The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Nineteen

The fires were still burning an hour later, their smoke and fury only beginning to fade as the flames consumed their fuel.

 A bent and twisted type of peace had descended over the ruins surrounding the dilapidated and crumbling mountain of a cathedral.  It squatted, a fallen House of the Holy, uncaring and inviolate, centermost in the extended, expansive atrium surrounding it.

 Tired, bruised and soul-weary, the survivors had all collected in a cobbled clearing near a long-dry water fountain, away from the massive, dying carcass of the cyborg Burrow-ship that, even still, continued slowly sinking deeper into the ground.

 Sergeant Carmoody and the remainder of the Broken Mirror unit had a melancholy, but satisfying, reunion and shared their experiences with brutal honesty and more than a little cynicism, as soldiers often did after living through the horrors of the battlefield.  There was cursing, there was bitterness, there were survivor’s guilt, but, too, there was a fierce pride in having survived the worse that the world could throw at them and relief that, for now, it was over.

 Carmoody also took the occasion to introduce his team to Ji’lyunne and Fre’drycka, who were, as announced in his estimation, the newest recruits to Broken Mirror.

 The Traveler in Red and Ryonne mingled uncomfortably among the group, accepted despite their alienness, and Earth-born Adam Wilder was adopted as a provisional member of the military unit.  Ryonne, meanwhile, sat amused and slightly bewildered at the attention she was given by the fascinated, and slightly smitten, group of soldiers.  Wilder listened intently to the details of how the mission had begun and what life was like back on his native Earth.  He did not look happy.

 Doctor Veneralli and Major Holloway stood off to one side, speaking solemnly with D’Spayr, Nygeia and Lumynn.

 “The Ambassador, Mystikyll, is dead.  He died inside the Borrow-schooner at the hands of that caped psychotic lunatic you call ‘Pilgrim’,” the Major said.  “And it appears, and we hope, that the last of the Night Marshals have finally been put down.”

 “Raphael Karamanga is dead, as well,” Doctor Veneralli said, wiping a tired hand across his brow.  “This affair has been hellish on every front.  Our survival has come at a pretty high cost.”

 “There’s no doubt of that,” Holloway agreed solemnly.

 “You couldn’t have known or predicted what lay in store for you when you began your mission,” Nygeia offered conciliatorily.

 “Yeah, maybe,” Veneralli said.  It was obvious he was disappointed and deeply dispirited.  “And the murderous Warlord piece-of-crap that put this whole mess into motion?  What about him?”

 “Last I saw, he was in the custody of the Grand Vizier of his political rival,” Nygeia admitted.  “His schemes have been pretty much neutralized for now, but there’s no centralized law enforcement on Teshiwahur and no governing committee who can put him on trial for his crimes.  This is the best we can do right now…”

 Holloway shook his head angrily.  “There ought to be more we can do.  A lot more.”

 “In the Withered Land, Time is the best, and most honest, policeman we have,” D’Spayr said.  “So we wait.  His day will come.  The scales will again be balanced.  Just be patient.”

 “I want to be there when that day comes,” Holloway said.

 D’Spayr smiled enigmatically and gave a small nod.

 “We need to return to the beach, back across the Wastes and bordering the Forever Plain.  That’s the extraction point,” Holloway said, changing the subject.  “That is where we’ll be able to return home.  Right now, we’re only eleven hours into our planned mission excursion.  But our implanted transmitters are out of range of the transdimensional network.  The team back home can’t pick up our signal.”

 D’Spayr nodded, understanding.  “I thought as much,” was all he said, though.

 “Our work here is not yet done,” Lumynn said, aiming his comment at D’Spayr and Nygeia.  “There is a great and deadly power struggle in progress here with far-reaching possibilities.  Madmen and tyrants are wrestling for control of our world.  The late, unlamented Lord Cr’Aughtin and the Pilgrim were only one part of it.  The cult of the Machusians are again trying to exert their control over the destiny of the Land and this time there is no hegemony like the old Emperium to stop them.  There is too much about this we do not yet know.”

 Doctor Veneralli said, “We will try to arrange some kind of a bridge between our two worlds when we get back, so we can help you rebuild, maybe re-centralize your splintered government…”

 “Thank you, but no,” Nygeia said, interrupting before the Doctor continued further.  “Earth’s interference in matters of the Withered Land would be disastrous.  You’ve only seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  You have no defense against the dormant, half-forgotten technologies we have or against the semi-mythical magicks of The Discipline that exist here.  If the Warlords, the TekMages or the UnderWitches of the Dark Societies knew they could travel to and from your planet, it would result in a bloody war of conquest.”

 “So you’re saying all we have to depend on to keep the balance and protect Earth’s humanity from monsters like we’ve seen here is you and your friends,” Major Holloway said.  “You’re suggesting that we say as little as possible about what we saw here.  That we keep the details foggy.”

 “That does appear to be what we’re saying,” D’Spayr said.

 “Marvelous.”

 D’Spayr smiled wanly, understanding the Major’s dilemma.

 “First things first, though,” the Knight said.  “We need to get you and your men home.”

 “Home would be nice,” Veneralli remarked.  “I think we’ve had enough of the Withered Land for now, no offense.”

 “None taken,” D’Spayr replied.

 

Meanwhile, across Space and Time, on a grassy hillock overlooking a tree-enclosed curve in the canal that prescribed the edges of the suburban community of Jericho, north of the Oxford city center in Oxfordshire County, south east England, a chubby, red-haired boy threw a wildly vehement tantrum.  He gnashed his teeth, tore at the grass, kicked his small feet and cursed like a longshoreman.  He rolled and beat his fists against the ground.  He rubbed his shoulder and had a brief coughing fit that bent him double on the grass and he bitterly cursed some more.

 He abruptly stopped when he heard a ghostly melody, a sound so soft, it was if one were hearing music echoing from the Past.  There was a vaguely human pitch to the sound, like that of a voice wordlessly singing musical scales.

 The little boy opened his eyes to see a floating, white will-o'-the wisp light, the circumference of an average dinner plate, bouncing gently in the air.

 “I HATE YOU, YOU BASTARD, I HATE YOU!” the boy screamed at the light.

 From the light came a noise that was unmistakably that of cruel, mean-spirited laughter.

                    T H E  E N D