Chapter 29

Sunday morning, after doing about a half hour of exercise, I got out the willow burl I had cut off the tree Saturday and put it in the wooden-jawed vise. Taking a medium-size gouge and a mallet, I began carving it into a small bowl or noggin. I didn't worry about making it round; I just followed the natural contour of the burl. It was going to be the replacement for my ritual cup. Because I was making it from material I had collected from nature myself, my spells should thereafter be somewhat more efficient and powerful.

It didn't take long to make an adequate hollow in the wood. I replaced the gouge with a smaller one and smoothed out the rough cuts. Then I replaced it again and smoothed some more. By the time Mom called me for brunch, I was in the process of giving the interior of the bowl a rough sanding. I had decided to leave the bark on the outside; I liked the rugged appearance.

As we were eating, Mary said to me, "Kirsten invited me over to go ice skating at the school with her and Pam. Did you want to come along?"

"Nah, no thanks. I'd sooner take some tweezers and yank out my nose hairs."

"Chicken."

"Bawk, bawk, bawk. Have fun."

"Band practice is at one, right?"

"Yep. Try not to break anything you use for music." We helped clean up and then Mary took her skates and left on her bike.

Before it was time to practice, I had really wanted to perform the location spell in another place, which would allow me triangulate the rough position of where the goat had been sacrificed. Unfortunately, my assistant had just gone ice-skating, and I couldn't think of any place with the requisite privacy to work the spell that wasn't also out in the cold. Going into trance under conditions such that freezing to death was a real possibility simply wasn't something to do alone. Familiars are useful for such situations, thought Ursus.

All right, thought Ursus. The same rules apply as last time, but even more so. You two better let me be in charge.

We set up, used the guitar to gather manna, and cast and purified the circle. Instead of the old cup I had borrowed from the kitchen, we used our new willow noggin, even though it wasn't yet finished, to hold the purification water. We gathered more manna with the guitar, put a drop of blood into the scrying water, and began deepening our trance while staring into the pie pan.

I lost track of time, and visions began to form. They were inchoate at first, but I eventually began seeing--and sometimes hearing, feeling, and smelling--things that made sense. I saw a forest that was greener than anything on earth. I saw a rocky desert with a line of humanoid figures walking across it. Although they were wearing long robes, I say humanoid, because they were taller and skinnier than a line of humans could be. They were chained together at their ankles.

I saw something that I originally took to be a bird, but then it came closer and I discerned a long tail. Then it came even closer and landed upon a crag. It was a dragon. The vision drew in even closer and I knew that he knew that we were watching him. He winked, and I felt Ursus relax. Greetings, sky brother, Ursus thought at him. The dragon nodded his head once in acknowledgement, and our vision shifted.

We saw a great many things, some that made no sense, and many that were boring--just landscapes or seascapes. Once we saw a sea serpent for a few moments.

Suddenly, a new vision felt much closer, more immediate. It was the back of a young woman, brunette. She was naked and bent over a chair. A man was taking her from behind. We were seeing the vision from his point of view. An angry feeling enveloped us, and the man said, "Get out of my head!"

The scene shifted, and our concentration almost broke, but Ursus managed to maintain our hold on manna. He picked up a toothpick and dropped it into the scrying water. "Where, where, where," he began to chant while trying to re-envision what we had just seen. Arthur and I soon joined our efforts to his.

For a moment, the vision formed again, and the toothpick quit drifting and pointed in a fixed direction. Ursus marked the spot on the pan with his finger--the toothpick was pointing in the same direction as the location of the goat sacrifice--and then ended the spell.

I was aroused and embarrassed about it. Don't worry about that, thought Ursus. We are in a pubescent eleven-year-old body. It gets aroused with a shift in the wind.

Don't worry about it? thought Arthur. Old man, I'm going to go take care of it. We hastily broke the circle, thanked the powers, snuffed the candle, and pretty much ran upstairs into the small bathroom.

After a certain tension had been relieved and we were again in the basement, Ursus thought, as we cleaned up the ritual area, I take it you both felt the change during that last vision?

It felt much closer than the visions from the metaphorical dimensions, I said. I can't explain it any more precisely than that.

Indeed, I'm almost sure it was nearby, and I strongly suspect that we again saw the same man who sacrificed the goat. It's not absolutely certain, but it's the way to bet.

He knew we were there, thought Arthur. And he didn't like it one bit.

Yes, we seem to have discovered someone else with genuine magical ability. As for being angry with us, wouldn't you be?

Of course, no one wants to be spied on at a time like that.