The Last Protector (58 page)

"I'm not sure.” Jape held up the ring. Its center was green, its edges black, and bands of silvery white and blue swirled in between. “I'm afraid we're not quite there yet."

"Jape,” Nalia said softly, “do you trust me? The Orb wants to leave, but it doesn't know how.” She pointed to the pale blue ball hanging calmly in the sky, as if waiting. “You're the only one who can set it free."

Jape looked at the Orb, and then at his ring. “Let's do it."

Nalia laid her hands softly on Jape's head and closed her eyes. Scrornuck watched for any signs of distress, but if anything Jape appeared to be enjoying the experience. After about half a minute, she was done.

"Now what?” Scrornuck asked.

"We wait,” Nalia said. “It shouldn't take long."

"It better not.” Jape nervously watched his ring, where green, silver and blue still fought the blackness. “Five minutes, that's all we've got."

Nalia faced the sky, her eyes closed. “It's stuck.” She grabbed the softscroll. “It needs to know one more thing.” She stabbed the buttons quickly, as if she'd been operating the device all her life. A window appeared, filled with writing in a strange tongue, surrounding several complex mathematical expressions. “What's this part mean?"

"I—I don't know,” Jape stammered. “I don't read Japanese. Mister Saughblade—"

"I'm here.” Scrornuck stared at the unfamiliar writing, and within seconds the Kanji symbols formed into words and sentences. “I think I've got it."

"Quickly."

Scrornuck ran his hand down the page, reciting the text. It was like reading the bridge column—he recognized the words, grammar and sentence structure, but he had no idea what any of it meant. But a steadily broadening smile showed that it made perfect sense to Jape. “Okay,” he said, “let's do it.” Nalia put her hands back on his head and they both closed her eyes. This time, it only took a few seconds. Jape opened his eyes and consulted the scroll. “Three minutes. Two forty-five—"

"Now,” Nalia said softly. Noiselessly, without any fuss, the Orb shimmered briefly, seemed to fold in upon itself, and was gone.

"Well, that should do it,” Jape said. “Two minutes to spare. Not even a close call this time.” He looked at his ring, expecting it to be a pleasant green.

It wasn't.

The jewel still glowed an angry red. “I don't...” He scratched his head. “Something's still wrong."

"Is it me?” Nalia asked nervously.

Jape consulted the blue ring. It was dark. “Try to read my mind."

Nalia's brow furrowed as she strained. “I can't."

"Your powers seem to have disappeared with the Orb. And if it's not you..."

"It's me,” Scrornuck finished.

Jape stared at the messages his rings were flashing and nodded. “It's the microbots. They've changed—picked up programming from the Beast. They don't belong here anymore."

"Can't we go somewhere else?” Nalia asked.

Jape checked the Traveler. “Nothing solves—we're too close to the crossing."

"Then there's only one thing left.” Scrornuck hurriedly searched the box of munitions. “Here we are—Mark 7 Thermal Grenade. This should do the job."

Nalia screamed, realizing what he had in mind. “No! You can't!"

"What choice do I have?” The situation seemed simple and clear to him: he could fire the grenade and save the world at the cost of his own life, or wait for the entire world, including himself and Nalia, to die in the stream crossing. Either way, he was already dead. The realization was oddly liberating.

Jape, tears streaming from his eyes, struggled to speak. “I'm sorry..."

Scrornuck shrugged. “Part of the job—I knew it when I signed up."

Nalia wrapped her arms around him. “I won't let you go! Not now!"

Scrornuck gently but firmly pushed her away. He thought for a second, reached into his sporran and took out the little red prayer book. “Here, you'll need this.” He turned to Jape. “See to it that she's brought up in a proper church."

The Ranger nodded. “I will. Farewell, Mister Saughblade."

Scrornuck shook Jape's hand. “It's been great working with you.” He looked into Nalia's eyes, realizing how desperately he wanted to stay, and whispered, “I'll try to wait for you.” With a sad sigh, he pulled the pin from the grenade, stretched out those beautiful butterfly wings and prepared to launch himself into the sky.

Lights sparkled before his eyes as his vision blurred and faded. His legs gave way and he crumpled to the ground. He heard Jape and Nalia urgently shouting something he couldn't hear over the roaring that filled his head. Her face filled his sight as she pulled the grenade from his unresisting fingers and threw it as far as she could. Seconds later, it went off with a blinding white flash.

The softscroll chimed an insistent alarm as Scrornuck struggled to his feet, suddenly almost blind as something like frost covered his eyes. His skin was at once burning hot, icily cold, and ferociously itchy. Nalia and Jape attacked him, tearing off wings, spikes, claws, and the bony crown on his head. The pieces came off with a stinging sensation, like tape being yanked from a wound.

The scroll's alarm became louder and more urgent. Scrornuck staggered about blindly, fighting to stay upright as somebody pulled at his belt, letting his kilt fall at his feet. A moment later, a jug of cold water was dumped over his head. He blinked madly as the frost on his eyes dissolved and vision returned.

The alarm rose to a continuous wail as Nalia doused him a second time, washing off the coarse white grit that had covered his skin. Jape rubbed him briskly with a rough towel, removing the last of the grit, and together they hustled him toward the skimmer.

Scrornuck could hear nothing over the shriek of the softscroll's alarm as they reached the vehicle. He grabbed its side and hung on as Jape threw a grenade at the pile of discarded clothing and body-parts. The incendiary went off with a brilliant flash and a
whump
that sent Scrornuck sprawling in the sand. He rolled over in time to see the sky darken, from pleasant blue to an angry purple crisscrossed by jagged bolts of lightning. Dark clouds blew in, seemingly from all directions at once.

The streams of time were crossing.

Desert sand, driven by a wind that came from nowhere, stung his skin and brought tears to his eyes. The clouds condensed, swirled, and formed into two immense whirlpools that looked vaguely like eyes, as if God Himself were staring down at them. Leaves blew by—dried, dead autumn leaves, even though it was the middle of summer and the nearest tree was miles away. Fat, white flakes of snow drifted on the wind. He smelled a strong odor of manure, and for a moment he gazed into the eyes of one very confused buffalo.

More lightning crackled between the clouds. Then, in what looked like a kind of cosmic wink, one of the great vortices collapsed upon itself and disappeared. A few final bolts of lightning flashed across the sky, and the other eye vanished as well. The sky returned to a mid-summer blue, and the last of the clouds swirled away to nothing.

It was once again a perfect summer afternoon in Khansous.

Drained, exhausted, barely able to lift his own weight, Scrornuck grabbed a corner of the skimmer and struggled to his feet. Jape danced about, waving his ring, with its gorgeous green emerald, high over his head. Lowering his arms, Jape examined the softscroll. The timer display had stopped at
0:00:01.25.
“That was too close,” he said. “I think I could use a drink."

"Yeah,” Scrornuck said. “A stiff drink—and some food!"

"I don't think you're quite dressed for dinner.” Giggling, Nalia pretended to cover her eyes—and Scrornuck realized he was naked as a jaybird. She laughed out loud and pretended to peek between her fingers before tossing him a towel that that had been lying on the skimmer's floor. “Hey,” she said, as he wrapped the towel around his waist, “what happened to your dragon?” He looked down and saw what she meant—the big tattoo was gone. Only a few specks of faded ink remained.

"Hmm, look at that.” Jape examined Scrornuck's skin and thought hard for several seconds. “I think I know,” he said. “Just before you collapsed, the microbots shut down and burrowed their way out. They must have pushed the tattoo-ink out as they passed through the skin."

"Well, no loss,” Scrornuck said. “This dragon's caused me enough trouble.” He ran his fingers across a stretch of ink-free skin. “Think they knew?"

"Who?"

"The microbots. The things they did—the spikes, the claws, the wings—always appeared just when I needed them. And when I needed them to be gone, they left. It's like they always knew."

"Well, you've got a knack for gadgets,” Jape said. “Maybe you found a way to tell them what you wanted."

Scrornuck raised his right arm slowly. It looked strange without the fiery snake. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they just knew."

Jape chuckled. “Well, a good guest should know when it's time to leave."

Fifteen minutes later they stood atop the dune where they'd camped two days before. Scrornuck dug up the big pack, retrieved his plaid and did the necessary folding and pleating to make it a proper kilt. With this task done, he joined Jape and Nalia in looking at the site of Darklord Castle.

There was no sign that the forest of black towers had ever existed. The moat, apparently fed by artesian water, had risen close to twenty feet, and all signs of the Castle, save one small island, were submerged beneath a sparkling blue lake close to a mile across. A fire burned on the island—not a smoky debris fire, but the clean orange blaze of a broken gas pipe. Scrornuck found it rather pretty.

Despite the stark beauty of the scene, Scrornuck's heart sank as he realized that both the Setron and Ol’ Red were somewhere on the bottom of the lake, buried in the debris of the Castle's destruction. He found a weapon with a telescopic sight in the skimmer, and spent the next several minutes scanning the island and the sand beaches surrounding the lake. Finding nothing, he sadly lowered the scope and whispered, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Then he turned to Jape and Nalia and said, “Come on, let's get some dinner."

Afternoon turned to early evening and the sky lit up in shades of orange, purple and blue as the three sat around a table in the beer garden at the road junction. Jape and Nalia munched snacks and sipped drinks, while Scrornuck shoveled the food down—having lost close to twenty pounds in the last two days, he seemed determined to gain them all back in one meal.

"Well,” the Ranger said, getting out his softscroll and preparing to record notes, “we've saved the world, but the job's not over till the paperwork's done. I've got a report to write, and it's best to hear what happened while the memories are still fresh. Nalia, since Mister Saughblade's stuffing his face, could you go first? Perhaps you could start when you entered the Orb. What did you see?"

"Uh, okay.” Nalia set down her Subtle Evening Rose wine and stared into the distance, gathering her thoughts. “First thing, I found out Draggott was all wrong. There wasn't any machinery inside the Orb, just bits of black ribbon blowing around. I looked for its center, and found a place that was calm and quiet. I—connected myself to it, I guess. I don't think there's any better word. When I did that, I heard voices—the slaves that Draggott had connected to the Orb were speaking.” She shuddered. “He'd put a little bit of their mind in the Orb, left a bigger part in their bodies, and thrown away the rest. There were good people in there, a lot of them. The bartender from Syb's, for one.” She turned to Scrornuck and smiled. “Did you know he's the one who brought you a six-pack when you were in Draggott's prison?"

Scrornuck, his mouth full of a big beef sandwich, shook his head. He hadn't really gotten a look at his benefactor.

"And then there was the archer—the one who wouldn't shoot us when we went up the tower? He was a Squatter, and he remembered how you bought him a meal when we left the city. He refused to harm us, no matter how much Draggott tried to make him."

Scrornuck washed the sandwich down with about half a beer. “So good deeds really do go unpunished now and then."

"Now and then,” Jape said. “What happened next?"

"The soldiers just wanted to be made whole again,” she said, “but too much was already lost; I couldn't return their minds to their bodies. So, I tried something else: I reached out to a soldier's body and sucked every last bit of
self
I could find inside it into the Orb."

"I saw that,” Scrornuck said, around a mouthful of French fries. “That's when the first guy fell over dead."

She nodded. “Dead outside, but alive in the Orb. And once I'd learned how to do that trick, it wasn't too hard to teach it to all the other soldiers. That's when the rest of the army died, at least on the outside. Inside the Orb, they were as whole as they could make themselves. It wasn't all that much, but it was all we could do.

"And once they were back together, the people in the Orb told me their stories.” She stopped abruptly. “No, that's not right. They didn't have to tell me; I just saw them all, in an instant. Some of it was awful. Draggott had Squatters kidnapped, and he fed them to the Orb just to make it grow. One time he killed a dozen captives, just stabbed them, one after another, for no reason other than to teach the Captain the right way to kill somebody. Another time...” She stopped again. Her hands shook with disgust and rage as she took a gulp of her wine.

"You don't have to give me all the details,” Jape said. “Let's move on."

"Okay.” She set her wine glass down again. “When I saw the soldiers’ memories, I got mad. We all got mad. And so, since Draggott had said he wanted to be connected to the Orb...” She fondled the glass and smiled, a cold, cruel smile. “We granted his request. It wasn't easy. He was strong, and he was fighting for his life. But I had a thousand soldiers on my side.” She took another sip of her wine. “We got him."

"And what did you do with him?"

"My plan was simply to tear his mind into pieces so tiny they'd never be able to come back together, kind of like you two did with the unkillable monster. But when I got a look, there was something strange about him. It was almost like two minds in one person, all tangled up in each other. One was unspeakably vile, but the other...” She blushed momentarily, looking a bit embarrassed. “Sorry. I tried really hard not to look into your mind, Jape, but it leaked, and I had a sort of a picture of what it looks like.” She swiped a fry from Scrornuck's plate and chewed thoughtfully as she searched for the right words. “The other part of Draggott's mind looked a lot like yours, and I just couldn't bring myself to destroy it. So, I separated them. That wasn't easy; they were so tangled up together. I let the soldiers rip the bad parts into tiny shreds, and just let the good part drift away."