by Janean Worth
“It will have to do, won’t it?” Mathew shouted, his voice pitched loudly so that she could hear him over the pounding rain.
Kara nodded, her face dripping with water, and turned the filly, heading for the half wall, hoping that something else wasn’t already using the place below the ramp for shelter. The horses needed no encouragement. They leapt forward eagerly, jumping the half wall with ease and clattering down the ramp at a fast clip, slipping a little as they went down the water slicked incline.
The rain was pounding so hard that she and Mathew were soaked by the time they made it into the dark shelter, though it only took a few moments to descend underground into a wide area that was sheltered from the downpour.
Rainwater sluiced down the ramp, too, but it was hampered by the thick, protective overhang above the ramp and the concrete half wall that bordered the road. Inside the underground shelter, the water was merely a trickle compared to the river that had formed in the roadway in the downpour.
The ramp went so deep underground, and the ceiling of the place was so high, that they could easily move about inside, still mounted on the horses. They walked the animals to the very center of the room and Kara dismounted quickly. Rain poured off of her, making her ragged shoes squelch when she stepped down from the filly’s back.
Mathew followed suit and quickly withdrew from a sodden pocket one of the odd bits of Old Tech that he had found in the city. He shook the device repeatedly, up and down, side to side, in short bursts of motion, and almost immediately it began to glow with a pale, bluish light. He continued to shake it vigorously until the palm‑sized device was brightly glowing ice‑blue, then he set it on top of Gallant’s saddle so that it illuminated a small pocket of space around them.
Kara moved closer to huddle inside the circle of light, leery of the dark, unknown space around them.
Mathew quickly withdrew a couple of ragged pieces of much‑used cloth from a saddlebag. He turned to hand one to her, where she stood beside him dripping copiously, and then used the other to begin drying himself.
She immediately pressed the cloth to her face with both hands, wiping the tickling, cold moisture from her eyelashes, brows, and nose.
“Thank you,” Kara said, her voice muffled through the cloth.
Mathew finished drying the worst of the rain from himself and began busily toweling off Gallant’s neck and face. The horse stood patiently under his hands.
Kara blotted her clothes with the cloth and then turned to give the filly the same treatment, though the filly did not submit to the attention as calmly as Gallant, shying away when the cloth touched her face, her eyes still rolling in fright from the storm’s assault.
Beyond the ramp and overhang, the storm continued its battering. Reflections of lightning streaked down the wet floor, illuminating the underground shelter with bright flashes. The roar of the rain and booming thunder was muted underground, but still threatening as Mathew applied the sopping towel to Gallant’s withers.
Though the animal sidestepped and tossed her head, Kara finished drying the filly as best she could, trying to catch a glimpse of their surroundings each time the lightning flashed outside and snuck inside to illuminate the underground room.
The open space that they’d fled into was wide and long, and oddly clean to have weathered decades of neglect. Tiny square tiles in red, orange, white, and blue covered the floor, walls, and ceiling of the huge room, gleaming wetly in the sharp spikes of brilliant white light. The long, rectangular‑shaped room butted up against a wide channel that was cut into the floor and lined with twin lengths of metal that headed off down into a tunnel. In the intermittent spears of light, Kara could see that the water running into the space from the ramp was falling into the channel, gurgling like a miniature waterfall. The ice‑blue light from the Old Tech device did not stretch far into the blackness of the tunnel, and Kara couldn’t even begin to guess its length.
Square columns of bare, unadorned concrete stood alongside the channel, supporting the ceiling.
“Where do you think that goes?” she asked, pointing to the tunnel beyond the channel.
Mathew shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it is dangerous? What if there are leobs down there? Or Fidgets?”
Mathew huffed out a snort. “What would Fidgets be doing down there? Aren’t they all in that old building we found on the Narrow Road or back in the Old Forest?”
Kara pursed her lips, unsure. “What if they’re not?”
Mathew shrugged again, entirely too blasé. “So, we’ve got the Old Tech shield. And we’ve got light.”
Kara nodded uncertainly, chewing her lip, her fears not so easily allayed. “Let’s build a fire, too. It will help keep them away and we need to dry off, anyway. I’m cold.”
She slipped a finger under the saddle to test the wetness of the saddle blanket. “We’d better dry out the saddle blankets, too, so the horses don’t get chafed.”
Mathew nodded, then looked around, a frown marring his brow.
“This place is so odd. There’s nothing here to build a fire with. No trash, no old leaves or sticks. Nothing—except for those . . .”
Kara looked up, over Gallant’s broad back, trying to see what Mathew was pointing at.
Mathew grabbed the light from Gallant’s saddle and held it aloft. Allowing the illumination to spread out across the floor, he took a few steps around the horse until she was able to see what he’d seen.
“Books?” she said, astonished.
“I know. I didn’t notice them at first, either.”
At the farthest edge of the room, a floor‑to‑ceiling bookcase stood against the wall, and it was filled completely with books.
“What do you suppose they’re doing down here?” Mathew asked, striding closer to be able to view them better, and taking the light with him.
Kara quickly joined him near the bookcase, staring at the tomes in awe. Even her tutor had not owned so many books as the bookshelf held. There had to be hundreds of books gathered there. She momentarily forgot her trepidation, and the raging storm outside, as she stared at them.
“And you want to burn them?” Kara asked, shocked. Those books must contain valuable knowledge if someone had taken the time to hide them away underground.
“No, not really. I don’t want to, but they would burn if we really needed a fire,” Mathew said.
Kara reached up a tentative hand to remove one of the books from the shelf. “I don’t think we need a fire quite that badly, Mathew.”
Mathew shrugged, as if the books were meaningless to him. “Suit yourself. I’ll go down the tunnel a little bit and see if I can find something else to make a fire with. Will you unsaddle the horses?”
Kara nodded absently, still staring at the book in her hands. It was remarkably well‑preserved, its covers bearing only a bit of wear and its pages only marginally yellowed with age. “Sure. Don’t go very far, okay?”
Mathew grinned at her, suddenly cocky, and turned away.
Kara, still very distracted by the fact that there was so much written knowledge in front of her, was only vaguely aware of his departure.
Entranced, she carefully placed the book on the shelf and went to retrieve her precious oil lamp, pausing only to move the horses closer to the wall where the bookshelf stood out of the way of the encroaching water. She unsaddled both horses quickly in the near darkness and fed them each a handful of wild oats before giving in to her need to peruse the books.
She placed the oil lamp on one of the waist‑high shelves in the middle, and carefully lit it with an odd little Old Tech device that produced fire when she flicked a small wheel with her thumb.
As she turned up the wick to provide a bit more illumination, her breath caught in a gasp as her eyes moved greedily over the shelves and shelves of books, her gaze catching on a bright, gold‑embossed cover that read: A Study of the Word, the Narrow Gate, and its Meaning.
She snatched the book from the shelf wi
th a stifled squeal of delight, and turned toward the channel.
“Mathew, Mathew, you must look what I’ve fou . . .”
Her words died in her throat as she took in the hundreds of sets of gleaming green eyes staring back at her from the darkness, eerily reflecting the flickering fire from the lamp back at her in miniature. The echo of her words died a moment later, replaced instantly by the unintelligible gibbering of Fidgets.
The precious book dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.
Chapter Twelve
Gemma knelt at the side of the Sovereign’s throne, wishing that she would die. Wishing that it were possible for her to just stop the beating of her own heart so that she could pass on to the kingdom of the One True God and finally find kindness again. There was nothing of kindness in the place where the men had brought her and the other people from her village. GateWide, they called it. And there was nothing of kindness in their leader, the Sovereign. In fact, a more evil, unkind man Gemma had never even imagined.
There was certainly no kindness in the way that he treated others, in the way that he had enslaved her and the others from her village, or even in the way that he treated his soldiers, the Enforcers.
As she knelt there, clothed in the rags that she had been given when they’d taken her fine. woven‑reed clothing from her to give to someone else, knees aching from being pressed against the hard, cold surface of shiny black floor for so long, Gemma wished that if she couldn’t die, she would at least be permitted to close her eyes so that she would not have to view the atrocities that the Sovereign committed each day in that very room. But she was denied even that ability, for to close her eyes against the Sovereign’s punishments of her people was to invite punishment on herself. She knew well these punishments, even after being in GateWide for only a few weeks. Her arms and legs bore numerous burn marks, caused by the strange device that the Sovereign had ordered be melded with the skin and bone of his arm by his surgeon. The thing that could emit a thin stream of red light which could burn, slice, puncture, or even kill, depending upon what the Sovereign wished it to do.
He was berating one of the village Elders, the once proud, venerable leaders of her village, reduced to abject slavery just as she had been herself. The Elder had thus far refused to do the Sovereign’s bidding, and the situation was quickly becoming dangerous.
Gemma’s lips trembled with the effort to keep them closed, to not speak up in the Elder’s defense. She could hardly bear to hear the words that the Sovereign hissed at the old man. For she knew that his harsh words often ended in a mad fit of rage, and that was when he was the most unkind, the most evil, the most murderous.
“You will go to the city and seek out the Strays who have betrayed me and you will convince them to journey to your village with you. You will lure them from their safe haven, wherever it may be hidden, and out into the Old Forest so that my Enforcers can capture them and bring them back to GateWide. You will.”
The old man shook his head. “No, I will not do this thing. It would be unkind to trick them in this way and very unkind to cause them to be brought back here, to this wicked, wicked place, against their will.”
Gemma winced and averted her eyes, hoping that the Sovereign did not see the gesture. She could not watch what came next. The Elder standing before the Sovereign was one of only two who still lived. The others had all refused this very same order from the Sovereign, and had then met their death at his hands, one by one, over the past few weeks.
Though she knew that hatred was wrong, according to the One True God; though she knew that hatred was not kind, she hated this mad ruler of GateWide. This Sovereign. But, more than she hated the Sovereign, she hated herself. She hated what she’d done by bringing the men back to the village. She hated that she had been the cause of so much suffering and pain and death among her people. She hated that she had led the men right to her village when she had unthinkingly picked up the bit of Old Tech with the red light and had carried it around with her in her pocket. They’d told her, jeeringly of course, that it was that bit of Old Tech that had led them all to her village, and very conveniently just when the Sovereign needed a new batch of slaves, too. And that was what she hated the most: this knowing that all of this suffering had been caused by her actions.
She heard the Sovereign’s hiss of displeasure, and then the whisper of his garments as he rose slowly to his feet. He motioned roughly with his hand and she moved forward, knowing what he wanted from her. She was to act as his crutch.
She obediently wedged herself beneath his arm and helped him down the stairs, holding her breath to avoid breathing in the putrid scent of his rotting flesh.
He hobbled slowly toward the Elder, who had been forced to kneel upon the floor by the Enforcers.
Slowly, they approached, and Gemma tried to keep her face averted, avoiding looking at the old man before her, afraid that she would give the Sovereign even more provocation to hurt the man should he see the emotion upon her face.
When they stood before the kneeling man, the Sovereign struck with speed that Gemma had not thought him still capable of. He flung out an inhuman arm and struck the Elder a hard blow across the cheek, knocking him to the side.
The Elder’s cheek was flayed open by the metallic fingers and blood spurted out over both Gemma and the Sovereign.
As the warmth splattered her bare feet, she jerked away from the Sovereign, fell to her knees, and vomited upon the sleek, black surface of the throne‑room floor. Turning away from the Sovereign, she swiped the sleeve of the rag that she wore over her mouth and then somehow found the courage to glance up at him, hoping that he would end her life for her audacity, rather than torture her some more as he’d done before. But before he could hand down her punishment, or worse, more punishment to the Elder, she lost her courage.
“I will do it,” she gasped out as she rose to her feet. “I will do this thing that you wish.”
“No, child, no,” the Elder cried, the anguish in his voice very evident. “You must not do this unkind thing.”
She took a shuddering breath, looking at the floor once more, her anguished gaze finding the Elder’s bleeding face, the sour taste of vomit upon her tongue. “I must, Grandfather. For you, I must.”
Beside her, the Sovereign hissed in a breath of surprise.
“Grandfather, is it?” he muttered. “Excellent.”
“It is just a term of respect in our village, nothing more,” Gemma said, her whole body shaking with emotion. Repressed rage at his treatment of the Elder warred with intense fear of the Sovereign and that mixed with horror at the thought of what she’d just agreed to do. And of what he would do to her people and the last two Grandfathers if she failed.
Chapter Thirteen
Beneath the sheltering boughs of the towering Old Forest trees, Gabert fought like he had never fought before. His many years of training had made him strong, and the past few weeks of labor and good food at the Narrow Gate had only added to that strength, but he was still no match for the group of eight Enforcers who struggled to subdue him.
He kicked and punched and clawed at the multitude of hands that sought to bring him to submission. There were grunts and groans and stifled curses from the eight men Gabert fought against.
But the fight did not last long. In only moments they had him subdued. Several bore him to the ground with their own body weight as another knelt upon his back and wrenched his arms behind him.
“It would have been better if you had died in the Mire, Gabert. It would have been better than what the Sovereign will do to you.”
“Then don’t take me back,” he muttered, his face pressed so hard to the ground that the words came out garbled and strange.
“I must. But first, we will see where your trail leads us. I believe that you’ve been somewhere other than the Mire these past weeks. You look too well to have been there all this time.”
An ice cold bolt of horror stabbed through him. No!
He had no
t thought of that when he’d left. He had given no thought whatsoever to covering his trail.
Gabert began to struggle anew, though he knew he could not escape them. He tried to roll to his back, so he could kick them away. He nearly wrenched his shoulders from their sockets trying to avoid the final tightening of the rope as his captors wound it around his wrists.
“No. No. You must not. Just take me back to the House now. I will welcome my fate, but I beg of you, do not follow my trail.”
He had failed again! He had simply been meaning to help his family and the others who were forced to serve the House. And he might possibly have given the Enforcers, and subsequently the Sovereign, the only way to find the Narrow Gate. If they found the Narrow Gate, it would be destroyed, and there would be no more hope for the citizens of GateWide or the Strays who had managed to escape. They would never find the Narrow Gate or learn to do the right thing.
Gabert was seized by such a powerful feeling of horror at the thought that a burst of adrenaline flooded through him. He managed to rear back and dislodge the man kneeling upon his back. He flung himself to the side, escaping the grasping hands of several Enforcers, and then rolled onto his back. Kicking out with his legs, he was able to dislodge several others.
Stunned at his success, he scrambled up onto his knees, flailing around, his balance off due to his bound hands. He struggled mightily to rise to his feet, not knowing what he’d do to stop them once he had attained that feat, but determined to try.
“I’m sorry Gabert,” one of the Enforcers said, his regret sounding sincere.
Gabert whipped his head around to face the man who had spoken, just as the Enforcer brought his wooden baton down upon the base of Gabert’s skull with a sickening thump.
The blow was not a killing blow, Gabert was sure, because with just a bit more force applied, it would have been easy to snap his spine with the stout baton. No, the blow was meant to debilitate, and it did its job well. Gabert felt all the fight go out of him, his head buzzing as if filled with a million fireflies, his ears ringing so loudly that he could not think. His vision blurred and he pitched forward onto his face, struggling not only with his bonds but also with his own body.
