‘What now?’ he muttered to himself, his voice barely more than an exhausted croak.
Suddenly Calis rode into view, and horse archers started picking off Saaur who were locked in combat with Erik’s men. Erik saw his Captain point behind Erik and shout something, but he couldn’t hear what he said over the din of fighting.
Then the world exploded in pain and Erik saw the ground rising up to strike him. The breath was knocked from Erik. His shrieking horse fell on his leg, and he barely kept his wits about him. More by instinct than thought, he disentangled himself from his thrashing animal, blood spraying from a wound to the horse’s flank.
A Saaur rider turned his animal as Calis charged, and Erik struggled to his feet. He put his hand to his head and found his helmet gone. Blood covered his hand when he brought it away, but he couldn’t tell if it was his or the horse’s.
The rider ignored Erik and charged Calis. Erik braced his hand on the trunk of a tree to support himself, then knelt to pick up his sword. Nausea knotted his stomach and his head swam from the effort, but he stayed conscious. He quickly killed his dying horse and looked to see Calis engaged with the Saaur.
If the Saaur that Erik had killed had looked surprised, it was nothing compared to the expression on this one’s face at the first blow Calis delivered to the creature’s shield. Erik was certain nothing could have prepared that rider for the impact of someone as strong as Calis. The blow knocked the creature from his saddle.
Then it was quiet. Erik opened his eyes and realized he was sitting on the ground, his back against the tree. Someone had put a tunic over his legs and a rolled-up shirt behind his head.
A familiar voice said, ‘You took a nasty one to the head.’
Erik turned to see Calis standing nearby. Erik said, ‘I think I’ve been hit worse.’
‘I’m sure. Blade glanced off the back of your helmet and that rock head of yours and struck your horse behind the saddle. Broke its spine. You’re a lucky man, von Darkmoor. A couple of inches farther forward and he would have split you in two.’
Erik’s head rang and throbbed. ‘I don’t feel lucky,’ he said. Taking a drink of water from a skin held before him, he asked, ‘What brings you to this dark and lonely place?’
Calis said, ‘I got your message, but mostly it was because I gave you orders to be back in Krondor in two months.’
Erik smiled and it made his head hurt worse. ‘I told you I needed three.’
‘Orders are orders.’
‘Does it help I brought you two thousand men instead of six hundred and have captured or killed another thousand of the Queen’s army?’
Calis considered this a moment. ‘A little. But not much.’ Then he smiled.
EIGHT - Evolution
Miranda spoke.
‘Where are we?’
Pug heard the words, though he knew they were projections of her mind. He wondered at that peculiar aspect of the human mind which sought always to force something to fit its perceptions, irrespective of what the true nature of the thing might be.
‘On our way to heaven,’ he answered.
‘How long have we been traveling?’ she asked. ‘It seems like years.’
‘Funny,’ answered Pug. ‘It seems but moments to me. Time is warped.’
‘Acaila was right,’ she observed.
‘He usually is,’ said Pug.
The region they traveled through was a multicolored distortion of space, or at least that was how Pug viewed it. Stars swam through vortices of violent colors, rather than the void of night he expected. And the stars were as often as not colorless.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ said Miranda, and to Pug’s mind she seemed to whisper in awe. ‘How do you know where to go?’
‘I foDow the line,’ he answered, indicating with a thought the fragile line of force they were following from Midkemia.
‘It goes on forever,’ she said.
‘I doubt it, but I think Macros the Black went on a very long journey when he last left Midkemia.’
‘We’re following his journey?’
‘Apparently,’ said Pug.
They voyaged through the cosmos, and at last they descended to a world, a green and blue orb that circled a star. Around it circled three moons.
‘We’re back where we started,’ said Miranda.
Pug turned his attention to the world below and it was indeed Midkemia. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve come to a time much earlier than when we left.’
‘Time travel?’
‘I’ve done it before,’ he answered.
‘You must tell me of this someday.’
Pug projected amusement. ‘I’ve never been fully in charge of those events. And I’ve always felt the risks far outweighed the benefits.’
‘You don’t think traveling in time to kill this Emerald Queen in her crib would be a good idea?’ she asked, and Pug detected the familiar dry humor in the question.
‘We can’t, or else we would have.’