Branegate (4 page)

To his left was a door, now closed. He remembered the door, its vines and strange runes, but he’d never seen the entire room so clearly, only as a vague vision of something there. The fire always came so quickly, and burned it all away.

Suddenly there was a soft knocking on the door in his room. He was startled, drawing the covers up to his chin. His arms were small and devoid of any hair. He was a little child again.

The door opened slightly. A woman peeked in at him, and smiled. “Ah, you’re awake. I want to talk to you before you go to sleep again.”

The woman came in and sat down on the edge of his bed. She wore the orange robe of a priest, but her blonde hair had been done grandly in great swirls to frame her face, and her slender fingers were adorned with silver rings. When she leaned close she smelled like cinnamon and musk.

“Do you know me?”

“I’ve seen your face before,” said Trae. The sound of his voice surprised him with its high pitch. She was so beautiful.

The woman stroked his cheek with a cool palm. “Oh, Anton, you’re awake, but still asleep. This must be confusing for you. Maybe you’ll remember my touch.”

“Are you my mother?” he said, a sudden compulsion driving him.

She smiled wonderfully, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m a memory, dear, but I wanted to be here. When there’s a need for us to talk it’s your father who’ll usually be here. We miss you terribly. One day we’ll be together again. When we meet in the mind, like now, it’s to give you knowledge you’ll need to accomplish the many tasks ahead.”

“But you’re dead, and Anton is dead, and his father has run away. I don’t understand who or what I am. They tell me I’m an Immortal; I have to go out into the Emperor’s world and find my father, and I don’t even know him. If Anton was his son, then who am I? Did Anton come back to life in me? This isn’t me; I’m not a little child. My name is Trae, and I’m sixteen.”

The woman stroked his forehead and smiled lovingly down at him. A tear ran down her cheek. “I’m not good at this. I just want to hold you in my arms. I promise your questions will be answered. You might not be aware of it, because much of what we tell you must remain buried deep in your mind. It must not fall into the Emperor’s hands. Your father will be here any minute, so it’s time for you to sleep again, but I want you to know I love you very much, and I don’t want you to forget me.”

Trae opened his mouth to speak, but then there were footsteps from beyond the door. “Ssshh, he’s here,” said the woman. She reached out with both hands and tapped his temples simultaneously. Everything went black.

And he awoke.

Gella’s face was close, and he was frowning. “Back so soon? You haven’t been out for more’n a minute.”

“It didn’t seem much longer than that,” said Trae. He rubbed both temples with his fingers, and sighed deeply.

“Head hurt?” asked Gella. Petyr came up behind him, arms crossed, and he looked worried.

“No, not really. Usually I wake up and feel like I’ve had a full night’s sleep, but now I feel blurry, like I’ve been concentrating for a long time.”

Trae told them what he’d just experienced. “It was so real. I swear I can still smell her, but then she tapped me on the side of my head and I was gone.”

“No other sensations: a tone, music, voices, nothing?” asked Petyr, and Trae shook his head.

“Subliminal, maybe,” said Gella.

“But we have no idea what he got, and we leave tomorrow. We’ll be flying blind.” Petyr looked angry, now. He picked up the syringe Gella had used to give Trae his injection. “Don’t any of you people know what he’s getting in these things?”

“Something to activate certain areas in his brain,” said Gella, “but all that’s written down anywhere is the order of the injections, and when they’re to be given. Anyone in the underground will have that information wherever you go on Gan. Off-planet I have no idea how you can continue. I presume Trae will know that when the time comes.”

“Know what?” asked Trae.

“Contacts, mostly. There are healers, cell leaders, off-worlders who’ve been trusted to get you off Gan and onto your father’s trail. He had no formal holdings here, except for the house. Everything is off world, scattered across Source-knows how many planets, maybe across the galaxy.

Gella looked over his shoulder at Petyr. “Yes, you’re flying blind. There’s no choice here; we have to assume Trae is being given the necessary information about contacts, passwords, codes, anything he needs to stay out of the Emperor’s grasp. It’s vital he get all his injections on time, and that’s your biggest concern. His physical safety comes after that.”

Trae started to say something, but Petyr shook his head and glared at the boy, silencing him. What Gella had just said made no sense at all to Trae.

Gella looked at Trae again. “Nothing new coming yet?” he asked, and smiled. He reached over and tapped him on the forehead. “I’ll bet there’s a lot more going on in there besides dreams of fire and beautiful women. Just be aware, Trae, aware of anything that comes into your head. Any or all of it could be important.”

“Okay,” said Trae. Then, “Can I get up, now?”

“Sure, we’re finished, for today, maybe for good. I might not see you again, young man, but I’ll be thinking about you. Good luck out there. You, too, Petyr. If you can’t bring the power of The Immortals back to help us it’s only a matter of time before our beloved Emperor has us all for lunch. So if you don’t succeed don’t bother to come back, because there won’t be anything to come back to. These caverns will be empty.”

Gella accompanied them to the door, shook hands, and waved goodbye to them from the doorway. Trae had a strong feeling he would never see the man again.

Petyr said not a single word to him all the way back to Trae’s apartment, where his parents were anxiously awaiting him on the eve of his departure from their world.

CHAPTER 4

P
etyr took him to a place he’d never heard of before. It was deep in the bowels of the caverns, and there was no heat or light. Petyr had come for him at midnight, and Trae had been waiting for him in the street outside the only home he’d known for sixteen years. He was dressed warmly in layers of rough, woolen clothing Petyr had given him the night before.

Petyr arrived, and led him silently down the street into an area of closed, dimly lit shops. They went to a door marked “Service.” Petyr had a key to unlock it. The door appeared to be a side entrance to a shop, but instead there was only a dark staircase descending steeply into darkness. They stepped inside, Petyr closed and locked the door behind them, and then a hand-lamp flared brightly. Petyr handed it to him, and a second lamp flared. “Keep the light at your feet,” said Petyr. It’s steep all the way down, and there’s no hand railing, so lean towards the wall.”

They descended stone stairs in a helical staircase for a minute or so. There was a cavern at the bottom and they followed shallow stairs to the left into the black maw of what seemed to be another cavern. The stairs went down steeply again, and were irregular in height and spacing, cut out of the natural rock. Warm air rose from below, and there was a low, moaning sound. Trae leaned instinctively to his left until his shoulder felt rock. He stayed a step behind Petyr all the way down, focusing on each move, for he knew that one step to his right there was only a great abyss.

Perhaps it was not as deep as he thought. In only a few minutes they reached level ground. The air was wetly chilled, and Trae smelled salt. Petyr motioned him ahead; they had come all the way down without a word. They walked across a cavern floor strewn with rubble and into a tunnel. Almost immediately Trae saw a light ahead, and heard voices. The light flashed once—twice, and Petyr answered by swinging his torch back and forth.

They came out of the tunnel, and four men surrounded them. A rain slicker was thrust into Trae’s hands. “Pouring outside. Couldn’t be better weather for us,” said a man. All the men wore ponchos, cowlings pulled up, their faces hidden in the gloom.

“Is it sunny where we’re going?” asked Petyr. His face was tense, his shoulders hunched, and Trae thought of a cat ready to spring.

“The sun never shines in Lycos,” said a man, and Petyr visibly relaxed.

They followed the men across a sandy area, winding between boulders as tall as Petyr, to a rock shelf hanging over a narrow channel of black water. A large rowboat was there, nearly as wide as the channel. The four men took up the oars after seating Petyr and Trae in bow and stern. Even as they pushed off, Trae could hear the pounding of surf some distance down the channel.

The men pulled hard on the oars, the channel water first smooth, then rougher until Trae grabbed the gunwales for support. They came out into a half-submerged cavern with a wide entrance to the sea, and the boiling water beyond it was foaming white. The rowing men never changed the beat, but charged the foaming turbulence and went up over it with a shudder. Trae squinted against sudden rain and hung on for his life as the boat lifted and twisted beneath him, but then there was only a rocking motion and the mess of surf breaking was behind them. In the darkness ahead Trae saw the dark outlines of a boat with three tall masts, sails down. The wind was gentle, but as Trae watched, the boat’s crew was already raising sail. The rowers never slowed, but suddenly raised oars and the hull of the boat appeared, rope netting deployed for boarding. Two men remained in the boat, the other two scrambled up the netting, then Petyr, Trae following his example. It was fortunately a short climb; the rope was hard to grip and kept moving. Trae almost fell near the top, but Petyr grabbed his arm and steadied him.

Trae stood by Petyr, puffing hard. Winches squeaked and timbers groaned. The air was salt and seaweed. Sails rose above him, and he swayed with the rocking of the deck.

“Don’t get much exercise, does he,” said a man.

“He’ll come along fast enough,” said Petyr. “You just get us to Lycos before sunrise.”

“Well before. Get below, and I’ll send down some tea. Soon as the landing boat is berthed, we pull anchor.”

The man turned away. Trae got one glimpse of a bearded, grizzled face, but he never heard a name or saw a face long enough to recognize it again.

They went below-decks, a single chamber the length of the hull and nearly as wide, loaded with packing crates, rolls of twisted steel cable and flat sheets of what looked like copper. Petyr went to one packing crate marked “Fabrik” and pressed an edge of it with a finger. There was a click, and the front panel opened outwards like a door. Inside were the ends of fabric rolls, top to bottom. Another click, and a second panel opened inward, fabric roll ends only going back a few inches in length. A table and two chairs were inside the crate, a fluorescent lamp and slowly turning vent fan in the ceiling. They went inside and shut the two panels behind them. A few minutes later there was a soft knock outside, and a man brought them hot tea and sugar.

The little room was soon stuffy, and the rocking of the floor gave Trae a queasy feeling in his stomach. Petyr looked at him with narrowed eyes. “We’ll be in here at least three hours, and your eyes are already large. Take this.” He handed him a white capsule, and Trae swallowed it dry without question.

“The first days will be hard,” said Petyr. “You’ll have to build strength and endurance.”

“And we’re supposed to be finding a way out?”

“You are. I’m along to get you started in the underground here. Beyond that I have no useful knowledge. I know the workings of the Emperor’s police; I should be able to keep them away from you. Once we’re off planet it’ll be easier, but even then I expect they’ll send pursuit squads after us. They’ll search for you, Trae, but mostly they want your father.”

“He ran off and abandoned me and everyone else a long time ago; how can he hurt the Emperor?”

“We don’t know a lot of things, Trae. We don’t know why he left. We don’t know for sure that he
has
left. He could use his financial empire to shut down all interplanetary commerce with Gan, or at least force sanctions against it. What powers he could bring to bear from The Immortals is unknown. There could be entire leagues of planets under their influence, huge armies your father could bring against the Emperor, but it hasn’t happened and we don’t know why. It’s even possible the Lyraen commune has lost his favor, and he’s left us to our fate, but your presence speaks against that.”

Trae took another sip of tea and rubbed his stomach. “The pill worked. I’m feeling better.”

“Talking helps, too. Makes you forget about it.”

Trae hesitated, then, “Gella slipped up once, and told me there were little machines working in my head. Is that where the dreams come from?”

“Probably. The wiring in your brain is constantly being redone. We couldn’t wait any longer, Trae. There were too many spies. We had to get you moving, and we don’t really know where we’re supposed to take you or what you’re supposed to do. First thing is to get you off planet, and the underground can help get us to that point. After that it’ll be up to you to show the way. I’m working by instinct here.”

“So am I,” said Trae. He paused, sipped tea, studied the cup in his hands, then said softly, “Have you ever been outside? You know—outside the caverns, and in the city with people walking around in sunlight.”

“Yes,” said Petyr. “Quite a bit, since you were small, mostly with the underground, mostly in Lycos. I’m a familiar face in the streets there. It’s different, Trae. Lots of people, busy going somewhere, and the Emperor’s troops are on every corner, always watching. Our papers are the best, and we’ll be moving fast. A little luck, and we’ll be off planet within a week.”

“It’s like I’m off planet right now, Petyr.”

“I understand. That’s one reason I’m here.”

“My teacher, older brother, always scolding me,
and
a priest.”

“I’m a Soldier of The Church, Trae.”

“Still a priest. Don’t you have a family somewhere?”

“All gone, a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry,” said Trae, then smiled. “I guess I’ll have to be your family, for now.”

Petyr actually chuckled, a rare thing. “I can accept that.”