Nan pulled her hand from his, pressing it tightly against
her mouth.
“I’ve never seen any birds like that before, even on
National
Geographic
,” Joe exclaimed. “We did it. We really did it!”
“Gee. I’m disappointed. No thunder, dizzying winds, or even
smelly smoke,” Nan said in a super-casual voice, but her eyes glittered—and
when she looked away, she dashed her thin wrist across her face in a defiant
gesture.
“This is great,” Joe said, pretending not to notice. “It’s
even warm.” He pulled off his winter gloves, and stuck them into his coat pocket.
Then he shrugged off his coat and slung it over his backpack. “Shall we look
around?”
“We should try to find
them
,” Nan said.
“Yeah. Right. So where do we go?”
They looked around more slowly.
The sandy beach was not very wide. Maybe half the length of
a football field away, a line of dark green indicated closely growing shrubs
and trees. In the dusky light, Joe couldn’t tell if the tree-shapes were
familiar or not, outside of being green. In either direction the white sands
stretched. And behind them lay a sea, silvery-blue in the light of a sinking
sun.
“It’s not red.” Nan pointed. “It’s pale gold.”
The sunset colors ranged through all the blue-spectrum, with
little red. Just above the forest line, where the sky was already a deep
indigo, winked bits of colored light—stars. In no constellations either of them
had ever seen.
Joe sucked in a deep breath. The air smelled of dust,
salt-tang, and an herb-scent he couldn’t identify. “We’re here. I think I’m
beginning to really believe it.”
Nan returned his smile, the first really friendly gesture
she’d ever made, then she turned away, pointing toward the brush. “I think that
may be a trail. Maybe we’d better take a look before it gets totally dark.”
“I brought a flashlight,” Joe offered.
She grunted. “So did I.” She started walking fast up the
beach toward the forest. “Thing is, what if they have enemies around here? When
you really think about it, that book didn’t tell us much.”
They reached the edge of the forest, which started abruptly.
Joe peered into the gloom between the interlaced branches of close-growing
trees, then shook his head. “That’s no trail—”
Shouts came from further up the beach. They exchanged a
look, then ducked down behind a couple of bushes.
A group of dark-clad figures ran to the spot they’d
appeared, then swarmed around the beach. One even splashed into the surf.
“Is that them?” Joe breathed, recalling her comment about
enemies.
“I can’t tell. A couple of them look awfully tall for kids—”
“Curse Todan’s black heart,” one of the voices yelled, his
voice coming clearly over the sound of the surf.
Joe blinked, feeling a second of vertigo. The words were not
English, but a split-second later his mind understood them as if they had been.
“He must have sounded my spell after all, and traced our
visitor. No one in sight!”
Motionless behind her bush, Nan stared.
Joe got an idea. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he
yelled, “Tarsen!”
And one of the figures swung violently around.
“That was taking a chance,” Nan muttered. “But I’m glad you
thought of it.”
“We could always have run into this forest if they’d been
the bad guys,” Joe said as they straightened up.
The people came at them at a dead run—and stopped a few feet
away, ranging themselves in a line before Joe and Nan. And they were people, too:
much like Earth people, skin varying shades of brown and the usual number of
arms, legs, eyes, and ears. Joe stared in astonishment as the biggest of the
newcomers put his hand on the hilt of a long knife at his side. He sensed Nan
tensing up beside him.
“What have you for us?” the shortest figure said.
Again, the words were a melodious flow that clicked into
place a moment later.
Joe shook his head. Beside him, Nan slid her hand into her
school bag, then silently withdrew the book.
“It is my token,” said the short one. “And we’ve not one
visitor, but two!”
The other kids let loose with a loud cheer. Nan’s pale face
swung in Joe’s direction, though he couldn’t see her expression. “Nice going,”
he breathed.
“Come, come quickly,” the short one said then. “Let us get
back into our Circle before someone does discover us. Who knows if Gate-magic
can be traced?”
At once the shadowy kids formed into two business-like
lines. “This way,” said the one Joe had identified as Tarsen.
He turned a couple of fast back-flips down the beach,
kicking sand high, then he led the way at a rapid clip back in the direction
they’d come. Nan toiled along beside Joe. The tall, lean one with the knife ran
silently right behind them.
They ran until the sky darkened to nearly black, and it was
difficult to see. When they rounded a mighty outcropping of rock, Tarsen
slowed.
The short one hummed something, his fingers flickered,
glowed briefly, and then on what seemed a wide, empty beach a path appeared.
Joe stared, fascinated. The pathway was limned in bluish light.
One by one their guides stepped onto it, their figures
becoming dim and hard to see. When it was his turn, Joe followed, looking down
as he did so. His shoes were fuzzy around the edges—almost half invisible. Nan
scanned warily, clutching the brown book in her hands.
The path led toward the forest line, then veered toward a
rocky outcropping. Once again they stopped, and once again the short one did
something magical. The rock disappeared and left them staring into a black void.
Their guides ran in. Joe followed, his heart banging away in
his chest. The rock closed behind them, leaving them in darkness.
Light came on—twin rows of round, softly glowing globes of
blue. They were set at intervals high in the unevenly carved rock of a tunnel,
leading down and down beneath the ground.
Joe’s guides started running down the tunnel. He followed
more slowly, hoping he wouldn’t trip. The floor of the tunnel was smooth,
despite the rough-hewn appearance of the walls and ceiling.
Nan appeared next to him, puffing from the long sprint on
the beach. The dim blue light from the globes bleached her face, leaving it
stark.
The tunnel made a right turn, and they entered a wide room.
This was also lit by globes, but the light was golden, and much brighter.
“Wow,” Joe exclaimed.
The room was circular, with smooth gray-streaked rock
walls. On the ground was a scattering of brightly colored rugs, and long
squashy pillows with tassels on the ends. “That book sure didn’t talk about
this.”
“Do they understand our lingo?” someone new said.
Joe felt the words—and the slang—resolve into English in his
mind as he looked into the interested brown face of the speaker. She was a tall
girl with long, glossy dark braids. Slanted eyes framed by thick lashes stared
back at him, interest for interest.
“Yes, for they showed us my token,” said the short guide,
who in the light turned out to be a thin boy with pale, almost white hair.
“We can, but it takes a couple seconds,” Joe said slowly. He
felt the words change as he spoke them, coming out in that same melodic
language.
All, that is, except the word
seconds
. That stayed in
English.
“Seck-ons?” the short boy repeated. He had almond-shaped
blue eyes, and a sharp chin. His brow puckered. “Has the translator spell gone
amiss? Or is that a spell of your own?”
Joe shook his head and exchanged looks with Nan. She just
shrugged jerkily. So he said, “Seconds, a small unit of time. Hours. Clocks?”
All three words came out in English. “Uh, telling what time of the day it is?”
That came out in the language.
And the faces around him cleared. “Ah yes, the candles?
Though we use magic for that,” said the short boy, pointing to a globe set on
thin silver rods. This globe, unlike any of the others, was changing from a
blue color to gold. “The time is the end of blue-three, now—meaning the end of
the day. The day is divided into colors: night to morning is gold, and the
height of the day is green, and after it, until the sun sets, is blue.” He
grinned. “And I am Kevriac.”
“Joe Robles,” Joe said, pointing to himself.
“I’m Nan,” the girl said quietly. And with a funny look at
Joe, she added, “That’s all I need here.”
“Blackeye,” said the tall girl with the braids. She swept a
hand around at the rest of the group. “If you found Kevriac’s scroll, you will
know something about us.”
“They knew me. Woofed my name right out,” Tarsen said. He
strolled in, head angled proudly. Joe liked his cocky grin and his funny, long
face under its wild curly brown hair.
“That’s Warron,” Kevriac added, pointing to the tallest one.
Warron slouched against a wall, a lean, action-ready figure with a bony face,
wickedly slanting eyes, and long black hair clipped back in a pony-tail.
“I am Sarilda,” a new voice spoke. A girl appeared, shorter
even than Kevriac. She moved like she was made out of air, and her long tangled
hair looked like tree bark with silver streaks in it. Gesturing airily behind
her, she said, “And that’s Tarly.”
Tarly the centaur was just a little taller than Joe, with a
human torso and long reddish-brown hair. At her waist reddish-brown horse-hair
started; she had a smallish horse body, with dainty hooves, and a silky tail
the exact color of her hair. A pair of gentle, slightly quizzical gray-blue
eyes stared back at Joe from a round-cheeked, freckled kid’s face. Tarly’s
hands were small but capable-looking, and she wore a short, colorfully
embroidered vest, leaving her smooth brown human arms bare. When she turned,
Joe saw that Tarly had white dapples along her back.
“You’ll meet Bran, Shor, and Mican when they return from
their run. And that is all of us, excepting only Elan, who lives in Fortanya,”
said Tarsen. “You’re here—at last.” He smacked his hands together. “Now let us
talk about pinching the
Falcon
—”
“A moment,” Blackeye interrupted. She sat on the edge of a
long square table, regarding Joe and Nan with a sort of friendly but close
assessment. “First we have to find out some things.”
“Like how much magic you know?” Kevriac put in eagerly.
Joe laughed as he looked at Nan.
“That means either lots or none, I’ll wager,” Sarilda
chortled. Her voice was high and clear, a little like she was singing.
“None about sums it up,” Joe said.
Nan spoke for the first time. “On our world,” she said
grimly, “they say magic doesn’t exist.”
All six of Blackeye’s gang burst into laughter.
“Here’s a blindness,” Blackeye said finally. “Well! It even
beats out Thesreve, a country that burns anyone caught making the smallest
spell. But there it’s forbidden. To say it doesn’t exist...”
“As well deny the sun!” Tarsen exclaimed.
“You could, if it was always night,” Nan said.
Blackeye’s slanted brows went up even more steeply. “It
seems your land has mysteries of its own. Yet you found your way here.”
“Thanks to your book,” Joe said, pointing to the brown corner
sticking up from Nan’s hands. “We did your spell three times, like it said, and
we found ourselves here. That is, on the beach.”
“Ah,” Kevriac said. “Let me see.”
He lunged forward and took the book from Nan. But when he
opened it, it disappeared. Nan jumped, startled; Kevriac merely shrugged. “I
thought it might come to that. Means, the scroll has truly served its purpose.”
He smiled suddenly. “I did get a glimpse of their script, which was unlike any
of ours,” he added. “What words of transport did you speak? Can you say them
again?”
Joe opened his mouth, but Nan quickly forestalled him. “Will
they take us back
there
?”
Kevriac blinked. “I would say I do not think so—but then, it
is not all my magic at work here. So I don’t know.”
“We could say it once,” Joe said. “We had to say it three
times for the spell to work.”
“
You
say it,” Nan shot back, arms crossed tightly.
So Joe repeated the phrase, and Kevriac looked puzzled. “No,
that is nothing I know. But as I said, the Gate Magic was arranged by another—”
Once again Blackeye interrupted. “Debate the magic details
later, Kevriac and Choe-roblas. First let us discuss our more immediate
concerns. You know from Kevriac’s chronicle what it is we’re trying to do?”
Joe nodded, and Nan said, “You’re going to get rid of a creepy
Regent, and our job is to free the prince from an enchantment.”
“You’ve said you know nothing of magic,” Blackeye replied. “What
training have you had in self defense?”
“None,” Nan said in a flat voice.
Joe shrugged, feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed.
Warron moved slightly. It seemed to Joe he was about to
speak, but he remained silent. Blackeye pursed her lips.
Tarsen whistled. “Then we have plenty to do, eh?”
“Sorry,” Joe muttered, thinking: It was so great to get
away, I never thought about how we’d rate when we got here.
Nan said firmly, “We’ll learn. He’s good at sports. And
I—I’d like to know something about self defense.”
Blackeye’s eyes narrowed. “I was about to hazard a guess you
come from a world lucky in peace, but that is not so?”
“Not at all so,” Nan said. “Gangs, bullies, and all kinds of
rottenness. But most fighting is done with guns—”
The word ‘guns’ came out in English again, and Nan and Joe
had to provide an explanation. When the others finally grasped the notion of a
weapon which killed from a distance, they were universal in condemning such
cowardliness.
“At least here when persons attack one another, they are in
reach of the other’s skills,” Tarsen exclaimed.
“I don’t claim we are any better than another world, not
with the accursed Todan and his bootlickers running things as they like, but
this world of yours sounds very strange,” Sarilda said, and shrugged
expressively.