by Jeff Hirsch
The inn was quiet except for a low murmur that rose up through the floorboards beneath her. Soon Glenn could make out at least three separate voices — two that were deeper and older, and another …
Glenn lowered her head and focused. The third voice was higher and talked fast in a short, clipped cadence. Kevin.
The wood floor creaked as she put her weight on it. She froze, but there was no change in the voices below. Glenn eased out of bed and crept to the door.
There was a shaft of light coming up the stairway down the hall.
Glenn dropped to a crouch at the edge of the staircase. She kept her body hidden in the darkness, leaning forward just enough so she could look down into the inn.
Kevin sat with his back to her at a table by the fire. Across from him sat the bartender and the violin player.
“Is he here or not?” Kevin asked.
“We’re still not sure who we’re talking to,” the bartender said.
His clawlike hands were on the table, half curled into fists.
“A friend,” Kevin said.
“Prove it.”
Kevin’s hand dropped below the lip of the table and beneath his coat, where he had hidden whatever it was Opal had given him. He pulled it out and placed it flat on the table, but Glenn still couldn’t see what it was.
The bartender turned to the violin player, but the older man remained still, staring across the table at Kevin.
“Can’t imagine where you got that,” the violin player said.
“It was given to me.”
The bartender scoffed. “Might have killed the old bag for it.”
“What do you want?” the violin player asked.
“To talk to Merrin Farrick.”
“About what?”
Kevin said nothing. The bartender shifted in his chair, but the violin player didn’t move. He was an older man with slate gray hair and a heavily lined face covered in short steely whiskers. His eyes, narrow and sharp, were hard on Kevin. Glenn was sure Kevin would crumble under that glare, but he sat deadly still, staring back at them until, as if by some strange magic, the two older men grew smaller and Kevin
larger.
The violin player glanced at the bartender and then out toward the front of the bar. The red-headed man pushed his chair back and quickly walked away from the table. The front door opened and shut, leaving Kevin alone with the musician.
“I’m Merrin Farrick,” the man said. His voice was different now, deep and full. He sat straight in his chair and his eyes were clear as ice.
“How do I know that?”
The man smiled ever so slightly. “There aren’t many people
lining up to lay claim to the name,” Farrick said. “Not with Her Majesty’s spies about. So. The spider is still kicking. What does she want?”
“There’s something here that’s very important. Something that the Colloquium wants.”
“I have no interest in what the outsiders want.”
“This object could threaten the Magistra as well.”
Glenn looked down at the metal band on her wrist and a thick lump grew in her throat. Merrin Farrick sat back in his chair, silenced.
“Gather your people outside Bethany,” Kevin said. “I’m
responsible for obtaining the object before anyone else. Once I have it, your people will take it.”
“And then?”
The fire crackled. Glenn held her breath as Kevin leaned across the table, taking hold of the object that sat between them.
“And then,” Kevin said as he lifted a shining golden dagger over the table, “death to the Magistra.”
Glenn stepped onto the inn’s porch before dawn to find a town transformed by a new dusting of white. It lay thin over the street and the porches and roofs of the buildings, giving the place a motley look.
Glenn’s cheeks burned. She huddled in her coat to try and block the cold out, but its fingers always found a way in.
When Kevin came back to the room, Glenn pretended to sleep.
She lay there, rigid with fear, watching him out of her half-closed eyes as he sat at the edge of the bed, head in his hands. Finally he lay down to sleep. As soon as Glenn heard his breathing go soft and regular she crept out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs.
The innkeeper pointed her to a trader who said he could take her halfway to Bethany for a price. Glenn had eagerly accepted, and after paying him off, she used the last of the money she had to buy food and loaded it all into the backpack.
There was a low squeak of wheels and the jangle of the horse’s tack as the trader eased his old wagon alongside the inn’s porch. It was a small flatbed with uneven lengths of timber tacked on the sides, cracked and ill fitted.
Glenn turned back to face the inn. Already candles were being lit in the windows and fires stoked as people rose from their beds. Soon Kevin would turn over to find her gone. What choice did she have?
Coming to this place was no accident. Clearly, Opal had shown him the way. And Kevin had lied to her. Kevin Kapoor had lied.
“Let’s go if you’re going.”
Glenn stepped into the wagon. There was a crack of a whip, and then the horses pulled away, leaving dark ruts in the snow. Glenn watched the inn and the town fade into the gray of early morning.
There was something heavy lodged in her chest, like a breath she couldn’t exhale.
The land passed by, great expanses of fields — winter fallow -
set with isolated clusters of domed houses and lone stands of trees.
There were a few roadside temples just like the one Aamon had prayed at on their first day in the Magisterium, but they were broken too, shattered and burned. The emptiness of it all was striking. If she was in the Colloquium, all of it would have been filled with the marble white lines of train tracks, towering stacks, and the din of skiffs zipping through the sky.
Glenn had the sudden thought that what she was seeing all
around her wasn’t the Magisterium at all. Not really. The Magisterium had been where her mother had grown up, a place that survived until years later when she returned to find that Merrin Farrick had murdered her family.
My grandparents … Glenn thought distantly.
Glenn wondered what the Magisterium had been like then, when the temples stood in their marble and gold and the Miel Pan moved freely through the world. When Affinity crackled in the air. What would it have been like to grow up in a place like that instead of the Colloquium? What would she have dreamed of instead of 813? Who would she be? Glennora Amantine, maybe, the granddaughter of the Magister? A princess, Affinity swirling around her fingers? Would she have learned to pray? How would it have been to grow up surrounded in that bone-deep wonder? In magic?
For the first time, Glenn wondered not why her mother had left them, but why she had ever left the Magisterium in the first place.
What would drive her away from such a place, and what would make her return only to destroy it?
She ran her fingers along the simple gray curves of the bracelet resting in her lap.
I could ask her now, couldn’t I?
“This is as far as I go.”
The wagon had come to a halt. The landscape around was empty prairie, fields of dirt and weeds and snow. There was a scattering of small houses in the distance. A thin dirt trail branched off the road they were on and led to a series of foothills that gave way to a small range of low mountains. Glenn was surprised to see that the sky was darkening quickly. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed the passing hours.
“How far is it to Bethany?”
“Straight on, you’d be there tonight, but only a fool would go through those hills at night. Best you head that way,” the man said, pointing to one of the scatterings of houses to their left. “Some family will take you in ’til the morning.”
Glenn thanked the driver, grabbed the pack, and dropped from the wagon into the snowy dirt by an intact pilgrim stone. The reins snapped, and slowly the wagon groaned off
on its way. Glenn listened to the low whistle of the wind as it blew a fog of white between her and the trader. Before she knew it, the man had disappeared and she was alone.
The distant farmhouses huddled together against the cold. If Glenn had to guess, she’d say it was two hours or more to get to one of them. Then she’d have to talk her way inside and then … what? Lie in some barn for another night, accomplishing nothing?
To her right was a collection of low peaks whose gray slate seemed almost blue in the wintry haze. The path was a straight shot into the foothills, but then she lost its course as it wound up and around the rolling crests.
If she pushed, she could be in Bethany that night. And if it was Bethany tonight, could it be home tomorrow?
Glenn’s hand brushed the pilgrim stone as she shouldered her backpack. Her fingers lingered over the split circle carved on its face.
Let Aamon be there, she thought and then set off down the road.
The trail narrowed and grew steeper as it snaked into rocky knolls. Every other step seemed to fall on loose gravel and dirt, made all the more treacherous by a veneer of snow and ice. Glenn’s legs were aching, her ankles shook with the strain, but still she climbed. She picked her steps carefully, bracing herself on the rock wall that grew up to the right when she faltered. To her left, the path dropped off to a boulder-and scrub-covered floor far below.
As the sun slipped farther toward the horizon, night drifted in like a fog. Glenn stopped and peered into the gathering dark, but there was nothing to see, just the narrow path ahead of her, its edges fading in the gloom. Glenn took a step forward and faltered on a patch of slick gravel. One foot slipped off the path and into the air. She tried to balance, but the awkward weight of the pack threw her off and gravity yanked at her heels. Glenn panicked, throwing herself violently to her right until her shoulder slammed into the rock wall.
Glenn drew several deep breaths to calm her pounding heart.
When the shaking in her legs ceased she peeled herself off the wall and moved up the path.
The hours passed and the darkness grew. Cold bit at her, and at times the winds that came screaming down the narrow path seemed as if they could blow her away. Glenn’s feet were slowly going numb. A light snow began to fall. Panic revved inside her, but she forced herself to push it down, to set one shaking foot in front of the other and keep going.
“Alnitak,” she whispered, stuttering, into the dark, imagining points of light appearing on her bedroom ceiling. “Alnilam. Mintaka.”
Glenn began to take another step, but stopped when the gravel down the path ahead of her shifted. She froze and listened. Nothing.
Just the wind. Glenn raised her foot, but there it was again, followed this time by a shower of dirt and rocks that tumbled down the hillside only feet from where she stood.
There was something waiting in the gloom ahead of her.
Glenn raised one foot and set it down behind her, but then the same sound came again. This time, behind her. She was trapped. Her hand slid up the wall to her right. At first there was only cold stone, but then her fingers discovered a crack. The ground shifted again in front of and behind her, closer this time, faster.
Glenn leapt, found another crevice for her left hand, and pulled herself up, her feet kicking at the smooth rock until they hit shallow depressions and took hold. Looking up, she could barely make out a series of short plateaus and crevices. A few deep seams, deeper areas of darkness, ran the wall’s length. The gravel below shifted again. Glenn pushed off and her fingers grazed a chink in the rock. A fingernail snapped as she dug in but she didn’t let go, she groped for another handhold, finally pulling herself up and away from the path. Glenn clambered up until she hit a narrow shelf, just wide enough for her to rise up onto her knees. She dared a look back to see what was coming for her.
It was as if the darkness below had congealed into two deep shadows. Both of them were tall and thin, like shifting smoke, and moving fast toward the same wall she had scrambled up.
Glenn’s heart flipped. The two figures were already on the wall, but they didn’t pause to find holds. They slid up, their hands flat on the rock, as if they were sticking to it. Glenn threw herself against the stone, finding two more handholds and yanking herself up. When she made it to the hill’s moonlit crest she rolled up onto it, then ran across the uneven rock. The two creatures came over the lip of the hill. They were faceless, freakishly elongated and thin, with tendril-like arms and legs.
Wisps of their dark bodies trailed behind them as they glided across the stone. Glenn fled up a short rise, leaping onto another hilltop that curved away to the right. She took off again, moving down a narrow corridor of rock.
She made it only a few feet before what she saw ahead pulled the last breath out of her lungs and crashed her down onto her knees. There, dark silhouettes against the deep blue night sky, were four more of the smokelike creatures. They stood in a semicircle at the edge of the cliff, their bodies wavering in the wind. Beyond them was sky and, to either side, high rock walls.
Glenn knew if she turned around she’d see the other two right behind her, cutting off her escape. There was nowhere to run. Even if she could fight, there were too many of them.
She had only one choice.
Glenn pulled back the sleeve of her coat and her fingers found the edge of the bracelet. Her breath caught in her throat as she tore it off and the dull metal hit the ground.
Glenn was aware only of the cold rock below the soles of her boots as she advanced toward the faceless creatures at the other side of the hill. She halved the distance between them and stopped. A gust of wind blew across the mountaintop. Removing the bracelet was like waking up a little at a time. The world began to pulse around her, becoming more vivid, fuller. High up on the mountain, there weren’t as many voices coming at her, just the smoothness of stone, the deep night, and the creatures that stood before her.
Without the bracelet to block them out, they were like places where the night, weighed down by some infinitely dense hunger, collapsed in on itself. They reached out for her, tugging at her, eager to press in through her flesh and fill her body. They wanted to devour her.
Become her.
Glenn’s knees started to buckle, but she threw her head back.
Above her the moon was huge and brilliantly white. It was transfixing, so cool and clean. Its light filled up her arms and legs and chest and drew her upward. Soon Glenn was aware of being high above the mountains, barely able to feel the shadowy things below.
The thin air seemed to fill with music the farther she drew away from the earth. She heard bells and horns and the tinkling of crystals.
The moon grew enormous. Glenn began to pick out the forms of the planets and the curve of solar systems. She could feel the universe like a bolt of silk gliding through her fingers, smooth and cool. Glenn urged herself higher, starving for more. Could she walk across the moon’s dusty surface? Could she go farther? Out to Orion? Out to 813? Opal had said that people once walked from world to world. Maybe she could too.
But then a sound rose up from below, followed by a jolt of animal terror that hit Glenn like molten iron. Below her was a small figure being surrounded by those cold, starving things. They were pressing in toward it. Glenn floated there, watching, but soon she turned away, rising back into that sea of music and light. Soon she would be a part of it.
“Glenn!”
The voice ripped through the air and was like a hand seizing Glenn’s ankle. There was something about the shape of it that fit like a key in her mind.
“Morgan!”
Something snapped. Glenn plummeted down out of the sky and
crashed onto the ground between a young man and the approaching shadows. They had formed a tight circle and were closing in. Glenn felt their tearing hunger as if it was her own.
She gritted her teeth as the darkness flooded her. The creatures pressed in closer, their wormlike arms reaching out. Their featureless faces yawned wide,
opening up huge, dark mouths. She tried to push them away, but what were they and what was she? What was the difference? She knew there was something she was supposed to do, but it was fuzzy and indistinct in her head. She was so hungry. A deep moan, a sigh of misery, resounded through her.
A hand took hers, the fingers pressing into her palm. Glenn turned. A spike of heat came from the boy on the ground. She was sure she knew him, but no name came to mind. He was small and thin, but there was something in him, something that burned and pushed the darkness back. Glenn snatched at it and pulled it within herself until it grew into a raging fire.
Glenn leapt again into the sky as the light and heat welled up in her pores and exploded outward, scouring the cold stone. She was a sun, and the creatures screamed as they fled from her, the light tearing at their smoky bodies, rending them apart.
Their cries doubled, keening pathetically. Words bubbled up through their screams. They came from everywhere, from each of them at once, clawing at her.
We are not these things, the voices said as their arms reached out to her. We are trapped. This is not who we are.
Glenn loosed another wave of light. It burst from her and pushed the creatures away, but still their cries surrounded her. Glenn dropped to the ground. A cluster of them was at the edge of the cliff, cringing with their dark arms wrapped tight around one another. Their moans still echoed in Glenn’s head. She strode forward, her body burning.
“Stop!” someone shouted distantly, but it meant nothing. Glenn burned hotter and brighter, ready to blast them away into nothingness.
The power was glorious.
A hand suddenly clasped her wrist. Glenn turned just as the young man yanked her toward him. There was a gray circle in his hand and he slapped it onto her wrist. Soon there was a great contraction and Glenn crashed to the ground.
“Glenn? Glenn!”
She was pulled into someone’s lap and cradled into their chest.
Her head lolled back.
His face was covered in ash and there were streaks of burn marks on his cheeks and on his shaven head. His eyes were luminous and strong. Glenn raised her hand up toward his face and he took it in his.