False Horizon (12 page)

Tuk walked with his father, Guge, toward the royal pavilion hours after the last of the partygoers had wandered off to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the phone call from Garin earlier and what ramifications it might have for his kingdom. But Garin had specifically asked Tuk to find out how to cross over to this land. And Tuk knew his only chance at getting that information was from his father.

“You’re enjoying yourself, my son?”

Tuk smiled. “What’s not to enjoy? For my entire life I’ve always wondered who I was and what I was supposed to do. I thought I’d found my life’s work and then that vanished. I was despondent. Unsure of where I was supposed to go. And then this happened and everything seems so utterly perfect.”

Guge smiled. “Your mother is beside herself with joy. She blamed herself for many years after your disappearance. She was inconsolable in some respects. Guilt is a terrible burden to handle, but especially so where it concerns a child.”

“I would imagine,” Tuk said. “But I don’t hold either of you responsible. How could you have known that your kindness would be repaid with betrayal.”

“That’s the thing that one can almost never guard against,” Guge said. “Betrayal.”

“But surely you can look out for such things. If a person’s actions are suspect, then you can remain on alert for their traitorous ways to emerge.”

Guge nodded and then fell silent for a time. Finally, he looked at Tuk. “You wish to ask me a question.”

“I do.”

“Then why haven’t you yet?”

Tuk smiled. “How is it that we came to be in this place? We examined the cave as much as we knew how. And yet, here we are.”

Guge smiled. “You want to know how you crossed over.”

“Yes.”

“It’s quite simple, actually. Would you like to see it?”

Tuk looked at him. “Right at this moment?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

Tuk shrugged. “I thought there might be something complicated about it, something that would require more preparation time.”

“Not at all.” Guge pointed toward the temple ahead of them that was connected to the royal quarters. Like the pavilion and court, it was constructed out of stone and seemed to be part of the mountain itself. Intricate carvings bordered every doorway and window.

Tuk was amazed at the workmanship. “How long has this been here?”

“Hundreds of years.” Guge pointed inside a darkened corridor. “Come with me and you will learn the secrets of our kingdom.”

Tuk fell into step behind his father. Guge traveled over the polished stone-floored corridors without a sound, seeming to almost levitate as he walked. Guge’s cough had also ceased, which made Tuk feel better about his father’s health. He’d secretly wondered if the coughing might be a sign that his father’s life was nearing its end.

They walked past giant stone gods squatting in amazing detail with their hands knotted into intricate mudra for calling down favor from the universe. Spectacular colored wall reliefs showed ancient battles between the good and evil forces.

“I come here a lot to be alone with my thoughts,” Guge said. “It is a place of contemplation for me as I imagine it will be for you also.”

“I’d like that,” Tuk said. “I have often thought my life could use a lot more meditation than action.”

“Some people don’t like to think,” Guge said. “If they are not solely preoccupied with action, then they have time to realize the truly infantile aspects of their essence. A brain in constant need of action is no better than a fool’s mind. Only the truly wise and intelligent may devote themselves to inaction from time to time without fear or prejudice.”

Tuk saw that there were lit torches ahead, casting light into the darkened gloom of the temple. The flames danced and bit at the night air, throwing shadows across the walls and paintings with reckless abandon.

“How much farther is it?”

Guge shrugged. “Not very. Are you in a hurry, my son?”

“Not at all. I am tired, however. I fear that I might collapse from exhaustion soon from all the dancing earlier.”

“Your people have missed you. And there was quite some concern as to who would assume the throne when your mother and I pass on. Some of our people suggested that it was time for a new ruler to assume command. But your mother insisted we wait a little longer before making a decision. She is very wise.”

Tuk smiled. “Maybe she knew I was coming home.”

“Perhaps she did.”

Guge led them down yet another corridor and the air grew cooler. Tuk shivered slightly and Guge noticed. “Yes, this is much deeper into the mountain now. And you can feel the temperature shift, can’t you?”

“Yes, it’s much cooler.”

Guge nodded. “So, you see that we are part of the same mountain. But our position makes all the difference.”

“How is that possible?”

“It just is.”

Tuk frowned. “Forgive me father, but that’s not much of an explanation.”

Guge turned around and, for a moment, Tuk thought his father was angered. But the expression faded then and Guge merely smiled. “Do not allow yourself to get caught up in the need to have everything explained to you so completely. Doing so robs the world of its magic.”

“I understand, Father. I merely thought that there would be an explanation that made more sense. You know, from a scientific perspective.”

“Science cannot explain everything, my son. And science should not try to explain everything. For then it becomes a crutch and imagination departs the soul.” Guge shook his head. “It would be truly tragic for the human race if that were to happen.”

“All right.”

They walked down a flight of stairs and then entered a long hallway leading toward another portal. A lone torch flickered on the wall ahead, but Tuk could not see beyond into the absolute darkness of the portal.

Guge stopped. “This is the way you came across.”

“Through there?”

Guge nodded. “It leads to a path that will take you back to the arctic side of the mountain.” He glanced at Tuk’s clothes. “Perhaps now is not the time to try it out and see. You seem a bit underdressed.”

Tuk smiled. “I’d just like to take a look.”

Guge shook his head. “I don’t recommend it, my son. There is little to see over there that you have not already seen. Why go through again? Are you merely attempting to satisfy your own curiosity?”

“I suppose I am.”

Guge sighed. “I am old, my son. This is nothing of consequence. You should be content to know that it exists and that there is a way to get from our kingdom back to the real world. But I don’t think you will be needing it. Unless you don’t intend to stay?”

Tuk shook his head. “I’m not leaving.”

Guge smiled. “Excellent. Then perhaps we can satisfy your curiosity another time? I am getting tired myself.”

Tuk smiled. “Perhaps I could take one quick little peek across? That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“You won’t stop badgering an old man unless he lets you go, will you?”

Tuk smiled. “Probably not.”

Guge sighed again. “Very well. Go ahead. But I am not coming with you. That cold air makes my old bones hurt. And there’s nothing there that I haven’t seen before now. If you want to go, you go by yourself.”

“Are you sure you won’t come along?”

“Completely.”

Tuk paused and looked down the hallway at the portal. The torch fire danced from the slight breeze that seemed to snake through the hallway. Tuk caught a touch of the chill across his neck and shivered involuntarily.

For a moment, he seriously considered going off to bed and doing this later. But then he shook his head and started forward toward the doorway.

He paused and looked back. “Can I bring the torch?”

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

“Not at all,” Tuk said. “I’m afraid of what I can’t see. I don’t want to step over the edge of something that would send me hurtling toward my death.”

“I don’t believe you will.”

“And yet…?”

Guge took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Oh, very well, take the torch along. But be ready for it to go out the moment you cross over. The winds are strong. And there may be a lot of snow.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“And make sure you pay very close attention to where you are,” Guge said. “If you don’t, you will never find the way back to us and you will perish in the cold over there. Your mother would never let me hear the end of it.”

Tuk paused and a slight frown crossed his face. That almost seemed an odd thing for his father to say. But Tuk shook his head and then grabbed the torch from the wall bracket.

He looked back toward his father. “All right. I’m going to go through the doorway now.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.

Tuk turned back to the blackened doorway and held the torch aloft. But for some strange reason, the torchlight could not penetrate the interior of the doorway.

Tuk held the torch up and ran it all along the perimeter of the door, but there was nothing that he could see inside.

“You will not be able to see until you actually cross the threshold,” Guge said from behind him.

Tuk looked back. “Why is that?”

“It is that way simply because it is that way.”

Tuk nodded. Another strange answer from his father. Very well, he thought. If there’s only one way to do this, then he would simply do it. Perhaps then he would know what to tell Garin when he called again.

Guge’s voice was behind him then. Very close. “I nearly forgot to ask you something.”

Tuk turned around. “What is it?”

“You received a phone call earlier this evening. Didn’t you?”

Tuk felt his face redden. “I did. I forgot that I had the telephone with me.”

Guge pointed at the doorway. “You cannot go through with the telephone from this side.”

“Why not?”

“As far as I understand it,” Guge said. “The technology is too advanced to be transported back.”

Tuk frowned. “But I came through with it from the other side and it seems to work just fine.”

Guge shrugged. “I will hold on to the phone for you while you go through. That way, you can be sure it will work.”

Tuk took the phone out and hefted it in his hand. “All right. I’ll just take a quick peek and then come back.”

Guge nodded. “Good. I hope you will satisfy your curiosity once and for all. Then we can move on to other things.”

Tuk smiled. “We have a lot to talk about, I assume.”

“A great deal indeed.”

Tuk turned back to the doorway. “All right, I’m going through.” He held the torch high above his head and then stepped closer to the doorway. He still felt Guge behind him, though, and turned back around. “Aren’t you too close?”

Guge smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you are certain of this.”

“I am, Father.”

Tuk turned around. Before him, the gaping maw of the darkened doorway stood.

Tuk took a deep breath and then started to step through the doorway.

The phone rang.

He stopped.

Then felt a heavy push from behind, and before he knew what was happening, Tuk went sprawling through the doorway and into the darkness beyond.

Annja tossed and turned on the bed of silky soft pillows and tried to get comfortable. From her quarters, an open window looked down upon the pavilion. Tropical breezes swept through the curtains and across her skin. The temperature was absolutely perfect for sleeping.

And yet, she couldn’t.

The idea that Garin was somehow involved in this whole mess had her confused. Why exactly had he hired Tuk to watch over her? Since when did Annja need a guardian angel, anyway? She had her sword. And the sword could handle anything that she’d ever come up against.

Although, she thought, she hadn’t had much occasion to use the blade on this outing. Something told her that if Hsu Xiao was really coming here, then that would soon be rectified.

Annja wondered how Mike was doing. After he’d stormed off, she’d tried to find him but he seemed intent on avoiding any contact. Annja decided that he needed some alone time and had gone to bed to try to get some rest. She would have thought that would be an easy task given how much the strain of the past day had worn on her. But after nearly an hour of tossing and turning, even she had to admit that something wasn’t letting her sleep.

She sat on the stone window ledge and peered out across the land. The winds swept through the trees, rustling leaves. She could see the tall grasses sway. And all about this place, everything seemed perfectly still. Perfectly…perfect.

Annja frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in an absolute peace. It was just that she had never seen anything that even approached the tranquility of this land. It was an oddity to her.

How is this even possible? she wondered. Where are we…exactly?

The idea that Shangri-La existed on the other side of Dhaulagiri Mountain didn’t sit right with Annja’s analytical mind. Some part of her rejected that outright, saying that it would be impossible for such a place to exist and stay hidden from the technological eye of modern man.

Despite what Vanya and Guge might want her to believe, Annja couldn’t buy into it.

Still, if they were in some sort of magical location, then what was it? How did it operate? Annja wasn’t naive enough to think that just because something may or may not be magical, there weren’t rules that it would have to abide by, as well. She’d seen enough crazy stuff in her life to know that all things in the universe—even those that were presently unexplainable—still had a rule book they had to follow.

So how did Shangri-La function?

She dressed quickly and walked down the stairs back toward the pavilion. The amazing thing about this place was there seemed to be very few individual homes anywhere. And everyone seemed to disappear to sleep at the same time. Earlier this evening, right after the party had disbanded, people simply vanished. Annja wrote it off as everyone going off to bed, but now it triggered an alarm bell inside her gut.

Her footfalls were silent on the courtyard stonework. Annja moved across the open pavilion and stole back down the grand staircase toward the fields below. As she walked, she kept her senses alert for any movement that might alert her she was not alone.

But as far as she could tell, she was just that. Alone.

This is weird, she thought. Where is everyone?

Even Tuk seemed to have vanished earlier. Annja had last seen him walking with Guge. Presumably, Tuk was going to get his father to tell him how to cross over so that Garin could find them.

Annja frowned. She wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. The times she’d been around Garin in the past had usually amounted to a lot of tension between them and then a differing agenda that left Annja on the losing end of things.

But then again, Garin had seemed sincere about wanting to keep Annja safe. But from what? The Chinese assassin? Was Annja truly in the crosshairs? And, if so, how did the Chinese know she would be coming over here? Couldn’t they have taken her out when she was back in Brooklyn?

Too many things just didn’t make sense. Her mind and spirit were at odds and the resulting battle had one casualty— Annja’s sleep.

She crossed into the open fields and started walking toward the groves of fruit trees farther ahead. She could smell their scent as she approached. Their branches looked strong and supple. Annja reached up and twisted a peach from one of the branches and held on to it as she continued toward the edge of the field.

Overhead, the stars winked at her and, somewhere far above, clouds wove strange patterns across the night sky. The effect was incredibly peaceful.

Annja bit into the peach, aware of how incredibly juicy it was. She ate it quickly and then tossed the pit onto the ground.

Annja looked around in every direction and saw nothing that would lead her to believe this place was inhabited. No lights, no noise, no nothing.

Everyone seemed to have disappeared.

Except for her.

Annja started walking back to the grand staircase. Surely there would be attendants awake in the temple corridors. Perhaps she could ask them a few questions and try to put her mind at rest.

But as Annja ascended the stairs, she heard nothing.

Back at the top, as she traveled down corridor after corridor and checked out room after room, she found nothing. There were no people anywhere. And worse, there were no personal belongings to speak of.

It was as if she was on some sort of weird soundstage in a movie production lot. But the land was real and surely the peach she’d eaten was real.

So where the hell was everyone else?

She ducked back upstairs to her room and tried again to sleep. Perhaps, she thought, if I go to sleep, tomorrow will sort things through.

But her mind raced as soon as she lay down.

Annja sat up and frowned.

Shangri-La was turning out to be anything but paradise.

She yawned and realized how utterly fatigued she was. Even if she couldn’t sleep, maybe just closing her eyes would make everything feel better. She leaned back and felt her head sink into one of the pillows.

A delicate scent of honeysuckle tickled her nostrils and Annja smiled. She loved that scent. Always had.

She thought about the golden sunshine and how warm it had been earlier today. It reminded her of sitting on a tropical beach somewhere watching the blue-green waves crash in against the sandy shore, frothing white before retreating once more to the water.

Annja stretched her limbs and tried to release all of her nervous energy. Wherever she was, she decided, it was better than being back in that cold, snowy cave.

In the next instant, driven purely by instinct, she leaped from the bed into a standing position. In her hands, the sword had already materialized.

Several images registered at once as she came fully awake.

A dark shadow behind her bed.

Hands extended over the pillow where she’d been lying. Claws.

Annja flicked the sword up in front of her and, from behind her bed, tracked the shadow. It was bathed in black cloth, invisible in the dim twilight of the room. There was no moon, making the landscape even darker.

But the shadow that stalked Annja seemed to simply bleed across the floor toward her, its hands upraised in a fighting stance vaguely reminiscent to Annja. She’d seen it somewhere before, but where?

The figure in black didn’t scream or jerk its body in any fashion. One second it was coolly regarding Annja as a cat might look at a mouse.

The next instant, it attacked.

Annja was almost stunned by the sudden ferocity of the attack. The figure slashed at Annja’s face with its claws.

Annja deftly flicked her sword up, intending to cut the attacker’s hands, but she heard something she didn’t expect. It was the clang of metal against metal.

Annja moved back for more room. Swinging a sword in a confined space wasn’t the best use of it as a weapon. The shadow had the advantage of a smaller tool used in a close environment.

But Annja didn’t intend to go down without a fight.

As the shadow advanced again, Annja could see that the skin around the eyes had been darkened, as well, rendering the figure nearly invisible save for the whites of the eyeballs themselves.

Again and again it came at Annja. Annja used the sword to ward off the attacks, but her own offensive struggled to get off the ground. Annja stabbed and took short cuts at the shadow, but the figure merely moved out of the way and out of range.

Annja shook her head. She needed open space to use her sword to its fullest advantage. But how would she convince the shadow to pursue her? She had to assume the shadow knew how to fight and do so extremely well. There was no way it would simply follow Annja if it meant giving up its advantage in the room.

Annja attacked savagely and thought she felt her blade slide into a piece of flesh. But the shadow never once uttered a sound.

Instead, it came back at Annja, swinging its claws with full force. Annja was driven back to the doorway and then beyond into the corridor.

Instead of continuing the fight, though, Annja ran.

She dashed down the steps back into the open pavilion. She had no idea if the shadow had followed her or not. She couldn’t hear anything. Even her own footsteps had been virtually silent thanks to the thick stone steps.

Annja whirled in time to see the shadow floating down from the second floor bedroom window of Annja’s quarters.

It flies, Annja thought. How is that possible?

But she had no time to think it through. The shadow attacked again, this time kicking Annja in the stomach.

Annja flew back, feeling her wind rush out of her body.

The shadow followed up with a resounding punch to Annja’s chin. Annja saw stars and tried to blink away the tears that welled up in her eyes.

Annja crouched, pivoting on her knee, trying to cut the shadow open at the midsection.

But the shadow backflipped away, tumbling across the pavilion and disappearing into the corridors beyond.

Annja stood there with her sword gleaming in the night.

Stay or follow?

She’d tricked the shadow into coming down here where she could better use the blade. Now the shadow probably wanted to return the favor.

Annja shook her head. No way was she following.

From the darkness across the courtyard, Annja heard a soft whisper cut through the night air. She jerked her sword up and cut it across her face, severing the arrow that had been fired at her from somewhere beyond the range of her sight.

The two pieces fell and skittered across the stone floor.

Annja heard another series of whispers and twisted to avoid the bolts that flew at her.

Again and again, arrows flew at her body and Annja found her lungs heaving as she struggled to avoid them. I’m silhouetted out here in the dim light, she thought. I need to be invisible, too.

Annja ran toward the darkness where the shadow had fled. Rushing through the doorway, she cut right and left and above and below, trying to score a direct hit with her offense.

But she cut nothing.

She heard a soft peal of laughter ring out, carried to her ears on the breeze that brushed past her face.

Annja pivoted and sliced nothing but air.

But she’d sensed movement.

Something had rushed past her back into the open courtyard of the pavilion.

Annja raced back out, still keeping the sword in front of her to protect her if need be.

Perched atop one of the stone walls leading up toward Annja’s quarters, the shadow was hunched. Against the night sky, it looked like a feral cat.

And it cast one final look at Annja before leaping off into the night.