A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(19)

Maria would have been a small girl when it happened. Had she lost anyone? Friends? Family? The very thought made me sick.

We went up one hill and down another, and my boots sank into the mud. I conjured a spell from the air to dry them, and the bottom of my skirt as well. While I tended to my clothes, Maria motioned to me with an air of bewilderment.

“Who goes into battle wearing ladies’ things?” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a lady,” I said, blushing. Granted, she had a point, but the Order would have had collective heart palpitations to see me dressed like a boy.

Or associating with a witch, but they didn’t need to know everything.

“Why do you wear trousers?” Blackwood asked. Maria shrugged.

“Ever tried to climb a tree in a dress?” she asked.

“No.” Blackwood rolled his eyes.

“Once.” Magnus grinned. “It was for a wager. I won.”

God, what an image. Maria laughed and slowed down to walk side by side with Magnus. They seemed to get along well, and not in the usual, flirtatious way Magnus got on with young ladies. As they walked, she showed him how to handle her ax. It didn’t take long before he was throwing it in an expert arc through the air and straight into a tree, even with only one good arm. Blackwood trudged beside me, shifting his pack from one shoulder to the other.

“How can we be certain she’s not a spy?” he murmured, continuing an argument we’d started that morning. When Maria had officially volunteered herself as our new companion, Magnus had been delighted and Blackwood withdrawn.

“We need to be cautious with whom we accept,” he’d told her when she’d noticed his less than enthusiastic reaction.

“What was the better introduction? The saving your life bit,” Maria said pointedly, “or the saving his life bit.” She’d nodded at Magnus.

“My life. Without question.” Magnus had shaken hands with her. “Welcome to the party.”

Blackwood said nothing further, but now here we were, still softly arguing about it. He was the stubbornest young man alive.

“We could use a physician. Besides, would you have felt comfortable leaving a girl underground all alone?” I whispered, lifting my skirt and leaping over a muddy patch.

Blackwood made his mouth a thin line but finally shut up about it. We walked, on alert for more Familiars as we passed one abandoned village and then another. The sight of them made us all uneasy. There was no scorching, no destruction to signify why the people had all left. It was as if they’d simply got up and vanished.

At midday we stopped for a small rest, and to allow Blackwood to form a scrying glass. He summoned water from the muddy ground and projected Strangewayes’s house’s location. It took a couple of tries, but with the help of the map, we soon saw it: a veritable wall of mist around what looked to be a small house.

“It’s close now,” he said, letting the water rain back to the ground. He pointed ahead. “That copse of trees looks familiar.” Indeed, we were on the border of an ancient-looking wood.

The second we entered the trees, the mist enveloped us, so thick I started to cough. Magnus cursed, and I lit my hand on fire to give us some light. It did little to help, only allowing us enough visability to move a foot or two at a time. It felt as though the mist were trying to drive us out.

Then we saw the house.

An old wooden fence gated a land grown wild with weeds. The fence was splintered and sagging on its posts, the barn beyond it in a dilapidated state. The wood was swollen with water and bleached from the sun. To the right, a moss-covered gray stone cottage had sunk into the ground. In short, it looked like any other abandoned farmstead to be found in Cornwall.

But the magic.

It simmered in the air, coating the inside of my throat like honey. Blackwood closed his eyes tight. He felt it, too.

“There’s glamour upon it.” Putting out his hand, he touched only mist and air. “The enchantment is powerful.”

“Magician enchantment?” Magnus walked forward, leaping over the fence. He turned around, and then came back wearing a puzzled expression. “It feels off, doesn’t it? Not quite human.”

Agrippa had schooled me in only the most rudimentary form of enchantments, but the boys had learned more. An enchantment went deeper than a mere illusion—it permeated the reality of an area, soaking it in deception. If I went inside that stone cottage right now, it would look like any other ordinary, abandoned house. Whatever Strangewayes was hiding would remain cloaked from the naked eye.

Enchantments, to put it mildly, were tricky.

“It might be Fae in nature.” Blackwood sounded confused. “But they don’t usually bother with areas this close to the sea.”

Indeed, the Fae were a woodland folk. Great amounts of salt water repelled them.

“Cut the air,” Magnus said, readying his stave. A simple warded blade could sever weaker enchantments.

I slashed Porridge twice but got nowhere. Blast and damn. Magnus followed with his own attempt, though he was a bit clumsy with his arm bandaged up. Blowing out my cheeks, I paced in front of the fence. Maria chuckled.

“Sorry. But you all look so cross.” She shrugged her pack off and set it on the ground. Her little fingers played along the top of her ax; she seemed to rely upon it for support, the way I relied upon Porridge. “Have you no other powers to use?”