faerie rift chronicles 01 - faerie rift (36 page)

“They fear you, Dion,” said the old man, “because you may be the one who can work the fifth element. We’ve never seen anyone do it before this time. If you develop the ability, The Tower will no longer with have dominion over the aether. And they want to keep that power very much. They know you have tracked your parents here and plan to free them. Now you must return to the mall.”

“But grandfather, grandmother,” he said. “This is too much for me. Isn’t there someone else who can learn the use of the fifth element? I just want my parents back.”

“No one is safe so long as The Tower controls the aether,” the old woman said. “Please, hurry as the sun is going down and you haven’t much time. The mall will close in a few hours.”

The old man and woman turned and walked back the way they had come. Lilly watched them depart. The cloud moved away from the sun and the fading light returned to warm her and Dion. Soon the old couple was no longer there and the mysterious sensation she had felt was gone.

“My father’s parents,” he said. “I never got to know them very well. They passed over when I was very young.”

A chill went through Lilly. “We just saw ghosts?” she asked.

“Call them what you will, all I know is they were allowed to return to help me, and for that I am grateful.”

He turned and looked at the mall. “Guess I have no choice. We need to get back inside. But first I want to show you some things.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Chapter 9

“You can learn the basics about manipulating elements in a few minutes,” Dion explained. “If something happens to me, you might need to summon one or two. So let me show you how to work an elemental on a very small scale.”

Dion sat down on a bench with Lilly and showed her how to attract the attention of an earth elemental with the right words and signs. Initially, it wasn’t much good and she failed to cause a plant to sprout. Deciding the best way to do it was to show her how to attract the attention of a basic earth elemental, Dion soon had her create a little homunculus on the ground that walked for a few paces before falling apart.

Lilly broke out in a big smile and looked up at Dion.

“It’s a beginning,” he said. “I need to show you more, but I don’t have time. Just be careful with what I’ve demonstrated. These things can get out of hand if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

They stood up from the bench and began walking back to the mall. Most of the traffic from it was from the opposite direction. It was toward the end of the day and the shoppers were headed home. Plenty of women and men with clean shopping bags and fresh purchases. It was amazing to see the endless display of consumers.

Dion stopped and stood outside the mall looking at the glass entrance doors. “I really don’t want to go back in there,” he told Lilly.

“Why not?”

“I’m not certain of myself. This is a lot for one person to do. I should have help from the elders, but they haven’t offered any. I need some kind of backup plan before I go inside that place.”

He put one hand on the wall and rested. Lilly stood behind him with one hand on his back. She could feel his lean muscles under the shirt he wore and took in the sensation of the touch. She wished there was some way she could give him comfort, some way she could make him find his parents without the need to go inside and seek them out. But she had no way to do it unless she too was an elemental worker. Right now, she only knew what he’d taught her. Perhaps later, he could show her more…

“Have you ever faced something so horrible in your life?” he asked Lilly. “Have you ever been in a situation where any decision you made could turn out bad? I worry I’m approaching this whole thing wrong and I need guidance. But the only guidance I get is from my dead grandparents and they don’t seem to stick around very long.”

“At least I can smoke outside,” they heard the voice of Edward sound behind them. “No one seems to mind pipes so far. This tobacco is beastly; I need to get a better variety.”

They turned to see the funny little Englishman in a tailored business suit, with a pipe in one hand. He inhaled the fumes one final time and placed it back in his pocket. “They say it will be the death of me, you know,” Edward announced to them. “Tobacco. Can’t understand why. I thought it was invented by the natives in this country and they seemed to be a healthy people.”

“You have a way of appearing at the most charming times,” Dion said. “Did you know that that floor polisher almost had me arrested for theft?”

“But it worked, didn’t it? The ghouls couldn’t stand the noise created by it. They are sensitive to light and noise. I almost gave you a camera with a flash to take down there, but I felt it would be better to let you have the floor polisher since the operation of it was simple. By the time you solved the method of using a flash on a camera, it would have been too late.”

“It did work to keep the ghouls at bay,” Lilly agreed. “And the ghouls had mirrorshades.”

“So now have you shown up to give me some wisdom?” Dion asked.

“I can’t dispense what I lack,” Edward laughed.

“Then what ever shall I do?” Dion asked with a fake southern accent.

“Both of you are talking in circles,” Lilly said. “Edward, why can’t you just get to the point?”

“Because it would be too easy. And the longer I drag this encounter out, the longer I get to wear this suit and smoke my pipe. It’s the little things you miss once you’ve passed over. So many things…”

“You have never told us why you are involved,” Dion snapped to him. “Why didn’t they send Isaac Newton or Julius Cesar to help out?”

“Well, Mr. Newton would spend the entire time tracing out sun patterns. And what good is Julius Cesar without an army? I’m sorry, you are stuck with me. I made many mistakes the first time around. This is their way of giving me a chance to fix what I broke.”

“We’re going to walk through those doors and Officer Karanzen and his good squad will be waiting for us,” Dion made clear. “What do I do when that happens? I need to get to the Earth Element Grandmaster and have her blessing. I can’t approach the next element grandmaster until I have done it.”

“You must be ready to let him know there are people with your best interests in mind. Don’t worry, the moment he tries to give you some trouble, I’m sure he’ll see the logic of backing away from you. It’s not Karanzen you have to worry about; it’s the earth elementals who don’t want you obtaining full power. The ghouls in particular. They are furious you’ve made them look bad to the mall owners and will do everything they can to keep you from reaching the elemental grandmaster.”

“Are they going to pull that cleaning crew stunt again?” Lilly asked. “Because I don’t want to deal with it again. Our friend Emily will never come back to this mall and I think she may be scared for life.”

“They’ll try something else this time and they may be very direct how they do it. I would watch out because you have no idea where they will strike. And, rest assured, the security guards will be nowhere to be found if you need their help.”

Dion looked at the doors and took Lilly by the hand. “Okay,” he said to them both. “I can do this. It looks like I’m the only one who can get my parents back, and prevent even worse things from happening.”

Edward raised a hand. “You can’t even conceive what you are up against. I would tell you more, but they only let me share so much information. But I’m sure you’ll come through, dear boy. In fact, you must…”.

Edward pulled out his pocket watch again and looked at it. “Oh, lovely, time is up. You two take care and I will see you again.”

Then he vanished.

Dion and Lilly walked through the glass doors into the entrance to the mall again. Once again they walked down the corridor lined with shops on each side and slowly approached their destination.

For a few minutes, they thought it might be possible to go upstairs and find the pharmacy where the elemental grandmaster had her shop. Dion and Lilly strolled into the main concourse and saw nothing. There were no security guards, no ghouls, nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. Just a bunch of shoppers finishing their activities for the day. Mothers pushing children in strollers. Groups of kids walking down the main hall, looking in the windows of stores, and men in front of a TV display who drooled over the big game on the latest twenty-five inch console.

It was the picture of domestic tranquility.

They walked toward the escalator with every intention to take it to the second floor where the pharmacy was located.

Lilly had never liked escalators and was happy using the stairs. She’d heard a story about a kid who got his foot caught in one and the ambulance company had to be called out to free him. From that day on, she’d avoided them. As a young kid, she froze when trying to go down one and had to have someone help her get on the track. There was something unnerving about escalators that worried her. It was as if by climbing on one you placed your future in the hands of an inhuman machine. It wasn’t something she wanted to do and couldn’t understand why anyone would do it. She felt the same way about elevators, although for some reason they didn’t bother her quite as much.

Just as they walked up to the escalator, two of Karanzen’s guards blocked their path. Dion and Lilly turned to the other sides only to see them blocked by his men as well. They turned to walk back when they found Officer Karanzen approaching with two more.

“Just couldn’t take my warning could you?” he said to them. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t supposed to be back in the mall.”

“What have I done to be banned from it?” Dion asked. “You never did spell out any charges.”

“First of all,” Karanzen snarled. “There is the matter of the floor polisher you took without authorization. Then there are the other items, which have mysteriously disappeared while you’ve been in the mall. I won’t get into the disruption of you being here creates. I don’t need it and I don’t want it in my mall.”

“You keep saying ‘my mall’,” a voice said to their right. “You seem to think this mall is your property.”

It was Dion’s grandparents.

They had, once again, appeared from nowhere and were right next to Officer Karanzen. The look of shock on his face told Dion all he needed. Even the security guards backed up a bit. His grandfather and grandmother had a presence that made it not wise to cross them. Lilly had felt it a bit when they’d appeared outside the mall, but now it was on full display.

“Major Auriel Bach?” Karanzen said to him. “I know you. What are you doing here? I thought you were--”

“Gone very far away?” Dion’s grandfather said. “Gone further than you could ever fathom? I’m the young man’s grandfather and I understand you have some issue with him.”

“He’s causing a problem in the mall. I’m hired to make sure the mall remains safe. I don’t need anyone here who causes problems.”

“Problems?” Dion’s grandfather said. “The way you handled the problems at the Chosin Reservoir? You’re lucky I let you keep your command after that happened.”

The faces of Dion’s grandfather and Karanzen faded into a cloud as Dion saw the security chief in a distant land in a military uniform. A soldier was leaning on a tank in a snow-covered landscape as he poured over a map. Karanzen was on a radio in a desperate attempt to communicate with someone.

“I said we’re lost!” Karanzen yelled into the apparatus. “Can you give me the coordinates we’re supposed to have? I have five men with a tank and me. We need to get back to the main column. Look, I know Chinese troops are in these hills. They’d love to find someone like us who don’t know where they are. Hello? Hello?”

He slammed the radio telephone receiver down on the tank’s side and swore. Karanzen, wearing a captain’s uniform, looked at the hills around him. It was getting dark. On top of the tank, an enlisted man held a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon.

“Can’t see a thing, sir,” he told him. “No movement anywhere. If there are Chinese Army in these hills they are doing the best job of concealment anyone could….”

The man with binoculars fell away from the tank as the air filled with bullets. The bounced off the tank and kicked up dirt from the ground. Karanzen dropped the radio and ran behind the tank, as he tried to take cover from the rifle fire. Two other men were with him.

“Can you see how many?” he asked the man to his right. They were strapping on their helmets as fast as they could. At least one of them carried a carbine.

“Could be four, could be five,” the man said. “Hard to tell and they’re shooting out of the sun to make it difficult to spot. For all we know it could be the entire Red Chinese Army out there.”

Then the fog faded again and Dion saw his grandfather facing Officer Karanzen. But the security chief had lost his composure. No longer was he the fearsome defender of the mall but a man who’d just had a secret he fought to suppress revealed to people. Dion looked around and wondered how many of them had the same vision he’d just seen. Lilly looked at him with confusion, which meant she’d seen it too. The rest of the guards just stood there, as if nothing had changed. But the tension between Dion’s grandparents and the rough security officer was now finished.

“So long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble,” Karanzen said to Dion’s grandfather and walked off. He stopped three steps away and turned to his security guards.

Dion’s grandparents turned and walked back the way they came. Soon, they were gone, vanished as they had done before.

“Be sure to keep an eye on him. I don’t want those two out of your sight.” Karanzen moved away toward the rear of the mall in the direction of his office. Whatever had transpired between him and Dion’s grandfather left a powerful impression.

The other security guards began to move away and head toward their posts. All except for the ones who were stationed in this part of the mall. They walked back and kept their gaze on Dion and Lilly.

“We need to find someplace to get away from them,” Dion said to Lilly. “Is there some restaurant or store we can duck into for the time being?”

“I’m not sure what is around this part of the mall. There are a few places I can think of, but not many. Wait, what’s that?”