“What? I wasn’t—”
“Come on, G-Gaige.” She rolled those golden eyes.
“I was just trying to figure out who she is.” I fought to keep any telltale redness from my face, readying an excuse that the cold had caused it.
“Right.” She turned away.
Seanna had thus far ignored us, and with my confusion and fear wearing off, anger started slipping in to replace them. I glanced sideways at Aoife before quickening my step to catch up with Seanna. I grabbed her arm. “You know, I’d really like to know what’s going on here.”
Her cool blue eyes turned toward me. “All in due time.”
“No time like the present,” I demanded.
She shook her head, her blond hair flowing out a bit. Her sharp features softened. “Now is not the time.” She placed a surprisingly warm hand on my cheek. “Not while other ears can hear.”
I nodded agreeably and glanced back at Aoife. She dropped her eyes down to her soggy shoes when I did. I turned my gaze to Niklas plodding along in front of us. His shoulders were wide, his back massive.
“Are we in danger?” I asked.
“Of them?” Seanna said. “I do not think so.”
“You don’t think so?” Aoife grunted from behind. She stumbled a bit but stayed upright.
Seanna glanced over a shoulder. “I do not think so,” she repeated.
I dropped my voice. “Can we get away from them?”
She looked at me like I was stupid.
Right, two in front of us, four behind, and high cliffs on either side. I’ll take that as a no . “What do we do?”
“We go with them.” She paused for a long moment. “For now.”
***
The sun gathered up whatever warmth it might have provided and greedily pulled it below the horizon. Large rock formations stretched their shadows over our path, threatening to engulf us with the bitter cold it held in its darkness. Those shadows grew deeper and started to fade. A blanket of twilight settled over us.
I tried to get my mind to work right, but the cold numbed my brain. Putting one painfully frozen foot in front of the other and trying to not shiver right out of my shoes occupied a large chunk of my dwindling brainpower.
A smaller portion was dedicated to worrying about Aoife. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet. She stumbled in the snow more frequently the longer we walked. I did my best to catch her when she did. At one point, I kept a hand on her elbow to help prevent her from falling, but she pulled her arm from my grip and tucked it close to her body. I glanced her way, but she kept her head down, face hidden in the depths of the borrowed cloak’s hood. Her breath blew out from the hood in puffs of white.
I watched her for a few moments, but my own shivering misery took over my thoughts. I lost track of time. Everything blurred into rock, snow, and frozen toes. My digits felt like an elephant had danced a jig on them. I tried to wiggle them in my shoes, but that only made them hurt worse. I started to worry about losing my toes. In eighth grade, I took a survival seminar my middle school and a local ski resort sponsored. They brought in an expert to address the assembly. Well, he was an expert at the time, but that was a few years after he had lost his toes to frostbite after being lost in the woods for several days. He proudly showed off pictures of his black and blue toes before surgeons had chopped them off. He proceeded to show off his seven remaining toes, the horror projected onto a large screen for everyone to see. A lot of kids groaned in revulsion, but I’d thought it was disgustingly cool at the time.
That opinion diminished by increasing degrees as I imagined my own foot with several missing toes. I wondered what it would be like to be short a few. The survival guide had said he couldn’t stand up for months after without tipping over because of the loss of stability.
I was pulled from my thoughts as we rounded a boulder, forcing Aoife to step closer to me. She stumbled and I caught her before she hit her knees.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
Before she could answer, I nearly dropped her. I stared ahead with my mouth hanging open. The ground leveled out before us, and I looked upon a village straight out of a History Channel documentary on Medieval Europe. Welcome to the home of the mountain men , I thought. Where the hell am I?
8
The Elder
I closed my mouth, helped Aoife to her feet, and followed Niklas down the path that ran between the buildings. The snow was stomped down to the frozen, grassless ground. The path wound through the village and into the dark of falling night beyond.
Crude wooden houses, a few dozen in all, lined either side of the trail. Made of rough, worn wood with simple shuttered windows on either side of the doors, they stood a little less than half the size of my house back home. Smoke rolled out of chimneys made of deep green stones stacked on the slightly slanted and thatched roofs. The smell of wood burning, laced with a tang of something I couldn’t identify, permeated the air. In somewhat of a stupor, I wondered how they told the buildings apart. They all looked the same to me. I was pretty sure I’d walk in somebody’s house on accident. And it would be a regular occurrence.
The village seemed so alien, yet very mundane. Unassuming. It shouldn’t have scared me. At least it shouldn’t have scared me as much as our very large and armed escort, but it did. It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. I couldn’t think. My head hurt. I was freezing. All I could think about was getting back home. That’s something I never thought I’d want once I got away from Gate City. A few months after my parents’ accident, I started counting down the days until I turned eighteen, graduated, and got out of there. Out of Gate City, out of Colorado, as far as I could get and still be in the United States. Maybe even farther. I just wanted to get away and forget. I wanted to be that mysterious guy with no past. When people would ask, I’d shrug and say, “My past is boring. Nothing there but ghosts and burnt bridges.” They would nod knowingly and drop it. Okay, I was twelve at the time, not exactly a deep, philosophical age, but the gist was there.
Three years later, my wish was granted. I couldn’t get much farther from Gate City, Colorado, then another world. Yet, at that moment, I just really wanted to go home. I wanted to turn, run back up the mountain, fight off a hundred of those bat things if I had to, and dive through that cave. Dive back to Earth. Dive back to my life, as messed up as it was. My steps faltered. I almost turned to do it. I almost turned and bolted back up the path, barreling through the capturers behind us. Just run and not stop until I tumbled feet over head onto that lush, green park grass. I felt muscles tensing all over my body. I felt the flop of fear in my stomach. I felt my teeth clench. I felt myself ready to run. I felt…
Aoife’s hand on my arm stopped me. Her tight grip pulled me along. I didn’t think she realized she was doing it. She stared at the village, dragging me mindlessly behind Seanna and Niklas. I felt a little ashamed. I hadn’t even thought about her in my wild escape plans. Could I get away with her? I thought I could make it past the guards behind us and up to the cave. I knew I could. But Aoife couldn’t. She barely made it down the path. She wouldn’t be able to make the sprint back up the way we had come.
The tension melted out of my body. The glob of fear churning in my stomach turned over, becoming a heavy knot of defeat. I couldn’t run. Not now. Maybe Aoife and I would be able to sneak out in the middle of the night. Then we could pick our way back up to the cave and go home. Maybe.
I sighed at the wistful fantasy and looked back to the village. It bustled with activity as men and women finished their day’s work in the last bits of twilight’s gray light. They cast sideways glances at us as we passed, but no more than that. If three strangers escorted through their village was an unusual event, they gave no indication.
Both men and women wore thick pants and clothes, and they were all tall. Not Brian tall, but still pretty tall. I glanced at the broad back of Niklas trudging in front. Well, maybe a few of them were as tall as Brian. Unlike my friend, who was as thin as a poll, the dude w
as massive, destroying some of the perception of height. His girth made him look squat, but it was only an illusion. He was big .
A woman passed us heading in the opposite direction. She carried a dead chicken by the neck. It looked like it had been pumped up on steroids while alive. It was huge, easily three times larger than any chicken I had ever seen. The woman’s red-tinted eyes flicked at us. The tough, lined corners of her mouth drew together, but she walked on without a word.
Another woman stepped across the path in front of us, carrying a bundle of sticks that looked like kindling for fire. She stepped to a door, opened it with her free hand, kicked at a stone off to the side, and entered. She turned to close the door, staring out at us from the shadowed abode until the door shut. I thought I heard the clink sound of a bolt locking into place, but it could have been just my imagination.
Besides my questioning concern for Aoife, nobody had spoken since Seanna’s cryptic “for now.” Even the villagers fell silent as we passed. I couldn’t even hear sounds of animals bleating or barking. That quiet bothered me the most. More than the cold, more than the gash of pain across my forehead. More than my general confusion and frustration, I couldn’t bear the only sound being the whoosh of wind sliding through the ravine behind us. “Is this your village?” I called up to Niklas. My lips hurt to talk. They felt dry and chapped.
He didn’t answer. I clenched my jaw.
A few children ran here and there, getting the last moments of play in before they had to go indoors for the night. One girl stopped at the side of the path as we passed. Even though she stood nearly as tall as Aoife, I could tell she was young by her soft, round face. I guessed she was only around seven. Her clouded eyes flicked between Seanna, Aoife, and me, full of curiosity. A massive, shaggy dog sat by her, stick in mouth. It watched us, too, its furry tail flopping back and forth in the trodden snow. When my eyes locked with the girl’s, I gave her a small wave. Just a quick flick of my hand, up and out, but she went right on staring until a sharp call from her mother sent her scurrying home, the dog bounding behind her. They disappeared into a house after the girl gave a quick kick at a stump by the door.
Night moved in fast once twilight had descended on us. All shadows disappeared in moments as it claimed the day. The walk through the village seemed to take forever as the temperature dropped like a stone in water. Aoife went from a shiver to a full-blown shake. We passed several houses that flickered with firelight that twinkled from the gaps in the shutters covering the windows. I peered longingly in as we passed, imagining the warmth inside.
By the time Niklas brought us to a stop in front of a building that looked like any other, I had almost stopped caring what we’d find inside. Whatever verdict this elder would render, as long as it was inside a warm building, I didn’t care. For the most part.
The massive man looked us over before speaking. “When we cross this threshold, in the presence of an Elder and you are expected to treat her with the respect she is being due.”
He stared at us. I figured he wanted a reply, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I glanced at Seanna, hoping she’d say something. She remained silent, her arms folded and a look of indifference on her pale face.
Niklas took our silence as an agreement. He turned to the house, lifted the wooden handle, and opened the door without knocking. He kicked the snow from his boots on a large stone that sat by the entrance before entering.
The rest of our escorts dispersed without a word. The one who had loaned Aoife his cloak retrieved it before walking back down the trail. I watched them disappear into the gloom of night before following Niklas into the building, kicking at the stone on the way in.
The building was one large room with no furniture and a fireplace opposite the door. A fire burning in the stones provided the room’s only light. A pile of wood lay neatly stacked off to the side. A woman sat in front of the fire, her legs crossed and her cloak lying beside her on the remarkably clean floor. She didn’t move or make any other indication that she was aware of our presence.
Niklas stepped forward and said something to her in a language I didn’t recognize. The woman’s silhouetted head nodded once. “Remember what I say,” he said to us. To my surprise, he turned to leave. A cold rush of air blew in as he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
The room filled with silence except from the crackling fire. Seanna folded her arms and I wondered if we should approach the elder or wait until we were invited. I found it odd that I looked to her for what to do. I barely knew the girl. In fact, I didn’t know her at all. I knew I shouldn’t trust her in any capacity whatsoever. She was the reason I was there with a blood-crusted head, nearly frozen to death, and waiting to hear what our punishment would be for trespassing on a mountain I had no idea I was trespassing on until being lead to that spot by armed behemoths. But as I looked at her face in the flickering light, I remembered my dream. I remembered the look in her eyes as she captured my attention from deep within the storm of hate that flowed from the crowd. I remembered the calm it gave me. I felt the same sensation seeping into me as I looked at her. I remembered…what? I knew there was something I should remember from the dream, something about the crowd around Seanna. The blur of people wavered and spun in my memory.
My thoughts were interrupted by Aoife stepping forward. She ignored the woman sitting on the floor and stopped as close to the flames as she dared without catching herself on fire. She stood facing the them, her arms folding in a shivering imitation of Seanna’s stance.
A light tinkle like chimes wisped over the room. The woman sitting on the floor brought a hand up to wave Seanna and me over. “Come. Warm yourselves.”
Was that sound her laughing? Her voice surprised me. It sounded youthful and nothing like an elderly person’s voice.
We crossed the room and I caught a better look at her in the soft glow of the firelight. It illuminated a very old and very wrinkled face. Her skin, dark, spotted, and deeply lined, betrayed the long years of harsh weather. Swooping blue tattoos lined her arms and up the sides of her neck. I stared at them, following one particular line that emerged from her shirt collar. It twirled over her strong jaw and up her cheek. The lines around her bloodshot eyes deepen as she smiled at me from her place on the floor.
I realized I had been staring and dropped my gaze.
“Welcome, Gatekeeper.” Her long, silver hair fell forward, covering the tattoos on her neck as she nodded a greeting. Her eyes traveled up to the wad of cloth still stuck to my forehead and then over to Seanna. “Nashashir , welcome.” She dipped her head again.
After a moment, Seanna returned the nod.
“Please, have a sit.” The woman waved a withered hand at the floor.
Seanna sank in a fluid motion, sitting in a similar cross-legged position as the old woman. I sat down, feeling like a fish flopping on dry land after watching her. More quiet moments passed and I started to warm. The feeling in my face and extremities came back painfully. I figured that was a good sign. Pain meant blood circulation and no nerve damage. At least I hoped so.
“I am Elder Narit. The warmth of our village is welcoming you,” she said formally. “Some more than others, I am suspecting,” she added with her chime-like giggle. I found it hard to believe it came from the old woman. At any rate, she glanced meaningfully at Aoife standing by the fire. The hearth definitely welcomed Aoife. The old woman turned back to me. “Am I to continue calling you Gatekeeper, or do you have a preferring name to be known?”
I blinked at her. Her odd English confused me. I understood what she said, but she wasn’t saying it quite right and it took my rattled brain several moments to put the words in the right order to interpret them.
“Gaige…Gaige Porter,” I stammered.
“Gaige Porter. You have a look of confused and lost. I will assumed this is your first time through the gate.” She paused a moment. She stared at me with the intensity of the sun. I felt my skin start to warm from her gaze more inte
nsely than the fire. “You are a young one, indeed. What would be your business for opening the gate?”
“The gate has been open for a while,” Seanna said. Belatedly she added, “Elder.”
“Has it, Ashling?”
I looked toward Seanna, half expecting her to reply in the same way she did when Niklas questioned her. I tried to mentally prepare myself to be thrown back out into the cold, but my mind refused to compute that possibility. I scanned the room, looking for anything I could hold onto when they tried to toss me into the night. Survival instincts I never knew I had kicked into full gear.
“It has,” Seanna replied.
“Why?” A simple question from the Elder.
A flash of annoyance crossed Seanna’s face. “Lortmor’s doing, we suspect.”
The old woman nodded once. “A devil of a man. What business have you bringing the Gatekeeper through and upon Jo-Shar lands? He could closing the gate from his side and be done with it.”
“Lortmor has spies on his world now. Shapeshifters.”
“He is seeking the magic there.” Elder Narit nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “That still is not explaining why you brought him here.”
“For his own protection. He is too exposed on his world. Untrained and weak,” she added after a pause.
“Hey,” I complained. Weak?
“We figured he would be safer here until the spies are weeded out and the gate closed.”
The old woman nodded but remained quiet for a while. Again, the sound of the fire filled the room. The Elder tapped a finger on her thin, dry lips.
I had about a billion questions buzzing around in my head but couldn’t quite figure out where to start. “What—”
“You wondering about the Jo-Shar eyes?” Elder Narit interrupted.
I blinked, taken aback. I hadn’t realized I was staring at her eyes. I looked away. “Uh. No. Well, yeah, but—”
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 8