Before the Dawn (21 page)

She laughed a bit. "Oh, it's all right. You
looked exhausted, so I didn't wanna wake you earlier. Then I just
spent the past few hours catching up with the rest of the world on
TV."

He stood up a bit unsteadily and yawned.
"Well, it's almost dinner time. Pizza okay?"

She brightened. "Sure. I've missed it!" She
hovered nearby while he placed the order, as excited as a kid when
he repeated her request for extra pepperoni. Briefly, he wondered
if Aline would be this girlish when he would finally meet her, and
he really hoped so. It would mean that she had held on to at least
some of her innocence. The doorbell rang just as they finished
ordering the pizza, but before either one of them could answer it,
they heard the door being opened and a high-pitched chorus of
"Trick or treat!" echoing throughout the house. Then they heard
Raven's aristocratic, "What is your meaning?" and they hurried to
rescue the kids before he impulsively turned them into gremlins or
something worse.

Trevor grabbed the candy from where he had
stashed it and threw the bag over to Meran who quickly raced to
Raven's side. By this time, he was sounding outraged. "What do you
mean I have to give you candy or you'll play a trick on me? Young
man, I assure you, the being who can trick this old Trickster has
not been born yet! And will never be born, if I have something to
say about it!"

Meran elbowed him aside quite ruthlessly.
"Here you go, guys," she said to the confused-looking children with
a bright smile. She then dumped several handfuls of candy into the
bags and hollow plastic pumpkins they held out to her and sent them
on their way.

"Why did you give them those sweets?" Raven
wondered. "If they had played any tricks on us, I would have
punished them severely for it."

She rolled her eyes. "They weren't actually
going to play any tricks," she told him. Then she went on to
explain the whole idea of Halloween to the immortal Prince. It was
hilarious to see him froth at the mouth over the irreverence and
"blasphemy humans commit against mystery and magic" by
"trivializing the mystic essence" of something or other, and Trevor
quit listening when Raven went into a tirade against humanity and
all their sins against the earth.

"This is why humans have lost their magic,"
the Prince concluded triumphantly after several minutes that Trevor
had lost count of. "You people show no respect for the mysteries
and powers of the earth."

"Yeah, bad humans," Trevor agreed absently as
the doorbell rang again. It was the pizza guy this time, and they
decided to just eat in the living room so they could easily answer
the door when other trick and treaters would drop by. Two more
groups of kids showed up while they were eating (again, it was just
him and Meran enjoying the food), and when they had eaten their
share, they got Raven's uneaten slices and gobbled them up too
while he looked at them with distaste.

At the end of the meal, he stood up. "Well
then. Have the two of you satisfied your animal hungers now?" he
demanded. "The night's getting older and we need to be moving on if
you still wish to go to Silverhaven."

Meran and Trevor stood up too, and got ready
for the trip as best as they could. Their preparations, though,
began and ended with Raven waving a hand over them and muttering
something to transform their clothes into more suitable ones for
his brother's Court. Trevor soon found himself dressed up in a
fancy outfit like the kind in period movies, though the various
pieces came from different eras, while Meran looked stunning in an
amber-colored ball gown that seemed to break up light and reflect
it in rainbow colors. Raven, for his part, was no longer dressed up
like some kind of romantic punk. Instead, he was wearing
rich-looking formal clothes like Trevor’s, except that everything
was in his usual black. He looked them over carefully after working
this little spell and he nodded, satisfied. "You'll both do. Come."
He held out a hand to Meran and she took it. She then turned to
Trevor and offered her hand. Taking a deep breath, he enfolded her
smaller hand into his bigger one then looked at Raven
expectantly.

"What now?" he asked.

Raven smirked. "Now? We walk."

He took a little step sideways and slipped
into a gap between overlapping realities then disappeared. Before
Trevor could gasp out in amazement that he was suddenly able to
perceive the different shifting layers of many, many worlds, Meran
tugged at his hand and they both followed after Raven.

***

Chapter 22

Walking through the doorways between worlds
can be overwhelming, especially if one is not used to the journey.
The senses get assaulted by an endless barrage of new experiences
and sensations with each step and there are no defenses against
them at all. So one step, and Trevor was frozen to his very bones
in a world where everything, even the sun, was made of ice. Another
step, and he was gasping for air in the bottom of an ocean where
luminous leviathans opened their sleepy eyes to gaze at the three
strange travelers curiously before going back to their slumber. One
more step, and he was burning in the heart of a star as it sang and
pulsed a song of fire. It only took those three steps before he was
begging Raven to please,
please
stop for a bit and, when
they did, he promptly threw up. Beside him, Meran did the same.
Afterwards, they both glared at Raven with cold anger.

"It was the fastest path for us to take," the
Prince only said by way of explanation. He, of course, looked
completely unruffled, which just annoyed them more. "We're deep
within the bowels of Silverhaven's castle now."

Trevor looked around and saw that they were
in what appeared to be some kind of dungeon. It was surprisingly
dry and pleasant-smelling; well-lighted too by rows of torches on
the walls. In fact, the only reason he even realized that the place
was actually a dungeon was the presence of small cells with thick
bars of black iron. From high above them, seeping through the small
cracks in the stone, came the very faint sound of music. Raven was
right. He had brought them quickly to his brother's Court.

"I wouldn't have minded going through all
those groves again," Meran grumbled, "not even if the leaves kept
cutting me." She inspected herself carefully to see what damage
walking through the doorways had done. But her appearance was
immaculate, like Trevor's, as if they had not even passed through
any of those strange places. Raven, though, wasn't really listening
to her. He was looking around the dungeon with distaste, and he
especially reserved his expression of loathing for the cells. Or,
rather, their bars.

"Sky iron!" he spat. "What madness possessed
Benwyr to put these filthy things in here? Even the stones feel the
cold poison of these bars."

"Well, sometimes," Meran's voice was so soft
that Trevor almost missed it, "Aline would get so tired that she
would refuse to dance. Then the Prince would become furious and
lock her up here for days." As she spoke, she moved almost as if
she was in a trance until she was near one cell in particular. She
reached out a hand and, with a small wince, wrapped her fingers
around a single iron bar. "At other times," Meran went on, "Aline
would dance more than once with other men, and he would have those
men locked up, too. The Prince also kept me here, when he saw that
Aline preferred to be with me every time she didn't have to attend
to him. I spent years in this place." To Trevor’s astonishment, he
saw that the skin on the hand touching the metal was slowly turning
red, as if she was getting burned. "It turned out to be too many
years." She released her grip on the iron bar with a hiss, then
held out her palm before Trevor and Raven. They both saw that it
had been burned quite badly.

Trevor was horrified. "Oh, God. Wh—How did it
do that to your hand?"

"The longer you stay in the Strangelands, the
more like the creatures of this place you become," Meran answered.
"But don't worry. Only sky iron, or iron that they get from
meteorites has this kind of effect. That's why most of the Lords
hoard it and make weapons out of it. That's why the Prince uses
them for the bars in his prisons."

Without a word, Raven went to her side and
took her injured hand in his while carefully avoiding her eyes.
Their joined hands glowed briefly and, when they finally broke
apart, Trevor saw that Meran’s burn had been healed. A silence came
over the three of them then. None of them knew quite what to say
after that little exhibition. But, at last, Raven faced Meran and
Trevor. He was looking unusually subdued. "This has reminded me to
give the two of you some protection while we are here." He tried to
make his tone light, but he didn't quite manage it. "Here." He held
out his hands, palms up, towards them. In each palm was a
delicate-looking leaf made of silver threaded through a
spiderweb-thin chain of the same material. "These are from the
trees that surround Silverhaven. They have protective powers that
can repel enchantments and other magicks." He glanced at Trevor.
"However, they will only work so long as you remember to resist the
spells that are being worked on you. Once you decide to succumb to
a spell, then the leaves will lose their powers. So keep them close
to your body at all times."

The two humans both nodded their
understanding and took the leaves. "Here's what we're going to do,"
Raven said next. "We are going to the ballroom and I will find my
brother to speak to him and distract him. The two of you will
search for the Princess and do what you can to convince her to
accept this leaf." And he produced another one out of thin air. "It
still won't break the enchantment over her, but it will weaken it
enough so she will start getting a bit of her old self back. It
should at least call to the silver leaf she possesses and spark her
remembrance of the person she used to be."

"Wait," Trevor cut in. "Aline has a silver
leaf like this? Why didn’t it help her before?"

Maybe he was just imagining it, but Raven
sort of looked shifty. "It didn’t prove to be very effective," the
other man simply said. "Now the thing you must remember is for the
enchantment to be rendered powerless, regardless of whether the one
who cast it willingly breaks the spell or not, Aline must not be in
Silverhaven by the time the sun rises after the third night. The
spell trapped her on the third night after it was cast, so it has
to be broken before the end of the time Benwyr strengthens it for
another seven years. And she must choose not to be here of her own
will. Benwyr will not be able to do anything then."

"And, just like that, Aline will be free?"
Trevor asked doubtfully. It sounded too easy.

Raven snorted. "You can be sure it will not
be
just like that
. My brother has had seven years to
influence her. Though she'll never be the Rosamund he knew in the
past, I'm certain he has still managed to change her into someone
who pleases him. And, never forget, there is always the possibility
that she would not want to leave him."

That particular unpleasant thought had
actually occurred to Trevor. He had no idea what they would do if
that turned out to be the case. Perhaps he hadn't really considered
all the aspects of this rescue operation and their possible
consequences all that well. But it was too late to back out now.
"Let's do this then," he said.

Raven sighed. He had a strange, pensive
expression on his face before he shook it off and looked like his
old, cavalier self again. "Very well." He then led them out of the
dungeon and up an incredibly long flight of stairs that twisted and
spiraled in a bizarre pattern. The stairs seemed to wind upwards
for an unbelievably long stretch, but it didn't seem to take any
time at all for them to climb the steps and, soon, they reached the
very top and Raven pushed open a door that revealed a hallway full
of moonlight and shifting shadows. They walked through it quickly,
and Trevor fancied that he saw their three shadows being joined by
others or moving in ways that their bodies were not. But when he
tried to ask Meran if she also saw the same things, the words that
came out of his mouth were not sounds but script written in
moonbeams. Meran read them in the air and gave him her answer in
the same manner. Trevor would have said something else, marveling
at what was happening, but then Raven opened another door, and they
were in the most fantastic ballroom Trevor had ever seen.

Even with the protection of the silver leaf,
he could feel the seductive allure of the magic in the air. It was
an actual physical sensation that pressed up against his skin, warm
and inviting like a kiss. The very air itself had a scent that
evoked images and memories of entwined limbs and intimate caresses.
He suddenly felt hot in the clothes he was wearing. He felt even
more uncomfortable when he got a good look around the place and he
saw what some of the guests were doing in the darkened corners of
the room. Flushing, he caught Meran’s eye. "Is it always like this
here?" he asked in a voice that squeaked a bit in
embarrassment.

She nodded. "It can get even more intense
sometimes," she replied, nodding pointedly at a group of revelers
in one part of the room who were writhing against one another on
the floor, their beautiful naked bodies oiled and gleaming. The
sight caused Trevor's face to turn a bright red.

Raven then touched Meran on the shoulder to
get her attention. "I see Benwyr," he said. "Watch him," he
gestured to Trevor, "and make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble.
And be careful." He looked like he wanted to say something more to
her, but he noticed that Trevor was watching the two of them quite
avidly, so he just nodded at the other man then left.