Fade (25 page)

The blue aura on the horizon was dimmer through the torrent, but still beckoned them more than the rain. In the revelry, the pull toward it could still be felt among the men. Eyes were seen to wander to it even as men drank their fill. Angela dropped her arms, opening her mouth to take in the sweet cloud burst. It poured over her chin and cheeks like waterfalls. After a while she dropped her head and looked also to the blue circle in the distant horizon. She smiled. Then she turned to Kah’en and made her way to where he sat on an outcropping of rock.

Sitting, she bumped him with her shoulder, her smile widening. They watched the men dance and run in the water, some of them lying down, letting it wash over them, laughing and talking, a sound that was scarce over the hiss of the downpour. They watched as it slowed, the men seeming to slow with it, shrinking away to their makeshift tents and checking the stakes to which the kulls were tied for the last time that night. The thunder became distant and the drops slowed to nothing.

Before long, they pulled the gathered wood from their tents where they had placed it to keep it dry when the rain began. Fires were started. Dried meats were pulled from their satchels and the few spoils of hunts were skinned and spitted. But they all, every one of them, looked sated on a full meal.

Now, as darkness took full hold, all that was left was the electric glow on the horizon. Each of them ate, some still drinking from water they had collected earlier. But all unspeaking, watched that radiance.

When Kah’en kissed her, Angela leaned into it. She took his lips and pushed her hand into the hair on the back of his neck. Kah’en felt as her body warmed, almost too much to take. Almost.

***

Kah’en assured the others they could stay without shame as he and Angela traveled the scant few miles to their destination. Their leader stepped forward, regarding his men. He promised nothing in the way of war, but they all wished to make the remainder of the journey. The Fade’s curiosity, Kah’en thought, it had led them to many great discoveries, but also to much death.

The last few miles seemed the longest. Rocks jutted from the ground like rotted teeth and they found themselves at dead ends or deep crevasses several times, having to turn around and find another way. The light was always their compass, but there would be no straight path to it.

Insects the size of a fist, scorpion tails curled up on their yellowed exoskeletons, skittered past them in a constant stream. The kulls crushed a few with every step. Sometimes the mounts would yelp, once almost throwing the men off as it reared in pain. The men raised their legs, watching every golden one of them. But the rocks began to grow smaller and the insects dissipated. The land flattened out as if bowing to the great wall of rock making a wide curve around where the light emanated.

Even the smallest rock of it was as large as a kull. The wall climbed for thirty feet at least in an almost perfect semi-circle against the side of a mountain which was splashed with the blue light. They had all stopped and were staring, wondering what to do next. Kah’en dismounted and walked a few steps forward. “There has to be a door,” he said, talking to himself for the most part.

Angela was at his side before he even realized. “It’s there.” She pointed to a tall, rounded hole in the wall, almost hidden around the curve of the structure. “Looks like it’s got a rock door though. Wanna knock?” There was unease in her smile.

Kah’en looked at the rest and asked if they had any ideas.

“Obviously it is not some savage beast that builds a thing like this,” one of them said in the Fade tongue.

Their leader nodded. “Perhaps it can be spoken to?”

“What are they saying?” Angela whispered.

“A moment,” he assured her and then returned to the hard, guttural language she had made well known she’d begun to hate. “I have heard few stories of this place, but they were all stories of death.”

Another spoke. “I have heard these stories, too. But, I believe if I were engaged by a yelling army carrying weapons pointed at me, I would fight as well.”

Kah’en lowered his head, rubbing at what had become a thick growth of hair on his face. “I will go to this door. Call to it. See what manner of response I get.”

The Fade’s leader frowned, then lifted his hands from his reigns seeming to have no better ideas.

Kah’en looked down at Angela, explained the conversation and said, “I have decided to go to this door. Call for the creature. We could push through this door, but I do not see that going well for us.”

Angela hesitated. “I’m going with you.”

“No,” he said and began toward the wall.

“No?” She said. “Eff that.” She strode up behind him.

Kah’en shook his head, but did not stop nor turn. “You stay back then. In case his answer is not…
pleasant
.”

She agreed.

The door, no more than a giant block of stone placed against the opening, was at least two feet thick. The way it leaned let Kah’en see in a bit. Angela snuck close enough to get a peek in behind him. Great wooden beams the size of full-grown trees leaned against the stones, holding the walls in place. The bright blue even reflected off of them. But he saw no one.

He took a breath and called out that they came in peace. Silence. He tried again. Still no sound came from within.

“Maybe he’s out. You know, hunting or something.” Angela said, trying at hope.

Three more times Kah’en pleaded for the creature to respond—just respond.

Angela rubbed her fingers together nervously, getting closer, bending forward, trying to see again through the crack into the fortress the stone provided. “We can’t just
leave
,” she said, pleading.

They both turned at the sound of beating hooves. It was Dacus. “We will push the door away.”

Kah’en eyed him with concern, but agreed, his shoulders tightening, lips compressing, as he backed away. “They are going to open this door,” he said to Angela.

“Are you sure?” Angela said, her voice a squeak. “You said you didn’t see that going well for us.”

Dacus and another of the Fade rode the two kulls toward the large stone door without another word. The great, hairy creatures lowered their heads and began to press them against it. The stone door creaked and ground upon the wall against which it stubbornly laid. The next few moments happened in fast-forward.

The kulls stumbled forward as the rock door slid away. The two riders were torn from their mounts and thrown. The door landed with a mighty thump that rumbled the ground and everything around it but the fabled Guardian that now stood before them. His great maw widened, a deafening roar released from deep within him. The remains of the small group stumbled back.

“Please! We just want to talk!” She began to shout. “Our friends need us!” Tears stood in the corners of Angela’s eyes, her hands out, pleading. The being, larger than any of the Fade with them, looked at her, relaxing.

***

The Guardian sat on the balls of his large feet. His skin, which lay over his muscles like spandex, was mottled blue and gray. He rested two of his four barrel arms on his knees. His hands, with two stubbed fingers, flat tipped and wide, and even larger thumbs, hung between his knees. The other hands grasped the forearms of the lower two. All of his hands were empty, but he was by no means to be perceived as unarmed. The quick work he had made of the two Fade riders, who were now with the others, tending their wounds, spoke to this. Perfect, round orbs of citrine watched Angela.

“You should not be here,” one of his fingers came up, pointing at her. “This concerns me.” He spoke perfect English. She could feel him fishing it out of her brain.

“Um,” she said, her voice shuddering. “I’m here because I want to go home. Also, because I’m needed there.”

His face, lousy with wrinkles, was a lighter blue than his body and curtained by long, cloudy hair of the kind one might find in the drain. He turned to Kah’en. “You are Janar?”

Kah’en nodded, looking like he were trying his best to resist the temptation to either pull his weapon or take a position much farther away.

“Have your people found the second Earth then?” He pointed back at Angela. “Because I can smell it on her.”

Kah’en furrowed his brow. “Very recently.
Who are you?
”

“This concerns me,” he repeated, then looked up at the men in the distance. “They will die if they attack, Janar.” He looked back at Kah’en. “I do not wish it, but it is the truth.”

“We are not here to battle,” Kah’en said.

“You will not leave, either.” He looked at Angela. “For that, I am actually sorry. In a way, it is my fault you are here.” He sighed and the dust between his feet rose and danced.

“So you don’t plan on hurting us?” Angela asked, just to be sure, and the giant’s head moved like a pendulum. So Angela stepped toward him, her confidence blooming. “Then tell me why we can’t leave. My friends are in a war and they need us.”

His lips tightened. “On the second Earth?” His head lolled to the sky and he sat. “You’re still causing troubles,” he said to the air, then looked at them as if they would understand.

She hesitated, trying to get all the crap Jonas had told her straight, and ignoring the blue man’s comment to nobody. “Yeah, I think, the second Earth. My friend Jonas brought me from the, um,
first
one to save me from a different war.
Well.
The same war, technically.” She looked at Kah’en. “With
his
people.”

Kah’en took this as the cue it was. “Yes, our people came in search of our queen, whom we wish to raise again. They will destroy this girl’s planet and its people if we are not allowed to return and help stop them.”

“What makes you think she can be raised?” The Guardian’s eyes narrowed.

Kah’en’s mouth hung open a moment. “That is always been known.”

“Mira’s Janar, always more clever than I gave them credit for. Always skulking and watching.”

“The staff can raise her,” Kah’en continued. “We once believed by magic, but now we know it is technology.”

“That damned staff,” he said under his breath, one of his hands on his face. “I have known for a long time that your people had the staff when,” he pointed at the Fade behind Kah’en, “
they
began appearing here. That’s its default address: this wretched place. My sister’s doing. She would send her enemies here when…” He stopped and pinched his nose, screwing his eyes shut. Angela had begun to wonder if he would continue and had opened her mouth to speak when he started again. “So, I felt responsibility. I helped many of them settle in the beginning. I even befriended some, and then made the mistake of telling them that I came there of my free will, and that I controlled the gate. It did not take long for them to gather, thinking I would let them leave. They did not understand that I could
not
let them leave. So they attacked. Dozens died at my hand.” His face was pained.

Angela raised a hand, felt like she was in elementary school again, dropped it and spoke. “So, what is
here
? Is this really where the queen or whatever came from?”

The Guardian nodded. “This was once our home world, yes.” Her heart broke at the sadness that statement brought to his face. But he firmed his jaw and looked back at Kah’en. “How did your people come to understand what the staff could do?”

“The staff was in a museum for years. Then, only a small cult of Mira’s followers remained. It was not until later that our scientists began to look closer at the staff, finding the technology inside,” Kah’en said. “Aern was the first to hold it in centuries. I believe banishing people here made him feel as if he were like the queen.” He said this with a sneer.

“In ways he would not wish to be,” the Guardian said. “I imagined the worship of my sister would have been forgotten by the time your people had the technology to understand what it could do.” He flinched.

“So, where is our queen? She was not on the first Earth we attacked,” Kah’en said, then looked up, what the Guardian had said obviously just hitting him. “Your sister?”

“No, she was not on that Earth.” The Guardian’s smile was grim. “And, yes, your so-called queen, Mira, is my sister. We are the last of our kind as far as I am aware.” He looked at the sky as he spoke. “This, our world, was at war with itself millennia ago. We all saw the end coming, but no one would stop. I made the staff to take my sister and myself off of this world before it was destroyed. We escaped to the closest planet that could sustain our life. It was the planet of the Fanil.” He looked up at Angela. “You call them the Fade, I believe.”

“If you were there,” Kah’en said, emboldened, “why do our stories not speak of you?”

The Guardian looked at him. “Because I was not fool enough to involve myself in their primitive society.” He ignored Kah’en’s contemptuous look at that remark. “We both felt powerless, angry, after we escaped, but my sister could not let it go. At first, she focused her need for some kind of order, after such chaos here, on your people, and named herself their protector. Then she began to use the staff to travel to other worlds that might someday threaten her Fanil children—observing them.”

“Yes. Then she deserved her reputation.” Kah’en nodded, his chest poking out in an almost comic manner, which Angela tried not to be disgusted by.

“She did mean well, Janar. Earth was one of the planets she observed and, early on, she brought your people from slavery there, giving you a new life among the Fanil. Your slave masters were the first that she sent here, to this desolate world, to show them what evil men like them did to beautiful worlds.

“But, as time went on, none of this helped her get over our planet’s destruction. She became more paranoid and bitter angry. Observing planets that might one day be a threat was no longer good enough. She had made it her obsession to see no harm ever come to any of you, her adopted children. I should have stopped her when she returned covered in the blood of a world. But I let myself believe she was still the sister I love, and she wooed me with her insane rationalizations.”