Taken

by Benedict Jacka

  Now why would a private residence in the middle of nowhere have such heavy defences?

  The obvious answer: because they had something to hide.

  I waited for sunset. English winter days are short and it wasn’t even four o’clock before the sun began dipping behind the hills. As soon as the sun vanished the temperature dropped like a rock, but my cloak kept me from more than the odd shiver. I know from experience that it’s actually harder to spot someone in twilight than nighttime—the eye has trouble adjusting from the light sky to the dark ground—so once the sky had faded to blue-grey I set off downhill.

  The dark woods were filled with roots and traps for unwary feet but my divination magic guided me safely through. My breath was visible in the cold air and the stars shone down from above, Orion and Sirius glowing brightly in a clear sky. I vaulted the garden wall and stole across the lawn, just one more shadow in the evening gloom.

  Fountain Reach was occupied—that had been obvious from the cars and vans—but having watched the place for an hour I was fairly sure that there wasn’t much security and I didn’t pick up any danger as I approached. I reached the back of the mansion and studied the wards.

  The more I looked at them, the more puzzled I got. Like the house, the wards had an organic look, as if they’d been grown rather than constructed. The design was massively inefficient but the sheer volume of energy made them formidable all the same. There was a gate ward, of course, and shields against spatial and temporal scrying, but search as I might I couldn’t discover any barrier to physical entry. Which was very strange—why would anyone expend so much energy on making a place impossible to view or gate into but do nothing to stop anyone from just walking in?

  The divination ward worried me, though. It’s almost impossible to shut down a diviner’s magic completely but the wards were powerful enough to damp it, and as I looked into the futures of my entering I found that I could see much less further than normal. Futures thirty seconds away were fuzzy, and beyond that they degraded quickly into uselessness. My ability to see into the future is the only major edge I have. Having it even partially suppressed makes me very nervous.

  But if I was careful thirty seconds ought to be enough. There were windows all along the ground floor and it took me no time at all to find one that had been left unlatched. I pushed it up and climbed inside, and into Fountain Reach.

  chapter 5

  The inside of Fountain Reach was quiet, distant voices muffled by the intervening walls. I’d come into some kind of sitting room and I moved to the door and listened. I could hear movement, but not close by.

  From a legal point of view, what I was doing here was kind of a grey area. The Council comes down hard on anyone trespassing on Council property, but entering another mage’s residence isn’t specifically forbidden—what the Concord prohibits against other mages is “hostile action.” On the other hand, hostile is a pretty vague word. Mages tend to be trigger-happy about home defence and if Crystal found me sneaking around her mansion she’d quite likely shoot on sight. She’d have to justify it to the Council afterwards, but if she claimed I’d been there to attack her she’d probably get away with it—especially if I was too dead to say otherwise.

  That last possibility didn’t appeal much, which was why I’d brought my mist cloak. My mist cloak doesn’t look very impressive—it’s just a length of soft cloth, coloured a sort of neutral grey, well cut but nothing worth taking note of. But when worn it has a camouflaging effect, its colours shifting to match the background behind, making its wearer fade into the scenery like a chameleon. If you stay in the shadows and don’t move, a mist cloak makes you damn near invisible.

  More important, mist cloaks function against magical senses too. Mind mages like Crystal can sense the presence of other creatures by detecting their consciousness, “seeing” thoughts in the same way that you or I can see light. Without the mist cloak she’d spot me the instant I got close. With it I had a chance of staying hidden.

  I stole into the corridor, senses alert. My ears and my magic told me that there were people to the left and right along the edge of the building. I went forward, deeper into the mansion.

  Fountain Reach was a bizarre house, with corridors that twisted and changed in size and design. There was no logic to the layout: Staircases led into dead ends and windows looked into other rooms. There were people here—lots of people—but as I moved through the mansion I realised most were servants or caterers. The opening ceremony for the tournament was tomorrow and the staff were busy with preparations. The stealth probably hadn’t been necessary; with all the activity I could have just walked in the front door. As I moved deeper into the mansion the sounds of activity became fainter and fainter until they were silent. I’d known the place was big but the winding corridors made it seem bigger; with no direct routes it took a long time to get anywhere.

  I’d been aiming for the bedrooms but found myself walking into what was obviously the duelling hall. It looked as though it had been a ballroom once, with a wide parquet floor and a high ceiling, but azimuth focuses had been erected at either end of the room and tables and chairs had been set up for refreshments. Despite the lights scattered around the hall, the place had a gloomy feel. I searched the room quickly and found focus weapons, protective gear, and scattered papers. In fact, exactly what you’d expect to find.

  I went through the documents and found what looked like a schedule. The opening ceremony would be tomorrow evening and the elimination rounds would take place during the two days after that, with the finals the day after. The focus of the tournament seemed to be on the apprentice competition. The journeyman division had only a few mages competing while dozens of apprentices were scheduled to duel, with places still open.

  Which told me . . .

  . . . nothing useful at all. I straightened up from the papers, suddenly annoyed with myself. What was I doing here? I was taking risks sneaking into a place I really shouldn’t be in, and for what? To find out information that wasn’t a secret in the first place.

  I could stick around and keep searching. But the mansion was huge, and with my ability to search through futures degraded I could look for days and not find anything. I turned and walked out.

  I followed the corridors back, twisting and turning, until I came to a T junction. Had I come from the left or the right? I tried the left and it led me to a four-way intersection. I followed it down a flight of stairs that I thought was familiar, but it led into a hall lined with paintings that I was sure I hadn’t seen before. I retraced my steps to the intersection but all the corridors looked identical. I picked one and it led me to a T junction, but the passages onwards didn’t look familiar either.

  I stopped, irritated. This was ridiculous. How could I be getting lost inside a house?

  Usually, as long as my magic is working, I can always find my way home. All I have to do is search through the futures and look for the one in which I make it out. But with my divination range cut down, I couldn’t see far enough—and since I’m so used to never getting lost I hadn’t thought to memorise the route on the way in. It was a rookie mistake and it was embarrassing. I started down the corridor, trying to find my way to a window or some sort of landmark.

  As I did I realised it had been a long time since I’d heard any movement. The house was quiet—really quiet. I stopped and listened but couldn’t hear any activity at all.

  The corridor I’d reached felt much older than the outer parts of the house. The furniture was dark and shabby, there were cracks in the plaster, and a fine layer of dust covered the tables.

  And suddenly my precognition flared.

  My divination magic might have been dulled, but my reactions weren’t. In a flash I was hidden in a doorway, the hood of my mist cloak concealing my face, fading into the background against the shadows of the dimly lit corridor.

  The house wa
s silent. I held myself perfectly still. Only my eyes moved, flicking up and down the length of the corridor. I couldn’t see or sense anything. But my magic was telling me that something very, very bad was going to happen if I moved even an inch from where I was standing now. One minute passed, two minutes, five. My feet itched but I didn’t let myself move. I scanned for enemies using every trick I knew and came up blank.

  And all of a sudden the threat was gone. I checked and rechecked the futures and found nothing. I held still another five minutes, then moved quickly and quietly away down the corridor, holding my breath until I was safely out of sight.

  Although I kept a tight grip on it, I was shaken. I hadn’t been able to make out what the danger was but I was absolutely sure that something would have happened to me if I’d moved. Usually my magic shows me the outcome of bad choices in gruesome detail. I’ve always thought it’s one of the nastiest bits of being a diviner but now I was finding that knowing something was after you without knowing what was actually worse.

  As I moved I tried to figure out just what the hell had happened there. I’d sensed danger in the short-term future but the immediate future had shown nothing but an empty corridor. If something had been about to attack me, why hadn’t I seen any trace of it?

  I didn’t know, but I wasn’t staying around to find out. I reached an intersection and scanned ahead. I still didn’t know which was the way out but I wasn’t looking for that anymore: All I was focused on was evading the invisible threat behind me. One of the routes gave me a stirring of unease and I took the other, moving as fast as I could. I was concentrating on scanning for the whatever-it-was rather than looking for rooms or people, and so I didn’t notice that I’d made my way back to the duelling hall until I came through the doorway.

  The hall wasn’t empty this time. There was a young man standing by one of the tables, going through the papers. He was tall and thin, dressed in black with a whiplike quickness to his movements. It had been eight months since I’d seen him but I remembered him very well. His name was Onyx, and the last time we’d met he’d been trying to kill me.

  As I stopped in the doorway Onyx’s head snapped up towards me. For a second we stared at each other.

  Onyx cast a spell and I leapt back as blades of force slashed in an X pattern through the space I’d been in a second ago. Another blade hissed over my head as I rolled left into the corridor, coming to my feet in a run.

  There was a wall between Onyx and me now, and I sprinted down the corridor before he could regain a line of sight. Looking ahead I saw that he wasn’t chasing me, he was going to—

  Crap! I threw myself flat, skidding on the carpet, and as I did splinters and plaster exploded all around me as Onyx sent a lethal spray of force blades tearing through the building. They were at waist height and he’d fired them straight from the duelling hall, cutting across the corridor and through the wall on both sides.

  As he did, a bolt of agony went through my head, a mental shriek of pain and fury. It was so powerful it blanked my thoughts for an instant, making my vision grey out.

  When I came to I was curled on the floor, my hands over my ears. I staggered to my feet and kept moving, trying to shake off the fuzziness inside my head. My hearing was still working and I could hear distant shouts from ahead of me, and I knew that we’d stirred up trouble, but the noise was enough to orient me and suddenly I knew more or less where I was going. I couldn’t sense Onyx or the other presence anymore, and I kept moving. As I reached the corridor leading to the outer rooms, a group of people went hurrying past. I waited in the shadows for them to get out of sight, then slipped into the room from which I’d entered and dropped out the window.

  As I left the walls of the mansion my vision of the futures ahead of me cleared, and my heart lifted as I could see properly again. I ran out across the garden under the starlight, my feet quiet on the grass. Looking back through the cold night air I could see the windows of Fountain Reach lit up. Distant shouts echoed through the walls, but I couldn’t hear any sounds of battle.

  I made it out of the garden and started back up the forested slope in the darkness. I could have activated my gate stone, but I wanted to put a safe distance between me and any pursuers before I did anything to reveal my presence. As I scanned ahead through the futures, though, I saw that I wasn’t alone in the woods. Someone was ahead of me in the same vantage point I’d used earlier. Maybe they’d had the same idea as me.

  I was tempted to just bug out, but I’d had time to recover from my scare. Now that my magic was working properly again I had my confidence back. I altered course towards the person above, and as I did I thought about Onyx.

  Onyx is the Chosen of a powerful Dark mage named Morden. Morden was one of the two major players competing for the fateweaver back in April; he coerced me and a small cabal of Dark mages to go get it for him and sent Onyx along to ensure our cooperation. It turned out that Onyx’s idea of cooperation involved him leaving with the fateweaver and everyone else not leaving at all. I got hold of the fateweaver before Onyx did and we had a frank exchange of views.

  It ended up with Onyx on the floor and bleeding, barely escaping with his life. Unfortunately I’d only won because of the fateweaver, and the price tag on those powers turned out to be a hell of a lot higher than I was willing to pay. The fateweaver was gone but Onyx was still around, and that was bad news because Onyx was one of the deadliest battle-mages I’d ever had the misfortune to run up against. I wondered if he held a grudge against me for humiliating him like that. I had the feeling the answer was a definite yes.

  The person waiting at the viewpoint near the top of the hill was a girl, nineteen or so. She was just a shadow in the darkness, but by looking into the futures in which I switched on my light I recognised her as one of Morden’s slaves. I had to think for a minute before I remembered her name: Lisa. I hadn’t really expected to see her again. Slaves to Dark mages have a high turnover rate. I let myself fade into the shadows and waited.

  Onyx arrived five minutes later. He was obviously trying to be quiet but I had the impression he didn’t spend much time in the woods and it wasn’t hard to hear him coming. Unlike me his magic didn’t give him any way to see in the dark and he’d resorted to some kind of black-light spell that cast a murky glow. I felt Lisa go tense as she saw him.

  “Who did you see?” Onyx said as he walked up into the clearing.

  “N-nobody.”

  “Verus was in there.” Onyx was young, but his voice was flat and cold and sent a chill down my spine. “When did he go in?”

  “I don’t know—”

  The blow didn’t look powerful but it was augmented with force and took Lisa off her feet. Onyx had already turned away and was staring down at Fountain Reach. There was a sort of casual indifference to the whole thing. Onyx had been annoyed and Lisa had been in front of him, so he’d hit her. He didn’t care whether it had been her fault and in fact he seemed already to have forgotten that she was there. Lisa stayed on the ground for a while, cringing, then pulled herself upright.

  Onyx shook his head and turned away. The darkness shrouded his face but his body language looked frustrated. Magic flared around him as he opened a black gateway; he stepped through and Lisa hurried through after him without needing to be told. The gateway closed and I was left alone on the hillside.

  I watched thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to make my way home.

  * * *

  “But what was Onyx doing there?” Sonder asked an hour and a half later.

  Arachne’s cave is wide and oval-shaped, hidden under Hampstead Heath and hollowed out of stone that’s been worn smooth by the passage of hundreds of years. Clothes cover the furniture and every inch of the walls, turning the cave into a riot of green and blue and yellow and red. There are small changing rooms to one side and at the far end a tunnel leads down into darkness.

 
Sonder was sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, his clothes rumpled from a day spent indoors. He has messy black hair, a pair of glasses, and a way of peering at whatever he’s reading that makes it look like he’s completely oblivious to everything else, which is usually true. He’s twenty-one but looks like a first-year university student. He still had his arms full of papers, and the reports he’d been reading were spread out over a pile of coats on the table in front of him. He pushed his glasses up automatically as he waited for my answer.

  “I don’t know,” I said from my sofa. I was more tired than I should have been; the escape from Fountain Reach had taken a lot out of me and I obviously hadn’t fully recovered from Anne’s spell yet. “But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be there either.”

  “Do you think it’s him?” Luna called. She was hidden behind the curtain of one of the changing rooms. “Him and Morden, I mean.”

  “They’re vicious enough,” I said. “But it seems like an odd thing for him to do.”

  “Onyx?” I could feel Luna shudder. “He’d do anything.”

  “Anything Morden tells him to. Don’t forget that.”

  “We know they take slaves,” Luna said. “Like that girl Lisa. Maybe that’s where the apprentices are going.”

  “There’s no way Morden would take that kind of risk,” I said. “The reason he got involved in the hunt for the fateweaver was because he wanted to become Council representative of the Dark mages. If he kept them as slaves it’d get out sooner or later, and as soon as that happened he’d lose any chance he ever had of getting that position.”

  “But what if—Oh, Arachne, could you have a look?”

  “Of course, dear,” Arachne said from her perch in the corner. She was working on something in vivid green. “Come right out.”