I looked at Arachne curiously. “Like what?”
“If you’re worried that your good deeds are outweighed by your bad ones, why not do more of them? You’ve spent a long time trying not to be like Richard. Perhaps it’s time you started considering what sort of person you do want to be.” Arachne rose. “Think it over.”
That evening found me back home, sketching the first notes and plans for what would eventually be a new set of blueprints for my flat. I wasn’t going to simply rebuild it—the Nightstalkers’ little demolition exercise had done a good job of exposing the weaknesses in my home defences and I had several upgrades in mind. A flicker in the futures caught my attention, and a moment later I heard the sound of the shop door being unlocked below. I looked up, then went downstairs.
Luna and Variam were just switching on the lights in the shop. “Vari?” I said in surprise. He was dressed in a hand-me-down set of formal robes that almost fit him but not quite. In a weird sort of way he looked like the mage equivalent of someone who’d just come home from the office. “I thought you were in Scotland?”
“I was,” Variam said cheerfully. “Knocked off early. I can gate now, remember?”
“Haven’t you moved out?”
“Well, yeah, but I can still visit, right?”
“We figured you could use some company,” Luna said. “Unless you want to be left alone?”
I looked between the two of them and smiled. “Come on up.”
They came up, and the three of us spent the evening together. We all had stories to telclass="underline" Variam of his first few days as a Light apprentice, and Luna of what had happened while I was gone. We cooked dinner together, and after Luna and Variam had caused the expected culinary disaster we spent another half hour deciding where to order takeaway. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t so bad.
I dreamed that night.
I saw Rachel—or perhaps I was Rachel. She was walking across a grassy ridge in the starlight, and in some strange way I both watched her from outside and at the same time felt and moved as she did. The sky was clear with no moon and the only light was from the stars, yet I recognised the silhouette of Richard’s mansion, a black shadow in the darkness. The sight filled me with a strange mix of emotions, familiar and alien: fear, anticipation, a distant sadness. As Rachel neared the front door she spoke a word and the door swung open, for she’d crafted these wards and they obeyed her commands.
Through the corridor, down the stairs, and into the darkness, a sphere of sea-green light forming to light the way. The glow backlit Rachel’s face strangely; she wore no mask this time, and in the greenish light her features were beautiful but cold, with little trace of feeling or warmth. Through the chapel, and now Rachel’s path curved to skirt a patch of floor. To me it looked the same as any other but to Rachel’s eyes it was the place in which Shireen had died, and a trace of her blood still stained the stone. Just for a moment I felt another presence in the ancient shrine, and I thought I heard an echo of footsteps behind us.
Through the corridors and the laboratory, past the cells and through the labyrinth. The signs of the battle still scarred the benches but the bodies were gone. Maybe the dust and ashes in the corners might have been a part of them once but no one would be able to tell, not anymore. Still Rachel walked on, her feet picking out the paths as though she’d walked them a hundred times before, until at last she came to the room at the very end of the labyrinth, the final one to have been completed all those years ago.
The room was smooth and circular, pillars supporting the ceiling, all illuminated in the green light of Rachel’s spell. At the centre of the room was a wide dais. Three black hemispheres protruded from the stone, forming a triangle. Rachel stopped a little way from the dais and waited.
Time passed. Rachel waited, paced. Twice she looked towards the exit, as though on the verge of leaving, but each time she stayed. Suddenly she snapped her head around and an instant later I felt what she did: a slow surge of magical power, growing stronger.
With a faint hiss black energy erupted from the dais, dark lightning crackling to join the three hemispheres in a triangle. At the centre of the triangle the air darkened, a black oval appearing in midair. Rachel stood stiff, as though paralysed. The black oval grew, stretched. For a moment it was almost transparent and there was the hint of something visible on the other side, then a man was stepping through, alighting on the dais. His feet touched the stone and the black lightning snapped off, the portal vanishing into nothingness. The man was ordinary-looking in every way; but for his entrance no one would have looked at him twice.
Rachel moved first, bowing her head. A complex mixture of emotions flickered across her face and were gone. “Master.”
“Deleo,” Richard said with a smile. “It’s good to be back.”
And I woke with a gasp, heart pounding in my chest.