The Gatekeeper Trilogy

by Scott Ferrell

  I dipped my head and turned my attention to my bowl. I was probably eating too much considering the amount of food I had eaten since arriving on this cursed planet, but I couldn’t stop myself. The mush was the best thing I had since going through the gateway and hunger won out against common sense. I scrapped out the last of the food at the bottom of the bowl with two fingers and savored it as long as I could. I glanced at the food barrel but resisted asking for more.

  When all four bowls were empty, Awar took them away and returned with tin cups full of water. I gulped mine down. It had a strong metallic taste, but it was the best water I had ever tasted at that moment. Thirst had a way of overcoming worry if water is clean or not.

  “This is a luxury here, you know.” Tias held up his tin cup. “Metal isn’t easy to come by for us. Daresh hoards most of it to keep for his own uses or to trade. Funny thing is, these cups were produced right here in our lovely city of Delicia. We got them from a trader passing through a few years back who picked them up on the other side of Alisundi. Small world.” He chuckled to himself and after a moment’s pause, added, “We think he was picked up off the street and taken to that damned hill before he could move on.”

  Awar brought me a refill of water. She seemed to enjoy serving us. She returned with the cup and a genuine smile of pride on her face. She didn’t seem phased by being stuck underground at all. It was the life she was accustomed to and she enjoyed helping. She ran back and forth, her bare feet slapping on the cold stone floor. Her shoes sat next to her father’s chair.

  It would have been hard to tell the conditions she had to live in just by looking at her. She was used to it, the only life she had known. When everybody in our little group told her they didn’t need anything else, she carried our dishes to a barrel of water.

  “So, what now?” Seanna asked, her voice a bit strained, clearly unhappy with being stuck there.

  “What do you mean?” Tias replied.

  “You can’t really expect us to join your little uprising, no matter what we may have seen. It means nothing to us.” Leave it to Seanna to put something so bluntly, however true. “We need to get out of Delicia as soon as possible.”

  “Of course.”

  “I think we should leave when night falls,” I suggested.

  “It won’t work.” Tias picked at something in his teeth with a dirty fingernail.

  “Why?”

  “The city will be crawling with soldiers all night.”

  “What other choice do we have?” Seanna asked. “Sneaking out under the cover of darkness is the best.”

  Tias shook his head. “Won’t work,” he repeated. “Wait for early morning, just before first light. There will be a shift change. If you move just before that, you’ll only have to evade those who have been up all night looking for you three.”

  “We don’t have until morning,” Seanna said, gripping the arms of her chair harder.

  “It’ll have to do.”

  Her eyes narrowed and hardened. “We leave at full dark.”

  “Then you’ll receive no help from us.” Tias shrugged, stood and walked over to help his daughter clean the dishes.

  “What was that about?” Aoife asked.

  “We can’t wait,” Seanna snapped. “We’ve waited too long already. We have to get back to the Mother Tree.”

  “The Mother Tree?” I asked. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “We just have to.” She clenched her jaw, a vein rising up the side of her neck. “I’ll go without you if I have to.”

  “Fine by me,” Aoife said.

  “What’s going on, Seanna?” I asked.

  Seanna looked at me, then to Aoife. I watched her jaw work. Clearly, she didn’t want to say anything in front of Aoife.

  “Fine,” Aoife said, getting the hint. “I don’t really care, anyways. I just want off this stupid planet. If these people can help me do that, then I’m willing to listen.” She stood and followed Tias.

  “Seanna?” I prompted.

  She let the tension melt from her body. It wasn’t her shifting into a more relaxed position in her chair. It was more like a balloon partially deflating in a rush. She slumped in the seat, her hands hanging limply over the arm rests.

  “Do you think I wanted to do all this to you, Gaige?” She brought her hands up to her lap and looked at them, flicking her short fingernails against each other.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

  “I didn’t. I really didn’t. I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Daresh,” she said as if that was answer enough.

  It wasn’t.

  “What about him?”

  “I had to do it because of him.”

  “That much I worked out on my own. How about a little more explanation?”

  “I just had to. I don’t know where to start.”

  “The beginning is usually the best place,” I suggested.

  She took in a long breath, letting it out slowly. “Yeah, okay.” She twisted her hands together on her lap. “A few fortnights ago, Daresh showed up in our forest.” She huffed. “Imagine that vile creature defiling our forest with his footsteps.” She tensed, her eyes distant. But, she deflated again. “We should have killed him where he stood, but that’s not our way. The Ashling way,” she said with a glance at me as if I needed that clarification.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “What do Ashlings have to do with me?”

  “We have access to magics not many on Alisundi have, mainly the ability to shift our shapes,” she indicated her form. “Although, it’s not a common talent. I’m the only one of my clan who can, as a matter of fact.” There was no bragging in that, only a simple statement.

  “So, you agreed to bring me here just like that? Because you could?” My voice rose with the question.

  “No, of course not. We had to agree to it. Daresh had found magic of his own. Dirty, filthy magic!”

  “What was it?”

  “Many, many generations ago, a war broke out among the Ashling tree clans. A magic-wielder from another clan sought to give his clan a quick victory to end the war. You have to understand, we aren’t a warrior people, us Ashlings. Most of us. We keep to ourselves, content in living our lives in our forests. This Ashling, he wanted it all to end. He traveled here, to Delicia and purchased a blade, a simple thing with a wicked point. We don’t have metal in our forests.” Seanna shook her head, closing her eyes. “What he did to that blade.” She struggled to find the words. “What he did, it was unforgivable. We’re sure he was quite mad.”

  “What did he do?”

  “After purchasing the blade, he traveled to Sholto’s swamp. It was ruled by another of his kind at the time, of course, but the Ashling was kicked out before he could perform the magics he intended to do. So, he traveled half-way across Alisundi until he found a swamp inhabited by lizardmen with hearts as black as that blade was to become. The magic he performed there was as black as a sky stripped of all stars and moons.”

  “What did he do?” I asked again. I leaned in as she spoke, my heart thumping in my chest. Enthralled, but dreading the answer.

  “What was the main thing you noticed about Sholto’s swamp?”

  I thought a moment, visualizing our trek through the area. “Everything was wet,” I said before adding, “and dead.”

  Seanna nodded. “Dead. Death. Diseased. That’s what he did to that blade. He embedded it with death.”

  “But it was just one knife, what could have made it so horribly bad?” I asked.

  “Think about it, Gaige,” she said, her voice laced with impatience. “What’s dead in those swamps? Not the lizardmen. Not the snakes or bugs or frogs.”

  “The trees,” I said.

  “The trees,” she confirmed. “Daresh had discovered the location of our Mother Tree. The Sky and Grounds only know how, but he did. If we didn’t do what he wanted, he had his people, if they could
be called that, his Aweng , ready to attack our Mother Tree. We would defend Her to the last Ashling, of course, but one prick with that blade, that’s all it would take to kill Her.”

  “Kill the Mother Tree, the forest dies,” I added.

  Seanna nodded. “What choice did we have? We had no concern about one Earthling, even if he is a Gatekeeper. We cared not if Daresh wanted to invade another world as long as he left us alone. She glanced at me with a look I interpreted as guilt.

  “So, you brought me here to save your people?” I asked quietly.

  “My clan, my forest is everything to me.”

  “Why did you help us escape? Why put your people and forest in danger?”

  “I had my doubts even as we travelled here. What is the cost of one life? I don’t know, but I couldn’t look at you as just another Earthling, a human just like Daresh. What kind of creature would I be if I put another’s life in danger to save my own kind? That makes us no better than Daresh,” she said. “By the time I figured that out, it was too late.

  A light flicked on in my head. “That’s what Kall meant back in that tunnel when he said people have already been dispatched even before you broke us out! They’re already on their way to the Mother Tree.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. She nodded.

  “Can we get there in time to stop them? Or warn your people? Or do something?” I asked with a hint of sympathetic desperation in my voice.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I need to try. I have to do something besides sit here waiting for Daresh to give up looking for you, which he won’t.”

  “I’ll help if I can.”

  “Why?” she asked, looking at me fully for the first time since the conversation started. “After I betrayed you? After you sat with my parents and they acted like you were an esteemed guest when they knew where I was taking you all along?”

  I thought for a moment. Why, indeed? Maybe I felt the need to do something that meant something. What had I done in my life besides feel sorry for myself? Maybe it was time I realized there was more to the universe than what resided in my little bubble. Besides, wouldn’t refusing to help put me on the same level as Daresh? What is the cost of one life? What is the cost of hundreds, if not thousands?

  “She cares deeply for you, you know?” Seanna said when I didn’t answer her question.

  “What? Who?”

  “Aoife,” she said, nodding in the other girl’s direction.

  I turned in time to see Aoife turn back to Tias to continue a conversation. She had been looking our way until I glanced at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, don’t be so thick! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how she looks at you with those gold eyes of hers. It doesn’t take somebody with her ability to see she likes you.”

  “I guess I have noticed,” I said. “We’re just friends, though. We’ve known each other forever.” Five years can feel like forever for a fifteen-year-old, just for the record.

  Seanna rolled her eyes.

  I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the odd turn of conversation, so I brought it back to the more important topic. “Maybe Tias can help. With getting word to the Ashlings, I mean.”

  She sighed. “Maybe,” she said softly.

  “It’s worth it to at least listen, don’t you think?” I said.

  Seanna folded her arms and shrugged a slight shoulder. “Unless he has some way to fly, I don’t have a second to wait. If he truly sent men as soon as I delivered, they have a full day’s head start. More.”

  A day ? Had it only been that long since we made the climb up to the Circle of Atlas?

  “If that’s true, what will leaving now accomplish? They have the head start and we’d have to find a way through the city while avoiding Daresh’s men. I don’t think we could fight them all.”

  She opened her mouth but closed it and drew her brows together.

  It took me a second to realize what had halted her. I turned to look at a tiny bell ringing in the far corner. Its sound was barely audible, but it was enough to gain the attention of everyone in the room. All heads turned to the bell before swiveling to Tias.

  “Men are in the store above,” he said.

  9

  I SAW YOUR DREAM

  Tias lead us to the adjourning room and conversed with one of the men in the wooden boxes. He glanced our direction, his face grim, before he nodded once and walked over to us.

  “Just as I feared,” he said in hushed tones. “Daresh’s men are upstairs. They’re crawling all over the place, actually. This was the last area you lot were seen, so they’re searching every building.”

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Leaving will only land you right into their hands.”

  “But, they’ll find this place.”

  “Have a little faith, my friend.” He put a hand on my shoulder. We took great care in constructing these hideouts. A few men aren’t going to find the entrances.”

  I glanced at Aoife. She shrugged, worry in her eyes.

  “Even if they do manage to find them,” Tias went on, “getting them open isn’t as easy as I made it look.”

  “All you did was push on them,” Aoife said.

  Tias shook his head and smiled. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “In the unlikely event they do find and open the doorways, they still have to get through this room.” He waved at the men in the boxes. “Not so easy, I think.”

  I don’t think I was completely mollified, but we didn’t really have any other choice. It wasn’t like we could run up to the store and hope we can get past the men currently crawling through it. That would get us caught or killed.

  “We have other ways out of here,” he said as if reading my thoughts. “But, we must wait until night or you won’t last ten minutes out there.”

  I nodded. I agreed with him, but I worried about Seanna’s clan. We needed to be smart about our escape, but that could lead to the destruction of her family and their forest. Were our lives really worth that? Then again, if we tried to escape now and were caught, the Ashling’s forest would still be destroyed. We were snagged in a Catch-22. I didn’t really see any option other than to sit tight and trust Tias.

  “Trust me, I’m your best bet,” Tias beamed.

  I wondered again if he could read minds. That was something I wasn’t comfortable with. It was bad enough Aoife could see my emotions. Having my thoughts laid out for somebody to read like a book terrified me. I tried to divert my mind to other things. I mentally ran through me football playbook.

  “Gaige,” Aoife hissed.

  “Huh?”

  She pointed at the ceiling above us. At first, I didn’t know what she was trying to get at, but it sunk in pretty quickly. The room had lapsed into silence and we could hear the men upstairs. Their thick boots thumped as they crossed the shop. The sounds were punctuated by an occasional crash.

  “There’s not much up there,” Tias whispered. “Nothing of real value, anyway. We left just enough stuff to make the store look abandoned. No skin off our bones.”

  “Should we go back into the other room?” I asked.

  Tias held up a hand to stall. We listened to the thumping and crashing for another few minutes until it ceased abruptly. I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. It wasn’t until then that I thought of how close we had come to being caught again. We had all stood in that room, putting complete faith in Tias and his secrete passages.

  “Come on. I have something to show you,” he said.

  I shared a look with Aoife, who just shrugged, before we followed him across the room with Seanna. Tias stood in front of the wall and placed his right hand on a section directly in front of him. He placed his other hand on a stone just to the left. Tias’ fingers on his left hand rotated in a circle when he pushed with his right and a door popped open. I had my doubts when the man had said opening the secr
et passages wasn’t as easy as I thought, but I would have never known it was there until I saw the dark passage beyond.

  “We should probably be as quiet as possible,” the man said.

  We followed him through the door, which lead to steep stairs. My injured shin burned just looking at them.

  “Where do these go?” Aoife asked.

  “Up,” he replied.

  He closed the door behind us and climbed the stairs in the dark. The steps were narrow with barely enough room for half my foot, but at least they were dry. I followed him up with the girls behind me. There was just enough light to make out the man’s outline, so I didn’t bump into him when we reached the top. He did something with his hands and another door clicked open, letting in a beam of sunlight powerful enough to make me blink and squint my eyes. We followed his lead and squatted as we shuffled through the door onto the shop’s second story roof.

  Tias turned to us after closing the door. He put a finger to his lips, then motioned for us to stay low. We shuffled across the roof to a low wall that ringed the edge and squatted there. Seanna gave him a what are we doing here look, but he just repeated the quiet gesture.

  The sun was going down somewhere I couldn’t see. The sky off to what I presumed to be the west deepened to brilliant shades of purple and orange. Even with the deepening shadows of the coming twilight, I felt exposed on that roof. It felt like a soldier would appear on one of the taller buildings at any moment and spot us. Would they attempt to capture us or just kill us on sight?

  Tias seemed unfazed by the prospect. He peeked over the side, then motioned for us to do the same. What I saw made my heart drop. Daresh’s men crawled over the city. They were everywhere, banging down every door, searching every crack we might be hiding in, and a group of them lead a bewildered looking older man none too gently down the street.

  We were only out there for a minute at the most, but it was long enough for us to get the idea. More specifically, Seanna. If we tried to leave now, we’d be captured within moments.

  Tias tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for us to follow him back to the door. Even though I came through it, I don’t think I would have been able to find it. There was an actual door that I assumed went down to the shop, but Tias pushed on the wall off to the left of it.