Fear endowed him with a sudden surge of strength, increasing his stumbling pace as he battered at the fabric of Argastos’s realm like a man clawing through cobwebs.
And it gave way, and the forest he found himself staggering through was no less dark and grim of aspect, but at least it was real and physical.
He paused, and leant against a tree, fighting to get his breath back. Clear, I’m clear! Even the murky forest air seemed sweet to him.
Something moved close by, and he felt a chill pass through him. Did something else come with me?
He looked about and realized that he was surrounded. There was a score of Mantis-kinden shifting in and out of sight amid the trees, with bows and spears. Nethyen or Etheryen? He could not tell.
‘Servants of the Green,’ he croaked, using the ancient Moth greeting to their followers.
For a long moment those words hung in the air, testing their power against the Mantids, while the world itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then one of them shook her head. ‘No masters,’ she said. ‘Not any more. Seize the trespasser.’
‘No!’ Tegrec gasped. Not after all I’ve been through. And he began backing away, seeing some of them drawing back their bowstrings, others spreading out. They were not moving towards him, though, even as he took step after step away. Their attention, hungry for blood, was focused elsewhere.
And at last he turned to see another Mantis behind him, a weathered-looking man with his long hair unbound.
‘What do you want?’ Tegrec gasped.
‘No masters,’ the man echoed. ‘Amalthae?’ Something in the way he stood led Tegrec’s gaze sideways and upwards, until at last he saw the colossal beast towering by the Mantis’s side.
Tegrec lashed out with all the force of his magic, but the mind he encountered was more than his equal. Then those dread killing arms were reaching for him.
Che awoke into darkness, but this was no new thing for her. She found herself standing, with walls pressing close on three sides.
Argastos’s domain.
And she was a daughter of Collegium, whether Apt or Inapt, and she had been raised to question. First she called on her Art, and found that the gloom about her was not dispelled, but hung before her eyes all the more. So, nothing as mundane as mere darkness, then. This is what Argastos wants me to see.
Not utterly dark, either – because Argastos wanted her to see just enough and no further. Enough to see that the indistinct walls around her comprised a dead end in what must be a maze. She remembered reading about Moths and mazes in a book, while she had been looting the College library for anything that might help her with her newly imposed Inaptitude. It had been a favourite pastime of Moth Skryres to trap their enemies in mazes of the mind. Che herself had nearly become lost in one through Seda’s doing, snared in her own memories. Until Maure walked into my mind to rescue me.
And did that mean Maure was just as capable of rescuing herself, or was she also a prisoner elsewhere in this labyrinth, or in some other cell altogether?
What does Argastos want? Is this a test? She stepped forwards and began to try a handful of turns, leftwards always. Her hand found the wall’s surface weirdly discontinuous, metallic and lanced with spines, nothing that matched what the eye could make out.
She had every expectation of the maze’s configuration shifting around her, because why should Argastos play fair? If there was a test here, it was not of her ability to solve a physical maze, after all.
She closed her eyes, seeking strength within her, before applying it carefully to the walls all around her, and making them creak. It seemed possible that sheer force might suffice, to break this place asunder, but what if that was something Argastos had foreseen? Would it leave her in an even worse position?
Instead, she let her mind flow out from her, twisting and turning over the contours of the maze, appreciating its nuances all at once and giving it no chance to change behind her back. She had not realized that she was capable of such concentration, and perhaps it was only here, in this pit of old magic, that she could have done it, but soon she had the entire maze in mind, and still her senses drifted outwards, calm and curious, until she found Maure.
Che?
Are you well?
I’m surrounded by the dead. There came sense of Maure’s bleak amusement. I won’t say it’s pleasant but it is what I trained for.
Is Argastos dead? Che asked her.
Interesting question. He’s not merely a ghost, anyway. There’s no cast-off image of him here, because the core of him never moved on. It was bound here, trapped in this place over the centuries.
So what does that make him, and what can we do about him?
There was an almost academic quality to Maure’s response. He is a man, still, but one who has been held in a place of great magic – dark Moth magic – for a very long time. Is he dead? Probably. Does he know it? Possibly. Is he powerful? Certainly. He’s been steeped in power for centuries.
More powerful than me?
A long pause before Maure answered that. Perhaps not, but more skilled. He was a strong and experienced magician before this happened to him, and he won’t have grown rusty.
Che nodded to herself, and stepped out of the maze. It only needed that one step, now that she had plumbed its every twist and turn. A moment later there was no maze, and she was in a cavern, its ceiling dimly knotted with roots, the air hazy with half-glimpsed forms. More games?
Then another real mind, for a moment, and the touch of it startled her. A trick, a deception? I must be mistaken, but she had the sense of someone staring right back at her. Hello, Cheerwell Maker. And a most uncharacteristic malice: Enjoying yourself?
Che recoiled, and then the fleeting touch was gone, as if it had never been. But was that really . . .? She could not bring herself to believe that it had actually been the Collegiate scholar Helma Bartrer . . .
Using her power as a light that burned the darkness like cheap oil, she came upon Maure, finding her surrounded by nebulous phantoms that fled at Che’s approach.
‘Real ghosts?’
The woman started at finding Che before her in the flesh. ‘This place is clogged with ghosts,’ she remarked quietly. ‘Argastos did not come here alone when he was imprisoned here, and he has gained plenty of company since, I think.’
‘We need to find the others.’
Maure nodded, ‘I’ve been trying to—’
But Che held a hand up to cut her off.
There was a new voice.
Cheerwell Maker.
Che froze, knowing immediately who had spoken, and that knowledge sent a sudden stab of fear through her – far more than Argastos’s voice might have done. Immediately she was raising defences, filling her mind with thought of armour and shield, walls, fortifications. In that moment, the encroaching dark of this subterranean domain was nothing compared to her fear of her rival, her jagged memories of the last time.
And at last, she replied, Seda.
She sensed a hint of amusement at all her preparations. Well, sister, how very far you have come from the little girl you once were. You have grown into your power. I’ll not catch you unawares again. Possibly there was a trace of respect there, or Seda might be trying to inveigle her way through Che’s defences by instilling some false confidence.
What do you want, Seda? Che demanded. Using the woman’s given name represented a calculated insult. Under no circumstances would she use the title ‘Empress’ and, of course, to show someone that you held their name was to have a hook in them from the start.
You have spoken with Argastos, of course?
‘Any sign of the others?’ Che murmured sidelong to Maure, and thought, So?
Even as Maure answered in the negative, Che heard Seda sigh. We will fight, you and I, over his power. We are opposites, and I will destroy you if I can, just as you would destroy me. We are two people standing in the same place, and neither of us can tolerate that. This rivalry is the last joke of the
Masters of Khanaphes. But, for now, Argastos’s power is firmly bound within Argastos himself, and he has brought us both here for his own purposes.
I came here only to stop you, Che growled at her.
Tell yourself that if you wish, but I know the truth. If you had discovered Argastos first, then it would be I chasing at your heels to keep him from you. We are sisters, you and I. We are not so different. You feel the pull of power just as I do.
Che’s instant response died within her mind, leaving her wondering if Seda was right after all. And surely she would have justified it to herself, how she needed his strength to hold off Seda later on, or to deal with some other threat . . . or just because if was safer in her hands than any other’s . . .
What do you want? Che repeated.
A truce, for now, until Argastos has played his hand. We are stronger than he is, but not if we fight each other. Let us recommence our feud over his body.
You’re supposing that I want to fight him, Che shot back, but the disdain with which that remark was greeted was withering.
Do you honestly think he means you any good? Seda demanded. Or either of us?
Well, no doubt he’ll tell us soon enough, Che snapped irritably, then calmed herself, feeling her defences grow shakier as she gave in to anger. But, for now, you want a truce?
Until Argastos’s intentions become clear, I will harm neither you nor your companions.
Maure tugged at her sleeve, demanding to know what was going on, and Che explained in as few words as possible.
‘What do you think?’
The necromancer frowned. ‘All I know is that this is just the sort of place that gives my profession a bad name. Moth magic is bad enough most of the time, with all that Path of Shadows business, and Mantis magic is all about death, and this place reeks of both of them in the worst possible way. Whatever is left of the man that was, whatever Argastos has become, it can’t intend any good to us – or to anyone. And I get the impression that the original man himself wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.’
‘He was a hero,’ Che responded automatically, and then stopped, surprised at herself.
‘He saw himself as a hero,’ Maure corrected her carefully. ‘So do many others, who do the most appalling things. By believing yourself a hero, all your actions become heroic, no matter what they are.’
Che closed her eyes again, feeling exactly the opposite – that no course of action open to her now was in any way desirable. Very well, let us have our truce, Seda, whilst privately adding, but I’m not lowering my defences or trusting you an inch.
Good. The response was brisk and pragmatic. As a token of goodwill, I have located your companions.
Che froze, fighting down the whirl of thoughts that statement prompted.
They are unharmed, although I need your help with the halfbreed girl.
And . . . Thalric? It had been Che’s terrible fear that Thalric might simply be gone, his Aptitude untraceable in this maze of the Inapt.
Here with me, Seda informed her, with a proprietorial air that made Che bristle.
Let me see him. Let me see you.
Again that arch amusement: Very well. And abruptly Che found the path between them laid out plainly, skirting all of Argastos’s tricks and sleights of hand.
The landscape around them remained uncertain of precisely what it was supposed to be, from blurred impressions of forest to caverns to occasional suggestions of the metal-walled maze, but Che found she could ignore it, simple force of will driving it away from her. Maure walked almost in her shadow, one hand resting on her shoulder.
And, in so few steps, she found herself face to face with Seda.
In her mind the Empress of the Wasps had become a monster, ten feet tall and dripping with blood, inhuman and ravening, evil written in every feature of her. It was hard, then, to remember that here was the outward truth: this slender Wasp girl, younger even than Che, with her pale skin and golden hair. The power that stirred within her was the sibling to Che’s own and, when they met there – their first physical meeting, and in such a place – the world around them seemed to shudder for a moment, as at the tolling of a huge but silent bell.
Che heard Maure’s sucked-in breath, and she wondered if, all over the Lowlands, magicians were twitching awake with a start, or crying out in their dreams. But surely we are not so important, she and I? How much does the mark of Khanaphes count for?
‘Che!’
Then Thalric was there, coming close but stopping out of reach, his eyes flicking between Che and Seda. And Che began to go to him, to throw her arms about him for the simple joy of seeing him alive, but there was an abrupt crackling sense of chill from Seda, and she held back.
But of course. She had forgotten that Thalric had been Seda’s once. Che had pushed that knowledge right out of her mind. It hurt a great deal, she discovered, to be reminded.
And if I press matters now . . . if I call Thalric and demand that he comes to me? Then, she guessed, her truce with Seda might be broken sooner than either of them was ready for, because she could sense it there – the tie between the Empress and her former consort – not a bond of love, she told herself, but one of presumed ownership.
‘Where is Tynisa?’ she asked, because she had to say something to kill the tension. Her eyes sought Thalric’s and found his gaze evasive. What were they doing together, before I arrived? How long . . .? She repressed the thought.
‘With Tisamon,’ Seda declared.
Che’s stomach lurched. ‘Then—’
‘Yes. And I can stop him, but not her. Between us we must separate them. We may need them against Argastos and his minions.’
Tynisa fought, and the fight had no beginning and no end.
She fought in the sewers beneath Myna. She fought in the Prowess Forum of Collegium. She fought in the Commonweal. She fought in the forest of the Nethyen. One fight spread over the years, as she tried to escape from the shadow of her father.
He was faster than her, but not by so much as he once had been. Death had dulled him a little, whilst her life had only sharpened her. She had learned new tricks that he had not taught her: every fight that she had entered into since his death had honed her, whilst he had remained the same broken thing he had always been.
In this dim no-place they dodged and cut, rapier against claw, a constant negotiation of reach and distance. She danced with him, Weaponsmaster to Weaponsmaster. Part of her mind was roiling with the need to destroy him, for the abomination he was; to strike down the insult to the man he had been, but there was more than that. No matter what he had become, what manner of revenant the Empress had raised from his memory, her blade and the mystery of her order knew that the fight itself was pure. This was the fight her life had been leading up to – and the fact that she and Tisamon had been allies, before the man’s death, had been only a temporary diversion.
No matter that she hated what he was, part of her exulted in fighting him again at last.
And sometimes he struck the death blow, and sometimes, less frequently, she did, but those strikes never landed, and they found themselves apart again, blade-tip to blade-tip . . . and then began again. Over and over, they began.
How long they had been fighting, Tynisa could not know. She was living in the eternal present, moment by moment ticking by and yet the clock standing still.
When something changed, and when the voice came, she resisted hearing it, so perfect was this instant she was living in. She stepped through her paces, her rapier a blur as it fended off Tisamon’s strikes and made its own inroads into his defence. But, at last, the demands became too insistent to ignore.
Tynisa! Che’s voice was an unwelcome reminder that there was more to life than this.
Stop this! You have to stop fighting!
The concept seemed utterly alien to her, and she shrugged it off, but Che was insistent.
Tynisa, Seda is going to rein in Tisamon, but only if you yourself stop. This is pointless. We have more impor
tant problems right now.
For a moment, Tynisa lost her rhythm, and a scything sweep of Tisamon’s claw nearly killed her, but she ceded three paces and repaired her defence.
Tynisa—
Go away, Che. And Tynisa applied herself utterly to the duel.
She sensed her foster-sister’s abrupt frustration with her, which might once have been a source only of amusement, but now there was a great power building behind it, a wave of influence that increased and increased until all that Tynisa represented, her badge, her sword, her whole being, was tiny in comparison.
‘No!’ she cried out, and heard, I’m sorry, in reply. And then the great fist of Che’s strength descended and clasped itself about her, locking her rigid, every limb frozen.
She had a moment of staring into Tisamon’s helm, that dark, half-seen face that was so familiar, and she tried to brace herself for the death strike . . . but she could not even do that.
Then he had frozen as well, his blade already halfway towards her, and a moment later they were not alone: Che, Thalric, Maure . . . and there too was Seda, whom Tynisa had seen in Capitas only the once, on the day that her father had died.
The grip left her, and she dropped to her knees with a curse.
‘I’m sorry,’ Che repeated, as Tisamon stalked stiffly over to Seda’s side.
Tynisa glowered up at Che. ‘If you ever do that to me again, I swear . . .’ But she was not sure what she could swear to, considering the sheer strength of the girl, the utter reversal of their roles. For the first time in her life, Tynisa suddenly felt ignorant and useless compared to whatever it was that Che had access to. And is that the way that she had always felt, before?
She got to her feet, sword already home in its sheath. ‘What now?’
‘Now?’ And they all spun about at this unexpected intrusion. He stood there in his chitin scale mail, shoulders broad beneath his open grey robe, and his winged helm under his arm: Argastos the warlord, the Moth who went to war. ‘Now you shall come with me as my guests,’ his rich voice resonated. ‘We have much to talk about.’
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