The Map Maker's Choice

by Matthew J. Krengel

  Eriunia shook her wounded hand, trying to remove the numbness. Instead of trying her bow again, she pulled the small device from her pack and looked closely at it. It had a button on the side that said “arm,” so she pushed it in and waited. On the opposite side of the device was another button that said “stun.” Next was a diagram of a man throwing it next to a guardian and the device going off. Sticking to the cover of the wall, she held the device, waiting for the charging button to indicate it was ready. She could feel the gears and wheels inside it moving. It seemed the guardian could sense the presence of the weapon, because it grew more agitated and started toward Eriunia’s hiding place. Bella dropped fairy net after fairy net on it, but the metal machine walked through them without pausing. Jane whipped every stone she could find at it, but now that the device in Eriunia’s hands was being armed, the guardian seemed to have only one purpose.

  Jane looked over at the sound of someone running, and her heart leapt in her chest. Jacob was charging the guardian with his shield held before him. He led the attack with his sword but also tried to keep as much of his body hidden as he could. This time the guardian responded. A dozen quarrels beat a rhythm off Jacob’s shield as the thing turned to face the charging threat. When the bolts failed to stop Jacob, it raised its brass sword high above its head. Down it flashed with enough power to kill anything, bolts still firing from its other arm.

  Jacob looked up and saw the sword bearing down. He closed his eyes and raised the shield. This was the moment he was going to die, he knew it. He saw no possible way to defend against the sword. The guardian had him right where it could finish him. Oddly, a sense of peace filled him, even as he regretted not being able to spend more time with Jane. He felt a hard impact and his defense faltered as a bolt struck his shoulder and spun him around. All that filled his vision was the sword descending toward his body and his own sword falling to the ground from fingers suddenly too weak to hold it.

  Eriunia watched in horror, trying to will the small weapon she held to arm faster. Jacob was about to die, so she leapt to her feet and drew her arm back. Suddenly the weapon signaled it was armed. She depressed the firing button and threw it at the guardian as hard as she could. The device Evelion had given them flew through the air and landed right next to the guardian. A moment later a deafening sound erupted from it, nearly bursting Eriunia’s sensitive eardrums. It had an even more profound effect on the guardian.

  It froze for the barest of moments, then went racing away, smashing through walls and bouncing off pillars of stone too thick to break. As it smashed its way into the city, pieces of brass started to break off. Finally it dropped to the ground, gave one last spasm, and was still. Silence followed, and Eriunia was not sure if it was actually quiet or if she had lost all hearing.

  “Eriunia?” Jane called loudly. She was only standing about five feet from the elf, but to Eriunia her words sounded far away. She pointed to her ears and shrugged, her head ringing from the blast of sound. When the elf signaled that she was all right, Jane hurried to Jacob, who was struggling to stand. He had been closest to the blast. A small trickle of blood dripped from his left ear.

  Coronia had been the most sheltered of everyone, and she hurried over to help Jane with Jacob. The guardian’s bolt had struck the outer part of his arm and passed straight through the muscle. Coronia pressed a bit of cloth against his wound while Jane rinsed it with water, then wrapped it with cloth torn from her outer shirt.

  “Hurts like crazy!” Jacob shouted, but the words sounded muffled to him. He hoped the effect would fade, but as they gathered it hung on.

  “Are you all right?” Jane asked Eriunia, who was bleeding from some deep scratches on her hand and one long cut on her cheek.

  “I’m fine,” Eriunia replied. “I’m more worried about Jacob. He was directly under the creature when the sound bomb went off. He took the full brunt of it.”

  Jacob shrugged. “I’m fine,” he said loudly. “But I don’t want any more of it.” The words echoed across the now-quiet cavern.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Jane said. Her ears popped several times and suddenly, clear hearing returned. She ducked under one of Jacob’s arms to help him stand. Coronia gathered up the things they had dropped during the battle, and the battered group walked to the gate.

  Jacob kept rubbing his ears with his good arm, but the hearing was slow to return. Bits and pieces came through but the ringing went on and on. He allowed Jane to help him walk and was grateful for it. The battering his body had just taken made him feel like he had just been through the hardest football practice of his life.

  Eriunia looked up at the formidable gate, finally reaching over and pushing on it. To her amazement, the locking mechanism gave way and the gate pushed open on silent hinges. Beyond was a single passage that stretched out for about a hundred yards and ended in another gate. This portal was built of the shiny metal that reminded her of gold. Together, the group hobbled down the smooth tunnel.

  “Hey, I think my hearing is getting better!” Jacob said, still way too loudly. He looked at the way Jane winced when he spoke and shrugged. His arm throbbed but the bandage Coronia and Jane had made kept it from bleeding too much. That was going to make one amazing scar later in his life, and, should he survive, he had one even more amazing story to tell his kids, if he had any.

  The golden gate stood before them, one last barrier before they reached the end of their journey. Then Eriunia skidded to a halt. She was wounded. Jacob was wounded. Jane and Coronia were unarmed. Yet they were about to confront the most deadly assassin she had ever crossed blades with. She had no weapon other than her bow. Her mind raced, but as she was about to warn Jacob not to open the gate, she saw him reach up and push on the golden portal. As the gate swung wide, she lunged forward, trying to stop them from stepping through.

  21: Bella’s Courage

  The golden portal swung open and Jacob stared at a wonderland of amazing sights. The chamber that contained the Antikytheran Device stretched out for hundreds of feet in all directions. Pipes came up from the ground and vanished into massive gearboxes while smaller pipes twisted around the larger ones and went on their way. The entire device was constructed of the same shiny metal as the guardian. It glowed in the lights strung high above it and shimmered like gold.

  Jacob saw that the floor was solid in places, but in others was covered with iron grates, showing that even the floor was filled with parts of the device. At the center of the cavern, a large fan-like construct emitted the power that held the Divide in place. A massive wall of darkness rose up there in a continuous stream and vanished into the earth.

  “Do you see Tasker?” Jane asked. She pushed forward and looked about with wide eyes. The sights and sounds that filled the cavern made her jaw drop in wonder.

  Coronia joined them just in front of the gate and she, too, seemed struck dumb with amazement.

  As Eriunia tried to shout her warning again, the whine of an Adherent musket and a blast of energy washed over them. She saw Jacob, Jane, and Coronia drop to the ground, and the next thing she knew she was hit and falling as well. The last thing Eriunia saw was Bella darting up toward a nearly perfectly concealed air vent high above them, then darkness closed in on her.

  Bella floated above them, beating her wings as hard as she could, trying to throw her body back and twist. Because of a slight lip at the edge of the ceiling, she managed to avoid the largest portion of the blast aimed at her. She felt a small bit of the energy wash over her, but she shook off the blast and searched for a place to hide.

  When she looked up, high on the wall she saw a grate that looked like part of the ventilation system. Flying as fast as she could, she covered the distance and grabbed the vent. It looked to be a tight fit, but she folded back her wings and tried to squirm through it into the darkness beyond. There was a snarl of rage, and the fairy looked behind her to see the assassin standi
ng in the door near her unconscious friends with an Adherent repeater pointed toward the vent.

  “You’re not getting away that easily, fairy,” Averill growled. He leveled the weapon and switched it to the “kill” setting.

  Bella thrashed and pulled, desperate to reach safety, and finally her shoulders cleared the metal grates. Behind her Averill pulled the trigger, trying to kill her before she could escape into the shaft. The blast of energy struck the wall around her as she vanished inside the ventilation duct.

  “I have your friends, fairy!” he shouted after her.

  Bella ran as hard as she could down the vent, stopping only long enough to form a weak ball of fairy light and hang it just in front of her. The vent was about two feet wide and a foot tall, and she knew she could not fly in such tight quarters. Behind her she heard the whine of the weapon one more time, and the ball of energy struck the edge of the stone. She leapt into the air to avoid the effects of the blast and almost made it clear of the shot. As the last bit of energy struck her, she could feel she was falling into darkness, and then she slumped to the stone, unconscious.

  * * * * *

  Bella came back to her surroundings slowly, and confusion swept over her. As she stumbled to her feet, leaning on the wall of the air tunnel, the events of the last couple hours came sweeping back over her. She realized she had no idea how much time had passed or even if the others were alive. Tears flowed down her face and she slumped against the wall, unable to face the fact that she was alone. The others had certainly died at the assassin’s hands, and she was stuck here and would never find her way out. She lay sobbing for some time. Then her mind began drifting back to all the things she had seen and done. She’d helped drive the Adherents away from Madeline Island and Duluth. She had helped in the battles on Isle Royale. She was brave, much braver then most fairies. Then she allowed that Jane and the others might still be alive. Here she was lying on the floor weeping when they might still be alive and needed help. What would Eriunia do right now? Bella thought. Would she lie here crying or would she get up and find a way out of this place? Would she try to help her friends? Of course she would.

  “I’m all they have left to rescue them,” Bella managed to say out loud. “I won’t give up on them. I will survive this.”

  Her mind raced. Tears threatened to make her stop and huddle on the ground weeping again, but she steeled her will. This was no time to act like the rest of her kind did when faced with terrible situations. Too many fairies did nothing when confronted with hardship. Bella set her face in a determined stare and turned around. Moving silently like only a scared, angry fairy could, she crept back down the vent until she could see the golden door they had used to enter the cavern. The door had been closed again, Averill was gone, and her friends had been moved. The area was empty.

  Bella left the vent and fluttered down to the door. Despite pushing on it as hard as she could, she lacked the strength to open it. She tried turning the lock, but it was secured. Rather than risk any noise that might alert the assassin, she flew back to the air duct and slipped inside.

  The vent extended for twenty feet, but for the small fairy it seemed like a great distance. She walked down it with a small light hovering above her, shedding light on her path. When she arrived at an intersection, she noticed the duct systerm went in three directions—a passage on her right, on her left, and another that led deeper into the ground. From the descending passage, she could feel drafts of warm air, and chose against going in that direction. The passage on the left she thought might lead back to the abandoned city where the defeated guardian had destroyed itself, so she started down the right side. The tunnel led out for about twice the distance of the first and she felt her confidence waning. Each time the darkness threatened to make her stop moving and give up, she filled her mind with images of Jane’s face and reminded herself that the others were depending on her. When she reached the end of the air duct, she found a grate similar to the one she had slipped through into the duct work, but it was blocked by a rotating fan blade and she saw no way to get by it. Another air shaft rose straight up, and she could just see where it intersected with another horizontal section of duct work. Maybe she could get out that way. She thought that, with the slight breeze being forced up the vent, her wings would get her there. She flapped away and rose up the vent slowly. Most people didn’t realize how much fairies depended on the natural flow of air to help propel them through the air. The enclosed vents had little air movement. But with the fan . . .

  Bella made it to the next tunnel with little trouble. Sure enough, there was a grate on one end, and she ran to it. Spread out before her she could see a vast chamber. More importantly, she could see where the assassin had set up his camp.

  “Oh, no!” Bella gasped. At the center of the camp, Eriunia was held in a cage made of thick shafts of what looked like black light. The elf had awakened from the blast of energy and was sitting calmly in the center of the cage watching around her. Bella’s hand went to her mouth, not wanting to cry out to the elf but yearning to fly to her rescue. Instead she noticed Eriunia’s eyes seemed to come directly to her. She was at least a hundred and fifty feet away, but clearly she saw Bella. She shook her head ever so slightly. The fairy understood immediately. The elf turned her head and nodded slightly toward the far side of the room, toward a door set in the stone and guarded by a single soldier.

  “I can do this, Eriunia,” Bella whispered. She nodded her own head and pointed to the door. That was where the others were being held, she guessed. She would rescue them. Somehow. Then they would come back for Eriunia and deal with this assassin and his remaining soldiers. Bella could only see three other beings in the vast room, but she thought there were probably more somewhere else.

  She straightened her back and willed herself to be strong. Working quickly, she wove a bit of fairy magic around herself and formed a camouflage net encasing her body. Once she was done, she slipped free of the grate and flew across the room until she was hovering just above the door. The guard seemed bored and didn’t notice when she slipped around the edge of the door, which was slightly ajar, and entered the passage behind him. She found a set of stairs that wound down into the ground at a slight angle. When Bella reached the bottom, she found a row of what had probably been storage rooms, with a number marking each. Written in dwarven, all Bella understood was that numbers were being portayed; she didn’t know which ones. She found another vent in the wall near the ceiling and slid into it, dropping her camouflage net before jogging to the back. Sure enough, the vent system fed into each of the rooms, assuring that air would find its way into them. The first one she looked into seemed to be a sleeping area for several of the assassin’s guards. Blankets had been laid out on the floor, and two of the evil beings were asleep on them.

  Bella paused. From the safety of the vent she used a bit more fairy magic and dropped a net around the two that she was sure would keep them sleeping through an earthquake. She continued to the next room. When she arrived and looked through the grate, her heart leapt. Tasker was sitting in the room, dejectedly leaning against a wall. Standing opposite him was a vile-looking human wearing a sword and carrying a pair of Adherent pistols. The man’s hair was trimmed very short, and his face was long and narrow. He paced back and forth and laughed at the dwarf.

  “Now, let’s discuss this again,” the assassin said. “You’re going to finish doing what I want to the device, or I’m going to torture and kill your friends one at a time.”

  “What you want me to do will kill millions on both sides,” Tasker said. He sounded weary, as if this was not the first time he’d insisted on that point. He lifted his head and stared at the man. “I don’t understand why the Temple would even be that stupid.”

  “Oh, this isn’t for the Temple,” Averill replied. “After I kidnapped you and as we fought our way here, I got to thinking. The Temple wanted you to transport everyone fr
om the other side here to our world and at the same time send all of their gathered supporters to the other side. It’d be perfect for them—a brand new world already developed, full of cities to live in and technology to study and adapt.” Averill paused for a moment. “I decided I don’t like that idea. I make money off chaos. The more orderly a place, the less people are willing to pay me to move them ahead of others. It was then I decided it was time for the Divide to come down. Think about it—once again, all the races will be living on one planet in one world. Oh, the sheer chaos that will be triggered as the worlds come back together! I can carve myself a great kingdom out of that chaos.”

  “Once again, why would I want to do that for you?” Tasker replied.

  “Because, Tasker,” Averill said with an evil smile. “This place is protected from the chaos. If you do what I say, your friends will survive here. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll bring them in front of you one at a time and kill them. Slowly and painfully, that I can guarantee.”

  Tasker slumped, and Bella could see the defeat in him by the tilt of his shoulders. Averill and his henchmen had beaten the dwarf, trying to make him do what they wanted done, and he resisted. Until now. Jane and the others had unwittingly delivered the doom of the world into the assassin’s hands. Bella had to stop him.

  “How long will it take to adjust the device?” Averill asked in a low voice.

  “A couple of hours at most,” Tasker replied quietly. He would not sacrifice his friends, not even for the good of the world.

  “If you’re not done in three hours, I will start with the girl,” Averill threatened. He pulled his curved knife from the sheath on his belt and tested the edge. “Don’t doubt me.”