Valhellions, p.18
Valhellions, page 18
“Can’t you go any faster? This isn’t much better than walking,” Chesa said.
“Then walk,” Jeff said.
“But, I mean, at this rate we won’t get back to HQ before the end of the world,” she answered.
“Well, that would certainly solve most of my problems,” Jeff said. “Don’t have to clock in if the world ends.”
“But you’ll be dead.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Everyone would be dead.”
Jeff answered with a long and protracted sigh, then settled deeper into his coat. We exchanged a look. Chesa was about to speak again, but Matthew held up a hand.
“The sooner we’re home, the sooner you can get back to . . . whatever you would rather be doing. Did Esther give specific instructions on when and how we should be getting back to HQ?” he asked.
“There’s a shadow road about five minutes away,” Jeff said. “Ten minutes, if you keep talking. Horses don’t like talking.”
“Not just the horses, I imagine,” I muttered. Jeff apparently heard me, because he gave the reins a little tug and slowed us even more.
The shadow gate, when we finally arrived, was a simple stone fence in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Jeff drove the horse-truck straight through the field, battering stalks of corn aside with the slow persistence of a glacier. The fence formed a circle about twenty feet in diameter, with a rickety iron gate on the near side. Inside the fence, the ground was gray and silty, like the surface of the moon. Jeff dropped us off and then trundled away, much faster than he had ever gone while we were with him.
“So, do you know how to operate this thing?” Chesa asked as she peered uncertainly at the fence. “Are there runes or something? A necessary sacrifice?”
“If I understand correctly, we just walk through the gate, our minds firmly fixed on our destination,” Matthew answered. “But to be honest, this kind of thing is Tembo’s territory.”
“Well, Tem’s not answering questions at the moment,” I said. “Let’s just walk through. We all know what HQ looks like.”
“But do we need to focus on HQ in general? Or the shadow gate at HQ?” Chesa asked. “Because I have no idea what that looks like.”
“We’re overthinking this,” I said. “Through the gate! Matthew, grab Tem’s feet. We can carry him through.”
“Maybe I should go through first?” Chesa asked. “In case it’s dangerous?”
“Overthinking!” I declared once again. Then, with Tembo’s shoulders supported by my shield, and his feet in Matthew’s hands, we sidestepped through the gate.
Nothing happened. Chesa stood outside the circle, staring at us in disappointment.
“Maybe there are words,” she said. “Have you tried saying magical words?”
“I don’t know any magic words!” I shouted. “I just want to go hom—”
Everything happened.
I’ve mentioned falling before. In fact, sometimes I think there’s too much falling in my life. I need to work on that. But at that moment, the only proper description was falling. Through the world. Without the world getting out of the way. Thick gravel slid past my head and forced its way into my armor, while more substantial rocks battered my legs and feet. I curled into a ball, but that just sped my descent without lessening the impact of my passage. I passed through an underground river thick with silt and strange grasping creatures, then there was a flash of heat and steam. For a brief moment I thought I was about to be flash-fried at the center of the earth, but just then I popped out into open air. I fell about eight feet and landed with a thud on a shelf of hard material. I lay in a fetal position for three long, shuddering breaths before I moved at all.
A shell of slimy grit cracked and fell away from my eyes. I coughed, and a stream of gray water splashed out onto the floor. I stood slowly, armor grinding as an avalanche of gravel slithered free and rattled into a pile at my feet. My shield had fallen out of my hands, but lay in a mound of rubble nearby, half-buried in grime and dirt. Tembo was gone. Matthew was gone. Presumably Chesa was still standing in a field somewhere, staring at an empty spot on the ground. But I wasn’t dead. So I had that going for me.
I looked around. I was in the strangest place; there was a pair of stuffed chairs arranged in front of a raging fireplace, and a table that looked like it had been used for sword practice by an enthusiastic berserker, and a pair of doors . . . Wait a second. Shield over the hearth, the smell of stew in the air, the general patter of rain on the window, the sound of someone softly humming and clattering around the kitchen . . .
I was in my own sitting room. In my domain. And there was someone in the kitchen.
Drawing my sword, I crept across the room to the narrow door that led to the kitchen. My sneakiness was hampered by the crunch of gravel underfoot, and the fact that I was wearing steel full plate mixed with a three bags of landscape pebbles, and also I’m not very sneaky in the best of circumstances, nevermind when I just fell through half the world and my own roof after nearly dying in a fire. But I got to the door, and the sound of gentle humming did not abate, so I steeled myself for battle and then kicked open the door and charged forward.
Percival the wayward garden zombie stood at the sink, cheerfully washing a bowl. When I came through the door he shrieked, then dropped the bowl and grabbed the ladle out of the pot of stew simmering away on the stove. We yelled at each other in bestial tones for a few heartbeats, then scorching hot soup drooled down the handle of the ladle and poured over Percy’s pale white hand.
“God’s grocery list, that’s hot!” he screamed, throwing the ladle into the sink and shaking his hand like a party favor. “You scared the ichor out of me, Rast!”
“You! You abandoned us, you two-timing, weasley little runt! I ought to run you through and see what comes out of that cold heart of yours!”
“It would be blood,” he said. “Kind of old blood, and yes, cold as tar, but still my blood and I’m kind of attached to it. Plus then I’d go to that damned field and they would have their hooks in me again.”
“Where did you go? How did you get here?” I shouted. Then, because two questions are never enough, “Are you on their side?”
“The valkyries? Gods, no. I just . . .” He looked exasperated, then stopped rubbing his hand and picked up the ladle to wash it. “I was out in the garden, and I could feel them pressing in. Feel them getting closer. And the last thing . . .” He took a moment to collect himself before continuing. “I’m not going to let them take me again. I don’t care what it costs, and I’m sorry if I let you down, but the last thing I’m going to do is stick around and fall under their sway again. For any reason.”
I lowered the tip of my sword. He looked miserable, even a little pathetic, but he certainly didn’t look threatening. Still, I had a mighty fury in my heart.
“You very much did let us down, Percy. Greg and Bee are gone now, their bodies swallowed whole by the ground, and Hildr’s dead. All that, plus we lost the Tears. So I’m sorry, but sorry isn’t going to cut it.”
“I understand,” he said, tossing the rag he’d been using to clean the ladle onto the counter, his shoulders slumping. “I’ll go. The garden gnomes have probably run rampant in my absence.”
“Like hell you’ll go. I don’t even understand how you got here in the first place! This is my domain, Percy! It’s supposed to be a secure place, a place that no one else can get to! In fact, the last time something got in here, it was to try to kill me! So I’m going to need—”
There was a sharp knock on the door. Percival and I both froze. He raised one bushy, zombified eyebrow.
“For a place no one else can get to, it’s getting kind of crowded in here,” he said.
“Stay here,” I ordered. “Don’t move.”
The knock came again, commanding and clear. I dug my shield out of its pile of rubble, slipping it over my forearm as I approached the door. The window shutters were closed, so I couldn’t see outside, but I knew that beyond that door was an entire magical domain of murderous monsters, hungry hobgoblins, and a dog the size of three school buses. But none of those things had ever knocked on the door. Carefully, I slid back the bolt and eased the thick wooden door open an inch.
A battering ram wrapped in floral print shot past me, spraying rain water and indignation across the room. It bowled me aside, not stopping until it reached the center of the room, and the piles of gravel that my recent transportation had deposited on the floor.
“Land of Goshen, John! How long were you going to keep us waiting in that rain! It’s hardly civilized.” My mother stood in the center of the room, her dress spotted with rain, face creased with disappointment. She looked around, her steely gaze eventually settling on the gravel underfoot. “And it’s a complete mess, of course. Can’t leave you alone for a week without the place falling into the Middle Ages, can I? And such dreary furniture. This place needs a woman’s touch, it does.”
“Mom . . . how did you . . . how are you . . . ?” I swallowed and tried again. “How did you get here?”
“You paying to heat the outside?” Dad asked as he trundled past me. He walked straight to the largest of the stuffed chairs and, with a great deal of complaining and oofing and general drama, settled into the cushions.
“How did we get here?” Mom asked. She had somehow found a broom and apron, and was already herding the rubble into a tidy pile. “We drove, obviously. Have you forgotten about cars?” She looked up at me, then made a tsking sound at the sword in my hand. “Gracious, John. It’s no wonder no one comes to visit, if you’re answering the door in costume. I thought this move would be good for you. Might straighten you out.”
“I don’t understand . . .” I said. “Anything that is happening. At all.”
“Well, close the door before the horses get out. You don’t actually have a horse in here, do you? It smells like you might.”
Dumbfounded, but trained from youth to simply do what my mother said, especially when it came to opening and closing doors, I turned and put my hand on the bolt. That’s when I froze in place.
Beyond the doorstep was a nicely manicured lawn, and a concrete sidewalk, and a road lined with majestic oaks and midrange cars and at least one person walking a dog that was not the size of three school buses. None of this was the realm of nightmare that was supposed to be outside my door. Everything here was perfectly . . . mundane.
It was terrifying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“No, no, no, no, NO!” I yelled as I rushed out my front door and into the manicured hellscape of suburbia. The man with the dog drew up short and stared at me. My ash-and-gravel-smeared plate armor, dented shield, and vintage longsword were a touch out of place, but I didn’t care. The dog started to wag his tail. His owner, less outgoing or perhaps more concerned for his safety, began to back slowly down the street. A minivan full of kids rolled past, mother-driver yelling cheerfully into her cellphone while the passenger gawked at Mr. Medieval. I went to my knees.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
“John Malcolm Rast! You get inside this house this instant!” My mother was on the stoop, hands to hips.
Still under the influence of motherly instruction, I stood and trudged back into the house. I was encouraged to see that my house, at least, had not changed significantly. The outside was still a rough-hewn log cottage built into the side of a hill that rose incongruently out of the suburban landscape like a little pocket of Hobbiton in Highland Park. Mom grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me the last ten feet, slamming the door behind me.
“What is wrong with you? Do you know what the neighbors will say, if you keep acting like that?” She pushed me down into the chair next to Dad. I squirmed around my sheathed sword and the uncomfortable burden of my shield. “Now stay here. I’ll be back with sandwiches in a jiffy.”
“Roast beef,” Dad said. He had produced a remote from somewhere and was patiently clicking it at the fireplace. “TV’s broken.”
“TV is a fireplace,” I said. Then I heard the door to the kitchen swing shut, and I realized Mom was about to meet a zombie. I jumped to my feet. “Wait!”
I rushed into the kitchen and directly into my mother. She was standing just inside the kitchen door, hands to her mouth, with a horrified expression on her face. I pushed her aside and stood between her and the zombie.
Except there wasn’t a zombie. The kitchen was empty. The pot of stew boiled happily on the woodstove, the dishes lay in the sink with the cauldron of rainwater next to it. Everything looked normal. Percy must have fled when he saw my mom, though where he could have gone was a mystery. I turned to my mom.
“I can explain—”
“Can you? Can you explain why my son, who was raised in a good and decent household, doesn’t even have a microwave? Or a refrigerator?” She shouldered her way past me and went to the sink. “OR RUNNING WATER! Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for me?”
“Oh. It’s the kitchen that horrifies you. Right.” I looked around the room, trying to see it through her eyes. The lack of appliances had never bothered me, simply because the house spirits that made the soup and kept the bread fresh also refilled the water bucket and—until Percy showed up—cleaned the dishes. I had a cupboard and some dishes. What more did I need?
Lots, apparently. Mom was listing a litany of absences, from can openers to mixing bowls, and she kept repeating the bit about a microwave. Fortunately, she hadn’t figured out the lack of electricity. Or, you know, conventional bathroom facilities. I suddenly realized I needed to get these people out of here before Dad had to “live through Pompeii,” which was the cute little term he had for his afternoon bowel movement.
“This is all part of the Ren faire thing, Mom,” I said, moving her firmly out of the kitchen. “I’m trying to be a knight. Kinda.”
“Knights had castles, John. They had servants. You have . . .” She gestured helplessly at the piles of gravel and my father, still futilely trying to change the channel on the fireplace. “You have whatever this is.”
“A home,” I said. She sighed heavily, then went to the table and moved the chairs around. She was fussing. “Mom, what’s bothering you?”
“Nothing, it’s just . . . we never see you. After that storm . . .” One of my very first adventures involved a storm harpy trying to kill me, and resulted in a tornado going through my parents’ house. “We had to move in with your aunt, and you just . . . disappeared. We see Eric sometimes, and Chesa, but you—”
“Wait, you see Eric and Chesa?”
“Around town, sure. Shopping. But you never visit, you never call, and the last time we tried to visit you, the address you gave us led to a dead-end road in the middle of a forest.” She wouldn’t look up at me, just busied herself with the chairs that she had already moved three times. “It feels like you’re avoiding us.”
How do you say I’m not avoiding you, I’m avoiding the modern world, because that’s how my magic powers work without sounding like a madman? I don’t think you can. Or at least, I don’t think I can, because when I tried it came out like this:
“Yes, I’m avoiding you.”
“Oh. Well, then.” She pushed the chair violently into the table. “Come on, Frank. We’re not wanted here.”
“That’s not what I meant! I mean, it is, but—”
“No, no, you don’t have to explain it. You’ve got important KNIGHT things to do. Maybe if you could find a damsel to save, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about you getting sepsis from your own kitchen sink!” She stormed to the door. “Frank!”
“I think Vesuvius is—”
“No! Mom, we can talk about this later. I promise to come visit more, but right now it’s probably best if we just leave things alone.”
“I agree. Besides, we have a ten-minute walk ahead of us,” she said. “The stupid car broke down on the way over.”
Father, grumbling, made his way to the door. Mom exited the house with a flounce and waited on the sidewalk. As he passed, Dad thumped the remote into my grasp.
“You’re going to need to get this thing looked at. Probably the batteries. Or the cable. Squirrels sometimes chew the cable,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure you brought this with you,” I said, trying to force the remote back into his hands. But he was already gone, rolling side to side as he and Mother made their way down the sidewalk. With a sigh, I wrapped the remote in a towel and hid it under some bushes at the end of my driveway to keep it from infecting the domain any more than it already had. Mom and Dad had already disappeared down the street.
“I’m going to have to fix that before this is all over,” I said. “Can’t have them showing up randomly. As for this . . .” I looked around the suburban neighborhood. “This is going to take a conversation with Esther, I think. If I can just find a way back to HQ from here.”
The good news was that HQ came to me. The bad news was that they brought friends. Lots of friends.
The sound of a helicopter reached me while I was still sitting on my front stoop, glaring at the neighbors and wondering how I was going to re-establish my domain’s connection to the mythic world. I didn’t think much of it at first. After all, if there were minivans and leashed dogs, why wouldn’t there be helicopters? Then it started getting closer, and closer, and louder, and lower. The sirens started shortly after.
“Well, this has got to be for me,” I said, getting stiffly to my feet. “Waving a sword around in the street will get you some attention. Though I really just expected a letter from the homeowners association, or maybe a stern cancellation online.” I drew my sword and laid it carefully on the sidewalk, next to my shield. “Really wish I’d thought to get out of the armor first. Ah well. At least I won’t have to worry about getting shivved.”
A caravan of black vans came squealing around the corner, sirens blaring and headlights blinking in a seizure-inducing sequence. They didn’t look like cop vehicles, though, more like high-end delivery vans, or maybe the kind of monstrosity a family of eighteen might take on vacation. Kind of like the Death Star, only square. Three of them screeched to a halt in front of my house, while a fourth barreled up the driveway and plowed into my yard. Just then, the aforementioned helicopter roared over my roof, flattening the surrounding trees. The chopper appeared to be some kind of gunship, with a bulbous nose and enough gun emplacements to shred a column of tanks, much less one hero in full plate. I shielded my eyes from the downdraft and peered up at the helicopter, half expecting a shower of incendiary rounds at any moment.
