Chapter 2
This time, I bolted awake and found myself crouching atop the covers of the strangest bed in which I’d ever been. The mattress was a thin pad that hissed as if stuffed with air yet clearly supported me. It was on a metal frame that pivoted so the head and foot would raise and had wheels on the legs. There were railings on both sides like a child’s crib to keep the occupant from falling out.
I hesitated. Ran my hands down my body and was absurdly grateful that I could feel everything again. Including an incredible soreness in my back and chest.
I looked at myself and saw that I was in a short gown and nothing else. I had a bandage wrapped around my chest and back. Under that, I saw a wound stitched neatly together with what looked like thick black hairs.
I slid off the bed and looked at where my feet pointed. I saw a door and like the wall, this had a window in it. When I tried to stand my weakness was evident. Without my hold on the bed, I would have fallen flat on my face.
Upright made my head swim. I half sat leaning against the footboard until I was confident I could reach the door. The first thing I did was try the knob and wasn’t too surprised that it was locked. I was very perplexed when I looked at the windows to find them blocked by dark screens that prevented me from looking out. They had been clear before.
That they could look in wasn’t apparent until the door popped open and a trio of strangers stood there, two men and a woman.
“Hey,” the man nearest to me stepped forward and pulled me back to the bed, lifting and depositing me before I could blink. “You need to take it easy. You were shot.”
I raised my hand to my chest. “Where am I?”
He rolled his eyes. “First question everyone always asks. I’m Cabor, this is Anye and Raylen. We found you on the ice with an arrow through your back. A silver arrow. I brought you in and Anye and I doctored you. We did a bit of surgery, cleaned you up and let you heal.”
“I thought I was paralyzed,” I said.
“That was the drugs. They kept you immobile so the stitches would seal and your lungs recover. It took several units of plasma too, before your pressure came back up. Who was chasing you?”
“My grandfather and a wizard,” I answered. I clamped my mouth shut but whenever he asked a question, I replied even though I didn’t want to. They asked my name, why I was chased and shot, and had my entire story out of me in the time it took to tell it. I finally sputtered to a halt and there was a sudden silence.
Then, the man called Cabor asked me if I had any questions. ‘Where am I?’ was my first one.
“In Reyjadsk. The city under the ice. Buried in the bedrock below the Glacier.”
“How is that possible–technology from before the Split?”
“You know about the split?” He returned and I shrugged my shoulders only to feel the soreness deepen. I swallowed.
“What happened? Last I remember was falling off my sylph into the snow.”
“Yes. I was on a…mission and stumbled across your animal. Found you buried beneath it, brought you to the city,” Cabor returned.
I looked him in the eyes. “Why?”
“Why not? You think we’d leave a boy out there, wounded, to die in the snow and ice?”
“You don’t know anything about me and I don’t know anything about you,” I returned. “And I haven’t exactly seen the milk of human kindness in my own kind.”
“What do they suspect you can do for them?” He seemed puzzled. “I tested your brain and I don’t find you any more advanced than any of our own children your age. Do you say they expected you to bridge the technology gap between their culture and the pre-Fracture?”
“What caused the Split?” I asked.
“We call it the Fracture,” he corrected. “The economy and infrastructure of the pre-Fracture world fell apart in a massive implosion. The cities could no longer maintain food, water or power services. Millions died and millions more fled to the countryside attacking for their own share of what was left. Within a hundred years, nothing was left except for small bands of hunters gathered together struggling to survive. The ice started to return and forced the survivors to retreat.
“The seas lowered. More landmasses appeared and there were incredible stresses on the plates. You know what tectonic plates are?” When I shook my head, he explained. “We live on vast plates of rock that float atop a core of molten lava and the plates move so much a year. Some over others and some under. Sometimes, they slip and this causes the earth to quake producing landslides and volcanoes erupting, these are all part of the cycle.
“Five thousand years ago, there was such a massive earthquake and it changed the surface of the continents as the ancients knew it. The old lands were smashed together into one continent called Ehrenberg and the new lands were broken into the two you call the Borderlands and the Newlands.”
“The Wall?”
“There is no wall.”
I shook my head. “There is a wall, a border that man cannot cross unless brought over by the Elassai. To cross the wall and go through the Mist will kill any human that tries. I myself have experienced it.”
“You’re not dead,” he laughed and I stared at him.
“I am. I died as a human the moment I left without my Lyr’s permission.” I opened my mouth and bit him before he could blink.