Fallen, p.25
Fallen, page 25
part #10 of Alex Verus Series
* * *
The better you know someone, and the more history you have with them, the easier it is to find their dreams through Elsewhere. It had taken me a little while to reach Cinder. Finding my next target was easier.
The door opened up into a room with a high arched ceiling and painted white walls. It could have been a palace but the proportions were off, more like a scaled-up doll’s house. People were scattered throughout the room, talking amongst themselves; they wore fine clothes but there was something insubstantial about them. I walked through the crowd, listening with half an ear to the muffled voices, searching for the presence ahead.
At the end of the room was a dais with a gilded throne, and sitting on the throne was Rachel. She wore clothes of purple and gold, trimmed with white fur, and she sat leaning forward, her brows drawn down in a frown. She tapped her fingers on the throne as she stared down at the boy addressing her from in front of the dais. He was young and plainly dressed; something about him looked familiar and it took me a moment to place him. He looked like Zander, one of the slaves from Richard’s mansion, back when Rachel and I had been apprentices.
Rachel asked Zander something. Zander responded slowly, and Rachel snapped at him, her voice sharp. Others were watching from around the walls, dressed in courtiers’ outfits: they gestured with fans, pointed and laughed. The murmur of their words never grew quite loud enough to be understandable, but it was a distraction, drowning out what Zander was saying.
Rachel was growing angry. She pointed at Zander, giving him orders; Zander responded sluggishly, as if confused. Rachel rose to her feet, her face a mask of anger. A green ray stabbed out and Zander disintegrated into dust.
“There!” Rachel shouted. “You see?”
The audience giggled and laughed. No one seemed upset or shocked; they reacted like schoolchildren to a teacher they didn’t respect. Rachel screamed at them and they slipped away, turning and ducking into the crowd. I saw other faces I recognised, shifting and changing; Tobruk and Morden, Vihaela and Onyx. From all around, the murmur of conversation continued unabated. Some of the crowd were drinking; I saw a woman who looked like Crystal lower a goblet, a red stain around her lips.
Rachel had sat back down on her throne and was giving orders. A couple of servants nodded and listened with half an ear: they didn’t seem to be paying attention. I could see Rachel getting angrier and angrier. Apparently, even now, she wasn’t getting the respect she wanted.
She doesn’t seem very happy, I thought coldly. I watched Rachel a moment longer.
Then I blew her throne into a million pieces.
Rachel came tumbling out of the explosion, a shield of green light glowing around her, eyes snapping from side to side. Bits of throne came showering down. “Hey, Rachel,” I called, stepping out of the crowd and into plain view. “I’m back.”
A green ray flashed out at me. I bent it aside and it hit the figure who might have been Crystal. The phantom shape thinned and faded, the goblet shattering to splatter its contents on the floor. The watching audience pointed and laughed. Rachel fired another disintegrate spell, and again I bent it aside. A statue between the windows puffed into dust. “Not this time, Rachel,” I said.
“Don’t call me that!” Rachel shouted.
“Why?”
Rachel attacked again. It wasn’t even close. It was harder for me to change reality here in Rachel’s dreams than it would have been in Elsewhere, but I’d been practising for a long time and Rachel couldn’t hurt me. Of course, I couldn’t do anything to her either, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know that.
“So,” I said. I created a grey-blue sofa in the middle of the room and sat, leaning back against the cushions. “Want to guess why I’m here?”
“Get out,” Rachel said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s to do with what happened at the Tiger’s Palace.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t remember? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It probably didn’t make much of an impression on you.” I crossed my legs, settling back comfortably. “It was that evening last year. While we were waiting for the Council to kick in the door, we had a chat up there on the balcony.”
“I don’t care.”
“So anyway, I asked you why you hated me. Well, I got my answer, and you really didn’t hold back. You told me that I was a hypocrite, that I was just as power-hungry as any Dark mage, that I wanted the same things as you, I just wasn’t willing to pay the price for it. That I’d always known who Richard really was, and that the only reason I’d left was because I couldn’t handle taking orders. Remember?”
“Jesus,” Rachel said. “You’re justifying yourself in my dreams now?”
“Oh, Rachel, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m here to say thank you.”
Rachel stared.
“I had a talk with Shireen a few years ago, and she told me something that stuck with me,” I said. “Back when I was still Richard’s prisoner, right at the end, she came down to the dungeons to talk. She was having second thoughts by then—I guess she’d seen what you were turning into and it was making her nervous. Well, at that point I liked her about as much as you like me, so I really let her have it. Funny thing was, it turned out to be the most helpful thing I could have done. If we’d been friends, I would have tried to sugarcoat it and spare her feelings, but instead I was the one person in that mansion who told her the truth.”
“Don’t talk about her,” Rachel said, her voice low and dangerous.
“What, painful memory? That’s your problem, not mine. Anyway, like I was saying, it took me a while to realise that you were basically doing the same thing to me. You were the one person I could count on to be completely honest, because you hated me so much.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out of my head!”
“Why? We’re getting to the good part.” I leant forward, looking at Rachel intently. “You spent all that time telling me all the ways in which I was a loser and a hypocrite. You know the funny thing? I’m pretty sure you never considered I might decide you were right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m congratulating you, Rachel. You’ve won. All these years, and you’ve finally convinced me that you were right and I was wrong. Except I don’t think you’re going to enjoy it very much, because the next thing I’m going to do is come after you and Richard. And you know what I’m going to do then? I’m going to take Richard up on his offer.”
“Bullshit.”
“He’s been wanting both Anne and me for a long time. Now he gets the complete set.”
“Too late,” Rachel said. “You already said no.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“You don’t get to change your mind!”
“Why?”
“You betrayed Richard. He’s not giving you another chance.”
“Richard didn’t become the most powerful Dark mage in the country by being inflexible.”
“He doesn’t need you anymore.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?” I said. “Now that Richard’s got Anne, he wants me twice as badly. He can control Anne with his dreamstone, but having me around will make everything so much easier.”
“You can’t do this!” I could see the anger on Rachel’s face. Good. “You stopped being a Dark mage! You can’t just turn around and come back!”
“But that’s what it means to be a Dark mage,” I said. “I can do whatever I want. The fact that you never got that is why you’ve been left behind while Richard’s promoted everyone else over your head. And soon, he’ll be promoting me over your head as well.”
Rachel’s face was drawn and white. “I’ll kill you first.”
“You’re welcome to try. I’m a lot more powerful now.” I gave Rachel a smile. “But even if I wasn’t, Richard would still choose me over you. You know why? Because as far as Richard is concerned, this has always been about Anne. He’s put up with your screwups and general insanity for this long because he’s needed you. But the last couple of years he’s needed you less and less. And once he has Anne fully under his control? He won’t need you at all.”
Rachel snapped. Green light flashed out and I leapt backwards, alighting on the floor as the sofa turned to dust. Rachel screamed in anger and went for me, but I slipped away, flitting with the speed of thought from cover to cover as disintegration rays exploded chunks of the palace hall. A final blast took out the floor at my feet as I flew through the door I’d entered from and back into Elsewhere.
I alighted and turned to face Rachel. She was striding towards the door, face set in fury. Rachel aimed another green ray at me: it reached the doorway and fizzled. She came to a halt.
Only a few steps separated Rachel from the doorway. Once she crossed that line, she’d be out of her dreams and into Elsewhere. I spread my hands invitingly. “Coming?”
Rachel stared murder at me but didn’t move.
“Didn’t think so.” I let my hands fall to my side. “I want you to tell Richard. Let him know that I’m coming to take up my old place. Tell him, Rachel. Because if you don’t, I will.” I turned and walked away.
Rachel didn’t follow. I could sense her eyes on me, but she stayed, safe in her own dreams, watching until I disappeared behind a building and vanished from her sight.
I heard a voice calling from behind me. Not Rachel, Shireen. “Alex! Wait!”
I didn’t want to talk to Shireen. I stepped out of Elsewhere, Shireen’s voice fading away as I slipped back into my own dreams.
* * *
“I do not even know where to start,” Klara said.
It was the next day. The Hollow was peaceful, birds singing in the trees and the midday sun shining down from above. Klara had come to check up on me as promised, and the visit was going a little differently from last time. For one thing, instead of being sprawled out on my mattress, I was sitting at my desk, my right arm laid out. Klara was leaning over it, frowning in concentration, her hair tied up out of the way of her eyes. Luna was leaning against the wall, staying quiet but obviously anxious. Landis wasn’t here, which concerned me slightly, but I had bigger problems to worry about.
“Are there any problems?” I asked.
“Problems would imply solutions,” Klara said. “I have no idea what I am looking at. The last I saw of you, your hand had been severed from your pattern. Now you have replaced it. How did this happen?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So I see. The thing on your arm is not a hand. It looks like a hand, it functions like a hand, but it clearly is not. It is an imbued item of some design I do not recognise at all, and whatever it was designed for, it was not to be a body part. Except that something has changed it into a body part, and now it has formed a symbiotic bond.”
“So what does that mean?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Klara said. “For now, at least, it is functioning. The item has linked into your nervous system and even your circulation. But it has done so by overwriting your body’s pattern in the respective areas. It was clearly never designed for anything such as this, and I would not expect it to be stable.”
“Can you stabilise it?”
“Are you listening to me?” Klara said. “I have no idea how this works or what to expect. It could remain exactly like this for years. It could continue overwriting your pattern until you turn into a construct. It could feed off your blood until you drop dead from desiccation. I would not be surprised by any of these things.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you recommend?”
“If I was only concerned with preserving your life, the recommended course of action would be amputation,” Klara said. “That would of course kill the item. A less hasty approach would be to study it, and you, in intensive care. That still runs the risk of exposing you to negative consequences, but we would have the chance to study the nature of the bond under controlled conditions, and determine whether it was developing, degenerating, or remaining stable.”
“I’m afraid neither of those are options.”
Klara looked frustrated but not surprised. “Very well. Then at the very least you must refrain from using the imbued item’s powers.”
“Why?”
“The item is tied into your body’s pattern. Each time you use it, it will adapt. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it will be to reverse.”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, I need to keep using it.”
“There is a good chance that doing so will kill you.”
“I’ll just have to see how it turns out.”
Klara threw up her hands and muttered something in German, then switched back to English. “I cannot help you if you will not cooperate. I will come back to check on you in three days, assuming you haven’t killed yourself by then.”
Klara left. “Don’t you think you should be listening to her?” Luna asked once she was gone.
“I am listening. I just have different priorities than she does.” I stretched, flexing my muscles. “Come on, let’s walk.”
I set off along one of the paths in the Hollow, enjoying the feel of the breeze on my face. Luna followed, looking unconvinced. “Have you heard from Vari?” I asked.
“No,” Luna said. “I was about to tell you when Klara arrived. When I woke up this morning, I had a text from him saying that there was a problem and he’d been called in. I haven’t been able to get in touch since.”
“Was the text from the early hours of the morning?” I said. “Around two or three A.M.?”
“Maybe?”
I nodded. “I think something’s happened with the Council.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been using the fateweaver to block their tracking spells,” I said. “I woke up around dawn to keep that going and found that I didn’t need to.”
Luna frowned. “So what does that mean?”
“Put together with Vari being called in and Landis not showing up? I think they’ve just been distracted by other problems.”
“I’m still worried about what Klara was saying,” Luna said. “Maybe you should stop using it.”
“You don’t understand how big a game-changer this is,” I said. I held up my right hand, the smooth ivory of the fateweaver bright in the midday sun. “I could never stand up against any of the really powerful mages before. Now, I can.”
“You’ve gone up against lots of powerful mages without the fateweaver,” Luna pointed out. “You seemed to do pretty well.”
“I really didn’t,” I said. “You have no idea how many times in the past five years I’ve been one mistake away from death. Over and over again, I get into situations where I have to do everything perfectly just to survive. And sometimes even that’s not enough. I use all of my skill and all of my knowledge, and the best I can do is set things up and hope that my enemy will fall for a trick, or someone else will come to the rescue. I don’t want to keep living because of other people’s slip-ups. I want to control my own fate.”
“Even if it kills you?”
“Trying to go up against Levistus and Richard without something like this will kill me,” I said. “Divination alone isn’t enough. You have to be on guard all the time, always watching, because you don’t have any safety margin. With this, I can actually make plans of my own, because I know . . .” I stopped.
Luna walked another few steps, then halted and looked back at me. “What?”
I stared into the trees. “I just figured out what Richard’s magic type is.”
“How?”
“I always thought he acted too confident,” I said. My thoughts were whirling, putting the pieces together. “That was why I thought it couldn’t be . . . But that’s it, isn’t it? He had the same problem as me, he just solved it a different way. My answer was the fateweaver, his was getting a jinn of his own. But he wanted all the power that a jinn could provide, the strongest possible jinn with the strongest possible bond.”
“Wait. Richard’s got a jinn?”
“Yeah, but it’s not enough,” I said absently. “Not for everything he wants. Probably he couldn’t bond a really powerful jinn without losing more control than he was willing to give up. That’s why he needed Anne.”
“Then what—?” Luna cut off as her phone beeped. She pulled it out, then stuffed it back into her pocket. “I have to go. I told Vari I’d call him now.” She pointed at me. “Don’t leave!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Luna disappeared and I sat on a fallen tree, my thoughts turning back to Richard’s magic type. Everything made so much more sense now. That was why Richard had always been one step ahead of me.
And he’ll always be one step ahead of me. For a moment, I felt overwhelmed. If I was right, Richard had every possible advantage. How could I beat that?
Shireen’s prophecy had given me an answer. Rachel. If she turned, then Richard would lose.
But how would that help? Rachel was powerful, but not that powerful. The only reason she’d been such a problem for so long was because she hated me so much. Well, that and the fact that she was so batshit crazy that—
I stopped.
That divination works really badly on her.
I sat quite still.
* * *
I felt the gate spell ten minutes later as Luna returned to the Hollow. She’d come straight back after talking to Variam, and she made a beeline for me through the trees. “Richard launched an attack last night,” Luna said as she walked into view.
“Where?”
“Vari says there were two. The first one was on the ground-floor offices of the War Rooms in Westminster. Mixed force, mostly adepts. The guards managed to hold out long enough for a response team to arrive, and when it did they surrounded them. A few of Richard’s mages escaped through a gate, the rest were wiped out.”
