Belladonna (45 page)

"Where is the closest place to find humans?" Glorianna asked.

The four waterhorses looked at Sebastian.

"Besides the Den," she added.

They turned and trotted back up the rise in the direction they had come from.

Glorianna hurried over to her pack and slipped into the straps before swinging a leg over her demon cycle. She and Lee headed after the waterhorses. Michael was a little slower since he needed a few moments longer to get his pack settled. When he was ready, he looked at Sebastian, who just looked back at him.

"Magician, I think it's time you educated the people in your landscapes about the nature of Ephemera."

Michael looked at the sand and stone that scarred the rolling green, then looked at Sebastian. "Won't that be fun?"

The smile came first. Then the laughter. He didn't mind the laughter. It was a sympathetic sound.

Glorianna and Lee studied the bridge that crossed a stream. There was something nearby she didn't like. Something that made her edgy, uneasy. But not here. That, too, made her uneasy. Unless she discovered another landscape that belonged to her on the other side of that bridge, she shouldn't have felt any resonance or dissonance. Except she
had
been aware of the currents flowing through the White Isle until Caitlin broke the connection between their two landscapes. And Michael ...

She suddenly had an image of walking through a garden — her garden? — and hearing the clear notes of his whistle drifting through the air, calling her home.

Why would that image make her heart ache?

"Looks like I don't have to make a resonating bridge after all," Lee said, rubbing his chin. "That's a stationary bridge. Crosses over to one — maybe two — other landscapes. I can tell that much from the resonance of it."

"So my landscapes aren't as closed off as I'd thought," Glorianna said.

"Going out isn't the same as coming back in," Lee pointed out.

"Koltak got in. And the Eater must have used the waterhorses' landscape as Its entry to Elandar."

"You don't know that, Glorianna." He sounded annoyed, but she wondered if he privately agreed with her. "Other Landscapers could have had landscapes in Elandar. The Eater could have gotten here through one of the gardens at the school."

She heard the clank and clatter of the pots and pans hung on Michael's pack before she saw him and Sebastian. They dismounted, but this time Michael didn't shrug off the pack.

"You said the feel of Dunberry turned dark," she said when Michael got close enough.

He nodded. "Two boys have gone missing, and a young woman was brutally murdered."

"After the Eater disappeared into the landscapes, two females were murdered in the Den," Sebastian said. "A succubus and a human. Those killings were brutal."

"Is there a pond or river close to where those boys were last seen?" Glorianna asked.

"Pond," Michael replied.

She watched his expression harden as he began putting the pieces together.

"The Eater of the World was hunting in Dunberry," she said quietly.

"It brought those death roller things into that pond?" He sounded outraged.

She shook her head. "Possible, but just as likely It took the form of a death roller and did the hunting. Just like It would have assumed a form that made It the best predator for killing that woman."

"And the lamplighter," Michael said. "I forgot about the lamplighter. Killed the same night. Some of his bones were crushed and there were other ... odd... things about the way he died. Or so I was told."

"When Lynnea and I were escaping from the Landscapers' School, we saw creatures that could have crushed bone," Sebastian said.

Michael shuddered. Then his eyes filled with a mixture of anger and shock as he pointed at her. "No, I'll not have it. You will
not
take this on your shoulders, Glorianna Belladonna. If a man bolts the door against a beast trying to attack his family, do you blame him for protecting his own? And if the beast turns away from his door to attack another's that is less well defended, is that his fault because he didn't step aside and let it attack what he loved? You bolted your own door, but you didn't aim that beast at a neighbor."

What was he hearing in her "music" that revealed so much of what she was thinking — and feeling? She
wasn't
to blame for where the Eater chose to hide after she had altered the landscapes and closed Wizard City away from the rest of the world, but she didn't like feeling this exposed, and wasn't used to someone who wasn't family reading her so clearly.

"If the borders in this part of Ephemera are as fluid as they seem, the Eater could have gotten here from Wizard City before I broke that bridge," Lee said. "Might have avoided your landscapes altogether."

"Maybe." If Michael and Caitlin hadn't stumbled into her life, she wouldn't have known where the Eater had gone, would have had no hope of finding It. Or stopping It.

"This is it then," Michael said, lifting a hand to indicate the bridge. "Either the road leading into Dunberry starts when we cross the bridge, or we'll be standing on the other side of the stream waving at your brother and cousin. Coming back across the bridge in the other direction should show us the road leading to Kendall. There's a posting house about halfway, where coaches change horses and such. The road that turns off the main one leads to Foggy Downs."

No matter what she found on the other side of the bridge, taking that step between here and there was all she needed to do in order to go home. No matter what they found when they crossed over, she could get them to a safe landscape in a heartbeat.

But the prospect of crossing over to a landscape that wasn't hers was exciting and scary — and made her feel adventurous and foolishly young. Had Michael's mother felt like this the first time she had begun a journey with his father? Had she felt this excitement for the adventure — and for the man? And look how
that
had ended. Maybe ...

She took a step back. Shook her head violently.

"Glorianna!"

Whose voice? She couldn't tell, didn't know. All three of them were around her. Then she felt his hands on her shoulders, felt the warmth of him. Heard the music in him.

She'd never thought of people as songs before she met him. Still didn't for most. Lee and Sebastian were a resonance. Michael was different. Michael was unlike anyone she had known before.

"It's sly," she said, pushing back her hair as she concentrated on taking steady breaths.

"It's
here?"

She paused a moment, thinking something was wrong with her hearing. Then she realized all three of them
had
asked the same question.

"No." She paused again. "My head hurts."

She felt Michael's lips against her ear. Felt those lips curve into a smile.

"Then stop pulling on your hair," he whispered.

She put her hands down — and looked at two pairs of green eyes that were sharp with worry.

"I'm all right," she said.

"You're going back to the Den," Sebastian said.

"No, I'm not."

"Leave the woman be," Michael said. "The land is sour here, and I'm thinking the badness that changed Dunberry spilled over a bit."

"This has happened before," Glorianna said, knowing by the way Lee sucked in a breath that he wouldn't keep that bit of information to himself and that she could look forward to one of Nadia's rare, full-tempered scolds when she got home. "The Eater tried to turn me away when I altered the pond to shut off the death rollers' access to this landscape. Now Its resonance in the Dark currents around the bridge brushed against me, tried to turn me away from crossing the bridge with you." She looked over her shoulder at Michael.

"Will crossing that bridge put you in danger?" Michael asked.

She gave the question serious consideration before shaking her head. She slipped out of their protective circle and retrieved her pack. Clothes, toiletries, some gold and silver coins, since those were acceptable tender in any landscape. Pencils and some folded sheets of paper to make notes of what she saw and how landscapes connected. A canteen clipped to the outside. Michael carried a bit of food, along with all his belongings — enough to get them through a lean meal or two if Dunberry turned elusive.

She had traveled farther with less fuss simply by crossing over to one of her distant landscapes. Wasn't the same.

She hugged Lee, an awkward business since the pack got in the way.

"We'll be back in a few days," she whispered in her brother's ear.

He kissed her cheek and whispered back, "Travel lightly."

Sebastian next, and just as hard to say good-bye. Harder in some ways.

Don't get maudlin,
she thought.
Don't feed the Dark currents. You could get back to the Den faster than they can.

"Travel lightly," Sebastian said, looking at Michael.

"And you," Michael replied softly. Then he held out his hand to her, linked his fingers with hers.

Together, they walked across the bridge.

A familiar road. Familiar land in terms of the looks of it. But a terrible, sour music that ripped at the heart. When he'd last been in Dunberry, he hadn't known what had caused the change in the village. Now his stomach churned with the knowledge of what had come to this place and what the Eater of the World had done to these people.

"Do you feel it?" Glorianna asked, looking around.

"Darling, the only
good
thing I'm feeling is your hand in mine," he replied.

"There's an access point nearby." She moved toward the stream's bank, tugging him with her.

He'd known the world had done one of its little shifts — no, that
they
had crossed over to another landscape — the moment his foot had touched the road, but he still looked across the stream to confirm Lee and Sebastian weren't there.

"This is the spot," she said, crouching down.

Since he wasn't about to let go of her hand, he crouched with her. "I don't see anything."

"What do you hear?"

A dark song, but faint and scratchy. What he heard clearly was her — the light tones as well as the dark.

"It can't touch me," he said, staring at her as the wonder of that truth filled him. "When I fought It, I was being pulled into darkness — and I chose what darkness would be my fate. So I can hear what It has done to Dunberry, but
Its
song is nothing more than a scratchy annoyance."

"Then what
do
you hear?"

"You." He watched her eyes widen. " 'Her darkness is my fate.' That was the choice I made. And that choice has made me tone-deaf to the Eater." He waited a beat, then tipped his head to indicate the stream. "So what is it you're feeling here, Glorianna Belladonna?"

"This is the Eater's point of entry when It comes to this landscape," she said.

"Like those bits you have in your garden?" He waited for her nod. "So It's made a garden?"

The arrested, thoughtful look on her face kept him silent.

"It turned the school into Its garden," she finally said. "The school is now full of Its creatures, so that would be the safest place to maintain Its own dark landscapes."

"Is that what Dunberry has become? One of Its dark landscapes?"

"A lot of Dark currents here, more than is natural for this place. But despite those currents, I don't think it's changed into one of the Eater's landscapes. Not yet." Glorianna rose to her feet and stepped away from the bank, her hand still linked with his.

"Landscapes, like people, can change, Magician. This place didn't start out this way. It doesn't have to stay this way."

"What about that?" He used their linked hands to point toward the stream.

She smiled. "Ask the wild child."

He studied her a moment and decided she wasn't teasing. Ask the wild child. Ask Ephemera. Lady's mercy, hadn't he seen what
she
could do by asking the world to make — or remake — itself?

"This feels foolish."

"Then foolishness is all that will come of it," Glorianna replied. "You are still the bedrock here. The connection hasn't been completely severed. Ephemera will give you what your heart tells it to give you. If you believe you will fail, then that is what you will do — because that is your truth in this moment. That you want to fail. Maybe even need to fail because you're not ready for the next stage of your journey."

He couldn't deny the truth of her words, even if he didn't like the sound of them. "Would you mind standing over there, then?

This is a private conversation."

She looked at their linked hands, then up at him — and he realized he'd been the one holding on, reluctant to let go. He released her hand and watched her walk a couple of man-lengths away, the polite distance someone would give people who needed a moment of privacy. It felt too far. Much too far. Because he knew if she were standing no farther away from him than she was now but was in a different landscape, he wouldn't be able to see her, or even know she was there.

Shaking his head to dislodge that thought, he went back to the stream and crouched on the bank.

"Wild child," he called softly. "Can you hear me?"

He waited, almost called again. Then he felt it — that same sensation he had in the pubs sometimes, of a child hiding in a corner, listening to the music. But now the sensation was more like a child hiding behind
him
in order to escape being seen by something that frightened it.