The lights went out.
Could he even print a second copy?
The computer was on a UPS that started to complain. Oilcan eyed the battery unit; it looked too small to be able to power the printer. He tried anyhow and the printer powered up. Then a warning message appeared on the computer screen about exceeding the wattage rating and the entire system shut down.
Oilcan silenced the UPS so it wouldn’t continue chirping.
Guy fiddled with his earbud. “The radio station is off the air. The oni must have cut the power.” He checked his cell phone. “They cut the cell phones too.”
“The circle is clean,” Blue called, “but we’re going to need lights to trace the spell.”
“Geoff has elf shines.” Guy scrambled to break out the backup lighting.
The casting circle was under a tall, fifty-foot-square ironwood shelter out the back of the warehouse. Building it had been a massive group effort four or five years ago. Team Tinker along with members of Carl Moser’s enclave and Geoffrey’s friends from his high school woodworking club had helped to clear the area of metal, lay the marble onto the tamped sand, and build the shelter without nails. The simple design and the number of people who had turned out to help meant that the work went fast; they’d finished in one day. Afterward they had an amazing pig roast potluck (Geoffrey’s family apparently were some type of food gods). They ate and played music and danced on the newly constructed casting circle. It had been a good day. Oilcan was afraid that there wouldn’t be days like it in the future if they lost to the oni today.
The “no metal” restriction meant that the shelter had no wires or batteries for lamps. The area was normally lit by sunlight shining through plexiglass skylights. While sunset was hours off, heavy rain clouds blanketed the sky in dark gray. Under the shelter, the casting circle was dark except for the dim purple haze of magic, probably not strong enough for anyone but Oilcan to see.
Guy came out with a wicker cage full of gleaming elf shines and a shimmering bottle of lure. He went around the shelter dabbing the support beams with lure and then released the big shimmering bugs. The elf shines floated overhead, casting dappled light down onto the white marble.
Oilcan inspected the stone, making sure that the kids had actually gotten all traces of old spells scrubbed away. Blue Sky knew the work after a childhood of chasing Tinker’s whims, but Baby Duck and Spot didn’t know the drill. He was glad to see that despite the lack of experience, the stone looked spotless.
“Good job.” Oilcan patted Spot on the head since the boy looked fearful.
There was a deep boom like thunder. It echoed down the river basin, bouncing off the steep hills that flanked the Ohio River. An odd crackling sound followed it.
Spot turned toward the sound and cocked his head. “That’s fireworks.”
“It is?” Guy said.
They all paused to look up through the skylights. A firework bloomed in the cloud-shrouded sky. The rocket had been fired off from somewhere downtown and then another followed from Mount Washington.
“It means fighting has broken out in Oakland,” Guy said.
“We better work fast,” Oilcan said as he knelt in the dappled light of the elf shines. He was keenly aware that he was surrounded by children whose lives depended on what he did in the next few hours.
25: OH, THE HORRORS
Between Pittsburgh and the East Coast were ancient mountains, worn down by time and weather into tall ridges separated by long, continuous valleys. A virgin forest of ironwood trees blanketed the land in unending green when viewed from the air and a vast dim cathedral of moss and fern rose from the ground. The rich dark smell of earth seemed overwhelming after the baked asphalt of Pittsburgh, but after hours of hiking up and over the steep ridge, it faded from Wolf’s senses enough that he started to catch the stench of the large oni camp. It was a smell like that of a slaughter yard mixed with an open latrine. As he led his people down the ridge into the valley, he started to hear noises from the fortification. There were command whistles blowing, drums beating out instructions, and deep, rough voices barking out orders. It sounded like the oni were on high alert.
Wolf came to a rocky outcrop covered with moss. Ahead the trees stopped at the edge of a marshy area. The rocks made a good viewing platform. Wolf crouched at the cliff edge to study the valley. His warriors took up positions around him, careful to keep down so as not to be silhouetted on the summit.
The forest stopped a few yards beyond the foot of the cliff where the land leveled. A beaver dam had been built across the stream that cut through the heart of the valley. The brook had been too small and the land too uneven to make one large pond. A dozen small pools were linked together by a maze of meandering channels. The water had killed all the valley’s trees, creating a wide marshy meadow full of denuded stumps and thick clumps of cattail reeds. On the far western side of the marsh, the land sloped up to a stockade wall. The oni had left enough ironwoods standing within the camp so that Wolf couldn’t see into it clearly from his elevated perch. Even with the green leafy screen, the scale of it was intimidating. The oni had built a fort of ironwood, a quarter mile square. Wolf could pick out hundreds of tents and cages that once held wargs. Like a kicked anthill, the camp swarmed with creatures. Oni of all sizes moved with intent, some controlling packs of wargs on leashes.
Wolf scanned the ground his people would need to cover to reach the fort. It made a hellish obstacle course. He considered the dam. Would blasting it make the crossing less dangerous? The weather was right for call-lightning, with heavy clouds hanging overhead. The dam seemed poorly made, suggesting that there been a great deal of engineering — although poorly executed — to turn the valley floor into a swamp. “No beaver would make something that sloppy looking.”
“Marshes like this one were a common Skin Clan defense,” Wraith Arrow murmured. “There will be black willows someplace close. They guard against large predators and keep would-be deserters from fleeing their post.”
Wolf cast a fire scry. He picked out a score of black willows currently standing motionless among scrub trees at the far southern end of the marsh. The lack of cover, the unstable ground, and the black willows made the meadow a death trap. Even if he removed the dam, he couldn’t make the area safe to cross.
He kept his scry active, studying the signatures returned by the spell. While it couldn’t have been seen from where they stood, the oni had dug a narrow trench before the wall, filled with wood spikes coated with something organic that was no doubt poisonous. The seething fort was filled with a confusion of potential magic. There was something huge and covered with active spells trapped within a magically reinforced ironwood cage at the heart of camp. Wolf guessed that it was a horror by the size. Wolf ignored it for now, searching for sign of the nactka. There didn’t seem to be anything like them within the camp. He focused back on the horror.
Even as he considered the signatures of the huge creature, the horror’s presence faded from his scry.
He recast the scry. The giant horror appeared again, easily large as a wyvern with more limbs. Was it some kind of spider? No, it seemed to have some type of wings. He noticed that there were faint echoes of similar creatures in small cages near the western wall.
All the signatures from the horror and smaller versions of it faded away a second time.
What was happening? The fire scry picked up on the combustion potential of everything in an area. Most organics burned at different rates. He should be able to feel the differences as long as he maintained the scry. Were the reinforcement spells on the cages’ timbers absorbing the magic?