The Queen's assassin

Chapter Sixteen

Rik looked up at Asea. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Had he exhausted himself performing mystical spells again? Then memory of the fight with Tamara came back to him. He looked around and saw that he was in his own chambers in the mansion.

“What happened?” he asked. “How did I get here?”

Asea’s face has a tight quality to it. It took him a moment to realise that she was barely containing her rage. He had never seen her this way before. He forced himself to be calm.

“Weasel brought you and the big man back. On the cart. He told me his version of what happened. Why don’t you tell me yours? Tamara escaped?”

There was no denying it or defending it. “She was a lot tougher than we expected. Faster too. She poisoned me and the Barbarian. Why am I not dead, by the way?”

“The poison she used was not intended to kill you, merely slow you and weaken you until you fell unconscious. Perhaps that is why she seemed so fast and strong.”

Rik shook his head. “She was moving swiftly before she struck me. That was not the effect of any poison, I am sure.”

“Go on.” There was more than rage there, he realised. There was excitement too. Asea was like a hound that had caught a scent and was ready for the chase.

“She almost managed to dodge a shot fired by Weasel, and I am sure she did not manage to poison him.”

“So he told me.” Rik felt a reaction set in. He could have died this last evening. Most probably would have if Tamara really wanted him dead.

“How could she have been so quick?” Rik asked. “And so strong? She is not built like the Barbarian.”

“There were mystical disciplines on Al’Terra that focused on combat. They allowed their practitioners to perform astonishing feats of martial skill. Malkior would know them. It appears he has taught his daughter.”

“A form of magic, you mean?”

“If you will.”

“Spells to make you stronger, faster, deadlier?”

“Techniques of the mind and spirit would be a better description but spells will do just as well.”

“So all we have really proven is that Tamara knows magic. We knew that already.”

“Did we?”

Rik realised he had made a mistake. He knew that already. He had never told Asea about it. “She is a Terrarch, isn’t she? Learning sorcery would have come naturally to her.”

“Quite so.” Rik sensed that Asea was uneasy with him. Perhaps she sensed his lies.

“In any case we know she can now.”

“She recognised you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The big man heard her say your name. So did Weasel.”

“How is the Barbarian?”

“He will live. The needle missed his jugular, and I have neutralised the poison in his bloodstream, just as I have done for you.”

“A useful trick. I wish you had taught me it.”

“I will make it the highest priority in your studies, Rik. I have a feeling that you are going to be needing it, and the ability to heal yourself.”

He was relieved to find that she still trusted him at least that much. Or perhaps she was trying to lull him into a false sense of security. He would not have put it past her.

“Tell me more about the whispering shadow you saw.”

He told her all he could remember about it, including his suspicion that it was a hallucination brought on by the poison.

“I don’t think so. Weasel saw it too.”

“Do you have any idea what it was? It put the wind up the two of us for certain.”

“It was a shadowgate.”

“What’s that?”

“A hole in the fabric of reality linking two points in shadow. A sorcerer who knows how to make one can use it to move between one point and another without passing through the space in between.”

“You think Tamara used it to escape?”

“I am certain of it.” There was the excitement of the hunt again in her voice.

“That’s powerful magic.”

“You have no idea how powerful, Rik.”

“I take it you do.”

“Under the circumstances you fought Tamara in, it would be beyond me.”

“You are saying that Tamara is a better mage than you are.”

“Not in general — but in this particular area, yes, unless she possessed some artefact that allowed her to do it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Spells of translocation are very difficult under the best of circumstances. They involve manipulating forces of a very high order. The spells required to open the paths between normally require long and complex ritual preparations, as well as enormous power.”

Rik thought he could see where this was going. “Tamara had no time for such.”

“Wounded as she was she should not have been able to maintain the necessary level of concentration to cast such a spell even if she could. At least if she was a normal sorcerer.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“There’s no reason why you should. There are many different types of magic, Rik, and many different ways of invoking them. The Shadowblood had many gifts, magical talents that were bred into them, that they could use as easily as a man can walk or run. Using shadowgates was one of those talents.”

“You are saying these assassins could move through shadows at will.”

“Not at will, Rik. I am guessing now but I believe that opening such a gate would use up considerable energy even for a Shadowblood. I doubt she could open more than one such gate without resting.”

A thought occurred to Rik. “Could you not trace where she went by studying the shadowgate? Would they not leave traces?”

“It’s one of the properties of shadowgates that they fade quickly without leaving such traces. Perhaps if I had been with you and seen the portal before it faded I might have been able to trace it. Now there will not even be the normal residual traces of tau that most magic leaves after it has been used. You can see how such a quality would be useful to an assassin.”

Indeed Rik could. “This is how she reached Elakar.”

“That would be my guess.”

An idea struck Rik with the force of a blow. “No one would be safe from a wizard with such a power. They could come and go as they pleased and no one would ever be able to stop them.”

“You are very nearly correct, Rik. Fortunately they do have some limits.”

“I think I would like to know what they are — for my own safety.”

“The first is that their range is very short. A normal magical portal — at least on Al’Terra could be set up to span continents. A shadowgate can only stretch a few hundred yards.”

“So Tamara must still have been fairly close to us, even after she used the gate?”

“Indeed.”

“What other flaws does this magic have?”

“You can’t just open them anywhere. You need to have a very clear idea in your mind of the exit point, otherwise the gate simply will not open.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. No one does. The theory is that it is a principle of sympathetic magic — you must see the place in your mind in order to be able to go there.”

A thought struck Rik as she was speaking. “We were close to Tamara’s mansion, easily within a few hundred yards. She would have been able to open a gate into the place.”

“Yes. If there were shadows in her room or some other location she was familiar with.”

“Why would there need to be shadows?”

“It’s one of the conditions of the spell. It can only connect two shadows.”

“How could she have gotten into Lord Elakar’s chambers?”

“Perhaps she had been there before.”

“You mean she had been his lover.”

“Lord Elakar was a man of great appetite and vanity. It would have flattered that vanity to number the daughter of Lord Malkior among his conquests.”

“Were they ever seen together?”

“That can be checked. There are other ways she could have done it. If she was familiar with the Palace — which she was. She had visited it often when it was owned by friends of Khaldarus.”

“Are we safe from infiltration here?”

“There’s a reason why I change my room often, Rik, and why I order the furniture moved, and the hangings changed every night.”

You did not get to reach Asea’s age by not being careful about such things. More ideas flooded into his mind in a torrent.

“Lord Malkior would have been familiar with the Palace in which the old Queen was assassinated.”

“Completely familiar.”

“I can see how all your suspicions fit together, Milady. All except one.”

“Which is?”

“How could this spell get past wards?”

“Wards do not extend into all planes, Rik. That would take too much energy.”

“Planes?”

“Think of them as alternate levels of reality, running side by side with our world, like pages lying beside each other in a book.”

“So the Shadowgate allows you to move between two points in our world by leaving it, and passing through the world of Shadows.”

“Yes.”

“Presumably that is why the entrance and exit must be in shadow.”

“It is as good an explanation as any. I am glad you grasped it so quickly.”

“That is where my hand went when I put it into the gate.”

“Yes.”

“It was cold there.”

“Quite possibly airless too. The alternate planes are not always friendly to life, at least not as we know it.”

“So she could not have survived in there for long.”

“No one could. That is why a shadowgate is a relatively short ranged phenomenon.”

Excitement filled Rik. “Could I learn to do this?”

“Given your heritage, it is entirely likely, yes. You have a long way to go before you can weave such complex magic, Rik.”

“But I will be able to do it?”

“Perhaps.” A vision of a world in which he possessed great power sprang into Rik’s mind. All he had to do was live long enough to get to it.

A loud knock sounded on the door. “Who is it?” Asea asked.

“A messenger from Lord Azaar, Milady,” said Karim. “He says it’s a matter most urgent.”

“Have you heard the news?” Lieutenant Jazeray asked.

Sardec looked up from the report he was writing. “News?”

“It seems Lady Tamara’s coach was attacked by highwaymen last night. Her footmen were all slaughtered. She herself only just managed to escape.”

Sardec raised an eyebrow. “She was very lucky then.”

“I don’t know the whole story but it seems she managed to slip out of the other side of the coach while her footmen held the rogues off. She was only a few yards from the door of the Palace when this happened.”

“The local bandits are getting very enterprising.”

“Maybe they were not bandits.”

“What do you mean?”

“The local patriots have been very busy recently. Perhaps they hate the Dark Empire as much as they hate us.”

“We should be so lucky.”

“It could be worse. Think of what would have happened if she had been killed.”

“Would not have reflected very well on our honour, would it? Lady with Ambassador’s portfolio being killed. I have heard Lord Azaar has assigned a team of bodyguards to watch the street outside the mansion. Why are you smiling?”

“That will let him keep an eye on her and restrict her movements.”

“You think this was all a ploy to let him do that? You are not as naive as you look, my dear Sardec.”

“Anything else?” Sardec looked meaningfully back at the pile of paperwork in front of him.

“Lady Asea is helping the Magisters assigned to look into the matter.”

“Let’s hope she has more success with this than she had finding Lord Elakar’s butcher.”

“I thought you were close to her.”

“I am. My wish is a sincere one.”

“I don’t know how long she’ll have to make her inquiries.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hear she is to be dispatched to Harven on a diplomatic mission. To try and get the Sea Devils on our side.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. What’s more, I have a pretty good idea who is going to be her bodyguard.”

“Our young half-breed comrade?”

Jazeray laughed. “Who commanded her bodyguard at Deep Achenar?”

Sardec stared at him. “I did.”

“Colonel Xeno just received a letter bearing her Ladyship’s seal. I left him scowling over it. He said to give him ten minutes and send you in.”

“Thank the light you did not tell me sooner. I might have worried.”

“I think you’d better go and see His Nibs right now. Ten minutes must be up.”

Sardec rose from his chair and made his way to the Colonel’s office.