Last Train to Parthenia
Danielle de Valera
Copyright Danielle de Valera 2015
Last Train to Parthenia
Cover and glyphs by by C S McClellan
All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
If you would like to do any of the above, please seek permission first by contacting the author at [email protected]
ISBN 978 0 9923311 9 1
Published in the United States by Old Tiger Books.
Table of Contents
Story start
Halfway
Last scene
About the author
More Star, O’Neill and Lawson (aka God) stories
Other works by this author
My sincere thanks to John Beresford of the UK, who kindly allowed me to use his stunning phototgraph entitled “Swindon Silhouette” for the cover of this story. To view more of John’s great photography, go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/38136824@N08/ If you love steam trains, this site is to die for.
Thank you, John.
Last Train to Parthenia
He found the amulet on a dark and drizzly night when the city seemed asleep on his way to work. His gang worked from midnight to dawn in the inner-city circle of StateRail, Sydney, walking the tracks trailing spot welding gear to repair any cracks they found in the rails. Mostly they were underground, walking miles every shift to ensure the safety of those thousands of commuters who entrusted their lives every day to StateRail.
Occasionally they found strangers in the tunnels: sobbing girls with bottles of vodka, waiting for the first morning train to despatch them; truculent men with similar intentions.
“What happens to these people?” Johnson asked Colin, the head ganger, after he’d encountered his first would-be suicide.
“We take them back to the office, Bob. The manager gives them a dressing down.”
“That’s all?”
Colin placed a hand on Johnson’s shoulder. “If they’re really ratty, someone calls the mental health team.”
How many people, Johnson wondered, used the railway to top themselves? StateRail didn’t advertise, never seemed to put out any figures.
Still, work on the tracks of the inner-city circle suited him. Although he was ten years older than the rest of the gang, he had no trouble. He’d been walking miles at night for years—insomnia was one of the many problems he’d suffered after Vietnam.
The concentration needed for the job suited him, too. It was almost a meditation: eyes on the rails, lights from the gang’s helmets flashing across the soot-encrusted walls of tunnels. Occasionally odd things happened that kept them on their toes—an unscheduled engine passing through, for instance. Although they carried mobiles to warn them of these trains, the reception didn’t always work. The gang had to be ready to get the welder off the rails at a moment’s notice and hurry to the safety of the alcoves if they were in a tunnel, or a safety hole if they were in the open.
The first time Johnson crouched in a safety hole with Colin, clinging to the safety rail, waiting for the train they’d been warned was coming, he found himself more frightened than he’d been in Vietnam.
“Why can’t we go to a tunnel alcove?” he’d asked Colin when he heard the train whistle at the approach to the tunnel.
“Because you need to learn this, Bob,” Colin replied. “We’re quite safe here as long as you hold on to the rail real tight.” The main danger with fast trains, he’d added, was that you could be caught in the slipstream and pulled under.
The train seemed to be bearing straight down on them.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Johnson yelled to Colin.
“Just hold on tight!”
The train thundered towards them. Just when he was certain they were going to be annihilated, Johnson saw that it was on a path that took it beside, not over, them. The power of the slipstream was incredible, like an evil force that longed to drag them under. Johnson hung on to the safety rail and prayed. He hadn’t prayed in a long time.
“Still like working here?” Colin grinned after the train had passed.
Johnson answered yes. But from then on he listened even harder for unscheduled trains that might use the inner-city circle during their shift. They averaged about two alarms of this kind a month.
On the night he found the amulet, the gang had just survived another unscheduled train. Walking back to the spot they’d hastily abandoned, Johnson caught sight of something on the tracks, glinting in the light from his helmet. He dropped behind and picked it up. It was a bracelet, made perhaps of pewter. A beautiful piece of work.
Johnson decided to regard it as an amulet. The word amulet came up a lot in the fantasy novels he devoured in his off-time. It sounded more mysterious than bracelet, and seemed to have connotations of power. He shoved the bracelet down deep into the pocket of his overalls. He didn’t want it handled by anyone else. It was his.
He kept his treasure hidden through that shift and took it home with him that morning. Usually he’d have breakfast at some greasy spoon, propped in a graffitied booth with the latest sword-and-sorcery magazine he’d bought from the sleepy newsagent in Central Station’s main concourse. This morning was different; he went straight home. He wanted to examine his find in peace, and under a good light.
He arrived home shortly after sunrise, and checked the house. Empty. Laurel was out somewhere, as usual, catting around. For years Johnson had tiptoed around the frail eggshell that was his marriage, taking manual jobs away from home whenever he could get them. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, he thought. Whoever wrote those words knew what they were talking about.
Sometimes, when Johnson looked at his wife, he was surprised to discover that she was still beautiful. But her pale blonde beauty had a brittle quality. She was TV beautiful. He’d married her for her beauty, on the rebound from Star’s dark good looks. Now here he was. With his new night job their lives hardly overlapped at all.
Good.
With Laurel out, Johnson felt it was safe to take out his treasure. He tossed a slab of butter into a frying pan, added a T-bone steak, a handful of mushrooms and a sliced onion and sat down to examine the bracelet.
His find was made of some kind of silver. Strange were the hieroglyphs carved into it, unlike anything he’d seen before. They were more like ... runes. He considered for a moment. Didn’t Tolkien’s The Hobbit have runes on the end papers?
Johnson rummaged about in the bookcase where the rarely used books were stacked on the bottom shelf. Half the books were romance novels (Laurel’s); half were fantasy (his). By the time he’d found The Hobbit, the meal was cooked. He forked the steak, onion rings and mushrooms onto a plate, made a cup of coffee and sat down with the book, a ball point pen and a notepad. He had a hard time at first; Tolkien never gave the alphabet for runes, only some writing in runes on the front endpapers and its translation later on in the text.
By the time Johnson had finished his meal he had a working alphabet. With this he set to deciphering the runes on the bracelet. The translation, when he’d finished, read:
To those whose work is still undone,
Wish on the rays of the rising sun.
With this gift you will win through,
Though the fiends of Hell oppose you.
Wish on the rays of the rising sun—what kind of advice was that? Still, Johnson put the amulet back in the pocket of his overalls. Next morning, as he stood on the steps after his shift underground he noticed the sun rising above the old Grace Bros building across the road from Central Station. He wished ve
ry hard on it but nothing happened. Afterwards he felt like a fool.
From then on, though, he wouldn’t go to work without the amulet. He wore it on his left forearm under his long-sleeved overalls. So it didn’t do anything—so what? It made him feel special, like the hero in a Robert E Howard novel. It was a little touch of fantasy in a world that was too real. Something to bring him luck in that strange, forsaken underground.
Perhaps the accident happened because the gang was almost out of the tunnel. Colin and Johnson, working ahead, found themselves with no alcoves to retreat to except the ones they’d already passed—and that meant running back, towards the train.
Johnson panicked when he heard the train whistling behind him. He ran out of the tunnel, away from the train and onto the clear tracks. Then he realised that he couldn’t climb the face of the sheer cutting to the west, and he wouldn’t survive the drop down the steep embankment to the east.
He dithered. Dimly through his panic he could hear Colin shouting, “Back here, Bob, back here!”
By now the train was shrieking like a demon out of hell as it bore down on him. Johnson could hear the screech of metal on metal as the driver applied the brakes. At the last moment Colin came out of nowhere, pushed him into the safety hole he hadn’t seen in his panic and tumbled in behind him—Colin knew every safety hole and every alcove; he’d worked the inner-city circle for years.
Johnson huddled there as the lone engine went rushing by. It had been a close call. When the panic subsided, he was horrified to find himself looking at two broken bodies lying on the track in front of him.
One body was Colin’s.
Oh god, Johnson thought. Colin had gone into the hole behind him. He mustn’t have had time to get securely in before the train reached them, and the slipstream had pulled him out. The other body was a mystery. It lay, face down, too teribly damaged for Johnson to want to inspect it closely. The train had not not stopped. With slipstream accidents, engine drivers rarely knew they had happened until later.
A strange mist began to envelope the scene. The signals at the side of the track disappeared. Johnson’s ears were ringing. He looked around. The rest of the gang had been able to take refuge in the tunnel alcoves. Now they came running. Johnson felt numb. He knew he should wait for the police to arrive and give a statement. He knew he should report somewhere for counselling. All he wanted to do was go home.
He drifted away.
Central’s Station’s clock read 5.01 a.m. as Johnson made his way unnoticed through the main concourse and out into the daylight. He leaned his back against one of the rough sandstone pillars that formed the colonnade at the entrance to Central and tried to push the sight of Colin’s body from his mind. A great wave of grief swept over him. Everyone he cared for seemed to disappear or die. Everything he touched turned to rubble.
Eventually the sun began to rise over the top of the Grace Bros building opposite; Johnson could feel the light on his closed eyelids. Unthinking, he put up his left hand to shield his eyes from the glare. He was wishing at the time, wishing with all his heart that things had been different. That his brother Will was still alive and that Star still loved him. This world was full of shit. You worked like a dog all your life, then you died. Why couldn’t he have been born in a Robert E Howard world, full of broadswords and magic and glamorous women needing to be saved from a fate worse than death?
The light hit the amulet, exposed as he lifted his hand against the sunlight. He felt a blinding flash and a sense of impact, as if he had fallen from a great height but had landed, upon his feet, unhurt.
Johnson found himself standing on a parapet, his back pressed hard against a rough sandstone wall. The sun was just rising over the ancient city below him, touching with gold the towers and minarets that spread out towards the stone walls encircling the city. As he watched, the alleys below him began to spring into life. In one quarter a bazaar was opening. Merchants led donkeys. Barefoot girls, brightly dressed, carried earthenware pots upon their heads. In the distance he saw the great bronze doors to the city swing open to admit a string of camels, heavily laden, riders swaying wearily in their saddles.
Could it be? Had the bracelet actually worked?
Someone cried out in the room behind him. “Forgive me, Great Ones, for what I am about to do!”
Now what? Johnson pushed open the heavy curtains that draped the window to the parapet and looked inside. In the centre of the room knelt a young woman with long dark hair held back from her face by a circlet of gold. She looked a lot like Star, although she was at least ten years younger. She wore golden breastplates and a jewelled girdle, from which hung a long skirt of some filmy material.
She was holding a ten-inch knife to her breast.
As Johnson watched, she positioned the knife against her chest and began to lean onto it in earnest. Johnson couldn’t take any more. He leapt into the room, wrested the knife from the strange woman’s grasp and tossed it away. She jumped to her feet and rounded on him.
“What do you here in the chamber of Queen L’Etoile?”
Johnson looked about him. Richly woven tapestries hung on the stone walls. Ornate carpets covered most of the marble floor. In a curtained alcove he could see a bed strewn with silks and furs.
“How got you past my guards?” the young woman was shouting. “Are you some wizard from the outlands, sent by Yogoroth the Accursed to prevent my escape from him even into hell?” She noticed the overalls he was wearing and the cell phone that hung at his belt. “You are strangely accoutred, even for an outlander. Have you been sent by the gods to help me?”
Johnson decided to answer yes to this question until he could figure out what was going on. It was like being in a film, he thought. Only trouble was, he hadn’t read the script. He led the young woman to a sofa strewn with cushions.
“What is your name, stranger?” she asked. “From whence have you come?”
“I live in Annandale,” he answered. “My name’s Bob Johnson.” Keep it short, he thought.
“Johnson of Annandale.” The young queen considered this. “I have not heard of you—but that matters not if you have come to help me.” She rose and, approaching a carved ebony table, poured wine from a carafe into two matching goblets. “It seems the gods have answered my prayers. We will drink to them.”
Johnson took the goblet from the young queen’s hand and downed the wine in a single gulp. He studied her. On her feet were small silk slippers, encrusted with pearls. On her arms were many bracelets that clinked when she poured the wine. Legs to die for gleamed through the see-through material of her skirt. Well, he thought to himself, he’d asked for glamour.
“P’raps we could have coffee sometime,” he murmured.
“You wish coffee, Johnson—you prefer coffee to wine?” The young woman strode to a nearby wall and gave three tugs on a long velvet rope that hung beside a tapestry.
Within minutes a young man appeared, clad in sandals, a leather belt and a loincloth. A scimitar hung at his side. He carried a copper tray, on which stood a carafe of coffee and a number of matching cups.
“This is Bildethius,” the woman said, “and I am L’Etoile, queen of Parthenia.”
The servant bowed as he set down the tray. For a second Johnson was reminded of his dead brother Will, but the likeness was only fleeting. L’Etoile dismissed the servant and poured the coffee herself. All traces of her former distress seemed to have left her.
“Listen, warrior. Tomorrow at dawn I am to be forcibly wed to Yogoroth, the sorcerer who lives in yonder tower.” She pointed through the window to a stone tower standing two hundred metres away. The tower rose up from a walled garden whose bushes bore strange black flowers that nodded in the early morning breeze.
Johnson helped himself to another cup of coffee. Now there was a sorcerer to contend with. Well, he had asked for magic. He tried to remember what else he’d asked for. He had a feeling he might have mentioned broadswords.
L’Etoile continued. “
My father, Aeides the Wise, died one moon ago. I am his only child, come but lately to the throne. But with nameless rites and many promises, Yogoroth has won the army to his will, and the common people are powerless against him. He plans to marry me and seize the kingdom, for once the marriage is consummated,” she shivered, “he will become the rightful king of Parthenia. But I will die before I allow myself to fall into the hands of such a monster.”
The same mist he had seen on the tracks after the accident hung for a moment in the room. Johnson rubbed at his eyes to clear it.
“The palace guard?”
“They are only fifty. I would be sending them to their deaths if I told them to oppose Yogoroth on the morrow. Now let us discuss your plan to rescue me.”
But Johnson had no plan. He guessed it was in the script he didn’t have.
“No plan!” L’Etoile exclaimed. “Are you so beloved of the gods? A wizard, then, you must be a wizard who has the ear of the Great Ones.”
Johnson thought of Colin’s body lying on the tracks. “I am no wizard,” he said.
L’Etoile seemed determined not to be discouraged. “Then you are a great warrior from the outlands.”
Bob Johnson raked his hand through his hair. Things were bloody confusing. As he raised his hand the amulet on his left arm came into view, glinting dully.
At the sight of the talisman the queen gave a shriek and leapt from the sofa “The magic amulet of Zagar! So that is how you came here. With this, you will be able to slay Yogoroth and give me back my kingdom.”
Johnson did not answer her. He felt cold. Shock, he thought. The icy, drop-off chemicals of delayed shock were creeping through his veins.
“I will reward you well, of course,” L’Etoile said, misunderstanding his grim silence. “Come now, if you do not have a plan, I do.”
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