Modern Magick

The Striding Spire: 16

'How are you still alive?' Jay had folded his arms. It's always a bad sign when he does that.

'Because my ideas are not as crazy as you think, and I have had a lot of practice at slightly foolhardy escapades.'

'Slightly?'

I held out my hands for the slate. 'What if I promise faithfully not to expire?'

He did not hand over the slate, so I set about finding another one.

This prompted a sigh from Jay. 'Ves, I am genuinely worried about this.'

I flashed him a quick smile. 'Me too. But it is going to take Val a while to figure out where we are, if she can at all. In the meantime, we are without food or shelter, and we can hardly sleep up here without falling off. There is only so long we can safely remain aloft, and that means we have to take a risk or two to sort ourselves out.'

With obvious reluctance, Jay passed me his roof tile. 'I am going to thank our lucky stars that your talent for enchanting flying objects is vastly superior to your talent for levitation.'

'Practice, Jay, not luck. Like I said, I've got into trouble before.'

'Do you practice levitation, too?'

'Constantly.'

He grinned at me, though it was a strained expression.

I took up my Sunstone Wand, and set about witching up the slate. The process was much the same, even if the object was rather different, and before long the slate was bobbing buoyantly at my feet.

My pride made it imperative to hide the frisson of panic that shot through me at the prospect of stepping onto it, so I composed my face into a fair impression of serenity, and managed the business as confidently as I could.

Jay sat not far away, hands out, poised to catch me if I somehow managed to fall in his general direction. His face was creased with worry. 'That won't hold your weight,' he said.

'I have reinforced it a bit.' It still felt precarious, though, and Jay had been right about the wind: it buffeted me about atop the too-lightweight tile, and whenever I tried to release my grip on the roof and straighten up, I was almost blown backwards.

So I did it the graceless, undignified way, inching down the roof like a backwards crab, both hands clinging tightly to the tiles within reach. The part where I had to go over the edge was too horrible to recount in any detail. Suffice it to say that the ground yawned far, far below, I absolutely did not look down (much), and a great gust of wind caught me halfway through my descent and slammed me against the wall of the tower, almost breaking my fragile levitation aid.

But, I reached the window. Reassuringly big, it was neatly rectangular, and filled in with many small, diamond-shaped panes of glass. It was closed, and locked, and also handsome and old; I did not want to have to employ Rob's trick, and break the whole thing.

So I finagled it. An unlocking charm, amplified by my precious Wand, did the trick; a latch clicked, and to my infinite relief, the central section of the window creaked open.

I shoved it the rest of the way, and all but fell into the room beyond. I received a faceful of dust, first of all, for the floor was thick with it — everything was thick with it. Choking, I drew a fold of my gauzy scarf over my mouth, and held a brief exploration party.

I was not back in the barn, to my relief, nor did I seem to have been transported anywhere else. The room was round-walled, and appeared to be of the right dimensions to fit the tower. Someone had made a comfortable home here, once: a matched pair of elegant, upholstered arm chairs of early seventeenth-century style stood near a stone hearth, with a low table in between. Better yet, an array of bookcases ringed the walls, all stuffed with dust-covered books. I badly wanted to peruse those, of course, but first things first: would one of those chairs fit out of the window...?