This was the price of my success.
I don’t know how long I lay there, so exhausted I could barely muster the strength to draw air into my lungs. I was surprised that Rita didn’t come over to see what was wrong. She was supposed to be on watch, wasn’t she? When I finally felt I had enough strength to do more than gasp for breath, I lifted myself up on one elbow and looked around for her.
She wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Struggling to my feet, I used a nearby tree to steady myself. My legs were still so weak I couldn’t stand without support. “Rita?”
She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Not in the camp, not on the nearby hill we’d chosen as a sentry point, not down by the stream. For a moment I wondered if she might have ducked behind some bushes to take care of private business, but if so, she should still be close enough to hear me call her name. I couldn’t call out too loudly, for fear that someone in the compound might pick up on it—sound travelled far at night—but if she was anywhere near our camp she should have heard me.
There was no response.
Surely Rita wouldn’t have just left me alone, I thought. The whole point of us sleeping in shifts was to make sure no Hunters could sneak up on us, and I couldn’t imagine her walking off and leaving me unguarded. But if someone had attacked her, and either killed her or dragged her away, why would that person have left me untouched?
Walking unsteadily to where I’d left my flashlight, I thought I saw a faint light in the woods. It took me a few seconds to be sure it wasn’t just moonlight shining down through the canopy, but no, the light was perfectly still, unaffected by the wind-stirred branches overhead the way moonlight would have been. And it didn’t look like the color of moonlight, either. I began to make my way toward the light source. The moonlight was barely enough to see by, and my legs were still pretty weak, but I wanted to observe the source of that light, so I kept my flashlight turned off. Once or twice I had to stop to catch my breath, but soon I could hear a voice from up ahead, pitched low to avoid detection. Heart pounding, I crouched low and inched toward it, finally settling behind a fallen tree that was covered in brush. No one looking this way in the darkness would see me there.
The voice was Rita’s.
She was standing with her back to me, and at first I thought she was talking to empty air, but as my eyes adjusted I could make out a ghostly image hovering in front of her. A woman’s face. I squinted, trying to bring its features into focus, but with Rita in the way I couldn’t get a clear view of it. Not until I heard the woman’s voice did I realize who she was . . . and when I did the shock was so great I had to grab hold of the tree trunk to steady myself.
“You told me there would be no Hunters,” Rita said.
“I said I would do my best to hold them at bay,” Alia Morgana responded. “You knew there was risk.”
Morgana. She was talking to Morgana. What the hell—?
Rita exhaled in a soft hiss. “Well, they haven’t attacked us so far.”
“Then they’re probably not Virilian’s people,” Morgana pointed out. “They’re certainly not mine. Perhaps some locals are curious about you.”
Rita had betrayed me. She was working for Morgana. The revelation was so mortifying that I could barely absorb it. All her friendship, all her support, even her seeming ignorance of the ways of this world, as we traveled side by side . . . it had all been a sham. We had guessed that there was a spy among us, and everyone had thought it was Isaac. But of course it wasn’t Isaac. A Shadow would have no reason to serve the Seers like that. Rita must have been the one reporting to Morgana all along, informing her of our every move, nudging us in whatever direction the Guildmistress wanted us to go. Thanks to her, we never made a move or had a conversation that Morgana did not know about.
I suddenly felt nauseous.
“Jesse’s planning some kind of disruption at the Weaver compound,” said the traitor who had once been my friend. “Do you want me to talk her out of it?”
I’d trusted her. In Berkeley Springs she’d been like a sister to me. Hot tears trickled down my cheeks, burning them like acid.
Morgana’s eyes narrowed. “I want you to keep your cover. I want you to let her take the lead. Those have been your orders since the day you entered my service, and they will not change. If the Weavers suffer a loss . . .” She shrugged. “I will light a candle for them. What about Jesse’s dreams? Have you learned anything new?”
Rita shook her head. “She sensed at the shallow that we were in the wrong place, but she said that was just a feeling she got while she was half-asleep. Nothing that a regular Seer might not have picked up on.”
“All right. Don’t press her for more. It will come when it comes. The single most important thing now is for you to maintain her trust, so that if she does show signs of the Gift we seek, she will want to confide in you.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem.” Rita’s smugness was like a knife plunging into my heart.
“For now, no more calls to me. I understand that you were worried about the Hunters, so this time it was justified, but I don’t want you contacting me from the field again, unless lives are at stake. It’s too risky. Understood?”
It sounded like they were beginning to wrap up their conversation, so I started to edge away from my hiding place, moving off to one side so that if Rita headed back to the camp she wouldn’t bump into me. I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t take a step without something to hold onto. How long had Rita been working for Morgana? Was she on the Seer’s payroll when I first met her, that day in the IHOP with Devon? Before that? Events I hadn’t paid much attention to at the time suddenly took on terrible significance. I started remembering comments Rita had made, things she had done; the way Morgana and Seyer had stopped by the fair at exactly the right moment for us to see them . . . Rita must have told them we were coming. And she had been the one to suggest that I get in touch with Seyer, which had set this whole trip in motion. Oh my God, it was staged, it was all staged, every minute of it was staged. . . .
Suddenly I remembered how Rita had come to me the night my house burned down, arriving in my bedroom just in time to save me. Her explanation for that had always seemed lame, but what other reason made sense at the time? Seyer had been standing outside the house, watching the fire. Had they been working together all along, trying to get me out of my house in time? That would suggest that they’d known about the arson in advance. My God, what if she’d actually set the fire, so that her people could make a show of rescuing me from it?
Tears were pouring freely from my eyes now, and I made no effort to wipe them away. All the pain of my family’s suffering was in those tears, all my agony at seeing my mother’s spirit wither away, all my rage at the time I had wasted worrying about Rita after our return home, thinking I had killed her, when in fact she was probably just hanging out at Morgana’s place having tea and biscuits. It was more than any soul could contain. The best I could do was try to stifle the noise of my sobbing, burying my face in my shirt as my body shook from the force of my sorrow. Was Morgana the one who had orchestrated Devon’s sickness? So that the only person traveling with me would be someone who answered to her? Sickness welled up inside me as I realized how thoroughly I had been manipulated. I leaned over and vomited, violently and wretchedly, but the fit offered a perverse cleansing for my soul, so I gave myself over to it. Wave after wave of sickness coursed through me, until my stomach was finally emptied of misery and all that was left was dry heaving.
“Jesse?”
Startled, I looked up. The call had come from the direction of our camp. Rita had gone back and was looking for me. Probably she heard all the noise I just made.
Crap.
With trembling hands I used the front of my shirt to wipe my face dry. There were a few bits of vomit left on my shirt, and on the back of my hand where I’d wiped my mouth, but I left them there.
Vomit would be easier to explain to her than tears. “Yeah,” I rasped. My throat was so raw I could barely get sound out. “I’m coming.”
Thank God I had moved away from my original path when I started back. As I headed back to the camp I circled around even further away from the place where she had betrayed me, and I stumbled nosily through the woods, like someone who didn’t know how to move quietly. If she heard me coming from another direction, she wouldn’t suspect that I had overheard her treachery.
When she saw me stagger into camp, her eyes went wide. “Holy crap, girl. What happened to you?”
I learned what you are. And I’m so filled with disgust that I can hardly bear to look at you. “I was sick as hell when I got up,” I whispered. “Didn’t want to throw up on top of our supplies.” I waved vaguely toward the woods. “I think I’m okay now.”
“Something you ate?”
I hesitated. We’d eaten the same food, so that story might not stand up to close inspection. My mind raced to come up with another excuse. “I had a nightmare. Really awful one. Left me feeling sick when I woke up.”
“What kind of nightmare?”
Instantly I realized my mistake. Morgana had ordered her to report on my dreams, so there was no way Rita was going to let this one pass without explanation. I was going to have to make something up, with enough gruesome detail in it that the Guildmistress would think it was genuine. So I told Rita about a nightmare in which we broke into the Weaver’s camp, only to find that Tommy was there, and that he’d been put through the same torture that Moth had talked about, but in a much more literal way. Halfway through my description of my little brother’s body turned inside-out on a gurney, organs pulsing outside his skin, Rita decided she’s had enough. Looking a little green around the gills, she waved the recitation short. My alibi was credible.
Analyze that one, Morgana.
I did manage to sneak the information about the safe combination into my fiction. There was no way to avoid Rita finding out about that—we couldn’t break into the compound without it—but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that I’d altered the Weaver’s dream to trick her into revealing it. I just told Rita that at the end of my nightmare I had seen three numbers appear, and I thought they might be the combination we needed.
Even a Seer could dream that much, right?
After I finished my story, Rita came over to me and put an arm around my shoulders, gently pulling me close to her. At any other time such a hug would have been comforting, but now that I knew the truth I had to swallow back on my revulsion to let her touch me. Hopefully if she sensed me drawing away from her, she would ascribe it to the aftermath of my nightmare. I had to keep up the illusion of friendship for now, no matter how painful it was. Rita and I were dependent on each other in this wilderness setting, and nothing good would come of our splitting up. As for later . . . I would have to play that by ear. It might be useful to be able to feed false information to Morgana, through her spy, but that would only work if Rita believed we were still best buddies.
I offered to take a turn at sentry duty so Rita could get some sleep, and I changed to a fresh T-shirt while she stretched out on top of her blankets. Then I climbed up the embankment and settled down on the large rock that had become our sentry post. Wrapping my arms around myself, I rocked gently back and forth, trying to comfort myself. If a horde of rabid raccoons had come running by at that moment, I doubt I would have noticed them.
I wanted to go to sleep again. I wanted to visit my brother in his dreams, or maybe Devon. Or maybe even my mother, though she wouldn’t understand what was happening. I wanted to hug them so tightly they couldn’t breathe, and tell them how friggin’ scared I was, and how the one person I’d trusted most had turned out to be a traitor. How everyone around me seemed to be allied to either the Shadows or Morgana, and I was no longer sure which of those I should fear more.
Tears began to trickle down my cheeks again, but they were quiet tears, and Rita slept right through them.
Never in all my life had I felt more alone.
15
SHADOWCREST
VIRGINIA PRIME
ISAAC
IF ISAAC HAD BEEN ASKED to name all the things in the world he didn’t want to do, meeting with Guildmaster Virilian would have been number one on the list.
Yet here I am, he thought unhappily, as he walked the length of the corridor leading to the Shadowlord’s audience chamber. The last time he’d come here it was to beg for reinstatement in the Guild. Now all that was done with, but he was being called back, and he could not think of a single good reason why that would happen. Ordinary business would be handled by his father—now that they were speaking again—or perhaps a teacher. A Shadowlord of Master Virilian’s rank didn’t schedule a private audience with a mere apprentice unless something was very wrong.
Maybe Isaac’s father had sensed how repelled his son was by the binding ritual, and was having second thoughts about Isaac’s membership in the Guild. Or maybe others had complained about Isaac’s attending that ritual, in breach of normal protocol. Or maybe there was some other offense involved. Isaac couldn’t begin to guess, so he just braced himself for the worst as he approached the great doors. One of the men standing guard outside cracked a door open and slipped inside, probably to announce him. Wiping the nervous sweat from his palms in that precious moment of privacy, he waited.
The man reappeared. “You may enter.”
The doors were opened just wide enough for Isaac to pass through, and they closed behind him as soon as he was inside. The vast audience chamber was filled with an unusual number of ghosts, more moans and screams echoing through the cavernous room than he remembered from his last visit. Or perhaps he was just more sensitive to them. Now that he knew he was hearing the terror of souls that Virilian had murdered, they were harder to ignore.
The Shadowlord was waiting for him at the far end of the chamber, seated on his black throne. The closer Isaac came to him, the louder the voices in the room seemed to become. Within ten paces of the throne he could almost make out words.
His Gift was growing stronger.
When he had come as close as seemed appropriate he stopped and bowed. He held the position for a few seconds, not just out of respect, but because it allowed him to put off the interview a tiny bit longer.
“Apprentice Antonin.”
He stood up straight. “Your Lordship summoned me?”
Virilian’s black eyes studied Isaac from head to toe. “Your family has taken you back, I see.”
Isaac nodded. “My father was most gracious in his acceptance.”
“He sees great promise in you.”
The concept that Isaac’s father might have praised him to the Guildmaster, after all their disagreements, was a startling one. That Virilian would tell him about it was even more so.
But even if my father said good things about me, that doesn’t mean they’re true. If Leonid Antonin believed that his family interests would be best served by the Guildmaster thinking that he was pleased with his son, then that was the story he would tell. Briefly, Isaac wondered what it was like to be part of a family where relationships were less complicated. Or more honest.
“I hope to serve my family faithfully and well,” he said evenly.
The thin, bloodless mouth twitched slightly. “And your Guild, of course.”
“Of course, your Grace.”
Virilian leaned back in his throne and steepled his hands in front of his chest; It seemed an oddly human gesture for such an inhuman creature. “An apprentice’s duty is to serve this Guild without hesitation or reserve. So if I asked you for information regarding your recent . . . adventures . . . you would of course provide it?”
Fear fluttered in his heart. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Virilian about the details of his two-year walkabout. There were some memories too private to s
hare. But he bowed his head and said, “Of course,” because no other response was acceptable.
He wished he were anywhere but here.
“You know what happened to our Gate.” It was a question.
“I heard that it was destroyed,” he said carefully. “Not much more than that.”
The Guildmaster nodded. “The Greys have kept the details of it quiet, at my request. Only a handful of people know the whole story.”
Isaac’s heart sank. Did Virilian suspect him of having played a part in the Gate’s destruction? Or think that maybe Isaac had known the Colonnans were planning it? A thin film of nervous sweat began to gather on his forehead, but he didn’t dare wipe it away for fear of drawing the Guildmaster’s attention to it.
“It seems,” the Shadowlord said, “our visitors had a codex. Presumably one keyed to Terra Colonna, though that has not been officially confirmed. They smashed it against the arch as they passed through, and the resulting explosion was powerful enough to destroy the Gate, along with its counterparts on more than a dozen worlds. The facility on Terra Colonna itself was completely destroyed. Though apparently they made it safely through before that happened.”
“But a codex can’t—” Isaac began. He bit his tongue and stopped.
“Yes?”
“Forgive me,” he murmured. He lowered his eyes in formal humility. “I didn’t mean to question you.”
“But you should, Apprentice. Because what I just described to you should not be possible. A codex is a recording device, nothing more. It has no special mechanism or power that would enable it to destroy a Gate, much less devastate the surrounding landscape as it did so.”
Startled, Isaac looked up at him.
“The Greys believe that some other power was fettered to it,” Virilian told him. “They’re not sure what, just yet, or who might have done the weaving. Investigation is ongoing.” The steepled fingers twitched slightly. “I was hoping you could help shed some light on the matter.”
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