by Anne Bishop
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 chewing 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 wa
s 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 of 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.”
Koltak winced at the reminder. He’d resented being excluded from the wizards chosen for the task because of his “family connections.” Afterward, he’d been grateful that he wasn’t among the wizards disgraced by their failure to seal that garden.
“But…” He looked around to confirm that they were the only ones on the top of the tower. Still, he lowered his voice. “What about the shadow?”
Harland nodded. “A warning, certainly, that something dark and dangerous has grown powerful enough to threaten Ephemera’s landscapes.” He paused. “For fifteen years, the council has feared this day would come, but we had hoped she would never become strong enough for this warning to appear. It would seem our hopes were in vain.”
Koltak whispered, “Belladonna.”
“Yes,” Harland said. “Belladonna. An enemy who could destroy everything we have protected—unless she is destroyed first.”
“She has eluded us for fifteen years! Most wizards can’t even cross over into any landscape under her control, even in the company of a Bridge. How are we supposed to find someone we haven’t even seen in fifteen years?”
“I don’t know,” Harland said bitterly. “But we must find a way.” He reached out and gripped Koltak’s shoulder. “Tell no one about the shadow. Say nothing about what you have seen. I must meditate on this warning before discussing it with the rest of the council. We do not want to spread alarm among the students and younger wizards.”
Will you even mention me when you speak with the council? “I understand.”
Harland released Koltak and headed for the door that led to the stairs that curved along the inside wall of the tower. Then he paused and looked back. “The apprentice you sent to fetch me. Did he see the shadow?”
Koltak shook his head. “But he’s clever enough to realize I wouldn’t have sent him to fetch you at this hour if there wasn’t a reason.”
“Is he trustworthy?”
Koltak hesitated, then shook his head again. “He has a braggart’s tongue and a fool’s lack of discretion. He had just enough potential to be admitted for formal training, but even after three years, he can barely undo a simple barrier.” Something Sebastian had been able to do with no training at all. He buried that thought. The power had lain dormant all these years. Sebastian had no reason to believe he had that kind of power. Unless something happened that gave the council a reason to demand testing, no one would ever know his offspring was anything more than an incubus.
“I see,” Harland said. He studied Koltak. “Why were you up here this morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I came up here to think.”
Harland stared at him for a long time. “Fortuitous.”
“Yes.”
After the tower door closed behind Harland, Koltak turned back to look at the land. Sunlight and natural shadows obscured the warning.
At least the warning had been seen and understood. And the wizards would not fail again. They would find a way to contain—or eliminate—Belladonna before she destroyed Ephemera.
Busy busy busy. Humans were always so busy. The Dark currents flowed through so many hearts in this city, but there were enough threads of Light to keep some of the best prey from abandoning this place. Even though It was eager to contact the minds with the darkest resonance, It couldn’t resist stretching out Its mental tentacles through the lower part of the city to play with some of the hearts nurtured by those threads of Light.
Yes, It whispered to one of those hearts. Yes, the butcher has cheated you, put his thumb on the scale to charge you the full price for less meat. But you are nothing, nobody, insignificant. No one will believe you if you accuse him—and if you do accuse him, he will not sell you meat anymore, and your family will go hungry.
It felt the Light in that heart dim, replaced with the despair that often overtook such hearts when the truth was skewed a little. There would be less kindness in that heart today, and the ripples of unhappiness would be felt by every person the woman encountered. Those hearts
would also be dimmed a little. And the threads of Light in the city would become a little weaker, making the Dark more powerful.
It played with Its prey as Its tentacles brushed the minds and hearts of the humans in the marketplace.
Then It brushed against a section of the city where the Dark and Light were woven together in such a way that the currents formed a barrier It couldn’t breach. The Dark currents didn’t quite resonate with the rest of the city, but the barrier hid the resonance of whatever power controlled that portion.
Tantalized and uneasy, It withdrew from that part of the city and stretched Its mental tentacles toward the two minds It had felt earlier that morning. One mind was barricaded behind walls of self-discipline, but the other was so distracted, slipping inside that mind was as easy as slipping into a dream.
Koltak stared out his sitting room window.
Harland had been so certain that Belladonna and her unnatural power was the reason for the warning. But…
A shadow is the warning.
Belladonna was an enemy to wizards and Landscapers alike, and certainly a danger to Ephemera, but only for the past fifteen years. Wizards had been keeping watch for generations. The tower was the oldest structure in Wizard City, had been built on this hill so that whoever stood at the top could see all of the surrounding countryside. Could keep watch.
For what? his mind whispered.
Not Belladonna, despite what Harland believed. Wizards had disposed of her kind of Landscaper before. They would find a way to dispose of her, too. No, he didn’t believe she and those like her in previous generations were the reason the wizards kept watch year after year after year.
Then why?
Koltak rubbed his forehead, remembering the feverish glitter in Harland’s eyes that revealed some strong emotion the man was otherwise able to control. And yet…
It wasn’t like Harland to dismiss the other possibility of danger. And they all knew there was another possibility. Every wizard who had walked around the Landscapers’ School had felt that core of evil hidden by all the currents of Light that flowed through the school. Every person who lived in Ephemera’s shattered landscapes knew the story about how the Guardians of Light and Guides of the Heart had found a way to cage the Eater of the World and the creatures It had shaped. The magic had been powerful, had been meant to last forever. The Guardians and Guides had disappeared in the making of that cage. Not destroyed, but no longer able to walk in the world. People believed they still existed, still listened to the heart’s deepest wishes and worked through the currents of power to make those wishes real.