Distant Star (4 page)

Ethan watched, entranced. He was
years from accomplishing anything this intricate. Despite my age—I was
only twenty-four—fighting on the front lines of the Tome Wars had forced
me to learn on a staggeringly steep curve.

“So how do I properly hide the
Will? How do I… shut the door?”

“When people think of our power,
they think it’s a source to be tapped. But that’s not how it is with our Will,
not ever. If you have the talent, the ability to access it and use it to
effect, as we do, then it is
always
switched on. All the time. There is never a moment you’re not channeling the
power through you, like the act of breathing—you’re constantly doing it.
You’re lit up like a beacon for miles around, Reilly. We need to shut ‘er
down.”

“How?”

“Up here.” I tapped his forehead.
“For me, I just make sure that the door in my mind is closed, which takes a bit
of practice, but with the door closed…” The sphere of rippling blue energy in
my palm spluttered and died. “You’re about as Willful, or as useful, as a
broken condom in a whorehouse.”

Ethan snorted.

“Oh, charming,” Sophie said.

“And what about Forget? Sophie
tells me you use books to get across a void—”

I raised a hand for silence. “Not
a
void. The Void. A place, a level of
existence that… sort of exists outside of the universe. I can’t explain it
better than that. Its very nature defies explanation. There are multiple
universes. not just worlds, but universes. The Void is the space between them,
a dark, ugly space… full of not so friendly things. Our Will can be used to
traverse it.”

“How?”

“Books—certain
books—can be used to cross into Forget, from our world, this world, known
as True Earth. You use your Will to invoke the words on the page. Again,
certain pages, in certain books.”

“The Infernal Works,” Sophie said
softly.

“Right.” I picked up one of the
paperbacks on the counter: one of Roper’s earlier adventures. “Books that you
can dive into, books that span the Void and cross over into Forget, are written
by men and women who have some control, even unconsciously, over Will. Normal
people, who can’t use the power, have stories that don’t become part of Forget.
Their stories are just that… stories. You follow?”

“Not so much, no.”

I nodded. “You’ll get your head
around the idea eventually, sure, and the best way to learn is to cross over
the Void and actually travel to Forget. But we’re not doing that.”

Ethan slumped. “Why not?”

Sophie chuckled. “For one, the
Knights Infernal will chop off Declan’s head if he’s caught diving into
Forget.”

“Oh.”

I rubbed my neck, still firmly
attached to my shoulders. “Yep, I’m in exile, Ethan. Times were, I’d have taken
you to Ascension City and the Academy at the Fae Palace to be
trained—trained properly. But I can never go back. Perhaps one day, when
you’ve learnt enough to survive, you can seek it out yourself.”

Ethan stared at me, frowned, and
stuck his tongue between his teeth. He stayed that way for a long minute. “Can
you still feel my Will?” he asked eventually.

“You’re lit up like a forest
fire, mate.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Fear not, practice makes
perfect—every time.”

“Can I ask…?” He glanced at
Sophie. “Can I ask why you were exiled, Mr. Hale?”

“You can ask, sure.”

Sophie rejoined us at the counter
and jumped up onto her perch. As she swung her legs back and forth, her pink
All Stars swished up and down Ethan’s jeans. “Declan did some very good and
some very bad things,” she said. “There was a war in Forget. A hundred-year war
that spanned time and space and universes. I’ve told you bits and pieces.
Declan ended it, at great cost.”

“That’s a nice way of putting
it.” I poured myself two fingers of Glenlivet. I always had a bottle of it
within arm’s reach. “I pulled a kind of a dick move and crippled something
called the Story Thread.”

“The Story Thread?”

“All those other universes we
were just talking about, written and accessed through the Infernal Works? They are
part of the Story Thread, a cord of pure existence—of
all
existence—running through the
Void and fighting the creeping nothing that is the space between universes. The
Story Thread fills that nothing with
anything
,
and has existed since the first Willful men and women put pen to page thousands
of years ago.”

“What happened?”

His question deserved another sip
of liquid gold. “I unleashed the Degradation, which forced an end to the war.
At
the time it was a chance worth taking.
”

Sophie sniffed. “Never mind the
unforeseen consequences, huh?”

“They were pretty damned
unforeseen at the time, ‘Phie. You think I wanted exile? You know what we
lost—
who
we lost.”

She relented with a sigh. “I
know.”

I turned back to Ethan. “Anyway,
after the Degradation was unleashed, the Story Thread sort of… froze. I say
crippled, because it can no longer support new universes, new worlds. I broke
Forget. Every book written by a Willful author since the Degradation is
just
a book. Existing only on the page
and impossible to use to travel across the Void.”

Ethan played with the buttons on
his shirt in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

I put him out of his misery.
“There’s a
helluva
lot to learn, kid.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have the time to teach you, which is why Sophie will
take you to the Academy in a year or two, when you’re ready.”

“Is it like university?”

I laughed. “Oh good god, no. It’s
far crueler—like a military school for misguided youth. Since the war’s
end, perhaps the curriculum is more scholarly, but I doubt it. You’re a lot
older than those usually accepted. Twenty years ago, the Academy would’ve found
you before your tenth birthday and shipped you off to Forget. The Tome Wars
changed all that, and kids with the talent slipped through the nets.”

“You started at the Academy at
age
ten
?” Ethan asked incredulously.

“Actually, I started at six, but
that’s beside the point. You learn hard and you learn quick. Sophie spent three
years there, eleven to fourteen.”

“Do you graduate? Is there, like
a test, or something?”

“Or something. Students are
tested constantly, in anything from enchantments to ward-casting, to augmented
weaponry.” I thought back to those days, almost fondly. “Then, at fifteen,
you’re sent on your first quest, called the Great Quest, which is a rite of
passage for the newest Knights—a solo journey across Forget.”

“Sounds… awesome.”

“It is, in a way. You see, at
that point in the training, the quest is more of a formality. The students have
passed all their tests, learned how to command their Will, and traversed
countless realms of Forget, under guidance. The Academy has been sending kids
on the Great Quest for centuries, and really, its purpose is to allow fresh
Knights to test their skills out in the real world.”

“What is the Great Quest?”

“Nothing too special. Just find
the road to the Lost City of Atlantis, and reclaim the troves of treasure and
knowledge that vanished there over ten thousand years ago.”

“Oh. Neat.”

“Yeah, you see why the Great
Quest is viewed as nothing more than a formality.”

“Because Atlantis isn’t real?”

I held up my thumb and forefinger
about half an inch apart. “Close. After a thousand years of searching, no one
has ever found even a trace of the city, beyond scraps of old parchment and
half-whispered myths. My Great Quest was a bit different, however.”

Ethan tilted his head. “Oh? You
didn’t have to go chasing after a fairytale?”

“No, no I did. Only difference was
that I found it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Valentine’s
Day

I used to work for the Knights
Infernal—an order of men and women dedicated to protecting the world from
its own imagination. Terrible worlds existed inside books. Terrible, wonderful,
amazing worlds of such depth and beauty, such tragedy and horror, that the
ideas became manifest.

The fiction became a lie that
told a truth, and a cord of the Story Thread.

The Renegades started off as a
fractured cell of the Knights. They believed the Knights’ power existed to
unmake the world, or, more accurately, to reshape it, an idea that opposed
everything represented by the Knights Infernal. The conflict between the
Renegades and the Knights was one for the ages. They fought in shadows and
darkness, in libraries and bookshops across the face of the True Earth and
in
and beyond the Infernal Works.

In deepest, darkest Forget.

They had all but destroyed one
another five years ago, in the Tome Wars. I’d played a significant role during
the war—I had ended it. My reward for forcing peace?

Exile.

Expelled from the Knights
Infernal and barred from all of Forget.

I’d unleashed a horrific construct
of Will that became known as the Degradation, and though the act saved many
Knights and Renegades, I’d crippled the Story Thread to make it happen.
Unbreakable laws had been broken. Lives had been lost. The one line in the sand
that neither the Knights nor the Renegades would dare cross… I crossed.

The bell above the door chimed
and I took a sip of wine. Two days had passed since the altercation with the
Pagemaster, young Jeff. Light, purposeful footsteps clicked against the wooden
floor. I heard the swish of a worn cloak. Clare Valentine stood before me in
the window alcove. I’d been expecting her earlier.

“Hello, Commander.”

“Just Declan now, Clare. You know
that.”

Clare offered me a sad smile. Her
short spiky hair was a terrific shade of purple and green. She looked younger
than I remembered, but then the last time I’d seen her, we’d been at war.
Perhaps the five years since had been kind to her. I hoped so.

“Aye, I know that. You know why
I’m here.”

She didn’t make it a question.
The scent of her perfume, soft lavender, brought back a rush of pleasant and
not so pleasant memories, of Tal and a sword of rose petals.

“Of
course,” I said.

In her right hand, Clare grasped
a book firmly with her index finger between the pages, just as we’d been
taught. She glanced around the shop, most likely for something more to say, her
eyes roaming over the empty spirit and wine bottles littering the shelves and
windowsill, before settling on the boxes of crinkled paper—my endless,
imperfect manuscript.

“Now that,” she said, “is perhaps
the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen. Declan Hale, storyteller.”

“It is wonderful to see you,
Clare. Were you sent to kill me?”

Clare smirked and offered me a
sly wink. “Even five years away from the field, exiled beyond the Final Vanguards,
you could still wipe the floor with me, I reckon.”

I shrugged and stood, keeping my
hands free and visible, and stepped across the space between us. She was a good
two feet shorter than me, but her Will was one of the strongest in the world.
“Faraday sent you.”

“Yes.”

“He very much wants me silenced.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. He claimed the Dragon
Throne unopposed, from what I hear.” I heard very little, these days. “Probably
for the best.”

“Oh, yes.”

“After Nightmare’s Reach, after
what I did?”

Clare paled and couldn’t hold my
gaze. “To speak of that is forbidden. Infernal Heresy, punishable by—”

“Exile? Death? All manner of
unpleasant misery?”

Clare bit her lip. A strange
thing happened. One of her green eyes turned as blue as a sapphire, and she
laughed shakily. “Everyone knows what you did, but no one talks about it. They
speak of… well, some say you should have claimed the Dragon Throne for
yourself, Declan.”

“That old thing? No, no. Faraday
tied his own noose when he took that seat, and he did it with a smile. You wait
and see.”

“Jon Faraday is a lot of things,
but he did keep the Knights together after the war. We owe him for that much.”
Clare reached out and ran a finger along the rim of my reading glasses. “He
asked me to tell you not to interfere. We know the Renegades have licked their
wounds, and small factions are regrouping. You should expect some reprisal,
given your past. He told me to remind you that the only reason you kept your
head was because of your service during the war. Declan, please, Faraday won’t
let you be a power unto yourself.”

“It’s not a question of who’s
going to let me, but more a question of who’s going to stop me. My service is
not the only reason I survived, Clare.”

Clare’s gaze turned wistful. “You
always did love the classics.”