Anne Bishop - Sebastian

As soon as the door swung open, Koltak slipped out of the room, then paused long enough to make sure the door was securely locked before hurrying along the corridors that were used mostly by the servants.

He gave silent thanks to whatever Guide was watching over him that he made it back to his suite of rooms without running into anyone who might wonder why he’d been coming back from the direction of the Petitioners’ Hall—and the detention rooms.

Not that the other wizards would wonder for long. By morning, they’d all know who had asked to see him. It would have been different if he could have contained the problem, but…

Koltak stared out his sitting room window. It didn’t face the right direction, but he stared anyway, as if that alone would somehow locate Sebastian before he got out of the city. Again.

For thirty years he’d been punished for that indiscretion, that weak hungering for the kind of sexual gratification that made human women little better than a container for a man’s seed. Plenty of wizards had indulged themselves with succubi. Plenty. But their liaisons hadn’t threatened to topple the power structure that gave wizards a place in the world, that made them the Justice Makers.

How could there be anything human in me with a succubus for a mother and you for a father?

Just words flung out in anger. Sebastian didn’t know the truth. Couldn’t know what his existence meant.

Secrets tightly held within the Wizards’ Hall were flaunted daily because that whelp had been born. Oh, most of the citizens wouldn’t realize what it meant that a mating between a wizard and a succubus had borne fruit, but the wizards knew it branded them for what they were.

Something not quite human. Beings whose ability to influence minds sprang from the same roots as the seductive power the incubi and succubi unfurled to attract their prey.

We’ve paid for our secrets. We pay every day by keeping order, by standing for justice. We’ve paid.

But tonight, the thing he’d personally feared the most had finally displayed itself.

Sebastian was not only an incubus; he also had some measure of the wizards’ kind of power. He couldn’t have opened that gate otherwise, couldn’t have shrugged aside Koltak’s mental persuasion so quickly that there wasn’t time for the guards to arrive.

If the other wizards realized Sebastian controlled the same magic as the Justice Makers, everything he, Koltak, had done for the past thirty years to make up for his lustful mistake and prove himself worthy of the kind of authority he’d always craved would have been for nothing. So there really was only one thing to do.

Somehow, some way, Sebastian had to be eliminated once and for all.

Sebastian was a stone’s throw beyond the city’s southern gate when he heard the bell ring twelve times. Midnight. The city gates were locked at midnight, and no one could enter or leave until the following dawn.

A shiver of relief went through him. Turning east, he struck off across the open land. Not that it would make any difference if Koltak ordered guards to come after him on horseback or on foot, but being off the road made him feel like he had a better chance of getting away from this landscape before his father—he let out a quiet, bitter laugh—found a way to force him to remain.

Besides, if he went back along the road, there wasn’t a closer bridge than the one he’d crossed to get to this boil on the world’s backside. Out here, there were bound to be other bridges. They might not take him back to the Den, but they would get him away from here, and that was the most important thing right now. Except…

If he was delayed in getting back home, who else might die in the time he was away?

He had to get back to the Den!

He’d put a fair distance between himself and the city when a veil of clouds covered the moon. He froze, unwilling to shift his feet. The land suddenly felt soft and strange, as if it were strewn with hidden traps. Which was foolish. He’d spent the past fifteen years in a landscape that never saw the sun rise. He was used to traveling at night.

But that was different. He knew the dangers that lived in and around the dark landscape he called home. Out here…There was something wrong out here.

A chill went through him. His skin felt clammy, as if he’d brushed against something that had smeared some kind of illness inside him.

Trying to shake off the sensation, he listened for any movement or sound that would confirm the wrongness. All he heard was the burble of water. He forced himself to move, and, following the sound, he found the creek. It was narrow enough that a man could scramble down the bank and jump across the water, but there were two rough planks stretched from one bank to the other. Since the planks didn’t look sturdy enough or wide enough to support the smallest cart, there was only one reason for them to be there.

A Bridge had put those planks across the creek, using that particular magic to create a link between landscapes.

Sebastian studied the planks. Had to be a resonating bridge. Those were the ones that tended to be in places that were found more by chance than design. Which meant he could end up anywhere the moment he stepped off the other side of the bridge.

Just cross over, Sebastian thought as he hooked both arms through the straps of his pack and settled it comfortably on his back. You can’t end up in any place that doesn’t live in your heart. Isn’t that what every child is taught? That a person is where he deserves to be? Isn’t that what Koltak always said when he dragged you back to that thrice-cursed city? But Nadia always said life was a journey, and the landscapes reflected the journey. That even when bad things happened, the journey eventually would lead a person where his heart needed to be.

He looked back toward Wizard City. He hadn’t deserved to be caged inside those walls simply because he’d been born and the succubus who had birthed him handed him over to his father instead of leaving him somewhere to die. He hadn’t needed the cruelty or pain that had shaped his childhood.

But if he hadn’t been shaped by those things, would he have known Nadia or Lee or Glorianna? Would he have ended up in the Den, a place where he belonged?

Sebastian shook his head. Pointless thoughts. An exercise in self-indulgence.

Then the feeling of sickness shuddered through him again. The memory of feeling sand beneath his feet instead of the hard ground of the alley made him shiver. And with every second that passed, the conviction grew stronger that if he didn’t cross the bridge now, he might never again see a landscape he recognized.

“Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart, please listen to me,” he whispered as he set one foot on the planks. “I need to get back to the Den. I need to get back to the Den.”

He hurried over the bridge.

Night. Open land. Nothing significantly different enough to tell him where he was—or even to indicate that he had crossed over to another landscape.

Get away from the bridge.

His body was in motion before he could decide on a direction. Maybe because there was only one direction that mattered— away.

In this flat, undulating form, It flowed beneath the surface of the land as easily as It flowed through water, moving swiftly toward the mound of earth. It had found the Dark Ones—the ones who had opened up the darkness in human hearts and had forced the world to bring It into being.

Then It slowed, circled, headed back to that finger of water that was too insignificant to hold any of the creatures It controlled.

For a moment, as It had passed the water, It had brushed against something…familiar.