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Book 2 Chapter 34

MARBLE 6.9: MY FRIEND

“There is a fundamental schism in the practice of reverence. On the one hand you have the dilettantes and dabblers, to whom all acts of reverence are celebrations of the various forms of being. There is nothing more worthy of celebration than the silver stream’s song, the cool wind on the hilltop, the quiet gnawing of worms beneath the roots! Even the sighs of the dying, the shrieks of the tortured – yes, even these may be celebrated by terrible entities for the forms inhabited. Yet on the other hand you have the devotee, to whom all acts of reverence constitute worship of a singular being. All becomes filtered through a single lens. There is only one school of doctrine to which all other doctrines must bend, and about which they must be recalibrated or, even, reconstructed in the mind. How will the son of Kaile perceive our Queen of Darkness? Not as she would have him perceive her!”

– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 5:166-175

He tried to fly, spreading himself into a vast raven and leaping for the sky, but I ignored the others and I had the edge on him in speed; before he’d gone fifty feet I managed to bring myself swerving in front of him –

“You were the first champion I ever met, and now –“

The moment he saw I’d caught up, he dropped out of the air. The diamond I’d placed about him did precisely nothing to stop him.

Then he tried to go under the ground, shaped like a tremendous mole. With my wraith exuding maximum levels of insubstantiality into my flesh, I was able to give chase. My wings and wizard-spell didn’t work down here, but the wraith-form let me float right through the soil in whatever direction I fancied – it was slow, but he wasn’t exactly going quickly either. I just had to make sure I had my head in the tunnel he was making when I needed to breathe.

“You don’t have to run from me! Nighteye! Please.”

He didn’t stop, feverishly ploughing through a hundred yards of earth in haphazard directions. If I hadn’t just watched him shapeshift, I’d have thought these the believable actions of a magic-addled giant mole, rather than a human in animal shape. Who was he trying to fool exactly?

I could hear Em calling out for me over the link, but I ignored her voice.

“Nighteye!” I yelled to him again along the hole, drifting down it just twenty-ish feet behind him – he was digging horizontally at the moment. “Nighteye, look! If you want to run from me, you can just make yourself one of the worms – there’s got to be hundreds round here, right? I can’t stop you. I can’t track you.”

He stopped suddenly, and while the wraithiness helped me out in the darkness, I was already missing Zel… whoever she was. I used a touch of Zab’s power to illuminate my surroundings in a pale green radiance.

The mole changed, slowly this time, blending into the hooded heretic once more. He was standing up to his knees in the dirt of the passageway he’d made.

“I’m s-sorry F-Feychilde,” he stammered. “I, hm, I have somewhere to be –“

“It’s okay, we can do it here.” The voice came from behind me, a confident purr. “And I’m certain I told you you’d never have to say sorry again, Theor.”

I tried to whirl when she started speaking, but time seemed to slip away from me, and she’d finished her comment before I could spin to face her.

Everseer, her plain-featured face and deep-set eyes gleaming in the green light, sitting cross-legged in the tunnel.

Empty-handed – no visible weapons.

No visible weapons.

“I have a shield up,” I warned her in a low voice.

“I’m aware.”

“They’re going to miss me up there if –“

“No they’re not. We have time. Plenty, now. You’re under my spell, boy. It’s not something you can protect against.”

I gritted my teeth, tilted my head slightly. “Nighteye, you can’t trust h-”

“I didn’t include him. It’s you I want. Certain moves open up to us, now the dragon’s gone. It’s your turn, Kas.”

Is this how it ends? I die, already buried, and she covers it up just by being hereno one even knows, no one can find out – I go missing, just like Nighteye went missing – and the twins, the twins never know what happened to me…

I laughed aloud.

No chance.

“You think you’ve got me?” I squared my shoulders. “You’re fast, sure, but you’re stuck in a tunnel down here with as many bintaborax as I can fit behind you –“

“I’ll stop them.”

“– and before you pop my shields I can just float freely back up to the surface if I want, or head to another plane –“

“You’ll listen to me first.” She shrugged. “I know it.”

“Listen to you?” My throat was suddenly dry. “You don’t want –“

“No, I don’t want to kill you, but it’s better to let you figure these things out for yourself. See?”

She blurred forwards, suddenly sitting cross-legged ten feet closer to me, well within the range of my outermost shields.

No ill-will.

“I find you interesting, Kastyr. You and Killstop, you interest me.”

Killstop’. Not ‘Tanra’.

If she was trying to show off by displaying her knowledge of my name, would she not do the same with that of her rival seeress, were she capable of it?

Curious.

“You’re going to talk Heresy at me, and then I’ll lose my head,” I said. “Literally.”

She smiled, baring her teeth at me, but it was a look of displeasure rather than amusement. “That’s not going to happen, Glaif take me. You’re too smart to repeat what you hear today.”

I flicked my tongue and pressed my lips together, trying to stimulate some saliva, but it was useless in wraith-form. My throat was sore. I didn’t know what to say.

I stared at her –

“Thank you, Kas. I can call you Kas, right?” She eased herself back into a relaxed position, putting her hands on the freshly-compacted dirt behind her. “You need to give me the wizards, Kas. You may think you’ve defeated the dragon but her family aren’t finished yet. This all ends in absolute, utter ruin if we don’t do something and we only have until Yearsend before the Crucible begins. After that… one more year… no more Mund.”

Heresy?

I heard her words, but I stopped listening, caring. “Give you – give you Saff, and Tarr?”

She nodded slowly, studying me, sunken eyes glinting greenly. “You could do worse, you know. You could leave them with the Magisterium, with the Gathering. That way, when the dragons want them, they know where to find them.”

I scrutinised her. “What do you want with the library?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well-spotted. Honestly? There’s a book in the master’s section we can’t get at through invisibility or subterfuge. Purportedly the only copy, taken from a manuscript located in the Yenistraph Par. Every way I plan the heist, it fails, and we end up worse-off. I’ve been looking forward to today for about three months. Took me awhile to figure out the Treetown part, though.”

Well-spotted.’ Such a compliment from someone like her meant precisely nothing. I didn’t have a diviner on-board anymore; I didn’t have any qualms about admitting to myself that she knew with perfect clarity exactly how this conversation was going to play out. She could see my future, at least until someone like Timesnatcher interfered with it.

“A book,” I repeated.

“A book.” She stared back at me, then quickly went on: “Don’t worry, you can’t stop us. I’m only willing to tell you now because Ibaran’s already retrieved it. We are due to withdraw in around fifteen seconds’ time.”

“Something… something to do with the twins.”

She grinned, or grimaced, and let the change in expression carry her compliment this time – and her gloating.

She knew my weakness.

I need answers.

“The twins are the key to everything. The dragons fear them, and them alone, do you follow? Tell me – I shall tell no other – were you dreaming of killing them yet?”

I didn’t want to but I nodded, a reaction pulled from me by the bluntness of the question.

I could remember it – but it wasn’t Saff and Tarr – it was my brother and sister.

It was… ten twins…

“You were her weapon,” Everseer mused. “Ah, Quietsigh… It’s as I feared. I heard your voice coming from the dark place, the darkness unlike this…” She gestured at the close, earthen walls of our buried meeting-place. “The darkness into which I cannot step. Grip the brand tightly, and all that. He had it mostly correct, I think.”

“Magicrux Zyger,” I breathed.

She nodded again, suddenly looking slightly unsure of herself, and leaned forwards somewhat to peer at me. “You are interesting, Kas. I can’t read anything past it, really – there are just too many variables. I’m sorry.”

I felt her sincerity, even if I couldn’t trust it.

“Am I doomed, then?” I asked, and heard the twinge of emotion in my voice.

“Yes,” she responded at once. “And I. And everyone you have ever known or met or seen or heard.”

“But – Zyger…”

She shook her head. “Nothing is ever fixed, except the ending – Ulu Kalar saw to the ending personally, you understand? That’s what I’m here to discuss… This Tyr Kayn clearly recognised you’d be close to the twins – she knew she could use you. It makes no sense!”

There was little agitation in her voice, coming from her lips calmly, level and cool – but it was there to be read in her eyes, even by the meagre green twist of spell-light hanging between us.

“Do you know anything, Feychilde? Do you know why she wouldn’t just kill them right away? Do you suspect anything? Have you heard a whisper on the cold winds carried by distant planes? Anything you could tell me about the Time of the Twins might be pivotal to our survival.”

She launched the questions at me like they were attacks, rocking me with them.

Everseer thinks Saff and Tarr are it, I realised.

And I knew I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell the heretics the dragon thought there’d be ten twins.

At the same time I knew I was beginning to be sucked in by her mindset.

“Survival?” I said harshly, more for my own benefit than anything else. “I watched you kill. You’re just like the rest of them.”

“Yet here I sit.” She spread her hands again, looking about. “I’ve been granted the sight by one of my friends. I can see your shields just the same as you can. Am I just like the rest of them, really? Do I bear you ill-intent?”

I shook my head. “That’s meaningless. You’re just so deadly it doesn’t register. A bath of acid doesn’t bear me ill-intent either. That doesn’t mean it won’t reduce me to sludge if I make a single slip-up. And even if you won’t kill me,” I couldn’t help but draw a shuddering breath, “that doesn’t mean you get to go around killing anyone who isn’t ‘interesting’, does it?”

“Why on earth are you asking me?” She looked amused. “I clearly do not give a damn about anyone’s life but my own.”

I stared at her.

“Right?” Everseer prodded. “I’m here out of selfishness, aren’t I? I mean, I believe Mund’s going to be devoured, its very core gnashed until the final pip at the heart of the apple pops – but I’m sticking around in my own best interests.”

I held up a hand so she’d stop – the sarcasm was getting old.

“So why kill people?” I asked plainly.

“Because they are already dead.” She shook her head. “You don’t understand, because you haven’t seen it, but you won’t accept my vision, will you? I can see how that conversation goes. You never trust me again if I even ask you to indulge me one more time…”

“I can see that,” I admitted. “Don’t try it.”

“If I kill them, the dragons don’t eat them. Their souls are gone.” Her voice was a low hiss, and there was true emotion, enmity, exuding out of her. “If the dragons don’t get to feed enough when the resurrection comes over them, it doesn’t take properly, we believe. Ord Yset can’t fully restore them. They’re forced to plane-shift. We so-called ‘heretics’ get to kill them, piecemeal, once the champions have expended their last efforts.”

I tried very hard to keep my jaw from dropping.

“And as for the champions,” she continued, “we try especially to snip from fate’s pages the ones we think may be taken by the arch-demons. These particular fiends come in many guises, some obvious, some less so, riding the waves of the gateways between worlds. The demons who disintegrate archmages with red and white light – all of those demons serve the undying will of Mal Tagar. They are stealing our souls, Kas, when they do it. Our power. We know it. We have… tested it.”

Then she drew a sudden breath, and blurted: “Consider! We will reach out to you –“

The roof of the tunnel between us exploded inwards, and the frowning face and green-lit colours of Killstop’s apparel came bursting down into view amidst a rush of dirt.

“Kas.” Tanra spoke in a quiet, throbbing voice from her crouched position, not even looking back once over her shoulder at me. “Are you okay?”

“She hasn’t tried anything.”

“Is – Nighteye, is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Killstop.” Everseer’s voice came through a little muffled from the other side of the soil-flood the girl brought through in her wake; I could make out that the heretic had got to her feet, crouching to fit under the low tunnel-roof. “I… apologise, what I did to you. I had to get Winterprince before the next Incursion, and I knew they’d have you back on your feet in minutes. Tried not to do anything too… permanent to you. The wizard had grown immensely in power over the last few months, and if we let Nil –”

“Enough of your Heresy.” Killstop sounded tired. “If you’re apologising, that means you’re going to let me go.”

“I will.”

“Both of us,” Tanra pressed.

“Of course.”

“All three of us,” I grated.

Everseer tutted suddenly, and the emptiness of that simple little clacking sound reverberated in my ears.

“You know that’s impossible.”

“Not impossible,” I retaliated. “You just don’t like it.”

Now Tanra glanced back at me. She could sense the tension building. Maybe she didn’t want to get her insides turned to pulp again, or perhaps there was more to it, but I definitely got the impression she didn’t want me starting something.

But I wanted to. It would be two-on-one, unless she brought Nighteye in – and would he really fight us? He might join us, help us take her down…

I had no fairy onboard, no lying vermin to talk me out of situations she saw as too dangerous for poor little Kassy.

Everseer cut out Winterprince’s brain, I reminded myself in a steely voice.

“I’ll make this really easy for you.” The darkmage spoke from the far side of the dirt-pile – then suddenly she spoke again from behind me: “Go. Now.”

I turned back, and saw her there, crouching in front of the time-locked Nighteye. The way out was clear – Everseer had moved past us, and I hadn’t even spotted a blur, even in this slowed state.

“Come on, Kas,” Killstop muttered. “I don’t wanna die down here.”

I stared at Nighteye. The young arch-druid, paralysed: a victim of a dark diviner, a cog in her deadly machinations.

I’ll free you, Nighteye, I promised silently. There’ll be a time, a place… I’ll do it.

I solidified my arm and nodded to Tanra; she took my elbow in her hand, and then we were gone.

* * *

“Can we talk?” I tried to ask, the speed at which we were zooming making it almost impossible to think, never mind move my tongue, the route echoing back at my senses in a disorienting fashion. “Without the link?”

Tanra slowed me, turned to face me. We’d only just emerged into the night air, it seemed; she’d used Nighteye’s tunnel-entrance to bring me out, rather than using her haste-effect to dig another hole – this was probably much easier for her. As such we weren’t that far from the heretic healers in whose entourage I’d come across Nighteye. They were all trapped in the stilling-effect, frozen mid-spellcast. One of them was only thirty feet away, his back to us; he was probably distracted by a dying colleague somewhere out there, but he was clearly heading towards us, towards the hole into which his fellow druid had fled to escape the wicked champion-sorcerer…

Beyond the dark druids, I could see the library – it was stuck in a moment that allowed me to estimate the numbers at play.

I easily spotted Stormsword, chasing a gang of fleeing wizards as they dove towards an infernal portal; on the corner of the roof nearest me I saw Fangmoon, holding the arms of a blade-armed demon-woman apart as she headbutted the fiend.

“It’s over,” the seeress said. “We won. Minimal damage. Few champions down, even fewer dead.”

“She said they found it, and they were going to retreat in seconds,” I replied, still surveying the scene.

“Found ‘it’?”

“A book. Something to do with the twins.” I turned to meet her eyes. “We can’t tell them – not about Nighteye.”

She drew a few breaths, evidently considering her next words carefully.

“Please – Tanra – if they know… then there’s no coming back for him. He’ll – they’ll have to…”

“I think,” she said at last, speaking very slowly, “we can’t tell them… about you, or me… either. Anything we…”

She collapsed into my arms and it was all I could do to turn down my wraith in time to catch her halfway to the ground – then everything around me burst into staggering noise and motion. The link, so long subdued by the chronomancy, erupted into a gibberish of voices.

“Ta- Killstop!” I struggled for a healing philtre from my demiskin, moved her mask aside slightly to pour it into her mouth. “Oh, not again, you stupid girl…”

As though it were her fault… It was me, again, demanding that she stretch her powers to the absolute limit. Me, whose ass she was saving.

I hoisted her up into the crook of my arm once more, marvelling at the satyr-strength, and directed myself into the air before the nearby heretic druid got his act together.

Killstop’s expended herself again!” I yelled into the link as I sped towards the library.

The telepathic connection captured Timesnatcher’s sigh. “How?”

Saving me… again…” I sighed back. “Can someone get here? Spirit, can you show them – never mind, Star’s here.”

Stormsword followed the diviner across the sky to me, and before I set Tanra down on the lawn for Starsight to tend, Spirit and Fang were on their way.

I looked up at Em as she descended.

“Where did you go?” she asked. “I needed you.”

She touched ground, and I found myself looking at her lips, avoiding her eyes.

“Tough bit of arch-diviner, sorry. I don’t know if something happened to the link –“ my eyes crossed Spirit, and I imagined his frown “– or if I just missed you…”

“It’s gonna be one hell of a debrief at the Gatherin’,” the enchanter said sourly, using the link, presumably speaking to champions only.

“You’re not wrong,” Timesnatcher replied. He’d descended to help Star, and now both seers were moving their hands hurriedly over Tanra’s recumbent form. “I just wish I knew what this was all about. It didn’t appear to me that they sought to find the twins, or penetrate the Maginox defences.”

It was one of those moments, where I held my thoughts in check and let myself re-experience the death, the needless, endless-seeming bloodshed. I kept that horror in my mind like a screen, a wall – although I knew I could trust Bor not to go rooting around in my head, I didn’t want to do the psychic version of screaming my guilt aloud.

I knew what this was all about.

But they’d attacked a library. Irimar would figure out they wanted a book sooner or later. If it saved Nighteye from getting his head torn off – or me and Tanra from suffering the same fate – the omission would be well worth it.

Bor had joined the diviners on the ground, and was kneeling by Tanra, staring at her. I looked at Em and deliberately shaped my mouth into the same tired smile she was wearing. I didn’t actually share her apparent sense of satisfaction with today’s events.

“Want flying home?” I asked her.

She nodded, trembling, but looking exhilarated rather than shaken. She cast about, as though asking for permission.

“Don’t worry, Storm,” Spirit said. “We do all the hard work. They got people to put the place back together again.”

I glanced around. The last of the heretics were long gone, and the defenders were starting to disperse. Like the enchanter said, we’d carried out the hard part, and we’d managed to stop it from looking like an Incursion had hit the place. Sure, the building was exposed to the foundation on one side, there were a few magical fires still loose and a few uprooted trees… but it probably wouldn’t take the renovators and landscapers long to fix the place up. Twenty-four hours tops.

“If you’re sure?” she said, a bit hesitantly.

When no one replied, Em soared slowly to my side; I took her by the hand and looked at the others.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Nighteye shift at two,” Fang reminded me.

I looked over towards the druidess, nodded to her awkwardly.

Then Em and me took off together, heading to the south-west. As we coursed over the twinkling lights of Hightown, weaved between towers and shrines, she kneaded my hand in her own. It was rare for us to hold hands when we flew, but I could feel her boundless energy, her ongoing thrill… Maybe a druid had just rejuvenated her?

“Exciting day!” I said, trying to inject as much enthusiasm into my voice as I could.

“I almost got her,” she said in a wistful tone. “A few more seconds, she vould’ve been mine…”

She laughed heartily, and I was glad I wasn’t looking her in the face.

“Oh?” I mumbled. I wanted to change the subject but I didn’t have the passion for any of it.

She spoke, about how the fire had responded to her over and above Hierarch Thirteen – while the heretic had the mastery where earth was concerned. In wind and water they were matched. Once they went under the earth there had been a brutal fight of constant near-misses –

“So what you’re telling me is, you almost died again.”

She shrugged. “You almost died in Zadhal, did you not? And vent back into it a second time?”

I wasn’t in pursuit of someone I wanted to kill, Em.

“I suppose,” my lips supplied.

“And zen she brought ze vater out of ze air, tried to drown me viz it – vell, as you can imagine I vozn’t a big fan of zat idea, so I electrified it and…”

Her accent was only growing more and more pronounced as she told her tale.

It took me a few seconds to realise she was directing our course downwards, descending –

The estates of mid-Treetown were beneath us –

“Em!” I barked, perhaps a bit harshly, and I tugged on her hand, bringing us to a halt. “What are you doing?”

She looked across at me, and I could see the shock on her face.

“I thought – ve vere – vhen you said zat you vonted to fly me home…?”

She was taking us to our special place, our hidden bower.

I sighed. Being close to her right now was unlikely to bring me any comfort, and I doubted I’d make for good company.

“N-no – sorry, Em – Emrelet…”

I was having trouble breathing. I turned up my wraith to fight the sudden surge of giddiness.

My hand slipped through hers, and her eyes flashed. “Kas! Vot’s going on?”

“I… I can’t…”

I couldn’t tell her. I knew what she was like. It’d be dangerous for me and for her and for us.

I couldn’t tell her everything…

“Kastyr?” Her voice and eyes were soft again. She drew herself close to me and wouldn’t let me back away. “Kas, you’re vorrying me…”

“It’s… It’s Zel.”

* * *

It was half-ten when I got home, but when I entered through the wall, practically-invisible, everyone but Xastur was still up. Jaid and Jaroan were on one couch, Xantaire and her grandfather on the other. Spread between them was the fortify set – I stopped in the shadows for thirty seconds, watching and listening with pride. The twins were teaching their elders how to make the most of their pieces’ positions and, amazingly, there appeared to be very little by way of deception going on.

“That one’s the Grim Ghost, remember,” Jaroan was saying. “Doesn’t move that fast, but it goes through other pieces, even enemies and terrain.”

It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

“What a useful power that sounds,” I remarked from the shadows beside the bookshelves.

“Kas!”

Jaid ran to me and threw her arms around me –

I looked down at her forearm sticking straight through my abdomen.

“Ah – give me a sec…”

I separated us, got my wraith turned down again, then gave her a proper hug.

“What happened?” Xantaire asked, half-concerned, half-curious. “We were down in the square, and the criers were getting reports flying in – literally – about how there were some mass-arrests or something, the most darkmages they ever heard of –”

“It’s been a… a long day.”

I found a seat between the twins. As much as I didn’t want to talk anymore, as much as I wanted to hit the sack and enter an extended, hopefully-dreamless sleep – I knew there were certain essentials I had to cover.

“It all started about… sweet Locus, was it just ten hours ago? Well, it’s probably been eleven or twelve for me…” I noted their baffled expressions, and decided to start at the beginning. “We’d been invited to the Arrealbord Palace, to discuss Dreamlaughter’s attack last night…”

I told them. How we’d been played. How there’d been a dragon, with a network of charmed minions. The twins must’ve understood from my tone that this was not something to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over. When I divulged the true nature of Lovebright, my sister just looked crestfallen rather than squealing in glee – I put my arm around her, but she didn’t seem to need it.

I didn’t mention how Zel saved us, but I did explain her betrayal. I had to. The way she wasn’t ever my friend. The way the creature sharing my mind for almost two months turned out to be no better than a demon after all.

I felt their confusion, and I had no words for it. I was no less confused myself. Perhaps more so, versed as I was in some of the deeper underpinnings of the matter.

She was dangerous. So dangerous. They had to know they couldn’t trust her if she showed up. She knew everything – she was my… Soulmate was very much the wrong kind of word for it, yet I knew of no other.

Where the heretics were concerned, I left the information at a bare minimum.

I had to say something about the fire in Treetown and the attack on the Maginox library – that’d be all over the news by tomorrow. I didn’t mention the not-dead-actually-evil Everseer knowing my name – another evil arch-diviner at whose mercy my choice of profession had placed my loved ones… The last thing they needed was more to worry about, but I still had to say something… In the end I just let them know that there was a lady with curly blonde hair and sunken eyes who was bad news and that if she showed up, to fetch me, or, if I wasn’t answering my glyphstone, to do exactly what the darkmage said until I showed up.

When I said that – then it was that I felt Jaid tense up under my arm, move almost imperceptibly-closer to me.

I gave a false grin, patted her hair and drew her even closer into my embrace.

“Hey, at least you got to the bottom of the Dreamlaughter thing,” Jaroan pointed out.

“Yeah…” I sighed, sat back. “Except we don’t know who she is or where she is… or even what she’s actually capable of, now Lovebright’s gone…”

“Are we going to,” Xantaire flicked a finger at my face, “lose the mask at least? Gods, Kas, my skin’s crawling. It’s like I’m expecting darkmages to come pouring in through the windows any moment –“

My eyes went wide, and I couldn’t help but flick my gaze across the room to the shutters, just to be on the safe side –

Worse – Xantaire saw me do it.

“Oh! Oh, man.” My friend got to her feet, strode to the front door to check its locks, then paced back, arms folded across her chest. “Kas, I don’t like this.”

“You see now why I talked about getting somewhere else to live,” I said.

“Somewhere! –“

“What! –“

“Kas! –“

“You didn’t! –“

“Look, I don’t mean I want to move out,” I interjected, raising my hands for peace and looking back and forth between them, “in fact I don’t suppose I’ll really have to… See, there’s the delay in rents, and one of the fellas who owned the block out there was willing to sell his share, if the price was right.”

“You mean –” Xantaire gestured towards the lane “– you’re gonna be a landlord? Like Peltos? Over there?”

“Hopefully not much like Peltos,” I muttered ruefully.

“I d-don’t want you to,” Jaid whispered.

“And that won’t help if this blonde woman’s got your name,” Jaroan said, less anxiety in his voice than in Jaid’s, though not by much. “It just puts us in more danger, if you’re not here, and someone comes – in the night…”

I waved a hand at the flickering blue lines that’d been there for weeks, which they’d never seen. “Not with a set of shields around the place.”

Orstrum chuckled. “You can do that, my boy?”

“I picked that trick up ages ago.” I didn’t take my eyes off Jaroan. “If someone comes, it’ll be for me, not you. Trust me, no darkmage is stupid-enough to hurt you guys or kidnap you – not if they know who I am.”

“That’s a paradox!” my brother blurted.

“Exactly! They’d be after me – the whole point is that I need to keep you out of the crossfire.” I swung my head to Jaid. “But I won’t do it if you’re not both onboard with the idea.”

Jaid looked like a diviner had time-frozen her.

“It’s okay, you don’t need to decide now!” I attempted a good-natured laugh. “Come on, we’ll talk about all this another night. Why don’t you continue your game?”

“I could do with a cup of that wine,” Orstrum said with a grimace. He actively avoided fortify whenever he could – how they’d roped him into it, I had no idea.

“Don’t, Grandpa,” Xantaire scolded him. “If Zel is… you know, not Zel… then what about Flood Boy…?”

She looked at me.

I blinked, and it seemed to last a lifetime:

The arch-wizard lifts his huge, gleaming boot and strikes out with the heel.

Smashing with magic-fuelled strength into Flood Boy’s face.

Scraping him off the ice-blade.

Letting him fall in a heap.

Fall and wither away.

And he too was a traitor…

“How’s about I just – leave all this till the morning?”

I tried not to make it sound like I was begging, but I could hear the desperation in my voice myself, and Xantaire just shook her head, looking down at the fortify board.

I could practically hear her thought: ‘Just don’t ever tell us.’

Or was that just my wishful thinking?

I too studied the board, then looked at Xantaire. “Say, if you’re going for the Geomancer, try to set up your mountains early, and in a clump, cards-willing… I always ended up using them like defensive shields, reactively, and it sucked. You’ll get a far better concentration and come end-game your opponents’ options will be severely limited. Just don’t think you’ve got to copy everyone else in the first few rounds.”

I felt Jaid and Jaroan, out of my eyeline on either side, staring daggers at me.

“Hm…” Xantaire looked down at her cards. “Okay, cool.”

“Arch-diviner tips.” I tapped my temple.

“No fair!” Jaroan snorted.

“Hey, do you have any tips for my Swordmaiden?” Jaid asked.

A sense of normalcy restored, I watched them play their game, interrupting only the bare minimum to clarify rules and card-wording. But while my outer self was sitting on the bench with a faint, amused smile on its face, my inner self was drowning in images and words.

Lethargy stole over my body. I felt like it was an anchor, pinning me to a material existence my mind had left far behind. All I saw were dead bodies, all I heard was sacrilege and lies.

They kill them all… to stop the dragons eating them.

My solid lump of flesh, the crude body to which my floating consciousness was bound, felt its smile widen. The ludicrousness of the heretics – were they all possessed of the same delusion, or did they each have different ones?

It was only then that I realised how the pieces fit together.

Heresy. The nobles of Zadhal. Everseer.

Lowborn archmages, their existence threatening downfall.

Dragons, swallowing their souls, their powers.

Of course, if the lines of archmagery weren’t tightly-controlled, there could be more and more of them with every generation… If the lowborn were permitted access to magical abilities, would this not increase the potential amount of souls the demons could harvest? Would this not allow the dragons to return with even greater strength? Was there some tipping-point – a number of archmage-souls beyond which the doom of Mund would be assured?

If they came, we would fight them, and we would win. The important thing would be to stand strong, together, as one. Not fracture into petty dissent – and certainly not start killing people, which had to be up there for the most defeatist notion ever conceived by a human mind…

Less than an hour later, Xantaire had successfully dominated the board, and made a winning move. My work complete, I swiftly excused myself and withdrew to the bedroom, dodging the worst of the twins’ vitriol while they were stuck putting the pieces away – the penalty of defeat.

Half an hour after that, the twins were asleep. I closed my eyes and gave in to the fatigue.

Not for the first time, I found that my hopes of a dreamless slumber were the futile wishes of a condemned soul.

None of the dragon’s insinuations. None of the fairy’s visions. Just an array of bog-standard nightmares to wrack my spirit.

Events that never happened which in hindsight I might’ve brought into being, had I only chosen differently. Occurrences that did happen, mistakes I could’ve avoided with a single action, a single sentence. Even the simplest accidents, like letting Khikiriaz trap my leg under his weight when I charged the weave, receive special treatment – in the dream I dispel him the moment we go down together and instead of lying there, rolling around in the grass, I fight Winterprince with all my faculties intact.

When Timesnatcher bears his corpse out of the burning forest, I smile, my hatred finally finding release: the burning forest is nothing more than my dead dryad, and it had been my own force-blades that had finished the wizard, sliced through his skull.

When Zel lies to me, when she sits there in the air in front of me, smiling her disgusting vile sickening little face off at me and lying to me – I take her in my hand and this time I listen – I take her previous advice, all her murderous counsel, and I extinguish the life in her with my superhuman strength.

I squeeze, and she begs me to continue. She wants to die and she needs me to kill.

Her eyes bulge, her tiny chest rattles, and still she grins, still she laughs at me, breathlessly mocking me for my weakness –

Above me, Stormsword and Timesnatcher kill them all. They tear humans into pieces, showering me in the body parts of the heretics, showering me in their laughter and lightning.

I watch in the throes of excruciatingly-slowed time, as Emrelet directs an explosion that bursts a female heretic like a beetle struck by a sledgehammer – the clothes are ripped away, then the skin, then everything else follows. I watch in that timeless paralysed moment as Timesnatcher delightedly reaches out an unstoppable, impossibly-fast hand, gouging his fingers into the underside of a darkmage’s chin and simply pulling off the man’s jaw, the man’s face –

Nighteye arrives, a tremendous owl descending at the two champions – and instead of stopping them, he joins them in the slaughter.

I watch, and I squeeze, and the fairy falls apart in my hand –

They’ve not been harmed, Feychilde,” Zel says quietly from Em’s lap. “I know it.”

I woke in the darkness, drenched in sweat. My right hand was balled up in the blanket, clutching a portion of the fabric so tightly that my fingers ached. It was only after thirty seconds of useless effort, numbly attempting to loosen my grip, that my sleep-addled brain reminded me that I could call on my wraith.

I slipped my hand free of the blanket, stared down at it, fingertips floating in and out of the bedding as my chest rose and fell.

I thought I’d gotten most of it out when I broke it all down for Em, but I’d been lost in the emotion of the betrayal.

Zel gave herself away, trying to protect me from myself, trying to help me in her own way. She always went above and beyond.

She… tried to end her life, when we fought Vaahn’s idol…

Her deceptions… The way she’d danced around the issue in the Green Tower, when we talked about her name…

You can’t know! You can’t know what it’s like, to be me!’

What was it like to be her? What was she, exactly? I knew nothing about her that hadn’t come from her own lips – or Flood Boy’s…

’Who? Who is your true master?’

I’d felt it. The connection had been real…

She was someone else’s all along.

Was there an arch-sorcerer among the heretics? But she was encouraging me to kill them… Was there a way that could make sense? It didn’t seem to fit – unless they fought amongst each other so often that this would be considered normal?

She was always pushing me forwards, propelling me into situations and advising me on methods that would cause me to hone my skills, strengthen my powers… She said she knew I would come to this realisation eventually – had she planned it? That didn’t mesh with what she said – but could I trust her explanation? Obviously not…

I could remember the way she spoke, especially during the Incursion. Telling me my soul was damned just for being a sorcerer. Telling me to join with demons, embrace my powers in full. She never wanted me to be me. She wanted… something else – like the dragon had done. She wanted a killer… not a murderer, no, but a champion without mercy, an archmage who gave no quarter. It was like she’d wanted to break me down, build me up again as a new person…

But that had changed, hadn’t it? She’d seemed different… since Zadhal, at least…

The Incursion! The red-white lights – the eolastyr, killing Dustbringer… The dancing man in rags who’d killed Smouldervein…

And she’d warned me not to enter. She’d kept me clear of the danger – hadn’t she? Had she saved my soul that night?

Hang on, I said to myself in a cold, clinical voice. Are you certain you believe Everseer?

I stood up, sinking my legs right through the bed, then grabbed up my satchel and slung it over my shoulder. I stared at the twins for a minute, checking the shields over and letting my wings coalesce.

I’d head out, leave behind the only people in the world I felt I could trust, really trust, safe in their peaceful slumbering. There were always the usual Sticktown scum out there, thieves and killers, inkatra-heads and minor darkmages. I’d find something to distract myself with, even without my accustomed perceptive capabilities –

The wings were ready; the shields –

The shields here were fine, all rotating perfectly, but –

I scrutinised my inner landscape, and found the barrier I’d left behind – the champion I’d abandoned in death.

I imagined him, lying there on the earth like Flood Boy had done. Glimmer had taken Shadow’s body up, showing him respect, deference – but him

No matter whether he deserves it – whether he killed my – the traitor – he was a champion –

I growled softly rather than let tears come to my eyes, and I went out into the darkness with all the speed I could conjure. The scum of Sticktown could wait.

Winterprince needed help, one last time.

* * *

It had to be three in the morning at the latest, going off the fact I couldn’t see the faintest brushstrokes of the sun’s paint across the sky, even from high up. It had finally stopped raining; in Ryntol Wood the magical fires that’d been raging through the damp undergrowth were all extinguished, by the looks of things, but there were still plenty of wizards amongst the druids going about tending the trees, probably in case there was a resurgence. Arch-wizardry could be tricky that way, Em was always telling me…

I scowled as I flew. My heart was conflicted, where it came to Em. Better not think, for the moment. I’d find the body first – how it’d been left on the battleground to rot I had no idea; a sorcerer should’ve been able to sense it by its signature, and a druid by the flies that decided to make their homes within it…

When I came upon the spot, I had an empty shield, sitting there, a blue dome of force quivering nervously.

I dismissed it with a thought, then soared off towards the magisters I’d spotted at the treeline coordinating the contractors.

“Haspophel?” I cried, squinting, as I approached.

The tall, dark-skinned diviner in his blue, starry robe turned away from his colleagues to look up at me.

“Feychilde!” he said in surprise – then, after a moment, the shocked face became one of contempt, if not open derision. “What are you doing here, exactly?”

“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” I snarled, coming to a stop over him.

His eyes widened, and the drop-sniffing expression did indeed melt away immediately into a look of barely-tempered horror. His two fellow magisters, a man and a woman I’d never met, joined him in staring up at me.

“I want to know how you moved Winterprince’s body.”

“How we…“ Haspophel began, then looked to his companions’ faces before continuing: “We haven’t moved Winterprince –“

“He wouldn’t look the same – he was –“ I waved my hand in the direction in which I’d expected to find him. “There wasn’t much of him left.”

The diviner-magister shook his head. “I’m sorry, Feychilde. I can’t help you.” He shifted his weight as though to turn away, turn his back on me.

Why was he putting emphasis on my name? Was he trying to exert leverage over me, remind me he knew my real name, my identity?

I swooped down, descending forty, forty-five feet in less than a second; I augmented the near-silent rush of my wings until they produced a thunderous crack

The three magisters cowered, crouching down to stare up at me, and one of them yelped; my feet were only just above their heads now.

“I put a shield on him,” I said in a flat, quiet voice, altogether unlike the din I’d just caused. “Do you understand? Fixed to him as its locus. You need to cast a spell, find out what happened here. If he’s gone, that means someone has taken –“

I stopped talking, working through the possibilities.

“Feychilde, Zakimel will hear of this, and I –“

“It’s okay, Hasslepuff. Apologies for the intrusion but I’ll need to take this over your head. Over your boss’s, too.”

I thrust upwards with my wings, then directed my course towards my supposed-friend’s mansion.

Timesnatcher. It’s time for you and I to have a little talk.

* * *

I elected to knock on the door, obey the niceties of respect that I no longer wholly felt he deserved. I could’ve gone rushing, enwraithed, right through the wall of his bedroom, challenged him there in the darkness – the mood I was in, I was tempted, so, so tempted. However, he would surely know I was on my way, and there was no chance he’d be taken unawares no matter how outlandish I made my sudden appearance. Worse, it would humiliate me – to expose the rawness of the betrayal that I felt eating me up inside. It would instantly be me on the back-foot, not him – I would be the intruder, the offender; he would be the injured party. No, I would knock on the door, and this way I would be the guest, he the host with a mouthful of lies.

Besides, the lights were on. It seemed I wasn’t the only champion keeping strange hours.

Of course, as I descended into the gardens and stepped towards his broad front doors, they swung inwards in advance of my approach.

Irimar stood there in the brightly-lit entryway wearing his civilian clothes, and in the predawn silence I managed to catch Tanra’s muttering from behind him – but I couldn’t tell what she said.

I was missing my fairy already.

“I-Irimar,” I stammered, much of my anger evaporating at the sight of his calm face, the ordinary (if expensive) garments he wore. “Winterprince –“

“I can’t countenance this.” Tanra stepped into view behind him – she was in her champion’s outfit, but the mask was pushed up on top of her head, the hood thrown back to reveal her mousy-brown hair. “You shouldn’t talk about these things.”

Irimar, for his part, was merely peering up into the sky above the house.

“You didn’t bring her,” he said after a moment in a marvelling tone of voice, then lowered his gaze to my face. “What in Celestium’s happened to you, Kas?”

I reached up, removed my mask.

I flicked my gaze across to Tanra, and she shook her eyes, left-right, an infinitesimally-tiny motion meant only for me.

She kept the secret?

“Zyger. Zyger’s the first thing, Irimar.” I moved my eyes back to him, clenching and unclenching my fist rapidly. “You say my fate’s entwined with Neverwish’s. You know my future, you know where it leads –“

“Where it led,” he corrected me. “You see, this is the very reason we seek to say as little as possible to you! Now you’ve spent – who was it? Starsight? You’ve spent hours brooding over nothing. My friend –“

“Don’t! Don’t ‘my friend’ me…” I drew a ragged breath – my throat still hurt a bit. “I’m a piece, a pawn, and when you call me your friend you’re only doing it because you know it’s better for you, a better move to make…”

“You think we cannot feel,” he said, in an almost-strangled voice.

I met his eyes. “No! No… I –“

“Kas, let it go,” Tanra said in a soothing voice, stepping forwards. I could see the concern in her eyes. “This isn’t anything you can change. We can see parts of your future. And we do, we do care about you. It’s just, if we tell you anything it changes things, and not always in predictable ways… You can’t dwell on it.”

“Did you see me in Zyger too?” I asked in a whisper.

She shook her head, and I almost felt relieved until she said, in a small voice: “I heard you, though.”

“You heard me…”

“Enough!” Irimar barked – and moving my attention back to his face I could see the way my words had upset him: his brow was furrowed; he gripped the edge of the door and it appeared his fingers were pressing grooves into the wood. “We heard you! One paltry, petty future, no longer a hand that the deck of fate can deal! Can you imagine the futures we perceive for ourselves? Do not be too hasty to play the victim, when you know nothing of the truth, when the truth only makes you close your ears!”

His words lashed me and, chastised, I stood like the condemned man chained to the post, rigidly accepting my punishment.

“You wish to speak of your pet’s betrayal, do you not? The creature you know as ‘Zel’? Yes, I’ve done my research. Yes, I knew what she was. A liar. A deceiver. I saw her, or someone very much like her, in Hellbane, and maybe in Tailtrap too… Do you know why I didn’t tell you instantly to reject such a filthy creature? Because this would be your reaction. By the maw of Wyrda!” He shouted the curse-word and I flinched. “You’d never have trusted a word that passed my lips, ever again! You need to get a grip. You need to grow up. You’re not the only one going through something, Kastyr Mortenn.”

I didn’t quite know why, but I shrank down to the ground, crouching and then falling to my knees on the pebbled path just outside the doorway. Exhaustion. Defeat. My emotions were drained, like fingertips that wouldn’t react upon waking. The nightmare – it had taken something out of me.

“That’s enough,” Tanra advised him in a cold voice.

I looked up when I saw his hand appear in front of my face. I met his eyes.

“Irimar, I –“

“It’s okay, Kas. You’re tired. We all are. And we’re not done yet, tonight.”

I accepted his help, rose to my feet.

“Winterprince,” I murmured. “I don’t care what you want me to do – I’ll do it, but first, tell me what happened to Winterprince.”

He cast a look over his shoulder at Tanra. “Perhaps it’s best if you tell him, O Great One.”

She sighed. “Could you stop doing that? And must I? He’s not going to like it.”

Irimar headed back into the house and waved a hand as he turned around the corner. “A cup of wine’ll help him deal with it. I’ll be a moment.”

Tanra turned away towards the drawing room, but I stayed on the outside; she hadn’t taken two steps before she halted, then turned back.

“Don’t be a dreadful ass, Kas,” she sniped at me. “If he says a cup of wine will help, it will help. Come in. Sit down.”

“No. Tell me.”

I caught her sighing again, then an instant later she was standing right in front of me on the threshold of the light, holding out a cup of aromatic, dark-red liquid.

“Just take it.”

It was my turn to sigh. I snatched it from her, took a big swig just to prove to –

“Winterprince isn’t dead.”

* * *

“What do you mean, a fake?”

“Not an illusion – a real corpse, created to look as though it were his.” Timesnatcher’s face was now inscrutable behind the star-browed mask as we sped south-east, towards the estates that stretched out to the walls of Mund.

Beyond him on my right side, the trees of the district were a blur. On my left side, Killstop was just as inscrutable, and she wasn’t talking, focussing on her magic. They’d apparently drained their power-reserves right to their limits today, and according to Tanra they barely had enough juice left – even combined – to bring me into their time-stream as they ran.

“But Timesnatcher you – you let Shadowcloud just –“

“If Shadowcloud didn’t go out with a bang right then,” Killstop cut me off, “he’d have gone out with a fizzle. The wet, bloody, vampiric kind of fizzle.”

“He killed –“ I choked on my words, knowing that many more of us could’ve, would’ve died a few hours ago, if not for his sacrifice, his mass-slaughtering of the heretics.

“I know, Kas. I know. But far fewer than he might’ve if the fabric had followed a different pattern. Better this way. For him. For everyone. Now if you wouldn’t mind shutting up for a moment –“

Whiteness rose up before me, below me, behind me, as we hit, and bounded over, the wall.

Thankfully it was just a blip, a single moment of stomach-churning intensity as we tipped back, ascending, then tipped forwards again, descending – before reaching the ground outside Mund and returning to our horizontal orientation. If it had lasted any longer I’d have needed to stop, apply my wraith to my queasy belly.

As though there weren’t enough to be making me feel sick, enough to be churning over in my mind – Winterprince wasn’t dead. What had Everseer done, exactly? Had she recruited him, subjected him to a vision that stole his sense, his loyalty, just like she’d recruited Nighteye?

Not something I could ask.

Now we crossed the fields, and, ahead, I could see the faint blur of Salnifast-by-the-Sea, marble gleaming under the constant radiance of spell-light.

“But that doesn’t explain how –“ I started.

“You tied the shield to Winterprince.” Timesnatcher answered me this time. “You felt its fluctuations, no?”

I remembered – the way it’d wavered, as though unwilling to come into existence…

“Intention…” I sighed. “So, I tied it to Winterprince, and it didn’t react when someone removed the corpse because it wasn’t his in the first place.”

“The shield had even drifted a little from its original placement,” he said. “Even before we left Ryntol for the Maginox, I noticed its lack of anchor by its future impressions – but that wouldn’t have been the right time to tell you, would it?”

I thought about the conversation with Everseer I’d had, of which he knew nothing, could scry nothing – how differently it might’ve gone…

“I suppose,” I lied, then quickly changed the subject: “So why’re we going to Salnifast, exactly?”

We were getting closer, rapidly. Smears of dark-hued colour surrounded us, hedges and meadows and copses of trees, but ahead the sea was swelling up to fill the foreground, the harbour-town only growing bigger and brighter.

“There’s a lacuna in our prophecies,” Killstop said.

“Lacuna?” I’d read the word, but never heard it spoken aloud before. “A hole? Something you can’t see?”

“It wasn’t until I watched Tanra sleeping beneath the Ceryad-tree that I understood,” Timesnatcher interjected. “I saw her face, and I realised – we share the same dream. The diviner of whom we know nothing. The tidal wave to obliterate the dry land.”

“The patternless plane,” Tanra murmured. “The featureless fabric, without permutation, differentiation.”

I swallowed. “Everseer?” I suggested. “Duskdown?”

Timesnatcher shook his head. “Something greater.”

Mal Tagar’s creatures? my mind whispered.

“That’s why we were waiting for you,” Killstop supplied. “We might need back-up of the sorcerous kind. Sucks that we can’t fly, though. We did think you’d be with Em…”

It wasn’t even a half-question – it was a quarter-question – and yet there it was: the hidden interrogative in her statement.

“I suppose if neither of you could see I wouldn’t bring her, that had to be down to Zel,” I said.

It could’ve been Everseer too, but I couldn’t mention that with Irimar here.

“It was too much for you?” Killstop asked, sympathy in her voice. “The fairy that broke the camel’s back?”

I nodded, frowning in frustration. I had no idea what I’d say to Em, how I was going to act…

“I’ll see her… Em I mean… tomorrow.”

“If you want my advice, you’ll leave it two days,” Tanra said. “Spend time with the twins. Your twins, I mean.”

I licked my lips and nodded. “Maybe.”

Timesnatcher chuckled, then placed his hand out across my chest.

We slowed, then came to a stop; I swivelled my head about immediately.

The pier upon which we stood was a wooden road, leading back towards the bright port-town behind us, docked ships like rows of buildings on either side. But we were near the pier’s end, our feet oriented towards the moonlit ocean.

I returned my eyes to the sea, gazing forwards.

There was a light out there that was approaching the harbour: a vessel bobbing up and down on the water, its sails filled with a wizard-wind.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling suddenly nervous. “What’s coming?”

“Answers,” Killstop said, sounding just as nervous, but excited most of all.

I looked at her, framed in the darkness. The frigid wind had caught a bit of her hair, letting it free from the hood’s rim to stream in the salty breeze. She turned her eyes to mine, and I saw through the mask’s slits that they seemed to shine more brightly than the harbour, than the ships, reflecting the moonlight like mirrors.

She’d changed, so much, but the eyes were still the same as they’d been in the warehouse that morning that now felt so long ago.

And what had Timesnatcher called her? ‘Great One’?

“Yes, Kas,” she said, and patted me on the arm. “At last – answers.”

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