The Nothing: A Book of the Between (24 page)

“We did not know the women would stop bearing. Nor that the young would leave...”

“Barbarian!” The girl’s voice cut through darkness and stone, a blade of truth and vengeance. “What did you expect? That women with their magic bound would become humble servitors, nothing more than receptacles for your seed? We have power still over our own bodies. The binding extends only into the outer world.”

The old man gaped at his daughter, comprehension and horror at war in a face that had aged seemingly a hundred years in the last moments. “Surely...” he murmured. “Surely they did not...”

“What reason had they to live, to desire that their misery be visited on children to come? Magic-bound, forced to submit to men made their masters, all they could do was withhold childbearing.”

“Your mother—”

Kalina laughed, a wild and bitter sound as far from mirth as darkness is from light. “Do not for a moment believe that my mother was weak. In the dark hours of the night, she whispered these things to me. Other sons were conceived, but she did not allow them to be born.”

A spasm crossed the Master’s face. One hand went to his heart. He bent forward a little, breathing harshly. Vivian took a step forward, thinking the old man suffering from a heart attack, but whatever ailed him passed almost at once. She felt the magic shift, flowing toward him rather than away. He lurched to his feet and spread his arms to gather it in, letting his head fall back.

Power swirled and shifted, gathering around the epicenter of the old Master. Vivian could barely stand, feeling the summons tugging at her, bone and skin and flesh. Her vision blurred, all colors and shapes running together.

When it passed, the Master was no longer old. Golden hair fell over his shoulders. His eyes were blue as the sea and as merciless. He leaned over his daughter, hands on her shoulders, and shook her.

“Where is your mother?”

“If she’d wanted you to know, she would have told you.”

He slapped her. It was an open-handed slap to the cheek, hard enough to snap her head sideways, leaving a livid white blotch that rapidly turned dark red with the purple undertone that meant a bruise would follow. Tears stood out in her eyes but did not fall.

“You think you can force me with brute strength? Try again.”

“No need.” He was breathing hard. “There are other ways to compel you.”

“You need that magic for other things.”

Kraal intervened. “This is about a woman?”

The Master smiled. “Isn’t everything? Either at the beginning or in the end. Now, my daughter, where is your mother?”

“Surmise.”

His eyes narrowed. “Would you lie to me?”

“How can I lie? When you have laid the Voice of Command on me, how can I resist?” Her eye was swelling shut but she didn’t look remotely defeated. She glowed with a quiet triumph.

“Well,” the Master said. “That’s settled, then. Since you already know our secrets, let me invite you to a council of war. This evening, three hours hence. My so-very-obedient-daughter will show you all to rooms and fetch whatever you need by way of bathing or refreshments in the meantime.”

K
ALINA
LED
them not back to their room but out into the garden. The world outside had fallen into darkness, save for the lights in the sky. The girl glimmered faintly with a light that emanated from her skin, her hair. She held the griffyn in her arms, stroking the soft head.

“What do you want?” Vivian demanded.

“I wish to help you. You need to know he will do nothing, acknowledge no claim, unless you are truly the Three in One. Your inner dragon must be restored.”

Vivian had never felt so helpless. She avoided looking at Zee, knowing that the girl’s words would serve to resurrect all of the guilt she’d been working to allay.

“There must be something we can do,” he said.

“There is always something,” Kalina agreed. “In this case, much. If you are willing, of course.”

“What are you suggesting?” Vivian explored the pattern of magic that wove around the girl, trying to identify the misgiving that rubbed at her like a pebble in a shoe.

“I can restore your inner dragon.”

“I thought you said you have no power.”

The girl shrugged a graceful white shoulder. “There are spells that require no special magic. My brother is willing to help.” She paused long enough to let the words sink in, then added, “We also need the blood of a dragon.”

Icy water could not have more effectively stolen Vivian’s breath. Images flooded her memory. Jehenna. The dragon Mellisande long held in captivity, her blood used to extend the life of the Sorceress indefinitely.

“You mean to use Godzilla! I will not participate in blood magic to raise one dragon at the cost of another.”

“And if all the worlds should fall as a result? All dead, for the sake of your fine sensibilities?”

Zee’s warm hand settled on Vivian’s shoulder. Instead of offering comfort, his nearness made a shiver run through her from head to toe. A poisonous truth unfurled within her breast. It wasn’t concern for Godzilla or the living beings affected by dying worlds that filled her with this cold dismay. It was pure selfishness.

She didn’t want to revive the dragon. Too much power, so difficult and dangerous to control. Power that might ruin this fragile understanding developing between her and Zee. She didn’t want to see that loathing in his eyes again, the hardness of his face when he’d thrust the dragonstone into her breast. Selfish, beginning to end, more concerned about her own comfort than that of either Godzilla or the people of the dying worlds.

“What harm will be done to the dragon if we proceed? Speak the ritual,” Zee said, his fingers tightening as though he could hear all the things she did not say.

“He will contribute blood, but no more than can easily be spared," Kalina answered.

Vivian reached out again to sense Kalina’s aura and found herself once again shut out. Whatever was hidden behind that slick barrier was beyond her ability to decipher.

Zee placed his other hand on her other shoulder, turning her to face him. His gaze claimed hers, agate eyes dark. “You once told me this was bigger than our own small lives. Remember?”

She nodded, unwilling to speak the truth aloud. It lay on her shoulders to repair what had been done in so much as she was able.

He shifted his hand so that it covered the scar above her breast. “I would like to see the harm I did undone. Every time I look at you and see this, how can I help but remember it was my hand that killed a part of you?”

“A part neither of us wanted,” she whispered. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and clung there, eyes lost in his.

No softness came into his face, no bending. He knew as well as she did what it meant to have the dragon between them, and he was not one to spout platitudes to ease or alter the truth.

Blood magic. She wanted nothing to do with it, but then she’d never wanted to be a Dreamshifter, or turn into a dragon, or have all of this responsibility. All she’d wanted to do was heal people. Instead, a trail of death and destruction stretched behind her, from the day her grandfather had died and named her Dreamshifter until now. And if she failed to act, if she denied this opportunity, then there would be even more destruction and death.

Trust or trust not. The girl had given them her name. It would have to be enough.

“What do I have to do?” she asked.

Zee’s lips curved slightly in a smile that was anything but pleasure, his eyes dark.

“I will show you. We have little time, and we must not be seen.” Kalina was all business now that the decision had been made. “Follow me.”

She led them away from the castle, along the same winding path they had taken yesterday, back to the grove. Touching Zee’s arm, she felt him taut as a bowstring, knew his hand was on the hilt of his sword.

When they reached the grove, the brother was waiting for them. Kalina obviously expected him. She kissed him on the cheek in greeting.

“Leander—is everything ready?”

“All according to the book.”

“I don’t like this,” Zee growled. “The more eyes to see, the more tongues to tell tales.”

Vivian didn’t like it, either. Something in the power dynamic between the two was other than it looked on the surface. This fed her uneasiness, but the choice had already been made and the time for turning back was long past.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said.

Leander bowed. “We will perform the ritual in the grove. Your dragon is waiting for you.”

Only a few steps further and Vivian could sense Godzilla faintly. He was frightened and lonely.

“You’ve bound him!” Vivian said, turning on the two who followed behind. “There was no need for that!”

“It is for his own protection,” Leander replied, smoothly. “If the Master found him roaming freely on the island, he would kill him. We have done him no harm.”

Vivian, thinking again of Jehenna and Mellisande, quickened her steps. Godzilla stood at the center of a circle of lighted torches, the picture of misery. His feet were bound with silver chains that allowed him to move within a restricted area but blocked his magic. He gave a little bleat of greeting when he saw them, straining against the chains but unable to cross the distance. Zee went to him, and the creature pressed his head against the warrior’s broad chest.

“Free him at once!” Vivian ordered. She knew full well how it felt to be bound with silver, to feel it damping all magic, constricting the ability to communicate.

“That may not be wise...”

“He’s just a baby. He traveled with us, slept with us, saved our lives. There’s no call to chain him up like that. Unless you intend some harm to him.”

“The ritual requires that we draw blood from the dragon, only a small amount. A cupful, perhaps two. You will drink it.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Zee said. “The dragonstone wound. Let’s say that drinking dragon blood restores and regenerates the dragon within. What then? We stand by and watch Vivian bleed to death?”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” Kalina said. “Do not make the mistake of thinking me a fool.”

No, Vivian thought, watching. Anything but a fool. “You’re hiding something,” she said aloud.

Kalina’s face remained remote, unmoved, its expression far too old for a girl of her apparent age. “I cannot clear your mind for you.”

Zee bent to unchain the dragon’s feet. Godzilla stretched, snorted smoke out through his nostrils, and leveled a golden-eyed glare at Kalina and Leander.

Filled with misgiving, Vivian ran again through all the options available and came to the same inevitable conclusion. There was no other way. Her only hope of stopping the deaths of the Dreamworlds meant finding a way into the Forever, and the only chance of that lay with the Sorcieri. The Master wasn’t going to tell her anything unless she faced him whole as Dreamshifter, Sorcieri, and dragon.

Zee stood beside Godzilla, eyes moving from Kalina to her silent brother and back again. “What says the sorcerer?” he asked at last. “Can you speak?”

Leander’s eyes gleamed in the torchlight. “It is as my sister says. We take blood from the dragon—given voluntarily as you require. Then a simple enchantment to reverse the effects of the dragonstone. Shall we proceed? Or will I have my sister conduct you back to your rooms?”

Vivian closed her eyes, trying to feel her way into whatever she was missing. All that her unschooled magic could decipher was smooth and slippery. No holds. No entrance to the minds of either of these two, who promised so much while revealing so little.

Turning her mind to Godzilla, she sent a message as strongly as she was able but feeling it faint and flickering even so.

Are you willing?

And to receive back,
It is a small thing.

With a deep sigh of acceptance, at last she nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s get this done.”

I
T
WAS
all wrong. Zee knew this as deeply as he’d ever known anything, but he was unable to find any path that was right. He had no magic, no extra ability to sense things as it seemed Vivian did. But he knew people, and he didn’t trust any of these Sorcieri with a hair of Vivian’s head, let alone with her life.