And they shouldn’t realise I’m here, she told herself. It shouldn’t even cross their minds.
The air felt odd, the wind blowing hot and cold seemingly at random. She wasn’t looking at the artefact — she’d been careful to pick a position where the artefact was out of her sight — but she could feel it behind her, like a boy creeping up to breathe down her neck. She would almost have preferred the boy. The artefact was a brooding presence that dominated the landscape, seemingly looming larger with every passing day. Hoban had told her they were still digging, that they hadn’t reached the bottom yet, and still… she swallowed hard. It was impossible to make sense of what she was seeing. Or sensing. Her mind simply refused to accept it.
She waited, checking her pistol and counting the seconds as they ticked onwards. It was quite possible she was wasting her time. The missing worker was probably hidden a long way from her. The other workers knew his absence, and the missing tools, had been noticed. It would be foolish for him to return to steal more or even to return what he’d stolen. Her lips quirked in disgust as the clouds shifted, shafts of moonlight stabbing down to the ground. There were very few crimes held in universal abhorrence in the region, but stealing tools was very definitely one of them. The thief would be lucky if he wasn’t beaten to death when he was caught.
And something odd clearly happened to him, she reflected. Or else the tracking spell would have either led us to him or failed completely.
The darkness seemed, somehow, to grow darker as the moon faded behind the clouds again. Frieda leaned forward, biting her lip to keep from falling asleep. It was galling. She knew how to stay awake and yet, her eyelids were suddenly very heavy. A flicker of alarm ran through her, banishing the tiredness in the wink of an eye. Was someone trying to put her to sleep? Sergeant Miles had taught her spells to put sentries to sleep, then shown her how to resist them. She couldn’t sense any magic, but that was meaningless. The subtle spells were designed to be difficult to detect. They’d be rendered useless the moment their target realised they were there.
She felt her heart start to race as her eyes peered into the darkness. She’d cast a pair of night vision spells as a matter of course and yet, it was hard to spot any movement within the pools of shadow. The ruined village was completely lifeless and yet… she tensed as she spotted a moving shadow, inching towards the dig. She froze, trying not to breathe. The intruder’s senses might be as good as her own, if not better. If he’d grown up in the Cairngorms, he was probably as attuned to the local environment as everyone else… she wished, suddenly, she’d spent more time outside since she’d left Mountaintop. The intruder might not need magic to sense her. The moment he sensed something out of place, he’d turn and run.
And I need to follow him back to his lair, she thought, grimly. She briefly considered trying to enchant the intruder, then dismissed the thought before she could even begin to put the idea into practice. The locals might be backed by a sorcerer or a rogue team of diggers or… who knew? We need to know who’s behind him.
She gritted her teeth and waited as the shadowy form flitted around the dig. He — she thought the intruder was male, he certainly carried himself like a local man — didn’t seem scared of the artefact. Frieda had no idea what that meant. Was he too stupid to be scared? Was he unable to sense the aura surrounding the artefact? Or… or what? If it made her skin crawl every time she looked at it, if it made hardened diggers take the long way around just to avoid getting to close to it, if… she shook her head. She’d get answers out of the intruder shortly, after he’d returned to his lair. She reached out with her senses but found nothing. The artefact’s baleful presence overshadowed everything else.
The intruder was good, she noted sourly, as he slipped back into the shadows. Her ears were sharp, and yet she’d heard nothing. He hadn’t even stepped on a twig! Frieda would have been impressed — she’d seen experienced scouts and soldiers betray their presence through slight mishaps — if it hadn’t made life harder for her. She inched forward, drawing on nearly fifteen years of life in the region — and five more years at Mountaintop and Whitehall — and slipped after the intruder. If he was aware of her presence, he did nothing. Instead, he moved with the confidence and grace of someone who knew the region like the back of his hand.
Which is interesting, she thought, because the headman told us no one has crossed the boundary line since the village was destroyed.
She put the thought aside for later consideration as she kept moving, slipping from tree to tree as she struggled to keep the intruder in sight. The undergrowth seemed to snatch at her, roots and branches threatening to snap across her face and make noises that would be all too revealing. Frieda knew she was fit and healthy, after five years of proper food and medical care, but she feared the intruder could simply outrun her. She readied a spell to take him down, all too aware he might be quick enough to put a tree trunk between them while she was casting the spell. If he acted quickly, and refused to panic, he might well get away.
The shadows seemed to ebb and flow like living things as the intruder continued ghosting through the trees. Frieda sensed flickers of wild magic—tainted magic — riding the winds, brushing almost painfully against her wards. She was suddenly very sure she was being watched by unseen eyes, eyes that were very far from human. A shiver ran down her spine, her legs jerking as they felt a sudden urge to stop. Frieda bit her lip and forced herself to keep going. The intruder seemed to be moving without fear, even though he was travelling well off the beaten path. She’d thought he’d head down to the village and plead innocence the following morning, but instead he was slipping further up the mountains. She cursed under her breath. If she lost sight of him now, she’d lose him for good.
Next time, we’ll have to set up a proper booby trap for him, she thought. And hope we can make him talk before his backers get spooked and vanish.
Frieda kept moving, eyes peering into the darkness as the wild magic grew stronger. The ground shifted below her feet, the earth giving way to stones that looked to have been thrown against the mountainside by an angry god. She crossed a stream that would become a raging torrent later in the year, when the autumn rains began in earnest. It was hard to tell if the intruder had a real destination in mind, or if he knew she was there and was trying to get her thoroughly lost before vanishing into the shadows and leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere. She smiled, rather grimly, at the thought. She could still sense the artefact, a poisoned needle stabbing into the land. It would be child’s play to let the artefact guide her back to the camp.
The world seemed to shift around her, so sharply she thought — for a second — she’d been attacked. Her senses were dulled, as if someone had thrown a blanket over her… panic yammered through her, forced down by schooling and experience. She hadn’t walked into a bunch of boys with bad intentions… she hadn’t! The panic nearly made her lash out, or cower under an imaginary blow, before she calmed herself. The air felt dead, weirdly hot and cold. She’d stepped under a magical shroud.