The tall figure stood before the bars for a few minutes, watching him in silence. Tommy was so wrapped up his own mental world he wasn’t aware of his presence.
“Tommy.”
The voice echoed emptily in the dank chamber. It was not a human sound.
Blinking, Tommy slowly looked up.
The thing standing outside his cell was human in shape, but not human in essence. Its face was pale, with translucent skin and seemingly bloodless flesh, and the bluish halo that the light-spheres cast down about its head and shoulders only made it look more eerie. Its eyes were black and empty.
The figure gestured. “Come here.”
Slowly, Tommy got up. His limbs were stiff after sitting in a cramped position for so long, and he was clearly less than enthusiastic about coming close to the visitor. He walked halfway across the chamber and then stopped.
“Do you know what I am?” the ghastly figure asked.
“A Shadowlord,” Tommy said hoarsely. “Your people run things here.” He’d picked up that much from comments made by the servants who brought him food. They never talked to him, but they talked to each other despite him. Like he didn’t exist.
That the spooky creature had authority here did not need to be explained. Power hung about him like a dark cloud, fearsome and compelling. The Shadowlord held out a sheaf of papers: pages from Tommy’s dream journal. “What are these?”
“Dreams. You told me to record them.”
“Barely legible. Incoherent in places. These are not the quality of what you produced before.”
Tommy shrugged stiffly, in the manner of someone who was so physically and emotionally exhausted that he no longer had the energy to care about anything. Inside, his heart was pounding. “It’s harder in this place.”
“Your duty is no different,” the Shadowlord said. “Your life will be spared as long as you are useful to us, and not a moment longer. Was that not made clear to you?”
He whispered it: “Yes, sir. It was.”
“Do you wish to die?”
“No, sir.”
“So the problem is not motive. What, then?”
Tommy hesitated, then looked anxiously at the shades surrounding him. The fear he was exuding was real enough, even if the source of it wasn’t quite what he was pretending. “The shades,” he whispered. “They show up in my dreams, whispering to me. It … it disturbs everything.”
The Shadowlord’s eyes narrowed. “You can hear the voices of the dead?”
Oh hell, Tommy thought. Was I not supposed to? “Sometimes,” he hedged. “Maybe it’s my imagination. I … I don’t know.”
“Can you make out what they say?”
He was aware that he was totally out of his depth, lost in a nameless mine field. There was no safe answer to give. So he just looked down at his feet in terrified silence and trembled. Let the undead bastard read into that whatever he wanted to.
There was silence for a moment. Then: “I do not think you are a dreamwalker.” The chill in his voice made Tommy’s skin crawl. “Some others believe that you are, but they have never met the dream-cursed. I have. I know how they think. You do not show the signs.”
Tommy’s heart skipped a beat. “The Seer said that I was one.”
“She said you had the potential to become one, nothing more. A thousand children with such potential are born every day, of which perhaps one will manifest the dreamer’s curse. If even one. The fact that we take in such children doesn’t mean we expect them to become dreamwalkers. It is simply a safeguard.”
It is simply a safeguard.
The dreamwalker Gift wasn’t something these people valued, Tommy realized suddenly. Not something they wanted him to manifest. It was something they wanted to isolate. To destroy. They were using him right now as a scientist would use a mouse in a lab, studying him in order to learn how to make a better mousetrap. That’s what the dream reports were all about.
If these people decided that he lacked the Gift, they would have no reason to keep him alive. That much he’d known all along. But even if he did have the Gift, he realized now, they would still kill him. As a “safeguard.”
There was no way out.
The empty eyes were fixed on him. Not an ounce of humanity in their depths.
“It’s the ghosts,” Tommy whispered hoarsely. Clinging to his original strategy like a lifeline, though it was rapidly fraying beneath his grasp. “They get into my dreams. It changes things.” He spread his hands helplessly.
The Shadowlord glanced down at the journal pages in his hand. Tommy held his breath. This plan had seemed clever enough when he’d come up with it, but now that he was putting it into action he could see gaping holes in it, a mile wide. Had this creature spotted them as well?
The Shadowlord looked at him. The empty eyes flashed green in the darkness, like a cat’s. Then he whispered something incomprehensible, breathing wordless sounds into the dank chamber. The spirits that had been hovering around Tommy left him, drawn to the pale creature as if to a magnet. Soon all the broken souls that were in the chamber were circling about the Shadowlord.
“Now there are no ghosts to distract you,” the creature said coldly. “I will read your next set of dreams tomorrow evening. If they lack the signs I’m looking for, this experiment will end. Do we understand each other?”
Tommy didn’t dare meet his eyes. “Yes, sir,” he whispered, looking down. “I understand.”
Then the Shadowlord turned and left the chamber without another word, ghostly soul fragments fluttering behind him. A moment later the entire retinue all passed out of Tommy’s sight, living and dead, and he heard the elevator carry them all away.
And he was alone. At last!
Reaching out with a trembling hand to a squat stalagmite nearby, he lowered himself slowly down onto it. His legs were so weak they could not have supported him a moment longer, and his chest was so tight he could hardly draw a breath. But … the ghosts were gone. He’d taken a terrible chance in order to get rid of them, but it had paid off in the end. No one was spying on him any more. And even more important, he’d proven that the Shadowlords weren’t omniscient. They could be fooled, just like anyone. There was some hope in that, right?
One more day, he reminded himself grimly. That’s all I have left, before this guy declares me a fraud.
Shutting his eyes, he drank in the wonderful silence, trying to transform it into hope.
26
NORTH RIVER
VIRGINIA PRIME
“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO destroy the Gate ,” I said.
Sebastian didn’t respond.
I was sitting in the boat with my legs stuck out straight in front of me, grateful to have a moment to stretch them while my traveling companions were answering the call of nature. Sebastian’s canoe was big enough for the five of us to travel in it, but once his equipment and provisions were packed inside it was a tight fit.
He’d served us a quick breakfast at daybreak—flatbread with honey, strips of smoked rabbit, surprisingly good coffee—and then we’d set off down the river. I’d been too nervous to eat much, and now the hunger pangs in my stomach were getting intense. But I still didn’t think I’d be able to keep anything down.
“That would be unspeakably dangerous,” he responded.
I looked at him sharply. “But you know how it could be done?”
Rita emerged from a thick clump of bushes some distance down the riverbank and started back toward us. The guys still weren’t visible. Which was pretty ironic, when you think about it. If Rita and I hadn’t been present they probably would have just pissed over the side of the boat, maybe even placed bets on who could shoot the furthest. But put two girls in the vicinity and suddenly they needed enough trees around them to reforest the Amazon.
If Rita heard our conversation, that was fine. Sooner or later I’d fill her and Devon in anyway. Isaac was another matter.
“You can’t use simple explosives,” Sebastian said. “That would onl
y destroy the physical arch. You’re talking about closing the portal itself, yes? Or at least making it harder to access?”
I nodded. “Is there a way to do that?”
Devon emerged from the woods. A moment later Isaac joined him. Sebastian lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“It won’t stop them, you know. There are other portals on Terra Colonna. If the Shadows want to come after you, they’ll find a way.”
“But what if they thought we were dead? Or lost somewhere in time or space? They don’t know that I have a codex, right? What would they expect to happen if we entered the Gate without one?”
“They’d expect you to be lost forever.” he whispered solemnly. He held up a hand to forestall any response; Isaac was getting too close now for us to talk privately.
Between the worlds. That’s what he meant. I remembered the chaos that had churned beneath my feet during my last dream. That was only a pale shadow of what we would have to deal with if we failed in our crossing. And we could wind up stuck in there forever.
Don’t think about the risk. You’ll go crazy if you do. Just deal with this step by step, and wherever that leads us, we’ll face it when we get there.
The canoe bobbed in the water as Rita and Isaac climbed inside, and I tucked in my legs to give them room. Devon resumed his station near the front of the canoe, ready to help Sebastian with the rowing. Yes, our tech geek knew how to paddle a canoe. Go figure. Meanwhile the little pterodactyl, who had followed us from camp, returned from its hunting expedition with a small struggling fish in its jaws. Settling down on my left shoulder, it held the prize in front of my face for a minute. I wasn’t sure if I was being invited to eat it, or if the pterodactyl just wanted me to admire its hunting prowess. A moment later it tipped its head back and flipped the fish neatly down its throat, making the question irrelevant.
I had the codex tucked into my bra and the map was in the back pocket of my jeans. I wanted those two things on me at all times, so that if anything separated us from our backpacks we’d still have access to them. I hoped that Isaac wouldn’t take note of the chain around my neck and ask what it was. It made me feel sick inside to distrust him, after all he’d done for us. You didn’t want to believe that someone who helped rescue your friends and led you through a network of sewers to safety would betray you. But Sebastian was right. We didn’t know anything about who Isaac really was, where he came from, or what he wanted. And there was way too much at stake here to take chances.
Of course he chose that moment to smile reassuringly at me, and my face flushed in guilt. I tried to smile back.
The river brought us to the King’s Canal, which cut straight across the valley, saving us from having to follow all the twists and turns of the river’s natural course. Even so, the trip took too long for my liking. I tried not to think about Tommy too much, because that only increased my anxiety. But the closer we got to Luray, the harder it was for me to think about anything else. I began to shift position so often in my restlessness that the pterodactyl finally squawked and fluttered away, perching on the edge of the canoe next to its master.
We’re coming for you, I promised my brother. Only a little while longer.
• • •
We dropped Isaac off just south of Luray. We had explained to him about how Tommy was our responsibility, not his, and we couldn’t ask him to help us break into a Shadowlord’s stronghold for the sake of a kid he hadn’t even met, and really, he’d be safer without us, since Hunters might still looking for us. But Isaac knew what was really going on. You could see it in his eyes. It hurt him, but he understood why it had to be that way. You could see that in his eyes, too.
I wanted a moment alone with him to say goodbye, to squeeze his hand and murmur something meaningful about the sunrise we’d shared and reassure him that in time the issues between him and his family would work themselves out. But circumstances were unobliging. As we approached the southern end of Luray, a few miles past the point where the canal and the river rejoined, Sebastian steered the canoe over toward some docks, and that’s where we said goodbye to him. We thanked him for his help, he wished us all good luck, and Sebastian offered him a bit of money to help him get home. Isaac hesitated, then took it. And that was it. Nothing I wanted to say to him would have sounded right in front of the others, and there was no way to go off with him alone without the others being suspicious. Or was I just worried about what Devon would think? It was hard not to be aware of him as I said goodbye to Isaac. Devon seemed to be relieved that Isaac was leaving, but was that because, like Sebastian, he didn’t trust him, or was there something more personal involved? As we got back into the canoe Devon put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. Was that for my benefit or Isaac’s?
As we pushed off into the river, Isaac caught my eye and held it for a moment. Then the current began to carry us away from him, and he turned away. Tucking the money into his pocket, he headed toward the city at a stiff trot. If he looked back at us again I didn’t see it.
Probably best that way.
• • •
Sebastian took us as far as he could by canoe, but once we passed into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the stream we were following became a series of rocky waterfalls, all flowing in the wrong direction, and he finally declared an end to our aquatic journey. We were close enough to the Shadows’ citadel that we could see it looming in the distance. Now that we knew more about who and what controlled it, it seemed ten times more ominous.
From here we would have to walk.
We had a last meal together by the side of the stream, rabbit jerky and breakfast bars washed down by bottled water. In between mouthfuls, Sebastian told us what little he knew about how the Gate worked. Apparently there were fetters embedded within the arch itself that served as locational markers, and that’s what a codex focused in on when you activated it. While that helped provide a bridge between worlds, he said that it was a shaky one at best, as unsteady as a rope bridge slung over a windy chasm. The fact that the breaches were constantly shifting meant they could never be stabilized perfectly, and Sebastian thought that if we destroyed the codex as we passed through the Gate, it might set off a chain reaction that would collapse the whole system.
He didn’t actually say chain reaction, of course. His own understanding of the matter was more metaphysical in nature, and he even referenced Purgatory at one point. But that’s what I derived from it.
Of course, to achieve this chain reaction, we’d have to be inside the arch itself. Generally it’s not a good idea to destroy a rope bridge while you’re still in the process of crossing it, so hopefully we could make it to the other side first. The alternative was just too scary to think about.
Devon had made copies of Sebastian’s map so that each of us could carry one. We’d gone over our intended route at least a dozen times, and identified several places inside Shadowcrest where we could meet up if anyone got separated from the group. I think we were more afraid of that possibility than we were of the Shadows themselves. To be isolated inside the enemy stronghold, facing all the horrors this world had to offer with no friends by your side, was the most terrible fate I could imagine. And it’s what Tommy is going through right now, I thought darkly.
Hopefully we would make it down to the prison level without running into anyone, but there was no guarantee of that. Which meant that we might have to fight. I tested that concept in my mind as I chewed on a stiff piece of rabbit jerky. Soon I might have to stab someone. I still wasn’t comfortable with the thought—or sure that I’d able to do it—but the mere suggestion of it wasn’t as shocking as it once had been. Journeying through this strange and callous world had hardened me, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Sebastian gave us two more things before we left him, fetters that he’d been wearing on his coat. One was a small silver charm with a symbol inscribed in it, that he called a stealth ward. He said that if we were seen by anyone it wo
uld help deflect suspicion.
“Is that what you used in the sewers?” Devon asked him.
Sebastian shook his head. “This one won’t blind a man to something that’s right in front of his face, only cause him to think that what he is looking at is of no concern. How well it works depends upon you. If you act as if there is no reason for people to be wary of you, this will help turn their attention away. But if you act in a manner that would normally raise an alarm, or go where no people should be, it will not be as effective.” It also had a finite charge, he warned, so we should save it for when we really needed it.
The second fetter was a disk of hammered brass with no markings at all. “This will open any lock,” he said, “but it can only be used once. Apply it judiciously.”
My hand trembled as I took it from him. For the first time in this misbegotten adventure I was beginning to feel a spark of real hope. We knew how to get to Tommy. We had a fetter to help us reach him safely, and a means of springing him from whatever prison he might be in. And we had a codex to help bring him home. All thanks to the Green Man.
Sebastian gave us Isaac’s glow lamp as well, and then handed me an envelope sealed with resin. “For you,” he said softly, “when you get home.”
When, not if. The choice of adjective brought grateful tears to my eyes. We can do this, I thought.
Parting from him was painful. With all he’d told me about his own family, and how Tommy’s rescue would provide him with personal redemption, I wondered if he might not offer to come with us in the end. I prayed that he would. His quiet and confident spirit had provided an anchor of sanity in this crazy world, and I wasn’t sure how well we would do without him. But you could see in his eyes when he looked up at the citadel that such a course would be unbearable. Whatever tortures he had endured in that place had left his soul deeply scarred, and return was unthinkable. So we all just hugged him, one after the other, and when it was my turn I held him so tightly that eventually he chuckled softly and had to pry me loose. As he did so my eyes met his, and the depths of pain that I sensed behind his gaze made my heart ache in sympathy.