While most of the Weavers were now fighting the fire, a small group of people stood halfway between the lab and the cabins, just watching. I hadn’t expected that. In the Weaver’s dream everyone had rushed to help out, each person in the compound having a specific role to play. Like cogs in a well-oiled machine. Granted, the dream had depicted an evacuation, not an actual fire, but still, it spoke to how the place was organized—
No, I realized. It spoke to the way the woman in charge imagined it was organized.
Damn. Lesson two in how relying on dream knowledge could screw things up.
The spectators were positioned so that no one could leave the compound without being seen. Rita and I could probably have gotten out, since we were dressed like Weavers, but a horde of children in their trademark scrubs could never pull it off.
“There’s nothing we can do for Moth now,” Rita murmured. “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. We need to get out of here while we can.”
“I’m not leaving her,” I snapped.
But I had no idea how to get those people to move out of the way. What we needed was a new distraction, something that would jar them out of spectator mode and send them running elsewhere. Anywhere. I tried to think of a way to do that, but I couldn’t come up with any ideas, other than an explosion. And we didn’t have the materials needed to produce one of those. I inventoried our supplies in my head, hoping that something would spark an insight, but the only things we had with us were stuff we’d packed for the break-in. Nothing useful.
I thought of Moth sitting miserably against the fence during our second secret chat, whispering to me how she would rather die than stay in this place one more day, and my heart clenched in sympathy. I couldn’t just abandon her. I couldn’t.
Then I remembered something else I had on me. Something that hadn’t been stored with our regular supplies. Slowly a plan took shape in my head, and yeah, it was a bit crazy, but it might work. And I wouldn’t have to fight with armed guards or stand inside a burning building to pull it off.
“Watch the dorm,” I ordered Rita. “As soon as you can break the kids out, do it, and lead them out of here. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“What—” she began.
But I was already gone, sprinting toward the stables.
The horses were upwind of the fire, and they had no direct view of the lab, so though they’d heard the commotion and smelled the smoke, they hadn’t gone into panic mode yet. A few were whinnying nervously, but grooms were working to calm them down, and thus far everything was under control.
As I approached the building I slowed to a walk, dropping behind it so no one would see me. It seemed to me the nervous whinnying increased slightly in volume. Now I could hear the grooms talking, trying their best to instill calm in their charges. “Whoa girl, easy now . . .” “It’s okay, don’t worry, we won’t let anything hurt you. . . .”
I moved a bit closer. The volume of the equine protests increased. There was a loud bang. Someone cursed.
Closer.
The horses started to buck and thrash in their stalls. High pitched squeals split the night. I heard objects crashing loudly to the ground, wood splitting, grooms yelling. A wave of guilt sickened me, but I stood my ground. The horses weren’t being hurt, they were just scared. Their fear would fade as soon as its cause left the vicinity.
Or so I hoped.
The ruckus in the stable had become loud enough now to draw attention, and some of the Weavers came running to see what the trouble was. Unlike the fire, this catastrophe wasn’t playing out in the open, which meant that anyone who wanted to know what was going on had to head this way. And the spectators came. They came. Not all of them, but enough to clear the way to the gate.
I looked over to the dormitory and saw Rita standing in front of it, keys in hand. What the fuck? she mouthed, when she saw that I was looking at her. I lifted the wildlife fetter out of my shirt just far enough for her to see it, then pointed toward the dormitory. As long as I was close to the horses, they would try to get away. She looked at me a moment longer, nodded her approval, then turned her attention to the key ring.
As I started to run toward her, the ground trembled. It only lasted a second, but that was enough to awaken memories of Mystic Caverns collapsing around me. I focused all my attention on Rita, trying to shut the memories out. She tried a few keys, with no success, then decided to kick in the door instead. She struck it right beside the doorknob, with enough force that the frame began to split. Then she kicked again and it gave way, bits of shattered wood flying everywhere as the door slammed open.
Lightning struck nearby with a deafening crack; it was so close that I could feel the electricity prickle my scalp. What the hell was going on? The weather had been calm when we’d entered the compound. Then the ground began to buck and heave, so violently that I lost my footing and fell to my hands and knees. Gasping, I looked at the dormitory, hoping that Rita was doing better than I was. There were children pouring out of the door now, headed toward the gate, many of them clutching food in their arms. Rita herself was staring at something in my direction, unable to move. I followed her gaze to the tops of the trees right behind me, and saw to my wonder—and horror—that they were all sprouting leaves, fresh green leaves, that grew to full size as we watched, then turned red or orange or yellow and fell to the ground, making way for new ones.
She looked at me, then at the mutating treetops, then back at me. There was fear in her eyes.
What the hell was happening?
I struggled back to my feet, and as I started to run toward her, rain began to fall from the cloudless sky. Not normal rain, but a dark, viscous liquid, that looked and smelled like blood. Suddenly I remembered the fetters we’d left behind, now in the heart of the blazing fire. Had the flames somehow triggered them, so that all the energy they contained was pouring into the compound? Lightning cracked again, and I saw a white-hot bolt strike one of the trees, splitting its trunk in two. A massive limb came crashing down right next to me, and I slipped in a puddle of the sticky red rain, almost going down again. As I grabbed at a branch to steady myself I could feel the bark crawling beneath my fingertips, and I let go of it quickly. The whole world had gone mad, and nothing within it was stable or solid any more.
Rita met me at the base of the dormitory stairs. Her face was streaked with red from the unnatural rain, and the terror in her eyes reflected what was in my heart. She grabbed me by the arm and we started to run. By now the ground was muddy—a thick, unnatural mud, that clung to our feet like glue—and the earth heaved repeatedly beneath our feet, as if we were running across the stomach of a living creature.
What had we done?
The gate was standing open when Rita and I reached it. Most of the children had passed through it ahead of us, but a few of the smaller ones were huddled together in fear just inside it. Rita grabbed up the smallest one and yelled for the others to get moving. The plan was for them to follow the road as long as they could, and abandon it only when forced to by pursuit . . . but there would be no pursuit tonight.
Suddenly I heard a horse screaming. I glanced toward the stable and saw that several animals had broken out into the pasture. As I watched, two of them fell to their knees, then collapsed full length upon the ground. I knew in my gut they were dying—they were all dying—and I had caused it. Insects began to swarm into the compound, wasps and bees pouring out of their hives, flying madly through the bloody rain, all sense of direction gone, a whirlwind of wings and buzzing and venom-tipped stings that swept through the compound like a twister.
“Jesse!” Rita grabbed me by the arm. “We have to go!”
Shuddering, I started to turn away from the horror that the compound had become, but out of the corner of my eye I saw something that chilled me to my core, and I turned to look at it. Against a sky seared white by lightning, a single spot of darkness had appeare
d, a terrible black void that sucked in all light, and it was slowly expanding, taking on the shape of a man—
No! No! Please, God, not that!
There was no mistaking it now: this was the creature from my dreams, the void-wraith, devourer of dreams, whose wound I still bore on my arm. Somehow, the terrible forces we’d unleashed had enabled it to cross into the real world, and now it hovered over the compound, feeding on the chaos. Its presence was an icy wind that sucked all the heat from the world, and I could see a film of frost spreading across the treetops beneath it, the leaves curling and dying as a glistening white shroud enveloped them.
Then the wraith looked at me. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, when it had no eyes, but I could feel its scrutiny in every fiber of my being. “Run!” I screamed. But a crack of thunder split the night, drowning out my warning. I could see children strung out along the length of the road, the frontmost ones lost in shadow as they fled for safety. But not fast enough. If I ran in that direction too, following them, the dream-wraith would come after me, and then they would be vulnerable. I thought of the trees behind me, now sheathed in ice, and shuddered. Even if the thing didn’t attack the children outright, its mere proximity to them might cause damage. I needed to flee in a different direction, and that meant only one thing: into the woods. I wouldn’t be able to run as fast there, but at least I would be running alone, and if the wraith followed me, the children would be safe from it.
So I turned to the north and ran by the side of the fence until I passed the end of the compound, then I dove into the forest and kept running. I had left the fire behind, and the moonlight coming through the trees was minimal, so I ran in near darkness. I tripped and stumbled over various obstacles, struggling to keep on my feet. Lightning struck and for a moment everything was starkly visible, trees looming overhead like hostile aliens—and then that light was gone, too, and in its wake I was left blinded, and had to stumble through the darkness based on the memory of what I had just seen, until my vision cleared.
The wraith was getting closer, its presence a chill wind, each gust colder than the last. I dared to look up when the tree cover thinned, and I saw it looming overhead, its unnatural darkness devouring the stars. Despair gripped me. Where was I running to? What kind of refuge could protect me? This wasn’t just a dream, like the last time; I couldn’t just wake myself up to make it end. No little brother would hear my screams, shake me by the shoulders, and banish this thing. Sooner or later it was going to catch up with me, and not all the running in the world could save me.
Suddenly the trees were gone, and I was sprinting across open ground. I dared another glance overhead; the wraith was so large it looked like it had devoured half the sky, and it was bearing down on me. I turned back just in time to see the ground fall away before me, and I skidded to a stop, desperately trying to save myself. But the earth was too soft, and I couldn’t get traction. Dirt crumbled away beneath me and I fell, landing with half my body on solid earth and half of it dangling over a chasm. It was probably the same crevice we’d followed on the way here, but in the darkness it looked ten times as deep. Desperately I grabbed onto an exposed tree root and tried to pull myself back to safety before the wraith fell upon me. Somehow I managed to get back onto solid ground, and as I did so I felt something sharp stab me in the butt. The fetter in my pocket.
The dream fetter in my pocket.
The whole world was losing heat now, and frost began to coat the treetops surrounding me. I couldn’t see the wraith any more, only a terrible blackness in place of the sky. Why was it coming after me? It had only done that before when I used my dream Gift. It never showed up in my regular dreams. So why was it hunting me now, when I was awake?
I dug the dream fetter out of my pocket. It looked like a piece of inert metal, but I knew the power that was in it. I had seen the wild energies of the other fetters crackling through the air of the compound, warping the very forces of nature. Maybe the wraith was responding to the energy in this one. Maybe it could sense the Dreamwalker’s essence in it, the same way Morgana’s Seers had.
Twisting around, I tried not to think about all that this fetter could have taught me, all the mysteries it could have revealed, all the powers it might have unlocked. None of that would do me any good if I was dead. With a cry of anguish I threw the thing as far I possibly could, and I watched it arc high over the chasm and then begin to fall. Lightning flashed, turning the smooth piece of metal into blazing fire, just for an instant. Then a dark and terrible presence rushed down into the chasm, passing so close to me that it left a film of frost on my hair. Ice formed along the edges of the crevice as it swept down its length, until it reached the falling fetter and enveloped it. Then the darkness began to draw into itself, blackness folding in upon blackness like some hellish origami. And an instant later it was gone. Half-blinded by the lightning, I couldn’t identify the exact moment it vanished from the waking world, but I could feel the frigid weight of its presence lifting from the universe, and overhead the stars returned.
And then there was silence. I waited, breath held, to see what would come next.
Melting icicles tinkled softly overhead. A patch of frost broke from the chasm’s rim, crumbling as it fell to the bottom, landing gently.
Nothing else.
Numbly I lowered my head to my arms, and I wept. I wept for the dead horses and the terrified children and even for the Weavers who had just lost all their work, because that was my doing. But most of all I wept for myself, for the loss of that precious hope I had enjoyed so briefly, when the key to knowledge was in my hand, and the future had appeared to be within my control. Now gone.
I was not consciously aware of the moment when this world gave way to the next, nightmares of the solid world morphing into nightmares of an imaginary one. But Rita found me shortly after dawn and woke me up, so sometime during the night that moment must have come.
Sometimes it is merciful not to know.
17
SHADOWCREST
VIRGINIA PRIME
ISAAC
ISAAC WAS ASLEEP when the spirit returned. He sensed it in his dream first: a presence in the shadows that was not quite visible, an unnatural breeze that chilled his skin whenever he looked in a particular direction. By the time he was fully awake, he knew that the event he’d been preparing for was finally at hand.
He squinted as he peered into the corner of the room where the spirit seemed to be. Struggling to see it. His teachers said his Gift was too weak to allow true death vision, but as he was beginning to discover, not everything his teachers taught him was correct. Whether they were deliberately hedging the truth to make him behave in a certain way, or just doing the best they could with the limited information they had, he didn’t know, but the end result of both paths was the same: the only sure way for him to discover what his limits were was to test them.
He’d spent the last few days researching the techniques that the umbrae majae used to bolster their Gift, and now, as he peered into the darkness, he whispered the spirit’s name over and over again, envisioning a ritual design he’d discovered in one of his father’s books, something called a death codex. Concentrating on it was supposed to help open a window into the world of the dead. Jacob Dockhart, he chanted mentally. Jacob Dockhart. Jacob Dockhart. He tried to visualize the boy’s face, superimposing it over the shifting shadow that was in front of him, but it proved surprisingly difficult. The last time Isaac had seen Jacob, the boy’s face had been contorted into a mask of pure horror; it was not the kind of image the mind naturally wanted to recall.
But slowly the darkness in the room seemed to coalesce, until there was a single human-sized shadow. While it lacked any color or detail, and there was only emptiness where its face should have been, it was vaguely human in shape, and Isaac felt a rush of pride at having managed that much. Most apprentices could not conjure a vision of the dead at all.
“J
acob Dockhart.” He spoke the spirit’s name firmly, because it was important for the dead to know who was in charge. “Why are you here?”
He sensed that the spirit was responding to him, but the ritual that had allowed him to see it did not help him make any sense of its speech. Shutting his eyes for a moment, he envisioned another codex he’d found, which supposedly would open his mind to the voices of the dead. It was a dangerous pattern to invoke, especially for a mere apprentice. If some malevolent spirit decided to take advantage of the fact that he was now opening his mind to the influence of the dead, there was little he could do to stop it. Only a Shadowlord had the power to cast out a possessing spirit.
But no spirit tried to take control of him, and after a few moments of concentration he found that he could make out fragments of the spirit’s speech. It wasn’t that he heard actual words, so much as he sensed their meaning. The tide of ghostly sounds chilled his skin, it stirred his blood, it made his eyes burn and left a strange taste in his mouth. And in the wake of that came understanding. There was no real sound.
Help me, the spirit seemed to be saying. Isaac’s skin prickled as he absorbed the words, not just through his ears but through every cell in his body. Even for a boy who was accustomed to the presence of the dead, the sensation was eerie.
Help me.
“I can’t,” he said quietly. His voice was pitched low so that no one outside the room would hear him. “You’ve been bound to a Shadowlord. There’s no way I can undo that, I’m sorry.”
Again he sensed, rather than heard, the ghost’s question. Forever?
Isaac hesitated. He knew that such slaves often became free when their masters died, but he also knew that Shadowlords who accepted Communion could claim the bound spirits of their predecessors. He didn’t know enough about the process to give the boy’s ghost any kind of definitive answer. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
For a moment there was silence. The air around him began to take on weight and substance; he felt as if the darkness were pressing in on him. Fear fluttered in his stomach, and for a moment he was tempted to try to banish his visitor—though God alone knew if he was capable of that. But instead he drew in a deep breath and waited.
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