LITMIR.BIZ

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“I’m not sure,” he answered. “But now that I’m doing it, I may as well keep going.”

      “Except you’re not really running away from us,” Skulduggery pointed out.

      “True,” he gasped. “But I don’t think I can stop. I want to stop. I do. But I don’t think I can.”

      “Just slow down,” Valkyrie said. “Come on, just slow down. That’s it. A little more.”

      They slowed the run back to a jog, and Kalvin’s legs started to wobble. He veered away from them and ran into the wall, then collapsed and rolled across the floor, clutching his side.

      “Stitch,” he explained when they looked down at him.

      “You don’t get an awful lot of exercise down here, do you?” Skulduggery said.

      “Not really...”

      “Do you want a hand up?”

      “If it’s OK with you... I’ll just stay down here... for another moment.”

      “No problem.”

      “Why... why are you here?”

      “It’s about Argeddion.”

      “Then you’re going to want to talk to Tyren.” Kalvin took another few breaths, and sat up. “He is not going to be happy to see you.”

      yren Lament was definitely not happy to see them. Skulduggery and Valkyrie sat at the long table in the dining hall, and Lament stood looking at them with his arms crossed. He looked to be around forty, with long fair hair. He had a long nose and sharp, intelligent eyes. He was dressed identically to Kalvin. From the glimpses Valkyrie had snatched of the other sorcerers on the way here, robes and sandals seemed to be the uniform for mountain-dwelling mages.

      “How did you find us?” were his first words to them.

      “It wasn’t easy,” Skulduggery said.

      He looked annoyed. “It was supposed to be impossible. We didn’t go to all this trouble to be ‘hard to find’. We did it to disappear.”

      “We’d never have come looking for you if it wasn’t for Argeddion,” said Valkyrie. “He’s doing something to ordinary people, giving them magic.”

      Lament shook his head. “Impossible. No one can transfer magic in any way to anyone who doesn’t already have magic within them.”

      “For all we know,” said Skulduggery, “these mortals did have magic within them. But if they did, it was dormant. They didn’t know anything about it.”

      “And what do you think Argeddion has done to them? Because whatever you suspect, I can assure you, he didn’t do it. He’s been resting in a coma-state for the past thirty years.”

      “You’re sure?”

      “Quite sure. He is closely monitored at every moment. The slightest increase in neural activity would be picked up on. Whoever is doing this to the mortals, it’s not Argeddion.”

      “If it’s not,” said Skulduggery, “then it’s someone connected to him somehow. We’d like to see him, all the same.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because I don’t want to. You’ve already breached our outer perimeter – I can’t allow you to breach the inner one. I knew you thirty years ago, Skulduggery, but a man can change in thirty years.”

      “You don’t trust me.”

      “I don’t. And I don’t even know your companion.”

      “We’ve saved the world,” Valkyrie said.

      “And on behalf of this little part of that world, I thank you,” said Lament. “But you’re still not getting close to Argeddion, I’m sorry.”

      Skulduggery sighed, and sat back. “Can we ask about the facility here?”

      Lament sat opposite them. “Of course.”

      “How many can it hold?”

      “I’m not sure what you mean.”

      “If there were another sorcerer like Argeddion, someone who found out their true name, could they be kept here, too?”

      Lament paled. “There’s another?”

      “This is just hypothetical.”

      “Hypothetical questions are a prelude to actual questions,” Lament said. “You told me that once. There is another?”

      “There might be,” Skulduggery admitted. “Hopefully, there won’t, but there might be. Maybe your psychics here have picked up on it. A sorcerer named Darquesse.”

      Lament nodded. “We’ve heard of her. We didn’t know that’s how she got her power, though. Do you know anything about her?”

      “No one does,” said Skulduggery. “All we have is the vague promise that she will eventually turn up. How would you stop her?”

      “If she hasn’t realised who she is yet, I’d use her true name against her.”

      “And if she’s already sealed it?” Valkyrie asked.

      Lament exhaled slowly. “Then you’re in trouble. You want to know how we subdued Argeddion, don’t you? You want to use this technique against Darquesse? I’m afraid you travelled all this way to be disappointed.”

      Skulduggery tilted his head. “So how did you stop him?”

      “There really was nothing to stop,” said Lament. “From what I’ve been told, Darquesse will be a force of destruction. How she comes to be this way, no one knows. But Argeddion was not like that.”

      “We spoke with Greta Dapple,” Skulduggery said. “According to her, Walden D’Essai was a pacifist. When he became Argeddion, this didn’t change.”

      Lament nodded. “This is true, but... Up until D’Essai, eight sorcerers over the course of human existence have learned their true names. Eight that we know of, anyway. Three of these were killed soon after, before they could exploit what they’d learned. Two of them couldn’t control their power and ended up killing themselves. Two more had their true names used against them and became virtually powerless. And the eighth one simply vanished. We presume he obliterated himself. No one who has ever learned their true name has been able to live peacefully.”

      “So while Argeddion was a pacifist and showed no inclination towards violence, you didn’t want to take the chance that he could change his mind.”

      “It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I liked Walden. He was a good man. I trusted him. I couldn’t trust Argeddion. How could I? All it would take is one bad day. Maybe that’s what sets Darquesse off. Maybe she’s a normal sorcerer, doing good work, but sometime in the near future she’s going to have one really bad day, and she’ll make the world suffer for it.”

      “So what did you do?”

      Lament hesitated. “Argeddion enjoyed talking about the things he was learning. Every day he’d develop a new ability, or he’d understand a new law of magic that no one else had even guessed at. He talked about the Source. He talked about the Cradles of Magic and how they related to each other and how they affected everything around them. He was a fascinating man. He was starting to view things in a completely new way.”

      “And then you ambushed him.”

      “We

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