“What?”
“No ‘I told you so’.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“It wasn’t?” I said, skeptical. “What were you going to say, then?”
“Never mind.” She turned away, lifting her chin indignantly.
“Hm,” I grunted, pulling a boot out of the muck to stand on a fallen tree. I turned the way we had come. The only indication of the end of the swamp was a slight lightening of the mists. “Do you think we’re in far enough?”
“He knew we were here the moment we stepped foot in sh—”
“Of courssse I know you’re here.”
We both jumped and turned on the spot. I lost my balance and slipped off the log. Some miracle kept me upright and my upper half dry. Once I regained my footing—as much as I could in the sludge at the bottom of the swamp water—it took a full thirty seconds of searching to find Sholto’s cloaked figure in a tree ten yards away.
“Sholto,” I said.
“Yesss.”
“You startled me.”
“Yesss.”
“Sorry for coming on your lands,” I said.
“You are welcome, Gatekeeper.”
I let the title slide.
Sholto’s dark hood turned to regard Seanna. “Ashling,” he said in way of greeting.
Seanna remained silent and stiff as a board.
“You must be in dire ssstraits to come into my swamp,” Sholto hissed.
“No,’ I said. “No, it was my idea. I wanted to thank you for helping us before.”
He turned on the branch he stood and slithered down the dead tree. It happened so fast, I couldn’t quite tell how he achieved it. He could have slid or crawled down using his sharp claws. Either one was a possibility. While he preferred to stay beneath his brown robes, there was no doubt he was a lizard man under them. Long, lean body covered in scales. Stubbed snout. Yellow eyes with slits for pupils. Thick tail. The whole nine yards.
“No thanksss isss necessary for a Gatekeeper,” he said as he stepped toward us, making only the barest of ripples in the black water.
“Well, I’m not a Gatekeeper anymore,” I said.
“No?”
I might have caught a glimpse of his eyes under the shadowed hood, but it could have been my imagination, too. “Nope. I lost those abilities.”
“Did you?”
“Uh, yeah.” Why did everybody doubt me on this planet?
Sholto hissed, the hood nodding once.
“Um, do you know how Minotaur faired after the, uh, fight?”
“Sssavage beast, that one isss.”
“Yeah, he’s a really good fighter.”
“We dissspatched those foul creatures and your friend went hisss own way.”
I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. It was a small weight off my shoulders to know both Sholto and Minotaur survived my escape. “That’sss…ahem…That’s good. I was worried about you both.”
“Worry not.”
“Okay, thanks.” I took a step back the way we came. “Well, I’m sorry if we disturbed you. I just wanted to say thank you and all. We’ll be out of your swamp.”
“The day is low,” Sholto said. “You don’t wisssh to stay the night?”
Seanna stiffened even more.
“No,” I said. “No, thank you. We have a camp just over there.”
“Very well,” he said, nodding his head. “It is safer here, but you will be close enough. I will instruct the creatures of my ssswamp to watch over you.”
“Oh.” I suppressed a shudder. I didn’t know how I felt about swamp creatures watching over us sleeping. “That’s not necessary.”
“It is no trouble for the Gatekeeper.”
I grimaced. “Gatekeeper. Sure.”
“Ssstill believe you’re not?”
“No gateway. No mind floaty thing.” I waved my hand around the swamp. “No Gatekeeper.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said.
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me. My powers are gone. Why does everybody think differently? I think I would know.”
“The ssstorms tell of it.”
“The storms.”
Nod.
“Tell of what?”
“Your future.”
“Okaaaay. What storms.”
The hood titled up to the sky somewhere above the stinking mists. “The ssstorms.”
“Oh, sure,” I muttered. “Thanks. I’m glad you are fine.”
Sholto took a step back, disappearing into the swamp before we had a chance to even turn to leave ourselves.
Seanna and I made our way out of the swamp as fast as possible. We came out only slightly off target from our camp.
That night, after the birds came back smelling like blood and guts, I settled down on a soft patch of grass. I didn’t think I’d ever get to sleep. A case of creepy-crawlies infected my skin every time I closed my eyes. I was wrong, though. I fell asleep pretty quickly and dreamed of ominous rolling thunder.
20
In clutches
I woke the next morning with the rolling thunder chasing me from sleep. I shook off the feeling that there were voices hidden in the dream rumbles and struggled to a sitting position. For once, I was awake at what I hoped was a reasonable time for Seanna. Even the birds looked like they had just woken up. They fluffed and pulled at loose feathers.
Seanna sat a little ways away, staring into the dark before dawn. I thought she would have a word to say about me finally waking up at a decent hour—seeing as how she liked to point out when I slept in—but she was too preoccupied to notice.
“We should get going soon,” I said. When she didn’t reply, I added, “If we want to make it to Delicia today, I think the earlier the better.”
Still, nothing from her.
“You know this whole quiet, distant thing is a little unnerving,” I said.
“Hm?”
“That.”
“What?”
“This is exactly how you acted as you marched me right up to Daresh,” I reminded her.
“I’m not acting like anything,” she protested, finally turning her attention to me.
“You’re not so distracted that you didn’t even notice the birds leave like five minutes ago?” I asked.
“What?” She jumped and turned to find the birds still fretting over their feathers. “Not funny.”
“Just proving a point,” I said.
“Which is?”
“What I just said. You’re acting like before. Distant. Troubled. Like you have some inner conflict you’re waging. Like you’re trying to decide whether to hand me over to a madman or not.”
“How many times are we going to go through this?” she asked.
“You can’t exactly blame me for being…cautious given our track record.”
Her shoulders slumped and she breathed a long, exaggerated sigh. “What can I do to prove to you that this time is different?”
“I don’t know if you can,” I said honestly.
“Then why keep going through this time and again?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe to let you know I’m not following you as blindly as I did before.”
“Great. Don’t,” she said. “But when you find out I’m not lying to you, you’ll owe me an apology.”
“We’ll see.” I stood and started gathering my things into the pack. “What were you thinking about anyways?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just now. You were so gone you might as well have been back on Earth.”
A shadow passed over her face and her thin eyebrows drew closer together. It was only a slight change in facial expression but for Seanna it might as well have been a shouted swear word.
“No hiding things from me,” I said.
She nodded, took a breath, took another, and finally spoke. “I had…troubling dreams last night.”
“Welcome to the club,” I muttered.
<
br /> “It’s not like you. You have them nearly every night.”
“How do you know that?”
“You mutter in your sleep. Sometimes loudly.” She shook her head like she was trying to break the dreams loose from her mind. “I…Ashlings rarely dream about anything other than the Mother Tree. When we are cut off from her presence our dreams become less benign. I haven’t had dreams like this since She withdrew her presence from me because of the deceit with you. You noticed I didn’t sleep much. That’s why.”
I wanted to snap at her. Ask her how she went through with it even though she had such a huge warning sign that what she had been doing wasn’t right. I held my tongue, though. “What did you dream?”
“Voices,” she whispered.
A chill ran up my spine. “What did they say?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It sounded like gibberish, really. Or they spoke in a tongue I’ve never heard before.”
The whispers from my dreams echoed in my head. Cold. Distant. Harsh. Gibberish.
“I don’t even know if I was dreaming, really,” she said. “I didn’t see anything. It was like I was awake but with my eyes closed, trying to make out what was being said around me.”
“Are you sure you were asleep?”
“Yes. I tried to force my eyes open to look around—find the source. They wouldn’t obey.”
I waited for her to mention thunder but she didn’t. I hoped it was just some distant storm passing while the voices I heard were a dream. She had heard them but not the thunder. Did that mean it was only in my head—in my dreams? And what did it mean?
I mentally shooed it away like a fly. I didn’t want to dwell on it. All it did was distract me from my goal. Find Aoife and get us both off this planet.
I abruptly stood up straight. “We should get going.”
She nodded. “Yes, I am anxious for this part of our journey to be over with.”
“You and me, both.”
***
We flew over the slash of rot that was Sholto’s home pretty quickly and soon nothing but the tall grass of the plains passed underneath us. I watched it from Click’s back, glad for our own little Lord of the Rings’ Deus ex Machina. While I had Aoife and the novelty of a creature like Minotaur for company, the first trek across these plains of foot had been a bore.
Until the Balataur attacked us, that is. It had been a less than exciting journey until then. Aoife didn’t think I was smart enough to carry a conversation with her or something. Minotaur rarely spoke, period. Seanna was deep in her crisis of character. That left me alone with my thoughts and nothing to look at but sky and grass.
High above plains, I still didn’t have a conversation partner, but at least the view was different. I could still see the swamp and Seanna’s home beyond. If I looked heard enough, I could even make out the Jo-Shar’s mountain.
Okay, so the view wasn’t that thrilling. Once the novelty of flying that high on a giant bird wore off, I was left with my thoughts, grass below, and sky above.
Still, it was better than nothing. I watched the color of the ground change as the different grasses rolled below. It wasn’t something I noticed walking through them. Then it had been the same old grass everywhere. From up in the sky, I could tell every...
Something caught my eye. At first, I thought it was just a change in grass color as it blew in the wind, but the dark blotch seemed to be moving forward.
“Hey,” I called out.
Click turned his head and his eye bobbed up and down as he looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “Hey!”
Seanna seemed still to be in her own little world. She stared at the back of Red Beak’s head.
“Seanna!”
That finally got her attention. She glanced my way. I pointed to our left towards the horizon. She turned and visibly stiffened.
“What is it?” I asked.
She looked at me and said nothing, but I could tell she didn’t think it was good. “Do you want to take a look?”
I hesitated. My first instinct was to stay far away, but curiosity is a powerful thing. Besides, we were so far up in the air, what could possibly go wrong? I nodded.
She passed silent communication to the birds and they dipped to the left, turning toward the dark mass. We covered the ground quickly and it didn’t take long to figure out its identity. It was an army. A massive one. That was fairly obvious from a few miles out. What was a formless, moving shape became a collection of individuals marching toward a common goal. As we flew even closer, the true nature of those individuals became clear. Balataurs.
I glanced at Seanna, but she was intent on the army below. No doubt, with her stronger eyesight, she had figured out what they were long before I did.
“Where are they going?” I called to her.
We circled once over the army, Seanna staring down at them while the large beasts shook fists and weapons up at us. She looked to the horizon and then at me.
“Delicia,” she said, her eyes round.
It took a moment for the word to sink in like she had spoken it in her native language. When it finally dawned on me, my heart sank. So many things ran through my mind until they started bumping into each other. We had to get to Delicia before the army. If we traveled swiftly, we could get in and out with what information we could gather about Aoife. I felt a duty to warn the people of Delicia, too. Especially those in the Underground who had helped us escape.
“We have to get there quickly,” Seanna said.
That was something we could agree on. She leaned into Red Beak’s neck as the bird flapped hard, gaining speed in a burst of movement.
Following its mate’s lead, Click accelerated at a frightening pace. I pushed as hard as I could into the bird, praying I didn’t fall off. We were going awful fast and it was a long way down with no telekinesis to break my fall.
Click let out an earsplitting screech. I looked up to see dots in the air ahead of us. Four of them. They were nothing more than specks in the sky but I knew down in my bones what they were. The dragon machines.
Both birds dipped and whirled around to go the other way. Surely the fast birds could outrun the dragons. We didn’t have a chance to find out if they could or not. Our new direction put us in the path of three more machines closer than the others.
“We’re surrounded,” I yelled the obvious at Seanna.
Red Beak released a scream, her talons clenching in the air. The birds were eager for the fight but what chance did they have against seven of those things?
“Down!” Seanna said.
The birds immediately followed the spoken and unspoken command. They folded their wings to their body and angled toward the plains below.
“What are you doing?” I called out to her.
“This is not their fight,” she yelled back.
I didn’t have time to respond. The ground came at us quickly. Within moments, the birds cut through the tall grass and landed. Seanna hopped off Red Beak and I followed suit.
“What are you doing?” I demanded again, running up to her with my eyes on the dragon machines closing in above.
She held up a hand and stared at her bird for a moment. Red Beak twitched, her black eyes going to the sky above and then back to Seanna. She squawked once and took off. Click followed.
“What are you doing?” A third time asking the desperate question brought a squeak to my voice.
“This is not their fight,” she said again. “I will not be responsible for their deaths, which is a certainty against these odds. The dragons are after us, not them.”
“Great, but you just made it us against them.” I watched the birds zoom away, staying low to avoid the dragon machines coming in from up high.
“We could not fight them, nor could we outrun them surrounded like we were. This way we all have a chance of surviving this.”
“How the hell do we have a chance?” I yelled.
“We run,” she said. “F
ind grass tall enough to hide in. That is our only chance, which is better than no chance at all.”
“I—”
“Talk later.” She grabbed my arm and yanked. “Run now.”
We pushed into the grass, which only came to my waist. I knew there were parts of the plains that had grass taller than me, but what were the chances we’d find a spot like that? And would it be good enough to hide us from overhead?
Turned out, we didn’t really have a chance to find out. After a short fifty-yard run, we found ourselves face to face with a group of Balataur. Skidding to a halt, we tried to change direction but a quick glance over the plains showed beasts closing in from all sides.
“Maybe now’s a good time to get your little stick thing out,” I said, yanking my escrima from the pack over my shoulders.
“Not yet,” she said.
“When will it be time?” I asked.
“I won’t waste the magic on a useless situation.”
“It’s not useless,” I insisted, gripping my sticks harder as they closed in on us. “Yet.”
The first of the Balataur came at us in a flash, grasping with its large hands. I spun, bringing a stick down on the wrist. Something snapped deep inside the beast’s bones. Before it could utter a sound, my second stick smashed it across the snout. Its head snapped back, a yellowed tooth glinting in the sunlight as it flew into the grass. The thing dropped to the ground.
I had no time to register the shock of how effective the blows were. More of them came at us. They were a motley collection of minotaur-like creatures. Large with fur of all sorts of colors, cow heads, and horns of varying sizes.
“Gaige!” Seanna shouted.
I stepped to meet the next closest monster. It saw its fellow on the ground and registered that I was armed too late. Two quick strikes and a snap-kick to his steer balls dropped him to his knees, clutching himself in pain.
I didn’t have the time to take him out of the fight completely before another was on me. This one, a particularly large and smelly specimen, wasn’t messing around. It swung an axe with a blade bigger than my head. I ducked out of the way and cracked an escrima on the side of its knee. Its momentum and lack of stability sent it pitching forward into the grass.
“Gaige!” Seanna called again.
Something cut through the heat swarming my mind. I twirled, thinking I’d find her in trouble. Instead, I found her standing with hands in the air.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 70
