Chapter One
“Shit,” Brogan said, then began coughing and trying to catch her breath.
When she did start to calm her breathing, she felt grass beneath her fingertips and saw the sun beating down on her. She let out a large sigh of relief.
“I’m on Earth, I’m on Earth. Thank Goddess.”
Then a wave of nausea hit her so hard that she rolled over on her side and vomited.
“Shit.” It was like she had been tossed in a tumble dryer.
When she looked up, Brogan saw a long stream, surrounded on each side by thick forest. She got up and stumbled over to the water for a drink.
It was then Brogan noticed that this was no ordinary stream. Every yard or so there was a different coloured whirlpool, a bit like the portals she and Balor were flung into. She walked by a few and felt very uneasy. This place where she found herself was so still.
Unearthly still.
No birds in the trees, no animal calls, just the sound of the running water. What was this place? This was not Earth, was it?
Just as she was gathering her thoughts, a blur moved towards her. On reflex she took a step back and stumbled into one of the whirlpools. Brogan was tossed around as she had been before, then again whacked to the grassy ground.
“Fuck,” Brogan said as the wind was knocked out of her again.
At least this time she heard the songs of birds, the calling of animals. She was somewhere more natural.
Brogan rested on all fours a minute, to try to regain her balance, but then the hackles on the back of her neck stood up.
Brogan ran, unsteadily at first, to behind a large rocky outcropping. The first thing she noticed was this was not the place where they’d fought Balor. That had been a large grassy area, yes, but it was enclosed.
Here there were no hills, or trees, or a mountain in the distance. A woman with dark brown hair came running into the clearing, and Brogan gasped. She was wearing brown leggings and a cream top, had a weathered brown leather satchel with the strap across her body, and—most unusual—wore no shoes.
Every part of Brogan’s body tingled, from her toes to her fingertips. Who was this woman?
The woman continued through the clearing until she was out of Brogan’s sight, but then Brogan understood why her hackles had been up. Two people were following the woman, shooting energy weapons.
“She seems a bit overmatched,” Brogan muttered to herself.
Where had she landed? Wherever Brogan was, she felt a huge compulsion to help the woman who was being chased.
Once the pair with the weapons had passed her, she jumped out from the outcropping. When she turned the corner, she saw the woman at a dead end, her back pressed against a rock face.
They were threatening her in some foreign tongue that Brogan couldn’t understand. But the woman wasn’t begging for her life—she was shouting back at them, in a similar language.
She’s got some courage, Brogan thought.
But she had to intervene quickly. She bounded over there and partially shifted to her fangs and flesh-ripping claws. Brogan grabbed one in her fangs and shook him like a chicken, while she hit the other in the head so hard that he was knocked unconscious.
Both were on the ground unmoving, and she looked up at the woman, expecting thanks. Instead, the woman shouted, “Tu da, GallowGlas,” with an angry look on her face.
“Excuse me?”
“Tu da, GallowGlas.”
Whatever this language meant, it wasn’t thank you this woman was saying.
“I don’t understand you,” Brogan said, using large hand gestures.
“Da gath, GallowGlas.”
Whatever she was saying, the woman was angry.
“Da back…you won’t…”
Finally, a few words Brogan could understand. The woman’s language was becoming more understandable the more she spoke. “You won’t what?”
The woman pointed at her with anger in her eyes. “Get back, GallowGlas Wolf.”
“Yes, I’m a wolf, but what is this Gallow Glass?” Brogan asked.
“Who sent you, Wolf?”
Brogan was getting severely pissed off. “No one sent me.”
The woman slipped one hand into her leather bag. “Wolf shit.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I just saved your life,” Brogan said angrily.
“I have been looking after myself and protecting myself from these people all of my life, and you don’t fool me, GallowGlas.”
That was the only word she didn’t understand now. “Look, I fell through this portal and found myself here.”
The woman held her hand up to the stone beside her, and a glowing portal opened up. She gave Brogan a look like it could cut through rock, followed by the most sarcastic looking smile, then jumped through the portal.
That infuriated Brogan. “You’re not getting away that easily.”
Without thinking about the pros or cons, Brogan ran and leapt through the portal milliseconds before it closed behind her.
Brogan felt the instant biting cold before she realized the state she found herself in. She was buried deep in a snow bank.
What the hell was going on? First she’s by a pleasant river with green grass and pleasant green trees, now she was up to her tail in snow.
Brogan started to dig frantically, then realized she didn’t know which way was up or down. A memory came to Brogan, her grandpater telling the kids of one time he was caught in an avalanche in the Scottish mountains when visiting family in the Wulver pack.
He’d shared a disgusting, if not a simple and clever trick: Spit and see which way gravity made it land. The method worked beautifully. Brogan dug herself out and rubbed snow on her face to clean it.
She looked up just in time to see the now most infuriating woman she’d ever had the misfortune to meet going through another window between worlds.
Oh no. “There’s no way you are leaving me here to freeze my tail off.”
The chase was on.
Camber landed on the edge of the marketplace on the dry, hot world of Oipra. She ducked behind a shop. She reached into her leather bag, pulled out a shawl, and draped it around herself, making sure to cover her face from the eyes down.
Most Oiprians wore shawls to protect themselves from the dry heat and sand in the air.
Now she could walk into the marketplace unseen. She smiled at the thought of escaping bounty hunters yet again.
Camber’s life was running away from these hunters, and she had managed to evade them, with close calls along the way. Camber was a Map Keeper, the only one born in generations, and the one who held the power to detect the network of portals between worlds, between universes.
There were known portals that were well used, ones whose locations were lost to time, and those that were obscured by the portal guardians to protect young worlds from civilizations at a more advanced state who might abuse them.
That made the Map Keeper one of the most sought after people in the galaxy, and Camber wasn’t about to get caught.
She walked out from behind the mud brick building and joined the people as they moved through the market.
The shawl gave Camber some anonymity, and it helped that the market was bustling with people busily shopping for what they needed.
Oipra was largely a desert world, with water in very short supply, but you wouldn’t have known that by the rich colours of the fruits and vegetables, not to mention the decent selections of meat.
Food was farmed, animals raised for food, and water gathered on a continent far from the population centres. This continent was controlled by the Abnobians.
The Abnobians, their overlords, brought rain to that continent and allowed food to be grown, then administered it to be sent around the planet.
But at the first sign of troublemaking by the Oiprians, their water and food would be shut off, and so they were enslaved to the Abnobians, who they were conditioned to believe were gods.
Camber walked past two local guards stationed on every corner. She was well practised in passing incognito in any situation. These guards were there to remind the populace to keep to the rules and remember who owned their lives and their families’ lives.
The thought sickened Camber, for Oipra and for all the worlds under the boot of the Abnobian empire.
That was why she fought so hard to keep out of their clutches.
If they had access to her knowledge and her skills as Map Keeper, there would be so many more planets under their control, suffering the pain that brought.
A shout startled her, and she turned to see the wolf following her.
Camber was astonished she had kept up. The wolf must have been following her scent.
People were staring at the wolf’s unusual clothes, and it wouldn’t be long until the guards noticed some disruption going on. Camber couldn’t allow that.
She had to find a way of disguising her scent because the only other portal on this world was heavily guarded by the Abnobians.
If she remembered correctly, she knew the perfect place to go.
When the local guards moved to investigate the commotion her pursuer was creating, Camber ducked behind the next building and made her way to the best place she could think of.