I crossed the room in half a dozen strides and stood between the window and the blazing fireplace. Barely had I begun to trace my portal when a mighty crash sounded from the doorway. Turning from the wall, facing the bolted door, I saw Lupien’s arm protruding through it and into the room. Slowly, his arm bent at the elbow and drew back. The door splintered and fell away from its hinges, littering the stone floor. Lupien strode through the now open archway and raised his huge hands toward me. Behind him a hooded figure moved into my sight, and quickly I realized who my real adversary actually was. The creature held a small crystalline sphere in his claw-like hand and I knew Lupien for the puppet he was and from whence his strength had come. The meaning of the clouded look in his eyes now became clear to me, also. Taking two steps to my right now placed me within arm-span of the fireplace and I raised my voice aloud, speaking plainly in the gnome’s own language.
“Hear me well, Wick! Stop him or I’ll throw this into the fire. Verily, you can see just how hot it is, and you’ll get naught but slag for your efforts.”
Being born in the fires of a sun, no ordinary flame could harm Daystryker. But Wick didn’t know that. I held Daystryker toward the fire and Wick’s evil eyes grew wide. He hurriedly covered the glowing sphere he held, and, slowly, the vacant look in Lupien’s eyes cleared. Then they closed and he limply folded to the floor, oblivious to everything happening around him. Wick slowly advanced further into the room. He had slipped the crystalline sphere into his cloak, but had not yet brought his hand back into sight. I knew he now had his hand closed around something else. But I had no idea what other tricks this strange gnome had available to him, nor was I curious enough to find out. I softly spoke a few words in the tongue of the Ancients, and Wick must have guessed what was coming, for he brought his hand out of his cloak empty and threw both arms up to cover his eyes. As I spoke the last word of the incantation, an invisible weight gathered itself and settled in my left hand. Tossing that weight forward, I willed it to fall at Wick’s feet. As it hit the floor, there was a soft pop and a cloud of smoke instantly formed about the gnome. The power of the spell would hold him for the nonce, so he could neither move nor see.
Quickly, I slung Daystryker across my back and returned to the wall, where I finished outlining my portal. After completing the tracing, which would open my path through dimensions, I turned and hurried to Lupien, hoisted him to my shoulder and again returned to the portal tracing, I couldn’t leave Lupien in Wick’s clutches because the gnome would inflict grievous vengeance upon him if I did.
After placing my hands on opposite sides of the tracing, the space inside the portal suddenly became a mass of shifting, kaleidoscopic colors. As I took my first step forward, passing through the wall, I envied Lupien his unconsciousness. Colors could now be smelled; sound could be tasted; odors had rough textures and the force of pressure, and that pressure was painful. My senses were being assaulted in ways which would send most people into the world of insanity.
Luckily, it only lasted the few seconds it took me to take my next couple steps. My third step brought me into a world of bright sunshine, clean air and soft grasses ’neath my sandalled feet. The portal I had stepped through winked out of existence without a sound and could not be reopened by anyone, save myself. This world and the world in which Wick lived were in two different planes of existence. Even if Wick could open a portal, he wouldn’t be able to find out which plane of existence Lupien and I had entered among the thousands that are possible.
I stooped to lay Lupien on the grass and then moved back sev-eral feet to await his return to consciousness. I wasn’t about to take a chance on his dislike for me causing him to make a mistake when he came to. Slipping Daystryker from where it hung across my back, I settled down upon the veldt grass myself and began my meditation ritual. Sitting cross-legged, I spanned Daystryker across my knees and rested my hands upon it. My eyes slid half closed and I muttered softly to myself the litany I had learned under very unusual circumstances. For that matter, this whole affair came about because of some very, very unusual, painful circumstances.
Six years ago and worlds away, I was an irrelevant cog at a computer firm. Worlds away, not in time and space, but in what can only be described as dimensions. Now I dress in animal hides and sandals, carry a sword, and have, at times, even found myself speaking in languages I’ve never heard before. And I was now being considered as the savior of a race of a troubled people. Many times in my life I had heard that the brain is the most mysterious organ in the human body. Little did I know how mysterious until that moment six years ago when I was awakened by a whisper from the dark.
TWO
My name was Michael Dermott, born in St. Charles, Illinois, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and sixty-five. Six years ago, I was twenty-two and holding down a promising job at Compnet Research Corporation, one of the best computer research and development companies in Southern California. At five foot eight, a hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet, with blond hair and green eyes, I was often mistaken for the typical California ‘Beach Bum’, although I’d spent very little time at the beach. A bit of a computer nerd, I lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment near the beach in the city of Oceanside. I’m perfectly aware that I’m not much to look at, as far as women are concerned. In fact, I’ve always been kind of intimidated by good-looking women. For general information, good-looking women are as numerous as the stars in the sky in Oceanside. Needless to say, this fact was the primary reason for my self-imposed solitude.
However, once I began life on my own, I began to go out on camping excursions. Quite often, three-day weekends would find me in nearby campgrounds. Being unattached, I wouldn’t have to make plans very far ahead of time. On spur-of-the-moment occasions I’d just pick up and leave.
On the weekend of January 17, 1988, I had done just that. That cold winter Sunday, I was on my way back home after spending a wonderful two days camping on Palomar Mountain. Sleeping bag, tent and miniature campstove were all tied down on the back of my motorcycle. My backpack held the other sundry items that I had packed for the weekend away from the noise and problems of city life. The weekend was very relaxing for me; however, maybe it was a little too relaxing.
That morning had been exceptionally cold with a film of frozen dew glazing everything. By noon, the sun had most of that glaze melted and nearly had everything dried out. I started out from the campground around 1:30 that afternoon, riding along at a leisurely speed, gliding through the curves smoothly. Ahead of me was a curve bathed in the shadows of the surrounding vegetation, so I eased off the gas and began to lightly apply both brakes, suspecting ice in those shadows. Just as I entered the curve, I saw the ice and heard a racing engine. Applying more pressure to the brakes, I attempted to stop before I reached it. But at that moment, the oncoming car came around the curve, skidding out of control. Time seemed to creep by then, seconds expanding into pregnant minutes.
The car was a candy-apple red Camaro with a pair of scared teenage faces showing behind the windshield. The driver’s eyes were shifting wildly left and right, seeking an escape or some way he could stop the insane ride they were on. The girl riding shotgun had both hands locked on the dashboard and I even believed that 1 could see her knuckles showing white from her fierce grip. Her eyes were wide with fright, but when she saw that I was in the path of their careening car, her eyes grew even larger. She had realized in that instant that I was the only thing that stood between them and the edge of the road. An edge which disappeared into the vast open space where the mountainside dropped away from the road.