Anne Bishop - Sebastian

The horse took a step forward, then stopped again.

“Stay thirsty, then.” Koltak removed the canteen from the saddle. Keeping a firm grip on the reins, he moved toward the water.

Apparently reassured by his action, the horse moved with him. But it still hesitated at the edge of the pond before it finally lowered its head and began to drink.

The dusky light had turned the water an opaque gray, but the pond looked clean enough. He would let the animal drink its fill, and then—

The creature broke the surface of the water right beside the horse’s head. Brownish gray. Bumpy. The open jaws, filled with serrated teeth, clamped onto the horse’s neck. A twist of its large body dragged the horse into the pond. A savage shake of its head severed the horse’s head, leaving it to bob in the bloody water.

Another of the creatures suddenly appeared and ripped off a hind leg, while another one bit into the horse’s belly and spun, churning the water until the sharp teeth and the spinning motion tore off a chunk of meat.

Gasping for breath, his body shaking with fear, Koltak stared at the pond. He didn’t remember moving, but now he stood several man-lengths from the carnage.

He knew what they were. Every wizard had to study descriptions and rough sketches of the creatures that had been locked away with the Eater of the World. Bonelovers, trap spiders, and wind runners were some of the creatures that had been taken out of the world.

These were the death rollers. Crocodileans bloated by human fear. A larger, more savage version of one of Ephemera’s natural predators.

His hands were full. Puzzled, Koltak lifted them. One fist gripped the strap of the canteen. The other still held reins.

His eyes followed those strips of leather. Then he screamed, dropped reins and canteen, and stumbled back a few steps to get away from the severed head he must have dragged from the pond. He fell to his hands and knees, was violently sick, then crawled away from the mess and lay on his back, staring at the first stars to shine in the darkening sky.

The terrors that had been manifested from human fears were no longer contained. The landscapes where those terrors dwelled had been reconnected to the rest of the world. If a connection had been made that allowed the death rollers to intrude in this landscape, had other landscapes been altered to give those creatures access? And what about the other terrors? Would a child on a family outing to the beach walk across a patch of rust-colored sand and disappear, caught in the bonelovers’ landscape?

It could happen. Fed by grief and fear, those landscapes could encroach on all others, changing the resonance, consuming hope. And the nightmare the Eater of the World had tried to create once before would become fully realized, and all that was good in the world would shrivel away until there was nothing left.

For one shining moment, as he stared up at the stars, his heart and mind were swept clean of ambition and personal grievances and only one thought resonated: He had to find Sebastian. Ephemera’s survival was at stake, and finding Sebastian was the key to saving the world.

Shaky but determined, Koltak got to his feet and began walking.

Sebastian was the key to saving the world.

Reaching into the inner pocket of his robe, he felt the reassuring crackle of paper.

Sebastian…and the message he’d brought with him from Wizard City.

Dalton leaned against a tree and wondered, again, what he could have done to change things.

“Cap’n?” Addison walked up to him, then looked toward the creek where Guy and Henley were standing watch. “What happened to Darby wasn’t your fault. You sent him to the city to pick up supplies and leave a report at the guard station to be taken up to the wizards. You didn’t tell him to stop at a tavern, get into some piss-assed fight, and end up knife-stuck enough times to die.”

“He wasn’t a hot-tempered man,” Dalton said, his voice full of baffled anger and regret.

“No, he wasn’t. But something’s been bringing out the mean in people lately. Surely does seem that way.”

“I know.”

Addison rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s none of my business, Cap’n, but maybe you should be thinking of another place for you and yours.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Dalton said softly. “My current contract is finished in a few months, and my wife has said more than once that she wouldn’t mind leaving Wizard City. So I’ve thought about it. But where would we go? What kind of landscape could we reach?”

Addison shifted from one foot to the other. “I’ve spent time in a few landscapes over the years, and I’ve served under several guard captains. Even the ones who were good captains weren’t always good men. You’re a good man. You don’t belong here. Knew that after the first week of being assigned to your fist. Haven’t changed my mind in the years since. It’s not a kind city, Cap’n. Never was. You keep on rubbing elbows with the wizards, you might start forgetting what it means to be a good man.”

Addison was coming too close to the bone, giving voice to things Dalton tried not to think about—especially in the darkest hours of the night.

“What about you, Addison? You came here from another landscape and stayed. You’ve been here more years than I have. Why aren’t you thinking of leaving?”

Addison’s smile was sweet and bitter. “I never said I was a good man.”

Glorianna walked toward the source of the dissonance in the waterhorses’ landscape—the dissonance that had set her teeth on edge when she’d walked through her garden to check the feel of her landscapes. This dissonance had made her angry. The other “weed” in her garden left the taste of despair burning at the back of her throat.

Lee would find out what had thrown their mother’s heart into such confusion. Nadia would talk to him, would tell him what was wrong, and he would do what he could to ease the trouble. Or at least find out the source of the trouble. Because she didn’t want to consider the unthinkable—that her mother’s heart was no longer attuned with hers, that something in Nadia had changed so much she no longer fit in a landscape held by Glorianna Belladonna.

Lee would take care of whatever trouble waited at home. Whatever had made the wrongness in this landscape was a task only she could deal with.

Whatever? She knew what had left Its mark on the waterhorses’ landscape. She just didn’t know how It had gotten here.

When Sebastian had told her about the waterhorse being killed, she’d gone to the pond. There had been a stain of Dark that didn’t fit with this landscape, that didn’t resonate with her. But she’d found no sign of an anchor that could be used as an access point, so she’d sent her resonance out over the land, concentrating the power on the pond and the land around it until it was in harmony with her once more. The stain of Dark hadn’t been completely washed away, but it should have faded by now—unless someone full of dark emotions that resonated with that Dark had passed by this pond often enough to feed the Dark, providing the Eater with just enough of an opening to alter the pond again to be an access point for one of Its landscapes.

Wishing she hadn’t ignored Lee’s sharp order to bring a lantern with her, she hurried toward the pond until, in the waning light, she spotted what she thought was a dark, oddly shaped rock. Then the smell of blood and vomit made her gag.

Fighting to control her churning stomach, she approached warily and stared at the severed horse’s head a long time before shifting her focus to the pond a few man-lengths away. There was only one thing that had been locked away in the Eater’s landscapes that could bite through muscle and bone like that. Death rollers.