Lies and Prophecy (15 page)

“Why should I?” Liesel flinched when I rounded on her viciously. “I was party to—no. I
came up with
a stupid idea that's caused Julian to vanish. That may have cost him his
life.
Why should I ‘get over it'?” She looked as though she was going to answer that, but I didn't give her a chance. “Don't you
dare
go all seelie on me. Pointless guilt is wrong, and I won't argue that. But I
am
responsible. And I don't want to forget it.”

She just stood there, sad-eyed. I almost dropped my shields and rammed my emotions right up in her face, forcing them on her so she'd feel them into next week. Such an act would have been unconscionable.

Instead I grabbed my coat and gloves, and left before I could do something I'd regret.

~

The stacks of Talman were even less cheery than usual. Very little light came in through the windows, and the ceiling lights were lethargic and flickering. The snow blanketing the ground outside muffled all noise. There was no one on the entire floor, and my skin crawled at every tiny sound.

I flitted from section to section, glaring at rows of books that couldn't help me find my friend. I found books on golems, but not advanced ones, and they were incomprehensible to me anyway. I walked through the divination section twice. Nothing suggested itself as a solution.

I stopped in the middle of one aisle, where I had not bothered to turn on the light, and stared sightlessly ahead. The silence around me pressed in.

“
Damn it,
” I said distinctly, and listened to the words be swallowed up by the books.

This was accomplishing nothing. I headed downstairs into the Dungeon.

The main reading room of Talman was quite possibly the one place on earth most uniquely unsuited to inspiring productive effort in students. It was as dim as the stacks, and nearly as claustrophobic. The chairs at the tables were hard and unforgiving; those at the study carrels, replaced three years ago, were already sagging and lumpy. Its low ceiling and insufficient light made it seem like the room was constantly closing in on the unwary fool stupid enough to wander within its reach. Officially the Helen W. Edelman Reading Room, the Dungeon was a marvel of bad planning and worse execution.

Which made it perfect for my current mood.

Bad planning and worse execution; that summed up my recent antics quite well. But whereas the misadventures of the architect had merely resulted in a depressing and uncomfortable room, mine had backfired on one of my dearest friends. We hadn't stopped to think, any of us.

The back of the Dungeon held machines dispensing soda, potato chips, and every revoltingly sugary concoction an overworked and underslept student could wish for when finishing his psychology paper at four o'clock in the morning. Since I wasn't minded to drown my misery in alcohol, poisoning myself with the most disgusting food I could find seemed a bizarrely appealing alternative.

The machines were wedged into the room's dimmest, gloomiest corner. Which explained why I didn't see the figure slumped in a chair until it spoke.

“Who goes there?”

I screamed.

Had I been anything like rational, the ridiculous phrasing of that question would have told me who the speaker was without looking. Then again, had I been rational, I would've seen Robert before he roused from his stupor enough to ask it.

Instead, I screamed. He barely reacted, remaining apathetically collapsed in the clutching embrace of the sagging armchair. He was glaring at me malevolently, I saw, once I was calm enough to look—glaring with the expression of one facing the last person in the world he wants to see.

I sympathized. I didn't want to talk to Robert any more than he wanted to talk to me.

But fate and the gods seemed to have other ideas. And now, having found him, I couldn't make myself turn and walk away. I didn't know what it was. His appearance, maybe. Robert looked hung over, horrendously so, although I doubted he'd been drinking. His eyes were so bloodshot the blue irises jumped out unnaturally at me, and his slack posture, sprawling in the chair, broadcast the apathy of one who can't muster the energy or conviction to behave like a living human being.

“You look like hell,” I said, and complimented myself on that diplomatic opening.

“‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.'” He muttered the quote bitterly.

I sat down gingerly on one of the other chairs, perching on its edge rather than allowing it to trap me in the pit of its sloping cushion. Robert stared at me dully, not seeming to care whether I stayed or left.

“Liesel thinks we ought to talk,” I said at last.

That provoked a short laugh from him. “Concerning what?”

Julian, obviously. But I would take my own approach, not the one my roommate wanted. “What happened?”

Robert looked away, leaning his head against the chair's stained back. “You were there.”

“Yes, and I know what I saw. But I don't know what
you
saw.”

“What good will it do?”

I considered and discarded several replies before saying honestly, “I'm not sure. But it has to be better than sitting here and doing nothing.”

He examined that and found it acceptable. “Something got him. It took him away.”

“Yes, but
what
? That's the real question. Start with the beginning of the ritual, and go from there.”

Robert's eyes fixed on the ceiling, and he spoke in a flat monotone. “We consecrated the ground and set the shields, raising them on everyone. Then we shielded the inner circle. Julian began the summoning. The green light appeared, and it seemed to me that Julian recognized it. There was an explosion, and the light turned gold. Whereupon it commenced trying to suck him in. We grew weaker; it grew stronger. Liesel went down. Then I passed out.”

I myself was staring at the floor, as though the answers were to be found in the stained carpet. And maybe they were, or at least inspiration was. “It grew stronger. I felt that, too. Was it feeding off us—stealing our power?”

That interested Robert enough to make him lift his head and look at me. “I think not,” he said slowly. “We held our own for a while. But then it gained in strength, and so we began to weaken more rapidly.”

“As though it had help,” I murmured. “It—or
they
? More than one?”

“I hope so,” Robert said. “Any creature that can outmatch three high bloods and a wilder … frightens me.”

I hadn't thought of that, and a chill ran down my spine.

“After I fell, what happened then?”

Glancing at my bandaged hands, I shrugged. “Not much. I only held out for a moment more.” The wrappings drew my attention. My hands were better, but still ached, particularly after my room-cleaning flurry. “There was a scream …
I reached into the fire.
”

My eyes flicked back upward. “I reached across and tried to grab hold of Julian. That's when the scream happened. And the light flared, and I passed out.” I'd reached into the fire. No wonder my hands were burned.

Robert sighed and leaned his head back again. “So that leaves us with nothing—except our gods-damned memories.”

I knew what he meant. That golden light was engraved on my eyelids, a reminder of our folly. I wondered if it would ever go away.

“This was not the same as before,” Robert whispered.

Unthinking, I slid back, and half-fell into the chair's depths. From my new vantage point, I frowned across at him. “What?”

He managed to sit up, escaping his own little hole. “You felt it, did you not? Whatever took Julian before, it seems to have treated him kindly.”

I almost disagreed, but swallowed the words before they left my mouth. Someone had erased the traces of his ritual, and returned his athame to his room. Julian had been thin when he returned, and he didn't remember anything, but by all signs no serious harm had been done to him. I couldn't see that happening this time. The malevolence I'd felt from the golden light had been all too clear.

The golden light?

The thought seemed to occur to Robert at the same moment. “What made it change?”

With my eyes closed, I could see it again. The green mist, changing to gold. Or—“It didn't change.”

“Something else took over.”

The pieces were falling into place. Sort of. “Julian starts the ritual. Some … entity … comes.”

“Which is possibly what he encountered before.”

“Yes.” It was making more and more sense. “So we succeeded in calling in something that could explain what happened in the attack on Samhain, and where he went afterward. Maybe. But then the other influence came, the malevolent one. And the rest, we know.”

“Except where he went.”

“We'll figure that out too,” I said, and for a moment I truly believed it.

Robert rose and extended a hand to pull me from my seat. I accepted it, lacking the energy to fight free on my own. For a moment I simply stood next to him, taking a breath to steady myself. Friends. I had more than one. I needed to remember that in the days to come; we could draw on each other's strength.

“Come,” Robert said, and we left the Dungeon.

~

I stopped in the door to the bedroom, took one look at Liesel, and said, “You meddling little elf.”

Despite everything, a smile spread across her face. I collapsed onto my own, unmade bed and rolled my eyes. “I thought you wanted me and Robert to forgive each other, or something—to get over being guilty about what happened.”

Liesel snorted. “More fool me if I thought you would do it. No, you both have a right to feel upset over this mess. The Lord and Lady know I do. And that's healthy. But you needed to talk it over, just for your peace of mind.”

“Well, we did. As you can obviously tell.”

“You're no longer in a mood to chew on the walls, at least.”

My anger was still there, but now it was aimed in a more useful direction than at myself. Whatever was behind that golden light, it would pay.

The thought reminded me, and I sat up on my bed. “I should also tell you—more good came of this than just emotional therapy.”

Liesel listened with wide eyes as I outlined what Robert and I had sorted out. When I was done, she laced her fingers together in a rare sign of nervousness and asked, “Kim … what will you do, if you figure out where Julian's gone?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then shut it. Rising, I paced to the window, looking out on the snow, flaming bright where the setting sun touched it. My stomach complained mildly, and I realized I hadn't eaten lunch. We should go to dinner soon. Though the thought of actual food made me ill.

“I don't know,” I whispered, thinking of my argument with Robert, my decision to help Julian despite the danger. “My fear is, I won't be able to do anything.” I laughed softly. “How's that for hell? Krauss rating of point four, and it'll be good for nothing whatsoever.”

“But you won't give up,” Liesel said.

“No.” I shook my head, still not looking at her. “I couldn't live with myself if I left Julian to face this alone.”

Silence from behind me. Liesel was wrestling with a question, hard enough that I could feel it in the air. Finally she voiced it. “And if he's dead?”

“He's not.”

I said it without thinking. It wasn't defensive—or not
only
defensive—I believed it, gut-deep. Liesel said, “How do you know?”

I looked down, twisting my hands. “I can't prove it. You know how my readings have been. But divinatory gifts can work on a subtler level, too—especially if you've got a connection to the subject.”

“A connection?”

She knew damn well what I meant. This was her favorite trick, asking questions to lead the patient into understanding things for herself. For
myself.
Liesel wasn't pushing me empathically, but she was definitely working on me, toward a specific end. I just wish she'd chosen a better time to do it. Like before all this trouble started.

“Friendship,” I muttered at last, giving my fingernails far more attention than they deserved. “Maybe more.”

Liesel rose and put her hand on my shoulder, a spot of warmth and support I sorely needed. “Then I believe he's okay, or will be. Because you believe it, and I trust you.”

Now we just had to hope I was right.

~

My sleep was uneasy, troubled by vague dreams interspersed with sharp sequences where I tried to reach through the fire to take Julian's hand, but watched in horror as my arms melted, dripping like hot wax to the ground until I was left with nothing beyond my shoulders; or where Julian's skin was pulled from his body, him screaming all the while.

I woke with a jolt from a cycle where I tried to escape the ritual circle, but was continually thrown back by the shields. For a moment I lay still, calming my heart. Then I looked at my clock and found it was early morning. Dawn was only a vague grey hint on the horizon. I gazed out the window for a while, then pulled on warm clothing and went outside.

The air was searingly cold. I hunched my shoulders into my coat and tramped through the snow across the fields, with no particular destination in mind. My feet took me to the banks of the river, already frozen over, and without thinking I turned and followed its course upstream. The path was becoming far too familiar.

Dean Seong hadn't exaggerated the damage we'd done. The tree with the broken limb was gone, but I didn't need it; the ground in a huge circle was bare of trees, underbrush, and even snow. I circled around its edge, eyeing the unnaturally clear dirt, before pulling off one glove and touching the earth gingerly. It burned hot, and I snatched my hand back. All physical traces of our work were gone. The only things in the circle that had survived the blast were ourselves and our ritual knives. Julian's athame had been there, too, the blade scorched black.