HOME (The Portal Series, Book 3)
Page 19
Today Affron and Larry had ridden since dawn without seeing anyone or anything. Now the sun was low on the horizon behind them, and the wind was picking up. “We’ll have to camp soon,” he said to Larry. “The horses are tired.”
“I suppose,” Larry muttered. Larry always wanted to keep going.
They stopped at sunset next to a brook. Larry took care of the horses. Affron gathered kindling and started a fire. Finally they sat by the fire, ate bread and cheese, sipped bitter ale, and looked up at the stars and the quarter moon low in the sky. It was lovely here, wherever they were.
“Tulf isn’t far,” Larry said finally.
“I think you’re probably right.”
“It may not be a place,” Larry went on. “It could be a people, a tribe.”
“Will they be any more talkative than anyone else on this world?”
Larry smiled. “They will tell us what we need to know.”
Affron smiled back at him. Larry was no longer a boy. He was tall and strong and capable. He had done the impossible—as Affron himself had done. “We have come a long way, you and I,” Affron said.
Larry nodded. “From a park in Glanbury. In a world with gigantic cell phones. You were giving a sermon. Aimed at me, I thought.”
“I used to love giving such sermons,” Affron replied. “A waste of time, of course. We were supposed to be gathering ideas for ruling Terra. Always looking for ways to improve the lives of our subjects. But really, no one did that anymore. We knew what worked and what didn’t. So I used to go to worlds and say what I was thinking, to whoever would listen.”
“I listened.”
“Yes. An audience of one.”
Larry lay back and looked up at the sky. “Is that the same moon?” he asked. “Or does it change as the Earth changes?”
“Everything changes,” Affron replied. “Or can change. The moon, the sun, rocks, birds, history. There appear to be certain pathways…universes that are more probable than others. That is what I’m told, anyway. I never tried to understand such things.”
“I tried, after I went home. I studied; I read books. But the multiverse never seemed to make much sense. At least to people in my world.”
“Your world is just beginning to understand such things. Other worlds are much farther along. But none have reached final understanding, complete knowledge. That we know of. Truth is always just out of reach. Sometimes much is learned, and then it is forgotten, or misunderstood, or simply disbelieved. Progress is never certain.”
Larry was silent. Clouds scudded across the moon. Leaves rustled in the wind. The two of them were utterly alone.
“What do you think is happening on Terra?” Larry asked finally.
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“You have family there. Friends. Don’t you miss them?”
Affron pondered the question. “I should. But this is something that happens to viators. We are taken from our families at a young age. And then we wander too far. We experience too much. We touch the inexpressible immensity of existence. It changes you.”
“But your home is your home,” Larry said. “Your family is your family.”
“Of course. But you found another family on Carmody’s world, did you not? The same but different.”
“Not entirely the same.”
“True. But everything, everyone is always changing. The moon, the stars. You are not the same person that you were when you first stepped into Via. And neither am I.”
Larry fell silent. “And now it is time for a new adventure,” he murmured finally.
Affron nodded. “And now we change again.”
They fell asleep then, and arose at first light. They splashed water from the brook onto their faces, ate more of the bread and cheese, and set out.
They rode through the day. And late in the afternoon they reached a village—little more than a collection of huts, really. A sentry must already have spotted them and brought word, because all the villagers were standing outside their huts, as if waiting to be inspected. They were different from the others Affron and Larry had met on this world: small but thickset, with long black hair and dark eyes. They wore woolen tunics and leather leggings.
Affron and Larry dismounted. A young man ran forward to take care of their horses. An older man walked up to them. His eyes were fixed on the ground, as if he were afraid to look at these powerful strangers. He wore an odd headdress made out of colored feathers. Affron assumed he was the chieftain.
“Tulf?” Larry asked.
The chieftain raised his eyes, smiled, and gestured to the people, the village. “Tulf.”
The chieftain then turned and gestured to Affron and Larry to follow him. He led them to the largest building in the village, which turned out to be a single room in the middle of which was a huge fireplace. The smoke from the fire escaped through a wide circular hole in the ceiling; over the fire a pig was roasting.
“They seem to have been expecting us,” Larry said.
Affron nodded.
The chieftain gestured for them to sit on thick woolen rugs near the fire. He sat next to them, and it looked like the entire village crowded in behind and around them.
Women approached with their eyes lowered, offering bowls fill with a dark liquid. Affron took his bowl, raised it to the women in thanks and took a sip. It was some kind of fermented grain—hot, earthy, and very powerful. He set the bowl down. He noticed that Larry had done the same thing. “Drinking the whole thing would probably kill us,” Affron murmured to him.
Then the feast began in earnest. Everyone drank from the bowls. Serving women carved up the pig and heaped up plates of meat and vegetables on polished wooden platters, which they placed around the fire. People reached out and took what they wanted from the platters. At first everyone was silent, but as the feast progressed people began talking and laughing, and finally singing. Their language was harsh and guttural, but Affron found their singing surprisingly tuneful.
After the singing stopped half a dozen young girls came forward and performed an intricate dance to the accompaniment of drums and an odd-sounding three-stringed instrument. They were charmingly serious as they worked their way through the steps. At the end everyone cheered. Affron and Larry cheered too, which seemed to delight the children, who broke into smiles and hurried off.
And that seemed to be the end of the entertainment. The drinking continued. The fire died down. Men and women settled back on the woolen rugs; some were already starting to snore. Finally Affron left the building to pee. Night had fallen; he couldn’t make out a latrine or an outhouse, so he simply relieved himself against a nearby tree. When he had finished, he heard a girl’s voice, speaking softly in the darkness nearby. He turned. He could make her out by the starlight. She was standing by herself, facing him. Was she speaking to him?
She repeated what she had said.
“I don’t understand,” Affron replied. “I don’t speak your language.”
She said something else.
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Est non procul,” she said this time.
And that he did understand. Latin. It’s not far.
“What?” he asked in Latin. “What is not far?”
She paused for a moment, as if considering. “Hoc quaeretis,” she said finally. The thing you seek.
“Can you take us there?”
“Possum.” I can.
And then she ran away into the night.
Affron thought about following her, but instead went back inside the building. Inside, Larry was already asleep; he had drunk more of the liquor than he should have. Affron spotted the chieftain, who was sitting against a wall in the shadows of the hut. He couldn’t tell if the man was staring at him. Did he know about the girl? Had he sent the girl?
Affron lay down next to Larry and closed his eyes. It was always difficult understanding other worlds, other societies. You think they are doing you a favor, and it turns out they are trying to ki
ll you. Or vice versa. But he thought—he hoped—that he understood what was happening here. A ritual of sorts. A ritual that had taken place before. Many times? He didn’t think so. But often enough, perhaps, for that girl to learn Latin. And to learn how to take them where they wanted to go.
Affron gave up pondering the situation finally and drifted off to sleep.
When he awoke, Larry was gone from the hut, as was the chieftain. Affron made his way outside through the sleeping bodies. It was just after dawn. Larry was standing in the narrow path that led through the center of the village. He was staring off into the distance, to where the sun was just peeking over craggy highlands.
“There,” he murmured, gesturing at the highlands.
“I spoke to a girl last night,” Affron replied. “In Latin. She knows the way.”
Larry nodded, as if this didn’t surprise him. “Then let’s find her.”
They walked through the village. Smoke was rising through the holes in the roofs of the huts. A baby cried. A dog barked. People who saw them looked down as they passed.
The girl was waiting in the corral where the horses were kept; the chieftain was with her. Affron hadn’t seen her clearly in the night, but he knew it was her. She was slighter than other women in the village, but with the same black hair, and her dark eyes radiated intelligence. She had reached womanhood, but just barely, with small breasts visible under her tunic.
“Can she come with us?” Affron asked the chieftain in Latin.
The girl spoke to the chieftain, who made a brief gesture towards the highlands in reply.
“Possum,” the girl said to Affron.
“Eamus,” Larry said. Let’s go. He went over to his horse.
The girl raised a hand. “Relinque equos,” she said. Leave the horses behind.
“What about our food? Our supplies?” Larry asked in Latin.
The girl shook her head. “Et relinque.” Leave them also.
Larry looked at Affron, who nodded. Then the chieftain dropped to his knees in front of the two of them, murmuring something that the girl didn’t bother to translate.
“Gratias tibi,” Affron said. Thank you.
The chieftain seemed to understand.
The girl ignored him and strode out of the corral. Affron and Larry hurriedly followed.
She headed east along the rutted path, towards the rising sun. Affron tried asking her questions: What is your name? Where are we going? How do you know Latin? But she didn’t respond. Larry was silent.
What awaited them up ahead? Affron didn’t know, but he remembered when he was back on Terra, and Scotia pulled him ever northward until finally he spotted a barren hill, indistinguishable from a hundred others, and thought: here. Why?
The girl was moving quickly. They could have travelled much faster on horseback. But of course horses could not clamber up the kind of hill he had been drawn to in Scotia.
The morning was chilly, but the exertion quickly warmed him. He wanted to go faster, he realized; he wanted to run. All his life, he thought, had been pointed towards this. “It is finally happening,” he said to Larry.
Larry didn’t respond, but Affron knew that he, too, was excited.
They travelled several hours without a break. Affron was tired and hungry. It was beginning to seem like a mistake to have left their food behind. The path had disappeared, and now they trudged through high grass and crossed a narrow stream.
“Mox,” the girl muttered. Soon.
They made their way through boulder-strewn ground until they reached a long rocky slope heading up to a plateau. A hawk soared overhead. The sun was high in the sky now. The girl gestured up to the top of the slope. “Ibi.” There.
They stood in silence for a moment, and then the girl abruptly said, “Eo.” I go. And she turned as if to leave them.
“Wait!” Affron commanded.
She turned back obediently.
“What can we do for you? What can we give you?”
The girl paused, and then she knelt in front of them as the chieftain had done. “Benedictio tua,” she whispered. Your blessing.
Affron looked at Larry, who shrugged his agreement. Affron reached down and put his hand on her head; then Larry did the same. The girl seemed to shiver beneath their touch. Finally they removed their hands, and she stood up. “Gratias tibi,” she murmured, and then she walked quickly away.
They watched her go, and then they turned and started up the slope.
It was hard work. Affron was exhausted now. Larry was younger, but even he looked weary as they scrambled upwards, grasping on to stunted trees and seeking footholds among the loose rocks.
Occasionally Affron spotted a footprint in the ground. Others had scrambled up this slope before them.
Finally they made it to the top. Affron stood up; his knees were scraped and sore. He looked around. They were on a wide, barren, windy plain.
Empty. Nothing. His body ached. The wind whipped against his face.
He felt a stab of disappointment, but then he recalled the hill in Scotia. Empty. Nothing. And he had built Via there. He had left Terra from there, leaving his Via behind for Larry.
“It’s here,” Larry said.
They stood up and walked forward. Nothing.
Until suddenly there was something—a force pushing back against them. Not the emptiness of Via, into which you could step and then travel to another world. Just a transparent nothingness, with no way in or through.
They followed it for fifty paces perhaps, probing it, pushing against it. Whatever it was, it was far larger than Via.
Finally they stopped and stared into the nothingness. “What do we do?” Affron asked.
Larry didn’t reply for a long time, and then he said, “I know how to get in.”
Thirty
Decius
Decius walked out of the meeting in the afternoon, worried and discouraged. The rebel general, whose name was Hippolytus, and the admiral, Eukippus, seemed unable to agree on anything, starting with who had ultimate command of the rebellion. And meanwhile the days passed and the soldiers grew restless. They could not stay in this port town forever. They needed to attack before winter. They needed to defeat the Gallians before the Gallians figured out how to defeat them. The strategy was obvious to Decius, but they were dismissive of his ideas. What battles had he ever won?
He strode across the plaza, heading to his cramped room in an inn on the waterfront.
It was then that he heard the woman calling out to him from the other side of the plaza.
He stopped and looked at her as she approached. She was young, with blond hair and gray, intelligent eyes. “Yes?”
“My lord, are you Governor Decius?”
She spoke Latin with a slight accent that he couldn’t quite place. “I am,” he replied, “although I am a governor no more. Who are you?”
“A friend of the viator Affron, whom I think you know.”
He stared at her, puzzled. She met his gaze. “How do you know Affron?” he demanded.
“May we speak in private?” she asked, gesturing at the people passing by.
He shrugged. “Come, then,” he replied. He led her to the inn. His room was on the third floor; in it, Corscius was writing at a table. “Please leave us for a while,” Decius said to him.
Corscius glanced at her with curiosity and then stood, bowed, and left without a word.
Decius took his place at the table and pushed the papers aside. She sat opposite him. The room was hot, but at least a cool breeze blew in through the open window. They were in Misenum, a port town on the great sea. It was the right place for the rebels to be, if they could decide what to do next.
“Your name?” he asked.
“Palta, my lord.”
“And how do you know Affron?”
“I was one of the people Tirelius was seeking last year, along with Affron and the others. The ones who escaped from Urbis.”
“You and Valleia and the boy,” he said.
The tale was told so simply, so quickly. Here, sitting opposite him, was the girl who had helped the Gallians and then disappeared. Had he heard her name before? He didn’t think so. “Why did you come to Misenum?” he asked.
“I helped to destroy the priests,” she explained. “And that was a mistake. Now I want to destroy the Gallians. So I need to join your rebellion.”
Decius recalled Liber’s obsession with Affron. Had he tried to track him down and kill him? “We knew that Affron went to Scotia,” he said. “The Gallians may have sent someone to find him. So he could be in danger.”
“He is not in danger,” Palta replied. “Not from the Gallians, at any rate. And they did send someone. I killed him. With this.”
She reached into the pocket of her robe and took out a small metal object that gleamed with a strange blue light.
He stared at it.
“You know what it is, I think,” she said.
“I do,” he said. And it terrified him. She was young, but her gaze told him that she was capable of using the thing. He thought of her accent. “You are not from Terra,” he said finally. “You and the boy.”
“That’s right—I see that you understand such matters. In fact, I’m from the world where the priests obtained these awful weapons. But that doesn’t matter. I live here now. I want to help Terra. I want to help the rebellion.”
“But you helped the Gallians,” he pointed out. “Why have you changed your mind about them?”