They worked on through the darkness. After several hours a rider came galloping up the pass from the south and Leonidas left the line. He took Cyra with him, even though she protested that she was fine.
“Report,” Leonidas ordered as they came up to the courier. The horse was sweating even though the night was cool.
“King,” the man nodded. “Your six Lochoi march swiftly but they are still four days away.”
Leonidas had expected as much. “And the Athenians?”
“Sit behind their walls and argue.”
“Are there any Greek forces on their way to join us?” Leonidas had sent out a dozen emissaries to the closest city-states.
“Two hundred archers from Mellos are coming. They are led by Lichas.”
Leonidas smiled. Lichas was a wily old warrior and his men were skilled with the bow. “When do they arrive?”
“In the afternoon, sire. At best.”
“That is all?”
“Yes, sir.”
Leonidas dismissed the courier to get some food. He ran a hand through his dirty hair as he pondered the situation. He could sense Cyra’s presence next to him. “The smart move would be to withdraw since the people who live behind us obviously don’t care enough to send troops to save their own skin. We could link up with my six lochoi and hold the isthmus at Corinth. That would also force the hand of the Athenians.”
“We must—” Cyra began, but Leonidas cut her off.
“I know we must hold until tomorrow. And not just for your map. We must hold stay here because we said we would.”
CHAPTER 23
“Where’s the water?” Dane asked.
They were on what had been the bank of the Potomac, but the riverbed was dry, unless some thin blowing snow was considered.
“The Shadow took the water,” Ariana said. “All of the fresh water they could tap through portals. And quite a bit of the oceans also. The shore of the Atlantic is about sixty miles that way, that’s how much water the Shadow has taken. In your timeline the Shadow takes power and people, but it wants more. Once it has sucked a world dry of those two, it moves to other materials. Water. Air.”
“Who is the Shadow?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know,” Ariana replied. “An intelligent race, if doing this to planets can be considered intelligent. One that has learned to move in both time and space using the portals and gates. Who understands how to use physics we were just beginning to learn existed.”
“Slow down,” Dane said. “What do you know about the portals and gates? What’s the difference between the two? Why is there just a portal in some places—” he pointed at the black circle they had come through—“and sometimes the portal is hidden inside a gate?”
“I don’t exactly know,” Ariana admitted. “My best guess from what I’ve seen and learned, is that the Shadow can open portals. Gates are a by-product, most likely occurring when some of the Shadow’s world spills through the portal into our world. When that happens some of the creatures from the Shadow’s world come through also, such as the kraken.”
That made sense to Dane, the first thing that had in quite a while. “So the Shadow attacks various Earth timelines via portals to scavenge them?”
“Yes. There must be many parallel Earths, each a little different from each other and the Shadow has been pillaging them. I remember reading a research paper where the author postulated an almost infinite number of parallel universes, existing side by side, but separated slightly by time and space.”
Earhart’s voice cut in. “And the Ones Before? Have you met them?”
“No. I’ve received visions of what I am to do.”
“And that is?” Dane asked.
“I’ve done it — most of it by showing this world and telling you of the timelines and parallel worlds.”
“We need a map of the portals,” Dane said.
“There’s something else I need to show you first,” Ariana said. She turned toward the west and began moving, Dane and Earhart hurrying to keep up.
There were so many questions running through Dane’s head, but he didn’t know which one to ask first. There was a high ridge ahead and Dane tried to remember if there had been such a terrain feature west of Washington in his timeline world, but he couldn’t recollect one.
When Ariana reached the top of the ridge, she paused and waited for them to catch up. Dane slid to a halt next to her, bobbing in the air for a few moments before the suit came to a stop. His questions were forgotten for the moment as he took in what had caused the ridge.
The top edge of a massive black sphere was all that could be seen, but from the quarter mile high ridge he was standing on, and from his experiences, Dane knew he was looking at one of the spheres that was used to traverse the large portals and capture ships and planes. It must have struck the ground hard given how far it was driven into the ground, but it appeared to be intact.
“That’s what captured me,” Earhart said.
“It is one of the Shadow’s craft,” Ariana said.
“What happened?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know. I was given a vision of it here and I knew I needed to show this to you.”
“It looks like it crashed — hard,” Earhart added.
As far as Dane could remember, all contacts with the spheres had been in the water. “It can move in the air?”
“Obviously,” Ariana said.
“Would the map be on board?” Dane asked.
“No. The ship was stripped by the Shadow after it crashed.”
Dane felt a surge of frustration. “Where is the map?”
Ariana must have picked up his mood. “You need to know what the map is of — what the portals are. There are indeed several portals that lead to the Shadow’s world, but most are between parallel Earth time-lines.”
“OK,” Dane said. “I understand that now. But my, our timeline—” he pointed at Earhart—“is running out of time.”
“I know,” Ariana said. “When the Shadow activates the core portal via the Nazca Plain, it is the last stage of scavenging. It has happened to other Earths. They no longer exist.”
“The map,” Dane snapped.
“Come.” Ariana began moving to the south and west, crossing what had once been the Potomac.
“Where do the ships go?” Captain Stokes asked Asper. The rest of the survivors of his crew were gathered behind him in Earhart’s camp. They were all battered and bruised but functional, and that was all that Stokes was concerned with. Several of the samurai, including Taki, were also standing close by.
“There’s a graveyard, a couple of them as far as we know, on Earth,” Asper said. “Deep under the ocean. A big cavern.”
“How do we get there?” Stokes asked.
“I imagine through a portal,” Asper said. “The problem with that is that there is a good chance the portal is hot and you’ll get fried and die like—” he pointed at Noonan’s body—“that poor fellow.”
Stokes turned to Taki. “This Dane fellow — he came through on a ship, didn’t he?”
Taki stared at him blankly and Stokes cursed. He knelt down and drew a rough outline of a submersible in the black sand. He pointed at it. Taki nodded and pointed toward the inner sea.
“But you still won’t know which portal to go through,” Asper pointed out.
Taki was kneeling and drawing something next to Stokes sketch. Stokes frowned. “A shark?” he asked as he noted the fin on top of the form that was drawn.
“No, a dolphin,” Asper said. “Last time they came through they had a dolphin leading them.”
“Is it still in the water with the submersible?” Stokes asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Asper said as he gestured to Taki, then pointed toward the inner sea.