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“It’s a precaution,” she told him. “This is something the lady over there brought to be read. I checked with Rose and Jeeves, and they both agreed this was the right step to take. I’m not sure what it is, or what it will show you, but they both said you have to read it here and now.”

Lynn stepped back, leaving the object with Zeke. He immediately sought the gaze of his friend Jeeves, who had been given the gift of foresight by the ancient djinn in the Tower of Babel. He looked very serious and nodded encouragement.

Zeke resigned himself to whatever was coming. Reading magical objects wasn’t something he had done often, and it always came with a little surprise. Not usually a pleasant one. He opened the pouch and allowed the contents to fall gently onto the small table in front of him.

It was a rock. He examined it visually before reaching out to touch it. At first, he thought it was just a regular black rock with crags and inclusions. Nothing special. But then, the light hit it in just the right way, and he saw that it wasn’t black at all. It was red. Blood red. Freshly spilled.

He almost wanted to shy away, but this rock was in its natural state.

It might be inherently magical in some way, but it hadn’t been shaped by man.

He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think a rock—even a magical one—could be inherently good or evil.

It was the will of the mage that used it that turned it one way or the other.

At least, that’s what made sense to him.

Heaven help them if he was wrong because he had to touch this thing, and it felt powerful even without direct connection.

Bracing himself, he took a deep breath and then reached out with one finger, touching the rock with just the tip of his finger, experimentally.

He gasped as images flooded his mind. Images of a rock just like this one.

A rock that had been part of this one until broken up by some mining tool.

The other piece of this rock had found its way to a place he recognized.

Kettering Castle. Zeke swore under his breath and removed his hand from the rock. He looked up to report what he’d seen.

“This is a piece of a ruby that was, or is being, carved into some kind of magical talisman by a mage in Kettering Castle. The stone by itself is powerful, but the guy who’s crafting it is turning its natural magic into something dark and twisted.

I think it’s going to be the center stone of a ring.

A man’s ring. It was very large and bulky, and there were some of those arcane designs carved into it.

Both on the silver of the ring itself and on the ruby. ”

“Silver or white gold?” Major Moore asked, frowning. “Or maybe platinum?”

“Pure silver,” Zeke replied. He wasn’t precisely sure how he knew that, but he was positive.

Moore and several of the other shifters muttered curses.

Zeke knew now that silver was poison to shifters, and the fact that the ring was made of it probably meant something dire to them.

Zeke would have to ask about it later. Right now, he had to look a little deeper.

He reached out and made contact with the stone again, this time touching it with three fingers.

The results were immediate, and strong. He kept his eyes closed, speaking of what he saw.

“Salazar,” he said.

“The stone mage,” a female voice intoned in almost musical notes.

Zeke looked up to find the small woman had moved from the edge of the crowd to stand opposite him on the other side of the small table. He’d removed his hand from the rock and looked at her questioningly.

“Ma’am?” He cocked his head, using his most respectful tone of voice.

Now that she was closer, he felt power radiating off her, though he couldn’t explain it.

Perhaps it was some new manifestation of his power that he could feel the intensity of magical beings.

He’d felt something from the mage and some of the shifters, but this woman was off the charts of his limited experience.

“Uh…” Major Moore stepped forward to make introductions. “This is Leonora, our resident dryad.” His eyes sparked with both humor and affection as he met the older woman’s eyes. She smiled back at him in a grandmotherly way.

Dryad? Zeke had studied mythology. Dryads were supposed to be magical wood nymphs with power over the living forest and the earth. He’d heard them described as earth elementals. Which made this rock an even more interesting specimen.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” Zeke said politely. She nodded at him and motioned toward the rock that sat on the table between them.

“Go on. What else do you see, young man?” she urged gently.

Zeke reached out once more and took the stone into his hand. Once again, the images flashed through his mind. He spoke of what he saw.

“Salazar has a workshop in Kettering Castle. I’ve seen it before and recognize the skyline out the window. I see him there, working on the other half of this stone, forging it into the ring. Kettering is there too, watching and learning,” Zeke said.

“Learning stone lore?” Leonora asked, prompting him in the direction she wanted.

Zeke shook his head. “He doesn’t have the aptitude for it, but he’s useful in other ways.

That’s what Salazar said to him while he worked.

The other part of this stone has been in his workshop for weeks.

There are a lot of conversations and things it saw that I can access.

This could take a while. And…it’s still there.

It’s like a direct line to anything that happens in that workshop.

” Zeke opened his eyes and let go of the stone.

The dryad beamed at him. “Then you should keep it and sort through everything it sees,” she told him. “You might learn something important.” With a wink, she retreated back to her earlier position at the periphery of the crowd.

The rest of the guys did their own demonstrations.

Dan walked through the wall of the building and back again.

Hal bent a steel rod with his bare hands, demonstrating his Herculean strength.

Rick healed a bad cut one of the guys had gotten earlier in the day.

Jeeves foretold the precise moment someone would sneeze in the crowd, drawing laughter, but he then went on to give a more somber prediction about the future.

“Rose and I have agreed to be cautious about what we say. I think you shifters know more about foresight and the responsibilities of my new power than we do, so I suspect you’ll understand that I’m treading a fine line between how much I can say and how much I have to withhold in order to let the future unfold in the best possible way.

What I can say, now that we’re here, is that I believe our unit is going to be heavily involved in the struggle against Elspeth.

We’re going to fight side-by-side with you all.

And we’re going to make it clear to everyone that we’ve sworn our allegiance to the Light, and we’ll never be swayed from that path.

I know the brass is talking about what to do with us, and I already know how that’s going to turn out.

I’ve conferred with Rose, and we don’t think it will change the outcome if I say that in all likelihood, our unit is going to end up becoming the human arm of the Wraiths. ”

*

Thanks for reading Echoes of the Past .