Into the Second World Page 28

  “Patrol coming. Step back and don’t breathe. Try not to think.”

  Sounds and smell nearly undid me, for they brought me instantly back to the gnome village. Padded feet on hard ground. The creak and clank of armor. The sour smell of the animals. Shapes passed in silhouette. I pressed my back against the stone of the building, closed my eyes, and hoped fervently that neither steed nor rider could catch my scent. Or hear the pounding of my heart.

  “They’re gone,” Nik said, long after I’d ceased to hear any footfall. “We’re going to have to make our run now. There’s no telling when the next patrol will come by.”

  I took a deep breath. I already felt winded. We had only this one chance, this one idea—race up the ramp and leap into the unknown. It seemed impossible. Madness.

  “Now.”

  Nik rounded the corner, and we all followed. A rush of steps and we were on the ramp itself. The obsidian black looked slick, but my footing seemed solid enough. Nik was several strides ahead, gun out. Beso ran alongside him. Henrik was supposed to be in the middle, but he was already panting, and I was out ahead of him. The shiny black ran upward, more steeply than I’d guessed. Perhaps a hundred yards ahead the shiny black ended at the flat black of the tower, still settled into one of the projecting balconies. I could make that. I had enough wind, enough strength in my legs. I could sprint the whole way, I was sure of it. In fact, I was almost up with Nik and Beso.

  Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I glanced over my shoulder. Sure enough, I was out-distancing the professor, who was now ten yards or more behind. I tried to slow down, but my whole body rebelled at the very thought. Especially since I saw the pursuit.

  “Nik!” I shouted.

  At the same moment another cry came from above. The drow on the control platform had seen us. He was shouting and gesturing.

  Nik pulled up so abruptly I nearly ran him down.

  “Keep going,” he said to me. I did not need urging.

  An instant later, a shot rang out, followed by a curse. I looked back. Nik was standing, but now he got onto one knee and aimed carefully. He fired again, and the drow fell.

  “Niki, run!”

  Professor Queller drew abreast of his nephew. “Go, go,” Nik said. “I’ll cover.”

  We were all running again, but laboring. Breaking stride had slowed me, and I struggled to regain my speed. Henrik was obviously laboring, and I could hear Beso gasping for breath. I glanced forward and up. Another thirty yards.

  Their silence was uncanny. Footsteps sounded, like the hammering of hail on stone streets, but no one called out. No war cry rent the air, and the silence was worse. It felt more relentless, and my imagination put them just a few steps behind, and gaining.

  I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, and immediately stumbled, jostling Nik.

  “Steady,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  The ramp was wide enough to take several across, and they were using every inch, seemingly indifferent to any peril of falling. The front ranks carried spears. They wouldn’t have to catch us. They only needed to get close enough to throw.

  Nik was now running last, turning now and again to fire into the score and more of dürgar farther down the ramp. I cannot say if his shots hit their marks, but they certainly helped keep the enemy at some distance. A metallic clatter told me that they were throwing their spears in return.

  Twenty yards, and then ten, and my heart was a fist pounding at my chest. A pain flared just beneath my ribs, and it was getting ever harder to breathe. It was at least getting easier to stay with Beso, though. His stamina was better than mine.

  Then we were at the balcony. Beso never even slowed but plunged right into the empty black and disappeared. I pulled up, though, suddenly afraid. Cosmas and the professor came next, and Henrik too stopped short. He turned back. Nik was only a few steps behind. A spear struck the ramp just in front of him, skittered upward and vanished into the void. Nik fired, and a dürgar toppled forward.

  “Go, Uncle! Now!”

  “Niki,” the professor said, an awful plaintiveness in his voice.

  Cosmas took hold of the professor and shoved him roughly. Henrik disappeared, still calling his nephew’s name.

  Cosmas turned and snatched up Niklot as if he were a large doll. The ogre’s great arm swung in an arc, and Nik went sailing into the void after his uncle.

  The ogre looked at me and gestured.

  “Apres vous, madame.”

  I leaped into the portal.

  Sound stopped. Light stopped. The ground vanished. I panted like a winded hound, yet heard nothing. I kept moving my legs, but I was running through cobwebs, through moss. The air that filled my lungs felt insubstantial, too thin to sustain life. I gulped at it.

  This was not the same kind of portal at all. The other portals had been no more than stepping through a veil, a blank mist contained within an eyeblink. Those were dwarf portals; this was elf. What if we had thrown ourselves into oblivion?

  I had no sense of direction. In that moment, the very idea of direction lost meaning. Everywhere was nowhere. How could there be direction when all of existence had vanished?

  Something hit me from behind. My first thought was I’d been hit by a spear. That was my thought only for an instant. I turned and there was Cosmas, and suddenly the void was no longer empty. Under my feet was a road—black, but a road of black brick fashioned from the surrounding blackness. Cosmas had not merely bumped me, he had grabbed hold of me, for I was about to step off of that road. Instinctively, I knew there would be no coming back from such a fall.

  Shapes took vague form as my eyes grew accustomed to the emptiness. I was strangely reassured, for this was less dark than the Long Dig, and I’d got through that well enough. But the abyss on either side of the road was every bit as bottomless.

  Cosmas pushed me. His mouth moved but no sound came. He gestured forward. His whole being was little more than shadow, a shape at midnight. I went forward again and there, far ahead, a light shone in the distance, a mere point of pale glow.

  The void was not empty. I glanced backward once more, to signal to Cosmas that I understood, that I had my wits again. At some distance behind came other shadows. Smaller. Armed. The dürgar.

  I uttered a despairing cry that made no sound, and did my best to run. Of the others in our party, I had no idea. They had gone in first, Beso and Nik and the professor. They couldn’t be too far ahead, but I could not see anything except the point of light. Had they fallen from the road? I squashed the thought as soon as it formed.

  My lungs warned me to slow down, but I didn’t dare. I ran, stumbled, ran farther. The muscles in my legs quivered. My insides felt cold, and empty as a jar. My vision blurred, so I shook my head, which caused me to stumble again. Cosmas and I nearly went down together. A panic screamed up from my stomach that we’d both fallen off the road. Where was Nik? Henrik? Beso?

  A huge hand grasped mine and hauled me to my feet. He went ahead now, keeping hold of my hand. Every time I stumbled, he pulled me along. My best speed was no more than a brisk stride for him, but he too was struggling.

  Because he had a spear in his back.

  It moved to and fro, like some absurd tail wagging. How could he even move? I had a vague thought that I should pull it out, followed by one equally vague that I ought not.

  We kept moving. Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. I had lost every point of reference, save for an ogre’s hand, and a soft glow up ahead. The point of light was larger, an irregular patch. That was hopeful for some reason, but my reeling brain couldn’t make out why.

  As I ran, I knew of a certainty that a dürgar spear was on its way, in the air, and aimed at my spine. The light was closer, only steps away, but my heart felt as if it would explode at the next instant. Sounds began to form, dim as memory: shouts, the thundering of my pulse, the clatter of spears that had missed their marks. I was sure I could hear the keen whine of the one spear, the one that carried my death at i
ts tip. The light ahead was so bright it hurt my eyes. It was only breaths away, then a single heartbeat.

  Then we were through. I don’t remember stumbling out or climbing out or falling out. I was just out. One moment I was about to collapse and let the enemy have me, the next moment I lay face up on the ground under a velvet blue sky.

  “Stay back!”

  They were words in the form of a roar, issued by an ogre. I struggled to one elbow and gave a shuddering cry, for there stood Beso, and there knelt Henrik and Nik, clutching each other like children in a storm. A circle of stones surrounded us. And there, at the edge of a black abyss in the ground, stood Cosmas.

  “Many come. Stay back.”

  Cosmas took the trägersack from its harness.

  “Wait!” I cried, thinking the fool was about to return to the void, to fall in valiant battle.

  He did not acknowledge me. He held the trägersack in one hand. He swung it in a great arc above his head, then let it go, sending it tumbling. He did something as he released. As it tumbled into the portal, the trägersack turned inside out.

  For two full heartbeats I saw the contents spill out—clothes, walking sticks, scientific instruments, an axe, food, a notebook. The bag itself seemed a kind of portal, with its own form of formlessness, its own shade of darkness. Even as they appeared, our possessions disintegrated into the portal.

  The black of the portal reached like a huge arm toward the bag. With it came dürgar. Besides pencils and notebooks and ropes coming apart, so also were dürgar coming apart. I heard screams. The trägersack swallowed the void even as the void consumed it in turn. Objects and living things alike simply ceased to exist.

  A boom erupted, like being inside a thunderclap. I fell on my face and clutched at the earth, but the ground was stony and gave me no purchase. A second boom followed, this one even louder, and I felt air and debris pass over me. It was as if the entire Earth had inhaled then violently exhaled.

  I’d closed my eyes without realizing it. When I opened them, the trägersack was gone. Where the portal had yawned was only a jumble of stone, as if the ground had been chewed up and vomited into a pile.

  We sat or stood speechless because we had no words to describe what we’d just witnessed. Then Henrik saw the spear protruding from the ogre’s back, and suddenly everyone was talking. This, we could understand.

  Nik went to Cosmas at once, said a few quick words, then pulled the spear out. The wound bled steadily, but Nik stanched it with his own shirt. It’s difficult to stanch a shoulder wound. Cosmas kept insisting he was fine, but once we got him to lie down he fell asleep quickly and deeply, and we worried to each other that he was in shock. We were all exhausted, so we simply huddled together, taking turns tending his wound.

  My wits returned only slowly. By degrees I became aware of my surroundings. I uttered little gasps as I realized we were truly back on the Surface of our world.

  “Where are we, professor?” I asked, for the countryside was not like anything in Germania or in Austria.

  “Difficult to say,” Henrik replied. “These standing stones might be Scotland or Ireland.”

  “True,” Nik said, “but they’re really found in scattered places all around the world.”

  “Around the world,” I said, sighing. “What a lovely phrase. I can hardly believe we’re back.”

  “It’s a pity about the loss of the trägersack,” Henrik said with his own sigh.

  “Cosmas saved us all with that magic bag of his,” Nik said, somewhat severely.

  “Yes, but I’ve lost all my notebooks. Without them, how shall I write my papers?”

  However ungrateful, I had to agree with the professor. All my notes, from the entire expedition, were gone forever. I felt their loss as a physical pain.

  Cosmas stirred. He lay on his side, so we could keep an eye on his wound. I leaned in close.

  “Pocket,” the ogre said.

  “What?” I said, unsure what to make of that.

  He whispered a reply that I barely heard.

  His overcoat had several pockets. The second one yielded a prize. I pulled it out and held it up for all to see.

  “Professor Queller, Cosmas apologizes for not being able to save your notebooks. He grabbed at the last instant and this was what his hand retrieved.”

  It was the elf skull we’d found.

  The standing stones around us had been knocked outward and now recoiled from the center as if horrified by what had happened. Beyond them stretched a landscape so bleak it would have been right at home in Urland, save for the bright sunlight showing between great pillows of cloud. I got to my feet.

  Someone was coming.

  A lone figure, stumping along with a walking stick. An old man. A human. Had I viewed my own home and doorstep, I could not have been more moved. I waved at him. He waved back.

  “Nik,” I said. “There’s someone coming.”

  That got them on their feet. Henrik called out a hallo. The old man raised his staff in acknowledgment. When he got closer, he replied.

  “Do not dawn is he.”

  The words made no sense at all, but that’s what my ears heard.

  He came closer. With his white hair and beard, his heavy boots and woolen clothes, he looked very much like a shepherd, but no sheep were in sight.

  “Beth with scene twin I do ma?”

  It was no sort of language I recognized. I turned to Henrik. “Where in the world have we come out?”

  The professor spoke past me.

  “Pentref ger?”

  “Ie, dros yno,” the old man replied.

  Henrik pointed to Cosmas, who was rousing at the sound of the voices.

  The old man’s eyes grew large. He pointed away northward, toward a hill.

  “Wales,” Henrik said. “We’re in Wales. Somewhere in Snowdonia, if I’m not too much mistaken.”

  Together we managed to get Cosmas to his feet—carrying him was out of the question—and we made our way, with many stops, to a tiny hamlet, where food and shelter could be had. I understood the speech of the locals no better than I had that of the gnomes. A little less, for these people made Cosmas seem chatty. But their food was hearty, their fire was warm and, with a little crowding, we were all under one roof.

  Nik was still puzzling about the location of the drow portal.

  “This is a damned odd place to start an invasion,” Nik said.

  “Not entirely. Consider these points. First, the drow must place a portal somewhere along a ley line. Those standing stones tell me it’s not just anywhere, but at particular junctures or at sites otherwise special. Perhaps there is, or was, a concentration of phlogiston there.”

  I could sense him composing a lecture even as he spoke.

  “A great many possibilities offer themselves, but consider the second point. The drow are accustomed to thinking in terms of strongholds, of beach-heads, if you will. Far fewer places are sufficiently removed from cities where hundreds or even thousands of dürgar could deploy before any army could challenge them.”

  Nik nodded, following the reasoning.

  “Now the third point. Such a beach- head should also be close enough that a dürgar army would not be forced to march hundreds of miles away from their base in order to strike the enemy. What lies to the east of here?”

  Nik, the dutiful student, replied. “Manchester. Liverpool. Sheffield.”

  “Indeed. The drow, having done their scouting over who knows how many years, know that if they can disrupt and seize the industrial heartland of Anglia, then Londinium will surely fall.”

  “But why Anglia at all?”

  “It’s an island! It’s the Surface equivalent of Urstadt. They could conquer the island, hold out against counterattacks, and make of it their new home.”

  “Appalling,” I said.

  “Would you prefer they conquer Brandenburg?”

  I had to admit I did not.

  “So, what now?”

  “Londinium,” Henrik s
aid. “And then home.”

  A fist that had been clenched for days inside me slowly relaxed.

  We were home.

  Surface

  We were famous for a while, then we became infamous, then we were forgotten. Fame was a chore, infamy was a trial. Being forgotten is a blessing.

  We all shared in the initial fame. Professor Queller was fêted across the courts of Europe, as the headlines often said. He delivered long lectures on a range of topics before academies and societies and universities. He enjoyed both sorts of venues but said he liked his appearances at court more. The food was better, he said.

  Cosmas accompanied him everywhere. At first, the ogre had signed a new contract, to go on a tour of Italy, but then came Hispania and then Ungarn, and somewhere along the way there were no more contracts. The ogre continued to insist he was in Henrik’s employ, but it was obvious to all that they were simply friends. This heartened me, for the professor needed a friend.

  Fame brought work for Nik. He had his choice of offers, from all around the world. Scientific societies, noble courts, even newspapers and magazines vied to have the famous explorer head up an expedition into the jungles of the Marañón River, the interior of Australia, or even to the North Pole (some fellow with the silly idea that an opening to the Second World could be found there). He accepted several smaller undertakings, the success of each of which helped bolster his reputation. Very smart. He got perilously close to being rich.

  I prospered as well, for a time. The Augsburg Zeitung certainly prospered. Its subscribers increased five-fold, then the paper did even better by selling the whole story as a special edition magazine. Of all that I saw nothing beyond my pay for the initial assignment.

  So I quit.

  I spoke to women’s associations. I wrote for small scientific journals. I made enough money from the work to be able to continue the work. Such is my definition of prosperity.

  Then came the collapse.

  We had been doubted from the start by some. Their voices were drowned out by the near-universal acclaim, but as year followed year and novelty gave way to news of revolutions and wars, the voices of the critics grew louder. Where was our evidence? Why could no scientist corroborate anything we said? Why could no expedition into Lamprecht’s Cave—and there were many—find any trace of what we described? Where were these portals? The dig at Bryn Cader Faner in Wales, where we had emerged, had found only a circle of jagged stones stabbed into rocky ground, with a rubble in the center. Researchers first, then treasure hunters, had mined downward but came up with only flint and slate amid conglomerate rock.