The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (95 page)

“You can borrow my cloak and staff if you like,” Shann heard herself say.

Rael smiled at her. “No, thanks. I have a feeling they won’t be of much help.” He turned to Boxx. “Let’s go.”

Shann held her breath and watched as the tall boy and the little shelled creature walked forward until the dense barrier of fog swallowed them up.

~

The grey emptiness vanished, to be replaced by a peaceful meadow. Rael saw that Boxx too was gone. Yellow grass extended in all directions, scattered with splashes of cyan, white, crimson and purple flowers. Summer insects buzzed, preoccupied with their various tasks. A fence was visible a short way off, and some distance beyond it, a farmhouse. He recognised this place. It was his cousin’s smallholding near Lechem, where he used to play as a child.

A girl in a light pink dress sailed through the golden pasture, swinging a large basket. Rael instantly recognised the shining russet eyes, the small button nose, the deep brown bob of hair. “Shann, what are you doing here?”

She looked up at him and her eyes narrowed. “Very funny.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on.”

Rael turned his head and scanned his surroundings once more. “Boxx,” he called out.

She frowned. “What’s a ‘Boxx’?”

High overhead, a green and crimson lupa-hawk shrieked, seeking out the small creatures that scuttled between the densely packed stalks. Of the Chandara, there was no sign. Rael allowed himself to be dragged through the open field and away from the farmhouse. The suns blazed down from an unbroken, azure sky. It was getting warm. He removed his fur jacket and unfastened the top of his tunic. Up ahead, a grove of luxuriant purple trees offered the promise of cool shade. As they passed beneath the first of the overhanging branches, Shann flopped to the ground. She smiled up at him, and Rael eased himself down next to her. The girl pulled a patterned cloth from the basket and laid it on the ground, then began busying herself with the basket’s contents.

What’s happening to me?
Rael began to cycle through the possibilities. Could all of this be a dream? Everything seemed much too real for that. He could feel the warmth of the suns on his face, smell the heady scents of growing things.
Still, let’s test the hypothesis, shall we?
If it were true, then inducing peril or pain ought to be enough to wake him up. He stood up and began searching the copse. There was some kind of bramble a short distance away. Shann eyed him curiously as he walked over to it. He snapped off a long spine and dug it into his palm until the blood flowed.

Shann was on her feet, running toward him. “What are you doing?” she cried in alarm. Suddenly, his hand was in hers once again as she dabbed at the wound and cleaned it off with a handkerchief. As Rael felt the tenderness of her touch, confused feelings began to well up within him. Their relationship up to now had been one of friendship–nothing more. It was not that he was repelled by the sudden change, he was just totally unprepared for it. And yet…and yet this person was not Shann. She talked and sounded like Shann, but she was not the infuriatingly bossy firebrand that he knew. This Shann was warm, caring and affectionate. And she did not seem to know who Boxx was.

Rael thrust the thought aside for now and resumed his analysis while the girl worked. Could he be under the effect of some hallucinogenic drug? It seemed unlikely. Apart from the fact that he could not remember ingesting anything or being stuck with any kind of a syringe, the effect had been immediate and complete. He was no expert, but he was fairly certain that there was nothing chemical that could bring about such a vivid, drug-induced state so instantaneously. However, it should be reasonably simple for him to assess his own mental state. He began by reeling off in his mind the first twenty prime numbers, then calculated pi to ten decimal places. Clearly his mind was logical and well ordered, even if the rest of the world wasn’t.

That left…an illusion of some kind. But an illusion that afforded such complete visual, auditory and tactile senses, that it was completely indistinguishable from reality? It would require a level of technology so far ahead of anything he could conceive that it hardly seemed possible.

She finished dressing his hand and led him gently back to their spot. She sat on the ground, tucked her bare legs attractively under her and smiled at him once more. “Have something to eat?” He accepted a round pastry from her hand and bit into it. As the fruit juices burst onto his tongue, his eyes widened. His mother used to make pastries just like this…no, not just like this. They were
exactly
as he remembered. There was a pattern here. He was on the farm he remembered fondly from his youth, with an idealised version of the girl from Kelanni-Drann, eating his mother’s sweetmeats. It was as if…as if something had reached into his mind and constructed an entire world out of his own fantasies.

A test.
This was all supposed to be a test, but he could not imagine what. When Alondo and Patris had emerged from their particular trials, they had seemed disturbed, even traumatised. Yet there was nothing here that was vaguely distressing. He lay back in the grass. As he did so, the girl moved over and began stroking his forehead. He looked up into her soft brown eyes, saw the delicate curve of her neck, felt the caress of her fingertips. Her face lowered toward his. His hand moved up to her slender waist, and their lips met for what seemed like an eternity.

Suddenly the girl pulled away, her eyes aflame. She drew her hand back and slapped the boy full across the face. Pain and shock lanced through him, but before he could react, there was a blinding flash and he was laying on the cold hard metal surface of the Dais. Rael massaged his cheek, then clambered unsteadily to his feet.
What was all that about?
Had he failed somehow?

The sky was still overcast and he was already starting to feel a damp chill. He reached down and pulled on his coat. There was something nagging at the back of his mind.
The others. Where are the others?
He spun around, taking in the view from every direction. There was nothing. The parked avionics, the huddle of tents, all of it. All gone.

He was utterly alone.

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Chapter 33

Rael fought a rising sense of panic. The platform was completely deserted. He turned slowly, taking in the view from every direction. To the north he could just see the outline of the Vannath range of mountains. To the south, the undulating plain rolled away, terminating in a distant line that was the Arlan Sea. Close by, the majestic Tower of Akalon was the only sign of civilisation, though sealed and abandoned more than three millennia ago. He was a man both out of place and out of time.

Rael walked to the edge of the Dais. What could possibly have caused Lyall and the others to abandon him? An emergency of some kind? Had they been attacked while he was undergoing his experience in the dome of mist? That didn’t seem likely. He could imagine that they might be forced to board the avionics to escape, but he could not conceive of an emergency that would allow them the time to neatly pack away all the tents and other equipment. Yet there was not even a pot or a utensil remaining.

The grey dome was no longer there. It was possible that Boxx had shut it off, except that there was no sign of the Chandara either. Rael reached the rim of the Dais and peered gingerly over the edge. Silvery pools of rainwater had collected in low-lying areas of the rough heath land. At higher points, gnarled and stunted trees stood, clinging to the thin, bare soil like stubborn old men. It was a sheer drop to the surface–seven, maybe eight ryns. With a fall from that kind of height, even a flying cloak would be of little use. Rael calculated the probable impact velocity, assigning values for his body mass and likely drag coefficient. A little more than nine ryns per dahn. There was a possibility that he might not be killed instantly, but he would almost certainly be in no condition to walk away. If they had only left one of the tents, a few blankets, anything that he could use to construct a makeshift parachute…

He gazed up at the dense covering of low clouds. His best chance was probably to do nothing. If Lyall and the others had been forced to leave unexpectedly, then they wouldn’t have forgotten him. They would obviously come back for him the first chance they could. He might even be spotted by a passing avionic. The Dais was some way off the regular flight paths; the only people who generally ventured down this way were sightseers interested in viewing the ancient sites. The fact that it was wintertime made such casual traffic less likely, but not impossible.

Best to wait it out, then.
Rael eased himself down and sat cross-legged, facing the distant sea. If he was careful, he could survive here on his own for some time. He was pretty confident that he could rig up something from his own torn clothing that would collect rainwater. The main problem up here would be lack of food. How long could a Kelanni survive without food? Rael found himself wishing that he had paid more attention during the educator’s biology lectures, instead of factoring polynomials in his head or figuring out how he could get the girl two rows back, with the laughing eyes and waist-length hair, to notice him. Fifteen to twenty days? That sounded about right. He guessed that for the final third of that time he would probably be too weak to do anything. Sleeping more would conserve energy, but would increase the chances that he might miss help when and if it flew by.

A light rain began to patter against the metal surface. Rael pulled his coat tighter around him. How long had he been in the dome of fog, with the illusion of Shann? He reached inside his tunic and pulled out his timepiece. He had only been gone for about two hundred dahns. It seemed inconceivable that the rest could pack up and leave in so short a period of time.
Time.
He was suddenly struck by a wild thought. What if…what if they were still here, but he had somehow moved in time? He had no idea whether travel through time was actually possible, although he did know of some pretty out-of-the-way theories. The surrounding plains and the tower would probably have looked exactly the same three thousand turns ago as they did in the present. And they would probably look the same, three thousand turns into the future. He could be any…when.

Rael shook his head. Speculation. Right now, he needed to maximize his chances of staying alive. He could figure out the rest later. Ignoring the damp and the cold, he removed his coat and tunic and began ripping off a large section of cloth to make a rain catcher.

As he worked, he registered a movement in the corner of his eye. Rael dropped the torn garment and stood up. Something was flying through the air toward him from the centre of the Dais. It was a translucent sphere, small–not much wider than the palm of his hand. It approached his position and stopped, floating in front of his face like a disembodied eye.

Rael took a step back. His mind crowded with questions. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before, and yet there was something...something he had read once, or…
Shann.
She had mentioned something that existed in her world–a different kind of technology based on lodestones.
Vision Spheres,
she had called them. Could that be what this was? He peered into the depths of the device, but all he could see was a distorted reflection. What was it Shann had said? The image was generated one way only. Someone was watching him. “Er…hello?” he said tentatively.

The sphere hovered a moment longer, then shot away in the direction it had come. Rael followed its trajectory. It came to a stop once again near the middle of the platform. The boy began walking toward it.

As he got near, he heard a steady whirring. All of a sudden, the surface of the platform parted and a round section rose up in front of him, stopping at just above head height. A door slid open to reveal an open cylinder. Rael approached it cautiously. The glassy sphere buzzed behind his left shoulder and hung there as if waiting to see what he would do.
It could be a trap.

The interior of the cylinder appeared featureless. He stepped back and turned to address the sphere. “Who are you?” There was no response. If the sphere was indeed some kind of observation device, then the emergence of the cylinder could not be coincidence. It was clearly an invitation of some kind. But an invitation by whom? And to what?

Another high pitched hum.
But this time it was behind and above him. He swivelled around and scanned the clouds.
There.
A silvery grey dart was heading straight for the platform. Rael ran forward, waving his arms frantically, the twin enigmas of sphere and cylinder forgotten. “Here…over here.” Common sense told him that there was no chance the pilot could hear him at that range, but he carried on yelling regardless.