Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  No, I’d rather kill them all. Starting with him.

  I wondered if assassin was a possible profession.

  * * *

  Jidras didn’t reprimand me later that evening, despite my hope that my behavior would force a confrontation. He only sent a servant up to my third-floor room with my supper, to tell me I was to eat alone and go to bed early if I couldn’t keep a civil tongue.

  I’d wanted to yell a message back to him, but what I was about to do would be more satisfying than that. And so I sat on my bed and waited.

  My room was bearable. I had a comfortable four-poster bed, with white gauze netting strung between the carved columns to block insects. It was the pink that I minded: pink silk bedding, pink-painted walls, a pink floral rug leading to a pink-curtained window.

  This hadn’t been my room at the start. In those first couple of weeks, I’d stayed in a guest room in tones of brown and dark blue on the second floor, next to the library, which I much preferred. Meanwhile, Jidras had this room decorated for me—or rather, for someone he imagined was me. I felt spoiled because I could have had nothing—or could’ve been dead—but he’d designed it for the most prim and proper sort of girl, proving that he had no idea who I really was, and that he didn’t care to know. Perhaps he thought he could eventually make me into the young lady he thought I should be.

  Despite the pink, I had no problem retiring early in my room. I was going to do what my mother had taught me to do.

  I was going to soulwalk.

  All I had to do was wait until the servants went to bed and the house was quiet before tiptoeing to their doors. Their rooms were small enough that if I fell asleep leaning up against the wall nearby, I would next open my eyes inside their nehyms. I couldn’t reach Jidras’s soul like this—his master bedroom was too large—but despite the fact that I might have learned something from him, I didn’t really want to be in his nehym anyway.

  I was going to go back into the servants’ nehyms and try practicing this time. Prying out secrets, even if they weren’t those I wished to learn. I didn’t quite know how to do it, but the day would soon come—at least I hoped it would—when I would need to know.

  I flopped back on my bed to pass the time, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to stare at the candlelit pink of my room.

  And the next thing I knew, I was standing in the dark clearing, my halfway point between the waking world and dreams. I had fallen asleep, faster than if I had downed a vial of sleeping tonic. I glanced around in surprise, but then my eyes locked on to something. My entire body tensed, ready to run.

  The black door was there, darker than anything else in my shadowy surroundings. I didn’t need much light to see it was open.

  I spun in a circle, actually checking that this was the same clearing. It was. This shouldn’t have been possible. And yet the door had followed me here—to nowhere, really. All this time I’d thought I had to be in someone’s nehym to see it.

  It had never appeared here before. So why now?

  Probably, because I’d opened it. I’d let whatever was in there into me. My mother said my soul was hidden, and so maybe this clearing was the closest thing I had to a nehym, the nearest the door could get to finding my deepest self.

  When I looked at the door again, my breath caught.

  There was more than one rose. They were identical and evenly spaced, leading away from the threshold, vanishing into the yawning darkness within.

  Whatever was in there seemed to want me to follow.

  My fingers dug into my thighs through my skirt. I was wearing one of my dresses that had burned with the villa: black and beige silk panels, with wide, embroidered sleeves and a scooping neckline. Wearing clothes that were mine, even if they didn’t really exist anymore, gave me courage. This clearing was my place, as empty as it was. The black door was my mistake. And I was going to find out, once and for all, what I had done. I would follow the roses to their end, to whatever was waiting.

  I tried to ignore the part of myself that wanted to follow. That wanted to see the dark end of this, if only to know what it held.

  My feet carried me hesitantly over the murky ground. My clearing may have been dim, but at least there was some light. Behind the door was only darkness so complete, it was like its own substance, swallowing the trail of roses.

  When my thin slipper touched down on the perfectly smooth material of the threshold, I almost jerked away. Just like every other time I had felt the door, the black stone there wasn’t cold, but warm through my slipper. Alive, somehow. I almost expected the floor to shift underfoot, to stir at my touch, as if I were treading on the back of a sleeping beast.

  I took another step, bringing myself fully inside the door for the first time. The air felt different—neither chilly nor warm, but thicker, like I was slipping behind a veil. Without taking my eyes off the darkness, I bent to pick up the first rose. It felt normal against my fingers. Cool, smooth stem, skin-soft petals. Like a rose in the waking world.

  Nothing moved in the black ahead. I straightened and exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  That was when the door slammed shut behind me, plunging me into total darkness.

  8

  IMMOVABLE NIGHTMARES

  I froze. I should have been looking behind, not forward. I should have tried to prop open the door beforehand. I should have—

  Kamai …

  The darkness spoke to me in that night-breeze voice I’d tried so hard to forget. My thoughts fell still. And then all I could hear were my own panicked breaths and something nearly like a whimper escaping my lips. A whisper of air tickled over my skin, prickling my neck and scalp. I squeezed the rose so hard a thorn pierced my finger. With a gasp, I let it go.

  I almost gasped again, because as soon as I dropped the rose, light flared overhead. I spun around and shielded my eyes. The light wasn’t intense, but it was powerful in contrast to what had come before.

  A long dark hallway stretched before me, lit by dangling, ornately patterned black orbs glowing in red and indigo. I couldn’t tell what the lamps were made of, or even what held them suspended. When I stared, their silhouetted patterns—different for each orb—changed. Some recalled thorny rose branches shifting in front of an illuminated window at night, others swirling clouds across a strange moon. The colorful luminosity blended down the hallway, neither cold nor warm, simply unearthly, and cast detailed shadows on otherwise bare, smooth black surfaces. The walls and floor seemed to writhe slowly. Or breathe.

  I couldn’t help thinking it was beautiful, if eerie. More roses led the way down the hall.

  I glanced behind me at the door. The way out. It was shut so tightly I could barely see the seams. I knew it wouldn’t open, even though I tried anyway.

  I wondered what would happen if I never escaped, never awoke. Would my body simply waste away, unable to nourish itself? Would Jidras think some mysterious illness had befallen me, since he didn’t know I was a soulwalker? Would he send for a priest or priestess of Heshara? Would he even care?

  I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. I didn’t care if he didn’t care. And if a priest or priestess found out what I was and what I had done, I might be better off trapped here. Besides, I’d entered this place of my own free will, to discover what was behind the door. And I had to admit … a part of me had always wanted this. To learn what dark secrets the door hid. I took a slow, shaky step down the hall, then another. And another. The strength in my legs grew with each stride, and my breath evened out.

  But when the way forward suddenly opened up around me, my jaw dropped and I stumbled to a halt. I stood in a cavernous entry hall bigger than any palace’s. It was bigger than imagination. Bigger than dreams or nightmares.

  The entry hall alone was wider and longer than any ballroom I had ever seen in the waking or sleeping world. Everything was black, and the lamps simply floated high overhead, with no pretense of hanging from anything. Staircases leapt off in all directions: three
arching sets on either side of the hall in increasing size, rising like black waves before the final two at the end that curved in a mirror image of each other. There was no indication of where the last pair went. They disappeared into huge vault-arched hallways that reminded me of depthless eyes.

  But none of those architectural wonders held my attention for long next to the one right before me. A massive spiral staircase rose right out of the center of the hall, wider than three carriages abreast, and it continued rising … into nothing. As far as I could see, there was no ceiling above my head, only darkness. More disturbing, the stairs twisted into the floor in an equally endless fashion. When I gathered enough courage to sidle over to the banister and glance down the central shaft, it seemed to fall forever.

  I pulled a pin out of my hair and dropped it, forgetting the rules about not altering anything in the sleeping world. Maybe it was because this place felt immovable. Unchangeable. The oppressive, towering walls almost seemed amused at the thought that I would even try to affect them. I was as insubstantial as a gnat buzzing alongside.

  I didn’t hear the pin land. The darkness swallowed it as if it had never been.

  If this was a nehym, it was the grandest, darkest, and most imposing I had ever seen. I was no longer sure I wanted to meet whomever it belonged to.

  And yet part of me was in complete awe. The roses were still trying to guide me, as if they understood my fascination. My twisted desire to see more. One rested at the base of the second staircase on the left side of the hall, another at the top of those arching black steps.

  My heart leapt in my chest almost hard enough for me to hear it, and that almost-sound was the loudest noise in the place. Silence, there was so much silence. It was almost a presence itself, like the darkness. I stepped back from the banister dizzily. The brush of my slipper over the smooth floor was like a heavy boot scraping over gravel, echoing all over the hall. I flinched, but there was no one to hear me.

  Every surface was as frozen as a mask. But almost as soon as I thought that, the light shifted to create a checkered pattern on the floor in shades of black and red, and vines made of cast shadows seemed to grow up the wall, creating the illusion of something living. The floating lamps seemed to shine a deeper crimson over the roses.

  I’d never had a soul respond to my thoughts before, if that was what it had done. I felt a thrill, but caution struggled to replace it.

  It wants the door to open, my mother’s voice murmured in my mind.

  Maybe, unlike other nehyms, this place had desires of its own. And maybe this wasn’t a soul at all. There were tales of monsters and lands beyond our understanding. Not the stories of the gods, which everyone knew to be true, but legends and myths that may have had kernels of truth. This might be some vast, forgotten place on the fringes of the sleeping realm, waiting to swallow the unwary. Or the utterly foolhardy, in my case. Here there be monsters, like the old maps said along the edges of the known world.

  But then, why the roses?

  Bait, I thought again. Or maybe they were a sign of something alive, something sweet and soft in here. As I saw it, there wasn’t much else for me to do except continue down the path I had chosen.

  That didn’t stop me from taking my mother’s knife out of my bodice and nestling it in my palm, the solidity of its smooth wooden handle reassuring. I was surprised I even had it in the sleeping realm. I’d never noticed it here before. But then, I’d never needed it until now.

  Not that I imagined it would do me much good in a place like this.

  Despite my wariness, my steps weren’t as hard to take, this time, across the checkered floor of the entry hall. The stairs weren’t difficult to ascend. There wasn’t even a door to open when I reached the top, only another yawning hallway.

  I followed the roses on the ground like a trail of crumbs, almost eagerly, taking twists and turns, passing by many other hallways that vanished into darkness. The lamps above my head kept the checkered pattern under my feet and the shadows of foliage around me. I hoped that either they or the roses would be able to show me the way back in a hurry, if need be. I had a disturbing hunch that the paths through this place wouldn’t stay the same for long.

  Finally, the hallway ended, but not at a door. I hadn’t seen a single one since the door that had brought me here. The archway opened onto a small room—small, at least, relative to everything else.

  It was a dining room bigger than the king’s, most likely, and contained the first furniture I had noticed so far. A glinting black table and chairs stretched the length of it, underneath windows that looked out into complete and utter darkness. I shuddered to think what was behind them, and yet they kept drawing my eyes, even as I studied the rest of the room. The table and chairs were all the space held, other than a vase of bloodred roses as a centerpiece and a silver coffeepot with a single cup resting next to it. They were easily the brightest things in the room, glowing in the lamplight.

  I shuffled up to the table in a heady daze, the swishing of my silken skirts susurrant and loud. This was why the roses had led me here, through this impossible place? For a cup of coffee? I couldn’t help it; a laugh, shattering the heavy silence, burst from me as I gripped the back of a chair.

  “Why, hello.”

  I spun. Someone was leaning in the archway, arms folded. A man—a young man—was blocking the only way out. I couldn’t help the startled cry that tore out of me either, piercing the thick air.

  He smiled at me. For some reason it made me back away from him, into the table, and nearly tip over the chair. I would have toppled myself if I hadn’t been clinging to it.

  “I figured if you were laughing it would be okay to introduce myself,” he said. “But now I’m confused.”

  I was beyond confused. I hadn’t seen another soulwalker since my mother had died, and she was the only one before that. The young man’s hair was the same thick black as Hallan’s but longer, falling to his shoulders. That was where any resemblance ended. Hallan had been handsome, but the person before me was far more beautiful, almost too beautiful to be a man, yet with features too sharp to be a woman’s—too much for either sex. He was something else, his hair a sheath for a face that cut like a knife. His skin was even paler than mine, white as bone, as if he’d never seen the sun. His jaw was beardless, his eyes dark, lined in heavy black lashes and maybe kohl. He looked to be about my age, or a few years older at most, though something in his gaze looked far older.

  I realized I was staring. I didn’t care. He was one of the most fascinating people I’d ever seen. Maybe it was in the way he held himself, but I also understood he was dangerous. And yet he wasn’t speaking in the hair-raising voice I’d heard long ago beyond the black door, the one like an endless night’s whisper, but in tones like coffee: rich, smooth, and with a sharp bite. I wanted to hear more.

  “Who … who are you?” I stammered. “Where did you come from?” I couldn’t tell anything from his manner of dress. He wore no clothes I’d ever seen before—a sweeping midnight robe, belted at the waist in copper. The sleeves were pinned at his shoulders, parting like curtains to reveal muscular arms cuffed with matching gold and silver armbands.

  He arched a sleek black eyebrow. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? This is my house.”

  This was his soul, his nehym. This unimaginable place was an expression of his internal self. His subconscious creation. I tried to take another step back and forgot I was already against the table, jostling and nearly knocking over its vase of roses.

  After waiting for the rattle to quiet, he added, “Though I suppose there’s no need for me to ask, since I already know about you.”

  “What?” My throat felt parched.

  “You’re Kamai Nuala … pardon me, Numa … from just outside of Shalain. Or, wait, are you in the capital now?” He shrugged, armbands glinting. “You are ever so difficult to keep up with these days. Have some coffee. You sound thirsty.”

  I ignored him, asking again in a whisper, “
Who are you?” He had to be a soulwalker, perhaps working for the Twilight Guild … and maybe tracking me.

  His eyes narrowed for a split second. “You may call me Vehyn.” He almost sounded unsure.

  Vehyn. It was a name as strange as his clothing, one I’d never heard before. The only word I knew that sounded anything like it was nehym, “soul house” in the old tongue. I tried it out silently, and his eyes shot to my lips when my mouth moved. He smiled again.

  “No family name?” I asked, grasping for whatever I could learn. His own mouth was distracting me for some reason.

  “I don’t have a family.”

  “No other names?”

  “I don’t need others.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what that meant—if he actually didn’t have any, or if he didn’t want to give them to me. Whatever the case, he deemed his single name enough, and yet it told me nothing. My teeth clenched to keep me from growling in frustration.

  I straightened, pushing off from the table, channeling the feeling. Anger was better than timidness. My mother’s advice for this type of situation rang through my head: Don’t show fear; it will only encourage a man. My voice came out stronger, louder. “Have you been following me?”

  He threw back his head and laughed, flashing perfectly white teeth between lips that were sensual enough to be a match for my mother’s. His canines were sharper than usual. “Oh, Kamai. It’s amusing to hear you ask questions about what you don’t understand in the slightest.”

  I didn’t like how he kept repeating my name, as if it were familiar to him. He didn’t know me—or at least we’d barely met—and he was already insulting my intelligence? Bastard. “So help me understand. Tell me about the door, about this place, about you, so I don’t have to be afraid.”