[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.But now, as adomana , she could see magic.The door swung open to reveal a room filled with theshimmer of power."Sweet gods," she breathed, earning a surprised look from Wojo and making thesekasha move closerto her.The magic flowed at a purple on the far end of the visible spectrum, lighting the floor to suchnear-invisible intensity that it brought tears to her eyes.The high ceiling absorbed most of that light, so itstayed cloaked in shifting shadows.Heat spilled out of the room, flushing her to fever hot, and secondslater, the sense of lightness seeped up her legs, slowly filling her until she felt like she would float away."What?" Wojo asked."It's a very strong ley line," Tinker said.Wojo made a slight surprised hrumpf to this.She considered what she was wearing.An active spell with this much force behind it, snarled byGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlsomething metal on her, could be deadly.She wasn't sure how dangerous this much latent magic mightpose."You might want to empty your pockets."She pulled off her boots, emptied her pockets into them, and took off her gun belt.Since thesekashacaste couldn't sense magic, she told Pony and Stormsong, "This ley seems almost as strong as the SpellStones.""The shrine indicates afiutana ," Pony explained."Like the one that the spell stones are built on.""What's that?" Tinker asked.Pony explained, "A single point where magic is much stronger than normal, welling up, like springwaters.""If you're coming in," she told the two warriors, "Strip off all metal.And I mean all."Thesekasha started paper, scissors, stone to see which was going in, and which would stay behind withthe weapons.There was a light switch by the door; Tinker cautiously flipped it on, but nothing happened."Light bulbs pop as soon as you carry them into the room," Wojo explained, "so we stopped installingthem.""We needed a light source shielded from magic." Tinker flipped the switch back to off."I don't thinkeven a plastic flashlight would work.""No, they pop too." Wojo took out two spell lights and held out one to her."These are safe, but you'llwant to watch  they're really bright."With this much magic around, that wasn't surprising.She wrapped her hand tight around the cool glass orb before activating it.Her fingers gleamed dull red,her bones lines of darkness inside her skin.Carefully, she uncovered a fraction of the orb, and lightshafted out a painfully brilliant white.Stormsong won paper, scissors, stone and opted for coming inside.She ghosted into the room ahead ofTinker, her shields outlining her in blue brilliance, her wooden sword ready.Tinker waiting for Stormsongto flash the 'all clear' signal before entering the warehouse.The cement floor was rough and warm under her stocking feet.She walked into the room, feeling likeshe should be wading.It lacked the resistance of water, but she could sense a current, a slow circularflow, and a depth.Wojo followed, oblivious to magic."This is the space.Is it big enough? If we can get the refrigerator unitto work?"Tinker considered the loading dock, the wide door and the large room.They would have to transfer thetree from the flatbed to something that wheeled, then shift both back onto the flatbed to get the tree up tothe loading dock height and still able to shift it back into the cooler.Given that they'd have to fit a forkliftin to help with the transfer, it would be a tight fit, but certainly doable.Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html"Yeah, this will do." Of course they would have to drain off the massive excess of magic.Strong magicand heavy machinery did not mix well."You had the cooling unit running for, what, ten years? I'msurprised you managed to keep it running that long.""More like fourteen." Wojo said."Your grandfather, actually, came over just after Startup and set us upso it worked fine for years.It didn't break down until after he died."The machine room was off the back of the refrigerated room, through a normal sized door in theinsulated wall.The compressor itself was normal.The cement around it, however, had been inscribedwith a spell.A section had overloaded, burning out a section of the spell.She'd never seen anything likeit."My grandfather did this?" Tinker asked."Yes." Wojo nodded."He heard about the trouble we were having and volunteered to fix it.We were alittle skeptical.Back then, no one knew anything about working magic.People are picking magic up, butstill, no one had a clue how to fix what he did when it broke."Tinker's family had the edge that they were descendent from an elf trapped on Earth.Her father,Leonardo Dufae, developed his hyperphase gate based off the quantum nature of magic after studying thefamily's codex.It was main reason Tinker had been able to build a gate when no one on Earth had yetfigured out how to copy her father's work."Define whacky." Tinker asked."What?" Wojo said."You said that it went whacky after the first startup.""Ah, well, the compressor seemed to work like a pump.The magic was so thick that you could see it.Itblew every lightbulb on the block.The forklifts kept burning out but then they'd skitter across the room,just inches off the floor.Loose paper would crawl up your leg like a kitten.It was just weird."Yes, that fell under whacky.She knew that the electric forklifts had engines that could short to form acrude anti-gravity spell  it was what gave her the idea for hoverbikes.The loose paper was new.Perhaps they had something printed on them that had animated them."We finally just shut it down and gave all the ice cream to the Queen's army." Wojo wave his hand toillustrate emptying out the vast storage area."Kind of an ice breaker  pardon the pun.A thousandgallons of the cookie batter, chocolate fudge, and peanut butter.Luckily, the Chinese paid for theinventory loss and it hooked the elves on our ice cream."Tinker sighed, combing her fingers back through her short hair."Well, no matter what, I'll have to drainoff the magic; basically set up a siphon that funnels magic to a storage unit.I have one set up for myelectromagnet since a ley line runs through my scrapyard." She used to think of it as a strong ley line, butit was just a meandering stream compared to this flood."But that won't handle a flood like you're talkingabout.""Whatever your grandfather did worked for years."Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlThe question was  what had her grandfather done? To start from scratch would take time she didn'thave, not with the black willow warming in the sun.Luckily, he kept meticulous records on anything heever worked on."I'll go through his things and see if I can find a copy of the spell [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]