“I know why me. Alex told me that part. I just want to know why you did all this shit. How is it worth it? How could it ever be worth it?”
“You would not be able to understand.”
“Understand what?” Variam demanded. “You could have gone anywhere, done anything. Instead you spend two hundred years killing people who’d never even heard of you?”
“Oh, your brother had heard of me,” Jagadev said. “At least by the time—”
Variam’s hand snapped up again, and this time I didn’t stop him.
Fire bloomed like a miniature sun. The noise was somewhere between a thump and a roar, and a wash of heat hit my face. I’d thrown up my hands to protect my eyes, and even with my armour, I could feel the skin scorching. A nauseating smell of burnt hair and flesh filled the room.
I lowered my hand to see that Jagadev was gone. A semicircular depression had been burnt in the wall, the stone charred black. The remains of the rakshasa’s body mixed with cooling lava in a charred mass on the floor below.
“Well,” I said. “You did warn him.”
Variam didn’t reply. We stood looking at the remains in silence.
Movement stirred in the futures. I looked ahead and one glance told me what I needed to know. “Come on. We’ve taken too long.”
“Yeah.” Variam tore his eyes away from Jagadev’s corpse and started to turn towards the door.
“Not that way.”
Variam halted. “More of Jagadev’s?”
“Not Jagadev’s,” I said. “The same guys I ran into outside.” There were more of the soldiers, and this time there were adepts and mages with them. “Chinese Council.”
“Shit,” Variam said. “I don’t want to have to talk my way past those guys.”
“If I’m standing next to you, I don’t think they’ll give you the chance.” The Councils of the various magical nations aren’t always on the best of terms, but they do share information. I headed towards the tapestry. “Let’s take the back door.”
“How are these guys even here?” Variam asked as I pulled aside the silk hangings to reveal a smooth wall.
“Either we tripped some sensor, or Jagadev called them in.” I ran my hand across the wall, my fingers finding a depression; I pushed and with a click a crack appeared in the stone. I shoved it open, the smooth marble rotating to reveal a dark opening.
“He would, wouldn’t he?” Variam was still carrying that bundle of fabric over his left arm, but with his right he sent orange-red flames flying over my shoulder, their light illuminating a rocky tunnel.
“Close it behind us,” I said, stepping through. Variam followed and with a click the light from the room behind was cut off, along with the stench of burning meat. “Yeah, probably. Just a final ‘screw you’ to whoever killed him. Oh, and he’s rigged this place to self-destruct.”
“Wait, what?”
“We’ve got time,” I said. I’d noticed the spell during our conversation. Someone, probably Anne, had interfered with the triggering mechanism, but it had been delayed, not stopped. “Twenty minutes at least.”
“What is it, a bomb?”
“Some sort of dimensional gate that’ll turn this mountain inside out and drop the contents into God knows where.”
“Okay, let’s not stick around to find out.” Variam stepped around a patch of fallen rubble in the tunnel. “How far do these gate wards go?”
“Not to the edge of the mountain,” I said. The wards over Jagadev’s palace were strong, but no ward has unlimited range. “We keep going another few minutes, they’ll have weakened to the point where we can . . . oh, for the love of God.”
“Now what?”
“Someone’s coming down the corridor towards us. Come on.”
I sped up my pace, searching through the futures ahead. Variam hurried to follow me, his shorter legs taking three steps to my two. Orange-red light from his flames flickered on the wall, casting dancing shadows. “More Council?”
“I wish,” I said. “Rachel.”
“Seriously? That crazy bitch again?” I heard a clatter as Variam stumbled over a stone before catching himself. “Can we get into deep falloff for the wards before she gets to us?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. “Can we get that far and finish a gate before she—?”
“No.”
“Can we find—?”
“No.”
“We could—”
“Terrain favours her too much.”
“It’s really annoying when you do that.”
“We don’t have time for a fight,” I said. “There’s a dip in the ward coverage in about a hundred feet. If you start a gate there, I’ll hold her off long enough for you to finish.”
“You sure—?”
“Yes.”
A hundred feet along, the corridor bent right. The wards were still clearly detectable to my magesight, but I could sense the fluctuations that betrayed the underlying weakness around this patch of tunnel. Variam started casting, shooting me a look that said, You’d better be right about this.
Ahead, the futures shifted. Rachel had broken into a run. “She’ll be here in thirty seconds,” I said. “Keep the gate going and don’t get distracted by disintegrate spells or cave-ins.”
“Yes, Mum. Shouldn’t you be worrying about her?”
I walked forward, picked my spot, and waited.
Sea-green light bloomed, illuminating a human shape. The footsteps changed, slowing from a rapid beat to a steady, relentless clack-clack-clack. The light brightened, intensifying at Rachel’s hands and revealing her face.
Rachel had not done well since we last met. The domino mask hid her upper face, but not the lines of tension along her face and jaw. Her clothes were dirty and torn, and the hatred in her eyes as her gaze met mine was like a physical blow. Before, I thought that Rachel had hated me about as much as a person possibly could. I’d been wrong.
Energy swirled around Rachel’s hands as she stalked forwards. She wasn’t stopping or slowing, and I felt a twinge of déjà vu. Trapped in a tunnel with a more powerful mage ahead . . .
No. I shook the memory away. Not more powerful anymore. I drew my gun, the barrel coming up to line on Rachel’s head.
Rachel reacted instantly. A sea-green ray flashed out.