Guardian of the Gate (18 page)

The water is unusually still. There is the rocking, but it is the slow, gentle glide of the boat through water, for the sea is as smooth as the looking glass that used to hang over the mantel in my chamber at Birchwood. I wonder, as I stare into the water, if the mirror is still there. If my room is just as I left it, or if it has been stripped of everything that made it home to me for so many years.

At first, there is nothing to see. The sky is so gray that I cannot even find my reflection and the water is not clear enough to decipher anything below its surface. But as I continue running my fingers through it, something bumps up against my hand. I wonder if it is a dolphin or a shark, and I pull my hand back into the boat, knowing it could be any number of strange creatures I have seen in Father’s many books on the sea.

I tip my head a little further over the boat and am rewarded with a glimpse of an eye. It is rather like an alligator or a crocodile, the way it emerges from the water, peering at me with the rest of its body still beneath the surface. But of course, it can be no such thing. Not in the ocean. I tear my eyes from the creature for a quick moment, looking back to my companions in the boat to see if anyone has noticed.

For the first time since we have been traveling, Dimitri is dozing next to me. A quick look around the boat tells me that the journey has caught up with everyone else as well. Sonia and Luisa are as deeply asleep as babes in the nighttime, while Edmund gazes trancelike over the prow of the boat.

I glance back at the water, wondering if I have imagined the sea creature. But no. It is still there, moving effortlessly
alongside the boat and seeming to survey me with its sympathetic eye. It blinks, and the creature rises slightly out of the water. It is very like a horse, though when its scaly tail slips quietly out of and then back into the water, I realize it is not like any horse I have ever seen.

It is the eye that draws me. Though I can’t explain it, there is understanding there. Understanding of all I have endured. The creature’s mane flows like kelp behind its sizable head, and I reach farther out of the boat, straining to reach the powerful neck moving beneath the surface of the water. It is at once feathery and slippery, and I am hypnotized by that infinite gaze together with the curious feel of its skin. I stroke the creature’s neck, and its eye closes momentarily as if in pleasure. When it opens again, I realize my mistake.

I cannot remove my hand.

It is stuck to the creature’s body. The great eye blinks once, and then sinks lower into the water, taking me with it. I am at first too shocked to say or do anything, but as my body is pulled overboard, I begin to kick and flail. The commotion causes everyone in the boat to jump to attention.

But it is too late. The creature is stronger and more powerful than I imagined, and I am over the side of the boat and into the water in no time at all. The last things I see are not Dimitri’s eyes, frightened and confused as they are, but the faceless figures who still man the front and back of the boat. They make no move amid the chaos that has broken out on the boat.

I manage a deep breath before I am pulled entirely under
the water. At first, I fight. I try and try to pull my hand from the thing’s neck, but it does not take me long to realize the futility of it. The creature does not bolt toward the bottom of the sea, though it is surely capable. It swims downward languidly, as if it has all the time in the world. Its pace is tortuous, for my end does not come quickly. No. I have time to contemplate my death.

The water is a murky underworld of shadowy shapes and slippery objects that bump up against me, and soon, too soon, I am filled with the apathy that I know accompanies drowning. My body floats behind the creature’s massive body, but my hand is as irrevocably attached to its neck as it was in the moment before it pulled me into the sea. My will to fight leaves in one big rush, and I allow myself to be pulled, farther and farther into the watery depths, without struggle. The truth is that I am tired. So very tired. This is the second time the water has vied for my life.

Perhaps it is fate. Perhaps it is meant to claim my soul.

It is my last conscious thought.

Despite everything that has happened, I am fairly certain it is the choking that will kill me.

I awake in the bottom of the boat, spitting up water and coughing until my throat is raw. I see the shadows of other figures in the periphery, but it is Dimitri’s face, worried and desolate, that is at the forefront of my vision. He leans over me, bracing one of my shoulders while I cough up the neverending stream of seawater that seems to have filled every pore, every crevice, every vein in my body.

Finally the coughing ceases, at least for the moment, and Dimitri gathers me in his arms and pulls me to his wet chest.

“I’m sorry,” I say. There is no question that I am to blame. I do not remember everything, but the bizarre creature that pulled me into the water and my own naiveté are things I will not soon forget.

He shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse and gruff. “I should have been watching… should have been paying more attention.”

I am too drained to argue. I wrap my arms around him and press my wet body to his.

Luisa kneels next to me, her face as worried as I have ever seen it. “Are you all right, Lia? One moment I was sound asleep, and the next thing I knew, your feet were disappearing into the sea!”

“It was a kelpie.” Dimitri says it as if it is the most realistic thing in the world instead of a creature found in books on ancient mythology. “Probably doing the Souls’ bidding just as the Hounds did in the wood. They want to stop you from reaching Altus and the missing pages.”

Luisa begins pulling objects from her bag. “You’re both shivering! You’ll catch your death!”

Even in my current state, I manage to find irony in her exclamation, but I am grateful for the blankets she produces first from her knapsack and then from Edmund’s. Dimitri wraps me in one, putting the other around his own shoulders before leaning back against the side of the boat and pulling me against him.

Luisa, satisfied that we are, at least for the moment, safe and well, moves back to her original seat. Edmund takes up his position next to Sonia, who looks as if she hasn’t moved during the entire episode. It is only then that I really see him. His face does not look right. It is as if he has aged ten years in
the time since I last saw him, his features twisted by fear and anguish and desolation. I know immediately why it is so, and my heart wrenches with guilt.

Edmund has already lost one child to the water. Henry may not have been Edmund’s own in the traditional sense, but there can be no doubt that he loved my brother as a son. Losing him nearly ruined Edmund, and now I have brought him back to that place… that terrifying place where anything, no matter how precious, can be taken without notice or apology.

I know I should say something. Make amends for the worry I have caused. But I cannot find the words, and my throat closes with regret. I meet his eyes and hope he knows.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You are the one who saved me?”

I am leaning against Dimitri’s chest. Even with the blankets and the warmth from Dimitri’s body, I am so cold that I no longer fear falling asleep. I do not think my body could relax enough to drift into slumber even if it were possible.

He does not answer right away, and I know he is trying to decide how much to tell me. Those moments under the sea are lost to me. I have only vague remembrances of infinite darkness, shadowy figures, and finally, a strange light that illuminated the blackness in the moment before I thought I was dead.

But it
was
Dimitri. That much is clear from his soaking
wet clothing and hair. I want to understand it. To understand
him
.

His chest rises behind me as he gathers breath to answer. “Yes. I exercised my authority over the creature as one of the Grigori.”

“You have such authority?”

“I do.” He pauses. “But I am not supposed to use it.”

I twist in his arms to look at his face. “What do you mean?”

He sighs. “I am not supposed to intervene in the path of the prophecy. I am not supposed to aid you at all, actually. I’ve been walking a fine line, and doing it within the boundaries of the Grigori’s law, I believe, by helping you stay awake, by acting as an escort to Altus. Even with the Hounds I did not, technically, intervene. They stepped aside of their own accord when they saw that I was with you.”

I hear something unspoken in his hesitation. “But there is more, isn’t there?”

“It’s nothing for you to fret about, Lia. I don’t want you to worry over a decision I made and would make again if given the opportunity. Not coming after you was simply not an option. Would never be an option.”

I touch his face. His skin is cold under my fingertips. “But we are in this together, aren’t we? Now more than ever.”

He hesitates before nodding.

“Whatever you face because of your intervention, you will not face it alone if I can help it.”

“I crossed a very real line by going after you. I used magic… magic that is forbidden in the physical world, to
render the kelpie powerless. Its strength, while greater than that of a mortal, is still considerably less than that of the Grigori. And many of the Sisters as well. In fact, you would have been able to escape yourself if you had undergone a bit more training. Your powers are considerable as well, though still undeveloped.”

I know that it has little to do with the subject at hand, but I cannot help feeling indignant. I have, after all, been refining my power for months.

“I am not as well versed in the use of my gifts as you, but I think I have done fairly well developing my skills these past months.”

He tips his head. “But you have not developed them on your own. Not really. Have you?”

I do not understand the point he is making at first, but when I do, when the realization dawns, it is with true horror. “Sonia. I have been training with Sonia.” I shake my head, as if my protestation will render his claim invalid. “But she was fine. She was fine until we entered the wood.”

He tucks a piece of my hair, ropey and stiff with salt, behind my ear. “Was she?” He takes a deep breath. “Lia, the Souls did not gain control over Sonia in one night. It was probably a progression of sorts.”

I turn so that my back is once again against his chest. I do not want him to see the mixture of sadness and anger and disbelief that I know is reflected in my face. “You think Sonia has been under the influence of the Souls for some time.”

It is not a question, but he answers anyway. “I think it is
more likely than the alternative, don’t you? That perhaps her alliance with the Souls began by subtle suggestion, maybe even disguised as someone other than who they are?”

“But… that would mean…” I cannot finish.

Dimitri does it for me. “It would mean that perhaps Sonia did not help you fully tap the power that is yours, either by accident or by choice.” He shrugs. “For instance, did you know that you are a Spellcaster like your sister? It will take time to develop your power, but it is there. You can be sure of it. And I imagine Sonia knew it was there as well.”

I cannot meet his eyes, though I am not surprised by the revelation. I don’t know why I should feel ashamed, for it is Sonia who has betrayed our cause. It is Sonia who has betrayed me. I only know that I feel terribly naive.

And now everything falls into place, however much I wish it would not.

Sonia, under the influence of the Souls, has been aiding me in developing my power
just enough
. Just enough so that I would believe I was getting stronger. Would believe I had a fighting chance. Just enough so that I would not seek more. Would not believe there
was
more. Her insistence that we travel the Plane together in the name of my safety was in fact a desire to know every move I made on behalf of the prophecy. Her worry over pushing myself too hard was instead simply concern over the too-swift development of my power.

When I remember her mad insistence that I wear the medallion, it hardly matters whether her betrayal began by choice or by deception. It is very clear how it ended.

I begin to tremble. Not with fear. Not with sadness. No. With pure, unbridled fury. I cannot even look at Sonia’s slumped figure at the front of the boat, for fear I will lunge at her and knock her over the side.

My anger, no, my
rage
, frightens me. At the same time, I thrill in its power, though I don’t dare analyze what that says about how much I have changed. Never have I felt such wrath. Not even for my sister. Perhaps it is because I have always feared Alice. Have always known I could not fully trust her, though it took many years to admit that, even to myself.

But Sonia… Sonia was different. Her purity, her innocence, made me believe in goodness. It made me believe there was hope. Somehow, the destruction of that hope angers me more than any other betrayal.

Dimitri rubs my shoulders with his hands. “It is not her, Lia. Not really. You know that.”