by Tom Early
“There’s something incredibly disturbing about Didas having a literal gate to Hell,” Sam mused. “I wonder if it actually works.”
I shuddered. “Let’s not find out. What do you think the odds are that Didas keeps the runes here?”
Sam looked around and started pawing through the stuff, picking up a carved statue of a bear before putting it back down again. “Only one way to know for sure. Besides, at least we get to trash the place. We’re already screwing ourselves over with this, so might as well get the full mileage, right?”
I grinned. “You do have a way of seeing the silver lining.” I started at the desk, while Sam tackled the shelves. I left the map alone—I didn’t want to accidentally teleport myself somewhere. There was an honest-to-god giant crystal ball in one corner, filled with nothing but swirling smoke and several nodes of strange silver light, and also what appeared to be a rose made of nothing but gold-sheened glass. It was extraordinarily beautiful, and also pulsating with an insane amount of “touch me and die” magic. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the runes, though, so I left it alone as well. I found what looked like a sheaf of notes, several of which seemed to be discussing the runes Didas had already used on me in frighteningly clinical terms—I spotted something about possible forced reprogramming of other possessor-type ancient beings to human hosts, and wow, that just sounded like new levels of creepy—but nothing about the ones he had yet to use. After that, the desk was pretty much done. I looked around for any hints of, like, a secret shelf or something, but I had no idea what to look for.
“Fay, come look at this,” Sam said, holding out a section of old parchment. “I think I found the old architectural plans for Janus University.”
I walked over. “Is this gonna help with finding the runes at all?”
“Not directly, no,” Sam said and then pointed at a section of the blueprints. “But look at this. Apparently Didas made this place with a big-ass vault in mind, another floor beneath where we are right now.” She peered at it. “That, or maybe it’s a coffee stain with a few well-placed ink smudges. I don’t actually know how to read most of this.”
I glanced at the section she was pointing to. “Well, it definitely seems to indicate that there are more levels to this stairwell than we’ve encountered, that’s for sure. Do you think that’s a false floor at the base or something?”
“It’s probably real.” Sam sighed. “I’m betting Didas just has another way down.” She brightened suddenly. “Ooh, supersecret hidden door. I’m gonna go touch every available surface now.”
I watched with some amusement as she flung herself at the nearest available wall and started running her hands down it, feeling for anything out of place. “Go get that part over there,” I called, grinning. “I’m not sure you’ve stroked it hard enough yet.”
There was a sudden click, and a section of the stone wall moved seamlessly inward and then slid to one side, revealing a passageway. After a moment, Sam turned back to look at me, her face insufferably smug.
“Don’t say it,” I warned her, trying to stifle a giggle. “Just… don’t.”
“Fay?” Sam said, grinning widely. I braced for impact. “I told you so.”
“Fine. You get that one.”
“I get all of them, Polar Bear. Don’t delude yourself. Now,” she said, practically skipping, “shall we investigate the hidden door in the hidden office of the magic university?”
“You’re having way too much fun with this,” I complained. “Our lives are at stake.” She ignored me in favor of diving happily into the doorway. I knew she wasn’t actually as carefree about this as she seemed—this was just her way of avoiding the panic rush.
I shook my head fondly and followed her into the passageway. It was more of a ramp than a staircase, gently turning as it brought us ever lower. Even I could feel the air getting markedly colder the farther down we went, and I had nothing to do with it this time. Runes were scored into the walls, glowing with barely contained power. There was so much raw energy stuffed into these enchantments that the air actually hummed with it. I kept glancing around, half expecting an attack. Sam looked tense, bouncing on the balls of her feet, ready for a fight. Then we rounded the corner, and what I saw was enough of a surprise to make me forget about everything else.
The room was a massive stone cavern. Whatever the blueprints had said, it looked like the cavern was naturally occurring, not man-made. The scale of it was immense, and so was the creature it contained. The floor could have been covered with gold and jewels and other treasures and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was too busy staring at the giant man chained to the wall, and the fact that his head had two faces on it, both of which had their eyes closed. He was the being from my dream. I’d almost forgotten about it.
“Sam,” I whispered. “This is the one I told you about!”
Sam stared up at the two sleeping faces. “Well, I guess that explains the name.”
“Janus University,” I breathed out. “The doorway god.”
There was a sudden tremble in the air, and then the giant opened his eyes, staring down at us. “Correct,” he rumbled in two voices that sounded in harmony. “Though you have nothing to fear from me, little ones.”
“Okay, hold up, one question before we start with the monologues,” Sam said shakily, holding up a hand. “Are you really a god? Like, are you Janus, or is this just some spell or something?”
The giant stared down at her. “I am Janus, yes,” he rumbled. “But I am no more a god than you are. I am merely the steward of the in-between places.” He turned to me. “You, I have seen before. Have you come to free me at last?”
“Uh,” I said, blinking. I glanced at Sam, and she shook her head. “No? You’re a giant, chained-up god in a hidden cave. When has it ever worked out well for people who do that? Besides, you probably work for Didas anyway.”
Janus lurched forward suddenly, pulling the chains that kept him tied to the wall taut. His faces stopped barely five feet away from us, his head alone easily ten feet tall. “I do not work for that usurper,” he hissed. “He has kept me imprisoned here for centuries, using my power to further his own influence like the leech he is.” Two sets of glowing silver eyes stared at me. “Free me, and my first acts will be to free you in return, and to bring ruin to that man.”
I shook my head. “No. I may not trust Didas, but at least he’s the evil I know. You, I have no idea about.”
Janus let out a coughing laugh. “So you think you know Didas, boy? That is a mistake. You have no idea the lengths that man will go to for what he believes is necessary.” Janus eyed me. “But I see you are still not convinced. Very well. Why not see what your trusted headmaster is doing at this very moment?” Janus pulled back, rearing up to his full height. Then in one calculated movement, he pulled his arm back as far as he could and slammed it forward impossibly fast. There was a horrifying crack as the chain stopped the gesture halfway through, and then a few drops of strange, purple-red blood fell slowly to the floor, quickly forming a puddle several feet in diameter. Janus hummed, the two voices in eerie harmony, and then light shimmered on the surface of his blood. “Go on,” Janus said, his voice rough from pain, “Look. See the evil that you claim to know.”
The image in the blood coalesced, forming a clear image of Didas striding through the halls of Obsidian, his normal nonexpression replaced by tightly controlled fury. He held something in his hands, a scrap of paper with something written on it that was powerful enough to send the shadows in the image dancing as far away from him as possible. I watched as he threw open the door to my room, revealing my bedroom, completely undamaged except for the curious lack of shadows anywhere. My room was glowing as brightly as the sun, and I could see wisps of smoke curling off from Didas’s boots as he stood by the entrance. For a moment he just stood there, and then I watched as he said something powerful enough to send a tremor through the walls of the building. My room seemed to shiver and fade to black and white, and th
en I saw myself and the leanan sídhe, and watched as Didas followed my flight from Obsidian, his face growing angrier by the second. I saw him witness my disappearance, and then my return and travel to the library. Didas saw me destroy the door to his office, and I was pretty sure he growled. His fist tightened around the scrap of paper.
“Enough,” he forced out, and suddenly Sekhmene was beside him, a pillar of silver light falling down from nowhere. “I will not tolerate any more disobedience. That boy has slipped the noose long enough. Bring him back to me, and I will tighten the collar round his neck myself.”
“Understood.” Sekhmene nodded, and then her whole body blurred, racing toward the library at incredible speed, and—shit.
I paled. “Is this real-time?” I asked. Janus nodded. I looked at Sam, who looked just as freaked out as I was. We had minutes before she arrived, if that, and I had no doubt as to what would happen when she did. I could break doors, sure, but Speaker Sekhmene? Not in a million years. Not like this. I turned back to Janus. “You swear you won’t try to hurt or control me?”
Janus nodded, neither face portraying anything other than grave assurance. “My revenge is for that man and everything he stands for. Helping you only furthers that cause.”
I took a deep breath. “Then you have a deal.”
“Freeing me will not be so easy, boy,” Janus said as I approached the wall where the chains were fastened. “They have held me for centuries. You will need to find the key, or a power greater than my own, restrained as it is.”
I felt a flash of irritation wash over me as he continued his pointless prattle. What did a wretch like that know about my power? Nothing. Then my head throbbed, and the irritation washed away. I glanced down at my hands before hurriedly pulling up my sleeves. Shit.
“Sam,” I said slowly, holding out my now unmarked forearms. “We have a problem.”
Sam came up to me, and her face paled as she realized the implication. “How much time do we have?”
“Not much. I just had a bleed-through. I think Summer’s help is starting to wear off.” I glanced at the chains. “Freeing Janus might push me over the edge. But leaving him here just leaves us at Didas’s mercy.”
Sam’s eyes hardened. “Do what you have to do.”
“Janus,” I called. “Do you know about Winter?”
Janus turned one of his faces toward me. “Aye,” he rumbled, “I do.” His eyes widened. “Ah, so that’s the strangeness about you.”
I nodded. “I think I can free you, but if I do, Winter’s going to surface. Can you stop them from rampaging?”
“No, I cannot. But I have seen the runes Didas intended to use on you. He sought them out instead of leaning on my power more than he thought safe. I can do to you what the runes would have done, finish the process of merging that you have already begun.” He looked at me, something unfathomably ancient behind his eyes. “This is a dangerous gamble to take, and you did not want to put yourself on this path. I can see Didas’s hand in your hurt, and the other Seasons, besides. What I offer may kill you, just as this ritual you have begun might. It might save you. The choice to take this risk is yours.”
I wanted nothing more than to get the runes and go back to the Seasons, and then maybe sleep for a thousand years, but part of me already knew that door had closed. Didas probably had the runes on his person right now, and I didn’t trust myself to be able to beat him, or Sekhmene. This… was probably my last chance.
I looked at Sam, and she stared back at me, worry present in her eyes. “You’ve let me make my own choices, Fay,” she said. “I owe you the same. And you’ll make it out okay, no matter what. I know you will, even if I have to kill Winter myself.”
I could do this. Sam believed in me. Tyler believed in me. My parents believed in me. I wasn’t going to let Winter take them away from me, not this time. I met Janus’s eyes. “Be ready.” He nodded.
I walked over to the chains and took in their rune-scarred appearance. The power inside this room was concentrated entirely on keeping Janus hidden and restrained. These chains kept every single bit of his power tamped down, and they had layer upon layer of enchantment cast on them. I could see the delicate Infusion work that had gone into every inch of the metal. Really, it was like an inverse Ward more than anything else, meant to keep the power inside from getting out. I could see how it was put together. It was a fairly simple construction, just layered with so much power that no normal person ever could have done it. Even simply throwing Winter’s power at it would take a while to make a dent. But if I targeted what few weaknesses I could see in the construction and used what I’d learned to guide Winter’s power, then I could do this. I was sure of it.
I took a steadying breath, then placed my hands on the chain links. I felt the scoring of the runes and carefully covered the first one with my palm. I steadied myself, then sent the ice in, sharp and precise as a scalpel. I could feel it following the lines I’d set for it, the cold diving ever deeper into the enchantment, until it found the barely present seams and began to widen them. Once I had the layers held separately in the ice, I clenched my hands into fists, and there was the clear ringing of a bell before every single link on the chains shattered. I grinned as they came apart, and Janus stretched to his full height, and then my vision went white and the last of the scars on my body vanished without the slightest trace. I could feel them gathering speed, their awful laughter as it pushed its way to the surface. I tried to hold them back, stood in its way, and they shoved me aside with only the barest effort. Winter was coming back, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
There was a moment of sheer terror as I felt my arms begin to move, felt something else raise the power inside me to its bidding, and then there was a flash of brilliant purple light, and everything stopped.
Chapter Twenty-five
THEN THERE was a door, set in a wall so riddled with cracks that it looked ready to collapse at any moment. Hoarfrost was pouring through the broken edges, creeping over the material and sending bitterly cold gusts of wind out toward me. I couldn’t see through the wall, but I could feel the seething hatred waiting there, barely contained. I looked around for Sam or Janus or anyone, but I was alone, the outlines of whatever room I was in strangely soft and shifting. The only thing in here with me was the door, and I strode over to it. As I drew closer to the wall, I noticed strange writing on it, runes that shimmered in and out of existence, their very presence causing the mortar to crumble and decay, letting more of the killing frost through. It was brute force turned to magic, simply overwhelming the wall with enough power to level a continent. I recognized the runes—they were the ones Didas had used on me. The door, however, was something different. It provided a way through the wall, same as the runes—but it was finesse and careful structure, and a magic that I was sure no human could ever replicate. And just by looking at it, I knew that I had no choice but to open it and see what lay on the other side. I reached out and turned the knob.
The sheer wave of power that hit me as soon as the door was opened blasted me off my feet, sending me skidding backward and tumbling head over heels. I got to my feet quickly and glanced up in time to see a mountain of blue-white ice, made entirely of edges sharp enough to sever limbs, crashing down on itself in an avalanche that stormed toward the open door. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment. Here was an elemental force of nature, vast enough to swallow the world and cold enough to shatter what was left behind. Just by looking at them, I could see exactly how Winter had managed to lock the entire world in ice for so many thousands of years, why everyone was afraid of them. Here was the end of all things, charging toward me in unstoppable fury. And I knew then, somehow, that if Winter reached the door before me, everything would be lost.
I broke into a run, throwing up a Ward without thinking, deflecting as much of Winter’s painful presence as I could manage. The mountain was collapsing, turning into vicious chunks of ice that rushed even faster toward the door, sacrificing much
of its bulk for speed. Snow was spreading rapidly as the ice at the bottom was churned into ever-smaller pieces. I gritted my teeth and called back from memory the speed-enhancing spell Sam loved to use so much, and sped up. I wasn’t going to lose. Not now, not ever. But no matter how fast I ran, the door didn’t seem to be getting any closer. And something was happening with Winter. More and more pieces of ice were breaking off the mountain, and it was reducing in size rapidly. There was practically more snow than ice now, and then the last of the mountain… dissolved. I stopped for a moment, watching as the ocean of snow lay there, unmoving, and then I saw it. At the very front of the snow pile, something was stirring. A body rose up slowly, only just taking shape, the arms and legs and head forming and solidifying, until finally I was left staring at… me. A me with bone-white skin, hair that seemed to have snow falling softly from it, and glowing ice-blue eyes that had the flat, dead gaze of a shark. Something about this other me’s proportions was all wrong. The way Winter’s limbs moved reminded me of ice floes breaking. The fingernails were a little too much like claws. And when they started to run for the door, they almost glided, more than anything else. Everything about them screamed that they shouldn’t exist, that they had no right to exist, and that I needed to get away from them as fast as possible. So, naturally, I ran straight at them.