Wherever I Am

Chapter 13 - Part 3

It was...sometime...when I woke gasping from that Sobeck pulling my face toward his.

Baemardis...we were in Baemardis. Nightly nightmare, it seemed. I felt my head. The wounds were healing, and no bandage now. We had survived the Golden Scroll statue and needed to go back. I glanced toward the open balcony door and headed that way.

"Ellie," I called lightly, then again.

"I'll wake her, Uncle Kevin," came Oana's reply. Not sure we needed her tagging along, but since she was awake, I was sure Ellie would bring her along. If that was the case, Oana should also send her message since that seemed like what we were doing...maybe. At least they knew we were here, or at least one of us was. Like so much, we weren't sure yet.

I went back inside and slipped on my baggy shirt and pants. I didn't bother with shoes or a vest. It'd be a short trip down the granite stairs and to the main hall. I supposed that if it were guarded at night for some reason, we could order them away, at least from the scroll, until we were done.

I slipped quietly out the doors to the hallway, none of the boys stirring, and Ellie and Oana came out a moment later holding a lamp, Ellie holding a finger to her lips as she shut the door.

"Sorina woke as we came through," Ellie whispered when she got to me. "I told her to be quiet and that we'd be back in a few minutes. I think she'll stay quiet."

I nodded, and we went down the stairs and out to the statue, feeling that electrical current as I touched it. The outer doors we closed, and there were no guards.

Uncle John's voice came into our heads. "I'm glad you two made it, and it looks like you picked up a hitchhiker along the way." There was humor in his statement. "I don't recognize your third, so if you can introduce her, I'd appreciate it. I didn't expect you to find anyone from the Realm there, so you have a lot of people curious. We don't have any specific ETA for showing up there, but it will probably be within the next month. Don't plan on coming home anytime soon—when you do, it won't be in Austin. As you might expect, home is destroyed. Unless the attackers had a second wave to clean things up, the local police found bodies in the wreckage. Let me know your current status." Then there was silence.

"She is Oana," Ellie replied before I could start. "She was born common here and was abandoned to us our first night here. Long story, but we've survived two different attacks by Sobecks, and Kevin was attacked by bandits trying to steal away one of my ladies-in-waiting. I'm up to five of them, by the way, and it's driving me crazy, though I've had one of them killed and two wounded...Kevin's the same with losing his knight cavalier valet, and his page and squire were both wounded. Nothing here makes sense. We're in some pre-Rennaisance Texas that doesn't exist with Norse nobility wearing medieval clothing and using Mongol saddles or something like that. They're ruling people who look maybe more like Orientals than Native Indians. No internet. No cell service. And we're the de facto rulers here now that we've survived touching this statue of a gold scroll. Is there some way to contact you without having to sneak down to the main meeting room in the middle of the night? I got the impression you didn't want the locals to know that this was a communication device. Kevin, what do you have?"

I cleared my voice. Ellie had spoken out loud, though I got a strange stereo effect from my ears and inside my head. Still, speaking out quietly would probably be easiest. "Oana is nine years old and seems to be locally born and not to nobility, but she handled my weapons, and I'm told that was supposed to kill her. The same with this scroll. Is all this myth and legend, or is she truly one of us?"

I took a breath before continuing. "I get the impression that we've been trained in many ways in preparation to come here or some other place like this and that your travels have been to someplace or places like here, or maybe more high-tech than at home, considering our armor and weapons, or are they magical like we've explained? We were also trained in firearms, which they don't have here, nor any magic that I've seen, though it's spoken of as though it's real, and why Enchanted Rock? My head hurts from thinking about this, and I will say that if there's any place you failed in the training, it was in the social and leadership roles. I assume you didn't plan on us being the Big Kahunas here, but we are and hope not to fuck things up too badly. However, we are this world's most eligible single people, and that isn't fun, either. I got nothing to add right now, though I'm sure I'll come up with more in a couple of minutes. We're going back to bed and maybe to sleep."