Ever since I’d started walking towards the marid, I’d been using the fateweaver, subtly altering the futures to bring about a natural thinning of reality. Now I threw out my hand and channelled through the dreamstone, forming a gate to Elsewhere. It shimmered into existence, ten times faster than normal.
Anne was already recovering. She was on her hands and knees, and now she looked up, life magic flaring. But I hadn’t created the gate vertically; I’d formed it horizontally, at her feet.
Anne dropped through. With three running strides, I leapt after her.
Normally when I step into Elsewhere, it’s hardly any different from using a gate to travel to our world. You could almost believe you’ve stepped into the same place you came from. It’s subtle and quiet.
Entering Elsewhere this time was neither of those things.
As soon as Anne dropped through the portal, Elsewhere went mad. The ground and walls shredded away, the fragments warping through an impossible range of colours, violet and cerulean and deepest black. Space shimmered and twisted.
The gate that I could normally hold open for minutes tore itself apart in seconds. Anne was falling away from me and with an effort of will I closed the distance, but there was nothing to land on. All around was a spinning kaleidoscope of colours.
This had to be something to do with Anne. I caught hold of her arm; her eyes were closed but her body was blurred, vibrating, as if pulling in three different directions. I tried to shape the space around us, land us somewhere familiar—
And suddenly my feet were on solid ground. The swirl of colours vanished.
We were back in Anne’s Elsewhere. I was crouched on a plaza of smooth obsidian, stretching out around me to the high walls that blocked out all but the upper branches of the forest behind. The tower loomed over us, reaching towards the roiling sky. Storm-clouds thrashed and boiled in the heavens above, but the winds didn’t touch the air around me.
Anne was lying at my feet, unconscious. Or at least her body was.
Dark Anne and Light Anne were facing each other on the plaza, shouting at each other, their words blending together so that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Their faces were twisted in fury, perfectly alike; the only way I could tell them apart was that one was wearing black and the other white. When I enter Elsewhere, I do it as a single entity, body and mind. Apparently with Anne, things were a little more complicated.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The jinn had been torn away, but it had already recovered and it was coming for us. ‘Both of you shut up!’ I shouted.
The two Annes turned on me with identical looks of anger.
They’re getting worse. I could feel the jinn drawing closer; we didn’t have long. ‘Settle this later,’ I told them. ‘Your marid is coming and it’s not in a good mood. We are going to bind it and that means you two need to work together.’
‘No,’ both Annes said in echo.
‘I wasn’t asking,’ I told them. I pulled the ring from my pocket and held it up. ‘You do this, or I die and the two of you are enslaved for ever.’
‘I can’t work with her—’
‘This is her fault—’
‘I SAID SHUT UP!’ I shouted. ‘All of this insane crap started because the two of you couldn’t deal with each other! Now once that marid is gone you can do whatever the hell you like, but right now you ARE going to work together or I swear to God, before I die, the last thing I do will be to figure out which one of you helped least and put the other one in charge!’
Light Anne and Dark Anne glared but didn’t argue. I knelt down next to Anne’s body, placed the ring on her stomach and clasped her hands over it. The first faint trails of mist were starting to rise from her skin. ‘One on each side,’ I ordered, pointing. ‘We’re only getting one shot at this.’
Surprisingly, both Annes obeyed. Far away I could hear something approaching, the distant crashing sound of falling trees.
Ever since I’d stepped into Elsewhere I’d sensed a change in the sovnya. I turned to look.
It felt as though I were seeing the weapon for the first time. On one level it looked as it had in the outside world, a long, slender polearm with a black haft and a curving blade. But overlaid upon that was another form, something larger and brighter and more real, something that towered over me from more than twice my height. It was sculpted of black iron that burned like fire, lined with claw-like barbs hooked to rip and tear. The blade was almost as tall as I was, a monstrous thing of twisted metal, etched with glowing letters in a language that stung my eyes. Where the blade met the haft was an eye, yellow and slitted like a cat’s, that blinked and roved. Just to look at the weapon was to feel a hunger, a void that could never be filled.
I pulled my eyes away with a shudder. I’ve been wielding THAT?
The sovnya didn’t seem to notice my reaction. Its attention was turned away, towards the approaching jinn. And that was how it had always been, hadn’t it? All it’d cared about was killing, and all I’d cared about was what it could do.
Maybe what I saw looking at the weapon was how Light mages saw me.
I put it out of my mind. The thunder of the marid was growing louder, and I could see a disturbance in the clouds. ‘The marid will come at us with everything it’s got,’ I told the two Annes. ‘It can’t back down, not now.’ I pointed to Light Anne. ‘You have the strength. You never accepted the marid’s contract. That gives you power over it.’ I pointed to Dark Anne. ‘You have the knowledge. You worked with the marid, used its magic.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘The two of you together have the power to bind it. But only if you commit absolutely. Falter, waver, and . . .’ I turned away from the Annes and took a grip on the sovnya. ‘Get ready.’
The obsidian beneath my feet was shuddering. The crashing of falling trees was a constant roar, mixing with the thunder of the storm. I could feel the sovnya trembling with anticipation. There was a vortex spinning in the clouds, glowing with a sickly yellow light. It drew closer until it was just outside the walls.
A towering figure materialised beneath the vortex.
I kicked off the ground, soaring upwards. I couldn’t see the jinn, not really – my eyes slid away from it, and at some level I knew it was for my own protection, that seeing it fully and clearly would tear something open inside my mind. All I had was an impression, a looming giant with legs like mountains and arms that blotted out the sky. Its steps shook the earth, and its gaze burned like fire, but as I flew up to meet it there was no fear in me, and the sovnya in my hands needed no guidance at all. Bloodlust and exultation filled me as the sovnya tore into the marid’s enormous form.
And the marid flinched. Unfathomably powerful as it was, it could still be hurt, and it was facing a weapon created to be its living nemesis. A fiery gash opened up on the jinn’s body as I came around for another blow.
Far below, at the foot of the tower, I heard Dark Anne’s voice, ringing out above the storm. ‘By my will and power, our contract is ended! I cast you out from my body and mind, and I bind you to your prison in Suleiman’s name!’
The marid aimed some kind of attack at me. I couldn’t see it and didn’t know what it was, but I knew what I could do and somehow I managed to dodge. Behind me, the top half of the tower disintegrated into dust. I struck the marid once more and felt it recoil from the sovnya’s dark flame.
Below me, Dark Anne shouted again. ‘Twice I bind you! This is my place of power, and you are not welcome here! Be gone, and be bound to your prison in Suleiman’s name!’