Jonathan nodded, deadpan. “I see we’ll be here for some time then. Those li muscles can barely lift me from the floor.”
Timothy didn’t so much as blink, just stepped forward and made the next thrust. “You Etsians are so weak your women have to mount you in order to conserve your strength for battle.”
“No, they’re just lusty wenches getting their exercise so they can breed more strong boys for the army,” Jonathan replied.
A smile played at the edge of Timothy’s mouth, but Jonathan didn’t believe for a minute he was about to break. Timothy had always been the best at the Catalian-Etsian shout-outs that had become a tradition in the front lines of the war. Generally it boiled down to the pair of them, the last two left. Jonathan won as often as Timothy did, but it was always a near thing. And Timothy was always full of tricks. He looked as if he were gearing up to one now.
“Yes, but can they take four men in one night?” Timothy shot back. “Because I don’t feel I’ve been properly warmed up until I’ve had at least that many.” When Jonathan opened his mouth to fire back, Timothy made a soft little moue and reached back to rub his right hand sensually over his bum, affecting a very crude Catalian gutter tongue. “Ooh, I wish there were a real man here to get me going right now, but there’s naught here but pasty Etsian fish!”
Jonathan choked, then burst out laughing. It started in his chest, and every time he tried to recover it rumbled down farther, all the way into the depths of his bowels, and it doubled him over, sending him practically to the floor. “Stop!” he cried as soon as he had enough breath to speak, but he was still laughing. “Stop. I can’t take it anymore.”
Timothy took a deep bow, grinning widely. “Another point to me, then.”
Jonathan righted himself, but he was holding his side to fight the stitch building there. “Timothy, Goddess save me, but I haven’t laughed like that…”
“In years,” Timothy finished for him. He tossed his foil saucily into the air, caught it with a flourish, then assumed en garde. “Are you ready for another beating?”
“I am ready to beat you, yes,” he said, and he took up the pose as well.
They saluted, squared off, and made the first round. Timothy lunged—
—and the vision hit Jonathan so hard his head spun.
Madeline on the water.
Madeline walking into black fog that clings with hands.
Madeline rearing back in fear, but she is caught, she is trapped—
She is going to die—
“Jonathan—Jonathan, help me—”
Timothy reappeared before him, gleaming in the torchlight as he rammed his foil into the center of Jonathan’s chest. “Another point!” Timothy cried, surprised, but exalting. “That’s
five
—” He caught the look on Jonathan’s face and withdrew, sober again and poised for action. “What is it? What has happened?”
“Madeline,” Jonathan whispered. He dropped the foil and headed for the exit of the courtyard.
Timothy followed at his heels as he navigated the debris-strewn halls. “Explain to me what we are doing and what I can do to help you.”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan shot back. His chest was tight, and he could barely breathe. “I-I had a vision. Madeline—at the lake—something—” He swore and vaulted himself over a chair in his way in the foyer, snaking his hand out to grab the knife he’d left on the seat as he passed by.
“We’ll find her. We’ll help her. We’ll bring her back safe,” Timothy said, reaching for a few other select artillery from their entryway arsenal. He slid Jonathan’s favorite broad knife into its sheath and tossed it to him. “Come. This point will be for you.”
They moved quickly and silently through the gardens; it was as if they were in the jungles again, with the rebels behind them and the Cloister Army all around them. When he heard a strange whine in the air, for a moment Jonathan thought he truly
was
in Catal, and then he remembered he wasn’t. He glanced up, shouted a warning, then toppled Timothy to the ground seconds before the creature would have hit the Catalian squarely in the face. It grazed helplessly off Jonathan’s back, screamed in rage, then scuttled off into the woods.
“What the
mathdu phrtoah
was that?” Timothy cried.
Jonathan kept him pinned to the ground and nodded at the pale, spindly creature as it climbed back up a tree. “Dark sprite. You read about them in stories: creatures that catch you in the woods in the night, dig inside your brain, and eat it from the inside.” Timothy swore steadily in Catalian. Jonathan sat up carefully, switching open a knife and swiping at a cluster of herbs by the side of the path. “The real ones are rare, but they’re thick around the moor, and they wake with the beast in the lake.” He shoved the herbs into Timothy’s hands as he rose, his eyes fixed on the thick, black fog at the edge of the path. “They’re supposed to be thickest and quickest when the beast is active.”
“I hate this country,” Timothy whispered, balefully eyeing the trees.
“That clump of grass will get you safely back to the abbey,” Jonathan said.
Timothy stopped looking up and shook his head at Jonathan. “Absolutely not.”
“You don’t have a charm,” Jonathan said, pointing to his chest. “That’s why it attacked you. The dark sprites are the gentlest of the sorts of things that will be waking tonight. You have to go back.”
“And what am I supposed to do there?” he demanded angrily. “Make tea?”
“I don’t have time for this, Timothy!” Jonathan shouted back. He jerked his head at the abbey. “Go!”
Timothy swore again, but he tucked the herb into his coat and started to back away down the path. He aimed his finger at Jonathan. “You will come back with your brain uneaten and the rest of you fully intact,” he ordered. “Either that or I’ll tell everyone how I beat you twenty-five to nothing in your last match alive!”
Jonathan nodded, but his heart was in his throat. “Go. Get safe. I’ll meet you soon.”
Then he turned and ran into the fog.
He could see nothing, but he could feel her, and he followed the cord that stretched between them until he felt the ground change under his feet. He was at the edge of the water. The lake itself was clear, save a dark cloud in the center. The fog pulsed from there, billowing out in great puffs, but the exterior ring was clear as crystal, letting the moon and stars reflect in the glassy black surface of the water. Jonathan saw a movement in the thick mist in the center, a shadow too dark, and he felt a hard pull in the center of his chest.
There
. That’s where Madeline was, in that center.
“Madeline!” he cried. “Madeline!”
“Go away, you filthy thing,”
something said sharply inside his mind and smacked him hard, knocking him to the ground.
Jonathan stood and ran out into the water. “Madeline!” His voice hit the fog in the center like a wall. “
Madeline
!” He shoved at the surface of the water. “Demon! Fog—
you
! Show yourself!
Where have you taken Madeline
?” He tensed but held still, listening. Nothing answered. If anything, the fog stilled, determined to give nothing away. Panic began to gnaw at him. Had she gone under?
Was she drowning while he stood here and shouted?
Jonathan swore. Then he dove beneath the surface of the water.
He immediately surfaced again when the air rushed from his body.
Cold. Too cold
. He took a new breath, then went down again, fighting off panic as the iciness seeped through him. He forced his mind onto his training, not his urge for speed. Think like an agent, he schooled himself. She doesn’t need a bumbling idiot. She needs you level and strong.
He opened his eyes beneath the water and nearly lost his breath again.
Jonathan had seen this lake before. He had walked past it many times in the height of summer, and he had bent close at the edge to peer beneath the surface of the water and had seen the reedy muck beneath. That was not what he saw now. Now he saw stars.
There were no reeds, no mud. He might have been swimming in the sky. It looked like the Void, that place where he had gone with Madeline. It was all strange and distorted like the Void, but this place was lit with points of light—thousands and thousands of points of light spanning the length and width of the lake, going down so far he thought he might be looking into the center of the earth. He looked up and could see the surface, and the moon above, and the angry wisps of fog, but when he looked down, he saw another world. It made him dizzy and a little sick. There was none of the peace of the night sky in this underwater heaven. It was no heaven at all. It was as if stars had been trapped here, pinned to the mud.
Jonathan forced his gaze away from the gruesome sight.
Find Madeline. That’s all that matters. Find Madeline.
He could see nothing but the stars, so he tried to focus on the feeling that had led him here, to see if it could help him locate her now. He shut his eyes and found that this helped. Yes, he could feel her. Was she above? Below? He tried to let go of everything, all but the breath held tight in his lungs, but he couldn’t tell. He opened his eyes again, half hoping the stars would be gone. They weren’t. He swam on, down into the depths, his lungs bursting, his brain insisting he needed air.
Not yet. Not yet
. He concentrated on his pulse, making it slow, forcing himself into calm. At one point in his training, he could hold his breath for almost seven minutes underwater. In the cold and after all he had been through, he doubted he could manage four. He had no idea how long he had been down here so far. Where was she? For that matter, where was
he
? What was this place?
“Center. Go to the center.”
The voice came inside his head—he didn’t know who spoke it. The demon? He couldn’t tell. But the words felt right. Something was in the center. Maybe the demon. Or maybe Madeline.
Only one way to find out.
He surfaced first, taking several seconds to refresh his air, to scan the landscape to see if he could find her now. He felt he was closer to the middle of the lake, but the fog was thicker here—he could not see any shore. He also saw no sign of Madeline. When he dove down again, his body was sluggish, his fingers and feet beginning to numb. His mind was dragging too as if he hadn’t had enough sleep. Jonathan pushed on toward the center with more intent, unable to hurry without raising his pulse and using more air, but he did not let himself be distracted now by the dull glow of the stars in the distance. He pushed through the cold water, pushed on to the center, to the dark space where he realized the fog sank below the surface. He saw a few stars clustered around the darkness, their lights very dim. They were long, thin stars. They moved too, dreamlike in the water, grass in a slow wind. They turned, and he saw their eyes.
They were not stars. They were people.
Horror filled him, but Jonathan shoved the emotion roughly back. He forced himself to look at the faces. Not Madeline. None of them looked right—not human, not quite. They were too tall. They were neither man nor woman. They were simply…shapes. Humanlike, but people they were not. He assessed them again, trying to decide what their threat might be, and in the end he decided they were benign. They were wraiths at best, perhaps dangerous if he came too close, for they might cling. But that was all they were.
Was this what was to become of Madeline?
He aimed high at the center of the darkness, away from the reedlike hands of the star people. The darkness was like a wall, and he worried for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to penetrate it, but he slipped through it with only a little drag, the murk sucking around his boots once he was through. He could see nothing here, no stars, no people, no demon, no Madeline. He felt nothing. Even his lungs did not burn here—there was no feeling, just deadness, so void there was not even cold.
“Up. Up. Up.”
He felt like one of the star wraiths as he pushed his arms against the water, aiming for the surface. It seemed to take years to get there, and the higher he went, the sleepier he became. Twice he caught himself floating, unmoving. He rose, but he moved slower and slower and slower. He forgot the pain, the fear, the dread, the sorrow. He began to give in to the soft, blanketing darkness.
“Just stay, and it will all go away.”
That was the demon’s whisper. This time he was certain. But he didn’t care. He couldn’t remember why he would. He forgot why he was here. He forgot how to move his arms, how to exhale gently against the now very faint whisper for air. He forgot his name. He forgot the star people, the war, and the world. He felt himself changing, felt his body becoming soft and thin, felt his life spinning out around him, glowing soft and dull, like a faraway star.
But then he felt a soft heat against his chest, and he remembered one thing, one thing that pulled him upward like a golden string.
Madeline.
He pushed on. The urge to sink down was strong, but so was the medallion against his chest, pulsing where his heart was slowing almost to stopping.
Madeline. Madeline. Madeline
. He focused on it, letting it propel him up, letting it fill his world, letting her become his world.
Madeline. Madeline
. His blood began to pound, and in his mind he saw a flash of his thumb grazing against a nail, sealing a promise.
Madeline. Madeline. Madeline.
When he broke the surface, he did not gasp for air—it was the only thing that saved his life. The poisoned fog tried to rush up his nose, but he was still in a stupor from the water below, and he held his breath still, letting the strange call of the amulet lift him up, up, until he too was standing on the surface of the water.
Madeline. Madeline. Madeline
. He saw her standing there frozen, heard her endless scream echoing in the narrow, insulated space.
Madeline. Madeline. Madeline
. He saw her look through him, saw her eyes fixed and dead once more. She was in the Void, and her body was in the poisonous fog, and somehow he knew he had only seconds more—for both of them.
He drew himself back, fighting the now raging fog, battling the hands that formed—
an enemy at last
—dodging them, ducking them even in his sluggish state, fixing on her. He pulled back from the hands, pushed out the last of his air, and launched himself at Madeline.