The noise sent a chill through him. He quickly glanced over his shoulder at the ruin behind him: the dark, toppled stones and half-shattered structures silhouetted against the jaundice-yellow sky. His eyes flicked to a broken archway at the ruin’s farthest edge. Had he seen a flicker of motion there? Something darting behind the stones? He stared in that direction for a moment. Nothing moving now. He must’ve imagined it.
He turned to the moat again, looked down again at the sword hilt buried in the mud. He glanced at his left palm, where a red light flashed on and off beneath his skin. That was the energy pod that would give fresh life to Mariel and Favian. Before he had left the Realm the last time, he had used the sword point to lance his hand, and the energy had flooded out of him into the sword’s blade. That was why he had thrown the sword to Mariel, to transfer that energy to her. She needed it to stay alive. Had she taken the energy and left the sword for him to find and use when he came back? Or was it maybe a message of some sort?
He knew he had to hurry. He knew he had to find Kurodar’s outpost before the madman launched an attack. The time on his hand was counting down, and there were only three days until the new outpost was ready.
But the hilt seemed to beckon him from the moat bottom. He had to find out why it was there.
Even as a quarterback, he had always been an intense macho man who charged ahead on instinct. That hadn’t changed, even with his injuries. Without further thought, then, he lowered himself to the ground. He turned and lowered his legs over the side of the wall. It was a long way down, too far to jump. But by sliding over the edge, hanging on to the rim of turf above, he found that the wall of the moat was as soft and muddy as the bottom. He kicked his toes into the dirt, creating a foothold first for one foot, then the other. He let go of the earth above with one hand, his left hand, and jammed his fingers into the mud as well. They went in deep, giving him purchase, a handhold. He brought his other hand down and jammed that in another place. Yes. He could do this. He could climb down, gripping the soft earth.
He started his descent. Above him, he heard that sound again—that high, hungry musical cry. It swirled above his head, sending another chill down the back of his neck. He told himself it was nothing. Just the wind. He kept climbing and sliding down the wall.
His arms were strong. And here in the Realm, his legs were strong, too. It did not take him long to reach the bottom. As he landed, his sneakers sank into the damp earth. He felt mud squeeze up over his laces and soak his socks with clammy cold. The suction slowed him down as he waded out away from the wall to reach the flashing object buried in the ground.
He stood above it. It was the hilt, for sure. He could see it clearly now: the twining lines rising to the image of that majestic face he remembered, the face that had haunted him every day since he had been in this place, a queenly and imposing face and yet tender, compassionate, and wise.
Rick crouched in the mud. His hand slippery with grime, he reached down and wrapped his fingers around the hilt.
He heard himself gasp. It was like sticking his fingers into an electrical outlet: the buzz that went through him, the instant surge of energy.
I am here.
“Mariel,” the word came out of him in a whisper. The jolt of energy inside him blossomed and spread into a flowering sense of joy and well-being. He almost seemed to see her standing there before him.
She was still alive!
With a tug, he drew the hilt out of the mud. The blade was all but gone. There was only a broken fragment of it, a few jagged inches of steel protruding from the handle.
Slowly, he stood up out of his crouch. He straightened. He lifted the broken sword and turned it this way and that in the sickly light.
Live in your spirit, Mariel had told him once. He could almost hear her saying it now. If you focus it, your spirit can transform the substance of the Realm itself.
It was true. He had proved it. Learning to focus the very self of himself, he had been able to change his entire body here, to take on the form of the alligator security bots who protected the place. He couldn’t do it for long—it was just too hard to keep up that level of focus—but whatever that core piece of himself was, he knew he could use it here. He knew it could make even this shattered weapon into something powerful and deadly.
Help me find you, he thought, trying to concentrate on the sword, trying to contact Mariel through the sword.
There was no answer, and yet he sensed that she heard him. He sensed that if he kept hold of this thing, it would lead him where he needed to go.
He slipped the weapon into his belt and tromped back through the mud toward the wall.
He began to climb up. It was much tougher going than the descent. The wall gave way and the mud slid down each time he tried to rise. By the time he was halfway up the moat wall, he was out of breath and he felt the muscles in his arms growing weak. A fearful little part of his mind spun out a whole fantasy about how he could slide down to the bottom and get stuck down there, far away from any portal point. He would languish in the empty moat while his ninety minutes ran out and his mind went to pieces.
But one of the things that Rick had learned playing football—and it was just as true here as it was in RL—was that courage is all about turning off that fantasy machine, silencing that part of your imagination that spins out images of disasters that haven’t happened yet and may never happen if your luck holds good. It was like something his father had told him once: Don’t worry about tomorrow; tomorrow can worry about itself. Probably a Bible quote, he thought sardonically. Just about everything his father said was.
He felt a flash of anger thinking about his dad, and then a flash of guilt.
He went on climbing, grunting with the effort. He gripped the wall—and the mud gave way in his hand. The wall slid down and he started sliding with it. He cried out. Pulled his hand from the sucking mud. Drove it back in, trying to get fresh purchase.
His slide stopped. He clung to the wall, panting. He had to stop thinking about . . . well, about everything, about anything but this. He had to pour his mind into the task before him. Don’t worry about tomorrow . . .
He took up the long, slow, frustrating climb again. He rose. He didn’t fall anymore. He wouldn’t fall. He wouldn’t let himself fall. He just determined it was not going to happen.
Sure enough, slowly, sliding, muddy hand over muddy hand, foot above foot, panting, gut-wrenching step-by-step, he clawed his way back to the top of the wall. Almost there, he reached up—up—touched the sere and ashen grass above and felt the hard earth of the surface underneath it. He gritted his teeth and let out a last loud grunt as he dragged himself up over the rim. Then, panting for breath, he rolled over onto the surface and lay on his back, exhausted, staring up into the weird yellow sky.
Tired as he was, he managed to lift his hand and stare at it. The timer embedded in the palm was covered in mud. He wiped it more or less clean against his black sweatshirt, held it up again: 73:16 . . . 15 . . . He had to get up, get moving. There was no more time to lie around.
He gave another loud groan as he pushed himself up on one hand—but the noise of his groan was washed away by the sudden rise of that noise, that noise like the wind. It was shockingly loud now, but filled with the same high-pitched song of hunger. The closeness of it made Rick’s heart race.
He leapt to his feet. That wasn’t the wind, he thought at once. That was . . . a creature. A living thing—or what passed for a living thing in this bizarre, digital place.
He looked around—looked all around him. There! Something. Another movement, a sudden darting behind the fallen stones off to his right. And another movement off to his left: something ducking behind an arch.
There was something here. Something in the fortress ruins.
Rick stood still, eyes wide, watching. His pulse was beating so hard in his head it nearly drowned out every other sound. That high, hungry song had dropped again to a low wind-like whisper. His glance shifted quickly
, left, right, back again, as he tried to catch out in the open whatever it was that was hiding among the stones.
He started moving cautiously toward the fallen fortress, toward the archway where he had seen the movement, seen something out of the corner of his eye darting away. His hand went to the hilt of the broken sword in his belt, ready to draw the weapon, such as it was. He stepped up to the pillar of stones. The shadow of the archway fell across him, cooling him. He leaned forward very carefully until he could look around the corner. Nothing there.
He felt his body relax a little. His hand came away from the sword hilt.
And that was when the high song rose again, almost a shriek now, and right behind him.
Rick spun and saw the thing: a glowing, globular shape floating in midair. Somewhere in the white mist of its form, there were red eyes, and sharp, vampire-like teeth. For one second he caught the scent of its raw animal craving.
And then—with shocking speed—it leapt at him.
10. WRAITHS
NOTHING COULD HAVE prepared Rick for the horror of it. The floating creature did not seize or slash him: it engulfed him, swallowed him, all in an instant. Despite its blobby appearance, it moved with panther-like quickness. He was immediately surrounded by it, captured inside its glowing presence like air inside a bubble. The creature’s red eyes were pressed so close to his they seemed to touch. He stared at them in mesmerized terror.
Then he felt the thing’s teeth sink into him—and his life began to drain away.
The white luminescent blob pulsed all around him. Its song of hunger—that ghostly high-pitched song—was everywhere, filling Rick’s mind, sapping his will, hypnotizing him into submission while the creature fed off his very life. With every moment, Rick could feel the beast getting stronger. And he was getting weaker as it drew his energy out of him and into itself. He knew instinctively that it would be less than a minute before he was sucked dry, transformed into a husk of lifeless nothing, left to live out his non-death in endless torment until the MindWar Realm should pass away and his spirit was freed.
Sickened by the thought, and by the slimy glow pulsing and bulging as it sucked him dry, he swallowed his disgust and fought off the weakness already infecting his will. He shut his mind to the creature’s hypnotic song. He focused on his hand, fought to move his hand. The fingers were already trembling with weakness like an old man’s. But he forced the hand down blindly to his belt, to the sword hilt there. With their last strength, his fingers closed on the metal. What a relief! Some remnant of Mariel’s power immediately shot through him, giving him a fresh bout of energy.
Willing that energy into electric motion, Rick drew the broken sword from his belt and wildly thrust it forward, jabbing its few inches of steel into the living, sucking glow that surrounded him.
At first, he thought the attack would have no effect. How could you stab something that had no substance, a creature of mere mist? But no, the being did seem to have a paper-thin body of some sort. The jagged point of the broken blade pierced it—Rick felt it tear through. And with all his remaining might, he dragged the steel edge across the length of the creature, slashing the beast open.
The hypnotic song that filled Rick’s mind was instantly transformed into a wrenching scream of agony. The glow that surrounded him, that was feeding off him, grew brighter for one moment and seemed to expand like a balloon.
Then, in a red flash, the wraith exploded. Rick felt the damp on his face as its mist sank down to the earth in a thin rain the color of blood.
The dead wraith stained the earth dark red. Rick gagged and coughed thickly as he stared down at what was left of the thing—the thing that a moment before had been leeching his energy away. Sick to his stomach, he reached out his hand to support himself on the pillar of the arch beside him.
And with wild keening musical cries, two more wraiths darted out of the ruins and rushed at him.
A flood of fear gave Rick more strength than he thought he had. He ran—and he ran fast. The wraiths had appeared out of the tumble of stones to his right. He ran to his left—toward the collapsed gate where he had once exited the fortress. Rick was amazed at how swiftly his feet flew up over that rubble, how quickly he climbed to the top of that low point in the center, and how fearlessly he threw himself off into the plain of broken stones beyond. There is no telling what you can do with a couple of energy-sucking vampire wraiths at your back, he thought.
He hit the ground and tripped on a broken stone. He stumbled a few feet forward and then pulled up short, frozen, the sword hilt still gripped in his hand.
They were everywhere.
On this side of the wall, he could see them clearly. All throughout the ruins, among the jagged walls, the standing pillars—coming through the roofs of the roofless rooms and darting through the archways—the glowing, floating white shapes were racing toward him. The air was filled with their music—that high, hungry sound. It vibrated and snaked its way into Rick’s head and made him feel dazed and disoriented.
He looked back. The two wraiths that had been chasing him were already drifting up over the wall. The others all around him were steadily approaching through the ruins from every direction. They weren’t moving as fast as that first one had. That was probably their attack speed, Rick thought. But they were closing in without stopping, and there wasn’t a lot of room to run.
But what choice did he have? He took off, fast. As soon as he did, the high songs of the wraiths grew louder. The air rang with them. And the circle of glowing shapes began closing in faster.
Rick had always been a passing quarterback, cool in the pocket with a deadly accurate throwing arm, but he could run when he had to and he had to now. He leapt over stones. He dodged around a pillar. He reached a section of wall with two wraiths like bookends moving in from either side. He grabbed the top of the wall and vaulted over it, his feet barely touching the rocks as they flew across.
He landed on the other side and more wraiths swept toward him, singing. He picked out the spaces between them and ran for daylight.
He passed a hollow pile of rocks: a collapsed doorway. A shocking sting of cold went through him, and then a shocking pain. He turned and saw a smaller wraith wrapped around his arm, its teeth sunk into his flesh. He slashed at it with the broken sword, nearly cutting himself open. But he got the wraith: it shrieked and pattered to the ground in a red rain.
The wraith-song grew louder and louder until it was a steady scream, deafening. Rick was now so disoriented that the world around him just seemed to be a jumble of stones and shapes and darkness and oncoming ghosts. He felt gripped by a kind of madness. Not half an hour ago, he had been in the world of men and women. He had been annoyed at Miss Ferris and worried about Molly and jealous of Victor One . . . and now he was in this bizarro universe of ruins and wraiths, where the only worry he had was how not to be engulfed by a hungry blob and sucked dry of life itself.
He felt dizzy, sick. He had to slow down. He had to look around, get his bearings, even if it gave the things a chance to attack.
He stopped running. He turned frantically this way and that. The wraiths were close—so close—and still steadily floating toward him from every side, pulsing, ready to pounce at any second. But he had crossed a good part of the ruined fortress now. He could see the far walls, see where the fallen piles of stone thinned out, where the gray grass ended and blended with grass that grew softly pink, then scarlet red as it ran off into the distance toward the Golden City. There were wraiths coming from that direction, too, but they had not closed ranks; there were gaps between them, gaps through which he could run.
A wraith to his right let out a scream and leapt at him—but too late. Rick was already running again. The thing missed him and went flying past.
Rick dashed for the fortress’s rear walls. They had crumbled and burned like the rest of the place, but they were still tall, still formidable. The wraiths seemed to see where he was headed. Their song grew louder as they came after
him. Rick cried out as the noise invaded his head, as it tried to reach into him and steal his mind, his will. He roared as he ran, trying to fight it off.
Twenty yards to go, a red-zone run in football. There was no giving up. There was only success or death.
Help me! he cried out to God in his mind. The oldest prayer of all, bursting up out of his heart before he even had time to think about it.
The wall. Just ahead. He could now see crevices and gashes in the broken stone: handholds; footholds. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the white glowing blobs sweeping through the air to close in on him for the attack. He reached the base of the wall and didn’t stop. He just leapt for it. Grabbed a crevice. Pulled himself up. Reached up. Grabbed the top of the wall. Hauled himself onto it.
And a sudden shriek deafened him. A sudden agony shot up his leg. He looked down to see that a wraith had grabbed his right foot and swallowed his leg to the knee. The white glow was seeping up toward his waist like a deadly stain. The hungry song was filling Rick’s mind, obliterating his thoughts. The energy was draining out of him.
Precariously balanced on the wall, he drew Mariel’s blade and slashed down at the glow. The creature screamed so loudly it made Rick’s ears ache. But the blow told. The thing turned to red rain and spilled down the side of the wall, painting the stones bloody.
Rick took one last look at the army of ghosts flying toward him. Then he shoved the blade back in his belt, lowered himself off the wall with both hands—dangled—let go—and fell to the earth beneath.
The drop was so far he stumbled to one knee. But there was no time to rest. The song of the wraiths was muffled by the wall for only a moment. The next moment it rose again as the white blobs flew up over the top of the wall and came down after him, their red eyes burning.