by Edward Cox
The illusionist stepped forward. ‘Wait,’ he shouted at the fleeing people.
The last person in line began barking orders at the others, telling them to not stop, to get out, to escape. He paused to look back at the two men and the wolf. Dressed in a bulky overcoat, he stared with round Aelfirian eyes, larger than any human’s.
‘We are denizens of the Labyrinth,’ Van Bam told him. ‘We mean you no harm.’
The Aelf turned and ran for the door. He paused before exiting, using his elbow to smash the glass cover of a big red box on the wall. He then thumped something hidden inside the box with the palm of his hand, and the air was shattered by the piercing wail of a klaxon. Clara began howling, and the glow spheres hanging from their chains above began flashing with a bright and warning orange light.
‘Please,’ Van Bam shouted, ‘we need your help!’ but his voice was drowned by the klaxon.
With a final glance at the group, the Aelf sprinted from the warehouse. A huge shutter door descended behind him and locked with a loud bang.
In the Nightshade, the Genii Hagi Tabet hung from a web of leathery tentacles that had sprouted from her back and punctured the stone of the walls, floor and ceiling of what had once been an isolation room. Strong and taut, dividing the room into two halves, the tentacles not only kept the new Resident of Labrys Town suspended in the air, but also connected her to the ancient magic of the Nightshade, which gave her omnipresent sight and command over the lives of one million humans.
Fabian Moor stood below Tabet, looking up at her naked and withered form hanging from the leathery web. Her watery eyes were vaguely focused on her fellow Genii. There might have been a hint of intrigue in her absent expression, a mild interest to know what was hidden in the hands that Moor clutched protectively to his chest. But Hagi Tabet did not speak, did not enquire, and Moor did not show her the crimson and yellow flower he hid in his hands. Instead, he shifted his attention to the left side of the room and studied the human who stood there.
Moor didn’t recognise the man. He was tall and slim, wearing a pristine police uniform. He stood to attention, back straight and hands clasped behind him. His hair was thinning and slicked back. The lenses of his spectacles were tinted enough to hide the colour of his eyes, but Moor could easily see the uncertainty in them. Fear and confusion etched into his gaunt face as he tried to process the strange company he was currently keeping.
Viktor Gadreel and Mo Asajad stood behind Moor. He turned and raised a questioning eyebrow at them.
‘Don’t look at me,’ Asajad said. ‘I’ve no idea who he is.’
Gadreel shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘Ask Hagi. She summoned him to the Nightshade.’
Hagi Tabet smiled dreamily at Moor. ‘This is Captain Jeter,’ she explained, her voice, like her expression, dancing precariously on the edge of insanity. ‘He commands the Labrys Town Police Force for me. I have brought him to the Nightshade to hear him explain why he allowed the Relic Guild to escape.’
Moor looked at the human again. He knew the name Jeter. This man’s loyalty to the Nightshade was without compromise, or so Tabet had said. He had blind faith in the Resident, and didn’t question the change of regime that had occurred in his town. But his faith would crumble if he realised who he stood in the room with.
Jeter thought better of stepping forwards, and cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying to our Resident,’ he said, his voice more confident than his body language, ‘the Relic Guild—’
‘Shut up,’ said Moor.
At first, it seemed that Jeter didn’t know whether to be fearful or affronted at having his authority quashed by anyone other than the Resident herself. To Moor’s immense irritation, the police captain then decided to whine and plead his case directly to Tabet.
‘Please, what chance did we have against magic? The Relic Guild murdered many of my officers. Only one of them escaped the warehouse alive …’
He trailed off as Tabet began giggling. With confusion evident on his face, Jeter looked to Moor and opened his mouth to continue his defence.
‘No, Captain,’ Moor said. ‘If you value your life, do not say another word.’
‘But don’t worry,’ Asajad added. ‘We will certainly discuss your incompetence soon enough.’ To which Gadreel rumbled a chuckle.
Jeter’s lips quivered. He looked from the cold intent of Moor to the calculating malevolence of Mo Asajad, to Gadreel’s hulking promise of brutality, to the strange, almost loving smile of Hagi Tabet, and the police captain found the good sense to remain silent. He bowed his head and stepped back, taking care to distance himself from the fence of Tabet’s tentacles that divided the room.
‘Good,’ said Moor.
Leaving the human to fester for the short time that remained to him, Moor gave the watery, semi-mad gaze of Tabet his full attention.
‘Hagi,’ he said, moving his hands away from his chest. ‘I have a gift for you.’
It was hard to keep his cupped hands from shaking as he raised the yellow and crimson flower like an offering to the Resident. ‘The time has come, my old comrade,’ he whispered.
Tabet reached down with an expression of longing on her face. Asajad and Gadreel stepped forwards to stand shoulder to shoulder with Moor, sharing his anticipation. Tabet took the flower with gentle fingers and lifted it to her face. She closed her eyes and breathed the scents of an empath’s memories. Her eyes remained closed as she opened her mouth wide, wider still, revealing a blood red tongue and long white teeth. With a little moan of childish pleasure, Tabet pushed the flower into her mouth.
She began to chew – slowly at first but then with determination. Her jaw muscles flexed, her lips smacked, and saliva dribbled down her chin. As soon as Tabet swallowed, her back arched, her arms splayed, and her legs opened wide, displaying herself to her fellow Genii. She moaned as though entering the throes of climax.
On the left side of the room, the human called Jeter had moved a hand to his sidearm – an unconscious action – and his fingers worried at the catch on the holster.
Moor’s lips set into a grim line.
Hagi Tabet’s body relaxed with an abruptness that left her limp upon the web of leathery tentacles. Her breathing was harsh, as though she had just completed a ten mile run. Almost as one, Moor, Asajad and Gadreel leaned forwards expectantly. Slowly, Tabet raised her head and glared triumphantly at her fellow Genii.
‘I can see her,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘The empath – she is in my head …’ She began swinging on her web, agitated, excited perhaps. ‘Oh, Fabian, there is wonder here, wonder and awe … Marney had faith. She knew love—’
‘Hagi,’ Moor said softly, though his teeth were clenched and his temples pounded. ‘Focus on what we need to know.’
‘It is hard to see, Fabian,’ Tabet breathed. ‘Everything is quick … too quick …’ Her eyes flickered from side to side as if struggling to keep pace with the speed of memories flowing through her head. ‘Marney led a full life …’
Gadreel’s patience was the first to crumble. ‘Where is our lord and master?’ he demanded.
‘I-I’m trying …’ Tabet, up on her web, became frustrated, and her swinging motion increased. ‘Oh, but the empath was clever. Memories have been hidden within memories. She has disrupted her timeline. There’s no … linear path to follow—’
‘Try harder, Hagi!’ Asajad’s tolerance had broken. ‘Tell us where he is,’ she hissed.
Tears spilled onto Tabet’s cheeks; her eyes flickered, blurs of vibration. ‘Past and present … I-I cannot tell the difference. All mixed, all jumbled … the information we need is hidden within a lifetime of memories. It will take time.’
‘We have already waited forty years,’ Asajad retorted.
And Gadreel growled in agreement. ‘Do better, Hagi!’
‘Enough, both of you,’ Moor said. He took a step towards Tabet,
and then turned to face Asajad and Gadreel. ‘Did I not tell you that the magic in Marney was strong for a human, that she was not to be underestimated?’
His fellow Genii stared angrily at him but held their tongues.
‘Have patience,’ Moor told them. ‘A simple magicker, albeit a clever one, cannot hide her secrets from us for long. Am I right, Hagi?’
‘Give me time,’ Tabet whispered. ‘I will find Oldest Place.’
‘Of course you will,’ Moor said. He allowed a smile to play out on his lips. ‘Search in peace, Hagi. Bring Lord Spiral back to his Genii.’
In reply, Tabet closed her eyes and her body relaxed. Her breathing settled. Two tears ran down her pale cheeks and a beatific expression came to her face. Her eyes moved rapidly beneath the lids as she began searching the lifelong memories of the empath.
Moor gave Asajad and Gadreel a look, daring them to question his authority. Although Asajad gave her usual thin, concealing smile, Gadreel nodded, frustrated but content to follow.
A small and high-pitched whine cut through the air. Moor looked to the human called Jeter. He had drawn his pistol and primed its power stone.
‘Genii?’ the police captain said. His hand shook as his aim wavered between the three creatures of higher magic. ‘Oldest Place? Spiral? I-I don’t understand.’
‘Forgive us,’ Moor said. ‘You must be terribly confused.’ He gave a casual flick of a finger and sent out a small pulse of thaumaturgy.
Captain Jeter yelped as the power stone jumped from his pistol, sparking as it shattered upon the floor.
‘Viktor,’ Moor said pleasantly. ‘Explain the situation to the captain, will you?’
In a blur of motion faster than any human eye could see, Gadreel jaunted across the room and gathered the human into a crushing embrace. Jeter’s struggles were as weak as a child’s in the hulking Genii’s arms. He sucked in a great lungful of air as Gadreel pulled his head back by the hair and sank his long teeth into his neck. Blood gushed down his uniform.
‘And Viktor,’ said Moor, ‘when you have finished, please return to the lowest region of the Nightshade and find a way to drag Hamir out of his hiding place.’
As he fed, Gadreel grunted an affirmation. Moor addressed Asajad.
‘While we are waiting for Hagi, there is something I would like you to see.’
Asajad paused, wincing as Jeter released his breath in a piercing scream, and then said, ‘So lead the way, my dear Lord Moor.’
A couple of hours had passed since the Relic Guild had been trapped inside the enormous warehouse. The giant shutter door remained closed and locked. Samuel had silenced the scream of the klaxon, and put a halt to the flashing orange lights by smashing the control box from the wall with a hammer he had found. He had then suggested breaking a window to escape the warehouse, grumbling, ‘We haven’t come this far just to be corralled.’ But Van Bam had declined the offer. The Aelfir were obviously spooked enough by the sudden appearance of humans, and there was no point antagonising them further. ‘We do nothing but wait for the Aelfir to make their next move,’ the illusionist had decided.
Van Bam might not have been the Resident anymore, but he still led the Relic Guild.
Now, Van Bam sat on a metal storage container, twirling his green glass cane in his hand. He watched the wolf as she foraged for food among the multitude of crates and sacks stacked high upon a host of huge cargo platforms. Samuel stood upon the crates he had piled upon a workbench to the left of the shutter door. Arms folded across his chest, he kept vigil, watching the outside world through a window, frozen, silent, barely blinking. Though Samuel might have appeared calm and assured, Van Bam’s inner vision detected the colours of Samuel’s mood – the shades of frustration and hues of uncertainty that swirled within him.
As for Clara, she was content, happy to focus on nothing more than the present moment as she rummaged through a hunting ground of crates, sacks and metal containers.
Each of the platforms, piled high with cargo, was thirty foot long and fifteen wide. There were at least sixty – maybe seventy – of them, forming two lines in the warehouse; enough to comprise a full day of deliveries to Labrys Town.
Countless times Van Bam had witnessed these platforms arriving into Labrys Town, emerging from the portal outside the Nightshade, one after the other, from the first light of day to the dead of night. Always unaccompanied, always carrying food stocks and raw materials and medicines – every kind of supply that enabled a million denizens to survive. Each platform that came not only delivered essential cargo but also exuded mystery. Countless times Van Bam had wondered which Aelfirian House resided on the other side of the portal outside the Nightshade. Who was it that was keeping the people of the Labyrinth alive?
He was finding the reality somewhat uninspiring.
In truth, Van Bam didn’t know what he had expected to find. Perhaps the glorious, mystical realms he had experienced in his younger days, or maybe one of the enormous Aelfirian cities that dwarfed Labrys Town. Certainly not this huge decrepit warehouse, cold and dimly-lit, with its high ceiling and greying walls, dull and unwelcoming, he was sure.
Clara gave a small yelp and skipped back as something sharp stabbed her snout. She shook her head and snorted before continuing to forage through the wooden crates stacked eight high on a platform, growling all the while.
With a sigh, Van Bam looked up at Samuel. ‘Can you see anyone yet?’
‘Nope.’ The old bounty hunter didn’t look away from the window.
‘Any indication which House this is?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t see beyond the loading bay, Van Bam. There’s no one around. Maybe the Aelfir evacuated.’
‘I do not think so, Samuel. They will be back, I am certain.’ Because they had to come back, Van Bam told himself. The Aelfir had to return and they had to listen. They had to put the Relic Guild in touch with the Thaumaturgists again. Without them, there was no saving Labrys Town from Fabian Moor and the Genii. ‘They will be back,’ he repeated.
Samuel said nothing and continued watching through the window.
Close to the back wall of the warehouse, at the end of the stone floor between the platforms, two portals stood. They were inert, the space within their archways empty, giving a clear view of the grey wall behind them. Van Bam guessed that one was for export, the other for import.
Considering that the import portal had been closed since the end of the Genii War, that it had remained inactive for forty years, Van Bam couldn’t blame the Aelfir for fleeing and trapping the Relic Guild in the warehouse. He imagined the panic when the portal suddenly activated after all this time, the shock and fear of seeing humans again, humans travelling with a huge wolf at their side. The agents of the Relic Guild were unwelcome strangers in this House, and their arrival had put a halt to the delivery of cargo that was essential to the people of Labrys Town.
Clara growled as she tussled with a crate, dragging it with her teeth from a platform, sending a pile of other crates crashing to the floor. The wolf dragged her crate clear, swiped at it with a mighty paw, and the wood cracked under her long and sharp nails. She tore a hole large enough to fit her muzzle inside, and she tugged a joint of dried beef free. Lying down, holding the joint between her forelegs, she proceeded to lick salt from the meat’s surface and gnaw at its toughness.
Clara was magnificent as the wolf: large and powerful, yet sleek and fast. Back in the alleyways of the Great Labyrinth, Van Bam had experienced a curious sense of pride for the way she had fearlessly protected her fellow agents from the wild demons of the Retrospective, for the way she had retained control over her inner beast for the first time in her life. But he was inclined to wonder if that control had been encouraged by guidance of a spiritual kind.
Van Bam had been in tune with the Nightshade long enough for its magic to have felt like a sixth sense to him, and the voice o
f Gideon, the dead Resident, had been his constant companion and guide. But when the Genii had taken control of Labrys Town, Van Bam’s connection to the Nightshade had been severed, its magic scooped out of him, and the voice of Gideon had fallen silent in his head. The illusionist had never felt that lost before. But now Gideon was back.
Van Bam could feel the familiar ghostly presence lurking in his mind, like a constant itch he could never scratch. He welcomed the sensation, recognised Gideon’s return as a good thing, especially with the Relic Guild needing every ally it could find. But Gideon had thus far declined to speak with Van Bam; his interest had been piqued by someone else.
Somehow Van Bam knew that Gideon and the wolf were communicating – he could just feel it. Whether this was a good thing or not remained to be seen, but Van Bam hoped – desperately hoped – that Clara was strong-willed enough to cope with the pernicious voice of an unstable dead Resident in her head.
Are you truly concerned for Clara’s sanity? Gideon drawled. Or are you jealous?
A wry smile touched Van Bam’s lips. I was growing bored of waiting for you to speak.
Hello, my idiot. Did you miss me?
Not as much as you might like to think.
The voice chuckled.
Gideon, what in the Timewatcher’s name is going on? How are you communicating with Clara?
I have absolutely no idea. Intriguing, isn’t it?
Where have you been? What happened at the Nightshade?
The ghost was quiet for a moment. I really don’t know, to be truthful. One moment I was watching Hamir, and the next I was with you, fighting wild demons out in the Great Labyrinth.
Do you know what became of Hamir?
No, and I wouldn’t like to guess.
Van Bam cursed silently; he and Samuel had already decided that Hamir was most likely dead. Then what of the Genii, Gideon? Did you see them enter the Nightshade?
I saw nothing, Gideon replied. It’s strange, my idiot. I feel like there’s a gap in my memory, yet the transition from one place to the other was seamless. As quick as blinking an eye. His pause was thoughtful. But I can tell you that my return seems to have coincided with the arrival of the avatar. Perhaps it had the power to call me back after the Genii took the Nightshade. Curious, isn’t it?