The domain of Argastos pressed all around him, that grey, gnarled shadow of the forest without, but its master’s attention was most decidedly elsewhere. Tegrec, a minor distraction at the
most, had some small space of time to get clear before the place noticed him again and made him pay.
He could sense all around him the spirits of the imprisoned dead. Argastos’ home was like a pitcher plant, and all those who ever entered had neither left nor truly died. The agonized
remnants of them were impaled on the trees surrounding him, writhing and screaming. If he came to their attention, he would join them in short order.
And not just death but a living death, as a slave of Argastos. He saw it all so clearly now.
He had not wanted things to turn out like this, but that was hardly worth saying. Born a Wasp without Aptitude, he had lived his whole life as an impostor amongst his own people. He had learned
magic in scraps and tatters, leaching what little could be had from the spoils of the Twelve-year War and carefully playing his political games until a golden opportunity had come his way: when the
Empire took Tharn, home of the Moth-kinden. He had been sent there as governor, and he had sold out his own people in return for knowledge and power, and he had given himself over to the Moths.
And they had given him back, in a way, so that he had ended up at the Imperial court as Tharen ambassador, brokering an alliance between his surrogate and his birth kinden that the Moths would
never have considered had the Empress not been who – or what – she was.
So far, so good, but then everything had fallen apart. He had never wanted to come to this terrible place, in the Empress’s entourage; to see the murder of his fellow Moth ambassador; to
see that other impostor, the assassin, suddenly spring out from behind the guise of dull Major Ostrec . . .
He was not a man temperamentally suited to such events, and so he ran, hoping that he could outdistance the reach of both Argastos and Seda before he was noticed again.
All around him he could feel this horribly dead place waking up. Its attention had contracted towards its centre, dragging in its chosen victims – the Empress and her opposite – but
now the tendrils of its thought were flexing and twitching, its trap was setting itself again, and he was still within its range; he could not find the way out.
Fear endowed him with a sudden surge of strength, increasing his stumbling pace as he battered at the fabric of Argastos’s realm like a man clawing through cobwebs.
And it gave way, and the forest he found himself staggering through was no less dark and grim of aspect, but at least it was real and physical.
He paused, and leant against a tree, fighting to get his breath back.
Clear, I’m clear!
Even the murky forest air seemed sweet to him.
Something moved close by, and he felt a chill pass through him.
Did something else come with me?
He looked about and realized that he was surrounded. There was a score of Mantis-kinden shifting in and out of sight amid the trees, with bows and spears. Nethyen or Etheryen? He could not
tell.
‘Servants of the Green,’ he croaked, using the ancient Moth greeting to their followers.
For a long moment those words hung in the air, testing their power against the Mantids, while the world itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then one of them shook her head. ‘No masters,’ she said. ‘Not any more. Seize the trespasser.’
‘No!’ Tegrec gasped.
Not after all I’ve been through
. And he began backing away, seeing some of them drawing back their bowstrings, others spreading out. They were not
moving towards him, though, even as he took step after step away. Their attention, hungry for blood, was focused elsewhere.
And at last he turned to see another Mantis behind him, a weathered-looking man with his long hair unbound.
‘What do you want?’ Tegrec gasped.
‘No masters,’ the man echoed. ‘Amalthae?’ Something in the way he stood led Tegrec’s gaze sideways and upwards, until at last he saw the colossal beast towering by
the Mantis’s side.
Tegrec lashed out with all the force of his magic, but the mind he encountered was more than his equal. Then those dread killing arms were reaching for him.
Che awoke into darkness, but this was no new thing for her. She found herself standing, with walls pressing close on three sides.
Argastos’s domain
.
And she was a daughter of Collegium, whether Apt or Inapt, and she had been raised to question. First she called on her Art, and found that the gloom about her was not dispelled, but hung before
her eyes all the more.
So, nothing as mundane as mere darkness, then. This is what Argastos wants me to see.
Not utterly dark, either – because Argastos wanted her to see just enough and no further. Enough to see that the indistinct walls around her comprised a dead end in what must be a maze.
She remembered reading about Moths and mazes in a book, while she had been looting the College library for anything that might help her with her newly imposed Inaptitude. It had been a favourite
pastime of Moth Skryres to trap their enemies in mazes of the mind. Che herself had nearly become lost in one through Seda’s doing, snared in her own memories.
Until Maure walked into my
mind to rescue me.
And did that mean Maure was just as capable of rescuing herself, or was she also a prisoner elsewhere in this labyrinth, or in some other cell altogether?
What does Argastos want? Is this a test?
She stepped forwards and began to try a handful of turns, leftwards always. Her hand found the wall’s surface weirdly discontinuous,
metallic and lanced with spines, nothing that matched what the eye could make out.
She had every expectation of the maze’s configuration shifting around her, because why should Argastos play fair? If there was a test here, it was not of her ability to solve a physical
maze, after all.
She closed her eyes, seeking strength within her, before applying it carefully to the walls all around her, and making them creak. It seemed possible that sheer force might suffice, to break
this place asunder, but what if that was something Argastos had foreseen? Would it leave her in an even worse position?
Instead, she let her mind flow out from her, twisting and turning over the contours of the maze, appreciating its nuances all at once and giving it no chance to change behind her back. She had
not realized that she was capable of such concentration, and perhaps it was only here, in this pit of old magic, that she could have done it, but soon she had the entire maze in mind, and still her
senses drifted outwards, calm and curious, until she found Maure.
Che?
Are you well?
I’m surrounded by the dead.
There came sense of Maure’s bleak amusement.
I won’t say it’s pleasant but it is what I trained for.
Is Argastos dead?
Che asked her.
Interesting question. He’s not merely a ghost, anyway. There’s no cast-off image of him here, because the core of him never moved on. It was bound here, trapped in this place
over the centuries.
So what does that make him, and what can we do about him?
There was an almost academic quality to Maure’s response.
He is a man, still, but one who has been held in a place of great magic – dark Moth magic – for a very long time.
Is he dead? Probably. Does he know it? Possibly. Is he powerful? Certainly. He’s been steeped in power for centuries.
More powerful than me?
A long pause before Maure answered that.
Perhaps not, but more skilled. He was a strong and experienced magician before this happened to him, and he won’t have grown rusty.
Che nodded to herself, and stepped out of the maze. It only needed that one step, now that she had plumbed its every twist and turn. A moment later there was no maze, and she was in a cavern,
its ceiling dimly knotted with roots, the air hazy with half-glimpsed forms.
More games?
Then another real mind, for a moment, and the touch of it startled her.
A trick, a deception? I must be mistaken
, but she had the sense of someone staring right back at her.
Hello,
Cheerwell Maker
. And a most uncharacteristic malice:
Enjoying yourself?
Che recoiled, and then the fleeting touch was gone, as if it had never been.
But was that really . . .?
She could not bring herself to believe that it had actually been the Collegiate
scholar Helma Bartrer . . .
Using her power as a light that burned the darkness like cheap oil, she came upon Maure, finding her surrounded by nebulous phantoms that fled at Che’s approach.
‘Real ghosts?’
The woman started at finding Che before her in the flesh. ‘This place is clogged with ghosts,’ she remarked quietly. ‘Argastos did not come here alone when he was imprisoned
here, and he has gained plenty of company since, I think.’
‘We need to find the others.’
Maure nodded, ‘I’ve been trying to—’
But Che held a hand up to cut her off.
There was a new voice.
Cheerwell Maker.
Che froze, knowing immediately who had spoken, and that knowledge sent a sudden stab of fear through her – far more than Argastos’s voice might have done. Immediately she was raising
defences, filling her mind with thought of armour and shield, walls, fortifications. In that moment, the encroaching dark of this subterranean domain was nothing compared to her fear of her rival,
her jagged memories of the last time.
And at last, she replied,
Seda
.
She sensed a hint of amusement at all her preparations.
Well, sister, how very far you have come from the little girl you once were. You have grown into your power. I’ll not catch you
unawares again.
Possibly there was a trace of respect there, or Seda might be trying to inveigle her way through Che’s defences by instilling some false confidence.
What do you want, Seda?
Che demanded. Using the woman’s given name represented a calculated insult. Under no circumstances would she use the title ‘Empress’ and, of
course, to show someone that you held their name was to have a hook in them from the start.
You have spoken with Argastos, of course?
‘Any sign of the others?’ Che murmured sidelong to Maure, and thought,
So?
Even as Maure answered in the negative, Che heard Seda sigh.
We will fight, you and I, over his power. We are opposites, and I will destroy you if I can, just as you would destroy me. We are
two people standing in the same place, and neither of us can tolerate that. This rivalry is the last joke of the Masters of Khanaphes. But, for now, Argastos’s power is firmly bound within
Argastos himself, and he has brought us both here for his own purposes.
I came here only to stop you
, Che growled at her.
Tell yourself that if you wish, but I know the truth. If you had discovered Argastos first, then it would be I chasing at your heels to keep him from you. We are sisters, you and I. We are
not so different. You feel the pull of power just as I do.
Che’s instant response died within her mind, leaving her wondering if Seda was right after all. And surely she would have justified it to herself, how she needed his strength to hold off
Seda later on, or to deal with some other threat . . . or just because if was safer in her hands than any other’s . . .
What do you want?
Che repeated.
A truce, for now, until Argastos has played his hand. We are stronger than he is, but not if we fight each other. Let us recommence our feud over his body.
You’re supposing that I want to fight him
, Che shot back, but the disdain with which that remark was greeted was withering.
Do you honestly think he means you any good?
Seda demanded.
Or either of us?
Well, no doubt he’ll tell us soon enough
, Che snapped irritably, then calmed herself, feeling her defences grow shakier as she gave in to anger.
But, for now, you want a
truce?
Until Argastos’s intentions become clear, I will harm neither you nor your companions.
Maure tugged at her sleeve, demanding to know what was going on, and Che explained in as few words as possible.
‘What do you think?’
The necromancer frowned. ‘All I know is that this is just the sort of place that gives my profession a bad name. Moth magic is bad enough most of the time, with all that Path of Shadows
business, and Mantis magic is all about death, and this place reeks of both of them in the worst possible way. Whatever is left of the man that was, whatever Argastos has become, it can’t
intend any good to us – or to anyone. And I get the impression that the original man himself wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.’
‘He was a hero,’ Che responded automatically, and then stopped, surprised at herself.
‘He saw himself as a hero,’ Maure corrected her carefully. ‘So do many others, who do the most appalling things. By believing yourself a hero, all your actions become heroic,
no matter what they are.’
Che closed her eyes again, feeling exactly the opposite – that no course of action open to her now was in any way desirable.
Very well, let us have our truce, Seda
, whilst
privately adding
, but I’m not lowering my defences or trusting you an inch.
Good
. The response was brisk and pragmatic.
As a token of goodwill, I have located your companions.
Che froze, fighting down the whirl of thoughts that statement prompted.
They are unharmed, although I need your help with the halfbreed girl.
And . . . Thalric?
It had been Che’s terrible fear that Thalric might simply be gone, his Aptitude untraceable in this maze of the Inapt.
Here with me
, Seda informed her, with a proprietorial air that made Che bristle.
Let me see him. Let me see you.