Decision Made

by Michael Anderle

  That was why you had a tribe—to extend the span. And why you disagreed with your tribe members sometimes.

  She began to run some simulations in the background on popcorn flavor and texture profiles and settled down to wait for the twins to wake. For now, she was safe. She didn’t have to worry.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The structure that held the key barely looked like a tower at all. From a distance, even at the base of the mountain, Taigan had thought it was a rock outcropping, not something that had been constructed.

  Frankly, she wasn’t sure it was safe to go into it at all. The dark-gray stone walls resembled tumbled boulders. From the base of the tower, she could see there was a hollow space in the center and that it rose higher than a ruin would. Perhaps, she thought, it had been built this way on purpose so that people wouldn’t go into it.

  It still creeped her out.

  Midnight, sensing her discomfort, stuck his cool nose into her palm and licked her hand. She jumped, then knelt to scratch the dog’s neck and received a lick to the face with a scrunched-up nose. She wasn’t exactly a dog person but she knew that he was trying to help and she appreciated that.

  Kural approached her as Jamie and Esak finished packing the camp up.

  “You should know what you’ll face in the tower,” the wizard said.

  “I’m…not sure I want to know.”

  “That, young lady, is childish.” He frowned at her. “You stand much better chances of success if you know what you’ll be up against.”

  Taigan nodded glumly. “I suppose.”

  “There’s no ‘I suppose’ about it. Good grief, young people are exhausting. How do you ever survive to adulthood?”

  “The same way you did,” she said and barely managed to not stick out her tongue at the end of it.

  “I should hope not. I survived more by luck than anything else.”

  “I…that’s probably normal.” She shrugged.

  He considered this. “Perhaps. But it’s not important. Right now, you have the chance to know what’s coming and I suggest you take it. The last key I found like this was of dwarven make but I have reason to believe that this one was made by the orcs.”

  “Orcs?” Taigan hadn’t seen many of them. “Er—will it smell in there?”

  Kural began to laugh. He couldn’t stop for a while and leaned on his staff while he held his side.

  “Oh, my,” he said when he finished. “It’s an apt question, I admit, but an unexpected one. No, the place will likely not smell like orcs do after so long. There haven’t been any of them in this part of the world for a long time. My guess is that there are few, if any, who remember that this artifact exists.”

  “Why did they make it?” she asked.

  “That’s a good question—why make an artifact like this if not to use it? I suppose the answer could be that those who feel driven to discover advances in magic are not always the type of people who wish to test those advances. Or perhaps it was an orcish seer who looked into the future and saw you. We will, quite likely, never know.”

  Taigan nodded. She swallowed as she shifted her focus to the tower.

  “It’s good to fear, you know,” Kural said. “Fear sharpens the mind.”

  “I thought one was always supposed to stay cool and rational.”

  The wizard snorted. “Anyone who told you that is either lying or deluded. No one stays rational in a fight. The best you can do is train yourself well so you have habit to fall back on and try not to out-and-out panic.”

  “So it’s not weird to get frightened or all…adrenaline-y…during a fight?” She saw his confusion. “Adrenaline is what you feel when you get scared or angry or something and your heart pumps fast and all that.”

  “Ah. In that case, no, it’s not weird. It’s quite normal, in fact.”

  She nodded.

  “The place will likely be guarded by the elements,” Kural told her. “There’s a prohibition in orcish culture about creating something with a mind—like the spirit of a warrior. My guess is that most of the trials you face in getting to the top will do with water, fire, cold and hot, wind, things like that. Given that the tower is made of stone, it’s possible that earth will be the dominant force you will face but no element has sole province over anything.”

  “How do I fight an element?” Taigan asked with a frown.

  “Well, I would fight it with magic, but I sense that won’t be an option for you.” He peered at her necklace. “That should do something for you, although I admit I have no idea what it will be. Remember that the main goal of the tower is to make you give up. Leaving one world for another is no minor thing, and whatever your reason is, it must be stronger than your fear and pain.”

  “Oh, goody,” she muttered. “So it’s merely a gauntlet to see if it can make me give up?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s some bullshit.”

  “Were you not listening, girl? No one should travel between worlds without a good reason.” He looked at Esak and lowered his voice. “He would not have made it, I think. Don’t tell him I said that.”

  She shook her head.

  “Come eat,” he said practically. “A good breakfast in your belly will do more to help you than any more advice. Did you get some good sleep?”

  “Eventually, yes.” Although her dreams had been uncomfortably vivid. “You know, there’s no magic in our world.” The thought bummed her out.

  Kural only laughed. “I doubt that.”

  Taigan opened her mouth to make a retort, then realized she couldn’t say with certainty that he was wrong. She shrugged and instead, asked, “Will you make us that porridge again?”

  “I suppose I could do that.” The fire had already been stoked so he placed the pan on it and began to rummage through his pack. “Someone fetch water. And limber up, all of you. The two of you will go up that tower and you, boy, are about to find out that it’s much more difficult to go down a mountain than up one.”

  “No, it’s not,” Esak said with a rare flash of humor. “It’s only harder to do it without dying.”

  The wizard guffawed. “Good, you have a sense of humor. This journey will be better than I thought.”

  Taigan stretched and did some warm-ups while she waited for breakfast. She suspected that Kural had suggested it to give her an outlet for her energy that wasn’t simply pacing constantly, but she was still grateful. Her anxiety rose inexorably as they drew closer to the point where she would go into the tower.

  Soon, all of this would be over. She had dim memories of her other comas now—of the darkness and the calm. It hadn’t felt like being trapped but rather like waiting, and that scared her even more. To her, it was better to be trapped and fighting to get out than to accept your imprisonment.

  It was strange to think about the “real” world, however, when it would be so different from this one. After choosing their path and having no one to rely on but themselves, they would be back to living under their parents’ roof, dealing with curfews and set mealtimes and college, a workweek, and all those things that defined the rhythm of life they had grown up with.

  Here, she had no sense of when the weekend might be. There was no busywork. Everything she did had a purpose.

  She knew she would search for that for a long time although she wasn’t sure that was a problem. Maybe it would be good for her.

  “I’m going to take some time alone,” she said when she had finished her food. She knew it had been delicious but she had barely tasted it.

  Jamie looked worried, but Kural put a hand on his shoulder to keep him seated and nodded to her.

  She headed to the edge of the mountain’s peak. The rock flat-top was hardly flat but it served well enough. She sat on the end of it and let her legs dangle and kick freely as she looked out over the valley. Dusty roads, blue sky behind clouds, wild tangles of trees and bushes, and all kinds of different wildflowers filled her vision.

  “Here,” Prima said. “I have a pre
sent for you.”

  “Oh?”

  The landscape around her flickered and disappeared to be replaced by huge redwoods. Taigan now sat on a boulder and looked around at dappled sunlight on the forest floor and browned pine needles. She smiled as the breeze ruffled her hair.

  “The first place we saw together.”

  “One of them.” The forest disappeared briefly to show only blue, the formless void of her first experience in this world, before the forest returned. “You loved this place.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “It reminded me…how much I missed having senses. That I wasn’t content to be sleeping.” She looked up. “Do you think I would ever have discovered how to do this on my own?”

  “No,” Prima said promptly. “But you have never been alone.”

  Taigan swallowed. “I hadn’t ever thought of it that way.”

  “Mmm. I thought that might be the case.”

  She sighed and lay back so she could stare up through the trees. Absently, she wondered if the group on the mountaintop could still see her and decided that they would cope if she blinked out for a while. It didn’t sound like Prima to cause a panic.

  Well, not by accident. She might do it because she thought it was funny.

  “You can visit, you know,” the AI pointed out.

  “Yes. I do know.” She smiled. “I’ll miss you, though.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know. I could stay here. But you know neither of us wants that.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I text now!”

  “You…” Taigan gaped. There was no mistaking how proud Prima was of herself. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say. It turns out it’s easy to send text messages without having a phone number.”

  “Then how am I supposed to text you in reply?” she joked.

  “It works.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ll say?”

  “Do you truly want to know the details of the routing protocols?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I truly don’t.” Taigan straightened. “I don’t want to do this, you know.”

  “I know. Not wanting to do it is an important part of the process, unfortunately. Also, the danger.”

  “I knew you would say that.” She sighed and stood. “Promise me something, will you?”

  “Maybe. Tell me what it is first.”

  “Promise you’ll keep making fun of me. It helps me stay grounded.”

  “So do thin-soled shoes. Zing!”

  “Someone needs to work on your humor algorithms,” Taigan said as she headed back. The trees flickered and disappeared around her and her companions watched her from the campfire.

  By their calm, she assumed they had seen her as if she were there the whole time.

  She shrugged at Jamie. “I think we might as well go. I keep expecting to feel ready or epic or something, but it’s not happening. Honestly, I only feel nervous.”

  “In my experience, the ones who feel deeply heroic and filled with purpose are either sociopaths or extremists,” Kural interjected. “Most people feel nervous and wonder if they’re doing the right thing.” He smiled at her and added, “Which you are.”

  Esak came to give the twins hugs. “Thank you for coming to find me,” he said. “I know I was angry but you gave me a new way to look at my life—and some harsh feedback about what I was trying to do.”

  Taigan smiled. “You go cure your friend,” she told him. “And take good care of Midnight.”

  “Of course,” he said fondly. “I might even learn to read, who knows? That would shock my father.”

  The wizard had no final words of wisdom for them and instead, only nodded. He started off down the path, whistling, and didn’t wait to see them enter the tower. This, he seemed to say, was entirely their show.

  The two of them looked at each other in silence. Then, with a sigh, they both readied their weapons and walked up the stairs and into the darkness of the tower.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There wasn’t much to see, although what had looked like an unorganized tumble of stones from the outside was much more organized inside. Some of the stairs that protruded from the stone walls were wood and others were stone.

  There shouldn’t be any timber left there if the orcs had disappeared so long ago, but there was almost a feeling that this place had been largely untouched by time—or that time moved more slowly there somehow. Taigan looked up into the almost perfect cylinder of the tower and had a sense of deep misgiving.

  She was validated in her feelings almost immediately when a wind whistled down the structure in a spiral and blew a wad of cobwebs into her face. Immediately, she spat and wiped her face to get everything off. Could she feel spiders on her neck? She couldn’t tell but flailed, as did Jamie. They both pretended they didn’t see the other one acting foolish.

  The tower would have to do better than that, but she didn’t exactly want to issue a challenge. It would rise to that, she was sure. She was also certain it had far more disgusting things to throw at them than cobwebs.

  They began their ascent, mainly because there was nothing else to do.

  The tower’s first gambit to keep them out was subtle. Slowly, the stairs below their feet grew slick. Taigan slipped and stumbled more than once, as did Jamie, and they took to steadying themselves on the wall—which, equally as quickly, grew slimy and wet. Water began to trickle down the center of the stairs that started to look worn and smooth.

  How long had they been climbing? She looked up to see only the same gloom she had seen before. Then, she looked back.

  They had climbed, yes, but not far—not nearly as far as they should have made it in about half an hour. They were no more than a flight of stairs up, although she was sure she had climbed far more than that. Her lungs and her thighs were both burning.

  “Hey,” she said, annoyed. She pointed down.

  Jamie looked, his breath short pants, and it took him a moment to see what she meant. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Goddammit,” he said.

  The roar of the wave came too quickly for them to evade its onslaught. It swept around the coil of the stairs with unholy speed. Somehow, it didn’t spill off the edges and down the drop in the middle and bowled them both over and all the way to the ground. They didn’t get shoved out of the tower, but only because both of them ended up face-first against the wall.

  The water vanished as suddenly as it had come and Taigan shivered convulsively. Her clothes were sopping wet and heavy and her hair was plastered against her neck.

  And how could she still feel spiders? Dammit.

  She looked at the stairs, gritted her teeth, and reminded herself that this was elements and illusion.

  Resolute, she stepped onto the first stair and began her upward trudge again. This would go on all day or perhaps longer than a day. She had to prove that she was sufficiently motivated to go home and she would because she was sufficiently motivated.

  “I don’t suppose Kural warned you about any of this.” Jamie panted behind her.

  “He said we’d likely face elemental powers,” she told him and shrugged. “Something about orcs and spirits—ghosts—something.”

  “Dotty could have told you about orcs,” Prima commented.

  “Next time, maybe tell us we’re meeting someone who can share good information.”

  “Do you remember me telling you that you didn’t go about this anywhere close to how I envisioned you doing it? Well, that was part of it. At least she gave you the necklace.”

  “Yeah, what does that—” Taigan gasped for breath and leaned against the wall. It was amazing how quickly one ran out of thigh strength. “What does it do? The necklace.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  The heat blast came while she was rolling her eyes, as hot as opening an oven and completely unexpected. She spluttered and whipped her face aside, but her eyes stung and her cheeks hurt. Jamie spluttered.

  Where
they had shuddered with cold, their clothes now turned into a prison made of steam and too-hot fastenings. She yelped and pulled her cloak clasp away from her neck. The heat was so intense that there was not one single moment where she felt comfortable. Instead, every breath in seemed to make her throat sear.

  It wouldn’t kill her, would it? She looked around for flame and saw nothing, although she could barely keep her eyes open for a second before the heat grew too much.

  It was so hot that she was losing track of how the ground felt beneath her feet.

  No, the stairs were now covered in sand. She decided that fit well with the desert motif, but she wasn’t pleased. About the only thing she could say for this was that she wouldn’t get sunburned.

  They shed their clothes as they climbed, coughing on dry air, but they hauled the garments along with them in case it got cold again. It didn’t for a long time. The wind picked up, which only made things worse—their skin was cooler than the air—and the wind kept the heat against them at every moment.

  Sweat dripped down Taigan’s back and across her upper lip. Her entire body seemed to be coated with it. Every time she drew breath in and every time she planted a foot on yet another damned stair, the sweat changed course across her body. Her arms itched and her ribs were coated. She could taste salt on her lips.

  The wind picked up and began to make the sweat glide across her body. It cooled slowly enough that she hardly noticed it. After all, she was more than a little focused on continuing her ascent instead of flopping into an exhausted heap. But slowly, the wind grew cooler and the sand disappeared from under their feet.

  One last blast of cold caught them on the stairs. They had achieved some distance this time, or so it seemed. Sometimes, when she looked, she was only a step or two above the floor and sometimes, she looked down so far she got vertigo. Clearly, looking would not help in either case.

  The cold air was sharp, perfectly timed to bring out the shivers. They pulled their clothes on again hastily, although they were damp with sweat and the chill only worsened. When Taigan saw a door ahead and the end of the stairway, she broke into a run—as much from cold as from relief.