Jamie was soft. And annoying. And his priorities weren’t entirely rational.

  But there was value to keeping the peace with the Boy, as the healer. Besides, mutual protection was probably the best strategic choice anyway.

  “Fine, we keep up with Esme,” Ian agreed.

  “I have to say,” said Montague as they hurried along after the witch, “that I expected more from our illustrious hosts.”

  “You want something worse than those creatures?” Jamie asked her, his eyes wide with alarm.

  “Nay, not worse exactly. Trickier.” The Captain shrugged a shoulder as she scanned the woods down the barrel of her pistol. “Monsters are fairly straightforward, even if they’re a dangerous sort.”

  “Oh no,” Ian moaned, “don’t say that! You’ll give them ideas.” He shuddered. He would swear he heard giggling on the wind. On no.

  “What did she say?” asked Esme. They had caught up to her. She’d stopped because her skirt was snagged, and they almost ran her over.

  “That she wants the fairies’ attacks to be trickier.”

  Esme gasped. “Why? Why would you ask for that?”

  “I didn’t ask! And I did not say ‘want.’”

  “They can hear us, you know!” Esme whispered, crouching down low as her eyes darted around the trees. She would have seemed somewhat deranged if it weren’t for the fact that it was obviously true.

  “Let’s keep moving,” said Ian. He strode forward into the woods several paces, realized he was alone, and turned back. He found the other three also returning to where they had just been, having all headed off in different directions.

  “This is the way we were going before,” said Montague, pointing with her sword, “Where are you all going?”

  “I’m continuing on,” said Esme, her nose wrinkled and her eyes narrowed, “you’ve gotten yourself turned around.” She jabbed a finger at Jamie. “And you’re going back the way we just came from, kid!”

  “No! This is the way you were just going.” Jamie looked, yet again, near tears.

  “He’s closer than you were,” Ian told Esme with a shrug. Though really, they were about equally off. Except…

  Jamie pointed at a tree. It was a fairly recognizable tree, with a distinctive vine wrapped around it. “That,” he said, “was next to that.” He pointed at a rock that was shaped somewhat like a chortlin.

  The three adults considered that. “...I think he’s right,” said Ian. The forest had changed. He hadn’t seen anything move, but something surely had all the same.

  “Oh no, this is the trick,” groaned Esme. She turned from Jamie to Montague, snarling, “Good going, Captain.”

  Montague paid her no mind, stowing her pistol to take a compass out of her pocked. “We were heading in a northeastern direction before. Which means we continue thissaway.” She pointed with her sword in a direction somewhere between her heading and Esme’s, pocketed the compass and drew her pistol once again.

  “We should hold hands,” said Jamie.

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous, child,” said Esme, her eyes nearly rolling out of her head, “Nobody is holding little baby’s hand just because you’re scawed.”

  “But—that’s not—”

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  Ian shrugged, and headed off after the women with Jamie hot on his heels. After three minutes he’d lost sight of Esme and Montague, and couldn’t hear Jamie behind him any more. He sighed and retraced his steps, but after five minutes he hadn’t found the tree with the vine or the chortlin rock. Nor had he encountered Jamie. And by now he hadn’t the slightest idea where Esme and Montague had got to.

  They really should have held hands.

  Ian called out to the others, softly. There was no answer. The woods were strangely quiet.

  He tried calling out more loudly. “Montague!” He didn’t hear a response, but it was also as if his own shout was choked out, cut short. Sound was being baffled. He really needed her… compass. Her compass.

  Ian tried to assess the direction he was headed by the sun, but he realized he had no idea what time of day it was. And Jamie and Esme were even more hopeless in the woods than he was. Not that he was too concerned about their safety, of course, but Jamie, at least, was useful to have around.

  Choosing a direction that seemed best, Ian started to move. He almost immediately tripped, his ankle tangled in a vine. He burned it away and continued on, but he had similar difficulty constantly. It was as if the undergrowth was actively trying to bar his movement.

  It turned out that he really also needed Montague’s cutlass.

  By casting a little life draining magic ahead of himself as he moved, Ian found he could make the smaller vines and grasses whither, clearing the way. He made some progress like this, but after ten or so minutes he really had to stop and think about the rather obvious problem he was facing: He had no idea where he was going, and therefore he wasn’t making progress towards anything. Continuing to move was probably good, but was he really going to give up and settle for “better than doing nothing”? Of course not! The notion was absurd.

  Ian stopped and sat on the forest floor. He tried focusing on the world around him. What would he be able to sense magically?

  The first thing he sensed did not require magic at all. It was that the undergrowth was growing over him, binding him in place. Well, that settled one thing, at least: Something within the forest was indeed actively working to impede him. Or at least the flora was growing unnaturally. He considered. Yes, it was possible that rampant, unnatural growth could be doing this even if it wasn’t targeted.

  So he really hadn’t learned anything.

  Magically withering the plants growing over him, he tried again. This time he kept up a constant trickle of a life-draining aura around him. That made things difficult for two reasons. One was that it used up a fraction, however small, of both his available magical energy and his focus. The other was that he was now sensing his own magic in addition to whatever he was looking for.

  But… the energy of the forest was intense. It was life so strong it was well outside of his ability to snuff it out. Was that entirely caused by the fairies? Plants, at least plants that weren’t also monsters, lacked will. They did not generally cling to life in the same way that people or even animals did. This was unusual.

  But there was something deeper, something in the earth. Maybe this wasn’t caused by the fey. Maybe it was the other way around? Maybe they came here because of this energy? Fairies had a deeper, more intrinsic connection to magic than did a mystic like him. They might feel this for miles around.

  There was something under the forest floor that positively radiated magical power. That’s why the trees and other vegetation were so suffused with it. A ley line? And he could sense where it led. Was that helpful, though? Was he supposed to be heading towards the point of greatest magical power.

  “Oh.” Why had Esme’s grandfather built his cabin way out in the deepest woods, so far from everything else? This was why. He’d built the cabin there, at that point. Which meant that Ian could find it!

  It also meant that Esme knew about all this, and it was probably how she’d been searching for it in the first place. Ian wasn’t sure he liked that she had chosen not to mention it.

  But could he draw on this power now? He stood, blighted the area ten feet around him to buy himself a little time to concentrate without the interference of the vines, and focused on drawing that power up from the earth. He was hardly a nature mage. This would probably work better for Jamie, maybe even for Esme, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it at all.

  And if he could drain life, maybe with a power boost he could sense it? He sensed magic all around him, and that was life magic. But if he could get a feel for that and then not focus on sensing the magic—yes. Life, strong life, but not the magically-enhanced life of the forest flora and creatures. That had to be what people felt like, and there were three of them.

  Ian hesitated. If Esme already knew all of this, she may have gotten back onto the right track faster than he had. He had to catch up to her, and she was probably the life force furthest ahead. But he might need Montague’s help, or Jamie’s. But did he have time to go rescue them? He had no idea which was which.

  He pictured the boy’s crying face if he knew that Ian was trying to decide whether to bother rescuing him at all. But why should that matter? And if he rescued Jamie, he’d definitely insist on rescuing Montague. If he found the Captain first, would she do the same? Probably. With a sigh, Ian headed towards the closest one. This would be difficult to do alone, after all.