Sebastian

Chapter Eight

The girl sniffled into a handkerchief and looked up at the two wizards standing in front of her. “He came running down the stairs so fast, I didn’t have a chance to warn him they were wet. And he looked so scared, like something terrible was chasing after him. Then he slipped and one foot got tangled in the wash bucket’s handle and he…” She collapsed into the chair behind her, sobbing.

“What were you doing on the stairs so early in the morning?” Harland asked sternly.

The tears dried up, replaced by a hint of angry pride. “My work, sir. When a stairway needs washing, we do it first so it’s dry before most other folk are up and about.”

“Are you implying that the wizards are lazy?” Harland sounded offended.

“I’m sure that’s not what she meant,” Koltak said. “The servants are aware that we spend the early hours in meditation or study and don’t usually leave our rooms.”

“That’s true, sir,” the girl said, looking earnestly at Harland. “No one’s to come knocking to clean a room until after breakfast, so we take care of other cleaning chores until then.”

“I see,” Harland said, a little mollified.

“Besides,” the girl added, “wizards don’t use that stairway. Just the servants. He shouldn’t have been using those stairs at all.”

“I think that’s all we need to know,” Koltak said. He glanced at Harland, relieved when the head of the Wizards’ Council nodded in agreement.

He led the girl to the door and opened it, not surprised to find the housekeeper hovering in the corridor. She was protective of her girls and had, more than once, publicly berated young wizards for not being able to tell a servant from a slut.

As the housekeeper hurried off with the girl, Koltak closed the door and turned to face Harland. “What do you think?”

Harland stared at the floor. Then he sighed. “The boy had no business on that stairway, but it is a shortcut from the apprentice quarters to the study rooms. So I think you were right about him having a braggart’s tongue. He was probably on his way to tell some companion about delivering a message to me.”

“If it was nothing more than haste that had him rushing down that stairway, he would have seen the girl and the bucket, would have realized the stairs were wet.” Koltak paused. “But the girl said he looked scared.”

Some undefinable look came and went over Harland’s face. “You think a Dark Guide influenced the boy into taking fright?”

“Don’t you believe in the Dark Guides?”

Harland lifted a hand, then let it fall. “If people believe there are Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart, how can there not be Dark Guides to provide balance, to grant the darker wishes of the heart? Personally, I think people make their own choices, good and bad. If they find comfort in blaming a hardship on something outside of themselves or that some force heard a wish and granted it, then let them believe.”

“And so a moment at the wrong place and time ends with a young man tumbling down a flight of wet stairs and breaking his neck?” Koltak said. Why was he arguing this, especially with Harland?

“Yes,” Harland said quietly. “Most likely we’ll discover some classmates pulled a prank on the boy that frightened him more than they’d intended, and that, in turn, caused the accident that ended the boy’s life this morning. I don’t think we’ll find anything more sinister than that, Koltak. No Dark Guides, no dark presence. Nothing but human weakness.”

“I know.”

As he went back to his own rooms, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Harland was trying to hide something—that Harland didn’t believe for one moment this morning’s tragedy had been caused by human weakness.

Nigelle ran all the way to her walled garden. Slipping through the gate, she paused to catch her breath and embrace the glee she felt whenever she stood here.

Secrets. Her garden was full of secrets. Dark landscapes carefully hidden so that a quick look by any of the Instructors would cause no alarm. Not that they were doing the usual inspections lately. Too many strange things had been happening.

And she was the only one who knew why.

She hurried to the far end of her garden, then looked around, impatient. Where was he? Surely he’d come. He had to come. He was so splendid, she couldn’t stand not seeing him for a whole day.

She’d tried sex with a couple of the boys studying to be Bridges, but she hadn’t liked it much. But with him… It was devastatingly wonderful. Like drowning in sensations. Like being devoured while she crested again and again. It had gotten so that, if a full day went by without sex, she felt jittery, hot, like her skin was too tight and she needed to peel it off in order to breathe.

She’d have sex with him every hour of every day until it killed her. That was how good it was.

Laughing at herself for being so melodramatic, she rubbed her hands over her arms to ease the jittery, itching feeling.

Where was he?

And it wasn’t just the sex, no matter how wonderful. He was showing her things the Instructors never would have taught her. And he had entrusted her with guarding the darkest, most dangerous landscapes in Ephemera.

Nigelle frowned. Why had he chosen her? If these places were so dangerous and had to be guarded to keep people from stumbling into them, why hadn’t he asked one of the stronger Landscapers for help? Why…?

She looked at the garden in front of the patch of grass she stood on. Directly in front of her was a path that ended at the back wall, separating two of the secret landscapes. To her left, hidden by two shrubs and a bed of tall summer flowers, was a patch of rust-colored sand fanning out from the corner. To her right, also fanning out from the corner, was a pool of murky water. Not deep. Even though he’d warned her to stay away from it, she’d used a stick as a measuring rod one day, so she knew it was barely up to her knees.

She’d never seen anyone create a space in a garden that could hold water without enclosing it on all sides to create a small pond.

Can Belladonna do something like that?

She banished the thought. She didn’t like thinking about Belladonna anymore. And the other day, when he’d asked her about the sealed gardens, she’d told him about Belladonna, the rogue Landscaper who had escaped from the Justice Makers’ magic. But when she’d said she intended to be a Landscaper like Belladonna, he’d gotten the strangest look on his face and murmured, “Perhaps you’re not what I thought you were.”

He left soon after that, and she hadn’t seen him since.

She turned in a slow circle, her eyes scanning every part of her garden. He had to come today. He had to.

Then he was there, appearing on the path in front of her, a handsome, middle-aged man who was carrying a small sack and wearing nothing but a smile.

He pulled her down on the grass, began pulling at her clothes.

“Let me have you,” he said, his dark eyes glittering with a feverish excitement. “Let me fill you.”

She tried to protest. This was crude. Not at all like him. She didn’t like this, even felt…

“Yes,” he said as he rolled on top of her and thrust into her. “Yes, fear is good. Delicious. Intoxicating.”

Then he kissed her. She closed her eyes while that flood of heat and need filled her until all she could think of was having him inside her so she could keep feeling this way.

But things didn’t feel…right. Her breasts felt enclosed by strange mouths that had a dozen little tongues that rasped the delicate skin and sensitized nipples. Painful. And yet she couldn’t bear to have it stop.

And he didn’t feel right inside her. Too thick. Too long. Each thrust hurt her, but the pleasure was also building and building and…

When she crested, she felt a sting on her shoulder, as if he’d bitten her. Moments later her arms and legs went numb. She couldn’t move them, could barely move her fingers enough to scratch at the grass.

Then she crested again—and didn’t care.

Still unbearably excited, she opened her eyes. When had he put on that strange cowl that stuck out at the sides and came down so low it shadowed his face? Eyes gleamed at her, and when he smiled…

Something wrong with his mouth. What was wrong with his mouth?

Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except him, because he was still moving inside her.

As she crested the third time, she felt him spill inside her and relax. She gasped for air, trying to form words to ask him to move. When he shifted slightly, the salty sweat on his skin burned her raw breasts.

One of his hands clamped down over her mouth before she could draw a full breath. The other hand fumbled inside the sack he’d dropped beside them.

He held the long, thin knife up where she could see it. Then he raised himself up enough to make a slice across her chest just above her breasts.

“Yes,” he said, slicing her arm open from shoulder to elbow, “fear is delicious. It will soak into this ground with your blood. Do you know what will happen then?” He smiled at her. “Since this is an access point, the fear will seep through this grass into the pasture it is anchored to. Then it will shiver into anyone who walks through that pasture, and as the fear takes root, those people will be open to the Dark Guides’ whispers. Things will happen. Small things at first. But each choice that comes from the dark feelings will make a tiny change in the landscape. And the fear will grow, like a weed among flowers, creating fertile ground for even darker feelings. You will be a seed that helps dim the Light.”

No! No no no!

He laughed softly. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why you opened the wall?” He made another slice down her arm, almost as an afterthought. “I had thought of keeping you for a while, but even though you are far more insignificant than you want to believe, you are still one of the enemies.”

As he raised the knife, Nigelle finally understood what she was looking at and what she’d done by poking that hole in the wall inside the forbidden garden, finally understood where the dark, secret landscapes anchored in her garden had come from.

And as the knife came down, she understood one other thing.

It’s afraid of Belladonna.

After It had drained every heartbeat of fear It could from the girl, It dragged her across the grass and through the flower bed, leaving the body on the rust-colored sand. The bonelovers would find the remains soon enough.

The Dark Ones’ spawn couldn’t be trusted, but they could be useful. Discovering that the Landscapers and Bridges didn’t remember what they truly were—or had been long ago—had been delightful. They were still the enemy, and even though they didn’t have the power the True Enemy controlled, they stood in the way of Its changing the world into an endless hunting ground.

So now was the time to strike, when so many would be in the buildings instead of the gardens. In the gardens there was more chance of them escaping, no matter how quickly Its creatures attacked. But in the buildings they would be nothing more than prey. By the time they realized the Eater of the World was among them, it would be too late.

It walked over to the pool of murky water, changing Its shape to match Its creatures in that landscape.

Moving swiftly through the water, It shuddered as It thought of that one sealed garden. Then It dismissed the thread of fear before the feeling could become a strangling rope.

By the time It was done with this place, that sealed garden would be an island no one could reach.

The ground beneath the circle of sand-colored bricks shifted. Altered. Hot, bubbling mud oozed up, pushed its way through the cracks between the bricks.

One brick tilted. Sank. Another brick tilted toward that empty space. Sank.

Another. And another.

As the change reached the center of the circle, the sundial, that hated reminder of the dance between Dark and Light, wobbled, fell, broke.

Sank.