The Nothing: A Book of the Between (17 page)

Vivian’s lips were parted, her cheeks and eyes glowing, as she looked around at something he was unable to see. Happiness was a wonderful thing, but not if it came by magic. He was at her side before she dismounted, taking the weight of the baby griffyn in his arms, reaching up to help her down.

But she just sat, as if unaware of his presence, her expression rapt. Zee tried to follow her gaze, directed upward, but saw only an expanse of cloudless sky, moving toward night, and two bright points of light. Stars. Dark was coming and they were still far from the castle in a wild landscape.

“Vivian, come on. We need to get moving.”

“Light. Light on light on light. Can’t you see it, Zee?”

“All I see is darkness coming. We’ve got to get to the castle, Vivian. There’s a lava flow between us and there. Looks like Yellowstone Park. One misstep—”

“It will be all right.” She shook herself, as though waking from dream, and brought her eyes down to meet his. Her brow creased as she caught his expression, and one hand reached out to smooth the line of his jaw. “It’s only magic, Zee.”

“That’s what worries me. Let’s go.”

She nodded, her face almost normal, and slid down, stretching stiff muscles. The mother griffyn blocked their path. Zee, on full alert, stepped between the creature and Vivian.

“Warrior, you do not trust us.”

Statement of fact. It wasn’t a question and he didn’t bother with any other response than to put his hand to his sword hilt. He didn’t trust one feather or strand of fur, not with Callyn’s blood still staining their beaks and claws.

“It is understood,” the griffyn said, with what looked almost like a bow. “You will serve her at the cost of your life?”

“At the cost of everything.”

“This is well. Beware the Sorcieri. Their magic turns and twists in upon itself. We mistrust this place and would be gone.” The eagle eyes shifted their gaze to Vivian, who stepped around Zee to stand beside him, the griffyn cub sleeping in her arms. “Our bargain is done. We will leave you here.”

“And the little one?”

“You have our trust.” And with that, both griffyns unfurled their wings and rose, flying upward toward the two bright stars in the darkening sky.

Zee wrapped his hand around Vivian’s and they set off toward the castle on the hill, Poe at their heels, the dragon trailing behind.

“That way, I think.” He gestured toward a grove of trees, thinking anything green and growing was likely to be safer than the steaming ground. The trees looked ancient, with trunks bigger around than the wrap of Zee’s arms. Smooth silver bark gleamed in the shadow light. Green grass carpeted the spaces between them, wide enough for the dragon to move between them with ease. No undergrowth, no fallen leaves or branches or even sticks.

Some sort of vine with large, goblet-shaped flowers wrapped around a number of the trunks, giving off a sweet, lazy fragrance that made him think of drowsy summer afternoons of his childhood, with the buzzing of bees and the sweet heaviness of limbs and...

Poe butted his knees. He realized he was standing still, eyes closed, swaying gently. Shaking himself awake, he looked at Vivian, beside him. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful. Zee squeezed her hand, called her name. “Vivian.”

“Dreamflowers.” She murmured the words without opening her eyes, her voice dreamy and dazed. He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her.

“Vivian!”

Her eyes flew open, a spark of alarm in their depths. “Better keep moving.”

Zee felt better, having seen that touch of fear. She’d seemed enchanted and enthralled since before they had touched down, and it worried him. But she only took three steps before she stopped in her tracks beside a tree where several of the flowers on a vine were black and shriveled. A quiver ran through her, like a plucked string.

“What is it?”

“Dead Dreamworlds. Even here, Zee. We have to hurry.”

He had no objection to hurrying, although the castle on the hill was not reassuring. The thing looked like it had grown straight up out of the rock, all angles and sharp points. Distracted, eyes on their goal rather than on the path, he very nearly stumbled over the body of a young woman.

She lay on her back, a cloud of night-dark hair fanned out around her. Her face was beautiful, pale ivory skin, a bone structure that he instantly wanted to paint, along with the perfect bow of her lip, the way her hair rippled back from her forehead, even the shape of the small, fine-fingered hand that lay outflung, lightly cupped as though to catch the starlight. A stone amulet, pure black, lay on her breast, attached to a silver chain.

Vivian, with a soft exclamation, sank down onto her knees at once, setting aside the griffyn cub. Zee, knowing her, waited for the usual doctor things. Checking for a pulse, listening for breath. But she did none of this. Her hands passed over the girl’s face and breast, not touching, hovering, as though tracing something Zee could not see.

When she finally put one hand down and curled her fingers around the amulet, he wanted to shout a warning.
No. Don’t touch that.

“Wake up,” she said, softly, clutching the stone in one hand, touching the center of the girl’s forehead with the other. “Come back.”

A breath moved the girl’s chest then, not a sharp gasp but just an easy, regular breath. Her eyes opened, dark, deep eyes, taking in first Vivian’s face and then Zee’s.

“You’ve come,” she said. If she’d been pale before, she was positively white now.

“Can you walk?” Vivian asked.

Putting a hand to the stone, the girl slowly sat up, a soft wonder crossing her face as she took in Poe, the dragon, and the griffyn cub. It mewed at her, and she reached out and stroked its head. “How did you get here?”

“The griffyns carried us.”

“I must take you to the Master,” she said, rising gracefully to her feet.

Although the words were spoken in a softly modulated voice, to Zee they sounded like a threat. “If he lives in the castle, we’re already headed that way of our own free will.”

Her wide eyes looked him over again, seemingly innocent and direct. Zee didn’t need magic to know that she was anything but. He was worried that Vivian would fall for the ruse, but he needn’t have.

“Who are you?” she demanded, and her words were sharp-edged. “What is your place here?”

“It is custom for you to speak first. I require your names to report to the Master.” The girl’s tone and posture were courteous and formal, a direct contrast to Vivian’s rudeness.

“We will keep our names to ourselves. You know what? We’ve got important business with the Master. Enough of this. Take us to him.”

“Not until you identify yourselves.”

“You first.” Vivian’s voice was adamant.

The Sorcieri girl smiled. “Very well. I am the Master’s daughter.”

“And I am the Dreamshifter. This is the Warrior.”

Zee let Vivian take the lead. Clearly, she could sense what he could not. A long silence fell, but then the girl inclined her head in a gesture of respect.

“Follow me.”

As if she hadn’t been lying apparently lifeless only moments before, the girl took off through the grove at a run. Zee scooped up the griffyn cub; Vivian grabbed Poe. Outside the grove, he wanted to slow down, to check each footstep before moving forward, but Vivian was ahead of him and it was all he could do to follow.

Geysers erupted in the distance. A lava flow ran across the surface of the earth not more than twenty feet from their path. He could feel the heat on his skin, was aware of a low-level quaking through the soles of his shoes. The path skirted around seven boiling mud pits, each making a sucking and bubbling noise, occasionally shooting a bubble upward, where it exploded into tiny mud drops.

Just beyond the mud pits stood a tree taller than anything Zee had ever seen, big enough around that seven men would never encompass that trunk with their arms outstretched. No leaves, only sharp, asymmetrical branches and bark that had cracked and split deep. It was so old that the wood had turned to stone, and embedded in the trunk was a flat, smooth surface, pitch black.

The girl stopped in front of it. “Jehenna’s mirror,” she said. “Until earlier today, it showed the intersection of a path of the Between with Surmise. And then it just went black.”

Vivian sucked in a breath of dismay. Zee wanted to reach out to her but held back, knowing she dare not show any weakness in front of this girl who was much more than she let on. But his heart ached, both for Vivian and the worlds everywhere. If a mirror reflecting the entrance to Surmise had gone black, then Surmise itself might be gone, along with Vivian’s mother and Prince Landon and all of the people in the kingdom.

He stepped up beside her under pretense of getting a better look at the mirror, pressing his arm against her shoulder. She leaned into him, just enough so he alone could feel it.

“You said it was near to Surmise,” Zee said. “What does that mean?”

“Truly, I do not know. The Master will know. I will take you to him.”

“And if we don’t wish to go to the Master?”

“Then I will go to the castle alone and tell him of you. He will send a search party. If you survive until he comes, then they will bind you with a spell and bring you forcibly.”

“And if we choose to leave?” Vivian asked.

“You will leave only with permission.”

It was a moot point, anyway, and not worth the arguing. One way or another, they were going to see the Master.

I
F
ANYBODY
ever, for the rest of his life, expressed a wish to ride an elephant, Weston vowed he would shoot the idiot then and there. He felt a bit like he was in a rudderless boat on a choppy sea. A tall boat. One with no anchor. He tried talking to the elephant, asking her to stop for a minute, but she ignored him and kept right on walking. Bob alternately flew ahead or perched between her ears, like a hood ornament.

At least Weston had managed to get himself turned around to face forward, whereupon Lyssa leaned back against him, closed her eyes, and drifted directly off to sleep. He put a protective arm around her and made himself as comfortable as possible.

Which was not comfortable at all.

His legs were stretched too far apart, and as the time went by, his skin began to chafe from the constant side-to-side motion. Muscles in his thighs and lower back went into spasm. If he’d been more trusting, he might have curled his legs up and crossed them, instead of trying to ride a creature as wide as several horses astride. But it was a long way down and he was afraid he’d fall off and the elephant would carry Lyssa far away from him.

He was tired, though. As dark descended and they continued to move on, his eyelids drifted shut and jerked open and drifted shut again. This was no good. So, he took the rope from his backpack and bound both himself and the child to the harness on the elephant’s back. In this manner he was able to adjust himself to a more comfortable position and to doze off and on.

He dreamed, in a disjointed, rambling sort of way, always waking to a sense of increasing uneasiness, thinking his dream had been important but unable to remember it. Finally, he woke to light, of a sort, filtering into his eyes, and a cessation of motion.

The Between had shifted to forest, deep, lush, old growth that made the cedar rainforest of the Pacific Northwest look like a well-tended garden. Vines wrapped around trees so tall and thick, they filtered out most of the light. There was only one way forward, a winding path far too narrow for the beast they rode.

He’d spent precious little time in the Between, and yet this place felt familiar. He examined the trees, the sky, the path, but saw nothing meaningful. Even so, his gut told him they were close to Surmise.

“Stand still, would you?” he asked of the elephant, as though she wasn’t doing precisely that. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he untied himself and the yawning little girl and navigated the tricky task of getting them both down onto the ground, thinking about Surmise all the while.

An anomaly, his father had said. A thing that ought not to be, by rights, created by a sorceress named Jehenna who had done what none of the Sorcieri before her had managed to do—learn the secrets of the Dreamshifters. With that knowledge, and after also enslaving a dragon, she was able to craft a space that was neither Dreamworld nor Between. Here, elements of both could exist. Humans who found their way into Surmise through the Dreamworld were not trapped, precisely, but a double was created, a second self with its own thoughts and memories and behaviors.

The result could be a lifetime of reoccurring dreams, an ongoing feeling of déjà vu, with the dreamer always sensing there was something beyond their rational understanding but not realizing they had another self in an alternate reality.

Surmise, under Jehenna’s rule, had been a dangerous place. Mind control. Dragons in captivity, fed by slaves and the children of slaves. All of this changed by a combination of forces involving Vivian, her dead grandfather, and Zee. Or so Vivian had said. Whatever it was, with the Dreamworlds dying left and right and the instability of the Between, it was going to be the safest place he could take Lyssa.