Thorn Fall (26 page)

But it had been insanity from the beginning, hadn’t it? To think that some kids fresh out of college could be heroes. It wasn’t as if we had special powers. I could barely pay my bills every month. Why did I think I had a chance at slaying killer creatures that apparently weren’t even from our plane of existence? We should never have followed Jakatra and Eleriss in the beginning. We should have stayed focused on building our business. A business that all of my former peers and professors hated me over. I dropped my head into my hands. Maybe I could find some portal that would take me back in time a year and let me start all over. Take the normal, respectable job after graduation. Have a normal, respectable life. Give up adventure. Avoid strangers from other worlds.

A hand came to rest on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure whether it was Simon or Alek—I couldn’t imagine Eleriss running out to console me—but I didn’t look up. Falling apart should be done in private.

The hand fell away, but I could feel the presence of its owner beside me on the table. Alek. Simon couldn’t have been quiet for that long.

After a while, I wiped my eyes and straightened, trying to look a little less… defeated. Twilight had come while I had been moping. A light was on in the van, but I couldn’t see anyone or hear anything. Alek was indeed the one sitting beside me, his elbows propped on his knees as he watched the deepening gloom around us. Alert, as always.

“Thanks,” I said, not entirely sure what I was thanking him for. Being there. Continuing to help us.

He inclined his head toward me. “It is difficult to feel powerless. I understand this.”

“I’m sure you do.” I felt a twinge of guilt at my self-flagellation. When he had endured so much more. Next, I would be complaining that all of this monster drama was keeping me from leveling my
RealmSaga
character.

“Do you wish to plan the next stage of our campaign?” he asked.

I stared at him. Next stage? “Unless Jakatra shows up with Temi’s sword, I don’t see what next stage there can be. Right now, we are, as you said, powerless to do anything against the
jibtab
. And we’re not any closer to knowing who’s behind creating the monsters than we were when this all started.” In hindsight, maybe we should have prioritized that more. Walking in a door and shooting someone in the chest would be easier than defeating the sum of his imagination.

“There are other swords,” Alek said.

I sat up straighter. “Here on Earth? Have you seen them?”

“I have seen many glowing
Dhekarzha
swords. Not on Earth, but possibly they exist here also. Was this one not buried when you found it? Might there be a way to locate the energy of such a weapon if one
was
here?”

“I…” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, my mind, which had been listless and enervated, suddenly churning anew. “I’d have to ask Simon. I wouldn’t have thought so a few hours ago, but maybe this dimensional thing… I don’t know. I wonder if we could come up with a way to search for unique signatures.” Maybe it was all fantasy. I had no idea if such things could be tracked or if we had the technology to do so. Even if there were no other weapons on Earth… “Eleriss did say Jakatra has a similar sword hanging on his wall back home.”

“There are
many
weapons in their world.” Alek didn’t sound at all daunted by the idea of sneaking over there to acquire some, either. Hell, maybe he wanted a chance to stick a thorn in each of the elves’ sides after what they had done to him.

The idea of stealing from Jakatra or Eleriss made me uncomfortable—they had been helping us all along—but I wasn’t kindly inclined toward this portal authority woman at the moment. I wouldn’t mind stealing from
her
. Maybe they even had a bin full of portal openers and elven weapons next to their public portals, much like the garbage cans full of nail files and toothpaste at the airport security stations. If we could figure out how to get there, maybe we could help ourselves… bring back weapons for Temi and Alek to use.

“The problem is that we don’t know how to get to their world,” I said. “Unless you know a way.”

I studied Alek’s face in the fading light. He had been such a quiet member of our group the last few days, content to follow my lead, and I supposed I had forgotten that he was a trained warrior. It was probably only his unfamiliarity—utter bewilderment—with the modern world and everything around him that had kept him from asserting himself more. Not to mention the language barrier. But I ought to be thinking of him as a master sergeant out of the Marines, not some random guy I was tutoring in my spare time. And, until he figured out how to navigate this world and speak to the people here, I had him at my disposal.

“The way would be to acquire one of their portal openers,” Alek said. “Artemis and I should be able to activate the devices, though it may take work to discover how to operate them.”

“So… pickpocket from Jakatra or Eleriss?” I asked softly, aware that Eleriss was a few feet away and in the middle of helping Temi. Again, I grimaced at the idea of stealing from them or abusing the friendship—however aloof—they had shown us. “Or maybe we can find that Yesathra person.”

Alek nodded. “Pick-pocket or forcefully take. You make the mistake of thinking of the
Dhekarzha
as allies, but these two are a rarity, and I do not trust Angry
Dhekarzha
at all.”

“Jakatra?”

“He looks at me in the manner that one of my… captors once did.”

Captors. I wondered if he had meant to say owner or master or something more unpleasant.

“They are the enemy, the other,” Alek went on. “Much could be learned by interrogating one of them.”

“That could come with repercussions that we can’t foresee.”

“Oh, I foresee them well.” Alek clenched his jaw, and a muscle in his cheek ticked. “But some risks are worth taking if it protects your own people.”

“True, but Alek… do you really consider us—” I touched my chest, then waved toward the mostly empty campground, “—
your
people? I appreciate that you’re helping us—I appreciate it a great deal—but I keep wondering why we matter to you.”

He gazed back at me, holding my eyes. Such a direct stare might have made me uncomfortable, coming from another man, but there wasn’t a challenge in his eyes. Just… a sadness.

“Isn’t it possible that some of these people are my descendants?” he asked. “If not mine, then those of my friends, my colleagues? I understand this is not my continent, but you are here. Others from Greece must be too. And it is all… the same world, the same people. To be a warrior, a protector… that is all I’ve known.”

“That’s true. It
is
possible that you have descendants here.” I wondered exactly how possible it was. “You go back far enough, and we’re all related. There was this conqueror about a thousand years ago, so still fifteen hundred years after your time, Genghis Khan, and he, ah, got around. They say that one in two hundred men alive today are his direct descendants. I’m not sure how scientifically accurate that study was, but you’re from much farther back. If you got around a lot in your youth, who knows? One in three people walking around might be your descendant.”

That made him blink a few times. I’d meant it as a joke, but maybe he thought I was serious.

“I… got around only moderately and only amongst my own people,” Alek said. “Young Spartan men were supposed to be too busy training to engage in affairs with women.”

I noted that
supposed
and smiled. “All right, so only one in five people are your descendants.”

Zelda’s door opened, and a rectangle of light slanted across the dirt. Eleriss stepped out of the van. I leaned back, trying to get a glimpse of Temi, to see if she was awake.

“…and if you need to recuperate, you could play some
RealmSaga
,” came Simon’s voice from within. He was studying the ceiling of the van but clearly talking to Temi. “Want me to set up my laptop? You could even play my character, since yours is only Level Two. Just don’t go out of town or the training area. Or talk to anyone. Or agree to run any dungeons. Maybe you should play your character. I can wander around and help you level.”

“Temi’s awake,” I decided. “And probably reminiscing over the days when Simon was too nervous to talk to her.”

“Artemis is healed?” came a voice from the trees.

I flinched. Jakatra. How long had he been there? Long enough to hear about notions of theft and interrogation? No, Alek and I had been speaking in Greek. We should be safe. I hoped. Though Simon had inflicted enough episodes of Star Trek on me that I knew aliens in those stories always had universal translators.

Alek didn’t look the faintest bit guilty. Maybe he had even known Jakatra was there. He gave the elf his usual frosty glare. Jakatra frosted right back at him, though not for long before focusing on Eleriss again.

“Yes.” Eleriss rubbed the back of his shoulder and shifted his head back and forth. It was the first time I had seen either of them appear physically tired. How long had he been up, looking for us and hunting for the portal monitor? “You did not reacquire the sword.”

“No. Yesathra and her unidentified ally must have known there would be pursuit. They left quickly. It has likely already been returned to our world.”

“Returned?” Temi sat on the edge of the van’s doorway. She appeared even more worn down than Eleriss, but it was good to see her awake. “But it came from here to start with, didn’t it? I thought that’s why you thought we could use it.”

“It has been here for centuries, but it didn’t originate on this world.”

“No,” I said, “some exploring elf came to check out the portals here in Sedona, let something out he shouldn’t have, and then decided to bury the sword to make sure nobody else opened those portals.” Everyone turned curious eyes toward me. “Or he came to check out the vortexes, got jumped by some natives, and
they
opened the portals. Then they realized bad things were coming out of them, figured out how to close them, and buried the sword themselves. The, ah, pictographs weren’t that clear.”

“It was buried by someone with more power than humans possessed at the time,” Eleriss said, “so likely the wielder was responsible. One of our people, yes. But the six portals located in this area, they have been known by the
Dhekarzha
for millennia. An explorer shouldn’t have opened them unless he or she meant to deliberately do damage to the local populace.” He looked at Jakatra. He wasn’t implying that Jakatra was someone like that, was he? No, he probably wanted verification. But Jakatra merely gave his usual glare in response. “It is possible there is a record. I will look for it when we return home. If it
is
true that the sword also has portal manipulation capabilities, it is a rarer tool than I realized, and there may, indeed, be a recorded lineage of it.”

“It
can
open portals,” Simon said. “We were
this
close to doing exactly that.”

And who knew what might have come out if we had done it? I shuddered.

Eleriss looked toward Temi. Not trusting Simon? It was true we were only speculating at this point. We had yet to prove that the sword could open a portal.

“As we drew close to one of the supposed vortex areas, there were flashes of light,” Temi said.

“Too bad the sword was stolen before we had a chance to see.” Simon plopped down on the picnic table beside me. “It’s gone for good, right?”

“It is gone,” Jakatra agreed.

“Would your people, your portal authorities, be having as much of a hissy fit if we just had a sword that could hurt monsters?” Simon asked. “Not one that opens portals? It sounds like that’s a more common weapon from your world.”

Eleriss looked at the three of us on the picnic table. “Hissy… fit?”

“Would they chase a regular magical sword to Earth and back?” Simon asked.

“There would still be repercussions for taking one through a portal to Earth.”

“
Especially
to Earth,” Jakatra added.

Temi frowned at him, as if this was a callback to another conversation they’d had.

“I just want to know if there’s any way we could get another sword,” Simon said. “Or two. One for Temi and one for Alek. Because we still have a monster that’s going to be harassing Sedona again, if it isn’t already.” He looked up through the tree branches, most bare thanks to the late autumn date. The stars were starting to come out.

“Not from our world,” Eleriss said. “It’s possible others may have been lost on your world over the millennia, but I do not know where. It took much effort for us to find this one.”

“And time,” Jakatra said.

“
You
people can’t bring a sword through the portal, or you’ll get fined,” Simon said. “I get it. But what if
we
happened to follow you home, bought a sword from the magical sword shop, and then went back through the portal? Didn’t Jakatra say he had one on the wall in his house? Maybe he could just look the other way as some pesky humans slipped in and borrowed it.”

I elbowed Simon, then wished I had thought to do it earlier. If we were going to try to sneak onto their world and acquire a
jibtab
-slaying tool through dubious means, telling them about it beforehand probably wasn’t wise.

“Humans are not welcome on our world,” Jakatra said.

“I’m not welcome a lot of places.” Simon smiled, undaunted. “The Denny’s in Prescott, the Pita Pit and the P.F. Chang’s in Tempe, any restaurant whatsoever in Scottsdale… That doesn’t keep me from showing up there.”

“What could you have possibly stolen from the Pita Pit?” I whispered, more because I wanted to distract him from his current line of questioning than because I cared.

“I may have liberated a jug of their secret sauce when nobody was looking. At least I thought nobody was looking. Did you know the guys behind the counter there are allowed to leave their post to chase a mostly-paying customer three blocks before giving up? I wouldn’t have guessed that was permissible.”