by R S Penney
“Yes, it is,” Desa agreed. “But they aren’t ghosts.” She waved her hand through the spectral image of an old woman who seemed to be hobbling across the street. “It’s only sculpted light. No different from a painting, just much more advanced.”
The front steps of a grand building appeared over the hill that led up to the temple. A fitting place, in Desa’s estimation. The building itself was magnificent, round with a domed roof.
A man in this world’s equivalent of a suit stood behind a podium at the foot of those stairs. “Thank you all for being with us on this momentous day,” he said to an audience that had gathered around Desa and Kalia. “For many years now, our physicists have suspected that the Unifying Field expands beyond the confines of our world. Beyond the confines of our solar system.”
Desa exchanged a glance with her partner.
“Now, at last, we have confirmation,” the man went on. “Not only does the Unifying Field permeate every inch of space within this universe, it also connects to many others. Worlds so very much like our own but where history unfolded differently.”
Desa strode forward, passing through ghostly figure after ghostly figure as she approached the stairs. “Other universes,” she murmured. “I think I understand.”
“That makes one of us,” Kalia said.
The man at the podium smiled for the crowd. “The Unifying Field can bridge one universe with another,” he said. “Our people will step into a new frontier, explore new worlds, create new possibilities.”
He turned, gesturing to something on the stairs behind him.
Desa looked up to find two men in white coats on the top step. Scientists, she suspected. And standing between them was a metal doorway with glyphs on its surface. Metal. So, not the same device that she had discovered in the cavern. But a companion to it, perhaps.
The image faded away, buildings, people and cars all vanishing, but the crystal continued to emit soft, blue light. Enough to illuminate the entire clearing.
Kalia stepped forward with her mouth agape, shuddering as she drew in a breath. The poor woman was trying to make sense of what she had seen. “They were travelers from another universe? And they came here?”
“And settled.”
“What?”
“They’re our ancestors, my love,” Desa said. “I’m sure of it.”
Kalia grimaced, shaking her head. “How can that be?” she demanded. “Surely, we would know about it. There would be some legend or…something!”
Dirt scuffed under Desa’s boots as she approached the other woman. “There are legends,” she said. “My people’s earliest myths are of Mercy and Vengeance leading us away from danger, to a new home.”
“Away from danger?”
Turning her back on the other woman, Desa gazed up at the ruined temple, at the spot where the metal doorway had stood. “Away from Hanak Tuvar,” she said. “Or at least, that is my guess.”
She was about to say more, but the crystal began constructing another image, teal beams drawing the outline of a room. Colour bled into the walls and the furniture. Desa was surrounded by metal tables and some kind of equipment she didn’t recognize, all sterile and white. And transparent.
A woman appeared from out of nowhere, marching across the room. She was about average height, slightly plump with a round face of dark-brown skin. Her curly hair was left to hang loose to her shoulders. A pair of spectacles sat on her nose.
Desa recognized her instantly.
Mercy.
“Daily log,” the woman said. “Well, the chancellor made quite an impression today with his speech. Grand dreams of exploring other universes. A noble goal, I suppose, if pursued as a matter of scientific inquiry, though I suspect the Council of Twelve will insist upon colonization. Since any suitable world will likely have lifeforms comparable to our own, I shudder to think about what might happen if our expeditions should encounter any less advanced societies.”
The woman paused at a counter that ran along one wall, hanging her head and letting out a sigh. “Still, we here at the Transcendentalist Project will continue our work,” she went on. “Expanding outward to other universes is a remarkable achievement, but there are those among us who see greater value in looking inward. To become one with the Unifying Field itself…”
“Are you still recording?”
Another woman came through a door that must have led out to a hallway, this one tall and slim with pale skin and red hair tied up in a ponytail. Vengeance. She wore a uniform of some kind, most likely that of a military officer. “The general is growing impatient with the delays, Nari.”
“The general’s impatience does not concern me.”
“He says that we’re making very little progress.”
Nari’s high heels clicked on the floor tiles as she paced across the room. “That is because he asks the impossible!” she protested. “Direct Infusions into living tissue? It cannot be done, and we have told him as much.”
“Listen-”
“The Field can be bound to inanimate objects,” Nari pressed on. “Never to living tissue. Not even to something that had once been alive!”
Vengeance – or whatever her name was – put her fists on her hips, thrust out her chin and sniffed. “We have poured an enormous amount of funding into this project, Nari,” she said. “Funding that could be diverted to more practical applications.”
Baring her teeth, Nari hissed. She looked very much like a cat that wanted to claw something. “So that you can create a living weapon!” she spat. “You think I don’t know your true purpose? I began this project to expand the limits of human consciousness, not to create yet another instrument of destruction. I will not-”
The image vanished, and the crystal went dark, its energy source depleted. Thick darkness settled over the clearing. It took a moment for Desa’s eyes to adjust.
Kalia dropped to one knee, retrieving the small device, cradling it in the palm of her hand. “What does it mean?” she asked. “Everything we saw…”
Desa put her hands on the other woman’s shoulders, dropping to her knees before her. She stared into Kalia’s lovely, brown eyes. “It means we have work to do,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, we start going north.”
Part I
1
Consciousness crept into Desa’s mind, and she rolled over to find Kalia sound asleep beside her. A light drizzle patterned against the window, and the gray light of an overcast morning streamed into the bedroom.
Two months.
Two more months in the saddle, making their way northward across some very rough terrain. They had crossed through scorching flatlands and dense swamps until they finally reached the Al a Nari city of Te’Alon. That was five days ago.
Desa had planned to set out again the very next morning – they had to get back to Eradia; that was where they would find Adele – but exhaustion had convinced her to remain for one more day. And then another. And then one more after that. Each night, she went to bed, promising herself that tomorrow, she would begin the long journey to her homeland, and each morning, she found another reason to stay.
Here, in the northern hemisphere, the winter rains had come. It was still warm this close to the equator – much warmer than it would be in Eradia, anyway – but the weather was still unpleasant, making the prospect of another journey even more unappealing.
Curled up on her side with the blankets pulled up to her neck, Desa blinked a few times. “Sweetie,” she whispered. “It’s time to wake up.”
She kissed Kalia’s nose, and the other woman opened her eyes, a slow smile blossoming on her face. “Are you sure?” Kalia murmured. “Couldn’t we stay just a few more minutes?”
“We have to get moving,” Desa lamented.
Mercy had appeared to her several times over the last week, always to ask when Desa would resume her trek northward. The goddess may have been mortal once, but she seemed to have forgotten the strain that travel put on a human body.
Sitting up
with the covers held to her chest, Desa squinted at the wall across from her bed. “Come on,” she said. “No more dawdling.”
She was dressed in five minutes, having donned a pair of beige pants, a red blouse and a brown, leather jacket. A wide-brimmed hat completed the ensemble. She hurried out the door and down the stairs before Kalia could protest.
The small hostel where they had taken lodgings was a gray-stone building with a garden in its front yard. None of the plants were in bloom, sadly, leaving nothing but mud on either side of the narrow path that led down to the sidewalk. The paved road was slick with rainfall, and on the other side, several other buildings just like this one stood in neat, little rows.
A man in a brown coat rode past on a bicycle, slowing to offer a friendly wave before he continued down the street. Water sprayed into the air as he splashed through a puddle. Just another winter morning in Te’Alon.
Walking across the street with her hands in her coat pockets, Desa exhaled through her nose. “We’ve been here too long already,” she mumbled. “Hot food and comfortable beds turn good women into layabouts.”
Rain fell upon a gray building with black shingles on its gabled roof. Light spilled out from the two, rectangular windows on either side of the front door. When Desa went inside, she found a small café with round, wooden tables. There were a few patrons present, but with the workday starting soon, the place was quiet.
A copper-skinned woman in a red dress stood behind a wooden counter. She looked up when she heard the door open and flashed a smile. “Desa Nin Leean.”
“Kadya Nin Pareem,” Desa replied. “I see business is going well.”
“Well enough. What can I get you?”
Folding her hands on the counter, Desa frowned as she considered the question. “Do you have any of that wonderful tea?” she said at last. “The one you served me a few days ago?”
Kadya turned around, scanning the top shelf with her index finger. “Let me check,” she said. “I think I might-”
She was cut off by the sound of the door opening, and Desa whirled around to find Rojan stomping into the café. His hair was drenched, droplets of water trailing over his olive-skinned face. “You’re here,” he said. “Good.”
“What’s wrong?”
He shuffled up to Desa and leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “The scouts on the northern perimeter failed to report in.” He cast a glance around the room to make sure no one was listening and then pressed on. “Something is amiss.”
“You’ve never had scouts fail to report in?”
“It’s part of the protocol,” Rojan explained. “They carry radios. If the squad leader is in some way indisposed, someone else takes on the task. For the entire team to be out of contact for so long…”
“I understand.”
Clearing his throat, Rojan glanced over his shoulder toward the window. Then his eyes fell upon her again. “You have proficiency with the more aggressive aspects of Field Binding.” Did he have to put it that way? Desa would have felt better if he had simply said that she knew how to kill. The euphemism made it seem dirty somehow. “I was hoping you would come with me to see what went wrong.”
Another delay. She had been hoping to start northward before noon. But the Al a Nari had shown her incredible kindness. She owed them. This small favour was not too much to ask. “Of course,” she said. “Kalia should come as well. Her talents almost rival my own.”
Raindrops slid over the lenses of Desa’s binoculars, distorting the image somewhat, but it wasn’t hard to miss the black coats and blue trousers of Eradian soldiers, men who crept through the damp grass with rifles in hand. They moved slowly as if they expected trouble to jump out from the trees on either side of them, which it very well might. The Al a Nari preferred to ambush foreign invaders before they got too close to a city.
Desa hid behind a small outcropping of rocks with Kalia, Rojan and the rest of his team. From her position at the top of a hill, she could see the enemy clearly. “Eradians,” she muttered under her breath.
Crouching on her left with one of those energy pistols in hand, Rojan snarled as the word passed through her lips. “The scouting team was six miles north of here when they last reported in,” he spat. “Now, we know what happened.”
Lowering the binoculars, Desa shook her head. “How could they have gotten past you?” she asked. “I remember the warm welcome you gave me and my friends.”
Kalia was on her right, hands gripping the rock ledge as she ventured a peek over it. “Could they have slipped past the patrols?” she wondered aloud. “Your territory is vast. I can’t imagine that you would be able to monitor every inch of the border.”
“Their technology is at least a century behind ours,” Rojan grumbled. “And they do not have access to the Ether. We can sense an approaching army before it gets anywhere near one of our settlements.”
“Then maybe they had help,” Desa muttered.
“What kind of help?”
She didn’t answer him. Adele had demonstrated the ability to transport troops over great distances. Was this another raid? If so, then Desa was the cause of it. The attack on Aladar had been nothing but an elaborate scheme to kill her.
But why now?
Adele had been relentless in her attempts to kill Desa during those first few months after she gained her new powers, but Desa had not seen her since their fight outside the Temple of Vengeance. Four months of silence was, in her estimation, a very good sign. She had even started to entertain the notion that the other woman might have died from her wounds. But Mercy insisted that Hanak Tuvar was still a threat.
“Help or no help,” Rojan growled. “It’s time to put an end to this.”
He hopped onto the rocks standing tall so that the Eradians below could see him. “Gentlemen!” he called out in their language. “I think it’s time you turned around and went home.”
Desa looked through the binoculars again and found Al a Nari scouts emerging from the trees on either side of the field. Every one of them carried one of those crescent-shaped pistols or a longer, tube-like device that would be the equivalent of a rifle. The latter weren’t any more powerful than their smaller cousins – that size of an object had no bearing on how much energy it could store – but some people found the larger weapons easier to aim.
The Eradians lifted their rifles.
Rojan’s team fired first.
Streaks of lightning converged on the enemy from all directions like spokes on a wheel meeting at a central point. Converged but never quite found their targets. They seemed to run up against an invisible dome that had sprung up around the Eradians. Desa had never seen anything like it.
The glare of all that electricity in one spot made her eyes smart. The dome crackled and hissed, raindrops evaporating the instant they made contact.
Adele was suddenly there, appearing from out of thin air and gathering all of that energy into the palm of her hand. Desa gasped at the sight of her. The other woman had changed considerably since their last encounter.
Her golden hair was now as black as pitch and as coarse as straw. The scales on her left hand had traveled up her forearm almost to the elbow. When she opened her mouth, Desa saw two pointed fangs. And her eyes. Orange with vertical slits where the pupils should be.
Instead of the flowing, white gown, the woman now wore a simple, black dress that left her shoulders bare, its flaring skirt nearly brushing the grass. Whatever human skin remained was now pale and sickly.
When she had collected all of the lightning, Adele screamed and sent it into the sky as a single jagged lance. The peel of thunder that followed made Desa’s ears pop. Silence fell over the field as everyone stood dumbstruck.
Adele extended a scaly hand toward the Al a Nari on her left, closing her fist with a growl. The ground erupted with a spray of dirt, tossing bodies into the air. Before they landed, she stretched a pale hand toward the men and women on her right, and they too were tossed about like toys kicked by an ang
ry child.
“Adele!” Desa screamed.
Rounding on her, the other woman flashed a smile that displayed her fangs. Her eyes shone with eagerness. “Ah, so here you are!”
Desa was over the rocks and charging down the hillside in an instant, drawing her pistol from its holster. She cocked the hammer, raised the weapon in one hand and fired. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Bullets became wisps of smoke when they got within an inch of Adele. But they were nothing but a distraction. Sound and fury to draw the eye and addle the mind.
Sliding to a stop, Desa thrust her closed fist toward the other woman and triggered the Electric-Source within her ring. A blast of lightning shot across the field. Adele was forced to stagger backward, gathering the electricity between her two palms.
She spun to her right, ignoring Desa, and sent it hurtling toward an Al a Nari man as a single bolt that struck him right in the chest. The poor fellow was thrown backward into a tree, his scorched body falling to the ground.
The Eradians sprang into motion, firing at the men behind the rocks and the ones in the trees. They ignored Desa completely. And why not? If the Aladri witch wanted to challenge their goddess, it was no business of theirs.
Rage spiked within Desa, driving rational thought away. Before she realized it, she had a hand in her pocket. She fished out a small coin, threw it as hard as she could and triggered the Heat-Sink.
The coin came to a stop, hovering about an inch away from Adele’s delicate nose. Mist formed around her body, but the other woman was unaffected by the sudden drop in temperature. Her cruel laughter felt like nails digging into Desa’s brain.
With a quick pivot to her left, Adele concentrated all of the super-chilled air into one spot and released it as a thin stream that hit an Al a Nari woman as she ran through the trees. In seconds, the woman was frozen solid.
“That’s two!” Adele shouted. “How many of your new friends do you intend to kill, Desa? I would have hoped that you might stop with Sebastian!”