Belladonna

  “I can’t go back to the village,” Michael said with strained patience.

  “Tch.”

  Glorianna glanced at her mother and saw Nadia’s lips twitch as they both realized they’d made the same sound of annoyance.

  “If nothing else, you’ll need to go with him to Dunberry and show him what’s to be done,” Nadia said.

  “Agreed,” Glorianna replied. “But it was a place called Foggy Downs that the Magician asked me to see.”

  Sebastian swore again.

  She saw Michael wince and shift his weight as if he’d like to put some distance between himself and her cousin but didn’t quite dare.

  “It takes a couple of days to get from Dunberry to Foggy Downs,” Michael said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Sebastian said, staring at the plate in front of him. “Not from the waterhorses’ landscape.”

  Glorianna sat back. “So what aren’t the two of you telling the rest of us?” When they didn’t answer, she added, “I can send a command through the currents of power so that every time it rains you end up stepping in a puddle and getting your feet soaked.”

  Sebastian gave her a puzzled—and sulky—look. Michael huffed out a breath and said, “Ah, now, Glorianna. That’s an unkind bit of ill-wishing.”

  “You can do that?” Teaser asked, looking at Michael.

  “I’ve never done that particular thing,” Michael muttered. Then added reluctantly, “Well, not often anyway.”

  “The point is, gentlemen, we understand each other,” Glorianna said. Then she waited.

  “There’s a bridge outside of Dunberry,” Michael said. “Most times if you cross it, you’ll keep going up the road to Kendall. But sometimes when you cross the bridge, there is no road, just open country, and soon enough a pretty black horse will come trotting up to greet you. There have been enough fools who have thrown a leg over one of those pretty horses. A few have gotten no more than a dunking and found their way home. Most end up drowned. Some are never found or seen again.”

  “Koltak mentioned those places,” Sebastian said. “Dunberry. Foggy Downs.”

  “Koltak?” Michael asked. “He was someone from here who crossed over to Elandar?”

  “My father. Wizard Koltak.” Sebastian spat out the words as if they were bitter gristle. “When he crossed over from Wizard City, intending to find me in the Den, he ended up in the waterhorses’ landscape instead. A few weeks before that, when I had gone to Wizard City to report the murders in the Den, I ended up in the waterhorses’ landscape too, when I crossed a bridge to get away from that thrice-cursed city. I walked a few hours before meeting a waterhorse that was willing to give me a ride without tricks.”

  “The Eater had killed one of them,” Glorianna said. “It was scared.”

  Sebastian nodded. “Didn’t take that long to reach the border and cross over to the Den. But Koltak wandered through that landscape for days trying to find the Den, and ended up going to Dunberry and Foggy Downs.”

  Michael nodded. “Would have taken him some time to go from one place to the other, even on horseback.”

  “The point is, he was able to reach both from the waterhorses’ landscape.”

  “Are there waterhorses around Foggy Downs?” Glorianna asked Michael.

  “Sometimes,” he said. He looked at Sebastian. “You’re thinking going through the waterhorses’ landscape would be a shortcut to Dunberry and Foggy Downs?”

  “Maybe,” Sebastian replied. “I just know Koltak ended up in those places while he was looking for the Den.”

  “The Eater of the World is out there in Elandar,” Lee said, bracing his hands on either side of his plate. “We know that. Creating the bridge between Aurora and Darling’s Harbor was risky enough since that provides a way in to both your landscapes.” He tipped his head to indicate Nadia and Glorianna. “Creating a bridge between—”

  “A resonating bridge,” Glorianna said, interrupting him. “In the waterhorses’ landscape. And you could create a couple of one-shot bridges Michael could carry with him that would get him back—”

  “Here,” Sebastian said, interrupting her. “That would get him back to the Den.”

  “A wise choice,” Yoshani said. “I agree.”

  “All right,” Glorianna said. “One-shot bridges that would get Michael back to the Den if I need to return to my island.”

  Lee didn’t look happy, but he nodded.

  Jeb pulled out a pocket watch and studied the time. “Still the shank of the evening in Aurora. Barely past dinnertime.”

  “In that case, let’s enjoy the food Philo provided,” Nadia said.

  Meeting adjourned, Glorianna thought as she picked at her food. Discussion ended. She would need to pack tonight, would need to consider what to carry.

  Tomorrow she would begin another stage of her journey.

  She tried not to wonder if she would ever return home.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Michael stared at the sand and stone that scarred the rolling green land. “That isn’t right. That doesn’t belong here. Did that…Eater…do this?”

  “No,” Glorianna said, her voice as dry as the sand. “I did.” She swung off the demon cycle, then shrugged out of her pack and set it on the ground before moving closer to the sand.

  “Why?” Michael asked. Either she didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him, so he swung off the demon cycle he was riding and shrugged out of his pack too. Since he had his full pack with all his gear, he didn’t see any reason to be clanking and clanging while he tried to talk to the woman.

  “Careful,” Sebastian warned.

  Not sure if the warning was meant as a caution about approaching the sand or Glorianna, Michael took care as he got closer to both.

  “So,” Michael said. “Is this like the sandbox?”

  “No, this is a desert.” She studied the sand and stones, then nodded as if satisfied.

  “So if someone steps onto the sand…”

  “They cross over to that landscape.”

  Wasn’t much of a landscape, Michael thought as he took a step closer. Some stones and sand and…Was that the remains of a horse’s head?

  “So you step over the stones and end up in a desert. Then you step back over to this…” Part of the world, he finished silently as it occurred to him that he was looking at a piece of the world far away from anything he knew.

  “The stones form the border here in the waterhorses’ landscape,” Glorianna said. “They don’t exist in the desert landscape.”

  Michael frowned. “Then how do you know where to cross over to get back here?”

  “You don’t get back here, Magician. That was the point of altering the landscape.”

  He stared at her.

  Glorianna huffed out a breath. “The Eater had formed an access point for the death rollers in the pond that existed here. I closed it once after Sebastian told me about the waterhorse being killed, but a dark heart passed this place often enough to allow the Eater to restore the access point. So I altered the landscape, changing the pond and the surrounding land to desert and stone. Even if the Eater manages to keep the access point open from Its landscape, the death rollers will cross over into a desert where they can’t survive.” She turned back toward the demon cycles.

  Michael looked at Sebastian and Lee, then at Glorianna. “Did none of you think to post a sign?”

  She spun back to face him and threw her hands up. “To say what? ‘Dangerous landscape, do not cross over’?”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing,” Lee said, “would anyone in your part of the world understand what that meant? Or pay attention even if they did?”

  Lee had a point. If a man landed himself in this part of Elandar and was dumb enough to ride a waterhorse, he was dumb enough to ignore a sign and end up in a desert with no food or water—and no way back.

  “For another,” Glorianna said, “waterhorses can’t read, so there’s no point posting a sign for them, and it’s u
nlikely anyone will get this far into their landscape without encountering one of them.”

  As if her words were a signal, four waterhorses came over a low rise and headed toward them. Their black coats shone in the morning sunlight and their manes lifted with the air stirred by their movement. Trotting in unison, they were gorgeous, and even though he knew better, he felt a keen desire to ride one.

  They stopped. No words were spoken, but Michael heard the message just the same. Come with us. We’ll give you a better ride. And we’re prettier.

  He glanced at the demon cycles. One of them was licking its lips as it stared at the waterhorses.

  “No,” Glorianna said.

  He wasn’t sure who the “no” was meant for, but all the demons—horse and cycle—were suddenly doing the equivalent of scratching an elbow and trying to look innocent.

  “You four,” Gloriana said, pointing to the waterhorses. “Would you go into that?” She pointed at the sand.

  They shook their heads.

  “See?” she said to Michael. “They know better. Are you saying humans are dumber than waterhorses?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw four black heads bob up and down.

  Sebastian and Lee started coughing. Glorianna’s face turned red with the effort not to laugh. He stared at the ground, not wanting to be the one who had to explain to demons that he wasn’t laughing at them. Of course, he couldn’t say he was laughing with them either.

  “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.”