by Alex Leopold
“Remember your training.” Was all the Sekhem had replied before walking away.
She’d shrouded her face even though they were alone and the sun hadn’t yet broken the horizon. Riley liked to think it was because she didn’t want the twins to see her cry.
On the trail, Mayat’s presence was missed immediately. Even though she rarely uttered a word and preferred to ride separately from the group, the knowledge that she was always nearby had been a comfort that everyone had grown accustomed to. Her absence now made the ride that much harder, the dangers more real.
At a narrow but fast flowing river, they dismounted to let the horses drink.
“Snoopers won’t be able to hear us over the sound of the water.” Riley’s father said pointing to the artificial waterfall up river, created from the debris of a collapsed lost civilization bridge.
“Okay, so spill, where are you taking us?” Acadia demanded.
“We’re going to find the resistance in Hellanta. With the Myrmidons following us, it’s the safest place for us to be right now.”
“Hellanta? That’s got to be a four week ride, maybe more.” The ursinian huffed. “We’re not provisioned for something like that.”
“Why don’t you tell them, Lee.”
She hesitated, feeling everyone’s eyes on her.
“We’re going to use the Harvedtown gateway to portal down to Hellanta. That’s where we’re riding.”
Acadia looked at her open mouthed. “You crazy?”
“It’s the only way we’ll outrun the Myrmidons.” Her father explained.
“Okay, but Harvardtown is Directory central. We’re talking armed guards by the hundreds. Snoopers monitoring the thoughts of everyone coming in and going out. And predictors to make sure the future doesn’t throw up any surprises. You think you can somehow slip passed all of them?”
“No, they’ll know I’m coming, I’m counting on it.”
“Naturally.” Acadia said with a sardonic smile and clicked his fingers, as if Riley’s father’s point should’ve been obvious to him.
“It’ll make sense when I tell you the plan tonight.” Her father said.
“I’m breathless with anticipation.”
“Hellanta is King Kalahar’s territory.” Redtail whispered to Acadia.
“I know, talk about jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire.”
The twins had heard stories from the two blends about the so-called ‘king of the outlaws’.
The blackest of blackhats, they’d been told. When you were in Kalahar’s world he effectively owned you, and forced you to pay for his protection. Only Kalahar himself ever knew what your debt was and, no matter what, he always got his money.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Nakano reminded the two blends, her voice a frail whisper. “Kalahar has no love for the Directory, and he makes sure their forces have no presence in his land.”
“He’s harboring the resistance, too. That’s got to mean something, right?” Riley pointed out.
“I suppose.” Acadia remained unconvinced and chewed his bottom lip.
“Let’s just make sure we reach the resistance before Kalahar learns we’re in his territory.” He finally added.
“Agreed.”
“How will we find the resistance when we get down there?” Cooper asked.
“Nakano has the name of a contact who lives near a mountain of stone. We’ll go there.”
“And you think these rebels are led by a man named Malthus?” Acadia asked Nakano. Riley remembered her saying that name the night before. She’d also mentioned him in her journal.
|| Resistance leader, Malthus, waits for the Pathfinder in a carriage-house with the tall tree near the City of Outlaws. ||
Nakano had to work up the strength to speak. “I saw Quill with him, I saw him say his name and call him the leader of the resistance.”
“You know this man?” It was evident from Acadia’s expression that something about this Malthus troubled him.
“Knew.” He corrected. “A lifetime ago, before you two were even born. Malthus was a Torchbearer like your father and me. At least we thought he was.”
“Except?”
He sighed. “Turns out he was a traitor.”
Riley looked at her father. “This true?”
He nodded.
“What did he do?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Not that complicated, Quill.” Acadia said. “Malthus was one of the first Myrmidons. His actions led to the death of the Oracle.”
“A Myrmidon?” Cooper gulped then shared a look with Riley. Aren’t these the people we’re running from, it said.
“Now you know why your father and I were surprised to hear Malthus was leading the rebels.”
He looked at Quill. “Might be a trap.”
“Maybe.” He agreed.
“I had a sense you trusted him.” Nakano argued. “That you were in Hellanta to meet with him, specifically.”
Acadia gave an unsatisfied grunt suggesting he found this fact hard to believe.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Riley’s father said trying to calm the situation.
“We don’t know what Nakano’s visions are telling us. What is real though is the contact that Nakano was given. That’s who we’re going to find in Hellanta. If we meet Malthus along the way, we’ll deal with him then.
“Acadia is right, he was a Myrmidon.” He told his daughters. “But back then they weren’t the butchers they are today. They were just a gang of petty thieves. And Malthus knows I saved his life, that could prove useful to us when the time comes.”
Looking at her father, Riley was reminded again there was so much about his life she didn’t know. In essence he’d become two men; the one who’d lived before her mother’s death, and the one who’d continued on after she was gone. So great was the wall he’d built to separate these two, that they’d rarely met the former.
Now that his past had caught up with him, Riley saw that her father was being forced to demolish this wall and show her a man she didn’t know existed. Yet, it was a man she was desperate to meet.
“If Malthus really is the leader of the resistance, do you think he’ll have forgiven me for shooting him?” Acadia asked with a wry smile.
Her father’s lips curled slightly. He was amused, Riley realized.
“I shot him too, remember.” He pointed out.
“Yeah, but I was trying to kill him.”
38
For the next few hours they’d ride twelve miles before letting the horses rest, water and feed. Then they’d ride another twelve, then another. It became a painful test of endurance they knew they couldn’t fail. Myrmidons were somewhere on their tail. If the Archon’s thugs caught up with them, they’d be cooked.
Everyone quickly lost their energy for talk and rode in silence with their eyes transfixed on the horizon. Except Redtail, the houndsman. He seemed to have limitless reserves, and he hummed, whistled or bantered without let up.
“You know, I think houndsmen are just as good at scouting as the kitties.” He declared boastfully to the twins when they happened to be within ear shot. “I don’t know why you never let me do this before.”
“Less talking, mutt.” Acadia growled reminding him they were supposed to be staying silent. But Redtail could see the twins welcomed the relief and ignored him.
“Me, I can smell a man from a mile away.” He gave a knowing tap to his snout-like nose.
“And they can smell you too.” Acadia replied wrinkling his own. “Now be quiet.”
The houndsman gave a dejected sniff. “I was only trying to say my senses are just as good as the felisians, if not better.”
Acadia shushed him.
“It’s the truth!”
“Will you shut up!” The grizzly hissed.
Pointing at the sky, he stopped so suddenly the girls nearly rode into the back of him.
“What is it?” Cooper’s father asked.
“Ravens!”
“Into the woods!” Her father commanded.
They raced for the trees only stopping when they were well inside the forest.
“Get the horses down!” Her father ordered as he led them into a ditch and pulled his horse onto its side.
“What do you see?” Riley asked Cooper who had her own eyeglasses and was watching the tree line through them.
“Nothing.” She replied scanning the skies. Then she spotted them, five black ravens gliding ten feet off the ground heading west. When the birds were almost directly in line with where they’d entered the forest, they dropped from the air and rested on the ground.
“Everyone, bows!” Her father hissed.
Hopping in circles, the ravens crowed at each other before one glided across the ground and landed just clear of the tree line.
“No one move!” Cooper’s father tapped.
"Why don't we shoot them?" She asked.
"We can't risk the chance we might miss one. If that happens, it’ll fly back to its masters and tell them where we are."
The raven hopped back and forth as it tried to peer deep into the forest. As Cooper watched it intently she heard a kind of whispering echo bounce around her head.
“Lee, do you hear that?” She asked her sister.
“Hear what?”
The chatter died down, but the moment she put her eyes back on the raven, the murmuring started up again. And this time it was louder.
“I think one of them is looking right at me.” Riley swallowed hard.
“Let's take them out.” Redtail nipped at Cooper’s father, and in the silence all they could hear was the sound of five bowstrings being pulled tighter.
“Hold your arrows!” Cooper hissed. “They haven't seen us.”
“How can you be sure?” The houndsman asked.
“I think I can hear them speaking to one another. Is that possible?”
The voices in her head weren’t so much communicating in the kind of conversational form she was used to. What she was hearing was more the relaying of thoughts and feelings passed back and forth in a way that made sense to her. And none suggested they’d been seen.
Her father looked at her inquisitively, his upper lip beading with sweat.
“Tuning, it’s a kind of telepathy but it’s very rare. Are you sure?”
Cooper looked at the ravens again.
“I'm sure.” She said.
In the next moment the closest raven leaped into the air and was gone, the other four following quickly after it.
Redtail let out a heavy sigh of relief as he carefully removed the arrow from his bow and placed it back in its pouch.
“Why didn’t you shadow us from them?” Riley asked her father.
“You can’t sway a raven’s mind. That’s why the Myrmidons like to use them.”
“Do you think they know we’re traveling to Harvardtown?” Nakano asked hesitantly.
Cooper’s father shook his head.
“If the Myrmidons suspected that, they’d be here.”
Everyone was quiet as they worked the tension out of their bodies.
“We should get moving.” Acadia suggested.
“The horses could use the rest.” Their father replied as he climbed out of the ditch. “We could too.
“Besides”, he added. “There may not be time to talk later, and there are things I must tell Riley and Cooper, if they’re to survive.”
“About the Oracle’s last prophecy?” Riley asked.
He nodded. “I need you to come back into the connection with me. It’s time you know the truth of it all.”
39
He motioned for his children and Nakano to sit next to him in a circle. This close together Riley could easily see the dark rings bruising the skin under her father’s eyes and the deepening of the wrinkles along his face. He looks more tired than the one night of sleep he’s been deprived of, she thought and when he spoke there was a weight to his voice she hadn’t heard before.
“What I’m about to show you is not without its painful secrets.” He admitted. “But if we are to go down this path, then you have a right to know everything.”
As he took Riley’s hand, she could see something in his expression that suggested he already knew that when he was finished they’d never look at him the same way again.
“So, is it true then, the last prophecy?” Cooper asked.
“That’s what I’m going to leave you to decide.” Was all he said on the matter before closing his eyes and entering the connection.
When Riley opened hers again she found they’d been transported to a busy market square in some unknown lost civilization town. Around them were lines of broken buildings and rubble. Yet, this was no ghost-town. In the last minutes of the day, the town’s people began placing lamps or candles in nearly every open window. The effect was hypnotic. Everywhere you looked, there was light.
“The sign of the Torchbearers.” A healthier and revived Nakano whispered to Riley.
“The light is a message. It tells all those who’ve lived in fear all their life that hope has returned.”
Within the market a large crowd was beginning to form, the town’s people spilling in from all directions. There seemed to be a sense of excited anticipation in the air and everyone was looking toward a specific building. When a woman appeared in its doorway and began marching toward them it appeared that whatever they’d been waiting for had arrived.
Dressed in a blue military overcoat, her blonde hair pulled back tight against her head she walked quickly through them with a purposeful stride that relayed an authority twice as tall as her slight height. She did not have to fight to make her way through the crowd, they parted for her out of respect.
The twins did not have to ask who this woman was, they recognized her immediately. It was their mother.
She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than they were now. As she walked passed them, Riley couldn’t help herself and stretched out to touch her. Her fingers glided through her mother’s arm, and as real as she appeared, Riley realized her mother was nothing more than an apparition.
She continued to walk toward the center of the square where a makeshift platform had been built beneath a dead oak tree.
When she was close enough to it, she switched straight onto the stage. Two men were waiting for her on wooden stools, their necks bound with rope tied to one of the tree’s higher branches.
The first man the twins did not recognize. The second they did instantly, it was their father, barely into his twenties.
Seeing him like this shocked them both and they turned to their real father for answers.
“I was a petty thief when I first met the Oracle.” He explained nodding his head toward his younger-self. “What you are witnessing is the accumulation of my efforts: a rope around my neck.”
“Who is the man next to you?” Asked Cooper. “He looks familiar, but I'm not sure why.”
“His name is Bellic.” Their father said, a note of regret in his voice. “And I will tell you about him soon.”
When Quill’s younger-self noticed who was approaching, he spoke.
“Well, well, well, Kitt the Elder. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
His voice was relaxed as he spoke, as if he were unaware of his predicament. Yet, he looked pale, and he had to squint to see.
He's been doped with sting, Riley guessed. That's why he couldn’t use his abilities to get free.
“Don’t tell me you’ve returned for that kiss you promised me?” Their father’s younger-self continued with a mocking tone, a manner neither twin could’ve ever imagined in him.
Leaning forward, he spoke in a whisper.
“People are watching, my lady. Think of my modesty.”
“The court found you guilty and sentenced you to hang.” Their mother said with lit
tle trace of remorse. “I’m here to carry out their sentence. Like I told you I would.”
Bellic mimed a mock grimace. “That’s far too generous of the court. I’m afraid we simply cannot accept. Another time perhaps?”
Their father also seemed unfazed and continued to tease her. “Bellic, if you please, I️ will handle this. The lady is only trying to get my attention so I’ll ask her out on a date.”
He turned to her. “I’m flattered, really I️ am.”
Kitt didn’t react to any of this, she simply placed her boot on Quill’s stool and as the crowd cheered she began to push.
“I have food and weapons!” Quill called out to make her halt. “Enough to feed and protect this town for days. Yours, if you commute my sentence.”
“You’re lying!” Kitt said but didn’t push the stool any further.
“Read my mind if you don’t think so.”
“Where?” She demanded after quickly peering into his thoughts.
He motioned for her to climb up on his stool.
When she hesitated he quickly explained himself. “I’m not going to say it out loud so some looter can steal it all before your men get there.”
Kitt looked wary but without another word she launched herself onto the stool to hear what he had to say.
The crowd roared with laughter when he planted his lips over hers. They grew louder still when the shock of his kiss caused her to lose her balance and sent her back to the ground to land squarely on her buttocks.
“You’re welcome.” The younger Quill said with a wink.
With scarlet red cheeks, their mother bared her teeth at him and in the next instant his stool was gone.
As she watched her father swing, Riley unconsciously placed a protective hand over her own throat. It was all too familiar to how her own life had almost been cut short.
“These men stole from you again and again!” Kitt addressed the crowd having picked herself up off the stage. “They will steal from you no more.”
Except for one woman, the crowd cheered their approval. The woman, Yin, the one from the photograph and Nakano’s sister, was trying to muscle her way through the throng as she called Kitt’s name. When she noticed her, Kitt switched down to her side.
