Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  Soon after they started down a long boulevard lined with tall stone buildings, a long hiss sounded from overhead, followed by a shrill cry. Instead of scanning the skies, Skara immediately ushered everyone through an arched entryway to their left.

  “That was a rock wyvern,” she said. “Everyone link arms and push into the darkness, then be still.”

  “Is it safe in here?” Will asked, feeling his way blindly ahead. He held Yasmina’s hand on the right, and linked an arm through Dalen’s on the left.

  “Safer than out there.”

  “What about a light?”

  “No lights. Further, now. Their sense of smell is extraordinary. Hopefully it was chasing something else, and will pass by.”

  After they stopped moving, they heard the distinctive cry several more times, each louder than before. Will tensed as the flap of eldritch leathery wings seemed to pass right outside the archway. Someone grunted to his left—he thought it was Bartu—causing Skara to silence him with a harsh whisper. Will wondered what had caused the composed warrior to move around.

  “Mateo?” he whispered.

  “I’m here.”

  “Just checking.”

  The cry of the great beast moved further and further away. Eventually Skara lit a match, exposing an anteroom with slender pillars and carvings of impressionistic landscapes on the walls. “What happened?” she asked, moving towards Bartu with some concern.

  “I tripped,” he said.

  “Tripped?” She looked around the empty room. “On what?”

  “I thought I heard something over there,” he said, pointing at a black hallway leading deeper into the interior. “I thought to position myself better in case of attack, and must have stumbled.”

  Skara let it drop. After ushering everyone back onto the boulevard, she scanned the sky for signs of danger, then hurried forward. More twists and turns led to a dead-end corridor walled in by immense granite buildings.

  “We’ve arrived,” Skara said.

  “Here?” Will asked. “This is the fabled storeroom?”

  Skara grinned, took a step forward, and disappeared through the base of the wall.

  “Oh my,” Dalen murmured, peering at the granite dead-end. “It’s no illusion I recognize.”

  “Nephili magic is unlike any other,” Bartu said, right before he stepped through.

  Will made his companions go before him, sucked in a breath, and followed. The illusion felt oddly tangible, as if walking through a heavy mist. Or maybe it was a portal instead of an illusion.

  On the other side, everyone had gathered at the base of a black marble staircase leading upwards into the gloom, enclosed within walls of the same material.

  “Remember that the Nephili lived in the higher reaches of the city,” Skara said. “My grandfather’s journal speculates that this staircase granted entrance to human workers to the Nephili storeroom for purposes unknown, with entry restricted by the door we’re about to encounter.”

  With everyone close on her heels, the adventuress moved steadily up the claustrophobic passage, lighting the way with a lavender glow stone. The illumination soon revealed the top of the staircase at least two hundred feet above ground level, though not until they drew to within a few yards could Will make out the faint outline of a silver door with no handle, and the angular scrawl of runes etched top to bottom into the surface, so faint they had almost disappeared.

  “That’s the door?” Will said, in a low voice.

  “Aye,” she said. “If the journal speaks the truth, ’tis the chamber where the Nephili came to feed.”

  -19-

  The river flowed lazily along, wide and blue and comforting, a waterborne magic carpet that could carry one anywhere, to the ends of the earth and beyond. Caleb wasn’t sure how long his cheek had been pressed against the sun-kissed wood of the raft, or how long he had been gazing down at the hypnotic current. The weather was warm and languorous, a perfect summer afternoon. He could smell the forest along the bank and almost taste the breeze. Time felt irrelevant, the way it did when he was a child.

  As if the world would go on forever.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, you. That just makes me mad.”

  “Mad? Why would it make you mad? It’s the dang truth. You should feel bad about it and apologize.”

  The voices did not startle Caleb. It was confusing, though. He didn’t know who they were, but for some reason, he knew there were two other people on the raft with him. One of the voices belonged to an older man with a thick, uneducated drawl. The other speaker was a boy of around twelve. Both sounded Southern, from north Louisiana or Mississippi.

  “I ain’t apologizing for nuttin, cuz I didn’t do it.”

  “You know you ate that butterscotch corn, Jim. You just forgot about it. Now c’mon and hand over that last piece.”

  “I ain’t gonna do that, neither.”

  Caleb heard scuffling, and the raft started to tilt as the two scrambled for the disputed piece of candy. Wary of falling into the water, Caleb scooted towards the middle of the raft, where he saw a white boy with a dirt-smeared face and overalls sitting atop a burly black man.

  “Oh, Huck,” the older man moaned, as the boy twisted one of his arms, “don’t make old Jim get up from here and lay a whooping on you.”

  “Looks to me like I’m doing the whooping,” the boy crowed.

  At the other end of the raft, Caleb saw a makeshift canvas tent, a couple of buckets, and a trio of fishing poles. As the two continued to struggle, a golf ball-size piece of caramel corn rolled towards the edge of the raft. Caleb walked over to pick it up, causing both of them to stop fighting.

  “Hey,” the boy said, holding out a hand. “Now just go ahead and hand that on over.”

  Caleb sat cross-legged on the raft. “Not until I get some answers.”

  The boy and the older man exchanged a look.

  “Huh?” the boy said.

  “Are you Huckleberry Finn?”

  “Are you a white-tailed rabbit? Of course I am.” He rolled off the older man, who kept moaning and complaining as he pushed to a sitting position.

  “How long have I been here?” Caleb asked.

  “What kind of a question is that?” The boy reached for a fishing pole, cast it out, and sat with his legs dangling in the water. “Who cares how long we’ve been here? We’re here, ain’t we? Isn’t that right, Jim?”

  “That right, Huck.”

  Huh, Caleb thought. Though his brain felt foggy, he seemed to remember that his favorite novel as a boy was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And now here he was, drifting down the Mississippi with Huck and old Jim themselves. It was just as grand as he had imagined it would be.

  The more he thought about it all, the past and the future and his own presence on the raft, the more right it felt. As if it had always been this way.

  As if it always would be.

  “Say, you,” Huckleberry said, “why don’t we split that candy up between us? Old Jim doesn’t need it, anyhow.”

  “That doesn’t sound very fair,” Caleb said.

  “That right, Huck. That ain’t very fair.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Jim blustered, waving his hands, “I’m the one had it first. At least gimme a piece. Split it three ways.”

  Over Huck’s protests, Caleb split the caramel corn into three chunks and handed one to each of them. He bit into his own chunk and found it quite delicious.

  “What’s your name again?” Huckleberry asked.

  Caleb thought for a moment, confused by the question. What was his name? Everything felt so warm and fuzzy. It came to him after a moment. “Caleb. Caleb . . . just Caleb, I guess.”

  “Here, then,” Huck said, reaching for one of the poles. “Help me catch some dinner, Just Caleb.”

  A wriggling worm was already attached to the hook. Caleb held the rod in his hand, reveling in the familiar smoothness of the wood. What was better than floating free d
own the river on a lazy summer day and tossing a line into the water? He reached back, cast, and laid the rod in his lap with a contented sigh.

  “Say Jim, tell us another story.”

  “Which one you want, Huck?”

  “Hmm . . . how about the one where you made the world?”

  “You already done heard that one.”

  Huckleberry jerked a thumb towards Caleb. “He hasn’t.”

  “Oh. Well.” Jim glanced at Caleb. “You want to hear it?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Sure.”

  As he began to speak, Jim clasped his weathered hands behind his head and laid on his back, letting the sun warm his face. “Way back in the beginning,” he said, in a voice of baritone honey, “when I was a little lonely one day, I made dem stars and dem galaxies, and then the ole Earth itself. It took me a few tries—”

  Huckleberry rolled his eyes. “You mean a few gazillion tries.”

  “You always using dem big words, Huck. You want to hear this story or not?”

  As they continued to argue, Caleb grew tired again, and set the rod down. He lay on his back near the edge of the raft as Jim resumed his story about making the world. He talked about the time before the stars arrived, and the time that came after they were gone. Somehow it all seemed to roll together. He talked about the meaning of life and how the animals communicate and where Atlantis used to be and other grand mysteries that Caleb listened to in fascination. At some point, his hip aching, Caleb turned to the side. He didn’t want to stop listening but his eyes started to slip downward, into the hypnotic depths of the river.

  “Don’t look down there,” Huckleberry warned. “We don’t look in the water.”

  “Why not?” Caleb asked.

  “Because you might not be able to look back. It won’t be like this anymore.”

  “Like this?”

  “You know, just the three of us, Jim’s stories, the river, the fishing, the adventure. What else do you want?”

  “Let the man make up his own mind, Huck. That’s what it’s there for, after all.”

  “That’s brought us nothing but trouble,” Huckleberry muttered.

  “You always say that, and you always wrong.”

  “That’s your opinion, Jim. You’re not perfect, you know.”

  “Anyway,” Jim said, “he should look if he wants to. Make up his own mind.”

  Huck threw his hands up. “Do what you want,” he said to Caleb. “My advice is to make it quick and forget about it.

  Now curious, Caleb leaned over and saw what he expected: a river of achingly blue water, too deep to see the bottom. Just as he started to turn away, he noticed his own reflection, and it caused him to pause.

  And remember why he was there.

  It all came back in a flash: Marguerite’s death, the quest and the Tower of Elarion, the harem, the dungeon beneath Zedock’s obelisk. He remembered, and he sat up, troubled by the stupor into which he had fallen.

  “I told you,” Huckleberry said, now chewing on a piece of licorice. “Here,” he said, offering Caleb’s rod to him again. “Help us catch some dinner.”

  Caleb took the rod, and his memories started to slip away as soon as he turned back from the water. He wanted to drift on that raft forever, bask in the glorious sunshine, listen to Jim spill forth the secrets of the universe. He sensed that he could do it, too. That this place was real, as real as anything else, and he could stay forever if he wanted. And he would be happy.

  But it would mean losing everything else. His memories of Marguerite, Luca, and his brothers. That was a high price to pay for eternal bliss.

  That, and Lord Alistair would never pay for what he had done.

  He could barely hold onto that train of thought. He was already slipping into a dreamlike state again. When he looked over at Jim, he noticed the older man was now staring at him with a piercing gaze. His pupils were a well of sadness so dark and deep they eclipsed the hole in Caleb’s soul. It gave him a moment of relief from the pain, and that made him furious. He never wanted to let go of that. Desperate for a way to escape this place, Caleb did the only thing he could think of to do. As Huckleberry protested beside him, trying to convince him to stay, Caleb leaned over and let himself fall off the edge of the raft, into his own reflection.

  The water was freezing, much colder than he expected. The shock of it snapped him back to reality, and he sank far faster than he should have, as if gravity and water resistance didn’t exist. He closed his eyes and kept on falling.

  Without warning, Caleb found himself standing on hard ground. He opened his eyes and found himself in a Jurassic landscape of blasted rock, bubbling fumaroles, and muddy brown lakes on the edge of a forest with trees so tall it made him dizzy to look up at them. The air was fresh, though it smelled faintly of sulfur. Steam poured out of hot pots and geysers. The primeval feel of the place reminded him of Rincon de la Vieja, a national park in Costa Rica he had visited before he had settled into his thatched hut in Hermosa Beach.

  A howler monkey roared from deep within the forest, setting Caleb’s nerves on edge and causing him to spin around.

  Which was when he saw Humpty Dumpty.

  Who else could it be? The giant egg with arms and legs and a face, sitting on a freestanding, ten-foot section of stone wall, had been imprinted in Caleb’s brain from a very early age.

  Outside of a few Stephen King novels, Caleb hadn’t done much reading in recent years. But he read a ton as a child, and Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll were two of his favorite authors. Given all that had occurred, he knew the tower was picking up on his memories somehow. He really hoped It, Salem’s Lot, and Pet Sematary weren’t next on the list.

  “Humpty?” Caleb asked.

  “Eh?” the egg said. It was peering intently at the primeval landscape with the rocks and fumaroles, and away from the old-growth forest.

  “That’s your name, isn’t it? Humpty Dumpty?”

  “Well if you already know, why are you asking?”

  “Just checking. You don’t happen to know where we are, do you? Is this a dream?”

  “How should I know if this is your dream?” the egg said haughtily. “It surely isn’t mine.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Listen, do you know how I can get out of here? I’m trying to climb to the top of a tower. Have you seen one anywhere close?”

  “A rock tower? A flower tower? Say what you mean, and mean what you say!”

  “A stone tower. Cylindrical and white, eight or so stories high.”

  “The tower is made of stories? How curious. How does that work, pray tell?”

  “It’s eight levels high,” Caleb said in exasperation. A geyser hissed and bubbled to his left, followed by another ear-splitting roar from a howler monkey.

  “Ah, why didn’t you say so!”

  “So you do know it?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Caleb tried to remember everything about the book, but it had just been so long ago. How had Alice escaped? Wasn’t there a queen involved?

  A sudden crash shook the earth, followed by another. Some great beast roared in the distance, deeper within the Jurassic portion of the world, and Caleb cringed at the sound.

  The beady eyes on the egg’s face, which reminded Caleb of Mr. Potato Head, widened as far as they could. The shaking ground caused him to wobble atop the wall, to the point where Caleb rushed over to help steady him.

  “Thank you,” the egg said begrudgingly. “Most embarrassing, this precarious state.”

  “Is that a dinosaur?”

  “A what?”

  Caleb waved his hands as the thundering footsteps drew nearer, though nothing could be seen on the horizon. “A huge prehistoric lizard. Triceratops, tyrannosaurus rex, stegosaurus?”

  “What strange words you know! I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “Okay, so what the hell is making all that noise, and is it going to eat us?”

  “Why, it’s a Jabberwock, that is. And of course it’s go
ing to eat us.”

  Caleb swallowed. Now that he remembered. He thought it was from a different book or poem, but who the hell cared. He backed against the wall. “What do we do?”

  “How would I know? I’m just an egg.”

  A huge, misshapen form appeared in the distance, stomping out from behind a hill. The thing looked like a mishmash of a dinosaur, a catfish, and the mountain trolls that had attacked him on the journey to the tower. Sturdy hind legs and a thick tail supported a squat gray body covered in warts. Its membranous bat wings twitched as it walked, the two spindly arms ended in clawed fingers that opened and closed like a bear trap, and the Jabberwock’s absurdly long neck supported a gilled face with whiskers and antenna poking out. At least fifteen feet tall, the monster ran upright, though at times the serpentine neck would raise and lower to sniff the ground or scope its surroundings.

  “Don’t you know anything helpful?” Caleb shouted, his stomach bottoming in fear.

  “Like what?” the egg answered.

  “Like how to get out of this world! Are there other people like me here?”

  “There was a little girl once,” Humpty said, twirling his thumbs nervously. “She even gave me some advice. Actually, she said a number of curious things, though she might have been addled. But one time, just before I fell for the seven thousand, six hundred and seventy-second time, instead of helping me up she looked at me with a very strange expression and said, “Humpty, sometimes death is the only escape.”

  “That is not at all helpful,” Caleb said, backing away as the Jabberwock caught a scent and started loping right towards them.

  “Then might I suggest, as someone with full mobility and a less ponderous ratio of shell to flesh, that you run very swiftly for those tall trees?”

  Caleb gave him a sharp glance. “Better,” he said, and darted for the cover of the forest. The Jabberwock bounded after him, swift and terrible, causing a stampede of birds and smaller animals.

  A cover of pine needles allowed Caleb to dash through the forest unhindered. Soon after he entered, he looked back and saw the Jabberwock passing right by the stone wall. Without missing a beat, the monster craned its long neck and gobbled up Humpty Dumpty in one bite.