Page 52 of The Magpie Lord
Stephen took a few more paces, and looked around. “What is it?”
“Stephen,” said Crane thickly.
Stephen was back at his side in two steps. “What?”
“I can’t move.”
Stephen’s chest contracted. “Can’t move at all? Try and take a step forward.”
“Ican’t.”
“Take a step back.”
Crane took a step back and inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. “Christ. God.”
“Did that hurt?”
“No. I just didn’t think I could. What the devil...” He took a step forward, stopped in his tracks again. “What is this? I can’t seem to move at all if I’m going this way.”
Stephen twitched and sketched at the meagre ether, letting his hands flitter round Crane’s body. What he found wasn’t right, and it definitely wasn’t good.
“This is a binding. Someone has bound you within the limits of an area. Trapped you within your grounds.”
“Well, can you deal with it please?” said Crane impatiently.
“I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I don’t have any idea how they did this.” Stephen slid his hands through the air around Crane’s shoulders. “I couldn’t do this. I can’t break it if I don’t know what it is or how it works.”
Crane’s voice was rigidly controlled. “Someone has poisoned my horsesandtrapped me in my own grounds?”
“Probably different people,” Stephen said. “Why bother with the horses if you could do a binding like this?”
“Why are they doing this at all?”
“I don’t know. I need to think.”
“You need to do something about this!”
“I’mtrying,” Stephen snapped. “I’m sorry if I led you to believe I’m omnipotent, but I’m really not.”
“That’s becoming bloody obvious!” Crane snarled back, and swung away. “Sorry,” he added, more calmly. “That wasn’t fair. I’m—unnerved.”
“I know. So am I.”
Crane took a step back from the invisible barrier. There was a flutter of black and white as magpies landed around his feet.
“Bloody things.” He made a cursory kicking movement to scare them off. They shuffled back a few inches, unafraid.
Stephen frowned. “They’re surprisingly bold.”
They really were. The trees were heavy with magpies, and a single bird was right in front of Crane on the path, glaring up at him with jet-bead eyes. He didn’t seem surprised. “The place is infested. If you stand still, they gather like flies.”
“They do, don’t they,” Stephen said slowly. “When you arrived. In the gallery. Have they always flocked to you like that? Even when you were a boy?”
“I don’t really remember the behaviour of birds twenty years ago. Can we talk about the current problem?”
