Risen

7

The Arcana Emporium was quiet. Within the shop, the only noise was the tap of Luna’s shoes on the floor. The shelves and tables didn’t leave enough space to get up any kind of speed, but there was a little corridor in front of the counter where you could walk in a straight line for about twelve feet before having to turn around. I watched Luna pace to the far shelves, then back, then to the shelves again. Every ten minutes or so she’d realise what she was doing and you could see her consciously stop and lean against the counter, holding herself still. Within sixty seconds, she’d be pacing again.

Ji-yeong was in the far corner, in a chair which Luna had tucked in between the display cabinets at the front window and the side tables against the wall. A Sainsbury’s bag with some food was under her chair. I doubted we’d need it, but you never know.

Outside, the city was abuzz with the coming evening. Scattered water droplets hung on the shop window: showers had come and gone, but now the weather was dry again and the streets were filling with the fall of night. The hum of voices and traffic filtered in through the walls, and soon distant music would begin to play as the clubs opened. The sounds of a Friday evening in Camden, familiar as a pair of old shoes.

I checked the time. 7.10. Fifty minutes to zero hour.

My communicator chimed. Luna stopped and both she and Ji-yeong turned to look as I lifted the focus. ‘Receiving,’ I said.

‘Verus?’ Talisid sounded harassed. ‘I’ve double-checked. The ward team confirm that the gate and isolation wards on Sagash’s shadow realm have been bypassed.’

‘Right now? You’re sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. It would help if you could tell me why you consider this so important.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

‘Wonderful. I assume you’ve checked in with Drakh?’

‘Text only,’ I said. I absolutely did not want a real-time conversation with Richard right now. Diviners can learn far too much that way. ‘His team will be entering at twenty-hundred, point C.’

‘Good. Now I have fifteen other things I need to be doing. Please don’t give me any more.’ Talisid broke the connection.

‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.

I returned the focus to my pocket. ‘Original plan was for the Council ward experts to bypass the wards on Sagash’s shadow realm at the last possible moment before zero hour. I convinced Talisid to do it an hour in advance. He wasn’t very happy about it.’

‘Mm,’ Luna said. She seemed distracted and I wasn’t sure she’d heard. She stared off into space, then went back to pacing. I checked the time again. 7.13.

Minutes ticked by. From a street or two over came the muffled sounds of cheering, swelling to a roar and then dying away. Luna’s footsteps echoed in the quiet shop. It was taking her five and a half steps to cross the floor each time. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn.

‘Ugh.’ Luna shook her head and put both hands flat on the counter. ‘This is driving me crazy. It’s like before a big duelling match, you know? Except then, if I lost, I’d just go back and train harder and do better next time. It wasn’t the end of the world.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘The waiting for these kinds of things is hard. Funny thing is, what I was thinking of just then wasn’t the combat ops I went on as a Keeper. It was exams at school.’

‘You used to get that tense about exams?’

‘You didn’t?’

‘I mean, they’re just exams. It’s not like they really matter.’

‘Well, not compared to the kind of stuff we have to deal with these days,’ I said. ‘But when you’re a kid, you don’t have much variety of experience. If exams are the biggest test you’re facing, that’s what you worry about.’

‘Come on. You must have had stuff you cared about more than that.’

‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘But that was the only thing I could do that adults seemed to care about. Pretty much the one single thing that my mother and father and teachers could all agree on was that I was supposed to do well at school.’ I shrugged. ‘Didn’t really have any friends, so I didn’t have much else to do.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Luna said, ‘but that sounds really sad.’

‘Sounds normal to me,’ Ji-yeong said.

‘You too?’ Luna said.

‘Well, not the having no friends part,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘But when you’re in school, you don’t get much time to see friends anyway.’

‘You can see them after school.’

‘That’s when you sleep.’

‘You’ve got time to do more than work and sleep.’

‘Well, classes and study are about sixteen hours,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Once you add on meals and travel, that doesn’t leave much.’

Luna stared at her. ‘Sixteen hours?’

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw what your schedules are like over here,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘English children are really spoilt.’

‘I’m half-English,’ Luna said. ‘My father’s Italian.’

‘Close enough.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Luna paused. ‘What time is it?’

‘7.19,’ I told her.

‘Oh, come on!’

All the time that Luna had been pacing, I’d been checking the futures. At exactly 8.00, the invasion would start. And it would succeed, at least to begin with. Both Council forces would deploy into the shadow realm without triggering the wards. I couldn’t see what Richard’s group would do, but as far as I could see, everything was unfolding according to plan.

Once everyone was inside the shadow realm, the futures blurred into a mess of uncertainty and branching possibilities. The invasion would set off alarms, and we could expect Anne’s forces to counterattack. But the whole point of invading like this at so many points was to overwhelm the defences with more threats than Anne could possibly handle. The Council would take losses, but with their numbers and with Richard’s forces on their side, they should be able to crush her in a matter of hours.

And at that point, they’d be in position to turn on Richard’s forces and crush them as well.

‘That sword looks kind of familiar,’ Ji-yeong told Luna.

‘It’s Alex’s,’ Luna said. She still sounded distracted.

‘Did he tell you where he got it?’

‘Okay,’ I interrupted. ‘I think it’s time.’

Ji-yeong and Luna looked at me as I took out my communicator and activated it. ‘Landis,’ a voice said after a moment.

‘It’s Verus,’ I said. ‘Go.’

‘Understood.’ Landis broke the connection.

‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.

I stood up, stretching slightly. ‘We’re going.’

Luna looked puzzled. ‘Going, as in . . . ?’

‘The invasion.’

Luna checked her phone. ‘It’s still—’

‘Change of plans.’

Both Luna and Ji-yeong looked confused now. ‘What’s going on?’ Luna asked.

‘Okay,’ I said. The futures were starting to shift, and I kept an eye on them as I talked. ‘Richard needs the Council to take out Anne. But once Anne’s been neutralised, his forces are going to be stuck in a warded shadow realm with a Council army. The Council is going to kill him at the first available opportunity. I know that, and if I can figure that out, so can Richard. Right?’

‘Okay,’ Luna said.

‘So imagine you’re Richard,’ I said. ‘You know the Council’s going to turn on you. The obvious way to deal with that is to backstab them first. Except the Council knows you know, so they’re also going to backstab you first. And the Council have a bigger army. If it comes down to Richard’s cabal versus the Council strike force in that shadow realm, Richard’s going to lose. So what do you do?’ I paused for a second, then went on. ‘You stop them from having the bigger army. The key is the isolation ward. Once that’s triggered, the Council won’t be able to bring in any more reinforcements. Their numbers won’t matter.’

‘But if he triggers the isolation ward once you’re all there, that’ll just make it worse for him,’ Luna said. ‘He won’t be able to get away.’

‘Which is why he isn’t going to wait that long. Richard’s going to sabotage the plan right at the beginning and trigger the isolation ward while the Council’s still moving that into the shadow realm. Let in a fraction, cut off the rest.’

‘Why a fraction?’ Luna asked.

‘Balancing act,’ I said. ‘He can’t beat Anne on his own. He’s planning to let in just enough Council mages to distract Anne’s forces and weaken them enough for him to finish them off, but not so many that they can beat him. It’s dangerous, but he’s been willing to take those chances before. And it’s exactly the kind of thing the Council wouldn’t see coming, because they’d never do anything so high risk.’

‘And you figured all this out by divining it?’ Ji-yeong asked.

‘Well, not exactly,’ I said. ‘My divination is telling me that the Council’s plan is going to work fine.’

‘What?’

‘The Council has diviners too. They’ll have told the Council the same thing.’

‘Then . . .’

‘Richard can project false futures. Make diviners see what he wants them to see. He’s fooled me with it before.’

‘So you can tell this one’s a fake?’ Luna asked.

‘Nope,’ I said.

The two of them stared at me.

‘Future looks one hundred per cent real,’ I said. ‘But Richard’s a master. If he was creating a false vision, that’s what I’d expect to see.’

‘So . . . you’re guessing?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘If I’m wrong, I just screwed everything up in a really major way and the Council are going to be very, very pissed off.’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s hope I’m not. Now stay quiet, I need to path-walk.’

Luna and Ji-yeong exchanged glances.

The shop was quiet, the streets outside busy with the bustle of a normal Camden evening. But elsewhere, I’d just kicked over an anthill. Landis was starting the gate spells that would send his team through into the shadow realm, and he’d have notified Nimbus to do the same. Nimbus would rage and order him to stop, and when Landis didn’t, Nimbus would call the Council and demand an explanation. And the Council would respond by calling . . .

My communicator pinged. Talisid. I picked up the focus, activated it and spoke into it, my voice clipped. ‘Richard’s betraying you. He’s going to let you start to gate your forces into the shadow realm, then trigger the isolation ward and cut you off. You have to go right now.’

‘Verus, what do you think—?’

‘No time. You have a few minutes. Don’t waste them.’

I broke the connection. There was silence for a few seconds, then the communicator pinged again. I didn’t answer.

Now it was a race. My actions had thrown the futures into chaos, and it wouldn’t take Richard long to realise something was wrong. Meanwhile, the Council would be arguing. Could they act faster than Richard?

Normally the answer would be no. But Richard had his own army to deploy, and he needed to maintain the optasia. And crucially, he was doing it alone. Richard’s cabal was powerful, but the biggest weakness of Dark mages is their lack of trust: if he didn’t watch his back then someone like Vihaela would put a knife in it. I was hoping that right now, he had too much to deal with.

The communicator pinged, then pinged twice more. I selected the person I needed to talk to and answered. ‘Verus.’

An aggravated voice spoke through the focus. ‘Verus, this is—’

‘Director Nimbus,’ I interrupted. ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing; yes, there is a good reason, and the reason is the one you just heard from Talisid. Richard is going to trigger the isolation ward and cut your force into bits. You have to launch the invasion right now.’

‘You don’t have—’

‘I do know that.’

‘The Council—’

‘The Council diviners are being fooled.’

‘You—’

‘My authority doesn’t matter. I’m the one who knows what’s going to happen.’

‘Stop interrupting me!’

‘Nimbus, I know you don’t like me,’ I said. ‘But you are about to make the most important decision of your career, and depending on which path you choose, you will go down in history in one of two ways. Down one path, you’ll be remembered as the visionary commander who sniffed out a trap and defeated Drakh when other Keepers couldn’t. Down the other, you’ll be remembered as a failure who hesitated at the crucial moment. Pick one.’

‘I need confirmation!’

‘Landis is opening his gate in three and a half minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you’re going to have to make your decision whether you’ve got confirmation or not.’ I hung up.

Luna and Ji-yeong were still watching, looking slightly nervous. ‘Um,’ Luna said. ‘Can we talk now?’

‘Not quite.’ I opened the door by the counter and went through into the back room.

Luna had kept some aspects of the Arcana Emporium the same – the back room on the ground floor had an enclave from the rest of the shop’s wards in order to allow for direct gate transit. I reached out through the dreamstone and the fateweaver, combining their powers. The dreamstone allowed me to step from here into Elsewhere; the fateweaver allowed me to exploit flaws in the castle’s defences. The Light mages working right now were creating large-scale breaches in the shadow realm’s wards to hold their gates open for an extended period. By slipping through chinks in the armour and causing the defences to weaken at opportune times, I could create a much smaller breach with a fraction of the effort.

At the same time, I was watching the futures. My divination was still telling me that the invasion was set to start at eight sharp, and with a thrill of satisfaction I knew I’d guessed right. Richard was hiding the truth from us, and he hadn’t figured out that we were onto him. Yet.

As I watched, the future seemed to quiver. I’d never seen anything like it before, and it was a strange sensation, as though reality was shaking loose. It made me dizzy to watch, and I had to look around to reassure myself that yes, I was still in the back room.

‘Alex?’ Luna asked.

‘I’m fine,’ I said absently. I was still forming the gate. I’d grown better with the dreamstone, and I’d discovered that with a little extra work I could compress the Elsewhere journey down to effectively nothing, placing the gate from here to Elsewhere and the gate from Elsewhere to the shadow realm right next to one another. After all these years, I could finally gate the way elemental mages could.

And then, just as I watched, the futures shattered, a screen breaking and crumbling to reveal new futures, real futures, that were a flurry of activity. I felt my spirits lift. I spend so much time looking into the future that having it taken away feels like fumbling around in the dark. Now the lights were on.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Gate into the shadow realm is in ninety seconds. Once we get through, things are going to get messy. Ji-yeong, we’re coming out in the same spot we left from. You know the area?’

‘I know it,’ Ji-yeong said. Hermes had appeared at Luna’s feet and was watching us, bright-eyed.

‘We’re going to need a way to get out of sight and escape pursuit quickly. You know a route that’ll do that?’

Ji-yeong hesitated. ‘I don’t know if—’

Hermes yipped.

We all looked down at him. Hermes looked up at me and blinked.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fox has the point.’

My communicator pinged, then pinged again. I didn’t answer. Everything had been set in motion and the only question was which dominos would fall first.

And then the air shimmered and a portal opened in mid-air. It was messier than the neat ovals created by gate magic, but through it I could see the yellow stones of the castle and feel the warm sea breeze. The sky above was the dusky purple of twilight.

I jumped through. Hermes followed at my heels and Luna and Ji-yeong came through a second later.

We were in a small courtyard at the base of a tower. Archways and a set of stairs led off in several directions. The four of us looked around, holding our breath. Nothing moved. After the background hum of Camden, the castle was eerily silent.

Behind us, the portal hung in the air. ‘Do they know we’re here?’ I asked Ji-yeong.

‘Yes,’ Ji-yeong said. She looked tense. ‘The alarm’s going.’

‘What alarm?’ Luna asked.

‘All of them. We can’t stay.’

‘Just a second,’ I said. The futures were shifting.

‘Master Verus,’ Ji-yeong said, and the urgency in her voice made me turn. ‘We need to go. Now.’

I hesitated. I wanted to see the isolation ward trigger . . . but then I saw Ji-yeong’s expression, and I let the portal back to my shop fade into thin air. ‘Hermes,’ I called.

A red and white head poked out from the top of the stairs, gave us an impatient glance and vanished again. I took a grip on the sovnya, and together we jogged up the steps.

In the distance, the silence was broken by a wail, rising and falling like a siren. ‘What’s that?’ Luna asked.

‘Major breach alarm,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘I don’t—’

‘Brace!’ I snapped.

The world around us shifted. There was no other way to describe it. It was like watching a video feed where the resolution changes, or having your ears pop and suddenly being able to hear. I stumbled, catching myself just in time, while Luna went sprawling. It was all over in an instant and I stood up, looking around. Everything seemed normal again, the moment of wrongness already gone.

‘That was the isolation ward?’ I asked Ji-yeong.

‘How should I know?’ Ji-yeong said. She was looking around nervously. ‘Even Sagash wasn’t crazy enough to fire that thing just to see what it looked like.’

‘Well, looks like you guessed right,’ Luna said, pulling herself to her feet. ‘How many do you think made it in?’

‘Don’t know,’ I said, pointing up at the sky. ‘But I think I can guess where they are.’

The walls around us limited our view, but between two towers was a gap through which we could see a narrow window of sky. Across it, lit in the fading sunset, a cloud of black dots was drifting. They were very small, almost invisible at this distance. If you didn’t look too closely, it could have been a flock of birds.

‘Uh,’ Luna said. ‘Are those . . . ?’

‘Shadow constructs,’ I said. Anne hadn’t wasted any time bringing the things under her control.

‘They’ll be coming this way too,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Now will you listen to me and run?’

We ran.

Through the castle, across walkways and around buildings. Hermes dashed ahead faster than any of us, a red flash in the gloom. Above us, the sky was fading from purple to grey. Towers loomed up all around, shadowed and threatening, dark windows hiding what might be within.

Elsewhere in the castle, fighting had broken out. A distant boom echoed from the east, followed by more. Lights flickered, faint and reflected, and I could feel the signature of battle magic. I couldn’t tell who was winning, and I didn’t stop to find out. The Council army could afford to fight Anne’s forces in open battle; we couldn’t.

Hermes began to lead us downwards, flights of stairs pointing down toward ground level. As he did, the futures lit up. Incoming, I sent to Luna and Ji-yeong.

The shadows in the archway ahead moved. Black figures appeared out of the darkness, spreading out to block the courtyard. Five, ten, a dozen.

I felt the sovnya stir. Luna and Ji-yeong slowed and stopped. Alex? Luna asked telepathically. Call it.

‘They’re here to slow us down,’ I said quietly. I walked between Luna and Ji-yeong to face the creatures. The jann stayed where they were, blocking the way forward. ‘We’re going through.’

I strode forward. The jann spread out, faces blank and expressionless, welcoming me in.

The sovnya’s bloodlust ignited, and I let it fill me.

The world around seemed to fade. Walls, floors, stone – all were shadows. Dead things, useless things. Only the living mattered. The three humans blazed with life, white blooms against the darkness. The things in front, though . . . they glowed an angry red, twisted, wrong. Tendrils of corruption seemed to spread from them, warping the space around. As I cut through the first, the tendrils that made up its essence flared, wisping away. Behind it was another, and another. It was methodical work, satisfying, like clearing weeds out of a garden. As each one faded, its tendrils faded too, the world seeming to sigh in relief as the taint was burned away.

The last of the things died. But the castle was infested; there were more, far more. I let my senses spread outwards, searching. Another presence, not as harshly wrong as the others, but still tainted, an aberration. I moved toward it but it slipped away. It was small, agile. Familiar, somehow—

Hermes.

Realisation flashed through me and all of a sudden I came awake. No! I struggled, fought the sovnya’s influence. It was like swimming in heavy clothing, trying to reach the surface. The sovnya resisted. Tainted. Kill. I forced it away, clawed upwards, broke clear—

Sight and sound rushed back. I was standing on the other side of an archway. Black bodies lay all around, red light glowing from gaping rents. The ones farther back were already starting to dissolve, vapour drifting upwards.

Luna and Ji-yeong were back in the archway, staring at me. Both had their swords out, the blades a matched pair. ‘Alex,’ Luna said urgently. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. The sovnya’s influence was receding, but I could still sense it, waiting and hungry. From the position of the bodies, I must have kept advancing after the last one had fallen. I knew where I’d been going, too. Dimly I could still sense Hermes, a red glow in the darkness, changed by magic, unnatural—

No. I forced the thought away. This was my mind, and my body. The sovnya withdrew . . . for now.

Hermes had led us to a small enclosed courtyard. Sheets of metal leant against the walls and some unidentifiable machine stood rusting in the centre. The high walls blocked any view of the sky, but I could still hear the distant sounds of battle. Hermes was waiting at the far side, next to a doorway that opened into darkness.

I walked closer; Hermes trotted aside, eyeing the sovnya. The doorway led into empty space. A vertical shaft dropped away into blackness, cables hanging in the shadows.

Ji-yeong walked up next to me. ‘Lift shaft?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said with a curious look. ‘Down to the old levels.’ She glanced at Hermes. ‘I thought Sagash sealed these off?’

Hermes looked back at her blandly.

‘Does it work?’ I asked.

Ji-yeong stepped forward to study the controls set into the wall. ‘As long as Anne hasn’t broken anything . . .’

‘It’s too quiet,’ Luna said.

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. I looked ahead into the short-term futures. ‘Ji-yeong? We need that lift.’

In answer, Ji-yeong shoved one of the levers. There was a screech of rust and a clanking sound, and within the shaft, I saw the cables start to shake and move.

‘How long?’ Luna asked.

‘Until that lift reaches the top, two minutes,’ I said. ‘Bad news is someone else is going to be here first.’

Luna and Ji-yeong moved instantly towards cover. Hermes disappeared with a flick of his tail. ‘Who?’ Luna asked.

‘It’s Sam, isn’t it?’ Ji-yeong asked.

‘Sam, or Aether, since you said that’s his mage name now,’ I said. I looked at Luna. ‘Lightning mage. He’ll be coming from above, shooting on sight. Stay out of view.’

‘So she got him too,’ Ji-yeong said with a twist of her mouth.

‘You knew him,’ I said. ‘Any advice?’

‘He hates fighting up close,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘You get in range, he’ll lightning jump away. You can’t catch him, but you can hold him off.’

‘Board the lift as soon as it arrives,’ I said. ‘Ten seconds.’

Silence fell. Ji-yeong and Luna were sheltering behind the buttresses that jutted from the wall. I stayed in the shadows of one of the doorways. Night had fallen and the courtyard was cloaked in shadow.

How many times had I waited like this? Keyed-up and still, seconds dragging by. Then the shift in futures, the scrape of a footstep, the lunge, futures splintering into the chaos of combat.

It was very close now. Was that a sound up above? Sam must have flown in silently, alighted on the rooftop. He should be coming into view of the courtyard right about—

I snapped my eyes shut as the courtyard went white. The flash was bright enough for me to see it through my eyelids, and a numbing jolt went through me as the courtyard rang to a deafening crash of thunder. Air rushed past, blasting my hair, then everything was still.

I opened my eyes. From a dozen places in the courtyard, faint trails of smoke were rising. The blast had been concentrated near the lift shaft. The mechanism was still moving, though I couldn’t hear anything except for a faint whine. The air stank of ozone.

Nothing moved. Luna and Ji-yeong had been smart enough to stay hidden. There would be no way for Sam to know how many people were waiting in the shadows, and that would make him cautious. Mages from the air sub-family don’t like to drop down into close quarters. His first instinct would be to wait, to keep his distance—

Sam dropped down into the courtyard.

Surprise skittered along the edge of my thoughts, but I was already moving, closing on Sam in a silent rush. Sam spun, electricity crackling around his hands, and I narrowed my focus to the next couple of seconds. The first lightning bolt went wide; the second would have hit but I pushed with the fateweaver and felt hot air wash over my head. Before he could strike again, I was on him. I could see his shield, hardened air crackling with static, but air shields are more flexible than strong; an enchanted weapon like the sovnya would cut through like paper. I started my swing and took in the futures in a wide-angle glance, a single glimpse with a hundred variations of the next half-second, searching for one in which the polearm cut through cleanly so that I could use the fateweaver to—

There wasn’t one.

The sovnya hit the side of Sam’s shield and bounced off, the shock vibrating down my arms. The impact made Sam stumble, but he recovered almost instantly and looked at me with flat, shadowed eyes from less than five feet away.

Sam fired a lightning bolt into my chest.