by Rabia Gale
And most probably, dangerous.
Trey pulled a wry face as he looked down at the cuff on his wrist. A band of silver with darker threads running through it, it connected him to his body in Vaeland—and to Sutton’s overseeing, Winter’s runes, and other magic besides.
He felt like small child on leading strings.
But these were the conditions Winter had set, so Trey dismissed the feeling and drew phantasmia from around him.
Phantasmia was the potent magic of the Shadow Lands, far more dangerous than aether, not as malevolent as miasma. Trey’s use of it in Vaeland was severely curtailed, but here, he could give full rein to his gift.
Here, he could really be a phantasmist.
The strange, half-alive stuff of the Shadow Lands coalesced inside his hands like thick smoke. Trey spun it into fine wires and sent them looping off in a hundred different directions. He breathed memories of Arabella into them and cast them out to go seek.
Now was the part he hated.
He had to wait.
If he’d brought his body, he could’ve tracked her himself. Trey surveyed the dull landscape, his gaze arrested by the black smear on the distant horizon.
Memory supplied the features he couldn’t distinguish. It was the ruined city, of course, never far from Wildcross, a constant reminder of his oldest failure. Border Walkers before him had searched their whole lives for just a glimpse of the place; meanwhile, he could never quite shake it off.
Even from here, he could taste bitter despair on the air. If he strained, he’d hear the toll of its tongueless bells. He knew, none better, how it’d warp the sky and land around it, turning them into a swamp of miasma.
He had to act, before the city’s presence jeopardized the already fraught operation.
Sorry, Winter.
Trey paced away from the ash, down the gentle slope away from the lake and past the well.
Despite what the vista promised, it didn’t take long for him to reach the boundary of Wildcross. The mist beyond was colored like ice, with hints of blue and purple. There was a weighty feel to it; Trey could sense it trying to solidify enough to form something. His eyes narrowed.
A trap?
For him—or Arabella?
He crooked his left hand and Sorrow flashed into shape in his fingers. Here, she was even more glorious, like iced lightning, with intricate patterns etched in quicksilver on the blade.
There was a tug on one of his lines, one that led straight into the mist. A strong pull, and with it the scent of rain and sun-warmed linen.
If there was ever a scent of Arabella Trent, this was it.
Wait, Winter had cautioned. Don’t go out to her. Reel her in.
Sorry, Winter. I can’t do that with wraiths about to be born.
He strode across the boundary of his safe place. The cuff around his wrist tightened, followed by a pinch between his shoulders.
Trey reached behind him and detached the line there. It crumbled to a wisp.
It would take Winter and Sutton at least a quarter of an hour to hook him again.
That was enough time for him.
And with that, he swung Sorrow in an arc through the torso of a newly-formed snow maiden, her hair still spinning gold out of grey, her eyes and mouth still ill-defined holes. Cold sprayed over him in specks that burned; he twitched phantasmal armor around himself.
And then the mist cleared and Trey looked out at dozens of snow maidens, intermingled with cobwebbed cloaks and small black barghests with fiery-coal eyes.
“Come on then,” he said, beckoning. “Who’s first?”
The wraiths fell in swathes before Sorrow. The half-formed creatures were no match for him.
If only there weren’t so many of them, crowding together, reaching out with plucking fingers, snapping muzzles, and tangling folds.
Trey suspected that they were only there to slow him down.
Which meant someone didn’t want him reaching—
A familiar shriek pierced his senses. “Trey!”
The mist had cleared, leaving him in the middle of a steel-grey plain with a high-vaulted ceiling of milky-white. Distant figures were pinned to it; they writhed like insects. Trey didn’t spare them too close a look.
“Arabella, here!” he called back as he decapitated a barghest. Smoky flames spurted out of its severed neck, consuming both head and body. Trey put his gauntleted arm in front of his face and thrust himself through a crowd of cloaks. It was like forcing his way through layers of draperies.
Draperies that whispered and gibbered, reminding him of every sin, every nightmare.
As if he hadn’t hardened himself against everything they could throw at him. Brother-killer. Pervert. Liar.
Trey spoke a few curt words and his armor turned white-hot and flared. Cloaks disintegrated in the blast.
“Trey!” Arabella came scrambling over the edge of the plain, tripping over her feet, clutching something to her chest. “Help me!”
And behind her, like a towering thundercloud with eyes of fire, a massive hell hound heaved itself onto the plain.
What a monster! Trey thought appreciatively, resting Sorrow on his shoulder.
The creature’s muscles rippled under its coal-black hide. Its paws were as big as carriages. Strands of toxic slobber fell from its mouth, the ground smoking underneath. Its growl reverberated against the arched ceiling. The skeletal figures affixed to it stopped their struggles and held still in fear.
Arabella was pale against the hell hound’s tar-black bulk, still running, still valiant.
Not that she had any hope of outdistancing it.
The hell hound stretched out its neck, mouth with double rows of teeth and black gums, wide open. It loomed over Arabella, then lowered its jaws with a snap.
On empty air.
One moment she was in the blast of its fetid breath, the next Trey jerked the life line she gripped.
Arabella stumbled upon landing and pitched forward into his chest. He caught her around the waist, steadying her.
“Sorry,” she said, the word muffled.
The hell hound raised its muzzle in a howl so bone-chilling that Arabella quivered and clutched the lapels of his coat even tighter.
“Hey, now.” Trey gently held her away from him, one hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you have the vapors right now. You’re a game one, aren’t you?”
Some color returned to her pale face. Arabella caught her breath in a half-sob and half-gulp and bit her lip. She nodded.
There were tears on her face, the first Trey had seen so far in her adventure.
He left Sorrow point-down next to him, and pulled a mist-thin handkerchief from his equally insubstantial coat pocket. With calm practicality, he dabbed her face, seemingly paying no attention to the hell hound galloping towards them.
Arabella glanced nervously over her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about the friend you brought,” Trey told her, reaching for another one of his lines. He jerked them both to another part of the plain, and once again, the thwarted hound raised up its cry.
Arabella stared at him. “You’re,” she said, almost accusingly, poking his shoulder, “a ghost.” Her finger pressed into him with a feeling that was half-ticklish, half-prickly.
“I had to leave my body behind.” The hell hound’s giant head appeared once more. Once again, it ran for them in ground-eating strides. “Tell me what happened, Arabella. I can only use my life lines two or three more times.” Already short-lived, they were crumbling rapidly.
The usual spells and runes didn’t last long in the Shadow Lands.
She nodded, face set and determined. There were smudges on her face and her skirt was sadly tattered.
She looked adorable.
Not the time to be thinking of such things,
“There was someone else in the pawnshop besides Mr. Gibbs. But he—or she—did something to my memory so I can’t remember him or her at all. The same person trapped me in a pentagram using my m
other’s ring.” She held up her right hand with a dainty gesture.
“Effective, but with a glaring weakness you obviously exploited. Excuse me, Arabella.” Trey put an arm around her again and shifted them again.
She was still talking, the words tumbling out of her. “It was a trap for you. They meant for you to follow me. The ghoul was there, too.” She shuddered.
Trey couldn’t blame her.
“And,” Arabella went on, triumphantly, “I remembered what was going on in the pawnshop. A miasma attack at the Viewing tomorrow!”
A feeling, part-fear, part-excitement, clenched in his gut. “Well done,” he said softly. “And now, I think, it’s time you returned to your body, Arabella.” Her exertions had done her spirit no good—her feet had completely lost shape, so that she appeared to be gliding on a column of light.
“Yes, but what of that?” The hell hound appeared on the horizon again.
“I’ll get you on your way.” His last life line had, as planned, found her body. He grabbed a hold of it for their last shift.
They landed in a different place this time. Under a polished silver sky, the hard silver ground was strewn with gem stones, like pebbles on a shore. Some were cut and polished, others still rough. They glittered in a rainbow of colors. Ruined structures and worn statuary were scattered throughout.
It wasn’t far enough. The hell hound had already turned even before they manifested, was already arrowing right for them.
The creature had known he would save this for last.
The creature? Or its master?
Arabella looked wildly around. “Oh!” Her stare fixed on a yellow topaz, clear in parts, smoky in others. She reached down to touch it, then sprang back, hiding her eyes, as it flared to life.
A portal stood where the stone had been, stretching into a tunnel that seemed to be made of water, walls rippling in bands of blue, green, and grey.
Arabella hurried eagerly towards it—it could hardly be helped, since the tug of her body at the other end was so strong.
But, incredibly, she checked herself at the entrance. “What about you?” she asked. “I can’t leave you with that thing!”
Her misplaced concern was touching. “Have you no faith, Miss Trent?” said Trey lightly, going up to her. He dropped a kiss on her upturned forehead. “I’m the Shade Hunter. Now get going!” He gave her a little push; the portal did the rest.
Currents of color, smelling of good earth and green herbs, enveloped her. The portal vanished.
Trey swung Sorrow, the blade whistling through aether. “Come on, you hell hound! Come and fight!”
It came at him, bigger than a house, bigger than a church even.
Yes, this would be a tough battle.
One that he wouldn’t have to fight.
As the hell hound galloped up, its reek of old blood and rot surging ahead of it, drool splattering and smoking, Trey felt that familiar pinch between his shoulder blades.
About time, thought Trey, as Winter and the rest finally got ahold of him and yanked him back to Vaeland.
Trey opened his eyes and sat up, his hands clenched around the sides of a thinly-padded mahogany box too much like a coffin.
This was one of the reasons he didn’t much like spirit walking.
By the grey light creeping through the attic windows, he could tell it was morning. Trey looked around at the strained, exhausted faces peering at him and found Winter.
He said, before Winter could scold him for his actions regarding the anchoring spell, “There’s going to be a miasma attack.” Trey stood up and stepped over the side of the box. “At the Viewing.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jonathan Blake was uneasy, a feeling that lay like lead in his gut. The soft dimness of dawn reigned inside the old Keep, the Vaelish people’s first and oldest safe haven. Night’s chill seeped through the stone walls of the long waiting chamber, the woolen tapestries depicting scenes from Vaeland’s perilous past doing little to hold back the cold. The air was still and musty; a reverent hush filled the place. Any inadvertent sound—a scuffle, a deep breath—seemed to be amplified tenfold.
This was not the first time Blake had drawn this duty, but familiarity had not taken the edge off his wariness.
Unknown to most, this was the most dangerous time of the Vernal Rites, this in-between time as night gave way to day on the morning of the Viewing. The Mirror of Elsinore was already in place in the ancient solar, and the only physical entrance to that chamber was through this room.
The gilded and gaudy artifact that the city burghers paraded in the streets later that day was only a decoy for the real thing. Two Guardians had brought the Mirror from its secret home in Flurrey last night and installed it in the solar, where they waited to complete the rites of renewal.
After last year’s Incursion and the long winter, the restoration of the Mirror’s powers was desperately needed.
Swan, the aquamentalist, shifted next to him. This was her first big assignment, and nervous excitement and determined duty were writ all over her square face. Short and curly-headed, she seemed to disappear in the large wraith cloak she wore.
The wraith cloaks. Another thing that only increased Blake’s unease. Fantastically expensive, the cloaks were woven out of phantasmia, spider silk, and the light of a half moon. He had no idea how Internal Affairs had managed to come up with six of them for the elementalists and magicians that guarded the Mirror.
They hadn’t ever done so before.
Maybe this was caution after the Great Incursion last year. Or maybe they suspected an attack.
Wraith cloaks to protect against Shadow Lands demons and shades.
Blake didn’t like this one bit.
He queried Ember, his fire elemental. The salamander, uncharacteristically serious, was on patrol duty, stretching thin strands of purifying fire across windows and doorways.
Should anything unclean enter the Keep, he would know it.
Swan said in a whisper, “Aria and Crescendo report no trouble, sir.” She almost managed to keep her voice even.
“Good. Ask them to come back in.” Blake called for Ember, and the salamander leapt from the wall to his shoulder in a flame-colored streak. Cool, sinuous bodies brushed past Blake as Swan’s undines flowed from the wall and coiled up her legs. She took their watery bodies in a hand each, petting and cooing, and they curled into twin bracelets, grey and ropey, on her wrists.
A movement in the short hallway leading out of the solar caught Blake’s attention. The Guardians emerged and stood in the doorway. The sturdier of the two, a curly-headed broad-faced man who went by the name of Mr. Milton, nodded at him. From the lilt in his voice, Blake guessed he came from one of the counties that bordered Alfheim, the elven kingdom to the north. Blake had no doubt the Guardian’s false name was related to his profession; the man’s jacket was dusted with flour and a smell of yeast surrounded him.
Ember made a contented sound that could only be interpreted as Mmm. Fresh-baked buns were among her favorite foods.
After this is over, we’ll get a whole bag of them to share, he told her. The salamander stroked his cheek in response, the caress a pleasant tingle.
The other Guardian was a small, fidgety man with the bright beady eyes and darting movements of a bird. He dressed like a magpie, too, with odd bits of finery here and there amongst his shabby clothes—a glittering pin holding his neckerchief in place, a swatch of butterfly-patterned silk peeking from a pocket, brass trinkets attached to chains at his waist.
He hadn’t been introduced to Blake at all. Mr. Milton had done all the talking while the birdlike man stared out of large, clear gold eyes.
Mr. Milton opened his mouth.
Blake never knew what he meant to say. The warning came a fraction of a moment before the attack.
Alarms blared. A blast shook the edifice. Fires roared in the outer chambers of the Keep.
Swan started. “What?”
“Protect the Guardians and the
solar!” Blake dashed towards the doorway, Ember’s fire running down his arm and glowing around his hand.
He burst into an outer chamber, one that had once been a dining hall. Marius charged into the room from the other end, a bullish man with heavy brows and a habitual scowl, who was, rather surprisingly, an aeromentalist.
“Report!” Blake demanded.
“Bastards took out my whirlwinds,” grunted Marius. “Banged my flock up good, too.” Sylphs lay around his shoulders like gauzy scarves, uttering piteous squeaks.
“Demons?”
“No.” Marius shook his head. “Men, in odd garb.”
“Be ready!” Blake warned. “Here they come!”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Blake caught sight of a strange, bulbous head for an instant, before it disappeared with a yelp as the steps crumbled.
Bard and his stanae. The earth elementals had collapsed the stairs. Marius gave a pleased grunt.
Blake had no time to express approval. Thanks to his sympathetic connection with Ember, he could summon fire. He set curtains of it across the doorway and windows. Marius didn’t need to be asked—his flock launched and fanned the flames ever higher.
The fire crackled hungrily, burning without fuel. Blake slid a vial of salt from his belt and tossed its contents into the flames. They spat furiously. Twisted spires of green and blue danced within them.
Impfire, malicious and painful, ready to inflict stinging burns on any who dared pass through.
Blake put his hand on a vial of gold flakes in aqua sancta. Expensive, hard to get, hard to make, this would burn away all impure thoughts—frequently along with the person harboring them, too.
No, they’d need a prisoner or two to interrogate.
Marius’ flock pushed the flames down the stairs.
Both men waited, tense.
And then came the surge.
A wave of thick black smoke spilled out from the stairwell. The flames whipped and danced; Blake poured more power into them. Smoke and fire fought, coiling around each other like aggressive snakes. The sylphs, now visible as myriad translucent and winged creatures, also formed into currents, pushing back the onslaught.
