by Mark McCabe
Josef’s face lit up with a broad grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling endearingly as he did so. “I should have guessed you’d be a kind person,” he said. He sat there looking at her silently for a few moments with a fond look in his eyes that totally confused Sara. She had just told him he’d got the wrong person and now he was looking at her as if she was a saint. It was very disquieting. Perhaps he really was crazy. After an uncomfortable pause, he went on.
“I haven’t got the wrong person,” he said, shaking his head. “And you’re wrong. You’re not just a girl. You’re much more important than that. Hear me out. Please. What I have to say is going to be difficult to believe. I knew it would be, but just give me a chance to explain. I can see from your face that you think I’m mad. Maybe I am. Maybe this whole idea was crazy right from the beginning. But you’re my only hope. At least hear me out.”
Sara nodded reassuringly, despite her misgivings. “Alright,” she said. It wouldn’t hurt to hear what he had to say. It couldn’t be any more confusing than what he’d said so far.
Placing his hands in his lap and gripping his walking stick, as if seeking reassurance, Josef took a deep breath. He appeared to be preparing himself for an ordeal. Although he seemed a bit more relaxed than he had been before, his hands continued to tremble slightly and his voice, when he spoke, had a gruff tone to it. She sensed he still hadn’t managed to clear his chest properly. He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he was finding it difficult to stay focused on what he needed to say.
“I don’t know how much you know about the portal, Sara,” he said. “Very little, I presume. I know a lot about it. I’ve studied the spell that controls it for a long time. For nearly ten years, I would guess. I found that it doesn’t just open up a way between worlds, as it did between yours and this one. It also has some amazing qualities, not least of which is its effect on anyone who travels through such a portal. It enables them to understand and converse with anyone they meet whenever they enter a new world.
“You probably don’t realise it, but you are not speaking in whatever language you used at home in your own world. Both you and I are speaking using the Common Tongue which almost everyone in this part of Ilythia uses. Because of the spell, you are able to do so without even trying. It just happens. If I spoke to you now using one of the more obscure languages used in a few of the nations in Ilythia, you would understand and be able to converse just as easily in those too. Of course, some of the idioms we both use don’t make much sense to each other; they are culturally based. But that isn’t the only amazing thing about the portal. It can also be used to move across time.
“I come from Ilythia,” he went on. “But the Ilythia that I live . . . no . . . lived in . . . lies many years into the future. Over eighty years into the future, in fact.” He stopped for a moment, waiting for what he had said to sink in.
Sara didn’t know what to make of his claim. Although she was prepared to believe almost anything after what had happened to her to date, the concept of time travel took her incredulity to an altogether new level. She wished Rayne were awake to help her.
“If that’s true,” she responded cautiously, after a few moments silence, “then why did you come back here and how did you know about me? How do you know my name? And Rayne’s?”
“I’m getting to that,” he replied, sighing again as he did so. “I’m getting to that. Hear me out. You see, I know your limited exposure to Ilythia has been anything but pleasant. It isn’t such a bad place, though. It really is the most beautiful of worlds, full of wonderful things and wondrous places.” He paused for a brief moment before he went on. “It isn’t going to stay that way, however. You,” he said, emphasising the word, “and your presence here will be the harbinger of great change.”
Sara’s eyes opened wide at his reference to her. Before she could respond to what he had said, he continued.
“Golkar’s behind it. In my time he rules Ilythia with an iron fist, he and those accursed sligs. It all happened very quickly. Within a few short years of your arrival here in Ilythia, all of the existing kingdoms were swept away in a short and bloody war. Once that was done, Golkar and the sligs set about destroying everything they could. It was as if anything that was decent, or had beauty, or that wouldn’t bow down in homage to Golkar or the sligs, had to be wiped from the face of the land. The slaughter went on for years without end. The wanton destruction that accompanied it seemed to have no other purpose than the appeasement of some sick part of Golkar’s mind.
“Within a few decades, there wasn’t one major town that hadn’t been ravaged and burnt to the ground. The people were thrown into slavery, great swathes of the forests were set alight and left to burn until only charred stumps remained, the waters were polluted and great rents were opened in the earth. The sligs seemed to delight in the destruction, not caring that much of the land was rendered uninhabitable as a result of their efforts. The people were cowed into submission, quickly losing both the means and the will to resist. Using the great power he’d acquired, Golkar made an example of one of the major towns very early on. He simply opened up the ground and allowed the whole place to slide into the chasm he’d created. It was horrendous. There wasn’t one single survivor. Keerêt no longer exists in my time. When news of that spread, what limited resistance there had been quickly crumbled.
“By the time I departed to come here, there was nothing left. Apart from the sligs, who still roam the land with impunity, I would guess there might be less than a thousand souls out of all of the sentient races that are still alive. All of the ones that had been taken into slavery had died years before. The only ones that survived were those that had taken to the hills and the forests, eking out a wretched existence in the wild. Even the sligs were beginning to diminish in number. The land would no longer support even them.
“Resistance was pointless. Certainly, some tried in the earlier years. My father was one of them. He was a brave man . . . a brave man. But they all fell. Even him. I lost him before I reached manhood.” As he spoke of his father, Josef stopped, looking down as he idly twisted the wooden stick that he held in his lap. After a few moments, he lifted his head, wiping a tear from his eye as he looked, first at Rayne where he lay sleeping beside her, then up at Sara.
Sara was appalled. What Josef had said confirmed her original conviction, that she was caught up in a nightmare of hellish proportions. It also destroyed the faint hope she had been nursing, that somehow things might still turn out all right, despite everything that had happened to her. The story Josef had told had crushed that hope in one foul stroke. Sara felt totally gutted.
The mental picture she had formed from his description of what was to come was of something akin to the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. From what she knew of Golkar, and had seen of the sligs, his story, though shocking, was quite believable. The sligs alone seemed capable of anything, let alone Golkar. Besides, she could see no reason why Josef would want to invent such a tale. No wonder he had fled from his own timeline. Her heart went out to him. She could see that he was filled with remorse, both from his recollection of what had happened to his land, and at the memory of the loss of his father.
After allowing him a few moments of silence, Sara finally came up with the question that had been burning away at her since he had begun his tale. Despite her fear of his answer, she had to know. “But what have I got to do with this?” she asked.
Snapping out of the contemplation he had sunk into once he had finished his tale, Josef lifted his head again, sighing deeply as he did so. His eyes glistened with moisture. As he started to speak again, his voice took on a gentler tone. “It was no coincidence that all of this happened shortly after you arrived in Ilythia, Sara,” he said. “Golkar pursued you from the moment you escaped. It took him nearly two years before he finally caught up with you. The destruction of Keerêt occurred a few days after that.” Sara couldn’t believe what he was saying. It couldn’t be right. His next few words seemed to reverberate
in her skull. “He used the energy residing in you to cause the great cataclysm that resulted in that destruction.”
“Nooooooo!” Sara screamed, jumping to her feet. “You’re lying,” she shouted at Josef. Turning away, she stumbled blindly across the cavern. “You’re lying,” she cried again as she burst into tears. “You’re lying,” she repeated for a third time, her voice slowly dwindling. Slumping to her knees, she buried her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably as she did so. He’s crazy, she told herself. None of it’s true. I won’t allow Golkar to catch me. I will get away. I will.
As her mind frantically struggled to come to grips with the picture Josef had painted, Sara felt a soft touch on her shoulders. Spinning around, she quickly stood up and backed away from the old man, retreating across the floor of the cavern. “Get away from me,” she hissed. “It isn’t true. You’re making it up. You just want to hurt me.”
Josef stayed where he was, allowing Sara the space she sought. “I’m truly sorry, Sara. But it is true. No. It was true. I’ve come back here in an attempt to change all of that.”
With her chest heaving, Sara looked at Josef silently for a few moments, then slumped to her knees again. She knelt there sobbing for a while, trying to bring her emotions under control. Raising her head once more, she slowly looked up at the old man, who had stayed where he was, gazing across at her with a look of concern on his face. Maybe he was telling the truth, she thought. Hadn’t she admitted to herself so many times before that she was doomed, that there was no real chance of escape? But all of those deaths, not that. “I . . . I’m not responsible,” she gasped between sobs. “If he did do that . . . it’s not my fault. It’s not.”
“I know, I know,” soothed Josef, cautiously approaching her. When he reached her side, he bent down and put a hand under her arm, helping her to her feet. “I know that,” he said quietly. “None of us are responsible for Golkar’s insanity. We are all just victims of it. But I’m one victim who won’t give up.” As he spoke he led Sara back to the fire, helping her to take her seat once more. This time he sat beside her, holding her hand in his. She could feel his wrinkled, leathery skin against the smooth skin of her own hands. Somehow it comforted her. It reminded her of her grandfather.
Her thoughts were a jumble. Each day in this world seemed to bring some new horror. It wasn’t enough that Golkar and the sligs were after her. Now she was being told that the wizard intended to use her against the people of Ilythia. Worse than that, Josef claimed that her fate was sealed, that Golkar would eventually capture her and use her to commit appalling atrocities against not only the Algarians but the rest of this world’s inhabitants. Surely it wasn’t really possible. Surely someone would stop him before he could do all of that.
“What about the other Guardians?” beseeched Sara, breaking the silence. “Surely they can stop him?”
“He killed both of them before he caught up with you.”
“How do you know all of this?” asked Sara, scrutinising him closely. “If there are so few free people left, how do you know all of this? And how did you get to use the portal?”
Josef sighed deeply. “There is more to my story,” he replied. “Are you up to hearing the rest?”
Sara sighed and lowered her eyes to the floor once more. “I don’t see how it can get any worse,” she mumbled softly. “Go on.”
“The reason I know so much about what happened is that I found out directly from Golkar.” As he said the name of the wizard, Sara pulled her hand away in alarm.
“No. It’s not what you think,” he went on. “He didn’t speak to me. I read it in his diary. You see, some ten years or so before I left my time, Golkar disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since.”
Sara couldn’t conceal her consternation. Josef’s story just seemed to get more unbelievable as it went on. If Golkar had left Ilythia and hadn’t been seen for ten years, then why had Josef come back in time looking for help? Each time Sara absorbed one part of his story, it just seemed to become more and more complex.
Josef took a gulp of water from the cup beside him before he continued. “At first no one knew he was gone. But slowly, word filtered out. When I found out, I carefully made my way to his stronghold. He made no secret of where he lived. He had Kell’s residence, Cloudtopper, pulled down and a magnificent castle built in its place; all of it done by slaves, brought here for that single purpose from all over Ilythia. None of the sligs had dared to enter it since he had gone, even though they suspected it was deserted. I think their awe of Golkar far outweighed any curiosity they might have felt.
By that stage, his power had risen quite substantially. Even the sligs lived in dread of him. I slipped in unseen one dark night and found out that it was true, that he’d gone, that Ilythia was free of its tyrant. I searched and searched that dread place for days, not knowing what I was really looking for. Somehow, inexplicably, I felt driven to go on, and eventually, I uncovered his diary.
“It wasn’t really his. It had belonged to Tanis before him, but he had taken it for his own. It was from there that I found out what had happened, how he had caught you in the end, how he’d used you to destroy Keerêt, how he’d then brought others of your kind to Ilythia and how they’d shared your fate, augmenting his power ever further, how eventually, when the land was crushed and the last drop of its usefulness had been squeezed from it, how he’d then used the portal to leave Ilythia and seek out other worlds, just like Tanis had done before him.” Josef stopped and took a deep breath, closing his eyes and sagging forward, as if a great weight had been lifted from him.
Sara was too stunned to say anything. She had found the final part of his story as chilling as the beginning. Incredible as it was, however, she believed him. For some reason, she had no doubt that what she had heard had been the truth. But what could she do about it? Why did he have to tell her all of this? All he had succeeded in doing was to destroy her will to fight. It all seemed so pointless now, the flight from Golkar and Tug, the desperate attempts to retain hope; she might just as well give up right here and now.
They both sat there quietly, each lost in their own thoughts. “So why are you telling me all of this?” she asked him after a while, not knowing what else to say. “If Golkar has gone, why have you come back here?”
Josef stared back at her. “I told you,” he said in an even voice. “I’ve come back to seek your help. Where I came from, though Golkar has left, it’s too late for Ilythia. The sligs now hold the land in their own evil grip, and it’s just as bloody a grasp as the one Golkar had. Certainly, there are still those who resist. I was one of them. But they are far too few in numbers. They have no chance at all. It is all they can do to survive now. The sligs number in the tens of thousands. They control the whole of Ilythia. The land reeks of their carnage from one end to the other. The resistance, if you could call it that, number in the scores, perhaps a few hundred at the very most. It’s only a matter of time before it is snuffed out, forever. Even if, by some miracle, the sligs could be overthrown, the land itself is broken. It’s been poisoned beyond redemption. Ilythia is nothing now but a muck heap.”
Sara nodded despondently, weighed down by the hopelessness of the situation they all faced. “You keep saying that you’ve come back to seek my help,” she finally said, her voice almost a whisper. “What could I possibly do about all of this? From what you’ve told me, Golkar will destroy the Guardians with or without me. You said that he was well advanced in what he was trying to do, even before he caught up with me.”
“Yes,” said Josef, “that’s right. There’s only one way to stop all of that from happening. That’s to defeat Golkar. Even if you somehow manage to elude him, he’ll still wreak havoc on Ilythia. And he’ll probably just go and take someone else from your world in your place and do to them what he intended to do to you.”
Sara felt herself beginning to cry again as he spoke. “I don’t want to hear any more of this,” she cried out in anguish. “You’re just tormenting me
. Why? What’s the point? First of all you say that I’m responsible, and then you say that if I get away he’ll only do the same to someone else.” She was working herself up into a frantic state, almost screaming the words at Josef by the time she finished. “Why don’t you just leave me alone? I can’t take any more of this.”
“Because I have to,” Josef shouted back at her angrily, coughing again as he did so. “I have to make you see. I can’t stop all of this from happening. You. You’re the key. You can stop him.”
Sara looked back at him blankly. Both his own emotional reaction as well as what he had said had stunned her.
“I’m sorry, Sara. I’m sorry,” gasped Josef as she stared at him with her mouth open. “Don’t you see,” he went on, pleading with her now. “I’ve lived through that horror. It took everything from me, my parents, my friends, everything. I’ve been fighting it all of my life; all of it, from the day I was born till now, trying to do something about it. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all. Until I found his diary. And then I saw a chance, a faint one, but a chance. A chance to stop all of that misery, to stop all of those thousands and thousands of deaths from happening. I had to try. I had to. Don’t you see?” As he finished he slumped forward, bending right over so that his head rested on his knees.
It was Sara’s turn to feel sorry for him. She could see now how horrific it all must have been for him. In many ways, if what he said was true, then she’d be one of the lucky ones. Much better to die early than to have to live through a lifetime of that. She could understand the desperation that Josef must be feeling.
“How?” she asked, her soft voice breaking the silence of the cavern. “How can I possibly do anything about all of that?”