by Gabi Moore
“This storm has lasted the entire time you’ve been here?” Dion asked one of the guards.
“Pretty much,” the man replied. “It slows down, but, like he said, the rains never go away for longer than a few days. This place is crazy; I haven’t seen the sun once. The clouds only break at night and you never see the stars for more than a few minutes at a time.”
The elevator entered the opening for the great hall, which was taller than most of the doors to the lift chamber. Dion had asked one of the sisters earlier in the day how people kept from falling down the open shaft and was told it had never happened. “You just know better than to get near it if there is no lift in the shaft,” she told him with a look of astonishment on her face. “How hard is it to learn that?”
Dion saw one of the other women waiting at the great hall when they began to move past it. Just as Kris stepped off and into the main chamber, the new woman stepped onto the lift.
“It’s only another level down,” Dion said to her. “You could have met us at the bottom...”
“I know,” she said, “but I’ve been dying to ride one of these things ever since I saw it.”
In a few minutes, the lift stopped at the bottom, which was the warehouse level. A small crowd had gathered around the door to the entrance and took turns to look out a peephole cut into the doors. Dion recognized Kylie Mahen, although this time she wore shoes and held a spear in one hand that was much longer than the one she’d held when he entered the tower. She still wore the same black gown.
Around her were several men who appeared to be servants and attendants. One held a bow and the other a club. From the way the man held the club, Dion could tell he’d never used one in a fight. He kept dropping and picking it up off the floor. The other man plucked the bowstring with abandon, something else that clued Dion as to the man’s inexperience with it.
“Something happening out there?” Dion asked Kiley.
Twelve of those things outside at the bridge,” she told him. “I can’t make up my mind if we should send out the men and push them away from the bridge or haul it up.”
“I thought they couldn’t leave the tower,” Dion said to her. “Something about a fear of heights I was told.”
“Not the same kind. These have green fur and brought an entire encampment with them. Have a look.”
Dion went to the peephole in the odor and stared out into the distance. He could see movement at the edge of the bridge in the storm, but not much. There were small figures out there carrying weapons of their own that were indecisive about what they should do. Dion guessed it had to do with the storm. No one wanted to mount an attack in the middle of this maelstrom. As he watched, a bolt of lightning struck near one of the figures and it jumped back. The others beat a fast retreat to their hovels in the distance.
“How could you see what they looked like?” Dion said to her. “You can’t see much of anything out there in this storm.”
“There was a break in the rain for thirty seconds and the moon shone through,” she told him. “I saw forty of those things in their outside. They were on the bridge when the storm resumed and ran back across. I guess they didn’t want the wind to blow them into the moat.”
“Did anyone see where they came from?” he asked her. “I don’t recall any camp outside when you let me in. There wasn’t much of anything out there.”
“One of the servants let me know,” she told him. “He came down to make the watch and saw them milling around. He called me down while you were upstairs to let me know.”
“I’d raise the bridge,” he told her. “You have the storm working in your favor right now. With the lighting making things risky, they’ll not try to ford the moat. If this storm ever lifts, they might try to make it across, but you’re good for now.”
“That was my original thought,” she responded to him. “I needed to hear it from someone else. She turned to a pair of men standing next to a crank. “All right, bring it up.”
The men began to turn the crank a bit at a time and Dion could hear the bridge rise in the storm. He looked out the peephole and saw it begin to rise in the air. There were no movements on the other side of the moat, so he closed the opening and went back upstairs.
“I thought we would see some action down there,” the woman from the club who went down with him said as they walked back up the stairwell.
“Not today,” Dion returned. “Why, did you really want to have a go at those things...ummm…what was your name again?”
“Bernice,” she said, “Bernice Cosmo. I was in the dragon corps.”
“So you used those big fire-breathing lizards against ground targets?” he asked her. Dion knew what his idea of a dragon represented, he needed to make sure it was the same on this world.
“Nope,” she told him. “I was in the veterinary division. Never got to see one strike a target. I suppose you could consider them big, although I never saw one more than ten feet long. Nothing bigger can stay in the air very long. Many people think they are huge, but work around them long enough and the size is relative. The smaller ones are trained to make the first strikes. They escape radar detection.”
“So you can’t ride them….” Dion spoke aloud. His idea of a dragon was much different.
“Of course not,” she laughed. “You’ve been reading too many books. They don’t talk either. But they do shoot fire. Takes them awhile to recharge, you only get two or three burns before they have to fly back to base.”
“They sound scary enough,” he told her.
“Not if you work with them every day. They haven’t been used in battle in over a hundred years, but every kingdom keeps them on the ready. You never know. I’ve read enough history to know what a full-on dragon war is like and I wouldn’t want to be around for it. Whole cities burned to the ground in one night. Entire countrysides reduced to ashes. And they will fight each other if not trained right. It was hard enough keeping the females separated. You get several female dragons in a pen together and they’ll try to rip each other apart.”
Dion continued on until he reached the grand hall level and went back to the table where his parents were sitting once again across from his uncle. There wasn’t much else to do right now but wait it out. Dion noticed the servants bringing out blankets and bedding for the couches and chairs in the great hall. Apparently, the Mahen sisters decided it would be a better idea to have all the storm refugees stay downstairs in the hall with both the top and entrance to the tower under siege.
He thought about what the woman who worked with dragons told him. Too bad they couldn’t get any of them to take care of the creatures that’d infested the tower. On the other hand, would it be such a good idea to have fire-breathing lizards running all over the tower? It might be stone on the outside, but there was plenty of wood on the inside.
Right now, he didn’t feel like interacting with either his parents or his uncle. The Mahen sisters where nowhere to be found. He’d left Kiley Mahen in the bottom warehouse playing little major, but he had no clue as to where the other two went. The servants were bringing in bowls of stew to the women who hadn’t had a chance to eat. Most of them sat at the table and continued to discuss whatever they’d been discussing when he walked into the hall.
He saw the young black woman who had come in with the bus occupants standing by the window and watching the storm. She held a drink in a small glass and wore a tight dress and heels. She turned from the window, checked her make-up in the reflection of a mirror and returned to the storm. Dion decided he could do much worse than talking with her, so he walked over to her part of the room.
“I remember you entering with everyone else,” he told her. “But I’m terrible with names.”
“Sondasha,” she told him. “I remember yours. You’re Dion, correct?”
“Correct,” he affirmed. “Were you on the bus long before it broke down?”
“About a day,” she told him. “Kristen drove it most of the way. She has a license or somethin
g. I hope the men who work here can get that bus fixed tomorrow. I need to get back to the city.”
Dion decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask her what city and changed the subject. “It sounds like you have important work to do in the city.”
“I’m an actress,” she told him. “And a singer. I have a concert coming up in two weeks and I need to get ready for it. I’m told there are some important patrons who are coming to see me and I want to look my best.”
“It sounds like a hard way to earn a living,” he said to her.
“It’s not easy. Plenty of competition out there. But I’m just starting and I hope to get places before much longer. I’ve always heard success is all a matter of timing, so I want to be ready.”
“Did you see anything funny outside when the bus broke down?”
“No, it was dead out there except for the storm.”
“Did you want to get something to eat?” one of the women called to her from the table. “There’s plenty of food. We’ve worked out a way to compensate the sisters for their hospitality later. They’ll send the bill to the agency.”
“Agency?” Dion asked Sondasha.
“The outfit who organized this trip,” she explained. “They were supposed to send us to a hotel for the evening. As you can see, we got lost. One of the stipends in the contract is that they will cover any unplanned expense. I think this qualifies. My, that stew smells good; I think I’ll have some.” She wondered off to the long table, leaving Dion alone by the window.
Dion sighed and decided to go sit with his parents. There still wasn’t much else he could do until the elemental grandmaster returned. He wasn’t able to get any more information out of the sisters or his uncle and decided he would have to wait to gather any.
The sisters were back at the head of the table. This time they wore the same color scheme, but had jackets on over their shoulders. He noticed Kiley leaning over to her sister Susan in a deep conversation. He couldn’t hear what it was about, but the younger woman didn’t seem to like the direction the discussion was headed. She continued to frown while her older sister told her what she didn’t want to hear. Dion speculated it had something to do with Susan leaving the room earlier. As before, Loris was in the middle of it all, but tried to stay aloof. This argument might’ve been going on for years, for all he knew.
The women from the bus seemed to be excited by all the action at the tower. Most of them had led boring lives from what he could tell. This trip was a chance to get out of town and find something to write about. From what he picked up from the side conversations, there was very little actual warfare in this world. The presence of dragons, which were easy to breed although monopolized by the various kingdoms, made it difficult to wage war on a neighbor. The mere threat of a dragon attack was enough to bring negotiators to the table. It didn’t matter how many of the lizards each side trained, the other side could still wreak havoc on an enemy with a few of them. These reptiles seemed to be a lot easier to train than their equivalent on earth. Most large reptiles from where he came from couldn’t be trained; they regarded any form of warm-blooded animal as an enemy or food.
The groups had known each other a long time and commented on how each other’s husbands and or children were getting along. Pictures were pulled from purses and shown to one another. It was no different from a similar gather in from where Dion came.
“I need to get to a phone soon,” one of the women said as she ate from her bowl. “This stew is great; I need to find out how you make it.” She was a large white woman who wore her hair in a bun. Dion tried to remember her name. It came to him a few minutes later. She was the one called Beth Ravi.
“It helps that we have an endless supply of jackelopes out here,” Kiley Mahen spoke to her. “It’s why the meat is tender.”
“Wild or do you breed them?” the woman named Beth asked her.
“Wild. Too difficult to breed them. Not only do they kick each other but also the males will charge each other with those horns for territory. You have to be very careful if you keep jackelopes for stock and we have never had any luck with them. We use snipes to hunt them in the dry season.”
“Not much ‘dry’ here,” Beth replied, as she wiped a spot of grease from her sweater. “And you’ve had this storm for at least two months? I’ve never seen one last more than three weeks up north. Of course, we can go the entire dry season and not see a drop of rain.”
“The dry season is short down here,” Loris Mahen explained. “We need to get up the capitol sometime next year; you’ll have to let us know what the best sites to see are.”
“I don’t know what you like to see, but they did but in a new quezzrdo in the jeweler’s district. You might want to check it out.”
Dion had the most intense desire to ask her what as “quezzrdo” was, but let it fly. There would be time later to understand the basic differences between this world and his. Right now, he needed to wait and see if the elemental grandmaster would return. He didn’t enjoy the thought of leading everyone to that door for which his uncle possessed the key, but if it came to it, he would do it.
“So what kind of things do you enjoy writing about?” Susan Mahen asked her. Dion wondered when she would break her silence.
“Sports,” she told her. “I’ve written several romances about rockball. Do you follow any of the leagues?”
“Not able to follow much of anything out here,” Susan responded. “We have enough trouble having magazines delivered.”
‘Wow, you are isolated. What happens if you have an emergency? How do you get a doctor out here in a hurry if you have to?”
“We haven’t had that problem in a long time. Rudy is certified in most areas and can handle the occasional household injury. In a real emergency, we have messenger bats that roost on the top of the tower. Haven’t been able to use them in the past few months because of that detestable Queen Lilith and her crew, but we’ll breed some more as soon as we get rid of her.”
As Dion listened to them chat he began to wonder how effective his elemental manipulation powers were in this time circle. According to his uncle, they were very limited here, but he could summon a few elementals for a limited time period from his own world.
Dion still felt very much alone in this place. Back where he came from he could always watch the elementals at play. Air sylphs he could watch dance in the wind and fire salamanders loved to play in the flames of a burning log. As an elemental manipulator, he could always see them. Up until today, he’d assumed it was due to his family lineage, but now he wasn’t so sure. If he was half-Olympian, was it because of that part of his background? He tried not to think about it and returned to his attempts at seeing elementals.
He finally spotted one rolling around on the ground. It wasn’t one of the kinds he’d seen on his own world; this elemental had to be particular to this time circle. He watched it spin around the floor and roll up the walls, then down them again. It stopped when the elemental saw him watch it move across the floor. The small black sphere, invisible to everyone but him, rolled back and stopped in front of his place on the table. It spun around three times and zipped under the door to one of the partitions in the grand hall.
It took Dion a few minutes to realize what kind of elemental it was: an aether elemental. He’d never seen one this bold back on his own world; they were extremely hard to see except in a few locations on Earth. They were the rarest of them all, but here they must be quite common.
The aether was the source of all other elements and aether elementals were difficult to utilize. Only a few elemental manipulators at any given time could work with them. His uncle had some limited ability with them, but even he had more than Dion. He needed to be authorized by the Aether Elemental Grandmaster to use them. He turned to see if his uncle had noticed the small elemental, but his eyes were on the Mahen sisters when it entered the room.
If his uncle couldn’t focus on the small elemental, then how was it that he could see it? Dion won
dered if his uncle truly had any aether elemental power at all. He closed his eyes and decided to see if he could summon anything at all from this world in the aether element. Dion concentrated and felt something near him. He opened his eyes and found the form of a black sphinx looking up from the ground. It was only three feet high and no one else in the room seemed to notice. The sphinx waited for Dion to make it an offer, but he simply told it there would be time later for some real employment. The sphinx sniffed the air, collapsed into another small ball and rolled away.
Chapter 11
“What were you doing there?” It was Bernice again. Dion turned to face the older women who had a keen sense of observation. She was close to the color of the Mahen sisters, but a few shades lighter.
“I was communicating,” he told her, not knowing what else to say. Dion had no way to know what the locals thought about elemental manipulation, so he let it be.
“Are you one of those guys who can work with a sphinx?” she asked him. “I haven’t met too many. Adepts, I think you’re called, right?”
Not knowing how to answer her question, Dion told her ‘yes’. He waited for a reaction.
“Never could see the reason for fooling with those things,” she told him. “I’ve had neighbors swear they can guard your house and more, but what kind of natural force comes in so mixed up? Face of a human, wings of a bird, body of a lion. It’s as if someone couldn’t make up his or her mind what kind of creature to construct. I always said they were built by a committee.”
“Now a dragon,” she said, “they have character. You always know where you stand with them even if they look at you as food. You feed them on a regular basis, work with them, play with them and they’ll look after you. If I were allowed, I would take the one I used to work with home with me. Can’t do that because of the regulations. They aren’t allowed off the base, even though you bond with them after a while. I was so close with some of the females I cared for they would even let me approach while nesting. Most people would never even consider being near a dragon when it’s nesting, too dangerous and a good way to get cremated.”
