The Mage on the Hill, page 12
Toby’s gasp as he reached the spot where he could see the gorge sent a thrill up Darius’s spine. Someone who had seen it often might become jaded, but seeing it again through the wonder in Toby’s eyes was like the first time, gazing out over the closely huddled, round-topped mountains of coniferous green that dropped in sharp slopes to the creek below. Old geology—four hundred and eighty million years ago when the mountains formed and the water first began to carve its deliberate, persistent way through them.
“It’s gorgeous,” Toby whispered.
“It is.” Zubayr pulled in a deep breath, his expression almost relaxed. These were his mountains—Darius understood that sense of I belong here. “I hear people call it the Grand Canyon of the East. Not the best comparison. We’re going down to the third waterfall, then heading off the trail.”
The weather cooperated as if someone had asked a special favor of Mother Nature. In the midfifties, with only the occasional light breeze, sun enough that it was still comfortable under the trees, and clouds enough to cut down on the glare of a completely clear sky. Zubayr led the way with Toby following. Darius took the back, since he might need more time in steeper sections and he could keep a better eye on Toby that way.
Most of the trail wound through a series of switchbacks. Sturdy and sometimes not so sturdy fencing served as guardrails where there were drop-offs. Benches waited at several turns, and wooden bridges spanned boggy areas or gullies too deep to fill in for the path. Zubayr was right in that summer and fall saw a good deal of foot traffic, so the park kept the trail in excellent condition. Civilization etched into the midst of a dark coniferous forest so hikers could have the experience of the natural world with most of the inherent perils removed.
Darius wasn’t criticizing. He wasn’t at all the rugged explorer he’d once been, and his creaking body appreciated good trails. Though… woods, Central PA…. “Copperheads?” he called down the trail.
The glare from Zubayr probably should have turned him to stone. “Really? That’s your commentary on the trail, Valstad? Don’t worry, Toby. The snakes don’t like the trails much, and it’s not warm enough for them to be active yet.”
“Oh, um, okay? Copperheads are poisonous, right?”
“I suppose if you ate the venom gland, they would be,” Zubayr answered at his driest. “Otherwise, they’re venomous. But not numerous and too sleepy today.”
“Anything else? Bears? Wolves? I dunno, small dragons?”
Darius couldn’t help a little smile. “Grizzlies. Tigers. Giant… spiders.”
“Great.” Toby stopped and waited for him to catch up before poking him in the chest. “No teasing the city boy. Not funny.”
He wanted to catch that hand and kiss those fingers. Darius contented himself with a soft chuckle.
Two rests, one near fall on a patch of slippery pebbles (Darius), one small cobweb freak-out (Toby), and they’d reached the terraced falls near the bottom of the trail. Here they left the trail, with Zubayr helping Toby over the dark, moss-covered stones to cross where the falls narrowed. Magic thrummed under Darius’s feet here, calling him to take off his shoes and sink his toes into his Earth magic. This confluence where Zubayr had found his Water ran deep under the falls and in a rough outward oval from where they had crossed.
They didn’t need the water today, stopping instead in a clearing hidden from anyone who might be on the nearby trail. Toby sank onto a fallen log as soon as they halted.
“All right?” Darius crouched in front of him, checking his hands. Good. Steady trickle.
“M’okay. I am. Legs were just getting a little shaky.” Toby squeezed his hands. “You holding up?”
“Durable… despite appearances.”
“Maybe there’s gym memberships in our future. Try to get back to being able to walk up and down stairs like normal people.”
You don’t even know that you’re doing it, talking so casually about having a future. This is why I believe in you. “Take a minute.” Darius joined him on the log. “Tell me… when.”
Zubayr patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going back up. You don’t need me for this, really, and it’s better with fewer people watching over your shoulder. I have my phone on. Call me if you need anything. Like scaring off a tiger or some such.”
The urge to call him back sat heavy in Darius’s throat, but he managed not to. Zubayr was right. This wasn’t Pittsburgh. Toby’s channel wasn’t one that would cause natural disasters. And yes, Toby would most likely concentrate better with just the two of them.
“I’m good.” Toby nudged him. “So what are we doing?”
“Phone.”
“You want… oh. Right.” Tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, Toby dug out his phone. “Text away.”
We’re going to attempt to connect you with your Major channel. The Minor will become evident once you’re properly channeled. Normally, we’d start with a meditative state. Then I would ask you to reach, to locate that path from yourself to your Arcanum.
He turned the phone for Toby to read. “Doesn’t sound bad. But there’s a normally in there. What are we doing instead?”
I think I need to help guide you. You did well with the last wild magic incident when we were working in tandem.
“Yeah, ’cause you shoved my arms underground. Don’t get me wrong. That was so much better than every other explosion I’ve had. I just don’t see how it was us working together.”
A lot of the redirection and dispersal was you. I stayed with you longer than I probably should have to monitor that dispersal, which was why I ended up taking a short flight when the remainder of the explosion occurred.
“Still with the jokes. You’re in a good mood today.”
Darius leaned in to press their foreheads together, telling himself sternly that he was not to think about Kara. The last thing Toby needed was for his teacher to lose his nerve. This was not then. Everything was different, including himself. He sat back to type again. Today’s the day. I feel it. We’re going to make sure you survive. Animus isn’t where my strength is, but it’s adjacent. I can find it.
“But what is it? I mean, you get taught that it’s the soul of things, right? I don’t know what that means. How do I reach for something that I don’t really get?”
Life magic is the spark. The electric current that powers living things so they can grow, feed, and multiply. Animus is the consciousness that comes with Life. An awareness, no matter how limited or how different from ours, that drives a living being to be that sort of being. Genetic structural, mitochondrial, chemical, communicating, reasoning consciousness. How a larva knows to become a bee. How the trees send information to each other. How animals reason.
Toby shook his head as he read. “Well, crap. Where were you when I was learning all this stuff from my family?”
“Being a grumpy… hermit.”
“Oh, right. Forgot all about that part.”
Darius allowed a soft snort for Toby’s all-too-serious expression. This will sound deceptively simple, but you’ll be doing the work. You take my hands and breathe with me. When I judge that you’ve reached a less, shall we say, excitable state, I’ll give you a nudge. You may feel it, you may not, but I’ll tell you. Then you concentrate on your magic—the tingling in your hands you’ve so often described—and you reach out to the living beings around you.
“Uh-huh. So I just think at the magic and it goes poof.”
The sarcastic deadpan had Darius laughing. He put the phone down. “At first. Don’t just… think. Concentrate.”
Toby nodded, then surprised Darius by reaching out and running a thumb over his jaw. “Thanks. For not tossing me out when I came. For putting up with my yakking. For believing in me. Even if this doesn’t work—”
“It will,” Darius growled. “Hands.”
“Bossy. I like it.” Toby most likely meant his grin to hide his nervousness. His trembling hands betrayed those nerves, though, when he set his in Darius’s.
Darius declined to comment on it. “Good. Eyes closed. Breathe in.” He took an audible deep breath along with Toby’s. “Out.”
Gradually, perhaps even slow enough that Toby wasn’t aware, Darius tapered off their synched breaths, deeper, slower still, until Toby’s desperate grip eased into something less painful and his shoulders didn’t appear to be crawling up toward his ears. Better. Darius let him just breathe for another five minutes, letting the sounds of the clearing sink deeply into Toby’s consciousness. This early in spring, there were few insect sounds beyond the occasional bee, but the birds were active—cardinal, finch, chickadee, mourning dove. Toby might even have been identifying them on his own by now. The trees whispered and creaked. The ferns rustled their soft songs.
Hyperaware of the abundance of life around them, Darius reached out to the denizens of the glade, fastening on to the sedate, wide-reaching animus of the ancient white pine at Toby’s back. The pine’s magic moved in a slow river under his, buoying him, cradling him. It was tempting to float there, untroubled. If he’d been alone, he might have. Instead, he caressed a bit of the pine’s animus, urging it to turn toward Toby, nudging gently until it touched the magic reaching, yearning from him.
Toby twitched and gasped. His eyes flew open wide. The connection broke and skittered like a bad antennae signal.
“It’s reaching.” Darius pulled their joined hands to his chest and whispered in Toby’s ear. “You’re okay. Reach back.”
Jaw locked, a sound of frustration escaped Toby. He leaned his head against Darius’s shoulder, breathing hard. His magic still trickled at a sustainable level, though. Darius urged him on silently, unwilling to interfere yet and praying to the goddesses of Earth that he wouldn’t have to. Let it go, Toby. You hold on so tight like you’re afraid you’ll fly apart. Let it go.
A second pine joined the first in its questing. They reached for Toby now in a show of willful autonomy that Darius had never seen from trees. A fern by Toby’s calf joined them, all casting out toward him. An unnatural silence hung over the clearing. The birds had gone silent. Watching. Waiting.
Toby shuddered so hard, Darius wrapped both arms tight around him, pulling him close. “Tobias. Let them… touch.”
The wild magic stayed dammed behind Toby’s subconscious control. When it neared critical mass, Darius would have no time to consider a course of action. If Toby couldn’t fight his way through this time, Darius’s only choice would be to contain and let the wild magic explode as he had the first time on his lawn back home. This could be the one that killed Toby, and if he survived, it would set him back, possibly for weeks if the explosion was powerful enough.
“So many,” Toby whispered against Darius’s throat. “Too many. So loud. I can’t breathe.”
While those disconnected sentences might seem nonsensical together, Animus magic could be overwhelming and cause sensory wires to cross.
“Find a voice,” Darius rasped out desperately. “One voice. One stream.”
Toby stiffened in his arms, back arched, eyes rolling back. Every fiber in him screaming for a different outcome, Darius put a palm on the ground and pulled on his Earth magic, ready at any second to surround Toby with an impenetrable shield of clay and stone.
Animus screamed around them in a widening vortex, deafening him. He might have joked with Toby about how little danger would be involved, but he’d never seen a Major Arcanum react this way before. Sound vibrated through his hand on Toby’s back, perhaps a desperate cry or a scream, he had no way to know. In that instant, a sharp spear of a thought tore a gasp from him. He was an idiot.
One voice. One consciousness. He reached with his own Animus, the magic of his own soul, and wrapped around Toby’s struggling, flailing magic. Distantly, he was aware they’d fallen off the log, Darius on his back, Toby’s head on his chest. The frightening glory of Toby’s wild magic took up the rest of his attention—the deafening, blinding, dizzying chaos of thought and sensation. His own power, his experience, meant he could contain it, dam it up temporarily, but no one could completely silence a flood of that magnitude.
No. Force wasn’t an option here. He twined around Toby gently, taking his cue from the plants trying their best to reach for him, caressing, whispering. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here…. Reach for me.
Too panicked to return the request gently, Toby’s magic slammed into Darius, sending tendrils of power flying before he could regain control. Earth heaved under them in response. Rocks cracked and showers of pebbles rolled down the hill to smack into the log that served as a barricade. Darius had nearly reached a point of complete despair when Toby stopped struggling so abruptly, the stomach-dropping sensation was like plummeting off a cliff. Caught up in Tsunami Toby, Darius tumbled for several terrified moments, losing track of all the streams of magic around them, his placement in the world, and even his own body.
Then a giant sluice gate opened in Toby’s awareness, a conduit through which he could direct the flood, and Toby channeled. A roar of magic at first as his wild magic finally found its natural course through the web, then gradually slowing to a more sustainable stream. Darius became aware of the woods again to find an early-spring toad staring down at him from the fallen log. Birds filled the trees around them, calling and singing. A scurry of squirrels peered out from the ferns on the far side of the clearing.
But the plants—the plants—arrested Darius’s attention. Every stem, every spring flower, every leaf reached toward Toby as if he were the sun.
Darius lifted his head from the leaves to find Toby sprawled across him, eyes closed. Cautiously, Darius allowed himself to stroke the thick black hair and smooth the white stripe back from Toby’s forehead. He is the sun, in this moment, theirs, mine. So perfect.
Twigs poked him in the back. His left leg was cramping. He felt wrung out and far older than forty, but he wasn’t moving for the world. Toby would come back in his own time, safe. Finally safe.
Chapter Eleven
STUFF ACHED. More of a that was a tough hill to climb ache than an I think I’m dying one, though. A steady thud-thump sounded directly under Toby’s ear, and it took him a minute to figure out that it was Darius’s heart. He lifted his head to find Darius watching him with something other than his usual glare. The fond warmth of his regard and the little smile tugging at his mouth had Toby grinning.
“Hey, there. We did okay, right? I mean, I think it worked?”
“Ha. You think.” Darius combed a leaf out of Toby’s hair. “Yes. Channeled. Animus-Crystallogen.”
Toby wriggled up Darius’s body, got an oof when he kneed a sensitive spot, and flung his arms around Darius’s neck. “Gods. Thank you, thank you so freaking much. You’re amazing and wonderful and I’m going to freaking live!”
To his astonishment, Darius wrapped long arms around him in return and murmured in his ear, “You’re… amazing. You. Did it.”
“Guess I couldn’t just sit on my unplaceable butt and wait for something to happen.” Toby nuzzled at Darius’s throat, happy to be surrounded by his scent. “It was weird shit. Like I was being turned inside out in pieces. But this wasn’t me doing this. You had to bring me here. You had to show me where the door was.” Toby fought the sudden constriction of his throat. “Without you, I’d be so dead.”
“Toby….”
Darius stroked his back, and something in his voice made Toby raise his head. How could an ice-blue eye exude heat like that? How did that work? He pushed Darius’s hat the rest of the way off his head and, after a quick internal debate, pushed the eye patch off as well. Darius didn’t stop him, which he took as a good sign. Encouragement, even. Too old, too weird, too much his teacher—none of that mattered anymore. It hadn’t mattered for a while now, but he’d been too much of a coward to do anything about it.
He wanted Darius so badly. Wariness had slid over into a hard crush, then into whatever this was. What he did know was that he and Darius understood each other. They felt right together. Toby wriggled to get more of himself on top. So right together.
The soft sound from Darius didn’t seem to be protest. Toby leaned in and kissed his forehead gently, then his scarred cheek and the blank skin where his right eye had once been. He kept his movements slow and careful out of consideration for sore muscles and so Darius would be less liable to balk.
“Toby.” His name was a ragged whisper torn from Darius’s throat.
“Need me to stop?” Toby murmured as he kissed down the unscarred side of Darius’s face.
“Yes… no. Gods.”
Hands on either side of Darius’s shoulders, Toby pushed up far enough for a better view. “Hey. Look at me.” Ah, there’s my griffin glare. “It’s either yes, I want this without waffling or I’m stopping.”
Darius blew out a hard breath. “We shouldn’t.”
“Age doesn’t matter. We’re both adults. The teacher thing? You won’t be that forever. This is more like a half-semester course. What else you got?”
“You’re… beautiful.”
“Well, thanks. I think I’m a bony reed with a skunk stripe, but I appreciate it.” Toby stroked a wild lock of hair from Darius’s forehead. “You think you’re ugly. Just because you have scars.” He traced the white edges of those scars. “Disagree with me all you want, but I think you’re hot. Like ghost pepper, oh my gods, I put too much of that in my chili hot. You earned your scars doing something that should’ve been impossible. You saved Zubayr and a good portion of a city doing it. Those scars? They’re a map of what you’ve accomplished. They’re you and they’re perfect.”
Darius had squeezed his eye shut and clamped his jaw.
“So is that it, then? Or am I missing some great big objection? Or did I read it all wrong and you’re not interested?”
