James Axler - Palaces Of Light

Ryan had no idea of what was happening behind him. He knew only that the ground was falling away beneath him even as he scrabbled with his boot heels to gain some kind of grip. Each frantic attempt to gain a foothold had only the opposite effect. At the same time, he could feel his legs start to slip and his calves cramp as the jagged edge of rock cut into them. At the other end of his body he could feel an ironlike grip around each wrist, and his shoulders strained in their sockets as he was grabbed and hauled back while his momentum sought to carry him in the opposite direction.

He stopped kicking, realizing that his efforts were counterproductive.

At his back, Jak and Krysty could feel the movement beneath them slow as Ryan ceased to fight. Now more confident, but still cautious in case they started a slide of their own, they began to move back slowly, one step at a time. They staggered their steps so that first Krysty, and then Jak, moved, causing the minimum of disturbance and impact to the fragile earth beneath them. Within a few steps, each felt another hand reach out and grab them in the darkness. Mildred took hold of Jak, and Doc assisted Krysty. Each allowed the others to lean a little of their weight into them, so that it took some strain off the ground beneath, and allowed the stress to be carried over a greater area of ground. At the rear, J.B. planted his feet firmly on solid ground and took hold of arms that were stretched out behind Doc and Mildred. Bearing their weight, he began to slowly shuffle back, taking the strain and helping them to haul back Jak and Krysty.

It was a slow and painful process. Sweating with the effort, despite the chill of the night, J.B. could only relax when he could see, under the wan moon, that Ryan was several yards from the edge, and was able to dig in his own heels and push back.

When they were all back level with the line of the crevasse, they collapsed onto the ground, breathing hard.

Ryan raised himself up on one elbow. In the moonlight he could see the inky blackness that was delineated only by the jagged line of collapsing rock. They had hauled him back only just in time. He could still hear the faint sounds of falling dirt and stone where small sections of the lip continued to fall away.

Just in time. Timing was everything. A few seconds and he would have been gone before they could reach him.

Timing was everything. A day either way and they might not even have been out here on this cold, dark night.

Chapter Two

“Tell me where they are, Morgan. Tell me what they’re doing.”

Baron K leaned into the fire, so that his face was reflected in the upward glow. Shiny, bright and expectant, there was almost something childlike about him as he asked.

The old man sucked his teeth, then spit to one side. “Wish it was that simple, Baron. But if it was, I would have seen them coming, known who they were when they arrived and been able to do something about it.”

The baron shook his head. “When I look back, I should have seen it, too. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious that they were bad news. No, Morgan, they had a magic about them that was strong, and could mask a lot.”

The old man cocked his head to one side as he considered the man who was nominally his superior. Not at present. Right now it seemed that the baron was looking up to him as a superior because of powers he appeared to possess. His faith was touching, if a little misplaced. Morgan mused that if he had been the kind of man who wished to gain and use power, he would have been able to use the baron’s belief against him. For a man who had used a very physical and worldly grasp of power to gain his position, he had a vulnerable point that was unexpected.

But Morgan wasn’t that kind of man. He considered that running his own life was enough of a struggle, let alone taking on the task of telling others how they should live. He also had what he considered to be a sense of perspective. And from that he knew that the baron had overestimated what he could do. The baron believed in magic and power that was beyond the physical and human. Morgan didn’t. All those old stories were crap. It was true that he had a certain ability. He was a doomie, as he had heard others like himself be called. He could see things that weren’t there, or that were happening some way distant. But he didn’t call it magic. He came from a long line of those who carried the history of the time before the nukecaust. This role as a person who could recall the stories of the past gave him a kind of protection. He was treated with a kind of awe akin to those who could cure the sick. Doctors, as they called them once. With a wry twist of humor, he realized that he was one of the few who would know that word around these parts. Just as he was the only one who knew that doomies weren’t some kind of supernatural beings.

But let the baron believe what he wanted. It kept Morgan alive and relatively safe.

It was true, though, that he did possess that kind of doomie gift that enabled him to see from a distance. If he concentrated, then he could see what it was that he concentrated his attention upon. Viewing remotely, as some had once called it. Or second sight, which seemed a stupe name to him, as he could barely see now that he was getting on and his eyes ailed him.

The fire wasn’t really necessary, but it added a sense of occasion to what he did, as did the empty room and the silence around him. If he could shut himself off mentally, then he could do it anywhere. The most important thing about the fire was that it sent a shiver down the spine of the baron, and actually made him keep his big mouth shut. The worst obstacle that Morgan could face while trying to do this was to keep being interrupted by K’s incessant questions.

So now, with the baron silenced by his own sense of occasion, Morgan was able to settle down, to relax his body from the toes up, and to blank his mind by thinking of nothing, just seeing the flickering flames in front of him.

He thought of the six people he had met all too briefly: the one-eyed leader and his wiry sidekick, the one with the stupe hat and the odd obsession with hardware. They were the kind of men you’d want on your side in a fight, though you might not want to be their friends in times of peace. The other four comprised a strange and motley crew. The red-haired woman was a doomie. That much he had sensed right away. That made his task easier, as he could focus on her. How it worked, he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to know. It just did. The black woman and the old man were really odd. There was something about them that seemed aged beyond their looks, as though they came from another time. He would have loved to have known their stories. They would have been well worth knowing to tell again and again. And then there was the albino. Not a youth to know in times of peace, like One-eye and the Hat. But different from them. He had an air of wildness to him.

They were brave. He had to give them that. He wouldn’t have undertaken the mission, no matter how much jack was involved. When he thought of those they were chasing, a sense of cold, enveloping darkness came over him. Just letting that thought pass through his mind made him shiver.

Instead, he concentrated on the red-haired doomie. That was no great stretch, as to even let the thought of her beauty cross his mind brought the warmth flooding to his loins. He had to suppress a salacious smile at the thought.

Feeling more relaxed now, he began to get some impressions: faint at first, then confusing and jumbled even as they began to take shape. The agony of stretched muscles, and a feeling of danger—not hers, but of one close to her. The one-eyed man? He had sensed something between them, and now that seemed to be the overriding sense that he was getting.