Ghostcountry's Wrath (32 page)

The problem was threefold.

First, as best she could make out, both by sight and the cessation of the subtle energizing that had been pulsing up through her feet, the Track had ended. Or if it continued straight, it was into a wall of solid stone.

Second, with straight ahead no longer an option, they still had too many choices, for easily a dozen arroyos opened off the perimeter of this place, some narrow, some wide, but all equally promising—or threatening.

The third problem was that the whole surrounding area, including what she could see of those canyons that fed off of it, was paved not with dust and sand, but with stones. Which meant no prints to follow.

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Brock asked helplessly, already starting to prowl around the perimeter.

“I'm thinking that we're in deep shit,” Sandy told him frankly. “
Very
deep.”

“I'm thinking that Cal and 'Kacha are in deep shit, too,” Brock replied in a low voice. “I'm thinking that if Tsistu was just playing with them, he'd have dropped the chase by now and sent 'em back.”

Sandy nodded grimly. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“And we can't track 'em through here,” Brock added. “Or I can't—not on stone.”

Sandy shook her head. “I can't either.”

“So what do we do, then?”

“What we do,” she told him, “is think.”

“Great!” Brock spat sourly.

“Could be worse.”

“It could?”

She shot him a thoughtful, speculative smile. “Brock, my lad, it's time you learned some magic.”

Chapter XVII: Thunders, Black and Red

It's time you learned some magic.

Brock gaped stupidly.
Sandy
had said that. Not Calvin, who was supposed to be the hot-shot shaman, but his buddy's practical, no-nonsense girlfriend! Shoot, she was a high school physics teacher, for Chrissakes, which ought to put her headspace about as far from mojo as anyone could get. Learn some magic, huh? Yeah, sure.

On the other hand, that's what he'd come stateside for. And though part of him wanted to concede that what he'd experienced already in the way of shapeshifting and Worldwalking absolved Calvin of his obligation by any reasonable standard, one could also argue that his sometime master hadn't
taught
him any magic at all; that he'd
experienced
it, but not
learned
it. And if Sandy agreed to lay some on him, too, why that still left Cal down one promise—technically. And two of a good thing was better than one any day of the week.

On the
other
other hand…

“What…kind of magic?” he asked carefully.

Sandy started to speak, then winced as if in pain. “Something…you can do better than I can at the moment, if what I know about Cherokee magic's reliable,” she replied finally. “I suspect it's something you'd do better than me anyway,” she added. “Besides, it's what Cal had decided to teach you.”

Brock shifted his weight and lifted an eyebrow, prompting, yet trying not to seem too impatient. Behind her—all around—irregular breaks in the striated stone sides of the depression marked the entrances of numerous small arroyos. He could scarcely resist the temptations to explore them—prowl them all and see to what new wonders they led.

Or—he shuddered, then blushed because Sandy had seen him—what those canyons might lead to them. “So what's the deal, then?” he wondered with calculated nonchalance.

“The Finding Ritual,” she replied. “Cal told me he was pretty sure that's what Don used to locate Michael—except that he thinks it worked too well and summoned Mike himself, instead of just showing in what direction he was. But
I
think that, either way, we oughta try it now. If we're lucky, it'll have the same effect it had then and draw Cal to us. At worst—well, hopefully it'll at least show us which of these blessed canyons to try.”

Brock nodded, still trying hard to keep his cool, though he could already feel a restless anticipation welling up inside. “I'm waiting.”

Sandy had squatted and was rummaging in the pack that held Calvin's clothes. “Ah-ha!” she cried a moment later. “I
thought
he took it off.”

“What?”

She held out a leather bag half the size of her hand, fringed at the bottom, and with a length of leather thong making a loop at the top, rather like the one that held the uktena scale. “His medicine pouch”—as she carefully loosened the opening, then proceeded to peer inside. Brock noticed that she touched as little of the actual bag as possible. “I don't know as much about this stuff as I ought to,” she continued. “I'm not like you; one reality's enough for me, preferably one that makes sense. But that doesn't mean I haven't picked up some things—or read some stuff.”

Brock crouched beside her. She wasn't touching the contents either, he observed. But she did seem to have located what she wanted, for she was obviously manipulating something toward the opening by the expedient of squeezing the outside of the bag with the barest pressure of fingertips. “Hold out your hand,” she told him abruptly.

He did—and felt a tiny jolt as something heavier than expected plopped into his palm: a red-brown stone, roughly the size of his little finger, with a length of twisted cord knotted around the middle.

“Why'd you do that?” he ventured. “Not touch it, I mean?”

Sandy colored unexpectedly. “Because, as of those two rounds of shapeshifting, it's got to be…that time of month a week early. And according to the traditional Cherokee worldview, which at the moment I feel inclined to respect, women in that condition are supposed to avoid contact with men and with ceremonies or objects that involve male power. I think it's cause our natures are so fundamentally…different, probably 'cause of the procreative thing. Or else it's the old purity thing: men are men, women are women, and ne'er the twain shall meet.”

“But Cal—”

“Cal's male, and this stone is part of his power. You're another male, therefore if we're gonna be able to use it at all, you're the lucky boy. Don't worry, I'll coach.”

Brock nodded warily. “I'm listening.”

And did, as Sandy explained what sounded like a fairly simple ritual involving spinning the stone in a circle until its line of arch tended in one direction.

“The only problem,” she concluded, “is that I don't know the words of the formula that's supposed to activate it. I've only heard it in Cherokee—and I only know a word or two of that.”

Brock's brow furrowed.

“I think I know a way around that, though.”

His brows shot up. “Oh?”

She nodded. “I know the sense behind a lot of the formulas, if not the actual language. And I know enough about the theory of magic to know that formulas exist in part as a focus of will. Which I guess means that if you try to do the right thing, it may happen—especially here, in what's already a magical place.”

Brock regarded her uncertainly and sat back on his haunches, fingering the cord but not touching the stone. He thought the shadows had shifted on the fractured walls around them, but couldn't be certain.

“What you do,” Sandy began, “is address the stone and ask it to do what you want, like find something—or somebody. That's the basic idea. But what you have to remember is that even though you seem to be talking to a dumb rock, the Cherokee thought everything had a life force—a kind of sentience. Therefore, you sometimes have to trick things, because nothing likes being ordered around. Like, you turn away a storm by calling to it, then pointing out that its wife is doing something she shouldn't somewhere else. Yeah, I know, it doesn't sound logical by our rules, but we've both seen firsthand that our rules don't always apply.” She paused for breath, then went on: “Also, you sort of assume an antipathy between opposites. If you want something to happen in the west, you invoke the powers of the east; if you want something to affect a squirrel, you invoke animals that prey on them. And there's the color thing. See—”

“I know the color thing,” Brock broke in impatiently. “And I more or less get the rest. So give me a sec and let me think. I don't suppose you've got anything to write with, do you? Or paper?”

“Actually, I may,” Sandy gave back, already fumbling in her pack. A moment later she handed him a stub of pencil and a checkbook. “Use the deposit slips. Sorry, but they're all I've got.”

“They'll do,” Brock grunted. “Now, 'scuse me while I go off and try to figure something out.”

Ten minutes and one consultation with Sandy later, Brock had produced something he thought would do. He scanned it one final time, then returned to where Sandy was sitting with her back to a boulder the size of a Galapagos turtle. “What d' you think?” he ventured.

She took the scrap of paper and scanned the crabbed script. “I think it's fine.”

He exhaled tension and shrugged. “I hope so. I'd read a couple of those formulas and all, so I sorta knew what they were supposed to sound like.”

A sigh. “No time like the present.”

Without further discussion, Brock made his way along the Track to what, as best he could tell, was the center of the depression. A final pause for breath, and he began.

He let the stone slip through his fingers, then the cord, until he held the knot at the end. As he flicked his fingers to start it twirling, he began to sing, trying to mimic the way Calvin did such things:

“Hark to me! Hark to me! I call you, most excellent Brown Stone!

The Red Stone and the Black Stone are nothing compared to you! Nor are the White nor the Blue!

The rocks of this place stand silent when you speak, and I know you always speak true!

Therefore, speak truly now; speak and show me which way my friend Calvin McIntosh lies!

This I humbly crave of you, I who am called Brock.”

And while he sang, he tried to focus on three things: on the memory of Cal's face as he had last seen it, on his desire to
find
Cal, and on the string. At first he neither felt nor saw anything except a brown blur describing a circle that was gradually narrowing into an ellipse. But then he
did
feel something: a subtle, but discernible tug in one direction. He kept on chanting but closed his eyes, hoping thereby to lessen his conscious influence on the pendulum. Not until the tugs became insistent did he raise his lids again.

“Seems pretty clear,” Sandy observed, staring at the stone. “It's pointing toward the wide one over there.”

“Then that's the way we go,” Brock declared flatly, and rose. Sandy handed him the medicine bag. He stowed the stone in it, stuffed it in his pocket, and re-shouldered his pack. “I guess we oughta be off,” he continued, and started walking.

*

Brock never knew how far they wandered, for time and distance, which already acted oddly in this Other-world, seemed to redouble their efforts at perversity in this place of twisting arroyos and convoluted canyons. Nor did it help that there was no obvious sun by which to chart the day (though there
were
shadows, of a sort, visible even in the pervasive gray-purple gloom). At least, by slow degrees, it had grown warmer.

But one thing he did know for sure was that he was wildly relieved when he led the way around one final outcrop and found the canyon emptying into a narrow rocky valley, its harsh, dim bareness fuzzed here and there with a few low bushes and scraggly trees—and, at its opposite end, a building.

Buildings, actually: a series of stone-walled structures set under the face of a gray and mauve cliff several hundred yards opposite the canyon by which they had entered. It reminded him of pictures he'd seen of the cliff-dwellings out west—except that the architecture was not quite the same, being more horizontal and somewhat more ornate. In fact, now that he studied them, the strongest similarity was that the structures seemed to have been secreted beneath the cliffs.

And then he heard the thunder.

A slow grumble, it was, as if the sunrise had been awakened too early and was voicing its displeasure. He glanced skyward automatically, but saw nothing save the familiar swirls of purple, gray, and black that, if they were clouds, were like none he'd ever seen. The air felt odd, too: tense and nervous, like it did before a storm. Which didn't jibe with the near-lifeless landscape at all. Fortunately, there were breezes, in lieu of the stale air that had characterized the arroyo.

Brock shook his head. It was all too strange.

“There's…a wall up ahead,” Sandy panted beside him, pointing to a long rocky ridge twenty yards further on. Brock had thought it a natural feature. “Guess we oughta check it, then,” he grumbled, already trudging toward it.

No gate showed in the head-high piled stone barrier, but there
was
an opening where one wall ended and another passed by an armspan further back, as if it were the entrance to an open-roofed spiral—which in fact it proved to be. They looped twice, as best he could tell, while the walls either rose or the floor descended. The air also grew damper as they progressed, until it was almost like invisible fog. Its clamminess made Brock shiver.