Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  Take me to the Darkness. Take me to its doorway.

  “Kamai, wait!” Vehyn’s tone changed in the inky air as I thundered down the stairs, becoming more pleading. I wondered if this was more him, or a trick. “If you cut off the Darkness, you’ll lose her!”

  Her? My footsteps faltered for a second.

  “I saved her for you, Kamai! Her spirit, after she died, drifted near … I took it, kept it. It was a surprise. A present for you.”

  No, no, no, no, I thought in time with the pounding of my feet, of my heart. Horror filled me; it was a tangible, consuming presence. He couldn’t mean …

  “The Darkness is all that’s keeping her here. Your mother will be gone if you close the door!”

  My mother … I slipped again, fell hard, jarring my bones.

  “I will give her to you.” His voice was getting closer. “She’ll be with you here, forever, even after I have my own soul.”

  Forever. A spirit trapped in a dark house for a short eternity. That sounded sickeningly familiar. If he thought such a vision would turn me from my goal, he was wrong. If my mother was here, that meant she was a prisoner, held in my soul by Darkness. Like a spirit inside a spirit eater.

  I hauled myself to my feet, but then Vehyn was upon me. I couldn’t see him; I felt his hand seize my shoulder. I threw myself sideways, twisting out of his grasp. I slammed up against the banister. The blackness was all around me. Maybe I could pretend I was near the bottom. There was no way I would outrun him now anyway.

  I tipped myself up and over the edge. I felt Vehyn’s fingers claw at my dress, but it tore, and then I was falling. Down the center shaft.

  “Kamai, no!” he screamed after me. His true voice, fraught with distress.

  I was falling fast. Far. Deep. I clearly hadn’t been near the bottom. Perhaps it was bottomless.

  I wondered if I would fall forever. For a short eternity.

  The words reminded me: my mother. I had to reach her. Take me to my mother. The command burned in me, its own sort of light in the darkness. It filled my chest, becoming the shape of my breath, my lungs, my beating heart. The shape of my soul.

  The walls caught me. At first, I feared I’d drifted in my fall and hit the banister, and would then bounce horrifically against the stairwell until my spirit shattered into a thousand pieces. But no. The surface that cradled me was perfectly smooth, like warm glass, slowing my descent with the steepest of slopes and then gradually leveling out. The silk of my gown slid over it like a whisper, carrying me, gliding, through the darkness. It was like I was flying instead of falling.

  And then I saw a light up ahead. Warm, golden, faint. Approaching fast—very fast. My chute was working all too well, and even after it became perfectly level, it sent me tumbling over the smooth black floor to finally skid to a stop.

  Vehyn’s cries echoed distantly behind me. Far, far distant. I had some time. Battered, torn, my hair in my face, I rose to my aching hands and knees and looked up. Even if the light was weak, it blinded me, and I had to squint to focus.

  It was my mother—Vehyn hadn’t been lying.

  My mother. She was the light in the darkness, her flesh seemingly made of it now that she was wholly a spirit. But dark, whorling patterns etched her bare skin like the bars of a cage, and heavy, thick links chained her ankle to the floor. Our eyes met, and I thought my heart would burst.

  But then I saw what was behind her. It. The other black door, the one that made my soul a gateway to the waking world from somewhere else. From nowhere you could possibly understand, Vehyn had once said.

  The doorway was open, revealing a gasping, sucking void. Darkness swirled in and out of it like a screaming breath. It blew around me, tossing my hair wildly, feeling like both a caress and death on my skin. Looking into the depths, I froze, forgetting my mother.

  Kamai …

  It saw me. It recognized me. It spoke my name in that night-dark whisper that I’d heard when I was twelve. The voice that wasn’t Vehyn’s.

  Vehyn had a voice like coffee. And he had bare feet. Sharp eyes. An arrogant smile. A deep laugh. Hands that held me. A spirit that flew with me on the wind.

  This … this was nothingness made real. It terrified me to my bones, down to the depths of my soul—which was deep, as it turned out—leaving me colder than the spirit eater had. I couldn’t look at anything else.

  “Kamai.” It was a different voice. A familiar, warm one, if only a whisper. It wrenched at my heart, tore my eyes away from the door, forcing me to come back to myself.

  My mother smiled at me, repeated my name. I took a shuddering breath. My lungs felt frozen. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Kamai, my sweet, close the door,” she murmured. She said it like we were back in the villa, as if she were talking about a normal wooden door I’d left open. It brought me jarringly back to where I was. My soul. At the bottom of a bottomless pit. At the gateway to Darkness. I lurched forward, clawing my way up, stumbling toward the door.

  “Be careful,” my mother called. Or tried to. Her voice seemed to crack apart, like the desiccated wings of a moth, turning to dust in the air.

  I soon understood her warning. At first it was hard to get close, the exhalations of the void blasting me back like a gale. But then, as I drew nearer, I felt the pull. My mother was at the midpoint, in between, but I had to move beyond her. And suddenly I was bracing myself, trying not to step too quickly, the wind at my back now. Trying not to go tumbling and flailing into Darkness.

  Kamai, it whispered. Come.

  My slippers started sliding over the smooth ground. I wobbled desperately, my arms windmilling. Disoriented, dizzy, I didn’t know if I was looking into the doorway or down into a vast sea of endless nothing.

  Something caught my ankle, steadying me, drawing my eyes. My mother was stretched out along the floor, at the very end of her length of chain, her hand barely able to reach me. I felt her strength, her warmth, her light, flooding me.

  I turned back to the door, gripped its heavy black edges, and pulled as hard as I could. At first it didn’t move, but I strained until I thought something inside of me might break.

  “This. Is. My. Soul!” I cried, willing it to be so, every word punctuated by a ragged gasp.

  And then it began to shift, bit by excruciating bit, toward me. Toward closing.

  The Darkness screamed, fighting me, pulling against me, but I only screamed back and tugged harder, feeling my mother’s hand squeeze my ankle, bracing me. And there was also the tug of the void. Once I reached the halfway point, it did the rest of the job for me. Its sucking darkness caught the door, ripped it out of my hands, and slammed it closed.

  The scream cut off abruptly. The wind died. Off-balance, I collapsed to my hands and knees. Just breathing.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but if I’d thought everything would magically change, that the darkness of my soul would be swept away instantly, I was wrong. At least as far as the section of floor I was staring at. It still gleamed like a piece of polished night.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, one on my cheek. They were so bright and warm. I turned my head to see my mother crouched next to me. At least one thing had changed. Her brilliant spirit was free of cages and chains.

  “Kamai…,” she said. So much love in her voice, it was practically glowing too.

  Tears flooded my eyes, and I threw myself into her arms. She held me tight, letting me cry. But not for as long as I would have liked. I would have accepted a short eternity in her embrace.

  She pushed me back, but only to hold my damp face in her hands, kissing my forehead with her lovely lips. “I don’t have much time, but I have so much I want to say. Forgive me, for doing what I did and not telling you. I didn’t want him to affect you like he has this place. I wanted you to grow up without his influence, until I could figure out how to get rid of it … or until we could, together. Perhaps that was a mistake.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not you who needs f
orgiveness, it’s me. You told me not to open the black door.”

  She sighed. “It was inevitable. This is your soul. Perhaps it’s Heshara’s will that someone so strong, so brave would bear such a burden.”

  “I’m not strong or brave!” I cried. I felt weak. Tainted. Fractured. Like only she was holding me together, and yet she’d said she didn’t have long here. Not long before she left me for Heshara’s embrace, depriving me of her own. But I wanted her to have peace more than anyone. More than I wanted it for myself.

  “You are the strongest, bravest person I know, and I am so proud of you.” A little shake of her hands emphasized each word, and her face crumpled, tears like liquid light in her eyes. “Even though you have made your own path, so different from mine, I am proud. And I know you have it in you to make it the rest of the way.”

  In that moment, I knew she saw me and knew everything about me that I’d once been ashamed to tell her. Now we both knew the truth, and it was good.

  And yet I hadn’t gotten this far alone.

  “But it wasn’t my strength, all along,” I insisted. “It was Nikha’s and Lenara’s and…” I didn’t say Vehyn’s, or let myself think about all the strange ways he’d helped me even as he’d hurt me. “And your knife.” I choked on something that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

  She smoothed my hair back from my face. “It was more than just a knife. It has a spirit of its own, because I fashioned it from part of mine to protect you. A mother’s love made tangible.”

  That was why it had always been here in the sleeping realm—waiting for me. Why it could hurt Darkness when nothing else could. Why Vehyn had taken it away from me … and then given it back. And now I would lose it for good when I lost her. She had done so much to protect me, and yet I would have to continue alone. Without Nikha, Lenara, my mother’s knife … or my mother.

  As if she knew what I was thinking, she said, “But you don’t need me anymore. I once told you that you didn’t have a nehym, but you had a soul. I was telling the truth. Your spirit might belong here, but these halls aren’t fully yours so long as they are still his too. Reclaim this place, Kamai. I know you have the strength on your own now.”

  I didn’t quite know what she meant—I’d already closed the door, hadn’t I?—but before I could ask, her head cocked, as if she heard something I couldn’t.

  “Heshara is waiting for me. I must go.” She wavered in my vision, through my sheen of tears. Her hands felt less solid on my face, and so did her lips when she kissed my forehead one last time. Her spirit was departing, but she was smiling radiantly as it did, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “Perhaps I will see Hallan again. And you, someday.” Her words grew more rushed. “Please tell Razim that none of this was his fault, Lenara that I miss her, your father that I forgive him, and Kamai … know that I love you more than life itself.”

  “Mama,” I sobbed as she faded. “I love you too.”

  Her beautiful smile was the last I saw of her. Her voice lingered in my ears. “Go, Kamai. Be strong. Be brave. You already are.”

  Go, Kamai.

  I realized, with the gateway shut and Vehyn’s power diminished, I could go now. And I was out of time. Razim would still kill his father. Still break the bond protecting Ranta. Vehyn could still invade his soul, perhaps open another door to Darkness, and take over the world. If I didn’t act fast.

  I threw myself awake.

  31

  HONEST DISGUISES

  I didn’t know where I was for a moment after I awoke. And then I recognized the white walls, the brown leather couch I was lying upon: Lenara’s office, in the temple of Heshara. Lenara wasn’t using it, after all, while imprisoned in the royal dungeons. Agrir must have left me here, not in a cell, on Vehyn’s orders. The door couldn’t be locked from the outside, but that obviously hadn’t concerned Agrir overly much. He likely didn’t imagine I would wake until it was too late.

  There was an armoire against one wall. I stood stiffly—I must have been lying without stirring for nearly a day, judging by the late-morning sun outside. It was Razim’s birthday. I moved as quickly and quietly as my limbs would allow.

  Go, Kamai. My mother’s words echoed in my ears, urging me on. I couldn’t let myself think about the rest of what had happened, with her, or with Vehyn, or else I might crumple to the ground and never get up again. I had to be strong. Brave. For her. For the realm.

  I threw open the armoire and tugged out Lenara’s long, nondescript gray cloak. I’d seen other priests and priestesses wearing them when they ventured out. At any other time, I would have been hesitant to take the guise of a priestess for fear of angering Heshara, but I was more her servant now than I had ever been. I tossed the cloak over my shoulders, fastened the clasp, and drew up the deep hood.

  I paused before opening the door that led out of the office and into the temple proper. Part of me wanted to find Nikha, no matter the consequences, make sure she was all right … but if I didn’t do what I had to do, none of us would be all right, let alone her. The best thing I could do for her now, I tried to tell myself, would be to leave her, wherever she was.

  I took a deep breath, my heart aching, and eased open the door.

  It would have been too much to hope that I’d been left entirely unguarded. A woman in silver armor stood watch out front. She came alert at the creak of a hinge, shooting upright from where she’d been leaning against a white pillar, her eyes meeting mine.

  “You’re not supposed to be awake yet,” she said, coming quickly toward me. I retreated just as quickly into the office. I worried she would stay outside and shut the door, trap me, but instead, she followed me in. “The high priest said that if you woke up, I was to give you—”

  She only got as far as the rug, which was fortunate for her skull. I exhaled heavily in her direction, hoping against hope that I still had the power, even though the gateway was closed. Black fog curled over her face, and her eyes rolled up in her head. She collapsed. The thick rug also muffled the sound of her clattering armor. Maybe, somehow, Heshara was looking out for me.

  And I still had Vehyn’s gift. My soul had enough darkness remaining in it, I supposed, to be saturated like a sponge. But that meant Vehyn would still have some power too, for a time. He hadn’t tried to stop me yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t soon.

  I leapt over the fallen guard, pausing only for a moment in the doorway to make sure no one was running toward me at the commotion I’d caused. The hall was clear. I closed the door quietly behind me, hiding the unconscious woman, and started down the wide wing, deeper into the temple, sticking to the shadows.

  Lenara had told me the secret passage to Zeniri’s suite was behind a statue of Heshara, in an alcove with wood paneling, rather than stone. I had only been in two of the four temple wings, and I hadn’t seen anything matching that description. When I reached the black dome, where the four wings branched from the center like the points of the soul chart depicted on the ceiling, I had to decide which of the other two wings to search.

  And fast. Voices echoed behind me, coming from the direction of the temple entrance. I skirted the edge of the black dome, passing a priest and priestess who either didn’t notice me or weren’t interested, and then I dashed into the nearest unfamiliar wing. Chance had decided for me, but this wing was the closest to the palace, most convenient for any underground tunnel, and it also looked to be the dimmest, which boded well for the “secret” part of secret passageway.

  Unfortunately, it was filled with statues. Cursing under my breath, I hurried down the length of it, head whipping side to side. I had to force down my rising desperation when I realized they were all sculptures of Heshara. Her hair-shadowed face and its mysterious smile seemed to chase me down the hall.

  A shout rose behind me. Someone must have noticed there was no longer a guard stationed outside Lenara’s door and gone inside. The shouts spread, and so did the pounding of boots. My skin prickled and sweat broke out un
der my cloak. I ran faster.

  Wood paneling. I needed to find wood paneling.

  The footsteps were getting louder behind me.

  And then I saw it. It looked more like an altar, with an unusual statue of Heshara holding the babe Ranta, kneeling atop a wooden base. Wood paneling, almost like a screen in an altarpiece, made up the back of the alcove behind it. This was the only depiction of Ranta I’d seen in Heshara’s temple, and since the Keepers were Ranta’s protectors in Heshara’s service …

  I ducked behind it. Just in time. I held my breath as the echoing footsteps drew closer … and then passed by. But it wouldn’t take them long to begin checking behind the statuary.

  I faced the panel, trying to figure out the trick of it, if indeed I was in the right spot.

  The phases of the moon were carved into the panel in the form of a soul chart. The new moon was a deep indentation at the center, with a clearly defined outline. Almost like it was an inset. I pressed it, and it sank deeper. The entire panel swung inward an inch, on silent hinges.

  Thank you, Heshara.

  It was only after I’d slipped behind the panel, shutting it carefully behind me, that I realized I had no light. The tunnel was pitch-black. But after the training my mother had given me in maneuvering through rooms at night, never mind what I’d gone through on the spiral staircase, this was child’s play. Following the rough-hewn wall with my hands, I made my way in the darkness down a set of stone steps and through a tunnel.

  Even the passageway didn’t feel terribly long after the halls and tunnels I had traversed in my own soul. I was moving so fast I tripped when I hit the stairs, too eager to mind my stubbed toe. I hoisted my skirts with one hand, kept my other on the wall, and made my way up the steps as quickly as I dared, until I reached what felt like another smooth, wooden panel. I felt around for the inevitable latch and tripped it. It opened just as quietly as the way in—but with some difficulty. Something soft hindered it. Feeling my way forward, I realized they were clothes. So many clothes. A slash of light from under a door opposite me helped my eyes adjust quickly, confirming where I was. Zeniri’s closet.