Variam was frowning as well, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t like the sound of this. ‘The next time this person tries to talk you into joining, you think you can find out more?’
Luna nodded. ‘I’ll give it a try.’
We spoke for a while longer, then as the hour drew late, first Variam and then Luna said their goodbyes and gated back to Earth. Tomorrow was a work day, and they both had an early start. At last only Anne and I were left, sitting under the stars.
‘I checked on Karyos,’ Anne said. ‘I was worried she was growing too slowly, but I think it’s because she’s in sync with the tree. She seems in good health.’
‘That’s good,’ I said absently. ‘Are you sure about this aide thing?’
‘I think I can do it,’ Anne said. ‘Unless there’s something you weren’t saying with the others around.’
‘It’s not that.’
Anne looked at me.
I sighed inwardly. It’s hard to hide things from Anne. ‘Okay, I guess it is that. I’m worried about the jinn. And about you.’
‘This again?’ Anne said. ‘You guys tested me for weeks. Honestly, for a while back there I was feeling like a lab rat. And every single one of those tests came up negative. I’m not possessed by something.’
‘None of the tests were able to find anything,’ I said. ‘But not finding anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Something drove off a whole Crusader strike team and ate the ones that didn’t run fast enough, and then on top of that it apparently managed to do a perfect disappearing act as well.’
‘But it’s been eight months! If whatever-it-was did that perfect a disappearing act, don’t you think that sounds as though it really has disappeared? I broke it out of its prison, it went on a rampage, then it escaped.’
‘But I don’t think they can escape,’ I said. ‘Arachne was very clear about that. The jinn trapped in those items were trapped for ever. Their old bodies are gone. The only way they can affect the world is by bonding to a human.’
‘Well, it doesn’t feel like it’s bonded to me,’ Anne said with a shrug. ‘And I don’t really want to just sit around for ever in the Hollow on the off-chance that something might happen if I don’t.’
I sat thinking for a moment. ‘Let me talk to Dr Shirland,’ I said at last.
Anne looked at me questioningly. ‘You don’t need my permission.’
‘I do if I want to ask her about anything that concerns you,’ I said. ‘Otherwise she’ll just tell me it’s confidential. I want you to give her a call and clear me for it.’
‘So you can do what? Vet me again?’
‘I just want to be on the safe side.’
Anne didn’t look happy. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But if she doesn’t give you a hard reason to rule me out then you’ll take me on as your aide. Promise?’
I hesitated, then nodded. ‘Okay.’
I’d built a small cottage on the Hollow’s east side. Okay, ‘built’ is an exaggeration – it was more like the magical equivalent of a prefab – but it was comfortable, and it was nice to be able to leave my stuff out without locking everything up behind layers of security. The temperature of the Hollow was comfortably warm as I undressed for bed.
I used to have trouble sleeping. I had insomnia as a child, and learning to use my magic made it worse. Divination tends to encourage a state of hyper-vigilance – you’re always watching and looking ahead, whether for opportunities or for danger. The more practised you become with it, the easier it gets to keep doing it in the back of your mind, but that same habit also makes it really hard to relax. Back when I lived in Camden, it was common for me to take an hour or two to fall asleep every night.
But I don’t have trouble sleeping now, and the reason for that was lying next to my futon. It looked like a shard of amethyst, glinting deep purple in the light, and it was called a dreamstone.
Dreamstones are rare and obscure items, and most mages have never even heard of them. They allow the user to manipulate Elsewhere, that strange half-real place somewhere between thoughts and dreams. Exactly how they allow you to manipulate it is another question, and one whose answer I was still working out. I thought about taking hold of the dreamstone, then decided against it. Working magic through it without physical contact was slightly harder, but I was trying to push myself. I lay down on the futon and closed my eyes, channelling a thread of magic through the stone, and immediately I felt my mind starting to slip away, leaving my body behind. My last thought was that I’d forgotten to switch off the light.
I was floating in a sea of blacks and greys, currents of darkness flowing around me. There was no up or down, and nothing to see, but I formed a shape in my mind, a sense of someone’s presence, and felt a sense of direction. I didn’t move exactly – there wasn’t anything to move through – but I could feel a shift, my environment rearranging itself. A door took shape ahead of me, and I stepped through.
I came down into brilliant sunlight. I was standing amid white stone columns, berry bushes growing around smooth flagstones. Beyond and below, green trees formed a canopy running down a hillside, stopping at a beach beyond which was a bright blue ocean. Above me, white clouds floated in a clear sky. There was a fenced platform on an overlook just ahead, with a view down to the bay. On it was a table with two chairs, one of which was occupied. ‘Hey, you,’ I said as I walked over.
‘Hello, Alex,’ Arachne said with a smile. In the real world Arachne is a spider the size of a minivan, but here she took the form of a woman, middle-aged with dark eyes, lines creasing her olive skin and black hair braided in an elaborate style. Clear gems hung on her forehead and she wore a simple white gown. The first few times that I’d met Arachne here she’d been in her spider form, but lately, I’d found her wearing this shape instead. I hadn’t asked why, but I had my suspicions – I’ve always had the feeling that Arachne might share more with the myth than just her name. In any case, her appearance was entirely up to her: this was a dreamshard, something less than Elsewhere but more than a dream, and everything here was shaped by Arachne’s mind.
‘I was expecting you earlier,’ Arachne said. ‘Busy day?’
‘You could say that,’ I said, and told her the details.
Arachne listened to the story. Birds flew overhead, their cries carried on the wind. ‘I imagine you didn’t try to use the crown?’ she asked once I was finished.
‘Do you think I should have?’
‘No,’ Arachne said. ‘I doubt it would have served you, and if it had, you would have come to regret it.’
With a sigh, I sat back in the chair. Absent-mindedly I reached out to the table and created a glass of iced water, lifting it to take a sip. It was the perfect temperature. ‘It feels like I’m not making fast enough progress,’ I said. ‘The whole reason I got into this to begin with was in the hope of finding an item that was a good match. But most of them are the kind I want to throw as far as I can and run in the opposite direction.’
‘We always knew that the odds were long ones,’ Arachne said. ‘As you said, any item that the Council could easily use wouldn’t have been locked up.’
There had been more than one reason that I’d been out in Deptford this evening hunting down the Splinter Crown. Months ago, I’d volunteered to head the Vault recovery project, and ever since then, I’d been on raid after raid, tracking down the imbued items that I’d indirectly helped to steal. When the Council had questioned me as to why I was doing it, I’d told them that I wanted to protect the people caught in the crossfire. They probably thought I was just trying to prove something. Actually, both reasons were true, but there was a third one that I didn’t think they’d guessed: I was also doing it in the hope of finding an item for myself.