The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending

by Steven J. Carroll

  Though Darius’s was a worser fate (and, I should judge, that it was because his cane, that had been the initiator of this blast, in the instant the energy field exploded outward, an extra line of power was sent backward, up through his cane, dealing him with a double blow). The surge of immeasurable energy launched him across the length of that great room; and he hit with his back against the wired trunk of his towering machine. And like his own sparks had turned on him, they leapt from every limb and corner of that mechanism, as if to devour him.

  And then there was a truly blinding flash of pure blue and vivid white shattering power, a force that split his machine in two, burying him beneath its rubble. And then the room was instantly and decidedly darkened, a sharp darkness in contrast to that unbearably blinding brilliant light.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Distant Starlight

  Only a distant starlight came through the painting, in what had once been the window room, and the world in Gleomu was now darkened by night as well, and clouded on the mountain where Darius’s prison estate stood, so that no other light could make its way through the holes in the high vaulted roof that had been torn open when Barbara and Timothy were first reflected back to Earth.

  The great dungeon room was lightless and silent, until the unexpected voice of an elderly man broke through the stillness.

  ���Timothy!��� his shaking voice rang out in the darkness. ���Timothy! Answer now, won’t you?���

  ���Wilbur?��� asked a weakened voice, who was still collapsed on the stone floor, trying to regain her strength so that she might stand on her own.

  And this voice, Queen Delany’s voice, was exactly right. The surprising old man’s voice was indeed that of Timothy’s grandfather, Wilbur, who had spent the last seven or so hours diligently trying to remember things he’d very much so forgotten: Like how he had come to be in this strange house, and why he’d felt this incontrollable urge to eat, even though he did not feel truly hungry to begin with, and where his dear wife, Mattie, could have gone to (because he was almost very certain that she had been there in that odd house with him, although he had no means by which to prove this). And in this time he began to wonder how he had been stricken with a series of circularly formed burn marks, scattered across his back and front torso.

  And it was not until after nightfall that he had remembered everything, especially the location of the secret doorway, and those steps leading down to the dungeon where Darius had held him prisoner for a considerable period of time, in order to run a litany of unsuccessful experiments on him.

  But now, on this night, with a metal rod in his hand that he’d used to pry open the secret door, Wilbur, the King of Earth, came down the winded stairs, just in time to see his grandson and Darius blasted through the air, and then the blinding light of the explosion, followed by a blank blackness and all the room went dark. (Which, I should assume, would not be something one would hope to see, after being away from their life for a year’s time, and after just so recently coming back to it.)

  Wilbur followed the sound of the Queen’s voice until he found her collapsed near the rubble of Darius’s great machine.

  ���I think he’s crashed into boxes… somewhere in that direction,��� Delany pointed vaguely, as Wilbur began to help her to her feet, which caused her to let out a short cry of pain, because her legs had been so wounded.

  And with the Queen limping, using Wilbur’s shoulder as a crutch, the two came fumbling in the dark to a heap of wooden crates, where they heard an almost inaudible low moaning, wedged beneath heavy pieces of timbered slat. They had found him, and it was something to be celebrated.

  And yet, from Timothy’s perspective his rescue went as so: In an almost pitch black room, he was startled back to his senses by a pressing immoveable weight, pinning his chest and legs, and arms, so that he could not budge the wood boards enough to free himself, and therefore he had come to the assumption that if unaided, he would eventually lose all strength to breathe, and be suffocated underneath this new trap.

  Or after feeling a warm wetness trickling down his arm, he was forced to readjust his presumptions to include that he might, in fact, bleed to death before such a time.

  Yet before he could come to terms with what that all meant, he heard a voice, muffled by the stack of loose wood now piled upon him, so that all he knew was that it was a man’s voice, and nothing of who it might be, or what he might be saying. Leaving his only explanation to be: that this man’s voice must be Darius’s, and when he heard the short cry of a woman’s voice, he had convinced himself that Darius, who must have revived himself, had gone back to finish his murder of the Queen, and that certainly he would be next in line, and helplessly stuck with no means of escape.

  The weight of the crates upon his chest became less and less, until finally a man’s hands began to reach at him in the almost completely darkened room. With his now free hands, Timothy pounded his fists at the man, desperately trying to save his own life, until he heard his grandfather’s voice clearly.

  ���This is the thanks I get?��� Wilbur slightly chuckled, in his own jolly way.

  ���Grandfather?��� Timothy said, surprised and overjoyed that all seemed to be well again.

  ���You’re safe, Tim,��� he answered, as his rounded and wrinkly stubby fingers reached around the boy, to embrace him and to lift him out of the pile.

  Down charcoal hallways draped in the night of that place, they were eventually reunited with Matilde and Asa, although within their rejoicing there was also much concern. For Matilde, though she was still alive, she was hardly responsive, and Wilbur as a doctor of medicine by trade, said that she would by no means be able to survive very much longer without proper treatment from the palace physicians, who would be better equipped to handle the complications of her injuries, and Asa was also badly off, he had suffered severe burns and he had been dreadfully malnourished, but not in any life threatening way.

  Yet he, unlike the Queen of Earth, was able to speak in hoarse whispers, and was quick to ask for food and water.

  But still their predicament was clear, either they had to find a way to recalculate the globe in order to send themselves back to the palace, or else Matilde would not survive, maybe not even more than one day without proper treatment. This however, dear reader, is not the sort of easy thing you might imagine it to be.

  For as it was, their globe, the one that was ripped away from the house in Mayfield, during the middle of the night, that was a globe from Earth, and therefore all the numbers and figures written within its almanac were transcribed in relation to Earth’s position in the universe. Which, I trust, is an overly scientific way to say that it would not work in Gleomu, unless they were to figure out new numbers and settings for the globe.

  And so, realizing this responsibility would fall to her as a veteran light traveler, Queen Delany, with the help of Wilbur and Timothy (after his arm had been bandaged), rushed through the house late that night in search of anything that might be used to measure the angles of stars. (Minding you that Matilde and Asa were first tucked soundly into warm beds, a comfort that would do little to aid Matilde, but one Asa had lacked for days, and was grateful for.)

  And thankfully, not less than an hour later, they found locked up in the drawer of an upstairs study, just the device they had needed. Which if you fancy yourself a fan of either seamanship, or astronomy, then you might have heard of this device already; It was a sextant.

  Howbeit, I do realize that that word will mean very little to a good number of people, and so, if you do not know how to image such a thing, it is a metal ringed instrument that works somewhat like the combination of a protractor and a telescope, and is used to measure the angles of stars. Which in olden times was used to pinpoint a person’s location on Earth, in relation to nearby stars, and usually within a range of accuracy of a few hundred yards, but that, of course, depended upon the skill of the measurer. Which fortun
ately for all involved, Delany was very good, after becoming tremendously better at science in her older years.

  However, that night the bleakly cold northern mountains in Gleomu were heavily clouded, so that it took the Queen several hours, between passing clouds, to locate and measure the angles of common stars, like our own North Star��. It was a laborious and somewhat anticlimactic night, spent with mostly watching drifting clouds and the occasional glimmer of stars behind them. And those stars, Timothy watched for as long as he could from his stoop on the porch steps of the house, until he rested his head against an entry pillar and fell asleep, wrapped up warmly in a dense wool blanket.

  But when the night was expired, and the sunlight broke over the ridge of that shallow mountain valley, by then, Delany had finished her recalculations, and once again the world and cities of Gleomu shone out of the painting, that still hung, somewhat precariously, on the wall of the broken and stolen window room, locked up inside Darius’s underground dungeon.

  And from out of the painting, as he came closer to have a better look, Timothy saw the capital city, Ismere, still surrounded by a giant’s army, and with the fires from their catapults burning in every district. It did not appear to be the safest place they could have chosen to run to for help.

  ���I should go first,��� Wilbur spoke up, also seeing the images from the city. ���I’m the only one who isn’t wounded-���

  ���Even so, I cannot join you,��� Asa interrupted, which was unlike his character to do, but it seemed these thoughts had been weighing on him for some time by then, perhaps since they had first begun to recalculate the globe. ���The King forbids it,��� he ended with.

  ���What if we said we forced you?��� Timothy answered quickly, but then knew by everyone’s harsh gazes that he had crossed some sort of a boundary line, and that he should have known better.

  ���Timothy…��� Asa shook his head disapprovingly. ���Then I would forbid myself from it.���

  And after this Wilbur continued on, to explain his idea that they could travel by note to the city (exactly like Timothy and Barbara had done previously, when they had sent letters back and forth between the palace and Matilde���s regiment of soldiers, at the start of their journeys). Except that in Wilbur’s plan, he would touch the paper note to the globe, thereby using it to travel to the city, and after a few minutes the paper would return to the window room, with a message letting them know if it was safe for travel.

  And this of course was a marvelous idea, and a few moments later the globe was charged and the light was ready, and Wilbur, the King of Earth, was whisked away, through the painting, across the land of Gleomu. And, as they had hoped, a few minutes later a crinkled note floated down at their feet with one large hand-scribbled word at the top of the page.

  ���SAFE���

  And likewise, after seeing that good news, Delany carried a wounded Matilde up with her in the orb, because the old woman was too frail to make the trip on her own, leaving Timothy and Asa alone to watch the siege of Ismere unfold before their eyes, as images of the battle and the burning city still came through one of the corner vignettes of the painting like a moving picture. Nothing was said until the note returned, ���Safe��� written below the other inscription.

  ���I’ll come back…��� Timothy said, after touching the paper to the globe, ���to bring you supplies, and news about the war.���

  ���That is kind of you, young prince,��� Asa answered, as he nodded a ���thank you���, stepping back from the globe as light began to form around Timothy and the letter.

  ���When should I expect you?��� Asa shouted, because the noise of the globe was now very loud.

  ���Tomorrow,��� Timothy shouted in return, or so was his plan when he reset the time on the globe for one day, precisely. However, a lot can happen within the course of a day, as Timothy would soon find, a lot indeed.

  *

  �� Which is named Polaris on Earth, but in Gleomu they call it Eard, and there it is not used in any form for navigation, like we would use it on Earth, but is simply a very bright and beautiful star. And as chance would have it, at this time of the year it could be seen both from Earth and in Gleomu; Which if you stop to consider that fact, is really such a miracle, for Matilde’s sake, and I’m convinced is the only way that she stood any chance at all for survival.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Gardens

  ���Tim, you’re alive!��� Barbara said, as she threw her arms around him.

  Perhaps just as excited, and we shouldn’t fault her for this, that she’d still had a friend with her to help her through the war, as she was that this particular friend had fared as well as he had.

  ���Ow! A little less, please,��� Timothy said wincing. ���My arm’s not so good,��� he continued, until Barbara had noticed his fresh bandage on the upper portion of his right arm, and with that she quickly apologized, coming back to her normal self again.

  That morning Timothy’s orb had landed in the palace gardens, near the fountain where they’d first met King Corwan and Queen Delany some weeks prior, during the King’s birthday celebration. But this time the gardens were all but emptied, with every available palace guard, gardener, and butler sent to take a watch along the city walls. The stunning gardens, with its well trimmed lawn and hedges, were eerily silent, except for the trickle of water flowing from off the marble fountain.

  ���How is it here?���

  Timothy could see the city, and the fires, and the destruction during his descent in the orb, and so he did not exactly care for an account of the war. Howbeit, Barbara knew what he’d meant, and so she answered, ���Your grandmother and the Queen were carried off by the palace physicians… They say there’s good hope.��� Barbara said this truthfully, but she could see the doubt in his eyes, and so she added, ���And… I’m sure they meant it.���

  There was a moment of pause.

  ���And what about Asa?��� Barbara asked, her eyes were regretful and face saddened, like she’d expected to hear the worst sort of news. ���Is he not coming?���

  ���No, he’s not… and he won’t be,��� Timothy answered, with a somber expression on his face, taking a seat on the edge of the fountain.

  At that news, Barbara nearly collapsed down beside him, looking like she was about to cry giant tears into the palms of her hands, which finally made Timothy realize how his words had sounded.

  ���Oh. No, no… he’s not dead,��� Timothy insisted, trying to make things better, shaking her arm softly so that she’d look at him, but sadly her face was already wet with tears. ���It’s just, he can’t come back… he’s not allowed to. It’s the King’s orders, remember, ‘no native born person can use light travel.’ That’s all.���

  ���Well it’s still awful,��� Barbara answered in full sobs, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. (It’s not that this news was all that bad, considering the alternatives, but I believe, it’s just that Barbara, who was not so used to crying, could not turn her tears off so easily, after she had already made up her mind to start.)

  ���So… he’s stuck there, then?��� she finally managed to say, after a little more sniffling, and once she had thoroughly died her eyes.

  ���Looks that way,��� he answered.

  Timothy sighed a little, and used his hands to prop himself up as they sat staring out over such an immaculate garden; Perfect plants and hedges, and stone statues, in the center of a burning city at war, with waning hopes for victory.

  After another pause, that seemed to go on forever, Timothy finally spoke again, a question that neither knew the answer to, ���Do you think the King would change his mind?���

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Of Kings

  During that day, Timothy and
Barbara went to check on his grandmother, who’d received some sort of medication, and various herbal salves, and was at that time asleep in her room, the one that had been set aside for her during visits.

  When they’d arrived, they saw seated in a chair at one side of the bed was Timothy’s grandfather, who sat cupping Matilde’s hand, and every so often he would brush the hairs from her face, as he had done nearly since she’d arrived, and had not left her bedside.

  And on the other side of the bed stood one of the palace physician, the head physician in fact (whose name was Dorton, and who had been good friends with Wilbur and Matilde for many years). He said that she, ���…had shown signs of improvement, and would be better than her old self in days.��� Which was perhaps a bit of positive thinking, but they thought it was good to know at least that she would be alright.

  And for a good portion of the morning they pulled up chairs to the bedside, to watch for any improvements, and to listen to the men as they discussed possible methods of treatment, and the condition of Matilde’s recovery, but all in the ways that trained doctors would speak. Some of which, that at either times, Timothy or else Barbara would vaguely comprehend, but most of it was well beyond their current educations. And even during Wilbur’s lengthy explanations (whenever they’d thought to ask a question), even that was not always understood, so that they eventually learned to stop asking those types of questions, in favor of other ones that they might better understand.

  Including a question that Timothy had wondered for some time about:

  During a long break in the conversation, Timothy leaned over to his grandfather to ask, what he thought might be a private question.

  ���Why do they call you a king, grandfather? I mean… you’re not one, you know, not really.��� And Barbara had leaned in, as well, to hear the answer to Timothy’s question, being quite curious herself.

  ���I’m not?��� the old man said, chuckling in his jolly way.