Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice

by Van Allen Plexico

I nodded. “A shame I did not know that before I slew it.” I looked down at the Rao. “Then where are we? How many miles away from the castle?”

  The Rao frowned, tapping away at his device.

  A chill touched me, touched the others. The two human women shivered and glanced at one another.

  “Did it just grow colder?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What you feel now is not cold,” Mirana stated, her eyes narrowing as she looked around us. “It is fear.”

  “What?” Erin did indeed appear afraid, but also angry. “The Phaedron is dead,” she pointed out. “Lady Karilyne slew it.”

  “That Phaedron is dead, yes,” Binari said. Rather than continuing the thought, he reached into a pouch at his waist and drew something out. Extending his hand and opening it, he revealed a small, matte-black object that rested in his palm. He whispered a few sounds in his own language and the object unfolded tiny arms that extended out from each of its four corners. With a nearly inaudible hum, it rose swiftly up into the sky.

  A holographic image appeared above his still-open hand, showing a three-dimensional view of the surrounding area, presumably beamed down from a camera mounted on his little flyer.

  Moving around behind him and leaning down for a better view, I could see in the hologram the hilly grasslands we presently occupied, and that puzzling fuzziness beyond. I could just make out a creek or river off to one side, though how far away was unclear. Nothing else of note presented itself, at least at first. But then…

  “What is that?” Mirana asked. She had leaned in next to me. She pointed with a long, slender finger, the tip of it actually penetrating the holographic image and touching a smudge on the opposite side from the body of water.

  I studied the smudge but couldn’t identify it either.

  “Something approaches,” the white-haired Templar stated. He signaled to his fellow. “We will investigate.”

  Together the two of them drew their swords and marched away through the grass. They covered a considerable distance before topping a rise and disappearing from view down the other side.

  Meanwhile I turned back to the hologram.

  “Can you move your machine closer to it?” I asked the Rao. “To that smudge there?”

  Frowning, Binari motioned. There came a change to the humming sound overhead and I looked up to see his little drone flying away. I looked back down at the image it was transmitting and watched as the picture zoomed in. Within that cube of light, the river disappeared as the focus of the image moved swiftly over the grass and came eventually to the smudge we’d seen. It zoomed in again.

  The others all gasped.

  Frowning, I rested my fingers on the hilt of my sword.

  “What are those?” Erin asked, horror filling her voice.

  Within the holographic image, an army of bizarre, bipedal, insect-like creatures swarmed over the grass. Their black shells gleamed in the sun; they waved bladed arms above their heads as they charged.

  The scale was hard to determine at first, but it was quickly clear that they were at least as large as a typical human.

  “Skrazzi,” Mirana whispered. “Foul, deadly Skrazzi.”

  “Call those men back,” I said to Erin and Lydia.

  The women moved to obey but, before they could utter a word, we heard shouts from the direction the Templars had gone. We all looked up and saw them racing back toward us.

  “Aliens,” the white-haired one was shouting. “Skrazzi!”

  A buzzing sound vibrated across the landscape, coming from behind the two men.

  I drew my sword and started toward them, but Mirana grasped me by the upper arm and restrained me. I whirled on her, glaring, but she merely nodded toward the two and said, “Look.”

  Swallowing my anger, I turned back and stared in shock as the younger of the two Templars grew fuzzy, indistinct. He continued to stumble along, from pure momentum, but the sword fell from his hand just before his entire arm came apart in a spray of particles and blood. This was followed an instant later by his other arm, his head and then his torso. What parts of him remained intact felt to the grass in a grotesque pile.

  Seeing this, I recalled that only one of a Skrazzi’s two arms takes the form of a blade. The other houses a sort of organic disintegrator cannon.

  The other Templar looked back at what remained of his partner and screamed. He raised his sword high, took two steps—and then he, too, shredded into fragments. A cloud of blood whirled about in the spot where he had stood a second earlier. Quickly it dissipated in the wind.

  If you’ve wondered why I have failed to identify the two Templar men who accompanied us from the castle, now you know. I regret to say that they traveled with us only a very short time and, quite sadly, I never learned their names.

  Instinctively I raised a hand to open a portal for us.

  Nothing happened.

  I redoubled my efforts, imagining a shimmering circle of light that would represent a doorway opening through to some adjacent dimension. I drew from the Power and exerted my will and my birthright.

  Still nothing. I could barely sense the Power; it was there, so that I could feel the slightest tingle of it, almost taste it. But it was somehow beyond my reach.

  Mirana looked at me questioningly. Wide-eyed, I shook my head.

  “We have to get out of here!” screamed one of the Templar women.

  “That is what I am attempting to do,” I snapped, “but it is not working!”

  “On foot, then,” Mirana said, tension filling her voice. “But we must go.”

  “Yes,” Binari said, as his little drone zipped back down and landed in his palm. “Toward the river.”

  No one needed further urging. Just ahead of a marauding horde of deadly alien Skrazzi, we fled.

  FIVE

  As the five of us raced across the grass toward the river, the world around us slowly and subtly altered itself. The sky became darker blue, then almost indigo. The grass grew shorter, then longer, then back to the length it had been when we had arrived. The wind grew stronger and cooler, the smell of the river increasing. At first I was uncertain what was happening, but soon enough I understood: Mirana was ushering us along different Paths.

  Just as something there was keeping me from opening a dimensional portal, though, something was also preventing her from leading us fully onto a Path. Instead of simply walking away from that world, we were tiptoeing around the edges of different realities while remaining in essentially the same place. Had she shifted us far enough onto a parallel version of this world to escape the alien horde that pursued us?

  We reached the water’s edge and saw that it was a swift-moving stream, relatively narrow but deep. Turning back, we all tried to see if the creatures were still coming. The rolling hills of the landscape prevented us from spotting them. Fortunately, it also screened us from their view, at least for the moment.

  Binari sent his drone up again and within seconds we had our answer: the attacking horde was just two hills away, charging fast, and would surely be upon us in seconds. They numbered in the hundreds and seemed riled to a frenzy.

  “Should we swim?” Asked the redhead.

  “There’s no time,” the brunette replied.

  My sword still out, I struck a defensive stance. “Try,” I told them. “I will hold back the enemy for as long as I can.”

  “That’s no good,” Mirana snapped. “They have disintegrator weapons incorporated into their bodies. They can kill us all from a distance, just as they did the other two.”

  “They will find me of hardier stock,” I growled.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it won’t be enough. You won’t die—not as long as the Fountain flows—but your body...” She left it at that, gazing back at me, her lips twisted in revulsion at the thought.

  Reluctantly I nodded. “Then what do you suggest?” I asked, not moving my eyes from the hilltop where I expected the enemy to appear any moment. “And think quickly!”

&nbs
p; “An escape vehicle,” Binari stated.

  “You have one?” I demanded, glancing at him.

  “No,” he said, a disappointed expression moving across his small face. “I was hoping one of you did.”

  I gave him a sour look, but then an idea came to me and I glanced at Mirana. I could tell she had thought the same thing. I knew this because I recognized the face she was making: she was concentrating, exercising her Path-walking abilities—the same ones the mightiest of her people had developed over millennia; the same that she herself had been practicing and improving ever since coming into my service. But she wasn’t attempting to go somewhere else. She was attempting to bring something to us, from some other layer of reality.

  “What are you conjuring up?” I asked her.

  She did not answer—at least, not verbally. Instead she swept out one arm and suddenly there was a boat at the shore, a short distance away. A boat that had always been there, now that she had twisted reality just enough to make sure that it had always been there.

  “How—how did—?” Binari began, seeing it, startled.

  Ignoring his confusion, we ran to it and clambered aboard.

  * * *

  Down the river our little craft fled, just as the Skrazzi topped the rise. They paused at the summit, perhaps confused by what they were seeing, then unleashed a terrifying cry and charged for the river’s edge.

  We could just hear the hum of their organic disintegrators over the rushing of the water on either side of the bow. Bits of wood flaked off the stern and a few holes appeared in the flapping canvas sail, but then we were away in the fastest-moving part of the stream and gaining speed.

  Binari moved to the railing at the rear, tapped a few quick commands into his control panel, and sent his drone zipping down to just above the water line. There it roared to life, providing a boost to our propulsion. The ship lurched forward as though kicked in the pants. Soon enough the pursuing horde of aliens was left behind.

  “By the stars, that was too close,” Lydia gasped.

  Catching our mutual breaths, we looked around at the vessel Mirana had found for us, able to study it for the first time.

  It was a single-masted wooden ship, laid out in a manner similar to larger ocean-going vessels I had seen in paintings in Malachek’s castle, but put together in a more compact manner and riding low in the water. Purple and gold detailing covered the rails and along the quarterdeck. A small crow’s-nest bobbed at the top of the mast.

  “Where did you find this?” I asked Mirana.

  She smiled. “Some king’s personal yacht, I believe,” she said. “I was able to open a Path for a brief moment between his lake and our river, and it floated to me.” She shrugged. “He will scarcely miss it.”

  I nodded, impressed. She was getting better and better at manipulating the fabric of reality in between the worlds and dimensions, and at a surprising rate. “Good work.”

  “It was difficult to find and harder to bring here,” she said. “I doubt I could do anything like that again soon.”

  Binari was looking upwards, turning in a circle. “The Skrazzi may have aircraft or spacecraft at their disposal,” he noted.

  Mirana nodded, then inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “I will try to shift us away again,” she said, sounding very tired already.

  At that, my Dyonari aide raised both hands and closed her eyes. I left her to her work and turned to the others.

  “None of you owe me further allegiance or assistance,” I told them. “We are free of the Phaedron, free of the castle and away from the Skrazzi. I will not object if you wish to depart.”

  The two Templar women exchanged quick glances before looking back at me.

  “We are in your service just as we are in Baranak’s,” the redhead—Erin—stated.

  The other agreed. “We follow you wherever you go.”

  I accepted this graciously, nodded in acknowledgement to them once, then looked at the little Rao Technologist. “And what of you?”

  Binari was summoning his drone back, now that we were apparently safely away. He shrugged. “I am waiting to hear where we will be going next,” he said.

  Slowly, almost against my will, a smile crept across my normally-cool features.

  “Very well,” I said. After what had befallen us so far that day, my desires extended beyond simply attempting to restore Baranak to life. I now wanted revenge against Cevelar and his human puppet, Vostok. They would pay for abducting Mirana and me, imprisoning us, endangering us, and above all for underestimating us.

  And beyond those things, I also harbored suspicions, deep suspicions, about Cevelar’s true plans. Why in truth should he desire to restore Baranak to life? Why Baranak in particular? There had been rumors about Cevelar, I recalled now, ages earlier. Rumors about his allegiances.

  Did he wish to restore a dead god to life? I was sure that he did.

  Was that dead god my own golden god, Baranak?

  In my heart of hearts, yet cold as ice, I doubted that very seriously.

  I noticed then that our surroundings on either bank of the river had changed. Where before the trees had been tall and straight and dark brown with full green canopies above, now they were gnarled and knobby and twisted in upon themselves, with sparse foliage at what passed for their crowns. The grass had changed from lush and thick to patchy and dry, its color an unpleasant shade of dark yellow. The sky itself was no longer blue but a kind of violet, and low mountains to starboard seemed almost to glow in the lowering sunlight. And still that puzzling fuzziness in the distance, just before the visible horizon. Instinctively I suspected all of these changes—changes happening incredibly fast—were not natural. They couldn’t be the result of our traveling along the river, but of our actual shifting from plane to plane.

  Looking back at Mirana, I saw what she was doing and knew that my guess was accurate. She was responsible for the world changing around us—or rather for our movement through different worlds.

  No mortal being, not even the long-lived and mighty Dyonari race, could generate or channel the Power to open trans-universal portals. Not in the way that we gods could. But a few among her people possessed a natural affinity for the Power, along with some rudimentary ability to navigate through the layers of reality in the places where they were at their thinnest. They called them “Paths.” I had taught her enough already in her time as my apprentice that she could accomplish much along those lines, finding Paths no one else could detect and directing herself and others along them. For a frail mortal being to achieve this was quite remarkable. I found myself inordinately proud of her.

  She still had her eyes closed and her hands held up before her, as if feeling for what lay ahead of her in a darkened room. She mumbled words I could only partially hear and could not understand. At last, after several minutes of this, she exhaled and opened her eyes. Her hands remained poised in the air another moment, then relaxed and lowered. She blinked and looked back at me.

  “We are safe now?” I asked her.

  “I believe so,” she replied. “We are now far from that place. And I have set us on course for our destination.”

  I frowned. “Which is?”

  She gazed out in front of the ship, at the seemingly endless river along which we traveled. “The city,” she said.

  My frown deepened. “The Golden City?”

  She glanced at me, shook her head, and said, “No—not your city. The city.”

  Realization dawned in me. It had been many, many years, but I did recall what she was talking about. At least, I was somewhat certain I did.

  “You mean…?”

  “The Mosaic. At the center of it all. Yes.”

  I considered this, then nodded. “Very well. It is relatively safe, and perhaps even more advantageous to us. After all, it would make sense for at least one of the lost weapons to be kept there.”

  Mirana nodded. “That was my thinking.”

  I became aware of Binari standing next to us, looking
up at me.

  “The First Rule of the Rao: Truly know your inner self,” he said. “No self-delusions.”

  I frowned down at him. “You believe I am deluded?”

  “No,” he said. “I merely hope you are doing what you are doing for the right reasons.”

  I considered this, as well as whether or not I should take it as an insult or an affront. I decided not to. Instead I told him, “Look to your Sixth Rule.”

  Binari blinked. “There is no Sixth Rule.”

  I chuckled. “It is unwritten, but those who truly know the Rao know their secret Sixth Rule.”

  When he said nothing in reply, I said, “‘Secrets are a treasure and should be kept as safe and secure as any other treasure. You would not hand your enemies the key to your home or your vault; do not hand them your secrets.’ That is the gist of it, yes?”

  Binari stared back at me blankly, and I knew I had stymied him. The Rao are unused to outsiders knowing much at all about their ways, their beliefs, or their past. Certainly they rarely encounter those who know their deepest secrets, for secrets are indeed treasures the Rao guard more closely than anything else.

  Smiling flatly, I turned away and gazed at the onrushing river that shimmered into the distance. As I relaxed for perhaps the first time in more than a day, my mind turned again, as often it did, to Baranak. Our great golden god of battle. And my lost love.

  When three-quarters of the gods had been murdered, ages ago, Baranak had quite naturally suspected the killer was our god of mischief and evil, Lucian. The fact that Lucian had just returned from centuries in exile on the mortal worlds for an earlier rebellion hadn’t helped the case against him. And so an admittedly prejudicial Baranak declared him guilty and pursued him relentlessly, across many worlds and many realms of the multiverse.

  In the end, of course, it turned out that Lucian was innocent—this one time, at least. A conspiracy involving our builder-god, Vorthan, was to blame. In the final confrontation with the guilty parties, on the steps leading up to the Fountain in the very heart of our Golden City, Baranak had sacrificed his life to ensure Vorthan’s destruction and the conspiracy’s defeat. In this conflict he had been aided by Lucian, whose name had been cleared.