Chapter 14: Worlds Apart (2/2)

“Me too,” Farrah said. “Rufus only likes things when they’re bitter.”

After letting him rest awhile, Gary pulled Jason easily to his feet. Jason wavered and Gary held him upright until the dizziness passed.

“Thanks,” Jason said. “I’ve passed out… three? Four times today? I think my brain might be bleeding.”

“We can’t use potions on you any time soon,” Farrah said, “but once we get Anisa back, she can heal you.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Jason said.

They left the chamber through the huge stone doors. Jason glanced back at the space he had hidden in behind one of them. The tunnel was surprisingly long, carved directly out of the stone.

“Who made this tunnel?” Jason asked. “It must have been a tough job.”

“Wouldn’t be that hard,” Farrah said. “Construction magic would make it a straightforward process.”

She looked up and down the extensive length of the tunnel.

“Might have taken a while, though,” she acknowledged.

They emerged from a gap that, at a distance, would have looked like a natural crevice. They were on the gentle slope of the lower portion of a mountain that tapered up to a towering height. The upper reaches were black and lifeless, while the lower portions turned to yellow stone and red earth, with patchy coverage of dry, yellow grass. There was a wagon outside the tunnel, wheels chocked to stop it rolling down the slope. It had a yoke for animals, but the harness was cut and the animals were gone.

“Did they scatter the horses so we couldn’t use the wagon?” Jason asked.

“What are horses?” Gary asked.

“You’ve never heard of horses?”

The other three shook their heads.

“Then what was pulling the wagon?” Jason asked.

“Heidels,” Gary said.

“What’s a heidel?”

“It’s a work animal, the kind you see everywhere,” Gary said. “They pull wagons, carry packs. You can ride them. I can too, but you can tell they don’t like it.”

“Maybe the name is just different,” Jason said. “Four legs, hooves?”

“Sounds right,” Farrah said.

“Long body,” Jason continued, “long head.”

“Heads,” Gary corrected.

“Heads?” Jason said. “As in more than one?”

“Yeah, two heads, scales, horns…”

“That sounds horrifying,” Jason said. “We are definitely not talking about the same animal.”

“The animal doesn’t matter if there aren’t any here,” Rufus said. “Which means we start walking.”

Jason looked down the slope, getting a panoramic view of the land below. It was a flat, dry landscape of sandy yellows and sober reds, punctuated by withered grass or spiky scrub. Every so often, a low tree with sparse foliage would jut reluctantly up from the barren earth. The sun hammered relentlessly down over all of it, but the arid air was almost pleasant after the cloying humidity of the sacrifice chamber.

The climate bore no resemblance to the moderate warmth and lush greenery he had experienced in the hedge maze. Even the heat had felt different there, more pleasantly warm than this unforgiving desert air. He remembered looking at the world map, a warped, but not entirely different globe to the one with which he was familiar. It marked his position as being in the Kalahari Desert, which matched the terrain now before him.

They started down the slope, Gary in the lead. He was wearing loose clothing to let air flow through, along with a hood to shield him from the sun. The others were wearing more fitted clothes but didn’t appear discomforted.

“They brought us here while I was unconscious, right?” Jason asked.

“That’s right,” Rufus said.

“How long was I knocked out for? This is very different from the place we were before.”

They all turned to look him with curiosity.

“The Vane Estate was using climate magic,” Farrah said. “Didn’t you notice when you went there in the first place?”

“Actually, how did you get involved with all this?” Rufus asked. “Now that we have time to talk.”

“Um, I think I might have been summoned,” Jason said. “Not on purpose, obviously. I mean, who’d summon me? I went to bed, which was last night, as far as I know, and woke up in the middle of the Vane family hedge maze. I sort of stumbled around for a bit until I found one of the residents, and from what I gather he was trying to summon something and got me instead. He called me something that sounded specific. I don’t remember what, exactly. ‘Other-worlder,’ maybe?”

“Outworlder?” Rufus suggested.

“Sounds right,” Jason said. “Is that what the name suggests? Is this really a whole different world?”

“We’ve always been in this one,” Rufus said. “You’d have to tell us if it’s different enough from where you came from.”

Jason thought about the flying eels and leech monsters, people throwing around magic chains and streams of lava. Healing potions, reading languages he’d never seen before. The magic powers he’d used for himself. All of it was impossible.

“It’s definitely different enough,” Jason said. “My world has its share of strangeness, but this is a whole different kind of strange. Some things are weirdly the same, though. Like hedge mazes, and people named Gary. I have a cousin named Gary. Not as tall as you, Gary, but almost as hairy.”

“He’s a leonid?” Gary asked.

“I think it’s a glandular thing. We don’t have leonids on my world.”

“I’m not well versed in astral magic,” Farrah said. “I’ve heard of outworlders, but it isn’t my field of expertise.”

“Alternate realities maybe,” Jason said. “Some things are the same, others different. If that’s what this is, then this world diverged from mine a very long time ago. The continents are different, but not completely. The fundamental physical laws here have some interesting addenda. My world doesn’t have magic, at all. Or a second moon. I did see a second moon, right?”

“Your world only has one moon?” Gary asked. “That’s weird.”