Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (20 page)

“And, as much as I would miss your sparkling wit and charming personality, the worst part seems pretty obvious: I would be trapped here for the rest of my life.”

I sighed.

“Point taken. You will come with me.”

She nodded.

“In fact, you might wish to remain there.”

It was her turn to frown.

“There? Where?”

“Our next destination. For the moment, I will say only that it is neither your Earth, nor anywhere else in your Terran Alliance. It is, however, in your plane, your home universe.”

“My…”

Her eyes widened momentarily, then she shook her head.

“No. Not without the others.”

The others. Of course. How could I ever have forgotten them?

Through sheer effort, mainly.

Reluctantly, I nodded. “…Right.”

And so we ate and we drank and we rested until we felt as good as we could reasonably expect to feel, given the circumstances. And then I led her to the back of the cave, and found the spot where the layer between dimensions grew thinnest, and I exerted the small amount of Power necessary in that place to open a portal. Together we stepped through the blazing circle, emerging directly into my most secret location of all.

“You’re kidding,” she said, upon seeing it.

“Certainly not.”

Evelyn looked around, her eyes quickly adjusting to the dim lighting. We stood in a small pool of light within a vast, gray room, extending perhaps fifty feet up and as many yards away from us in every direction. It was filled with row upon row of shelves. Those shelves were covered with every size and shape of box and crate and container imaginable. The musty smell of long-stored items in a long-sealed room washed over us both. Evelyn wrinkled her nose.

“This is it?”

She fixed me with a look that spoke of surprise, bewilderment, and no small amount of disappointment.

I laughed softly, nodding.

“This is it.”

“You show me the wonders of the universe, building up to this grand finale—and it’s a
warehouse
?”

I could not help but laugh again.

Hands on hips, she waited.

Finally, “I never said it was a ‘grand finale,’ as you say, and I promised you no spectacular vistas. But, if all is as it should be, this warehouse should contain something quite pleasing to the eyes.”

She cocked her head at me, incredulous.

I shrugged, adding, “To my eyes, anyway.”

As I moved to the nearest shelf and studied the markings, getting my bearings, a light flickered our way from some distance down the aisle. Evelyn saw it first and motioned frantically at me. I whirled, just in time to see a man in gray moving through a more distant cone of illumination. He was coming toward us, his footsteps echoing off the crates and the walls, accelerating as he became aware of us.

“Who’s there?” he cried. “Don’t move!”

He drew a sidearm and halted a short distance away from us, studying us carefully. He was an old guy, white-haired and hunched over a bit. I had not realized I employed anyone of quite that vintage in a security capacity, but he appeared competent and alert enough. Then I recognized him, but realized it had been years—many years—since I had seen him last. I could not even remember his name.

He gave both of us a perfunctory once-over, his expression wary and nervous, then moved his hand to activate his communication link.

“Hello,” I said, moving quickly but casually toward him, directly under one of the cones of light shining down. Then, “Do you not recognize me?”

His hand froze and he blinked, peering closer at me. Then he gasped, moved back a step, and said, “Lord Markos!”

Smiling, I nodded, and clapped him warmly on the shoulder.

His suspicious expression evaporated, and he grinned back at me.

“I—I apologize for—“

“No, no,” I said, stopping him. “You do your job well—” I squinted at his name badge. “—Tony. I was scarcely here a minute before you spotted me.”

He swelled with pride and bowed slightly.

“I heard some talk that you’d found a way to look young again,” he said, “but I didn’t believe…”

“It’s true,” I said.

He stared at me unabashedly, and shook his head in wonder. Then, with more formality, “My lord, we’ve been worried at your absence. You simply disappeared, and you’ve been gone for over two months.”

So the many shifts among different planes high up in the Above had cost us more time, relative to this universe, than I had expected. Sighing, I nodded.

“I was called away on urgent business,” I said.

He nodded, an anxious and eager-to-please look on his face. I found I liked him a great deal. In fact, I—what?

Ridiculous. He was a mortal. One of my former servants.

Shaking my head to clear what must have been a touch of temporary insanity, I continued, “It was very secret business, I’m afraid. And I am in fact still in the process of dealing with it.”

It galled me to have to treat so with a common guard, but I wanted what this warehouse contained, and the alternatives all seemed likely to result in greater delays.

“It could not be helped,” I added.

He nodded, taking it all in.

“I’m just glad to see you’re all right,” he said after a moment’s silence. “No one was quite sure who should be in charge, and there have been some problems—”

He looked past me at Evelyn, seeming to take full notice of her for the first time, and he stopped in mid-sentence. His smile evaporated. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at her. It took me a moment to figure out why, and then I realized—she was wearing her flight suit, her military uniform from the Terran Alliance Navy.

Before he could act or speak, I cut him off.

“Lieutenant Colicos here is with me. She is a liaison from the Alliance, working with me on some very sensitive matters.”

“Ah.”

He nodded slowly, his expression still conveying suspicion. Outworlders harbored enormous dislike and hostility toward Terrans, who likewise viewed them with contempt and scorn. That mutual animosity could be traced back to well before my time of exile. Indeed, it extended as far back as the earliest days of the Second Empire, when the earliest jump ships first ventured into the great dark unknown between the stars. At its heart, though, the animosity probably was driven by simple resentment and competition—motivations as old as life itself.

“I appreciate your diligence, Tony,” I told him. “But I have a few items to collect here, and then we will be out of your way.”

Turning back to me, his face warmed again, and he executed another little half-bow.

“Of course, of course, sir. If I can be of any help—?”

“No, no, we have it well in hand. You may continue your rounds.”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.”

Bowing to me again, then giving Evelyn a cursory and half-hearted one as well, he bustled away down the aisle.

Evelyn watched him go, then chuckled.

“Your security staff is quite impressive. I’ll have to tell the folks back home not to dare try an attack here—they wouldn’t stand a chance against Tony.”

Groaning, I shook my head dismissively and set off down the aisle.

“You were pleasant with him,” Evelyn noted as she followed after me.

“Yes.”

She stared at me, hands on hips, waiting for more.

“He was once one of my soldiers. He has served me faithfully all his life.” I laughed. “He thinks he served my father, too.”

Evelyn nodded, saying, “But he’s a mortal. Where was the contempt? The scorn?”

I shrugged.

“He served a different me than the one you first met. I was powerless, and had been so for a very long time. It was a lifetime ago.”

“Lucian, it was two months ago. And only days ago, to you and me.”

“Yes. As I said, a lifetime ago.”

Evelyn continued to regard me for a few more seconds, her expression unreadable. Sighing, I moved on, following the rows of crates and boxes that lined the shelves and walls of the dingy storage building. I examined the markings on each item, working from memory. Very soon, I found what I was seeking: a set of crates, each approximately five feet long and three feet to a side. Unlatching the fastenings of the nearest one, I pulled the cover back, and smiled.

Evelyn leaned over my shoulder and peered down into the crate. She found cold, deadly black metal there.

“Guns?”

“Oh, yes,” I breathed. “Oh, yes. Guns. Most definitely guns.”

Her eyes widened, and I imagined she was thinking back to the recent events on my little desert island.

“Oh.
Guns
.”

“Lots of guns. Oh, yes.”

“Arendal guns.”

“Arendal guns, oh, yes.”

I pulled the crate off the low shelf and let it drop the six inches down onto the floor, then rummaged through its contents, shoving the packing material aside, counting.

“All here. Five rifles per crate. Five pistols as well. And… lots of crates.”

I was surely grinning maniacally now. It is a wonder Evelyn did not flee from the sight of me.

“Would you mind telling me,” she said, “how these came to be here? And, for that matter, where exactly we are?”

“Mysentia,” I replied. “My old capital in the Outer Worlds.”

She frowned.

“Mysentia?”

“And the guns came to be here, rather than with me in the Golden City,” I continued, ignoring her reaction, “because I was extremely foolish. After spending centuries accumulating these things and hiding them here, I got careless. The Fountain flowed again, the Power rushed through my veins and intoxicated me, and I raced back to the Golden City without bringing a single one of these beauties along with me.”

I shrugged.

“But I was excited. It had been so long—so many years—since I had last felt the Power surging through me, through the universe. I felt invulnerable, invincible. What need had I of any weapon? I was the only weapon I needed. And, besides, if I could sense the Power again, and access it, I assumed that meant all was forgiven, and I was being allowed to come home again.”

I snorted.

“Little did I dream no one else had been able to access the Power either, those past thousand years. Little did I guess I was essentially walking into a trap.”

Evelyn was nodding.

“I’d have to agree, that was pretty dumb,” she said.

I let her comment pass without response or reaction—something that should have struck me at the time as noteworthy. But I pushed on to the conclusion of my thoughts.