8 Gone is the Witch (42 page)

Believing he looked enough like an officer, h
e strolled onto the compound proud as a peacock and ordered the others to let us pass.

Surprisingly, they
did. The four of us ran out of there as fast as we could. We met up with Ursula on the other side of the drawbridge and waited there for Carlos.

“What the hell is taking him?” asked
Tony. “I thought he was right behind us.”

“
He was,” I said. “But look at him now. I think he’s giving them orders.”

In his effort to play up the role
as best he could, Carlos decided he should act authoritatively. He barked out commands ordering the guards up in the tower to switch places with the men walking the battlements. He then told the blacksmiths stoking the fires to dowse their flames because they were making too much smoke.

“And don’t use water!” I heard him
yell. When someone asked him what they should use, he shouted out, “Pee on it!”

Finally, and this is what happens when you let
the brobble seed go to your head, he ordered the gatekeepers to secure the gate and drawbridge and then burn the place down.

“
The enemy is coming,” he told them. “We must not let the fortress fall into their hands.”

He then
began calmly backing out through the gates. He was only about halfway across the drawbridge when the head fell off the stick and rolled into the mote. The soldiers at the gates didn’t see it fall, but they heard the splash.

When they
turned and looked, they saw the headless officer backing down the planks as if nothing happened.

Their immediate response was to reopen the gates, which they did.
When Ursula saw them approaching, she hurried out onto the drawbridge and splayed her hands in the air.

“Cease thee
heathens and lay ye weapons down,” she commanded. “Lest I chop thy heads and strike thee dead where ye be.” She pointed at Carlos. “Walk thee this way to the sound of my voice and know what blood doth spill doth spare the blood of thine own kind.”

The guards
quickly dropped their weapons and backed away. I stepped out onto the drawbridge with Ursula and offered up my own two cents worth.

“Better do
as she says, assholes. She’s a powerful witch. You see what she did to your superior. She can do it to you, too, in a blink. So just keep on backing up. Close the gates and raise the drawbridge.”

“
Wait till we be off,” Ursula added.

“Yes, of course. I thought that was implied.”

After escorting Carlos off the drawbridge, I hollered back, “And don’t forget to burn the place down, or we’ll be back to do it for you!”

Ursula raised h
er fist in the air and shook it. “Heed thy word lest it be forgotten. The wrath of vengeance shall befall thee!”

She started to turn away,
but then whipped back and added, “Assholes!”

Chapter Twenty-four

Heavy
plumes of thick black smoke rolled off the horizon as we cleared the second hill beyond the fortress. We weren’t any closer to home than when we first arrived at the ES, yet just knowing Doctor Lowell was dead and Leona was in our company, gave our journey a sense of accomplishment. I know Leona felt it. Though the rest of us, dirty, hungry, and tired, had nothing much to smile about, she could barely contain hers.

“Le
ona,” I said, “you seem happy.”

We had stopped
at a quiet stream to soak our feet and quench our thirst, though not necessarily in that order. Jerome lay on his side, under a sprawling broad-leaf shrub, blending in so well it took me a minute to realize he was even there.

“Oh, but I am
happy,” Leona replied. “I have not had so much happy for a very long time.”

“How do you mean?”

She regarded me with a curious stare. “Because of my incarnation.”

“Your what
, dear?”

Tony said, “I think she means incarceration.”

“Ah, sí. Gracias. For mi incarceration. Perhaps for a witch, a year is not so much time, but for me...” She let it go at that.

I looked at Tony. I
knew he and I were thinking the same thing. He said to her, “Leona, just how long do you believe Doctor Lowell held you there in that fortress?”

She rolled her eyes softly and
offered a simple shrug. “I do not know, but a long time is for sure.”

“Guess.”

“I think maybe for one year and some months.”

“How do you know?
I mean because none of us seem to have a grip of the whole time space thing here.”

She looked at Ursula and me. “You know.”

“I know?” I said, pointing to myself. “How would I know?”

Her eyes moved to Tony and Carlos, but only for a moment before finding comfort again in mine.

“Because of that time.”

“What time?”

Ursula said, “Methinks she speaks of that time when a woman’s friend doth visit.”

“Ooh.
That time. I get it.”

Carlos
asked, “You had visitors at the castle?”

“Carlos.
” Tony gave him a look to shut him down.

“Leona
.” I took her hand. “Let me get this straight. By counting your periods, you estimate you’ve been up in that room for over a year?”

“
Sí, and some months.”

“Oh, you poor
thing. It’s only been a few days since––”

“Lilith.
” Tony pitched that same tone at me that he used on Carlos. If I hadn’t been so damn tired, I’d have pitched something back at him. But, I was, so I let it drop. He said to Leona, “I have another question.”

She smiled timidly. “
Sí?”

“How did Doctor Lowell get you here?”

“Here?”

“To the Eighth Sphere. You do know that’s where you
are, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“How did he do it? Do you know?”

“Sí, he told me.”

“And?”

“
The doctor discovered… how you say, rasgón?”

“
Rasgón?”

Carlos said, “She means rip,
or tear.”

“Sí, a tear,
un rasgón en la tela del universo.”

“A tear in the universe.”

“Exactamente! This tear, it is a hole, no? It is left after from when you sent him here.”

“
Leftover,” I said. “That’s what I told them. Leftover energy from the vortex.” I looked at Ursula. “Isn’t that what I said?”

She nodded eagerly. “
Aye, thou did say it to be sure.”

Tony came back,
“We understand all that, Leona. What I want to know is how did you both get through the vortex without the help of a witch’s key or a witch’s ladder?”

“Ah, sí
, through the mirror.”

“Mirror?”

“I knew it!” I said, slapping my knee. “The mirror upstairs in the workshop. I told you it wasn’t there before.”

“Yes, keen observation, Lilith
.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Shush, please. I want to hear this.”

“Now you’re sh
ushing me? Are you serious?”

“Lilith. Please?”

“Fine.” I put my hand out and splayed my fingers. “You can talk to the hand when you’re ready for real answers.”

Tony ignore
d me. “Leona, tell us how he used it.”

“
He captured the window,” she answered.

“What window?”

“The one with Travis Webber’s thought-form. He makes for the reflection to show in the mirror and he steps into it.”

“Amazing.”
Tony turned to me. “What do you think of that, Lilith?”

“What?
Now you want to hear what I think? Too bad. I don’t have an opinion on the matter.”

“
Okay, then don’t––”

“
Fine. Stop whining. I’ll tell you. You don’t have to beg.”

“I wasn’t beg––”

“Here’s exactly what happened. Obviously, there’s still a fair amount of residual energy left on the window from when I conjured up Travis’ thought form some years ago. That energy must act like a magnet for the convergence points of the old vortex.

“
Somehow, after Doctor Lowell found his way there from here, he must have figured out how to fashion a viable portal using the mirror as a focus point.”

“
Guess that explains it. Sure wish we had that mirror now.”

“Which reminds me,
ol` mighty portal hunter. I thought you told us those things were everywhere.”

“
The portals? They are.”

“Where?”

“Well, you can’t expect me to find them all.”

“Can I expect you to find
just one?”

“I’ve been looking.”

“Do you need help? Tell us what to look for. Maybe with all of us chipping in we can find one.”

“Yeah,” said Carlos. “This place is getting old. I’d really like to get back home.
”

“The way I’ve found portals before was by kicking up some dust, literally. If you throw enough
of it around, eventually you’ll see it disappear. That’s when you know it fell into a portal.”

“
Be it like the rock I threw into the chasm and found Yammer’s portal?” Ursula asked.

“Exactly,”
said Tony. “Only dust covers a larger area, increasing the odds of locating them, especially the smaller ones.”

“What’s to prevent one of us from stumbling into a portal
and disappearing?” asked Carlos.

Things got
silent then. Leave it to Carlos to ask the most important question of all. The ramifications of such an incident suddenly became abundantly clear. We learned from experience that a portal will take you anywhere in the ES your mind can imagine. The problem is that no two people will imagine the same thing.

“Look,” I said. “We’re going to need a plan. In case one of us does trip into a portal, we should have a
designated rendezvous point.”

“Good idea.” Tony clapped his hands and wrung them together. “We all remember the
first rope bridge we came to.”

“
Where we met Jerome,” said Carlos.

“That’s right
. It’s not far from town. There may be a portal near there. If we picture that place, we ought to come out somewhere close to it.”

“There’s just one problem,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Leona has never been there.
”

Tony turned to Leona. She appeared frightened
at the prospect of traveling via unfamiliar means to unfamiliar places. He cupped her hands gently. “It’s okay, Leona. We’ll never leave you.”

“Prom
esa?”

“Of course.
” He turned to the rest of us. “Look, new plan. Listen up everyone. If one of us falls into a portal, the thing to do is get right back in it and think yourself back to where you were when you fell in. Once he or she gets back, we’ll all go through it together, just as we did before. Okay?”

Carlos
said, “What if you can’t get back into it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like the one that dumped us into the river near the castle. We couldn’t get back into that one.”

“Then you find another and you get your ass back as soon as
you can. ¿Entienda, amigo?”

“
I’m just saying.”

I think Tony had more to
add. At the very least, he had something sharper to dish out if Carlos had tried a sarcastic comeback. Though Carlos usually doesn’t take crap from anyone, he has learned over the years when it’s best to let Tony have the last word. Me, I never let him have the last word, but then that’s just how I roll.

W
e picked up and headed out immediately after that, thus avoiding the awkward silence that usually follows such confrontations. Of course, Tony is probably the only one who would have minded it. The rest of us were so dog-tired, we wouldn’t have had much to say anyway.

We
elected to follow the riverbank downstream. When I say elected, of course, I mean Tony decided. His logic was that towns and settlements always establish themselves along waterways. My logic about malodyte base camps held much the same. I just didn’t share that with the others.

About an hour into the walk, or maybe it was ten minutes, it depended
on who you asked, Carlos began opening up again. He made several comments about the orange sky. Thought it made everything look like early morning in the country.