Arrows of Time (51 page)

For a second the other woman faltered. She hadn’t expected that.

Now!
Kali shouted into his mind.

Teg sent a searing bolt of energy to Le Saint so fast she could never have caught it in time. It would hit the side of her mind—splashing into her consciousness, scrambling her memory and balance, short-circuiting her thoughts. It would have, that is, if she hadn’t had a shield up. He conjured every last bit of his reserves to cut through.

Stop, Teg. She’s down. Don’t kill her.

The last thing he remembered was Kali pulling him into the portal, the temple guards shouting behind him. In the cool darkness of the corridors, he collapsed to the ground.

E
verett stared at the walls. They were old, but not as old as he was. Their plaster, like the skin over his bones, had been scraped smooth, reapplied and retextured again and again. The finished look never reclaimed his youthful vigour. There was no rosy glow, but it covered the cracks and filled the pits. Behind it stood Everett. What stood behind the walls, he didn’t know.

At one time his centuries had seemed like an attribute, but not any more. Things had changed. The cracks reappeared. He followed one now as it meandered through the pale green plaster. It stopped just short of the clock. He let his eyes adjust, waiting for the second hand to catch up. He cleared his throat.

‘Time of death, 1.05 p.m.’

The room was silent save for the drone of the heart monitor, a flat line running across the black screen. Someone took the paddles out of his hands and flipped off the switch. No one else moved. Faces edged his
peripheral vision, silent, twitching. A dam of questions was about to burst and he was the only one standing in the causeway. They’d need his direction and he had to give it to them, but his mind felt frozen, his body numb.

He took off his glasses, pinching the furrow between his eyes. Now it made sense, but it didn’t lessen his disorientation. It didn’t make it any easier to do what must be done. He polished the lenses with the edge of his scrub shirt and replaced them, the room coming back into focus. No one would understand a death, but they had to learn. It was time for them all to face it.

It’s keeping them trapped. Can’t you see that now?
Her voice rang in his head, though he knew it was only a memory. She said she wouldn’t hang around after. After death? He didn’t blame her. With the images of life in other worlds, vibrant worlds where he’d made other choices, filling his mind like a multi-digital display, who would? She’d shown them to him to offer encouragement and to help him understand. He did, now. He also understood the austerity and poverty of this world. Not a poverty of nutrition, but of the soul. Who would stay in a place so devoid of spirit, a place where the inhabitants were all but robotic replicas of human expression? That’s what she’d called him, and the label made him weep.

A replica of human expression
. He shook his head. No one had predicted that their ‘fountain of youth’ would turn into a prison, a place where souls, over time, would fade, losing their lustre for life, love and happiness. Worse still, it happened so slowly, so insidiously, that no one noticed. No one cared. They were going to live forever in a confinement of their own making, never acknowledging they were architect as well as inmate.

She had told him, though. She had made him see.
Without words or narrative she had delivered the images. She’d put them straight into his mind—pictures of trees and flowers and forests, of four-legged creatures like Canie, and some not like him at all, of fish and frogs and fleas. She’d shown him glorious weather patterns, sunsets and mountain peaks. And he had heard their sounds. Angelic music, voices, wind blowing spray from the crest of waves, birds, whales, whispers and wolves—everything missing from his world, this choice, for so long it was forgotten. His Earth had become a cadaver, a ghost town with windows shuttered and streets abandoned, nothing but dust and debris tumbling past—and he was the dust and debris. They all were. This was no way to live a life, let alone an eternity.

She’d shown him yet another world, full of contrast, gloriously bright fields of grain and flowers, dark forests and darker swamps, rumbling mountains and rippling streams, oceans, cities and prairies. This other world was also suffering. Because of his fountain of youth, no children were born in that other place and their cycle of life-death-life failed. He laughed at the irony.

His people, who fervently wanted to preserve existence, were preventing it, trapping the life force until the energy dried up and turned to ash. Suspended animation was not a lifegiver after all. They’d got it wrong, and he was the one who had to set it right.

He had wanted to say, why me? He’d screamed it out to her, but what she’d shown him next made his mouth snap shut. Instead of a protest, he’d squared his shoulders and dipped his head. This was his chance to turn it around. He said, ‘Why, me!’

The stainless steel table reflected the halogen lights, hitting his eyes like a sunbeam. He focused on the hard edge, unable to look elsewhere, unable to turn away. He pulled off his gloves, letting them fall to the floor.
In his peripheral vision he saw his team moving as if in slow motion, turning off monitors, clamping drip sets, folding up instrument packs, collecting rubbish. No one walked away, though. No one left her side. He understood why. This was their first death.

‘Dr Kelly?’

He didn’t reply. His eyes shifted from the table to the delicate wrist of the woman who lay upon it, her hand like a lotus, white fingers curled, red-painted nails pointing towards him. He closed his eyes.

‘Dr Kelly?’ The attendant was next to him, shoulder to shoulder. He appreciated the touch, the contact bringing him back to the present. ‘What happens now?’ The question was outlined on everyone’s face as he scanned the room.

‘Is it too late for Cryo?’ a med student asked.

‘She’s not going there,’ Everett said, after clearing his throat again.

‘I don’t understand. Where, then?’

‘We’ll put together a death kit. Run the procedures and get her down to the morgue.’

A nurse stared up at him. ‘Dr Kelly, we don’t have a morgue.’

‘We do now.’ He felt a wash of relief. Some of his staff had been alive for decades past their centenary, patched together with synthesised donor parts, looking lopsided and taut from repeated plastic surgeries. Their eyes were tired, glazed. Lifeless. Without death, there could be no life. She had explained it to him. Now he had to convince ASSIST, and the rest of the world.

‘What’s a death kit?’ the nurse asked.

‘Get me a lab pack,’ he directed. ‘I’ll show you how this is done.’ He snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. ‘Hally, can you call Admin for me? I want Dr Martin in on this.’

‘Chief of Staff?’

‘Please.’

The door swung wide and a large man appeared, gasping for breath. ‘Dr Kelly? The press are here. What do I do?’

‘Let them in, and cancel my appointments for the rest of the day.’

Everett squinted as the digi-cameras flashed. The press edged into the exam room, throwing questions at him from the second they crossed the threshold. He motioned them closer, covering the corpse with a sheet, calm in the midst of fervour.

‘Dr Kelly. We’ve heard you’ve just pronounced a death. Is there some mistake?’

The room went silent.

‘No mistake,’ he said. ‘She died at 1.05 p.m.’

A barrage of questions erupted and he addressed them, answering each reporter, one at a time.

T
eg awoke; his head was resting easily under a bunched cloak. For a second, he didn’t feel the pain. In that instance he didn’t remember anything but warmth and a sense of peace. He groaned when the second passed.

‘You’re awake.’ Kali laughed softly. ‘I thought I’d have to carry you out of the corridors, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.’

The sense of peace vanished as his memory rushed back—the race to the portal, the wounds from fang and sword, Le Saint’s challenge, his escape with Kreshkali. He groaned again, inside and out.

‘That bad?’ she asked.

‘Worse.’ He shifted onto his side. ‘I feel like I’ve been mauled.’

‘Drink this.’

He tilted his head back, accepting the liquid with its earthy fragrance and bitter aftertaste.

‘More,’ she said, holding the vial up to his lips.

He took another gulp and pulled his head away. ‘I’ll be sick.’

She handed him a waterskin and returned to her vigil by the entrance. ‘Wash it down. Slow sips.’

The water was sweet, though the sour aftertaste remained. ‘Thanks.’

He could see her profile outlined in the dark. She was standing at the mouth of the portal, streams of light rushing by. He tried to get up and yelped.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Give that draught a minute to work.’ She was back at his side now, her cool hands on his face. ‘You need to learn to protect yourself, Teg,’ she said. ‘Your defence is shocking.’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

Her hands were hovering over his wounds. Warm energy radiated from them and the shooting pains along his side and ankle eased. She tapped his spine, his head and around his eyes, chanting quietly as she did. The pain eased further.

‘That’s magical,’ he smiled, catching her hand and forcing her to look at him. She returned his gaze with a flash of fire that made him let go.

‘Drink more.’ She propped his head and held a waterskin to his lips. ‘You’re dry as bark.’

He swallowed, and choked, sitting up and coughing. ‘That’s not water.’ It was much stronger than the first potion she’d given him. His mouth stung, and his throat burned with the harsh taste.

‘I know. Take another sip.’ She held it to his lips.

He took a few more swallows. ‘Am I being punished?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his face pinched. There was something rancid in the concoction. Maybe she’d decided to poison him.

‘You’re being cured, fast. You might also take it as a reminder to avoid getting wounded in the future.’ She
studied his face. ‘Teg, you have a powerful magic. Why are you so reluctant to use it? These wounds were unnecessary.’

He shrugged and looked away.

‘There’s no shame in being a Lupin,’ she said when he didn’t answer. ‘Nor in using the arcane magic. It’s a gift.’ She returned to the mouth of the portal. ‘Please run true,’ she whispered to the Entity. ‘Take us straight to Rosette.’

‘What’s wrong with the portals?’ he asked, relieved to shift the focus off his failings.

‘I don’t know. Someone’s tampering, I think.’

‘Trackers?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not certain. Maybe.’

‘What else could cause them to run erratic?’

‘I need Jarrod to calculate that.’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘Entropy is my guess.’

‘How do you stop it?’

‘The old school answer?’ she said. ‘You don’t.’

He smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re not old school then.’ He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. ‘Kali, it’s not shame that makes me hesitate,’ he finally said, understanding it as if for the first time.

‘What, then?’

‘I don’t actually enjoy injuring others.’

‘Even to protect yourself?’

‘Even that.’

She turned and smiled. ‘Don’t let the Sword Master hear such ideas. You’ll have a philosophical debate on your hands that’ll last aeons.’

He laughed, cringing. ‘I guess I never put it to the test quite like this before.’

‘Perhaps not. But, Teg, the test isn’t over yet.’ She straightened her spine. The whirl of colour rushing past the portal slowed, the blur coming into focus—red plains, cracked land, treeless and desolate save for
the green Gaela apples. She silently thanked the Entity. ‘We’re here, Teg. Can you walk?’

‘Not on two legs.’

‘Then shift. I’m not lugging you all the way to the temple.’

He sighed, focusing his thoughts on his wolf form, and rose on all fours, favouring his near hind leg. He was surprised at how much stronger he felt. Between the potion and his Lupin form, the pain was nearly halved. His emotions were steadier too. He tuned into Kreshkali, sensing their connection. That was all he needed to feel—nothing more, nothing less. He followed her out of the portal and into the intense heat of the day. The apple trees rustled in the wind.

I’m hungry.

‘Good sign, but it’ll have to wait.’ Kreshkali stood in front of the gates, her eyes closed. In a moment the call of ravens filled the air, their jet-black bodies bearing down on them at top speed. They swooped and dived, escorting them through the entrance.

‘Rosette is here.’ She smiled.

Alive?
Teg asked.

‘Not yet.’ She crouched to the ground.
Meet me there.

She rose in the form of a black falcon, overtaking the ravens and disappearing in the distance. The Three Sisters squawked for a moment before shooting off after her. Teg loped, his side in a stitch. He winced, slowing to a trot. He’d been an idiot to let himself be wounded, twice. This wouldn’t go down well.

Teg!

He spun his head around, turning on his haunches.
Hotha?

You’re wounded?

Not badly, and I can explain.

No time. We’re called.

He looked past Hotha and saw the scattered clan of Lupins, black and grey dots on the red earth. They approached slowly, tongues lolling in the heat.

For Rosette?

Hotha dipped his head.
Blood heals blood.
He frowned at Teg’s wounds.
What happened to you?

Long story. Do you remember a woman named Lily?

A deep rumble came from Hotha’s throat.
How could I forget?