by Bill Fawcett
“Janelle, listen.” He spoke urgently. “I won’t hurt you. But if we stay here, we could be killed. Outlaws have been raiding homesteads in this area. You’re a beautiful woman. If they find you with no defense except me, you would be in far worse trouble than you think I might cause you. And I would be dead.”
She didn’t want to listen. But she had to do something. What if he was telling the truth? What if he wasn’t? If she made the wrong choice, could one or both of them end up dead?
“Janelle?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. “All right.” For now.
He released her, then grasped her upper arm and set off for the trees. She had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. So much for her assumption that age would slow him down; he could easily outrun her. His large hand engulfed her arm. His grip could have bruised, but he didn’t let it. The contrast between the contained violence of his personality and his careful touch confused her.
The fine-grained sand showed little trace of their progress. They soon reached the forest and strode under its sparse cover. He kept up the grueling pace as they plunged into the deepening woods, until a stitch burned in her side.
Dominick angled through a tangle of bushes into a denser knot of trees. As they pushed through the bushes, he used his knife to cut away branches. The thicker foliage screened them from view, but it wasn’t until they reached the center of the glade that he slowed down. He motioned her toward a boulder that jutted up to about waist height. Sitting on another, he planted his boots on the ground, braced his palms on his knees, and heaved in large breaths. Janelle stayed on her feet, too nervous to sit as she struggled to catch her wind.
“We can rest here,” he said as his breathing settled.
She rubbed her arms, feeling cold despite the heat. It was much warmer than in the Smoky Mountains, and she didn’t want to dwell on the implications of that fact. “I don’t understand how you know me.”
“Only through the prophecy.” He watched her as if she were the apparition rather than this entire place. “I didn’t really expect to find you.”
“How do you know I’m the right person?”
“You look like the vision in the Jade Pool. It’s near a mountain lodge where my father took his seeress.” Sarcasm edged his voice. “Apparently she made better predictions when she was alone with him in secluded retreats.”
From his tone, she suspected he had been painfully aware in his childhood of his father’s involvement with his “seeress.” Choosing tact, she said only, “What did she predict?”
“Just days before my mother gave birth for the first time, she showed my father a vision of you. She said Maximillian and I would be his oldest sons, that whichever of us married you would kill the other, and that if either of us tried to kill you, that brother would die.”
“That’s horrible.”
Dryly he said, “My parents weren’t delighted with it.” He studied her face. “The scribes copied your image from the pool. But you are much younger than the woman in those portraits.”
“I doubt they were pictures of me.”
“It’s more than appearance,” he said. “The gate was supposed to bring me to you. It took me three tries to get it right, but it did work. And the seeress knew your name. Janelle Aulair.”
“You could have looked me up on the Internet.”
“What is the Internet?”
Like he didn’t know. Maybe next he would try to sell her swampland in Florida. “It’s not important. Just tell me how to get back home.”
He dropped his hand to his belt and set his palm over a disk. It differed from the abalone circles; this one had a metallic sheen. He stared at the ground, his gaze unfocused.
“Dominick?” she asked.
He looked up at her. “The gate doesn’t open.”
She pushed back her growing fear. “That’s convenient.”
“It’s true.” He ran his fingers over the disk. “Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m trying to create the gate where you’re standing.”
She didn’t know what to think. “How did you learn to use it?”
“One of the monks told me.”
Right. Monks, too. “How did he find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“A description has to be somewhere. Books, files, storage.”
He seemed oddly bewildered. “You mean a library?”
“Yes!” If they had web service there, she could email someone for help.
“I have one at my home,” he said.
The last place she wanted to go was his house. “A public library would be better.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
She couldn’t believe him. That he sounded sane made none of this more plausible. “And you have no idea how this gate works?” she challenged.
His gaze flashed. “Of course I do. It’s a branch. From here to your mountains.”
“A tree, you mean?”
“No. A branch cut to another page. Your universe is one sheet, mine is another.”
She gaped at him. “Do you mean a Riemann sheet? A branch cut from one Riemann sheet to another?”
“That’s right.” He hesitated. “You know these words?” She laughed unsteadily. “It’s nonsense. Not the sheets, I mean, but they’re just mathematical constructs! They don’t actually exist. You can’t physically go through a branch cut any more than you could step into a square root sign.”
He was watching her with an expression that mirrored how she had felt when he told her about his prophecy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Complex variable analysis.” She felt as if she were in a play where she only knew part of the script. “A branch cut is like a slit in a sheet of paper. It opens onto another sheet. I suppose you could say the sheets are alternate universes. But they aren’t real.”
“They seem quite real,” he said. “When you went through the gate, it threw off my calibration. I had set it to come out at my camp.” More to himself than to her, he added, “I hadn’t actually expected to leave the camp.”
“Tell you what,” Janelle said. “How about you and your brother find wives here? I’ll just drop out of the picture.” She thought of what he had said about his father. “Unless you’re already married. Because if you’re pulling this bit looking for some fun on the side, forget it.”
“Neither Maximillian nor I is wed. I have had concubines, though not in some years.”
“Concubines!”
He grinned. “You don’t like that?”
Just like a guy, to be pleased because he thought she was jealous. “Oh, cut the sexist crap.”
He had the audacity to look intrigued. “What does ‘sexist’ mean? Is it to do with love-making?”
“No. It means I should go back to Tennessee.”
His voice softened. “This world would be much poorer, to lose such beauty as yours.”
“Don’t.” For some reason, it angered her that he actually sounded sincere with that line. Or maybe the anger masked her fear. Right now, he could do whatever he wanted with her.
“Max wouldn’t give you a choice.” He was no longer smiling. “If not for the prophecy that we would die if we killed you, he would probably execute you on sight.”
An unwelcome memory jumped into her mind: she had learned about the deaths of her family from the media. Someone with too much ambition or too little compassion had leaked the story, sensationalizing it as an “execution.” Janelle had been visiting a girlfriend in Virginia during a school break, and the news had gone public even as government officials scrambled to find her.
Dominick spoke quietly. “Your face looks like a dark cloud passed over it.”
She shook her head, unable to answer.
“I do regret all this.” He stood up and lifted his hand, inviting her to leave the glade. “Are you rested enough to go on? Let me at least bring you to my home, as my honored guest.”
<
br /> Janelle didn’t want to be his guest. But she was beginning to absorb that this might be real, and she doubted staying in the glade would help her escape.
The Sun was setting when they emerged from the screen of bushes. The world had darkened and blurred, as if they saw it through old glass on the seashore, brown and rounded by tumbling waves.
Dominick set off along a faint path scattered with leaves. They had only gone a few yards, though, when he turned to her and paused, listening. Then he spoke in an urgent whisper. “Run.”
She took one look at his face—and broke into a sprint.
III
THE TRANSFORM PALACE
Janelle raced through the woods, and Dominick’s boots thudded behind her. Then she tripped on a jutting rock, and he plowed into her. Holding on to her, he lurched past a tangle of wild berry bushes and fell behind a large boulder and the bushes. He twisted in midair and landed on his back, cushioning their fall so she came down on top of him. Her breath went out in a rush. It happened so fast, she had no time even to tense up.
For one second, he held her in a viselike embrace. Then he sat up fast, rolling her off his body and onto her stomach. She pushed up on her hands, but when he laid his palm on her back, she stopped with her head raised. He crouched next to her, his knife drawn, his head tilted as if he were listening to the distant waves. Her surge of adrenaline sharpened her hearing, and she caught the shushing of hooves on sand. Dominick raised his dagger in a single sure motion, the blade glinting in the last rays of the Sun.
Hooves stamped nearby. Janelle stayed silent, though surely they could hear the thud of her heart. Voices spoke in a patois of heavily accented English sprinkled with unfamiliar words. Straining to understand, she recognized they were talking about the “two on the beach,” that they would finish off the man and take the girl. When she heard what they wanted to do with her, bile rose in her throat.
The voices moved away, until she heard only waves on the beach. Dominick spoke under his breath, no words she recognized, what sounded like an oath. She breathed out, aware of her rigid posture.
“I think we can go,” he said in a low voice.
A reaction was setting in as Janelle comprehended she might truly be stranded in this violent place with no anchor except this stranger. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“It will work out.” Despite his rough voice, he had a kind tone. “Come with me, Janelle. I will do well by you.”
Get a grip, she told herself, and climbed to her feet. “I’m all right.”
Standing with her, he inclined his head. He lifted his hand as if to touch her face, but when she tensed, he lowered his arm.
They set off again, and the ocean’s mumble receded as they went deeper among the trees. The woods thickened into a heavy forest, and tufts of wild grass stuck up in the soil. Dusk came like a great beast, one barely noticed until it spread its wings, darkening every copse and glade. Luminescent bottle flies hummed among the trees.
Dominick drew her to a stop. Holding his fingers to his mouth, he gave a whistle that rose and fell in an eerie tune. A bird answered his call.
“Hai,” a low voice said.
Janelle started. A man had appeared under a nearby tree. He wore leather armor and a dagger similar to Dominick’s, but without the silver or abalone. He also had an “extra” that made her mouth go dry, a monstrous broadsword strapped across his back with its hilt sticking above his shoulders.
Dominick spoke in the same dialect used by the men who wanted to kill him. It sounded like “Hava moon strake camp,” but she thought he meant, “Have the men strike camp.” Although she didn’t understand the other man’s response, she saw the deference in his bow. The man glanced at her with curiosity, then withdrew into the trees and vanished as silently as he had come.
She and Dominick continued on, and although she saw no one else, she didn’t think they were alone anymore. They soon entered a clearing of trampled grass. Several tents stood on the far side, and men moved in the trees beyond, soldiers it looked like, in leather armor. Most were tending animals. Their mounts resembled horses, but with tufts for tails. Each had two horns, one on either side of its head, with the tips pointing inward. Some of the men wore helmets with similar horns. The scene had a dreamlike quality, all in the dusk, with mist curling around the animals. But the cooling air on her arms and legs and the pungent smell of wet grass were all too real.
The men greeted Dominick with respect. Although Janelle had trouble deciphering their words, she understood their intent. They were preparing to leave.
And she was going with them.
Fog muffled the night. Janelle sat in front of Dominick on one of the two-horned animals, which he called a biaquine. Starlight, his mount, had a silver coat with stiff hair. He changed the animal’s saddle to a tasseled blanket woven in heavy red and white yarn so Janelle could more easily sit with him. A few scouts went on ahead, but the rest of the men stayed together, with extra biaquines to carry the tents and other supplies.
Fear and curiosity warred within Janelle. She had agreed to go with Dominick because she saw no other viable choices, at least not where she stayed alive and healthy. But she didn’t trust him.
They passed through veils of mist, climbing into the mountains. Her muscles ached from the unfamiliar ride. Moonlight lightened the fog, and she strove to keep track of landmarks that loomed out of the night: a gnarled tree with two trunks or a weathered statue of an elderly man in a niche of rock. Her ties to home were growing tenuous, unable to compete with the reality of this impossible place.
Dominick put his arms around her waist, so she didn’t fall off the biaquine. At first she sat ramrod straight. Gradually, though, Starlight’s rocking gait lulled her. Nor did Dominick act in any way to make her uncomfortable. She had forgotten how comforting it felt just to be held. Her mother had always been effusive with affection, and although her father had been less demonstrative, he had never let them doubt his love. She had grown up secure in those close-knit ties. One instant of violence had shattered everything. Drowning in grief, she had withdrawn from human contact; in the past two years she had barely touched another person.
Dominick had a strange request. He wanted a curl of her hair. When she agreed, he pulled out his dagger. She stiffened, her gaze riveted on the long blade as it glittered in the moonlight, but he only cut off a small tendril. He gave it to one of his riders, who carefully placed the strands in a packet of cloth. Then the man took off up the trail, galloping ahead of their party.
“What’ll he do with it?” Janelle asked.
“My monks will examine it,” Dominick said. “To see if you are who I think.”
“How can they know from a lock of hair?”
“They have . . . spells.”
“Spells?”
“Well,” he amended, “so they say.”
From his tone, she suspected he didn’t believe it any more than she did. She just hoped his monks didn’t decide her hair had demonic properties.
Exhaustion was catching up to her, but she feared to rest, dreading what she might find when she awoke. She had rarely slept enough during school, often studying late into the night. It paid off; she earned high marks, even the top grade in Mathematical Methods of Physics. Now her simple pleasure in a job well done seemed forlorn.
An owl hooted, its call muted by the fog. Janelle shuddered.
“Are you cold?” Dominick asked.
“I was thinking of home.”
Regret softened the hard edges of his voice. “I am sorry about this.” After a pause, he added, “But I would be lying if I denied I am glad you are here. I never really believed this would happen.”
“Prophecies aren’t real.” She watched the biaquines plodding ahead of them on the trail. “A rational explanation has to exist.”
“Truthfully?” he said. “I don’t think the seeress made that prediction. It was Gregor, a monk from the monastery. He is the one who can read the Jade Pool.” His voic
e tightened. “Father’s soothsayer had never even been there before. She stayed at the palace.”
“Palace?”
“Where my brother is.”
“Does he work there?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You could say that.”
“What does he do?”
“He is the Emperor of Othman.”
Good Lord. What had she landed in? “You’re the brother of an emperor?”
“Yes.” He said it simply, just verifying a fact. “He was born first.”
If neither he nor his brother had married, that suggested neither had legitimate offspring. “Does that mean you’re his heir?”
“For now. Until he sires one.”
“Sweet blazes,” she murmured. “I’ve never heard of Othman.”
He swept out his hand as if to show her all of the land. “The provinces stretch from the snow fields in the far north to the great gulf in the south. Maximillian rules it, and I govern the Atlantic Province under him.”
“The entire continent?” It sounded like Canada and North America.
“Only the eastern half. Britain has the rest.” In a voice that sounded deceptively soft, he added, “For now.”
A chill went through her. “And later?”
“That depends on what happens with Max.”
From his tone, she suspected that if he ever became emperor, he would kick out the British and absorb their territories. What a strange history for the colonial revolution.
“Your brother is afraid you’re after his throne,” she said.
“Supposedly, whichever of us marries you will rule Othman.”
“This is crazy. I have nothing to do with either of you.”
“Not according to the seer.”
Or the politicians, more likely. “Dominick, surely you see this so-called prophecy is a trick, one guaranteed to set you and your brother against each other. It’s bunk.”
“Bunk?”
“Lies. Moonshine.”
“Moonshine.” Wryly he added, “An apt image.”