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‘And I will, you big oaf– but if it helps, I don’t think whoever’s doing this means Cade harm.’ He pulled away. ‘I think maybe they really do just want to talk.’ He turned to me. ‘Your call, buddy. I can force the path forward if I have to, but then you’ll never know why this mysterious admirer of yours is so determined to meet you.’

I sighed. ‘So what happens if I follow the road to the left?’

The diabolic put up his hands. ‘Then you’re out of my protection. Take one step off the path and you’re on your own. I’ve got no control over what happens next until and unless you return.’

‘Then why are we even discussing this?’ Galass asked. ‘Of course Cade’s not going to—’

‘I’ll go,’ I said.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would you risk it?’

I buttoned up my blue brocade coat and straightened my cuffs. Not sure why, but I felt like whatever was about to happen, I should meet it with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘Somebody’s going to a lot of trouble to have a chat with me. It would be rude to ignore the invitation.’

Without another word, I stepped to my left, off Tenebris’ path and into the Infernal depths.

Chapter 24

Voices from the Shadows

I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life. An argument could be made– in fact, ithadbeen made, by the kind-hearted woman to whom I was about to be wed, just minutes before she cast a skin binding on me (which really isn’t as much fun as it sounds- try to imagine your own skin becoming a straitjacket: you could theoretically get out of it, but you really wouldn’t want to)– that I’d never made agooddecision. Given she subsequently tried to stab me to death with my own sword, I could see her point; deciding to marry her had clearly been one of those bad decisions she’d been so forcefully complaining about. Accepting a mysterious invitation to leave the safety of Tenebris’ path, risking certain and no doubt horribly painful death in search of some enigmatic stranger, lent further credence to that particular view.

‘Hello?’ I called out to the all-encompassing darkness surrounding me.

The tremor in my voice was unflattering. You never want to sound frightened while wandering blindly in the Infernal demesne. That single step off the path had been all it took to lose sight of Corrigan and the others; now I could see no points of reference whatsoever, just endless shadows everywhere, swirling and oozing like thick blots of oil across glass.

Better than walking through the grasping hands of the damned,I supposed. Though that didn’t explain the shaking of my own hands. I felt that uncomfortable itch at the back of my neck that told me I was being watched.

‘Why is that which we cannot see so much more terrifying than the horrors we can?’ I asked aloud. I hadn’t been expecting– or even wanting– an answer.

Alas, that’s usually when answers come.

‘It’s the emptiness we all fear,’ said a voice older and slightly higher-pitched than my own. Where it had come from I couldn’t tell. ‘Death. Pain. Madness. These are all merely gates through which we pass into that void. Do you recall the secret name of that emptiness?’

I called out to the darkness, ‘And here I thought I was being lured into a fatal encounter with some hideous demoniac monstrosity planning to feast on my soul for ever and a day. But if my eternal torment is going to involve listening to a philosopher, I’m out of here.’ I made a show of turning to leave, despite having not the first idea how I’d get back to Tenebris and my crew.

Whoever it was laughed, as embracing as a warm blanket; light-hearted, if tempered with a touch of old-age wheeze. I remembered that laugh even before I recognized the voice to which it belonged.

From the smothering, swirling void of shadows emerged a figure, at first barely more than the faint tracing of a charcoal line upon a vast black canvas. Her shape grew more distinct with every step, until I could make out her silhouette. She was taller than me, and I wasn’t a short man by any means. Older than I remembered, a little crooked at the neck, but still broad in the shoulders. Her walk was a little uneven now, weighted more heavily on the left side, but she had lost none of the strength and purposefulness that had made her so formidable to those like me who would have followed her into battle no matter the odds.

Once she got close enough, the darkness around her dissolved enough that I could make out the silver-grey of her arching eyebrows and short-cropped hair. The scar on her jawline was one I’d been proud to give her during a fencing bout back when she’d insisted I practise with the longsword even though such mundane weapons were barely more than props in our profession.

Of all the people I’d ever imagined meeting in Hell, surely the last was Hazidan Rosh. Once First Paladin of the Glorian Justiciars, she was the woman who’d tried and failed to take an angry, reckless young man and turn him into the sort of hero she so effortlessly embodied. Yet here she stood, looking much as she had five years ago when I’d walked away from her– if you ignored the two black holes in place of the pair of steel blue eyes which had gazed out at the world in amused judgement.

‘Cade,’ she said, and reached out a hand to give my shoulder a shake. ‘You look like shit.’

Chapter 25

Friends in Low Places

‘Master?’ I half expected the blinded figure before me to open her mouth wide and come at me with pointy fangs and a forked tongue. To be honest, that might have been a relief.

‘Was I ever that?’ she asked, and rubbed the collar of my blue coat between thumb and forefinger as if there were something tawdry about it. ‘You seem to have forgotten everything I tried to teach you.’

‘Maybe you weren’t very good at teaching.’

One eyebrow arched as she looked at me dubiously. I’d always envied her that eyebrow trick.

‘You really want me to have to go searching around here for a willow stick with which to beat you?’ she asked.