Mickey Reichert: The lost Dragons of Barakhai

"Yes," Collins said. "He is." He let his brows inch upward. "May I please go now? I'd like to get this horse set up in time to grab some breakfast."

With obvious reluctance, the guard stepped aside. Collins continued down the pathway more quickly now, hoping to make it to the portal without running into anyone else. That realization brought an ironic smile to his lips. The portal What's my hurry? Do I really need to rush to a place where the people in power want me dead? The idea seemed insanity. He had never sought out as simple a thrill as bungee jumping, and he did not relish the thought of repeating his last encounter in Barakhai. The insanity is that I've even agreed to come this far.

The oblong shape of Daubert Laboratories came into view, and Collins loosed a pent up breath. He raced for the most obscure side entrance, the horse trotting happily along behind him. Farthest from the main rooms and experiments, it would provide fewer opportunities for chance encounters with students or professors. Only as he hurried up the concrete stairs to the peeling, green-painted door did he remember that, for this way in, he needed a key. He fumbled at his waist, hoping he had left his jumble of keys clipped to a belt loop by habit. As usual, his beeper pinched the fabric at his left hip, the keys just in front of his right. He unfastened the metal clip, found the biggest key by feel and inserted it into the lock. It snapped to the open position. He twisted the knob and shouldered the panel inward. The mingled odors of mustiness, animal dander, cleaners, and wood chips filled his nose.

Falima whickered, apparently recognizing the scent as the pathway home, and Zylas scrabbled back to Collins' shoulder. "We're here?"

"We'd better be." Collins stepped inside and held the door open for Falima and Korfius. "Otherwise, you just earned me a one-way ticket to Bellevue."

The limitations of the translation spells kicked in. "What?"

Collins shook his head. "Never mind." He closed the door behind the animals, out of habit listening for the click of its locking.

Zylas squeaked into Collins' ear, "We didn't need a key to get out."

"You wouldn't have." Collins watched Falima continue forward, hooves clattering against tile. She moved easily despite the odd sounds, which surprised him. He had spent an anxious half hour urging her across the castle drawbridge in Barakhai and now had to guess that embedded formica had a more solid sound or feel than overair planking. "The main door's never locked. I brought us in a different way."

Korfius raised his nose, sniffing wildly, then running to Collins.

Accepting Collins' explanation, Zylas turned to some-tiling he understood. "Korfius associates the smell of this place with you."

Now that Zylas had spoken it aloud, the dog's behavior seemed obvious. "Not surprising. I practically live here." It seemed unlikely they would find anyone in the building this time of the morning, but Collins could not discount the possibility of a cleaning crew. He hurried his animal companions down the hallway to the class-turned-storage room that led to Barakhai.

Sparse light funneled in the doorway to reveal the jumbled desks, chairs, and boxes Collins remembered from his last visit to Barakhai. Then, sunlight swimming through dust motes had given the appearance of smoke; but the current hour just made it seem ghostly dark. The strange equations remained, white figures dancing across the chalkboard, and Collins could just discern the purple chalk pentagram scrawled across the tile.

Zylas scrambled to the floor. "Let's go."

Collins studied Falima doubtfully. Her solid, golden body had to weigh at least half a ton, and her head towered over his own 5'll".

Zylas followed Collins' gaze and divined his question. "She made it in; she can make it out." He flitted beneath a desk.

Collins shrugged. The rat/man had a seemingly undeniable point, but Collins knew the loophole. He could leave his world for Barakhai through the portal, but no one in human form had ever passed from there to here. If the magic could make such seemingly impossible and random distinctions, perhaps it could make the path in more difficult than the one out of Barakhai. Deciding the pain of watching a friend struggle outweighed curiosity, he followed his albino companion.

Worried about the effect of mixing technology with the active magic of the portal, Collins did not attempt to use his mag light as they crawled through dark debris for what seemed like an hour. At first, Collins' backpack banged against the stacked furniture, and he heard an avalanche of cardboard boxes. Falima gave an occasional snort but otherwise handled the low scramble well. Soon, he heard her steady hoofbeats behind him, no longer moving at an unnatural shuffle, and he realized she could stand. Last time, he had assumed himself still amid the debris and had crawled much longer than necessary. This time, he rose, though he found himself keeping one hand hovering at the level of his forehead, guarding against the imagined junk that had last filled his vision. Barely needing to dip his head at any point, Korfius padded along beside him. Zylas continued to lead the way effortlessly, his white fur the only thing visible in the otherwise blinding gloom. Anything that could inconvenience a rat would surely thwart any of his companions.

Then, the world began to brighten. Moonlight filtered through an opening that had once held a wooden door, revealing a crumbling ruin of a stone room. Through the gap, Collins could see a world that currently resembled his own, at least in regard to time of day. Stars sprinkled the sky, with a slight grayness that hinted of coming dawn. The rat stared ahead as Collins and Korfius emerged.

"Uh-oh," Zylas said.

Collins stared through his wire-rimmed glasses at a sea of men milling outside the ruins, dressed in the familiar silver and aqua of King Terrin's guards.

THROUGH the doorway of the ruins, Collins looked down on a sea of royal aqua and white. The soldiers in front stood in regimented lines, their uniforms unadorned, their mail pristine, and their heads bare. Their hair ranged from snowy-white to ebony, and their skin spanned nearly as broad a range. Most clutched spears and some carried swords through the wide black sashes that served as belts. Dogs of myriad shapes, colors, and sizes meandered through the troops or stood attentively among the men. Toward the back, the mounted soldiers wore iron helms and the white portions of their uniforms bore a spattering of stretched, blue-green clovers.

"Damn," Collins said, his awed and nervous expletive no louder than Zylas' grossly understated, "Uh-oh."

Collins added carefully, "We're in an almighty colossal shit load of trouble." He waited for his friend to contradict him, to assure him that the renegades had expected and planned for this confrontation, but Zylas gave him nothing.

The front line leveled its spears. "Halt!" a commander yelled at Collins and his friends. "No one move."

"Zylas?" Collins implored in a desperate whisper. His animal companions, he knew, had an out. They could race back through the magical portal and hope none of the guards in their horse or dog forms dared to follow. And leave me in Weirdoland to face an army alone. The idea seemed reprehensible, yet Collins turned to seal his fate. At least, Falima and Korfius, the woman and the child, should seize what little security they still had.

Korfius crouched, growling deep in his throat. Falima rummaged through the debris in woman form, as naked as a newborn and no more self-conscious.

Collins groaned, the irony clear even through rising dread. At their darkest hour, every companion but Korfius had been caught in his smallest, weakest form, It's up to me. He glanced out over the horde, at least a hundred strong. And I'm not going to win by overpowering them. He considered his possessions, hoping he had included some object he could use to shock and intimidate the soldiers. He dared not make a motion large enough to unsling his backpack. Instead, his hand strayed to his pocket, sifting through loose change and lint. No simple parlor trick, no random display of technology, would work here. One of the king's advisers, Carrie Quinton, came from his world; and the soldiers already knew that Collins did, too.