Baranak_Storming the Gates Read online

  The palace was quiet and mostly dark, it being well past dinner time now. Fearing that I would inadvertently run into one of my uncles or aunts and get pulled into another long and undesired conversation, I made straight for the nearest exit. That put me out near the stables and so I made a snap decision to stroll that way.

  Entering the old wooden building, I nodded to Voras, our blacksmith, who labored at the far end of the stalls. He returned the gesture, as did his slender, wiry assistant, Goran.

  Moments later I found my feet had led me straight up to my current favorite horse, a tall chestnut called Comet. The thought struck me, then: why not a ride? Surely a quick lap or two around the palace would leave me ready to hit the hay and sleep for a week—something I felt was not particularly advisable in the current situation, but likely necessary for my own sanity.

  After reacquainting myself with Comet I mounted up and we set out, no real destination in mind. The sun was already below the horizon but there was enough artificial lighting around the palace that we could see where we were going. We passed through a well-landscaped grove and down into a shallow valley at the end, moving at barely above a walk. That was when I saw it.

  I had no idea what it was. At first I thought it was a man—perhaps a groundskeeper or maybe even one of my uncles out for a walk. But then it moved, and it did not move like a man. Not at all. It was taller, thinner; spindly, one might say. The dim light glinted here and there on its clothes or its armor, or whatever it wore.

  I brought Comet up short and kept him quiet as I looked and frowned and tried to discern exactly what I was seeing.

  A black horse stood nearby, unmoving. I thought I recognized it from our stables but wasn’t certain. After a few moments the strange figure approached the horse and in a surreal, supremely acrobatic springing motion leapt into the saddle. It landed almost weightlessly, so that the horse did not react at all.

  I watched this transpire and I wondered. What, exactly, was I seeing here? Was I experiencing some sort of waking dream, brought on by a combination of sleep deprivation, trauma, and general anxiety?

  Now mounted on the dark horse, the figure started to move away, seemingly not aware of our presence. Through the grassy valley the horse and rider went, and I urged Comet to follow—again, quietly.

  Fortunately my mount was up to the challenge; he trotted along stealthily, and we kept a decent distance while always having our quarry in view.

  Around a bend and through another grove we went, past a small brook that gurgled along, detouring quickly past a bed of small rocks I was certain would crunch at our passing and give us away. For a moment I feared I’d lose sight of the figure, but I never did. And he never looked back.

  Into a flat plain of sparse but richly-leaved trees we passed, and through it, and out the other side, emerging into a bare stretch where the grass gave way to a densely-packed sandy surface. Fog swirled around us as from nowhere and Comet grew somewhat spooked, as did I. This went on for some time, during which I barely managed to keep the strange being we were following in view. The ground, now virtually invisible at Comet’s feet, leveled out and became perfectly flat. On we went, our quarry clopping along, clearly in no particular hurry, remaining just at the limits of visibility ahead. Then at last the clouds parted and a dim light shone down and the trees reappeared. Now, though, they were all of an entirely different variety, many with bright purple blossoms and surrounded by pollen-bearing pods littering the ground—and that ground had traded hard-packed sand for short, yellowy grass.

  I realized then that the sun had somehow risen again and was now off to the right as we trotted along. A full understanding of just how bizarre that was didn’t come to me for several seconds, so distracted was I by the changes to the vegetation. Then I looked around, blinked, and gasped.

  How could this be possible? How could the very sun have moved—have come back up, less than an hour after it had set for the evening? How could the trees have changed so much? For that matter—how could gravity itself now feel slightly stronger?

  I looked back around behind me. The forest stretched as far as I could see, up a gently sloping hill. Of the palace there was no sign whatsoever.

  My head reeled. I felt as though I might faint. Comet didn’t seem particularly happy, either, and I soothed him even as I sought to calm myself. I thought about it—about what could have possibly happened.

  There was only one possible answer, as insane as it might sound.

  We were no longer on Victoria.

  We had been transported to a completely different world.

  FOUR

  The building was all of crystal, shot through with strands of pink and purple, much of it transparent or at least translucent. Great shards reared up from the ground at various angles, none of them directly upright, and together they blended to form a jagged domelike structure, there amid the strange forest. The spindly being I’d followed from the palace—and, I had to admit, from Victoria itself, to wherever this was—had tethered his black horse just outside and passed into the crystalline dome via an arched entrance just ahead.

  I resolved to follow. As ridiculously foolhardy as that sounded, I was determined to discover what this was all about. Frankly, I was sick of not knowing what was going on around me, from the behavior of the corim of the Church to the Verghasite sneak attack to dad’s murder to this eerie being who had just inadvertently led me from my home to this alien place. I had to have answers, and soon, or I feared that not only would we lose the war, but also that I would lose my very sanity.

  Tethering Comet to a tree in a spot camouflaged with undergrowth, where I was hopeful he would avoid easy detection, I crept along the path my quarry had taken. Fortunately the black horse was busy chewing on the grass and ignored me entirely. Soon I reached the arch and hesitated just outside it. What, I asked myself, if the interior of this place was filled with more of these creatures—and they were hostile? What if something notified them the moment an intruder entered?

  Then again, what other options did I have? If I went back to the palace to gather troops and to better arm myself, could I find my way back here again? For that matter, was it even possible to return to the palace? I could no longer see it in the direction we had come. How was I supposed to find it?

  Too many questions, and none of them immediately answerable—except perhaps by the being I had followed here. I shook my head, drew my pistol and walked through the arch.

  First came a sort of entryway with several passages leading in different directions from it. I could see some distance down each of them and quickly I realized the interior of the dome was a maze of tunnels that wound round and round with seemingly no pattern or rational intent. It felt a bit like what I imagine being shrunk down and tossed into an anthill must feel like. Fortunately, it appeared to be deserted; I could neither see nor hear traces of anyone. Unfortunately that included the one I’d been following.

  I chose the wide passageway directly opposite the entrance and padded slowly down it. A crunch up ahead, coming from around a sharp corner, and I halted, then backed up a few steps. Someone was coming. The walls were extremely uneven due to mainly being formed from angled pillars of crystal and I moved until I’d pressed myself into a narrow alcove formed by a crease between two of them. There I waited, pistol up and ready. Seconds later the strange figure I’d been following strode by. He didn’t look my way and didn’t slow down.

  What to do? Jump out and accost him, demanding information? Follow him again? I wasn’t certain. As I wrestled with different approaches and plans, his footsteps faded and disappeared.

  At that moment a fear seized me: What if he had represented the only way back home? Then again, I reminded myself, I had no way of knowing where he was going now. What was the likelihood that he was headed back to Victoria? To the contrary, he might well have led me to some even more remote locale. Perhaps one where the atmosphere wasn’t this breathable.

  So I forced myself to calm down an
d wait. I would find a way back home, I told myself—but on my terms, once I’d thoroughly investigated what was happening here.

  Stepping out of the alcove, I hurried down the corridor in the direction from which the being had come and rounded the sharp corner. Then I nearly stumbled and fell.

  I had entered a room—a room filled with pinkish light. The walls and ceiling were composed of the same crystal shafts that comprised the building’s outer construction. What seized my attention, however, was what filled much of the space at the center.

  Banks of equipment of some sort—boxy and white and made of metal and plastic and entirely out of place here in this crystalline funhouse—surrounded a silver metal slab which rested on a single matching leg at the center. The slab was at least two meters wide and more than twice that in length and it was tilted at a slight angle back. Strapped onto it—bolted to it by metal brackets at wrists and ankles and waist—lay a man, or something like a man yet not one.

  It was another being like the one I’d followed. He wore none of the glittering glasslike armor that the other had possessed; instead he was clad in gray rags that looked to have been violently torn and burned in places. Something that might have been dried blood formed splotches here and there. His features were narrow, angular, sharp. He was not as tall as the other but just as slender and spindly. His skin was pale and milky; his eyes were closed. As I neared him I could hear a soft groaning sound escaping his too-thin lips.

  What was this? Had the other been torturing him? Was he a prisoner? Or perhaps merely a patient, receiving particularly onerous treatments for his own good? It was hard to tell which.

  Before I could formulate a question or even clear my throat and introduce myself, his eyes snapped open and he stared directly at me.

  I somehow resisted the impulse to leap back, though my pulse grew rapid. I felt my pistol tight in my grasp, then considered and holstered it. I raised my open hands in what I hoped was a universal signal of peaceful intentions—not that he was in a position to threaten me, restrained as he was. It simply somehow seemed the appropriate thing to do.

  He said nothing, merely staring at me, and so after a few seconds I approached and executed a somewhat formal bow. “Hello,” I said. “Um—can you understand me?”

  The other didn’t open his mouth, but a moment later I could somehow hear what must have been his response anyway. The words were unintelligible to me but they resounded within my mind.

  The effect was somewhat startling and I must have stumbled back a step or two again. Waving my already upraised hands I called out, “Wait, wait—I can’t understand—”

  The voice in my head changed slightly, changed again. Then suddenly I could understand it.

  “A human. Well. This is unexpected.”

  He was speaking directly to my mind. That certainly took me aback. That and the fact that he was an alien. And that I likely stood on some other world, far away from my own. And that I had ridden a horse rather than a spacecraft to get here.

  Yes, when I truly put all the activities of the day thus far in proper perspective, hearing his voice within my head didn’t rank up there with the most startling developments. I resolved to worry about all those things at a later date, when the situation was not nearly as pressing.

  I looked back at the alien and smiled. “Then may I ask whom you were expecting?”

  “Oh, no one,” his silent voice replied in my head. “I had resigned myself to the idea that I would be quite alone until my tormentor returned again.”

  Tormentor? “You are being tortured here, then?”

  A soft chuckle, actually out loud, from his thin lips.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he replied, now communicating verbally and with no discernible accent. “In several manners, actually.”

  “Why?”

  Now his lips turned upward in a true smile, though clearly filled with tinges of pain and regret.

  “For being the point of greatest resistance,” he said. A pause, and I could feel his presence within my head grow stronger for a moment. Then, “For being the sand in the gears. The spanner in the works.”

  “You took those phrases from my mind, didn’t you?”

  “I did. I wanted to be sure you understood my meaning, and they seemed colloquial and apt.”

  “I’m not at all sure I appreciate you rummaging about inside my mind.”

  He said nothing for a moment and I waited, studying him. Then, “You are quite right,” he said. “Quite right. Perhaps I have lost my sense of appropriateness, of proper boundaries, during my long period of incarceration here.”

  I nodded. “I can see where that could be possible.”

  Another pause, this one slightly uncomfortable. He continued to stare back at me, unblinking. It began to give me something of the creeps. At last he smiled weakly and said, “Might I inquire as to how a human came to be here?”

  “I followed someone. Your jailer, I suspect.”

  “Ah.” A pause. “Followed him from...?”

  Now it was my turn to offer a smile. And that was all.

  After a few seconds he frowned, realizing I wasn’t going to volunteer every scrap of information I possessed simply for the asking.

  “So,” he said, trying a different tack, “will you be getting me down from here, then?”

  I reached up and stroked my goatee, thinking. He continued to stare at me.

  “I imagine that would be to your advantage,” I told him, “but I don’t know that it would be to mine.”

  “How now?”

  I smiled and spread my hands. “I do not know you. Nor do I know the causes of your incarceration here. Perhaps you were put here for very valid reasons, by proper authorities. Dare I go against their judgment? And if so, for what reasons?”

  He looked back at me for several seconds before his expression slowly changed. A sly smile appeared; it was almost seductive.

  “I can see that you are a cautious man. That is good. Very wise. Very healthy.”

  I shrugged. “I try to be.”

  He nodded that long, slender head.

  “I believe that you can be of some use to me.”

  I chuckled. “Afraid I’m terribly busy at the moment.” I hesitated dramatically. “But... if you were of some use to me...”

  He looked somewhat shocked for an instant, and then angry. The look passed within a very brief moment, however.

  “I believe we could be useful to one another,” he said, the smile returning as quickly as it had evaporated. “An arrangement promising mutual benefits, as it were.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Free me from this infernal captivity and I will show you the way back to your home.”

  I gave him a look intended to indicate that I was considering the offer, though I was not.

  “No,” I replied at length. “I think I will go roaming about this place on my own. It looks capable of holding my interest for some time.” I shrugged. “When I tire of it, I’m sure I will find the way home eventually.”

  “I am sure that you will not,” he said. “You will require a guide.”

  “Will I?”

  His laugh was soft and staccato. “Furthermore, I will grant you the one thing you most desire.”

  “Would you now? And what might that be?”

  “The opportunity to gain revenge on those killed your father.”

  My expression slowly morphed from one of curiosity to one of anger. “I will tell you this only once more,” I said, my voice very low but filled with menace. “You need to stay out of my head.”

  His smile broadened. “I did not take that information from your mind, Gaius son of Constantine. I did not have to.” He laughed at my surprise. “Oh yes. I know who you are now. And I know what you want above all other things.” He chuckled softly. “And I can help you get it.”

  + + +

  Suffice to say I freed him from his restraints and helped him down. He moved very slowly and stiffly at first, like a
n old man wracked with arthritis. His condition concerned me in that if we were to travel on foot at the speed he appeared capable of moving, we might never reach Victoria. Conversely, though, I was at least able to relax and not overly concern myself that he might attack me. He could scarcely move at all, much less threaten physical violence.

  You might think me foolish for choosing to—trust him? No; I never trusted him. Never. Not even at the end, after he went into the machine and... No, I digress. It was not so much that I trusted him but that I was willing to give him the opportunity to demonstrate the truth of his promises. Remember—at this point I was lost on an alien world and the final strands of the web I had been trying to unravel since that horrific moment in my father’s tent were slipping through my fingers. This strange being represented the best—the only—chance I had to make any progress toward finding my father’s killers.

  He discarded his old, stained clothes and donned a shining tunic of royal blue with red and gold trim, an eight-pointed silver star on the chest. His pants were of similar material and were dark gray. He’d retrieved those items from a drawer after I’d helped him down.

  We immediately set out, negotiating the maze of passages I’d passed through before, and emerged back onto the grassy lawn. An orange-yellow sun hung directly overhead now and it beat down with remarkable intensity. The grass and flowers and trees around us fairly vibrated with color and brightness. It was all very nearly too much, and I found myself squinting, raising a hand to shield my eyes and wishing I’d brought sunglasses along—though I could only laugh at the notion that I would have felt the need to bring sunglasses on what had begun as a late-night ride.

  My companion’s movements picked up a bit once we were out in the sunshine and he began to stride purposefully through the grass. I could tell then that he was not nearly as tall as the first of his kind—the one who’d led me there—though he was still a bit taller than me. I followed along after him, curious about a great many things.