“I hear there is an Inquisitor in Halim and he is interested in you.”

“I have heard that too.”

“Will you kill him?”

“If it proves necessary, I might.”

“I would advise you to run as far and as fast as you can. The Inquisition has great power and I doubt even you can kill all of them.”

“Your concern touches me.”

“It is genuine, believe it or not. I have always liked you.”

“People keep telling me that. It makes me suspicious.”

“No-one made you suspicious. You were born that way.”

There was a strange tension in the air. Rik wondered what it was. They seem to have exhausted whatever business was between them, but she seemed oddly reluctant to go.

“He is really dead?” she asked. There was no need to ask to whom she referred.

“Yes.”

“Then I am finally free.”

“If that’s what his death means to you then yes.”

“I find myself not sure what to do now. I have lived in his shadow for so long.”

Rik thought of his own life, the dead mother he had never known, his abandonment, his life in the orphanage and as a soldier, his confrontations with Malkior. “We both have,” he said at last. “We’ve both lived in his shadow.”

“I will bid you farewell,” she said, and stepped back. The shadows extended to greet her, and he was aware of the sensation of reality tearing. A moment later the darkness folded in on itself and she was gone. He waited for a second to be sure that no attack was coming and then began to edge away towards the exit.

He wondered if he would ever see her again.

Briefly Tamara fell through a cold airless place in which alien things waited. She stepped from the shadows and into the small room she had taken overlooking the old necromantic lab. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs then let out a long sigh of relief.

A quick glance around told her that no-one waited in ambush. None of her wards had been disturbed.

She felt weak at the knees. She was not sure whether it was from emotional distress or the toll that shadow-walking always took from her. The greatest of efforts sent stumbling across the room to slump down in the single chair.

Elation, fear and relief fought a three way battle in her mind. Her father was dead. At long last the old monster was gone. She was free of him, and his schemes, free of the ancient evil he represented.

Carved ikons left by the previous occupants leered down at her mockingly, and she reminded herself just how false their promise of salvation was. This world was in the grip of the Shadow. Evil was the true lord of the universe and there was no escape from that. Her father might be gone, but there were others like him, and worse things waiting to take his place.

How odd, she thought, that one so deadly should meet his fate at the hands of a mere youth, one who had not possessed a thousandth of his knowledge. It seemed that Malkior had forgotten his own lessons in the end. He had never tired of telling her that even the most expert swordsman can be killed by a fool that gets lucky.

Rik was no fool though. He was calm and calculating and there was something quite chilling about him that had not been there only a few months ago. She supposed the human part of him that was responsible for that. He had their trick of changing very quickly, of growing and learning almost before your eyes.