by Bill Hiatt
Dan frowned. “That depends on a huge amount of luck, but unless we dig our way out with our swords, I suppose it’s about the only thing we’ve got.”
“I can help you get out,” said a shaky female voice. All three of us jumped, but it didn’t take us more than a few seconds to realize who had spoken: the shadow assassin who tried to kill Lucas. I’d forgotten Vanora had a fourth prisoner down here.
We walked over to her excruciatingly bright cell from which she looked at us, eyes slit against the light she was still not used to. Contrasted against the dark-gray stone walls of the cell and her own black outfit, her skin looked incredibly pale. She was also not very threatening physically. Girls I knew, like Eva and Carla, looked much stronger, though her loose-fitting garments could be creating a false impression like mine had. Still, it was hard to believe she was a trained assassin—or that she could possibly help us.
“I’ve seen you and your people in action,” Shar said. “Even without your weapon, you’re pretty dangerous. How could we ever trust you?”
“My people lied to me,” she said, hanging her head as if in shame. “I didn’t even know I was human until I fought with Lucas. They kept that from me.”
“I don’t see how that makes you more trustworthy,” replied Shar.
“I didn’t know I was one of you. I do now. Besides, since I have failed more than once, my people…the ones who used to be my people…will kill me if I return. My choice is to stay here forever, go home and die…or go with you. Which would you choose?”
I looked at her more closely. Try as I might, I still couldn’t see her as a threat. Of course, the security guard hadn’t seen me as a threat, either.
“Suppose we could find a way to trust you,” I said. “How could you help us?”
“I can travel through shadow, and I can take you with me.”
Shar snorted. “Yeah, take us back to your people to make up for failing before.”
“Bringing you would excuse nothing!” the girl insisted, sounding almost desperate. “We are judged by whether we fulfill our mission or not. My mission was Lucas. I could kill all three of you, and it would not matter. I would still have failed.”
“Isn’t this a moot point anyway?” asked Dan. “Isn’t the whole town protected against shadow assassins, including a barrier that keeps them from shadow traveling in?”
“In, yes…but not out,” I said. “At least, not as far as I know. Could be worth a try.”
“Are you nuts?” asked Shar. “If she takes us back to where she came from, we have no way to return, and everyone in her society is an assassin. I’m confident we can contain her if necessary, but against, say, a thousand of her people? We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Shar had always been brave, but now, backed up by his Alexander the Great and Achilles past-life personas, he was even more so. That he was unwilling to even consider the possibility gave me second thoughts—lots of them.
“I just want to try to live as a human,” she said, almost begging. “Is that so much to ask?”
“From what Tal and Lucas have told us, not to mention our Olympian friends, everything she says is true,” I pointed out. “Going back to her own people would be a death sentence. They kidnapped her when she was a baby and raised her without ever telling her the truth about herself. If any of that is a reason for her to want to side with them, I don’t see it.”
“I do,” said Dan. “She’s been conditioned almost since birth…brainwashed, if you want to put it that way. Yeah, staying loyal to her people makes no sense, but that doesn’t mean she won’t do exactly that at the first opportunity.
“All of that said, I say we chance it.”
“What?” asked Shar, looking back and forth between us as if we were both nuts.
“Without some intel, we have no idea what’s happening outside. We might hold off security for a while or even beat them, but we don’t know that Vanora is the only one involved in this or that distracting her will give our friends a chance to do anything. I think we can do more by figuring out what’s happening—which we can’t do from in here.”
At Shar’s insistence, I used the sagephone to see if I could tell what was happening outside. From the security reports, I could confirm we were the only prisoners but only by reading between the lines. Most of the files were encoded, not in the computer sense but in the old secret-agent sense. Given enough time, I might have cracked the code, but a new guard was scheduled to come on shift in a few minutes.
I was able to log on to the general network, including Internet connection, but from that, all I could find out was that the town had been evacuated as a result of some unspecified threat. With that information, we could locate our parents easily enough, since I could access the addresses of all the properties that Vanora had leased as evacuation areas at the point when Nicneven was threatening us a few months ago. I could also guess that whatever Vanora was planning, she didn’t want witnesses around. Other than that, the evacuation news didn’t give us any other relevant information.
I tried each of our accounts: e-mail, social media, voice messages, texts—that kind of thing. It would have been faster for each of us to check his own, but only the sagephone worked. We were underground and surrounded by too much stone, concrete, and steel to pick up a regular cell-phone network. The sagephone, however, could magically reach beyond those obstructions. Not that it mattered, since none of our friends had been in touch. As we might have suspected from our own experiences, whatever had happened hit fast, with no time for anybody else to warn us.
“Well, we know Vanora’s move was well planned—and that’s still about all we know,” I admitted. “Everybody else could be captured and held elsewhere, or free but on the run.”
“Or dead,” added Dan quietly. I knew he was worrying about Jimmie.
“Doubtful,” said Shar. “Why keep only us alive?”
“I think Shar’s right. We should operate on the assumption that they’re alive somewhere,” I said.
“We have to find out what’s really going on, then,” said Dan. “That means we have to get out of here—by any means necessary.”
Shar continued to argue, though, and we now had like two minutes before we had to knock out another security guard. That wouldn’t be a problem, but someone would notice pretty quickly that the one who was supposed to rotate out of the dungeon didn’t show up. To buy us a little time, I locked down both the stair and elevator accesses to the dungeon level. The guard coming on shift would immediately call tech support—not the most knowledgeable group, since Vanora had relied so heavily on me. The tech people would run through their checklist without result, but in a few minutes even they would realize the security network was misbehaving, and then they would start putting two and two together. I gave us maybe fifteen minutes—less if someone pointed out the problem to Vanora.
While Shar and Dan continued to argue, I called each one of the gang. The sagephone didn’t have much magic juice left; the magic part needed recharging more often than the technological part. However, I had enough time to make one last attempt.
Everyone went straight to voice mail—which at this point could mean anything from they were dead to they were safe in Annwn or on Olympus. I still had no real information, and Shar and Dan continued to argue. At this rate we’d have to use Shar’s plan, good or bad, because he wasn’t about to budge.
Then I remember there was one person I could call who might break the deadlock.
“Hi, Mrs. Weaver, it’s Stan.”
“Stan? Is everything all right?” Tal’s mother knew I’d have no reason to call unless we were in trouble.
“Short version: Vanora has gone nuts and has taken at least Dan, Shar, and me prisoner. We don’t know about anybody else.”
“I never liked that woman,” Mrs. Weaver muttered.
“Anyway, the three of us have a choice between staying here and fighting against pretty big odds, or escaping with the help of the shadow assassin Tal defeated
a while back.”
If my mother knew the kind of life-or-death situations I was getting into all the time, she’d lock me up until I turned thirty-five—or maybe forty.
Mrs. Weaver took a long time replying. Seers were not limited the way sorcerers were by constraints like distance and time, but they got information in erratic little bits they sometimes didn’t understand at first. By giving her a specific question, I increased the chance that she might actually have a useful answer.
Finally, she said, “I had several dreams last night, vivid ones. One of them was about the three of you. I saw you running into shadows…and in the dream I felt as if that was a good thing.”
“OK, that helps. Any other dreams that might help us?”
“I don’t know,” she said, slightly frustrated. “Lots of disturbing images. I didn’t see anyone die, at least. I did see Tal on the moon, and he was acting strangely. That’s the only other really specific thing I saw, and it must be symbolic, but I don’t know what it symbolizes.”
“If you think of anything else, please call me,” I said. “I’ll do the same if I have news.”
“I’ll get Tal’s father to cut our trip short and come home,” she replied.
“No,” I said quickly, “Tal would want you safe, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be safe here. I wish my parents were out of the area right now.”
“OK,” she said, but I knew her well enough to know she’d be on the next plane back regardless of what I told her.
After we said our good-byes, I turned my attention back to Shar and Dan.
“Tal’s mom says we should go with the assassin,” I told them. That was obviously considerably more direct than what she had actually said, but we needed to stop this haggling quickly.
Shar looked reluctant, but Tal’s mom had never led us in the wrong direction, so he finally agreed. I unchained the girl, who told us her name was Umbra, and then I shut down the extra lighting in her cell as well as the regular overhead lighting. With only the lighting from the hall, the room now had plenty of shadows.
“Hold hands,” Umbra commanded, sounding like a different person. After we complied, she added, “Keep holding on, and keep quiet. To shift from shadow to shadow, we have to pass briefly through the realm of the Populous Umbrae, who used to be my people. That’s how the shadows are connected.”
“I don’t—” began Shar.
“There is no danger,” Umbra assured him. “Since only a member of the Populus Umbrae can travel that way, our border is not guarded, and I can cloak you so that, if someone is nearby, they will not see you.”
“Where do we want to end up?” asked Dan.
I would have liked to go someplace like Tal’s house, because of its superior magical protection, but part of that protection was directed specifically at shadow assassins, so Umbra would be blocked. The same was true for any of our houses now. Nor would it be a good idea to visit the evacuation areas. I longed to see my parents. I was pretty sure we all did. But at best they would ask questions we couldn’t answer. Vanora, adept at weaving cover stories, must have done something to explain our absence. If we blew up that story, our parents would want us to stay with them, and that we couldn’t do right now.
“Yes, where would you like to go?” asked Umbra.
“Wales,” I said. “Cardiff. We can get in touch with some of the Order’s nonmagical employees, and they’ll get word to Coventina of what’s happening. She can contact Gwynn for us, too.”
The pause that followed the request was long enough to be scary, especially considering Vanora could be onto us at almost any time.
Umbra finally responded. “I can travel to any shadow, but if I have not been to a place before, and if it is not nearby, it will take time, in what used to be my home, to seek out a shadow in that area.”
“So you’d have to keep us covered in shadow longer?” asked Dan.
“Except in bright light, I can keep up the shadow as long as I need to,” said Umbra. “The problem is that members of the Populus Umbrae have no…heat—”
“Body heat?” asked Shar.
“Yes,” she said, relieved to not have to struggle for the phrase anymore. “Body heat. You all do have it. I have it. If we pass through for a few seconds, no one will notice it. If we have to stay long enough for me to find a shadow in this Cardiff place, we are much more likely to be noticed.”
“We need to be out of here soon,” I pointed out. “Where can you take us without having to spending too much time in the shadow realm?”
“I can find any shadow within a few leagues of here,” she replied.
“No place that close will be safe once Vanora realizes we’re gone,” I said, becoming more nervous by the minute. “What about the places you’ve gone on your, uh, missions?”
“Lucas was my first mission,” she admitted, sounding embarrassed. “I can take you to Madisonville if you like.”
“I’ve been there a couple of times,” said Shar. “I could help us get around. It’s not ideal, though. It won’t take Vanora long to figure out Umbra helped us escape. Even if she doesn’t have Lucas, she can find his parents and use their memories to open a portal to Madisonville.”
“I have told her nothing,” said Umbra. “She does not know Madisonville is the only place I can go.”
“Good enough for me,” said Dan. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hold hands again,” said Umbra.
We did so and followed as she pulled us along. For a few moments we were in absolute blackness. Then we found ourselves in a dark corner of a house.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In Lucas’s old house, right?” asked Shar.
“Yes, this is where Lucas used to dwell,” said Umbra.
It took me a few minutes on the sagephone, worrying the whole time the charge would run out, but I gathered enough information to verify that the house hadn’t sold yet. Then I hacked into the real-estate company’s system and faked e-mails from Lucas’s dad, who still owned the place, notifying the broker that friends of the family would be staying in the house for a few days and asking her to make sure no showings were scheduled until he got back in touch. Then I concocted an internal e-mail from the broker to the listing agent, notifying her of the change.
All of that was risky, of course. The agent could call the broker to ask a question about the e-mail. If the broker, who after all wouldn’t remember e-mailing the agent, didn’t take the e-mail in her sent folder at face value and called Lucas’s dad, the whole thing would blow up pretty quickly. Everything hinged on people at a busy real-estate office not double-checking things that, though somewhat odd, seemed to be in order.
Even if that plan didn’t work completely, I’d rather have to explain myself to the local authorities than fight Vanora and her minions, at least for the moment.
That we would have to fight them eventually I didn’t doubt for a minute.
Chapter 7: Lunatics (Gordy)
“How can we go to the moon?” I asked. “Isn’t that a bit beyond even your magic?”
“And can we really survive there?” asked Carlos, clearly just as suspicious as I was.
Magnus rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking about the moon in our world. I’m talking about the moon in this one.”
I was having difficulty keeping up. “You mean there’s more than just this island?”
I was pretty sure Magnus wanted to insult my intelligence, but he also probably wanted to get us out of here as fast as possible. “Yeah, in the same way Annwn is more than just Gwynn’s castle. This plane of existence has a moon nothing like ours. Atlante tells me conditions are like those on Earth. Whole civilizations live there, though we are going to try very hard not to interact with them. The fewer people who know where we are, the better. The moon doesn’t get many visitors, so we’d be big news—and we can’t be sure whether any of the lunar inhabitants are in contact with people in other parts of this plane, or even people in other planes.”
> “You and Atlante flew there?” asked Lucas. Like me, he was still having trouble reconciling what he knew about astronomy with how things worked here.
“Unlike our universe, space here is not a freezing, airless void. Atlante wasn’t sure the hippogriff would have the stamina, but it made it. The only problem was that we had to pass through a wall of fire—I guess this plane’s equivalent to the Van Allen radiation belts. I had to cut through it with the sword of chaos, as Atlante suspected would be necessary.” Magnus raised the sword, tucked safely in its scabbard. “That reminds me—I need to return this to you, Ascalaphus.”
The Greek warrior happily accepted the sword. I wondered, not for the first time, how good an idea it was to leave such a massively destructive weapon in the hands of someone whose reactions might be unpredictable. Would he keep believing that fighting against his father, Ares, was what we needed to do to save Ares? There was also a risk that Alex might take over the body again.
No, I wasn’t happy about the whole situation, but Magnus, much as I hated his guts, was as smart as Tal and must have considered the risks acceptable. If Tal—the current time version, not the twelve-year-old—had done the same thing, I wouldn’t have questioned it.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Magnus had worked out some kind of secret understanding with Ascalaphus, who would side with him against us at some future point.
Magnus had already gotten a portal open. “Let’s go,” he said, gesturing at the silvery swirl.
“Evil alter egos first!” said Carlos with mock politeness. Magnus scowled but, probably realizing none of us wanted to take chances, walked through. We all followed, though with obvious reluctance.
I had to squint against the brightness when we emerged. Everything around us had a silver glow brighter than the portal. As the light became easier to take, I realized we were in a clearing, with a glowing forest of weeping willows all around us. The hippogriff grazed nearby, content to munch on glistening grass.
