“Perhaps we need a different approach?” Jasper said tentatively.
Silas turned a hard look on him. “If you have one, I’m all ears.”
“I admit, that was more a concept than a proposal.”
Silas thought hard about that Greenworld gate to Home. “Perhaps all of us, melding our power the way we did on Greenworld. Darien? Can you give us that synthesis?”
Darien said, “Power blender coming up,” although his tone wasn’t as light as his words.
Silas sensed Jasper and Magda offering power, Darien pulling the threads to his own, blending blue and orange and gold, passing the resulting amber rope to Silas’s hand to meet his own. Silas tried again, guiding their shared magic through the runes, around the target pattern, and ending at the Earth rune. The gate frame brightened, and the rift snapped open sharply, but it was the Veil again.
He closed it. “It’s stronger, but it’s not right.”
Grim said, “Coldwell opened the gate to the Greenworld. Did he leave you any idea how he did that?”
“No!” The answer ripped from his throat. “All that time, offering up my mind to his control, and he left some vital things out.”
“Or hid them?” Grim’s voice took on a deeper echo. “Hid them deep, where it will take courage to find them.”
Silas let go of Darien’s hand, feeling his power ebb, and lifted the big cat off his shoulders and set him down so he could meet Grim’s eyes. “What was that? What do you know?”
Grim stretched high on his hind legs to claw at Darien’s backpack. “That potion Granny Abels gave you. This is the moment.”
Darien set his pack on the floor and dug through it, pulling out the swaddled flask they’d stowed away, and unwrapped it. “This one? What do I do?”
“You give it to Silas,” Grim said.
Silas eyed the potion bottle. And what do I do? But the moment held a resonance, taking him back to his mentor’s slow deathbed, a stuffy room, an old man’s voice, another stoppered flask. Silas took the bottle and sat down on the floor. With difficulty, he worked the cork free. The scent of the liquid wafted out, dominated by rosemary and lavender and wine. Familiar. Too familiar. His stomach rolled uneasily.
Grim moved around to sit at his back, twenty pounds of muscular warmth against his spine. “Drink it, Silas, and remember.”
Silas raised the mouth of the bottle to his lips and took a sip. Not quite the same. Or else, his memory had faded. But this one didn’t catch in his throat the same way, didn’t feel like it would steal his breath or silence his voice. He sipped again. The potion slid into him, both soothing and energizing, turning his attention inward as it infused his body. Another sip. Another.
The strange alien room receded. In a warm dimness, he turned away from bright lights and gray walls and began walking. The dark around him stroked over his skin like old velvet, like silk worn thin with time, like the covers on a bed—
.
.
—like the covers that came into view, familiar and threadbare against a wooden footboard. My master’s bed. Did he call me? Silas rubbed his aching head.
“Ah, there you are at last, boy.” Coldwell’s voice wavered, his hair pure white since his illness, but his eyes as sharp as ever. “Time for another session.”
“Yes, Master.” Silas sat in the chair at the bedside, wrinkling his nose to subdue the odor of dust and time and death.
“Not dead yet,” Coldwell said, as if he’d heard that thought. “Drink your potion.” He gestured at a small table that had appeared by the bed. On it, a stoppered flask sat beside a shot-glass full of dark liquid.
“I don’t want to.” Silas didn’t think he’d ever said that out loud before, but in this moment the truth floated to the surface.
“Of course not. But you want to live, don’t you? I don’t have time to train you as I should. That power you have? You’ll be catnip to demons. This is your one true hope of survival.”
“All right.” Silas raised the glass, turning it so the liquid caught the light. He thought the potion was red, not black, but the color was so deep it was barely hinted at, even where the light of the bedside candles glowed through it.
“Drink it down. Quickly now.”
Silas gulped the potion in one shot, as he’d learned to do. It caught in his throat and clamped down until he couldn’t make a sound. He wasn’t sure he was breathing, but he set the glass on the table and didn’t fall over dead, so he probably was. He folded his hands in his lap and waited.
A door behind him opened and Norlington came into the room. “You started without me.”
Coldwell said, “This really isn’t your place. He’s my apprentice.”
“True. But if you’re going to tell him about the gate, it affects me too. I’m still living in the house, tending it. What will he do with the knowledge?”
What gate? Silas couldn’t muster the energy to care. The flavor of valerian sat on his tongue like a green growing thing, with rosemary blooming over it. Woodsy. Pretty.
Something smacked his face and he blinked his eyes open. Norlington stared into his eyes. “You with us, Silas? How much did you give the boy, Coldwell?”
Coldwell said, “A goodly dose. Enough. We don’t need to cross the Veil this time, and I wanted to be safe.”
“We could say nothing.”
“Our finest work, Norlie. Unique. Unprecedented. Don’t you want recognition one day for what we accomplished?”
After a long pause, Norlington said, “Very well. Explain the gate to him. But I’m going to lock that knowledge away. When I’m gone, he can have the house and the gate and the monster and he’ll be welcome to it all…”
Time skipped and slithered around Silas. Sometimes Coldwell spoke, sometimes Norlington. They drew runes in the air, though Coldwell’s were sketched without power behind them. They argued, more than once. Silas tried to pay attention, although his whole being yearned for sleep.
Eventually, Coldwell’s eyes closed. Norlington loomed over Silas, reaching out and grabbing Silas’s hair between crooked elderly fingers. “You will be silent, understand me. I won’t have my actions pried into and criticized, and my home invaded. And I won’t have that monster near me.”
Monster? Silas still couldn’t speak and didn’t dare nod his head against the sharp pull on his hair, so he blinked rapidly. Whatever you say.
“Silence. Ignorance. Forgetting.” Norlington gestured, runes forming in front of Silas’s face. The heat of them singed his eyebrows, but his personal shield was missing in the mushy, velvet dark. “Until I am gone and the gate dies its death, you will forget this.”
Yes.
“Lost in darkness. Every word, every rune, all we said. Lost in the dark!”
Yes. Silas got to his feet, left the room, and turned aside into the soft dim place of old velvet and whispering silk and paper skin and approval he both wanted and reviled.
***
Darien couldn’t help pacing, even though it made Grim flatten his ears and sigh. Pip had stopped trotting at his heels and sat, head cocked, watching him stride back and forth.
“How long will this take?” he finally burst out, maybe to Grim, or to the universe. “It’s been hours.”