by Dima Zales
“Is there a barrier, here?”
“Yes,” Ghosteater said.
I wondered why we could go through it but the fire couldn’t. I didn’t ask, though. If I raised the subject, it’d invite questions.
We stopped for the night shortly afterwards. The forest was too dense and wet to build a fire, so we huddled under the tarps, eating dried meat and fruit. Once everyone was settled in their sleeping bags, I slipped away into the darkening forest and found a ’pus. I coaxed it into my lap and then explained what had happened to the one I’d carried with me — that she’d saved my life, and that I knew it was my fault she was dead, and that I was sorry.
The ’pus stared back at me, its strange oblong pupil reminding me of my friend’s. Not surprisingly, it didn’t respond. I had no idea if it understood me.
When I was done talking, I sat there for a long while, stroking the ’pus and feeling strange. Part of the feeling was sadness, and part of it was remorse. But there was also a striking sense of having been changed in ways I couldn’t understand. I was at a loss.
Eventually I got up to head back to camp. Oddly, the ’pus wanted to come with me. When I got in my sleeping bag, it settled on a root near my face.
I woke up several times during the night, and each time it was still there.
In the morning, it was gone.
A day and a half later, we reached the shore.
Williams led us out to the point where rocks and water met. We waded into the gentle waves until Ghosteater indicated the strait was beneath us. I looked down. The water was clear, but it was impossible to pick the stone ball out of the rocky seabed. As I watched, Ghosteater dove down, kicking vigorously to reach the bottom. We all watched as he touched a certain place with his nose, then disappeared. The water tossed violently as it filled the space he’d occupied, and I lost sight of the spot he’d touched.
“Ryder,” Williams said. “Go.”
Taking a deep breath, I bent down to the place I thought the strait was and began feeling around with my hands. On the third try, I must’ve touched it because I found myself sprawled on the tile floor of a windowless room beside a stone ball — the matching strait, the one Graham had been carrying.
“Move away,” Ghosteater said from the corner.
I scrambled over to the wall and waited while the others appeared one by one.
Once everyone was there, I thanked them for coming to get me.
“Sure,” Kara said, “no problem.”
Zion shrugged. “Not like we had a choice, right?”
Ghosteater cocked his head and stared at me.
Williams said nothing — just grabbed a towel from the pile that had been left in the corner and walked out.
“Don’t mind them,” Kara said. “They’re assholes. It’s not your fault you ended up there.”
“It is your fault we had to go so far to find you,” Zion said, toweling her hair. “Next time, stay put.”
Her words stung. I felt defensive, even though I’d been berating myself for that exact mistake.
“I didn’t know if anyone would come for me. Or if Graham or Lord Limu might be the one who came, if anyone did.”
“Exactly,” Kara said staunchly. “I would’ve been on the move, too.”
Zion rolled her eyes and left.
Kara and I dried off, then stood there awkwardly.
“Well,” she said, “we’d better go find Lord Cordus. I mean, you’d better go find him. Hopefully he won’t need to talk to me.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She gave me a pained smile and left. Ghosteater slid out behind her, leaving me alone in the quiet room. The carven strait sat on the floor, shining dully. It was a profoundly anticlimactic ending to ten days of wonder, terror, and pain.
24
Cordus straightened up, closing his hand.
We were sitting in his office in our usual training spot. He’d spoken briefly to me the day before, then sent me to my room to rest and recover. Today, I was resuming my old schedule. Our lesson had gone as usual: I still couldn’t see workings.
He sat in silence for a time, then broached the subject I’d been dreading.
“As I understand it, you may have manifested a gift while in the isolate.”
Knowing the subject was unavoidable, I described all that had happened to me and what I’d apparently done.
Cordus didn’t seem shocked by my having incinerated a vast stretch of land and everything that lived there, but he did ask a number of very detailed questions. At last, he sat back and started some serious foot-tapping.
Eventually, I couldn’t stand the silence. “So, am I a fire-worker, like Lord Limu?”
“I think not, Miss Ryder. Based on your description, I believe you are a worker of light.”
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.
“I did that with light?”
“Not the variety of light humans are capable of seeing.”
He got up, went a bookcase, and pulled out a volume.
“An explanation based on human science will be easiest for you, at this point.”
He paged through the book and then brought it to me, opened to a colorful diagram.
“The electromagnetic spectrum,” he said, sweeping his hand over the pages. “At the center are the wavelengths that human eyes can detect. Some creatures can see more broadly, of course.”
I nodded as though I’d known that.
“I suspect you produced a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy in these wavelengths,” he said, pointing to the infrared area of the spectrum. “Such a burst would ignite or incinerate flammable material, such as plants.”
Plants, bones, minis.
“Or people?” I said, looking up at him.
He looked back at me, expressionless. “People are indeed flammable, Miss Ryder.”
I sat there for some time, reading the diagram’s brief descriptions of infrared and other waves.
For once, Cordus was the one to break the silence. “With time, you may be able to produce energy across the entire spectrum.”
I looked up at him, then back down at the book. Microwaves. X-rays. Gamma rays.
“I don’t want this.”
I wasn’t sure where the words had come from. Some deep, instinctual place. They surfaced and demanded expression. I spoke them without thinking.
“You have no choice as to the nature of your abilities, Miss Ryder,” Cordus said softly. “When you have learned to control them, however, you will be able to choose how and when you employ them.”
I was surprised at the obvious lie. There’d be no choice. I’d have to do exactly what he told me to do, and if that meant incinerating or irradiating people, then that’s what I’d have to do. I doubted I could even choose my own death instead. He could get inside my head and control me like a puppet, so that disobedience would be literally impossible. That’s what he’d done with the green man.
I suppose he took my silence for acquiescence, because he went on. “As you know, the emergence of gifts is the second stage of Nolander development. You are now in the radically anomalous position of possessing a gift without being able to sense workings. You can make what you cannot perceive.”
I nodded dully.
“Given the life-or-death situation you describe, I believe your capacity was once again forced into untimely growth. As a result, it seems to have become even more irregular in its shape.”
“So, I’m lopsided?”
“I suppose that is as good a term as any other. In fact, the metaphor is useful. As you know from mundane experience, lopsided things tend to be unstable. Likewise, your capacity is unbalanced and is likely to function unpredictably for some time. Our lessons should be safe enough, but I must ask you to continue to refrain from attempting to sense workings outside my presence. In addition, you must not use your gift. Any such attempt could be extremely dangerous.”
So far as I’m concerned, I’m never using it again.
; “Don’t worry,” I said aloud. “I wouldn’t know how to use it if I wanted to.
During the ensuing days and weeks, I slid back into my routine — workouts with Gwen, combat training with Tezzy, lessons with Cordus.
My “spa week” in the S-Em, as Gwen called it, had brought improvements to two out of the three areas of my education. I’d lost fat and gained muscle, which pleased Gwen. I’d also apparently gotten something Tezzy called “focus.” She talked about my “deepened commitment to the art” and my “predator’s eye.” It sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me. I think she basically meant I wasn’t quite as easy to knock over.
In my lessons with Cordus, however, I remained unable to sense the little heat-working he held out. My progress with Baasha was slow — even mastering the alphabet was a struggle. Fortunately, he remained patient.
I went back to visiting Justine, who’d survived being buried in the sinkhole. She continued to vacillate between fear and anger, and I continued to dread seeing her. I also reconnected with Tiffany, who’d been frightened when I stopped answering her calls. Ben still didn’t want to talk to me, though Tiff said things seemed to be getting a little better.
As I returned to my routine, the estate around me appeared to assume its usual condition. Ghosteater disappeared. Williams and Kara went back to Minnesota. Cordus held court weekly.
I knew things weren’t wholly normal, though. Cordus never looked ruffled or distracted, but his desk, once a model of neatness, was increasingly piled with old books and papers. Sometimes strange people visited the estate, and he spent hours talking to them privately. I was certain he was trying to find out more about Eye of the Heavens and Limu’s stolen weapon.
The few times I asked him about it, he shut me down immediately: “That conversation must wait, Miss Ryder,” or, “This is neither the time nor the place, Miss Ryder.” I figured it was Cordus-speak for, Jesus Christ, woman — shut up! So I stopped asking.
It was hard not to feel tense about the situation. Limu scared me. Was he still in New York? Every time we drove into the city for court, I wondered if he was going to pop out of an alley and torch the car. And Justine just weirded me out. She both was and wasn’t my sister-in-law. It was disturbing.
There wasn’t much I could do about Justine and Limu, so I focused on small goals: running a faster forty-yard dash, mastering the ready stance, convincing the stable master to let me go riding.
And I thought about things a lot.
I knew what had happened had changed me. Heck, that much was obvious: my life had been altered in nearly every way I could imagine. But my experience in the S-Em had done something on a different order of magnitude. It had reached way down deep inside me and shifted something. The closest I could come to pinning it down was this: death had come for me on that sand bank, and I’d said “no,” and death had listened.
I’d survived. I’d won.
It wasn’t a pure feeling. It was mixed with guilt and horror at what I’d done, with frustration at my mistakes, with anger at all that had been done to me, and with fear of what the future would bring.
But despite the guilt and anger and doubt, I still felt like I’d made it over some kind of hurdle. I knew it was important, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. That I was on my way to something, maybe. But what?
I looked up at Gwen, seeking reassurance.
“S’okay,” she said. “He really is helpless. You’ll see.”
I nodded and knocked on the door she was guarding.
“Come in.”
I opened the door slowly and peeked around it. Graham was sitting on a couch at the far end of the room. He looked surprised to see me.
I stepped in, closing the door behind me. I approached the sitting area and chose an armchair.
Long seconds of uncomfortable silence followed.
“How are you?” he said.
“Okay. You?”
“I’m okay.”
He didn’t look okay. He looked sick. Cordus was keeping him nearly drained. I didn’t know how you drain someone against their will. Maybe it felt like what Williams had done to me. At any rate, the effects were clear. Graham looked too weak to stand, much less cause trouble.
We sat there in silence.
“Beth,” he finally said, “why are you here?”
I searched for an answer. “I’m not sure.”
I’d come planning to demand an explanation.
The more I’d thought about what Graham had done to me, the angrier it had made me. A lot of what had happened to me could be categorized as “my fault” or “just the way things are.” Even the many cruelties I’d experienced and observed were the result of individuals acting according to their overt natures. Graham stood out from that. What he’d done — sending me to that place and leaving me there — seemed different. It felt like a betrayal.
But sitting across from him, that distinction seemed silly. He too had been acting according to his nature. I’d just been too naive to recognize his nature for what it was.
“Were you hoping I’d confess my sins?” he said, his voice taking on an edge. “Do you think you’ll get ‘closure,’ or something?” He made sarcastic air quotes.
I stood and walked to the door.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”
I stopped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired.”
He cleared his throat. “Hey, I haven’t had any visitors. Why don’t you stay a bit? You can tell me about where the strait took you.”
“Would that be entertaining? Hearing the story of how you almost killed me?”
He flushed and dropped his eyes.
I waited for a few seconds, then realized I was standing there hoping he’d produce a sincere apology. God, when was I going to learn? I turned to go.
“Beth, wait,” he said, sounding upset.
Against my better judgment, I stopped again.
“I’m sorry I did that to you. It wasn’t supposed to happen, and I just panicked. I should’ve come after you.”
“Yeah, you should’ve. It would only have taken you a couple seconds.”
“But I didn’t know where you’d gone. I mean, the companion could’ve been inside a volcano. It could’ve been in outer space.”
“Nonsense,” I snapped. “Limu wants Justine alive. You wouldn’t have done something that stupid.”
He stared at me, and I saw that expression on his face again, the one I’d seen at the mill — the trapped-animal look. At last he looked away, his expression bleak.
“There’s a death sentence on my head. Limu figured that out and gave me a choice: be his man in Cordus’s organization or face the music.”
“Why were you sentenced to death?”
He shook his head and didn’t answer.
I stood there a while and thought about what he’d said. Did it make me feel better about what he’d done? Maybe. A little. Trying to escape a death threat was a less-bad motive than greed or ambition, I guess. I remembered how I’d gone haring off to Nebraska after Williams had assaulted me. Profound fear could make you do things ranging from idiotic to evil.
Then again, why was I believing him? I opened my mouth to question his story. What came out was, “Did you really seduce Kara when she was fifteen?”
A second later, my brain came back on line. Why the hell had I said that?
“Yeah.” He shrugged, as though it was no big deal.
“Because you wanted to control her?”
He looked at me like I was nuts. “No, because I wanted to screw her. Isn’t that why that kind of thing usually happens?”
Wow, classy.
“She was just a kid. It’s statutory rape.”
“Not where I’m from,” he said, sounding exasperated. “I probably shouldn’t have done it. Whatever. It’s all water under the bridge, now.”
Unsteadily, he stood and walked over to the window, clearly annoyed with my moralizing. A silence stretched between us.
�
�What’s Lord Cordus going to do with you?”
“Hang onto me, for the time being,” Graham said. “He has a dispute with the elder beast over my ownership. Once he gets clear title, he’ll execute me himself.”
I frowned, confused. “Elder beast?”
“Giant wolf, a million years old, no feet. I think you know him.”
A million years old?
“You mean Ghosteater?”
“Yeah. He hunted me down in the city and claimed me. Cordus found some loophole. I think they’re deadlocked, at this point. I’m being held until they find a neutral arbitrator.”
I turned and walked to the door, then looked back. Graham was watching me. The soft June sunlight illuminated one side of his face. The other side was contoured with shadow. Even pale and sick, he was striking.
“Good luck, Graham.”
“Beth,” he said, as I reached for the doorknob.
I turned back one last time.
“That mouse you picked up on Rib Mountain? Don’t tell anyone about that.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t.”
An apprehensive shiver passed over me. I stared at him for several long beats, but he’d looked away. Disturbed, I opened the door and left.
“Are you certain, Miss Ryder? Your visit was an anomaly in Mr. Ryzik’s schedule — the only anomaly, in fact. Are you sure he said nothing of an impending escape?”
I was sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs in front of Cordus’s desk. The man was doing something I’d never seen him do: he was pacing. He strolled from one side of the bay window behind his desk to the other, hands clasped behind his back, gaze distant. It looked leisurely and contemplative. I wasn’t fooled for a moment.
“No, Lord Cordus, he didn’t say anything. I’m quite certain.”