Authors: Anne Bishop
Denys glanced at Lee, but Danyal shook his head to indicate now wasn’t the time to ask about Zhahar.
“We told them that Lee had run off with one of the Handlers,” Denys continued. “Said we weren’t sure when they’d slipped away from the Asylum, because things were in a bit of a twist with the Shaman missing and all. They were wicked mad to find out Lee wasn’t there to be plucked up and taken away, but they left. What else could they do?”
“They sent Clubs after us,” Lee said. “Maybe that’s why it took so long before they returned to the Asylum. No reason to until they received word that we’d gotten away.”
“Guess so,” Denys said. “Had some warning, though. Not much, but enough to save some inmates.” He knuckled away a tear. “We saved some.”
“What kind of warning?” Danyal asked softly.
“Stinkweed and turd plants.” Denys’s face scrunched up even as he
smiled. “Stuff began sprouting everywhere. The stink was so bad you couldn’t get away from it. That’s when Nik realized he hadn’t smelled any of that stinkweed lately except when those two uncles showed up, so it had to be a warning. Meddik Benham had taken some inmates to the little temple, because ringing the wind chimes made them calmer, so Nik ran to warn Meddik while I gathered the people who had been working in the gardens.
“I was out with a dozen inmates, close to the gate that opens onto that weedy park, when I saw those two men heading for the main building with a couple dozen men carrying clubs or knives.
“Our guards came out to challenge them and…” Denys took a sip of water. “Those men raised their hands, and the guards were struck by lightning. Killed that fast. Just…that fast. Then inmates were pouring out of the residence and running in all directions. Helpers and Handlers were being clubbed again and again even after they fell. The gate was there and I had the keys, so I made a choice to save those I could.
“Couple of the Clubs saw me as I was pushing the last inmate through the gate. Wasn’t time to lock it behind me, so I ran.” Denys shook his head slowly, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d seen and even less sure he’d be believed. “Wasn’t time to lock the gate, but when I looked back, the opening was filled with thorny vines that no one could cut through easily.
“Kept everyone together and moving as best I could, taking alleyways and the more winding streets. Got far enough from the Asylum to risk going back to the main road. Had some luck there, since I spotted some city guards close to the stop for the omnibus. I told them the Asylum was under attack and that I was heading for The Temples to inform the Shamans. One of the guards wrote a travel pass for me and the inmates, allowing us to use any conveyance at the city’s expense.
“Took the better part of two days to get here,” Denys finished with a sigh. “Don’t expect there will be much left of the Asylum.”
Or the people?
Danyal wondered.
“No one feels easy about the Asylums,” the Knife said, “but the city guards wouldn’t back off and leave the people there under attack. And my guild keeps places on shadow streets all over the parts of the city that we
can see. As soon as word reached them that the Asylum was under attack, they would have joined forces with the city guards. For this, they would.”
“Until the darkness filling the Asylum changed it so that the men coming to help could no longer see the place,” Danyal said.
“And those already inside that darkness would be facing wizards’ lightning as well as familiar weapons,” Sebastian said.
Michael looked at Glorianna. “If these wizards changed the feel of the place so much that no one can get in, can those ripe-bastard wizards get out without the help of someone like a Bridge or Landscaper?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Danyal heard the words and wondered if anyone else had heard the lie.
A
nger burned in him, hot and fierce, until it consumed everything except itself.
Danyal slipped out of the building that housed visiting Shamans and other guests. Everyone else was asleep now, and in the deep hours of night, no one would notice his absence.
He understood now how the wizards and their hired weapons had changed shadow places into places too dark for the Shamans to see. They had spilled innocent blood, killed the young, the old, the ones who couldn’t defend themselves. One death creates a shadow. A dozen lives taken at the same time? Darkness.
Like shadows, darkness also came in many shades.
He put on his plain white robe. As a Shaman, he was the voice of the world.
The world had many voices.
Avalanche. Earthquake.
Danyal walked away from the buildings.
Hurricane. Tidal wave.
In the city of Vision, if you can find only what you can see, can you also see what you truly want to find
, need
to find?
“Ephemera,” he whispered. “It’s Voice-guide. I need your help.”
???
He closed his eyes and pictured the Asylum, pictured the open ground between the inmates’ residence and the reflecting pool. “I need to go back to the Asylum. I need to reach this place. Can you help me?”
He caught a whiff of stinkweed. “I know, but I have to go there.”
The smell got stronger. Danyal opened his eyes and saw a patch of sparse grass smeared with dark stains. He swallowed hard as he considered what he was about to embrace—and what he would have to leave behind.
Then he stepped onto the patch of sparse grass that was the temporary access point to the Asylum.
“Lee.” His name whispered, followed by a pause. “Lee!”
He could have—and would have—continued to ignore the whisper, but not the thump on the shoulder that followed.
“Daylight, Glorianna,” he muttered. “Why don’t you bother the Magician? You wouldn’t even have to get out of bed to do it.”
“He offered, but I need you,” she replied, giving his shoulder another thump.
Knowing a third thump from Glorianna would be hard enough to leave bruises, he propped himself up on one elbow. “What if I’d had company?”
“She could go back to sleep. You need to get up and come with me.”
“Where?”
“The Asylum.”
“That’s not a good idea. The wizards and Dark Guide might still be there.”
“If they aren’t there now, they will be.”
Some change in her voice told him he was no longer talking to Glorianna. “Why?”
“Voice of the world,” Belladonna said with a kind of dreamy viciousness
that made Lee shiver. “Someone who speaks for the world touches the Dark as well as Light. In his fury over what happened at the Asylum, Danyal is reaching out to touch dark currents that shouldn’t be touched.”
“The Eater’s landscapes?”
“Belladonna’s landscape.”
Swearing, Lee flung the sheet aside and nudged her out of the way, glad he hadn’t stripped down completely when he dropped into bed earlier.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure if that was Belladonna or Glorianna asking, but the answer was the same. “At this point, I probably can find things in the dark better than you can.”
He could almost feel her annoyed shrug.
“All right, then. I’ll—” A thump.
“Glorianna?”
“I found the door.”
He shoved his feet into his shoes and rammed his arms into the short sleeves of a shirt. “Let’s go.”
“Glasses,” she said.
He patted the side table until he found the dark glasses. Slipping them into the shirt’s pocket, he joined her at the door.
They moved through the hallways quickly and quietly, not out of stealth but out of the habit of trying not to disturb other people.
Outside, Lee called to the island—and breathed a sigh of relief when he stretched out his hand and felt the familiar bark of one of the trees. Keeping one hand on the tree, he reached back with the other and stepped onto the island, bringing Glorianna with him.
“I’m not sure how to guide us to the Asylum,” he said. “My eyesight wasn’t good most of the time I was there.”
“Don’t see with your eyes, Bridge. See with your heart.”
He nodded to indicate he understood. Not the early days of his time at the Asylum, but those last few days when he walked the paths and had regained a measure of independence, when his Bridge’s gift had helped some inmates travel to the places their hearts called home.
At the last moment, just as he felt the island begin to resonate in a way
that indicated it was about to shift, he hesitated—and the island remained within the Shaman’s compound.
“Are we going to the Asylum to stop Danyal from doing whatever he intended to do?”
“No,” Belladonna replied. Then Glorianna added, “We’re going to help him with what comes after whatever choice he made.”
The dead had been left out, exposed to heat, insects, and carrion eaters.
Inmates, Helpers, Handlers, Asylum guards and city guards, shadowmen from the assassins’ guild. Whoever had entered the grounds didn’t make it out again. But they weren’t alone. There were plenty of men among the dead who looked like hired Clubs, so despite their damn lightning, the fight hadn’t been completely in the wizards’ favor.
The inmates’ residence and the building where he and Benham had living quarters had been burned to the ground. The two-room temple was gone. Just gone. Danyal didn’t try to enter any of the buildings that were still standing. He wandered the paths, alone among the dead.
When he finally stopped walking, he took a position in front of the burned residence, no longer a man. Not even a Shaman. Now he was merely the forge that would shape the weapon.
No caution now. No timidity about what he was going to do.
Danyal raised his arms shoulder high, his palms turned skyward.
“Ephemera,” he said in a voice that carried a thousand storms. “The men who did this, who violated the trust of the damaged hearts who lived here. The men who darkened this place with pain and blood. Bring them to me.
Bring all of them to me.
”
His fury, burning so hot and fierce, must have scared the world, because the ground beyond him changed, and as a two-story house appeared, it tipped and settled awkwardly, one corner of its foundation missing. Moments later, a brothel appeared, its sign swinging madly as the ground under it turned to mud from the water spilling out of broken pipes. Moments after that, he heard a man’s vicious cursing as an outdoor privy
appeared in the reflecting pool that now had more things fouling it than stagnant water.
While he waited, Danyal pictured the next step and thought,
This.
When I tell you, make this.
Ephemera didn’t answer.
The wizards Pugnos and Styks came out of the house first. A few Clubs came out of the brothel, and one from the privy. More wizards came out of the house—a dozen in all. Then the Dark Guide stepped out of the house. No hood to hide the inhuman face. Not anymore.
“Ah, so you did survive,” the Dark Guide said, smiling. “And now you’ve returned. Have you come to avenge the feeble, Shaman?”
“Yes,” Danyal replied, lowering his arms.
“Alone? Against us?”
He saw Pugnos and Styks rub their thumbs against their first two fingers, so he didn’t bother to answer. He just snarled, “
Now
.”
Thorn trees with sinuous limbs erupted out of the ground. The wizards didn’t have time to raise a hand against him before limbs coiled around them and lifted them off the ground. Long thorns pierced clothing and flesh, digging deeper as the coils tightened.
The Clubs thrashed and screamed. The wizards and Dark Guide unleashed their lightning against the trees. The trees screamed and the ends of the limbs sprouted bulbous pods that split open to reveal hundreds of sharp needles.
The pods hovered for a moment. Then they snapped closed over the heads of every man except the Dark Guide. Wizards and Clubs thrashed and screamed as the pods released digestive juices and began consuming the flesh on the faces of their prey.
“Shaman!” the Dark Guide howled. “Do you think you’ll be rid of us? You’ll never hide your city from all of us. Not ever again!”
“I know,” Danyal said. “Your kind may be able to find us, you may be able to enter our city, but you won’t make this place your own. We know you now.”
The Dark Guide smiled a terrible smile and said gently, “As long as you
walk in this city, there will be dark places where malevolent hearts can hide.”
“But not your heart,” Danyal whispered as a pod split above the Dark Guide’s head.
Glorianna stood between the trees that marked the island’s path and tried to study the land beyond.
“You used to be better at this,” she finally said. “I don’t think we’re even close to the Asylum.”
Lee shouldered her to one side. “Well, daylight, Glorianna. It’s the middle of the damn night. Even if my eyesight was perfect, I still couldn’t see where we are. And it’s not like we want to set a lantern out there to see what might get curious about us.” He cocked his head, listening. “And I don’t think I’m that far off. The Asylum grounds had different areas.”
“So the vegetables we landed in on your first try…?”
“Could have been the home farm. They grow what they can, and it gives some of the inmates work and keeps them active.”
“And this?”
“Does that sound like a brook or stream to you?”
“Definitely water,” Glorianna agreed. “Could be a stream.”
“There was a stream at the farthest edge of where borderline inmates were allowed to walk without close supervision. There was a footbridge. I avoided it because I was afraid the bridge would respond to me and change into one that provided access to other landscapes.” Lee blew out a breath. “Ephemera is bringing the island as close as we can get to the buildings, isn’t it?”
“As close as you can get,” Glorianna said quietly.
He couldn’t see her in the dark, but he reached out and touched her hair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re probably close to that bridge, so I’ll take one of the shielded lanterns and walk the rest of the way to the grounds around the buildings.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, you don’t go in alone this time.”