Chapter Thirteen
Drip, drip, drop. Drip, drip, drop.
Something fell onto Kieran’s face. He opened his eyes only to shut them again when more raindrops came. Raindrops? Yes, they were wet and small, cold too… Kieran frowned, still feeling the rain hit his face. He moved an arm and felt a slight resistance, like he was running his hands through … water. Then it all made sense: the cold, the wet, the tickling against the sides of his face. He was lying on his back in a puddle, in the rain, in a flood, judging by how only half of his face poked above the surface.
Lucky he’d woken up; it would’ve been kind of hard to keep breathing when he was completely underwater.
He forced himself into a sitting position with a small groan, his head throbbing and his muscles aching. Water trickled from his hair and down his face, his sodden clothes clinging to him. Now that he wasn’t going to get blinded by the rain, he opened his eyes. Then realised he wasn’t in a puddle … and it wasn’t raining.
He was sitting in the middle of a fountain. Yes, a fountain. With white stone sides that would’ve reached his knee if he’d been standing up. Kieran craned his neck around and saw a huge, black slab rising into the night sky behind him. Water cascaded down its sides, with the odd droplets jumping from the top, which was how they’d hit his face.
Damn. He raised a hand to his forehead and hit himself in the face with a soaking sleeve. Kieran peered down at what he was wearing, because he knew when he’d hit the ground, he hadn’t been wearing something with white sleeves. Sure enough, floating in the water was a white robe identical to the ones Rhogan and Lilac-Eyes had been wearing. He didn’t remember putting that on.
This kept happening to him, didn’t it? One minute he’d be somewhere bad, the next, somewhere worse. He began to wonder if he’d even stay in one place for longer than two minutes.
The last thing he remembered he was in the middle of a battle, with harpies swooping everywhere, and swords, and a collapsed roof and a … horrible ... shrieking…
“Ah, Christ!” Kieran clutched at his chest as he felt his heart begin to pound again. It was like the swine was saying with each throb: Hey, remember me? I’m the one you nearly destroyed with all the running you did that day. Not to forget all the fear, the anxiety… Why don’t you just make yourself a greasy bacon sarnie and get it over with?
“You are awake,” came a soft voice somewhere to the left of Kieran.
His head snapped around to the direction the voice came from, droplets flying from his hair. A woman stood not too far away, draped in a pale fabric so thin it almost seemed to float around her. A few tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from her loose plait and stroked her fine cheekbones. Wrinkles crisscrossed around her eyes, but they made her look softer, wiser. Man, back in her twenties, she would’ve been a stunner. Still was, in a way, or so Kieran thought, trying to keep the drooling to a minimum.
She stepped closer to Kieran, letting the hand that had been held against the trunk of a tree fall. Her eyes were fixed on Kieran’s, a pretty shade of brown. Like Emily’s, but Emily’s weren’t as light.
His shoulders sagged. Trust Emily to ruin this moment, even if she was safe in England. Where he should be. Now Kieran felt guilty, like he was a married man caught giving the cute waitress a once over.
Sodding Emily.
The woman knelt in front of the fountain, leaning her elbows on the stone side. Her lips parted as she ran her eyes over Kieran’s face, like she was checking for something.
“I am Lady Aliessye,” she told him, looking back into his eyes.
The name rung a bell. Then sounded a foghorn. Rhogan had been talking about her when Kieran had taken the guard hostage. She was the one Rhogan’d wanted him to meet, but then they’d gotten attacked by the harpies. She was the one Rhogan said could explain everything about what had happened to him.
“Lady Aliessye,” Kieran breathed. He paused for a second, and then blurted out, “Do you have my stone?”
A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “A World Jumper you most certainly are. Yes, I do have the Stone, but I am unable to give it to you until you understand.”
Kieran’s heart began to race again. “Why not? I-I need it.”
“Don’t sound so panicked. You are safe here. You are safe.”
She sounded so sincere, but she didn’t understand: the master would know by now Kieran was alive. He would’ve sent a team after him because the sooner Kieran was silenced, the better for everyone. With the master after him, Kieran wasn’t safe anywhere.
Still, she didn’t need to know that. If she did she’d probably throw him out of her city, not wanting to put anyone’s life at risk.
“Ah, um, what do I need to understand until I can get it back?”
“Everything.”
Oh, great. Kieran made to get to his feet. “When my calendar’s empty until next Christmas, I’ll let you know.”
Aliessye also stood up and offered her small hand to him. Kieran took it because he wasn’t too confident using his legs at that moment in time. Especially when they put jelly to shame. He stepped out of the fountain and onto soft, springy grass.
“Why was I in a fountain?” he asked as they shuffled across the grass toward a clump of trees.
“You were badly wounded.” She sounded mildly surprised, like she wasn’t used to answering a question with such an obvious answer. Obvious to her, Kieran still hadn’t the faintest idea what that had to do with anything.
“So why was I in a fountain?”
“Junella was built here because of the water. It is why it is the greatest city of all of Brunelle. The water in the fountain protects, the water heals.”
“My leg was broken.”
“Yes.”
Kieran’s forehead slumped over his eyes. “You’re telling me water healed my broken leg?”
“Yes.” She frowned like she didn’t understand his confusion. “We had to submerge you in the water, but ultimately you were healed. It is what the water does.”
Kieran decided to let that one slide, after all, he’d been grappling with a couple of harpies last he remembered, and they were meant to be mythological creatures. So why not water that healed broken bones?
Insane. Absolutely, freaking insane.
Aliessye slowed as they neared the trees. “The Harpies or any other creature cannot get through the water when it descends. It-”
“Wait-” Kieran stopped and stared at her. She paused, waiting for him to go on. “That … thing that went over the city yesterday was the water from that fountain?”
“The water protects the city, but it takes time to cover it all. Also, the attack was not yesterday, but three days ago, you have been unconscious ever since.”
“Three days? I’ve been out three days?” So whoever the master sent after Kieran would be hot on his trail by now.
“Yes.” She paused. “You heard the voice, did you not?”
Instantly Kieran knew what she was talking about. “Yeah, goddamn, it was…” His heart began to pound again at just the memory and Kieran tried to hide his trembling hands by running them through his drying hair.
“It is what the harpies hear when the water traps them. The water has the voice of Jerhal enclosed in it, screaming his hatred for the harpies. As a World Jumper, you can make sense of any language. It is why you are able to understand what we say and how you are able to in our language as easily as if it were yours. It is why you felt such terror when you heard Jerhal’s voice.”
Kieran stared at her, mouth open. “I – I don’t…” he began after a while. “I don’t understand any of this…”
“Let me show you,” Aliessye said, gesturing to the trees.
Kieran stepped toward them, wondering if any of the ones here would snap at him or show Sven looking down at him again. But Aliessye wasn’t interested in the trees; when she took the lead, she led him through them until they reached the other side.
The breath left Kieran in a rush. He’d seen a few sights in his life, travelling from time to time on the master’s whims, but never had he seen anything quite like what he saw now. Just a couple of centimetres ahead, the ground sloped steeply away, making Kieran feel like he was standing on a mountain, looking down on the world. It was more than a feeling; he was on the top level of the city, gazing at the roofs of the houses on the other levels below him and the soft lights weaving to and fro. The leaves from the trees behind him whispered as a breeze flew up into Kieran's face, bringing with it the scent of cooking food and a sweet smell that stayed in the back of his throat like a whore's perfume. It must've been flowers, then. Where the lights of the city ended, the wall that encircled it loomed out from the gloom, as jagged as a broken tooth.
“Wow,” he said.
Aliessye sank to the ground as elegantly as a cat. She gestured for Kieran to sit with her, so he did, staring out into the darkening evening sky.
“It has been a very long time since a World Jumper came to us,” Aliessye said quietly, staring into the arriving night like Kieran.
“What is a World Jumper?” he asked. Even if it sounded obvious, it was too crazy to be true.
Aliessye didn't answer at first. Instead she lifted her jaw, narrowing her eyes at the stars already beginning to glisten in the violet sky. “There are many worlds out there. Many, many worlds. Scattered into the vast corners of the night’s sky. Only a few have life forms who have reached a level of intelligence high enough that they are able to govern their land. You and I are the most successful, for humans have conquered a number of worlds, Brunelle included.”
“Are you saying that everyone in my world are aliens?” Kieran asked, incredulous.
“What is your world?”
“Um, Earth.” It felt odd saying it; Kieran wasn’t used to telling people what planet he came from. Usually, they came from the same place, too.
“Earth?” Her eyes were warmer when she looked at him, or maybe it was just the darkness playing with Kieran. “All come from Earth. My ancestors and everyone else in Brunelle have come from Earth. Our journey to Brunelle was unintentional, however. A mistake from when chaos reigned between the gods.”
“Gods?” Kieran raised a sceptic eyebrow at her. Just his luck, he was stuck in another world with a religious nut. Oh joy. They were everywhere.
“Yes. They are how everything came about.”
“Gods?”
“It’s the mistake of a minor god why you are here now.”
Yeah, God shouldn’t have made us humans, Kieran thought, not really paying much attention to her now she was talking nonsense.
“He ignored Authority’s orders and destroyed all Authority had created. He created the stones.”
Kieran had no idea where she got it from, there was no way her outfit had pockets, but Aliessye was suddenly holding Kieran’s stone at eye-level and studying it like a jeweller studies a diamond. A soft, orange glow was thrown onto her face from it.
Kieran’s hands began to shake.
“C-can I have it?” he asked, feeling like a druggie just about to get his next fix from a drug dealer.
Aliessye looked out of the corners of her eyes at him. “Only when you understand.” She looked back at the stone. “Only when you hear what you must be told about this stone.”
“You’re going to tell me about the stone?”
Aliessye glanced back at Kieran, the loose tendrils of her hair waving about in the slight breeze. She absentmindedly twirled the stone around between her slender fingers as she stared hard at him.
“I’m going to tell you everything.”
