Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,87
and bright, and there were still lights on in the main building.
“Don’t you get it yet?” Muirin said, seeing her expression. “Nobody’s going to stop us. There are eight nights of the year that somebody on this campus is sure to make it easy for anyone who wants to go out of bounds. Why not? I bet an extra Tithe or two only makes things better for whoever’s doing this.”
Spirit swallowed hard. Muirin was right. She wondered where Claire Grissom was right now. Out there somewhere shivering with fear and cold and pain? Unconscious? She couldn’t be dead: If there was one thing that Spirit had picked up from all the lore about the Wild Hunt, it was that it ignored dead things.
They followed the brick walkways down to the little private train station, then walked along the tracks for about half a mile. This far away from everything, the wind cut like a knife, and even in her warm clothes, Spirit shivered constantly. She was surprised—and grateful—to find, when they finally had to abandon the tracks to head for the stand of pines, that the snow was only a few inches deep.
“The wind blows it and scours it off the open plain. It piles up around the buildings, because the buildings are the only things out here to stop it,” Burke said, when she exclaimed in surprise. “It shouldn’t be too deep out here for a few weeks yet.”
At least something’s going right tonight, Spirit thought. She did her best to smother the thought, hoping it wouldn’t jinx everything else that was going to happen.
Loch was waiting for them in the tiny pine forest. The moonlight was bright enough that even under the trees he was plainly visible. “Oh, good,” he said, taking the leaf blower from Spirit. “You brought it.”
“No,” Muirin said. “We thought we’d just leave it behind and ruin your plans.”
“Fun-nee,” Loch said, deadpan. He set the leaf blower carefully behind a tree. Spirit looked around, but she couldn’t see anything anywhere that looked like the drawing of the spell-trap she’d seen in Loch’s notes.
Loch looked at the others. “Okay. I guess we’re ready.”
“Except for . . . how do we make sure the Hunt comes after us—and not after somebody else?” Addie asked.
This is a fine time to wonder that! Spirit thought, even as she realized that hadn’t occurred to her, either. What if they just missed them?
“North,” Loch said with certainty, glancing toward the white pillar that marked the edge of the school bounds. “Just head north and keep heading north. The Hunt should show up pretty quick as soon as we’re off the school grounds—and outside the wards.”
Burke nodded, and pulled off his heavy gloves, exposing the thin glove liners underneath them. He stuffed a hand into his pocket and pulled out two shells, dropping them into the barrels of the shotgun he held. When he slammed it shut, the sound echoed through the trees with a terrible finality.
With Burke in the lead, they stepped from beneath the shadow of the trees and began walking north.
ELEVEN
Spirit knew it was probably her imagination that made the night suddenly seem colder the moment the five of them passed the boundary stone. The wards were impalpable, intangible spell barriers that only served to keep baneful creatures and uninvited guests outside them. Magicians would experience a ward as a barrier as real and solid as a stone wall. Normal non-magical people would simply choose not to go through a ward—and their minds would come up with a dozen different reasons why. They’d forget where they were going, or get lost, or think of something they suddenly needed to do somewhere else, or even get sick and need to leave.
All that aside, there was no way any Oakhurst student would actually be affected by them. The wards weren’t designed to keep anyone in, nor were they designed to keep the Oakhurst students out. No, thinking she could feel them was only nerves.
Their boots crunched over the frozen surface of the snow as they walked, and the night air was so utterly still that the sound of their footsteps was the loudest sound there was. The full moon was almost directly overhead, and the stars were brilliant in the clear night sky. They were so far from any city that the Milky Way was even visible.
When they’d gone about a hundred yards from the trees, Muirin stopped, reached into her pocket, and made a tossing motion.