Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  I loved Darkness Incarnate. I didn’t know if I loved him for him, or if it was because we shared a soul, but I didn’t dwell on the thought for long. There wasn’t time.

  I hesitated before stuffing the letter back under the stone, wishing I could destroy it so Vehyn could never find it … and then it turned to ash in my fingers, just like that. My soul was still listening to me.

  Take me to Razim’s soul, I thought.

  The black door, as quick as a wink, appeared in the dark cellar. I barely dared to hope it could be so easy as I drew it open. Gray stone walls, torches burning in sconces, and sumptuous rugs and tapestries greeted me on the other side. I’d glimpsed it only once, but I recognized it. Razim’s soul.

  “Huh,” I said, more bemused than anything. Perhaps I was in shock. “That wasn’t so hard.”

  I tentatively stepped inside, feeling the thick rug under my slippers. It was a handsome nehym, despite being a little imposing and windowless. The stones were clean and smooth, the rugs a rich burgundy, and the air warm and glowing from the torches. Razim’s fresh woody scent permeated everything. As I looked closer, details on the wall tapestries seemed to come alive, deepening and spreading. There were horses, hunting scenes, a father and son fishing that made my heart twist, thinking of Hallan … and some that would have made me blush in less dire circumstances, with young men and women kissing, offering gifts of flowers and ribbons, and even entwined in more suggestive ways.

  His soul seemed to be revealing itself to me more readily than others. I didn’t know if it was that I had grown more skilled at soulwalking, or if it was because of his feelings for me, or something else, whatever my mother had meant about “strange pathways” in her letter.

  I strode into the center of the room. What lies between your soul and mine?

  The walls changed around me. Darkness rippled and flowed out of cracks in the stone like liquid, pooling in specific shapes. I spun in a circle, my mouth falling open in horror.

  Every surface was lined with black doors. Riddled with them, like a sickness. Our souls weren’t simply connected. Razim’s was infested, burrowed into, by Darkness, ready to be opened.

  But all the doors save the one I had come through were still closed. Darkness hadn’t entered. Yet.

  Urgency overrode my horror. Did my mother leave me anything here?

  A drawer creaked in a gleaming wooden buffet table set against one wall. I dashed over and yanked it open. The drawer was empty, but I understood the hidden nature of these messages now, and so I groped around until my finger poked through a hole in the wood in the far back. Hooking it, I pulled up a false bottom.

  A leather-bound journal lay beneath. Words, in my mother’s writing, filled the pages, the dated entries going back to when I was a baby and reaching to roughly two and a half months ago, to the days right before she died. Years whipped by with the flip of pages. I skimmed as quickly as possible.

  The darkness was meant for Razim, I know that now. But something Hallan did kept Razim from it, and that was why they needed me, and you, my darling. The guild offered you up instead, and even though they think the ritual failed, the evil inside of your soul built a bridge to Razim’s. It hasn’t come through, yet … It seems to be waiting.

  …

  Hallan is growing more anxious. He still visits the queen consort, but it is not love they make between them. Every time he returns, he is angry, because she is angry. And it has to do with their son.

  …

  Hallan and I … we made love for the first time. After all these years, I think I’m falling for him …

  I skipped quickly over that part, flipping to the last pages.

  Gods. Oh, holy Heshara. Hallan finally told me the truth. Finally, I understand. Just as I am not his wife, but he loves me anyway, Razim … isn’t Hallan’s.

  Razim isn’t a bastard. He is the heir.

  The guild placed Hallan close to the queen consort so he could gain her trust, influence both her and the eventual heir, not father a bastard. And he succeeded. As heir, Razim was supposed to have that strange darkness filling him from the day of his birth instead of you, Kamai. Hallan didn’t know what they had planned for the child—he still doesn’t know, since he can’t walk within souls—but he knew the babe would become a pawn.

  (Nor did he have any idea what would happen to you, Kamai. He doesn’t know the guild has any interest in you at all. He bought their false reasoning for our arrangement, just like I did.)

  Back then, Hallan had fallen in love with the queen consort and decided he couldn’t hurt her by using her child so. Pregnant, she was already in seclusion to avoid public scandal in case a priest determined the child was a bastard. Everyone knew of the king’s taste for men, not women. But then Hallan arranged for her to vanish to a different location that the guild hadn’t expected, around the time of the child’s birth. The guild didn’t have their own priest at hand, ready to work whatever dark rite. Not that Hallan suspected this—he simply wanted a priest whom he had chosen. This new priest quietly confirmed—lied—that the child was Hallan’s, a bastard, without actually checking whose it was, so the babe would be of no use to the guild.

  And so Razim went to live with Hallan, safe—or so Hallan thought—from the guild’s plots for the heir. His soul formed on its own, growing strong, so by the time the guild discovered Hallan’s deceit, it was too late for the rite.

  The sound of clapping made me spin around, interrupting the flow of written words. Vehyn was leaning in the open door.

  29

  BRIGHT BLADES

  “Well done,” Vehyn said. The cluster of doors around him reminded me of a spider’s multitudinous eyes, but still only the one stood open, and Vehyn was careful not to step through. “I see you’ve been up to no good.” He gestured at the journal in my hands. “Would you like to finish?”

  I doubted he would let me, and sure enough, he said, “But why don’t I tell you the rest of the story, since I know where you left off, after all?” He tapped the side of his head, reminding me that he knew what I knew—what was in my soul. I already held the truth in my hand, so he didn’t mind revealing it now. And he wanted me to hear it from him, not my mother. “Hallan presumed he would somehow escape punishment from the guild, not realizing he had stalled a plan that was years, decades, centuries in the making. He actually thought the guild would be content with him supposedly fathering a bastard on the queen consort, pleased that he could at least use the child to keep her under his influence.”

  “So of course you had to kill him for his presumption,” I whispered, my throat dry.

  “No, remember, the king had him killed.” Vehyn smiled, as if this were an inside joke we shared—a secret. “Besides, Agrir wasn’t too angry with him, since having a secret heir stashed away for future use, especially when Agrir thought the ritual had failed, was better than nothing. And he still hoped we might someday use Razim for his original purpose.” He gestured at me, careful not to let his hand cross the threshold. “Through you. And his hope wasn’t unfounded.”

  “Lucky me.”

  Vehyn didn’t seem to appreciate my sarcasm. As if I should feel lucky to be a part of this. “In the meantime, the queen consort grew to hate Hallan, did you know that?” He shrugged, as if all this were trivial. “But she was unable to expose what he had done for fear of retribution from the guild or the king.”

  “I don’t blame her for being angry,” I said, making my voice hard. “Despite everything, her child still became a card in a game of Gods and Kings.”

  “And she didn’t even know how he would come into play.” He swept his hand to include the many black doors in the walls. “I suppose this is a fitting way to repay her ingratitude toward Hallan, despite his trying to save her child.”

  “Don’t pretend you actually care about any injustice, perceived or otherwise, against Hallan,” I spat, unable to help myself.

  “I won’t, especially since he more thoroughly vexed the guild when he
told Marin about Razim’s true parentage. And she, knowing the ritual hadn’t failed but was merely postponed, started poking her nose where it didn’t belong. See how well that turned out?” He nodded at the journal. “Truly, go ahead and read it.”

  I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew it would hurt. I wanted to scrape up my mother’s words like they were the last remnants from a dish. I skimmed to where she finally discovered the Twilighters’ plan:

  The guild will arrange the king’s death somehow and position Razim on the throne. Having a king as one of their members will serve them far better than a secret heir. And yet, because of the darkness linked to his soul through yours, I fear such an outcome would be worse than anyone could imagine. But I can’t tell anyone, not even those I truly serve, because they might kill you for the danger your soul poses. I am even afraid you would want to end your own life, practical, kind, clever girl that you are, and so I have yet to burden you with this knowledge. There must be another way—I have to believe that. Despite the very real danger, the black door inside you remains closed.

  And so maybe you, with your fortitude, and Hallan, with the goodness of his heart, can stop this. After some discussion with him, the queen consort has claimed she will finally tell the truth to the world and beg her husband’s clemency. Hallan, out of his love for Razim, won’t stop her, even if she risks the king’s wrath. The kingdom will keep its king and yet finally have its heir, one who knows the guild is only trying to use him. And you, Hallan, and I will hide somewhere far away and finally become the family we have only seemed for so long. I hope, and I pray to Heshara, that between us all, this will be enough to keep the lurking evil at bay.

  It ended there. I knew what had happened after. Their affair had been outed by Agrir before anyone could beg for clemency or escape into hiding, and Hallan, the queen consort, and my mother had died. My mother’s prayers, Hallan’s goodness, the queen consort’s determination, and my supposed fortitude obviously hadn’t been enough. My mother had been right about one thing, though—I would have killed myself. If only I had known the truth then.

  But now that I’d opened the black door, I couldn’t, and Razim was going to kill the king anyway … and unintentionally become king himself. And then Darkness was going to finally make its move. I still wasn’t sure what that would entail, but I had a hunch, based on all the black doors ringing me.

  And Vehyn was trying to tell me there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

  “I know the truth,” I whispered, backing away from him, my heart climbing my throat in fear. “So that means I win our game. You have to halt what you’re doing, by your own vow.”

  He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I do? But how have you won? What truth might you have discovered that I didn’t tell you myself?”

  All I could do was stand in the center of the room. There was nowhere to run. “Razim will kill the king and become king himself. He’s the heir.”

  Vehyn technically hadn’t told me the latter part.

  “That’s not the full truth, but yes, you are correct.”

  “The king’s sacred bond with Ranta will break.” Vehyn was Darkness, after all, and the bond was what protected the earth from him.

  “Yes, but that was just a guess. You don’t know how.”

  “The truth is the truth!” I shouted.

  “And yet, even so, you haven’t found all of it. You haven’t won.”

  Gods, if only Lenara had told me everything about Ranta’s bond with the king. The darkest creature in any realm already knew the details; I couldn’t do much worse with the knowledge than him. But it wasn’t Lenara’s fault. I hadn’t told her the truth about my situation, either. The fear and mistrust went both ways.

  I tried to guess the other parts of his plan, but I could feel my victory slipping away. “So, you’ll possess Razim first, instead. Jump from me to him.” Lenara had said simply assassinating the king wouldn’t break the bond, but perhaps if the Darkness itself were controlling the hand that wielded the knife…?

  “No, you’re missing a few steps. It’s not that simple. I can’t just possess a fully formed soul, and through that, a body, like I have yours. Your soul was built around me—we built it together.” He waved at the room I stood in, still careful not to let even a fingertip cross the threshold. “If I barged in here now, even with all of the doorways that I’ve carefully constructed over time, I might destroy him inside and out before I could make myself at home anywhere, body or soul.”

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. I was still guessing, and he was proving it. “You’ll kill him, then.”

  “Wrong. What good would killing him do?”

  Never mind that theory, then. I wanted to scream.

  No, I wanted to move. I needed to get the answers that Vehyn couldn’t give me, and I knew who had them. And even how to get to her. Not that she’d necessarily want to talk to me.

  At the thought, my mother’s knife appeared in my hand.

  Vehyn smirked. “Are you going to fight me?” He shook his head, surety in his eyes. “You won’t.”

  He was right. I backed away from him.

  “You think you can hide in Razim’s soul? Suit yourself—time will pass all the same in there. It’s already deepest night in the waking world. Everything will happen tomorrow, and I’ll be able to join you sooner rather than later.”

  Perfect. It was night. I edged past all the black doors, staying out of arm’s reach, until I found the door I was looking for. The door that wasn’t black. The one that belonged to Razim and led outside of his soul.

  “You can’t go that way, Kamai,” Vehyn called suddenly, realizing where I was headed. There was a different, urgent note to his voice. “You can’t wake up.”

  “I’m not trying to wake up.” I wrenched open the door and leapt through it.

  To In Between.

  The starry sky expanded far overhead, the dark path unwinding before me through the suddenly looming trees. I ran as fast as I could away from Razim’s soul and out into the strange night, thinking all the while, Lenara, Lenara. Take me to Lenara’s soul.

  But then I felt the tug on my hand. For a second, I was terrified it was a spirit eater, but then I looked back and saw that Razim’s door had vanished. In its place was the black door, Vehyn standing in the threshold, silhouetted by faint red light. The shadowy ribbon ran from my wrist to his grip, and he gave it another jerk.

  “Kamai, stop!” he shouted.

  I swung my knife around, the blade glinting brightly in the darkness, and slashed at the binding. It parted, and Vehyn’s outline staggered. I didn’t wait to see more, stumbling back into a run, his shouts fading behind me. I tried to ignore the fear in his voice. My link to Vehyn had saved my life last time, and I’d just severed it.

  Lenara, Lenara, Lenara.

  I kept chanting her name in my head, and then I realized I was saying it out loud. I kept repeating it, even after I leapt over a dark tentacle that flowed across the path. Even after it sprang at me and I slashed it with the knife. Even when a dozen of them wriggled out through the trees and surrounded me, forcing me to stop.

  “Lenara, I’m coming. Lenara,” I said. With the words, I exhaled.

  I hadn’t possessed Vehyn’s gift last time I’d tried walking In Between. It was worth a shot, even if it only slowed the spirit eater’s tentacles.

  They recoiled, whipping and lashing in the dark night, slithering back to whatever monstrosity they’d ventured from. I blinked in shock, before quickly resuming my chant. Even spirit eaters were afraid of Darkness, despite being drawn to it. Whatever they were, they existed here, in Heshara’s realm, not the unimaginable place Vehyn had come from. Which meant that not even a spirit eater was as bad as what dwelt in my soul.

  I shivered and looked up at the stars, wondering if Heshara would turn on me after I’d used Vehyn’s gift in her realm. But the sky and trees were still and silent. Maybe she was waiting to see what I would do.

 
; Lenara, Lenara. I continued moving.

  The path veered, cutting into the trees, and opened into a space that reminded me of my clearing. Perhaps in the sleeping realm, such glades surrounded the entrances to souls.

  My mother’s protections must have extended to my clearing. All my life it had seemed safe, limited, even boring, until the black door had begun to appear there. In actuality, she had fenced off that space somehow from In Between.

  In this particular clearing, a lone door stood without walls, made of many shimmering glass panes—the same glass I’d seen in the windows of Lenara’s soul.

  I gripped the door’s faceted knob and turned. It didn’t budge.

  “Lenara!” I shouted. “Let me in! It’s Kamai!” I didn’t want to stay out here any longer than I had to, and not only because the entire kingdom was at stake. I couldn’t help my rising terror now that I’d traversed In Between. It was like feeling the sting only after the cut.

  But she wasn’t answering. Perhaps her spirit was awake. Either it wasn’t late enough in the waking world, like Vehyn had claimed, or she simply wasn’t able to sleep. Or perhaps, even asleep, she could block who tried to enter her soul—a wise skill to hone, if it was possible—or …

  The door opened a crack and Lenara peered out, looking shocked to see me—and then intensely distrustful. “What are you doing here? How are you here, Kamai?”

  “Just let me in! I know this is strange, but I just risked my life to reach you. I’m trying to fix everything, I promise!”

  The earnestness in my words, the desperation, must have touched her, because she opened the door wider and let me step past her.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” She gestured the way forward, through a glowing entryway and into the central room with the fountain, ringed by windows and lush greenery. Like last time, her nehym struck me as almost painfully bright and beautiful … especially now that I knew what my own soul looked like. I took the lead. I guessed she didn’t want me behind her—a realization that struck deep and sharp in my chest. She came around me to sit on the edge of the fountain, keeping me in her sight.