Michael Scott Rohan by Chase the Morning

Author:Chase the Morning [Morning, Chase the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-06-01T22:43:27+00:00

big cargo carriers with never a mast or smokestack between them, flanked by modern container cranes or grain or mineral hoppers whose banks of floodlights carved out little wedges in the night. Of the Defiance, of all or anything that had brought me here, there was no sign at all.

I could have gone rampaging up and down those wharves, looking; I didn’t.

I knew too damn well what had happened. I’d feared it from the moment I saw that paper, that date - though maybe it was already too late by then. Maybe it had been since that moon rose. My assumptions, my Core-bred basic instincts, had tangled with the reality that had brought me here. I’d pushed on too deep, gone back into the Core, seen too much of it that didn’t want to let go its grip. As, no doubt, the Knave meant to happen. And some deeper part of me, despairing of fulfilling the purpose that had driven me so far, so fast, had retreated into what it knew best and shut out the rest. In a foreign country, without papers, passport, money or even a good explanation why I was here, it had stranded me, left me high and dry on a desolate shore. From the Defiance, from Mall and Jyp, from all hope of help, it had cut me off.

There’d been no dawn. Maybe there never would be, any more. There was nothing before me but streets, a cityful of corners to turn, hoping that around one, or the next … hoping against hope. How long would that take? Empty and sick, I gripped the warehouse wall, staring up at the blank little windows high above, eyes as blind as mine to what I most needed to see. It was behind them somewhere, beneath all this modern overlay, the past sheathed in sheet steel -

or coffined?

‘Hey!’ roared a hoarse angry voice. ‘Hey you! Whatcha doin’ there?

C’mon, beat it!’ I almost drew on him, but remembered in time that in these parts even nightwatchmen would carry a gun; better not call attention to the sword, anyhow. A wavering flashlight tracked me like a spotlight as I stalked away, around the first corner that opened and into the shadows of unlit alleys. Darkness closed on me like a vast fist, and the shadows flooded into my head. Lost, alone, I stumbled blindly through stinking puddles, deeper and deeper into night.

At first I still tried to remember where I was going, turning this way and that, seeking another way back through the darkened ways to the river and the docks. But soon enough my tired mind lost track, and soon after that I forgot the very direction of the docks; but I kept walking, because there was nowhere to stop. Now and again I struggled to think. What did any marooned tourist do? Go see the British consul - with a convenient case of amnesia? I’d be flown home, then. With a lot of explaining to do; about here, about gold, about … what had happened to Clare.

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