by Robert Brady
He dressed all in white, except for a picture of a shield and an eagle on his breast in red and black and gold. His hair stood out, but his face remained bland, almost kindly. His eyes were like mystical orbs, looking through him as if he were too small to see.
It struck him suddenly, their eyes were all silver. No pupil, no cornea, no iris. He couldn’t tell where they were looking, or if they saw him at all.
“You cannot go to her,” the old man said.
“I am her protector,” Bill said.
The old man nodded. “We will bring her to you. She is not harmed. She is simply too weak to stand, and will recover.”
Already the male and the female were at her side, and lifting her from the floor. They struggled with her weight, lifting her by her upper arms and dragging her back to Bill. Her head hung down, her hair dragging the floor.
“We are the Uman-Chi,” the old man said. “I am Angron Aurelias, their King. I am perhaps the only one here who speaks this language.”
“Why did you come to our planet?” Bill asked.
The man seemed puzzled.
* * *
“He is not from this world,” Angron said to Avek, in the language of Uman-Chi.
The Heir stepped up to D’gattis and Glynn, helping them to lay the female at the feet of the male. Her eyelids were closed, her cheeks wet. Some black fluid leaked from the corners of her eyes.
Glynn stood back in disgust. She knew something of the concept of stars and worlds—this idea that they hung in a great, dark arena, and everything revolved around everything else.
What strange sickness could they bring with them, which made their very eyes run black?
The King looked directly at D’gattis. “You have injured her,” he accused.
D’gattis shook his head. “With respect, your Majesty, I did not. And I detect no illness in her. What runs from her eyes may well be natural in her species, whatever that may be.”
* * *
Bill knelt at Melissa’s side. She was whimpering, but he couldn’t make it out. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the mascara from her cheeks. She tried to lift her hands to his, but they fell limp back to her sides.
He looked into her eyes. “You don’t worry, hun,” he said. “He said this isn’t going to last. I don’t know what they did, but it isn’t permanent and you are going to be fine. You lay there and get your strength back.
“Is she injured?” Angron asked him in English.
He looked up at the old man. “You said she wasn’t,” Bill accused him. “You tell me.”
“We do not know this thing that makes her eyes run black,” the King said.
Bill smiled despite himself. “It is called ‘mascara,’” he said. “It is—um—it is a decoration women wear for the face. It won’t hurt her.”
Angron seemed relieved.
“Are we on your space ship?” Bill asked him.
Angron looked puzzled again. “I do not know this word.”
“Look around you,” Bill said. “This is a vessel that flies through space.”
“I must confess, I do not know what you speak of,” Angron told him.
“How did you get to our planet?” Bill asked.
“This is no sort of ship,” Angron said
He stepped away from Bill, and to his own people. They in turn bowed and backed away. He counted eight of them, only one a female—the one he had seen before. She looked younger than Melissa.
“You are in the royal palace of Outpost IX,” Angron said. “In a place known as Fovea.”
“How did you bring us here?” Bill asked.
The man stopped and looked puzzled. “You did not come of your own accord?”
“We were pushed into my car by a man with black and white hair,” Bill said.
“I do not know the word, ‘car,’” Angron said, turning finally so he faced Bill, three feet away, his ‘Uman-Chi’ forming a ring behind them. He was a fleck of a man, a foot shorter than Bill and a third his weight. Still, he had such bearing; Bill didn’t think he could bring himself to raise a hand against this ‘King.’
Melissa seemed to be stirring at Bill’s side. She raised her hand, and rubbed a knuckle clumsily against her eye.
“Automobile?” Bill said. “Vehicle? It has a motor, we move around in them, very fast?”
“A wagon?” Angron asked.
“It is similar,” Bill said. “A self-propelled wagon.”
“We have no such thing here,” Angron said.
“If you didn’t bring us, how did we come here?” Bill asked.
Angron looked at the female, then at Bill. He said something in their song-language, then the woman said something back
* * *
“Your majesty,” Glynn said. “I cannot say. The song makes no mention—”
“It certainly does,” D’gattis said. They all turned to him.
“‘Fight the battle from within, with a champion from outside’, you sang,” he continued. “If your battle is within Fovea, then these are from outside.”
“Yet there are two,” Avek said.
“One is brought by the other,” Aniquen said. “His concubine, apparently.”
“If he is the one,” Glynn said. They all turned to her.
“She is a slip of a girl, clearly a sexual toy,” Avek said.
“However, the song mentions ‘she’,” Glynn said.
“He calls himself her protector,” Angron said. They all fell quiet to hear him. “If he is that, then I think we must assume it is she who is the champion.”
The male clearly tended the female. She acted terrified, he more wary. He protected her, clearly, but if he filled that role, then what might she be?
“Already she recovers from your spell,” Chaheff noted to D’gattis. “I would have thought she would be done for this day.”
“I note,” D’gattis said, nodding, then turned to Angron. “May I inquire, your Majesty, as to their language?”
“It is called Anglesh, the language of the North,” the King said. “And it was spoken by a Man from the North when I was just a child, and the mark of the Uman-Chi was not upon the land.”
“The Emperor claims to be from the North,” D’gattis noted.
“Perhaps another of the questionable truths about him,” Aniquen said.
“Shall we ask them, then?” Avek said.
* * *
“What are they doing?” Melissa asked.
“Talking about us,” Bill said. At least the Uman-Chi didn’t lie. She could already take his hand, already move her head to look him in the face. “I don’t think they know why we’re here.”
“Who was that guy who pushed us?”
“I have no idea,” Bill said. “He talked to me in the Men’s room and wanted to know what my intentions were with you.”
“Oh?” her expression still showed skepticism.
“I thought he wanted to ask you out,” Bill said. “And was making sure I wasn’t in the way.”
“He didn’t act like he wanted to ask me out,” Melissa said. “He sounded like he was trying to hook us up.”
Bill thought for a moment.
“That sounds more like it now,” he lied. In fact, it sounded more to Bill like he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t hook up.
“Well, I did ask you to take me somewhere else,” she said.
She was actually smiling. He smiled back at her, impressed that she could collect herself so fast. She was a fighter, this girl.
The King turned to them, and asked, “Which of you leads?”
“Leads?” Bill asked.
“Surely, one of you is responsible for the other,” he said.
“You are guardian protector, Bill Howard. Stand beside her and give her what she needs. She cannot stand alone.”
“I am her guardian protector,” Bill told him again.
Melissa looked up at him with a tough little smile on her lips.
“So, in fact, she leads?” Angron said
.
“I don’t lead, no,” Melissa said. “Our society isn’t like that.”
“Neither leads, but you are guardian protector,” Angron said, his eyes unreadable. “Why do you need a guardian protector, then?”
Bill looked down at Melissa. She shrugged.
Why not tell the truth? Bill looked at the King and said, “We were told I am her guardian protector by the man who pushed us into the car and sent us here.”
“And he did not say why?”
“I am sorry, no,” Bill said.
* * *
“He is her guardian protector,” Angron said to his Uman-Chi, in their own language.
“However, she does not lead,” he continued. “It appears that other forces are at work here, and these Men do not control them. If there is a ‘champion,’ it is the female.”
“Already, she speaks,” Glynn noted.
“I would think that rather obvious observation beneath you, Glynn Escaroth,” D’gattis said to her, his chin up.
Glynn wanted to whither, Chaheff straightened. “Were that you were so strict in your personal discipline as you are with hers,” he noted.
“Enough,” Angron ordered them. They quieted. He, too, had been impressed. He had smelled the very power when D’gattis cast. The girl should be paralyzed until sunrise.
“What shall we do with them, your Majesty?” Avek asked, attempting to divert the argument.
Angron considered.
“She sang of a hungry one,” D’gattis said, “and of a fight, and that the fighters against the hungry one are already doomed to lose, because they are too late.”
Angron nodded. “I think we need to delve deeper into the words,” he said. “However, it does not bode well, and I find myself concluding that, if this girl is the one from outside, then she should have some ability to aid us. We must derive what it is.”
They all looked at the two visitors. The male was helping the female to sit up. No one needed to reiterate that her resolve was amazing. As they watched, the male looked up at them.
“What?” Bill said.
* * *
Avek Noir sat in his personal chambers, in a tower just within the main gates to Outpost IX. These were the traditional quarters of the family Noir, who had held the gates to Outpost IX for centuries.
Avek’s rooms seemed lavish for a Caster. Padded furniture, thick pile carpets, a gigantic bed of four posts with a canopy and a desk and chair in the bedroom, a sitting room with lush couches and what the Conqueror called ‘kaw-fee’ tables, which were good for drinks and feet, and a study packed with lore.
He spent most of his time here, and so D’gattis found him.
D’gattis could be considered haughty even for an Uman-Chi. His power rivaled Chaheff’s. Uman-Chi considered him the leading expert in the world on Cheyak lore. However, Avek had been in the vaults of Outpost V, and D’gattis could make no such claim.
D’gattis entered in his white robes, the strange yellow symbol on the front of them. It marked him as a member of a group of mercenaries called the Daff Kanaar, the most feared warriors in Fovea, after the Wolf Soldiers. They turned battles; they defeated many times their number in enemy troops of all races. They were for hire to whomever could afford them. D’gattis’ skills had been for hire. There had been a time when a Man could barely sell a duchy for the price of an Uman-Chi’s services, especially a Caster’s.
Avek had been for hire once. He had been a Wolf Soldier himself, after Lupus the Conqueror had sacked the city of Outpost IX, pushing past Noir guards like they weren’t there, leaving them dead in the streets.
Avek Noir had sought to redeem his honor by pursuing the Wolf Soldier ships as they fled the City for Tren Bay. He had failed in that, too. The Conqueror had managed to sink his ships, and Avek had returned to Trenbon in a lifeboat.
Angron had suggested that a nice, safe knighthood in Outpost VII would be more fitting for the Noir’s. Rather than accept that shame, Avek Noir had sailed to Thera and bent his knee to the one who had shamed him, and become a Wolf Soldier, of the Mage Corps.
Uman-Chi seemed to be becoming a commodity.
“I greet thee, House of Noir,” D’gattis said, spreading both hands and rolling his wrists in the traditional greeting of equals.
“I welcome thee, D’gattis of the Daff Kanaar.”
They weren’t friends. They weren’t actually friendly, but they had something in common, and that seemed most likely to bring D’gattis to his door. Avek would have gone to him otherwise.
Avek assumed the friendly, receptive posture, and inclined his head in the respectful gesture due a Caster like D’gattis.
“Our mutual friend must be informed of this,” D’gattis said.
That was it.
“I concur,” he said. “And I am suspicious, as I believe you are as well.”
“That we have in some way discovered the home of the homeless Conqueror?”
“Verily.”
“These two Men look like him,” Avek said. “The male is a giant, with those heavy bones of Lupus’ people. His hair is gone gray, as the old among Men do.”
Avek nodded.
“A gray-haired Man is a gaffer with no teeth,” D’gattis said. “Have you looked in the mouth of the Conqueror?”
“In fact I have, in his service,” Avek said. “Steel implants in the teeth.”
“Why anyone would do that baffles me,” D’gattis said, and suppressed a shudder. “But they melt silver into their teeth. These two have it as well, although it is a white material more difficult to see. I saw it as the female reclined.”
“That cannot be a coincidence,” Avek said.
“I agree,” D’gattis said. “We must convince Angron to summon Lupus the Conqueror to meet these two.”
“I think that that will never happen,” Avek said. “And I think you know why.”
Avek indicated with a turn of his wrist D’gattis could seat himself. D’gattis delicately lifted a pile of scrolls from a hassock to a table, and did so. He looked directly into Avek’s eyes, and assumed the posture of assertiveness. Avek himself turned his toes outward where he sat, showing a receptive stance.
“You were in the Emperor’s hire,” he said.
Lupus the Conqueror hadn’t been an Emperor for that long. He hadn’t even been a noble for that long—barely more than a decade. In the 83rd year of the reign of the Fovean High Council, King Glennen had died and been replaced by his self-appointed heir, Duke Rancor Mordetur of Thera, known best throughout Fovea as Lupus the Conqueror.
Lupus the Conqueror had been king for less than a month before he marched on Andoran and annexed a tribe he called the Wolf Riders, and staked out the junction of the Safe and the Great Mid Rivers as their tribal home. Eldador went immediately from Kingdom to Empire, and His Majesty became His Imperial Majesty.
Lupus the Conqueror had purchased Avek’s fealty long before that with Cheyak gold. He had gotten it from Uman City, which he had needed to conquer on behalf of Eldador when its Duke, Yerel, had attempted to secede.
He’d revealed Uman City as the forgotten Cheyak Outpost V. Lupus the Conqueror in his short years had uncovered what Uman-Chi expending every resource available to them for centuries had failed to do.
That gold had purchased Avek as the Emperor’s eyes and ears in Trenbon. He reported back regularly.
Avek knew full well Angron was too wise to fool, so he hadn’t tried. Trenbon needed to not be the target of this new Eldadorian Empire, which could sack Outpost IX. Maintaining Avek as Heir kept his most dire enemy close, without having to smell his breath.
“That is well known,” Avek said.
“And Lupus gave you the gold to supplant Ancenon as Heir,” D’gattis continued. “The gold from the treasury at Outpost V.”
“You know of Outpost V?” Avek was stunned. He leaned forward, as if afraid his words would betray them if the other Uman-Chi didn’t breathe them in. “How long have you known?”
D’gatt
is snorted in an un-Uman-Chi way. “He is a Man, Avek,” he said. “He has no secrets from me, whether he thinks he does or not.”
Avek hadn’t found the Emperor so transparent, but said nothing.
“In light of Lupus knowing where the Outposts are, and Angron not knowing, I have had time to reflect on this song of young Glynn’s as well,” D’gattis said.
“And you know what that means, then,” Avek said.
“I think we both do.”
Chapter Five:
A Bold, New World
They were led by the female Uman-Chi through a maze of halls and passageways, Bill supporting Melissa until she could finally walk with just a hand on his arm. Eventually the Uman-Chi pushed open a door to a room paneled in green, with varnished wood floors and a wooden table in the center with a red marble top. Polished rosewood cabinets lined the walls, with shelves full of bottles and urns behind glass doors. The female guided them inside, closed the door behind them all, and had handed them each robes. They looked at each other, then at her, and blushed crimson. Finally she sighed and turned around.
“They want us to put the robes on,” Melissa said.
“Yep.”
She looked at him, looked down, and looked at him, still blushing.
“Hell,” she said finally, and pulled her top off. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts, pert and pink and perfect, bobbed free. She looked into his eyes.
“Start strippin’, stud,” she said. “You were going to see it tonight anyway.”
He started unbuttoning his shirt. “Yeah?”
She smiled, turning her skirt on her hips so she could unfasten it, and kicking off her heels. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “It was your lucky night.”
He pulled the shirt off, then the t-shirt. His belly felt like it had more bounce than her breasts, the skin hidden under a mat of hair. He kicked off his shoes as well.
“When did you decide that?”
She pulled the skirt off and was naked in front of him. She had shaved her pubic hair away except for a heart, just above her lips. He had never seen that before and caught himself staring. Then he realized she hadn’t put her robe on.