Chapter Ten #2
“Any Halcin enclaves near here would be suspect.” Shadach looked out at the woods beyond the cave, seeming to scrutinise their location.
He had said last night that he’d know come daylight where they were.
Aoife hoped that had been true. “I think we’re on the outer Eastern lands just outside the Emperor’s City.
That looks like Foresight Ridge.” Shadach pointed to a hilltop in the distance laced in green.
“There is a Halcin enclave just beyond there, but that’s the first place Aristen will look. ”
They were between a rock and a hard place. Wonderful. “Right … how do we get out of this?”
Shadach was silent, his expression sombre. “I’m not sure.” Then, with a little more hope, he said, “Yet. I’m not sure yet.”
Aoife nodded, trying to mirror his hope back to him. Hope she did not feel. Was this what the Gates intended? For her to be on the run the rest of her life?
~*~
Aristen wasn’t going to feel safe until Aoife was dead. Or she was gone in such a way that she was as good as dead. Shadach may not have known how to fix their situation yet, but Aoife did. She could think of one way to forever disappear and not be dead: go back through the Gates.
Go home.
That made the most sense, didn’t it? Mum would be disappointed in her for giving up on an experiment halfway through, but it wasn’t as if she was going to tell her family about this little bit of world jumping.
They’d think she was completely mad.
Unless, of course, she summoned the Gates again and proved herself sane.
That kind of scientific discovery would be one way to shut up her condescending little brother once and for all: “Oh, you discovered a new theorem? That’s cute.
I discovered a whole new dimension.” But Aoife couldn’t think about that yet.
There were far too many terrible futures that could yet unfold.
The problem was Aoife didn’t know how to get home.
She had tried, and repeatedly failed, to remember the poem that had summoned the Gates in the first place.
She had racked her brain nearly every step of their journey on this God-forsaken road.
Aoife trudged behind Shadach. The dusty road was long.
Endless, if Aoife had been inclined to put an adjective to it.
Her feet hurt, the soles of her slim boots too thin to be worth their leather.
If that’s what they were made of. Did this world have cows?
“Are you sure this temple will be safe?” Aoife said. The wide open plains of dust and dirt on either side of them made Aoife feel anything but safe. She preferred having the safety of tree cover.
“Honestly, I’m not sure about anything. But it’s our best option.” Shadach looked every bit the rugged, would-be emperor he was as he walked through the surrounding veils of darkness. His clothes were now dry, his stride strong and sure, despite his uncertain words.
When they’d first left the cave, they’d gone south, but had quickly come upon soldiers. A lot of soldiers. They’d turned back and gone westward. After a bit of aimless wandering, Shadach had had the idea to go to a particular temple. One that was a two days journey by foot.
“Won’t this temple report back to the High Priestess?” A speck of dirt landed in Aoife’s eye. Tears dripped down her cheek as she tried to fish it out.
“The First Temple of Lust is somewhat autonomous. All its priestesses, including its head priestess, are Xana. They don’t particularly like the Halcin, but I’m hoping they dislike the High Priestess and her corruption more.”
Xana. Halcin. Head Priestess. High Priestess.
The First Temple of Lust. The floating darkness.
It would have been nice if the Gates had given her a beginners guide to the Kingdom of Shadows.
There were too many things about this world Aoife didn’t know, didn’t understand.
But she was unlikely to ever get answers, considering she was going home. Somehow.
Somehow, she needed to get home.
“Have you been to the Forgotten Lands?” Shadach said. The words were as decadent as Swiss chocolate on his lips, and Aoife’s mind went to last night. To the panting, to the passion. What else could he do with those luscious lips of his?
“Never,” Aoife said.
Why was it so hot all of a sudden? Aoife tried to fight the desire pulsating through her as Shadach’s fierce, seductive eyes took her in.
Let my body succumb to lust most grand, that I may know the other half of my soul even in a far away land, played in Aoife’s head.
The only line of the summoning she could remember with perfect clarity.
Except Shadach was not ‘the other half’ of her soul.
Her family wouldn’t have been the least bit impressed with him. He wasn’t even STEM.
“I can’t say I blame you,” he said. What were they talking about?
She needed to redirect the conversation. To calm the fire in her blood. She needed a dousing of ice-cold logic.
A glob of floating darkness brushed past Aoife’s ear and she ducked, swatting it away like a fly. She couldn’t be sure, she might have imagined it, but she thought it hissed at her. Like a diabolical shadow kitten.
“Are these things sentient?” Aoife inadvertently kicked up a bit of dirt, the tiny particles forming a mist that splattered her clothes. She thought she heard the blob hiss again, but this time it sounded more like a laugh.
Shadach glanced at her as they walked, Aoife’s body rushing hot.
“These things?” he said.
“The floating darkness.” Ice. Think of ice. Ice fishing. Ice water. Ice baths.
“The floating … do you mean the Shadows?”
Shadows. Of course. People called them Shadows here, even if floating darkness was more descriptive.
It took Aoife a moment to realise she hadn’t responded, distracted as she was by her pounding heart.
Shadach was staring at her, looking as if she’d told him she was from another dimension.
That look did more to stifle the heat in her than any ice bath.
“I tend to call them ‘floating darkness’,” she said quickly.
“But everyone calls them Shadows.” His words were cautious. His shadow and ice eyes looked at her, around her, as if searching for something.
“I’m not from here.” Aoife tried to smile brightly. Disarmingly. “Like I told you in the pub.”
“You mean the tavern?”
“Right. Tavern. I just call them ‘floating darkness’ most of the time.”
“Yes, but the Shadows is what we’re known for.
Seeing as we’re the Kingdom of Shadows.” A note of suspicion hung in Shadach’s voice, verging on accusation.
Aoife really should have asked that waitress to clarify what country she was in.
She had only mentioned the city. “Exactly how far away is this Atlantic place you’re from? ”
“Really, really far.” The last thing Aoife needed was for him to think she was a head case. He might decide she wasn’t worth the trouble of saving before she found a way home.
“Beyond the Kingdom of Tears?”
“Way beyond.” Aoife fidgeted with her dress then stopped. She was looking guilty and she wasn’t even sure of what.
“The Fields of Blood?”
Was that a real name of a real place? “Sort of. It’s near there. Disputed territory.” Oh lovely. She was improvising. Nothing good happened when she improvised.
Shadach stared at something above her head before looking back at her. “What’s it called?”
“Ireland. Like I said before.” She should have said the “Bone Islands” or something. That sounded like a more plausible name in this world.
“I’ve never heard of it.” Shadach’s suspicious tone was marred by confusion, his brow furrowing. “What language do they speak there?”
What language? Who cared about language? “English.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Aoife laughed. “What do you mean? It’s what we’re speaking.”
This time, Shadach laughed. “We’re speaking Selatian, last I checked.”
Aoife paused. She paused again. And then she paused some more.
Selatian. Were they speaking another language and Aoife hadn’t noticed? How was that possible?
I believe your culture calls it “magic,” echoed in Aoife’s mind. And then, I made a place for you. That’s what the Gates had said. What if they had made more than just a place? What if they had given her a language and a history appropriate to this world?
“Am I …” Aoife wasn’t sure how to ask this question without it sounding horribly, horribly strange. “Am I a Selatian?”
Shadach’s face was the picture of befuddlement. “Do you not know what you are?”
“I mean … do I seem like it? To you.”
“Selatian is the language. Selats are the people. You don’t seem like a language to me, no.” His laugh was gentle, but guarded. “Are there Selats in this Ireland of yours?”
“I don’t think so. We’re called ‘Irish’.”
Shadach said nothing for a moment, watching the air around her as if waiting for something. Aoife glanced up then looked over each shoulder, trying to find what he was searching for.
“Interesting,” he finally said.
Aoife nodded in agreement, not knowing what else to say. He still looked confused, but at least he didn’t seem like he was accusing her of anything. Not like he had when she’d called the Shadows “floating darkness.”
Speaking of which.
“You never answered my question,” she said.
“Your question?”
“If the floating dar—, the Shadows, are sentient.”
A soft breeze picked up, twirling bits of dust around Aoife and Shadach, the wide open plains stretching out endlessly.
There was no one to hear them or see them save for the Shadows, and a furry creature that looked like a land-based platypus the size of a mole.
The animal poked out of the dirt, had a look around, then burrowed back beneath.
“No one is certain,” Shadach said. “Some think they are. Some think they are not.”
“What do you think?” Aoife watched a land platypus launch itself into the dirt, back legs flailing in the air as it tried to dig down, down, down.