by Celeste Raye
Drake let his hip brush against hers. Just that light touch made his heart race and his pulse pound. “You mean the weapon.”
“The weapon was only the start of what we were protecting.”
Every single time he thought that he understood the whole thing, she told him something he had not known. “What could have been more precious than that weapon? What else could you have needed to protect?”
Lornia said, “The race who created Tralam—or rather the machine that creates Tralam, they also possessed the Orb. That Orb was the doorway to this place. And from this place, we could control every universe. Not just yours and not just the one that lies beyond it, but all. We found the Orb when we arrived and after they were all already dead. They hid it away, and once we were here, we understood the magnitude of what we had found. Once we found the Orb, we understood what the weapon was intended to protect and why.”
His feet stopped dead on the stones. His mouth hung open. His body swiveled so that he could look her in the face. “I think you’re going to have to repeat that.”
Lornia tugged at his hand. Drake wanted to balk, to refuse to move until she explained all of that rather astounding statement to him. He sensed that she wanted to walk in order to sort out her thoughts, so he continued along beside her. His curiosity was not sated, however.
He said, “What do you mean all the universes and that this is the doorway? I thought this was the prison for the weapon.”
Lornia said, “It is, but that came later. It came into being because that race knew there would come a day when Tralam fell, if not in this universe, then in others. I was young when I came, and I never understood their language so we didn’t know, not for at least five centuries, just what it was—that Orb.
“We didn’t know until the founding members of the Federation came, and once they did, we understood that we could never let it be given over. That we had no choice but to allow them into Tralam because they would have killed us all and taken what they could. They would have taken the weapon, yes, but, more importantly, they would have taken that Orb. I have spent so many hundreds of years protecting that secret, the secret of the Orb, and I’m tired. I trust you, Drake. I love you, and I trust you as I have no other in the millennia that I have been alive and in Tralam.”
That really astounded him. He had never heard of this Orb. She was talking about things he could not fathom. He was not sure how Tralam could still be standing even though he had seen it destroyed and he was not sure how they had gotten there. He had the rudimentary idea that the machine had recreated Tralam in order to house her because she was the weapon. He had known that she would be unable to stay if she loosed the power of the weapon. But the Orb? What was it?
Because he could not sift through all of the things that she was saying and telling him now and because he was so touched by the words she had said, that she loved and trusted him, he found himself uttering out the words, “I love and trust you too, Lornia. I don’t think I have ever known real love or trust before I met you. I waited my whole life for you, and I didn’t even know it.”
They paused. Their mouths met again. His hands found her skin and his tongue teased hers until hers answered. That kiss was slow and deep, life-affirming. It said everything that they had not said yet between them.
When the kiss broke off, he asked the question largest in his mind. “Lornia, how long can I stay with you?”
Lornia’s fingers twisted together, and she looked down at them. Her head shook from side to side, stirring her silver hair across her shoulders and along the stones of the floor. “It may not be as long as you would like. The founding members of your federation came here in the hopes of finding absolute immortality. Such a thing does not exist. They did live longer than they would have. Time’s strange here. It passes differently, and it always has as Tralam exists outside and yet within space and time.”
He said, “I want to live long enough to love you until there’s nothing left of me. I hope that takes a very long time. Now, about this Orb. What is it and why did it have to be protected even more than that weapon?”
She said, “Come. I want to see the gardens again.”
They took off walking again, and he stared around himself. The fortress was splendid and clearly meant to house many. Their footfalls echoed however, and all of the rooms lay silent and still. Misgivings came up, and he knew that he would have them for quite some time. He loved her enough to stay, enough to be happy to be there, but that human part of him—that part of him that craved social life and everything that went with it, would always rear its head from time to time. Okay, so be it. He could live with that.
Lornia said, “The race that was older than mine, the one that created both the weapon and the machines that kept Tralam from falling, was not immortal either. They created this place because they were… I suppose you could say they were gatekeepers. They alone knew the secret of crossing all universes. I know you think that means just the universes that we find in space, but that’s not true. Every universe has a universe beside it in a universe beside that in a universe beside that. It’s rather like when you stand in a hall full of mirrors and see your reflection in each one, constantly growing smaller but always there, shading toward infinity.”
That last sentence stunned Drake so much that his mouth fell open and a weak little sound came up, but it did not translate into a word. He snapped his teeth together, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Are you saying that parallel dimensions truly exist? They’ve been in question for centuries. Science makers often spend their entire lives trying to prove that. Nobody ever has. It’s always proven to be false.”
Lornia said, “That is because the race before mine that held this fortress locked all the alternate universes away from those which originate them. They believed that if someone had power over every parallel universe connected to the universe in which they live that they could wage war on single universes, universes wherein the parallel dimensions were not known, and come out the winner. Think of it. If a warrior of renown and note passed away in one but not in the other, and was brought back from that other place to boost the morale of his soldiers, that in itself would be a mighty weapon.”
Drake couldn’t imagine it. It literally boggled his mind. He was a strong man, for all his faults, but his imagination had never been great, and he knew it. Tralam had been about as far as he could imagine and to know that there was so much more and so much more possible astounded and staggered him.
He spoke with real caution. “So you are saying that this place didn’t just exist for the weapon; it existed to protect those dimensions. I understand that. Why did your race bar the door between the universes? Why not just allow the, what did you call it? The Orb?” At her nod, he continued, “The Orb to do its work? I’m guessing that the Orb is the thing that keeps the other universes from being seen. I mean the other dimensions. You know what I mean.”
Lornia said, “Indeed I do. It’s a good question. The weapon was never intended to be used against the universe in which you move or the universe in which I came from. We prevented it. My race did that. We first thought as an answer to our prayers, and then we thought of it as something that must be hidden away lest your Federation find it and destroy everything in its path with it. Which they would’ve done eventually.”
Drake found he had no argument against that one. He asked, “Speaking of the Federation, where did they go?”
Lornia smile was grim. “Into the universe from which my race originated. The one beyond this one. I should not tell you, because I saw it all once the machine woke up and the weapon came to life under my skin, but that universe is also at war. And the Federation will not survive over there. I am sorry.”
Drake said, “Why would you be sorry for that?”
She said, “Because you are a good man and you have a conscience. At some point, you will mourn those deaths if you are not already. I know that too. I also know that you could not have prevented this. This was int
ended to happen.”
Drake took a deep breath. “Are you saying this was fated to be?”
Lornia said, “I am saying that, eventually, it would’ve happened. If it had not been you that came for me, it would’ve been someone else. Eventually, somebody would’ve commanded me to deploy the weapon. Somebody would’ve fired the weapon. And if the person who commanded me had been the Federation, death and destruction would’ve followed behind. So what I am saying is that it was destined, yes, for me to become the weapon and for me to be commanded to loose the weapons powers.”
They stopped walking again. His fingers lifted and rested on her face and he brought her in close to him for another long and lingering kiss. Her lips warmed beneath his, and their tongues met and twisted. Desire snaked through him again, stirring every cell in his body His dick hardened, and his balls tightened. Heat coiled into his belly and then flushed up and down his thighs. God, he wanted her so badly.
The kiss broke off, and understanding hit. The Orb. That was what Tralam had been built to protect and keep. The Orb: that was a key; it was some kind of key that would unlock every universe and its parallel dimensions.
“The Orb will take us into other dimensions. That’s what you’re telling me, what you’ve been trying to tell me.”
“It already has. That’s how we came here, to this Tralam. The Orb brought us here. It brought us here because the weapon was a singular thing. It was one of a kind and built to never be able to be replicated in any other dimension. I don’t know how they did it. That tech they had was old before they died and yet it was so much more advanced than any we had ever seen. It’s still far more advanced than anything seen in any other universe, or dimension.”
He said, “If it is so precious, and precious it is indeed, why should we pass it along?”
And there it was again. That crisis of personality within him. Part of him wanted to scream that the Orb must be kept with them. He could feel the power of such a thing, and he knew that he would always feel that rush of power around something so huge and important. And that was why they must pass it along.
He looked into her eyes, and he saw a brief sadness there. She did know him well. She knew him well enough to know that he would not be able to withstand the corruption of the Orb. He had been able to withstand the corruption that the power of his being, the one who could control that ancient weapon, had brought into his soul, but only because he had loved her more than he had loved power.
But something that could control every single universe and every universe beyond those universes? Now that was true power.
She said, “I will tell you who we must pass it to, and I need you to understand why. The weapon is still within me, and one day I will be called upon again, but so will many others. The ones we will have to fight when war comes again are the last of the race that created both the weapon and the machine that created the doors that prevent any from entering into parallel dimensions. Our races do not know how to enter there, but they do. When they come, blackness will come with them. A blackness such as has never been seen before.”
Drake took a deep breath. “You are saying that the race that made the weapon and the machine that built Tralam had a civil war and some of that race was peaceful and good, and others were not. And that the good of the race is dead—and those who would possess the Orb for its power are all that are left and that they will eventually come to take the Orb back.”
“Yes.”
He stiffened. “Will I be at your side when that happens?”
Her answer was soft. “I can’t see the future Drake.”
No, she couldn’t. None could. “How do we keep them from coming here?”
Her eyes held his. “They can’t come here without the Orb, but they can enter other worlds that are not protected by its power. When the weapon launched in your world, it tore away the Orb’s protection. It must go to that world. There’s no other choice as to who to trust with it. We need someone capable of holding secrets tightly to his chest.
Blade. She meant Blade. That old resentment tried to come up. Blade was always the one given the power.
And why not?
Blade knew too well the cost of power, and he was imbued with the need to make things right, to set good into motion and to fight back against the evil and darkness that lurked in every shadow.
Drake did not even have to consider it. He already knew what universe would be the first to have to fight. The one he hailed from. Why that universe had to be so burdened was a question he could ask forever and never get an answer to. “I already know. I know, and I understand. Now let’s go look at those gardens of yours.”
She smiled at him, a radiant and real smile, and he could see that the rage and hurt and grief that had sharpened and honed the weapons lethal power had faded out of her now. There was only her now. Lornia. Gentle and soft, a believer in peace. A being who wanted only to live and to love and to make things grow.
She said, “I know you’re worried about being here alone with me. I knew that before you knew that you would be.”
His eyebrows angled toward his hairline. “Please tell me that you cannot read my mind.”
Her laughter was real and true. “No, I cannot. I just know how I felt alone here. Even if there were the two of us, we would eventually need other people. It’s simply a condition of having a soul. We must have others like us around us in order to feel whole.”
They came to a large center hall just then, and he heard the sounds of voices in the distance. His brows drew together, and he peered into the hallway. “Did I just hear that?”
Lornia nodded. She drew him onward, and he went willingly. The center hall was vast and there, right in the center, lay the machine that ran the fortress and held it fast. It was, like everything else, shiny and vibrant, well-oiled and running smoothly. It would withstand centuries and centuries and centuries of time, and he stared at it as they passed. He had never seen such a complicated, complex, and marvelous creation in his entire life. That a race so ancient had had the technology, so many millennia ago, to create such a thing was staggering.
That some remnants of that race survived, that the ones who had created the fortress had probably done so to keep the Orb and the weapon that they had wanted to use to protect it from the others of their race—those who would hold that power for themselves—frightened him all the way to the core.
Could those that they passed the Orb to truly keep it safe? Could they really fight back something so determined and advanced and do so without falling?
He had to hope that they could.
That too was a question he could ask forever and ever and never get the answer to.
The sound of voices grew louder. Drake’s heart lightened with each step. He asked, “Who are they? These people that are here.”
Lornia said, “My race came to Tralam once, and we were many. We died, yes, as all things do, but not all of us. In that Tralam, there was a war with the beasts. The beasts created by Franchine, the Federation’s first founder in his attempts to achieve immortality. He killed the rest, all but me. But here—here they still live because that event did not happen here and if they do come here, I know what they did there—and will repel them with everything I have in me.”
His teeth chewed at his lip. “Time. They may not have come here yet. This Tralam may be in a different time and a different dimension, one the Federation had no way to enter. But they could enter it if they had the Orb.”
“As could any race who possessed the Orb.”
Then they would hide that Orb as her race had done for so long. He asked, “How do you know that you are not here already?”
“If I were, I would have already died. The thing is, only those who are of a single nature, beings like the machine, who exist only in one place and no other, can cross the dimensions. If I had ever lived here, I would not be here now, and neither would you.”
That he was of a single nature shocked him. “There’s nobody like me anyw
here in any universe or other dimension?”
Her grin was impish. “No.”
“And there’s nobody like you either.” He wanted to kiss her again but she was already moving on again, and he went with her, treading down the hallway toward the sounds of life just beyond.
They exited the great hall at that moment and stepped into a smaller, but no less wide room. His mouth fell open as he stared at the rows and rows of cryo-chambers positioned on the walls. Within them were people! He found he couldn’t breathe. “How is this possible?”
Lornia said, “They sleep, but only some. Mostly because they need to sleep in cycles to prevent the gardens from giving out. They grew in number, you see, but the machine only has so much energy, and the rest is up to them. But they need a keeper of the gardens here as one has never yet existed within this Tralam. I am not here, you see, and I was the one who grew them.”
He felt a sense of sheer awe. This was beyond what he had imagined, what he had thought was possible. “The gardens that were in the old Tralam, can you grow them here?”
“I can.”
She could. The weapon had not stripped that talent away from her, and he believed her. He believed that she could and would regrow all the lush and beautiful greenery that had been in those gardens and the greenery that had stung his soul with its beauty, much as Lornia herself did.
Faces turned toward them. Mouths opened as Lornia walked forward, her voice ringing with authority. “My name’s Lornia. I too am an Eldern.”
An Eldern. That word was one he had never heard before, but he understood it now with his rudimentary understanding of her language. They, his race, had called her kind the Speakers because they had not had a word in their known languages that would simulate the one she had just used.
He stood there, staring at them all. Lornia said, “And this is Drake, who commanded the weapon against those who would have breached Tralam at its weakest point. That Tralam is no more. I am the sole keeper of the gardens, and I’ve come to keep yours.”