The Voice Read online

  Sebastian’s right hand clenched, reminding Lee that the wizards’ lightning, a magic that had been dormant in Sebastian until the previous year, was now a power the incubus-wizard could wield with deadly effect.

  “Suit yourself,” Sebastian said as he headed for the house. “But if this little discussion produces weeds or stones in Glorianna’s gardens, you’re cleaning them up.”

  Lee headed toward the walled garden that held Glorianna’s landscapes, the pieces of the world that she kept balanced through the resonance of her own heart. Then he saw Sebastian veer toward the sandbox Glorianna called the playground and hurried to catch up.

  The playground was a wooden, calf-high box that was about the size of a marriage bed and was filled with sand. Attached to it was another wooden box, about half that length, that was filled with gravel and had a bench to sit on. Glorianna had made the box as a place for Ephemera to play without there being any consequences in the landscapes where people lived. It was also the means that Sebastian and Michael had used to reach Belladonna.

  Michael was in the box, one knee resting on the gravel, a shapeless brown hat shadowing his face from the summer sun. Maybe it was the brim that kept the man from seeing them approach, but Lee thought it had more to do with the Magician being focused on the items in the playground’s sand.

  “Ah, come on, wild child. Come on,” Michael said. “I wasn’t meaning it like that, so you have to stop bringing me such things.”

  Sebastian grinned as he looked at the handful of pocket watches poking out of the sand. Then he laughed out loud when a mantel clock that was missing its hands pushed out of the sand.

  “Guardians and Guides,” Lee exploded. “What are you doing?”

  Startled, Michael almost tipped over. He gave them a sour look as he stood up and carefully stepped out of the box. “It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll get it cleared up. Eventually.”

  Lee stared as another pocket watch poked out of the sand like a shiny gold clam. “You’re teaching the world to steal things?”

  “No,” Michael said, looking flustered as he pulled off his hat.

  “Then what is that?” Lee pointed to the playground.

  “A misunderstanding.” Now Michael’s voice carried a hint of temper.

  “You taught Ephemera to be a thief,” Lee said. Then he gave Sebastian a hard look. “I guess the two of you are more suited to each other than I thought.”

  “Have a care,” Michael warned.

  Lee swore under his breath. He shouldn’t have needed a reminder that Ephemera shaped itself by manifesting the resonances of the human heart. And on Glorianna’s island, the world was more responsive to people’s emotions than anywhere else.

  Moments later, all three men clamped their hands over their noses and backed away from each other.

  “Daylight, Magician!” Sebastian said. “Did you just fart?”

  Michael huffed and pointed to the sand in the playground. “Stinkweed. The wild child has started making it in response to swear words. And if you’re wondering who influenced Ephemera so that it creates a weed that smells like farts every time someone swears, all I can tell you is it wasn’t me.” Turning, he pointed at the stinkweed plant. “But Lee wasn’t standing in the box to play with you, so you shouldn’t be listening to him so closely that you turn his words into plants.”

  The stinkweed sank into the sand. Since the smell didn’t disappear as fast, the men walked away from the playground.

  “So,” Sebastian said, wheezing a little. “Did you teach the world to steal?”

  “No,” Michael said firmly. Then he faltered. “At least, I don’t think I did. I just said . . .” Taking a couple more steps away from the playground, he lowered his voice. “I just said I’d like to steal a little time so that Glorianna wouldn’t feel she has to take up her work as a Landscaper so soon and could rest a while longer.”

  “And Ephemera has been bringing you timepieces since then?” Sebastian laughed long and loud.

  “It’s amusing as long as you’re not the one trying to explain why you have a basket of broken pocket watches,” Michael grumbled.

  “All broken? So the world isn’t sneaking into people’s houses and—”

  “Don’t even be thinking that,” Michael said. “No, I’m fairly sure it’s been finding these things in the dumping grounds of various landscapes. At least, I’m hoping that’s what the wild child has been doing.”

  “I could talk to Dalton and ask if anyone in Aurora is missing a pocket watch or mantel clock,” Sebastian said. “As a law enforcer, he’d have heard about a mysterious thief.”

  “Oh, sure,” Michael said agreeably. “And with a handful of diamonds and a couple of emeralds the size of sparrows’ eggs, I’ll be able to pay for whatever the wild child took without permission.”

  Things popped out of the ground with enough force and speed to zip past their faces. Sebastian caught one. He opened his hand, stared at the emerald, then handed it to Michael. Without saying a word, he hunted in the grass and found the diamonds and the other emerald.

  He gave the emerald and most of the diamonds to Michael, then dropped one diamond in his shirt pocket. “Finder’s fee,” he said with a grin.

  “You’re welcome to it,” Michael sighed. “If I’d known I could have gems for the asking, I could have been a wealthy man.”

  “You wouldn’t have asked for more than you need,” Sebastian said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Truth is, the wild child didn’t start giving me such things until I made my bit of a garden inside Glorianna’s.”

  Having heard all he could stomach, Lee walked away from them and went to the gate in the two-acre walled garden. Slipping through the gate, he followed the paths to the beds that represented Sanctuary, the landscapes that nurtured and protected Ephemera’s currents of Light. Each of those places had been alone once, isolated by distance and the nature of the world. Then Glorianna brought them together, connecting them to give the Guardians of Light access to each other. Most of those places still kept themselves apart from the hurry and scurry of people’s lives, but the landscape most people thought of as Sanctuary was an open place where anyone could come to rest and renew the spirit.

  Anyone whose heart resonated with Sanctuary, that is.

  Did Glorianna still resonate with the Places of Light? If she walked across the stationary bridge that connected her island to Sanctuary, would she end up in the right place? Or would Ephemera send her somewhere else?

  If she found herself in a different place, would she take the step between here and there and return to her garden? Or would she disappear into a landscape that appealed to Belladonna?

  All their lives, Lee had been her working partner and her closest friend as well as her brother. He’d had few friends outside the family because he’d needed to be so careful of what he said, whom he trusted.

  He’d had plenty of acquaintances once he left the school and began traveling to check on the stationary and resonating bridges that allowed people to cross over from one part of Ephemera to another. And he hadn’t lacked for casual lovers. But there had been no one he could share his life with, no one he had dared trust with his family’s secrets—and bringing anyone in close enough to know his family meant letting them get close enough to learn at least some of the secrets.

  Lee sighed and rubbed his forearm. It wasn’t just a bone Michael had broken. The Magician had also broken the friendship that had been forming between them, had broken the trust. The feeling of betrayal had hurt as much as the broken arm.

  What hurt even more was that Michael had asked for Sebastian’s help to find a way into a landscape that no one should have been able to reach. Michael had asked Sebastian, the cousin, and didn’t mention the plan to the Bridge, the brother, the one who had put aside his own life to support Glorianna.

  And the Magician and the incubus-wizard had done it—they had created a bridge out of memories, heart, and music that was strong enough to draw Bellad
onna back to the Island in the Mist and the part of her that belonged to the Light. The part of her that was Glorianna.

  Rubbing a hand over his chest, as if that would ease the ache in his heart, Lee turned away from the access points that led to the Light and headed for the part of the garden where he knew his sister would be.

  She spent hours sitting on a small bench she’d placed in front of the beds that were the access points to her dark landscapes. She didn’t even weed the other parts of her garden unless someone was with her, but the beds for the dark landscapes she tended with meticulous care.

  He approached her, his footsteps loud on the gravel path. At least, it sounded loud to him, but she didn’t turn her head to see who was coming.

  “Want some company?” he called.

  Now she turned her head and he saw Belladonna, the woman who had cast out the Light in her own heart to become the monster Evil feared. In that moment, he saw cruelty in her eyes, a dark, rich desire to send him into a landscape where suffering was a man’s only lover.

  Then the look faded, and Glorianna smiled at him and said, “Sure.”

  She shifted on the bench, making room for him.

  He hesitated before sitting so close to her—and hated himself for it.

  “Something interesting?” he asked, trying to remember how easy it used to be to talk to her.

  “Yes,” she replied as she pointed to a grass triangle.

  He studied it and frowned. “Why did you rearrange the access points for the other dark landscapes to have that triangle close to the Den?”

  “I didn’t rearrange anything. Ephemera did.” Glorianna also frowned. “The Den of Iniquity is still at the center of the dark landscapes that resonate with me, but Ephemera shifted their access points to make room for this new connection.”

  “But it’s only connected with the Den,” Lee said.

  “The other dark landscapes aren’t connected to each other either except through the Den, so that’s not strange. Besides, demon landscapes aren’t exactly hospitable.”

  “The Merry Makers are hospitable. They’re always willing to have someone for dinner.” Of course, the hapless person who stumbled into the Merry Makers’ landscape usually ended up being dinner.

  She didn’t give him a disapproving smile or an elbow jab.

  His sister would have. Before she split her heart to save the world, she would have.

  “So where is this landscape?” Lee asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s why it’s so puzzling. It doesn’t resonate with me yet, but Ephemera seems to think it wants to. It’s like only one part of it has begun resonating with me, but that’s not enough to—”

  “You’re not crossing over!” he shouted as he shot to his feet. “You don’t know anything about that place except it’s a dark landscape.”

  “That’s right. I don’t,” Belladonna said. She turned her head away from him. “You should leave now.”

  “Glorianna . . .”

  “Please, Lee. Get out of the garden. Now.”

  He took a step away from her. Took another. It hurt him to ask, but he asked because she was his sister and he still loved her. “Do you want Michael? Or Sebastian?”

  “No. I don’t want anyone in this garden right now.”

  His own heart had soured this time together. His own hurt at what she had done to save them all and how she came back kept getting in the way. Would it get in the way one time too many?

  “I’m sorry, Glorianna,” he said.

  “So am I.”

  As he walked away from his sister and her dark landscapes, he heard her say, “Ephemera, hear me.”

  He wasn’t sure who had summoned the world—the Guide who belonged to the Light or the monster who ruled the Dark.

  She had walked those landscapes, folding them into each other, turning them into mazes that celebrated her Dark purity, altering them into labyrinths that offered no peace, no comfort. Those things did not exist in her world. She created out of the brutal beauty that came from the undiluted feelings that lived in the dark side of the human heart. She was sublime madness, magnificent rage, divine indifference.

  In that place, she had been Belladonna.

  Only Belladonna.

  Setting her feet on the bench, Glorianna dropped her forehead to her knees and trembled with the effort not to give Ephemera a command as the world’s currents of Dark and Light swirled around her, waiting to resonate with whatever her heart wanted.

  Unfortunately, when she wasn’t vigilant, she craved the undiluted power she had wielded in the dark landscape she had made for the Eater of the World. She wasn’t supposed to leave that landscape. The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup and cast out the Light from her own heart. Once she had done that, she became the greatest danger to the people around her.

  But Michael, Sebastian, and Ephemera had found a way to reach her, made her remember who she had been, and hearing the music in Michael’s heart, she had used the access point Ephemera had created and taken the step between here and there.

  And in taking that step, she had taken back the Light she had cast out of her heart. But she wasn’t whole. She wasn’t Glorianna Belladonna anymore. She was Glorianna and she was Belladonna. Separate. Opposite. Much like her dark landscapes and Sanctuary. The problem was that the middle ground was missing inside her, and she didn’t know how to fix that. Didn’t know if anyone could fix that.

  Now she had this mysterious landscape that wasn’t yet hers. She thought its resonance might be enough for her to cross over and find out what the place was—and where it was. Only it didn’t feel like a dark landscape, despite Ephemera thinking it should connect with the Den, and it didn’t feel like a landscape that belonged to the Light.

  And she wasn’t sure if that piece of the world called to Glorianna or to Belladonna.

  Something rippled through Ephemera’s currents of power. Then it washed through her. Both parts of her.

  “Maybe it’s not the landscape that’s calling to me,” she whispered as she raised her head to study the triangle of grass.

  Someone from that landscape wanted something so much, a heart wish had gone out through the currents of power—and had found her because she wasn’t just a powerful Landscaper; she was also a Guide of the Heart.

  Glorianna swung her feet off the bench, then lifted them again, startled by the gravel suddenly moving between her feet. A moment later, a pocket watch poked partway out of the gravel.

  Oh, that can’t be good, she thought as she reached for the watch with the same enthusiasm as a person feels when picking up a mouse the family cat left as a gift.

  Before she could touch it, the watch wiggled back under the gravel.

  She stared at the gravel, then at the triangle of grass. “It’s not time for me to go there?”

  yes yes yes

  At least she understood Ephemera’s message.

  And she thought it best not to ask her lover where—and how—the wild child had acquired the watch.

  Then she heard the music. Michael, tending to the garden he had made within her garden by playing his tin whistle. He heard the song of a place and kept his pieces of the world balanced with tunes—along with the ill-wishing and luck-bringing that were the ways a Magician’s power connected with the world.

  Giving the triangle of grass a last, thoughtful look, she followed the sound of the whistle until she reached Michael’s garden.

  He finished the tune and gave her a sheepish smile.

  “So what have you and the wild child been up to today?” she asked.

  “That depends,” he replied. “How do you feel about diamonds and emeralds?”

  yes yes yes

  Knowing better than to answer when Ephemera was so eager to please, she said, “Play another tune, Magician.”

  “Lee.”

  Swearing silently, Lee turned to wait for the man striding from Sanctuary’s guesthouse. If he hadn’t stopped for some food to add to his pack, he cou
ld have slipped away from Sanctuary like he had slipped away from the Island in the Mist after he left Glorianna’s garden.

  “Honorable Yoshani,” he said. “Have you come to argue with me too?”

  “Who have you argued with today?” Yoshani asked.

  Lee saw nothing but compassion in the holy man’s dark eyes. “Michael. Sebastian. Glorianna.” He looked away, not wanting to meet Yoshani’s eyes. “You all think I’m wrong, that I should accept she will never be the same, and that I should make some kind of peace with Michael because I’m Glorianna’s brother and he’s as close to being her husband as a man can get without the formal vows.”

  “He would speak those vows without hesitation. It is Glorianna Dark and Wise who is not ready to take that step.” Yoshani hesitated. “You have not asked for my advice, but as we are standing in Sanctuary, I will offer it anyway. There is much hurt and anger in your heart. It clouds your ability to see the people around you for who and what they are now. Perhaps you need this, but a man who does the work you do cannot afford to hold that much hurt and anger in his heart. People change, Lee. And the world changes. You know this better than most. Don’t let these dark feelings change you so much that you can’t find your way home again.”

  “I’ll always be able to get back home,” Lee said, his voice turning sharp as a way to defy the odd shiver produced by Yoshani’s words.

  “Will you?” Yoshani asked gently. “If you refuse to see the Landscaper, will you be able to find her landscapes?”

  Lee took a couple of steps away from Yoshani. “I have to go.”

  “Do your friends and family a kindness. Every two days, return to Sanctuary and let us know you are well. There are still wizards and some Dark Guides hiding in the landscapes beyond your mother’s and sister’s control. And the Bridges who survived the Eater’s attack haven’t stopped creating bridges for people who need to leave where they are.”

  Which was why he needed to patrol and stay vigilant. But he couldn’t deny that Yoshani’s suggestion was prudent.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll use my island to reach Glorianna’s and Mother’s landscapes so I’m not spending a lot of time on the roads alone. And every second day I’ll return here and give you or Brighid my itinerary for the next bit of journeying.”