by Marc Secchia
Zaranna exploded, “I am applying my intelligence!”
“Just a different kind to everyone else’s?” Sanu shouted back.
Biting back her fury and the mad flurries of butterflies which inevitably accompanied her anger these days, the Horse tried to control herself. But this argument had been brewing for too long. It cut to the core of her confidence, of who she was.
They had found the oval after a short walk that morning. The trail continued past, but the travellers set about examining the site eagerly. This was it. Zaranna had walked gingerly around the oval enough times since morning, examining each of the thirty-foot tall circular portals in their black crystal frames, to know that the only pull she felt, the only inkling, was down the slippery, turquoise crystalline slope into the centre of the bowl, a hundred paces from any of the portals. But that was nothing but a bottomless hole from which a great wind emanated – not a magical wind, she thought. Just wind.
Seventeen Dragon-sized portals and a hole. The surfaces of some of the shimmering, light blue portals even felt openly dangerous; she was repelled by those. All was bathed in luminosity, making the inscriptions difficult to make out. Sanu had to read them by squinting between cloth-swathed fingers. It just did not make sense. Were the makers of these Safeways hiding something? She had to admit, that was the possibility which intrigued her the most. A secret. A portal hidden down that hole? Why?
She said, “My learning difficulties have nothing to do with this. Dreamers are supposed to follow the flows of equinoctial magic, that’s what Illume taught me.”
“Now you choose to have perfect recall?”
“No. But I am trying my best to think of a way forward, unlike you.”
Sanu’s eyes gleamed a spiteful green in the small space inside their bag. “Trying our best to think? That must be our problem here. It’s your alleged dyslexia or memory or whatever turns you into such a bonehead. You just keep hiding behind your difficulties. Why don’t you leave the thinking to those without dysfunction?”
Enough! Too infuriated to see straight, Zaranna tried to kick Sanu, but the chameleon-girl’s reactions were far too quick, as usual. All she achieved was to swing herself off balance. Her hooves slipped on the slick-as-ice crystal underfoot; the Horse lurched, muscles and joints shrieking as her legs splayed in all the wrong directions. She skated off downslope, dragging Sanu whose foot had somehow become entangled in a bag-strap. The slide was bizarrely slow to begin with. The Human girl was still yelling at her and snatching at her dagger to cut the strap as they slipped downslope, picking up speed gently. Zara struggled to her hooves, only to perform another very un-balletic dance. She fell heavily on her side, yanking Sanu in another direction and thumping the girl’s chest with her leg.
“Oof!” Sanu folded up over the blow.
“Whaaaa …” yelled Zaranna. “Stop us!”
The perfect slippery slope acted like an ant-lion’s trap. Their struggles only served to accelerate their slide into the centre. Sanu pressed her hands and face to the surface in the vain hope her skin might stick. Away they sailed, into the wind!
And fell … gradually.
Zaranna squirmed in the rushing air. They were falling down a perfectly smooth shaft of the same turquoise blue crystal, buoyed up on a stream of warm air.
Sanu folded her arms crossly. “Accidentally on purpose, was that?”
“An accident caused by my bad temper.”
“Aye. And my idiotic tongue. I’m so sorry – what the … Zaranna!”
Jaws flashed up at them! And stopped. She found herself gazing past a carmine-and-yellow butterfly at a Dragon’s upturned jaws. Just one butterfly. It appeared to be giggling at her stupefied expression. Actually, a dozen or more jade-green, snake-like heads and jaws and assorted bits of draconic nastiness filled the circumference of the large tube just below them, giving the Horse and the Human a perfect appreciation of how many fangs fitted into a Dragon’s jaw with its seven rows of teeth, the largest being the outer layer, becoming progressively smaller the further one moved within. And an excellent view down multiple gullets to the bonfires they contained. She and Sanu would have been Indian fakirs walking a bed of teeth were it not for the butterfly. Bizarro with purple fluff covered in strawberry sauce, as Whiz would have said.
Sanu shrugged, clearly fighting back raw terror. Zara knew exactly how that felt! “Alright, Miss Flies-without-Wings, what now?”
“Um … Dragon, may we enter, please?”
“What, do you think your precious politeness –”
All fourteen Dragon-heads roared, “WHO REQUESTS ENTRY?”
Sanu snapped her jaw shut. “From now on, you d-do the talking, Zaranna. A-A-Agreed?”
She swallowed hard. Twice. Walking on air? Whatever next? “Dragon … ah, this is Sanu of the Outland Human Tribes and I am Zaranna Inglewood, the Dreamer, friend of Illume the Stars of the Bluewing Dragon Clan.”
“A Dreamer?” The Dragon sounded amazed. “What do you want in the Beyond?”
“Who are you?”
“Enigma Axewing of the Guardian-Spirit Dragons, I am!”
She racked her pathetic brain for an answer that might satisfy this Dragon, whose snapping heads remained just a few feet beneath a set of very unhappy toes and hooves.
Finally, she said, “A creature of the Abyss stalks the Vales of Equinox seeking, I believe, the destruction of all Equines. I seek to stop his dominion, for he controls Dragons with a Dragonstone called the Ixurbiel. And –”
GRRRARRRGGH!!
They shot so high on the Jade Dragon’s breath that white light burst over them again, and Zaranna momentarily spotted the portals shimmering all around the oval. Decoys, she thought? Then they were falling again, faster and faster, toward the champing, seething mass of Dragon heads and Sanu screamed, but over her high-pitched wail the Dragon thundered:
“ENTER, DREAMER!”
And they whizzed down past the heads and on to a shimmering portal which entirely filled the tube. With a soft plop, they landed in what felt like a bowl of putty. The portal sucked the intrepid pair in like quicksand, inverted in the blink of an eye, and spat them out onto a circle of the familiar dark grey Safeways material.
Zaranna and Sanu landed in a heap of sore limbs with a chorus of yells.
“Safe travels, Dreamer,” said Enigma’s voice. “Remember, the Safeways bear my name and likeness. For they are indeed an enigma.”
Sanu picked herself up, brushing off her clothes.
Zaranna untangled her hooves and stood as well. She ached everywhere. “Well, I guess we’re in.”
“You are incredible.”
“Sanu, with all respect, will you just shut up? I’ve had enough abuse from you.” Trembling, on the verge of angry tears, Zara turned her back on the Human girl, muttering, “If you can’t say something nice … honestly. Not another word or I swear I’ll – huh?”
Sanu hugged her harder, moving around so that she could reach properly around the base of Zaranna’s neck. “I said, I’m the idiot. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I know it’s unbelievable, but I’ve had a revelation. And please don’t be insulted when I say this, right? I think it’s a truth you need to hear.” A small hand reached up, tentatively, to stroke Zaranna’s muzzle. “Right? Truly sorry.”
Ambushed by the vulnerability in Sanu’s manner, Zaranna could only croak, “Ok.”
“You’re a Dreamer. You move between worlds, and clearly between events, in ways unimaginable to ordinary people. You’re unique. That uniqueness demands a unique mind – don’t you growl at me, Horse. You’re no Dragon. I just escaped one of those.” Sanu pulled her dark braid angrily. “I’m the unthinking bonehead here. I don’t mean unique as in damaged or deficient or obtuse, and I wish I could take back all those foolish words and more. I know you probably won’t forget, but I will ask forgiveness, which isn’t an Outland cultural trait either, but maybe it should be.”
“I –”
“It won’t happen again. I promise, word of my dagger.”
“Sanu, would you shut up properly, for once?”
Now there was an expression she could have sold for serious material gain.
Zara said, “You’re forgiven. Do I need to spell it out for you?”
The girl shook her thick black braids.
“Thank you for making things right. I’ll do my best to forget. Now, shouldn’t we find out where this path will lead us?”
Sanu laughed merrily. “Whosoever asketh for adventure … that’s a line from one of our Tribal histories. It’s meant to discourage children from being too curious.”
“Too late!”
The Dragon-capable Safeway was constructed from the same grey, asphalt-like substance as the others, but this pathway was double the usual width, about twenty feet wide or so. They stood where they had fallen, perhaps thirty feet beneath a circular portal, a distance that by rights should have caused the breakage of a limb or two. That hallucinatory, shimmering circle was embedded in the top of a cave formed in a velvety cyan-blue substrate, although the rock was a peculiar substance that made the word ‘supercollider’ pop into Zaranna’s mind, for reasons unknown. To her left the road, seemingly suspended in mid-air by magic or invisible hawsers, led away down a smooth tunnel until it disappeared into the slightly misty, equally cyan-tinged air perhaps a quarter-mile from their current location. The mist provided enough illumination for her to see that this Safeway, apparently, had no footing in the Abyssal Plains. She sighed.
Then, they walked.
After a few hours, Zaranna began to wonder why adventures always skipped the boring bits where people just walked from A to B. After all, these were the times that the mind was free to roam, thinking issues through and making connections and envisioning scenarios. These were the bits readers skimmed, for what did the will to set one hoof before the other truly matter? Perhaps they assumed the adventurer simply walked or rode or flew to their destination and arrived unchanged, as if unaffected by the beauty they had seen or the dangers avoided, the meals taken and companionship shared? Perhaps they did not want to think about vertiginous canyons and equine weather and the exquisite splendour of the tiniest meadow flower?
A few hours later, she came to the conclusion that walking was as dull as overused dishwater.
“Hmm,” said Sanu. “There’s a junction ahead, I think.”
“Oh?”
“And someone’s sleeping there.”
“What – oh, that dot? How do you do that, Sanu?”
“I feel the mysterious flux and flow of Equinox’s powerful magical forces coursing in the depths of my soul.”
“Hey!”
Sanu gripped her daggers as if she was already imagining a little culinary art being performed on that innocent traveller. “I feel a diverting interrogation coming on.”
“Now that’s the Sanu I know,” Zaranna grinned. “Human?”
“No, a man-sized bat. Let’s sneak up on him.”
So they tiptoed right up to the sleeping man, who did not move a muscle in all the time it took them to reach a five-way junction of Safeways. The ubiquitous tunnels merged in a larger cavern here, some emerging from higher or lower levels, and if Zaranna leaned over the side, she could see another similar four-way junction a couple of thousand feet below. Dragons. It might help if one had wings.
The man, clearly male judging by the rugged five o’clock shadow adorning his exposed cheek, was sleeping in the mathematical centre of the five-way junction. A nondescript black travelling cloak enveloped his frame. Knee-length boots of soft black leather shod his feet, boots well-worn but excellently maintained, Zaranna noted, having some experience with the maintenance of horse tack. Curious. A lump in that cloak proclaimed the presence of a bow similar to Sanu’s. Zara was convinced that if he rolled over, a small arsenal would be revealed. He was that kind of man. Lean. All hanks of whipcord muscle. A rogue, most certainly.
On his right thumb, he wore a heavy signet ring bearing a torch-symbol Zaranna had seen before – at Obscurant Vale!
Sanu, reaching out with her dagger, turned her head at Zaranna’s sibilant hiss. ‘Danger,’ mouthed the Horse.
“I’m awake,” said the man.
To her credit, Sanu neither screamed nor twitched a muscle. “I know. Hands off your weapons. Sit up. Slowly.”
The man gathered his legs beneath him as though he had not a care in the world. As his cloak shifted, a blade came into view, a straight sword, perhaps three or three and a half feet long, forged of a dark, oily metal Zaranna did not recognise.
“Now, why would I threaten a lovely girl and … a Plains Horse? Are you two lost?”
Sanu growled, “Hood back.”
The man pushed back the hood of his cloak, revealing a tousled thatching of black hair and a face of Oriental, perhaps Mongoloid cast. He had the laser-grey eyes, black stubble and craggy jawline down pat, and the air of a cowboy out in the trackless plains, alone and living off the land. He wore a leather cord at his neck, displaying what Zaranna thought might be a Dragon’s fang, and his upper body beneath that cloak was bare to the waist, muscled like a professional boxer’s, and liberally covered in tattoos and scars. Bad boy. She revised her opinion upward, while readying her magic. He’d find himself shadow-boxing with butterflies … because she would not be fighting this man. He was very dangerous indeed. And good-looking, if Sanu fancied the type.
“What’s your name?” Sanu demanded.
“Mmm,” said Exceedingly Bad Boy, looking Sanu over so brazenly that Zaranna felt awkward, and she was a Horse. “Aren’t we feisty, this morning. What’s your name, my pretty?”
“Death,” said Sanu. “What’s yours?”
He guffawed heartily. “Boss. As in, put that silly little knife away, girl, or I’ll have to show you who’s boss.”
Phew. Flame to kindling. Sanu’s expression was carved from equal parts granite and lava. “What’s a Hooded Wizard stooge doing down here?”
“Could ask you the same question. Since you ask so sweetly, just strolling along. Taking in the sights. I’m an explorer and I’m very, very good at my job. Begs the question, see? How did you two circumvent the Dragon Portal magic to end up in here?”
“We asked nicely,” said Sanu.
Their eyes exchanged invisible poisoned arrows. Zaranna wanted to tell them to get a room. They either hated each other and someone was going to die, or this was love at first blade, or however that saying might translate in their respective cultures.
“What’s your real name, girl?”
“I’m the one asking the questions.”
The man drawled, “Tell you what, if you can touch me with that pathetic pocketknife you have there, little wench, I might just make your day brighter.”
Sanu’s hand blurred. The man cursed. Zaranna blinked – for the strange fellow was standing five feet back from where he had been sitting an instant before, sword in hand but pointed toward the ground. Sanu still held her blade at his throat. A trickle of blood welled on his right cheek. An unholy light infused his eyes – anger, perhaps something more.
“You’ll pay for that!”
“Usually I’m more careful when asked to shave my opponents’ beards,” said Sanu. “I’ll have your name, now.”
“Did someone make a promise?”
“You’re so crafty,” she sneered. “Are you that shrewd with your blade? First person to draw blood – more blood, anyway, since I already cut you once – gets a real name and purpose here in these Safeways.”
“Real name and Soul-name,” he countered, with an expression that made Zara imagine Sanu had just forced him to swallow a pineapple.
“Deal.”
The syllable had not yet left her mouth before they clashed violently. Zaranna could not even follow the duel, they moved so fast – just silvery fans blurring in the air, Cat Woman on one side and Ninja Turtle on the other. The ting-ting-ting of their blades was like a clock tic
king milliseconds; they spun apart as abruptly as they had attacked each other, exchanging scowls of mutual hatred, and tore into each other with renewed fury. Ninja Turtle landed a crushing blow with his foot, but Sanu somersaulted away, teetering briefly on the edge of the Safeway, before spinning back into him like a whirlwind. All she knew was that Bad Boy had to be very good – or bad – to keep a fighter like Sanu at bay.
Suddenly he backed away, shucking his cloak. “So, you think you can fight, eh?” The sword began to whistle through the air, making a strangely hungry, moaning sound. “I’m through playing with you, girl!”
“Aw, I was hoping you’d take this more seriously,” she sneered back.
Zaranna rolled her eyes. Honestly, what was it with these Equinoxians and their fondness for cheesy lines? Ninja Turtle was flexing his shoulders and neck over there, showing off his muscles. Snark-Maiden did some ridiculously elastic thing with her back, making his eyes bulge appreciatively in the half-second or so she allowed him before she pressed her attack once more.
Round and round they circled, neither fighter seeming able to gain a decisive advantage. Then, Sanu vanished. The man went on the attack, his blade like a shield shimmering about his person; the moaning sound turned into a high-pitched whistle. She appeared behind him, laughed, and disappeared again. Cursing, he widened the steely sweeps of his flying sword.
Sanu reappeared beside Zara’s flank. “Come and get me.”
Her mocking beckon made the infuriated man hurtle into a prodigious attack. But Sanu was faster by far. Her daggers separated and spun in glistening arcs, following her blurring body as she spun into his embrace and back out again, quicker than a cobra’s strike.
“Curse you, you vixen!” He stumbled backward, holding his cheek. “Using magic is unfair.”
