The Pilgrims

46

The groundman hole wasn’t far — groundmen had a knack for keeping them hidden in plain sight. As though reading Anfen’s mind, the light about Stranger illuminated the ground around it so he could examine the way for those odd spiked tracks. Watching him do it, she said, ‘I know what you fear.’

‘And what can you tell me of that fear, Stranger?’

‘For now only a little, as we will soon risk being overheard.’ They crawled down through the tunnel, its rock walls bare of lightstones. Stranger lit the way with the green gleam about her, otherwise the tunnel would be purely dark. ‘Tormentors they were named by survivors of the mining station wiped out by them. Apparently no written record of the creatures exists. They play with time, they come from beyond World’s End. Some are small — man-sized — some huge. A few small ones, an army patrol could perhaps handle, with some deaths. The large ones are … a different matter.’

‘And what do we do about them?’

‘You, I am unsure. I will tell you what the castle is doing about them. Us.’ She pointed to herself.

‘New mages?’

‘Yes. And if the new mages succeed in destroying all the Tormentors, what do you suppose their next task will be?’ She let that sink in. ‘We are an old project of theirs. So for how long have they known of Tormentors? But we must be silent, now. The tunnel walls are thin here, and castle guards are on the other side.’

It was clear they’d be gone longer than an hour, for at least half that time had passed before Stranger gestured to halt. She felt the rock wall with her hands, seeking a secret door, then found it. It appeared she stepped head first into stone that swallowed her up, for that section of wall was illusion, nothing but air. She kept an arm protruding through it to guide him in.

Soon, with greater frequency, voices could be heard to either side of their tunnel. Then the passages widened out and the walls’ lightstones were thick, large slabs. This was a thoroughfare commonly used, for military bric-a-brac lay here and there, and signs had been put on the walls with stern written orders and warnings. Small statues and portraits of Vous were everywhere the eye fell. Even as they watched, a man in leathers marched past and paused to wipe dust off the shoulders of a statue which showed the man’s Friend and Lord grim-faced on a drake, with a spear in hand, brass eyes staring at the horizon, seeing further than any mere man could …

Other tunnels led off away from this passageway to more secretive places, the entrance of each barred by iron lattice with heavy locks. After making certain no one was around to see them, Stranger ran out into the open and Anfen followed. Between two barred tunnels she found another secret wall, and again the rock seemed to swallow her.

Anfen knew they were heading for places not well known to the common soldiery, or to anyone else but a select few, despite the troops traversing past those very secret places day to day. He also knew he would not find his way back through these winding tunnels to the surface without Stranger’s help, which began to worry him. Every ten paces, he now gouged little marks with his sword’s tip in the rock wall. If Stranger noticed this, she didn’t comment.

Finally they came to a lightless tunnel angling downwards to a dead end. A secret door was doubtless let into the rounded back wall, or else she’d chosen this to be the place of his death. The air was warm and stuffy.

Stranger turned to whisper, ‘It is just ahead of us. It’s safe to talk in there, as long as no guards come. The mages may hear your voice, may even react to it, but they won’t recall it any more than a sleeping person would.’

He wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Mages?’

‘You will see. They won’t be able to harm us. They won’t even see us, though their eyes may be open.’

He nodded. ‘Let’s hurry. We’ve been longer than you promised.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ She felt the dead end for its secret door. Not only was it well hidden, it was just big enough to crawl through, likely put there by groundmen when they alone owned these tunnels. Anfen struggled to fit, Stranger’s feet just before his face. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d exposed her back to him in these dark tunnels, especially after she’d already felt his blade’s edge. I trust you, it meant. Do you trust me?

The lightstones were tinged golden in the large cavern opening up before and beneath them. At first he thought she’d brought him to a prison, for down below, on the rounded walls, people were fixed in place with some kind of shackle. Men, women, all naked, their heads slumped forwards on their chests. None spoke or moved. A horrible smell filled the air: the way hair smells when it catches fire. Stifling heat rose from below, the air hard to breathe.

Stranger gazed down there, seeking guards, and held up her hand: don’t move, quiet. One of the castle grey-robes passed along the rounded wall, moving from one of the shackled bodies to the next. In one hand was a bucket, the other held a sponge with which he cleaned the prisoners. The grey-robe — under some sort of mind-control spell, by the way he moved — didn’t spend long on each before moving on. Soon his task was done, and he left the chamber through a secret door, the wall seeming to swallow him. Stranger whispered, ‘Now, go.’

A ledge ran down to the ground from below where they stood, though it was a perilous jump to land on it. Nimble as a cat, her leap made it look easy. Anfen glanced down — the drop wouldn’t kill him, but broken bones were likely, followed by certain capture. ‘As It wills,’ he muttered, and leaped not quite as nimbly, his boot slipping when he landed, and only Stranger’s grip stopping a painful slide down the slope on his butt. Their scuffing feet seemed very loud in the chamber’s oppressive silence.

The stink was worse as they went lower. The bodies were trapped not by chains or shackles; many parts of the wall were covered in what looked like large war mage horns curled around the prisoners’ arms, ankles, knees and feet, like long pinching claws. From some angles, the illusion was that a cruel inhuman hand held them in place. They were young people, late teenage perhaps, ranging up to mid-twenties. All had their eyes shut, faces blank. If they breathed, their breaths were too shallow to move their chests.

The horns that gripped them were dark in colour, black or deepest red. It was these that made the cavern’s air like that of an oven, though the bodies’ skin showed few burn marks. Those horns that hung spare, like unused shackles dangling in a cell, seemed not to be ‘switched on’ like the dark ones; they were the same dull hue as those on a war mage that hadn’t cast for a while. No heat emanated from them.

Stranger watched him examine it all. He looked to her, knowing now that she had been here, on the wall like these unfortunates, yet was somehow freed. Again, she seemed to read his face. ‘One of the guards liked to use my body, from time to time,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Mine and others. The bodies can be removed and set back a while later, and not awoken. That time, he took too long. I woke.’

Anfen nodded, not needing to ask what had become of the guard in question. The curling hot mage-horns seemed to be growing into the flesh of those bodies nearest, though the wounds were bloodless, as if the horns were now a part of them. ‘These people cannot be easily removed, it appears,’ he said. ‘I assume your escape was early in the process. Do these horns give them their power? Is this how you were given yours?’

‘Yes. They alter mind as much as body. This process usually kills; most don’t survive it. I probably wouldn’t have, if not for the guard. I am also probably the first to live. The mind control is the hard part, from what I’ve learned … some early experiments lived with my powers or greater, but no thoughts in their mind to wield them. They sat drooling. Perfectly useless bodies. The castle will be lucky if four or five of these live to become mages. Maybe none. But they learn more each time they try.’ She gazed around at the bodies along the curved wall and sighed. ‘The point is to stretch the human ability to endure what greater magic does. The horns also teach spells, making them as instinctive as moves of your swordplay, no longer a need to compose as you cast the traditional way. I emerged early, so I know less than these ones will, if they make it out alive.’

‘How many more caverns such as this?’

‘There’s no telling,’ she said quietly. ‘I know of four.’

‘How great will these be, as mages?’

‘Imagine a war mage who can cast for an entire day, or longer, unhindered by the burn.’

‘Burn?’

‘Magic’s poisonous effects. It has other names, as you’d know. These casters will have all of a war mage’s destructive abilities, with more creativity and more sanity.’

‘Like you.’

‘Greater. Spells of disguise, illusions, mind control, necromancy, happenstance, elements. What’s more, they’ll get great use out of only small amounts of power; if the airs are weak, it won’t matter as much. Their bodies store it.’ Her hand touched the cut Anfen’s sword had made in her dress. She lifted the material and Anfen saw something hard and crusted below, which her fingernail tapped on like wood. It took a moment for him to recognise that part of her skin was made of the same material composing the shackles burrowing themselves slowly into these prisoners’ bodies.

‘It’s why I have no horns,’ she said. ‘Not on my head, anyway. You can hide from war mages in cities, where magic is thin or gone altogether. What if they take a store of magic in with them? There’ll be no hiding from New Mages. All of them utterly blind and fanatic with loyalty to the castle.’ Seeing his look, ‘Oh yes, there is great emphasis on that. It is also part of the process I escaped.’

Anfen imagined it and it filled him with dread. And yet … ‘It would make these magicians greater than the Arch Mage, if I judge right. Does it not seem strange to you that he would create underlings greater than him?’

‘I do not claim to know how his mind works.’

‘How long until they complete their research?’

‘I know only that it’s not complete yet.’

When it was, there would be little need for soldiers or armies. A hundred such mages and there would be no real answer. But it was the cruelty of it that sickened him, the heat, the smell of burning flesh. Not that it surprised him. He wondered how many had died, painfully and slowly, as the castle, completely indifferent, experimented and learned. ‘You’re brave, to return here.’

She smiled, though her eyes showed little of it. ‘We’re both brave. We should not tarry here long. They come through every so often to clean the bodies and push pellets of food into their mouths.’

‘Thank you for showing me this.’ He turned to her, wanting to put a hand on her shoulder in comfort, but for some reason feeling he should not, not down here. ‘Are you sure you don’t wish to journey with us?’

‘No. Thank you for the offer and for your trust. But I will remain at a distance. And I will help you as I can. Let us depart.’

‘Not just yet, please.’ Anfen gazed around at the bodies, counting them: forty. ‘How long have these ones been here? How soon until they are freed? How long were you held?’

She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I remember little. Only that I was one of those who came from the cities to the castle seeking work, as my parents wished. I was accepted, my aptitude tested. They took those who had magic talent. I had much — I knew it before they tested me. They sent coin and a letter full of lies to my parents, brought me with a few others underground, and that’s where memories fade.’ Her eyes closed. ‘Or, at least, change. Please, let us go.’

‘And these ones, you say, will be of different inclination from you, if they survive to become New Mages? They are certain to be a threat to the Free Cities?’

She frowned, watching him carefully. ‘Yes. When this process is complete, they will be unable to do anything other than serve the Arch Mage.’

‘Even if we free them now?’

‘There is no way we can. Your sword will not break their bonds.’

‘Are you absolutely certain all that is so?’

‘Yes.’

Anfen nodded. He drew his sword.

She looked at him, eyes wide. ‘What are you doing?’

He looked back, surprised at her. ‘You have told me yourself, this is a threat awaiting us.’

‘Please. Some of these were with me at the castle gates. Some were my friends. They were just like me. Their parents think they are spinning wool or learning trades.’

‘I am sorry, Stranger. Such is war. Look away if it distresses you.’

‘Don’t …’

He didn’t look back at her, did not wish this moment or this act to be extended. His arm moved, that was all, and he distanced himself from what it did, made it a mechanical thing, a killing machine. He made himself distant from Stranger’s blazing, hateful eyes, glaring at him with — he imagined — heat as strong as that coming from the claws embedded in the walls. How shocked he’d have been by the change in her just then, had Anfen really been present in the room as his arm lashed out and killed, rather than watching it all from a safer distance, and trying to bury the memory even as it occurred, to make it meaningless sounds and blurs of colour.

The poor souls trapped in the Arch Mage’s embrace did not make a sound. Anfen’s sword thumped against the stone wall behind them with impersonal regularity. Finally the last of them was dead. Sweat poured from him and he felt dizzy, wanting a drink of water more than anything else. He felt Stranger’s rage, felt it seething. She could kill me, we both know it, he thought, as Anfen returned to himself.

‘We may be allies,’ she said, ‘but from this moment, we will never be friends.’

Anfen cleaned his blade as best he could. He looked at her sadly. ‘As It wills.’