Grave Debt

by D. D. Miers

  Chapter 15

  The portal closed behind me with a rush just a second after I passed through it, the cold-water sensation still lingering.

  I was immediately struck by a sensation of severe vertigo and confusion. I was nowhere on earth.

  An unusual lavender space stretched around me, the air and earth the same soft blue-purple shade, if the air was indeed air—solid and present, like a thick fog, but with a texture like foam or whipped cream. This texture cloyed against my skin, and I saw through it much further than I should have been capable of. I couldn't find the horizon because the land was not flat. It rose and fell in ripples and hollows like a satin blanket, catching light on its curves in holofoil iridescence.

  I could not find a point where the distant hills obscured my sight. What light made deep, twinkling shadows and ephemeral rainbow highlights on the ground's silken surface? Where was the sun? I struggled to rationalize what I saw, imagining the land curving up around me like a sphere. And yet I had a distinct impression of sky as well, if only because of the cities and castles gleaming like nacre and oil slick, which seemed to be rooted in it rather than the ground on which I was, allegedly, standing.

  "Come along!" a voice shouted, sounding impossibly distant and then like a whisper in my ear. "If you don't want to be lost, you shouldn't linger."

  I forced myself to endure the terrible endless vision ahead of me, to where Greenwood stood, tapping his foot impatiently. He looked close enough to touch, but when I reached for him the distance between us might have been miles. Nausea rose in me which I struggled to suppress. I made an inhuman sound of absolute animal terror, my brain scrambling to comprehend.

  "You're fine," Greenwood shouted. "You are not dying, you are in fairly minimal danger, and if you hurry up, we will be out of here in a moment."

  Now that was motivation. I hesitated anyway, unsure if walking was something I could actually do in this nightmare. My body was not built for whatever laws this place obeyed. Could my muscles still contract, my blood still pump? Obviously, my neurons still fired, but God, for how much longer? Was I at the bottom of a pool, holding my breath, moments away from running out of air?

  A hand gripped my upper arm, fingers coiling endlessly around a column of my own skin and muscle too far away to possibly be under my own control. The hand, which must have been Greenwood, though he still seemed impossibly distant, pulled me forward, and stumbling, I learned how to move my legs again.

  "There, see?" Greenwood said with a huff. "It's not so difficult, is it? Now, hurry up!"

  He let me go and turned away and in an instant, became a barely visible spot on the nonhorizon. I rushed to keep up with him, my heart gripped with terror at the thought of being left behind. I took three or four steps and crashed directly into his back.

  With a long-suffering sigh, Greenwood helped me to my feet. I fell? When did I fall? What did I land on? Did I land at all? He put an arm around me to guide me forward, which I deeply appreciated. I still wasn't one hundred percent sure how my legs worked, and I was scared witless and wanted to hold on to someone. I wished for the comfort of Ethan’s nearness. He would have hated this, and I didn't think Greenwood would have stopped to help him. I wasn't certain why he stopped to help me.

  "I am helping you for the same reason I gave you the candle," Greenwood said, and I realized with a mild shock that I'd been talking almost nonstop since I stepped through the portal in a terrified stream of consciousness. I shut my mouth and concentrated on the feeling of having it closed. When I had mastered not talking, I attempted to speak again.

  "You still haven't told me why you gave me the candle," I said. My voice sounded weird, like listening to a recording of myself played through a gramophone in another room. And talking deliberately while walking was difficult.

  "I wanted to see what would happen," Greenwood said, casually. "There hasn't been a descendent of Aethon as powerful as you in several hundred years. I wanted to see what you would do."

  "That's it?" I asked, a little stunned.

  "That's it," he confirmed. "I threw a wild card into a game I was not playing, and if I want to see how the game turns out, I can't allow my wild card to be lost in the Far Lands."

  "Is that what this place is?" I asked, risking a glance around myself again, which I regretted a moment later. "The Other Lands?"

  "One of them," Greenwood said. His strides were impossibly long, stretching out forever ahead of us, eating up ground. And the lilac atmosphere gathered around him, caught up in his long limbs and golden hair. He wore a suit the color of twilight now, rather than the simple slacks he'd been wearing when we stepped through the portal. The high-collared coat, the lace at his throat, echoed something Edwardian or equestrian, but the delicate embroidery at the collar and sleeves crawled with symbols far older and a kind of deep, dense greenery that reminded me of the Unicorn Tapestries.

  "These are the Far Lands," he explained. "Descriptive title, I know. Those who know how often use them for traveling."

  "Traveling where?" I asked, as confused as I was fascinated as I was nauseous. "How?

  "Any point in the realms," Greenwood said, with an all-encompassing gesture of his staff. "But I find them most convenient for navigating earth."

  Seeing my confusion, he sighed. "Someone gave you the soap bubble comparison, didn't they?" he asked, and I nodded. "Reductive nonsense. The Other Lands aren't connected by earth. They're not an extension of it or born from it. Earth is the exact same kind of thing they are. Realities overlaying one another like onion skin, occupying the same time and space at different wavelengths, none larger or more significant than the other, no matter how much the denizens of each might like to claim their home is superior.

  “The occupy the same space, you understand? That's the important part. But the concept of distance is different in the Far Lands. To remain insultingly reductive, a step here translates to a far greater magnitude of distance on earth. With traffic, it might take me an hour or more to get where I'm going on earth. This way, it takes only a moment, giving the person I'm going to kill much less time to realize I am coming and escape."

  "Oh," I said, trying to process any of that and not positive I had succeeded. "Is that what Uther does?"

  Disguised, Greenwood said, "That hack? Of course not. He could never muster the power to actually pass between realms. He only barely manages to get slightly out of phase with earth, and he can hardly sustain it for more than moment. He just uses it to walk through walls to make himself look more impressive. He thinks he's being clever, parking behind the library and walking directly into the study room like we haven't all seen his miserable little junker sulking behind the dumpsters like an indigent cat. Pompous moron."

  "Wait," I said, as he stopped and let go of me. "Did you say you're going to kill someone?"

  "Yes," Greenwood said, baring his teeth in a grin that looked more like a snarl. He struck the ground with his staff and another portal opened, where blessedly normal streets of a good, solid earth were revealed. Greenwood plunged through and I followed a second behind him.

  I gasped in the cold night air with relief, wrapped my arms around myself, and took a moment to just appreciate my limbs all being the right length and everything having geometry that made sense. But I didn't have long to relish being back in a universe that made sense.

  Greenwood hurried forward, boots clicking on the wet pavement. It was early evening, and we appeared to be in an alley downtown somewhere, with no exits. The buildings closed it in entirely. The only way in or out was a nondescript security door at one narrow end. Greenwood walked toward it. He knocked on it sharply with the end of his staff, and a window opened. The moth-crowded floodlight above the door cast the opening in sharp shadow, making the person behind it invisible.

  "Password," a voice demanded.

  "I haven't visited recently," Greenwood said, with his most charming smile. "I believe it was 'Tahitian Sunrise' the last time?"

  "We haven't used
cocktails names as passwords in years," the guy behind the door said. "Try again."

  "This is a matter of some urgency," Greenwood said, looking slightly strained. "It was a valid password last time. If you could just—"

  "I can't just anything. If you've been in here before you know how the boss is about security."

  I jumped as another portal opened at the far end of the alley. A young couple hurried out, the guy shoving what looked like a car antenna into his coat. They stood a little distance from us, waiting their turn at the door while Greenwood argued with the door man.

  "Not everyone has time to keep up with these things!" Greenwood said, frustrated. "He can't expect people to keep up if he's always changing it. He knows me. If you could just bring him here . . ."

  "He's busy."

  "If you just mention my name."

  "The boss doesn't have time to deal with every shady Fae trying to sneak in through the back. If you want to get in without the password, you have to shed your magic at the front door like everyone else."

  "I do not have time—"

  "Would you step aside and let the actual customers pass, sir?"

  Livid, Greenwood moved aside for the young couple approach, backing far enough away for the doorman to be satisfied. I went with him, my hands in my pockets, fidgeting with the lucky coin.

  "Nita, welcome back," he said. "Password?"

  The young woman leaned close to whisper something, the sound well masked by the ambient noise of the alley. The door opened, the faint sound of music and chatter escaping, and the couple slipped inside. But as Greenwood approached, it shut again.

  "If you would just give me a moment's benefit of the doubt," Greenwood said, with a frustrated gesture. "I assure you that Julius knows me!"

  "Then go in through the front without your magic and get the password from him," the doorman said. "Cause you're not getting in here."

  "Um," I cleared my throat, stepping in front of Greenwood. "If I know the password, can I bring him in with me?"

  "Guests are allowed," the door man said with obvious reluctance.

  "It's lobelia erinus," I said.

  Suspicious, he squinted his eyes at me through the window and opened the door.

  "Cause any trouble and I will throw you out personally," the door man said. "And I will make sure it hurts."

  "Finally," Greenwood huffed and pushed through the door and I followed him, curious. I jumped as the door shut. The doorman was an eight-foot-tall wall of muscle under gray-blue skin like living stone. Yellow eyes stared down at me between jutting tusks and thick, forward-pointing horns. A long tail flicked behind him like an angry cat's. He looked unsurprised by my blatant, open-mouthed staring.

  "Get used to it sweetheart," he said. "There's weirder things inside."

  I caught up with Greenwood.

  "How did you know the password?" he asked, sounding only mildly curious.

  "Dead moth on the floodlight," I explained. "I just listened through it while the other person talked to the doorman."

  "Clever," Greenwood said. "I should tell Julius he has a hole in his security."

  He walked quickly down the long hall that led away from the security door. There were four doorways along this hall covered by beaded curtains, symbols I didn't recognize carved above each one. Greenwood shoved his head through each curtain and I caught glimpses of people in tables and booths, talking and drinking and eating like normal. Except that many of these people were clearly and obviously not human. I saw wings, hooves, tails, horns, tentacles, and things I couldn't describe. It was enough to make me wonder if the Far Lands hadn't permanently scrambled my brains.

  At the end, the hallway branched, leading toward more of the small dining rooms, and another door was covered by a heavy curtain. Greenwood checked through this one, too, and I glimpsed the front of the establishment. It was a bar, large and comfortably casual, with a distinctly old-world pub atmosphere. Everyone out front appeared human, though my more magical senses knew they radiated power. There were a handful of normies among them, but this was clearly a place for people like me. The magical community, right there and waiting for me. There was also an absurd amount of energy bound up in the walls, the floors, even the wooden tables. This place was enchanted as hell.

  An older man, silver-haired, handsome, and distinctly muscular under his leather vest, tended bar, laughing at a joke shared by the man whose drink he poured. As Greenwood scanned the room, the bartender spotted us. He put down the bottle he held and headed toward us, but Greenwood was already moving away down one of the branching halls.

  "Gwydion!"

  The bartender burst through the curtain and hurried after us, but Greenwood ignored him.

  "Whatever he's done this time, I know he probably deserves what's coming," the bartender said, trying to calm Greenwood down. "But you know the rules. If you do this in here—"

  "I'm not going to kill him in your precious bar, Julius," Greenwood said sharply, yanking aside another beaded curtain and letting it drop in disappointment. "Nor will I endanger any of your patrons. And rest assured, the beating he has coming is richly deserved."

  "You know I trust you," Julius protested. "But my other guests—"

  Greenwood ripped aside another curtain and instantly a freezing wind rushed down the hall, chilling me to the bone and tearing Greenwood's hair loose from its ribbon, sending it flying around his head. He had the look of a vengeful god.

  "Gilfaethwy!" Greenwood roared.

  At a table in the center of the room, a man who looked remarkably similar to Greenwood, right down to the suit, sat like a deer in headlights with a glass of beer at his lips. Everyone in the room stared at Greenwood at the moment, but the fear in the man's eyes made it clear he knew exactly what he was in trouble for. There was a tense moment of stillness. And then the man spit his beer out, directly at Greenwood. It burst into steam in the air, clouding Greenwood's vision. Greenwood flung it out of the way with a rush of cold wind and an angry cutting gesture, but the man had vanished.

  I yelped and jumped out of the way as a large brown squirrel darted past my feet.

  "Gilfaethwy, you treacherous little shit!" Greenwood shouted. "You won't get away from me that easily!"

  He folded up into himself like a strange tessellation and an instant later, a hawk flew after the squirrel with an angry scream.

  "Not in the bar!" Julius yelled after them. "Not in the bar!"

  He clapped his mighty hands and the silver rings on his fingers glowed with intricate runework. A portal opened in front of the squirrel, who attempted to dodge around it, but at another gesture from Julius, was swept through, followed closely by the hawk.

  I ran after them and Julius ran after me, leaping through the portal, which opened onto the same alley we'd come in through. The hawk snagged the squirrel as I watched, flying high into the air. But a second later the squirrel twisted and became a large snake, which reared up and bit the hawk with dagger-like fangs. The hawk fell to the roof of a nearby building with a cry of pain.

  "Greenwood!" I shouted, horrified.

  Julian clapped his hands again and a ladder appeared, the pieces drawn from a thousand secret places across the alley. I didn't stop to question it. I climbed quickly, terrified I would find Greenwood dead at the top.

  Instead, the flailing hooves of a goat nearly took my head off. A mouse scrambled around its feet, which it was trying furiously to stomp on. A second later, the mouse became a great stag, throwing the goat into the air on its antlers. A moment later the goat was a wolf, sinking its teeth into the stag's flank.

  "Oh, they're into it now," Julius said, climbing up beside me. "Best to just stay out of the way."

  "Which one is Greenwood?" I asked, as the deer became a lion to devour the wolf, which became a wasp to sting the lion's face, which became a swallow to eat the wasp.

  "Gwydion? God only knows," Julius said with a smile, patting me on the shoulder. "Don't worry too much. When they get like this
, it's better to just let them get it out of their system. They'll wear each other out soon enough. This is probably a couple of decades of stored up power they're burning through right now. Just enjoy the show."

  He waved a hand and a bag of popcorn appeared, which he offered me. I declined, hurrying across the roof as the wasp became a cat and batted the swallow out of the air, who became a rabbit and bounded away across the rooftop. The cat became a greyhound and gave chase, both of them leaping across the gap onto the tiles of the next building over.

  "Who is that guy?" I asked, heart racing as I searched for a way to follow, grabbing a loose board and throwing it across the gap, glad it wasn't a large one.

  "Gilfaethwy," Julius explained, holding the board for me as I hurried across. "Gwydion's brother. Sort of."

  "Sort of?" I asked, holding it so that he could cross too, but he just walked beside it, like the air was solid ground.

  "Well, the Fae don't have families as we'd describe them," Julius said. "But . . . I really don't know how much you know about the courts?"

  "I know there are three of them and that the main two seem to kind of be jerks," I summarized.

  Julius nodded, hands raised in a “pretty much” gesture.

  "When a new Fae is created in the Seelie Court," he said, "an equally matched counterpart instantly appears in the Unseelie, and vice versa, so that the courts stay perfectly balanced. It's why they started recruiting Wild Fae, though that hasn't worked out any better for them. Gilfaethwy is Gwydion's opposite, perfectly equal to him in every way."

  "So there's no chance Gelf, uh, Gilfeth . . . that his brother will beat him?" I asked. The greyhound had caught the rabbit, only to release it yelping as it became a porcupine. The greyhound became a badger, swiping at the porcupine with long, angry claws, and the porcupine became a fox, darting around the badger to bite at its flank.

  "I wouldn't say none," Julius said, eating a handful of popcorn. "Or they wouldn't keep doing this every few years. But it's pretty slim."

  "Shouldn't we try to help Greenwood, I mean—what did you call him?"