The Labyrinth of the Dead (3 page)

Some of the spirit faces cheered and
others wept. The second tree dug its branch ends into Portia’s scalp, snarling
in her hair and drawing blood. She let it yank her head backward, relaxing into
the fall. Nearby lay the fallen limb, still shimmering darkly and occasionally
twitching. She got her hands around it and swung it up over her head.
Surprisingly, the branches that were tangled in her hair flew into brittle
pieces upon impact, and the one that had wrapped around her throat spasmed and
let go. Moving with the momentum, Portia rolled to the side and came up on her
knees, brandishing her weapon against a second onslaught. Her scalp throbbed.
She wiped away a sweaty rivulet of blood as it dripped into her goggles before
gripping the branch with both hands once more.

A glitter of silver like holiday tinsel
hung from broken twig-fingers of the second tree; dabs of her blood shone among
the fine strands of her hair. The rest of the branch lay shattered
across the path, as if the tree had been made of glass. Portia rose, slamming
her improvised weapon into the outstretched wooden arms. One after the other
they splintered, exploding into a shower of ragged shards. When she swung for
the trunk, it split from root to tip and fell over like a broken scarecrow. She
saw that the wood was black, as if it had been burnt, but the other trees
remained untouched. She looked down at the blood on her hand, pressed against
the bark of the branch, and realized that the vanquished tree had been the one
that had opened her scalp.

Wiping a hand through her blood-clotted
hair, Portia pressed a wet, red print into the trunk of the nearest tree and
watched as it shuddered violently, nearly wrenching itself from the earth before
collapsing into blackened rubble.

"Yes, I am alive and I am not human. I
will destroy you all if I have to. Let me pass."

The tree that had made the initial grab
for her neck reached for her again. Portia let it. She allowed herself to be
bound up tight by its braches and dragged in close to
its trunk. It pressed her close, but pushed her face away, holding her bleeding
head with the very tips of its twigs. She even allowed the sickly yellow-green
growths to snake up from the roots and twine around her legs, reaching up for
her torso and her body’s warm, living core.

"You are a very stupid tree," she
whispered. "My blood is not the only part of me that can hurt you."

The shoots pulled her legs apart,
seeking to burrow straight up through her.

"You have been warned." Portia closed
her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. In the long weeks since her ordeal at
the convent, her waking hours had been spent on just two thoughts: saving
Imogen and learning to control this new power of hers. They were inexorably
linked. She could rescue Imogen from death and from the clutches of the Aldias
forever, but she would have to learn how to harness
the raging fire of spirit within her if she were ever to succeed.
Perhaps it was too soon to have tried this risky gamble, but Portia had always
thought herself a quick study. Carefully, she released her mental reins,
allowing that banked flame to grow and to consume her. She knew she would not
burn. The light built slowly beneath her skin and the branches began to flinch
back from her flesh.

"Are you afraid? You don’t know the
half, yet."

She gulped in a fresh lungful of air
and let it out again slowly, so slowly, as the pressure built within her. She had
practiced this power, among others, with Anna, laying hands to trees and
boulders under her house-sister’s watchful eye. But here in the spirit world,
the ability was different, manifesting in a far more visual way. Portia’s bones
began to glow.

She focused her mind on the soothing
rhythm of her breath, allowing the light to fill her until each strand of her
hair was ablaze and the demon tree was desperately trying to untangle itself
from her. Portia took its trunk in her hands, just as she had touched the
felled trees in the living side of Penemue to split them into firewood, and let
her fire out. Tongues of seraphic flame tore from her flesh, haloing her in a
sphere of blinding light. It annihilated the tree in seconds, and the force of
it knocked down most of the others around her in a wide ring.

With extraordinary effort, she pulled
the power back into her, leashing it with heavy chains of will. She sagged to
her knees, exhausted, then slumped over onto her side, her heart racing and her
eyes dazzled. She pushed the goggles up onto her forehead and looked around,
gasping. She had never felt so connected to the celestial power within her. It
had leapt to her command, exponentially more potent than it had ever been…and
that much more difficult to contain once it was freed.

All the training
, Portia realized,
it isn’t going to be enough
.
I can’t control this.

Splintered wood spread in an elegant
fan shape radiating from the shallow crater where she lay. The spirits that had
been trapped within rose from the wreckage
like steam and, moaning softly, vanished into the ever-present mist. A
soft patch of green grass had sprung up all around Portia, jeweled with violets
and clover. She pushed herself up onto one elbow, running her hands over her
head to find her scalp entirely healed. Kanika stood nearby with a hand
outstretched to help her to her feet.

The girl’s perfect ringlets bounced as she shook
her head with that same imperturbable smile playing along her soft lips.
"Portia, you’re trouble."

—3—

AT THE center of Penemue stood a fountain with a
large pool. Graceful figures reached for the sky as water showered down around
them, all carved from an ivory-colored stone flecked with gold and red. On the
shadow-side, instead, there was a festering pond from the center of which
sprouted an ominous-looking willow tree, its leaves hanging lank and leathery
like so many dead bats clinging to the long branches.

"So, what’s in the bag?" Kanika was
chipper again, striding alongside Portia and bubbling with conversation.

Portia batted the girl’s hands away as
she reached into the satchel.

"Oooh, is
that myrrh unguent? Oh, my! Where did you get this? It’s not a real salvation
flower, is it? They only bloom once every one hundred years!"

Portia reclaimed the pilfered containers
and stowed them back in the bag. "Kanika, listen, I appreciate the company, but
I cannot have you getting your fingers into everything."

"Afraid I might steal something?"

"No. Everything I have with me I have
for a specific purpose and it was quite a burden to get it here, so I would
like it muchly if you’d leave my things be. Please."

The girl huffed.
"You do need me to help you, or don’t you remember?"

"If you ruin my supplies, then all the
information in the world won’t be of any use to me."

Kanika kicked at some of the loose
scree scattered atop the cobblestones. "You aren’t any fun."

Portia wheeled on the girl and Kanika
flinched. "Take me somewhere that’s safe, where we can speak openly. You’ll
tell me what you know and I will find a way to repay you."

Kanika looked dubious at the
suggestion, but after a moment’s thought she led the way toward a long row of
broken-down houses. Portia recognized the place as Jeweler’s Row.

"So, how close of a copy is this to the
living world?"

Kanika shook her head.
"Not a copy, an echo. There are places, many in Penemue, where the two worlds
not only intersect, but interact."

Portia gazed around the cavernous
building toward where the floor had buckled and the second story had caved in, leaving
a jagged and unwelcoming maw where once had been a bustling shop full of gold
and jewels. "An echo, hmmm? Evidently something here has gotten lost in
translation."

"It’s the only
world we know. And much better than any alternative."

"So how many places are beyond this?"
Portia followed her into the storefront.

"Lots. Some are
even pleasant, or so I hear. But the road is harsh and treacherous and many of
us prefer to remain here. Most of us still have loved ones left among the
living, and we like to stay close. And it doesn’t get any closer than this.
Well, so far as I know, anyway."

"Do you have relatives in Penemue? I
can certainly carry a message back to them when I leave here."

"You are ever so
optimistic, Portia. Thank you for your kind offer, but no. What needs to be
said to them I can just as well say myself."

"How does this work, then? How did you
come to be here?"

Kanika clucked her tongue and dragged
out a crate from the cobwebbed shadows. She sat on it, reclining back on her
arms and stretching her legs out before her. "First of all, it is terribly rude
to ask someone here how they died. Especially since you have not had the
privilege of that experience."

"My apologies."

"Second, if you are taking one soul
back over with you, I think you should consider taking me along as well."

Portia leaned against the dust-cloaked
counter. "Oh? You do, do you? I am afraid it is a bit more complicated than
that. To begin with, the lady in question that I am here to retrieve still has
a body that is very much alive, ready and waiting for her. I somehow doubt that
you have the same luxury. And I would need some sort of object that was
precious to you to help guide you back to the mortal realm; that is, if you
have not been dead so long you don’t remember it at all. Which brings me back
to my original question: How did you come to be here?"

"There was a fire. I don’t recall much
other than that."

Portia shivered to recall her own near
miss in the convent fire. "I see. Well, sadly, that hardly helps us. I am sure your
body is long gone, I’m afraid."

"What if I could get another?"

"Another
body
?"

"Sure thing! The necromancers come all
the time. They take the souls belonging to the bodies they have, and sometimes,
if they can’t find the right soul to go with the right body, they just pick any
ghost they like and take it instead. Seems to work; we never see any of those
taken show up here again."

"I can’t say that is necessarily a
positive thing, Kanika. You said there were other places than this, worse
places."

"Certainly, but when you’re freshly
dead, you always end up here. Unless you’re one of you. And then you usually
don’t."

But what if you’ve already been dead
once…or twice, then what?
"I cannot make you any promises, Kanika dear, but I will do my best to help you."

"You will? Do you promise?"

Portia paused,
carefully considering her words. "No, I cannot promise that to you. But I will
try to help you however I can without jeopardizing my own task here. You must
understand, Imogen comes first."

"Sure thing." Her coquettish smile
returned. "Imogen. That’s a nice name. Sort of chimes, doesn’t it? Imogen!
Imogen!" Kanika called the name lightly and appeared utterly charmed by it.
"Does she persist in her own name here?"

"I don’t know, honestly. I hope she
has, or at least she will know it when she hears it."

"I hope so, too. Imogen. Such a nice
name. I’d hate to see it go to waste."

Portia nodded and silence descended
between them. It felt terribly awkward to her, but Kanika showed no uneasiness;
she simply sat back and gazed at Portia with frank appreciation.

"Well, then." The girl stood up,
seemingly finished with her staring, and brushed the cobwebs from the backs of
her thighs, twisting over in a vain attempt to bring attention to her backside.
"We had best get to bed. It isn’t safe to be out at night."

"Night?" Portia craned her neck to see
out of the dingy front windows. "How can you tell? It doesn’t look any darker
than it was before."

But the wind had picked up, and it
whistled around the edges of the doors and between the window panes.

"At night, the storms come. Storms and
demons. Doesn’t your kind hunt demons? Oughtn’t you know that?" She made her
way to a small stair at the rear of the building. "Come on up, we’ll be safe
here."

Hesitating, Portia opened the front
door a crack and peered outside. The heavy fog had puffed and plumed into tall
thunderheads, bruise-purple against the black sky. A hollow wail reverberated
between them and a distant roll of thunder answered. Within the shadows of the
buildings, darker shapes skittered and writhed. At first there was no
discernable pattern to their movements, but they soon seemed to scent her and
migrated toward the ramshackle jeweler’s shop. Claire had certainly not
mentioned this.

"Shut the door!" Kanika’s
sharp cry jolted Portia into action, and she slammed the heavy oaken door on
the approaching gremlins. A pale blue sigil carved into the door flared to
life, and she could hear the shadow creatures move away, although the storm
broke with ferocity above them. "Didn’t I warn you? Now, come on upstairs, it’s
quite comfortable, I assure you."

The loft above the shop was indeed
cozy. A feather mattress lay alongside the least crumbling wall and a wobbly
table bore up a chipped pitcher and basin. A small hand-cranked generator
connected to a bare light bulb mounted on the wall by way of a thick braid of
cords that stretched across the floor.

"Not so close to the light—the floor
there is not sound."

"That explains what the genny is doing way over there, then. Do you live here?"

"Just when I need a safe place to sleep
at night, which isn’t always, but most of the time." Kanika settled into the
bed, rolling the flattened pillow under her neck. "There’s more bedding and
some clothes in the trunk," she said, pointing to the battered steamer chest
near the foot of the bed.

"Where does all this stuff come from?
How does it get here?"