1.5 - Destiny Unchosen (9 page)

Temi tried not to feel like she had left another coach to die, but the bleakness threatened to overwhelm her.

“As soon as we reach a clear area, I’ll open a portal,” Eleriss said.

“Will you be coming back? At some point? I’d like to hear about... if Jakatra made it.”

Eleriss gave her that polite smile of his. “Jakatra is extremely capable. I highly doubt a fire or a couple of our own people could trouble him overmuch.”

Temi wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “I feel cowardly running away from something that is... at least partially my fault, or a result of my being here anyway.”

The hovercraft had come into clear air, air that seemed a touch lighter, promising dawn’s approach, and Eleriss brought it to a stop and faced her in his seat. “You will not be running away from something. You will be running toward something. Another
jibtab
has appeared in your world. Your comrades need your help.”

Temi let her chin droop to her chest. If Simon and Delia would be in trouble soon, she had to go back to help them, but she struggled to walk away from this... unfinished business. For all she knew, neither Eleriss nor Jakatra nor anyone else would ever return to her world, not now that they had retrieved the sword and trained a human to use it.

“You will go to them and help fight it, yes?” Eleriss asked, his blue eyes scrutinizing her.

She wondered if he had known about her thoughts from the week before, her notion that she might take the healed knee and return to the tennis world. Forget the
jibtab
and being Earth’s warrior. But that would have been if she had failed the training, if they had been forced to look for someone else. Thanks to Jakatra, she hadn’t. She didn’t know what the next
jibtab
would look like, but she had practice fighting terrifying predators now. He’d said she was competent. And that had pleased her, even if it condemned her to... whatever fate awaited her back home.

“Triumph and disaster,” she muttered.

“Pardon?” Eleriss asked.

“Yes, I will fight them.”

“Good.” Eleriss hopped out of the vehicle and pulled a device out of his pocket. He pressed it, and the blue portal flared to life, as it had a week ago, on a dark deserted logging road in the mountains of Arizona.

Temi gazed toward the trees, back in the direction they had come from, where smoke hugged the canopy, tendrils bleeding up into the sky.

“It is the middle of your nighttime,” Eleriss said, “so I have not placed the portal exit far from the city, but you should go through soon, lest someone else notices it.”

“Yes, that would be hard to explain.” Temi sighed and started to turn away from the forest, but something stirred the smoke, and she paused.

A tall lean form strode out of the haze, walking soundlessly across the leaf litter and pine needles, the hilt of a sword poking up over his shoulder. The light from the portal shone across Jakatra’s features, his face smudged by soot and grime, and marred by more than a few bruises.

“Greetings,” Eleriss said. “It is good that you have come to say farewell to your student. She was most reluctant to leave while your fate was unknown.”

As tired and numb as she was after the night, Temi found the energy to blush at this statement. It wasn’t as if she was some pining lover. She just hadn’t wanted to leave without knowing if he lived or died, that was all.

Jakatra gave her a curious look, though he didn’t comment on Eleriss’s words, instead going straight to business.

“I caught up with those who were shooting at us. I convinced them to fly away,” Jakatra said coolly, a lot left unsaid, Temi was certain. “They were unwilling to speak openly to me, and I was not inclined to interrogate anyone—” he gave Eleriss a long look that Temi couldn’t decipher, “—but I construed that Artemis was only part of the problem. That she has that sword is another part.
We
are another part.” His eyes narrowed, never leaving Eleriss’s face. “People know now that we have been helping humans.”

“The sword is a problem?” Eleriss asked, ignoring the other issues. Maybe he had already known about them. “But it came from Earth, where it had been buried for centuries. Why would anyone here care about it or even know of its existence?”

“I don’t know,” Jakatra said.

Eleriss frowned at Temi’s scabbard. What would she do if he asked for it back? A week ago, she would have offered it to him freely, but after going through so much with it, she would be reluctant to part with it. “Your friends who like to do the research,” he said, “perhaps they can learn more about the weapon. Perhaps it has a history we do not know.”

“I’m sure they’ll be willing to do that.” If they hadn’t already. That first night, Simon had taken a few thousand pictures of the sword and scabbard from different angles, with Delia nearby, looking up historical weapons on the Internet.

“You had better join them now.” Eleriss cast a nervous glance back toward the woods, maybe wondering if Jakatra had done anything more than buy them a little time.

“I will.” Temi hid the sword in her bag and hefted it over her shoulder. Hoping for a hug or a pat on the shoulder from Jakatra was probably too much, but she gave him a nod, like the one he had given her before going off, before stepping up to the portal.

“Don’t forget,” Jakatra said. “Momentum can solve a lot of problems.”

Certain he was talking about more than running across branches, she nodded and said, “I’ll remember.”

Temi gave them both long looks, then strode through the portal.

THE END