We Walk in Darkness

by Bill Hiatt

  “Then take Lucas to Coventina herself!” Bisavó insisted, her tone demanding and unyielding as steel. “I have done service for members of her Order, and she will help me.”

  “And she did help you; she sent us,” said Taliesin, his voice calm but his eyes telling a different story. “That is no small thing, whatever you may think.”

  “Yet you cannot cure him!” Bisavó pointed out.

  Taliesin’s calm facade cracked at that. “We probably could cure him if you didn’t keep interrupting!”

  I was sure Bisavó was acting out of genuine feeling for me. That didn’t prevent what she was doing from embarrassing the hell out of me.

  “Bisavó, please!” I begged. “Let them try what Taliesin suggested. It can’t hurt.”

  “He has never before done what he is suggesting!” Bisavó replied sternly. “Even he doesn’t know it won’t hurt you. Coventina, she will know what to do.”

  “Coventina has her own problems right now!” Taliesin snapped. “Not so long ago, headquarters was infiltrated by a powerful witch. The Lake itself might have been endangered, and certainly the Order’s existence was. Nurse Florence and I stopped the witch from bringing through a hostile army.

  “I doubt that whatever you did for Coventina quite compares,” Taliesin continued, getting louder with each syllable. “I saved the whole damn Order—and even I wouldn’t ask Coventina to take in someone marked by the shadows. Probably she wouldn’t do it even for me. It would put the Order in jeopardy again. All it might take is Lucas’s hand slipping off the sword for a second, and bam—the shadow army comes flooding in from some dark corner! Remember, headquarters is far underground and only has torchlight.

  “You don’t trust me? Fine! Take Lucas and go then. I’m guessing you can use the sea here to take him to the Encante. Let someone there heal him!”

  By the time Taliesin finished, he was shaking. Before, he sounded far more adult than I would have expected. Now, though, he sounded more like a teenager throwing a tantrum. I was ashamed to have been the cause of making him come unhinged like that.

  “How dare you!” Bisavó shouted. “My Bisneto is dying, and all you can think about is your own ego!”

  I knew part of this was my fault, and, as embarrassed as the whole situation was making me, if I didn’t man up now, things would only get worse. “Bisavó!” I said loudly. “Stop this…right now! You are being unfair to Taliesin and his friends.”

  “You…you would take their side…against your Bisavó?” she said, as if she couldn’t believe such a thing was possible.

  “Look, I know you care about me,” I said, somewhat more calmly. “But I just met you today, same as them. And they’re not bad people! They risked their lives for me. We owe them the courtesy of letting them try.”

  Khalid walked over to Bisavó and said, “Lady, Tal never fails at anything. You couldn’t find anyone better.”

  Time froze for a moment. Bisavó seemed torn between hugging Khalid and slapping him. Glancing at Shar, I could see slapping him would have been a very, very bad idea, but I wasn’t sure she picked up on that vibe.

  Fortunately, she went with the hugging. “Child, you are so wise for your years.” She looked up, her eyes wet with tears. “Maybe your friend is as well.”

  Taliesin walked over to her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry I lost my temper. I know you care about Lucas. The rest of us care too, and I didn’t mean it when I told you to take him away. We are together in this until he is cured.”

  “I…am…sorry…” said Bisavó, as if each word cost her dearly. “What Lucas said was true; you have already risked your lives for him, without even knowing him. Try what you can.”

  Even having known her only a few hours, I could tell Bisavó was not completely convinced that Taliesin could do the job, but I figured she had the common sense to see he might be the best shot we had.

  Unfortunately, Taliesin’s plan to capture the light from Gordy’s sword and somehow get it into the part of me where the poison lurked was harder than he thought. He was used to making these magic swords work like ray weapons or flame throwers, and Gordy told me he could even use his own to create a fire shield around himself and his allies during battle. However, he had been practicing that kind of thing for months.

  What he had proposed, he had never tried, and he and Viviane spent a lot of time fussing with the sword without an immediate result. Shar, Gordy and Khalid made small talk with me, I suspect so I wouldn’t worry, but I spent the whole time praying—not that he would succeed, but that Bisavó wouldn’t make any more ill-tempered complaints.

  I didn’t doubt his success for a second, though I didn’t know why. After all, he looked as if he were about my age, which Gordy confirmed. Something about him made me feel better. Come to think of it, there was really something about them all.

  I learned they had been working closely together for months, and it showed. No one said this, but they were also clearly very close, like a family, though apparently only Shar and Khalid were actually related, and then only as foster siblings.

  It wasn’t that I was all alone in the world. I had my share of friends, and Gavin was a very good friend, one who probably would have risked himself for me too, if he had known I was in trouble.

  The problem was that Gavin was friends with the person he thought I was. I realized as I watched these guys, who knew each other’s secrets and accepted them, that Gavin didn’t know me that way, would never know me that way, and that made me almost as sad as the poison inside of me. I guess that separation from everybody else was just a different kind of poison, a more subtle one.

  At last Taliesin coaxed the light into an almost liquid form, and then dribbled some of it into the scratch on my arm. The scratch healed instantly, and I felt the droplets in my bloodstream. I was all warm inside, but a shudder ran through me as the light droplets hit the poison.

  It wanted to struggle, to dig so deeply into my tissues that the light couldn’t reach it; I knew that much instinctively. However, Shar’s sword prevented it from doing anything to me, so it had nowhere to run. It screamed like the shadows as it shriveled up in the light.

  “I’m cured!” I said happily before Taliesin could say anything, but he immediately agreed.

  “So you are!” He and Viviane both smiled broadly, satisfied with a job well done.

  Bisavó, who had been staring wistfully out to sea, was on me in a moment. “Filho!” she said joyfully, giving me an almost suffocating hug. The shift from great-grandson to son was not lost on me.

  “What’s next?” asked Shar, as if such miraculous cures were everyday events. Actually, for this group, they could be, for all I knew.

  “More research, I think,” replied Taliesin. “We beat that poison this time, but we needed two healers and a sword blessed by Apollo and a completely sunny environment with no shadows anywhere close…oh, and Shar’s sword to hold the poison at bay. Plus, let’s not forget that a normal human without Lucas’s mixed lineage would have died long before we got there in the first place. We were lucky this time. We need a better way of dealing with this kind of thing.”

  “Taliesin, I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

  “No problem, buddy…and it’s Tal.”

  Since everyone had been calling him that for hours, I felt stupid for not picking up on it. Of course, I did have a few other things on my mind.

  Suddenly I realized how tired I was. It must have been well after midnight back home.

  “No rush,” I said, “but I’d like to get back home when it’s convenient.”

  Dead silence surrounded me. Even Bisavó, whom I might have expected to want the same thing, said nothing.

  “Buddy, you can’t go home…at least not right away,” Tal said finally.

  I looked at him but didn’t respond, as if my brain were suddenly working at quarter speed.

  “It wouldn’t be safe,” Tal continued when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to say anything. “Until we can f
igure out how to keep the shadows out of this world, they’ll keep coming at you. You’d be at risk every night. Even an overcast day might be a problem.”

  “Don’t worry, Lucas. It was always my thought for you to come stay with me in the Encante,” said Bisavó, putting her arm around me.

  “What?” I said, still pretty slow on the uptake. “Before you even knew what the threat was?”

  “I knew it was bad,” she said quickly. “Bad enough that the human world might not be safe for you anymore. In the Encante, I can protect you. My people can protect you.”

  I struggled against fatigue and information overload. “What would my parents say to this?”

  After another long silence, she said, “Bisneto, your mother could come with you if she wished. Your father, as I’ve told you before, has no supernatural blood. He would not be permitted.”

  “You…you want me to just leave Dad here?” I said, not really believing my own ears, even though I now remembered that earlier conversation about my dad.

  “It may not have to be forever,” said Bisavó, trying to be reassuring but missing the target by about a whole county.

  “I am not leaving my pai!” I said emphatically.

  “I know this is hard, filho, but what choice do we have?” she asked gently.

  “I am not leaving my pai!” I repeated stubbornly and much more loudly.

  At that moment, we heard a high, piercing shriek. I jumped and looked automatically in that direction.

  The assassin—though it was hard to think of that frail-looking girl that way—had awakened. She was covering her face with her hands, probably because the sunlight was too bright for her, and she was shaking, perhaps from fear, perhaps from something else.

  Bisavó stiffened. Gordy and Tal drew their swords, Khalid grabbed his bow, and Shar raised his fists. I stood there like an idiot, though I still clutched Shar’s borrowed sword and could easily have raised it. Then, realizing I no longer needed the sword and wouldn’t have been able to fight well with it anyway, I handed it back to Shar, who took it quickly and raised it, his eyes reflecting its green glow.

  “She’s not a threat,” said Viviane quietly. “She can’t see in this much light. I’ll just put her back to sleep, and we can finish up here.”

  “Perhaps now is the time to discuss what we do with her,” said Tal. That was definitely not what I wanted to talk about, but I was angry with Bisavó, not with him, and I held my peace. Maybe a little pause would give me time to figure out how to convince her that my place was in my own home.

  “She could have valuable information,” suggested Shar. “If we plan on fighting the shadows again, and we might have to, at the very least we should extract that information.”

  “Torture?” asked Bisavó in a surprisingly indifferent tone.

  Tal looked offended. “We don’t torture people. Anyway, we don’t need to. I can read minds.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone who could really do that,” said Bisavó. Having seen what else Tal could do, I couldn’t believe she questioned such a seemingly less spectacular ability.

  “You aren’t going to kill me?” the girl asked, her hands still over her face.

  Bisavó said, “That remains to be seen,” and, simultaneously, Tal said, “That depends on whether or not you intend to complete your mission.”

  “I have failed three times already,” the girl said sadly. “Completing my trial now would be without meaning, for my existence will surely be ended when I return to the Populus Umbrae.”

  There was another long pause. Then Tal said, “As far as I can tell, she means what she says.”

  “Would you risk Lucas’s life on a theory?” asked Bisavó, starting to sound belligerent again.

  Tal looked at Bisavó, seemed to swallow his first idea for a response, and settled for, “She’s our prisoner, not our friend. She’s not going to be in a position to threaten us. That doesn’t mean I intend to let the Populus Umbrae take her either.”

  “Nurse Florence,” he said, turning to Viviane, “can you tell how the Populus Umbrae have altered her from the human norm?”

  “I’m…I’m human?” the girl asked timidly.

  “Perhaps,” said Nurse Florence. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. The defeated assassin flinched away from her touch, and then seemed to become resigned to it, though she was clearly frightened.

  After a short time, Viviane said, “She’s still basically human. Her eyes have been altered to allow her to see in the dark. The pallor is just a result of never being in the sun, not some physical change.”

  “That’s it?” asked Tal, who was clearly expecting more.

  “All physically,” said Viviane. “But not spiritually. Her spirit is joined to the Shadow in the same way ours is joined to the Lake. That means she can use shadow magic and is much more agile in the dark than most humans. It also means the Populus Umbrae can definitely track her. They will reclaim her the moment she’s in shadow.”

  “Can we break that bond?” asked Tal.

  “Not without study,” replied Viviane, looking puzzled.

  “Mask it?”

  “Possibly,” she said, looking closely at the girl. “The chains in the cells at Awen, you know, the ones that prevent a captive from using magic, are designed to block even that kind of deep tie. After all, the designer had Ladies of the Lake very much in mind.”

  “You guys have cells?” I asked. Hey, it was a natural question at the time.

  “Dude, we’ve got a whole dungeon!” said Gordy, as if he were describing a home entertainment system. “Some time we’ll have to give you the tour.”

  “It’s not really a dungeon, and an…associate of ours actually has it,” corrected Tal. I didn’t know if he was trying to be mysterious, but he made me even more curious.

  “So, we chain her, and we…keep her in the light at all times, just to be sure, and then the Populus Umbrae won’t be able to reclaim her,” said Tal, thinking out loud.

  “I don’t think they can connect with her under those circumstances, but I can’t guarantee it,” said Nurse Florence. “Even the Order has very limited data on what these shadows can and cannot do.”

  My fatigue was catching up with me, to the point that I could hardly keep my eyes open, despite my odd circumstances. They actually fell shut for a second, but I forced them open. My vision…well, flickered is the best word, I guessed. Yeah, my vision flickered for a second, and then I noticed all of Tal’s party had turned to me. Had I missed something?

  “Lucas, it’s time to head back home now,” said Bisavó. “Say good-bye to your new friends.”

  “Home?” I said groggily. “But you said—”

  “I was wrong,” she admitted. “Of course you can’t leave your father. We will find another way to keep you safe. Say good-bye now.”

  All of this seemed very sudden, but I decided to just go with it, even though I felt oddly reluctant to part with Tal and his friends. Maybe I would get to see them again some time. There was a roda coming up in Santa Barbara in about a month. I would have invited them, but my brain was still sluggish. Next thing I knew, they were waving good-bye, I was waving back, and then Bisavó and I turned toward a portal I didn’t remember anyone opening. I could see Madisonville on the other side though. Bisavó put an arm around me and propelled me forward. Everything seemed like a dream. I must have been even more tired than I thought.

  Suddenly I was nearly knocked off my feet by something that felt like an earthquake, and my vision rippled, a little like the earlier flicker, but much more violent, as if someone were tearing everything I was seeing apart.

  Abruptly gone was the portal leading to Madisonville. Instead, I found myself standing waist-deep in the ocean, moving toward what appeared to be an archway made from the seawater itself. Beyond that arch was not Madisonville, but a luminous undersea scene, from which dolphin-like creatures stared back at me.

  The Encante!

  Bisavó had cast some kind of s
pell on me to get me to see what she wanted—and she had lied to me! She had no intention of letting me go back home.

  “You will not take him against his will!” I heard Tal shouting. “And you will not use your illusions on any of us again!”

  I looked back to the beach from which I had come. There was a sort of battle going on, with Tal and Viviane on one side, and Bisavó on the other. They weren’t close physically, but even from where I was, I could feel power flowing back and forth between them. No, not flowing. More like surging, seething. Two forces wrestled with each other on that beach.

  I started to move back toward the beach, but I was grabbed roughly by both arms. Two really muscular guys had come up from behind me. That could only mean one thing; they had come through the doorway from the Encante. They must be friends of Bisavó, here to make sure I couldn’t get away if her illusion failed.

  I had always thought I could take care of myself if I faced an attacker, but here was a situation for which I had no real training. Capoeira relied heavily on leg movements I had never tried to execute standing on sand, let alone in water, and the arm movements certainly didn’t assume somebody had already restrained my arms. My extra speed wouldn’t help either, unless I could get away from these guys, who were both stronger than I and pulling me in the direction of the doorway.

  I had to do something fast. Once through that door, I had no idea if I could ever escape.

  I looked back at the beach. Tal and Viviane both had strong magic, but Bisavó was apparently no slouch either. It looked as if she were losing whatever mystic struggle was going on, but it could be another couple of minutes before she lost completely, and by that time, I might be in the Encante. Shar, Gordy, and Khalid all stood there with stupid smiles plastered on their faces, apparently still in the grip of Bisavó’s illusion. From what I’d been told, Shar’s sword should have protected him, so she must have looked carefully to make sure he wasn’t touching it before she struck. Bottom line: I wasn’t getting any help for at least a while. I needed to slow these guys down if I wanted to stay in this world.