In the sudden silence, Christian did his best to ignore the presence of half a dozen trolls that were not in the best of moods. Mark had promised to keep him safe, and his family had told him that Mark could, and what Christian had sensed from Alexandra was consistent with that. So there wasn’t really anything to fear, and it was just animal instinct making him apprehensive. He needed to shove that away and concentrate.
The shifting spark of light in the prism gave him something to occupy his eyes and the more immediate part of his mind, allowing other impressions to drift in, in hopes of regaining the thread of contact he’d already found once, then lost.
There. That was the troll who had been in this place but currently was not, the troll who was connected to the others that were present.
That one was angry and alone and profoundly unhappy.
But en was alive, and that was a good start.
The problem was, this was the possibility he’d feared. A witch didn’t need to be in literal proximity to create a summoning. Liminals were less anchored in the physical world and so distance was often much less relevant. Done right, with enough power, it could pull the nearest liminal of the target species to the summoner. Many witches, Christian knew, used those initial moments of disorientation to impose a binding onto the liminal, either tricking en into agreement or simply overwhelming en. Once a binding was in place, the liminal was stuck with it, even if it forced obedience or the requirement to complete a specific task, no matter how difficult it might be or how long it might take.
It was a form of slavery, and it was unconditionally wrong.
It was also the most likely reason for the current situation.
He didn’t really believe that the trolls would attack him. Being upset was understandable, but it was highly unlikely the others would dishonour themselves, let alone risk the loss of more of their family.
Besides, Alexandra was... how powerful? Enough to make the trolls reconsider, certainly.
So it wasn’t fear for himself that made him want fervently to find the troll.
How was he going to do this? He didn’t have the circle inlaid into the floor of the library, under his grandmother’s protective rug, nor did he have anything available he could possibly use to create even a rudimentary complete one.
But then, he’d grown up knowing that tools were only that, objects that made magic a bit easier. The circle and tools in the library had incorporated symbols from a wide variety of traditions and cultures, until they were as mixed and chaotic as Christian’s own bloodline—much the same mix, in fact. That didn’t give any of those symbols intrinsic power. It was all about a witch’s own innate gift and skills.
He could do this. He had to.
But symbols still mattered.
He stood up abruptly. “I need a circle. And I mean anything that defines a space on the ground—it doesn’t have to be a continuous line, and it doesn’t have to be an exact circle, just something creating an inside and an outside. A bunch of rocks suggesting a ring would be fine. You can see in the dark better than I can, could you help, please?”
The trolls hesitated, looking at one another. “A circle, so rough?” their guide said, puzzled. “To what purpose?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Mark said. “You’re not witches and god knows what the explanation would sound like or how much sense it would make to anyone else. You asked for help, you’re getting it. Just do it.”
The trolls scattered, and came back with their large hands filled with small rocks, anything from the size of a golf ball to the size of a human fist. Under Christian’s direction, they laid them on the ground, sketching out a circle big enough for a troll to stand in comfortably.
Christian knelt beside it, and closed his eyes, turning inward. He’d touched the spirit of that lost troll twice, he could do it again. This wasn’t a proper circle, a flawless and unbroken perfect geometric shape adorned around the border with symbols that reminded his subconscious of various things, in a space that was controlled and safe. But it didn’t matter. He was declaring it to be the equivalent. He knew every one of those symbols by heart, otherwise they’d be useless anyway. He just had to decide that they were, in a virtual sense, present. This was the equivalent of the circle in the library, because he had decided it was.
Safety wasn’t in question. Mark had promised.
And that meant he could summon one specific troll into this circle.
It took longer than he’d have liked, trying to ignore the cool night, his own fatigue, the gaze of the trolls. Doubts crept in at moments, whether he could really do this all on his own with no tools, but he banished those. He could. He knew he could. Everything he knew told him he could.
It helped, trusting Mark to handle anything external for now.
Finally, his questing mental touch found en.
And when he had, he visualized en within the circle, within his reach, right here where he could interact with en.
When he opened his eyes, he could see en, dimly. En wasn’t properly here, but there was a connection. More clear to his eyes was the symbolic rope wrapped around en, glowing and crackling with energy, anchoring en in another part of this plane.
That thing was going to bite back, but it was absolutely evil, a magical construct with no purpose except stripping away the identity and freedom of a living being, reducing en to an object forced to obey, separating en from ens family.
He’d never studied bindings in much depth, but they had to be roughly the same kind of structures as anything else, right?
He stood up, and broke the cardinal rule of summoning: he stepped into the circle himself.
From there, he could seize hold of the binding with both hands and inspect it more closely.
It was more rigidly formal than anything he was really accustomed to doing himself, but his grandmother had taught him the fundamentals of that kind of magic, and his grandfather had taught him about bindings.
Actually, he recognized this exact binding. He hadn’t looked at anything on the subject for months, but he was sure he’d seen it spelled out in detail in one of the library’s books.
The book in question had margin notes by one of his own ancestors, spelling out the weakness of the technique and advising against using it. What had it said? What was the vulnerability to this one? He struggled to remember, without letting go of the binding or the connection to the lost troll. There was a way to defeat it, he knew there was, and it was more about skill than brute force.
Don’t use this one because... if exactly the same binding was cast a second time on the same liminal, they would cancel out, freeing the captive, who would probably not be in a good mood.
He had limited familiarity with this binding or any other, and these were not ideal conditions. The sensible course of action would probably be to tell them he had to go home where he had reference books and tools, and he could have some hot chocolate and a snack to boost his energy levels before trying this, something more substantial than the granola bars and sports drink in his backpack.
He didn’t think the trolls would be at all happy about that, and he could understand why. They were intensely communal, and one of their own was in misery. Plus, of course, one troll was in misery.
He’d gotten this far. He could do this.
He studied the rope in his hands a moment longer, visualizing the page in the book that had described how to create it and matching it to the living example in front of him.
Then he began to rebuild it, with will and imagination alone, reproducing in his mind every tool, every step, every word, every gesture. That was the only place that really mattered anyway, the external trappings were just a way of keeping it all straight. After a lifetime of training, and most of his own best skills needing only his own will, he could do this.
He would do this.
His concentration wavered, only for a heartbeat, but he lost the whole delicate construction.
“Damn it! I almost had it!”
“Do you need to stop and rest and try again in the morning?” Mark asked calmly.
That set the trolls off into a chorus of protests.
Mark’s voice cut through them without effort. “I am not risking that witch’s life for the sake of your sibling. For that matter, if he dies, then your sibling is completely fucked, because I would certainly like to see you find another witch willing to do this.”
It was tempting, and probably sensible.
But he’d picked up the echoes of the way that poor troll was feeling, and knew he wouldn’t be able to rest, wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.
He took a deep breath, and shook his head. “I’m going to try again. I really hope I get it this time, because I don’t think I’ll have a choice if it comes to a third attempt, I just won’t have any juice left. Even if I can pull this off, I’m going to be exhausted and pretty out of it afterwards.”
“I’ll make sure you get home safely,” Mark said. “I promise.”
Christian nodded. “Not quite how we were expecting tonight to go, but that’s life, I guess?” Another deep breath, and he closed his eyes again, starting back at the beginning.
It was painfully slow, and he could feel muscles starting to cramp, his core temperature dropping because the hoodie he’d grabbed wasn’t really meant for these conditions, his own impatience and anxiety trying to rise, but he shoved all that away. He couldn’t lose this. He couldn’t rush it. He had no room for error or distraction or doubt. He had to get it right.
An eternity later, he laid the last strand in place and pulled the knot tight. He’d have said a fervent prayer, if he was into that kind of thing.
A trollish voice howled, right in his ear—possibly in pain—in the same instant Christian felt his own binding spell snap violently. He grunted, dropping to his knees, as the released power earthed itself through him with the force and sensation of a massive electrical surge. The night grew even darker for a moment.
Then a massive hand seized him by the throat, and slowly tightened. Being short on air didn’t help, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate enough to do anything about it.
“Let him go. Now!”
That was Alexandra’s voice, and in place of the cool calculated control he’d heard in the park, she sounded angry.
“Release the witch!” one of the trolls said. “He freed you! Hurt was not intended!”
“I will kill you,” Alexandra said. “You’re currently alive only because I don’t want you making any fast moves. If you harm him, there is nothing on any plane that will save your life. You have my word on that.”
More troll voices chimed in, urging Christian’s release.
The hand around his throat slowly loosened.
At the moment, it was the only thing keeping Christian vertical. The world tilted and came up to meet him.
* * *
“Oh, you are in a world of trouble,” Alexandra snarled, striding over to Christian. She dropped to one knee to check on him. His heart was steady, so was his breathing, but the energy levels she could feel were precariously low.
“Sorry,” rumbled the one who had just been rescued. “Was confused and it hurt.”
“That was this witch undoing the binding holding you to another witch!” She straightened. “I want the lot of you out of this area. I don’t care where you go. North where you should be or south into the United States or whatever, I could care less. But this is your only warning. More than one of you have been a threat to Christian tonight. I will not tolerate that. Starting tomorrow night, I will start picking you off one at a time until you start taking me seriously. And you will not say a word to anyone about me. Are we absolutely clear on this?”
The one who had come to Christian for help bowed its head. “We deeply appreciate the freeing of our sibling. We owe the witch a great debt. We have not handled this situation entirely with honour.”
“We will find a new territory,” another said. “We have been here for some years. We will explore elsewhere.”
“Please tell the witch we are grateful,” a third said.
“Witch is scary,” one troll said softly. “Summoned our sibling, no other, into barely a circle at all, and broke another witch’s binding.”
“Yeah, he’s good,” Alexandra said. That troll had a point: it had been a ridiculous display of raw determination and sheer finesse, when he’d already been tired, but ‘scary’ was one of the last adjectives she’d ever apply to Christian. “Break up this circle. Humans get ideas too easily.” She tucked Christian’s glass prism back into his backpack, tied it, and slung it onto her own shoulder, then gathered him up in her arms. She didn’t normally use her more-than-human strength for a purpose like this, but it worked, and she wrapped her wings around him for extra support. “Get lost. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”
There were benches closer to the road. Christian had enough sense, she was sure, to have snacks in his bag. He probably wouldn’t be unconscious long. If she could get any kind of food into him at all, he should be able to stay more or less functional long enough for Mark to call a taxi and get them home.
And tomorrow night, Alexandra was going hunting for any trolls still in this city.
In the sudden silence, Christian did his best to ignore the presence of half a dozen trolls that were not in the best of moods. Mark had promised to keep him safe, and his family had told him that Mark could, and what Christian had sensed from Alexandra was consistent with that. So there wasn’t really anything to fear, and it was just animal instinct making him apprehensive. He needed to shove that away and concentrate.
The shifting spark of light in the prism gave him something to occupy his eyes and the more immediate part of his mind, allowing other impressions to drift in, in hopes of regaining the thread of contact he’d already found once, then lost.
There. That was the troll who had been in this place but currently was not, the troll who was connected to the others that were present.
That one was angry and alone and profoundly unhappy.
But en was alive, and that was a good start.
The problem was, this was the possibility he’d feared. A witch didn’t need to be in literal proximity to create a summoning. Liminals were less anchored in the physical world and so distance was often much less relevant. Done right, with enough power, it could pull the nearest liminal of the target species to the summoner. Many witches, Christian knew, used those initial moments of disorientation to impose a binding onto the liminal, either tricking en into agreement or simply overwhelming en. Once a binding was in place, the liminal was stuck with it, even if it forced obedience or the requirement to complete a specific task, no matter how difficult it might be or how long it might take.
It was a form of slavery, and it was unconditionally wrong.
It was also the most likely reason for the current situation.
He didn’t really believe that the trolls would attack him. Being upset was understandable, but it was highly unlikely the others would dishonour themselves, let alone risk the loss of more of their family.
Besides, Alexandra was... how powerful? Enough to make the trolls reconsider, certainly.
So it wasn’t fear for himself that made him want fervently to find the troll.
How was he going to do this? He didn’t have the circle inlaid into the floor of the library, under his grandmother’s protective rug, nor did he have anything available he could possibly use to create even a rudimentary complete one.
But then, he’d grown up knowing that tools were only that, objects that made magic a bit easier. The circle and tools in the library had incorporated symbols from a wide variety of traditions and cultures, until they were as mixed and chaotic as Christian’s own bloodline—much the same mix, in fact. That didn’t give any of those symbols intrinsic power. It was all about a witch’s own innate gift and skills.
He could do this. He had to.
But symbols still mattered.
He stood up abruptly. “I need a circle. And I mean anything that defines a space on the ground—it doesn’t have to be a continuous line, and it doesn’t have to be an exact circle, just something creating an inside and an outside. A bunch of rocks suggesting a ring would be fine. You can see in the dark better than I can, could you help, please?”
The trolls hesitated, looking at one another. “A circle, so rough?” their guide said, puzzled. “To what purpose?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Mark said. “You’re not witches and god knows what the explanation would sound like or how much sense it would make to anyone else. You asked for help, you’re getting it. Just do it.”
The trolls scattered, and came back with their large hands filled with small rocks, anything from the size of a golf ball to the size of a human fist. Under Christian’s direction, they laid them on the ground, sketching out a circle big enough for a troll to stand in comfortably.
Christian knelt beside it, and closed his eyes, turning inward. He’d touched the spirit of that lost troll twice, he could do it again. This wasn’t a proper circle, a flawless and unbroken perfect geometric shape adorned around the border with symbols that reminded his subconscious of various things, in a space that was controlled and safe. But it didn’t matter. He was declaring it to be the equivalent. He knew every one of those symbols by heart, otherwise they’d be useless anyway. He just had to decide that they were, in a virtual sense, present. This was the equivalent of the circle in the library, because he had decided it was.
Safety wasn’t in question. Mark had promised.
And that meant he could summon one specific troll into this circle.
It took longer than he’d have liked, trying to ignore the cool night, his own fatigue, the gaze of the trolls. Doubts crept in at moments, whether he could really do this all on his own with no tools, but he banished those. He could. He knew he could. Everything he knew told him he could.
It helped, trusting Mark to handle anything external for now.
Finally, his questing mental touch found en.
And when he had, he visualized en within the circle, within his reach, right here where he could interact with en.
When he opened his eyes, he could see en, dimly. En wasn’t properly here, but there was a connection. More clear to his eyes was the symbolic rope wrapped around en, glowing and crackling with energy, anchoring en in another part of this plane.
That thing was going to bite back, but it was absolutely evil, a magical construct with no purpose except stripping away the identity and freedom of a living being, reducing en to an object forced to obey, separating en from ens family.
He’d never studied bindings in much depth, but they had to be roughly the same kind of structures as anything else, right?
He stood up, and broke the cardinal rule of summoning: he stepped into the circle himself.
From there, he could seize hold of the binding with both hands and inspect it more closely.
It was more rigidly formal than anything he was really accustomed to doing himself, but his grandmother had taught him the fundamentals of that kind of magic, and his grandfather had taught him about bindings.
Actually, he recognized this exact binding. He hadn’t looked at anything on the subject for months, but he was sure he’d seen it spelled out in detail in one of the library’s books.
The book in question had margin notes by one of his own ancestors, spelling out the weakness of the technique and advising against using it. What had it said? What was the vulnerability to this one? He struggled to remember, without letting go of the binding or the connection to the lost troll. There was a way to defeat it, he knew there was, and it was more about skill than brute force.
Don’t use this one because... if exactly the same binding was cast a second time on the same liminal, they would cancel out, freeing the captive, who would probably not be in a good mood.
He had limited familiarity with this binding or any other, and these were not ideal conditions. The sensible course of action would probably be to tell them he had to go home where he had reference books and tools, and he could have some hot chocolate and a snack to boost his energy levels before trying this, something more substantial than the granola bars and sports drink in his backpack.
He didn’t think the trolls would be at all happy about that, and he could understand why. They were intensely communal, and one of their own was in misery. Plus, of course, one troll was in misery.
He’d gotten this far. He could do this.
He studied the rope in his hands a moment longer, visualizing the page in the book that had described how to create it and matching it to the living example in front of him.
Then he began to rebuild it, with will and imagination alone, reproducing in his mind every tool, every step, every word, every gesture. That was the only place that really mattered anyway, the external trappings were just a way of keeping it all straight. After a lifetime of training, and most of his own best skills needing only his own will, he could do this.
He would do this.
His concentration wavered, only for a heartbeat, but he lost the whole delicate construction.
“Damn it! I almost had it!”
“Do you need to stop and rest and try again in the morning?” Mark asked calmly.
That set the trolls off into a chorus of protests.
Mark’s voice cut through them without effort. “I am not risking that witch’s life for the sake of your sibling. For that matter, if he dies, then your sibling is completely fucked, because I would certainly like to see you find another witch willing to do this.”
It was tempting, and probably sensible.
But he’d picked up the echoes of the way that poor troll was feeling, and knew he wouldn’t be able to rest, wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.
He took a deep breath, and shook his head. “I’m going to try again. I really hope I get it this time, because I don’t think I’ll have a choice if it comes to a third attempt, I just won’t have any juice left. Even if I can pull this off, I’m going to be exhausted and pretty out of it afterwards.”
“I’ll make sure you get home safely,” Mark said. “I promise.”
Christian nodded. “Not quite how we were expecting tonight to go, but that’s life, I guess?” Another deep breath, and he closed his eyes again, starting back at the beginning.
It was painfully slow, and he could feel muscles starting to cramp, his core temperature dropping because the hoodie he’d grabbed wasn’t really meant for these conditions, his own impatience and anxiety trying to rise, but he shoved all that away. He couldn’t lose this. He couldn’t rush it. He had no room for error or distraction or doubt. He had to get it right.
An eternity later, he laid the last strand in place and pulled the knot tight. He’d have said a fervent prayer, if he was into that kind of thing.
A trollish voice howled, right in his ear—possibly in pain—in the same instant Christian felt his own binding spell snap violently. He grunted, dropping to his knees, as the released power earthed itself through him with the force and sensation of a massive electrical surge. The night grew even darker for a moment.
Then a massive hand seized him by the throat, and slowly tightened. Being short on air didn’t help, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate enough to do anything about it.
“Let him go. Now!”
That was Alexandra’s voice, and in place of the cool calculated control he’d heard in the park, she sounded angry.
“Release the witch!” one of the trolls said. “He freed you! Hurt was not intended!”
“I will kill you,” Alexandra said. “You’re currently alive only because I don’t want you making any fast moves. If you harm him, there is nothing on any plane that will save your life. You have my word on that.”
More troll voices chimed in, urging Christian’s release.
The hand around his throat slowly loosened.
At the moment, it was the only thing keeping Christian vertical. The world tilted and came up to meet him.
* * *
“Oh, you are in a world of trouble,” Alexandra snarled, striding over to Christian. She dropped to one knee to check on him. His heart was steady, so was his breathing, but the energy levels she could feel were precariously low.
“Sorry,” rumbled the one who had just been rescued. “Was confused and it hurt.”
“That was this witch undoing the binding holding you to another witch!” She straightened. “I want the lot of you out of this area. I don’t care where you go. North where you should be or south into the United States or whatever, I could care less. But this is your only warning. More than one of you have been a threat to Christian tonight. I will not tolerate that. Starting tomorrow night, I will start picking you off one at a time until you start taking me seriously. And you will not say a word to anyone about me. Are we absolutely clear on this?”
The one who had come to Christian for help bowed its head. “We deeply appreciate the freeing of our sibling. We owe the witch a great debt. We have not handled this situation entirely with honour.”
“We will find a new territory,” another said. “We have been here for some years. We will explore elsewhere.”
“Please tell the witch we are grateful,” a third said.
“Witch is scary,” one troll said softly. “Summoned our sibling, no other, into barely a circle at all, and broke another witch’s binding.”
“Yeah, he’s good,” Alexandra said. That troll had a point: it had been a ridiculous display of raw determination and sheer finesse, when he’d already been tired, but ‘scary’ was one of the last adjectives she’d ever apply to Christian. “Break up this circle. Humans get ideas too easily.” She tucked Christian’s glass prism back into his backpack, tied it, and slung it onto her own shoulder, then gathered him up in her arms. She didn’t normally use her more-than-human strength for a purpose like this, but it worked, and she wrapped her wings around him for extra support. “Get lost. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”
There were benches closer to the road. Christian had enough sense, she was sure, to have snacks in his bag. He probably wouldn’t be unconscious long. If she could get any kind of food into him at all, he should be able to stay more or less functional long enough for Mark to call a taxi and get them home.
And tomorrow night, Alexandra was going hunting for any trolls still in this city.
