“What’s wrong,” Amy asked.
“The taxi driver was watchin’ where we went, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t think the enemy is, you know, controlling him, do you?”
This was Martay and his voice was full of suspicion.
“Nah, I don’t reckon so, he was wide awake. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t under other orders though. We’ve got earth’s own law enforcement to worry about remember, not just the enemy. Didn’t ya notice how long it took for customs to let us through?”
“But, if we are wanted for something, why didn’t they just arrest us at the airport?”
Snipping didn’t have an answer to that. He had been asking himself the same thing.
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t make sense to me but I’m certain our movements are bein’ followed. We need to keep a low profile and disappear as quickly as possible from the city.”
They quickly found their way to an intercity bus depot and booked the next available trip to a small town called Revelstoke, just west of the Rocky Mountain national parks. Amy put up a considerable fight with Snipping, arguing that her parents would almost certainly be in Vancouver. Snipping simply wouldn’t allow it.
“If we hang around we’ll get found almost instantly. All sorts o’ awkward questions’ll get asked.”
Martay said nothing but nodded grimly to indicate his approval. If the police really were after them, or even watching them, staying still would make the job all too easy. He wasn’t going to take that risk, pain or no. Amy was forced to go along with the plan yet again and soon they continued on their journey.
The bus ride took many hours but it was not without its upsides. The scenery that greeted them was absolutely breathtaking, somehow wilder than the Alps of Europe. Revelstoke, on the other hand, was not quite so impressive. You couldn’t expect much of a small town on the edge of the expansive Canadian wilderness. The basic amenities such as a post office, pub and convenience store were all to be seen along the main street, which at least lent a quaint ambience to the town. Fortunately, as it was on the edge of a very popular tourist area, it was also littered with decent motels and hotels.
They chose a pleasant looking motel a little way out from the town centre and checked in for one night with the suggestion that they might stay longer. Finally, after nearly two days of travel they relaxed in their room exhausted.
Of the three of them, Martay was definitely in the worst condition. His side ached terribly and he could not get comfortable even when he lay down. Amy was tired but her concern for Martay was much more powerful. She stooped over him where he had eased himself onto a couch and checked him cautiously. His forehead was hot to the touch, which worried her. The walk to the motel had not been overly far and the weather was very cold. She had a bad feeling. Despite Martay's reluctance, she helped him to remove his jumper and shirt so that she could inspect the wound.
She didn’t dare remove the bandages without a fresh set to replace them but the problem was immediately apparent, courtesy of the smell coming from beneath the layers. The wound was getting infected. It wasn’t too bad at present but it needed to be treated immediately.
“There must be some kind of medical centre here,” Amy exclaimed, “somewhere that we can take Martay to get looked at.”
Some quick research showed them that there was indeed a medical centre nearby but it was closed for the night. With reluctance, they settled in for a night of restless sleep.
The remainder of the week saw a great deal of relief for all three of them. They had taken Martay to the medical centre first thing in the morning and had received care without too many questions, other than the usual. The explanation of a skiing accident into a tree seemed to have satisfied the doctor’s curiosity, who must have seen plenty of unusual skiing injuries so close to the resorts. Martay's bandages were replaced, his wound site washed thoroughly, and he was provided with antibiotics for the infection which had started. The doctor had also given Amy spare bandages and shown her how to change Martay's dressings properly. More importantly, Amy had spent more time training with the Arbiter and was making some progress with creations in her elven dreams, though the more she learnt the more she felt she didn’t properly understand dreamwalking. When she explained this to the Arbiter he had simply hummed in an amused way.
“So it is with the study of all complex matters,” he had said. “At first you believe that you begin to understand. Then you feel totally lost, until eventually you appreciate that there will always be more and more layers to learn about, but that you truly are making progress.”
It had taken a moment for this to sink in before Amy understood.
“No one fully understands dreamwalking,” the Arbiter continued, “and there will always be surprises for even the most knowledgeable masters of the subject. For example, your parents achieved what was believed to be impossible when they jumped worlds. The Arbiters believed they had witnessed the absolute limits of a dreamwalker’s capabilities. And then suddenly you come along and achieve something even more astounding by drawing elements out of the Arbiters’ plane. Who knows how, and who knows what else you are capable of doing when you are ready. So, do not despair if you do not understand everything that happens around you. See it rather as an opportunity.”
At the end of the week they received a shock. A letter arrived for them, supposedly from Amy’s parents, hinting that they were currently staying at Lake Louise. This had caused a significant argument but in the end, they agreed that it was worth heading there to look for them. The handwriting had certainly looked like Amy’s parents’.
They hired a car and set out for the mountains. Even if they couldn’t find her parents they were at least enjoying one of the most beautiful places in the world and all of them were feeling recovered from their fear and worry. There was no sign of the enemy and the police hadn’t descended on them as yet. They travelled east out of town and along the southern edge of Mount Revelstoke National Park, enjoying the snow touched landscape. They were so distracted that they didn’t see their danger until it was far too late.
Amy tried hard to swerve and miss the tree that lay sprawled across the road but all she achieved was to swing the car sideways before the collision. The tyres squealed in pain even on the slippery road and all of the companions were thrown about badly. There was a hollow moment of fearful expectation, then…
Crunch! The car slammed into the heavy wooden barrier at nearly forty miles per hour, sideways. Their deceleration became a sudden, painful slamming stop. The airbags fired. The car rocked up against the tree as if it was threatening to roll over the whole thing before coming to rest with another loud thunk on the road.
Martay and Snipping were knocked out cold and Amy was slipping between consciousness and unconsciousness. Her mind reeled against it, fighting to master itself. The fear of losing consciousness again gave her determination and focus. Her mind started to clear and she blinked blearily over the steering wheel. Her body was filling with adrenalin so quickly that she barely noticed the pain of the impact. She scrabbled suddenly at her seatbelt and once free, tried to check on her companions. She was filled with terror at first but then she realised they both still had a pulse. She also noticed a little blood seeping through Martay's shirt. The seatbelt, through the force of the impact, had wrenched at his skin and pulled his wound open. Amy was in the process of calming herself down and trying to get her breathing under control when a sound caused her heart rate to redouble and she let out a shrill scream.
Something metallic had tapped loudly on her unbroken window. The source of the noise was in no way a relief. Amy was looking through a few millimeters of glass at the barrel of a pistol. She didn’t need time to work out what had happened. It was all too clear. They were caught in a trap and the blank look on the highway patrolman’s face told her quite plainly that this was no plan of the local authorities.
The man gestured awkwardly with the gun and Amy realised he wanted her to get out of t
he car. She had no choice. She slowly opened the door and with her blood pounding in her ears, stepped out of the car to meet her fate.
She feared the worst but nothing happened. The man stood silent.
“What do you want from me?” Amy surprised herself with the steadiness of her voice.
The answer came slowly and with some difficulty.
“We need your help.”
Whatever Amy had been expecting it wasn’t this. Then again, she thought, help probably meant, ‘need to use your power’.
“Why should I help you!? You really think I would help you after everything you have done?”
“You do not… understand,” came the reply. “We had to hunt you because your captors stopped us from speaking to you…directly.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Amy didn’t know what the enemy was trying to do but she kept asking questions to play for time. The enemy ignored them.
“You must help. You do not understand but you must help.”
“And what if I won’t?” Amy retorted.
“Then I must force you to help.”
This sounded more realistic, Amy thought but the thought was also accompanied by the sound of another car door opening. She spun around to see another patrolman standing next to Martay. The patrolman stood with another gun pointed at Martay's chest.
“Alright!” Amy screamed. “Don’t hurt them, just, tell me what you want me to do!”
Martay woke to a pain throbbing in his side as if he had just been shot again. The world was dark and unclear but he could hear muffled sobs coming from beside him. Amy was curled up with her arms around her legs and her face pressed against her knees. She barely reacted even when she noticed that he was awake.
As Martay's eyes adjusted he realised they were stuck in a small holding cell.
“Amy… what…”
“He refuses to let you have bandages until I submit,” she sniffed.
“I’m fine Amy!” he lied but it didn’t work.
“I checked your wound Martay. If I don’t do what they want you’re going to bleed out or worse.”
“What are you going to do?” It was clear Amy had made up her mind about something. She looked at him with a strange fire in her eyes.
“I’m going to get us out of here.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The pub slowly started to fill as workers around the city, led on by their internal clocks and, in some cases, deep seated addiction, began to give up on work for the day and seek a means of forgetting most of what had happened so far. It may have been a small, provincial town on the western edges of Aerandos but there was a reason that pubs were always one of the first civic buildings to appear in new settlements. The barman nodded appreciatively to his arriving regulars.
Personally, the barman felt that he could have been a very successful political advisor to the regional Lord, Boldog, over in Taval. From his vantage point behind the solid oak counter, paid to serve the world’s most popular truth serum, he heard all the candid opinions, anger and fears of the local populace. Lately fear had been the main theme.
Much of the talk had been about the attacks in the south and the number of people who had been taken. He was therefore not surprised, a few hours after opening, to hear the hubbub steadily circling in on the topic.
“You know what gets me? Right? Like, it’s the way the toff don’t seem to notice that it’s always the small towns like ours, right?”
There was a murmur of general agreement to this in the vicinity of the speaker, who the barman identified as a local farmer.
“Yeah, that’s a good point Garb’, no one ever attacked old Samuka’s place aye?”
This came from the local tanner.
“You’re right there boys. Might explain why the Duke wanted his head, you reckon?”
This third and rather loud input came from the blacksmith Nemet who was a bit hard of hearing. Then one of the merchants spoke up. Normally a merchant would have been shunned from the conversation for not being of the same class as the regulars. However, Luka was a local born man, was well known and spoke their lingo. As such, he was always quite welcome when his business brought him home.
“Eeeere, I dunno gents. I reckon that might’a just been politics ya know? I been down to Kest’hay castle a few times on business, as it were, and all the locals there spoke right proud of Samuka. I reckon you gotta be doin’ something right to win the respect of a hardworking man when you’re a lord, yeah? Don’t hear no one speaking like that about old Boldog aye?” He paused for a moment. “Not that he’s a bad toff mind,” he added, showing a surprising amount of political caution.
There was a lot of nodding in response. He was respected for what the town dwellers considered to be ‘foreign information’.
“Yeah, but then why did the attacks stop after his lordship did a runner?”
This question caused quite a stir and the barman tried to work out who it had come from. The pub clientele weren’t so concerned about who was asking, they were more interested in discussing this, as yet, unconsidered fact. It tipped the balance of collective opinion heavily towards the belief that Samuka had indeed been guilty.
The barman listened thoughtfully as Luka the merchant tried to inject what the barman considered to be quite sensible ideas, noting that if it was politics, any kind of twisted plot against Samuka might be true. The scales of belief started slowly to tip back to a balance when the unidentified voice piped up again.
“Yeah buy why would the Duke frame Samuka? They were old chums from what I hear!”
The barman’s gaze searched again for the owner of this odd voice, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the talk shot off again to factor in the new revelation. This time the scales stayed tipped. Even Luka was nodding concernedly. Everyone was starting to remember every bad thing they had ever remembered about Samuka and the southern province in general. The earlier comment about Samuka’s popularity had somehow been forgotten a few drinks ago.
Suddenly, the mystery voice chimed in once more.
“Where do you think Samuka ran off to? I don’t think he could stay hidden this long without inside help if you know what I mean.”
The barman was ready this time and discovered that the surprisingly sober words were coming from a youngish looking man at the back of the local crowd, inconspicuous and evidently unnoticed by the others. The barman’s spine tingled in a telling way. Sober strangers were patrons that caused concern to barmen everywhere and this one, he noticed, with but a few words had distinctly altered the conversation to end up damning Samuka, who the barman had only ever heard good things about. It all seemed, as Luka had suggested, disturbingly political, not at all the pub politics the barman was used to. He decided that tonight was definitely a night to close up early.
A little later, Vencel left the pub quietly and made his way back to his horse at the edge of town. The night had gone very well, he thought. It was just a shame the barman had closed up so early. He had been so close to making the locals think that Samuka was holed up with Kestel. Still, with the ground work laid, it wouldn’t take long for rumors from neighbouring towns to lead them the rest of the way. This had been the last western town on his anti-Samuka list.
Next came the fun part. The pro-Samuka work in the eastern provinces.
✽ ✽ ✽
Chapter 18
Amy hadn’t worked out what exactly she would do yet but the desire to do something burned inside her like a raging fire. It had been one thing when her friend was hurt but free. The enemy trapping them and using Martay's perilous condition to try and control her didn’t make her scared, it made her angry. Furious! She would do something about it.
The cabin that contained them was very basic but sturdy and solid. It had a concrete floor with wooden walls and a metal roof set on wooden beams. The roof was not overly high and the bars forming their cell were primarily fixed in the concrete floor and bolted securely to the heavy wooden beams above th
em. Regrettably there was no hope of quickly loosening the bars. The wooden walls behind them were made of thick, solid beams that wouldn’t budge at all. There was no hope for them that way. Physically speaking, they had no real hope of escape at all.
Nevertheless, the physical limitations of the world were starting to bend in Amy’s mind.
The thought had flitted through her head quickly and caused her to reflect for a moment on how much she had changed lately. Only days ago, she would have gladly given up all her power. But now she needed it, and she knew that she was powerful. What was a wooden wall to her when she could simply create an axe or even a chainsaw for that matter. A strange feeling akin to excitement was coursing through her veins.
Martay gave her a concerned and expectant look. There was something disconcerting about the light in her eyes. It was almost wild, chaotic, but when she spoke again her voice was steady and calm. Whatever strange emotions were driving her, she was controlling them.
“Getting out of here shouldn’t be too hard,” she explained. “You told me that my power could be used for good. Well, I’m going to try it. Whether I like it or not Martay, I’m a dreamwalker and that means I’m capable of almost anything. I can make you bandages and tools to get us out of here. When you think about it, putting a dreamwalker in a prison cell is kind of pointless.”
Martay slowly nodded in agreement. He had seen enough to know that in principle she was right. And yet…
“It does seem like a big mistake for someone who is meant to be some kind of… evil genius... Anyway, why not just dream away the bars or the wall or something? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way out?”
“No…” said Amy slowly, thinking back through what the Arbiter had taught her, “Dreamwalking sort of works in one direction I think. You can create something new pretty easily but deconstructing something is impossible, or at least, it’s impossibly complicated to do. I think if I knew how to create raw energy I could blow the wall apart but that’s inherently dangerous and I might hurt us in the process.”
Bridge Between the Worlds (Dreamwalker Book 1) Page 42