Anyway, since it's been such a long time, I'll remind you what happened in Kieran's last chapter: He was stumbling through the forest and touched a tree which transformed into some giant screen. He ran out of the forest and met the guys he's with right now. He's certain he's dreaming, so he let's them drag him off toward their city. They were telling him about the harpies when it ends. And so we are here!
I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter Eight
“Harpies?” Kieran echoed. “Harpies? What – are you on drugs or something?”
The lilac-eyed one didn’t answer, just peered nervously at the sky again. Finally, he said, “You are of this world, you must know of the Harpies. They are a plague on Junella. Not a single settlement can escape them.”
“This world? Junella? What are you on about?”
Lilac-Eyes frowned and tore his eyes from the sky so he could look curiously at Kieran. “Junella is The Great City.” He gestured to the mini-mountain place they were heading for. “How could you not know?”
“He’s bumped his head,” butted in the guard on Kieran’s other side.
“Ah, true,” said Lilac-Eyes.
“Actually, this is a dream,” Kieran said, even though he had knocked his head too many times to count. “None of you are real. You’re my imagination. When I wake up-”
“How I wish I could wake up,” said the other guard, interrupting again. “The Harpies are far worse than any nightmare I’ve had. It’s just my luck it’s real life.”
“-You will disappear,” Kieran finished.
“Why are you so confident you are lost to dreams?” Lilac-Eyes asked.
Kieran couldn’t help but snort at that. The place was pure fantasy set-up. White cities on mountains, trees that mutated into God-knows-what and these flowery guys. “Just take my word for it, yeah?”
“Dehk, Hahli, our attention best be for the sky,” growled the guard behind Kieran. “Lest you want the Harpies to take you unawares?”
Their chins snapped up as they looked up at the sky again, their hands on the daggers hanging by their hips. Kieran watched them, snickering at their seriousness. Didn’t they get it? This was only a dream. Nothing bad would happen to them, because they weren’t real.
He wasn’t laughing when he stubbed his toe on a rock. Yeah, no biggie if he was awake and at home, but weren’t you not supposed to feel pain in dreams? Especially the sharp kind that had him cursing under his breath until the throbbing eased off. Unless he was dreaming about the pain. Yes, that had to be it. It wasn’t like all of this could be real.
Kieran was feeling a little less sure of himself now, though. He’d been dreaming about being in pain an awful lot, if that was the reason. How would he have thought up what had happened to Rick and Sven with such detail? Their screams…
Damn, his choices weren’t good. Either reality was just messed up more than normal or he was sick in the head.
He shook his head from side to side. No, no, no. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t think like this. If he wasn’t dreaming then that would mean what happened back in Africa was…real.
He wrenched his arms free of the guards on either side of him and knocked them both to the ground. Their grip was slack because, up until now, Kieran had been pretty happy to go with them, so they had no reason to think he would try and escape. Which he wasn’t doing, really. No, he just wanted answers.
He whirled around and grabbed the guard behind him by the neck. Kieran’s hand shot out and, sure enough, he jerked the dagger out of its holster and held it against the guy’s throat. To stop the other two guards from trying to skewer him with their daggers, Kieran stepped behind his hostage, treating him like a human shield. By the time the guards had got to their feet and figured out what was happening, Kieran was in a pretty cozy position.
“Don’t struggle,” he hissed to his hostage. “I don’t want to get covered in your blood.”
“Rhogan!” called Lilac-Eyes in a high, tense voice.
Rick Two, now apparently called Rhogan, appeared around a boulder. The veins on his neck stood out and his face would have put a baboon’s ass to shame as he took in the scene in front of him. “What in Lady Aliessye’s name is going on here?!”
“The stranger is holding a dagger to Halmunn’s throat,” Lilac-Eyes said.
Rhogan didn’t seem to appreciate the answer to his rhetorical question. He strode toward Kieran, who pressed the dagger into the guard’s throat even more. His hostage flinched and a bead of blood ran down his neck and into his robes.
“Not another step!”
Rhogan stopped, his lip twitching as he tried to hold back his snarl.
“What is it you want?” he growled. “Why do you keep us here when the Harpies come under the cover of the approaching darkness?”
“Jesus. Why can’t you speak English?” Kieran felt panic bubbling up inside him. No way was his subconscious smart enough to come up with their lingo. “What I want is to know what’s going on! Who are you? What was that forest? Who is that Lady … Lady Al… Who is that Lady? And where in God’s name am I?”
“He bumped his head,” whispered the other guard to Rhogan.
“No!” protested Kieran. “I mean, yes! I mean… Tell me what’s going on before this guy gets a knife in his throat.”
“Please,” gasped his hostage. “I have a wife, children. Do not separate me-”
“Silence, Halmunn.”
Rhogan stepped forward, a nasty glint in his eye. But Kieran didn’t find out what he was going to do because he paused and bent down to pick something up off the ground. When he straightened, Kieran saw he was holding a stone, an amber one.
His heart leapt. He didn’t know the stone had survived the journey through the forest. How had it fallen out of his pocket here and not sooner? Well, whatever the reason, Rhogan was staring at Kieran with his eyes narrowed accusingly, as though he was a cop who’d caught Kieran with a couple of pills.
“Give… Give it here…” Kieran swallowed, for some strange reason hating the fact that Rhogan was holding his stone. It made him feel edgy, trapped, knowing he didn’t have it.
“You own this?”
“What if I do? Just give it to me, before… Before I…” The person who Kieran held at knifepoint twitched, and Kieran suddenly remembered what he was doing. “Before I take this guy’s head off!”
Rhogan didn’t seem bothered by the threat; his brown eyes were fixed on Kieran’s face like he was searching it for lies. “You are not from around here, are you? You are not even of this world.”
“What world?”
Lilac-Eyes glanced from Kieran to Rhogan, looking like he was in the middle of a tennis match. His eyes widened suddenly and he opened his mouth.
“Silence, Hahli,” Rhogan growled, still staring hard at Kieran. “Our world – Brunnelle.”
“Brune-what?” Kieran shook his head from side to side. “Just shut up! Stop trying to confuse me and tell me what is going on! And give me that stone!”
“There was a flash.” Rhogan’s eyes bored into Kieran’s and, for a moment, Kieran forgot how to speak.
“Y-yes.”
“Amber, I would assume from the colour of this stone. You felt as though the sky had fallen and you were surrounded by a sunset.”
“You mean what happened in Africa? Y-yeah… I suppose.”
“World Jumper,” Rhogan breathed.
Immediately the two guards and the high-voiced one dropped onto one knee, their fists over their hearts. Rhogan sunk to the ground reluctantly, assuming the same pose as the others. He bowed his head, eyes on the pebbly ground. After a moment, he murmured, “They return.”
Kieran struggled to breathe, feeling confusion and hysteria tear through him. He had no idea what was happening, and he hated feeling so powerless. So he yanked the hostage closer to him and pressed the tip of the dagger against the guard’s throat again. “Stop pissing around!” he snarled. “I’ll still kill him!”
Rhogan lifted his head and gazed at Kieran. “You won’t,” he said softly, rising to his feet again. “If you meant to, you would have done so already. Besides, you need him as your leverage. How would a dead body stop us from coming for you?”
Kieran saw the hostage’s eyes go wide. Obviously he didn’t like the talk of dead bodies.
“Rhogan!” Lilac-eyes shot old Flower-Temples a wild look. “If a World Jumper is ever to be found we must-”
“I am aware of what Lady Aliessye wants, Hahli.” Rhogan smiled at Kieran, but there was about as much warmth in it as in a January night. “I’m sure the stranger will be overjoyed to accompany us to Junella. After all, Lady Aliessye is the only one who can answer all his questions.”
Kieran narrowed his eyes. “You think I’m stupid? No one with half a brain would fall for that.”
“Ah, but the choice is yours. You may come with us and discover what brought you to our world or you can decline and we will have to overpower you and throw you in our dungeons.”
“Or I could wake up,” Kieran added.
“This isn’t a dream. As much as you think it is – it isn’t.”
There was no way Kieran was going to trust this guy. Not a chance on Earth. If he actually was still on Earth. Which he was. Of course. None of this could be real. No, too far-fetched. For sure.
“The Harpies come soon, stranger, and I would rather lose one of my men than all of them.”
“Nothing on Earth – or whatever this place is called – is going to make me go with you, so don’t even try that.” Kieran was in the middle of scoffing when an unearthly shriek cut across him. It was nothing he had ever heard before. Terror instantly turned his mind into soup and his knees almost folded underneath him. The only thing stopping him from dropping to the ground like a grand piano was the hostage in front of him, who Kieran clutched onto until his knuckles turned white. Over the blood roaring in his ears, he gasped, “Whatwasthat?”
Lilac-Eyes was stared up at the sky behind Kieran with his mouth hanging open, face white, utter horror in his eyes. Even Rhogan had lost a little colour in his cheeks.
“The Harpies,” he said, eyes glued to that same patch Lilac-Eyes was looking at.
That shriek came again, a little louder this time. Which meant they were getting closer.
“Well,” said Kieran, pushing his hostage forwards until he took the hint and began stumbling in the direction of the city. “I think it’s time to meet Lady What’s-her-name, don’t you?”
