Alex Verus 5: Hidden

by Benedict Jacka

  I straightened, heart racing. Check surroundings, check the futures . . . no threats, everything was clear. I looked down at Darren and saw that he was out cold. “Well, shit,” I said to no one in particular.

  The focus I’d just used was a nerve scrambler; it disrupted signals to a living brain. Enough to keep someone out for a few minutes but no more—I had to move fast. I rolled Darren onto his back; there was blood on his face from where one of my kicks had cut his forehead, but I ignored it and started going through his pockets, tossing out the contents. Money, keys, wallet, phone . . .

  “Well, hello there,” I murmured. The object was a fluted rod eight inches long, ringed at either end, and it radiated magic. I know a gate stone when I see one. I looked through the futures in which I activated it and . . . yes, this was it.

  Now what was I going to do about its owner?

  I looked down at Darren, flicking quickly through possibilities. Keeping him restrained was not an option. My scrambler was discharged, and I didn’t have anything else that’d keep him unconscious. Anne would have been able to do it easily . . . why do you always need a mage’s abilities when they’re not there?

  (For the record, no, at no point did I consider just killing him, and I suppose some of you are wondering why. Point one: killing the apprentice of a recognised mage would violate the Concord and would give Sagash full grounds to demand that the Keepers arrest me. Point two: it would escalate things and cut off any possibility of negotiation with Sagash, which was still a viable way of resolving this even if it was getting less likely by the minute. Point three: What the hell is wrong with you? You seriously think I want to be responsible for more dead kids? Jesus.)

  I could take the focus and find the others, but as soon as Darren woke up he’d miss it and raise the alarm. They’d put a guard on the shadow realm’s entrance . . . assuming they hadn’t done that already . . .

  . . . why not take a look and see?

  I quickly looked through the futures in which I tried the gate stone; some failed unpredictably, making the path unstable, but by piecing them together I managed to get a vague impression of what was waiting for me. I ignored details, looking for encounters or danger, and couldn’t sense either. No security—that was strange. That couldn’t last.

  On the other hand, the front door was open now . . .

  When in doubt, attack. I grabbed Darren’s phone and pocketed it, then started channelling my magic into the rod, using it as a focus. As I did I pulled out my own phone and speed-dialled Luna’s number. It went to voice mail and I dialled again. This time she picked up.

  “Hey, Alex—” Luna began.

  I lost my grip on the gate spell and it fizzled out. “Listen closely,” I said as I recast it. “I found Darren, we fought, he lost. He’s unconscious and waking up in three minutes. I’m going to use his focus to get into Sagash’s shadow realm. I’ll be out of contact once I do.”

  “You—wait! Can’t I—”

  “No time.” A black shape wavered, starting to form in midair, then the spell fizzled again and it winked out. “Damn it! Not now!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Darren was starting to stir and I was out of time. I tried the focus yet again, and this time I put everything I had into it. “Keep working on finding a way to break into that shadow realm. Watch your back, stop Vari from starting any wars, and do what you can to keep Sonder and Caldera on side. We’re going to need help before this is over.”

  “Goddamn it,” Luna said, and I heard her sigh. “Fine, understood. Just for the record, you are not allowed to complain about me doing dangerous stuff ever again.”

  The gate spell caught and a black oval appeared in midair, a dark contrast to the drab living room. No light came through the warded gate, but the still air rippled and a breeze touched my face, carrying with it the smell of the sea and ancient stone. “Gate’s open,” I said. “Going through. Good luck.”

  “You’re the one who needs it. Be careful.”

  I stepped through the gate and into Sagash’s shadow realm.

  chapter 7

  I came down into a sea breeze and dazzling sunlight. The gate closed behind me and I was alone.

  I was standing on a stone platform on the edge of a massive cliff. The cliff stretched away to my left and right; as my eyes adjusted I saw that it went on as far as I could see. Behind was forest and greenery and the sun was shining down out of a cloudy sky, filling the air with haze. At the foot of the cliff and stretching away into the distance was an endless ocean, and the rush of waves on rock was a steady sound in the background.

  Directly ahead was an enormous castle. It was built upon a rocky island offshore, several hundred feet from the cliff, and a long narrow bridge stretched from my feet to some sort of courtyard directly ahead. The castle was made out of yellow-grey stone, and it was huge. Square towers and buttresses reached up into the clouded sky, arched windows peeking down from layered walls, with a darker, towerlike building beyond the first few layers of ramparts.

  I was still holding my phone in one hand; the signal indicator was spinning uselessly and I switched it off. As I did I searched ahead, looking for danger, and came up blank. As far as I could tell I was alone out here. Of course, given how big it was, it was going to be pretty hard to tell the difference between alone and nobody in range . . .

  I shook my head and focused. Back in London, Darren would be waking up right now. He’d notice I’d stolen his gate stone, and it wouldn’t take him long to figure out what I’d done with it. There wouldn’t be any easy way for him to report to Sagash (and given the typical attitude Dark masters have towards failure, he probably wouldn’t want to), so his most likely next move would be to contact one of the other apprentices. I’d taken his phone specifically to slow that down, but he’d manage it sooner or later and once he did I could expect him to show up here with reinforcements. I needed to find Anne before then.

  I started walking forward across the bridge. It was a full fifteen feet wide, which was good because there was no railing, just a sheer drop. The cliff face was vertical, and I glanced down after a few steps to confirm that there was absolutely nothing below me except a long, long fall of hundreds of feet to the water. Sea breezes tugged at me, whipping my hair and pushing me from side to side. I had a macabre impulse to look into the future in which I jumped off the edge, down and down to those little wavelets below, but shook it off.

  I couldn’t help feeling relieved when I made it across. The courtyard beyond was vast, more than a hundred feet deep with ledged walls reaching a good forty feet above my head. A straight stone path ran to a huge door which led deeper into the castle, and grass grew on either side. I’d been scanning for danger as I’d been crossing but I hadn’t found anything—either nobody had noticed me, or I really was alone. Something caught my peripheral vision; I looked right to see what it was and jumped.

  Standing in the shadow of the outer wall, just a few feet away from where the bridge met the courtyard, was a fuzzy mass of darkness which looked like a humanoid sculpted out of shadow and black smoke. Its only features were a pair of faintly glowing white eyes, through which it watched me silently. It wasn’t moving, and as far as I could tell it wasn’t going to.

  I looked at the thing, puzzled. It was a construct, and as soon as I’d seen the thing my hand had gone to the pocket where I kept my focus, but as I studied the futures I saw that the thing wasn’t going to attack. Unless I bothered it, it was just going to stand there. Variam had said something about shadow constructs used as a security force, but this one didn’t seem to be doing very much in the way of security . . .

  . . . unless it wasn’t there to keep me out, but to keep someone else in. Experimentally, I looked into the futures in which I walked back out over the bridge. No response. Constructs aren’t alive and can’t take initiative; they only do what they’ve been specifically ordered t
o do. If the construct had been told to watch for one particular person then it wouldn’t react to anything else.

  I was tempted to keep experimenting, but it didn’t relate to my primary goal of finding Anne and the clock was ticking. I walked away from the bridge and deeper into the castle. The shadow watched me go, white eyes tracking me silently.

  The first courtyard led into a bigger courtyard with multiple levels, patches of grass crossed by walkways. Now that I was out of the wind, I was getting hot; the castle wasn’t tropical but it was much warmer than the cold London spring. I stripped off my greatcoat and slung it over one arm, looking from side to side around the high courtyard walls. There were several ways out and no obvious correct direction; given enough time I could map the place blind, but I was on a clock. I searched the short-term futures and saw that one of the back staircases led up to a high tower.

  The interior of the tower was the same yellow stone and it felt dark and gloomy compared to the bright sun outside. There was something eerie about the castle, something that was hard to pin down, like a feeling of being watched. I climbed the spiral staircase which lined the inside of the tower wall, going up and up until at last sunlight broke through the gap in the ceiling above me and I came up into the light again. I shielded my eyes as I did, looking around over the tower parapet, and for a moment thought that I’d gotten disoriented. When I realised what I was seeing, my eyes went wide.

  It had been my fault, honestly. Variam had said the castle was huge, but I hadn’t really listened—after all, most castles are pretty damn big by normal standards. But this place wasn’t big, it was gigantic. From my position on top of the tower I could see dozens of buildings and other towers rising out of the haze, clustered together and built on top of one another. Sun-drenched courtyards separated the buildings, and sheer drops plunged from vertical walls down into lower levels. The tower I’d just climbed had to be close to a hundred feet, and it wasn’t even the tallest. The ocean was to my left and right, and behind the castle too; the island kept going away from the mainland, but not forever. I’d never heard of a shadow realm so big. Most are little pocket realities, no bigger than a football pitch; this place could have swallowed up every other shadow realm I’d ever seen with room to spare.

  Towards the centre of the castle, rising up above the lower halls and towers, was a square keep. It was darker than the construction around it, a dull matte black instead of the sandstone shades of the other buildings. The design felt different, too. It wasn’t exactly the architecture, it just didn’t quite fit with the castle around it. The rest of the shadow realm was a single unit but the keep jarred somehow, didn’t blend in.

  I looked for magical signatures, and found them. Wards covered the castle—scratch that, they covered the whole shadow realm. They were so omnipresent that they were hard to see, huge background currents like a haze in the air. I couldn’t pick them all out but I could identify some. Most recognisable was the gate ward that Vari had warned me about. It didn’t look as though point-to-point transport within the shadow realm was impeded, but gating directly out was going to be impossible. There were also shroud effects, subtle and layered, though I wasn’t sure what they were meant to guard against. They weren’t blocking my divination, at least. Maybe they were designed to stop longer-range spells.

  Two places stood out in my mage’s sight. The first was the platform back on the mainland, on the other side of the bridge. A space magic effect was bound around the standing stones, allowing passage in and out. The second was the dark stone keep. Wards were laced over it, tight and dangerous-looking. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but they seemed to have a different style than the universal effects over the shadow realm—they were more focused and aggressive.

  I understood now what Vari had meant when he’d said that Anne had hidden here, back all those years ago. With its size and the shrouds, this place could hide an army. Anne had managed to stay concealed here once; maybe she’d managed it again.

  Time to think. Anne had arrived here three days ago, almost certainly to the same platform which I’d just come down on. Where would she have gone?

  She could have run directly away from the castle. Turning to look, I could see the narrow bridge running to the cliff face, and the platform at the top. Beyond was grass and light woodland, green and inviting. Or she could have done what I’d done: crossed the bridge and disappeared into the castle. Instinctively that felt like the worst direction, but if you want to lose pursuers, you go where they’re not expecting.

  And then there was a third possibility—Anne’s pursuers might have caught her. In which case (assuming she was still alive) she’d be in whichever part of the castle they used as a prison. I had a nasty feeling it would be that keep.

  Three possibilities, three directions, and I didn’t have time to search them all. Which to choose?

  I spent a precious minute thinking. What swung my decision in the end was that shadow I’d seen in the courtyard. It hadn’t been on general guard duty or it wouldn’t have let me in, but its presence there made perfect sense if it was meant to stop Anne from getting out, which suggested that someone thought Anne was still inside. Until I found something better, I’d assume Anne was hiding somewhere in the castle.

  The bad news was that anything that could hide her from her pursuers would also hide her from me. If I was hiding, and she was hiding, how was I going to find her?

  Well, there are mundane ways to track people, but it’s complicated and quite frankly finding stuff the normal way takes too damn long. Divination it was.

  I moved to the edge of the tower parapet. The breeze ruffled my hair, though it wasn’t as strong as the wind should be in a tower so high. I looked into the future to see what would happen if I stood there and screamed “ANNE!” at the top of my voice.

  No response from Anne, which wasn’t surprising. No response from anyone else, which was more surprising—the wind and the sea must be making it hard to hear. I looked to see what would happen if I kept screaming. Nothing . . . nothing . . . ah. Futures of shadows closing in on my position . . . they could fly? Didn’t know that. And . . . a person? It looked like a girl . . . could it be Anne? It felt similar to her . . . maybe . . . at this distance I couldn’t be sure. I needed a closer look.

  I gave the castle a last glance, fixing its layout in my mind, then went jogging down the stairs of the tower. When I reached the bottom, I picked a direction towards where I’d seen the figure in my vision and started working my way deeper into the castle. The layout of the place was winding and confusing—instead of straight corridors I had to take side routes to get anywhere. Luckily, finding paths is something my magic is very good at, and I made good time.

  I stopped inside a huge, cathedral-like hall. Narrow windows cast slivers of light through the gloom, and rafters crisscrossed the roof above. The floor had a gaping chasm in the middle, but a railed walkway ran around the walls and a catwalk crossed the cathedral lengthways. Movement in the future caught my attention and I stopped to look. Movement, a presence . . . there was a girl heading this way, and it wasn’t Anne.

  I had more than enough time to avoid her, but I needed information. There were doorways along the wall leading into side rooms. I checked to make sure I’d have a way out in case things went wrong, then slipped into one of the rooms and waited. Footsteps broke the silence, quiet but growing louder, until someone emerged at the cathedral’s north end.

  I stayed out of sight behind the wall, watching her through the futures in which I leant out. She was slim, with short black hair and Southeast Asian features; her clothes were grey, and a pair of shortswords were sheathed at her belt. Assuming Sagash didn’t have more than one armed Korean girl hanging around his shadow realm (which didn’t seem too likely unless he had a very specific fetish), then this was the third apprentice Caldera had told us about, Yun Ji-yeong. Right now her arms were folded and she was standing at the
cathedral’s north entrance. I wonder what you’re waiting for . . . oh. That. Sagash’s other two apprentices were on their way, and they were in a hurry.

  Three Dark apprentices at once were more than I could handle. I did not want to be found here, but I did want to eavesdrop. I checked again to make sure I wouldn’t be spotted, then hunkered down and waited.

  Darren and the other apprentice from the ball appeared at the south end of the cathedral two minutes later. They stopped as soon as they saw Ji-yeong; I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their body language wasn’t friendly. After a pause they started across the central walkway.

  “What are you doing?” Ji-yeong said as they approached.

  Neither of the two boys answered. Ji-yeong stepped out onto the walkway, blocking their path. “Hey.”

  “What?” Darren said. He was wearing the same clothes as when I’d knocked him out, and he was moving stiffly, obviously hurt. He didn’t look ready to quit, though.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Out.”

  “Who were you fighting?”

  “None of your business.”

  Ji-yeong looked him up and down. “You lost, didn’t you?”