by Pam Uphoff
“It’s more of a hill . . . no one’s quite sure what the video part actually meant back when the area was first explored by Europeans.” Ryol shrugged. “I see a mountain, or something deo, or, who knows.”
“Huh. Well, a couple of millennia later it sounds prettier than ‘Rip World’ ‘Prairie Coast,’ or,” He shot a quick grin at them, “‘Granite Peak.’”
He chuckled at their double glares and pointed. “There are two corridors they each go about fifty miles to two different gates. See, they can pop the corridors quick, if someone’s chasing them. Then through the next gate, and corridor . . .”
“And pop that one? Wow.” Lala had brightened and now she looked around . . . “What’s the best way to go?”
“My favorite place had a forest fire eight years ago . . . It’s recovering slowly, but it’s still a great place for a picnic.” He hoisted his bag of pastries. “Unfortunately it’s where my family is camping out. But let’s go there anyway.”
Six gates and corridors later they were standing on the shore of a big lake. Mountains all around, and a broad sandy beach.
Back from the beach, the ground was crisscrossed by charred tree trunks, young pines bright green against the blackened ground.
“That must have been some fire!” Ryol looked back through the last corridor. It was all new growth there, too!
“What started it?” Lala reached out and touched a fallen trunk nearly as tall as she was.
“A magical battle. I kind of wish I’d seen it! We were attacked by some Arbolian priests. I got knocked out by a stun spell right off and missed the rest. Apparently they were throwing fireballs and slice . . . well, I came to a couple hours later and we were four gates away, and collapsing the corridors behind us.” He looked around. “I was pretty upset, the next time we came through.”
They nodded, and followed him down to the water’s edge and along the shore.
They skirted the boys, who were taking their shoes off to test the water. Ryol caught Arno’s yelp about freezing . . .
Zodiac snickered. “It’s snow melt. On the hottest summer days it’s wonderfully brisk.” He paused at a large splash. Followed by more. “They’ve started throwing each other in. They’re all going to regret it.
Ryol spotted the wagons parked in the shade, the horses staked out to graze. Campfires just getting lit.
Zodiac strolled up to the closest fire and raised the bag he was carrying. “Two dozen donuts. Better hide them if you don’t want the frozen boys to scarf them all.”
Ryol blinked as she spotted the young woman beside a table by the fire.
“This is my Aunt Macaw. Best camp cook in the Multiverse.”
The woman snorted and took the bag. “I see you’ve met my nephew, the worst cook in the Multiverse. Grab the biggest pot and fetch some water. I suspect those boys are going to want something hot to drink in a moment. Old Gods know how we’ll feed them.”
Ryol giggled. “Oh, we’ll have to go back for dinner. Our . . . biofather will no doubt expect us to sleep in the beds he’s providing.”
Macaw’s brow wrinkled. “Bio . . . sorry, I thought you felt like a standard Witch Wizard combination.”
Zodiac laughed. “Remember when Xen Wolfson went and spied on the Oners? And he seduced all these High Oner wives and disgraced their husbands?”
Macaw stepped closer and looked Ryol and then Lala up and down. “Huh. Never thought about babies, which is stupid of me. Well! They’d be half a year older than Panther.”
Zodiac blinked, eyed Ryol. “You’re fourteen? All of you?” He looked over his shoulder. “Excuse me a minute.”
He trotted back to the kid pack and put his lips to Irwun’s ear, as if whispering, then slid around the pack to another boy . . . who looked just like Irwun.
Royal looked at Macaw. “Irwun has a twin?”
“Alin. Yep. Those boys drive their poor mother crazy swapping places.”
Back in the pack, Irwun had eased away from Gior, who was glaring at Zodiac.
Then the rest of the boys came up from the lake, dripping and shivering.
A tall woman intercepted them. “Wring out your shirts over there so you don’t make mud here and come have some tea.”
“That’s my sister Crimson. My other sister, Walnut, is around somewhere. Alin and Irwun’s mother isn’t along on this trip.” Macaw sighed. “We sort of . . . got ourselves disinvited to the Winter Solstice ceremony. Well, we figured we could just have our own.”
Ryol helped serve mugs of steaming tea to shivering scrawny boys. “Is that the ceremony on Mount Frost, or . . .”
“Old Gods, no! Brrrr! In the Winter we go to the hotsprings.”
“I figured . . . Hey, you know? Master Xen said something about a corridor to some hotsprings. In the mountains.”
Crimson’s eyebrows rose, then dropped. She sent a scathing glare toward her sisters. “Some people have made it impossible for us to ask any favors of Xen.”
Macaw tossed a glare right back. “I was curious! I didn’t think how he’d take it!”
“And Q made us pay for it.” Walnut walked past, hands full of loaded shish kabob skewers.
Ryol eyed Crimson. “What did they do?”
“After you lot almost killed him—again—they snuck into his bed while he was in that healing coma thing they do. So, of course, the first time he touched one of the babies, he realized they’d raped him. And Q transformed them into these amazingly ugly rabbit things and it didn’t wear off for a month.”
Walnut yelled back, “It was not rape, he was quite happy to . . .” She glanced at the kids and shut up.
“Yeah, while he was probably dreaming of that scrawny assassin he’s fixated on!” Crimson yelled back. She glanced apologetically at Ryol. “They were too young for any of the guys to actually go all the way with. The head witch, Answer, is perfectly capable of killing any man who diddles an underage witch. So they snuck.”
“It’s not like he hasn’t deliberately had dozens of children!” Macaw called from the far side of the campsite.
Ryol rubbed her forehead. “So what did this Answer do to Master Xen?”
“Nothing. She knew who was at fault, and didn’t even say anything about Q’s spell, a year later.” Crimson shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Three witches don’t make a Pyramid. Now let’s see if your multitude of brothers are warm enough to send back to their, your, father.”
***
“So those wooden forts are based on a bunch of vids about your pioneering age in North America?” Arno was sitting between the two purple haired boys.
“Earth’s North America. Our World is Exile Two. Arrival-Arbolia is Exile Four and Comet Fall is Exile Five.”
Arno eased his feet back from the fire. “So there are two more Exile Worlds out there? Cool! I wonder what they’re like?”
Chris Puma grinned, He was the youngest of group at thirteen. Joel Taxus was already fifteen.
“Probably about like you guys and Arrival. You guys got hit harder by the comets and didn’t have much petroleum. We had oil, and we didn’t get hit by comets, so we only had to industrialize once.”
Arno sniffed. “We’re Oners. All we got from Comet Fall are the genes.”
“All?” Epic—the college student—sniffed. “Xen Wolfson is probably the most powerful magic user in the Multiverse. Half the embassies here, well, on Embassy, are probably trying to figure out how to recruit you guys.”
“As if we’d be interested.” Yrno sneered. “What could they possibly offer us? The One World is the most technically advanced civilization in the Multiverse.”
Irwun grinned. “Ever been to the Moon? I have, on British Empire. They’ve got a Mars base now too. Not open to tourists yet.”
Arno nodded. “Connected back to their Earth with dimensional corridors. But those are made by Fallen, not by themselves.”
Jay shrugged. “We’ve sent rockets. There’s just nothing there worth the effort, when you’ve got gate tech and
can find multiple worlds with untapped resources and breathable air.”
That got nods all around.
Arno grabbed his socks—damp, but warm and started pulling them on. At least he’d gotten his shoes off before he’d been tossed in the freezing lake. And only one guy had needed to be rescued. The rest of them had swum enough to know to just put their feet down and wade back to shore.
Utry was going to be teased about his floundering panic in about a meter of water for years.
And a good thing it was that shallow, the way he tried to climb all over us as we hauled him to shore.
His obnoxious sister walked past and thumped him on the head. “I think we ought to head home before it gets any darker.”
Arno grabbed his shoes and slid them on. “Yeah. It’s not like they can feed a couple dozen kids that dropped by. We’ll have to pack food along, if we go exploring out here.”
Yrno snorted. “Boring. This place is boring. The women are either our sisters or younger than we are.”
Arno spotted Ryol and the other girls heading for the corridor. Dropped his voice. “What do you want to bet they get lost?”
The group broke up, laughing and they straggled “homeward” in a disorganized group.
It should be easy enough to find Embassy from this direction. The gates are spaced out with corridors inbetween, so we just have to pop through a corridor, then through the gate to the next world . . .
Where the girls were looking around in dismay at three corridors.
Ryol popped out of the one on the left. “Not that one. It’s got a waterfall. I don’t remember a waterfall.”
We took a left turn . . . on this world? Which would be coming from the right.
Arno trotted over and jumped through. A rocky slope . . . and the gate was between boulders, and needed a U turn to get from the corridor to the gate.
Arno turned and jumped back through the corridor. “Not this one, so . . .” They all headed for the center corridor.
Jay and Or What stopped beside Arno, looking around.
“Are we already lost?” Or looked a little worried.
Arno shook his head. “Not yet, and there’s only seven more gates. We ought to be able to work it out.”
Jay grinned. “If we can all keep our heads? We really should get a head count, and maybe leave a few people behind to direct the slow pokes.”
Arno nodded. Good thinking. “And otherwise stick together, so they only have to rescue one large group instead of, what? Twenty-five or thirty of us spread all over and running around in a panic?”
Jay laughed. “Right.” He looked over his shoulder as another boy jumped through. “Anro? Or are you the other Arno? No, you’re Anro. We need more nicknames, darn it. Are you the last one?”
“Naw. They’re still looking for their shoes. Which way’s Embassy?”
“That one. But will you stay here and send the rest through the right corridor?”
Anro wrinkled his nose, shrugged. “Sure.”
“Great!” Arno jumped through the corridor to yet another grass meadow, across to the gate and through to a milling batch of siblings.
Five corridors? Yikes!
No sign of his sister. “Where’s Ryol?”
Lala looked around. “She’s scouting down that corridor.” She pointed to the right.
“All right. I’ll start on the left. We need a watcher on every corridor so we don’t get them mixed up.” Arno strode through the left most corridor, spotted the gate and jumped into a desert.
“We definitely didn’t come this way.” He trotted back to report.
Ryol had returned and said hers was possible, except she didn’t remember taking a hard right out of any of the corridors. Jay popped out of the one next to Arno and said it was possible, then Or What returned shaking his head.
Yrno stepped through the last corridor . . . Arno fidgeted . . . “He must be checking through the gate . . . I’ll take a quick look.”
The first thing he saw was the bear. Roaring and reaching up a tree. The second thing was Yrno, clinging desperately to the tree trunk, legs wrapped around a high branch. Screaming for help.
Arno stepped back through the corridor. “Anyone have any way to deal with a bear? It’s got Yrno treed.” Everyone shook their heads, looking at each other.
Arno looked around, and picked up a couple of pebbles. I ought to have brought my pistol . . . no I shouldn’t. It’s not up to shooting bears, and it would have gotten tossed in the lake.
“Are you crazy?” Ogri stared at his handful of rocks.
“Umm, yes?” Arno looked around and pointed. “Maybe everyone should get through Jay’s corridor, in case it chases me?”
That started an exodus, and Arno stepped back through the corridor.
The bear was halfway up the tree.
Arno looked around, there had to be something . . . like the dark thing rustling around in the tall grass? He hefted a pebble and threw it hard. A startled bawl. Arno dropped down behind a bush as the bear descended at speed and raced over to her cub.
Arno looked up at Yrno, who had at least had the sense to shut up. The bear stood up and stared at him, then dropped to all fours, turned and disappeared into the brush, two cubs galloping after her.
Yrno scrambled down through the branches and dropped from the lowest one. He sprinted for the corridor, with Arno close behind.
“Oh, man, I thought I was going to die!”
Arno grinned. “How did you get up that tree?”
“Fast!” He started laughing. “There might have been some levitation, but I think it was pure adrenaline.”
***
Arno led the way to Jay’s corridor, and across to the that gate and through. And spotted three sharp peaks on the horizon. “I remember that! Yay! Almost halfway home.”
Or What laughed. “Everyone, hold still! I think we need a head count. Ryol? Do you remember which girls came with us? I’ll count guys . . .”
Arno stretched to look around. There was Epic and Arwen. And the two guys with purple hair . . . he hadn’t actually realized there were three purple girls.
Including myself, all twelve of Master Xen’s bastard sons.
Ryol said that she thought all the girls who had come were present.
Only two corridors, one to a dark forest, so they trooped through the other and through that gate as well.
The ground was soft, water saturated. Yeah, I remember this. He looked, pointed at the corridor with the wet trampled squishy path leading from it. The horde rushed it.
Arno swapped grins with Ryol. “I think they’re eager to get back to Embassy.”
She grinned wryly. “So am I. I hadn’t realized what a city girl I am. It never occurred to me that there were bound to be predatory animals out here.”
They walked through the corridor, then the gate.
“That’s five.” Ryol looked around. “Three corridors. No wonder they call this the Maze.” She headed left, Jay was going right, so Arno walked through the cautious crowd and hopped through the one straight ahead.
Recoiled from the on rushing . . . dog? Got sucked back through the corridor, and hastily backed away as the big animal jumped through, grinning and wagging his tail.
“Good dog?” He winced at the quaver in his voice. A glance through the corridor showed a foggy blurred silhouette of a horse and rider. Arno stepped out of the way and the horse trotted through. Master Xen.
On a great huge dark chestnut. With no bridle at all.
The man looked relieved, and swept a quick look over the crowd. “More of you than I’d expected. Epic and Arwen, got your siblings, I see. And the purple contingent. All accounted for, Deliah?”
“Yes, sir. Umm, glad to see you, sir. We were sort of lost.”
Arno shook his head. “We were proceeding cautiously, being careful to retrace our steps.”
Ryol snickered. “We didn’t pay enough attention to the route while we were going, to be sure of the way home. I guess we
all assumed Zodiac or Irwun would lead us back home.”
“Ah. The smugglers. No doubt camped at their favorite lake.”
“Smugglers!” Gior yelped. “They said they were traders!”
“Oh yes, they are. They just don’t happen to pay tariffs or taxes, or worry about import and export permits, and don’t bother anyone at the official gates as they come and go.” Xen swung down off the tall horse. “So, who needs a ride the most?”
Pyrite took three girls away at a decorous pace, and returned quickly with a whole herd of helpers. Not a stitch of tack on any of the others.
Master Xen started boosting kids aboard. “Take them to the new school, please.” And the horses all nodded.
A big black one poked Arno with her nose. :: Want a ride? ::
“Umm, yes.” Arno looked up at her back. Much taller than the lesson horses back home!
She nodded at a boulder. :: Try from there. ::
She sidestepped over to it as he scrambled up, grabbed mane and hopped a little to get his leg over. Bare back was slippery.
:: Careful with the heels . . . I know you don’t mean “go faster” but it’s a natural response. ::
“Right.” He tried to relax and let his legs dangle, and she moved off, heading for the next gate. “Do you horses explore the Maze?”
:: Of course. There’s no telling when we’ll be needed. Not that you guys needed much rescuing. :: A mental impression of a sigh. :: It could have been a lot more exciting. ::
Arno grinned. “We’ll have to try harder, next time. I’m very certain that we could get a whole lot more lost.”
***
Ryol hoped she wouldn't fall asleep in her dinner. They were all dragging as they followed the adults to the restaurant.
The Kitchen had a chalkboard at the door. Chicken with mushrooms and cheese, Elk in green peppercorn sauce, Peach cobbler, Death-by-chocolate.
Master Xen waved at it. "That's the whole menu. They'll substitute tofu for the meat and hold the cheese, if you're vegetarian. Or vat grown meat for natural elk and chicken. It all comes with salad, veggies, and bread."
"Elk?"