by Jack
‘Yes, dear,’ Adrina agreed. ‘The way he faked his recovery from the mortal wound I inflicted on him was simply hysterical.’
Damin wasn’t amused. ‘It would make me feel better if you stayed here in the Citadel.’
Adrina pushed herself awkwardly to her feet. ‘Why do you think that, right now, I am interested in doing anything to make you feel better, Damin Wolfblade? Besides, if Dirk Provin keeps coming back to life because he doesn’t belong here, what possible harm can any of us come to, if we cross into his world?’
* * * *
Chapter V
The expedition to visit the site of Dirk Provin’s supposed veil between worlds was deliberately small. The High Prince of Hythria seemed convinced they were simply pandering to this prisoner’s flights of fantasy and it was foolish in the extreme to play along with him. He could do little to argue the case, however, given the determination of the Queen of the Harshini and his wife, who — having witnessed Dirk Provin’s resurrection — were both adamant the young man’s story should be taken seriously.
They left after lunch, mounted in a small group with only two of Tarja’s red-coated Defenders as an escort. Adrina was thrilled to be out of the confines of the Citadel and gave her horse its head as soon as they were over the bridge and on the main road south. Damin caught up with her quick enough, and demanded she slow down, but even the brief spurt of speed seemed to blow the cobwebs out of her head, although her child protested the jostling with a few well-placed kicks, hard enough to make her grunt.
‘See, even the child thinks you’re a lunatic for galloping off like that.’
Adrina glanced over her shoulder at the others rapidly catching up behind them. ‘I don’t let you dictate to me, Damin. Why would I listen to your child?’
Damin had no chance to answer before the rest of their party arrived. Shananara’s face creased with concern as her unbridled horse came to a halt without any visible effort on her part. ‘Should you be galloping like that in your condition, your highness?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Adrina said. ‘If Dirk Provin is right, I’m not going to give birth. Ever.’ She turned to the young man mounted on a borrowed Defender’s horse led by Tarja. As a precaution his hands were tied to the pommel of his saddle. ‘Isn’t that right, Master Provin?’
‘I assume so, your highness.’ The lad seemed reluctant to be drawn into making a definitive ruling on the matter. Despite being bound, he sat comfortably on the horse, clearly used to being in the saddle, but his manner seemed ill at ease.
‘Let’s not take that as a given,’ Damin suggested, frowning at the young man. ‘How far out of the Citadel did you say this world-bridging veil of yours is supposed to be?’
Dirk looked around uncertainly. ‘I thought it was east of the Citadel. We were in a forested area. Although it was dark when I arrived, it took me less than an hour to find the road.’
Tarja glanced at one of the guards, who nodded and pointed confidently east. ‘That would make it the woods around Bottleneck Gorge. That’s the only wooded area within half a day’s walk of the city.’
‘Bottleneck Gorge it is then,’ Tarja said, turning his mount east. He tugged on Dirk’s horse’s lead rein, pulling the young man behind him. Adrina fell in beside Damin and Shananara, with the two Defenders behind them, and they headed toward a veil between two worlds that was, in all likelihood, not there.
* * * *
It was an hour or so later, once they were well into the tree line, that Adrina heard the noise. It was a rhythmic pounding like nothing she had ever heard before, so foreign to her senses that at first, she thought she might be imagining it. A moment later all doubt the strange noise was nothing more than a figment of her imagination vanished as the ground shuddered with the impact of a massive explosion somewhere ahead of them.
The horses reared in fright.
‘What the hell ...’ Tarja turned to Dirk as he fought to bring both his own mount and the one he was leading, under control. ‘Founders! What was that?’
‘Why are you asking me?’ the boy replied, clinging to the pommel of his saddle with grim determination. ‘When I came through the veil it was like a mist. There was nothing burning. Nothing exploding, either.’
Adrina circled her mount a few times to settle him, and then turned to look in the direction of the detonation. The acrid black smoke — unlike the wood smoke Adrina was used to — billowed into the clear morning sky like an evil black tower tottering on its foundations.
Tarja dismounted, and drew his sword. ‘Get down,’ he ordered the prisoner. ‘We’ll go on foot from here.’
Dirk lifted his tied hands the few inches the slack in his bond would allow. ‘Love to,’ he said, ‘soon as you let me loose.’
Tarja waved one of the Defenders forward, drawing his sword. Damin and Adrina — with some difficulty — dismounted as the guards released Dirk Provin. The second Defender took up the reins of their mounts. Dirk shook his hands in an attempt to restore their circulation.
‘Stay here with the horses,’ Tarja ordered the Defenders, and then shoved Dirk none too gently to get him moving. ‘You go first.’
The lad shrugged. ‘You think I’m leading you into an ambush?’
‘Well, if you are, they’ll take you out first, won’t they?’
Dirk shook his head, smiling ever so slightly at Tarja’s unforgiving tone, and then headed off into the trees in the direction of the acrid-smelling smoke. The rhythmic pounding had stopped, but the source of the explosion remained a mystery. Damin offered Adrina his hand, which she accepted gladly, more exhausted from the ride than she was prepared to admit.
‘Do you still think he’s lying?’ Adrina asked Damin and Shananara in a low voice as they followed the Lord Defender and this interloper from another world, leaving their somewhat bemused escort back at the edge of the tree line with the horses.
‘I’m of two minds,’ Shananara admitted. ‘But there’s something burning up ahead and I don’t think it a bonfire.’
They hurried forward through the trees and the unnaturally silent forest until they reached a narrow clearing bordering the edge of a steep gully. Although they couldn’t see the water, they could hear it tumbling over the rocks below. Nobody paid any attention to it, however. Their eyes were fixed on the strange machine that lay mangled and burning on the ground and the two men climbing from inside the belly of the mechanical beast, singed and shaken, but apparently unharmed. Smoke belched from the wreckage like a dragon spewing forth all the ills of the world. Adrina’s eyes watered as she stared at the spectacle, unable to find the words to describe what she was seeing.
‘By the gods,’ Damin exclaimed, coming to a halt beside her. ‘What is this thing?’ He turned to Dirk Provin. ‘Is this what brought you here? This ... metal monster?’
Dirk shook his head, as gobsmacked as they were. ‘I ... I have no idea ...’
‘It’s a helicopter,’ one of the men climbing from the wrecked metal contraption announced in a matter-of-fact sort of tone. He winced in pain and then turned to glance at his companion, but made no move to help him. The man turned back to look at them. He was tall and dark-haired and — except for his hair colour — shared more than a passing resemblance to Damin. ‘What? You all look like you’ve never seen a chopper before?’
‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Dorothy,’ the other man grunted, still trying to extract himself from the wreckage with some difficulty. Finally, he clambered out of the burning wreck and looked around, examining each of their group with a wary eye. His companion seemed equally disturbed. ‘I’ll lay you odds we’re not even on Earth any longer, Rodent.’
The man named Rodent frowned. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘We just ditched the crystal in the Mariana Trench. There’s no way Lukys has had time to find it and open a rift. Besides, it’s not High Tide yet.’
The two men from the wreckage of the metallic machine looked at each other oddly. ‘There’s no Tide at a
ll,’ the Rodent said. ‘Can you feel it? It’s gone.’
‘High tide?’ Damin asked, his hand on his sword hilt. ‘We’re nowhere near the coast here.’
The taller of the two men turned to Damin, looking at him curiously. ‘I’m sorry ... can you tell us where we are?’
‘Medalon. You have come through the veil.’
‘Shut up, Provin,’ Tarja said, pointing his sword at the two newcomers. ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’
‘My name is Declan Hawkes,’ Rodent said, holding his hands up to indicate peaceful intentions. ‘This is Cayal Lakesh. We appear to have ...’ His voice trailed off and he turned to his companion for help.
The other man simply shrugged.
‘Actually, I have no idea what we’ve done. A few minutes ago, we were flying over the Pacific Ocean, patting ourselves on the back for outwitting Lukys.’
‘Seems like Lukys got the last laugh,’ Cayal Lakesh said, slapping out a small flame on his sleeve as he came to stand beside his companion. ‘Who are you people?’
‘I am Her Serene Highness, Princess Adrina.’ Someone had to take charge here. ‘This is my husband, Prince Damin, High Prince of Hythria, Tarja Tenragan, the Lord Defender of Medalon, Shananara, Queen of the Harshini, and Dirk Provin, who claims to be a prince and a religious leader on his world of Ranadon.’
‘Well, at least they sent a welcoming committee worthy of us,’ Cayal remarked to his companion. ‘Where did you say we are?’
‘Medalon,’ Tarja said, taking a step forward, his sword still held out threateningly in front of him.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Nor have you yet told us where you came from. Or what that metallic beast is. Or how you killed it.’
Declan Hawkes glanced over his shoulder at the smouldering, twisted metal heap behind him and smiled. ‘More like it tried to kill us. But somehow you — armed with nothing more than a sword and a bad attitude — managed to bring it down. How did you do that, by the way?’
‘The Lord Defender didn’t bring your machine down,’ Dirk said. ‘You’ve come through the veil between worlds.’
‘You don’t know that ...’ Damin began, but Dirk shook his head and pointed at the wreck and the two strangers.
‘They are not of this world, your highness, any more than I am. Look at their machine. Their clothes. They are not from your world, and they’re certainly not from mine. That leaves only another world we know nothing about.’
‘Do you have any idea what these people are talking about, Rodent?’ Cayal asked his companion.
Hawkes shook his head and turned to Tarja impatiently. ‘Are you going to stick me with that thing? If not, would you mind putting it away?’
‘Not until you explain —’
‘Look!’ Dirk Provin cut in, pushing himself between Tarja and the stranger before the two men could come to blows. ‘It’s obvious what’s happened here. These men and their machine came through the veil the same way I did. There is no point threatening them, Lord Defender, because if they’re not from this reality, you won’t be able to kill them, anyway.’
‘Actually, he’s not going to have any luck killing us, whatever reality he thinks we’re from,’ Cayal remarked, as Tarja somewhat reluctantly sheathed his blade. ‘Can someone please tell us what’s going on? And how a ragtag bunch like you lot were able to destroy a world?’
‘Destroy a world?’ Shananara asked, looking a little puzzled. ‘Nobody has destroyed anything.’
‘Where we come from, my lady, when you start jumping between worlds, you leave piles of rubble in your wake.’
Dirk Provin seemed rather rattled by that prospect. ‘Do you know that for certain?’
Declan Hawkes nodded. ‘Absolutely. What I don’t understand is how you were able to activate a Chaos Crystal when there’s no sign of the Tide.’
‘We’re nowhere near the coast here,’ Damin said, a little impatiently. ‘I told you that already.’
‘I don’t think he’s talking about ocean tides,’ Adrina said, wondering what a Chaos Crystal was. It sounded like trouble. ‘And we used no crystals to bring you here, gentlemen. If we are to believe young Master Provin here,’ she added, indicating Dirk, ‘you fell into our world, much the same way he did.’
The two strangers glanced at each other. ‘Then how do we get home?’
Everyone turned to look at Dirk. Adrina found that interesting. Although they all professed to doubt his theory, they seemed to assume he had the answers about what to do next.
As if suddenly realising the weight of expectation he was being asked to shoulder, the young man threw his hands up and took a step backward. ‘Why are you all looking at me? I have a theory about what’s causing this. I never said I had the solution to the problem.’
‘What is the problem, exactly?’ Cayal asked.
‘Dirk Provin believes we all live in different worlds created by a single entity — hence the reason we all speak the same language,’ Adrina explained. ‘He also believes something has happened to the Creator and that’s the reason the walls between our worlds are breaking down.’
‘It’s worse than that,’ Dirk added glumly. ‘I suspect that if we don’t do something, we’ll all cease to exist.’
‘I see ... so you think God brought us here?’ Hawkes asked carefully.
‘I think the Creator created God,’ Dirk corrected.
Cayal glanced at Hawkes. ‘I think the natives here have been smoking something trippy.’
Dirk didn’t understand the reference, but he got the patronising tone in which it was spoken clear enough. ‘You can believe me or not,’ he said. ‘Have fun finding your way home.’ He turned to face Tarja and held out his joined wrists to the Lord Defender. ‘Back to the Citadel and my cell, then, my lord? I think we’re done here.’
‘Hang on,’ Damin said. He seemed concerned. Adrina wondered if that meant he was starting to believe Dirk Provin, or he just didn’t like the idea of leaving these two decidedly odd strangers to their own devices. ‘Let’s assume you’re right, Provin. Let’s assume we were all created by this being you speak of, and you’re right about something happening to him. You must have some idea how we can fix this. You’d not have crossed the veil from your world otherwise.’
Adrina nodded in agreement. ‘He’s right ... you would have stayed at home. Aren’t you a religious leader? If you thought you couldn’t stop the end of the world, you’d be at home comforting your flock, not standing here trying to convince us to do something about it.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds perfectly reasonable to me,’ Cayal said. ‘Particularly if it means you haven’t destroyed Earth and we can get back there some time before the sun goes supernova.’ He turned to his companion and added sourly, ‘You’ll be sorry we chucked that crystal in the drink when that happens, Rodent.’
Damin ignored the aside, probably because very little of what the handsome stranger said made any sense. He kept his attention on Dirk Provin. ‘Well ... what do we do now?’
Dirk lowered his arms and shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Really ... I’m not. But ...’
‘But what?’ Tarja asked, his hand still on the hilt of his sword.
‘Well ... I think we need to find the Creator and speak to him ourselves. I mean ... he may not even be aware of what’s going on.’
‘Find the Creator?’ Declan Hawkes asked. ‘How?’
‘That’s obvious,’ Shananara said. ‘We have to go through the veil.’
* * * *
Chapter VI
While they were arguing Adrina noticed a mist gathering that nobody else seemed aware of. It wasn’t until the storm of argument Shananara’s announcement unleashed was in full swing that Adrina realised the mist was thickening so rapidly the trees around the clearing had faded into nothing. As Damin and Tarja, Dirk Provin, and the two strangers, Declan and Cayal, argued about the merits of crossing this imaginary barrier between worlds, the barrier overtook them.
‘Damin ...’
Her husband ignored her. He was busy disagreeing with Tarja, while Dirk tried to defend his position, and the two newcomers made snide comments to each other that seemed to indicate an ambivalence in their relationship, reminding Adrina of two teenage boys comparing the size of their manhood.
‘Damin!’
‘What, Adrina?’
‘It doesn’t matter any longer. Look around you.’
Damin looked up and gasped as he realised they were now almost completely swallowed by the mist.
The others finally noticed it, too. They fell silent as the mist thickened to a silent, impenetrable fog.
