Chapter 17: The Gate Revisited
In the narrow, rubble-ridden streets of Apex a pair of vehicles moved in convoy. The gray car in the lead picked their way, nimbly choosing one road after the other. Behind it rumbled the steam truck, shack rattling and smoke pouring from its stacks. Buildings shook as it passed, knocking already loose masonry to the ground.
They had been traveling for days now, moving through the broken city. A few times Bard rode with Elisha, just to see how the truck felt from inside. It drove with an enjoyable rumble and roll, feeling like it could crush anything in its path. But it was hot and noisy inside. Most of the time the two young men traveled with Loran in the car.
Bard was tired of the constant travel by vehicle, weary of sitting still and watching the buildings of Apex go by. He found some amusement in talking with Jeroam, who was always full of energy and adventure. It also distracted his mind from turning the same questions over repeatedly until it felt ready to catch fire or turn to ashes. But one day, near the end of the journey Jeroam decided to ride with Elisha, just for a change.
There was only two seats in the big truck, so Bard stayed with Loran. The day rolled slowly by from the rising of the red sun to when it stood over them at noon. It had begun to sink past noon when Bard finally got up the courage to look at Loran and ask, “is it a relic that gives you power?”
He expected her to give him cold looks, answer in a round-about way or even just ignore him.
Instead, she raised one eyebrow at him for a moment before saying, “yes. As far as creating orbs of power or manipulating physical objects goes.”
Driving with her left, she held out her right hand so that the sleeve fell down her arm away from it. It revealed, tucked far up her right arm, a bracelet shining on the pale skin. It was tarnished gold, with brilliant blue gems set in it, each gleaming as if with their own light. The central piece was a set of tiny gems on a fillet of gold, formed into the branching shape imprinted on all relics.
“It gives me slight powers, reliant on my energy to feed it. You see...” Loran paused, putting both hands on the wheel to jig the car around a fallen stone. “All relics do have power of some sort in them. Many of them just for simple things, such as Drifter’s key being able to unlock the Gate of Eternity, when no other key or master locksmith could. Others, like this Band of Trailis, have more generally useful properties for those who have the mind to use them.”
Bard sat back, laying a finger to his nose in thought. “You know, I studied relics with Dick for a few years and never really believed in magic. Not until I met you.”
Loran shot him a small smile. “It sounds to me as if Dick was more of a scholar, interested in their history and physical appearance, then the sort who would believe in 'magic’ either.”
With a shake of his head, the boy returned, “I’m not so sure of that. Sometimes I wonder how much he knew that he never told me. He believed in the Gate of Eternity and, I think, knew Drifter’s plan for opening it. Dick told me to go with him thinking that the world would end...and approving of it.”
“The mind of a human is like the hairs on our heads.” Loran said gently after a minute. “Unaccountable to all but the Maker.”
They rode on quietly the rest of the day, until the sun set and they made camp. Bard recognized the area they stopped in and realized that one more day’s travel, perhaps less, would bring them to the infamous gate. He shivered, wondering if they would find bones still laying before them. Or just scraps of blue and tan cloth blown by the wind.
The night past uneventfully and Jeroam rejoined them in the car for the last leg of the journey. It made the day slip by quicker, until finally they were pulling into a graveled parking lot and Bard was looking up the scorched, tree-pocked hill at the ruined scientific buildings around the Gate.
“Is this the place?” Jeroam was unusually grave as he fixed his gaze on the top of the hill. “I can’t make out the gate.”
“It’s hidden behind the buildings.” Bard got out, finding himself reluctant. The image of what they might find at the top of the hill haunted him. Loran stepped briskly from the other side of the car as the steam truck pulled up beside them.
“I’ll show you the way, Jeroam. Let’s collect Elisha first...”
The inventor parked his truck with a series of steamy hisses and jets of air, before opening the door and jumping out.
“We made it, 'ay?”
“Yes.” Loran pointed at the top of the hill. “The gate lies up there. This path will take us to it.”
She indicated the scorched cement trail winding up the slope. “But we must be wary. Someone might have come while we were away, now that it is open. Either from outside--”
“Or from in,” Jeroam finished for her. Drawing his machete, he started towards the trail. “We came to find out what this gate and machine are about. Meeting the people who built it would probably answer our questions. Even if we didn’t like the answer at all.”
Steeling himself against anything they might find on top, Bard followed him, fingering his pistol thoughtfully. Loran and Elisha walked together behind them, discussing possibilities in a voice so low Bard could just hear a few words.
“I’ve looked at it more...” Elisha muttered first.
“...so strange about it?” Loran asked.
“That material...not anything like it here. It’s not even natural, ye see...”
But Bard was soon distracted from eavesdropping when Jeroam put his elbow in the boy’s side.
“You seem anxious, brother. What are you worried about?”
Bard shrugged, gesturing towards the approaching top of the hill. “What we’ll find up there, I guess.”
Jeroam put his head on one side as if thinking this over. “Yeah, I guess there might be something dangerous waiting. But I’m excited, not afraid.”
With a shake of his head, Bard indicated that he could not share in this excitement right away. Later, maybe, when they were looking at the machine and finding out about it. Not when the Gate was still hidden from sight with whatever might be laying around it.
They crested the hill and moved off of the path around the buildings, crossing the fence where Bard and Loran had before. In just a few paces, they came around the side of the ruined buildings, stepping out beside the Gate.
The door still hung open, blown by rambling winds so that it had wedged against the ground, wider open than it had been before. The tall, smooth arch twinkled darkly, every curve a mystery. The key still stuck out of the hole in the open door, the only ornament to the dark creation. Before it, the ground was bare, not even a mark showing where a body might have lain. Bard had the odd feeling that the Gate was watching them, an open eye gazing sadly on the world. Or that a cold wind might blow out of it, coming from a different part of the land. But nothing was moving in the whole scene except for a single Charwing, who circled in the air above, little head cocked with interest.
Jeroam moved over in front of the door, sizing it up as if he were about to eat it. Cautiously, he moved over to the open arch and peered in, looking up and down the hall inside.
“No one in sight,” he remarked, “just a few closed doors further down.”
Bard had not actually looked into the doorway before, not daring to cross the space where Drifter had been struck down. Now he moved up beside Jeroam and poked his head in.
To the right, the path was taken up by the big machine and tub, almost entirely blocking the path. But to the left he was looking down a long hall, ceiling arched and floor tiled in huge, black slabs. A sort of dark mist seemed to hang in the passageway, making it difficult to see what was further than forty feet down it. This mist also gave the hall a gloomy, atmospheric ambiance, as if a wraith might pad its way down it at any moment.
In between the Gate and the spot the mist concealed, there was a length of smooth, dark wall broken only by a few doors set into it. Bard counted three, two on the right and one on the left as his Gate was. Each of them had a series of colored stones set into their faces, red, green and even one blue. They appeared to be a sort of code, perhaps an indication of what was within. But if someone dwelt inside those doors, they had not come out to shut the Gate, nor did they open the doors now to see who was invading their hall.
Elisha and Loran had come up to the Gate by now as well. The inventor was running his hand down the four rails suspended on the inner side of the door. They were set in a long box shape, as if to contain one of the Greenspark cubes within them. In fact, the cube would have slid nicely along the inside of the rail, traveling back down past a few wires and tubes connecting from machine to rail, along a flexible joint where the door hinged and into the mouth of the huge machine inside the hall.
Elisha was nodding to himself as he peered into the dark, square mouth of the machine where the rails ended. “Aye, the cube would have been shot from there. I don’t yet see how, especially how it could be shot so far as to go 'round the world. But we’ll figure it all out with time. Now, what was in this tub?”
He moved around to the big bin at the back, which seemed to be made of normal black plastic, thick and strong. He was actually inside the Gate now, with his feet on the dark floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. There was a lid on top of the bin, such as might have been put on a dumpster. He flipped it up and craned his head under it, peering inside.
“‘Ay, now that’s an odd way to be storing ammo,” he muttered, reaching an arm inside, “some sort of thick gelatin. And look’e here, there is another dud still caught in it.”
He scooped out a second black box, this one glistening with a thin film from the gel it had been in. He set it on the ground beside the bin, rubbing his arm to get rid of the thin coating on it.
“Noxious stuff, that gelatin.”
Bard came over to peer in, wondering what it looked like. The walls were so high he could just stick his head in. Inside, it was almost filled with a thick, clearish-white material about the consistency of stiff gelatin. A rapidly-filling hole could be seen where the cube had been suspended in it. It could have held a few hundred cubes neatly packed inside. Bard guessed that it had been replenished while firing, if all of the Greenspark had come from this one machine.
Jeroam was wandering down the hall, cautiously holding his machete at the ready. He paused in front of one of the other doors, laying his hand on the simple pull-handle it was fitted with.
“Wait.” Loran stopped him with a word. “Don’t go exploring yet, Jeroam.”
The young man looked back with a half-smile. “Why not? We have to open one and see what is beyond at some point.”
It was Elisha who answered him, “because we want to take this machine apart and inspect it first, ye young rip! If you open the door there is no tellin’ what might come through and hinder us. Do as the good lady says and wait a bit, would ye?”
Jeroam shrugged with a touch of bad nature and returned. “By the time we get that thing apart it will be dark.”
And though he said it more from irritation than calculation, he was correct. Elisha had brought a few tools with him, wrench and screwdrivers, but the machine was put together in a way which denied access to both of these things. There was no bolts or screws visible, only gleaming metal press-fit together. The young men were kept busy running back and forth to the truck to fetch him more tools, including his crystal torch and a large hammer. Progress was slow, as Elisha did not want to harm the machine or what was in it more than was possible.
Loran sat watching, helping him hold things when necessary. Her expression was one of concentration, dark eyes seeming to see things or put clues together that the others did not perceive.
By the time the sun was setting, they had not yet taken the whole machine apart. The outer shell had come off, exposing a network of cylinders, pipes, wires, electronic boards and activators of various sorts that Elisha picked through with painstaking slowness. Many of the things they found in it were wholly new to him. Metals, gasses in the cylinders and ways of doings things he had never seen before. At one point, they found a rack holding a single, tiny cylinder with a indent on one end and what looked like an electromagnet on the other. Another time Elisha opened a gas cylinder and yellowish foam bubbled out, smelling strongly of dead fish.
But there were still layers of machinery to pick through by the time it started getting too dark to continue.
“Well, one thing I know for certain,” Elisha summed up his findings, “this was used to launch those cubes. But where the people who built it got some of these materials...it escapes me!”
“And there has been no clue as to who built it or why,” Loran said thoughtfully.
Stolen novel; please report.
“That’s what we have to find through the doors.” Jeroam jerked a hand towards the entrances down the hall, now hidden by gathering gloom.
“Not tonight, lad!” Elisha stood up with a sigh. “Tell ye what. Tomorrow we will drop the taking apart of the machine for a time and explore the doors first thing. I’m beginning to wish to have a talk with those that built it, myself. It’s made with marvelous machinery.”
Bard stood looking at the machine, a feeling of eerie watchfulness striking him again. He turned his head to look up at the top of the Gate and found a Charwing perched there, looking back at him with dark eyes.
“You’re right,” Loran agreed with the inventor, “we’ll go back, eat and rest for tonight. In the morning we must press on for more answers.”
Bard nodded agreement, feeling a touch of relief at leaving the Gate while it was getting dark. But at the same time, excitement began to build at what they might find beyond the doors in the morning.
---
The Akarnan’s ‘soon’ was longer than Drifter would have liked. By the meals, he guessed that days passed as he waited in the cramped cell. Only once did someone come in to visit him. Then it was the nurse, coming to make sure that his temperature was correct and his heart still beating. He tried to press her for information, but all he gained was the estimate that the Akarnan had held him, mostly unconscious, for at least a week before the Volka caused a revolt and took him themselves. When Drifter tried to get more from the nurse, she threatened once again to call the guard and have him ‘neutralized’.
He could not count the passing of days by when he was awake or slept. He spent much of his time lost in memories or waking visions, or somewhere between the two states. He found that he could relive parts of his life before the Greenspark fall with much less pain now. Gradually, his earlier life unfolded to his mind, set free from the cage where he had kept it. Parts of it were still too tender to touch, especially later parts. These he crammed hastily back into their hiding place whenever they showed their faces. But others, especially from when he was young, came quite easily.
He remembered the school he had gone to, a simple Sector school near his home. There had been a hill between it and his house, a tall, humped thing that boys rode sleds down in the winter and girls went to for the wildflowers in the spring. It was a tiny patch of wilderness in a sea of city. Maples and oaks grew on that hill. Their leaves turned red and gold in the fall. He remembered keenly one red leaf blazing in the hand of a slim, blonde girl of twenty-one when he asked her if they could spend their life together. And she had said yes.
How short that life together had been.
When he was weary of sitting still and longed to be on the move, Drifter would practice his martial arts in the little cell. He ended up breaking the back of the chair this way, with a blow that was harder than he had intended. The next day when he awoke it had been replaced. He had not heard anyone enter the cell or take the old one away.
The meals continued bland, though he eventually got used to the amount of seasonings used in them and even enjoyed a few of the menu items. There was a rotation to them, a pattern always followed that he learned to anticipate. The morning meal, or what he understood came in the morning, was a few bits of meat and some eggs. These could be fried or scrambled, bacon or sausages. The next meal was usually a slice of bread with something on it, anything from meat to jam. The last plate of the day would contain something a little more hearty, such as the mashed potatoes and vegetables. After that there was a long gap, the space of night, before the pattern started over again.
Drifter was not hungry half of the time the food came. With so little to do, he did not use much energy. It seemed a waste to let it go uneaten, but he had the feeling that the people in this place did not care. They had more than enough to keep themselves and a useless prisoner alive.
He often thought of experimenting further with the mysterious relic set in his robotic hand. But after the one outburst, he resisted using it again. The Akarnan leader’s warning was clear. He might be watched at all times. And the weapon was the one true edge he had over his captors. As long as they were in doubt as to what it was and what he could do with it, he had a tool, small but significant, to use in gaining eventual freedom.
By the time they came for him, he was ready to meet any incident or action that would follow. The nurse was not there this time, nor the legal little fellow. It was just a pair of guards, weapons against their shoulders and armor gleaming. The lead one had orangish hair, the second black. Other than that it would have been difficult to tell them apart.
“You’re to come with us.” The one in the lead dropped Drifter’s boots on the floor in front of him. Without waiting to be asked, Drifter began to lace them on. Like his cloak, they were clean and shined, a tear in the side even patched without a joint. To himself, Drifter commented wryly that if nothing else, he had gained better clothes from this whole incident.
“The council is waiting,” the second guard added. Whether it was to hurry him or not was hard to tell, as it was spoken in a flat monotone.
“Then the joke’s on them, for a change.” Drifter shrugged, tying his last lace with a touch of truculent slowness.
Once he was ready, he stood up, stamping his feet in the shoes with pleasure to have them back. Now he could go anywhere, in a building or out, without physical discomfort. If he had a knife in his belt he could have lived in any climate and survived.
The guards fell into place, one in front of and one behind him. Impassively, he allowed himself to be led out of the room.
Drifter was taken down the hall, away from the main chamber where the podium stood. At the end of that passage was a door which led into another, wider hallway. This one was draped in crimson banners, each with a different golden symbol centered in a ring of silver stars. Between them were tall, narrow windows of a silvery sheen, looking out on a lawn almost entirely enclosed by walls of the building around it. The grass grew green and short, carefully trimmed into shape. The trees had leaves of startling purple and orange shades on them, though it appeared to be early-mid summer. Drifter watched the wind blowing through the leaves out of the corner of his eyes and wished that he were out in the air and sun, rather than stuck inside.
At the end of the hall there were three doors, one straight ahead and two to the right. The guards took him through the second door on the right, entering a tall, wide chamber with a heavy wooden door at the end. This had its own pair of guards, standing at attention in front of it. A gold symbol was deeply etched into the door. The two separate pairs of guards saluted each other, Drifter’s keepers indicating that they were bringing him at the council’s orders. The couple at the door nodded and opened it. Drifter was brought into the private council room, where matters between the Volka and Akarnan were discussed away from public eyes. Today, there were only Volka present.
It was a large, half-circular room with the door being set in the flat side of it. The far curve was mostly made up of what at first appeared to be windows looking out on a quiet, hedge garden scene. But It soon became apparent that they were not windows at all. Instead, they were huge screens, set into the walls and made to project gradually shifting images of quiet, outdoors scenes.
To the left of the door was the widest space in the chamber, where the floor was pale cream intersected by black and gold lines. On this floor, facing Drifter as he came in, was a large, arced counter or desk made of variegated red and cream stone. Black and gold stripes ran vertically and horizontally on its face, marking off squares. Behind each square sat a council member. Four men and a woman, all dressed in stiff, formal suits and ties. The bent, balding questioner was there, sitting just left of center. He had his tablet out and was running his finger over it anxiously, counting off something or other. Privately, Drifter thought that it was unanswered questions.
Beside him, in the central position, sat a man in a dark suit with thin, blade-like shoulders stuck stiffly in the air, a long, pale neck and head which looked too heavy for it. His hair was thin, as if the close air in the place made hair grow poorly on the men, and his nose too large. He had an electronic tablet as well, set in front of him with one hand laying on it. His eyes fixed on Drifter with a predatory swiftness.
The other members did not stand out. They all seemed to be cut of the same material, even the woman with her stern hair and tapered fingers. They did not speak in the following interview, just listened and sometimes nodded when the central figure spoke.
Beyond them, the room rose into a set of wooden benches. These were empty, though evidently built so that trials and discussions could be watched by picked members. A guard stood at the base of them, as if to make sure that Drifter did not ruin them in a fit of anger or desperation. The two guards who had been escorting Drifter stayed by the door, one on either side just like their compatriots on the opposite face of the wall. Another pair of guards stood next to an object set in the middle of the floor on the right. This piece drew Drifter’s gaze away from the council members for a moment as he came in.
It was a tall, dark arch of smooth stone. Inside of it a door was set flush, a plain pull-handle on its face. It was a dark, shiny material much like the stone and exactly like the material of another door Drifter had recently stood at. The Gate of Eternity.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he looked at it. His memory of what had been inside the Gate was too vague for him to decide if it could have been that very room.
“Take the floor, Mr. Drifter.” The lead man’s voice was surprisingly sonorous, though it had a sort of dry weariness which grated on the nerves. Drifter’s head whipped back toward him, and he paced out into the center of the floor in front of the half-circle desk, stopping there with his arms crossed. He nodded his head once at the little, bent questioner from before. “Just Drifter. As your inquisitor will tell you.”
His voice, low and rough but firm, carried well in the room. It was like an uncut stone sitting on a clean paper plate. Out of place and unwanted for its rawness.
The words made the bent man scoot around uncomfortably in his seat, while the central figure drew back his head as if about to peck something with his large nose.
“Very well, Drifter,” the central figure continued, “I am Head Councilman Flemming. We have called you here today to inform you of your rights and invest you as a formal ward of the Volka council.”
He paused as if expecting an answer. Drifter threw a single word into the gap.
“Ward.”
“Yes, well, that means--”
“I know what it means.” The loner’s glimmering gaze cut him off at head-height. “One, The act of guarding; watch; guardianship. Two, one who, or that which, guards; garrison; defender; protector. What I want to know is how you are using it.”
At this the questioner and Flemming had to have a whispered conference. Eventually, the lead councilman nodded his head a few more times at Drifter and humphed. “Yes. We mean it exactly how you explained. Now, to get on with business...”
He picked up the tablet and looked over the words on it, as if unable to keep many of them in his head at a time.
“To invest you as a ward, the council must, by the decrees of the council of Dagor, explain to you the position in which we have found you, inform you of your rights and prove that the council has the right of conquest with which to take wards of state.”
Drifter shifted slightly on the floor, face unperturbed. “The Akarnan recycled me when I was near-dead and you have kept me in a cell for days. Is that conquest?”
“That is not what I was speaking of. That is our pseudo-wardship. Now please, silence while I read the decrees.” Flemming arched his neck to get a better point with which to view his tablet.
“Item the first. Having found the incumbent, that’s you, in a state of helplessness being held by the Akarnan council in violation of the Dagor council, this council, the Volka assembly, has taken upon itself to bring the incumbent under our guardianship, until such time as it sees fit to release the aforesaid. The incumbents state as an Othered extenuates the circumstances so as include infinity, until mortalis, ect. The Akarnan council have, to placate the assemblies; A, made apology to the council for breaking pledge. B, made apology to the incumbent for the same. And C, paid a fine of the agreed-upon value to keep their seat in the assembly.”
The councilman gave Drifter a sharp look. “That is the explanation of position.”
Drifter made a motion of assent. “Everyone’s been paid off and apologized to for my kidnapping. Understood.”
With a faint noise of irritation and another command for silence, the councilman went on.
“Item the second. The rights of an incumbent are as follows. Past the age of eighteen the incumbent may make a plea of citizenship before a full assembly. Such personage may also be given legal council, representation and benefits. See items fifty-four B, One-sixty-one G, ect, ect. In the case of an Othered Incumbent, all laws are mitigated. Othereds may not have representation, council, ect. Once made ward of the council they may not plead any cases, nor find representation beyond what the council offers. Othereds must be kept confined in the council building except for under special license, to be granted by full assembly. An Othered ward has no rights, except for that of sufficient nutrition.”
Once again Drifter made a sign of assent, a tiny twist of his lips showing what he thought without him breaking the silence imposed on him.
“Item the third.” Flemming cleared his throat and drank from a tumbler of water near his right hand. The air in the room seemed to become more still, as if everyone was hanging on his words.
“An explanation of conquest. This is a long item, so I will ask your patience and silence.”
If anyone had spoken then, it would have sounded out of place. Drifter did not even nod, face shaded by the overhang of his hood.
“In the year three-fifty of the Ascended Nation, A.N., the Volka council found that the Akarnan had constructed a door or gate in what was to become afterwards the private council chamber. It was not a normal door, as it tapped into strange energy flows only guessed at before. Its construction was a secret up until this time. It allowed the Akarnan to travel, not between time, nor to any physical space in this dimension. In fact, it was a door to secondary dimensions, an idea that the two councils were just beginning to experiment with. The door tapped into a mysterious construct like a series of hall or passageways, very dim and set with many such doors or gates. These had evidently been there for some time and, upon opening them, it was found that they were the exit into these various secondary dimensions.”
The councilman shot a look around the room. “I will forbear from going further into the history of the passages or gates. Its exploration is a long, interesting tale but does not bear upon this discussion.”
He cleared his throat again and continued, “In the year three-fifty the door was discovered by the Volka council and a full assembly held to decide upon rules dictating the use of this new technology. It was called the Council of Dagor. In it, many binding rules were made between Volka and Akarnan, firstly that it would be kept a secret from all but the assembly, hence the private council room. Secondly, that the ‘Othereds’, as anyone from a secondary dimension is know as, must not be interfered with unless the full assembly cast a majority vote in the favor of the movement. It eventually came to the Volka’s knowledge that the Akarnan had found a portal to another dimension and were already breaking this pact, by introducing 'relics’ or great power into it. They had, in fact, built a portal to this dimension themselves, much like the gate in this room, setting it into a blank wall of the passages.”
Here Flemming indicated the door and arch at the far side of the room.
“This was dismissed on promise of the action halting, as it had begun before the pact. Eventually, the Volka council decided to make use of this dimension themselves, as it had already been sullied. This they did with perfect legality, the motion being accepted by a margin of six to four. The Akarnan were mostly in the minority.”
“The motion was to experiment with a new weapon that the Volka had conceived for warring with the aliens of the neighboring planets. It was first designed to destroy the entire population and life of a planet, therefore rendering it open to resettling. It failed in this, being strong but not yet potent enough to thoroughly destroy a planet’s life. It was tested on the dimension that the Akarnan had discovered. As repayment for their votes, the Akarnan demanded that they be allowed to install agents on the chosen world after the destruction, to act as surveillance. Unfortunately, most of these agents soon went insane in the varied atmosphere and have fallen out of contact. The few who survived with intact mentality have just started to contact us, since the gate has been unsealed. As the assembly agreed upon in the motion, once the gate was used to test the weapon it was resealed with the original Akarnan lock so that no Othered could pass it and discover the machine of destruction inside, as the weapon had failed and left a scattering of survivors intact. Unfortunately the Akarnan, unknown to the Volka council, bestowed a single key to open the gate upon the Othereds of this dimension, once again in breach of pact. Because of this, one survivor, you sir, were able to unseal the door and open it. In case of such emergency the Volka had built in a protection unit meant to destroy anyone attempting to enter. You know the results.”
The councilman set aside his tablet, folded his hands together as if much pleased and looked at Drifter blandly.