“And you just travel with it, do you? Just in case you ever end up in Laknuria and need to mobilize an army of raging automatons?”
“Of course not,” he said. “When the Entanglement staff told us where you were going, we ordered a transportation plate back to my office. Your mother got it for us while I waited.”
“Oh, did she?” I turned my gaze on her, hard.
She wilted under it. “I just thought …”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve heard it all before.”
Another quiet came between us. The storm raged on, rain hammering down as if the deluge would never end. A flash of lightning illuminated the clouds overhead, cutting a white-hot path within the black churn. Its rumble came a couple of seconds later, once again muted by the sound of the rain hammering down around us.
“I’ve made a decision,” said Mum finally.
“Oh yeah? What’s the latest choice you’ve made on my behalf then?”
She winced. But she’d lifted her eyes now, meeting mine, and despite the heat coming off me in waves, she did not back down.
“I’ve made a decision for myself. And that is …” She sucked in a breath. “That is … to do my best … to be happy for you.”
I waited, one eyebrow raised. My heart had skipped, just one beat. The urge to shoot back some sort of retort had bubbled inside of me. But my shock held it back. Was this her finally backing down?
“This world is a dangerous one,” she said quickly. “Today only proves that. But the way you handled that robot … You did—well.”
Geez. It really was her backing down.
Even better—it was her admitting to having been wrong.
“If you’re going to do this,” she said, with another of her great, steadying breaths—she was taking a lot of them; apparently this was the only way she was getting through this—“then I can’t stop you.” A pause. “I won’t stop you.” She shook, at that, just a little.
Dad put an arm around her shoulder. He pulled her in tight, squeezing her as though to still her vibrations.
“You are a Seeker,” she said shakily. “I see it now. And I will … I will do my best to respect that.”
I was floored.
To Dad, I said, “And you?”
He nodded. “I’m with your mother,” he said weakly. “As ever.”
And, for the first time in a long time, he cracked a smile. Only a very small one, just one side of his lips rising, such slight inclination that you’d hardly see it unless you’d known him, had lived with him for seventeen and a half of your eighteen years on this rock. (Well, not this one, but you know what I mean.)
“You did well, Mira,” he said. “You did well.”
30
“So,” I said, “this is the Instrumentum Aetenatitis.”
“It is,” confirmed Borrick with a nod.
We were back in my hideout, the three of us arranged around a desk, all wrapped in towels. We’d left an impressive trailing pool behind us after coming back through the ‘LONDON’ wall. At some point soon I’d need to go back with a few more towels to soak it all up. But that could wait. For now, I was cooking myself by the fireplace, soaking in the heat and doing my best to banish the remnants of Laknurian rain. A change of clothes had helped, me and Heidi both—now it was really just getting some warmth back in me (London night had been chilly, sent my teeth chattering as we walked back to Tortilla to cut through), and getting my hair to dry, probably into a frizzy heaped mess.
Borrick wasn’t quite so fortunate. Carson had cleared out his belongings when he left. And Bub’s small collection of clothes were mostly threadbare things that he wore beneath his armor, growing with holes—the armor was meticulously cared for, but the undergarments? Forget it. Ragged state of them aside, I didn’t really expect Borrick to want to wear them anyway. Orcs had a certain stink about them that just didn’t wash off, even when you were lathering up on the regular with Heidi’s overly pungent shampoo.
Instead, he’d hung his jacket on the back of a chair positioned beside the fireplace. Wrapped in a fluffy pink towel, he looked completely ridiculous.
For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that.
He bowed low over the Instrumentum Aeternitatis, laid upon the desk between us.
“It looks …” I said, “kind of like a fork.”
It was a fork. A golden fork, yes, with a couple of small gemstones embedded on the handle, purple and green alternating. But it was definitely a fork.
“A cup,” said Borrick, leaning back in his seat and eyeing the Chalice Gloria where it sparkled on the mantel, “and now a fork.”
“And a plate,” said Heidi. “Tyran Burnton has that one—the plate of immortality.”
“Hmm.” Borrick pressed a knuckle to his chin. Head leaned forward, he thought. “Glory, immortality, undying … and all of it the kind of thing you’d have in your kitchen cupboards.”
“Or on your dinner table,” I said.
He frowned, eyebrows pressing in that little comma-shaped shadow. “But what does it mean?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” I said, shaking my head. “Probably absolutely nothing.”
“It must mean something,” he said.
“It doesn’t.”
Borrick’s frown deepened, the shadow between his eyebrows growing only darker. “You seem very sure of that.”
I sighed. “That’s because I know it’s true.”
They both looked at me, confusion warring on their faces.
And this was it—time to tell them; to be honest about what had happened. It would be hard, when they put so much stock in the Antecessors and their stupid games—but after everything we’d been through, today and in the days before this? They deserved to know.
“When Manny … when he died,” I said, “I couldn’t stop him. And I couldn’t stop him because I was taken out of the puzzle by an Antecessor.”
Both their eyes widened, but where Heidi looked mildly shocked, Borrick appeared as though he’d heard that the world was ending tomorrow. Eyes bulging, almost quite literally, he leaned forward. “You did? I didn’t even know they were still around!” Awe turned his voice breathy. “What were they like?”
“They’re...not good,” I answered. “They filled the universe with these puzzles—but they don’t mean anything at all. The prizes, they’re just trinkets designed to tantalize us. The game for them is watching us scrabbling to beat their temples.”
“I don’t understand,” said Heidi.
“We are nothing more than reality TV to them,” I said. “We are all ‘competitors’, fighting for a common goal. The Antecessors pit us against each other, and they watch it, like we’re rats in a maze.” To Borrick, I added, “It’s why Erbridge’s quest was ‘time-limited’. It’d been buried for eons, and now there was some movement on it at last, the Antecessors imposed an arbitrary end time to force us to move even faster, in direct competition the entire way through.” Shaking my head, and smiling ruefully, I added, “I can only imagine their sick joy at the losers throughout that challenge, leaving with their heads in their hands.”
“They want that?” Borrick asked.
“Yep. When my brother was considering cutting a gate …” I suppressed a shudder. “I could feel their interest rising, this morbid excitement … And then, when he stepped into the void …” A hard lump rested in my throat, dry and immoveable. I swallowed, trying to force it down, but it wouldn’t go. “They’re sick,” I spat. “Like little boys with magnifying glasses, poised over an anthill—but on a galactic scale, with much more than a magnifying glass.”
“But … the treasures … they can’t mean nothing,” said Heidi. She rose, paced over to the mantel.
The Tide of Ages sat upon its stand once more, glassy and still as inert as it had ever been.
She lifted it carefully, taking it between gentle fingers, like she was scared that by touching it in the wrong way, she would activate it, throwing us into a past where we once again had
to fight off a giant robot raging through Tokyo.
Staring into its confines, and the undulating wave within, she said, “This thing actually turns back time. It works. So how can that just be a … a …”
“A carrot on a stick?” I finished. I shrugged. “No idea. I guess because the objects have to be meaningful in some way, they have to do something—otherwise the whole Seeker community would’ve fallen apart centuries ago. I mean, if you litter the universe with temples and treasures, but those treasures don’t do anything … why bother finding them?”
“People would though,” said Borrick. “People always would.”
“I agree,” I said. “But not the way we do now. Look at the Way-Crossing. Seeker communities from many worlds have come together and amassed into one huge, sprawling society. You think that would’ve happened if these were only temples with old, forgotten relics? There would still be Seeker researchers—but this world of ours? It wouldn’t be anything like the one we live in today. We’d just be disparate nomads, only the foolhardiest of us putting their lives at risk for—forks.” I tapped the Instrumentum Aeternitatis on the tines. “So by making these things at least do something …”
“The Antecessors encourage us to put our necks on the line to acquire them,” Borrick finished for me.
I nodded. “Got it in one.”
“Wow.” He fell back in his chair, sighing. No more awe in his face now; just troubled lines. Staring into the table’s surface, past it, he thought for ten, fifteen seconds.
Then his gaze was upon me again.
“That’s what changed,” he said, “isn’t it? It wasn’t just seeing your brother die that turned you into such a nihilist. It was learning this.”
I nodded.
Somehow, he sagged lower. “Damn.” And then … “Well, in that case, I’m sorrier than ever—for Manny, for this—and for everything between us before.”
I waved it off. “Bygones.”
“I mean it, Mira.” He leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. “Everything that came between us before—I’m sorry for it. My father’s influence turned me into a repugnant person with few qualms about the means to my ends.” He shook his head. “I was a fool.”
I suppressed a smile. “I told you so.”
He grinned back.
Heidi remained beside the fireplace. She rolled the Tide of Ages in her hands, watching its innards shift softly. I could only picture the thoughts turning over in her mind right now: whether, perhaps, it might be coaxed to work; whether she could bring her mother back.
And, in light of what I’d just told the both of them: whether her disappearance really had been for nothing more than the games of demigods.
Finally, she rested the Tide of Ages back upon its stand.
She stood, her back to us.
“You lied to me too,” she said quietly.
I lifted my head. “Sorry?”
“The Tide of Ages.” She glanced back, over her shoulder, but didn’t meet my eyes, just stared off into a middle distance somewhere among the bookshelves. “You used it before but said it didn’t work. You lied to me.”
I saved your life, I almost shot back.
But the mechanics of it didn’t matter. I had lied.
Just like she had.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not … looking for an apology,” she said. “I just—wanted you to realize that the lies—they went both ways.”
I nodded. “I know. So … bygones?”
She sighed. “Bygones.”
Returning to her seat, she slumped down in it. Her towel, a light tan with a black band, made of Egyptian cotton, she’d left on her chair. Now she settled into it again, and wrapped it back about her, taking care that the only wet portion—for her hair—went back around the top of her head like a neatly tied turban.
“So,” said Borrick, “what next?”
Heidi glanced at me. She looked sullen, but it was not directed at me, I knew.
“I’m still looking for my mother,” she said. “The treasures themselves might mean nothing—but my mum … I need to find her. Or, if she’s gone … I need to find out what happened to her.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Thank you for helping,” she said to me. “It means a lot.”
“No problem,” I said. “I mean, not exactly—it’s not the most fun day I’ve ever had … and it’s going to be a nightmare trying to keep myself from picking off the scabs. But that’s okay. I’ve come off worse before.”
Heidi nodded. She wrung her hands, looked down at them.
“I guess you’ll be wanting to go home now then,” she said.
It wasn’t a question—but it was, too.
I hesitated.
This morning, I’d been sullen, broken down, depressed. I’d vowed never to return to the world of Seeking—because what did it all mean? The prizes meant nothing at all. I’d un-retired because even though the Antecessors were pulling strings in the most blatant fashion, I wanted to at least help Heidi set out on the path to fulfill her personal quest.
Yet now, as I sat here, as I looked back over the library …
Things had changed somehow. Where this morning the library had been an almost alien place, not remotely comforting after my long absence, now there was no denying that it felt …
Kind of like home.
Even stranger to feel like that with Heidi and Borrick beside me, the two very last people I would’ve expected to be adventuring with.
They looked at me, waiting—wanting to know.
I licked my lips. “You know … I think I’ll stay—just a little longer.”
Heidi’s eyebrows arched. “You will? But I thought you said all the prizes don’t matter.”
“I did,” I confirmed with a nod. “But I realized today that it doesn’t make everything pointless. This fork?” I held it up, letting the gemstones in its handle catch the light and refract tiny purple and green reflections. “It means absolutely nothing. Even if it has a special power, it’s worthless to me. This, though.” I pointed between myself and Heidi—and then expanded that back-and-forth to include Borrick. “This does mean something: people. Our connections. That’s what the real fun was in all those stupid quests. That’s what I’ve taken away from them. None of the glory of finding some stupid cup—” I swept a hand toward the Chalice Gloria, glittering on the mantel “—or some necklace, or a sheet of obduridium, or any of those things. What’s important is us; our connection. That’s what makes this all worth it.”
Heidi’s eyes glistened. She stuck her hand out across the table. “Team?”
I took it, squeezed. “We make a pretty good one.” I grinned. “And … I guess you did a pretty good job of things today too, Alain.”
He’d been watching apprehensively, like he’d been sidelined, that this moment was mine and Heidi’s. And it was—but he’d been there today with us, he’d fought too. And although we had all that water under the bridge, that was all it was: water under the bridge. I was perfectly willing to let it pass us by, now I knew—now I understood.
After all, it was like he’d said all that time ago: he and I were like two sides of the same coin, really.
Borrick placed his hand on both of us. He grinned. “Question then: you don’t want to go home. What do you want?”
The answer was clear: to help Heidi. But there was something before that, something niggling the back of my mind now I’d made my decision.
And Heidi and Borrick were waiting for it.
Waiting for me to choose where we were going next.
“Well,” I said, eyeing the million-world clock ticking above us, still set to Laknuria, “first we’re going to need to find an old orc friend of mine I like to call Bub … and then,” I went on, face breaking with a sly smile as Heidi’s eyes lit, “we’re going to take a little trip to America...and find Carson Yates.”
Mira Brand Will Return in
The Gang of Legend
The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 7
Coming Late 2018/Early 2019!
Get it here!
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading! If you want to know immediately when future books become available, take sixty seconds and sign up for my NEW RELEASE EMAIL ALERTS by CLICKING HERE. I don’t sell your information and I only send out emails when I have a new book out. The reason you should sign up for this is because I don’t always set release dates, and even if you’re following me on Facebook (robertJcrane (Author)) or Twitter (@robertJcrane), it’s easy to miss my book announcements because … well, because social media is an imprecise thing.
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Cheers,
Robert J. Crane
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editing, formatting, and so much more was handled expertly by Nick Bowman of nickbowman-editing.com.
Lewis Moore handled editing, with a final proofing pass by Lillie of Lillie's Literary Service, who you can find at lilliesls.wordpress.com.
The most excellent cover was created by Momir Borocki.
Many thanks to that whole crew for helping make this book happen.
And thanks as always to my family—wife, parents, in-laws and occasionally my kids—for keeping a lid on the craziness so I can do this job.
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
World of Sanctuary
Epic Fantasy
Defender: The Sanctuary Series, Volume One
Avenger: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Two
Champion: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Three
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four
Sanctuary Tales, Volume One - A Short Story Collection
Thy Father’s Shadow: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 4.5
Master: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Five
Fated in Darkness: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 5.5
We Aimless Few Page 20
