The Lost Enclave

by Fredric Shernoff

  They descended steps deep underground. It occurred to Goldman how dangerous it would be to slip and fall down such a seemingly endless flight of stairs. The guards lit torches on the walls along the way, but the bottom remained hidden in deep darkness.

  “I’ve only ever been down here one time,” Marisol said. “Very few people would have a reason to be down here with the Great Ones gone. But I know there is a vault at the bottom with a very solid door. That should protect us until the disaster on top has ended.”

  “And what if it doesn’t end?” Lilli asked. “You don’t know what’s happening up there to your people! You’re going to abandon them to be bombed?”

  “What would you have me do?” Marisol yelled. “I have no idea what’s happening! I don’t know how to stop it! All I can do is survive and try to rebuild when the worst has passed. If you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it.”

  Lilli opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. Goldman felt bad for her. So much had happened to her in such a short time, and as soon as she embraced a new reality, the world shifted again. But maybe that was the same for all of them, even Nate and Marisol. The world was evolving rapidly, and only one evil man in both time periods was truly in control.

  They were now removed enough from the attack on the surface that Goldman could no longer hear the bombs, though he could feel the impacts as vibrations in the stones below his feet. He felt another pang of anxiety as he saw the hallway ahead ended in a room.

  “This is the place,” Nathaniel said. “This is where they changed the Great Ones into normals.”

  “You okay with this?” Goldman asked. “I’m guessing those memories are a little raw right now.”

  Nathaniel nodded solemnly. “It is what it is.”

  They filed into the room. Goldman looked around for signs of the process that had taken place in the past, but there was nothing he could see. Just a big room surrounded by stone.

  “Shut the door,” Marisol said to the guards. “Stay in here with us.”

  “But Ma’am,” one guard protested, “we should post some of us outside the door. For your protection.”

  “I will not risk losing my chief guards to the explosions and the violence,” Marisol said. “You stay with me. When this is over, which hopefully won’t take very long, I will need you by my side to survey the damage.”

  The guards looked torn, but followed Marisol’s commands. Two of them pulled the heavy door closed. Goldman looked for Nathaniel, figuring he could have easily maneuvered the door into place, but the Great One was sitting against the wall, attempting to meditate.

  “He’s freaked out,” Lilli whispered. “This is all too much for him.”

  “It’s too much for all of us,” Goldman replied.

  “What now?” Lilli asked Marisol.

  “Now we wait.”

  Goldman, Marisol, and Lilli sat in silence in the center of the room, with the guards surrounding them. Nathaniel stayed against the wall, eyes shut.

  Goldman closed his own eyes and focused on his breathing. The walls had seemed to close in on them, but slowly he felt a greater sense of spaciousness, and his panic drifted into the background of his thoughts. After what seemed an eternity, Goldman realized he could no longer feel the explosions in the ground.

  “I think it’s stopped,” he said.

  “We wait it out for now,” Marisol said. She still seemed frightened, Goldman thought, but she was trying to retain the illusion of command. That was probably a good thing.

  They waited for a while. He felt his bladder starting to ache, and he stood up. “Listen, I think we should probably get ready to—” The door began to open.

  Nathaniel was on his feet in a flash, though the rest of them were not far behind. The guards aimed their weapons at the stone door as it swung outward. Standing in the doorway was a tall figure shrouded from head to toe in black.

  19

  Nathaniel had felt a mixture of emotions as they entered the room at the bottom of the palace. As with everything else in the past two days, it reminded him of his adventures in the village and his time with Amara. He remembered the techniques Goldman had taught him in what seemed a different age, and he calmed himself on the floor. In time, thoughts left him and he was simply floating in the moment.

  He was startled by the door moving. It was so substantial that he doubted one normal person could open it. He jumped to his feet and watched with the others in the room as the door opened and revealed a living shadow.

  He felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. It had only been hours since he’d heard Marisol’s story, and now it was as if that story had come to life. The shadow man entered the room.

  “Do not take another step,” a guard said. All five of Marisol’s protectors were aiming weapons at the intruder. Goldman pulled out his own weapon and aimed it silently, without one of his usual nervous quips. Lilli did the same.

  The man in black walked forward. “I said don’t move!” the guard yelled. The man raised his hand, and arcs of energy came from his fingertips. A ball of energy formed in his hand, and he hurled it at the guard. The energy ball exploded around the guard’s body, and there was a blood-curdling shriek as the hellfire incinerated the guard. A smoldering remnant of a skeleton fell to the ground.

  “Attack him!” Marisol shouted.

  “Wait!” Nathaniel called.

  The guards rushed the shadow man, firing their weapons. He moved with speed Nathaniel had not seen in longer than he could remember. There were thuds, and cracks, and outbursts of pain. Two guards crashed into the walls, leaving bloody snail trails down the stones. The man slammed the two remaining guards together, their heads exploding on impact.

  Lilli screamed and fired her weapon. The blast hit the black figure in the shoulder. The fabric caught fire, and he ripped that part of the outfit off with his opposite hand. The skin underneath was tan, though where the energy had struck there were red blisters. The man took two steps forward, and Nathaniel stepped in his path.

  “Weber.”

  The man removed his black mask. He looked like Marisol had described, though his hair was nearly as long as Nathaniel’s.

  “Nathaniel Mansfield. You have made things very difficult for me lately.” The words held no audible malice. It was simply a statement of fact. As Nathaniel watched, Weber’s shoulder healed itself.

  “I have only begun to make things difficult for you,” Nathaniel said. Before he could react, Weber struck him with a lightning fast jab to the face, then connected with his chin with the other fist. Nathaniel staggered, threw a sloppy punch that caught nothing but air, and received a swift knee to his midsection that knocked out his wind.

  “Goddamn it!” Nathaniel heard Goldman say. “I can’t get a clean shot!”

  Weber grabbed Nathaniel like a sack of potatoes, and tossed him headfirst into the wall, hard enough to shatter the stone. A web of cracks spread from the impact point as he fell to the ground, disoriented.

  Nathaniel heard more energy blasts.

  “Enough!” Marisol said. “I have run this land the way you asked for all these years! You have no right to invade here. No right to destroy my home and kill my people!”

  “No right?” Weber questioned. “I am the one who decides what is right! You work for me! And you betrayed me when you allowed these interlopers into your territory. When you allowed them to poison you with lies.”

  “You lie!” Marisol yelled. Nathaniel’s blurry vision cleared and he saw the brave woman standing face to face with the Prophet. “You lied to me about everything!”

  “You were preparing to turn the people against me,” Weber said. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? I am the Prophet, and my word is law!” He broke Marisol’s neck with one quick move of his hand.

  Nathaniel leaped across the room and hit Weber from the side with as much force as he could muster. They sprawled sideways into the far wall. “Go!” Nathaniel yelled to Goldman and Lilli. “Run!” He landed a pun
ch and an elbow to Weber’s face in quick succession, drawing a small trickle of blood from the Prophet’s nose. He heard the sounds of feet in motion, and knew his distraction was working.

  Weber blocked Nathaniel’s next punch. He roared and grabbed Nathaniel by the throat with both hands, lifting him off the ground. He tossed Nathaniel across the room in the direction of the door. Against everything he’d ever known or believed in, Nathaniel of the house of Mansfield, last of the Great Ones of his land, picked himself up off the floor and ran.

  He made it halfway up the stairs before he heard Weber behind him. He shot his foot backward without looking, and with maybe the only luck he had left, he connected. Weber went tumbling down the stairs. Nathaniel didn’t wait, but continued upward. It didn’t take him long to catch up with Goldman and Lilli, who were stumbling out of the stairwell.

  “Keep moving!” he yelled.

  “Christ, Nate,” Goldman said, gasping for breath, “I didn’t know if you’d make it. Did you get him?”

  “No. I escaped. He will be following. We need to get out of here.”

  “Where the hell can we go?” Lilli asked.

  “The clearing! We have to find the clearing!”

  They ran through the courtyards, and zigzagged through hallways. The palace was heavily damaged from the bombing, and everywhere he looked there were injured and dead.

  In the front of the palace, Lilli nearly keeled over. “I can’t…” she gasped. “I can’t keep going. I need…to…rest.”

  Nathaniel looked around. He saw a cart resting at a funny angle. The horse that had pulled it was dead and had slumped mostly to the ground while still connected. He ran over and worked the carcass free. “Get in here!” he called.

  Goldman helped Lilli to the cart and they climbed in. Nathaniel stepped into the harness and pushed himself forward. He stumbled, regained his footing, then picked up speed. He ran, pulling the cart with him, through the remainder of the Central Enclave and into the woods beyond, hoping with everything he had in him that the clearing would exist, and that it would be where he expected it to be.

  He saw signs of the bombs pockmarking the land, and more death and destruction all around. He saw people fighting against mutants in the distance. He saw a man disemboweled by a mutant’s blue claws. In a different time he would have felt compelled to help out, but there was only so much he could do.

  “God, Nate,” Goldman said, “how the hell are you doing this?”

  Nathaniel did not reply. His focus was only on moving as quickly as possible. Weber was likely on their tail and could catch up at any minute. It was amazing he had not caught them yet. How had the Prophet known what they were doing? It seemed he had known about all of it. Probably had been tracking them since the disaster in his home territory with Gustavus. But Gustavus had been with them and was not able to contact anyone. Maybe a second in command?

  Somehow Weber had known about their conversations with Marisol. In a different situation, he would probably have suspected Marisol as the source of the leak, as he had not known whether to trust her. But she had seen her land laid to waste, and she had confronted the Prophet, resulting in her own death. It had been an incredibly brave and incredibly foolish thing she had done, when she had seen the kind of damage Weber had inflicted on Nathaniel. But for someone like Marisol, there was nothing else she could do. She had to protect her land to her very last breath, and truthfully, she probably already knew all hope was lost.

  Finally, Nathaniel saw his first glimpse of the clearing. As he had expected, it was no longer truly a clearing. Still, he was able to identify the ring of trees. He set down the cart and helped his friends to the ground.

  “Thank you, Nate,” Lilli said. “You saved us.”

  He nodded. “It was not enough. The mutants are killing indiscriminately. Weber himself killed everyone with us in the bottom of the palace. I could not save Marisol.”

  “You did everything you could,” Lilli said.

  “He’s a fucking Great One,” Goldman said. “Wolfgang fucking Weber is a Great One. And he can shoot energy through his goddamned hands. How the hell are we ever going to beat him?”

  “We can’t beat him here,” Lilli said. “We just can’t. The only chance we have is in the past.”

  Nathaniel rushed into the former clearing, with the others behind him. He studied the arrangement of trees and found the center.

  “These places were designed with a single tree over the secret compartment,” he said. “But that is long gone. There is probably not one tree perfectly positioned over it.”

  “Look at the roots there.” Goldman pointed. “They are higher up than some of the others. Like they can’t penetrate too far into the ground.”

  Nathaniel dropped to his knees where Goldman was pointing. Sure enough, there was the rusted remnant of the anchor that had once held a tree in place. He nudged the anchor, and it crumbled away. He felt along the ground, poking his fingers into the springy earth, until he found the edge of the plate. He dug down and under, then lifted up. The mechanism, meant to slide sideways but rusted beyond all functional use, groaned and cracked as Nathaniel broke the plate loose, dislodging a large root with it.

  In the compartment beneath was a ripped and dirty sack. “It looks pretty messed up,” Lilli said.

  “It’s thousands of years old,” Goldman marveled. “I hope I look that good when I get to that age.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t really think of that,” she said. “It’s way more preserved than it should be.”

  Nathaniel reached in and removed the sack. It ripped loudly as he pulled it up, and the book inside tumbled to the bottom of the compartment. He tossed the sack aside and scooped up the book, feeling his heart race with anticipation.

  “Look at that,” Goldman said. “It’s got the same title.”

  The word ‘Divided’ was embossed in the cover, just as it was on the book that was now stored at Opellius’s home. Nathaniel traced the letters with his fingers, taking a moment to ponder that he could read the strange language from Goldman and Lilli’s time. He flipped the book open and read a passage.

  “‘I entered the bar. The door jingled, signaling my arrival to what remained of the lunchtime crowd. Two middle-aged men sat at the bar, a guy probably in his sixties or early seventies wearing a “Weber Forever” t-shirt sat in a booth in the corner picking at the remnants of his meal, and the youngest of the bunch played pool against himself at one of the three billiards tables on the opposite side of the room.’ This is your story, Goldman.”

  “Yeah. It is. Am I the only one who is still creeped out that my journal is all over the place in this dystopian future?”

  Nathaniel expected Lilli to reply, but she was just sitting there with a far-off look. She had witnessed some terrible things, and it was possible the impact of that was just beginning to settle in. “It does not matter how strange it might be,” Nathaniel said. “We know what it can do, and that is what matters now. Join up.”

  Goldman put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder, and another on Lilli’s. Nathaniel turned to an empty page at the back of the book, and placed his palm in the center, preparing for the feeling of being sucked through the portal. Nothing happened.

  “What the fuck?” Goldman said. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I know not. It seems like the other book.”

  “Let me try,” Goldman said. He leaned forward and put his palm on the page. “Maybe I can—” His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Goldman felt his hand connect with the rough surface of the book’s blank page. Then he was somewhere else. In that endless darkness he saw the supernatural thing that wore his body. The not-Goldman smiled at him.

  “What’s up, bro?” the not-Goldman said.

  “Your book is broken,” Goldman said. “We need it to get back to my time. Things aren’t good, well, pretty much anywhere, in case you didn’t know.”

  The not-Goldman gave a good-natured chuckle. “Oh, I know. And it’s
much, much worse than you think. Your ken of ‘anywhere’ is a bit limited, no offense.”

  “Weber is coming for us,” Goldman said, not entirely sure why he was feeling so compelled to chat. He guessed that was what happened when one was interacting with oneself. “He’s super-powered.”

  “Mmhmm. He is the Alpha and the Omega of your world. Pun intended.”

  “What pun? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The not-Goldman nodded. “That’s true. You don’t. This world that you call home isn’t the Prime Universe. It isn’t even a secondary universe. It’s just an aberration that should have been inconsequential. But when the being you call Weber arrived, he changed everything.”

  “Arrived from where?”

  “There are other worlds, Ben Goldman. First a few, then a lot. And now, fewer and fewer all the time.”

  “None of that makes sense to me!”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “Are you really just some leftover echo of me? If you were, you wouldn’t know so much about everything.”

  Another chuckle. “You got me there. I’m something much more. But I appear in the form that the book dictated. What did you think would happen to you before your powerful friend saved you in your time?”

  “I figured I was supposed to die.”

  “Mmhmm. But you don’t know that.”

  “No…”

  “And what if you weren’t supposed to die, but you were supposed to fight the good fight, and eventually use your fragment of story to send a message in a bottle to the future?”

  “I…well…I guess maybe that makes sense. But the books are not normal. They’re fucking magical objects.”

  “Ben, ‘magic’ is just science that the scientists haven’t figured out yet. Just some super-secret powers of the multiverse. And the books, well, they are like the artifacts because of their connection to the device. It was unexpected, but as I said, Weber changed everything.”