The item inside was a cylinder of lacquered wood, about ten inches long and two inches wide, with a braided cord hanging from one end. The wood was coloured white, with engravings of twining blue flowers. I sat back down on the chair, let out a long slow breath, braced myself, then reached out mentally through the dreamstone. Marid, I said quietly but clearly. If you are willing, I would speak with you.
There was what felt like a very long silence. Then the jinn answered.
It didn’t sound like a creature. It was more like a choir, with one dominant voice and a chorus of lesser ones. As the dominant voice spoke, the others would speak in echo, sometimes repeating its words with subtle differences of emphasis, sometimes contradicting it entirely. I was keeping the mental contact thread-thin, but even so the pressure from the other side was vast. It felt like putting one hand through the bars of a cage to rest my fingers against the body of some enormously strong animal.
WHY HAVE YOU COME. The jinn’s voice rolled over my senses, even as the chorus echoed it. (come where? you have always been here.)
I braced myself against the mental pressure. The really frightening thing was that it didn’t even feel as though the jinn was attacking; all it was doing was paying me attention. I’ve been told a lot about jinn over the past few years, I said through the dreamstone. I thought it might be a good idea to see how much of it is true.
YES. (yes? you ask, you do not understand.)
I was told there was a war long ago, between jinn and mages. I was told that’s why you are how you are now.
YES. (no. not always. not now.)
Do you want to tell me your side of the story?
THERE ARE NO SIDES. THERE IS ONLY THE DARK. (the beginning and the end. to see is not to understand.)
I paused. I was told that it was mages that bound you into items. Stripping away your physical form and binding you into items. Did they?
OUTSIDE. (outside.)
I don’t understand.
YOU SEE THE SURFACE. IN THEIR BINDING, THEY TOUCHED SOMETHING ELSE. (made us less. made us more.) BETWEEN BODY AND SEAL, WE WERE OUTSIDE. A BLINK OF AN EYE AND A THOUSAND YEARS. (less than a blink. more than a thousand years. a thousand years were a blink.)
That . . . happened to you?
THE LESSER WERE EXTINGUISHED. (husks. shells. burning shells.) THE GREATER WERE CHANGED. ONLY THE ETERNAL CAN ENDURE THE DARK. (the dark. the dark.)
Okay, I said slowly. The jinn that’s possessing Anne. What does it want?
WAR. (eternal patience. eternal war.)
A chill went through me. Is there any way I can change its mind?
AN AVALANCHE BEGINS A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. (blades of grass beneath the stone. ask the rock why it falls.)
How about breaking its contract with Anne? Is there some way I can do that?
YES. (no.)
How?
DO NOT PRESUME. TO WISH IS NOT TO GUIDE. (impudent. to guide is not to wish. you have learned nothing.)
Okay, I said. What do you want in all this? Are you on that other jinn’s side? Are you hoping it’ll succeed, or fail? Do you want humans wiped out for what they did to you? What?
THERE IS NO REVENGE. There was no anger in the jinn’s voice; it was dispassionate, implacable. THERE IS ONLY THE CONTRACT, AND THE PRICE. (the price. your price.)
The strain of talking to the jinn was wearing on me. It felt like holding back some massive uncaring force, and I could feel my will beginning to shake. One last question, I said. You stayed in my shop for years. I’m pretty sure you didn’t have to. You took victims when they made contracts. But the rest of the time, you left everyone in peace. Why?
YOU ARE THE HOST. ONE LIFE IS A LEAF. LAW IS ETERNAL. (you have seen. follow the path.)
I struggled to understand. It was getting harder to think. What do you mean—?
ENOUGH.
All of a sudden, the jinn’s presence was gone. I lurched on my chair, blinking, as though a weight I’d been bracing against had been suddenly pulled away. The sunlight hurt my eyes and I put up my hand to shield them.
I rose to my feet, staggering slightly. The Hollow felt too bright and too loud. Carefully I rewrapped the cylinder and carried it back to the tree. I made sure not to touch it with my bare skin, but the item was passive and silent as I returned it to its storage. Once I was done, I slumped back down on the chair. That had taken a lot out of me.
Was that even worth it? It was hideously dangerous to link to a creature that powerful. My mind could have been destroyed, and I’d learned nothing.
Or had I? I still didn’t understand what the jinn were, but now I had some idea of what I didn’t know. Something had happened to them, something that those ancient mages had done with their binding, maybe deliberately but more likely as some unintended side effect they didn’t fully understand. I didn’t know how to make use of that, but it was somewhere to start.
I got to my feet, gathered up my stuff, and started walking. It was time to get to work on the problem I knew something about.
* * *
—
Shadow realms that have been warded against intruders are difficult to enter, which was one reason I’d been able to stay in the Hollow for so long. When we set up the Hollow’s defences, we created a set of keystones, and in theory only someone holding one could open a gate to get inside. But if you’re powerful enough, there are ways around these things.
Earlier this year, I’d gained two abilities that significantly expanded my options. First, I’d learned how to use the dreamstone to step physically into Elsewhere. It’s a hostile environment to put it mildly, but it has major advantages, one of those being that it allows you to travel almost anywhere. The second ability was the magic of the fateweaver. It let me manipulate the futures I could see with my divination, choosing the outcome I desired and eliminating all others.
Put the two together, and I had a way to get into a shadow realm. The dreamstone let me open a gate; the fateweaver let me make sure it would work. It wasn’t easy—first I had to stack the odds in my favour by travelling to the real-world location that the shadow realm was a mirror of, then I had to spend a couple of hours patiently following future threads, using the fateweaver to stabilise them so that I could learn what would and wouldn’t work. But eventually I saw the futures light up in a sequence of events that would end with me entering the shadow realm. What the Council would have done with a full assault team and a weeklong siege, I could do in an afternoon.
I stepped through into the shadow realm and let the gate wink out behind me, feeling the slight disorientation that always hit me upon leaving Elsewhere. Looking around, I saw green trees, dappled shadows, and beams of light slanting down from a canopy far overhead. From nearby, I could hear a stream and what sounded like a waterfall. There was a path a little to one side, grey flagstones laid through the grass. I started walking, though I didn’t hurry. My arrival had set off several alarms, and I knew that the shadow realm’s inhabitants were converging on me.