Counter Magic 5

"It might be possible to simply break through," Jace said. "But given the things we've seen in this desert, I suspect that barrier is very strong. Assuming it's meant to keep sandwurms out and not to keep people in."

"Do you think you can find a way to bypass the magic?" Gideon asked.

"Of course I can. But I'll know more when I actually have a chance to examine it." Jace looked over his shoulder at Nissa, then his eyes glimmered with blue light, suggesting he had just begun a telepathic conversation with Nissa that Gideon was not privy to.

***

His greeting was answered, not by one of the people nearby, but with a flap of wings in the air above him. Looking up, he saw a winged man, with a crane-like head atop an otherwise human body—an aven, he supposed, though without the hawk- or owl-like features of the ones he'd known on Bant so many years ago. Rather than alight and address him, though, the aven flew past him to the iridescent wall they'd passed through.

Jace was still holding the passage open for Nissa, and Liliana's attention was still focused on keeping the desert zombies from following them into the city. All three of them started in surprise when the aven squawked at them, "What are you doing?" He landed right beside Jace and nudged him with the butt of his staff—a staff topped with a pair of horns much like the ones still visible on the horizon, by the second sun. "Get out of the way so I can repair—"

Before he could finish his sentence, Jace let his hands fall to his sides, and the hole he had opened in the magical wall sealed itself back up.

"—the Hekma," the aven finished. He looked at Jace, blinked slowly, then let his long beak bob down and back up again as he took the stranger all in, from his pale skin and strange blue tattoos to his equally strange, equally blue boots.

TRUST