Belladonna

Michael's voice sharpened. "Is that what the two of you are trying not to say? That because people had an argument and some harsh words were said, the world changed and a man died because of it?"
    Shocked gasps. One of the women — maybe Caitlin — whimpered.
    "We don't know," Glorianna said, giving him the courtesy of looking him in the eyes. "I don't think a chunk of the road suddenly disappeared out from under the carriage, dropping man and horse to the bottom of the lake. I think it's more likely the landscapes altered, and Ephemera created a moat, of sorts, around Lighthaven."
    Suddenly Michael realized what she wasn't quite saying: The lake was that unnatural dark patch in the sea, the place where Glorianna had fainted in his arms. Somehow, Ephemera had plopped Lighthaven in the middle ofthat dark patch, which Lee and Glorianna were now calling a lake. And since that made no sense to him, he focused on something he hoped wasn't quite so slippery to grasp.
    "So the driver might be standing in the same spot, wondering why the road is suddenly leading right into a lake?"
    "He could be." Glorianna took a healthy swallow of brandy. "Or he could have stared at it for a minute or two and then driven hack to Atwater as fast as he could."
    "To tell them what?" Brighid asked.
    Michael studied his aunt. She looked pale, and she had to be hurting still from the injuries caused in the fire. It would have eased his own nerves a bit if she'd gone off to rest. But he hadn't known, and she had never said, that she had been more than a Lady of Light, that she had been their leader.
    She belonged here. He could see it. Even in pain, even in distress over the things that had happened there was an ease in the way she held herself, as if the land itself nourished something inside her — something that had starved during the years she had lived in Raven's Hill.
    He'd had no idea what she had given up in order to answer the plea of a young boy who had been desperate to avoid being put in the orphans home and just as desperate not to lose his little sister, the only family he had left.
    Brighid caught him looking — and returned the look.
    Power in her eyes. The kind of power that had been kept hidden all the years she had lived outside these walls. Maybe — he glanced at Merrill, making a quick judgment of the way she was watching Brighid — had been kept hidden all the years she had lived here as well.
    "We won't know that — or what's on the other side of the boundary — until one of us is standing in the other landscape and looking at the lake from that side," Glorianna said in response to Brighid's question.
    "The problem is, we don't know if the rest of the White Isle is the landscape on the other side of the lake. And Caitlin hasn't had the training to know how to take the step between here and there to reach one of her landscapes or her garden, so — "
    "She's not going back to Raven's Hill," Michael said fiercely. "Especially not alone."
    "Her garden isn't rooted in Raven's Hill," Glorianna said. "It never was. Our immediate problem is how to get across a lake of undetermined size with neither boat nor oars — and no idea of what now resides in that lake since it's still a dark landscape."
    Michael shuddered. The weed's that floated just beneath the surface had looked similar to the seaweed that had marked that patch of dark water, but Lee had felt reasonably certain the water was fresh, not salt. Different... and yet the same. So Michael took a long swallow of brandy and wished there wasn't a reason to wonder ... and worry ... about what might be waiting for any fool who tried to cross that lake.
    Lee dug in his jacket pocket. "I've got a solution to that particular problem. Kenneday gave me this." He held out a compass and grinned at his sister.
    Glorianna looked at the compass and started hooting with laughter while everyone else just looked puzzled
    "I asked him for something small that I could carry and use if I needed a way back to the ship. So he gave me this."
    Glorianna almost got herself under control — and then got the hiccups.
    "One shot — hic — bridge?" she asked.
    Lee nodded. "It should put me on the deck of the ship. If I leave now, I shouldn't be too far behind the driver and whatever story he'll be telling. Might even get there ahead of him. I'll reassure Kenneday that we're all in one piece, then have him help me get a wagon and maybe a rowboat. We couldn't see the other shore because of the