‘What’s that?’ Brynne was listening intently.
Gilmour tied his riding cloak tightly around his shoulders, as if he felt a sudden chill in the heavy Ronan air. ‘Welstar Palace in Malakasia.’
OUTSIDE SOUTHPORT, PRAGA
Hannah’s joints ached with the dull, throbbing pain of dehydration. The day was hot and the road beneath her feet dusty: tiny clouds of dirt billowed about her ankles with every step and her trainers were coated with a thin brown film. She had only been walking for half an hour, but having nothing to eat or drink for two days was taking its toll. She felt it first in her knees – it was always her knees; they invariably let her know when she had pushed her body too far – but determined to practise equal opportunity abuse this afternoon, Hannah kept walking.
Soon her ankles, shoulders and neck were crying for mercy as well.
The road flanking the copse where she had slept appeared to wind its way casually into the village along the water. The trip was taking longer than she had anticipated. ‘No crows flying along this route unless they have a learning disability,’ she groaned. Twisting back into a narrow draw between two hillocks sitting like twin camel humps above the harbour, Hannah could no longer see the city. She assumed the road would follow the valley’s curve before dropping down into town. Hoping a stream might flow through the draw at the far end of the gorge, she made her way doggedly into the defile, imagining cool spring water tumbling over smooth rocks and into gentle pools.
‘I’ll drink a gallon,’ she promised herself, ignoring the fact that any number of pernicious bacteria might be lurking, just waiting for her to come along. ‘Screw it. I’ll take whatever they’re serving – Montezuma’s worst nightmare, chicken pox, malaria, nitrogen narcosis – I’m beyond caring. As long as it’s on the daily special, I’ll have an order… with fries.’ She wiped a sleeve across her forehead and pulled off her jacket.
‘Too hot. How did that happen? Not only was I transported through the floor of Steven’s house, but I was transported to the desert, too.’ She tried not to think about it. There had to be a rational explanation. Unwilling to accept the fact that she had been the victim of something supernatural, Hannah clung to her no-nonsense, everything-can-and-will-make-sense views with all the determination she could muster. But it was a tiring charge, and only the steady, repetitive pace of her forced march into town provided her with any comfort.
‘I’ll figure this out when I get to town. I have some money. I have my credit cards. I will call a cab, take a bus, charter a frigging plane; I don’t care.’ She was chanting to herself, almost a mantra. ‘I will get out of this and things will be fine.’ Her muscles ached and she was forced to stop for a moment, but as she almost fell to the ground, insecurity began to creep over her.
‘I should keep moving… keep going, before I start thinking too much about this again. There were two moons, no mistake about that. And buses? I don’t suppose they’ll have buses going quite that far.’ A strange feeling snaked along her spine and teased her with the notion that perhaps this was real, she had fallen into someplace new, someplace different – possibly even someplace unfriendly.
‘Steven might be here, too. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t called.’ She shook her head. Why hadn’t that occurred to her earlier? Just the thought of finding Steven energised her and after taking a minute to estimate the distance around the valley’s bowl, Hannah got to her feet and started out again.
She rounded a lazy bend and came face to face with three men walking along the dirt road away from town. Hannah was struck by their dress: all three were clad entirely in black and despite the heat, they wore boots, form-fitting leggings, hip-length pullover tunics belted at the waist and thick leather vests adorned with an ornate gold crest. At their belts each wore a short knife and what appeared to be a rapier or a sword; Hannah didn’t know the difference. She couldn’t imagine how warm they must be in such heavy costumes; she assumed, as she had earlier, that some sort of mock-Renaissance celebration was under way in the town.
‘Am I glad to see you guys,’ she started – as far as Hannah was concerned, finding anyone at all on the bone-dry roadway was a blessing, even if they were dressed like something out of a TV adaptation of Ivanhoe.
‘Do you know where I can find a 7-11, or maybe a supermarket? I need a payphone and I want to get some water.’ Suddenly afraid of how they might respond, she added hesitantly, ‘And can you tell me where we are? I mean… I know that sounds silly, but what town is that over there?’ She gestured towards the harbour.
The three men stared at her, apparently speechless. Hannah, remembering she was alone, endeavoured to keep her distance while remaining polite. She smiled and waited, the smoke-like tendrils of insecurity chilling her bones once again.
The tallest of the three, who towered over his companions by six or seven inches, spoke first. At first, Hannah thought she had misheard him, that his words had been lost on the breeze brushing through the gorge, but then she realised he was speaking a different language, a strange language, one she had never heard before. It was guttural and full of left-footed consonants, a little like Welsh after a few drinks. More curious, though, was the fact that she understood him. She comprehended every word.
A dream, that’s what this is, just a dream… maybe you hit your head. Just ride it out and you’ll wake up eventually. Relaxing somewhat, Hannah searched across the hillside, looking for a purple giraffe, a whale reading a comic book, or the collective faculty of the law school clad entirely in Victoria’s Secret underwear.
Her throat closed slightly when the young man spoke again. His words formed phrases in her mind after a two- or three-second delay. ‘-too far from town, my sweet little morsel,’ he said lasciviously. ‘No one will hear you out here.’
The men closed on her swiftly. Hannah, stunned by their attack, remained frozen in place. Her limbs filled with concrete and she went down without a struggle. They were tugging at her, fumbling with her clothing and arguing with one another about who would go first when she finally realised what was about to happen.
An alarm clamoured in her head: Get up! Fight back! But she was trapped now, their collective weight too heavy for her to move. She overheard snatches of what they were saying – given her panic at what was happening, Hannah was amazed that she could understand the thick, hacking syllables at all…
‘-strange rutting clothes on her-’
‘-look at these hose-’
‘-just pull them off her feet, rutting whores’ sake, can’t you do anything?’
It’s happening. Oh Christ, it’s happening to me- Hannah had read about rape victims, women who wished they had been trained in self-defence, that they had been carrying mace or pepper spray or a Tomahawk missile, but she had never joined the ranks of those who claimed, ‘If that ever happens to me, I’ll-’
Instead, she had just prayed it never would happen to her. Now she realised that was not enough. Keys. Someone once told her they were an excellent weapon against a sexual predator. She could scratch a face, open a jagged wound across a cheek, or claw an eye out. She could even use them to rip a hole in his scrotum, gouge out his balls. Where were her keys? Her jacket was tied around her waist, but she knew the keys were not in the pockets. She knew that because she remembered putting them down beside a half-eaten pizza on the counter at 147 Tenth Street.
Finally she screamed, scratching wildly at her assailants – maybe she could jab an eye with her fingernails… but Hannah Sorenson didn’t have long or especially sharp fingernails; she had never been one for high fashion and her fingernails had been filed down so they didn’t get in the way. She was useless.
She tried kicking, and wailing for help, mercy or forgiveness, until one of the men rammed his knee up violently between her legs, sending a sharp pain across her abdomen that paralysed her from the waist down. Another gripped her breasts, squeezing and twisting them violently.