Pursuit
The city is an inky, purplish blue, as though someone has poured expensive dye over Berend’s vision. The color obscures the lines of the buildings and dims the street lamps even as it provides its own eerie light. Through it runs the wake of Geray’s magic: bright green threads that dart through the air, swimming after their creator.
Geray is moving fast, much faster than he should be, dragging Warder and his device. He’s still ahead of Berend as he crosses into the university’s grounds.
I hate magic, Berend decides, as he turns a corner and a wave of dizziness nearly knocks him down. He hates Geray’s illusions and his diabolical speed, and he hates whatever Isabel did to him to make him able to see it.
He stops to regain his balance and to fight down the nausea that is threatening to make his night even worse. The threads of greenish light stop with him, hovering and turning in idle circles like tiny fish.
Isabel is right behind him. Her boots skid on the cobbles as she comes to a halt. “Are you all right?”
He takes a shaky breath. The thing he might hate most, at the moment, is how Isabel is calm and unaffected.
“I’m fine,” he says. “It just takes a little getting used to.”
“Well, the rite of seeing is usually done by a priest, over the course of several hours,” Isabel explains. “I did the best I could.”
Berend sighs. He can feel the mud on his face drying out and cracking. Scratching at it would probably ruin the effect, so he resists doing so with conscious effort.
The threads are fading, disappearing into the indigo gloom. Berend straightens up and sets off after them again.
One way or another, this will all be over soon. And then, either Berend will be dead, or he’ll have time for a fine meal and a very long, very hot bath. Either fate sounds preferable to his present circumstances.
Every step makes the world ripple and shudder, and Berend’s head spins as he runs, stumbling, through the university district. The threads grow brighter again, their movement quickening.
We have to be getting close.
He emerges from a narrow alley onto a tree-lined street, Isabel at his heels. This is the main road that goes through the Temple District to the city center, and it’s empty—strange, even for this time of night. A gust of wind rushes through the trees, and a few dry leaves begin a slow descent to the pavement.
Bright lights to his left draw Berend’s attention. At first, he thinks he’s finally found Geray and Warder, and the source of the magic threads. It is a moment before he realizes that the lights are dim orange orbs, piercing through the darkness like the sun behind a raincloud.
He blinks. There are people gathered in the Temple District, a short distance up the road, and they carry torches and lanterns to light their way in the night.
Berend can’t make out any individual figures. “What’s happening?”
“I think it’s another gathering,” Isabel says.
So that’s what she’s calling it. Berend distinctly remembers the gunshot from last night, and didn’t Isabel spend the whole night in the guard tower? A gathering, to Berend, implied pleasant music and perhaps some food, not…whatever nonsense had happened then and was probably happening now.
Before he can make the mostly incoherent argument that is forming in his exhausted mind, Isabel asks, “Which way?”
The threads are moving up the street, a thin stream of pale, sickly light. They hover around the crowd, disappearing into the glow of the torches before appearing again, farther away. They’re unnaturally bright, even at a distance.
Geray is leading us into the crowd, Berend realizes. Fantastic.
As an answer to Isabel’s question, he starts toward the Temple District. She follows. It seems she has a lot of trust in her slapdash spell, but Berend would feel much better if she were the one under its effects, instead.
The noise of the crowd wells up and envelops Berend as he gets closer. They’re chanting—praying, most likely, but there are too many voices to pick out their words. A constable materializes out of the colorful haze at the border between districts, and Berend nearly collides with him. His face is indistinct, covered over by shades of purple, and he’s carrying a rifle.
“The Temple District is closed, sir,” the constable says. He sounds young.
Berend takes a steadying breath and hopes he doesn’t look as drunk or as mad as he feels. “There’s…there’s been a report of an animated corpse, in a building in West Gate,” he says with all the authority he can muster with his face covered in mud. “I’m escorting the Sentinel.”
The constable hesitates, holding his rifle to his chest. His face shimmers in mottled blues as he glances between Berend and Isabel.
“It’s a matter of great urgency,” Isabel cuts in. “Let us through, please.”
That does it. It helps that she’s in full uniform, sword and book and all. The constable steps out of the way.
The signs of Geray’s passing go straight up the middle of the street, in the press of the crowd. Can he pass straight through people, as well as being invisible?
Berend decides he will ask, shortly before he removes Geray’s head from his shoulders.
He leads Isabel around the back of the crowd, against the rows of shrines opposite the temple complexes on the northern side of the street. It’s still slow going, and the threads are growing sparse and dim. Isabel is lagging behind, distracted by something Berend can’t see across the street.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s a walking corpse we have to see to, remember?”
The reason they are hurrying is much worse, but he doesn’t want to say anything in earshot of the already agitated townsfolk. A tall priest standing on the steps of the temple of Galaser has their attention—Berend can’t tell through the haze what color his robes are.
“There will be consequences for denying the gods!” the man cries.
Involuntarily, and for no reason that is apparent to him, Berend shudders. Maybe it’s the excitement of the mob, or the amount of time he’s spent with a Sentinel of Ondir over the past couple of days, but he can’t shake the feeling that none of this will end well.
The road slopes downward. Berend emerges from the crowd at the base of the hill. It’s dark, and the street lamps glow bright yellow—the murky purple tint is all but gone. He can no longer see the threads. The spell has worn off, and Geray’s trail has gone with it.
He looks around, hoping that he’ll notice the cumbersome pair of Geray and Warder moving through the shadows. Nothing catches his attention but the lights from the crowd.
Gods, do I hate magic.
“Your spell’s gone,” he says to Isabel. “Any chance you could top it up?” The nausea, at least, has worn off as well.
She glances back toward the hill. “I’d rather not, in front of all these people. It’ll make them nervous.”
Berend lets himself scratch at his face. Dried mud flakes off and falls to the ground like dirty snow. “It’s just as well,” he grumbles. “They must be a mile ahead of us by now. Geray’s moving fast.”
“You know where he’s going,” says Isabel. “You told me that there was a place you couldn’t find—that there was something preventing you from going there.”
“Right. The lair with all his rituals, that we’ve been trying to avoid.” Berend sighs. “What should we do?”
Isabel looks over her shoulder, back at the crowd. “We can’t do this alone,” she says, but if there are some of her black-clad brethren on the street, they aren’t visible from here.
“He’s got Warder. And the device.” And what might be the only means of fixing whatever happened to Mikhail. He touches his hand to his chest and feels the crinkle of paper under his doublet. If nothing else, he has some of Warder’s notes, but he won’t fool himself into thinking they will be enough. “If we move quickly, we might still be able to head them off. How do we get there?”
She gives him a skeptical glance. To be fair, he had just said Geray was a mile away. It is less than a mile from here to the city’s western wall.
“All right,” she says. “Lead the way. I’ll come up with something.”
She puts her hands in her pockets and pulls out, with an expression of surprise, the object Berend found in Geray’s coat. A binding spell, Berend recalls.
He starts walking toward West Gate. If he remembers correctly, he was heading in exactly this direction when he first noticed the spell—the sort of mental sleight of hand, to use Isabel’s words. It’s dark now, and this district has only a handful of lights, but he thinks he can retrace his steps.
“Do you have a knife on you?” Isabel asks, breaking his concentration.
“What? Oh. I think so.” He checks his pockets, finds the desired item, and hands it to her.
Under the gaslight at the next corner, Isabel carves three additional marks into the base of the wooden trinket, holding the end of the knife like a pen. That done, she hesitates for a moment before sticking the point into the end of her thumb. Blood wells up, black in the dim light, and fills the lines in the wood.
She sticks her bleeding thumb into her mouth and holds up the object. The carved surface glitters, as though it were inlaid with tiny red gems.
Then it goes dark, and the air shudders. Berend has a strange feeling, as though he were a ship struck by a powerful wave.
“What was that?” he asks, as soon as his stomach settles.
Isabel examines her thumb. The bleeding has already stopped, leaving only a thin line of red. “If the gods are with us, I’ve turned his magic against him and disabled the effect around his base of operations, at least for now.”
And if they’re not? The question hangs, unspoken, in the air between them.
They walk for a few more blocks. Fog collects under the street lights, and the air smells of rain. Berend thinks he can hear distant thunder, away to the north, but his ears are ringing and an invisible force presses against his skull.
I really, truly, hate magic.
A flash of movement some distance ahead grabs his attention. A door on the right side of the street slams against its adjoining wall with a terrible crash. Just as quickly, it closes with a bang.
Berend starts running. He crosses two more blocks and stops in front of the house, his hand on his sword. It’s ordinary enough; a two-story building with an old-fashioned steep roof and an awning over the front door. All the windows are dark behind wrought-iron grates.
This must be the place. Unfortunately, it seems Geray has arrived before Berend could. Silence falls over the street, complete but for the ringing in his ears. He approaches the door, mounting the low staircase leading up.
“Wait,” Isabel says. She puts a hand on his arm to stop him.
Two figures appear in the alley between this house and its neighbor. They are shadows, outside of the reach of the street lamps, and they stand without moving.
“Help me!”
It’s Warder’s voice, thin and distant. Berend draws his sword and levels it at the figures. “Let him go, Geray,” he says.
Isabel’s grip tightens on his elbow. “Berend,” she says, and it’s a warning.
It is then that Berend realizes that Warder’s voice came from somewhere above—a second story window, perhaps, and not the nearby alley.
With a lurching, shambling gait, the figures walk into the light. Their skin is a mottled gray, and their clothing is dirty and ragged. Empty black holes stare out from where their eyes once were.
The pair of walking corpses quicken their pace, reaching out with their rotting arms.
Forward to Chapter Twenty-Five
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience waiting for this chapter!
Space Whales Press 
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