Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set

by Vanessa Nelson

  “Apparently. Ungrateful brats. Disappointing. Every one.”

  Arrow caught her breath. More than one. More than one child. She ignored the fact that Serran sounded like a sulky adolescent. Arrow had been teaching at the Academy for long enough to recognise the signs. An adolescent who had not done their assigned homework and was trying to cover for it with belligerence.

  “Just how many human women did you associate with?” she asked, tone still sharp. Erith morality on relationships was complicated, and occasionally exceedingly flexible.

  “You are impertinent.” He told her, staring back with a tight expression. He would tell her nothing, she saw.

  “Just curious as to how many aunts and uncles I may have,” she told him, making her voice as light as possible. Aunts and uncles. Until she said the words they did not seem real. Serran’s other offspring, however many there were, would be her relatives, too. Her parents were gone, her only other grandparent dead. But she might have aunts. And uncles. The possibility made her light headed for a moment before she considered that they were also Serran’s offspring and could be as displeased by her as she was by Serran.

  She rose to her feet, gathered the items around Serran back into her messenger bag. Avoided meeting his eyes. Time to move on.

  ~

  The next turning they made led somewhere different. Rather than bare and featureless, the corridor ahead of them was scattered with stones and rocks of all sizes.

  Arrow stopped at once, seeing familiar shapes scattered amongst what looked like random debris. The squat squares, slender rectangles and ovals.

  Serran bustled past her, muttering something about idiot women who could not navigate. She reached out and grabbed his sleeve without thinking, tugging hard to bring him to a stop.

  He whirled on her with brilliant amber in his eyes, face twisted in anger.

  “Unhand me at once. How dare you?”

  “Stop,” she told him. She let him go. “Stand very still.”

  “Stupid girl.” He turned and moved a few paces on into the corridor. “They are just stones.”

  “No, they are not. We encountered something like this before. Come away. Now.”

  “Afraid, are you?”

  “Yes,” Arrow said candidly.

  “How do you expect to get out of here if you are afraid of some bits of rock?” he asked, kicking the nearest one. It slid across the floor and bumped into a nearby one. The pair of them vibrated gently and all along the corridor the vibration was repeated, bit and pieces of scattered stone gathering together. Serran watched, seemingly fascinated by the process.

  “Away. Now.” Arrow backed away from the corridor slowly, turning her head to see where they could retreat to. The junction she remembered had gone. There was no corner behind her but a straight length of corridor, featureless and plain.

  “Where did the corner go?” Serran asked.

  “I do not know, but we have to leave. Now. Come on.”

  “Ridiculous.” Serran turned back to the gathering stones, petulance vanishing into curiosity. He leant forward, peering at the pieces on the floor. “They look almost like people.”

  “Wait until you see the knives. Come on, you foolish old man.” She did not wait for a response, judging him quite capable of standing and staring at the rock figures forming in the corridor until one of them decided to attack him.

  “Who are you calling … Wait! Do not walk away from me!”

  A moment later and he was hard on her heels, breathing rapid.

  “No respect for your elders. None. Cowardly, running away.”

  “I am walking. When I start running, you should panic,” Arrow snapped at him. “I do not like running.”

  “Rubbish. An Erith mage who does not run? What about your training?”

  “Training did not include much running,” Arrow told him. “Do you really want to discuss this now?”

  There was a pause and she wondered if he had fallen behind, glancing back to find that he was trying to look behind himself and walk forward at the same time. She paused and turned to see what he was looking at.

  A mistake.

  The rock figures had formed and were following them at a steady pace, long knives that passed for fingers clear even in the gloom.

  “They are people.”

  “No. They are rocks,” Arrow said. “And they will kill us if they catch us.”

  “You have a sword.”

  “A spirit sword. Those things do not carry surjusi. They are something else.”

  “Surjusi magic. I told you it exists.”

  “I do not doubt that. But I cannot sense it.” She clamped her jaw shut before she told him that she had no weapons training. The sword at her back might be solid and real, but it was also useless to her as a weapon against anything other than surjusi, when she could surrender to the sword and let it work.

  “We should move,” he suggested, walking on. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, expression tense. “How fast can they move?”

  “Quite fast,” she answered. “Why?”

  “Run.”

  He ran. In typical Erith fashion, despite his age and apparent frailty, he took off down the corridor ahead of them at a flat sprint that Arrow knew she would be unable to match.

  Muttering a curse under her breath, she ran after him, reminded of an old human joke that when faced with a bear, or other predator, it did not matter how fast you could run, only that you could run faster than your companion. She wondered if Serran had heard that joke and decided it was helpful information.

  Her muscles were screaming with effort and it was all she could do to keep Serran in sight, let alone catch up with him. Worse, the ground underfoot was trembling and she knew the rock figures were close behind. She dare not look, simply pushed herself to move on as fast as she could. Her breath was coming in huge, tearing gasps, throat rasping

  A cry ahead of her broke her concentration. She stumbled, catching herself, and continued running, but one of the finger-knives sliced the air beside her face as she moved on. She instinctively ducked away from it, slammed into the wall of the corridor, tripped over her own feet, and tumbled to the ground.

  There were rock figures towering over her, the blades of their hands reaching out and down. Her wards flared, blinding, and the knives slid across the surface of silver with a screeching sound that set her teeth on edge.

  “Stay still.” A vaguely familiar voice. Then the hiss of Erith steel through the air. Iserat’s face appeared where one of the stone heads had been. “Do not move for a moment.”

  Arrow nodded, breathing too hard to speak. He had already moved on.

  She settled back against the wall, breath coming in gulps, and was treated to the sight of Iserat’s third working their way through the twenty or so rock figures that had been following her and Serran. The warriors moved fluidly, each seeming to understand perfectly where the others were. Blades flashed, Ronath using his sword rather than bow, and the severed limbs of the rock figures gathered on the floor in growing piles.

  When the last limb had been severed, the warriors turned back.

  Willan had been standing with Serran, mage fire crackling in his hand. He cancelled the mage fire as the third returned.

  “We should move,” Iserat said, face grim. “It does not take them long to gather again and we need to be as far away as possible.” He offered Arrow a hand and she took it, grateful for the aid back to her feet.

  “Arrow found you, then,” Onalla commented to Serran, grinning as the old mage glared back at her. “Lovely to see you too, old man.”

  “Talk later,” Iserat suggested, voice dry, and led them away.

  ~

  “How did you come to be there?” Arrow asked, when they had been walking a while and she had got her breath back.

  “Lost,” Pateris answered, grimacing. “This place keeps changing.”

  “We thought we were in one of the corridors that led to an entrance,” Ronath added. “But i
t never ended.”

  “Kept going around corners only to look back and find the corridor was straight,” Onalla said with a shudder. “Nasty place.”

  “Have you seen Kester?” Arrow asked.

  The six exchanged glances before Iserat shook his head.

  “We were all separated. It has taken a while to find each other.”

  “There was no sign of Kester. Or any humans,” Willan added. “But we are all in one piece. And he is a capable warrior.”

  Arrow nodded. She wanted to say something, but no words made it on to her tongue. Kester was still missing. A tight knot of panic gripped her. He was capable. Of course he was. But this was a place with surjusi, rock figures and the being calling himself Saul. And those were just the dangers she knew about.

  At length, Iserat called for a short pause. They were in a long, straight corridor, with good views to either side. Arrow had recovered her energy and was about to offer to keep going when she saw the cadre leader’s eyes stray to Serran. They were stopping for him, she realised. The Erith’s favourite mage looked exhausted, breathing hard, face pale, deep shadows under his eyes.

  The six settled on the ground, Serran following. A nice trick, Arrow thought, as she sat down, too. No one had suggested, by word or gesture, that he needed to rest, he was simply following their example.

  When they were all settled, the questions began, the six full of curiosity, not least how Serran had come to be in the cells, and had he found a way out of the realm?

  “Saul caught me,” Serran told them, apparently disgusted with himself. “Silly mistake.”

  “What did he want with you?” Arrow asked, breaking through the six’s questions.

  “Information. Power. Who knows?” Serran spread his hands, indicating he did not know. Arrow’s eyes narrowed. The acerbic mage who had been criticising her lack of direction had faded. Serran seemed frail, the six clearly not wanting to press him too hard.

  “A way out,” Onalla prompted.

  Serran shook his head, lips pressed together. The six waited for a moment, perhaps hoping he would fill the silence. He did not, glaring at the ground.

  “Can you sense anyone else?” Iserat asked Arrow.

  Arrow drew a breath, unexpected sting warranting another breath. She was the inexperienced one. No tracking skills. No combat skills. But she could do magic.

  Sending her senses out resulted in a nosebleed. She shook her head. Nothing.

  “This place is impossible to navigate.” Onalla echoed Arrow’s thoughts. “The damn corridors keep changing shape. There are no doorways. No windows.”

  “It looked like there were rooms in the walls, with windows looking out,” Iserat remembered, frowning. “Perhaps if we can find one of them, we can get our bearings better.”

  They all looked around the corridor. The endless corridor, with its blank walls. Not one door.

  “Are the doors hidden?” Arrow wondered out loud.

  “I thought of that. A glamour of sorts,” Willan suggested, “but I cannot sense any active magic. And touching the surface makes my skin crawl.”

  Arrow looked at the stone wall nearest to her. She did not think her skin had crawled when she had freed Serran, and could not remember if she had touched the walls apart from that.

  “Perhaps if I-”

  Whatever she would have said was interrupted by the sword flaring. Her skin crawled with static. Surjusi. A lot of them.

  They all rose, the six flowing into a circle, warriors facing outward, surrounding Serran, battle wards rising, crackling against the static charge of the air. Arrow drew the sword, light damped down.

  She stood with her back to the wall, turning her head in either direction. The corridor was empty. Her hair was twisting in clouds around her head, trailing across her face leaving minor shocks as it passed. The surjusi were close.

  “Where?” Willan hissed, his head turning this way and that. He had mage fire ready in his hands, ready to use.

  “Close,” Arrow answered, taking another step back to see further along the corridor. “No movement I can see.”

  “None here,” Onalla said, looking one way.

  “Me neither,” Ronath added, opposite Onalla. He was down to his last few arrows, she saw. He grimaced as he saw the direction of her gave. “We normally collect the spent arrows and reshape them. It is much harder to do when running away from surjusi.”

  The static charge intensified and there was a faint rumbling sound, the ground shaking slightly under her feet. She moved, taking a few steps away from the wall, closer to the six, turning to face the blank wall.

  Even as she did so, the walls on either side of the corridor vanished. Simply faded to nothing between one heartbeat and the next, a trail of nausea coursing through Arrow, the static almost visible in the air.

  The group was exposed. There were stairs going up on one side, and down on the other, and the wide staircases were both overflowing with surjusi. Giant creatures, the power of them pressing against Arrow’s senses.

  “We should run,” Serran said. Arrow could not spare time to look at him, but he sounded every one of his many hundred years of age.

  “Nowhere to go,” Iserat answered, voice tight. “Arrow, we will defend you.”

  Arrow swallowed the lump in her throat, sword held in front of her. A shadow-walker. Last line of defence against the dark. Her palms were sweaty, grip uncertain on the sword.

  “Mantra,” Willan murmured. Without looking, she knew the better part of his attention was on the surjusi. Still, he had sensed her hesitation.

  Mantra.

  The simple lines flowed through her mind, calming her enough to let the sword take over.

  She moved.

  Forward, to the surjusi descending towards them.

  The sword stayed dull, only its edges brilliant with silver. It swung, Arrow’s body moving with it, feet following patterns she had never learned, perfectly balanced as she cut through the descending demons.

  There was no sound apart from her breathing, even and steady, and her heartbeat, strong and sure. No sensation apart from the hilt under her hand, warm to her touch, the slightest breeze against her cheek as she moved, solid ground underfoot. Only the sword. Only the surjusi. Only the pattern of battle.

  The sword sliced through the surjusi with no resistance.

  She moved without tiring.

  A dozen. Maybe more. And still more came towards her. Piles of ash grew around her, the grey weight of the dead blurring the edges of her sight.

  And there were still more.

  She stepped forward, sword turning to meet the next demon and the ground disappeared from underneath her feet, stairs that had been leading upward abruptly leading down.

  She fell. Tumbled down. Hit off the stone stairs. Shoulder. Hip. Knee. Foot. Wrist. Sword clattered to the stone next to her. Hand out to brace against the fall. She tore skin on the last step, rough surface taking most of the surface of her palm.

  No breath. No sound. No pain. For one blissful moment. Then her heart thumped, all the points of her body waking up in agony. Bones broken. Perhaps. Still no breath. Her lungs were empty. Pain pain pain. Everywhere.

  Breath came with searing agony that drew tears to her eyes.

  She struggled to sit up. Her hair was still full of static. The surjusi were still close.

  She put her hand on the ground to push off and hissed, the open wound coming into contact with the surface again, bleeding freely.

  Looked down at her hand. The right hand. And realised it was not as it should be. The misaligned fingers were straight and perfect. She flexed them. It was her hand. Connected to her body. Yet there was no evidence of broken bones.

  And underneath her hand something else.

  Through her blood. Something.

  She focused down, past the perfectly formed fingers, through her hand, through the blood. There. Just there. A swirl of energy. Not like the second world. Or the shadow world. But energy. Lines and curls o
f power. It curdled in her stomach, nausea rising. Still, it was power. Power she could use.

  She formed the words for a simple hold spell, drew the power in, and shoved it out, aimed at the surjusi all around.

  Rose to her feet, sword in hand again, and cut through the frozen demons until there were no more left.

  Then collapsed to her knees again, throwing up onto the stone floor, shivering so hard her teeth rattled, the grey press of the dead pinning her down, the points of pain across her body waking up again. Wrist. Knee. Ankle. Hip. Ribs. Among them the peculiar ache of fractured bone, the sharper twinge of pulled muscle, the pulse of more bruises forming.

  Mantra.

  Willan had not spoken. No one had. The reminder was there in her own mind.

  I walk in the dark but I am not the dark.

  I walk in the light but I am not the light.

  I walk in the shadows and I can become the shadows.

  Above all, I walk.

  Her sight cleared, and she found she could see more. She was huddled on the stone floor. The walls were solid again. The floor was scattered with thick drifts of ash. Surjusi remnants. And above them, brilliant sparks of amber provided light to see by. Enough to see the grim faces of the six and Serran as they stared at the amber.

  “So many dead,” Pateris murmured. “Old friends.”

  For a horrible moment, Arrow thought he had recognised some of the amber sparks as belonging to a specific Erith. But he was not looking at any particular spot, just turning slowly to view the cloud of Erith magic.

  “We could use it,” Willan said, voice heavy. He looked drawn, expression pinched. Physical pain, or grief, Arrow was not sure. He reached a hand out, cupping one of the amber sparks. It nestled in the palm of his hand, seeming quite content. “There is enough here to give us all a boost.”

  “No.” Iserat’s voice was low, choked. He was looking around, eyes too bright. “We will not become our enemy. We have survived this long with our own resources.”

  “And now we have the girl,” Serran added. “Did she tell you she is my granddaughter?”

  Arrow closed her eyes and huddled against the wall while exclamations took place over her head. The Erith’s most famous mage. So far she was not impressed.