Though her surviving shouldn’t really have been a surprise. I once saw Anne shot with a full clip of bullets, and by the next day she was walking around as though nothing had happened. I’ve also seen her rip the life out of another mage in the blink of an eye. She might look delicate, but she isn’t.
How much of that came from what had happened to her here?
I shook my head and straightened, then walked to the stairs and climbed up to the next floor. The staircase led into an upper level with windows open in all four directions, giving a view down onto the grass and the pool and out to sea. The sun had set, and the sky was a tapestry of red cloud fading into dusky purple to the east. I sat on the stone floor, resting my back against the wall with a sigh. My armour isn’t really designed for lying around in, but it’s a lot better than anything made out of metal or Kevlar and I was comfortable enough. I closed my eyes and started searching for a way out.
Just as the conditions at the Tiger’s Palace had been terrible for path-walking, the conditions in the castle were nearly perfect. Path-walking requires a long chain of highly predictable links, and as soon as one link becomes unstable, everything beyond it collapses. If you’re within a busy environment like a city, then normally the only way to do any kind of long-distance path-walking is to limit it to your own home or some other controlled environment where you don’t have to worry about passersby destroying your intricate probabilistic house of cards. But here, path-walking was easy. The castle wasn’t deserted but it was pretty close, and the only uncertainty came from the ocean winds and the foraging birds. There was still just enough light for my future self to see by, and I sent him running south, working his way back towards the entryway as the sky darkened above him. I couldn’t see any trace of Sagash’s apprentices, but the castle was so big that wasn’t really a surprise. There were a lot of places they could be, and I didn’t try to find them; instead I explored my way south, running up against dead ends and memorising them as I did, building up a mental map of the castle so that with each wrong turning I could find the path a little faster next time.
Just as I expected, reaching the bridge and crossing the cliff to the platform caused the painstakingly held thread of my future to break apart into the chaos of combat. There were a bunch of shadow constructs on the door, and this time they weren’t going to let me past. Constructs aren’t sapient, which means it’s theoretically possible to predict how a fight with one will go, but it didn’t really matter in this case: the shadows were individually weak but there were too many of them. The focus in my pocket would take out one, but not the other seven.
I tried to work around the fight, but the combination of distance, darkness, and cumulative uncertainty was making it hard to see. It didn’t help that I was pretty tired myself. It had been a long day.
I opened my eyes and looked up out of the window. I’d lost track of time while I’d been path-walking, and the last traces of sunlight had faded from the sky. In their place a moon had risen, shining through the eastern window and turning the dark tower of the windmill into a strange place of black shadow and knife-edged moonlight. The sails still swung past outside, the rhythmic creaking blending with the rush of the waves on the rocks far below. The moonlight on the clouds gave it a misty halo, rings of light spreading out through the sky, and I sat there for a while, gazing up at it. I’ve always loved looking at the moon, and I wondered idly what I was really seeing. Was it our moon, its light transported, or another one? Did the shadow realm have its own sun and moon and stars, or did it borrow them from our world?
Who knows. Whatever that moon was, I was glad it was there.
Movement in the futures caught my attention, and as I glanced at them I saw that Anne was awake. I was within the radius of her lifesight so I didn’t need to tell her where I’d gone. After a minute I heard quiet footsteps on stone and a shadow appeared at the staircase. “Alex?” Anne said softly.
“Trouble sleeping?” I asked.
Anne nodded. She had my coat wrapped around her. “Come over here,” I said. “You look cold.”
“I’m not,” Anne said. She sat down against the stone wall opposite, shivering slightly.
I looked at Anne for a second, then got up. I’m not much good at knowing what to do when someone’s upset or unhappy, but every now and then my divination gives me a hint. I sat down next to Anne and put my arm around her. “What’s wrong? Did you get hurt?”
Anne shook her head. I could still feel her shivering against me. “You’re sure you’re not cold?” I asked. Anne wasn’t exactly heavily dressed, but the stones of the castle were still warm.
“It’s not that.”
“Did something wake you up?”
“No,” Anne said. “I mean, I was asleep . . . I was afraid they were coming. I wanted to sleep, I had to make myself wake up. Then when I did it was like they were there—I couldn’t see them, but they could have been . . .” Anne’s shoulders hunched and she fell silent.
Oh. Right. Anne had just spent three days without rest or sleep, alone and on the run with Dark mages trying to abduct her or worse. On top of that, she’d been dragged back to the same shadow realm that had been the site of probably the most horrible experiences of her life. Anne always seems so self-possessed but she’s actually younger than Luna, and what she’d just gone through would have sent most people into a nervous breakdown. “It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “You’re safe.”
“We’re not safe.” Anne’s voice was slightly muffled, and she didn’t look up at me. “They’re still after us. And now you’re going to get hurt too.”
“Okay, I’m not saying it’s impossible that things’ll turn out that way, but let’s look on the bright side. You’re here, I’m here, we’re both alive and safe, and you get to have a good night’s sleep for once. Why not enjoy it?”
Anne was silent. “Come on,” I said. “Remember back when you moved in with me? That talk we had up on the roof? You trusted me to take care of you back then. Trust me now.”
“That was—” Anne said, then stopped. I’d seen Anne’s words—she’d been about to say, That was before last year. After a pause she went on. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” Her shoulders were hunched and she was looking down at the floor. “All the ways they might catch me. I had nightmares about this place for so long. When I was here I dreamed every night about getting away. Then when I did I kept being afraid that someday I’d be caught again. You don’t understand—you don’t know what Sagash did to me. What it was like. Getting away was the only thing I wanted. And now, it’s . . . the one thing I did and it’s all for nothing.”
“You aren’t the same person you were,” I said quietly. “And you aren’t on your own anymore.”
“I’m so tired of being afraid.” Anne sounded dull and weary and utterly wretched. “I wish I didn’t . . .”
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid of people who want to hurt you. I’d be more worried if you weren’t.”
“Easy for you to say. You and Vari and Luna are never scared of anything.”
I laughed out loud at that. Anne looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Anne, I’m scared of more things than I can count. If I ever sat down and tried to make a list, I’d be there all week.”
“But you don’t . . .”
“I’m eight years older than you; I’ve had time to get used to it. Look, you remember when we first met? You were twenty then, right? When I was that age, I was much more screwed up mentally than you were. I’d just gotten away from Richard and I was terrified out of my wits that he’d come after me. I couldn’t hold any kind of job or relationship, I treated everyone like they were out to get me, and I slept with a weapon under my pillow. But it gets better. It takes time and you have to work at it, but it does.”
Anne was silent. “Have you ever talked about it?” I asked.
Anne
shook her head.
“Vari? Luna?”
“Vari knows bits. Little bits. Luna . . . she asked, but . . .”
“Why did Sagash bring you here?”
Anne was silent for a little while, long enough that I started to think she wasn’t going to answer. “He found out about us because of Miss Chandler,” she said at last. “She was his . . . student, I think. We didn’t know. We just thought she was on her own; we’d never heard anything about Dark mages back then. I was payment. That was the way Sagash explained it. He wanted an apprentice, and I was the price.”
“And you lived here for nine months?”
Anne nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“What was it like?”
“It was horrible,” Anne said softly. “The only other people were Sagash and his guests. Not all were Dark mages, but they were just as bad. I’d . . . I’d look at them when they came in and wonder what kind this one was, and whether Sagash would give me to them. I never had any say, not about anything. What I wore, what I did, where I went . . . He controlled everything. The only choices I had were the ones he gave me, he was changing me into something and I couldn’t stop it. I just watched and I kept losing myself, one bit at a time . . . I tried to run away but it never helped; there wasn’t any food and eventually I’d have to come back or starve. After the second time Sagash put a collar on me so he could hurt me and track me, and I couldn’t even run away anymore. I had to come back each time, for training . . .” Anne fell silent again.
“What kind of training?” I said quietly.
“I can’t tell you,” Anne whispered. “I can’t, I don’t . . .” Her shoulders shook and she started to cry. “I didn’t want to, he made me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me . . .”
I held Anne closer and she kept crying quietly, tears mixing with sniffs, one hand tight on the mesh of the armour at my chest. I didn’t ask her any more questions. Maybe she could have answered and maybe not, but pushing her to do it felt too heartless. Eventually she fell silent. She was huddled up against me, the coat still wrapped around her, and listening to her breathing I realised she’d fallen asleep. From a glance into the futures, I could tell this slumber was a deeper one; she wasn’t going to be waking up so easily this time.
Well, now what?
Anne was pressed up against me, which pretty much ruled out any more path-walking. We still needed to get out, but it wasn’t immediately obvious how. Trying to retrace our steps to the main gate would just lead us into a battle with a squad of constructs, which would draw in Sagash’s apprentices. I’d sucker-punched Darren once—I didn’t think it would be so easy to do it twice.
The best approach would be to find some other way out, but for that I’d need Anne’s help, and she was obviously exhausted. From the signs of it she’d been using a combination of terror and her own life magic to keep herself in a state of hypervigilance for three days straight, and she wouldn’t be able to think clearly until she’d had a chance to rest. For that matter, I was having trouble thinking clearly too. I hadn’t had much sleep since this whole thing had started, and it had been a long day.
I rested my head back against the stone and gazed up at the beams of moonlight slanting through the windows. The creak of the sails, the whisper of wind, and the distant waves blended together into a soothing, gentle sound. Anne slept next to me, still and warm. I found my eyes drifting closed, and chided myself, looking ahead to check the futures in which I sat here and stayed awake. It didn’t look as though anything was going to disturb us—in all the futures I could make out, we’d be left alone until sunrise. Still, even if I’d checked, there was always the chance of something changing, no matter how small. I let my eyes close, feeling the presence of my armour around me, watchful.
I shouldn’t go to sleep, but it felt good to rest my eyes. Just for a little while . . .
chapter 8
I drifted through dreams, old memories rising to the surface and sinking into the depths. A door opened and I stepped through.
As I did everything changed, becoming focused and clear. I was standing in a hallway made out of some kind of black stone. Soft lights glowed from holders, reflecting off the walls. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same substance—it was somewhere between stone and glass, with a mirrored finish which cast back the light with perfect clarity. I brushed my fingers across it and found it cool and smooth to the touch. Turning, I saw an open doorway behind me.
I didn’t recognise this place but there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger, and I was curious. I walked down the corridor.
The corridor opened up into a large curved room. A long dining table of dark wood sat in the centre; bowls made out of a vivid green glass were spaced along its length. A little farther away was a sofa and a set of chairs, all the same distinctive shade of green, contrasting oddly with the black-glass walls. Lights hung from the ceiling, but the room was dominated by the row of massive arch windows along the left wall. They had no glass or panes, and the view I glimpsed was so bizarre that I walked up and leant on one of the windowsills so that I could gaze out.
The windows led out onto a railed balcony made of the same strange black glass, and beyond was an impossible landscape stretching away to infinity. Giant trees rose beside mirrored lakes, stretching up into a clear blue sky. The trees were the size of tower blocks, and only the perspective gave a clue to how vast they were. The biggest looked as though it could have cast St. Paul’s Cathedral in its shadow, and tiny wooden buildings and round platforms peeked from its twisting branches. Farther away I could see rolling hills, distant grasslands, and sunlit mountains on the horizon. All of the landscape teemed with life; birds flew, grass and trees and flowers crowded the hills. It was a lush, verdant land . . . until you looked down. A few hundred feet away, at ground level, the grass and trees were cut off abruptly, as though with a knife. A black wall formed a perfectly curved arc around my current location, stretching to the left and the right until it was hidden by the edges of the window. The difference was razor-edged and startling—outside the walls flowers bloomed in grassy meadows, while inside everything was sculpted from the same black glass, without so much as a blade of grass to break up the unnatural smoothness. The outside was natural, wild, and alive; the inside artificial, ordered, and dead.
I was in Elsewhere, of that I was sure, but not any part of it I’d ever seen. Looking down at the ground and judging the angle, I had to be in some kind of tower. The arc of the walls made me think that they might go all the way around, forming a circle with the tower at the centre. There was something odd about the light: the lakes and the giant trees in the distance were all bathed in sunlight, as was the landscape to either side, but the place I was in now was dimly lit, the black glass reflecting only the light of an overcast day. Something about the layout made me think of the castle in the shadow realm, with the keep at its centre.
I stared down at the black-glass walls. They had to be thirty feet high, and I couldn’t see any gates or ways to climb to the top. They didn’t look designed to keep people out. It was more as though . . .
A voice spoke from behind me. “They’re to keep things in.”
I jumped, twisting in midair, coming down in a fighting stance. A blade of blue-white energy ignited at my hand and I held it pointing down at the floor.
The girl who’d spoken was Anne . . . or something that looked like her. She had Anne’s face and eyes and slender height, but the rest of her was different. Instead of falling to shoulder length her hair stretched down her back, and in place of Anne’s soft-coloured clothing she wore a floor-length dress of vivid scarlet that shone in the darkened room. She held something in her hands, though at this distance I couldn’t see what. “You were wondering about the walls.” She had Anne’s voice, but it was stronger, more confident. “They’re to make sure what’s in here stays in.”
I stared at Anne, or whoever i
t was. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s a little rude.” She walked towards the table, coming into the light from the windows. As she did, I saw that she was holding a long knife, tapping the blade against the palm of her hand. She placed it on the table with a clack, then nodded towards my right hand. “You don’t need that.”
I was still holding the energy blade. Elsewhere is fluid; creating a sword of magical energy is as easy as thinking. You can make any tool or weapon you can think of, lighter than a feather and stronger than steel, with all kinds of amazing properties which could never exist in the real world . . . and they’re all completely useless. I opened my hand and let the blade vanish. “There you go,” the girl said. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I looked at her for a moment. “You’re not Anne,” I said at last.
“No shit, Sherlock. Did you think my hair grew twelve inches overnight?”
“The sarcasm is kind of a giveaway too.” I studied the girl. “Whose Elsewhere is this? Anne’s or yours?”
“That’s a hard one to answer. Do you know how Anne can go without sleep?”
“I know it has to do with adjusting her biochemistry, but no.”
“Human bodies have safety cutoffs designed to force them to operate at lower capacity if they’re short of resources like food or sleep. Anne can override those cutoffs and keep going when normal people can’t—enough to kill herself if she’s not careful. She’s been doing that for three days straight, and that’s why she’s in a deep sleep right now. Too deep to touch Elsewhere.”
“And this is relevant because . . . ?”
“The cat’s away, so the mice can play.”
I studied not-Anne. She did look like Anne, at least physically. But the way she moved and spoke . . . it was like a different person in the same body. “Does that make you the cat or the mouse?”
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