Sebastian

have gone back to the school at some point and taken it. Damn foolish of her to take the risk."
    "She knew there was trouble at the school." Sebastian heard the hesitation in his voice and hated it, but he knew Lee understood the question beneath the statement.
    "Glorianna believes in letting people make their own choices, good or bad, but if she'd suspected the Eater could make this kind of attack, she would have told you straight out not to go to the school. And if she decided not to tell you straight out, she has a connection with Ephemera no other Landscaper can match. You would have started out on the journey, but she would have made sure you couldn't reach the school."
    Sebastian felt one knot of tension ease inside him, swiftly replaced by another. "What's going to happen to Ephemera?"
    "Most of the Landscapers and Bridges don't live at the school. They wouldn't have been caught in the attack. Even if the Landscapers came back to their gardens, as soon as they realized they were in danger, they'd be only a step away from escaping into another of their landscapes."
    Sebastian studied his cousin. "You should never lie to someone who has played cards with you. You give too much away."

    "Then I'm lucky I've never played cards with anyone at the school, since I've had a lifetime's worth of experience lying to them" Lee snapped. Then he looked out over the water. "The school is a focal point because the gardens are there. If a Landscaper comes back to the school through her garden and realizes something bad has happened, she'll probably be able to get out again before she's attacked, but…"
    "She won't have access to all the landscapes in her keeping, will she?"
    "I'm not sure. My mother can step from one of her landscapes to another without going back to her garden, but she's a Level Five Landscaper. Landscapers below that level don't have the skill to do that.
    They're dependent on having access to their gardens."
    "So what happens to Ephemera?"
    Lee closed his eyes. "The Landscapers' resonance will last a few weeks, maybe a month, without being renewed. After that…" He swallowed hard. "After that, there won't be anyone standing between Ephemera and the human heart, so it will begin manifesting everything in response to all those emotions.
    A child will have a temper tantrum, and the family's well will go dry. A farmer will have an argument with his wife, and when he goes out to work in the fields, his plow horse will step into a hole that suddenly appears and break a leg. People will blame one another for their troubles, and everything will get worse and worse because the Dark currents will get stronger and stronger—and the Eater of the World will be able to use all those dark emotions to shape terrors made from people's deepest fears."
    "Guardians and Guides," Sebastian whispered.
    Lee opened his eyes and stood up. "I have to go."
    Sebastian stood as well. "Go where? You can't go to the school."
    "We have to assume all the Landscapers who were at the school are dead. And all the Bridges who were there as well. But that means the Eater has access to all the landscapes connected to those gardens."
    "So where are you going?" Sebastian asked, hurrying after his cousin as Lee left the island and strode across the bridge.
    "I have to break the bridges between Glorianna's landscapes and the rest of Ephemera. I have to break as many as I can, as fast as I can. I can start with the ones that cross over into Sanctuary."
    As they reached the shore, Sebastian grabbed Lee's arm, pulling his cousin around to face him. "You're going to cut people off with no way to escape that thing?"
    "I'm going to do what I can to save what I can," Lee replied. "Guardians and Guides, Sebastian! We need some safe ground that the Eater can't reach, or we'll never be able to gather enough force to fight It."
    It made sense, but… "So you're going to save Sanctuary." He felt cold… and so alone.
    Lee gave him a strange look. "I'm going to close off Glorianna's landscapes. I'll break the bridges that connect them to outside landscapes. We'll be isolated from the rest of Ephemera, but the landscapes are diverse enough to provide people with everything they really need."
    "But you said… Sanctuary."
    Lee smiled with bitter humor. "This is one of Belladonna's landscapes. Sanctuary and the Den are connected. Not directly, but they're connected."

    The Den. Sebastian shook his head. "There are dozens of ways into the Den, and the Eater has