By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Thirty-One "The River of Time is Stopped"
"Gilman!"
Sarah felt the tears sting her eyes. How she had missed him! What a dreadful, long, weary time she had had without Gilman there to protect and support her. Now he was back. That would show them, that would show them all. Sarah felt fiercely vindicated by this sharp, vindictive thought. Show all who? was her next thought. Mother and Father? Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie? Her cousins, Abbey and Dar, who'd never done even one thing to deliberately hurt her? Eva and Mr. Plimsoul, who seemed foul as louses in some ways, but who were ready to take Sarah under their wing provided she open their silly Casket of Augersaal? Bart? Maybe Bart. But hadn't Bart already paid for his teasing and insults with a wounded eye? Did Sarah really want more justice than an eye for an eye? Maybe Sarah was just unhappy with her luck, with her lot in life, with, as Eva had called it at their strangely compelling dinner interview, her "high and lonely destiny."
Well, with Gilman back, none of that would matter. Sarah had always had Gilman on her side, and she could always trust him to be sympathetic to her cause, even when she didn't know exactly what that cause was. Gilman was the best best friend and best big brother all wrapped up into one. With a pinch in her breath from her broken ribs, Sarah looked up at him.
It was weirder than words could tell to see your own brother standing before you like a living cartoon. Gilman had died and, and gone to this place? It didn't make any sense to Sarah. She needed some answers, and she needed them now. "Gilman," she managed. "What...? Wh-why?"
The only answer Gilman made was to put his ghostly hand on Sarah's shoulder. Had he sacrificed himself to be there with her? Sarah wondered. Or was he just comforting her because he couldn't speak? For some reason Sarah couldn't quite name, the question she actually asked Gilman was: "Is it too late?"
The hand on Sarah's shoulder pressed down more firmly. Sarah wanted to put the down the sword blade that shone between them, but she couldn't. Gilman's ghostly eyes pierced her mercilessly. It was as if he were asking her a question. But what would that question be? Did Gilman know who had killed him, and why? Was it just an accident of war, the shelling of his position, or had there been some magical connection because of the Tone family's "warrior crown"?
"Gilman," Sarah asked, tilting her head to one side of the blade, and almost whispering. "Do you know who had you killed?"
Gilman still did not speak. He did not shake his head or nod. Reasons were for the living, it seemed.
"Do you know why you were killed?" Sarah insisted. If Gilman didn't know what to do or why, how could Sarah ever know?
At this question, something extraordinarily strange occurred. Gilman, very carefully and very deliberately removed his officer's cap. He was as careful as if he had a glass of water balanced on his head under his cap and didn't want to spill it. There, around his thickly drawn head of hair, was a thin silver circlet. Just over Gilman's forehead, it had a small diamond-shaped crest which was divided at the middle by the circlet. It seemed to Sarah as if a star had landed on Gilman's brow. As Gilman very seriously removed the crown, Sarah could see a rune scribed on the diamond. Gilman held the circlet over the lifted blade and then over Sarah's helmet. Gilman settled the circlet onto the helmet firmly, clicking it into a slight ridge that seemed to exist for that specific purpose.
Sarah, helmeted, armed, and crowned now stood stock still. All that the world would ever give her was now hers, but she still didn't know just what to do. Sarah looked ardently at Gilman, wishing intensely that he would speak, say something, anything, to help her decide what she must do. Sarah couldn't bring herself to ask her mute brother another question, but felt that the silence was overwhelming.
Gilman settled his officer's cap back firmly on his head, hiding the loose bundle of his hair. It looked like he was about to turn back and follow the receding line of ghostly figures when Sarah reached out and put her hand on his arm. Gilman stopped, and gestured silently to the unmoving underground river. Then he tapped the watch on his wrist. He held the watch up to Sarah. The second hand wasn't moving. Sarah wasn't sure what that meant. Then Gilman, as solemnly as a statue, pointed down at the ground, to Sarah's left.
For a long moment, it seemed to Sarah that neither she nor Gilman, nor Gilman's watch, would ever move again. A dread filled her, like gasoline going into a can, as she followed Gilman's gesture toward the ground. His finger stopped only a few feet above a lanky prone body wearing chain mail and a steel cap, with a sword laid into its pale unmoving hand. This was not one of the cartoon outline figures of the soldiers; this was a real, living person lying motionless in the muck. There was a small pool by the figure's head, darkening its blond hair with blood.
It was Sarah.
Sarah felt an odd dissonance overtake her soul. This was like watching the throat of the shadow Sarah getting ripped out by shadow birds, or like watching her reflection being strangled in the well by the old crone. Sarah felt as though her bones had been turned inside out. The horror that came over her, seeing what she was, and where she had wound up, left her without words in a place that was without time. Sarah joined the stillness of the unmoving waters, and felt nothing.
And then Gilman turned and began to walk away, without so much as a backward glance at Sarah.
Sarah looked at the blade in her hand as Gilman walked away, joining the long grey line of soldiers from time immemorial. The watery cavern echoed with their booted steps until the darkness swallowed them all again. As long as the line seemed to have been, it was not infinite. There was an end to the defenders, and Gilman was now gone away with them into an irrecoverable past.
The blade shone with all the reflected colors of the well-light, but at its very edge, it lost all color. The edge has no room for indecision: either cut or do not cut. Death or life. Win or lose. To use this tool, you needed to pick sides, you needed to know what you were fighting for. In the hilt was the pendant Granny Pansy had given Gilman, and that Sarah had filtched from his uniform pocket in the closet in recent days past that now seemed eons ago. Sarah rubbed her thumb back and forth over the runic inscription. She felt that she was back in the dark of that closet again, stumbling into nothingness. Again, her eyes shone back at her from the flat of the blade. But this time, Sarah didn't turn away from herself.
She had decided.
* * * *
Back at the docks, the scene remained frozen just as it was when the Casket of Augersaal had been invoked by Eva and Sarah. Everything was as stiff and still as a postcard. The glinting light on the water, the golden barge with its furled sails, and a figure on the prow squinting at the frozen chaos of the dockworks. All of the bustling sorcerers Eva and Mr. Plimsoul had at their disposal were stiffened into cardboard cut-outs. Even Great Uncle Charlie's friend, the hirsute giant, Hartlebragginthronsii, who had returned to help in the battle out of friendship, was stuck in mid-stride, batting away a flaming ball with the torn-off arm of a freight crane.
Virtually at Sarah's feet, Mr. Hectatomb clutched his broken arm, a grimace of pain painted on his round, red face. Sarah saw with a gasp that Granny Pansy had been knocked flat to the ground, just a dozen yards on the other side of the blasted-open iron gates. With that gasp, time returned to the hectic scene.
The Casket of Augersaal had opened wide, its ebon lid dangling from a single hinge. Within the casket, but leaping out, was Sarah. She leaped with her sword flashing, and yelling in a tongue she did not understand. It was the words inscribed around the side-cave that had held the sacred armor until the new warrior came to collect them. Mr. Plimsoul had been knocked over by the lid of the casket, but Eva stood coolly, the purple globe in her hand, the tiny hand still plucking a now unsung melody that haunted the air of the battle. Sarah did not hesitate, but struck mercilessly, and Eva's cool head thonked to the paving, eyes widened in surprise.
END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE