by Robert Brady
“Nothing worked,” D’gattis interrupted him. His contempt was clear. “Now Angron seeks your counsel.”
Glynn stepped into the throne room and almost tiptoed down the long, red carpet. She felt no rush of air from the vortex, no roar of great energies, no sound at all, in fact. The room had become velvety quiet, the other Casters standing like white crows at the vortex’s edge, all in contemplation of whatever this could be.
“I am amazed,” Glynn admitted.
“Yes,” Chaheff agreed, “we all are. This is an anomaly and we cannot dislodge it. There are spells which, once cast, cannot be undone except by the caster, and we are in hope now that this is one.”
“It is not,” Angron said. They all looked up at him, still pristine and white and ancient upon his throne.
“It is an opening, and we do not know to where,” he continued. “We dropped an orb into it, and it rolled across the surface. We wait in contemplation of this thing, for what comes out.”
“What comes out?” Glynn asked.
D’gattis clicked his tongue. “Surely, girl, you must understand that, if nothing can go in, then something must need to come out.”
“Then what use have you for me?” she asked. She felt weary on her feet, even from the short walk.
“In fact, our need for you has grown,” Aniquen said.
“It is my opinion that you are ill-advising our monarch,” D’gattis said.
“I believe I am not,” Aniquen said.
“And I am swayed by him,” Avek said. “As is Angron.”
“In what?” Glynn asked, thinking she must already know the answer.
And they confirmed it. “That you should sing, of course,” Aniquen said. “You have sung something halfway here, clearly you must sing it the rest of the way.”
“My song is sung,” Glynn said. It was true—she no longer felt the need, although the words now were burned upon her memory.
“I have tried to sing a portion of your song,” Avek said, “and I cannot. Nor can any other, and that is strange, because you are not the greatest among us, Glynn Escaroth. Some here, Aniquen for example, could not hear your song, which speaks for its power. We believe that this is your destiny, and you must continue in it with your own voice.”
Chaheff nudged her elbow where he held it. “Do not sing your song at first,” he said. “Sing something sweet, as you might use to coax a horse from a barn.”
Glynn nodded. She thought this made sense. If something was trying to come through, it might be lost because it sought her voice.
She opened her mouth, and she inhaled.
This would be disaster; or her greatest moment yet.
* * *
Bill, in his day, had been a power drinker. He could pound it with any client like he had a hollow leg. It was a matter of pacing, even if you were pounding; little sips instead of a few big gulps, and of course eat before, during and after.
Bill wasn’t pounding on Melissa’s bar tab, but the rest of these kids were on their own, and that made him really nervous because drunks don’t always remember things very accurately.
“So, yanno,” Melissa said, with her tiny hand on his shoulder, “how did you get so good at sales and stuff?”
“Stuff?” he asked. Her breath smelled like a brewery. Roy and another hanger-on had been trying to get her attention and shoehorn in between them all night, but Melissa would have none of it. She was entirely focused on Bill. She’d made him her mission apparently.
“Yanno,” she said. “Like, cars ‘n co’puters and boys ’n stuff.”
“Ah,” he said sagely. “Well, by living it, I guess. Benefits of growing old, more memories than expectations.”
“You say that too much,” she said, and slapped his shoulder. “You aren’t that old.”
“Nah,” Chelsea said. “You are totally middle aged.”
“I would do you,” another of the girls said, with a wicked grin.
“You would do anyone,” Chelsea said.
“Except Roy,” all of the girls said together, like some big joke. Of course, Roy’s chin hit the floor, as the girls went into gigglefest.
“But seriously,” the girl who ‘would do him,’ said, “you’re not old like grandpa-old. You’re doing okay.”
“Look at you, totally perving on him!” lobster girl said.
“Yeah,” said Chelsea. “Melly’s buying him beer; she is the only one who gets to perv on him tonight.”
“And you girls say we’re bad,” one of the other guys said.
“Oh, we know we’re bad,” Chelsea said, and hooked pinkies with the girl next to her. “Buy me a shot and you’ll see how bad.”
The boys went for their wallets as one, then laughed.
Bill had been growing steadily crimson during the whole conversation. This was going somewhere he didn’t want to go. Melissa was looking down at her tips again and smiling.
“I’ll be right back,” Bill said, and got up from the stool.
Roy leapt into it, and that was fine. A trip to the men’s room and then he intended to beat a hasty retreat.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
Bill turned as he pushed through the door with the ‘man’ symbol on it. He entered to find himself alone with one other guy in the Men’s room. Strange for a place this crowded.
“Sure.”
The guy looked to be in his twenties, tightish jeans, maroon business shirt open three buttons, nice shoes. He had a great head of hair, parted on the side and black as night with white highlights, brown eyes, and a black beard with the same white highlights.
“Is that your ‘crew’?” his mouth smiled at Bill, his eyes didn’t.
“No, they think it’s funny to go out with dad,” Bill said. “I give it a week before they’re bored with me and do something else.”
“So no interest in the long-haired one who can’t get her eyes off of you?”
Bill laughed, and dried his hands with a paper towel. “She’s younger than my daughters,” he said.
The younger man laughed. Something didn’t seem right, whoever he was. He had a youthful face and old eyes, with a far-away look but no crow’s feet.
“So you watch over her?” he asked Bill said finally.
Bill tossed the paper towel, looked at the guy a final time and said, “Look, she’s a nice girl, so if you want to ask her out—”
The other man smiled. “I inquire of your interest, not mine.” Bill walked past him to the door, but the man put a hand on his shoulder. Bill turned and they looked into each other’s eyes. He wanted to look away but couldn’t.
“You have no feelings for this girl?” the man asked.
“Of course I do,” Bill said. The truth had to be wrung out of him and he didn’t like it. “Who wouldn’t? But I’m not kidding myself. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
“All I wanted to know,” the guy said, releasing Bills shoulder. Bill walked out the bathroom door without looking back, so he didn’t see the crowded Men’s room and the two men sharing a laugh over the old guy who walked through the whole place talking to himself.
* * *
Uman wives sang a simple song when their husbands left for the bay. Thanks to the Eldadorian Sea Wolves, that had grown a lot more dangerous than it used to be. Glynn sang that now, calling through the vortex for whatever might be lost within.
It was a song of summoning, a yearning for one close, to draw the heart in closer.
* * *
“I’m sorry for that,” Melissa said.
Bill almost ran her over before he saw her, where she must have been waiting for him at the Men’s room door.
“No problem,” he said, smiling down at her.
“This was supposed to show you we’re your friends,” she said. “And now it looks like we were just baiting you.”
“I never thought that,” Bill lied.
She looked down, then looked up at him. “Do you want to go somewhere else?” she asked him, eyes wide
and innocent, just like when she’d asked him for Marlboros instead of Luckys that first time she met him.
Oh, for the love of God, won’t this end? Bill asked himself. This was a pretty girl. This was a girl who should be out dancing and smoking and looking for a nice guy, not some old fart with no future.
“Yeah, sure,” he heard himself say. “You alright to drive?”
“No,” she smiled up at him. “You better take me.”
They were out the door before he realized it, the knowing eyes of the girls and the jealous glares of the boys burning into his back.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought.
He didn’t kid himself on what she was offering. Her hand felt as fragile as the petals of a flower in his, as she led him to his own car. She looked up at him and her eyes told him she knew where she wanted to go. For her it would be different. For her, it would be love and babies and dressing him up in clothes and taking him to places to show her friends.
Neither noticed the car they were walking toward glowed brighter than the space around it.
“What are you thinking?” Melissa asked him, as she planted her butt on his fender, and took both of his hands in hers.
“Why you want an old fart like me,” he said, honestly.
“You are not old,” she said.
He just looked at her. She sounded so sincere. She wanted this, God knows why.
“Am I older than your parents?” he asked.
She looked away, and looked back at him. Her eyes were shimmering from the tears she held back. He wanted so badly to hold her, comfort her, tell her something funny to keep her from crying.
“I don’t really see my parents anymore, Bill. My mother died when I was real young, and my dad never got over it.”
“Oh,” he had stepped in it. He saw her clearly, saw the sparkle of the light on her sequined top, saw the makeup that highlighted her eyes and her cheeks, and the redness of the lips he wanted to be kissing.
“That music is nice,” she said, changing the subject.
He looked around. He didn’t recognize the tune.
“Is it a full moon tonight?” he asked.
* * *
Glynn sang the song’s refrain, and already she sensed something in the void. She probed it with her mind, as she’d learned to try to sense a bear in a cave, to see what she might be drawing out.
* * *
“What song is that?” Melissa asked him.
“I don’t know,” Bill admitted. “It doesn’t really have any melody.”
“And there is no band, just the singer. And where is that light coming from?”
She looked at his chest, then at his face, then at his chest again. He looked down and saw her shadow on him.
They looked behind her, and saw the hood of the car pulsing. She leapt from the fender and crashed into him. Her tiny hands took his upper arm in a death-grip. Even with the shock of seeing his car turning into a Vegas sideshow, he found himself amazed by the strength in her fingers.
“Bill?” she asked him. She wasn’t thinking about sex, she just wanted his arms around her.
“What the hell is that?”
Chapter Four:
Down With The Sickness
Glynn ended her song. They could all hear the grumblings of something in the whorl now. The Casters steeled themselves. Angron stood up upon his throne, his white hair standing out from his body as he let his power swell.
The Uman-Chi would be ready, come sweet greetings or bloody war.
“Come to me, traveler,” Glynn commanded.
* * *
“Did you hear that?” Melissa asked.
“What is this, close encounters?”
“No, it is not.”
Both turned and there was the guy from the bathroom. Same shirt, same hair, same too-tight jeans. He walked right toward them, his eyes focused on them.
“Who? What?” Bill couldn’t frame a thought.
“You said your intentions were true,” the guy accused him.
“What the—”
Melissa looked up at him, fear and suspicion on her face now.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
He looked down at her. “I have no clue what is going on.”
“Then know this,” the guy said. “You are guardian protector, Bill Howard. Stand beside her and give her what she needs. She cannot stand alone.”
And he put a hand on each of their breasts, and shoved.
The car they should have fallen against shimmered, flashed, and became normal once again, alone in the parking lot. The man smiled to himself, contemplated the empty scene for a few moments, and then vanished.
* * *
From the whorl, two beings emerged, stumbling onto the white marble floor.
Men, Glynn noticed. A male and a female. The song spoke of Men, of Uman and of Uman-Chi.
They dressed strangely, one the size a giant with the look of age, the other a woman, and by her dress of low birth.
Strange visitors to be traveling between places in a whorl, Glynn couldn’t help thinking.
The whorl collapsed into nothing. The room fell silent but for the crackling of power from the Uman-Chi.
The female cowered against the male. No surprise. Men were aggressive; look no further than the Conqueror to know that.
But the Bitch of Eldador came of the race of Men, and she hid behind no man. Arguably, she was not of low birth.
Arguably.
Avek stepped forward. “I greet thee, travelers, in the name of the Silent Isle, to the land of Fovea.”
The male regarded him suspiciously, aged eyes squinting. The female held him by his right upper arm, her eyes moist. Her lower lip trembled, her eyes stood wide as saucers. There were points of moisture on the male’s sleeves, at her fingertips, that could be blood. She didn’t know better than to cling to his sword arm, however he bore no weapon, Glynn noted. This was not a warrior. He might be a fellow Caster.
He growled like a bear and looked like one. He might be communicating in some manner to Avek, but Avek knew nothing of it.
The female tried to draw away from him, growling as she did, gesticulating wildly. He barked something at her, and she defied him. His voice changed from bark to roar—another trait of Men. What they can’t attract, they attack.
Angron surprised them all. He said something in some gruff tone, and the male looked up at him, relieved.
At least he knew greatness when it came to him.
* * *
“Who the hell are you people?” Bill demanded.
The thing in front of them sang something in its fluty voice.
‘Thing’ being the best word. It couldn’t be human. These things had pointed ears, green and violet and white hair, alabaster skin, and strange faces. The whole room had been built in some kind of glowing white marble, with a throne behind them and something sitting on top of it.
Clearly, they had been abducted by aliens.
“Bill, where are we?” Melissa started to cry. He could feel her fingernails in his arm, so tight his fingers were tingling.
“You are guardian protector, Bill Howard. Stand beside her and give her what she needs. She cannot stand alone.”
Bill’s heart stirred and he laid a hand on her shoulder. Whatever the hell this weirdness was, or whatever these people wanted, it would have to come through him to get to her.
In his twenties he would have already hit. Three decades later, he had enough sense to know getting his ass kicked wouldn’t help anyone.
“I can’t understand you,” he told it. It looked puzzled then looked at the others of its kind.
In her twenties, Melissa had no such self-control.
“Bill, we have to get out of here.”
He looked down at her. The tears had started. Her lower lip trembled and there was blood on his upper arm.
“We have to find out where we are first,” he said.
“No, we have to go!”
“Go where, exa
ctly?” he threw the question back at her. “We have to be calm—”
“Be calm?” she released him. She teetered halfway between attacking him and bolting. “Be calm? Are you challenged? Do you not know what’s going on?”
“Yes, Melissa, I do not know what’s going on!” he roared. This was stupid. He couldn’t help her if she wouldn’t let him.
From on top of a dais of some kind, one of them with white hair said, “Perhaps I help you with that?”
Bill’s head spun around. It spoke English. Badly accented English, but still English. Some of them spoke English.
What should have comforted Melissa made the whole situation worse. “Oh, no!” she said, shaking her head and stepping backwards, away from Bill.
“Melissa, what are you doing?” Bill asked her.
“He freakin’ knows you,” she said. She began moving down the carpet, toward the door. Bill saw two of these frail creatures moving between her and her goal. One might be a female, if females here were built like humans.
“That guy in the parking lot knew you,” she said. “That guy up there knows you. You are in on this, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bill said, and took a step forward.
That did it—she bolted. She spun and crashed into the two creatures that had moved behind her, knocking one on its ass and the other back two feet. Her sandals flew off in two different directions as she sprinted for the door.
She didn’t get far.
* * *
D’gattis looked up from the floor at the fleeing female.
Typical Man-child. Where did she think she was going? Through the palace, into the city of Outpost IX, out the gate, through the market, and then perhaps to leap into the harbor for a winter swim in Tren Bay to the nation of Volkhydro?
He raised his hand and closed it. She fell to the floor. Not dead, which would have been his first choice, but weakened, to the point where her legs would not support her.
To his surprise she rose and fell, not once but twice. Volkhydran warriors had fallen, gentle as babes, with less effort by him.
* * *
Bill saw her fall, try to get up, and fall again. He took a step forward and felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He turned to see the old man from the top of the dais, amazingly now at his side.
