1. An agreement

Jacks stopped. He'd survived by following his senses, not his thoughts. But now. He was lost,in the spire of mages, as this part of the Inch had been named. Lost. Who knew what kind of future waited, to keep prying minds and fingers away from this deserted area. Dust covered the passage, contoured in dull light thrown by random glow bulbs. None came here. He stopped, his thoughts getting the better of him. He could die from a misstep here. Only a fool would be here. He started, urged on again. Not far, he thought. Not far at all. He had come this far. He knew the way back, for his sins, he always could remember the paths he had taken. Even from decades before. That clicked in his mind, he had come this way before. Long ago. Yet he knew he hadn't, he searched himself. Once he had walked here often. He stopped, looked at a Chute, he had come this way when the Chutes could not be trusted. Trapped in a little tubes travelling in Chutes fast between places you could easily be caught and perhaps killed. Many had risked them, who knew how long Chutes had been used to disappear their cargo. No one used them no, he wondered how they worked. He swiped dust and dirt from the Chute. It had High Valen written on it, the language of yore, forgotten now. Not far from this Chute, he thought and walked on. Left here. Jump, up into that hole in the roof, that's a trap. Yes. Don't use the power, the are foot holds. Up into another dark corridor. Ahead, the are no traps. Stop turn and up these stairs. Glow tubes flicked on, every other step. Stop. Press that stone and a the wall disappeared. There you go. We are here. Walk on. We? his own thoughts thought we?
'No I don't think so. I am here, tell me who you are. '
Go through the next door. This room, it will kill you if you do not, his mind replied.
'And the next?'
Go. Jacks did. He had come this far.
The was no door. Just a blank wall. This time he pressed his hand onto the wall and felt himself pulled through.
He stood in a large room, lowly lit, sleeping as it were. Other rooms laid through archways, he was in an apartment. It looked as if it had been lived in yesterday, it felt alive. He smelt the air, it smelt of a person. People. Food perhaps.
'Why am I here then?'
Nothing.
He stood for a while. Then longer, turning, looking around. He looked at the wall he had come through. Tapestries. He pressed against it, nothing but the hard touch of stone. Cold solid stone. Then he noticed an alcove. A statue on a small pedestal stood in it, facing a small pedestal with nothing upon it, one of a pair. He walked to it, the first time in months knowing that this is what he should do. He pulled out the statue he had brought, the one he had taken from the Undercity so many months before. He set it down on the empty pedestal. It had been what he had needed to do. He had found what he had been looking for, he thought. A weight lifted form his mind.
He browsed the room, re-looking at everything. Relaxed, unfettered able to see to the bone and judge calmly. Wandering from room to room till he had looked everywhere. Perhaps a mages quarters. It did not seem so, for the seemed little save one room that had anything that mages used. He took a seat.
'These are good quarters are they not? Everything is here.' Jacks looked round. Ahead on a plinth a shadow had begun to coalesce.
'Are they?'
'The seats are comfortable. Everything is to hand, a study with everything one could need. But perhaps you are not happy being here.'
'I would like to leave. Alive.'
'You can leave any time you like. Alive as you like, but I warn you, you will not live long. The are those who know what you are. They might not want to let you live free or alive.'
'Show me the way to leave.' He could feel the trace of a shadow turn, Valen of shape, and look at him.
'Fine' A door way appeared. He looked at his old rooms in the Tutheric house of his birth.' That is the way you can leave, but you cannot leave yet.'
'Will you stop me?'
'I will not harm you,' Jacks, standing, opened his own gateway now. It sat and waited for him, He stepped up to it and the air became treacle, and he failed to make headway. Stuck hanging in the air, his full strength only able to barely keep him moving.
'Wait a while. ' A shadow of a figure had formed around where the voice came from. Growing more solid.' Feel inside yourself. What do you find?'
'I feel that,' he gritted and pushed ahead', that I am weaker, What have you done?'
'You are not weaker. No, I would say you are beginning to delve the power you can use, feel it?' Jacks did, so much, not a river, no river came so large, it seemed he could call on what he wished. Yet, he couldn't, something had taken it before he could.
'What are you doing?'
'What any mage of old can do. Tap the power you use, you are a channel. An open channel, if I wished, you would not have any power to use yourself. You are fighting yourself. The more you pull the more you will have to fight to step ahead, let go.' Jacks looked at the figure, it had become solid. Watching and smiling. He placed in his mind the statue beside it, the two were twins. He let some of the power go, the figure faded.