23.
It was well after ten o’clock by the time Deirdre straggled into the Charterhouse the next morning. She stopped at the front desk, picked up a pen fastened to a chain, and signed in on the clipboard. The receptionist, Madeleine, looked up from her computer, though her fingers continued to flay the keyboard.
“How good of you to join us today, Miss Falling Hawk,” she said, peering over moon-shaped reading glasses.
Deirdre was not in the mood for irony. “You misspelled ‘Sincerely,’ ” she said, pointing at Madeleine’s computer screen.
The receptionist gave her a sour look, which Deirdre could at least appreciate for its honesty, then pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the screen. Deirdre made her way down the hall and descended a flight of stairs to her office.
Anders wasn’t there. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. With regard to the lack of coffee, it was certainly the former, but otherwise it could only be the latter. Surely he would have seen it on her face the moment she looked at him. Doubt.
She tossed the newspaper she had bought on her desk and slumped into the chair. There was a note neatly tucked under the blotter. She pulled it out. It was written in Anders’s cramped, precise hand.
Good morning, partner!
Beltan and I decided to get an early start. We’re o f
to nose about the city. Back by noon. Shall we lunch
at the M.E.?
Cheers!
—Anders
Deirdre winced. Gods, even when he wrote he sounded insanely chipper. She started to toss the note in the trash can, then stopped, folded it carefully, and tucked it back beneath the blotter.
She hated this. She hated the way she felt, and she hated what she was going to do. However, she had no choice. Once again she asked herself the question that had been eating at her.
How did the sorcerers here on Earth know about the blood of
power that runs in Travis’s veins?
The only people who could possibly know that information were Travis’s closest companions. And any Seeker who had read the Wilder-Beckett case files. Deirdre could not believe Beltan or Vani had informed the sorcerers. That meant there was only one other possibility.
There’s a traitor in the Seekers, and Sasha must know it—or
at least suspect it. That’s why she was trying to warn you yesterday. Someone with access to the reports about Travis is in
league with the sorcerers.
And, much as it turned her heart to ash to admit it, all the signs pointed to one person. He had read all the reports about Travis. He was capable of keeping secrets; the gun he carried proved that. And the night they were attacked by the Scirathi, he had shown up at the Tube station almost too miraculously.
Only that doesn’t make sense, Deirdre. If Anders was really
working for the Scirathi, why did he save all of you that night?
For the same reason he brewed fabulous coffee and brought flowers to the office. To win their trust, their affection.
Think about it, Deirdre. No one actually saw him shoot that
sorcerer he claimed he killed. You read his report. Even Eustace
didn’t see it happen. A Scirathi could simply have given Anders
one of their gold masks to use as a prop, to help back up his
story.
The thought made her sick, but she couldn’t dismiss it. Her grandfather had always told her to trust her instincts. And all those instincts told her that Anders was concealing something.
So what was she going to do?
Keep him close, Deirdre. And don’t act as if anything’s
changed. Whatever his work is, it isn’t done; otherwise, he
wouldn’t still be playing this game. The longer you can make
him believe you know nothing, the better your chances of figuring out what it is he’s up to.
Deirdre massaged her throbbing temples. She had spent all night going over these thoughts again and again. Right now she wanted to think about something—anything—else. She unfolded the copy of the
Times
she had bought and bent her head over it.
However, she found little solace in reading the paper. On the front page there was an article about the worldwide increase in violent natural phenomena over the last few months. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes—all were happening with greater frequency than normal. The article discounted the common belief that the change in the Earth’s climate was a result of the celestial anomaly, and instead offered various theories about possible geologic and meteorological causes. However, Deirdre knew the article was wrong.
It’s perihelion. That’s what the Philosopher said. Eldh is
drawing close, and somehow it’s a fecting Earth. It’s like the
pull of gravity.
Only it wasn’t gravity, it was something else. But what then? Magic? All Deirdre knew was that it wasn’t chance that an earthquake had shaken Crete, revealing the stone arch.
And what about the dark spot in space? It can’t be chance
that it’s appeared now as perihelion approaches.
According to a report she had seen on a morning TV news show, the anomaly was now visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere—at least to those who didn’t live in major cities. However, even if it hadn’t been cloudy the last several days, Deirdre doubted she would have been able to see it through the glare of London’s streetlights.
And maybe that explained why people in the city continued to go about their lives as if nothing had changed. That morning, Deirdre had taken the Tube with countless people trudging to their jobs, the expressions on their faces as dull as the leaden sky. On the streets, double-decker buses ferried tired, trapped-looking tourists to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s. Ships oozed up and down the sluggish Thames. Yet surely, if people could see the dark spot in the sky, they would be panicking.
Or would they? Because even if they couldn’t see it through the London fog, people had to know it was there. Just as it had expanded in the sky, stories about Variance X had grown more prominent on television and in the newspaper. Reports about it were everywhere. Only no one seemed to be paying attention.
Except for the Mouthers. Deirdre had passed several of them that morning, standing on a corner outside the Blackfriars Tube station in their white sheets. Each member of the group had carried a sign that bore, not words, but instead a black circle scrawled on white cardboard. They did not accost passersby, but simply stared, their eyes as vacant as the circles on their signs.
Deirdre had ignored the Mouthers, as had everyone else passing by. No one ever looked at the people in white, or up at the sky. Or, it seemed, at the articles in the newspaper.
Maybe people are tired of hearing about disasters, Deirdre.
Fires. Floods. Wars. Famines. Maybe there are too many troubles here on Earth to worry about something in the sky.
Maybe. But while others might be disinterested, Deirdre was anything but. Like the storms and earthquakes, Variance X had to be related to perihelion somehow. She leaned over the paper, scanning the article in the
Times
.
It began with a summary of what was known about the anomaly: how it had first been detected a few months ago, at a distance of about 10 billion miles from Earth—or fifteen hours as the light beam flies. At the time, the anomaly was dubbed Variance X by skeptical astronomers. The name was a joke. Over the years, various astronomers had put forth the theory that the solar system contained a dark, distant tenth planet— Planet X. Such a planet had never been found, and those who theorized it existed were generally regarded as pseudoscientists and crackpots.
However, no one was laughing now, for the joke soon ended as countless observatories around the world confirmed the existence of Variance X, as well as the fact that it was growing.
Some researchers speculated that the anomaly was indeed a tenth planet, surrounded by a cloud of black, icy comets, approaching the solar system on the short end of its elliptical orbit. Others suggested it was a disk of dark matter that until recently had been angled with respect to Earth so that it was invisible, like a dinner plate turned on edge. Now, as the disk rotated on its axis, it was coming into view, and blotting out Earth’s view of the stars beyond it. Others suggested Variance X was a cloud of light-absorbing gas trailing a small, wandering black hole.
However, one researcher—an American astronomer who had recently accepted a position as a visiting professor at Oxford— had proposed a very different theory: that the dark blot was in fact an instability in the fabric of space-time. So far, according to the newspaper article, most leading astronomers had rejected that theory.
Yet perhaps such an explanation is unthinkable
, the article went on,
not because it is impossible, but instead because the
consequences are so dire. If Variance X is a rip in space-time—
the cloth from which our universe is cut—what’s to stop it from
unraveling? Nothing, says American astronomer Sara
Voorhees. According to Voorhees, unless the instability that
gave rise to it somehow corrects itself, the anomaly will keep
expanding until the universe is torn apart in one final, violent
blending of matter and antimatter that will leave nothing at all.
It’s not difficult to see why that prospect has proven unpopular.
Feeling ill, Deirdre folded the paper and tossed it in the waste bin. What did it all mean? Maybe two different worlds were on a collision course. Maybe that was what perihelion meant. If so, then there was no hope for anyone on Earth or Eldh.
Except, the problem was, Deirdre
did
have hope. She couldn’t wait quietly for the end of the world like the Mouthers; she had to do something. And she was going to. With a deep breath she rolled up her sleeves, turned on her computer, and got to work.
By the time Beltan and Anders showed up, she had a plan.
“What’s going on, mate?” Anders said, setting a tall paper cup on her desk. “You’ve got an extradetermined look about you today.”
She picked up the cup and took a sip. It was coffee: rich, bitter, and with just the perfect hint of cream. “Have you found a sorcerer yet?”
“No,” Beltan said, slumping into a chair next to her desk. “It’s like looking for something very small lost in an enormous pile of things that are also very small. Only not the same as the first thing.”
“You mean it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Anders said.
Beltan frowned at him. “By Vathris, why would anyone look for a needle in a stack of hay?”
“It’s an expression. It means just what you said.”
“I’m talking about people, not needles. And how did it get in the hay? Did some mad seamstress put the needle there?”
“Never mind,” Anders growled. He shrugged off his suit coat and glanced at Deirdre. “As you can see, we haven’t exactly made a lot of progress in our hunt for a sorcerer.”
Muscles played beneath the skin of his forearms as he loosened his tie. Deirdre gulped the scalding-hot coffee.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her throat burning. “I think I’ve got it figured out.”
“You’ve got what figured out?” Beltan said.
“How we’re going to catch a sorcerer.”
24.
They waited until nightfall. The Scirathi were more comfortable working under cover of darkness; that was one of the few things they had learned in their dealings with the sorcerers.
And what about Anders?
Deirdre thought as they drove in a black sedan along Shaftesbury Avenue.
What’s he learned about
them?
She glanced at him as he drove. Would he betray her tonight? After all, if he was really working for the sorcerers, he couldn’t allow her to catch one of them. Except he had to, if he was going to keep up his act; he would have to go along with her plan.
As the lights of the city came on against the gathering dusk, Anders turned the wheel, guiding the car onto a narrow lane. Beltan’s and Travis’s flat was just ahead.
“We already checked out the flat,” Anders had said earlier that day, when she told him where they would go that evening. “Beltan and I sniffed all around his old neighborhood and didn’t see a thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a sorcerer lurking about there—returning to the scene of the crime and all that. But if so, he won’t come out to play.”
“He will if you make him want to,” Deirdre had said.
It was time. Anders brought the car to a halt two blocks away from the flat. Deirdre climbed out. Beltan unfolded his long frame from the backseat.
“I’m ready,” he said, one hand in the pocket of his jeans.
Deirdre touched his arm. “Make sure you’re seen.”
He nodded, then turned and took long strides down the sidewalk, vanishing into the gloom.
Anders leaned out the window of the car. “Is your radio working, mate?”
Deirdre held the device to her mouth to test it. She heard her voice emanate from inside the car. She gave him a thumbs-up, then tucked the radio into her jacket pocket, alongside something else.
“Good luck,” Anders said, winking at her.
The car sped away down the lane. Deirdre didn’t like letting him go by himself, but she had no choice, not if this plan was going to work. Besides, it was too late for him to warn them. If one was keeping watch, then at that moment he was already observing Beltan open the door of the flat. Deirdre looked at her wristwatch, letting thirty more seconds pass. Then she started moving.
She walked quickly down the sidewalk and up the front steps of the building. If the Philosopher was right, it wouldn’t take long. She waited a few seconds in the lobby of the building, eyes on her watch. The plan called for Beltan to be alone in the flat for three minutes, not one second more. With thirty seconds to go, she started up the stairs.
Five seconds still remained when she reached the door of the flat. It was closed; no sounds emanated from the other side. She drew in a breath to steady herself. Was Anders in position? What if he wasn’t?
There was no more time to worry about it. The watch ticked the last seconds away. Deirdre slipped a hand into her jacket pocket, then pushed through the door of the flat.
The sorcerer was killing Beltan.
It was hard to see. The flat was darkened, and only a few scraps of light filtered around Deirdre into the living room, but her imagination filled in what her eyes could not discern.
The window was open, and the night air billowed the white curtains like the garb of a ghost. Beltan was on his knees, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck standing out. One hand clutched at his chest. The other gripped a small glass vial filled with dark fluid. The sorcerer stood above him, clad all in black, a smile frozen on the serene gold face. One hand reached toward Beltan. The sorcerer’s fingers curled together, and Beltan jerked as a spasm passed through him.
Fear stabbed into Deirdre’s chest, as if it was her heart the sorcerer was stopping with a spell. And if she didn’t act quickly, in a moment it would be. She pulled two objects from her pocket—and fumbled them in sweaty hands. They fell to the floor: the radio, as well as something sleek and silvery.
A squawk emanated from the radio. Before Deirdre could move, Anders’s voice crackled out of it. “Is that you, Deirdre? Are you in position yet? I can’t see anything in the flat; it’s too dark in there.”
The sorcerer hissed, and the gold mask swung in Deirdre’s direction. Beltan drew in a gasping breath, but he still couldn’t move; the sorcerer had not lowered its hand. And it had another. It stretched its left hand toward Deirdre’s chest.
There was no time to think. Deirdre dived to the floor, grabbing the things lying there. She punched a button on the radio.
“Now, Anders!” she shouted. And with her free hand she gripped the other object and flicked a switch.
A beam of white-blue light pierced the darkness of the flat, slicing crazily through the shadows. Deirdre threw down the radio and gripped the flashlight in both hands, angling the beam upward. It struck the sorcerer’s gold mask, and the Scirathi staggered back, dazzled by the sudden light. Beltan started to struggle to his feet.
Again the sorcerer thrust a hand toward the blond man, and Beltan grunted, falling back to his knees. The other hand pointed at Deirdre, and she gasped as pain crackled through her. She couldn’t breathe; the flashlight started to slip from her hands.
Something hissed through the open window, and there was a soft
thunk
. The sorcerer took a step back, and a soft exhalation of air passed through the mouth slit of its mask. Then the Scirathi slumped to the floor.
Although he had been under the spell of the sorcerer longer, Beltan was the first to recover. As he knelt above her, Deirdre could see his green eyes glowing faintly in the dark. He helped her sit up, and a ragged breath rushed into her lungs.
“Are you all right?” he said, his voice hoarse.
She nodded. Her heart had resumed something like a normal cadence in her chest. The sorcerer’s spell had not done as much harm as she would have thought. “How is he?”
Beltan moved to a dark lump that sprawled on the floor. “He’s not moving, but I think he’s still conscious.”
Good. The drug was working exactly as it was supposed to. She had feared Scirathi physiology might be different, but it wasn’t. For all their powers, they were still men.
Deirdre groped for the flashlight, then crawled on hands and knees to Beltan. She trained the light down, onto the crumpled form of the sorcerer. Its body twitched, and gurgling sounds emanated from behind the mask. A silver dart protruded from the center of its chest.
“The mask,” Beltan said. “Take it off. He’s powerless without it.”
Deirdre hesitated, then with trembling hands gripped the edge of the gold mask, pulled it off, and handed it to Beltan.
The sorcerer was not a man after all. The face was a blasted landscape of scar tissue, crudely stitched wounds, and oozing scabs. The ears were gone, and the nose reduced to two pits above the featureless slit of the mouth. However, the bone structure—plain to see—was fine, even delicate. This sorcerer was a woman.
Or had been once. Now her face was a ruin from which all traces of humanity had been cut away with the blade of a knife. Only the sorcerer’s eyes were recognizable as something human. They gazed at Deirdre with hatred. And with fear.
“It looks like everything went off without a hitch,” said a cheerful, if breathless, voice behind them.
Both Deirdre and Beltan glared at Anders as he stepped into the flat.
“Or not,” he said, grin fading as he shut the door.
It hadn’t taken him long to get here from his position in the hotel across the street. He had been stationed on the third floor with the dart gun, waiting for Deirdre to shine the light on their target. Once he got off his shot, he must have run here to the flat. Good. That meant he wouldn’t have had time to communicate with anyone else.
Anders knelt beside them. “Gads, that’s a nasty sight.” He looked up from the sorcerer. “Are you both all right?”
“We’re alive, if that’s what you mean,” Beltan said, his voice still ragged.
“Let’s talk to her,” Deirdre said.
Anders reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a syringe. He handed it to Deirdre. She took off the cap, flicked the syringe to remove the bubbles, then inserted the needle into the sorcerer’s throat.
“This will relax the muscles around your larynx. You’ll be able to talk, but that’s all.”
Anders started to reach for the dart embedded in the Scirathi’s chest, but Beltan grabbed his hand.
“No, leave the dart in place. We do not want her to bleed.”
Anders swallowed. “Good point, mate.”
“Blood,” hissed a voice like a serpent’s. It was the sorcerer. The slit of her mouth twitched. “Give me the blood. . . .”
“Never,” Beltan growled. He made sure the glass vial was stopped tightly, then slipped it into his pocket.
The mysterious Philosopher had been right; Beltan had indeed possessed something that would tempt a sorcerer. That morning, they had used alcohol to wash the blood from the bandage Beltan had kept from Travis’s arm. Most of the alcohol had evaporated, leaving only the residual fluid in the vial. It amounted to only a few drops of blood, no more, but it was enough. The moment Beltan had opened the vial in the flat, the sorcerer had appeared, drawn out of hiding by the scent of such power.
“I think it’s time you answered a few questions, friend,” Anders said.
Deirdre gave him a sharp look. Was he trying to take over the questioning, to keep them from learning everything they might?
“I’ll do this,” she said. Anders gave her a surprised look, but before he could protest she bent over the sorcerer.
“Where is the arch you stole from Crete?”
The sorcerer made a gurgling sound low in her throat.
“I know you can understand me. You just spoke English a moment ago. Now answer me.”
The gurgling became words. “I will tell you nothing.”
She was wrong about that. The drug on the dart had been a potent mixture, one intended not only to paralyze the body but soften the mind, to make it pliant and cooperative.
“Where is the arch you stole from Crete?” Deirdre repeated. “If you tell us, we’ll give you a drop of the blood. His blood.”
Beltan gave her a sharp look, but she shook her head.
“I do not know,” the sorcerer hissed. “Now give me the blood of power! It will heal me.”
Deirdre made her voice hard. “You’re lying.”
The Scirathi muttered in a language she did not understand, then spoke again in English. “I do not know, I tell you. We gave it to them, and they took it. That is all.”
Anders raised an eyebrow, and Beltan let out a low grunt.
“They were working for someone else,” Deirdre said.
Beltan leaned over the sorcerer, gripping her shoulders. “Who did you give the arch to? Tell us!”
The drug had taken full effect by then. The sorcerer spoke rapidly, almost babbling, spittle trickling from her lipless mouth. “I do not know who they are. I do not care who they are. The arch means nothing to us now. We need a gate no longer. The worlds draw near. Soon the walls between them will come tumbling down, and we shall return. We shall take what should have been ours long ago. And both the worlds will tremble before the might of the Scirathi.”
Anders let out a low whistle. “That doesn’t exactly sound like cause for celebration.”
It didn’t. The sorcerer’s words sent a chill through Deirdre, even though she didn’t fully understand them. She decided to try a different tactic. “If you’re so powerful, why steal the arch for these others? Why do someone else’s bidding?”
“Knowledge.” The sorcerer writhed in Beltan’s grip. “They gave us knowledge we did not possess. We did not know she was here—we did not guess it. But they told us where to find him, and of the blood of the scarab that flows in him. We sought him out, to slay him so that he cannot stand in our way. But instead we found her. Like a perfect jewel she is, one beyond worth. We were dazzled, and so we took her. . . .”
“Nim!” Beltan roared. “Where is she? Where have you taken her?”
He shook the sorcerer—violently, so that her head flopped— and Deirdre gripped his arms, forcing him to stop. If he killed her, they would learn nothing.
The sorcerer let out a high, keening sound. At first Deirdre thought it was a sound of grief. Then she realized it was laughter.
“They have taken the child unto the Dark,” the sorcerer croaked. “After so long, all its secrets will be ours. She is the key that will open the way. . . .”
Deirdre bent over the sorcerer. “Nim is the key that will open the way to what?”
“Him . . .” The sorcerer’s head lolled back and forth, eyes fluttering shut. Her voice was nearly drowned in a wet gurgle. “The arch . . . blood so near . . . the seven cannot . . . be far.”
They were losing her. “The seven what?” Deirdre said, shaking the sorcerer herself in desperation.
“Sleep,” the sorcerer breathed in a faint exhalation. “Sleep . . .”
Her body shuddered once, then went still.