eliminate a traditional scrying spell altogether. If we can do that, a witch would not be likely to take notice.”
“I reckon the less we do stuff they might know, the better off we are,” Cody observed. He rubbed his hands together to warm them; despite the stove, the room was cold and all of them were draped in blankets now.
Fox closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment; there was a fluttering of wings over their heads, and a handsome, glossy raven descended from the rafters and landed next to the mirror. He seemed entirely solid and real, as did the sylphs when they wanted to fully interact with objects like ribbons. He eyed Rosa and tilted his head to the side, then looked at Fox. Fox nodded. Rosa put one hand gently on his back, cupped the other over the mirror and muttered something under her breath. When she took her hands away, the raven shook himself and uttered a thoughtful-sounding quork.
Fox nodded again, and the raven flew up, and through the roof. Just as the sylphs sometimes did, although they preferred to come and go by the windows. After all, a spirit of the air was not exactly limited by things like walls and roofs.
“It’s working,” said Rosa with satisfaction, and Giselle looked back down at the mirror. She felt her eyes widen, as now the concave mirror reflected a literal bird’s-eye view of the snowscape below the tower, as brilliantly as if the mirror had been of the clearest, best glass, rather than obsidian. The amount of snow that had been dumped on the abbey last night was a little . . . frightening. Six feet at least, and in places it had drifted twelve feet high. She had never seen that much snow at once here, not in the worst of the storms that the abbey had weathered.
The raven circled the abbey, giving them all a good idea of how the snow lay about the building, then turned his attention out toward the edge of the meadow. She couldn’t see anything that far away, but evidently the raven did. He angled out to the east, wings beating strongly, heading for the forest.
That’s not where I would have gone, she thought, frowning a little. There’s nothing out that direction but thick woods. The raven evidently knew better, however, and he must have been able to see something that was not visible to their human eyes, even looking through his in the mirror.
“He is being cautious in his approach,” said Fox, calmly. “I have warned him to act like a real bird, and be very wary, as if he expected to be hunted and shot by man.”
It was fascinating, and more than a little dizzying, to watch the landscape go by from a bird’s point of view. He moved his head much more quickly than a human would, which was disorienting. “Fox? Can you just choose to see through his eyes?” she asked, never taking her own eyes off the mirror.
Fox looked up at her, and shook his head a little. “Not without his consent, which would be hard to gain. He is a being, just as your sylphs are, and does not care for the idea of someone else using his senses.” Fox replied. Now that he was no longer playing up his heritage, he had adopted some heavy canvas trousers with suspenders in place of his leather leggings, wore long flannel underwear as virtually every one of the cowboys did, and one of the common wool flannel shirts over that, with a shawl and a blanket draped over everything. Only his long braided hair, his headband, and his features showed he was an Indian. “He does this because this is a time of exceptional need, and because this is nothing more than a reflection of what he sees, rather than a medicine-worker making use of his eyes directly.”
“And I hope you let him know we are suitably grateful,” Rosa said gravely. “Wait . . . he’s going down into the forest.”
The raven was, indeed, flying down into the forest. In a moment he was among the branches, skillfully evading them, changing directions so quickly that Giselle clutched her hands together involuntarily. If watching him fly in the open sky had been disorienting, this was very close to being nauseating. According to Mother’s books an Air Master could choose to see through the eyes of any Air Elemental that would let her, but Giselle had never asked.