Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice

by Van Allen Plexico

  Baranak had understood at the end that he had misjudged Lucian and had acted hastily and precipitously. In light of Lucian’s efforts to defeat Vorthan and save what was left of the gods, Baranak had forgiven our god of evil for his many earlier, lesser crimes. He had desired that I would do the same. For the sake of my love for him, I had tried. With Baranak dead afterward, I had even handed over his great golden sword to Lucian, in a moment of grief and perhaps madness. I had meant the gesture as one of forgiveness and closure, but also to serve as a reminder to Lucian of what our victory that day had cost us. Had cost Baranak. Had cost me.

  But I never forgave Lucian—not for his greatest crime. For the crime of living, when Baranak had died.

  Lucian should have been the one to plunge into the Fountain. He should have been the one to dissolve and disintegrate, as if he’d never been. Not Baranak. Not my golden god of battle.

  No. It should have been Lucian.

  For that crime alone I had never forgiven him, nor would I.

  Did I desire Baranak back from the dead?

  In my heart of hearts, I knew the answer all along.

  Did I truly want Lucian dead?

  About that, we would have to see.

  There was no hurry to find an answer. I had plenty of time to think about it. After all, we had a long voyage ahead of us.

  * * *

  We sailed along the river for several hours, the world gradually changing around us as we moved—though the fuzziness at the edges remained, and seemed to grow more noticeable. I hadn’t mentioned it to Mirana yet, nor had anyone else made note of it, but it was starting to puzzle me. The temperature had dropped steadily, to the point that Mirana conjured long cloaks with hoods for each of us save Binari, who was well enough protected by his own outfit. I wrapped my cloak about myself; it was black with silver lining and that pleased me.

  I sat on the port side of our ship, my back to the cabin wall, the two Templar women resting nearby. Mirana stood at the prow, facing away from us, her hands occasionally rising and then falling as she encouraged the reality around us to shift yet again. She would be exhausted when this was all over, and of little use in combat if we encountered such, but there was no other choice. The Power was almost entirely denied to me and I could not open a portal. So down the river we fled.

  In a way we were indeed traveling on an actual river—a rushing body of water upon which our tiny craft zipped along. In another way, though, we were passing through entire layers of reality, and the river was just another physical manifestation of the Paths that some Dyonari had developed the ability to navigate; the connective tissue among and between worlds and dimensions. What we could see of the shore on either side of our craft changed time and again, the vegetation becoming more alien and then more familiar, over and over. We passed from barren wasteland to inhabited areas bustling with inhabitants moving and working and traveling along the shore. No one bothered us, however, and we left them alone. It was strange and wonderful and bizarre. Binari referred to the river that carried us along from world to world as not a body of water at all—though it was that, too—but as an “experiential metaphor.” That seemed as good a description for it as anything I could tell you.

  Multiple times during our voyage the darkness began to descend, and each time Mirana shifted us to a slightly adjacent location in spacetime and sunlight returned. She needed the light, I understood, to more effectively navigate.

  We rested as best we could for a few hours while the sun remained almost motionless overhead in that bizarre, violet sky. The little boat sailed along smoothly but at a somewhat rapid pace, as the temperature continued to grow colder and the sound of insect life grew louder from either shore.

  For most of that time we could see nothing ahead of us but a thin fog and the hint of bluish mountains far in the distance, never seeming to grow nearer. But then, as the sun finally fought its way down to the level of the horizon, a tall and twisted shape stood out far in the distance, silhouetted against its failing rays. A shape that towered far up into the sky.

  A shape that seemed somehow familiar to me.

  Because time was flowing properly again around us, I knew that Mirana must finally be resting and no longer fighting to hold back the sunset. I drew myself up from where I had been sitting on the deck and made my way over to her.

  There was a sharp odor in the air and it had grown stronger over the past half hour or so. It contained hints of nut and bark and rich soil, but there was more to it than just those elements. If the tall shape ahead was indeed what I suspected, that would explain most of the scent, though not all of it—and that concerned me.

  Mirana was seated on the deck, her head back against the wooden planks and her eyes closed. Somehow she managed to appear graceful even in such an awkward position. She opened her eyes as I drew near.

  “We approach the One Tree, yes?” I asked, gesturing toward the dark, twisted shape.

  She didn’t bother to look. “We do.”

  “That was intentional? For us to come to it?”

  “Yes,” she said, allowing a slight smile to cross her slender features. “Getting us here was not easy. I am glad it worked.”

  “You think one of them is there. One of the Cosmic Weapons.”

  “I overheard what Cevelar said in your throne room. Something about a tree.” She shrugged. “It seemed logical that he was referring to the One.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “I had forgotten, given all else that has happened to us since then.” I paused, then, “I wasn’t aware you knew of it.”

  She stood and turned to face the towering dark shape on the starboard shore. It had grown much closer in the past few moments, further revealing its mammoth size. “I read about it in one of your books: a tree that grew up through layers of reality and serves as a bridge among dimensions. And it was on our way,” she added. “Or at least, it was after I chose a certain sequence of headings while we sailed.”

  I nodded again and smiled flatly. “Good work,” I told her. “Perhaps we even beat Cevelar and his human pet here.”

  As our craft drew up alongside the towering One Tree, I motioned for the two Templars to help me lash it firmly to some of the gigantic gnarled roots that extended into the water. Once the little ship was secure against the flowing currents, I led our team ashore. Binari came along last, having retrieved his drone from where it had been helping to push the ship along.

  Finding the stairway did not take long. We pushed our way through a particularly thick row of wild bushes and I took my sword to the more thorny brambles beyond, carving a path to the base of the tree. There a stairway began, spiraling round and round the massive trunk, never more than two or three meters wide at most. Its first steps were blocks of stone set into the brown earth, but after only a short distance they became thick wooden slats driven into the sides of the tree. Up it circled until the steps blended in with the dark gray bark of the Tree and vanished in the dim twilight.

  “It would appear no one has been here in a long while,” Mirana noted, coming along last in our party and still picking her way through the dense vegetation, as the others all stood near the roots and stared up in wonder. “Surely this means we have come to it first.”

  “Not necessarily,” I noted. “We stand at the very bottom—at the roots. But there are other points of entry as one moves higher.” I joined the others in gazing skyward and sighed. “We have a long climb ahead.”

  Binari looked at the size of the steps, which to him represented an obstacle effectively double that of what the rest of us faced, and he groaned.

  I led the way and together we started up.

  The going was easy enough at first. The steps made of stone, firm and solid, did not last long, though, and soon we were stepping upon the pale slats that projected out from the trunk. They didn’t look particularly safe but once we’d begun stepping on them they seemed dependable enough—though I did caution the others to take them one person at a time. As a consequ
ence, our party became stretched out into a single-file line as we went round and round and up and up. We barely spoke, each of us intent on pressing forward.

  Binari broke the silence eventually, grumbling to himself about something. He had sent his drone zooming up and ahead on a couple of scouting missions, but all it had discovered and revealed to us was more steps leading endlessly upward. Now, however, he seemed to be having trouble with it. It was issuing forth odd sounds and didn’t appear to wish to remain aloft.

  I brought us to a halt, walked back down a few steps past the others to him and inquired as to the problem.

  “I do not know,” he replied, frustrated, turning the little machine over and over in his tiny hands and poking and prodding at it. “I see nothing amiss, yet it no longer can maintain consistent flight.”

  “We have passed through a number of dimensional barriers as we have climbed,” Mirana stated, leaning in. “Perhaps technology of that sort will not function here.”

  Binari did not appear happy to hear that. He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers, then frowned deeper when nothing happened. He tapped out a few instructions onto the pad that was part of his sleeve, but still nothing resulted.

  “Mirana is correct,” he said, after a few sharp words in his own language. “None of my technology will operate here.” He shook his head. “It is bizarre to me. And very off-putting.”

  “At least it means nothing is truly wrong with your machine,” I pointed out to him. “Nothing of that type works here.”

  “But I will be of little use to our mission if we remain in an environment such as this.”

  “I am certain it will change again soon,” I told him.

  Glumly he nodded. He folded the drone and put it away within his robes.

  I returned to the front of our procession and we continued on.

  After another half hour of relentless and seemingly endless climbing, with only a couple of pauses to allow everyone to rest, we came upon a layer of fog or clouds.

  “I do not like this,” Mirana observed. “Visibility will be very low if we continue into that. We could easily be ambushed.”

  I nodded but didn’t see any alternative. “We’ve come this far,” I said.

  Mirana shrugged.

  We pushed on.

  Continuing around and up, we passed into the clouds and visibility indeed dropped to almost nothing. I could feel the dampness in the air, and I could feel it on the steps as well—they grew slicker by the moment.

  “Be careful, everyone,” I called back from the front, extending my left hand toward the tree and finding the rough bark surface. “Keep contact with the tree so that you don’t walk right off the steps—or slide off.”

  How high up were we now? I had no idea. Honestly, I didn’t want to know. My larger concern at the moment was this: Were we on a fool’s errand? A wild goose chase? Mirana and I had both hypothesized that one of the Cosmic Weapons might be hidden away here, at the One Tree, given its great significance as a famed landmark and waypoint among the worlds. But where, along its immense length, if at all? It seemed to go on and on, up and up, forever.

  Around and around I led them through the fog for another five minutes or so, stepping very carefully, and suddenly the clouds gave way and blue sky appeared above. It was like emerging from a bad dream into a bright morning.

  “What is that?” Mirana asked from just behind me.

  Looking up to where she was pointing, I could see a landing of some sort projecting out and touching the stairs. It was a type of bridge, extending away from the Tree—though to where, I could not yet tell. But it was a destination of sorts, at last, after more than an hour of nothing but climbing. I redoubled my pace.

  Coming around the final bend before the landing, I stopped in my tracks as I heard voices ahead. I raised my hand to signal to Mirana behind me to halt and to be silent, and she in turn did the same for the others, all the way down to Binari at the rear, still struggling to keep up.

  Men. There were men—human men—standing on the edge of the landing, speaking in low tones with one another.

  I took another very quiet two steps upward and leaned out and around the tree’s massive trunk and spied them: Soldiers. Two of them. Swords hung at their belts on one side, and pistols in holsters at the other. They wore uniforms of white with green trim. I knew that livery. It belonged to the III Legion.

  “The legion of General Vostok,” I whispered. So our adversaries had beaten us here after all.

  But—what had they found?

  Stealth has never been my strong suit. “Plan A” for me has always been to barge right in. I would have been far more comfortable simply drawing my sword and charging directly at them. Questions could wait for after the battle, and I would direct them at any who survived. But this was a different scenario. I wasn’t sure exactly where in spacetime we were at the moment, or what types of technology—if any—would function here. And besides that, we desperately needed information. We needed answers. My more cavalier approach would likely not avail us the necessary results.

  Unfortunately, things went to hell anyway.

  “You two,” came a deeper voice from farther down the landing. “Take these boxes and get going. We will be departing soon.”

  I recognized the voice. Vostok. So there he was.

  The two soldiers moved out of my line of sight. I climbed quickly up three more steps to see who and what else might be up on the landing. Mirana started to follow but I quickly motioned her back.

  As I came around the trunk and up that third step, I saw metal and plastic crates stacked here and there, some of them being picked up and carried away by more legionaries in white and green standard body armor. Beyond the crates stood the rugged, bald form of General Vostok, his hands clasped behind his back, facing away from me. He was speaking with a robed figure that I instantly knew to be Cevelar.

  There is an electricity, a mild crackling in the air, that some of us can feel when our kind are in proximity. I can feel it, occasionally, though not every one of us can. Apparently, Cevelar could, too—and did.

  He stiffened suddenly, turned away from Vostok—and his eyes focused directly on me.

  “Karilyne!”

  Vostok whirled, eyes widening. He looked past the slender god and saw me now as well. He scowled. “Guards!” he shouted, pointing.

  Growling low in my throat, sword in my hand, I reverted to Plan A.

  SIX

  Startled, likely shocked to see a woman in black and silver armor charging at them, a sword over her head and bad intentions clearly on the agenda, the soldiers hesitated an instant before responding to my threat, and to Cevelar’s orders.

  That cost the nearest two of them dearly.

  Quickly I dealt with those opponents; the going would have been more difficult if they had been clad in the heavy plate armor they called Diesing-Arry, but fortunately these men wore only lightweight uniforms with minimal shielding. Dispatching them, I ran on and passed several more by—they were still standing there, shocked—en route to my real enemies just ahead. By then I could hear the others coming up behind me, led of course by Mirana. Her rapier-thin transparent blade sang its terrible song as legionaries on either side converged upon her. Having made it so far already, I left her to handle the other troopers and bore down on Vostok and Cevelar.

  It occurred to me in a flash that I had no idea if we were still in a zone where higher technology would function—or what kinds of weapons might qualify as that type.

  That was, of course, when the three legionaries directly ahead of me drew their blast pistols and leveled them at me.

  We gods are a resilient bunch, and as long as the Fountain in the Golden City flows even a little, we cannot truly die. But we can most assuredly be hurt, and being hurt is not fun.

  The three men fired in unison, point blank. There could be no chance of dodging, and I cursed my foolhardiness for blundering directly in. I gritted my teeth and prepared for severe p
ain.

  Their guns—energy weapons all—discharged showers of sparks and sputtered a bit. And that was all.

  Still in a tech-free zone, then.

  This, my friends, is why so many of us who frequently travel among the realms of the multiverse arm ourselves with bladed weapons at least as often as we carry firearms.

  As they raised their pistols to see what had gone wrong—again, in unison, and somewhat comically—I reached them and my sword did the rest of the work.

  Vostok and Cevelar had taken advantage of the very brief obstacle those men had presented, though, and had retreated back along the landing. And now a veritable army of III Legion soldiers poured out past them, headed our way. They left their currently-useless blast pistols in their holsters, drew their short, broad gladius blades, and in their dozens they advanced.

  Mirana was beside me then, her sword at the ready. “Come ahead, humans,” she growled.

  I could hear the others hurrying up behind us.

  “No,” I said, softly at first and then again louder.

  Mirana looked at me, surprised.

  “Fall back,” I commanded.

  Still her sword was raised, but now her frown became one of puzzlement.

  I glanced back behind me quickly as the soldiers approached.

  All four of them were there: the two humans, Mirana, even the Rao. They were brave, all of them. They wanted to help. They were willing to risk everything for a cause they didn’t fully understand.

  I appreciated that. But I had no desire to lose them all in a pointless, giant melee with the professional soldiers of III Legion.

  “Back,” I repeated. “Back to the Tree!”

  We retreated in the face of massive opposition, though I had not given up all hope yet. Our chances would be much better in the confined space of the stairs than on the wide-open landing.

  We reached the steps and started down, moving backwards, facing the oncoming horde, weapons still at the ready. And then the sea of soldiers parted before us and someone new and unexpected emerged to stand at their forefront.