Jane leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Then don’t speak to me like I’m stupid.”
She sat back, looking at the fire, her face expressionless. After several seconds, Frazier followed her gaze and caught his breath.
Several burning logs had floated up into the air and out of the main hearth, hovering above a rug made from the skin of a scallywag beast. Sparks and hot cinders fell from the logs, igniting several long hairs of the soft fur, which flared and died out quickly. A mess of white ash flew up from the fireplace, swirling around the flames in midair in fancy patterns, spelling words and making faces. Frazier felt a familiar icy fear in his gut, thinking of such power in the hands of a woman as unstable as Mistress Jane.
With a hiss and crackle, the whole show collapsed back into the fireplace; in seconds, it looked like the fire hadn’t been disturbed at all.
“Now,” Jane said, folding her arms and returning her focus to Frazier. “I know people are worried that my attempts to change are insincere. If anything, they seem more frightened of me than ever. Correct?”
Frazier nodded, not daring to say a word.
“This doesn’t bother me. Not in the least. I’ve been… unwise in some of my leadership methods. Perhaps even cruel. I know it will take time-a long time-to change.” Jane shifted in her seat, looking toward the window on the other side of the room, muted light from the cloudy day spilling through onto her bed. “All I ever wanted was to make things better, Frazier. That’s all I still want. If I need to adapt how I rule things, then so be it.”
She turned her neck, looking once again at Frazier, her eyes narrowed. “But we will take over the Realities. We will spread the goodness and power of the Chi’karda from the Thirteenth Reality to the others. And in the end, we will make the universe a better place for all. This, I promise you.”
Frazier nodded again, throwing all the sincerity he could into his expression. Jane’s words, filled with passion, had moved him greatly. He remembered why he had followed this woman for so many years, despite the constant danger. He remembered… and felt ashamed of the many times he’d hoped to topple her and take over.
“Mistress Jane,” he said. “I… I… I don’t know what to-”
“Say nothing,” she snapped, a sudden thunderclap shaking the room. It was a trick she performed often. “You’ve earned yourself back into my full graces. You’re my most loyal servant. You will be beside me, always. Nothing else needs to be said.”
A long pause followed, thoughts churning inside Frazier’s mind. How do I act now? What do I say? His fear of Jane hadn’t diminished in the least-if anything, it had grown stronger.
Thankfully, Jane got back to business. “You said you had an update on the Barrier Wand and some interesting news. Well, get on with-” She paused, forcing a smile. “Please, report.”
Frazier leaned forward, grunting as he pulled himself out of the soft cushions, and put his elbows on his knees. “They’ve found a place in a small mountain range about five hundred miles away-they’ve spotted signs of ore. It looks encouraging. The Diggers are hunting as we speak. As soon as they find a deposit, I’ll let you know.”
“Once they do,” Jane said, “we should need only two or three more weeks.”
“That’s right. The metal is the last thing we need to reconstruct the Wand.”
Something floated up from a shelf near the bed, flying through the air and landing with a thump in Jane’s outreached palm. She held it out for Frazier to see-a complex bundle of wires, pipework, gears, and nanochips-the Chi’karda Drive she’d removed from her previous Barrier Wand. The one Atticus Higginbottom had stolen.
“What’s the other news?” Jane asked.
Frazier shifted uncomfortably. His news was very strange, and he worried about her reaction. “Well, some of our hunters discovered an interesting… thing.” He paused, unsure how to proceed.
“A thing? ” Jane repeated. “Your descriptive skills are less than apt, Frazier.”
“Sorry.” He rubbed his hands together. “I guess I’ll just say it how it is.”
“Brilliant idea.”
Frazier tried to laugh, but it came out as a snort. “Way out in the Forest of Plague, near the spot of the old battleground, they found a place where hundreds of trees have been cut down. Each stump is perfectly flat, as if the trees had been cut with a laser or something.”
Jane tilted her head, obviously intrigued. “Interesting. I can’t think of anyone…”
When she trailed off, looking at the fire, Frazier continued. “Right, no one in our Reality has that kind of technology. But, um, that’s not the weird part. Not even close.”
That caught Jane’s attention; her eyebrows rose.
“The trees…” Frazier said.
“Did someone take them? Did they burn them? That area has enormous trees-some taller than the fortress.”
Frazier shook his head. “I know, which makes the next part really bizarre. I couldn’t tell what had happened until I flew on the back of a fangen and looked down from above.”
“What do you mean?” Jane asked.
“Somehow, whoever cut those trees down… arranged them on the ground so they spelled out words.”
“Spelled out words?” Jane repeated. “With trees? ”
“Yes. They formed letters out of the tree trunks. Really big trees that made really big words.” He laughed at himself but stopped abruptly.
“What did they say?” Jane asked, not smiling.
Frazier braced himself, knowing he had no choice but to repeat the mysterious message word for word.
“It said, ‘Mistress Jane, you are a coward. Come and find me.’”
Chapter 16
Tunnel of Glass
Tick slid his hand along the warm, hard glass of the big tube as he walked beside it in disbelief at the sheer height of the structure. It rose at least twenty feet above him, maybe more, and appeared to be a perfect cylinder. The bottom third was buried underneath the shifting sands of the desert. The glass was clear, but so thick he couldn’t tell what lay inside the big pipe; he could only see distorted images of varying color.
“Okay,” Paul said. “I’ve seen some strange stuff since hanging out with you two, but this might beat all.” He stepped back and spread his arms wide, looking up at the curved glass. “What could this thing possibly be?”
Sofia squatted on the ground, digging through the sand to see if the structure changed at all underneath. “Looks like it just keeps curving in a perfect circle. Maybe if we dug all the way to the bottom we’d figure something out.”
“Do I look like a shovel to you?” Paul asked.
“Well… actually, you kind of do,” Sofia said. “You look like a shovel with crooked ears.”
Tick ignored them, walking along with his hand pressed against the glass, hoping for some change or sign of what they were supposed to do next. Sweat soaked his clothes, the sun beating down on them as if trying to cook them for dinner. He could feel his skin beginning to burn-especially his neck. In all the chaos with the giant spider robot monster, he’d lost his scarf.
What is this thing? he thought as he studied the glass structure. Master George-if it really had been him-must have sent them here for a reason, and a clue or riddle must be hidden somewhere. He kept walking.
“Yo, where you going?” Paul called out.
Tick turned to look, surprised at how far he’d walked-at least a hundred feet. “I don’t know!” he yelled. “Trying to find a clue!”
He stopped, squinting to examine the endless tube as it stretched into the horizon, diminishing in a shimmering haze of heat in the distance. Nothing appeared to break the consistency of the smooth glass-no ladders, no doors, no connected buildings. He finally gave up and walked back to his friends, both of whom were digging in the sand.
“See anything?” he asked.
“No,” Sofia answered. She sat back on her heels, letting out a big sigh. “Seems like a perfect cylinder. A really big one.�
�
Before he could reply, a deep humming sound filled the air, a short burst lasting only a few seconds, but so loud it made the glass vibrate. Or maybe it was the other way around, Tick thought. Maybe the glass had shaken and made the sound.
Sofia and Paul jumped to their feet and moved next to Tick.
“Please tell me you guys heard that,” Paul said.
“Yeah,” Tick said, almost in a whisper. He thought he might’ve seen something from the corner of his eye-a slight movement in the glass to their left. “Something happened when it made that sound-I didn’t really get a good look.” He pointed to where he thought he’d seen the anomaly and walked closer; the others joined him.
“What do you mean?” Sofia asked.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something move across the glass, a shadow inside or water pouring down it.”
Paul reached out and ran his hand along the curved wall. “Serious?”
“Yeah, positive.”
“Let’s wait to see if it happens again,” Sofia said.
Tick folded his arms, staring at the tube. No one said a word, silently hoping for a clue as to what they should do next.
A minute went by. Then another. Then several. A half-hour passed and nothing happened. Tick felt so uncomfortable from the sweat drenching his clothes and the sticky salt on his face
and the burning in his skin and the sand in his shoes VRRMMMMM!
The sound boomed out again for five or six seconds, and this time, they all saw it. Right where Paul had touched earlier, a section of glass slid down, as if it were simply melting open, creating a rectangular hole the size of a typical door. Inside, filling the entire cylinder, something huge and dark zoomed past like a train, going at an incredible speed. Tick couldn’t see any details, scarcely believing that whatever it was could move at such a velocity.
The train thing was gone as soon as it had come, and the glass melted upward, closing the door and reforming until not a single blemish or mark revealed it had ever been there.
“Whoa,” Paul said.
“This must be a tunnel for some kind of bullet train,” Sofia said. She gingerly reached out to where the doorway had appeared, then tapped the glass with her fingertip and pulled away. “It’s not any hotter than the rest of the tube.”
“We’re obviously supposed to go inside,” Tick said.
“And get smashed by that thing?” Paul said. “Wasn’t much room for a nice stroll in there if that train comes flying by again.”
Sofia turned toward the two of them so they stood in a small circle, facing each other. “Tick’s right. It can’t be a coincidence that we showed up here next to this big tunnel, right where a door opens up. We have to go inside.”
Paul shook his head. “Well, I’m not too keen on the idea of getting run over by a monster train. That door seems to open only every half-hour or so and it only stayed open a few seconds. Jumping in there sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“There has to be a path and a railing, right?” Tick said. “Even if it’s small. Any subway in the world has a walkway, doesn’t it? For people to make repairs and stuff?”
Paul shrugged. “Maybe, but it sure seemed to me like that thing was right next to the glass.”
“Yeah, it was,” Sofia agreed. “But what else are we going to do? Sit out here in the sun and bake to death? There’s no sign of anything for miles and miles except that stupid chair-I guess we could try sitting on it again, but-”
“We have to go in there, ” Tick interrupted, nodding toward the tube, knowing he was right.
Paul held out his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, all right. Look, here’s what we’ll do. We sit here and wait for the door to open again. When it does, we’ll peek in and see what we see-all while making sure we don’t let anything slice our heads off or smash our faces in. Ya know, just for kicks. Like I’ve said before, we wouldn’t want to mess up this pretty face of mine or you know the ladies would be devastated.”
Sofia groaned.
“That works for me,” Tick said. “If this door opens every half-hour or whatever, we don’t need to rush it. Next time, let’s just lean in real quick and take a look around. Hopefully there’ll be a walkway with a railing. If not, we’ll decide what to do from there.”
“Deal,” Paul said.
“Who’s going to poke their head in?” Sofia asked.
“All of us-it looks big enough,” Tick said. “Sofia, you look left. Paul, you look straight ahead. I’ll look to the right-and make sure you look down, too. Get in line and let’s get ready. Who knows when it’ll open next.”
They lined up in the order Tick had indicated and stood just inches from the invisible door in the shiny curved glass. The seconds dragged into minutes as Tick stared at his distorted reflection, trying to stay focused so he could lean forward the instant things changed. The sun had moved further west, but it still shone down with ruthless heat.
“What if the door closes before we pull out?” Paul said after what seemed like an hour of waiting.
Tick rolled his shoulders, surprised at how stiff his muscles were, tensed as he kept himself prepared to move. His injuries from the metaspides still stung as well. “Just count to three inside your head then pull back. It stayed open at least-”
The humming sound cut him off.
Tick tried not to blink as he stared at the unbelievable sight of the doorway opening. Like liquid silver, the glass melted and disappeared into itself, dropping in a straight line until a perfect rectangle once again revealed the inside of the tube.
“Now!” Tick said, but the other two were already leaning forward with him.
Everything felt different-the vrrmmmmm sound wasn’t as loud and nothing shook. Even as Tick’s head passed through the opening, he could see that no train or anything else was close by. Mentally counting to three, he stared across the tube and took it all in, hoping his friends were doing the same.
He saw no sign of rails or anything else to indicate train tracks. There wasn’t even a sunken floor running along the bottom. The inside of the structure looked much like the outside, a long tunnel of smooth glass almost completely unblemished by objects. It was much darker inside, the sunlight filtering into dark shades of blue and purple as it passed through. Here and there, small, odd-shaped formations of glass jutted into the tunnel. Tick had no idea what they were for.
Tick felt someone tugging on his shirt. He snapped back to his senses and jerked himself out of the tube. A second later, the humming sound returned as the glass magically formed upward, a gravity-defying sheet of molten crystal, and sealed off the doorway.
“Dang, Tick!” Paul said. “Weren’t you the one who said count to three? ”
“Sorry-I just… I guess I lost track of time.”
“How do you lose track of three seconds?” Sofia said.
“Yeah, man-one more second and you’d have been running around here without a head.”
Tick ignored them, still fascinated by the inside of the tunnel. “So what did you guys see?”
“Glass,” Paul said. “A bunch of glass.”
“Me, too,” Sofia agreed.
Tick frowned, having hoped they would have seen something different. “No sign of a walkway or anything?”
Paul shook his head. “Just smooth glass with little things sticking out here and there-no idea what those were.”
Sofia nodded. “Below us the glass just curved toward the bottom in the middle then started back up again. It’s just a big glass tunnel. That’s it.”
Tick folded his arms and leaned back against the tube-a few feet away from the doorway, just in case. “What was that thing we saw zing past last time?” He wondered if maybe they’d gone to a Reality with extremely advanced technology, some form of travel they couldn’t even comprehend.
Sofia seemed to be on the same wavelength. “Maybe it’s some kind of futuristic invention-a train that slides through the tube at lightning speeds. Maybe this i
s a special kind of glass mixed with a metal we don’t know about and super-magnetized. Maybe.”
“Man, that sounded smart,” Paul said as he joined Tick, leaning against the tube.
Sofia put her hands on her hips and stared at them, as if picking out a criminal from a police lineup. “Okay, so what do we do?”
A long pause answered her. Tick finally broke the silence. “We go in.”
“Now, wait a minute-” Paul began.
“He’s right, Paul,” Sofia said. “What else can we do? We go in and let the door close behind us. Someone is testing our bravery. If we’re willing to just stand out here and roast to death, what good are we as Realitants?”
“What good are we if we get smashed by a big old train?” Paul retorted.
“Courage,” Sofia said. “Master George expects us to be brave.”
“He also expects us to be smart.”
“How about this?” Tick interjected. He stepped away from the tube. “We’ll wait until the door opens and we don’t feel the big vibration of the train-thing. The door opens every half-hour, but maybe the train only comes by at certain intervals. We’ve been here for at least three hours and we’ve only felt the vibration of the train twice.”
“I’m in,” Sofia said quickly.
They both looked at Paul, who took a long moment to think. “Fine-but only if there’s no doubt the train isn’t coming.”
“Sweet,” Tick said. “Line up again.”
They did, and time seemed to move slower than ever. When the door opened next, it was accompanied by the violent vibration of the traveling machine. Tick caught a blurry glimpse of the dark shape as it zipped past.
“See,” Sofia said. “It’s totally obvious when the train is coming. We can probably go in next time. If we don’t see or find anything in thirty minutes, we’ll just come back out.”
Again, the waiting game. Tick felt like the heat and the boredom were slowly driving his mind crazy; his stomach ached for food. He thought of his family, picturing each one in turn. Kayla, finally reading and loving every minute of it. Lisa, getting better at the piano and yapping on the phone constantly. His mom, the best cook he’d ever known-though old Aunt Mabel in Alaska was a close second. Finally, he pictured his dad: big belly, funny hair, gigantic smashed nose and all. Thinking of them made him feel a little better, but his heart panged with sadness as well.
The Hunt for Dark Infinity 1r-2 Page 10
