She smirked. “It would have been Aurelia. She claims to be one of us, but I’ve never trusted her.”
“She’s dead,” I stated flatly.
“What?”
Stephanie blinked and lowered the gun a couple of inches. I considered making a break for the path—or attacking her with the sword—but I dared not risk it; not just yet, anyway. She was distracted, but not enough.
“Aurelia was killed saving Istari and me from the Cabal.”
“I knew she wasn’t truly committed,” Stephanie growled. Then her frown deepened. “Cabal. Huh. I don’t like that name,” she said. “We are the Immortals, and soon we will be gods.”
“No,” I told her. “You won’t.”
Quickly I sketched for her what had recently transpired within the dome of the Cabal.
“I don’t believe you,” she said at length. “I don’t believe you could have killed all four of them.”
“Istari actually killed them,” I said, “but in hindsight I think I could have given a pretty decent accounting of myself, if necessary.” I held the sword aloft. “Especially if I’d possessed this.”
“You think you can use it? The only reason I am willing to try is that I’ve spent years studying it, working with the Immortals, learning to master such artifacts and powers. But you—what do you know of it? It will destroy you.”
“I can use it,” I replied coldly, holding it up before me. “As you can see.”
Her eyes glinted with desire as she looked upon the golden weapon.
“I will have to,” I added, “since you and your friends have left me no other choice.” I gazed at her with contempt. “To think that you would have been willing to see the entire galaxy destroyed, just for your own selfish reasons.”
“You know nothing,” she spat back at me. “And you’ll never be able to stop the wave.”
“I know,” I said, smiling flatly at her. “Fortunately, that’s not the plan.”
She continued to regard me for a couple of seconds in silence, and a tiny frown passed over her features. Then she scoffed and shook her head. “I don’t even know that I believe you about the others being dead,” she said offhand. “But—whether you’re telling the truth or not, my priority at the moment is that sword.” She moved closer. “The rest I can find out for myself once I possess it.”
“Then come and get it,” I said, holding it out before me, hoping she was agitated enough now to actually try it, and not just shoot me down from there.
Sure enough, she took another step closer.
A whinny sounded from behind her. Sneak wasn’t as dead as I’d thought, apparently.
She glanced back, surprised.
I tossed the sword to her.
She reached out for it, the gun forgotten, tumbling from her fingertips.
I lunged, punching her in the stomach. She grunted.
The sword fell to the ground.
She started to rise. I punched her again. “Stay down,” I shouted, furious with her.
She reached for her fallen gun.
I brought the sword around and down and sliced the gun in half. Sparks flew from it in a golden cascade.
Cursing at me, she got to her hands and knees and scampered into the fog on the far side of the Path. Gone. To where, I couldn’t say—but there was no way, even if I’d had the time, that I would have pursued her into the depths of the mist, away from the Path. She was unarmed now. Let her come back and try something.
I checked to be sure my own pistol was safe in its holster. Then I got to my feet and went over to take a look at Sneak.
He was in a bad way. I knew I had to do something about it, and so I did. Then I walked away and back onto the Path, sick to my stomach.
I was beginning to question my career choices.
+ + +
I had trudged along the Path for what felt like half of eternity when the little black creature trotted up beside me and struck up a conversation.
“Hi. What are you doing?”
The monotony of the journey had nearly lulled me into a state of hypnosis, and it took a moment for the creature’s voice to get through to me. When it did, I looked down.
It was black and furry and went on all fours and was about the size of an average dog, but it wasn’t a dog. To be honest, I wasn’t certain what it was. It gazed back up at me with a pleasant enough expression on its all-too-human face, and its blue eyes sparkled in the dim light.
Considering several possible answers including a couple of smart-assed ones, I settled on the truth. “I’m traveling to a pocket universe,” I said.
“Ah,” the creature said. Its eyes shifted to the sword I carried ahead of me for a few seconds. Then, “That’s a lovely item. May I ask where you found it?”
“I didn’t find it,” I replied somewhat testily. “It was given to me. By a friend.”
“Ooooh,” it said. “A friend. Nice.”
I trudged on in silence and the little creature kept the pace, trotting along next to me. I looked for all the world, I’m sure, like someone taking their dog out for a walk. Except, of course, dogs didn’t look like this. And they didn’t talk.
“Do you think you’ll be in time?” it asked a few seconds later.
I looked down at it again, surprised. “What do you know of that?”
“You seem in quite a hurry,” it replied. “I’m wondering if you think you’ll be on time, or late.”
I stared into the mists ahead of me for a moment, then shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I’m going to try.”
“Commendable,” it said. “Most commendable.”
We walked on together silently for a short way.
“I know the answer to that question,” it said suddenly. “Would you like to hear it?”
“To what question?” I asked, confused. My entire focus was on moving forward, following the Path, finding the entrance to the pocket universe as quickly as possible.
“Whether you make it or not.”
“How could you know that?” I asked, not taking the creature seriously.
“I have powerful friends,” it squawked. “I know a lot of things.”
“Then why ask me?”
It chuckled; the sound was curious. “I don’t know. I just wanted to hear your perspective on it all. You don’t seem terribly confident, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I looked down at it and frowned. “Actually,” I said, “I think I’d make better progress without you here, distracting me. If you don’t mind,” I added.
“Of course, of course,” it said. Then it moved in closer. “But I have to tell you—you won’t succeed. There isn’t enough time.”
“Is that so?” I asked, growing angry. “You know that for a fact, do you?”
“I do,” it said. “But that’s okay. You tried. You tried very hard. No one can fault you for effort.” It looked off to the side. “Now it’s time to lay down your burdens. Time to lie down and rest.”
“Lay down my burdens?” I held the sword up and nodded toward it. “Like this one, for instance? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I snorted. “You aren’t the first being I’ve encountered that wanted to divest me of this weapon.”
“Oh, I’m not interested in your sword,” the little creature replied. “I simply took something of a liking to you, the last time we met, and I didn’t want to see you needlessly killed when the wave comes through.”
I frowned at this and looked back down at the little being.
“We’ve never met,” I said.
“Oh, you wound me, sir,” it said. “How soon they forget. And here I was considering offering you a shortcut by way of my cave.”
“Cave?” My forehead creased even deeper as I thought about what it had said. Then the light came on, metaphorically.
“No,” I said. “You don’t mean you are—”
“One and the same,” it replied.
The creature in the darkness of the cave. The one that had allowed
me to ask a couple of questions, and had let me depart in peace—something that had initially surprised Istari.
It was only this big?
“If you truly could provide a shortcut, I would be very grateful,” I told the little beast, not at all sure how serious to take it.
It made a sort of shrugging gesture with its forward shoulders and replied, “Why not? It could prove diverting for a time, at any rate.” It nodded forward. “Keep going a short distance more—my, but you do cover a lot of ground quickly with those long legs—and... now, turn right.”
I turned.
The mists and fog and the Path itself vanished from around me.
I panicked at first. Was the creature leading me astray—removing any last vestiges of hope I had left? Was it planning to strand me forever in the mists between universes?
But then darkness swallowed me, and I actually felt better about things. For this darkness seemed familiar to me. It was the darkness of the cave I’d entered and exited after meeting Istari.
About that much, at least, the little beast had spoken the truth.
“Straight through and out the back,” it was saying. “When you come out, you’ll be very close.” It regarded me, its head turned partway to the side, now reminding me more strongly of an actual dog. “Of course, you’ll still be too late,” it added—and now its voice was deepening, growing smooth and resonant, and much more familiar. It was the voice from our previous encounter, without a doubt. “But at least now you can say you came close.”
Ignoring these last words, I called back a “thank you” and ran for the far end of the cave.
“Good luck,” I heard it say, its voice now grown very deep, harsh and rough. “Glad I didn’t eat you.”
“Me too.”
+ + +
The creature’s cave opened out onto another nearly identical segment of the Paths. But this time I could see a standard, run-of-the-mill door—the same sort mankind had been building for ages— standing there before me, upright and unsupported. It wasn’t the first of its kind I had encountered, and by now I knew the drill. I could only assume my own subconscious made me see it that way, and I suspected that others would see something entirely different—something that fit within their own point of reference.
I felt strange, suddenly. My head hurt. The light that until now had been pale, dim, diffused, now seemed too bright, too intense. I chalked it up to having just emerged from the darkness of the cave, but I knew that was only part of it. Something was happening. I feared I knew all too well what it was.
The wave had arrived. The little creature had been right—I was too late. Based on what Istari had told me, when it became physically noticeable, the wave of energy had arrived. In the universe I called home, somewhere at the far end of one of these Paths, the wave front was poised to break. I knew that, back at the Nexus, Istari was laboring intently even now to aim the bulk of the wave toward this place. He had lived up to his part of the deal, and would likely be dead in moments. For myself, I had only seconds before the point of no return—the moment the massive energy could no longer be diverted.
My people from the palace were no longer a factor in this. They couldn’t be. Despite my best efforts and desires, they had moved firmly into the category of collateral damage. There was nothing to be done for them now.
I reached out, grasped the copper-colored knob, turned it and pulled. The door swung open on invisible hinges and I stepped through.
It was a paradise. Rolling green hills stretched into the distance. Trees and flowers and hanging fruit and colorful birds soaring by. And in the foreground, standing or seated in little groups of three or four or more, all busily engaged in conversation or eating or just lying back in the warm sunlight, were the hundred-plus members of our household staff.
One would have scarcely guessed we all teetered on the brink of the apocalypse.
A couple of them looked up and saw me then and they called out to the others and next thing I knew a whole crowd of them was rushing up to me.
I was sick. I didn’t have the heart to tell them what I had come to do.
But, for the galaxy to survive, they—and I— would all have to die.
The plan had been for me to lead them all back home, then return and do what I had to do here. But Stephanie had utterly ruined that possibility. Now all I could do was save every other living being in our galaxy except for them.
I pushed past them, shoving them aside, racing toward the center of this universe.
As I ran, I saw Jerome out of the corner of my eye, sitting up, being tended by the intelligence officer, Markos. I was glad he had survived the earlier attack in the palace and was sorry he would live no longer, after what I was about to do.
Brushing aside their multitude of questions—mostly about where I had been, what had happened, and when they could go back home—I hurried out into the grassy field beyond their campsite. Was I anywhere near the center of this tiny little pocket universe? I had no idea. Somehow, I doubted it. Was that vital to the plan’s success? I didn’t know that, either.
But there was no more time even to try to find it. My vision was growing blurry—it appeared as if everyone around me was streaked with lines of light, and illuminated by some inner glow. They could see it too; they stared openly at one another, some of them staggering around aimlessly, some falling to the ground as if drunk or dying.
I felt a burning in my gut. It was as if I’d swallowed a small star, and now it was preparing to go nova inside me.
The wave. The wave was upon us. Even through the walls that divide the universes, I could feel the pressure wave striking hard. I could only imagine the damage being wrought on the greater universe back home.
The deed would be done now, or not at all.
I waved my arms frantically, shouting for them to get back. Then I raised the great golden sword above my head, grasped the hilt firmly with both hands, and drove it down into the ground before me. It sunk partway into the surface and stopped there.
Nothing happened.
I waited for a long moment, uncertain what to do next. Finally I decided to do what came instinctively. I tightened my grip on the hilt and drew the sword back out of the ground.
A rumbling.
An earthquake.
A cataclysm.
Out in its wake spewed a geyser of blinding, coruscating, raw energy. The force of it hurled me back, knocking the sword from my grasp.
The others backed away, shocked and astonished, while I fought my way onto my feet, sought the sword, found it where it lay and lifted it again. When I did, I saw that my hands, my arms were... bigger, somehow. More muscular. The golden armor I wore had begun to morph into a heavier, thicker material of the same color.
This all seemed meaningless to me. I ignored it and regarded what I had wrought.
A plume of pure, elemental power jetted up toward the sky from the hole I had punched in the ground with the sword. That energy, I knew, was not coming from under the surface of this strange world we now occupied; it was coming from some other plane, and if all was going as Istari had planned and predicted, it was now being siphoned away from our universe and here instead.
Enough energy to obliterate those of us who currently occupied that universe a thousand times over. A million times over.
Yet still we lived. I raised my left hand—the right yet clutched the sword—and I looked at it again. It was big, powerful, luminous. I could not understand what that meant.
Looking around at the others, I saw that each of them now stood transfixed, arms out wide and heads thrown back, as shimmering waves of cosmic energy washed over them. I recognized the Sister Superior, and at last her given name came back to me from our first meeting on Sarmata: Karilyne. Her name was Karilyne.
I knew her name again, but now I only barely knew her by her appearance. Her stature had grown even beyond what it had been, her bearing had become more regal, and she now wore gleaming silver armor that sparkled beneath
her mantle of jet black hair. She looked at me and her blue eyes glinted and my legs, strong as they now were, felt for a moment very weak indeed.
All of the others around me were as affected by the flood of energy pulsing into our little pocket universe as I was. They were changing—metamorphosing—before my very eyes. Into what, I did not know. Part of me feared to know. Another part reveled in it.
The flame within me—the flame of battle—had fully ignited, and the energy wave was pure oxygen breathing upon it, nurturing it, causing it to flourish.
I sensed something then. I realized I now possessed a greater native understanding of the forces at work here. My consciousness was expanding even as my body did. I looked at the geyser of energy and then at the little world around us and I simply knew on an elemental, fundamental level what was happening, and what I had to do.
The energy wasn’t killing us. It was changing us. Sustaining us. And if I did nothing, it would continue to erupt, uncontrolled, and to escape away into other dimensions, leaving us bereft of its gifts.
I turned and saw Comet standing to my left. He appeared changed for the better, as well—bigger, stronger, and radiant with power. I called to him and he trotted over.
Yes. I knew what had to be done—what only I could do.
I climbed aboard Comet and raised the sword high and we rode. I spurred him forward and we crossed the grassland like his fiery namesake.
When I felt the moment was right, I brought him up and turned him to the left, and as we began to move in a long, broad circle with the plume of energy at the center, I stretched out the sword and willed its blade to carve into the very fabric of this universe’s spacetime. A glowing line of yellow-white remained etched in the very air as we passed, as the blade cut through the walls of reality.
Everything began to change.
I gazed upward as we rode. I gasped.
The sky filled with stars, and stars rained down from the sky.
The heavens wheeled about me, wheeled again. Day to night, night to day, in endless cycle—and yet so quickly. Days passed—or was it seconds? I no longer knew.
Baranak: Storming the Gates (The Above Book 2) Page 21