I had imagined finding Eden in a hundred different ways, but never once had it played out like this. I’d never envisioned a reunion with a ghoul. Yet here she was, the proof before my eyes, leading me through a darkness that felt disconcertingly solid underfoot, beneath a ceiling of eerie light the colour of poison.
‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘Where’s Sycamore?’
No reply.
‘What has he done to you, Eden?’
‘He has done nothing.’ My wife shook her head. ‘I hear that since your wife died, you’ve always liked to blame others for your hardships, never taking responsibility for yourself. Even now it doesn’t occur to you that this might be your fault, does it?’
‘My fault?’
‘Aren’t you going to apologise?’
She was mocking me and my anger flared. ‘I tried to find you,’ I snarled, ‘but you killed yourself and left me when I needed you most.’
‘There you go again,’ Eden said. ‘Blaming your wife when she believed you’d died on the wasteland. Wasn’t it you who let a psychopathic survivalist tell her the truth?’
‘I wasn’t given a choice, I …’ She spoke as though she didn’t know me, like I was someone she’d only heard about, like we had no history, like we hadn’t once shared a happy life together. ‘Tell me you remember me,’ I said. ‘Say my name.’
‘What name would you like? Fool? Puppet? Killer?’ Eden gave a cursory glance over her shoulder. ‘I’d rather Sycamore took away the Song of Always and let his realm tear you apart than play out this charade.’
That hit me hard. No, I thought. It shouldn’t be like this. It was too cruel. Eden had killed herself, she couldn’t be a ghoul. Sycamore had done this to her to punish me.
‘All Sycamore has done is give you a parting gift that you’re too blind to accept,’ Eden said, as though reading my thoughts, before adding with acid in her voice, ‘Unless you accept it, the realm of the dead won’t release me. And I’m not the only one.’
Above, the green light faded away and the darkness began to shift and mould around me, turning into something solid and ancient. Yellow flames sprang to life, dancing from pools of oil in the deep dishes of braziers that appeared between thick pillars of chipped and worn stone. I now followed Eden along a narrow floor paved with cracked tiles of terracotta, as though we walked through a hall of some forgotten castle buried aeons ago.
‘This realm appears as the Shepherd imagines,’ Eden said, her tone irritated, sharing none of my fearful awe. ‘The magic of death.’
Sycamore’s magic, a strange and terrible power that even Mrs Blackstone and the Quantum couldn’t understand.
The stone pillars flanked our path. There was little but darkness beyond them, but between them, behind the flames of the braziers, I could see faces peering out, ghostly aspects. Spirits, I realised, and I knew who they were.
Ghan Hathor watched me with a sour expression. Brandon Quinn and Agtha Martal seemed to be confused about who I was. Yorla of Clan Ayros knew me, however, glaring with her mouth set into as much of a grim line as her tusks would allow. Ing Meredith’s smile did little to reassure me. My platoon watched in silent judgement – Hannah and Danii, Commander Childs – and I averted my eyes, too perturbed to see who else lurked in the shadows between the pillars. Every one of them had died because of Sycamore. Their voices formed a backwash of moans, the low and hollow Song of the Dead.
‘Because of you, none of them can leave,’ Eden said. ‘Will you tell them that it isn’t your fault?’ She pointed to her right. ‘Will you tell that to her?’
A groan escaped my lips and I halted, frozen to the spot. Nel stood in the shadows, her face lit by flickering flames. There wasn’t much expression on her features but her eyes were full of accusation, and in them I saw myself for what I was: her murderer.
‘I’m sorry, Nel,’ was all I could think to say. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She had no interest in my apology, or anything else I might say, and sank back into the shadows to be swallowed by darkness.
A blaze of light flared up ahead, brighter than the brazier fires. It came from a ragged tear in the black, a wide rent. A gateway? Eden stood before it, limned by the flashes of orange lightning she stared into. A metallic reek filled my nostrils and scratched the back of my throat, and I knew the rent was a hole into the real world, Urdezha, Old Castle. The storm was still raging.
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘He can’t do this. Sycamore has to close it.’
‘You are an anomaly,’ Eden growled, ‘a living being of flesh and blood where none should exist, and the realm of the dead cannot allow that.’
‘Look at me, Eden.’ I was begging. ‘Say my name.’
‘You don’t belong here.’
Even as she said it, I could feel it was true. The spirits between the pillars were waiting for me to leave, the magic of this realm was pushing against me, egging me towards the rent and the world I came from. Both alive and not, I had no place here, but in the land of the living my doom was assured.
I hid behind the ghoul of my wife. ‘I don’t want to go back.’
Eden’s laugh was sharp and spiteful. ‘What were you expecting? That you could spend eternity roaming the planes of Sycamore’s realm, living out some fairy tale?’ She turned to me and shouted in Salabese, ‘You don’t belong here!’
The rage and hatred on her face smothered anything I was feeling, crushed me. ‘Eden, please … Let me stay with you.’
She shook her head, curiosity replacing some of the ghoul’s anger. ‘Surely you understand now that you don’t have a choice.’ She gestured to the spirits peering out from the shadows. ‘And for them, for the sake of Old Castle, I have to go with you.’
Eden turned as the rent rushed towards her, swallowed her, and then came for me with a blinding flash of orange.