Alisiyad

by Sarah R. Suleski

  “I’m leaving.” Alisiya seemed almost giddy. She dragged Russ toward the edge of the cliff, as if she would jump off the edge into oblivion with him. He let her pull him, afraid for Liseli if he didn’t.

  Liseli was trapped on the other side of the dogs. “You can’t do this.” Anger pierced through her words. “I won’t let you. Come back here. Now. Russell!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said inanely, feeling rushed and confused. “I mean, I can’t just let you die . . . .”

  “And I can? You’re going to kill yourself,” she steamed, “I won’t let you. I love you, Russ, you can’t do this to me!”

  “You what?” He paused.

  “I love you, you idiot! You can’t just go kill yourself over me and expect me to . . . to . . . deal with that!” She nearly kicked one of the dogs in her frustration to get past it. Fortunately, it was so intent on getting past the other dogs to Alisiya that it paid her no more mind than it would a fly.

  I love you, it echoed in his head. Despite everything, he felt a wide smile spreading across his face. The phrase seemed completely new when spoken to him, not just overheard or seen in movies. It sounded different, came alive. I love you . . . .

  “Listen to her, Markson,” Leeton said. He’d stopped, and was wavering. “You’re not doing anyone any favors if you go through with this.”

  “I . . . .”

  Alisiya was at his shoulder, insistent. “If she falls now, the dogs will trample her. I will order them to trample her, and rip her to pieces, if you do not take me through.”

  The smile disappeared, the chill returning. “I will,” he muttered, gritting his teeth. Then he called out, “Liseli . . . I love you, too. I love you more. That’s why I’ve got to . . . I have to . . . I’ll be right back.”

  “No! Russ, please!” She was crying now; he wanted to shove the dogs aside and crush her to his chest, assure her nothing bad was going to happen ever again. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t even reach her. He was leaving her, again. There must be another way, he thought, then Alisiya dug her fingers into him, reminding him of the dogs’ teeth, sharp and relentless.

  “I’m coming.” He jerked away irritably. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He looked back at Liseli one last time. “I’ll make it. You’ll see, okay? I love you. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  She was silent, too stunned and screamed-out to respond. Her eyes wide, she stood knee deep in dogs, palms up and out toward him, empty. He took a photo of her like that, in his mind, though he still insisted to himself that he would be right back.

  Then he had to pay attention to where he was going, so that he wouldn’t fall.

  Chapter 25 ~ Gates

  Water drenched Russ’s right side as Alisiya pulled him under the ledge. He slipped on the slick rock, reached out for the wall, and regained his balance just before catching sight of the Gate. He stopped, ignoring Alisiya’s impatience for a moment. This Gate was much more obvious than the one in the Mill had been; he saw light glinting out from between the rock fissure, flicking like ghostly fingers feeling at the edges.

  “Do you see it?” Alisiya asked, eagerness lighting her eyes.

  “Yeah.” He wiped dampened hair away from his face and stared dubiously.

  This is it; once you go over the edge there’ll be no turning back until you’re all the way through. Maybe not even then. Maybe you’ll never even get through.

  He put his hand back on the wall and shook his head, “This isn’t a good idea,” he said, his fingers slipping as Alisiya pulled insistently. “Your dad might be right, Ali—”

  “Remember Liseli,” she hissed, and his hand went limp. He stumbled as she pulled him to her and then thrust him toward the Gate.

  Russ fell backward into the fissure, and Alisiya, still gripping his other hand, came tumbling towards him. But he saw her as if she were a million miles away, falling toward someone else, in a different time. The light surrounded him, blinded him. At first its touch had no feeling; he felt nothing at all. Then he felt the vacuum suck of the Gate drawing him in, the edges of the world falling away, his body disintegrating in the light.

  In a moment he could feel himself again, one piece, lying on his back on a sandy gray surface. He lifted his head, recognizing the gray edgeworld; the road stretching up a hill, light gray under a dark gray sky. Alisiya lay a few feet away from him, on her side with her face down in the road.

  Russ squinted up at the crest of the hill, remembering how the light at the Mill had lurked behind it before rising above to suck him into the new world. Here it seemed as if the light was scattered all around, fractured and muted, buried in the sands. The world was dull: the flickering fingers had disappeared. There was a hollow buzzing in his ears, that he was sure came from what had been the light. He pulled himself up and crawled over to Alisiya, turning her over.

  The sand of the road clung to her face. Her eyes opened, but they were as colorless as the world around them. She stared at him blankly.

  “C’mon.” He struggled to his feet, grabbing her arm, trying to pull her up with him. The air was oppressive and suffocating, it made him dizzy as he stood too fast. The broken not-light sickened him; he felt it twisting in his stomach and clenching at his head. He dropped Alisiya’s arm and she was left sitting in the dust.

  Russ wavered for a moment, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes as he tried to fight the nausea. “Okay, alright . . . right,” he muttered to himself, trying to wipe away the grit he’d got on his face. That only seemed to make it worse; the sand was fine and clingy and his hands just smeared it. He gave up, settling for blinking it out of his eyes. Alisiya was still seated on the ground; she stared at the sand on her arms with befuddlement, slowly turning them over.

  “Let’s go.” He held out a hand.

  She looked up, without focusing on him, turning her head back and forth as if she were looking for where the voice had come from. She didn’t take his hand. He was impatient to be out of the edgeworld, where his insides felt like they were being squeezed and shrunk, so he reached down and hauled her up by the shoulders. “Come on,” he grunted, “let’s get out of here.”

  Alisiya remained standing on her own strength, but was no more lucid than if she’d been sleepwalking. Maybe she was. He remembered Liseli had seemed that way, too, though she’d spoken to him on the gray road. Afterwards she’d said she couldn’t remember it, though . . . . He stared at Alisiya, a new idea presenting itself. In this edgeworld she was powerless, not even fully aware of herself or her surroundings. If he turned around and went back without her there was nothing, really, that she could do about it. He could always tell Leeton that Alisiya was in Adayzjia . . . .

  He looked back up the hill before him. The light was growing; it seemed to be collecting itself from around him to a focus on the road. Once it was full, he figured, it could take him to Adayzjia, so he’d have to decide quickly if he was going through or not. He turned around, leaving Alisiya wavering with unfocused eyes, and looked back where he’d come from.

  The road stretched downward into pitch darkness, but the air seemed less heavy down that way. The oppressiveness was coming from the light up the hill, down away from it the edgeworld was empty. Like nothingness. He took a few steps toward it, then skidded to a stop in the sand. The darkness was nothing; the road ended down there and beyond its boundaries was an abyss. The light gave the abyss form, making the gray road and shaping the gray sky. He turned around again, shaken at how close he’d come to walking out of the edgeworld into nothing, and wondered how he could ever get back when the way had disappeared.

  Alisiya had fallen down, and was half sitting, half lying on the road, looking at nothing. The light on the hill formed itself into something that, to Russ’s surprise, looked almost like a woman standing on the road.

  He walked toward it hesitantly. The closer he got, stepping around Alisiya, the more like a human form the light seemed. It hovered just above rather than standing on the ro
ad, its body indistinct like a form covered by a shapeless white shift. But he made out a head with long hair of flowing light, and shoulders, arms, and the slender line of an upright figure.

  “Who are you?” he asked, lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the intensity of the light.

  “Do you not know?” answered a voice that seemed to come from the light and the road and the sky all at once. “I am the Gate. Who are you?”

  “I’m Russ.”

  The features of the face on the being were hard to make out, especially since it was painful to look directly at it. But it almost seemed to smile. “You are a Key, that is what you mean to say.”

  “I guess. But my name is Russ. I meant.” He felt flustered. “Sorry, I’m feeling . . . a little sick. Oh—” He remembered Alisiya, and motioned toward her, “that’s—”

  “I know who she is,” the Gate interrupted, but without impatience. “She has tried my boundaries many times. She wishes to pass to that which mortals call Adayzjia. I know her well. But what is it that you want?”

  “I’m just taking her across. ’Cause she can’t herself,” Russ explained. He was starting to adjust to the weight of the edgeworld, and could swallow down the nausea enough to focus a little more on the Gate.

  “She could, if she could see beyond her own boundaries,” the Gate remarked. “Do you know what you are doing?”

  “What?”

  “I am broken. Did you not know?” The light flickered, the image of the woman wavering a moment before reforming itself. “My gateways are dangerous to all who attempt passage. Do you know the danger?”

  “Leeton told me it would kill me,” Russ admitted, lowering his hand from his face. He had to squint still. “But I didn’t have much of a choice. So here I am.” He shrugged, feeling foolish under the Gate’s calm scrutiny.

  “Leeton,” it repeated. “The Gatebreaker. This Child’s father. He is near?”

  “Just on the other side. He told me you would be really dangerous, and he didn’t want us to go. But I had to . . . .”

  “It will kill you if you are not strong enough. Are you a Key of great power?”

  He winced. “Not really. I don’t even know what it’s about, really . . . . I mean, I can open things. Locked doors, stuff like that. I think anyway. They might have just been stuck . . . .”

  “Do you mean that you have never passed through a Gate before?”

  “No. I mean, I have once. And I didn’t even know how it happened, I just kind of stepped into it and it pulled me through.” He shrugged, as the light frowned at him. “It really hurt . . . .”

  “Did it speak to you? Did you ask its name?”

  “No. It never looked like . . . you do,” he said. “It was just a bright light, on a road just like this one.”

  “The road was the same?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was not silver? And the road was alone?”

  “Um . . . well it was gray.” He wracked his brains to remember. “And it was dark on the sides.”

  “It was broken. You have passed through another broken Gate and lived. There is some hope for you, then.”

  “Oh. What would it look like if it wasn’t broken?” He forget his headache in a moment of curiosity.

  He thought he could hear sadness in the Gate’s voice as it answered; “The Silver Road it a beautiful thing. And on all sides there stretch other roads, other paths to other Gates, ways to all the worlds for those who are strong enough to go anywhere their hearts desire. And they are not alone, the unbroken Gates, not alone as I am.”

  There was silence. Russ didn’t know what to say, and the Gate seemed not to look at him with its lighted eyes. Then it said, “And you would not have felt pain, unless you are very weak.”

  He shifted his feet in the sand, and looked down. “I had a cold . . . .”

  “You were cold? That is nothing. A Gate takes no more energy than what you can give.”

  “No. I mean I was sick. With a cold.” Russ shook his head. “It’s when your nose runs and your throat hurts and you can’t breathe. Good. Can’t breathe good, I mean . . . .” He fell silent.

  “Oh.” The Gate paused. “A mortal ailment. Still, if the Gate had been whole the road would not have looked as mine does. But that is what concerns us now, does it not? Do you wish to step through my gateway, risk the danger of the broken passage?”

  He thought for a moment. “Do I have a choice? If I don’t won’t I just be stuck here?”

  It smiled again. “You are right. To go forward or to go back, you must take the risk. But I must ask.”

  Russ swallowed a sigh, making his decision. “I told Alisiya I’d take her to Adayzjia, and I told Liseli I’d be right back. So I guess, yeah, I need to risk it.”

  “Very well. If you die, it shall be the risk you took. I will not take your life; there is only one whose life I would take for myself; the one who owes it to me.” The form started to dissolve, the light spreading outward till it was like the sun rising over the horizon. “Hold onto the Gatebreaker’s daughter,” it said, “if you lose her on the way, no one will ever find her again.”

  Russ looked down at Alisiya, and briefly considered that. But he bent down and picked her up, hefting her over his shoulder and holding onto her legs around her knees as he turned back to face the light. He hadn’t forgotten her threats to Liseli, but she looked so harmless and helpless at the moment that he couldn’t quite justify leaving her here to die, or disappear, or whatever would happen. She was Leeton’s daughter, anyway, and he didn’t really think he could lie well enough to fool the King. Better just do what he’d said he would, and take her through.

  The light had spread itself to envelop his vision completely, but it was waiting for him, not racing down the hill like he remembered the other Gate doing. So he walked slowly upward, weighted down by the oppression of the broken edgeworld and the listless body of Alisiya over his shoulder. The sandy road sunk down with each step, dragging at his feet, and he feared he might step through into black nothingness below. But he kept his head down and shut his eyes, forcing each foot ahead of the other.

  He felt the light touch him, ripping through him like he was made of holes. It took his breath away, made him stumble a step or two back, but it was too late to go backwards. His insides lurched as they were pulled forward, but in a moment he couldn’t feel them at all. He felt his own existence spinning away from him; he had no place in time or space anymore. In another moment he was aware of nothing, being nothing, and the next thing he knew he was hitting reality again with his body feeling as weak and fragile as a newborn’s.

  The entrance into Adayzjia knocked the wind out of his lungs just as soon as he was aware of his lungs again. For a moment he saw murky sunlight above him and the gritty hard surface of the ground rushing up to catch him as he fell toward it. He had exited the Gate standing, but his legs couldn’t hold him and he tumbled to the ground in a heap. He opened his mouth to gasp for air, but instead ended up vomiting blood and spit onto the ground. His head hurt so badly that in another moment he couldn’t feel it at all, and his vision blinked out.

  Chapter 25 ~ Gates, part 2

  Leeton’s dogs sat in rows, waiting patiently and blinking their amber eyes at their master as he paced absently before them. Liseli sat on the rock and stared at the waterfall, only glancing briefly at Leeton and his animals from time to time. It had been about fifteen minutes since Russ and Alisiya had disappeared. Since then she’d been staring at the waterfall; waiting, watching, worrying. She couldn’t bring herself to go between the ledges and watch by the Gate itself . . . she didn’t like being that close to it, even though she couldn’t see or sense it. She resigned herself to the rock, and the hypnotic flow of water down the rock face.

  Russ, come back, she thought, nervously fingering the edges of her shirt. She had put on her own clothes when leaving Elharan. Somehow she had thought it would make her feel better to wear the clothes of her normal life, her normal world. It
didn’t really, at the moment. “Is this long?” she asked Leeton, twisting around.

  Leeton paused in his pacing to glance at her, but didn’t answer. He looked at the waterfall with an expression she couldn’t read.

  “Well? Tell me.” She clenched her fists. “Is it too late for him to come back?”

  “I don’t know.” Leeton wouldn’t look at her. “If he had gone through and turned back around right away, he would have returned by now.”

  No. No, no, no. Don’t say that. It can’t be. She squinted and bit her lip, hard. In a moment she tasted blood, but felt able to speak. “He didn’t make it, then,” she said, half surprised at the monotone voice she heard.

  “He could be resting,” said Leeton, but he didn’t sound very convinced. “Wait a little more.”

  “What if he got through, but something happens in Adayzjia. He could be gone a long time.” Liseli locked her hands together in her lap. “I’m not going to stop waiting until . . . .” She shook her head and shrugged.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this.” Leeton stepped toward her, then stopped. “But it’s unlikely they got through. Both of them are probably—”

  “No,” Liseli bit off the word. Leeton shook his head, but remained silent, and Liseli closed her eyes, brushing gingerly at the blood on her lip. She sighed, opening her eyes again to watch the waterfall.

  They didn’t speak for another several minutes.

  Leeton’s dogs were confused at the disappearance of their mistress, and a few of them ventured a whine or a movement from time to time. But Leeton would speak a word or give them a look, and they would meekly obey, quieting or sitting back in line. He kept pacing back and forth in front of them, head down, absorbed with his own thoughts. Every time Liseli looked at him, he was the same.

  He’s not coming back. After all this you let him leave and now he’s not coming back. No, she squelched that line of thought quickly. She wouldn’t give up hope again. She’d believed him dead once and made things worse. This time, she told herself, she would believe him alive until she saw . . . otherwise. But what does it matter? It’s not as if you can do anything, either way . . . . She shook her head. Think. Maybe there is. There’s always got to be something better than nothing. Assume he’s alive; what’s keeping him from returning?