by Rabia Gale
The floor of the chamber, when she got to it, was spongy, with many dimples and rises. Groups of partygoers stood gossiping and eating around small tables draped in cobweb and piled with bruised fruit, rancid meat, and stale bread. The guests themselves wore tattered clothes, and their substance was worn so thin, Arabella could only see some of them if she squinted.
They ignored her as she passed, each one holding a separate conversation.
“And so I told Gehenna-bai…”
“The rains are late this year…”
“I do so love a tea made from broken hearts steeped in the tears of the disinherited!”
“Has the messenger come? Tell me, has the messenger come?”
The last was spoken by a ghost so transparent and agitated that he was a mere flutter in the air. Arabella could barely make out a middle-aged man with staring eyes and care-lined face, wearing a loin cloth and a tiger’s skin around his shoulders, his body smeared with paint.
For a moment, Arabella’s eyes connected with his. A jolt ran through her. Then the ghost faded away entirely, leaving only a small insistent, “… the messenger come?” before it, too, dwindled into a sigh and was gone.
No one else had noticed. They continued their prattle, in voices that were higher, louder, and faster than before.
Shaken, Arabella followed that inner pull to the shadows on the other side of the ballroom. A cavernous gloom shrouded this end, and the few guests nearby stood with their backs turned towards it.
The darkness exhaled a warm breeze that smelled of wet earth and wild grass. Arabella glanced at the chamber behind her, a place safe in the same way a prison was. It was a roadhouse that everyone was petrified to leave.
She didn’t want to end up like that barely-there ghost who had winked out right before her eyes.
Resolutely she turned, consulted her intuition, and strode into the darkness.
The sound of dripping water accompanied her long before the darkness lifted. Arabella brushed against wet leaves, tipping water into her slippers. A few moments of concentration, and the slippers became half-boots with sturdy heels. That was better.
The path was soggy and she squelched. Every now and then, something thin and woody tickled the back of her neck. Arabella hoped it was a twig and not a skeletal hand.
The thought made her quicken her pace through the undergrowth. Arabella tripped over a root and caught herself from falling. Her hands clutched something muscular and vine-like. It writhed and Arabella hastily let go.
Her unseen surroundings closed in, snagging painfully in her hair, reaching out across the path. Branches whipped in her face, and she splashed muddy water over herself with every step.
It was cold and disgusting.
So intent was she upon her footing, Arabella didn’t notice the creature until much later.
Something moved in the foliage, much quieter, keeping pace with her. She heard its breathing, low and soft.
The back of her neck prickled. Arabella stood still, peering, but could make out nothing.
It kept its distance.
Arabella couldn’t just stand there in the dark, waiting for it to make a move. She pressed on, uncomfortably aware of her unseen companion.
The darkness lightened, turning to a thick smoky grey. Shapes appeared out of it—a tree trunk, a tangle of large leaves, some hanging vines. White fog moved sluggishly as she passed through it, leaving warm moisture on her face.
Arabella’s legs ached, as if she’d been trudging through a marsh for days. Tiredness bowed her shoulders. Heat and humidity pressed down on her.
She wondered if ghosts perspired. It was hard to tell, with the damp plastering her hair to her head and sticking her clothes to her body. Her shoes and hem were waterlogged.
In this realm, it seemed she retained all the inconveniences of her corporeal form.
The light was a pearly grey when Arabella stopped by a quiet brook and leaned against a tree. It was cooler under the canopy, and the gurgle of water as it slipped over a bed of dark stones a welcome change from the ceaseless dripping.
She stared idly at the stones, noting the way they glinted with veins of green and blue. They reminded Arabella of lapis lazuli imported from the Goblin Empire. She leaned down for a closer look.
A snarl ripped the silence. A sinuous, feline body leapt out of the trees. It landed on the bank and turned in one savage fluid movement. Flash of fangs, ripple of spotted pelt, green glare of lantern eyes.
Arabella yelped and ran.
Her feet took flight. She skimmed over the brook, over the roots of ancient trees, over a tangle of undergrowth. The large cat bounded behind her, its rumble never far from her ears. Its breath was hot against her shoulder blades.
Branches whipped by. She dodged around trunks, scraped her arms against roughened bark. The exertion burned through her and roared in her ears, punctuated by her own scared whimpers.
She didn’t have time to think, just flee, following the pull inside her. Her body in Vaeland, still drawing her like a magnet, from so far away.
There. A gap in the trees, a golden arch framing light. Arabella tumbled into a clearing filled with sparkling sunshine, and fell to her knees.
The sweet green scent of crushed grass rose to her nose.
This was followed by a gentle laugh.
“Welcome,” said a voice, full of mirth and warmth. “Welcome, weary traveler.”
Arabella squinted in the direction of the voice as her eyes adjusted to the light. A woman resolved out of the golden smear, tall, black-haired, pale-skinned. Faint lines around her eyes and mouth put her at about middle age.
She wore an old-fashioned fitted gown of red velvet, a golden girdle low about her slender waist, emphasizing the curves of her hips. The skirts were full to her feet, her sleeves tight on her arms, and her shoulders bare above the low boat-shaped neckline.
“Who are you?” Arabella blurted out, too tired and too scared for proper etiquette.
The woman chuckled. “My, you are a blunt one. Spirited, too.” She surveyed Arabella with kindly satisfaction. “But those are the only ones who make it this far.” Sadness touched her voice and the brightness in her face dimmed.
As if on cue, the large cat set up an eerie scream. Arabella sensed its frustrated energy outside the clearing as it prowled.
She scrambled to her feet, still tensed to run. “You didn’t answer my question,” she told the woman. Kindly or not, ordinary-seeming or not, she was still a denizen of the Shadow Lands.
The woman bowed her dark head, a slender gold coronet gleaming against her hair. “Forgive me. I am Shahandra, one of the Guardians of this place. It is my task to provide a small refuge for those unfortunate enough to lose themselves in the Shadow Lands, to give them a reprieve from its dangers.”
She gestured around her. Arabella noted a number of grey tree-stumps, each polished to a shine, functioning as tables. Each held a profusion of objects—a tangle of jewelry on one, a host of goblets on another, stacks of plates, rows of daggers, folded clothing, and more.
Arabella’s fingers itched to snatch up a weapon. She put her hands behind her back lest her desires get the better of her. “Where did you get all these?”
Shahandra did not seem to mind her curtness. She answered with a gracious patience that made Arabella feel small and churlish. “I create them from the aether within the Shadow Lands.”
Arabella paused, thinking of Trey’s sword and the stool he had conjured up. “I thought aether was grey?”
“In the mortal realm, it is,” said Shahandra. “Here in the Shadow Lands, I have more… flexibility.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Arabella, but the woman was already turning away to a slender, moon-pale pedestal. She dipped a silver chalice into a stone bowl atop it and came forward with a friendly smile.
“Drink,” Shahandra said, holding it out. The cuffs of her sleeves extended up to her fingers. “You must be thirsty. The Shadow Lands sap your
strength. Drink, and refresh yourself.”
Looking into that clear water, Arabella realized she was indeed desperately parched.
Without thinking, she reached out her hand.
The cat screamed again, the sound clawing down her nerves. Arabella jumped, and the whole clearing wavered in her sight. She frowned and rubbed her eyes, but the smear refused to clear. It was as if she were seeing double, one image on top of the other.
Arabella looked at Shahandara, who smiled with mild concern, still whole and solid, holding out the chalice. “I fear that you are rapidly losing substance,” she went on. “Drink and be restored.”
Thirst burned in Arabella’s throat. Her insides felt withered. She yearned for that water with a ferocity that shocked her.
Her hands clenched into fists. Pain shot through her right finger—her mother’s ring biting deep into her incorporeal flesh, insistent.
Arabella looked down at it. The sapphire glowed.
A slight frown marred Shahandra’s smooth white forehead. “You come bearing some interesting magic,” she said. Her voice came from far away. The rippling of the clearing around her made Arabella sick to her stomach. It was as if something was straining to come out of the very fabric of the place itself, like children revealing themselves from behind draperies.
Her hand throbbed, the ring a band of heat around her finger.
“Ah, you’re in pain,” said Shahandra. “Quickly, take it off and cast it aside before it consumes you!”
Did the Master cast black magic on Mama’s ring? Arabella wrenched it off her finger. Sparks shot up her arms. She raised her hand to fling it away.
And remembered.
She remembered this pain.
It was the same as the time she went through the barrier at All Saints’. A fierce, purifying sort of pain.
The ache was concentrated in her eyes. Her vision was washed with white. Arabella had the sense that someone was trying to tell her something. Something important.
“Hurry!” Shahandra said urgently.
On impulse, Arabella held the ring up to her right eye, peeping through the hole.
She stifled a squeak.
The warm golden light that had suffused the clearing was gone, replaced with a cold silver one. Twisted and blackened tree stumps tore through the soggy ground like rotten teeth. Each bore a clutter of relics in rusted and tottering piles—wicked knives with serrated edges, blood-stained clothing, cracked goblets, and chipped plates.
Shahandra too had changed, her skin a dead white, leached of all life. Her ebony tresses twined and hissed like snakes, her coronet was a rusted circle of iron thorns. The woman’s eyes were chips of obsidian and her dress stained with things Arabella did not wish to identify.
In her hands was a human skull, full of a thick and dark liquid.
“Drink,” she said, reaching out, speaking in a voice that seemed to emanate from the grave itself. “Drink!”
“Absolutely not!” Arabella slapped the skull out of Shahandra’s hands. It clattered to the ground, spilling foul ooze.
Shahandra gnashed her teeth. Her jaw came unhinged, scales crept up her face.
She lunged at Arabella.
Arabella skipped back and yelled, “Cat! Come!”
It worked. With a snarl and a pounce, the cat was there, in the clearing. Arabella ducked behind Shahandra, now writhing, her dress clinging to her lengthening body.
The cat hit the woman in the chest. They both went down in a whirl of fur and scale, hissing and spitting.
Arabella fled to the other side of the clearing, slipping the ring back on her finger. She glanced at the weapons as she passed, each one full of malice and pain and bloodlust.
She didn’t want any of them. She ran.
Moments—or hours—later, Arabella came out of the forest and into a narrow valley, filled with stones and pebbles.
Here she paused. Because instead of one pull, she felt two.
They led in different directions.
And for the first time she could see them, manifested as two slender threads, faintly gleaming.
She had no idea which one to follow.
A woman’s voice, pleasant and well-bred, said, “One leads back to your body, the other to the one who came into the Shadow Lands.”
Arabella spun to face the woman seated on a boulder.
Not another one!
Arabella eyed her warily, this woman with pale hair slipping out of its knot, in a dress with fuller skirts and lower waist than current trends indicated. She sat as if she had all the time in the world.
At Arabella’s expression, the woman shrugged and said, “See for yourself.”
Arabella bent down and touched one thread. A familiar sensation ran through her—she smelled Aunt Cecilia’s perfume, the powder she dusted her neck and arms with, and clean sheets warm from the sun.
The other thread felt as if spun of steel, hard and biting, leading somewhere wilder, colder.
She looked at the woman again and thought she looked familiar. “I’m sorry, but have we met?”
“No, never,” said the other composedly. Her hands were clasped loosely in her lap; there was something very restful about her.
Arabella frowned, unable to shake off the nagging feeling she’d seen the woman before. It was hard to tell the color of her eyes save that they were light, and the moonlit glow had bleached her hair to silver.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Arabella gravely, “but I must perform a test.”
The woman inclined her head in assent. Arabella pulled off her mother’s ring and, feeling foolish but determined, peered at her through it.
The woman remained the same, as did her surroundings.
“You ran across Shahandra,” she guessed as Arabella replaced the ring.
“I did.” Arabella made a face.
“It took me,” said the woman, expressionless, “two years to disentangle myself from the sorceress’s clutches.”
“I had help,” said Arabella, thinking of the cat. “Was she really a Guardian?”
“Once. But it’s not good for anyone to linger in the Shadow Lands. Not even the purest can resist the taint.”
Arabella gave her a speaking look.
The woman smiled. “Oh, I haven’t been here that long. Only about nine years by mortal reckoning. I will move on soon—whether or not I accomplish my purpose.”
“And what is that, ma’am?” queried Arabella.
“Right now, it’s to tell you what your choices are,” answered the woman dryly. “Have you picked?”
Arabella gave a longing look at the thread that led back to her body, to safety and home and warmth.
“This one.” Arabella picked the thread of steel, winding it between her fingers. It stung, but not as much as she’d expected.
She had to do it. She had to take the chance that the one looking for her in the Shadow Lands was Trey, not the ghoul nor its Master. If she didn’t find Trey, he could still be drawn into the trap.
And there wasn’t much time left in which to warn him of the coming attack on the Mirror of Elsinore.
The woman nodded. “Very well, then. Off you go. You haven’t a lot of time.” There was nothing in her straightforward tone to tell Arabella whether she’d chosen rightly or not.
Arabella started up the path—of course it had to wind uphill into broken, stony country. Then she paused and turned around. “Thank you, ma’am. And,” she added impulsively, “I hope it goes well with you, in the end.”
A smile flickered on the woman’s face. “And you, too, Arabella Trent.”
Arabella started but the woman was gone.
She was alone, holding the shining thread. It jerked in her hands. “I’m coming,” she told it and resumed climbing.
Halfway up the path, a howl rose up behind her. It echoed against the flat sky above, filled her ears with thunder.
Arabella peered over her shoulder as the dark bulk of a monster heaved itself up over the lan
dscape. Oh no!
Run!
Chapter Thirteen
Trey arrived first, as he always did when walking the Shadow Lands in spirit, at the place he called Wildcross.
This was the Shadow Lands version of Whitecross Abbey, the ancestral home of the Shields. But here, the bow-shaped lake was darker and deeper, the drop from hilltop to lake a straight plunge, as if cut by a knife. No house overlooked the lake, though the Shadow Lands kept trying to manifest one.
The trouble with houses was that they tended to attract inhabitants.
An old ash tree stood in the place occupied by Whitecross Abbey in the mortal plane. Its bark was a pale grey, its branches spread silvery-green leaflets up to a tarnished sky. Clouds of aether, fine and white, stretched like cobwebs overhead.
Trey put a hand on the ridged, diamond-textured bark, felt the flow of pure sap in the heart of the tree. The ash protected this corner of the Shadow Lands, and every summer and winter he renewed the rites that kept it pure and strong. Its unseen roots plunged through the soft, unstable ground and anchored in Vaelish soil.
This was an outpost, a small, safe place in a hostile land.
The ground around the ash was fuzzy with the short blades that passed for Shadow Lands grass. They rubbed against his spirit like razor burn. The land rolled around him in sullen hillocks and dispirited hollows. Intermittent items of interest broke the monotony—a stand of sickly-pale birches; a topiary shaped like a knight on a charger, clipped to within an inch of its life; a well in a hollow.
Most of these were temporary; save for the well, they changed as the seasons passed. Trey guessed, like the roots of the ash, the well too drew its water from good Vaelish soil. He had never figured out where on the actual estate it was, however. This made him leery of taking a sip, despite the winch and wooden bucket hanging above it.
Once assured that this place was as safe as the Shadow Lands could ever be, Trey stepped away, questing for Arabella.
Time and space were fluid in this realm. It might’ve taken one moment to snatch Arabella from Merrimack’s courtyard and spirit her to her present location, but from his perspective, her route could be long, tedious, and meandering.
