Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  Razim hadn’t moved. Using my arms for support, I pulled myself into a crouch in front of him. I kept my eyes on his face as I picked up the bottle of mohol, glancing down only long enough to pour a good deal of it into the handkerchief. Then, in the same motion I would use to smash a fly between my palms, I clapped one hand behind his head and the cloth over his nose and mouth, holding tight.

  I wasn’t sure if he ever awoke. He jerked once as if trying to respond but then slumped more heavily than before. I let his head down slowly, so as not to make a thump.

  For half a second, I considered cutting his throat with the knife. But I didn’t know if mohol would keep him under for that, and if I fumbled it he might wake up screaming, or simply thrash in his sleep, and then I would be discovered. Besides, I’d already seen too much blood tonight. I’d never killed anyone or anything, never mind someone I’d tried to pretend was my brother for my entire life. Someone whom I’d both played tricks on and laughed with, who’d both pulled my hair and once held my hand all the way back to the villa when I’d skinned my knee running through the jungle. I almost couldn’t recognize this hardened, vicious side of myself. She was new, born just hours before from fire and blood.

  Moving quietly and carefully, I heaped my skirt and some feed sacks under the blanket in the approximate shape of a body. If anyone peeked in, I hoped the scene would look as before: both of us asleep, me under the blanket. Then I crept to the front corner of the wagon, farthest from the light of the fire and the laced-up exit at the back.

  Slicing the hide covering was slower, but also quieter than I expected. It was under tension too, fitted tightly to the arching frame over the wagon bed. It parted with only a whisper but required a lot of pressure. If my hands weren’t already in agony, they would have been by the time I cut a slit big enough for my shoulders to slip through.

  The night air was fresh, cool, and alive, insects buzzing loud enough to mask any sound I made. My arms shook as I used all my strength to silently lower myself to the ground alongside one of the front wheels. Thank the gods we were still in the coastal forest, not exposed among the frequent expanses of sandy hills that were farther north and inland. It took all I had of a different kind of strength not to bolt through the shadows and into the surrounding trees, where I would find cover but no doubt crash around loud enough to rouse someone.

  Not that I could even hope for Nyaren to be asleep. Someone had been feeding the fire.

  No, I needed to move without dead twigs snapping underfoot or rustling underbrush, and that meant following the narrow road we were traveling. The way we’d been heading was the easiest route, since the fire was behind the wagon.

  I sent a silent prayer to Heshara to keep me hidden, touched the horse’s neck as I passed so as not to startle it, and then began to move faster. My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it against my eardrums. Once the wagon and the fire were a torch’s glow behind me, I broke into a loping run, landing on the balls of my feet first, so my steps wouldn’t pound.

  I ran like that for as long as my lungs held out, until the arches of my feet cramped, my calves burned, my tongue was parched, and I was gasping too noisily for comfort. Only then did I duck off the road and make my way into the trees, the firelight long swallowed by the darkness of the woods behind me. The air grew heavier and humid under the canopy, muffling any noise I made and singing with life. Unfortunately, my surroundings also felt alive. I groped my way forward with each step, one arm stretched out and down to gently part the ferns and other undergrowth, the other held up in front of my face to part the vines and spiderwebs.

  So many spiderwebs. I hated spiders. Several times something crawled along my arms or shoulders, and I hastily batted it away.

  And there were creeping things other than spiders. Something large danced across my ankle once, maybe a snake or a giant centipede.

  I took deep breaths and focused on stepping carefully, not on my skin crawling. Besides, how could I let insects affect me, after what I’d just been through? No, don’t think about that. But it was too late. My eyes started to swim, blurring the looming shapes of the forest around me, as if it wasn’t hard enough to see already. I gritted my teeth and dashed away my tears. You can cry later. Right now you have to move. That was what my mother would tell me to do. I could practically hear her voice in my head:

  Move, Kamai.

  Eventually, it wasn’t tears that made my eyes blur. And nothing could keep my eyelids from drooping, not creeping things or even fear of pursuit. It was the lingering effect of the mohol, or likely that I was dead exhausted. I had to stop. Through the shadows up ahead, I spotted a downed tree, covered in moss. I could lie on the other side of the trunk, tuck myself out of view of anyone coming this way, and sleep. I wished I could lie on top to keep off the ground, but then I might as well serve myself up on a platter for whoever came along. Better the bugs found me.

  Or so I thought.

  Low to the ground, my foot kicked into something without much resistance, like a spiderweb. But unlike a spiderweb, it came alive and attacked me as soon as it broke apart. Within seconds, whatever I’d disturbed swarmed up my foot, and then my legs.

  Ants. I’d kicked a tunnel.

  It wasn’t a tunnel made of dirt. I’d seen them moving at dusk through the forest ringing our villa, creating walls out of their own warriors’ bodies to move their unhatched young safely within. The whole colony would form a miniature black river winding over the sand and through the trees, often farther than my eye could trace. The warriors linked with their jaws outward, so every bit of the living structure literally had teeth. I’d once poked one with a stick just for fun, and had to drop the stick when the warriors latched on, breaking formation to funnel up it in a ferocious storm.

  Now my body was the stick, and in seconds I was covered in ants. Pinching, biting, stinging ants. My skin burned like fire.

  I couldn’t help it: I screamed. It didn’t make me feel any better. Nor did running in circles and beating at my skin. I screamed again as the ants began savaging my neck and face.

  If a light hadn’t flared in the trees behind me, I may have just collapsed right there and succumbed to death. Instead, I ran for the light, not caring who it was. It was toward the road, but in the opposite direction of the wagon, at least. Even so, it could have been Razim with a torch and I still would have run to him and pleaded for help, such was the pain.

  It wasn’t Razim or Nyaren. But the sight of half a dozen men carrying lanterns and swords, bare steel glinting in the darkness, was enough to make me pause.

  I dropped to the sandy ground behind some bushes, ignoring the pain as best I could, trying not to make any noise, even though I wanted to keep screaming. If I had managed the agony of seeing my mother killed in silence, I could do this. I stuffed my fist in my mouth and bit down on it hard enough to draw blood, while I used my other hand to swipe at my face and neck. Nothing helped. I was burning to death, like I almost had in the villa. And yet these men might complete the job if I didn’t keep quiet.

  “Over there!” said a voice. “I heard rustling.”

  “Could be an ambush by whoever started the fire. That lad had a strange look about him; he could have been lying.”

  “No, a girl was screaming.” A feminine voice. They weren’t all men. I almost cried out and gave myself away then, though I wasn’t sure why. A woman was just as capable of deceit as a man. Maybe it was that I wanted to hear a different woman’s voice—my mother’s—so very badly. This voice sounded younger, rising to call, “Whoever it is, don’t be afraid. We’re only looking for someone—a girl, to help her. Jidras Numa sent us from the capital to find his daughter, Kamai Nuala. We’re here to bring her to him.”

  Go to your father … it’s the only place that will be safe. Between my mother’s urgent instructions and the use of my father’s name, I doubted this was a trick. It was enough for me, at least, to leap up and fling myself right into the middle of them.

  Al
l my pain and fear came pouring out of me in the form of wailing and waving arms. “Ants, ants, get them off me!”

  For a second, they looked startled, like I was a ghost who had come winging out of the night. Then they all plunged into action. In a matter of seconds, swords were dropped, several men were batting at my arms and legs and hair, and the woman was tearing at the ties on my bodice to loosen it. Normally, I would have shied away in horror, but at the moment I was happy to help her undo them.

  “Ranta’s tits, they’re all over her,” one man exclaimed. “Ouch! One bit me.”

  “Think how bad it must be for her! Now, watch your language, give me your canteens—and don’t look,” the woman barked at the others. Awkwardly, a couple of men sidled forward with their eyes averted, holding out their offerings, as she dropped my bodice down around my shoulders.

  The woman took the canteens from them and unceremoniously dumped them over my head, splashing water over my face, neck, and chest, washing most of the ants away. The rest she carefully picked away as she spotted them, crushing them between her fingers. I helped as best I could. My usually pale skin, wet in the warm glow of lantern light, was angry red and covered in welts.

  “You must be Kamai?” the woman murmured. All I could do was give her a shuddering nod. “You have his nose,” she said.

  Once the top half of me was clear, the woman tugged my bodice up to cover me, passed the ties into my hands, and hoisted my slip. “Let me get your legs.” More splashing of water, more light pinches of her fingertips against my thighs and calves. I didn’t feel the slightest bit awkward, not even when I noticed one of the men grinning at the sight of the woman down on her knees in front of me, half under my dark shift with a lantern lighting it up from within. I just thought he was an idiot.

  “Need any help?” he asked, his tone innocent. I glared, but my watery eyes probably ruined the effect.

  “Shut it,” the woman snapped, and his grin turned sheepish.

  When she finally pulled away, she had to smooth down her short brown hair—mussed by my skirt. She looked to be in her early twenties, and while her jaw was square, her nose slightly crooked, and her brown cheeks chapped by the sun, she suddenly looked like the loveliest person in the whole of Eopia to me. “All right?” she asked.

  I almost wanted to laugh and say, No, I’m not all right, but at least ants are no longer eating me alive. Instead, I started crying huge, breathless sobs. They shook my entire body.

  “There, there, come on, then.” The young woman patted me awkwardly. The men were suddenly scouting the trees, shuffling their feet, or checking their swords, happy to leave the crying girl to a woman. Not that she looked or acted a whole lot like any woman I’d ever met—tall, no curves or softness to speak of, all lean muscle and martial movements. I’d heard of women, even seen a few, who were guards or soldiers and acted more like men, but never one who seemed to be giving the orders. “Let’s get you to the carriage and to your father,” she said.

  “Carriage? Where—?”

  She pointed through the trees. “It’s right over there, in the road. I’m Nikha, head of your father’s household guard, and he sent us when he got word of … well…”

  Never mind the fact that she was a woman, she seemed remarkably young to be in charge, especially of a bunch of older men, but I didn’t have long to consider it. My eyes were swimming again. “My mother,” I said, my voice breaking.

  Nikha’s eyes grew grim. “We’re not sure what happened, only that your father received a missive that his daughter, one Kamai Nuala, was in danger. Never mind that none of us were aware he had a daughter. When we arrived at the location he gave us, the place was embers. You’re some ways away from there, in the opposite direction of the capital, so we’re lucky we found you. We were about to turn around. We only thought you might have gone this way by accident, if you hadn’t … if you weren’t…”

  If I weren’t embers like everything else.

  I suddenly remembered Razim, the danger that was still out there. “Did you see a covered wagon?”

  She must have heard the fear in my voice because her gaze sharpened. The others were looking my way now too. “Yes, we passed one, with a man dead drunk in the back and another dousing his fire. He seemed suspicious but said he’d seen no sign of a lone girl, or even a rider. We carried on a bit farther because we didn’t like the look of him, and that’s when we heard your scream.”

  “He’s lying. I think they helped start the fire, though there were lots of other … men … too”—I didn’t want to say soldiers—“and then the two of them kidnapped me. I was in the wagon, but I ran.”

  Swords were immediately in hand again. “Maybe a few of us should go look for them,” one of the men said darkly.

  Nikha frowned. “No. They’re probably long gone, and we need to get her back. They’re not our business.” She turned to me. “Do you know who they were?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t tell them that Razim was supposedly my stepbrother, because I would have had to explain why he was kidnapping me, and that would lead to the Twilight Guild—and too many dangerous secrets. “My mother might have known, but she … she didn’t make it out of the house.” Luckily, my choked voice disguised the rage and disgust in what I said next. “I don’t think my stepbrother did, either.” Which was true, in a sense. He was no longer my stepbrother, in pretend or practice or otherwise. “And Hallan, my stepfather … I heard one of the attackers say he was dead.”

  Nikha put her hand on my shoulder. “A carriage was ambushed between your villa and the capital, both the driver and passenger pulled to the side of the road and beheaded. I think the passenger was Hallan Lizier. I’m sorry.”

  Beheaded. Hallan’s deep voice, his sharp eyes, witty mouth—all severed from the rest of him. I knew he was dead, but to hear how made bile rise in my throat. “Why?” I cried, even though I probably knew more than she did—at least who had done it. The Twilight Guild.

  “I think your father will be able to explain better than I can,” she said hesitantly. “Let’s get you home.”

  Home. My home was ash, but I nodded anyway.

  “They don’t”—I had to swallow—“those two men in the wagon, they don’t know where we’re going, right?”

  “No. The man asked who we worked for, but I told him it was none of his business. You’ll be safe.”

  That wouldn’t necessarily stop Razim or the Twilight Guild from figuring out where I’d gone. My mother said the guild had members tucked everywhere, from the poorest alleyways up to the king’s court. Safe. The word felt as hollow as home.

  * * *

  Sleep came despite my burning skin and the nickering of the horses, and most especially despite the worry that, even though Razim’s wagon was indeed gone, he would somehow come after me. My head tipped slowly, dropping onto Nikha’s arm. I couldn’t help it, and she was already asleep anyway, so I didn’t think she would mind.

  Nikha’s soul was surprisingly expansive. I already knew that a person’s nehym didn’t often match their body in the waking world, but the difference here was more drastic than usual. Nikha wasn’t what I would have called beautiful, but her soul was. It was like a tree house, wooden floors winding through different levels and passages, smooth branches twining the walls in intricate patterns. The entirety of it glowed like polished furniture in firelight.

  I should have just left it and drifted into dreams. Instead, I looked around, my anger and despair building.

  It was beautiful, but it was not my mother’s. My mother should have been the one to tend my wounds. Hers should have been the shoulder I leaned upon. This should have been her soul. Her nehym was the closest thing I had to a nehym of my own, and now I would never see it again. Those sandstone walls were a greater loss to me than those we had shared in the waking world. It felt like a physical pain in my chest, enough to nearly double me over. I truly was no better than an empty shell—what I had always feared.

  I had lost everyt
hing. I only had a father’s name. My mother had said neither of us would likely be pleased to meet each other, so why go to him? I wasn’t even sure why I’d bothered escaping, other than to spite Razim. Spite was all I had left to fill me.

  The black door appeared then, as if summoned by my dark mood, drawing the color and warmth and gleam from the wooden wall. I laughed at the perfect timing.

  And why not? I thought. What did I have to lose? My mother had told me never to open it, but now she was dead, and I had nothing else. A small, petty part of me was furious at her for dying and wanted to get back at her, even if it killed me. Maybe especially if it killed me.

  Besides, how could something that had given me a rose petal be that dangerous?

  Perhaps if I’d had my own nehym to give me somewhere to go as I slept … Perhaps if my mother weren’t dead … Perhaps if she had told me what was hidden behind the door …

  Perhaps then I wouldn’t have opened it.

  But I took the sleek, warm doorknob in my hand and turned it. So much hinging on something so small. The door opened soundlessly, though I could feel the density of its heavy black material—was it wood or stone or something else?—pushing against me, as if it had been waiting for my touch.

  My mother’s voice came back to me: It wants the door to open.

  It.

  Like a large animal’s head nudging against the hand of a child, the power was startling, unbalancing, its friendliness dubious. Uncertainty and fear flickered through me like a candle flame sparking back to life, but it was too late. The door swung wide, and the way stood open.