//------------------------------//
// 7 - The Case of the Duplicate Duplicate, Part 1 
// Story: The Casebook of Currycombs 
// by AugieDog 
//------------------------------//

"Dr. Scalpel?" a voice asked quietly, and I bolted awake, my hooves clattering against a wooden floor rather than the carpets I'd spread around my bedroom. Once again, however, I had reason to thank the training I'd received during my decade in Her Majesty's cavalry: I could fall asleep nearly anywhere and be ready for duty the moment consciousness returned.

At this particular moment, I started upright to see the grey light of dawn filtering through the curtains of our front room. Young Anisette stood beside me, and she reached a steadying hoof to my shoulder. "Use caution, I beg you, doctor." She gestured with her snout toward the sofa, still pulled into the entryway and still containing the slumbering form of our mysterious visitor. "Ms. Starlight's sleep remains deep but fitful, and I'm expected in the bakery downstairs to perform my morning—"

Which was when the door burst open, and Currycombs spun into the room with the ferocity of a whirlwind. "We must be away at once!" she shouted.

Starlight leaped whinnying from the sofa, power bloating from her unfortunate horn and charging the air as if a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung up. "No!" she cried. "I won't let you take me!"

I flared my own horn, every tranquilizer spell I'd ever learned bursting to the forefront of my thoughts, but Anisette moved even more quickly, her wings carrying her at once to Starlight's side. "It's us, Ms. Starlight! Your friends! Ms. Currycombs and Dr. Silver Scalpel and Anisette! You have nothing to fear! Nothing!"

For a tick of the clock, I'll admit I feared we might all be reduced to ash by multiple lightning strikes, but Starlight somehow managed to hold all that energy in suspension once again, her rapid blinks aimed at Anisette. "Oh! I— I'm so sorry!" Every wisp of magical force vanished in complete contravention of all known thaumaturgical laws, and Starlight stepped forward to press her face gently against the side of Anisette's neck. "I thought I was back in the—"

"Yes, yes, yes," Currycombs snapped. "But we haven't the time!"

"Confound it, Currycombs!" I couldn't keep my voice down. "I'll not have you bullying my patient when she's in such a—!"

"Fine!" Wheeling toward Starlight, Currycombs sketched the most perfunctory bow I'd ever witnessed. "Forgive me, Starlight," she said through clenched teeth, "but if you and Scalpel aren't on the first train to San Pinto, we lose our best possibility of getting you back to your world and bringing both Violet Peony and Hope Springs to some semblance of justice."

The rest of us stared at Currycombs for yet another tick of the clock, then Starlight straightened, her jaw tightening with determination. "Just point me in the right direction," she said.

"Misdirection, actually," Currycombs said, and I could hear the flash of a smile in her voice as I whisked my magic out to gather the saddlebags I'd begun leaving packed and waiting just inside my bedroom door. "For you must get to San Pinto ahead of our quarries. In fact, if you can retrace the path you took through the desert when Hope Springs inadvertently led you into town however many weeks ago and find the canyon wherein the mirror lies hidden, that would be ideal."

Starlight's face fell. "I...I'll try...."

Slinging my traveling blanket over my withers, I looked up to see Currycombs nodding at me. "If not, Scalpel, find a spot where you can watch the railway station while keeping yourselves out of sight. I shall be following Ms. Peony and Mr. Springs in as ostentatious a fashion as I can manage to ensure that their gazes will always be focused on me behind them. The longer, therefore, that you can remain in front of them, the better chance we have of taking them unawares and gaining our ultimate goal."

I dropped my bags into place over my blanket. "If circumstances conspire to keep us in San Pinto till they arrive, should we attempt to make contact with you?"

"No." Currycombs seized her Mulester coat in her teeth and flung it about herself. "Under no circumstances should you concern yourself with my situation: this is of the utmost importance. If you have no other options, follow our quarries into the desert, but with the time constraints under which we're operating, we must of necessity construct our plans of string. Shift them however seems best to you in the moment, and remember that Springs's associate said that he would be gathering their fellow guardians at the mirror. But the two of you must—"

"The three of us," Starlight said, stepping sideways to press her flank to Anisette's.

That got Currycombs blinking, and I slipped into my best 'attending physician' tones. "Anisette has duties here," I began, but Starlight cut me off as she had Currycombs.

"Anisette has to come." A trace of the fanaticism she'd shown us briefly last night sparked in her eyes. "I don't know why, but—" She rubbed the base of her horn, the greyish-purple light of her magic flickering around it. "I can feel it. Without her, we won't succeed."

It took some effort to keep my mouth closed. Augury has ever been the most nebulous of the magical arts, and for all that Her Majesty employs unicorns specially trained in making such predictions, my experiences with them on the frontier had shown me that even the best were mistaken at least half the time. Moreover, the tightened muscles along Starlight's back and the desperation in her face convinced me that the matter had more of the psychological about it than the thaumaturgical. She'd been so very alone in a world not remotely her own that she now feared losing any of the small group that had come to be gathered about her.

Still, keeping Starlight calm seemed to me to be a very worthwhile goal, so I turned to Currycombs. "Do you think we could arrange with Mr. Trencher for Anisette to travel with us?"

"You cannot." Currycombs waved a hoof at the door. "For you must get to Puddington Station without delay." She leapt forward to stand before Starlight and Anisette. "Starlight, I know it's difficult, but I must ask you to trust me even further than you already have. I give you my word that Anisette will be at my side when next we meet, but you and Dr. Scalpel cannot wait. Everything depends upon you catching the early train."

Starlight wavered, her head dropping, but again, Anisette proved herself invaluable. "Please, Ms. Starlight!" The young pegasus very nearly fell to her knees, crouching before the taller unicorn so as to look her straight in the eye. "Know that I will never be induced to abandon you! But if Ms. Currycombs says that we must be parted for a time, than we must bravely face the prospect until we can be reunited."

For another fraction of a moment, I feared it wouldn't be enough. But Starlight drew in a shuddering breath before blowing it out and saying, "Yes, of course. I just—" She took another breath, and when she raised her head, she was once again the scared but resourceful young mare we'd gotten to know the evening before. "Shall we be on our way, then, doctor?"

And so we were. Leaving Currycombs and Anisette, I led us out into the early-morning bustle along Bakery Row, my glances alternating between finding a path through the crowd ahead and watching Starlight to make sure she didn't fall behind. She'd donned her full cloak and slouch-brimmed hat once more, but she kept her eyes up, the barest shiver of her chin hinting at whatever emotions might be swirling beneath her impassive surface.

The mile-and-a-half from our apartments to the station passed with silence between us, and Starlight stood just as silently at my side while I purchased tickets on the Great Western's 7:06 for Los Caballos, scheduled to stop in San Pinto approximately eight hours after departing Ehwazton. We reached the platform to the ringing cry of the conductor's last boarding call, and we settled onto adjacent couches in a coach near the front of the train mere moments before the engine blew its whistle and we rumbled forth on our journey.

I nodded to Starlight, swaddled in her cloak beside me. "Might I recommend you take this opportunity to get some more sleep? It's truly the best treatment for your current condition, and we'd best be prepared for whatever might await us once we disembark."

Her hat was already slumping forward onto her hooves. "A couple hours," I heard her murmur, "then I'll need some...brunch or something." Her breathing deepened, and I didn't need any sort of diagnostic magic to tell that she'd relaxed into slumber.

Fortunately, I'd procured for myself a notebook small enough to fit into my panniers but large enough for me to do more than take notes. So I spent the rest of the morning organizing my thoughts on how I would present this current adventure in the ongoing fictionalizations I'd been putting together based upon the cases Currycombs and I had pursued. Of course, we first had to survive the adventure, and with it having begun some weeks ago with a deadly crime the likes of which the realm hadn't seen in multiple generations...

However much I sought to keep my thoughts away from such contemplations, I simply couldn't avoid them. Mortality and I had a nodding acquaintance already, after all, due to my time in the cavalry and more specifically to my near-death experience at the claws of that foul griffin. Here, however, I found myself faced with the dilemma of explaining such violence to an audience unused to considering it. Even more daunting, this case revolved around equines committing the ultimate atrocity against another equine. Discussing magic mirrors that led to worlds of non-equine beings was all well and good, but how to discuss murder?

Seeking respite from this dilemma, I would occasionally rest my eyes upon the scenery racing by outside the window of our coach at speeds approaching 300 miles per hour. We'd left the more civilized portions of the realm behind some time ago, so I beheld nothing too terribly inspirational. Rows of cabbages or barley or corn or tomatoes gave way to dun-colored soil stretching off in all directions the farther we traveled. Patches of green here and there along the horizon signaled some farm or other, but this was the deep countryside, the heart of Hevosenvalta, a place I understood less than most equines understood the concept of taking another life.

The scars along my forelegs itched. I drew my blanket about them and wished I had something more cheerful to dwell upon. Turning away from the current case, then, I levitated my pen to sketch outlines for retellings of a few of our less-problematic cases.

Eventually, Starlight stirred beside me, and we took ourselves back to the dining car for some lunch. She seemed a good deal less flyaway than even this morning, and she set upon the sandwiches the stewards made available with an evident enthusiasm.

After her sixth, she slowed enough to say, "I had a dream about how different everything smells here, so maybe we can try that when we get to San Pinto. 'Cause there's only two things in this whole world that come from somewhere else: me and that mirror!" Her eyes and smile gleamed. "If we can manage to quantify some differences between you and me—not in actual smells, but in magical vibrations or life force emanations or whatever—maybe we can find similar differences in the desert around San Pinto, and that'll lead us in the right direction!"

I cleared my throat. "I'd call that a valid approach to the basic problem, but the differences we'd be looking for would be extremely subtle. When I examined you last night after you passed out, for instance, you presented nothing too terribly out of the ordinary compared to the hundreds of other equines I've looked at in my career."

Her smile faded.

Quickly, I set a hoof upon hers. "What we'll be needing to search for is something called 'affinity,' a rather nebulous quality I've read about in the work of spellcrafters much more advanced than I shall ever be. To use your scent analogy, we'll be trying to find a rose buried in a field of violets. It can be done, but even with the power you've already demonstrated, we'll need to practice a great deal of patience."

Her frown grew more thoughtful than distressed, and she nodded. "Then maybe we could just try to detect a large group of equines out there in the desert. All the mirror guardians are supposed to be gathered at the site waiting for Hope and Peony to arrive, so that should give off kind of a glow or something shouldn't it?"

That seemed a better idea to me, and I told her so. "Though again, it will be affinity we're looking for, similarities and differences and all." As a medical mare during my cavalry days, I'd often been the nearest thing to a thaumaturgical therapist available when in the field, so my mind now rifled through the techniques I'd employed to help injured unicorns regain their sensitivities. "Let's return to our seats, and I'll attempt to guide you through some exercises that might give you an idea of how to approach the problem."

The next several hours flew by, and I found Starlight to be a most attentive student, her mind quick to make connections when I'd only begun pointing her toward them. "Magic is like a science, isn't it?" she asked as we neared San Pinto. "I mean, in a place like this where it actually works. It's got rules and principles and an underlying logic and...and everything."

"It's a way of interacting with the world." I sent a silver curl out from my horn to lift the last remaining apple from the snacks we'd purchased. "We're surrounded by innumerable magical triggers, some more complicated to access than others, but by learning about the world, by cooperating with it, or in some cases cajoling it, we can create effects and affect outcomes in ways that contravene other natural laws."

Starlight nodded, her brow furrowing. Her lavender hornglow reached out slowly and gently to stroke against mine, and when I withdrew my magic, she caught the apple as neatly as if she'd been using magic her entire life. "Wow," she whispered. "If Grandma could see me now..." Her mouth went sideways. "She would have the biggest, smuggest smirk on her face." Her magic flipped the apple upward, caught it again, and set it onto the table between our seats.

Then the speaker at the front of the coach chimed, the conductor announced our imminent arrival in San Pinto, and we disembarked once the train had pulled up to the station.

For all that I'd spent most of my ten years in harness traipsing through outposts and border towns, I'd never expected to find such a rustic spot here within Hevosenvalta herself. Indeed, 'rustic' struck me as too polite a word. A 'tank town' I would rather have termed San Pinto, a community that only existed because the railroad, striking a straight course across the plains, needed a spot to empty and refill certain of its tanks. A river flowed past the town therefore, though again, 'flow' seemed the wrong word for the lethargic curl of water oozing along at the bottom of the channel the train passed over before sliding into the station.

Suffice it to say that the place did not esteem itself to me at first sight.

Starlight likewise disembarked from the railroad carriage with her ears folded, more than a little white around her darting eyes. Few equines inhabited the station lobby, visible through the dusty windows that ran along this entire side of the station, and nearly all of them whom I could see wore a hat or a scarf that identified them as an employee of the railroad.

I nudged her shoulder. "Any familiar faces?" I asked.

She shook her head convulsively, and I nudged her a bit harder toward the exit gate. "Then let's absent ourselves from the platform and decide upon our next move."

Her nod came just as roughly, but she did move her hooves, her steps not as steady as I would've liked. "I don't know what—" she began, but she took in and blew out a shaky breath before she continued. "Something here isn't right, Dr. Scalpel. I feel like...like—" Another breath flexed her nostrils. "Like there's pins and needles in the air."

My own breath slid through me as easily as ever, but that only meant it wasn't a physical hazard. "An abrogation spell, I would guess," I muttered. "One the mirror guardians cast against you specifically to keep you from approaching the site."

"Huh." Narrowing her eyes, she began swinging her head back and forth, but she said nothing more until we reached the gate. Then, "Yes," she said, the dissolving into a hiss. We crossed the threshold and came out from under the rusting, corrugated roof into the watery afternoon sunlight. "That'll make things easy."

"I beg your pardon?"

She was still swinging her head, her eyes wide when she was facing toward the river canyon and away from town but her entire body tensing when she looked past the station and toward the desert. "It's directional." Her forehoof came up, and she waved it through the air in front of her. "It feels like an ice storm blowing straight at me." Her hoof came to a stop pointing roughly northwest. "And it's coming from right there."

"Of course!" The pieces fell into place. "Blanket abrogations are deucedly difficult to maintain! They must have the spell radiating outward from their headquarters so it won't prove too taxing for whoever's casting it!"

"Well, then." Gritting her teeth, she started up the street than ran north from the station. "Let's just follow it right back to 'em, shall we?"

"Starlight!" I kept my voice low and hurried to catch up with her. "The spell will only get stronger the closer we get!" My mind raced. "Perhaps we could formulate a general anti-magic spell to cast upon your hat and cloak the way you cast that invisibility spell when you were—"

"It's fine." And in fact, each step she took now seemed firmer than the last. "I'm spinning a sort of windbreak in the air ahead of me. It seems to be working." She smiled for the first time since we'd gotten off the train, and while it was slightly strained, that she could manage it at all under the circumstances made me once again realize how formidable a young lady she was.

Still, as much as I admired her bravado, I wasn't willing to abandon practicality entirely. "You said it took you most of the night to traverse the desert when you followed Hope Springs into town. I'll suggest, therefore, that we procure some basic provisions before setting forth. You're likely to be spinning this counterspell during our entire trek, after all, and that will prove a great deal more wearying than the journey alone."

She nodded without speaking, and we wended our way along the hard-packed dirt road, ramshackle buildings of uncertain utility lining the way. At the second intersection, a scent of sour melons invaded my nose, and I turned in its direction with a sort of dread-filled fascination.

It was indeed a general store I'd smelled, but the less said about its unfortunate selection of produce, the better. The trail mix gave a better impression as did their canteens of water, so I stocked my saddlebags with some of the former and more of the latter while Starlight remained near the door with her hat pulled down and her cloak bunched up to cover her rather distinctive two-tone mane.

The shopkeeper gave no sign of recognizing her, but he did ask what we were doing in "these parts," as he termed it. I spun some fabrication about the two of us representing an Ehwazton mining consortium investigating the buttes to the north as a possible site to dig for tellurium, but I diverted his attention away from that subject by asking his opinion on which of the wide-brimmed hats he had for sale he might recommend I purchase.

A bit more comfortably laden, then, and with me sporting my new haberdashery, we set out for the northern edge of town, Starlight keeping her cloak partially draped over her face. "Enchanting the cloth was a good idea," she said, a certain relaxation evident in her tone. "Like a coat against the cold."

I cast a sidelong glance at the sun, still perhaps three hours from setting. "As long as we moderate our pace and remain hydrated, we should be able to maintain the two hour advantage we have on our quarry." It took some effort, but I managed not to look eastward toward the spot where the railroad tracks disappeared.

Starlight, however, did look, a bit of her namesake glimmer shining from her shadowed eyes. "I hope Ms. Currycombs can convince Anisette's boss to let her come along."

"Fear not." I couldn't stop a smile. "Currycombs can be quite convincing."

At about that moment, we reached the edge of town, two final clapboard shacks on either side of the road, then nothing but dirt and sand and stunted, spiky shrubbery. Mesas of weathered stone stood at the horizon in several directions, but Starlight didn't hesitate at all. She shifted course slightly to our right and continued onward.

The hours till sundown passed steadily. We chatted about our respective worlds, and between the two of us, I couldn't say who expressed their astonishment more often. We stopped for regular breaks during which I monitored her horn for signs of stress, and while they were indeed present, they weren't as alarming as they'd been the night before.

With darkness, the air became noticeably colder, but I allowed us neither fire nor light. "In fact," I told Starlight, an idea occurring to me, "can you see what I'm doing with this?" And I cast some basic dappling and muting magic over myself, a spell I'd learned in the cavalry to muddle the senses of any griffin who might be patrolling above.

She blinked, cocked her head, and her form became a good deal less distinct in the night deepening around us. I dropped my magic, asked her to drop hers, then I cast the spell again over the both of us. "We're deep within enemy territory," I said as we once more began our trek, "and the abrogation spell shows that our foes have made preparations for your return. We cannot afford to be anything but vigilant in case they have pegasi aloft watching for you as well."

My speech, I fear, rather dampened the mood, and we walked on another hour or so in near silence before, at what I estimated to be just past the halfway point of our journey, an all-too-familiar rumbling pricked my ears: hooves, perhaps a dozen sets of them, charging toward us from the north-west.

My training took over, and I skimmed my gaze over our immediate surroundings. The rocks and sand in the area fortunately combined to create a patchwork of low dunes, and I nudged Starlight toward the one that was both closest and largest. "Behind that hillock as quickly as you can. I shall be pressing close upon your tail."

Starlight moved without hesitation—I suppose having spent the better part of the last month in a survivalist frame of mind had attuned her senses to danger. I followed while conjuring up my breeze spells to blur our tracks for as many yards behind us as I could manage. Crouching beside her, I dug more deeply into my arsenal of camouflage magic and did my best not to dwell upon how it was the failure of this very spell that had exposed me to the griffin whose attack had ended my military career and very nearly cost me my life.

"One with the earth," I muttered, my chest tightening, my eyes clenched, and my ears folding at the hoof beats getting louder by the second. My horn felt as if it were sputtering and spurting, but huddling closer to Starlight, I forced myself to relax—an oxymoron, yes, but one of the many at the heart of the sorcerous arts—and pictured a blanket drawing over us, a blanket of darkness and silence and sand, a blanket of warmth and protection, a blanket as passive and natural as the rocks and cacti around us.

The hoof beats thundered closer and closer, then they were passing us by, not a one breaking stride. I kept my face pressed to the side of the hillock and discerned what I took to be the sounds of fourteen individual equines, a mix of stallions and mares with perhaps a few donkeys or mules, none of them showing any sign that the darkness or the uncertain terrain bothered them in the slightest. I was largely concerned with being sand and wind, however, so it wasn't until Starlight touched her snout to my ears and whispered, "I think that's all of them," that I took my first breath in what felt like hours and dared to raise my head.

I could still smell the sour saltiness of equine sweat, but whether it was mine or belonged to those who'd charged past us, I was unprepared to say. That they had indeed charged past us, however, I didn't allow myself to believe until I'd stretched my ears into the night and heard silence ahead and retreating hooves behind.

Swallowing, I stood. "Do you still detect the abrogation magic as strongly as before?"

Beside me, Starlight also stood and glanced to the northwest. "Yes, though—" She swung her head back and forth. "It's not as strong as it was!" When she faced me, her eyes nearly glowed. "Like you said, it's been getting more and more annoying the closer we got, but now its...it's maybe only as stabby as it was back in San Pinto!"

Full realization struck me then, and to keep myself from gasping, I focused on shaking off as much of the sand clinging to my chest and stomach as I could. "Then let's pick up our pace a bit, shall we?" And I started in the direction the mob had come from.

"But—" Starlight moved quickly to my side. "If they're looking for us, why are they all in a group like that? It's a good thing you were using that shadow magic against any pegasi, but, I mean, shouldn't the ones on the ground be spread out and, I don't know, being quieter?"

"They're not looking for us." It took some effort to keep my voice calm, but I couldn't keep her in the dark as to the danger that I believed the current situation entailed. "You recall the word Currycombs used this morning? 'Misdirection.'" I jerked my head over my shoulder. "When the train carrying Hope Springs, Violet Peony, Currycombs and Anisette pulled into San Pinto two hours ago, Springs must've been able to send word to the other mirror guardians. Those who just passed us would've set out from their base of operations at that point and are no doubt intent on meeting Springs and Peony in order to—"

"No!" Her horn flaring, Starlight spun. "We can't let them capture Currycombs and Anisette! We've got to—!"

"Starlight!" Wheeling myself, I caught her neck between my forelegs, crooked my hooves over her withers, and touched my horn to hers; hopefully, the unaccustomed and slightly intimate physical contact would be enough to shock her into listening. "This has evidently been Currycombs's plan from the very beginning! She must've surmised that Springs would call in reinforcements and that this would leave a bare minimum of guardians behind at the mirror! We have therefore been placed in the perfect position to enter their stronghold with less opposition!"

Eyes wide and jaw trembling, Starlight didn't pull away, didn't push me from her, didn't seem really to be breathing. So I continued in a lower voice. "We must continue on, and we must further trust Currycombs to do what she does best: outwit her foes." It took a further effort on my part not to blurt out that these particular foes had already committed the unthinkable act of murder, but I did manage to keep the thought firmly under wraps. "She's counting on us to play our parts, and we cannot disappoint her."

Another trembling moment went by, then Starlight whispered, "And I made her promise to bring Anisette..."

"No recriminations." I stepped away and lowered myself back onto all fours. "If Currycombs did indeed bring her, then she did so for her usual well-thought-out reasons." I nodded to the tracks of those who'd passed us by, the stars providing just enough light to find the trail. "Shall we?"

"We must," she muttered. Hunching her shoulders under her cloak, she started forward at more a canter than a trot.

I matched her and began speaking aloud certain thoughts I'd had as to how we could approach our upcoming infiltration. My purpose was merely to distract her from brooding upon what might be happening behind us, but her agile mind took to the process quite readily. And so it was that, as the last few hours passed and we continued drawing ever nearer our goal, the two of us came up with a loose framework—she quoted Currycombs' admonition about making our plans of string almost constantly—that we thought would suit us well.

Blocks of a darkness even deeper than the night above had begun appearing close to the horizon during our last hour of travel, and Starlight steered us toward the third one on the left. This butte seemed to be the largest of the whole group, and I could only imagine that it would appear fairly impressive in the light of day. I estimated as we approached that it would rise perhaps a quarter of a mile above the desert's surface, but how much acreage it might cover, I couldn't begin to guess.

Somewhere within its crevices and hollows, however, stood a gateway to another world...

Among some low dunes a good half mile from the wall of stone, Starlight and I stopped as we'd agreed we would, and I whispered, "Is the abrogation spell still tolerable?"

She nodded, but when she said, "I think we'd better go with Plan B," I could hear that her teeth were clenched.

"You're certain?" And even though I didn't believe it, I said, "Plan C is a perfectly viable option."

That got a low chuckle from her. "It's nice of you, doctor, but I'm not so completely out of it that I'd let you do this by yourself." She ducked her head so that both myself and the dunes stood between her and any watchers who might still be stationed ahead of us and set her horn to glowing. Her magic wavered a bit around the edges as a consequence of the repellent force pouring over her from whatever unicorn still remained hidden within the butte, but I could only nod as she cast one of the spells we'd been discussing. The already dark purple of her aura scattered quickly to her fetlocks, and with a nod of her own, she stepped upward, her hooves finding purchase in the dark, empty air.

It was the same air-walking magic that she'd utilized when making her escape from confinement in the mirror guardians' lair, but this time, she employed it to mount into the sky, her form quickly disappearing from my sight. Plan A had in fact called for us each to cast the spell so that we might simply stroll over the butte and descend into the interior without alerting our foes as to our approach. Unfortunately, however, her lack of formal training precluded her from explaining the spell's methodology in a way that I could understand, and with the abrogation magic performing exactly as it should, Starlight didn't trust her concentration enough to cast the spell safely upon us both.

Plan C had been our contingency should the abrogation magic prove too unpleasant at these close quarters for her to expend any magic whatsoever, but that was evidently not the case. Which left us with Plan B.

I took a breath and started my trek toward the base of the butte. We'd gone back and forth, exchanging thoughts on how I might find the passage into the hidden center without her at my side, but none of our ideas seemed feasible. But as we'd trekked along in silence both thoughtful and fretful, my gaze had found itself drawn to the dozen or so sets the hoof prints marking in the sand ahead of us.

We'd felt slightly stupid for having spent so much time worrying over the point when we'd been quite literally staring at the solution for several hours, and we'd sworn a solemn vow that, when we detailed our adventures to Currycombs, we would state unequivocally that the idea of backtracking our enemies to the mouth of the correct crevice had occurred to us at once.

Moving carefully, I kept my ears perked and my eyes focused for any rustle or spark that would signify a sentry on duty. That one such guardian might remain behind when most of the others had set out seemed plausible to me, but I had no way of knowing whether their confidence in their own ability to protect the place outweighed their fear of whatever they believed Starlight to be. They already had a magical barrier set against her, after all, so the question became whether they felt the need for any additional—

A sound ahead of me like a sudden, partially muffled sneeze was followed immediately by the unmistakable thud of a body crumpling to the ground. Arresting my forward motion, I caught my breath, and a glowing purple bubble began inflating several yards away. The color of the magic smoothed my ruffled mane at once, and I could now make out Starlight standing above the slumped form of a young aardhorse stallion.

I hurried to her side, but her gaze remained fixed upon the stallion. "I saw movement as I passed over," she whispered, her face even paler in the glow of her horn than the lavender light should've made it. "I don't think he saw you or gave a signal or anything, but I...I just...I wasn't sure what I could do other than..." She finally looked at me. "I imagined a padded club and smacked him over the head with it."

My cursory examination showed he was still breathing, but trauma inflicted by a magical cudgel can be every bit as serious as that caused by a material one. Still, we hadn't time to dwell on it now. Lifting him in my hornglow, I draped him across my back, thankful that he wasn't much more than a colt, and began a standard course of spells for tranquilization and the treatment of shock. "He'll be fine," I told Starlight as I straightened my legs and shifted my shoulders to accommodate my new burden. "You continue on from above and find the path through this maze; I can't imagine we'll meet anyone else till we arrive at the center."

"Okay." Her voice seemed uncertain, however, her magic sparking fitfully. "I'll come down at each intersection and wait for you to catch up, I guess. Or—" She touched a hoof to her chin. "How 'bout I leave a little mark?" Reaching out with the same hoof, she pressed it to the sandstone wall of the crevice where the colt had been lurking, and when she pulled the hoof away, an impression of it glowed in dim purple light. "You poke it when you go past, and that'll send a signal back to me so I can track your progress."

I couldn't help but smile. "We'll make a proper sorceress of you yet."

"I—" She swallowed, blushed, and dimmed her horn. "It just...made...sense..." Shaking her head, she began climbing the darkened air once more.

The next three-quarters of an hour were for me the most unpleasant of our entire journey: dusty, dim, and claustrophobic. I kept the light of my own horn to a minimum to reduce the possibility of discovery by either sight or magical sensors, and with the colt sprawled across my back, I had to tread even more carefully lest what appeared to be a shadow along our route might turn out to be a spur of rock or something equally solid and injurious. True to Starlight's word, however, purple hoofmarks, guttering like the charcoal remains of a bonfire, appeared every now and again on the close-pressing walls, leading me to alter course after a tap had extinguished them.

The twists and turns muddled my sense of direction quite thoroughly, but I kept thinking the passage couldn't possibly continue, that we must be on the very verge of the center. And yet, another marked branch would reach my eyes ahead, and I would squeeze myself into it and keep trudging forward, mindful all the while of my patient.

At the seventh or eighth intersection after I'd begun, I turned with a sigh and sucked the breath back in to see an equine figure settled there. The cloak and hat told me immediately that it was Starlight, and fear for my own safety shifted to concern for hers. Had the abrogation spell finally grown too strong for her to resist? Had her magic faltered and sent her crashing to the ground?

The colt I was already bearing foiled my attempt to leap to her side, but her head came up, her eyes fluttering as if I'd startled her awake. She raised a quick hoof, touched it to her horn, then puffed up her cheeks and blew a breath at me.

I blinked before her meaning dawned upon me, and I doused even the scant light I'd been generating. She meanwhile had climbed to her hooves, and the last image I registered before utter darkness closed in around us was the pained expression drawn tight across her face. "We're here," she whispered. "The next right turn leads to a fairly straight section, and that then opens out into the central canyon."

Beginning to nod, I checked myself and whispered back, "Very well." Her obvious discomfort made me grind my teeth, but a sudden thought stopped me. "Do you think you could design something similar to the abrogation magic they're aiming at you? Something to shake the concentration of whoever they've left behind to cast the spell and perhaps give you some relief?"

"I'd like that," she answered. "But not from here. If I remember right, this is the only way into and out of the canyon other than, y'know, flying, so if we do something, let's not be between them and the door." My eyes had adjusted sufficiently to the night that I could just discern her moving away from me, and I followed, my unconscious passenger seeming to gain weight with each step I took.

Fortunately, as Starlight had said, turning the next corner brought us within sight of our destination. And I mean "sight" quite literally: the barest flicker of light touched the walls ahead and revealing a tall, narrow crack of an opening at the end. Starlight continued plodding forward, and we quickly emerged from the confines of the maze into a space the size of which still surprised me for all that I'd been expecting it.

Only the high rocky walls told me we still remained within the mesa. Light flickered red over these walls from one of the five or six cabins clustered before a larger building, train tracks running between them and back into the darkness at the far end of the canyon just as Starlight had described it during her recitation— Had it really been just last night?

I shook my head and kept close to Starlight. She somehow managed to huddle even deeper into her cloak as she walked, and I found myself again concerned for her welfare a mere hundred paces away from the source of a spell designed specifically to keep her away.

The need to tend my patient struck another idea in me, and I sidled up to Starlight. "Your invisibility spell," I whispered. "Would you be able to throw it into place the moment this abrogation magic ceased?"

She nodded without answering, her teeth clenched.

Gesturing my snout toward the cabin with the lantern light showing at its windows, I started toward its door. "Stand by, then."

After the briefest of pauses, I heard the chuf-chuf-chuf of her hooves in the sand that covered the floor of the place. Whoever was inside, I hoped, would be too absorbed in their own magicworking to likewise hear the sounds of our approach, though I was fairly certain they'd notice it when I stepped up to the door and slid the colt off my back so that his forehooves crashed loudly against it.

Two gasps rang out at largely the same time: one from inside the cabin and the other from Starlight. The light purple waver of her hornglow sprang up in my peripheral vision, and I slid over to press my flank to the folds of her cloak just as the door flew open. An elderly unicorn stallion, a scar running jaggedly along the length of his snout, glared out with eyes that seemed both angry and frightened until his gaze reached the colt crumpled in the sand.

"Pensive!" the older stallion cried, and I reached out with my emergency anesthesia spell, a bit of magic not quite as unsubtle as a club to the head but very nearly.

The stallion's gasp this time seemed to deflate him, slumping forward onto the form of his young colleague. Moving quickly, I scanned their vital signs and found them to be within acceptable parameters. "Let's get them inside," I said, turning back to Starlight.

The grey of her hide was already regaining its lavender hue, and she smiled, lifted both the unconscious equines in her magic, and levitated them through the doorway.

The cabin's interior was rusticity incarnate: a single large room with a fireplace along the far wall and cots pushed up against the other three.  The cot to the left of the doorway showed signs of recent occupation—a pillow propped against the wall, a worn paperback book splayed open upon the canvas to one side—and Starlight deposited the unicorn there. The aardhorse whom I'd carried through the mesa's labyrinth she set onto the next nearest cot, and then she turned to me. "Okay. What do we do now?"