The sky stayed dark, the clouds thickening. I already knew from path-walking that Anne was asleep, though I hadn’t been able to find out much else – divination isn’t much use for looking into Elsewhere: it’s too fluid. Trying to track her down like this was dangerous, but I had to try.
Trees rose up in front of me as I drew closer to the border. Beyond was Anne’s kingdom . . . or world . . . or prison. I came to a stop at the edge of a plaza. Thirty feet ahead, the stones of the plaza broke up into clumps of grass that turned into a meadow that turned into a forest. Black storm-clouds roiled the sky.
I sent out a call. There was no sound, but my skills in Elsewhere were far advanced beyond what they’d once been, and I knew that Anne had heard me. I stood and waited.
Nothing. No shift.
She wasn’t coming.
I walked forward into Anne’s Elsewhere.
Instantly, the world changed. I could feel a presence in the air, charged and alive. The wind whipped up around me, hissing through the trees and rising to a roar. I’d crossed into something’s territory, and it had noticed me.
I changed direction, moving next to one of the trees. It was a huge oak, hundreds of years old, great branches rising up into the sky. I leant against it and let the essence of the tree flow into me, feeling the earth, the water, the leaves. Anne’s Elsewhere is its own world, sculpted over many years. It’s not my world, but I loved Anne, and this place was made in her image. I knew it because I knew her.
The colour of the tree’s bark spread to cover my body, its leaves hiding my hair. My feet ran down into the earth. I took my essence, the core of myself, and muted it, smoothing it out below the surface of the forest around me.
The storm hit seconds later. A roaring gale lashed the trees, rain hissing through the leaves. Through the canopy above, I had a vague image of a monstrous shape, legs like mountains, its head hidden in the clouds. I felt its attention turn towards me, massive and terrible. It brushed across the forest like fingers sweeping a carpet, huge yet strangely delicate. With a crash, a branch broke above my head, smashed down into the earth nearby, the sound almost drowned by the scream of the wind . . .
The presence passed over without finding me. It groped away to the north, fading, and was gone.
I stayed quite still for maybe a minute, neither moving nor breathing. The rain above died away to a drizzle and stopped, and the wind fell off until it was only a breeze.
I pulled my consciousness together again and stepped away from the tree. The broken branch was lying nearby, jagged and wet from the rain. I put my hand on the tree trunk in silent thanks and set off through the forest. Far away to the north, the storm raged.
I slipped through the trees quickly and quietly. When the wall of black glass loomed up in front of me, I jumped it in a single bound. I came down in an open courtyard, the only feature the black tower rising up ahead.
The sounds of the storm felt muted here. The wind blew less strongly and the hostile presence was weaker. I could still sense it, but there was something between, a kind of shield. The thing could still find me, but it would take time.
I crossed the courtyard and entered the tower, absent-mindedly creating a doorway that closed behind me. The inside was made of the same reflective black glass, soft lights glowing at intervals from the walls. I climbed a spiral staircase and opened a door.
The room within was the one that I’d come to think of as Dark Anne’s drawing room. A long dining table of dark wood occupied the centre, with a sofa off to one side. The room was barer than I remembered: the chairs by the sofa were gone, as were most of the ones at the table. The sofa was green, as were the glass bowls on the table, contrasting sharply with the black walls and ceiling. Open arch windows at the far end looked out onto a spectacular view.
Dark Anne was leaning on the table with her head propped up in one hand. Her dress was the vivid red one that she’d worn to our first meeting, but it was rumpled, as though she’d been sleeping in it. With her free hand, she was playing with a long knife. Her eyes flicked up as I walked in.
‘You could at least answer when I call,’ I said.
Anne flipped the knife into the air, catching it by the blade.
I crossed the room and walked past her. There was one other chair, placed opposite from Anne, but I didn’t sit down. Anne’s eyes tracked me as I moved.
The view from the windows was just as amazing as I remembered, the forest beyond the walls stretching away into a fantastic landscape of tower-sized trees, mirrored lakes and distant mountains . . . but there was a difference. The first time that I’d been here, most of the world had been bathed in sunlight, while the tower and the walls around it had received only the murky light of an overcast day. Now the contrast was the other way round. The tower was still overcast, but the world outside was covered in black storm-clouds. Lightning flickered around the mountains, and the towering trees swayed in what had to be gale-force winds.
Dark Anne’s prison hadn’t changed. Everywhere else had.
‘I’ve got to say,’ I said, ‘I don’t really like what you’ve done with the place.’
She shot me a look.
‘Your jinn tried to catch me on the way in,’ I said conversationally. ‘You know, when you only see them in the outside world, it’s easy to forget how powerful they are. Having to act through a possessed human really limits them. Here, though . . . they’re like a sea monster in the ocean.’
No answer. I turned, leaning my elbows on the window-sill. Dark Anne was spinning the knife between her fingers, watching me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Just as well, I suppose,’ I said. ‘It’s so powerful it’s hard for it to find me. Like a giant hunting a mouse.’
Dark Anne finally spoke. ‘Are you going to talk all day?’
‘You’re trapped here, aren’t you?’
‘Right, because I’ve got nothing better to do than come running when you call. Get over yourself.’
I shrugged. ‘You’re not a prisoner?’ I pointed out through the window. ‘Then step past those walls and back again.’
Dark Anne scowled.
‘I can even tell you when it happened,’ I said. ‘It was last night. You were thinking about paying your family a visit, weren’t you? I mean, you’ve dealt with everyone else. So after you took down Sagash, you figured it was time to go settle some old scores. Only the jinn didn’t want that, did it? It was happy to feed you all the power you needed as long as you were using it to fight Sagash. But once it had his shadow realm, well, it wasn’t going to put all that at risk just because you had a grudge against your two pain-in-the-arse cousins. Of course, you weren’t going to take no for an answer, so you forced the issue. After all, you’ve done that lots of times, and the jinn’s always backed down, right? Except that was when you discovered that all the times it did that, it wasn’t because it was weaker. It was because it was biding its time. And now that it’s stronger than you, it doesn’t need you any more. Which is why you’re slumped over your dinner table, feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘Oh, screw you!’ Anne snapped. ‘Like you’ve done anything to help!’
‘I haven’t helped?’ I said, and suddenly my voice was harsh. ‘How about all the times I told you this was going to happen using these exact fucking words? I told you the jinn wasn’t your friend, I told you it was stronger than you, I told you only a complete moron would let a marid into her head and expect to be the one running the show. And you just rolled your eyes and sniggered. Well, you going to laugh at me now? How about it, Anne? Still think it’s funny?’