Sebastian e-1 Read online

  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.

  Chapter Six

  Lynnea hunched her shoulders as she studied the land on either side of the road. Pasture, crops, some stands of trees. Not so different from the land she knew, except it looked better tended than ho—the farm where she had lived most of her life.

  The farm wasn’t home, had never been home. That truth had sliced through her two days ago and had left her heart bleeding.

  “Mam should have left you by the side of the road,” Ewan muttered. “Should have known you were no good as soon as she laid eyes on you.” He slapped the reins against the horse’s back. “Get on there, you worthless piece of crowbait!”

  The tired animal shifted into a trot. Lynnea grabbed the side of the small farm cart with one hand to keep from falling against Ewan.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lynnea said, her voice breaking.

  “You lift your skirt for a married man while his wife is working to put a meal on the table and you don’t think that’s wrong? No, I guess you wouldn’t.”

  “I went into the barn to see the kittens. That’s all. Then Pa—”

  “He’s not your pa,” Ewan snapped.

  No, he wasn’t. Had never acted like a father, even when she’d been a little girl.

  She curled her free hand into a fist and pressed it into her lap to hide the trembling. “I just wanted to see the kittens.” Just to have a minute to cuddle something that wanted to be loved. She blinked back the tears, and whispered, “Mam didn’t believe me.”

  Ewan snorted. “Why would she? We’d put the kittens in a sack and dropped them in the pond the day before.”

  Lynnea stared at him, the fear of being turned out that she’d lived with all her life exploding into a beast with claws. “You drowned the kittens? But they were babies!”

  “Useless. Like you.”

  She huddled on her part of the seat, trying not to weep for the dead kittens, trying not to wonder if she was being taken to a similar fate.

  Would it have been different if she hadn’t struggled, if she hadn’t screamed when Pa tried to push her down into the stall and pull up her skirt? Would it have been different if Mam had ignored the scream instead of coming into the barn? Or if, when Mam dragged her back to the house, she hadn’t blurted out what Pa had said about the old cow being dried up so she’d have to give him the milk from now on?

  It wasn’t until she saw the wounded look in Mam’s eyes—eyes that had flashed a moment later with jealous fury—that she understood what Pa had meant, and then it was too late.

  Which was why she and Ewan were traveling to the Landscapers’ School. She was no longer welcome at the farm. Pa had wanted to take her into the village and leave her, but Mam had given him a cold, hard look and said that was keeping temptation too close at hand. So Pa had grudgingly agreed to give Ewan time off the farm to take her to the school, where the Landscapers would send her to another landscape in Ephemera. In a very real sense, she would disappear from the lives of everyone she had known.

  They’d been traveling since sunup. The sun was now low in the west. Would they reach the school before full dark? Or were they going to have to find some shelter for the night? From the things he’d muttered all day, she knew what Ewan would like to do to her. Whatever constraints had kept Pa and Ewan at a distance all the years she’d lived with them were broken now. But there had been too many people on the roads throughout the day, and now they were probably—hopefully—too close to the school for him to risk a dark intention that might change things for him.

  Ewan gave a hard tug on the reins, bringing the weary horse to a stop beside a wooden post that had an R carved into the wood.

  “This is it,” Ewan said, turning his head to look at her. “Get out.”

  “What?” Lynnea looked around. The road curved, and trees blocked the view. “Is this the school?”

  Ewan gave her a mean smile. “No, but this is as far as I’m taking you. Went up to the village yesterday while Pa and Mam were shouting at each other. Pa figured it was a two-day ride to the school, but I talked to some of the fellows, and they told me about this road.”

  Her heart pounded. “This isn’t the way to the school?”

  “There’s a resonating bridge on the other side of the bend. That’s what the R in the post means. I’m crossing over to another landscape to have some fun. You’re getting out here. I got two free days before Pa expects to see me back home, and I’m not going to waste them on a piece of crowbait like you. And I’m not going to have the filth inside you influencing what landscape I end up in.” He gave her a hard shove, almost knocking her off the cart seat. “Get out.”

  “But…” When his hand curled into a fist, she scrambled out of the cart. “How am I supposed to find the school?”

  Ewan gathered the reins. “Cross the bridge—and hope you end up in a place that’s better than you deserve. Giddyap there!”

  Stunned that he had done what she’d always feared—left her on the side of the road like a piece of trash—she’d almost let him reach the bend before she realized the bag with the change of clothes Mam had allowed her to take was still in the back of the cart. “Ewan!” she shouted. “Ewan! My bag!”

  Maybe he heard her, maybe not. Either way, he rounded the bend and was gone.

  Moments later he screamed.

  She ran down the road. Had the horse shied at something and thrown Ewan from the cart? He had screamed, so he must be hurt. Where could she go to reach help if he was badly injured and the horse had bolted, leaving her with no way to take Ewan anywhere?

  She raced around the bend—and staggered to a halt. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

  The cart, overturned and sinking. The horse, frantically struggling in a pool of water that covered half the road. No sign of Ewan, but she thought she could still hear faint screaming.

  Wary now, her heart pounding, she approached the water and the struggling horse.

  “Easy, boy,” she whispered. “Easy.”

  The horse thrashed, as if spurred by the sound of a familiar voice instead of sooth
ed by it. As its right front leg lifted clear of the water, she saw a strange-looking, fleshy vine coiled around the leg from knee to pastern. Then, in a heartbeat, two other vines, their undersides covered with disks, whipped out of the water and wrapped around the horse’s neck and other front leg.

  The horse screamed as it was pulled under.

  Lynnea stared at the pool, watching the churning water turn red.

  She had to go back. She had to get away from this place. How far away was the last farmhouse she’d seen? Didn’t matter. The sun was going down. She had to get away from here while she could watch for any traps.

  She turned—and froze.

  Rust-colored sand covered the road. It hadn’t been there when she’d rounded the bend. She couldn’t jump across it, and she was afraid of moving into the trees on either side of the road in order to get around it.

  Which left the bridge.

  Travel lightly.

  A few steps back to provide some distance from the sand. Then she turned—and whimpered.

  The pool of water had spread. Only a thin strip of road remained, barely wide enough to walk on. Once it disappeared beneath the water, there would be no safe way to reach the bridge.

  She’d heard that when you crossed a bridge into another landscape, you thought about what you wanted to find on the other side. Then, if you were favored by the Guides of the Heart, you would end up in the place you needed to be.

  What she wanted with all her heart was a place where she felt safe, where she didn’t have to be afraid all the time. A place where someone loved her.

  And that reminded her of the strange waking dream she’d had last night. She’d been yearning for the things she’d never had…and a man’s voice had promised to love her, had said…