by C. A. Gray
“What, you just want me to speak to it and see if it obeys?” said Brock doubtfully. “I don’t even know the Ancient Tongue…”
“I can teach you, then!” said Bruce. “I don’t know the whole thing fluently, and the only elements that obey me are quantum particles, although if I get enough of them at once then I suppose I could technically control all sorts of things, but that’s another story. Here, try water. Repeat after me: dtonnta a dhéanamh.”
It took Brock several tries to get the pronunciation right, but even when Bruce was satisfied that he had done so, the water remained still as glass. “Hmm,” Bruce frowned. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have the gift of water – maybe this stuff is just abnormal in some way.”
“I’d buy that,” said Brock. “Nothing else is normal around here.”
“Fine. How about air? Umm…” He looked around for a minute, and finally took off his shoe. “Try this,” he said. “Aeir the thíos bróg!”
Brock repeated him at least six times until Bruce was satisfied with the pronunciation, but still the shoe remained on the stone platform, immobile as ever.
“This is stupid. I don’t have a gift,” said Brock crossly.
“Well, here, I’ll show you how it’s done, though I guess you’ve already seen it quite a bit if you were in Carlion,” said Bruce, nonplussed. “Chruthú fótón.” Instantly a little prick of light appeared and shot towards the edge of the forcefield. But when it hit the field, it suddenly grew much, much larger, like an explosion of white light. Then with a crack, it extinguished altogether.
They were both silent for a moment, staring at the place where the photon had been.
“What was that?” said Brock finally.
“Not sure,” Bruce murmured. “I’ve never seen a photon behave that way… in fact usually I can barely see them at all, due to the presence of too much ambient light. In this place, though, there is no light, except for that...” He pointed around them, indicating the faint glow that seemed to be coming from someplace else entirely.
“Let me try!” Brock exclaimed, and then repeated Bruce’s words in the Ancient Tongue until he was blue in the face, but could not achieve the same result. “This is ridiculous. Peter can freeze a car in mid-air, and I can’t even…”
“Try this,” said Bruce absently. “Leathnú cloch. Look at the stones when you say it – it makes a difference where your attention is focused.”
Brock scowled at him, looking as if he wanted to tell Bruce where he and his Ancient Tongue could go, but he did as told, rather halfheartedly. He could scarcely believe his own eyes when the ground that supported them began to extend to cover more and more of the deathly water.
Forgetting himself, he cried, “Look at that! I did it! I really did it!”
Bruce looked up. “Excellent!” he said distractedly. “Keep going, keep going!”
So Brock repeated the words. He stood up, extending the ground beneath the forcefield in all directions until he had created a little oasis beneath it, scarcely able to contain himself.
While Brock was doing this, Bruce muttered again, “Chruthú fótón,” and the same phenomenon repeated: the speck of light, the annihilation with a flash and a burst, and the subsequent darkness.
Then he understood.
“Brock!” Bruce exclaimed, and Brock looked up at him expectantly, now willing to listen to anything he had to say. “I think I know what this place is made of!”
Brock was confused. “You said it was a superstring or something…”
“No, no!” said Bruce, and then amended, “Well, yes, but more than that. I think the Fata Morgana is made of dark matter!” When Brock did not immediately register this information with shock and delight, Bruce continued, “Right. Crash course: there’s an enormous amount of energy in the universe that scientists can identify mathematically but cannot actually detect. Energy and mass are just different forms of the same thing. They call the discrepancy between the two dark matter, meaning it’s the matter we know is there but can’t see. Lots of physicists who study Superstring theory, like me, assume that this matter exists inside of the alternate dimensions –”
“Like the one we’re in,” said Brock.
“Yes! So this place is made of dark matter. In fact, I never thought of this before, but that’s probably why the penumbra aren’t visible in our world to most people even though they’re right there, in plain view – they’re made of dark matter too!”
“That’s… brilliant,” said Brock, sounding as though he thought it was anything but. “But how does that help us…”
“It helps us,” Bruce cut him off, “because of what happens when matter and antimatter of the same type contact each other. Annihilation,” he finished, looking smug. “That’s what we just saw: light comes into contact with darkness, and it annihilates. It blows up.”
Brock stared at him for a long moment, finally beginning to understand the significance of what Bruce was saying. “You mean… you can blow up the whole fortress?”
Bruce frowned. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s technically possible, but I’ve never been able to create that many photons at once before. Even with meditation, best I can do is illuminate a lightbulb…”
Brock suddenly remembered something that he had considered insignificant at the time. “Kane told us there’s a natural limit to how much of their element people can control.”
Bruce nodded, “Yes, the energy within their own bodies. That’s why it’s so remarkable that Peter reversed that car and lived to tell the tale.”
Brock regarded him for a moment and then said with concern, “So if you tried to blow this place up… wouldn’t it kill us both in the process? You from the effort, and me from the explosion?”
Bruce shrugged and spoke casually, but his voice was tense. “It’s technically possible.”
“Right,” said Brock, and he laughed uneasily because he didn’t know what else to do. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”
Chapter 26
“Where did Kane take the flashlight?” Cole panted.
“Shh!” said Lily sharply. “Not so loud!”
“Sorry,” Cole whispered back irritably, still breathing hard. Then he whispered, “Where did Kane take the flashlight?”
“I think he took it – back – to his room,” Peter huffed. He wished he’d taken physical education class a bit more seriously.
“So we have to search for an unknown room in the dark?” said Cole.
“Basically, yeah,” said Peter. He had slowed to a stop when they reached the blank stone wall near the store room and closed his eyes.
“What are you –” Lily began.
“Shh!” said Peter. “I’m trying to remember.” A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and began to tap a sequence very carefully on the wall, the one he had tried to cement in his memory when he had seen Kane do it. He was rewarded by the sound of heavy movement, and in another second, they were standing in front of a gaping black hole that looked even more forbidding this time around, considering what he planned to do. Peter tried not to think of the open mouth of a grave. He plunged in first and the others followed him.
They moved in silence and darkness so complete that if not for the sounds of their footsteps, muffled in the narrow and dank interior, it would have seemed as though they were inside of an isolation tank. Then the ground began to curve steeply downward, which gave Peter his bearings. He remembered that the ground had begun to curve just before Kane had told him to make a hard right…
“The library is coming up soon, isn’t it?” came Cole’s voice behind him.
“Yes, but there’s a fork in the path before that,” said Peter. “I’ll try here, on both sides. You guys go on up ahead until you get to the next doors and passages.”
“What? Why?” said Lily anxiously. “I say we stick together!”
“It’ll be faster if we divide and conquer,” said Peter brusquely. “Just open every door you come to until one of u
s finds the Commuter Station, and then shout out so the others meet up with you.” Then he moved to the passage that opened to his left, making space in the center hall for the other two to get by him.
“What if there are no lights in the rooms?” Cole said. “How will we know which one is the Commuter Station if we can’t see?”
“Gerald said that the fire specialist lights the torches in every room of the castle in the mornings, whether people are in them or not,” said Peter, “and they all blow out at night. But it’s still daytime so they should all be lit.”
“I want to go with you,” said Lily abruptly.
“What?” said Cole, and his voice betrayed his nervousness. “You just want to leave me?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Peter quickly, “go with Cole.”
Lily hesitated, and then said, “Oh, fine. But we’ll all meet up again as soon as one of us finds the Commuter Station. Right?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” said Peter, and hoped she couldn’t hear the insincerity in his voice.
Suddenly Lily managed to find Peter’s hand in the darkness, and wrapped her fingers around it. “Be careful,” she said earnestly.
“Of course. You too,” Peter replied, trying to keep his tone as even as possible. For a wild second he entertained the thought of hugging them both goodbye, but he knew that if he did that they would never let him go. Instead, he disentangled his fingers from hers and slipped down the passage to his left.
Peter didn’t have to go very far before he came to the first door. He cast a quick, reflexive glance over his shoulder to make sure the others were out of sight, but he could see nothing in the gloom anyway. He steadied himself then and pushed it open.
The brightness of the room momentarily dazzled Peter compared to the darkness in the secret passageway, even though the room was illuminated only by the flicker of firelight. When his normal vision returned to him, his jaw dropped.
Apparently, he had stumbled upon the Armory. This was where Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table stored their weapons when they were not in use, and he remembered from his dad’s stories that it was also a practice room for sparring and training. Thousands and thousands of weapons lined the walls, many of which looked centuries old.
This must be where Kane got his stash from on that first night, Peter thought. There were broadswords and katana blades, scimitars and clubs, axes and bows with arrows, dirks, Chinese throwing stars, numb chucks, knives of every size and shape, and a variety of other vicious-looking things that Peter could not readily identify. The weaponry seemed to be a mish mash of ages and cultures (much like the fashions in Carlion), though notably there seemed to be no guns, as if the collection extended only through the early fifteenth century. One section of the wall was devoted just to shields and body armor of various types, from chain mail that looked light as a feather, to the sort of full body armor that Arthur and his knights wore in their last battle, complete with helmets with every imaginable color and size of panache. A different crest marked each of the shields, but his eyes were immediately drawn to the one with two interlocking red dragons emblazoned on a background of gold.
Under ordinary circumstances, Peter would have been thrilled to stumble upon such a find. At the moment, however, he could not afford to linger. He cast a reluctant look at the beautiful, vicious-looking array and headed back towards the hall again when he stopped himself.
Wait a minute. What am I doing?
The weapons were there for the taking. Not that he had the slightest idea how to use them – but walking away from a stash like this when he knew he was facing certain death seemed unbelievably foolish. The penumbra did not usually have bodies and so weapons would not ordinarily do him any good, as Lily had pointed out. In order to abduct a human, they would have to take physical form again, wouldn’t they?
Besides, Peter thought, arguing with himself, and made a face, if Dad is a Watcher, he probably knows how to use this stuff. Obviously, Kane had had a good amount of training, so perhaps they all had.
The next problem was figuring out which weapons to take, and how to transport them. Peter still wore the gray jumper and jeans from the day before, and didn’t have anything like Kane’s overcoat that he had worn the night of the accident under which to conceal a sword. Not that concealing it was strictly necessary, but he didn’t want the penumbra to know he was armed immediately if he could help it.
Peter stopped. How did Kane know he’d need a sword the night of the accident?
He didn’t have time to wonder about that now.
He didn’t think he could move quickly enough with a weapon as large and unwieldy as a sword. He settled instead for a pair of medium-sized knives (he thought machete might be the appropriate term) and strapped one to either shin with the leather holsters lying nearby, which looked newly minted. The machetes were large enough to do damage without getting too close to an enemy (at least, he hoped so), but small enough that they did not extend above his knee, which meant he could barely feel them as he moved.
With the knives in place, Peter turned and ran back into the passageway, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart. He probably had only another few minutes before Cole and Lily finished checking all the doors up ahead and came looking for him. He quickly tried the next door.
Peter knew even before he opened it that it was the right one. He stopped when he saw the rows of photos and paintings, and took a moment to steady himself. The light no longer dazzled him, so it took him only an instant to register the fact that he was not alone. He blinked in surprise as he recognized the skinny figure with the blond hair and jagged scar, reclining with one arm pressed against a wall.
“Kane!”
“Peter,” said Kane in reply. He did not seem surprised to see him at all.
“What are you doing here?” Peter demanded, his gaze involuntarily straying over Kane’s shoulder at the paintings behind him. The one immediately behind him was an abstract sketch of a wristwatch that merged into the face of a mountain, and the title below it said “Cayman Islands.”
“Waiting for you,” Kane said simply through his still-swollen lip.
“You’d better not be here to stop me,” Peter snarled, “because I will hit you again.”
To his surprise, Kane laughed. “Well, now, that’s a threat!” he chortled, and crossed his arms over his chest with an infuriatingly condescending expression. “Before you do that, though, consider that you might not want to injure your allies.”
Peter wasn’t sure how to respond to that. His gaze flickered again to the pictures over Kane’s shoulder. He knew it didn’t matter which one he went through; he only needed to get out of Carlion, and fast. The painting beside the wristwatch said “Siberia, Russia,” and it bore the image of a tiger, which seemed slightly more relevant to its location than the previous one. “Allies?” Peter repeated distractedly, wondering how to get Kane out of the way.
“That’s right,” said Kane. “I’m here to help you rescue Bruce and Brock.”
That got Peter’s full attention. “Isdemus didn’t send you to stop me?” he said suspiciously.
“Nope. And here’s how I see it: you, Peter Stewart, are about 120 pounds soaking wet, you’re winded by a thirty second sprint, and you’ve never held a weapon in your life unless you count swords made of cardboard with a towel draped around your shoulders as a cape.”
Peter still had enough of his faculties to flush at the accusation. “I was a kid!” he protested heatedly.
Kane ignored him and went on, “So the way I figure it, you can’t do this alone.”
“Of course I can’t! But I’m the only one who can find the Fata Morgana, and Isdemus won’t let me go with the rescue team, so I’ve got to do it alone, haven’t I?”
“No, you don’t,” said Kane, his tone suddenly taking on an uncharacteristic note of sincerity. “I got you into this mess. You said it yourself – it’s my fault, what happened to your dad. In order to get him back, Peter, you need help.
You need my help.”
“Why do I need your help?” Peter countered.
“Because I’m the only Watcher in this castle who won’t try to stop you. That makes me your only option.”
It was a good answer, Peter had to admit. “How did you know I’d come here?” he asked, still suspicious.
“You had to,” said Kane simply. “The Commuter Station is the only way to get out of the castle without going through the main gates, and the secret passageway is the only way to get to the Commuter Station undetected.”
Peter faltered for a moment, considering. He suddenly remembered Kane’s ability with a weapon. That would come in handy. Also (though he didn’t consciously acknowledge this part), unlike Cole or Lily, if Kane didn’t end up coming back, Peter wasn’t so sure he’d consider that a tragedy.
“Fine,” he said grudgingly, “but we’ve got to move.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Kane. “I estimate we’ve got about three and a half minutes before Isdemus sends a guard to the Commuter Station, to make sure you have no route of escape.”
“Three and a half?”
“Just a guess. Honestly, I don’t know what took you so long in the first place. I told you exactly where to go when I took you to the library, didn’t I?”
Peter stared at him for a minute before that registered. “You told me that on purpose!” Then he scowled at him and said defensively, “I had to get rid of Cole and Lily. That took some time. And speaking of wasting time…” Without another backward glance at Kane, he began to move towards the photo closest to where he stood, which was of a large, flat-topped pyramid without a label. “I assume it doesn’t matter where we go?”
“Nope, long as we’re outside of Carlion,” Kane affirmed.
Within a few inches of the wall, Peter felt the familiar sensation of a hook just behind his navel, drawing him forward. It seemed as if he was approaching the photo from the inside of a tunnel, rushing towards it with uncontrollable force.
