Baranak_Storming the Gates by Van Allen Plexico

Author:Van Allen Plexico [Plexico, Van Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Rocket Books
Published: 2015-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Our relationship changed a bit after the incident with Kratok and Udasi.

Istari retained possession of the sword but he seemed deeply troubled by the revelation that I could use it. He made it very clear to me that such a thing should not have been possible.

I was getting a bit fed up with him leading me around and expecting me to do his bidding—which today had mostly consisted of rushing blindly and unarmed into fights against vastly superior forces. So I put my foot down and demanded answers.

To my surprise, he acquiesced. “That is fair,” he said. “I promised to help you with your problem once the sword came into my possession, and now it has.”

We climbed back onto our horses, both now awake again after Istari had freed them from his hypnotic spell, and my companion regarded me as if seeing me for the first time.

“There is also the fact that our separate problems are now merging together,” he added.

This took me aback. “They are?” I asked. “How so?”

“My enemies—my former associates—are now working with individuals who are your enemies, but whom you still believe to be your allies and associates,” he said.

I attempted to parse that out, failed. I was very tired at that point. I’d been up a full day even before the attack on the Victoria moon and the murder of my father, and then add on everything that had happened since then... I had a hell of a headache, to say the least.

“Can you run that by me again?” I asked, rubbing my bloodshot eyes with my fists.

He looked away for a moment as our horses moved lazily about in slow, meandering circles, nibbling at the parts of the grass that weren’t still frozen. “Haven’t you asked yourself,” he said at last, “what my former captor was doing riding his horse away from your world in the first place? Why was he there?”

I shook my head, feeling chagrined to have overlooked such an obvious thing. Of course I had thought about it at the time, but so much had happened since then that the question of that first alien’s presence there on Victoria had slipped my mind entirely. And, as I’ve said repeatedly, I was extremely tired.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” I told him. “Do you?”

“Of course,” he said, flashing me that thin smile I’d seen from him so many times already in our brief acquaintance. Then his look turned more serious. “He was there meeting with someone,” he said. “Someone who is in league with him and his associates—my former compatriots.”

I stared back at him, a sick feeling growing in my gut. “What are you saying?” I demanded.

“I am saying precisely what you think I’m saying. What you fear most.” He chuckled softly. “You harbor a traitor within your ranks.”

“Someone on my world?”

“Someone in your family,” he replied.

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