Excantation Read online

  “Oh.” My hand to Thor, she honestly didn’t look a day over thirty. Wrinkles fled in fear from this woman, okay? Her pale skin was perfect.

  She grinned at me, delighted. “I like you and thank you for the compliment.”

  Does it count as a compliment if I didn’t mean it that way? You know what, I’m gonna roll with that. “You’re welcome. Okay, if you never used it, then do you know much about it?”

  “Hmm, only what I’ve been told. I did stop in the Waterloo station, since it was on the way. I wanted to see a platform with my own eyes. What I saw was quite interesting.”

  I sat up a little straighter. To my knowledge, she was the only druid to have examined the platforms. “What did you see?”

  “A tether. A bit bedraggled and needs restoring, but a tether.”

  Excitement rising in a tide, my voice got a little louder. “Like the druid tethers you guys use? My nana, she said it was similar, that the Hub was tethered in place in order to support it.”

  She blinked at me. “Your grandmother has knowledge in this field?”

  “She was a mythology professor before she retired.”

  “Ahh. Well, in this case she’s half-right.”

  I punched the air in victory. “She’s going to be so smug about that, you have no idea. But how was she half-wrong?”

  “It was a little hard to judge, you understand, with the state the tether is in.” She pursed her lips and stared at the picture I still had up on the screen. It was the one that looked as if the viewer was just stepping out of the tunnel with the Hub waiting area around it. “But I don’t think the Hub was tethered. Or at least, it wasn’t tethered via the platform. Instead, it looked as if the platform was tethered to a designated point.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I’m following?”

  “I don’t blame you. I’m speaking aloud in a way. Allow me to give you a baseline of information. You’re aware of how tethers are made and function?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a clueless wonder. Tell me all, Obi-Wan.”

  She snorted a laugh. “You’re lucky I’ve seen Star Wars and can catch that reference. Alright, from the beginning, then. Our system is two-fold. First is our ability to plane-walk, which isn’t something we can grant someone else. We can take passengers along, assuming we only have two or three, but it’s not a skill we can teach. It takes a particular sight to manage it. The sight enables us to plane-walk, meaning we can reach many of the planes and choose which one to walk about. The planes of course are not our creation, but the ability to walk upon them, that is part of our training.”

  I nodded to show I was following along.

  “Now, the second part is the tethers themselves. The tethers are tri-functional. They operate as a doorway for us, as a tether between one plane and the next, and as a beacon upon all the planes. As I’m sure you’re aware, all the planes look vastly different from each other. They have no geographical points in common. Without our tethers shining as a beacon, we’d become very quickly lost.”

  Did I know that? Nope. But I nodded along anyway.

  Warming to her subject, Aisling rubbed the tips of her fingers together. “Now. As I said, the tethers are the key to this. Our tethers do not hold anything in place, that is not their purpose. They are a connection, a road leading from one place to another. Think of it this way: you have many roads going from one city to another. Do those roads hold the city in place?”

  “No,” I agreed, seeing her point. “They just connect the cities for travel. Gotcha. The tethers can’t function that way.”

  “They were not designed to do so. Nor do they have the strength or ability to be modified in such a manner. Now, what I found curious—”

  “Aisling!” James called from the front door, sounding peeved. “I hear you in there theorizing, and how dare you have fun without me.”

  I tilted my head back to see past Aisling and realized it wasn’t just James coming in, but Jackson too. “Jackson, hey! I lost track of you days ago. How are you doing?”

  “Fine, fine. I had some emergency shelters to put in place,” Jackson answered with a tired wave. His panda eyes were seriously no joke. If he walked into a zoo right now, the pandas would accept him as one of their own. “Hi.”

  Agna appeared out of thin air. I’m not kidding. She took one look at Jackson and tsked, taking his bag out of his hand. “You’re hungry, no doubt. Upstairs with you, have a hot shower. I’ll bring up a tray so you can snack before you have a nap.”

  “That obvious I want a nap, huh?” Jackson followed her dociley upstairs. He did call back, “Don’t come up with any breakthroughs without me!”

  “Fat chance!” I called back, mostly to tweak his nose.

  “I wish for a breakthrough more than anything,” James muttered rhetorically. He came to plop on the couch, staring at Aisling with a pout on his mouth. “I call you in to help and you start giving her all the meaty clues?”

  “She asked,” Aisling responded in amusement, totally unbothered with his pout. “And do stop, James, you look like you’re five. I’ll tell you too.”

  His attitude did an abrupt 180 and he went back to being happy James. “What have I missed?”

  For his sake, Aisling backtracked a little. “I stopped by to look at the platform on the way here. Your tether there is raggedy, no doubt from the air raid that hit the building, but still stable enough I could figure it out.”

  James threw up a hand. “Wait. Wait, there’s a tether on that platform?”

  “Hmm, aye. Not something anyone other than a druid could detect. It’s not visible on a magical spectrum. The tether connects to three other points—two linear, one vertical.”

  The linear points made sense to me. “Connecting to the other platforms in-country.”

  She pointed a finger at me and winked. “You’re quick. That’s precisely it. The vertical point, I would think, is the connection to the Hub. And that’s rather where the problem child is. The tether going up is damaged and will need extensive repair to stabilize it again. Frankly, not something I’d want to do by myself.”

  James leaned forward. “But it’s there? It can be repaired?”

  “Oh, aye. Or just done anew, if need be. What’s interesting is that someone has placed a warning on the tether. A ‘do not pass’ sign, if you will. I know when they first shut it down and sent out the announcement that the system was not to be used, many signs were posted all around the platforms. And the platforms themselves were disabled to prevent their use. But why tamper with the tether in such a way? Only a druid could see it, and the druids have no use for them.”

  Now that was odd. Unless that was an international platform. Each country had at least one platform designated as the one that would connect to the Hub. Not every platform did. It was something I hadn’t checked when we were over there.

  “I wonder if it was to prevent a druid from tampering with them on behalf of another?” James postulated slowly, each word building a path forward. “So many wanted to use them, perhaps they feared someone talking a druid into renewing the connection?”

  “That is perhaps it.”

  “That’s likely it.” Aisling gave a satisfied nod. “Often, the simple explanation is correct.”

  All this was important info, but she didn’t tell him the most important part, in my opinion. “James, she also explained to me that there’s no way the tethers support anything. That’s not how they function. They’re just a road connecting from platform to platform, they can’t be used as a support.”

  James sagged in place, shoulders and head dropping. “Blight it. I half-hoped that was the case.”

  Aisling looked around to me, eyebrows arched. “Was this really such an issue?”

  “We don’t know where the Hub is,” I explained on a long sigh. “Like seriously, no clue. We do know it’s not on the material plane, but that means they’ve fixed the Hub in some point on some other plane, and we’re not sure how they managed that. Connecting it t
o the material plane is one thing. Anchoring it to another? Whole other headache.”

  Aisling tapped a finger to her chin. “I wonder where it is, then?”

  “Aisling,” James groaned, sounding truly pitiful, “You are here to supply answers, not ask more questions. We have too many of those as it is.”

  Waggling her eyebrows at him, she crooned, “I bring joy wherever I go.”

  “Remind me why I like you, again?”

  “You’re a glutton for punishment. We’ve established this.”

  I tried not to laugh and mostly failed. When James turned those mournful eyes on me, I decided to have pity and bail him out. We’d gotten off track anyway. “But I do have a question you might be able to answer. You said there was a warning on the tether leading up, but nothing to stop you, right? Just a warning?”

  She regarded me through narrowed eyes. “I can renew it and make it functional once more, aye. With a little help. But isn’t it risky to open that platform back up and just waltz through? Your forbearers shut it down for a reason.”

  “Risky, sure, but we don’t have to risk us. We can send in a drone like we did before.”

  James nodded in vigorous support of this. “A drone’s an excellent idea. Aisling, who do you need?”

  “I think Liam and Oisin for this. They’re the best with tethers. I’ll call them, see if I can bring them in. I assume same rate of pay for them?”

  “The clans are all in agreement on this. Everyone who helps is paid the same,” James assured her. “And we’re allowed to bring in however many experts we need to.”

  “Excellent. Then let me make some calls.” She stood gracefully and left the room, her forest green skirt swirling about her ankles as she moved.

  Can I be like her when I grow up?

  James turned to me and asked, “Why don’t the two of us go to the store and buy some drones and a camera or three? My clan’s covering expenses while you’re here and I’ve got a charge card to use. I think we’re going to need things shortly.”

  “I’m always up for buying more toys.” Although it did worry me that he wanted to buy multiples of them. Were the chances of us breaking them that high?

  Not sure if I wanted an answer on that.

  Liam and Oisin arrived the next morning. They didn’t have the cool staff in hand, though, and no wind accompanied their entrance, so apparently it wasn’t a druid thing to arrive that way. Just an Aisling thing. I have no idea how Zoya contacted any of them, come to think of it. Did druids have cell phones? Surely, right?

  Both men introduced themselves generally to the room, all while my hottie alert went off. Liam alone warranted the hottie alert with his thick red hair, stubble beard, and yummy build. But Oisin also looked handsome, though too old for my tastes. He was dark-haired and heavily salt-and-peppered, hint of a beard on his jaw, with cool, slate grey eyes that seemed to miss nothing. He wasn’t as boisterous as Liam, instead hanging back with a slight smile on his face, but he seemed cool. Knowing my luck, they were both as old as Aisling, despite appearances. Druids seemed to age only when they wanted to.

  Both were dressed in street clothes, not looking druidy at all, but I supposed it was easier to blend in with society than to stand out from it.

  We gathered up laptop, drone, camera, and all marched down to the platform. Aisling caught Liam up as they walked, filling him in on what we’d discussed last night. Oisin chose to talk with James and Zoya, also getting the gist of it all, with me, Jackson, and Ciarán bringing up the rear.

  Jackson hadn’t been awake long enough to catch up on everything, although he’d tried to as he’d eaten. He’d apparently heard enough to only need to verify a few things with me. “Tethers don’t say exactly where the Hub is?”

  “Aisling says yes, but the coordinates are apparently confusing. At least, they made no sense to her. She can duplicate them, though.”

  “Rats. Good thing they can redo them, then, so we can use the platform.”

  “Yup. I think we’re going to have to reverse-engineer this one. The Hub, I mean. We’ll have to get up there somehow and figure out how it was built. We’re not going to figure anything out from the ground.”

  Jackson made a face, nose wrinkling. “Dangerous prospect, that. They shut it down for a reason. I really wish someone had recorded the reason.”

  “You and me both.”

  We waltzed through the glamour as before. Jackson had clearly been here before, as he didn’t even blink. Our two new druid friends did, though, which made me wonder what Aisling thought of it the first time she popped in.

  We walked in and Jackson let out a low whistle. “You lot have been busy. Much cleaner in here. Who created the waiting area?”

  I lifted a hand.

  He gave me a nod. “Cheers, Reagan, looks quite good. And those chairs have all sorts of padding, which is brilliant. We’ll likely be here quite a while.”

  “Ciarán made a dying request,” I explained seriously.

  My pooka shrugged. “I figured you’d all be thankful for it later. I certainly will be in the future.”

  I was quite happy with how it turned out, too, and was pleased to get feedback from everyone else saying they felt the same. I’d put in little side tables every third chair, and James promptly made use of one for the laptop, choosing the one with the most direct line of sight to the platform. He was intent on setting up video feed already, eh?

  Not to brag, but I was the most tech-savvy person in this group, so I went to his side to help. The druids headed for the platform to work on the tether. I tried to keep an eye on them, but whatever they were doing, I literally couldn’t see it. Aisling had been right on that. Druidic magic wasn’t something visible on the magical spectrum. I would love it if someone could explain to me why at some point.

  We’d done an inspection of the platform yesterday, and it seemed okay enough for some trial runs. Definitely worse for the wear. It would need a cosmetic makeover at the very least before we let people use it. The general consensus was to test it before doing anything to it.

  They started talking in some other language I couldn’t even identify, so I lost track of what they were doing pretty quickly. I focused on helping James set up, and then created a room for a livestream. We had people pop in pretty quickly, ratcheting up the numbers to over a hundred in the space of ten minutes. I watched the counter with a growing frown. “James, we might need to limit the room. I don’t want them to overload and crash us.”

  “Oh. Good point. Do that now. We can’t afford any loss of data.”

  “Nope.” I capped the limit at the current count, as that was holding steady, and frankly? I wasn’t willing to experiment right now. If the server was happy at the moment, then happy it would remain.

  Liam came back to us, brows drawn together in worry. “James, bit of trouble over here. We’ve repaired the tether. It looks right as rain from here, but there’s something…odd at the far end.”

  It was a sad state of affairs that James didn’t even look surprised. “Odd how?”

  “Normally, when we touch a tether, we can sense the far end, in a way.” Liam scratched at one cheek, his beard stubble making a rasping noise. “If there’s a block on the far end, we feel that, as it has a remote feel to it. If it’s open, it echoes. Sort of like a tunnel for you, I suppose. If the tunnel’s blocked on the far end, you can tell by the sound of it.”

  We nodded, showed we were following.

  “Right, so we’re getting a sort of mixed reaction? It’s not open, that much I can tell you. There’s something blocking it on the far end, but it feels more like a door that’s been shut, not a collapse. But when we tried to probe at it, we couldn’t really tell what’s blocking the path.”

  “So, we may or may not be able to send a drone all the way through, is what you’re telling me.” James sighed, as if he were just done with this year. “Right. Well, all we can do is try it.”

  Liam shrugged agreement, then turned to go back to the
platform. Jackson followed with drone in hand. I really wanted to play with that drone at some point. I wondered if I could make a case for it being my turn yet.

  Ciarán manned the GoPro camera in one hand and followed after, although he stayed back enough to catch the full platform, out of the way of everyone working. I monitored the feed for a minute, but it seemed stable, no glitches.

  “We ready?” Aisling called back to us.

  James waved a hand over his head in a go motion. “Do it.”

  Zoya was actually the one to touch the symbols, as she knew better than the druids how to use it. The symbols on the column spluttered to life like a machine chugging up to speed after sitting idle for decades. Which it basically had. We all kind of held our breaths to see if it was going to work, or if we’d need to repair it fully after all.

  After a minute, the green light of the symbols held steady and the platform’s tunnel opened, allowing entry. It never failed to remind me of Stargate when it initially engaged, although we saw a lighted tunnel stretching out instead of a wormhole.

  “Steady as she goes,” Jackson muttered as he maneuvered the drone through.

  I switched to watching the laptop’s screen, as that would show me more information than anything right then. Zoya and James gathered at either shoulder, watching as well. The tunnel matched up perfectly so far with my own experiences using a platform, not any different in appearance to those in-country. It was a narrow tunnel just like the others, running lights along the baseboard and the top of the ceiling creating a mellow lighting. The floors, ceilings, and walls all looked to be of unrelieved grey stone. It did seem to take a while, but I expected that since the distance was longer. Supposedly. In theory, anyway.

  The drone flew along, Jackson flying it like a pro. The tunnel started to change a little, a warning sign popping up here and there in different languages, urging the passenger to go back and explaining that the Hub was no longer in operation. It didn’t warn of any specific dangers, more’s the pity. I’d love to know what was actually wrong with the Hub. We all would.