Another Kingdom

by Andrew Klavan

  I felt alone and hopeless. The loss—and the injustice of the loss—and the rage at the injustice—rose up out of my heart and curled around my throat and closed around my throat like an iron ring, strangling me on my own hot passion for revenge.

  I climbed to my feet, my sword gripped hard in my hand.

  “Iron!” I shouted through the noise of melee. “Iron!”

  My eyes searched the night for him, but he had escaped through the mist. I looked the way he had gone. He couldn’t have gotten far. I would hunt him down. I would kill him. I would kill him if it cost me everything I had. I took a step, a single step, in his direction.

  And suddenly my black stallion raced in front of me, rearing, blocking my path.

  Maud balanced on the pommel of the saddle, sparkling, as the horse’s hooves kicked at the air.

  “Get out of my way!” I shouted at her.

  “Mount! We have to go!” the mutant rodent shouted back.

  “I’m going after Iron. I’m going to kill him!”

  “You can’t. You can’t defeat Curtin. He’s too strong.”

  “I don’t care! Get out of my way!”

  The horse’s hooves came down. The beast snorted, its head twisting, its eyes rolling.

  “There’s no time for this!” the rodent said. “Our armies are at the walls. The gates are open. But we can’t hold the position much longer!”

  I stood there panting with anger and frustration. The raw force of my rage was spurring me to vengeance, but Maud’s words held me where I was.

  “The only way you can have your revenge,” she said, “is to bring the talisman to the emperor.”

  I looked up at her, furious. I wanted blood. Not later. Now. Not through the emperor. By my own hand.

  But even as I tried to convince myself to brush past the stallion and go after Lord Iron, a thought was forming in my mind.

  The mutant rodent spoke the thought aloud, the very words. “It’s what she wanted. You know it is.”

  I stared into the night. It was true. It was what she wanted. Not just revenge. The queen restored. The kingdom restored.

  I let out a ragged, tremulous breath. Slowly, as if against my own will, I fitted my sword back in its sheath. At once, sword and sheath and armor all melted away. My helmet too. Maud had the good manners to avert her gaze from my tearstained face.

  I grabbed hold of the saddle, stepped into the stirrup, and swung up into the seat. My heart was in ashes.

  “Ride,” I said.

  We raced away through the darkness.

  AFTERWARD, I COULD not remember the journey to the city gates. Even as I rode, I had only the vaguest sense of the wind on my face and the fields before me and the streets of the city rising up around me. Mostly, I was aware of the pain and rage inside me. That last look Lady Betheray had given me. The weight of her dead body in my arms. The living warmth of her naked flesh only hours before. All that—the pain, the memories—was far more real to me than the passing scenery.

  Then I heard Maud say, “Whoa. Whoa.”

  The stallion slowed to a stop. I looked around as if coming out of a dream. Up ahead of me, I saw the gates and the battle for the gates, ten or fifteen centaurs holding off half an army of men, as more and more soldiers poured into the fight every minute. I saw the colored lights of fairies swarming around the winches to protect the peak-capped trolls who were keeping the gate open. I saw the soldiers slashing at the fairy lights with their swords.

  “Look at me,” said Maud.

  I looked. The mutant rodent’s bizarrely human, bizarrely female face was set and grim.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I have to organize the retreat.”

  I blinked, coming to myself. I shook my head. “But …”

  “You’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t know the way.”

  “Keep the north star on your left shoulder, then follow the rising sun across the Eleven Lands. You’ll find it.”

  I swallowed. “All right,” I said uncertainly.

  “You will. The emperor will call you to him. Just head in his direction, and he’ll bring you home.”

  “All right,” I repeated, a little more convincingly this time. Then I gazed into that strange face of hers. “Thank you for everything. You know?”

  “Yes. I know.” She turned to jump off the saddle. But she hesitated. She turned back to me. “You’re not as big a pansy as I thought you were.”

  Even in my sorrow, I laughed a little. Maud gave me a last quirky smile then leapt off into the night.

  I faced forward.

  Already, the battle for the walls was lost. The centaurs were being driven back by the soldier reinforcements. The fairy lights were faltering. The fresh soldiers were hacking their way toward where the trolls worked the winches. The gate was beginning to descend.

  “Hurry!” Maud called to me from the darkness below. “Go your way.”

  I nodded. I drew a breath. “Let wisdom reign,” I whispered.

  I spurred the stallion and charged through the falling gate.

  AND IN A vastly disorienting snap of consciousness, I found myself walking on the sidewalk outside the Hollywood police station. The world of Galiana that had been so utterly real a split second before was utterly gone.

  No. Not utterly. The grief—that was still there. The grief and the fever for revenge. A second before, I had been on fire with my mission. To find the emperor. To bring him the talisman. To call him back with his armies to overthrow Lord Iron’s council and restore Elinda to her throne. And now …

  Well, maybe Galiana was a dream of some kind—a hallucination, a symptom of insanity, it felt like it had to be something like that—but the grief, the rage, the fever for the mission—all that was real, still with me. The frustration at having been called back to Los Angeles before I could cross the Eleven Lands. The idea—the fact—that I would never see Lady Betheray again—never, neither here nor there … It was all like a cloud of darkness inside me that swallowed every lighter thought and feeling. In that moment, I felt like I would never be happy again. And how crazy would that be? To spend the rest of my life mourning for a woman—and for a kingdom—that may never have been real in the first place?

  I was walking without looking, lost in thought. I nearly stepped off the curb without noticing. A truck went speeding by me, the trailer sidewall inches from my face. I staggered back onto the sidewalk, shaking my head, coming out of my daze.

  I remembered. The last thing that had happened here. The assassin falling to his death at the construction site. The cops bearing down on me in the interrogation room. My family … Orosgo … The plainclothesman at the door …

  Get out of the city. You’re a dead man in LA. You’re a dead man anywhere they find you.

  Right. Right. I was in danger here. I scanned the dingy streets. The white walls of the buildings, the murky recesses of the storefront doorways. Gabbling knots of tourists went past me on my left and right. Cars zipped across my eyeline in front of me, their drivers hidden behind dark windshields. Was anyone watching me? Was anyone after me? Was one of these people Orosgo’s agent, sent to find me? Kill me?

  Confused, I stood where I was. My head was filled with thoughts that all seemed to crash into each other like a pileup on the freeway. What was I supposed to do now? Run? Hide? Find the emperor. No, find my sister, Riley. Destroy Lord Iron, or defeat Orosgo. And what about Jane … Jane Janeway? If I became a fugitive, how would I ever get back to her? And if I did get back to her, would I still be able to have feelings for her, or would there only be this deadening sadness in me and nothing else from now on to forever?

  Was this going to be my life? This grief, this fear, this confusion? Was this the rest of my life? No dreams, no home, no friends, no family, no career. Just nights on the run and days on end tangled in the web of a conspiracy I didn’t even understand. A mad billionaire after me. An evil wizard. A conniving lord. My parents. My brother …

  As I stood the
re, overwhelmed, someone bumped into me from behind, a shoulder hitting my shoulder, jarring me. I looked up in time to see the figure of a woman heading away from me along the sidewalk. She was wearing jeans and a light khaki jacket against the autumn chill. Her golden-blond hair hung straight down past her shoulder blades. In my dazed state, it was a moment before I realized she had slipped something into my hand.

  I lifted my hand and looked down at it. A noise came up out of my throat.

  The locket! I was holding the locket! Betheray’s locket. The one she wore around her neck. There was no mistaking it. It was the very one with the picture inside, the portrait of Queen Elinda, Queen Elinda who was also …

  I looked up, looked for the woman. She was just turning the corner. As she did, she glanced back at me.

  Ellen Evermore!

  The words came back to me—the words of Magdala, the forest queen, speaking of Lord Iron and his fellow conspirators: “They tried to kill the wisest queen in all the world … They would have succeeded too, if my husband had not used his magic to transport her to another kingdom.”

  Another kingdom: right here!

  “Wait!” I shouted.

  I ran after her. I reached the intersection, turned. A little wave of tourists washed over me, surrounded me. I looked over their heads along the sidewalk, searching the crowd. I did not see the gold-haired woman anywhere.

  Where did she go? Baffled, I looked around me.

  And suddenly, with a screech of tires, a long-snouted silver Camaro pulled up at the curb and stopped short, the passenger door right beside me.

  “Get in!” the driver screamed frantically. He shoved the door open toward me.

  I stooped and caught a glimpse of him behind the wheel: a wolfish Latino, his neck tattooed, his eyes full of panic and fear. I knew him from somewhere. Where?

  Then it came to me. Marco. It was Marco, my sister’s boyfriend.

  I took one last look around the street for Ellen Evermore. She was gone. So I jumped into the car.

  The Camaro fired away before I could get the door closed. It flew out of my hand, and I had to reach out of the speeding vehicle and dangle perilously above the racing pavement before I could grab the handle and yank it shut.

  Marco was weaving the silver car through the traffic at a reckless speed, his frightened eyes locked on the scene through the windshield. I struggled to get my seat belt across me and get it locked in.

  “What the hell are you doing? Where’s my sister?” I said. “Slow down!”

  “She needs you!” Marco shouted over the roaring engine. He was clearly terrified. The Camaro’s tires screeched again as he drove around the corner and rocketed on.

  “Where is she?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” His voice was high, strained, hysterical. “It’s all real! It’s all real! They’re trying to kill us!”

  “Kill you? Who?”

  “I don’t know!” The whole car tilted as he took another corner at high speed. “It’s about the book!” he said.

  “Slow down!” I shouted.

  But he didn’t slow down.

  “Has Riley got the book?”

  “I don’t know! I think so! She told me to find you!” He glanced up frantically in the rearview mirror. Then he said, “That’s it! I’ve done it. I’m done!”

  I was thrown hard against my seat belt as the car sliced into an open no-parking zone at the curb and stopped short. Then I was hurled back against my seat again.

  “I have to go!” Marco said, grabbing the door handle.

  “Go?”

  “They’ll kill me! They’ll kill everyone!”

  “Marco, wait!”

  Too late. He had thrown the door open and leapt out of the car.

  “Hurry!” he shouted to me over his shoulder as he ran away. “They’ll kill her too! Hurry!” And with his knees pistoning high, he took off, running as fast as he could.

  For a long moment, I sat where I was, dazed. Then I looked down. My hand was balled into a fist. My fist was pressed against my belly. I felt a strange, radiant heat pulsing against my palm. I opened my fingers. I saw the locket. Some power was coming out of it, seeping into my flesh—into my mind.

  I touched the latch. The locket popped open.

  There she was. Her portrait. Queen Elinda. Ellen Evermore.

  I could hear Lady Betheray’s voice in my mind. Her last words.

  My love … the emperor … the talisman … go …

  I could hear Marco.

  Find Riley. They’ll kill her. They’ll kill everyone.

  I looked up through the windshield at the traffic going past me. The heat of the locket radiated through me. My thoughts were clearing. My heart was clearing. I was beginning to understand.

  Ellen Evermore. Queen Elinda. LA. Galiana. It was all one story. My story. My madness maybe, or maybe my mission. I didn’t know; I wasn’t sure. I only knew—I finally understood—that Galiana and this place, reality or LA or whatever you want to call it—these two worlds were connected, and the book—Another Kingdom—was the portal between them.

  Queen Elinda—Ellen Evermore—had been sent here by Tauratanio’s magic, exiled here to save her from being murdered in Galiana at Lord Iron’s hands. Fearing for her kingdom, a kingdom stripped of its heroes, she had created the book as a kind of passage back. Reading it would shape a mind, the proper mind, the mind of a fighting man of brave heart and right belief—it would shape that mind so that that man could find his way between one kingdom and another, so he could bring the queen’s talisman to the emperor, who would return with his armies to save her country.

  The queen—Elinda, Ellen Evermore—had searched in our literature for signs of such a mind. She had found Sean Gunther and then realized that alcohol had destroyed him. He was no longer able to serve. She had found me in my script among his papers. She had sent me the book and then withdrawn it when she saw that I worked for Orosgo. I had not read enough of the book for it to change my mind fully, only enough to make a beginning, to give me this strange, uncontrollable power to pass from one realm to another.

  But who was Orosgo, then? Why did he want the book? And what was the connection between Elinda’s world and mine? If Galiana fell, would this world fall too? If I saved one, could I save them both? And if I lost one, what then?

  I didn’t know the answers. I didn’t know what would happen next. I didn’t know what Orosgo was planning here or how the book figured into his plans. I didn’t know if I was the right man for this job or just a sad and comic mistake.

  I only knew I had to stay alive. I only knew I had to find the whole truth. Somehow, someway, I had to do the work that had been given me to do. Whether it was Orosgo after me or Lord Iron or some phantom of my imagination or all of them together, I had to stand against them. I had to beat them, stop them, bring them down.

  I snapped the locket shut. Its heat faded. I slipped the chain over my neck. I climbed over the center divide and dropped into the driver’s seat. I took the wheel in one hand. I took the gear stick in the other. I put the car in drive.

  Find Riley. Find the emperor. Find the book. Save the kingdom.

  God, I sounded crazy even to myself!

  I didn’t care. I would do it. Somehow I would do all of it. Somehow I would be what I was called to be: a fighting man of brave heart and right belief. I would not be stopped. I would not turn back.

  I would go my way.

  I nodded once. I drew a breath.

  “Let wisdom reign,” I whispered.

  I hit the gas and sped off through the city.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel reached its first audience in the form of a podcast, which would not have happened without the help of some true and talented friends. Michael Knowles delivered a wonderful performance as Austin Lively not to mention all the other characters; he brought the story to vivid life. Scott Immergut latched
onto the podcast idea immediately and he and Rob Long gave it a platform at their website Ricochet, with the able assistance of Max Ledoux. Then, for no other reason than friendship, love of the arts and a very paltry number of bucks, the podcast was assembled, edited and refined by Mathis Glover, Jonathan Hay and Mike Coromina while Cynthia Angulo provided the logo.

  In novel form, Robert and Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media found a wonderful publisher at Turner, and everyone there — from Todd Bottorff to Heather Howell to Stephanie Beard and Madeline Cothren — provided the kind of support most writers only dream about.

  Finally and always, I have to thank my wife Ellen, my first and best reader, my steadfast supporter, and still, after all these years, my muse, my song, my only-ever love.