The enchanters let us observe through Ciraya’s senses while it unfolded. As the encounter progressed, the terror fizzed in my mind like an acid chewing through my skull, eating at my brain, and I longed to cry out – but I couldn’t disturb her now. None of us used the link – not at first.
“Whatever’s the matter, my dear magister?”
The woman behind the desk was old, perhaps in her late sixties, with big droopy-looking ears; but she looked lithe, not scrawny. Her eyes were clear of the redness of age – in fact you would have to say she looked sharp, alert, as she sat there in her chair, dressed in what might’ve been a nice-looking formal robe forty-eight hours ago. Yet she didn’t seem to notice that the chamber was steeped in shadow, the dark-blue sky beyond the tall windows giving barely a spatter of illumination. And, perhaps more importantly, she was surrounded by a scene not unlike the results of Em’s storm in my apartment, that night with Dustbringer: a tumult of papers, a million carefully-inked characters showing across a thousand exposed surfaces, loose leaves half-askew from their bindings, tomes standing on their ends like strange sentinels looking out over a field of carcasses.
What happened here? What was she really looking for?
“It’s serious, I’m afraid, Mistress.”
“Then do come in – sit.” Arithos pointed at the chair in front of the desk with a single languid finger.
Ciraya’s right. There’s definitely something wrong with her.
Oh no. Oh, no, Ciraya, what’re you doing…
The magister went and sat in the damn chair. Eighteen inches from the desk at most.
I grit my teeth. She had to do it, but I didn’t like it. If the eolastyr realised what was happening, she might try to flee before bringing out the whip, change the battlefield without us getting a chance at our objective. Tanra’s plan would come to nothing. Ciraya had to lull her into a false sense of security before we could make our move.
“There’s no explanation for the disappearances. I’ve discussed it with my magistry contacts, some pretty powerful diviners. I know some of them were your friends, Mistress, but it’s a dead end. Something’s blocking them.“
The thing across the desk wasn’t even trying to hide its smile. “And Henthae?”
“Henthae, Zakimel – as far as I can tell, they’re as clueless as the champions… Stormsword said Timesnatcher thinks it’s one of the unknown factors, like Dreamlaughter or some other archmage of similar power-level.”
When Arithos purred, it wasn’t human. It was the tiger inside.
“Hmmmmmmmmmm.”
The eolastyr was staring hungrily at Ciraya – at me, and the rest of us, as we watched through her eyes.
How is she not shaking with fear? I asked myself incredulously.
Ciraya looked away – the young sorceress’s eyes went roaming over the books on the table. I recognised The Science of the Past, its spine askew, its pages spread across the surface of the chaos.
“Feychilde,” Killstop said over the link.
“Come on,” Netherhame said aloud, suddenly hopping down from her perch and standing up tall. “Let’s get into position.”
“Finally,” Kani muttered, frowning. With some difficulty she managed to clamber free of the bed, then turned and helped Orieg and Arxine to their feet. “It’ll all be over in a moment, girls.”
Ciraya was talking: “Did you… get all the information you were looking for?”
Arithos wasn’t replying, and the magister still wasn’t looking back at her, at those too-sharp, too-carnivorous eyes.
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“It might be time to back away, magister,” Glancefall said.
“She has a while yet,” Doomspeaker supplied.
“Mistress?” Ciraya hedged, daring to look at the eolastyr once more. Arithos’s face was warped into a look of savage distaste –
“What?” the old woman snapped.
“The book you sent us for? Is it… as informative as you’d hoped?”
The keen old eyes went back to the desk, roving about the scattered papers.
“I think you need to back away now, Ciraya,” Killstop said. “Maybe this won’t work… but we still have to fight her.”
But Ciraya wasn’t moving. She was staring at the husk of her mentor, and while the enchanters weren’t transmitting it, I could almost feel her grief, the overwhelming sorrow.
What was it she’d said, that night I fought Shadowcrafter with Fe as my secret weapon?
“The Seven-Star Swords looked after me when I came here, gave me direction and purpose. You aren’t going to get an objective perspective on them from me.”
She was in a similar situation to Em, brought under the wing of a powerful, controlling influence – if only Em’s were so overtly possessed by Evil…
The six of us were standing on the globe-lit landing now, nothing but a few doors to break up the monotony of the featureless walls. Orieg and Arxine’s shields were there, unbelievably powerful – we were just steps from covering half the eolastyr’s room in an impenetrable shell. I spread my wings from my back, tested my wraith-form, ensuring everything was in its place. The flight-spell was still active under my feet, the energising-spells still racing through my blood.
Still, Ciraya stared at Arithos. At the twentieth-rank demon.
“I’m sorry, Mistress. I…”
As Arithos’s gaze came back to Ciraya’s face – my face – I had to blink away the vision again: one of the doors near us opened suddenly. An adult man stepped out of his room, turned and noticed us.
The sorcerer froze, and I slowly raised an arm in silence, pointing back at his door. Netherhame to my left was making much the same gesture. Then all at once, like he was coming out of a trance, the man nodded violently in thanks – he flung himself back into his room, slamming it shut behind him at first, then, just in the nick of time, realising the noise it would make and catching it, closing it quietly behind him as though to reassure us he’d never been there, never saw us.
I sighed, and returned to the vision.
The eolastyr was speaking: “… quite fine, I assure you, magister… I extend to you my thanks, for all you’ve done to keep an ear on the ground for me.” She waved a hand slowly at the windows, the lightless sky, and Ciraya looked down again. “It can be difficult from up here to keep on top of the little things.”
“Ciraya, you’re right on the edge!” Killstop hissed.
“No problem,” Ciraya said aloud, standing up suddenly, refusing to meet the eolastyr’s gaze.
“Are you quite alright, Ciraya?” the demon asked. “You don’t quite seem to be yourself, today.”
As though she couldn’t help herself, the young sorceress’s eyes were pulled to meet Arithos’s.
A hideous grin was pasted across the Mistress’s lower face.
“She knows!” Dimdweller growled.
“Sure thing, Mistress,” Ciraya said in an unshaken voice. “Just… a long day.”
The sorceress stepped a little to her left, away from the chair, just incidentally removing the obstacle from her avenue of retreat –
Drop it.
Three pulses of the six sylph-wings, along with my spectral lightness and the will-activated flight-spell, let me travel at speeds some diviners might envy.
I leapt at the wall, passing through it, heading up and out into the snowy air.
It was dark enough, and satyr-reflexes only took me so far. I summoned and joined with my vampire as I ascended.
“First line, go!” Killstop cried.“Twins forward!”
As Netherhame and Kani ushered Orieg and Arxine into the correct spot by the wall of the landing, now far below me, I could see the twins’ shield nudging up slightly. It was a vast blue bubble, with its curve near the apex of the barrier now penetrating through the room at the top of the central spire… the chamber we’d all seen through the enchantment’s magic – my target –
I slid into the room at such an angle that I passed through a few flights of stairs before coming up through the floor, surrounded in buzzing azure blades.
Eneleyn Arithos was no longer herself. Her hand gripped the golden whip, its thongs choked with gobbets of flesh; her eyes were empty ink-wells, deeper black than a starless night sky. She leapt over the desk just as the shield settled into place, a diagonal arc of blue sweeping across the space.
Just as Ciraya stumbled back into its protections. Just as I barrelled up out of the ground at the eolastyr, getting between the two of them.
Our foe didn’t know I was coming; Tanra’s gambit was working. Hopefully the demon wouldn’t know about the others either – I could see them, through the windows, growing on the balcony into vast animals, mere instants from imploding the glass, surging into the room through a pulverised wall –
I was at the front of Arxine and Orieg’s shield, my circle extending through it. Mistress Arithos swung out her empty hand, fingers forming hooks, and as the arm stretched out towards us it changed in reality, becoming clawed, purple fur spotted with black stretching up her wrist beneath her sleeve.
* * *