D. MacHale - Raven Rise

We weren’t ready to give up. I spotted the two dado-killing rods that we had brought from Denduron. They were still on the dirt floor where we had dropped them when we were Tasered on our arrival.

“Let him go,” I commanded Alder, while diving to the ground and grabbing the rods.

Alder pushed Naymeer away. I tossed him a weapon.

Saint Dane stood in the center of the flume with his legs apart and his arms folded. He wasn’t about to move.

“Must you always be so difficult, Pendragon?” he asked, bored.

“Uh, yeah” was my answer, and the fight was on.

The dados jogged past Saint Dane on either side of the demon, headed for us. I dropped my rod down to my waist, ready to use it like a prod. I nailed the first dado in line, instantly feeling his power going out. I pulled the weapon back and jabbed again at the second. They didn’t know what hit them. Wherever these dados came from, it wasn’t Quillan. They knew nothing about the power of these weapons. We had a chance.

Naymeer ran from the root cellar. I didn’t care. We had to get out of there and go to Third Earth, where we could figure out another plan of attack. Alder took out the dados one by one. The bodies were piling up, but more red shirts marched from the depths of the flume. Many more.

I heard Alder gasp. He’d been hit. I wasn’t sure by what. A Taser? The butt of a gun? He staggered. I went to him to try and keep the dados off him. It was the last move I made. There were too many of them. As soon as I jumped to Alder’s defense, I felt a sharp shot to the back of my head. I fell forward, dropping the weapon. Alder was already flat out. I was on my knees, about to join him. I took another shot to the side of my head and went down, hard. The last thing I remember seeing was Saint Dane’s smiling face looking down at me.

“Always the hard way,” he said, shaking his head.

(CONTINUED)

“Howare you feeling?”

It was a deep voice that sounded vaguely familiar. How was I feeling? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

“Like I was hit by a bus,” I croaked. Of course, I’d never actually been hit by a bus, but I was pretty sure that this was what it would feel like. I struggled to pull myself out of the dark pit of the unconscious, knowing that when I got out, I wouldn’t want to be where I found myself. I opened my eyes. At least I think I did. It was hard to tell, because everything was black.

“Alder?” I asked.

“He is fine,” came the deep voice.

Who was that? Why did he sound so familiar? I blinked. It didn’t change anything, other than to make my head hurt. I decided not to blink anymore. I was lying out flat on something soft. At least somebody had tried to make me comfortable. Good for them, whoever they were.

“Over here, Pendragon,” the voice said.

The third time was the charm. I recognized the voice. I wanted to be unconscious again. I looked toward my feet to see him standing over me, lit by a small lamp near the end of the couch I was on. The light hit him from below, like when you hold a flashlight under your chin to look all spooky. But Saint Dane didn’t really need any lighting effects to help with his creep appeal. He loomed over me like a vulture, his bald head in shadow caused by the light of the single bulb.

“Welcome back,” he said warmly, as if he actually meant it. “I was afraid you’d miss the festivities. Close your eyes; I’ll put some lights on.”

What a courteous guy! He didn’t want me to be uncomfortable when he flicked on the lights. How thoughtful. I’d have thanked him, if I hadn’t wanted to hurt him.

Saint Dane walked slowly to a wall panel and turned a dimmer switch. The room slowly grew brighter, and I got a view of the space. It looked like the waiting room at a doctor’s office. I didn’t think for a second that Saint Dane would have taken me to a doctor. There were a couple of couches and chairs with tables. One whole wall was covered by heavy red drapes that were probably blocking a window. I was lying on a couch along one wall. My head hurt. I wasn’t sure if I had been knocked out by getting hit or being Tasered. Probably both. Bottom line was, I felt like, well, like I had been hit by a bus.

Saint Dane walked toward me. Except for the fact that he had lost his gray hair when his head caught fire a while back, the guy hadn’t changed a bit since the day I’d first seen him. He still stood tall and ramrod straight. He still wore that black suit. He still had those blue-white eyes that burned into my head whenever he looked my way. He still made my skin crawl.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said groggily.

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“How many of those suits do you have? Do you like, send them to the laundry, or just toss ‘em out and put on a new one when it gets all gamey?”

Saint Dane chuckled. I amused him.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“It was a joke, idiot.” On top of everything else wrong with him, Saint Dane didn’t have much of a sense of humor. Except when I amused him. Which happened a lot, I’m sorry to say.

“I’m glad to see that you’re in a good mood. You should be. Our struggle has finally come to an end. Perhaps we should celebrate.”

“Perhaps you should bite me.”

Saint Dane cocked his head, confused. “I’m afraid I don’t understand that remark, but I’ll assume it’s a provocation. There’s no need for hostility between us anymore, Pendragon.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

He sat down in a chair across from me. I tried to sit up, but decided my aching head preferred that I stay on my back. What the heck. I didn’t need to be polite to this guy.

“You’ll soon learn that I speak the truth,” Saint Dane said calmly. “The Convergence is well under way. The territories are becoming one. All is as I anticipated it would be. Our duel is complete.”

“You keep talking as if this were a contest between us,” I said.

“It is. It was.”

“Then why didn’t somebody tell me that from the beginning? You can’t have a competition when only one side knows the rules.”

“It was the only way,” Saint Dane explained. “This has been a battle to determine the future of Halla. Though not in the conventional sense. If you were to have understood the stakes from the beginning, it would not have been a fair demonstration.”

“Demonstration of what?”

“The quest for control of Halla was never about armies or physical strength or even technology. It was about a battle between two basic, philosophical differences. It was about determining which is the more effective way to play out one’s destiny. By chance or by design. I, of course, believe in design. You and your sort prefer to let fate lead you where it may. If you knew that issue was at the core of our struggle, you would not have had a fair chance to prove your philosophy.”

I finally sat up. I didn’t care that my head was being pounded by a sledgehammer. “What philosophy? I don’t have any philosophy.”

“But you do. At every turn you have made choices based on the belief that the people of Halla know what is best for them. Correct?”

I didn’t answer.

“Press told you that the territories should never be mixed. Each culture, each society, each world, each individual should be given the chance to live its own destiny without interference. Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“Of course not. And I have proved time and again that the people of Halla will consistently make the wrong choices.”

“Because you’ve pushed them into making the wrong choices,” I exclaimed.

“Only to prove my point. Do you honestly think the battles we’ve been through are the only cases of misery in the history of Halla? Pendragon! I know you are still just a boy, but certainly you know that each world has its own legacy of violence and strife that has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I didn’t invent conflict. Quite the opposite. I’m trying to end it.”