The city of Zadhal was once one of the fairest jewels in the Mundic Realm’s crown. Word was that it was located in the Sephanaul Mountains, a thousand miles to the north, in an area that was half-legend by now anyway. The city had enjoyed immense success from the exports generated by its mining and deep-delving wizardry; the huge white stones that made up its walls were hewn by magic, in imitation of Mund’s – the place was far smaller and less impressive than Mund, of course, even if it was, in its origins, more ancient. There were, according to my books, still some elves living who could truthfully say that they’d played in the city’s parks and creeks as children – but it had been almost three hundred years since the mortal races had ruled the place. Three hundred years since any person had been able to live there in peace.
Since any person could step foot there without fearing for their lives every second that they stayed.
What had happened was a matter of debate, but the opposing arguments tended to fall into two categories. There were those who believed that the sorcerers of Zadhal had used bribes to obtain protection from the nascent, Magisterium-like guild that had existed in those days – that the Zadhalite nobles wilfully took their experiments in the blackest of the black arts to such extremes that the city was lost. And there were those who believed the mages of Zadhal had acted in innocence, perhaps uncovering something unspeakable, and in their naivety and the surety of their powers awakening the creature, or creatures, that simply could not be stopped.
All but one of the commentators I’d read had refused to speculate further; the only other notion was that Zadhal simply fell to an outside attack. But this was rejected out of hand by the sources, the stories I’d been exposed to. No one seemed to want to consider the idea that a Mundic city could be taken down by force, even three hundred years ago, before the Magisterium was established in its current form.
Whatever had happened, the archmages of the day had failed.
“It’s a tough bugger to keep closed, the Winter Door,” Ly explained. “Once we’ve gone over weaving –“
“I’ve been doing some reading,” I said through my mouthful, but she just waved a hand and continued:
“– you’ll understand how the Magisterium’s keeping the denizens of Zadhal out.” She shuddered. “They couldn’t pay me enough.”
“They’ve bound the Door tight?” I remembered seeing it from a distance: a Door like the Autumn Door, but a wall of blue fire rather than green; its shrine was steel walls, and it was in the centre of a small wasteland; I could picture how you could set barriers along each face… “With force-lines right up against the portal?”
She nodded. “You’ve been to the Doors before, right? Since you became…” She twirled a finger in the air.
“Just the Autumn Door, actually. I’ve flown near the others, but haven’t, you know –“
“You ever been through the Spring Door? Ever been to Habburat?”
I shook my head.
“Well, yeah, the Doors are a bit less impressive from the air, gotta admit.” She sucked sauce off her fingers. “That’s kinda my point. You’ve been close to a Door. You know what it’s like – for us.” She gave me a knowing look. “It’s even worse when you go through, trust me.”
“Of course…” I remembered how shaken I’d ended up when I visited with the twins, when I actually spent some time in the vicinity of the portal, and I suddenly understood what she’d meant. “How much do they pay? By the Five!”
“More dan we get,” Min supplied.
Ly grimaced. “Yeah, more than us… but you should see the state of the arch-sorcerers in the Box, though.”
“Box? That’s what they call the walls around it?” ‘They’ were imaginative.
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“That’s what they call the whole thing – the open ground around the Winter Door, all the dead tree stumps.”
“Ah.”
“It’s laced with runes – you’ll see, when you go.”
“Am I…” I frowned. “Did I volunteer for something?”
Ly looked at Min, who looked back at her, saying nothing.
“Guys… I distinctly remember not saying ‘I wanna go for a two-week holiday in Zadhal this Yearsend,’ you know…”
What would it be like?
“As if anyone’d last two weeks.” Ly’s response hardly started out reassuringly. “You want to sleep in there? No, no – look. There’s one way in, one way out. We can’t even open portals in the place, not for us, anyway – nothing from Materium comes back out non-undead, anywhere around Zadhal – no one even wants to try, anymore. No, look… This is all T-Man’s big idea. He’s been in talks with the Magisterium and the Arrealbord. Something about ‘there’s never going to be a better time than now’, with a side-dish of ‘do you really want to upset my plans?’ They know he’s never wrong, so it’s going to happen.”
“Dere is always choice,” Min whispered, looking down fixedly at the table. She’d eaten only a little, unlike me, and Ly had probably gone through as much as the two of us combined.
“Yeee-ah,” Ly retorted. “Choice is… what was it?… Choice is just your experience of the foredained. Doesn’t mean you coulda chosen any other way. Just that you had to experience the, the struggle to decide.”
She might have mangled her words a bit but she had wisdom, this Lyanne. I started to reassess her.
“But why me?” I asked. “I mean – why didn’t he say something himself –“
“Way I get it, if he said something, you mighta acted different last night. He had to know you’d,” she smirked, “get your hands dirty.”
“Are you going?”
Ly shook her head. “He did explain to you about… D.C.?”
D.C.? I didn’t…
“And R.G.…”
Ah… Direcrown? And Redgate.
“Yeah – why?”
“Well, we can’t leave him here, alone, can we? And someone has to stay, to keep an eye on things – no offence, but I know the darkmages better than you, I’ve fought heretics –“
“I’ve taken down a couple of archmages basically solo,” I protested.
She held up a hand, palm out. “I’m sure you have, but you realise there are more dark sorcerers than any other type of darkmage? I know the city – I’ve been around a few times. T-Man’s plan is to send you, Min and D.C., along with any of the other champions who’ll go, and the arch-magisters they’ve got to spare… They’ve got a magister like us, you know? A fighter. Came into his powers in the Rivertown battle.”
In the Incursion?
I stared at her. “And he decided to join the Magisterium so quickly?”
“He already was a magister, way I heard it.”
My staring eyes widened.
“Anyway, I’ll hold the fort on this side. Four arch-sorcerers, though. Think about it…”
I sat for a moment in thought.
Did that mean Em would end up going with me? The idea of it did thrill me – seeing Zadhal with my own two eyes – we would be taking the fight to them, casting humanity’s spite back in their rotten teeth…
I rubbed my side in half-remembered pain.
In her current mood Em would be a mighty weapon in a place like Zadhal. But would it help her? What about Nighteye, who’d seemed distraught after the slaughter he’d caused amongst the ghouls and vampires? Perhaps Leafcloak would make him stay back…
“You want to go,” Ly said in a satisfied tone, and sat back in her chair, rubbing her now rather-rounded belly, perhaps taking my earlier motion for the same thing.
I could hardly say no. I had butterflies in my stomach, feeling empty again despite the silly amount of food I’d just consumed.
“You using an eldritch power on me?” I asked.
“May-beee,” she evaded. “Am I right?”
My face must’ve answered for me. I opened my mouth but I grasped for the words to explain how I felt – and the triumphant smile returned to her lips, as though I’d done nothing more in this whole conversation than confirm all her suspicions.
“He said that would be how I’d know I was right to ask you,” she said. “He’s one slippery dropstain, T-Man. Look…” She glanced across at Min. “You’re going to have to keep an eye out for each other, you hear me? Watch each other’s backs. Support each other’s shields. You can’t rely on D.C. to put himself on the line for you, remember that.”
I pursed my lips. “Speaking from experience?”
She shrugged, as if expressing nonchalance, but I could see in her eyes how angry she became when contemplating my question. “I don’t believe for a heartbeat that his shield covering Smoulder should’ve dropped that quickly, for a start…”
I realised within thirty seconds that I shouldn’t have asked. This topic of conversation – the various moments at which Direcrown may or may not have betrayed other champions – carried us through the rest of the meal, out of the restaurant, and down the street. It was only when Min used an illusory power to mask us as we changed into our champion outfits that Ly finally started teaching me actual sorcery.
And half the stuff she said about the weave went in one ear and out the other – it took me ten minutes to fix my shield-line to Shallowlie’s while we strolled the wind-ripped yellow leaves of Hightown’s streets, my fingers still slightly shaky, my thoughts elsewhere.
I was going to Zadhal.
* * *