R. Salvatore - Echoes of the Fourth Magic

He lay on his side, shrouded by a thick gray fog. Strangely, he felt no pain. He raised his hands up before his face.

No blood. Had it been a dream? Trembling, he looked down, his breath coming in short gasps as he moved the tattered strands of his shirt aside. A jagged line of scars crossed his belly, the round scars of bullets.

It took him many minutes to steady his breathing.

As he regained control he realized that he wasn’t on the beach, that the floor beneath him was smooth and cool as marble. Struggling against his disorientation and bordering on panic, he forced himself to his feet, but as his head emerged from the waist-deep fog, his confusion only increased, for he stood in a vast dark hall, illuminated in reflections of wispy gray from the transient fog. A seemingly infinite row of huge pillars, glowing blue-white, ran off into the distance at his left. Del saw no walls or ceiling, just the massive columns, each rooted beneath the low-riding fog and stretching upward as far as the eye could see, into the blackness and beyond. Unearthly, beautiful, yet hauntingly surreal.

“I must be dead,” he muttered, staring blankly at the supernatural sight.

“Hardly,” came a voice behind him. He spun to face Martin Reinheiser.

“Del? What happened?” another voice called. Del recognized it immediately, and then saw Billy rising from the mist at his right. “The last thing I remember was those goblins on the beach and getting whomped on the head.”

“Thompson,” Del explained.

“Figures,” Billy replied, shaking his head. “That guy’s got a real problem.”

“He took your weapon and opened up on the rest of us,” Del went on.

“But you two got away.”

“No, I got shot. So did Reinheiser, I think.”

“A dozen times at least,” the physicist confirmed.

Billy folded his arms across his chest and shot them an angry glare. “What?” he demanded, his voice louder.

Del understood his friend’s impatience. Holding Billy’s stare with his own firm but compassionate visage, he slowly pulled the tattered shirt away from his abdomen. Even from several feet away the vicious scars were unmistakable.

Billy’s arms fell unfolded and his eyes bulged in disbelief. “Are we dead?” he gasped.

“You two seem preoccupied with that subject,” Reinheiser said. “These are not the bodies of spiritual entities; we remain flesh and blood. We are not dead!”

“But you just said you got shot,” Billy protested. “Don’t tell me that those goblin things know anything about medicine.”

“Apparently-” Reinheiser began, but Del cut him off.

“Ssh!” he hissed, and he went tense. Billy and Reinheiser also went alert, straining their eyes and ears in search of the danger Del had sensed.

A low growling noise came from somewhere under the fog nearby.

“Bear?” Billy whispered breathlessly. He moved next to Del, half expecting some hideous beast to spring at them from out of the fog.

A second later, though, the growling sounded more like snoring, and Billy and Del looked at each other and smiled. “Mitchell!”

“The captain, too,” Reinheiser said. He stroked his goatee at this new revelation. He knew he had been shot, but since it was the last thing he remembered, he wasn’t sure of the extent of his injuries. Immediate aid might have saved him. The captain was a different story, though. Reinheiser had seen Mitchell blasted apart by a hail of bullets, certainly dead even as he fell to the ground. Nobody could possibly have survived that volley.

Following the thunderous snores, the men had little trouble finding the sleeping giant. Waking him was a bit more difficult, though, for Mitchell was deep into his dreams and didn’t appreciate being disturbed. He flailed and kicked, punched and even tried to bite. Eventually they managed to rouse him, somewhat, for the captain remained groggy and had little recollection of the events at the beach. The others recounted the tale in full, and though Mitchell grumbled about its implausibility, at this juncture, at least, he had no choice but to accept it.

“Let us continue searching,” Reinheiser suggested, “perhaps the doctor is here as well.”

Almost immediately, Billy stumbled over Doc Brady, peacefully asleep under the gray blanket. Before they even woke him, Del pressed on. “That makes five,” he said. “Let’s keep going.” And he started away.

“Do we really want to locate that idiot Thompson?” Reinheiser argued.

“We’ve got to keep looking,” Del pleaded. He wasn’t looking for Thompson at all, secretly hoping that Ray Corbin was there, somehow recovered.

“Del’s right,” Billy agreed. “If Thompson’s out there and he’s got that gun, we’ve got to get him before he wakes up.”

“Then let’s get going,” Mitchell growled, nodding his huge head as he began to remember the pain and shock of the bullets. “I want Thompson found, and then his ass is mine.” The captain grinned wickedly at the notion. It wasn’t often that a dead man had a chance to pay back his killer, and he found the thought of twisting Thompson’s neck quite satisfying.

They searched the immediate area, but the fog remained impenetrable and Thompson didn’t seem to be close by. Frustrated and more than a little fearful of the possibilities-perhaps Thompson watched from a distance even as they searched, a crazed smile on his face and a ready M-16 at his side-Mitchell needed a showdown and began calling out, “Thompson!” The others, except Reinheiser, joined in.

“Wonderful,” Reinheiser muttered, and he crouched low into the safety of the opaque veil. “That lunatic is probably training his rifle on their voices this very minute.”

A tickling breeze, a gentle puff of wind, blew across them, swirling the fog into swaying minarets. And the breeze carried words in its wake, words in the purest tone and timbre that any of them had ever heard, clear as an unblemished bell and, like the great hall about them, supernatural in beauty. “Your Mr. Thompson is not here.”

As one, eyes wide, mouths open, they turned to the voice.

Halfway between the five men and the columns, limned in ghostly evanescence, stood a tall man in a flowing white robe of fine silk. A golden crown adorned his head, and in his delicate hand he held a many-jeweled, golden scepter. Hair of the starkest white, yet thick and rich with vitality, hung loosely about his shoulders, and though his skin was incredibly pale, almost translucent, his presence was undeniably solid and powerful.

Even from a distance the being’s calm demeanor soothed Del’s apprehension, for the creature’s eyes held a flickering blue flame that radiated unbounded knowledge and serenity.

Mitchell stood firm before the wondrous specter, his anger sufficient proof against any feelings of awe. “Then where is he?” he demanded. “And who are you?”

The being made no motion, yet a breeze emanated from him. He did not move his lips, yet the breeze carried words. More than words, actually. Within that gentle wind came emotions and sensations beyond the spectrum of hearing, emanations that the five men felt throughout their bodies and souls. “It is best to say only that Michael Thompson’s destiny followed a different path from yours. As to your second question, I am Calae, Prince of the Colonnae.” The specter then turned from Mitchell to Del, and an even more gentle puff blew by. “Truly I am sorry, Jeffrey DelGiudice, but your friend, Ray Corbin, has indeed passed from this world.”

Del’s eyes widened. The being had just read his mind and answered his unspoken question.

“You still think we’re not dead?” Billy whispered to Reinheiser. The scientist, completely at a loss for an explanation, wasn’t so quick to dismiss the possibility this time, but before he could seriously consider that theory, the breeze came again.