AWOL

by Traci Harding

  ‘Clearly, you are in paradise,’ he advised.

  ‘Frujia is far from my idea of paradise. I hate sun, I hate sand, I hate water and I HATE animals, and bugs!’ Khalid could at least guess at what planet he was being held on; the terrain was indicative of the tropical islands only found on Frujia. ‘What are you planning to do with me?’

  ‘The question is more what you will do with you?’

  Was this kid playing mind games?

  ‘But it is our intention that you learn who you really are, before you make that decision.’

  ‘I’ve been subject to some sick shit in my time.’ Khalid felt he knew the intention well enough. ‘But forcing me to decide the means of my own death —’

  ‘No,’ the guy calmly insisted he was wrong about that. ‘We are granting you the opportunity to decide on your own life.’

  While Khalid was pondering what it could possibly mean, the monkey returned with a large pinkish fruit under one arm, which she carried down onto the hammock and held up in offering. It was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen and Khalid felt himself melt a little. ‘You got that for me?’

  Karisha put the fruit down and backed away from it. Reaching out towards it, Khalid noted a bite mark on his wrist — the marks matched up to the two fang-like teeth in the monkey’s upper jaw. ‘You bit me!’ He suddenly found his anger. ‘You’re just fattening up your dinner, is that it?’

  Again he reached for the fruit, of a mind to toss it at the creature, but the monkey did not flee. The animal launched itself towards Khalid’s extended arm and clung on with all four limbs, then sank its little teeth into his arm and began suckling blood from his body.

  ‘You … little … parasite!’ Khalid tried shaking it off, but within moments the anger rushed away — he felt very light-headed and extremely calm. ‘Whoa!’ He collapsed onto the hammock once more.

  ‘Karisha is a rare breed of monkey widely known as the rainbow monkey,’ his company advised. ‘But locally, they are more aptly named the vampire, or mind-melding monkey. They tranquillise their prey with a poison that triggers happy endorphins. They are extremely sensitive to the emotions of other creatures and will attack at the first sign of fear or anger.’

  Karisha came up for air and looked to him, and all the amazing colours on her face appeared far more vibrant now. ‘She’s so beautiful …’ The revelation brought tears to his eyes. ‘Even with blood dripping from her little chin like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ his host said. ‘In case you haven’t guessed, Karisha’s here to assist with your anger management issues. She will be your constant companion and you shall feed each other.’

  Khalid drew a deep pleasurable breath; he hadn’t felt this carefree ever! ‘I love this program.’

  His entire life had been spent despising the past and plotting the future; he’d never once stopped and just experienced now, mainly because he’d never lived a moment worth cherishing. But in this instance, nothing mattered beyond just being present — comfortable, relaxed and thankful to be so. Odd that, in the hands of his enemy, he’d never felt so safe.

  As Zeven and Taren were led through the Phemorian palace in Tonissia, he in particular was receiving some very strange looks from the Valoureans guarding the secret depths of the ancient structure, where, he’d been informed, no man had ever trodden.

  At least now Zeven had been supplied with a thought scrambler and was able to drop his mental guard. Taren could have just given him his Juju back, but they did not want to draw any attention to their amulets so it was better to just run with Jalila’s solution.

  They came to a long, very large, vault-like set of doors that were heavily guarded by Valoureans. They stood their ground despite the viceroy’s approach — their eyes boring into Zeven.

  ‘Step aside,’ Jalila commanded, holding up the signet ring of Phemoria that the queen rarely took off her hand. ‘We are on the Qusay’s business.’

  Upon sighting the Qusay’s royal seal, all the Valoureans present dropped down onto one knee.

  ‘Forgive me, Viceroy Lamus, but this event is unprecedented.’ Despite her humbled stance, the guard in charge was suspicious.

  ‘If you don’t believe your own eyes, then by all means ask your superior once you have seen the Qusay’s order granted,’ Jalila suggested, before her tone became far more ominous. ‘But make me wait, and I will have you all flogged and expelled from the Valoureans.’

  Presented with that ultimatum, the guard in charge rose and stepped aside, whereupon the rest of the guard followed suit.

  Jalila moved directly to the doors and locking the seal of the Qusay’s ring into the keyhole on the doors, she turned it clockwise. There was a loud chink of metal disengaging, whereupon Jalila removed the ring and the large metal doors of the vault opened inwards to grant them entry.

  Beyond was a grand, vaulted, stone arched hallway, eons old judging from the archaic design. At the base of both sides of each arch, the pillars curved out into a plinth, hollowed out in the centre and filled with oil. These burst into flame in consecutive order down the long hall, to light the way to a similar set of metal doors at the far end of the passage.

  ‘You are to speak to no one but your superior about this event,’ Jalila advised the Valoureans as Zeven and Taren proceeded into the passage. ‘If word of this gets out to anyone, you will all be held to account.’

  Jalila followed them into the passage, leaving some very bemused and agitated Valoureans in her wake. Once the signet ring Jalila was carrying entered the passage, the doors automatically closed behind them.

  ‘How will the Qusay react when she finds out about this?’ Zeven queried the viceroy, once they were enclosed in the hallway.

  ‘She won’t find out,’ Jalila assured her. ‘The General of the Valoureans saw our ruler hand over complete authority to me this morning when she gave me this ring to carry during her convalescence. The general is under strict instructions to refer all state affairs to me.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s wrong bringing a man down here, when up until now you’ve been forbidden to do so?’ Zeven was curious about her liberal attitude.

  ‘I have always believed that the Phemoray are pure evil,’ Jalila enlightened him. ‘So any rule they made I mean to break.’

  ‘I can see we are going to get along very well.’ Taren was right with the viceroy on that count.

  ‘We should have their crown tossed in a furnace and destroyed,’ Jalila posed to test Taren’s theory, and Taren was about to agree.

  ‘No!’ Zeven stressed and both women turned to him, surprised by his protest, and he was momentarily stunned to have to explain. ‘That crown must be dispensed with in a very particular way, so that the curse can be dispelled, otherwise you may just as easily set the Phemoray free to wreak havoc wherever they like.’

  ‘And you know this how?’ Taren challenged.

  ‘You know how,’ Zeven suggested more timidly. ‘The crown needs to be kept in a safe place until the right elements come together to release the curse properly. But I am working on assembling those elements as we speak,’ he assured them both.

  Taren didn’t like taking anything on faith, and her expression and Jalila’s were most displeased.

  ‘Ladies, I believe that not only can the curse of the Phemoray be lifted, but the curse of the halfling of shadow at the same time.’ He looked Taren in the eyes to drive home the fact. ‘We have never managed to do that before.’

  ‘You know who the halfling of shadow is?’ Jalila was shocked.

  ‘I suspect,’ Zeven did not commit.

  ‘Who?’ Jalila pushed for an answer.

  ‘No offence to you, Prime Minister, but the task of seeking and dealing with that curse, fate has assigned to me. It would not do to have every secret service agency in the USS confusing the issue.’

  Clearly Jalila saw his point, and probably was regretting giving him a thought scrambler. ‘That child was an abomination!’

  Cursed from conception does
not an abomination make. Zeven wished he could express that thought aloud. ‘One might think so, but I have reason to believe that assumption may prove incorrect.’

  ‘What?’ Jalila was perplexed by his response.

  Taren knew he’d seen more of the present and immediate future than she could remember at this point in time, so she must also realise that if they handled this correctly it would be most beneficial to the outcome. ‘Considering the Phemorian prophecy about the end of the Phemoray, and the Sermetic prophecy regarding the end of the halfling of shadow, it would seem advisable to trust Zeven’s word in this matter.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Jalila’s frown lifted. ‘I didn’t imagine being rid of the Phemoray would be a simple matter. If you have knowledge as to how it can be done, then your plan is my plan.’

  The doors at the far end of the passage were opened in the same fashion as the first, but what lay beyond them came as a complete surprise to Zeven.

  They were on a balcony, overlooking a vast ancient vault that was filled with tall rows of pods, all lined up on vertical shelves like a library — only in the place of books there were unconscious women, whose faces could be seen through windows in the tops of the otherwise opaque pods.

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ Even Taren was taken aback. ‘I had no idea there were so many!’

  ‘Phemoria’s finest,’ Jalila said, sadly.

  ‘I thought you said you’d been here?’ Zeven had to wonder why Taren was so overwhelmed.

  ‘I’ve visited the celestial city that the soul-minds of these women frequent.’ Taren’s gaze drifted back to the view. ‘I knew this place existed, but …’ She slowly shook her head, lost for words for a moment. ‘What would happen if we just shut the system down?’

  Jalila’s expression became very solemn. ‘That was attempted by one of my predecessors, a long time ago. The act severed every one of them from their soul-minds and they all died instantly. The one who tried to free them was executed by the Phemoray, and they re-culled our population to re-populate their celestial city. It is theorised that only lifting the curse will return these sisters to us safely.’

  ‘Do you think they wish to come back to the physical realm?’ Zeven wondered out loud.

  ‘That is irrelevant,’ Taren cut in. ‘If these women were meant to spend their life as spirits, they would never have incarnated in the first place.’

  Jalila found her smile. ‘My sentiments exactly.’

  ‘So how do you do this?’ Zeven posed, not wanting to seem rude. ‘Will it take long? I’m on a bit of a tight schedule.’

  ‘Are you now?’ Taren chided.

  ‘Stop that,’ Zeven protested. ‘One day you will thank me, and on that day you will be very pleased not to have given me a hard time about this.’

  ‘I’m not giving you a hard time!’ Taren placed hands on hips. ‘I’m helping you, or we wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Anyone would think you were siblings, not cousins,’ Jalila noted, slipping off her shoes and proceeding barefoot.

  ‘Join me.’ Jalila moved to one of several smaller balconies that annexed off the front of the main balcony, and stood upon a round plate in the middle of it. As Taren and Zeven both went to remove their boots, Jalila advised that it was not necessary for them to do so.

  The little balcony had a bench curving beneath its balustrade and at first glance, Zeven had thought this just a decorative seating arrangement. But as they joined the viceroy, the plate beneath her feet lit up and the annex detached from the main balcony and began to hover.

  ‘Telepathic control.’ Zeven assumed Jalila was directing the module through her feet.

  Jalila smiled to confirm, before suggesting, ‘You might want to sit down?’

  ‘Good call.’ Zeven planted himself in the seat beside Taren as the little balcony began to plummet downwards into the library of capsules, before shooting off down one of the long aisles.

  After an all too brief thrill ride through the massive complex, their module slowed and, open side facing the wall of capsules, they came to hover before one in particular. ‘Lock,’ Jalila said out loud, to prevent her passengers panicking as she stepped off the control plate to approach their subject, who was the spitting image of the viceroy in their company.

  ‘Your sister,’ Taren stated what was all too obvious.

  ‘Twin sister,’ Jalila said sadly. ‘The Phemoray split us up on purpose.’

  ‘She is telepathic, like you?’ Taren supposed.

  ‘Because we were so strongly linked, we had the best chance of forming a telepathic line between the worlds, were it ever required,’ Jalila said with a good serve of spite.

  ‘And was it ever required?’ Zeven asked the question Jalila was begging to be asked.

  ‘They tested the link when they first split us up, that’s how I know it can be done. But no, not once did the Phemoray require our services in over a hundred years.’ Jalila’s voice went raspy as she looked back to her slumbering sister. ‘That abnormal apparition of spite and hatred tore us apart for a backup plan it never used, and now that indulgence shall be its undoing.’

  She placed her hands on the metal plate positioned beneath the window in the capsule and closed her eyes.

  Over the next half an hour Jalila didn’t utter a word, but Zeven witnessed the viceroy run a whole gamut of emotions. This was an odd and rare event, as Phemorian women were usually externally emotionless.

  When Jalila finally stepped away, she appeared completely exhausted, and Zeven waited for her to return to their company and be seated.

  ‘Was she able to help us?’ Zeven queried.

  Jalila drew a deep breath, appearing overwhelmed, but nodded to confirm. ‘She told me that the Old Ones are a celestial race who can still assume a solid form but rarely choose to. Our sisters in the Phemoray’s city know them as the Dropa, and have had dealings with them in the past —’

  ‘The Dropa?’ Zeven cut in, stunned by the mention. That was the name of an extra-terrestrial race that had crash landed in ancient China, until the timekeepers changed the timelines of that universe and the event never happened. But how could they have ended up here? he wondered. The Eternity Gate, perhaps?

  ‘Does that mean something to you?’ Taren queried.

  ‘It does.’ Zeven nodded. Khalid had once had a deep affinity with the last of the Dropa people on Earth, Dorje Pema, for she had been the spiritual master who had aided Khalid to self realisation. ‘I think we are definitely onto something here.’

  ‘I’m sorry to inform you, but the Dropa severed all communication with our sister city following an incident that happened during our last Qusay’s reign.’

  ‘Ah-huh.’ Zeven had suspected this. ‘The Phemoray arranged a pairing between the late Qusay and a male of the Dropa kind,’ he hypothesised, ‘just as they had many times before. That’s how psychic power became inherited through the Phemorian line. Then what happened?’

  Both women in Zeven’s company were staring at him, stunned speechless.

  ‘A son happened,’ Jalila ventured to say. ‘Our Qusay was not treated with all due respect during the conception. The prince the Dropa chose abused her in ways thought inconceivable to the Dropa. Not only did he overpower her physically, but to a point that she lost all control of her psychic sensibilities and conceived a son.’

  ‘The halfling of shadow,’ Zeven deduced.

  ‘But —’ Taren was about to query Chironjivi’s involvement, for they had always assumed Khalid was born of an evil spirit and had no earthly father.

  ‘Shh!’ Zeven didn’t want to get off track. ‘What happened to the Dropa Prince?’

  ‘He was seized and thrown in prison, and eventually went as mad as our late Qusay did. But when our sisters refused to release him, the Dropa cut all communication with us.’

  ‘Thus the next time a Phemorian Qusay needed impregnating, you were forced to look to the royal House of Sermetica.’ Zeven motioned to Taren, who was the issue from that pairing.

 
‘That’s right.’ Jalila was stunned. ‘But how could you know all of that, when even I did not?’

  ‘Ditto,’ Taren concurred.

  ‘Where is the Dropa Prince now?’ Zeven sidestepped the query and remained focused on Jalila.

  ‘Still in prison, or dead, I suspect,’ Jalila outlined the only two options.

  ‘We need to find him,’ Zeven stated in no uncertain terms. ‘He has been wrongly incarcerated and I can prove it.’

  Jalila gasped, Taren did not. ‘I believe I understand Zeven’s reasoning here, and he is absolutely correct.’

  ‘If he is still alive,’ Zeven instructed, ‘we need to repair him, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.’

  ‘How?’ Jalila felt the request impossible.

  ‘You find him, clean him up, and we shall take care of the rest,’ Zeven advised.

  ‘We?’ Taren noted her inclusion in his plan.

  ‘If you could get Ringbalin to pay him a visit, that would help a lot,’ Zeven said. ‘Then Telmo and I can take it from there.’

  ‘Okay,’ Taren agreed warily.

  ‘Excellent.’ Zeven stood. ‘I have to get moving, but I’ll be back in touch soon.’

  ‘Be careful.’ Taren raised half a grin, seeming more inclined towards trusting him.

  ‘Don’t do anything with the crown for now.’ Zeven made them both swear. ‘We need to get this right this time, ’cause it’s our last shot at this.’

  Taren nodded, understanding his meaning.

  ‘And if your mother decides to have a family dinner party, delay it until I’ve assembled all the elements we need to dispose of these curses,’ Zeven cautioned.

  Taren gaped at the suggestion. ‘That’s hardly likely —’

  ‘In fact,’ Zeven spoke over her, ‘ensure my daughter, Ray, does not visit Phemoria before the said event either.’

  Taren frowned as she fathomed his reasoning. ‘Ray has a part to play in all of this?’

  Zeven grinned, and at the risk of taking the module he was standing on with him — and the two ladies besides — he decided to jump ship.