Awaking to pink and purple spotting her screwed-shut eyelids, and her jaw aching from unconscious grinding to drown out the hurt surging head to toe, Kiera willed the pain away by Inkiru discipline and cleaned her soul with slow breaths, but the flowery spots did not subside, no matter how she rubbed her eyes, fluttered her watering eyelids, or shook her head.
Crimson shades were shot with violet grooves and a trickle of indigo, a luminous glow captured in the rippling pool lapping up to the floor. The brilliant, beckoning gate vortex that had consumed the soil of the Sargan Vos was here embedded in a phosphorescent cave wall, from which, Kiera guessed, she had fallen to the floor, passing out from exhaustion and the shock of crossing over.
Where was the ogress? They had passed through together. Having planted her feet to receive the ogress's charge, the desert had betrayed her, swelling a high dune that subsided just as suddenly, pitching them through the gate.
When she did not see her weapon, she did not trust the glimmering cave light, but groped until she found it buried to the hilt in the goopy clay of the pool. Extracting her sword from the muck, then wiping it on her tattered cloak, she slid it home, then pulled the belt through the scabbard loop, the better to prod the stones with the scabbarded blade.
By the time she had circled the cave, her shoulders and biceps throbbed from her persistent clouting of the wall, and she was even hungrier. Again she focused her Inkiru discipline. While she had taken what she could carry of their stores from the Zalgyne wreckage, it was neither chivalrous nor kind to eat her future queen's food, and, short of famishment that would prevent her from fulfilling her duty, she must wait.
She had seen them, Kiera told herself. Loren and Berangere had passed through here as she had battled the ogress. And if the ogress had no doubt left her for dead, then followed their trail, the exit was here to be found. Despite this strong encouragment, and the faint sound of running water, her scabbard rattled and scraped along cave rock finding neither a telltale echo nor a hollow wide enough to be worth exploring.
When the phosphorescence dimmed and the walls pinched too tight for her to shimmy through, Kiera returned to the pool. Gazing past its oozy banks, ripples sliding in rings, and ocassional bubbles trailing up to bob and pop upon the skin of water, she followed the phosphorescent glint as it plumbed the depths to a cavernous bottom, where a sandle was tangled in seaweed.
Those foolish girls. Had the fox girl no pity for her princess, who could surely not swim with a broken arm? Casting aside her sword, Kiera unbuttoned the thongs of her armor, stripped away her armaments, then tiptoed into the cool ooze, so focused on steeling herself for the plunge that she thought nothing of the sudden shadow displacing the luminous aura of the walls. When she dove in, she was only slightly less startled by the icy shock of the water than the hot grasp enveloping her foot.
Thrashing her feet so hard that she spun, Kiera took in the cruel grin glinting in the phosphorescence, gargled the water in her startled panic, thrust backwards with strident, flailing kicks, and scraped her forehead on the stone ceiling of the subterranean pool.
Without her Inkiru discipline, Kiera's instincts would have murdered her as she descended into darkness. She fought the urge to wipe the blood from her eyes, for it was pitch black anyway, then struggled with the urge to breathe, for there was nothing but water, and more water, in the cold stone coffin through which she shuddered, and shimmied, her chest knotted on the greedy flame of her last breath, which pushed and forced against her teeth, thirsty to be drowned and entombed in this underground urn of water and stone, and it was only when the night blue water, striped with her streaming blood, began to be splotched again with violet and pink, that she tore through the blinding gold, clawing the sunlit surface and roaring breath after breath until a lazy current swept her on a bank where she clutched wet sand, dragged herself to her knees, watched her bloody forehead spatter her clenched, gritty fingers, then sunk into darkness.
When gold and white streaked Kiera's groggy, squinting eyelids, she raised her shaking hand to fan her eyes from the sun, which sneered, snarling a snaggly smile...no, that was not right. The ogress! Rolling to her side, Kiera's attempt to scurry away stopped in a sudden, violent convulsion, hacking brackish water that drizzled down as she was hoisted mid-air, her hauberk pinched tight in its fist.
When Kiera vomited to the sand, the leering ogress leaned over, pried open Kiera's squinting eye, flicked away a speck of puke, and snickered. "I surrender."
While Kiera was dumbstruck for a moment, she was unable to respond for a long minute of squealing and wheezing. "Just make it quick, ogre. Don't mock me."
"Make it quick? What are you? Fast food? What do you recommend, a nibble above the kneecap? Your crunchy toes? Your addled jelly brains might be tasty."
When Kiera sulked, and did not respond, the ogress continued, "if you won't accept my surrender, how about a truce?"
"Why now?" croaked Kiera.
"I'm Jezera by the way. Why now? I could do with worse companions. If we liked each other, you might jaw my ear off, but since we hate each other, there's no danger of that."
"I won't tell you anything."
"As if you could," snorted the ogress. "You don't know where they are any more than I do."
Kiera rolled over, then sat up. Wet sand clumped to her fingers and pressed seawater through her leggings and the backseat of her tunic, turning them from midnight blue to black. While they were overshadowed by the rocky spur at their backs, sunshine gleamed on sails flapping across the waves, baked swimmers splashing in the surf, and glinted on white shells and smooth, sea-polished stones studding the beach.
"You've been here before." Kiera's voice trailed from the woozy puddle she made on the floor. When she tottered to her feet, she had an extra helping of vertigo, being no more than rib high on the hulking ogress. While she had felt confident facing the beast in Ephremian armor, being half-naked, disarmed, and more overshadowed by the monster than the rocks, Kiera had never felt so small than in that moment.
"Did I say that?" grumbled the ogress.
"Not in so many words," said Kiera. "But you did." Kiera took a deep breath. While uncertain of her proposed ally, it was not because the ogress was untrustworthy—she expected that, and supposed the ogress knew Kiera would cut and run when it suited her—but because of the ogrish appetite, famed for being as unslakeable as it was nondiscriminating. While Kiera pondered how to leave the ogress at her earliest opportunity, what no doubt gnawed at the monster was whether to eat her roasted or raw. "I'm Kiera."
The ogress snickered.
"What did I say?"
"It's always funny."
"What's funny?"
"That moment when the meat is talking." The ogress snorted. "I thought you were human. What's a Kiera?"
"You're hilarious." Groaning, Kiera put one hand to her face, closed her eyes, then peeked through her fingers, being uncertain that the beast might not be sizing her up into so many mouthfuls at that very moment. The pasty-white ogress looked so unruffled as to be nearly masklike, aside from her somber, staring eyes. Was she waiting for her question to be answered? "You're serious." When the ogress said nothing, Kiera ranted, "I was introducing myself. That's my name." As the ogress continued to level her blank stare, Kiera began to wonder. Surely ogres had names? "Did you hear me?"
"Was there a question?"
"What's your name?"
"You never asked me that."
"Then I just did."
"All I could hear was my stomach grumbling. It's Jezera."
Kiera swallowed and looked up. While the massive, hungry ogress had a mean, furrowed brow, and a mouthful of fangs the size of Kiera's fingers, she seemed, somehow, less ferocious than when they battled to and fro on the shifting soil of the Sargan Vos. It was as if some vital essence had dribbled out of her, as if her carnivore blood had cooled, gelled, and turned to cheese.
"Are you alright?"
Jezera rasped a brutal, joyous laugh that sounded like she had discovered a bag of puppies to munch. "Better than you, Ephremian."
"I meant are you feeling right?"
"Would I tell you? We crossed swords an hour ago."
"That battlefield was on another world. Who knows how they keep time here." Kiera wondered if passage through the gate had changed her as well. "How do I look?"
"Like a shrimp without its shell. Are we going to find your princess?"
"If we do—find them, I mean—what are your intentions?"
"My intentions, it says," jeered the ogress. "As if I'm asking for her hand in marriage. I only mean to find your hidden princess, wherever she's squirreled away in this hole of a world."
"And when we find her?"
"Do you want me to swear? So long as we're on Earth, I'll do no harm to your princess."
"But you'll slay me and the fox, then ransom Berangere to Queen Suvani."
"Fine. So long as we're on Earth," the ogress emphrasized with a roar, "I'll do no harm to you, your princess, or her fox friend."
"You mean a truce."
"Yes, you stupid shrimp," scoffed Jezera. "As if I'd change sides after a Zalgyne crash, scouring a desert, and falling through a gate to another world. Not that I like Queen Suvani very much. All things considered, I like you a bit more."
"You're mocking me."
"Don't get me wrong, small fry. I don't like you much. But your queen makes an awful first impression."
"She's not my queen."
"Do you always have to be so squirrelly? It was the same way when we were fighting-- you wouldn't let anything land. Stand still while I'm complimenting you," groused the ogress. "You think bigger than you look. And you're dashing. That should do it."
"Thank you." Kiera began to feel oddly embarrassed by the tyrannical, mountainous monster.
"Don't mention it. That said, I have my reputation to think of, you know. I won't have my work ethic questioned, nor my professionalism, so as long as I'm on Queen Suvani's payroll, you and I can be only friendly enemies. Frienemies, the Earthers call it. They have a name for everything. "
"Is money what holds you to that tyrant?"
Jezera sighed and scowled. "It must be those little ears. I said money and loyalty, but yes, other than that, what else is there? Even sharing a good book or a good bottle of wine won't bind you like money or sworn loyalty. The last page or the last drop comes faster than you think."
"But you say you have no great love for Suvani."
"None whatsoever. My loyalty is a matter of professional courtesy."
"Are you saying your loyalty can be bought?"
For answer, Jezera snickered.
"You think I'm joking," said Kiera. "Now it is you who shall hear my praise, ogress. You're skilled, strong, relentless, and most importantly, you have a quick mind. Not only do you have a better ear for wit, you can turn a better phrase than I can. As an Ephremian officer charged with the protection of the royal family, I have the power to hire who I wish. Not only will I pay your price, I could even commission you."
"Oh, no—nothing that easy."
"What do you mean?"
"I won't have anyone saying I'm a turncoat, or opportunistic. If Suvani fires me, I'm your girl, but until then, we're mortal enemies, if joined at the moment by our happy alliance."
Kiera sighed. "Couldn't you just call her names?"
"Indeed I could. I did! And she hired me anyway. I doubt she'd fire me now even if I mocked her until her ears turned blood-red. What are you moping for?"
"Let's be honest, Jezera."
"I thought we already were."
"Indeed. We are. Let's continue to be. However useful this alliance is to you now, it can only be motivated by a desire to keep me close, not only to eliminate any competition with your own mission, but to keep me at hand until you're ready to dispense with your ally."
"Do you know how ravenous I am? I could be much less generous." The ogress looked at Kiera with a meaningful hunger. "I don't even share french fries, small fry."
"Thank you for your honesty. In the same spirit, I thought it fair to let you know that I'm onto you. Buying you off was my best hope, but not my last one."
"We won't have any hope if your princess and her pet are mowed down by a car. Where would they go?"
"To the water."
"What could they hope to find there?"
"They're barefoot children, a hundred feet from water. Even if they weren't dried out by the Sargan Vos, they'd head for the waves. And Berangere is smart—since she couldn't know which of us would follow them through the gate, the waves would wash away their tracks."
"You're right," grumbled the ogress. "But why would they still be here? This beach can't be that wide."
"They'll put as much distance as possible between themselves and you, but not so far that they couldn't see the cave mouth."
"They're hanging around in the hope that you won?" The laugh was plump with scorn and a harrowing mouthful of gnashing teeth that didn't quite mesh. "You said your princess was smart!"
After a sniff and a curt shake of her head, Kiera headed along the sandy beach, looking for small footprints. Sand burned Kiera's bare soles and itched the soft, white spots between her toes. Heading away from a patch of tall grasses fringing a small inlet, Kiera walked the beach path towards the well-trodden seashore littered with footprints, stones and shells both rough and polished, wood splinters, sodden newspaper pulp, crumbling sandcastles, crabs scuttling faster than the lapping waves, tiny fish darting in the shallows, and a few stray people who paid no mind to the cool, ripping breeze. While teens and tykes waded in the shoals, their parents laid on lawn chairs with eyes blacked out by smudged, smoky lenses, and other indolent sunbathers lay on faded towels.
As Kiera took it in, looking for her injured princess and her fox friend, a thin stream wet her chin and cheek, then subsided through a tiny hole in the sand.
"It's not so different here, Kiera." Having trudged to just behind her, Jezera loomed considerably over Kiera's head, but none of the beachgoers stirred from their lazy funks.
No one even stared.
"You mean that?" Kiera gestured to the broad wavy blue of the horizon, which rippled and flickered.
"I meant the mollusk that sprayed you. On our beaches, we draw them out with a massive bladed sieve, roast them in melted butter and salt, then crunch them in the shell. These weaklings have something like it called popcorn, which might be slightly easier on your baby teeth."
"Ogres live near the ocean? I didn't know that."
While both Earth and Alsantia were once gigantic supercontinents, they had diverged over millions of years: while Earth's tectonic plate activity had pulled its land masses into seven distinct continents, Alsantia was still one supercontinent, which meant most of its inhabitants had never seen the ocean, living tens of thousands of miles away from seashore.
As Ephremia was a landlocked nation, Kiera had never waded in the Alsantian ocean,
and had only seen it through the windshield of the Zalgyne until last week, when Berangere ordered her to retrieve Loren. On the cool northern beach where they had rescued the fox girl, Kiera had gazed into the immense sea glittering with the light of two moons, and forgot where, and nearly who, she was, until the princess's gentle command to depart.
"As our land touches ocean only along a tiny strip a few miles wide, many ogres live their lives without knowing it's there." At the crack and gory slobber of Jezera's jaws, Kiera couldn't help turning a sidelong glance toward the ogress, who picked tiny white mollusks from a handful of sand, chewed the gritty, bloody mouthfuls, and smiled contentedly. "Its better with butter and salt, but raw you get all the fishiness, not to mention the squishiness,and the crackliness is just the same, and on top of that, it is much healthier."
"Just like back home, eh?" said Kiera. "They must have ogres here."
"Why do you say that?" mumbled Jezera around a faceful of mollusks.
"To them, you're normal."
"Am I so different?" Pink mollusk juice dripped down the ogress's bone white chin.
"Yes!" said Kiera. "You're huge! Plus, several shades whiter, like you're bleached."
"Thank you for not saying whale," glowered Jezera. "But you might as well have."
"And your hands—they look like all thumbs! No offense."
"None taken." Jezera grumbled, squinted, and directed a begrudging look at the petite warrior. If looks could squish, Kiera would be mollusk jelly, spread so thin she might fit on an ogre-sized cracker. "Earth people are ridiculous, Kiera. Those lazy eyes are not unintelligent, just apathetic and indifferent. When I draw near, I get the fear I'm accustomed to in Alsantia, only to find they won't talk to me for fear of my 'condition.' While they don't think I'm contagious, difference and ugliness makes them so uncomfortable that I'm shunned with incredible urgency, giving me wthe perfect disguise, the mask of a pariah—it's as if they're eager not to use the mind or eyes with which they're born."
"They think you're a human with a disorder." Kiera scoffed. "Earth people are incredibly stupid, Jezera."
When the ogress smiled, it rippled over to the petite Ephremian, and both doubled over with laughter. Although it wasn't very funny, it was a massive relief to dissipate the monstrous tension
burgeoning between her and Jezera. An hour ago they were trying to stick swords in each other
on the shifting soil of the Sargan Vos, and while their new backdrop was an improvement—having exchanged an infamous desolate desert for a nameless breezy beach—Kiera remained so untrusting of the ogress that sometimes she forgot to exhale, and it was only now that this tension finally seeped away, with her hands on her knees, and her laughing face again sprayed by buried mollusks. If Jezera was amused before, now the ogress rollicked back and forth on the sand, clutching her ribs.
Kiera snorted good-naturedly, wiped her face, then stopped mid-wipe to fan her eyes. "Is that Berangere?"
Even on her knees, the ogress was taller than Kiera. Squinting where Kiera pointed, Jezera scowled. "Maybe. Humans have such small features. They're the right height and age, though."
"It must be them," Kiera shouted as she ran ahead, "they're running!"
Jezera thumped along after her, calling, "why?"
"They saw us laughing! They don't think you're helping me," panted Kiera. "They think I'm helping you! They think I'm the traitor!"
"I'm not surprised," Jezera snorted. "I did break your princess's arm."
Kiera glowered darkly. While she had not forgotten that—and neither did she want to forget it, for such an insult to her princess must be avenged—she didn't want to be an open book to Jezera either,
and wouldn't have worn her expressions so openly if she was not in the lead in a foot chase, with the ogress puffing several yards back.
"Why are you helping?" The ogress's hollow panting was like a wheezy, whistling cave wind. "I thought I would have to twist your arm, Ephremian."
Even if they weren't Berangere and Loren, the two girls had reason to run from an ogress and a frightfully bedraggled woman, and gave Kiera and Jezera a merry chase, darting up sandy slopes and through exploding sand castles, crashing into bushes, grazing trees, and flicking heavy boughs to sway and rustle, obscuring Kiera's vision, already blurry from hunger and exhaustion and bleary from near-drowning in cold seawater. Ducking a careening branch, Kiera nearly twisted her ankle in deep gravel
sliding between gnarled roots that descended the hill to a massive lot packed with metal and glass vehicles. Finding her footing in the scurrying, grinding gravel, she dashed down, then staggered into a half-trot down an aisle of cars, with the ogress lumbering after, dragging her enormous shadow over glinting windows.
If not so seamless as Ephremian vessels—a Zalgyne seemed more insect than machine at first glance—even the smallest carriages there had a sleek design projecting force and strength. Even driverless and parked, these motorcars seemed harnessed to violent thoughts of killing distances and days.
"Did you see where they went?" grumbled Jezera.
"No. They must still be here."
"Try the doors." Having wrenched open one door, the ogress rattled a black contraption dangling restraining belts, which looked like it might transport monkeys, then the one across from it, which produced a steady stream of shiny foil and crumpled paper, and a paper cup with a plastic lid venting a sour smelling water that fizzed as it spilled along the strange black material that seemed less like stone than baked brick. As she went along the row, Jezera left the doors hanging, and her mouth ajar, venting curses in such a coarsely accented Ephremian that at first Kiera did not recognize her own tongue.
"Don't they have locks on Earth?"
"It takes half a thought to turn a key, or click a button." Jezera snickered. " As two humans have half a brain between them...wait! Here's one." With a snarl, and a snap of her arm that jangled the car side to side on its wheels, she gouged the door from its chassis, threw the mangled door just short of Kiera's toes, then thrust her huge head inside. "Come out, you thorny little urchins."
"What is? Some kind of exhibition?" As she tried one door after another, Kiera closed the doors quietly as she went.
"This?" snorted Jezera. When she turned from the still-shuddering car, it looked not parked but wrecked. "This is normal."
"Normal? There's more than one of these?"
"Don't they have parking in Ephremia?"
"Of course! We have carriage houses, stables, and Zalgyne hangars."
"This is just like those."
While these unlocked cars had no wings, Kiera wondered why they didn't fly off, parked in a lot without walls. Human nature was savage and greedy enough, and it was nothing compared to ogrish nature, which now picked the doors off as easily as a cruel child might pick the wings off of flies. "In Ephremia, we value our possessions."
"Take another aisle, Ephremian. If we cut out this idle chatter, I could do a row of cars by myself."
Had she spotted Berangere? "No thanks."
"Did I hear you correctly?" snarled Jezera.
"If there was an understanding that I was to be the weaker partner in our alliance, I missed that part."
"Understanding?" the ogress sneered, "What does your instinct tell you?" Having riven another door free, and glaring at Kiera heedless of the shards the shattered window spat at her forearm, grazing thin, red scratches in her tough hide, the roaring ogress crushed the squeaking, jangling metal into a massive sphere. "Like my wreckage ball?" sneered Jezera. "Just as easily a wrecking ball for toppling proud Ephremians."
Ducking between parked cars, Kiera glimpsed the flushed, worried faces of Loren and Berangere huddled in a backseat, until a blanket flapped over them, showing only Berangere's peeking fingertips. Rapping the window lightly, Kiera bolted into the next aisle and stood where she could keep their hiding place in the corner of her eye. "Jezeera! Come quick!"
When the glowering ogress crashed through the parked cars, cracking the windows with her pumping elbows, Kiera shouted "that way!" then darted away as fast as she could, turning only once to see the ogress fling herself forward with more heat than horsepower, not bothering to run around the creaking cars, but grinding them under her hurtles and stomps.
When the ogress passed her with a contemptuous snort, Kiera could not feel smug that Jezera was playing into her hand, for Kiera was truly weary. There was no need to pretend to slack off, when she panted so loud that spittle mingled with her ragged blowing, and her vision was fogged by her own hot breath. As Jezera's head bobbed ahead, dipping out of sight, Kiera somehow brought her sluggish blood to a fresh boil, dashed back to the car, and found the back seats crushed and dimpled, the blanket rumpled on the floor, and no sign of the girls.
When Jezera's roar boomed from the other side of the lot, Loren jumped up in a truck bed two aisles over, and Berangere yanked her back with a thump.
"Ouch!"
On meeting her eyes, the girls froze, but when Kiera dashed toward them, they leaped out the back gate and headed towards the beach.
"No!" Kiera hissed. "She's faster. She'll catch you!"
When they stopped, and eyed her warily, she grabbed their elbows and pulled them behind a conspicuously drab motorcar. Whereas the other cars were gleaming, boxy, and seemed minted that morning, this anomaly was a dreary olive-green, pocked with rust, scarred by peeling paint, and built like a boat, stretching well past its parking spot into the aisle. It looked less like a vehicle than a battle-scarred chariot, back from the front line.
"Kiera..."
"There's no time for accusations, apologies, or whatever you're trying to say. We have to go."
"Kiera..."
"She'll hear us!"
"The keys!" Berangere hissed, pointing through the rolled-down window to a key ring dangling below the steering wheel.
Kiera pulled them down as the ogress's shadow swept down the aisle. "You can drive these things?"
While Loren's giggle was an airy, cheery thing, the stark contrast made their plight seem darker. "She's only eleven. And she has a broken arm." Her dimpled smile was impish. "Don't look at me. Not only am I even younger, but my feet won't reach the pedals. "
"You could drive us," said Berangere. "It must be easier than flying a Zalgyne. You turn the key until the engine starts, then use the wheel to drive it. The pedals are for the brake and the gas."
Creaking open the ancient, rusty door, Kiera crept inside the car. "Which is which?"
"I'm not sure." Berangere filed in the back seat behind Loren. "You're a pilot!"
"What do these strange letters mean?"
"I only know R is for reverse."
"You should have started with that," said Kiera. "I might have plowed into the car in front of us." Kiera breathed a deep sigh. Her hands shook from exhaustion, the courage she had mustered fighting the ogress, and the numbing terror of waking half-naked, half-drowned, and weaponless on another world, under the shadow of Jezera.
When she turned the key, the boom of the engine was echoed by the roar of the charging ogress, who vaulted cars in her urgency.
Rattling the rigid lever to R, Kiera stamped down to no effect, then stomped the other pedal, jerking the car in a rapid rush that yawwed out into the aisle, sending the lunging ogress face forward into their vacated parking space.
Clenching the wheel in one hand, Kiera turned her head, and yelled "get down!" As the girls ducked their heads, she continued the vehicle's lunatic, rearward swerve down a cross aisle.
Since I'm getting somewhere, I may as well keep this up.
The doughty Ephremian warrior navigated the entire lot backwards, until they backed between two buses flanking the lot entrance, whirled the car with a spin of the handwheel, and, only sparing a glance at the shifting lever, grasped it, wrenched it randomly, and stomped the throttle. When the car bit the ground slowly, she cursed, ratcheted it again, and when the antique motorcar burst ahead with an exhilirating momentum, blasting her face with a gust of sea air and a puff of engine vapor that, for a moment, made her feel not only wide awake, but in her element, she barked a madcap laugh
While neither in a Zalgyne, nor on Alsantia, there was something soothing about being behind the dashboard of a powerful motor, as if it voiced her drives, her life wish, and her future, in throwing the ogress into her horizon.
When Berangere laid her head beside the head rest, Kiera said, "sit back, your highness. As these outlanders are not so outlandish as not to implement restraining belts, you had better belt yourself in."
"I was checking the gas."
"What's that?"
"The fuel."
Kiera frowned. "I should have guessed. These aren't magic vehicles."
"Of course not," said Berangere. "Most magic on Earth is either entertainment or phony, or both, and what little real magic I've seen was either a secret or brought here by an Alsantian."
"You've seen real magic? I doubt that."
"What do you mean."
"Even on Alsantia, real magic is rare."
"But I've seen it! The gateway, talking animals, the Zalgyne, The Ashflowers, the Sargan Vos."
"Have you seen any spellcasting?"
"No?" As Berangere sounded uncertain, she spoke her no with such ambiguous inflection that it sounded like she wanted to use, all at once, a period, an exclamation point, and a question mark.
"Then you haven't seen any real magic, your highness. You've only seen its effects. Watching comets fall is hardly science, either. It's only recreation without rigorous practice, such as conscientious measurement. Magic, like science, is observation plus practice."
"You know how magic works?" Glee leaped into Loren's voice.
"Of course." Kiera could not keep a hint of pride from her voice. "I am Ephremian."
"So am I," said Berangere, "shouldn't you teach me the basics?"
"Why not?" said Kiera. "It might keep me awake. But first, tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"The gasp."
"What? Oh—the gas. It's a little more than half a tank."
"Will that take us where we need to go?"
"Where are we going? For that matter, where are we now? Draden was nowhere near the ocean."
"This isn't home," said Loren, her sad frown downcast over a map she now unfolded. "What language is this?"
"I don't even know the letters," said Berangere.
"Answer me this, then. How long can we travel at this speed?" While sand and gravel mingled on the shoulder of the road, the beach was already far behind, and the road, flanked with stalks of wheat on one side and corn on the other, shot toward a city's strange, rectangular spires, which towered, then loomed as they approached. While the city looked near, Kiera was enough of a veteran traveler to know that was illusory, and they were likely hours from arrival.
"Let's stop for gas," said Berangere, "just to be sure."
"I'm presuming that costs coin here."
"Yes, it costs money." As the girls rifled the back seat, Kiera brushed through a rumpled towel on the seat beside her, and her fingers closed on a latched handpurse she pried open with thumb and forefinger.
"It's just bric-a-brac." Kiera thrust the purse into the back seat.
"What are these?" Loren waved crumpled paper bills. "Euros? Pesos? Rupees?"
"We would be able to read the letters," said Berangere.
"Here's a thought," said Kiera. "Are you sure this is Earth?"
"It has to be," said Loren. "We passed through the gate."
"It sure isn't Alsantia," said Berangere.
"Are there only two worlds?"
"How would we know?" said Loren.
"Of course not," said Berangere. "The Many Worlds theory says there are countless worlds."
"Interesting," said Kiera. "You must tell me about this theory, your highness. After I tell you the basics of magic. While I'm curious to hear of Many Worlds, you asked first, and it's only fair. Moreover, you will need to know—if we ever make our way back to Ephremia."
"Why shouldn't we?" said Berangere. "If worst comes to worst, we'll double back to the beach and go the long way, through the portal and the Sargan Vos, and on board the right Zalgyne."
"There are too many maybes in your plan B, your highness," said Kiera.
"Fine. What's Plan A?"
"First things first."
"What's before A? Double A? Lowercase a?"
"I mean only that you should first understand the laws of magic, as only by magical logic, magical application, or magical experimentation, are we certain to return to Ephremia."
"I'm excited already," said Berangere.
"I'm already confused," said Loren, with a bewildered expression. "While I'd like to be excited, do we really want to go back to Alsantia?"
"Loren," said Berangere, "if this is Earth, where do we call home? And if it's some other world--" She pointed to a triple-seat hovercycle that passed with a roaring shuff-shuff-shuff of its air jets. "—there's nothing here for us either. At least I'm a princess in Ephremia."
"I'm only 'your grace' there." Loren wrinkled her nose. "And only for as long as I keep pretending to be human. Maybe I've reached my limit? Who knows? How long could an apple pretend to be a butterfly?"
"You're my friend, Loren, no matter your shape." By now, Kiera had
Having puzzled out the rear view mirror, Kiera glanced up. The look of determination in Berangere's eyes said she had only recently passed through her own doubts about the fox-girl to arrive at this resolve.
"Not only everything you see, but everything you know or imagine, is reducible to a common element. While ancient philsophers believed light is the source of everything, our magicians and scientists posit a finer foundation, and whatever It is, everything expands from It in an inexhaustible stream. Whether It is infinite or finite depends on your perspective in time; while there is no end to existence, the segment that marks our lives in the timeline is a definitely finite set of resources that we manipulate to construct our experiences and fill our lives. While you are no doubt already aware of time and space, the dynavoir and the cognivoir are other, subtle resources crafted by magicians."
At the silence in the back seat, Kiera flicked her eyes to the rear view mirror, angling her neck so that she saw the girls and not the road.
While Loren sprawled over the middle seat, snoozing on Berangere's shoulder, the princess's
unclouded eyes were fixed on a faraway point. As the silence continued, her meditative look drifted to the rearview mirror, where their eyes locked.
"When magicians cast spells and artificers build devices, they tap the dynavoir. When a Zalgyne flies, its sparks furl from the dynavoir."
"Doesn't it run out?"
"While the dynavoir replenishes itself, some mages warn that the exploitation of magic in Suvani's empire exceeds the supply. Then there are the dynavores."
"What are dynavores? I think of dinosaurs."
Once Berangere explained dinosaurs, and demonstrated a Tyrranosaurus Rex by drawing up her fists in mock claws, Kiera laughed. "Nothing so fierce, but potentially much more deadly. Actually, you've seen their effect first hand."
"I have? Where?"
"In the Sargan Vos. The Ashflowers might be destructive, but they didn't do all that."
"But we didn't see any dynavores. Did we?"
"Dynavores are tiny parasites that consume magic. They softened up the Sargan Vos for the Ashflowers."
Berangere looked very serious. "We have a place like that on Earth. Africa was as green as the other continent until the Sahara desert spread. I've seen movies online in which the Earth becomes a desert from global warming. Will the dynavores, unchecked, make all of Alsantia a Sargan Vos?"
"I don't know. If so, it's a long way off.
"Shouldn't you be more concerned?"
"This is me being concerned." While Kiera said this with the soberest expression imaginable, her princess snorted a laugh.
"What's the cognivoir?" asked Berangere.
"It's a finer stream, suited for the exchange of knowledge and information."
"Like the internet."
"Is that what they use on Earth to exchange ideas?"
"Yes. Why not tap into this cognivoir now? Tell us where we are?"
"Yes and no," sighed Kiera. "Tapping the cognivoir was not only my first lesson in wizardry, it's become so second nature that I've already checked it here a half-dozen times. There's nothing—actually, not precisely nothing, but a faint static indicating faroff activity, either in distance or time. I can only use it to deposit my ideas."
"Wait!" said Berangere. "You upload your thoughts and ideas to a magical cloud?"
"Cloud? Is that a metaphor? Why a cloud?"
"That's what they call it here. Or there, I mean. I think we can rule out being on Earth." She pointed to a strange structure, apparently constructed of nothing but gleaming, gridlocked laser light.
"While much looks the same, huge differences trump superficial similarities. Even Alsantia and Ephremia have more similarities than differences, and we fought a war."
"Are there also cognivores? That consume the cognivoir?"
"Only pure speculation," chuckled Kiera.
"Maybe that's happened here," said Beranger. "And on Earth."
"Just as the gates can contaminate the dynavoir, the cognivoir can definitely be polluted, not only by noise, but by toxic ideas."
"Maybe that's where bad dreams come from," said Berangere.
"Unlikely," said Kiera, "but it is sometimes where they go, when powerful mages conjure a nightmare freakish enough to infect reality"
"Many worlds," yawned Berangere.
"What was that?"
Kiera got no response. As the girls dozed, and hopefully sowed sweet dreams that didn't pollute the desolate cognivoir of this outlandish world with otherworldly nightmares, Kiera mulled over the past day, then turned to their clouded future.
While Kiera had never understood their purpose, Earth gateways were an indisputable fact, given that her princess was snuck through and raised on Earth. But why a gate to this world? Finding the question opaque and enigmatic from every angle, she turned to the world flitting past her window, now so shadowy that she could barely see the dashboard.
The gas! As she meditated, the gas line had dwindled to a hair above empty.
As the setting sun reddened, then blued, the horizon, sinking deeper and deeper until a cool violet settled on the countryside, the wooded fields began to alternate with settled stretches of dome houses.
The fuel line dipped past empty before she saw the filling station, where glossier vehicles clustered around posts inset with gleaming screens that ticked off numbers. As she pulled up to one of the posts, an attendant barged from a garage, wiped his brow, shook his head, smiled, and waved a six-fingered, furry hand.
Now she could see the differences; not that they weren't human, per se, but they looked like they took after ogrish ancestors, their blocky, hairy mitts more like monstrous feet than human hands. Otherwise, the resemblance to Earth and Alsantian humans was near-flawless. His tan complexion was streaked with sweat, and his brown hair with gray. One blocky, six-fingered hand clutched an unfamiliar tool, which seemed a bunch of senselessly-joined flanges, each topped with a different widget.
Just as she realized he was talking to her, his voice raised to a comical emphasis which only underscored his gibberish.
Kiera's translation spell was by now so habitual that after activating it first thing in the morning, she often forgot it was in effect while speaking to her Earth-born princess. To adjust this previously-cast spell, she had only to insert a clause containing one syllable of the unknown language.
"Kirton {agrel} varu von treba zevik varu plaxin. Better?"
"Is what better?" growled the mechanic. "If you understand what I'm saying, say so, and don't make fools out of us."
"It was a long day at the beach," she said. "I hope I didn't pick something up."
"Like that car?" Suspicion stilted his already hostile tone another notch. "Is that yours?"
"Of course she is," said Kiera, "what do you mean?"
"Anyone with a 3002 Voxis knows she takes petrol." The mechanic narrowed his eyes. "Come on—is this your dad's? Taking it for a joyride?"
"How did you know?" Faking an arch smile, Kiera raised an eyebrow. "She's drained, and I need to get her home." This was true, when applied to Berangere. Kiera hated to lie. "Where are the petrol pumps?"
"That's an antique, miss. We don't have them anymore. We service synaptic engines."
Whatever that was, Kiera sighed. It couldn't be easy, could it? "What do I do?" she wailed, playing her role of irresponsible teen to the hilt.
"Calm down, miss. While we took out the pumps fifteen years ago, we keep a little petrol her for antique roadsters like your dad's. If..." He wagged a finger. "...I remembered to reorder." As he headed in the garage, he called, "just wait there."
"Kiera." Loren whispered from the back seat of the Voxis.
Kiera sidled to the window. "There's no reason to show yourself, your grace. I'm simply filling this vehicle."
"Here." Loren yawned as she extended the purse.
Kiera rifled through the money. While her spell translated the letters and numbers, they were jumbled in a nonsensical pattern. Were they small bills or a small fortune? "We might need more. Can you scrounge for more?" In realizing she had asked her princess's best friend to stoop to an ignoble, illegal act, she relaxed her guardedness toward the fox girl, smiled, and added, "your grace."
When silence was her answer, Kiera peered through the window.
Loren's snoring head was now in Berangere's lap, somehow looking comfortable despite the twisted seat belt biting into her waist.
"Your grace?" Kiera growled.
"I found it," came the mechanic's voice.
As Kiera turned, she blocked the open window. While it was highly unlikely he was on Suvani's payroll, or that anyone here had any designs on them, why give him gossip, when Jezera might stop to top off her own purloined motorcar?
Kiera breathed a sign of relief. It was such a huge jug that he rolled it over on a wheeled cart. "It's less than half a tank for that old beast," said the mechanic, "but it should get you to Kulver."
"Perfect," said Kiera. "How much do we owe you?" She realized her mistake as she said it. Until then, there had been no we—she had approached him alone, while the girls slumbered.
The mechanic only shrugged his shoulders, wiped his brow as if the effort of making this sale was overwhelming, and said, "Now it may seem like a lot, but I hate to let this go for less than forty drammas a chrun."
While Kiera did not know if it was a fair price, she was not raised a fool, and well knew the bluster of mechanics. In need of the whole jug, and having uncertain funds, she must drive down the price.
"That seems high."
"You think? Do you know another station within a mile of here? If your antque can make it that far."
"I'm only saying," she said, "you wouldn't want that kind of reputation, would you?"
"What reputation," he said darkly. "This isn't even my store."
"Well, I'm little more than a girl, and—"
He cut her off. "Thirty drammas," he said firmly. "That's as low as I can go. Say what you will. Even honest businessmen have to make a profit."
While Kiera took time, as if to consider, she had no way of knowing whether she could afford even one chrun, whatever that was. While she knew the denominations of the bills, she didn't know what unit of currency they stood for, only that they totaled eighty-five. If that was drammas, she wouldn't be able to buy three chrun. What if a chrun was less than a trepele?
Having threatened to malign his character, it would be risky to trust him, but what choice did she have? She hoped the mechanic was a man of integrity.
"I'm afraid I've been playing a little game with you," she said.
"If you mean your insinuations, I paid them no mind."
"No," said Kiera. "Well, yes. I didn't really mean that. I meant our haggling. Your language is new to me, and I'm lost in your money. What's a dramma?" Fanning the purse wide, and holding it at arm's length, she added, "take what you think is fair."
The mechanic peered in the wallet, then eyed her sidelong. "How much do you want?"
"All of it?"
"It's lucky you broke down here." His smile was ingratiating as he took a single bill from the purse. "Another man might have taken everything, and asked for an IOU besides." Having wheeled the handcart to the antique Voxis, he stood by the fuel port, one hand resting on the siphon feeding fuel to the tank, While only a hand's breadth from the window, he fanned his eyes with his other hand and stared at the distant horizon.
"Do you see that?" he asked.
When Kiera turned, she swayed, feeling the full weight of her exhaustion. Her hands clamped to the hood.
While night had nearly settled in, shifting from violet to midnight blue salted with glinting stars, the horizon seemed to unfurl bright red sails. "Is that fire?"
"Unless sunset's shifting into reverse," said the mechanic wryly.
As the siphon trickled in their tank, Kiera's brow began to sweat. "Have you seen this before?"
"Never," yawned the mechanic. "Sorry. Long day's work. I wouldn't worry. It's only some trick of the weather or the stars."
While Kiera did not know how Jezera lit this destructive blaze, after seeing the monster's knack for devastation, she was certain this deadly firestorm was the ogress in their wake.
Kiera hated siphons. If sometimes they were the only tool for the task, such as when liquids pooled in hard to reach places, they were insufferably slow, and in the royal hangar, she delegated such tasks to her underlings. Now their life might hang on a siphon.
"Let me help you." Stepping forward before he could reply, Kiera whipped the tube free, hoisted the jug, and poured it directly into the Voxis. While petite, and wearier than she had ever been, Kiera was toughened by hangar-work, sparring, and wrestling the torpid controls of the Zalgyne. The stream tapered so neatly into the gas port that she didn't lose a drop.
"Put that down," barked the mechanic. "That's eighty klug. You'll pull something."
"Almost." Kiera set down the jug. "There. Thank you for your help."
In moments, the thin flame at the horizon had leaped and furled to a wall of fire, slowly advancing on the suburb. When the mechanic backed toward the garage, the hand cart flopped over, and the empty jug echoed as it shook its last droplets onto the lot.
Having clambered into the car, Kiera turned her head to check on the sleeping girls, grunted, grumbled, then turned the ignition key. The car rolled out of the lot, then down the dark road overshadowed by the conflagration advancing from the rear horizon.
Through the windshield, a new nimbus of light shimmered as she drove toward the neon dawn of the strange city. From the top of the rise, it seemed a monolithic, monotonous place, but as they neared it in truth, the bright city seemed forested with blue stone. The pursuing fire dimmed at the outskirts, then faded as they drove into the towers clumped in groves.
While the buildings seemed ordered, chaotic streets were studded with metal cylinders, wooden posts, and flashing lights, and cars were parked at every intersection in labyrinthine circles that Kiera guessed were for throttling traffic.
"Your majesty," said Kiera. "Your grace."
The stirring girls groaned, moaned, cried, and denied Kiera. "No! Everything hurts!" cried Loren.
"You're not the one with a broken arm," grumbled Berangere. "It's so bright! How long did we sleep!"
"A few hours."
"A few hours!"
"Maybe we can find you a real bed. It's still night."
"But it's so bright!"
"That's the city. We're here."
"Where's here?"
Kiera laughed. "I forget. But it doesn't matter."
"Why?"
"Whatever we need to know, we can learn by translation."
"Do we have time? Isn't she still on our tail?"
"It's a spell. Haven't you wondered how I understand you?"
"It nagged me, actually," said Berangere, with an exasperated look. "Just because we live on parallel worlds, it doesn't mean our languages, or even our thoughts, are parallel. So many things should be different. As you have one big continent, and we have several, not only our beginnings, but our languages, should be much different from those on Alsantia."
"Ephremia."
"I meant the world. Or the continent, if you wish."
"But Alsantian is much like your language. No matter how much diverged between your history and mine, we are connected by that linguistic coincidence."
"By an astronomical impossibility!"
"Not in an infinite number of worlds, and a creator who isn't so much as playing dice with creation as doing so with a gusto that a gambling addict might shudder to see."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Nevertheless, infinite worlds are a fact. That said, Ephremian is very different from your language or Alsantian. Despite many points of similarity, such as our atmospheres, soil, common elements, and human competition and pollution, our worlds also flower with divergences, differences, and variations. Ephremia is one of these." Kiera smiled in the rear view mirror.
Having parked in the labyrinthine traffic circle, Kiera got out of the car, opened the rear door,
and held it for Princess Berangere.
"Why are we stopping?"
"Because we don't know where we're going."
"I thought you had an idea of where to go?"
"If you're asking me, as far away from that ogress as possible," said Loren.
"I'd agree," said Kiera, "if we had a Zalgyne, not this antique slurping fossil fuels."
"Then where to now?" asked Berangere.
"I already told you," said Kiera. "It shouldn't be too hard to find beds. Let's hope we have enough for a room."
Berangere rolled her eyes upward. "Or that these hotels don't expect credit cards."
"Since we might be flagged for one reason or another, whether for not using the right form of payment, or for our ragged, outlandish attire, we will avoid upscale establishments. Even if we lucked into a small fortune."
"Kiera," Berangere said evenly, "having slept in the backs of cars and Zalgynes, and before that, my ramshackle bed in the Mansion of the Shining Prince, I'll take anything, not that a pillow wouldn't be nice."
"I'll take anything at all," yawned Loren. "Bear is my pillow."
"I'm not your pillow," grumbled Berangere.
"You know I am." Loren's smile peeked through a face flushed with exhaustion, her rumpled hair plastered to her sweaty brow. "There's no sense grumbling about it. Considering we're on yet another world, I'm more certain you're my pillow than that the sun will rise."
Having led them through the maze of parking spaces to a turnstile exit, Kiera grabbed Berangere and Loren's hands, waited as a middle-aged lady slipped her card into a slot, then barged past, knocking her off balance.
"Rude!" she shouted, but they had already leapt from sidewalk to crosswalk, dodging cars whistling and whirring past, their eerie gliding unlike the humming throb of a Zalgyne.
"We don't need to run!" shouted Berangere.
Coming to a stop on the other side of the street, Kiera ignored the shouts, the unearthly whiz of traffic, and her royal majesty, whom she yanked toward the next corner.
Headlights, blinking street lamps, and storefront signs lit by searing pinks and blues could not be avoided, for when Kiera averted her eyes, their shocking brilliance was reflected in oil-streaked puddles and shining slicks.
"Where are we going?" Loren dragged her feet to little effect against the relentless tread of the doughty warrior.
"We just had this conversation. There may be something wrong with your memories," said Kiera, "all due respect, your grace. Your highness." Having adjusted to the glare, Kiera's eyes flicked over the various signs and storefronts, and as her ears adjusted to the deafening roar of traffic, she began to hear snippets of conversation.
Just as her spell was translating, second by second, every stray cipher into something intelligble, so was their every movement being converted, moment by moment, into gossip.
"Sainted lords, look at those beggars," said one.
"There should be a law," sniffed another.
"There is a law." This one pried from her stuffed purse a gleaming screen so absurdly tiny in her monstrous oven-mitt of a hand that it seemed embedded in the fleshy cube.
"Don't call the guard," said the first, "have no you pity?"
"It is a pity," said the caller. "It's a disgrace, the way they blight our fair city."
"They? I'm blacker than they are." The second raised her chin in such an indignant staredown
that it drew Kiera's eyes to the show.
"Why would I care? Don't be stupid, it's the poor I despise—and the unintelligent, which to me is the same thing. And incompetent bureaucracies." She fumed and scowled at her dimmed screen.
"No answer?"
"'All connects engaged.' As if they have anything better to do. Nothing ever happens in Crossyx."
Their bickering was pounded into a murmur by the crackling rumble of the shaking, blue towers, then silenced by the sparking sizzle of electricity which shivered up the buildings, crowned their penthouses, and drew all eyes together in rapt fear.
When the skyline dissolved in a shimmering roar that furled forward in a billowing, pyroclastic cloud, rooftops spinning like shrapnel, and other distorted shadows flung in the windblown char, Kiera grabbed Berangere and Loren's hands and darted down steps leading under the sidewalk to a clacketing, screeching clamor that could not quite drown out the sinking screams of shock, horror and pain.
Now the steps swarmed with a rushing mob, taking the steps two, three steps at a time, even an aged lady whose walker lunged step by step, occasionally swatting the urgent, human swarm that threatened to upset her proud, hobbling bearing.
"Help her—she'll be overrun!" When Loren yanked Kiera's hand, it seemed the buried fox was clawing its way out of the girl. While this ferocity taxed Kiera's exhausted body, she held firm.
"No, your grace. We must get the Princess aboard."
For they now pushed through the swelling crush of people mobbing the strange conveyance made of clasped horseless cars. Windows embedded in coach walls showed panicked people,
whose fierce, clenched faces now matched their ogre fists. Some of those clawing for seats were streaked with blood.
When Kiera shouldered through their savage eyes and spit-flecked, screaming mouths, the human wall shuddered back, then shoved, then erupted with balled fists, one rocking her temple and another slugging her ribs, and as she bit down on the hot mouthful of air until her lip seeped blood down her chin, she felt first the bloody fringe of rage, then passed through the red curtain of wrath.
Pushing Loren and Berangere the last yard, Kiera fell like a storm on the cowardly throng,
which now gave way before her, the first ranks felled by fists like ax blows, cleaving through cheek to bone or driving upward through gut or cracked ribs, while the rest fell back from fear, their footfalls scurrying aside, seizing them with a silence and stillness that drew even more of the surging mob, until the fearful railed back, their faces twisted in grimacing fright, and their backs pressed like a dike against the burgeoning masses, as if it was better to be trampled than face those berserk fists.
Except for one face, the cruel smile that, for all its monstrousness, was a picture of calm to contrast with the human animals lunging for the wheeled cage that was the train. Jutting from the human heap, the head charged with a serene smile for Kiera, while the ogress under it knocked the snarling cowards flat, spinning, and flying. There was an obscene grace to the flung bodies as they hurtled in all directions, each collision causing a pile of tangled people.
"Go!" Kiera shoved Berangere, in complete disregard of her broken arm, through the packed boarders onto the vehicle. Turning to Loren, she seethed, "make yourself useful, your grace! These animals are showing you up!"
When Loren quailed from her, Kiera wondered what a fright she must look. Even fighting Jezera, she had not let the berserk strike, and plunder her sanity when she needed it most. But there was no time to unwind now—she could only unravel, or coil tighter. Given time to sigh, she would sink to her knees in exhaustion.
Having hoisted Loren behind Berangere, Kiera turned toward the advancing ogress.
Without a weapon, she didn't stand much of a chance. Unable to reach her huge opponent's eyes, ears, or throat, short of a lucky jump, she only had one shot. Though this dismal situation doubled down as the linked cars slid along their tracks, bearing her princess away, her berserker fury floated a bloodthirsty grin to her face. Kiera hadn't felt this buouyant since she completed her apprenticeship, and auditioned before the Ephremian King and Queen.
Battle, like stagecraft, machines, and magic, was a matter of timing. Even when the ogress's shadow slid over hers, Kiera stood her ground. Even when Jezera's leer stretched wider than Kiera's waistline, Kiera waited. When she smelled the fetid, ogrish breath, she lunged forward.