The Nothing: A Book of the Between (16 page)

“She must be stopped. Must be found,” one of them said.

“Perhaps the envoy should search for her rather than proceeding to the Sorcieri,” said another. Kraal remained silent, his eyes watchful.

“Fools, the lot of you. She will be well beyond our reach already.” The Queen clapped her hands together sharply. “Guards—gather a search party. Send them out in all directions. If the woman is found, she is not to be harmed, understood? Bring her back safely to me along with the box she carries. Do not, on pain of a long torture and a delayed death, tell any being beyond this room that there is a dreamsphere in that box. Understood?”

There was a sound of what might have been heels clicking together, and the backs of two Giants came into view, skirting the half circle at the base of the throne and marching side by side and in unison toward the doors.

“Now,” the Queen said. “Our visit to the Sorcieri takes on a whole new urgency. You will leave before the sun passes Second Hill. I will now tolerate questions without reprisal.”

A moment of silence.

A female Giant with jutting breasts and a scar running down the side of her face that looked like a seam in a granite cliff, inclined her head and said, “I do not understand why we are taking this human. He will slow us. He is damaged and does not seem overly bright.”

“My name is Jared.” He saw the lips move of the man that must be himself, heard his own voice in his own ears, and still didn’t believe he’d actually said it.

The Queen, rather than pulling his heart out of his chest, responded with surprising warmth. “Even so. His name is Jared. You will treat him with respect. Not one of the rest of you has offered your eyes to me as bond. While it is not required that I tell you my reasons, I will indulge you this time. First, we assume that the Dreamshifter will go to the Sorcieri to try to gain entrance. Jared—you are betrothed to the Dreamshifter, yes?”

Not a time to quibble, Jared thought. He was pleased to see that his expression did not reflect the dismay he felt or reveal that he was lying. No eyes to give him away. “Yes, Majesty.”

“So you are important to her. Valuable.”

“A hostage, then,” another of the Giants said.

“Hostage is a rude word to take with you on such a diplomatic mission. Let’s call him a motivator.”

Jared kept his face impassive, even as a small hope beat under his ribs. He knew full well that he had no special value for Vivian. If anything, she despised him. And where Vivian went, Zee went, and Zee would have killed him long before if it weren’t for some ridiculous code of honor. But what he knew of Vivian was that she would try to save him, no matter how much she loathed him.

And if Zee killed him, well, that would be a mercy. At least he’d be out of this godforsaken kingdom of the bloodthirsty Giants.

“Is the benefit sufficient to the cost? I say we can still use him as a bargaining stone even if he is not with us.” The female Giant again. Bitches apparently came in all sizes and shapes.

“Would you make promises you do not intend to keep?” Kraal now. “What happened to word as bond?”

“Bonds do not apply to the Sorcieri,” another Giant said. “They have consistently broken theirs or twisted it like a serpent so that it seems to mean one thing and then another.”

“Silence.” The queen’s word sliced into them all. “Would you argue with me? Would you put your wisdom before mine?”

Not a word. Not a breath. The faces of the Giants were frozen into unreadable expressions.

“Now. You will go to your homes and gather what you need for this journey. The human will go with you, and you will conduct him safely there and back. If you fail, your lives will be forfeit. I will send a scroll in the hands of Kurian. Kraal has already placed the human under his bond.”

The female Giant stepped forward and a scroll appeared in her hand.

“Bear it safely. Present it only to the Lord of the Sorcieri. Now go, all of you. Out of my sight.”

Watching himself and the throne room, Jared got his body turned around and began to walk without guidance from Kraal.
Like a video game. Use the joystick to move the avatar through the room.
It was a challenge, but his brain was beginning to make the connections that enabled him to see himself as outside of his own body, an image to be directed and moved around a screen.

A small triumph, to walk from her sight unaided, but it ended the moment the doors slammed shut behind him. A dark loss twisted him as he lost sight of himself, seeing nothing now but an empty throne room. He stood there, trying to make a picture for himself of the wide black marble with its embedded stars and superimpose it over the throne room, but he failed.

Kraal’s hand descended on his shoulder, steering him forward, away from the palace and off on a mission the purpose of which he didn’t begin to understand.

A
LL
DAY
they flew, only stopping once for a break. Not so much so the griffyns could rest their wings, Vivian suspected, but because they were worried about the cub. They alighted on the banks of a river, where they all had long, cooling drinks. Poe dove directly into the water, and the dragon followed, splashing around in the shallows.

Vivian dribbled some water into the cub’s mouth. He swallowed, then opened his eyes and mewed for food. Vivian didn’t want to take the time to find milk again, but this time the male griffyn did the hunting, returning with a fat doe in his claws. The poor creature broke a leg when he dropped her and had four long, bloody gouges in her back.

It was too late to undo the damage, and one look at the watching griffyns dissuaded Vivian from objecting too vigorously. She took time to splint the broken bone to minimize the unlucky doe’s suffering. This time, Zee did the milking, sending streams of milk directly into the open mouth of the hungry baby, which had struggled to sit up.

Godzilla finished off the deer, sharing out his meal with the griffyns. And then they flew, for what seemed forever, the mazes of the Between laid out beneath them in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of color. At intervals, a sudden updraft or downdraft sucked at them, and whole sections of the Between altered in the blink of an eye.

Vivian was exhausted. The cub kept slipping from her arms as she nodded and drifted into a moment of sleep. Her lips were dry and cracked, her skin tender and burned from the constant wind. Her legs had begun to cramp. Just when she was about to call out that they were going to have to take a rest, they reached the edge of a vast body of water. It might have been either lake or sea; she couldn’t tell.

A long, low-lying island lay not far ahead. Plumes of smoke billowed upward, turning the setting sun to an ominous red. One hill marked the very center of the island, and the lurid light reflected off the sharp towers and pinnacles of a castle.

“Is it under attack?” Zee called to her, leaning forward to see better.

“I don’t think so.”

Despite what her eyes told her, she felt that all was as it should be down below, including the rivers of lava that spewed out of gaping holes in the earth. A few more wingbeats and the sky before them lit up with a wonder that made her gasp aloud.

Like a laser show, if those colored beams of light could curve and dance at will, if they came in colors that human eyes had never seen. The play of light formed a canopy above the island, luminous, translucent, so beautiful that tears wet her cheeks. All fatigue and fear vanished. New energy flowed through her veins. Her heart beat with exultation and excitement.

From a distant place, she felt the griffyn’s wings check, the forward motion falter.

“What the hell?” Zee said.

The griffyns circled aimlessly.

“What’s the matter?” Vivian cried. All she wanted was to fly into that place of light and color, to the island that lay below.

“What do you mean, what’s the matter?” Zee replied.

“Why are we flying in circles? We need to get to the island.”

His griffyn was flying next to hers and she could see the look on his face. “Precisely the problem,” he said, watching her. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the island has vanished.”

“It hasn’t. It’s right there where it always has been.”

“I can’t see it. And it would appear that neither can the griffyns.”

Vivian let this sink in. “Can you see the lights?”

“Apart from the sunset and the stars, you mean?”

“No, I mean the light show, the way it dances...”

“No.” He said it shortly. “Vivian, I don’t like the feel of this place.”

“It’s crawling with magic,” she said. Not unpleasantly, though. She could feel it playing over her skin, inviting her in.

She made herself stop and consider the possibility that she was the one under illusion, that something was sucking her in to a doom she couldn’t even picture. But what other option did they have? They’d come looking for the Sorcieri, and all of her instincts screamed that they’d found them.

Leaning forward, she tapped the griffyn on the shoulder. “It’s still down there, where it always was. They’ve just put a screening spell on it.”

The feathered head with its dangerous beak turned to look at her, the amber eye questioning. “We sense the land below, but our vision is blocked by a spell.”

“I’ll direct you. The others can follow.”

But then the dragon took it all out of their hands. With a call of what Vivian recognized as joy, he set out headlong toward the island, as straight as his broken wing would allow, descending all the while and making that sound of ecstasy.

“Come on,” Vivian pleaded. “Just follow Godzilla.”

The dragon reached the lights and Vivian caught her breath, her one fear that the enchantment would incapacitate anything that touched it, or act as a force field.

Godzilla flew on through, unscathed.

The sun sank lower over the sea. Soon it would be dark. Vivian did not want to be traipsing over that unstable land mass in the dark. The griffyns circled one more time and then dove. As they reached the lights, Vivian gasped in pleasure and astonishment, feeling their touch play on her skin as a sensual pleasure. Only a moment, though, and then they were through and descending, following the dragon, who was headed for a small grove of trees.

“Whoa,” Zee said behind her.

“You can see it?”

“I couldn’t. And then I could. What are we getting into here, Vivian?”

“The Sorcieri.” Her words came out in wonder. “Magic, Zee.”

“Jehenna was one of them.”

This was not a question, and it jolted Vivian straight out of euphoria and directly back into reality. Jehenna was responsible for Surmise, but not in its current form. She’d seduced Vivian’s grandfather to learn the ways of the Dreamshifters, had used their secrets to weave a web of a place that was neither Dreamworld nor Wakeworld. And she had subjugated both people and dragons into captivity and cruelty. She’d killed Zee’s double and had very nearly managed to kill Vivian and get herself into the Forever.

If the Sorcieri were anything like Jehenna, then they were in for a world of trouble.

MAGIC.

Zee could feel it crawling over his skin, invisible and irritating, poking at his eyeballs, sending out questioning little tendrils into his brain. With an effort, he could shut them out of his thoughts, or at least he thought he could, but it required constant effort. If his concentration slipped, if a battle broke out, then he wouldn’t be able to keep this up.

Or if he slept. Or got too tired.

Maybe nothing bad would happen if the magic got into his brain. Maybe the Pope was Muslim. Completely aside from the question of mind control, magic made him useless. He remembered Jehenna using that Voice on him, the way his body had been forced to obey her commands even while his mind struggled to break free. And the dragonstone had seemed to have a will of its own, and look how that turned out.

No, he didn’t like this place at all. The sooner they’d completed their business and could move on, the happier he would be. As soon as the griffyn he was riding touched down in a grove of trees, he slid off the furry back and tested the ground. It seemed solid enough, but he didn’t trust it, didn’t trust anything that hadn’t been visible one minute, and was the next.