We Have to Go Deeper

amiss. If nothing else, she may have a better idea of the Separatists' plans to guide us."

  Pevan was staring at him, mouth hanging open. When he met her eyes, she blinked, and her face turned suddenly to a mask of sardonic amusement. "Who are you, and what have you done with Rel?"

  He shrugged. "I, uh..."

  "Had she done as instructed in Vessit," Taslin's tone stayed hard, her face like an axe, "Dora might not have wandered so far from her body."

  Rel looked from the Gift-Giver to his sister and back again. Pevan had fallen back into herself, head bowed, shoulders slack. The Guide, still standing by the door, looked completely lost. A lump settled in Rel's gut, not quite cold, but hard and sore. He'd been dimly aware of Pevan's presence before Taslin joined the fight at the Abyss, unable to see what she'd done after taking the other Wildren elsewhere. Her demeanour said she knew she had something to answer for.

  She mumbled something. It was hard not to look at Taslin, but however much he'd agreed to follow her lead, she couldn't be allowed to control this conversation. Trying to make his voice as gentle as possible, Rel said, "What happened?"

  Pevan looked at Taslin, who said, "I told her to find some of my kin and bring them to the Abyss to support Dora. She never returned."

  He met Pevan's eyes, saw more tears there, her cheeks and eyebrows tight with remorse. She whispered, "I didn't know who to believe. Whether the Wildren would help Dora or not."

  "I-" Heat surged through Rel, just for a moment, an instinctive response to Pevan's betrayal, but he stamped the reaction down. A heavy breath settled him. "You probably have me to thank for that too." He reached over and squeezed Pevan's shoulder. To Taslin, he finished, "My point stands. Without me, Dora wouldn't have needed help in the first place. We all screwed up. Let's focus on getting things straightened out."

  The Gift-Giver stood, her eyes still locked on Pevan, who cringed as if before a physical assault. "Where are the Separatists?"

  "I dunno," Pevan mumbled, glancing at Rel. "I left them in the... that room we were meeting in, the one that looked like a Warding Hall."

  "How long ago?" No mistaking the way Taslin's tone sharpened. She sounded like she'd picked up that particular inflection of anger bitten back behind intense focus from Dora. Rel started to step forward, to put himself between the two women, but Taslin stopped him with a brief glare.

  Pevan looked around, biting her lip. "I... um, half an hour? I don't know."

  Taslin rolled her eyes - that had definitely come from Dora - and folded her arms. "You should be doing better than this, Pevan."

  It was Pevan's turn to give Rel a stay-out-of-this look. From somewhere, she found the fortitude to pull herself up straight. Her voice steadied, too, as she said, "I wasn't operating at my best, I'll admit." She swallowed. "If time is important, shouldn't we better get going?"

  "Yes, in a moment." Taslin turned to the Guide. "You will have to wait here. We cannot tolerate the risk of your Gift damaging the Court's foundations."

  The lad's face went pale. "Wait? But, uh..."

  Rel bit back instinctive criticism. The kid was a trainee, he couldn't be expected to measure up yet. Pevan went over and took the Guide's arm. For a moment, Rel thought she might hug him, but she just stood there, frozen on the brink of further reassurance.

  Somehow, it still seemed to have the desired effect. The Guide swallowed loudly and said, "Is, um, is there anything I can d-do?"

  Taslin's face actually seemed to soften a bit. Probably she sensed something in the lad that wasn't obvious to human eyes. Her voice stayed harsh, but he didn't cringe as she said, "Go to the Great Hall and find Quilo, or someone who can lead you to him. Ask him to put the Guard on alert for Separatists."

  The boy fled, diving for the door almost before Taslin had finished speaking. Pevan stared after him for a moment, then turned to Rel with a look halfway between puzzled frown and sardonic exasperation on her face. Rel returned a grim nod, searching for something to answer her with. Taslin gave him no more time to think, though, heading straight for the door herself.

  Rel followed, letting Pevan take the rear. Taslin set her usual stiff pace, leaving little breath for talking. Immediately, she led them away from the central areas of the Court, to a narrow door which opened onto long, descending stairs. The bottom was shrouded in gloom, but Taslin gave them no time to pause in trepidation.

  Over her shoulder as she descended, Taslin called back, "Absolutely no talking until I say otherwise. Parts of this Route are not word-safe."

  That sent a tingle of nerves down Rel's spine. Myth and rumour spoke of secret ways in and out of the Court, and the Gift-Givers had never trusted humanity with a complete map of the complex. Was Taslin fleeing, rather than heading for a confrontation? What might the Separatists have been able to do?

  And would it be preferable to face them or to flee before whatever they could have done to the Court? Wildren had built the Court, while the First Realm was still wracked by the chaos of the Realmwar. Presumably Wildren could destroy it, though whether the two Separatists could overcome the power of the Gift-Givers wasn't clear. If there were still only the two of them. What if they'd opened a back door for an invasion?

  The stairs began to turn, a wide, smooth curve that tightened steadily until they were spiralling around a central column. Steps that had been carpeted stone lost their softness, became a lattice of torn, dark fabric and then gave way to black iron grille-work. The air seemed to darken - not quite a lowering of the light level, but the faint sense that something was starting to come between them and the nearest lamp or candle.

  For what seemed like a long time - a little voice at the back of Rel's mind told him to stop fretting, that it hadn't really been that long at all - the oppressive atmosphere grew heavier, until Rel almost thought he could feel it dragging at Pevan's step as well as his own. Then, between footfalls, the gloom was gone.

  Rel almost faltered in blinking surprise, but managed to force himself forward before Pevan could ram into his back. This was not a staircase to fall down. Through the gaps in the metal stairs, there was no sign of a bottom to the stairwell, and the steps themselves were getting steeper and narrower. He was just starting to turn around so he could climb backwards, using the stairs as a ladder, when Taslin seemed to leap sideways through the wall.

  It was no easy thing to slide down to the step she'd been on - the step he hoped she'd been on - and throw himself at the wall, but he managed. The stone swallowed him without sound or sensation, and he found himself in a claustrophobic, unlit anteroom. An empty doorframe on the far side - really only a few feet away - opened into some brightly-lit hall. Taslin stood in front of the doorway, her eyes shining in the gloom. The other side of the room, where Rel had just come from, had only a flat, grey wall. Pevan stepped through it effortlessly, though, looking more bored than afraid.

  Taslin's eyes flickered as she nodded, just once. Then she turned and stepped through the doorway. Rel followed, watching the Gift-Giver's motions closely. If he'd missed some cue in her behaviour on the stairs, it could have killed him. He'd been more than a little careless. Fatigue ran a fat, heavy thumb along the inside of his forehead as he crossed the threshold.

  Beyond, the Great Hall towered over him. The dappled, organic quality of the light marked the familiar space out from everywhere else in the Court. Rel relaxed, looking around for the Guide or Quilo. Why had Taslin taken them by such a roundabout route? He opened his mouth to ask, then had to swallow hard and painfully against the words as Taslin waved a frantic danger gesture at him.

  Without turning around, she pointed down at the floor, her finger directed unerringly at Rel's feet. He looked down, eyes narrowed. What was he supposed to be looking for? From the way his headache pulsed again, something was definitely wrong, just outside the outlines of his boots.

  He leaned sideways, trying to get a fresh angle on the troubling sight, and almost stumbled in shock. The streaky marble moved under his feet without any sensation of sl
iding or friction. As if he wasn't standing on it, but hovering just above. And he didn't have half the shadow he should have had, either.

  Taslin gestured, arm held up and out to one side, so Rel could see it without her having to turn around. He missed the first part of the signal, but when she finished by pointing to herself, he took the obvious guess; follow exactly. Duly chastened, he repeated the gesture back for Pevan's benefit and made a careful study of the Gift-Giver's posture.

  The floor of the Great Hall was laid in tiles of about a foot square, and Taslin stood with her long, narrow, heeled boots pointing along their diagonals. Rel concentrated on those tiles as Taslin stepped off them. She moved in an awkward pattern, right leg forward two tiles and right one, then the left moving to the tile one left and one forward from her right.

  Clumsy though the uneven stride made him feel, it could have been worse. Not falling over - heaven alone knew what the consequence of that would be - took enough of his attention that he didn't have time to fret about the Separatists, or this strange secret route through the Great Hall. Their footsteps made no sound, but he could hear Pevan's occasional grunts as her balance tipped. Ahead, Taslin might as well have been a ghost.

  The Gift-Giver changed the pattern, incorporating a right-foot step back one and left two, so that for