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I nodded. “It also means someone must know what is going on here, because barrier spells are not perpetual. They need regular refurbishment and strengthening.”

“Its existence doesn’t necessarily mean that the current crop of government bods are in the know,” Cynwrig said. “It might simply be the result of a historical overlay order, which is funded and serviced without details as to why it’s being released.”

I glanced at him curiously. “Are there many of those in existence these days?”

“There’s a couple, mainly in the locations that saw the worst fighting during the war of the races.”

A war mankind won, with more than a little help from shifters and mages.

I raised my eyebrows. “That happened centuries ago—how could the magic still exist?”

“It doesn’t, but before it faded, it changed the viscosity of the soil. You might as well try walking on water.” He motioned to the wall we couldn’t see. “Will your knives counter this spell? Or are they designed to only counter foul magic or spells designed to attack you?”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

I drew a knife and pressed the point into the unseen barrier. A gentle pulse ran through the blade, a soft beat that suggested it had at least recognized the presence of magic. A few seconds later, the pulsing increased, and the barrier shimmered and peeled away from the knife’s point, creating a hole a meter or so in width. Which wasn’t enough to let me step through, let alone the two men beside me. When I pulled the blade away, the hole slowly closed.

“You know,” Lugh said, “we came across a barrier like this once in Egypt. Our mage tried every spell he knew but couldn’t break it. In the end, we used two silver blades to create a gap big enough through which to crawl.” He glanced at me. “Your knives are silver. That’s probably why it pierced the barrier without breaking the spell.”

The fading pulse in the knife suggested theyhadapplied some interference to the magic, but I let it slip. “What do we need to do?”

“You place one knife on the ground and hold the other diagonally several feet away. We slip through the gap, you follow, and then reclaim the ground knife.”

I frowned. “If it was that simple, wouldn’t other people have tried to get in here?”

“Who would really want to get in here?” Lugh countered. “Photographers and cavers perhaps, but pure silver knives are expensive, and most would not bother.”

I’d gone out with a photographer a couple of times, and it had seemed to me that being legally restricted from entering a place had only fueled his determination to do exactly that. He might have been a rarity, of course.

I placed one knife on the ground, drew the other, then took two steps sideways, pushing it into the barrier just above my head. The air once again shimmered and peeled away from the blades, this time creating a somewhat angular “doorway” rather than a neat-looking hole. Once the two men stepped through, I followed then bent to pick up my other knife. The barrier chased my movement down, closing fully the minute my knife was free.

“Hopefully,” Lugh said, “we haven’t set off all sorts of alarms and traps. That did happen in Egypt. Got interesting for a while there on that trip.”

Cynwrig rolled his eyes. “Nowhe mentions it.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because it wouldn’t have stopped any of us.”

Which was a truth neither Cynwrig nor I could argue with. I sheathed my knives and followed the two men down the road and into the lovely old forest. What immediately struck me was the silence. Woods like this were usually full of birdsong, even in winter, but there were no sounds here aside from the gentle rustle of leaves stirred by the wind. Did the barrier prevent them from entering? It was possible, I supposed, but overkill in the extreme. Unless, of course, whatever happened in Pynwffynnon was as dangerous to wildlife as humans.

Which made me doubt the wisdom of entering this place, but not enough to stop, of course.

I brushed my fingers along the low-hanging branch of an old oak arching gracefully over the broken road. Its song was strong and warm, but it resonated with such sadness that tears briefly touched my eyes. I blinked them away and brushed the branch of another tree. It too mourned for brethren lost. And yet both were surrounded by trees that were perhaps even older than them.

As we moved closer to Pynwffynnon, the road began to climb, and the forest fell to our left while the mountain rose to our right.

It was then we began to see the destruction. While there were plenty of newer trees whose song resonated brightly across the stillness, dotted amongst them were the remnants of what had once been lovely old oaks and birches. They lay on the ground in lines that fanned out in an increasing radius, reminding me a little of an image I’d once seen of a meteor strike that had happened in Russia in the early 1900s. That forest had also been flattened, the trees stripped of all foliage, their bare trunks lying on the ground in soldier-straight lines that led away from the strike point.

If Pynwffynnon was the strike point here, then its destruction did not solely lie at the hands of the Annwfyn. Their weapons were claws and teeth, not bombs, bullets, or even knives.

We finally reached the top of the long slope. Pynwffynnon lay below us, nestled in the small valley between two mountain ridges. Like many villages around these parts, there was one main street lined with buildings on either side, and a smattering of houses on the slopes around it. All of them were in a state of decay. Mounds of rubble surrounded most of them, there were very few intact windows, and most of the roofing had disappeared, though whetherthatwas due to erosion or theft, I couldn’t say. Slate was often repurposed, and if they’d had time to bury the dead, then they’d probably had time to gather slate and other reusable building materials.

Blackberries and other noxious weeds rambled over what remained of the buildings, and the forest had begun reclaiming the main street. There was even a poplar growing out of the engine bay of a rusted old car.

There were no soldier lines of trees here, though. No old trees or plants of any kind, in fact. If this village was the ignition point for the blast that had caused the damage in the surrounding forest, then there was no immediate evidence of it.

But maybethatwas all the evidence we needed, given the cover-up that had obviously happened here.

Cynwrig dropped onto his heels and pressed his fingers into the gritty soil. After a moment, he said, “There’s no indication that the ground is in any way unstable up ahead.”