Illusions

“If I hadn’t seen the trolls vanish, I wouldn’t know anything was amiss,” Tamani said, dropping his hands to his sides.

“But we can’t see it, and can only feel it indirectly,” Shar said, his arms folded across his chest as he stared into the darkness. “How do we breach a wall we cannot touch?”

“The trolls went right through it,” Tamani replied. “So it’s not really a wall.”

Shar silently stepped away from Tamani and picked up a small rock. He stood a few feet away and gave it an underhand toss. It arced toward the barrier and then, without the slightest interruption, vanished.

Encouraged, Tamani bent down to grab a small stick. He walked forward, just to the point where he found himself turning, and reached out with the stick. There was no physical sensation, nothing stopped him from moving freely — but when he thought he was thrusting it forward, he found the stick pointing sideways. He started to pull back, confused, when a new idea struck him.

Maybe it’s attuned to plants.

He tossed the stick at the barrier instead, expecting it to bounce back. The stick vanished, just like the rock.

Guess not.

“That’s some warding,” Tamani breathed.

“Since when do trolls work this kind of magic?” Shar asked.

“Since never,” Tamani responded darkly. “So it ought to be easily overcome.”

“Oh, aye, clearly,” Shar said, sarcasm heavy in his tone.

Tamani studied the mysterious nothingness. “I can throw things through it, but I can’t poke through it with a stick. Think you could throw me through it?”

Shar looked at him for a long time, then arched one eyebrow and nodded. “I can certainly try.” He knelt with his fingers laced together and Tamani placed one foot into his open palms.

“A haon, a do, a tri!” Shar heaved, and Tamani made a flying leap, directly toward the barrier.

He was airborne, and then he had the excruciatingly distinct impression that something was turning him inside out. But the pain passed quickly, and his back hit the ground, forcing the air from his chest. There were too many stars in the sky, he thought, trying to focus. Shar was looking down at him, vaguely amused.

“What happened?” Tamani asked.

“You… bounced.”

Tamani sat up and stared at the space before him. “It must be very specifically attuned to fae. That shouldn’t even be possible.” He glared at the ground for a moment. “Maybe we can dig under it?”

“Maybe,” Shar said, but he didn’t sound confident.

“What can we do, then?”

Shar didn’t respond immediately. He was studying the small clearing with a look of consternation, tilting his head this way and that, as if in search of an angle that would allow him to see the secret. Then he stopped and straightened.

“I wonder…” Shar reached his hands forward, dragging his toe along the invisible barrier, marking its perimeter. From his pack, he produced a small drawstring pouch. “Stand back.”

Automatically, Tamani took a few steps backward, wondering what Shar was up to.

After loosening the strings that held it closed, Shar pinched the bottom corner of the little pouch between his thumb and forefinger. Then he crouched on the ground, carefully scattering its pale, granular contents around himself, completing the circle by dropping an arc from overhead that disappeared as it passed the invisible wall.

Tamani jumped back in alarm as the small clearing where they stood swelled to triple its size in the blink of an eye. His breath caught in his throat as he surveyed the expanse that materialized before them from the vaguest hint of a shadow. In the center of the clearing was a dilapidated cabin, its windows tightly boarded. It practically glowed in the full moonlight.

Realizing at once how vulnerable they were — how vulnerable they had been the whole time — Tamani dropped to his stomach and scrambled for cover behind a scrub oak. When nothing moved in the moonlit clearing, Tamani crept out slowly, though part of him suspected it didn’t matter. If anyone had been watching them for the last quarter of an hour, the time for hiding was long past. Still, his training didn’t allow him to do anything but proceed as carefully as possible.

Shar hadn’t moved. He was standing in the middle of his improvised circle, staring at the now-empty pouch that rested in his upturned palm. The look on his face was a mixture of awestruck horror and giddy delight. Whatever he had done, he hadn’t expected it to work.

“What was that?” Tamani said appreciatively.

“Salt,” Shar replied, his voice hollow. He didn’t take his eyes off the pouch in his hand. Tamani laughed, but Shar did not.

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“Look there.”

Tamani looked at the ground where Shar was pointing. The white line of salt Shar had made around himself overlapped a thick arc of dark blue powder that appeared to encircle the entire clearing.

“That’s Mixer’s work,” Shar said, frowning.

“It looks that way, but this is Winter-class enchantment. They’ve hidden half an acre just by drawing a circle around it!”

“Benders don’t use powders,” Shar replied. Tamani suppressed a grimace; referring to Winter faeries as Benders was vulgar even by sentry standards. “The powder makes it a Mixing for sure.”

“Or maybe we’re dealing with a new kind of troll. Laurel hit those trolls with caesafum and they didn’t even blink. Tracking serums don’t work, either. And it seems like Barnes was immune to everything but lead. Specifically, lead shot into his brain.”

Shar ruminated on that. “Maybe. But there have been some very, very strong Mixers in our history.”

“Not outside Avalon. Except the one exile, and she burned, what, forty, fifty years ago?”

“Indeed. I saw it happen with my own eyes. But perhaps an apprentice?” Shar hesitated. “There is the young faerie.”

“I don’t think it’s possible. Even on the off-chance that the Wildflower is a Fall, she’s too young. An Academy-trained Mixer would be a hundred before they could do something like this, never mind a wild one.”

“Anything is possible.”

“So I see,” Tamani said, gesturing at the powder. “Both this blue powder and whatever you did,” he added. “Why salt?”

“Testing a theory,” Shar said. “So far, I’m encouraged by the results.”

Sensing that Shar was not going to say more on the subject, Tamani knelt and examined the blue powder. “Can I have that pouch?”

Wordlessly, Shar dropped the small burlap sack into Tamani’s outstretched hand. Tamani scooped some of the powder onto the blade of his knife and poured it into the pouch. Then, as an afterthought, he used his knife to draw a line in the dirt, breaking the blue circle.

“What are you doing?” asked Shar.

“I’m guessing a broken circle won’t work,” Tamani said. “If the trolls inside didn’t see us, they may not know the circle is broken — but they might find your salt. If we scatter the salt, and cover this break, maybe they won’t notice their lair is exposed.”

“I want this place watched day and night from now on.”

“I’ll need to call reinforcements,” Tamani said, the weight of his weariness bearing down on him as the excitement of discovery waned. He ducked behind a thick tree to turn on his iPhone, wishing the screen didn’t light up quite so brightly. Hoping Aaron remembered how to use the GPS, Tamani sent his location to the other sentry’s phone.

By the time Tamani returned, Shar had eradicated his salt circle and scattered leaves over the break Tamani