“I can’t believe this,” he was engrossed, glow of the laptop screen on his face, eyes wide and scanning back and forth. He was hunched at the edge of the couch, the computer on the coffee table before him. Hansel watched from a recliner across the living room, both feet flat on the floor, not daring to cross his legs or get comfortable.
The end of the world was at hand.
The big-screen TV on the wall droned on with repeats of what they already knew. Lorenzo’s access to the bigger picture was hobbled by the same weaknesses of the wires and fibers carrying everyone else’s screaming traffic. The Bok had no special pipeline from this particular safe house, and even if they did it would eventually run into the bottlenecks that were surging everywhere. So far the aliens hadn’t done anything to shut down communications, though Hansel suspected they could do so easily. He figured they were probably just letting the networks cripple themselves. Or, more sinister and probably more likely, simply allowing the Earth to undo itself for them by letting the panic feed.
“There is no doubt,” Lorenzo was shaking his head, “these are our ancestors.” He straightened. Ran his hands over his scalp, pushing back thick, dark hair, then flopped all the way back against the cushions. He stayed that way a long moment, hands on his head, looking up at the ceiling. Gaze a million miles away.
“We need to go to Istanbul,” he said at length. The TV went on quietly in the background. It was the only noise interrupting the long pause. “Look at the originals.”
“Flights are grounded,” Hansel pointed out.
Lorenzo scoffed. “They don’t have time to enforce groundings. We’re about to go to war. A private jet flying low across that airspace will go unchallenged. We leave at once.”
Hansel nodded slowly. “What do you intend?” His place was to serve but, honestly, in view of everything going on, he felt that relationship was changing by the second. Whether he chose to stay and help or flee the Bok once and for all—as he’d dreamed about doing for years—depended greatly on what came next.
Lorenzo answered: “I intend to confirm what I suspect. That these Kel are one and the same. That they have, somehow, after all this time, found a way here, to this world. To the Witch’s failed hideout.”
He dropped his arms but remained lounging on the couch.
Hansel swallowed. These Kel were human enough, but he failed to see the connection. He knew the lore of the Bok, how the Esehta Bok were founded by the priestess Aesha in ancient times—who was herself a Kel—but Hansel was always given to believe the Bok were, by extension, at war with their Kel overlords. According to the Bok’s own legends they ended up stranded on Earth after their priestess, Aesha, died. Things since then had only deteriorated for the Bok until, most recently, Lorenzo completed their descent—in Hansel’s opinion—turning their loyalties upside down and declaring their ancient founder a Witch. Lorenzo claimed everything she’d done was a blight on what could have been. If the current Kel still felt the same ...
Hansel assumed Lorenzo, in his arrogance, would try and make contact. That was almost a given. However, why would the Kel welcome them back?
“Arrange the plane,” his boss came to a decision and Hansel focused on him. “Have it ready. We leave for the airfield within the hour.”
Hansel took a deep breath.
For now he would go along.
CHAPTER 10: SLIPPING
It was a pale blue dawn. The two dog-headed guards stood in more or less the same spot they’d been standing all night, shifting now and again but otherwise unmoving, holding their long pikes steady in a display of patience that would’ve made a Marine ceremonial guard proud. The air grew cooler right before the dawn and Jess hugged herself tighter into her overalls and farm shirt, shivering harder than she had all night.
Zac never came.
She had no idea how long the nights were on this alien world, nor even a good idea of when she’d arrived in that spot; all she knew was that she’d been sitting there what felt like a long, long time, awake all night, and now the sun was rising and Zac never showed. The Icon must not have returned to him. Nothing could’ve happened to him, nothing could’ve stopped him, and if he had the Icon he would’ve done everything in his power to get to her. Which meant the Icon did not return to that same spot in the castle. It couldn’t have. God knew where it went, but wherever it was it must be sitting there right now, waiting to be found.
She rocked off of her sore butt, forward onto her feet, just kind of squatting there. The shivering was steady now. If she let them her teeth would chatter. She decided to, for a bit, then when they were hammering in her head clamped her jaw tight.
Hope hadn’t left her. The Bok knew of the Icon. She glanced at the crumpled form of the man nearby, the elder Bok that dragged her through. He knew of this place, this blue-Saturn world; said Lorenzo had already been here. If the Bok used the Icon before then they knew where it returned. Zac would find out. He would beat the Bok mercilessly until they told him what they knew. Then he would find the Icon and come for her. In fact he was probably on his way to it now, wherever it was, battling through anything that dared stand in his way. Overcoming all to reach the side of his beloved.
The brilliant morning sun edged above the far peaks and she blinked.
She was thirsty.
So thirsty.
Her mouth was bone dry. Cool water would feel so nice.
She thought to ask the guards—as yet having spent no time trying to imagine what their role in this was, nor who the old man was … Just sat there all night, dazed, drifting and waiting. Now she began to wonder, just a little, what they thought of her. Would they give her water? Where did they have to go to get it? The plateau was wide in every direction, dropping off to what appeared to be woods and rolling stone valleys on all sides. Under the light of the rising sun she saw more of where she was.
Nowhere.
There was a village down the stairs and down the path, a tiny one, and they likely had water. Surely the old man did. She didn’t want to leave that spot, though, and she doubted the guards would go without her. If she could even get them to understand.
Zac! She concentrated hard on the spot he would emerge. Willing him through. Not far from the dead Bok, where the Icon connected. She felt so closed off from everything right then—as if the very universe were pinching her off into a tiny, isolated bubble.
Marooned.
She imagined Zac popping suddenly into existence and running to her, scooping her up in his arms and taking her home. She closed her eyes; felt a delirious sort of rapture as she did. A gentle breeze picked up and it was as if she flew. Into his arms, whisked away. Sitting there in the steadily warming rays of the rising sun, in the crisp, fresh air, she could feel him lifting her. Cradling her to his strong chest. His powerful whisper close in her ear.
Then real voices. Drifting on the wind. Her lashes fluttered and opened.
She turned to look. The giant half of the blue Saturn spanned the horizon in that direction, in more or less the same position it had been all night and she wondered if it ever set. Stunning blue on blue; stripes of its clouds shimmering against the pale blue sky. The planet she was on, surely one of its moons, must have an orbit that held the gas giant fixed, turning in some way such that the sun rose as it was doing now, giving the planet a night and a day that allowed weather and life.
That slight, developing curiosity blew away easily, however, right along with the strengthening breeze, scarcely enough to capture her delirious mind. Two figures approached. For a second she imagined it was the guards and that they’d moved without her noticing, but a quick glance in that direction confirmed they were still where they’d been all along.
Did someone come through with the Icon?!
The excitement of that possibility—whoever it might be—lifted her flagging consciousness … and fell away quickly as she realized the two people she saw were not emerging from the connecting point, and that one of them was in fact the old man from last
night.
She recognized him, dirty loincloth twisting this way and that in the wind as he walked with a slow gait, relying heavily on his staff. With him was another man, not much taller, about the same size but … youthful. Like the old man he wore only a loincloth, and like the old man was dark skinned and thin.
Awkwardly she pivoted on her butt to face them, turning her back to the guards and the spot at which she’d been staring. The old man and what she now suspected was a boy came closer. Closer still and she could tell the other was indeed a boy, probably early teens—not many years younger than her—and in that same instant she experienced a strange out-of-body sensation as she realized, as if all at once, that she herself had only just turned sixteen.
She felt about a hundred.
The duo stopped a few paces away. The old man put both hands on his staff and leaned on it. In the light of the rising sun Jess got a better look, the rays of that golden, Earth-like sun shining brightly on both of them, bronzing their dark skin; the boy’s smooth and unblemished, the old man’s marred with a lifetime of age. Both in nothing but the simple loincloths. Everyone’s shadow stretched far across the gray stones in the early morning light, making for a beautifully picturesque scene, the gas giant behind them, icy rings shooting up at a scintillating angle.
In fact she felt like she was starting to lose touch. Rather than fight it—she had no more energy for such things—she simply allowed herself to fade.
It was starting to feel comfortable.
The old man nodded and she guessed that gesture applied anywhere. This was clearly another world, and yet here were more humans, acting like humans, an impossibility she was growing to expect. Planets were all more or less the same; stars, galaxies and all else were more or less the same. Maybe life was too.
Her eyes drooped and she pulled them open.
Then the boy spoke directly to her, more loudly in her head—as you might if speaking to a person who understood little English. Or who you thought was dumb.
Maybe she could just shrink away to nothing.
She let herself be soothed by his presence.
Jess felt the shivering turn to shakes. And as she faded she could sense rising alarm in the old man’s thoughts.
**
A little snowflake drifted into Zac’s field of vision. Many floated though the air in a slow, dancing pattern, but this one in particular detached itself from the rest, catching a current and fluttering back and up, then over, cutting across the others which continued to make their lazy, meandering way to the ground, drifted, found a path through them directly to where he sat—he watched it—coming at last for his eye where … it settled onto his lash. There it hung, restless, flitting this way and that in the barely perceptible movement of air but not dislodging. He let his focus go to it, so close it would’ve been but a blur to him before he was a Kazerai—a blur to any normal human, a ghostly fairy dancing much too near. Not now. Now he could make out its every detail, eye like a microscope, bringing his fantastic vision into focus. It was a flurry, one of the handful that had started to fall in the cold mountain air; heavy, graying skies their spawning ground. A cold gloom had begun to settle over the peak.
He blinked it away.
Somewhere down in the valley an animal howled. A few seconds later another took up the call. Wolves, if he was correct. He didn’t know much of Earth’s animals, but in conversations with Jess they’d talked of things ...
It howled again, a long, lonely howl, and Zac felt a deep connection. The dreary skies, the coming night, the cold air and the lonely wolf ... the entire setting ached of sadness. Almost a tragic drama, in a way, too perfect; a melancholy poem come to life. All the elements were there, the emptiness complete.
Why he sat he did not know. When he sat … he also wasn’t sure. Only that he was. Had been. Another night was coming and he’d gradually lost the will to move.
Trying to imagine a life without love.
**
The Elnab guard carried the girl in his arms, the other following a few steps behind with both pikes. Galfar hurried along beside, tip of his wooden staff clacking the stone path faster than it had in a long time. His son, Haz, followed further back, taking his time but managing to keep up.
Youth truly was wasted on the young.
He looked to the feverish girl. Not with this one, he thought. Her head lolled and she struggled to hold it, keeping it from dangling as she fought not to go completely unconscious. Galfar could feel her slipping, though, losing touch with everything around her, fading from the world. Whatever force gripped her was sinking its teeth in and he was sure this was no sudden illness. This girl had just suffered some great loss—perhaps even a chain of losses, as Galfar had the growing sense she’d been through many trials, many fresh, very recent difficulties to get there—and the magnitude of those losses were threatening her life.
He glanced back at Haz, idly tapping aside pebbles with his feet as he followed along, looking idly this way and that, bored with everything.
This girl did not deserve to die. Galfar knew at once she had purpose. An intensity about her he picked up as soon as she came into his presence in the hut that night. When the sound of her arrival, the great Pop of the transition, came from the plateau above, when the use of the portal awakened him ... in lighting the fires and making himself ready he found himself waiting with more anticipation than he had in a long, long time.
Then she stood before him. This girl, right here. In his hut. Frantic and powerful and exuding potential and afraid and wanting to go back all at once. He of course let her return to the spot of her arrival. There was no reason not to.
No one else would be coming through.
But no else might need. This could very well be the one.
“Put her there,” he said to the Elnab as they entered the hut. He pointed to one of the cots. The guard took her and laid her on it, following Galfar’s instructions.
“Get water,” he told Haz as his son shuffled in behind. The boy turned reluctantly and went back out to the well.
“Wait by the tree,” he instructed the guards. They left the hut. Galfar turned to the girl. Went and laid a hand on her forehead; against her cheek.
She was burning up.
Haz returned with a bucket.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, barely interested.
“Get rags,” said Galfar and began looking her over. Her eyes were open but unseeing as she slipped quicker than he expected into the fever state. Already her skin was clammy.
He studied the nails of her hands and feet, painted like only a princess would have. Even the color was royal; a rich, sparkling blue. Upon closer inspection there were ever-so faint traces of makeup around her eyes, more marks of station. All these things looked worn, as if she’d been in a fight for her life, and Galfar had no doubt that was the case. This princess had endured much.
But this was no princess. And though these marks of royalty might have been normal from where she came, here they would never do. Others might come.
Questions might be asked. He must see to her concealment with as much urgency as he saw to her life.
“Bring the cleanser,” he said even as Haz returned with the rags. The boy tossed the rags on a work table beside the cot and huffed:
“Bring this, get that.” But he was off for the jug. Galfar watched him with a steady gaze; made sure Haz felt his stare as he went.
His youngest was more belligerent than the rest of his children.
Shortly he returned with the cleanser and Galfar took it with his free hand, leaned his staff against the table and picked up a rag with his other.
“Please assist me,” he said with more patience as he poured some of the harsh liquid onto the rag. He extended the bottle back to Haz, Haz took it and Galfar went to work rubbing the paint from the fingers of one of the girl’s hands. In response to his father’s more conciliatory tone Haz dropped a bit of his resistance—though he was slow to follow suit. Soon, however, he was doing the same to her feet and in no time they’d removed all signs of any noble station. Galfar took a clean rag and wiped her eyes and face, then used another to wipe away the beading sweat. By then her lids had closed and he could see her eyes rolling behind them.
“Fresh sheets,” he instructed and began removing the curious clothing. There were hooks on the outer garment like metal buttons. Those he undid and pulled the heavy fabric down with some effort. He didn’t have the strength he used to. The girl wasn’t big, probably even smaller or lighter than Haz, but her deadweight held it fast. Haz returned with a clean sheet and helped him get it the rest of the way off. Beneath that she wore a shirt of some sort with more buttons, and together they undid that and got it off too. As they did this Galfar noticed Haz pretending to be unmoved by her naked form. He wasn’t doing a very good job. The girl was light-skinned, different than the girls around their village and—there was no question—beautiful.
Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4) Page 9