Another line from Bronte occurred to me then, I knew not why: “Like a false guard, false watch keeping.” Saying it to myself, I laughed out loud, for no particular reason. Clearly, my time in exile had resulted in my having far too much time on my hands, to be reading that stuff.
Evelyn looked up at me, startled by my laughter.
“You seem a little bit less miserable now, anyway,” she said.
Looking at her, I felt a slight smile working its way across one corner of my mouth, and I fought it down ferociously.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps you have been of some help in that regard.”
“Isn’t this sweet?”
The voice had sounded from behind me. I whirled, the Power rushing through me, ready to erect a force shield around Evelyn and myself in an instant.
Across the clearing, seated on a low branch, a tall, slender woman gazed down at us like the Cheshire Cat. Her thick, red hair sat in a bundle, held atop her head by pearl combs. Her long, black dress draped over the limb and fluttered lazily in the breeze. She wore a mischievous smile as she watched us.
Evelyn had jumped to her feet but, seeing who it was, she relaxed somewhat. I kept the Power within easy reach as I rested my hands on my hips and called up to her, “What are you doing here, Alaria?”
“Enjoying the show, obviously,” she replied. “You two are very amusing.”
Anger welled inside me. She may have been the one who first released us from captivity, but I trusted Alaria no more than any of the others, and I had never taken to her teasing.
“I am pleased we could provide you with some entertainment,” I said. “Now, let me ask again. Why are you here?”
She frowned.
“You are no fun, Lucian.”
She hopped from the branch and landed easily on the ground before me. She turned toward Evelyn.
“Is he?”
Evelyn said nothing, but I noticed she had picked up her duffle bag. Good. Despite the fact that Alaria had only ever assisted us thus far, I wanted Evelyn to understand that none of the others could be entirely trusted—and it looked as though she had grasped that concept well enough.
“I heard through the grapevine that you had visited Karilyne’s world, so I worked my way up the path you seemed likely to take away from there.”
Cold panic gripped my heart. Word had reached the City already? And—if Alaria could accurately guess my route, why couldn’t Baranak?
“Relax,” she said, reading my mood. “I said nothing to the others. The golden god seeks you in fields far remote from these. Or, rather, he sends others to do the seeking.”
She laughed.
“He has holed himself up in the City, surrounded by those few he feels are most loyal, drawing up his plans.”
“Do those few not include you?” I asked her, for several reasons.
If she visibly reacted, it was very brief.
“He trusts me,” she said.
“More the fool, he,” Evelyn said.
Alaria glared at her, then recovered smoothly.
“Perhaps,” she said, looking back at me. “In this matter, anyway. I have nothing against him otherwise, and believe he administers the City wisely and fairly.”
She reached out, a pale white hand stroking my cheek.
“I simply do not want to see my friend Lucian wronged without opportunity to exonerate himself.”
“A sentiment with which I think we can all agree,” I said. “Now: What brings you here?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and strode across the clearing, then turned theatrically and said, “Several things, actually. Where to begin? I have seen the ‘Dark Men’ of whom you earlier spoke.”
“Finally,” I breathed. “It was starting to seem as if I were imagining them.”
“No, they are quite real, and quite deadly. I was fortunate to avoid their notice.”
“How many did you see?”
“That is just it,” she replied. “I saw only one at a time, but in several locations. But I got the sense, for whatever reason, that it was not the same one each time.” She paused, chewing her lower lip, then continued. “They appear to be on the move, perhaps proliferating, moving all along the main roads leading out from the City.”
Sighing, I shook my head. “I was holding onto the hope that there might only be two or three of them at most. I should have known we could not be so fortunate.”
“I wonder,” Alaria said, “if, in fact, they could be the parties responsible for the murders.”
“I think not.”
She looked at me with some surprise.
“Truly? I had expected them to constitute your prime alibi—to be your main suspects,” she said.
I told her of the reasoning I had worked out earlier, and added, “A significant factor in the killings was that the Fountain had stopped flowing. How could these creatures, mindless as they seem to be, have engineered something like that?”
She shrugged.
“The second bit of information for you is this. Demons have begun to appear on some of the human worlds.”
Evelyn and I both reacted with shocked expressions.
“Explain,” I demanded.
“I cannot explain it, Lucian—and do not take such a tone with me.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. Beside me, Evelyn anxiously looked from one of us to the other, waiting to learn more.
Alaria moved closer, her hands spread before her in what I took to be a gesture of openness.
“All I know is this: Two worlds of the Terran Alliance, and one or two among the Outer Worlds, as well, have fallen prey to invasion. At first, we thought the attackers were some variety of aliens from within the humans’ universe, but that turns out not to be the case. Though many of them have been arriving at their target worlds in vast spacecraft, others have simply sprung up planetside. In every case, they attack anyone nearby with murderous fury. Thousands are dead already, and the Alliance and Outer Worlds governments have both declared a state of high alert.”
I simply stared at her, then at Evelyn.
“Can this be true?” Evelyn demanded. “How?”
She was distraught, and I could scarcely blame her. She stumbled backward and seated herself roughly on the log, staring up at us.
“What can we do?”
I shook my head.
“There is precious little we can do,” I replied. “At least, for now. But I am beginning to suspect there is much more to all of this than I first believed. The murders, the Dark Men, these demons appearing everywhere lately—it all fits together somehow. If we can get to the bottom of it…”
Evelyn’s eyes, reflecting shock and confusion, met mine, and after a moment she seemed to pull herself together.
“Yes.”
Her jaw now set, her uncertainty evaporated from about her.
I looked back at Alaria. “What are your plans now, if I may ask?”
She shrugged.
“I had not thought about it, beyond finding you and giving you this information.”
Frowning, she cast her gaze all around the clearing. “What became of your other two companions?”
“Arendal,” Evelyn stated succinctly.
“He abducted them,” I explained. “We do not know where they might be.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “And where is he now? I have not seen him in some time.”
“You just missed him, the last time I saw you, actually,” I said, weighing the consequences of telling her what had happened on the island, and deciding to share most of it—though keeping a few of the details to myself.
“Typical of him,” she said when I was finished. “I do not blame you for what you did.”
She thought for a few moments.
“Perhaps I can be of further assistance.”
“How so?”
She smiled.
“I have talents of which you know nothing, Lucian,” she said. “Where is his body now?”
“Still on the island, last time I saw it.”
“Then let us be off for your tropical paradise,” she replied. “And, as I am in no mood for a long hike, allow me to do the honors of opening the way. If I do so, my energy signature should mask yours—we should be able to take the shortest, most direct route, without arousing any suspicions from anyone watching.”
Anything that meant less walking for Evelyn and me was welcome indeed. “By all means,” I said, “lead on.”
She swirled her hands before her. A sparkling crystalline oval appeared, taking the form of an elegant, full-length mirror. It hovered in midair, and stretched out to the size of a broad doorway, touching the ground. The “glass” rippled as she passed through it. Then her hand reappeared, gesturing for us to follow her, and follow her we did.
# # #
We stood on those familiar warm sands, beneath the perpetually shining sun, the waves crashing behind us and the gulls squawking overhead. My once-secret island. Up the hill we walked, in silence, at last reaching the partially hidden hatchway in the grove of palms. I pulled the door open and pointed down.
“I left him down there,” I said.
Alaria gazed down into the darkness, then at me.
“And how did he get down there, pray tell?”
“It is… complicated,” I replied. Evelyn unsuccessfully tried to suppress a laugh.
“Well, I am not climbing down there. Bring him up.”
Sighing, I grasped the edge and swung down, landing with a thud on the hard floor. My eyes quickly adjusted, and I saw Arendal lying just where I had dropped him. His condition was unchanged—something that puzzled me, since I had half-expected him to have recovered entirely and departed by now, or at least to have healed the obvious wound in his forehead, even if he were still comatose. Frowning in puzzlement but not terribly concerned for his health, I moved the ladder into place, and lifted him easily over my shoulder. Grasping the rungs, I started climbing back up again, and hefted him over the edge.
Alaria reacted with visible surprise and distaste to his appearance—or, more precisely, to the burn mark between his eyes where my shot had struck him. From where she knelt over his prone form, she looked up at me, frowning.
“It has been some time since I last saw the effects of your weapons, Lucian. A thousand years, in fact. I still do not approve of them.”
“I do not doubt that, lady,” I replied. “But there are times, unfortunately, when one has no other choice.”
“And I presume you felt you had no other choice, that day in the City, than to shoot down some dozen or more of your fellow gods? To harm so many, before you were restrained—before Halaini…”
“I will not speak further of it,” I shot back angrily. “What is past is past.”
I pointed at Arendal.
“Here he is. You said you could do something useful with him. Please do so.”
She gave me a withering look, but then turned her attention back to the body lying before her in the sand. Reaching down with both hands, she touched the sides of his head, and closed her eyes. Sparkles of light like tiny stars flickered around both of them, and she groaned. For several long seconds this continued, until finally she released him, sat back, and opened her eyes.
“No,” she said. “It is not all here.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked up at me, biting her lip.
“Perhaps you still have the weapon that dealt this damage to him?”
“No. It was ruined, some time later, along with the jewel inside it. I threw it away.”
She frowned, clearly upset—more upset than I would have expected. I did not think she and Arendal had ever been particularly close.
“Wait,” I said then. “The gem—I actually do still have the one that was in the pistol when I shot him. I forgot that I had swapped it out with another I found on him.”
Her expression brightened considerably, and she reached out to take the gemstone I produced from a pocket. Clutching it tightly in one hand, she leaned over him again, her other hand moving to touch his face. She squeezed her eyes closed again, and mumbled something unintelligible. Seconds passed, during which Evelyn and I exchanged puzzled expressions but said nothing, waiting. Then, after nearly a minute of this, Alaria grunted sharply and jerked backward, stumbling in the sand and falling on her backside. Smoke curled from within her still-clenched fist, and from the wound in Arendal’s forehead.
Evelyn and I helped her to her feet, and she dusted the sand from her black, silken robes. She looked down at her hand as she opened it, seeing the jewel sparkling there like a tiny sun. She nodded slowly.
“I have it,” she said, looking up at Evelyn. “I know where your friends are.”
Evelyn restrained herself, but her excitement was more than evident in her eyes, in her barely contained energy.
“Then let’s go,” she said softly, and she clutched the duffle bag tighter to her side.
“First things first,” I said, hefting Arendal’s body once more. I started to toss it over the edge again, but thought of Alaria’s probable reaction and stopped myself. Instead, I climbed back down the ladder and lay him on his back on the floor.
“That is better than you deserve,” I whispered. “And I shed no tears for your condition, Arendal, whatever its cause. As far as I am concerned, you can sleep here for the rest of eternity.”
Once out of the hole again, I swung the door closed and turned to Alaria.
“I didn’t know you could do that—whatever that was.”
“There is much you still do not know, Lucian,” she said softly.
“True. But I am starting to believe that situation may be changing. And changing rapidly.”
She glanced over at me, then away into the distance. When she spoke, her tone was not a pleasant one.
“I would agree,” she said. “For all the good, and the bad, that implies.”
The three of us walked in silence down the sloping hillside to the beach. We stopped there as Alaria shaded her eyes with one hand and pointed off to the left and closer toward the water.
“What is that?”
I turned to see where she was looking.
“What?”
She was moving that way quickly already, her delicate white feet churning the sand as she ran. Evelyn and I stood there, waiting. She stooped down and I realized at that moment what she had seen. She reached out and grasped the object in the sand—
“No, wait!” I called, but it was too late.
—and she lifted it easily, holding it up before her as she stood: a slender, silver rod with an ornate grip on one end.
“Arendal’s cane,” she said. She looked at me, puzzled. “You just left it here?”
“It—seemed wisest at the time,” I replied, puzzled but glad she had not been attacked by it. “The thing is dangerous—I had no desire to handle it. Besides, we were in something of a hurry.”
Her expression portrayed the dubious reception with which she greeted my reasoning. She studied the cane for a few moments, then raised her free hand and gestured. A small portal shimmered open in the air beside her. Carefully she reached out and placed the cane through the opening in the fabric of the world, then withdrew her empty hand and sealed the portal closed.
“There. It will remain safe in a pocket universe until things have settled down a bit.”
I had no objections—I would have left it where it had lain until time and tide and the sands had buried it forever. If she wanted it, she was welcome to it. She made a better custodian than most of the others, in my estimation.
Returning to where we stood, Alaria gestured again, this time opening a person-sized portal.
“Time to move along,” she told us, then stepped through. The opening remained, sparkling in the air where she had stood.
Evelyn was sipping water from a container she had evidently stashed in her duffle bag. Screwing the lid back on, she dropped it back inside and slung the bag over her shoulder.
“So,” she said.
I motioned toward the portal.
“After you.”
With a polite nod, she turned and followed Alaria through.
Bringing up the rear, I stepped through and emerged into a dense, dark forest. Earthy smells washed over me, and the sound of insects vibrated like the motor driving the world. It was overwhelming, especially after coming directly there from a desert island. It took a few moments to regain my equilibrium.
Evelyn and Alaria were tromping along through the brush, so I gathered my senses and set out after them. I had a suspicion then where we might be, but I wasn’t sure. Had I known for certain, I might have been watching more carefully for the two, tiny red eyes, hidden in the foliage, that doubtlessly followed our every move.
“May I ask,” I called out finally, “just where we are going?”
Alaria paused and looked back at me. She pointed to her forehead.
“I have it all in here now,” she said.
“Wonderful,” I replied. Then, “All of what?”
“Arendal.”
“Ah.” I considered. “Sorry to hear that. Oh!” It dawned on me then. “You know where it is.”
“Precisely.”
We started moving again. Evelyn looked from one of us to the other as we marched. After a few seconds, she came out with it: “You know where what is?”
“Arendal’s private sanctum,” she replied.
“No one has ever found it before,” I added, “as far as we know. We have always been sure he has all sorts of interesting and useful things stashed away there, given the interesting and useful things he has shown up with in the City, from time to time.”
Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1) Page 22