There was not a lot he could do. Tamara was moving again, starting to pick herself up. He reeled over to her and aimed a kick. She blocked the blow with her left hand and despite the heavy dress dragging in the wet managed to rotate her body below him and kick his leg. He dropped to the ground, even as she rose, turning her head. Rik looked in the direction she did and saw Weasel raise his long-barrelled rifle once more. Tamara sprang into the mouth of the alley. Blood dripped from the wound in her shoulder.
Weasel came running up and looked at the two of them. “This is not going too well,” he said.
“Do tell,” said the Barbarian. “Would never have noticed if you had not told me.” His voice was slurred and weakening. Weasel bent and touched the ground. His fingers came up red. He touched them to his lips and then looked at the trail of blood.
“Look after the big man,” he said to Rik. “I’ll get the girl. She can’t have gone far and she’s bleeding like a stuck pig.”
Somehow Rik got across and managed to tie a bandage over the wound in the Barbarian’s neck. A moment later, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and the oddest sensation flowed through his mind. He thought he felt something coming from the back of the alley. He heard a shrieking, tearing noise that he was sure was not audible to anybody else. Sorcery, he thought.
Weasel was gone for so long that Rik was starting to worry. Eventually he came back out of the alley.
“Did you get her?” he asked. Weasel shook his head.
“Damnedest thing,” he said. “The alley is a dead end. Nothing there but a wall and trash pile.. It’s like she’s vanished into the thin air. All I could see was a patch of shadows, that crawled and gave me the creeps.”
If it was enough to frighten Weasel it must be really something. Rik tried to fight the dizziness and reeled to his feet. “Best show me it,” he said.
“Are you mad? We’d best get out of here before the law comes. This has been hanging work tonight, if we’re caught for it.”
“No, I want to see.” Rik staggered down to the end of the alley and saw at once what Weasel meant. There was something at the end of the alley, a patch of shadow that whispered and shimmered. At first he thought it was a side-effect of the poison but something about it set his teeth on edge. He recognised this thing at the very core of his being, even if he was not sure what it was.
He reached out and touched it. His fingers tingled and vanished. His fingertips felt very cold. He withdrew them to make sure they were all right.
The thing continued to fade until there was no longer even a whisper of its presence. What was going on here, he wondered? Then a wave of dizziness swept over him, and he tumbled forward into darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
Rik looked up at Asea. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Had he exhausted himself performing mystical spells again? Then memory of the fight with Tamara came back to him. He looked around and saw that he was in his own chambers in the mansion.
“What happened?” he asked. “How did I get here?”
Asea’s face has a tight quality to it. It took him a moment to realise that she was barely containing her rage. He had never seen her this way before. He forced himself to be calm.
“Weasel brought you and the big man back. On the cart. He told me his version of what happened. Why don’t you tell me yours? Tamara escaped?”
There was no denying it or defending it. “She was a lot tougher than we expected. Faster too. She poisoned me and the Barbarian. Why am I not dead, by the way?”
“The poison she used was not intended to kill you, merely slow you and weaken you until you fell unconscious. Perhaps that is why she seemed so fast and strong.”
Rik shook his head. “She was moving swiftly before she struck me. That was not the effect of any poison, I am sure.”
“Go on.” There was more than rage there, he realised. There was excitement too. Asea was like a hound that had caught a scent and was ready for the chase.
“She almost managed to dodge a shot fired by Weasel, and I am sure she did not manage to poison him.”
“So he told me.” Rik felt a reaction set in. He could have died this last evening. Most probably would have if Tamara really wanted him dead.
“How could she have been so quick?” Rik asked. “And so strong? She is not built like the Barbarian.”
“There were mystical disciplines on Al’Terra that focused on combat. They allowed their practitioners to perform astonishing feats of martial skill. Malkior would know them. It appears he has taught his daughter.”
“A form of magic, you mean?”
“If you will.”
“Spells to make you stronger, faster, deadlier?”
“Techniques of the mind and spirit would be a better description but spells will do just as well.”
“So all we have really proven is that Tamara knows magic. We knew that already.”
“Did we?”
Rik realised he had made a mistake. He knew that already. He had never told Asea about it. “She is a Terrarch, isn’t she? Learning sorcery would have come naturally to her.”
“Quite so.” Rik sensed that Asea was uneasy with him. Perhaps she sensed his lies.
“In any case we know she can now.”
“She recognised you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The big man heard her say your name. So did Weasel.”
“How is the Barbarian?”
“He will live. The needle missed his jugular, and I have neutralised the poison in his bloodstream, just as I have done for you.”
“A useful trick. I wish you had taught me it.”
“I will make it the highest priority in your studies, Rik. I have a feeling that you are going to be needing it, and the ability to heal yourself.”
He was relieved to find that she still trusted him at least that much. Or perhaps she was trying to lull him into a false sense of security. He would not have put it past her.
“Tell me more about the whispering shadow you saw.”
He told her all he could remember about it, including his suspicion that it was a hallucination brought on by the poison.
“I don’t think so. Weasel saw it too.”
“Do you have any idea what it was? It put the wind up the two of us for certain.”
“It was a shadowgate.”
“What’s that?”
“A hole in the fabric of reality linking two points in shadow. A sorcerer who knows how to make one can use it to move between one point and another without passing through the space in between.”
“You think Tamara used it to escape?”
“I am certain of it.” There was the excitement of the hunt again in her voice.
“That’s powerful magic.”
“You have no idea how powerful, Rik.”
“I take it you do.”
“Under the circumstances you fought Tamara in, it would be beyond me.”
“You are saying that Tamara is a better mage than you are.”
“Not in general — but in this particular area, yes, unless she possessed some artefact that allowed her to do it.”
“Why do you think that?”
