She was there, near him, close. Too close. Did she not see his weapon drawn? Backhand, his wrist held straight, the sword lashed through the air and caught her midsection lightly. He was fast, his eye good, body poised a moment later for advance and another cut, feet moving with a dancer’s speed, all instinct. Others had had to practise for years for these movements which had come to him naturally and so impressed his tutors. They had joked he must have been born with a sword in hand and cut the umbilical cord himself.
A sound passed her lips like a sigh through teeth. She leaped backwards, falling a step or two, then was gone from sight. ‘You may trust me,’ she said, a little strain to her voice now.
He could not quite locate her through her voice, but she wasn’t far. Keep her talking. ‘Did I wound you?’
‘Scratched. My dress torn. There was dead stone on that blade, was there not?’
‘Yes.’
‘It must be why I misjudged my distance from you and came too close.’ Her voice seemed now to come from several sides at once.
‘Why are you here?’ he said.
‘There are things to show you.’
Anfen went carefully towards a thick tree trunk, pressing his back into it. ‘There are things to tell me too.’
‘Time’s pressing. Ask, quickly.’ Her voice was just ahead of him now.
‘How are you here and casting while my mage rests nearby? He should sense you.’
‘He is indisposed.’ The knuckles gripping Anfen’s sword tightened. She said, ‘I have done nothing to him. He is off on a vision.’
Fool!
She said, ‘Don’t be angered. He is seeking the Pilgrims, to help them.’
‘And where are they?’
‘I don’t know. May I show myself?’ She did so, a patch of shimmering green directly before him, a comfortable distance from the range of his sword. There was a neatly sliced line of fabric above her belly, two hand-lengths long. Her hand ran along the cut lightly. He found the sight of her long finger soothing to watch, the way it traced across the dress’s slit. He made himself look away from it. He said, ‘Do you wish to travel with us? Is that why you stalk my company?’
‘I am more useful to you coming and going as I please. You aren’t aware of the many ill things I have steered away from your path.’
Anfen’s own thoughts echoed: Have we been unlucky? I doubt it. We’ve been lucky … ‘Where’s Far Gaze?’ he said.
‘The wolf? He fled. I did not hurt him, though I could have — I am greater than he.’ Anfen heard with perfect clarity what she didn’t say: I could hurt you, too. ‘He too seeks the Pilgrims, I believe, and means to bring them back. I wish he would believe that we are of the same purpose.’
‘That remains to be proven. I know only that a trusted friend has treated you as his enemy, that you have stalked my company, and that the last time I saw you, trouble befell us.’
‘I had hoped to prove myself that morning when the Invia came,’ she said, face sad. ‘There was not much time for me to do it. Arrows were fired, your trusted friend leaped for my throat. And you yourself are fast with a sword, Anfen. I’d not have liked to be an inch closer to you, just now.’
He looked her in the eye. ‘I’m not sorry. You’ve been like a distant shadow. Your magic is powerful — my mage hardly believes what he’s seen and heard. And you cast spells right on the castle lawns when all free mages have long been killed on sight. You are either in league with them, or you have abilities of a kind as yet unknown, even to those of us familiar with the old schools and their devices. Explain yourself.’
‘You’re right. It’s best to show you. You will see what I am. It requires us to walk a short way. There is an underground tunnel, not far. There are castle soldiers down there, but they won’t trouble us.’
Anfen shook his head. ‘You can tell me what you are, here and now.’
She smiled. ‘You have described it perfectly. I am a New Mage.’
He waited.
‘The castle is producing more of us, this very moment. I escaped. Unlike me, the others won’t be here to aid you. You are best to acquaint yourself with this new threat before you find your way to the Council of Free Cities, for it shall be dire. The more you know, the better you may deal with it, when the rest of the new mages are set loose.’
Anfen studied her face. She calmly met his gaze. It could not be denied: if she was as great as she seemed, she had the ability, if she wished, to kill him this very second with minimal effort. If that was her intent, why risk luring him to some other place to do it?
Luring him for capture? That was possible …
‘How long would we be gone?’ he said at last.
‘An hour.’
46
The groundman hole wasn’t far — groundmen had a knack for keeping them hidden in plain sight. As though reading Anfen’s mind, the light about Stranger illuminated the ground around it so he could examine the way for those odd spiked tracks. Watching him do it, she said, ‘I know what you fear.’
‘And what can you tell me of that fear, Stranger?’
‘For now only a little, as we will soon risk being overheard.’ They crawled down through the tunnel, its rock walls bare of lightstones. Stranger lit the way with the green gleam about her, otherwise the tunnel would be purely dark. ‘Tormentors they were named by survivors of the mining station wiped out by them. Apparently no written record of the creatures exists. They play with time, they come from beyond World’s End. Some are small — man-sized — some huge. A few small ones, an army patrol could perhaps handle, with some deaths. The large ones are … a different matter.’
‘And what do we do about them?’
‘You, I am unsure. I will tell you what the castle is doing about them. Us.’ She pointed to herself.
‘New mages?’
‘Yes. And if the new mages succeed in destroying all the Tormentors, what do you suppose their next task will be?’ She let that sink in. ‘We are an old project of theirs. So for how long have they known of Tormentors? But we must be silent, now. The tunnel walls are thin here, and castle guards are on the other side.’
It was clear they’d be gone longer than an hour, for at least half that time had passed before Stranger gestured to halt. She felt the rock wall with her hands, seeking a secret door, then found it. It appeared she stepped head first into stone that swallowed her up, for that section of wall was illusion, nothing but air. She kept an arm protruding through it to guide him in.
Soon, with greater frequency, voices could be heard to either side of their tunnel. Then the passages widened out and the walls’ lightstones were thick, large slabs. This was a thoroughfare commonly used, for military bric-a-brac lay here and there, and signs had been put on the walls with stern written orders and warnings. Small statues and portraits of Vous were everywhere the eye fell. Even as they watched, a man in leathers marched past and paused to wipe dust off the shoulders of a statue which showed the man’s Friend and Lord grim-faced on a drake, with a spear in hand, brass eyes staring at the horizon, seeing further than any mere man could …
Other tunnels led off away from this passageway to more secretive places, the entrance of each barred by iron lattice with heavy locks. After making certain no one was around to see them, Stranger ran out into the open and Anfen followed. Between two barred tunnels she found another secret wall, and again the rock seemed to swallow her.
Anfen knew they were heading for places not well known to the common soldiery, or to anyone else but a select few, despite the troops traversing past those very secret places day to day. He also knew he would not find his way back through these winding tunnels to the surface without Stranger’s help, which began to worry him. Every ten paces, he now gouged little marks with his sword’s tip in the rock wall. If Stranger noticed this, she didn’t comment.