“That might be a good idea,” Ryan conceded. “It keeps us from getting into a bunch of lies.”
Matt agreed but added, “The only problem is people will want some sort of answer.”
Anna offered, “We can just say, ‘so do we’.”
Eric nodded. “The best lie is a simple one.”
After a few minutes, Ryan stopped. In the excitement of returning he’d forgotten something. “Anna, let’s see if you can heal me here.”
The others stopped, exchanging a dubious look. Before they could talk him out of it, Ryan used his keys to scratch a cut into his palm. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Grimacing, he held it out to her as she sighed.
“This really could have waited for a better time. Don’t get your hopes up,” she reminded him.
“C’mon,” he replied, “think positively. You have to believe in it. You’ve done it before. You can do it.”
She sighed and he suspected she wasn’t really into it. Did he have to be dying before she tried? Apparently not, for she took his hand in hers and closed her eyes. She appeared to be making an effort, but nothing was happening. She opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” she said. “It’s not working. I don’t know why.”
“Try again!”
“I did. I don’t know what’s the matter. Maybe none of that works here for some reason.” Seeing him about to protest, she added, “Look, you know I would love to heal Daniel as much as you. You believe that, don’t you?”
He opened his mouth to urge her to try again, but then stopped himself. “Yes, I do, but–”
“No buts,” she replied. “It isn’t working. Maybe it will work some other time, but not today. Okay? Can we just leave it at that?”
He sighed heavily. It couldn’t have all been for nothing. There was no way God would do that to him. To Daniel. He’d try again with her later and see what could be done, but he couldn’t just give up. Maybe they could somehow take Daniel with them on another quest, if it came to that, and she could heal him there. Surely that would work and if he came back with them, he wouldn’t return to being injured. That would just be cruel.
As they continued, Eric kept the flashlight shining, hoping a car would soon stop for them, and one finally did. The friendly driver asked too many questions about what they were doing out in the middle of nowhere, and Anna, seated in the front, did her best to fend them off. She spied a newspaper folded up between seats and read the date aloud. Two weeks had passed. Desperate to get away from the questions, she asked for the nearest place to catch a taxi and they soon had a quieter ride, suspecting the questions would get a lot worse, and they were right.
A covered lanai was the ideal place to wait out an afternoon thunderstorm, and warming her bones was another reason Erin Jennings had moved to Florida. Once one past a certain age, such things made the hours easier. She chuckled to herself. She hadn’t aged all that much since learning to call this world home, even though it sometimes felt like it inside. She had other ways to make the signs of time’s passage vanish, but there was a limit on how much she could do before people started talking, and so here she was.
She put her legs up on the recliner and watched the rain fall over her screened-in pool, sipping a favorite zinfandel, for wine was one of the few things of her youth available here, everything else having been modernized into oblivion. The ornate wine glass was etched with an armored knight atop a charging steed, a sight that reminded her of a friend long lost. She hadn’t seen him in many years and didn’t know his whereabouts despite many fruitless searches. These days it seemed everyone could learn anything about anyone, thanks in large part to the internet, but try as one might, some people simply never surfaced. She didn’t know if she’d recognize him anyway, for nearly twenty years had passed since they and two other friends had last been together.
They might not recognize her, either, especially with a different name and a new life as a banker’s wife. Despite starting over, she was a student of history and spent time researching medieval times, becoming something of an expert, albeit unknown. She was a private person and chose not to advertise her scholarly findings lest it attract attention, but had anyone known the truth, she’d have been known as one of the foremost scholars on the period. At times she wondered if she should come forward, for that might draw forth these old friends if they were still around, but it would also raise scrutiny. She hadn’t covered her own tracks as much as she probably should.
With her mind so much in the past, she often missed the news and so hadn’t heard anything about the four friends who’d disappeared from Stonehenge. It wasn’t until just now that she caught the early afternoon telecast of the frantic rush to bring the story to the world. She frowned at that, as always, not pleased with the speed of modern living. They knew nothing of a quiet day without television. She was tempted to turn it off until a pretty young woman appeared onscreen, talking about their reasons for visiting the monoliths. Around her neck hung a pendant she kept playing with, drawing the eye as the camera zoomed in on it.
“By the gods,” Erin whispered, staring at the recognized stone, her wine glass slipping unnoticed to shatter on the lanai, the wine draining away like a rivulet of blood. Her face grew paler as the girl spoke of visiting the monument, vanishing for weeks, then returning as if nothing happened. She professed to have no recollection of the missing time, but Erin had been reading people in tough situations far longer than this pretty girl had and she knew a lie when she heard it. The spark of untold adventure in the girl’s eyes said it all and Erin rose from her chair with a light in her own.
“What have they done?”
A week after the firestorm started, it quieted to a dull roar as the media moved on to other stories and the flow of interviews trickled off, but all was not well with their lives. On the surface, little had changed for Ryan, whose parents had displayed more affection for him in a few days than in his whole life before that. In theory that was good, but the departure from their regular indifference and established lack of attention made him uncomfortable and didn’t seem to be letting up. In fact, it got worse, as they wanted to know his every move and even suggested assigning a 24/7 bodyguard. Their monitoring of where he drove the GPS-equipped car made him disable that and the tracking app on his phone. He was starting to feel like a prisoner in his own life and didn’t know what to do. When Daniel remarked on how annoying such hovering can be, the big guy finally understood his brother’s need for space.
Their reunion had been the happiest moment of his life, and seeing that Daniel had survived without him the greatest relief. While he’d come to grips with the violence he’d experienced on Honyn, the first sight of Daniel had made him flush with renewed guilt he couldn’t explain. He had to lie about his whereabouts to the one person who most deserved the truth, and since Ryan had never lied to Daniel before, he wasn’t good at it. His brother didn’t believe him, some awkward moments following. His friends watched with more understanding than ever and Ryan was glad he’d told them the truth about the accident.
Ryan’s initial call to Daniel had led to his parents knowing of their return and soon, the world did, too, via a press conference they arranged. Amidst police reports and interviews, they’d finally flown home to meet their relieved families and friends. The question dodging had become painful, but the four friends stuck together, their ordeal creating a bond.
Things hadn’t turned out quite so well for the others. All of Eric’s martial arts students had moved on to another teacher in his absence, and the guy who had first been a temporary replacement during his “vacation” had taken his job. The owner, Kim Jung, was less than kind, asserting that Eric had abandoned his position and students and wasn’t welcome back. The students and even his replacement were more forgiving and understanding, but ultimately it didn’t matter. He had lost his job, a fact that made headlines. The backlash on Jung worsened after he stupidly aired his opinion on camera. Many of the school’s roster went e
lsewhere, a move that both pleased and embarrassed Eric, who wasn’t used to such shows of loyalty. He received a dozen offers from other schools, and many of his former student’s parents withdrew their children to follow Eric to his new job.
Matt took a few days off and then reported to work as usual, though he got little done the first week with geek co-workers jokingly asking what being abducted by aliens felt like, or similar half-baked theories. Being at work dealing with irritating tech problems felt wildly uninspiring and he increasingly longed for more in his life. Not an hour passed without dreams of the power that was once his. He could be a different man with it, and life just wasn’t the same without that energy coursing through him, like his black-and-white life had been infused with color only to cast him back to greyness. He’d tried to perform magic here without success despite his clear memory of the spells, which he’d written down in his own book. He hadn’t yet been hypnotized to see what of Soliander’s memories he retained and wasn’t sure if it would matter now anyway. Besides, he’d need someone he trusted to do that.
Perhaps the biggest change had been for Anna, whose position at the hospital had been filled by necessity, though a similar one had become available. Jack Riley had never packed her things despite her father’s request, but she learned of the intent anyway and was quite upset with being written off so quickly. Her father’s lukewarm response to her return, not even offering her a hug, had surprised her. A few pointed questions later had revealed he’d investigated collecting her life insurance policy, too, and now she wasn’t speaking to him, to her mother’s consternation. She was starting to feel lost, her world so different from before. When she saw a patient near death or in agony that no medicine could alleviate, she wanted to reach out and heal them, but it was impossible. God doesn’t exist here. He isn’t real, she told herself, but the same assertion lacked the strength it once had, though her failures to reach Him had kept her atheism intact. She didn’t want to think about any of it but it was always in the back of her mind now, her job a constant reminder. She felt relieved when the next weekend came.
The four friends gathered in Anna’s condo Saturday night, enjoying some quiet and privacy. They hadn’t been alone for long since their return, but they’d invited Jack to let him in on the truth. They had discussed the idea at length, the deciding factor being that someone needed to look after their interests if they were summoned again and he was the only one they could trust. The threat of Soliander’s appearance was another reason to tell someone. If he showed up while they were on a quest, they wanted at least someone to be aware of who and what he was.
Now Jack sat quietly, trying to digest what they’d told him. He had laughed at the start, assuming it a joke, but the more details they’d revealed, the less funny it had become. Efforts to ask a question they couldn’t answer had proven fruitless. The details were sobering in their complexity, and he’d tried catching them in lies to no avail. It had become clear that the level of planning needed for them to get all their stories straight, if they were lying, would have been a flattering amount of time to waste just to play a trick on him, and he had never known them to possess such imaginations as this.
But the pendant was the thing that got him. They’d acquired a loupe and taken turns looking at the words inside, but only Matt could understand them. They were indeed in the language of magic and read:
Within the jewel magic resides
Creatures, too, and all abide
To keep Earth safe from she who lies
The prison here keeps hope alive
The henge of stone shall set them free
Good and evil, equal be
Undo what’s done and come what may
Risk the price all life could pay
They’d discussed this privately and now let Jack see for himself, and though he couldn’t verify what it said, he’d never seen script like it and thought it would’ve been going awfully far to get that inscribed in there just to fool him. And there was no escaping the reality that they’d disappeared and returned weeks later
As for the pendant, no one knew who “she who lies” was but they assumed that bringing the pendant to Stonehenge had set something unpredictable in motion. This had been one reason to tell someone the truth, for if anything odd began happening on Earth, like dragons appearing over Manhattan, they wanted someone besides them to know. It was possible they’d be off-world on another request. They wanted Jack to be their eyes and ears while they were gone.
“So you haven’t seen any sign of this Soliander on Earth?” Jack asked, focusing on what they wanted, though he didn’t know what he could do against such a wizard if one appeared.
Ryan shook his head, his hand diving into a bag of Chex Mix. “No, thank God. We all asked our families if anyone strange had been hanging out around the houses or neighborhood, but they said only reporters.”
“What do you think he might do if he shows up?” Jack asked.
They exchanged a look before Eric stopped himself from swiveling back and forth in an office chair. “Go after Matt, first, unless he tries to be sneakier by going after a less obvious target, for bait or something.”
“What can you do to protect yourselves from this guy?” Jack asked, shaking his head.
“Move,” suggested Matt, looking up from the laptop before him on the table. “I’ve already been looking into apartments. There’s no sense in any of us staying where we are except maybe Anna, since you can’t sell your condo as easily.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” admitted Eric, “especially for you and me. We should get an apartment together.”
“Absolutely,” the techie agreed. “I don’t want to be alone when he shows up.”
“When?” Jack asked. “Not if?”
Matt shook his head. “I think it’s only a matter of time.”
Ryan said, “Maybe I can join you. My parents are driving me nuts. The only drawback is leaving Daniel, but my presence might bring Soliander to our doorstep and that’s certainly worse. I can’t let that wizard get to Daniel.”
“Even better,” said Matt.
Looking at Anna, Ryan added, “I don’t think we should leave Anna alone, though.”
Anna nodded, sipping a glass of zinfandel. “I agree, though I’m not sure I want to share an apartment with three guys, especially you three.”
Eric replied, “You already shared space with us in far less modest circumstances.”
“True,” she admitted, playing with her pendant.
“Ryan,” Jack started, “if the apartment is registered in your name, people may be able to find you. Maybe you should do it in mine.”
Eric perked up. “Great idea. I knew it was smart to tell you. None of us should do a forwarding address for mail, either.”
As talk turned to arranging such details, Jack took the opportunity to get another beer and excused himself for the kitchen. His head spun with crazy thoughts and he needed a moment alone to get a grip. They had never lied to him before but all of this suggested the world was a far different place than he knew. He wouldn’t truly accept any of it unless he witnessed something with his own eyes. In the fridge sat the remains of a welcome back cake, and he dipped a finger in the icing before grabbing a drink and shutting the door. As he licked off his finger, a bright flash came from the room behind him, followed by a glass breaking, and sudden silence. He popped the beer can open and started back, saying, “Did a light burn out or…something.” He stopped in the doorway, staring.
Matt’s laptop still lay open and unlocked, when the techie was paranoid about not signing out if he stepped away. Anna’s wineglass had broken on the floor, red wine spilling across it. Ryan’s bag of Chex-mix had fallen over on the couch. And the office chair Eric had been sitting in was slowly spinning, empty.
They were gone.
THE END
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Acknowledgments
Edited by JJ Henke.
Conlang by Bryan Casas.
Maps by Randy Ellefson.
Cover design by Steam Power Studios.
About The Author
Randy Ellefson has written fantasy fiction since his teens and is an avid world builder, having spent three decades creating Llurien, which has its own website. He has a Bachelor’s of Music in classical guitar but has always been more of a rocker, having released several albums and earned endorsements from music companies. He’s a professional software developer and runs a consulting firm in the Washington D.C. suburbs. He loves spending time with his son and daughter when not writing, making music, or playing golf.
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The Dragon Gate (The Dragon Gate Series Book 1) Page 28