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

  And she crept in her knit socks, around the bend of the hall, and down toward the lower level. In this place, however, there had been torches, because the lower portion of the palace had been built completely underground, and so without them it would have been entirely pitch black. And so, because of this, there were dimly lit torches in sconce holders upon the walls, greatly spaced apart, and with sickly flames that seemed on the verge of dying.

  The flash of a brown creature’s body ran along the floor near the wall. She bit on her lip to avoid screaming.

  Too large for a mouse, with too bulbous and scaly of a tail. It was a rat. She took in a giant-sized breath to compose herself, holding her hand over her mouth.

  ���Why would anyone live here?��� she thought. ���On purpose?…��� The words continuing in her head, as she began again stepping quickly through this dank basement level.

  Voices echoing around the corner, she peeked her head around the wall to find two dirty-faced guards, one with a torch in hand, walking toward her direction. They were speaking with loud, abrasive voices. And they spoke in their native language, which was a dialect of Ancient Assyrian (which Tavora could not understand). Yet, in English, here were the rough equivalents of their words.

  ���The thing I’ve noticed most of all,��� said the one with the torch, ���are the teeth. Always having to polish them, and keep them in repair. It’ll drive you mad,��� he said, rounding the corner.

  But as he did so, he came too close to Tavora, who was pressed up flatly against the wall, and his boot nicked her foot.

  ���Ahh…��� he called out, his arms flailing, falling to the ground with his torch sliding and spinning along the basement floor.

  (Reader: If you’ve ever had someone trip you up, then you’ll know what it feels like, and that it is a very distinct unlikeable feeling, one that you would easily recognize in an instant.)

  ���Who’s there?��� the guard said, now in English.

  Tavora ducked around the corner.

  ���It’s no one,��� the other guard answered him, in their native tongue. ���You’re just fatter and clumsier than you used to be.���

  ���No, I saw something,��� the guard who’d fallen replied in their ancient dialect. ���…like a shadow.���

  But by this time, Tavora was a good distance away from them, though she would not have been able to understand their words even if she’d been nearby.

  Dank and considerably dim in this section of the hall, here she found several shut and bolted doors, and she waited until the basement level was altogether quiet before knocking.

  Knock. Pausing a moment. Knocking again.

  ���Ata? Are you in there?��� she asked, timidly, and hoarsely, remembering that she had not had a drink of water for an entire day.

  Something rustled, perhaps someone turning upon a creaking prison room cot.

  ���Tavora? Is it really you?��� a voice spoke. Though this was not Ata’s voice as she suspected, but an older, familiar man’s voice, one that she had slowly grown to dislike, and one she had not anticipated. It was her father’s voice.

  She shut her mouth tightly, taking a step backward. Of all people she might have had to rescue, why him? From within that locked room she heard the bed creak once more, as the prisoner came to the door. (And though she could not have seen this, he pressed the flat of his hand against the cold door.)

  ���Are you there?��� he asked, in such a sad and broken way. ���Is anyone there?���

  She covered her mouth to keep herself from answering, fighting back her emotions, and her desire for tears.

  He deserved this, she thought. She might bring herself to save him, but he would not be the first, she reasoned, while taking steps away from his prison room, and onward to the next locked door.

  She pressed her lips below the crack of the door, so that her voice would not be heard out in the hall.

  ���Ata,��� she said. ���Answer me if you’re in there,��� she whispered.

  Footsteps within the room, the noise of someone bending low, and another voice answered her, peering below the crack of the door.

  ���I knew that was you with the pitcher,��� he said.

  It was Ata, truly him this time. She could not remember ever being happier to hear someone’s voice.

  ���How did you manage to get away?��� he asked.

  Thinking of some excuse, ���I’m a good hider,��� she answered, but unconvincingly.

  ���I’ll say…��� Ata exclaimed, agreeing with her. ���Incredibly good.���

  Tavora smiled. As someone who’d not received very many compliments as of late, even an undeserved, and falsified compliment about her good hiding was enough to bring a smile.

  But then Ata said something to break her good mood.

  ���Well, come on then, where’s the key?��� he asked.

  Her eyes shifted. ���I haven’t got it yet,��� she answered sheepishly.

  ���Why not? You’ve had all day?��� he answered back, not entirely serious, but still, after the emotional strain of leaving her father locked away in his prison room, she was not yet ready to be joked with.

  ���Oh, you’re one to talk,��� she blurted out. ���If you hadn’t been captured, I wouldn’t have to find a key, would I?���

  ���No…��� he said trying to calm her, and then added, ���but since you’re so good at sneaking about, this should be easy for you.���

  ���Uhh,��� she breathed out heavily, and rolling her eyes out of instinct. ���You’re impossible,��� she said, standing and beginning to walk away.

  And as she hurried off, she could hear Ata’s voice below the door, in an apologetic way for teasing her, saying sincerely, that she should, ���please be careful.���

  And her footsteps left the darkened basement, as indistinctive as the sound of cats’ paws, on her way to be anything but careful, to steal keys from whatever calloused, blood-thirsty guards she could find.

  However, I wish I could say, for her sake, that she had found one, but in real life finding keys, and inattentive guards, is not so easy as it would appear in movies. For one, in a practical sense, there’s little chance of snatching a giant iron key ring off a sleeping guard’s belt, or of knocking someone comically over the head to steal their keys.

  In the real world, as Tavora was in, guards’ keys are almost impossible to find. And in fact, in her particular case, even finding a guard was proving to be a challenge, as if they’d had other more pressing matters than to busy about their posts. So that there were only a few mulling around the stolen globe, in the King’s throne room, awaiting his return. And none of them had any keys that she could see.

  Which then left only non-keyed options, that among other things meant that she could break down the door. But how?

  And as I’ve said before, there were no decorations in that ghastly house, and so nothing to use as a battering ram. Also, she did not have an ax to chop it down with, nor was she strong enough to break it down herself.

  Notwithstanding, she did know someone who was that strong. Though, even so, it was an impossibly foolish idea… That is to say, impossibly foolish for any visible person to attempt, but for the invisible, as she had been, it was at least worth a try.

  Chapter Thirty

  Daylight

  The giant stone door of the great central crypt slid open on their third morning in that forever world. And armed with swords, and bows, and spears, Timothy and Barbara, led by Mr. Greyford, cautiously made their way from the tombs.

  ���They’re nocturnal hunters,��� Arthur said, commenting on what they all had been thinking. ���But that doesn’t mean that they won’t make an exception, every now and then.��� He said this, speaking in regards to those horrible win
ged-lions, as they left the mountainous mausoleum building on the morning they would be reflected.

  Timothy took the weighty metal pole that he’d used to keep the surrounding gate locked shut (not that it’d done them much good), and he lifted it above his head, flinging it to the side like it had been nothing more than a broom handle. Doing that which, on Earth, would have taken the strength of ten men to accomplish, but here it was done with ease, and casually, as if it had not been odd at all.

  ���I don’t see why they didn’t just kill off the entire lot of them ages ago,��� he said clearly, without the slightest sense that he’d been winded from lifting the heavy rod.

  (Since arriving in Eddesu, his strength seemed to be steadily increasing. And it would only continue to increase the longer he was there. Though practically speaking, even perfect humans will reach a limit to their strength. Meaning specifically, that there will come a point when they will forever be moving towards this ultimate end limit of their own abilities, yet in fractionally smaller and smaller increment. So that, technically, they will be forever improving, but in a very real sense, unable to ever exceed the maximum limits of their own strength.

  Which could be explained in another way, as a metaphor, that might help you to better understand what I mean:

  Imagine Timothy’s strength, in this perfect world, were a rocket, that blasted off at an incredible rate at first, but gradually began to slow as it reached the outer limits of the atmosphere. So that every minute its speed would be decreased by exactly half. And in this way there would come a time, relatively soon, at which you might be able to say, scientifically, that this imaginary rocket, or ���Timothy’s strength���, would be infinitely improving. Yet, it would however be happening at such a microscopic rate that, subjectively, you could say that it was not happening at all, that our rocket had reached its outer limits, and Timothy, the bounding limit of human ability.)

  But, all this said, Timothy was unbelievably strong (and Barbara with him), and what had taken all his strength to close only a day and a half before, could now be pushed open on his own without tremendous strain.

  And while I realize that you might not care at all about this sort of thing, it is important to note, quickly, that the inverse effects of leaving Eddesu are also true. That your body would steadily become weaker and weaker over time, until you were only in a fractional, unmeasurable way, stronger than the average person. Though for all practical purposes you would be just like everyone else.

  ���They don’t need to be killed off,��� Arthur said, responding to Timothy’s previous statement. ���They just need to be retrained.���

  ���What? Like dogs?��� Barbara asked, thinking it an awfully bizarre thing to train such ferocious, unfriendly beasts.

  ���No, more like horses,��� he answered.

  ���Are you saying they rode on those monsters?��� Timothy asked, trying to comprehend what Mr. Greyford had said.

  ���Oh, yes. I’m told they were fantastic to ride upon, once they were trained, of course. Everyone who could afford them had one. They were all the rage in high society,��� Arthur said.

  ���Such a deadly fashion statement,��� Barbara said, looking out over the ruined and wasted city.

  ���I agree,��� Arthur replied.

  And as they stared out at the devastation, Timothy leaned toward Barbara, saying, ���If you’d ask me, I’d rather own a car.���

  Barbara nodded, and was about to make a clever joke about lion insurance, when Arthur interrupted.

  ���Did you see that?��� he said quickly.

  Though Timothy and Barbara had been joking amongst themselves, and hadn’t noticed.

  While they had not been paying attention, an orb had shot up from a distant part of the city, miles and miles away, like a silent blast of reverse lightning.

  ���A rescue party, I wonder?��� Barbara said, turning her attention to the old man.

  ���Possibly,��� Arthur answered, without much resolve or certainty.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Of Horses

  And now for things that are not like horses, but are actual horses, and of one horse in particular: a slouching old plow horse named Myre.

  Myre had not known better when she had not resisted Tavora’s orders, agreeing to follow her master out of the King’s stables; And, as quietly as horses are able, to proceed through the unguarded palace doors.

  (This may seem unlikely, but remember that Queen Delany had just that late afternoon told those frightened door guards to run away, and run away they did, and they had not returned.

  Nor had anyone questioned where they had gone to, nor did they try to fill their vacant spots. After all, one should never underestimate the power of ���one’s job���. And what I mean by this is simply, that very often if something is not a person’s job, then that said person will not be easily convinced to worry about it; Especially if they had some other responsibilities that had seemed more pressing.)

  And therefore, at that time of night, before the regular guard change, there was no one to take the post of a door guard. Allowing, as it happened, Tavora full license to lead her horse in by the reins, remembering that as long a she kept a hand on her, Myre would be just as invisible as Tavora had been. Which might then, afford them the chance to sneak through the halls, as quietly as horses can sneak, whether invisible or not.

  And so she eased open the doors. The halls were still and empty at night, and she did what would seem impossible unless she were invisible. She led Myre through the stone halls with her clacking horse hooves, down the stairs (which was a feat in itself), and through the dungeonous torchlit belly of the King’s house, passing her father’s locked room and on to Ata’s.

  ���Ata,��� she said in a strongly whispered voice. Which was ironic, considering that she’d just brought a horse into the palace, and so what point would there be to whisper, even if she had been invisible.

  Myre stomped her hoofs, pulling her reins from side to side.

  ���Is that a horse?��� Ata asked loudly.

  ���I couldn’t find a key,��� Tavora answered.

  ���And this is somehow better than a key?��� he said.

  ���I’m rescuing you, remember? You have to take what you can get,��� she insisted.

  Myre breathed heavily from her nostrils. She had never been indoors before, and this was such a dark and hostile house. To her it felt terribly unnatural.

  ���Shh… easy,��� Tavora said, stroking Myre’s face. ���I believe in you,��� she whispered, then grabbed a rope that had hung upon Myre’s saddle.

  Almost no light came through the crack below Ata’s door. Yet in that dim darkness, he saw the end piece of a rope snaking beneath the door jam. And he heard Tavora speaking in a low voice, ���Here, tie this onto something heavy,��� she said, feeding a line of rope below the door. And since there was nothing else within the dark prison room besides Ata’s bed and himself, he tied it securely onto the bed frame, and tried to stand out of the way.

  Outside, Tavora had fastened the other end of the rope to her horse’s harness, and was now patting her mane, trying to be an encouragement.

  ���I know you can do it. You have to,��� she said.

  Then she kissed Myre’s nose, and in a loving but commanding tone, she said, ���Now pull!���

  From her younger years, Myre had been born and bred to be a plow horse, meaning that she was used to dragging heavy weights for hours at a time. Though as she progressed in years, the weights that she could carry, and the time for which she could carry them grew to be less and less. So that her previous owner had no choice, but to sell her at auction, where Temima, Oded’s late wife, had bought her to be a cart horse for their family, to bring their gold and trinkets to market; And the reason for this, only because a very
young Tavora had loved Myre from the very beginning, saying that she, ���was such a pretty horse.���

  Although no one else would have thought of her as a ���pretty horse���, with a wiry mane and frail body from years of heavy plowing. But with a good deal of kindness and attention, Tavora had been able to breathe new life into that tired old plow horse.

  And it is my opinion, that the only reason why Myre had lasted as long as she had was simply because she did not want to let Tavora down, and in her own horsely way, she had loved her in return.

  And it is a strange thing about love, even horsely love, it is that it can take a strength that would seem otherwise insignificant and transform it into a hardly quenchable power.

  Myre pulled immediately, straining the rope, and breaking the bolts that held Ata’s bed to the floor. It drug across the room, sparks flying in the pure darkness, slamming against the door. The thud of which resonated through the vacant hallway.

  ���Is someone there?��� a voice called out from the other room. It was Oded.

  ���Please, help me,��� he called out, but there was no answer. Tavora had made up her mind regarding the plan for this rescue: First, it would be Ata, then the globe, and if there were time afterward, her father would be rescued, and nothing could detour her from her chosen course.

  The door bowed and flexed. The wood made splintering sounds, as Myre pulled with more strength than she had pulled with in years. And though it was impossible for her to know the full extent of the situation, she somehow knew that this event was of extreme importance, and so she continued to strain at the rope, and would not give up.

  From the level above them, there were shouts and soldiers yelling out orders.

  ���Oh no,��� Tavora thought, imagining that the noise of their escape had alerted the palace guards.

  Breaking like a thunder clap, the dungeon-like door shattered away from its hinges. And in a second Ata was free, running through the broken doorframe.