The Quest (12 page)

“The cute guy?” I asked innocently. That was how my late girlfriend had once described the never-aging 3000-year-old psionic recluse who lived in the mountains and traded information for favors.

Terry nodded. “This war is history in the making, so the Historian is really our only bet. Even the Angels wouldn’t stand a chance if we could get the Historian to fight on our side.”

Though technically still flesh and blood, the Historian had been alive so long and had consequently acquired so much psionic power that he was practically immortal. When Terry met the Historian last year, she had been seeking an answer to my lost eyesight. This time, however, our request wouldn’t be quite as innocuous.

I looked at Terry uneasily. “But I thought the Historian had vowed never to alter the course of history with his powers. Maybe he’ll give us information, but he isn’t going to directly help us fight the Angels, is he?”

“That remains to be seen,” said Terry. “I told you before that he has a soft spot for underdogs, and even the mighty Historian probably fears what could happen if the Angels really do end up taking over the planet. I’m guessing his neutrality is about to be tested.”

I gave a non-committal nod, and Terry continued, “Besides, information alone would be a very good start. With the right information, we might even be able to kill Randal Divine without any direct help from the Historian.”

Perhaps, but to get the Historian on our side would require an audience with him and plenty of gifts. The Seraphim would be closely watching every possible route to the Historian’s mountain home, and the notoriously fickle and eccentric Historian was unlikely to assist us in breaking through the Angels’ embargo on his vast knowledge and powers.

“It won’t be easy getting to him,” I said warningly.

“I know it won’t be easy, Half-head!” snapped Terry. “Since when was anything we did easy? Come on, trust me on this. You remember that I made a second trip to the Historian alone, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied cautiously. “But things are different now.”

The Angels would have tripled their guard on the Historian’s mountain since Terry had been there last. The balance of power had tilted too far.

Terry said accusingly, “You promised you’d help me find and kill Randal Divine.”

“I also said Cindy first,” I reminded her.

“I’m going even without your help,” Terry said stubbornly, and then grinned as she added, “But if you come with me, who knows? The Historian might be able to tell you what happened to the Council’s plane.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re just trying to use me.”

Terry laughed. “Well, sure I am, but so what? You don’t plan on spending the rest of your life in Walnut Lane, do you?”

It was useless to argue with Terry once she had an idea in her head. Terry wanted Mrs. Harding to lend us the Walnut Lane Guardian Knights, without which our hope of reaching the Historian alive was virtually nonexistent. Merlin strongly doubted that Mrs. Harding would ever grant Terry’s request, but he agreed to arrange a meeting nevertheless.

The following day, having received personal hiding protection from Merlin so that I could leave the house, I accompanied Terry to the home of the woman who led Walnut Lane. Old Mrs. Harding lived half a block down from us in a richly furnished two-story house with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren.

We arrived just in time for afternoon tea and cake.

Terry patiently explained her idea and request to Mrs. Harding, who listened with a sympathetic smile as she sipped her tea.

“Oh, Teresa dear,” Mrs. Harding said affectionately when Terry finished, “you have grown so much since you stayed with us last winter. But your recklessness has no limit, does it?”

I could never get over how Mrs. Harding called my combat instructor “Teresa dear,” and I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

“We have to try, Mrs. Harding,” argued Terry, whose facial muscles were hard at work concealing her annoyance. “It is our only hope.”

“But we
have
tried, Teresa,” said Mrs. Harding. “Do you honestly believe that you are the first to seek an audience with the Historian since the fall of your city? There have been at least six attempts by the Guardians to reach the Historian already, and not one of them has returned. Most of them never even made it to the mountain.”

“But we can’t just sit around and do nothing,” insisted Terry. “That’s not how you win a war.”

“A war…” mused Mrs. Harding. “Yes, it is a war, alright. Especially these last few weeks, things have been quite crazy right here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Terry.

Mrs. Harding sighed. “Teresa dear, you are not even the first to ask me to give away my Knights. We have been contacted by the two so-called ‘true Guardians’ last month. Both have demanded that I give half of my Knights to them. If I obliged them both, we would have none left at all to protect Walnut Lane.”

“Are you going to send any Knights?” I asked.

Mrs. Harding chuckled. “Heavens no, dear. This isn’t the New Haven Council we’re talking about.”

Mrs. Harding took an excruciatingly slow sip of tea, and then said, “The truth is that I have been speaking with the families here and the general consensus is that we should strike our colors.”

Horrified, I asked, “You mean
join
the Angels?”

“Oh, no, nothing as dire as that,” said Mrs. Harding, smiling comfortingly. “Secession, dear Adrian. The Guardians are on the verge of collapse, and we feel that they may drag us down when they do.”

Now I understood why Mrs. Harding had called New Haven “your city” earlier.

Mrs. Harding continued, “Soon after Queen Granados was assassinated, this small community became independent and remained neutral for many years. It was only last year that we decided to rejoin the Guardians and established contact with the New Haven Council. Now, it appears that our trust may have been misplaced.”

My first impression of Mrs. Harding had been that of a cookie-baking flower-arranging grandmother, but now I could see the destroyer in her blood. The telekinetic leader of the Walnut Lane Guardians was actually a tough pragmatist that reminded me a little of Mr. Baker.

Terry’s frustration was beginning to show more clearly on her face. “Mrs. Harding, we may be in a state of turmoil, but the Guardians are all that stand between the Angels and a world ruled by psionics. You can’t turn your back now. You just can’t!”

Mrs. Harding shook her head. “A Guardian councilwoman visited us at the start of this year, Teresa, shortly after you left us. This Mrs. Brown had come to assure us of the impregnability of your experimental Guardian city. She even suggested that we join her there. And yet New Haven fell to the Angels in just one night.” Mrs. Harding took another long sip of her tea before continuing gravely, “The hard truth we must all face now is that our fight with the Angels is a lost cause. The Angels have already won, and we must each do what we can to protect ourselves. I’m sorry, Teresa, but the war is over.”

“It’s not over!” Terry said furiously. “I’ll start my own war if I have to!”

Mrs. Harding gently patted Terry’s right arm and asked in an overly understanding, grandmotherly tone, “You and what army, Teresa dear?”

“I’ll find help elsewhere!” said Terry, her voice shaking as she stood up. “I’ll go to the other Guardian factions if I have to, but I’m going to get to the Historian somehow!”

Mrs. Harding remained calmly seated. “I know you well enough not to try stopping you, but I’m afraid that you may not have much luck anywhere you go. We are all on the defensive now. No faction leader will risk their limited resources for a suicide mission.”

Terry bit her lip so hard I thought she might draw blood.

Taking Terry’s hand, Mrs. Harding gently forced her back into her chair.

“Besides, Teresa,” she said, pouring us more tea, “I have met the Historian four times in my life, and I believe that you are seriously overestimating the potential return on a meeting with him. Even if, by some miracle, you did get to his mountain, the Historian would never actually fight for us. His bending of his vow of neutrality has its limits too. And while there is definitely potential gain from whatever information he might provide on Randal Divine, even the Historian’s lore is not absolute.”

I remembered how the Historian hadn’t been able to provide the Guardians with the secret identity of the Angels’ second master controller, Angelina Harrow. The Historian wasn’t omniscient. As for the possibility of him actually breaking his vow and fighting for us, I found Mrs. Harding’s levelheaded assessment far more believable than Terry’s passionate hopes. Perhaps Terry just believed what she wanted to believe.

Terry was positively fuming when we left Mrs. Harding’s home. Merlin had given me strong enough hiding protection to last three solid days, so it was only Terry and me walking back to the Refugee House together.

“Me and what army?!” Terry muttered savagely. “I’ll give her what army!”

“Are we leaving, then?” I asked hesitantly.

“No,” replied Terry, her eyes suddenly filled with grim determination. “The Historian is still our best bet, but Harding is right too. The Guardians won’t keep sending Knights to the mountain if they’ve already lost six teams.”

“Then what are you planning to do?”

“What I should have done the day we arrived here,” replied Terry. “We’ve been sitting around playing house far too long.”

Chapter 6: Terry’s Troopers

The living room was in its usual state of chaos when we returned. In one corner were Daniel and Walter throwing paper airplanes at each other. In another were Felicity and Susan in the midst of a heated argument over something or other. Heather, Candace and Alia were sitting together on the sofas, and Heather was teaching Alia how to put on lipstick as the girls talked and laughed noisily over the sisters’ shouts and the blaring sound of action-movie gunfire from the TV.

“Attention please,” Terry said quietly.

I telekinetically hit the power switch on the TV and then locked onto an in-flight paper airplane, guiding it into my right hand. All eyes turned toward us.

“Is everyone here?” asked Terry.

Heather replied, “Scott just got back from work and said he was going to take a shower. I think everybody is in the house somewhere, though.”

“Gather them please,” said Terry. “I have an announcement to make. Scott can shower later.”

“You want Steven here too?” asked Heather.

“Everyone. This is important.”

In less than two minutes, Terry had everybody’s undivided attention as they sat on the sofas and on the floor, gazing at us expectantly. I already regretted not confronting Terry before we entered the house.

“You all know it’s been more than a month now since we left New Haven together,” began Terry, looking around at everyone in turn. “I heard from Mrs. Harding today that Teddy is doing well with his aunt. I still hope that some of you will find your families. But in the meantime, we are all members of the Walnut Lane community, and it’s time we started contributing to it for real.”

I looked at Terry uneasily. But as Terry’s second-in-command, I knew better than to argue with her in front of the others.

Terry continued, “Scott, Heather and Candace are helping us make enough money now not to be a drain on the other Guardian families living here, and I know that everyone else is helping out in the house one way or another. But we have to do more than that. The Angels are all but unstoppable now, and every small community like ours is at risk. You all know what Adrian and I have been doing downstairs, right?”

By “downstairs,” Terry meant the large storage basement under our house. Weeks ago, I had helped Terry clear away the clutter and set up a makeshift training room. Alia had managed to use her connections over at Patrick’s to get Terry a set of rusty weights that had been gathering dust in someone else’s basement. Though we didn’t have proper gym mats to cover the concrete floor, our training room resembled a miniaturized version of the dojo in the subbasement of NH-1. Terry and I had been using the place to keep our skills up, and most of the kids had come down a few times to watch us practice. Seeing Terry’s moves, however, nobody ever tried to join in.

Felicity asked hesitantly, “Are you suggesting that we should all become Guardian Knights?”

“No,” said Terry. “You don’t have to become a Knight if you don’t want to. But I’m saying you should at least learn how to defend yourself. Knights or not, we’re Guardians, all of us. If you’re untrained and get into a fight, you might win, you might die. Two on one, you die. The more you train, the better your odds get. It’s really that simple.”

Most of the kids nodded. Not every Guardian Knight was proficient in hand-to-hand combat. Many simply fought using their own psionic powers or relied on modern weapons. But these kids didn’t have either.

Terry smiled grimly at the crowd, saying, “I’m sure you’ve all had plenty of time to think about what might happen if you don’t find your families again. Most of you will probably gain some kind of psionic power in a few more years. It might not be a combat power, but that doesn’t mean you have to be helpless. If you have time to waste in this house, you have time to train. You might even get one back for what happened to your homes.”

Steven snorted loudly. “So who’s going to teach us? You?”

“I’ll teach anyone willing,” Terry replied evenly.

Steven stood up, silently glared at Terry for a few seconds, and left the room.

“Anyone else?” Terry asked challengingly, her eyes darting around the room.

Sitting next to Felicity, Susan seemed to tremble under Terry’s fierce gaze. Max just stared emptily back.

Terry said in a softer tone, “I’m not going to force anyone, especially the youngest. It has to be your own decision.”

A full minute passed in silence. Then we heard a whisper.

“I’ll fight.”

The kids looked around trying to find the source of the voice, but Terry and I knew who it was because we were facing the crowd.

“I’ll fight,” Max whispered again, getting up from the floor and looking at us determinedly.