The Nothing: A Book of the Between (23 page)

“This is true,” Kraal acknowledged.

The Master stroked one hand lazily across the scepter in his lap. “It was agreed that a Key would be provided to the One that only she could use to open the Gates. Is this not so?”

“It is so.”

She heard no judgment in the words. Kraal’s face was unreadable, the roughhewn, uneven planes disconcerting to her eyes, the slash of a mouth nothing more than a vehicle of speech. Like trying to decipher emotion from the Easter Island carvings.

“So, this one…” He gestured at Vivian, his tone dripping with condescension and sarcasm. “The Three in One, if you will, used the Key to open the gates, let Aidan and her dragons pass through, and then sealed them again?”

Vivian had no response. This was true and, put in that way, sounded like the stupidest thing ever.

The Master’s voice rose and he leveled a long white finger at her. “You are a half-breed, a woman, and a fool. I tell you this much—Aidan has poisoned the dreamspheres. Water from the Pool of Life in the Forever might stop their destruction, but you have locked yourself out. You! And now you come sniveling here to me, expecting me to solve the problem you have created.”

“There is a way.” Kalina, still down on her knees, spoke the words.

“Silence!” The Master swung around toward her, magic gathering in his raised hands, ready to strike.

The brother stepped in between them. His face was pale, but his dark eyes glittered with an emotion that was anything but fear. “She speaks truth. There is a way.”

A long moment they stood facing each other, magic against magic. Vivian tried to follow the flow, but something was wrong, a tangle she was unable to unweave. She was just on the brink of understanding when the Master released the threat and turned back toward her.

“Very well. My son is against me in this, and I will tell you this much and no more—Vivian.”

Her name hung in the air, electric, dangerous. She chose not to answer, not to respond to his provocation. So, she looked him directly in the eye, unflinching. For all his derision of her powers, she had unmasked him last night, and they both knew it.

“There is a tale in the
History of the Sorcieri
which speaks of another way into the Forever. It is not based in fact but only on rumor. It has never been tested or tried, and even my grandfather did not know the origins of it. The tale says that she who is Three in One—Dreamshifter, dragon, and Sorcieri—may be given the power to enter the Forever by means of the Cave of Dreams.”

“You know more than you’re saying.” Vivian was weary of sparring and intrigue. All she wanted was a direct answer.

“You cannot begin to scratch the surface of all that I know. Which includes this, and I will not say it again. The One who can complete the blood ritual to enter the Forever must be Dreamshifter, Sorcieri, and dragon. The dragon within you is as good as dead.” The Master steepled his fingers together. “Now, Kraal of the Giants. Suppose you tell me this before you judge me in my own hall. Why have you really come? Why now? I know Alara and that she isn’t acting out of concern for the worlds. What is happening to the world of the Giants?”

“Hunger. No safe foraging in other Dreamworlds, on which we heavily relied.”

“And yet this is not all. Will you tell me? Any of you?” All of the Giants remained stoic and silent.

“Very well,” the Master said. “You. Human. Step forward.”

Vivian recognized the Voice of Command, watched Jared’s body jerk and then move him step by reluctant step, forward to the throne. “Now, why this excursion, and why is it important enough that they are dragging you along?”

“It’s the dreamsphere,” Jared said, the words sounding stretched and thin as though they were being vacuumed out of him. “There is a woman who holds the dreamsphere that contains the world of the Giants. Now she is gone.”

“At last we come to a modicum of truth,” the Master said. “You are here because the world of the Giants is subject to immediate obliteration.”

He leaned forward in his throne, his face no longer detached and dismissive. “Do you know where she has gone?”

“Surmise,” Kraal said. “I believe she has gone to Surmise.”

Kalina’s face went deadly pale, and she swayed a little on her knees. Zee reached out a hand to steady her, then snatched it back, shaking it as if he’d come in contact with something hot.

“Don’t touch her,” the Master said absently, his eyes looking in an entirely other direction. “So. The dreamsphere of the Giant world has gone to Surmise. And you came here?”

“A party also went to seek the woman.”

“And if they find her?”

“She has been suffered to hold the sphere until now, as long as she stayed with us and cared for it. There is a group that believes the sphere will be harmed if taken with violence.”

“But the Queen does not hold this belief.”

“She does not.”

A vision flashed into Vivian’s mind of blood and slaughter in Surmise. Landon would never permit a group of Giants to come in and kill. He would fight. Maybe he’d win, but a band of determined Giants could wreak a lot of havoc before they could be stopped. They were so big, so implacable. This woman who held the sphere had to be Weston’s sister. She’d left him that note that she’d gone to stay with the Giants, would have had to have a dreamsphere to get there.

“We hoped,” Kraal said, “that you could look into your mirrors and tell us of Surmise.”

The Master laughed, a sound without mirth. “My sons. Tell them of the mirrors,” he said.

The seven brothers turned to face Kraal. Their faces were more like their sister’s than their father’s, beautiful but with a masculine strength. Long dark hair hung down onto their shoulders; their black eyes gleamed.

“The mirrors have gone dark,” one of them said.

“All of the mirrors.” Seven voices spoke at once.

Vivian shivered. In her peripheral vision, the forms of the young men wavered in and out of existence.

“What of Surmise?” It was her own voice, although she hadn’t meant to speak.

Seven pairs of dark eyes turned to meet hers, glittering and shallow, with no more depth than Jared’s green stones. “Surmise has also gone dark.”

“This cannot be so,” Kraal said. “Surely.”

A whisper ran through the hall as of hushed voices in dismay. Cold crawled over Vivian’s body, from her toes to the crown of her head. Poe had been huddled at her feet. Now, all at once, he waddled away. Past the kneeling girl, making a wide detour around the griffyn, who batted at him with a paw. He paused to extend his neck and peck at Jared. The blind man flinched and jerked away but said nothing, his head moving side to side, the blank stone eyes searching.

The penguin bypassed the Giants, waddling right up to the first of the seven young men standing in a row. And walked right through him.

Kraal broke a long silence that followed. “Nothing here is as it seems. I begin to see why you play games with us. You have locked yourselves away on this island for so long, you have died out, and you seek to keep knowledge of this weakness from the rest of us. How many are left? Speak truth.”

“I need not answer any questions. This is my home. It is time for you to leave.”

“Or you’ll turn us into toads?” Vivian crossed to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the dais, Poe hopping along beside her. She put her foot on the first step. The magic pushed against her, warning her back.

“This is forbidden,” the Master said. “What happens to you if you come farther is on your own head.”

From here she could see a slight palsy of the hand resting on the arm of his throne, the tick in his jaw as he swallowed hard and then swallowed again.

She took another step. The magic felt almost like a solid wall now, pushing against her, trying to force her backward. She marshaled all of her will and shoved back. Her eyes met those of the girl, wide with surprise, and then Kalina nodded once, a tiny gesture that her father missed.

One more step and she was through the illusion.

A tired old man sat on a wooden chair. His clothes were threadbare, his hair thin, both hands spotted with age and trembling with weakness.

“You dare.”

Nothing weak about his voice or the power he wielded, which snapped and cracked and swirled but couldn’t touch her.

“You are a fraud.”

Her voice amplified, expanded, without any more effort than the will that all should hear. So much magic to draw on. She had a brief impression that magic didn’t like to lie around unused, but there was no time to think, and she went on.

“You said you have nothing to fear from what happens in the other worlds. Maybe that’s true, but you are dying. You have two children left to carry on the entire legacy of the Sorcieri. And then what happens?”

“This matter is not your concern.”

“It is my concern. It’s everybody’s concern.” Vivian drew a breath and straightened her shoulders. “You’re as bad as Aidan.”

“You go too far!” The old man erupted from his seat, blue fire winding around outspread fingertips. His wispy hair stood out straight from his head, each strand ending in a spark. “How dare you compare me to that creature?”

A wind pushed against Vivian, so powerful she had to lean forward to stand against it, and still it thrust her back and away from him. A solid warmth behind her steadied her, gave her anchor.

She flung back at him, “Of the two of you, I prefer Aidan. What she does, she does on purpose. She’s not a craven, cowering in a hidden corner, waiting for the world to end. You want us to believe you powerful and beyond the concerns of anything outside the Sorcieri. There are no Sorcieri, not anymore. You are a doddering old fool and your family line has run out.”

The Giant named Kraal thudded into place at her side. “This is truth? All the throng but an illusion, your house fallen into decay?”

“Show him!” Vivian said. “Drop the threads and let your guests see what truly is.”

For all his age, the Master was still stronger than she, with powers at his disposal that she could not begin to imagine. Breath held, she waited for the lightning bolt that would kill her for her insolence, for crumbling the illusions behind which he hid both his pride and his shame.

Instead, the blue fires thinned, faded, and went out. The sparks died. And then the rest of the illusions began to fall away. No more voices or breathing as of a throng in the hall. Darkness. A smell of damp earth and old stone with the stink of decay.

“Light the torches,” the Master said.

A flicker of honest yellow flame, and a low glimmer of light appeared next to the throne. Another, and another. Although most of the hall remained in darkness, around the throne light and shadow flickered and danced as the only son and heir to the Sorcieri legacy lit torches manually with a flint.

As the light brightened and grew, the disrepair of the room became evident. Walls and floor were nothing but cracked and pitted stone. Water dripped in the distance, and the air smelled as dank as a cellar. Light gleamed dull and heavy on patches of wetness. And still the youth lit torches, lining the path they had taken through the entrance hall, each one illuminating an echoing, empty space.

A chill wind blew from the open doorway, guttering the torches, raising goose bumps on Vivian’s exposed skin. Poe puffed out his feathers. Even one of the Giants reached up and adjusted his cloak. Jared, in his rags, shivered miserably

On the steps, Kalina knelt where she had been placed, still obedient, with the griffyn cub cuddled in her lap. In the dim light, Vivian thought she saw a circle of luxurious, unfaded carpet under the slender knees, but when she looked again, it was gone. She also caught the barest hint of an unexpected stillness, like the calm at the center of a storm.

The old man sank down onto his throne, which was a throne yet, one of the few things in this place that had not been conjured by magic.

“This palace was built by the magic of thousands,” he said, “or so my father told me. “By the time of my birth, there were barely four score of us remaining. Why the others died out, I do not know. That was a story never told, always unspoken among us. But even under the will and the word of a hundred, the castle was a glorious thing. A shared magic, built by combined and harmonious wills...”

“I know why,” Kalina said, and there was nothing thin or stretched about her voice.

“Hush, child. When will you learn to be silent?”

“What will you do to me, old man?” She rose to her feet. “Will you strike me down in front of these? Or perhaps you will command my brother to do it?”

The youth, carrying a torch, could scarce hide the dismay in his face as he shook his head and retreated behind his father’s throne.

Kalina laughed bitterly. “You wonder why the Master is afraid? I will tell you. His seed has run out. His consort fled from his foolishness and he has no chance to birth another. And the magic that might go to extending his own sorry life must be expended to maintain the illusions that there is a throng of Sorcieri gathered here, that I have many brothers, all of whom have magic. He cannot offer you refreshments or a dinner in the banquet hall because the expenditure of so much magic would kill him.”

“What does it matter when no one is here to see?” Despite her own outrage, Vivian’s heart twisted with pity. The Master appeared far older than when she had first seen him…was it only last night? As she reached out to sense the power that curled around him, she found it dimmed. He had drained himself to create the illusions. His silver hair was thin and wispy as dandelion fluff, the hands liver-spotted and thin, his whole body wracked with tremors.

“Pride,” Kalina said. No respect or compassion in her tone; it was all purely contempt. “Perhaps he thought I did not see, girl-child that I am, what he was doing.”

“You lie. Your magic was bound at birth.”

“Magic-bound does not equal magic-blind.”

The Master sagged in his great throne now like a rag doll with barely enough strength to keep himself upright. “It was done for the good of all,” he croaked.

Kalina swept forward to stand before his throne, gesturing at the decayed hall. “Look around you, Father, and tell me that this is good.”