“I met her,” Lily said dryly. “She showed up almost as soon as I arrived.”
“And you know she’s—”
“Helen Whitehead’s twin sister. Yes.”
“She’s some kind of bigwig here. I haven’t figured out what her role is exactly, but she’s got pull with the spawn so she must be useful to them. And she, uh—I’m her prisoner. Once the spawn finished questioning me, they gave me to her. She wants me to teach the peasants here more about how to use magic.”
Lily was silent, trying to stretch her view of that cold, colorless woman to encompass . . . what? Missionary? Do-gooder? “She wants to educate the peasants?”
“I know. Weird, huh? But she’s got a list of the kind of spells she wants them to learn. Practical stuff like purifying water and spells that promote healing. Anti-vermin spells—I already traded her one of those, one for fleas. No fire spells, though. For some reason that’s forbidden.” She huffed. “I’ve let myself get distracted again. I’ve told you two of the three things I wanted to be sure to say right away, in case they interrupt us. Here’s the third.” With that, she lifted the hem of her top.
For a second Lily was too startled at having Cynna flash her boobs to notice the golden cobweb clinging to her skin over her heart. It was round, about six inches across, and seemed to be made of very fine gold wire. “What in the hell is that?”
“They call it a magic cage. It traps my power. I can’t do any magic that reaches beyond my skin. And it won’t come off.” As Cynna wrapped her top around herself again, her mouth kept moving, but silently.
Lily had stopped paying attention to her mindsense, so she had to nudge it out again. Repeat, please. I wasn’t “listening.”
I think that together we can blow this thing’s circuits, but what I have in mind is kind of dangerous. Don’t want to try until we’re ready to act.
When the children get here. Yes. Lily’s hands fisted. But we’ll need a way back. Can you make a gate? Surely the answer was yes. Cynna had the memories and she’d participated in a gate-building once—and dammit, they had to get the children out of here, once they arrived. They had to go home.
But Cynna was shaking her head. Not alone. Even gnomes don’t try to build a gate alone, and they know what they’re doing. Maybe Reno can help me when he gets here. She switched back to speaking out loud. “I think the magic cage is sidhe work. That’s based on what I can see of the runes incorporated in the web. Wherever it came from, though, it’s old and it’s sophisticated. It draws power from me—uses my own magic to block my magic, which is a real pisser. When I try to use magic, I get dizzy. If I keep trying, I pass out.”
Lily frowned. “So does it really block your magic? Or does it just react to an attempt to use it by knocking you out?”
“The first, I think. Far as I can tell—and damn, but I wish I had Cullen’s vision!—it’s like a magic vacuum. It sucks up my magic, and not just the amount I’m trying to use, either. It doesn’t matter if I’m trying to do a Find, throw a mage light, or cast a powerful spell. Same result. I get dizzy almost instantly, the depleted kind of dizzy. If I keep trying anyway, in a few seconds I pass out.”
“Nasty.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about this place. What have you learned?”
“A lot. Um . . . first thing you should know is that this is a high-magic realm.”
“I thought it might be. Lots of sorcéri.” Though she hadn’t had any brush against her since being brought inside . . . maybe the stone walls blocked them?
Cynna nodded. “It’s like Edge in some ways. The magic isn’t dangerously high everywhere, but there are large areas humans stay away from. Unlike Edge, though, there isn’t a single band of territory that’s safe, but a patchwork of safe and not-safe. Mostly people have settled near moving water. That has to do with the way Water holds on to magic—better than Air, but it doesn’t grip as hard as Earth does. And Fire, of course, doesn’t hold on to magic at all. Fire magic is really misnamed. When that type of magic is released suddenly, you get fire, but calling it “fire” is like calling cows “milk” because you get milk from them. The product isn’t the same as . . . damn.” She rubbed her face wearily. “I’m going all Cullen on you. Explaining too much. Sorry. It’s just so damn good to have someone to talk to.”
Every time Cynna spoke Cullen’s name, Lily felt a little stab of hurt. He’s not dead, she told herself. “I know what you mean. When I learned you were here, I was glad. Then guilty because I was glad.”
“Yeah.” Cynna sighed. “Yeah, it’s like that. I’m glad you’re here. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but right now I don’t care about ‘should,’ I just . . . part of me hoped Gan would bring Cullen, but that’s stupid. If they’d captured him, they’d have killed him right away. A sorcerer is too dangerous to keep around.”
It sounded like Cynna was sure Cullen had been alive to be captured. Either that, or she was in denial. Lily decided she didn’t care which it was. She saw a lot of value in denial herself right now. She sent a probe out again. You knew Gan would bring someone else, but you didn’t know who?
We didn’t have a chance to chat. She grabbed me and zap—we were here. And falling. Cynna rubbed her arm as if remembering the result of that fall. “Where was I before I wandered off-topic?”
“This is a high-magic realm. People settle near water, where the ambient magic isn’t as high. Though I thought the ocean raised ambient magic levels, not lowered them.”
“They settle near running water, not the ocean. The ocean’s where magic gets dumped when the rivers empty into it. Big lakes can be a problem, too, though that probably isn’t the case in Lang Xin because of the spawn. Who we are not supposed to call spawn. I should warn you about that. They like to be called Zhu in the singular, Zhuren in the plural, and if you forget, they’ll hurt you. But like dragons, they’re sponges, able to soak up a lot of magic.”
“Is everyone here human? Except the spawn, I mean. And are they all Chinese?”
“Well, there aren’t any lupi.” Cynna smirked briefly. “According to Alice—almost all of this is from her, so grain-of-salt it—China’s the only part of Earth that abuts this realm in a way that causes fall-throughs. Beings from other realms do turn up, but they don’t have descendants. Or haven’t so far. Living in a high-magic realm inhibits fertility, and most races are nowhere near as fertile as humans. Of course, most of the races from sidhe realms can interbreed with humans, but there’s a big taboo about that here. Far as they’re concerned, all nonhumans are demons.”