Fated

3

The spot Starbreeze had dropped me was just outside the British Museum. The courtyard was bordered to the north by the museum itself, to the east and west by outbuildings and to the south by stone walls, tall gates and a high iron fence with spikes. Beyond the fence, buses and cars tracked steadily from left to right to left along Great Russell Street, casting light and sound through the railings, but the courtyard itself was silent.

As I waited for my eyes to adjust, I looked through the futures and saw that if I moved forward I’d run into a line of massive columns, behind which was the museum’s main entrance. Starbreeze had said something about mages trying to open something. It might be Lyle’s relic, in which case this place would be under Council guard. Otherwise, it might be someone’s secret project. Either way, it was a safe bet nobody inside would be happy to see me.

If there’s one thing all diviners share, it’s curiosity. We really can’t help it; it’s just part of who we are. If you dug out a tunnel somewhere in the wilderness a thousand miles from anywhere and hung a sign on it saying, ‘Warning, this leads to the Temple of Horrendous Doom. Do not enter, ever. No, not even then’, you’d get back from lunch to find a diviner already inside and two more about to go in.

Come to think about it, that might explain why there are so few of us.

In any case, even if this wasn’t what I was after, I couldn’t resist having a closer look. I flipped the hood of my mist cloak up over my head and walked into the shadows of the huge columns. In the wall beyond were double doors of metal and glass. Through the glass I could see an open area with two men at a security station, one sitting, one standing. The only way through into the museum proper was to cross in clear line of sight of both men. I stood watching for two full minutes, then opened the door and walked inside.

Everyone knows diviners can see the future. But what does seeing the future mean?

Most people think it’s like reading a book. You skip a few pages ahead, see what’s going to happen. That’s impossible, of course. You reach a fork in the road: do you go left or right? You might go one way; you might go the other. It’s your choice, no one else’s.

What a diviner sees is probability. In one future you go left; in another you go right; in a third, you stop and ask for directions. A hundred branches, each branching again and again to create thousands, for every one of the millions of people living on this earth. Billions and trillions of futures, branching in every way through four dimensions like a river delta the size of a galaxy.

You can’t look at all that at once. If you opened your sight to all the possible futures of everything around you, even for an instant, the knowledge would destroy you, wipe away your mind like an ocean wave rolling over a drop of water. Seeing into the future is a constant discipline, always keeping your guard up, always focused. The real reason there are so few diviners is that most of them either go crazy or block their power off so that they don’t have to deal with it any more.

The diviners who don’t go crazy learn to see futures in terms of strength. Everyone develops their own code, a way of interpreting the information. To me, futures appear as lines of light in the darkness. The stronger and more likely the future, the brighter the glow. The next thing you learn is how to sort futures, search for groupings of events in which things happen a certain way. And once you’ve done that, all you have to do is look back along the strands and find out which actions lead to them.

In ninety-nine out of a hundred futures, opening the door and walking in led to me being spotted by the security guards. I searched for the future in which I wasn’t spotted, looked back to see what I had to do to make it happen, and did it. I didn’t have the faintest idea why I had to move that way. I just knew it would work.

To anyone watching, it looks like pure fluke. One guard points at something, and the other turns just as I open the door and close it behind me. They carry on talking and I stand quietly in the shadow of the doorway. One looks away briefly and I walk out across the floor as the second bends down to fumble in a drawer. I walk past, staying behind the first one as he turns back, and pass through the exit at the other side just before the second one looks up again.

Afterwards, when the balloon goes up, both guards will swear they never took their eyes off the door.

The Great Court of the British Museum is massive, more than fifty feet high with the huge cylinder of the Reading Room running from floor to ceiling at the centre. Floor and walls are painted white, reflecting the light and emphasising the empty space, and the ceiling is slightly domed. An equestrian statue stood to the right; to the left, a stone lion snarled down upon an information desk covered with pamphlets. I crossed the floor, half my mind on keeping my footsteps silent and the other half searching the possible futures for more guards, noting as I did that a patrol was due in about three minutes. I picked a map off the desk and glanced at it. The bulk of the ground floor was taken up by the west wing, mostly filled with permanent exhibits from Ancient Greece and Rome. Somehow I couldn’t see Lyle’s relic being one of those; if the Rosetta Stone or the Elgin Marbles were magical, I was pretty sure someone would have noticed by now. At the back, around the third floor, were some rooms marked in brown as ‘exhibitions and changing displays’. That sounded hopeful. I slipped the map into my pocket and started for the stairs.

As I climbed the curving staircase around the Reading Room and mapped out my path through the museum, the back of my mind was puzzling about why any kind of magical item would be here. Mages, as a whole, are not the most public-spirited of people. If they find something they want, they take it. They don’t leave it on display.

Unless in this case they couldn’t take it. If the Council couldn’t move it to a safe location, that might explain why Lyle was desperate enough to try contacting me.

I’d just reached Ethiopia and Coptic Egypt when something pinged on my precognition. Two guards were ahead. I paused until I knew neither was looking in my direction, then peeked my head around the corner. The men were about thirty feet away, standing in front of a staircase leading up, and they were carrying …

Bingo. The security guards at the door had worn the black uniforms and pullovers of British Museum security, with a silver ‘BM’ on their epaulettes. These two wore plain clothes. They carried no obvious tools or weapons, but I could sense the auras of magical items, and from the way one had moved I’d spotted a gun in a shoulder holster and that made them Council security. Mages don’t do sentry duty, not unless it’s literally a matter of life or death; they’re too important for that. Instead they have private soldiers, equipped with modern weapons and magical aids.

These two weren’t mages, or even adepts, but they were alert and competent. As well as that, I could tell from here that the top of the stairwell behind them was warded with a barrier. The barrier would contain a well-hidden alarm; anyone entering the fourth floor without the magical key, whether by foot or by spell, would set off a silent warning signal. Knowing the Council, the guards wouldn’t be trusted with the password key. An elemental mage could blast through the guards and the barrier, but would set off the alarm. A more subtle mage would be able to avoid raising the alarm, but they wouldn’t be able to get through the barrier.

It was a typical Council defence: cost-effective and ruthless. The job of those two guards was to be, basically, cannon fodder. If a mage attacked them, their chances of survival were nil. Their only purpose was to raise the alarm and give advance warning to Council reinforcements gating in. But no matter what I thought of the methods, I had to admit it was a fairly good setup. For a normal mage, getting past both the guards and the barrier without raising the alarm would take hours of preparation, if not days.

It took me slightly over five minutes. When you know exactly what will set off an alarm, then you know exactly what won’t. Think about it.

The fourth floor was sealed off from the rest of the museum with boards and screens. Worn red carpet covered the floor and a scattered handful of lights cast the room in a dim glow. Standing in the centre of the room was a statue.

I should probably mention at this point that what I was doing was, under mage law, illegal as hell. The Council might turn a blind eye to torture and murder, but trespassing, well, that’s serious. With my reputation, I’d be in serious trouble if I was caught. However, I was pretty sure by this point that I’d be in more serious trouble if I stayed home. I had no particular desire to sit around waiting for the next guy in line to take a shot at me.

I scanned the room. A few other exhibits had been pushed into the corners: a vase, a standing lamp, something that looked like a totem pole. None radiated magic. A lift was at the far end, but it was dark and unpowered. There were no windows. Apart from the stairs I’d climbed to enter this room, there was no way in and no way out, which meant I was standing in a dead end if anything went wrong. I would have to work fast.

The statue was of a man, life-size, wearing robes that looked like ancient ancestors of the ceremonial gear Light mages wear to formal occasions. He looked in his fifties or sixties, with a flowing beard. His right hand grasped a wand, while his left hand was held out in front of him, palm up and slightly cupped as though asking for something. The face was superbly detailed, right down to the age lines and the set of the eyes; the sculptor had obviously used magic to preserve his work. The expression and pose of the man was commanding, proud. I circled the statue once more then, after a moment’s hesitation, reached out and touched it.

Nothing happened, as I’d known it would. The statue looked and felt like stone, though slightly cooler to the touch than stone should be. This was Lyle’s relic, all right. Even without my mage’s sight, I could feel power radiating from the thing. I looked around the room, putting together what must have happened. The museum had gotten hold of the statue and brought it here. The Council had found it, sent agents. Their orders would have been to study the item, determine its power. First they would have tried to activate the statue, then if that didn’t work they would have tried to move it.

What had happened then?

I turned back to the statue, studying the face. The expression was calm, but with a hint of something else — arrogance? Danger? Looking closely, I could see traces of old scars. A battle mage, then, and a good one, if he’d lived to that age. The more I looked, the more I felt there was something expectant about the statue, as though it were waiting for something.

The outstretched hand lay there, open and inviting. I looked into the future to see what would happen if I put something into it.

I watched the scene unfolding ahead of me for just a second, then broke off the vision and stepped back hastily until my back fetched up against the wall. Suddenly I understood exactly why Lyle and Cinder needed a diviner, and what had happened the last time someone had tried to activate this thing. The statue had been perfectly preserved — and its defence system had been perfectly preserved, too. I’d learned all I needed to know. It was time to get out of here.

I’d taken two steps towards the door when I heard the sound from downstairs. It was a quiet sound, the sound of something soft and heavy falling, and it made me stop dead.

Remember what I said about diviners learning to focus on the futures that tell you what you need to know? Well, it comes with a drawback. If you’re focusing on one set of futures, you aren’t paying attention to the others. So if you’re about to be cornered by some people you really don’t want to meet, you won’t notice it until something draws your attention — something like the sound of a body hitting the floor.

It was not turning out to be a good day.

Most people’s first response to danger is to run away. It’s a survival instinct which natural selection has done a good job of encouraging. It’s an old saying that if you’re being chased, you only have to outrun one person. If everyone else runs away and you don’t, by default that makes you the one person. Hence people whose first response to danger isn’t to run away tend to get weeded out of the gene pool by teeth, or bullets, or fireballs, as the case may be.

Personally, my first response to danger is to take a closer look and see what’s going on. Refer back to what I said about diviners being curious. Also refer back to what I said about there not being many of us. I looked into the future of what I would see if I ran downstairs, following the gaze of my future self.

The first thing I saw were the two guards who’d been stationed on the landing. Both were now lying on the floor, quite dead. Standing over them were three figures. As my future self saw the figures, they saw me, and I got one glimpse of what they’d do before I cut the vision off abruptly. Just that look was all I needed to know that I did not want to be found here.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and I knew I had fewer than thirty seconds. Running was out, fighting was out. The only choice left was to hide. I moved into one of the corners, sliding in behind the totem pole so its irregular shape would break up my outline, then pulled the hood of my mist cloak over my head. The footsteps below stopped, and I knew they’d reached the barrier. There was a flicker of green light and the barrier was gone. Figures strode in.

There were three of them, two men and a woman, quick and quiet, their heads turning as they checked the corners. All three were masked and wore dark clothes, but even with the masks I recognised the hulking shape of the nearest. It was Cinder. He looked straight at the corner in which I was hiding, but his eyes swept past without seeing. ‘Empty.’

‘Find some more,’ snarled the second man. It was Khazad. Apparently going after me hadn’t been the only item on his to-do list for tonight. He was limping and smelt of rotting vegetables. Maybe he’d hit the dumpster on his way down. ‘I’m not done.’

‘Enough,’ the woman said sharply, and the sound of her voice made me forget all about Khazad. The clothes hid her shape and all I could see was a pair of blue eyes, but even a glance at them made me go still. I couldn’t place her voice, but somehow I felt as though I’d met her before. ‘Cinder, do your tests.’

Cinder made a gesture and dark red lights sprang up around the room, small red flames smouldering in mid-air. In the red glow, he studied the statue, turning his back to me. ‘How long we got?’

‘They’ll still be getting out of bed,’ Khazad said, his voice simmering with anger. ‘They get in our way, too bad for them.’

‘We aren’t here for you to play,’ the woman said. She checked a watch. ‘Two minutes. Cinder?’

The woman’s voice was sending chills through me. Something about it kept nagging at my memory, but I couldn’t quite match it. If I could just see her face … but in the red light, all I could make out were her eyes as she stood with arms folded, staring at the statue. She was average height and moved with a smooth grace.

‘Trying,’ Cinder muttered. He was holding up his hands, weaving glowing red threads around the statue. I could recognise it as a divining spell of some kind, but a crude one. He wasn’t going to learn anything useful. Cinder must have realised it the same time I did, because he lowered his hands and let the light die. ‘Need a diviner.’

Khazad looked at Cinder angrily. ‘You say something?’

Cinder returned Khazad’s gaze. ‘Said you’d bring Verus. Said you didn’t need any help.’

Khazad showed his teeth in a snarl. I could feel the hate radiating off him, and I made a mental note to make sure I stayed out of Khazad’s way for a while. I was getting the impression he wasn’t the forgive-and-forget type.

‘Cinder,’ the woman said again, and Cinder looked away from Khazad, breaking the stand-off. I couldn’t help but grin. Hey, don’t sell yourself short, guys. You did manage to bring along a diviner, you just can’t see him. Destroying the barrier had triggered an alarm, and Council reinforcements were on the way. I already knew that Khazad’s guess had been accurate. The reinforcements were going to be too late to do me any good.

But the three Dark mages didn’t know that. The woman took a final glance at her watch and shook her head. ‘We’re out of time.’

Reluctantly, Cinder held out his left hand. The woman handed him something the size of a tennis ball, covered in a dark cloth. Cinder turned to the statue and hesitated.

Khazad gave an ugly laugh. ‘Losing your nerve?’

‘Shut up, Khazad,’ The woman’s voice had a snap of authority to it. Khazad fell silent mid-laugh and glowered. The woman’s eyes swept past him and suddenly locked on the corner in which I was hiding.

I caught my breath. Blue eyes stared into mine. In the dim light, I knew that I would be only a shadow in the corner. But if she came forward even a little … I closed my fingers around the glass marble in my pocket.

‘Fine,’ Cinder growled. The woman dragged her eyes away to look at him, and I let out my breath silently. ‘Let’s do this.’

Cinder stepped forward towards the statue, unwrapping the whatever-it-was. His back was to me, and I wanted to find out what he was holding in his hands, but self-preservation made me look into the future instead. Cinder was going to place the thing into the statue’s hand, the statue was going to activate, and-

Oh, crap.

I’d been hoping these three knew what they were doing. Judging by what they were about to set off, it was obvious they didn’t.

As Cinder wove a protection spell around the statue, I knew I didn’t have much time. My current location was about to become very unhealthy. I could try stepping out to give the three Dark mages a warning, but I didn’t even bother checking what the consequences of that would be. Pretty much every future in which I stayed in this room led to me being burnt to a crisp within the next thirty seconds.

It was time to go back to Plan A: run away very quickly.

Cinder finished his spell, placed something in the statue’s hand, then stepped back. With his bulk between me and the statue, I couldn’t see what was happening, and all my attention was going towards calculating at exactly which point I should run. There was a faint white glow from the statue, dim in the red light, then a red flicker. Then the light died away and there was silence.

Khazad spoke into the vacuum. ‘Is that it?’

Never ask questions like that around active magic.

The room brightened with pale light, swallowing the red glow of Cinder’s magic in a white aura. Something large appeared in the room, just above the statue, and right in the middle of the three very surprised Dark mages.

And in the moment’s pause where the three of them were staring open-mouthed at the creature in front of them, I sprinted past and down the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me.

I’ve been involved in a good few combats over the course of my life, and pretty much all of them have either started or ended with me running away. There is a reason for this. Mages can inconvenience, immobilise, hurt, injure, stab, slice, burn, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate you in a variety of creative ways, but pretty much all of them require that they know where you are. If you can stay out of sight it’s hard for them to know where you are, and if you can move faster than they can it’s hard for them to keep you in sight. So if you lead a lifestyle that brings you into frequent contact with unfriendly mages, and you have plans for your life that don’t involve getting turned into a small pile of charcoal, it’s a good idea to learn to run fast. To run fast you need training, fitness and, most of all, motivation.

I had three Dark mages and an angry guardian elemental behind me. I had motivation in spades.

As I tore down the stairs, I heard a shout from the woman, followed by a hollow boom and a red-black flash as at least two of the Dark mages took a shot at the elemental. A second later the stairs flashed white and there was a crack of thunder as the elemental took a shot back. I didn’t know whether I’d been spotted and I didn’t hang around to find out. I made it back the way I came into the Great Court and to the top of the staircase with a speed that an Olympic sprinter would have had trouble beating.

The Great Court showed no signs of battle; the three Dark mages had probably bypassed the doors and gated in. The good news was that there were no security guards.

The bad news was that the Council reinforcements had just turned up.

There were five of them, just entering through the front doors. The battle mages of the Council are more of a police force than anything else, but you still don’t want to mess with them. This group were shielded, armed and ready for trouble.

But they didn’t have advance warning and I did. As I reached the top of the staircase I pulled the crystal marble from my pocket and threw it to shatter at the foot of the stairs. Silvery vapour surged out, filling the Great Court with an obscuring mist, and the mages disappeared from view in an instant. I sprinted down into the mist, relying on my magic to avoid a fall.

If I’d been lucky, that would have been it. I could have passed them in the mist and left them to fight it out behind me. But their leader was fast, already throwing up shields, shouting orders, and I knew I’d never make it through the door. I made a snap decision, jinked right, ran across the Great Court into the West Wing and just made it into the doorway before one of the other mages evaporated the mist to nothingness with a surge of air magic.

I’d been forewarned in time to freeze in the shadow of the door, my mist cloak gathered around me. The mages were clustered around the main entrance, defensive spells glowing around them. ‘Where’d he go?’ the leader snapped. He was a tough-looking man in his middle years with iron-grey hair.

‘Can’t see him,’ another mage said, scanning the court. ‘Didn’t feel a gate.’

‘He couldn’t have made one that fast …’

‘We don’t know that,’ the leader said. ‘Ward the door; we need to push up.’

With care and persistence, you can track down even someone in a mist cloak. I knew the mages of the response team would be able to find me given enough time. I also knew they weren’t going to get it.

The air mage who’d blown away the mist heard the sound of running footsteps first and called a warning to the others. The response team swung their attention to the top of the staircase just as the three Dark mages appeared at a dead run. Even at this distance I could see that Cinder and Khazad’s clothes were smoking. The leader of the Council mages started to shout something up at them, and the ensuing conversation would have been very interesting if the elemental hadn’t followed them out a second later.

Elementals are living, sapient manifestations of the building blocks of our universe. They’re not usually all that smart, although calling them stupid isn’t quite right either — ‘limited’ is a better word. Either way, one thing they’re not is weak. Take Starbreeze — she isn’t particularly powerful as elementals go, but she could still transform you into air without breaking a sweat. She could also, should she feel like it, scatter that air across so many thousands of cubic miles of atmosphere that your body would be in every time zone at once. With that in mind, you can see why mages avoid picking fights with even lesser elementals.

The elemental hovering at the top of the stairs was definitely not a lesser one.

Standing upright it would have been maybe twelve feet tall, a rough humanoid shape with two arms, two legs, a body and what could have been a head, every part of it crackling blue-white electricity. It didn’t walk so much as fly, blazing a jagged path through the air to light up the Great Court with dazzling light, staring with brilliant eyes down upon the mages facing it. Ah, I thought. ‘Lightning man’. So that was what she meant.

The leader of the Light mages shouted something, but no one was listening to him any more. About five of the Light and Dark mages hit the elemental at the same time, fire and wind and earth slamming into it as one. The elemental hit back, and a lightning storm blazed outward from the top of the stairs, bolts slamming off shields to crackle down into the floor.

By this point I was running again. For a diviner like me, a two-sided battle is more than dangerous enough. A three-sided battle isn’t even worth thinking about. By my count there were now four sides: the Dark trio, the Council reinforcements, the elemental and me. My curiosity wanted to stick around and see who won, but it was outvoted.

The only problem was that the free-for-all I was running away from just happened to be right between me and the exit. I sprinted past the Rosetta Stone and Assyria, took a right at the Nereid Monument and ducked into a corner in the Greeks and Lycians displays. Pulling out my glass rod, I channelled a thread of magic and whispered urgently. ‘Starbreeze, friend to the air and — no, wait. Lady of the wind, dancer of, friend to, um … oh, hell with it, Starbreeze, it’s Alex Verus, and I need you right now. Get me out of here!’

There was a crash from the direction of the Great Court and the air lit up white. I’d picked the furthest corner I could find, but from the way the floor vibrated, it wasn’t far enough. ‘Starbreeze! Come on! Where are you?’

Running footsteps echoed from where I’d come. I scanned, then snapped a quick look around the corner. Running through the gallery which held the Nereid Monument were two figures in dark clothes: Cinder and the woman. I ducked back and swore under my breath. ‘Why do these people keep following me?’

‘Who?’ Starbreeze said in interest.

I jumped and spun to see Starbreeze hovering right next to my face, the transparent lines of her face almost invisible in the darkness. Starbreeze giggled. ‘Scared you!’ She pointed brightly back towards the Great Court. ‘Lightning man!’

‘Yeah, I noticed. Let’s get out of here!’

‘Stay and watch?’

Around the corner, the sound of approaching footsteps had stopped. Dimly I heard Cinder’s voice, muttering, ‘-someone there.’

‘Khazad?’ the woman’s voice muttered back.

Why can’t they find their own place to hide? ‘Let’s not,’ I urged. ‘Look!’ I rummaged through my pocket and came up with a silvered earring. ‘Here, Starbreeze. Starbreeze!’

Starbreeze was floating five feet up in the air, gazing absently in the direction of the battle. She gave a look down at the earring, then shook her head and went back to staring at the wall happily. ‘Lightning’s pretty.’

‘Starbreeze, come on!’

Starbreeze shook her head. ‘Uh-uh.’

Over Starbreeze’s voice, I could just hear Cinder talking. ‘-not Khazad.’

‘Burn the room he’s in.’

‘Can’t tell which room.’

‘Burn them all, then.’

As I heard those last words my precognition screamed. I went from a standing start to a dead run in one second flat, sprinting out through the exit on the right.

There was a whoompf! and a wave of heat washed over me, followed by the wail of smoke alarms. I turned back to see that the gallery I’d been standing in was a cloud of ash and smoke. The edge of the blast had missed me by maybe ten feet.

As I watched the sprinkler system came on, water hissing as it struck the molten glass of the display case, Starbreeze came zipping out of the smoke. ‘That hurt!’ Her voice rippled, upset, and her form was shaky, specks of ash fluttering as she moved.

‘Then let’s go! Get us out of here!’

Starbreeze swept down and around me, turned me into air, and whisked me up and out of sight. I had one fleeting glimpse of Cinder and the woman emerging from the smoke, then we were moving at Starbreeze’s full speed, and let me tell you, full speed for Starbreeze is fast. The museum blurred and before I had time to take a breath we were outside and soaring upwards, the dome of the British Museum turning into a speck beneath us as we vanished into the night.

I had plenty to think about on the trip back. Whatever that statue was, it was valuable enough that the three Dark mages had been willing to take heavy risks to be the first to activate it. They’d tried to pick the lock and failed. It was obvious now why they’d wanted a diviner so badly: with my help, they wouldn’t have set off that trap. Now they’d botched their first attempt, the security on the museum would be doubled. That meant they’d either have to quit, or come after me again. Somehow none of them struck me as the quitting type.

Thinking about them made me think again about the woman. Something about her kept nagging at my memory. I was sure I’d met her, but I couldn’t remember where.

By the time I managed to convince Starbreeze to take me home, the adrenaline rush from the battle had worn off and I was dead tired. Starbreeze dropped me off on my roof and swirled away as I climbed wearily down to my flat. I’d made some new enemies, given the Council further cause to dislike me, and nearly got killed twice. Not a great day’s work.

But it hadn’t been for nothing. I’ve always believed in the power of knowledge. Any problem can be solved if you understand it well enough, and somewhere in what I’d learnt today was the key to this whole mess. I just needed to figure it out.

Once I was back in my bedroom all I wanted was to sleep, but I had more work to do. I hung my mist cloak in the wardrobe, giving it a pat and watching as its colours rippled slightly at the touch of my hand. Then I fetched the cube from where I’d left it and set it down on my desk. Cinder had been willing to kill me for this, which meant I needed to know what it did. It was going to be a long night.