“No, I’m not,” I said.
“But it’s all lies!” Carson cried.
“She’s lying?” Burnton asked dubiously.
“I’m not lying,” I said. “He’s talking about the Antecessors.”
“What about them?”
“Their quests,” said Carson. “They’re all games to the Antecessors. Tell him, Mira—tell him what you said you saw.”
“Is this really the time?” Heidi murmured. “Come on, Carson, let’s just—”
She’d put a hand on his elbow to try to guide him down the corridor and out of the conversation. Carson sidestepped clear though.
“Tell Burnton what the Antecessors showed you,” he demanded. “Tell him how pointless this—what is it you’re chasing, again? A spoon? Tell him how worthless it is.”
“Carson,” Heidi warned.
But we were all at an impasse, the six of us arranged in a rough circle here in the corridor. All eyes zipped back and forth between me and Carson—mostly to me, Burnton’s in particular, as he waited with a tense expression, forehead lined.
“I got to have a kind of sit-down with the Antecessors when my brother disappeared,” I said at last. “They showed me that Seekers … we’re all just ‘competitors’ to them. They watch us fighting for their prizes like we’re … rats in a lab, figuring out a maze. The prizes are pointless.”
Burnton waited.
I shrugged. “That’s it.”
“So … these objects … they don’t mean anything at all.”
“No,” I said. “Nothing more than the value we bestow upon them.”
“Right,” he said slowly. He sucked in a breath. And then: “Well, nothing has changed then, has it?”
I gaped a moment. “Excuse me?”
“Everything is worthless except for the value we choose to give it. That’s how economies work, young Mira.” His terse expression dissolved into a typical Tyran Burnton winning smile. “I appreciate your telling me, though.” Clapping me on the shoulder, he said, “See you on deck. We’ll be there in ten.” And off he strode, gold garb flashing gloriously under the high bulbs.
“Unbelievable,” said Carson.
“Sorry,” said Heidi, patting his shoulder. “I guess you’re in on this after all.”
He sighed. “Damn it.”
“You’re still in then, Mira?” asked Borrick.
I glanced back at the medical bay. Door wide open, though the room was displayed for all to see, Manny and Doctor Fiennes were secreted behind a grey-blue curtain. I thought I heard the faint scribbling of Fiennes taking notes … but then it turned out to be Wembley adjusting his position on the bed.
“I guess so,” I said. “Sitting around here isn’t going to do me much good, is it?”
“Probably not, no,” Borrick agreed.
“Another quest,” Bub rumbled as we set off down the corridor. “All together again—and Mr. Borrick. It’s like the old days.”
“Funny,” Carson murmured. “I don’t remember feeling sick like this in the old days.”
“You’ll be okay,” Heidi said kindly.
“It’s probably the pitfly larvae,” said Borrick. Lips thin, he suppressed a shudder. “Those eyes …”
“I’d like one,” said Bub. “What?” he asked our chorus of disgusted noises. “The insides of larvae are delicious. Squeezed on eggs—”
“Shut up,” said Heidi through gritted teeth. “Shut up right now.”
“—sublime,” Bub finished. He licked his lips and cast a distant glance backward. “Do you think the doctor would mind if I …?”
“We would,” I said.
“I feel sick,” Carson moaned.
Heidi glared at Bub with disgust. “Don’t we all.”
12
“Welcome,” said Tyran Burnton grandly as the five of us stepped onto the top deck to join him, “to the Argo-L’an—one of Harsterra’s richest, most thriving lands.”
I blinked, peering around. The vast hull of the Velocity blocked much, but this Argo-L’an area, however it was delineated from its surroundings, appeared absolutely no different from any of the rest of the planet. The skies were a burnt umber color, churning as high winds stretched the clouds out of shape. Somewhere below us, I had little doubt that one of Harsterra’s many storms brewed. There were no land masses in sight, no platforms hanging in the sky like a kite on the breeze. About the only thing of any note about it was that, here, I could detect a faint odor like liquorice, clinging to the winds. Which was not exactly up my street—I detested the stuff. Whoever came up with it, and termed it confectionary, had to have been a close relative of the sadist who invented Parma Violets, the chalky, vomit-inducing purple ‘sweets’ that tasted like actual perfume.
“It’s very nice,” said Bub, quite earnestly.
Tyran beamed at that, and I was glad it had been Bub who responded—my “Uh?” would’ve been less than stellar.
“I won’t bore you with the details of how I found the first leg of this next quest,” said Tyran, sounding as though he very much would like to bore us with the tale, because of course it would be a very self-important story to tell, with plenty of false modesty—“but I will say this,” he amended, apparently reconsidering. “I had to conduct a great deal of research, a very great deal indeed. I spent many an hour toiling away, over stacks and stacks of books, cross-referencing, translating—I speak several languages, did you know? Orcish, for instance—” And he barked a series of quite aggressive-sounding noises.
Bub clapped. “Very well done, Mr. King of the Skies,” he intoned.
Tyran beamed again.
Before he could say anything, Commander Greco spoke up. “We’re over the connection, sir.”
“Oh, jolly good!” Tyran reached a hand into a well-disguised golden pocket, and withdrew a Harsterran trinket, a coin with notched edges, and a polished purple gem inset and off-center. “I thought I’d use this one today,” he said, flashing it to us all. “Wonderful, isn’t it, the workmanship? I commissioned—”
“Sir,” said Greco, “I hate to interrupt, but if we dally long, the Velocity may drift.”
“Oh, yes, of course—Storm Garfunkel,” said Tyran, with an air of distraction. “We ought to make this quick, actually—it’s on the move.”
“Storm?” Carson echoed faintly.
“Under us, lad,” said Tyran. “Big one, much larger than the Velocity. Probably will tear our ship apart if we don’t get this over and done with. Anyhow.” He pivoted, and approached a blank square of wall in the middle of the deck, where another deck rose above us, blotting out a fraction of the curving orbs that were the Velocity’s engines. Clutching the talisman, he swiped, and opened a gateway to the world beyond.
I blinked in momentary confusion at the swell of green, with industrial greys streaked in among it. This was the passageway between worlds they saw? Then I remembered—like Carson’s gates, the Harsterran portals were direct between this world and the next.
“Here we go,” said Tyran. “Let’s be off, shall we?”
“And us, sir?” said Greco.
“Hold down the fort,” said Tyran. “I believe I have enough assistance as it is. Not that I need it.” He winked at me, grinning cheekily. “The fort is the Velocity, by the by.”
“Yes, Captain. I know.”
“Excellent. Well then—see you on the other side, hm?” And, with one last wink, Burnton cast himself backward through the portal, vanishing out of sight below.
I wondered if the idiot’s arrogance had gone a little too far this time, and he’d flung himself off the side of a chasm or something. But Commander Greco stuck his head through, apparently considering this same possibility—I had little doubt he’d seen Burnton do much worse in the past through his theatrics—and, withdrawing it, said, “He’s okay.”
“Oh, joy,” said Heidi.
“Come on,” I said. “The sooner this is done, the sooner we can get back on track.” And I could get back to my brother�
��s side and oversee his recovery, though I didn’t add this. Didn’t need to—pretty obvious what I was thinking.
We approached the portal.
“By the way,” said Heidi to Bub. “What did he say to you?”
“Hang on,” I said. “You’re the language expert.”
“I can read orcish,” said Heidi. “But decipher it when it’s spoken?” She grimaced. “Except for a few snippets, orcish is all gobbledegook to me.”
“Orcish?” said Bub. “Oh, no, he wasn’t speaking orcish. I have no idea what Mr. King of the Skies said.”
“But you clapped,” said Borrick.
“I thought he’d treated us all to some rather intriguing poetry,” the orc went on. “Those sounds he was making … truly a treat to one’s ears. What a man of culture he is.”
“Unbelievable,” said Heidi.
The world beyond was hilly, very green, under a soft blue sky, like the early morning, not long after dawn. The hills were quite extreme though, like a child’s rendition of them in a drawing, curving up and down dramatically. Buildings rose between them, the city itself settled into a valley-like depression. Roads on struts curved out of sight, beyond the portal’s edge.
I went through first.
What I expected was that I’d arrive somewhere in the city, on the streets below one of the tall skyscrapers.
And I kind of did.
But the skyscrapers were skyscrapers no longer. The tallest of them came up to little higher than my head.
“What the—?”
Heidi came, then Carson, landing on the street beside me. Their faces contorted as mine surely had, expectations subverted.
Then Bub was pushing his way through the gap, and I bleated, “Move it, now!” We scurried sideways—the roadways, four lanes in miniature underfoot, were just big enough to contain the three of us (Tyran Burnton had already shoved his way through the skyscrapers and was mounting a nearby hill the way a little kid went in reverse up a slide, hands groping for purchase), but with Bub through too? We’d all be ground into a meaty paste on the sides of the buildings.
“Ooh,” said the orc, after squeezing through the gap. He patted one of the buildings, touching a finger to a spindly little lightning rod, no thicker than a mid-sized knitting needle and not much longer. “It’s teensy.”
“Let Borrick through,” I said, “before the gate closes.”
“Oh, they don’t close,” called Tyran from his hill—these were larger, a bit more like human-sized hills, though their extreme curvature clearly made them a struggle to mount; slightly red-faced, Tyran was clutching at tufts of grass to heft himself up the rise. “It’ll be open as long as we need it.”
“Which is a shame,” said Heidi, “because I’d be very happy for you to stay exactly where you are and block Borrick from following, Bub. Would you do that for me? As an apology for using my shampoo all the time?”
“What sort do you use?” Tyran asked. “I could recommend some, if you’d like. I have samples, actually—if you—oof—remind me, back on the Velocity … there’s a brand who hired me to be their face … what was it, what was it? It’s pink, tastes like bubblegum.” He was three quarters of the way up the rise now.
“Hang on,” I said. “Bub, would you move?”
“No, stay—”
“Ignore Heidi and please move, Bub.”
The orc shuffled sideways, looking a bit perplexed.
Borrick came through the gap, joining the rest of us on the street. He had rather an unamused look on his face, lips pressed down into a thin line, and the shadow of a comma between his eyebrows.
“At last,” he said.
“Boo,” said Heidi. “You suck, Bub.”
Bub wilted.
“Where are we?” asked Carson.
“Do hurry up, won’t you?” said Burnton, from the rise. “We’re going this way.”
“Why are these roads so tiny?” said Bub. He squatted to peer.
“Hold on, everyone, please,” I said. How had things devolved into instant chaos? Even more so, how had they devolved into instant chaos when all we’d done was step out on the steps of a scale-model city? We hadn’t even found this world’s temple yet, let alone thrust ourselves into the challenges awaiting us there.
“Quickly,” called Burnton impatiently. “Storm Garfunkel is—”
“Are these toy cars?” Bub wondered. He picked one up, and shook it.
“AAAAAAAARGH!” screeched a tiny little voice.
“Bub, please would you—” I stopped dead. “Err. What was that?”
Bub squinted an eye into the tiny car. It really was a minute little thing, not much larger than a fingernail (a human fingernail; not one of Bub’s wide, somewhat yellowed ones). And inside it, in the driver’s seat, was—
“Is that a tiny person?” Carson asked.
“Goodness, heavens,” cried the little person in the car—although, even pressing in toward Bub, I couldn’t exactly see them very well. Little larger than an ant, I could make out a vague approximation of the person’s shape, his tiny blue shirt and a wisp of ginger hairs on his head, but not much more than that. “Giants! Gods! Come to our world!”
“Err …”
“The legends foretold this day would come,” squealed the little voice. “Mighty ones, come to our peaceful lands!”
Burnton leapt back down from the rise, landing again in the street. “What was that about mighty ones?” He flashed a princely grin, looking about for the source of the voice.
“The Gold One!” a voice squealed—and I heard, with it, a shrill wave of cries.
I jerked about—
The tiny people, like ants, were everywhere, I saw now. They clustered in the streets below us. They hung out of windows, or pressed up against glass, in the tall skyscrapers. Their cars had mostly stopped, gawkers—I could only assume they were gawking, smitten as they were with our presence—idling beside open doors.
How we hadn’t stepped on any was incredible.
Having said that—
I lifted my feet up, one then the other, peering at the bottom of my boots.
Was that—? No. No, it couldn’t be. Just detritus of some sort, I thought. Maybe an actual Earth ant.
“Oh, geez,” said Carson. He stared down at his feet with bulging eyes, but was too afraid to move them to check. “I think I might have stepped on someone,” he whispered to me.
“You didn’t, O Great One,” squeaked a tiny voice from down below—these guys had some pipes on them, didn’t they? “You came close, but we moved swiftly clear!”
“Wait,” said a little, sad voice. “Where’s my dog? She was—”
“Oh, Great and Mighty Ones! Led by the Gold One!” cried—someone. I was spinning about, or rather jerking my head around at least, to try to pinpoint the voices—but there were many of them, all crying one over another. This exulting cry was swallowed by others, echoing the words—
Burnton looked extremely pleased with himself. “Fans, out here … well, of course they’ve heard of me. ‘The Gold One’ … yes, I daresay that might be my new title, or at least part of it. Or—wait. How does this sound? Tyran Burnton—the GOLDEN KING OF THE SKIES!” he boomed, thrusting his fist skyward, a leg kicked out with little regard for who or what he might stamp on.
A cacophony of screams sounded at that, from the direction of his thrust—but it was easily overpowered by the riotous cheers of the tiny people below.
“What even is this?” I asked, eyebrows knitted.
Borrick shrugged.
“Why, isn’t it clear?” said Burnton. “My great name has preceded me even to here. You worship me, yes?” he asked the crowd.
“Yes, O Great Golden King of the Skies!” the little people chorused.
“My dog—”
“I think they worship all of us, actually,” said Heidi with a disgruntled look.
“All of you! All the Great Ones, arrayed here, before us!”
Burnton looked put out by this
. “Ah, but it is me who they most worship—isn’t that so, little ones?”
“Yes, O Great Golden King of the Skies!”
Burnton grinned, the quest evidently entirely forgotten. I had the feeling he could quite easily live out the rest of his days here, if he so chose, and he would be mightily happy for it. Though, there would always be the matter of sustenance; one meal for Burnton could feed how many of these people, for how long? Tiptoeing (carefully), I thought I could see a wheat field nestled somewhere in the hills. But it was little more than a few square feet—I’d be surprised if a season’s growth was enough for a human-sized loaf of bread. Not human-sized, but, you know, sized for a human.
I glanced about the city. Where the hills rose and fell in great green semi-circles, the city’s buildings and roads had been erected between the valleys. Because of the sheer nearness of everything, even scaled down as it was, it felt compact, more like a river running through a network of hillocks than a city in the traditional sense (though, to be fair, who could say what was traditional with so many worlds out there?).
We were bordered by a row of skyscrapers on one side. But the gateway itself had opened on a hillside directly overlooking these tower blocks, nature and the city meeting in a kiss on the opposite roadside. Farther back in the city’s direction were more of the scrapers, arranged in blocks between the hills—then there was a river, a little bridge wending over it, like the Dartford Crossing but scaled down to little more than a couple of meters in length. And then, beyond that, more scrapers—and if I tilted my head to see beyond them, houses, I think, built into the hillsides themselves. They weren’t far distant, maybe twenty meters behind us, and no larger than two matchboxes stacked atop one another—but for these miniscule ant people, those were long miles to cross.
“Little peons,” Burnton was saying, bending down, “I am searching—”
“We are searching,” said Heidi.
Tyran frowned. “Yes, yes. As I was saying, we—” he shot a sharp glare at Heidi “—are searching for an object, left here by beings long before us. Less great than we, of course, but—”
The Gang of Legend Page 9
