Sac'a'rith (9 page)

Raquel joined us and said, “I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten Narcion’s teachings. If you’re finished, we have only a few more hours of travel before we reach our destination.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’ll keep the rising sun at our back for the rest of the morning. The hill country is safe during the day, or at least it was the last time I was here,” she said without acknowledging the question.

We went back to the cave to clean up and gather our gear, and then headed out. As we walked Raquel told us stories from her childhood, a childhood lived ten thousand years before we were born.

My head hurt, my back hurt and I couldn’t see at first. Slowly my vision started to return, but I couldn’t shake the cloud that seemed to cover my mind and blur my thoughts. With some pain … no, with great pain, I slowly sat up and looked around. It was hard to see. It was as if I were in a light fog or maybe a smoke-filled room.

I was lying on a couch in a modern office, in the center of which an aged human sat behind a desk with a holographic terminal. He was dressed in formal work attire and looked like the quintessential rich businessman. The room itself was neat and proper with everything precisely in place. I knew the fog was all in my head, but I suspected that, if it were real, every molecule of it would be as perfectly placed as everything else in the room.

“Where am I?” I asked hoarsely through the pain and mist. The words hurt my throat.

“Easy, Purwryn; you had a nasty fall,” said the man. His voice was perfectly even and betrayed no feelings.

“Fall?” I repeated. I tried hard to remember how I’d got here or where I might be, but I just couldn’t think clearly. Every time I tried, my mind became cloudier instead of sharp.

“Yes,” he said. He waved his hand to close the display in front of him, then stood and walked towards one of the walls. “May I get you something to drink?”

“Water, please,” I said. As much as I wanted something stronger, I had to keep what was left of my wits about me until I figured out what was going on. There was a dread growing slowly inside me. Somehow I knew I was in great danger, but I couldn’t work out how or why. I was sure I was either hung over or drugged, and with my history I wasn’t sure which was worse. Drugged meant I had been taken captive by some hostile force, but hung over meant I had lost control and anything might have happened. I wondered briefly if having been captured and drugged was actually the better alternative.

“Here,” said the old man as he held out a cup of water.

I took a deep drink of the water and almost choked on it. As the liquid hit my throat it felt like acid burning its way down. The pain gave my mind a moment of clarity. “I was attacked in my room!”

“Go easy with the water. You almost choked to death on your vomit and we had to clear your air passage with a tube,” he said.

“What?” I asked. The moment of clarity had passed and I was struggling to remember what I had just said.

“Your throat is irritated from the tube we used to clear your lungs,” he repeated.

“Where am I?” I asked again.

“My office. Now, you took a bad blow to the head and I need to ask you some questions to assess what damage has been done. First, say your name for me,” he said.

“Purwryn,” I said.

“Good, and where do you work?” he asked.

“Um, just a sec,” I said as I raked my clouded mind for the answer. “Robotics! I’m the lead robotics engineer on the
Paradise
.”

“Excellent. For how long have you had this job?” he asked.

“I guess a week or so?” I said.

“Good, good. And what was your job before that?” he asked.

Instantly memories of Zah’rak and his team came to mind. “I was working with – ” I started to say but some internal alarm went off, stopping me from finishing the thought. I couldn’t think through the cloud, but something told me I shouldn’t answer that question.

“Yes? Go on,” he said.

I tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness caused me to fall back onto the couch. My back screamed in protest, and my legs felt as if ants were crawling up and down them, throwing a party to end all parties.

“Easy; I don’t think you are quite ready for that,” he said.

Where was I? Why wasn’t I
ready to stand? What had I just been talking about? My mind struggled against the fog
, trying to make sense of my world. Was I in trouble?

“My head is so cloudy,” I said.

“Cloudy? How so?” he asked.

“It’s hard to think and to remember. There’s something important I need to recall, but I can’t seem to focus on it,” I said.

“I see,” he replied.

Might he be a doctor? I was in pain, and maybe he could help. If I could just think, I could figure this out.

“Can you give me something to clear my head?” I asked.

“No, it’s probably just the medicine wearing off. It should pass soon. Now, what was the last thing you repaired at your job?”

“Um, I’m not sure,” I said. I struggled to remember my day at work. “Oh, I think it was a food transport. Its wheels were sticking; easy job, but it yielded me some chocolate cake.”

“Yes, cake is good, especially chocolate. What about your first repair for them?” he asked.

“A Mark III loader,” I said as some of my memories started coming clearer, but nothing that helped explain why I was here.

“Excellent. And what were you doing before that?” he asked.

“I was looking for work, so I was wandering the maintenance hub,” I said.

“I see. What happened to your previous job?” he asked.

“I quit,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

An image of Raquel came to mind, and her offer to join the Wizard Kingdom. I started to answer, but again I caught myself. There was something I shouldn’t tell him, but I couldn’t think of what it was. I noticed I was still holding the water and took another deep drink. Fire ran down my throat, but this time I was ready for it; I embraced the pain, as it brought clarity to my thoughts. “I was jumped!” I called out. That meant I was a prisoner, and this was an interrogation!

I forced myself to stand. The room was spinning around me, but I was sure I could correctly time my move to reach the door as it swung by. I took another gulp of water and teleported myself over to it. The door didn’t open as I reached it, so I hit the ‘open’ button. It slid back to reveal the same steel-eyed man who had jumped me in my room.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked.

I tried to push past him and escape, but ended up falling into him as my newfound strength and balance failed. He picked me up and carried me back into the room. I was too weak to mount an effective resistance. The door snapped shut behind him, cutting off my line of sight and any hope of teleporting away.

The old man walked over towards me and passed his hand in front of my face. I felt my consciousness fade away as he said, “I have what I need. Take him back.”

~~~

I awoke lying in a hospital bed, connected to various machines which I assumed were doing something to treat or monitor me. To my left sat Marcus, reading something on a datapad. I started to sit up, but pain shot through my eyes into the back of my head. I was sure there must be scorch marks on my pillow from the pain bursting out the back of my head.

Marcus looked up as I yelled out in pain. “Doctor!”

I took a steadying breath which sent pain down my throat. “Where am I?” I tried to croak out. Instinctively I grabbed the bed, willing the room to stop its incessant spinning.

“Easy, friend,” said Marcus. He was trying to speak in a gentle, calming voice, but his vocal range was too gruff for that to be effective. “Try to stay still.”

“Good plan. Hurts too much to move,” I said. I didn’t know why I was there but it was comforting to hear Marcus’ voice, no matter how gruff it was.

Marcus was the closest thing to a friend I had on board. He was another robotics engineer, and we shared a repair shop down in the hangars. Before I came on board he was their only technician and simply couldn’t keep up with the workload. We worked well as a team and, given that he was the social type, I think I saved him from going insane working alone all those hours in the shop.

“Then take the hint and stay put,” he said firmly.

I decided he was probably right. I tried to reconstruct the events that had put me in this bed. It was a jumbled mess and I wasn’t sure where one memory ended and another started. There was something about being attacked, a couch and a desk. I struggled to assemble them into something that made sense, but the memories just wouldn’t behave.

“Ah! I see you’re awake! Excellent!” said a new voice.

“He seems to be in a lot of pain,” said Marcus.

“That is to be expected,” said the voice.

I slowly turned my head, trying to avoid another flare-up of pain. The man who had spoken was an older gentleman wearing the uniform of a doctor. “Everything hurts,” I said softly.

“Yes. I’m sorry about that, but we had to cut back your pain medication to start the detox,” he said.

“Detox?” I queried.

“I’ll explain in a moment. First, can you tell me your name?” he asked.

“Purwryn,” I said.

He obtained a small cup of water from somewhere I couldn’t see. “Here, sip this slowly. Your throat is probably rather irritated, but the water will help.”

I remembered what had happened when I’d chugged a drink of water in the old man’s office and contented myself with sipping this one. He had also asked me my name, but there was something strange about that memory. It didn’t seem real.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

“I think – yes, this looks like the medical quarters on the
Paradise
,” I said.

“That’s correct,” he said. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“I was attacked in my quarters,” I said.

“Attacked?” queried Marcus.

The doctor waved him off. “That’s a common side effect.”

“Being attacked?” I said. “How is that a side effect?” My mind might not have been fully functional yet, but I couldn’t think of anything that would fit that description.

“Purwryn, tell me about this attack. What happened?” he asked.

“I was in my quarters and someone tried to take me prisoner. We fought but he was too strong for me. I managed to escape from the room and ran for the hallway, but then he shot me with a blaster or something.”

“Did anyone see this?” he asked.

“Yes, there were several men in the hallway at the time,” I said.

The doctor pulled back a curtain and I saw three more beds like the one I was in. “Them?”

“Could be; hard to tell from this angle,” I said.

He closed the curtain again and said, “Everything you said fits. Are you familiar with tricholophate?”

“Yes, we use it in the robotics shop. Nasty stuff, but safe enough if you take precautions,” I replied.

“Yes,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and made a minor adjustment to some machine. “You seem to have your senses, so I’m increasing your pain medication a little. Hopefully that will make you more comfortable, but we need to keep it as low as possible.”

I did feel a bit better and had to work hard to resist demanding more. “So, what happened?”

“Several people in your section reported being attacked. When security was dispatched, they discovered the entire section was flooded with tricholophate vapors. It seems a primary supply line ruptured and was leaking onto a heating element,” he said.

“So everything I remember was a hallucination?” Tricholophate was used by addicts for just that effect.

“Yes, it seems that way,” he said. “None of the security cameras show any attackers, and there were none there when the security forces arrived. It took a few hours to decontaminate the area before we could pull anyone out, but the only injuries we could find appeared to be self-inflicted.”

“Then who did I throw a table at?” I asked.

“We did find your table overturned, but there was no one around and no sign that anyone had been in your room,” he said.

“Makes sense,” said Marcus. “Tricholophate is hallucinogenic even in small quantities. If the section was flooded with it, it stands to reason it would be intense.”

“But the attack seemed so real. I mean, the fight really hurt,” I said.

“Yes, the others report the same,” said the doctor.

“But if it wasn’t real, why am I in so much pain now?” I asked.

“Tricholophate is highly toxic and did extensive damage to your body. I’m sorry to say you will be here for some time until your body heals,” said the doctor.

I wanted to believe him; what he said made more sense than what I remembered, but it didn’t feel right. I was sure I had been attacked. It was the only really clear memory I had.

“How long?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “but at least a week, maybe two.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

Raquel led us up one final steep hill. This was much larger than any of the others and gave way to a flat summit. On the top of the hill was a large collection of stones that vaguely reminded me of a castle. Some parts looked as if they might once have been towers, others might have been wall segments, but for the most part it just looked like rubble which stretched out in all directions and seemed to cover the entire plateau.

“Zah’rak, Shira, welcome home,” said Raquel.

“Home?” I repeated. A pile of rubble seemed an odd place to call ‘home’.

“Yes, Zah’rak,” she said. “Granted, ten thousand years ago when I was growing up it looked quite different.”

I leaned against one of the rocks and was surprised to feel life in it. I stretched out my mind and could feel all the rocks. “The rocks! They’re alive?”

“Not really, but they were heavily enchanted ages ago. This used to be a massive fortress: the headquarters of the Sac’a’rith,” she said.

Shira gazed across it in wonder. “What happened to it?”

“It stood as an impregnable fortress for generations, until internal corruption caused it to fall,” she said.

“But how?” asked Shira.

I leaned against the rock, letting it speak to me. I was thrilled to see Shira talking directly to Raquel, even if it was just because she was distracted by the view and the story. It was a start, and perhaps a sign of better things to come.