Sebastian

Chapter Five

It swam beneath the sand, but only those with magic running in their veins would notice the rippling dark shadow that soured the land as It passed—and left behind a seductive lure to give in to the dark feelings the heart usually kept well hidden. All creatures responded to the Dark and the Light, but humans, with their agile minds, had always been the best prey—because It had been made to be their predator.

Which was what brought It back to the part of the bonelovers’ landscape It had anchored to the place called the Den. Full of darkness, yes, but at the core there was Light that made It greedy to devour—and made It shiver. The Den was filled with the same powerful resonance that had given Ephemera the strength to resist reshaping more than a small anchor point in that other dark, demon landscape.

That would change. The incubi and succubi had become feeble creatures, contaminated by the human prey. But the purebloods that had been caged in Its landscapes were still powerful, still belonged to the Dark. They would be real hunters—and once they reached the Den, their presence would change the Den’s resonance, would dim the Light.

As It rose to the surface, Its massive form shrank, shifted. A moment later a handsome, elegantly dressed man stood on the rust-colored sand.

A moment after that, Its scream of rage made even the bonelovers scurry away from feelings so dark and primal.

Where an alley should have been, there was nothing but stone. Huge tumbled boulders blocked Its path. Even if It made the effort to scramble over them, It knew It would find nothing but stones.

As It beat Its fists on the stones, It felt that same powerful resonance at the core of this strange landscape.

Panting, It braced scraped, bloodied hands against the stones as It tried to crush the fear taking root inside It.

The creatures called Landscapers were so diminished they were no longer a threat, were no more than feeble barriers standing in the way of Its desire to turn all of Ephemera into dark landscapes full of terrors shaped from the heart’s deepest fears.

But the one who had touched this place…

A True Enemy was still out there. Somewhere.

Changing back to Its natural form, It swam beneath the sand until It reached the pile of bones that were Its anchor to the lair of the Landscapers and Bridges.

Its form shrank, shifted, grew eight legs. Its front legs lifted the bones It had turned into a trapdoor that led down to the tunnel that would take It back to the school.

Fifteen years had passed since she’d walked down this path at the school, but she remembered the feel of it—the sly rage, the envy and jealousy, the bitter despair that seemed to seep up from the ground beneath the flagstones. Feelings none of the other students, or even the Instructors, had been aware of.

It felt different now, muted, as if those feelings, once so concentrated under this path that led to the oldest garden at the school, were spread out in a thin skin. But just as potent.

And she remembered her mother’s warning as she took another step toward the forbidden.

Being at the school…It’s an exciting time in your life, Glorianna. You’ll be with so many young women who have a power like yours, the same life’s work. And there will be the young men who are training to be Bridges. They provide a different kind of excitement. But despite the power you and the others will learn to wield for the good of Ephemera, you are all, in many ways, still children. And children are not always wise, because they want to be strong and brave and adult—and, therefore, they do not always want to believe that the things adults are afraid of are things that truly should be feared, that should be left alone. That was true when I attended the school. I doubt your classmates will be any different.

So you must heed this warning, Glorianna.

“You there!”

She walked toward the archway. Each step took a moment, took a lifetime.

The Instructors will take you to an archway and show you the walled garden with the wrought-iron gate. Inside that old garden is a simple stone wall. They will tell all of you that you must never step through that archway, must never approach that sealed gate.

But children will always want to prove their daring and bravery in front of their peers. So some of them will sneak out at night and go to the archway. They’ll taunt one another into proving their courage by crossing that poisonous ground of thorn trees and bloated mushrooms—and then they will touch the gate to prove they aren’t afraid of what was sealed behind that stone wall.

“You there! Stop!”

They’ll tease you, call you names, say that you’re afraid. But, daughter, you must not step through that archway. You must not touch that gate. You are not…quite…like the rest of the students. We come from an old lineage, a secret held by the women of our house. It must remain a secret for the sake of our world.

Those children, your classmates…They won’t believe what the Instructors tell them—that what is contained will become aware of their presence once they cross the archway and step on ground It defiles with Its existence. They won’t believe something locked away from the world can truly sense them—or harm them.

But sometimes It does sense them, Glorianna, and It can harm them. Those who approach without the respect due a powerful enemy…Well, things…happen. People get swallowed by the world, lost in the landscapes instead of making their life journey. Even Bridges. Even Landscapers.

“You there!”

What is contained within that garden, Mother?

The—

The flagstone shifted under her foot, just enough to banish memories and make her see her surroundings with painful clarity.

She looked down, then carefully lifted her foot and took a step back. Instead of hard earth, the space between that flagstone and the others was filled with rust-colored sand.

Boots slapped the flagstones on the path behind her.

She looked at the land near the archway—and shuddered.

A hand clamped on her upper arm and yanked her around to face a stern, middle-aged man who wore a Bridges badge on his tunic.

Not stern, Glorianna decided as she studied his face. Grim. Worried. Afraid.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “This part of the school is forbidden to everyone. You should know that, Landscaper.”

Of course he knew she was a Landscaper. He’d be able to sense that power in her, just as she would have known he was a Bridge even without the badge.

“The wall has been breached,” she said. “It is out here in the world, Bridge, and the landscapes that were sealed by that wall are no longer contained. It is no longer contained.”

“Nonsense. That wall has stood for centuries.”

“The wall has been breached.” She stabbed a finger in the direction of the archway. “Look at the ground. If everything was as it should be, that shouldn’t be possible.”

He looked where she pointed—and she felt him tremble.

To the right of the path, growing in the shadow of the wall, the ground was speckled with young mushrooms. To the left, dark seedlings rose up from the rotted fruit of the thorn trees.

He shook his head. “The magics—”

“Aren’t strong enough anymore to hold back the things It shaped.” She jerked free of his hold on her arm. “You have to warn the Landscapers to guard the places in their keeping and hold those places in the Light, regardless of how strongly the people there may resonate the darker feelings of the heart. You have to tell the Bridges to break the bridges they’ve created and isolate the landscapes. It’s the only chance to find—”

“Find what?” he snapped. “You want to spread a rumor that a myth—”

“That wall wasn’t created to contain a myth, Bridge,” she snapped back.

He seemed thoughtful, willing to bend to the idea that the horror that had caused the first Landscapers to break the world into pieces was once more free to unfurl Its full power and turn Ephemera into a nightmarish hunting ground. Then he shook his head, and his face firmed into stubborn lines. “There’s enough uneasiness because of the incidents without—”

“What incidents? When did they start?”

“Three weeks ago, right after Lukene disappeared.”

Glorianna stared at him. “Lukene disappeared three weeks ago and no one checked the wall?”

But he was staring back at her, as if finally seeing her. “Where’s your badge, Landscaper? You’re supposed to wear your badge when you visit the school.”

A stab of shame, the scrape of old memories, must have shown in her eyes.

“You’re—”

She raised her hand in a sharp move to silence him. It wasn’t safe to have anyone speak her name. Not here. Not now. “It doesn’t matter who I am. Warn the Landscapers, Bridge, before it’s too late.”

“And tell them what?”

“That the Eater of the World is hunting in Ephemera.”

Something rippled under the land. Something dark and predatory.

Did It have a lair at the school? It wouldn’t want to keep Its pieces of the world in that old garden. Too much possibility that the Landscapers might be able to reestablish the boundaries, repair the wall, and trap It again. But because of Ephemera’s nature, this was the only place that would give It access to all of the landscapes.

At least, all of the landscapes that were anchored in the gardens at the school.

The man facing her looked feverish. Ill. Ugly emotions swam in his eyes—and weren’t quite banished by his true nature.

“Get away from this path, away from that garden,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “Warn the Landscapers.”

Another dark ripple. Closer this time.

She had to get away from here. Now!

Turning, she strode away from the archway, ignoring the shouts of the Bridge, who, for his own reasons, didn’t follow her.

At least, she hoped they were still his own reasons.

Guardians and Guides, let the Bridge turn away from that garden and give the Landscapers her warning. Not that they’d believe a warning that came from Belladonna. She was a rogue, a “threat” to maintaining the landscapes that made up Ephemera.

She wouldn’t be surprised if they decided she was the cause of the “incidents.” After all, an embittered Landscaper who had, somehow, escaped the wizards’ justice would want to cause mischief and harm to those who could achieve what she had not—status among her own kind and an acknowledged place in the world.

They had condemned her because she had made a patchwork out of some of the dark places in the world and shaped them around the Den of Iniquity.

Did any of them realize she had also made a patchwork of the most powerful places of Light? Did any of them know she was the Landscaper whose power resonated through Sanctuary?

She came to the circle of sand-colored bricks and walked toward the sundial at the center of the circle.

The Landscapers and wizards had wondered all these years how she had escaped from a magically sealed garden. This was part of the answer.

Students were taught that their walled gardens were their anchor points to the school. Every connection they established with one of Ephemera’s landscapes was anchored within their individual gardens, so they could return to the school from any of those places without needing a bridge to cross over.

The walled gardens were the Landscapers’ anchors to the school. Students never questioned that teaching. Neither did the Instructors, since all of them had been students here as well.

Having another anchor point between her garden and the classrooms had seemed a practical way to give herself a little more time to work without having to run all the way back to the school building to be on time for her classes. She’d chosen the sundial as the second anchor point simply because she liked the look of it, the warmth of its stone. And because it was a daily reminder that Dark and Light were together in an eternal dance, and where there was one, the other also dwelled.

That day, fifteen years ago, when she’d discovered a solid stone wall where her garden’s gate should have been, she’d assumed it was another part of the “test.” She might have spent weeks without realizing the meaning of that solid wall if the Instructors had given her all of her books when they’d closed her in for the “test.” So she’d crossed the boundary between here and there, stepping from her garden to the sundial in the space of a heartbeat.

But she hadn’t gone back to her room at the student lodgings. Instead she’d walked back to her garden to look at the gate from the outside in order to figure out why it had become solid stone so she could change it back and pass that part of her “test.”

That was when she’d found the wizards’ seal on the wrought-iron gate and realized the solid stone existed only for someone inside the garden. That was when her trust in those who were supposed to be wise enough to make decisions about other people’s lives turned to ash swept away by the sharp winds of anger and hurt…and fear.

She lost her innocence that day, and in losing it, began the next stage of the life journey that would make her as dangerous as the wizards and Instructors had feared.

Glorianna shook her head. This wasn’t the time or place for dark memories, especially if the Eater of the World was hiding somewhere in the gardens. It would be drawn to the resonance dark memories produced in the heart, and she wasn’t ready to fight It. Didn’t know if she could fight It.

She brushed her fingers over the sundial as she walked past it, keeping her mind focused on where she needed to be. In that moment, between one step and the next, the ground beneath her changed from sand-colored bricks to an overgrown path in the abandoned garden.

A pang of sorrow pierced her, making her stop and look around.

The garden should have been lovely, should have been tended and nurtured. It should have been hers.

You’ve no time for this. Get what you came for and be gone.

Clenching her hands to resist the temptation to free some of the flowers that were still struggling to grow despite the smothering tangle of weeds, she walked to the center where the small fountain, the garden’s focal point, still burbled, spilling fresh water over the stones into the surrounding pool.

She’d run home the day she’d discovered the seal. Had rushed back to this garden just long enough to cross over to the landscape that was her mother’s domain—a place where she safely could weep out the hurt and bitterness.

“You must find another place to anchor your landscapes, daughter. You must build another garden in a place that can’t be reached by your enemies.”

“There isn’t such a place!”

“There is. If you want it to exist, there will be such a place. Break your ties to the school, and I will teach you all that I can.”

“I’m a rogue now, Mother. If you help me…”

She looked into her mother’s eyes, stunned by the anger she saw in them.

“You’re going to break your ties to your garden at the school. Aren’t you?” she said.

“Sending you to the school was a necessary risk, just as your grandmother took that risk when it was my time to go for the formal training. Now there’s another risk, one too great for me to take chances. So, yes, I will break my ties to that garden. But I promise you, Glorianna, I will not lose anything I do not choose to release.”

“But…Mother—”

“There are things I must tell you about our family, but not now. Not yet. Just shift your landscapes’ anchors to some other place, and do it swiftly.”

“What about Lee?”

Nadia hesitated. “When the time comes, he’ll have to go to the school to train as a Bridge.”

“Another necessary risk?”

“Yes. Another necessary risk. You’ll need a Bridge you can trust.”

“You’re placing a large burden on a young boy.”

Sadness filled Nadia’s eyes. “No, Glorianna. It isn’t Lee who will carry the burden.”

Glorianna shook her head as if that would clear away the thoughts, the weight of despair.

Its influence. There was too little of her left within these walls to fight against the feelings It coaxed to the mind’s surface in order to fill the heart with dark emotions.

She had to leave.

Crouching beside the fountain, she studied the tumbled stones in the bottom of the pool. Most of them were just stones without power. But…

Pushing up her sleeves, she plunged her hands into the pool, shifting the stones to find the three that contained bridges Lee had created for her.

She’d done what Nadia had asked. She’d found that safe, secret place and made another garden that became her link to the landscapes that were in her keeping. But she came back here, just once, while Lee was in school, and left the three stones. She’d been afraid for him because of his ability to impose one landscape over another. If the Instructors at the Bridges’ School had discovered Lee could control even a small piece of a landscape to that degree, they might have handed him over to the wizards for the “good” of Ephemera.

So she’d placed the stones in the fountain to give him a way to escape if the Instructors—or the wizards—turned on him.

She rose to her feet and studied the stones in her hands. The agate provided a bridge to the school. Turning to face the wall, she threw the stone as hard as she could. It arched, met the resistance of the magic that kept each garden private, then disappeared.

She didn’t know where the stone had gone. Maybe it dropped on the other side of the wall. Maybe it had ended up somewhere else. Or nowhere else. There was no telling what the wizards’ power would do to anything that tried to get over the wall from inside the garden.

The second stone, a piece of red-veined black marble, provided a bridge to the Den of Iniquity. She put that one in her trouser pocket.

The third…

She tried to move her hand to put the smooth oval of white marble in her pocket, but she couldn’t. Something within her trembled—a kind of knowing the mind couldn’t put into words. It was a feeling that went through her whenever Ephemera intervened to stop her from doing something that went against some primal knowledge that lived within her heart.

That was the other part of the answer of how she’d escaped being walled inside her garden. Ephemera had intervened by showing her something irresistible.

She’d been working hard in her garden, creating anchor points to the landscapes that resonated for her, even in distant lands. When that staggering wave of darkness had pressed against her mind, her first thought was that she was coming down with some kind of illness. Then the coaxing whispers began, trying to fill her with desolation, trying to convince her that the desolation sweeping through her was the only thing that belonged in her garden. Desolation. Isolation. Food, clothing, shelter. Yes, those things should be part of her landscapes. But not people. She should always be one step removed from any contact with people.

Alone. Forever alone. That was all she deserved.

But something Dark and powerful had risen up inside her. Something primal that recognized those whispers—and hated them. Before those Dark currents flowing inside her could be shaped and manifested in the world, the ground next to her altered, forming a perfect circle filled with grass and unfamiliar wildflowers—and currents of Light that resonated so strongly they were impossible to resist.

The whispers faded, no longer important, as she stepped into that circle and crossed over from here to there…

…and found the first of the many Places of Light that would call to her until she brought them together as connected landscapes known as Sanctuary.

She stayed for two days, being given company and solitude as each were needed, until the currents of Dark and Light that flowed in her felt balanced again. Then she returned to her garden, bringing with her an ornamental stone so that she could return to that distant landscape and learn more from the people who cared for the Place of Light.

And then, about a month later, she had used the sundial anchor point to return to her room for the rest of her books and had discovered, instead, what the wizards and Instructors at the school had tried to do.

Glorianna sighed. The wizards hadn’t succeeded in sealing her up in tiny, desolate landscapes, but more often than not, she did feel one step removed from other people, even when she walked among them. More often than not, she did feel alone.

Get away from this place before it warps something inside you. You may have escaped them, but the resonance of what they tried to do still lingers here.

She dropped the stone that provided a way to Sanctuary back into the pool.

Then she walked away from the fountain, her mind focused on the place she needed to be as she took the step between here and there.

She had to go to Aurora, had to warn Nadia that the Eater of the World was once more hunting in Ephemera.

Long after he’d lost sight of her, Gregor stood on the path that led to the archway, a sludge of fury filling his mind. He wanted to run after her, wanted to pin her to the ground and hammer his fists into that beautiful face, wanted to rip out handfuls of that silky black hair, wanted to…wanted to…

Vile creature. Nothing but a vessel of power that was a perversion of the magic that provided some stability in their ever-changing world. There had been others like her in the past, and the wizards had done their duty for the good of Ephemera and had sealed those perversions within their gardens, leaving them just enough access to the landscapes that they would be able to find food, clothing, and shelter but creating boundaries around those patches of Ephemera that couldn’t be breached.

What the wizards did when the perversion of magic surfaced in a student Landscaper was no different from what the first Landscapers had done to contain…contain…

Vile creature. Vile, vile creature. The only perversion who had managed to escape the Justice Makers.

He hawked and spit.

Then he stared at the gob of phlegm on the flagstone, feeling queasy, feeling as if he’d just spit out something poisonous. Which was foolish. He was just feeling contaminated by having touched her, having spoken to her.

But Lukene had believed the Instructors and wizards had made a serious mistake in how they had dealt with the girl. That they had judged without knowledge—and by doing so, had destroyed any chance of learning why a fifteen-year-old girl would create something like the Den of Iniquity.

Fifteen years later, they still didn’t know why. And they still didn’t know how she had done it.

The wall has been breached.

Ridiculous. That wall would stand forever. Had to stand forever.

Warn the Landscapers, Bridge.

She was probably behind the incidents—the unexplained alterations in some of the students’ gardens; the girl who woke up screaming each morning because, she said, there were spiderwebs all over her skin, and when her skin was completely covered, the spiders would burrow under her skin and eat her alive; the two boys who had tried to create a bridge to some dark street in a nearby town in order to have a tankard of ale and had, somehow, crossed over to a place so frightening that, after they managed to get back to the school, they were too terrified to use any kind of bridge.

But would the girl Lukene feared and yet still believed had a good heart make two students disappear the way Lukene had disappeared?

The wall has been breached.

Probably a lie. She had been moving toward the archway when he’d stopped her, so how could she know?

But if it wasn’t a lie…?

Reluctantly, Gregor moved toward the archway. The daylight seemed to pale with every step he took, but he kept moving forward. He shuddered as he passed under the archway. His body shook as he crossed the ground covered with bloated mushrooms and shadowed by thorn trees. His heart raced as he stared at the broken lock and open gate that meant someone had done the unthinkable and entered that garden.

Unwilling to open the gate any farther, he squeezed through the space. As he stared at the simple stone wall, he had a moment to feel relieved, to think it had been a lie after all.

Then he noticed the stick…and the crumbled mortar…and the small hole in the wall.

“Guardians of Light and Guides of the Heart, help us,” he whispered.

He turned away from the wall, but before he reached the gate, he heard…

“Help me. Please. Someone help me.”

A familiar voice. A beloved voice.

“Lukene?” He looked at the wall. Icy fear filled his heart. “Lukene?”

“Gregor? Gregor! Help me.”

A patch of ground near the gate shifted, lifted just enough to reveal a dark space.

He edged toward the gate, toward the dark space, toward the voice of the woman he loved.

“Gregor!”

A pale hand, scraped and bruised, reached out from the dark space.

Caution and love warred in his chest, making his heart ache. “How…?”

“I saw the breach in the wall and tripped into another landscape when I ran to warn the others. I…The tunnel is steep. My leg…hurt. I can’t…Gregor, please.”

He reached for her hand. He’d get her away from this garden, away from that wall. Then he’d leave her in the care of the first students he could find while he ran to the school to warn the Landscapers.

For a moment, with her hand clamped in his, she resisted his effort to pull her out of that dark space, as if she needed to savor the contact before gathering her strength.

Then the ground lifted like a trapdoor. Tentacles whipped out and wrapped around him. A head emerged. A sea creature. But the body and other four legs were those of a large spider.

Pain in his belly as It bit deep. Then he stopped thrashing as the toxins in that bite paralyzed his limbs.

It pulled him through the trapdoor, down a steep tunnel. It pulled him into a pool of water at the bottom of the tunnel—his legs, his waist, his chest.

His heart pounded. His lungs still labored to breathe. But he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Couldn’t struggle to escape.

He screamed when It began to feed.

The meal should have been delicious, but one unpalatable nugget had spoiled it all. While It had feasted on the flesh, It had slipped into the human’s mind and filled that mind with terrors that had sweetened the flesh. But even as the mind shattered from the fear, there was one shimmer of Light, one seed of hope. Not for itself, but for its kind. For the world.

The male had sacrificed his sanity in order to lock that seed of hope inside a meaningless word—and had died before It could darken that shimmer of Light, break open that seed of hope, and discover the secret inside.

It would go back to that place where the Dark Ones lived. They would know the answer. And if they did not, they would find the answer.

Then It would know the meaning of the meaningless word that made It feel uneasy—and guarded a seed of hope.

Belladonna.