Threshold

by King, R. L.

  The two guards by the front door had been supplemented by another one posted at the back door, which meant both exits were covered. If Stone wanted to make a break for it, he’d have to dive out through one of the windows, and he didn’t feel up to that at the moment. Inexplicably, though, now that he had a chance to rest for a while without anyone bothering him, sleep eluded him. He lay back with his eyes closed and listened to the ambient sounds of the area: the breathing of the two mages as they dozed, the occasional shifting back and forth of the guards, the click of the rifle as its holder leaned it against something, the subtle creaking of the building, the low, whispered voices as the two guards in front carried on brief conversations.

  Another couple hours had gone by since what had passed for breakfast, and he and the others had made good progress on the calculations. Stone had remembered to ask some worried questions about the state of his friends—Dobbs and Sherman assured him that they were fine, and that he could see them again after the formulas were completed. Stone didn’t believe this—he was half convinced they were dead already, and nobody was telling him. He wished he had a way to find out for sure, but at least his anxiety helped to uphold his cover. He found it disgusting that Dobbs and Sherman seemed to be drinking in his fear and despair, and didn’t do anything to squelch the reaction. He wondered if they got off on disgust, too.

  He had just shifted position in a mostly useless attempt to get more comfortable on the hard pew when a new sound reached his ears. Without revealing he was awake, he finished settling into the new position and then strained his ears to try to make out the source of what he’d heard.

  Someone was walking past the church on the other side—from the sound of it, quite a number of someones. They spoke in low but not hushed voices, and they sounded agitated or possibly even angry. Stone tried listening harder to make out their words, but he couldn’t. He risked cracking his eyes open just a bit for a look, and spotted several shadowy figures moving past the stained glass windows toward the front end of the church.

  The voices began to die out, but just as he thought they would move on, the double doors at the entrance to the church creaked open. Stone once again risked opening his eyes just a bit. After a moment, two new men entered the sanctuary. They hurried up to the two guards at the front and the four of them held a hurried conversation. At one point, one of them raised his voice a bit above a whisper and Stone thought he caught the word “Escaped?” It took all his willpower to force himself to continue appearing asleep, and not to break into a grin. If he’d heard the word correctly, it could only mean one thing. But he dared not let on that he knew.

  If he’d heard correctly, things had just gotten a lot more interesting.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Okay, we need a plan.”

  Jason and Verity watched Decker’s Gap from their vantage point atop a tall tree a short distance outside of town. Fearing ambush from wandering sentries, they had decided to risk Verity levitating them to a spot where they could watch without being seen. Fortunately for her, their captors hadn’t taken her bird amulet, and she’d only had to rest for a few minutes after getting them both settled.

  Equally fortunately, the Evil hadn’t expected them to escape, and thus had dropped their coats and boots in a corner in the outer area of the police station. They had risked taking the time to put them back on and quickly search the area for useful gear. But despite having the keys to the station, they found nothing to take with them. They didn’t want to stay long, in case the two who had been sent to retrieve them were missed, so they hurried into the forest to decide their next move.

  “We have to get Al out of there,” Jason said. “I don’t know what’s going on at the school—whether he’s there or not—but we need to figure out where he is and get him out. I don’t think we have a lot of time, especially once they find out we’ve escaped.”

  “Not too many places to look, but even so, it’s gonna be hard. What do we do, just wander around and peek in windows?”

  Jason sighed. “I don’t know. I wish it was dark—makes it easier to sneak around—but we can’t wait that long.”

  “I wish we knew if the Harmony guys got away,” Verity said.

  “Doesn’t matter—we don’t have any way to communicate with them. Even if we did, it would take them too long to get up here.”

  “Maybe we do,” Verity said. “Do you think they have phones here? I didn’t even check to see if the one at the police station worked.”

  “What good would that do? I don’t have any of their phone numbers—do you? And it’s not like any of the businesses are gonna be open today. It’s Christmas.”

  Verity shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Maybe there’s a main number for Harmony Farms. We can try Information. Even if they can’t get up here right away, having them show up and help us would be useful.”

  Jason studied the buildings in the town. The two largest were the church at one end and the school at the other. In between was a scattering of small businesses and residences, though most of the residences weren’t visible from where they were. “You want to risk sneaking back into town and trying to find a phone? If we do, we’d better do it fast.”

  “I think—wait!” She dropped her tone to a harsh whisper and pointed. “Somebody’s heading toward the police station!”

  “Shit!” Jason leaned forward a bit, shifting his position on the branch. Sure enough, a single figure was moving toward the station. The figure disappeared as it presumably entered, then a couple of minutes later it came back out at a run, hurrying back toward the school.

  “They’re on to us,” Jason said grimly. “That was fast.”

  “What now?” Verity looked scared.

  “Let’s wait and see what they do. They still need Al to help them with that portal—maybe they just won’t tell him we’re gone so they can keep him working.”

  After about five more minutes, they started hearing voices. Several people poured out of the schoolhouse and headed down the street toward the church. It wasn’t possible to make out what they were saying at this distance, but they sounded agitated.

  The group reached the church, but only one peeled off from the main group to go in. The others went up the hill toward the cave containing the portal.

  “I wonder how many of them are in that church,” Jason said.

  “I wonder how many guns they’ve got,” Verity said.

  The group that had gone up to the cave soon came back down. They stopped near the church and had a conversation, and then they broke up and went off in pairs in different directions.

  “Looking for us,” Jason whispered. “C’mon—let’s get out of this tree.”

  “Where to?”

  He was already scrambling down; she quickly followed, and soon they both stood on the snowy ground.

  “I think we need to risk getting a look inside that church,” Jason said. “They might think we took off to find the Harmony people. If anybody spots us, tell me and I’ll shoot ’em. We’ll deal with the consequences later. This is too big to worry about that stuff right now.”

  Someone poked Stone, who was still pretending to be asleep. “Get up. It’s time to get back to work.” It was Dobbs, and his voice had an odd urgency that hadn’t been there before.

  Stone stretched. “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. You’ve had enough rest, that’s all. You’re not here to sleep.”

  “Right, right. Your little doorway to the Party Dimension won’t stabilize itself, will it?” Stone made a show of getting up slowly—and not all of it was a show. His muscles ached from the hard pew. “Have you made any progress?”

  Dobbs’s only answer was to point toward the table containing their notebooks. Sherman was already there, looking impatient. Stone noticed that the guards were now standing up and didn’t look bored anymore.

  Stone reached
the table and looked over the notes. Dobbs and Sherman hadn’t gotten much further, and it appeared they’d made a subtle, mistaken calculation that led their efforts even more astray. Inwardly Stone cheered, but outwardly he did nothing more than nod contemplatively. “Yes...” he said as if talking to himself. “I think you’re on to something here.” He picked up a pencil and began updating the page as the two of them hovered nearby watching his every move. “See here?” he said, pointing. “I think this is the key, right here.”

  “What do you mean?” Sherman asked.

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious?” In his best dry professor’s tone he launched into a jargon-laden and mostly correct explanation of the calculations, and was gratified to see the two other mages struggling in vain to follow it, though they obviously didn’t want to reveal this fact to him. “So you see,” he concluded, tapping the paper for emphasis, “it appears we’re at the point where we need to visit the site and get started on the actual work of stabilizing the portal.” His gaze flicked up to meet theirs. “One thing, though.”

  “What?” Dobbs asked, suspicious.

  “I want to see my friends again first.” When neither one answered, he crossed his arms over his chest and hardened his gaze. “I want to make sure your overzealous friends haven’t killed them. If they’re dead, then I’ve no reason to help you. You can’t force me to—you can kill me, or torture me, or whatever else will make you happy, but there’s nothing on this Earth you can do to force me to fix your portal for you. And I think you know it. That was our deal—you keep my friends safe, I help you. No friends, no help. So let’s get to it, shall we? In fact, you know what? I’ve had another brainwave. You bring them along with us. You can keep them locked up and under guard to your heart’s content, but I want them where I can see them while I work.”

  Sherman and Dobbs exchanged glances; if they hadn’t been who they were, Stone might even have felt sorry for them as he watched them squirm and try desperately not to show it. As it was, he simply waited and watched, arms still crossed.

  After a long uncomfortable pause he tilted his head. “Problem? You do still have them alive, right? Your friends haven’t made the mistake of killing them after taking me to visit them, in the hope that sorting through your calculations would sufficiently fog my brain that I’d forget about them? Because that would be an unfortunate mistake indeed.”

  “We’ve got them,” Sherman said, glaring at him. “They’re locked up in the jail, right where you saw them before.”

  “Excellent. Then send one of your lackeys off to fetch them, and we’ll all go up to the cave together. Oh,” he added, “as I’m sure you’ve worked out if you’ve been following along with the lesson, we’ll be needing some parts to fix your portal.”

  He snatched up a piece of paper and a pencil, then cocked his gaze over toward the two rifle-toting guards. “Off you go, one of you,” he said, making a “shoo” gesture. “Or if you don’t think you can guard me sufficiently with only one gun, ring up somebody else and send them off to collect Jason and Verity while I finish this list.”

  Without waiting to see if they complied, he turned his attention back to the paper, dashing off notes in a rapid hand. After a minute or two he finished, tossing the pencil on the table and the list at Dobbs and Sherman. “There you go. Gather that up and let’s go.”

  Sherman examined the list, squinting a little as he tried to make sense of Stone’s handwriting, then handed it to Dobbs.

  “You said you had supplies—none of that is particularly esoteric,” Stone said. In fact, he had deliberately filled the list with things that he expected them to have on hand. At this point, he wanted to get the portal closed as fast as possible. He didn’t think he could stretch out the ruse long enough for them to take several days ordering complicated magical paraphernalia.

  Dobbs and Sherman consulted in hushed tones for a short time, then Sherman turned back to Stone, pointing at a pew near the guards. “You sit there and stay put,” he said. He motioned to one of the two guards. “You. Go get the two in the jail and bring them up to the cave.”

  The guard started to say something, but Sherman glared at him. “Go. And you,” he said to the remaining guard at the front of the church, “If he makes any kind of funny move, shoot him. Got it?”

  The other guard nodded, pointing his rifle in Stone’s general vicinity.

  Stone lounged back against the pew where Sherman had indicated for him to sit. “So now we wait,” he said. “Anyone else hungry?”

  Jason and Verity still watched the church, trying to figure out how they could get a look inside without attracting any attention. A couple minutes ago, the front door had opened again and a tall man with white-blond hair and another man carrying a rifle had exited and hurried off toward the center of town.

  “Can you do that ‘I’m not here’ thing again?” Jason asked. “Maybe that can get us close enough—”

  “Yeah, but I won’t be able to hold it very long, even with the amulet,” she told him. “Even holding it in the cell for less than a minute tired me out. I guess I need to go to the magical gym or something.”

  “Let’s risk it,” he said. “I doubt they’ll be looking for us here anyway, so even if you have to drop it we should be able to get to cover before anyone spots us. I’m getting tired of just standing around doing nothing. We need to know if Al is in there.”

  She nodded. “Be ready to run,” she said. “Like I said, I can’t promise more than a minute or so. We really need to find out if that power battery thing of yours works with me too, but until Dr. Stone teaches me, I don’t have a clue how to do it.” She took Jason’s arm lightly and concentrated; the red eyes in her bird amulet glowed briefly. “There,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

  They hurried out from cover, half expecting shouts of discovery or even gunshots, but nothing happened. It took them only a few seconds to make it to the outer wall of the church. Fortunately, the windows were normal non-stained glass, so it was easy to peer through and get a look around.

  “They’ve got something stacked against the windows,” Jason whispered, trying to focus through the spaces.

  “Pews, it looks like.” Verity was doing the same thing. “Do you see—”

  “There! In the front!” Jason pointed. Verity followed his finger to the area near the front part of the church. Stone sat on one of the pews, while a dark-skinned man hovered over him. Another man with a rifle stood near the doors, attentive and watchful. “Do you see anybody else?” Jason asked.

  “I’m not—Oh. Yeah. In the back. See him there by the back door?”

  Jason looked, and spotted another guard with a rifle, also standing and looking like he was paying close attention to what was going on. “Hmm...” he muttered. “Two rifles, and that other guy with Al is probably a mage. Not good odds.”

  “We can’t just stand here,” she protested. Then she grinned. “Hey, I have an idea. Come on—let’s get back to cover and I’ll tell you.”

  When they’d made it back to the trees and hidden themselves carefully, she pointed to the back of the church. “Do you think they’ve got Dr. Stone in there to help with their portal?” she asked. “Because I do. Did you see all those papers and notebooks and the chalkboard in there?”

  Jason nodded. “It makes sense. I can’t think of any other reason why they’d hold him instead of just killing him.”

  “Well, if that’s true, then they’re gonna have to go up there at some point, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess they will. But who knows when?”

  “I think it’s gotta be soon. They already know we’ve escaped, and they aren’t gonna be able to hide that from him forever. Once he knows we’re gone, they can’t count on him to help anymore. Plus, if the portal’s unstable, it could go poof at any time, and they’d be stuck.”

  “Who knows if he even can help?” Jason aske
d, sighing. “He said himself there’s a lot he doesn’t know about how portals work.”

  “But they don’t know that,” she pointed out. “And he’s the best chance they’ve got.”

  “So what are you getting at?”

  “I think we should go up there and wait for them,” she said, still grinning. “We know the two mages who hid from us and ambushed us aren’t up there now, ’cuz one of them is in with Dr. Stone and the other one took off in the other direction. So if we can get up there and deal with any guards they’ve got, maybe we can pull the same trick on them.”

  “So,” Stone said to Dobbs, “They are coming back soon with my friends, right? Because I can’t imagine that this town is large enough that it would take more than a few minutes to collect them and bring them back here.” He was trying not to show his impatience, but it was getting harder.

  “Be patient,” Dobbs told him. “Sherman needs to gather the materials. They might be taking them straight up to the portal, since that’s where we’ll be working.” He glared. “And anyway, it’s not your place to ask all these questions. You’ll do as you’re told.”

  Stone shrugged. “Once you show me that Jason and Verity are still alive and unharmed, then we’ll talk. Until then—”

  The church’s front door opened again and Sherman came in, carrying two large, stuffed bags. The guard was not with him. “I’ve got everything on the list, assuming I could make out your crappy handwriting,” he said, puffing, and dropped the two bags on the floor. They clanked loudly. “Let’s get going.”

  Stone looked around. “I don’t see my friends,” he said. “Unless you’ve turned them invisible or miniaturized them and put them in one of those bags. I told you—I’m not moving until I see them.”

  Dobbs nodded toward one of the guards, who came over and grabbed Stone’s arm, roughly hauling him to his feet. “You’ll go when we say you go,” Sherman said, his expression cold. After a pause, he added, “They’re taking your friends up to the cave. You’ll see them there.” He picked up one of the bags and motioned for Dobbs to grab the other one.