Anne Bishop: Sebastian

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.

Free.

It had not understood Its Enemy’s power, had not known It and the landscapes It had shaped could be locked away. But not completely. Never completely. It had not been able to reach the physical world beyond Its own landscapes, but It had always been able to whisper to the truly dark hearts, sending Its resonance through the twilight of waking dreams. And the Dark Ones, who had brought It into being so long ago, had found a way to send humans into Its landscapes often enough to keep It amused—and to keep It and Its creatures fed. But now It was free of the magic in the stone wall that had kept It caged; now It could bring Its landscapes back into the world. Now It could find the Dark Ones, who would help It alter the world into what It wanted the world to be. Now…

The vibration of footsteps. Coming closer.

Tentacles condensed and changed into eight legs. The body’s shape altered to fit the legs. It climbed up and over the wall of the inner garden, then raced across the ground to the archway, Its belly brushing the tops of bloated mushrooms. It climbed the wall beside the archway. Within moments, Its large body blended perfectly with the stones, even mimicking the shadows cast by the thorn trees.

There It waited, savoring the anticipation of hunting again.

With her arms wrapped around herself, Lukene stared at the sealed, barred gate. A wooden door on the other side of the gate kept anyone from seeing what was held within the stone walls.