The Door Before

by N. D. Wilson

  “Well, haven’t you just made a flour-cake fool of yourself?”

  Hyacinth looked back up at the log. Where she had just been sitting, a small, thick-bodied man was now standing. He had round cheeks and a round nose and thick hair bushing straight up from his skull like a hair volcano, frozen in mid-eruption.

  “Do you have any knowledge of the beasts at all, or are you daft clear through your girlie skull?”

  “Excuse me?” Hyacinth shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Truth from the thieftess.” He laughed. “How can you not know raggants but find your way here? This island has no pilgrims but those seeking the beasties. Have you even brought a sack? Where’s your coracle?”

  “I’m not here to steal an animal,” Hyacinth said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what a coracle is, and I didn’t bring a sack.” She faced the little man, still holding Squid. “They’re called raggants? Is that what you said?”

  The man cocked his head and raised an eyebrow thicker than any caterpillar she had ever seen. Then he gathered the hair on top of his head and pulled it straight out on both sides. When he let go of it, the hair stayed, as stiff as wire.

  “Indeed. Raggant is what I said because raggant is what they be. Is the isle called for the beasts or the beasts for the isle?” He shrugged. “No faerie could say and not be lying. But you stand on the soil of Raggant Isle, so named for as long as any creature knows, and if you are not here to steal a beast, then I would love to hear whatever tale you may care to tell to explain you standing here in plain sight of all eyes present. True or false, tell it how you like. I’ve been here nine and a half moons and have heard no voice but my own and the songs of the beasties when they’re calling up the fish.”

  When he finished, he shoved his thick fingers into his pockets and stared at Hyacinth.

  She set Squid down on the ferns and glanced around to be sure that he was in no danger. Then she focused her attention back on the man above her.

  “My name is Hyacinth,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Oh, ho,” the little man said. “You’re quick to pry. I’ll answer to Kibs if your voice needs a handle, but I’ll tell you no more except to say that I belong to Mound Nine of Glaston, and the Central Committee of Faeren currently has no desire for my presence. Thus, I have been appointed ragherd of this rumpus, and guardian of this isle.” He snorted. “Not that they need herding, nor the isle guarding. But the beasties tolerate me.”

  “Kibs,” Hyacinth said. “Very nice to meet you. I’m here partly by accident and partly because I was trying to escape.”

  “Escape what?” Kibs asked. “From whither and why?”

  Hyacinth laughed.

  “And how?” Kibs added. His face was quite serious.

  “First, from my home,” Hyacinth said, erasing her laughter. She almost mentioned Mordecai and Caleb and then thought better of it. One thing at a time. “Through a doorway in a tree. And then through an actual door I found hanging on a wall. I was running from an awful woman who would have killed me.”

  Kibs put his hands behind his back and leaned forward, staring into Hyacinth’s eyes.

  “A doorway in a tree?” He pursed his lips. “A doorway of your own spellcraft? And another door that led you here? If you are a witch, then we are foes, not friends, and your destruction will be swift.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and cracked his lumpy knuckles.

  “No spells,” Hyacinth said quickly. “Not a witch. Not at all. I was running from a witch.”

  “Were those her ravens?” Kibs asked.

  “Maybe,” Hyacinth said. “Probably. I honestly don’t know. Will you answer a question? What did you do to get sent here? You must have done something if your people didn’t want you around.”

  Kibs stared at her, silent. Then he puffed his cheeks out and vanished.

  “Whoa,” Hyacinth said, taking a step back, and then a thunderous blow to her ribs sent her tumbling through the brush.

  “Who are you to question me?” Kibs screamed. “A girl, a lassie, a brat, a human!”

  Gasping, Hyacinth sat up, but the little man was still hidden.

  “If you never leave this island, who will miss you?” Kibs asked. “Will your mother grieve? I want your mother to grieve!”

  “Faerie!” Mordecai crashed through the brush and stood in front of the log. Caleb followed him but hurried to help Hyacinth up.

  All around, the raggants quietly disappeared. She couldn’t see Kibs anywhere, but Mordecai was focused on something.

  “Ooh, hoo!” Kibs laughed. “A game, a game. Here’s some real sport! Catch me if you can, boyo!”

  Mordecai’s hand flamed, sprouting a vine behind it like a whip, and Kibs suddenly appeared, mouth open, fat cheeks flushed, eyes wide.

  “Wait,” Kibs said, raising both hands. “Please let me explain.”

  “Come here, faerie,” Mordecai said. “You owe me loyalty.”

  “I didn’t know she was with a green. I couldn’t know. She didn’t say.”

  “Does it matter?” Mordecai asked. “I said come, faerie. Speak to me eye to eye.”

  Hyacinth rubbed the spot on her ribs. Nothing broken, but she would have a mighty bruise.

  Kibs was shuffling toward Mordecai, and his eyes were flashing with fury and worry, first one, then the other. Hyacinth could tell that he was deciding whether to fight.

  But before the faerie could make up his mind, Mordecai snapped the vine fire whip that had been dripping from his arm, and a cage of green and purple fire appeared in the air around a very surprised Kibs.

  Mordecai looked back at Caleb and grinned.

  “Maybe,” Caleb said. “But he is hardly as powerful as the witch-queen. Still, let him test it.”

  “Witch-queen?” Kibs asked. “The witch-queen? Nimroth’s daughter?”

  “The same,” Mordecai said. “Now, foolish faerie, let us see your full strength. Every drop of wrath you can muster. Break free of this cage and I’ll forget that you disrespected a green man.”

  Kibs didn’t have to be told twice. In a blur of smoke and wind and fire, he attacked the fiery vines above and around him.

  The greens grew brighter, the purples deeper, but the faerie achieved nothing. Finally, panting and exhausted, Kibs collapsed in the center of his cage.

  “If you were Nimiane of Endor,” Mordecai said, “what would you do?”

  “I would drink the life from the very ground,” Kibs said. “I would summon the demons in my veins, and I would consume this cage and these trees and every living creature on this island.”

  “Try,” Mordecai said.

  Kibs rolled onto his side and glared at him.

  “You’ve already been banished,” Mordecai said. “Drink life from the ground and hurl it at me. I am Mordecai Westmore, the seventh son of Amram Iothric, and I tell you truly, there I will hold you guilty for it. You will be helping me.”

  “That is the path of darkness,” Kibs said. “I wandered old ways through many worlds, breaking oaths and treaties and terrifying humans, but I have never set my feet on the paths of darkness.”

  “Sounds pretty dark to me,” Hyacinth said.

  Kibs wasn’t listening. He jumped up and extended his hands toward the ground within his cage. The ferns and moss beneath his feet shriveled into ash, and he hurled every drop of the life he’d gathered at the fiery vines around him.

  They brightened but didn’t bend.

  The faerie fell onto the ashen ground and began to cry.

  “It works,” Mordecai said, looking at his brother.

  “It holds a breeze,” Caleb said. “But it must hold a storm.”

  Mordecai stepped forward and gripped the nearest fiery vine. The cage collapsed at his touch.

  “How?” Kibs asked, sitting up. “Your soul itself was in that fire.”

  “Yes,” Mordecai said, and his voice was weary. “My life. My strength turned inside out—the vine roots inward, drinking what is enclosed, stre
ngthening the whole. The attack is swallowed, the cage strengthened. Now apologize to the girl.”

  “The girl?” Hyacinth asked. “Excuse me?”

  Mordecai smiled.

  Kibs stumbled all the way over to her. The top of his head was barely higher than her waist.

  “Hyacinth,” he said, bowing. “Flower of mankind. Forgive my grievous and violent trespass.”

  Hyacinth wasn’t sure if she was being mocked.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, and she looked at Caleb. “Now what are we doing?”

  “We are going to trap the witch,” Caleb said.

  “We’re going to try,” Mordecai added.

  “You’re going to die,” Kibs said. “I swear it by all of my finest meals.”

  Caleb and Mordecai both grimaced.

  “You would need a place of complete death,” Kibs said. “Dry of life. As barren as the moon. If you trap the queen with her Blackstar blood in the way you just trapped me, she will drink life from all around, not just from within the cage. If there is life anywhere within her reach, she will draw on it. If there is enough life, she will draw on it until she can break your viny soul bonds. Nimroth’s spawn cannot and will not die.”

  “We know,” Caleb said. “But she can be bound and buried and forgotten.”

  “Forgotten?” Kibs snorted at the foolishness of the word. “Nimiane will never be forgotten.”

  “You know,” Mordecai said, looking at Caleb, “there’s only one place we can do this.”

  Caleb nodded. “Sadly.”

  “Where?” Hyacinth asked. “The moon?”

  “Might as well be,” Caleb said. “There is no land so dead as the land in old Endor. Nimroth’s first city.”

  Kibs laughed. “Walk in that land and you have died already.”

  Mordecai faced the faerie, crossing his arms.

  “Faerie,” he said. “Where does your loyalty lie?”

  Irritated, Kibs pushed his wiry hair into a spike off the back of his head.

  “I am loyal to my family.” Kibs was practically a monotone, like a schoolboy droning off a memorized and disliked answer. “To the faeren of my mound. To their allies, and to the Central Committee of my race, and abide by all the treaties and conventions and manuals by them issued and adopted.”

  “Good answer,” Mordecai said. “What of the green bloods?”

  Kibs sniffed. “My mound swore loyalty to the green man, Amram Iothric,” he muttered.

  “And?” Caleb asked.

  “And his blood,” Kibs answered.

  “Am I his blood?” Mordecai asked.

  Kibs squinted at him, then sniffed again. “You are.”

  “Then I require your service,” Mordecai said. “Your banishment is waived and your crimes forgiven. You will guide us on the old roads of your people, wherever we may need to go.”

  “To Endor?” Kibs sighed. “I would rather remain with the rumpus of raggants on this island for all eternity.”

  Mordecai laughed.

  “Your rathering doesn’t matter,” Caleb said. “Load a pack. We can’t afford to wait long.”

  The faerie lived in a small stone hut on the other side of the island. The roof was shaggy sod, the floor was dirt, and so was the back wall. As it turned out, he didn’t have much to pack. He grabbed a small block of old cheese, a long knife, and a knobby stick.

  “All right,” Kibs said. “Let’s see if we can get through.”

  Approaching the back wall, he thumped the dirt with the stick and then traced the outline of a door. After a moment he thumped the dirt again.

  “There might not be anyone there,” Kibs said. “No one comes through the banishment mounds unless they’re dropping off food.”

  Mordecai stepped forward and raised his fiery palm.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Kibs said. “They’ll take it personally.”

  “Fine by me,” Mordecai said, and he banged on the dirt, shaking it like a drum.

  “Kibs!” a muffled voice shouted. “Cease!”

  Mordecai didn’t cease.

  And then the dirt vanished, opening into a many-sided room with a stone floor and a dirt roof, held up with interwoven roots.

  Three faeren stood in the doorway, two slight and one stout and ruddy, all holding cudgels.

  “Thank you,” Mordecai said, and he stepped forward, beckoning Hyacinth and Caleb to follow him.

  “Excuse me!” the stout faerie bellowed. “No humans in the mounds.”

  “I told them not to,” Kibs said. “I did. I swear it.”

  “I am a green blood,” Mordecai said. “Pauper son of the fallen Amram Iothric. You owe me your allegiance.”

  All three of the faeren puffed out their cheeks and vanished, at least to Hyacinth’s eyes, and she immediately braced for an attack.

  “I can still see you,” Mordecai said. “As you well know. Resist me, and I will strike you down. And if you survive, I will charge you before the Central Committee.”

  The faeren reappeared, one at a time.

  “What do you want?” the stout one asked.

  “Passage,” Mordecai said. “For myself, my brother, my friend, and my guide.”

  Hyacinth wasn’t sure if she should interrupt. Did she need to travel with Mordecai into the witch’s dead land?

  “Guide?” the stout one said. “I see no guide.”

  “Kibs,” Mordecai answered. “Against his will, he has been pressed into my service.”

  “I don’t know.” The faerie shook his head.

  “You don’t need to know,” Caleb answered, and together, he and Mordecai pushed forward.

  “Hold on,” Hyacinth said. “I could wait here, couldn’t I? You don’t need me.”

  “We do need you,” Mordecai said. “And you shouldn’t stay with them without me. They owe you no loyalty, and they never pay what they don’t owe.”

  The faeren parted, and Hyacinth hurried forward, crossing through the dirt door into the cool room on Mordecai’s heels.

  Kibs hesitated at the threshold, clearly unsure of what was about to happen to him.

  “Where are you traveling?” the stout faerie asked.

  “Where I like,” Mordecai said. “And unquestioned, as is my right.” He turned slowly, looking at the many dirt-filled doorways around the room. “Kibs?”

  The faerie frantically mussed his hair, held his breath, and then stepped inside. Relieved, he exhaled, sputtering his lips.

  “When you’re ready,” Mordecai said, “choose our first door.”

  LAWRENCE WAS RESTING ON his side in a small white hospital bed, watching the sun set over a huge lake. The window beside his bed was tall and cut into a thick stone wall. Thin white curtains had been pulled wide, and the window had been opened a little to let in the breeze.

  He didn’t know where he was, but it was beautiful. And it was hard to fully sleep. Every time his mind slipped away, he thought he heard a scream or a blast or he saw the beams falling. Sometimes the vision of Thor smashing a monster was waiting for him right behind his eyelids, and he would jerk in the bed and his eyes would fly open and the stitched-up gash on his head would ache and his mother would lean forward in her chair and touch him, whispering her love or singing softly, promising him that she was there and that everything would be all right.

  His mother was covered with dust and black pasty patches where dust had mixed with blood. The rest of the beds in the high-ceilinged room were full, and doctors and nurses moved from one to the next.

  “Gertrude Smith?” a nurse asked. “They are ready for you.”

  Lawrence twisted in his bed to see the nurse. The medicine he’d been given made her a little blurry, but she looked nice. And clean.

  Trudie stood up, and Lawrence sat up quickly.

  “I want to come,” Lawrence said. “Please. I’m fine. It was just stitches.”

  “No,” Trudie said. “Not for this. Stay and try to sleep.” His mother bent and kissed his head. “And then pray. Pray
for your sister.” She didn’t need to say which one.

  Lawrence watched his weary mother leave, walking slowly between rows of beds. When she had gone, he lay back down and checked on the sun.

  It was nothing but an afterglow now, and the light on the lake was vanishing.

  As his eyes drooped, this time he was no longer in the battle in the hallway. He was with his sister.

  —

  TRUDIE WAS ESCORTED INTO a lush chamber by a man in formal dress, who also happened to be wearing a gun. The floor was gleaming wood. The walls were lined with portraits, and crystal chandeliers hung from polished black beams. Albert and Thor were both standing in the center of the room, facing a long, curving marble table. Behind the table, men and women—all with some degree of white hair and sun-aged skin—sat like statues.

  Albert had his right arm in a sling, and Thor had his head wrapped with bandages and half of his beard burned off. Both had extensive burns on their clothes.

  A younger man stood at the end of the table with his arms behind his back. He watched as Trudie hurried forward to her husband and slipped her arm under his.

  “How’s L?” he whispered.

  “Fine,” Trudie answered. “Worried.”

  Albert nodded.

  The young man at the end of the table cleared his throat. “The Sages of the Order of Brendan have reached a decision in the case of Hyacinth Smith.”

  Trudie licked her dusty lips and waited.

  “The girl, daughter of Albert and Gertrude Smith, opened ways and used them for travel, did she not?”

  Albert nodded. “She did, but she had no knowledge that what she was doing was—”

  The man interrupted him. “Forces unknown entered this estate in violence due to her actions, did they not?”

  Albert nodded grimly.

  Trudie looked down the length of the table, moving from gray-haired man to gray-haired woman, hoping to see some pity. Some flicker of understanding.

  Every eye was hard. Every jaw was set.

  “This intrusion was boldly repelled with great injury, and at the cost of seven lives thus far. Many more, including the life of this Order’s Avengel, Robert Boone, remain in peril from their grievous wounds. The Room of Ways has been sealed and, until a greater force can be assembled, lost. Also, the former home of Isaac Smith, and current home of Albert and Trudie Smith, where the first ways were opened, shall henceforth be forbidden ground until sufficient strength can be mustered to search and cleanse the premises.”