Darklands (36 page)

I looked up, checking the rooftops. Silhouetted against the sky stood a tall man; a crossbow dangled from his hand. Eight archers were stationed around the square; two on each side. Good. The cauldrons were well guarded. It would be hard for Pryce to approach them.

“Come up.” A voice drifted down from the top of the stairs like a warm spring breeze. “Don’t be afraid.”

Whenever I hear a disembodied voice urging me not to be afraid, I figure it’s a good time to have a weapon in my hand. I drew my sword. Holding it ready, I went up a few more steps.

“Come,” breathed the voice.

A woman came into view on the balcony. She had long, straight, white-blonde hair, and she wore a welcoming smile and a scarlet cape. A Keeper. She held out her hands to me, then her mouth rounded with surprise.

“You’re clay-born!” she exclaimed.

“That’s right. Don’t offer me any food, please.”

“But only shades may climb the stone stairs! You must descend at once!”

“Why?

“Because…because…” The woman sputtered, too shocked to get the words out. Then something caught her eye across the square. “Look—over there! You’ll
see
why.”

The Keeper pointed to a balcony like ours on the other side of the square. I ran up the last few stairs to see what was happening. A man—a shade—stood on the opposite balcony, looking out over the crowd.

“I see a guy standing on a balcony. So?”

“Shh! Watch.”

I stepped back so I stood between the Keeper and the wall. I could see what was happening, but anyone looking up from ground-level wouldn’t notice me.

On the other balcony, the shade raised both arms above his head in a gesture that seemed more resigned than triumphant—a surrender, not a victory. He tilted his head back. After a moment, thin tendrils began to rise from his fingers. The tendrils looked like smoke, except they weren’t gray but rather multicolored, like the fog that had filled the spring’s clearing. The rising tendrils joined together into a swirling rainbow of vivid, glorious colors: red, blue, green, yellow, purple, gold, and myriad shades in between. The magic was so lovely. The rainbow grew, arcing, and stretched from the man to one of the cauldrons. It looked like a path made of glittering jewels.

The man dropped his arms. A red-cloaked Keeper stepped forward and helped him climb onto the path. I realized now that the shade’s outfit was midnight black. He bowed to the Keeper and then walked—no,
glided
—along the rainbow. His feet didn’t move. At the end of the path, he stopped. He looked around once, twisting to the left and right, and then he raised his arms again. In a graceful swan dive, he plunged into the cauldron.

“Good return,” whispered the Keeper in front of me.

The rainbow exploded in a blast of light. Colors burst and flared and sparkled like fireworks. Then they subsided—fading, drifting, and finally disappearing.

Whoa. That was strange. But even stranger was the fact that no one in the square paid the slightest bit of attention to the spectacle. Shades milled around, talking to each other and pushing their way through the crowds. No one had glanced up at the shade walking on a rainbow above their heads. No one had flinched at the boom or
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed over the display.

The last of the colors faded out. The shade who’d dived into the cauldron didn’t reemerge.

The Keeper turned, searching my face for a reaction. “That was a reincarnation, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes. The time had arrived for that spirit to leave the Darklands and be clay-born into a new body.”

I eyed the cauldron he’d jumped into. “What happened to his magical body?”

“You saw—the colors, the lights. That was the magic dispersing.”

Talk about going out with a bang. “How come no one in the square noticed all the fireworks?”

“The ‘fireworks,’ as you call them, are not visible from the
ground. They would be a distraction to those whose time has not come, so the magic shields them.” The Keeper fixed me with a schoolmarm glare. “I am a Cauldron Keeper,” she said. “The same as that Keeper across the square. We help shades make their returns.
Now
do you understand why you cannot—?”

“Look,” I interrupted, “there’s another one.”

To our right, a black-clad woman stood on a different balcony. Next to her stood yet another Keeper.

The woman on the other balcony was shaking her head vigorously. The Cauldron Keeper there touched her arm, and she yanked away. She pushed past the Keeper and started down the stairs, but the Keeper caught her and lifted her back onto the balcony.

“She doesn’t want to do it,” I said.

“It’s not her choice.”

My fingers tightened around the grip of my sword. I judged how long it would take to run down these stairs, push my way through the crowd, and mount the other stairs to rescue her. Too long.

“You cannot rescue her,” said the Keeper, as though she’d read my thoughts. “There’s nothing to rescue her from. Put away your sword. That Keeper isn’t forcing her; he’s merely assisting. Some shades do resist, yes, but sooner or later the magic must be obeyed. It is Law. And it is our job to help shades accept what must be.”

Dad.
An image of him—dressed in black, ghostly, sweating out magic—flashed through my mind.

Across the square, the Keeper stood behind the woman, a hand on each forearm. Slowly, the Keeper raised the woman’s arms. Even from this distance, I could see her shaking. She let her head drop back onto the Keeper’s shoulder, and the rainbow colors rose from her hands. This time, the rainbow bridge stretched to a different cauldron.

“Ah,” said the Keeper who stood with me. “A regeneration. I suspect she’ll be pleased.”

The far Keeper spoke to the trembling woman and pointed at the cauldrons. Her head snapped forward, and she dropped her arms. She leapt onto the rainbow and ran along it. At the height of the arc, she sat down and slid feet-first, her hair streaming behind her, like a kid on a playground slide.

This time, there was no explosion, no burst of colors. The woman disappeared into the cauldron, then floated up again,
carried on a shining cloud. Colors gleamed around her head like a halo, and her black dress had lightened to a silvery gray. She stepped from her cloud onto the bridge and glided back to the balcony she’d started from. When she stepped off the rainbow, she turned around, facing the cauldrons, and held her arms out straight in front of her. The bridge dissolved into a spectrum of colored light and flowed into her fingers and up her arms. She glowed with it as the light filled her body. The woman hugged the Keeper and skipped down the stairs.

“Now, that
was
a good return.” The blonde Keeper smiled.

“Why was she so afraid?” I asked, sheathing my sword.

“When a shade is called to the cauldrons, we don’t know whether it’s to be regenerated, as she was, or reborn, like the first shade you saw. Some don’t wish to leave our realm. Usually, it’s because they’re waiting for a loved one from their previous life to arrive here. But there are many reasons a shade may wish to remain in the Darklands. And there are equally as many reasons why a shade may wish to return to the Ordinary as quickly as possible. But it’s not our choice. The magic always decides.”

If Dad had come to Resurrection Square and climbed these stairs, he might have been regenerated. But he wasn’t willing to take the chance that he’d be reincarnated instead. Once the rainbow emerged and attached itself to a cauldron, it was too late to go back.

“There’s no way to influence which cauldron the magic chooses?”

The Keeper looked slightly shocked, as if I’d made a fart joke instead of asking a question. “There are false priests who claim to understand and control the ways of magic,” she said. “They grow rich defrauding those who wish to choose their fate in this square. But those…those
charlatans
have no power over the magic. It is Law here, just as gravity is Law in your world.”

“What if a shade tries to resist the magic’s pull?”

“Some do, for a time.” Her scarlet shoulders shrugged. “But as the pull of the magic grows stronger, the physical body grows weaker. Eventually, all must succumb. It is Law.”

She really liked that phrase. I wondered if she had it embroidered on a pillowcase at home.

I was still thinking about Dad. “But what if someone is
really
strong willed and does resist the pull—say, for years? What happens then?”

“For years?” She squinted skeptically. “Impossible. As I said, a shade might try. But that’s why we have Soul Keepers, to assist anyone so deluded in coming here, where we Cauldron Keepers assist them further.”

“But what if a shade evaded the Keepers’, um, ‘assistance’ and hid out from the magic for a long, long time? What would happen to him?”

She considered, her hands flat on the balcony’s edge. In the square, another rainbow exploded as a shade was reborn. “It is not good for a shade to resist the magic’s pull. There is a reason we trust the magic.”

“It is Law?” I said the word with a capital L, the way she did.

“Yes.” She tilted her head, considering. “But more than that, the magic knows when renewal is needed. Here, magic draws from spirit, but everything is carefully balanced. Magic will not take more from spirit than spirit can bear. That is why the pull grows stronger as the shade grows weaker. If a shade were to resist the pull for too long a time, the spirit would become too thin to hold the magical body together. The body would disintegrate, and the shade would die.”

“So there’s no…” My throat was so dry it was hard to talk around the lump in it. “No chance of regeneration?”

“It would be too late.”

“And that’s Law, too, huh?”

“It is.” If she wondered at the bitterness in my voice, she didn’t show it. “Now…” Her featherlight touch nudged me toward the stairs.

I didn’t move. I was trying to figure out how to ask about the hidden spring.

“Go!” she said more insistently. “A shade waits to climb the stairs. It pains them to wait when they are so close. If you don’t go now, he’ll have to wait until after the purification ceremony. Let him up!”

A man in a black tunic and leggings stood at the bottom of the staircase, one foot on the first step. He’d twisted around to look at something behind him, and all I could see was curly brown hair. My heart jolted.
Dad.
But then he turned my way, peering anxiously up the stairs, and I saw he was clean-shaven and had a crooked nose. Not my father.

Still, my legs shook as I made my way down the stone steps. The man watched me descend, his mouth tight. A kaleidoscope
of emotions—fear, hope, worry, anticipation, regret—chased each other across his face.

What would I say right now, I wondered, if this shade had been my father?

The man stepped aside to let me pass. “Good return,” I said.

He replied with an uncertain smile. Then he took a long, deep breath and started up the stairs.

I watched him go. About halfway up the staircase, he disappeared—passing, I guessed, through the magic shield. From here, there were no rainbows, no colors, no fireworks or shining clouds. But a few minutes later the man trotted back down the stairs. His clothes were now pale yellow, and his dubious smile had been replaced by a broad grin.

He waved to me and then called to someone in the crowd. A woman in a tan dress ran to him. When they hugged, he lifted her off her feet and spun her around. Then, arm in arm, they went to find seats for the ceremony.

I wished the waiting shade had been my father. Regeneration, reincarnation—why had that even mattered? All that mattered was the survival of his spirit. I thought of the woods near the spring, how utterly empty they’d felt as I called Dad’s name. After so many years, I’d finally found my father. Now I’d lost him again—this time beyond any place I could search.

I TRIED TO WARN ARAWN. I LOCATED THE ENTRANCE TO HIS palace—Dad had said the building bordered Resurrection Square—and was surprised to find it unguarded. That is, until I attempted to approach the door. It was warded; I couldn’t get closer than ten feet away. It wasn’t like hitting an invisible wall. At a certain distance, I simply couldn’t move any closer. I could walk and walk all day, and the door would always remain ten feet ahead of me. There was no way to reach the palace, no one to carry a message to the king. I gave up and went back to the square.

There, I stayed on ground level, keeping close to the walls. The bleachers might offer a better view, but if something happened and I needed to move fast, I didn’t want to waste time climbing over people. I made a circuit of the square, checking faces in the stands, watching the throngs on the ground. A couple of times, I thought I saw Pryce. But when I approached, a hand on my sword hilt, it always turned out to be someone else.

Maybe Pryce hadn’t made it here. Maybe Ferris Mackey wasn’t the only murder victim whose spirit had escaped him. Maybe Pryce had weakened and faded into nothing somewhere on the road to Tywyll. And maybe I’d look up and see pigs
dancing an aerial ballet overhead. Anything was possible, but I knew where I’d place my bets.

Trumpets blared. The crowd hushed as everyone craned toward the central platform. A man appeared there, waving, and the spectators cheered. A woman emerged beside him. Both wore blue—members of the court—but with gold capes. Wizards? Had to be; their magic was needed to purify the cauldron.

There must be a tunnel from the palace to the cauldrons. The wizards had arrived that way, then climbed up to make a grand entrance on the platform through a trapdoor.

The third person on the platform must be Arawn himself. He was considered both king and god here, and he looked the part. The lord of the Darklands stood tall and straight, soaking in the crowd’s adoration. He was muscular and dark-bearded and moved with an easy grace. His clothes were regal purple, and a gold crown glittered on his head.

Arawn stepped forward, and the crowd stilled. I almost wished I had a pin, so I could drop it to hear the clatter.

“My friends and subjects,” he said, his deep voice carrying through the square. “Today we come together to restore a treasure that, long ago, was stolen from our realm. Today, the three cauldrons of Arawn are reunited: the cauldron of rebirth, the cauldron of regeneration, and—once again in its proper place—the cauldron of transformation.