by Dan Decker
Chapter 29
It had taken Adar and Tere the better part of half an hour to get to the archive on the second floor. During that time, they still hadn't been able to find Karn and they'd killed more Hunwei. Adar had sometimes wondered what it would be like when the Hunwei came back. He'd never once thought that the person at his back would end up being Tere. It was strange how things happened.
Adar took a deep breath and had to keep from gagging. The smell of burned Hunwei flesh was disgusting. He stepped over the Hunwei he'd just killed to get to the door of the archive. The town hall was swarming with them. Several times, they’d gotten the drop on some of the Hunwei and made quick work of them, but more than once they'd been forced to turn and run. Adar hadn’t realized how big this building was until now. They’d gotten lost twice.
“Help me pull him in here?” Adar asked, motioning to the dead Hunwei.
Tere nodded.
Leaving the body in the hall would be as good as hanging a sign announcing their presence. Tere grabbed a leg and Adar took the other. It was heavy. He estimated that it weighed about four hundred pounds. As they pulled, the body left behind a blue trail of blood on the floor. It wasn't ideal but at least the body would be out of sight. Once they were through the doorway, they pulled the body to the side of the room.
Working together with Tere reminded Adar of what it had been like when they had still been in training. Back then, they had been inseparable. As Adar watched for an attack from Tere, he couldn’t help but wonder what he would have thought back then if he’d known that twenty years later they’d be just a hair away from killing one another.
Adar shook his head and pushed away the sentimental feelings, there was no going back. He shut the door and looked around. Many of the books had fallen off the shelves and one of the freestanding bookshelves had toppled over against the back wall. Through the windows, Adar could see that it was still raining. Jorad had better be in the Arches by now.
Adar approached the third safe and looked through the key hole. He couldn’t make out anything inside, but he could have sworn he'd seen light glinting off some metal. He was just imagining things now. There was only one thing to do, Adar took the blaster and leveled it at a hinge, firing a shot and causing the safe to fly into the wall. The blast had replaced the hinge with a gaping hole.
“Are you mad?” Tere asked. “What if you hit the tablet?”
“What did you think we were going to do?”
Adar reached into the hole and felt around. He began pulling things out; much of it was jewelry and gold. There were several other artifacts but nothing resembling Deren’s tablet. He tossed everything on the floor.
Aiming from above, he took out the other hinge, putting a large hole into the floor in the process.
“With all this blasting, the Hunwei are going to come looking.”
Adar didn’t answer. After emptying everything he could reach through the new hole—there was now a small fortune on the floor—he began struggling with the door.
“Stop standing there and help me.” Adar grunted.
Tere came over to help but after several attempts, they still weren’t able to move the door. From out in the hallway there was the sound of running footsteps and Adar recognized the heavy boots of a Hunwei. He was glad they had moved the body because the footsteps continued past the door.
“Time,” Tere said. There was a sense of finality to the statement.
In frustration, Adar fired a shot into the top of the safe once the Hunwei had gone. If he destroyed the tablet, at least he’d keep it from the Hunwei. When the smoke settled, Adar set down his blaster and dug in with his hand ignoring the heat from the blasted metal. He added more items to the fortune on the floor, until his hand touched a rectangular object. He pulled out a small shiny piece of metal. It was pocket sized and the ancient symbol for the number nine was embossed on it.
“It’s here.” Adar held it up. The room seemed to change. Pictures, words, and sounds spun around Adar. At first, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing and for a moment, he could have sworn one of the images resembled Vigorock. There it was again. Adar reached out and touched the image.
The spinning stopped and Vigorock froze in place, expanding in size until it took up several feet of space as it hung in the air. This was just like the globe in the Arches, only he was standing in the middle of the globe and looking out. Adar began to feel his heart sinking. Had he come all this way to find a navigational device like the one contained in the Arches?
Adar felt disoriented as he realized that he was looking at Vigorock from a bird’s eye view and that it was surrounded by a crowd. On closer inspection, he realized it was an army of Hunwei. Well, this was different from the globe in the Arches, but what did it mean? Was this a vision from the past? A historical record of some sort?
A loud piercing sound came from the tablet and the air above the illusion flashed with a word. It took him a few seconds to recognize the ancient word for warning. Adar reached towards the word and it changed when he touched it, now it was asking him if he wanted to arm Vigorock.
He had been right! Vigorock was a weapon and somehow, the tablet was showing him what was happening there at that very moment. The loud piercing sound had been replaced by a voice asking him the same question displayed in the air.
“Yes,” he said, wondering what it would do but nothing happened. He realized that he should answer in the ancient dialect so he spoke “yes” again but this time in the language of his fathers.
“Tower is armed,” said the voice.
The image zoomed out and he focused on the globe of the world that surrounded him. He noticed this one was different from the Arches. The globe represented different places with towers similar to Vigorock. If Vigorock was a weapon, perhaps the tower in front of the town hall was too. He reached out and touched the tower that he thought represented Zecarani on the globe.
There was a swirl of colors as the image changed and again he was looking at the town hall and the smaller tower out front. Just like before he could see Hunwei milling around the field. The warning sounded and he spoke the ancient word for yes again.
“Tower is armed.”
Adar yelled with satisfaction as the image disappeared leaving the globe surrounding him again. He began to rack his brain. He’d never paid much attention to the towers before until he’d seen Vigorock, but he’d seen those towers before in other towns. As he tried to remember where, he noticed a reflection off the shiny surface of the tablet and dropped to the floor.
Adar was unable to avoid Tere’s sword as it cut into his side, but it wasn’t the mortal wound it could have been. As he fell, he dropped the tablet and the illusions disappeared.
Adar rolled back to his feet and brought his sword out at the same time. He ducked another blow and attacked. Even with the cut in his side, he was confident that he would take Tere. As the fight continued, they moved around the room and Tere focused on defending against Adar’s attacks.
In a moment of clarity, Adar realized the madness of this situation. The world was falling apart, the Hunwei were about to overrun them, and here they were wasting strength fighting each other. He spared a glance out the rain-covered window. Not to mention the weapon that he’d just armed. How long before it went into effect? How far away did they need to be?
He went cold inside. What about the people of Zecarani? He hadn’t thought of that when he armed the weapon. What would happen to them?
“All this time. Have you never suspected?” Tere’s voice was quiet but cut like a sharp knife through very thin cloth. Adar looked at Tere waiting for him to continue. He’d prepared for this moment for a long time.
Could it really be?
Tere knocked a table over between them and used the distraction to scoop up Deren's tablet. Without looking at it, he put it into his pocket.
“I killed Nelion.”
All calm and control fled from Adar. His blood boiled with rage. His he
art beat with revenge. Screaming, he charged Tere. At the same time, the door opened and several Hunwei stepped inside. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye but didn’t care. Tere would die today.
Adar stabbed his sword at Tere who deflected the hit to keep it from taking him in the neck. The blade went into his shoulder instead. Adar twisted the sword out and dove to the ground as the Hunwei brought up their weapons.
Tere ran to the closest window, broke it with his sword, and jumped headfirst through the glass. Blasts filled the space where Tere had been moments before as Adar crawled behind the fallen table, his ears ringing. Several feet away, lay one of his blasters where he'd dropped it after shooting the safe. He scrambled towards it, grabbed it, and turned to face the two Hunwei.
He registered their surprise as he pulled the trigger twice and watched big holes rip through them. As they fell, he got to his feet and ran to the broken window. Tere hadn’t wasted any time and was limping across the street. A few more steps and he would disappear into an alley.
Adar fired the blaster in rapid succession. In his anger, his aim was terrible and the brick walls to the side of Tere took the brunt of it. Tere didn’t look back as he disappeared into the alley.
There was a flurry of activity below and Adar was surprised to see Karn had broken through a window and was running towards Tere. In his fury, Adar almost fired at Karn but stopped as he had begun to squeeze the trigger. Karn had been a boy at the time of Nelion’s death.
Adar was about to jump when a handful of Hunwei raced after Karn and Tere. More Hunwei began to pour into the street below, some herding people in front of them. Adar sunk out of view of the window and struggled to regain control.
After all these years, he’d finally confronted his wife’s killer. Adar had always had his suspicions, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it of his old friend.
Adar didn't remember making a decision to charge Tere. The revelation had caused him to react. Tere had known that in his anger Adar would make a mistake. It was strange to think that the appearance of the Hunwei had saved Adar's life. He looked over at the lifeless bodies wondering at his luck.
Tere had played his card well. The anger had caused Adar to lose control and he'd attacked without thought. His hands shook as he thought of Nelion and remembered the night when Tere had found Adar, only now Adar accepted that Tere had been there all along. He’d been a fool for not doing so before. Melyah, what a fool!
“What have you done?” Tere had said all those years ago. “Who is that man?”
Adar hadn’t known.
“What madness is this?” Tere asked after a pause. “No matter what she did, it’s not your right to do this. Even as the Ghar.”
Adar hadn’t responded and had only been able clutch Nelion. If it hadn’t been for his grief, maybe he would have wondered how Tere had found him so quickly. The gods knew how often he’d wondered since. The Rarbon Palace was a vast place, what were the odds?
Adar looked back out the window and now for the first time seriously considered if his father had been behind Nelion's murder. It had been Abel who had come between Adar and Tere in the first place. Had Abel sent Tere to do it? Was Adar jealous enough to have killed his only son's wife? Adar shook his head and took several calming breaths. Now was not the time, he had to get back to Jorad.
Adar froze. The tablet. How had he forgotten about it? How long until the tower's weapon was deployed? He shouldn’t have been so hasty to arm the weapon. How many people would die because he hadn't thought things through?