“What will that accomplish?” I asked.
“Come along and find out,” he said.
I frowned, bit my bottom lip, then looked at my apprentice and nodded. She returned the gesture and stepped aside. The rest of us filed into the box, and Mirana brought up the rear, sheathing her blade as she entered.
The interior of the crystal box was just that: the inside of a crystal box. It was as if we stood within an elevator that happened to be built all of glass. No markings, no controls, nothing.
I looked at Davos in some surprise before Solonis could close the door. “You have fulfilled your part of our deal, and are under no obligation to come with us,” I told him. “And, frankly, you have given me no reason to expect that you would wish to.”
The big gray alien arched his thick, dark eyebrows. “I can scarcely leave the three of you now. At least, not before I learn what happens next.” He grinned. “I would like to see the mission through to the end.”
Solonis leaned between us. “He comes with us. The Fates have decreed it.”
“The Fates have nothing to do with it,” Davos countered, frowning. “I accompany you by my own free choice.”
The god in brown robes chuckled. “You hold to that illusion, and yet here you are, just as I said.” He shrugged. “Believe what you will, what you must. In truth, though, there is never any choice. About anything.”
Davos shook his head slowly, indicating great disappointment. “It must be excruciating to exist as such a cynical being, devoid of even the thought of spontaneity or free will.”
“Illusions, all,” he replied, before slamming the door closed.
The crystal box flared even brighter, the sound rose to a deafening wail, and the world outside our box vanished.
THIRTEEN
Outside the transparent walls of the Time Tomb, the atrium changed as we watched. First all the half-destroyed robots vanished. Then the look of the place changed slightly, changed again, as if it were being renovated in super-speed. Or de-renovated, since it looked less advanced each time. Around us, crowds moved and formed and dispersed and vanished. The types and styles of clothing they wore changed constantly.
“We are some two hundred years in the past now, and moving backwards at increasing speed,” Solonis told us.
Eventually the atrium walls and ceiling vanished entirely. We were outdoors, and all we could see was the Spire itself, stretching far up into the sky—a sky that alternated back and forth between the blue of day and the black of night. The sun zipped by overhead, again and again, so rapidly it became a streak across a dull, blurred sky. Days and nights sped by now, faster and faster, eventually reaching such a speed that all faded to gray around us. This continued for several minutes, relative to us inside the box. Then we appeared to be slowing down again.
“How far back are we going?” I asked, disturbed by how long and how quickly we had been moving.
“Far enough,” Solonis said with a smile.
It took several more seconds before we came to a “halt” relative to the time outside the box—though, physically, we had never moved. The orange glow radiating from the crystal walls faded and vanished. The view was clearer now, the gray replaced by crisp colors. The sun stood high overhead and it was no longer moving.
Solonis stepped forward and slid the door open. We all stepped out and looked around.
Everything had changed.
We stood on a beach, the sand thick and dry under our feet. A short distance ahead of us, an azure ocean stretched to the horizon, and gentle waves broke rhythmically at its edge. The air was humid and salty, with a strong breeze blowing in.
Most importantly, the massive black form of the Spire was missing.
It took me a moment to realize that fact. I turned in a full circle to be sure I wasn’t simply disoriented. No, it was entirely gone. When that fully dawned on me, I faced the god in the brown robes, frowning. “Where is it?”
“The Spire? It doesn’t exist yet,” he said. “That was the point.”
I stared at him. “But then how are we supposed to get inside it?”
“Wait,” he replied.
An orange flare of light, coming from behind me. I spun about.
The crystal box—his “Time Tomb,” as he called it, though I had no idea why—was pulsing with bright light, and the wailing sound we’d heard coming from it before was back.
“Um,” Binari said, “isn’t that what it does when it’s leaving?”
We were all gawking at it now, panic rising. We stood on a deserted beach; as far as I knew, we had no other transportation and no idea where or when we actually were. I tore my eyes away from the box and looked at Solonis; he stood there serene as could be, utterly unperturbed.
“I am very sure,” Binari updated us all, the tension in his voice rising, “that yes, that is in fact what it does when it is leaving.”
I turned to Mirana. She met my eyes and then dashed for it.
Moving through sand, she was slowed somewhat. She was two steps away when the box began to fade from view. She dived for the open doorway but was too late. She passed through the ephemeral afterimage and landed hard in the low dunes with a grunt. By the time she had rolled over and spit sand, it was gone entirely.
Mirana climbed to her feet and we all stood there, staring at one another, dumbfounded.
Solonis had his head bowed and his eyes closed, and so missed the initial brunt of our hostility. After several seconds of that, though, he looked up at us and smiled.
I had my sword out then, but he ignored this and gestured further down the beach. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get moving. It shouldn’t be far, and I suspect we’ll barely get our feet wet.”
And as we all continued to stare at him in flabbergasted amazement, he turned and strode away along the shoreline, the waves lapping gently at his feet.
Having no other options, we followed along behind him.
* * *
Perhaps a half-hour passed while we walked along that beach. Airborne wildlife somewhat resembling gulls sporadically called from overhead and the sun dipped toward the water to our right. I found myself exceedingly uncomfortable, for a tropical climate is the opposite of that which I prefer.
Where were we? The Mosaic City consists of sections from various different places and times, overlapping from their home locations and all arranged like pizza slices around the axis of the Spire. But were all of them the same city, from different times—or were they from different locations as well? Different worlds, even? I was not sure. I’d never bothered to look into it.
With the city as well as the Spire now gone—or, rather, not having been yet, since we had traveled back in time to before they were built—we were left with nothing but an ocean and a beach to our right, and rolling hills of lightly forested land off to our left.
We traveled in silence for perhaps half an hour. No one spoke, probably because no one knew exactly what to say. Solonis was being enigmatic; what few answers he had provided thus far had been less than helpful. And so we trudged along through the sand, following the god in the brown robes, and we hoped he was in fact sane and knew what he was doing—and of course that at some point we would find alternate transportation, particularly of the time-traveling variety.
The sun had stood at the high noon position when we arrived, but by now it was lower and farther to the west. At that point Solonis brought us to a halt. He stiffened and began to turn in a slow circle, looking high and low, reaching out with his right hand to touch the air around him, as if he could see things the rest of us could not. I sincerely hoped that to be the case, because the alternative was that we had followed a madman and were now hopelessly lost in time.
For more than a minute he continued this bizarre behavior. Then he seemed to come back to his senses, for he relaxed, looked at the rest of us and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “this is the spot.”
“The spot for what?” Mirana demanded.
“It will be another twen
ty seconds,” Solonis announced.
“That is about all the patience I have left for you,” Mirana told him, and I couldn’t suppress a smile at her remark. In recent times my apprentice had become increasingly assertive, no longer waiting to follow my lead, and I appreciated that growth I was seeing in her.
The twenty seconds passed. Nothing of note occurred. We all turned to glare at Solonis more or less simultaneously.
“My mistake,” he said. “Twenty-five.”
And then the sound returned. The bright orange light followed it.
Both were coming from a spot just ahead of us; an unremarkable spot, except that it now contained the very familiar ghostly outline of a crystal box the size of a large elevator car.
Relief washed over me and, I’m sure, the rest of us. The Time Tomb had returned.
Once it had solidified, Solonis went to it, slid the door open and ushered us aboard.
“Where—or when—are we going now?” I asked after he’d closed the door, sealing us inside.
“The right question at last,” he said, beaming. “Right here. And—the same time as when we left.”
“But—what good will that do?”
He laughed. “As you should be well aware, we are no longer in the same exact location we were before.”
“So?” I asked.
Before we could continue the conversation further, Davos issued an exclamatory sound from behind me. We all looked to see what had impressed him so. He was at the right rear corner, kneeling down over an open cubical cargo container about a meter to a side. I did not remember seeing it on board the Time Tomb previously.
“Excellent,” he was saying. “I would have brought these myself, had I realized I would be doing more than simply escorting you all to the city center.”
I leaned over to see past his big shoulder at what he had found.
“I assume everything we will need is included,” Solonis said, looking very satisfied.
“Because you put it there yourself?” Davos asked, as he reached into the cube and pulled out a couple of items, held them up and examined them closely.
“I think it’s safe to assume I did,” Solonis replied. “Or rather, future-me will. And by the time that version of me does so, and sends it back to us here, I should already know everything that would’ve been useful to have now.”
I found myself wishing he were not, like me, a god, and thus not effectively immortal. I believe I would have drawn my sword and struck him down then and there, just to bring his infuriating time-travel talk to an end. “Enough of this insane talk of future-you and past-you,” I barked. “Let us be about our mission.”
He shot a sour expression my way, but he seemed to get the message. Or at least someone did. For at that moment the box lurched, the world outside blurred, the wailing sounded and the orange light flared. And off we went again.
As the years and centuries and millennia flew by outside the walls of the Time Tomb, only seconds and minutes passed for those of us inside. Soon the ocean and the beach and the blue sky all vanished, and we were surrounded by a dim, blurry darkness.
Darkness. As if we were inside something.
At that moment I began to understand what Solonis had in mind.
We zoomed on ahead. An equal amount of time passed as before, for us inside the box. So fast were we traveling, though we were not physically moving at all. Then the light dimmed and the sound faded and we slowed, slowed. At that point the world outside solidified into focus. I gazed out through the transparent walls in wonder.
From what little could be seen, we appeared to be inside a closed room with smooth, black, glossy walls.
Binari and Mirana were looking around, puzzled, but Davos and I exchanged knowing glances. He’d figured it out, too.
“The Spire,” I said. “We are inside it.”
“Precisely,” Solonis confirmed.
He opened the doors and we stepped out. Davos carried a shiny silver weapon he’d taken from the cargo container; a weapon that, in anyone else’s hands, would have appeared huge and unwieldy. In his massive gray hands, it almost looked like a toy. Solonis himself had retrieved a device of some sort that filled the palm of his right hand and might have been made of half-melted white plastic. Red lights flickered across its surface as he held it up in front of him and stared at it.
“It is a tracker,” he told us in response to more than one curious query. “I have attuned it to the wavelength of the cosmic energies that infuse the objects we are seeking.” He paused a moment, thinking. “Or at least I believe I have.” He shrugged. “If one is nearby, as we believe it is, and if I am correct about the wavelengths, this device should lead us to it.”
“But where inside the tower are we?” Binari asked, looking around nervously at the dark walls surrounding us. It was enough to give anyone a touch of claustrophobia.
“If I recall correctly,” Solonis said, “we are inside a storage or maintenance room several floors below where we need to be.”
Davos quickly found a big, heavy, black iron door—not easy to do with such dim lighting and in an unfamiliar location. He eased it open, bringing forth from it a horrific squeaking sound that caused all of us to grit our teeth, both because of the irritating noise and out of worry that it would bring more robots or other guards running. When after several seconds no enemy forces had responded to the sound, he peeked outside, then stepped all the way through and motioned for the rest of us to follow him. Apparently no one was about.
The device Solonis was carrying flickered with green light. He smiled and directed us to the right.
As quietly as possible, the five of us made our way in that direction along a narrow corridor that appeared to have been carved out of hardened lava. It had a sort of organic feel to it, as though we were moving through the digestive system of some gigantic being. There was no electrical lighting nor were there torches; the place glowed in the dim radiance of what seemed to be magical effects, with fingers of eldritch lightning flickering backwards and forwards along the ceiling overhead.
We came to the end of the hallway and to a staircase leading upward and downward. The way it was constructed, turning at right angles after only a few steps each section, prevented us from seeing more than a short distance. Solonis pointed at the steps and gestured upward. I nodded.
Again Davos led the way, his silver weapon held at the ready. I had no idea what it did, and I wasn’t certain he knew, either. But it looked dangerous. Given his hulking size, anything looked dangerous when he carried it.
Solonis, coming along second in our stealthy procession and with one eye on the tracker, motioned for Davos to continue on up every time he reached another floor. Pretty soon we had climbed a great distance, and I found myself wondering why the Time Tomb couldn’t have simply appeared there rather than, apparently, down toward the bottom.
As we journeyed round and round, I pondered this strange little team into which I had somehow become integrated. Mirana, my apprentice, had been with me for several years as the mortals measure time, and I had grown to trust her implicitly. But the others each gave me pause, and each in a different way. Binari the Rao Technologist had proven useful thus far, but I still knew virtually nothing of him. And the Rao in general had always been extremely secretive. Davos had exhibited cunning and resourcefulness as well as battle prowess during our brief association, but he represented even more of a mystery to me. Clearly he was a member of that race of tall, gray aliens that had once occupied much of the galaxy, eons ago, but were now nearly extinct. Who was he, really? What did he want? Why was he helping us, beyond his stated reason of wishing to see the mission through? I did not know, and I did not like the fact that I did not know.
I glanced at the two of them in turn, then at the young man in the brown robes who claimed to be Solonis, one of my fellow gods, now in a new body. I believed his claim, not least because I couldn’t imagine how anyone who wasn’t one of us could ever do the things he had done so far. But
I’d never known much about Solonis, back in the glory days of the Golden City, and had never found a particular reason to turn to him or to trust him. He and I were, for the most part, beginning our relationship as allies on a clean slate. He had frustrated and infuriated me at times, but had also proven resourceful and surprisingly powerful. For his sake, I hoped that continued until we no longer needed one another.
Arriving at the twelfth floor up from where we had begun, Solonis gestured for us to exit the stairwell. No one spoke as we entered another corridor, this one much taller and wider than before—though the lighting remained terribly dim.
We started down it, then halted suddenly as we all became aware of another presence at the far end. Purple lightning flared out, flickering like a strobe light and sending wild shadows streaking along the walls and ceiling.
“You,” came a rumbling male voice. “You are here. How is that possible?”
In the reflected glare of the purple flashes I could see the shape of a man in a cloak and hood, colors shifting rapidly through the spectrum and back around again.
“Garvael,” I stated. “I wondered if we would encounter you again.”
He continued to stare at us. “You cannot be here. It is not possible.”
“Are you attempting to convince yourself of that?” Davos asked, a wry grin on his blunt face.
“I left you in the hands of my mechanoid army,” he growled. “They should have killed you all, easily.”
“Perhaps you should have remained behind to verify their success,” Mirana said.
As my companions traded words with the sorcerer, I glanced at Solonis. The tracking device in hand, he was backing away. “I’m not a great fighter,” he said with a shrug when he saw me looking at him. “I’ll just wait over here.”
I offered him a somewhat contemptuous look, even though I knew he was being honest.
“But this is the correct floor?” I asked.
“It is.”
I nodded, then turned from him back to our foe.
Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice Page 15
