Grinding the balls of my hands into my tired eyes, I replied, “A portal into here has to be opened from outside. Our powers are negated within the dungeon. It is actually a walled-off pocket universe, a step below the City, and the Power scarcely trickles into this space.”
Lieutenant Kim had been approaching, and he scoffed at my words.
“I’m not buying any of this,” he said.
I shrugged.
“Lieutenant,” Evelyn said to him, softly but tersely, “I was just apologizing…”
Kim ignored her.
“That big guy seemed awfully sure you were guilty of something,” he said.
“Occupational hazard of being the ‘dark god,’” I replied. “Of course, I am indeed guilty of… much.”
He looked down at me, shaking his head in wonder.
“I’m supposed to believe there’s really some kind of ‘dark lord?’ And he’s you?”
“You can believe what you like,” I replied sharply. “I seek no followers among your kind. Not any longer.”
“Our kind?”
“Humans. The Terran Alliance.”
“Who would ever follow you?” Kim growled.
I shrugged. “I had supporters aplenty among the Outer Worlds. Soon enough, we would have been standing triumphant on your Earth, your old order swept away.”
And then I cursed soundlessly. I had given in to anger, and given away something I had wished to keep hidden. Who was the god, here? How could I have allowed these mortals to push me so, and cause me to slip?
The third human, Cassidy, approached then, eyes wide.
“I do know this guy!” he said. “I recognize him now!”
The captain and Kim turned, regarding him with questioning expressions.
“We’ve believed for years,” he began, “that a family out among the Outer Worlds was building a coalition against us, either through intimidation or outright conquest of their neighbors. They’ve always kept a low profile, working through intermediaries and puppet rulers, so not much has been said about them publicly within the Alliance. Their current head is supposedly called Markos, probably named after the original one, years ago—who probably didn’t even exist, anyway.”
My dark eyes studied Cassidy carefully, but I said nothing.
He snorted a laugh.
“We’ve only been able to acquire a few pictures of him or the other leaders, over the years, and a bunch of us in the Directorate had begun to think maybe it was all a myth—something the Outies cooked up to scare our security forces out along the frontier. But—I’ve seen what few pictures we do have, and this guy has to be a part of that family. Maybe a son or a nephew—though he looks just like the guy from a generation ago.” Cassidy paused and nodded slowly, his eyes drilling back into mine. “The secret leader of the Outer Worlds. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, well,” I breathed. “An intelligence man.” Something from my dim, distant past reacted to that thought, but I quickly, reflexively suppressed it before it could fully register.
“Though not a particularly discreet one,” Evelyn noted. She looked at me, waiting.
“Guilty as charged,” I said then.
Cassidy nodded again, his jaw setting, his mouth curling into a self-satisfied smile. “You’re the son?”
“I am Markos. The only Markos there has ever been.”
Cassidy frowned. “That’s impossible. You’d have to be…”
“Immortal?” I laughed. “What part of ‘god’ don’t you understand?”
Cassidy grew visibly angry again, but held his tongue.
“I was Markos, rather,” I said finally. “But no longer. All of that has turned out to be only a momentary diversion. A sideshow.”
“Why?” Evelyn asked.
How much to tell them? I inhaled deeply, considered for a few seconds, then decided that recounting a bit of the story might actually do me some good.
Sitting back, I spread my hands before me and began. “A thousand years ago… well, let us say that I objected—strenuously—to the prevailing power structure in this City. For my troubles I was exiled to your mortal realm.”
“They kicked you out,” Cassidy said.
I ignored him and continued. “After a brief time of casting about for something to occupy me there, I seized control of the planet Mysentia in the Outer Worlds. It was not difficult for one with my knowledge, my abilities. And there, under the name Markos, I ruled, subduing your fellow humans to my will.” I smiled. “For a time, life was at least tolerable. Security and safety I possessed there in full measure, along with control over the destinies of millions. Leading a world in rebellion against your Alliance was nothing to me—a entertaining diversion, at best.”
Even as I said those last words, though, I knew them to be false.
Evelyn frowned.
“Why ‘Markos?’” she asked, after a moment.
“I—because—” A veil of fog descended over my mind as I pondered that simple question. “It seemed—”
She stared at me, waiting.
I felt that an answer—a good answer—hovered out there, somewhere just beyond my reach. The fog…
“This is all preposterous,” Cassidy growled.
I was grateful for the interruption. My mind cleared at once, as I set Evelyn’s question aside and faced Cassidy.
“Look around you,” I said. “How did you come to be here? Are you so sure your understanding of the universe is the only possible one?”
Cassidy looked away, unsettled.
“This is just ridiculous,” Kim said. “Bad enough he’s an Outie rabble-rouser, but one with delusions of godhood, to boot.”
I glared back at him.
“Delusions? You fool. You insect. You have no idea.” Despite my determination to ignore these creatures, they had succeeded in raising my ire—a fact that further angered me and spurred me to react.
Kim shoved past Cassidy, fists raised.
And again Evelyn was there, between us, voice gentle but firm and eyes unwavering as they met my own.
“Enough!” she said. “We’re all equals now in our imprisonment, and the rebellion is very far away from all of us at the moment.”
Calming myself, I executed a small bow to her and reseated myself on the cold floor, drawing my long coat about me again, turning away from the others.
Evelyn would not be deterred. After a few moments, she spoke again.
“Please—let’s put the accusations and innuendo aside. I genuinely want to understand,” she said. “I want to know who you really are… and where we are. But I don’t know how we’re supposed to believe you, especially when you actually claim to be… evil.”
I sighed, then looked up at her again. Her eyes sparkled in the dim light, betraying no deceptions. I found, unexpectedly, that I, too, wanted her to understand.
“Evil is my Aspect as a god, but not necessarily my nature,” I said, for perhaps the thousandth time in my long existence. I paused, considering the strange sense of sincerity I felt behind the phrase this time. “At least, perhaps not my nature any longer.”
I considered my own words, and then laughed humorlessly.
“Not that it matters,” I said. “Baranak has already made his decision, and found me guilty. His one-track mind will not entertain any other possibilities.”
I steepled my fingers in front of my chin, my mind sifting through the strange series of events that had brought me to this point.
“Understand one thing, though,” I told her. “I was a god long before I found myself involved in the affairs of your worlds.”
“And before that?”
“Before… that?”
I looked at her, then looked away and said nothing.
Cassidy and Kim, still lurking nearby, frowning, shook their heads and retreated some distance away. Soon enough, it sounded as though they had set the issue of my presence and identity aside for the moment and were resuming an earlier argument over engineering problems with thei
r ship.
The captain, however, remained. She sat across from me, her eyes penetrating, never leaving mine.
“So,” she said, finally, “you and your people are gods. But what does that mean, really?”
I tried to ignore her, but found I could not.
“We are who we are,” I finally said, by way of answer. “Our origins are lost in the mists of time.”
“Mm hmm.”
She pursed her lips in a way I could not help but find most attractive.
“I can explain no better than that,” I finally said. “Why do you care?”
“Because, if we truly are in some other universe, and you’ve been to mine, I want to know how you got there, and how you got back again. It might help us to get home.”
I sighed.
“It is not that you are in an entirely different universe,” I said, “it is merely that you are… well… a level up from your own plane, so to speak. Whereas subspace, which I imagine you were attempting to penetrate, is a level down.”
I smiled, sitting back.
“One might say that, in your nice, new, experimental ship, you simply lacked for a decent roadmap.”
Evelyn attempted to question me further, but, despite any personal feelings on my part, I studiously ignored her. After a brief while, she gave up and returned to the others.
An uneventful few hours followed, during which Kim cast occasional unsavory glances my way. Eventually the three humans slept, and I sat there in the near-darkness with my mood grown black as my prison and my soul.
I do not know how much time I spent in bleak introspection before being roused back into attentiveness by the flaring of a portal opening. This time I stood, determined to face Baranak down—but it was not our glorious golden god of battle who passed through. Alaria instead emerged from the flaming circle and stood before us, now wearing diaphanous robes, backlit and glowing, leaving her curvaceous silhouette an interplay of shadow and fire.
“Lucian,” she whispered, “whether you are guilty or innocent of these crimes, we both know you will receive no fair hearing from Baranak. He is convinced of your guilt and means to see you consumed by the Fountain immediately.”
“He made that abundantly clear, yes.”
“You deserve the opportunity to prove yourself.”
She gestured toward the blazing portal, and the freedom beyond.
I blinked.
“You mean…”
“Go!” She waved again at the glowing exit. “Find your evidence. Find the murderer. But do it quickly!”
I looked at the portal, then back at her. It didn’t quite add up. I hesitated.
At that moment the human captain pushed past me, the other two in tow.
“If you’re not going, we are,” she said.
I scoffed.
“Going where? You have no idea what horrors await you out there.”
“It can’t be any worse than staying here, at that guy’s mercy.”
“You don’t even know where ‘here’ is,” I replied.
The captain moved very close, gazing up at me. Her eyes sparkled, there in the dungeon of my City.
“You know the way back to Earth,” she whispered. “Or at least to the Outer Worlds. Take us home.”
“I thought you were not going to make any further demands upon me.”
“I take it back,” she said quickly. “Just this one thing.”
I shook my head.
“That path is not safe for any of us.”
She looked past me at the glare of the open portal.
“Then at least show us the way.” Her voice was now louder, and very firm. “We’ll go by ourselves.”
I snorted.
“Indeed?”
Rising to my feet, I made my decision and started past her.
“Without a guide you would scarcely get a mile from the city,” I said.
“What do we have to lose?”
“You have no idea,” I repeated quietly.
“Lucian,” Alaria hissed, “you must come now!”
“We need your help,” Evelyn said. “Please.”
For a long while afterward I attempted to rationalize my decision in any number of ways, including the possibility that three humans might make excellent decoys. Certainly, in the case of Cassidy and Kim, I honestly believed this to be true, and felt no guilt over the thought. With the advantage of hindsight, however, I have to admit it was probably the look in Evelyn’s eyes that motivated me to do what I did.
For long seconds, as Alaria urged me to depart, I stared back at the human woman. Finally I told her, much to my own surprise, “Very well. I will do what I can. Come on.”
We rushed over the rainbow, then, the portal snapping shut behind us on that long, cold darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
Bright, sunless sky like a slap in the face as the dungeon’s depths gave way instantly to the perpetual midday of the Golden Realm. No single point of illumination there in our own private cosmos, just a constant noontime of bluer-than-blue sky and shimmering radiance all about. Not, I reflected, the optimum conditions for a jailbreak.
Across the main square of the Golden City we raced. Now I understood why the streets were deserted and, at least for the moment, I will admit I was grateful.
In the middle of the square, the great plume of the Fountain flared up like a geyser, spouting golden sparks and stars and constellations into the too-blue sky. The column of energy towered over a hundred feet into the air before falling back down like water into the great basin surrounding its base. Frail by comparison, a gilded stairway ascended some forty feet up alongside the Fountain, topped by a ten-foot-wide platform, just within arm’s reach of the current, from which various ceremonies were conducted in happier days.
The air around the Fountain fairly buzzed in harmony with the erupting shower of primal energy. Freed from the shielded interior of the dungeon, I could feel the full, invigorating effects of the Power washing over me. The clothes that have always been a part of my Aspect quickly regained their luster; my indigo shirt and pants seemed fresh and new again and my navy-blue long coat flared crisply behind me. The sapphire jewel I wore at my collar sparkled like a new star.
One thing was certain. We had to get out of the city immediately. Any planning beyond that point could wait. I led them to the main gates, but remembered my last journey on the road from Earth’s plane and hesitated.
“What is it?” Cassidy demanded. “What are you waiting for? Get us out of here!”
Resisting the urge to backhand him for his impudence, I considered our options. The road I knew best—that most direct, best-mapped, and least-tasking of routes among the planes back to Earth’s dimension—would surely be watched, if not by the man in black then by one of us. Perhaps by Baranak himself, once word reached him of my escape.
Anger swelled within me. I had not come all this way simply to give up and flee back to my place of exile, even were I sure it would be safe. But where else could we go? I needed information. I needed advice. I needed…
“He’s right,” Evelyn said, anxiety evident in her voice. “It can’t be wise to stand here so long.”
“Wise…” That word conjured an image from the depths of my ages-old memory. “Wisdom. Yes!”
Ignoring their further questions, I led them a short distance along the city’s massive walls to another gate—a smaller one—and cautiously opened it. Seeing no signs of an attack, I motioned the humans out and closed the gate behind us. A narrow path led away from the city walls and into a wooded area down the hill, and I hurried off in that direction, the others behind me. It had been some time since I had last taken this route, and I hoped the intersection with Malachek’s realm still lay in the same place.
“Where are we going?” Evelyn asked as we ran.
“To visit the god of wisdom,” I replied, “and see if he can live up to his Aspect.”
I strove to relax my mind as best I could, allowing my senses and my instincts t
o guide me as I mentally examined the texture of reality around us. It didn’t take long. The point of close proximity between the City’s dimension and my destination, where the barrier between those two planes was thinnest, had not moved since last I had passed this way, so many centuries earlier. Gesturing with one hand, the Power flowing through me, I pressed at the invisible wall and penetrated it easily, causing a portal to flare open. Quickly I expanded it into a ten-foot circle of blue fire that hovered before us. Smiling for the first time in quite a while, I quickly led the others through, allowing it to shrink to nothingness behind us. When we stepped out the other side, the brightness of day had been replaced by a dim world of long shadows and near twilight. The tall, straight trees from the outskirts of the city had given way to gnarly, twisted growths and thick underbrush.
Through the woods we raced, shadows descending all around. Gradually the ground sloped further down, until we found ourselves in a low area covered over completely with layers of contorted and knotty branches high above. Vast puddles of stagnant water surrounded us, leaving only mossy, narrow raised areas for walking. The sounds of swamp life buzzed and croaked and chirped all around us.
In answer to Evelyn’s questioning look, I could only shrug and reply, “He likes his privacy.”
On through the swamp we marched, for what seemed like hours on end. I considered opening a series of portals in and out of lower-powered adjacent planes where time ran faster, to hurry us on our way, but I feared that such actions might somehow be detected. Better to use this straightforward route to the pocket universe Malachek had found—or constructed; he was never entirely clear on this—many years before, even if it meant a depressing trek through lands he could only have chosen for their value as deterrents to visitors.
After far too long a time of trudging through muck, I sensed the texture of reality growing thin around us once more, and called a halt. This had to be the right place, the right node of intersection. I struggled for several moments, pushing with some effort against unexpected resistance, before rending the barrier enough for all of us to pass through. It snapped shut behind us instantly, leaving us in what appeared to be the same place we’d just evacuated. Frowning, I metaphorically tasted the energies around me. Ever so slightly different. Good. We had to be very close now. Perhaps only one more barrier lay before us. On we hiked.
Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1) Page 3
