Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (7 page)

"He is your brother. It seems you dream through each other's eyes."

"This is impossible," Jonas muttered, screwing up his face, shaking his head. It was too much, Jonas could not comprehend what he was being told.

"I realise that this is not what you were expecting," Uly expressed.

Jonas regained some clarity and composure from all of the thoughts rushing through his mind. "It wouldn't have been my first guess, no!" he remarked, with all the smarts of a son answering back to his father.

Jonas realised then that this man had done a terrible thing to him as a child. "How could you send me away?" he said, with a cutting look in his eye.

Uly shut his eyes. "I had no choice," he told him.

"I was a baby, you had every choice!" Jonas trembled. "But you chose a life of solitary for me, a life with nothing! All I ever knew of my family was this pendant around my neck!"

"It belonged to your mother," Uly confirmed.

Tears made their way down Jonas's cheek. He wished that this king could feel the pain that he had felt his entire life. Having no family, fending for himself, always left to wonder.

"A kind woman called Lina raised me. She died when I was five. She was the only family I ever had. Her last words told me that if I ever wanted to, I could find my family with this pendant. I thought she was crazy!" said Jonas.

Uly firmed up his tone, not forgetting who the authority in this room was supposed to be, "We can talk about everything, Jonas, but for now…"

Jonas cut him off. "I can guess why I'm here, Father. Calyx has been taken, I've seen it."

The kings voice softened again. "Yes Jonas. I need you. We all need you. You are now the only one who can protect the Elementis and destroy the Zohr and his armies."

Jonas didn't hesitate to respond. "Not for all the blackfire of Jahara would I help you."

Uly grew impatient. "This is your chance Jonas—to make it up to your mother. To make it up to me," he said.

"You got rid of me when I was a child, as if my mother dying was my fault—how could you blame me?" Jonas was incensed, and full of hate for this man. "And now you ask this of me! What would make you think that I would accept?"

"Because I am your father, Jonas, and once again I have no choice," Uly said, reaching out a hand to touch his son for the first time. Jonas brushed his arm away.

"No, perhaps this time you don't have a choice, but I do!" said Jonas.

"You defy me then!?" Uly said, looking down his nose at his child with disapproval.

"I will not protect your Elementis or pretend to be any kind of prince or destroy any armies!"

Uly's complexion turned a fiery red. "Then you shall be returned to Kroyto, and never leave!" he threatened.

King Uly looked across the room and nodded at Hawk who returned the nod and activated the energy-cuffs held in his hands. He got up and stepped towards Jonas.

Jonas looked at Uly. His heart emptied of all feeling and all hope that he had once desperately had for wanting to know his father. "It was nice knowing you, Father," he mocked.

With no idea what he was doing, the room watched on confused as Jonas jumped high in the air. Coming down straight-bodied from his jump, he smashed his feet hard into the creaky wooden floor, flexing his muscles as he landed. Hawk stopped a few feet away not knowing what Jonas would do next. Jonas jumped again, only this time when he came down he didn't land on the floor, he ploughed right through the wood and down into a corridor below. He didn't look up, he just ran. He wasn't going back to Kroyto and he wasn't going to be forced by a father who had sent him away as a child into doing anything that he didn't want to. He had been alone his entire life and maybe there was no going back from that. His father hadn't even said sorry, that at least would have been a start. Perhaps he wasn't sorry, and if he wasn't then Jonas would try his best to make him feel that way.

After a few twists and turns sprinting down corridors, Jonas burst through a door. An armed Cytherean Guard stood watch outside. The Guard looked at the boy, surprised. "Who are you?" he said, with a curious lowering of his brow.

Jonas grabbed a hold of the soldier's blaster. The Guard gripped onto it as Jonas had hoped he would. Jonas yanked the gun sharply towards him, the Guard came with it and knocked his face straight into Jonas's head-butt. The Guard fell, sprawled out-cold on the floor.

"Prince Jonas, apparently!" he said, thinking the name actually had quite a nice sound to it.

Hawk's voice blared out of the forearm of the Guards uniform. "All Guard seek and capture—stun and restrain—do not kill!" his voice ordered as a holographic image of Jonas in the rugged red top he was wearing materialised in mid-air from the communications system. "I repeat. Stun and capture—do not kill."

Jonas looked up to a noise in the distance. He saw three Guard pounding across a courtyard. He burst into a sprint not knowing where to run, only thinking anywhere was better than here. He headed towards the taller buildings in the distance, running past street turnings, as more and more Guard joined in the hunt. He knocked down two that got in his way as he made a turn down a street. Stun-shots flew dangerously close to him, freezing a Guard caught in the line of fire who collapsed as stiff as a falling tree scraping his armour along the floor with his momentum. Jonas was faster than all of them. He turned down a narrow alley sandwiched between two tall glass buildings. He turned down another alleyway and another, testing his speed to its limits until everything was quiet. He hid in the shadow of a pillar that ran up alongside one of the glass towers. Footsteps came up fast. A Guard stopped right in front of him. He looked into the shadow. Jonas closed his eyes and heard more footsteps coming. He braced to be stunned.

"Come on he went this way," they called as they ran along past. The suspicious soldier peering into the shadow saw nothing in the shade and continued his chase. The silence returned and Jonas blew a breath of relief.

More footsteps came. They clunked along like metal instead of sounding like the boots of an armoured Guard. And these feet weren't running either. A kid, a few years younger than Jonas hovered along the alley, gliding along on a bike. Just behind him walked a heavy-footed droid.

Twain walked straight past Jonas. Lynk turned to face him, "Hello friend," he politely gestured with a nod.

Twain stopped and turned back to see who his droid was speaking to. He saw no one. "Lynk, there's nobody there! Hurry along. We've lots to do when we get back."

"I was just greeting the fugitive, Jonas Knight. I didn't mean any harm," said Lynk.

Twain reversed his bike and squinted into the shadow. He could just make out the shape of someone. He jumped off his hoverbike and drew a small cylinder from his tool-belt, demanding to whoever it was to come out, and put down their weapons.

Jonas stepped forward, holding his hands in the air. He left the Guards blaster strapped and hanging around his shoulder. He saw what the boy held as a weapon. "That's a drill handle," he smirked. "Does it shoot as well?" Jonas laughed.

Twain put a hand out to Lynk. The droid yanked off his own hand as Twain pulled Lynk's forearm out of his elbow socket and attached it with a twist to the top of his drill bit. He shot a blast past Jonas's ducking head. "Yes it shoots as well," Twain said. "I'm just not allowed a blaster yet so I had to combine my drill and Lynk's arm, works pretty well and Mother will never figure it out."

"Clever kid," said Jonas, with the smile wiped clear from his face.

Twain firmed his grip on his weapon, moving it closer to the older boy, "I'm not a kid and I'm not clever. I'm ten and a half and I'm a genius. Tell him Lynk."

Lynk happily confirmed. "Yes, my serdar, Twain is 10 years and 233 days old and he has the mental capacity of a 187 year old."

"Okay, good for you, but I'm in a real hurry here," said Jonas.

"Lynk, confirm his identity!" said Twain, moving the gun closer still to Jonas, causing Jonas to raise his dropping hands higher.

Lynk's belly popped out and slid up, revealing a data-screen that sat behind the metal plate on his stomach. Twain watched with interest as an image of Jonas showed up with a high-alert signal.

Jonas needed to move on. He was becoming impatient. "Look, I don't mean anyone any harm. I just want to get back to Rilk and forget all about this place."

Twain was fascinated, he probed the fugitive for more information. "What did you do to get every Guard on the planet looking for you?"

Jonas was annoyed that he had to explain himself to a ten-year-old holding a drill in his face. "It's possible I'm the king's son but I've done nothing! I didn't even know him until five minutes ago and now all of a sudden he wants to play happy families."

"He's telling the truth serdar," said Lynk, making use of the flawless lie detection system built into his program.

Jonas sounded desperate. "I need to figure out how to get out of here. They're going to send me back to Kroyto!"

Twain lowered his weapon.

"Kroyto?" said Twain, with his interest levels soaring. "Come on, tell me the story on the way. I live in Subterennea—the undercity, not the nice part, but mother won't mind for a night. I've got a ship as well! Well nearly, I need one more part for it. It's an old shipwrecked dekapod, crashed in the forest of Andawan. It's yours for the pendant around your neck. I could do with one of those."

"A ship? That can get me home?" asked Jonas.

"Seems to me that you're already home, but yes, you can go where you like once I've fixed it," said Twain.

Jonas pondered the exchange of a ship for the pendant. This kid was the stupidest genius he'd ever met. Aside from the fact that he was the only genius he'd ever met, the exchange was clearly unfair. Young Twain still had some way to go in understanding the value of supply and demand, but Jonas needed a ship to leave this place more than anything else right now and here was a way out, standing right in front of him. He put a hand around his mother's pendant, knowing that it was all that remained of her now.

*

Torchlight skipped off the surface of a damp tunnel wall as the boys floated along, riding the hoverbike with Lynk clinging to Jonas's back. Twain talked a lot, babbling on about solving the theory involved in capturing the energy of a supernova the second it explodes; he believed it would be the most powerful energy force known to man but he lost Jonas at "neutrino-displacement" and Jonas took his mind back to being in that room with the king. He felt disheartened. His father was nothing like how he'd imagined and it was no medical centre accident after all that had meant he'd spent his life alone. He didn't want to think about it; he just wanted to get as far away from him as he could. Jonas turned his mind to wondering what this undercity where Twain was taking him would look like. Dark and damp he supposed, judging by this tunnel; and probably full of dirt and with the people to match—it reminded him of home.

"Are you sure your mother won’t mind?" Jonas said to Twain, interrupting the boys talk that had moved on to the untapped potential power of the energy inside black holes.

"Of course not, she’ll be pleased of the company!" Twain assured him.

"And it’s safe for you? I don’t want to get you in any trouble," Jonas said, thinking back to when Hok was blasted apart in front of his eyes. Jonas had laid in that prison cell thinking it over in his mind again and again as to whether or not he could have done something different, something to save Hok from dying so young. Why Jonas cared so much he didn't know, neither Hok nor Ell would have given it a second thought if it had been Jonas who was on the receiving end of the Red-Badges' blasters. Nonetheless, Jonas wanted no part in putting Twain in any danger.

Twain smiled to himself in the shadowed light, "The Guard don’t come around my way, even when looking for missing princes, you don't need to worry."

Twain switched off the hoverbike's front lights and Jonas saw a soft glowing of multi-coloured light mixing with the darkness at the end of the tunnel. The colours refracted through the air as if it was some magical doorway to a land beyond the living. The tunnel ended as they reached the other world. Twain stopped the bike on top of a ledge where the ground fell away beneath them. Jonas stood up, his eyes were hypnotized by the luciferase ceiling of a gigantic cave. The sky was alive with vibrant sparkles of yellows, reds, blues, purples and greens. Algae and worms that lived in the roots of the trees above the ground lit up the world below. The underground city of Subterennea was blessed with an eternal night, a night filled with stars more beautiful even than the real night sky. Beneath the sky, towering buildings glittering with lights spired up from the ground to the cave top and great glass lifts rose and fell to and from the world above. Transporters went about their business, floating between the buildings and the look that was held on Jonas's face told Twain that he never would have imagined a city such as this existing. His jaw was ajar, as he took in the awe of the life beneath the ground.

The city was split into several settlements. To the left was the main district, packed with tall buildings and bright lights that perched up high on a mighty ledge. At the bottom of the cliff below was a village which sat beside a dark flowing river. A dozen separate hamlets stretched out along the river towards the back of the cave before it disappeared into darkness. And then down to the right, carved into the rock sides lay a scattered town of sweet and modest houses, finished with dried-grass roofs and fires that flickered a warming light through their windows.

"Come on, just down here," Twain said, kicking the bike into life with Lynk now clinging on to his back.

Jonas moved his head from side to side one last time, taking in the view beneath him before he jumped back onto the bike. Twain hovered off towards the town cut into the base of the rock.

They pulled up outside a small shack, wooden-framed doors and windows dressed the un-rendered clay and pebble walls that backed onto a solid cliff. Twain opened the door for Jonas to enter. He could feel the warmth of the place as he walked beneath the mantel. Not just the warmth of a crackling fire but a feeling of love that oozed from every corner of the spotless floors and warm rugs and cosy chairs. Everywhere Jonas looked he imagined the laughter and closeness of Twain's family. It was everything he'd never had.