Skythane

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  Xander peered outside. It led out on a wide terrace overlooking the clearing where the House of the Sky sat, the walls of storm in the distance.

  It was starting to get dark outside. He looked down. Quince and Jameson were collecting their supplies.

  Xander hurried back downstairs. There was one more place to check.

  He stood before the shimmering patch on the wall for a moment, debating whether to cross through it or wait for Quince and Jameson.

  Morgan might be in trouble over there. Wherever there was. That decided him.

  He stepped through and found Morgan on the other side, standing there and looking up.

  Xander grabbed the boy and twirled him around in his arms. “I was so worried about you, little man.” Then he looked up too.

  He was standing in a mirror of the room on the other side of the portal, but this one looked almost new. Pink light streamed in through the windows outside, not the normal yellow-green of Oberon’s skies.

  Far above, a glass ceiling showed him a pink daytime sky in all its glory, fleecy clouds slipping by, and a giant silver moon.

  He wasn’t on Oberon anymore.

  JAMESON FOLLOWED Quince back into the House of the Sky, carrying one of the saddlebags. The wide hall was empty, but it must have been impressive in its day. The gloom outside gave it a decadent majesty where beams of light from the setting sun struck metal sconces that might once have held torches embedded into the walls. The details were hard to see in silhouette. He looked up—the remnants of a grand candelabra hung there at an awkward angle, rusted almost into oblivion.

  Xander was nowhere to be seen.

  “Xander?” Quince called. Her voice echoed in the huge space. No one answered. “Dammit, he must have gone on ahead of us. I told him to wait.”

  Jameson was trying to ignore his growing attraction to the Oberon man.

  There was something about his arrogance, his penchant for taking control.

  It was likely just a byproduct of the stressful situations they had gone through, his psych side reassured him once again. Being kept under intense pressure with someone else for long periods of time often fostered feelings of connection and intimacy.

  His training was silent on the fact that he felt no physical attraction whatsoever to Quince.

  “Looking for me?” Xander appeared through an archway at the back of the room, carrying Morgan in his arms. A strange pink light shone through it behind him.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Quince shook her head. “What if the waygate had closed while you were over there?”

  “I was worried about Morgan. We would have figured it out.”

  She grunted. “Well, you both are safe, at least.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out two chains. The first one she held out was a silver chain with a thick argent pendant; it was in the shape of a quarter moon. “I was planning on sharing this with you tonight, but events have outrun me. Through that doorway is another world, as you’ve probably already guessed. The other half of Oberon. We call it Titania.”

  Xander nodded. “It’s certainly not Oberon.”

  Jameson wondered what Xander had seen through that doorway.

  “Xander, it’s time that you knew your birthright. Your true name is Davyn Sléite, and you’re a Prince of the House of Gaelan—House of the Moon,” she said to Xander. “This is your sigil.” She lifted up the chain.

  Xander stared at her. “Are you kidding me?”

  She shook her head. “Your mother is Robyn Sléite, and your father was Theron Sléite. I knew them both before I brought you here.”

  He frowned, but bowed to allow her to put it over his shoulders. Then he stood up straight and brushed his hands across the metal. It glimmered silver at his touch.

  Quince turned to Jameson. “You were just a babe when I carried you through that doorway to this world. Your true name is Lyrin Madainn, and you are a Prince of Errian—the House of the Sun. This is your sigil.” She held up a golden sunburst on a gold chain.

  Jameson started to open his mouth, but Quince put her finger over his lips, silencing him. “I promised to show you everything, and I will. If you still don’t believe me once we step through that door, you are free to leave and find your way back home. I’m asking you to trust me.”

  He felt like he was dissolving, the last little pieces of the Jameson he had been blowing away in the wind. A prince. How did you even process something like that?

  He was no prince. He was nothing special, a cog in the machine. A low-level psych who was never meant for anything greater than midlevel success.

  What was left? If the persona he’d built up around himself over these past twenty-five years was a lie, then who the hell was he?

  And yet, Quince had proven time and time again that she had his back. He was learning, step by painful step, that the world was not what he had imagined. He bent his head and let Quince put the chain around his neck.

  He touched the sigil. The metal was warm, and glimmered with a golden glow.

  A prince. And Xander was one too.

  Jameson had one more question. “Why can’t anyone go through that door? Surely they must have discovered it.”

  Quince shook her head. “This place is well hidden, and the waygate will only open once a day at noon, with a key.” She pulled out a small black sphere. “It’s made of amalite. That’s all I know.”

  “But it’s not noon.”

  She nodded. “I know. Something has opened the gate for us early, saving us more than half a day’s wait. We must cross over now. I don’t know why the waygate is open—maybe your friend Morgan had something to do with it. In any case, we should go before that changes.”

  Jameson looked at Xander, who shrugged, giving him a how should I know look.

  Two princes. And to think, when the day had begun, he’d been just a scared-shitless off-world psych. Who said things weren’t getting better?

  “Let’s go,” Quince said, and they followed her through the door in single file, passing over to Titania.

  Part Two: Titania

  Chapter Fourteen: Night Watch

  XANDER LOOKED around the great hall. Unlike the room they’d just left on Oberon, this one was mostly clean. There was no caked dirt on the floor, only a light coating of dust. It was filled with white tarps covering bits of what he suspected were furniture, reminding him of the room in the deserted farmhouse where he had found Morgan, but the walls of this room were white stone, not black, and they looked to be in much better repair. He filed it away with all the mysteries that were piling up in his head.

  Xander looked back in time to see the doorway behind them shimmer out of existence, to be replaced with a wall of white stone. Quince was right. He could have been trapped here.

  He looked up to take in the view that had captivated him before. The sky was a light pink, so different from Oberon’s green-tinted blue. Cirrus clouds streaked the sky above. The silver moon had moved, and now was framed in the center of the glass ceiling.

  “It’s called Bandia,” Quince said. “Come on. There’s more to see.” She led them to the doors of the great hall and flung them open to let in the fresh air.

  Jameson gasped, and Xander followed the man’s gaze down.

  It looked to be late afternoon.

  The place was deserted, but what a glorious desertion. They stood at the top of a wide stair. The courtyard below them and the wall behind them were made from the same bright white stone—in sharp contrast to the black stone of the House of the Sky that they had just left behind.

  Capping the gate were two wide silver bowls that looked like they had once held flames—bits of soot around the edges and a metallic pipe in the middle of each betrayed them.

  Beyond the gate was an elaborate garden that would have put the Governor’s mansions on Oberon to shame. White marble paths wound through faerie gardens, and though they were now somewhat overgrown, he could see that they had been created with a beauty to rival or surpass any
thing he’d ever seen on Oberon. The plants were predominantly purple and red and gold, unlike the silvery blue hue of the vegetation on Oberon.

  There in the middle of it all stood a statue. “It’s Gael, the moon god,” he said with certainty. The statue was as silver as Bandia’s moonlight, twice as tall as a man, one hand outstretched toward the sky, the other cradling a flawless sphere. His wings were extended behind him as though he were in flight. “I’ve been here before.”

  Jameson looked at him strangely.

  Quince nodded. “Yes, you were. This is the House of the Stars. To the East lies Jameson’s Kingdom—Errian and the Hundred Villages. To the West, Gaelan and the villages of Xander’s people. Both of our peoples used to come here to meet for the summer and winter solstice, before the division. This is the dividing line between the Kingdoms. You were probably too young to remember….”

  Xander shook his head. “There’s another statue. On the other side. The sun god, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  He sank back against the stone rail. “I… I do remember. Damn, I remember.”

  Quince shook her head. “That’s impossible. You were just a baby.”

  Xander shrugged. “Nevertheless.” This couldn’t be real. There was no way they’d just stepped from one world to another, through a stone archway. That kind of thing didn’t happen, not in real life, and yet… the air smelled different here. Like… he couldn’t place it exactly. It was something like honeysuckle. Sweet, but not cloying, something that triggered deep associations in the back of his head.

  He took a deep breath. A little like chocolate too?

  Then something Quince had said a minute before registered. “What division?” he asked.

  “It was the reason your mother sent you away. She feared for your life, and I was worried for Jameson as well. Now you’ve returned. It’s time to set things right.” She looked around at this new place. It was a homecoming for Quince. “The fate of this world, and your adopted one, depends on it.”

  “Where is this place, Quince?” Xander asked.

  “It’s Titania. I told you—”

  “No. Where are we? Where is this world? We came through that waygate to a different place.”

  “Ah.” She picked up one of their citrones and raised her knife. She split it in half with one blow and held up the two pieces. “This is Oberon,” she said, lifting her right hand. “And this is Titania.”

  “How do you know which is which?” Jameson smirked. He seemed to be feeling better, after all.

  “Clever boy. So one time, long ago, they were together, like this. We think the ones who lived here before devised a plan to spin the world into an alternate universe. Maybe to escape a solar flare like the one that’s coming. Maybe the shift created it.”

  Xander tried to picture it, but it was too grand an undertaking to comprehend.

  “In any case, from what we can tell, it failed, splitting the world in two, one half in our universe, and the other here.”

  “Holy shit,” Jameson said.

  “We’re in a whole different universe,” Xander said softly.

  Morgan watched the whole exchange silently, soaking it in.

  “That’s why Oberon doesn’t collapse?”

  Quince nodded. “The two sides are still connected, across the Shift. Our job is to complete the transition, and pull Oberon over to this side. At least until the flare ends. Then we can restore the status quo. And we don’t have much more time.”

  Xander spat. “We should just let Oberon burn. It’s mostly a rat’s nest anyhow.”

  She shook her head. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”

  That was an understatement. “I’m guessing there are a lot of things you didn’t tell us, Quince.”

  She managed a rueful smile. “True enough. See the sun?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s changing. It’s hard to tell, but it used to be more red. The two realities are connected. They’re like reverse images of each other. Not exactly, but there’s a bond. As the sun there moves closer to its flare stage, this one becomes more yellow.”

  He stared at Titania’s primary. “Okay. I get that, but still….”

  “No you don’t. It’s not just the stars that are connected.” She held up the two halves of the citrone. “This world, Titania—or this half a world, counterbalances Oberon. They’re still connected too. That’s why Oberon hasn’t crumpled up into a ball of broken stone.”

  “So what?”

  She split the two halves apart and dropped them to the ground, where they smashed into pieces, scattering seeds across the stones of the courtyard.

  Xander went pale. “Oh crap.”

  She nodded. “If the flare is bad enough, it could break the connection between the two sides….”

  “… sending both careening off into the void like the broken halves of a citrone, with their insides leaking out.”

  She nodded. “Not to mention the danger if one of the three moons were to collide with Titania or Oberon.”

  “Holy shit,” Jameson said again.

  “Holy shit indeed.”

  QUINCE DECIDED they would spend the night in the courtyard of the House of the Stars before setting out the next day. She was anxious to get going, but they needed to teach Jameson to fly, and she didn’t want to attempt that in darkness.

  Morgan was walking around the courtyard, taking everything in with his wide eyes. She still didn’t trust the little creature. Maybe he was a boy, but he was also much more. After all, what were the odds that he would have turned up in a house in the middle of nowhere, just when Xander had arrived?

  Too many mysteries.

  Quince left her charges setting up a rudimentary camp and headed off to the old orchards to look for something for them to eat.

  She found enough redfruit and some protein-rich mushrooms to make a meal, if not a very satisfying one. She didn’t dare light a fire here, lest the smoke give them away.

  It was strange to be back home after all these years. She breathed in the fresh air deeply—she had nearly forgotten that scent, but now it all came rushing back to her.

  She had been far too young for the responsibility she had taken on, but there had been no other choice. Already banished from Gaelan because of Robyn’s fears of discovery, they’d only seen each other once in a while in secret, in places such as this.

  How much had she missed over these last twenty-five years? How much had changed?

  Did Robyn still love her? She itched to be on her way, for the world’s sake as well as her own.

  She sighed. For better or worse, her long exile was finally over, and soon she would have done what she could.

  A part of her hadn’t wanted to return. She had made peace with her decision, and had adapted herself to Oberon’s high-tech, fast-forward culture. Now things were coming to a head, and she had little choice but to face the consequences of her decisions so long before.

  She returned to the House of the Stars with a sack full of fruit and mushrooms.

  Xander and Jameson were sitting on opposite sides of the courtyard, ignoring one another. Jameson was in shock over the events of the last few days, especially the violence and death. She understood it, but he needed to be shaken out of his shell.

  And Xander? Well, Xander was being Xander.

  “Xander, want to wash this fruit? It’s not much, but this and the mushrooms I found will keep our stomachs from rumbling too much.”

  “Of course. Hand them over.”

  “Jameson, there’s a well out in the gardens. Want to bring me some more water? I can make a cold soup with the last of the MREs to stretch them out a bit.”

  “Sounds delightful.” He grimaced.

  She handed him a canteen. “You know how to work a well?”

  He nodded. “We had one on Tander’s World. Pretty low-tech.”

  She waited until both of them were busy with their preparations, and then emptied the last two meals, both
chunky soups, into a pot. She slipped in a few drops of pith, stirring them into the mixture, and hid away the phial by the time Jameson returned. She was careful with the dosage; too much, and she might end up with a couple pith-addled addicts on her hands.

  “Here you go.” He handed her the canteen and returned to his end of the courtyard.

  Xander watched him go, surreptitiously, but said nothing.

  Quince smiled. Bit by bit.

  In a few more minutes, everything was ready, and the motley group sat down to the meal. She poured each of the boys a helping of the stew.

  “Don’t you want some?” Jameson asked, sniffing it. “It’s cold, but it doesn’t seem too bad.” He took a cautious sip.

  “You two will need your strength for the next few days. Morgan and I will manage on mushrooms and fruit.”

  Xander nodded appreciatively at her use of the boy’s name. Morgan himself didn’t seem to mind what he ate, devouring whatever she put in front of him.

  Jameson flexed his golden brown wings unconsciously. They were growing quickly now, almost two thirds the expanse of Xander’s black ones. He seemed to be getting used to them too, little by little.

  “Have to test those out tomorrow.” Quince pointed at his wings.

  “Test them out?” His face was blank. “Oh, you mean try to fly? Oh no. I’m nowhere near ready to try that. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “You’d rather walk a thousand kilometers?”

  “To where?” Xander’s eyes were intent on her.

  “To Gaelan, your family’s ancestral home,” she told Xander. “It’s time for the two of you to make an appearance.”

  “I guess I can try it,” Jameson conceded, flexing his wings. “But nothing too high.”

  “Once you know how to use them, we have to be on our way. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

  “Are things really that dire?” Jameson asked.

  “You saw the shuttle crash in the Red Sands. You tell me.”