The Pilgrims

assume your escape was early in the process. Do these horns give them their power? Is this how you were given yours?’

‘Yes. They alter mind as much as body. This process usually kills; most don’t survive it. I probably wouldn’t have, if not for the guard. I am also probably the first to live. The mind control is the hard part, from what I’ve learned … some early experiments lived with my powers or greater, but no thoughts in their mind to wield them. They sat drooling. Perfectly useless bodies. The castle will be lucky if four or five of these live to become mages. Maybe none. But they learn more each time they try.’ She gazed around at the bodies along the curved wall and sighed. ‘The point is to stretch the human ability to endure what greater magic does. The horns also teach spells, making them as instinctive as moves of your swordplay, no longer a need to compose as you cast the traditional way. I emerged early, so I know less than these ones will, if they make it out alive.’

‘How many more caverns such as this?’

‘There’s no telling,’ she said quietly. ‘I know of four.’

‘How great will these be, as mages?’

‘Imagine a war mage who can cast for an entire day, or longer, unhindered by the burn.’

‘Burn?’

‘Magic’s poisonous effects. It has other names, as you’d know. These casters will have all of a war mage’s destructive abilities, with more creativity and more sanity.’

‘Like you.’

‘Greater. Spells of disguise, illusions, mind control, necromancy, happenstance, elements. What’s more, they’ll get great use out of only small amounts of power; if the airs are weak, it won’t matter as much. Their bodies store it.’ Her hand touched the cut Anfen’s sword had made in her dress. She lifted the material and Anfen saw something hard and crusted below, which her fingernail tapped on like wood. It took a moment for him to recognise that part of her skin was made of the same material composing the shackles burrowing themselves slowly into these prisoners’ bodies.

‘It’s why I have no horns,’ she said. ‘Not on my head, anyway. You can hide from war mages in cities, where magic is thin or gone altogether. What if they take a store of magic in with them? There’ll be no hiding from New Mages. All of them utterly blind and fanatic with loyalty to the castle.’ Seeing his look, ‘Oh yes, there is great emphasis on that. It is also part of the process I escaped.’

Anfen imagined it and it filled him with dread. And yet … ‘It would make these magicians greater than the Arch Mage, if I judge right. Does it not seem strange to you that he would create underlings greater than him?’

‘I do not claim to know how his mind works.’

‘How long until they complete their research?’

‘I know only that it’s not complete yet.’

When it was, there would be little need for soldiers or armies. A hundred such mages and there would be no real answer. But it was the cruelty of it that sickened him, the heat, the smell of burning flesh. Not that it surprised him. He wondered how many had died, painfully and slowly, as the castle, completely indifferent, experimented and learned. ‘You’re brave, to return here.’

She smiled, though her eyes showed little of it. ‘We’re both brave. We should not tarry here long. They come through every so often to clean the bodies and push pellets of food into their mouths.’

‘Thank you for showing me this.’ He turned to her, wanting to put a hand on her shoulder in comfort, but for some reason feeling he should not, not down here. ‘Are you sure you don’t wish to journey with us?’

‘No. Thank you for the offer and for your trust. But I will remain at a distance. And I will help you as I can. Let us depart.’

‘Not just yet, please.’ Anfen gazed around at the bodies, counting them: forty. ‘How long have these ones been here? How soon until they are freed? How long were you held?’

She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I remember little. Only that I was one of those who came from the cities to the castle seeking work, as my parents wished. I was accepted, my aptitude tested. They took those who had magic talent. I had much — I knew it before they tested me. They sent coin and a letter full of lies to my parents, brought me with a few others underground, and that’s where memories fade.’ Her eyes closed. ‘Or, at least, change. Please, let us go.’

‘And these ones, you say, will be of different inclination from you, if they survive to become New Mages? They are certain to be a threat to the Free Cities?’

She frowned, watching him carefully. ‘Yes. When this process is complete, they will be unable to do anything other than serve the Arch Mage.’

‘Even if we free them now?’

‘There is no way we can. Your sword will not break their bonds.’

‘Are you absolutely certain all that is so?’

‘Yes.’

Anfen nodded. He drew his sword.

She looked at him, eyes wide. ‘What are you doing?’

He looked back, surprised at her. ‘You have told me yourself, this is a threat awaiting us.’

‘Please. Some of these were with me at the castle gates. Some were my friends. They were just like me. Their parents think they are spinning wool or learning trades.’

‘I am sorry, Stranger. Such is war. Look away if it distresses you.’

‘Don’t …’

He didn’t look back at her, did not wish this moment or this act to be extended. His arm moved, that was all, and he distanced himself from what it did, made it a mechanical thing, a killing machine. He made himself distant from Stranger’s blazing, hateful eyes, glaring at him with — he imagined — heat as strong as that coming from the claws embedded in the walls. How shocked he’d have been by the change in her just then, had Anfen really been present in the room as his arm lashed out and killed, rather than watching it all from a safer distance, and trying to bury the memory even as it occurred, to make it meaningless sounds and blurs of colour.

The poor souls trapped in the Arch Mage’s embrace did not make a sound. Anfen’s sword thumped against the stone wall behind them with impersonal regularity. Finally the last of them was dead. Sweat poured from him and he felt dizzy, wanting a drink of water more than anything else. He felt Stranger’s rage, felt it seething. She could kill me, we both know it, he thought, as Anfen returned to himself.

‘We may be allies,’ she said, ‘but from this moment, we will never be friends.’

Anfen cleaned his blade as best he could. He looked at her sadly. ‘As It wills.’

47

As they headed back through the tunnels in the ghostly glow of lightstones her mood cooled, and she finally broke her silence. ‘I had hoped to win them over, when they were freed.’

‘Yet you told me that was impossible.’

‘I thought I alone could do it. I, who knew where they had been and what they’d been before. Of course I couldn’t promise you success.’

Anfen would have liked to put that memory in the place he kept all the others, where other blood had been spilled in such fashion. Yet part of him was glad for the chance to explain it this time, to reconcile his arm mechanically slaying with a mind that knew its purpose, and (this time) stood by it afterwards. ‘How well do you know history, Stranger? How well do you really know them? The ones who put those people in that cavern. And put you there.’

She didn’t answer. The caverns echoed with the phantom drip drip of unseen water, though Anfen now imagined it as blood. He spoke quietly. ‘Did my arm seem practised to you, just now? Professional? Do you know that I have had to do that sort of thing before? Only not to people little more than suffering bodies. And not to those who will soon be a powerful weapon in evil hands. I have overseen the slaughter of entire villages of people deemed trouble, or inconvenient, or simply in the way of some construction and refusing to move from their land. Sometimes it seemed they were killed for no reason at all. I