Warriors Gate and Beyond : Target Collection (9781473533622) by Gallagher Stephen

Author:Gallagher, Stephen [Gallagher, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473533622
Publisher: Random House Uk Ltd
Published: 2023-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

THE KAIROS RING

Romana stood among fallen stones on a grassy plain and thought, Too late. At least a thousand years too late.

The sky was stacked heavy with clouds, and dark. The big stones were rough-hewn and their placement made an almost perfect circle, but any ritual significance they’d had was long forgotten.

She was disappointed, mostly with herself. At this stage it was hard to say whether her information was wrong, or her instincts at fault. Either way, she’d brought them to a fruitless spot.

But then she saw something.

Romana dropped to one knee for a closer look, and then reached down to tug at the angle of metal she could see sticking out of the hard dirt. The dirt broke up, and a buckle came free. As she continued to pull, she drew a fragment of rotted leather strap out of the earth.

The buckle was D-shaped, and cast in the form of two bronze dolphins meeting head-to-head. It was lightly crusted, and discoloured green from its time in the ground. Late Roman, she reckoned, part of some soldier’s armour, and the straight edge of the leather suggested that it had been cut with a blade. She even began to imagine that the dark stains on the strap might be blood.

Perhaps that was taking it too far, but one thing was for sure. The stones might be ancient but the battle was more recent, which meant that her timing was not as far out as she’d thought.

Under Laszlo’s instruction, Romana was becoming more adept at navigating the Tharils’ Gateway and taking advantage of the time winds. Even so, she was no Tharil herself. Such skills were not part of her nature, so they had to be acquired. It was no easy matter. Compared to travel within the protection of a TARDIS, riding the time winds was like free diving in a hostile ocean. Romana still couldn’t slide out of phase unaided, and still couldn’t reach a destination with sufficient accuracy.

But she was learning, and she was getting better.

She rose to her feet. Around her the grass rippled, and for a moment the clouds seemed to move at a greater speed. Even before she turned, she knew that Laszlo had joined her.

She showed him the buckle. ‘I was close,’ she said.

He didn’t even look at the offered trinket. ‘The Sluagh are on the move,’ he said.

‘Here?’

‘Another battlefield.’

He held out his hand. It was like an enormous golden paw, fully in keeping with the leonine head and mane that sat above those broad shoulders. The Tharil cut a mighty figure, intimidating to all, but his touch was delicate, their contact slight as Romana let the buckle fall and took the offered hand.

Straight away she felt herself sliding out of phase with the moment, cutting loose from any fixed location of time or place. They’d come seeking the Sluagh, but the Sluagh were elsewhere. They’d leapt on ahead to another line of time, in another universe of possibilities. So the chase would continue, with Romana and the Tharil a step behind, sometimes getting closer, often losing the trail.

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