“Who do I go for next?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous this time. I told myself the clamminess was just the otherworld-water I’d used to wash off the worst of the diviner’s vomit, reacting strangely with my skin – but I knew I was being fanciful.
A dragon…
It was cold sweat filming across my forehead.
“Timesnatcher,” she replied at once from behind her mask. “It’s manageable with just the two of us, but I won’t be able to slow everyone at the same time, not on my own.”
“Okay. How long’s it been since I took you?”
A… dragon…
“Less than a minute.”
I shook my head. “She’s going to know something’s up this time – that I’m willing to go back, that we’re here…“
Tanra shook hers right back at me. “She’s bringing Valorin to the party. That’s the best bit of this – she’s almost out of Ceryad power! Her reach is diminishing, and she can’t find Shallowlie and Netherhame, not right now. Her other –”
“Valorin’s enough of a problem on his own,” I said, feeling a bit sick at the thought. Can I really fight someone who’s just acting under an enchanter’s control? “We’ve got to get started, or we’ve got to leave, and we can’t do this without –“
Tanra snapped: “Her other arch-sorcerers are too far away, I was going to say.”
I swallowed, thought it through, staring at the incongruously-serious frowning face she wore, garish hood pulled over her hair.
“And she has Bookwyrm and Bladesedge?” I asked.
“I… hadn’t considered that…”
Her head dropped suddenly.
“You mean you can’t see them.”
“Give me… give me time…” she murmured.
“That’s the one thing we don’t have!”
“We – have – time – Kas.”
Now her tone brooked no refusal.
What else could I do? I was at her mercy.
I waited.
Zel was moving towards us, I could tell, but only when I looked closely. She’d travelled a distance no greater than the thickness of my pinkie-finger since Tanra put me under the effects of her magic.
Everything was coming undone. If I thought I was at Tanra’s mercy, what about Lovebright? Joceine… Whoever she really was… She was the spider at the centre of the web, pulling the strings, but to what end? Nothing about this made any sense. If she’d wanted us all dead, surely she could’ve accomplished it by now… No, she didn’t want us dead – not exactly. She wanted us changed, wanted us in certain places at certain specific times, accomplishing predefined successes, failures…
Predefined? Predicted. Foreseen…
Surely she was following the steps laid out by her pet diviners…
Would it all end in us being… eaten?
Would we even know that it was happening to us?
How did I know this wasn’t all some test of her power, sending me into an illusion of the otherworld, making me think I was talking to Tanra, when in fact I was… I don’t know… still sitting in the chair?
What if I never went to the Arrealbord at all?
My head was really starting to hurt.
“I’ve got so many questions.” I sounded like I was whinging, even to myself. “Can I talk yet? Because it helped before – when I was talking, I mean – and I don’t even know how long has passed now –“
“Less than a second since the last time you asked, for your information!” she flared, raising her head at last. The eyes I could see through the slits were those of the cool Sticktowner once more, though. “First, we get Timesnatcher. And that means we need protection. We could look for Voicenoise, or one of the others… they don’t look good, though…”
‘They’ didn’t look ‘good’? Was she talking about our odds? Was she seeing us die, over and over in different futures, even as she stood there?
I thought about it. “I’ve got something. I can only hope our dragon friend hasn’t damaged it. But we have to get there and back – it’ll be a long way, on this side… and if we go back without protection, too close to Hightown, she might ensnare us… I need the best route to Oldtown through urban areas. I mean, literally, we’re better off following a road than cutting across the grass… Etherium rules. At least until you think we’re far enough away from her…”
“A long way, you say?” She cocked her head at me. “You’ve forgotten how fast we can move like this, and we’ll only go slower as we go faster… you’ll see. Come on. I know what you’ve got in mind.”
She took me, and it was like the grass was a wave – as it had been in my vision, when Nentheleme blessed me – and we rode the wave, the undulating carpet beneath us. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what had happened when she took us across a valley, across a treeline, and then we were striding atop the trees’ leaves, racing through the still, silent air.
I really hope she knows what she’s doing, I thought.
* * *
Keyla screamed as I stuck my head through her wall.
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“Ah, I do apologise,” I said, sticking my arm out and offering a hand-wave to emphasise my words.
“Feychilde!”
The heaving of her chest gradually slowed, and she lowered the quivering hand she’d pressed to her lips.
“I, really, I can’t say how sorry I am about this but – can we possibly borrow that?”
I pointed to Spirit’s amulet dangling around her neck.
Keyla turned, and it was only then that she realised Killstop was standing beside her, touching her elbow.
“Of – of course, Liberator…”
She removed it and handed it right over, staring at me curiously.
“Ta. I’ll… bring it back. Later. Glaif witness me. By Kultemeren.” It couldn’t hurt, could it? “And I’ll use the door next time – I promise. Gotta rush now!”
And with that and a flash of green energy, we were gone.
* * *
“What’re the odds on this?” I asked, once I got my breath back. I really didn’t like moving quickly.
But for all her faults, Tanra knew her stuff. She’d brought us unerringly back to the same spot. Zel had moved perhaps a couple of hand-spans, but the fairy had still only just turned her head as though to follow our trajectory as we sped away; her body was still oriented the same direction as before. We’d lost a few seconds, tops, while Tanra put Keyla under her spell.
Whatever answer she gave, I’d believe her.
“Fifty-fifty,” she replied at length. “It’s difficult – there are no incongruencies I can see, but I’m not an enchanter; what do you think? You helped create it.”
I’d already looked the pendant over with my sorcerer’s-eye. “Everything about the rune looks the same as the day he made it, and the magic I put in it…”
“It feels the same?”
“Uh huh?”
She shrugged. “Seventy-thirty, in our favour. You’re up for this? I’ll have to run away, you know. The amulet won’t work for two, nowhere near as well.”
I nodded. “I’ll yell when I’m back –“
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Do you… you need me to refresh my seal again? Just to be on the safe side?”
“Kas, it’s been seconds, literal seconds, since you made the mark. It’s not even had chance to bleed yet, for Celestium’s sake!”
“Well I’m sorry, but I’m nervous!” I suppressed a shudder. “I know what I’ve got to do, and I’m terrified!”
A… dropping… dragon.
“You can do it. I know you can.”
“Curse you. Right after I thought to myself, how much trust I put in your judgement…”
She laughed. “Get on with it. I’ll be right back.”
I drew a quivering breath. “Okay. Go.”
She fled, and time came rushing back.
My assorted fey companions let out a variety of exclamations.
I addressed Zel, who was clearly the most miffed at being left out of the loop: “In a minute, dear. Trust goes both ways, remember.”
I reached out my hand to pinch a seam in reality, and had to take a moment to stop myself shaking. My fingers weren’t performing their usual trick.
Come on, Kas. Keep it together. They’re all relying on you.
I opened the jadeway, just a little bit.
Go to Lovebright and reprimand her. Tell her how you feel.
It was a tiny voice, whispering in my head, over and over.
Go to Lovebright and kill her. Show the others your strength.
But with Spirit’s pendant around my neck, I could hear it: the accent to the voice.
It was not my own. It wasn’t even Lovebright’s.
Too… draconic.
The room I could espy through the hole had changed.
Sunspring was laying his hands on Lady Sentelemeth, and the ancient Lord Wenlyworth was already leaning over the arm of his chair, convulsing, foaming at the mouth. Lord Haid had his eyes closed.
The others were standing to attention, in a loose ring around the arch-druid and the three politicians in their chairs; Em was standing on the table, fire-wreathed.
Lovebright was nowhere to be seen – a fact that meant precisely nothing.
The arch-diviner’s voice boomed: “There!”
I could barely withdraw, close the seam, before Timesnatcher’s blade penetrated the planar boundary, Stormsword’s orange flames flickering behind him.
At least he was in front of me now – possibly…
I ducked low and reopened the jadeway, hoping against hope –
Tackling someone armed with a knife was perilous enough. Tackling them through a planar doorway, blindly, without getting stabbed? Impossible.
Then, arm them with a dagger designed to eat demons for breakfast, trailing emerald tinctures through the air.
Then, make them a hostile arch-diviner.
I went out of and back into Etherium in a flash, and it wasn’t four punches in the face I received.
I landed face-first in a pool of thick, glistening water, life spilling out of me in a dozen places and still they kept coming – daggers falling, sinking through my robe, my unprotected flesh – my internal organs rupturing in violent floods of effluent and light that I could feel streaming out of me, high into the air –
Still I couldn’t shield –
My heart, a sucking sensation, an explosion of pain –
Then I was on my back on the grass once more, fierce clouds frozen in place in the sky above me that I could see through the canopy of tall trees. The warmth of a healing elixir was again making its way down my throat. And then another, and another.
I’m glad… I didn’t have to yell… Tanra…
The rejuvenating fluid trickled slowly, tickling my tonsils, but it still moved far more quickly than my surroundings; I’d been stopped again.
I flicked my gaze across.
Timesnatcher, crouching beside me, tipping a little phial of his own into my mouth. His other hand, in contact with my shoulder.
Killstop standing over us.
“I do apologise, Kastyr,” Timesnatcher said huskily. “Tanra’s explained. I would’ve brought your sylph in, too, but he doesn’t like us after we attacked you, no matter what your fairy says.” He sighed, withdrawing his healing elixir from my lips. “I’ll be in need of your seal, when you’re ready.”
I swallowed then croaked, a meaningless noise, before my innards started twisting a little, the healing working its way through my body.
“She didn’t poison us all.” His husky voice fell to a trembling bass. “Not Emrelet and I. She’s using Neko to replicate the effect of a toxin on the nobles, but, yes, it’s going to be blamed on you. She’s trying to manoeuvre you into a future where you don’t belong. She’s…” he swallowed “… a dragon? Seriously?”
He turned his head up to face Killstop, who merely nodded solemnly.
“I still can’t wrap my head around it,” he admitted. “I need… time…”
“This… again?” I moaned. “Thought… you were… greatest…?”
“Imagine looking through the threads in a scarf to find the shortest one,” Killstop said to me. “It can be quite frustrating, let me tell you. Luck has more to do with it than skill. Skill – power – is just the ability to search them in the first place. It never guarantees success.”
“She and I were… we were intimate, some nights ago.” Again, the deep voice shook. “It was… I cannot remember much of what happened. But it did… it happened.”
His voice dropped off almost into silence on the last words.
I stared at him, not even knowing how to respond to this.
Tanra knew how to respond. “Is that something we can capitalise on?”
He only shook his head, and said: “I don’t know. She – she wasn’t her. It makes no sense…”
“You can scry deeper later.” Killstop had her hands on her hips. “Come on, get up, Kas. We’ve got to get a move on.”
With Timesnatcher’s help I propped myself up on an elbow, then took Killstop’s kitchen knife when she passed it over. Timesnatcher held out his arm, sleeve drawn back, and I started slicing into it.
“Speak about your troubles, Feychilde,” he said after a moment.
I laughed, then cut the sound short. I could hear the despair in it.
“Which ones, exactly? I’m currently wondering how wide of a gate I can open… but I can’t stay in contact with them all, not at the same –”
“Don’t trouble yourself over that. You’re coming with me to see Wilderweird first. We’re getting amulets for Tanra and I before we even step into that mess out there, and then we will help you carry them through, one by one. She won’t be able to stop us.” Irimar lifted his face to the overpoweringly-moss-scented breeze. It was clear from his lack of reaction to his surroundings that he’d been to Etherium before. “I believe it’s that way.” He nodded towards what would be south, given the sun’s position, if we’d been on the Material Plane.
More stomach-lurching speeding around, and still no way to use my wraith here…
I passed Tanra her knife back, and sighed.
It was going to be one of those days.
* * *