Mindbender (28 page)

Magda was waiting for her when she arrived.

Isabel felt unusually nervous. She was normally confident when facing a challenge but this was different—so much depended on her success.

“Good morning, Isabel. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

Isabel shook her head slowly.

“Just so we’re clear, this is dangerous and difficult. There is no pressure if you wish to continue your practice and build on your skills before you undergo the trials.”

“I understand,” Isabel said. “I’m ready now.”

“Very well, come with me,” Magda said as she retrieved a small box from a locked cabinet.

Magda led her through a twisting maze of corridors that wound deeper into the bowels of the fortress island than Isabel had ever been. There were a number of doors that were locked and spelled to prevent entrance to anyone but authorized members of the coven. They arrived at a nondescript door that opened to a circular room with a magic circle inlaid in the floor. It was a simple stone room carved from the rock of the island. The ceiling was high and the walls were bare. There was a low bed with a thin feather mattress in the center. Two neatly folded blankets and a pillow rested on the foot of the bed. A cistern filled with water sat next to the bed and a single oil lamp rested on a small table nearby.

A single ray of sunlight stabbed through the dim light of the lamp from a slit in one wall, brilliantly illuminating a spot on the opposite wall.

Magda placed the box on the table and opened it carefully. Within were seven heavy glass vials filled with liquid that was glowing slightly with a pure white light. Each vial was fitted into a red felt-lined indentation designed to hold it in place.

“You must drink one vial each day for the next seven days,” Magda said. “Use the position of the sunlight to mark time. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Isabel said.

“Once the trials begin, you will be on your own,” Magda said. “If you fail to drink all of the vials, you will die. If you drink more than one per day, you will die. If you succumb to the pain, fear, or despair, you will die. The firmament has no consciousness of its own but it seems to crave the input of the conscious mind. It is believed that this is the reason for the difficulty of the trials. People are more apt to act rashly to escape unpleasant feelings, so the firmament induces the worst emotions possible with great intensity in order to motivate you to release your hold on your own identity and surrender your will to the firmament. If you let go, you will die.

“You must face each of the trials directly and endure. You must maintain a hold on your identity and your will in order to survive. Once you can face the unmitigated torment of each trial, the firmament will give up and move on to the next trial. Remember, everything you are about to experience is both very real and completely imaginary at the same time. Real in the sense that you will experience the feelings with great intensity and unreal in the sense that the feelings are fabricated and artificial—but your psyche won’t know that. You must not let the intensity of the experience fool you into believing that the experience is real. You must maintain a firm grasp on the truth that this is a test of your will that is taking place within your mind and nowhere else.

“If you are ready, I will activate the magic circle and seal you into this room for the next week. Once you drink the contents of the first vial, the trials will begin at a time and in a way that is completely unpredictable, except that they will take seven days to complete. Some people report the trials beginning within minutes of drinking the first vial. At least one witch I know said that her trials all happened on the final day of the mana fast.

“On the morning of the eighth day, I will return to release the magic circle. Until then, no magic or substance will be able to pass into or out of the circle. Occasionally, uncontrolled magical energies of great power are released during the mana fast. The circle is here to ensure that you cause no harm to those around you as well as to ensure that you finish the fast.

“Use your emotions to your advantage. Focus on your love for Alexander and use that love to remain grounded in reality.”

Isabel nodded and sat down on the edge of the little bed.

“Are you certain that you’re ready?” Magda asked. “Once you drink the first vial, there is no going back. You’ll either survive the trials or you will die.”

Isabel looked over to the spot of sunlight on the wall. It fell on the fourth stone up from the floor. She marked the position in her mind and took the first of the seven vials. She looked briefly at the magical elixir, at the way it glowed with the kind of light she had seen when she witnessed the birth of the fairy Sara within her own mind. With a smile of love for Alexander and a firm sense of resolve, she uncorked the vial and drank the sweet-tasting liquid.

Magda nodded with a mixture of approval and concern before she stepped out of the circle and spoke a few words under her breath. The circle pulsed with light and the air shimmered briefly.

“The trials have begun,” Magda said. “May the Maker of the world watch over you and deliver you through the ordeal you face.” She held Isabel with her eyes for a moment before she left the room. Isabel heard the bolt on the outside of the door slam into place and then the sound of Magda’s footsteps echoing in the corridor as she walked away. Then there was only silence.

She sat cross-legged on the bed and closed her eyes.

The onslaught was so sudden and so intense that she nearly cast herself into the firmament without even thinking of the consequences. An instant after she closed her eyes, she found herself standing in the small room within her mind that Alexander had helped her construct, looking through what used to be a secure doorway leading to the netherworld. Only now, where the door used to be, there was a gaping hole in the imaginary wall leading to a place of inky blackness, endless emptiness, and palpable malice.

Isabel stared into the netherworld with breathless terror, and the darkness stared back. She was paralyzed with fear. Overcome with cold dread.

She had opened the doorway to the netherworld and unleashed the shades. They had come forth into the world of time and substance with the singular goal of finding and opening the Nether Gate. Creatures of the dark would pour forth and consume the world of life, ending all hope, not just for the people of the Seven Isles but for every creature everywhere.

Isabel had doomed them all.

She felt the rush of fear come in waves that threatened to overwhelm her sanity. Guilt crushed in on her. She cowered away from the consequences of her actions. It was the most horrible thing she had ever felt. She had to escape it. But before she could release her hold on her will, she became dimly aware of a quiet place of calm deep within her psyche.

She focused on that place and found herself wondering how Alexander could have possibly endured such terror. The shock of the revelation hit her like a lightning bolt. In an instant, she realized that she had allowed the intensity of the trials to overwhelm her reason and drive out her sense of reality. Alexander had gone through the trials. He had endured. She could too.

Facing her fear of the darkness before her, she withdrew into that place of calm and reason, but the fear followed her. She vaguely remembered Alexander explaining how he had taken refuge within that place of calm in his mind and how the fear and pain couldn’t exist there. For her it still did. She couldn’t find a refuge. She felt trapped in her own mind with a beast of unspeakable evil and cold malevolence. It chased her until she was frantic and exhausted. Then the darkness was all around her. The sensation was familiar. She had fallen into the darkness of the netherworld. The coldness and emptiness threatened to tear her soul apart—she couldn’t find the strength or the resolve to resist the overwhelming pull of the void.

What had been terror only a moment ago spiked into wild panic. She felt the tug of countless formless manifestations of evil pulling at the edges of her soul, trying to unravel the very essence of her being. The abstract fear of unleashing the darkness into the world transformed into a visceral, hopeless horror of being lost to the endless torment of the netherworld.

She felt trapped and alone without any place of refuge. Her fear only fueled the hunger of the darkness and drew the lifeless beings that lived there to her failing light. Her desperation ignited a spark of anger within her that she seized and nurtured into a full-blown rage, but that only seemed to feed the creatures in the dark. They took strength from the negativity of the anger she had deliberately flooded herself with and renewed their attack with a vengeance.

Isabel frantically focused on the exercise she had learned for dispelling anger. She stepped outside of herself and looked at the events transpiring within her mind from the perspective of a disinterested observer. Almost as quickly as she had given her anger life, she snuffed it out and extinguished the passion of it, leaving her vulnerable to the cold, life-leeching darkness of the netherworld. The fear threatened to overwhelm her sanity and she considered letting go—but only for a moment.

Thoughts of Alexander filled her mind and she saw the path to salvation. She focused on him and her love for him. The light of her soul grew bright and drove the creatures circling in the darkness far enough away for her to gain greater control of her mind and her reason. She could still feel the fear but it was less important in the face of her love for Alexander. She renewed her efforts to focus on the light of her love and regained some sense of her circumstances. The panic receded into manageable terror.

When she realized she didn’t know the way out of the darkness, the panic threatened at the edges of her consciousness again, but again she pushed it back. In that moment of relative calm, she understood what she had to do. She reached deep into her mind and found the pathway that led to the realm of light, the portal that had opened within her mind when Sara was born.

With an effort of will and her newly gained powers of visualization, she threw open the passageway to the realm of light. A ray of pure white light the color of life stabbed through the darkness and showed her the way back into her own mind and the world of time and substance. The creatures swirling in the darkness shrieked with fury at the intrusion of the Maker’s light into their realm, but they cowered from it in spite of their hatred for it.

Isabel willed her soul through the darkness toward the source of the light until she found herself back in her own mind. She opened her eyes and gasped for breath as she stood and looked around frantically. She was standing next to the bed in the chamber of trials. The sun had moved down the wall and several feet across the floor.

Isabel had passed the trial of fear.

She had no way of knowing whether she had actually passed into the netherworld or if it had all been an illusion created within her mind by the firmament, and she didn’t really care. She was through the first of three trials and the mana fast had only just begun.

For the next three days she struggled with isolation and hunger. The second day was the worst. She paced for hours trying to take her mind off food, but the grumbling of her empty stomach always brought her back to her hunger.

She drank the Wizard’s Dust-infused water at the correct time each day and waited for the next of the trials to manifest.

She tried to keep her mind busy with her visualization and emotional-control exercises. When she tired of that, she replayed the experience of the trial of fear over in her mind in an effort to learn what she could from it. Her connections to the netherworld and the realm of light led her to speculate about the nature of the world she lived in and how it interacted with the higher and lower planes. When she tired of speculating about things she could not prove, she thought about Alexander. He always brought her back to a place of clarity and purpose. Thinking of him centered her and gave her hope for the future, not just for herself but for the entire Seven Isles.

She drifted off to sleep on the third night of her trials thinking about her husband. Without waking, she found herself floating as a disembodied point of awareness over a battlefield. Alexander was surrounded by an army of enormous proportions. He fought fiercely and with reckless abandon but there were just too many enemy soldiers. One by one she watched her friends die trying to save Alexander. Anatoly fell first. He stepped in front of a volley of enemy arrows and took several long shafts in the chest. He slumped to his knees with blood bubbling from his mouth. Alexander cried out. Isabel could see his horror at losing his mentor, but he was forced to defend himself against another surge of enemy soldiers.

Isabel felt a growing sense of hopelessness begin to build within her as she floated above the fray. Lucky rushed to help Anatoly when a big enemy soldier broke through the cordon of loyal protectors surrounding Alexander and ran Lucky through with a spear. Isabel heard Alexander sob even as he renewed his drive into the enemy.

She saw the frantic and desperate struggle in Alexander’s movements as he tried in vain to overcome impossible odds. From where Isabel floated over the field she could see the enemy horde stretch off to the horizon. Alexander was fighting a hopeless battle. He would strike down hundreds, maybe even thousands of the enemy with the Sword of Kings—but, in the end, he would fall.

She felt a lump growing in her soul. A feeling of loss and despair began to build. She imagined a world without Alexander and quailed from the prospect.