The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (11 page)

Then Alessia had arrived.

“So there’s something in your atomic construction that’s—that’s
different
than us,” Keene said. “And now you’re the key to controlling this massive energy implosion.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t the monks or locals just, I don’t know, work their old magic?”

“It’s not magic,” Alessia said with reverence.

“Fine. Science. Whatever you want to call it.”

“All the ones who held the old ways are dead,” Alessia said. “I’m the last of the line.”

“What about your father?”

“It is rare,” Alessia said. “A genetic mutation not useful for any other purpose.” She poked at the charcoaled meat, then nodded, satisfied it was finished. She brought the steaming pot from the fire and placed a woven mat onto the rug. Then she set down the pot.

Keene reached for whatever leg was sticking out of the pot, and she slapped it away.

“You have much to learn, Kip Keene.”

“So I’m told.” Keene waited until she returned with wooden slabs, plain but still beautiful. Alessia served them both before serving herself. She ate standing. “About your father.”

“We have tried to mount an attack on the Diamond Dragon many times. They have all failed, for the Centurions are strong. That is why we sent a request for help to the world in the journals, hidden in the folds of our friend Prashant’s clothes while he accompanied Cladius on the visits to the town. Cladius believes him utterly loyal. The truth is more fluid.”

“You could’ve sent a lot more journals, you know,” Keene said.

“As you might suspect, paper and leather are not infinitely abundant here,” Alessia said. “And each journal burdened Prashant with considerable risk. To send more than one every few years would be…”

Her eyes darkened. A light flashed in Keene’s head. “You love him and thought you could save this place all by yourself.”

“You know nothing about me,” she responded, in a way that suggested Keene already knew almost everything that mattered.

“So aside from lover boy, why haven’t you and your father just left Crazytown yourself,” Keene said. “I mean, there’s clearly a way out of here.”

“Two portals out. One in the Diamond Dragon temple, the other in the valley, in the cellar of Cladius’ estate. Both heavily guarded by the Centurions and their loyal subjects.” Alessia paced about the room, barely touching her plate. “Besides, would you leave?”

“Definitely.”

“The world will end today and all my friends will die if we do nothing,” Alessia said. “A short lived victory, don’t you think?”

“You make a compelling case.” Keene listened for the creak of the floorboards, but the only sound was the crackling fire and Strike mauling her food. Years of evading Centurion rule had forced Alessia to become completely invisible.

It’d paid off. They hadn’t found her up here on this secluded hill—despite their men being no more than a mile or two away.

Keene wondered what Linus was up to. What he wouldn’t give for an aerial map or some sort of GPS. A parachute might be nice. Hell, any information at all on how to defeat a crazed group of Roman Centurions who had just spent two millennia honing their combat skills would be excellent.

He sighed.

Alessia gave him a sharp look. “We must kill Cladius.”

“Whoa, slow down there,” Keene said. “I’m on your side.”

“You might not be, once you hear him speak. He is very persuasive.”

“You said he was a brute.”

“He is,” Alessia said. “But an eloquent one.”

“Explains how he got the leaders of Tillus in on his scam,” Keene said between mouthfuls of the unidentified meat. Despite its mysterious provenance, he had to admit that it was one of the best things he’d ever tasted.

Alessia wiped her eyes quickly and looked away.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You can tell Strike instead, if you don’t trust me.”

This got a sharp laugh, followed by a hiccup. “We went yesterday. To the temple.”

“Who is we,” Keene said. He stopped eating and sat up straight.

“My father and I. We didn’t know help was coming, and…”

Keene’s eyes flashed to the corner. Two animal skin beds.

“The Centurions have your father.”

“And they’ve demanded that I—and the rest of the resistance—surrender, or else they’ll torture him.”

Keene pursed his lips together and checked his watch. “How many hours did you say we have?”

“Until midnight.”

“What time is it now,” Keene said. “I’m full. Strike’s full.”

Strike shot him a glare, and set down her own dish with sinewy strands jutting out of her mouth.

“About two,” Alessia said. “That gives us only ten hours before the world vanishes.”

“Shit,” Keene said, an icy chill running through his chest. “That changes things.”

“We still head to the valley first,” Alessia said. “We need my father.”

“Thought you said he didn’t have the genetic mutation—”

“If he’s not with me, I don’t think I can make it to the temple,” Alessia said. “I can’t fulfill the prophecy without him.”

“Then we’ll go to the valley. If you promise one thing.”

“What?” Alessia said, her voice hardening at the realization that a catch was involved.

“Take the route with the least amount of holes.”

She turned around, and her dark eyes flashed with the hint of a smile. “I can do you one better.” Alessia reached in her pocket and tossed Keene a metal object.

He caught it and looked down.

A carabineer.

“Aw, come on.”

The only thing worse than a bunch of holes was scaling the sheer face of a mountain.

“You see, Martin,” Cladius Maximus said, leaning back in his chair and sipping a fine wine from a silver chalice, “you have become quite the problem for me.”

He scratched his hand with a large, thick finger. His eyes—one emerald, one red—flashed with curiosity as he stared at his new captive. Cladius had seen Martin Redbeard before, this nemesis of his for so long—had it been twenty-five years already?—but it had always been from afar. He only knew the man from tales about resistance activities, relayed by his men. In hushed whispers from his local informants.

Seeing the legend up close, however, was almost disappointing.

Cladius wondered if the locals thought the same way of him—a fabled monster so mythical as to be impossible to reconcile with reality.

He crossed his massive forearms, the wine almost sloshing over the edge of the cup. His tanned skin, covered in old scars, turned a slight shade of red as he pressed his muscles together.

Martin poked at the bed of fresh greens on the plate before him.

“It’s not poisoned, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Cladius figured it would be best to demonstrate. He strode across the private meeting room and plucked one of the leaves from the plate. Then, with an exaggerated motion, he chewed it and swallowed. “If I am not dead in five minutes, you will have your confirmation.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You hate me. I understand.” Cladius waved his broad hand around at the mansion, the extensive wood paneling on the room’s walls. “Ostentatious, no?”

“Quite the vocabulary for a Roman soldier.”

“You have to be clever to be a soldier,” Cladius said. “It takes a lot of skill to avoid getting killed. A man’s ingenuity, you see, keeps him from harm. It’s something I worry about, now that I am here. Have I lost my knack?”

“Maybe.”

“We captured you, didn’t we? Coming to kill me, I presume?”

“The temple’s energy must be contained.”

“As if I don’t have the situation under control.” Cladius waved his hand dismissively. “You all take me for a fool, when it is you who are the fools. Following a leader who treats you as puppets.”

“I know who you are. All the bodies you’ve buried along the way.”

“Do you, now? The story of paradise lost, is it?” Cladius said. “Two sides to every story, as you might well know.”

Martin speared a large stack of leaves and held them up to the window light.  “I know who you are.”

Cladius gave a knowing wink. He snagged the fork from mid-air as it rocketed towards his throat, then snared the butter knife with his free hand before it could enter his eye.

“Not bad,” Cladius said. “Better than most attempts, in fact.” He took a bite from the greens still attached to the prongs of the fork. “It is quite a shame that you refuse to try the salad.”

Martin vaulted the table, but Cladius easily sidestepped the man’s punch. Then the Roman landed a light blow of his own, directly at the base of Martin’s neck. The man immediately seized up, frozen in place.

“I apologize for the roughness, but you are quite difficult to convince. I assume that Prashant has told you many things. Yes, I know that Prashant is your leader. I have for quite some time. You are surprised that I let him live, given my reputation.” Cladius laughed and drank from the chalice. He stretched his massive limbs and paced before his guest. “The truth is, I like the man. He is simply misguided, fighting for the wrong things.”

There was so much he could explain to Martin, all the things that one could learn over two thousand years. But with the clock winding down on this, the day of days, there simply wasn’t time to transfer the requisite knowledge. It would take close to a hundred lifetimes, and even then, there were no guarantees.

History had a curious way of categorizing villains and heroes. His own people becoming heroes by virtues of their fearsome, world-spanning power, little more. But from the unheard voices of those they had defeated, a different story would surely be told.

Cladius understood that the narrative was key. In his early days in Shambhala, he had not controlled it well. He would be the first to admit that some of his initial actions were borne of bloodlust and greed.

But that was before he had understood the purpose of the Diamond Dragon, the relationship between this land and the one he had left so many years ago. What the powers here could truly do for his own world, the one he had left two millennia ago. If only the root could be shared.

But first, he had a crisis to attend to. If the girl was not captured, then his plans would be rendered useless. His attention snapped back to Martin, who still stood ramrod straight, unmoving.

“The world you and your daughter seek to return to,” Cladius said. “I wish to go with you. But I wish to make it better with all I have learned here.”

He pressed his hand against the base of Martin’s neck, right near the brain stem. The man collapsed on the floor, his head turning in a daze.

“W-what did you do to me?”

“Paralyzed you. Fair game, I’d say, after you tried to kill me. Twice.” Cladius grabbed the fork from the table and offered it to Martin. “You may try again, should you like.”

Martin stared at the fork like it was made of battery acid, recoiling from the utensil. “No.”

“It’s not a trick.”

“Stay away from me.”

“I plan on returning to our world once my business here is done,” Cladius said. “I have watched for the past two thousand years, waited for this mysterious girl. In the past, the energy had been released, controlled. Did you ever wonder where it had gone?”

“No.”

“There is a problem when a man does not ask the correct questions,” Cladius said. He dropped the fork to the ground and turned his back to face the bright red wall. “I have protected this place from outsiders for many years because I have learned, first hand, that the power within is too alluring for others to handle. And because the stories told here are not true.”

“What do you mean, they are not true?”

“You believe that the girl, if she is brought near the temple, will release this energy and save the world. Earth. But this is not what will occur. Because we are not on Earth right now.”

“I don’t believe a word you say.”

“All the energy dispersed from this universe is expelled into the multi-verse, where it collides with other universes. Like our own world of predators and prey, those universes that don’t get out of the way or cannot withstand this energy are simply annihilated. Survival of the fittest, on a cosmic scale.”

Cladius turned to face Martin, who was quaking on the ground, saying nothing.

“Fail to release this excess energy, and the laws of physics are violated. The energy equation becomes unbalanced, and this universe will implode.”

“We’re in Tibet,” Martin said, his voice wavering but no longer combative.

“No, my friend,” Cladius said, offering his hand to the confused man. “We are in Shambhala. An alternate universe. And in this universe, Earth does not exist. Nor will it ever exist again if that energy is allowed to be released. For these two universes are too close within cosmic space for both to co-exist peacefully.”

“What are you saying?”

“It is simple,” Cladius said with a grave tone. “This universe must be destroyed for our own to survive.” Cladius uttered the words not with satisfaction, but with a grim resolution. Sometimes there was no win-win.

Sometimes there was only survival.