by Anne Bishop
The prissy prig humans in other landscapes called the incubi and succubi vile demons, although enough of those humans craved the kind of sex that could be had only with an incubus or succubus partner to provide the Den’s residents with a good living. But there were more dangerous demons that roamed their world, and the incubi and succubi could end up being prey as easily as any human. It had taken him a few years to realize the reason other demons who came to the Den were wary of him wasn’t because he was a badass demon; it was because of his human connection. They didn’t fear Lee, who was a Bridge with a rare ability to impose one landscape over another, but Glorianna…
No demon wanted to incur her wrath—because Glorianna Belladonna was the Landscaper who had created the Den of Iniquity.
Filling his own mug, Sebastian leaned against the counter, sipped his koffee, and said nothing.
After a few minutes, Teaser said, “This place. It’s…nice.” He looked at the small table tucked against the wall, where Sebastian ate his meals, then at the larger table in the dining area. “It looks…nice.”
It looks human, Sebastian thought, feeling as if he’d been caught doing something lewd. In public. In a human landscape, since doing something lewd in the Den was commonplace. Embarrassed that anyone had seen evidence of his need to stay connected with whatever humanity he might claim, he felt the old bitterness well up inside him.
Nadia wasn’t blood kin. She’d been married to his father’s brother and had no reason to fight with Koltak over the well-being of a half-demon boy. But she had fought—and had won often enough that there were islands of time throughout his childhood when he’d known what it was like to be loved and accepted. Everything good that he had experienced in the human landscapes had come to him because of her.
That was why the cottage had tugged at him. That was why it looked like a human home instead of an incubus’s lair. He had the room at the bordello for seduction. This place reminded him of how he had felt when he lived with Nadia and Glorianna and Lee. When he’d still had some connection with the Light.
But if the other incubi and succubi found out he lived like a human, the malicious teasing would never end—and he’d end up being an outcast again.
He swallowed the last of his koffee to choke the bitterness back down. “Why are you here, Teaser?” he asked roughly.
Teaser drained his own mug, started to set it aside, then hesitated, crossed the kitchen, and carefully placed the mug in the sink, as if keeping the cottage tidy were of the utmost importance. When he turned back to face Sebastian, his expression was bleak. “We found another one.”
Currents of power dance through Ephemera, this living, ever-changing world. Some of those currents are Light, and some are Dark. Two halves of a whole. Nothing has one without some measure of the other. That is the way of things.
And there is no vessel for focusing the Light and the Dark that can compare to the human heart.
How do we tell people, who are still shaken by the horrors the Eater of the World set free in Ephemera, that this thing they fear cannot be destroyed completely because It was manifested from the darkest desires of their own hearts? How can we tell them they planted the seeds of this war that shattered the world? How can we tell them it was their own despair during this fearsome time that changed rich farmland into deserts? How can we tell them that, even with our guidance and intervention, the link between Ephemera and the human heart is unbreakable, and the world around them is nothing more or less than a reflection of themselves?
We can’t tell them—because, despite the dangers that exist within it, the human heart is our only hope of restoring Ephemera someday. Nor can we let people completely deny the part they play in the constant shaping and reshaping of this world.
So we will teach them this warning: Let your heart travel lightly. Because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape.
—The Lost Archives
Chapter Two
Three weeks earlier
Lukene gathered the frayed threads of her patience as she pulled out a chair at the study table and sat down next to the sulking girl. She’d been kind and understanding the first time this complaint had been voiced. And the second time. And the third. But no matter how many times she explained it, the girl refused to acknowledge the truth.
“You’re not going to promote me to Level One Landscaper, are you?” the girl asked, her tone one part desperation and two parts hostility.
Lukene sighed. “No, Nigelle, we’re not. The Instructors considered your abilities very carefully before making the decision, but it is our conclusion that you haven’t, as yet, achieved the skills necessary to advance. Until you have fulfilled all the requirements, you will not be granted a Landscaper’s Badge.”
Nigelle pressed her fists against the top of the table. “I’ve been studying for four years. You have to achieve Level Two or better in five years in order to remain and continue studying for the higher levels. How am I supposed to fulfill the requirements for two levels in a year’s time if you won’t promote me to even the first level?”
You can’t, Lukene thought. And that is a blessing for us all. “What is the Heart’s Blessing?”
The girl’s eyes darkened with anger. “Is this another test, Instructor Lukene? Although I don’t see the point in asking a question every child knows the answer to.”
Guardians and Guides, let me finally explain this in a way she’ll understand. “Then it should be a simple question to answer,” Lukene replied. “Heart’s Blessing.”
Nigelle sneered. “Travel lightly.”
Lukene nodded. “Travel lightly. Because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape. That is true for every person who lives in this world. It is especially true for Landscapers, because we are the sieve through which Ephemera manifests what is reflected in all those hearts. The resonance of our hearts provides the bedrock through which the currents of Dark and Light flow, keeping people safe from the turmoil of their own feelings while still allowing the true desires of the heart to become real. We are the bedrock, Nigelle. Other people, and Ephemera itself, depend on us to find a balance between the Light and Dark aspects of ourselves in order to filter the Light and Dark currents that are this world’s wonderful and terrible power.”
“I know all that,” Nigelle snapped.
“Up here.” Lukene tapped a finger against her own temple. Then she tapped the finger against her chest. “But not here. You carry too much baggage, Nigelle. You show up for the lessons, but you make only token attempts to practice those lessons. You’re angry and envious whenever other students fulfill a requirement and go on to the next stage, but you won’t do the work they did to achieve the goal. And yet you still expect us to grant you power over our world. We can’t. Open your eyes, Nigelle. Look at what you manifest in your garden. Until that changes, until you change, we cannot allow you to have control of places other people will have to live in.”
The girl’s sulkiness shifted, changing into something sly and ugly. “I know the real reason you won’t advance me.”
Lukene sighed. Why did the “real” reason never have anything to do with the student’s skills?
“You’re afraid of me,” Nigelle said. “You know I’m better than you. Better than all of you. I’m like Belladonna, and you can’t stand the thought of there being another Landscaper who can do things you can’t even dream of.”
Unable to hide the shiver of fear that went through her, Lukene said nothing. Instructors never engaged in discussion once a student mentioned that name.
After the silence stretched out, Nigelle let out a nasty little laugh and stood up. “You better keep that in mind the next time you evaluate my work.”
Lukene waited until Nigelle left the room before whispering, “We’ll keep it in mind. Oh, we’ll definitely keep it in mind.”
She braced her hands on the table to help her shaking legs support her as she stood up. She wasn’t forty yet, but right now she felt ancient.
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“I know they’re necessary,” a male voice said from the doorway, “but these thrice-yearly evaluations take more out of the Instructors than the students.”
Tears stung Lukene’s eyes as she looked at the solid man filling the doorway. “Gregor.”
He hurried across the room to reach her. His warm, strong hand rested on her shoulder.
She turned into that strength, that warmth, wrapping her arms around him as his arms closed around her.
“Difficult day?” Gregor asked, resting his cheek against her hair.
“Not so bad…until this last student.”
“What did she do?”
“Spoke the name every Instructor in the school fears.”
Gregor tensed. “Belladonna.”
Lukene nodded. “I broke, Gregor. I showed fear.”
“With good reason if this was more than schoolgirl romanticism of a rogue Landscaper.”
“More like another manipulative ploy to push the Instructors into granting her a status she hasn’t earned.” She eased back enough to look at the man who was the Head Instructor of Bridges—and her lover. “And how was your day?”
“Better than yours. Teaching the young men who have the gift to provide a connection between landscapes isn’t nearly as unnerving as teaching the young women who will control those landscapes.” He studied her, his dark eyes full of concern. “Why don’t you go to Sanctuary for a day or two?”
“Maybe I will. But I think I should be here right now, in case the other Instructors…” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words.
“In case the other Instructors feel this girl is too dangerous and needs to be walled in,” Gregor said grimly. When Lukene nodded, he asked, “Is she that dangerous? Could she be another Belladonna?”
Lukene thought for a moment, then shook her head. “She has enough anger and…soul muck…to resonate with dark landscapes, but she’ll never be like Belladonna. She doesn’t have the power—or the heart.”
Nigelle glowered at every student she passed as she hurried down the wide flagstone paths that would eventually lead to her walled garden. She should have known from the moment she’d seen how far away her training ground was from the school’s central buildings that the Instructors would be against her. Other students had training grounds that were no more than a five-minute walk from the classrooms. Granted, there weren’t many students who were given a space among the walled gardens reserved for the Instructors, but there were some, and she should have been one of them.
“Cold, heart-rotted bitches,” she muttered. Abruptly, she turned down another path that headed back toward the school. A path that, while as well tended as all the others, always had a dusty, little-used feel to it. A path students were forbidden to follow to the end unless an Instructor was with them. Maybe that was why it intrigued her enough to risk sneaking down that path several times a year to ponder the mystery at its end.
The path ended in an archway that was the only break in a high stone wall. In the center of this garden was another high-walled garden that had a locked wrought-iron gate. The only things that grew on the land between the inner and outer garden walls were large, bloated mushrooms and thorn trees that produced a fruit the color of a putrid wound.
Students whispered that the Dark Guides sneaked into the school during the dark of the moon, harvested those mushrooms and fruits, and cooked them with the hearts of people they had lured into the dark landscapes.
She liked that story. She spent a lot of nights imagining that one of the Dark Guides had come to the school and snatched all those snippy-bitch Instructors who said they were trying to help her learn how to use the power inside her but were really doing everything they could to ensure that she failed.
She’d like to see someone like Lukene face a Dark Guide. Snippy-bitch Lukene would wet herself if she came face-to-face with anything truly dark. But she wouldn’t be afraid.
Yes, something whispered inside her. You have nothing to fear from the Dark. There is power in the Dark, waiting for you to embrace it.
Maybe that was the other reason she so often ended up standing in the archway, looking into this place that caused every Instructor to pale whenever it was mentioned.
Late at night, the older students would whisper stories about that garden, saying that forbidden landscapes were contained within it—landscapes so terrible they had been taken out of the world to protect people from the things that lived in those places.
But as she stood in the archway, all she could see beyond the wrought-iron gate was a low stone wall in the middle of barren, hard-packed earth. What was so frightening about that? Oh, there was a dark resonance in the garden. You could feel it as soon as you stepped beneath the archway. But if there was something really bad, why not tell the students what it was instead of making a secret out of it?
The Instructors were always making secrets out of things. Yes, this school was good at keeping things away from people who could make use of them.
Anger swelled inside her until there was nothing else.
Looking at the ground around her, Nigelle spotted a fist-sized stone. She picked it up, cocked her arm, and threw the stone at the lock on the wrought-iron gate. She didn’t expect anything to happen; she just wanted to vent her anger at being held back again.
But the metal, fragile with age, crumbled where the stone struck. The gate, and whatever secrets were contained within that inner garden, was now open to her.
Licking dry lips, Nigelle stepped through the archway. The place smelled slightly of rotted meat, but that could have been the mushrooms or the fruit covering the ground around the thorn trees.
She hurried across the ground that separated the inner and outer garden, then wrapped her hands around two of the gate’s bars and pulled as hard as she could. Frozen, rusty hinges screamed in protest, but the gate opened far enough for her to squeeze through.
Nigelle waited, her hands still wrapped around the bars, certain someone would come running to find out what had made that noise. But the air felt heavy and still, muffling sound.
She counted to one hundred, ready to run to avoid being caught in a forbidden place. When no one came to investigate, she relaxed enough to study the barren ground on the other side of the gate.
They say even Belladonna was afraid of this place, that she wouldn’t come near it. But I’m not afraid. I’m going to see what’s enclosed within these walls.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be careful. She retreated to the nearest thorn tree. Plenty of deadfall, but nothing suitable, so she went from tree to tree, checking the ground until she found a branch that was the right size and length to prod at anything of interest without having to get too close to the thing itself.
Excited now, she hurried back to the gate, slipped inside, and approached the low stone wall.
Just an old, waist-high wall barely two man-lengths long. Mortar filled all the spaces between the uneven stones, which meant someone had built it with care.
She looked around. There was nothing else within the inner garden. Nothing at all. Which meant the wall itself was the thing being guarded. Why guard a wall?
Maybe the wall was an access point to a landscape the Instructors wanted to keep hidden—a landscape that was the source of the dark resonance that permeated the walled garden.
She walked the length of the wall, studying it. Old stones. Old, crumbling mortar. She poked at the wall here and there, but her excitement at being in the forbidden garden waned, and she’d almost convinced herself that an old wall couldn’t really be the access point to an interesting landscape. Then a poke with the narrow end of the branch loosened a piece of mortar, revealing a space between the stones as big as the circle she could make with thumb and forefinger.
A hole big enough to look through if she could clear it out to the other side.
She rammed the branch into the hole over and over, scraping out the crumbled mortar to clear the space. Finally, when her hands were raw and her
muscles ached, she punched through to the other side. Tossing the branch away, she dropped to her knees and peered through the opening.
A narrow stretch of rust-colored sand that led to dark, still water.
Several minutes later, Nigelle sat back on her heels. This was it? Sand and water? This was the scary, forbidden landscape that made the Instructors shrill whenever a student asked about it?
Disgusted, Nigelle stood up and brushed the dirt off her trousers. “Should have known this was just an excuse for the Instructors to penalize anyone whose landscapes weren’t sugarcoated nice-nice.”
Slipping through the gate, she hurried back to the archway. Then she paused to check the position of the sun.
Too late to go to her own garden. If she didn’t show up on time for the evening meal, it would be another mark against her. So she’d make the effort to be on time and come to class and be nice for all the Instructors—even if it killed her.
Although she’d prefer it if the effort killed them.
Lured by the resonance of a dark heart, It rose to the surface, barely making a ripple in the deep, dark water. Nothing in the water around It, so It stretched out a tentacle and delicately touched the place where sand met water—a border between two of Its landscapes. But the resonance in the sand was enough warning that It was near the hated stones that had shaped Its cage for so long.
And yet…
Its tentacles moved across the sand, rapidly changing their color from the dark gray that matched the caves deep beneath the water to the sand’s rust color, making them invisible while they flowed toward the stone wall.
Before the first tentacle touched stone, It knew something was different. Something had changed. There was a different feel in the air, a trace of the dark heart’s resonance right…there.
Tentacles elongated, thinned to slender cords of flesh that flowed through the small opening between the stones. Bit by bit, the large, fluid body moved across the sand and through the opening until the tip of the last tentacle brushed the other side of the old wall.
