Battle Across Worlds Read online

“No,” said Xiya. “It’s one of the strangers! They say he came from the other world. Like in Oberkion’s prophecy and all that. Oh, he has golden hair! Tesha, you have to see this!”

  “All right.” She stood and looked, intending to have only a glimpse. A pale-complected man in odd garb was indeed striding towards them, watched over by one of the larger Xa Ashaon guards.

  The stranger looked to be in his later thirties, with the slightest bit of a paunch, the yellow fur of an untamed beard covering his face. He was dressed in a gaudy scarlet coat with silver buttons, and wore a broad-brimmed hat with a yellow plume. The ridiculous get-up reminded her of the type of clothes she’d seen on some of the spoiled ladies of the royal court. Did males in his world all dress like that?

  She thought about ducking back down behind the flyer, out of sight. Before she could do so, though, the stranger’s gaze met her eyes, and a broad smile spread in the midst of his tawny beard.

  He spoke in a bizarre language with many soft and indistinct sounds: “My Lady, I should have something poetic to say on an occasion such as this. But words fail me.”

  “Words-fail-me,” Xiya said, parroting him. “I don’t know what that means, but I think he likes you. Oh Tesha!”

  The stranger was trying to be subtle, keeping his gaze on her face so that he didn’t seem too lecherous. But she caught him when he pretended to blink in the sunlight, while actually dipping his eyes quickly to her feet and back up again, scanning her form. Then he was looking at the flyer, reaching out for the long silver needle of the ambia gun.

  Dear gods, if he damaged anything after all the time she’d just spent working on—

  “GET … AWAY!” she told him, speaking loudly and slowly, as if she were trying to communicate with a small child. “DO … NOT … TOUCH.”

  The stranger’s Xa Ashaon guard was close by, but stayed back a bit, and that bastard was smiling too, seemingly amused by the situation.

  However, the yellow-bearded stranger seemed to get her meaning, and refrained from touching anything. Still, he gestured at the flyer, moving his arm as if he were caressing the air around it. “Look at this craft,” he said, smiling as he uttered more mushy syllables of his own language. “The lines show such supple strength, and such grace. Yet it is nothing when compared to the divine form of the goddess who tends to it.”

  “Who-tends-to-it,” Xiya repeated. The girl was wringing her hands in excitement, and Tesha was about two seconds away from reaching out and slapping her.

  Still there was … something in his eyes.

  Blue eyes—she’d never seen that exact shade before. A deep sky blue, the color of a faience idol. Those eyes held an electricity that must have ensnared many young ladies in the past.

  She wouldn’t fall for it, though.

  Finally, seeing no other choice, she nodded her head towards him, acknowledging him as politely as she felt able. “I am glad you have an appreciation of the Hummingbird flyer, sir,” she told him. “But I am quite busy, and I do have to get back to work.”

  He obviously did not understand. Instead, he removed his hat, and bowed to her with a flourish. “Jack,” he said. “Jack. I am Jack.”

  Ah, Jack. So that was his name. Sounded almost Kokytian, like a sailor’s name from that sea-swept island nation.

  She didn’t like it.

  She was loathe to give her own name in return, thinking this would only encourage him.

  But Xiya was more than happy to offer it for her. The girl bounced up and down, smiling at “Jack” and pointing to Tesha. “Tesha!” she said. “She is Tesha!”

  Tesha tried to ignore all of this and get back to her work on the aon cell, but she could still hear Xiya giggling behind her:

  “Oh Tesha, he’s so cute! I like him for you!”

  #

  Ralley followed the wooden-masked man called Orcus Gaelti across the arched stone bridge which joined the two halves of the fortress. The bridge spanned a narrow place in the cliffs and, hundreds of feet below, the great river churned past in its ceaseless flow.

  The bridge lead to the smaller half of the fortress, a square complex of ramparts with a central tower which squatted on the cliff’s edge on the opposite side of the river. There were no flyers here, just a few soldiers talking and milling about.

  Gaelti turned back and spoke to Ralley. “Perceptions will be clearer on this side,” he said. “Fewer people, fewer aon devices, less interference. It will make it easier to accomplish what we must do.”

  Behind Ralley, bringing up the rear of their small party, was a brown-skinned youth of about fifteen years of age. The wind whipped the beaded braids of the boy’s hair in his face as he trudged along, bearing the weight of a long bronze cylinder strapped to his back.

  When they’d crossed the span of the bridge and reached the courtyard of the fortress on the other side, the boy shrugged off his burden and began loosening screws and fastenings upon it. He opened up the top of the cylinder, which Ralley saw was a sort of protective case. Inside it was a tripod with folding legs. A silver cup at the apex of the tripod held a blue-black crystal in its grip, like a giant jewel in an expertly made setting.

  Ralley was still dizzy. Every once in a while, he thought he could hear his beloved’s cries echoing in his head. He wished Jack was still with him, but Gaelti had insisted that he come alone. Jack hadn’t wanted to stay behind, but Ralley had assured his friend that he would be all right.

  “You believe that you can sense the mind of the Princess Taxamia?” Gaelti asked, his voice cold and somber.

  “Yes,” Ralley replied. “We share a powerful bond.”

  “Ah.” Gaelti nodded. “It is as I expected. You are experiencing an urge for proximity to the sympathetic master aon in order to relieve the conflicts engendered by the tension of the link.”

  “No,” Ralley said. “It’s more than that. We need each other.”

  “You are attuned to her, yes. It should be possible to trace her position by following the link between the two of you. Young Rakotis here is an aon pattern seer.” Gaelti nodded towards the boy, who was still fiddling with his crystal-bearing apparatus. “He has the rare talent which enables him to see such links.”

  Ralley shook his head. “Not necessary. I can lead you to her now, Master Gaelti. Please …”

  Gaelti shook his head. “What you feel are subjective sensations relative to the tension of your aon link. But you are not a pattern seer, and the accuracy of these sensations cannot be relied upon.”

  Why would no one believe him? “We don’t have time for this!” Ralley protested. “I know where she is, dammit!” When he swore, it was in his own language, not Dameryan, but he thought they might get his meaning clearly enough.

  If Gaelti was offended by the outburst, he did not show it. He face remained unreadable, eyes hidden behind the bulky wooden visor he wore.

  The youth, Rakotis, had his tripod set up and stabilized now. His fingers stroked the blue-black crystal, and he closed his eyes. He turned his head from side to side and grimaced, looking pained.

  “This may take a while,” Gaelti said. “But we shall obtain a reading that is reliable in the end, an exact vector to follow.”

  Ralley was barely listening. He stepped slowly away, out onto the bridge. Gaelti watched, but did not move to stop him.

  The barrier wall edging the bridge came up to his waist, and he leaned on it, looking downstream at the river. He tried to settle his thoughts, focus, feel for her. She was still alive, he knew—but her voice was silent. There was only a dull sensation of pain from her. How long would she last? How long could she hold up while Gaelti’s young seer communed with his crystal?

  Despairing, Ralley began to hum. It was the chorus from “The Tragedy of the Marchien Knights,” a mournful tune that reflected the despair he felt.

  As he brooded, he was startled by a sudden movement at the corner of his vision. A swarm like a flock of dark birds was approaching, but growing too large, coming too fast �
�

  They were flyers. A group of them, speeding up the river valley not far above the water. How many were there? Ten, maybe more?

  The ships in the lead shot forward, spinning as they came, spitting white fire. Bolts of energy shot below the bridge, rending the air and whistling as they passed.

  Distantly, Ralley could hear Gaelti shouting something, and there were cries of alarm from guards at both halves of the fortress.

  Then, one of the flyers sped under him, a blue-black shape like a giant insect with a crystalline carapace. The shadow of yet another craft passed over him …

  Shaking off his trance, Ralley turned to head back towards Gaelti and the relative safety of the fortress proper.

  As he did so, Ralley saw a crescent-shaped flyer heading at a terrible speed towards the stone bridge on which he stood. Whistling white fire shot from the tips of the crescent, there was a loud crumbling noise … and then he was off his feet.

  Ralley fell, the world dropping out from under him—

  He grasped out for something, anything—

  And his fingers found stone, a tenuous handhold.

  In a moment, it was clear what had occurred. An enemy flyer had blasted away a section of bridge just beside where he’d stood, creating a gap at least eight feet wide. Gaelti and young Rakotis were on the other side of the gap, while he clung to the fragmented edge of the remaining bridge-span that lead to the larger half of the fortress.

  Turning his head, he could see Gaelti running forward. But it was too far, the gap too wide; the man would never be able to reach him.

  The wind whistled in his ears. He looked down and saw a monstrous plume of water splashing up from where the tons of stone dislodged from the bridge had just plunged into the river.

  Already, the tendons in his fingers were starting to burn. He could not hold on for long. He knew that, if he fell from this great height, the surface of the water below would be like solid stone to his fragile body.

  And if he died, so would she. That was his greatest fear. His beloved needed him!

  He strained to pull himself up, every muscle in his body groaning. How he wished that the fiery strength he’d had earlier would return to him, now that he so desperately needed it!

  But he could not let himself fall. He would not fail her!

  -11-

  As the clock in the Crandolph mansion’s dining room struck the hour of two o’clock in the morning, Ed Bocke sat down at the table, a plate of cold victuals set before him.

  Young Julea Crandolph took her place in the chair beside him, holding out her skirt as she sat, brushing her long blonde hair behind her ears before she slid in closer to the table. She was obviously nervous, yet worked very hard to remain lady-like and composed.

  Ed concentrated on her because he did not want to look across the table, where Guardian Crandolph was just sitting down. That … thing … called Reverend Mott was already seated beside the Guardian, his ragged hood still obscuring his eyes.

  “Let us have a brief prayer,” the Guardian said, “before we enjoy this repast.” He cleared his throat: “God our heavenly Master, who giveth us this food, we commend ourselves to you. Our bodies, hearts and spirits are yours, and we are grateful for the sustenance thy glory provides. Amen.”

  For a Stefanite, it was an unusually short dinner prayer. Ed’s own father, Reverend Bocke, typically droned on for five minutes or more before the family was permitted to eat. But then, Ed’s family would never have dined in the dead of the night, either, nor had a walking corpse for a guest at their table …

  Rutting hell! None of this made any sense, and thinking about it made him dizzy.

  He wondered if it might help if he ate something. Looking down at his plate, he saw a piece of ham, some cold stewed cabbage, and a slice of some raisin pudding. But the ham was the pink color of the bared muscle under Mott’s porous flesh. The cabbage was the wrinkled dead texture of the flesh itself, and the way the pudding glistened in the lamplight, it reminded him of the slimy passage where the man’s nose should have been.

  Ed didn’t think he would be able to eat any of it.

  The Guardian nodded towards his old serving woman, who had just entered the room. “Mrs. Starks, might you bring us some of that tea now, please? And mustard for the ham, if you will.” Then, without missing a beat, he turned to Ed. “So Constable Bocke, how is your father doing?”

  “Um … all right, I guess,” Ed said. In truth, he hadn’t heard from his parents in months, not since he’d been given the Constable position on the island.

  Not even supposed to rutting write them, bastards.

  He didn’t really care much, either. He certainly hadn’t missed his father.

  “That is good to hear. You know, it is the local parish leaders like your father who are really responsible for our victory over the degenerate royalists. He helped us raise the militia. The one that defeated the royalist force in the skirmish at Seagirt.”

  Ed nodded. Of course, the aristocrats exiled on the island had another name for that “skirmish at Seagirt”: the Massacre in the East. There, thousands of royalist troops who had gathered at Lord Palmington’s coastal estate had been slaughtered by militia forces from the Stefanite stronghold of Ironbound. No prisoners had been taken; it was said that even Lord Palmington’s wife, children, and household servants were put to a bloody death. The Massacre had frightened the Queen into a willing surrender, enabling a swift transition of government.

  Guardian Crandolph had lead the Massacre. That was why he was esteemed in the eye of the Stefanites and their Lord Protector, and that was why he was hated and feared on the island.

  Right now, Ed was experiencing a bit of fear himself. Would he get out of this intact? Something was wrong here, that was obvious. Would they let him go after what he’d seen? Or did the Guardian himself really think that the situation with Mott and the mound and whatever other insane business was going on here was normal? Was the man insane?

  At that moment, Mott raised a forkful of ham to his lipless mouth and took a bite. His teeth closed on the tines of the fork instead; several teeth broke off with a crunch. Bloodless and rotten, they clattered down onto his plate.

  Ed looked away.

  “Constable, I am sorry about your accident earlier,” the Guardian continued. “It’s been a tragic night. The young Grenadier Fane was found outside, his neck broken. Barbaric. Did you happen to witness this deed?”

  Ed felt his throat constrict. He coughed in an attempt to clear it so that he could speak. “Well … uh … yes. I mean that … I was watching. From the trees.”

  “Ah. And what did you see? Who committed this murder?”

  Ed swallowed hard, took a sip of tea which Mrs. Starks and just poured for him, then launched into a description of what he’d witnessed. Of course, he had to alter a few details. He told the Guardian that he’d heard Jack Chestire bragging to his fellow Dragoons in town that he was going with Quenn to the faerie mound that night. It seemed a reasonable version of events, and he really didn’t want to get Mother Henne in trouble, either.

  “And you did not see a need to report what you heard to the Grenadiers?” the Guardian asked. “You decided right off to investigate by yourself?”

  Ed nodded. “I really … Well, it was a holiday, and the soldiers work so hard, and I, um … didn’t want to bother them. I thought it might be some Dragoon joke.”

  There was a pause as something distracted the Guardian. He turned to his left. Ed followed his gaze and saw that Mott was in the process of sipping from his cup of tea. As he sipped, the tea trickled out from a penny-sized hole in his throat, splashing his robes.

  Mott’s arm creaked as he lowered his cup, and the Guardian turned back to Ed as if nothing had happened. “Yes,” he said, and he was smiling again, though Ed had no idea if the cheerful sentiment on his face was genuine. “Didn’t want to bother the soldiers. That is understandable. So, what else happened? Please do continue.”

  So he tol
d them about Ralley Quenn throwing Fane into the tree trunk, the white light, the three men disappearing … He admitted that Mott had chased him into the mound, but for some reason he didn’t feel comfortable revealing that he had been attacked by another thing down in that shaft—that leathery animal creature with glowing red eyes, which he now believed was the very same demon that Mother Henne had seen.

  Instead, he told them that he’d tripped in the darkness, had felt himself falling, and could remember nothing more.

  Julea watched him intently as he spoke, her large brown eyes wide, like a child absorbed in a fireside ghost story.

  For the first time, Ed realized that she was quite pretty. Small for her age, perhaps—but pretty, in a delicate way. He’d never had a girl look at him like that before. Somehow, it made him feel a little more confident about the situation.

  “I commend the precise detail of your report,” the Guardian said when he’d finished speaking. “You are highly observant. But tell me—you said there was shouting. This clerk Quenn shouted odd words, foreign words?”

  “Yes,” Ed said, nodding. “Very foreign.”

  “Was one of the words … Now think upon it, take your time and tell me …” The Guardian leaned closer, his own red eyes widening. His gaze was so intense that it seemed to pull at Ed’s soul. “Was one of those words a name— Oberkion?”

  “Yes,” Ed replied, unable to look away from those crimson eyes, his mind caught up in their magnetism. “Yes, uhh … I think it was.”

  With this, the Guardian placed his napkin on his plate and rose from his chair. “Thank you so much for the information, Constable. You do not know what a great help you have been.”

  Ed nodded, and also rose from his seat, following the Guardian’s example. “Thanks. I’m … um … really glad.” He still had no idea himself of what was going on here. It was like an unpleasant dream that he’d been stuck in.

  But now he’d be able to leave? His mind was already racing ahead, thinking about how he’d explain it all to Mother Henne.

  The Guardian seemed to have read his mind. “You must keep all of this secret, Constable. I have your agreement? I will speak to the Grenadiers about Aubren and Fane, but I must be assured that you will not discuss anything which has occurred tonight.”