“For another,” Glorianna said, “waterhorses can’t read, so there’s no point posting a sign for them, and it’s unlikely anyone will get this far into their landscape without encountering one of them.”
As if her words were a signal, four waterhorses came over a low rise and headed toward them. Their black coats shone in the morning sunlight and their manes lifted with the air stirred by their movement. Trotting in unison, they were gorgeous, and even though he knew better, he felt a keen desire to ride one.
They stopped. No words were spoken, but Michael heard the message just the same. Come with us. We’ll give you a better ride. And we’re prettier.
He glanced at the demon cycles. One of them was licking its lips as it stared at the waterhorses.
“No,” Glorianna said.
He wasn’t sure who the “no” was meant for, but all the demons—horse and cycle—were suddenly doing the equivalent of scratching an elbow and trying to look innocent.
“You four,” Gloriana said, pointing to the waterhorses. “Would you go into that?” She pointed at the sand.
They shook their heads.
“See?” she said to Michael. “They know better. Are you saying humans are dumber than waterhorses?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw four black heads bob up and down.
Sebastian and Lee started coughing. Glorianna’s face turned red with the effort not to laugh. He stared at the ground, not wanting to be the one who had to explain to demons that he wasn’t laughing at them. Of course, he couldn’t say he was laughing with them either.
“Where is the closest place to find humans?” Glorianna asked.
The four waterhorses looked at Sebastian.
“Besides the Den,” she added.
They turned and trotted back up the rise in the direction they had come from.
Glorianna hurried over to her pack and slipped into the straps before swinging a leg over her demon cycle. She and Lee headed after the waterhorses. Michael was a little slower since he needed a few moments longer to get his pack settled. When he was ready, he looked at Sebastian, who just looked back at him.
“Magician, I think it’s time you educated the people in your landscapes about the nature of Ephemera.”
Michael looked at the sand and stone that scarred the rolling green, then looked at Sebastian. “Won’t that be fun?”
The smile came first. Then the laughter. He didn’t mind the laughter. It was a sympathetic sound.
Glorianna and Lee studied the bridge that crossed a stream. There was something nearby she didn’t like. Something that made her edgy, uneasy. But not here. That, too, made her uneasy. Unless she discovered another landscape that belonged to her on the other side of that bridge, she shouldn’t have felt any resonance or dissonance. Except she had been aware of the currents flowing through the White Isle until Caitlin broke the connection between their two landscapes. And Michael…
She suddenly had an image of walking through a garden—her garden?—and hearing the clear notes of his whistle drifting through the air, calling her home.
Why would that image make her heart ache?
“Looks like I don’t have to make a resonating bridge after all,” Lee said, rubbing his chin. “That’s a stationary bridge. Crosses over to one—maybe two—other landscapes. I can tell that much from the resonance of it.”
“So my landscapes aren’t as closed off as I’d thought,” Glorianna said.
“Going out isn’t the same as coming back in,” Lee pointed out.
“Koltak got in. And the Eater must have used the waterhorses’ landscape as Its entry to Elandar.”
“You don’t know that, Glorianna.” He sounded annoyed, but she wondered if he privately agreed with her. “Other Landscapers could have had landscapes in Elandar. The Eater could have gotten here through one of the gardens at the school.”
She heard the clank and clatter of the pots and pans hung on Michael’s pack before she saw him and Sebastian. They dismounted, but this time Michael didn’t shrug off the pack.
“You said the feel of Dunberry turned dark,” she said when Michael got close enough.
He nodded. “Two boys have gone missing, and a young woman was brutally murdered.”
“After the Eater disappeared into the landscapes, two females were murdered in the Den,” Sebastian said. “A succubus and a human. Those killings were brutal.”
“Is there a pond or river close to where those boys were last seen?” Glorianna asked.
“Pond,” Michael replied.
She watched his expression harden as he began putting the pieces together.
“The Eater of the World was hunting in Dunberry,” she said quietly.
“It brought those death roller things into that pond?” He sounded outraged.
She shook her head. “Possible, but just as likely It took the form of a death roller and did the hunting. Just like It would have assumed a form that made It the best predator for killing that woman.”
“And the lamplighter,” Michael said. “I forgot about the lamplighter. Killed the same night. Some of his bones were crushed and there were other…odd…things about the way he died. Or so I was told.”
“When Lynnea and I were escaping from the Landscapers’ School, we saw creatures that could have crushed bone,” Sebastian said.
Michael shuddered. Then his eyes filled with a mixture of anger and shock as he pointed at her. “No. I’ll not have it. You will not take this on your shoulders, Glorianna Belladonna. If a man bolts the door against a beast trying to attack his family, do you blame him for protecting his own? And if the beast turns away from his door to attack another’s that is less well defended, is that his fault because he didn’t step aside and let it attack what he loved? You bolted your own door, but you didn’t aim that beast at a neighbor.”
What was he hearing in her “music” that revealed so much of what she was thinking—and feeling? She wasn’t to blame for where the Eater chose to hide after she had altered the landscapes and closed Wizard City away from the rest of the world, but she didn’t like feeling this exposed and wasn’t used to someone who wasn’t family reading her so clearly.
“If the borders in this part of Ephemera are as fluid as they seem, the Eater could have gotten here from Wizard City before I broke that bridge,” Lee said. “Might have avoided your landscapes altogether.”
“Maybe.” If Michael and Caitlin hadn’t stumbled into her life, she wouldn’t have known where the Eater had gone, would have had no hope of finding It. Or stopping It.
“This is it then,” Michael said, lifting a hand to indicate the bridge. “Either the road leading into Dunberry starts when we cross the bridge, or we’ll be standing on the other side of the stream waving at your brother and cousin. Coming back across the bridge in the other direction should show us the road leading to Kendall. There’s a posting house about halfway, where coaches change horses and such. The road that turns off the main one leads to Foggy Downs.”
No matter what she found on the other side of the bridge, taking that step between here and there was all she needed to do in order to go home. No matter what they found when they crossed over, she could get them to a safe landscape in a heartbeat.
But the prospect of crossing over to a landscape that wasn’t hers was exciting and scary—and made her feel adventurous and foolishly young. Had Michael’s mother felt like this the first time she had begun a journey with his father? Had she felt this excitement for the adventure—and for the man? And look how that had ended. Maybe…
She took a step back. Shook her head violently.
“Glorianna!”
Whose voice? She couldn’t tell, didn’t know. All three of them were around her. Then she felt his hands on her shoulders, felt the warmth of him. Heard the music in him.
She’d never thought of people as songs before she met him. Still didn’t for most. Lee and Sebastian were a resonance. Michael was different. Michael was unlike anyone she had known before.