The City that Time forgot

by Patrick McClafferty

  “Peachy.” Gareth returned sourly. “Where is Jafelon?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Gareth sighed, getting to his feet and pulling Chiu with him. “Fine.” He said without inflection. “If you’re going to play the game that way, I quit. Find yourself another sucker. I jumped through all the hoops you set out for me, and for what? To get battered, broken and lied to across the whole damn world. Every time I turned around something was trying to eat me! Now I have to find a mystical control center somehow, somewhere and blow up the damn moon? Are you insane? I’ll tell you what will happen. I will try very hard and very bravely, and something very hungry will come along and eat me and I will be very dead, and eventually I will be something coming out of the south end of a north bound monster. The world will cook when the radiation reaches it. End of story. Thank you very much.” He glared at Athena. “In my version I quit and go my merry merry, all happy and shiny, live my life out and die an old man. Maybe my children’s children’s children will be some of those that are smart enough to leave the Earth. I will be long gone so I don’t give a shit. The Earth will still cook.” He vaguely heard a small whimper from Chiu, but he did warn her that it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Athena’s calm composure was cracking. “You can’t quit.”

  “Watch me.” Gareth grinned without it ever touching his eyes. “I fulfilled what you wanted me to do when you sent me to Eldenworld. My car is just at the top of that rise, the keys, fifty dollars in cash and my passport hidden in a small compartment in the left hand rear door. My rent is paid until the end of the month.” He pulled out the Colt and flipped on the digital sights. “Colt Industries will give me a fortune for this weapon, and it will put them centuries beyond everyone else in the arms business. Chiu and I can use the money to buy a small inn on the coast up in northern Maine.”

  “You can’t quit.” Athena repeated, her voice rising several octaves. “Millions will die.”

  “Millions will probably die anyway.” Gareth said roughly.

  “Please help!!” Athena’s violet eyes were very wide and shining in the moonlight with unshed tears. “Please save my people. It’s too late to recruit someone else, and none I ever found were as good as you.” She took his hand “Please… I’ll do anything.” She wasn’t even being subtle.

  “Tell me where the control center is.”

  “I can’t!” She wailed. “I can’t.”

  “Well you’d better damned well do something, or I’m out of here, and you can watch the world cook.”

  “What do you want?” She was on her knees in front of him.

  “What can you do for me?”

  Reaching out, she touched his hip. “I can give you such pleasure as you’ve never imagined.” He felt an ecstatic tingle working out from where her fingertips rested and he gasped as he pulled back. “Or I can give you money.”

  “I want you to help me survive.” Gareth panted. “Only if I survive will I be able to complete your task.” His chuckle was dry and lacked any mirth. “Money is overrated anyway.”

  Something flickered across her face so fast that he would have missed it, if he hadn’t been looking… satisfaction. She stood and reached out more quickly than he could imagine. “Done!” She touched the lambda tattoo on his cheek, and for an instant cold fire washed through his body. Gareth almost fell, and then Chiu was holding his arm. Before him Athena was glowing radiantly, and from the expression on her face Gareth had the sinking feeling he’d done exactly what she wanted him to. “Tell Shaw what I’ve said to you. She will be able to point your way.” She laughed. “It’s a nice night. Stay as long as you like. You know how to get back.” She was gone.

  Gareth sank back to the sand, Chiu standing before him, her hands on her hips. “What was that all about?”

  Gareth took another deep breath, striving to calm his racing heart. Athena’s touch had been more stimulating than he could ever have imagined. “I had to get her off her ass. I had to get her to do something, to help me.”

  Chiu gave a dry snort. “Right. She was about to take you to bed.”

  Gareth looked up. “Was she? I don’t think so. I was pushing her to do something for me, while she was pushing me to do something for her. We met somewhere in the middle, I think.”

  The dark-haired woman shook her head and sank to the sand at his side. “Why is it always so complicated?”

  Gareth sat quietly for a few moments longer, listening to the waves. “I think Athena wants to make us work for our own salvation.”

  “Us?”

  His smile was crooked. “Okay, me if you will, and the rest of the human race by association.”

  Reaching up, Chiu touched his cheek. “You might want to check your definition of the word ‘human’ again. I suspect that you no longer qualify. Your funny upside-down V has changed. In its place is a shield and on the shield a woman’s face,” She frowned, leaning closer. “with snakes in her hair.” Her finger touched his cheek gently, moving slowly toward his jaw. “There is other writing swirling around the shield, but I can’t read it.”

  In his imagination Gareth heard the snick of a lock clicking shut. “That’s the Shield of the Aegis. What did she do to me now?” He grumbled to the night breeze.

  “I did as you asked.” The voice of Athena whispered in the whirl of the zephyrs. “I helped you to survive.”

  “You put the Shield of Athena on my cheek. What’s that all about?”

  “In different ages and in different cultures I’ve been known by other names. The shield is mine. If you recall, it has been lent out before.”

  To Chiu’s dismay, Gareth leaned back in the sand and laughed. “I should have opted to have sex with you. It’s probably safer.” He heard a growl from Chiu.

  Coming out of the warm air, Athena’s voice was sultry. “Are you sure? Aphrodite can be very possessive, you know.”

  “Are you implying that you aren’t possessive?”

  “Ohhh.” Athena purred. “I am very possessive, as you are just discovering.”

  “Scheiße.” Gareth growled under his breath.

  “Gareth, Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. I can speak German.” Athena said calmly from the air at his side. She didn’t sound at all upset by his cursing.

  Gareth counted to a hundred. “Goodnight Athena.” He said at last.

  “Goodnight my Gareth.”

  Gareth reached down and began to unlace his boots, and Chiu looked at him curiously. “What are you doing?”

  He gave her a wink. “It’s a beautiful warm night on a secluded beach in Mexico. I, my dear, am going swimming.”

  “But you don’t have a swimsuit.” Chiu explained slowly.

  Gareth removed his socks, and began unbuttoning his shirt. “And your point is?”

  “But you… I…” She stopped, swallowed, and began to follow Gareth’s example.

  Shaw had just entered the arbor looking for them when Gareth and Chiu arrived, hair still wet from their skinny dipping, pants and shirts sticking to their wet skin. White sand clung to their bare feet, cheeks and hair. Both carried their boots in one hand, while they held hands with the other… and they were laughing.

  Shaw’s eyes went very wide. “Chiu? Gareth? Where have you been?” She added as she took in the sand and their generally disheveled look.

  “She’s your mother.” Gareth said, looking at Chiu innocently.

  “Oh no! It’s your story to tell, mister hero. Go for it.”

  Gareth rolled his eyes. “It’s not so much where we were, as when. Chiu and I were swimming on a beach in the country of Mexico, under a waxing autumn moon, thirty-eight thousand years ago. That’s where Athena brought us when I said that I wanted to talk. She thought it would make me feel more comfortable, since it’s the last place I saw before I came here.”

  Shaw wasn’t paying any attention to him at the moment, but was instead staring hard at her daughter, and Gareth knew that she was quickly shifting through the younger woman’s memories. Fin
ally she turned back to Gareth, her eyes haunted. “The moon looks as though it’s about to fall from the sky into your lap.” She said in a small voice. “And is the sun really that bright and that yellow?”

  Gareth nodded. “We stayed until the sun rose over the eastern mountains.” He shot a glance at Chiu’s slightly pink face. “Your daughter got what we call a sunburn from exposure to our sun for an hour or so. What is coming for this world will be a thousand times stronger, and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.” He frowned. “Athena told me to mention that there were five great interconnected cities here at one time. They were: Azheles, Brivrelsea, Yuegate, Jafelon and Shsa-Tirion. The city that was called Jafelon is now called The City that Time Forgot. That’s where I’m headed.”

  Shaw shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. “I’ve heard of The Yeugate before. Four or five hundred leagues north of Molva there are ruins that some claim is The Yeugate. The mountains that way are said to be treacherous. I’ve heard of three or four expeditions heading that way in the past few years. None have returned.”

  Gareth looked at Chiu, whose teeth were beginning to chatter from the cold, and then grinned at Shaw. “Athena said that you would point us in the right direction. I guess she was right… again.” Wrapping his arms about Chiu, Gareth’s face took on a far-away look as he turned his thought inward. Soon steam was rising from his clothes and the light blue pallor departed from Chiu’s cheeks.

  Shaw looked at him in wonder. “So the stories about your dragon blood are true.”

  “Ahhh, yeah.” Gareth looked embarrassed.

  “Why don’t you young people come inside, and get out of those wet clothes.” There was a strangely wistful look on the older woman’s face, and Gareth wondered to himself if she might, perhaps, be a little jealous of her daughter’s adventures. “When you’re finished, I can send for the minister and we can discuss your wedding. The cathedral should be free next week.” She said matter-of-factly.

  Gareth stumbled, catching his toe on a rock. “Cathedral?” There was a note of panic in his voice, and then an idea struck him from out of the blue. “That won’t be necessary, Shaw.” Both women stopped and turned, glaring at him, one stunned and one suspicious. “I’m sure that Athena would consent to marry us, if I asked nicely.” He gave them a wide smile, while at the same time wondering just exactly where that idea came from. He had certain suspicions. “You have a beautiful little chapel in the west wing of the manor that would fit a few dozen people. That would work nicely. We could always postpone it until after I save the world.” He would have laughed if it weren’t so damnably impossible.

  “No more postponements.” There was a definite edge in Chiu’s voice.

  “I was thinking of inviting a couple of hundred.” Shaw replied, dismayed.

  Gareth’s face hardened. “And I would have preferred myself, Chiu, a Justice of the Peace and two witnesses. This is a good compromise. If Athena can do it, we’ll have the wedding in three days, and be back on the road in six.” He looked over at a stunned Chiu. “If you still wish to come.”

  She clutched his arm. “I’m possessive too.” Chiu replied hotly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight because I don’t trust Athena any further than I can throw her. She just wants to get you into bed.”

  Gareth winced when he saw Shaw’s face. “It’s a long story.” He apologized. “Maybe we could discuss it over lunch.”

  “Lunch?” Shaw blinked. “We’re still having breakfast.”

  He laughed. “We’ve been gone eight hours. I don’t know about your daughter, but I’m starved.”

  ~~~

  The river ketch was named the Esa Serin, and was a bonded courier to the Oseothan government. Her entire length of forty-five meters had been converted to cabins, with a small hold amidships for passenger luggage. Fore and aft rigged, she was a stable, wide bodied craft, well suited for shallow river and lake traffic. Her crew of ten seemed sluggish and taciturn, but Shaw had assured him that they would get the job done. Standing in the narrow bow of the boat and despite the spitting sleet, it seemed to Gareth that this was the first time he’d had to relax in the last five days.

  The first three days, he smiled to himself, had been a whirl of preparations for the wedding, with Chiu and Shaw being closeted for hours in their preparations. When Shen, Chiu’s older brother along with his wife, and Qingzhao her younger sister with her fiancé, arrived the day before the ceremony, the tears had flowed again, and the four once more disappeared. Gareth sat with Lyndra and Wokeg, making lists of everything they might need in the upcoming expedition. Making the list, he discovered, was easy. Whittling the same list down to what could be loaded onto two packhorses was more difficult. Food and water would be no problem, but thinking of complex sentences in Latin when you were freezing or hanging by your fingertips was unlikely. How, he wondered to himself, did one go about asking for crampons and ice axes in Latin? Athena had visited him the evening before the wedding, and seemed to be harboring a vast laughter as she calmly asked him what he was planning on wearing to the ceremony. He almost broke right then, and started running, but Athena had conveniently locked the doors. He finally settled on the Marine Corps dress uniform. What Athena presented him with, however, was an officer’s uniform, with the twin bars of a captain on his epaulette. She calmly explained that as the sole representative of the USMC left alive on the planet Earth, it was more than appropriate for him to be an officer. With a guilty look on her face she admitted that she’d altered the records back on old Earth to reflect the fact that Gareth had received a battlefield commission to Lieutenant, and a step up to Captain on his involuntary retirement. To Gareth it still felt like cheating, but he found that he was strangely choked up when he donned the familiar uniform.

  Walking down the aisle, Chiu looked radiant in her flowing white satin gown, all accomplished without Athena’s help, he’d been told. Her own eyes shown when she took in his dress uniform. Smiling in a benign benediction, Athena began the simple ceremony but afterword, unfortunately, Gareth couldn’t remember a thing until he reached over to turn off the lamp in their bedroom. Beside him Chiu was smiling.

  Luckily, he’d given I'alen the list of their requirements before the wedding, so that the confusion afterward wasn’t quite complete.

  Shaw touched his shoulder, and he started. “Deep thoughts for the newlywed?” Her voice was light although slightly muffled by the heavy hood she had pulled over her head.

  “Oh, you know, the usual thing for a new husband; will my new wife survive the upcoming weeks and not get eaten so that, someday, we can have a real honeymoon? Will we freeze to death in the mountains?” His voice held a bitter edge. “Will we survive to have children?”

  “It sounds as though you’re having second thoughts about marriage.” Shaw commented, frowning.

  “Oh hell no!” Gareth gave her a wink. “I’m just sorry we came back to Eldenworld is all. Chiu and I might have had a good life on old Earth, and our great, great grandchildren could have gone to the stars. Now, if we fail, it all goes down the drain.”

  “If you’re that concerned, I could take Chiu back with me. She will be safe.”

  Gareth sighed. “It won’t work for two reasons. The first is that Chui would probably leave me if I left her behind. I’d have no one to come home to. The second is that we’d never get away with it. She would catch up in a day, and make my life pure hell.” His smile lacked any warmth. “You daughter has an exceptionally sharp tongue.”

  Under the fur lined hood Shaw looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid that she got that from me.” He saw her chuckle. “I got it from my father, who was a lumberjack.” She stood beside him for a time, watching as the muddy brown Puasheehchester River turned into the steel gray Lake Molva. “We should only have three more days of easy sailing, now that we’re in the lake.” Her voice was low. “The captain will post lookouts for ice flows.”

  “There won’t be any problem from ice dragons?”

  S
haw gave a delighted little laugh. “Ice dragons? Those are creatures from fairy tale…” Her laughter died when she saw his face.

  “Your daughter didn’t tell you what happened to us on the Lake of Shadows?” Gareth asked. Shaw shook her head. “An ice dragon, ice snake really, came up out of the icy lake and dragged the boat down under us. Chiu, I, Lyndra, and Wokeg were the only survivors. After that we knew what to look for, and were able to avoid them. Ice dragons are very real and very hungry. Remember what I said about getting eaten?”

  Her eyes wide, Shaw gave a little nod. “I’m beginning to see just how dangerous and impossible your task is. How could Athena ask you to…”

  “Because I’m the only one left.” Gareth interrupted. “She sent out ten others. None made it as far as Zuebrihn.”

  Reaching out, Shaw gripped his arm and he could feel her tremble. “As soon as we land I will see to your accommodations and horses. There is a small village named Manticore, at the very edge of the polar ice. I will provide what maps we have available. The government runs a stable there for travelers next to a small inn. You may leave your riding mounts at the stable, taking only your pack horses with you into the mountains.” She gave him a sad little smile. “If you should find that you can take your pack horses no further simply remove the packs and release them. Well trained and more than a little spoiled, the horses will make their way back to the stable on their own.” Shaw wiped at her cheek, and then glared at the offending tear that hung from her finger. “I hate farewells, so I will depart in a carriage as soon as the boat lands. Please don’t be offended. A second carriage will arrive to take you and your companions to an inn beside the stables.” She gave him a quick and surprisingly warm kiss, and then pulled back. “Our blessing, and the blessing of the Nine be on you all.” She turned away quickly so that he wouldn’t see her tears, but not quickly enough.

  “Thank you, Mother.” He said to her retreating back.