Gregar resisted the urge to cuff the youth across his head. ‘Why didn’t you say so, dammit! I thought your master was just the cook or something!’ Realizing he was shouting, he lowered his voice, hissing, ‘I don’t want any attention, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
The lad – in truth, perhaps no older than himself for all he knew – raised his eerily long-fingered hands in reassurance. ‘I know, I know. And I can get us out. Guaranteed. Then we’ll join the Crimson Guard.’
Gregar rubbed the back of his neck while the lad limped about the kitchen, digging out a cured ham, a wedge of cheese, a skin of wine, and throwing all into a burlap sack. ‘Ah, about that joining up thing … I was drunk. It was just a damned boast … I really don’t think that’s gonna happen …’
The lad raised a hand once again. ‘Don’t worry. It will. They’ll take both of us. I’m sure.’
Gregar laughed, shaking his head. ‘Well, kid. As I said: you talk a good line – I’ll give you that. What’s your name, anyway?’
He raised his hands to study them once more. ‘Dog, he called me. My master. I did … things for him. Things I do not want to think of. But now that I am free – I can forget him. So, I will use my old name, Haraj. And you?’
‘Gregar Bluenth.’
The lad pulled a face. ‘Gregar Bluenth? Really. Have to do something about that …’ He limped to a heavily bound door that Gregar knew must lead closer to the rear chambers, and possible freedom.
‘That’s locked,’ he warned. ‘No point trying that.’
The lad pressed his hands to the door. He brushed and rubbed his long fingers over the iron lock. Then, with one extended finger, he gave the door a push and it creaked open. He flashed an evil boyish grin to Gregar. ‘No it’s not.’ He crooked a finger, inviting him onward. ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 2
The day after he, Surly, and Kellanved had their strategy talk, Dancer was in the upper chambers of Mock’s Hold when Kellanved entered and carefully shut the door behind him. The mage, now permanently appearing as a wrinkled, black-skinned Dal Hon elder, beckoned Dancer close and whispered, hushed, ‘Are we alone?’
Dancer shrugged, a touch mystified. ‘Well, yes. I imagine so.’
‘Good. Then let’s go.’
‘Go? Go where?’
The grey-haired ancient raised his eyes to the ceiling in frustration. ‘Our research. The stone! We follow the stone!’
For the last month Dancer had heard nothing but this and so he pulled a hand down his face, exhausted by it. Their first trip chasing up a lead regarding ancient weapons from the Fenn mountains had been an utter disaster and they’d barely escaped with their lives – yet again. He’d hoped that would’ve been enough to quell the lad’s ambitions, but apparently no setback, no matter how dire, could in any manner rein in this one’s plans. ‘Right. The spear-point. You mean this very moment?’
‘Of course!’ The mage drew himself up straight and pronounced, ‘If not now, then what? If not where, then who?’
Dancer stared at him, his brows crimping. ‘What?’
The mage threw a finger in the air for a pause. ‘Wait!’ He stroked his chin, thinking furiously. ‘If not where … then why … no, that’s not it. If not what, then who?’ He shook his head. ‘No. Wait …’
Dancer waved that aside. ‘Not now. We have to prepare. Water, food, the proper gear.’
‘Fine!’ Kellanved pointed to a candle inscribed with lines. ‘One segment – an hour.’
Dancer nodded his agreement. ‘Okay. One hour.’ He headed to the door. ‘We’ll meet here.’
Downstairs, in the main hall of the Hold, he found Surly. She was leaning up against a long feasting-table, her arms crossed, the usual sceptical and disapproving scowl on her hard face. ‘You’re off disappearing now, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, we’re leaving.’
She raised a hand to inscribe a languid circle as if encompassing the Hold. ‘And what makes you think all this will be here waiting for you when you return?’
He raised his shoulders, dismissive. ‘I don’t assume any such thing – if that’s what you mean.’
‘Really? Then why all this? Why do any of it?’
‘This? The Hold? The isle?’ He waved a hand. ‘I care nothing for this. It’s a by-product only. I don’t need it.’
Now Surly raised a brow, extremely doubtful. ‘Really. A by-product … of what?’
‘Of me challenging myself.’ He inclined his head. ‘Now, if you will excuse me – time is short.’ He headed off.
‘What if you do not return?’ Surly called after him. ‘Then what?’
Turning, he bowed, while retreating. ‘Then do with it what you will.’
An hour later he pushed open the door to Kellanved’s chambers then kicked it shut behind him. He now wore his customary armoured vest beneath his shirt and pocketed jacket. Knives of all lengths and weights were thrust into sheaths sewn into vest, shirt and jacket. Further weapons were secreted at his neck, in his boots, and round his waist. A coiled rope was at one shoulder, and a pack containing a drinking skin and dried food. A pouch inside his jacket held a selection of miscellaneous coins, a tinderbox, lengths of drawn wire, a few fine tools, and two beeswax candles.
Kellanved he found once more behind his desk, feet up, snoring.
In three long strides he was across the room to kick the desk and Kellanved fell from his chair, arms flailing. His head appeared from behind the desk, peering about in wonder. ‘What was that?’
‘An earthquake.’
‘Really? Imagine that.’
‘Yes. Ready to go?’
‘Already?’
Dancer righted the candle, indicated the remaining scribed lines.
The mage frowned, then shrugged. ‘Hunh.’ He stood and straightened his vest. ‘Very well.’
‘All set, are you?’ Dancer enquired sweetly. ‘Got everything, have we?’
The ancient-looking Dal Hon fluttered a hand. ‘Well, I imagine you’ve taken care of all the mundane details.’
‘Thank you so very much …’ His acid comment trailed off as he found he was no longer in the mage’s chambers in Mock’s Hold. The two now stood on a vast plain of volcanic black dust and ashes, a sky of roiling dark clouds shot through by blasts of lightning above. ‘That was … very smooth,’ he managed, secretly quite impressed.
‘Why thank you,’ the little mage answered, with all his usual smugness. ‘It’s coming so much more easily now. Almost as if I never really leave, you know?’
Dancer didn’t know, but he nodded. ‘If you say so. This isn’t Shadow, clearly. The Scar?’
Kellanved nodded. He waved his walking stick about and headed off. ‘Yes. More private, don’t you think?’
Personally, Dancer didn’t like it. He was uncomfortable in this wasteland region, or Warren, or whatever it was. He felt as if he were always being watched. And there was also the atmosphere. Melancholy was the best word he could come up with to describe the aura this place seemed to exude. It unnerved him. But at least nothing was actively trying to kill him – nothing he knew of, at any rate.
He turned his attention to the crabbed, hunched, falsely aged mage at his side. ‘As if I never leave,’ the fellow had said. Dancer thought that inadvertently revealing. Once more he tried to make sense of what the Tano Spiritwalker had confided to him that day in the far-off Seven Cities prison. That this mage may inhabit more than one plane or Warren at any one time. That having been engulfed by a storm of Otataral dust, his essence had been annealed, or translated, across more than one location: the mundane physical plane, the Warren of Shadow, and this strange artificial dimension – be it whatever it was.
And if this were indeed so – he glanced aside to the mage as he sauntered along swinging his walking stick – it may be that this fellow had become rather difficult to kill. For it may be that his spirit would persist in those other Realms.