The island hill was heavily wooded at that point, though it appeared more sparse elsewhere, and Marla stayed close to Finch as he went into the trees. They trudged up the steep slope for what seemed to Marla a very long time, especially since it was such a small island. “Are you screwing around with Euclidean norms?” she asked, kicking a low branch out of her way, making it snap under her boot.
“There’s a certain amount of topological crumpling going on, yes,” Finch said. “We don’t want people tripping over the Cornerstone by accident, so the hill is folded in on itself a bit, with the stone tucked away within.”
“This is too much like really being in the woods,” Marla said, gritting her teeth. Every brush of a leaf against the skin of her forearms felt like the skittering of insects, and didn’t they have poison oak out here? She was an urban creature, and her years as chief sorcerer of Felport had intensified that intrinsic sympathy—in a way, she was her city, and she did not feel at home in even so circumscribed a piece of wilderness as this. She glanced behind her, where Rondeau was walking placidly along, hands in his pockets, knees going steadily up and down like he was on a StairMaster or something. Looking past him, Marla saw nothing but blue sky, no skyscrapers. The folded space had obscured any view of buildings. Marla clamped down on her rising panic, annoyed at her own reactions. She hadn’t been in among the trees like this since she was a kid in Indiana, and she was distressed to find herself so discomforted by the experience—it seemed like a dangerous chink in her armor.
“The clearing is just up ahead,” Finch said, puffing a little, and Marla felt a little glee over that, at least—she was in better shape than he was. She walked in her city every day, but she suspected that Finch did most of his business in the same aerie where he fucked the ghosts of his enemies.
Marla hurried forward, walking beside Finch, and they passed from the trees into the clearing together.
“What the living fuck,” Finch said, and Marla stood speechless, taking in the scene before her with her typical threat-assessment glance, but unsure of what she was seeing, exactly, and certainly unsure of how to proceed.
First she saw the man, because men and monsters were usually the most dangerous things in any given situation. He was dark-skinned and bare-chested, so thin that his ribs protruded, and he wore brief shorts that appeared to be made of green-and-red snakeskin. Heavy gold bracelets adorned his wrists, and his short cape, tied around his neck and hanging to just above the back of his knees, shimmered, strangely iridescent, like imperfect jewels transformed into cloth; prismatic, organic, and oddly disgusting. He held a large, round wicker basket tucked awkwardly under one arm. Marla sensed a strange power in him—spiritual gravity, heavy madness, something that tickled her well-tuned senses but did not fully reveal itself. Something new in her experience. He did not attack them—did not even look at them. He was looking at the other thing in the clearing. The far more improbable thing.
Marla recognized the Cornerstone instantly, a large chunk of blue-gray rock, easily two feet to a side, cut into a weathered cube, with a magical density so great that it actually warped the light within an inch of its surface, making its smooth faces seem slightly convex. The stone had been ripped from the earth at the center of the clearing, leaving a raw hole of black dirt behind, and soil still clung to the lower two-thirds of the stone.
The Cornerstone hung in the air a few feet above the ground, supported by a profusion of thin silver chains. The upper ends of the chains were attached to hundreds—perhaps thousands—of hummingbirds, individually tiny, but so massed that they formed a shimmering ruby-colored cloud.
“Hummingbirds again,” Rondeau said, and Marla nodded, thinking of the same thing he probably was—the birds that Rondeau had Cursed in the elevator. Cursing was too dangerous here—too many living things, too many trees, too many ways for a sudden, nasty shift in the fabric of creation to backfire and hurt something or someone valuable. They’d found their bird-wizard, though—Mutex, the freak in the shimmering cape, who apparently had designs on the Cornerstone, and was making off with it. Well, fuck that. Marla hadn’t come this far to let some bird-watcher steal her artifact out from under her.
Before she could make a move, however, Finch was roaring. “Mutex!”
The caped man bowed, slightly. “I did not think you would remember my name, sir,” he said. He didn’t sound particularly crazy. “Not when you treated me so badly before. I did not expect to see you today. I had hoped to see you later, when I would have a better use for your blood. I am saddened that your teyolia will be wasted on this hidden ground.”