by Steve McHugh
“I’m not going to attack Galahad,” I said. “You do know that he hired me, yes? That he set me up and tried to manipulate events so that I’d murder people for him. You are aware of that, yes?”
“Yes, I know exactly what happened. I’m one of the very few who do. I may not disagree with your reasons for striking him, but he’s my king. Your reasons don’t make it any better that it was allowed to happen.” She dropped the dagger, which vanished into the floor, before turning and striding off.
At the end of the corridor, Rebecca opened the door and ushered us both inside. There were half a dozen people inside, all of whom were seated at computers, typing away. Another five stood next to the door, all of them in uniforms of blue and black and carrying rifles.
“Why the rifles?” I asked.
After a few moments of awkward silence, when it became clear that I was certainly not welcome in the room, one of the guards spoke up. “Sometimes unfriendly people come through the gate,” he said. “And sometimes they come this way. We’re here to make sure nothing bad happens on either end and silver bullets do that job pretty well.”
“Thanks,” I said to him, receiving a curt nod in reply.
“What the hell is that?” Caitlin said and walked to the far end of the sizeable room, staring at the huge archway in front of her. It sat about twelve feet away from anyone else in the room and was nowhere near any walls or doors.
“It’s a realm gate,” I told her.
All realm gates are the same in terms of composition: a mixture of wood and rock and metal, although no one really knows how they’re created or where they came from. They’re all different shapes and sizes; the one before us was about fifteen feet tall and ten feet wide. Each gate has runes carved on its surface that give the gate its color. In the case of Shadow Falls it’s a dull purple glow.
“It’s beautiful,” Caitlin said.
“I remember the first time I saw one,” Rebecca told Caitlin. “I was mesmerized. Even after all these years, it’s hard to believe that such a simple-looking structure is a gateway to the closet thing to heaven many of us will ever see.”
“So, Shadow Falls is a paradise now?” I asked. “Looks like Galahad did good.”
“You’ll see,” Rebecca said with a sly smirk.
“How does it work?” Caitlin asked.
Rebecca nodded to one of the other people in the room who walked up to the realm gate and placed his hand on the gate. The runes on the side of the realm gate exploded to life, the dull purple glow now bathing the whole structure in light. The blank space that had occupied the middle of the gate changed, becoming a mass of swirling colors. The man touched the runes on the opposite side of the gate and the swirling colors changed to a picture of a room. Several people were inside, all of them wore leather amour and had swords at the ready. They saw Rebecca and relaxed.
A huge man appeared in the image, his long almost orange hair tied back. “Rebecca, I was not aware of anyone coming here today.”
“I’m sorry, Harrison,” Rebecca said, “but these people must speak to the king.”
“And, who are these people?”
Caitlin waved at the large man, but he saw me and reacted as if he’d been struck. “Him! He will not come through.”
“Harrison, he must speak to the king. It’s urgent. And, no, you can’t do it for him. It has to be Nathan. I’m not happy either, but his case is solid. Simon is killing again.”
Harrison laughed. “Simon is in a cell.”
“That hasn’t stopped him,” I said. “I just need to figure out how.”
“If you step out of line, I will kill you.”
You’ll try, I managed to bite down. “I’m not here to start trouble, just stop people dying.”
Harrison spoke in whispers to his colleagues around him. “We will arrange transport to the king,” he said. “He will not leave our sight.”
“I need to go to see someone else first.”
“Who?” Harrison snapped.
“The person who built the prison.”
Harrison smiled. “That won’t be a problem. Maybe one of his inventions will blow up and we’ll be spared your existence.”
“So, can they come through?” Rebecca asked over Harrison and his friends’ laughter.
“Yes, send them over. We’ll get them to where they want to go. They have twenty-four hours, after that I’m opening the gateway and throwing them back, job done or otherwise.”
“Deal,” I said.
“Are you both ready?” Rebecca asked us.
I nodded.
“If you have weapons, you must leave them here.”
Caitlin and I shook our heads, but the guard still patted us down. I assumed it was nothing personal, but the man who decided to check me for weapons was a little more aggressive about it than necessary.
After the checks had been completed Caitlin and I walked up to the gateway as Harrison stared at me from the other side.
“Nervous?” I asked.
Caitlin nodded.
“Don’t be, it’s just a tear in reality.”
We both stepped through together. The trip was instantaneous, although Caitlin tripped once in Shadow Falls, falling to the ground.
As one of the guards helped her to back to an upright position, Harrison towered over me. “If you step out of line, I will kill you.”
I waited until the guardian had switched the gate off before replying, it would take time for them to recharge and be able to open it again. “Anyone ever told you, you’re a colossal dick?”
Harrison appeared flustered, but then bent toward me, so his face was only an inch from mine. “I really hope you step out of line.”
I smiled. “Take us where we want to go, or get out of the way. But every second you stand there and flex your muscles at me is time I could be doing something much more important.”
Harrison almost growled, but stepped aside, allowing Caitlin and me to walk out of the gigantic temple where the realm gate was kept and into the vast city beyond.
CHAPTER 25
Standing outside the temple and looking down at Shadow Falls is an incredible experience. It stretches for miles and miles in all directions. At one time the city was tiny, just a few hundred people lived there, but over the centuries it grew and grew as more people decided that Avalon rule wasn’t for them.
“So, if the realm is called Shadow Falls, what’s the city called?”
“This,” I said with a gesture, “is the city of Solomon.”
“Solomon, as in the Bible?”
I nodded. “Originally this place was to be the paradise for the wise and righteous. The original founders wanted it to an enlightened place, and one of them said Solomon and it stuck.”
“Didn’t he have, like, seven-hundred wives or something?”
“Yeah, I think that part’s optional.”
Caitlin laughed. “So, where’s the king?”
I pointed to the far end of the city, there was no way to see the castle without binoculars, though. “There’s a stream that starts on the mountains, by the time it gets to the city, it’s a river. When the city was first made, it was used as a moat to protect the people who lived here. But as the city grew, it became a river that separates the king and his council from the rest of the people who live here.”
“So, are different parts of the city doing different things?”
“See the aqueducts?” I asked. “They not only supply water to the city, they also divide the city up. The west is mostly agriculture and farming, the east is industrial. You have to pass check points to get through them.”
“What do the people who live here use to get around?”
“Trams,” I said and motioned toward one of the three coach vehicles that moved along a structure next to the aqueducts. “They were designed by the man
we’re going to go meet, the same person who did the blueprints for the prison.”
When we’d walked out of the temple, the sun was high in the sky, with barely a cloud in sight, but after a few minutes of walking down the steps to the nearest tram station, the sun had moved until it was behind Shadow’s Peak, the mountain range to the east, casting a huge swathe of darkness across the city.
“It happens every day,” I told Caitlin as the lights began to ignite, bathing everything in a blue hue. “That’s different,” I said to the guards who had been accompanying us.
“They were changed a few years back, the gas ones were unreliable,” he said.
A twinge of guilt hit me as I realized that I’d never visited Galahad in Shadow Falls since he’d become king. After what had happened in Maine, I’d made a conscious effort to stay as far away from the place as possible. But I began to wonder if maybe that had been the wrong decision, to allow the anger of that day to build up, maybe it had done more harm than good. I pushed the thought aside. It was not the time for second guesses.
We followed the three guards and Harrison to the closest tram station, a small hut next to the line.
“What do the trams run on?” Caitlin asked.
I shrugged. “At one point it had been gas power, but with the removal of the lamps, I don’t know anymore.”
As one of the trams stopped at the station, I realized that they were completely different from how they used to look. Gone was the blocky design, replaced with something sleek and elegant, almost bullet-train-like.
Harrison motioned for the passengers to disembark before allowing Caitlin and me to get on. “You will have two guards accompanying you at all times until you reach the king’s district. There are more than enough armed soldiers there to keep an eye on you. Me and my men have better things to do than babysit the two of you, but if you step out of line.…”
“Yeah, they’ll kill us,” I said. “You’ve mentioned it before.”
Harrison stared at me. “Just give them a reason. They’d enjoy it almost as much as I would.”
I took a seat on the tram and watched Harrison, who didn’t move as we pulled away, high above the rest of the city.
As much as I didn’t want to feel like a tourist, I couldn’t help but look out of the windows at the hustle and bustle of the city a hundred feet below. The tram moved up and down with the aqueduct, stopping every few minutes, although the guards ensured that no one else got into our coach. I wasn’t sure if that was because they thought I might attack someone, or because they were worried that someone might recognize me and attack. I doubted it was the latter, but it had been thirty years and a lot could have happened in that time.
The shadow continued to move across the city, eventually catching the tram in its snare. As the shadow engulfed us, the interior lights sprung to life and I began to wonder what the hell had replaced the gas lamps of old.
The view below regained my attention as it changed from dense housing to open fields and farmland, and then a few minutes later we arrived at the stop just inside of the king’s district. When I’d last been in the city the tram had stopped on the opposite side of the river; it had been deemed unsafe for the tram to go further, but apparently things had changed.
The four of us got off the tram as a stampede of passengers made their way inside. The guard took us along the tram platform and down some steps where the grand splendor of the king’s district shone through. The houses were bigger, many with ornate paintings or mosaics on the street-side external wall. The street itself was different; the pavement was made with tarmac and concrete, while the rest of the city had to contend with brick.
“How far do we have to walk?” Caitlin asked.
“Not too far now,” one of the guards said.
The inhabitants of Shadow Falls wore a mixture of modern clothing, such as jeans, and older-style Victorian outfits. The result was a bit of a mishmash, but Caitlin and I could walk around without looking like we didn’t belong.
We made our way to the far side of the king’s district, under an aqueduct arch and into a large field with only one house in the middle.
“This is it,” the guard said and both of them turned and walked back up to the main part of the district.
“We should go say hello,” I told Caitlin, who took a step and then froze as an explosion rocked the ground.
“You’re probably safe,” I said. “From him anyway.”
Although clearly uncertain, she followed me to the sizeable two-story house where I used an easel-shaped brass knocker.
The door was opened almost immediately by a large young man who appeared to be in his early twenties, although I knew he was at least two hundred.
“Antonio,” I said with a smile.
“Nathanial,” he bellowed and picked me up in a massive bear hug.
“Nate,” I squeaked. “Call me Nate. And also, put me down.”
Antonio laughed, a deep bellow that would have probably woken the dead. “And you’ve brought a lady friend.”
“Emphasis on the friend part,” Caitlin said as Antonio took her hand in his and kissed it lightly.
“Any friend of Nate’s is welcome in this home,” he told her. “I assume you wish to see the idiot working out back.”
“Idiot?” I asked as we stepped into the house. While the first room we stepped in was neat and tidy, the further back into the house we went the more and more drawings and sketches sat on every surface. Any spare space was taken up with small models or the occasional bust.
“He’s found a new toy,” Antonio said. “And by toy, I mean something that’s going to blow him up if he’s not careful. But you know him, he can’t stay away once his mind starts tinkering with things. I swear he has the attention span of cheese sometimes.”
I laughed and caught Caitlin looking at some of the sketches that hung on a nearby wall.
“These are incredible. What are they?”
“No idea,” Antonio said. “He has ideas, sketches them out and works on them for about a day, and then something else catches his attention. A few weeks later, he’ll come back to this and do some more. You can try to tell him to calm down, but that’s just not him. Since he found those damn crystals he’s even worse than he ever was. It’s like they charge his mind.”
“Crystals?” I asked.
“He’ll explain better than I could.”
Antonio opened a window and shouted, “You have guests.”
A few seconds later a door opened and closed, followed by footsteps heading toward us.
“If it’s one of Galahad’s men, they can come back when I’m not busy; the king has commissioned me for enough projects,” said a male voice from a nearby room.
“Then why aren’t you doing any of them?” Antonio barked back.
“Because this is more interesting,” the second man said as he stepped into the room, noticed me and gave me a hug that rivaled Antonio’s.
“Nathanial, it’s been so very long.”
“Leonardo,” I said as he placed me back on my feet. “It has been too long. How are you?”
“Good, good,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Now, who is this delightful lady?”
“Caitlin, Leonardo,” I introduced. “Caitlin’s an FBI agent, we’re working together.”
Leonardo spoke in hushed Italian and kissed her on both cheeks.
“What did he just say?” she asked when the greeting was over.
“That you were a sight that he thought only the heavens themselves could create,” I said.
Caitlin made a noise that sounded like she approved. “So, his name is Leonardo? And he’s Italian? Oh shit, not the Leonardo?”
Leonardo beamed a smile that I’d seen used to melt frosty hearts.
“It’s less impressive when you get to know him,” I said, receiving
a hearty laugh from Antonio.
Leonardo clasped his hands to his chest in mock outrage. “You wound me, old friend. Wound me deeply.”
“Stop flirting then,” I said with a smile as Leonardo continued to ham it up.
“I assume you’re here for something important,” Leonardo said, running one hand over his lengthy beard.
“Wait a second,” Caitlin said. “I’ve seen a self-portrait of you as an old man. There are first hand records of people meeting an elderly man, but you don’t look anything over thirty-five.”
“Ah, that was simple. Prosthetics. I’m an alchemist; I can create most things through sheer willpower, so remodeling some items to make me look like an old man wasn’t difficult. I couldn’t just leave Italy when there were so many people there I cared for, so I aged myself as if I were human. Then I moved across Europe to live and work in Avalon. Turns out I was just swapping one dictatorship for another. Shadow Falls is a place that suits me perfectly. Galahad allows me the freedom to do as I wish in exchange for working on things for the city.”
“Like the trams?” I asked.
“Yes, they were unreliable for a long time, but they were also the best we could manage on the technology that’s available here. Then we found those crystals and everything changed.”
“Antonio mentioned them,” I told him. “What are they?”
“Oh, you’re going to be very excited.” A thought seemed to stop Leonardo from saying more. “Am I still a turtle?”
Caitlin and I glanced at once another in confusion.
“Ah, I should explain,” Leonardo eventually said. “The last time I was in your world, I found that television had moved on, there was a cartoon about four turtles. One was named after me. I assume that’s a beloved program still. Leonardo was the leader. That impressed me, although I always thought that the fact that I wasn’t the inventor of the group put me in a bad light.”
