Broken Lands

Sophia borrowed the map, such as it was, from Amy and tried to track their progress on it as they followed Lillah through the outer part of the city towards the West Conservatory. It fairly quickly became obvious that either Lillah was taking them through paths that weren’t on the map or that Sophia was lost.

Sophia was pretty sure both were true. She couldn’t find any paths on the map that led through either badly damaged buildings or underground tunnels and Lillah led them through both. She also couldn’t find the small stream in a brick streambed they crossed three times anywhere on the map.

At least, she hoped it was the same stream. If it wasn’t, she was even more confused about where they were.

Her best guess, more or less two hours after they left Lillah’s place, was that they’d looped around behind the West Conservatory and were coming at it from the northwest. If she was correct about that, she knew more or less where they were on the map. There were far more trees than the map showed and she was fairly certain that some of the green lumps she saw were actually buried rubble, but she thought she knew where they were and that meant they were close to the West Conservatory. If they went directly, it was probably … ten or fifteen minutes’ walk?

Of course, that depended on how well she’d gauged their progress and whether or not that last area they’d crossed was actually the Old Market Field.

Lillah led them up a set of stone stairs that were different from most of what they’d seen because they’d clearly had a path cut through the vines that tried to block them repeatedly; Sophia could see the cut marks and dead vines.

Sophia still had her head down, watching her feet, when Dav stopped right in front of her. She ran into him and had to catch ahold of him to steady herself.

A moment later, she was glad that she was holding him and that she hadn’t knocked him over. “Woah,” escaped her mouth as she looked over the vista that appeared once they were at the top of the stairway.

That had to be the West Conservatory. It was a clearly glass-walled building with an oddly curved roof and a pair of glassed in cupolas on top of a pair of peaks in the glass paneled roof. Most of the glass panels seemed intact, though Sophia was pretty sure some were damaged and some seemed to be entirely missing. Below the top tier, it changed from a structure that looked mostly metal with glass panels to something that was more like stone with huge windows; Sophia had to guess that was to support the weight. The lowest level was even more heavily stone and less glass; it didn’t really look like part of a greenhouse at all. Even so, she was pretty sure there had to be magic somewhere in the building process, even if it was only the magic of good engineering.

The entire structure had vines and other greenery growing on the ledges and even in some places where Sophia wouldn’t have expected it to have support. Her eyes followed the greenery out beyond the walls of the building onto another set of walls; were those additional garden walls or was that another building to the left? The overgrown wall in front of her, at least, looked like it was a sort of courtyard wall for the West Conservatory, even if it was so overgrown that it didn’t look like much of a courtyard anymore. There might even be more than one courtyard.

In the distance, Sophia couldn’t see the city. That meant one other thing: she was wrong about which side of the Conservatory they were on. She’d thought they were on the west side, but Casterville ought to be visible to the east of the West Conservatory. Despite the trees, she thought she could see it in the distance to her left, which meant they were north of the West Conservatory instead of west of it.

“It’s quite a view, isn’t it?” Dav’s question startled Sophia for a moment. His arm steadied her and she realized that it wasn’t just her holding Dav; he was holding her, too. Some time while she was taking in the scenery, they’d shifted from her balancing against him to actually holding each other like it was a romantic moment.

It kind of was a romantic moment, in a way. Whatever was hidden behind the beautiful if overgrown and slightly decrepit facade below was just that: hidden. They were here together, balanced on a short platform that overlooked the garden. “Yeah, it is. There’s nothing really like this at home. This is … it must have been a grand building when it was used.”

“It was.” Lillah’s cold voice broke the illusion of an interlude Sophia could share with Dav. “But that’s not why you’re here. Be careful what you touch; there are cuttings all around here. If you only want one, you’ll want to lure it into a tunnel. Don’t go down the steps into the outer yard; there’s a cutting just below the stairs and I’m pretty sure you’d wake it up.”

Sophia looked ahead and to the left where a set of stone steps led down to a broken path inside the outer courtyard. There were plants near the steps, but Sophia definitely didn’t see any sign of a person hidden in the plants. She didn’t see anything with her ManaSight, either. She hadn’t really expected to, but it was worth a try. “How can you tell?”

Lillah shrugged. “They are plants. I know plants. Follow me. There are usually fewer cuttings this way.”

The Gardener turned and walked along the top of the platform to another set of steps that went the other direction. A slightly less overgrown stone path led around the corner from there; it seemed to lead to a different entrance to the inner courtyard without going through the outer yard.

Sophia stopped at the bottom of the stairs to grab Moti Quinn. “You said you would try to find a guide?”

Moti shook his head and whispered, far quieter than Sophia. “They’re mostly farther in, but I can get a feel for what’s here. There are a lot of ghosts in that building, but none of them are aware of when it is or what’s going on. They’re just echoes, scared of what was happening. This is a powerful place for us to fight their killers but I can’t see where they might be.”

Sophia nodded. She couldn’t be too surprised by that; she didn’t really know what the Quinns could and couldn’t do yet. She wasn’t sure they did, either. She wasn’t all that surprised, overall; the only problem was that it left them dependent on Amy’s senses and Lillah to know where things were.

Sophia wasn’t certain if Amy could scent the “cuttings” or not. It seemed likely, but at the same time it seemed unlikely Amy would be able to find the plants they came from. Most plants didn’t have that much of a scent unless they were specifically trying to attract a pollinator.

At least, Sophia didn’t think they did. She wasn’t a gardener and her senses weren’t above human-normal for anything but magic.

They weren’t going to find out for certain until they actually encountered a corpsevine. Sophia hoped they wouldn’t; a “cutting” that couldn’t infect anyone but that would serve as evidence would be perfect. She was going to have to ask Ann and the Quinns exactly what they needed to do with it once they had it; surely they didn’t need to drag the entire body back to the Registry? That would be possible but very awkward and annoying, since it wouldn’t fit in her backpack’s opening. She wouldn’t want to put a body in there anyway; it wasn’t like everything had its own space.

Sophia frowned to herself and realized that she’d fallen behind again. Dav was waiting for her but everyone else had moved ahead. They weren’t doing a very good job at keeping in anything resembling a formation, now that Lillah was leading. Sophia figured the only reason they’d done reasonably well before was that it wasn’t that far from the edge of the protected area to where they saw the ghost.

Sophia hurried to catch up when she saw everyone else stop ahead of her. There was an archway in the wall to the right; Lillah was just past it. The archway was covered in a vine that clung to the stone wall and archway. There was clearly a space after that where the ceiling was gone, then a far flatter opening that led into darkness. Small white flowers covered the vines over the inner opening. Sophia could only see vague shapes in the distance in the dark room. They didn’t look plantlike, but that was really all she could say.

“This is the best place I can think of for you to enter,” Lillah said once Sophia was back with the others. “This arch leads through the wall, then into a storeroom. It’s dark and dry, so nothing really grows there. Even the cuttings avoid it, normally, but it feels like there’s one in there. If it’s not there, it’s on the other side of the door at the other end of the storeroom. I’ll wait out here.”

Sophia glanced at the others, then made sure that the blade she wanted to animate was imbued along with her sword and Dav’s sword. They all were, so she pulled her magelight off her belt and lit it, then animated the blade. It wasn’t useful farther than she could see, but she did have enough mana available to have it already going when they walked into a fight. “Everyone ready?”

“Yes.” Dav had his sword out, but that was all. They weren’t close enough for him to summon a beacon, especially not if the “cutting” was on the other side of the door.

Rae Quinn nodded. Her eyes glowed slightly with mana. “I’ll lead,” she whispered. “I can see people who are hiding, maybe I can see cuttings too.”

Sophia handed her magelight to Rae with quiet instructions. “This will be lit for the next few minutes even without more mana. Try not to drop it; it’s sturdy, but it can break if you drop it on stone.”

A magelight was a standard piece of equipment for mage-type delvers back home, since a powerful magelight was cheaper than a really good flashlight as long as you could supply the mana. It seemed odd to her, but she hadn’t seen anything really equivalent in the cheap section of the general magical items store back at the Registry.

Not that there was much of a cheap section.

“I’m ready,” Moti whispered hoarsely, then coughed. He flushed slightly and tried to pretend that he hadn’t startled himself with the cough. His voice was a little louder with far less of the clearly artificial roughness when he continued. “There’s a very angry spirit nearby. I will try to get its help when we see something it can help with.”

Sophia hid her grin at Moti Quinn’s clear effort to try to seem older. She nodded seriously, then turned her attention to the person she was the most worried about: Amy Hunter. She knew Amy could fight, but she wasn’t sure if Amy wanted to shift or not.

The wolf-girl frowned and glared at her bow. Her expression didn’t relax when she returned Sophia’s gaze. “I’ll shoot a cutting. I think I’d better not bite anything that can infect people. I’ll stay in the back.”

Sophia waved Rae forward. Dav was next, then Sophia herself. Sophia knew the last two would be Moti and Amy, but she didn’t watch them come in. Instead, her attention was focused ahead on the area illuminated by the magelight. She was only a few steps in when Rae pointed the magelight all the way down the room at the far end, where the door was.

A woman stood in front of the door. She stared forward, directly into the light, and clearly couldn’t see them because of the sudden brightness. She had vines in her hair and around her shoulders, with what looked like a belt made of roots tied around her waist. It reminded Sophia of the ghost’s attempt to avoid the corpsevines by seeming to already be a “cutting”.

Well, there was one way to tell if she was hiding or not: could she talk? “Miss? Are you all right?”