murmur called up the tiny sphere of flame. The spell stuttered and coughed before it coalesced, and even then the light was barely brighter than a candle.
“Harry?” Michael asked in that tone of voice people use when they talk to crazy people. “What are you doing?”
The drywall to one side of the door suddenly buckled as a hob’s claws began ripping through it. Michael bobbed to one side, temporarily leaving the door, held his thumb up to the wall, as if judging where the stud would be, and then ran Amoracchius at an angle through the drywall. The Sword came back hissing and spitting, while another hob howled with pain.
“Without the myrk, these things are in trouble,” I said. “Carol, be a dear and roll that chair over here.”
Carol, her eyes very wide, her face very pale, did so. She gave the chair a little push, so that it came the last six feet on its own.
Michael’s shoulder hit the door as another hob tried to push in. The creature wasn’t stupid. It didn’t keep trying to force the door when Amoracchius plunged through the wood as if it had been a rice-paper screen, and Michael’s Sword came back unstained. “Whatever you’re going to do, sooner would be better than later.”
“Two minutes,” I said. I rolled the chair to the right spot and stood up on it. I wobbled for a second, then stabilized myself and quickly unscrewed the sprinkler from its housing. Foul-smelling water rushed out in its wake, which I had expected and mostly avoided. Granted, I hadn’t expected it to smell quite so overwhelmingly stagnant, though I should have. Many sprinkler systems have closed holding tanks, and God only knew how many years that water had been in there, waiting to be used.
I hopped down out of the chair and moved out from under the falling water. I pulled one of the pieces of chalk out of my pocket, knelt, and began to draw a large circle all around me on the low-nap carpet. It didn’t have to be a perfect circle, as long as it was closed, but I’ve drawn a lot of them, and by now they’re usually pretty close.
“E-excuse me,” Carol said. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Our charming visitors are known as hobs,” I told her, drawing carefully, infusing the chalk with some of my will as I did so. “Light hurts them.”
A hob burst through the already broken drywall, this time getting its head and one shoulder through. It howled and raked at Michael, who was still leaning on the door. Michael’s hip got ripped by a claw, but then Amoracchius swept down and took the hob’s head from its shoulders in reply. Dark, blazing blood spattered the room, and some of it nearly hit my circle.
“Hey!” I complained. “I’m working here!”
“Sorry,” Michael said without a trace of sarcasm. A hob slammed into the door before he could return to it, and drove him several paces back. He recovered in time to duck under the swing of a heavy club, then swept Amoracchius across the creature’s belly and followed it up with a heavy, thrusting kick that shoved the wicked faerie out of the room and back into its fellows. Michael slammed the door shut again.
“B-but it’s dark,” Carol stammered, staring at Michael and me alternately.
“They’ve put something in the air called myrk. Think of it as a smoke screen. The myrk is keeping the lights from hurting the hobs,” I said. I finished the circle and felt it spring to life around me, an intangible curtain of power that walled away outside magic—including the myrk that had been caught inside the circle as it formed. It congealed into a thin coating of slimy ectoplasm over everything in the circle—which is to say, me. “Super,” I mumbled, and swiped it out of my eyes as best I could.
“S-so,” Carol said, “what are you doing, exactly?”
“I’m going to take their smoke screen away.” I held the sprinkler head in my right hand and closed my eyes, focusing on it, on its texture, its shape, its composition. I began pouring energy into the object, imagining it as a glowing aura of blue-white light with dozens of little tendrils sprouting from it. Once the energy was firmly wrapped around the sprinkler, I transferred it to my left hand and extended my right again.
“B-but we don’t have any lights.”
“Oh, we have lights,” I said. I held out my right hand and called forth my little ball of sunshine.