No one ever said gifts like this came without a price.
But, he thought with a sour glance at the farmer, if he had to listen to the man hoo-whee all the way to Wizard City, the price of this particular gift was a bit steep.
“You really going up to Wizard City to talk to a wizard?” William asked.
“I am.”
“Hoo-whee! Don’t know as I’d want to do that. They’s not like regular folks. Don’t matter that they’s the Justice Makers. Got that magic in them that makes them different. Wouldn’t want to be jawing with the likes of them.”
Sebastian looked sideways at William. “Have you ever seen a wizard?”
“Seen ’em, sure. They prowl the marketplaces in the city from time to time just like everybody else. But never talked to one—and hope I never do.”
Something—a change in inflection, a shift in the way William held himself—made Sebastian look at the man more closely.
“Why do you do that?” he asked, curious.
“Do what?”
“Talk like that. You’re not a hayseed.”
“What makes you think I’m not?” William sounded indignant.
Sebastian smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. “You try too hard. The hayseeds I’ve run across always give themselves away, but they try to talk better than they do at home. You roll in the words like a…” He couldn’t think of anything to compare it to that wouldn’t be an insult.
“Like a pig in muck,” William said.
Sebastian tipped his head. “All right.” He paused, then added, “You may be a farmer, but you’re not a hayseed.”
William was silent for the first time since he’d picked up Sebastian. Finally he said, “Are you going to rob me?”
“I’m not a thief,” Sebastian snapped. “Besides, robbing you after you gave me a ride”—Wouldn’t be a kindness—“would be wrong.” He studied the farmer in the dusky light. The clothes were sufficiently worn-out to be a practical choice if a man was going to spend a day traveling along muddy or dusty roads—or they could have been the best clothes the man owned. As soon as he’d heard William speak, he’d assumed the latter. And any would-be thief, after listening to William for a minute, would figure there was nothing easy to steal and either endure the chatter for the length of the journey or escape at the first crossroads that offered an excuse to leave.
All in all, it provided a camouflage against potential predators that didn’t change the resonance of the man’s nature, like a rabbit whose fur changed from brown to white to better match the land when summer turned to winter.
Sebastian looked over his shoulder at the baskets of fruits and vegetables that filled the back of the wagon. “Isn’t there a market closer to your home? You said it’s a day’s journey to the city.”
William nodded. “And today it was a long day’s journey. I usually reach the city well before sunset. Guess those delays were meant for a reason.” He shrugged. “I sell half of what I harvest at the market in my town. The other half I bring up to the city.”
“Why?”
“It’s a kindness.” William hesitated. “Someone told me that what you give to the world comes back to you. I guess there’s truth in that.”
Sebastian looked away. The waning daylight was enough to travel by, but not enough, he hoped, for the farmer to see his face clearly.
He remembered Glorianna, with those clear green eyes focused on him, telling him the same thing. What you give comes back to you, Sebastian. It’s not tit for tat—life isn’t that simple—but what you give always comes back to you.
His heart ached. He missed his cousins. Especially Glorianna. There was a bond between them, something more than he felt with Nadia or Lee. Nothing…carnal. Never that, despite his nature. But her words had always sunk deep into his heart, had been the reason he’d learned to consider human needs as well as his own when he hunted as an incubus. Hearing her words coming from a stranger…
No matter what landscapes she might be walking now, no matter what she might be doing as a rogue Landscaper, Glorianna Belladonna wouldn’t bring terrifying death into a landscape. Guardians and Guides, the world held enough of its own terrors without unleashing more.
“It’s like this,” William said. “A few years ago, things were bad. The farm is good land, and I worked hard, but I could never make things what they could be. Crops were poor, and I couldn’t get a decent price at the market. I turned to drink, and I turned mean. Stone-hearted, I guess you could say. Blamed my neighbors, blamed the merchants, blamed the land. Blamed everyone and felt sorry for myself.
“So one day I packed the wagon and came up to Wizard City. The merchants laughed at the country farmer, and the price offered for what I had in the wagon…Might as well throw it in the street as take what they were offering.
“It was close to sunset, and I was on my way home, since I couldn’t afford to spend the night in the city. I picked up this girl walking along the road. Was going to drive by, but she lifted a hand and asked if she could have a ride to the next bridge. Said it would be a kindness.”
William shook his head. “Don’t know why I stopped. I wasn’t feeling kindly toward anyone. But I gave her a ride. She asked about the produce in the wagon, and I spoke my mind, poured it out like I was draining a festering wound.
“When I was done, she said, ‘There are people in the city who could use the food in this wagon. The poor in the outer circle. The children who are outcast for one reason or another, who feed on despair and never know the sweet taste of hope. A stone heart can only harvest stones. What you give to the world will come back to you.’”
“And I said, ‘Who says so?’ and she said, ‘I do.’”
“‘And who are you?’ And she said—”
“Belladonna,” Sebastian whispered.
William nodded. “Didn’t know what that name meant. Not then. But after I let her off near the next bridge—almost the same place where I met up with you, as a matter of fact—I turned the wagon back to the city. Went to a poor section in the outer circle and sold off my produce for pennies.
“Some of the youngsters couldn’t even scrape up a penny between them for a handful of fruit and a few vegetables.”
Sebastian swallowed hard. There had been times when he’d been one of those children—running wild in the streets, as cunning and dangerous as animals. Then Nadia would arrive and take him back to her home for a few weeks or months—until Koltak showed up and the cycle started again. The children in Aurora, Nadia’s home village, knew what he was, and their name-calling and taunts revealed a nature more vicious and cruel than any creature he’d met in the Den, but being with Nadia meant being with Lee and Glorianna. Their love and acceptance couldn’t erase the cruelty, but without that tempering, he would have become the kind of incubus that was feared—the kind that thought of humans as nothing more than prey.
“So I told them they could have the food in exchange for doing a kindness for someone else,” William continued.
When the farmer didn’t say anything more, Sebastian prodded. “What happened?”
“Things changed,” William said quietly. “Not all at once. It doesn’t happen that way. But I brought up a wagon of produce each week once the land started to ripen and sold it in that section of the city. And things started to change. The children who paid for the food I gave them by doing a kindness for someone else helped old shopkeepers by sweeping the sidewalk or cleaning the shops. Some began to learn the merchant trade and were given cots in the back rooms and food as pay.
“Things changed for me, too. The land became richer. What I brought to the home market got a better price, and I began to prosper. One day at the market, I met a fine woman who wasn’t too proud to be a country farmer’s wife. We’ve got two children now, and that’s a wonder to me.” He paused and cleared his throat, as if emotions and memories had choked him for a moment.
“It’s still a poor part of the city, but it’s different now. Troublemakers aren??
?t comfortable there and don’t stay long. Folks look beyond their own doors these days and give their neighbors a helping hand. And I still bring a wagon of produce each week once the land ripens.”
“Did you ever see her again?” Sebastian asked.
William nodded. “Couple years ago. I was selling my last bushel of apples, and this woman held out a penny and smiled at me. By then I knew who she was, what she was, how dangerous she was. But I tell you, I don’t care what other folks say about her. She gave me a chance to change things the day I gave her a ride, and nothing but good has come from it.” He raised a hand and pointed. “There’s the city’s south gate. I’ll be turning off once we get past it. Will you be able to get on all right after that?”
“I know the way to the Wizards’ Hall,” Sebastian replied.
The land around them wasn’t flat, but the hill upon which Wizard City had been built dominated the countryside, as if some massive creature swimming beneath the surface had suddenly arched its back. No, more like a giant dog stretching its back and front legs in an invitation to play and pushing the earth up with its movement. The hill sloped gradually on this side, giving people enough of a foothold to build houses and spiraling roads that led to the plateau where the Wizards’ Hall and Tower looked down on the rest of the city. The other side of the hill was too steep for anything but pasturing sheep and goats.
They drove through the south gate in the high stone wall that circled the hill. William stopped his horses long enough for Sebastian to climb down.
“Travel lightly,” William said.
Sebastian nodded. “Thank you for the kindness.” He watched the wagon until it disappeared around a curve. Then he strode in the opposite direction toward a courtyard that was as old as the city.
In the beginning, the courtyard had been a place for meditation, for quieting one’s heart and thoughts before climbing the Thousand Stairs to Justice. Now it was flanked by barracks for the hard-eyed guards who kept order in the lower levels of the city, and he doubted if anyone who lingered in that tired place, with its dying trees and weed-choked flower beds, found any peace there.
He didn’t know if there had been a thousand stairs when they had been created or if someone had called them that because it sounded impressive. There wouldn’t be a thousand now, since the roads that were built afterward eliminated some of them, but it was still a climb that tested the strength of a man’s legs—and his determination to reach the top.
And it was still the fastest way up to the plateau where the wizards, the Justice Makers, reigned.
He heard the bell chime nine times as he stepped into the courtyard. Guards who had been lounging against the buildings straightened when they saw him. Ignoring them, he settled one strap of his pack over his shoulder and strode to the back of the courtyard as if he had every right to be there.
And he did. Anyone could petition the wizards for help. Of course, asking for help wasn’t the same as getting any.
The moment his foot touched the first stair, the guards lost interest in him. Wizards’ magic supposedly had built the stairs and still resided in them. It was said that the audience was merely a formality, that the wizards knew all that was needed about the petitioner by the time the person climbed the last stair.
He didn’t believe that was true. Even so, as he climbed he tried to empty his mind of everything but moving from one stair to the next. He didn’t want to remember the other times he’d been in this city—or the one and only time he’d seen the Wizards’ Hall.
But his muscles tightened, his heart pounded, and the despair and bitter anger that had colored so much of his childhood was a heavy rock strapped to his back with chains forged by cruel words.
He’d climbed these stairs once before.
How old had he been? Five? Maybe six? Just lingering at the edge of the street where he lived, as much to get away from the latest woman who was looking after him as to watch three girls playing catch with a bright-colored ball. He watched them, drinking in their laughter and happiness, unaware of his own nature or why their emotions made him feel as if he were gulping down cool water after being thirsty for so long.
A girl missed the catch, and the ball rolled right to him. He picked it up, and as he looked at the girls, he felt their happiness change to wariness. He knew what other boys would have done—kept the ball, since it was the kind of pretty toy rarely seen in this part of the city, or thrown the ball hard at one of the girls to scare her or hit her so she’d cry. But he wanted to hear the girls laugh again, so he tossed the ball gently to one of them. They studied him a moment, then went back to their game. But when the ball came around to the one who had missed it before, she motioned him forward and tossed the ball to him. And the triangle of girls became a square of four children playing catch and having fun.
Then the woman stomped out of the building and dragged him inside to the cramped, smelly rooms he called home.
She screamed at him about the demon inside him and the depraved nature she’d been told to watch for. Then she hit him, her heavy hand cracking across his face hard enough to send him to the floor.
But he’d scrambled to his feet, dodged past her…and ran until he reached the courtyard and the Thousand Stairs to Justice.
Some of the other women who had looked after him had been a little kinder. They’d told him his father was an important man, a wizard. But children weren’t allowed to live in the Wizards’ Hall, so he had to stay with them. He’d accepted that, had never questioned their explanation.
He raced up the stairs, his young legs fueled by anger. He hadn’t seen his father often, and the feelings that flowed out of the man made him uneasy, but that didn’t matter now. His father was an important man. His father was a wizard. And his father, after learning how mean the woman had been, would take him someplace else to live.
Yes, that’s what would happen. He would go live in a nice house with a kind woman who didn’t yell at him all the time or say bad things about him or hit him. And maybe there would be children to play with. Children who liked him, who wouldn’t call him names.
The need for that kind woman and those children swelled inside him, blotting out the anger. Hope filled him as he raced up the stairs.
When he finally reached the top of the stairs and ran along the path that led to the street and the high stone walls beyond, a vine of doubt curled around the hope and tried to smother it.
How was he supposed to get inside and find his father? What if he went inside the Petitioners’ Hall and asked for Koltak and the other wizards just sent him away? He had to get inside!
Then luck, or fate, or the nature of Ephemera gave him the opportunity. A man walked out of the wrought-iron gate next to the Petitioners’ Hall and gave it a negligent shove to close it. The gate stopped a hand-width away from locking.
He ran across the street and pulled the gate open just enough to slip inside. A different world, with more trees and greenery than he’d ever seen. He wandered along the paths, his father momentarily forgotten. It was so clean here. No smell of garbage or sour bodies.
Then, hearing laughter, he turned and made the discovery that changed his life.
Boys, not much older than him, running along another path toward the buildings at the other end of the courtyard garden. Boys. Living at the Wizards’ Hall.
He could have lived here, in this clean place—if his father had wanted him.
He stepped off the path and sat down next to a bush, curling up as much as he could to keep from being noticed. He cried silently while all the cruel words that had been said to him over the years took root deep in his heart.
Hearing footsteps on the path, he curled up tighter. But the footsteps stopped suddenly, the person stepped off the path and came around the bush—and he looked up at a woman with dark hair and dark, angry eyes. He flinched at the anger pouring off her, but when she crouched down, her voice was gentle.
“Who hit you?” she asked.
“The woman,”
he muttered.
“Your mother?”
He shook his head. “The woman I lives with. She…keeps me.”
“Are you an orphan?”
Another head shake. “Don’t know my mother. My father…he doesn’t want me because I’m an incubastard.” He wasn’t sure what that was, but he knew now it was the reason he would never live in a clean place with kind people.
“What’s your name?”
“Sebastian.”
“I’m Nadia.” She hesitated, studying his face, staring deep into his green eyes. “Are you Koltak’s son?”
He nodded.
“Well, then. I guess that makes me your auntie.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Would you like to come live with me, Sebastian?”
The anger inside her had faded to sadness, but the warmth and kindness beneath the sadness, at the core of her, dazzled his young heart.
Getting to his feet, he took the offered hand—and the two of them walked away from the Wizards’ Hall.
Opportunities and choices. That was how Aunt Nadia explained how the currents of power worked. When a person made a heart wish, that wish resonated through the currents and things would happen to give the person an opportunity to make that wish come true. Like a gate not closing all the way. Like a woman, distressed and angry over the disappearance of her husband, hurrying down a path and stopping suddenly at the exact spot where a boy, who had the same green eyes as her own children, was hiding. Like a hand offered—and accepted.
Sebastian shook his head as he continued to climb.
Travel lightly. Think of something besides the past. Think of sitting in Philo’s courtyard on a summer night, drinking wine and watching the ebb and flow of people looking for a taste of the dark side. Think of sitting in Nadia’s kitchen, a room that felt bright and warm on even the dreariest day. Think of Nadia’s birds, those bright, playful little chatterheads. Travel lightly—or this place will swallow you whole.