KARL TORE HIS mind away from whatever terrors Shawna might be facing in the realm of the werewolves to address the vampire queen lounging on the throne before him, whose eyes, like the eyes of the carved bat that crowned her throne, gleamed blood-red.
“I am a friend of Ygrair’s,” he said, in answer to her question. “It is in her service that I and my companion entered your world.”
“Ygrair?” Queen Patricia leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “You claim to be from the First World?”
“I do. I am.”
“And how was this miracle accomplished?” she said scornfully. “Ygrair never even hinted it might be possible for anyone else from the First World to enter our world. Am I to believe you came through the Graduation Portal?” Her eyes narrowed further. “I believe you are lying. I believe Stephanie has somehow found a way to make me think you come from outside this world, in the hope she might worm a spy into my confidence.”
“I am not lying,” Karl said. “I do not know who Stephanie is. Ygrair sent me into the Labyrinth and gave me the ability to open Portals between the worlds. She did not send me directly into your world, and, no, she did not send me through the Graduation Portal. That no longer exists. The school has been destroyed.”
Queen Patricia’s eyes widened. “Destroyed? How? Why?”
Karl sighed. “The tale is a long one, Your Majesty.” Queen Patricia was not his queen, but there was no point in being provocative. “Might we discuss it somewhere more comfortable than with you up there and me down here, in the oppressive heat of this most impressive display of candles?”
The queen regarded him for a long, silent moment, unblinking. He supposed it made sense that a creature that could move unnaturally fast could also stand unnaturally still. He found her regard unnerving, as no doubt she intended.
“Very well,” she said at last. “We will talk in my quarters.” She turned to the lady-in-waiting. “Seraphina, you are dismissed.”
Seraphina frowned. “Your Majesty, are you sure that’s wise . . .” Her voice trailed off and she visibly wilted—something he would not have thought possible, based on his own experience of the . . . force . . . of her personality—before the queen’s icy gaze. “Of course, Your Majesty.” She hurried out of the throne room, back through the grand doors through which she and Karl had entered.
The queen stood. “This way,” she said, leading Karl to a side door off to his left. Beyond lay a short corridor lit by only two candelabra, instead of a hundred. The ironbound door at the end of that hallway swung open to her touch, and she ushered him into . . .
He looked around. “This is not a medieval room,” he commented mildly. Judging from what he had seen in Shawna’s world, it was closer in time and design to her era: comfortable furniture, glass-topped coffee table, paintings on the walls, throw rugs on the stone floor. An archway at the back showed a bed that, although appropriately royal-sized, was definitely not the four-poster one might have expected. Nor was there the preponderance of red and black he had seen elsewhere. The walls were pale green, the rugs green and blue and brown. It was, compared to the throne room, soothing.
Not that Karl felt soothed, alone with the vampire queen and Shaper of this world.
“There are times,” Queen Patricia said, “that I miss the First World. Sit down.” She indicated a comfortable-looking couch upholstered in pale blue, with throw pillows patterned in green leaves.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Karl sat as instructed.
“You don’t need to keep calling me that,” she said. “Not in here. Out there,” she nodded at the door, “yes. But in here, I’m just Patricia Morrison from Salmon Arm, British Columbia.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you know where that is?”
“No,” Karl said. “But I do know of British Columbia. The westernmost province of the Dominion of Canada. The capital is Victoria, I believe . . . on Vancouver Island.”
She inclined her head. “A point in favor of your telling me some version of the truth. Yes. And in British Columbia, I was simply called Trish. You may do likewise.”
“All right . . . Trish.”
“Wine?” she said then, going to a side table beneath a painting of her castle, lit by the moon, black-winged creatures flying around its high towers, the model, clearly, for the giant tapestry behind the throne. “I only have red.” She chuckled. “And, I know, I’m supposed to say things like, ‘I never drink . . . wine,’” (for some reason, she said the words in a thick Eastern European accent) “but, in fact, I quite enjoy it. Though not as much as blood, of course.”
Karl had no idea what she was going on about, when it came to the wine, but he was happy enough to take a glass of it—even happier it wasn’t blood—though he only sipped it. It was quite good. “I do not understand that,” he said, setting the glass down on the coffee table. “How could you make yourself into a vampire? Shapers cannot Shape themselves.” Except for Shawna, who somehow managed to make herself forget she was a Shaper, he thought, but set that ongoing mystery aside.
“I didn’t,” Trish said. She took a rather irritated sip of her own wine.
“Then how . . . ?” Karl began, but Trish waved a hand, the vampire queen showing through in that imperious dismissal of his concerns in favor of her own.
“I did not bring you in here to tell you my story,” she said. “Not yet. I brought you here for you to tell me yours. Explain to me what is going on or, at least, what you claim is going on.”
“Of course.” Karl told her about the attack on the school . . . Ygrair being wounded and forced to flee to her own Shaped world in the Labyrinth . . . the weakening of her hold on the other Shaped worlds . . . the depredations of the Adversary, who was seizing control of worlds not his own . . . the need for someone to go world to world, find those worlds’ Shapers, and gather their hokhmah, to take it to Ygrair and enable her to save all the worlds from destruction.
He spoke of his discovery and rescue of Shawna in her world, and their success in the last world, though he did not go into detail about Robur’s failure to cooperate, and how only his death had released his hokhmah to Shawna: he had not been present for most of what had happened there, anyway.
Patricia Morrison listened intently and quietly, occasionally sipping from her wine. “Where is this ‘Adversary’ now?” she said when Karl had finished.
“Trapped in the world of my companion,” he said.
“Are you sure?” She leaned forward as she spoke. “Absolutely certain?”
“As certain as I can be,” he said. Now was not the time to mention his concerns about the shirt he had left behind, stained with his blood, blood that contained the Shurak nanotechnology that allowed him to open Portals between Shaped worlds. He frowned at her instead. “Why?”
She sat back with an air of disappointment. “Because, if you are telling the truth, and such a man exists, I thought perhaps his presence here might explain certain things happening in this world. Things that go against everything we Shaped.”
Karl blinked. “We?”
Patricia poured more wine for both of them. “I am not the only Shaper in this world.” For some reason, her mouth quirked, and her voice changed and deepened, as if she were quoting someone else. “‘No. There is another.’”
Karl gaped—something he very rarely did. Then he frowned—something he did quite often. “That’s impossible.”
Patricia matched him frown for frown. “Clearly, it is not.”
“Ygrair never suggested . . .” Karl bit off his protestation. He would not complain about Ygrair to an ordinary Shaper.
“Didn’t she?” Patricia said. “You claim to be her friend, and yet you do not know this? She certainly taught her students it was possible. Your companion . . . this ‘Shawna’ . . . should know of the possibility, too, if she attended the school as you claim.”
Karl had said nothing about Shawna’s lack of any memory of school, or of being a Shaper. He did not say anything now.
“It was Ygrair who placed me and Stephanie together in this world,” Patricia continued. “It was she who told us our plan for it would work.”
“Your . . . plan?”
“You asked, how did I become a vampire. You noted, Shapers cannot Shape themselves.”
“Or anyone from the First World,” Karl said.
“So Ygrair taught us all. But she also taught us that we would be subject to the natural laws of our worlds, and she taught us that two people could Shape a world together if they chose. So Steph and I thought, what if we took a world together, and she Shaped vampires, and I Shaped werewolves, and she allowed herself to be bitten by a werewolf, and I allowed myself to be bitten . . . killed, in fact . . . by a vampire, and . . .” She spread her hands. “It worked.”
Karl nodded, glad to understand what he was dealing with at last—and impressed despite himself. “A brilliant strategy,” he said. “My congratulations.”
He studied Patricia. Now, separated from her by only a table’s distance, he realized he could at last, though only with intense concentration, detect just the faintest whiff of Shaperhood—Shaperiness?—about her. But very faint. Part of that, he thought, might be related to the rather uncomfortable fact that she was, in fact, dead. Undead, he supposed was the term, but still . . .
But there might be another reason, as well, one he had already considered and now thought even more likely. “But afterward,” he continued, “You had nothing left. You can no longer Shape.”
“No,” Trish said. “Neither of us can. We drained ourselves in the Shaping of the World, and our power has never returned. Perhaps partly because of how we allowed ourselves to be altered.” She raised a hand and flexed it. “We thought we would never need Shaping power again, once we were what we wanted to be. I am a vampire. Undead. Undying. Fast and powerful. Able to change into a giant bat and fly wherever I wish. And Steph . . .” She made a face. “Steph is a werewolf. Also fast, also powerful, able to change into a giant wolf whenever she wishes. And, though ordinary werewolves are not immortal, since she is also a Shaper, and Shapers do not age in Shaped worlds, she is as immortal as I, barring accidents.”
“And that was enough for you?” Karl said. He did not see the appeal himself.
“It was,” Patricia said. “Until it wasn’t. Until Stephanie brutally betrayed our friendship and my trust, and the Pact collapsed.” She did not look at him as she said that. She had plunged her gaze into her wine, as though she saw something in its scarlet depths he could not see.
“The Pact?” Karl said, thinking, There has been a falling-out between the two Shapers of this world, and yet, we must gather the hokhmah of both if we are to take it to Ygrair. He grimaced. That could be a problem.
“We did not Shape a world of terror and bloodshed,” Patricia said, raising her gaze once more. “The backstory we crafted for this world was that everyone outside of this God-protected valley was destroyed in the Great Cataclysm, a slow-moving wave of divinely decreed disintegration that spread out from the original site of the Garden of Eden, eliminating all humans, all werewolves, and vampires, and all signs of their existence, returning the world to its untouched wild state. Humans already living in this valley were protected, and then to this valley fled the only survivors of the cataclysm, vampires and werewolves who received a vision from God telling them that here they would find Sanctuary, but only if they swore to live in peace with the humans that theretofore had been their prey.
“The story goes that, in concert with Abbot Nathan Costello,” the queen’s mouth quirked in amusement again, for no reason Karl could grasp, “of what has now become the Mother Church, they agreed to a grand Pact. The vampires were granted control over the north end of the Great Valley, the werewolves control of the south. Humans could live their lives as they had been, in whichever kingdom they wished, or in the free villages in what is known as the Lands Between. Werewolves and vampires were not to feed on humans or change them into werewolves or vampires without their consent. Peace reigned.
“In the story the people know, Stephanie and I are the children of now-dead kings and queens, born in this valley. I, in the Shaped memory of my servants, grew up here, a vampire from birth—which is possible in this world, as it is possible to be a werewolf from birth, because we Shaped it so. There are servants in Stephanie’s underground lair who likewise remember her childhood and youth.
“But ten years ago, for no reason I can discern, Stephanie led an attack on a band of my people in the Lands Between. Without warning. Without any expression of grievances, even though our courts were in regular communication with each other. Completely unprovoked.”
“Were you there?”
“No, but my consort was. He saw her, and he knows her well. Others who had met her saw her, too. It was Stephanie. There is no doubt. He also recognized other of the werewolves with her, werewolves he knew personally—many of our people had friends—or so they thought—in the other kingdom. Many of our people were killed, before the werewolves withdrew. My consort barely escaped with his life. Other attacks took place, all through the Lands Between. I expelled her envoys to my court. My own envoys to Stephanie’s kingdom never returned.
“Ever since, we have been at war. And as war spread, shortly after it began, rogues appeared, vampires and werewolves who have abandoned the Pact. Whole villages have been slaughtered by them. Farmers have been driven from their lands. From the very beginning of the war, I have forbidden my subjects from attacking humans, and yet vampire attacks continue. I have heard—though how much credence I should give the tale, I’m not sure—that Stephanie has issued similar orders to her werewolves: yet, werewolf attacks continue, as well.
“Now the humans live inside walled villages, like Zarozje, near which you were captured. They hate and fear vampires and werewolves and kill on sight any they come across. And thus, the Lands Between have become a place of terrible violence. And all of it—all of it—is Stephanie’s fault.” She snatched up her glass, gulped more wine, swiped her hand across her mouth, and slammed the goblet on the coffee table so hard Karl was surprised its glass top didn’t crack. “Under the cover of the chaos in the Lands Between, I am convinced she is plotting an all-out assault on my realm!”
For a moment, her face turned demonic: angular, pale, terrifying, her eyes completely black except for the hellfire sparks within them. Then she took a deep breath and became fully human once more. She poured herself more wine, took another sip. “In the First World, she was jealous of me,” she said moodily. “But I never thought that jealousy could lead to something like this. I thought we had moved beyond it.”
“Why was she jealous?” Karl asked. He took another swallow of his own wine.
Patricia shrugged. “The usual reasons. I was the more attractive and had my pick of boys . . . including one or two she had her eye on. I’ll admit, I took full advantage of it. But they were just meaningless flings. Long-term attachments were impractical in the school, unless you committed to being a joint Shaper with your loved one. I had fun with the boys, but I never considered Shaping a world with one. In the world Stephanie and I planned, I knew I could Shape the ideal mate, if I chose . . . and I chose.” She raised her voice. “Blood of my heart. Reveal yourself. Come meet our guest.”
Karl heard nothing, but suddenly sensed something behind him. His heart started pounding, and his breath caught in his throat. Terror gripped him, as unreasoning as the lust he had felt for Seraphina earlier. It took all his willpower to twist his head around.
A tall, elegantly slim man stood there. He wore black—black pants, a black dinner jacket, and a black shirt—relieved only by a diamond stickpin in the shape of a bat, with ruby flecks for eyes, at his throat. He smiled slightly at Karl, revealing the tips of sharp fangs against ruby-red lips. Flecks of bloody fire burned deep within his pupils. His hair was as black as his clothing, his complexion as pale as Patricia’s. “Good evening,” he said, in a deep voice with the same Eastern European accent Trish had affected earlier. “And welcome.” He bowed slightly. “I am Count Dracula.”
Bram Stoker’s novel had been one of the last books Karl had read before Ygrair literally dropped into his life. His fear faded away, Dracula clearly withdrawing it deliberately, as Seraphina had earlier withdrawn her carnal influence. It made Karl uneasy to think that he, a creature of the First World—a real man, as opposed to a Shaped one—could be influenced so easily by Shaped creatures. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
It’s because of the way they crafted the world, he thought. They wanted to be subject to the powers of the werewolves and vampires, so they could become them. And so I—and Shawna—are subject to them, too. He felt an unaccustomed touch of trepidation. If they chose, they could make me one of them . . .
He turned back to face the queen as Dracula came around the end of the couch to stand beside her. Trish took the count’s hand. “Dracula is my Prince Consort,” she said. “My lover, my dearest friend, my second in command.”
“I am glad you found a way to make yourself happy,” Karl said carefully.
Patricia’s lip curled. “But I am not happy. I will not be happy—and let me assure you, you will not, either—until you tell me the truth: why did Stephanie send you to spy on me?” She leaned forward, and in the same moment, Dracula smiled slightly, and the terror reasserted itself. Karl’s mouth opened, and he gaped like a landed fish, struggling to breathe as his racing heart threatened to shatter his rib cage. “I do not believe your story, Karl Yatsar,” Patricia said. “I do not believe you are from the First World. I believe you are from this one, and that Stephanie faked your arrival; that she intended for me to capture you and taught you what to say. You played your part well, but I do not believe it is possible to move from one world to another. Ygrair would have told us, if it were. Your queen’s scheme has failed. Now tell me, what were you sent to learn? When does she plan to attack?” Patricia’s eyes drilled into his, her face going demonic again, the red light flaring deep within eyes that were now all-black. “You will answer my question. Now.”
Karl had never felt anything like the terror Dracula projected. He tried to protest that he was not a spy, and neither was Shawna, that everything he had told her about Ygrair, about their mission through the Labyrinth, was true, but he couldn’t formulate the words, couldn’t fight the paralysis of his throat . . . he felt faint . . .
“Release him,” Patricia commanded, and just like that, the fear vanished. Karl slumped back on the couch, panting.
“The terror can return at any moment,” the queen said softly.
“Your Majesty,” Karl said, when he had regained his voice . . . he dared not call her anything else, not after that . . . “I have not lied to you. I am not a spy. I have not met Queen Stephanie. All I know of her is what you have told me.”
He forced himself to squarely meet her eyes, obsidian orbs with glowing red fires deep within. Her fangs had grown and were prominent against her ruby-red lips; her face remained angular, alien. A surprisingly analytical part of his mind noted that there were three forms the vampires could take: human, bat-like, and this demonic one, which looked horribly out of place in her otherwise ordinary chambers. But, of course, the only one truly out of place here was him. He did not belong in this Shaped world or any other, except the one that maybe, someday, if Ygrair kept her word, he would Shape for himself.
Then, to his surprise, Patricia broke eye contact with him, and glanced at Dracula. “He speaks the truth,” she said. “Or what he believes to be the truth.”
“Thank you for believing me,” Karl said to her.
The queen, her face once more human, returned her gaze to him. “It is a simple statement of fact. No human can successfully lie in my presence, if I exert my will to ascertain the truth.”
“It is useful for interrogation,” Dracula said. “As is my own glamor of terror.”
Glamor of terror? Karl shuddered, his face still wet with a sheen of sweat. He nodded without speaking, and for the first time in a long time, took a sip of his wine. His hand shook as he put the glass back down on the table.
“I am sorry for any discomfort you experienced,” Patricia said, “but I do not apologize for doubting you. Stephanie is up to something. She means to overthrow me. I am certain of it.”
“From what you have told me of the situation, I can understand why you feel that way,” Karl said.
“And from what you have told me of the situation, there is nothing you can do to help, even though you are . . . or at least believe you are . . . telling the truth, “ Patricia said. “The Pact remains broken. Werewolves and vampires remain at war. Rogues devour humans. Everything we Shaped is crumbling into chaos. And it is Stephanie’s doing.”
Dracula moved behind Patricia and began kneading her shoulders, so domestic an action Karl thought Shawna would have laughed out loud at it, though he felt no such urge himself. “You are right,” Karl said. “There is nothing I can do about it. Not on my own. But . . .”
And then he stopped, because what he was about to suggest had nothing to do with his overarching quest, the only thing he was really interested in: helping Shawna—or someone—gather the hokhmah of enough Shaped worlds that Ygrair could draw on it preserve the Labyrinth.
He did not care about this specific Shaped world, or any other Shaped world, for itself. The denizens of these worlds were real to themselves, of course, but to him? No. They were nothing but modified copies of people in the First World, golems shaped from the infinitely malleable clay of the Labyrinth. He did not know how long ago Stephanie and Patricia had graduated, but nobody in this world was older than however few decades that had been. This world’s “history” had never happened. The heroes and villains of the past had never existed. It was all just fiction. From what he had seen of this world so far, bad fiction.
Shawna had not yet fully grasped that truth. For her, the people of her world had been real, even though she had seen them wiped from reality in an instant, had wiped some from that reality herself. She had tried to leave the last world they’d been in better shape (by her lights) than it had been, using Robur’s hokhmah, which had come to her as he died. Karl had his doubts that the world had in truth become any more peaceful, but he’d never know. Nor did he care.
But Shawna had cared. And she would care about this world, too. She would want to use her power, once she had the shared hokhmah of Queen Stephanie and Queen Patricia, to make this world better.
And that was something he could use.
“But?” Patricia prompted, eyes narrowed.
Karl pulled his thoughts together. “But Shawna can,” he said. “If you share your hokhmah with her, and she can likewise obtain Queen Stephanie’s, she will have the power to rebuild your world. She can restore the Pact. She can put things back the way they were.”
“Stephanie will never allow it,” Patricia said flatly. “She started this, and she thinks she can win. She thinks she will be the only ruler once all is done.”
“Perhaps,” Karl said. “But did you not say that you Shaped her werewolves, and she Shaped your vampires, so that you could each then be transformed into the thing you wished to be?”
Patricia nodded.
“Then giving Shawna your hokhmah,” Karl said, “will give her power, not over your vampires—but over Stephanie’s werewolves.”
Patricia blinked. And then she laughed. “That,” she said, her face flashing again in an instant to obsidian-eyed and angular, “would be sweet.” She showed fangs in a toothy smile.
“But your friend,” Dracula said, “is being held by the werewolves.”
“I am not suggesting an all-out assault,” Karl said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Patricia. “We do not have the forces that would require, and I will not sacrifice my people on such a fruitless attempt.”
“Then what are you suggesting?” Dracula said.
“Send me to the werewolves alone. I will talk to Stephanie as I have talked to you, convince her to let Shawna go, help negotiate a truce between you. She will give Shawna her hokhmah, you will give her yours, and Shawna, who is a very powerful Shaper, will then be able to set right your world before we leave it for the next.”
As he said it, he could almost see Shawna’s look of surprise at his words, but he ignored it just as he would have had she actually been present. He did not really care if this world were left in better, worse, or the same shape: all he cared about was the quest, and that meant somehow convincing—by any means necessary—the two queens, onetime friends, now enemies, to surrender their knowledge of the world’s Shaping to Shawna.
The queen frowned. “Wait . . . if Shawna gaining my hokhmah would give her control over Stephanie’s werewolves, wouldn’t her gaining Stephanie’s hokhmah give her control over my vampires?”
Karl hesitated, not sure what the queen was thinking. “Yes, I believe so.”
Patricia’s eyes narrowed. “Then by all means, we must indeed get you to Stephanie’s kingdom, and you must retrieve Shawna as quickly as possible, before Stephanie learns what you have told me and uses Shawna to take my kingdom.”
Karl started to say he thought that unlikely, then forbore saying anything at all. After all Shawna had accomplished without him in the last world, he no longer wanted to predict what she might or might not do.
The queen turned to the count. “Drac, will you please organize an escort, to leave at the next sunset?”
Dracula nodded. “Of course, my love.”
To Karl, Patricia said, “Seraphina will show you back to your quarters.”
“I would prefer another escort, Your Majesty.”
Patricia smiled sweetly. “Seraphina will show you back to your quarters.” She nodded to Dracula, who went out, presumably to fetch the lady-in-waiting, who presumably, was . . . well, waiting, somewhere nearby.
Karl sighed. “Yes, Your Majesty.” Perhaps she will refrain from releasing her glamor. It was only to impress me. It meant nothing more.
Seraphina appeared in short order, bowed to the queen, smiled at Karl, and turned with a sweep of her hand to indicate he should accompany her.
“Seraphina,” said the queen as they approached the door.
Seraphina turned and looked back.
“No drinking.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Seraphina smiled at Karl. “Shall we?”
As they stepped out into the hallway, her glamor came back, full-force, and he groaned. At least, if she obeys the queen, she won’t bite me, he thought. But after two more steps, he was desperately hoping she would.
And so she did, after a fashion, among a great many other things, once they were back in his tower room, the end result of which left him quite thoroughly drained . . . though not, admittedly, of blood.