Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light

by Tanya Huff

  He smiled at her and crossed the room to smooth tangled curls away from her face. “When the Darkness,” he began, but Rebecca’s fingers closing tightly around his wrist cut off the words.

  “Look!” She pointed with her free hand at the white mist seeping in through the open window.

  Evan frowned but held his power in check. Whatever else it was, this was not a thing of the Darkness.

  The mist swirled into a column and took on the vague shape of a tall man with long curly hair and a workman’s large hands.

  “Ivan?” Rebecca’s eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”

  Evan recognized him now. This was the spirit that had guided him from the Light.

  “Ivan? Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “I don’t think he can, Lady. He has wandered far from the place he is tied to and has no strength for speech.”

  “But why? He never leaves the campus. Never. I didn’t think he could.”

  “Lady, is there a large open area near where this spirit makes his home?” He knew he was right before Rebecca answered for Ivan lost all definition and the column of mist began to spin.

  “Uh-huh. There’s a big round field right in … Is that the place, Evan? Is Darkness there?”

  “Yes, Lady, I think so,” He bent and kissed her quickly, his eyes alight with the anticipation of battle. He would arrive before the sacrifice began, before the balance shifted. This time, Darkness would not escape!

  “Evan, I want to go, too!”

  “I’m sorry, Lady, the way I must travel, you couldn’t keep up.”

  “I could,” Rebecca protested scrambling off the couch. “I’ve got running shoes!” she wailed to the suddenly empty apartment.

  The small body lay half its length above the grass, held in the air by bands of Darkness. Behind it stood a man who smiled as he raised his left hand above his head. From that hand arced the curved blade of a black dagger.

  Evan wasted no time on subtlety. He gathered his power and shot a mighty bolt of pure white Light directly at the chest of the standing man, using over half of the strength he had available in a desperate attempt to stop the knife from falling.

  The concussion knocked him backward and slammed him to the ground, leaving him momentarily blinded by the sudden explosion of energy that followed his blow.

  The Dark Adept began to laugh. “Pretty fool,” he said.

  His voice, Evan realized, came from about twenty feet left of … “Illusion,” he cried bitterly and struggled to clear his sight.

  “No. A mirror. It showed you what you wanted to see and reflected your power back at you. Most of my power went into it and, were you able, you would find me an easy target now. But the Light is so predictable. You reacted exactly as I had anticipated, although I’d hoped you might throw everything and destroy yourself. It would have saved me the bother of dealing with you when I finish here.”

  Evan gained his feet and took two swaying steps toward the voice, barely able to see a shadowy outline through the starbursts of light that still blurred his vision.

  The bells of the city began to ring midnight.

  “Too late,” the Dark Adept mocked.

  At that instant, Evan’s sight cleared.

  He saw a curly, haired child of no more than four stretched out in the exact center of the King’s College Circle common. He saw the black knife touch her throat. He saw the blood on the grass.

  And the balance shifted.

  Evan cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, clutching at himself in a desperate attempt to hold together. He felt the Darkness approach and forced himself back on his feet to face it.

  “Pretty fool,” the Dark Adept repeated, his features sharply delineated by the amount of power he now carried.

  The black whip sliced skin off the arm Evan threw up to shield his face. And then from his side. It cut lines of pain into his legs and slashed his defenses into pieces.

  “I have won,” the Darkness purred.

  The black bolt hit Evan squarely in the chest and would have thrown him entirely off the common and onto the pavement of the Circle had he not slammed into the trunk of a young oak and slid down it to the ground. He lay limply for as long as he dared, calling up what little power remained to him. He was so tired and it hurt so much. When he thought he could do it without screaming, he took hold of the tree and, using it as a staff, struggled to his feet. Beneath his hand he felt the strength of the living wood rising from its roots deep in the earth, then, to his astonishment, he felt that strength flow through the contact and into him. Although no breeze moved them, above his head and down the whole line of oaks edging that arc of the Circle, leaves rustled as the trees entered the battle on the side of the Light.

  Compared to what the Darkness could call on, now that the sacrifice had so drastically shifted the balance, it wasn’t much, but Evan welcomed it with his whole heart. He lifted his head, brought his hands together and from them blazed the Light.

  “You really haven’t got the sense to know when you’re beaten, have you?” asked the Dark Adept, sauntering closer. “If you give up now, you’ll still exist tomorrow and can watch this world fa … Damn you!” For an instant, but only an instant, he stared, face twisted with pain, at the stump of his arm. Then it was whole again and he was raising it to point at Evan.

  Evan parried the first blow. And the second. The third snapped his head around and the bar of Light flickered. The fourth lifted him off his feet and the bar of Light died.

  * * *

  “We’ve got what going on at King’s College Circle?” PC Patton asked, making a puzzled face at her partner.

  “Fireworks,” the dispatcher replied, the weariness in her voice clearly audible over the radio. The flu bug had put the whole force on extended shifts. “Two reports of fireworks and one of some nut-case with a light-saber.”

  PC Brooks mouthed, Luke Skywalker? and PC, Patton shrugged.

  “We’re on it,” she sighed.

  The Dark Adept spread his fingers and looked down through the spaces at Evan, curled up and panting on the grass. “You should have run when you had the chance,” he said, and flew backward as something hard rammed into his stomach, knocking him flat on his back and leaving him gasping for breath.

  “Don’t you hurt him anymore!” Rebecca screamed, standing over Evan, chin thrust forward and hands balled into fists. When she’d reached the Circle and found that Evan had fallen, she’d moved without thinking, lowering her head and launching herself at the Dark Adept.

  A physical attack was the last thing he’d expected and so it had worked. “Oh, I’ll hurt him,” he gasped, sitting up and drawing his fury around him like a cloak, “but first, first, I’ll hurt you.”

  He raised his hand to strike and suddenly found himself wrapped in mist. Mist that thickened and thinned, inexplicably blocking his sight and therefore his blow. Snarling with rage, he struck at it instead.

  “You can’t hurt me,” the mist whispered, and two pale eyes met his. “I’m already dead.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong,” the Darkness warned. “You’re very wrong. But destruction now is too good for the lot of you.” Brushing a bit of grass off his jeans, he smiled. “Live. Live and know you failed when tomorrow I open the gate and the barrier falls. Why should I give you an easy out when you’ll torture yourselves more exquisitely than I ever could for the next twenty-four hours.” He vanished, his laughter merging with the sound of distant sirens.

  Rebecca dropped to her knees and lightly touched the tip of one finger to the purpling curve of Evan’s cheek. “Evan,” she sobbed, “he’s gone. What do I do now?”

  Evan heard her as though from a very long way away. He couldn’t find the strength to reply. And he couldn’t face her with his failure.

  “Evan?” She plucked at the torn sleeve of his T-shirt. There were wounds and massive bruising all over his body, but instead of blood each cut seeped Light. “Evan? You’ve got to get up!”

  “He c
an’t, Lady.”

  At the sound of the deep, slow voice, Rebecca whirled around and flung herself up and into the arms of the troll. “Oh, Lan, I don’t know what to do,” she cried.

  Lan merely held her and silently stroked her back.

  “He’s hurt. Bad.”

  “I know, Lady. I felt his pain.”

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes on the hem of her tank top. “The police are coming,” she said, turning her head to better hear the sirens.

  “They will take him from you.”

  “They will?”

  “He is not of this world. Let me take him to safety, Lady, for I owe him a debt.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Rebecca pushed herself away and stared up at the troll, tears still spilling down over her cheeks. “You take him ‘cause I can’t carry him and I’ll tell the police what happened. Daru says if I’m in trouble I’m to go to the police.” As the patrol car roared up in a blaze of sound and light she whirled and started across the common to meet it.

  Lan has Evan. Don’t tell them about Evan. Rebecca tried to keep that separate from all the other bits and pieces, but car doors slammed and people started shouting and she felt everything beginning to get all mixed up. She stumbled over a tiny body, nearly invisible in the night, and the Darkness that rose up around it almost knocked her to her knees. The sacrifice. A number of the bits and pieces got away and she cried out.

  PC Patton strained to see what was going on in the dark center of the common. “These things look pretty,” she muttered, jerking her head at one of the old-fashioned street lamps, “but they give bugger all in the way of light.”

  PC Brooks shifted his grip on his nightstick. “Someone’s coming. Sounds …” He paused. It sounded like a wild animal in pain, but the moving shadow looked like a person. “It’s a girl,” he added a few seconds later as the runner came closer to the light.

  “Not just any girl.” PC Patton stepped forward and Rebecca ran right into her arms, forcing her back a step to keep them both from going down.

  “He killed her. He killed her,” she sobbed, clutching at the policewoman with a desperate grip. “She was just a little girl and he killed her. It’s too late now and he got away!” The last word rose to a wail.

  By the second sentence, PC Brooks had radioed for backup. By the third, he’d snapped the searchlight on and flooded the Circle and the common it contained with light. By the fourth he was halfway to the small, pale shape lying crumpled on the grass.

  PC Patton forced Rebecca’s fingers to loose their grip on her shoulders, a little surprised that it took all her strength to do it, and she cradled the distraught girl in her arms. “Who killed her?” she demanded, shouting over the sirens of two arriving cars. “Who.”

  Rebecca buried her head away from the noise and the confusion and whimpered. She wanted to go home.

  “Rebecca? Rebecca!”

  “Roland?” Rebecca’s head snapped up and she wrenched free of PC Patton’s hold, throwing herself across the space between them and into Roland’s arms in the same desperate motion.

  Somehow, Roland managed to keep his feet. “Shh, kiddo, shh. I’m here.” He shuffled them both sideways until they stood on the grass, his hands running in soothing patterns up and down Rebecca’s back. There were a million questions he wanted to ask, but he only whispered comforting words into her curls and provided an anchor for her to catch hold of. Soon they were the only island of quiet amidst the lights and the sirens and the men and women who had no idea of the real horror they’d stumbled upon.

  No one noticed that the common had acquired another oak tree. Or that when the confusion died down the tree was no longer there.

  Later, at the station:

  “I’ve been staying with her, because of,” Roland waved a hand, “last night.” Believe me, said his voice, truth and sincerity behind every word. He hoped he wasn’t laying it on too thick. He wasn’t sure what he could do without Patience or the harp.

  Heads nodded.

  “I thought she was safe at the apartment.” Which he had. “She suggested I go to Bloor to get some things.” Which was true. “The Dominion there is open twenty-four hours,” Which it was. Although he wasn’t at it. “I was on my way back when I heard the sirens and saw the lights, so I went to investigate.” And considering the scenarios he’d dreamed up on that wild run, seeing the “fireworks” for what they were and knowing what the Darkness was capable of, what he’d found had been almost a relief. “I have no idea what she was doing there.”

  “I followed him,” Rebecca whispered, the first coherent words she’d spoken since Roland had appeared back at the Circle. “I have running shoes and I followed him.”

  “Followed who?” asked a homicide detective gently.

  Rebecca butted her head into Roland’s side and stared at the detective with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

  “Did you follow your friend?”

  She reached for Roland’s hand. Evan was hurt. “Yes.”

  But because they didn’t know about Evan, the detectives asked the wrong questions. And because Rebecca answered only what they actually asked and they heard her answers through the label they’d placed on her, they never found out what really happened.

  “Did you see who killed the little girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him actually do it?”

  “No.”

  “But you did see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he look like?”

  When she described the suspect they were already looking for, they were happy and they believed and they stopped asking questions.

  “You’ll remain available,” they said as Rebecca carefully printed her name at the bottom of her statement.

  Roland said they would.

  Not until they were in the cab on the way back to Rebecca’s apartment, did he get a chance to ask about Evan and even then he could barely force the question past the sudden fear in his throat. He couldn’t be …

  “He got hurt, Roland,” Rebecca sniffed. “And Lan the troll took him away.”

  “Took him where, kiddo?

  “Somewhere safe.”

  Where would a troll think was safe, Roland wondered. And then the cab pulled up in front of Rebecca’s building and he knew.

  “Roland, look!” Rebecca sprang out of the cab.

  “I’m looking, kiddo.” He paid the cabbie and exited only slightly more slowly. It was something to look at. Strange and wonderful creatures perched in every available nook and cranny. The old chestnut sagged under the weight of the littles in its branches.

  Every eye was on Rebecca as she ran through the still broken door and pounded up the stairs.

  By the time Roland reached the apartment she was kneeling by the bed, her hands running lightly up the length of Evan’s naked body.

  “I don’t remember,” she lamented in a voice so lost it pulled tears from Roland’s eyes. “I don’t remember what to do.”

  He touched her gently on the shoulder, not understanding but offering what support he could. He forced himself not to look away from the bruising and the half healed wounds. If he can stand the pain of bearing them, I’ll just have to stand knowing that he does.

  Tom stared up at them both from his position on the other pillow, his expression, Roland thought, vaguely accusatory. You let this happen, said the set of his whiskers.

  “Lady?”

  “I’m here, Evan.” Rebecca pressed her face against his shoulder.

  The Adept sighed and seemed to relax into her touch. When she moved away, he opened his eyes. The stormy gray had become bleak and leaden.

  “Roland,” he acknowledged the other man weakly. “I failed.”

  Roland licked away a tear that had reached his mouth. “There’s still tomorrow,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

  Evan let his eyes fall closed. “There may only be tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Roland?”

&nb
sp; “Mmmph.” He dragged himself up through flannel layers of sleep and managed to focus on Rebecca’s face. “Wazzup, kiddo?”

  “I’m going to work now.”

  “Work?” Twisting his brain into some semblance of rationality, Roland tried to sit up with a distinct lack of success. A large, furry cement block lay squarely in the middle of his chest. “Are you quite comfortable?” he demanded.

  Tom yawned.

  “Wonderful.” Roland gagged. “Cat food breath. Just what I need first thing in the morning.” The light that spilled through the curtains had an unused look. He checked his watch. Five thirteen. “Or last thing at night,” he added. It had been barely four hours since they’d left the police station.

  Rebecca lifted Tom to the floor.

  He stalked off, pointedly ignoring them both.

  “Now then.” Roland got himself up onto his elbows. “Why are you going to work?”

  “Because.” Rebecca looked confused. “It’s what I do.”

  She wore jeans and an old turquoise bowling shirt. Her hair clustered in damp tangles around her face. She’d obviously been up for a while and she certainly looked wide awake, but Roland noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the way she was worrying at her full lower lip.

  “You’re tired, kiddo,” he said, swinging his legs off the couch and sitting up. “You didn’t get much sleep last night. Why don’t you take the day off.”

  “No,” She shook her head, her hair fanning out with the motion. A drop of water hit Roland on the chin. “I’m not sick. Daru says you never take the day off unless you’re sick.”

  Roland knew better than to argue against a “Daru says” so he tried a different tack. “But Evan …”

  Rebecca’s face softened. “Evan is mostly okay now, but he isn’t finished yet. When he wakes up, he’ll be better.”

  “And he’ll want you here.”

  “Yes.” Her expression became serious again. “But he said before I have to keep doing what I do so the Darkness doesn’t,” she hesitated over the word but got it out, “disrupt ordinary things.” She sighed. “I think this is how I fight the Darkness. Don’t you see, Roland? It isn’t big or important, but it’s what I do.”