Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (32 page)

Abithriax bowed. “And whom do I have the honour of addressing?”

I stood staring at the mage in front of me. Abithriax stood looking back with an expression of mild inquiry. “How are you alive?” I said at last. It wasn’t polite, but I was shaken.

Abithriax didn’t seem particularly offended. “Well,” he said, “that’s rather an interesting question. Perhaps you’d like to walk with me? One gets so little exercise cooped up in here.”

I took a glance back at Luna and Sonder. They were talking to each other, although I still couldn’t hear them. They didn’t seem able to see Abithriax either. “You’ll be quite safe,” Abithriax said, as though reading my thoughts. “No one is going to arrive for a little while.”

I hesitated a moment, then fell into step beside Abithriax and we began walking back down the corridor. Despite his age, he moved smoothly, with no trace of stiffness. “How am I talking to you?” I said.

“The crystals on these walls form a communication network that extends throughout this facility,” Abithriax said.
“Mental projection only, I’m afraid; your body is still back in that room. The network works with your mind to translate the information.”

“If I’m here, where are you?”

“At the centre, of course.”

I stared at Abithriax for a second before it clicked. “
You’re
the fateweaver.”

Abithriax just smiled. I kept walking, my head spinning as everything fell into place. Of course. Something as powerful as the fateweaver would have to be an imbued item. And the more powerful it was, the stronger its own identity would be…I looked up at Abithriax. “How? You were supposed to have died.”

“Oh, I did.” Abithriax looked inquiringly at me. “Perhaps you’d like to hear the story?”

I stared back at him and finally nodded.

“Oh good. It really is so nice to have someone to talk to…Let’s see, where to begin? People still remember the Dark Wars, I hope? I’ve afraid I’ve rather lost track of time.”

“You lived through them.”

Abithriax nodded. “From the beginning to the end. I remember Syriathis, and its destruction. I fought through the retreats in the early campaigns, seeing my friends and allies die one by one. I was promoted, and promoted again. After our victory at the Ebon Fields I was granted my fateweaver. Years passed, the tide turned, the strongholds lost in the early years were retaken, and I was at the forefront of every battle. When the final sieges began, I was battle commander of all the Light armies.”

We’d come to a junction and Abithriax stopped. “And then I was betrayed.” His eyes stared off into nothingness, distant. “The Council had become afraid of me. I was too famous, too powerful. So in the last months of the war, once victory was guaranteed, they sent me to my death.”

Abithriax fell silent. I stood looking at him. “How did you do it?” I said at last.

Abithriax blinked, looked at me, then shook his head and turned left down the junction. I followed. “My fateweaver. All
our generals carried one, but the craftsmen were never able to stabilise the design. They were always…unpredictable. But I learnt the secret of investing myself into it, binding my identity into it a piece at a time, and as its power grew, so did mine. It was almost a part of me. Perhaps that was how I was able to make the final leap at the very end…”

Abithriax shook his head, and suddenly his voice became brisk. “Well then. I assume that’s what you’re here for? My fateweaver? Oh, there’s no need to hide it,” he added as I hesitated. “It’s not as if you’d come here for any other reason. Besides, it’s not as if I can carry it myself anymore.”

“Yes.”

“And the others?”

“Which others?”

Abithriax raised his eyebrows. “The other mages attempting to reach me. I may lack a physical body, but I’m not entirely blind. Half a dozen or so, I believe?”

I walked for a little while in silence. “Can you help me against them?” I said at last.

Abithriax snorted. “A handful of mages? I’ve defeated
armies
. However…without a wielder, I am nothing. And more to the point, there is no guarantee my wielder will be you. If one of those mages reaches me first, I’m afraid my powers will be at their disposal, not yours. In this form, I am a servant to my wielder.”

Something made me look up at that, searching Abithriax’s face. He looked back at me calmly. “And I have no control over who that wielder is. So if you have any enemies within this facility, I would suggest you make sure they do not reach me first. Because if they take possession of me and order me to use my powers to hunt you down and kill you, I am very much afraid I will have no choice but to obey.”

Abithriax and I had taken two turnings and we were almost back at the room we’d started from. The two of us stood looking at each other. “Then I guess I’d better get moving,” I said at last.

“Of course,” Abithriax said with a nod. “Tell that scholarly
looking apprentice with you to try a command word in the right corner. I’m not sure of the password but I’m sure you can deduce it.”

“Right. See you later.”

“Hopefully so.” Abithriax smiled slightly. “For what it’s worth, I hope you succeed.” His image seemed to dissolve into mist and he was gone.

I walked back into the room. Luna and Sonder were still there, throwing glances at my body. Somehow I knew how to break the connection. I walked into my body, layering my mental self over my physical one, placing my hand over where my real hand grasped the crystal. There was a moment of dizziness, then—

“—be in trouble.” Sonder’s voice.

“He said not to do anything.” It was Luna’s voice; to most people she would have sounded calm, but I could hear the trace of anxiety. “We could— Alex!”

I turned around—
really
turned around, this time. Luna gave me a searching look, then let out a sigh of relief. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Sonder? Take a look at the right corner. While you’re doing that, I’ve got something to tell you both.”

A
s Sonder worked, I relayed what I’d learnt. I briefly considered keeping it a secret between me and Luna, but there wasn’t any good excuse to send Sonder out of earshot, and anyway, I wanted his input. “That’s incredible,” Sonder said once I’d finished. “I mean, just the idea of surviving that long…The Dark Wars were almost two thousand years ago! The things he’d be able to tell us!”

“Sonder,” I said. “Priorities. Survive first, research afterwards. Does what he said match with what you know?”

Sonder thought for a minute. “We’ve never been able to recover a fateweaver before. It was just assumed they were all destroyed, but if they were unstable, that would explain
it. And there’s always been a mystery about Abithriax’s death. Some writers did argue for the betrayal theory, but there’s never been any proof. The Old Council fell into infighting after the Dark Wars, and most of the records were destroyed.”

“Do you trust him?” Luna asked.

I hesitated. “I’m not sure,” I said at last. “I had the feeling he was keeping something back. But I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth about what he’d do if Onyx found him first.”

“So what should we do?” Luna said.

Sonder had stopped, and both he and Luna were looking at me, waiting for my decision. “We go for the fateweaver,” I said. “If we can take it for ourselves, we’ve got a chance. But I don’t want either of you involved in the fighting. Onyx and the rest are going to be after me, not you. Don’t do anything to draw their attention.”

I made my voice sound confident, and both of them nodded, Sonder quickly, Luna a little more reluctant. The two of them turned back to what they were doing and I bit my lip, wishing I were as sure as I was pretending to be.

The truth was that none of our options were good. I knew that trying to beat Onyx and the others to the fateweaver was likely to end in a fight, and I also knew that if it came to a battle, our little group was almost certain to lose. It was tempting to run and hide. If we weren’t going for the fateweaver, Levistus and Morden’s agents would be too busy fighting each other to worry about us.

Except that if we did that, whoever won the battle would be free to hunt us down afterwards, with all the power of the Precursor artifact at their disposal. Whether we lived or died would be up to them. My instinct told me our best chance was to act. But it’s one thing to risk your own life and another to risk someone else’s. I looked at Luna withdrawn into the corner, and Sonder examining the wall, and felt suddenly afraid. For all my brave words, I didn’t know if I’d be able to protect either of them.

Then I shook it off and focused, going back to watching
Sonder and sifting through the futures. After a moment I knew Abithriax’s advice had been good. “There,” I told Sonder. “Try some command words.”

“Uh…which ones?”

“Every one you can think of.”

Sonder looked back at the wall and hesitated. “This feels silly.”

I sighed inwardly. For all Sonder’s knowledge, it was painfully obvious how inexperienced he was. Once you’ve been around the block a few times you stop caring about looking silly, especially when you’re dealing with magical traps. Better to be laughed at than dead, and he wouldn’t have been laughed at. “Just give it a go.”

Sonder started reciting in the old tongue. He spoke like a scholar, each word carefully pronounced. “Stop,” I said after a moment. “Say that last one again and put your hand on the wall, fingers spread. Up a bit,” I said as Sonder obeyed. “Left a bit. Hold that. Now say that word again.”

Reluctantly, Sonder did as I said.
“Etro.”

Right in front of Sonder, a section of wall seven feet high and three feet wide glowed for an instant and simply vanished. Sonder started and jumped back. Beyond was a short corridor, bending left. “Now I see,” I said. “The whole room is a trap. The only safe way is to go around.”

“Is it safe?” Luna asked.

“Yes. It’s—” I stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

I stared for a moment before answering. “It’s not empty.”

The corridor was about five feet wide. All the way along the left side was a one-way mirror into the trap room, and as we looked in we got a perfect view of what would have happened to us if we’d stepped through that door.

Every inch of the other room—walls, floor, ceiling—was covered in mirrors. Instead of being placed evenly, they were tilted, casting images at odd angles. Reflecting from the mirrors, filling the room with a crisscross of white light, were beams of energy, white lines that looked harmless but which I knew could cut like razors. The room was so filled
with the beams that it took a moment to realise that there were in fact only three. They emerged from a single tiny panel on the back wall, then bounced around the room at every angle, multiplied a thousand times over.

In the middle of the room, trapped in a cage of beams, were Rachel and Cinder. Rachel was in a half crouch, a beam just above her head stopping her from rising any farther. Cinder was standing, leaning sideways to fit into the empty space. Beams laced the air around them, and I could see burnt patches on their clothes where they’d brushed up against the energy. Both were standing dead still.

Luna stopped as she saw them. “Alex—”

“They can’t see us,” I said. Neither Rachel nor Cinder reacted as we spoke. “Or hear. Sonder, do you know what that is?”

“It’s an energy lattice,” Sonder said. He was staring in fascination. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“What does it do?”

Sonder started. “Um, they were defence systems from the Dark Wars. They were meant to contain intruders. Once the beams are up, you have to stand there until someone comes to turn it off.”

“What happens if no one comes?”

Sonder paused. “I don’t really know.”

On the other side of the glass, Cinder said something and Rachel answered silently. Both were only inches away from beams on all sides. Sooner or later they would get tired and fall, and when they did, the beams would kill them.

It’s a strange feeling, holding someone’s life in your hands, and it affects people in different ways. Some hate it; they can’t stand the burden and get away as quick as they can. Others revel in the power. You can think of it as a choice, and it is, but the truth is that for most of the big things, the choice was made long ago. It’s only when you reach the crossroads that you discover what it was. It was nothing new to me; I’d been here before. But the others…

Both Luna and Sonder stared through the one-way mirror. Neither spoke, but it was so easy to read their thoughts.
Rachel and Cinder were their enemies; all they had to do was walk away. But when it came to it, they hesitated. One after another they turned to look at me, and I knew they were waiting for me to make the decision, just as I’d done a few minutes ago. I could order them to help Rachel and Cinder or to walk away and leave, and they’d obey.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked them.

I saw their faces change. The seconds ticked away, and even here, I couldn’t help but be curious. I looked into the future, trying to see how they’d decide, and couldn’t predict either. You can’t see beyond a choice that someone hasn’t made. I watched as the possibilities wavered, shifting and changing.