Three pigeons fluttered out, one black, one white, one grey. They spread their wings and took off. The room was small, and the frenzied birds seemed to fill it. They flew in circles, collided with furniture, pecked at the closed window. The noise they made was deafening.
‘Centre yourself, Kutch!’ the mage called out, oblivious to the racket. ‘Focus, focus!’
Kutch struggled to apply his spotting talent. The constant movement, the shrill cooing, the beating wings, all made his head spin. Loose sheets of parchment swirled in the chaos. An earthenware pot fell from its shelf and burst open, splattering the floor with something gelatinous and bright green.
A vial of sparkly, salmon-coloured powder dropped and shattered next to it. Neither had a particularly pleasant odour.
The mage was unconcerned. ‘You can do it!’ he urged. ‘Have confidence in your master!’
‘You’re not him,’ Kutch announced deliberately, barely making himself heard above the din. ‘He’s dead.’
The mage saw that the boy’s eyes were moist, and sighed. He snapped his fingers. Instantly, silence returned. The pigeons hung motionless in the air, frozen in mid-flight. Two of them, the white and the black, lost their definition. Feathers and flesh dissolved into masses of golden motes. The birds’ shimmering outlines remained for a second, then faded into nonexistence. Another snap of his fingers freed the real pigeon, the grey. It beat its wings and compliantly swooped back into the cabinet. The doors slammed shut behind it.
‘I’m sorry, Kutch,’ the mage began. ‘I…Just a minute.’
He lowered his head. Immediately his features were somehow less certain. They churned, altered, mutated. His flesh took on a pappy, malleable appearance, and flowed like hot candle wax. The image of Kutch’s late master departed. In an instant, a new form emerged.
Another old man occupied the chair, but quite different to the one who’d been sitting there seconds before. He too was familiar. But he was no longer Grentor Domex.
Phoenix shook his head, as though clearing it. ‘Perhaps I made the likeness too poorly,’ he surmised. ‘After all, I haven’t seen your master for some years and I had to extrapolate his-’
‘No, it wasn’t that,’ Kutch told him. ‘If anything, you were too good.’
‘I thought that appearing in the guise of your master would put you at your ease.’
‘I thought so, too. But it just brought back memories. Not good ones. Memories of his death and…’
‘I understand. Forgive me.’
‘But…it wasn’t just seeing my master again that flustered me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Why are you giving me more spotting exercises when what I need is help with these visions I’ve been having?’
‘I look at it as being like treating a lame horse.’
‘I’m not a horse. Or lame.’
‘No. But the horse you’re riding might be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You suspect that your visions are connected in some way with training as a spotter.’
‘It’s difficult to think what else might be doing it.’
‘I agree That’s rational. So we have to walk the horse to see if that’s where the problem is.’
‘So you think it’s the spotting, too?’
‘I’m just trying to eliminate all possibilities, Kutch.’
‘Have you ever heard of other spotters having this kind of problem?’
‘No. Then again, the number of spotters is very small, and I certainly haven’t known all of them. But there’s no reason to believe that spotting’s dangerous in that sense.’
‘In that sense?’
‘Well, we haven’t got a lot to go on, you understand, but it does seem that spotters are a bit more prone to certain pitfalls.’
‘Such as?’
‘Excessive use of alcohol, drug taking, anti-social behaviour, that sort of thing.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this at the start?’
‘Partly because I didn’t know as much about it then as I do now. I’ve been doing some research, you see. Anyway, the numbers succumbing in that way aren’t significant, and I suspect those that do fall victim to the pressure from the use spotting’s put to, rather than the spotting itself.’
‘You said partly.’
‘The other reason was that I judged you to be resilient enough to resist any such snares.’
‘How could you be so sure? I mean, suppose the training’s started something? Opened a door that can’t be closed, or-’
‘Magic has dangers, you know that. But I’ve never heard of anything resembling what’s happening to you. Then again, let’s not forget that your problem seems unique in more ways than one.’
‘Because I’m sharing visions with Reeth?’
‘Yes. That’s totally outside my experience. It’s not as though we’re talking about some kind of magical illusion that temporarily dazzles its subject, is it?’
‘No. This is different. It’s like watching something real. But something Reeth sees too, and has done for a long time.’
‘Do you see everything he sees?’
‘No. Just…just one particular thing.’
‘Go on,’ Phoenix coaxed. ‘You’ve never really tried explaining it to me.’
‘That’s because I can’t. Not really. What I get is a glimpse of…somewhere else, is the best way I can describe it. Another kind of landscape, but not like anything I’ve ever seen before, or heard about.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Bad. It’s never still. It changes, constantly. As though the land itself is a living thing, forever in flux. And there’s a terrible sense of menace. A feeling of not belonging there.’ He shuddered. ‘Definitely not.’
‘It’s all right, Kutch. What else?’
‘Something lives there. Or a whole mass of somethings, I don’t know. Vile, poisonous things that would just love to hurt me.’
‘Do you ever see any of this in dreams?’
‘No, only when I’m awake. When I was practising spotting,
at first. Then it started when I wasn’t. That’s what scared me.’ His eyes had been downcast. Now he lifted them, and they were wide with dread. ‘You know what frightens me most?’
‘Tell me.’
‘That I’ll get to see more of it.’
‘We’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen.’
‘How?’
Phoenix didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, ‘And this…
place
is familiar to Caldason?’
‘He says it is. But he sees lots more than I do. It’s hard to say what, because he’s not keen to talk about it.’ He added, hesitantly, ‘Though he just told me about something else he’d seen. Something new. I can trust you, can’t I, Phoenix? I mean, if Reeth thought I’d been talking about it-’
‘You have my word.’
Kutch took a breath. ‘He told me that he was responsible for his mother’s death.’
‘He knew this from one of these visions?’
‘Yes. Or thought he did. I was there. He was shouting and screaming in his sleep and it woke me up. We talked about it.’
‘And he said he killed his own mother?’
‘He didn’t really explain it, just said it was his fault. But I can’t see how he could be responsible.’
‘Let’s get this straight. Caldason has visions about his past life. You don’t share those. The other sort of visions, about another place, you do share.’
‘Yes. And Reeth’s visions seem to…evolve. They’re getting more elaborate for some reason.’
‘And they’re tied in somehow with these berserk fits he has.’
‘He has visions without berserking. But rarely a fit without a vision. At least, that’s what he says. It’s all so complicated, I don’t understand it.’
‘It’s one of the things that makes him so dangerous, Kutch.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean, much more dangerous than any ordinary man. Think about it. Imagine you had an infinite amount of time to perfect whatever it was you did. Your magical studies, for instance. I myself have had the privilege of an extended life-span, and it’s been enormously beneficial to my understanding of the Craft. Caldason’s become such a good fighter because he’s had years to develop his skills, years without his body deteriorating or his stamina lessening. I estimate he’s older than me, yet he’s still as strong as a mountain buffalo on ramp. But whether his mental faculties have stayed as hardy-’