Chapter Ten

The Faraway Cry

CHAPTER TEN

The Faraway Cry

“?????????”

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Westwood Forest
Eastern Edge

When Jace heard the voice behind him, his gaze snapped to his hands.

As he stood there – silent, motionless – a lifetime separated him from the young man whose least movement had effortlessly commanded the attention of four legions.

In that dark, featureless cloak, he could have been anyone.

“Turn around and face me, greenhorn.”

A comet froze in the sky above Jace’s head, its light pouring over him like molten gold. When he stepped forward, the effect was like an image and its afterimage colliding. His eyes should have watered, but he barely blinked.

“What are you?” he asked.

“Something you wouldn’t understand yet.. Luckily for you.”

Their gazes met, equally unyielding.

Only the curve of the man’s jaw was outlined by the light—
Revealing stubble there, and a hint of his broad, weathered arms crossed.

“Lose it. Now. You wanna kill these sons of bitches, or try to recruit their asses into a cult?”

Jace realized his hands were still extended a few inches in front of him, fingers splayed. As he heard the words, he flexed them a few times and then let his arms drop to his sides. In the back of his mind, he wondered about his crossbows.

The stranger frowned, but gave a curt nod, sensing he was a few shades more aware.

“The horn,” Jace blurted, and the gesture became an upward nod of manly approbation. In his mind’s eye, the ancient horn from the Bazaar overflowed with feverlew he’d hidden.

“Green ... horn,” Jace whispered, still looking down.

In that moment, the green gem on the necklace attached to his belt flared until its blinding light consumed everything.

Mirror Lake
Tri-State Commonwealth
10 Years Earlier

Westwood Forest
Eastern Edge
Citrine (November) 5, 2012

The cry of some far off, nocturnal bird brought Jace back to the present, and he took a few shaky, steadying breaths before looking up from the ground.

What appeared to be Donovan Kerrick was still standing there, calm and relaxed.

Far more so than Jace ever remembered in life.

Kerrick’s lips curved into a razor-thin smile as he drew a rolled cigarette from beneath his cloak.

“Surprised?”

Without missing a beat, Jace shrugged.

“Not really,” he said. “I just took enough feverlew to kill a small elephant, so a hallucination this strong would not be unheard of.”

Kerrick looked amused, nodding slowly as if conceding that much. The coral glow, emanating from a kind of lighter Jace had never seen before, splashed over his features.

His cigarette lit, the old bastard took his first drag.

“Are there any small elephants?”

Surprising himself, Jace laughed a little.

“Good point.”

Though the green light had faded, it was still pulsating all around them. Everything was covered in it, outlined by it. As for the gold light, which should have been there ... it had fizzled away like flat seltzer. The comet hung, inert – nothing more than a prop at a stage play.

Not a particularly good one, either.

Kerrick sat down on a stump that started glowing a little brighter as he did.

“Let’s cut the crap, greenhorn, we both know I’m no hallucination.”

Jace sighed and sunk his hands into the deep pockets of his enemy's cloak. They were in the exact same place as on his own, and just as familiar.

The horn was back on his belt.

“Yeah.”

Kerrick sighed, almost an echo of Jace’s, and expelled smoke from his nostrils like a bull. Very deliberately, he peered at Jace in a way that had lost none of its potency with the passage of time, and – it would seem – death. The wind wouldn’t blow, but Jace was still cold.

“So you actually killed the damn thing that night, huh?”

“It said your title in public.”

Kerrick laughed, and motioned lazily with his free hand toward the gray cloak laying on the ground, where no corpse now lay beneath. “An ... Outrider?”

Jace shrugged.

“What can I say?”

“You don't have to say anything. Just never would have imagined.” Kerrick stood slowly. “Impressive, though. Almost as impressive as the fact you’re still alive. Bet you can see much better under the red moon now, eh? You looked into that ghoulish bastard's hood.”

Jace began to feel uneasy, uncomfortable for the first time since the apparition appeared.

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“More’n luck. I’ve a feeling this ain’t the last time we’ll meet.”

“More’s the pity for us, then,” Jace said. He slowly stretched, standing and pacing lazily about their clearing in the depths of time. If he looked up, and thought hard, he could compel the golden light to flare up – a guttering gaslight straining for a few seconds.

“If I don’t miss my guess,” said Kerrick, “you’d like to have all the answers. You’d like that very much. But it’s the questions that will lead you out of this, boy. Don’t dismiss their worth so fast.”

Jace had turned his attention away from the dangling comet and was now peering out to the green-tinted edge of their bubble. He hadn’t been able to see the contour before, but now – again, with fearsome concentration – he spotted a firefly suspended there, frozen between worlds.

He slowly turned to face Kerrick, now a pace behind and to his right.

“What ... questions?” he asked, adopting a cockeyed expression.

Kerrick’s brows knit together in thought as his cigarette bobbed from one side to the other.

“Good,” said the assassin. “That’s a start, at least.”

Jace’s cockeyed expression intensified.

He raised a hand as if to say something, and took a step – then felt his foot jerk unexpectedly on something in the brush. At once, his whole body thrashed to protect the horn at his side, but it had barely shifted.

At his foot was the stump Kerrick had just been sitting on.

“It moved ...”

“Very good,” Kerrick said again.

And Jace might have kicked it if he hadn’t noticed it was no ordinary stump. Carvings stood out on it, swirling together like the mad-eyed totems of Mirror Lake. Each one was a single stroke, and they came together to form something that meant more—

“Twenty,” said Jace.

“Mmmm,” Kerrick said, neither approving nor disapproving.
The marks shifted dizzily, words dancing in a dream—

“Twenty-two,” said Jace. “Twenty-two marks.”

With that, Kerrick seized him by the shoulders to pull his attention away. They stood face to face for an instant, and Jace wondered if he would see will-o-the-wisps dancing in the old man’s eyes.

But there was nothing there.

Or perhaps there was Nothing there.

Kerrick stepped up on the stump, as if tamping something down.

“The answers you want would only mislead you. Knowing changes things – it can be an endless cycle. But stay close to your ...” Again, his gaze bobbed to the cloak. “... friends. They’ve stood by you twenty-two times already. That’s what the rune says ...” He shrugged one shoulder to indicate the horn. “It’ll be good for one more before the storm gets here.”

One day more.

But Jace was no longer looking. He had swayed, like a drunk, out of Kerrick’s grasp – the words repeating again and again. He suddenly realized what was missing here: The color, the smell. The moments here had none, not until he heard those words—

Twenty-two times. One more. One.

Now, at last, his eyes watered; he could no longer find Kerrick’s face.

He wanted to imagine some sympathy there.

But not pity.

Not scorn—

The shadows around them shifted.

Kerrick raised his fist to clout Jace about the ear and rouse him— And Jace caught it.

There was no breath in this place, but Jace would have been panting if he could. In the absence of that brief, burning desperation there was an alien sense of foreknowledge.

Again, he and Kerrick shared a look:

“The answers ...”

“Would only mislead you,” Jace echoed; it sounded stupid in his ears, but it brought relief.

Kerrick broke their contact, and no trace of warmth lingered on Jace’s skin. The old man flicked the cigarette to the ground and took, it seemed, greater pleasure in snuffing it out than he had in smoking it.

“Damn right,” he said – maybe to Jace’s answer, maybe to the ground.

The messenger hides all he has, Kerrick said, but the comet above them was like a small sun now, and the familiar shadows had begun to turn to sepia tones. The most important part of having a secret ...

Jace couldn’t swirl his tongue in his mouth, let alone find his voice. His question came in his eyes:

What happens next?

The gatekeeper is up ahead, said Kerrick, gesturing to the horn. You are planning to burn their reagent wagon. A bold, if ... impractical strategy, as you cannot do this on your own. So you will fail .. again. But I'll send you back to start the endeavor, out onto the plains, as I always have.

A light Jace had never noticed before was gently oozing out of it.

“Those lights,” said Jace. “They say they’re old Outriders signaling their comrades.”

Kerrick turned away from the cloud of spirits and mouthed:

They're not.

Now, the wisps ate the color out of the world around them like a flood of hungry moths.

Remember this, kid – where you’re headed, there are no twenty-fourth chances.

In Jace’s mind ...

You will fail again. You will blow the horn, and if you escape to tomorrow you will come, at last, to Lornda Manor. You will meet the Paladin. Then ... we will meet again, green—

... the ancient horn sounded once more.

Jace found himself out of the woods, staring down at his hands. ... it could have belonged to one of the ancient sea-kings painted on caves and cliff faces all across the continent; dramas in faded paint come to life in the Outrider's hands.

Well, at least they’re not telepathic, said the voice of Thean.

“Oh?” Jace asked, without thinking. Roll with the punches. “How do you figure?”

Because if they were, you’d be dead by now.

Underneath the dark cowl, Jace nodded at this logic.

He had to simply accept where he was.

What was happening.

Mind his environment.

He was no longer just a spectator.

He would have to remember what he was taught, he ...

He would have to offer some kind of acknowledgment to the small cluster of figures staring at him as he passed.

They made no noise, nor did they seem inclined to pursue him.

But they were staring.

It was easy to imagine the confusion on their faces, hidden beneath their hoods.

They’re wondering why you’re walking towards their reagent wagon, and not to them.

“I know,” said Jace to the Thean in his mind.

Well, you better do something!

Turning half to the side, back towards the woods where the group stood, Jace gave a wave he knew was absurd even as he did it. It looked like the kind of gesture one might offer a friend to say no hard feelings.

His eyes winched shut in embarrassment.

Oh, that was slick!

At once, their hooded heads jerked backward as if he had punched them in the face.

He was close enough now to rely on his sense of smell, for the giant wagon reeked of nightshade. But there was another note: Hemlock. It reminded him he was a long way from home; immersed in a stomach-churning sea of enemies.

In just a moment, he would face the greatest test—

Jace spun on his heels, shedding the robe and unhinging his crossbows.

Robed figures charged him from every direction.

Minotaurs loped forward with menacing sneers, dragging massive clubs beside them, or resting heavy hammers on their enormous shoulders.

The world was no longer waiting on the edge of Jace Dabriel’s actions.

It was trying to kill him!

Jace's hands did their graceful work, swiping the crossbows downward against the belt on his waist, running through their reloading trick with defiant efficiency as he watched the enemy come.

Only now did he realize he had no plan for escape.

Stupid ass, he heard Thean say.

Westwood Forest
Fairlawn Thoroughfare

Relic had ridden for more than half an hour now—

Thirty-five minutes, each one ticking coolly in the back of his mind like a water rosary or the slow drip-drip-drip of torture.

No matter how fast he moved, there was no denying that time had come in upon him.

Every passing second had a name.

“It is Citrine,” he told himself, but only Midnight heard him.

Or at least, so he thought—

He’d felt the tell-tale signs that his horse was tiring, the jagged feeling of sluggish, hard-won steps. But there was no time to stop now: Even when every moment cast its shadow over the back of his mind, there was never enough.

Not enough time!

In an instant—one of an endless march of thousands—he realized the world around him was growing brighter. Now the comet-light penetrated the trees as if they weren’t even there, and Midnight whickered like a clock winding down.

Like a pocket-watch—

He leapt from the saddle and began to lead his horse into the trees. I won’t run him to death, he told himself. It won’t save me if I do. But he remembered the way the minotaurs had smelled out the horse-flesh from so far away, and a grimace told him the truth.

You’re leaving him as a distraction, instead.

“Quiet,” he told himself; his head was pounding.

Midnight neighed.

“Not you, buddy,” Relic said, patting his flank absently.

After a few seconds—exactly thirteen seconds, he thought, watch or no—the same hand drifted down to his saddlebags, feeling the reassuring weight of his logbook and what few pages he salvaged from the sentry house.

He realized what had been bothering him all along—

In his mind’s eye, he saw Jace, staring, impatient, at the well outside the sentry house ... And he realized, apropos of nothing, that he had forgotten to bring his pocket-watch.

Its familiar, soothing, even ticking had been absent; and his mind worked feverishly to fill the gap until he could barely think for all the moments crowding around him.

Each one has a smell, a taste, a—

Had Jace told him that, once?

He left it on the table because he fell asleep.

Seconds, which should have been tiny, crawled over him like bloated leeches. His struggling mind had a far different message for him:

What’s behind you?

All of a sudden, his horse bucked with strength Relic never could’ve expected.

He peered up the road and saw what the horse didn’t need to see: The lumbering shapes of three minotaurs far down the way, blocking the only path. They moved slowly, but with grim determination; sometimes their heads were raised, other times their horns touched the ground.

There was no turning back ...

“An ambush,” Relic told himself aloud, patting himself down ever more frantically as he did; his words came in a burst, half-mumbled to himself and the horse who continued to sway. “N-not without bolts. Just need a vantage point ...”

He braced himself against the trunk of one gnarled oak along the side of the road, gauging and measuring as the brightest blasts yet filled the sky all around him. Then he was decided, and bobbed toward the horse in a half-crouched pivot.

One, two, three forceful tugs, and Midnight was loitering against the trees.

“What to do,” Relic asked himself, eyes searching.

Isabelle would know what to do—

His breath caught for a moment; he hammered at his chest, making to loosen the muscles there, and remembered his wounds with a sudden start. A sort-of grin found its way to his face. He couldn’t stop thinking of Isabelle, strains of exhaustion jangling his thoughts.

She’d laugh if she could see, he thought—

The minotaurs had begun to stride more forcefully up the road. Relic began his ascent, and the giddy terror he’d felt only moments before started to congeal into something else:

A half-lived memory, a vision he’d had a hundred times over his career ...

He sprang up the tree with the speed of a ring-tailed coati—

Having to tell Isabelle that Jace was gone ...

—he heard Midnight shriek and was helpless to do anything but watch as the horse bolted—

... and he wasn’t coming back.

The riderless horse streaked across the plains, ragged mane streaming as it fled in mute horror. Its eyes swiveled, face flecked with foam, throat choked with it.

Past and present became as one as Relic realized—

It would run itself to death to escape—

He was about to die.

STATIC

Chapter Eleven  (E) Half Past Midnight #2190471 by Dan Hiestand