A Plague of Shadows (9 page)

Abagail stumbled, her feet trying to find purchase on a ground that seemed to shift like sand beneath her boots. She could feel Rorick and Leona’s grips on her, but she couldn’t see them. All she could see were brilliant blotches of light before her, as if her eyes were closed too tightly.

With a lurch they burst out of the disorientating trip and stumbled on a white road stretching miles before them through a darkened night.

Stars blazed all about them, to their left and right, above them, and beneath the road under them. It was less like they were standing on a road and more like they were standing on a bridge that stretched through the cold blackness of space.

Abagail turned back to look one last time at her father, but there was nothing there but the end of the bridge and a swirling fogbank which quickly solidified into a milky white gateway.

Leona let go of Abagail’s hand, and that brought her attention away from the gateway and back to the road before them. Ahead of them, and high up in the blackness was a floating disk of light, similar to the Waking Eye, but completely white and almost as radiant to hurt the eyes as the sun did.

There was something climbing through the darkness and toward that light. From a distance behind them, beyond the gateway they’d just come through spirits arose through the air as if climbing a stairway only they could see. Their eyes were rooted on the light they were climbing to, the light that Abagail almost couldn’t look at.

“What are they?” Rorick asked, following her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Abagail told him.

“Spirits of the Dead.” Leona said. “Skuld says they are climbing to their final meeting with the All Father.”

Abagail glanced at her sister and frowned at the wooden doll clasped in her hands. She wanted to refuse to believe what Leona said. She couldn’t. Once Leona said it, she remembered a myth about a stairway to the Ever After at the top of the Tree at Eget Row.

“This is Eget Row,” Abagail whispered, realizing where they were. The moment she realized it the light shone down upon the bridge they stood on and like opals caught in the light, the bridge reflected an oily kind of rainbow light.

The light grew, and as her eyes followed the Rainbow Bridge she could just make out the top of the World Tree stretching up into the darkness which held the glowing light of the Ever After.

Leona started waving to the people as they climbed above them, and Abagail reached for her to make her stop. Rorick tugged on her arm, and Abagail looked to him.

“Why stop her?” Rorick asked. “She’s just having fun. She’s not hurting anyone.”

“Yea Abbie, they’re already dead,” Leona said.

Abagail frowned, but watched the people climb higher and higher. When one would finally reach the light at the top of their invisible stairway there was a slight flash of light, and they would vanish.

“I wonder what’s beyond there,” Abagail said aloud.

“Wanna find out?” Leona asked her, and then laughed at the scowl on Abagail’s face. “Don’t be so sour,” Leona said.

“I’m sorry, it’s hard to be excited when I have these shadows turning me into a raging monster,” Abagail said.

“Seems like you were always kind of a raging monster,” Leona shrugged. “Maybe now your true nature is starting to show through.”

Abagail wanted to say something back to Leona, but she bit her tongue. Maybe Leona was right, she had always been terse with her sister. She
wasn’t
her mother, and Dolan had never been as protective with them as Abagail was.

Instead she looked around herself at the glittering road of opal that stretched out of sight ahead of them.

Rorick leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Come on, think of where we are,” he said. Her stomach hitched as his voice whispered against her ear. “How many mortals can say they’ve been here before?”

Abagail smiled and let him lead her a little ways away from Leona, who was still trying to get the spirits of the dead to talk to her.

“You know, it helps a little seeing this,” Rorick said after a couple moments.

“What’s that?” Abagail asked, dragging her eyes away from the endless dark before them and the bridge that seemed to manifest out of the darkness the further they walked. She could head Leona’s feet scuffling up behind them.

“The ghosts of the dead,” Rorick said, his eyes latched on those people climbing higher and higher. “For the longest time I didn’t know if any of it was real. I mean, I
believed,
but I didn’t
know.
If that makes any sense.”

“It does,” Abagail said. “I was the same way.” She lowered her voice, aware that Leona was getting closer behind them. She didn’t mind Rorick hearing what she thought of religion, but there was something about Leona hearing anything to do with the Gods, she started talking about Skuld as if she knew the inner workings of the Gods, and it irritated Abagail. “I kept the Hearth lit, I prayed to the All Father, I even set out lavender every Moon Day for Vilda. Even though I’ve seen the power of the All Father, and the darklings, it was just hard for me to believe any of this.”

“I know, I felt the same way when your father started talking about the Nine Worlds and Eget Row.”

“I think I believed in Eget Row,” Abagail said. The butterfly fluttered out before them, and continued on, her plum colored light shining off the opal bridge like purple fire. “I dreamed about it.”

“Rorick,” Leona said coming up beside him. “I think one of the ghosts looked at me!”

Abagail rolled her eyes. “Leona, they can’t even see us.”

“Oh really?” Leona said. “Skuld says they can.”

“Oh yes, by all means, the doll knows all,” She pulled her arm away from Rorick and walked closer to the edge of the road. There was a cool breeze drifting up from beneath the bridge, carrying with it a strange chorus of noises.

She hated that she was being so mean to Leona, and couldn’t figure out why. She had to get her mind around it. It wasn’t Leona’s fault she was in the mess she was in.

And then it hit her. She was upset in general, and Leona acted like it didn’t matter.

That’s not right,
and it wasn’t. Leona was simply too young to know better. She might only be a few years younger than Abagail, but it made a world of difference.

Abagail tried to think about something else, and put out of mind the conversation Leona and Rorick were having just a few feet away from her. Their voices carried out into the darkness beyond the road, and then were lost to the night.

She thought about the wind she could feel coming from beneath them. It felt like a winter wind, blowing in off an icy lake, and Abagail was happy she’d brought her cloak. She pulled it tighter around herself and slowed her pace, watching as her breath puffed out beyond the bridge in misty drafts.

Abagail leaned over the edge of the opalescent road, her short hair tossing fitfully in the updraft. There was a strange smell on the air, like carrion. It made her stomach churn forebodingly. She frowned and was about to step back when a word traveled up through the draft to her ears.

Helvegr,
the word came, as if whispered from thousands of deadened throats.

She looked over the edge again and thought for a moment she could see a sparkle of flames far beneath them in the darkness. The sound of creaking wood came to her, like a ship she’d heard once before in the port of their home town. Her mind remembered the ship in the picture she’d seen, but she shook her head against the image and pulled away from the edge of the road. She stepped to the center, where she was certain she was safe, and watched the spirits of the dead climb the darkness above Eget Row toward the glowing brightness above.

She tried to forget the word, and found watching the butterfly before them really helped.

“What should we name her?” Abagail asked, coming up behind Rorick and Leona.

“Who?” Rorick asked, smiling back at Abagail. She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face.

“The butterfly,” Abagail said.

“I think we should name her Luna!” Leona said.

“How do you know it’s a her?” Rorick asked.

“Um, she’s purple?” Leona said.

“Men can wear purple,” Rorick argued.

“But if it was a male butterfly, it would be green or dark blue or something,” Leona said.

“I think it’s safe to say it’s a female,” Abagail said.

“Do you know something we don’t?” Rorick asked her.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a butterfly,” she said, and then went on to tell them what she’d thought she’d seen when the butterfly drove the darkling off.

“A pixie?” Leona asked.

“It had wings, wouldn’t that be a fairy?” Rorick asked her.

“It doesn’t have to be. Pixies can change shape, fairies don’t normally do that. And fairies are typically smaller,” Leona told them.

“I didn’t know you were so versed in the lore of other races,” Rorick said with a smile.

Leona frowned at him, but then laughed.

“Well then it’s settled, we call her Luna,” Abagail said.

“And if
she
reveals herself to be a
he
?” Rorick asked.

“Then we will name it Sol!” Leona said.

“What if I can’t change the name in my head, and I just keep calling Sol Luna?” Rorick wondered. “Do you think his pixie-ness will get mad at me?”

“You better watch it, he might shrink you!” Abagail warned him.

“That’s not very funny,” Leona said. “And yes, he could do something horrible to you, you better be careful!”

“Duly noted,” Rorick said, nodding seriously, though he smiled at Abagail once Leona turned away. Leona started wandering away and toward Luna.

“So what’s really on your mind?” Rorick asked.

“Do I have to pick just one thing?” Abagail asked.

“Let’s start with one, that’s less confusing.”

“Right now I’m wondering where we are going. Father said Agaranth, and I thought we would just step into the mirror on our side, and out of the mirror in my Aunt’s house.”

“It is a little disconcerting. I’m assuming this road leads to the other mirror? Can he direct the road you think?”

“Who knows?” Abagail shrugged.

“I’m sure we will make it to where we need to go,” Rorick said. He fell silent as his eyes drifted upwards again, and Abagail didn’t press conversation, there was also too many things on her mind at the moment to desire conversation any longer.

Mainly what would happen if they never reached where they were going? What happened if the wyrd of the rainbow bridge brought the shadow out of her faster? What if they finally arrived at an exit, but it didn’t lead to her Aunt Mattelyn?

Underlying all of that was the noise from beneath them. Abagail wasn’t sure if the noise was getting louder, or if she was listening for it, and therefore hearing it louder than what she had before. Once she’d heard the moans of the dead, calling up to her that putrid word she couldn’t not hear it. She shivered as the word crept into the recesses of her mind. It seemed as though she knew the word, though she’d never heard it before a couple days ago.

And what about the sounds of the boat?
Abagail asked herself. She remembered the light beneath the bridge and the way it instantly reminded her of the fiery boat that sailed around the edges of the image in the painting she’d seen in her father’s study.

Eget Row was supposed to connect all of the Nine Worlds together, and that even included the realm of the damned, the boat they traveled around in for all eternity. If this was Eget Row, and it was increasingly harder for her to think it was anything
but
Eget Row, then it was very possible that had been the boat she’d seen.

The sound of water drew her mind away from her ponderings, and Leona let out a startled yelp. Luna fluttered higher, away from her sister, and Abagail raced forward to see what her sister was seeing.

There, in the distance, just this side of her vision she could see the spray of water cascading off of something and down into the nothingness. Their feet drew them onward faster than before, and before long they were at the edge of a waterfall that was coming from a lake before them. The waterfall spilled down into the blankness of space, though Abagail could hear it hitting a huge lake below, echoing up around them.

Further still, she thought she could see a mass of land.

“This is incredible,” Rorick said. “If this is Eget Row, then that lake must be Elivigar. The waters created at the beginning of time.”

“What’s that?” Abagail asked, pointing off to their right where the light from above glittered off something green that had crested out of the water, and dove back in with a splash.

“We should back up,” Leona said, watching as Luna fluttered backwards, away from the lake and toward where they’d come from.

“What is it?” Rorick asked, pulling Abagail along with him.

“Skuld says it’s not good,” Leona said.

Abagail’s mind reeled, but she followed Rorick all the same.

Leona raced away from Elivigar and back where they’d come from. But as Abagail turned, she saw another bridge leading off to the left, connecting to the path behind them.

That hadn’t been there before,
she thought. The opalescent road carried on that way, to the left, down what appeared to be a slope. But this part was different, darker, somehow. Abagail wouldn’t have been surprised to see roots and vines growing out of the flagstone bridge that made up the left-hand path.

It was a covered bridge, and the roof of the tunnel was thatched in glittering gold. She stepped toward the path, and looked up. The ceiling was the same gold. She smiled at the golden ore above her. But her smile quickly faded when the word
Helvegr
and the rotting smell of meat wafted up to her from down the tunnel.

“Harbinger, you do not want to go that way,” A resonant voice called from the darkness behind her. Leona gasped, and Rorick grabbed Abagail’s arm, pulling her in behind him.

Abagail turned to see what the commotion was about, and from out of the darkness stepped a glowing being of pure white light.