Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Sam carefully set the pottery fragment on the ground again and dusted his hands off on the seat of his pants. “Leave everything where you see it for now. It will need to be properly noted and catalogued later. Watch where you step, and if you spot anything interesting, give a shout.”
“You mean like these brick walls?” Vasily said, pointing ahead of them.
That was…puzzling.
Not far from where they were standing were some brick buildings that had clearly been built in the last one hundred years. That should not be here.
Had whoever had arrived first decided to build up their own protection and buildings around the original Sousa Clan site?
Finding the site and excavating it, that Sam could understand. Any archaeologist would do that.
But building on the site of an ancient clan? No one did that. No archaeologist, at least. They’d be kicked out of their field promptly for such sacrilege. So, what the hell was going on here?
This whole thing was weird. Really weird. The ward just added a cherry to the cake of weirdness.
Sam stopped a good ten feet from the ward, intensely studying it. The ward was older, established, maybe sixty or so years? Perhaps older. Still fully functional, so it had a good power source. It sat right outside of the weathered stone walls, tied to them but not directly on top of them. Interesting. Not the norm—usually wards were attached to the walls of a building itself.
Seriously, what the hell was going on?
Dimitri made a grinding sound, much like a train heading for a collision course.
Uh-oh, now what? Sam looked at him sharply. “What?”
“That,” Dimitri ground out between clenched teeth, “is a Jaeggi ward.”
“You sure?” Vasily demanded incredulously.
“I’m sure. You can’t mistake that smell. Their magic doesn’t smell like anything else on the planet.”
Sam stared at him, then back at the ward, feeling his whole perception of the situation go skewing sideways. “This makes no sense. Why would the Jaeggi be here?”
“I really do not know, but I do not like it.”
Sam didn’t like it, for that matter. For their benefit, he relayed, “The ward’s relatively new, considering the age of the site. It’s about sixty-plus years old would be my estimate. My guess is that they arrived here, set up this ward, and then set up the booby traps on the mountain to deter hikers from getting too close to this site. The ward is strong, and I see no sign of Sousa magic in this.”
“Jaeggi wards are built more on mechanics,” Dimitri explained succinctly. He was damn near breathing ice out. “They can’t use another clan’s magic in a traditional sense. Wards would be beyond them. They’d have to use their own version.”
“Ah. Well, that makes sense of what I’m seeing.”
Sam stared at it some more, debating what to do. The strange thing, aside from the ward existing in the first place, was that it appeared oddly familiar. Like the magic had an affinity to something else he’d seen before. He couldn’t immediately put his finger on why.
“We have to report this in,” Luka said behind him. “Rodrigo is going to have kittens when he hears this. Anyone got cell signal?”
“Dammit, no,” Gregori growled. “We’re too far in the valley for that. One of us is going to have to fly out.”
Vasily chimed in, “I think we should all fly back to the clan. We’ve got the exact GPS coordinate now. We can easily return later. Standing next to a Jaeggi ward is giving me graveyard chills.”
Sam listened with half an ear to the debate behind him, but his attention wasn’t really on them. He kept staring at the ward, and the more he studied it, the more sure he became. He had an affinity to this ward. It looked like his own magical core did, in a strange sense.
Normally, his scientific brain wouldn’t allow him to perform leaps of logic, but intuition strongly told him to move forward. If he could put a hand through that ward, then theory proven. If not, then all he’d do is smack a palm against it and be rebuffed. No harm either way, right?
Unless disturbing the ward would send back a signal to whomever set it up that someone was poking at their defenses. That would be bad. But they could fly off quickly enough, right? It was worth the potential risk.
Decisively, he set his pack down and walked right up to the ward. Despite his confidence, Sam half expected to be repelled back.
Instead, he waltzed right through like it was thin air.
The shock of that made him stumble to a stop and he twisted around to stare at the ward incredulously. That should not have worked. His intuition was right on the money, but why?
Dimitri, on the other side of the ward, absolutely lost it.
“Sam!” he barked, panic and horror clawing over his expression. “What the hell! Get over here right now!”