Raven Rise

JOURNAL#35
(CONTINUED)
DENDURON

TheMilago village had changed since my first visit to Denduron. What had once been a small village of farmers had been destroyed by an underground explosion (thanks to me), rebuilt using Bedoowan technology, and was now being developed as a jumping-off point for a conquering army-complete with training grounds, hospitals, armories, and barracks for newly inducted knights. Even with all the advances, it was still primitive by Second Earth standards. The huts were made of stone or wood. The streets were dirt. Horses pulled wooden wagons. The only signs of modern technology were the street lights, which were powered by something called “triptyte,” a mineral that glowed in the dark. Triptyte wasn’t electricity, but it was valuable enough to start a war over. A war that would put Denduron on Saint Dane’s path to destruction. Could Alder and I stop it? I had no idea, but we had to try. Together. That’s why the first thing I needed to do was get my friend out of prison.

The Bedoowan armory was exactly where Alder said it would be. I recognized the area as the old Milago training ground. This is where I first saw the Milago miners having target practice with tak. It was a skill that was quickly developed into a method for waging war. Finding the armory wasn’t exactly tricky. It was the largest building in the village. Alder told me that there were two armed guards. I saw only one. I was in luck. Still, it was broad daylight. If I made trouble, there was a good chance I’d be seen. Whatever I did had to be fast.

I looped around to the side of the barnlike building, clutching the dado weapon. I wanted to get as close as possible before announcing my presence to the guard. Surprise was a good thing. Loor and Alder taught me never to make the first move. That didn’t apply when it came to surprise. The trick with surprise was to make sure the fight was over before it began. The first strike had to be the last.

The Bedoowan guard didn’t know what hit him. For the record, it was me. I crept to the corner of the building, waited until his attention was away from me, leaped at the unsuspecting guy, and knocked him cold with two swipes of the dado weapon. Before he had the chance to hit the ground, I grabbed him and dragged him inside the building, closing the door behind us. It was fast. It was efficient. It was violent. It was the new me. So far so good. Really good. I felt great. Physically, I mean. Alder had healed me. The mystery of what it meant to be a Traveler would continue, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t take advantage of the powers we possessed. I felt strong and hopeful. I might even say invincible. Why not? It was proved that we could cheat injury and even death. I wish I could say that we were able to cheat pain, but that wasn’t part of the program. Oh well. It’s hard to put this into words, but the feeling of knowing we had that kind of power shot me full of such confidence,

I actually thought we might have a chance of stopping the war on Denduron. Why not?

That feeling of confidence lasted for about as long as it took me to look into the armory building. Alder had described it as the storehouse for the Bedoowan arsenal. He told me about the rows of cannons and the stacks of bows and arrows that sat waiting for war. He said there was enough firepower contained in that building to overrun the simple Lowsee, destroy their tribe, and move on to any other enemy the army decided to victimize next. I didn’t doubt him. Trouble was, what I saw inside the armory was in some ways more frightening than knowing such an elaborate arsenal existed.

What I saw was nothing. The armory was empty. Cleared out. Not a single arrow or cannonball was left. Alder had described a huge stockpile of weapons. There was nothing like that in sight. It suddenly made sense why there was only one guard stationed out front. There was nothing left to guard. The weapons were gone and I knew where they went. They were headed over the mountain with the Bedoowan knights, who were on their way to destroy the Lowsee. My heart sank. Our plan was to destroy the arsenal, but there was no arsenal left to destroy. We were too late.

We would have to find another way to stop the war. But first, Alder had to be rescued. I moved quickly, following his description of the armory. Finding the tak mine wasn’t hard. Near the mouth of the tunnel was a small pile of tak bricks.

I took two, along with a length of fuse and one of the friction starters Alder described to me. I had a fleeting thought that I should run down into the mine and just ignite the tak again. But that was too risky. Alder had failed at that once. There were probably miners and guards down there. I didn’t need to be caught and dumped into the jail cell next to my Bedoowan friend. No, I had to stick to the plan and spring Alder.

I took one of the bricks and gingerly broke off a piece of the soft mineral. If you remember, it was gritty and pliable, like clay. It was also volatile. I had to be fast, but careful. I ran to one of the inside walls of the armory and gently pressed a line of tak along the base of the wooden wall. The process scared the heck out of me. If I handled the tak too roughly, it would hit back with a big boom. I kept breaking off pieces and smearing the soft mineral along the base of the wall, making a long, rust-colored line.

I heard a sound from down in the mine. Clang! Somebody had dropped a tool. It was innocent enough, but I feared that somebody might be coming up. I had to work faster. After smearing most of the tak brick on the wall, I was ready. I took a small piece of fuse no more than two inches long and jammed it into the space between the wooden boards, making sure the end touched the smear of tak. I sparked the starter and lit the fuse. Backing away, I hoped I had smeared the right amount on the wall. I didn’t want an explosion, I wanted a fire. A diversion. I had made a thin line of tak about twenty feet long on the wooden wall. If it didn’t blow up, it would burn. At least, I hoped it would.

I backed away to the door of the armory and waited. It wouldn’t be long. The fuse would only take a few seconds to reach the tak. I actually put my fingers in my ears, in case I hadn’t spread it thin enough. Two seconds later I heard a sharp fizzle. The fuse hit the tak and instantly shot along the line, faster than I had imagined. The flare was brighter than I had imagined too. I had to squint or I would have l been blinded. Iwaited for an explosion. It didn’t come. Perfect. The wall of the armory was burning. The tak was so powerful it had already eaten through the wood. Flames began to lick up the side of the huge wooden structure. We were in business. The armory would soon be blazing.

I couldn’t leave the unconscious guard in there to die, so I quickly dragged him outside and dumped him a safe distance from what was about to be a burning building. If all went well, help would soon arrive to put the flames out and he’d be in no danger. If things went badly, well, I didn’t want to think about that. SoIdidn’t. I ran back inside, grabbed the dado weapon and the second tak brick, then ran out for good.

I sprinted across the training ground, jumped over the berm of dirt, and turned back to watch. Smoke was already filling the air. The tak was doing its job. If this fire wasn’t put out quickly, the whole place would go up. It was exactly what I wanted. I got up and moved quickly back toward the village. I had gotten about halfway back to the stockade when I heard the urgent clanging of a bell. It had to be a fire alarm. Whoever was ringing it wasn’t announcing lunch. The ringing was furious. Instantly people emerged from their houses and looked around nervously. A patrol of Bedoowan knights ran past me, headed for the armory. They knew where the problem was. What they didn’t know was that I was about to cause another problem somewhere else.

I made it back to the stockade easily. The whole way, I passed Bedoowan knights sprinting the other way, toward the burning armory. My hope was that Alder would be left unguarded.

He wasn’t. One guard remained at his post. That was okay. I could handle one guard. The poor guy was about to get a very big surprise. I ran quickly to the back of the stockade, where I gently broke a Silly Putty egg-size chunk off the tak brick and molded it along the upper edge of Alder’s barred window opening.

“Do not use too much,” Alder cautioned as he peered at me from inside. “I have no protection in here.”

I didn’t know how strong the bars were. If I didn’t use enough tak, all we’d do was alert the guard. If I used too much, there wouldn’t be enough left of Alder to break out of anywhere. It wasn’t an exact science. I decided to use only one piece of tak. I pressed the explosive along the entire top edge of the window and jammed a fuse into the soft material.

“Under the bed,” I commanded.

Alder didn’t need to be convinced. Before I could ignite the fuse, he was hidden safely under his cot. At least, I hoped it was safely. I sparked the starter. Ten seconds to detonation. This time it wasn’t about the fire. It was about the boom. When that tak went off, there was no telhng which way the bars would fly, so I ducked around the corner. I put my back to the wall and waited. And waited. It felt like forever. I was second-guessing myself, thinking I should have used less tak when boom! The tak erupted, much more strongly than I expected. I quickly glanced back around the corner to see the square frame of bars flying away from the building, with smoke trailing behind as if it were jet propelled. I sprinted to the window, choking on the smoke.

“Hey!” I called. “You okay?”

Alder’s head popped up from below the charred, gaping hole that was once a window frame. He was smiling. “I guess there is no longer need for secrecy,” he announced with a grin.

Before he could climb out, I was tackled from the side. I never saw it coming. It was a total blindside hit. It took me a second to realize that the guard had heard the explosion too, no big surprise. It wasn’t subtle. He had run around to investigate and jumped me without so much as a “Halt!” or a “What’s going on here?” The guard hit me. I hit the ground. He sat on top of me, pinning my arms with his knees, and wound up to punch me in the head. There was nothing I could do but wince. The punch never came. I looked up cautiously to see Alder looming over the guard. He had caught the guy’s hand at the top of its arc.

“Please do not hit my friend,” he said calmly.

The Bedoowan guard didn’t have time to react. Alder clocked him with his other hand. Simple as that. The guard tumbled off me. He wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he was reeling.

“Now what?” Alder asked as calmly as if we were planning a picnic. The answer came in the form of a shout from the direction of the sea. We turned to see a dozen Bedoowan knights with cross-staves, sprinting directly toward us from the ruins of the castle.

“We get gone,” I said, and ran toward the village.

We both knew the best place to escape to would be the village. With any luck we could get lost within the labyrinth of huts. We needed time to think and to plan.

“The armory is on fire,” I said as we ran.

“Perhaps it will destroy the weapons as well.”

“The building was empty, Alder. The weapons are in play. The war is about to begin.”

Alder’s only response was a quick, dark look.

We hit the village and sprinted along the narrow streets, winding our way on a route we thought would be impossible to follow. There weren’t many people around. They were either out in the fields to work the farms or marching over the mountain to work the war. Alder pointed for me to run down a narrow alleyway of huts. We moved quickly until we came to a central, open courtyard. “Stop here,” he ordered.

We both leaned against one of the wooden buildings to catch our breath.

“The tak mine,” I said, gulping air. “Maybe we can still take it out.”

Alder shook his head. “It would not matter,” he said gravely. “The Bedoowan already have all they need. Once they see the power it gives them, they will never be denied again. If we buried the mine, they would only dig it out again. We cannot turn the clock back.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right. The damage was done.

“It is too late for Denduron,” Alder added. “We cannot stop an army.”

Alder dropped his head in defeat. This was the new turning point for Denduron. The first domino was about to fall, and there was nothing we could do about it.

“I’m sorry” was all I could say. It was a painfully inadequate apology. After having saved it once, Alder’s home territory was now lost.

He frowned. “We cannot let the events that happened here stop us.”

“Agreed,” I said quickly. “I’m not giving up. Not again.”

“Perhaps the Convergence has not yet touched other territories,” Alder offered. “There may still be hope.” I nodded. “We’ve got to get to the flume.”

Zing! An arrow nearly hit me in the face. It stuck in the wall of the hut where we had been resting, not a foot from my head. Alder shoved me out of the way. I hit the ground, rolled, and came up running. We sprinted for a large wooden structure on the far side of the clearing.

Zing! Zing! Arrows flew around us. I swear I could feel the ripple of air as they sped past. None found their mark, but I didn’t think we could dodge them for long. Alder leaped through a large wooden door, into a dark room that my nose told me was a stable. He knew exactly what he was doing. Horses were lined up along the far wall, all with simple saddles and halters.

“Can you ride?” Alder asked.

“Can you keep up with me?” I answered.

I grabbed what looked like a leather saddlebag. I still had the rest of the tak brick I’d used to blast open Alder’s cell. No way I could hold it while I rode, but I didn’t want to give it up. It was the only weapon we had. I quickly but gingerly slipped the chunk of explosive into the bag and tied it to the saddle of a deep brown horse. Alder was already up on his own horse, ready to go.

“Hurry, Pendragon,” he said calmly. Alder didn’t know how to panic.

“Right behind you.”

Alder kicked his ride. The animal responded and bolted for the door. I did the same, clutching my legs so hard I was sure I’d crack ribs. Alder blasted out the door just as the Bedoowan knights arrived. I don’t think they were expecting to face two charging horses, because they scattered in surprise, jumping out of the way to avoid being trampled. I didn’t know where to go. Alder did. I stayed focused on the butt of his horse, urging my own to stay close. Clods of dirt and gravel were kicked up by Alder’s animal. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if my horse cared. We weren’t about to stop. I cringed, expecting to get hit with an arrow from behind. Alder smartly rounded a hut to put a barrier between us and the knights, then galloped on a course directly away from them.

Turned out it wasn’t the knights from the stable that we had to worry about.

Alder’s horse was faster than mine. Or maybe it was because Alder was a better rider than I was. As we broke into the open, he quickly pulled way ahead. In no time there was a gap of about twenty yards between us. Another patrol of knights appeared far off to our left. They were too far away to do anything but shoot arrows, but that was enough. A wave of missiles flew in front of me like the swarm of quig-bees from Ibara. Most missed. One didn’t. Alder’s horse took an arrow square in its left flank. The animal whinnied and reared up. Alder wasn’t ready for that. He rolled backward, falling off the horse and landing square on his back. Alder’s horse wasn’t hurt badly, because it continued to run. The animal would be fine. I wasn’t so sure about Alder.

I shot a look to see the group of knights about fifty yards away and closing. They weren’t moving all that fast-they were busy fumbling to reload their bows. It wouldn’t be long before another round of arrows would be incoming. I hadn’t slowed down. In seconds I would be next to Alder. What would I do? I was an okay rider, but I wasn’t a circus guy. It wasn’t like I could lean down and swoop him up off the ground at a full gallop. I only had a few seconds to make a decision. I had no idea what to do.

Alder solved the problem. When he hit the ground he never stopped moving. He did a complete backward somersault and landed on his feet. It wasn’t like he jumped up with a “Ta da!” or anything. He was shaken and looked pretty wobbly. His balance was obviously off as he struggled to stand straight. But he was aware of everything that was swirling around him. I knew it the instant he glanced over his shoulder, looking for me. He knew where he was. He knew where I was. He needed a ride.

I slowed my horse, not sure how to get Alder on board. Again Alder took care of it. He was a knight. A soldier. He knew horses. He grabbed the back of my saddle and vaulted onto the rear of my horse.

“Go” was all he said.

I kicked my horse and launched back into a gallop…as another wave of arrows arrived. The knights’ timing was off. They were aiming at where we were, not thinking we’d be moving so fast, so quickly. The missiles flew behind us. None came close. We were gone.

“Head for those trees,” Alder said, pointing to a stand of pine trees far ahead. We weren’t moving as fast as before. Two riders on one horse tends to slow things down. Didn’t matter. We weren’t being chased. I maneuvered the strong horse into the trees, but kept moving forward, trying to get as much distance between us and the Milago village as possible.

“You okay?” I asked Alder.

“I have been thrown worse than that” was his understated answer.

The guy was amazing. Nothing got to him. He could be hit by a bus and he’d shrug it off as if it were a tricycle. That is, if there were buses on Denduron. Or tricycles. Whatever. I was glad we were together. I knew that no matter how the final moves of the battle with Saint Dane would play out,

Alder would be by my side. And why not? He didn’t need to be on Denduron anymore.

Neither did I. Denduron was lost. A victory had turned into defeat. What we needed to know was, what other territories were in danger of turning. Zadaa? Eelong? Everything we had done was thrown into doubt because of Saint Dane’s Convergence.

As we climbed the mountain together on the back of that horse, I realized there was yet another concern. I don’t know why it took me so long to get it.

“There are ten territories,” I said to Alder. “Until today we stopped Saint Dane on six of them. Veelox was a loss, but by winning Ibara, I thought it had become a victory. The only solid loss was Quillan…until now.”

“Now they are all in danger of turning,” Alder replied with no emotion.

“That’s not all. There are still two territories that haven’t been targeted. Second and Third Earth. If territories are defined by their turning point, what’s the deal with those two? If Saint Dane’s big plan was to create a convergence of territories, why did he skip those two?”

“Perhaps he did not need them,” Alder offered.

“Or maybe he’s been waiting until now.”

The thought made my stomach twist. That always seemed to happen when reality paid a visit. Especially if it was bad, which was often. All I knew about events on Second Earth had to do with the change in technology that happened because of Forge. Same with Third Earth. As far as I knew, neither had reached a definite turning point. As we spoke, the truth became obvious. Unfortunately.

“It’s about Earth,” I announced soberly. “It’s always been about Earth.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because everything leads there,” I answered, my mind racing. “Second Earth is where Saint Dane got Mark to invent Forge. First Earth is where the evolution of the dados began. The dados attacked Ibara. We took tak from Denduron to battle the dados, which is why things have gone sour here. Dados are everywhere on Quillan, and they were trying to get to First Earth. They’re already on Third Earth, and they’re headed back to Ibara. I’m the lead Traveler. I’m from Second Earth. It’s like Earth is the hub of a wheel. Everything spreads out from there. All the events that have led to the Convergence began on Earth.”

Alder let that sink in, then asked, “What do you believe that means?”

“I think the turning point of either Second or Third Earth might be the turning point for Halla.”

Alder shook his head. “I do not know, Pendragon. For all that I have seen, the concepts of which you speak are still beyond my grasp.”

“Yeah, I’m not far ahead. I’m reaching here, but I think I know what we should do. We’d be wasting our time by going to any other territories. We’ve got to go to the source. We’ve got to see what Saint Dane is doing on Earth.”

“So do we go to Second Earth?”

“No, Third Earth. From there we can use the computers to look back on everything that has happened on Earth. That’s where we’ll find answers.”

Alder didn’t say anything. I wasn’t surprised. He was a simple guy from a primitive society. The ideas I was throwing out were completely alien to him. They weren’t exactly comfortable to me either, but I had been through a lot more than he had. I hoped he would continue to trust me.

We climbed silently for several minutes. The horse was strong. Once we entered the snowfield, the animal barely slowed as it trudged across the icy expanse. Finally, after rolling our dilemma over in his head for the better part of our trek, Alder spoke.

“I do not know if your theory is correct, Pendragon, but I do agree with one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We should not look back. The Convergence has begun. I fear that if we revisit any of the other territories, we may not have the power to change events. Even if we did, what would prevent Saint Dane from manipulating events yet again to create other turning points?”

He was exactly right. It was the reality that had been eating at my stomach since I discovered that Ibara was the future of Veelox. Saint Dane was in control. More than I had ever imagined. He seemed to have the ability to travel between times at will. We only had the power to chase after him and trust that the flumes would put us in the right time. I didn’t know why that was. I didn’t know who made up the rules, but it was the truth. We could be chasing Saint Dane between territories from now until forever, and he would always have the ability to change the rules.

“If we are to stop him,” Alder continued, “we have to understand exactly what his goals are. It is the very essence of warfare. The only way to defeat an enemy is to understand what he wants. Until we do that, we have no hope of victory. We need to learn why we have been fighting this battle.”

Alder may have been a simple guy. He may have not understood modern concepts or technology, but with those few words he had defined our mission perfectly. We had to stop thinking small. This wasn’t about a single territory, or even about ten individual territories. This was about Halla. This was about flumes. About Travelers. About Saint Dane’s ability to change shape. It was about the Travelers being able to heal one another. It was about our being illusions. About traveling through time. It was about Saint Dane saying that he wanted to prove his superiority. We needed to know who he was proving it to. We had to learn it all.

“You’re right,” I declared. “I think we have the best chance of doing that on Third Earth.”

“Then Third Earth is where we will go.”

We heard a distant rumble. The horse stopped, spooked.

“Thunder?” I asked.

More rumbles followed. I looked back at Alder. His eyes were sharp. His hearing focused.

“No,” he answered somberly. “The battle has begun. The Bedoowan have used tak against their brothers. Denduron is lost.”

What we were listening to was the sounds of war. There was no way we could change things for the better on Denduron. Those distant explosions proved it.

“Are we that close to the Lowsee village?” I asked.

“No. It is well beyond the far side of this mountain. That will tell you how devastating the tak is. Right now, people are dying.”

“So is Denduron.”

We listened to the explosions. The power was incredible. The snow beneath us shook. More explosions echoed over the mountains. The snow shook again. And again. Something was wrong. The sound of the explosions and the shaking beneath us weren’t coinciding. There was something else happening.

“Earthquake?” I asked, jittery.

Alder didn’t know. We heard more explosions.

We weren’t the only ones who heard them.

The snow continued to rumble and shift. I realized the real reason for all the shaking a split second before it all came apart. Thirty yards in front of us, the snow started to boil. I saw the surface crack and crumble. A few yards beyond that, more snow shifted. Another area began to roil. It wasn’t the whole surface of the snowfield; it was only in specific areas. Areas where things were buried. Things that were awakened by the sound of exploding tak. An area of snow erupted like an ice-filled volcano, sending sparkling shards into the air. Through the cloud of snow that blew into the sky, I saw the cause.

The quigs were awake.