Sebastian Read online

  Nadia cleared her throat. “I see. I never…I never asked you about that part of your life.”

  “And I wouldn’t have told you even if you’d asked.”

  “I think…I’ve been contaminated. Maybe by a Dark Guide. Maybe by the Eater of the World. That’s why I’m here, Sebastian. I never doubted Glorianna’s reason for shaping the Den. Until these dreams started.”

  “What do you feel compelled to do, Aunt Nadia?” Sebastian asked, his voice stripped of all emotion.

  Nadia shivered. “Go to the wizards and tell them how to find her. Take them to Sanctuary—a place none of them have been able to reach on their own.”

  “But you didn’t.” Now his voice was sharp, alarmed.

  “No, I didn’t. Instead I came here. Glorianna can do things no one else can. She embraces the Dark and still walks in the Light. I needed to see this place…to reaffirm my faith in Belladonna.”

  Sebastian took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Let me tell you about the dreams Lynnea’s been having lately.”

  She could feel the heat rise in her face. “Oh, no, Sebastian. I don’t think that’s—”

  “She’s been rearranging furniture. Or I should say, she’s been pointing and I’ve been rearranging furniture, hauling things I couldn’t possibly lift in the real world. And it’s a mix of furniture, some from our room at the bordello, some from the cottage. So I’m moving the bed and the couch and tables and chairs while Lynnea keeps saying, ‘No, that’s not the way it should be.’ Each morning she wakes up and looks at the furniture with this gleam in her eyes, and I wake up with a sore back.

  “Last night I was rearranging windows. I’d grab the wooden frame and lift the whole thing out. There wouldn’t be a hole in the wall where it had been, and every time I pressed it against the wall, a hole would open exactly the right size for the window.

  “But Lynnea kept saying it wasn’t where it should be. Then she wanted me to put it against an inside wall. I argued that we wouldn’t see anything but the person in the next room, but it was her dream and I was just the labor, so I did what I was told.”

  Nadia tipped her head to the side. “And did you see into the next room?”

  “No,” he replied softly. “I couldn’t see anything. The window was full of sunlight. The room was washed in it. And when I looked back at Lynnea, it was Glorianna standing there. She smiled at me and said, ‘Yes. Now it’s where it should be.’”

  He reached across the table, picked up her glass of wine, and drank half of it. “I don’t know what it means, or even why I told you this now.”

  “I know why you told me,” Nadia replied softly. “You believe in Glorianna—and you trust Belladonna. I’m going to fight very hard to do the same.”

  Sebastian pushed his chair back. “Come on. Teaser’s had enough time to make Jeb blush right down to his toes, and I think it’s best if you went home. And stayed home.”

  Nadia shivered. “You think I’m a danger, don’t you?”

  “I think you’ve been poisoned.” He tapped his chest. “In here.”

  He was right. She could feel the resonance of his words and knew he was right.

  “Yes, we should be getting back.” She squared her shoulders. “And the walk will do me good.”

  Sebastian draped an arm over her shoulders. “That’s too bad, because you’re riding back on the demon cycles.”

  “Demon…Oh, no, I…”

  Paying no attention to her protests and blustering, he rounded up Teaser and Jeb, gave her a moment to say good-bye to Lynnea, and had her riding behind him on something that was a combination of a thick bicycle with no wheels and a demon with lots of sharp teeth and wickedly curved claws.

  It wasn’t too bad while they were on the Den’s main street, but once they reached the dirt lane that led to the cottage…

  “You can let go now, Aunt Nadia.”

  That was what he thought. She felt him patting her hands and trying to loosen the fists that had a death-hold on his shirt.

  “We’re not moving anymore.”

  “Then I’ll just wait for my insides to catch up with us.”

  Sebastian laughed. That wicked boy actually laughed. Which annoyed her so much she managed to let go of his shirt and get off the cycle.

  Jeb, she noticed, didn’t seem the least bit shaken. She couldn’t see him clearly, since there was only starlight, but he was rubbing his chin in that way he had when something had caught his interest.

  Teaser grinned at Jeb and cocked his head.

  “I’ll think about it,” Jeb said. He walked over to her and cupped her elbow in one of his big, strong hands. “Come along, darling. I’ll make you a cup of tea when we get home and you can have a bit of a lie-down.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m old and decrepit,” Nadia snapped. Since the demon cycles had brought them right to the edge of the woods behind Sebastian’s cottage, it was no more than a few minutes’ walk before she’d be home.

  She looked back at Sebastian. “The next time you come to visit, I hope Sparky poops in your hair.”

  Jeb’s chuckles didn’t cover up Sebastian’s sputters. That made her feel better, so she hooked her arm through Jeb’s, and the two of them followed the path that led home.

  Sebastian stared at the dark path in the woods, his heart aching.

  “Do you want to check the cottage while we’re here?” Teaser asked.

  He shook his head. “No one has been around.” He was certain of that because he stopped at the cottage each day when he checked the bridges leading to the Den. “Let’s get back.”

  “Jeb said he’d think about my idea.”

  “Where’s he going to find an artist to paint erotic pictures to make into a puzzle?”

  “Well, he did say that might be a sticking point.” Teaser paused, then asked, “Who’s Sparky?”

  On the way back to the Den, Sebastian thought about Nadia. Why would she have doubts about Glorianna now? Why would she consider telling the wizards where to find Belladonna? Unless, as he’d said, she had been poisoned by a mind strong enough to plant doubts and thoughts where none had been before. How was he supposed to tell Glorianna and Lee that something dangerous might have been locked in Nadia’s landscapes when Glorianna had altered Ephemera to isolate those places and keep her mother safe?

  And how was he supposed to tell his cousins that their mother could no longer be trusted?

  Shadows in the garden.

  It is the hardest lesson for a Landscaper to learn.

  The gardens are not just access points put together in a pleasing manner. They also reveal the heart of the Landscaper, the signature resonance that will overlie the landscapes in her care. It is a reflection of who the Landscaper is, and her innermost self will be manifested into plants and stones and water for everyone to see.

  If the heart tries to lie, the garden will reveal that, too.

  But every student’s first attempt tends to be a pretty lie. All the plants are the ones that symbolize kindness and generosity, patience and understanding. Love. Despite the student’s best efforts, the garden struggles to survive because the dark feelings that are denied also resonate in that confined space and have no patch of ground to call their own. So they interfere, tangle up the currents of power, thrusting up where they don’t belong. And the garden fails.

  It takes time to find the courage to display the parts of yourself that aren’t bright and shining. But you have to see them, have to know they’re inside you, because they will resonate in the landscapes you control. Because you, as a Landscaper, are the sieve through which all the human hearts in your landscapes touch Ephemera—and none of those hearts lives completely in the Light.

  So every Landscaper has to learn, and acknowledge, the dark side of her own heart in order to keep our world balanced.

  Shadows in the garden.

  They are a part of all of us.

  —The Book of Lessons

  Chapter Twenty

 
“Perverse beast,” Koltak grumbled when the horse suddenly stopped a few strides away from the large pond. “Nearly pulled my arm out of the socket to get to the water, and now you don’t want to drink?”

  He didn’t know much about horses, but the animal seemed uneasy about something, so he looked around. Just rolling green hills that looked the same as the ones he’d seen yesterday—and the day before that. What was happening in Wizard City? Was anyone concerned about the length of time he’d been away? Was he trapped in this landscape, doomed to wander in a place where he was nothing more than a bumbling traveler?

  The horse took a step forward, then stopped again.

  “Stay thirsty, then.” Koltak removed the canteen from the saddle. Keeping a firm grip on the reins, he moved toward the water.

  Apparently reassured by his action, the horse moved with him. But it still hesitated at the edge of the pond before it finally lowered its head and began to drink.

  The dusky light had turned the water an opaque gray, but the pond looked clean enough. He would let the animal drink its fill, and then—

  The creature broke the surface of the water right beside the horse’s head. Brownish gray. Bumpy. The open jaws, filled with serrated teeth, clamped onto the horse’s neck. A twist of its large body dragged the horse into the pond. A savage shake of its head severed the horse’s head, leaving it to bob in the bloody water.

  Another of the creatures suddenly appeared and ripped off a hind leg, while another one bit into the horse’s belly and spun, churning the water until the sharp teeth and the spinning motion tore off a chunk of meat.

  Gasping for breath, his body shaking with fear, Koltak stared at the pond. He didn’t remember moving, but now he stood several man-lengths from the carnage.

  He knew what they were. Every wizard had to study descriptions and rough sketches of the creatures that had been locked away with the Eater of the World. Bonelovers, trap spiders, and wind runners were some of the creatures that had been taken out of the world.

  These were the death rollers. Crocodileans bloated by human fear. A larger, more savage version of one of Ephemera’s natural predators.

  His hands were full. Puzzled, Koltak lifted them. One fist gripped the strap of the canteen. The other still held reins.

  His eyes followed those strips of leather. Then he screamed, dropped reins and canteen, and stumbled back a few steps to get away from the severed head he must have dragged from the pond. He fell to his hands and knees, was violently sick, then crawled away from the mess and lay on his back, staring at the first stars to shine in the darkening sky.

  The terrors that had been manifested from human fears were no longer contained. The landscapes where those terrors dwelled had been reconnected to the rest of the world. If a connection had been made that allowed the death rollers to intrude in this landscape, had other landscapes been altered to give those creatures access? And what about the other terrors? Would a child on a family outing to the beach walk across a patch of rust-colored sand and disappear, caught in the bonelovers’ landscape?

  It could happen. Fed by grief and fear, those landscapes could encroach on all others, changing the resonance, consuming hope. And the nightmare the Eater of the World had tried to create once before would become fully realized, and all that was good in the world would shrivel away until there was nothing left.

  For one shining moment, as he stared up at the stars, his heart and mind were swept clean of ambition and personal grievances and only one thought resonated: He had to find Sebastian. Ephemera’s survival was at stake, and finding Sebastian was the key to saving the world.

  Shaky but determined, Koltak got to his feet and began walking.

  Sebastian was the key to saving the world.

  Reaching into the inner pocket of his robe, he felt the reassuring crackle of paper.

  Sebastian…and the message he’d brought with him from Wizard City.

  Dalton leaned against a tree and wondered, again, what he could have done to change things.

  “Cap’n?” Addison walked up to him, then looked toward the creek where Guy and Henley were standing watch. “What happened to Darby wasn’t your fault. You sent him to the city to pick up supplies and leave a report at the guard station to be taken up to the wizards. You didn’t tell him to stop at a tavern, get into some piss-assed fight, and end up knife-stuck enough times to die.”

  “He wasn’t a hot-tempered man,” Dalton said, his voice full of baffled anger and regret.

  “No, he wasn’t. But something’s been bringing out the mean in people lately. Surely does seem that way.”

  “I know.”

  Addison rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s none of my business, Cap’n, but maybe you should be thinking of another place for you and yours.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Dalton said softly. “My current contract is finished in a few months, and my wife has said more than once that she wouldn’t mind leaving Wizard City. So I’ve thought about it. But where would we go? What kind of landscape could we reach?”

  Addison shifted from one foot to the other. “I’ve spent time in a few landscapes over the years, and I’ve served under several guard captains. Even the ones who were good captains weren’t always good men. You’re a good man. You don’t belong here. Knew that after the first week of being assigned to your fist. Haven’t changed my mind in the years since. It’s not a kind city, Cap’n. Never was. You keep on rubbing elbows with the wizards, you might start forgetting what it means to be a good man.”

  Addison was coming too close to the bone, giving voice to things Dalton tried not to think about—especially in the darkest hours of the night.

  “What about you, Addison? You came here from another landscape and stayed. You’ve been here more years than I have. Why aren’t you thinking of leaving?”

  Addison’s smile was sweet and bitter. “I never said I was a good man.”

  Glorianna walked toward the source of the dissonance in the waterhorses’ landscape—the dissonance that had set her teeth on edge when she’d walked through her garden to check the feel of her landscapes. This dissonance had made her angry. The other “weed” in her garden left the taste of despair burning at the back of her throat.

  Lee would find out what had thrown their mother’s heart into such confusion. Nadia would talk to him, would tell him what was wrong, and he would do what he could to ease the trouble. Or at least find out the source of the trouble. Because she didn’t want to consider the unthinkable—that her mother’s heart was no longer attuned with hers, that something in Nadia had changed so much she no longer fit in a landscape held by Glorianna Belladonna.

  Lee would take care of whatever trouble waited at home. Whatever had made the wrongness in this landscape was a task only she could deal with.

  Whatever? She knew what had left Its mark on the waterhorses’ landscape. She just didn’t know how It had gotten here.

  When Sebastian had told her about the waterhorse being killed, she’d gone to the pond. There had been a stain of Dark that didn’t fit with this landscape, that didn’t resonate with her. But she’d found no sign of an anchor that could be used as an access point, so she’d sent her resonance out over the land, concentrating the power on the pond and the land around it until it was in harmony with her once more. The stain of Dark hadn’t been completely washed away, but it should have faded by now—unless someone full of dark emotions that resonated with that Dark had passed by this pond often enough to feed the Dark, providing the Eater with just enough of an opening to alter the pond again to be an access point for one of Its landscapes.

  Wishing she hadn’t ignored Lee’s sharp order to bring a lantern with her, she hurried toward the pond until, in the waning light, she spotted what she thought was a dark, oddly shaped rock. Then the smell of blood and vomit made her gag.

  Fighting to control her churning stomach, she approached warily and stared at the severed horse’s head a long time before shifting her focus to t
he pond a few man-lengths away. There was only one thing that had been locked away in the Eater’s landscapes that could bite through muscle and bone like that. Death rollers.

  A freshwater pond would suit them, but the waterhorses came from a northern climate, so this landscape should have been too cold for death rollers. Unless the creatures had changed in the long years they’d been taken out of the world and were no longer dependent on the heat of the sun to warm their bodies.

  Or the pond was nothing more than a place where they would hunt for prey and then go back to their own, warmer landscape. Either way, the Eater needed a way to reach this landscape in order to alter the pond, which meant It had an anchor nearby that was small enough to escape detection—or there was a bridge Lee didn’t know about that was giving It access.

  And if It had access to this landscape, it could reach the Den or take the bridge to…

  Oh, Guardians of the Light, was that why there was something wrong with Nadia? Had the Eater of the World crossed over the bridge to Aurora? Was it already altering the village, changing streets into rust-colored sand so that anyone who walked there would be pulled into the bonelovers’ landscape? Would the pond where children swam in the summertime become a hunting ground for death rollers? Or what if It hadn’t reached the village? It wasn’t that far between the border of this landscape and Sebastian’s cottage—and the bridge that crossed over to the path that led to Nadia’s home was behind the cottage. What if she was under attack? What if Lee stumbled into trouble and was seriously injured before he had time to impose his island over whatever was happening at home and get himself, Nadia, and Jeb to safety? And what about Nadia’s gardens? Every one of those landscapes had a bridge that crossed over to Sanctuary. And that was the Eater’s ultimate goal: to crush the places that were beacons of Light, the places people, simply by knowing they existed, used to hold on to feelings of love and kindness and hope.