by S. K. Holder
He found Luke where he had left him: standing outside the vault. He skidded towards him and then hunched over to catch his breath. ‘Did-did it open?’
‘I think so,’ said Luke. ‘I heard it click.’
Ted nodded in appreciation. Luke hadn’t run out on him. He had waited.
‘After you,’ he said gesturing to the door.
Ted gave Luke a wary glance, aware of the kid’s motives. No wonder he had waited. Who knows what fate awaited them once they went inside. ‘We’re in this together. We do this together,’ he said.
Luke shrugged. They used the time lock on the outside to hoist open the door. Ted was in no hurry to close it. They were some bizarre mechanical components on the inside of the door and a digital device. He didn’t want to get locked in. If Steve and Alec were scouring the building looking for him, the vault was the last place he wanted to be discovered.
A barred door swung open in front of them. They went through. The back of the vault had been fitted with a mirror. Lockers lined both walls. Each had a keyhole and handlebar.
Ted seized a handlebar in each hand and pulled. None of the drawers opened.
Luke dug his hands in his pockets. ‘Sorry.’
‘Laptops wouldn’t fit in there anyway,’ said Ted, wiping his sweaty prints from the handlebars. The fact that they were locked, told him they were filled with something more valuable than laptops. Still, he couldn’t believe he had taken such a desperate risk. He had one choice left and that was to run as far away from Tridan Entertainment as he possibly could. ‘We’d better leave before−’ He spun around. The kid had gone.
Abandoned him!
He lurched toward the barred gate. Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. He turned to the walled mirror. He saw a ripple run through it. He rubbed his eyes and made them go as wide as he could bear. There it was again! A ripple like the one a stone would make if it were dropped into a pool.
He crept to the mirror, pulled out his phone and went to tap it on the spot he had seen the ripple appear. The mirror sucked up his phone. He let it slip from his hand. A hand shot from the mirror and grabbed him by the shirt. His mouth jerked open in surprise and he stumbled through the mirror to the other side where he landed at Luke’s feet.
Ted clambered up and glanced back at the mirrored wall. He could see through the other side of it. His gaze snapped back to Luke. He held a tattered book in his hand and what looked like a gun in the other.
Ted felt his bladder go weak. ‘You knew this was here.’
Luke didn’t answer. To Ted’s relief he placed the gun back on the shelf. He saw many more shelves stacked with guns, bullet-proof vests, coins, passports, blank bank cards, foreign bank notes, faceless watches and mobile phones. The floor had been laid with a medallion engraving with an eye in its centre.
Ted traipsed to a shelf stacked with tubes of what looked like gold coins. He prodded one with his finger. Other strange objects sat on the shelves: ancient looking scrolls, gloves made of steel and face masks. He hissed through his teeth. There were knives and swords in glass case displays and what appeared to be a box of dynamite.
‘Do you want the laptops or not?’ said Luke. He nodded to a shelf stacked with computers.
‘Urm, I’ll take one,’ said Ted, trying to take it all in. The money had to be counterfeit. Had to be. He grabbed a laptop from the shelf. He checked the serial number. It was one of the ‘specials’. There were about ten in the stack. He sifted through them, looking for one with a football sticker on it. ‘Is this your uncle’s vault?’
‘I don’t know whose vault it is.’ Luke pocketed an object that resembled a metal business card. ‘Don’t you want to take some money?’
‘No. I don’t trust where it came from.’ He wondered what else Luke had taken before he had got there.
‘Suit yourself.’
Ted looked on as Luke selected more items from the shelves and popped them into his brother’s rucksack. What the hell had he gotten himself into? He didn’t get the impression that anything on the shelves belonged to an avid collector of unusual artefacts. He was looking at the booty from a number of heists. He didn’t want to be part of some criminal underworld. Luke seemed quite content looting the vault. He probably helped steal most of it, the laptops included.
He had to get something out of this. He snatched his phone from the floor and started taking pictures. Evidence would be his collateral if anything were to happen to him. He got some good close up shots of the gold coins and weird foreign notes which looked as if they were centuries old. He felt a tap on his shoulder. He wheeled round. He had the laptop under his arm and his phone in his hand.
‘Urm…hello Mr Brailey,’ he said.
THIRTY-THREE
Connor had been moved to the east wing of the compound away from the temptations of the city proper. His view from the window was a solid stone wall which hid the sky. He couldn’t tell if it was night or day.
And what did he care?
The physical and mental exertions of the past few days had caught up with him. He had never been so tired. He forced his eyes open, shrugged his shoulders, and pounded his fists on the table, fighting to stay awake. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep when he didn’t know where his dreams would take him and he couldn’t bring himself to sit on the bed, let alone lie on it. It made him think of Beth Crosswell and the fact that she hadn’t made it.
There were so many occasions when things could have gone very badly for him, but he always managed to pull through. He didn’t think it was luck and it certainly wasn’t bravery. He started to think that someone was watching over him.
He had washed and changed into the set of new clothes that had been laid out for him: a pair of black combat trousers and a shirt. One of the Citizen soldiers said they would collect him when Garis was ready to see him. It was all very formal, but he knew the end result was that he would be going home. But what was he going home to? Maybe he had watched too many sci-fi films with the same outcome: where aliens were either destroyed or they went home. He was an alien. And Earth was not his home.
To his recollection, he had had an uneventful childhood, so mundane he barely remembered it. He had flashes of his time spent in nursery and his first day at school. Memories from a different life, on another planet, had never surfaced. What he did remember from his early years was his brother’s lack of humour. He rarely smiled and he was very protective of him. Luke had thumped a boy once when he had accidentally nudged him out of the way with his skateboard. Luke wasn’t a bully but the other children were afraid of him.
In the last four years, Luke had acquired a sense of humour which had vanished since they had returned from Narrigh. He now understood that his brother had been carrying a heavy burden. He had wanted to protect him from the truth, but in doing so had placed them in greater danger.
He sat in the eating area. He found a hot meal waiting for him, a bowl of fruit and a glass of water and a large pitcher of herbal tea, which sat on some kind of hot plate and kept boiling at regular intervals. He wolfed down the green stringy vegetables and the white meat on the plate. He barely tasted it. He was ravenous. He gulped water from the glass set beside him. He then poured himself a cup of steaming hot tea. It tasted sweet, like the tea his mum usually drank.
The sound of padding footsteps made him jolt to his feet.
Issturo entered. He wore a new a set of clothes and he had trimmed his beard. Connor thought he looked more like the man he had seen in his dream and less like the one he had met in the bottom of the lake: cleaner and less haggard.
Issturo placed a barrel-shaped instrument on the table. It had yellow markings and a metal prong at one end. ‘Helps keep out listening ears. No machine, Peltarck or Citizen will hear us,’ he said.
Connor nodded. He could have done with a gadget like that for his bedroom. ‘I’m glad you’re all right. They almost didn’t believe me.’
Issturo beamed. ‘Thank-the-maker they did. I’m grateful to
be out after all this time. I’m returning to Odisiris. I’m curious to see how the planet thrives without a successor. I insisted that they let me see you before I leave. May I join you?’
Connor poured Issturo a cup of tea, glad to be in the company of another Dream Emissary, even if it was only for a little while. He would finally learn how to master his Gift. Then at least he could return home having learned something.
Issturo eased himself into a chair. Connor placed the cup in front of him. ‘You were going to tell me about the World of Dreams and astral travel and how I can make objects disappear with the keyhole of light in my mind.’ He sat opposite Issturo. He didn’t want to waste any more time. He hadn’t a pen to write down all the questions he wanted answered. He had stored them all in his head. He drummed his legs, trying to control his impatience.
‘The last one’s a myth I’m afraid.’ Issturo plucked up a handful of berries from the fruit bowl and popped them in his mouth. He swallowed them whole. ‘Finding the World of Dreams is simple. All you need to do is to ask for the keyhole of light to come to you. It’s a lot easier than going in search of it. The World of Dreams will give you glimpses into a life that once was, is, or will come to pass. It may not be your own life. You may dream of people, creatures, and places you will never see.’ He blew into the steaming cup of tea.
‘That’s it? I just ask?’ Issturo had made it sound straightforward, but it was hard not to go in search of the keyhole of light when there was so much more he wanted to know − to learn. He had searched for the keyhole of light and discovered a world of dreams, thwart with riddles.
He thought of the Dal-Carrion he had seen when he had been locked in the fortress in Narrigh. ‘I made a dream come to life once by thinking about it. It was of a giant bird.’
‘Did the bird scare you?’
Connor nodded not wanting to think of it again.
‘Fear brought it out of you. Images conjured from fear cannot be seen by anyone else but you. They’re worthless. Entering the World of Dreams gives you the ability to see the past, present and future, to partake in astral travel and to communicate your thoughts into another’s mind as you sleep. Not all Dream Emissaries can do all three. It is rare. There is nothing more.’
‘Do you hear voices?’
Issturo chuckled and drank some more of his tea. ‘Real or imaginary?’
‘The voice of the Maker?’
‘Then you mean imaginary?’ Issturo had finished his tea. He helped himself to another cup.
‘You don’t believe in the Maker? But you thanked him.’
‘The Maker’s not an entity or individual, unless something has changed while I’ve been away from civilisation. It’s just an expression used for unsolved mysteries and phenomenon. You think it is some kind of entity, is that it?’
‘No. I just − it doesn’t matter.’ Connor wrung his hands together. The more he tried to make sense of the events leading up to Narrigh the more confused he became. He no longer knew what was real. Was he hearing voices? Had he imagined the man with the cane and the mismatched eyes or misunderstood what he had told him?
‘I can’t communicate my thoughts through someone else’s mind and I’m not sure I can see the past, present and future. I have dreams and nightmares. I don’t know what they mean.’
‘The only dreams and nightmares that count are the ones inside the World of Dreams. Discount everything outside it. And you must go through the keyhole to reach the World of Dreams. As for astral travel, you must have wanted to go under the lake.’
‘Why would I want to do that? I never knew it was there. I came across it by accident.’
‘You must have thought about it before falling asleep.’
‘But I don’t remember nodding off.’ He leaned on the table and rested his chin on his hands. ‘I was thinking about how to get off this planet. That’s all I’ve been thinking about since I got here.’
‘What was the last thing you remember before finding me?’
‘I was resting. I thought about taking the rock passage to the battle and getting a carrier back to Swordul. I had a drink from my flask and sat on a ledge not far from the lake.’
‘What flask?’ said Issturo, his eyes widening. ‘Show me?’
Connor had his pack with him. He took out his flask and gave it a shake. There was only a drop of water left in it.
Issturo opened the flask and sniffed it. ‘Who gave you this?’
‘Brett Delsen, one of the fleet commanders. What is it?’
‘Whoever gave it to you means you ill. It contains a sleeping draught that will knock you right out after an hour or so. That is if you consume enough of it. A few sips wouldn’t have done you any harm. Do you have any known enemies on Pyridian other than the aliens?’
‘I suppose I must have. That’s why I have to leave. I don’t know who they are? Other than you, I haven’t told anyone else about my Gift unless they found my Worral Stone.’
‘Not all Citizens know about Worral Stones. Citizens may try to align themselves with you hoping your Gift will help them. There really is no other way they can take it from you.’
‘You said my Worral Stone can’t leave, but I didn’t always have it. What are they? Where do they come from?’
Issturo traced his finger around the cup’s rim. ‘Not all Citizens believe in Gifted Ones because such gifts are not created by science. They are the Makers Will: a phenomenon. You are not born a Dream Emissary. You do not become one until another one of our kind dies as there can only be six Dream Emissaries in existence at any one time. No one knows where the Worral Stones come from or how they work. I’ve been a Dream Emissary since the age of seven and never solved the mystery. Call it magic if you will or a divine intervention, you will remain a Dream Emissary for as long as you live and that can be an age.’
‘I saw my stone glow before you appeared in the cram shelter.’
‘I suspect it’s because it knows there is another close by.’
‘You think they can communicate?’
‘I’d like to think so, but I have never had my Worral stone examined or thought it any more than a token.’
‘What’s the point of being a Dream Emissary? What am I supposed to do?’
‘You don’t have to do anything. The gift is just a bothersome distraction from a restful night’s sleep. More like an affliction really. It can take a lifetime to truly read those dreams. You want to concern yourself with living, not dreaming.’ He gave the flask back to him.
Connor sipped his tea. He was disappointed. He had built his Gift into something exquisite and unique. Issturo had stripped it down to meaningless imaginings and sleepless nights. He had talked about their Gift as if it were nothing at all. He was practically telling him he should forget all about it and get on with his life. Well he had a new life now and realised that he wanted to be part of it. He was someone important in the other worlds, not someone’s baby brother or younger son. On Earth, no one bowed to him. He didn’t have superhuman abilities and his family was always short of money. A large part of him wanted to live the life of a Citizen; if only it didn’t put his life in jeopardy or anyone else he cared about.
‘You need to confide in someone about the contents of this flask,’ said Issturo, moving on from the topic of Dream Emissaries as if he had tired of the subject. ‘It may be that this commander Brett wanted to test your resolve or there was someone else on the carrier who has a problem with you.’
‘They don’t know me.’ Connor frowned, but they may have known his father. It was a brutal test, one that he wouldn’t put past Brett undertaking. After all, he had drugged him to get him onto the carrier. ‘How did you get trapped in the cram shelter?’
‘About eight years ago a Peltarck warrior, named Daroh, led a rebellion against the Citizens in Swordul. I was asked to negotiate a treaty with them. Negotiations failed. They captured me and threw me into the out of use cram shelter beneath Jolrin Lake. Oh how they despised us and all we stood for. The
rebels believed we were responsible for the increase in the alien population on their planet. Daroh had seen an Echo. He considered it a cruder version of a Citizen.’
‘What do you mean a cruder version?’
‘They self-heal as we do, but self-healing isn’t unique to the race of Citizens. The Telquorkhans can move without us hearing them. Does that mean we created them? That they’re part of our blood? The aliens are our enemies not our friends. They want to make us extinct like they have done with other creatures on this planet. I can’t remember the last time I heard the chirrup of a bird or the drone of an insect.’
It looked as if Issturo had never heard of the Korack breeding farms and Connor did not propose to tell him. ‘So you’ve seen the Echoes?’
‘Seen them? Why I was there when they first landed. They brought their pet lizards with them. They’re not like the Telquorkhans and the Koracks, those creatures have little intelligence. The Echoes are−’
‘Almost human,’ Connor interrupted.
‘I was going to say immortal.’ Issturo sighed.
‘So what happened in the rebellion?’
‘The Citizen fleet crushed the Peltarck rebels and turned them to ash.’
Connor sighed with relief. ‘So it was your mission I dreamt about, not mine. I don’t know how you could have survived in that shelter for eight years. I would have gone mad.’
Issturo smiled. ‘I suppose our Gift isn’t so much of a curse when you need it most. If it weren’t for the World of Dreams, I would have gone insane in my first year. You were able to save me because we share the same gift. I believe that is the Will of the Maker. Astral travel made me weak since I had no sustenance in the cram shelter. When you leave your physical body, no one can see or hear you. I was asleep when you appeared to me in the shelter. If I was awake you would have been invisible to me. I can’t communicate with others while I sleep. Even if I could, I’m not certain anyone would have come to my aid. A voice in your head is a sure sign of madness, wouldn’t you say? As for what you revealed to me in your dream,’ he held up his hand. ‘I shall pry no further and I will keep your identity a secret.’
