“How could she have been so quick?” Rik asked. “And so strong? She is not built like the Barbarian.”
“There were mystical disciplines on Al’Terra that focused on combat. They allowed their practitioners to perform astonishing feats of martial skill. Malkior would know them. It appears he has taught his daughter.”
“A form of magic, you mean?”
“If you will.”
“Spells to make you stronger, faster, deadlier?”
“Techniques of the mind and spirit would be a better description but spells will do just as well.”
“So all we have really proven is that Tamara knows magic. We knew that already.”
“Did we?”
Rik realised he had made a mistake. He knew that already. He had never told Asea about it. “She is a Terrarch, isn’t she? Learning sorcery would have come naturally to her.”
“Quite so.” Rik sensed that Asea was uneasy with him. Perhaps she sensed his lies.
“In any case we know she can now.”
“She recognised you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The big man heard her say your name. So did Weasel.”
“How is the Barbarian?”
“He will live. The needle missed his jugular, and I have neutralised the poison in his bloodstream, just as I have done for you.”
“A useful trick. I wish you had taught me it.”
“I will make it the highest priority in your studies, Rik. I have a feeling that you are going to be needing it, and the ability to heal yourself.”
He was relieved to find that she still trusted him at least that much. Or perhaps she was trying to lull him into a false sense of security. He would not have put it past her.
“Tell me more about the whispering shadow you saw.”
He told her all he could remember about it, including his suspicion that it was a hallucination brought on by the poison.
“I don’t think so. Weasel saw it too.”
“Do you have any idea what it was? It put the wind up the two of us for certain.”
“It was a shadowgate.”
“What’s that?”
“A hole in the fabric of reality linking two points in shadow. A sorcerer who knows how to make one can use it to move between one point and another without passing through the space in between.”
“You think Tamara used it to escape?”
“I am certain of it.” There was the excitement of the hunt again in her voice.
“That’s powerful magic.”
“You have no idea how powerful, Rik.”
“I take it you do.”
“Under the circumstances you fought Tamara in, it would be beyond me.”
“You are saying that Tamara is a better mage than you are.”
“Not in general — but in this particular area, yes, unless she possessed some artefact that allowed her to do it.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Spells of translocation are very difficult under the best of circumstances. They involve manipulating forces of a very high order. The spells required to open the paths between normally require long and complex ritual preparations, as well as enormous power.”
Rik thought he could see where this was going. “Tamara had no time for such.”
“Wounded as she was she should not have been able to maintain the necessary level of concentration to cast such a spell even if she could. At least if she was a normal sorcerer.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“There’s no reason why you should. There are many different types of magic, Rik, and many different ways of invoking them. The Shadowblood had many gifts, magical talents that were bred into them, that they could use as easily as a man can walk or run. Using shadowgates was one of those talents.”
“You are saying these assassins could move through shadows at will.”
“Not at will, Rik. I am guessing now but I believe that opening such a gate would use up considerable energy even for a Shadowblood. I doubt she could open more than one such gate without resting.”
A thought occurred to Rik. “Could you not trace where she went by studying the shadowgate? Would they not leave traces?”
“It’s one of the properties of shadowgates that they fade quickly without leaving such traces. Perhaps if I had been with you and seen the portal before it faded I might have been able to trace it. Now there will not even be the normal residual traces of tau that most magic leaves after it has been used. You can see how such a quality would be useful to an assassin.”
Indeed Rik could. “This is how she reached Elakar.”
“That would be my guess.”
An idea struck Rik with the force of a blow. “No one would be safe from a wizard with such a power. They could come and go as they pleased and no one would ever be able to stop them.”
“You are very nearly correct, Rik. Fortunately they do have some limits.”
“I think I would like to know what they are — for my own safety.”
“The first is that their range is very short. A normal magical portal — at least on Al’Terra could be set up to span continents. A shadowgate can only stretch a few hundred yards.”
“So Tamara must still have been fairly close to us, even after she used the gate?”
“Indeed.”
“What other flaws does this magic have?”
“You can’t just open them anywhere. You need to have a very clear idea in your mind of the exit point, otherwise the gate simply will not open.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. No one does. The theory is that it is a principle of sympathetic magic — you must see the place in your mind in order to be able to go there.”
A thought struck Rik as she was speaking. “We were close to Tamara’s mansion, easily within a few hundred yards. She would have been able to open a gate into the place.”
“Yes. If there were shadows in her room or some other location she was familiar with.”
“Why would there need to be shadows?”
“It’s one of the conditions of the spell. It can only connect two shadows.”
“How could she have gotten into Lord Elakar’s chambers?”
“Perhaps she had been there before.”
“You mean she had been his lover.”
“Lord Elakar was a man of great appetite and vanity. It would have flattered that vanity to number the daughter of Lord Malkior among his conquests.”
“Were they ever seen together?”
“That can be checked. There are other ways she could have done it. If she was familiar with the Palace — which she was. She had visited it often when it was owned by friends of Khaldarus.”
“Are we safe from infiltration here?”
“There’s a reason why I change my room often, Rik, and why I order the furniture moved, and the hangings changed every night.”
You did not get to reach Asea’s age by not being careful about such things. More ideas flooded into his mind in a torrent.
“Lord Malkior would have been familiar with the Palace in which the old Queen was assassinated.”
“Completely familiar.”
“I can see how all your suspicions fit together, Milady. All except one.”
“Which is?”
“How could this spell get past wards?”
“Wards do not extend into all planes, Rik. That would take too much energy.”
“Planes?”
“Think of them as alternate levels of reality, running side by side with our world, like pages lying beside each other in a book.”
“So the Shadowgate allows you to move between two points in our world by leaving it, and passing through the world of Shadows.”
“Yes.”
“Presumably that is why the entrance and exit must be in shadow.”
“It is as good an explanation as any. I am glad you grasped it so quickly.”
“That is where my hand went when I put it into the gate.”
“Yes.”
“It was cold there.”
“Quite possibly airless too. The alternate planes are not always friendly to life, at least not as we know it.”
“So she could not have survived in there for long.”
“No one could. That is why a shadowgate is a relatively short ranged phenomenon.”