Bound

chapter 10

“How did you figure it out?” I asked Anne.

We’d carried Karyos to the centre of the shadow realm. It had been harder work than I’d expected; it turns out roots are heavy. Thornlings were still lurking around, but they hadn’t made any move to rescue their mistress, and now Variam was working on opening the gate while Luna, Anne, and I kept watch.

“You saw how those flowers and the roses went for us?” Anne said. “Like they knew exactly where we were?”

I nodded.

“But they didn’t have eyes,” Anne said. “So I wondered how they could know where to go, and I looked and I thought I could pick up some kind of life magic. That made me think of lifesight, and that made me wonder if I could use the same shrouding spell that I figured out all those years back to stop Sagash from tracking me. That was why I asked you to check. Once you told me it would work, then I just ran straight past.”

“How’d you know where to find Karyos?”

“The plants and the thornlings all had . . . ripples,” Anne said. “Like a fish leaves in the water. I traced them back and once I got close enough I could see her with my lifesight. Then I just circled behind her. She was so focused on you that she didn’t see me, even when I slipped through the branches.” Anne shrugged. “That was that.”

“Okay,” Variam said, walking back to us. “Gate’s clear and we’re ready to go. What do we do with her?”

The tree at the centre of the shadow realm was huge, gnarled branches spreading out from a thick, ancient trunk. The four of us gathered under the branches, looking down at Karyos’s unconscious form.

“She won’t wake up for a day or so,” Anne said.

“Yeah, but what if she does?”

“I do know what I’m doing,” Anne said.

Variam shrugged. “Not saying you don’t, but why take the chance?”

“Is there something you’re hinting at?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill her?”

“No!” Anne said before I could speak.

“Not to get all school-playground here,” Variam said, “but she started it.”

“We’re the ones who broke into her home,” Anne said.

“Yeah, and she tried to kill us on sight.”

“Anne’s kind of got a point though,” I said. “We did break in without an invitation, and I’m not sure if she was really in a fit enough mental state to notice much else.”

“Isn’t that kind of a reason not to leave her around?” Luna asked. “I mean, if we leave her here, then isn’t she going to go right back to murdering everyone who walks in?”

“It’s not as if random innocents are going to come walking in.”

“Yeah, well,” Variam said. “All I’m saying is that she seems to be pretty much exactly the kind of thing the Order of the Shield were formed to fight in the first place.”

“I didn’t knock her out so that you could burn her to death,” Anne said flatly.

Variam got a stubborn look on his face. I knew he was about to argue, and I also knew that Anne wasn’t going to back down. “I think Anne’s right,” I said before Variam could speak.

“Oh, come on,” Variam said. “You saw those bodies.”

“Yes, but I think it’s worth remembering that we got an awful lot of help from Arachne in getting here. Now she didn’t actually make us promise to keep Karyos alive, but it was pretty clear what outcome she was hoping for. Fighting in self-defence is one thing. Executing someone while they’re helpless . . .” I shrugged. “Besides, Karyos might be the last hamadryad still on earth. I don’t want to kill her if I can avoid it.”

“If they’re like this, then I don’t think they’d be missed much,” Variam muttered, then held up a hand before Anne or I could speak. “Fine, whatever. I won’t burn the bitch to death while she’s sleeping. But you’d better hurry, because if she wakes up while you’re gone, I’m not making any promises.”

“We’ll make sure it’s clear for when you come out,” Luna added.

I nodded, then glanced at Anne. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

We stood together in front of the great tree. “Here we go,” Variam said. “Don’t think I can keep this open for more than a few seconds, so don’t hang around.”

I felt the spell start to form and took a deep breath, then as the rent in the air formed in front of us I darted through, Anne at my side.

| | | | | | | | |

The Hollow had been otherworldly and beautiful. The hill on the Chilterns from which we’d gated had been ordinary, but still beautiful. The deep shadow realm was neither.

We came down in a wide, tall chamber. Pillars ran from the floor to the ceiling, and platforms linked by spiralling ramps jutted from the walls. Everything was coloured in different shades of purple, mauve to lavender to violet, and a thick haze hung in the air. From somewhere above, white light filtered down through the mist. The air smelt dry and clean, almost antiseptic, but there was no sound.

Anne and I scanned left and right, reflexively taking positions back to back. “Anything?” Anne asked.

“Nothing in the futures,” I said. “You?”

“Nothing alive.”

There was something alien-looking about this place. Maybe it was the architecture—too many rounded corners, not enough straight lines—but then again, maybe it was something else. The Hollow had been deadly, but that had been the creatures inside it. Here, it felt as though the whole environment was watching us, and I didn’t think we were welcome.

“So how are we supposed to be finding these dreamstones again?” Anne asked.

“Still working on that part,” I said, frowning. There was something strange about this place. I was looking through the futures of us searching, and while some of them were what you’d expect, there were flashes of possibilities that just didn’t fit. Strange creatures, natural hazards, even glimpses of what looked like combat . . . but when I looked again, they weren’t there.

“Something about this place feels like Elsewhere,” Anne said. “I don’t know why, but . . .”

“The futures do too,” I said. “Too fluid.” I pointed. “Okay, I’m pretty sure that this direction has something. Can’t promise what. But let’s check in first.” I touched the communicator in my ear. “Vari, come in.”

Silence.

“Vari, it’s Alex. Come in.”

“Why is it,” Anne said, “that these communicators always seem to fail whenever we really need them?”

I bit back a couple of swear words. It wouldn’t have helped Anne’s morale. “Okay, so calling for extraction is out. Good news is that it looks like the gate stone’ll work.”

The gate stone was the backup plan. Variam was holding its mirror, meaning that it should gate us straight back to where he was. “Except that we won’t be able to call for help,” Anne pointed out.

“There is that.”

Anne shrugged. “Nothing new then.”

We set off, walking in the direction I’d marked. “So,” Anne said, “what exactly do dreamstones look like?”

“According to Arachne, it’s a case of ‘you’ll know it when you see it.’”

“Do you think there’s some way we could make sure Richard has a weaker one?”

“I got the impression that . . .” I trailed off. “Heads up.”

Ahead of us, the corridor opened up into a tunnel. The features were the same, weirdly curved purple lines, with strange objects hanging from the ceiling that looked like a cross between stalactites and giant frozen bats, but straight ahead was a sphere of pure black, edged in violet.

I walked forward cautiously. I couldn’t see any immediate danger, but there was the same weird fluidity to the futures, half-glimpsed possibilities of horror and surprise blinking in and out. “It’s a portal,” I said.

“To where?” Anne said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s something . . .”

“There’s something inside,” Anne said.

I nodded slowly. I couldn’t get a clear vision, but I could get a sense of something within the darkness, an impression of silent power. Stepping through would take me into a maze of narrower corridors, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back out. “There’s a problem,” I said. “It’s not stable.”

Anne didn’t take her eyes off the sphere. “Hmm?”

“If I step through, I think it’ll collapse,” I said. “Or redirect, maybe. Wherever it’ll take me, I can’t see you there too.” I frowned. “Maybe there’s some way to stabilise it . . .”

“I don’t think it wants you,” Anne said absently.

I started to ask what she meant, then spun. Just for an instant I had an impression of something behind us, huge and looming, then it was gone. The corridor behind was empty. “Anne,” I said. “Anne!”

“Hmm?”

“Was there something there?”

“It’s okay,” Anne said. “I’ll be back.”

I should have realised what Anne was about to do, but the phantoms were distracting me and I put it together just a second too late. I grabbed for her just as Anne stepped forward and touched the sphere. There was a moment where she seemed to twist and warp, then she was gone. I swore, hesitated an instant, jumped after her—

—and stumbled through into an empty corridor. The sphere was gone. The corridor was empty both ahead and behind. “Anne!” I shouted.

My voice echoed from the walls, fading into silence. I couldn’t see Anne. Except that it felt as though I should be able to see her—there was a future where she was right ahead of me, walking slowly down the corridor—then as I reached for it, it was gone. “Damn it,” I muttered. Anne was usually more careful than this.

I thought I could see a possibility in which I found Anne. Just like the others, it blinked in and out, there and gone again, but it was the best lead I had and I went running down the corridor. I could gate out at any time I wanted, but Anne wasn’t holding the gate stone and if I couldn’t find her then she would be in real trouble. I turned a corner to find a black wall blocking my path, sheer and lightless and straight as a razor, but a glance at the futures told me that it wasn’t dangerous and I stepped through.

And stopped. Right in front of me was a boy, maybe twelve years old, light-skinned with a shock of black hair and dark watchful eyes. He was sitting upon a curved shelf, his legs swinging underneath him, and he was looking at me. “What are you doing here?” I said.

“You aren’t ready,” the boy said.

Something about the boy’s face and the way he was watching me seemed weirdly familiar, but I didn’t have time to think about it. “I’m looking for a girl,” I said. “Have you seen her?”

“She’s not looking for you.”

I advanced cautiously. I didn’t think the boy was hostile, but something about him made me uneasy. He didn’t move, looking up at me with those big dark eyes. “Where’s Anne?”

“You’re going to lose more than you think.”

I stared at the boy. “Who are you?”

The boy hopped off from where he was sitting, his shoes thumping onto the floor. “I won’t stop you,” he said. “Just don’t forget.”

“What are you—?”

The boy knelt down, sinking into a ball, and then he was gone. The curving, chairlike rest that he’d been sitting on was gone as well. In its place was a jagged, moundlike crystalline formation, amethyst-coloured and rising to a blunted point.

I stared down at the stone, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There were veins running through the crystal, converging towards its tip, and the centre had a hollow like that of a very small volcano. Resting in the hollow was a shard of the same crystal, but brighter, clearer. Somehow, I knew that it would come away if I reached for it.

A voice in my mind spoke up. Pretty sure that’s what we’re looking for.

Screw that! the other half of my mind said. Where the hell did he go? And what was he?

Which were two very good questions that I had absolutely no clue how to answer, so I scanned the futures for what would happen if I picked up the shard. Once I was reasonably sure that it wasn’t going to poison, burn, electrocute, or otherwise inconvenience me, I leant forward and clasped my hand around the crystal. It resisted slightly, then came away. The veins running through the mound pulsed once, then went dark.

I looked at the shard. It was small enough for my fingers to wrap around, but it was heavy. I had no idea what it was made of, but I was pretty sure this was what we were looking for. I’d need to get it back to Arachne to check, but before I could do that I needed to find—

“Alex,” Anne’s voice said from behind me.

I jumped, spinning around with my heart pounding in my chest. I never get surprised like that, and more times than I can count that’s been the only thing that’s kept me alive, yet here in this place I apparently couldn’t even walk around a corner without missing something crucial. It was starting to really scare me now. What would happen when I met something actually dangerous? “Jesus,” I said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Anne said, but she sounded distracted. She nodded towards my hand. “Did you find one too?”

“Yeah—wait. What do you mean, ‘too’?”

In answer, Anne lifted something in her hand. It was a dark purplish-black, gleaming in the light, similar to the crystal I was carrying but slightly smaller. “I think it wanted to be found,” Anne said.

“Never mind that,” I said. Now that the initial rush of relief had worn off, I was angry. “What were you thinking, running off like that? You could have been lost here.”

“I don’t think it would have wanted that.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “You know what? Let’s just get out of here.”

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

I looked at Anne, puzzled. “What?”

“Anything you want to tell me,” Anne said. Her reddish eyes were dark as she watched me.

“What kind of thing?”

Anne stared at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she said at last.

I shook my head. “Look, let’s just open the gate. I don’t like this place.”

Anne crossed to my side and I took out the gate stone, turning it around in my hand. “Did you see anything when you picked it up?” Anne asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Did you?”

“Yes,” Anne said. There was something distant in her voice.

I kept focusing on the gate, starting to weave the spell. “What did you see?”

There was a moment’s pause before Anne answered, and when she did her voice was suddenly cold. “Something about you.”

Agony shot through me, spiking through my limbs. The gate stone dropped from my hand as I collapsed, shuddering; the floor was cold and smooth against my cheek. I couldn’t move or think. My muscles were burning.

A hand grabbed me, dragging me onto my back. Through hazy eyes, I could see Anne bending over me, her face contorted with rage. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I stared at Anne in shock. I couldn’t understand it. Anne would never hurt me; this had to be some kind of mistake—

“I trusted you!” Anne’s face twisted into a snarl. “And you did this! This!” Her fingers touched my chest, and I felt a spell weaving.

A terrible pain flashed through me, a ripping, tearing sensation that made me convulse, followed by a horrible silence. I couldn’t hear anything and my limbs felt still, leaden, with a terrible sense of pressure. My heart wasn’t beating. I tried to open my mouth, tried to speak, but my muscles wouldn’t obey me. A grey veil was falling over my eyes.

“I trusted you,” Anne said again. She was staring down at me, and the light was fading from all around, the room going from purple to grey to black. As it slipped away, my last sight was of those furious eyes—

| | | | | | | | |

I jerked upright with a gasp. I was lying on the floor next to the crystal mound and I looked around wildly. There was no sign of the boy, or of Anne. Clutched in my hand was a shard of amethyst, small but heavy. My fingers were wrapped around it, and when with an effort I made them release, I could see white and red lines where the crystal’s edges had sunk into my hands. The floor was smooth and cold.

Movement in the futures. Someone was coming and I twisted around, staring at the corridor from which I’d entered. I saw who it was going to be and sudden fear spiked through me.

A figure appeared, tall and slender, with shoulder-length hair. “Alex?” Anne said. Her eyes went down to the shard of crystal in my hand. “Did you find one too?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Anne looked down at me, frowning. “Alex?”

I took a breath, then another. I looked at the futures, searching for any sign of danger, and found nothing. But then, I hadn’t seen any danger before, either, and my divination wasn’t working the way it should be—

“What’s wrong?”

I tried to speak, failed, cleared my throat, and tried again. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Anne said doubtfully. She walked towards me, reaching out a hand.

I flinched. It was only a small movement, but Anne stopped dead. I scrambled to my feet. “I’m all right.”

“I could check—” Anne began.

“No,” I said quickly. All of a sudden I didn’t want Anne touching me. “It’s okay.”

Anne was looking at me. She didn’t come any closer and there was a puzzled, hurt look in her eyes. I dragged my gaze away. “What did you find?” I said.

“This,” Anne said, and I knew what she was going to show me before she held it up. A shard of crystal, a dark purplish black, smaller than the one I was holding but similar in its design . . .

“Alex?” Anne asked when I didn’t speak.

I didn’t want to look; just a glimpse of the dreamstone brought the memory back. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you want to check?”

“It’s what we’re looking for,” I said. I didn’t meet her gaze. “Good job.”

“I know you said to stay together,” Anne said. “But it felt as though something was calling me, and I knew it’d be . . .” She frowned, paused. “Did something . . . happen when you found that?”

I opened my mouth, began to answer, then found myself looking into Anne’s eyes. Reddish brown, just as they had been before, and a shiver went through me and suddenly the thought of telling her about it was more than I could face. “It’s fine,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Anne gave a dubious nod, stepping closer. She was watching me closely and I managed not to pull away this time, but I could feel her eyes on me.

| | | | | | | | |

We stepped through into bright, peaceful light. The multicoloured sky of the Hollow was all around us and the branches of the great tree hung overhead. As I looked through the futures I could see that they were solid once more, and I closed my eyes and sagged in relief. I did not want to do that again.

A girl with light brown hair was carrying a handful of sticks across the grass. As she saw us, she stopped and stared, then dropped the bundle of wood with a clatter and shouted. “Vari, Vari!” Then she ran towards me.

“Hey, Luna,” I began. “We—oof!”

Luna crashed into me, hugging me tight. I staggered back and immediately Luna was backing off, apologetic. “Sorry, sorry. I know I shouldn’t—wait a sec.” She held out a hand and the threads of half-seen silver mist which had clung to me from the touch slid away, sinking down into the earth. “Vari!” she shouted over her shoulder, then turned to Anne. “You’re okay? You’re both okay?”

“We’re fine,” Anne said. “And we got what we came for.”

“Screw what you came for! I thought you were never coming out!”

“Luna, relax,” I said. I’d been enjoying the attention—it was kind of touching—but it was still a funny overreaction. “We said we’d be back.”

Luna laughed. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

Variam came running into view through the trees. As he saw us he slowed to a walk, but his eyes flicked sharply over Anne. “You’re all right?” he demanded.

“We’re all right,” Anne said.

“Wow,” I said, looking around. “You guys have been busy.” When we’d left, the clearing had been scattered with the remains of the thornlings and those flowers. All of them were gone now: a blackened heap marked where the bodies had been burned in a pyre, and off to the right was what looked like a makeshift campsite, with the supplies we’d left back on the hilltop. Both Luna and Vari must have worked like crazy to get all that done so fast.

“What’s that?” Anne asked.

I turned to see that Anne was staring at something to the right of the clearing. It looked like a small fallen tree with a sapling growing nearby. “What’s what?” I asked, then when she continued to stare, I looked at Variam and Luna. “Guys?”

Luna and Variam looked at me, then Luna turned to look at Variam. “I told you,” Variam said.

“Um,” Luna said. “So. There was a slight problem.”

“A problem with . . . ?” Anne started to ask, then her eyes went wide. She started to walk towards the tree.

Luna fell in beside her. “Okay,” Luna said as she walked. “First of all, I’d like to point out that this was not remotely our fault.”

My heart sank. I recognised that tone of voice. “Luna, what have you done?”

“I said, it wasn’t our fault.”

“What did . . .” I started to say, then trailed off. Looking around the clearing, I could see the remains of the pyre, and Luna and Variam’s campsite. But there was something I wasn’t seeing that I should have been seeing. “Luna?” I said, and this time there was a warning note to my voice. “Where’s Karyos?”

Luna and Variam looked at each other. “You said you’d tell him,” Variam said.

“I’m trying, okay?”

I started to answer, then shot a sharp look at the remains of the fire. A big fire. Too big to have been fuelled only by the thornlings we’d killed. “Vari!”

“What?”

“Did you burn Karyos on that?”

“No!” Variam said indignantly.

“Of course we didn’t!” Luna said, then hesitated. “Well, not most of her.”

“Not most of her?”

“Let me explain,” Luna began.

“Wait,” Anne said. She’d been crouched over the fallen tree, studying it, and now she turned to Luna and Variam. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Pretty much,” Variam said.

Luna rounded on Vari. “Will you shut up and let me explain?”

“Because you’re doing such a great job.”

“Anne?” I said. “Can you explain what’s going on here?”

Anne pointed down at the tree. “That’s a cocoon.”

I frowned. “You mean—?”

“A regeneration cocoon?” Anne said. “Yes.”

I stared at it for a second. Now that I looked more closely at the thing, I could see that it wasn’t a tree. It was too round, without enough of a trunk, and the only branches came from the sapling whose roots were twined into it. “You guys used the seed?”

“Actually, that was her,” Variam put in.

“Shut up, Vari!” Luna snapped.

I put a hand to my forehead. “Christ.”

“Well, she’s alive,” Anne said. She knelt down, one hand on the cocoon, frowning. “Or something is.”

I glared at Luna. “The idea was to offer the thing to Karyos. Not use it on her against her will!”

“If you’d let me finish,” Variam said, “the reason I told you that it was Luna was to make the point that you really should be thanking her. If it had been up to me, I just would have fried her.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Okay, you know what?” Luna said. “I’ve about had enough of this. What did you expect us to do?”

“Leave her unconscious until we got back!”

“Uh, yeah, slight problem with that,” Variam said. “She woke up.”

“She—Wait, what?”

“Or started to,” Variam said. “And given how the last conversation went, I think it’s safe to say that her mood would not have been improved by finding out what we’d done with her pets, right? So we had a choice between letting her finish waking up, and getting a fun and exciting lesson about weaponised dryad magic, or cutting things off early. We voted for option number two. Only question was how.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Anne said, frowning. “That spell should have kept her sleeping for at least eighteen hours. More like twenty-four.”

Luna and Variam stared at Anne. Luna opened her mouth to speak, and then an odd expression crossed her face. “How long did you spend in that other shadow realm?” she asked me.

Anne and I looked at each other. “Forty minutes?” Anne guessed.

“Less,” I said.

Variam and Luna looked at each other.

“What?” I said.

“Alex,” Luna said slowly. “You’ve been gone for three days.”

I blinked. “No we haven’t.”

“Two days, twenty-one hours, and thirty minutes,” Variam put in. “Give or take half an hour.”

The four of us stared at each other.

| | | | | | | | |

Putting the pieces together took a while.

From Anne’s and my perspectives, we’d been gone for slightly over half an hour. Anne assured me that we hadn’t burned enough body energy for it to be more, and the clocks on our phones agreed with her. But while we’d been in that deep shadow realm, the sun had set and risen again three times on Earth and in the Hollow that mirrored it.

Once I’d finally accepted that yes, Luna and Variam were telling the truth, and no, this wasn’t a practical joke, the full creepy implications set in. I remembered passing through those black screens, the feelings of dislocation, and wondered just how much time we’d lost in those moments. Or did time simply flow faster inside the shadow realm than outside? If we’d taken our time with the exploration, stayed in those corridors for hours, then how much time would have passed outside? Weeks? More?

Of course, while we’d been gone, Luna and Variam had had more immediate problems. They couldn’t go back to Earth out of fear that we’d try to use the gate stone while they were gone, so they’d been stuck in a shadow realm full of hostile monsters. And it turned out that while the vampire flowers and the bushes weren’t a threat with Karyos gone, the same was not true for the thornlings.

“They didn’t do any more coordinated rushes,” Luna explained. “But they didn’t give up either. They just kept stalking us, and with you and Anne gone it was really hard to spot the bloody things.”

“What did you do?” Anne asked.

“Wiped them out, what do you think?” Variam said. “And don’t you even start giving us grief about that. Those things were not willing to sit down and talk.”

“Did Karyos wake up in the middle of one of those attacks?” I asked.

“How’d you guess?” Variam said. “Let’s just say it got a little exciting. Just as well Luna had been playing around with the regeneration thing.”

I looked at Luna. “Well, you weren’t coming back,” she said with a shrug. “I’d been thinking about what to do if we needed it.”

“And you figured out a way to get it working?” I asked.

“Pretty much.”

I was actually impressed. When Arachne had given me that seed, she’d implied that it had been meant to be used by Karyos, not by someone else, particularly not under that kind of time pressure. “Well, it worked,” Anne said. “Karyos is in there, or her new body is.” She nodded towards the cocoon. “And as far as I can tell, it took. She’s bonded to that sapling now.”

“So what does that mean?” Luna asked.

“Means in another few years, that thing’ll open and a baby hamadryad’ll come out.”

“With the freaky roots-for-legs or without?” Luna asked.

I shrugged. “I’m not exactly an expert on this stuff.”

“So is the whole kill-crazy murder-all-humans thing going to carry over as well?” Variam asked. “Because if it does, I’m not sure if Luna did anyone any favours.”

“It shouldn’t,” I said. “That was the whole point of the thing. But now we’ve got another problem.”

“What?”

“I think I know,” Anne said. “This shadow realm’s accessible from the outside, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “And those bodies prove that people know about it.”

Luna looked between the two of us.

“Shadow realms are valuable,” I explained to Luna. “You know how some mages live in their own shadow realm? And how they make sure everyone knows it? It’s a status symbol.”

“I thought they just grew their own.”

“Yes, but it takes years and years, and from what I’ve heard, the only way to find out whether it’s somewhere you want to live or a little pocket hellhole is to wait and see. It’s much easier to find an existing shadow realm that someone else has done the work of making. A place like this?” I nodded at the multicoloured sky, the trees, the warm air. “This is prime real estate. The only reason some mage hasn’t planted their flag here already is that Karyos was defending it.”

“Huh,” Luna said. “So now that she’s gone . . .”

“Now this place is like a three-storey house with a garden in central London. Someone is going to grab it.”

“And the first thing they’ll do is destroy that,” Anne said, nodding to the cocoon. “Or use it for experiments.”

“What if you moved it?” Luna asked.

“It’s too fragile. In six months, maybe, but now . . .”

“Okay, I know I’m sounding like a broken record here,” Variam said, “but I don’t see how any of this is our problem. We wanted dreamstones, we’ve got dreamstones. I say we call the mission a success and bail while the going’s good.”

“And leave her to die?” Anne asked.

“Did you miss the part where she was about to kill us?”

Anne threw up her hands and looked at me. “Can you think of any mage who’d be willing to help?”

“I’ve been trying,” I admitted. “But the only mages I can think of who might be sympathetic don’t really have the resources to take on something like this. Maybe Landis . . .”

Variam shook his head. “He’s got way too much on his plate right now.”

“What about us?” Luna asked.

All three of us looked at her. “I’m not saying we should move in,” Luna said. “But we could set up gate wards and all that stuff, right?”

“None of us knows how to set up gate wards,” Variam said.

Luna pointed at me. “Alex knows people who do.”

“Yeah, but they don’t work for free,” I said.

Luna shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always storing up favours.”

“Come on,” Variam said. “I can’t believe you’re thinking seriously about this. Yes, this place is pretty, but it’s a frigging deathtrap. Hanging out in a place where a crazy dryad’s spent the last fifty years magically modifying every single plant to either poison you or eat you is not my idea of fun!”

“We could clear it out,” Luna said. “The only reason we were having so much trouble was that neither of us had any senses that could tell us what to watch out for. With Anne’s lifesight and your precognition, we could sweep the place.”

“That’ll take days,” I said. “Maybe weeks. And that’s not even the part I’m worried about. What happens when the next bunch of mages comes along? We’d have to set up gate wards and a security system, and the mages who specialise in that kind of stuff don’t work cheap.”

“It’d also give us a base,” Luna pointed out.

That made me pause. Ever since my house in Camden had been burnt down, it had been difficult for the four of us to find places to meet or train. The house in Wales had been a stopgap, but now that I’d abandoned that too, we’d had to fall back upon Arachne’s lair. Which was a good place—a very good place—but it required Arachne to be comfortable with us planning our operations from what was, basically, her living room. She hadn’t complained, but I was uncomfortably aware that we were presuming on her hospitality, and ever since that conversation we’d had in February there’d been the nasty thought at the back of my mind that I could be storing up trouble for the future. Arachne’s position with the Council is precarious, and I’m not a popular person these days. By using her home as a base I could be putting her in danger. Of course, trying to use an unsecured shadow realm as a base would be almost as bad . . .

I paused. Except that I did know someone with the influence to get a shadow realm properly secured, who also owed me favours. Talisid. Was my spying on Richard worth enough to get him to do this?

Maybe I should find out.

“. . . really don’t want to deal with this,” Variam was saying. “Can’t we just—?”

“Okay,” I said.

The others looked at me. “Really?” Variam said.

“No promises, but I’ve got an idea that might be able to help,” I said. “But I only want you guys in on this if you want to be. Vari’s right: it’s going to be a lot of work.”

“I’m up for it,” Luna said. “I kind of like this place, and it’s not like I don’t have the time. Besides, there’s something I’ve been having trouble with that a shadow realm would be handy for. I’ll tell you about it later.”

I looked at Anne, who nodded. “I’d like to,” she said in her soft voice. “I’m the reason Karyos can’t defend herself now. I’m not comfortable leaving her like this.”

Luna turned to Variam with a grin. “Looks like you’re outvoted.”

Variam threw up his hands. “Luna,” I said, and Luna rolled her eyes but didn’t answer. “It’s okay, Vari, you’ve done plenty already. We can handle the cleanup.”

“Yeah, unless you run into another nest of those vampire flowers. What are you going to do, pick them out of the air?” Variam scowled. “Fine. But just so you know, this is a stupid plan.”

“Oh, come on,” Luna said. “How many new journeymen get to say they’re part owner of their own shadow realm?”

“We’re splitting it into parts now?”

I got to my feet. “Come on, guys. Time to go.”

| | | | | | | | |

Walking back into Arachne’s cave felt like coming home after a long, long day. Luna and Variam were exhausted from three days of watching for danger, and I wasn’t much better—the vision or dream or whatever it was in the deep shadow realm had shaken me more than I’d been willing to admit. Only Anne seemed in good shape.

We told the story to Arachne. She didn’t make a big demonstration upon hearing what we’d decided to do with Karyos and the Hollow—that’s not her style—but I could tell she was pleased. She thanked us, and thanked me again later in private.

We’d meant to have a party to celebrate our success, but it didn’t last very long. Within an hour Luna and Variam were asleep, sprawled on sofas, and only Anne and I were left awake, talking to Arachne. She promised to help with the work on the Hollow, and curled up in an armchair surrounded by silks, I felt warm and safe.

Eventually the conversation turned to the dreamstones, and Anne and I laid our prizes out on one of the tables. Arachne crouched over them on her eight legs and studied them. “What do you think?” I said when I couldn’t take the suspense any longer.

“About which you should give to Richard?” Arachne asked.

“Yeah.”

“Preferably neither.”

“That’s not really helpful.”

“The mages of your Council would be extremely uncomfortable about placing either of these into the hands of a Dark mage,” Arachne said. “I think I would agree with them.”

“Are they alive?” I asked curiously. I hadn’t sensed anything from either crystal since returning to the Hollow, but I still couldn’t make sense of that boy I’d met. Had it been the crystal, or . . . ?

Arachne gave the spider equivalent of a shrug. “If you write down someone’s life, do they live forever?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that one. “These are powerful items,” Arachne said. “Whatever Richard intends to use them for, I doubt it will be anything good.”

“Yeah, well, if we keep them, then I’m pretty sure what’s going to happen to us will be a lot less good,” I said. “So given that we’re going with the least bad option, which one do you recommend?”

Arachne tapped one of the crystals with one tapering foreleg. “This.”

I looked at it. The one Arachne had tapped was the one Anne had brought, slightly slimmer and darker than the other. If mine was amethyst, hers was a deep violet. “Why that one?”

“The darker of the two crystals is more suited for compulsion,” Arachne said. “To use it to its full potential, the wielder must want to impose their will upon another. Not out of necessity, but out of desire. It would be a poor match for you, I think.” She tapped the other crystal. “This could have a similar use, but its focus is slightly different. More of a tool for linking.”

I nodded slowly, then looked at Anne. “What do you think?”

Anne looked down at the crystal she’d carried out of the shadow realm. “Get rid of it,” she said at last.

| | | | | | | | |

Much later, after Luna and Variam had yawned themselves awake and we were preparing to leave, I spoke quietly to Anne while the other two were putting on their coats. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Anne said after a moment. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

Anne shook her head.

I met her eyes. “What did you see when you picked up that thing?”

Anne hesitated and I knew she was thinking about dodging the question, but I held her gaze and the moment passed. “If I were in danger,” she said slowly, “real danger, would you come to help?”

I frowned. “Of course.”

“What if you couldn’t do anything?” Anne said bluntly. “You’re not as powerful as any of us. Would you still try?”

That stung. But still . . . “Probably.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. I could have said that I had few enough friends and that I didn’t want to lose the ones I had. I could have just said that that was the sort of thing I do. There was another reason, a truer one perhaps, but I shied away from admitting that, even to myself. But something in Anne’s eyes made me uncomfortable, and I fell back on a less naked answer. “We all have things we don’t want to give up.”

Anne stood looking back at me for a long moment, then a burst of laughter came from Luna and Variam behind us, and the moment was gone. She turned away.

I looked at Anne, frowning. Somehow I had the uneasy feeling that I’d said the wrong thing. But then Luna and Variam came to rejoin us, and we fell in together for the walk out.