by Anne Bishop
“She knew there was trouble at the school.” Sebastian heard the hesitation in his voice and hated it, but he knew Lee understood the question beneath the statement.
“Glorianna believes in letting people make their own choices, good or bad, but if she’d suspected the Eater could make this kind of attack, she would have told you straight out not to go to the school. And if she decided not to tell you straight out, she has a connection with Ephemera no other Landscaper can match. You would have started out on the journey, but she would have made sure you couldn’t reach the school.”
Sebastian felt one knot of tension ease inside him, swiftly replaced by another. “What’s going to happen to Ephemera?”
“Most of the Landscapers and Bridges don’t live at the school. They wouldn’t have been caught in the attack. Even if the Landscapers came back to their gardens, as soon as they realized they were in danger, they’d be only a step away from escaping into another of their landscapes.”
Sebastian studied his cousin. “You should never lie to someone who has played cards with you. You give too much away.”
“Then I’m lucky I’ve never played cards with anyone at the school, since I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of experience lying to them,” Lee snapped. Then he looked out over the water. “The school is a focal point because the gardens are there. If a Landscaper comes back to the school through her garden and realizes something bad has happened, she’ll probably be able to get out again before she’s attacked, but…”
“She won’t have access to all the landscapes in her keeping, will she?”
“I’m not sure. My mother can step from one of her landscapes to another without going back to her garden, but she’s a Level Five Landscaper. Landscapers below that level don’t have the skill to do that. They’re dependent on having access to their gardens.”
“So what happens to Ephemera?”
Lee closed his eyes. “The Landscapers’ resonance will last a few weeks, maybe a month, without being renewed. After that…” He swallowed hard. “After that, there won’t be anyone standing between Ephemera and the human heart, so it will begin manifesting everything in response to all those emotions. A child will have a temper tantrum, and the family’s well will go dry. A farmer will have an argument with his wife, and when he goes out to work in the fields, his plow horse will step into a hole that suddenly appears and break a leg. People will blame one another for their troubles, and everything will get worse and worse because the Dark currents will get stronger and stronger—and the Eater of the World will be able to use all those dark emotions to shape terrors made from people’s deepest fears.”
“Guardians and Guides,” Sebastian whispered.
Lee opened his eyes and stood up. “I have to go.”
Sebastian stood as well. “Go where? You can’t go to the school.”
“We have to assume all the Landscapers who were at the school are dead. And all the Bridges who were there as well. But that means the Eater has access to all the landscapes connected to those gardens.”
“So where are you going?” Sebastian asked, hurrying after his cousin as Lee left the island and strode across the bridge.
“I have to break the bridges between Glorianna’s landscapes and the rest of Ephemera. I have to break as many as I can, as fast as I can. I can start with the ones that cross over into Sanctuary.”
As they reached the shore, Sebastian grabbed Lee’s arm, pulling his cousin around to face him. “You’re going to cut people off with no way to escape that thing?”
“I’m going to do what I can to save what I can,” Lee replied. “Guardians and Guides, Sebastian! We need some safe ground that the Eater can’t reach, or we’ll never be able to gather enough force to fight It.”
It made sense, but…“So you’re going to save Sanctuary.” He felt cold…and so alone.
Lee gave him a strange look. “I’m going to close off Glorianna’s landscapes. I’ll break the bridges that connect them to outside landscapes. We’ll be isolated from the rest of Ephemera, but the landscapes are diverse enough to provide people with everything they really need.”
“But you said…Sanctuary.”
Lee smiled with bitter humor. “This is one of Belladonna’s landscapes. Sanctuary and the Den are connected. Not directly, but they’re connected.”
The Den. Sebastian shook his head. “There are dozens of ways into the Den, and the Eater has already attacked there.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and felt it lodge in his heart. When he went back to the Den, Lynnea could stay here in Sanctuary. Lynnea would be safe. “You have to let the Den go, or you won’t have your safe ground.”
“There are ten stationary bridges that cross over into the Den. I created them, and they all connect with landscapes held by Glorianna or Nadia. It’s the resonating bridges and any stationary ones other Bridges established since the last time I made a circuit around the Den that I have to find and break.”
“Didn’t you hear me? The Den is already compromised!”
“Then the only thing I can suggest, cousin, is that you gather whoever you can to help you defend it. Because Glorianna isn’t going to abandon the Den, and neither am I.”
We’re not going to abandon you. That was the message. They didn’t care if he was human or demon. He was family. That was all that mattered.
“All right,” Sebastian said. “I’ll hold on to the Den.” Somehow.
They climbed the hill in silence. When they reached the door into the building, Lee paused. “Could you stop at my mother’s house on your way back to the Den? Just to make sure everything’s…” He closed his eyes. “There’s a saying I learned in school. ‘Despair made the deserts.’ That’s what the Eater of the World really does, you know. It’s not the landscapes It twisted or the creatures It twisted into monsters; it’s the loss of hope, the seeds of fear that almost gave It control of the world long ago. It feeds on those feelings, cultivates the dark aspects of our hearts. It’s going to try to kill all the Landscapers. That’s the only way to keep the world from holding on to the Light.”
“I’ll check on Aunt Nadia.”
Lee nodded.
They went inside, Lee to pack his things and begin his own kind of fight against the Eater of the World, and Sebastian to find Lynnea and tell her he was going back to the Den in a few hours. Alone.
“There’s something you need to see,” Nadia said. She opened a kitchen drawer, removed two folded pieces of paper, and set them on the kitchen table in front of Glorianna.
“Where did you find these?” Glorianna asked as she opened the papers and saw the heavy lines of masculine handwriting.
“In the attic.” Nadia latched the kitchen’s screen door, locked the wood door, then walked over to one of the windows. “I didn’t go up for anything in particular. Just to sort things out, I suppose, for something to do, since I was feeling restless. I found those at the bottom of a trunk of children’s clothes, wrapped in your old baby blanket.”
Glorianna looked up. “You told me a dog stole my blanket.”
Nadia closed the window, then closed the shutters over it. “What was I supposed to tell you? It was so worn and tattered—and got more tattered every time I washed it. But you didn’t want to let it go.”
“So you lied to me?”
“I told you a lie that gave the loss meaning. You used to find comfort from thinking a small orphan dog was snuggled up in that blanket on cold nights.”
Glorianna watched her mother close the other kitchen window. “Why are you doing that? It’ll be stifling in here.”
“For a little while. Read, Glorianna.”
So she read, and what she read chilled her to the marrow.
“Guardians and Guides, can this be true?”
Nadia sat down opposite Glorianna and said nothing for a long time. Then, “It makes a frightening kind of sense. Both sides lost some abilities, some aspects of their magic after the Eater of the World was fought and defeated long ago. But
one side forgot its roots, except for the families who passed the truth down from mother to daughter; the other side did not. It hid in plain sight, keeping its bloodlines strong while depleting the strength of its enemy.”
Glorianna looked at the papers lying on the table between them. “Who…?”
“Your father. Peter. Shortly before he…”
“Disappeared.”
“Yes.” Nadia closed her eyes. “I thought he left because he was dissatisfied with his life, or with me. I thought he left because he’d grown tired of the secrets he’d insisted we keep—and because of the secrets he knew I kept from him about my family. I thought he left because he crossed into a strange landscape and couldn’t find his way back—or didn’t want to find his way back. I thought a lot of things during the months after he disappeared.” She opened her eyes. “After reading that, I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Glorianna looked at the papers, at the strong handwriting that looked as if the hand had trembled a little while it held the pen. Out of haste? Fear?
“You think the Wizards’ Council killed him, or had him killed, because he found out about this?”
“It’s possible.”
“But…” Despite the closed door and windows, despite their being alone, Glorianna lowered her voice. “Females kept in secret as breeders? Females who aren’t…human? Even if it’s true, he didn’t say where he saw these females or who was mating with them. He didn’t accuse any particular group of being the—”
“Peter was a wizard,” Nadia interrupted. “If he’d seen this place anywhere but in Wizard City, he would have reported it, and the wizards would have been the first to rally against some dark aspect gathering strength in secret. They’ve always been the most vocal about keeping humankind away from the demons who share this world.”
“Exactly.”
Nadia looked at Glorianna. Her face, even in the soft glow of the lamp on the table, appeared older than her years. “If the power that your kind had shaped in order to control the world had been defeated by your enemies, by the ones who stood for the Light, what better way to survive than to transform into a shape that would blend in? What better way to survive than to build a fortress city in which to hide the females who, for whatever reason, weren’t able to transform but who held the dark legacy in their wombs?”
“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe any of this.” But Glorianna stared at the words on the papers and felt sick.
The Dark Guides are not just an unseen force that flows through Ephemera, providing an opportunity for a person to follow the baser feelings in his heart. And they are not figures so malformed that they slink in the dark corners of cities or hide in caves in the countryside, appearing as a black-cloaked shape that whispers lies or helps bring about misfortune.
I have seen the creche, the breeding grounds. I watched males who wear the mask of human faces mate with females who are not human.
The Dark Guides exist. They are real. They wear human faces, but they are not human under the skin.
And, perhaps, neither am I. If the power I was born with comes from this dark place, neither am I.
“I told you the family secrets,” Nadia said softly. “Things I never told your father. We can trace our line back to the first Landscapers, who were the Guides of the Heart. Human in form, but not human. They had such a strong connection with Ephemera, they could alter the landscapes, actually change the shape of the world.”
“Like me,” Glorianna whispered.
“Like you.”
Nadia got up, rummaged through the cupboards, then returned to the table with a bottle of brandy and two glasses. She filled the glasses and set one beside Glorianna’s hand. Then she drained half her glass before sitting down again.
“I have no marriage lines,” Nadia said. “I wanted them, but Peter said it was enough that we were married in our hearts, and I loved him enough to be content with that. Even when I became pregnant with you, he still refused to consider a formal marriage. But that’s when he told me one of the wizards’ secrets.
“It was, and is, taboo for a wizard to have carnal relations with a Landscaper, and if the Wizards’ Council had found out he’d been with me and I carried a child that mingled the bloodlines of wizard and Landscaper, at best they would have punished him. At worst, they would have sealed both of us in a dark landscape.
“He loved you, Glorianna, but he was also terrified of you.”
Glorianna licked her lips, which felt painfully dry. “If the wizards are the descendants of the Dark Guides and the Landscapers are the descendants of the Guides of the Heart…”
“You are the mingling of the Dark and the Light, and you are the only known Landscaper in our time who can alter landscapes. Truly alter them. I think the kind of Landscaper you are is the reason for the taboo. The wizards didn’t want to give Dark power back to the Light—because I think that mingling is the only kind of power that can defeat the Eater of the World.”
Glorianna gulped some brandy. “I can’t do this alone. You think I can go up against the Eater of the World?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
The question froze her blood. But another thought unfurled. “Sebastian,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Nadia agreed. “Sebastian. Your uncle Koltak’s scandal. Living testament that wizards and the succubi can mate and have offspring. Dark power mating with dark power.”
“Which means he might have all the power of a wizard as well as the power of an incubus.”
“The seed resides in him, but he’s never shown any ability for wizards’ magic. If he had, I imagine the council would have taken him in and trained him.”
“But Koltak’s not pure wizard.”
Nadia nodded. “Koltak and Peter didn’t come from Wizard City. I suspect the human marriages in that family line are the reason Koltak never achieved the power he craved. Not if it’s the Wizards’ Council and their handpicked protégés who are mating with those females to keep some bloodlines of the Dark Guides pure.”
“What about Sebastian? Is there any human in him at all?”
“A little.” Nadia paused, then sighed. “He is human in his heart, Glorianna, even if he’s no longer willing to acknowledge it.”
Relief shuddered through her. It would break her heart to have Sebastian as an enemy.
“You have to leave, daughter. If the wizards manage to find you and destroy you, we have no hope of defeating the Eater of the World. You have to hide until you’re ready to fight.”
“I’ll go if you come with me.”
Nadia shook her head. “I can’t abandon the landscapes in my care. Not now.”
“Mother—”
Nadia rested her hand over Glorianna’s. “We are not the whole world. Maybe there are other Landscapers in faraway lands, even if they’re known by a different name. Ephemera didn’t shatter as much in those faraway places as it did here where the battle was fought, Dark against Light. We are not the whole world. If that were not so, you and Lee would not have discovered a southern land where koffea beans grow.”
“Merchant ships have been bringing koffea beans into ports of call for many years,” Glorianna said.
“And yet those beans were unknown in many landscapes here. Our world is very large, and it is very small. We see only what our hearts can hold, whether we sail the seas to distant lands or live out the whole of our lives in the village where we were born. But the people here live on the bones of the battleground, and the Landscapers who care for this part of Ephemera may be the only ones who know this was a battleground—and they’re the only ones who can see with their own eyes that this will be a battleground again.”
“So if we win, most of Ephemera will never know. And if we lose…”
“The Eater of the World will be able to unleash the horrors It created and alter the world into a dark hunting ground.” Nadia leaned back in her chair and dropped her hands to her lap. “Despair made the deserts.”
�
�And hope shaped the oasis. I know the saying.”
“You’re our oasis, Glorianna. I’ll look after myself. You look after Ephemera.”
Unbearably weary, Glorianna nodded and pushed her chair back. “I’ll go.”
“May the Guardians of Light go with you, daughter.”
After Nadia unlocked the kitchen door, Glorianna wrapped her arms around her mother and held on tight.
“I’ll see you again,” she whispered.
“You’re always in my heart,” Nadia whispered back. “You and Lee…and Sebastian.”
Just tired, Glorianna told herself as she hurried along the familiar garden paths, blinking back tears. Just tired. And afraid. So very afraid.
Which was why she doubled back to a particular part of Nadia’s gardens and took a small statue of a sitting woman. She, Lee, and Sebastian had worked at odd jobs an entire summer in order to earn the money to buy the statue for Nadia’s birthday. Her mother cherished it because of that. And because it was cherished, it was a powerful anchor to this place.
Nadia wouldn’t approve of her taking on the added burden. Most Landscapers held a handful of landscapes. She held thrice that many. And she was about to add a dozen more. Because once she altered the landscapes and shifted the borders and boundaries, she would make all the landscapes in Nadia’s garden a single landscape within her own. Until Lee could establish more bridges between Nadia’s landscapes and hers, it would isolate the people living in those places from the rest of Ephemera.
But it would keep her mother safe.
Chapter Twelve
Sebastian and Lynnea crossed over the bridge that connected Sanctuary to Nadia’s home landscape and stepped into a clearing filled with sunlight.
Sebastian threw an arm up over his eyes and blinked away the tears caused by the unexpected brightness.
“Daylight,” he muttered, lowering his arm a little so he could squint at the land around them.
“Yes,” Lynnea said, looking up at the sky. “It’s a lovely day, even if it is a bit overcast.”