Taken Read online

  We walked in silence while I tried to figure out how to answer. “It’s easier to understand Dark mages than Light mages,” I said at last. “Dark mages are . . . honest, I guess. Bastards, but honest bastards. They say what they believe and they live it. Light mages are more complicated.” I glanced at Luna. “You know how things were in the old times? Before the Light Council got formed?”

  Luna shook her head.

  “Okay. First thing to understand is that there were a lot more magical creatures back then. And I mean a lot. Think monster-of-the-week TV show. Except the heroes didn’t win as much as they do on the TV shows, and when the monsters won a lot of people died. And sometimes the mages were the monsters. There were Dark mages around back then as well, and if half the stories are true they made modern Dark mages look nice.

  “Well, the Light mages grew up in opposition to that. They believed they should use their powers to protect others. Not just mages, but normal people too. They wanted a world where human beings wouldn’t have to live in fear of monsters. And that was what they worked for. Identifying the most dangerous magical creatures and learning their weaknesses. Tracking down the ones that fed off humans and destroying them. Guarding towns and cities. Stopping Dark mages from setting themselves up as tyrants. They kept doing it for hundreds of years.”

  “What happened?” Luna said.

  “They won,” I said simply.

  Luna looked at me curiously. “I’ll give you an example,” I said. “Vampires.”

  “They’re real?”

  I nodded. “Not all the stories are true, but they get the basics right. Vampires were supernatural predators who fed off human life force by drinking their blood. They lived forever or until something killed them, and the older they got the stronger they got. They had powers related to mind magic—they could dominate their prey, make them willingly come back to be fed upon. And they could make more of themselves. One vampire could control a whole city, and they did. For a while they ruled most of the world.

  “But then the mages got organised. It was one of only three times in history where the Light and Dark factions united. Even if they couldn’t agree on anything else, they knew they didn’t want to be vampire food. They smashed the vampire-controlled armies, and then they hunted the vampires down one by one and exterminated them. Not just some of them, all of them. They spent about a hundred years searching with a fine-tooth comb to make sure they got every last one.” I shrugged. “There aren’t any more vampires.”

  Luna was silent.

  “The same thing happened to most of the really nasty monsters,” I said. “Manticores, ogres, nightmares. The smart ones fled into other worlds or hid themselves away. The ones who didn’t got hunted down. Mages had seen what it was like being prey and they didn’t like it. They wanted to make sure humanity was at the top of the food chain. And that was what they did. And they did it so well that most people nowadays don’t believe those creatures ever existed.”

  I fell silent and we walked to the sound of our footsteps on the pavement and the click-click-click of Luna’s bike. “This is one of those stories that doesn’t have a happy ending, isn’t it?” Luna said at last.

  “Well, there aren’t monsters stalking the city every night,” I said. “But the Council—well, it sounds weird, but their problem was they succeeded. They wanted mages to protect normal humans from the magical world. But with the monsters gone, the biggest threat from the magical world was . . . mages.

  “The Council’s old purpose is pretty much gone these days. It’s still the biggest power in magical society but nowadays people join it because they want to be in power, not because they believe in what it does. Every now and then a monster shows up and they get rid of it, but mostly they spend their time jockeying for position.” I sighed. “I don’t think they’re actively evil. Not most of them, anyway. But they’ve made so many compromises you can’t really count on them for anything. I don’t know if there’s anything they do believe in anymore. Stability, maybe. Keeping things the same.”

  Luna thought about it. “So does Talisid believe in the Council’s old mission?”

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  My shop is in Camden, down a little side street and in the middle of a tangle of bridges and railway lines. It makes a small profit, though it’d make a lot more if I actually kept regular hours instead of hanging up the CLOSED sign every time I’ve got something else to do.

  Inside the shop is quiet and cool, wide windows letting in lots of light from the street outside and a faint herbal smell in the air. Standing shelves hold just about every faux-magic item you can think of, from crystal balls to exotic powders, while a small unlabelled roped-off area to one side holds the stuff that really is magical. It’s not designed for high turnover, but all in all I prefer it that way.

  I ate lunch with Luna and then she had to leave; she had another class with a different set of apprentices in Kilburn. I waved as she cycled off, then headed up to my flat to get started on the report Talisid had given me. My flat is just above my shop, with a nice view out over the Camden rooftops. I settled into my chair and started reading.

  I’ve never had any formal training as an investigator but I’ve had a fair bit of practice, enough to figure out the basics of what works and what doesn’t. To be honest, I don’t actually think I’m all that good at it. Other people tend to assume I am and I don’t go out of my way to correct them, but the way I generally find things out is by cheating and using my divination magic. But divination doesn’t help with a written report, and so I wasn’t really expecting to find anything in Talisid’s folder that other people hadn’t spotted already. What I wanted was a feel for the facts.

  I got one, and it wasn’t pretty. Since the beginning of autumn a total of three members of the Light apprentice program had vanished without a trace. The earliest disappearance had been three months ago; the most recent was less than a fortnight old. It looked like Talisid was right; there wasn’t any sign of this stopping. I picked up my phone and tapped one of the names in my address book. It rang five times before there was a click and a voice spoke from the other end. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Sonder,” I said. “Been reading your report.”

  “Alex!” Sonder said. “So Talisid did ask you to help? And you said yes?”

  Sonder is a time mage, and it was him I’d been thinking of when I’d sketched out that plan to Talisid. It had been a surprise to find that Talisid had recruited him already, but thinking it over, maybe I should have expected it. Sonder may be young, but he’s talented. He helped me out during the business with the fateweaver and again in the autumn against Belthas, and both times he made a real difference. But the real reason I like Sonder doesn’t have anything to do with how good he is at seeing into the past—it’s because he can be trusted. “Better we don’t talk about it over the phone,” I said. “Listen, I’m going to be another few hours getting up to speed on this report. Let’s meet up tomorrow at nine and we’ll put our heads together.”

  “Okay. Is Luna coming?”

  “Yes, Luna’s coming.”

  “Okay! See you then.”

  I shook my head and ended the call, smiling to myself. As I did, I noticed I had a message. It had arrived earlier, but I’d been absorbed in the report and hadn’t noticed. I opened it.

  What you’re looking for is in Fountain Reach.

  There was nothing else. Frowning, I checked the sender. It was an e-mail address from a free provider. The prefix on the address was a random string of letters and numbers.

  Who had sent it?

  Fountain Reach was the place Crystal had told me about this morning, but this seemed like a pretty weird way for her to entice me to take the job. Besides, we hadn’t exactly parted on good terms.

  What you’re looking for . . . What I was looking for was the source of
the disappearances. And within a few hours of starting to look, I had someone sending me an anonymous tip. How convenient.

  It was a hell of a lot too convenient. This was way too easy. Maybe Talisid’s right and I’m just cynical but I couldn’t honestly believe that someone would just hand me the solution like that. It had to be a trick or a trap of some kind.

  More worrying was the speed. Talisid had met me only hours ago and already someone seemed to know that I was involved. Had someone been spying on our meeting? Between the two of us Talisid and I should have been able to spot someone following us . . . maybe. Mages have a lot of ways of finding out information. But if their intelligence network was so good, why were they wasting it on such a clumsy trap?

  I puzzled over it for an hour but couldn’t find any answers. Outside the light faded from the sky, evening turning into a cold winter’s night. I fixed myself some dinner and tried to finish off the report, but my mind kept drifting back to the message. I caught myself wondering how long it would take to make the journey to Fountain Reach, and pushed the thought firmly away. I had enough to worry about without going looking for trouble. But the idea nagged at me all the same.

  I’d been vaguely expecting Luna back and had been keeping an eye on the possible futures all evening. When I saw that the bell was going to ring I put the folder down in relief, then I checked a second time and stopped. There was a girl about to arrive at my door—but it wasn’t Luna.

  I sat frowning for a moment, then locked the folder away in a drawer. I tucked a few items into my pockets and went downstairs.

  My shop feels eerie after dark. The street is a quiet one, and while the background hum of the city never stops, the nearby shops empty out completely after closing hours. Inside the shelves stood silent, their contents making strange shapes in the darkness. The front of the shop was cast in a yellow glow from the streetlights, and their light passed through the windows to fall upon the wands in their display cases and glint off the metal blades in the shadows against the wall. Under the shop counter is a hidden shelf. I reached in and took out a narrow-bladed dagger, then stood alone in the darkness and waited.

  Five minutes passed.

  From out in the street came the throaty growl of a car engine. It grew louder and there was the crunching of tyres as it pulled in, then the engine died away to a purr and stopped. A car door opened and shut and footsteps approached, coming to a halt just outside. A moment later, from back in the hall, the bell rang.

  I waited twenty seconds—about long enough for someone to stop whatever they were doing and come downstairs—then opened the door.

  The girl standing outside was Anne. She’d changed clothes since the lesson and was wearing a long-sleeved pullover and thin trousers, both in shades of grey and brown that faded into the night. They looked good on her, but again I got that odd feeling that she was trying to blend into the background. “Good evening, Mr. Verus.”

  “Just Alex is fine,” I said. Behind Anne was the car she’d arrived in. It was a sedan, big and sleek, and its lines gleamed silver in the streetlights with a winged B ornament at the front of the hood. There was a man behind the wheel. It was hard to make him out in the darkness, but I had an impression of a hunched figure and two unfriendly eyes. “Did you want Luna?”

  “Ah . . . no. Thank you.” Anne hesitated. “I’m here to give you an invitation.”

  I blinked. “To what?”

  “Tiger’s Palace,” Anne said. “There’s a gathering tomorrow evening at eight o’clock.”

  I’d never heard of Tiger’s Palace. “Who’s inviting me?”

  “Lord Jagadev,” Anne said. “He owns the club.”

  “Okay,” I was still a little puzzled. “What sort of gathering?”

  “Other mages are going to be there,” Anne said. “I don’t think it’s for a special occasion.”

  Neither the place nor the name rang any bells, but that wasn’t surprising. I’m pretty much an outsider to mage society, and I don’t get invited to many parties. Which raised an obvious question. “Look,” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude. But why is this ‘Lord Jagadev’ inviting me?”

  “I don’t actually know,” Anne said. She sounded honest. “He gave me a list of people to invite but he didn’t tell me why.”

  “Do you always do what he tells you?”

  Something flickered across Anne’s face and she seemed to draw back a little. “What answer should I give him?”

  I looked at Anne for a long moment. I couldn’t sense any deception from her but my instincts were telling me something strange was going on. Mage parties are dangerous at the best of times. If I showed up, there was no telling what I’d be getting into.

  On the other hand mage parties are also a mine of information and I hate missing opportunities to find things out. Besides, one of the things I’ve learnt over the past year is that if trouble’s on its way it’s a lot better to go do something about it than to sit around and wait. “Tell him I’ll be there,” I said.

  “I will.”

  We stood in silence for a moment. “Do you want to come inside?” I said suddenly. As soon as the words were out I wanted to kick myself. It was a really inappropriate question to ask another mage’s apprentice, especially a girl three-quarters my age.

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said. “There’s another invitation I have to deliver in Archway.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Uh, have a safe trip.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Anne gave a small smile and walked back to the car. As she did I caught a flash of movement from the front seat; the man inside was putting away something that looked like a phone. Anne climbed in, the door snicked shut, and the engine started up with a growl that made me think of a big animal. I watched the car roll smoothly down the street, signal at the T junction, and pull away out of sight.

  I closed and locked the door. Thoughtfully I took the dagger from where I’d been holding it behind the door and returned it to its sheath before going back up to my study.

  Inviting Anne in had been a weird thing to do and as I climbed the stairs I wondered why I’d done it. I remembered the last image, Anne climbing into the dark car while that hunched shape waited behind the wheel, and felt a stir of disquiet.

  My street was dark and still again, and the shop was empty. The distant thump, thump, thump of club music drifted over the rooftops, but there was no movement outside. I stood flipping the sheathed dagger absentmindedly between my fingers, frowning at nothing. Outside my window, lights shone from the blocks of flats across the canal.

  I felt uneasy. I live alone and I should be used to the quiet of my part of Camden after sunset. But tonight something about the silence had me on edge.

  It wasn’t as if anything that had just happened was all that extraordinary. I do get invited to mage social events sometimes. Not often, but it happens. And sending an apprentice out to deliver invitations in person wasn’t unusual . . . okay, it was unusual, but it wasn’t unheard of. It must have just felt strange to me because I’d been off the social circuit so long.

  I told myself that, but the uneasy feeling didn’t go away.

  I don’t get these feelings often and when I do I’ve learnt to pay attention to them. I did a scan of the immediate futures, looking for danger, and found nothing. I spread my search further, looking for anything that might threaten or attack me.

  Still nothing.

  I tried half a dozen more ways of looking for danger and came up blank every time. Finally I tried something different. I looked into the future to see what would happen if I sat in my bedroom and did absolutely nothing.

  One uneventful hour, two uneventful hours, four uneventful hours—then activity. In the early hours of the morning people were going to come to my door. Not ordinary people—mages. They’d want to talk to me, and they were . . .

  I
frowned. They were Council Keepers.

  That was strange.

  Keepers are the primary enforcement arm of the Council, kind of a mix between police and an internal affairs division. There are a lot of reasons for Keepers to come looking for a mage and very few of them are good. As I looked into the future the encounter didn’t look hostile, but it didn’t look friendly either. I wished I could see exactly what they were saying, but as I tried to focus on the distant strands the images blurred and shifted. It’s hard to predict something as fluid as conversation. I can do it easily if it’s only a few seconds ahead, but trying to do it a few hours ahead is almost impossible. I tried to focus on a single strand and pin it down.

  The Keepers were asking me questions. They were suspicious. I tried to hear what the questions were about or why they were asking them, but couldn’t pick up any details.

  I shifted my focus to the beginning of the conversation. That was better. Now the Keepers were saying the same things in each future with only minor differences, the things they’d decided to say before my answers took them in other directions. I suddenly realised what the scene reminded me of: two police officers interviewing a suspect.

  I strained my mental lens to its limit, trying to get the exact words. By concentrating and piecing together bits from parallel futures, I was just able to make out fragments.

  “—where were—”

  “—did you do—”

  “—any contact . . . after—”

  I shook my head in frustration. Useless. In every one of the futures, my future self seemed to ask the same questions. I focused on the answers the Keepers gave in return.

  “—enquiries—”

  “—was here—”

  “—last . . . see her alive—”

  I stopped dead. The futures I’d traced so carefully shattered, fading into darkness.

  I stood motionless for ten seconds, then ran for the door.