Beyond the Dark Gate

by R. V. Johnson

  A three-dimensional image filled the triangle, vivid and life-like with rich detail right up to her palms. Garbed in the brown and green kell leather of the forest, a silver-haired man with matching close-cropped beard ran nimbly along a well-beaten trail.

  Behind the man, a tall smooth-faced man with four long-bladed spear tips poking over his shoulders followed. The tall man led a muscular man wearing a black half cloak by a rope tied at the wrists. A wide man wearing a great axe strapped to the side of his brown kell leather brought up the rear.

  Crystalyn concentrated on the man leading the procession. “Camoe Shadoe, I would speak with you about Jade.”

  The silver-haired man slid to a stop, those behind halting abruptly. His firm but soft tone carried a promise of violence into the recesses of her mind; he was one who knew how to dispatch an enemy with proficiency. “You have but one opportunity to identify yourself before I sever this connection.”

  “I am Jade’s sister, Crystalyn.”

  “Why do you hide from my view?”

  Crystalyn shrugged though he’d just admitted to not seeing her. “I’m not certain why you can’t see me, but I can you. I’m Jade’s sister, and I have knowledge of her whereabouts.”

  Camoe glanced up, his blue eyes fading to light gray. “How do I know you are truly her sibling?” he asked, his words ringing softly in her mind.

  “There’s something you both know, but others may not. When Jade fell into the underground grotto into the water, you started a fire to keep her from freezing to death.”

  Camoe’s eyes darkened as his eyebrows rose. “What happened after the fire burned low?”

  Crystalyn wracked her memory. Only one thing stood out from Jade’s retelling of her harrowing escape. Though she didn’t think it what the druid searched for, she mentioned it anyway. “Something bad sniffed outside your hiding place.”

  Camoe smiled, lighting his now dark blue eyes briefly. “Yes, I suspect they were Dark hounds. I greet you, elder sister of Jade. What is the nature of this contacting?”

  Though Jade had spoken of it, Crystalyn found the druid’s eyes unnerving for some reason. One would think it wouldn’t bother her after spending time with Broth and his marvelous hourglass color-changing orbs. “How close are you to catching up with Jade?”

  “Judging from their speed, we should only be a few bells behind. Have you had word of her?”

  “Yes, I have. Jade’s nearing Bracken Lake. Is a more direct route available from where you are?” Crystalyn asked, wondering why Durandas had said Camoe was only one or two bells from catching up with Jade. But it didn’t matter now, her dad was with her sister.

  Camoe looked off into the distance. “Yes, there is such a route. Our time of overtaking them would halve… your sister’s faith in you is not without merit,” he said, looking up. Then he froze.

  Gaps of blackness pockmarked his face, bursting through the background surrounding him. Tendrils of darkness popped out along the top, writhing like stalks from an underwater plant disturbed by the passage of something immense.

  Crystalyn jerked her hands from the triangle as the foulness of the tendrils permeated her mind. Darkness profound and absolute engulfed her. In the blackness, an immensity moved, slipping close. Sliding around her mind, it squeezed, compressing upon her the sense of unrelenting dominance birthed from an ancient arrogance.

  The indomitable will knew only subversion for it had not known thwarting. The blackness within the darkness had no concept of it, which raised Crystalyn’s ire. Thwart it she would.

  Crystalyn envisioned her golden symbol and wrapped it around her awareness as the immensity struck, beating down upon her with wave after wave of arrogant domination. Resolute, she held strong. No one, no thing, would do that to her. She fought back. Expanding her symbol, she pushed outward, pressing the arrogance back, bit by minuscule bit.

  Abruptly, the dominant will popped. Behind it, the immensity recoiled in surprise. Swelling, it expanded beyond the boundaries of her comprehension. Slowly, almost serenely, a great axe swung out from the vast immensity. Picking up a sense of speed as it fell, the axe chopped into her symbol, bursting it into immeasurable pieces. The great axe rose and again descended.

  Crystalyn could not stop it.

  A powerful concussive ting resonated through her mind, and the colossal axe halted abruptly, frozen a hair’s breadth away from the sense of who she was and what she knew of herself. A thin barrier of intense azure rippled but held firm.

  A voice raspy with ancientness and long disuse boomed from out of the immensity. “You dare to interfere in my domain? Consequences shall arise from your action.” The axe withdrew. The immensity receded.

  Crystalyn found herself looking at the pale face of Atoi, her passionless emerald eyes staring up at her unblinking. A sudden, powerful scene opened inside her mind.

  The first of three oblong winged shapes closed the distance between it and the dark child-like shape fleeing across a brown desert of sand. The winged shape stretched four giant legs downward, the shadowy hooked ends of its claws opening and closing with anticipation of prey within grasp.

  The child shape veered sharply toward a formation of red and brown rocks. As the shape turned, Crystalyn saw an oblong object cradled at the waist shimmered with darkness. A second winged shape swerved to overtake the running child. Beneath a large pile of sand, a shadowy opening swung into view.

  The winged shape arrived first, pulling up to hover in front of the enticing darkness. Crystalyn willed the child shape to go faster. The tiny shadowy child sped up, racing under the grasping claws at the entrance, merging into the darkness.

  Crystalyn gaped at her tiny companion, a string of questions burbling from her mouth. “Was that you? Did you help me? What did the winged beasts want with the Dark Child?”

  Atoi stared, her dispassionate face uninterested. “What?”

  Crystalyn’s anger rose. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. You had to have been the one who stopped that monstrous axe and then projected such a strong image to me. Broth would not have done it without an explanation.” “Isn’t that right, my Broth?”

  “I sent no image, Do’brieni.”

  Broth’s assurance only elevated the ire. Crystalyn wanted answers from the dark thing; it had interfered to show her something of importance. “Is there something under the brown sand we should know about?”

  Atoi gazed at her unrelenting.

  “What happened?” her mother asked.

  Ignoring the question, Crystalyn took a step toward the little girl. Bending face to face with her, she spoke as clear as she could. “Tell me, blast you! Or I’ll leave you here for the Dark Users to find. What attacked me? What were those dark shapes in the desert? Where were they?”

  Hastel said, led the horses closer to his charge. “Here now, mistress. Let’s have no threats,” he said quickly.

  Slowly and deliberately, Atoi turned and faced southwest.

  Drawing the horses ups short, Hastel stopped moving, his one eye blinking in surprise. “Blast!”

  Crystalyn hated to ask the question foremost on her mind, but she had to. “Is that the way I should go?”

  Atoi stared at the southwest without moving. Beyond her, a gentle slope led toward cultivated fields.

  Crystalyn sighed. “I suppose I have my answer.”

  Her mother moved beside her. Crystalyn drew comfort from her steadfast presence. “Are you certain you can trust her? Can you believe the Dark Child she hosts?”

  Crystalyn wasn’t certain she had faith in anyone but herself and her father and sister. “Jade is safe with the one I know I can trust, my dad. I will meet them or send for them as soon as the refugees are safe, after I’ve discovered what the Dark Child has to show me.”

  Her mom smiled. “Your father is the best thing for her.” Her face smoothed. “And what of me, can you not trust me?”

  Crystalyn kept her own face smooth. “I’m
not certain I even know you, not yet. But I do have something in mind which will go a long way toward earning my trust.”

  Raising her head of rich brown hair, her mother compressed her lips. “What must I do?”

  “Go to Jade, help Dad protect her.”

  Her mother’s eyes flashed a bright green, a sign of her quick anger, which Crystalyn now recalled. “I do not wish to leave you, my daughter. My youngest daughter is safe with your father. He has certain capabilities, even he is not aware of.”

  “I am a survivor on this world, Mom, but you wouldn’t know. I have friends who fight for me. Jade, however, has to have help. Something is always after her. Why, I don’t know. Your being with her would ease my fears. I’ve seen the power you draw from the Flow.”

  Her mother stared. “You can see it? Have you tried to access it?”

  Crystalyn pushed her impatience to the side. “You’re changing the subject. Will you go?”

  “I shall go to them by way of the Vale and combine two… requirements I am to fulfill, though I truly do not wish to leave you. Her mother’s gaze flickered to the ground behind her. Her smooth facial features remained serene. “I imagine I should aid with your healing of those two before I depart.”

  “What two?” Crystalyn spun around, making her question rhetorical.

  The Lore Mother and Durandas lay crumpled on the ground. Though their chests rose and collapsed normally, her guilt at not thinking of them ascended with her rising anxiety. Even now, a mind worm could be assaulting them as it fed upon their neural processes. Once she saved them, and she would, she’d send them both back to Surbo to help fight the assault on the capitol city of the White Lands. Crystalyn attached her awareness to her golden symbol and sank into Durandas first.

  MISSING

  Camoe’s inner vision sprang back to normal. He had halted the company by simply stopping for the contacting that had stabbed into his mind, coming with greater insistence than normal. Durandas had provided the means to communicate, but Jade’s sister, Crystalyn, had spoken. Oddly, he could not see her through any part of it but he had little doubt of her identity, not with her having intimate knowledge of Jade. The fact that the contacting ended abruptly bothered him. Either Durandas had used a fledgling Interrupter or Dark Users had found them and severed the connection, which meant they were getting faster at locating such connections. The contacting had not been long.

  Whatever had happened, the information Crystalyn imparted was grand news. Jade’s father had broken her free, and Camoe now knew Jade was close, closer than he thought. After navigating through Broken Gap, a short run down the mountainside and across the foothills would put them at Bracken Lake before nightfall.

  Camoe had thought to inquire how badly the Vale fared just before the contacting had ended, but he was better off not knowing. He had a mission he would see through until the end, regardless of how safe her sister believed his charge to be.

  An undertaking he had jeopardized by halting the men out in the open.

  Camoe signaled for the group to move behind a large pile of slate rock slabs. Though it would slow them, they would draw far less attention from unfriendly eyes.

  He continued along the trail alone. Ahead, round dark shapes skittered about. Wary, he slipped from the shade of a boulder the path wound around to a sparse recess of scrub weed growing at the mouth of Broken Gap. He waited for the others, watching the frenzy within.

  Kerna, Peers, and Girth trotted up on silent feet, followed by Long Draught pulling the prisoner behind him. Wheezing, Tarn came last, though he kept as silent as he could by muffling the sounds with his fist.

  Moving beside him, Girth frowned as he gazed ahead. “What are they doing?”

  Camoe slipped his long sword from the sheath at his side, glancing at each of his companions as he spoke. “They are gorging on their dead. Many boulder beetles perished here though most consider them harmless. Yet, something slaughtered them, or they attacked a disciplined force. I imagine it was our quarry. Keep a sharp eye as we move through.”

  Peers slipped to the front. “Aye, something is amiss in there.” His hushed words hung in the air as he moved into the gap.

  His scout’s words added a cloud of foreboding Camoe disliked. The bouts of true sense that assailed him, the divinations of Flow threads attracted to him as possible future occurrences, usually came riddled with a sense of impending doom; there was no getting away from it. As the fifth generation of a long line of essence druids, he had to live with it. All he could do was follow close to Peers and hope he spotted danger before peril found them.

  Halfway through the narrow pass, Peers slowed, finally coming to a halt at a rock cairn piled chest-high with slate. Several open-faced helms adorned the top but no weapons or plate armor. Those were too precious to leave behind. A wide path of dirt and buried slate surrounded it, indicating a recent construction.

  The beetles had vanished, leaving behind partially eaten corpses of their own kind, the oily black blood staining much of the gray limestone.

  After a quick perusal of the area, Camoe put his sword away. The signs of battle told the story. Several soldiers had perished. How many beetles had met their demise was hard to determine, though that did not concern him. From the way the string of corpses led from many of the holes to the rock cairns, the boulder beetles had initiated the attack, which concerned him and made him uneasy.

  Something else bothered Camoe. They had lost ground with catching up, they were now several bells farther back than he believed. Was he getting old, misreading the signs? Doubtful, so what spurred the quarry to greater speed? The battle with the beetles? No matter. With knowledge of their now closer whereabouts, he would be able to help Jade and her father after all. “Peers, Kerna, keep watch farther along the gap; our quarry has gained distance between us. They rode from here many bells ago at a full gallop. Stay alert, something frenzied these creatures, and I want advance warning should it still lurk near.”

  Giving a slight nod, the life mates ran ahead.

  “Not all rode away.” The hooded man’s quiet statement echoed softly around the pass. “One has to wonder why a carrion scavenger would attack a large force of men,” he said, his silky voice echoing Camoe’s thoughts.

  Long Draught gave a sharp yank on the rope, reeling the hooded man to him. His long arm pulled the Alchemist close. “No one gave you permission to speak,” he said, quietly but firmly. Where the Dark One’s voice was pleasant, Long Draught’ soft tone promised quick and decisive repercussions.

  The Alchemist’s golden hourglass eyes fixed steadily upward at the man gripping him.

  Camoe could think of none better at guarding a lone prisoner than the tall druid. Satisfied, he strode away. Climbing an old cairn, he squatted for a closer view of the top. Four sets of tracks were prominent in the packed dirt between the rocks. Of those, one set was smaller and by itself. Jade. The disturbed earth had very little soil sloughing from the edges, backfilling the prints. They had been gaining on her captors until they rode from here.

  Camoe moved to a mound of piled slate at Broken Gap’s bottom, gazing at the hooded man over the top of it. “Regarding your question of the beetles’ attack, had you genuine curiosity? Or do you wish to tell us something of importance? Speak freely.”

  The hooded man’s broad chin lifted, and his pale lips thinned.

  Camoe counted four heartbeats of flagrant pause and accorded it to the man’s arrogance. The Alchemist’s first words confirmed it.

  “You still do not know with whom you speak so to, do you, druid?”

  Two strides brought Tarn behind the hooded man. Two well-placed kicks at the back of the Alchemist’s knees put him kneeling painfully in the limestone and dirt. His two longest daggers suddenly rested on the shoulders of the black-hooded man, the blades firm against the bare skin of his neck, the tips crossed. “You would do well to show respect for Camoe. He is our leader and your captor. He alone decides when and
if you shall continue to draw breath,” Tarn said softly, his voice full of menace. His deep cough racking his muscular frame only slightly diminished the effect.

  Though one of the long knives drew droplets of blood because of the coughs, the hooded man smiled.

  Tarn’s cough deepened.

  The hooded man’s smile broadened.

  Camoe started. He hopped upon the cairn, staring down on the hooded man. “Your darkness is well known, Alchemist,” he said, speaking over Tarn’s wet-sounding hacking. “What foul concoction have you infected my man with? Tell me or I shall have him squeeze his blades closed.”

  The Alchemist’s smile faded.

  “Blast you, evil one!” Girth cursed.

  “Befouled blood, soiled earth, and the stink of rottenness, what have you done?” Long Draught demanded to know, the tone of his voice becoming more clipped with each curse. Squeezing and loosening his grip on the rope, Long Draught’s prominent biceps expanded and contracted, he looked like he wanted to pull the hooded man to him but was leery of Tarn’s daggers.

  The Alchemist swallowed slowly. “Breath bane is a base ingredient of the poison, gray petra spore is used in part. Though how many parts shall remain with me.”

  Camoe could not keep a frown from his face, though he regained composure quickly. “Are you toying with me? I shall consider commanding Tarn the opportunity to squeeze his blades together slowly. Your brain shall not have time to shut down and protect you from pain. You shall feel the sharpened steel from two sides as they meet.”

  The hooded man’s chest expanded as he straightened his back, powerful and muscular even kneeling. “Give your man the command to lower his swords, or you shall get nothing from me.”

  Camoe kept his tone even. “‘Nothing’ is exactly what you have provided thus far. In truth, I no longer believe you possess knowledge worth gleaning, and I cannot allow such vileness as yours to continue staining the world unchecked. That leaves only one alternative.”