---Chapter 16
Lenny looked from the Di-jump to the pit of stars in front of them. “But that means...we’re not on a world at all! We must have fallen into the ‘dead space’ you mentioned existing between dimensions. The lightening didn’t make us shoot further away from our target. Instead, we fell short.”
“Which means,” Jax added to his statement, “that we’re not anywhere at all now. We’re in no-where. A place between all places.”
They looked down at the flickering gauge together, seeing salvation in that little silver thread moving over a red paper. After a minute they both blinked and gazed behind them. The train looked very far away.
But Leaflow had made surprisingly quick progress and was just coming up on the pile of junk they had left behind. He had grown from a black line to a discernible figure.
“Come on, let’s go tell him what’s up!” Jax flipped his board back down onto the green grass of the transdimensional hill. Lenny shook his head. “You go get him, I’ll wait here. He needs to see this too.”
He gestured to the great rift in the fabric of the land on the far side of the hill. Jax nodded once and blasted off, skipping crazily down the hill while leaning forward to get the most speed possible as he shot towards the junk pile. Lenny watched as he neared it, then shook his head as he saw Jax do a jump off of one bit of metal, go flying over the pile and land on the other side next to their companion. Lenny could faintly hear his voice raised in excitement as he described what they had found.
Soon, Leaflow was up behind the young man on the ‘board and they came speeding back, making a detour around the junk pile and hitting the hill going fast. Both of their black coats flapped behind them, making a streak of darkness across the land as they skipped up the hill and flared to a stop just a few feet away from Lenny.
“Remind me to take the taxicab next time,” Leaflow said, stepping off onto the ground. “My cloak was almost twisted into a pretzel on the way here.”
But despite his remark, the hood of his cloak had not blown off during the flight, nor did the bright glow in his eyes resemble any sort of annoyance.
They showed him the pit spread out below the hill and told him their theory. He agreed, pointing out the fact that the Di-jump indicated two nearby worlds, one nearby and one further off. This rift would be the nearer one, while the other was probably in the opposite direction, past the train and out of sight.
“So, do you think if we brought the train here we could Di-jump to the next world?” Jax asked him, “or should we just drive the train right into the pool and crash into another dimension?”
“I wouldn’t do that. The train is not prepared to take on the rigors of outer space and we would all be frozen, boiled, stretched and smothered within a few moments.” Leaflow pointed back at the heap of junk on the opposite side of the hill. “Whoever had those ships were prepared for a vacuum, but not for the no-where in between it.”
“What do you mean?”
“That pile is made up of parts from at least two small space craft. Though not all of the pieces are present. Someone or some thing has been here before us and taken anything useful from it, like engines, batteries and food supplies. Those pieces in the pile are just the shells.”
After this sobering statement, Leaflow suggested that one or both of the boys go back and inform the train of their discovery, while he awaited its coming one the hill, rather than walk all of the way back. Jax eagerly volunteered to return, but Lenny was loathe to leave any one person of their group alone outside the train while they were traveling. So he elected to stay behind with the cloaked one, waiting for the engine to make it to their location. Or, if it absolutely could not move along the ground without tracks, for the rest of the crew to make the trek there on foot, with wires to hook the Di-jump to all of them.
With a whip of yellow hair and a burst of jets, Jax was gone once again. They could see him moving across the plain, slowly getting smaller and less distinct until he burst through the barrier of mist and was only a dark line.
Lenny turned back around to watch the solar system shifting in the rift between worlds, trying to picture what it would be like to fall into the lake and come into another dimension. Obviously, there was an invisible barrier between this whiteness and that galaxy, or else its vacuum would be affecting the landscape and the white world would be visible to the people of the solar system. But was it a hard barrier, or could you go through it? Would the lake be liquid like water and mist, or would it resist like glass? He did not dare try going down to touch it, in case even a slight contact would draw him through.
“Worlds like specks of sand. People so far away that you cannot see them or sense their presence in any way.” Leaflow looked up from contemplating the living scene before them. “It gives you a new scale of things, doesn’t it?”
“And this is just one dimension.” Lenny spread out his arms. “There are dozens more, hundreds, maybe thousands like it! How are you supposed to find the best world among them?”
“You aren’t.” Leaflow gave him a peculiar glance. “There are usually only three choices. Stay in the place you were put, believing that you were put there for a purpose. Relocate only for a strong reason, only once, accepting whatever you find. Or let go of all anchors and spend your days searching through the worlds for something that is as powerful as a sunset and as hopeless as a phantom.”
They stood for some time, watching the worlds go around beneath them. Then they began, on a silent agreement, to ramble back down the hill towards the heap of scrapmetal a little ways off. They were silent on the way, but when they reached the pile Lenny began rooting around in it, asking as he searched. “You’ve been in one of these before, haven’t you? A spaceship, I mean.”
“Multiple ships, many times.”
Lenny was hoping to find something useful among the wreckage, even if it were just a coil of wires or a circuit card. But there was nothing except junk that was useless to him, much of it too large to even think of carrying away.
“There’s no spacecraft like this on my world. Oh, we’ve built things to go out to the moon and other nearby planets to do research or attempt colonies. But nothing so sophisticated that you would want to travel in them for more than a few weeks. And we haven’t yet found sentient life on other planets. Is there always other inhabited planets in a dimension, do you think?”
“Probably not always.” Leaflow shrugged. “From what I have seen, only a few dimensions have multiple sentient races and inhabited worlds. Then again, many worlds have not progressed far enough to really discover their universes. Even in my own, with hundreds of worlds found, we are just scratching the skin of a giant beast.”
Lenny looked around thoughtfully. “But if this is a no-where place between dimensions, as we thought, it must be bigger than all of the dimensions put together. Or...maybe not, if it only holds small portals looking through at each of them. But what is outside of this world, or is there any end to it? Can one, single place go on forever? The more I learn on this quest of ours, the more I feel like I’m on the brink of an infinite puzzle.”
Leaflow nodded in understand and agreement.
Looking towards the train, Lenny saw that it had become a slightly larger dot. He realized right away this meant it had moved towards them and was now steaming across the white landscape. He watched as it gradually grew, until it came bursting through the thin film of mist with steam pouring upwards from its stack. Amber leaned out of one window, copper-brown hair waving in the wind of its going. Jax was looking out of the opposite side, pointing straight ahead as if directing their course. As they neared, pistons turning and wheels rolling over the hard ground in a stream of light fog, Amber pulled the brakes. The train rumbled to a stop near them, couplers clanking together and engine hissing.
“Get on!” Amber shouted, “we’re going to get as near as possible before Di-jumping.”
Lenny and Leaflow swung up onto the front platform of the passenger car, gripping the banisters as the train began to move onward. The heap of junk was slightly to the left of them, but the hill was directly ahead. As they rolled towards it, Lenny said, “I hope we’re not going to try to go up that hill. The ground is too soft; we’ll just sink in. And a train can’t steer by itself.”
“If Jax was in control, he would want to jump over it.” Leaflow waved a hand at the engine. “But, since Amber is driving, we will stop just before.”
True to his prediction, the engine slowed gently to a stop just before the abrupt hill. The engineer and guide climbed out, coming back to where the two stood on the platform. Jax gave Lenny the Di-jump so that he could hook it back up in the engine, pointing out that the gauge still read safely between a medium and strong signal. While Lenny busied himself with the electrical work, Jax got the rest of the crew and took them to the top of the hill to see the spectacle on the other side. Even Soleeryn agreed to come, with some cajoling.
When they returned, Amber was sparkling with excitement. “It’s like the globe in the library, you remember it Lenny? But much, much better. I’ve never seen the stars so near and bright before. If only we could take it with us as a picture!”
Raggsy was less impressed. “Huh, made me sick to t’ink of fallin’ in there.”
Once everyone was back aboard the train, Lenny finished the Di-jump’s connection and stood by as Jax prepared to use it.
“This might still fail,” the world-traveler warned, “if there’s a barrier of some sort between us and that world. But here we go!”
He slammed his thumb into the ‘jump’ button, sending its power through the train. Lenny felt the tiny shock of it and heard an odd fizzing in the back of his mind. His cybernetics were still malfunctioning from being hit with lightning.
The world blurred around them, turning white into black and back again. The jump was a success.
---
In the decadent palace of the emperor Takai Onmeru a man in the clothes of a servant swept the polished wooden floor with a worn broom. Around him servants dashed, some in the rich silks of the personal serving girls and others in the same loose, black top and rough brown leggings as he wore. He was near the kitchen where a basin of water was being heated for the emperor’s morning ablations.
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With bowed head he listened as servants called for towels to be brought, brushes to be laid out and other apparatus for the job to be readied. Then he heard the sharp voice of the chamberlain call, “someone fetch the basin up!”
Dropping his broom, the man dressed as a servant dashed into the kitchen. He told the girl about to pick it up that he would do the task and gave her a winsome smile. She stepped back, smoothing her long, black hair with one hand.
“You are a true gentleman.”
“Only for those who deserve it.” With a courtly bow, he took up the gleaming copper basin and carried it up the stairs towards the emperor’s room. It was a great honor to carry even his washing water, as he was the ruler of all Shinlang and considered almost a powerful spirit.
At the top of the stairs he gave the basin to the chamberlain, who whisked it behind the door of the emperor’s room, a door made of gleaming dark teak wood and inlaid with pearls in the form of a coiling dragon. The man dressed as a servant glanced around to make sure that he was unobserved, before fading back behind a curtain against the wall. After a moment the chamberlain came out of the door backwards, bowing the whole way. He bowed himself right down the stairs, leaving the door shut behind him.
The man behind the curtain slipped silently out from behind them, gliding over to open the door without a sound. There would be a guard at the bottom of the stairs, but none here. No one would disturb the emperor at his morning’s wash. Even being on the same landing as his door would be considered too rude for anyone to attempt. To anyone except for the person creeping into his chamber at the moment, that is.
The emperor’s room was ascetic and rich, sternly beautiful. The floor was honey-gold wood, polished until it gleamed. The colorful wall hangings depicted ancient martyrs, fighting evil spirits in the clouds. A single low, round table sat in the center of the room, made of blackened wood. Before it, on a red silk cushion, knelt the man who controlled the empire. With graying hair, square shoulders and a straight back, he looked like an experienced warrior. He was stripped to his satin leggings and was splashing water from the basin on a sudsy face.
The man dressed as a servant walked across the room without a noise, drawing a keen dagger with a black hilt in the bell of his sleeve. The knife glittered in the light from a window as he stepped up beside the table and lay it to his emperor’s throat.
Takai Onmeru jerked in surprise, hand coming up to the assassin’s arm and mouth opening to shout. Their eyes met and the assassin’s were full of the light of laughter.
“Shinto’dansei! (silent man) what does this mean?” the emperor exclaimed, “if a guard were to see you like this...”
The man dressed as a servant flicked the knife away into its hiding place again, a small smile on his face. Kneeling down and bowing until his head was on the floor, he said, “sir, I am your humble Shinobi and everyone knows it. My loyalty is yours.”
“Sometimes I wonder. They say that a Shinobi will work for whoever pays him the most.”
“And you have paid the highest price possible, my master, in giving me life and freedom. I would be nothing but a poor, foolish young Shinobi hanging from a gibbets if it were not for you. So I repeat, my loyalty is yours.”
The emperor stood up, drying his face while pulling on a robe of crimson and fine goldwork. He looked down at the apparently humble servant. “So, what have you come to me for, Shinto’dansei?”
“Your orders.” The Shinobi arose, though his head was still bowed. “I was visiting family in our ancestral valley (as you gave me leave to, great one) when I heard rumors of what what was happening in the outside world. I came out of the valley to find that they were all true. Villages destroyed by strange men in purple armor. Black and purple streaks taking over the land. Fields grown with weeds the color of a ripe plum. And one of your own high lords arrested, if I hear rightly. Worst of all, your soldiers powerless to stop all but the most obvious attacks of the invading men, or creatures if that’s what they are. The soldiers can do nothing against the corruption eating into the flesh of your empire.”
Takai Onmeru tapped a softly-shod foot on the wooden floor, crossing his arms on his chest and nodding in agreement. “All that you have said is true, my Shinobi. Something is wrong with my world. Have we angered the spirits, perhaps? My priests do not know. They only sense evil in all that is done. As for lord Kei Shushan...come, we will speak of him in the garden, where we can not be as easily overheard.”
The emperor led the way out of the room, followed by the Shinobi dressed as a palace servant. They swept down the stairs, past the guard and chamberlain that were waiting there. Both gave the emperor and his follower a surprised look, but said nothing.
If the great Sun and Star of their world wished to allow a mere servant to accompany him where the high chamberlain could not, that was his affair. And even when he waved off the royal guard about to follow him, no protests were made. But the experienced officer in charge of the guard was especially quick to step back and allow them to go on alone, watching with grim curiosity. He recognized the man following the emperor. It was the personal assassin and spy of the king, known among the soldiers as ‘Kurasa’, Darkness, and to the courtiers as 'Shinto’dansei’ the Silent Man. His original name was hidden by the mists of time, though some of the older inhabitants of the palace remembered the day that the emperor had seen the captive Shinobi about to be hung and stopped to question him, eventually letting him go free. In return, the Shinobi warrior had served their master ever since.
Shinto’dansei and the emperor went through the palace, passing out of a side door in a softly-lit hall into the royal gardens. There was a high, thick stone wall all around the outer edge of the palace grounds, but it was hidden from sight by bushes and trees in the emperor’s garden. Weeping willows grew around pools of aqua-marine water where goldfish swam, the water trickling over rocks between ponds in delightful small streams. Flowering cherry trees and other fruits grew in graceful clumps, or were trimmed up against rock walls with the moss thick on them. Stone flagging made steps between miniature shrines concealed in the bushes, where tiny golden statuettes of nature spirits stood. Flowers, herbs and soft grass made borders and beds that were grown so as to look almost natural.
The two men walked down one of these paths, their faces grim as they spoke of the things that had been taking over parts of the empire. Even one of the shrines had a smear of purple on it, scandalously proving the impotence of the idol inside.
“Lord Kei was arrested yesterday,” the emperor explained, “though how long we can hold him, we are not sure.”
He spoke in the Flat language, one that was not used often in the Shinlang empire. But, because it came from a neighboring country that had trade routes connecting to Shinlang, the emperor and some of his officers knew it. He used it now so as to disguise their words from any chance gardener or servant that could be eavesdropping.
“How so?” Shinto’dansei walked just a step behind and beside him. “Your dungeons are good and there are no traitors that I know of among the guards.”
The emperor’s face fell in a puzzled frown. “Things are stranger than even you might believe, my Shinobi. It appears that lord Kei’s wife has been concealing his madness for some time. Poor woman, she’s admitted that he’s spent most of the last month going through fits of insanity in which he rages about purple energy, calls on spirits of power and implores them to leave his mind untouched. For days he would have to stay locked up in a strong room in his castle, he was so violent and unreasonable. These fits became closer together, with interludes of his being calm, cold and hinting mysteriously at diabolical powers that have been granted him. It was only a few days ago that we found out where some of the invading troops have been coming from: his castle. They issue from it at night, marching silently out to destroy villages and kill the inhabitants. Or, worse, somehow touch the inhabitants with their power and cause a sickness to fall on them for which we have found no cure. It turns their skin purple and drives them crazy before they die.”
The Shinobi hung his head in sorrowful thought. “This is terrible. So far my valley is untouched, but who knows when it will spread and harm my clan. But how come you can not hold Lord Kei, or simply destroy him?”
“So far we have held him in the deepest, most fortified dungeon,” Takai returned, “but despite a heavy guard, every night there are strange creatures and even the armored phantoms appearing around his cell. So far, we have destroyed them all. But...one of my soldiers has been bitten and affected with the sickness. There is no telling when their attempts to free Kei Shushan will be a success. Not to mention the fact that he seems to have other strange powers, making it difficult to hold him. He glows with energy at night, sits most of the day on his bed with his head in his hands muttering prayers to a spirit he calls 'master’ and has used this energy to kill two more of my soldiers who were outside of the bars, just by touching them!”
“Execute him,” Shinto’dansei suggested again, drawing a strange, spiked weapon from his other sleeve and making a decisive motion with it in the air.
“It might come to that. I was hoping to spare him, as he was one of my most trusted officials before this madness took him. But there is another reason I do not have him killed. He is our only clue, or only link to what is going on. Not all the soldiers invading Shinlang are from his castle. Where else are they coming from? What is this evil energy and who is his master? If we could learn this from him, we might be able to stop the terrible flow. As it is, I expend many men trying to stop the corruption of my land, while it only grows.”
“What means of persuasion have you used on him?”
The emperor cast a sideways look at his companion. “Every one we could think of. Lord Kei laughs at pain, or demands with cold haughtiness that we destroy him on the spot. He turns away from his wife’s tears, or threatens her life so that we have to remove her from the cell for her own safety. Threatening her ourselves as a ruse makes him laugh even more and suggest that we put the whole nation to torture and sword. We have gained no ground.”
They walked in silence for a time, before turning around at the end of a walk by a bench overhung with flowers. Walking back the other way, the Shinobi said, “my emperor, I repeat my first request. Give me your orders. I do not think that I can elicit more from your prisoner than your dungeon masters, but if you wish me to try I will. Or I will search his castle. Even drift the land in disguise as one of these evils in an attempt to infiltrate their ranks, if you desire. Make use of me. I am your weapon.”
The emperor nodded slowly. “I am glad that you are here, Silent Man. For now...Kei’s castle was searched and nothing found. But you could search the woods near it, above the city of Li’tanwa. There has been reports of odd happenings there in ages before. See what you can find there. Follow any leads. You are my secret ears; hear for me what others cannot. But Shinto’dansei...”
“Yes, my master?”
“Do not fall prey to this illness or be caught by the evil troops. I have too much need of you right now for you to die.”
“I will obey you, sir.” Shinto’dansei bowed respectfully. “Though you know what they say about my people. 'A Shinobi’s first dance partner and last dance is death’.”
With that he was gone, slipping secretly into the hidden, lowly room in the palace that was his. There he changed disguise for that of a working peasant, with snugly-fitting black clothes, fraying, woven sandals, a conical hat and a stick over his shoulder with a basket on each end. From his room there were many secret exits in the palace. He chose one that took him out onto a back street nearby, where he soon blended into the crowd.
A few days later he was in the city of Li’tanwa, selling live chickens from his basket on the streets. That night he camped on the outer border of the city, near a stony bluff where Lord Kei’s empty castle stood. Above him lay the small but dense forest of Li’tanwa, where the locals believed ghosts and spirits to dwell. It was dark inside, the leaves rustling softly as he made himself comfortable to sleep.
The next morning the Shinobi was just rising, looking over the forest from below, when he saw a brief flash of light from inside of the trees. It was not repeated, though he stared steadily into the branches to watch for more. After a few minutes, he looked around to make sure that he was unobserved and went stealthily into the trees. The ground was speckled with bits of light under the branches, and the gossamer, yellowed leaves of last year. Shadows hung everywhere, making the scene almost gloomy. Moss was thick on the rocks, the trees were old and gnarled. Few signs of human interference could be seen in the woods.
The Shinobi walked quietly between the rough trunks, using them as cover as often as possible. After ten minutes he came to a slight clearing in the trees, where the ground was almost bare and even the bushes seemed to hang back from invading. There was a strange structure stretching the length of this clearing, a form which the Shinobi had never seen the likes of before. The front part seemed to be mostly made of metal, black and shiny. It had a cylindrical nose on front like a large barrel laid sideways, backed by what looked like a little house or carriage with open windows. This was sitting on steel wheels.
Behind that section, but linked with iron fasteners, was a large black box, also sitting on steel wheels. In fact, all sections of the structure were all sitting on wheels, sunk into the ground. One of these rear parts looked like a long, thin building with decorative paneling and many shiny, fine glass windows. The last one was also like a building, but it had a tiny attic on top and less windows or decorations on the side. There was no sign of animals to pull the structure, nor traces to hook beasts to on front. It was a very mysterious contraption.
The Shinobi watched it from the concealment of a tree, noticing after a moment that there were people moving around on the inside of the windowed part. He could see their forms beyond the glass, though he could not make them out clearly. Though there was no purple marks on the train, there was a few slashes of corruption on the ground and trees around it. Perhaps this apparition had something to do with the happenings all across Shinlang. Finding a hidden place to observe from in the leafy branches of a tree, the Shinobi settled in to watch. This could be an important clue to his quest.