torg 01 - Storm Knights (21 page)

"That's crazy," exclaimed Bryce, "I won't let you go anywhere. You're not well, and ."

"I am not a child to be ordered, Christopher Bryce!" Tolwyn shouted. Her voice was strong, full of authority. It made Bryce pause.

"I want to help you, Tolwyn, don't you see that?"

"Then help me find the gorge, Christopher," Tolwyn pleaded, suddenly all the power was gone from her voice. "Please."

63

That afternoon, after a quiet lunch with Rick Alder, Coyote and Rat in the hospital's cafeteria, Father Christopher Bryce walked Tolwyn back to her room. She did not speak to him, and the silence was disturbing. But he still had questions, so he sat down in the chair beside her bed to gather his thoughts.

"Were you really dead, Tolwyn?" Bryce asked.

"Yes," she said, not bothering to adjust her blue hospital robe as she sat upon the bed.

"And you're not a woman named Wendy Miller?"

"No."

"You were never her, were you?"

"I have always been who I am now, Tolwyn of House Tancred."

"Do you know what happened to the woman whose body you wear?"

Tolwyn looked down at her arms and hands. She glanced at her image in the mirror over the small chest of drawers. "This is my body," she said. She pointed to the scars on her arms. "These are my scars. That much I know. And that is my face in the glass."

She ran one hand through her hair. "But someone has cut my hair."

"Where have you come from, Tolwyn of House Tancred ... and why?" he asked slowly, hesitantly, concerned that his questioning would alarm her or send her back into herself. He saw the tension ripple the muscles along the lines of her jaw and feared the worst, that he had driven her away again with his questions to which she seemed to have no answers. But she sighed and the hard planes of clenched muscles softened in her face as she shook her head from side to side, apparently indicating that she did not have the answers he sought.

"What land is this, Christopher Bryce?" Tolwyn asked as she looked out the window at the storm-beaten city. He told her.

"It is difficult to know what you know and what you don't know," he said.

"For me also," she said. She reached to the night stand beside the bed and picked up the vase that held the blue and red flower. "Do you know what this is?"

"I don't think I've ever seen its like. But, then, I'm not very knowledgeable about flowers. You called it a crys, didn't you? A strange name ..."

"Not to me, Christopher. I ran through fields of them when I was a child. They were trampled into the ground in the battle in which I died."

"Where was this battle, Tolwyn?"

He watched anger and frustration at her own lack of recollection chase each other across the windows of her eyes. "I do not ... wait ... Aysle ..." At first, the word was forced from Tolwyn's stiffened lips. But as she said it, rolled it around in her mouth, it calmed her. "My home is Aysle."

However, no other memories would surface, nothing but a name and a feeling of terrible homesickness. "My mind is a war, and I am tired." And then she turned to Father Bryce. "This bed is narrow, but I've loved on narrower. Would you lie with me, Christopher Bryce?"

Bryce felt the blood rush to his face and cause it to redden. He watched Tolwyn as she looked oddly at him where he sat red-faced and speechless as he searched for the words to explain his vocation and his vows to her.

"How odd," she said wonderingly after he had found the words and gotten them out. "Vows I understand, but to deny one's nature ..."

"That is the way it is," he said softly.

She shrugged. "I would have enjoyed it, Christopher Bryce."

"My friends call me Chris. It's short for Christopher." She looked puzzled, then grinned at him and asked, "Does that mean you have to call me Tol?"

Bryce laughed and inwardly thanked her for lightening the tone of their situation. "I'll see you later, Tolwyn," he said, rose from the chair, and walked toward the door of the room.

"Until later ... Chris," she said and lay back on the bed, closing her eyes as her head rested on the pillow.

64

Lambent energies flickered, coruscated, and Dr. Hachi Mara-Two appeared in the center of the flowing, dimension-spanning beams. Then the lambency died, the coruscation faded, and Mara found herself standing in a downpour. Mara absently wiped rain from her black jumpsuit, as she looked up at the brick building in front of her. She pulled her language logic enhancement chip from a pocket and plugged it into one of the slots behind her ear. The chip did its job immediately, and the metal letters embedded in the wall of the building, moments ago unreadable, now clearly proclaimed it the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Giga-rad," Mara exclaimed to the empty street. "It worked. I'm here."

Suddenly, the thrill of success slipped from her mind, and she remembered the incident in the transference chamber that had occurred not more than thirty seconds ago, her time. Quickly, she looked around to see if the one who had introduced himself as Thratchen had followed her. The streets were empty of people. She had not been followed. Off in the distance, some sort of wheeled vehicle passed by, its spotlights burning holes in the darkness of the storm. Mara rolled her leather gauntlet up, uncovering the inside of her left wrist. The wrist, like the rest of the arm, was sleeved in metal flesh that protected metal sinews and veins of circuitry. She squeezed her fist and a panel slid open, revealing a keypad and display line. The code running across the display told her the program was still operating, controlling the sensor unit built into her left eye.

Mara had developed the sensor unit during the early days of the Sim War. It was apparent that select individuals on her world had undergone a change in response to the invading reality. These individuals — herself included—had started storing a form of energy that Mara could measure but not identify. Even the Sims registered on the sensor, or at least some of them. In fact, the sensor identified the energy in everything, but most things had it in such minute quantities that it was never noticed before. She theorized that the energy buildup was a natural defense mechanism that kicked into effect in the wake of reality storms, but she hadn't had time to prove it.

"I don't like this storm," Mara muttered, remembering the storms that rocked Kadandra prior to the coming of the Sims. "Okay, let's see what the energy level looks like on Earth." A few taps on the keypad shifted the sensor lense into place over her pupil. Then the world exploded into a blinding burst of blue and red light.

Mara shut her eye, but the vivid colors were burned into her retina. Even with the lid closed, she still saw the after image in her mind. "By the Net! This entire world glows like the selects! The energy is in such abundance here," she said to herself. She recalibrated the program, adjusting for the heavier concentration, and opened her eye again.

Now the scenery was as normal, without the blue-red cast. To test the sensor, she held her hand before her. It was surrounded by the blue and red glow. "Because of the abundant energy here, I seem to be absorbing more of it. Giga-rad."

Scanning the building before her, Mara saw a faint glow pulsating from an upper window. Okay, she thought. In and up. Mara found the entrance and pushed open the glass doors of the hospital. No one in the busy lobby took much notice of the young woman in the black jumpsuit as she made her way through the corridors and up the staircases of the building, following the displays in her eye. On the fourth floor of the hospital, she found a high concentration of energy coming from an open doorway. Whoever the select is, she thought, he must be positively crackling with the stuff. Quietly, she approached the portal and looked in.

65

"Put on this robe, Tolwyn," Father Bryce pleaded for the hundredth time.

Tolwyn turned, leaned close so that her nose almost touched his, and said, "If you tell me what to do one more time, Christopher Bryce, I shall personally demonstrate twenty-seven ways to disable a man without using a weapon."

Coyote and Rat giggled at the thought, but Bryce could hear the seriousness in Tolwyn's voice. It scared him, but not for his own sake. For her's. He dropped the garment onto the bed, then dropped himself into a chair.

"Tolwyn, tell me again where you want to go," said Rick Alder.

"There is a wide, deep gorge. At the bottom, a rushing river winds its way through the gorge. There is a cave in the gorge, and in that cave is the entity that called me to this world. It is in pain. It is afraid. And I must go to help it," Tolwyn finished.

"That isn't a lot to go on, I'm afraid," Alder said. "We don't even know which direction to go."

Tolwyn jumped up excitedly, grabbing the police officer with powerful hands. "But we do, Rick Alder! We do! In my dreams I am always moving west. We have to go west."

"It was a dream, Tolwyn," Bryce said, trying to calm the excited woman.

"I must find this gorge, Chris. I must!"

"Why, Tolwyn?" Coyote asked.

Before Tolwyn could answer, Rat exclaimed, "Cool hair!"

Bryce, Tolwyn, Alder and Coyote looked up inquiringly at the young woman with the mane of silver hair who stood in the doorway. She was dressed in an oddly-tailored black jumpsuit that bristled with pockets. She looked directly at Tolwyn.

"She must find the place in her dreams," the young woman said. Her voice was tinged with an accent as strange as Tolwyn's, but definitely not of the same origin. Bryce noticed that she wore a mask of makeup that reminded him of a raccoon.

The young woman looked from Tolwyn to examine each of the others in turn. Then she spoke again. "She must go, and I am going with her."

66

Djil rose from his position overlooking the sea. He had sat there long enough, listening to the Earth and walking among the dreams. He checked the rope he had been working, examing the six knots he had tied.

"We shall be the knots which tie reality back together," he told the rope, but it was evident he was talking to those the knots represented. "But the path of the rope will be hard to walk. So very hard."

He marched into his village, ignoring the questioning stares that followed him to his dwelling. There, he gathered his few possessions into a small sack which he slung across his back. Then he started to leave the village.

"Where are you going without a word, old man,"

asked a village woman finally, gaining the courage to address the shaman.

"It's time to go on walkabout, m'luv."

And, as if that explained everything, the aborigine left the village without another word.

67

The elven wizard Delyndun stepped onto the ground of a new world. At his back were the forces of Aysle, jammed upon a bridge that reached into the sky and then spanned the cosmverse to connect to his home. Before him were the strange sights of this world's reality, but already he could see signs that Aysle's reality was pure throughout the area around the bridge.

He could see the dragons and their riders clearing away any opposition with blasts of fire and other energies. Warriors of the many houses spread out to secure the realm, and the creatures of Aysle were pouring forth to fill the land.

"To me, assistants," Delyndun called. Quickly, the young human mages that were his students appeared about him. "Prepare the circle," he ordered, then stepped away to watch them work.

They used their arcane powers to create the wards of knowledge and the circle of searching. When Delyndun was satisfied with their spells, he stepped into the circle and traced a shell over his head. His own spell caused the circle to fill with a blue sphere of glowing magic. From inside, he could view most anything he wished upon the curve of the sphere — provided he had the proper artifact to power the spell.

He removed a metal gauntlet from a pouch that hung on his belt. It was an aged glove, yet finely detailed and of superior workmanship. Obviously, it once belonged to a knight of great station. Delyndun spoke words from a language only mages knew, and the glove reflected light onto the walls of the sphere.

"If the knight of prophecy, the knight that haunts my master's thoughts, is upon this world, reveal her to me!"

The face of a woman with glossy chestnut hair and green eyes appeared before the elf. Others could be seen beside her — a man in black, a woman in black, another man, and two boys — but the elf was too absorbed by Tolwyn's image to pay the others much heed.

"It worked," he whispered in awe. "After all the times I have been forced to perform this ritual on all those different worlds, this time it worked." He marked her location in his mind, then let the spell drop.

One of the students steadied the elf, who appeared ready to faint. "What is wrong, master?" the student asked. "What did you see?"

"She is here, Conkin," the mage replied, trying to keep the fear he felt out of his voice. "I must inform Lady Ardinay that Tolwyn of House Tancred has finally returned."

Thratchen sat amid the computers in the main chamber of the Transference Facility. He finished tearing out the throat of the last living volunteer who was plugged into the cybernet. The thought that he should not have killed them all flicked across the surface of his mind. But he knew it would not have made any difference. He could not have trusted any of them to send him after Dr. Hachi. They would have pretended to accede to his wishes, but once they had him in the transference cylinder, they would have scattered his atoms across the cosms. He and his High Lord and their armies had just fought a war with Hachi's people. But it should not have been a war. The raiders never fought wars. They conquered, quickly, completely. War was unheard of, and losing could not be tolerated. But now the armies were captured or had fled, the maelstrom bridges crumbled. For all Thratchen knew, he was the last of his people left alive on the world of Kadandra. Thratchen observed his tantrum with grim satisfaction. Dead bodies were sprawled in reclining chairs. Control panels were splattered with blood. The facility was a mess, courtesy of a Sim. But he had to get moving. Kadandra's soldiers would arrive soon. He had to be gone long before that. Thratchen pulled a small black cube from one of his pockets. The cube was given to Thratchen by his High Lord, and all he had to do was invoke its power to return to his master's side. He was about to do just that when he noticed a flashing light on the cyberdrive console.