The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  Wonder filled Travis, just as it had then. “She said, ‘Hello, Father.’ ”

  Beltan’s eyes shone, and he gripped Travis’s hand.

  There was so much Travis wanted to know, so many questions to ask—where they had been, what they had done—but before he could speak, Vani reached inside her leathers, drew out a small object, and set it on the table. It was a tetrahedron fashioned of perfect black stone.

  “The gate artifact,” Beltan said, leaning over but not touching the onyx tetrahedron. “So that’s how you reached Earth.”

  “My people have had it in their keeping these last three years,” Vani said. “I gave it to them when they came to Gravenfist Keep.”

  “Before you left,” Travis said. The words sounded harsher than he intended, but he didn’t care.

  “Yes,” Vani said, turning her gold eyes on him. “Before I left. Then, a few weeks ago, I went to my people, to ask if I might have the artifact back. I found them in the far south of Falengarth.”

  Beltan picked up the coffeepot and refilled their mugs. “Were Sareth and Lirith with the Mournish?”

  “I fear I missed them. My brother had taken a ship across the Summer Sea, to Moringarth, a week before I arrived, and Lirith had gone north with their son, Taneth, to visit Aryn at Calavere.”

  Despite everything, Travis couldn’t help smiling. So Lirith and Sareth were parents now. A sudden desire to see them, to see everyone they had left on Eldh, came over him. Only that was impossible, wasn’t it? Even as he thought this, his fingers crept toward the fragment of the gate artifact on the table; he jerked his hand back.

  “Why did you go to your people to get the gate?” Beltan said.

  “For the same reason I left you three years ago and could not return.”

  Travis took a breath. “And what reason is that?”

  “I am fleeing the Scirathi.”

  They listened, too stunned for speech, as Vani described in brief but vivid words why she had left Gravenfist that day three years ago, and where she had been in the time since.

  She hadn’t known the sorcerers of Scirath were pursuing her, at least not at first. After leaving Gravenfist Keep she had journeyed south, sailing across the Summer Sea to Al-Amún, seeking out oracles and seers, trying to understand the fate her al-Mama had seen in the cards.

  Your daughter is not yet born, the old woman had told Vani, yet already powerful lines of fate weave themselves around her. You dare not stay, lest you be trapped in the net.

  It was there, in Moringarth, where the Scirathi first attacked her. Several of the gold-masked sorcerers had surrounded the hostel where she was staying. She was heavy with child then, and she could not have fought them, except that they seemed unwilling to harm her. They only wanted to capture her, to keep her from escaping. One cut himself and began a spell of binding. However, Vani managed to take his knife and cut him deeper, so that more blood flowed than he had intended. Many spirits came in answer to his spell, and they consumed his blood, draining him dry. The other sorcerers were forced to weave their own spells to keep the ravenous morndari under control. In the confusion, Vani fled.

  After that, she was vigilant, and they did not catch her unawares again. However, she was forced always to keep moving. By the time she gave birth to Nim she was on a ship sailing north. For the next three years she kept traveling from place to place, never staying in one spot for more than a month or two, and never daring to return to a location where she had been before, for fear they would be waiting for her.

  When she finished, Travis and Beltan could only stare at her. Through the door they heard Nim humming as she drew. At last Travis forced himself to speak.

  “So have you learned what the Scirathi want with you?”

  “They don’t want me.”

  “Nim,” Beltan said, his voice hoarse. He stood, pacing around the table. “It’s Nim the sorcerers want, isn’t it?”

  Vani nodded, her expression haunted.

  Beltan slammed a fist on the countertop. “The filthy Scirathi—I will kill them all with my bare hands.”

  Sparks shone in his green eyes. Alarmed, Travis rose and moved to him, touching his arm. For a moment Beltan was rigid, then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Travis. It’s only . . . we’ve just met her, and now they want to take her away.”

  Travis looked at Vani. “What do they want with her?”

  “I would that I knew,” Vani said, gazing at her hands splayed on the table. “But whatever the reason, the Scirathi have grown more relentless in their pursuit these last weeks. I could not stay anywhere more than a few days before I was forced to flee. That was why I sought out my people and asked for the gate. I knew it was the only way to escape.”

  Travis gazed at the piece of the artifact. “How did you open it, Vani? The gate.”

  Beltan gave him a startled look.

  Travis sat again. He slid his hands across the table toward her own but did not touch them. “The blood I filled it with beneath the Steel Cathedral would have been consumed when you and Beltan returned to Eldh. So what blood did you use to open the gate?”

  Vani opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “It’s all right, Mother,” said a small voice behind them. “You can tell them. I don’t mind.”

  Nim stood in the kitchen door, holding a piece of paper.

  “Tell us what, sweetheart?” Travis said, keeping his tone light, unsure how much she had heard.

  The girl pranced to the table and set the paper down. “How we came here. Look, I drew you a picture. It explains everything.”

  Travis turned the paper around. The drawing was made up of simple but expressive lines. At the bottom of the paper was a small black triangle. Above the triangle was a large circle with wavy edges. On either side of the circle stood a stick figure, one tall, the other short. The shorter figure held a hand toward the triangle. Small black shapes like teardrops fell from the little figure’s hand onto the triangle.

  Only the drops weren’t tears, Travis knew. A sweat sprang out on his skin.

  Vani picked up the paper, folded it in half, and gave it back to Nim. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

  “I know,” the girl said. “I can put myself to bed. I just wanted my fathers to kiss me good night first.”

  They did. Beltan picked her up and hugged her, and Travis gave her a solemn kiss on her forehead. She ran to the door, then stopped and looked at Vani.

  “I’m lucky, Mother,” she said.

  Vani’s gaze was thoughtful. “How so, daughter?”

  “Most children have just one father. But I have two.”

  With that, Nim was gone. Travis and Beltan sat again at the table. Vani stared at the door where the girl had vanished.

  “How?” Travis said simply.

  Vani didn’t look at him. “She told me to do it. I refused at first—older though she seems, she is only three—but the sorcerers were close behind us, and I knew my people would not be able to delay them for long. I had little choice. And I learned early on that she knows things. Things she shouldn’t know, yet does all the same.”

  Beltan pressed his hand to the inside of his right arm.

  “So her blood activated the gate,” Travis said, feeling ill.

  “She didn’t even cry as I pricked her finger with a needle.” Vani hesitated, then touched his hand. “Somehow, through some magic of the Little People, she truly is your child, Travis. Even as she is my child, and Beltan’s. She is what she is because of all of us.”

  Travis struggled to comprehend. How could Nim really be his child? The Little People had tricked Vani and Beltan, making each think the other was Travis. The two had lain together, and Nim was conceived. But it was only illusion; he hadn’t really been there. Or was it some enchantment of the Little People? Some magic that had taken something from all three of them and imparted it to Nim?

  “There’s something else I have not told you.” Vani circled her hands around the on
yx tetrahedron—the topmost portion of the gate artifact. “It has been three weeks since I came to Earth. It took me that long to find you, for I began my search in Colorado.”

  “Sorry,” Travis said. “We didn’t know we needed to leave a forwarding address.”

  Vani did not smile. “I kept the lid of the gate artifact so that I might remain in contact with my people. While a Mournish man or woman’s blood is not enough to open the gate—”

  “It’s enough to send a message,” Travis said. “Yes, I know. Are you saying you’ve heard something?”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  Travis did so, and she set the onyx tetrahedron on his palm. It was warm, and he felt a hum of magic. Blood flowed beneath his skin. Blood of power. Just the proximity to it was enough to awaken the artifact. A tiny, transparent image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron.

  It was Sareth. He held a knife, and there was a dark line on his forearm.

  “Sister,” the image spoke in a reedy but clear facsimile of Sareth’s voice, “I returned from the south, from Moringarth, only today, and our al-Mama tells me that you are already two weeks gone. I wish that I could speak with you in person. But I fear, whatever dark wonders you might tell me, the news I bear would be darker yet.”

  A grimace crossed the image of his face. “I must be brief. Let me say this: I think it is fate you chose to journey to Earth. In Moringarth, I spoke to a dervish, and though what he told me seems impossible, I am certain it is true. The burial place of Morindu the Dark has been discovered. Already the Scirathi seek it out, and our people move to hinder them and reach the city first. And, sister, this news is even stranger than you imagine, for the dervish who brought it to me is a man from Travis Wilder’s world, a man named Hadrian Farr. He says word must be sent to Travis, that the time draws near when he must return to Eldh and—”

  The image of Sareth flickered, then vanished. The tetrahedron grew cool and heavy in Travis’s hand. He could feel both Vani’s and Beltan’s eyes on him as he set it on the table. His mind buzzed, and his hands itched. What had Sareth been about to say before the spell of blood sorcery ceased? What was Travis supposed to return to Eldh and do?

  They want you to raise it, Travis. To raise it from the sands that swallowed it long ago. Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers.

  He shoved his chair back from the table and stood.

  Beltan’s green eyes were worried. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling for help,” Travis said as he picked up the phone and dialed.

  7.

  “Come on,” Deirdre Falling Hawk muttered as the train rattled to a stop at the Green Park station.

  The doors lurched open, and she squeezed through the moment the opening was wide enough. “Mind the gap,” droned a recorded voice, but she had already leaped onto the platform, breaking into a run as her boots hit the tiles. Travis hadn’t said why he wanted her to come over, but there had been something in his voice—a sharpness—that made her heart quicken. Besides, Travis and Beltan hadn’t invited her or any other Seeker to their flat in the three years since they had come to London. Something told her this wasn’t an invitation for a drink and casual conversation.

  She gripped the yellowed bear claw that hung at her throat as she pounded up the steps and into the balmy night. A man wearing a grimy white sheet stood next to the entrance of the Tube station, holding a cardboard sign, a blank look on his face. The sign read, in neatly printed letters, You Will Be Eaten.

  “Are you ready for the Mouth?” he said as she passed him, the words accompanied by a puff of sour breath.

  Deirdre ignored him—the Mouthers were everywhere in the city these days—and darted across Piccadilly Street. She had never been to Travis and Beltan’s flat, but she knew exactly where it was. The Seekers had a penchant for keeping tabs on otherworldly travelers. Even those whose cases were closed.

  Except the case would never really be closed, whether the Seekers were actively investigating it or not. And it wasn’t just because of the phone call from Travis that Deirdre ran headlong down the sidewalk, daring other pedestrians to get in her way.

  Just before the phone rang, she had been sitting at the dining table in her flat, working on her laptop computer, doing some cross-indexing between two databases. It was tedious work, but necessary as well. The kind of work she’d been doing a lot of lately.

  Not that she wouldn’t rather have been investigating rumors of unexplainable energy signatures or artifacts of unknown origin, journeying to exotic locations, poring over lost manuscripts, or decoding hieroglyphics. However, if there were any otherworldly forces lurking out there, waiting to be discovered, then they were studiously avoiding her, because she hadn’t worked on an interesting case in over a year, and the last several leads of any promise she had found had all run into dead ends.

  Eyes aching from staring at the computer, Deirdre had just decided to call it a night when the machine chimed. On screen, a message appeared.

  Do be sure to take this call.

  That was all. There was no indication of the sender, no box in which she could type a reply. She was still staring at the message when the phone rang, causing her to jump out of her seat.

  If the call had come a minute before, she would have been tempted to let the answering machine get it, to soak in a bath before going to bed. After all, what could be so important she couldn’t deal with it tomorrow? Deirdre didn’t know, but the message on the computer screen changed everything. She lunged for the phone, unsure who it would be on the other end, though somehow not surprised when it was Travis Wilder.

  “Deirdre, I’m so glad you’re home,” he had said, his words clipped. “Can you . . . can you come over right away?”

  “Of course,” she had said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and glanced at the computer. The message was gone, but she knew now who had sent it.

  It was he. There was no other possibility, even though he hadn’t contacted her in over three years. The last time had been just a few weeks after the events in Denver, when the Steel Cathedral was destroyed, and the truth about Duratek’s involvement in the illegal trade of the drug Electria was revealed. After that, for a time, she had hoped. Every phone call, every e-mail message, had caused a jolt of excitement.

  Only they were never from him. Whoever the mysterious Philosopher was who had helped her in the past, he had fallen silent. But hadn’t he said it would be like that? It may be some time until we speak again , he had told her at the end of their first and only telephone conversation. But when the time comes, I’ll be in touch.

  That time was now. Yet what did it mean? Something had happened—something had changed—but what?

  You know what it is, Deirdre. Perihelion is coming. Earth and Eldh are drawing near. That’s what he told you three years ago. Maybe it’s close now. Maybe that’s why everything is changing. . . .

  She turned down a deserted side street, half jogged the last block to their building, and started up the steps. Just as she reached the door, the short hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Again she gripped her bear claw necklace—a gift from her shaman grandfather—and turned around.

  The black silhouette of a figure stood on the edge of a circle of light cast by a streetlamp. A thrill of dread and wonder sizzled through Deirdre. Was it him? Surely he was keeping watch on Beltan and Travis. How else would he have known Travis was about to call her?

  The figure reached out a beckoning hand. As if compelled by a will not her own, she started back down the steps.

  “Deirdre!” a voice called from above. “Up here.”

  She turned and looked up. Beltan leaned out of a window two floors above her.

  “I’ll let you in,” the blond man said, then his head ducked inside. A second later the building’s front door buzzed, and the lock clicked.

  Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, but the circle of light across the street was empty. She pulled on the door before the buzzing stopped
, then bounded up two flights of stairs. The door of their flat opened before she could knock on it, and she was hauled inside by strong hands.

  “It’s been too long since we’ve seen you,” Beltan said as he lifted her off the floor in an embrace.

  “So you’re going to crush me as punishment?” she managed to squeak.

  Beltan set her down and straightened her leather jacket. “Sorry. For me, hugs only come in one strength.”

  “That would be maximum,” she said, returning his grin. However, her smile vanished as she caught Travis’s troubled gray eyes. He moved forward and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “I’ll always come when you call, no matter how long it’s been or how far away you are. But what’s going on? And why couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”

  He stepped aside. The first thing she noticed was the broadsword hanging above the sofa; that had to be Beltan’s. Then her gaze moved down, and she saw the woman sitting there. The woman stood, stretching limbs clad in supple black leather.

  “Oh,” Deirdre said, and would have fallen to the floor if not for Beltan’s strong hands.

  They set her on the sofa, propped her up with a pillow, and pressed a glass of porter into her hand. A few sips of beer revived her enough that she was able to tell them she was fine, though she wasn’t certain that was really the case.

  For the last three years, Deirdre had done her best not to think about them. The Seekers had officially closed the Wilder-Beckett case. The gate to the world AU-3—to Eldh—had been destroyed, and Duratek Corporation had been destroyed as well. The company had been dismantled by the governments of Earth; its executives were in jail or, in many cases, dead. There would be other investigations, maybe even other worlds. But the door to this one had been shut. It was over.

  At least, that was what she had told herself. But deep within, Deirdre had known it wasn’t over, not truly. They had all of them been waiting, that was all. Waiting for a day when two worlds would draw closer. Waiting for a time they would be called again.