Sebastian e-1 Page 18

  So we walk among them, feeling the resonance of the bedrock wishes, the true dreams of the heart. And we whisper to Ephemera, Don’t listen to that wish. It’s not a true wish. Or, Yes, that’s a true wish. Alter the currents around that person to provide the chance for him to take the first steps of the journey that will end with the heart having what it desires.

  One of us would resonate with that yearning heart for a moment, showing it the possibility, giving it the chance to take those first steps.

  Some hearts will back away from the journey, too fearful to leave the familiar even though it withers. Others will leap forward and never look back, bruising the hearts left behind. Pain will force some to begin the journey. For others, love will be a beacon that keeps them moving forward.

  We walk among the people. So do the others. As we are drawn to the Light and the feelings that resonate with the Light, the others are drawn to the darkness that dwells within the human heart.

  The people call them the Dark Guides.

  Ephemera manifested them, too, because we who follow the Light could not resonate with the hearts that yearned for the Dark.

  There will always be such hearts. There will always be that choice. If that wasn’t true, then a heart that walks in the Light has made no choice at all.

  —The Lost Archives

  Chapter Eleven

  Simple stone markers stood sentry at the beginning of a dirt path that curved down the hill. A step away from those markers, Sebastian pulled Lynnea into his arms.

  He watched. Waited.

  No nightmarish creatures appeared between the stone markers.

  Weak with relief, he closed his eyes and rested his cheek against Lynnea’s head, rubbing one hand up and down her back to offer comfort.

  “You’re all right?” he asked quietly. “You’re not hurt?”

  “I’m all right, but…” Lynnea turned enough to look at the markers. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever landscape this was connected to.” He opened his hand and stared at the piece of smooth, white marble.

  Peace folded around him like a warm, soft blanket. Fear diminished with every breath.

  He could almost see the air shimmer like a veil between the sentry stones. If he stepped through them in the other direction to enter whatever landscape lay beyond, fear would have a savage bite, and the world beyond the veil might be filled with things that would rape courage and murder hope. But here…

  Slipping the piece of white marble into his jacket pocket, he looked at Lynnea. “We’d better find out where we are.”

  She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She seemed quietly dazzled by the feel of this place.

  They started down the hill. The trees that had blocked the view on their left ended at the curve in the path, revealing a small lake. A handful of tiny islands dotted the lake, and a light shone on each one. Another light moved steadily away from one island, and in the day’s last breath, he saw a man walking across a bridge back to the shore.

  “Hey-a,” Sebastian called, using the folksy greeting that was commonplace in the landscape Nadia called home. Even in a friendly tone, a raised voice sounded wrong here—disruptive, almost obscene—but the man stopped on the shore, lifted a hand in greeting, and followed the path around the lake that connected with the path down the hill.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the man said when Sebastian and Lynnea reached the bottom of the hill. “I am Yoshani, a fellow visitor in this part of the landscape. You have missed the evening meal, but there is always something in the kitchen for late travelers. Come. We’ll get you settled in the guesthouse, and then you may wander as the heart wills.” He turned and led them up another hill. “Have you traveled far?”

  “In some ways,” Sebastian replied.

  Yoshani nodded. “So it is with many who find their way to Sanctuary.”

  Sanctuary. “I never thought I’d see this place,” Sebastian said, the words barely voiced.

  But Lynnea heard him and squeezed his hand to indicate she understood.

  She didn’t understand. How could she? She was human, and someone like her could have found her way here at any time.

  But she hadn’t. When her heart was looking for a safe place, she found the Den—and you.

  “We have many guests in this part of Sanctuary,” Yoshani said. “They come to renew the spirit so they are stronger when they go back to their journey in the world.”

  “There are other parts of Sanctuary?” Lynnea asked.

  “Yes. There are many Places of Light in the world, but we were islands, each alone in the sea of the world until the Landscaper brought us together, creating borders that connect these places with one another. Her brother, who is a Bridge, also helped by making bridges between our landscapes so that we may visit and better understand the other caretakers of the Light.” Yoshani raised a hand in greeting. “And there he is now.”

  At the top of the hill stood a three-story stone building. A man stepped out into the light of the lanterns hung by the doorway.

  “Hey-a, Lee!” Yoshani said. “We have visitors.”

  In that moment, everything else vanished for Sebastian. His mind and heart were filled with one image—a brass plaque with a wizards’ seal…and a date that had revealed a secret.

  Shrugging off the blanket of peace, he strode toward the familiar figure, whose mouth was curving into a smile of surprised pleasure.

  “Sebastian!” Lee said. “What brings you—”

  A shove pushed Lee back a step. Then Sebastian grabbed Lee’s shirt, pulling his cousin close as his hands curled into fists.

  “You never told me,” Sebastian growled. “I had a right to know, and you never told me.”

  No blankness in Lee’s eyes to indicate he didn’t know what Sebastian was talking about. No surprise at the anger. And no apology.

  “Hey-a, hey!” Yoshani said. “Don’t be spilling your troubles on the ground for other people to trip over. Not in Sanctuary.”

  Sebastian felt heat flood his face—the same heat he used to feel as a boy when he’d done something that felt natural to him but wasn’t acceptable to everyone else.

  He opened his fists, releasing Lee’s shirt.

  Yoshani studied them, then shook his head. “Tch. Here. Take the lantern. Go down to one of the islands and speak your angry words if you must. Let the water wash them away. I will look after the sensible one among you,” he added, making a graceful gesture with his hand to indicate Lynnea.

  Sebastian took a step back. “No, it’s—”

  “Yes,” Lee said. He took the lantern from Yoshani. “It’s time things were said.”

  Sebastian followed Lee down the hill to the lake. They crossed a bridge to the first island, which had a stone bench and a hollowed rock that sheltered another lantern.

  Lee swung a leg over one end of the bench and sat down, straddling it. Sebastian mirrored the move, settling at the other end of the bench.

  On one of the other islands, wind chimes rang softly, stirred by puffs of air, the clear notes blending with the rustle of leaves and the lazy sound of water lapping the edges of the islands.

  Sebastian closed his eyes. The sounds pulled at him, urging him to let go of anger and surround himself once more in that blanket of peace.

  Then Lee moved, setting the lantern aside. It was a quiet sound that didn’t intrude on the leaves and wind chimes and water, but it was enough to make Sebastian remember—and hold on to—the anger.

  “I saw the plaque on Glorianna’s garden,” Sebastian said. “I saw the date. That was shortly after she created the Den, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  “So what if it was?” Lee replied.

  “Damn you! She was fifteen years old, and she was declared rogue because she made the Den!”

  “No, she was declared rogue because she escaped being sealed into her garden, and by the time the wizards and Instructors realized that, she had disappeared into the landscapes.”

 
; Sebastian bobbed his head. Not to agree with anything, just to indicate he’d heard. “So the crime she committed that was great enough to be walled in was creating a place called the Den of Iniquity. For me.”

  “You aren’t the only one who has benefited from the Den,” Lee countered.

  “But I was the reason she created it. She made that place so that I would have a home.”

  “Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter,” Lee said, his voice sharp. “They never knew about you. The Instructors never asked why she made the Den, and Glorianna never told them, so they never knew about you. I doubt there’s any among them that know even now why she altered the landscapes to make the Den.”

  “So you decided not to tell me that Glorianna had sacrificed her future for my sake.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Lee snapped. “By the time I found out what had happened, it was two years too late to make any difference. What could you have done, Sebastian? I was fifteen; you were seventeen. What could either of us have done? The wizards had condemned her. The other Landscapers had condemned her. All I could do was get through my formal training as fast as I could so that I could be a Bridge for her, since you can be damn certain no one else would do it knowingly. And I had to be careful, always so careful, because I was Glorianna’s brother, and they were always watching me to see if my gift had any unacceptable…flourishes.”

  “Like being able to impose one landscape over another?”

  “Exactly. Which is something only my family knows about me.”

  Sebastian hesitated, absorbing the importance of that statement tossed out in anger. When Lee had told him about this rare ability, he’d understood his cousin was sharing something very private, but he hadn’t realized how much trust Lee was offering by telling him at all.

  Only my family knows about me.

  And he hadn’t realized how difficult all those years at the school had been for Lee. “Why did you stay?”

  “Because I needed the official training. Oh, I didn’t need most of the training itself. I’d done more just playing with Glorianna when we were children than I learned in the first three years at the school. But if I hadn’t gone through the formal training to prove my talents weren’t a potential danger to Ephemera, I would have been declared rogue, too, and that wouldn’t have done Mother or Glorianna any good.”

  Sebastian hung his head. “I’m sorry things were hard for all of you, that things went bad for Glorianna…because of me.”

  “It wasn’t you, so stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  That stung his temper and his pride. He raised his head and stared at his cousin.

  Lee looked out over the water. “It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t the Den. Not really. I overheard some things while I was in training that make me think it was just an excuse. Before she ever got to the school, the wizards suspected that Glorianna’s power might eclipse what was considered ‘natural’ in a Landscaper, and they wanted to seal her in, confine her, isolate her. If it hadn’t been the Den, it would have been something else at some other time, when it might have been harder for her to break free.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Like I said, things I overheard. The wizards come by several times a year, right after students are evaluated for advancement. They always want to know about the strongest student Landscapers, the ones who might become a ‘problem’ in the future once they’re away from watchful eyes.” Lee looked at Sebastian. “Glorianna wasn’t the first, you know. Whenever I had a free day, I would wander all over the school. There were other sealed gardens, some dating back a hundred years or more. Some going back so far the date had been etched in the stone wall instead of on a brass plaque. I think…” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “I think the wizards have been culling the strongest Landscapers for generations. I think they find some excuse to get that girl declared a threat to Ephemera, then seal her up in a cage of her own making. In theory, the girl can reach the things she needs to survive—food, clothing, shelter—through the access points in her garden, but she’s alone. She can reach things but not people. Even if one of her access points is a street in the middle of a city, she’s still isolated from any direct contact with other people. That’s the real punishment of being walled in by the Justice Makers. The girl lives alone—and she dies alone. And her line is extinguished.”

  Sebastian braced his hands on the bench and leaned forward so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice above a whisper. Daylight! He felt as if he were exchanging vile secrets that would be worth his life if anyone else heard what Lee was saying.

  And maybe that’s true.

  “You can’t know that’s what happens to the girls, that they’re left alone like that,” Sebastian said.

  “Yes, I can. Because I found one of them two years ago.” Lee shook his head. “A calling so strong, I created a bridge to answer it. And I found her. She was very old and quite mad, but it was a lucid madness. She was in a woods, gathering leaves and twigs. I don’t know if she thought they were edible or if she was just doing it for something to do. She was wearing rags that barely covered her and looked so frail….

  “Then she saw me. And she told me about being sealed in her garden and what the wizards’ justice meant for the girl who was condemned.”

  “But she was mad,” Sebastian protested. “You don’t know if any of it was true.”

  Even in the lantern light, with his face half in shadows, Sebastian could see the pain in Lee’s eyes.

  “She talked about her sister. How her sister would take care of the baby. And how the daughter of that baby would carry the seeds of the Dark as well as the Light—and would be an enemy not even the Eater of the World could survive if the Dark Guides didn’t destroy her before she bloomed into her full power.

  “Then she broke off pieces of two plants and held them out to me. When I reached out to take them, I felt my hand pass through a barrier of power—and she disappeared.” Lee rubbed the back of his neck. “Somehow my bridge had pierced the barrier enough for me to see her and talk to her but not enough for her to feel the touch of a human hand. I wandered those woods for an hour. Same land, but not the same landscape. Except…the plants were there, and I think I understood the message. I never told Mother or Glorianna about seeing that old woman because of that message.”

  “Message?” What kind of message could be made out of two plants?

  “What she tried to give me was heart’s hope…and belladonna.”

  Sebastian felt his breath catch, felt his heart bump hard against his chest. But “belladonna” made his thoughts circle back to how this talk began.

  “Why would the wizards eliminate the best Landscapers? And why would the Landscapers at the school agree with it?”

  “How did the wizards become the Justice Makers, Sebastian?” Lee asked. “Why are they the ones who decide when a person is too…damaged…in some way to live in the daylight landscapes and must be sent to the darkest place that resonates within that person? No one remembers. The Landscapers are the ones who actually perform Heart’s Justice and shift a person to another landscape, but it’s the wizards who decide when it needs to be done. How did they become such a powerful force in our world?”

  Sebastian leaned back, feeling uneasy about what he’d heard. If it were true that the wizards had been systematically eliminating the Landscapers with superior skills, it meant the Justice Makers had an agenda for Ephemera no one else knew about. But what? And why?

  “Well,” Lee said, reaching for the lantern, “I don’t know what part of the day you’re in, but I need to get some sleep before I go to the school to record my working log.”

  The school. For this little while, his personal discovery had blocked out the horror. Now it came flooding back. “You can’t.”

  “Have to. I don’t have an established circuit of landscapes—at least, not that the Bridges’ School is aware of—so I’m required to report in once each season to log the locations of any bridges I c
reated and the landscapes they connect.”

  Sebastian grabbed Lee’s forearm. “You can’t go back to the school. Everyone’s dead.”

  Lee stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Eater of the World escaped. It’s loose in the landscapes.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Glorianna.” He felt Lee tremble beneath his hand. “I think It attacked the school. There were creatures there—giant ants, giant spiders, other things—and I found a classroom full of bodies.” Parts of bodies, but he didn’t say that.

  “Everyone?”

  Hearing the shock in Lee’s voice, Sebastian hesitated. “I don’t know. We ran, made it to Glorianna’s garden, and got away to here.” Releasing Lee’s arm, he pulled the piece of marble out of his pocket. “Using this.”

  “A one-shot bridge,” Lee said, brushing a thumb over the marble. “I made this for Glorianna on one of my visits home.” He looked at Sebastian, his face hard. “I made three, to different landscapes. This was the bridge to Sanctuary.”

  “When I put my hand in the fountain, I didn’t feel anything from the other stones. Just this one.” He hesitated. “There was a stone just outside the gate of Glorianna’s garden.”

  “Black marble?”

  “No, just a polished stone. I stepped on it, stumbled. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed the plaque.”

  Lee rubbed the back of his neck. “Then maybe the Guides of the Heart meant for you to find out about this now. Sometimes it’s a small thing that can make a difference in someone’s life.” He sighed. “You must have stepped on the agate. It was a bridge to the entrance at the Bridges part of the school. The black marble connected to the Den. If it had still been hidden in the fountain, you would have felt it. Which means Glorianna must have gone back to the school at some point and taken it. Damn foolish of her to take the risk.”