Gordath Wood

by Patrice Sarath

  She hoisted herself out of the cellar and suddenly stopped.

  On the ground in front of her lay one of Tharp’s men under a second-story window. His neck was bent at a bad angle, but it was the hole in his chest that had killed him.

  His rifle lay a few feet away from him.

  Kate picked it up. She looked around for Marthen and saw him where he stood with Lord Terrick and Lord Saraval near the front of the house.

  Perhaps he knew he was being watched. Perhaps his natural caution made him scan for enemies. Whatever the reason, Marthen turned around and saw her, and his words faltered and went still. At his sudden silence, the lords turned, too.

  “Remember, Kate, justice, not vengeance,” her mother always said. Kate’s finger pressed lightly on the trigger. She wondered what her mother would say about this case.

  Her mother would want to kill him with her bare hands. Kate knew that for a certainty. But she would always know it was vengeance, and she would take it upon herself, not leave it to Kate.

  If she pulled the trigger, she stood to lose more than he did. It was terrible to think about, that she could do worse to herself than he had done, but she knew it was true.

  Still.

  He would be very sure that it was her choice, and not her weakness, that saved his life. She held up the rifle and aimed, finding his heart in the simple sight. And then she lowered the rifle and set it down in the snow.

  Her vision no longer narrowed to the pinpoint of concentration, Kate looked around. Everyone was looking at her. There was Lynn. And Joe. And Mrs. Hunt. And Dungiven.

  “Kate!” Lynn called out. The barn manager ran over to her, enveloping Kate in a hug. Kate cried out and pushed her away. Lynn stumbled back. “Are you all right? What happened? Why—?” Lynn stopped. Then she said, “We’re going home. They’re going to send us through and then close the gordath.”

  I can’t go home. I’m going to med school in Brythern. Wait. No. Kate frowned, trying to make sense of things. Finally she said, “Mojo’s dead.”

  Tears sprang to Lynn’s eyes. “Oh, Katie.” She took Kate’s arm. “Come on. We’re almost home.” Kate let herself be led away. As they passed Marthen and the Council, she turned to look at him. Marthen was soaked with blood, a long scrape bleeding from his shoulder to his wrist. His dark hair was wet with sweat, and his face was feverish. He looked straight at her, and his lips parted as if he were about to say something. Kate shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it. Lynn tugged at her. “Come on, Kate,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

  “Lord Terrick!” Skayler shouted, catching their attention. He and two of the other scouts carried out another between them from the house. Terrick turned and gasped.

  “Colar!”

  They laid him in the snow in front of the house, and his blood melted it where he lay. Kate pushed herself between Terrick and the scouts and knelt beside him. Frantically she held her half cloak tight against the bullet hole in his abdomen.

  “No,” she said. “No, Colar. Don’t.” He breathed shallow breaths that took in almost no air. Under his sparse beard his face was very pale. His hair, wet from the snow, seemed almost as black as the boles of the trees surrounding them. “Oh God no,” Kate cried. “He’ll die here. He needs a hospital.”

  Lord Terrick wept. He knelt beside his son, dwarfing the young man, his dark blue cloak spreading out to cover the snow. “Colar—” he said, his voice hoarse. He spread his hands out but dared not touch his son. He looked at them. “Can your world save him?”

  “Maybe. He’s hurt pretty badly,” Lynn said. “We’ll have to hurry.” She looked behind her at the struggling guardian. “I don’t think he’ll be able to come back.”

  Terrick’s eyes were dark with the enormity of his loss. He turned to Kate. “I place my son in your parents’ care,” he said. “He will be a good foster son to them. Never—” his voice broke. “Never let him forget he is Terrick.”

  Kate nodded. “I won’t,” she whispered. “We’ll take good care of him. I promise.”

  Terrick bowed his head and then placed his hand on Colar’s forehead. The boy did not move, and his father stood, his cloak crusted in snow, and stepped back.

  “Let’s get him up,” Joe said, and together he, Lynn, and Terrick took hold of Colar and picked him up out of the snow. The boy gasped and cried out. Kate hurried ahead of them and swept out the backseat of the Jeep, making a place for him. They set him in as gently as they could.

  “All right, everybody in,” Lynn said. Kate turned around. Terrick stood with his hands over his face. Lord Saraval stood by his side, his plain old face grieving with his friend.

  Kate slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The Jeep started right up. Lynn got in the passenger side. “Let’s go. Joe, come on.”

  The portal widened even farther, and the guardian stepped back. “You must cross now!” Arrim cried. “I cannot hold it open much longer!”

  It was funny, Joe thought, how he knew exactly what to do. He could stand with Arrim, right there, and push just so, and the portal would stay open long enough to let the Jeep slip through. I can do that, he thought.

  He turned to Lynn. She was so good to see. He figured he could hold that memory of her with him for a long time.

  “I’m gonna miss you,” he said, and he leaned forward and kissed her.

  Confusion and then understanding flooded her face. “You’re not coming,” she said.

  He shook his head and put his hand over hers on the door handle. “No. I’m going to help Arrim take care of the gordath. Don’t know if we can keep it closed after you’re gone, but we’ll sure try.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet. Lynn took it in a daze. “Colar might need this. The driver’s license picture don’t look much like him, but my social security card’s in there, and he can get another one made. Not much money, but what there is he’s welcome to.”

  “Joe, no,” Lynn said.

  He leaned in close.

  “I know. I thought maybe we’d get a chance, just the two of us. Thing is, all my life I’ve been running, and this is the first time I ever felt like I stopped. I think I’m meant to be here.” He reached out and tilted her chin, giving her a light kiss. “Best go now. That boy needs a doctor.”

  Arrim nodded at him when Joe joined him. He didn’t even really need to be told what to do, just a glance and follow his lead. The portal locked steady with a click he could feel in his bones.

  Oh yeah, thought Joe.

  Kate shifted and gunned the motor, steering the Jeep into the gordath flickering between Joe and Arrim. She and Lynn both took a deep breath as they passed through the portal, and the Jeep slipped on an icy patch of ground and they bumped out from the forest into an overgrown driveway. The tall stone house had disappeared; now there was only the run-down house on Daw Road.

  The Jeep dropped, as if the road fell out from under them, and they all cried out, Lynn reaching back to steady Colar. We’re through, Kate thought. She looked up at the rearview mirror, but all she could see was the retreating house and power lines. There was one more bump and shift, and she knew. The portal had been closed.

  Kate looked at Lynn. “We’re running out of time. Which way?”

  Lynn scanned the road, then pointed. “Take a left up there. We can get to town the back way.”

  Kate slewed the Jeep through the turn where the dirt road met asphalt. She accelerated again, and they plunged forward. When she passed a car going the other way, she gasped. It looked so out of place.

  They began passing more cars, registering shock on the faces of the other drivers. Kate stamped on the gas, the needle edging up toward sixty. In the open Jeep, their loose cloaks fluttered behind them. We’re showing our colors, she thought.

  “Slow down,” Lynn said, her voice edged in an effort to stay calm. She reached up for the roll bar, holding on tight. She threw a look back at Colar, and Kate followed with a glance in the rearview mirror. The boy was wh
ite, almost gray, blood cascading down his armor.

  “Is he dead?” Kate cried. She could hear the panic in her own voice. She tightened her grip on the wheel, swerving around an oncoming car. The other driver blared his horn.

  “No, he’ll be fine. Take it easy. He’ll be fine.” Up ahead they could see the hospital towers. “We’re almost there,” Lynn shouted, and then they were there, Kate pulling up in the drive in front of the emergency room.

  Lynn jumped out of the Jeep almost before Kate stopped and bolted for the sliding doors. Kate set the brake and looked back. Colar’s eyes were open, but his gaze was blank. Soldier’s god, protect him, she prayed and hoped the god could hear her in this foreign place.

  Emergency room personnel streamed out with a stretcher, Lynn following close behind. They lifted Colar onto the gurney, and he disappeared into the hospital in a swirl of medical activity. Kate watched them go, numb. She looked up, squinting at the metal and glass towers looming over her and stomped her stained and broken boots on the pavement for warmth.

  A nurse wearing a pink cardigan over her scrubs came up. “Are you all right?” she said. She looked at Kate quizzically. “What’s your name?”

  Kate said nothing. I want Talios, she thought. The nurse bit her lip, then took Kate by the arm. “Come along. Let’s take a look at you.”

  Kate went with her through the sliding doors, wincing at the fluorescent lights and the blast of heated air that met her. Her half cloak and trousers, faded and tattered, were dark and foreign under the bright light. She squinted at the strange lettering everywhere. I can’t read, she thought.

  The nurse flung a curtain around a hospital bed, making a room. She helped Kate ease off her half cloak and gasped. From the wet feel of the shirt on her back, Kate figured that her back was soaked with blood.

  Kate moved slowly, getting back into her dirty clothes, wincing at the feel of them against her skin after the crisp cleanliness of the hospital gown. The doctor had re-bandaged her back and given her a dose of antibiotics. She heard the hospital personnel talking in low voices. Periodically someone would come in and ask her name, which she refused to give, until they left her alone. She peeked out the door of the examining room, wondering if she could leave without being spotted. In the waiting area, Lynn leaped up when she saw her. She gripped Kate’s hand.

  “All right?” she said, her thin face filled with worry.

  Kate nodded. “How’s—Joe?” she asked. Lynn’s expression acknowledged her choice of names.

  “He’s in surgery. But reading between the lines, I think the doctors think he will make it.”

  A nurse came over to them.

  “Miss Romano? The police are here. They want to talk to you.”

  Lynn took a breath. “It begins,” she muttered. “I’ll be right there.” She looked at Kate. “You’ll be all right?”

  “Yes. I’ll be fine.” Kate watched Lynn go meet the police, where a salt-and-pepper man in a gray suit waited, his notebook out and ready. Kate looked at the nurse and took a deep breath. She was as ready as she would ever be.

  “I want to call my parents.”

  The nurse nodded at the phone on the counter at the nurse’s station. “You can use that one.”

  Kate stared down at the phone, and after a long moment she lifted the handset. She fumbled with the numbers; she had forgotten what each one symbolized, and had to stare at them for a long time to find the right sequence.

  The phone started to ring. Kate stared at the speckled institutional counter, and her courage began to fail. She almost hung up when the phone connected.

  “David Mossland.” Her father’s voice was deep and strong, the way she remembered it. She remembered how safe it could make her feel, but at the same time a little afraid, as if he could withdraw his protection at any time. “Hello?” he said, and Kate willed herself to speak, to push the words past her swollen throat. She could hear him waiting, impatient with the connection, and she could hear him breathe out in disgust, and she knew he was going to put the phone down.

  Daddy, she tried, and then, with a croak, she managed to say it out loud. “Daddy.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, “Kate?”

  “Daddy,” she said and began to cry.

  The Aftermath

  A cold blue sky looked down on the Temian encampment. Despite a warming sun, an icy wind gusted, snapping canvas and blowing remnant trash across the expanse. Rows and rows of damp squares marked where men had pulled up their stakes and marched off. Only Marthen’s tent remained, mostly packed, a wagon and horses waiting patiently out front.

  Marthen looked around. The tent was cold, the fire long burned out. It smelled musty, wet. We fit the Aeritan Council in here. The whimsy made him uncomfortable. He began gathering up the things he would pack in his saddlebags. He would ride his saddle horse south, let the wagon go on ahead with Grayne and his orderly, his warhorse tied to the tailgate.

  He picked up the small bottle, the clear sack, now torn and fragile, and the helmet and tossed them on the pile on his table. Her saddle was already loaded onto the wagon. He didn’t know why he kept it—as spoils of war, it was a ridiculous thing, too small to be useful as a war saddle or even a riding saddle, and really just a reminder of his failure.

  Not at war—the council had won, after all. Peace talks had consumed the winter months at Red Gold Bridge, with all the lords present. Lord Terrick looked as if he were eighty years old. Lord Tharp had not softened, though Lady Sarita had returned to him. Marthen wondered if perhaps her homecoming had more of the bitter than the sweet. He sat by and watched as they disposed of one fate after another. Only once did Terrick look at him, when a captain had been granted a lordship, and Marthen knew then that the man would be true to his word. He would never be given Council rights.

  Because of the girl. The girl he had foolishly pinned his hopes—his future—on. She had disappeared through the cut between the two worlds, and even that option was closed to him.

  They called him mad; he knew it and let his reputation work for him. He hadn’t known, till then, when she disappeared from sight, that he had been in love as well. No. Time for the truth, he told himself. He had known; it was why he had her strung up and flogged.

  Grayne ducked in and saluted. “We’re ready to begin loading your things, sir.”

  “All right. I’ll let you know when I am ready.”

  Grayne nodded and ducked out.

  Marthen gathered up his gloves and the small wrapped package lying on his stripped camp bed.

  It was a gift, the Brytherner had said. He had cornered Marthen in the halls of Red Gold Bridge.

  “What could you do with this, General?” he had said, handing him over the gun. It felt heavy in his hand.

  “I thought all the weapons were accounted for,” Marthen said. His head started pounding.

  “They are,” said the Brytherner. “Though not to the Council’s satisfaction, perhaps.” He nodded at Lord Tharp, being questioned by the Council. “Would you like to finish what you started?”

  Marthen laughed, taking the Brytherner by surprise. “I have no quarrel with Lord Tharp,” he said. “Why do you?”

  The Brytherner regarded him. “You’re right.” He nodded at the gun. “It’s a gift, nothing more.”

  He left not long after that, Marthen found out, and he took the stranger man with him, Tharp’s stranger, who had brought all the weapons to Aeritan and set the war in motion.

  The wind gusted hard, tossing his tent around as if it were made of no more than paper. Marthen slipped the gun out of its wrappings. Its grip was pebbled and rough against his palm, the barrel smooth and shining. The chamber where the shells were loaded rotated smoothly.

  This weapon was so strange, and yet so commonplace in her world, according to her tales. It felt like a talisman, made him feel safe.

  A man who walked in her world with one of these weapons would not be out of place.

  He put
it back in its wrappings. A door swung both ways, he thought. If he could get through, find her, perhaps not all would be lost.

  “Kate Mossland,” he said. “I will find you.”

  In the high school student parking lot Kate waited for Colar by their candy-apple-red Jeep Wrangler, jangling the keys absently. Students streamed out of the high school into the bright spring sunlight, jackets and backpacks flung over their shoulders. People shouted to each other or gathered in knots, heads together in intense conversation. A few of her friends waved. She sighted Colar walking with Josh Bradford. When Colar had gotten out of the hospital and started at her high school, he and Josh had bonded. Mathematics, physics, engineering—Colar was catching up by leaps and bounds. It helped that the school bought his cover story— homeschooling and dyslexia—to explain the strange gaps in his education.

  Colar saw her waiting and said something to Josh. They hurried, Colar still moving stiffly. Kate herself had mostly healed, but she still had a few rounds of plastic surgery and skin grafts to go. When her parents saw her back, she thought that Marthen was lucky the gordath was closed.

  “Sorry about that,” Colar said and grinned, showing off his new braces. He tossed his books into the back of the Jeep.

  “No problem,” Kate said and smiled at Josh. “Hi.” They had known each other since the fifth grade. He was still the smartest kid in school like he was back then, but the strange, scrawny boy who talked endlessly about building robots had grown up and filled out, and wasn’t half-bad-looking.

  “Hi,” he said, his ears turning pink.

  “See you at the house,” Colar told him. He turned to Kate. “We think we have the operating system figured out.” She nodded. Robots.

  “You should come,” Josh offered. “You want to? It’ll be fun.”

  It sounded fun. She wanted to go and forget everything. Just be a normal kid, with two friends, hanging out together. Except nothing would ever be normal again. “Thanks, but—I have to see a girl about a horse.”

  That much was true. Lynn had her working with Allegra, of all horses. After the events of Gordath Wood, Carolyn had abandoned the weedy, hysterical mare and fled to the city, where presumably her bony behind would not touch a saddle again. Lynn had wanted Kate to try to rehabilitate the mare.