Curiosity got the better of me as I crept on hands and knees toward the precipice to look over the edge at the sight below.
Danidesh was motioning vigorously for me to proceed. As I neared the precipice and looked down, there was a feeling I mistook for a symptom of vertigo, like a heavy weight upon my chest. There was a scent I became vaguely aware of, like the after-scent of oil from a furnace vent. As I nervously glanced down, I felt generally unwell.
Among my sensitive friends, when I start getting feelings, you know something big is going on.
As I looked down at the scene below us, I didn't get it right away. I saw
Tindar and Ascher sitting by themselves in the center of the compound. Some other men I didn't recognize paced impatiently not very far away. They looked like unsavory sorts. The distance wasn't so great we couldn't have conversed with slightly raised voices. I didn't see any other members of our clan in view.
Leave it to me to focus on the people stuff and be completely oblivious to everything else. Bam, I finally got it.
"Holy crap," I whispered. The ruin wasn't a ruin anymore. "How the hell did they do that?"
Serghan chortled behind and to the left of me. "They didn't," he mused.
"You've been with us the whole time, it couldn't have been you," Danidesh deduced.
Serghan's glee rose increasingly as the riddle stumped us more and more.
"No, it wasn't me, either." I edged back from the ledge carefully before turning to face his exasperating smile.
"Spill it little man," I warned. "I have no patience for games right now. I feel like crap."
"Yes, it's a little unpleasant the first time. I remember." He held both of his hands open over his upper chest and breathed deeply.
"You feel it too?" I asked.
"If I think about it," Serghan responded.
"I thought it was just me feeling under the weather," Danidesh shook his head in wonder.
"It is the Gate," Serghan explained.
"Worse than living near power lines," I complained.
"Only happens when it's activated," Serghan laughed a little too loudly.
I began to hold up my finger to indicate he should hush. Then what he had said sunk in a little deeper.
"Activated?"
I heard yelling from below that would no doubt drown out our unstealthy friend.
"Now they know too," Serghan smiled again. "The Jerome man knows."
"What do you mean 'activated'?" Danidesh forced the point.
"Look and see," he urged, dancing lightly to the edge of the cliff.
I crawled reluctantly back out to the very edge and looked down. My uneasy feeling that someone would look up was immediately forgotten. There was too much going on for them to notice us as we crouched at our vantage point.
Jerome had come running from within the ruin. He was pointing, needlessly. Anna appeared from within the structure next, walking more calmly, a little disoriented, it seemed to me. The ruin was humming, pulsing with the dappled reflection from a light internal to the structure, presumably from the ceiling. My uneasy feeling about the strange men standing around was confirmed when I saw them draw guns. They looked a little more jittery than I would have liked to see for the safety of my friends.
"What did you do?" I heard Tindar shouting at Jerome.
Jerome's response was lost in the hum, but he was shaking his head in the negative and waving his arms about quite a lot.
"What is going on Serghan?" Danidesh wondered. "I thought it took more than just one person to activate the Gate."
He was right. We'd all lined up on the six symbols, done the breathing. Jerome couldn't have followed the ritual by himself.
"What if the six standers on the symbols were at a different Gate, sending someone here?" I wondered.
"Ah, now you are closer to the truth, I think," Serghan nodded.
The humming stopped. The light dimmed.
"Now we will see the heart of the matter," Serghan's face turned serious for the first time since we'd reached Jerome's place.
A man I didn't recognize emerged from the Temple of the Gate, his hands open and in front of him, as if he was urging calm.
Apparently Tindar recognized him. "Ezrial!" he shouted, backing slowly away from the man.
After Ezrial came a cloud of a being, gray and swirling.
"All is lost," Serghan said quietly. "They have led the
Time Warrens right to the Gate."
"They are the ones who reconstructed the Gate, aren't they?" Danidesh asked.
"They could not have done so alone. They haven't the technical ability," Serghan muttered. "I fear the worst."
The strange men waved their guns around wildly in fear. The scene was about a nano-second from deteriorating into ugliness. Then I heard a voice, loud and clear above the din of chaos.
"STOP!"
It was Syha. Softly spoken, quiet Syha.
"Listen to what I have to say," she insisted. "And for goodness sake, get down here," she continued, looking directly up at our place on the ridge.
"This will be interesting," Serghan muttered as he turned lightly away from the precipice and began to descend back into the forest.
To be continued...
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The Wheels Clan Chronicles
series ©2006-2007 by Jeff Beardwood.
