—
Once I was clear of the shadow realm, I made a short call to Morden. Then I went to the Hollow to gear up.
For the meeting with Talisid, I’d deliberately gone in underequipped. It was all but certain that they’d had a diviner or some other mage with a way of getting a look at me, and I’d been doing my best to lull their suspicions. That wasn’t a concern anymore, and I loaded for bear. I took my armour, my dreamstone, and my old MP7, as well as my usual dispel focus. A combat knife and handgun rounded out my weapons, and for defence I added a mind shield, an aquamarine in the shape of a teardrop that hung around my neck. It was the best mental defence focus I’d been able to get my hands on, and for some years now I’d had it stored away, just waiting for the right opportunity. Now I’d see if it was worth what I’d paid for it. I added my usual collection of miscellaneous tools and one-shots, then gated to the Heath, at the old entrance to Arachne’s lair.
I arrived as the sun was setting behind the western hills. Gleams of sunlight penetrated the trees, casting long black shadows that stretched away without end. The air was warm, but the atmosphere was curiously hushed; a few voices were carried on the wind, but not many. The summer evening was quiet and still.
The ravine that had once led to Arachne’s lair was deserted. The tunnel leading down into the earth had been sealed, and the spells that had opened and closed it were gone. If you didn’t know better, it looked like just a mound of earth. There were no guards or alarms: the place had been looted when the Council had raided it, and apparently they’d decided they were done with the place. With no one living there and nothing valuable to find, it would probably be abandoned. Over the years, fewer and fewer would have any reason to visit, until someday, in fifty or a hundred years, no one would remember it at all. Men and women would walk their dogs, and children would play, not knowing that a cavern complex lay beneath their feet.
Maybe Arachne would return sometime around then. It was a nice thought. I wouldn’t be around to see it.
I sat on a fallen tree and waited. Birdsong carried on the evening air. From far above, I heard the distant roar of an airliner, heading westwards.
Soft footsteps sounded, shoes on earth. “This,” Anne said, “had better be good.”
I turned to see Anne half-lit beside one of the trees. Spatters of sunlight fell across her bare arms and legs, swallowed up by the black of her dress. Her expression was shadowed, but didn’t look welcoming. “Sorry about the wait,” I told her.
“I hate waiting.” Anne took a step forward into brighter light. “You made me wait five hours.”
“I told you my best estimate was four to eight, and I explained why.”
“No, you didn’t. You ran off some random crap about deep shadow realms and I stopped listening. Now how about you go back to explaining why I’ve been hanging around these woods all day?”
“If you’d bothered to listen the last time I explained,” I said, “you would have had to wait an hour or two at the most. And if you’d stopped being so paranoid and just given me a phone number, you wouldn’t have had to wait even that long. The reason it’s taken this long is that I had to wait for the Council to—”
“Bored.”
“Okay, let’s try this another way. It took five hours because the time flow—”
“Bored.”
“Do you want me to explain this, or not?”
“Too many words.” Anne made a spinning motion with one finger. “TLDR.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll explain this in terms that are simple enough for your attention span. What do you think we’re here to do?”
“You want me to kill Levistus.”
“And as soon as we go after Levistus, the Council is going to send a response team to kill us. A response team that’s going to have their best combat mages and their best weapons. Right now, that response team is stuck in a deep shadow realm for the next few hours. We’re going to kill Levistus before they get out. Clear?”
“See, you should have explained it like that the first time.” Anne folded her arms. “What’s stopping them sending more?”
“The Council’s first priority is to protect itself,” I said. “Right now, they think there’s an attack being launched against the War Rooms.” Morden was seeing to that. It wouldn’t be a very thorough feint, but it wouldn’t have to be—the Council would be in a state of maximum paranoia after losing contact with Talisid. “They have enough reserves left to defend the War Rooms against a full attack from Richard’s cabal, and they have enough reserves left to send a strike force to crush us. They don’t have enough to do both.”
“And what if they pick Option B?”
I shrugged. “What’s life without a little risk?” I held out a hand. “Coming?”
Anne looked back at me, then a smile flashed across her face. “You know, I’ve been waiting for you to do that for a really long time.” She jumped lightly across the ravine, then strode up to me, the sunbeams casting her in alternating dark and light. “Let’s do this.”
I gave Anne a nod. Together, we walked away.
chapter 11
You can tell a lot about a mage by where they live. Some live in little terraced houses in the suburbs. Some live in mansions out in the country. Others live in places that are so well hidden you’ll never see them at all. Levistus’s house and base of operations was a house on a street in London called Kensington Palace Gardens.
Calling Kensington Palace Gardens rich is like saying that Heathrow Airport is big. It’s true, but doesn’t explain the scale. Let’s say you live in the U.S. or the U.K. or some other Western country, and let’s say you work full-time earning an average sort of salary. If you managed to save fifty percent of that pretax salary, then the amount of time it would take you to save enough money to buy a house on Kensington Palace Gardens is longer than the amount of time between today and the birth of Christ. If you decided to get the money by playing the lottery, you’d have to win the U.K. national jackpot five times running to get even halfway there. The people who live on that street are the sort who buy Ferraris without noticing the difference in their bank balance.
So I have to admit, I got a particular satisfaction out of watching Anne blow Levistus’s front door into a thousand pieces.
Wooden splinters went skittering across the floor. The doors had been warded against scrying, three or four different types of sensory magic, and against any attempt to pick or bypass the lock. They hadn’t been warded against overwhelming force. Anne and I came through side by side and scanned the front hall, seeing a room floored in white marble, with black veined pillars flanking open doorways, all decorated in an elegant, minimalistic style. A curving staircase disappeared upwards. Running footsteps sounded from several directions, and Anne and I halted.