MARBLE 6.7: THE HUNTERS
“Eradicate such evil where it rears its head, and be watchful for the hydra’s regrowth. We cannot permit a single one of their catechisms inside our minds. We locate and purge all such aberrations during your debriefing. Should you suspect yourself or a member of your band of heretical infestation, do not hesitate to report it immediately to your band-leader or sub-division head. Do not be afraid. The earlier such influences are discovered, the more readily they can be expunged, and the swifter the recovery for the unfortunate bearer of sacrilegious thoughts.”
– from the ‘Magister’s Handbook’ ch. 40
“Praise Joran we’re all safe now.”
Lord Haid couldn’t quite get his fingers in order, it seemed – he kept folding his hands over themselves, again and again, a seriously-noticeable nervous tick. But I couldn’t forget him standing over the First Lady and the Lord Shadow, prepared to sell his life for theirs. He might’ve been nervous, but his heart was in the right place.
“Safe – for how long, my lord?” I asked. “We have to do something about the dragon. She – it – wants to take our minds back, remember?”
“There is only one option,” Stormsword said from her seat beside me, voice tightly controlled. I could tell she was painfully aware she was in the presence of her fellow magisters, and of them only Zakimel could be expected to know for certain who she was behind the mask. “It is little different from a heretic situation, only worse – we have no idea what she can do to us. We take her down, fast and hard. Concerted effort, as with titan-class demons.”
As I looked around the table I noted the admiring stares of the twin arch-wizards, Saff and Tarr, their eyes glued to my girlfriend, and I smiled. I was trying to judge the reception of her words in the faces of the others, still doing my best not to show my awe at our environment. This room was on the fourth floor of the Maginox – the actual fourth floor, not the fortieth or four-hundredth: the ensorcellment on the stairway didn’t work when we were moving under the effects of Starsight’s spell, but when we’d arrived one of Zakimel’s minions, presumably granted his own chronomantic bubble by the arch-magister, greeted us and directed us on. I was thankful we didn’t have to climb the whole damn tower, but it made sense now. The halls at the bottom of the building were, of course, the biggest, given its tapering structure. And there were a lot of interested parties.
Given the amount of people Zakimel had invited in, at least half his motive had to be minimising rumours. He’d been happier to let the champions out of his sight than his own magisters, as though he feared the second he took his eyes off them they were going to go around telling all the undergraduates there was a dragon in the city. What most gave me this impression was that the number of people in the room only seemed to increase as we waited; plenty of the mages in here now weren’t involved in the battle in Etherium. I had an awful suspicion some were simply entering, eavesdropping idly, and then, once their shocked expressions gave them away, they were actually being told to take a chair.
Accordingly, we were all seated at a horseshoe-shaped table in what I’d overheard one magister calling the ‘conference hall’. There were something in the vicinity of two hundred and fifty chairs surroundings the table’s outer edge, and in the centre was a smaller table on a raised dais, where Henthae, Sentelemeth and a number of other (almost equally important-looking) officials were sitting. In their midst were Saff and Tarr and their parents, huddled together with confused, horrified expressions – the parents, that was. The kids still only had eyes for Em.
This was the right place for them to be. I couldn’t imagine a safer room than this one.
By now the chairs in the room weren’t quite all full, but we weren’t far off.
One edge of the semi-circular chamber was the purple wall of the Maginox; looking out, I saw that it had started to rain. With the coloured glass, it was as though the amethyst mists of Zadhal, the poisonous work of Vaahn, had claimed the paths, the bridges. The doubled hue was difficult to wrap my head around: the shielding surrounding the school and the fields remained azure-blue to me – no mere glass tinting was going to occlude something like that from my sorcerer’s eye.
Unless you end up in Zyger, and lose your power, a voice inside my head reminded me.
I straightened up in my seat. Half an hour without Zel and I was starting to impersonate her.
“There might be some utility in finding out what she knows,” a druid called in response to Em. “Rather than just offing her at the first opportunity.”
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“There may be opportunity after she dies,” a sorcerer suggested, smiling faintly. “It would take the concerted efforts of an entire college, and every penny of its treasury in the purchasing of reagents, if enough were even to be found in the city.”
Idiot.
Muttering swept the room.
“– didn’t think it’d be a private venture –“
“– if we opened the Magisterium coffers, and store-houses –“
“– have a great honking undead dragon on the lawn –“
“– completely impossible,” a sorceress drawled – it was Ciraya sitting there! – she was sneering softly, dismissively, at her non-tattoo-covered rival. “This dragon is clearly an archmage, meaning we can’t control her – not her spirit, at least – if she is even a she… Even our arch-sorcerers can’t command an archghost. Cajole, perhaps, but do we really want to tempt fate by –“
“This is not on the cards,” Zakimel said with surprising directness, raising his voice above the crowd. I could see fatigue on his face, the bristling moustache drooping lamely. For all I knew he was still maintaining people inside time-bubbles somewhere, sapping his strength, but it was more than just that: there was disappointment, self-doubt, written into the creases of his forehead, his frown. “We await the return of those champions still absent. Then we will make a battle-plan.”
“Can’t she be foreseen?” someone piped up.
“She cannot be scried or linked.” When Henthae spoke, almost complete silence fell across the stretches of table. If I’d thought to see any of Zakky’s uncertainty on her face, I’d have been disappointed. “We think the former is due to the interaction of a powerful outside force with her chosen path, whether she knows it or not; the latter is evidently due to a previously-unsuspected level of expertise on her part. We have druids in the field as we speak, attempting to perceive her through their particular senses. Though I will state this, for all to hear,” the Head of Special Investigations drew an audible breath: “this creature’s facility for enchantment astounds me. Like many others, I was fooled. Let none cast aspersions, let none be brought into disrepute! But we must temper fascination with caution. I hold with Stormsword. When Timesnatcher returns, I will advise the dragon’s immediate destruction. I do not care what we think she may or may not know. Every second of her continued existence is an incalculable risk.”
The near-silence held – and held, until:
“Well, when do we suppose that shall be?” Lady Sentelemeth asked the old arch-magister.
Muttering swept the room again.
I sighed. “The sooner Timesnatcher’s back, the better,” I said under my breath, contributing to the general clamour.
“Why?” Storm asked curiously. “You want this over as much as I do?”
I looked into her eyes behind the phoenix-mask. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
She affected a slight shudder, and I instinctively put my hand on her arm, drawing her a little closer.
She smiled grimly. “It’s just – messing with minds… It is not something I even enjoy to read about, hear about… even watch it in a play. Having this happen to me, I… Send me back to the front-lines already.”
“I know… At least we might get to fight a dragon into the bargain.”
Her smile became a little less grim, and she didn’t reply, wistfulness entering her eyes.
“As for Timesnatcher… I was actually thinking about something he once told me.”
I briefly related what he’d said about Neverwish, and what Star had told me about Zyger, masking my language as much as I could in case one of the magisters sitting around us was eavesdropping whilst continuing their own conversations.
“I knew zat… it voz feared,” she breathed, eyes searching my own, letting her accent slip in her excitement. “I did not know zi- this!” She turned aside, blinked a few times, then looked back at me. “This is like having an enchanter in your mind, only… worse, no?”
I nodded lamely and she moved closer, placing her lips close to my ear; when she spoke she whispered such that even I could barely hear her.
“You truly think that you are destined to be imprisoned as a darkmage?”
Now it was my turn to shiver.
“Nooooo…” my tongue trailed out the denial, making it a playful sound.
Yesssss, my mind hissed the confirmation. I couldn’t hide from my fears.
“… yes?” my tongue finished lamely.
She drew back again slightly, so that she could look through the slits in my mask again.
“Then we shall talk to Timesnatcher, together,” she said firmly. “I do not want you to hide this from me, Feychilde. Nothing like this, you understand me? We can avert any future, any doom – together.”
She gripped my hand tight, and I returned the pressure –
“Ow!”
I released her hand and turned up my wraith-form at the same time.
“Sorry!” I adopted a pained expression. “Still getting used to the double-satyr thing.”
“It’s okay!” She shook her hand, half-wincing, half-grinning. “Save it for the dragon, will you?”
“So sorry…”
It might not have cost her much, but I felt so much better. I had back-up. Not Stormsword’s – Em’s. Em would guide me away from the darkness that wasn’t silent. This powerful, amazing, beautiful girl would actually argue my case, work for her own reasons to change my destiny for me.
Help me survive the dark tides of time ahead. Save me from losing everything I’d gained that fateful day I’d kicked their grave in goodbye.
Save my soul…
She was looking across the table, saying something to Ciraya, but I was staring into her face, her cobalt eyes, and I found her hand once more beneath the table. She let me take it in my own, and this time I turned up my wraith some more so that I could squeeze as hard as I wanted without her noticing.
I love you, Emrelet Reyd.
At that very moment the door banged open once more. Timesnatcher was framed in the shadows, the white hourglasses on his spare robe just as radiant as I was used to. Other champions were behind him, Killstop right there at his elbow.
“I’m back,” he said, “and I know exactly what we have to do.”
* * *