Sebastian

Chapter Two

Three weeks earlier

Lukene gathered the frayed threads of her patience as she pulled out a chair at the study table and sat down next to the sulking girl. She’d been kind and understanding the first time this complaint had been voiced. And the second time. And the third. But no matter how many times she explained it, the girl refused to acknowledge the truth.

“You’re not going to promote me to Level One Landscaper, are you?” the girl asked, her tone one part desperation and two parts hostility.

Lukene sighed. “No, Nigelle, we’re not. The Instructors considered your abilities very carefully before making the decision, but it is our conclusion that you haven’t, as yet, achieved the skills necessary to advance. Until you have fulfilled all the requirements, you will not be granted a Landscaper’s Badge.”

Nigelle pressed her fists against the top of the table. “I’ve been studying for four years. You have to achieve Level Two or better in five years in order to remain and continue studying for the higher levels. How am I supposed to fulfill the requirements for two levels in a year’s time if you won’t promote me to even the first level?”

You can’t, Lukene thought. And that is a blessing for us all. “What is the Heart’s Blessing?”

The girl’s eyes darkened with anger. “Is this another test, Instructor Lukene? Although I don’t see the point in asking a question every child knows the answer to.”

Guardians and Guides, let me finally explain this in a way she’ll understand. “Then it should be a simple question to answer,” Lukene replied. “Heart’s Blessing.”

Nigelle sneered. “Travel lightly.”

Lukene nodded. “Travel lightly. Because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape. That is true for every person who lives in this world. It is especially true for Landscapers, because we are the sieve through which Ephemera manifests what is reflected in all those hearts. The resonance of our hearts provides the bedrock through which the currents of Dark and Light flow, keeping people safe from the turmoil of their own feelings while still allowing the true desires of the heart to become real. We are the bedrock, Nigelle. Other people, and Ephemera itself, depend on us to find a balance between the Light and Dark aspects of ourselves in order to filter the Light and Dark currents that are this world’s wonderful and terrible power.”

“I know all that,” Nigelle snapped.

“Up here.” Lukene tapped a finger against her own temple. Then she tapped the finger against her chest. “But not here. You carry too much baggage, Nigelle. You show up for the lessons, but you make only token attempts to practice those lessons. You’re angry and envious whenever other students fulfill a requirement and go on to the next stage, but you won’t do the work they did to achieve the goal. And yet you still expect us to grant you power over our world. We can’t. Open your eyes, Nigelle. Look at what you manifest in your garden. Until that changes, until you change, we cannot allow you to have control of places other people will have to live in.”

The girl’s sulkiness shifted, changing into something sly and ugly. “I know the real reason you won’t advance me.”

Lukene sighed. Why did the “real” reason never have anything to do with the student’s skills?

“You’re afraid of me,” Nigelle said. “You know I’m better than you. Better than all of you. I’m like Belladonna, and you can’t stand the thought of there being another Landscaper who can do things you can’t even dream of.”

Unable to hide the shiver of fear that went through her, Lukene said nothing. Instructors never engaged in discussion once a student mentioned that name.

After the silence stretched out, Nigelle let out a nasty little laugh and stood up. “You better keep that in mind the next time you evaluate my work.”

Lukene waited until Nigelle left the room before whispering, “We’ll keep it in mind. Oh, we’ll definitely keep it in mind.”

She braced her hands on the table to help her shaking legs support her as she stood up. She wasn’t forty yet, but right now she felt ancient.

“I know they’re necessary,” a male voice said from the doorway, “but these thrice-yearly evaluations take more out of the Instructors than the students.”

Tears stung Lukene’s eyes as she looked at the solid man filling the doorway. “Gregor.”

He hurried across the room to reach her. His warm, strong hand rested on her shoulder.

She turned into that strength, that warmth, wrapping her arms around him as his arms closed around her.

“Difficult day?” Gregor asked, resting his cheek against her hair.

“Not so bad…until this last student.”

“What did she do?”

“Spoke the name every Instructor in the school fears.”

Gregor tensed. “Belladonna.”

Lukene nodded. “I broke, Gregor. I showed fear.”

“With good reason if this was more than schoolgirl romanticism of a rogue Landscaper.”

“More like another manipulative ploy to push the Instructors into granting her a status she hasn’t earned.” She eased back enough to look at the man who was the Head Instructor of Bridges—and her lover. “And how was your day?”

“Better than yours. Teaching the young men who have the gift to provide a connection between landscapes isn’t nearly as unnerving as teaching the young women who will control those landscapes.” He studied her, his dark eyes full of concern. “Why don’t you go to Sanctuary for a day or two?”

“Maybe I will. But I think I should be here right now, in case the other Instructors…” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words.

“In case the other Instructors feel this girl is too dangerous and needs to be walled in,” Gregor said grimly. When Lukene nodded, he asked, “Is she that dangerous? Could she be another Belladonna?”

Lukene thought for a moment, then shook her head. “She has enough anger and…soul muck…to resonate with dark landscapes, but she’ll never be like Belladonna. She doesn’t have the power—or the heart.”

Nigelle glowered at every student she passed as she hurried down the wide flagstone paths that would eventually lead to her walled garden. She should have known from the moment she’d seen how far away her training ground was from the school’s central buildings that the Instructors would be against her. Other students had training grounds that were no more than a five-minute walk from the classrooms. Granted, there weren’t many students who were given a space among the walled gardens reserved for the Instructors, but there were some, and she should have been one of them.

“Cold, heart-rotted bitches,” she muttered. Abruptly, she turned down another path that headed back toward the school. A path that, while as well tended as all the others, always had a dusty, little-used feel to it. A path students were forbidden to follow to the end unless an Instructor was with them. Maybe that was why it intrigued her enough to risk sneaking down that path several times a year to ponder the mystery at its end.

The path ended in an archway that was the only break in a high stone wall. In the center of this garden was another high-walled garden that had a locked wrought-iron gate. The only things that grew on the land between the inner and outer garden walls were large, bloated mushrooms and thorn trees that produced a fruit the color of a putrid wound.

Students whispered that the Dark Guides sneaked into the school during the dark of the moon, harvested those mushrooms and fruits, and cooked them with the hearts of people they had lured into the dark landscapes.

She liked that story. She spent a lot of nights imagining that one of the Dark Guides had come to the school and snatched all those snippy-bitch Instructors who said they were trying to help her learn how to use the power inside her but were really doing everything they could to ensure that she failed.

She’d like to see someone like Lukene face a Dark Guide. Snippy-bitch Lukene would wet herself if she came face-to-face with anything truly dark. But she wouldn’t be afraid.

Yes, something whispered inside her. You have nothing to fear from the Dark. There is power in the Dark, waiting for you to embrace it.

Maybe that was the other reason she so often ended up standing in the archway, looking into this place that caused every Instructor to pale whenever it was mentioned.

Late at night, the older students would whisper stories about that garden, saying that forbidden landscapes were contained within it—landscapes so terrible they had been taken out of the world to protect people from the things that lived in those places.

But as she stood in the archway, all she could see beyond the wrought-iron gate was a low stone wall in the middle of barren, hard-packed earth. What was so frightening about that? Oh, there was a dark resonance in the garden. You could feel it as soon as you stepped beneath the archway. But if there was something really bad, why not tell the students what it was instead of making a secret out of it?

The Instructors were always making secrets out of things. Yes, this school was good at keeping things away from people who could make use of them.

Anger swelled inside her until there was nothing else.

Looking at the ground around her, Nigelle spotted a fist-sized stone. She picked it up, cocked her arm, and threw the stone at the lock on the wrought-iron gate. She didn’t expect anything to happen; she just wanted to vent her anger at being held back again.

But the metal, fragile with age, crumbled where the stone struck. The gate, and whatever secrets were contained within that inner garden, was now open to her.

Licking dry lips, Nigelle stepped through the archway. The place smelled slightly of rotted meat, but that could have been the mushrooms or the fruit covering the ground around the thorn trees.

She hurried across the ground that separated the inner and outer garden, then wrapped her hands around two of the gate’s bars and pulled as hard as she could. Frozen, rusty hinges screamed in protest, but the gate opened far enough for her to squeeze through.

Nigelle waited, her hands still wrapped around the bars, certain someone would come running to find out what had made that noise. But the air felt heavy and still, muffling sound.

She counted to one hundred, ready to run to avoid being caught in a forbidden place. When no one came to investigate, she relaxed enough to study the barren ground on the other side of the gate.

They say even Belladonna was afraid of this place, that she wouldn’t come near it. But I’m not afraid. I’m going to see what’s enclosed within these walls.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be careful. She retreated to the nearest thorn tree. Plenty of deadfall, but nothing suitable, so she went from tree to tree, checking the ground until she found a branch that was the right size and length to prod at anything of interest without having to get too close to the thing itself.

Excited now, she hurried back to the gate, slipped inside, and approached the low stone wall.

Just an old, waist-high wall barely two man-lengths long. Mortar filled all the spaces between the uneven stones, which meant someone had built it with care.

She looked around. There was nothing else within the inner garden. Nothing at all. Which meant the wall itself was the thing being guarded. Why guard a wall?

Maybe the wall was an access point to a landscape the Instructors wanted to keep hidden—a landscape that was the source of the dark resonance that permeated the walled garden.

She walked the length of the wall, studying it. Old stones. Old, crumbling mortar. She poked at the wall here and there, but her excitement at being in the forbidden garden waned, and she’d almost convinced herself that an old wall couldn’t really be the access point to an interesting landscape. Then a poke with the narrow end of the branch loosened a piece of mortar, revealing a space between the stones as big as the circle she could make with thumb and forefinger.

A hole big enough to look through if she could clear it out to the other side.

She rammed the branch into the hole over and over, scraping out the crumbled mortar to clear the space. Finally, when her hands were raw and her muscles ached, she punched through to the other side. Tossing the branch away, she dropped to her knees and peered through the opening.

A narrow stretch of rust-colored sand that led to dark, still water.

Several minutes later, Nigelle sat back on her heels. This was it? Sand and water? This was the scary, forbidden landscape that made the Instructors shrill whenever a student asked about it?

Disgusted, Nigelle stood up and brushed the dirt off her trousers. “Should have known this was just an excuse for the Instructors to penalize anyone whose landscapes weren’t sugarcoated nice-nice.”

Slipping through the gate, she hurried back to the archway. Then she paused to check the position of the sun.

Too late to go to her own garden. If she didn’t show up on time for the evening meal, it would be another mark against her. So she’d make the effort to be on time and come to class and be nice for all the Instructors—even if it killed her.

Although she’d prefer it if the effort killed them.

Lured by the resonance of a dark heart, It rose to the surface, barely making a ripple in the deep, dark water. Nothing in the water around It, so It stretched out a tentacle and delicately touched the place where sand met water—a border between two of Its landscapes. But the resonance in the sand was enough warning that It was near the hated stones that had shaped Its cage for so long.

And yet…

Its tentacles moved across the sand, rapidly changing their color from the dark gray that matched the caves deep beneath the water to the sand’s rust color, making them invisible while they flowed toward the stone wall.

Before the first tentacle touched stone, It knew something was different. Something had changed. There was a different feel in the air, a trace of the dark heart’s resonance right…there.

Tentacles elongated, thinned to slender cords of flesh that flowed through the small opening between the stones. Bit by bit, the large, fluid body moved across the sand and through the opening until the tip of the last tentacle brushed the other side of the old wall.

Free.

It had not understood Its Enemy’s power, had not known It and the landscapes It had shaped could be locked away. But not completely. Never completely. It had not been able to reach the physical world beyond Its own landscapes, but It had always been able to whisper to the truly dark hearts, sending Its resonance through the twilight of waking dreams. And the Dark Ones, who had brought It into being so long ago, had found a way to send humans into Its landscapes often enough to keep It amused—and to keep It and Its creatures fed. But now It was free of the magic in the stone wall that had kept It caged; now It could bring Its landscapes back into the world. Now It could find the Dark Ones, who would help It alter the world into what It wanted the world to be. Now…

The vibration of footsteps. Coming closer.

Tentacles condensed and changed into eight legs. The body’s shape altered to fit the legs. It climbed up and over the wall of the inner garden, then raced across the ground to the archway, Its belly brushing the tops of bloated mushrooms. It climbed the wall beside the archway. Within moments, Its large body blended perfectly with the stones, even mimicking the shadows cast by the thorn trees.

There It waited, savoring the anticipation of hunting again.

With her arms wrapped around herself, Lukene stared at the sealed, barred gate. A wooden door on the other side of the gate kept anyone from seeing what was held within the stone walls.

“Belladonna,” Lukene whispered.

A mistake made fifteen years ago and impossible to rectify. But there were still times when she thought she could have done something, should have done something, to stop what had happened.

She’d been twenty-four and a new Instructor the year fifteen-year-old Glorianna came to the Landscapers’ School. A bright girl, eager to learn. And so gifted.

They hadn’t understood how gifted until halfway through the first year, when the Instructor Lukene was assisting assigned the students the task of making an access point for “a home.” Since students that age had, at best, fledgling control over the power that lived within them, the access point would become the connection to the landscape that was their home. That was what the Instructor expected; that was what the lesson was meant to do.

But Glorianna had done something no other Landscaper could have done. Somehow she had altered Ephemera, rearranging pieces of the world to create an entirely new landscape, a place called the Den of Iniquity. The Instructors who judged the student efforts were horrified when they crossed over and got their first look at the Den—and were even more horrified when they saw the “residents” of that landscape.

When they returned to the walled garden that was Glorianna’s training ground and demanded an explanation, the girl had smiled and told them even demons needed a home.

No one had asked Glorianna why she would create a place for demons that would surely also attract the darker elements of the human heart. No one contacted her family to make any inquiries—at least, not while it would have mattered.

Instead of asking the questions that should have been asked, the Head Instructor gave Glorianna a false smile and told the girl she was being given one of the advanced tests. For a fortnight, she was to stay within her walled garden and anchor her foundation landscapes—that is, the landscapes that resonated for her and were her “personal world.”

She was given a basket of food, her clothes and books, water, and blankets.

She stood on one side of the gate and smiled while she watched the Head Instructor put a stout padlock on the barred gate to keep anyone from going in.

And she had waved cheerfully at Lukene when the Instructors walked away.

The last morning before it was too late, Lukene stole the padlock key and entered Glorianna’s garden. What the girl had done in a fortnight had left her awed and breathless—and terrified. The Den of Iniquity hadn’t been a fluke. The girl truly had the power to change the world and needed to be nurtured very carefully.

She’d run back to the Head Instructor, stammering in her desperate attempt to make herself understood. But the Head Instructor shouted her into silence, telling her the decision was made; the wizards had arrived to seal the gate. Glorianna and her unnatural power would be walled in to keep the landscapes safe.

By the time she ran back to that walled garden, the wizards were gone, the seal was in place, and no one would enter that ground ever again—or leave it. Whatever Glorianna could coax Ephemera into manifesting within that garden was all the world the girl would know.

But a month later, she was walking with a few of her students and noticed a black-haired girl standing in front of that sealed gate.

“What are you doing there?” Lukene asked. “You know students aren’t supposed to…” The words died when the girl turned and looked at her.

“So this is why none of you have come to see my work,” Glorianna said.

“Perhaps,” Lukene said carefully, aware that her students were shifting about uneasily, “now that you’ve found your way back—”

Glorianna shook her head. “No. There’s nothing I want from you anymore. You chose to close me in. Now I choose to shut you out.”

“I didn’t choose to close you in!”

The girl smiled sadly. “No, you didn’t. Good-bye, Lukene. Travel lightly.”

As Glorianna walked away, one of Lukene’s students said, “Who are you?”

She stopped, looked back, and said, “I’m Belladonna.” Then she walked away—and was never seen at the school again.

Lukene wiped the tears off her face and started walking, paying no attention to where she was going, just needing the movement.

There was nothing she could have done, not then, not now. But the mistake they’d all made fifteen years ago still ate at her sometimes until she felt the cut of it right down to the bone.

There were seven levels of Landscapers, seven levels of skill in using the power that kept people, and the world, safe from the manifestation of every heart’s desires. And then there was Glorianna Belladonna. If only…

A feeling of dread swept through Lukene, making her stop and look around.

What had drawn her to this path? Why did everything feel out of balance? The dark resonance, usually suppressed by the presence of so many Landscapers, felt as if it were leaking out of the forbidden garden, seeping into the ground and spreading out to contaminate the rest of the school. And it was strong now. Terribly strong.

Which was impossible. Unthinkable. She was overreacting to something that was always there in the background of the school. This was probably nothing more than a reaction to her confrontation with Nigelle and her thoughts about Glorianna.

But she hurried along the little-used path, and when she reached the archway and saw the open wrought-iron gate, she froze for a moment. Then she spun around, intending to run back to the school buildings and warn everyone that the unthinkable had happened.

Has the unthinkable happened?

A whispered thought. Calm, soothing, coaxing.

Lukene hesitated, turned back to look through the archway.

If she went running back now, what could she tell the Head Instructor? That someone had opened the old gate? That would cause an uproar among the Instructors in both the Landscapers’ and Bridges’ schools, but it wouldn’t tell them anything. And she didn’t actually know someone had opened the gate.

You don’t want to make another mistake, the voice whispered.

Lukene shook her head. No, she didn’t want to make another mistake.

She stepped through the archway—and gagged on the smell of rotting meat.

No more mistakes, the voice whispered. They eat at you. Eat you right to the bone.

Mushrooms burst as Lukene kicked them in her rush to the gate. Just a quick look to confirm nothing had changed inside, she thought as she squeezed through the opening. Then she would report to the Head Instructor, who would assign workers to replace the gate. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear.

The small hole in the old stone wall throbbed inside her like a bad tooth.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh, no.”

Back through the gate. Racing across the short distance to the archway. Distracted by a movement on the wall, she stumbled as she glanced up and…

…she ran across endless, rust-colored sand beneath a sky the color of ripe bruises. Her heart pounded, her arms and legs pumped for speed, but the creatures behind her kept getting closer, closer.

Guardians and Guides, how had she gotten here? One moment she was running for the archway. Then a movement, a stumble, and…

She ran, gulping air that felt too hot, too dry. Feet pounded the endless sand.

Travel lightly. All she needed was a few moments to calm her mind, find her balance, and resonate with the access point of one of her landscapes. That would bring her back to her garden at the school. Then she’d be safe. Then she could warn the others that—

One foot slid over something just under the surface, breaking her stride. She flung her arms out to keep her balance, but that brief hesitation cost her. She felt the slashing bite on her left calf, felt blood flowing down her leg as fear gave her speed.

The calf muscles in her left leg seized up. She lost her balance. Fell on her hands and one knee. Up again in a heartbeat, but it was still enough time for another one to reach her, to slash at the back of her right thigh.

Running again. Running and running, trying to ignore the wounds, the blood, the muscles that were getting too stiff to obey the mind’s frantic commands.

Then she caught a glimpse of white and veered toward the mounds, not wondering what they were or why she hadn’t noticed them before. If she could reach the top of one, maybe she could keep the creatures away long enough to get back to her garden at the school.

But as she got closer, fighting for every stride, she saw black, chitinous, segmented bodies pouring out of the top of the mounds, running toward her.

She tried to veer again, but the calf muscles in her left leg stopped working. She staggered. Barely kept herself from falling. In a scream of terror and defiance, she turned and grabbed the creature that was almost on top of her, lifting it up in both hands.

For a second she looked at the head, the jaws, the legs. Her mind supplied a word: ant. But this thing was as long as her arm from elbow to fingers. Screaming, she hurled it at the others rushing toward her.

She tried to run, but her legs didn’t work anymore. She fell full-length on the sand.

And they were on her, the ones that had chased her, the ones from the mounds. She screamed as their jaws ripped out pieces of flesh, as her blood drenched the sand. She kept bucking, trying to throw them off, but there were so many now, her movements produced no more than another ripple under the mound of glistening black bodies.

Then she stopped moving. Stopped screaming.

When they finally left, the workers returning to the mounds, the scouts returning to the endless landscape, all that was left was a darker patch of wet sand, scraps of cloth, and clean bones.