Phoenix Rising (36 page)

“Well . . . would it really hurt to try? You said it will last only a short time more.”

Xavier looked reluctant, then shrugged. “I . . . guess not. Just be careful, I’ve heard doing the wrong thing with batteries can make them blow up. And I know that you have to have the right, um, voltages or whatever to run a gadget like this.”

With permission given, Poplock focused on the battery-thing.
Okay, it’s giving enough power to operate that LTP now. So if I can keep
that
taste about the same, maybe just a
little
more intense, but find a way to keep a little power flowing
in
. . .

He took the battery and pushed it into place.
Spring-loaded clips. That leaves a little space here and here.

“Hey, Tobimar. You got any Zeus’ Rains in your ‘reserves’ over there?”

“I think I’ve got a few . . . not very big, though.”

“I don’t need big ones.”

Tobimar opened up the small bag, rummaged around in it as Xavier watched. “Um . . . yeah, there’s a couple . . . three. That’s it, though.”

Two of them were too big, but the third was a deep blue-black oval that was small enough to fit on one side without crowding.

Now, let’s see. This is sort of like that trap I ran across back in the
mazakh
stronghold. I want to channel the energy out of the Rain into this battery-thingie, and just enough to keep the taste the same—not sharper, not sweeter.

He took out his notebook and riffled to the section with runes and symbols. A lot of them were still way out of his comfort zone, but just a simple guide-and-drop channel . . . “Hey, do you just get new batteries when they run out?”

“No, you recharge them.”

There were several shiny gold-colored parts of the battery. “Can you tell me if these are the parts that ‘recharge,’ or the parts that give the power out?”

“I don’t think . . .” Xavier blinked, then grinned. “Maybe I can!” He dug around in his backpack and came up with a small battered printed booklet with a picture of the LTP on it. “Here, I still have the manual, never can bring myself to throw them away . . . um . . .”

After a few moments of looking at pictures in the manual and arguing, they were able to conclude that two of the “contacts,” as the book called them, were for recharging the battery.

“Okay, here goes.” He first fit the battery back in carefully and then pulled it back out after marking the right spot. On that spot he put the Zeus’ Rain, sticking it fast with a drop of hawkspinner’s glue. Then he took out a thin engraving stylus and drew two lines, one from each end of the Zeus’ Rain and each going to one of the two contacts in question.

Elemental magic . . . here, this page.
He focused as old Watersparker had taught him and began to channel his own strength into the symbols, copying each precisely along the lines graven on the battery. It took a while, during which Xavier and Tobimar started talking about their fighting styles.
That’d be interesting, but not time to get distracted . . . There!

He felt a tingle along his fingers which were still touching the Zeus’ Rain, and he was sure he could see a very faint blue-violet glow.

“Hey,” he said, as the two were both reaching for their scabbards. “Instead of comparing your swords, let’s see if this worked.”

This time Xavier
and
Tobimar looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t think you chose those words by accident,” Xavier said.

Poplock grinned inside, but just blinked innocently. “I don’t know what you mean by
that.
But here, put your battery back in.”

The gray-eyed boy studied the modifications for a moment, shrugged, and put it back in. “Doesn’t look like you did anything that would damage it, anyway. Well, here goes nothing.”

The screen lit back up, and Xavier’s jaw dropped slightly. “Damn! Look at that!” The little corner symbol was now a full green. “Thanks, Poplock! That’s great! I mean . . . maybe I won’t get lots of chances to play it, but it’s like a kind of, you know, comfort reminder from home.”

Poplock felt a warm swell of pride and some mingled surprise.
It worked!
“I guess practice pays off. I’m not much of a mage . . . not really a mage at all, mostly more into sneaking
past
mages, and sometimes you have to know how they work to get away with that.”

“You sound like a couple other people I know, which means I bet you can do more than you admit. But thanks again.” He handed the device over to the Skysand prince. “So here you go, Tobimar!”

Several hours later Poplock kicked the little device almost out of Tobimar’s hands. “Time for you to go to sleep, Tobimar.”

“But I’m almost through this challenge! Just another few minutes and I’m sure I’ll figure it—”

Poplock just
looked
at him, and Tobimar sighed and shut the strange device off. The little Toad then dragged it over to Xavier, who was already asleep.

Maybe fixing that “battery” thing wasn’t the best idea I’ve had.

34

“Ha,” said Xavier, looking at Tobimar. “Got sucked in, didn’t you?”

The expression wasn’t hard to figure out, and neither was the knowing grin. Tobimar rolled his eyes and nodded. “Yes. I suppose that’s not uncommon?”

“Depends on the person, but no. Especially if it’s new and exciting. First time I played, my mom came into my room and I wondered what she was doing up so late . . . and that’s when I looked up and saw that the sun was
rising
and I had to get ready for school. Didn’t learn much
that
day.” He started packing up his sleeping roll. “So where’d you get to?”

“Trying to cross the river.”

“Oh, that one stopped me
dead
for a while.”

As they prepared a quick breakfast, Poplock spoke up. “Hey, Xavier, I was wondering—have you known the rest of your group a long time?”

“Long time? Ha. No, Khoros yanked us all together and then dumped us in your world with some old mysterious wizard handwavy advice maybe six weeks before we got grabbed by the city on suspicion of regicide.”

That makes sense
. “I rather thought so,” Tobimar said aloud. “The way you stood and talked with each other; you knew each other somewhat, and you’d been through at least enough to feel like a group . . . but you weren’t friends, really.”

“Yeah. Though they’re all pretty nice people, really, even Toshi. Who can be such a dick, without meaning to, if you know what I mean.”

Tobimar was breathing in when Xavier said that, so the laugh came out more as a snort. “Your precise meaning is lost in sand, yet I think I still understand you perfectly.” There was a short pause as they continued walking. “But one thing does puzzle me, a great deal. There’s no magic in your world, right?”

“Right.” Xavier suddenly blinked, as though he’d caught himself in a lie. “Um . . . lemme change that. There
wasn’t
any as far as I knew, up until a little while before Khoros got us together.”

“Ohhh,” Poplock said with an enlightened tone. “Of course, if he’d just been brought over by Khoros, how’d he learn those magic tricks from his sensei?”

“Those aren’t magic. At least, I don’t think so,” Xavier protested. “If they were, I’d have been detected, right?”

That
did
stop Tobimar, and from his suddenly wrinkled expression, Poplock too. “I . . . I think I would have to agree, yes,” Tobimar said after a moment. “Yet you wandered around the Dragon’s Castle for weeks without anyone noticing.”

“Still,” Poplock said, “from the way you act, that’s got to at least
seem
like magic to you, so how’d you end up learning what you know before you
got
here?”

Xavier’s sharp-edged face showed expression clearly, and now it was suddenly downcast. “I did something inexcusably stupid, that’s what. And didn’t
quite
pay the full price for it.” He sighed, looked up into the sky, then back at them. “My . . . my brother died. Killed, while I was talking to him on the phone.”

Tobimar restrained himself from asking what a “phone” was, and his glance kept Poplock from doing more than opening his mouth.

“It really messed up our family bad. And the cops, the police, they couldn’t find who it was—eventually pinned it on some guy I
know
hadn’t done it, because I’d heard the killer myself, and it wasn’t a man, it was a woman, sounded almost like a little girl, and she’d
laughed
. So . . . I decided I’d go find the killer myself. And so I got less than halfway there, cut through the wrong alley, and got ambushed by a gang that didn’t like some kid walking through their turf. They’d stabbed me in the gut and were going to finish me off when this old man shows up and tells them to back off—and then beats the heck out of all of them when they don’t.”

“Khoros?” asked Poplock.

Xavier managed a cynical grin. “Oh, no,
that
wasn’t Khoros.
Khoros
was the bastard who’d told me to take
that
alley as a shortcut, I found out later. No, the old man ended up being my sensei. I knew some fighting stuff, martial arts, before I met him, but by the time he was done I knew how to do things I didn’t think were possible. This after he told me how much of an idiot I was and got me to realize how much I was hurting my family by disappearing.”

“So why didn’t you go back
home
instead of staying to learn with this sensei?”

The smile grew bitter. “Because he also recognized . . .
I
recognized . . . that I’d probably end up breaking myself if I didn’t finish what I started. Knowing she was still out there would eat away at me every day. So he taught me, and a year later I came out, went down the alley another fifty feet, and Khoros showed up and dragged me off to fairyland.” He managed a better smile. “So that’s
my
story. What about you guys? What brought both of you all the way out here?”

Tobimar looked at Poplock and grinned. The Toad gave a little hop-bow. “After you, O Prince.”

* * *

Talking made the miles flow by quickly, and Tobimar came to know Xavier much better. That didn’t mean he—or Poplock—really
understood
Xavier, because the boy and his world were so very
alien
that even what seemed simple assumptions turned out to be very incorrect. But he had the same courage, loyalty, and toughness that any adventuring companion should have, and a sense of humor and curiosity that fit well with both the exiled Prince and his Toad friend. He was glad that Xavier was able to travel with them for at least a while.

Over the next two weeks they crossed a few hundred miles, partly by catching rides on caravans that moved on through the night. Tobimar’s fascination with Xavier’s little machine didn’t completely go away, but the immediate obsession dimmed quickly; the LTP’s games were amazing, but the world around them was even more so.

The three were now looking up the road where hills rose higher, the farthest piercing the lowering gray clouds, covered with the thick greenery of the jungle and showing the wavering line of the cleared perimeter narrowing. “We coming to a mountain range?”

Poplock glanced at a miniature map in one tiny paw-hand. “Um . . . Not really
mountains
, but that’s the Fallenstone Jumble. We’ll be going up a little, but the Great Road stays pretty level.”

“Still, we’d better be alert,” Tobimar said, feeling nervous for the first time in a while. “The Fallenstone’s the most dangerous part of this leg of our trip. The clearcut narrows in this area down to a few hundred yards, so bandits, monsters, that kind of thing have a better chance of catching people unawares.”

“Can we get through that part today?” Xavier asked.

“Not a chance,” Poplock answered promptly. “More than a hundred miles through, maybe two.”

Xavier studied the Jumble as they approached. “You know, I didn’t ask about that. Why this huge clear-cut area most places?”

“Gives room and security to build farms, little villages, things like that. If you let the jungle come in, well, gets too dangerous.” Poplock nodded sagely.

“But your people live . . .
lived
, sorry . . . in the jungle. So did the
Artan
, right? So . . .”

“Special people, special places, but it’s never safe or civilized. People like us—adventurers—go in, but it’s always a mystery.”

“Huh. Where I come from, the whole continent’s pretty much explored and safe. I mean, there’s some preserved wilderness areas and all, but I think there’s a lot more chopped down, turned to cities and fields and such, than there is wild. And no one’s
afraid
to go into the woods, really.”

Another huge difference
, Tobimar mused.
His world truly
is
completely different.

The hills became higher, until Xavier said that he didn’t care what
they
thought, these were mountains as far as he was concerned. Tobimar didn’t feel inclined to argue; the highest peaks might not be more than seven or eight thousand feet overhead, puny compared to the Firewalls or, of course, the Khalals, but they were steep and forbidding.

“Why didn’t they just build the road
around
these mountains?” Xavier said after a while, with the mist now descending on them and reducing sight to only half a mile.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Poplock answered. “The mountains weren’t
here
then.”

Xavier goggled at them both, looking momentarily like a Toad himself. “
What?
”

“It’s true.”

“
Oooohhh,
” Tobimar said, feeling revelation and surprise.
This is the place!
“That was
here
?”

“I think so. They said he fell from the sky across the Great Road and nearly broke his back, right?”

“That’s how I remember it.”
What was it Khoros called it? “Chains of the Mind,” that was it . . .

Xavier was watching them as they talked, and his incredulity hadn’t faded. “You people can’t be serious. What could possibly fall down and make a hundred-plus miles of mountains?”

“A Dragon, obviously.”

Xavier was apparently still trying to decide whether they were pranking him or telling the truth when Tobimar noticed something. He pointed up the road. “Look—someone’s stopped up ahead.”