“Go to the end and take a right,” Crystal said.
We made the turn onto a wider service road between more warehouses. Even though we were more exposed to the sky overhead, the light felt dimmer. We were starting to move into the Tangle.
“Go about three buildings down,” she said.
Murdock guided the car around piles of rubble, trash, and masonry discarded with no fear that anyone would object. The warehouses down here were no longer active, most of them burnt-out and boarded up. It had been a long time since city services ran garbage trucks. Murdock stopped the car.
Crystal leaned forward and peered through the wind-shield, then out the side. She closed her eyes. “Wait here and take the left when the alley appears.”
Murdock craned his neck to look up through the wind-shield. “There’s no alley turn here.”
“There will be,” said Crystal.
I scanned the buildings for the telltale signs of a spell, but there was so much ambient essence, nothing stood out. “The Tangle’s full of illusions, Murdock. People put them up all the time. Sometimes they forget them and leave them running,” I said.
We sat for twenty minutes. “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, it’s about the right place. It didn’t take this long that night. Maybe it’s broken.”
A few minutes later I was about to suggest Crystal rethink the location when the brick wall to our left shimmered and vanished. Without a word, Murdock backed up and turned into the alley that had been hidden. Crystal led us through two more similar illusions and an odd series of turns around buildings that seemed to have been built in the middle of the road.
“We have to get out here and walk,” said Crystal. We were in a stretch of alley that managed to look dark even in the early afternoon.
“You want me to leave the car here?” Murdock said.
“It’s not like it’s a Rolls,” I muttered and let myself out. For such a trash heap, he worried about it an awful lot. Murdock and I walked a few feet behind Crystal as she made tentative steps forward. Ahead, old Jersey barriers lay in a heap like a very large game of pick-up-sticks. Crystal turned to her left and faced a gaping hole torn through the brick wall of a building. She seemed frozen in place.
“Where next, Crystal?” I asked when she didn’t move.
She looked up at me, then back at the hole. “We went through here.”
She didn’t move, so I stepped around her and peered inside. Not much to see, just a large empty room covered with the ruins of the collapsed ceiling. The far wall was just gone. Where we stood, the light felt dim. Out beyond the other side of the building, it looked stark and harsh. I could feel the buzz of essence, an old resonance slithering over my mind. The darkness in my head didn’t like it. Something had happened here, something wrong. There were places like it all over the Tangle. Throughout most of the Weird, people avoided using too much Power for fear of the backlash. But here in the Tangle, all bets were off. No one cared what happened to anyone here.
“You ran straight through,” I said to confirm my thought with her.
“Yes,” she said behind me, her voice small.
I think I knew what was out there. We were close to the end. “I’ll go first,” I said.
Murdock pulled his gun and covered us. I walked across the room, feeling pain whispers all around me. When I reached the far wall, I stopped with Murdock at my side. We faced a long narrow courtyard, more an oversize air shaft. Opposite, a storage shed had been built into the side of the adjoining warehouse. Not much remained, its left and right walls still standing, but its front and roof gone.
Between the crumbled walls, in the midst of raw debris, Croda stood. She was about eight feet tall, stout, and thick-limbed. Her right arm was thrust up above her head, and her back was arched. Her face was bulbous, a small round tusk sprouting from each side of her wide, flat nose. And her mouth—her mouth was stretched wide in terror, sharp teeth visible, thick tongue protruding. The sun shone hard and white on her dead, petrified face. Now I knew why I had made Moke so angry.
We walked across the broken stones until we stood next to her. Crystal stayed back, refusing to come any closer than the perimeter of the shed.
I cleared my throat. “What happened?”
“We hid in there. We thought no one saw us. There was a loud sound like a big wind, and Croda pushed me down behind her. The next thing I knew, everything was flying apart. Sunlight was coming in, and Croda was screaming. Something reached in and grabbed Denny. Croda stopped screaming, but I could hear fey-fire. I couldn’t see very well, but it looked like two people were in the air fighting. I think one was a fairy dressed in black, and the other was the troll from Unity.”
I looked over her and frowned. “A troll? In the air? In daylight?”
She nodded. “I don’t get it either. The troll had Denny, then the guy in black grabbed him away and flew off. I waited until I didn’t hear anything anymore. Croda told me if anything happened to her, I should find Moke and tell him what happened and that he would take care of me. So that’s what I did. I’ve been there ever since.”
Murdock was standing on the opposite side of Croda from me. He moved nothing but his eyes, examining the frozen figure. She looked like a statue with clothes on. I started doing my own exam. “She’s petrified,” I said for his benefit. “Literally. As best I know, trolls don’t just turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. They’re attuned to stone. They call it the bones of the earth. It’s their fey ability. When they’re exposed to sunlight, their bodies become hyperconductors and immediately begin absorbing minerals from everything nearby. The sun acts as catalyst for a petrification process that happens in minutes.”
“Sounds painful,” said Murdock.
I nodded. It had to be. Effectively, she had mineralized, every cell in her body turning solid with compounds of iron or carbon or silica or whatever other elements were in the soil. The land we were on was an old industrial area. All kinds of chemical waste were below us. She glittered dully in the afternoon light, like a dirty cut gemstone in muted shades of white, black, red, and blue. I couldn’t help thinking she was sadly beautiful in death in a way she could never be in life.
“…run, Dennis. Get out of here…” a male voice called out. Both Murdock and I jumped back. Crystal screamed and ran. The voice had come from Croda.
“What just happened?” Murdock said.
“Give me a minute,” I said. I let my eyes roam over her, trying to find something out of place. Squatting down, I looked behind her and found the source of the voice. In Croda’s left hand, the one hidden behind her back, was a small obelisk that fit almost entirely in her palm.
Murdock came around to my side. I stood and looked at Croda. “She has a ward stone fused into her hand. It must be a recorder. Her whole body is a ward stone now.”
Wards can be charged with essence and spelled for all kinds of things. The ones back at my apartment worked like alarms. Some can immobilize anyone that comes within their fields. And some can work like glow bees, only they can record a lot more. To listen to them, you just have to hit them with the right amount of essence. I must have touched Croda, and my body essence triggered the recording. I placed my hand on her arm. I could hear a faint whisper, but nowhere near the clarity of the first time.