Days of Future Past - Part 2: Present Tense

by John Van Stry

  "What about the orcs!" Neirdre asked, "How will you return now that they're blocking your way home?"

  "I admit," Sarah began, looking concerned now, "that the news of the fighting east of here is of great concern. My family has dealt with the southern members of the Washoe many times over the years, and I had expected to see some of them on our return trip. This development will bear some consideration."

  "So then your best course would be to return home now, wouldn't it?" Neirdre said, sounding like she had made a major point. I was curious as to just how Sarah would respond to that.

  Sarah just shrugged. "We are already here, the fighting has already begun. Whether we return now or continue along on our trip, that path is already blocked and the difficulties will remain the same, regardless.

  "We will most likely have to retrace our route to the south, in order to return home safely. But regardless of that, we have already spent a great deal of effort to come this far. Continuing on is still the logical choice, as it will not make our returning home any harder than it already has become. However if we were to return now, it would mean returning empty handed."

  Eldrin spoke up again while Neirdre puzzled through that.

  "But if you don't find what you're looking for, you'd still be returning empty handed, wouldn't you?"

  Sarah shook her head, "We'd at least know that what we sought was no longer there and would not have to launch a second expedition at a later time, and at a greater expense, to confirm it."

  Several of the council members were starting to look to be swayed, but Neirdre and two others were definitely not.

  "I don't like it," one of the other elves said. "They have come into our territory, they now know about our town, and when pressed all they can do is offer flowery phrases and misdirection about who they are and what they're doing! How do we know that they're not spies, simply sent here to find out our secrets?"

  Sarah looked shocked at that and Heather spoke up before she could say anything.

  "We didn't ask to be shown your town!" Heather said rather hotly. "We didn't even know your damn town was here, and if you hadn't stopped us, we wouldn't now know of it either!"

  "Don't get snippy with me, young lady!"

  "She's right," I said speaking up now as well. "If anyone is to blame for us knowing you're here, it's you. If you hadn't stopped us, we'd be out of your hair and headed on our way by now. Don't go blaming us for your sticking your nose into our business!"

  That didn't seem to go over very well, and I noticed Sarah had her head down, coving her face with a hand as she shook her head.

  "Then why haven't the dragons attacked you yet?" Neirdre stated.

  "Because they don't know we're here," Heather shot back. "Why haven't they attacked you? How do we know you aren't in league with them?"

  "Why I never...." Neirdre said looking positively furious.

  "You would accuse us?" The elf who had spoken previously said, looking angry as well.

  I shook my head, "She's simply pointing out that...."

  Heather interrupted me, "Why the hell not? You're accusing us, aren't you?"

  I put a restraining hand on Heather's chest as she looked about ready to walk over there and smack somebody.

  Heather continued rather angrily. "I have lost friends, co-workers, and even family to orcs and dragons both! And I resent your implication that I might side with any of them."

  I could see that causing some concern and Eldrin stood up and held up his hands, silencing the members of his own council, several of whom looked like they had some retorts of their own ready.

  "Obviously we can not settle this here and now," he said. "I will summon one of the dwarves to come and examine your equipment, to at least verify your claims of discovering a significant find to the south, and to insure that you are of no real threat to us."

  "Wait, what?" I said looking at him. If anyone found the nuke in my backpack, there would be trouble for sure.

  "I would feel a lot better if we at least knew more about what you were carrying first."

  "But that's our private property!" I protested.

  "Over my dead body!" Heather swore and started forward.

  "Guards, seize them."

  "Son of a bitch!" I swore as I was grabbed from behind.

  "Take their belongings and jail them. I'll have the dwarves send someone up tomorrow to examine their things and determine if they're as safe to us as they claim. If so, you can continue on with our apologies."

  "It's going to take a lot of apologies to make up for this," Heather said glaring at him as she struggled against the guard holding her from behind.

  "I must agree," Sarah added. "I will make sure the elves of the east hear about this!"

  They stripped our packs off, tied our hands, searched us, relieving us of any extra knives in the process. They then marched us off to a large cell in another building, and untying our hands they pushed us all in together. After locking it, they stacked our stuff up on the far side of the room and left us there.

  - 10 -

  "Well that could have gone better," Sarah said and glared at both me and Heather.

  "Hey, how was I to know that they could be such assholes?" I sighed and shrugged.

  "Don't look at me," Heather said and dropped down onto the floor of our cell to sit, "If they had just stayed hidden and left us alone, none of this would have happened. They're the ones looking for a fight."

  "You did not have to give them one," Sarah sat down on the lone bed in the cell and looked back and forth between Heather and I again. She was probably right. We probably shouldn't have said some of what we had said, she had been handing things fairly well until Heather and I had spoken up.

  "So what's our next step?" Heather asked with a heavy sigh.

  "We break out of here, that's our next step," I said.

  "What?!" Sarah said and stared at me, "If we do that, they will attack us for sure!"

  I shook my head, "I'm sorry, but I'm not up for being anyone's slave again, it's bad enough I have Coyote yanking my chain. We weren't the ones who started all of this, they were."

  Sarah sighed, "Well, they were being self-righteous pricks. But elves can be like that. I suspect we're the first humans other than the Indians that any of them have ever seen, much less dealt with. So our lack of 'respect' for their 'obvious superiority' probably grated on their more refined sensibilities."

  "So you think they're assholes too," Heather chuckled.

  Sarah rolled her eyes, but smiled.

  "The first thing we need to do," I told them, "is to get out of here. Then get our stuff, then leave."

  "Without killing anyone," Sarah warned. "If we kill any of them, the rest will follow us like a swarm of angry hornets. Elves are very single minded about revenge."

  "What good will it do if we can't threaten them?" Heather wanted to know.

  "Threatening is fine, we just better not follow through on the threats, or we will be in a lot worse shape than we are now."

  "I don't see how it can get any worse!"

  "Trust me, it can always get worse," Sarah warned.

  "Fine, we don't kill anyone." Heather looked at me, "Okay, so how do we escape?"

  "Why do I have to figure it out?" I asked surprised.

  "Because it was your idea, that's why!"

  I sighed and started to walk around the cell, looking at it. We were in an old storeroom in one of the larger buildings. The walls were concrete on two sides; I guessed that we were in a corner room. The third side looked like plaster, but when I kicked it, I didn't leave a mark.

  The fourth wall, the one that held the door we'd been unceremoniously pushed through, was made up of bars. That made it rather easy for anyone entering the outside room to see all of us.

  I checked the bed it was firmly rooted to the floor.

  I checked the bars, the jumped back as I got shocked.

  "They electrified the bars?" I said in surprise.

  "It is magic,"
Sarah clarified. "All of the walls have the same barrier inside them, so if we try to dig through them, we'll get shocked. Not that I think we have anything we can use to do that."

  "Can you do anything to defeat it?"

  Sarah shook her head, "Not without them finding out. It would take me a couple of hours to do something and whoever controls the spell would know as soon as I did it."

  I nodded and sat down, thinking about it.

  "What if we were to pretend that one of us was sick?" Heather asked. "Get one of them in here, and then try to take them hostage?"

  I shook my head, "That trick was old even when I was a kid, I don't think they'd fall for it here."

  "Too bad we can't just teleport out of here," Heather grumbled.

  "What?" I turned and looked at Sarah.

  "Teleporting is difficult and takes more power than I possess, even if I knew how to do it, which I do not."

  I sighed and was about to give up myself, when an idea hit me.

  "They don't know that, right?"

  "They do not know what?" Sarah looked up at me.

  "They don't know that you can't teleport."

  "Well no, they would be surprised to find out I can, but that does not matter, because I can not."

  "But what if they came down here and found an empty cell. They'd think we teleported out, right?"

  "Well, probably. But we can not, so why are you even asking about it?"

  "Could you cast that spell of Luvon's? The one that hides everything inside an area?"

  Sarah popped up to her feet almost immediately and started doing something with her hands as she walked around the cell. I watched her as she went around the cell twice, and then stopped and looked at me, smiling.

  "I could do that. Normally any magic user would feel the magic of the spell, but the wards and the spells in the walls would hide it. They would only see an empty cell, until they actually set foot inside here."

  "Perfect!" I smiled, "Now cast it!"

  "What good will that do?" Heather said. "They see an empty cell, and they're going to go look for us. They're not going to open the door for an empty cell."

  I stopped and thought about that. "You're right; we need a reason for them to come inside here."

  "We could leave something behind," Sarah said.

  "But then they would be suspicious," I pointed out, "so they wouldn't just walk in here un-expecting."

  "Hmm...."

  We sat there for several minutes when suddenly Heather jumped to her feet.

  "I got it!" She said, and proceeded to pull the covers down on the bed and make a mess of them at the foot of the bed, and pushed the pillows around, knocking one on the floor.

  "What are you doing?" Sarah asked looking confused.

  "You saw the town, the meeting room, even the ruins outside of town. They're neat freaks! I bet it's compulsive or something. They see this bed all messed up, and if one of them doesn't come inside to straighten up, I bet they send the maid down to do it!"

  I looked at Sarah and shrugged.

  "What have we got to lose?"

  Sarah shrugged, "Okay," she said and she started to cast the spell. Heather and I just sat on the floor and watched. Ten minutes later, Sarah came over and sat by the two of us.

  "Remember," she whispered, "the spell does not hide any sounds, so be quiet."

  Heather and I both nodded and we got comfortable and waited.

  Heather poked me and I woke up. I heard it; there were people at the door leading into the room on the other side of the bars. The door opened then and Tanyl walked into the room with Maerdrym from the council. They both stopped and stared at the cell.

  "They're gone!" Maerdrym said.

  Tanyl came over and grabbed the door, then jumped back shaking his hand.

  "The spell is still active, they didn't escape that way. Besides," he motioned to our gear stacked by the wall, "their things are still here. They must have teleported away."

  "I did not think that their mage was that strong! Come, we must tell the others!"

  "What's the rush? They've left."

  "Surely they will come back for their things," Maerdrym said.

  "If their mage can teleport them safely away, I don't see why they'd bother. But you're right; we had better warn the others."

  They both left the room, and we waited. Five minutes later they were back with the rest of the council members, plus the guards.

  "How did this happen?" Neirdre demanded. She looked just as angry now as she had during the council. "Why weren't any guards posted?"

  "There were guards, two of them!" Maerdrym told her.

  "Yes, outside of here! They should have been watched! They could have been stopped!" She glared at one of the guards, "I hold you, Rhys, responsible!"

  "Oh come off of it, Neirdre," Tanyl said. "If their mage was powerful enough to teleport, I doubt Rhys could have done anything to have stopped them. You should be lucky that they decided not to fight us in the council room!"

  "What?" Neirdre said looking rather shocked.

  "Any mage with enough power to teleport from the inside of a warded cell could easily have hurt many of us and probably killed a few more as well. She probably had the others act up solely so we would underestimate all of them, so they could all escape later."

  "What do we do if they come back?" One of the other guards asked.

  "Why would they come back?" Maerdrym asked.

  "Well let's see, we kidnapped them, assaulted them, stole their things and took their horses. And they're a lot more powerful than any of you thought. You know humans; they'll want to rub our noses in their superiority."

  "They are annoying like that, I'll agree," Tanyl said and several of the others nodded. "We can consider that in council later. For now, let's warn the others to be watchful."

  "What do we do with their stuff?" Rhys asked.

  Tanyl shrugged, "Leave it for now. I don't have much trust in human technology."

  "Well we've already sent for Grunim," Maerdrym said. "He can at least tell us if it's safe or not."

  "More likely he'll want to take it all," Neirdre said.

  "Then he can pay us for it," Maerdrym shrugged.

  I watched as they all left the room, except for Rhys who came over and looked at the cell a moment, and then shrugged and walked away.

  "Larrel, get someone over to clean up the cell," Rhys said to the other guard as he left the room. "With the way that bed's been used, I don't want the whole place stinking of human."

  I looked at Heather who was grinning.

  "Wow, I thought we humans were lazy," Heather grumbled. We'd been waiting for hours for whoever was supposed to show up and clean the cell, and so far, no one had come.

  "When you live forever, I guess you just move at a slower pace," Sarah said.

  "Do they really live forever?" I asked.

  Sarah shrugged, "No one really knows. Dianne told me once that as far as she knew, they just lived really long lives compared to us. But she didn't think that they were immortal."

  "Well, it would be nice if someone would light a fire under their ass," Heather complained and we all nodded in agreement.

  We heard a sound at the door then, and Heather and I both quickly stood up and moved to the cell door.

  A female elf came in, a younger looking one by my guess, followed by a short, wide, heavyset man with a long black beard, wearing a metal skullcap with short black hair underneath. He had thick arms and thick legs, if the heavy leather jerkin and chain shirt that he was wearing was any indication. He was definitely shorter than five foot; he barely came up to her shoulder. I was guessing that this was the dwarf that had been mentioned earlier.

  "Thank ye, Holone, for letting me inside."

  "I have to clean up the cell, Grunim," she said to him.

  "So, this is their stuff?" he asked heading over to the pile.

  "I guess so, Eldrin tells me they don't trust it because it's human made."

  I wa
tched as Grunim picked up one of the gauss guns and looked at it.

  "This is old tech. From before the destruction," Grunim said. "I've never seen its like before."

  "Probably why the council is afraid of it," Holone shrugged. "Well, I need to get that mess cleaned up."

  We all watched as the elf came over to the cell door and took out a key. She then stuck it in the lock and turned it a full circle, and pushing the door open she stepped into the cell.

  I grabbed her and clamping a hand over her mouth I put her in a sleeper hold even as her eyes widened.

  She never made a sound.

  Once she was unconscious, I lowered her to the floor and Heather took off the elf's belt and used it to tie her hands behind her back, and then gagged her with one of the pillowcases.

  Looking up, I saw that Grunim had set down the rifles and was poking through our backpacks. I almost gasped when I realized he had mine, and he had pulled out the bomb and was staring at it.

  I ran out of the cell immediately with Heather and Sarah on my heels.

  "Put that down!" I told him as he uncovered the controls.

  "What?" he said and spun around in shock, dropping the bomb back onto the piled packs.

  "That's not yours, and it's dangerous," I warned him. I stopped less than ten feet away as he put his hand on the butt of a pistol on his side and his eyes were moving back and forth, taking in the three of us.

  "Where's Holone?"

  "Tied up, in the cell. Now take your hand off of that pistol slowly, and no one will get hurt!" I warned him.

  "Ye should be one ta talk! I'm armed, ye are not!"

  "Care to bet on that?" I warned him.

  He pulled his pistol, as I skipped in and kicked his hand. A risky move, but it paid off and he lost his grip on the pistol. His other hand pulled a knife and I kicked him again, in the chest.

  It was like kicking a brick wall. He may not be tall, but he was wide and he was heavy!

  He grunted and took a swing at me with the knife, which I dodged, and then he punched me in the chest knocking me back. He punched like a mule!

  He turned to go after Heather then, who was making for the stacked rifles, so I jumped at him and kicked him in the back of the knee. It hurt, the pants he was wearing were heavy, but he lost his balance for a moment and I grabbed his beard and yanked his head around. The body always follows the head after all!