Book 1: Gatemaker - WordPress.com · 2017. 10. 1. · “Serve the little twerps right if I left...

SSPIRALCHAINPIRALCHAIN Book 1:

Gatemaker

Jeremiah L. Schwennen

Spiralchain: Gatemaker

Copyright © 2017 Jeremiah L. Schwennen

ISBN 978-1-542-43000-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Tom, who lets me play in my imagination even when there is laundry that needs to be done. I love you more than words can say—and I have a lot of words. Also, For Jeremy, who makes my stories better every time he reads them. For Janice, who is a better mom than I probably deserve. For my students, who make everything worth it. And for Andrew, the greatest minion/brother-in-law a person could want.

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Prologue Core

hey talked on the phone every night. Tonight was no different, and the ice that fell in sheets outside their windows—many blocks from one another—gave the world a bizarre feel. Adam Childers talked idly to his

girlfriend, Becky. The winter holidays had come and gone and their winter break was nearly behind them. They had not seen each other in person for nearly two weeks—an incredible amount of time for two people who were, more often than not, inseparable.

“The news says it’s getting worse out there,” Becky said. Her voice was sullen, and Adam knew that she was likely thinking that their plans to get lunch together downtown the next day would be off.

Adam made a dismissive sort of clicking sound. “No big deal. It’s Iowa in the winter time—this sort of weather isn’t all that unusual.”

“I’ve lived here just as long as you, Adam. I know about the weather.” Adam smiled. While most people found his girlfriend’s sarcastic

mannerisms abrasive, he found them endearing. He replied, “Why are we talking about the weather? Is that what we’re down to?”

Becky was silent for a beat before saying, “We’re not going to talk about Christmas if that’s what you want. Not now, not ever. The Hanson family Christmas is not a subject of discussion.”

Adam winced. “That bad?” “Isn’t it always?” Becky asked rhetorically. Adam knew better than to

push any further. “Well, at least the family stuff is done. I even got to see John for a couple

of days. You’d have loved it, we—“ Outside Adam’s window—the only room on the half-sized second story

of his mother’s rundown house in northern Des Moines—there was a shuddering crash.

“Hey Becky, something’s going on outside. I’m going to go check it out, and I’ll catch up with you later online,” Adam said.

“Yeah, sure. Be careful—my dad slipped on his way home from the office and gave himself a big old goose-egg on his forehead,” Becky replied.

Adam chuckled softly. “Is he OK?” Becky sighed as she answered, “As OK as he gets, I guess. Anyway, I’ll

talk to you later—we need to be online and checked in at the hub by 9. I’m hoping to get some power-leveling in tonight.”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Adam replied as he hung up the phone. He looked out the window again, his breath frosting the glass as he saw

the world outside reduced to a smear of light and shadow. The old and gnarled trees that stood sentry over the uneven concrete walkway that led from the sidewalk to the front stoop of the house sagged heavily under the

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weight of ice that had built upon their branches over the course of the three ferocious ice storms that had gripped Des Moines in recent days. Since school had let out for break, the weather had conspired to keep the entire city ground to a halt.

Adam pulled a faded red sweatshirt over his head, feeling static electricity build and his dark hair dance erratically at the back of his head. Slipping on his sneakers he flipped off the light, catching a tiny jolt as the static discharged. He descended the old wooden stairs and emerged in the living room where his mother sat watching television and reading a paperback romance novel.

It astounded Adam that his mother could manage to absorb twice as much entertainment at one time as anyone else he knew… and yet manage to enjoy nothing of substance. She watched reality shows about swamp loggers while she read about forbidden romance on the high seas. He loved her dearly, but he did not understand her. Which, he supposed, gave them something in common. It had been a very long time since his mother had understood him either.

“I’ll be right back, Mom!” Adam called as he unlocked the front door and grabbed his black winter jacket from the coat tree in the corner.

“Where do you think you’re going? It’s awful out there.” His mother responded without looking up from her book.

Adam groaned softly and rolled his eyes. “I heard a noise outside. I’m just going to check it out.”

“Don’t be too long then, dear.” She turned a page and Adam could almost see her as she plunged back into her personal retreat of open-shirted pirates and forbidden liaisons.

Adam zipped up his jacket and opened the door. Outside the patter of rain striking the ice-covered surface of the sidewalk and popping as it instantly hardened to ice drowned out all other sound. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and stepped out tentatively, feeling his tennis shoes scramble for purchase on the frictionless concrete.

He closed the door behind him and stepped out further, ice pelting his head and face. He muttered a few swear words under his breath and walked out onto the glistening white remains of their lawn to take a closer look at the great tree on the right—the one nearest his own bedroom window.

The wind blew in a great gust and the tree swayed and creaked, its armor of ice cracking and popping. Adam winced and images of the tree snapping and crashing down on him flashed through his mind. While not an overly morbid person, he couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to be laid up in the hospital for a while. Perhaps get a chance to see who exactly came to visit him—to see if his dad made the trip into the city or if, as Adam surmised, he wouldn’t care.

But the tree did not break, and the only circumstances likely to put Adam in the hospital at this point were hypothermia and frostbite. He

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looked carefully, shielding his eyes with his hands, as he sought the source of the crashing sound that had cut short his conversation with Becky.

The deep shadows of the evening and the reduced visibility of the freezing rain made it hard to see much, but at last his eyes fell upon a heavy branch that had indeed snapped from the tree and come crashing to the ground, its icy shell shattering into dozens of jagged shards upon the sidewalk. It lay there, obstructing the sidewalk and posing a hazard to the neighborhood kids who would surely, in spite of this ridiculously foul weather, be riding their bicycles around in the dead of night.

“Serve the little twerps right if I left this here,” Adam muttered, knowing full well he wouldn’t do that. His neighborhood had a bad reputation in the city, but he found himself rather fond of the street, its kids—the life he and his mother had made here for themselves.

Adam grabbed the frigid limb and pulled to clear it from the walk, but the branch had already frozen to the sidewalk and as he pulled his feet went out from under him. He crashed heavily onto his back on the lumpy ice of the lawn and the world spun for a moment. Freezing rain poured down on his face and into his eyes, and he yelled in frustration, reaching up with both hands as if to ward the rain away. A booming crack of thunder rang out, and lightning forked in the black sky as a wave of exhaustion racked Adam’s body.

The rain seemed to stop then, and Adam heard his mother call his name, loud and panicked, from the house. He pushed himself to his feet and blinked, clearing the water and the after-image of the riotous lightning flare from his vision. He saw that the house was dark—no lights beamed from the windows. Down the street no lights burned—not in windows and not on light posts.

Adam hurried to the house, walking gingerly as his tailbone ached, and he entered the house to find his mother frantically searching a drawer in the kitchen for a candle in the dark.

It seemed he would not meet with Becky online tonight after all. The ice had brought down power lines somewhere. This time of year, the electric company was often slow to restore power.

It would be a long night. Outside, in the meager light of the winter moon, rain continued to pour

and freeze, coating the city of Des Moines in a blanket of gleaming crystal. Rain fell in sheets everywhere…

Except for one place. Near the sidewalk of the Childers home, just beyond a place where a twisted and gnarled branch had frozen to the sidewalk like a bizarre collage, rain did not fall. In a perfect circle no new water fell, and no new ice formed.


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1 Onus

o the Reflectory! The call to retreat rang through the high-walled fortress of the Order of Gar at nearly the same time as the bone-chilling sound of the front gate being shattered split the afternoon. It was Corudain who

gave the order, surely, but there were few who listened to his instructions. This was their home; this was Gar Nought, the oldest of the temples. It would not be abandoned this night, not by these dedicated men.

Jara watched the battle unfolding from the south tower. She had been told to hide there, told to stay out of sight and out from under foot. She was all of twelve now, and even though to her own mind that made her more than capable of making her own decisions, the men who watched over her cared little for her wishes. They sought only to keep her safe, she knew, but that did not change the helpless feeling that battered at her heart as she watched Hyrak’s legion assaulting the high walls of the temple.

She had come to Gar Nought many years ago, together with her mother, after her father had died in the war that Hyrak had brought to the northern continent. They had been seeking only shelter for the night, and Jara could remember the fear in her mother’s eyes as she pounded upon those great gates—the same great gates that now lay in ruin upon the worn cobblestone courtyard below.

The monks had taken them in, offered the shelter that they had begged for and more: offered a place for them to call home. The monks of the Order of Gar were all men, as they had always been, but their order had occasionally employed women as maids and housekeepers. Jara’s mother had accepted a job as a maid and had quickly grown to love the simplicity of the task. Jara herself had no patience for such things, and her outspoken complaints had brought many a smile to the old men who populated this place. They looked on her as the granddaughter most of them would never have, and she looked on them as the jailors who kept her from seeking out the man responsible for her father’s death and putting a sword between his eyes.

Not that Jara had ever even touched a sword, of course. In her dreams she was a mighty warrior, scourging the lands of Onus to throw out the blight of Hyrak and his legion once and for all. Sadly, those were only dreams, and like the fortress-temple that had been home for the past seven years, those dreams were crumbling all around her.

She looked down, peering over the rampart ever so carefully to avoid being seen from the ground. Her mother would be in the Reflectory, bandaging wounded men or boiling herbs for medicines or some other womanly duty. As much as Jara scorned those tasks, she would have settled

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for them now, settled for anything—even cleaning bed sheets—over being forced to watch the carnage below.

Armored men, clad in black steel emblazoned with the phosphorescent red sigil of Hyrak, wielded great axes as they destroyed everything in their path. The tradesmen and travelers who occupied the courtyard in the afternoons, bringing supplies and news to the outlying temple, pleaded for their lives even as they tried to find ways to slip past the dozens of soldiers who had formed a wall of death across the broad opening once secured by the gates. Those who came within a few yards of the warriors, though, did not get much opportunity to plead as those heavy axes lashed out, lopping heads from bodies with casual efficiency.

Why were they doing this? The Order of Gar was a peaceful order, one of the old brotherhoods of men dedicated to study and reflection. Once, long ago, the peoples of Onus had respected the Gars for their dedication to traveling the world with news and secrets, but the days of the traveling monks bringing tidings from distant family members were long past. As best as Jara could understand, the Gars had not served as messengers since long before she was born, and to her mind, they had rarely taken up new membership for their order in nearly as long. They were old men who lived, it seemed, forever lamenting the glorious days of old. They were maddeningly old-fashioned and terribly dull, but she could not understand what anyone, even someone as mad as Hyrak, would gain by their deaths.

Of course, Jara had never understood what these men had gained by killing her own father, either. Nor did she need to. The black and red armies that crawled across the lands of Onus were evil. That much she understood, and that was all she needed to understand. Perhaps if she crept down the back stairs now, through the abandoned storage rooms in the tower, she might reach the courtyard and take up the sword of one of the fallen travelers who fought back; she might stand up to the soldiers below and turn back the tide of men.

It was a noble dream, but an empty one. There would be no chance of Jara saving the day because there was no chance of Jara escaping from the south tower. The door was locked—locked by Corudain, “for her own good.” So she would instead be a prisoner, forced to watch the only family she had left in the world, her mother and these odd old men, butchered before her eyes.

There was hope, she supposed. The Reflectory was the strongest structure within the fortress, its underground walls thick and its doors crafted of a strange amber metal covered in odd marks and shapes. Those doors would be closed soon, and Corudain, her mother, and all of the others who had listened to the order to retreat, would be safe inside.

But if it was so safe, so certainly secure, why was she not being held there?

¤~¤~¤


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He heard the sounds from above. Battle sounded louder than this; he well-remembered the ringing sounds of battle. This was no battle; this was perhaps more accurately a slaughter. They had finally come. Come to finish the work begun nearly twenty years ago, perhaps. Was she with them, he wondered. Surely she must be. If she wasn’t, they had no hope of taking the Reflectory. They would beat against its doors for a hundred years and gain no passage. But if she was with them, knowing what she knew, then this was the end of the Order of Gar.

They had forgotten about him in the haste to retreat. The fortress above was not so large that such an order needed to be given early. Perhaps a hundred monks lived in Gar Nought, and another two dozen workers and attendants. They all lived in quarters built into the outer walls, and the various workshops and public buildings that stood freely in the center of the courtyard would have been their first line of defense once those walls were breached.

Underground, there were the storehouses beneath the east and west towers, the Reflectory beneath the abbey at the fortresses’ center, and then there were the dungeons beneath the south tower.

It was these dungeons where he had been trapped for what must have been a dozen years, chained in violet-steel shackles and fed only enough bread and water so as to keep him alive. He could not see this place, for his eyes had been burned from his skull before he had even come to call this dungeon home, but the prisoner could smell the stale straw and the damp that seeped through poorly fit old stones. The Order of Gar was not a cruel order, but there were certain crimes for which their punishments were indefinite. He had, in short order, committed all of these crimes.

He wondered if they would even find him, those marauding soldiers up above. If not, he would die of hunger or thirst in a few days time. If so… he did not know what they would do. Hyrak’s heart held no love for the Orders, and his actions since his rise to power had shown no willingness to make prisoners of those practitioners he had conquered. Where he walked, only death followed.

There was the piercing scream of a dying man from above, and the prisoner felt the world tilt. Just for a moment. The man who had just died was one of the Order, and in his last breath he had worked his arts.

The prisoner felt the chains that bound his strange manacles to the walls slowly vibrate, one link then another, until the entire length of both chains was set to thrumming with power. Then, with a distinct pop of air, the links fell to the ground, each separate from the others in its chain, a pile of perfect circles of steel scattered across the straw-matted floor.

Manacles of lambent violet metal still clung to his wrists, but for the first time, the prisoner was free to move again. And, at the back of his mind, he knew that there was hope. Not for the poor doomed men of the Order of Gar. If the monk above had freed him that meant that she whom he feared was with the soldiers: that Lyda had come back to the temple to finish what she had begun so long ago.

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No, there was no hope for Corudain and the others. But there was possibly hope for the world. He could not escape alone. He would need a pair of eyes.

¤~¤~¤

“Set fire to the carts and then report back to the abbey gates. We’ll need

your men once we breach the doors,” Lyda called to one detachment of the soldiers at her command. The leader of the group took his half dozen men to light torches and, with them, light the contents of the now-dead merchants’ carts that lined the insides of the fortress walls.

She stood just outside the former gates of Gar Nought, not yet willing to enter. Her skin was deeply bronzed and standing here in the high sun of midday was going to add even more to her tone. She wore little: a sheer cape of red fabric slung over her shoulders and a small shift of tanned hide covering her body in brazen ways. She was a beautiful woman, shapely and lithe, and she saw no purpose in hiding her assets. Few could contest her beauty even as few could equal her cruelty.

Lyda commanded this force of fifty soldiers, her personal retinue and the latest of many gifts from her lover Hyrak. While the personal army was not as nice a gift as the palace he had built for her at their home on the south continent, it had helped her to realize a long-standing ambition: the extermination of the Order of Gar.

Lyda enjoyed her notoriety as a cruel beauty, but it was neither of those traits that had earned her the respect and companionship of the most feared man in all of Onus. Many beautiful women were to be found if one merely knew where to look, and women of boundless cruelty were not as rare as one might think. But Lyda was the only woman in the world, perhaps the only woman in history, who had mastered the secret arts of the Order of Gar.

Once she was done beheading the collective population of Gar Nought, she would be able to expand her claim substantially. No longer would she merely be the only woman with such talents; she would be the only being in the world with such talents. With the death of this simpering collection of old fools, she would corner the market on one of mankind’s oldest secrets.

Disrupting her reverie, a monk clad in heavy gray robes burst from between two soldiers, his hands wrapped around a long club made of what seemed to be a table leg. He shoved aside the warriors attempting to dispatch him and he charged towards Lyda, each step moving him farther than the span of his legs. Lyda felt him then, felt the soft spinning of the world around them that signified his use of the old magic, folding space in such a way to bring his club within striking distance of the raven-haired witch who had brought all this ruin upon his home.

He brought the club high overhead, and Lyda smiled. With unearthly speed, her own knowledge of the arts of Gar proving superior to this


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monk’s, she pressed her left hand outward, fingers splayed and palm flat, pressing firmly into the chest of her attacker.

The rage in his eyes suddenly transformed to terror as he too felt the world tilt, felt the power of one far stronger than himself reach out to change the spaces between things. Lyda pulled her hand back, curling the fingers as she pulled away and her attacker collapsed to the ground. In her hand, held high, was a bloody human heart.

As he fell, the monk whispered soft sounds that she did not understand. Lyda looked at the gasping man upon the ground, held his heart, beating one last time in spite of its new location atop her palm, and squeezed.

The man screamed, and inside the temple walls, the sounds of battering rams against the abbey gates began. Lyda sighed. It took so long to do things this way. Through the abbey they would have to fight, butchering sad little men until finally her pet soldiers secured a passage for her to reach the door of the Reflectory. Then she would show all of the Order of Gar what a very good student she had been.

¤~¤~¤

Jara couldn’t look down any more. She had watched, eyes wide, as that

woman outside the gates had—it was too terrible to think about. All of the sudden, things didn’t make sense any more. As horrible as it all was, she understood why the soldiers were killing the monks and the others—they were doing it because someone ordered them to do so. In her experience, Jara had always known that things happen for reasons, and that the world, as chaotic as it so often was, had a certain order about it. What she had just seen, though, what that woman had done with Brother Ikah’s heart—that was beyond reason, beyond order.

That was magic. And there was no such thing as magic. Unable to watch any more, knowing that that the soldiers were now

inside the abbey and mere yards from the Reflectory, from her mother, Jara ran back to the locked wooden door. She beat her small fists upon the door, not caring who heard her. She did not want to live if it meant being trapped here forever, being alone forever. She would not do that. She would rather die fighting, like her father had.

As she railed upon the door, there was a stiff breeze that sent her short mop of mousy brown hair flying wildly. It was the first wind of an otherwise still day, and it seemed to push the clouds to block the sun that still rested high in the afternoon sky. As that shadow of shade passed over her, Jara saw something that was quite entirely impossible.

As she brought her right fist down upon the door, it went through the door. She immediately pulled back, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. Her heart raced; her thoughts darted from place to place. For a moment, Jara was frozen with indecision and no small measure of fear.

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Another cry came from below and broke her paralysis. So many were dying. What did she have to lose? Taking a deep breath, Jara pushed both hands forward, against the door, and found that it offered no resistance. Where a handful of seconds before had been an impenetrable barrier preventing her from escaping this tower, now there was little more than a phantom, an object with no substance, no resistance. She pushed herself forward more, taking a step and wincing, expecting this to be a flight of fancy, expecting to find her head colliding with the all-too-solid world of a fine oak door.

Instead, she found herself in the poorly lit landing of the spiral staircase that ran the entire height of the south tower. She had passed entirely through the door and now had the chance to take action upon the thoughts she had so brazenly thought before.

Would she scoop up a sword and strike down one of the marauding knights that was defiling her home and murdering her friends? Would she sneak away and raise a band of rebels in the surrounding forests to return and strike for vengeance against the slayers of the Order of Gar?

All such noble thoughts slipped from her mind as Jara slid down the now solid door and pulled her knees, skinned and open beneath the short skirt she was wearing, up against her chest. She hugged her knees and laid her head upon them, tears running down her cheeks.

Jara Abison was free to do whatever she could to help her mother and the kind old monks of Gar Nought escape, and she knew that there was nothing that one twelve year old girl could do to stop an army of axe-wielding madmen under the command of an evil witch.

¤~¤~¤

The prisoner lay upon the floor, sweating and breathing with great

labor. Whoever had freed him had made it possible for him to move about, but by leaving the shackles in place, they had done him no great service. His powers were bound by those shackles, limited in profound ways. He could still use his gifts if he pushed himself, but the toll, both physically and mentally, was extensive.

He knew that the little girl, the one whose curious mother brought him his meals, was at the top of the tower. He thought her mother had mentioned her name once: Jara. He had heard her protests as Corudain had led her there, and he knew exactly what the elder monk’s plan had been.

The south tower was supposedly abandoned. Mostly given over to storage of old clothes and furniture, few knew of the dungeons beneath the rundown structure, and all knew that above ground there was nothing of value. If the girl was quiet, she might evade discovery by the attacking forces and live a long and healthy life.

Sadly, the prisoner could not afford her that luxury. She was his only hope for escape, the only one he could count on being somewhere nearby as the slaughter above raged on.


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He had drawn in all of his power, squeezed it through the vice-like hold of the manacles and expelled it ever so slowly, ever so painfully, to open a way for her to escape. The cost had been higher than he had anticipated, and now it was all he could do to keep his own heart beating.

But she was free. The woman who brought his food had told him that the girl was young, this being but her twelfth summer, and the prisoner knew that to have seen what she must surely have seen would be hard for anyone so young to handle. To be honest with himself, he knew that it was more than even he could handle, and he had seen much in the days before he had lost his eyes, back when the Order of Gar still worked outside these walls to make the world a better place.

He would rest only a little while longer, and then he would call to her. It was a risk—the men outside might well hear him and that would put an end to his hopes of escape and, perhaps, vengeance. But he had no other choice.

¤~¤~¤

Jara heard a noise below, and suddenly her tears were gone. Survival

instincts sprung to life and she fought back her fear and stood, peering down the stairwell to see what terror was climbing towards her.

She saw nothing in the shadow-heavy stairs, and cocked her head to listen again, wiping her last few tears away with the hem of her over-sized shirt.

“Jara!” the voice called out from below, faint but urgent. She did not know what to do. The attackers should not have known her name, she reasoned, but with that witch—with what she saw the woman do—impossibilities suddenly seemed less impossible. Coupled with the matter of the door, her fear began to claw its way back into her heart.

But Jara Abison was not a frightened maid. She was the daughter of Abis Coudon, a warrior of the northern throne cities. Bravery was in her blood, and so she set foot upon the stairs and descended into the piecemeal darkness. The shadows of the tower were broken only by the occasional flare of sunlight through chipped mortar and stone.

As she neared the bottom, Jara listened carefully, stopping at each landing’s door to try and discern from which her mysterious caller resounded. But now she stood before the door to the courtyard, the ground level, and she had neither heard nor seen anything. There was of course one more level below, but surely—

“Jara!” the voice called again: louder, but also more desperate. It came from downstairs, from what Jara had always fancied was some sort of secret library. Her mother had gone there on occasion, but Jara had never been allowed to accompany her. The only other place where that was the case in all of Gar Nought was the Abbey’s upper library, and Jara had decided that any place banned to her was surely filled only with moldy books.

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Perhaps one of the monks was hiding in that lower chamber? Perhaps even one of the visiting travelers? If someone was there who could help her get to the Reflectory, to get to her mother and the others…

She descended the last few steps and came to the heavy door at the base of the stairs. It had once been fitted with a great padlock, but that lock lay now upon the floor, still snapped closed. It was almost as though the lock had simply fallen through the latch that it had so dutifully bound shut.

With more than a little trepidation, Jara pulled the door open, pushing the strangely locked padlock aside with one bare foot as she did so.

There was little light in this room, as had been the case all along the stairs, but her time in the dark had by now adjusted Jara’s eyes to see fairly well. This was surely not a library. Along the walls there were several sets of chains hanging, empty, and the floor was packed down with smelly, damp straw. The only other thing of note in the chamber, in what was certainly a dungeon of some sort, was an old man lying spread out upon the floor.

Hearing the door open, the old man lifted his head heavily and pointed his face, and the two scarred and empty sockets where once there were eyes, at Jara. He had long and unkempt silver hair framing that eyeless face, and his chin was bare of beard, like many of the other monks.

“I am Embrew, child. We have little time. You must help me outside.” Jara said nothing. The old man was wearing the heavy gray robes of the

Gars, and no matter what he had done to be locked in this place, she could not bring herself to turn down the chance to rescue this man. It meant that, should they escape, she would not be the sole survivor of the massacre at Gar Nought. She could save someone, and that was what her father would have done.

“What happened to your eyes?” she asked, biting back her fear. The old man said softly, “That is a tale for another day.” Jara nodded in understanding and helped to pull the old man to his

feet. She found him placing nearly all his weight upon her as she wormed her way under his right arm. The man was not heavy, and she could feel as she touched him that there was little flesh upon his bones.

“The stairs are right outside the door, sir. But once we get up to the courtyard, there are soldiers, and there’s a witch—”

Embrew stopped moving. “A witch, you say? Is she dark of hair and skin? Tall and slender?”

Jara nodded, but then realized the old man may well not have felt her nod and certainly did not see it. “Yes. She’s horrible. She tore Brother Ikah’s heart out, and she…” her words trailed off. She didn’t know what else to say.

Embrew began to walk again, using Jara as a crutch. “I feared as much. We shall need much luck to make good our escape then.”

As the two began to climb the short flight of steps to the courtyard level, she said, “How are we going to get past the soldiers and the witch? We don’t have any weapons.”


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As they came to the top of the stairs, standing with only one door between them and the courtyard, Embrew took in a deep breath. “All you need to worry about is staying very close to me, child. Everything else falls to me.”

He leaned against the wall for support, and motioned for Jara to open the door. She paused for a moment and then, with firm determination, opened the door and let in the brilliant light of day.

At that point, everything happened quite fast. Embrew reached out and pulled her back from the door, squeezing her

up against his foul-smelling robes with one hand as the other pointed forward and gaunt fingers began to trace out strange symbols in the air.

Jara felt the metal band around the hand that held her begin to heat up, and she saw a grimace of pain cross Embrew’s face.

Pressing onward in spite of the pain, Embrew finished his series of symbols and spread his fingers wide, slowly twisting his wrist clockwise until his thumb pointed straight down.

Jara felt the world spin, and she felt her breakfast climb up her throat and void all over Embrew’s stained gray robe. She felt the air suddenly grow incredibly cold, and then she saw a shimmering disc of blue light spring into being before them, filling the frame of the open door to the courtyard.

“What is that?” she asked. Embrew didn’t answer. Instead, he drew her closer still, paying no heed

to the trail of vomit running down his robe, and stepped into the doorway and out of the world called Onus.

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2 Core

ara had changed. They passed through the portal of light that Embrew had called up from what had seemed like nowhere, and Jara felt suddenly different. She felt the world spin out of control, felt her every notion of

what was and was not possible falter. Behind them, from where they had come, there was the portal. She

could not see through it, could not see the dim shape of the entry of the tower that she had expected to see.

“Do not look back, little one. This is a chaingate, and it is not meant to go both ways.” Embrew’s words were soft, his breath clearly short. Whatever he had done to make this possible had taken much from the frail old man.

Heeding his words, Jara looked forward. They stood in a long tunnel of light, its surfaces solid to the touch but not to the eye. Swirling azure energy seemed to make up the bulk of the mysterious corridor, but in the far distance Jara could see occasional flickers of a dark light, almost black in color, that arced through the light and then, abruptly, vanished. Through the shimmering light nearest her she saw glimpses of many things, many places. Some looked familiar, but others were unbelievably strange.

“What is this place, sir?” Her voice seemed so small now. Embrew stopped walking and lowered himself to the floor of the

tunnel, motioning for Jara to do the same. “We are safe here, for a time, so it is important I teach you a few things.

This is a way to other worlds, a connection to what we call the Spiral. The tunnel where we sit is not a permanent part of the Spiral, but instead a sort of shortcut that I have made for us. It will not last forever, but my skill at creating such ways was once among the best. This tunnel could keep us safe for a few days, if I need it to.”

Jara shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this. Is this magic? Like the door in the tower?”

“It seems like it, doesn’t it?” Embrew rubbed at the purple metal bands on his wrists. The skin beneath them was blistered and raw. “What I have done today, all the strange things you have seen, is called Gatemaking. It is a secret thing, and many would call it magic. We call it an art. It is the great secret that the Order of Gar was born to protect, and since it is new to you who have lived among us for several years, I would say that in this task at least my brothers have never faltered.”

Jara’s face reflected her incredulity. “You mean all of the Gars are some kind of wizards? I’m sorry, but that’s just not possible. They were all very kind, but there was nothing special about any of them.”

J


18

“If that were so, child, why would Hyrak have sent his most powerful ally to burn Gar Nought to the ground?”

The image of the witch returned to Jara’s mind and she recoiled. “So everyone that died could have just run away like this? Then why didn’t they?” Her voice cracked as she thought about the needless death they had left behind.

“Not all of them are capable of this exact effect. Even those that are, however, would not have abandoned their home. The Reflectory contains many old secrets that our order would never have allowed to fall into Hyrak’s hands. The others would have rather died than see Hyrak able to freely move from one world to another.”

Jara’s sadness hardened, sharpening to the pointed edge of anger. “Then why did we run away? We could have stayed and fought them, stayed and helped the others protect the secrets. We could have stayed and helped my mother…”

“Your mother was a kind woman, and if there is any justice in the world Corudain would have ordered someone to help her escape as I have done with you. There is no way for us to know until we return—but we will return. We have not run away Jara. We have done what I have always known must be done in order to stop Hyrak and Lyda and the others who have joined their cause. We are going to retrieve a secret weapon.”

“What kind of weapon? My father was a great warrior, and he couldn’t stop Hyrak. What makes you think swords or bows or even magic spells will stop what’s happening to our people?”

Embrew smiled, and Jara was surprised how natural that expression looked upon his eyeless face. “The Order of Gar was very good at keeping secrets. We are going now to a world that Hyrak’s people know nothing about. They do not even know that the world we head for, which we call Core, exists. On this world the Gars, and their most trusted allies, planted the seeds of a better future many years ago. We are not after spells or steel, my dear girl. We are after people that are uniquely qualified to turn back the darkness that threatens our world. The hope of Onus was long ago hidden on Core so that it would be safe.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Embrew. But if going to this Core place is what we have to do to go back and find my mother, I’ll help you. Father would want me to help you, I think. He believed very much in protecting our people from Hyrak.”

Embrew stood then, and the pair continued walking down the strange luminescent corridor. For quite some time they did not speak.

“When we reach the end of this path, we will arrive at the Spiralgate. Spiralgates were built long ago to make it easier for the Order of Gar to travel from one world to another. Most worlds have seven Spiralgates, but Core has only one. It is a wonderful thing, this gate. It will touch your mind with the words of the world to which you are traveling, making you understand every language of the place. But you must not forget, Core is a dangerous place. Since there is only one Spiralgate, there is only one way

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into Core. It will be guarded, and I do not know who might be guarding it. It will not be safe for you to be there—of this much I am certain.”

“Then what are you going to do with me? You won’t leave me here,” she looked around at the pulsating tunnel, “will you?”

Embrew laughed. “Of course not! I have a plan for you, little Jara. Before we exit the gate completely, I will use my arts to place you outside the immediate area of the gate. It will be difficult.” He rubbed his wrists again.

“Just me? Why can’t you come with me?” “I have to pay my penance. If anyone tries to follow us, I must remain at

the gate to stop them. Also, I must remain with the gate so that when you find what I send you for, I can get us all safely back to Onus.”

Now Jara’s mind was bursting with questions. “What am I looking for? How will I find you and this gate? What is this world like?”

Embrew raised his hand to his brow, rubbing at his temples. “You are more than you know yourself to be. The Gars were not the only keepers of secrets on Onus. Your mother was a very special woman as well, and there is much of her in you. Your task, Jara Abison, is to find the Line. When the Gars ordered this world sealed away, they left behind a handful of agents who were tasked with ensuring that certain bloodlines were carried onward through the generations. I need one of the products of those bloodlines, a child both of the arts and of the world Core. You will find one of these children, Jara. When you have the child, you will find the gate and me. I cannot say how you will do this, but I am certain that you will.”

Jara had many more questions. She did not, however, have the chance to ask them. With a sudden convulsion, the tunnel dissolved around them, leaving them standing in a sphere of that same coruscating light.

Embrew grasped her firmly by the arm. “Good luck. Trust your eyes. Seek the Line.”

Then he shoved her outside of the sphere, pushing her through the seemingly solid wall of energy and releasing her even as she felt her stomach lurch and the cold sting of frigid rain upon her face.

¤~¤~¤

Steven Mollison was glad the rain was slowing. Travel was downright

treacherous on the roads, but now that no more ice was building, the world was starting to calm down again. His cruiser was parked in the angled parking spaces before the I-35 rest stop, and he was happy for the few moments of silence that the radio allowed him. He was off duty and outside the city limits (and thus his jurisdiction) but he still couldn’t help but stop and help people whose cars had slid into ditches and stood shivering in the freezing rain. In the distance, hazy through the fading drizzle, the city stretched dark and ominous. The ice storm had cut power to much of Des Moines.


20

Now that the weather was clearing up, he didn’t have any more excuses. He had to do what he had come out here for in the first place, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

Steven had been an officer of the Des Moines Police Department for just over a year. It wasn’t the most glamorous lifestyle in the world, and his job would have certainly been easier in a smaller town, but he liked helping people. That probably explained why he felt so terrible right now. He had received the call only an hour ago, shortly after the power had gone out across the city. He hadn’t talked on the phone long, but the man on the other end, a man he trusted implicitly, had insisted this had to be done.

Steven stepped out of the car, unfolding his towering frame from the low-riding patrol vehicle. He was six foot four, and he wore his black uniform with its crisp-pressed lines with pride. He walked with a steady gait, even as his polished black shoes struggled to find purchase on the ice-coated concrete. His brown eyes probed the darkness of the woods surrounding the rest area, and his hand almost automatically reached for the long handled flashlight at his side. He cast forth the beam of light in a smooth sweeping gesture, illuminating paint-peeling picnic tables and a large sign indicating that no pets were allowed in the picnic area.

Steven’s skin was the leathery brown of someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors, and his short brown hair was complimented by the neatly trimmed goatee that his mother disliked. He was twenty three and narrow bodied, the kind of man who you’d not want to run up against in a fight. None of this mattered though as he crunched through the mostly crusted snow into the less groomed parts of the woods. He shook not with cold but with apprehension. He’d sworn to protect and to serve people, and his contact had assured him that this was necessary, but inside he was torn. How could killing someone ever be what was best? He did not believe in the death penalty; he couldn’t even justify abortion in the most extreme of cases. Nothing was more important to Steven than life.

He stopped as the pale beam of his flashlight fell upon the exact scene that had been described to him. A single pair of footprints appeared from nowhere. The feet were bare and small: a child’s. Surrounding the footprints there was a hemispheric depression in the snow, perhaps a yard and a half across, and the snow beneath that depression had been melted and then almost instantly refrozen, forming a bowl of rock-hard ice with those two little footprints at the center.

The feet had moved with surety out of the shallow depression and forged a trail towards the rest area building. Steven’s quarry had moved in the shadows, sticking near the broadest trees whenever possible, and those feet had barely punctured the surface of the snow only to be filled in with rain.

He was too late. Whoever had arrived here, however they had gotten here, they had come while the rain was still falling. Perhaps they were still in the rest area building, and of course he would check that, but the rain had

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been reduced to a mere drizzle for almost a half hour. That was plenty of time for this person to escape. This made matters much more complicated.

A small voice in the back of his mind told Steven that this relieved him of the responsibility. The quarry was on the move, and surely Mister Alders would send someone else after them. That wasn’t likely though. Many people owed Jamison Alders favors, but there were not many who would kill for him. Steven was a good man who respected life more than anything else. He’d fought in a war on the other side of the world to prove that. But the person he was hunting, if those footprints were any indication, was a child. A little boy or a little girl, it didn’t matter—it was just a kid.

Steven had hoped he’d never have to kill a child again.

¤~¤~¤

Jara was a brave girl, and she never refused a challenge. She kept those notions front and center in her mind as she looked through the small glass window to see this terrible new world.

She had arrived in a wooded place that had not seemed so different from the forests that surrounded Gar Nought. These were mostly deciduous trees, their ample leaves torn away by the brisk winds of winter. When she had left Gar Nought it had been high summer, and to find herself standing in her short skirt and sleeveless top on a crust of ice-bound snow in a drizzle of freezing rain was strange enough for a girl of her experience. But to see what was beyond that cluster of skeletal trees was almost more than she could bear.

A great road of smooth stone wound through the hills beyond her little patch of forest. It was a clean line of gray stone, two paths each split by a long line of white that was not snow but some manner of paint. And rushing along those ribbons of smooth stone were the strangest things; great metal carts that moved without obvious motive, racing along at terrifying speeds. Even that was tolerable to Jara’s mind, for the thing she could not abide was the sheer number of these carts that zipped past. Fierce white light poured from two lanterns at the front of each cart, splitting the night.

She had taken refuge in a small stone building nearby, positioned along an outcropping of the great road. Jara had spotted the building as soon as she had pried her eyes away from the furious traffic below and ran for its safety and, she hoped, its warmth. She was fortunate to find it both warm and dry.

An old woman had been standing there as she entered, looking out through the windows as an equally old man stood in the rain and worked in some unknown way beneath the front flap of one of the metal carts.

As Jara entered, wringing water from her hair and shaking to shed some of the water from her short dress, the old woman had asked, “What are you doing out here dressed like that, dear?”

Jara heard the words, understood the words, but knew that they were not the words of Onus. Embrew had explained this to her as they had


22

traveled in the glowing corridor that took them from her home to this strange place, but she did not understand how it worked. She was grateful for the words, however they had come to her, and she used the gift of this tongue to reply in her most demure tone, “I’m lost.”

She did not know if the people of this world were at all like those of her own, but she had been raised around kind old men who would have done anything for a lost and sick child. She had come to believe that such compassion was universal among the elderly, and she thought that her best hope of doing what Embrew had asked would be to play on what sympathies she could find in the people of this place.

“Oh, you poor thing. How did you get all the way out here?” The woman immediately abandoned her vigil at the window and came to Jara, bending down just a bit, for she was not all that much taller than Jara, and pushing a lock of dripping hair away from Jara’s eyes.

Many lies danced through Jara’s mind, but she thought those closest to the truth might serve her best. They always had before. “There was an accident, and I was separated from my parents. Can you help me find them?”

It had been a simple little lie. It had worked famously. It had also, unfortunately, forced Jara to consider something she had not yet had time to think about—the fact that she really was separated from her mother. If she was even still alive, her mother was trapped in the Reflectory with Corudain and the others, on another world that Jara could not get back to unless she did this impossible task Embrew had asked of her.

The old woman had gone out into the rain and spoken with the man who had apparently completed whatever he had been trying to do inside the vehicle. They had both agreed that the best thing to do would be to take Jara somewhere safe and warm and to call the police.

That had brought her to her current predicament. She sat in the back seat of the vehicle, pretending to sleep so that she would have to answer no more questions from the well-meaning people in the front seat. The old woman was named Eleanor, and her husband was Hans. They were very kind and clearly meant well, but every time they asked her a question, she was forced to dig her lie a bit deeper, and the more said about a lie the harder it was to hold that lie together. When she was younger Jara had learned that lesson the hard way trying to keep the monks from discovering her various adventures. Now, when she was doing something truly important, she wondered if perhaps all of the troubles she had gotten into as a young thing had been preparation for this very task. Perhaps that is what Embrew had meant when he said, “You are more than you know yourself to be.”

She watched the great buildings go by outside the window, dark and ghastly things. Hans had commented that the storm had somehow damaged the city, for there were few lights coming from these great towers and it made the entire place all the more terrifying.

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Jara closed her eyes. Somewhere out there Embrew was guarding the way home. She wanted nothing more than to race to him, to take what small comfort there was from someone familiar, even though she had known Embrew for almost no time at all. But Jara Abison was her father’s daughter, brave and true. She would do what Embrew had asked and she would return home to defeat Hyrak and his armies once and for all. If all she had to endure were a few more questions from these kind old people she would count herself lucky. She leaned back into the soft material of the seat and allowed her mind to wander.


24

3 Core

e was a force of nature. I knew from the first time I laid eyes on him that he had the potential to change everything in this boring little world. For as long as he lived, Todd White uprooted the natural order of things.

The night that changed my life forever, for instance; things would likely have gone quite differently if he hadn’t been there. To be entirely honest, I doubt I’d have even been there myself if he hadn’t asked me to go.

It was the beginning of second semester, early in January, when Todd transferred to my school: Lewis High School in good old Des Moines, Iowa. It was my junior year, and things had been going well up until that point, or at least as well as you could expect for someone in my position. You see, I was pretty much out of my depth in my life. When I was younger, I had been pretty bright, and my mother never let go of the hope that I was going to grow up to be the next Einstein or Edison or something. I think from the time I brought home my first statewide aptitude test, in the sixth grade, I lost control of my future. I know that on that day I stopped being free to just be Adam Childers.

I was the oldest of three children; older than my sister by a year and my brother John by three. My family had been rooted into our rural Iowa town for years thanks to my dad’s job at a window factory, and we were pretty typical of the average families in town. That test though, it lit this fire in my mother’s eyes—the possibility of some grand future that I, as an eleven year old, couldn’t even dream of.

I’m the reason my parents split up. The possibilities of scholarships and advanced coursework in our little town were meager compared to the opportunities that the big city of Des Moines offered. They fought so hard, my parents, when mom decided we had to move. Dad was afraid to try and find a new job after so many years with the factory, and he wanted to stay in Ashfield to be near my grandparents. Mom, though, had never been happy in Ashfield, and hadn’t been truly happy with Dad in a while either. Maybe I was just the straw that broke that camel’s back, but no matter what other evidence has come to light in the years since, I’ve never been able to shake the sense of guilt that I’ve been toting around since we moved.

I still see Dad and my siblings every month or so, but they’re almost like strangers now. So from the first day of high school, I’ve been alone in a world built entirely on the dreams of my mother. And the change from Ashfield, where the entire population of the city just barely broke four digits, to Des Moines where the headcount at my high school already outmatched Ashfield’s population, was mind numbing. I was a stranger in a very strange land.

H

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Becky Hanson (I refuse to call her Rebecca) was my salvation. She kept me from going utterly insane as I tried to understand what my place in the world might be. I’d never considered myself a racist, but simply enduring the shock of transferring from a town where the only minorities were the Chinese couple that worked as bus drivers to a school where the only true minority was a Caucasian was more than my small town brain could handle.

Becky was adopted, and she’d been living in Des Moines for as long as she could remember. Her birth parents were from Laos, and her adopted parents were real estate agents that had fallen out of love with parenting shortly after their daughter stopped being adorable and started being, as Mrs. Hanson calls it, “disgustingly obese.” All in all, the last time her parents gave Becky the time of day she was nine.

Regardless of her home issues, which were considerable and yet pleasantly different from my own, Becky had been a ship without an anchor in the Des Moines public school system for years. When I happened along, we found each other and suddenly, almost magically, we weren’t alone anymore. She’s smart—smarter than I am—but she refuses to do well on the tests. I think she’s afraid to bring her parents’ attention back onto herself. I haven’t quite figured out why—but solving the mysteries of why Becky does anything was a cornerstone of our relationship.

We started dating just as the homecoming dance approached during our freshmen year. Of course, dating was different in Des Moines than it was in Ashfield, but wasn’t everything? Here, it seemed like people barely knew each other a few hours before they were sleeping together, and every week the news broke that some other girl was expecting to be a new mother. I was confused about a lot of things in life that year, and still am, but one thing that I knew with crystal clarity was that I had no desire to be a teenage father. So Becky and I dated in the old school sense of holding hands and a peck on the cheek. I don’t know what base those things amount to, having never cared much for baseball analogies, but whatever it was, it was enough for us. We were happy, at least for the thirty-five minutes of lunch we got to spend together every day.

That was pretty much the status quo for three years. Becky and I shared our time together, I struggled to achieve my potential, in the words of my mother, and Becky struggled to mask her own. I took every class my counselor and mother concocted to garner the attention of the all-important scholarship boards of various universities, and I continued to wonder what it was I wanted from life. Becky and I made a few other friends, but such connections were always short-lived. With so many high schools in the city, and the economy so weak throughout the country, jobs changed, parents moved, and students were carted like unwanted luggage from one region to another. It was an unhappy time, but we took refuge in bad movies, fast food, and the safety of anonymity that a large school so conveniently provides.


26

Until, of course, Todd White came to town. It had been a long and dull winter break, punctuated by ice storms that made escaping the house impossible. Becky and I had been chatting online a great deal over the two weeks of school-free vacation, playing an online war game that we enjoyed. I enjoyed the sheer escapism of role-playing games, and Becky took a casual pleasure in finding new ways to completely dominate whatever game we were playing at the time. If she hadn’t been so good natured about it all, I’d have been afraid of her. Becky was terribly good at planning things; it seemed like she could think three steps ahead of anyone else. It was one of many things I admired about her, and it helped us to pass the time during that gray winter vacation.

The ice storms hadn’t prevented the obligatory family time with my brother and sister over the holidays. We got along well enough, particularly John and I. Carrie was indifferent to me, as she had been for years now, and Dad… He and I hadn’t really spoken much since the divorce. When I visited Ashfield every other month, it was more to see Carrie and John than it ever was to see him. I don’t think I’m the only one who blames me for the divorce.

The storms, an unbelievable three in the space of two weeks, had done their best to make everyone miserable. Shortly after the last one, a major blackout had crippled the city for just over 24 hours, sparking all kinds of random panic. They even called the National Guard out for that, although things weren’t really that bad. I didn’t pay too much attention to anything during the blackout—I had a terrible headache pretty much the whole time.

So we returned to school in early January without having had any real fun at all during our two week vacation. The only date Becky and I had made for the entire stretch, a downtown lunch on our last day of freedom, had been a victim of the power outage.

As school resumed, we quickly discovered that in this new semester Becky and I happened to share our last period class. As we sat in the back of the room, waiting for the bell to ring and free us from that first day back, everything changed. Like a tornado that erases a town from the map, or a volcanic eruption that destroys an entire culture, Todd White transferred to Lewis High School.

¤~¤~¤

Adam and Becky sat in two of the three seats closest to the door at the

back of Mr. Pool’s American History class. The first day of the new semester was winding to a close. Two dozen students sat almost elbow to elbow in the classroom, each squeezed into old and yellowing stand-alone desks. At the front of the room, Mr. Pool, hair thin and glasses thick, lectured and gestured to an overhead projection of the class syllabus on a tattered white projection screen.

The blinds were drawn and the lights were off; the only sources of light were the amber glow of the projector bulb and the stark white of the

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hallway lights coming through the high window of the door. Alongside the windows, a student passed a note to another, while three seats nearer the front a student casually entered some message of earth-shattering importance into his cell phone and sent a text to what was certainly another student similarly disengaged from his or her education.

Mr. Pool continued to discuss the course requirements for the second semester. As he pulled aside one overhead transparency to replace it with another, the door to the classroom opened, causing more light to spill in onto Adam’s desk and illuminating the doodle of a sword that was climbing the left margin of his copy of the course guide.

Standing, framed in the light of the door, was the vice-principal and, to her side, an unfamiliar African-American student—someone new. New students were not uncommon at Lewis High, particularly this time of year when students who had been expelled from one building in the district were reassigned to other buildings. As it turned out, this young man at the vice-principal’s side was such a case: brought in from one of the east side schools for a variety of reasons.

“Mr. Pool, I’m sorry to interrupt your class, but this young man just received his schedule.” The vice-principal walked into the classroom, blinking to adjust her eyes. Her guest walked behind her, a broad smile on his face. He was a bit shorter than the administrator, perhaps five feet and nine inches to her ten. His shoulders were broad, and his hair was close-cropped. His brown skin was of a light tone, and his large eyes were bright. There was a confidence in his gait and a certain set to his stance that clearly identified him as the sort of person who carried trouble with him wherever he went.

Mr. Pool paused, the vice-principal’s words taking a few moments to settle into his head. Once he pulled himself out of the mental rhythm of his lecture, he straightened up a few inches, pushed the thick rimmed glasses a bit higher onto the bridge of his nose, and gestured to the seat nearest the door, immediately next to Adam. “You can have a seat there, Mr.…?”

The new student smiled, teeth flashing, as he said, “I’m Todd. Todd White.”

Becky leaned over to whisper in Adam’s ear, paying no heed to the imposing shadow of the vice-principal that fell only a few feet away from them. “Five bucks says he’s a moron. Absolute moron.”

Adam smiled but didn’t reply. Todd took the indicated seat, bumping into Adam’s desk as he did so,

and knocking Adam’s notebook, with its random scribblings, to the floor. “Sorry about that, man.”

Adam said nothing but leaned over to pick up the book. As his head dipped below the level of the desktop, Todd leaned across, over him, to whisper to Becky, “Not a moron.”

Becky smiled, her face flushing with color. Todd smirked, content in his small victory, and leaned back in his chair as the vice-principal left the room, the door closing behind her and returning the room to dim shadows.


28

Mr. Pool resumed his lecture, passing a copy of the syllabus to Todd via his student helper. Adam returned to doodling while the complexities of his American History credit were outlined in excruciating detail on the blurry overhead screen.

Minutes ticked by with stately decorum, utterly ignorant of the mind-dulling boredom that accompanied their march.

As Pool began to setup his initial unit of the term, focused largely on the American response to the opening stages of the Second World War, Todd leaned over to Adam and spoke, his voice deep and rich, clearly standing out amid the humming drone of the teacher. “What time are we out of here?”

Adam looked up at the clock, partially obscured by a diorama of the first twenty presidents of the United States, and whispered back, “About five minutes.”

“Gentlemen, if your conversation is so much more important than what I have to say, perhaps you’d care to come see me after school and discuss how you might be able to improve the curriculum,” came the enunciated words of Mr. Pool. His droning monotone was gone now, refined by a sharp edge of anger.

Adam’s face went pale, and an objection rose in his throat only to die on his lips. Talking back to teachers was not at all in character for him, but in the same regard, being on the receiving end of a reprimand was likewise foreign territory. As it turned out, however, he did not need to find words to rebut the teacher.

From beside him, that same deep voice, a voice that carried loud and clear over all of the incidental noises of the room without so much as an effort, said, “That sounds like a plan then. Do you have an hour or two? We’ve got a lot of crap to fix.”

Someone towards the window-row whispered, “Oooh.” Adam slid down in his seat, wishing fervently for the ability to shrink to

insect size, or turn invisible, or to, failing all other options, simply die. Becky, herself a bit fonder of snark and sass than Adam, beamed at Todd. Every eye in the room was on the new student now, save for Adam’s which were squinting closed as though expecting some sort of explosion to overtake them all.

For one long moment there was absolute silence. No one texted, no one whispered, no one spoke. There was not even the sound of papers being rifled, or books being closed. The wheels were spinning in Mr. Pool’s head, evidenced clearly by the furrowing of his brow and the reddening of his ears. Then, like the explosive release of held breath, the bell rang.

With something akin to preternatural speed, Adam rammed his notebook into his backpack, standing and sprinting for the door as the rest of the class did the same. Becky followed closely, shoving at Adam’s desk to clear room behind it for her own hasty retreat. The twenty-some students in the room filtered out through that one door, someone taking the initiative to flip on the lights on the way out. After only a handful of seconds, the room

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was left with only two occupants: Archie Pool, twenty year veteran teacher of history, and Todd White, twenty minute student of history.

Adam and Becky reconvened immediately up the northwest stairwell, near their lockers. Adam was still blanched, breathing heavily from darting up the stairs. His build was slim but he was not nearly as athletic as the shape of his limbs might have suggested. Becky took longer to arrive, largely due to the fact that she was not fleeing the wrath of Pool.

“He stayed!” she exclaimed as she reached the top of the stairs. “What? You mean he’s still in there?” asked Adam, his voice pitched

high with incredulity. “I swear, he’s just sitting there waiting to get yelled at. It’s kind of…

well… well, it’s stupid. That’s what it is.” Becky’s tone clearly betrayed her ambivalence toward the situation.

“Well, good. It’s not like I even did anything wrong, you know? He’s the one that was talking. And loud! It’s like he wanted to get caught. Do you think Pool’s going to call my mom now?”

Becky shrugged. “Hard to say. It probably depends on what Todd’s saying down there right now. If I were you, I’d be praying that he’s the ‘take one for the team’ type. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Adam sighed and stepped across the hall to his locker, working the combination lock. Around them, students were gathering their books and jackets, readying to head home. Finally, as he pulled his literature homework into the faded black duffle bag he carried with him everywhere, he spoke again. “Do you think he’s a basketball player?”

Becky shook her head. “No such luck. That’s a wrestler if I’ve ever seen one.”

Adam slammed the locker shut. “Shit.”

¤~¤~¤

The only light in the room came from the dozens of computer monitors that covered the east wall. While most of the monitors cycled idly through images from various security camera feeds that showed hallways, elevators, and parking lots, two in particular did not scroll through images. One, the largest of the bank, showed a vast room, well-lit, where several floodlights illuminated a hemisphere of banded metal perhaps ten feet in radius. The other showed a dark room, lit only by narrow cylinder-lamps recessed into one wall. Within that room an indistinct figure sat upon a steel bench built into the opposite wall.

The rest of the monitor-filled room was quite bare, consisting only of a large table and the eight chairs surrounding it. Seated at equally spaced intervals around the glass oblong table were eight men: five in dark suits, two in the distinctive green of the armed services, and one in a white lab coat. It was the one in the lab coat, Ervin Jaske, who spoke.

“Members of the board, you’ve asked for a report on our findings in the wake of the high-energy discharge event that very nearly compromised the


30

security and secrecy of this program. As per the general’s orders, I’ve prepared some information for you to help answer any questions you may have about what exactly happened. On January 3rd, at approximately nineteen hundred hours, an electromagnetic event struck the greater Des Moines metropolitan area. This event, centered on this facility, was completely unexpected and occurred without any warning by our forecasting systems.”

One of the suits, his features grim, asked, “Are you saying this wasn’t the result of one of our tests on the artifact? You said unexpected, but protocol indicates that appropriate shielding should have been in place if a test was being conducted.”

Jaske coughed. “This was not a test, sir, but the shielding was in place.” He shuffled the papers in front of him, clearly uncomfortable with the information he was being asked to share.

One of the military men, Major Lorenz, barked, “You mean this thing was strong enough to leak through the shielding and still blow out half the power grid?”

“Yes sir. And the shielding is slagged. It fused with the concrete substructure, and our contractor thinks it’ll take a few weeks to properly excavate the materials and install replacements.”

Another of the suits ran his finger across a line on the spreadsheets sitting on the table before him. “That shielding cost eight million dollars. This project is already significantly over budget, and in the past fifteen years we haven’t had a single useful breakthrough in studying the artifact. I don’t know if we can continue to secure funding.”

Jaske pounded his fists on the table in frustration, scattering the papers in front of him. “Are you insane? This was our breakthrough! In the past decade and a half we haven’t been able to get the machine to so much as hum. A few days ago it belched out enough energy to cripple a sophisticated military base, and now you want to pull the plug?”

The until-now-silent military man at the table, General Horton, said, “Calm yourself, Ervin. We’re not going to pull out now. Mister Aplington doesn’t have all of the information yet.” With those words, the general pushed a manila file folder across the table to Aplington and the other suits. “At this time I’m declassifying the full report of the January 3rd event. This is privileged information, gentlemen, and must, as you will soon see, remain as such.”

The five suits, one of them Director Candor himself, gathered closer at their end of the table, flipping open the file folder to reveal dozens of photographs. Figured prominently in all of the images was a tall, emaciated man. He wore heavy grey robes, soiled and stained, and his gray hair was long and unkempt. His face was lined with many wrinkles, and where there should have been eyes, two scar-tissue holes gaped. Upon each wrist was a band of a strange violet-tinted metal, and in several of the photographs he appeared somehow double-exposed, as though the camera had captured him doing two things at once.

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The director raised an eyebrow and asked, “Who is this man? What is his relationship to the situation?”

General Horton smiled. “He isn’t related to the situation, gentlemen. He is the situation.”

“You mean he caused the device to activate?” This time it was Jaske who spoke. “This man, who calls himself

Embrew, emerged from the artifact exactly five minutes after it began radiating electromagnetic energy. In that act alone he told us more about the machine than we have been able to unearth since it was discovered. The artifact isn’t a weapon; it’s a doorway.”

Jaske paused to savor the stunned silence of the board. For years they had pushed at his team, demanding answers and profitable information when none was to be had. Now he was absolutely certain they were swimming in collective ecstasy at the thought of all the money to be made from derived technologies. Ervin had to confess he was ecstatic as well. He might finally have found something to justify General Horton’s faith in him.

After a few moments of contemplation, the director was the first to ask a question. “Where is he from? Is he an alien?”

General Horton pointed to the monitor that focused on the shadowy figure. “I thought you gentlemen might like to be here when we found that out. Major Lorenz, please instruct the men to set up the teleconferencing monitor.”

¤~¤~¤

Embrew sat on the cold metal surface of the bench with his hands

resting on knobby knees. The room was silent, as it had been for most of the time since he arrived. The only interruptions had been the regular intervals where two men, footfalls heavy on the cold surface of the floor, had brought food for him. Assuming they were feeding him three times each day, he had been here for two days. He was no fool and knew full well that he was, yet again, a prisoner, but these people treated him better than the Gars had.

Of course, he had not betrayed these people as he had the Order of Gar. That likely had something to do with the quality of his accommodations.

His mind raced as he thought of what he had done. There were going to be consequences for his actions, most certainly. Core was a barred world, forbidden by the Order for terribly important reasons. The records of its existence had been mostly destroyed, but Embrew remembered the geometric key that would open the way—one of many things he had learned in his youth, studying the Observatorium at the Council Tower. In his long years of imprisonment beneath the monastery, he had often fancied himself escaping to Core; escaping to this place where he knew he would not be followed.

Those were just dreams, though. Now he was here, and he realized the seriousness of what he had done. The gate had been sealed for so long here, and those left to tend it had been so proficient, that this world had forgotten


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what it was like to have contact with the others. They did not know the truth of the universe, and that meant that his slimmest of hopes was no hope at all. The peoples of Core could not be counted on to return with him to Onus and drive out the armies of Hyrak.

Worse yet, there was the possibility that Lyda could follow him. His actions might have opened this entire world to attack from Hyrak. Now the fall of two worlds would weigh upon his conscience.

The only hope that persisted in his heart was that Jara might be able to accomplish her task. It was a strange world, very different from her own, but she was a bright girl—resourceful. If anything proved the existence of the Purpose it was the fact that of all the people in the world to be near him during the fall of Gar Nought, it was that little girl with her extraordinary pedigree. If she could find the Line, than there might yet be hope for this place.

The reverie of the old man was broken as the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door to his room and then stopped. A series of faint beeps emanated from next to the door, and then a resounding click indicated that the door was no longer locked.

A pair of men, their number evident by the slightly out of sync footfalls of their boots, entered the chamber. Embrew listened closely to the sounds of their passage, and could not detect the metallic sounds that accompanied his food; there was no clink of spoon against tray or cup.

Following the two men came a third. From the sounds that traveled in his wake he was either pushing or pulling some manner of cart with wheels of metal that squeaked upon the cold floors. The cart had a certain substance to it, and Embrew felt the amount of space it displaced as it entered the room. There was a large cubic object atop the cart, but that was the extent of the information he could gather from his magical arts. The bands of metal at his wrists made even that much more difficult than it ought to have been. This third man positioned the cart next to the wall and then departed, leaving the first two men to stand on either side, solid and silent across from the monk of Gar.

“Good men, would you be able to gather for me something to drink? I know it has been no few days, but my journey was quite exhausting, and I am slow to recover from its rigors.” Embrew tasted the words of this world in his mouth, feeling the strange sounds of their syllables catching on his tongue. The gate had done its job, preparing his mind for the languages of this world, but it had been so long since those arts had been employed upon him that he had forgotten how it felt.

Suddenly, in answer to his question, the object on the cart before him seemed to come alive, a pregnant static filling the air for a few moments until it resolved. Embrew could hear new sounds now; sounds that came not from this room, but from the device between the two men. He heard the nervous sounds of people seated around a table, although he could not discern how many. Chairs made squeaking noises, papers shuffled, and a

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stylus or quill tapped on the smooth surface of that table. These were the sounds of his true captors—of this he was certain.

A voice issued forth from the box. “Mr. Embrew, we’ll send someone with water very soon. I hope you’ve not been too uncomfortable.”

Embrew nodded. He listened carefully, hoping to hear some other distinguishing note in the man’s presence, as he said, “I have been blessed to see the inside of many cells in my long life, good sir, and you and yours provide one of the best.” He kept good spirits in his words, continuing at all costs to present a friendly face to these men. Everything depended upon his handling of his captors. Everything depended on keeping them content and himself alive.

The same man replied, “Good. We’ll talk quite a bit over the coming days, but my colleagues and I have one question that we’d like to see answered first. Where do you come from?”

Embrew weighed his answer carefully. For two hundred years the Order had adhered to established rules to prevent the contamination of cultures between worlds, but those rules had fallen by the wayside when they had begun bringing travelers outside the Order’s ranks with them from world to world—a practice begun in Embrew’s now-distant youth. Along the major routes between worlds, few cared for the old protocol. But this place, Core, was different. Was it his place to share the secrets of the universe with these men? Finally, he realized that he was arguing to no end. The only beings who would take him to task for such a thing were the eldest of the order, like Corudain, and they were all surely dead.

“I come from Gar Nought, a monastery in the green reaches of the northern continent of Onus.”

Almost immediately, there was a tumult of voices from the box. Finally one rang out louder than the others, coming from a man who had not yet spoken. The words came with a high pitch and a reedy sound. “And this place, Onus… is it another planet? If we showed you star charts, could you identify from which planet you come?”

Embrew shook his head. “Onus is not another planet, it is another world.” His mind scrambled for the words in this language to explain the concept, and he suddenly realized he could not. In this place, the word ‘planet’ and the word ‘world’ meant the same thing. They had never developed the vocabulary to understand the spiral of worlds and the chains of destiny that bound them to one another. He would have to teach them the truth, just as he had taught Lyda twenty years—and as many mistakes—ago. There was a rather sobering amount of irony in that.

“It works like this, you see…”


34

4 Core

p until that point, my life had been pretty safe. But in one quarter of an hour on a Monday afternoon, everything I had taken for granted about my world had started to come undone. Becky and I sat in the front

lobby of the building, waiting for my mom to arrive to drive us both home. The weather was too cold for walking, and neither of us had been on the receiving end of many positive experiences on the metro bus system. The wait for Mom gave us plenty of time to finish talking about the mess in History.

Becky and I only really had each other. There were lots of people that she or I talked to throughout the day, and some were even bordering on being the sort of person you might voluntarily spend time with. But no matter what else happened, we both knew that there was only one person in the world who had our backs—and that was each other. This co-dependency was really central to our relationship, and anytime we were separated it was easy for anyone to see that separately we were significantly more vulnerable than together.

Back during our freshman year, there had been an incident. I was still new to lots of things—the city, the school, having a girlfriend—and in a high school being new, being unsure of yourself, is an awful lot like putting blood in shark-infested water. While our relationship was just getting its feet under it, I was still operating under the assumption that somewhere out there were people who would be my friends. Becky was wonderful, and I was already by that time having a hard time picturing my life without her, but sometimes you want to feel like you belong to something.

My dad, at the time still nervous about trying to remain an important part of my life via telephone and the occasional weekend visit, had suggested that I take the move to Des Moines as an opportunity to get a fresh start for myself. I’d been pretty withdrawn in Ashfield and Dad said this was my chance to get out and try something new. Not often a font of useful advice, I had to admit that Dad was on to something there.

In Ashfield, I’d been reluctant to stand up in front of people for fear that they’d suddenly flash back to second grade show-and-tell when I’d wet my pants while showing off my new book about tigers. I’d been afraid to join any sports teams in middle school because of the lingering shame that came from a fourth grade soccer game where I’d kicked the winning goal into the wrong team’s net. I’d fallen out of love with public speaking, and sports, because of those events and the almost elephant-like way that the people of Ashfield refused to forget them.

Des Moines was a fresh start, so I thought that I’d try and patch things up with Dad and, at the same time, take advantage of that start. I was, of

U

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course, drowning in academic work thanks to my mom’s master plan to ship me off to an Ivy League school somewhere in spite of the fact that I was quickly realizing that my limits were much nearer the state university level of achievement. I resolved to find the time anyway, becoming one of those people who found a way to juggle school, sports, and social life. It was, at its heart, a noble plan.

There were lots of things I didn’t know about high school at that point. I didn’t know that Geometry was supposed to be hard (because it never was for me) or that cheerleaders also ran the yearbook. I didn’t know that Becky’s neighbor was the football coach or that the world of high school athletics was neatly divided into two populations. It was that last fact that matters most of all.

When I showed up for the winter sports meeting, I’d expected there to be tables and signup sheets, maybe a friendly coach with encouraging advice. What I got was something a great deal more intimidating. It turned out that our school, in spite of its massive number of students, had a fairly small pool of student athletes. Most kids were too busy with academics, or social lives, or their jobs, to be bothered with football or basketball or track, which meant that those students who did get involved in athletics were double (or triple) dippers. It was pretty rare to find someone who only played baseball or only ran cross country. The majority of the young men of Des Moines Lewis High played football, which was a fall sport.

Winter was apparently a bad time to get into the politics of high school athletics. While most of the other athletic seasons were neatly spread out, winter played host to two vastly different groups of people who had, mere weeks before, worked together to be part of our mediocre football team. The parts of that whole had split in two to become Those Who Played Basketball and Those Who Wrestled. And I, of course, didn’t have a single clue which of those groups I belonged in.

With the crystal clarity of hindsight I can say that I made the wrong choice. As I walked in and was bombarded with people asking me which sport I was there for, I made a gut decision that has hounded me until this day. It was the wrong choice for lots of reasons, but it was the choice I made. I thought back to my father, a man whom I was still, at the time, trying desperately to stay connected to. All I could think, as people literally shouted at me to take a seat in one section or the other, was that Dad had wrestled in high school.

So I chose wrestling. I have my mother’s frame, lean and sort of tall. I’m not particularly strong (but then again nor am I very well coordinated). I’ve had the sort of practical experience with basketball that comes from 9 years in public school physical education classes, whereas my only practice wrestling comes from arguing with my little brother or getting my ass kicked by Ronald Trotter in seventh grade. So my “genius” gut instincts drove me to pick wrestling over basketball in spite of all that useful empirical evidence pointing in the other direction. When my dad and I fight he often says I don’t have the common sense God gave a groundhog (why a


36

groundhog?), and that day was very much one of those days where I had little choice but to agree with the man.

Some of the guys at school take a great deal of joy from picking on wrestlers—mostly when they aren’t around to hear it, of course. They say that, at the end of the day, there isn’t a single thing on the whole planet that’s gayer than a bunch of guys in spandex rolling around on a mat together. Of course, there are an equal number of people who know that there are very few people in any given school that can kick your ass harder than someone on the wrestling team. The moral being that a person like me, lacking in both physical strength and emotional fortitude, should have seen the doom that this sport had in store for me long before I signed the paperwork at that meeting.

I showed up for the initial practice the following week, despite some very loud protests from Becky. She said she liked me just the way I was, and that I’d look too much like a raccoon if I ended up walking around school with two black eyes. I laughed, trying my hardest to seem cool, and simply promised to comb my floppy brown hair forward to hide any such badges of honor. I’m really good at thinking of snappy things to say when Becky’s the only one around. I swear, even back then I was pretty non-functional without her.

So I entered the wrestling room wearing a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, like everyone else. I wasn’t the scrawniest guy in the room, but I wasn’t even close to the brick house that some of the guys had made themselves into. The coach went over some introductory stuff, which the guys mostly laughed their way through. It seemed that I was the only person in the room who hadn’t been wrestling for years at this point—and it quickly became apparent that while my signature was good enough on ‘draft day’ in the auditorium, my presence was no longer required—or even welcome—on the team.

That attitude wasn’t even a student-driven concern, either—the person who was most powerfully radiating disdain for me was the coach! Apparently I wasn’t his first waste-of-time applicant, because it didn’t take him long to figure out how to get rid of me.

He paired us off by height and instructed each pair to wrestle a practice match on the mat. He had by this point gone over the basics so I felt comfortable with the idea, knowing full well I’d lose miserably, until I realized the problem here. He’d paired us up not by weight, but by height. Wrestling is all about weight; even someone on the far outside of the sport knows that. Two people of equal height can have massively different builds. My self-deprecation aside, I had a sort of lean build. Nothing fancy, but it took more than a stiff breeze to knock me over. My opponent, who so conveniently stood the same five feet and eleven inches as me, was a sophomore named Ryan Weber. Ryan was… impossible to describe. He was a tower of muscle, like what you see in Greek statues or home gym commercials. He had a shallow tan and sort of long brown hair, with these green eyes that didn’t have so much as the capacity for compassion. He was

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a freaking monster, and I was supposed to get down on the mat and attempt (because an attempt is the best I could have hoped for) to pin him?

It was over in about four seconds. It may have even been three seconds. I let him win—and I’m not saying that to make myself sound better. I one hundred percent stopped trying at that moment, that three-or-four-seconds-into-the-match moment. Something happened on that mat, something happened while I was trying to twist him around, while he was lifting and turning me… something that I could not allow anyone else to see. I stopped trying right there, I let go of him entirely, and then I was lying flat on my back, having spun through the air and come down so hard on that padded mat that the entire world had gone purple for a moment.

Everyone laughed. I think, out of the periphery of my vision, I even saw the coach laughing. But I knew as I glanced around from my terrible vantage point on the floor that they were laughing at my awesome ineptitude… not at what had happened the moment before that flip.

But the look in Ryan’s eyes told me that he knew what had really happened, and he wasn’t laughing. Those cold green eyes were not laughing at all.

He never said anything. I don’t know why, but he didn’t. But for two years since, I’ve been scared to death of wrestlers. You just never know what’s going to happen when one of them walks into a room. I may not have much of a life, but I like what I have enough to know how hard I have to try to hold on to it.

¤~¤~¤

Adam and Becky sat on one of several long wooden benches that lined

the front lobby of Lewis High. The great glass front of the building was to their backs, and they were easily visible from the outside, where Adam’s mother could be expected at 3:20 on the dot. It was just now three o’clock, and they typically enjoyed their time waiting for the ride. Sometimes they did homework together, while other times they simply sat and talked. Today they did neither as Adam appeared intently lost in thought.

Becky pushed back her long black hair and slipped the ear buds of her MP3 player into her ears, knowing Adam well enough to know when he needed to be left to think. The trouble with Todd and Mr. Pool was likely bringing back some of his old issues with the wrestling team and the general species of humanity known as bullies. Just as Becky was queuing up a song she actually felt like listening to, she felt someone sit down on the bench on the opposite side of her from Adam—someone who was helping themselves to a share of her personal space.

JC Stein was not Becky’s favorite person, but by the same token she didn’t really hate him. He was a sophomore, and while she wasn’t one of those grade-elitist snobs, she found it hard to be around sophomores who acted so… well, sophomoric. JC was her next door neighbor and the


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youngest son of the football coach. For as long as Becky could remember, JC had been poking around on the edge of her business.

JC (whose name was actually Joseph Christopher) was five feet and nine inches of enthusiasm. He had dirty blonde hair kept to a scalp-hugging buzz cut and his bright blue eyes were almost alive with trouble. His athletic build, perhaps the only thing he had inherited from his dark haired and too-tall father, was more the product of endless hyperactivity than any particular fitness regimen. He was the sort of person Becky found it hardest to deal with; one of those kids who had been made into what she called a manufactured bipolar thanks to the wonders of attention deficit disorder medicine. When JC was taking his pills, he was something of a zombie, a goofy but good-natured person whose very will to live seemed to have been sucked dry. When he wasn’t on his meds, which was becoming more and more often the case, he was a barely-restrained ball of energy.

As he scooted even closer to Becky, she caught from the corner of her eyes what amounted to JC’s fashion statement of the moment. He wore his standard ripped blue jeans and black t-shirt, featuring the faded logo of a band no one had ever heard of, but around his neck he wore a necklace of heavy chain links, secured at the front by an equally heavy padlock.

“Joe, what is that thing around your neck?” Becky’s voice had the even tone that she often used when dealing with stray dogs or lost infants. It seemed appropriate.

JC rolled his eyes. “It’s JC, Becky. Joe is my slave name.” Without even meaning to, Becky rolled her eyes in return. “Joe, white

guys don’t have slave names. And people who are trying to ditch slave names shouldn’t go around wearing chains. It sends mixed signals.”

For the briefest of moments a cloud seemed to pass over JC’s eyes, and Becky knew it was his mind trying to figure out what she was talking about. Like the equally powerful part of his mind that kicked his common sense to the curb years ago, Joe’s brain managed to shove aside his confusion and soldier on without making sense of the world around him. Becky had to admit; on some tiny level it was kind of… cute. Like stray dogs and lost infants, of course.

“Whatever. Becky, did I hear that your boy is in tight with the new guy?”

Becky glanced sharply at Adam, saw that he was still off in his own little world, and turned back to JC, leaning in closer and noticing that he clearly had not showered after gym class. “What did you hear?”

“Oh! It’s all over school—new guy went off on Pool because Pool was trying to write Adam up for something. Which I knew wasn’t right, because your guy doesn’t have the balls, no offense, to do anything that would get him in trouble—” JC was cut off in mid stream of thought by the fact that Adam was now standing next to him, scowling.

Adam’s voice, calm and even and just low enough that a person had to strain to hear the nuances, hissed from between clenched teeth. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Joe?”

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JC shrugged and stood up. “Sounds like the guy had your back, man. Don’t shoot the messager.”

Realizing that the time for putting up with JC was over, Becky pushed him gently up from the bench. “It’s messenger, Joe. With an ‘n’. Go home. Go to the back doors. Just go.”

Still sporting a smile, and blithely unaware of the tension that was seething around him, Joseph Christopher Stein stood and shrugged his shoulders again, causing the padlock around his neck to heave up and down. “Whatever.”

As JC walked away, and almost immediately forgot what he had been doing as he bumped into a pair of freshman girls, Adam started to pace the tiled floor alongside the bench as Becky calmly rolled the earphones of her music player back up and tucked them into her bag.

“You want to talk?” She knew the answer before she asked, but Becky had spent three years trying to figure out how to snap Adam out of his own special brand of funk, and the only constant she had discovered was that no matter how mad he was with anyone else, he’d always keep his cool with her.

“No. It’s nothing. It’s… stupid.” He finally came to a rest, sitting back down on the bench a few feet from Becky. Without missing a beat, Becky slid closer and took Adam’s hand in hers.

“You’re not in trouble. The way that Todd kid was acting, there’s no way Pool will even care who else was in the room at the time.”

“It’s not that,” Adam said in a voice pitched just a bit lower than usual. “I think Joe was right. I think Todd was sticking up for me.”

“Or he was just being an ass. Remember, he’s probably a wrestler, and if he’s not he’s at the very least a jock of some sort. Ass is in his blood.” Becky was starting to see where this was going, and it was not a good place. Not at all. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain knew how badly Adam wanted to fit in with people. Too many people took pleasure in exploiting that; she’d seen it so many times already.

“It didn’t seem like—” Becky squeezed Adam’s hand. “Whatever the case, the guy’s been here

one class period and he’s already front page news. We have a solemn vow to remain anonymous in the eyes of the law around here, Mr. Childers. If you break that promise I’ll have no choice but to subject you to a sixties alien movie marathon. Again.”

Adam faked a grimace. “I give. Socializing with the new guy is not worth having to watch your sorry excuse for cinema.” He leaned in and quickly gave Becky a peck on the cheek, then just as quickly blushed as he remembered where they were. Luckily it didn’t seem as though any of the people still gathered in the lobby had noticed. Public displays of affection were not a common thing in their relationship, but Becky smiled warmly at the gesture.

The two sat and listened to Becky’s music for the rest of their waiting time, one ear phone in each of their ears. As Adam’s mom pulled up in her


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battered green station wagon, the two snatched up their things, zipped and buttoned up their coats to keep out the cold January air, and stepped out to the parking lot.

Adam opened the rear passenger side door for Becky, like the gentleman his mother had insisted he be, and as he closed her door and went to open his own, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Many years of instincts shouted at him to cower, but the presence of his mother made Adam just a bit bolder. He instead turned to face his would-be attacker.

Todd White stood there, a thin blue and white baseball jacket all that was keeping him from death by hypothermia in the eight degree wind. Adam attempted to speak, but the cold and his own surprise conspired to still his tongue.

“Sorry about History.” Todd’s tone was warm and easy to construe as friendly. Adam was immediately suspicious, and Becky worked the crank to lower her car window to intercede. Before she could, Todd finished what he’d come to say.

“I owe you one. This weekend, let me take you and your girl there out. You get home; we’ll sort the details tomorrow in class.”

And like that, having said what he needed to say, Todd White turned and started walking down the street, the wind whipping at his coat as he shoved his hands deeper in the pockets to secure his jacket against the breeze.

Adam slipped into the car and didn’t say a word for a long moment. It was his mother who finally broke the ice. “Who was that, Adam?” Adam said, “A friend. I think. Maybe.” But he did not hear, in the back seat, Becky’s soft whisper of, “Trouble.”

¤~¤~¤

In one of several private meeting rooms at the Army Post Road facility,

Major Lorenz met with the civilian director of the facility. It was not a formal meeting, and the director, Nathaniel Candor, had requested that Major Lorenz not let the General know that the meeting was happening at all.

The two gentlemen sat across from one another at opposite ends of a small table on which a lamp rested—the only source of light in the room.

Candor was a short man, and even the expensively tailored suit he wore could not mask the state of disrepair his body was in. He was of middle age and his waist exceeded his belt by more than a few inches. His hair was a dark blond and a shiny scalp peered through in more than one place.

The Major, however, was much better maintained. Of similar age, Lorenz had dark hair and a body that held back the weight of his years through decades of regimen. He wore his army uniform, and his hat sat on the table in front of him.

Lorenz spoke first. “What do you want, Candor? This is highly inappropriate.”

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Nathaniel Candor’s face was split by a wide grin that showed not even the barest hint of mirth. “You are quite right Major. Everything about this place is highly inappropriate. We have an illegal alien of the truest sort in a holding cell and we are treating him like some sort of guest! It’s been four days! How long will we continue to be lead around by the nose by this Embrew creature?”

Lorenz raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? We’re following standard protocols here.”

“There are no protocols for something like this! This is a matter of global security. We should be interrogating that thing using the full range of options at our disposal, but your boss insists on these little chats where Embrew spouts his lies as though we were sitting around a campfire together. Are you telling me you believe the nonsense that this man is spewing about parallel worlds and magic spells?”

Lorenz shook his head. “It isn’t my job to decide what’s true and what isn’t. My job is to follow General Horton’s orders. It seems to me though,” his voice lowered considerably, “that the General does believe.”

“That’s the problem!” Candor slammed his hand on the table, causing the lamp to rock. “We’ve been told for decades that we’re sitting on some form of particle accelerator that could be anything from a font of alternative energy to a form of space travel. A man shows up using this device and we believe him when he says that he isn’t from outer space at all, but instead from some medieval world? If his world is so backwards, how come they know how to operate the artifact? We’ve spent millions studying it, and we don’t even know how to turn it on.”

“What do you suggest, Mr. Candor?” Candor rose to his feet his feet. “I notice that General Horton is not on

site at the moment, Major. What say you and I step down to the holding cell and ask this alien to explain to us how to use the artifact?”

Lorenz shook his head again. “I won’t countermand the General’s orders. He insisted that we conduct our interrogation of Embrew in a civilized manner until we have reason to re-evaluate that position. He’s been forthcoming so far, so we have no reason to change our tactics.”

“Forthcoming?” Candor reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and drew out a folded piece of cream colored paper. “Read this.”

The Major took the paper from Candor and opened it, skimming through the text. “What is this?”

“It’s the analysis of the metal of those bracelets that your ‘honest and forthcoming’ alien is wearing.”

The Major slowly rose from his own chair. “This says that the metal is highly energized. That isn’t surprising; we assumed that it was similar to the material from which the artifact is built.”

Candor snatched the paper away from Lorenz. “In the sense that a power plant is similar to an alkaline battery. Those bands have the energetic equivalent of several kilos of plutonium. Each.”

“You mean he could--”


42

“That blind bastard could blow us to kingdom come at any time. That seems hostile to me! I want to know how to use the artifact, Major. I don’t care if I have to cut him open six ways from Sunday to get my answers. And now you have the information you need to circumvent General Horton’s ridiculous orders.” Lorenz stepped into the hallway, his face grim. He pulled the radio from his belt and pressed the button. “Major Lorenz to detention area. I am authorizing the relocation of detainee Embrew from holding to Interrogation 2. Call in a medical team and place them on standby.”

¤~¤~¤

Friday afternoon at Lewis High, the world continued to be filled with

surprises. Todd had been true to his word, and he had made arrangements to meet Adam and Becky at Blue Dog Billiards, a restaurant and pool parlor that catered to high school and college students on the north and east sides of Des Moines. The arrangements had been made rather hastily, of course, because it turned out that Tuesday had been Todd’s last day in seventh period history as Mr. Pool had asked for him to be removed from his class because of his insubordination.

All of which suited Becky just fine. Todd seemed to be a nice guy, and when she did see him in the halls or at lunch he managed to make her laugh more often than not. The simple fact remained, however, that she distrusted his motives in asking them to go out. She distrusted him so much, in fact, that she’d devised her own twist to the arrangements for the evening.

“I think we should drive out to the restaurant, instead of taking the bus.” She brought the idea up to Adam on Friday as they sat, as always, waiting for their ride home. The weather had started to warm a bit, but it was still early January in a state famed for erratic and fierce weather.

“Unless you know something I don’t, neither one of us has a car, Becky.” Adam chewed on his pencil as he attempted to finish a pre-calculus problem that was handily defeating his brain.

Becky smiled and leaned over to make a correction to his paper. “I thought I’d bring a chaperone. Just in case. He can drive.”

Adam arched an eyebrow. “We don’t need a chaperone, but if we did, who would you be suggesting? Not your dad?”

Becky couldn’t help but laugh—a short, sharp sound, not unlike a bark. The very idea of Mr. Martin Hansen taking an interest in his daughter’s life was too rich. “No such luck. I was thinking JC?”

Adam’s eyes widened. “First of all, you’re actually calling him JC now? And secondly, since when do we, or anyone for that matter, voluntarily choose to spend time with Joe? He’s a factory-made third wheel, or fifth wheel, or whatever the number I’m looking for is.” Realizing that his analogy had finished off his hope of doing his calculus, Adam snapped the book closed.

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“You only need to worry about an odd wheel when the group is even in the first place. You and I and Todd don’t add up to an even number at all, so the way I see it, Joe will balance things out. And he’s got a car, which is better than the bus. Unless you intend to ask your mom to give us a ride?”

Neither Adam nor Becky could imagine any good coming of being dropped off at what was one of the cooler places to spend a Friday night in Mrs. Childers’ dingy station wagon.

Adam sighed. “Fine. Joe’s in. I’ll be at your place at seven.”

¤~¤~¤

It had been six days since she had insinuated herself into Hans and Eleanor Campbell’s care. Jara had been with the couple to see the police twice now. They had taken her to a great building where hundreds of people seemed to gather. Most of the time Eleanor had sat with Jara in a pair of narrow seats with soft cushions that had been ripped until the stuffing oozed out when a person sat down. While they sat, Hans answered questions.

Once in a while, an officer would come over to Jara and ask her questions, but she kept her answers short and vague. They had done something with her fingers, pressing them into some sort of ink and then smudging that ink onto a piece of paper. They’d even had her wipe some strange stick in her mouth. She imagined all of these tests made them feel better in some way, but it did nothing to calm her nerves.

In all of those days, she had learned nothing about the Line, had not heard a single clue as to where Embrew and his gate might be. She was lost and confused and the only thing that could have been worse would have been to be hungry. Eleanor and Hans took care of her, and had even arranged to keep her when the police had insisted she be turned over to some other strange woman. They were, as she had first suspected, much like the old people of her world.

Today was like all of the other—this particular day, she had learned, was called Friday. She’d eaten breakfast with Eleanor while Hans went to work, and had spent the day watching television while Eleanor crocheted a blanket. They spoke in small snippets, and Jara often felt bad about not sharing the truth with her benefactor.

When Hans had returned home, not long after the sun had set, he reported that he had been called at work by the police. They needed to ask more questions, and Jara sighed as she gathered her wits for more lies. In all her years Jara had never felt as guilty as she did now, spinning lie after lie in order to bide time until the insight that Embrew claimed she possessed would awaken. This was their third trip to the police station, and Jara feared that after a few more she would lose track of what was real and what was lie.

They sat there while Hans answered questions, and Eleanor looked at a magazine. Jara, dressed in a new skirt and shirt, both of warmer cloth,


44

picked at the stuffing of her chair. After a few minutes she looked up and happened to see something that piqued her curiosity. Rising from the chair, she whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Eleanor nodded, “Hurry back dear.” Jara stepped over to a wall adorned with photographs of various

officers who had received acclaim in the past year. During her previous visits to the station, the wall had been obscured by workmen that were installing the lighting fixtures that illuminated the twelve pictures on the wall. Now she had, for the first time, an unobstructed view of this wall and her head felt as though it were about to burst.

Her eyes raced from left to right, scanning each photograph until they rested upon one. Her eyes fell upon the image of Officer Mollison, and she saw. His face burned into her mind with terrible fury, blotting out all other sensations. She read the small plaque under his name that proclaimed him recipient of the Mayor’s Award for Exemplary Service. He was a police officer and he was important. She knew with absolute certainty that he was going to help her.

She rushed back to Eleanor and grabbed her hand. “I need to show you this Mrs. Campbell.”

Without even the slightest hesitation, Eleanor Campbell rose from her seat and set her magazine down on the torn cushion to preserve her seat for when she returned. She followed Jara over to the wall and adjusted the thick-glassed spectacles on her nose.

“I know this man, Mrs. Campbell. It is very important that I talk to him right away.”

¤~¤~¤

Nathaniel Candor was not an evil man. This simple notion became a

mantra to him as he watched, through two panes of heavy ballistic glass, as the interrogation team went in to work on the alien for the third time this week. He didn’t enjoy seeing what these dedicated men did to the eyeless old man in that cell, but he knew that it had to be done. Nathaniel Candor was not evil, but he was committed. He would not only protect his country, he would help his country become great again.

Candor had been involved in the Army Post Road operation for just over five years, having been appointed to the post of Director after an unfortunate incident had necessitated the removal of the previous director. Coming from a background working in alternative energy out east, the possibilities presented by the artifact had been an attractive enough draw to cause Nathaniel to uproot his wife and daughter and move to Iowa. Given the health problems his daughter possessed, such a move was not undertaken lightly.

Five years of failed research had been wearing heavily on his heart when the breakthrough came. The arrival of this “Embrew” character had suddenly made the possibility of success in this venture a realistic one, and

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Nathaniel would not allow the kid gloves of General Horton’s liberal policies to hamstring his chances at mastering the artifact.

So far, Major Lorenz had done a masterful job of keeping the interrogation of the alien below the General’s radar. This facility was not the only project under Horton’s command, and convenient problems at several of the Army’s Nebraska facilities had left Horton busily occupied and bought valuable time for Candor’s men to extract what information was available from Embrew. Sadly, even with the use of clearly illegal questioning techniques, the old man had not yet divulged any information of consequence. Embrew flat out refused, even under extreme duress, to speak of the bracelets he wore.

Those bracelets were the most intriguing thing about the old man. While his ability to make the artifact function was of course amazing, they had spent years analyzing the artifact. While fascinating, it did not offer up the world of possibilities that those two simple bands of metal around Embrew’s wrists did. Candor would not rest until he knew what they were and how they worked, and as long as Candor was not resting, Embrew would not get to rest either.

It appeared as though the interrogators were ready to begin. Nathaniel settled into a comfortable chair to look upon the proceedings. While he certainly didn’t find what he was about to see enjoyable, he believed that it was the responsibility of men in positions of authority to take ownership in all those things that happened under their watch. He’d be damned if anyone would ever come after the Major, or the men working below, for these proceedings. By God, if someone were ever to pay the price for the actions taken this week, it would be Nathaniel Candor.

A simple speaker carried the sounds of the room below to Nathaniel, and he listened with eyes wide open. He pressed a button that activated the digital recorder so that, should anything important be said, his men could later analyze the precise words spoken. Below, things began, as they had the previous time, with a scream.

Embrew sat in a heavy steel chair, bound to it by canvas straps not unlike those used to restrain mental patients. His scream was the result of one of the aids in the room injecting him with three syringes full of a foul-looking chemical.

Embrew began to quiver, and sweat began to roll down his temples. The hollow places where his eyes had once been, covered over with smooth scar tissue, contracted as old muscles attempted to squint. His voice was dry and rasping; he’d had precious little water since the interrogation sessions had begun.

“Please, stop! I can tell you no more!” One of the interrogators, a lean and hard man named Carmichael,

looked to his clipboard and began to ask the prescribed questions, starting with, “What is the nature of the wristbands you are wearing?”

“They are my chains. They bind me for what I have done.” Embrew forced the words through clenched teeth as the drugs that had been injected


46

into his veins shot him through with pain. Candor knew that, by now, the alien should have been feeling a disorienting sensation. The chemical cocktail they had given him was stronger than the last time.

“How do they work?” Carmichael’s voice was even and low. “They are made of bindmetal, and I am no Metalbreaker. I have no idea

how they work!” “How do you use the artifact that you call the Spiralgate?” From his vantage point in the observation room, Candor leaned in close

to the glass. Carmichael had just abandoned the scheduled questions, and that was not like him. The Army’s interrogators were methodical to a fault.

¤~¤~¤

Embrew felt the chemicals in his body working against his will, and he

felt memories boil to the surface of his mind that he had not endured since his punishment by the Gars. He remembered Lyda, and he remembered the times they had shared until he had taught her the secrets of Gatemaking. He also remembered the depth and range of his power, and how it felt to use it.

Steam began to rise from the violet bands at Embrew’s wrists, and with a sudden jerk of one hand he made a violent motion and clenched, unleashing his power through the bands, pouring the torrent of arcane energy through them like a funnel as they restrained him—as they always restrained him. The bands of canvas that held him to the cold steel chair began to unravel, compelled to do so by his arts. But the effect was so slow—his powers still impossibly weakened by both the journey from Onus, in spite of the time he had already spent recovering, and this damnable place.

The interrogator stood then, seemingly expecting Embrew’s actions. He leaned in close to the old man, his mouth at the very ear and his words impossible to hear by anyone save for Embrew.

“You have revealed too much already, old man. You should not be here. Speak any more of the secrets of the Spiral and I will end you.”

Before Embrew could move any further, another member of the interrogation team was upon him. The young man plunged another syringe into Embrew, this time at the neck, and with that simple application the old man blacked out.

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5 Core

he atmosphere in the office was decidedly tense. Steven Mollison sat behind a desk that was not his own and fixed his eyes on the young woman who sat across from him. She was terribly young, perhaps eleven if his

estimation was in any way sound, and she had the most sober expression on her face. It was disconcerting the way she looked at him, almost as though she were looking through him. No, not through—beyond.

An elderly woman named Eleanor Campbell sat next to the girl, and she had been patiently waiting for either the officer or the girl to speak, but neither seemed likely.

“Officer Mollison, this is Jara. She’s been staying with my husband and me ever since we found her abandoned by the road. We’ve been trying to find her parents but she doesn’t know much to help with that. She saw your picture in the lobby out front, and she recognized you. Do you happen to recognize her?”

Steven shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Tell me, Jara, is it? How is it that you think you know me?” Steven leaned forward a bit, his mind working furiously. There was something familiar about the girl…

Jara blinked a few times, as though waking from a daydream. “Eleanor, can I talk to him alone? I’ll be fine.” Images danced through Jara’s mind: pictures and scenes that made no sense. She saw the officer, Steven according to the nameplate in the lobby, wrapped in heavy, tar-like shadows. She saw him stalking through a winter-bound forest with fear in his eyes, and she saw him beating a balding man in the head with a short shaft of metal as those shadows that clung to him pulled away like strings working their will upon a marionette. She tried to force aside the torrent of images, to focus on what was happening in front of her, but no matter what she did she could not help but see.

Eleanor slowly stood, smoothing her slacks as she did so. “I don’t see why that would be a problem. I’ll be right outside if you need me, dear.”

As she left the room, Steven stood, bringing his impressive height to bear as he glowered down at Jara. “What’s going on here?”

Jara smiled nervously. “I was sent to find you. Embrew told me I had to find a child of the Line, and you’re supposed to help me, I think. We have to go now.”

“Go where? You aren’t making any sense.” Steven walked around the desk and sat on the corner, now only an arm’s length from the girl.

“I don’t know any more than you do! When I saw your picture it made all of these thoughts pop into my head, and now I see things and I know things about you. Embrew said there was more to me than I knew; this has to be what he was talking about.”

T


48

Steven smiled, trying his best for reassuring but afraid he was looking condescending instead. This girl was clearly upset, and he needed to get her to someone who could help. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll find somebody for you to talk to? Someone who’s better at this kind of thing than I am.”

Jara snorted. “I don’t think there is anyone better at this than you. That’s why I had to find you. We have to rescue Embrew and get back to Gar Nought. It may not be too late to save my mother!”

“OK, I’ve heard enough. Let’s take a walk.” Steven grabbed Jara by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

“I see you, Steven! In my mind, I see you, in the woods where I arrived. Were you there looking for me?”

As though he had been struck, Steven released his grip on Jara and took a step back. This was the child—the one Jamison Alders had sent him to find! He had failed, and he had put it out of his mind, hoping that the whole ordeal was behind him now. He had been so certain that this was someone else’s problem—and here she was right in front of him. He had to call Alders; he had to figure out what to do next.

Jara smiled. “You believe me now?” Steven nodded. “We have to go talk to someone—someone who will

know what’s going on here. A friend of mine.” “No. I was told to find the Line, which is you, and get to Embrew and

the way home. You have to come with me now; this has taken too long already.”

Steven ran a hand through his spiky brown hair, sighing. “Do you know where this Embrew person is?”

Jara’s confidence cracked and her voice became very small. “No. I don’t. But I found you… so maybe I’ll be able to find Embrew too. Maybe that’s my gift—finding things.”

Steven hated to lie. He hated everything he found himself doing when Alders was involved, but as it had been for years now, he couldn’t help but do what he was told. He owed Jamison Alders too much to betray him. But a lie was a lie, and he hated it all the same no matter what its reasons.

“Jara, the man I want us to go see, he has a gift like yours—he finds things. He knows things. If anyone can find who you’re looking for, it’s him.” Steven’s voice was unsteady, and he was certain it rang false.

“Then let’s go,” Jara said. Steven hadn’t counted on how desperate the girl was to be back with

her friend and back home. Something that seemed much like his own guilt was clearly eating away at this little girl. He hated this.

¤~¤~¤

The car was beautiful. JC had clearly spent hours after school standing

in the frigid driveway of his house polishing every piece of chrome and wiping down all of the dust from the interior. His car wasn’t anything

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particularly special, but it was one of the few things that he could focus on. He had been ecstatic when Becky asked him to accompany her (and Adam) to Blue Dog, and he was going to make sure they arrived in style.

At five minutes before seven, the three of them stood in front of Adam’s house, breath frosting into heavy clouds as Adam and Becky bickered about who was going to sit in the front of JC’s two-door car, and who would have to crawl into the narrow backseat. Adam, constantly shooting sour looks in JC’s direction, wore a black button-up dress shirt and blue jeans under his heavy winter coat, while Becky had a white blouse and dark dress pants. She wasn’t wearing a coat, but she had a gray sweater tied around her waist. As for JC, he wore what he always wore: torn jeans and a black t-shirt. His father had insisted he wear a jacket, so his football letter jacket from school was slung over the driver’s seat. The only things about JC that were at all different from his everyday dress were that he’d polished up the chain around his neck, and his jeans were being supported by a metal-studded belt, similarly polished. The three of them could not have looked more mismatched.

“You know what, why don’t you both sit in the back?” JC pulled open the passenger side door and flipped the seat forward, motioning for someone to enter the vehicle. “Cuz if we don’t get going soon, the place is going to be packed.”

Becky frowned at JC as she started to climb into the car. “They don’t make these things for real-sized people, do they?”

Before he could make a reply, JC found himself cut off by another withering glare from Adam.

“Do I get in this side, then?” Adam asked. JC nodded, and as the two passengers buckled their seatbelts, he started

the car once more. Heavy music began to blare from the speakers in the back, and JC didn’t seem to notice the volume as he peeled away from the curb.

Adam leaned over to Becky. “This was a mistake. If we even get there alive, he’s just going to spaz out all night long. You know how he is, Becky—you more than just about anyone! Remember the birthday party?”

Becky blushed as the thought of Joe (he had not yet adopted the JC nickname) running nearly naked through her fifteenth birthday party came vividly back to mind. It had been the first time Adam had met her parents, and the party had been going well. It was, like all Hanson family affairs, a sedate gathering with no music, no laughter, and very little conversation that wasn’t about politics or real estate. Then Joe had come tearing across the lawn, fleeing one of his older brothers whose face had been covered with thick white paste of some sort.

“He’s grown up a lot since then.” Becky’s voice didn’t carry much conviction, and even that promptly dissolved as JC rolled down his window and began howling at random people on the street. “Or not.”

Adam sighed. “Whatever. As long as we have a good time and don’t get kicked out of the place, I guess it’ll be fine.” Adam’s knee began bobbing


50

furiously, and Becky took note of her boyfriend’s most obvious tell. Adam’s legs shook whenever he was nervous, and the way that his left knee was working, it was a wonder that the car hadn’t shaken apart yet.

Ten long minutes later, and with the tension between Adam and Becky mostly smoothed over, JC slid the car gracefully into a narrow spot between two large trucks. As JC stepped out of the car, leaving the letter jacket behind and unperturbed by the cold, Adam whistled.

“I’m impressed Joe. How can someone who takes off like a bandit every time he steps on the gas park so smoothly?” Adam unfolded himself from the car as JC opened the door for Becky.

“It’s my signature. Ask any of the ladies: JC starts out rough but at the end of the night, he knows how to treat his lady right.” A large, goofy grin swept across JC’s face, and Adam couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of the guy. Becky, rather than chuckling, elbowed JC squarely in the stomach as she stepped out of the car.

“I see my mistake now. I brought two boys with me and expected to have a good time.” The corners of her mouth turned up into a sly smile, and Becky took her place between Adam and JC, one on each arm. As far as she was concerned, this night might just turn out alright. Maybe.

¤~¤~¤

Jamison Alders could not abide those who did not take matters into

their own hands. He was a creature of both wealth and all of its attendant responsibility, and no matter where he went or who he counted upon in his endeavors, he found his most frequent companion to be disappointment. People were stunningly capable of disappointing him.

Mr. Alders stood in the lobby of the Veil building in downtown Des Moines, idly discussing the financial markets with an attractive young woman that had recognized him from a picture in the paper. She seemed interesting enough, but he found it utterly impossible to focus on what she was saying. He was a masterful conversationalist and he allowed his natural talent to carry him through the discussion without having to invest any more than a minimum of concentration on the matter. His mind, his staggeringly brilliant mind, was far too busily engaged in other issues to worry about this girl’s trifling concerns.

Officer Mollison had sent a text message only minutes ago indicating that he had found the girl. The entire shape of Mr. Alders’ day had changed—exclusively for the better.

Finally unable to tolerate the girl’s prattling any longer, he made a polite but firm remark that closed the conversation and left him standing at the great glass lobby enclosure alone. In the tinted glass his reflection, solid and plain, wavered as it always did. His broad jaw and deep, wide-set eyes gave him the appearance of a rough-hewn statue more than a middle-aged man. The lights along Grand Avenue, incandescent blossoms, cast long and jagged shadows up and down the tree-lined parkway. In each of those

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shadows Jamison saw possibility, and for the first time in many years he began to suspect that his work here in this miserable place would turn him a profit.

The problem was Mollison. It was difficult for Jamison to accurately gauge to what extent he could count upon the young police officer, and even more difficult to predict how he would react to more overt means of control. Bringing the girl to Alders was, in and of itself, a small act of rebellion. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that the girl had to die, but rather than simply do his duty Mollison had sent that text message and indicated he was bringing the young child of Onus to Jamison Alders alive and well.

Very well. If Steven Mollison didn’t want to get his hands dirty, Jamison Alders would handle matters himself. It wouldn’t be the first time innocent blood had washed across his smooth palms, and it would surely not be the last. It would, however, be the beginning of the end of his long and painful exile to this miserably frozen hellhole. In no more than an hour Alders would have everything he needed to be free of Des Moines, free of Iowa, free of the United States of America… and free of Core.

¤~¤~¤

Adam Childers stood just outside the door of Blue Dog Billiards and

swallowed hard. Through that door was an unfathomable number of possibilities, and very few of them seemed all that engaging all of the sudden. He had come here at Todd White’s insistence, but what did he really know about the guy? Becky and JC stood right behind him, and it was only due to the reassurance that they provided, however meager it may have been in JC’s case, that he had not yet bolted.

“We don’t have to go in.” Becky’s voice offered the same option it had offered all day: retreat. He knew she knew what was going through his head; his uncertainty. She understood him so well, better than he understood himself. It was part of the problem.

Adam shook his head and sucked in a deep breath of chill air. The night was deepening. “No, I’m good. Let’s go.”

The door pushed in at the insistence of tentative hands and revealed the dining room of Blue Dog in all of its humid and roaring glory. Dozens of square tables were arranged scattershot throughout the large open room, with oversized plasma televisions mounted on sturdy metal arms around the outer walls of the room. In each of four corners a large billiards table stood, and many people crowded around those tables.

There were a handful of empty seats throughout the dining room, and the music coming from the restaurant’s sound system had been turned up to nearly painful levels. Waitresses bustled about flirting and laughing as young men and women told raunchy jokes, split greasy pizzas, and watched basketball and hockey games on the overhead televisions.


52

JC shouldered his way past Becky to stand next to Adam and throw his arm over Adam’s shoulders, pulling him in conspiratorially. “Not exactly your kind of place, huh?”

Adam shook his head and firmly disengaged himself from JC’s hold. “Nah, I used to go to places like this all the time with my dad.” The lie sounded flat, but Adam knew that whatever he said JC wasn’t going to hear anyway. A pretty waitress came over to ask them if they needed to be seated and Joe’s attention was instantly hers.

Becky took Adam’s hand in hers, and he wondered briefly if his expression somehow broadcast the words, “Touch Me.” Shivering in spite of his heavy coat and the room’s oppressive humidity, Adam led Becky by the hand and followed the waitress and JC to the table she found for them towards the center of the restaurant.

“Will this be all right for you?” The nametag on the waitresses’ t-shirt read ‘Marty’ and JC smiled broadly up at her.

“This is nice baby. Real nice,” JC’s voice managed to crack as he spoke, causing a smirk to sprout on Becky’s face.

Marty smiled and nodded, leaving three menus on the table. “Excuse me, can we get a fourth? We’re waiting for someone,” Adam

said. He shot a glance toward the door but still had not caught a glimpse of Todd. Marty left the extra menu and disappeared, certainly off to, Adam assumed, trade their table to someone else so she could avoid any further attempts by JC to employ his so-called ‘charm’.

“My brothers always brought their dates here when they were in high school,” JC began, “and that table over there is supposed to be where Andy got his first girlfriend pregnant.”

Adam sighed. “I hope they washed it.” JC smiled, “Man, that was like five years ago. I’m sure they washed it

since then!” Adam leaned forward and grabbed a menu, opening it up in front of

him to cut off eye contact with JC. He turned to Becky and said, “You’ve been awfully quiet. Are you OK?”

Becky shook her head and chewed on her lip. She stared down at the table, intently tracing her finger over a symbol someone had scratched into the surface long ago.

Adam leaned in closer. “What is it?” After a long and awkward pause, during which JC was continuing to

talk to no one in particular, Becky looked up and made a short gesture to one of the pool tables in the corner of the restaurant. “Don’t be too obvious about looking, OK? And… I’m sorry.”

Adam’s eyes darted to the indicated corner in his best attempt at a surreptitious glance. Standing in the corner, foaming mug of beer in hand, was Todd White. He stood talking, laughing, with a small cluster of people, many of whom Adam had never seen before. Todd wore his tattered blue jacket and his wide eyes were gleaming. He was happy and comfortable—more in his element here than Adam had expected.

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None of that, however, was the reason for Becky’s apology. The person Todd was standing closest to was not a stranger. He was not some friend of Todd’s from his previous school, and from the body language between them he did not seem to be a casual acquaintance or a newly-met drinking buddy. Todd White was friends with Ryan Weber. The same Ryan Weber Adam had wrestled during his one day of wrestling in the ninth grade, the same Ryan Weber that had looked at Adam with revulsion and hate every time their paths had crossed for the last two years.

And while he was looking at Todd and Ryan talking, Adam watched as Ryan pointed to the center of the room, pointed to the table where Adam sat nestled between JC and Becky, and laughed. He wasn’t laughing alone. Adam clearly heard the deep, rich sound of Todd’s laugh. Laughing at him.

Adam felt the color leech from his face, and he felt his hands begin to shake. Becky grabbed for a hand, whispering, “Let’s go, now. Please.”

Even JC knew something was wrong. He looked at Adam, his customary smile drawing down at the corners into a look of concern.

It was more than Adam could bear. He could be laughed at—he had so many times before. He could be hurt—it was nothing new. He could be many things, but he could not—would not—be felt sorry for by Joe Stein. He reached over and took hold of the polished chain around JC’s neck, tugging it down towards the table and causing JC to yelp.

“Do not look at me that way. Don’t you ever look at me that way!” The voice that came from Adam’s lips was almost foreign to his ears. It was harsh and guttural, laced with feelings he had never let out before. As he pulled down, leveraging all of his weight to keep JC off balance and scrabbling, he twisted the chain link collar.

The shiny metal came free in his hands, the links that met together in the heavy padlock at the front suddenly free of their restraint and the padlock clattering noisily to the tabletop. Without Adam’s weight pulling him down, JC went sprawling backwards, knocking over his chair and colliding with another table’s occupants, forcing a large and scowling man with a monstrous gut to spill his soda all over his date.

“Dude! What the hell?” JC shouted as he scrambled to his feet and backed away from the large man with his hands splayed out in front of him. The man continued to scowl, staring at JC while his date shrieked for a waitress to bring her napkins.

Adam sat there in his chair, JC’s length of chain in his hand, his jaw slack. “I… I don’t know. I just… I—”

JC shrugged his narrow shoulders, the familiar grin spreading once more to his face, lighting his eyes with mirth. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Childers. Cool.”

He launched himself through the air, colliding with Adam and bowling the pair of them into Becky as she tried, in vain, to backpedal away from the pair.

¤~¤~¤


54

Jara knew something was wrong. The same way she had seen images of

Officer Mollison in her mind’s eye, she now watched as other images danced through her brain, pictures without context but all of them dangerous and disturbing.

Again the image of tar-like shadows clinging to the taut limbs of Officer Mollison leapt to mind, but now the focus of that image was different—no longer did her mind’s eye affix to the man bound in those shadows, but instead it was upon the shadows themselves. They strung out behind and above him, like streamers of ribbon made from darkness, and in the substance of those streamers she felt something unnatural, something horrifying. Like the stories Brother Ikah had once told her of the Weaver that stole children in the night, she felt a mysterious presence in those image-shadows, calling and tugging and weaving the officer in a design that she could not figure out.

It was not the only image she saw, but the others were disjointed and fragmented, like the beginnings of stories interrupted by the call for bed. She saw the shimmering disk of light that Embrew had spun to bring them to this place, and before it was a hulking azure wolf. She saw graceful palaces of gold and ivory in a dense jungle lit by three suns. She saw the witch who had laid siege to Gar Nought, and her hands dripped blood as the world seemed to crack and break around her. She saw all of these things and from none of them did she feel the same ambient wrongness that lit that image of the Officer and his shadows.

As Steven Mollison’s patrol car turned on to Grand Avenue, he looked over to see Jara gripping her head tightly with both hands. His voice was quiet, but the concern he felt was clear. “Are you alright? Can I get you something?”

Jara shook her head. “No. I see things when I think about you—weird things. Embrew will know what they mean, I think. We just have to find him. Are we almost there?”

Steven nodded. “Only a few minutes more, I promise. Mr. Alders will know what to do—he’ll know where your friend is. He knows lots of things…” What Steven could not bring himself to say aloud was that most of the things Jamison Alders knew he did not share with others—certainly not with Steven. In all the years they had known each other Alders had never been forthcoming with Steven about why he asked him to do the things he did. But Steven did them, as he always had—because he owed Alders more than he could ever repay.

It was that enormous debt that meant Steven was even now delivering this little girl, this odd little girl with her strange problems and even stranger story, to a man who wanted her dead. His vows to serve and protect the innocent meant everything to him, but when Alders was involved his vows were secondary to his duty.

The car finally pulled up alongside the Veil building. “This is the place. Here we’ll find the answers you need.”

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Jara smiled, although it was clearly forced. The images in her head had subsided again, but she knew that they had surfaced that second time for a reason. Something was there in that message that she needed to know. Unable to figure it out, she looked out the window and up the height of the tallest building in the city. She had seen the Veil building from the freeway several times while driving with Hans and Eleanor, but to be so close to something so big was almost frightening. The building was more than five times the height of the tallest building she had ever seen in her own world—the Council Tower on the far coast of the northern continent. It seemed almost impossible that any work of mere men and women could reach so near the stars.

As her eyes worked their way back down to earth, Jara saw a vague shape in the tinted lobby windows. The nature of the windows prevented her from seeing much more than the profile of a man, square of jaw and of medium height, but it was not what she saw that concerned her so much as it was what she saw. The profile of that man was not wrapped in shadows like Officer Mollison was in her mind’s eye—it was composed solely of those shadows—shadows with cruel visages and jagged eyes, tendrils and tentacles of their shadowy substance crawling out along the dark glass like the jointed legs of spiders feeling along their webs for signs of prey.

Jara Abison saw something altogether evil on the other side of the lobby window, and she knew it was the man Mollison had brought her to meet. She screamed.

“Hey! Calm down!” Steven leaned over and grabbed Jara’s arm, his grip powerful and firm upon her slender limb. “Stop yelling! What happened?”

Jara shook her head, suddenly remembering how terribly alone she was in this world. “I can’t go in there. I can’t. It’s bad. It’s bad.”

Steven took a deep breath. He had been so close to being able to wash his hands of this whole business. Now, though, things were infinitely more complex. He could not easily force the girl into the building—too many people would see and there would be too many questions. “Hey, it’s OK. This man we’re going to see is my friend. I’ve known him my whole life, and I promise you that this is the only place I know where we might find out the answers to your questions.”

“I know you think that’s true, Officer, but you’re wrong. This is a bad place, and that man is bad. He’s just as bad as the witch that killed Brother Ikah. You don’t even realize what he is; that means you can’t be the one who helps me. You can’t even help yourself.”

Steven drew back a bit, not releasing Jara’s arm but lessening the tension in his elbow. “I don’t know what you mean, kid. Can’t we just—“

Steven was interrupted in mid-plea by the police radio, squawking a call for officers to settle a disturbance at Blue Dog Billiards on the east side. Steven looked at Jara, at the puzzling mix of fear and pity in her eyes, and then looked towards the door to Alders’ building. His duty to Alders again placed him at odds with his responsibility as a police officer, and this time, he thought, he might be able to have it both ways.


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“We’re close to that call, kid, so I think I’m going to swing over that way. After I get done there, we can talk about what you just said. Then, together, we can go talk to Mr. Alders and figure out where your friend is and how to get you home. Does that sound good?”

Jara nodded hesitantly. She said nothing, but inside she beamed. She had done it. There had been a false start, to be sure, thinking that this man was who she needed to find, but now—this was surely the right path. Blue Dog Billiards? She wasn’t quite sure what billiards were, but she knew enough of this place to understand that a dog was not unlike a wolf, and suddenly the image of the azure wolf from her vision raced back to the forefront of her memory, and this image did not fill her with dread. This time, what she felt was hope.

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6 Onus

old silver rain danced atop the battlements of Hyrak Arn. The twin moons hid behind the thick and billowing clouds that had brought this rain to the southern continent, and Lyda could not help but think that was for

the best. The scant light of the guttering torches that lined the outer walls of her lover’s fortress home was more than enough to illuminate the terrors that stalked this night.

The past week had unfolded somewhat differently from Lyda’s expectations. As the most trusted of all those Hyrak counted among his advisors, Lyda felt that her rousing victory over the monks of Gar Nought would have earned her some form of accolade—but that was not the reception she and her warriors received upon their return to Hyrak Arn.

Raising her hand in a casual gesture of warding, Lyda pressed outward with her mind, bending the space around her to scatter the rain in a clean circle over her head. The sheer power at her command, the many techniques of Gatemaking she had mastered both during her tutelage under Embrew and in the years since, made her a fearsome creature. Perhaps it was for that reason that Hyrak had spurned her so.

Sufficiently protected from the cool rain, Lyda walked the upper battlements and looked down at the smooth fields of grass that stretched outward from the blue stone of Hyrak Arn for miles in every direction. Vaguely lit by the torches she could see the newest symbol of Hyrak’s respect for his beloved consort; heavy planks of wood had been erected every few yards. They were giant ‘X’s that had so perplexed her when she had returned with her men. Her forces had emerged from the pulsing green crossgate she had crafted to carry them, and their prisoners, home from the ruins of Gar Nought, and stretched across the field before them had been these great and ugly structures.

It had not been until she delivered her handful of prisoners and the books that the Gars had sealed away in their precious Reflectory to Hyrak that she had even realized that things were not what she had expected them to be. Hyrak’s grim visage did not look upon her with hunger as it so often did—the ravenous appetite in her lover’s cold blue eyes was directed instead at the heavy book bound in black leather and violet metal filigree that she carried beneath her lithe and bronzed arm.

He had dismissed her then, casting her aside as does a child grown bored with a once favored toy, and he had sequestered himself in his study for an entire day. He had said no words to her upon her arrival—he had directed the prisoners to the dungeons and instructed her soldiers to remain at the ready. To her, he had said nothing.

C


58

Lyda was not a fool, and she knew that the relationship she shared with the most feared man in all Onus was not a thing of love but of passion. In the years she had stood at his side those passions had never once diminished, and she had grown accustomed to being held in his confidence. She had even imagined that someday, perhaps after the last of the city-states of the North had fallen, she would stand together with him as an equal, a sorceress of renown to match a warlord of legend.

When Hyrak emerged from his study after that endless day of silence, eyes ablaze and armor secured, great sword in hand, he swiftly disabused Lyda of any such romantic notions. With casual efficiency he had ordered her soldiers, the warriors he had given to her as a token of his affection, crucified upon those ugly wooden scaffolds that bloomed across the fields. In a matter of an hour he had murdered every man in Lyda’s retinue, and all this he did without a word of explanation.

She looked out now at the remains of cloaks, armor, and flesh tattered and flitting in the wind. She had held no particular affection for the men, but they had been hers. To have them struck down so, by someone she trusted, stung more deeply than she had cared to admit. A deep sigh shuddered through her body, and she released the working that cast the rain away from her. The cold water quickly soaked her through. There was no sense in wasting energy warding off inconveniences. For all she knew, it would take every ounce of her power to preserve her place in Hyrak’s vision of the future.

¤~¤~¤

A quill pen scratched busily at a thick sheaf of parchment, ink splashing

about as the writer worked at a furious pace, concerned more with the quantity of his work than their quality. A pale sphere of light hovered over his head, worked into existence many years ago by a woman long dead. Too many of those the writer had once called friend were dead and gone now. The glorious days of progress, when the spirit of cooperation had guided the disparate peoples of Onus to gather together at the first Council Tower, were almost forgotten by those who still lived free in the woods and mountains of the north. Hyrak and his legions had seen to that—they had killed the dreams of an entire generation.

It was the task of the writer, Moultus by name, to remind the people who survived of how things were meant to be. He held fast to all he had learned, all he had heard, and all he had been warned of. Few in this day and age bothered to learn the arts of reading and writing, but Moultus knew that his life was forfeit if ever the warlord were to find him, and thus he vowed to leave a record.

Moultus was a very special writer—a scribe of singular talent. Once an apprentice of the Archivists that had visited Onus from Arctos, Moultus had fallen out of love with the idea of a life of records and documents when he had first laid eyes upon Callie. In his mind, accustomed as it was to sifting

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through memories, he recalled those days, forty years gone, with brilliant clarity.

Moultus was a spare man, short and slender but possessed of a thick head of black hair. In the years since it had faded to a dark gray and thinned at the front, but back when he met Callie he was handsome if somewhat frail. He had been tasked by his master to visit the academies of the various orders, and he had undertaken the journey with two of his dearest friends at his side. They had traveled the length and breadth of Onus’ two continents, meeting with the Gars and the Vols, the Kems and the Surs.

After many journeys, they had traveled to Igar Holc, the great city that straddled the land bridge between the northern and southern continents, to meet with the most secretive of the orders, the Wyrs. Unlike the others, the Order of Wyr had no academy and did not openly petition for the children of Onus’ many regions to come and learn their secrets.

Moultus had worked hard simply to learn of the name of a single Wyr, and he and his companions had traveled far to speak with her. Her name was Callie and she lived in the ramshackle huts that so many of the poor had built abutting the outer walls of Igar Holc. It seemed strange to Moultus to see such a powerful woman live amid such squalor, especially after seeing the majesty of the crystal palaces of Kem Nought.

When his thin fingers pulled back the frayed cloth curtain that served to separate the inside of Callie’s shack from the dust and dirt outside he had been struck quite powerfully by a sense of rightness. Inside he saw nothing more than a simple bed, a chair, and a small lamp. That had seemed enough as he looked at Callie and forgot all other women he had ever laid eyes upon.

She was beautiful in a way that no one aside from Moultus had ever understood. She was of medium height and sparse build, but her copper-colored hair spilled down in waves to her waist, and her eyes glimmered in such a way that even after years of staring into them, Moultus would never be able to say exactly what color they were.

He had found it unnecessary to say even a single word to this beautiful woman, for once he laid eyes upon her he knew that it did not matter what he said. They were meant to be together, and Moultus knew then that he had always known such a thing. Facts writ large in the stars themselves were more disputable than this.

“You are the one seeking truths?” she had asked in a voice smooth and sweet.

“I am the one seeking you.” The words did not feel foolish or bold or empty as they slipped from his lips—they felt simply right.

Callie lowered her eyes demurely. “I feared that this would not be the place, or that you would not yet be the man you needed to be. The Art of Fatewaking is not easily mastered…”

Moultus shook his head and whispered, “I am here, and you are here. The place that happens to be here is quite inconsequential.”


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That first meeting had become the beginning of many years together, and it had seemed to Moultus like Callie had been a dam, constructed by destiny to thwart his course in life. No longer did he strive to become a solitary Archivist, no longer did he dream of one day being invited to travel to Arctos and add his learning of Onus to the great collection there. No longer did he feel compelled to maintain contact with his dear friends—it seemed that after meeting Callie even those two who had traveled every road of their world at his side could offer his soul no more companionship. Anyone else in his life served only to distract Moultus from spending every precious moment with his beloved Callie.

He sighed and put down his quill. He was not all that very old, but the past years of scribbling those many things he had learned during his quiet and peaceful years with his wife had taken their toll upon his hands, leaving them gnarled and unable to hold the quill for too great of a stretch.

He remembered the first time he had truly begun to understand what it was that the Order of Wyr did, what it was to be a Fatewaker. He remembered asking Callie that day if she had used her arts to change his destiny, if she had made him fall in love with her that day.

She had smiled, softly, and taken his hand, not then gnarled as it was now, and she had said, “If it were in my power to keep you from falling in love with me, beloved, I would have done so. I love you too much to wish what I have seen upon you. The children of Wyr must never use their gifts to change fate. We may know things, we may see things, and we may learn things. To do any more would be unthinkable.”

And then she had cried, and Moultus had begun to understand why the Wyrs kept their identities secret. They knew too much, and they cared too deeply. Being privy to so many secrets, and unable to act upon any of them, was a curse too terrible to bear.

The writer looked at his parchment and scratched at his soft chin with a feeble finger. He had traced yet another genealogy—followed the true blood of the Wyr to its end point. This was the last of them, the last of the bloodlines entrusted with the power of the Wyr. As he had painstakingly reconstructed the trail of all eight original Fatewakers, he had watched as time after time the lines terminated in blood and fire. Unlike the other orders, whose secrets could be taught to any willing to learn, the powers of the Wyr were bound up in their blood.

In order to find a way to stop Hyrak, Moultus had promised many powerful men that he could find a Fatewaker to show them the way. Yet again he was defeated. Of all the many lines, of all the twists and turns, he could find only one bloodline that might yet exist—Callie’s line.

For Onus to live, Moultus had no choice but to find his grand-daughter.

¤~¤~¤

“Damn them all!” Hyrak was a man of few words. He preferred to let his actions speak for him, and as he hurled the useless Book of Gar against

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the wall of his study, he realized that there was no more action he could take to solve his problem. It was a book of nonsense, and if any secret lore was contained within he could make so sense of it. Other books awaited his attention, including the violet gilded volume Lyda had carried personally, but it was the Book of Gar that was supposed to unlock the mysteries of the Gars. He loathed disappointment.

“Warlord? Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Norun, the bravest of Hyrak’s retainers. Few could bring themselves to stand in the presence of the warlord when his mood was so foul.

Hyrak spat a string of curses. “You can explain to me how I was so easily deceived. That would be of great help to me.”

Norun shrugged, his loose-fitting tunic of green and amber wool heaving. “I do not believe my honesty would be appreciated by my lord.”

Hyrak stopped his pacing and turned to lock eyes with his lackey. The warlord was a powerful man, broad shouldered and imposing in stature. He wore ornate armor punctuated by a black bindmetal chest plate and his bald head gleamed in the torchlight. His ice-colored eyes bore into Norun’s own mud-colored orbs. “Explain yourself, minion.”

Norun shrugged again, delighting in the way that the gesture caused Hyrak’s jaw to tighten. “You thought with your groin, warlord. You are hardly the first man to do such a thing—but you are not an ordinary man. You can ill afford such mistakes in your current position. Those who remain free of your dominion will take advantage of any weakness, and Lyda-“

Norun stopped suddenly, his eyes bulging wide. Hyrak watched, curiosity plain across his face, as his retainer collapsed to the ground, blood beginning to bubble up from his lips.

After no more than a handful of seconds Norun lay still upon the cold stone floor of Hyrak’s study, and the echoing click of Lyda’s heels reverberated from the vaulted ceiling. She stepped through the locked doors and smiled alluringly, depositing what Hyrak could only assume was the recently excised heart of Norun in a softly squishing heap on the floor as she entered.

“Beloved Hyrak, I think it is time you explained to me what in the name of the Rot is going on?” Her voice was cold and sharp.

Hyrak smiled a grim and mirthless smile. “I had thought you smarter than this, woman. You truly believed I would not see through your ploys? How interesting it is that you managed to bring half a dozen captives back from Gar Nought, but not a one of them possesses the secret of Gatemaking. Don’t you find that curious?”

Lyda shrugged, her supple shoulders rolling beneath her crimson cape. She smiled broadly as she said, “I was unaware that you wanted any of Embrew’s lot alive. It seemed to me that they were of more value to you as corpses than as rebels. Pardon my presumption.”

Hyrak stepped to face Lyda, his frame more than a foot taller than her own. He looked down and smiled. “That is not entirely untrue, I suppose.” As he spoke he pulled her in close, and Lyda melted into him, pressing her


62

body against the cold metal of his armor and ignoring the places where its ornamentation bit into her bronze skin, drawing narrow beads of blood.

Once her mouth met his, Lyda felt the possibility of things returning to how they once stood, and in that optimism she lost track of Hyrak’s right hand as it slid up her back and gripped the back of her neck with vice-like strength.

“What are you-“ Hyrak propelled Lyda away, snapping her body almost like a whip and

releasing her to sprawl across the floor with a sickly-sounding thud. “You will no longer keep your secrets from me, witch. If you wish to live for even a minute longer, if you wish to continue to roam free instead of bound in irons at my feet, you will teach me the arts of Gar.”

Lyda hissed as she raised her head defiantly, “If I do that, you will have no more use for me!”

Hyrak turned his back on his former consort and stalked towards the door of his study. His voice echoed powerfully as he said, “Precisely.”

¤~¤~¤

Corudain had not died in the razing of Gar Nought, but as time

stretched interminably before him, he almost wished he had. The master of the Gars, Corudain had lived longer than any of them, and in all those years he had gathered about him his share of contingencies. He was not the most powerful of the Gatemakers, but he was the most experienced, and there was much to be said for wisdom.

He had felt clearly the pain of his body dying. He had watched, brown eyes wide, as Lyda had plunged her sword into his stomach. She had leered as his lifeblood spilled upon the thickly carpeted floor of the Reflectory, and she had looked upon the collection of books there with near-ecstasy.

For Corudain, it was not the dying that was the most painful event of that moment. The realization that there was nothing he could do to prevent this woman, this usurper, from taking the secrets of the Gars back to her master—that was true pain. Few things paralyzed Corudain with dread like the idea of an army equipped with the ruthless mentality of Hyrak and the boundless reach of a Gatemaker. It was that fear, coalesced in that desperate moment, which drove the elderly monk, strong of spirit if not of body, to bring to bear one of his precious contingencies.

There had been a time, long ago, when Corudain had been the keeper of the Spiralgate at Ptorus Holc. The metalsmiths of that fair land had been eager to journey to other worlds then, hungrily seeking the secrets of new techniques and undiscovered ores. It had been among the men and women who worked the forges of the Ptorus region that the first Metalbreakers, the Order of Jov, had emerged in the far reaches of antiquity. Corudain, even in his later years, had believed that it was his many trips from that gate to the worlds up and down the spiral that had helped cement that order’s role in history—for good or for ill.

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One of the most frequent destinations to which he had ferried metalsmiths and Metalbreakers alike had been the world of Murrod. That land, sweltering with heat when the suns rose and bathed in the perfect cool of paradise when they set, had been the home of a truly miraculous substance. Bindmetal was discovered in Murrod, and the makers and shapers of that metal, gifted not of mystical arts but instead of simple and honest ingenuity, were true masters of their craft.

The trade between Onus and Murrod had been brisk at first, but as the first few years went by it became apparent that there was little Onus could offer Murrod that was of equivalent value to the mighty bindmetal. What foodstuffs or tapestries could compare with a metal that could take on the properties of any sorcery worked upon it? Chains that sapped the magical strength of their wearer were but one of the endless possibilities of bindmetal crafted by a competent smith and a dedicated worker of magic. The idea of finally being able to contain a rogue Gatemaker, should such a man ever appear, had been quite intoxicating those who sat in power in the Council Tower.

When the rulers of one of Murrod’s great cities, already held in poor regard by the lords of Onus who looked upon the strange customs of Murrod’s hierarchy with disdain, made their final bargain, Corudain had been the Gatemaker tasked to take the response from the Lord of Ptorus to the envoy of the princes of Murrod. Corudain had been the man who delivered the words that agreed to the terms of Murrod’s rulers and handed the whole of the Order of Jov to that strange world.

The concessions had been many, of course. For ten years each city-state had been granted an audience at the beginning of each season with the Metalbreakers of the Order of Jov, now prisoners of a world not of their birth. From these audiences amazing works of metal and magic had been wrought.

It had been most disconcerting for Corudain when he had been called upon to represent the Gars at what was to be the last of those seasonal meetings. He had looked into the eyes of people he had once ferried across the spiral of worlds while telling stories and laughing, and he saw in those eyes despair. They had known, at that meeting, that the days of free travel between worlds were coming to an end. Corudain never learned how these men and women had come to such knowledge, but in his later years as he recalled their demeanor at that final meeting it became undeniably apparent to him that their gifts to the Gars, to everyone who asked wonders of them that season, had been gifts of farewell.

On that final trip the Gars had received four items of Metalbreaker manufacture, each more wondrous than the rest. The first had been a set of chains and manacles of violet bindmetal, able to collect the power of a Gatemaker, to restrain a Gar gone rogue. Those chains had sat in a fine box inside the Reflectory until the day Embrew had returned, guilt writ large across his face, and turned himself over to the justice of his brothers.


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They had also sent with the Gars a mighty door of solid amber bindmetal, ensorcelled to resist any attempt at entry, magical or otherwise. Only a Gatemaker could open the door, making it perfect defense for the Reflectory and the secrets contained therein.

The final two gifts had been much more esoteric, and at the time Corudain had no idea of how they might be useful. A delicate icon of violet metal that would sustain a Gatemaking far longer than an ordinary mind could, and a pole of red bindmetal upon which to hang the standard of the Gars, holding back their fear in the face of any enemy. That last had been the only reason that his brothers had stood their ground when Hyrak’s witch Lyda had laid waste to the peaceful academy of Gar Nought. What small good that bravery had done them he could not guess, considering he alone had in any way survived the assault.

As Corudain had bent his will upon his arts, as those many thoughts had flickered through his mind and his life emptied on the same carpet where he had first learned to twist the shape of space, he had stretched his mind and locked it upon one gleaming shape atop a shelf not far from the place his body fell.

Corudain was not dead. His body was gone, but his mind, his heart, his soul—these things clung together by force of will alone, hovering in a coruscating tunnel of blue light with no beginning and no ending. Corudain lived, and yet did not live, in a crossgate wrought into an endless loop, waiting for someone to free him so that he could tell them the secrets that the Gars had vowed to protect all those years ago when they withdrew from the world and ceased to ferry men and women across the spiral of worlds.

With a shuddering sigh, Corudain settled into his self-made prison once more, waiting for salvation that was unlikely to come. He had kept the secrets of the Gars safe years ago by destroying the only copy of the Book of Gar and committing its words to memory, leaving a book of riddles and parables in its place. In so doing he had denied himself the chance to die. He would hold on to his tenuous existence, a spirit bound in a ring of endless light, because he had quite deliberately left himself no choice.

¤~¤~¤

Lyda knew that Embrew had escaped. She was not naïve enough to

believe the Gars had killed him when the stubborn fool turned himself over to their tender mercies, nor was she vain enough to believe that her soldiers—her poor, dead soldiers—had been able to kill the wily old man. His powers had surely been weakened, thanks to the burned out eyes that had been her final gift to her mentor on their last day together, but of all the Gatemakers that ever lived Embrew was the one she felt most capable of presenting a threat to her ambitions.

She sat in her private chamber, a heavy blanket pulled over her bruised body. She debated once more returning to her own palace, not far from Hyrak Arn, but decided against it. She needed to be here, to see with her

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own eyes what new insanity her lover would birth. Hyrak’s fury had not lessened in the scant hours since their confrontation, and she worried that the slightest misstep would push him over the edge. For the moment he thought her useful still, but if he knew any other Gatemakers lived, particularly one more powerful and experienced than she, he would surely have no reservation about slitting her throat then and there. She struggled with the problem, shivering in the cold and unwilling to summon a servant to start a fire in the hearth.

If she taught Hyrak the secrets, she faced two dilemmas. If the warlord showed no natural aptitude he would likely accuse her of intentionally holding back and have her slain. If he did develop the skills needed to open portals and alter the connection between places, he would need her only until she had taught him all that she knew. Both such avenues ended unpleasantly for her, and Lyda was nothing if not keen on survival.

Unfortunately, choosing not to teach her techniques to Hyrak was not an option either. If she was to retain her role in the new world order that Hyrak was slowly and inexorably implementing across the surface of Onus, she would have to find a way to distract him from his current mood. The warlord was obsessed with expanding his power—not just the influence and might of his armies, but also his own personal reserve of power. In a world that had once teemed with mystically-imbued agents of more than a half dozen different sacred orders, it was easy for a man knowledgeable enough to know what had been lost to thirst for a share of that untapped power.

Lyda had already heard rumblings that Hyrak, or one of his pet torturers, had coerced one of their prisoners from Gar Nought to unlock the magical potential in some of his more trusted soldiers. How such a thing was possible, Lyda could not say—she knew much about Gatemaking, but little about the other flavors of magic that lingered behind closed doors in the lands of Onus. As that strange woman perfected the trick of waking Vol magic in others, she might discover other techniques—perhaps in time the prisoner would become the avenue through which Hyrak would learn the power of Gatemaking.

What Lyda needed was a greater purpose upon which to set the man that she dared to call lover—a distraction that would ensure her own usefulness. As she stared at the ashes in her chamber’s hearth, she recalled the smoking ruins of Gar Nought as she and her men had left that husk of a monastery behind and stepped into the crossgate she had constructed to carry them home.

Suddenly, she drew in a sharp breath. The answer to her problem, maybe to all of her problems, lay in the ashes of Gar Nought. One of the techniques she had insisted that Embrew teach to her during their time together had been the perception of where portals had been opened. If Embrew had escaped the razing of his home, he most likely did so under the aegis of his arts. The use of such power, particularly if he was bold enough to open a chaingate, left an indelible mark on the atmosphere of a


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place. She could find that mark and use it to determine to where her doomed mentor had fled.

Smiling, Lyda shucked the blanket from her shoulders and smoothly slid across the uneven stones of her chamber floor to draw a heavy and warm traveling cloak from her wardrobe. The rain had faded to a spare mist as the sun patiently prepared to dawn, but still the chill of the wind and rain-swept night would remain.

Suitably garbed against the perils of the world outside the walls of Hyrak Arn, Lyda then turned to a small cabinet where she kept her sword and knives. While not a gifted swordswoman, she considered herself capable. Once those weapons were secured upon her person the smile on her lips intensified. Now she was girded both for the world outside the fortress and, she thought as she stroked her blade gently, for the world inside as well.

More for dramatic effect than out of any real need, Lyda slipped one knife from its sheath at her thigh and used it to cut the air before her, focusing her will in just such a way as to bridge the familiar space of her chamber with the less-accustomed space of the woods surrounding Gar Nought. The simplest of the gate techniques, Lyda was terribly proficient with the formation of crossgates.

The diamond shaped pattern she had wrought in the air with her knife began to quiver and fold inward upon itself, the scant light in the room spinning briefly and altering in balance and contrast until it burned a steady and rich green. The whisper of exhaustion beginning to bear down upon her concentration, Lyda stepped forward and into that diamond of verdant light. As her booted foot crossed that plane of energy it emerged hundreds of miles away in the soft needles of the evergreens that surrounded the smoking remains of the academy of the Gars.

Turning contemptuously, Lyda dismissed the crossgate and watched the natural order of the place reassert itself. The pressure in her mind eased considerably and Lyda sheathed the knife in her hand only to replace it with her slender blade. It was unlikely that anyone would be amid the ruins, but she had not risen to the prominence she had attained by being reckless.

Lyda stalked back in to the place where once she had been welcomed with open arms, seeking with her every sense the place where her mentor had made good his escape. She did not know what she would do if she found Embrew’s corpse. At the moment, and perhaps for the first time since she betrayed him, she found herself wishing that the old fool still drew breath.

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7 Core

f I stop to think about it, I realize that I have been called lots of things over the years. Some of those things have been quite complimentary, and others

have hurt like a fist—or so I had thought. In spite of all the words that had been hurled my way both in Ashfield and in Des Moines, physical violence had never really been a concern for me. Even when I’d fought with my brother John, we’d both been more inclined to get in to a good screaming match than we ever were to trade blows. That might be why everything that happened at Blue Dog seemed so unreal to me. In many ways it was the end of a long and difficult period of my life, but it was also the beginning of something I had never imagined. And it had all started with Joseph Christopher Stein leaping at me like some kind of crazed baboon.

It was bizarre that I reacted so violently when he’d asked me what was wrong. As I said, violence is not particularly well represented in my personality, and I could never have imagined myself lashing out physically at a friend—even one who held to that status as tenuously as JC. Seeing Todd, a person who I had convinced myself was in my corner, standing there and talking with a person who could almost single-handedly take responsibility for most of my social inadequacy in high school… it just snapped something in my head.

Todd and Ryan together seemed like some sort of sick joke. After years of carefully quarantining myself from situations like this, after determinedly avoiding making new friends and going out on limbs, I had taken that chance and left myself vulnerable. If Becky hadn’t been too busy freaking out about JC and me coming to blows amid a packed restaurant known to have the police on speed-dial, I’m sure she would have been the first to say, “I told you so.”

She had told me so—insistently and abundantly. Yet I had ignored her, all because… well, I wasn’t even sure why. Something about him slipped right in and made camp in my brain. In so doing, it had clearly done some major damage to my common sense.

Of course, this all happened over supposition. I supposed that they were talking about me. I presumed that Ryan was talking with Todd about our uncomfortable history. I imagined that any chance I had once possessed of forging a friendship with the new kid had evaporated under the hot lights of the pool hall. I had made one unfounded assumption after another, all motivated solely by the idea that the world for some reason revolved around me.

Interestingly, that wasn’t far from the truth, but that was something that didn’t become clear to me until much later on. I said before that Todd White was a force of nature. His very arrival had awoken a cascading chain of

I


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confusion and confrontation that my life had been practically built to avoid. He turned the entire world upside down for everyone in my life. And he did that all just by being there. All of the actual work of demolishing my entire life had been mine and mine alone. I’m mature enough to take responsibility for my actions. Todd White may have been a storm that swept into the lives of Becky, JC, and me, but I was the one in the driver’s seat. I allowed myself to become distracted, and everything that happened afterwards is no one’s fault but my own.

¤~¤~¤

JC sat atop Adam in a curious state. The sophomore’s left eye was

already swelling with the tell-tale purple flesh of a large bruise, but as was usually the case, his face was lit by the most ferocious grin. Crushed down by JC’s well-placed knees, Adam was similarly tenderized. He had a shallow cut across the forehead that had smeared blood up into his unkempt hair, and the stuffing was emerging from his padded winter coat where it had torn on a table corner.

The scene around them was equally disarrayed. Several of the square tables of the restaurant had been overturned, either by the tussle between JC and Adam or by the rushed evacuation of their occupants once the fight began. Several other groups had taken the opportunity to settle heated arguments of their own with a few exchanges of blows, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who had started things. Over the course of their struggle Adam and JC had worked their way to the exact center of the room.

Only a few minutes earlier the manager had announced over the Blue Dog’s feeble PA system that the police had been called and had asked for people to clear out. Most of the clientele of the establishment had better things to do on a Friday night than answer questions for the police, so it had taken very little time to clear most of the non-combatants away and leave JC and Adam to work out their issues.

Adam had reacted on instinct, kicking and clawing at JC once he had thrown himself across the table, and JC, reared in a house of aggressive brothers and accustomed to a lifelong tradition of tackle football, had simply upped the ante. For some reason it had never occurred to either of them to simply stop. It was not until JC was perched atop of Adam like a triumphant cowboy having roped his first calf that either of them took the time to see what they had just done.

Standing in one corner, where an energetic game of pool had practically dissolved once the fists started flying, was Becky. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she was tapping her foot impatiently. Her eyes were narrow and hard, and it was clearly evident that she was furious. Neither Adam nor JC could bring themselves to look up at her from their centrally located point of cease-fire.

Diagonally opposite from Becky was the corner that had held Todd, Ryan, and Ryan’s friends. While some of them had departed, most had not;

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they simply watched with wolfish grins, except for Ryan, who studied the situation very carefully, and Todd, whose features were plainly unreadable.

The entire altercation had lasted no more than five minutes, most of that made up of the extended grappling that had led to Adam’s current position on the ground.

“I give. I give!” Adam panted from beneath JC. Joe shrugged and slipped off of his friend, rocking a bit as he stood

upright and realized he’d knocked his leg around harder than he’d thought. “That was awesome!”

Adam started to rise, at least to his knees, as he muttered, “I hate you. Really.”

“And what about me? Do you hate me too?” Becky’s question came out louder than she had expected, as the relative silence of the restaurant left her with a large echo with which to contend. She stalked over to where Adam pushed himself up from the ground. “You must, if this is the way you act when you go out with me. Like little kids! Like jerks!” She looked around and saw Ryan and company standing in their corner. “Like them!” She pointed imperiously, clearly emboldened by her anger.

JC made a feeble gesture that might have been an aborted shrug. “It’s not a big deal, Becky. Nobody got hurt or anything. Just having a good time.”

Adam grabbed an overturned chair and used it to help himself to his feet. “Stop talking Joe. You are not helping, and this… this is my fault anyway.”

Becky, having closed the distance between her safety zone and Adam, slugged him in the arm. It was not a powerful hit, but given the pummeling he had just taken it was sufficient to draw a shuddering wince from her boyfriend. “What was that, butthead? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of big stupid boys in this room.”

Adam smiled in spite of himself. Becky was doing something, he knew it. Becky thought three steps ahead, and even if Adam couldn’t always keep up he was bright enough to know when she was up to something.

He cleared his throat, wheels spinning in his head as he tried to see where Becky was going. “I said it was my fault. I got pissed off is all, and I took it out on Joe. Sorry, Joe.”

Joe laughed, “Please. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. I’ve fought grandmas with more heat. Really—my grandma’s badass.”

Becky shot a withering glance at JC. It was clear that whatever leeway she was cutting Adam was not applicable to her chauffer. Very deliberately turning her head away from the sophomore she looked Adam carefully in the eyes and reached up to push a bloodied strand of hair out of his eyes.

“Why were you pissed off, Adam?” Then he knew what she wanted. He saw the plan with crystal clarity,

and it shook him. This wasn’t the way they handled things—this wasn’t the Adam and Becky method for social survival. Things had changed.


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Adam turned to look at the cluster of young men at the pool table in the corner. Then, his backbone stiffening with courage that clearly came more from exhaustion than genuine bravery, he took a few steps toward them.

He didn’t make it far before Ryan Weber, his voice quiet and deep and dangerous, said, “Stop. What the hell are you doing?”

Adam smiled, attempting to look confident. His voice sounded thin and a bit high, like it always did, but he didn’t care. He was done worrying about putting on a show for these people.

“I’m doing something I should have done two years ago, Ryan,” Adam found that speaking the words propelled him even closer, until there were only a handful of feet separating him from the pack. “I’m telling you to leave me the hell alone.”

Ryan’s lips continued to form a stern scowl, but they thinned as he tightened that scowl. His dark eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. His was the expression of someone who had let intimidation solve most of his problems over the years.

“I didn’t do anything to you, asshole. I’ve never done anything to you. I wouldn’t want to—I don’t care enough about you to waste my time on you,” Ryan said.

Adam felt his confidence deflate. He’d wanted a confrontation, wanted Ryan to voice his accusations and rumor-mongering. Here, with Becky and, he hated to admit it, JC, he was in the best position he would ever be to defuse that weapon once and for all. He hadn’t been prepared to be told that he didn’t matter.

A new voice entered the conversation, and it was both calm and resonant, its tone bubbling with a tiny hint of mirth. Taking a half step closer to Ryan, Todd White put one broad and heavy hand on the corded muscle that was Ryan’s shoulder.

“That’s really interesting, Weber,” Todd said in the exact same tone he had addressed Mr. Pool in not five days before, “but it’s also a really big damn lie.”

There was no warning, no hesitation. Ryan slipped one hand up to throw Todd’s hand off his shoulder and took the other hand and curled it into a rock-hard fist. He brought that fist up like a hammer into Todd’s jaw, and Todd took a step back, shaken but not altogether surprised.

“Get your hands off me, White. I tried to do you a favor, but if you want to throw your lot in with this little shit, you do that. I’d be happy to mess you up on my way to him!” Ryan screamed in a voice that had lost the quiet and the deep but not the dangerous.

Todd turned his back on Ryan, which every instinct in Adam’s brain screamed was a mistake, and started to walk away. Again moving with terrible grace, Ryan charged at Todd, throwing all of his weight into a rush that would have flattened small trees.

Todd spun and dropped to a compact squat, colliding not with the massive torso and pumping fists of his opponent but instead with his unprotected knees and groin. He flexed solid legs to extension, driving his

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shoulder up and into those vulnerable areas and leaving Ryan sprawled on the ground, winded and angry.

Todd said, calmly and without even a trace of exertion from having just laid out the star of the Lewis High wrestling team, “Do not think that I am afraid of you, Weber. And do not think that you can decide who I want to talk to.”

Adam, Becky, and JC stood, not far from one another, and watched with mouths agape. What had just happened was… unexpected. Unprecedented.

Todd looked at JC and smiled, white teeth flashing from between dark lips. “You the wheels? I think the four of us can find a better place to be.”

Wordlessly, the quartet filed towards the door as Ryan’s friends helped him up, muttering and cursing as they waited for their ringleader to tell them what to do.

As Becky worked her way through overturned tables, a gleam caught her eye and she knelt quickly, not wanting to be left alone in the place with Ryan and his goons, to scoop up a short length of polished chain links—JC’s necklace. She had seen Adam pull it off Joe in their fight, but it wasn’t until she held the chain in her hand that she began to ask questions.

The padlock, still snapped shut, lay not attached to the chain, but beside it. There were no broken links anywhere nearby.

“How…?”

¤~¤~¤

Steven’s car moved easily through the streets of the east side of Des Moines, lights ablaze and sirens singing. Traffic parted for him as his black and white patrol car maneuvered towards the altercation at Blue Dog Billiards. In spite of the piercing sound of the siren’s wail, the interior of the car was quite awash in silence.

He looked over for the hundredth time at the girl, Jara, and sighed. He had never been so confused in his entire life. He knew his duty, but she seemed so innocent. She was surely confused, but as he watched her chew at her lip and absently trace designs in the fog that her breath left upon the cold windows, he saw a girl that had clearly never done anything to hurt anyone.

“I’m sorry about dragging you along for this, kiddo,” Steven said quietly. His voice was usually quite firm, but with her, knowing what Alders expected him to do, he found that it was all he could do to keep that voice from cracking.

Jara shrugged her shoulders and whispered, “It’s for the best.” Steven cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” “You are not who I thought you were,” she replied with guileless

innocence, “but you are taking me to who I am supposed to find. I think.” Steven smiled. “Is this another one of those things you have seen?” “Seen. Felt. However you want to describe it. The same way that I know

this man you were taking me to see is not a good man.”


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Steven ran one hand through his spiky hair, sighing. “You’ve never even met the man. I’ve known him most of my life, Jara, and I trust him completely.”

Jara reached over and put one small hand on top of the hand with which Steven held to the steering wheel. She stared at him with eyes wide and said clearly, in words that struck deeply, “He makes you do things that you know are wrong. What makes you trust him so much that you let him do this to you?”

Steven felt her hand, hot upon his own, and a wave of cold swept over him, raising gooseflesh upon his arms. She had asked the one question that had always bothered him, and hearing it come from someone else’s lips, from this little girl, before he had ever had the nerve to really ask it himself, made him feel very foolish. Weak.

Luckily, that became secondary to the familiar mundanity of his job. Outside the window he saw the bright lights of the Blue Dog’s signage swiftly approaching. Ignoring Jara’s question, Steven Mollison shifted his mindset firmly into his ‘work clothes’ and brought to mind the proper procedures for dealing with the situation at hand.

A fight at Blue Dog could quickly escalate into a riot, and sometimes local gang politics even reared their heads in these sorts of altercations. Fortunately, the management of the restaurant had learned enough over the years to be a far more accurate gauge of the severity of a fight than even the police. Their call to dispatch had suggested a small fight between unarmed opponents, and the thought of being able to wade in and bust a few heads seemed rather comforting to Steven.

Hurting people who were doing the wrong thing was significantly more rewarding than any of the things Jamison Alders was going to ask him to do when he got back to delivering Jara to the Veil Building.

As he slipped the parking brake on, Steven looked sternly at Jara. “Stay here,” he dictated in his most authoritative voice, “and we’ll finish our talk in a few minutes.”

Jara nodded demurely and then looked past Steven, almost through him, to the door of the restaurant. Seeing her eyes widen, and her jaw set, Steven followed her gaze, climbing out of the car to stand up tall and see what was unfolding before him.

Walking out of the restaurant and into a mostly-deserted parking lot were four teenagers. Walking in the lead was an African-American of medium height and a sturdy build, wearing a blue baseball jacket. Following close behind him were two more young men, both Caucasian—a lean and tall brunette with pale skin wearing a ripped black winter coat and a slightly shorter dirty-blonde, hair buzzed short, who walked with undisguised enthusiasm and seemed unbothered to be wearing a simple black t-shirt in the January night. Bringing up the rear was an Asian girl with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a white shirt with a grey sweater draped over her shoulders.

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Steven saw nothing particularly special about the quartet, other than a nagging sense of familiarity with the young man in the lead of the pack. But inside the car, he chanced a glance to see Jara still staring at them—only now she was quite literally trembling.

¤~¤~¤

Jamison Alders felt the world stop. For one endless second, he felt every

single atom of Core cease its rhythmic pulse. Few in the entire world would have been so sensitive to things as to feel that faltering hesitation, and he alone had the wisdom to know what that meant. In spite of all his efforts, the girl who had come through the Spiralgate had somehow managed to find one of the so-called “Line”. This was unacceptable.

He still stood in the lobby of the Veil Building; he still watched his reflection in the darkly tinted window. He still held one hand in his pocket waiting for the call from Steven Mollison, his loyal and faithful ally, to explain why exactly he had turned his car around and driven away with the girl.

In the eight minutes since they’d left Alders’ sight, the girl had managed to find what she was looking for. For almost twenty years Alders had searched for the Line, searched to find every one of those children and eliminate them before they could ever be a threat to his purpose. His twenty years of work had been neatly and completely undone in eight Rot-damned minutes.

Subtlety no longer mattered. Having no way of knowing which of the children of the Line the little alien child had stumbled across, he had no choice but to turn to drastic and vulgar solutions. He hoped that he might be able to spare Mollison, for he was too valuably placed to give up easily, but matters had progressed to the point where even Jamison’s most useful allies and employees were expendable.

The girl, and whichever Line-whelp she had managed to find, were surely near Mollison. That would provide Alders a target, then—for Steven Mollison was easily found.

Jamison walked briskly into the night air, through the double glass doors that served to insulate his building from the chill of the Iowa winter. Eyes closed, he walked with determination as he saw not those things illuminated by the light but those things obscured by shadow. As the cold air bit at his unprotected face, he stepped into the shadow of his great glass building and felt his connection to the world strengthen.

He felt outward with his mind, dark patterns of shadow swirling around his hands but unseen by those who walked by. He felt for the many tendrils of shadow that connected him to the dozens of employees, agents, and friends he had made in his time upon this spinning world called Earth, or Core by those who knew the truth of things. He felt for the familiar thrum of the string of energy that bound Mollison to his service, and along that streamer of power he sent his consciousness, pushing along into the


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night and blazing through the streets of Des Moines, hopping from shadow to shadow, a flicker of awareness just outside the sight of man, woman, and child.

He pushed himself quickly and carried most of his power with him, leaving his body vulnerable and exhausted. Several pedestrians walking past the Veil building saw Jamison Alders fall limply to the concrete in the shadowy alley next to the building, but for one reason or another none would dare to enter the terrible shadow that lay across that alley.

Elsewhere, Jamison felt his mind settle into the shadow that lay just behind Steven Mollison, his tall and wiry form confronting a small group of children, and one of them—

One of them was a keeper of the Arts of Onus—his powers awakened already, without the aid of the girl. And that accursed girl was here as well, cowering inside the patrol car fifteen yards away.

Jamison Alders had been led to believe that the children of the Line would be powerless unless first awakened by someone from Onus. The tall young man in the midst of the others, his power weak and smoldering beneath the surface, was capable of something that was not supposed to be possible.

He would take delicious pleasure in killing it.

¤~¤~¤

Adam’s heart raced as the officer stepped closer. In the last week he had been involved in more near-danger situations than the two years before, and he was decidedly opposed to culminating the week with a visit to the police station. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see a way out of this. Whether he was proud of it or not, he had started a fist fight with JC in the restaurant and probably cost the place hundreds of dollars in lost business.

As he moved to step forward and initiate the conversation with the officer, Todd placed one hand on his chest and whispered, “I’ve got this.”

The officer, heavy flashlight in hand, approached the four friends and shook his head. His mouth was curled into a tight frown framed by a neatly trimmed goatee. He spoke with an almost television-cop-like quality.

“Were you kids involved with the fight tonight?” Todd smiled, teeth flashing and eyes gleaming. Adam noticed his

posture shifting, shoulders slouching and stance narrowing. It seemed as if he was attempting to look less threatening—almost as though he’d had an abundance of practice dealing with the police.

“Sir,” Todd sounded almost contrite, and it lent a strangely gentle quality to his voice, “we happen to have been the whole fight.”

The officer arched an eyebrow as he asked, “Can you explain that?” Todd laughed briefly, a nervous sound that Adam knew for certain was

staged entirely for effect. “My friends here were having an argument and it got a little out of hand, that’s all.”

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Becky made a snorting sound behind Adam, and before he knew it she was opening her mouth, hands resting on her hips. “Officer, these two were fighting because they’re idiots, and last time I checked idiots didn’t need a reason to fight. I really just want to get them home to let their parents straighten them out. Can we do that?”

The policeman looked Becky over carefully and a small smile played across his lips as he answered, “We’ll have to talk to the restaurant manager first, ma’am. If he decides he wants to press charges, we may have to—“

Whatever the officer had intended to say, it never made it to his lips. Suddenly and without any warning, the man convulsed and then the entire world took a shift into the strange.

The officer’s shadow seemed to crawl over him, casting his entire body in darkness for a moment as it scaled his back and then flowed down the front of his body, leaving that body pale and shaking in its wake. Once it had swept over the whole of his form in a wave that took less than a full second, it stood of its own volition, three dimensional and unnerving, between the trembling officer and Todd. The officer collapsed, eyes rolled back in his head.

Adam heard a shrill scream and winced as he looked quickly at Becky, but the sound had not come from her. Turning the rest of the way, thankful for the chance to look away from the strange shadow-thing before him, he saw JC, white as a sheet and eyes wide with terror. The scream continued to issue forth from his throat as Adam’s attention was ripped back to the matter at hand.

The shadow-creature had taken another step forward and seemed to swell in the darkness. Todd, eyes wide but jaw set, stood his ground before the creature. It reared back one translucent hand and let forth a powerful blow, striking Todd in the chest and sending him flying backwards to collide with JC

Becky grabbed hold of Adam’s hand and yanked him away from the creature, but its dark eyes, little more than spheres of black amid a wavering body of gray-bent light, remained fixed upon him.

“Adam, run!” Becky attempted to bolt, but Adam’s body, frozen with fear, would not budge.

Then the monstrosity spoke. Its voice had more in common with the sound of nails upon a chalkboard than with any quality of sound that might have been called ‘voice-like’, but the sound issued forth from its head and it certainly conveyed words.

“Pale and soft, flesh. A poor home for such power! But a delicious home. Stand fast, little sorcerer, and let the Rot feed upon you!” Its words, piercing and loud, caused Adam to cover his ears with his hands, convinced that his eardrums had burst.

Then there was a flash of movement from many directions at once. Todd disentangled himself from the screaming JC, who had finally gained enough composure to start running away. Becky darted off to the side, getting clear of the reach of the creature but leaving Adam within easy


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grasp, much to her chagrin. And then there was the small shape of a young girl that raced from the open door of the patrol car, past the creature, to stand beside Adam, her hand grasping for his.

The creature lurched forward, snarling more chalkboard-rending words. “Too late, too late! Child of Onus, Child of Core, it matters not to the appetite of the Dark!”

It lashed out with a crooked limb, pulsing with muscle of resonant shadow, and brought its vile fingers, tipped each with a pinprick of darkness, down in a cruel slash across Adam’s face. The claws did not tear flesh, but rather crossed through it, striking inside Adam’s mind.

The pain was unimaginable. He had never felt such agony, as every nerve in his body exploded into a blazing song of pain. The world seemed to go white, his senses blinking out one at a time until all he could feel was the pain… and the hand that held his.

The girl’s touch was radiant and soothing, protecting some small part of his mind from the pain as his legs collapsed beneath him. In his mind, Adam felt something suddenly twist, he felt a part of his mind he had never before been aware of spring to brilliant wakefulness, and he knew, in that one instant, what to do. But he could not do it while this creature’s razor-tipped claws shot pain through his body.

Fortunately, as was so often the case, Becky knew what to do. As she had moved wide away from the creature she had kept her eyes fixed on the patrolman’s heavy flashlight, which lay beside his somehow comatose body. Seeing the creature bear down on Adam, and hearing the gibbering whine of pain that escaped his lips—a sound that almost literally broke her heart—Becky was galvanized to action, lunging for the flashlight and bringing it up as she thumbed the button, casting a blazing cone of incandescent light across the shadow and desperately hoping that it was the right thing to do.

Startled, the shadow spun, plucking its talons from Adam to shield its black eyes from the light. It did not call out in pain or wither away to nothingness as Becky had wished, but it did recoil just a moment, which was enough of an opportunity for Adam to catch his breath and Todd to plow into the monster, slamming it to the ground even as his eyes squeezed shut and he suppressed a scream of pain himself. Simply touching the thing had brought waves of agony crashing into his senses, but he had knocked it clear of Adam, and he was, for the moment, holding it tight in the grip of his powerful arms.

Adam struggled to his feet, pulled largely by the unexpected strength of the little girl. He opened his eyes and blinked at the light of Becky’s flashlight. He saw Todd struggling, barely able to hold the creature, and Adam reached one hand forward, fingers splayed wide.

He brought all of his concentration to bear against the creature and imagined a series of shapes spinning and interlocking in his mind’s eye. Then, he pushed his hand outward, bringing his palm down on the shadowflesh of the creature. With a shuddering breath that seemed to draw

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all of the strength clean out of his body, Adam unleashed the patterns in his mind and the creature abruptly vanished.

The girl released Adam’s hand and said, simply, “Good job, Gatemaker.”


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8 Core

have betrayed the precautions of my brothers,” came dry words from Embrew’s throat. He sat, his posture betraying his misery, on the cold metal shelf that was both seat and bed in the interrogation cell that had

been his home for the past few days. For the second time in the past twenty-four hours he felt the presence of the one they called Carmichael outside his door. As before, the man continued to stand in silence.

Embrew had shared no more information with the director who had taken his questioning to these more barbaric levels. At the moment that Carmichael had interceded and rendered him unconscious, at the very moment that he had whispered in Embrew’s ear the simple truth that he had already said too much, the old man’s resolve had come flooding back. The pain that the medicines and injections of these soldiers wracked through his body was no longer stronger than his dedication to his vows to the Order of Gar.

In spite of the pain, the purple bruises that lined his arms where needles had been harshly jabbed, and the dryness of throat that no amount of water could remedy, Embrew felt at a certain peace with himself. Not since he had met Lyda, two decades ago, had he felt so morally righteous. Not even the night of his return to Gar Nought, heart burdened with secrets and truths and confessions, had made him feel so sure that his course of action was the right one.

Embrew was now certain that the greatest task left to him in this world or any other was to die. He had brought Jara here, and with any luck that would set into motion the plans Corudain and the others had formed in the Council Tower just before his imprisonment in the dungeon beneath Gar Nought.

He rubbed at the manacles upon his wrists, feeling again the gentle heat that pulsed within their smooth metal surface. These were the things that the soldiers focused upon, now, and they were clearly a matter that Carmichael wished him to speak no more of. Pressing outward with his senses, Embrew felt the space outside the door, noticing the by-now familiar contours of the shape of Carmichael. He found it amusing that in this one instance he wished that he had been born blind, rather than having received the scars across his former eyes as a parting gift from his pupil, Lyda. Had he been blind for the duration of his time among the Gars, he would have learned earlier to memorize the displacement of individual human bodies and been able to know more of this Carmichael simply from his imprint in space.

I

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Regardless of his unfamiliarity, Embrew knew for certain that he and Carmichael had met before, at least once, and that meant that the man was not of Core, but of Onus. Perhaps even a Gar.

“It is rude to spy upon your elders, Mister Carmichael,” Embrew said. He expected this attempt at conversation to be no different from the

past one, but then he heard a heavy sound of static and echoes and felt the door open into the room upon well-oiled steel hinges.

A hand set down upon his shoulder, and Carmichael seated himself beside Embrew on the bench.

“We’re not observed, for the time being,” he spoke in a low voice, “but that will not go unnoticed for long.”

Embrew smiled as he asked, “Is this your art? Are you a Boltsender?” “No, old man. Before this place, I was a Bloodmender, but that is so

long ago now that I forget even how to bring those arts to bear.” “What do you mean?” Embrew wondered. Carmichael fidgeted nervously. “I can say little in the time we have. We

knew when we came that Core was poorly attuned to the universal energies that the arts manipulate, but we had not anticipated the fact that our gifts would not work at all. No sooner had the last of us stepped through the Spiralgate than we found ourselves bereft of those very talents that had caused us to be selected for this task. And more—“

Outside the cell a noise echoed down the corridor, and Carmichael fell silent. Embrew pressed outward, feeling the space of the hallway and also sensing the rise of heat in the bands at his wrists. He spoke with confidence, saying, “We are still alone.”

Carmichael looked carefully at Embrew. “You still possess your powers then?”

Embrew nodded. “It must be the bindmetal. I don’t know how, but this is a good thing! It

is has been a long time since I had any good news,” Carmichael said triumphantly.

Embrew said, “I am glad, too. Without my arts I fear I would not be able to gather the children of the Line and return to Onus to set them upon their task.”

Carmichael’s hand on Embrew’s shoulder tensed, gripping sharply into the old man’s frail flesh. “You are mistaken, Embrew. The Line is to remain here.”

Embrew shook his head, his voice rising as he said, “The bloodlines that your cabal was to watch over were kept safe here until the time came for them to free us from chaos. Hyrak’s forces have swept across Onus and left death and ruin in their every shadow. Now is the time for the contingency these children represent!”

Carmichael lifted his hand and stood. “You are wrong. No single threat to any single world is worth revealing what we have hidden here. I am happy you have come, Embrew, and brought this unforeseen ability to


80

wield the arts of Onus to Core. This means we can finally do what I have tried to do for the past few years.”

Embrew shook his head, refusing to believe what he was hearing. “I demand to speak with the others. Take me to the Gars who came to Core with you and the others. They will see reason!”

“There are no more Gars, Embrew. There are no more of the Onus-born protectors your people sent here. I am the last, and the choice of what to do falls to me. Tomorrow evening, you and I will walk to the gate chamber, and you will find a way to destroy the Spiralgate.”

Embrew recoiled as he whispered, “No. That is forbidden.” Carmichael stepped towards the door, his footsteps heavy. “So was

Core, and yet here you are. You don’t understand what you have done. What you have brought upon me, and those children…”

The man who represented all that remained of Embrew’s hope for saving the free men and women of Onus left the room, sealing the door behind him. His footsteps echoed in the corridor as he left Embrew, once more, alone. Embrew leaned over, clutching at his belly. Had he tearducts, he would have cried.

“I will not do what you ask. Jara will make this right.” The footsteps outside stopped. Voice loud enough to be casually

overheard, desperation evident, Carmichael asked, “Who is Jara?” Embrew lifted his head, aiming his face defiantly at the window of the

door that stood between him and the rest of this mad world. His voice was that of a man ten years younger, such was its confidence. “She is the Fatewaker that came through the gate at my side.”

Carmichael screamed, “A Fatewaker? But she will—what have you done? You’ll cost us everything!”

¤~¤~¤

Nathaniel Candor flipped through the file folders sitting on his desk,

absentmindedly jotting notes for later follow-up. The interrogation of the alien had been less than useful, thus far, and he feared that he was losing control of the situation. Major Lorenz was taking increasingly broad liberties with his initiative, ordering more aggressive techniques to be applied without even consulting with the director. This was a matter of great concern to Candor.

When the matter had been initiated, it had been Candor who had pushed for Lorenz to issue the necessary orders and begin the more aggressive interrogation. As the past few days had gone by, however, he had watched the demeanor of his reluctant co-conspirator shift to that of a man who no longer hesitated to bring pain to that weak old man in the holding cell. Candor imagined that the stress of the situation could cause such a thing, but he was swiftly realizing how out of his depth he was.

Using some of his contacts in the private sector Nathaniel had learned that the energy that seemed to be contained within the prisoner’s bracelets

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fluctuated, seeming to steadily dissipate except when the alien was in some way exerting himself. Of particular note was the way that the readings spiked whenever someone entered the cell with the prisoner.

Nathaniel wished that this all made sense to him. He was no scientist, no interrogator, and certainly no officer in the military. He was hired to serve as director not for his knowledge of science, but for his talents at managing paperwork and dollar signs.

One of the many files on his desk was that of the previous director whose seat he now occupied. The only other director the facility had ever known, Jamison Alders had been relieved of his position after General Horton had caught him engaging in unauthorized tests upon the matter accelerator—the Spiralgate, as the alien referred to it. It seemed then that an obsession with finding the secrets of the device was a common trait in directors.

Candor sighed. He was likely reading too much into all of this. Who was he to question Lorenz’s new enthusiasm for the task? If he was to question anything it would be the thick-rimmed dark sunglasses the major had taken to wearing at all hours of the day and night. Their time to work without being subjected to the scrutiny of Horton and his liberal policies was quickly vanishing, and results mattered more than scruples.

The office phone buzzed, disrupting his rambling train of thought and forcing him back to the matter at hand. It was likely Lorenz’s chief interrogator, Mr. Carmichael, with the latest report from the morning’s questioning. Candor found he no longer had the stomach to watch the proceedings and had become quite content with simple debriefings.

“This is Candor. Speak,” he said brusquely. “Director Candor, this is Dr. Jaske. I have some alarming readings I

think you should see.” The voice at the other end of the line was the reedy tone of the operation’s primary researcher, and Candor could hear the panic in his words.

Rising, Candor said, “I’ll be right down.” Jaske’s voice sounded choked as he said, “You may want to call the

General, sir. The artifact is cycling up again.”

¤~¤~¤

Jonas Carmichael was not the given name of the man who served as chief interrogator of the Army Post Road installation. He had been born Jonah Carikon in the refugee camps at the extreme polar tip of the southern continent of Onus. There he had found himself blessed to be naturally gifted with the arts of Sur—the power to heal the injured and cure the sick. He had worked long and hard to raise his family up from the squalor that ran rampant through those lands at that time, and he had risen far indeed. After little more than a decade of service to the Order of Sur, he was brought to Sur Nought, the academy of Bloodmenders, where he thought he would be given a new lease on life. Such was not to be.


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Each of the Orders, save for the already-doomed Jovs, had decided that a threat was brewing somewhere in the spiral of worlds that demanded drastic measures to avert. Each order had then, in turn, nominated a handful of their members to join a team that would travel to one of the forbidden worlds, a place called Core, to prepare a failsafe against this hidden enemy. These agents of the orders of Onus would safeguard children of specially selected bloodlines, identified by a powerful Fatewaker, and watch over the sole Spiralgate upon Core to ensure that it was never used.

The authority to gather the children of the Line, as they were called, was given to the small band of Gars who accompanied Jonas and the others to Core. As the sorcerers most adept at detecting disturbances along the spiral, the Gars seemed the most logical choice to lead.

Of course, the moment that the group had emerged through the shimmering Spiralgate and into this world, logic seemed to utterly abandon their cause. The activation of the gate quickly drew the attention of local authorities, and it was all that the combined members of the cabal, calling themselves the Order of Core, could do to obfuscate their true existence and purpose. Some infiltrated the newly formed Army Post Road operational staff, while others set about keeping a careful eye on the young people identified by the Sister of Wyr who had determined which of the children available would be best suited to serving as the Line.

That was before the murders began. Jonas remembered well the night they all met to discuss the fact that all three Gars had been slain; their hearts stopped stone cold by terror. He cursed this world as he had since its arrival, knowing fully that had they been on Onus, his arts would have been more than sufficient to heal such curious wounds.

It wasn’t until the others began to die that Jonas Carmichael and the few survivors had realized what was truly happening. At first they had speculated that they were merely the victims of poor luck, but as more death sought out the Order of Core, it became apparent that they were discovered. Thinking that one of their own had betrayed them, the cabal turned on Kenua, the Fatewaker who had worked so hard to make the endeavor to Core a success. Believing that she should have foreseen a traitor, and knowing that she did not, the cabal determined that she alone could be that traitor… and they killed her.

The next night the only Kem among them was slain, again by what appeared to be utter terror. There remained only three of them by then: Jonas, one other Sur, and a fearsome Vol named Marten. They knew then that they had made a horrible mistake, and that what was truly happening was beyond their ability to stop without their arts; something had followed them through the Spiralgate. An agent of the enemy they were striving to build contingency against had fallen upon them and was working methodically to destroy them.

Those memories of the terror that had gripped him when the Order of Core had been reduced to three, and still worse the utter fear when he alone

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was left and yet no creature of evil came for him, bubbled unbidden to his mind as Carmichael bolted through stairwells and corridors, seeking escape from the concrete and steel bunker that had been his prison, in spirit if not in flesh, for so long.

Jonas Carmichael ran as fast as he could, hoping to get clear of the facility and, perhaps, find the Fatewaker Embrew had brought to Core before she could damage his life’s work. He knew, however, that the gesture was futile. It was the nature of her kind to stumble across destiny, and she was sure to find at least one of the Line in Des Moines, since so many of them had been located nearby—the better to safeguard them, he thought wryly.

It wasn’t until Carmichael reached the surface exit gates that he realized that in his panicked state he had managed to overlook the flashing lights of the artifact flares. He was, of course, already too late.

Someone was coming through the Spiralgate, and as before, Carmichael was certain that whoever was on their way would be accompanied by an aspect of the enemy.

Then his blood chilled. Embrew, and this ‘Jara,’ had also come through the gate. Had they too brought a hitchhiker from deeper down the spiral?

¤~¤~¤

Ervin Jaske set down the phone and turned once more to look at the

banded hemisphere of unnatural metal that formed the Artifact that had dominated his research, his entire professional life, for as long as he could remember. The bands spun, slowly, twisting and warping under their own power as the electromagnetic field that the facility had measured only once before began to accumulate.

Energy in a variety of colors and patterns radiated outward, drawn towards newly installed shielding designed to blunt the electromagnetic impact of another artifact activation. Nearly a week ago, when the device had last activated, it had overloaded the city above’s power system, leading to a prolonged blackout and a public relations train wreck that had taken the military many hours to defuse.

It was Jaske’s responsibility to ensure that something like that did not happen again. Such matters seemed quite trivial, though, when he considered that what was happening was utterly beyond his ability to fathom. The last time the device had sprung to life it had done so with not even a fraction as much warning as it was so courteously providing tonight, and it had deposited into this world a living breathing being (presumably human). This time, as it geared up slowly, he wondered what wonders it might next bring to the Earth.

He felt the thinning hair at the top of his head begin to sway, drawn about by static electricity nascent in the air, and realized that the shielding, in spite of its prodigious expense, would be insufficient to ward off the ill-effects of the activation.


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It was at that moment that he saw Candor enter, Major Lorenz hot on his heels. The pair made an odd couple, suit and tie leading crisp pressed military dress, but they represented the odd duality that had always governed the project.

“Sir, it’s escalated beyond our ability to shield. Whatever the device is doing, it’s going to be bigger than the last event.” Jaske worried that his words sounded smug. He felt smug, of course, but this was hardly the time to gloat.

Candor turned to Lorenz, snarling, “Is this the alien? Is he doing this?” Lorenz did not respond. Candor repeated his question, and Jaske

looked more closely at the Major as he continued to stand there, unresponsive. The Major had removed his sunglasses and stood, slack-jawed, watching as the artifact accumulated energy. Jaske was paid for many things, but hardly the least was his attention to detail. As he looked carefully at Major Lorenz, his keen eyes, eyes that had seen him through honors courses at three different prestigious universities, saw that the Major was fundamentally… inhuman.

The pupils of each of Lorenz’ eyes were shot full of what looked to be, for lack of a better word, lightning. It was not a reflection of the artifact—it was an inner energy, a spark that danced inside eyes that appeared to be living but were not.

Jaske grabbed Candor and pulled him away from the Major, shouting to be heard over the rising hum of the artifact, “He’s not right, sir! Look at his eyes!”

Candor said nothing as the energy in the room continued to rise and the swiftly shifting banded metal of the Spiralgate began to take on a luminous green glow. It would not have mattered what he said, anyway—it would have been impossible to hear over the sound of the disjointed and inhumanely pitched laughter that began issuing forth from Major Lorenz.

¤~¤~¤

Many years ago, a gateway had been opened between two worlds. This

gateway, more precisely a tunnel, had burrowed into a part of reality that was mired in a strange and turbulent darkness. As the tunnel gouged its way to its destination, a portion of this undulating and unknowable expanse of shadow was separated from the rest of itself, isolated in the making of that tunnel and carried along its trajectory to be deposited, like the occupants of that tunnel, at its point of arrival.

That fragment of shadowy non-existence had in that moment of arrival found within itself a self-awareness it had never known. It curled up in the body of a thing nearby, a two legged, two armed, breathing and moving collection of cells and synapses that other creatures of similar construction referred to as ‘Jamison Alders.’

It had not taken long for the shadow to acclimate to the ways of these odd creatures who, in spite of their cruelly limited physical forms, had

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somehow managed to ascend to dominance over their world. It learned of their weaknesses and their appetites, of the ways in which they could be manipulated and the ways in which they could be killed. It learned of their hopes and dreams and ambitions and all of the many ways that such things could be used to unmake a man.

It also learned many secrets of those whose passage through the spiral of worlds had made its birth in this form possible. It grew to hate them, and perhaps it came to know hate as its first true emotion, independent of the remnants of humanity that clung to the mortal shell it had consumed. To unmake the purpose of those who had separated it from its larger self, to punish those who had forced the awkward silence of individuality upon its newborn mind, became its greatest drive.

As years piled upon one another, the creature of formless shadow came more and more to think of itself as the man Alders. It made better use of his life than he ever had, and after more than a decade of playing the role of Jamison Alders, sometimes more convincingly than others, the shadow felt that no longer was Alders a role. It ceased to be an ‘it’ at all, and Jamison Alders was dead no more. He learned many things about the world, about its energies and its purposes. He learned how to use the secret gifts of those whose arrival had birthed him, savoring their power long after their bodies were cold and rotted.

Jamison Alders was not a creature of the world called Core, nor was he of Onus or any other world in the great spiral. He was a being of the in-between, and he was powerful—more powerful than any sorcerer of Onus could ever be upon the soil of Core, where their gifts abandoned them. He was industrious and clever and endlessly resourceful.

None of that mattered at the moment. Alders was a great many things, but the only one of those things that mattered right now was that Jamison Alders was lost.

He clung desperately to the shadow form he had constructed for his essence, the invincible shape that he had set against the girl that had slipped into this world now that his access to the Spiralgate was gone. Somehow, the children she was with had managed to harm him, to hold back his assault and to… banish him. He had been cast away, far now from his body which lay unprotected and vacant in the alley behind the Veil building.

Alders was unsure how long he could remain outside of the body before he began to break down. For well over a decade he had called that bag of flesh his home, and to lose it now would be dreadfully inconvenient. He had much to do in a short amount of time if he was to preserve the value of his identity as Alders.

The time would come to punish the girl and her cohort. Unfortunately, the damage she could do was already done. She had set events into motion that would make his private hunting grounds, this world, private no longer. Already he knew that her arrival had surely brought another of his kind to this place, and that meant that the shadow of Alders was no longer alone.


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This was a pity. After so many years of wallowing in despair at its newfound individuality, the monstrosity in the skin of a man had finally taken comfort in knowing that it was, as some manner of consolation, unique. The loss of that uniqueness was not something Alders would take lightly. He had always assumed that what he wanted was to be free of this place, but as his situation changed, he wondered if perhaps what he wanted wasn’t… job security.

Jamison Alders realized as he skittered about from one shadow to the next, taking in the sounds of foreign language and the smell of a season on the opposite side of the Earth, that he had three very important tasks to accomplish in short order: he had to get back to his body before some fool carted it off to a morgue somewhere; he had to kill the girl and every one of the children he had faced at her side; and of course he had to find the shadow that had followed the girl and welcome it into the family before it did something stupid.

¤~¤~¤

The portal, awash in green light and pulsing in time with the deep

thrum of the resonating bands of metal that made up the Spiralgate artifact, held steady and solid for almost three minutes before anything emerged.

Nathaniel Candor found it difficult to take his eyes off the spinning orb of luminescence, but every few seconds he did, chancing a glance at the creature that had been Major Lorenz. He had no delusions about what had happened—the evidence was readily apparent. Prolonged contact with the alien, ‘Embrew,’ had clearly left Lorenz vulnerable to some form of mind control technology, likely hidden away in the creature’s mysterious wristbands.

Embrew had surely used Lorenz, then, to activate the artifact and, Candor was certain, summon reinforcements from his ship, or world, or whatever it was precisely that lurked on the other end of the wormhole created by the device.

Lorenz continued to laugh, his eyes literally alight with crackling energy, and all the while Nathaniel watched as the Major’s shadow writhed in the pulsing light of the portal, squirming and retracting as though struggling to escape. It was almost as unnerving as that abominable laugh, but both paled in comparison to the dread that filled him when he looked into that swirling green maw of light.

Nathaniel Candor was not a fit man, but he knew as he felt the tension mount that he could have sprinted up all four flights of stairs and out of the compound like a man half his weight and age. Such was the power of the apprehension that gripped him.

With Lorenz obviously incapacitated, and Horton off dealing with fictional problems in Nebraska, it was to the Director that command of the situation fell. Whatever emerged from that portal was his responsibility—his call.

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Summoning courage from unforeseen reserves, and whispering a prayer for his wife and daughter, Nathaniel sidled up next to the cackling Lorenz and reached for the Major’s sidearm. The laughing man paid him no mind, and in moments Candor held the heavy firearm in his hands, hastily recalling poorly-heeded lessons in the use of the weapon.

The facility had already been compromised by one alien’s arrival. When the old man had entered through the previous portal, it had blown out the power grid and let a powerful, mysterious old man into a classified military base. That man had seemingly carried with him highly potent technologies including the capability to…well, to do whatever it was that had been done to Major Lorenz.

Nathaniel Candor was going to shoot whatever came out of that portal. Repeatedly. He’d had enough of alien invasions for one month.

A simple distortion rippled through the portal’s sphere, like a pebble striking a still pond. As the distortion spread to the edge of the globe of light, it rebounded and worked its way back inward, until it folded back in upon itself at the center. In that moment, at that precise point, a slender feminine hand materialized, followed slowly, gracefully, by the rest of a lithe and supple figure.

The woman, long dark hair falling straight to her waist, deeply bronzed skin gleaming in the light of the gate, stepped firmly into the world wearing a heavy grey traveling cloak over a revealing smock of tanned hide belted tightly at the waist to accentuate her elegant figure.

“I must inform you,” the woman said hesitantly, her face wrinkling slightly as she tasted the words upon her tongue, “that your world now belongs to Warlord Hyrak.”

Candor looked around quickly. The only other people in the room were clearly going to be of no help—Jaske was awestruck by the woman and Lorenz was…

Lorenz had stopped laughing. He stood stock still, staring through the woman, eyes fixed upon the portal.

Candor steeled himself and supported the gun with his right hand. His words were crisp and clipped, not unlike the way he spoke to his mother-in-law, as he said, “Thanks for the head’s up. Now lie down on the ground before I shoot you in the head.”

The woman smiled and brought her hand up in a fierce swatting gesture, her forehead creasing with an effort of concentration. Nothing happened, and she repeated the gesture again, more violently.

“What is happening?” she shrieked. Before Nathaniel could reply, the green vortex of light blinked out,

plunging the room into darkness. The woman began to shriek words that made no sense, clearly profanities, as the emergency lights slowly powered up, bathing the room in soft amber light that gleamed off the barrels of the rifles carried by the fifteen soldiers that filed neatly in the door to stand at Candor’s side.


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9 Core

switch had been thrown in my brain. All of the sudden the whole world had snapped into tighter focus, and I couldn’t imagine the way things had been before. When the girl had touched me, she had done

something to me—woken up some part of me that I had never even known existed. When I looked around the parking lot, as that creature of shadows and angles struggled with Todd and JC screamed and Becky fumbled with the officer’s flashlight, I saw things in a way that is difficult to describe. I felt the exact distance between any two points in the area, I knew the precise amount of space occupied by each and every object and person I could see—except for the creature.

My newfound awareness had been unable to focus on the shadow, unable to see it as anything more than a fold of the light. This was no different than what my old awareness had seen it to be—and that thought terrified me as much as the wave of radiant terror that its touch had blasted across my senses. But I had felt that terror distinctly, with the rational part of my mind instead of with the instinctual part of the brain that had nearly killed me when the creature’s claws bit into me. The awareness that the girl, Jara, had woken in my mind was shielding me, in some measure, from the fear the creature wielded so efficiently, and having the freedom to think, and the knowledge that was clicking into place in my mind, had opened up an option that had not been available before.

When I reached out my hand, I knew what had to be done. I don’t know if the knowledge was instinct, some implanted message from the girl, or a byproduct of any number of factors. What I did know was that I saw the threat of the creature, I saw the life flickering out of Todd, who I had only just realized was my friend, and I knew with absolute certainty that if I did not do something, it would come back for me, and Becky, and even JC. We were all going to die screaming if I didn’t get this right.

When I pressed my hand outward, I felt for the volume of the creature, and of course there was nothing to feel. I then turned my focus to the volume of space immediately surrounding it. I wedged my mind into that space, focusing on the exact shape of a series of interlocking cubes of space that contained the creature. The image in my mind, a pattern of precise geometry that would have reduced computers to smoking ruins, locked into pristine focus as my palm pressed against the non-shape of the shadow.

Then I released the pattern, sending its vertices and intersections flowing down my arm and into my palm, where it slipped out of me and into the space around the creature, springing into reality and sealing off the space within its imagined confines, slipping it free of its location in the glare

A

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of Becky’s flashlight and sending it… somewhere else. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be honest. I knew that I had to send it away, and I had.

When that was done, when I had worked my will into an act of unreasoning impossibility, we were all safe. I heard the girl beside me say something, but the words were incomprehensible as the blood pounded in my ears and the world spun ever so gently on its axis beneath me. All I wanted to do was to sleep.

¤~¤~¤

Becky clicked off the flashlight as Adam sank to his knees, and the little

girl at his side smiled grimly. The monster was gone, and it had made a hellish mess of everything.

She shot a glance around the parking lot to find JC cowering behind his car, a soft whimpering giving away his location. Todd lay on the ground in front of Adam, panting, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. And the officer, whose shadow, it seemed, had acted of its own accord to try and murder them all, was slowly rising with a look of absolute confusion on his face.

None of that mattered as she dropped the light with a clatter and rushed to kneel beside Adam, pulling him into a tight embrace. She felt his shuddering breathing and stroked his head gently with one hand, feeling tears well in her eyes. This was nonsense, all of this. It made no sense, and she was done with it.

As she looked up, Becky’s eyes met those of the girl, who had said nothing more since Adam had… done whatever he had done… to the shadow-thing.

“I am Jara,” the girl said with simple confidence, “and your friend has to come with me.”

Becky narrowed her eyes into a fierce scowl as she retorted, “He most certainly does not! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I just told you, I’m—” Becky’s withering stare cut Jara off in mid-sentence.

Adam mumbled softly, “It’s OK, Becky. I’m good. Just tired.” Becky eased up on her embrace, but her glare towards Jara did not

soften. “Are you sure? I don’t like this. That thing was… I don’t know, it was like it was sucking the life right out of you or something.”

“I’m better now.” Adam gestured towards Jara as he falteringly rose back to his feet. “She helped me. Helped me stop it.”

“But how exactly did you stop it? What did you even do to it? Where did it go?” Becky’s voice rose as her own fear began to get the better of her anger-born courage.

Adam shook his head. “We’ll talk about it soon, promise. Can we make sure everyone else is alright first? Why don’t you go check on Joe?”

Becky nodded, reluctantly, and started towards JC’s car and the quivering young man that hid in its shadow. As she moved away from Adam and the girl, she saw, from the corner of her eye, as her boyfriend


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knelt down to check on the relatively still form of Todd. She felt another wave of anger sweep through her heart.

If it hadn’t been for Todd White, they wouldn’t have even been here tonight. If it hadn’t been for him, they would have been safely at a movie, or playing games online, or talking on the phone. They most certainly wouldn’t have been desperately surviving a fight with some kind of animated shadow, and they wouldn’t be sitting here trying to figure out all of these impossible things.

The girl, Jara—what kind of name was Jara, anyway?—had called Adam her ‘Gatemaker.’ What the hell was a Gatemaker, and why did Adam have to be one? Adam was her boyfriend, damn it—it was her job to keep him safe.

Ever since they had met, it had been Becky’s job to protect Adam, and it was in those roles that their relationship had been forged. If he didn’t need her to take care of him, to shelter him from those who would hurt him, than what use was she to him?

Becky forced those thoughts from her mind, knowing full well they would be back. It was not an unfamiliar problem, and it was one that she frequently wrestled with in the dark of night. It seemed trivial to worry about such things when she had just seen, almost literally, the dark of night itself take action against her and her friends. But trivial or not, Adam was her world, and everything in that world had just changed.

Becky placed one hand on the shining surface of JC’s car and said in a low but, she hoped, assuring voice, “Hey, Joe. It’s OK. You can come out.”

She heard the whimpering quiet behind the car, and feeling confident that it was safe to approach, Becky rounded the back side of the vehicle to find her neighbor curled into the fetal position, tears streaking a face made ghostly pale with fear.

“Is it gone?” Joseph Christopher Stein’s voice was not that of an over-confident sixteen year old. All of his swagger and bravado, all of his goofy humor and skewed sense of the appropriate, were absent from that voice. JC sounded so young, so vulnerable, that Becky almost hurt to hear it.

“It’s gone, Joe,” Becky said softly. Hesitantly, JC began to uncoil himself, rising from the cold and dirty

concrete and leaning heavily against the car. The color quickly flushed back to his face, and he wiped away the tears, thickening in the frigid night air, with the back of his hand.

“We don’t have to, you know… talk about this, right?” There was another question implied in JC’s words, and Becky heard it is clearly as the question he had actually asked aloud. He didn’t know if what had just happened had changed things between them, and Becky suddenly understood that whatever form it took, his friendship with her, her trust in him—these were important things to the young man. Becky had always imagined Joe as someone with no shortage of friends, but perhaps she had fallen for an act in exactly the way she was supposed to.

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“I don’t see anything we need to talk about, JC,” she said, deliberately shifting back to his preferred moniker, “aside from the fact that some incredibly crazy things are going down right now.”

JC’s face lit up with relief, his overlarge grin briefly playing across his features as he lightly bumped his fist into Becky’s shoulder and grunted, “Cool.”

Becky sighed and walked, side by side with a boy she was only now beginning to understand after all these years, towards a young man she understood all too well, another young man whose motives she would never understand, and a young girl who had an awful lot of explaining to do.

¤~¤~¤

Officer Steven Mollison had an inordinate amount of difficulty opening

his eyes. There was a pounding in his head that put even the worst of his frequent migraines to shame, and he felt the bitter cold of icy winter concrete pressing against the side of his face. Considering he knew that he was on the job because he was lying in such a way that the uncomfortable shape of his sidearm was pressed tightly between his hip and the ground in a mildly painful way, Steven resolved that this was a bad thing.

Fighting against the pressure in his head that seemed ready to burst his skull wide open, Steven opened his eyes to see the four young people he’d been talking to gathering in a rough circle around Jara. The young woman among the quartet had raised her voice and was almost shouting at Jara, but the small girl was holding her own, shouting right back. Their words were not clear to him over the pounding sound that dominated his sense of hearing, but it was clear that something had happened.

He knew he had to get up and do something, but it felt like entirely too much effort. He took a deep breath and tried to stand, utterly failing. Perhaps standing could wait a bit longer.

¤~¤~¤

Jara tried to feel sorry for these people, but she was tired and worried

and angry. Sure, they might be afraid, but they were still home, still living in their own world with friends and family and certainty. She was none of those things, and all she had to do to get back home, to find her mother and be sure that she was safe, was to take this tall boy, with his hair in his eyes and his battered face, back to Embrew. She had done her part and found him, but it had never occurred to her that the so-called “child of the Line” would not be willing to come with her.

“I’m not going anywhere. I have to get my friends home and make sure they’re alright. There’s been more than enough excitement for one night.” The Gatemaker, Adam was his name, stared at Jara as his girlfriend held his hand and his other two friends stood nearby.


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For a moment, Jara felt envious to see such a group of people. Friends had never been an option for her, growing up among the monks of Gar Nought, and she had not often had opportunity to think about what she was missing. That moment passed, however, when she recalled the slaughter of those monks at the hands of Hyrak’s witch.

“You have to come with me. It’s what you are meant to do! You are a child of the Line, and I was sent to find you and bring you back to Onus to stop Hyrak’s armies from killing everyone!” Jara nearly shrieked with frustration.

Before Adam could respond, his girlfriend interjected, “Where is Onus? I’ve never even heard of it.”

Jara let loose an exasperated sigh. There simply wasn’t time for this. “Onus is the name of—“

“Her world. It’s a whole nother world.” Adam interrupted in an awed voice.

“What?” The girlfriend turned her incredulous eyes upon the Gatemaker.

Adam shook his head as he said, “Becky, I don’t know how I know, but I know it like I know my own name. When she says Onus, a pattern of shapes pops up in my mind—like some kind of coordinate. Far away.”

The thinner of the two other males spoke then, his voice curiously eager. “She’s an alien? Sweet!”

Jara realized then that the other male, the dark skinned one, had said nothing so far. She looked into his dark eyes, and realized he said nothing because none of this was surprising to him. He looked… expectant.

She worried about that, and said to him, ignoring the eager one’s words, “Can I touch your hand for a moment?”

The young man smiled, stretching one solid hand out towards Jara in a gesture like that of the handshake she had seen Hans exchange with men at the police station after her arrival.

“We don’t have time for handshakes, kid! We deserve some better answers.” Becky’s voice betrayed her impatience, but Jara had to sate her own curiosity about this strange male.

As she wrapped her tiny hand around his massive one, Jara closed her eyes and waited to see. She waited for images to shoot like lightning through her mind’s eye, or for scenes to play out in the back of her imagination. She had merely seen a picture of Steven Mollison when her abilities activated, revealing glimpses of his fate to her wakening senses. It had been much the same when she had laid eyes upon Adam Childers, feeling with a perfect sense of fulfilled purpose that he was who she sought and that within him was the art of Gar—the power of a Gatemaker.

Nothing happened when she touched the hand that was offered her. Not a single burst of insight came to her—not a name, an image, a smell—nothing.

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“My name is Todd White, and it’s always nice to meet interesting people,” he said with an unnerving smile, pumping her hand in an overly vigorous gesture of greeting.

Feeling suddenly less sure of herself, Jara released her grip on Todd’s hand and turned back to Adam and Becky, realizing that she had to convince Becky if she was going to convince Adam.

Jara hesitated for a moment. “The Gatemaker is right. Onus is my world, and it is not the same as yours. I wish I understood it all better, but I don’t. I didn’t even know there were worlds besides my own until a few days ago, when I met a very odd old man with no eyes that brought me here and told me I had to find a child of the Line,” she pointed at Adam, “of which you are definitely one, and get them back to that same old man.”

The one whose name Jara had not yet learned chuckled. “Gatemaker? That’s like a lame superhero name. No offense, Adam, but you’re really not superhero material. Maybe Todd over here. Not you.”

Adam glowered at the young man as he hissed, “Shut up, Joe.” The young man, Joe, retorted, “Get a new song, man. That one’s getting

old.” Becky placed a restraining hand on Adam’s shoulder. Focusing still on

Jara, she asked, “How do you know Adam is one of these Gatemaker things?”

Jara gestured to the place where Todd had wrestled with the shadow. “He banished the creature, did he not?”

Adam raised an eyebrow and said, “But you were touching me when I did it. How do we know that wasn’t something you did, just like… through me, or something?”

“You can take my word for it.” Jara folded her frail arms across her chest, doing her best to look imperious.

Joe said, “That’s not very likely. These two aren’t huge in the trust department. What else can one of these Gatemakers do?”

“I would imagine,” Todd added, “that they make gates.” Joe rolled his eyes. “I have seen other Gatemakers bring things closer to themselves, or

send them further away,” Jara thought carefully of all the things she had seen Embrew do, and also those things that the witch, Lyda, had done as she assaulted Gar Nought. “They can open portals, or gates, to different places.”

Adam looked relieved. “I’ve never done any of those things. I think maybe you are mistaken.”

Jara wracked her brain, “But I know you’ve done something—I knew when I saw you that your powers were already awakened. A Gatemaker once made it so I could pass through a door without opening it. Have you ever…?”

Adam shook his head. Becky snorted, “This is getting ridiculous.”


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Then Jara remembered Embrew’s cell. “I saw a Gatemaker take an entire length of chains apart, one link at a time, without breaking a single ring.”

Adam said, “Sorry, kid. No magic tricks here. We have to go, and it would probably be better to go before the cop wakes up, so if you’ll excuse us…”

Adam turned to leave, and it seemed as though Joe and Todd were to follow him. But Becky stood stock still, her hand thrust into her pocket. She nervously chewed at her lip.

Jara cocked her head and asked, “Have you seen such a thing?” Very slowly, and with terrible effort, Becky nodded. Then, still not

saying a word, she drew a length of shining silver chain links from her pocket.

“My necklace! I was wondering where that went!” Joe reached for the chain, and Becky let him take it. “Where’s the padlock?”

Todd and Adam were also watching now as Becky reached into the pocket once more and drew out the padlock.

Joe snatched that as well, an eyebrow rising up. “How did you get it off? The key’s at home on my dresser.”

Becky, almost quivering, said, “I didn’t take it off. Adam did. When you started fighting.”

Adam shook his head. “It must have broken, then. We were getting kind of rough.”

“You were knocking each other around pretty hard, man,” Todd said, “but there’s no way you’ve got the juice to snap one of those links. That’s a pretty heavy chain.”

Jara smiled smugly. “As I said—Gatemaker. Now, can we discuss getting me home?”

“And I have a few questions as well.” The voice that came from behind them was steady and deep, and it was accompanied by the resonant click of a gun being cocked.

The five young men and women turned almost as one to see Officer Steven Mollison, firearm at the ready, staring at them with an indecipherable gleam in his eyes.

¤~¤~¤

Adam was the first to raise his hands, followed closely by Todd. Slowly

Jara and Becky followed suit, but JC did no such thing, instead shoving his hands, and his chain necklace, into his jean pockets.

Adam wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. They hadn’t really done anything wrong, aside from costing the restaurant some business, and that certainly didn’t warrant the drawing of a gun. But considering that the shadow creature had seemed to be somehow connected to the officer, things were likely more complicated than they seemed.

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Adam thought about the things Jara had said, and the things he had apparently done, and wondered if there wasn’t some fantastic way out of this problem that involved his alleged Gatemaking abilities. The thought of doing anything remotely like banishing the shadow, though, simply reminded him of the debilitating weariness that still coursed through his body. Even if he knew how to do it again, he doubted he had the simple strength to try.

As was swiftly becoming customary in situations involving the law, Todd spoke first. “We can probably sort things out without the gun, officer.”

The cop shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not until I know what’s going on around here. What did you kids do to me?”

Todd shrugged, and Adam felt that was not the right move. Unsure of what to do, Adam did what he always did—he turned to Becky and looked to her to solve his problems.

Dependable as ever, Becky opened her mouth. “You passed out, sir. While you were talking to us.” Adam felt a sense of relief build in him, knowing that they were going to get out of this just fine. Becky could be a coolly rational person when she wanted to be. “And then some kind of crazy shadow-monster leapt out of you and tried to kill my boyfriend and this guy here,” she pointed to Todd.

Adam felt that sense of relief evaporate as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. What was she doing?

The officer focused his eyes, and more importantly his gun, on Becky. “What are you talking about? Are you intoxicated?”

Jara lowered her hands and began to walk slowly towards the officer. “Steven, please put the weapon down. The girl speaks the truth, even though I know you don’t believe her.”

Adam watched in horror as Jara moved, one step at a time, towards the policeman until the gun was barely inches from her forehead.

“Don’t talk to me, Jara. Just—I just want to know what’s going on. I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on.” Steven’s hands, gripping tightly to his service revolver, began to tremble.

Jara reached up to take his hands, and the gun, in her own. Her eyes closed for a moment, and then sprung open wide. Her voice rang out when she said, “I know what your friend, Alders, wanted you to do. I know it is not the only time he had asked you to do things that you knew were not right. And now… I know why you have done them.”

Adam could not believe his eyes as tears welled in the officer’s eyes. He chanced a look towards Becky, and saw her eyes mirror his own surprise and confusion.

Steven let out a shuddering breath. “I owe him my life. He saved me, gave me purpose after I came home from overseas… he made me understand that I had only done what had to be done…”

Jara shook her head firmly. “He lies to you. He tells you what you need to hear, and for his lies you repay him with deeds that break your heart. He


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has made you into his weapon, Steven Mollison, and it is all because of a lie.”

“What lie?” Jara looked, for the first time, not at Steven’s eyes but at the ground. She

seemed to struggle with what she had to say, but say it she did: “You did not kill a child in the hot sands of that far away place.”

Steven’s eyes grew hard, and the trembling ceased, as though a switch had been flipped. His voice was grim as he said, “You are wrong. I killed that boy, and if I do what Alders asks, he will—”

“What?” Jara’s small voice was furious, and Adam could imagine only one way this confrontation was going to end. “He’ll what? Bring the boy back from the dead?”

Steven pressed the gun forward, causing Jara to take a faltering half-step back. “He’ll make me forget.”

Jara laughed then, but it was a nervous, fearful sound. “It would be easy enough for one like him to make you forget, I suppose. Especially since he made you think you had done it in the first place.”

Adam saw the expression on Mollison’s face—he saw the man recoil as if he’d been struck. He saw the slight trickle of blood leak from the officer’s nose. He saw a dawning light of comprehension spread across the tall and lanky man’s visage.

Jara lowered her hands, for the first time breaking physical contact with the policeman. “You see now? He made you believe you had done this horrible thing, he put this shadow in your heart.”

Steven nodded. “I do see.” He lowered the gun and slid it back into its holster, snapping the strap across its top that held it securely in place. “I don’t understand though. I have always known Alders could do such things, but… why would he do it?”

Becky spoke this time, a half-smile of insight on her lips. “You would have done anything to forget, right? How many things has he asked you to do for him that you’d have never done otherwise? If he’s the guy who sent that shadow-thing after Adam, after all of us, then we know he’s probably never asked you for any simple favors.”

Steven said, “He asked me to kill you, Jara. He’d probably want all of you dead, if you saw the things he could do and lived. Why ask these things of me, though? If he wanted someone to do his dirty work, if he wanted someone inside the police department, he had many choices. Why me?”

Jara turned to motion Adam to approach her. “Because being his weapon, being cloaked in his shadow, made it impossible for me to see something else that was right in front of me.”

There was a long pause. Adam realized Jara was, for some reason, trying to inject a sense of the dramatic into what was happening. Reluctantly, he asked, “What was that?”

Jara smiled. “Adam Childers, I would like you to meet Steven Mollison. You two have something very important in common.”

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This time it was Steven who rose to the bait of Jara’s pause. “And that is?”

“You are both,” Jara grinned, “children of the Line.” It was then that Adam heard the approaching sound of an additional set

of police sirens. “We have to leave here, now. We can go somewhere else and figure out what this all means.”

Steven turned towards his car. “It’s been too long since I checked in. They sent backup—it’s normal procedure. It’ll take me a few minutes to get rid of them.”

Todd stepped up. “You do your thing. Why don’t the rest of us jet out of here, and we’ll meet back up… somewhere. Anybody have any ideas?”

Jara nodded agreement. “I know just the place.”


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10 Core

he clock on the faux-stone wall was just striking midnight when Becky hung up the phone. An overly large map of the state of Iowa featured prominently

on the wall as Adam turned to see how the call had gone. Jara, JC, and Todd sat on the lightly padded benches lining the single room of the rest area where, just under a week ago, Jara had entered this world.

“Did they buy it?” Adam asked. He knew that the story they had decided on was a long-shot at best, but he also had come to appreciate the circumstances. Curfew or not, things were happening here that needed to be dealt with tonight.

Becky nodded, although her face betrayed a sense of regret. “It should come as no surprise to anyone that my parents do not particularly care if I make it home tonight.”

“So they believe that you’re at my place?” Adam questioned, hopefully. He had told his mom that he was staying at Becky’s, and it seemed almost unreal that the trick might actually work.

“Yeah, I guess. They really don’t care, Adam. You know that.” Nearby, JC stood and stretched, arching his back until it popped. He

grunted for effect and said, “I don’t get you two. If I called my dad and said I was staying at my girl’s house, he’d drag me home before I knew what hit me. Aren’t your folks worried about… you know?”

Adam narrowed his eyes and glared at JC. “I know, I know,” JC shrugged and collapsed back to his bench. “Shut

up, Joe. I’m just saying, is all. It’s weird how much they trust you. My Dad doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me.”

Becky smiled and took a seat next to Jara. “Maybe that’s because your dad has met you Joe. You don’t exactly exude a sense of dependability.”

Joe grimaced and motioned towards Todd. “She’s using big words again, man. Do you understand what she’s saying?”

“That depends,” Todd said without moving, his eyes closed and head leaned back against the plaster-brick wall, “on whether or not you’ll leave me alone if I say yes.”

Adam continued to pace as his friends exchanged verbal jabs. He looked at each of them in turn, unaware of what would happen to them all when the officer, Steven, met up with them and they started to tackle the problems Jara seemed so intent upon. Maybe it would be best to send them home, he wondered. JC hadn’t even called home yet, and his parents were bound to be worried. And Todd… Todd seemed unfazed by all this, and that was equal parts comforting and frightening, as far as Adam was concerned.

T

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Unable to abide the waiting any more, Adam paced back to the bench where Jara and Becky sat and squatted down on his haunches there, looking Jara in the eyes.

“So, if I understand this right, you need me to go back with you, and this guy you came here with, to your world. Why?” Adam asked calmly, doing his best to keep the plaintive whining tone that so often accompanied his words from spilling out.

Jara nodded brusquely, clearly tired of explaining herself. “Yes. It is not a difficult thing to understand, is it?”

“Well, in a way, it is. If this old man—“ Jara interrupted, “Embrew. His name is Embrew.” Adam nodded, “OK, Embrew. So if Embrew is a Gatemaker, what do

you even need me for? Can’t he do everything I can do?” “I would guess he can do even more. He does have more practice than

you, if nothing else.” Jara rubbed at her left temple with her hand. “I don’t know exactly why he needs you, but he does. You and Steven. The rest of these people can go home, you know. I was told to find the children of the Line, not the children and everyone they’ve ever met.”

Becky entered the conversation at that point. “Well maybe the rest of us are these Line children too?”

Jara shook her head. “No. I don’t believe so. I knew it when I saw Adam, and as soon as the creature released Steven I saw it in him too. I don’t see anything special in you, Becky, or him,” she pointed to JC.

Adam cocked an eyebrow. “What about Todd?” Jara said nothing, but she glared at Todd with naked apprehension. Becky smiled briefly and said, “I know exactly how you feel.” Adam lifted himself back to an upright position and thrust his hands

deep into his pockets. “Let it go, Becky. And Jara, please know this: I’m not going anywhere without these people. If you want me to be your Gatemaker, or whatever, the rest of the gang is part of the package.”

Joe said, with determination, “I did promise to chaperone.” “And I figure,” Todd said as he leaned forward and opened his eyes,

“that this beats the hell out of anything else I had going on this weekend.” Adam smiled. “So we’re settled. Whatever happens next, it happens to

all of us.”

¤~¤~¤

The man called Jonas Carmichael sat in his car. He was ready to leave, ready to turn away from his duty to the Order of Core and quit this place forever. The moon shone brightly down on the facility as a semblance of order returned, and if he left now no one would ever be the wiser.

It would be impossible to stop the events now set into motion. If the enemy that had slain his colleagues was now reinforced by yet another of its kind, it was possible that now as many as three such creatures were on the loose. The children of the Line, guided by a nascent Fatewaker and a blind


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old man both imprisoned and weak, would have no hope against three aspects of the enemy.

Whatever had just entered Core through the Spiralgate was certain to be a lesser threat than the monstrous entity that had slipped in at its side. Jonas would not let anyone else die the death that was meant for him.

He would make sure that the creature that had killed the rest of the Order of Core regretted leaving him alive. If the Line was to be activated, even if he knew it was wrong to do so, he would rather see them safely escape to Onus than see them die in ignorance of their purpose at the hands of an entity too terrible to conceive.

He opened the car door and stepped out into the biting cold of a January midnight. He reached deep into his mind and looked for the places where once, many years ago, the power to mend and rend flesh and blood had resided. As expected, the arts of his youth were still lost—casualties of time spent on this cursed and broken world.

He would have to solve his problems the old fashioned way. For the first time in ten years, Jonas Carmichael opened the trunk of his

car and drew forth his own contingency plan. It lacked the elegance of a batch of specially selected children with the inborn potential to save the universe from chaos, but there was a certain majesty to its simplicity.

It was, after all, a very fine sword.

¤~¤~¤

“Die screaming.” Lyda spat the words at her captors as they secured a pair of heavy restraints to her hands, binding them behind her back. She stood in a bare room, adorned only by a large mirror and a cold steel bench. They had brought her here directly after her entrance through the Spiralgate, and she was feeling more than a little put out.

The guards, two men of near identical build, both with very closely shorn brown hair and equally mundane brown eyes, seemed uninterested in her ranting and equally unconcerned with her comfort. Having secured the clamps around her wrists, they rose, making deliberate effort not to look her in the eyes. Wordlessly, they filed out the heavy door of the cell.

Lyda thought she caught, as they closed the door, a hungry look from one of the two guards—the one who had been fractionally shorter than the other. She knew she was not at her most alluring, clad in the bulky traveling cloak she had donned for her grueling exploration of the ruins of Gar Nought, but she was a woman of ravishing beauty. Moreover, she was well aware of her charms and possessed no small amount of success in using those charms to accomplish her aims in life.

It had been those same charms that had lured Embrew first to her side as a teacher, then to her bed as a lover. It seemed that her destiny was never to be quit of the old fool though, since it was upon his trail she had set her sights, and that same trail led her to this place. This accursed, arts-damned place.

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She swept her concentration into a furious bundle of focus, envisioning the patterns of force and angles of connection that could be used for a simple transposition. It would be a matter of no consequence, back home, for her to rid herself of these awkward manacles and step through that polished door. Then she could resume the quest for Embrew and discover exactly what the old man was up to. If she was to evade Hyrak’s wrath, she would make it be Embrew who taught her lover the secrets of the Gars. He would surely have no compunction against such a thing, she mused, given how readily he had betrayed those same secrets to her, almost twenty years gone.

Of course she knew that was delusional. Embrew had been torn apart by his decision to teach Lyda the secrets of the Gars, and even amidst the throes of passion he had never been wholly the same person that she had first met. The act of yielding to her request had forever damaged part of the old man’s soul, and all the years of imprisonment at the hands of the monks of Gar Nought would surely have done little to assuage such pain.

As she pondered her next course of action, Lyda became aware of a soft rhythm coming from outside her cell. She rose and moved to the window in the cell door listening to the corridor outside.

The beat she was hearing was familiar—it was the slow and stately measure of the Reflection upon the Moons, one of the calming chants that the monks of Gar Nought had used to focus their arts. Embrew had taught it to her, although she had never had the occasion to use it. Lyda found that there were other mental exercises that more effectively focused her efforts.

“Embrew?” she asked, haltingly, of the corridor outside. She saw several other doors like hers lining the space, but she had not been aware of anyone in those chambers as she had passed. Of course her attention had been focused on her captors at the time.

“I thought I felt you enter.” Embrew’s voice was low and steady as he ceased his soft chant.

Lyda smiled and said, “It is uncommonly decent of you to present yourself for execution so readily. You save me a great deal of trouble.”

“Hardly. You are many things, Lyda Falduron, but the least of those things, in this place, is dangerous.” Embrew approached the window of his own cell, and Lyda saw for the first time the scars that had formed over the empty sockets where she had gouged out his eyes. The last time she had laid eyes upon her ex-lover those sockets had still been wet with blood.

She licked her lips and whispered, “You have no idea of my dangers.” Embrew reached up with one emaciated hand and rubbed gently at the

smooth scar-flesh that stretched from his cheeks to his eyebrows. “Of all men, Lyda, I know best of what you are capable.”

There was silence between them for a time. Lyda watched, waiting to see exactly what Embrew was playing at. He appeared to be no more free to move about here than she was, which made his escape to this world all the more confusing. They stood in a place she had never learned of, one of the sealed worlds that Embrew had only briefly mentioned. At the time of her


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lessons the seductress was far more worried with mastering the methods of traveling to the worlds of which she was already aware—the legendary treasures of Murrod, the endless lore of Arctos, the miraculous technologies of Rettik. Amid such splendors, worlds to which there was no access had seemed fruitless wastes of time.

A thought occurred to her, then, and she asked pointedly, “Did you flee here simply to trap me? Did you finally come to realize that the pupil had surpassed the master, and that without first stripping me of my power you would never best me?”

“Is that finally so?” Embrew asked, innocently. “Have you finally learned to open chaingates?”

Lyda choked back a bitter retort. The decrepit old fool knew she had not, could not, learn his most powerful technique. The secret to crafting such conduits, hybrids between the much simpler crossgates and the ultimate expression of Gatemaking, spiralgates, was not simply a technique of breathing or concentration, as all the others were. A Gatemaker who had mastered the chaingate had to pass its secrets on to his pupil with his dying breath, an act of the ultimate confidence in another’s worthiness.

She said, after a brief pause, “Unfortunately Corudain was too busy screaming as he died to pass on his wisdom. Perhaps I’ll carve the secrets from your body when I leave this place.”

Embrew smiled thinly. “I see your opinion of yourself has not slackened in the years since our time together, even if your flesh, I feel, has. It must be so hard for you to handle the advent of age stripping you of your beauty. Perhaps some nights you regret stealing the secrets of Gatemaking when the arts of Bloodmending would have served a woman of your depth better.”

Lyda raised an eyebrow. She was far too proud to ever admit it, but the twenty years that had passed since she had so effectively seduced Embrew had not been all that kind to her. She was still a woman of unsurpassed beauty, but it was the seasoned beauty of a woman in her forties, not the unbridled appeal of a woman in her twenties. But Embrew’s words held another meaning, and Lyda was swift to deduce it.

Embrew could still wield his arts. Lyda, her curiosity enflamed, said, “You seem tired old man. All those

years in Corudain’s dungeons have worn you down to nothing. I came here to bring you back in chains, to make an offering of you to Hyrak. What I see before me is not worthy of such an honor. You lack the power to even threaten his rule. This was a wasted trip, indeed.”

Embrew’s expression grew somber. “I have done many ill-considered things in my years, Lyda, but never would I bow to that man. The fact that you would turn from me, and my teachings, to side with him remains my greatest shame.”

Then the old man simply walked through the door. Lyda felt the tingle at the back of her neck that always signaled the use of Gatemaking by another, and she saw plain as day the gentle disturbance in reality that accompanied a transposition of space. She also saw, gleaming in the harsh

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white rods of light that lined the ceiling of the prison corridor, the bands at Embrew’s wrists.

“So that’s how you’ve done it!” she exulted. Embrew nodded and said, “It matters not how I have done what I have

done. I came here to gather a means of ending the threat Hyrak posed to our world, but it seems I have no need to gather anything. You have come before me, Lyda, helpless. In all the sleepless nights of two decades of captivity, this was my fondest dream.”

“Old man,” Lyda spat as Embrew moved nearer the door to her cell, “do not do this! You are a better man than this!”

Embrew laid a single hand on the metal door of Lyda’s cell, and as he concentrated she could see a shimmering of heat radiate from the band of violet bindmetal at his wrist. She could smell the softly sweet smell of raw flesh heating, burning, beneath that band.

“I was once a better man, Lyda. Then I met you, and since then, there is little good about me.”

He shoved the door with both hands then, disconnecting it from its hinges with his arts and causing it to clatter noisily to the cell floor.

Lyda screamed then, but it was difficult to say if it was a shriek of terror or one of joy. For the pet witch of the Warlord of Onus, there was often little distinction between the two.

¤~¤~¤

Finally off for the night, Steven Mollison had been looking forward to a

relaxing evening at home. Instead, he was driving his patrol car on the interstate, meeting up with a bunch of high school kids and a girl from another world. The night had certainly not gone the way he’d hoped.

He parked the car in the angled parking spaces out front of the square-ish brick rest area building. He pulled in next to the gleaming shape of the car the kids had driven, the car belonging to the one named JC.

He looked up and saw them sitting and talking in the rest stop, clearly waiting for him before they planned their next move. He worried, though, that he had no insight to offer. He didn’t know what any of this meant, and the terrifying idea that meeting with these kids, helping them, was somehow going to anger Mr. Alders, was almost more than he could bear.

Only the thought of Jara’s reassuring words, and the resonant rightness of her declaration that he was a “child of the Line,” kept his nerve intact. He looked down at his cell phone again, nervously, and saw that, still, there was no call from Alders. Perhaps Jara was wrong about the man.

But if what she was saying was true—if there was no death on Steven’s hands, no horrible and unbearable sin for which he had to atone—he was free. He was free to live his life again, out from under the unimaginable burden of guilt that had tied his hands since he came home.


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He couldn’t keep the kids waiting any longer. A thought struck him then: aside from Jara, they were only, at most, six years his junior. He was not even old enough to have babysat for most of them.

Killing the ignition and tucking his phone back into his jeans pocket, Steven took a deep breath of the warm air inside the cabin of the car and darted through the frosty early morning air to step into the rest area where, he feared, a great many big decisions needed to be made.

Todd inclined his head marginally when Steven entered, but it was JC who spoke first. He sounded wiped out, exhaustion having finally caught up with his eager energy.

“Dude, what took you so long? It’s after midnight!” Steven frowned and said, “Sorry guys. It took longer to wrap things up

than I hoped. Do any of you need to get home? It’s getting pretty late.” Becky sighed. “Going home would be the sensible thing, officer…” Steven interrupted her, saying, “Please, call me Steven. We’re all on

equal footing here.” Becky narrowed her eyes and continued, “Excuse me, Steven, as I was

saying, the smart thing to do would be to go home before we each get grounded back to the stone age, but seeing as how I am clearly the only sensible person here, we’ve democratically elected to follow the Gatemaker here’s,” she pointed at Adam, “lead.”

Steven nodded. “So what do I have to do?” Before Adam could say anything, and it was apparent to Steven that the

young man had very little idea exactly it was that he should say, Jara coughed loudly, drawing everyone’s attention to her.

“I need to figure out what you do, Steven. I know that Adam is a Gatemaker, like my friend Embrew, but I can’t tell exactly what your gifts are.” Her voice lacked the conviction Steven had come to expect of it, and he began to see her not as an infallible source of knowledge, but as a young girl who was very far from home.

Todd said, “That could be because he hasn’t used them yet, right?” Adam turned to Todd, and Steven noticed a change in the taller boy’s

posture as he seemed to set his shoulders back just a bit and drew in a steadying breath. Adam asked, “How do you figure that?”

Todd shrugged, displaying his now customary apathy. “Well, turns out you’d just done your thing on JC’s neck chain when the kid saw you, right? It’s like she can’t tell you what happens in the book until someone opens the cover for her first, you know?”

Adam chewed a lip thoughtfully. “That makes sense.” Becky looked carefully at Steven. “Well, have you done anything freaky

lately?” JC muttered, loud enough to be easily heard, “aside from shooting

scary-ass shadow monsters at completely innocent people.” Steven shrugged. “I don’t think so. My question isn’t what I can do—it’s

what we are supposed to do now.”

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Jara rubbled blearily at her eyes. “Embrew said to find you guys and get back to him. That’s it.”

Becky leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes as she said, “So where is he? Do you even know that?”

Jara shook her head. “He threw me out of the tunnel of light, the portal thing, before he left. I never saw where he came out at.”

Steven connected a handful of facts in his head and said, “but you do know where you came out at, right? This place?”

Jara nodded again. “In the trees behind this building, yes. In the freezing rain and without shoes, by the way.” She looked pointedly at Adam’s lanky profile. “The things I’ve done for you people.”

Todd stood then, walking past Adam and towards the rear window of the shelter, which looked out over the ice-bound woods surrounding the facility.

“So you entered our world out there? Using one of these gate things.” Jara folded her arms across her chest once more and said, shortly, “That

is what I said.” Todd looked back over his shoulder, at Adam, and said, “So maybe

there’s some kind of, I dunno, residue or something out there. Like fingerprints for magic doorways.”

Adam joined Todd at the window and began to slowly nod his head in the affirmative. “You might be on to something!”

¤~¤~¤

Nathaniel Candor was inexplicably having the night of his life. The new

alien had been easily secured in the interrogation cells. The artifact activity had created only minimal electromagnetic havoc, not even causing so much as a brownout in the power grid when all was said and done. And, most importantly, he had definitive proof that Major Lorenz was indeed bat-shit crazy.

After the portal had closed and his soldiers had rounded up the intruder woman, Candor had turned his attention to Lorenz. He had ordered several of the guards to detain Lorenz as well and had walked back to his office conferring with Dr. Jaske about the turn of events that had unfolded on their watch.

Lorenz’ insanity created a valuable opportunity for Candor. The Major made the perfect scapegoat for increased pressure to be applied to the first alien, Embrew. Candor would simply blame the interrogation on Lorenz, and any political or legal consequences could be easily sloughed off onto the poor lunatic.

Now, barely more than an hour after the activation and its attendant rush of excitement, Candor had finally convinced the good doctor to head home for the night. The facility was practically empty, save for the contingent of eight guards on duty throughout the night shift. While that meant that the full staff of interrogators was not available to work over


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Embrew, Candor had checked the logs and saw that Carmichael was still available.

Clearly the most practiced of the men in the interrogation unit, Candor counted Carmichael’s presence as yet another sign of his unforeseen fortune on this strange night.

He knew that his window of opportunity during which Lorenz could safely be blamed for events was narrow, and Candor placed an all-call on the intercom asking for Carmichael to come to his office immediately. When the good man arrived, Candor would order him to go down and pump the wrinkled old alien full of something toxic. If the old man offered up any more information as he writhed in pain, that would be an excellent, if unexpected, turn of events. The real goal was simply to kill the alien and blame the death on the advanced questioning techniques approved by Lorenz.

Candor liked the sound of that lie. It carried the weight of believability. Once the alien was dead there would surely be any number of practical

means of removing the bands on his wrists. Those bracelets, if properly harnessed, would mean a whole new world of employment opportunities for Nathaniel Candor. They would also, he hoped, mean the chance to leave this godforsaken armpit of a town and head back to the coast, where things were better.

Nathaniel Candor was a practical man. He accepted space portals and alien beauties with a great deal of grace, so long as in doing so there was tangible benefit for him.

As he pictured, vividly, the summer house in Massachusetts that he had always wanted, he glanced idly at the security monitors and noticed that his chief interrogator was indeed on his way to his office…

With a four foot broadsword slung expertly over one shoulder. Candor wondered if, perhaps, the evening had not quite turned out to

be as fortuitous as he had imagined.

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11 Core

dam could feel a certain quality to the air, a difference from the biting cold wind that had washed over them as they trudged deeper into the sparse and eerie woods surrounding the rest area. He walked side by side with

Jara as she led the way to the point of her arrival, followed closely by Steven and Todd. Back in the shelter, Becky and JC were still visible, standing at the window and leaving clouds of condensation where their breath struck the double thick glass. Ahead, a bowl-shaped depression in the ice marked Jara’s point of entry into the world.

Todd put a heavy hand on Adam’s shoulder, and Adam turned, stepping in closer to his new friend to hear what his often-quiet voice had to say.

“What do you see if you close your eyes?” Todd asked carefully. Adam cocked an eyebrow at Todd but closed his eyes nonetheless. He

found it strangely rewarding to be engaging in this mad quest with Todd at his side, or having his back, or whatever the appropriate turn of phrase was. It was so different from his frequent experiences of having people like Todd on the opposite side in an endeavor.

After a few deep breaths, Adam became convinced that there was nothing to see and that he was merely looking like a fool, perhaps for the amusement of Todd and the others. As he began to open his eyes, however, he saw something curious begin to happen at the periphery of his vision.

Swirls of faint light were dancing through the air in a series of interlocking rings, hovering three feet above the basin of the crater. The colors undulated between blue and green, flickering faintly and both dissolving and blossoming, like the concentric circles cast by a stone upon a still pond.

He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes then. As he released that breath, he realized what his next step might be. Turning without a word, he began to slog back to the shelter, crossing the ice and snow more easily by tracing the heavy footfalls of the party backwards.

Steven called after him, “What is it?” Jara looked smug. “The Gatemaker has discovered something. His

instincts are good, as Embrew surely knew they would be.” Then she turned to glare at Todd, her small mouth drawn into a tight

line. “What are you?” Todd shrugged, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of defeat. Yet he

said nothing, following Adam in silence. He moved surely through the snow, and continued to seem unbothered by the cold in spite of his thin jacket’s obviously meager warmth.

A


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Jara grabbed Steven’s hand, taking small comfort in letting impressions of his destiny flood over her as she SAW pieces of what fate had in store for the child of the Line.

“Yes?” Steven asked. “I need you to promise me something. Whatever else happens, that boy

needs to be watched. He is not supposed to be here.”

¤~¤~¤

JC stood next to Becky, and she could almost feel the tension in the empty shelter as the pair watched Adam and the others start to head back from the woods.

“What’s the matter, Joe?” Becky asked. He shrugged, nervously shifting the length of chain that had previously

been his necklace from hand to hand. “You think I’m a coward, don’t you?” Becky smiled softly. She had plenty of problems bouncing around in her

head, but it was somehow comforting to know that some things could be handled so easily. Reaching out, she put her hand on JC’s cheek and turned his head gently to face her.

“Of all the words I’d ever use to describe you, coward would never make the cut. You’re one of the bravest people I know.” She waited for his face to respond with its habitual grin.

No such expression came. JC closed his eyes tightly, whispering, “I ran from that thing. Nobody else ran. You kept your head, Todd tackled the thing, hell, even Adam knew what to do. Everyone did the right thing but me.”

Becky lowered her hand and sighed. “You think what any of us did was the right thing? Honestly? The only one of the four of us that showed any sense whatsoever was you! When a scary-as-hell shadow monster leaps at a sensible person, they run.”

She paused, looking JC over. He was practically her little brother, in all of the ways that counted, and she hated seeing him so torn up. His tension seemed to ease, and then she saw the corners of his mouth begin to curl up into the faintest ghost of a smile.

“What?” she asked. “Well, it’s…” he hesitated, “I bet one of the other words you never

thought you’d use to describe me was sensible.” Becky laughed, hard. JC joined her, and they laughed until they forgot

how worried, tired, and scared they were. Becky laughed and remembered that sometimes it was OK to let people in.

The door to the shelter opened then, granting entrance to Adam, Todd, and an accompanying blast of frozen air.

Adam ran a hand through his hair, pushing the shaggy bangs out of his eyes and staring as Becky and JC pulled themselves back together. “Something funny?” he asked.

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Becky ignored his question. “What did you find?” she inquired as she turned from the window. JC continued to look out, and Todd stood by the door, clearly waiting to push it open for the others when they caught up.

“There was a portal, or gate, or whatever you call it, out there. It’s kind of cool looking, honestly. And I think I know how to find out where it connected to.” Adam rubbed his hands together furiously, reminding Becky of how cold it really was out there tonight.

“Well, can we go ahead and figure this all out and be done with this craziness? I’ll be happy when we finally put all of this behind us and get home.”

Todd grunted. “I don’t think your boy gets off that easy, Beck.” Becky shot a withering glance at Todd. “My name is Rebecca. I will let

you call me Becky, but if you can’t handle two syllables, I’m really not all that interested in what you have to say.”

Adam directed an equally sharp look at Becky, saying, “Chill out, Becky.”

“Well, gosh, I’m sorry.” She looked back to Todd and said, “Gee, new best friend, I sure am sorry for being rude to you. I have so many excellent reasons to trust and respect you, after all. I mean, there’s the way you… oh wait, that’s right, I have absolutely no damn reason to respect you.”

Feeling her temper utterly overwhelm her sense of propriety, Becky turned and stormed into the women’s restroom, leaving the boys to stand, somewhat agape, while she figured out what had to happen next.

¤~¤~¤

Embrew swept outward with his arts, feeling the exact volume and

space of Lyda’s cell and seeing, in his mind’s eye, her location. She crouched before him, breathing heavily from the exertion of leaping clear of the door he had transposed off of its hinges only a half second before.

“The opportunity to pay you back for my eyes was denied me for a long time, witch.”

Lyda leapt at him then, shrieking. She moved quickly, clearly knowing that his ability to see, based as it was upon the sonar-like senses of a Gatemaker, could not cope with rapid movement. Her slender form was upon him then, willow-wand fingers bringing impressive strength to bear around his windpipe.

“You are a fool, Embrew! If you had any sense at all, you’d have killed me from across the hall.” She squeezed harder, and Embrew choked. He hadn’t the strength for this kind of struggle, but he knew there was no other way.

“Vows,” he managed to gasp out. Lyda spat in his face. “Pathetic. What good are your gifts if you swear

never to use them against your enemies?” Embrew thought, as the world around him seemed to grow smaller and

his lungs screamed out for air, that perhaps she had a point. He had broken


110

the vows once, and Lyda and her reign of terror had been the result. Wouldn’t it be acceptable to break them once more, if in so doing he could set right all of the consequences of that original sin?

No. His conscience, so often disregarded in his youth, asserted itself with force. He would not kill her with the arts of Gar. But perhaps…

Embrew thrust outward with his frail arms, pushing against Lyda. He lacked the strength to physically force her away from him, but with contact he could work some small magic. Patterns of light and shapes of energy sprang to his mind’s eye, techniques ingrained from years of practice. He took the tiny amount of space between Lyda’s fingers and his throat, the miniscule layer of opposing forces that prevented all things from ever truly coming into direct contact, and expanded that space. He stretched it to many times its actual dimensions, leaving perhaps a half inch of relative space between her fingers and his throat.

Lyda clearly felt him work the effect. She did not, however, let up. Embrew was still pinned there, but he could at least breathe.

“You are merely delaying the inevitable, old man!” Her voice climbed another octave, and Embrew began to question whether or not his former student retained any true sanity. He was almost glad to be unable to see into her eyes. When they had first met he had been fascinated by the depths of hunger—of passion—in those eyes. Now, he imagined all he would find in her soul was madness.

Embrew forced a smile to his face, although that itself was an act of will. Maintaining the space extension that was keeping him alive was far more taxing than it should have been, and the bands at his wrists were actually burning and blistering the skin beneath them.

Pushing himself to the absolute limit, Embrew said simply, “If you kill me, how will you get home?”

And suddenly Lyda was off him, her back to the wall and his lungs finally free to pull in the stale air of the holding cell.

“You are right, teacher. It seems perhaps our destinies are intertwined once more.”

Embrew heard a sort of icy lucidity in her words, and he wished again, as he so often had, to be able to see her body language—to see at what game she was playing. Alas, he had to trust his instincts, and they had so rarely guided him to proper decisions in regards to Lyda.

Lyda stepped forward demurely, her posture reserved in the image that Embrew’s arts carried to his mind. She reached out and took Embrew’s hand, and he felt her smooth and delicate skin upon his wrinkled and calloused palm, remembering for a split second the feel of her body from so long ago.

In that split second, however, he allowed memories of passion to distract him from the deadly woman who stood before him. With a powerful tug, Lyda pulled Embrew closer to her and wrapped both hands around his wrists, eliciting a howl of pain from the old man. The flesh, sore and blistered, burned at her harsh grip, but he realized almost instantly that

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it was not his wrists that she was gripping: it was the bands—the bindmetal bracelets that pulsed with energy stored each time he had reached out with his gifts to change the world around him.

And like a dehydrated man amid a boundless desert, Lyda drank her fill of the energy in those bands, lapping it up and absorbing its miraculous properties like a sponge.

“Now the advantage is mine, you decrepit old fool!” Exulting, Lyda gestured sharply to the floor at Embrew’s feet and he suddenly slid downward, slipping into the floor as though it were quicksand, falling until he was only free above the waist.

He felt her disconnect from the working then, leaving him transposed with the floor and utterly incapable of doing anything to free himself. The reserves of energy within the bands were now gone, and with them Embrew’s ability to work his arts in this world.

“Now, I think I shall go find the way home. I’ll be back for you, Embrew. Hyrak has been looking forward to meeting you, I think.”

¤~¤~¤

Awkward silence was the order of the moment as Jara and Steven

rejoined the others inside the rest area shelter. Adam stood just outside the door to the women’s restroom, and Steven could see that the kid was upset.

“What happened?” Steven asked. He watched Jara move silently to take a seat next to JC, apparently uncomfortable with the idea of sitting anywhere near Todd.

Adam shrugged. “Girl stuff, I guess. I said something to upset Becky, and now she’s in there, mad at me.”

Steven walked over to Adam and asked, more quietly, “Do you want me to go talk with her? I can do that while you do whatever it is you have to do next. Do you know what has to be done next?”

Adam looked over his shoulder to the over-sized maps of the state and the city that hung behind layered glass on the walls of the rest area. “I think I can use the maps together with what I felt at the crater.”

“Give it a shot,” Steven said. He stood at the restroom door while Adam began to study the map on the wall.

“Is this weird for you?” Todd asked, approaching Steven. “What? Shadow monsters and little girls who see the future?” Todd shook his head and pulled a brochure for the botanical center out

of the rack. “Being stuck waiting for someone else to do the important stuff. It’s pretty much the worst feeling in the world from where I’m sitting.”

“This sort of thing happen to you often?” Steven thought that, perhaps, there was the possibility here of getting to the bottom of the unease that Jara felt towards Todd. From the edge of his vision Steven saw Jara watching the exchange between the two carefully.


112

Todd smiled a tight and well-restrained smile. “I’ve been the wingman on things before. It suits me. I’m not a good leader, but I’m one hell of a follower.”

“Or,” Steven said thoughtfully, “You are a good enough leader to know how to steer people your direction without actually seeming to take charge.”

Todd’s smile, thin thought it was, vanished. “I’m nothing special, officer.”

Before Todd could respond, the door to the restroom slammed open and Becky stormed out, voice ringing powerfully as she called out, “Adam. Talking. Now.”

JC jumped down and darted over to grab Becky’s hand. “Don’t crush his groove, Becky. He’s doing his magic thing.”

The withering glare Becky directed at JC made it clear to Steven that she wasn’t particularly interested in what Adam was doing. Todd stepped away quietly, and Steven realized that whatever confrontation was brewing with the solidly-built young man was now tabled for later.

Adam, it seemed, had not heard Becky’s instructions. He stood, hands pressed against the glass over the map, with his eyes closed. Faint flickers of green and blue light shot through the glass, specters and ghosts of energy that even Steven could see. It was enough to bring both Becky and JC up short, and he had begun to wonder if anything could get those two to set aside their teenage crap and get down to the real business at hand.

Adam said, confidently, “I know where the gate originated. It’s not far…”

Jara rose and came to stand next to Adam. “Show me, please.” Adam pressed his hand into, then through, the glass with a simple

effort of will, and his finger traced a simple path south and east from the bright yellow “You Are Here!” star to a heavy dark line labeled “Army Post Road.” He continued a few inches more, to come to rest on a large shaded square marked “Army Post Road Installation, US Army.”

“There. Your gate started there.” Adam pulled his hand out of the glass and let out a stiff breath as he relaxed his concentration.

“Then that is where Embrew is.” The joy in Jara’s voice was evident. The final word, however, was JC’s. He stood next to Becky still, but his

jaw was agape. “You mean we have to break into a goddamned army base?”

Steven felt his career very rapidly slipping away.

¤~¤~¤

Jonas Carmichael ignored his name on the intercom. The weight of the Onus-made broadsword resting on his shoulder helped him concentrate on what was really important. Answering to Mr. Candor, for instance—no longer important. Interrogating Embrew? Also no longer important. All that

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mattered was killing the things that had entered this world at each and every activation of the Spiralgate.

The original creature, the one that had accompanied his companions as they crossed over so long ago, was clearly no longer at hand. He had been fairly certain that the creature had been in league with the former director, a man named Jamison Alders.

The second activation, and today’s third activation, meant two other creatures were likely on the loose, and given their tendency to stay close to the gate at first, both were sure to be in the facility still. Whatever they were, these creatures would find his cold steel ready for them.

While he waited for the enemy to show itself, though, he would take the necessary measures to free Embrew. The old man had, through his foolish pride, set events into motion far too early. Imprisoned, he was not able to guide the children of the Line to their destiny. Free, he could at least adequately prepare them for the task ahead. All of this presupposing, of course, that Embrew even knew the true role the children were meant to play.

Jonas had no choice but to hope that was the case. It wasn’t until he walked, unchallenged, past the last checkpoint

between the entrance and the artifact room that Carmichael noticed that the checkpoint was not deserted; they were perfectly and completely manned—but the pair of guards stationed there had simply been bludgeoned into unconsciousness.

Suddenly running, Carmichael realized that he had made a critical mistake. He had believed the only thing to be afraid of was the enemy that stole into the world unseen. He had failed to account for the possibility of an enemy Gatemaker.

Such a thing had simply not been heard of before. He entered the artifact room to find things in a considerable state of

disarray. Two additional guards were lying unmoving on the cold concrete floor, blood welling from deep cuts across their throats. He recognized them both, and he lifted his sword high, making eye contact with the woman responsible for their deaths.

Lyda stood, a single long knife in each hand, watching Jonas with an almost intoxicated gleam in her eyes.

“Why did you kill them?” He shouted, not realizing the depths of his anger.

Lyda smiled, brilliantly white teeth flashing as, behind her, a Spiralgate began to open, causing the bands of metal that made up the artifact to rotate lazily. “They were in my way.”

Jonas shook his head. “You didn’t kill the others. Just these two. These were good men!”

Lyda raised one knife to her mouth and ran her tongue along its surface. “But I didn’t have my knives until I got here. If you’d like, I can go back and finish the others. It would be nice to have a matched set. A dozen corpses sounds much prettier than a pair.”


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The light and sound of the gate intensified, bands spinning and a spherical globe of swirling energy springing into being. Lyda took one step backwards, vanishing into the globe of energy… and promptly re-appeared.

Carmichael smiled. “It didn’t work? That’s too bad…” Lyda’s grin outclassed his own as she said, “Don’t be ridiculous. I

wasn’t leaving, little soldier. I was fetching.” Jonas felt his mouth go dry. “Fetching what?” “Why, my own army. It wouldn’t be fair for me to kill your whole army

without sharing, would it?”

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he lights inside the shelter began to spark. No one made a sound, every breath held in anticipation of what was about to happen. Outside, the

deep black of midnight was giving way to what would soon be the grasping fingers of sunlight that heralded the dawn.

Adam’s eyes were closed, as he found all workings of his newfound abilities seemed to go more smoothly in such a state. He visualized a pattern of light, similar to the ghostly traces of energy he had detected in the woods. Unlike the banishing of the shadow creature, this effort did not click firmly into place. He felt equal measures of imagination, concentration, and desperation flow into one disjointed tangle in his brain, and he knew that it would not happen.

His eyes opened and, as one, the others let out a heavy breath. Outside, the roar of a semi-truck’s engine brake broke the quiet, brilliant headlights flooding the shelter with light as the truck turned up the curved entrance ramp to the rest area.

“That was anticlimactic,” Becky commented smugly. JC looked at her curiously, but said nothing. Outside, the driver of the

truck climbed down from his cab and kicked at the many tires of the vehicle. Adam watched him nervously.

Steven moved towards the door. “You can try again after this guy leaves, Adam. I’m sure you’ll get it the next time. Why don’t I go and… hurry him up a little. Catch your breath.” Taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the cold, walking towards the truck driver.

Adam nodded and wiped away the sweat that had formed on his brow. His hair was plastered down, and he felt his knees trembling. Exhaustion was the cause of some of that, but more than anything else he was anxious. He never felt comfortable when other people were depending on him, and this was certainly no exception to that.

Jara continued to stare at the map, speaking without looking away. “It shouldn’t be any more difficult than banishing the shadow. I don’t understand.”

“Can you do it?” Becky asked, struggling through a yawn. “Like before, can you just hold his hand and help him do what needs to be done?”

Jara said nothing for a while, and Adam looked to her expectantly. When she did speak, her voice was quite small. “I don’t know how.”

Then here eyes went flat—cold and hard. She sucked in a sharp breath. Moving with unexpected speed, she reached up and slapped Adam across the cheek. Her eyes were cold and hard as she did so, and Adam took a half-step back, more shocked than hurt.

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Every light in the shelter, including the illumination inside the soda machine, exploded in perfect unison sparks showering the sudden darkness.

Suddenly reeling, Adam collapsed to his knees, his stomach churning as the entire world seemed to spin, rapidly, on a dozen pivots at once. Streamers and swirls of energy slowly faded into existence around Adam, and he knew instinctively that he was the only one that could see them. The others moved closer to him, even Todd leaping to offer aid, but Adam, wearily, threw his arms out wide, calling, “No! Stay back!”

The energy continued to draw into, through, Adam. He felt his mind opening, awakening, and the precise geometry of Gatemaking, which he had experienced only briefly against the shadow, suddenly sprang fully realized into the forefront of his mind. He felt the coordinates of the place he now kneeled, and he felt the entire world spinning beneath him.

Jara said, in a loud and firm voice, “Think of the place on the map.” Fighting to contain, to organize, the information that whirled in his

mind, Adam visualized the location on the map, the Army Post Road Facility. He brought to mind memories of nearby places that he had been before, recalling perfect detail of physical location that he had not even perceived before. With startling clarity he triangulated the location of the Facility using his memories, the map, and the gentle tug of energy radiating from those still-fading concentric circles of light in the woods.

Everything snapped together in brilliant focus as he reached forward and punched a hole into reality, causing a green disk of light to appear in the center of the shelter, lighting the whole room with its verdant glow.

Adam pushed himself to his feet, feeling the world steady around him. “That is a crossgate. And I have no idea how long I can hold it.”

Jara grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the portal. “We have to hurry then!”

JC, face gone pale, called out, “What about the cop?” Adam shook his head. “There’s no time. We have to go now!” Following Jara’s lead, Adam stepped into the disk, its brilliant energy

swallowing him.

¤~¤~¤

Embrew pushed against the floor, willing his arts to transpose his body once more—to free him from this ludicrous imprisonment. At his call, no power came. He brought every ounce of concentration to bear, but it was as though no energy existed to answer his call.

Embrew brought one of the violet bands at his wrist up to his face, pressing its now-cold smoothness to his forehead. He tried to sense its contours and volume, but even that simplest of abilities was now denied him. The world was nothing but blackness all around him.

He imagined that the bands had somehow stored away a measure of his power each time he had worked his arts within their confinement, and it

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was that surplus of excess energy that had made it possible for him to gatemake in this world when the powers of all others seemed broken. It was an interesting revelation, but not one that helped him now.

Lyda would most likely be fleeing back to Onus. The woman would be bringing others here, of this he was certain. Already he could tell, from a simple acidic taste in the air, that the Spiralgate was open. Hyrak would expand his dominion—Core would be the next world of the spiral to fall to the warlord’s schemes. Had Embrew never come here, perhaps Hyrak’s attention would have fallen upon Arctos, or Rettik—but now, there would be no doubt that Core would be next.

Lyda, and he supposed Hyrak, would believe there was something dangerous here, something worth having—or at the very least, denying to Embrew. They would burn this entire world to kill the children of the Line, and if what Carmichael had said was true, now was not even the time for those children to act.

Every thought halted in Embrew’s mind. All that mattered was the electric tingle of energy that skittered across the wispy hairs along his arm and at the back of his neck.

Someone was opening a crossgate.

¤~¤~¤

The first soldiers to emerge from the crackling sphere that was the Spiralgate were clad in supple leather armor, dark green cloaks at their backs and short swords drawn. Slender bows were slung over each of their shoulders, and the two men sported full beards and grim eyes. The two were clearly cut of the same cloth, even if their basic heights and builds showed little familial resemblance.

Jonas Carmichael met their charge with casual grace, catching the downward sweeping blade of one man on the guard of his broadsword and bringing his knee up sharply to strike the hand of the other, sending the short sword in that hand spiraling to the ground.

“These men are barely competent, witch.” Jonas shoved up with all his strength, hoping to overpower the other man’s grip and cost him his sword as well, but he had no such luck. The first man disengaged, sword still at the ready, while his companion, rather than pulling back, drove in closer. Already near, the second soldier easily came in close enough to render the length of Jonas’ sword more liability than advantage.

Jonas tried to bring the pommel of the blade down on the shoulder of his opponent, but the huntsman simply bore down, bringing his low-slung weight to bear and crashing Jonas to the ground, where his grip on the broadsword loosed and he found himself disarmed and pinned beneath the soldier’s weight.

Lyda laughed haughtily. “It seems incompetence is sufficient, after all. And these are merely my scouts! Did you think you could stop an entire army with such a performance?”


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Jonas squirmed, hoping to find some degree of leverage but having no luck. The initial soldier, still armed, sheathed his short sword and lifted Jonas’ broadsword, testing its weight in his hands. “A fine blade, Lady Lyda. Might I keep it?”

“As you wish.” Lyda made a dismissive gesture, her brilliant eyes keenly locked on Carmichael. Moving slowly, she approached the last remaining member of the Order of Core and knelt beside him, knife in hand.

“Your blood will consecrate my conquest of this world. It is quite an honor,” she purred.

The soldier, who pressed down securely at Carmichael’s wrists and knees with his own, coughed softly, drawing Lyda’s wicked gaze to his own eyes.

“Yes, cretin?” Lyda’s eyes held a terrible fury, and Jonas felt her pulse dramatically quicken.

He suddenly froze, realization dawning amid the desperation that had gripped him as tightly as the damnable hunter on top of him. He had felt her pulse… and she was not touching him. In the split second of her distraction, he turned that perception inward, noting his own heartbeat and breathing, his own skin purpling with bruises under the pressure of the man holding him down… sensing all the secrets of the body that were his birthright as a Bloodmender.

His arts had returned to him. “Lady Lyda, you should choose your words more carefully,” the soldier

said. Lyda swiftly reversed her grip on the knife and struck the hunter across

the jaw with its grip. “Why would I do that? Who will judge the things I say to this little dead man here? Certainly not you.”

Jonas flexed one hand, changing his fingernails to tiny, razor-sharp claws. As the soldier re-positioned his weight following the blow from Lyda, Jonas ripped one hand out from under the man’s grip, bringing his newly-formed claw up in a blur of motion that cut the man’s throat wide open, blinding Lyda and Jonas both in a spray of hot blood.

Backing away madly in a crab-walk on back-bent hands and feet, Jonas hurled himself clear of Lyda as she began to lash out wildly with the knife. Behind her, the first soldier, now equipped with Jonas’ own sword, smiled grimly but offered no aid.

“Stop him, fool!” Lyda shrieked. The guard, instead of moving, turned his back on Lyda, eyes to the

warping orb of light that was the Spiralgate, and bowed. Jonas wiped the blood from his eyes with the hand that was not sporting deadly claws, blinking furiously to clear his field of vision—hoping to see what it was that was happening.

As his eyes finally came to focus, he saw a dozen rapid ripples crease the surface of the portal. Emerging at the epicenter of the disturbances were twelve heavily armored figures, battle axes and shields crafted of matching black steel. Each wore a heavily ornamented helmet, but the one that

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entered in the center, with a full arms-length of space between him and any other man, was the true threat.

Lyda hissed, “Hyrak.” Emblazoned on the black bindmetal breastplate of Hyrak’s armor was

the ancient sigil for chaos, and in Hyrak’s blood Jonas felt the greatest of all abominations. His senses and arts, miraculously returned to him in the pulsing light of Lyda’s Spiralgate, screamed at him every aspect of Hyrak’s biology, and all of the details, all of the perceptions, were insignificant. All that mattered was one glaring declaration… in some way, through some unknowable means, Warlord Hyrak walked the worlds of Onus and Core in a body that could not die.

And then the portal closed.

¤~¤~¤

Becky felt like she was going to vomit when the endless step between entering Adam’s portal and exiting Adam’s portal finally did come to an end.

She managed to fight back the impulse, throwing herself against the nearest wall to steady her wildly-disjointed sense of balance. She found herself in a small concrete room, adorned only with a cold metal bench, a large mirror, and a heavy metal door. At her side were JC and Todd, both looking equally nauseous, and Adam and Jara who appeared to have partially recovered from the sensation.

No sooner had Becky taken stock of the situation than had the smooth green disk of the portal vanished, leaving the room lit solely by the amber-colored emergency lights at the four corners of the chamber.

Adam crossed the short distance between himself and Becky and put an arm around her in a casual embrace. His body was drenched in clammy sweat, and Becky resisted a shudder.

“I did it! Can you believe what just happened?” Adam’s excitement had gotten the better of his exhaustion, it seemed, and Becky forced a smile. She had to admit, even grudgingly, that what had just happened was fairly amazing.

“Do not congratulate yourself yet, Gatemaker. You managed to leave behind Steven, and we seem to have another obstacle to deal with still.” Jara pointed at the door—or more accurately, at JC’s butt as he peered out the small window in the door.

“That is so gross,” JC commented as he turned back to the group. Silence reigned for several seconds as he stood there, staring at everyone.

Finally, exasperated, Becky said, “What’s gross?” JC grinned. “The dude across the hall is like stuck in the floor, and he’s

got no eyes.” Jara bolted to the door, scrambling to grip the narrow lip of the door’s

windowsill and haul herself up to peer through. JC lifted her up, grin still wide. “Is that your dude?”


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Jara squealed in delight. “Embrew!” She brought her small fists down on the window.

Todd walked over to join the gathering at the door and knelt to examine the door’s lock. “This is heavy stuff. I think we might need to,” he made a wobbling gesture with his hand, “do your thing here, man.”

Becky slipped out from under Adam’s arm and held out her hands. “Give me your coat and get to work. It’s awfully close to breakfast time and you know how much I hate to skip breakfast.” Any trailing vestiges of her anger with Adam were gone.

Adam smiled, slipped out of the padded jacket he had been wearing all night, and walked over to the door. Without so much as pausing, he reached forward and tapped the surface of the door, causing it to ripple like the surface of a pond.

“Joe, try it.” Adam smiled. Lowering Jara to the ground, JC took a deep breath and Becky saw his

eyes dart, frantically, to her. She imagined that inside, JC was doing a fair job of freaking out. Fortunately, he kept himself together in the face of these impossible things and stepped forward, passing directly through the door as if it were nothing more than light and air.

Adam did not even need to say anything, as Jara and Todd immediately followed JC. Turning to Becky, Adam smiled and said, “Ladies first.”

Jara raced past JC, who examined his hands carefully as though he feared he had somehow left a part of himself inside the door as he crossed through it. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around the frail old man who was, in a way, the last piece of home she had.

“Jara, is that you?” Embrew’s voice was hoarse, and Jara could feel him trembling beneath her embrace.

“It’s me! I did it, Embrew. I found a child of the Line, a Gatemaker like you! I did exactly what you wanted. Please… you promised. Please take me home.”

Embrew awkwardly stroked Jara’s head, feeling her long hair. He then took in a deep breath, steadying himself, and said, “I can not take you home until I am out of this cell. Bring your Gatemaker to me, Jara. I need his help to get out of this floor.”

Jara let Embrew go and turned, motioning for Adam to approach. He was standing beside Becky, and the others were also close at hand, but none of them had dared to speak as Jara had been reunited with her friend.

“Embrew, this is Adam,” she introduced the young man and stepped back to allow him the room to work.

Adam knelt down next to Embrew, and when he spoke there was a hint of awe in his voice. “It’s nice to meet you, sir. I’m going to have to touch you to pull you out. Is that alright, sir?”

Embrew smiled. “So polite. Yes, yes—by all means boy, yank me out of this. We have things to do!”

Adam did just that, grabbing Embrew’s hand with his own and touching the floor with the other. Jara watched the seamless motion as the

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floor rippled and Adam pulled up simultaneously, and she marveled at how proficient Adam had already become.

Embrew leaned heavily on Adam’s shoulder though—he was clearly not in good shape after his ordeals.

“You have great talent, Adam. I thought I would have to show you how to transpose, but you…” Embrew turned his face towards Jara, angling it downward. “You had help from Jara, didn’t you?”

Adam rubbed gingerly at his cheek, where Jara had slapped him. “I guess you could call it help. She woke me up.”

Embrew chuckled softly. “She did indeed.” Jara quickly made introductions between Embrew and the others,

explaining how she had come to be here, and telling Embrew of the shadow and Steven.

“We have much to talk of later, I think,” Embrew said after a moment’s consideration, “but right now I worry most about young Adam’s gifts. Do you find it difficult to work your abilities?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t have anything to compare it to. It’s harder than riding a bicycle, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Except you look like death warmed over,” Todd said. “You can’t see him, Mr. Embrew, but Adam’s looking pretty damn wiped out right now.”

Before Adam could argue, Embrew spoke again. “This does not surprise me. The Arts of Gar are not easy to work in the best of circumstances, and this world is hardly such. Core, as a world, is ill-suited to the old arts. Most people can’t get their powers to work at all here. Even when things do work, they take a great deal more energy than they should.”

Adam said, “I’m fine. Whatever needs to be done, I can do it.” Jara smiled. “My Gatemaker is very handy, Embrew. I don’t think he’ll

have any problem taking us home.” Becky interjected, “Sending.” Embrew turned to face the young woman, who until then had been

quite silent. “Pardon me?” “Adam won’t be taking you home; he’ll be sending you home. There’s a

pretty significant difference there.” Jara drew in a deep breath, readying to argue with Becky, but Embrew

placed a restraining hand on her shoulder and said, “Of course. Before that can happen though, we have another problem.”

JC shivered. “Of course there is. Let me guess—shadow monsters.” Embrew shook his head. “Worse, I’m afraid. A woman.” Todd smirked as Becky’s face turned a deep red. Jara looked up at Embrew and asked, quietly, “The witch followed us?” Embrew bowed his head. “I knew there was a chance.” Adam drew himself up to his full height and began to slowly walk

down the corridor. “You guys coming? We’ve got work to do.” Becky darted to catch up with him, as Jara lead Embrew and Todd and

JC brought up the rear. “How do you know which way to go?”


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Adam inclined his head slightly towards the wall, where a large sign read, “Artifact Chamber.” A large arrow pointed down the corridor in the direction they were heading.

Becky grabbed his hand and squeezed it sharply. “Be careful Adam. This isn’t a game, and I don’t trust anyone here.”

Adam leaned in and kissed Becky on the forehead. “You can trust me. And I know we’ll be fine.”

¤~¤~¤

Carmichael bit back a scream of pain as his hand wrenched back to its

original shape. No sooner had the portal closed than had his powers abruptly abandoned him again, leaving him dangerously out of options.

Fortunately for him, it seemed as though he was beneath the notice of Lyda and her newly-arrived boss.

Hyrak spoke to Lyda in a deep and gravelly voice. His words were clipped, and he spoke without compassion. “Open the portal again. I want another dozen squads brought in to secure the area before the sun fully rises.”

Lyda bowed deeply, and said in a barely audible whisper, “I cannot.” Hyrak gestured to half of the men in his retinue, and they fanned out in

powerful strides, axes at the ready, to surround Jonas. He raised his hands in defeat, hoping that there might yet be some measure of mercy in these people. Judging by the way that Lyda had dealt with the guards in the artifact room, though, there seemed little chance of that.

Moving closer to Lyda, Hyrak reached down to grab her chin in his gauntleted hand. “Explain yourself.”

Lyda closed her eyes and said, “My powers work improperly here. I had not thought you would come through personally. I thought you would send a few clusters of men, and with them I would secure the area. Then, when I had built up the strength again, I would come back and report to you…”

Hyrak squeezed, eliciting a gasp of pain from the woman. “You thought to set yourself up as ruler of this world? You thought to take my men and escape my grasp?”

Lyda’s eyes snapped open, welling with tears of rage. “Had I my own men any longer, I would not have needed yours!”

Hyrak sheathed his great sword in a smooth motion, bringing the hand that had held the blade back in a curled fist, readying to strike a powerful blow to Lyda’s face. “Your treachery is well revealed now. If you can no longer open gates, I have no use for you.”

A voice, whisper-quiet but still resonant with authority, called from the doorway to the chamber, “But what of her teacher? Have you use for him?”

Jonas turned at the same time as Hyrak, and both saw the fragile form of Embrew hobble into the chamber, a slender young man supporting his body.

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Hyrak grinned, his mouth the only feature of his face seen beneath the wickedly ornamented helmet he wore.

“I have heard much about you, old man. I understand you have great reason to want this hag dead. Open my portal, and I will give her to you, to do as you wish.”

He gestured sharply with his hand, and the remaining soldiers he had held in reserve by the banded metal hemisphere of the inactive gate moved into position flanking Embrew and the boy. Neither of them made any move to run or resist, and Jonas thought he saw a flicker of motion in the hallway behind them, but he wasn’t sure.

Hyrak’s deep voice rang out again. “Of course, should you refuse, I’ll kill you. Either way, I will keep my word. Of this you can be certain.”


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13 Core

egardless of what had happened in the past few hours, the creature known as Jamison Alders would not lose sight of his goals. He had slid through

shadows across a dozen countries, shifted hemispheres, and finally come to rest in the general vicinity of his body. The journey had been both rapid and painful, each slip from one shadow to the next costing vital energy from the flickering shadow-shape that held his consciousness.

It was difficult to be an Obliviate. At his core, he was merely a gnarled and twisted piece of a larger whole, born to consciousness by accident and filled to bursting with purpose. Destroying the spawn of the other worlds, the ones wise enough to know of his existence, had been a simple plan, but it had somehow been undone. The child that had sent him so far from home, wielding power that was plainly not possible in this world, would be made to suffer.

It was likely that the most recent arrivals to Core would be plotting their escape by now. Having found a being capable of opening gates from this side, they would surely be anxious to leave. Opening the gate again would likely bring forth more of his own kind, and Jamison Alders wanted no more Obliviates at hand. This world was his, and when he chewed it up and spat out the festering remains in the name of the purpose that drove his kind, he would claim the glory singularly.

There was no familial love lost between the many parts of the purposeful whole. Each sought to serve the purpose best, and to share in that glory with others was simply wasted opportunity. The boundless potential of individuality required nothing less than an unyielding acceptance of selfishness.

He looked around, watching the sun rise majestically over a seemingly boundless field of snow and ice that, in warmer months, would play host to the interminable corn crop that made this godforsaken backwater of a state so critical to the people of this world. He was only a jump or two from home, but he feared for the condition his body would be in. An unattended body, left for more than nine hours, was sure to have been found by now.

There were, perhaps, other avenues of approach that might bear more fruit.

¤~¤~¤

Becky held her breath as she crouched out of sight, around the corner of

the corridor that led to the artifact chamber. JC and Todd were with her, JC nervously biting at his fingernails in a similar crouch and Todd upright, leaning against the wall and stretching as though preparing for a race. All

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three of them, she was convinced, were contemplating exactly how wrong this was all going to go.

Several yards further away, nearer the cells than the chamber, was Jara. She sat on the floor, arms folded and eyes tightly closed. She quivered with evident rage, and Becky wondered exactly what it must take to bring out such a primal rush of emotion in someone so young.

Jara had heard the voice of the woman, Lyda, who had led a massacre upon her home. She knew that what happened in the next few minutes determined whether or not she would ever see her mother again. She was angry because all of this was beyond her control, and it was a feeling Becky could relate to after all.

The plan, she thought, was a foolish one. It all relied upon suppositions the old man was willing to make and Adam was, stupidly, willing to accept from the old guy. Embrew assured them all that Adam’s ability to open the gate would keep them safe, but Becky didn’t believe it. It was clear that there was some other aspect to Embrew’s plan, a part he was not sharing. The confidence that the frail old man carried in his gait had convinced Adam more than any of his weirdly stilted words had. And now Becky sat with the others, hiding, waiting for the time when Adam would give the signal and they would all rush forward.

And into the gate. That was the part that was killing Becky. Adam had agreed to actually

go to this other world, this place called Onus, with Embrew and Jara. Todd had, for whatever stupid reason, agreed quite easily as well, and JC had been quiet on the subject. Becky, of course, didn’t have a choice. Adam was going, so Becky was going. They were a team, he’d said, and she knew that as long as she didn’t break that trust with him, he would not break it with her. So it would seem that the group would stick together and do this crazy thing.

She looked again at Jara, seeing in her the hurt that came from realizing she was all alone and had to accept the hand that life had dealt her. Becky Hanson was not going to casually accept her lot in life ever again. She had done that once—bottled up that rage and started a new life in a far away place with people who only pretended to love her. For the rest of her life, Becky was making the rules. She’d follow Adam into hell itself before she let him leave her alone.

¤~¤~¤

Hyrak stood directly in front of Adam, and the young man from

Ashfield, Iowa could not recall ever being so incredibly afraid in his entire life. Even the touch of the shadow-creature paled before this. He had been scared before, but never terrified—never uncertain if he was suddenly living inside his very last moments. This man, with his towering frame and massive shoulders and bristling armor and helmet that blocked out


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everything but a ferocious sneer—was more a figure of dreams and nightmares than anything real.

Embrew’s arm, leaning heavily on Adam’s shoulder for support, was the only thing keeping him from physically cowering. He stood tall to hold Embrew tall, and he looked quickly around the room, careful to avoid looking towards the corridor where the others waited in concealment.

The Gatemaker woman, Lyda, squatted on her haunches near the Spiralgate, her eyes cold and hard and boring holes into Adam’s soul. Between the two of them Adam was not sure which he was more afraid of.

Embrew said, “We will open the gate so that you can return to Onus, warlord. You can take your soldiers with you. If you are as good as your word, you will let me decide what is to be done with Lyda.” Embrew smiled. “I would like her to be left here, where the entire world might serve as her prison.”

Hyrak considered Embrew’s words carefully and said, “Why do you volunteer to serve me? The Gars swore to oppose my rule of Onus with their dying breaths. As the last of the Gars, do you forsake their wishes so easily?”

Adam felt tension rise in the old man’s frame and interjected before Embrew could say anything that might compromise the plan. “He wishes to go home. If he has to take you there too, he’s willing to do that.”

Hyrak’s sneer softened to a blank expression, and he fixed his eyes, obscured in the shadows of his helm, on Adam. “What are you to him, boy?”

Adam struggled to keep from stammering, saying simply, “A friend.” Hyrak seemed to consider those simple words for a moment, before

casually slamming his fist into Adam’s abdomen in a swift and powerful stroke.

Adam fell to the ground, wheezing and feeling as though he’d never take in another breath again. Embrew wobbled as his support vanished, but managed to keep to his feet. Adam coughed and sputtered, and Hyrak moved to place one heavily-armored boot on Adam’s head, holding back his weight but clearly ready to step down.

Fear overwhelmed Adam’s courage, and he let lose a soft whimpering cry. He knew that, not far away, it was all Becky could do to keep from bursting in to the room, mouth running. He prayed she would use better judgment than that, but he had little thought to spare for her. Right now, Adam was worried almost exclusively about Adam. His head suddenly screamed in pain as pressure began to build and Hyrak’s impressive weight began to bear down upon him.

“Embrew of Gar, open my portal. You will come through along with my guards and me, and when we return you will be rewarded for your service as I see fit. In exchange for this service, I will leave Lyda stranded here, as you requested, and I will find it in my heart to refrain from bursting this whelp’s head like a melon. Do we have an understanding?”

Embrew’s voice was weak, but Adam heard him softly mutter, “Yes.”

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Hyrak stepped away from Adam, and the young Gatemaker lifted himself up on his elbows and knees to better see what was going on. Things were about to get very interesting.

¤~¤~¤

Steven Mollison drove his car through the third red light in a row,

racing towards the Army Post Road address that Adam had indicated on the map. He had missed the chance to travel through the gate Adam had made, but had he not distracted the truck driver at the rest station he was certain that they would have had larger problems on their hands.

Steven stepped on his brakes, bringing the car to an urgent halt as the morning traffic in downtown Des Moines began to backup, as it always did. His car came to a rest in the shadow of one of the city’s skywalk bridges, and for a moment the radio, quietly humming soft rock, let out a squeal of static. He glanced down at the dials of the radio and watched as the power from the engine stuttered. The car did not die, but for a moment, as the headlights faltered, his car sat in the darkness of that bridge’s shadow.

And a moment in the shadow was enough.

¤~¤~¤

Embrew raised his hands in a careful gesture, precise and measured and utterly pompous. He felt the cool metal of the bands at his wrists as a clear indication that his powers would not respond to his call, but Hyrak did not know that. He presented the smoke and mirrors of gatemaking, the showmanship that the Gars had perfected long ago to obfuscate the true simplicity of their art.

As was true of any good stage act, his aim was not so much to impress as it was to distract. Customarily, a magician distracted with one hand while the other hand worked the true trickery. In the situation in which he found himself, the real trick was not being done by another hand but by another man, and that left a great deal of room for mistakes.

He had tried to impart to Adam, simply, the steps involved in opening the Spiralgate. It was not all that difficult, save for the precise geometric key that signaled the gate to connect to a specific world. Adam had seen the traces of the key for Onus before, where he had found Jara’s gate signature, and so Embrew had to hope that this echo of the key was sufficient.

He also had to hope that the boy was not too terrified to follow through with his part in all this. Once the gate was open, Embrew would take the reigns, but until that connection was made, there was nothing he could do but add a little flair and, in so doing, protect Adam Childers from the man who would kill him without hesitation.

As he brought his hands up together in a supplicant’s gesture, Embrew felt a stirring of the wind and a tingle across the skin, telltale omens of a Gatemaker’s arts being brought to wakefulness. Then, slowly and steadily,


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he heard the roar of the Spiralgate springing to life, each of its eight bands of ancient metal pivoting independently, gaining speed and shedding sparks and motes of light until its shape was lost in the indistinct blur of a single solid orb of flickering power.

Embrew felt the power radiate out of Adam, and he stood between the boy and the Spiralgate, his gestures, he hoped, blocking the truth to the only other person in the room who could perceive the nuances of gatemaking—Lyda.

Then, in a powerful and resonant thrum of energy, Embrew felt the key to Onus engage; he felt the flickering concentric circles of multi-hued light slide out of Adam’s mind and into the spherical portal, aligning it with its destination.

Embrew bowed, slightly, to Hyrak. “Your gate is open, sir.” Hyrak grabbed Embrew roughly by the arm and gestured for his men to

lead the way into the portal. Two of the men, those surrounding Carmichael, who Embrew only now realized was in the room, thanks to the open portal’s restoration of his arts-enhanced senses, promptly struck the man in the back of the head with the hafts of their axes, leaving him a crumpled mass upon the floor.

Hyrak, moving with almost preternatural grace, reached down and ripped Adam up by the arm, half-dragging him along as he stepped purposefully towards the gateway to Onus.

“If this gate doesn’t take me to Onus, old man,” he said, “I’ll personally feed you this boy’s heart.”

Embrew’s spirit fell. He had planned on Adam and the others entering the portal after Hyrak and himself, separate and thus easily divided by his arts en route. He had hoped to find a way to drop Hyrak, and himself, into a dark hole somewhere on Arctos or Depal, leaving the others free to liberate Onus. Now… now things would be more difficult.

¤~¤~¤

Steven/Jamison stretched his fingers out, growing accustomed to the

feel of a new suit of skin. This was a temporary measure, at best, but it would suffice to accomplish his goals. This body was fit and strong, blessed with the vigor of youth that had abandoned the Alders body long before the Obliviate had crawled in and blotted out every piece of Jamison Alders’ soul.

This body was also, curiously, resistant to such efforts. The creature that had come to call himself Jamison could not seem to kill the thoughts and feelings of Steven Mollison that beat around inside this body and its brain. Alders had died easily, yielding to the fury and power of the creature. Mollison resisted, and it seemed the best Jamison could hope for was to tuck Mollison’s essence aside, bottled away where it could do no harm, buried in the back of the brain and the pit of the heart.

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The skills and aptitudes of Mollison’s body came easily to Jamison now, beginning with the casual ease with which the young officer drove his car. Slipping the vehicle back into motion, Jamison continued on the same course Mollison had intended. He would return to the sight of the Spiralgate, and there he would clean up this abysmal mess. Steven had wanted to join up with the others, to help accomplish their grand goals. Jamison briefly entertained that notion, thinking carefully about the possibilities of fleeing this world and establishing himself on another.

The idea was a wistful one, but utterly lacking in practical merit. This world was already familiar to him, and its downfall had been plotted in intricate detail by his own hand. No other world would be the same, and if the Purpose that drove the forces of the Rot demanded another world fall, it would fall at the direction of some other Obliviate. Jamison Alders had quite enough to do, thank you very much.

He looked down at his hands—young hands, calloused but unworn. This body would do for now, but the other, and its identity, were too useful to abandon for long. Mollison may have been physically imposing, but Alders was financially and politically powerful. If the creature had learned nothing else he had learned that in the land of Core, power was not something that could be measured by sword or gun or muscle. Power was more ephemeral here, and as a creature of sentient shadow he found such a notion utterly delicious.

¤~¤~¤

Lyda watched. She watched as her every plan and ambition, her every

hunger and desire, marched with stately grace into the globe of energy that would carry her lover and her former teacher back to Onus. She knew there would be time enough to rush into the sphere, to follow them back to Onus, but she also knew that Hyrak would kill her instantly if she dared.

If only she had stolen the secrets of chaingating from Corudain before she’d killed him! Then she could follow through the portal and crossgate away immediately upon returning to Onus, exiting somewhere distant from the others and, perhaps, saving her skin until she could find a new way to either return to Hyrak’s good graces or perhaps to kill him and take over his operations herself.

Lyda’s eyes widened as, darting from the shadows of the corridor that led away from the chamber, four young people raced towards the globe. A heavy girl with sallow skin and angular eyes followed a pair of young men, one lanky and the other solid and dark of skin. Trailing all three was a small girl, a girl whose eyes and hair were painfully familiar—the daughter of the maid from Gar Nought.

Lyda could have stopped them. It was well within her power to intercept them, and there were knives hidden about her cloak that could have easily gutted each and every one of the pitiful children. Such a thing would have, once upon a time, earned her the gratitude, and perhaps even


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the affection, of the warlord. But that relationship was no longer one she cared to foster, and watching the Spiralgate swallow the quartet up, Lyda suddenly realized that there was one act she could perform that would be utterly fitting. She would teach Hyrak to appreciate her talents, show Embrew how much she had learned, and quash whatever hopes the old man, and the Bloodmender that lay unconscious on the floor, had pinned upon those Core-raised whelps.

Lyda stood, smoothing her cloak and striding to the Spiralgate even as its bands began to slow and the area of its sphere began to shrink. She readied patterns and formulas in her mind, carefully visualizing exactly what she would do. Then, eyes shining and body quivering with expectation, she stepped out of Core and into the space between worlds.

¤~¤~¤

Everything that happened in the coruscating blue tunnel that led from

one world to another was a blur to Jara. She had run right behind the others, her shorter legs slowing her considerably, and had entered the tunnel a few yards behind them. Not far ahead, she saw Hyrak’s men, and Hyrak himself—Adam and Embrew in his grip.

A million thoughts bounded through her mind, but every one terminated in revenge. She thought of her father, dead at the hands of men not unlike those at Hyrak’s side, and of her mother, cowering in hiding as Hyrak’s forces burned their home at Gar Nought to the ground. She wanted more than anything to punish the great and armored warlord of Onus for all he had done, but she was wise enough to know she didn’t have the means to make him pay.

Embrew had a plan, and she waited, as did the others, to see what came of it. Hyrak’s forces were not aware of Becky, Todd, JC, and Jara—there was no reason to look behind them in this place, and sound carried strangely here. In the flickering blue energy that served as floor, wall, and ceiling, Jara noticed the same odd streamers of black as she had in the journey towards Core, only now they diminished with each step, instead of intensifying.

Then Jara, as the person furthest behind the leading edge of the portal’s course, became aware of something happening. Something was causing the tunnel of light to warp, to bend and quiver and shake, sending waves of nausea through her gut and slowing her steps.

Slowly, the others became aware of it. JC leaned against the wall for support, eyes wide as he found the shimmering energy solid to the touch. Becky and Todd braced themselves with hands on their knees, turning back towards Jara to see what was happening. Moments later, Hyrak’s men turned, followed lastly by the warlord himself.

Jara and the others were hidden and secret no longer, but that didn’t seem to matter in comparison to the larger issue. The witch who had murdered Brother Ikah—and so many others at Gar Nought—stalked with purpose and madness through the tunnel, and as she walked whole

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segments of the blue light shattered and sloughed away, like dead skin cracking and flaking into the wind.

Green energy spiraled away from Lyda in jagged arcs, skittering along the surface of the spiralgate’s tunnel and making painful, high-pitched noises that brought Jara’s hands to her ears.

“I have learned well, lover! Too well!” Lyda’s voice echoed unnaturally, and at the opposite end of the portal, Hyrak shoved Embrew and Adam to the ground.

“And what lesson is it you have learned, sow?” Hyrak’s voice was dispassionate and cold.

Lyda shook her head. “Not you. Embrew. Do you see what lesson I have learned, with those dead eyes I gave you?”

Jara heard Embrew cry out, “No!” Lyda smiled coldly, and Jara could see the madness in those eyes

consume all reason, all compassion—if ever either had held sway in her heart before.

Lyda brought her hands together over her head as Hyrak suddenly rushed towards her, sword sliding easily from its scabbard. He was swift and powerful, but as he ran past Jara and the others, Todd’s foot darted out, tripping the warlord of Onus and costing him precious seconds as Lyda worked the final step of her effect.

The tunnel went dark, all light extinguished in a single instant. Jara heard Adam scream, “Everyone, get to me! Now!”

She ran, suddenly feeling her flesh begin to crawl, her feet standing one moment on the strangely solid light of the tunnel and the next on fading clouds of nothingness, the entire world suddenly lost and forgotten around her.

As she collided with a warm body, soft and unarmored, she heard Embrew whisper a prayer to the elders of the Gars, and then there was nothing but the violent crashing sounds of silence.

¤~¤~¤

Jonas Carmichael awoke to find himself bound in heavy cuffs of steel,

arms behind a wooden office chair. He looked around the room and realized that he was in Director Candor’s office, and he swiftly noticed he was not the only one nearby. The director himself, head lolled in the telltale recline of unconsciousness, sat in the corner.

A figure sat in the director’s plush office chair, his back to Carmichael and Candor, seemingly staring into the security monitors as he watched a recorded feed from the artifact room. Over the mysterious man’s shoulder, Jonas watched the fight with Lyda and Hyrak unfold, and watched as the entire party left the chamber by way of the Spiralgate until only the dead guard slain by Lyda’s blade and his own unconscious form remained.

The video paused, and the chair turned slowly, revealing to Jonas a tall man, narrowly but powerfully built, short brown hair spiked back and a


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neatly trimmed goatee adorning a youngish face, perhaps in its mid-twenties. He had not seen the man before, but there was a certain gleam of the eye that he found familiar, and his mind grappled with the feeling, desperate to identify it.

“Mr. Carmichael, I am pleased to have you back among the living. It would seem a shame if you had been killed today, after all I did to keep you alive.” The man’s voice was low and raspy, as though he had not spoken for many days.

Jonas narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you?” The man slowly stood, leaning over the desk to stare directly into Jonas’

eyes. “Not precisely. When last we spoke, I was wearing a different suit. I wondered, when I left, if you had ever been able to put two and two together. You seemed bright enough, but I have learned that putting faith in human ingenuity is rarely an exercise in accomplishment.”

Carmichael shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The man’s voice grew softer, more sinister. “Before Candor arrived, this

was my office. Now, it will be your tomb.” Jonas felt his skin go cold. The creature that had hunted his companions

of the Order of Core was right here, in front of him. Its face was not ten inches from his face, and now…

Then his mind made the connection it had been struggling with. The familiarity he saw in the man was not the monster that lurked beneath his skin, the creature that he had once trusted as Jamison Alders. No, the sense of the familiar came from the body itself.

The man standing in front of him was the oldest of the children of the Line. One of the two he had personally watched over, before the deaths had started and he’d had no choice but to withdraw to focus on guarding the Spiralgate.

The enemy had taken one of the children he had sworn to protect, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The man smiled grimly. “You begin to understand, then?” Then a new voice entered the conversation, as Nathaniel Candor lifted

his head and said simply, “Not one damn bit.” Then, in a smooth motion, the director lifted one hand, revealing the small firearm he had been holding up his suit jacket sleeve, and fired three shots directly into the eldest child of the Line.

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EENDND AACT CT II

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Book 1: Gatemaker - WordPress.com · 2017. 10. 1. · “Serve the little twerps right if I left...

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