When You Believe

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  “Quain’s mad. Entirely,” a sorciere interrupted. “He’s mad, and he’s more powerful than any sorcier I’ve ever known. There was that terrible spell at the end, but everything leading up to it was just as dangerous. And his magic is so strong that there isn’t time to call for healers. It’s over, just like that. He thinks sword, and it’s in your heart. He thinks pain, and you can’t move. He imagines the gray, and you’re trapped in it. We think—we think some of our people are lost in matter. Lost and alive.”

  Sariel looked up. “In matter?” For an instant, he saw Phaedrus’s people hanging in the gray, still, scared, unable to move. He bit his the inside of his cheek, trying to calm himself, thinking, You’re not stuck. It’s not you.

  Phaedrus turned for a moment to look at Sariel and then nodded. “This new power of his is what also gave him the ability to shake us almost to death. Somehow, he can energize matter and also harness it, still it, the wave and particle in constant, but at the same time, motionless flux. His own private prison no one else can find. That’s where he has put our people. We intend to find them.”

  “How many are trapped there?” Rufus asked gruffly.

  “Maybe five,” the woman said, the others nodding. “There still might be hope for them.”

  “If he gets the third plaque…” Nala began, stopping, her fingers tight around her goblet.

  “If he gets the third plaque,” Phaedrus said, “we won’t be able to do anything.”

  “So what in the blazes can we do?” Rufus leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  The group was silent for a moment. Finally, Phaedrus cleared his throat.

  “We know more now, that’s certain. So we are going to report to the Council. I would assume that we will regroup and gather together more Croyant and guard the third plaque. I’m going to Adalbert tonight. And you are going to try to find Quain and Kallisto before they find us.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” Rufus said, his sarcasm heavy. “But how do you suppose we’ll achieve that kind of wee magic?”

  “You are a talented group,” Phaedrus said. “And you have Sariel. From what Adalbert has told me, if anyone can find Quain, it’s you.” He looked at Sariel, his gaze slow and serious. “You have the connection.”

  “And if anyone can find Kallisto,” the woman added, “it’s you as well.”

  Kallisto spun into Sariel’s thoughts, her eyes wide, bitter, beautiful. He blinked, feeling his anger rise up, fuming in his chest. She had never cared for him, never loved him, used him and his family. Sariel could feel the way her mind would crack apart when he trapped her as clearly as he could still feel her body in his hands.

  “Who’s our contact?” Nala asked. Her face was tense, but she’d found her bearing, her back straight, her eyes narrowed. She seemed taller again, regal. “We need to get started. I feel— I feel there isn’t much time.”

  Phaedrus nodded. “You’re right. Even though the Council has likely worked magic to protect the third plaque already, it won’t be long before Quain has a plan. It could be a couple of days, maybe a week if we’re lucky. We found a contact for you, but I assure you, the meeting will not be at all pleasant. He claims he has a message directly from Quain.”

  “We need to go now,” Rufus said. “There’s no time to waste.”

  “I know it’s hard to trust in these times, but could you open your mind for a moment and let me give you the information?” Phaedrus asked Nala.

  Nala looked at Sariel and Rufus, and they nodded. She and Phaedrus stood up and left the table, walking to the far end of the room. Sariel watched as she and Phaedrus stood facing each other, their eyes closed, their hands touching.

  “If we aren’t successful…” the sorciere began saying. Then she stopped and sighed.

  Sariel looked at her, her eyes blue and tired and glossy, pale gray shadows under them like bruises.

  “I know,” he said. “We all do.”

  After Phaedrus had supplied Nala with the contact information, Sariel and Rufus stood up from the round table, unsure of what to say. Sariel knew that these people had been through what they were likely to face. What words would help either way? Finally, one of the sorciers raised a glass, and Sariel nodded, and both he and Rufus followed Nala to the door.

  Back at the house, edgy and irritable, they waited in the kitchen for Mazi, Baris, Lutalo, and Sayblee to return from collecting what information they could about Quain’s location. Sariel paced back and forth in the kitchen, while Rufus slumped in a chair, his arms crossed. Nala sat at the table, drumming her fingers on the wood, her mouth grimly set. Outside, a steady rain began to fall, light taps bouncing off the windows.

  “We shouldn’t just be waiting here,” Rufus said. “Phaedrus said we don’t have a lot of time. We need to find this contact.”

  “They’ll be here,” Nala said quietly, her fingers keeping rhythm to the rain.

  Rufus stood up suddenly, his hands on his hips. “Where in the hell are they? We need to get them back here now. Or do we really even need them for this?”

  “We all need to hear what the contact has to say,” Nala said. “And Mazi especially needs to listen. Maybe he’ll have a vision.”

  Sariel sighed. “Ru, a few minutes, an hour. It’s not going to make a difference. They’ll be back soon enough. And then we can go on this fool’s mission.”

  “If you keep those thoughts,” Nala said, her voice tight and filled with disappointment at his words, “we have no chance.”

  Sariel uncrossed his arms and lifted his hands. “It’s the truth. Out of fifty, they had twelve left. Did you see how they looked? Did you see their robes? Their eyes? Their faces? They looked exactly like people who’d been beaten and beaten soundly. Like people who’d lost what was most important to them. We’re not going on a picnic, Nala. No matter what our friends discover today. No matter what this so-called informant says, you don’t know Kallisto like I do, and you certainly don’t know Quain like my father did. No one knows him like my father did.”

  Sariel stopped talking, wishing he could find the right feeling in his body. He wanted to trap both Quain and Kallisto, stop the killing, the pain, the poison leaking into the world. He knew the anger that would flow through him and wondered how he’d ever be able to contain it. But he also wanted to go home, leaving this current struggle and all the past struggles behind. He felt as tired and beaten as the people around the table had. Inside, he felt the same: worn out and empty, filled only with the fear of seeing Kallisto. Maybe it wasn’t just seeing her. It was feeling her twisted thoughts, and maybe being swept up in them again, her sticky, sweet, evil current of desire. Two years ago, Kallisto had been like a candy he couldn’t get enough of, a honeyed liqueur he’d wanted to sip all night.

  But that was how he felt two years ago. Not now. And if they were to be successful, Nala was right. They needed to let go of thoughts like this. They needed to go in and take back what was theirs, what belonged to all Croyant.

  But there was something else, too, and he’d reminded himself of it when he’d said, Like people who’d lost what was most important to them. Looking at Phaedrus and his team reminded him of losing his father and of losing something else. But he wasn’t sure what.

  In a twirl of almost imperceptible movement, Mazi, Lutalo, Baris, and Sayblee were back, standing in front of them, pushing back their hoods. Nala stood up, and Sariel felt her excitement and fear and hope, but the energy coming from the returnees was quiet and bitter and lifeless. Rufus and Sariel walked toward them, standing with the group in the center of the room.

  “Nothing?” Nala said.

  Lutalo shrugged. “Not nothing. But little. We followed the information Adalbert gave us, but if Quain was there, he’s gone now. There was a vortex still in place, but nothing within it. So we missed him by hours, maybe half a day at most.”

  Sayblee shook her head. “We picked up a stream of thought in Regent’s Park, and that’s our biggest lead. He’s cleaned up b
ehind himself, that one, but not completely. As if he knows that even if we find him, it won’t matter. It will be too late.”

  Baris shook his head, his orange hair wet, drops spraying to the floor. “We need to keep trying. We can go back out.”

  “There are other things to do,” Nala said, taking a deep breath.

  “You found the survivors,” Mazi said. “They are forlorn. They’ve been decimated. They don’t have any good news.”

  Nala came from around the table, standing in front of them all. “Your vision is right, Mazi, but we have one more piece of business.”

  “The contact,” Mazi said.

  “Yes,” Nala said, and they stood in a circle staring at each other. Then they closed their eyes, and followed Nala once again into the gray.

  The man was sickly, broken from a disease he hadn’t bothered to have cured. The first thing Sariel heard when they appeared in the dim, dirty flat was the man’s cough, a seal bark into the gloom. Sariel could have helped in minutes, but he was glad not to, the man’s clothes dirty, his face gray with pallor and grit. His scant brown hair was plastered to his head, his eyes bloodshot and rheumy with fever.

  “So you’ve come,” the man said. “I was told to expect you. That you’d be desperate, and it’s true!” He started to laugh, but his glee turned into a paroxysm of rasps and choked gasps.

  Sariel tried to get into the man’s mind, but unfortunately, it was blocked. Even from the perimeter, Sariel could feel the corruption in the man’s thoughts, feel the twists Quain had kinked into his personality. While he knew the man’s mind could give them more information than his tongue, Sariel was glad that he didn’t have to clamber through the twists of the man’s ideas.

  “We were told you had information for us,” Nala said.

  “In-for-mation,” the man said slowly, standing up from his bed, shuffling toward them. Reflexively, they all backed up, and Sariel saw Sayblee lift her palm, ready to fight back with fire.

  “Put your fire away,” the man said. “Fire doesn’t touch Labaan. I’ve been blessed by the new king, and he’s protected me. None of your fancy tricks can break through his magic.”

  “King!” Rufus spat. “We have no king.”

  “But we will,” Labaan said. “We almost have him now.”

  “So why did he leave you here?” Sariel said. “If you are so important to him, why are you in this hovel? Unhealed. Dying.”

  As Sariel said the last word, he knew it was true, feeling that man’s slow, blocked blood, sensing the tears and scars in his lungs.

  “Dying!” Labaan said. “I’m not dying. I’ll be by his side, next to him and his queen.”

  Sariel felt Mazi’s prophetic mind spin out images, and he tried to stay away from them, knowing that the images would haunt him. But there they were, Quain and Kallisto sitting on thrones, Croyant doing their bidding, the rest of the world in thrall.

  “It is no concern of ours why you are here,” Nala said, nudging Sariel to silence with her mind as she spoke the words. “We need the information we were told you had. That you promised to give us.”

  “Of course, of course,” Labaan said. He wheezed out the last words and then was caught in a seizure of deep, phlegmy coughing.

  They waited as Labaan found his breath and then sat back down on his unkempt bed and sank onto the filthy pillows. In a wave, Sariel found the man’s despair through a crack in the mind block. Labaan had indeed been left behind. He knew that he was dying. He wanted to lash out, to take back a tiny piece of his health, his life, and his soul that he’d given Quain during the thirty years he’d been by his side.

  “He has her,” Labaan said, wiping his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. “She somehow came through matter, and the queen found her. Just like that! We found her without even looking. And she knows things, this one. Very useful things indeed. That’s why you couldn’t find him today. He knew you were coming. The silly woman’s thoughts told him that. And he wants you all. The queen wants you, too, especially this one.”

  Labaan pointed a skinny finger at Sariel.

  “Who is she?” Sayblee asked. “Who are you talking about?”

  Labaan went on as if he didn’t hear Sayblee’s question. “So the woman is still alive. How else can you explain getting so close to him? You thought you were so tricky missing him by just hours. Our new king knew what he was doing. Oh, yes. He knew.”

  “God, man,” Rufus said, moving forward, his hand on Sariel’s arm. “Who are you talking about? Who has whom? Who is she?”

  Labaan laughed briefly, and then stopped, catching himself before he had another fit of coughing. “The woman.” He looked at Sariel, his pale, faded eyes full of delight. “We know all about your little love affair. Oh, yes. He has her. Your Moyenne woman. Miranda.”

  Chapter Ten

  In the far distance, somewhere at the edge of the gray matter swirling around her, Miranda heard Sariel’s voice. She wanted to open her eyes, but she was afraid that if she did, she’d lose the tiny bit of concentration she’d mustered. Sariel had said he concentrated on where he wanted to go, so she knew she had to as well. Sariel, she thought. I want to go to Sariel.

  “I’m here,” his voice said. “Keep coming.”

  Relaxing, she let herself focus on clear, happy thoughts of him, his smile, the way his eyes had looked at her over his glass that first night, the way his body felt under her hands. She saw him in her bed, at the coffee shop, in Hilo, looking out toward dawn as they stood on Felix’s lanai. She thought of his smell, how he reminded her of oranges and cinnamon. She tasted him on her tongue, sweet and salty.

  “Yes, that’s right. Keep coming. Keep thinking,” his voice continued. “Don’t stop. Don’t look. Just a little farther.”

  Miranda took a deep breath and bore down on more images of Sariel—his long soft hair, his laugh, his hands as they skimmed up her leg from her injured ankle—and then, she felt the matter lighten, lift off her skin. Without opening her eyes, she knew she was in a dark room, could feel the hard cold floor beneath her feet. Maybe he’d been waiting for her. Maybe he would be happy to see her, she thought, amazed at what she’d been able to do just to find him. Miranda opened her eyes, blinking into the darkness and breathing in the closed, stuffy air.

  “Sariel?”

  There was movement in the corner of the room, a tall dark shape seeming to adjust clothing—a robe! It was him!—and then he begin to move forward. Miranda felt her heart beat faster, her mouth dry, her skin tenting with gooseflesh.

  Swallowing, she said again, “Sariel?” His name cracked brittlely in the room, her tongue barely able to get out the word.

  The shape moved even closer, but now Miranda’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and there was something off. Wrong. The person coming to her was tall but not tall enough; imposing but not big enough. Miranda grasped her purse and backed away, too soon feeling the wall hard and cool against her back. Find the gray, she thought, find it now. Desperate, she closed her eyes, flicking them back and forth behind her lids, but the image of Sariel she’d held in her mind as she’d traveled through the matter was gone. But that’s not what she needed to do! That was backward. She thought of Sariel in order to get here; to get home, she should conjure forth San Francisco, her apartment, her desk, her words on the computer screen.

  Quick, Miranda thought. Think. Think hard!

  “A little mistake,” the voice said. A woman’s voice, sudden and clearly not Sariel’s. “Happens to the inept often enough.”

  Miranda opened her eyes and stared at the woman only a few feet in front of her. Something the woman was wearing had found the only available light in the room and glimmered gold. A necklace or earrings.

  “Where am I?” Miranda asked, blinking into the darkness. “Who are you?”

  “Where you are doesn’t matter now. I think the more important question would be, Who are you?” The woman seemed to be staring at her and then began walking back and forth in front of Miranda,
the cape of her long hair hanging down her back.

  “I’m looking for Sariel. Sariel Valasay. I—I got here…” Miranda stopped, not knowing who she was speaking to and what she could say. She’d promised Sariel she wouldn’t tell a soul about his abilities and his people, and this woman could be an angry hermit who lived in this dark basement, just barely able to contain her fear at Miranda’s strange appearance. A story like Miranda’s might throw the woman over the edge. After all, hadn’t Miranda herself been full of disbelief? Just days ago, she would have laughed at the insanity of a traveling through matter story. She would have laughed and then been afraid, knowing that whoever was telling her was clearly and totally insane.

  “I’m lost,” Miranda said quickly. “I got… confused.”

  “Did you really? How interesting. And you found yourself here in this basement,” the woman said. “But a common mistake. Sariel Valasay is often in my basement, of course. A constant visitor.”

  “Do you have a light we could just flick on?” Miranda asked. “It might be easier to talk if we could see each other.” And then maybe I could find a way to get the hell out of here, she thought.

  The woman laughed. “No, neither a quick escape nor a light are available at the moment.” The woman moved closer, and Miranda felt her whole body flex instinctively, as if the woman were a blow she needed to deflect.

  “So, I guess you are Croyant,” Miranda asked.

  “Yes. Brilliant of you to figure it out,” the woman said. “More evolved than you, obviously. You can’t seem to travel very well and your mind is wide open, a pool for me to jump into. I’m just beginning to see…”

  “So why I’m here is because,” Miranda said quickly, trying to keep the woman out of her mind, “I was thinking about Sariel and I heard him, too. That’s how he taught me—”