Page 26 of Elemental Truth (Mysterious Fields #3)

26

JANUARY 18TH AT ARUNDEL

V itus remained entirely uncertain about this plan, but he had not come up with a better one. And he had to acknowledge that Thessaly both knew how things were done at Arundel far better than he did and was a far better strategist at speed. So now, here they were, about to go through the portal from Bryn Glas. He was wearing his voluminous cloak; she was wearing duelling clothes.

That, he had simple feelings about. Vitus found the outfit fascinating. He kept comparing what he could see of her body— feet and ankles, for example— with what was hidden behind the billowing fabric of the bloomers. Or whatever they were properly called. She had bracers on her forearms to corral the fabric from the sleeves. And she wore boots that came up her calves, laced, the sort that offered both support and good footing.

She’d also forgone any cloak of her own. He’d blinked at that, and she’d shrugged. “Warming charms. And I want to be able to move freely.” Vitus had to admit that multiple yards of wool were not lightweight at all.

Vitus had presented her with a talisman that would encourage anyone looking toward it to pass on by what they saw, or get distracted looking in the other direction. Nothing worth seeing right there. He wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, actually; it was one of those methods passed down from person to person, but the accompanying theory had been lost to time.

Perhaps she could help him work it out and improve it. It must rely on at least some of the same theory as illusion work. He paused at the Bryn Glas portal long enough for her to cast a series of illusions. When she was done, he could barely see where she was, even when her hand was on his wrist and he knew.

When they came out of the portal on the far side, he was pleased to see the weather wasn’t unpleasant. They’d settled on arriving at about half-three, after the Fortiers should be gone, but with enough light to get a look at the mill in daylight. Vitus nodded at the footman who was waiting, somewhat relaxed. The man jumped to attention before realising it was Vitus, who did not rate that kind of effort.

“Good afternoon. I believe Magister Montague mentioned I might be by? I wanted a look at the project we’re working on.”

“Sir.” There was a slight nod. “As you wish, sir. Please don’t enter into the estate proper. Do you know how long you’ll be?”

“I wasn’t planning to. And it might be an hour, it might be a few. It depends how long my measurements take, and if I find any differences once the sun has set. I brought a lantern or two for a charmlight.” Vitus managed a nod, smooth enough for what was needed, and then set off. He could feel Thessaly to his left. She was keeping his body between herself and the footman. But a glance back showed the footman had sat again. He was watching the portal, rather than keeping an eye on them until they got around the bend in the path.

From there, it was a brisk walk across to the river, and when they got there, Thessaly dropped the illusion work. Vitus blinked several times, so he could more or less focus on her, despite the talisman. “This is the mill.”

“The problem I have here is that I don’t know what a mill is supposed to look like inside. So I don’t know what might be different. Can I have a look around outside?”

“Might as well, while there’s light. Then we can do inside.” Vitus really wasn’t sure this was a good idea now he was here. He was not designed for this sort of plot. That was becoming more and more clear every second.

Thessaly, on the other hand, bounced lightly on her toes. She set off to investigate the entire outside of the building, including climbing out on the wooden framework that held the spinning mill wheel. She spent quite a long time peering at it, while Vitus checked the measurements again. He thought from the way the readings were that there had been something active in the space a few days ago. Not yesterday, probably, but Thursday or Wednesday. He wondered what that meant, if they’d done something before having Vitus and Florent make the oaths.

Finally, Thessaly unfolded herself from where she’d been sitting. “Inside? Can you get inside, first?”

They retreated to the door, and Vitus pressed his palm against the panel that anchored the wards. He’d been attuned to it. He felt the warding magic recognise him. There was a little flicker that wasn’t quite painful but like a spark against his skin in the winter. And then the door clicked, a lock turning over. He reached to turn the handle with his other hand, and the knob shifted and the door opened.

“Me first.” Vitus went in, casting a charmlight and setting it inside the lantern he’d been carrying. He looked around, considering. It was a large room, the entire size of the mill. That was not the surprising part. If a mill didn’t have someone living in it, he thought that was often the case where the room would be used for storage or something like.

Instead, there was a metal construction to one side. It was not quite touching the far walls, maybe a foot or two of space around it, and Vitus blinked at it several times. It was made of a broad copper mesh, open enough that he could see there was nothing inside it bar a wooden bench or two. He held up his hand. “Wait a minute, don’t come inside.”

He took the second lantern, added a charmlight to it, and made a much closer inspection of the room, working clockwise from the door. Some part of him felt remarkably superstitious about it. The walls seemed to be what they looked like. At the left of the door, to the south, there was the cage. There turned out to be more room to walk around it than it looked like. The cage was also larger than he expected, as if the perspective of the room, seen from the door, was somehow altered.

The cage turned out to be about eight feet tall, a reasonable ceiling height, and a solid nine foot diameter, one of the more common sizes for a proper ritual circle. He could see lines of chalk on the floor, which was inset with slate, inside a wooden base where the cage stood. The weave of the cage itself was quite small - from outside, someone could see if there was anyone inside, but not who it was, he thought. Circling behind it, he found a dozen switches. They were labelled, but only with symbols, the sort of thing that would make sense to the owner and to no one else. One had a bee, and one had a flower of some kind. One had the image of an archway, one had a sun. There were several other shapes he couldn’t quite parse, perhaps a particular family symbology. Some of them looked alchemical, others looked like the sort of thing inscribed on mysterious stone monuments.

From there, he went around the rest of the room. He saw nothing nearly as confusing, though he was again struck by some incongruence of the shape of the room, the size of it. When he came around to the door again, Thessaly was shifting from foot to foot.

“Can you tell from there if there’s an illusion on the room? Something doesn’t feel right about the size or the placement.” Vitus shivered once. “About a lot of things, actually.”

Thessaly nodded. “Can you bring the light over near that— whatever that is?”

Vitus had a slowly dawning realisation of what it was called properly, but he didn’t want to distract Thessaly. “Here?” He took the lantern over to about an arm’s length from the near side of the cage. She nodded, and then concentrated.

“There’s something. I don’t— whoever they got to do the illusion work, I don’t think they’re very good? It’s not holding very well. But why would they do an illusion inside a building that no one’s going to look at twice, when it’s also warded?” It seemed to offend her in some fundamental way.

“Explain, please?” Vitus asked. “If you would? Is, um. Is there a way you can tell if it’s a new illusion or an older one? Or whether it’s meant for everyone, or just some people?”

“Oh, that’s an idea.” Thessaly considered. “I was reading something the other day. Now, what is that? If it were cast like Aunt Metaia did for the Silence-warded places. You want magical folk to see what’s really there, and the non-magical folk see whatever illusion means they won’t bother to come look. Like, oh, along the visible side of Trellech from the river. It’s sort of boring fields, with just enough bulls and fierce sheepdogs that you wouldn’t go wandering through the fields. You’d go along the paths, far enough away from Trellech.”

“Can you get a good look at it now?” Vitus was watching her, though the light was fading outside, and she was standing far enough back that the lantern with the charmlight he’d hung inside the door, on the wall, wasn’t quite illuminating her face or where she was standing. Besides the problem of the talisman, which made it tricky to look at her directly.

“That’s.” She made a gesture with her hands, and he couldn’t make sense of that either. “It’s like in my dream. The one Solstice eve. Do you know what that is?”

Vitus coughed once. “Yes, but I’ve not the faintest clue what it means. I’m near sure it’s a Faraday cage, it blocks electrical forces. You could sit in one of these in a lightning storm, and not be struck.”

“But it’s inside.” That logic, he had to admit, was very relevant and correct.

“There’s a set of, um. I don’t actually know what to call them. Switches? Dials? Something. I don’t want to test them, not without having any idea what they do, and they’re just labelled with symbols. And this one here, with the cord attached, the lever.”

Thessaly considered. “I think I’d best not come in. I can try dispelling the illusion from here. If it’s cast the way I think it is, the Fortiers won’t notice it’s gone, at least until they try to renew it. And that might be a while, and it’s the sort of thing that might fade out without a lot of warning, anyway. You write down what’s on those dials or whatever they are.” She considered. “Did Professor Marrington do the lecture with you in Incantation class where he talked about anchoring modes? The one he illustrated with that board of knobs of different metals?”

“Oh!” Vitus nodded, remembering it now. “He did. I can see what the materials are, that might be informative. Later, if not right now.” He settled into examining each one. The identification charms shouldn’t harm anything or leave any sign they’d been done. He found, in fact, that whatever the mechanism was, it was relying on multiple different metals, including, oddly, iron. Three kinds of iron, in fact, when he ran an additional test. That wasn’t one he was used to. He was far more used to judging the purity of gold or silver. But the iron, some was hot forged, some was cold forged, and some had come from a meteorite. Another two were stone, one marble and one quartz. Then there was copper, bronze, one that was eighteen karat gold, and a sterling silver. No mercury, he thought, but that wasn’t unreasonable. Mercury was difficult to manage.

By the time he finished with that, Thessaly was standing on both feet, looking rather smug. “There.” She’d waited until he was able to pay attention. “Have a look now?”

Vitus took a few steps back, and that odd sense of the size of the building being all wrong had disappeared entirely. The cage took up a good half of the room, he could see that now, leaving a substantial space, the same wood floor with slate set inside, outside the cage. It suggested that one might want a ritual space affected by the cage and one not. But that made no sense if the goal was to create lightning or electricity or anything of the kind.