“And then you’d learn by experience, wouldn’t you? Particularly if you fail.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even curse when his defence crumbled.
She continued. “Sometimes you can only judge what it is better to experience than know—”
“I can’t judge if I’m dead,” he interrupted.
She started the exercise again. “Working out which … well, most of the time it’s a matter of common sense. No matter how much knowledge you have, there will be times you don’t have a suitable pre-considered plan, or you’ll be in a situation where you don’t have enough time to think. Dealing with the first involves taking a risk; when dealing with the second, it helps if you have good instincts and reflexes honed through practice.”
He said nothing. His reactions were sloppy with annoyance now. She stopped midway through the sequence. “Is there a way out of this?”
He began shaking his head, then paused. “I suppose there might be.”
“Let’s start again.”
She didn’t think defeat could be avoided in the exercise, but it was worth giving him the chance to try just to get him to engage with the lesson. He tried three more times. In the first, he tried a different, riskier tactic. In the second, he tried confusing her with rapid responses. In the third, he moved out of the world, skimmed into her barrier and nearly scored a hit on her inner shield, only failing because her instinct to protect herself was faster than his attack.
“You’re supposed to be limiting your access to magic for this exercise,” she reminded him. “You’d have used most of your strength leaving the world.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t need much to kill you if I was fast enough.”
She nodded. “That is true. It would be a great risk.”
“A risk worth taking, if I knew trying nothing would mean losing. Working that out takes time. Time I don’t … have …” His voice faded as his gaze shifted away, fixing on the distance as he realised what he was saying.
“But now that we’ve practised this, you may work that out straightaway, should you ever end up in this position,” she finished. She smiled. “We’ve achieved something today.”
He nodded slowly, still distracted by his thoughts.
“What is it?” She followed his gaze, seeing only the labyrinth of dark, twisted rock and soft sand that made up this part of the world they were in.
“I thought I heard something.”
She listened. Sometimes the wind filled the passages and tunnels with unearthly sounds, but today it was so quiet she could hear his breathing, and the growl of his stomach.
“Time to go home,” she decided.
He nodded, his gaze moving back to her. Now that the lesson was over, the withdrawn, brooding look had returned. She smothered a sigh and led the way out into a nearby cave.
They retraced their path through the rocky landscape to the place they’d arrived at. All the way, Rielle searched constantly for other minds, and found none. Despite the tall boots they’d purchased for visits to this world, sand always found its way into their shoes, so they paused to shake it out. Once they were done, she held out a hand to Qall. Once he’d taken it, she pushed into the place between worlds, moving slowly at first as she concealed their path.
As the dark rocks and sand faded, it became difficult to tell where one met the other. This was one reason she had chosen the location for their lessons—on approaching it from the place between, it looked like solid rock. Sorcerers would skim higher to ensure they found a clear space to emerge, and they would not see her and Qall, hidden within the great maze of passages and caves.
With Qall unable to go without breathing for long, she couldn’t spare the time to smooth the signs of their passing all the way to the next world. After counting to thirty, she stopped and sought the end of the path they had made on arrival. She found the end, where it started abruptly at the place she’d begun concealing it, and followed it further into the place between.
She would have preferred to not travel far from Amelya, or even leave the city, but the dense population that made it a great place to hide in also meant it would be impossible to teach Qall without drawing attention. The constant traffic from other worlds also meant her journeys were lost among many others, at least until she moved further away from Amelya. Once out of the busy thoroughfares, she relied on her ability to hide her path to prevent them leaving a trail.
Complete whiteness passed, then the green ocean and sky of the next world coloured their surroundings. Creating a floor of solidified air at the moment of arrival kept them from falling. They sat down to make balancing easier as she propelled them both across the sky.
This world had plenty of arrival places, but since most of the people in it lived on huge slabs of buoyant rocks floating in the ocean, it was only ever a matter of luck if one of these natural rafts and an arrival place happened to be in the same location. Sorcerers here must skim or levitate to find “land.” Rielle was not seeking solid ground, however, just adding a stage to their journey home that did not leave a path a sorcerer could track. She wasn’t looking for an arrival place either, since she had forged a new path to this world. The hard part was finding where that new path had ended.
Reaching an area where the ocean was shallow enough to see the rippled floor, she sought a familiar configuration of shapes—
a place where the stripes blended in an unusual way. It was not a unique feature, however, and it wasn’t until she had found a familiar shipwreck that she knew she’d reached the end of her previous path.
As soon as she began following it, she sensed that someone else had recently travelled along it. Had she not been between worlds, her heart would have lurched in her chest. Qall looked at her and frowned, sensing the same thing.
“How long—?”
“Don’t speak,” she replied quickly. “If there’s someone in the place between, they might hear you.”
He scowled, his lips pressing together. She did not have the time to mollify him, and turned her attention to the path again. It had been used recently, but not moments ago. Probably before the time she and Qall had left the training place. Whoever it was, they were most likely long gone.
They had been following the path she had forged to get here. How a stranger had found it when she had hidden the start, she couldn’t guess. Perhaps they had stumbled upon it. Where they had gone once they’d arrived in the ocean world was not clear. Either they had retreated back to where they’d joined the path, or they’d arrived in the ocean world and levitated away. Or fallen into the water.
She proceeded along the path cautiously. They passed through the midpoint and continued towards the next world. All the way, she kept watching for the place where this stranger had come across her path and followed it. Instead, not far from the next world, their own path abruptly became less travelled. Puzzled, she continued on for a moment before she realised what this meant.
We’re following their path. They must have crossed the section between the next world and where I stopped concealing our path. But how did they know which way to go, to find the exact place once I had stopped hiding it?
The next world grew more distinct. A thin forest of odd trees surrounded them. Single-trunked, with a mass of fine branches forming a ball at intervals, they looked like a child’s idea of a tree. Below them, patches of spiny plants grew everywhere except where sheets of glittering stone broke through the ground. As they arrived, she heard Qall suck in a deep breath. She ignored the sudden pounding of her heart, as her body expressed the anxiety it couldn’t feel between worlds, and created a barrier of stilled air around them as she searched for minds.
The only humans nearby were those living in farms and one tiny village. None were aware of her or Qall. She looked at him, expecting questions, but he remained hunched and silent.
“Someone found our path,” she said, her breath misting in the cold air. “That doesn’t mean they were looking for us though.”
His expression told her he k
new she wasn’t as confident of that as she sounded.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
What indeed? she thought. “Continue home.”
When coming from the other direction, she’d skimmed to this forest from a nearby arrival place in an old quarry. She decided to take a different route, then as she opened her mouth to tell Qall to hold his breath she changed her mind. Let’s see how long this nosy sorcerer was following us.
Qall took a deep breath, reading her intention in her expression. She nodded in approval and pushed out of the world. Though she had hidden the end of her path from the quarry, she knew roughly where it was and started in that direction. Immediately she sensed a new path, used recently, connecting the gap between the arrival place and where she had previously started hiding her own.
Continuing, both curiosity and worry grew as she neared the end of the path. It changed, once again becoming the less defined trace of a single journey. It did not meander, but continued directly towards the quarry, where she emerged again to contemplate what she had just learned.
A stranger had somehow located the beginning and end of two of her paths, despite her hiding them. One for a journey between worlds, the other for a skim across a world. Was this coincidence, or something more sinister?
Perhaps it was obvious which direction she had skimmed in. She put herself in the position of the stranger. If they had been following Rielle and Qall, they’d have arrived at the quarry and found no continuing path. They would conclude that she’d either retraced her steps, travelled on from the quarry by non-magical means or hidden her path. If they’d suspected the first option, they’d have retreated, but not before eliminating the second option by skimming higher to see if they could see her, and skimming in circles to find the place where she’d stopped walking and moved into the place between worlds again.
She slipped out of the world a little, looking for evidence of the latter, and found none. The stranger had skimmed directly from the arrival place to where her path started. As if they knew she could hide it.
No! As if they could sense where I’d hidden my path!
Qall squeezed her hand. Looking up, she saw his strained expression and realised that she had slowed almost to a stop between worlds. Returning to the quarry, she emerged. Qall immediately began gasping for air.
“Sorry,” she said. As he recovered, she looked around, searching for minds, and found none.
Another possibility occurred to her then. Since a sorcerer skimming close to a world could be seen as a ghostly figure, it was reasonable to think the stranger might have seen her, and the direction she was travelling in. He or she would have needed to be close to the world as well.
If they noticed me moving slowly at first, then faster, they might have investigated and discovered I can conceal my path. Maybe they followed because they want to ask me how it is done, then lost me in the ocean world. Or they could be one of Dahli’s trackers.
She decided to find another way home, then changed her mind. If one of Dahli’s searchers had found her, she needed to know how long they had been following her. If they had tracked her as far back as Amelya, they might have found Timane.
Qall straightened, his brows lowering in a frown of concern, and she knew he’d read her mind again. As she opened her mouth to scold him, he dragged in a very deep breath. Holding back the words, she pushed out of the world.
Coming from the other direction, she’d used well-used paths to pass through the next two worlds, so she had no way to detect if the stranger had followed her. For the next journey, not far from Amelya, she had forged a new path through the centre of a world. Taking inspiration from Tyen’s approach to leaving Doum, she’d created a path that plunged straight down into the earth. At a point she thought most mortal sorcerers would baulk, she’d started hiding her path, changing direction at the same time, then travelled normally to the surface in another part of the world. This would be an opportunity to see if they could detect where she’d hidden her path.
She would need to travel slowly. Too slowly for Qall, as he’d run out of breath. As she reached the crumbling stone tower from which the path through the world would begin, Qall’s expression changed to dismay.
“You’re going to leave me here.” A slight quaver in his voice betrayed his fear.
“Yes,” she told him. “It will take longer than you can hold your breath for.”
“What if they find me here?”
“Go down the tower and stay out of sight. If anyone appears, read their mind to see if they are hunting us, but don’t reveal yourself.”
He nodded. “Be careful.”
“I will.” Drawing magic from the outer edge of the world, she pushed into the place between, found her former path and plunged down into the ground.
At once she sensed that the path had been used by another sorcerer. Only by mentally counting did she know when the path was about to end and the gap began. She slowed when she was close to the end, but the path continued on longer than she expected. Anxiety had made her count faster.
At the gap, she slowed. Only the stranger’s path continued, turning where she had changed direction while hiding her path.
And then she was back on her original path.
She stopped and headed back, anger growing inside.
Tyen. The liar! He made me think I was hiding my path when what I was really doing was laying a very distinctive trail.
Moving in another direction, she smoothed the substance of the place between as she had done so many times before. Reversing direction, she searched for signs of her passing. Knowing what she was looking for made it easier to detect a faint roughness in the substance of the place between. It was like how, no matter how carefully one might smooth wet sand, it never quite regained the evenness that the ebb and flow of water left. Most people wouldn’t sense the roughness, but someone who knew what to look for would sense it. Someone who had been told what to look for.
Conscious that she had been in the place between for a long time now, she sought out the path to the tower. She sped towards the surface, mind racing. Would the roughness smooth out in time, or was every step of her journey to Amelya visible to Dahli’s hunters?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. What matters is that someone who can detect where I’ve been hiding my path is following me. As she emerged from within the world and arrived in the tower, her head swam with implications. If the tracker had seen Rielle and Qall, they would have started the journey back to Dahli. Unless they tried to deliver a message from Dahli, threatening Lejihk’s family. But she doubted they’d do the latter, because they must know she would stop them returning to tell Dahli they’d delivered it. You can’t blackmail someone you can’t communicate with.
Either way, she needed to get back to Amelya and make sure Timane was fine.
And then they once again would have to set out to find a new place to hide.
CHAPTER 14
“You could stay.” Rielle told Timane. “You should move to another city though. We’d be sad to leave you behind, but happy to know you were prospering here.”
“No.” Timane shook her head, her face solemn and her back straight. She hid her disappointment well. “The worlds are infinite, as my ma’s ma used to say. If I can sing here, I can sing somewhere else.”
“It might be safer if you stay,” Rielle added. “As long as you move to another city …”
“No,” Timane corrected. “It won’t be safer here than with you. If they find their way here they’ll learn about me, then they’ll hunt me down to ask questions about you.”
“She’s right,” Qall said.
Rielle looked at him. He’d been scowling and silent since she’d returned from investigating the path.
“See?” Timane said. She forced a tight, determined smile. “And now that’s decided, I can’t see why we must delay any longer than we need to. I will go tell Dell.” Rising from her chair, she slipped out of the room.
How did I
earn such loyalty? Rielle wondered. But I am glad she’s coming with us. She gets along with Qall better than I do. She turned to Qall. He had been staring at her. Now he looked away. “I’ll get our packs and see if we need to replace anything,” he said.
She smiled. “Thanks.”
She watched him climb the stairs. She’d used the gems she’d stashed at Tarran’s house getting back to Amelya: they had nothing to trade this time. Only Timane and Qall’s savings. Conflicting guilt and gratitude rose. It didn’t seem fair to use the pair’s income, but without it, travelling through worlds would be much more difficult.
What to do now? She searched the surrounding minds—of which there were many since a performance was underway in the theatre downstairs. Her senses found a familiar mind: Timane. The girl was bartering fiercely with the theatre owner. Timane’s mind reading advantage was countered by her not wanting to leave the woman who had hired and trained her too much out of pocket. When they were done, they touched palms in a gesture of respect, then hugged and wiped away tears. The affection and admiration Dell had for the girl was genuine.
Rielle left the room, meeting a more composed Timane halfway down the stairs. The girl pressed the bag of coins into Rielle’s hands.
“Take it,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Just don’t make me shop for supplies. You’re a much better bargainer anyway, and know what we’ll need for the journey. I need to decide which of my belongings I have to give up. That’s not something I had to do before.”
Rielle hugged her. “Thank you. Qall’s getting our packs ready, so you’ll have an idea how much room you’ve got.”
Timane groaned in mock horror. “You let a man barely out of childhood pack for two grown women?”
“You’d better get up there and supervise. I think he’d accept guidance from you better than from me.”
The girl hurried up the stairs. Turning away, Rielle continued down. As she passed Dell’s office, she stopped to thank the woman, who accepted it with a grave nod. Timane hadn’t told her what she, Qall and Rielle were fleeing from, but she knew too many women who had escaped powerful families or cruel husbands to resent one for abandoning her in the midst of her most successful season.