Shadow (26 page)

Anfen didn't even seem to notice them. Sharfy longed to ask the elites if it were true that they were fed half-giant blood before each battle (or was it drake's blood?), but instead he tried to look menacing, as though he'd had a hand in dispatching the dozens and dozens of dead warriors lying on the road around them.

The Arch Mage himself – alone, without ceremony – came out soon after. He hobbled to the small balcony, before which townspeople usually came to beg for work. He looked at the bodies but gave no hint of what he thought. He said, ‘You have come a long way. And through dangerous country. But it has not made you weak, I see.'

Anfen stood and leaned heavily on the handle of his sword, its tip not piercing the Great Dividing Road.

Anfen said, ‘Very dangerous country. The men who fight and die for you would not like to know you set Tormentors free, to mop them up when they return from the final battle.'

The Arch Mage's gaze lingered on the mound of bodies Anfen had produced. ‘For one who professes concern for my fighting men, this is a strange way to demonstrate it. But I set no Tormentors free.' He stared at Anfen like one trying to solve a riddle. The square gem in his eye socket twisted. ‘Some of the beasts won their own freedom. A risk of trying to use them. They are extremely difficult to handle. I must condition all their handlers so that they no longer fear death or pain. Volunteers are … rare.'

The elite guards watched them silently.

Said Anfen, ‘Do you understand you have set the Pendulum swinging?'

The Arch Mage shook his head. ‘I am familiar with the Pendulum theory. I do not subscribe to it. Some of my Strategists do.'

‘You should have listened to them.'

The Arch Mage leaned forward upon the rail and sighed. ‘Otherworld usually has greater
material
science than we do. By which I mean non-magical science. In my long lifetime, even in your brief one, Anfen, their advances defy belief. I am nearly certain they would destroy us in war. But in that place, pendulums are a recent invention. They are used to tell the time, I believe. I do not have much time to spare. You have earned an audience with me. Tell me why you are here. That is mighty armour you wear, and a mighty sword in your hand. From where they come I cannot tell. But you are more formidable than when we met by the Wall. I shall be wary of you.'

‘And you have more powerful airs to use than you did on that day,' said Anfen. ‘But be careful what you cast, and when. This is why I have come. To give a lesson in magic.'

The Arch Mage peered at him curiously. ‘You aren't here to duel? That is well. Then I wait, and learn. Teach me.'

‘Cast a spell for me.'

‘A spell?'

‘Any kind of spell. A small one, if you prefer.'

The Arch Mage looked warily at him, then stood. ‘As you wish. This one used to amuse my daughter.' There was no visible movement from the Arch Mage, nothing to indicate his casting of the spell – if he did anything, it was by thought alone, and his eye never left Anfen. A small bird, seemingly made of little spots of multicoloured light, fluttered clumsily down the steps, then crash-landed on the ground in a shower of sparks. ‘Sufficient?' he said.

Anfen did not answer. Sharfy saw neither of them, then, for Anfen took the Arch Mage into the quiet, leaving him alone by the steps in the hot glare of the castle's elite guard. ‘Shit,' he muttered.

3

All the soldiers, and bodies, vanished. The Road was still underfoot, the castle was enormous before them, vaster perhaps than it had been in the normal realm. The sky was twilight, the distant landmarks black against it. The stone walls seemed here in the quiet to swell and recede like the chest of someone breathing. Enormous white glowing jewels, bigger than any they had seen on the road, were all through the sky, some hung low and some far distant.

Anfen and the Arch Mage were alone. By the steps, where he had cast the little spell which had so amused Aziel – he had not realised just now that he'd referred to her as his daughter – a little cluster of diamonds, no more than a handful, hung in the air. The Arch looked about himself with alarm, not sure what had happened, what effect was in play.

Anfen told him about the quiet. The Arch Mage listened.

‘In your words, Avridis,' said Anfen, ‘what is magic?'

‘I explained it to Aziel, days ago. It is loose reality. Made into fixed reality, by designs of the caster.'

‘It is here, where it becomes real.' Anfen pointed to the small clutch of diamonds. ‘Do not touch that. That is the spell you cast. Those are the instructions to create your bird of light. Those patterns are the language your instruction is written in. A shaper will come to carry out your instructions. To us, the spell looks instant. But this place is outside of time. There are many shapers here, where the airs are strong. Look there, one comes now.'

Indeed two came, distorted patches without shape of their own. But the second drifted away when it saw the first had already reached the spell. In moments it devoured the little sparkling pieces frozen in the air. Then it moved away like something floating in water.

The Arch Mage watched, fascinated. As he'd read theories on the Pendulum and much else besides, he had also read theories of
this
place, and this process, which likewise he had not believed. Now that he found it was real, he already knew more of this place than Anfen would have guessed, this place the theories gave many names: the under-realm,
Kalom
in an old tongue, which meant
dream aspect.
And more names it had.

And he knew there was no magic here for him to use. He was in dire peril.

He made a grand show of his amazement as Anfen lectured. He would not have needed the mound of bodies to see that Anfen had become dangerous. It had been immediately clear that a new power was about his former First Captain, beyond just the armour he wore and blade he wielded. The Arch Mage could not guess what had caused this change; his first thought went out to the mages of the hidden schools.

‘If you went to the unclaimed lands, you would find enormous spells not yet transcribed by the shapers, dating back to the dragon days,' said Anfen.

‘How can that be so, Anfen?'

‘Shapers follow no order. They roam, they move to whatever spells they see, then do their work. Bigger spells take them longer, sometimes occupying many of them for a long time.'

‘Why do you bring me here, Anfen?'

‘To warn you. If you use foreign airs, Avridis, you will cause foreign shapers to come. Ones from beyond World's End. Already some are here, though for now very few. They read a different language of instructions. They will alter spells already cast in our realm, but not yet made reality. Here, in the quiet.'

The Arch Mage nodded. ‘Which means if they alter spells already cast…'

‘They will alter the past. They will change everything. It is how Vous made Shadow real, and made him part of a common history.'

‘Is Shadow here?'

‘He can come here whenever he wishes.' Anfen gazed into his human eye and spoke not to the Arch Mage, but to Avridis, the young man who ignored the warnings of mages and wizards long ago, and provoked them into banishing a promising student from their temples. ‘You have created something you shouldn't have,' said Anfen. ‘With your knowledge you alone can now help make the damage less. It's why I have not yet cut the life from you, as every part of me thirsts to do.'

The Arch Mage nodded to show he understood. His mind immediately went to the canisters of chilled foreign air, in near-complete purity, sitting in storage. And he knew he held a weapon to Anfen's head, and had all of Levaal at his mercy. But he had first to get back to the familiar realm where he could cast to defend himself.

So he listened to all of Anfen's warnings, his instructions to call back the war mages and to forbid them to cast anything until the foreign airs had dissipated. He even hung his head as though ashamed of his deeds. Privately he reflected with amusement on how those with tender consciences assumed that, deep down, others were ultimately the same. So very wrong.

When Anfen finally took him back, he immediately cast a spell which kept his likeness here on the steps like a puppet, while he fled to the safety of the castle, and controlled his puppet from a distance. A useful trick, one that had saved him from Vous's rages many times. He ordered the elite guards to stand down and leave them be.

‘As you have taught me, I shall teach you something of value,' he said when they had gone, and he explained about the foreign magic he had captured with airships when the wall was destroyed. Anfen listened, seeming more weary and sick than ever. ‘So I have a quest for you, Anfen. My enemies are now your enemies, and they have stolen Aziel. Find her, and bring her to me. Or I will empty what foreign power I have into Vous's chamber. All at once. What effect this will have in our realm, I don't know. Do you?'

Anfen did not answer.

‘But now we both know what it will do in the quiet. Thank you for the lesson on magic. I am sorry you find yourself serving me again.'

When Anfen rushed forward and cut the Arch Mage down, the body did not bleed – it vanished into a sheet of mist and he heard mocking laughter.

A VISITOR

1

Well into the following morning Aziel still slept where she'd fallen and the necklace's secrets remained untold.

On the upper floor, Stranger took what Gorb had caught in the nearby woods – two fat birds, three rabbits – and laid them all out on the platform. ‘He is starting to worry me down there,' she said, referring to Far Gaze, who had watched Aziel constantly as though her every breath was of great importance.

‘Stand back, shield your eyes,' she said. There was a flash not unlike a camera's. When it faded the meat was skinned and cooked golden. ‘Don't tell the other mages I did that,' she said, passing the meat around to Eric and Gorb.

‘Why not?'

‘They're afraid there's something bad in the airs. They don't want much casting.'

‘That red stuff?' said Eric, squinting at the dark glimmering ribbon that wound over their heads and trailed out the rear window. ‘There isn't any of it there any more.'

‘It's clean enough now.' Stranger plucked a thread out with her finger and wound it around like string, till it broke and dissipated. ‘But you can see by the way the magic behaves that something is not right. There are ripples and strange movements.'

Bald was pouring water from a rusty metal jug over his seven wildly varying versions of the gun.

‘That's enough,' Eric said. He snatched the Glock out of Bald's hands and put it back in the shoulder holster.

Bald shrieked, tried to bite him, tattled to Gorb. ‘I know where you sleep,' he hissed.

‘Hush, Bald,' said Gorb.

Bald pointed at Eric like a prosecuting attorney. Spit flew from his mouth. ‘You would have to expand his
being.
He will
observe
in a seat above the world, strapped in hanging, effects of
deeds,
effects throughout ages
stretched,
each dependent on innocent
deeds
about them as a demon skipping on dry rocks across a
river—'

‘Bald, hush up and do your work,' said Gorb sternly. ‘No one wants to hear that stuff. It doesn't mean anything anyhow.'

‘One day the poison shall be
expelled!
' Bald shrieked in anguish. He went back to sprinkling drops of water over his creations like someone watering plants, glowering murderously at Eric.

‘Those guns he's making, they're sort of alive,' Gorb explained. ‘That's why he's watering em. He couldn't figure out what makes the trigger send out the – what did you call it?'

‘Bullet.'

‘Yeah. So it was easier to bring a part of the gadgets to life,' said Gorb. His fat lips pulled the meat from a poultry shank with one quick suck. Big hunks of it showed in his teeth when he spoke. ‘He's been trying to work out how smart to make them. Enough so the guns understand what they're meant to do: shoot. But not so smart they can decide if they want to obey or not.'

‘Can he bring any object he wants to life?' said Eric.

‘Sure, if he finds the right airs.' Gorb chewed up the poultry bone as though it were a biscuit with three crunching bites then swallowed the bone chips. ‘He could bring a chair alive, say. But why? It wouldn't do much. And you'd need to look after it. Food or water or firelight, whatever it needed. If you didn't, it'd die and fall apart. No one wants a chair like that.'

‘How's he do it?'

‘Only Engineers know,' said Gorb sagely. ‘You saw them dolls we did. Weren't easy to make, took us ages to find the airs. But there's good airs here, I guess.' Eric was newly nervous to learn the crazed little man had such powers. ‘You did good to make him mad, just now,' said Gorb. ‘He's trying to make the alive part of the guns so they're always angry. Why else would they want to shoot at something? Now he's putting the anger you gave him into the guns.'

‘How long till they're ready to fire?'

‘They're almost ready now,' said Gorb. At Eric's look of disbelief, he said, ‘Yep, all we need's to make some bullets. Rocks we can sharpen, maybe. Something that'll fit in those – what do you call em? Barrels.'

‘You can see why Engineers are prized property,' said Stranger.

Eric said, ‘Why didn't it occur to anyone in this world to make guns before now?'

‘As It wills,' she said, shrugging. She took the scraps and bones as though to toss them out the window, but Gorb took them from her and shovelled them into his mouth, devouring the lot. ‘Such a weapon was not part of this world until you brought it here,' said Stranger. ‘Just as past Pilgrims brought versions of all other weapons we use. The gun had no place here until you came. Now yours is here, it can be made real and copied. You should bring more things, if you ever return to Otherworld.'