by Holly Lisle
"Thank you."
Doggie said, "When will he develop the powers of an old god?"
Lauren shrugged. "I really don't know. Years from now, I hope."
The goroths nodded again, looking oddly relieved.
Lauren considered that, from their perspective, being in charge of a very busy small boy who they thought might strike them with lightning at any moment must have been uncomfortable. When he told them to jump, no wonder they jumped.
"You can't tell the…doggies…what to do," she told Jake. "You are a little boy."
"I'm Superman," he said, studying her with that look that said he was testing her to see how she reacted to defiance.
"You're Jake. You can pretend to be Superman later, but right now I am talking to Jake." She displayed no weakness in either her voice or her expression, and he looked down after a moment and nestled his head against her chest. "Okay, Mama."
She stroked his hair and cuddled him tight, rocking back and forth. "I love you," she said.
"I love you, too." He smiled up at her, and kissed her cheek. She kissed the top of his head. "I want my Superman cape."
Lauren sighed. "I should have packed that. I'm sorry. I'll get it for you as soon as I can."
He looked at her. "I want my Superman cape."
"I understand that." She pointed to the bag. "I brought Bearish. I brought Mr. Puddleduck. And I brought the cars. But I forgot the cape."
Jake said, "We are the Justice Leak."
The Justice League was a superhero cartoon that Jake loved beyond reason. He adored superheroes—any superheroes. He was perfectly willing to be a Powerpuff Girl, or Captain Underpants, or Batman. He didn't discriminate—as long as they were clearly the good guys, they were all right with him. If he was Superman, then Bearish could be the Green Lantern, and Mr. Puddleduck could be Batman. He'd decided some time back that she was Wonder Woman. Of course, he liked his superheroes best if they wore capes. So when she had noticed this budding passion, she made him a Superman cape by tying together the sleeves of a short red satin bathrobe she hadn't worn in years. It made a surprisingly convincing cape. On Jake, it was floor-length, and the material draped beautifully.
He loved that cape. Prior to the disaster, she'd had to watch him every minute to make sure he didn't try to fly off the top stairs while wearing it, of course, but she'd also had the fun of watching him stand in front of the mirror, in Superman Underoos and the cape, with his hands on his hips and a stern expression on his face, repeating, "I am Superman. I am Superman." But this was the first time since that day that he'd really expressed interest in being Superman.
She smiled and hugged him tight. Maybe he would make it all the way back to being himself again. She wanted desperately to believe that.
"I'll get it for you today, all right? And you can carry it around in the bag with the rest of the Justice Leak—er, League."
"Yes. That will be a good thing."
Seolar arrived then, with the first of the household staff, and the room filled up with mirrors and chairs and a table and food, and then with cots for Lauren and Molly and Jake, and nesting blankets for the goroths, and then Lauren and Molly fell into work, and magic, and didn't resurface for hours.
By the time Molly could open and close a gate and was starting to get the hang of distance-viewing through a mirror, Lauren looked up from working to discover Jake already asleep.
She looked at him, curled alone on the cot, his blanket already kicked off. Curled on the floor all around him in little piles lay goroths on balled-up blankets. At the sole door that entered the safe room, guards—alert and armed. Doggie stood watch behind them.
"Like living in a fort within a fort," Molly said, watching the direction of Lauren's gaze.
Lauren nodded. "I wish it seemed like overkill."
"I know what you mean." Molly shrugged. "But at least nothing is getting in here tonight."
Lauren, lying with her own cot shoved against Jake's, realized as she was drifting off to sleep that he was wearing a red cape. She wondered which of the goroths had managed to understand what Jake wanted well enough to find the cloth and fashion a cape.
Sweet of them, she thought. And drifted down to darkness.
Copper House
"Hunter? Hunter? He's…gone."
Lauren woke, to find the goroths up and milling, the guards standing around staring with panic in their eyes.
And she saw Jake's cot empty, and looked for him, and did not see him.
She was on her feet, caught in a fine rage and a coarse and terrible dread. "Where is he?" she asked to anyone and everyone. "What happened?"
"He kissed you," Doggie said, wringing her knobby hands. "He said, 'Everything will be okay, Mommy. Superman will go get Daddy.' And I thought he was playing, for he spoke much of this Superman yesterday after he pulled the red cloak out of the bag you brought him—though when he asked me to get the cloak from the bag, I could not find it there—and then he said to me that he was Superman." The hands wrung faster, "And you said he did not have the god powers, so I thought he could not do any harm to himself playing with the mirrors."
Lauren's skin suddenly wore a sheen of cold sweat. "The mirrors," she whispered. She'd gone through gates as a small child. Had brought playmates into her room from Oria, too, by opening gates. But Jake had never opened a gate. Had never done magic.
But he watched. He had traveled the path between the worlds.
He knew the feel of gates opening, the feel of the power that opened them.
"But when he put his hand on the mirror and the green fire opened before him, I was not fast enough. Had I been, I would have pulled him back—or barring that, I would have gone with him. But the passage closed behind him, and I could do nothing but wake you."
Lauren felt light-headed. Sick. Her mind whirled, confused, like an animal caught in a trap trying to find a way out. Trying to roll back time just a few precious minutes.
"Which one?" Lauren asked, and suddenly Molly was at her side.
"What happened? What are you going to do? I just woke up and all I caught is that Jake is gone."
"He opened a gate and went through it. He's gone to get his father."
Molly looked bewildered. "But his father is dead."
Lauren asked Doggie, "Which mirror?"
Doggie showed her, and Lauren knelt before it, her fingers pressed lightly to the glass, feeling the echoes of the last passage.
"Lauren," Molly said, her voice a background noise in Lauren's mind, "Brian is dead. Where could Jake possibly think he might find him?"
Lauren felt the first echoes of Jake's passage, and shivered, wanting to pull away. Coldness, darkness, a slow and terrifying vibration that had nothing to do with worlds and life, and everything to do with eternity and death—it seeped into her fingertips and ran through her bloodstream, freezing her from the heart out. Her child was in there. Jake. Jake, who thought he was Superman.
"Where did he go?" Molly asked again.
"Heaven," Lauren said, her voice dull. "Or Hell. Or maybe just nonexistence. I can't tell."
Molly put a hand on Lauren's shoulder. "How could Jake know where to go?"
"Brian gave Jake part of himself—part of his soul, his essence—to keep Jake alive when you carried him from Oria back to Earth after the accident. Jake can feel his father as clearly as I can feel Jake. Maybe even clearer."
Lauren stared into the mirror, into the reflection of her eyes, and there looked within for the fire—comforting green fire, the embrace of the energies of the universe. She splayed her fingers against the glass, summoning the gatefires, and the storm that rode with them. But the familiar energies did not come. No green light glimmered far away. The fire that came for her, the fire that had swallowed Jake and that would take her, too, seeped toward her, gray and cold and terrifying, and tears filled her eyes as she thought of her little boy calling that—calling it so that he could go get his Daddy—and then bravely stepping in when the darkness came.
That cold, that gray, that hell, was nothing short of Death, and the river through which Death flowed opened a pinpoint tributary that ran from the end of everything straight to Lauren, and she had to fight down fear so awful it made her want to pull back and hide.
"Don't go," Molly said, and the fear in her voice cut through the haze of terror that clouded Lauren's mind. "We'll find a way to bring Jake back. With magic. With something. Don't go. If you go and don't come back, worlds will die."
The passageway spiraled bigger—a thumbprint, a peach, a cantaloupe. She kept calling it, and suddenly beneath her fingertips she felt the dead flowing past. A broad, deep, powerful river of souls, cold and angry and terrifying, confused and grieving and lost, relieved and sad, mourning and merely numb, pouring steadily in one direction. The direction in which she could feel Jake, still moving away from her. Lauren locked her knees and clenched her teeth and stood fast, though her heart felt like it might explode and she stank of her own fear-sweat. "Death has been stingy about giving me back the people I care about. I'm going to make him give me back my child."
Behind her, Lauren heard Seolar, feet pounding on the stones, running like hell—and others running with him. He was shouting, "Keep her here. Do whatever you must, but keep her here."
"Anyone and everyone who tries to stop me from going after Jake is going to die," Lauren said. "Right now."
Behind her, Molly whispered. "I've got your back." And then, to those who came pouring into the safe room, Molly shouted, "Don't touch her, don't anybody move." And then, in a voice that broke Lauren's heart, Molly added, just to her, "Be safe. And if you see the real me…bring me back."
"I love you, Molly," Lauren said. And stepped into darkness.
CHAPTER 9
Copper House
MOLLY WATCHED LAUREN walk into the dark, cold fire of the gate. She stood for a long, quiet moment, lost between hope and despair; and then she thought of Seolar, who had known the truth and kept it from her, and anger filled her and washed everything else away.
She turned and waited, while Seolar waded through his men to stand in front of her, and on his face she read echoes of her own fury.
She glared at her reflection in Lauren's gate-mirror, angled behind Seolar—her green eyes gleamed. She gave no impression of softness, nor yielding. No shadow of the woman who had sought passion and wild sex from her lover the night before remained.
"I would speak with you," she said, only barely containing the fury in her voice.
Seolar's eyes narrowed. He turned to his men, the goroths, and to a thin, short veyâr dressed in tan and dun.
The guest held up one hand to forestall Seolar, and said, "Matters between you and the Vodi take precedence over anything I might have to say. We'll wait outside." He led the rest out the door, and within a moment Molly and Seolar had the room to themselves.
With the click of the door behind her, Molly tore into Seo. "Not only didn't you tell me, but you actively hid the truth of what I am from me. When we were at Graywinds, I told you not to confuse adversaries with enemies. I may not want the same things you want, we may have different means to an end, but I am not your enemy. Unless you lie to me."
She shook her head, clenched her fists. "You could have saved me time and confusion; you could have just laid out the facts in front of me and trusted me to deal with them. Instead, you decided to jolly me along as if I were some fragile, brainless little twit, and to hide things from me. And you lied to me—and lies of omission are just as heinous as lies of commission. You would have let me go on thinking nothing had changed, you bastard. Why? Afraid that if I knew the truth, I might be a little less willing to leap in and risk my life to save the worldchain? Afraid I might go over to the dark side right away, join forces with others of my kind? Afraid I might just say 'To hell with all of it,' and go off someplace else in the universe to sulk or work on my fucking tan or something? Is that what you thought? You shit! You asshole! You creep! Wouldn't even let me know that I'm a monster, that you can't abide the sight of me, that I'm just some soulless thing that is going to become more and more evil, more and more lost, and less and less me." During the tirade she kept walking toward him, a half step at a time, until she was inches from him, her face tipped up as close as she could get while she shouted. She realized suddenly that she was shouting; that was more loss of control than she wanted to display. So she dropped her voice to a soft growl and continued. "Just keep me confused and bury me in bullshit and let me keep healing the sick and let me and my sister put everything on the line to reverse the dying of the worldchain and pretend that you give a shit about me just to keep me happy and quiet, and never mind that as long as I'm here and fulfilling my parents' plan for my life, monsters are just going to keep dropping out of the sky and cropping up from the ground to kill me. And some of them are going to get through, and I'm going to die, and every time I die I'm going to lose a few more little pieces of me, and all the while I could be downworld about ten or fifteen worlds in some nice undeveloped corner of some planet, doing nothing but working on my tan and no one would ever come after me to try to kill me." She gasped for breath and glared into his eyes. "I could live something that resembled a normal life, you shitweasel, if I wasn't here busting my ass trying to keep our part of the universe from going tits up."
Seolar hadn't said a word or made a sound during that whole tirade; Molly didn't think he'd even blinked. Now, though, when she'd temporarily run out of steam and breath, his anger faded from his face and he put a hand on her wrist. "I'm sorry. I wanted to protect you from the truth because it is so sad, and because I love you. I did not mean to hurt you." He looked brokenhearted.
"You did."
"I can see that. But, my love, causing you pain is not and will never be my intent."
"You can't possibly love me," Molly said. "I'm a…thing."
Seolar shook his head, reached out and touched her hair. "You're you. Right now, at this moment, you are still you. My sadness comes from knowing that you will gradually slip away. Perhaps we can keep you safe and you will be you for as long as I live—and if that sounds selfish, it is. I know that you will outlive me, and I don't mind that—but I don't want to outlive the part of you that is truly you." He brushed his fingertips against her cheek, and for just a moment looked away.
"That's easy to say—"
He pressed one finger to her lips. "It is not easy to say. It is very hard—to admit that there could come a time when I will look at you, and you will look just as you do at this moment, but that whatever is inside of you will have no memory of your love for me, no thought of me, no compassion toward me. I love you—I love you with everything that is in me. In you I found the partner and the lover I waited my en tire life to discover. And no more do I find you than you start to slip away from me, and if I can protect you well enough I may be able to keep you as you are—but I am just a man and your enemies are gods."
He pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair. "Would that I were a god. Would that I could be everything you need me to be, as you are everything I need you to be."
Inside her, the anger melted. "You're everything I want you to be. I found love with you, and I never had that before. I just thought…I thought that you couldn't love me anymore."
"I will always love you." He leaned back so that he could look into her eyes. "I wish I could say the same for you." He smiled when he said it, but the sadness in his eyes grew vast as an ocean.
She looked at him and memorized his face and the moment and how love filled her—and knew as she did it that it was futile. The realization was a knife in her heart. "I will always love you—for however much that's worth, and for however long I'm me."
He pulled her in close and squeezed her. Then he sighed and pulled away, and his mood shifted.
"Someone came here to meet you. He's here to help—he felt your sister arrive, and noticed the…ah, them gathering overhead, and he said he's been waiting a long time for Lauren and you to get here. Your, ah�
��temper…chased him from the room before he had a chance to introduce himself."
"That bland little veyâr?"
"That is the form he takes here. He's one of the old gods. One of the Tergathi. His name is Qawar and he is almost as ancient as the…rrôn…and powerful. And absolutely on your side—if not on ours."
"He doesn't like the veyâr?"
"We don't matter to him. He's concerned about Oria, though, and Earth, and all the worlds above and below it."
Molly said, "Then he can't be happy Lauren left."
A trace of Seolar's previous anger chased across his face.
"He was furious. But no matter. What's done can be undone." Seo opened the door and asked the old god to enter.
On closer examination, Molly decided Qawar didn't look quite like a veyâr. Apart from his short stature, his eyes—black as Seolar's—seemed a bit small and not luminous enough. His cheekbones and nose jutted at wrong angles—if he'd been a sculpture, he would have been a second-rate one. And unlike the veyâr, he had all the presence of lumpy mashed potatoes. He'd pass the first glance, she thought, but not a close inspection.
