His pulse quickened. He opened his eyes.
Behold a world divided, said the voices.
Before him and above him—everywhere he looked—stretched the Veil. It was clear like water and shot through with rainbow colours that changed and swirled in misty patterns before his eyes. It was not cloudy—it was most like a very clear mountain stream—yet he could not see through it to the other side.
Here lies the path before you. We bar the way to a part of the world you have never seen before. You must step through, said the heavy-silk voices. The Veil shimmered with the sounding of them. It was true, Nicolas realized, what he had told Marja. The Veil was not a thing, it was a Being. A thousand Beings, knitted together. The Shearim.
He had forgotten all about the long fall before him, had forgotten everything except the moment. He stretched out his hand, and his fingers touched the Veil. It rippled under his fingers like water and sounded like harp strings. Rainbow colours swirled around the spot where his fingers touched. The Veil was cool to his hand. He pulled away.
You must step through, the voices said again.
Nicolas swallowed and touched the Veil again. This time he pressed against it, and his fingers slipped through. He gasped and pulled them back. Silvery rainbow tendrils tightened gently around his fingers and spread over his hand. He stretched his fingers; bent them; played with them.
He looked up once again, nodded his head, and stepped off the edge of the coliseum.
Nicolas gasped as the Veil closed around him. This was no fall, no plummet from the coliseum edge. It was a passing from one dimension into another. Instead of darkness he saw misty light. The coolness surrounded and supported him. He breathed in, and with his breath came air that was not air: that was spirit, that was life. Life tingled and burned in his veins, like a fire leaping up to greet the air. He heard voices but could not understand the words; he heard harp strings that were also voices, wondrous and heartbreaking. The closest to him sounded thin and pained, like something being torn apart. And then he was through.
It was dark on the other side of the Veil. Dark in this second dimension—in this world within the world.
Nicolas turned to look back and stumbled backward in shock. The Veil here had none of the shimmering beauty of the other side. It was beautiful, yes, but the beauty was terrible and frightening. It was black, shot through with lightning. A barrier.
Nicolas crawled to the Veil’s edge and reached out to touch it. Pain stung his fingers. He pulled his hand close and cradled it. He could smell burned flesh. His own flesh. He began to look around him. The ground where he sat was scorched, black, and cold. He touched it, and when he lifted his fingers they were covered with inky soot. He stood and shivered.
The sky was low and dark, and the horizon glimmered with distant orange light. There was no vegetation anywhere, and no water. The ground was flat. It stretched away forever in every direction. To the north, black mountains spiked the rim of the visible world. The air smelled burned and sweet, a strange sweetness that was pleasant for a moment and then revolting. And there was sound: a constant, distant noise that defied concentration. A sound that might drive a man crazy before he had ever learned to describe it.
Nicolas took a tentative step to the south and stopped. He could see no one anywhere.
“I don’t—” he said, stopping to clear his throat. “I don’t know which way to go.”
The answer came from his memory: Follow the river. Come for me. I am the prisoner River-Daughter, yearning to be free. Set me free, Nicolas Fisher. Your journey is not over yet.
“Follow the river,” he repeated. Only the distant roar answered him. “There is no river!” he said, and then looked to his right.
It was there. A dry river bed.
Nicolas forced himself to put one foot in front of the other along the place where a river had once run. How long he walked he could not tell. The darkness and distant noise swallowed up time. He talked to himself as he went, narrating his own actions, just to give himself some clear sound to cling to. Never had his ears been so without anchor.
He dove for cover in the river bed at the sound of a distant, blood-chilling howl. He had heard such a thing before. He lay on his back and looked up as shadows fell over him and the creatures passed by. He could just see them over the crust of the earth.
The hell hound came first, its green eyes glowing and its green breath marking the air. The stench of death fell over the river bed and nearly choked Nicolas. He squinted his watering eyes and swallowed hard. The hound snuffled and whined. It opened its mouth to reveal massive teeth. They were real, those teeth, real and solid and deadly, and yet there was something about the whole body of the hound that was not quite there—its edges were frayed, its lines not entirely static. Nicolas thought it might dissolve its shape at any moment and become something else, because its true shape was not that of a hound but that of a spirit.
This, too, he had seen before. The ravens that had attacked the Major’s Gypsies long ago in search of Maggie had changed shape and become one great bird. The Gypsies had killed it. Marja had wounded it, he remembered. He wanted to close his eyes and think only of her, but fear kept his eyes open and riveted on the passing creatures.
Behind the hound came a skeletal man, too long and too tall, with limbs that seemed to drift over the ground and trail behind him and a head far too big for his body. The skeletal man turned his head as he passed. Nicolas saw his face: it was a carved, grinning mask, with nothing but blackness where the eyes and nose and mouth should be. Nicolas bit back his own fear till he could taste blood.
The creatures of shadow passed by and disappeared over the horizon, but it was a long time before Nicolas could move.
He clambered cautiously out of the river bed. His hands shook as he lifted them and placed them on the ground again, crawling. After a while he was able to walk.
There was no sun or moon in the burnt sky. Nicolas turned to look at the Veil, and in its dark surface he saw the Gypsy camp. He saw Caspin and he saw his wife, and then it all faded away. He saw a golden-haired child with a scarred face. The boy seemed to be staring straight at him, and Nicolas stared back. Fear for the child gripped him. And then that vision, too, faded away.
He forced himself to keep walking.
After some time the riverbank crowded over with bare, black, thorny bushes, many of them. They threatened to choke out the path and obscure Nicolas’s sight of the river. He knew that if he tried to go around them he would lose his way, so he stepped down into the river bed and walked inside it.
In the distance he saw something bright—a white light, unlike the orange glow on the horizon. He kept walking toward it until he could see it flickering, steadily burning. A fire. As he drew near, he shielded his eyes with his hands.
When he reached it, he saw a great bush on fire, taller than he was and wide enough to fill the river bed. It stood directly in his path. It was brighter than most fires, so that he could not look directly at it. He began to climb out of the river bed, seeking a way around it, when a powerful presence fell over him, arresting him. It weakened his limbs so that he slid back down the bank. Slowly, he turned to face the bush.
It was gone. In its place, standing in the center of the flame with his eyes and hair shining white, was the ancient young man in homespun.
“Would you learn the Fire-Song?” the King said. “Then come. Pass through the fire to me.”
* * *
Chapter 15
Fire-Song
“I can’t,” Nicolas whispered. His mouth was dry. The fire grew as he looked at it, grew till it seemed to him great enough to swallow the world—yet it was still there, still contained in the river bed. Instead of casting light on the desolate land, it seemed to draw the darkness in around it. It burned like the very center of the world, terrible, white, and deadly.
And there was something else about it—Nicolas felt afraid in its presence as he had never before felt afraid. This was not like t
he fear of evil. It was instead the fear of good—great, infinite good. It made him know how small and full of blackness he himself was.
“Are you afraid?” the King asked.
“Yes,” Nicolas said. He did not say what he felt with all his heart. I cannot come. The fire will destroy me.
“I have led you here,” the King said. “Will you turn away now? You have heard two strains of my song and known their beauty. The Fire-Song is greatest of all, for it is the song of my spirit. Tell me, son of the earth. Will you come?”
“I cannot,” Nicolas answered. “You know I cannot.”
“You could not if you faced the fire alone,” the King said. “But I am here.”
“What if I do not come?” Nicolas asked. His whole body, his whole spirit, was shrinking back from the flames. Yet the King’s eyes kept him riveted to the spot, drawing him—drawing a deep part of him.
“You feel the blackness in yourself?” the King asked.
“Yes,” Nicolas whispered.
“If you do not come,” the King said, “that blackness will destroy everything you love.”
Nicolas lifted his tear-stained face and looked through the flames at the face of the King. “You will help me?” he asked.
The King in homespun nodded and smiled. The gladness Nicolas had sensed below the surface of the King’s face sparked now in his eyes. “Yes.”
“Then I will come,” Nicolas said.
The King held out his hands. They reached beyond the fire to Nicolas, themselves alight, strong hands white like star fire.
“Take my hands,” the King commanded.
Nicolas did.
* * *
They stood in the streets of Athrom, Michael O’Roarke and his family. Straight up the main road, overlooking the city, rose the golden walls of the Emperor’s Palace. They were dull under the clouded sky.
Michael hardly saw any of it.
Kris of the Mountains laid his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he said.
Michael shook his head. “She’s not here,” he said.
“She told us we would find the children in the city,” Shannon said. “If you’re right that she’s gone to try to free them herself, where else would she be?”
“She lied,” Michael said.
Shannon started to answer and bit her lip instead. He was right. She knew that.
“Gwyrion’s with her,” Shannon said. “She’ll be all right.”
“Where are they?” Michael breathed.
The sound of beating wings filled the air, and suddenly birds were all around, landing on the hands and heads and shoulders of the clann. The birds called and sang, demanding attention before they lifted up again.
“Follow them!” Michael shouted. “They’ve found the children!”
* * *
The white wolf pushed against Miracle’s leg as they looked down at the swamp and the tower that stood in its center, a short but treacherous distance away.
“It’s an ill place,” Miracle said. “Everything here is sick.”
She took a deep breath and stepped forward, down the hill to the swampland. At the base of the hill, mud sucked at her boots and weighed down her skirt. She stumbled as she walked. The wolf pushed ahead of her and whined. She looked up and saw that he stood on a solid piece of ground. She picked her feet up and struggled to reach him.
The grass on the solid ground was sharp. It cut at her ankles as she moved through it. She stopped and brushed a lock of hair out of her face, streaking her cheek with mud.
“Where am I taking myself?” she asked. Her eyes filled with momentary tears, but she willed them away. The distant cry of a carrion crow fell through the darkness.
A light glowed in the top of the tower, and she followed it. The white wolf went ahead of her, testing the ground, leaping over pools of filth. She followed. The weeping branches of a gnarled tree brushed across her face and shoulders, and she lost her step for an instant, plunging one foot into deep muddy water. She cried out and pulled her foot back again. A pale snake had wrapped itself around her ankle. She felt its fangs sink into her leg.
The white wolf was at her side in an instant. His jaws snapped at the serpent, his teeth so close they nearly grazed her skin. He severed the snake’s body, and its coils loosened and fell. Miracle pulled up her skirt to reveal two perfect fang marks, dripping blood and poison.
Already her head was spinning. Pain shot through her eyes, and her fingers felt clumsy. She bowed her head and placed her hands over the wound.
“Not for me,” she whispered. “Not for me, but for the children, bring healing through my hands.”
She closed her eyes and let the heat in her veins rise and flow through her fingers. In a moment the pain subsided, and her head began to clear. She opened her eyes and removed her hands, watching as the fang marks closed and left her skin streaked with blood—but whole.
She lifted her head and said, “Thank you.”
The white wolf nudged her arm, and she held onto his shoulder as she pulled herself to her feet. She took three more steps and stopped—she could not go on quite yet. Not until she had left a mark of her own in this place.
Miracle took the rose from her belt and knelt on the earth. The smell of the swamp filled her senses and in a moment nearly overwhelmed her. She fought back the sickening feeling and fixed her eyes on the rose. She said something inaudibly, only her lips moving, and the rose began to change. From its stem roots grew. She dug with her hands in the dirt and planted the rose in the center of the swamp.
“Grow,” she said. “Grow and heal this place. May the land remember me kindly.”
For a long time she stayed there, hushed, while the swamp around her crawled and skittered with the sounds of the night. At last she breathed in deeply and stood, turned, faced the light in the tower, still some distance away. Time to go on.
* * *
The Black Tower, ancient stronghold of the Order of the Spider, was guarded by nothing more than a single oak door on one side. No one knew who had built the foreboding structure. Legend said it had grown there, like the drooping trees in the swamp. Sometimes it did seem alive, its black stones quivering, the vines that wrapped around its height growing from the tower itself and not from any root in the ground.
In the highest part of the tower, a candle burned orange. And in the deepest part, in the Pit far under the ground, another fire burned blue.
Christopher Ens spoke solemnly to the children in a room just above the tower’s base. They listened with serious eyes. Moll clung to Archer, and Seamus stayed just behind him. Christopher wanted to tell them to run, get away, before it was too late—but he couldn’t. The Oath of the Covenant controlled his lips now.
He hated himself for it.
“Fire dwells within all of us: within every human being. Most can never call it up or control it without the help of the Blackness. When the Blackness joins its strength with ours, we become more than human. Their power and ours, joined together, is Covenant Fire: the greatest power in existence. The spell I place over you now will protect you as the Blackness falls over you for the first time. Without it, you would die.”
Moll was sniffling. Archer held her closer. “Hush,” he said. “It will soon be all right.”
Christopher heard himself say, “Yes. You are children. You do not understand everything that will happen today. But the Blackness will accept you into itself, and it will make you great.”
“Greater even than you,” Archer said. “We are Gifted, and you are not. Is that not true?”
Christopher stared at the child. Earnest eyes looked back at him, determined to do evil that good might come. For an instant Christopher could speak his own words, without the Blackness controlling his mouth. “It is true,” he said.
A single ghost ray of moonlight fell across the floor from a high thin window. Christopher looked up at the sickle moon. “Close your eyes, children,” he said. “While I speak protection over you.”
> The guttural words that flowed from Christopher’s mouth, a spell born of Covenant Fire, fell over the children like black water. Archer felt something deep in him burning in response. His heart beat faster.
“Come,” Christopher said.
Together, they descended the staircase one after the other, down through the floor of the tower. They turned a corner and saw the blue fire burning far below them. They stood at the edge of a great pit, its sheer black walls plummeting thirty feet on every side. Carved stairs wound down the side of the wall.
Tall, twisting candlesticks formed a path along the floor. At the end was a deep circle in the ground, blue fire roaring within it. Beyond that sat a high throne. Christopher Ens approached the edge of the circle and dropped to his knees. He looked up, the word “Master” on his lips—and froze with shock.
The Nameless One sat on the throne, gloating. He stood with a swish of black robes and raised his tattooed hand.
“Where is Master Skraetock?” Christopher demanded.
The Nameless One looked at him for a long moment. “Who?” he asked.
Christopher felt his throat tighten. “Don’t play games with me,” he said. “Where is the Master?”
The Nameless One smiled. His tongue behind his teeth was blood red. “I am the Master now,” he sang.
“No,” Christopher said, shaking his head. He took a step back, toward the children. He had to protect the children.
“Have you brought new recruits, little brother?” asked the Nameless One. “A shame—the Order of the Spider is no longer accepting acolytes.”
“What are you talking about?” Christopher said.
“They are not needed,” the Nameless One said. “I am going to tear the Veil. You—all of you—are no longer necessary. After tonight the Order will cease to exist.”
Archer’s voice was small in the firelit darkness. He pushed Moll and Seamus behind his back. “What are you going to do with us?”
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