“He’s pulled me between worlds before. I think I can find the path on my own this time. And I think I’d best do it before he has a chance to put up very many defenses. Truly, I should have gone earlier, but I doubt I would’ve been able to sleep.”
Time passed in popping hisses from the fire and gusts of wind from outside the window, in her breaths and Cathal’s. Then he nodded, squeezed her briefly with one arm, and slid out of bed, only to return before she could do more than squeak in protest at the draft. He brought his sword with him, unsheathed, and laid it on his other side.
“A little misplaced for the tales,” she said, smiling and watching, setting as much of him as she could into her memory, “and a little late too.”
Cathal laughed. “I’d thought it, before you offered,” he said, gathering her against his body again and then sobering. “But I’ll want it now. Demons.”
“Oh. Yes.” The thought made her shiver, but it was too late. Drained by cold and fright, exertion and unfamiliar pleasure, she was sliding rapidly down into sleep. “Good thought.”
“I hope I’m wrong.”
“Me too,” she said, slurring her words. “You shouldn’t fight demons naked.”
She felt him laugh again. “Aye, true.” He turned toward her, and his lips brushed across her forehead. “One day I’ll not have to send you into danger, I swear it. I’ll not ask you not to take chances, but…remember I’m waiting. Come back to me.”
“I will.”
Getting to Valerius’s world, or the place between them, was bound to take concentration. Sophia held the images in her mind as best she could as she drifted off: falling in blackness, the shapes she couldn’t look directly at, and the dark castle. Even so, the last things she remembered of the waking world were the strength of Cathal’s arm around her shoulders and the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
* * *
This time, Sophia landed in the tree. It wasn’t a pleasant landing—she rather thought she’d grabbed for the branch as she’d entered the world, only half able to control her destination even after so much time, and the bark dug up under her fingernails—but no, she didn’t have to bother with running and climbing and shadow creatures that wanted her dead. That was cause enough for gratitude, and she didn’t have time for complaints.
Next came the bridge, building itself under her sight and the pressure of her will. This one was more unified, with only occasional patches of wood or empty space interrupting the solid chunks of masonry. She jumped no more gracefully than before, and the landing hurt no less, but that was all right: the oozing, stinging patches on her knees and under the ripped elbows of her dress served as proof that the stone was there and solid.I’ve found the purpose of pain, she thought as she walked, half drunk with fear and the use of power.How delighted all the scholars will be.
Still the edges didn’t line up entirely, still there were sections where she had to hold her breath and grit her teeth in order to walk over nothingness, but the passage across the bridge was a thing done, and therefore possible, and so she reached the other side with almost steady hands and less urge to be sick.
The castle was different too.
It was still huge and dark, and the doors were still closed. When Sophia looked at the walls, though, there were spaces that blurred and warped, particularly places she’d seen in the castle in her waking world, and she knew that it wasn’t entirely the same as the one Valerius had crafted in this aethereal realm. The great doors, for instance, were quite forbidding, but their wood in reality was splintering and warping, and the guards had stood in front of them singing drunken songs. They’d been open most of the time, at that. They’d had to be, as the doors of any real castle did when it wasn’t under siege. So, at the seam where these doors met, space buckled like a badly sewn patch.
Sophia reached out gingerly. Her fingers went into the non-space, and she felt nothing. She pushed, lightly at first and then put her back behind it, and a resistance like a strong wind gave way. The doors swung open.
That was where the aether-castle gave up pretending to be much like the real thing. Beyond the doors there was no courtyard, no great hall full of surly men and tired women, no smell of cow dung or sound of restless horses. Beyond the doors was only a dark, silent staircase that led up and onward.
“I am,” Sophia said to the force that pretended to be air, “getting rather tired of alwaysclimbingthings.”
Nothing responded, of course, and the staircase was still in front of her—but the complaint made it easier to start the journey upward.
* * *
At first, the staircase was pitch-black around her, only the steps beneath her feet telling Sophia that she wasn’t lost in the between-worlds place again. As she ascended, she started to see flashes of light: not the unviewable, unthinkablethingsfrom the journey between worlds, but rather flickers and lines that she eventually realized came from under doors. The staircase wasn’t all there was. Landings led off, and there were doors on those landings that could lead to rooms or entirely separate halls.
Sophia thought she could have opened those doors. She was fairly sure she didn’t want to. What she sought wasn’t there. Behind each door was a distraction at best, and a trap at worst. She kept climbing, one hand out in front of her for protection.
When she did reach the top, she didn’t need that precaution. The light from under the final door was a sickly grayish-pink that reminded her of rotting entrails, but it was bright enough. She saw the thick wood of the door clearly, the steel of the bolts keeping it shut, and she didn’t believe that it would fall to her as easily as the doors of the castle had. Discrepancy between real and aether wasn’t the key here. This place had no mirror in the waking world.
The formula here was different.
Little as she wanted to approach the decaying light, Sophia walked up to the door and put her hand on the latch. “Albert de Percy,” she said. It came out calm and conversational, the tone she might use to introduce one acquaintance to another.
The door didn’t open this time; it crumbled suddenly and completely, revealing a tiny five-sided room lined with small chests. Each was dull gray, none was locked, and none was any longer than her hand. Albert—she wouldnotthink of him as Valerius here—might have been able to distinguish between them. To Sophia’s eyes, they were all alike, and her intuition gave her no guidance.
It did tell her that she had little time. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, whether they existed or not, and the mouth she might or might not have was dry. Before long, she wouldn’t be alone.
Sophia knelt and started flipping up lids.
Inside the first chest was a miniature lake, frozen to glassy green stillness—not what she sought, though it pained her to leave it without further investigation. When she opened the second, a gust of blue and silver feathers flew up into her face, scratching it with their surprisingly sharp edges. Sophia put up her hands to guard herself and by instinct grabbed onto one of the feathers as the rest dispersed, blown hither and yon on nonexistent wind. She slid the feather into her belt; when she got out, it might be useful or simply interesting.
