Fated

Lyle stood negligently in the shadow of two of them. I knew he was showing off, and I couldn’t sense any danger, but I’ve lived on my wits too long to ever be comfortable about exposing myself. Even though I knew the guards weren’t going to touch me, the thought of passing beneath those shining blades made my skin crawl.

I took a breath and walked forward. One of the guards swivelled its head to watch. Up close it smelt of sweet oil and polished metal. I couldn’t see any joints in its body; it looked like an insect crafted in silver. Its future held no choices, a solid line instead of branching forks. Gythka are constructs with no will of their own, programmed to obey Council members absolutely. According to rumour, they’re almost indestructible. I’ve never seen the rumour tested. Lyle pushed open the door and we stepped inside.

The room within was dimly lit, with a high ceiling and a dozen widely spaced chairs. The entire left wall was a giant window, a transparent panel looking down onto the great hall. Below was the arena and the buffet table, and to one side I could see the dance floor and the band. It was an impressive view, perfectly placed to see and be seen by the people below … except that when I’d looked up from floor level, this spot had looked like a blank wall. The window was one-way glass. We could see the people below, but they couldn’t see us.

Five people were sitting in the room, but it was the man at the centre who caught my attention. He was in his fifties, with thinning white hair and eyes that faded into the shadows. I’d seen his picture before, but never in person, and it took me a moment to put a name to the face. This was Vaal Levistus, one of the members of the Council. He glanced up as we entered. ‘Mr Verus. I’m glad you could come.’ He gestured to the others. ‘Leave us.’

They obeyed in silence, giving me sidelong looks as they filed out. Lyle hesitated in the doorway. ‘Councillor?’

‘Thank you, Lyle.’

Lyle shot a glance at me and closed the door. There was a smooth click and Levistus and I were alone. Although I could see down through the window into the main hall, with the door closed the room was suddenly silent. Soundproofed. People outside could neither see nor hear.

I’d been scanning ahead ever since I landed outside, looking into the future of what was going to happen to Luna and to me, and I’d found no sign of danger – at least, no immediate danger. But beyond that door, the future had broken up, forking into too many different paths, and now I knew why.

Divination can only predict what can be predicted. Some things are truly random, or so close that it makes no difference. You can’t predict the roll of a dice, because there are so many thousands of things that can nudge it one way or another that by the time you could pick out a future it would have stopped rolling. Any really complex system has too much chaos to be easily predictable; it follows patterns, but not ones that can be reliably foreseen. But there’s another thing that can’t be predetermined – thought. Free will is one of the points at which divination magic breaks down. If a person hasn’t made a choice, then no magic can see beyond it. You can see probabilities, but they’re no more than guesses, wisps that fade as fast as they appear.

Looking into the future of what Levistus was going to do, I came up with so many answers I couldn’t begin to pick one, dozens of futures branching in every direction, ever-shifting. Some looked peaceful; others didn’t. This was a dangerous man.

When I didn’t move, Levistus gestured to the chair on his right. ‘Sit.’

‘What about her?’

Levistus looked up at me. ‘Who?’

I cleared my throat. ‘You asked for everyone to leave.’ I nodded at an empty space about six feet behind where Levistus was sitting. ‘What about her?’

Levistus watched me for a long moment, his face showing nothing, and for the second time in two minutes my skin crawled briefly. ‘Thirteen,’ he said at last. ‘Visible.’

The air in the spot I’d looked at shimmered and took form. One moment it was empty, the next a wispy, transparent figure of a woman was standing there, its shape visible as thin lines in the gloom. It was an air elemental – but it wasn’t. Normal elementals have a primal feel to them, something timeless and alien. Except for her body of air, this one looked like a real woman. She was tall, with long legs and hair falling around her shoulders, and she was naked, her body clearly visible. She looked sensual, eerily beautiful, and I felt my body responding until I saw her eyes. They glowed a faint white, and they were utterly empty. She watched me blankly, like a statue, completely still.

‘Interesting,’ Levistus said. ‘How did you detect her?’

I hadn’t detected her. ‘Trade secrets.’

‘Hm.’ Levistus looked away. ‘Take a seat. Thirteen, to the corner.’

Silently, the air elemental glided to the corner of the room. I noticed that the place she had been standing would have put her right behind the chair Levistus had indicated for me, and felt a slight chill. Whatever she was, that creature scared me. She had been totally invisible, both to my eyes and to my mage’s sight. The only way I’d known she was there had been through the common elements in the futures ahead of us and, from my brief look, they hadn’t been pleasant ones.

I took the chair to the other side of Levistus, the one he hadn’t nodded to. As I did, I searched my memory for everything I knew about the man sitting next to me. Though not yet a senior member, Levistus was talked about as one of the more powerful members of the Council, and that put him in the political top ten of the entire country. If Lyle was one of his agents, he’d progressed even faster than I’d thought. Like most Council masters, Levistus was believed to use mind magic, but that could just as easily be rumour. Beyond that, his nature and goals were a mystery … but nothing I’d heard suggested he was in the habit of employing out-of-favour diviners.

The view below us was directly onto the sphere arena. Spheres is an old, old game among mages, and two players had just started a bout, their faces locked in concentration as their globes of light formed, moving inwards into the sphere, one set white, one set black. A crowd had gathered to watch, standing on the raised steps around the arena, talking to each other as they followed the movements. Both the lights in the sphere and the crowd moved in eerie silence, inaudible through the layer of glass.

‘I believe you may be able to help me with a problem,’ Levistus said. His voice was educated, detached, with no trace of emotion. His eyes didn’t rest on me as he spoke but looked down at the hall below, passing over the crowd. ‘I expect Lyle has told you the details.’

‘Some of them,’ I said. I could see the air elemental, Thirteen, out of the corner of my eye; she was still watching me.