by Anne Bishop
Ewan snorted. “Why would she? We’d put the kittens in a sack and dropped them in the pond the day before.”
Lynnea stared at him, the fear of being turned out that she’d lived with all her life exploding into a beast with claws. “You drowned the kittens? But they were babies!”
“Useless. Like you.”
She huddled on her part of the seat, trying not to weep for the dead kittens, trying not to wonder if she was being taken to a similar fate.
Would it have been different if she hadn’t struggled, if she hadn’t screamed when Pa tried to push her down into the stall and pull up her skirt? Would it have been different if Mam had ignored the scream instead of coming into the barn? Or if, when Mam dragged her back to the house, she hadn’t blurted out what Pa had said about the old cow being dried up so she’d have to give him the milk from now on?
It wasn’t until she saw the wounded look in Mam’s eyes—eyes that had flashed a moment later with jealous fury—that she understood what Pa had meant, and then it was too late.
Which was why she and Ewan were traveling to the Landscapers’ School. She was no longer welcome at the farm. Pa had wanted to take her into the village and leave her, but Mam had given him a cold, hard look and said that was keeping temptation too close at hand. So Pa had grudgingly agreed to give Ewan time off the farm to take her to the school, where the Landscapers would send her to another landscape in Ephemera. In a very real sense, she would disappear from the lives of everyone she had known.
They’d been traveling since sunup. The sun was now low in the west. Would they reach the school before full dark? Or were they going to have to find some shelter for the night? From the things he’d muttered all day, she knew what Ewan would like to do to her. Whatever constraints had kept Pa and Ewan at a distance all the years she’d lived with them were broken now. But there had been too many people on the roads throughout the day, and now they were probably—hopefully—too close to the school for him to risk a dark intention that might change things for him.
Ewan gave a hard tug on the reins, bringing the weary horse to a stop beside a wooden post that had an R carved into the wood.
“This is it,” Ewan said, turning his head to look at her. “Get out.”
“What?” Lynnea looked around. The road curved, and trees blocked the view. “Is this the school?”
Ewan gave her a mean smile. “No, but this is as far as I’m taking you. Went up to the village yesterday while Pa and Mam were shouting at each other. Pa figured it was a two-day ride to the school, but I talked to some of the fellows, and they told me about this road.”
Her heart pounded. “This isn’t the way to the school?”
“There’s a resonating bridge on the other side of the bend. That’s what the R in the post means. I’m crossing over to another landscape to have some fun. You’re getting out here. I got two free days before Pa expects to see me back home, and I’m not going to waste them on a piece of crowbait like you. And I’m not going to have the filth inside you influencing what landscape I end up in.” He gave her a hard shove, almost knocking her off the cart seat. “Get out.”
“But…” When his hand curled into a fist, she scrambled out of the cart. “How am I supposed to find the school?”
Ewan gathered the reins. “Cross the bridge—and hope you end up in a place that’s better than you deserve. Giddyap there!”
Stunned that he had done what she’d always feared—left her on the side of the road like a piece of trash—she’d almost let him reach the bend before she realized the bag with the change of clothes Mam had allowed her to take was still in the back of the cart. “Ewan!” she shouted. “Ewan! My bag!”
Maybe he heard her, maybe not. Either way, he rounded the bend and was gone.
Moments later he screamed.
She ran down the road. Had the horse shied at something and thrown Ewan from the cart? He had screamed, so he must be hurt. Where could she go to reach help if he was badly injured and the horse had bolted, leaving her with no way to take Ewan anywhere?
She raced around the bend—and staggered to a halt. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she tried to understand what she was seeing.
The cart, overturned and sinking. The horse, frantically struggling in a pool of water that covered half the road. No sign of Ewan, but she thought she could still hear faint screaming.
Wary now, her heart pounding, she approached the water and the struggling horse.
“Easy, boy,” she whispered. “Easy.”
The horse thrashed, as if spurred by the sound of a familiar voice instead of soothed by it. As its right front leg lifted clear of the water, she saw a strange-looking, fleshy vine coiled around the leg from knee to pastern. Then, in a heartbeat, two other vines, their undersides covered with disks, whipped out of the water and wrapped around the horse’s neck and other front leg.
The horse screamed as it was pulled under.
Lynnea stared at the pool, watching the churning water turn red.
She had to go back. She had to get away from this place. How far away was the last farmhouse she’d seen? Didn’t matter. The sun was going down. She had to get away from here while she could watch for any traps.
She turned—and froze.
Rust-colored sand covered the road. It hadn’t been there when she’d rounded the bend. She couldn’t jump across it, and she was afraid of moving into the trees on either side of the road in order to get around it.
Which left the bridge.
Travel lightly.
A few steps back to provide some distance from the sand. Then she turned—and whimpered.
The pool of water had spread. Only a thin strip of road remained, barely wide enough to walk on. Once it disappeared beneath the water, there would be no safe way to reach the bridge.
She’d heard that when you crossed a bridge into another landscape, you thought about what you wanted to find on the other side. Then, if you were favored by the Guides of the Heart, you would end up in the place you needed to be.
What she wanted with all her heart was a place where she felt safe, where she didn’t have to be afraid all the time. A place where someone loved her.
And that reminded her of the strange waking dream she’d had last night. She’d been yearning for the things she’d never had…and a man’s voice had promised to love her, had said…
Come to me.
Even if he was real, how could she ever find him?
No time to think. No time to decide. If she didn’t go now, she’d be trapped between that pool of water and the rust-colored sand.
Travel lightly.
Come to me.
I want to be safe! I want to be loved! I want to be safe! I want to be loved!
Lifting her skirt, she ran across that narrow piece of road and over the bridge, chanting the two things that mattered the most. When she reached the other side of the bridge, she looked around, trying to get some impression of what kind of place it was. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t tell.
Because on this side of the bridge, the sun had already set.
Waking up groggy and pissed off, Sebastian struggled to extricate himself from the tangled sheets and tangled dreams. He sat on the side of the bed and ran a hand up and down his arm. He felt bloated, starving…strange. As if something were trying to birth itself inside him.
Maybe he was sick. He hadn’t felt quite like himself since he’d gotten away from Wizard City.
Staggering into the bathroom, he turned on the water taps, then took care of morning necessaries while the tub filled with a few inches of water. The water was grudgingly tepid—a reminder that he hadn’t tended the little potbelly stove that heated the water tank tucked into one corner of the bathroom.
Cursing softly as he turned off the taps and got into the tub, he took a quick bath, scrubbing off the sour smell the dreams had left on his skin. Too bad soap and water couldn’t clean his mood or wash away the jagged edges of whatever was che
wing him up inside.
After toweling himself dry, he went back into the bedroom and dressed in a moss-green shirt and black denim pants. The denim, while common enough in other landscapes, was another black-market item in the Den. His cousin Lee had given him two bolts of the stuff, which he’d traded to Mr. Finch in exchange for making a pair of pants and a jacket—and giving him enough credit at the shop for any clothes he might want over the next year.
Stepping out of the bedroom, he stared at Teaser, who was standing by the couch. Then disgust welled up in him as he took a swift look around the room. This wasn’t a lair for seduction. This wasn’t a place suitable for an incubus. This place was rustic and cozy and so human he wanted to puke.
“Good timing,” Teaser said. “If I’d had to wait much longer, I would have gone out and peed in the wide-open.”
What difference would it make? Sebastian thought as he strode to the kitchen while Teaser headed for the bathroom. Some of the alleys around the taverns stank like urinals. Why should a tree be any different from a stone wall? Didn’t that just prove humans were animals? Were…prey?
Those thoughts made him uneasy, so he concentrated on measuring out the koffea beans and grinding them. He managed to get the koffee started, but by the time Teaser came into the kitchen, he had his hands braced on the counter and was shaking so hard he thought his skin would split—and something hideous would writhe out of the abandoned cocoon.
“Koffee!” Teaser rubbed his hands together and grinned.
“I want to hunt,” Sebastian growled, watching his hands curl into fists.
Teaser’s grin faded. “What?”
“I want to hunt!” Sebastian turned his head and glared at Teaser. “That’s what we do, isn’t it? Find a female who’s ripe for the picking and screw her until she’s addicted to our kind of sex, then harvest that need for any goods or favors we can wring out of her until she’s wrung dry or becomes too boring to tolerate. Isn’t that what we do?”
“It’s what most of the succutits do, sure. And what a lot of the incubi do. But you don’t. You never did.”
“Then it’s time I started.” Sebastian grabbed two mugs and set them on the counter near the stove.
“Sebastian?” Teaser studied him, pale and wary. “What happened when you went to Wizard City?”
“Nothing. I told you when we got to this place. The Justice Makers won’t help us.”
“Yeah, you said that, but—”
“What difference does it make?” Sebastian shouted. He felt angry, edgy, and he didn’t know why. Felt like a part of himself was being ripped up by a vile darkness that wanted to fill him up until there was nothing else. But that part of himself kept struggling to survive. Wanted fiercely to survive. He just didn’t know how to help it—or even if he wanted to help it. “I’m an incubus, just like you!”
Teaser looked like a man who had just seen something he valued thrown to the ground and crushed underfoot. He smiled, but it was a sick, pained smile. “Yeah. You’re just like me.”
Even after a few hours’ sleep, she still felt weary to the bone, but Glorianna smiled as Nadia set a plate of sweet rolls on the table and poured koffee into mugs.
“Iced cinnamon rolls,” she said, putting one on the small plate in front of her. “And I don’t have to fight with Lee this time to get my share.”
“We need to talk.” Nadia put the koffee pot on a woven mat and sat at the table.
Not at her usual seat, Glorianna noted, but facing the kitchen windows and back door—as if she needed to stay watchful in case anyone tried to approach her home.
“You said that last night.” Which was why she had stayed with her mother after telling Nadia that the wall in the forbidden garden had been breached.
The quiet chattering that came from the room that was separated from the kitchen by a screened door increased in volume. A small blue-and-white bird flew to the door, hooked his toes into the screen, and scolded them.
“Not now, Sparky,” Nadia said firmly.
The scolding changed to chirps and cajoling whistles.
Glorianna smiled. Nadia did not.
That worried her.
“There are things I must say to you, while I still can,” Nadia said quietly.
Glorianna tensed. “While you can? What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t take the chance that things that must be remembered will be lost if something should happen to me.” Nadia closed her eyes. “My mother died when I was young. I was raised by my grandmother.” She paused. Opening her eyes, she stared out the screened back door. “My great-aunt, actually. My real grandmother was like you, Glorianna. And like you, the wizards decided she was a danger to Ephemera and sealed her into her garden at the school, using their magic to create boundaries in the landscapes she had access to in order to isolate her in a kind of living death. They didn’t know she was carrying a child when they condemned her, that the power inside her wouldn’t be extinguished when she died. They never found out that she and her older sister, who was a Level Five Landscaper, had discovered a place that existed in both their landscapes—a place in the woods that had a large, split stone. The dreaming place, they used to call it. Neither could cross the boundary that separated them, so they were never able to see each other or talk to each other, but they could leave messages tucked into the split stone, or a basket could be left that the other could take.
“One day, when my great-aunt arrived with a basket of food, she found another basket at the meeting place. My mother was inside that basket. And a note that said, ‘Love her. Teach her. And don’t come back.’
“My great-aunt never found another message from her sister. So she raised her sister’s daughter, claiming the girl as her own, and then she raised me. And like her mother before her, she told her daughter, and then me, the family secrets about what we are…and what we came from.”
Nadia took a long swallow of cold koffee. “And now I must tell you.”
“You’ve told me the family secrets,” Glorianna said, covering her mother’s hands with hers.
“Not this one. This one is the reason for all the other secrets that the women in our family—and the women in other families like ours, if any others have survived—have held in their hearts for generations.” Nadia’s eyes filled with tears. “I carried the secrets and the seed of our bloodline, but I was spared the burden of it. You’re the one who must carry the burden.”
“What burden? I don’t understand.”
Nadia turned her hands so that she could clasp her daughter’s. “What you are, Glorianna, is the reason for all the family secrets.”
We will not be found easily in this broken piece of the world. So there is time to hide what must be hidden while we wait to discover who prevailed in the final battle for Ephemera—our enemies…or the Eater of the World. Either way, we can no longer walk in the world as we once did. So we must learn how to hide our true nature behind a human mask. And in time, if our enemies were the victors, we will seek them out and embrace them as allies—and they will never realize we are always working to destroy them.
We have ensured our survival by fleeing to this place. We will be well established by the time the shattered pieces of the world are made whole again. By then, no one will look beyond what we pretend to be because our power will be needed to keep Ephemera clean of the human heart’s darkest wishes. We will be invaluable to the human world—and we will use our new position to slowly, carefully winnow out the strongest of our enemies, diluting their power generation after generation until they become little more than useful tools.
But there is one fear we dare not speak lest it resonate through the currents of the world.
If the Eater ever finds us, will It realize that we abandoned It when It most needed our guidance, that we left It to fight Its enemies alone?
—The Dark Book of Secrets
Chapter Seven
Koltak braced his hands on the waist-high stone wall that circled the top o
f the Wizards’ Tower and stared at the open land east of the city. Already the sun had risen high enough to vanquish the night’s shadows. Already the shadow that had filled him with revulsion and excitement was surrendering to the bright summer light and fading away.
Damn that fool of an apprentice that he’d sent running to fetch Harland. If the boy was too spineless to knock on Harland’s door at an unseemly hour, the moment would be lost, and he would be just another fool who had raised an alarm over a shadow caused by natural contours in the land. He couldn’t afford to sound like a fool, but if he was the one to see the very thing generations of wizards had watched for, that would go a long way toward balancing out his youthful mistake. Wouldn’t it?
“I trust you have good reason to send for me at this hour and interrupt my meditations.”
Koltak jumped at the sound of Harland’s voice, but he didn’t take his eyes off the land. His hand trembled as he lifted it and pointed. “Look.”
Harland came up beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, Koltak saw the leader of the Wizards’ Council stiffen.
“Do you see it?” Koltak asked, keeping his voice low.
“Yes, I see it.”
Relief swept through Koltak. He had a witness. No one would doubt Harland. But that meant…
A shadow is the warning. That was what he’d been taught all those years ago when he was a third-year apprentice beginning his training for tower duty. A shadow that ripples. A shadow that seems cast by something below the earth rather than by light shining down upon the earth.
“Do you think someone should go to the Landscapers’ School and ask them to check the hidden garden?” he asked.
Harland looked at Koltak, a feverish glitter in his eyes that was at odds with his solemn expression. “And say what? That we know about the garden they have guarded so vigilantly for generations? A garden they still believe is a secret known only to themselves? A garden only the Landscapers and Bridges can find, despite our years of effort to determine its exact location at the school? They have never acknowledged the existence of that garden, and despite how often we visit the school to help them weed out the dangerous elements among their own kind, we have found no evidence of its existence. No, Koltak. The Landscapers would have sent a message if they had noticed any sign of danger—even though we failed them the last time our help was needed.”