The fourth tube was fully open. The gray giant inside reached up and ripped the wires and tubes away from himself and leapt out onto the floor. Fluids dripped from his limbs and his eyes were filled with fury.
Istari swept the sword around at him.
He jerked his upper half backwards with a swiftness and a fluidity that belied his massive form.
Istari missed.
The giant lunged for him, grappled with him, knocked the sword from his hand.
Istari spun about but couldn’t break free. The giant seized him, wrapped his massive arms around his neck and started to squeeze. Istari gasped as the big creature roared in fury.
I picked up the sword where it had fallen and ran the giant through with it.
His roar changed drastically, morphing into to a cry of pain. He released Istari and staggered back, in the process wrenching the hilt from my hands. The blade remained protruding through him. He spun about and glared down at me and reached out with his huge hands, meaning to murder me. The hands moved far more quickly than I could have imagined. They grasped me by the neck, lifted me up, and began to crush my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe. I kicked and flailed frantically.
From the corner of my eye I could see several of my troopers rushing forward. The nearest one fired, the blasts from his pistol impacting the giant but scarcely affecting him.
And then the golden blade that protruded from the giant’s torso vanished. It had been drawn back out from his back, and it reappeared in midair, sweeping around.
The giant’s head separated from his shoulders and fell to the floor, followed a moment later by the massive, headless body.
Istari stood over the slain giant and frowned. “That’s odd,” he said.
“What’s odd?” I gasped, desperately trying to catch my breath. What isn’t odd here, I was thinking.
Istari shrugged. “I didn’t expect to end up decapitating all three of the giants,” he said.
+ + +
“This is not good,” Istari called out to me from where he was almost entirely engulfed in the innards of the dome’s futuristic machinery. Only his lower legs and feet protruded from beneath the wide gray console. A constellation of colorful lights danced across its surface, though several had gone dark moments earlier as Istari worked underneath.
“What?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
Slowly he withdrew himself from the depths of the machinery and sat up. His expression dour, he shook his head and looked up at me.
“The oncoming wave of cosmic energy cannot be stopped,” he said.
I felt my heart sink in my chest. I shook my head, moving quickly into denial, and looked away for a moment. Then I turned back to him.
“You mean they—the Cabal—created this power wave, but their equipment can’t un-create it?”
“They did not create it,” he said. “They merely learned of it and were attempting to take advantage of it.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“Not where,” he replied, meeting my eyes again. “When.”
I recalled what had been said earlier. In all honesty, I’d happily allowed the details to go right over my head. Now, though, with all that had happened, and all that yet could occur, I found a renewed interest in the subject.
“The future,” I said. “It’s coming back to us here and now from some point in the future.”
“Correct.”
“But—how is that possible?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I suspect none of my former compatriots of the Cabal did, either. But they didn’t allow that to dissuade them. They detected—or were told of—the wave’s approach long ago and resolved to harness it for their own purposes. In order to do that, they sent out certain signals and emanations into the various layers of the multiverse, redirecting and channeling its course as it drew near.” He sighed heavily. “Those changes cannot be undone. The wave is coming, and it will sweep across the mortal plane, wreaking untold carnage over the greater portion of our galaxy.” He paused, looking away. “Unless...”
“Yes?” I said, seizing on the slender hope his last utterance had promised. “Unless what?”
“It just might be possible that sending out a new set of signals, while unable to stop or reverse the oncoming wave, might be able to divert it… shall we say… vertically.”
“Vertically?” I stared back at him, utterly mystified.
He smiled flatly. “Understand that we are speaking of multi-dimensional phenomena while we ourselves are constrained within only three dimensions. So by ‘vertically’ I mean into a higher realm; a higher level of being.”
“You mean into the Paths?”
“Not precisely, no,” he said, shaking his head. “The Paths are but connective passages between various levels of reality. They do not constitute a dimension unto themselves. But,” he added, his smile growing sly, “there are many actual dimensions available to us. It just might be possible…”
“I’m all for it,” I said. “What do we have to do?”
“We would have to…” He paused, frowned, and his eyes grew unfocused for a few seconds. I assumed he was mentally working out formulas and equations. When he was finished and he looked at me again, his frown deepened and he shook his head.
“I had forgotten a few very basic properties of the higher planes,” he growled.
“What does that mean?”
“It means it is not so simple,” he said, clearly disgusted. “If we did succeed in redirecting the wave into a higher dimensional realm, it wouldn’t just remain there and fade away. It would in all likelihood echo across that plane, doing just as much damage there—whereupon it might very well re-energize and re-emerge into this plane, at least as powerful as before.”
I took this in, blinking rapidly. “Okay,” I said after a couple of seconds. “You’re saying if we do nothing, it will destroy the galaxy—”
“Yes.”
“—But if we do redirect it away, it will destroy other dimensions, and then come back down and destroy this galaxy anyway.”
He brought his slender hands up to his pale white face and rubbed at his reddened eyes. “Yes,” he repeated. “In all likelihood, that is so.”
“Then—” I looked away, staggered. Was this the end? “—is there anything we can do?”
He met my eyes again and offered a sort of resigned shrug. “I’m afraid there is.”
At first, given his tone, I was sure he had answered in the negative. Then I realized what he had said, and I looked up. “Wait—there is something?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound confident it will work.”
“Oh, it should work,” he said.
“Then what—?”
“But it will definitely cost one of us our lives. Both of us, quite possibly.”
I absorbed this, considered it for perhaps three seconds, and nodded. For some reason I found the potential price we would have to pay didn’t much surprise me. It would cost us our lives? Of course it would. Anything else—anything less—would’ve been the real surprise.
“What do we have to do?” I asked.
His evil half-smile returned one last time. “You are so prepared to sacrifice both our lives for the greater good,” he noted with a snort. “That has never been my favorite of your qualities.”
+ + +
According to Istari’s plan, he was to remain in the dome, burrowed deep inside the machinery, manipulating circuits and controls on the fly, moment by moment, regulating and directing the flow of the oncoming wave of cosmic energy as best he could. By precisely managing the wave at the micro level, he believed he could blunt its impact and shape it so that it remained in the higher planes and never blasted back down into our universe. Such a task could not be left to the existing machinery the Cabal had possessed, and there was no time to go and find, procure, or create new equipment for that purpose. Only he could process the changes made to the flow of energy in real time, as they neede
d to happen, using a combination of his telepathy and precognition to anticipate the fluctuations in the oncoming wave.
Unfortunately, the wave was going to strike the dome at the same time it struck wherever else we managed to make it go, and there was no combination of factors that could cause it to do otherwise. In other words, Istari would be here when it hit, and he would die.
He didn’t seem terribly upset about this fact. I assumed that meant it was what he had seen in the Well of Eternity, and that he had been prepared for it for at least that long.
I assumed that, but I wasn’t certain of it.
The rest of the plan, of course, involved me, as he explained:
“You must move quickly. Go back to where we left your people, in the pocket universe. Lead them home.” He paused. “Not to your palace—I doubt it exists any longer. Take them back to Majondra. Then follow the Paths back to that same pocket universe, and—”
“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand to interrupt him. “If you remain here, how am I supposed to travel the Paths?”
He lifted the golden sword and pressed it into my hands. I was surprised, to say the least.
“Take this. I know that it will work for you. I have seen it.”
I accepted the sword and held it up before me. Its golden form gleamed in the pale light. It looked marvelous and terrible.
“You can take my horse, as well,” he said. “He will lead you back to the others, and along the Paths. He knows the ways almost as well as I do.”
“Your horse? Sneak is here?”
“What?”
“Never mind. How did your horse get here?”
“I called to him,” he said. “He awaits you outside this chamber.”
“Very well,” I said, surprised and impressed. “I will.”
“As I was saying. After you have taken them to Majondra, go back to that pocket universe, which—if you have done your job properly—will no longer contain one hundred and twenty-seven of your soldiers, retainers and other employees.”
“One hundred twenty-seven?”
“I counted them.”
“Huh.”
“May I continue? Or is there anything else of no importance you must ask?”
“By all means,” I said.
“Go back to the pocket universe. Find its center. The sword will help with that, too. Then use it to punch a hole in the ground.”
I simply stared back at him, dumbfounded.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I punch a hole in the ground.”
“Yes.”
I thought about this for a second, then nodded. Why not? It made about as much sense as anything else, at this point. “And then what?”
“You get the hell out of there, as quickly as you can.”
I nodded. “Because...?”
“Because you will have just opened a new path for all the energies of the oncoming wave, and—if I have done my part of the job properly, which of course I will have—that energy will be directed up through the hole you have created and into that pocket universe.”
“Ah,” I said, able to at least visualize what he was saying if not fully comprehend it. “And will I need to return at some point and seal the hole, somehow, so that it won’t escape?”
He shook his head. “No. The energy will not work that way. It will have resonated down through the time stream from the far future, and it will continue to flow for ages to come. The energy will never drain back out—it will always be flowing into the pocket universe, through that hole in reality.”
“Always?”
“For all intents and purposes.” He shrugged. “I imagine there will be some bleed-over, of course. Traces of the energy will probably radiate outwards from that pocket dimension and throughout all the layers of reality for eons to come. But not in any sort of harmful levels.”
I thought about that.
“And what will happen to me if I don’t escape the pocket universe in time?”
Istari looked back at me, pursed his lips, and smiled.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Quite possibly the same thing that will happen to me, here.” He paused, then, “Or possibly something entirely different.”
“I see,” I said. “I think.”
“That is the beauty of the plan, my human friend,” he said. “You don’t have to think. Just do as I say.”
I chuckled, then nodded once to him.
He offered me a smile, and for once it wasn’t an evil one. “Good fortune to you,” he said.
“To you as well,” I replied.
“Now hurry. Time grows exceedingly short.”
I turned, raised the sword before me, and strode out of there.
I never saw Istari again.
TWELVE
The blast came from nowhere. Sneak went down with a cry of pain and threw me clear. I rolled across the soft surface of the Path and came up with my pistol drawn.
No one was there.
I looked around, furious. Time was my enemy now. I had none to waste. Who could have wanted to stop me?
I glanced over at the black horse where he lay on his side, unmoving. Dead, I was pretty sure.
This was bad. Without Sneak, I wasn’t certain I could find my way to the pocket universe, much less lead the men and women who waited there back home. Even if I could—even if the sword would do it all for me—I would be traveling so much slower now. Would there still be time?
Wary, on constant guard, I ran.
The waves of mists parted before me and lighting flared along beside me. I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what I was doing or where I was going, but it felt right.
I knew the situation had grown critical now; that much was certain. I had to take my best guess, rely on my instincts, and go.
Another blast, a few seconds later. This time I leapt out of the way, tucking and rolling, and when I came up I was in the mists and no longer on the Path.
Panic struck at me. What if I couldn’t find the way again? How long would I wander in this nightmare of nothingness before—what? This attacker killed me? I died of thirst? Or some strange creature out of shadow and nightmare devoured me?
I felt the sword still clutched tightly in my right hand and I held it up before me. The radiant golden glow it threw off seemed to penetrate the gloom and now I could see the course of the Path again off to my left, clear as day. Relief flooded over me, but mixed with fear: I was in all likelihood broadcasting my precise location to my invisible assailant. But I had no choice. I hurried back to the Path and started forward again. Where was my assailant? Who was it? Why did they want me dead?
Another blast. Again I hurled myself down, rolling off to my left, but this time I kept the Path in sight. I looked around quickly, seeking any sign that might betray the location of my foe.
Nothing.
I was growing extremely frustrated, to the point of recklessness. The clock was ticking; I needed to be moving. Without Sneak to carry me along, every second was precious.
Fed up, I sat up and shouted, “Come out, whoever you are! Let’s settle this like men and not like children hiding in the shadows!”
“Like men?” came the response in a familiar female voice.
As I looked on in utter astonishment, my young Aunt Stephanie emerged from the fog and walked slowly towards me, a blast pistol in one hand aimed at my chest.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, a wry smile crossing her face.
“I have to admit, it’s a bit unexpected,” I replied. My own pistol was still in its holster but I held the sword in my right hand and experience had taught me over the past couple of days that it might be the deadlier weapon.
She glanced over at Sneak’s body, frowned, and looked back at me. “Aren’t you upset that I shot your horse?” she asked.
“It’s not my horse,” I told her.
“Oh.”
“But yes—pretty upset. He was what you’d call a key component in what I’m trying to do.”
�
��That’s a shame,” she said. “I didn’t really want to. But you were going to gallop right past my position.”
She’d been waiting out here? Waiting for me?
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “That and, you know, shooting at me, too.”
She laughed. It was a sweet, carefree laugh; wholly out of place here and entirely creepy. “I needed you to slow down. I’m on foot, you see. A horse gave you an unfair advantage.”
“Ah,” I said by way of reply. “You could have simply asked, you know. I’ve always been partial to my aunts over my uncles.”
“You hate all of us,” she said. “Not that I blame you.”
“But it’s a relative thing,” I told her. “No pun intended, of course.”
She scowled. “I should kill you for that alone.”
“Why would you want to kill me at all?”
“Because you know too much,” she said, growing serious. “And because I want that sword.” She chuckled. “That makes two very good reasons. I tried to kill you the first time just for the first reason.”
“The first time?” I edged to my right, attempting to get back on the Path. She raised her pistol and fired a warning shot just past my shoulder. I halted.
“Yes,” she said then, as though nothing of consequence had happened. “Didn’t you wonder why someone suddenly targeted the palace on Victoria with quantum missiles?”
My jaw dropped. “That was you?”
She shrugged. “If someone hadn’t come along and awakened you from your long nap, you’d be taking a much longer one now,” she said.
“Aurelia,” I murmured, thinking of my eldest aunt. “She woke me. And she told me she’d seen you there earlier. I never put it together like that, though. I never would have.”
Baranak: Storming the Gates (The Above Book 2) Page 20