Belladonna

  Glorianna shook her head. Let them go.

  She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.

  Ephemera, hear me.

  “I cast out the Light from this land that is bound to me. I cast out the Light from my heart. I deny all things that come from the Light. I repel all feelings that come from the Light. They have no place in this landscape. They have no place in this heart. I cast out the Light.”

  “Something’s happening,” Lee said as he stared at the outside walls of the school. “The resonance is changing, but…”

  Michael watched Lee. Drifted a little closer. Yoshani and Jeb probably wouldn’t act fast enough. Sebastian and Teaser would.

  “Guardians and Guides,” Lee gasped. “The landscape is getting darker. It’s getting darker.”

  The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup, Michael thought, feeling his heart ache as he drifted a little closer to Lee.

  “I cast out the Light from this land that is bound to me. I cast out the Light from my heart.”

  Ephemera, obey me!

  “I can feel her resonance,” Lee said, turning back toward his island. “I think I can still get in, still get her out.”

  No, you can’t, Michael thought.

  He threw himself on Lee, ramming into Sebastian as he and Lee hit the ground. They rolled, scrabbled, kicked. He’d gotten his arms around Lee and was holding on since he didn’t want this to turn into a vicious brawl, and there was no question that it would turn vicious if Lee managed to shake him off.

  Teaser jumped into it and got his legs knocked out from under him, half landing on both of them as they continued to roll and getting elbowed in the head with enough force to take him out of the fight.

  Michael kicked out at someone and heard an angry female squeal in response. He’d pay for that kick. He surely would. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. The surprise of the attack had worked in his favor, but all Sebastian needed to do was grab hold long enough to use that wizard magic and the fight would end.

  More than the fight would end.

  Wild child! he called. Now. Now!

  “I cast out the Light from this land that is bound to me. I cast out the Light from my heart.”

  Ephemera, obey me! Do this for me and for everyone I love! Now. Now!

  Something happening. Strange resonances in the currents. What was she doing to Its landscapes?

  The ground thickened until It couldn’t flow through It in Its natural form. So It changed into the middle-aged gentleman and began to run toward the part of the school that now pulsed with potential, possibility, change.

  Lee got one arm free, flailed a moment, then reached back and grabbed Michael’s hair, yanking hard enough to tear scalp. Sebastian grabbed at both of them but lost his balance when the ground suddenly crested like a wave beneath his feet. Michael rolled, bringing Lee partway under him, pressing Lee’s left forearm to the ground at the same moment a rib of stone pushed up from the earth—and Sebastian fell on top of them.

  Bone snapped. Lee cried out.

  “I cast out the Light!” Glorianna shouted. “I cast out the Light! I cast out the Light!”

  A tearing inside her. A pain beyond anything she could have imagined. Dark and Light. Two halves of a whole. One could not exist without the other.

  But it could. And it did.

  She roared through the landscape that had once been the Landscapers’ School, changing it. Twisting it until the place reflected the resonance that was her. Until it reflected nothing but her sublime cruelty and held nothing but the Dark.

  “It’s gone!” Lynnea shouted. “The school is gone!”

  Michael shuddered. He’d heard the music. Beautifully twisted. Vibrantly terrible. A glorious song of malevolence.

  Travel lightly, Glorianna Belladonna.

  He had kept his promises to her, had fulfilled his duties to the world. Because of that, the woman he loved no longer existed.

  It was Jeb who pulled him to his feet and looked ready to beat him half to death. And it was Nadia who stepped between them and just stared at him, silently asking for an explanation he didn’t want to give.

  “She cast out the Light,” he said, speaking to Nadia, although he knew the rest of them were listening. “In the story, in order to save the world and everything she loves, the Warrior casts out the Light and embraces the Dark.”

  “What does she become?” Nadia asked.

  He didn’t want to tell her. Vowed, in that moment, that he never would tell her the story, that he would hide the book and keep it hidden until the day came when the story was, once again, nothing more than a story.

  “What does she become?” Nadia asked again.

  “She becomes a monster,” he said, his voice dulled by sorrow. “She becomes the thing that Evil fears.”

  There was a time, in the days of old, when Evil walked in the world.

  When Evil ruled the world.

  One by one, It destroyed the Light in people’s hearts, making them slaves to the Dark.

  The people who eluded It cried out in fearful desperation. “A champion,” they cried. “We need a champion to save the Light.”

  Now, there was one among them who saw what could be done. Might be done. Must be done. So she commanded the people to build a huge maze, a labyrinth, a tangle of paths and hiding places. And then, when they had done all she had commanded them to do, they built a wall around the place—a wall so high and jagged that nothing could climb it and escape.

  When all the preparations were done and everything was ready, the woman slipped into the maze and challenged Evil. “I am the warrior who defends the Light, and I will free the people enslaved in the Dark.”

  Evil, hearing the challenge, followed the woman into the maze, followed her through the secrets of the labyrinth, searched for her along the tangled paths and in the hiding places. And while Evil followed the Warrior of Light, the people sealed the entrance so that nothing could escape.

  When the last stone was in place and the wall was unbroken, the woman faced her enemy and said, “Because I love, I stand here. Because I love, I will stay here. I cast out the Light and bind you to me. I cast out the Light and become your dwelling place. I cast out the Light that lives within me and will walk in this Dark place forever!”

  The woman’s heart ripped in two. The Light burst out of the maze and flowed through the world, freeing the people who had been enslaved in the Dark.

  Seeing the Light and knowing Evil had been defeated, the people who had followed the woman stood outside the high, jagged wall and cheered and cheered.

  Then they realized the terrible truth.

  By casting out the half of her heart that held the Light, the woman had become something worse than the Evil that had plagued them. She had become a monster that Evil feared. And the people understood then that the walls had been built so jagged and so high because the woman, who had been Light’s Warrior, had become something too fearsome to live among them.

  So they wept for the loss of the Warrior, and they cherished the Light to the end of their days. But even though they never forgot her, no one went back to that walled-in maze to offer company or comfort to the monster that Evil feared.

  —Elandar story

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rage stormed through her landscapes. Raindrops, thick as pus and stinking of decayed dreams, splatted on ground cracked by desperation. Death rollers choked and drowned when freshwater ponds suddenly changed to the boiling mud of fury—or were frozen by bone-chilling indifference. Bonelovers, pouring out of their mounds in search of prey, found themselves swimming in the acid of disappointment, and even as they climbed over each other in their desperation to get back to safety, the acid ate through their carapaces, dissolving their bodies as they crawled. The Wizards’ Hall was now an island trapped by a piece of sea, and the Dark Guides, who had relished being the whispers that had dimmed the Light in people’s hearts, now prowled the corridors throughout the nights, haunted by the v
oices of men calling for help, calling for mercy. Just calling. The voices of doomed men, already dead. And in the morning, when there was a morning, the Dark Guides would gather and look at the empty places at the tables. When they checked the rooms of those missing companions, they would find the carpets soaked with seawater—and there would be more voices in the night, calling. Just calling.

  She walked these 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.

  As the weeks passed, the Light, that part of herself that had been called Glorianna, became nothing more than a wispy dream of a fading memory, a sometimes-aching scar.

  Here, now, there was Belladonna.

  Only Belladonna.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The land bloomed with the promise of spring, but winter still lived in Michael’s heart.

  He’d kept his promise—for the most part. He’d learned from Nadia how to take that step between here and there so that he could use the access points in his little piece of the garden to reach his landscapes instead of traveling like he used to. He considered the rest of the walled garden on the Island in the Mist another place in his circuit and wandered the paths, playing the songs he heard in each access point to a landscape. Shoring up the bedrock, that’s all he was doing, but the tunes were starting to shift nonetheless. Maybe they were meant to, but he would hold on to them for as long as he could.

  He spent a day on each circuit within the walled garden. But he never stepped beyond that. Never went past the gate and up to the house that was now his—the home he had yearned for. Still yearned for. Nadia grew impatient with him sometimes because of it, but his self-imposed exile was the only reason Lee could tolerate dealing with him when they had to meet for business.

  Since the Eater of the World was caged again, and it was safe once more to connect landscapes, Lee had done his duty as Bridge and created a stationary bridge that connected the Island in the Mist to Sanctuary. From Sanctuary, another stationary bridge connected to Aurora, the Den, and Darling’s Harbor, giving him easy access to his family and the places Glorianna would have wanted him to be able to visit.

  Not that he ever used the bridge that led to Sanctuary. It was within sight of the house—and within sight of the bed of turned earth that held the piece of granite and the heart’s hope that was his heart’s symbol for home.

  Putting the bridge there, where he would be reminded of what Glorianna had given him every time he used it, was a piece of calculated cruelty on Lee’s part—payback for a broken arm and a lost sister. He understood that well enough.

  So he did his duty to the world and played his tunes while his heart froze in a winter that would never end.

  There was no Light.

  At first, It had felt gleeful that the surviving currents of Light within the school had been so diminished that they were little more than starved threads, easily snuffed out. It had reveled in the despair and anger that had flowed from the surviving humans in Wizard City, as well as gulping down the fear that had flowed from the Dark Guides.

  But the glee had faded with the Light’s currents. It found no pleasure in the dark landscapes. It took no satisfaction from the knowledge that the True Enemy was trapped within Its landscapes. It had come to realize that It, too, was trapped. With her.

  So It felt no glee, no pleasure, no satisfaction. The feelings that fed, and were fed by, the Light were snuffed out almost before they could form.

  But It did know fear. It crossed the rust-colored sand of the bonelovers’ landscape and found mounds of half-dissolved carcasses. It discovered death rollers impaled on the branches of thorn trees, hanging in the sun like some obscene, rotting fruit. And It watched humans, gathered in hunting parties for safety, grimly butchering one of those death rollers before the meat spoiled.

  When It rested, images crept into Its mind. Nasty dreams about Its fluid, natural form becoming stiff as leather; no longer able to flow beneath the skin of the world; just barely able to hump over the surface, defenseless and exposed. Or It would get stuck in the transformation between one shape and the other, stuck between a land creature and a sea creature, unable to live in either landscape, gasping to survive. Or It would change into the middle-aged gentleman, but the body would divide at the waist, becoming the gentleman and one of the female prey. Sometimes the gentleman had a knife, sometimes claws. Either way It would rip and tear Its prey, screaming in pain because It ripped and tore into Itself.

  This was Its purpose. This was why the Dark Guides long ago had shaped It from the darkest desires of the human heart and brought It into the world: to destroy the Light. But…

  It didn’t like the Dark. Not this much Dark, where there was no hope of a successful hunt, where the human hearts were already so dulled by despair they couldn’t hear It—and didn’t care when they did.

  The Light was gone. It should be happy. But happy belonged to the Light, so the feeling withered before it bloomed.

  It didn’t like this landscape. And It was afraid of the thing that walked in the Dark because she could sense Its wishes as swiftly as It could make the wish—and destroyed the manifestation of that wish the moment after It realized It had gotten what It had asked for.

  No, It didn’t like this much Dark. This wasn’t what It wanted. This place was too cold, too barren, too bitter. Too lonely.

  World? It whispered. Ephemera? Where is the Light?

  Its only answer was Belladonna’s cruel, mocking laughter.

  The Eater of the World craved Light. Wasn’t that delicious?

  She could feel those tiny threads inside It. A flaw on the part of the Dark Guides who had brought It into being so long ago. It enjoyed snuffing out the feelings that came from the Light, but It also needed those feelings for Itself.

  The Eater of the World was a flawed creation. Unlike her, who walked pure and undiminished in the Dark.

  And if her chest ached so fiercely at times that she wondered why there was no deep, violent scar carved in her flesh, well, that didn’t matter because she no longer remembered what she had lost.

  You won’t find the answer to whatever pains your heart at the bottom of a bottle, Michael, Shaney had said.

  You’re not doing yourself or the world any good, Magician, Kenneday had said. Go somewhere your heart can find peace.

  Michael sat on a stone bench and watched the koi in their pond. Find peace. Well, there was no better place to find it than Sanctuary, was there?

  It always came as a jolt to realize he had known her for no more than a double handful of days. Oh, he dreamed of her for longer than that, but he hadn’t known the woman for more than that short span of time.

  So much had happened in those too few days.

  My heart’s hope lies with Belladonna. Her darkness is my fate.

  Too few days. But he would spend the rest of his life living in her shadow.

  “It has been quite some time since you visited here,” Yoshani said, sitting down on the bench.

  “Haven’t been in tune with the place, have I?” Michael replied, not caring about the bitterness that flowed through his words.

  “Perhaps you haven’t wanted to be in tune with the place,” Yoshani said gently. “Perhaps now you are starting to heal.” He paused, then added, “They understand, Michael. It hurt them—hurt all of us—but we had known Glorianna would stand against the Eater of the World and, most likely, not survive.”

  “They don’t understand—and they haven’t forgiven.” Michael turned his head and looked at Yoshani. “Nadia has forgiven, as much as she can, but not Lee. Not Sebastian. What happened to Glorianna was no clean death, no peaceful ending. She cast out all the things that belong to the Light—joy and kindne
ss, compassion and love. Hope. She wears a coat of misery, makes a bed out of despair, and drinks sorrow. And the forces of darkness must sit at the table she has made from the bones of their kin and weep bitter tears over the banquet she has set before them.”

  A long pause. Then Yoshani said, “Those words do not come from the story about the Warrior of Light.” He smiled when Michael narrowed his eyes. “You left the box of books with Caitlin Marie. She showed me the story. Your words tell me you have given that dark place, and the woman who walks there, much thought.”

  “So what if I have?” He hadn’t dreamed about her once since she disappeared into that dark place. Some mornings he woke up weeping because he didn’t even have that much of her anymore.

  “There is something I have wondered.”

  Yoshani fixed his gaze on the koi pond. That avoidance of meeting another person’s eyes caught Michael’s attention as nothing else could.

  “What happened to the Light?” Yoshani asked softly. “In the story, it is dispersed through the world. But I have also heard about the dark landscape that was created when the Dark was cast out of Lighthaven. So I wondered what happened to the other half of Glorianna’s heart. Was her Light dispersed through her landscapes or is it—”

  Michael sprang to his feet and took a few steps before realizing he had moved.

  He’d asked Ephemera to keep the Light safe. Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. He had accepted the tragic ending of the Warrior of Light. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that it was just a story? And stories could be changed.

  Wild child? he called, hardly daring to breathe. Wild child? Do you know how to find Glorianna’s Light? yes yes yes

  Faint notes carried on the air. A song he thought he would never hear again—the bright part of the music that was Glorianna Belladonna.