Palaces Of Light

Jak stared into the abyss.

And the abyss stared back. With a lurching fear that swept over him like a wave, an emotion to which he was unaccustomed, he felt the desire to throw himself off the edge and into the welcoming arms of…what?

Breathing hard, Jak hurriedly stepped back and looked up at the sky. The night was ink-black in patches, dotted only with the distant diamonds of stars and the wan disk of the moon. It was cold and distant, hardly welcoming, yet somehow reassuring when compared to what he had just seen.

For the land below the lip of rock had seemed to disappear beneath a blanket of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. It was like a presence that seemed to have a life of its own, acting as a cover for whatever lay beneath it, and fiercely protective of its charge. It was almost as if it had tried to strike out at him when he dared to look beneath it.

Despite the cold weather, Jak was sweating. An icy-cold puddle formed in the small of his back. He turned away from the abyss to see that Krysty had awakened, and was now standing, watching him. Her hair was coiled around her neck, in an almost mirrorlike imitation of the sweat at his own. Even in the dark of night, he could see the unease and fear in her eyes.

“Not look down there,” he said softly. “Wait sunup.” He walked back toward the sleeping group. If she was to relieve him, then he wanted to find the oblivion of sleep as soon as possible. As he passed her, she began to step toward the edge of the abyss. Jak grabbed her arm, pulling her back so that she turned around to face him.

“No.” He said it simply and quietly, but there was a power in it backed up by the expression on his face and in his usually blank eyes.

Krysty tried to speak but nothing would emerge. It was all she could do to shake her head before taking up her watch with her back firmly to the fissure in the earth.

Jak sank down gladly against the sleepers, welcoming oblivion… .

* * *

BARON K SHIVERED as he recalled that day, shivered because he had no real memory of the day the children were taken. What had come before was still etched into his mind as though someone had taken a wag battery, cut it open and poured the gunk into his brain. And what had come after, when the whole ville had awakened from what seemed to be a stupor that could only have been induced by some kind of jolt was only too clear. But of that time—the time when the exodus had occurred—there was nothing.

And while Morgan stared into the fire, K brought back to mind the awful task of having to outline that moment to the one-eyed man and his crew as they had sat in front of him.

“You can’t tell us anything? But you expect us to go after these coldhearts with no real clue as to what they can do.” The man known as Ryan Cawdor had looked around at his people, all of whom were looking as incredulous as himself.

K squirmed. Part of the strategy that had made him a baron was to be in complete control of everything that went on around him. To admit that he hadn’t been was almost like an admission of weakness. And weakness was anathema to him.

“The only way I can explain it is that it was like the kind of sleep you get when you’re exhausted…when you’ve been on the road for days, and you kept traveling until every muscle is at breaking point, and your eyes are out on sticks with the grit of the road rubbing them raw. That moment when you’re just running on fumes one moment, and the next your body just gives up and you fade so quick you don’t even know it until you wake up and it’s dark, and your face is embedded in the dirt.”

Ryan sniffed. The baron had a colorful turn of phrase, but it served its purpose. He knew that feeling. They all knew it.

“Okay, so you just nodded out,” he said simply. “Your point is what? That these coldhearts drugged you in some way?”

The baron’s laugh was cold and bitter, with no humor. “The whole ville? How would they make that happen?”

Ryan shrugged. “Could be easy enough, from what you say. Gather the whole ville together in one place, make like it’s some kind of festival, and just spike whatever you’re going to give them. Doesn’t have to be anything mutie or some kind of weird shit.”

“Doesn’t have to be, but it probably was,” K had said with a shrug.

Doc, at Ryan’s elbow, indicated Morgan, who was seated by the baron. “I fear that perhaps you have been listening to your friend,” he said in an amused tone.

Morgan glared at Doc. His eyes bore into him, and for a moment the scholar experienced a shiver of apprehension as it seemed that the grizzled old-timer was peering into his soul. Morgan smiled slowly and slyly.

“You know that I can’t influence the baron in this matter, and you know that there are stranger things…what was it? On heaven and earth, Horatio, or something like that.”

Doc looked uncomfortable. Yes, he knew that, but he was unwilling to accept at face value that K was right.

Maybe he was…

There was silence, broken eventually by the baron, who was hesitant as he tried to express what had happened, and what had led him to enlisting the outlanders on a task that he was so unwilling to undertake himself. Or to put his people at risk. When the outlanders had come their way, the ville folk had been suspicious. So soon after the ones who had stolen their young, it was remarkable that they had not chilled the newcomers on sight.

Yet there was something about the six people who had ridden into the ville in a battered wag that was on its last legs that set them apart from the ones who had come before.

“Listen, Ryan,” K said carefully. “When they came, I should have read the signs. A bit of me did. But another bit of me couldn’t do anything about it. Why the fuck was that? You tell me,” he continued before the one-eyed man had a chance to speak. “All I know is that they did what they liked. In my ville. And then they took our kids. My kid,” he said quietly, almost as an afterthought, but one that he deliberately downplayed. “I can’t trust myself to follow them. I can’t trust any of my people, much as I can any other time. This is…different.”

“Then why us?” Ryan questioned.

K looked him squarely in the eye. “Because you haven’t fallen under the spell. Because you’re prepared…” He railed off, but seemed far from done.

“And?” Ryan said.

K shook his head. “Because you need the gold I’ll give you for it.”

Chapter Three

Ryan was the last one to take watch, and was still staring out across the wastes when the others had roused themselves and risen to join him.

Krysty walked over to him as he stood on the lip of the crevice, surer of his footing now that he could see the gaps between land and empty air.

“You see anything, lover?”

“Like what?” He turned and looked sharply at her. There was something about her tone that set his senses tingling.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a trace of where they went after they disappeared over the edge.”

He said nothing for a moment, that single, ice-blue orb burrowing into her consciousness, probing that mind it knew so well. Finally, he said, “There are some tracks. They were careful, no doubt, but no one can be that careful. No one.”

She nodded. “That’s good.”

“Something you want to tell me, mebbe?” he asked quietly. “About what you saw in the night?”

She grimaced. “I didn’t see anything…not actually see…and I’ve got to be honest with you, lover, I didn’t get so close. There was a way weird feel to it, and Jak… Well, I don’t really know what Jak saw, but it was something that wasn’t just a bunch of coldhearts.”

“This whole business has the ring of the macabre and mysterious about it,” Doc announced, moving near and clapping his hands together as he did so. “I do so love a mystery, especially when knowledge of it could save my skin. It resembles some stories I used to read by a young man called Pope. Edgar Wallace Pope, as I recall. Liked a touch of the bizarre. A bit like these fellows we are chasing.” Doc’s tone, which had previously been jocular, now became somber, his voice lowering. “I really do think you and young Jak should share this with us, no matter how silly or odd you may feel about it.”

“Doc’s right,” Mildred said, also coming near. “No matter how odd it is, even if it isn’t spooky, the fact that they’re making us feel like that means it’s one of their weapons.”

Jak had remained apart from the group, which had slowly clustered around Ryan. He was ruminative, as though weighing how to explain himself. He joined them, then. Looking away from them, he began. “Not sure how say. Deal with things in front you—hit man, chill mutie. Blades and bullets, know where are. Not with this. Shit scare kids with…didn’t feel like that, though.”

And so hesitantly, as the sun grew higher in the sky, Jak went on to outline how he had felt the previous night when he had tried to scan the dark, and how he had felt as though something was almost physically manhandling him. They listened in silenced until he had come to a halt almost as hesitantly as his beginning.

“Even if one does not believe in the supernatural,” Doc said, “then there is the preternatural. There are powers of the mind that we have all felt, one way or the other. Indeed, our own dear Krysty is living testament to this. To suppose that there are others with a more enhanced power, who could strike fear in this way, is not such a leap. To purport to be an ancient evil as a means of clouding men’s minds and gaining protection, that would be a simple expedient for such a power. I would venture to suggest that we proceed with nothing less than the utmost caution.”

“I guess that goes without saying.” Ryan grinned. Trust Doc to state the obvious, and in a way that used twenty words where one would do. But nonetheless, his central point remained valid. And as Ryan turned back to the narrow valley made by the crack in the earth, he knew that the people they were tailing had strengths that could put the companions on the last train west.

The fissure was unusual. It looked for all the world as though a fork of incredibly strong lightning had struck the earth and mined out a narrow and deep seam of soil. It was no more than fifteen yards across at its broadest point, the ledge that had nearly claimed him the night before being not so much an incursion into existing space as a curve in the trajectory of the seam, its width being the same even though the path suddenly changed. Now that they had good light they could see that it curved in a slow arc that took it beyond their view to the east and west. It was as if nature had decided to arbitrarily cut the earth in two, using this line as a crude division.

And yet there was something that was odd. At the edges of the horizon, where you would expect the curve to continue in a smooth arc, it suddenly seemed to cut sharply at an angle.

The Armorer had noticed that, and to his practiced eye there was something unnatural about the curve. Wordlessly, he took out his minisextant and took some readings by the newly risen sun. Then he sucked on his teeth, deep in thought.

“Something wrong, John?” Mildred asked.

“Could be,” he said after a reflective pause. “This might sound crazy, but if you look at the distance between here and there, then there’s no way we should be able to see those kinds of angles. What’s more, where do they actually go?”

Ryan looked again. J.B. was right. The sharp bend in the fissure seemed to suddenly peter out into nothing before it finally hit the edge of the horizon.

“We’ll follow the trail, such as it is, but we’ll take it real slow,” he said carefully. “There’s something about this that’s crazy, and not in a good way.”

The path ahead of them seemed treacherous. The slope into the fissure was almost sheer, and it was deep. In places, it was so deep as to disappear into shadow. There were paths, but they were narrow and covered with shale. To try to descend them would take a sure-footed care that Ryan felt only Jak truly possessed. And yet the men they sought had made this descent with a bunch of children.

Was there another way? One they were missing? It certainly didn’t seem so. Indeed, from the evidence of torn shrub and cleaned and skidded patches of shale, it would seem that there was a clearly defined route that they could follow.

“I’ll take point,” Ryan said. “Jak, you stay near the back, keep an eye on Doc.”

Doc raised an eyebrow. “I feel somehow as though I should be insulted, my dear Ryan, and yet instead I feel a little reassured.”

“More than I do, Doc,” Ryan replied with a grin. “J.B., follow me and watch my back. If I go, grab me before it’s too late.”

The Armorer moved across Krysty so that he would follow Ryan down the path. To access it, they had to drop almost three yards onto a narrow ledge. Ryan looked over. It was no more than a yard wide, and while one side was sheer rock with only a few handholds, the other dropped off into space that was empty right down into shadow, the occasional jagged rock that broke the shadow being the only real indicator of depth.

“Here goes jackshit,” he said with a sigh, gradually lowering himself over the edge until he was at full extension, his feet slipping on what little hold they could find, and his forearms taking the strain until he had to flatten his palms and let himself fall free a little way. He could feel the rough ground bite into his fingertips as they took his weight. With the pack that he carried, this wasn’t inconsiderable, and as he took a breath, preparing himself for the next drop, he wondered how Doc and Mildred would cope. They were tough, but they weren’t as physically strong as the others. With his head turned and his cheek pressed against the cold, dusty rock, he wondered if momentum would make any of them tumble back as they hit the ledge below, falling into space.

Fireblast, he thought. That was no way to think. Ryan spared himself one look down at the narrow ledge below, which seemed now to be too thin even to accommodate the length of his boots, before letting his fingers loose and feeling himself fall.

He scraped against the face of the rock, feeling it abrasive and hard against his skin. The uneven surface beneath his feet as they hit the ledge made him stumble and fall back. He put one heel back to steady himself, feeling it scrape the edge of the ledge and fall free into space. Barely able to take a breath, he thrust his torso forward so that he could equalize his balance, throwing himself into the rock, pulling that heel forward so that it was now on solid footing. For a second that felt like forever he held his breath in his lungs, feeling the blood thump around his arteries as he revelled in the fact that he had made it in one piece.

He stepped back as far as the ledge would allow and looked up. Above him, he could see the faces of the others, watching anxiously yet unable to do anything in the blinking of an eye that had yet seemed so long to him.

“Come on, we don’t have time to waste.” He grinned, making light of it.

Shrugging, J.B. slipped over the side and dropped down, allowing Ryan to steady him and so avoid the near disaster that the one-eyed man had faced. For Mildred and Doc, it was made easy by the assistance of Jak and Krysty up top, who aided them down to Ryan and J.B. Finally, when they were safely down, they pondered the way ahead.

The path was narrow and wound down into the valley formed by the crevice. Dark shadows enveloped it as it burrowed farther into the earth. Sparse scrub littered the rock-strewed pathway, and it was only this that marked the way taken by those they were following. It seemed a daunting path ahead. There was no indication of how much ground the other party had gained on them. Certainly, they were nowhere in sight.

The path wound down on a slight incline, moving into shadow. The companions started to walk along it, picking their way gingerly over the loose shale. The only consolation was that as the sun rose higher in the sky, they were in shadow and so protected from the worst ravages of the elements.

“How much distance do you think they’ve got on us?” Ryan muttered almost to himself. J.B., close on his heels as he had requested, sniffed ruminatively as he stared across the short yet infinitely deep space between one side and the other.

“I don’t get it, Ryan. It feels all wrong. Never mind what Jak and Krysty were saying, thing is this—it was so bastard dark down here that there was no way they could have gotten that far in front of us before having to stop. Which means that down here, we should be able to at least catch sight of them. But where are they? They’re nowhere I can see.”

“No way they could have gotten across, either,” Ryan mused. He stopped and looked into the darkness that seemed to swirl in the depths, having no real form. It was a disorienting experience and he quickly tore his vision away. “They must be in front.”

“Yeah, well, they better not have gained that much distance,” Mildred grumbled. “Or else they found some way off this path.”

It was true. They had been walking on the narrow ledge for some time, and the lure of the endless drop to their right was calling to them, giving each the almost irresistible desire to throw themselves into the abyss. None would admit it, but it was all they could do to keep their vision focused on the shale path beneath and in front of them.

The call of the darkness grew stronger. Into each person’s mind, unbidden, came a picture of what it would be like to throw himself or herself into the crevice. A despair at their progress swept across them like a wave. What point was there in going on when they couldn’t see their prey? How far in front, how distant were they?

It was inevitable that, with this clouding their focus, one of them would stumble and fall. Almost as inevitable was that it would be one of the weakest of the group. And yet this was where fate had a surprise in store for them, for although Doc found his mind clouding, and his feet becoming heavy and cumbersome, it was J.B. who suddenly felt his combat boots slip on loose shale. Taken momentarily by surprise, he felt his leg shoot out from under him. He threw out an arm, grabbing instinctively for Ryan.

The one-eyed man felt J.B. pull on him, and he was thrown off balance. Beneath him, that which had once been solid was now almost fluid as it slid out from under his feet.

He heard Krysty and Mildred both yell, as he and the Armorer found themselves falling into space.

* * *

MORGAN WAS DOZING fitfully in the morning light as it penetrated the heavy covers over the windows of his hut. The fire had died down and was now little more than a few smoking embers and wisps of smoke, the smell of the sweet, burned wood permeating the room. The baron was hunkered down on the far side of the room, staring into the embers, lost in thoughts of his own. Since the moment the dark force had reached out and thrust him back, Morgan had been content to remain within himself. He might have had some small degree of power, but he knew that whatever was behind the people who had taken the children was far more powerful. Baron or not, he wouldn’t risk going near it again. Tell K whatever he wanted to hear—make it up, if necessary. But he didn’t want to feel that icy claw around his heart again.

“Don’t hold out on me,” K murmured without looking up.

Morgan looked across at the baron. Had K been watching him? Did he, in some way, have the power to see into the old man’s mind? A power that he didn’t, perhaps, even realize he had?

“Whatever you’re seeing, I need to know. Even if you don’t think it’s what I want to hear. I won’t hold you responsible. But I have to know.”

I don’t think you do, Morgan thought but wouldn’t dare say.

Instead he said, “There’s nothing to tell you. At the moment all is dark, as though there was some kind of blanket thrown over the glass.”

K chuckled, albeit without humor. “You’re speaking in riddles, Morgan. Don’t do that. Speak plain.”

“Very well.” The old man sniffed. “There’s some kind of power that’s stopping me seeing clearly, but—”

“What is it?” K was electrified into sudden movement. With a speed that spoke of his strength, he moved from his haunches and across the room in one smooth movement, until he had Morgan’s face in his hands. He was holding it up to whatever light he could find, trying to get a better view. For his part, the old man was making desperate gurgling sounds on the back of his throat, his eyes rolled up into his head so that only the whites showed, yellow and awful as the few shafts of light to penetrate the gloom caught them. Spittle rolled down his chin and into his beard.

“What is it? What is it, man? Tell me!” K roared, as if sheer volume would break through the barrier between them.

But Morgan couldn’t answer. All intent of lying to the baron had been lost, and now all hope of soft-pedaling in an attempt to stay on the right side of the baron was also a cause that was given up. For Morgan had wanted to steer clear of the dark force that One-eye and his motley crew were pursuing. He wished them well, but he knew when he was facing something greater than he had ever believed existed. He didn’t even care about the children. The ones he knew. Even the ones he cared about. Such was the fear that this dark power had instilled in him with one swoop.

Morgan wanted to steer clear, but the dark force wouldn’t let him. It was almost as if it was sentient, seeking to use him as a tool, to scare the baron away from further pursuit.

Struggle as he might to deny it, Morgan was seeing what was happening to Ryan and his people. He hated it, for so many reasons.

But he couldn’t deny it.

* * *

RYAN YELLED in anger and surprise. He was furious with the fates and with himself. He was certain that he had a sure footing, and that he would be able to take the weight of the Armorer as he reached out for him. It should have been simple to grab J.B. and stop him from falling. And yet the ground had seemingly given way beneath him, causing him to be dragged in the wake of his stricken friend. For the second time in less than twelve hours he felt that he was plunging to his doom, except that this time there was no one to stop him. Unlike the night before, the others were too far out of reach, being behind the Armorer as he was the first to take the plunge.

As he fell, weightless, in the air it seemed to him that he was falling at an infinitesimally slow rate. He felt as though he slowly turned in the air, away from the swirling and formless shadows below so that he could see the anguished faces of Doc, Mildred, Jak and particularly Krysty as they stared down, helpless. It was almost funny. They looked so ridiculous in that moment when Ryan knew even their pain and longing could no longer help him.

Maybe that was what did it. At that moment, when Ryan gave in to what he saw as his fate, and his inevitable end, it was as though he ceased to fall. He felt as though he was lying on static ground, as though J.B. was lying next to him. He turned his head and could see that the Armorer was level with him. Surely that wasn’t right? Shouldn’t J.B. have fallen first and been beneath him? The expression of bewilderment on his old friend’s face told him that thoughts of a similar nature were crossing the Armorer’s mind.

The others, looming over him, seemed to be closer than they had a moment ago. Too close. And the air, which had been whistling around his ears, now seemed so static and dry. Dusty, almost…

A blinding pain shot across his skull, running from the back of his neck, up and around so that it blinded his only eye, making him shut it tightly to try to stop the agony, which seemed as though it wanted nothing more than to take a physical form and force its way out through the socket.

He screamed.

And when he opened his eye once more, he was bemused to see that the others were, indeed, standing over him and J.B. Only instead of looking down at them, they were looking around.