Jack Gregson & the Forgotten Portal (13 page)

We need to get out of here quickly, he
thought. In response the mist around him began to stir, voicing
asking where this foreign thought was coming from.

Jack immediately tried to stop thinking,
hoping his cousins would also notice and do the same.

He started moving again, as legs cut through
their bodies. The army above ran around in a panic, trying to
locate the three of them.

He made his way along the outskirts of the
Horde, staying close to the mountainside on his left. There was
shade coming up along the mountainside and he hoped they could slip
away from the mist unnoticed and hide there.

“Jack, where are we going?” David
hissed.

The Horde went silent. Millions of beings
stopped and listened for one of them to speak again.

Jack kept his mind blank, trying hard not to
shout at David to shut up. He increased speed towards the shade,
his connection to his cousins tightened, as their anxiety grew.
Finally he reached the edge closest to the shadow and stopped,
waiting to see if his movement had caught anyone’s eye.

After a time, the voices within the Horde
resumed, at first small whispers and then full chatter, wondering
where the intruders had gone. Once it had reached full volume
again, Jack moved them away, into the shadow of an overarching rock
face.

Don’t talk, he thought, hoping they may hear
him while they were as one.

That was mental drifted into Jack’s mind. He
turned back and looked at the army of people standing in the mist.
A large one-eyed man, much like the ones they’d encountered on
Bowlandose, stood near the portal having an angry conversation with
a human figure of black mist that had grown out from the Horde.

Him again…

Who again? Jack didn’t know whom the thought
had come from.

I’ll explain later.

He looked around as he remembered what
Anthrow had said about the magic. It could run out at any minute
and then they would be exposed.

He looked around for somewhere they could
go. The spot of shade they were in was small, only metres from
Theordens men. If they followed the mountain around they would soon
be exposed, with nowhere safe to run in sight.

He looked up and noticed a small hole,
hidden in the shadows further up the wall. It wasn’t big enough to
fit any of them in human form, but as mist it would be
possible.

Follow me, he thought as he moved towards
the mountain and began crawling up, the mist clinging to the rock.
He reached the hole and poured through it; happy to see it opened
up into a cave big enough to hold them all in their human form.

Jack concentrated on the ring and willed the
magic to stop, their bodies returning to normal.

“That was…”

“Mental. I know.” Said Rosie. She slowly
moved towards the hole and peered down at the scene below. “How did
they know we would come through that portal? It’s like they knew
our plans.”

“Vonsant or Anthrow must have told them,”
said David.

“No, they wouldn’t do that!” said Rosie.

Jack wasn’t sure who was right, but he hoped
nobody had betrayed them. Did Theorden know their plan to get to
Diamond Lake? Looking down at the army of people below, he suddenly
felt frightened.

What were they going to do?

***

The Shadow Man yelled in frustration. They
had gotten away again! Theorden would be furious. His men were
spread out. Searching for the three Gregson’s they had let get
away.

Idiots!

It had been dumb luck that he personally was
in the area when they’d arrived. Theorden had ordered him to place
groups of followers at over twenty seemingly random portals, in the
hope of catching the heir. Why he had picked those particular ones
was a mystery to the Shadow Man. Theorden rarely shared his plans
with him.

Find them! Bring me the book they carry!
Theorden’s commands travelled through the Horde to the Shadow Man,
frightening the voices of the mist to silence.

Why did he want a book they carried? And
more importantly how had they gotten away?

One of the reports had said they’d turned
into mist and hidden within the Horde, however he’d scoured the
area and couldn’t hear their voices anywhere. Had they returned
through the portal? It seemed the most logical thing to have
happened.

He had to think quickly, Theorden was
already gathering his main army at the portal to Earth. The current
heir needed to die, so that the title could pass back to where it
belonged.

The Shadow Man decided to split the group
and send one half back through the portal. The rest could stay here
with the Horde and continue the search on Coran.

As he moved to give out his orders, he
thought about the name the green ogre had said he’d heard - Jack.
Long ago he and his wife had hoped to call their child Jack if it
turned out to be a boy.

They were both dead now, his mother refusing
to use her magic to save them. She had then banished him from his
home, all because he had sought out help from Theorden!

He made a promise that he would kill the
false heir and take the title back for himself. It was his by birth
rite, and she had had no right taking it away from him in the first
place!

He would then return to Gregson Manor with
Theorden and rule over what was rightfully his.

Chapter
Fourteen

The Book’s
Secret

Jack, David and Rosie sat in the small cave,
trapped. They watched and waited; hoping the group below would
leave the area.

The cave was large enough to stand in and a
few metres deep. Judging by the straw and sticks laying everywhere,
Jack figured it had once been home to a family of large birds.

“Who was that man in the mist?” asked Rosie
quietly. “Why did you say ‘him again?’”

“He was at the Grotto when we first got
attacked. After you two went through the portal he appeared in the
clearing,” said Jack.

“You didn’t tell us that…”

“Anthrow said the Horde couldn’t travel
through portals. It can’t be the same person,” said David.

“It was,” Jack insisted. “There’s
something…familiar about him.”

“Familiar,” said David. “He looked like a
bloody shadow.”

“Not that…I don’t know what it is. I just
feel like I know him.” Jack couldn’t explain it any clearer. He
didn’t understand it himself. It wasn’t like he looked familiar.
His posture or size didn’t have anything to do with it.

There was a feeling, like there was a
connection between him and the family. Maybe it was Theorden. But
wouldn’t Anthrow have said something if it was? He had seen the
Shadow Man in the Grotto too.

“So what do we do now?” asked David. “This
is comfy and all, but I’m getting hungry and there’s around a
hundred people down below looking to kill us! And did you hear that
mist! It’s like every living thing it’s ever killed is actually
alive in smoke form and on the lookout for us too! We’re
screwed.”

“Calm down,” said Rosie.

“They’re splitting up,” said Jack.

The Shadow man had been instructing a small
group of men who were now breaking away and gathering their troops.
Half of them made their way to the portal and formed a line walk
through.

“They must think we went back through the
portal,” said Rosie.

“I think they’re just covering their bases,”
replied Jack. “Look, half are staying.”

The remaining men had started sweeping the
area, groups of them going off in different directions. They were
starting at the perimeter of the mountain and working their way out
into the desolate terrain beyond.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief as they
inspected the shadows and didn’t look up at the hole in the wall
where they were hiding.

“We’ll have to wait until nightfall and
sneak back out of the cave. The black ring has one charge
left.”

“What about food?” Asked David.

“Everything that was living on this planets
surface is dead. No plants or animals. I don’t know where we’re
going to get any food anytime soon. Maybe at Diamond Lake?”
suggested Rosie.

“That’ll be hours! We haven’t eaten in
nearly a day and even that was only a strange purple fruit. Why
would Theorden choose to live on a planet where he’s killed
everything that there is to eat? Surely if the Forgotten Portal’s
here, he’d have found it already,”

While his cousins talked, Jack grabbed
Rosie’s bag and took out the book, to see if it knew anything about
Coran.

He looked at the cover just as the title of
the book was changing, this time to ‘The Forgotten Portal.’

“Look at this! The book knows about the
Portal,” said Jack.

“Ha! Yeah right,” said David turning in his
direction. “The Forgotten Portal is a portal. It was forgotten and
that’s why people call it ‘The Forgotten Portal’. Do you really
think this book knows anything useful about something most people
think is a myth?”

“It must think it can help us,” said Jack as
he flipped open the book to the first page and started reading.

David Gregson is a chubby know-it-all. He
thinks he knows everything and he’s overweight, which is why he’s
known as a ‘chubby know-it-all’.

“Hey!”

“You really need to start being nicer to the
book,” said Rosie.

“It’s a book!”

“It also doesn’t have any other words in it
anymore, just that sentence over and over,” said Jack flipping
through the pages. “Can you apologise to it or something?”

“It’s. A. Book.”

“Say sorry David!” said Rosie.

“Fine! Book, I am so sorry. Forgive me.
Please.”

“It’s working!” said Jack. “Listen to
this.”

The Forgotten Portal, the most powerful
object in the universal was created by a god, and given to humanity
as a gift to improve their lives.

“Please…”

“Shh!”

Realising that the Universe had become a
very big place, with millions of civilisations living in isolation,
the god created the first portal to bring them together.

People from all planets were brought to
Coran and asked to create a doorway to their home world.

A person just had to imagine where the
doorway would appear on their world and the Forgotten Portal would
take them there. Once that connection was made, it was bound back
to the Grotto, so the people of the Universe would have one central
point to access all worlds.

“Amazing,” said Rosie. “So all those portals
at the Grotto were created one by one. It must have taken
centuries!”

After some time, people started making their
own way to Coran to make more portals, without the gods invitation
or permission.

Some portals were added for convenience, but
more were created for ventures of a more sinister nature. The
portal soon became a tool of theft, kidnapping and murder.

Furious that his creation had been used for
dark deeds, the god hid the portal and the forest it resided in
from the Universe.

From then on people from all worlds who came
to Coran would leave in disappointment, as no amount of searching
or magic would reveal its location.

Centuries passed and people started to doubt
the old stories. Fact turned to myth and myth into fiction until
eventually only dreamers and madmen still believed in what had
become known as The Forgotten Portal.

“So Theorden has killed everything on this
planet in search of the portal. He is a madman!” said Rosie.

“It’s a good thing he can’t find it,” said
Jack.

“So why is the book telling us this now?”
asked David. “It’s not like we asked about it.”

Jack looked back at the book as an
additional paragraph appeared.

The Forgotten Portal can create new portals
but it can also send you through to any existing ones. It could
take you to Diamond Lake. It could also take you back to Earth.

“But the god hid the portal from everyone.
How are we supposed to find it?”

There is only one way to find the Forgotten
Portal. Me.

I was created to guide people back to the
Portal, straight through the illusion the god put in place. It is
impossible to reach the portal without me in your possession.

“I thought your reason to live was to give
people information on anything and everything that they want to
know about,” said David.

It is the way I was created. When Richard’s
father purchased me, it meant I could only share the secret of the
Portal to him or his heirs. And even then I had to believe that
they would not use the portal for evil purposes.

To everyone else, I need to seem useful,
else wind up fuel on a fire. Hence I help the people who read me,
to the best of my knowledge.

“So you can only tell me of the Forgotten
Portal because I’m the current heir to the Gregson Manor.”

Correct. You are the current heir Jack, and
I believe you would not use the Portal for ill will. I believe your
cousins wouldn’t either and since you were bound to fill them in on
everything I wrote about, I didn’t see any point in asking you to
step away from them before mentioning it.

The book was right, Jack thought. He
wouldn’t have kept it from his cousins. Then why are you keeping
what you know about your father from them? A traitorous voice in he
head asked him.

Rosie, who now sat next to Jack, also
reading the words as they appeared asked, “Did you ever tell
Richard about the portal?”

No, but he asked me about it constantly.
People like him are the reason the Forgotten Portal was hidden in
the first place, so I always denied knowledge of it.

He said that he knew that I knew where it
was. That his father had told him of the portal when he was a young
boy and that I’d shared with him the secret of its location.

“Was he right, Book? Did you share the
location with his father?”