Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  There was nothing else for it. I took a step outside of the black door—wherever this outside place, In Between, may have existed. I glanced back at Vehyn. The study, with only its subtle red light, struck me as much brighter and warmer than it had a second before. It was familiar territory, at least.

  “Focus,” he reminded me, and so I turned back to the towering, blurry forest. It looked sort of like the distant trees surrounding my clearing, which I could never manage to reach, except now I was among them.

  “Okay, focus,” I muttered. I had never seen Zeniri’s soul before, but I didn’t think that mattered. I just had to know where I wanted to go, like I’d wanted the truth with Jidras. I hadn’t known the specifics of the particular truth I’d find; the urge alone had been enough to bring it to the surface in his nehym. In this case, I hoped my will would be enough to bring me to Zeniri.

  Zeniri. I want to find Zeniri’s soul. I held the thought in my mind, repeated it over and over as I readied the pocketknife in my hand. Without warning, the path in front of me shifted slightly, and the surrounding foliage billowed around it like a black curtain in a breeze, flowing into a new shape.

  “That’s it,” Vehyn murmured behind me. “Keep focusing and go. I’ll be here, waiting.”

  Not watching, because I would quickly be out of sight of him and the black door. But the shadowy ribbon spooled out behind me as I moved down the path. As nigh invisible and creepy as the link between the two of us was, I was grateful to have it as the trees loomed up around me like a crowd of tall, dark-cloaked strangers, closing me off.

  Trail of breadcrumbs, indeed.

  Before long, I was utterly alone. The darkness around me was absolutely silent, the only light from the stars above. At least there were stars. Occasionally, I caught a flickering glow between the trees, like candlelight—maybe the door to a nehym—but the trunks would swallow it as soon as I blinked.

  Focus on your goal. Don’t look at anything else.

  But that was difficult, especially when I began to see something wriggling on the path before me. If only it had been a snake, or a river of ants, or a clump of drifting spiderweb, I would have at least known what to do with it. But no, this was more shapeless than that, darker. Whatever it was wavered in a tendril of black mist, right across the path. It looked almost like an octopus tentacle, but made of ink in water.

  Focus on Zeniri, I thought as I hopped over it. I could have sworn I’d stepped high enough, and yet the tendril rippled, wavelike, up into my foot. I passed right through it, but I still felt it. It was cold. Ice-cold, leeching the warmth from my entire leg. I gasped, stumbling, and nearly fell.

  When I turned back to look at it, another few tentacles had joined the first. They were curling out of the trees, drifting toward me like smoke.

  Focus …

  But fear instantly replaced any focus as the shadow tentacles coiled, then came slithering over the path for me, as fast as snakes. Freezing, I tried to decide what to do, until they all came flying right for my face, deciding for me. I slashed out with my knife and leapt off the path.

  Now there was absolute darkness, not only silence. I spun and blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust, but couldn’t see anything. The path was nowhere to be found. And then I felt the cold. Soft whispers of it over my arms, like freezing caresses. Tickling over my cheeks, like chilly fingers.

  As my warmth fled, I forgot everything. The icy, invisible fingers beckoned me, and I couldn’t think of a reason not to follow. Something tugged sharply on my wrist, but since I was mostly numb, I ignored it.

  It didn’t take long for me to step out into a clearing, a bit like my clearing. Wait. Where was my clearing, again? Wasn’t this it? There was a dark ring of trees surrounding an even darker … mansion. Stacked with scraggly towers like crooked, blackened teeth, it was darker than the darkest night. There were windows, hundreds, but every single one was empty, sightless. And there was movement. Spreading out through the open doorway, crawling down the steps, squirming across the grass and reaching for me, were black tentacles, made of shadow and cold. Several were already twined around my arms, my legs, my neck.

  For a second, it looked wrong, but only because no nehym I’d ever seen from the outside had walls, only a freestanding doorway in my clearing. There were walls on the inside, of course, dividing up each soul according to its particular geography, but the physical body was the true vessel containing the soul, unseen on the outside in the sleeping realm. Which meant this house might not belong to a physical body, and I knew that thought should have bothered me. But then I forgot it too.

  The tug at my wrist grew more insistent. But the tendrils holding me were even more so. They wanted me to follow them, and so I followed, because this was where I belonged. My steps felt both light and heavy, floating and deadened, as I stumbled over the dim ground toward the sprawling front steps. The massive house remained silent all the while. The doorway stood open, dark as an inkwell. When I put my foot on the first step up to it, I went colder than ever, as if my entire body had been thrown into a mountain spring. And then I could see them.

  Faces looked out from the door, gathered as if to welcome me inside. Haunted, cheeks sunken. Eye sockets dark and empty, skin pale as dead flesh. Mouths open in silent screams. Their tongues were black.

  I blinked. Warmth suddenly flooded into my hand and up my arm, coming from the tight band of heat around my wrist, and with it came the realization that this was beyond wrong. This was not where I belonged. This was a horror.

  I screamed. It was like a spell breaking. I lashed out at the tentacles holding me, turned, and ran back across the clearing. I wasn’t sure I would make it far on my own, but the tug on my wrist grew so strong that I was winging through the darkness, like in my dream with Vehyn. Except this was no dream, but a waking nightmare, trees whipping by, branches lashing my face. Suddenly, the black door came flying at me faster than if I were sprinting for it.

  It was open, and after what I had just seen, it felt like coming home. I still threw up my hands to cushion my impact and crashed right into Vehyn’s chest and the red, warm darkness of his embrace. His arms held me tight against him. I gasped and shivered violently.

  “Shh,” Vehyn said, stroking my hair. “I have you now. It’s all right.”

  I realized my gasps were sobs. “What … was that?”

  “Only one of many predators out there: a spirit eater, a hollow shell, really. They lure and swallow the unwary, feeding off them for a short eternity. I warned you,” he added, but his voice wasn’t harsh or chastising. It was calm, soothing.

  I still shuddered. Short eternity. “You mean, those other … things … I saw were lost spirits?”

  “Yes, getting slowly devoured.”

  I couldn’t help squeezing my eyes closed, trying to banish the memory of those empty eye sockets and black tongues, burrowing my face in his neck, and enjoying the sturdy feel of his arms around me. Whatever he was, he wasn’t anything like a spirit eater. Right now he felt warm and alive and solid.

  For a split second after I drew closer, nuzzling him, he seemed to hesitate. Then his arms cinched tighter, and he perched his chin on my head. His vexed sigh was familiar, almost fond, and we were so close it stirred my hair, tickling my scalp. “So that didn’t go very well,” he said. “The spirit eaters seem to have a particular interest in you—even they could recognize your superior nature, unlike yourself.” I wondered if their interest had to do with Vehyn’s influence over me—like calling to like—but I didn’t say that. “What am I going to do with you now?”

  I shook my head against his chest. “Is there any other way? I don’t think I’m strong enough to take that path. And I can’t…” I couldn’t help sniffling, my voice breaking again. “I can’t get married or become a pleasure artist or—”

  “Shh,” Vehyn said again. He inhaled deeply, as if breathing me in. “There is another way.”

  I blinked, jerked my head up to look at him. “One that�
�s safer than that?”

  “Yes.” His eyes, for a moment, were inkwells.

  His arms suddenly felt a little less warm, and I leaned away. “Then why didn’t you tell me before?”

  He didn’t flinch, or look chagrined, or guilty, or much of anything, really. “Because I didn’t know the creatures In Between would react so strongly to your presence, and because I would be giving you strength that you might not want … and that I might not want to give you.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but the black marks swirling under my skin came to mind. More shadows, tainting my eyes and making me not look quite right in the mirror anymore—while making me more appealing to monsters like spirit eaters. But if it was a way out of marriage, or the pleasure arts, or the tentacled clutches of a spirit eater … and especially if it gave me an advantage Vehyn might not want me to have … I was following the path of roses once again, to their end.

  “What is it?”

  “Hold still.” He bent his head, lips slightly parted, as if to kiss me.

  I froze. But he didn’t kiss me. He breathed on me, and with it came darkness, curling out from his mouth. For a terrifying second, I was reminded of the spirit eater’s tendrils, but this just drifted and twined around my face like smoke. It wasn’t even cold, just … cool and peaceful.

  His lips quirked. “Breathe, Kamai. It won’t hurt you.”

  I inhaled. It even smelled cool and peaceful. Like a deep cave, or well water, or even fresh silken sheets. I looked at him in wonder. “Wait, are you Moholos, after all? You know, the mythical folk figure who breathes on people to put them to sleep?”

  But I certainly wasn’t feeling sleepy.

  Vehyn laughed—truly, deeply, throwing back his head. He bit his lip to try to contain it, in a way that made my stomach twist strangely, and I remembered his arms were still around me. “Oh, how you amuse me,” he said, still trying not to grin. “But the answer is no. Not quite.”

  “Who are you, then?” Maybe I could catch him off guard in this more relaxed, delighted state, and he would accidentally answer me.

  He smiled, an enigmatic curve to his mouth. But now his eyes were sharp above it, almost displeased. “You’ll see. First, we practice.”

  21

  PARTING WORDS

  By the time I woke up several hours later, Jidras had returned from whatever business he’d been conducting and sent for me. The timing was perfect, since I now knew exactly how I could serve the Keepers and use my skills to the best of my ability. It involved neither marriage nor the pleasure arts, and yet I would be able to leave this place for the Keepers all the same.

  I’d expected to be rebelliously triumphant for this occasion, but when I knocked and entered the office, I only felt nervous and oddly regretful. My steps were hesitant over the plush rug that lay before the large wooden desk, behind which Jidras stood, carefully stacking a pile of papers. Rainy gray light filtered through the tall windows, seeming to shadow more than illuminate him.

  I could have had a father, someone who’d appeared in my life right after I’d lost my mother and Hallan, to help fill the hole left by their deaths; instead, our relationship had come to this. Jidras made it worse by looking concerned now, of all times. But it was too little, too late.

  “I heard what happened with that filthy animal Gerresh,” he said by way of greeting, his pale eyes finding my bruised throat, “and I’d like to know why no one woke me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d care,” I answered honestly, clasping my hands in front of myself, “and so both Nikha and the constable respected my wishes not to disturb you until morning.” Mostly, I’d been too tired to deal with him along with everything else.

  And maybe I had been afraid that he would be more irritated than actually worried.

  “In that case, both of them deserve a reprimand from their superiors. I am the master of this house, and I should be told immediately when my child is nearly strangled and a man, once of my employ, dies on my doorstep.”

  Of course, this wasn’t about me and my safety, but his authority over me and the situation. “Nikha only deserves praise,” I said, anger clipping my words. “She saved my life.” It hadn’t quite happened like that, but it was close enough.

  “Commendable as that may be, her judgment was still lacking elsewhere.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you won’t be her superior for much longer.”

  He arched a cool eyebrow. “Is she resigning from her position as head of my household guard?”

  “In a sense.” I took a slow, deep breath. “I’m leaving, and Nikha is coming with me.”

  He blinked at me in surprise. “Have you accepted a proposal already?”

  “No.” I squared my shoulders. “And I don’t intend to.”

  Jidras’s brow immediately furrowed, his gaze sharpening like a dagger. “Then what in Tain’s name do you expect to do with yourself?”

  “I’ve taken an apprenticeship under a man named Zeniri Sarvotha.”

  “Who—?”

  “A renowned pleasure artist, currently in residence at court.”

  His mouth fell open. And then his expression gradually twisted from shock to ugly rage. “Little whore. Just like your mother.”

  Even though I’d been anticipating the words, they still cut deeply. I didn’t bother explaining that I wasn’t ever planning on practicing the pleasure arts, or that he was entirely hypocritical. That was all beside the point.

  “And you’re just as foul as I always suspected you to be,” I hissed, “as my mother knew you to be! How could you have ever thought someone as good as her would stay with someone like you?”

  “Yes, I know. There’s nothing to be expected from a whore that one doesn’t pay for, and nothing else owed, afterward.” His fist crumpled the top sheet of paper in the nearest stack. “If this is your decision, then get out. You are no longer my daughter, and I never wish to set eyes upon you again.”

  I had imagined it would come to this: disinheritance. But knowing it would happen didn’t change the fact that it stung. I wished tears hadn’t sprung to my eyes, but they did—only letting him know how much he could hurt me. He looked on, without a speck of pity in his own chilly blue gaze.

  I thought I would be angry, but I only stared back at him. With three fingers, I tapped the crown of my head, my brow between my eyes, and finally my lips in a parting benediction. I kissed my fingertips afterward and then held them out toward him, as if to touch his own lips and complete the blessing. But he was too far away, behind his desk, and neither of us made a move to bridge the gap.

  Despite that, his eyes widened, and in them I glimpsed a flash of pain. But before he could say anything else—either spiteful or otherwise—I turned and left.

  * * *

  Zeniri announced that he’d taken me on as his apprentice a week later during a soiree held at the palace, after setting Nikha and me up in a suite of extravagant rooms near his own—paid for by the Keepers, no doubt. As far as everyone else knew, he was investing in me and my potential. Since he was one of the most popular courtiers and pleasure artists in residence at court, it created quite the stir.

  The salon we were in was as resplendent as everything else in the palace. Ornate brass lamps ignited the swirls of gilt painted on the walls and lit the air with a golden glow, plush red rugs cushioned my slippered feet, and wine and other refreshments circulated the room on gleaming trays. Too much wine, perhaps. Practically before Zeniri had finished making his announcement, he received inquiries, some discreet and others less so, regarding when, exactly, I would be accepting patron gifts for my art.

  Ironically, it was because of Jidras that I’d had anything to wear on such an occasion. I’d left his town house without taking anything, but then a trunk full of my dresses, with no note, had shown up in my suite the next day. He obviously had no need for them, but I’d still figured he wouldn’t want me to have anything he’d provided for me. I’d been wrong. Perhaps, at least, he didn’t w
ant to throw me out without clothes. So it happened that I wore the midnight-blue spider-webbed gown that he’d given me for my eighteenth birthday, a couple of weeks prior. One of my most alluring dresses, to be used like bait.

  “Kamai will not be practicing her art anytime soon. She has much to learn first!” Zeniri declared with a taunting twinkle in his eyes, both for me and the inquirers. They had no idea that I never intended to learn. “In the meantime,” he continued, after the chorus of theatrical, disappointed sighs and half-joking offers to help me study, “Kamai might amuse you with a game of Gods and Kings. She has quite the talent. I might even declare it as the basis for another game: whoever bests her first wins the honor of bedding her first.”

  I had to lock my jaw in a smile to keep it from falling open in horrified shock. It was a good thing looks couldn’t kill, because Zeniri would have fallen dead in the middle of the salon. And it was an especially good thing that Nikha had opted not to come tonight. She might have punched Zeniri in the face. He had reason to assume I wouldn’t lose, based on my own assertions and demonstrations of what Vehyn had taught me, but I could have done without so much pressure.

  And perhaps he knew just whom such a game would inspire. Zeniri had made certain that word of my attendance at this gathering had spread to the right ears. And that was why Nikha hadn’t come—she would have been too tempted to punch the person in question, first and foremost. They’d already crossed swords, after all.

  Nikha was truly a man, one who was only drawn to women, so was this distaste for Razim of a different nature? Was there an element of competition? A hint of jealousy? I didn’t have long to ponder.

  Right that very moment, spectators demanded a test of my skills, and so a small table was set up and two chairs arranged. Before anyone could argue over who got to play me first, Razim—rather, the young lord and courtier Ramir Zareen—materialized from the crowd and took a seat, just as I’d known he would. His face and eyes burned with intensity, as if daring me, or anyone, to contest his challenge.