Are you well?
I’m surrounded by the dead. There came sense of Maure’s bleak amusement. I won’t say it’s pleasant but it is what I trained for.
Is Argastos dead? Che asked her.
Interesting question. He’s not merely a ghost, anyway. There’s no cast-off image of him here, because the core of him never moved on. It was bound here, trapped in this place over the centuries.
So what does that make him, and what can we do about him?
There was an almost academic quality to Maure’s response. He is a man, still, but one who has been held in a place of great magic — dark Moth magic — for a very long time. Is he dead? Probably. Does he know it? Possibly. Is he powerful? Certainly. He’s been steeped in power for centuries.
More powerful than me?
A long pause before Maure answered that. Perhaps not, but more skilled. He was a strong and experienced magician before this happened to him, and he won’t have grown rusty.
Che nodded to herself, and stepped out of the maze. It only needed that one step, now that she had plumbed its every twist and turn. A moment later there was no maze, and she was in a cavern, its ceiling dimly knotted with roots, the air hazy with half-glimpsed forms. More games?
Then another real mind, for a moment, and the touch of it startled her. A trick, a deception? I must be mistaken, but she had the sense of someone staring right back at her. Hello, Cheerwell Maker. And a most uncharacteristic malice: Enjoying yourself?
Che recoiled, and then the fleeting touch was gone, as if it had never been. But was that really. .? She could not bring herself to believe that it had actually been the Collegiate scholar Helma Bartrer. .
Using her power as a light that burned the darkness like cheap oil, she came upon Maure, finding her surrounded by nebulous phantoms that fled at Che’s approach.
‘Real ghosts?’
The woman started at finding Che before her in the flesh. ‘This place is clogged with ghosts,’ she remarked quietly. ‘Argastos did not come here alone when he was imprisoned here, and he has gained plenty of company since, I think.’
‘We need to find the others.’
Maure nodded, ‘I’ve been trying to-’
But Che held a hand up to cut her off.
There was a new voice.
Cheerwell Maker.
Che froze, knowing immediately who had spoken, and that knowledge sent a sudden stab of fear through her — far more than Argastos’s voice might have done. Immediately she was raising defences, filling her mind with thought of armour and shield, walls, fortifications. In that moment, the encroaching dark of this subterranean domain was nothing compared to her fear of her rival, her jagged memories of the last time.
And at last, she replied, Seda.
She sensed a hint of amusement at all her preparations. Well, sister, how very far you have come from the little girl you once were. You have grown into your power. I’ll not catch you unawares again. Possibly there was a trace of respect there, or Seda might be trying to inveigle her way through Che’s defences by instilling some false confidence.
What do you want, Seda? Che demanded. Using the woman’s given name represented a calculated insult. Under no circumstances would she use the title ‘Empress’ and, of course, to show someone that you held their name was to have a hook in them from the start.
You have spoken with Argastos, of course?
‘Any sign of the others?’ Che murmured sidelong to Maure, and thought, So?
Even as Maure answered in the negative, Che heard Seda sigh. We will fight, you and I, over his power. We are opposites, and I will destroy you if I can, just as you would destroy me. We are two people standing in the same place, and neither of us can tolerate that. This rivalry is the last joke of the Masters of Khanaphes. But, for now, Argastos’s power is firmly bound within Argastos himself, and he has brought us both here for his own purposes.
I came here only to stop you, Che growled at her.
Tell yourself that if you wish, but I know the truth. If you had discovered Argastos first, then it would be I chasing at your heels to keep him from you. We are sisters, you and I. We are not so different. You feel the pull of power just as I do.
Che’s instant response died within her mind, leaving her wondering if Seda was right after all. And surely she would have justified it to herself, how she needed his strength to hold off Seda later on, or to deal with some other threat. . or just because if was safer in her hands than any other’s. .
What do you want? Che repeated.
A truce, for now, until Argastos has played his hand. We are stronger than he is, but not if we fight each other. Let us recommence our feud over his body.
You’re supposing that I want to fight him, Che shot back, but the disdain with which that remark was greeted was withering.
Do you honestly think he means you any good? Seda demanded. Or either of us?
Well, no doubt he’ll tell us soon enough, Che snapped irritably, then calmed herself, feeling her defences grow shakier as she gave in to anger. But, for now, you want a truce?
Until Argastos’s intentions become clear, I will harm neither you nor your companions.
Maure tugged at her sleeve, demanding to know what was going on, and Che explained in as few words as possible.
‘What do you think?’
The necromancer frowned. ‘All I know is that this is just the sort of place that gives my profession a bad name. Moth magic is bad enough most of the time, with all that Path of Shadows business, and Mantis magic is all about death, and this place reeks of both of them in the worst possible way. Whatever is left of the man that was, whatever Argastos has become, it can’t intend any good to us — or to anyone. And I get the impression that the original man himself wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.’
‘He was a hero,’ Che responded automatically, and then stopped, surprised at herself.
‘He saw himself as a hero,’ Maure corrected her carefully. ‘So do many others, who do the most appalling things. By believing yourself a hero, all your actions become heroic, no matter what they are.’
Che closed her eyes again, feeling exactly the opposite — that no course of action open to her now was in any way desirable. Very well, let us have our truce, Seda, whilst privately adding, but I’m not lowering my defences or trusting you an inch.
Good. The response was brisk and pragmatic. As a token of goodwill, I have located your companions.
Che froze, fighting down the whirl of thoughts that statement prompted.
They are unharmed, although I need your help with the halfbreed girl.
And. . Thalric? It had been Che’s terrible fear that Thalric might simply be gone, his Aptitude untraceable in this maze of the Inapt.
Here with me, Seda informed her, with a proprietorial air that made Che bristle.
Let me see him. Let me see you.
Again that arch amusement: Very well. And abruptly Che found the path between them laid out plainly, skirting all of Argastos’s tricks and sleights of hand.
The landscape around them remained uncertain of precisely what it was supposed to be, from blurred impressions of forest to caverns to occasional suggestions of the metal-walled maze, but Che found she could ignore it, simple force of will driving it away from her. Maure walked almost in her shadow, one hand resting on her shoulder.