‘Only to a very limited extent,’ Arachne said. ‘I could weave a shield, some sort of cocoon to screen Anne from the jinn’s influence. But it would require her to remain here, and she’d be unable to leave without losing her protection. I doubt very much she’d be willing to live like that for ever. Besides, I’m not at all sure it would work. Shields function best when they protect against something from outside. The jinn’s access comes from within.’
‘Have you got anything that would work from within?’
‘No, and even if I did, I wouldn’t use it. Any kind of effect powerful enough to prevent Anne’s other self from acting would have the potential to cause lasting mental damage to both sides of her personality. I can’t get you out of this one.’
‘I know,’ I said, raising a hand. ‘You’re going to say I should talk to her.’
‘There’s a reason everyone keeps giving you the same advice.’
‘And I’m going to. But I’m starting to think it’s not going to work.’
‘Why?’
‘We know all of this was set up by Richard,’ I said. ‘The Vault, the jinn, everything. It wasn’t the only thing he was aiming for with that raid, but it was definitely up there on his priority list, and he’s been planning it for a long time. Now, maybe if I talk to Anne, I can persuade her, and maybe she can figure out some way to fix this. But even if I do, my gut tells me that it won’t be that easy. Richard wouldn’t have staked that much on this plan if I could undo the whole thing with a pep talk. There’ll be some other way for the jinn to gain access. One way or another, this is not going away.’
‘Unfortunately, that does seem quite possible.’
‘And that’s not the only problem,’ I said. ‘There’s Rachel. That prophecy of Shireen’s said that if I wanted to live, I’d have to turn her against Richard, and I still haven’t found any way to do that. I’ve tried to get in touch with her, and it hasn’t worked. Even if it did, she’d probably just try to kill me on sight. And then if that isn’t enough, I still need to find some way to get an edge against Levistus or Sal Sarque or whoever else tries to get rid of me next. None of the imbued items we’ve found have worked and we’re running out of time.’
‘So what course of action are you considering?’
‘I’ve tried all my personal sources of information,’ I said. ‘And I’ve asked you, and all my other friends. I think I need to go further.’ I looked at Arachne. ‘With your permission, I’d like to speak with your … acquaintance in the tunnels below.’
Arachne was silent.
‘Is that okay?’ I asked.
Arachne withdrew her legs from either side of me and walked away. The movements of her eight legs were slow, almost sluggish. ‘Arachne?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes,’ Arachne answered. She turned back to me, legs moving in intricate steps. ‘Perfectly.’
I looked at her doubtfully. ‘You seem a little …’
‘Something long foreseen,’ Arachne said. She waved one leg towards the tunnels beyond. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Right now?’
‘One time is exactly as good as another.’
I rose to my feet and started across the room, then paused in the tunnel entrance. Something about Arachne’s manner felt off. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’ll be fine, Alex,’ Arachne said. ‘I’ll be waiting here.’ She lifted a leg. ‘Go.’
In the caverns beneath Arachne’s lair lives a dragon.
I’ve only met the dragon twice, and both visits are hard to remember. There was something disorientating about the experience, like looking through an unfocused lens or trying to retrace a path you followed in a dream. Dragons don’t fit in our world, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we don’t fit in theirs. According to Arachne, dragons exist outside time as we perceive it, only touching our timeline at points of their choosing. To them, our world is like a story in a book: they can flip between pages as they choose, and if they decide to leave, we have exactly as much ability to stop them as a fictional character has to stop you from closing the book and putting it on a shelf. So Arachne says, at least, and nothing I’ve seen has given me reason to doubt her. But while Arachne will tell me about dragons in general, she shuts up when I probe for specifics as to this dragon in particular. Some of the things she’s said have implied a special relationship, but what that relationship is, I don’t know.
The tunnels beyond the lair went down and kept on going. To begin with they looked to be carved out of rock, but the further I went the more jagged and bumpy they became; something about them made me sure that they had existed for a very, very long time. Occasional forks and turnings appeared in the light of my torch, but I walked by without paying attention. Normally I’d use my divination to navigate under these kinds of conditions, but somehow I knew that in this place, that didn’t matter. If the dragon wanted me to find it, I’d find it.
I can’t say exactly how long I walked. It felt like maybe an hour, but it could have been more. Gradually I realised that I wasn’t walking through a tunnel any more. My divination was still showing me a narrow path, but the light of my torch wasn’t revealing any walls. I clicked off the torch and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.
As my night vision set in, pinpoints appeared in the blackness around me, coalescing into stars. Not the sky of the Hollow, but the constellations of Earth: the Great Square of Pegasus, Orion, the bright Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb and Altair. The stars were below me as well as above; peering down and to the left and right, I could see others, ones that would never appear in the sky of England. I was walking on a thick pathway, twisting and winding, hanging suspended in a bottomless void. The starlight was enough to see by; I put away the torch and kept walking.
My footsteps were the only sound in the silence. Stars twinkled, bright against the darkness, the ribbon of the Milky Way a curving shape above my head. As I walked I began to make out other paths to the right and to the left, visible as black bands against the starry backdrop. Connecting paths linked my route to theirs, and the distance between them grew shorter the further I went, converging to a point.
At the centre of the web, the paths linked to form a small island. Through some trick of the starlight, the middle of the island was illuminated, revealing a heavy stone chair. Sitting straight-backed upon it was a human shape. I approached and stood in front of her, studying her.
At first glance she looked like a woman of indeterminate age, maybe thirty and maybe fifty. She wore a white garment that left her arms bare and looked something like a cross between a pleated dress and a toga. Her features were plain and ordinary, yet at the same time there was something regal about them, as though she was accustomed to being obeyed. She looked human, but even if I hadn’t known what to expect, I think I would have guessed that she wasn’t. It was the eyes: even from a distance they didn’t look quite right.
Mages usually steer clear of dragons. Received wisdom is that they’re dangerous and hostile, and the mages in stories who go to dragons usually come to bad ends. I don’t think the stories are completely true – dragons aren’t hostile to humans, any more than you’re hostile to an ant. Dangerous, on the other hand … that’s hard to argue with.
There was a reason I hadn’t come here before. Dragons can tell you your future, after a fashion. But I’ve never known whether they tell you what’s going to happen, or whether hearing it from them is what causes it to happen. The one thing I was absolutely sure of was that this wasn’t going to be comfortable.