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  I scratched my chin slowly. Given what I knew of Forget, I was wary of the boy. I watched him carefully as he built a small sand castle, thin and narrow, but with great care. He only spent a few minutes building the castle, but when it was done, he had a rough tower, a good two feet high. The ocean swept in and ate at the tower’s foundations.

  Annie knelt down so they were roughly eye to eye. “What’s your name?” she asked with a smile.

  “Charlie,” he said. “Charlie Dusk.”

  “Hi, Charlie Dusk. I’m Annie and this is Declan. How old are you, Charlie?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” he said, and scratched at the back of his neck. “At least as many as ten but no more than twelve. I’d remember if it’d been twelve.”

  Annie gave him a bemused grin. “Are your parents around, Charlie? Declan and I are lost, you see, and we need to find—”

  “Father’s away,” he said, in a tone of deadly seriousness. “Haven’t seen Mother in a good many days. Or my brothers and sisters. We’ve been scattered for a while, yeah.”

  “How did you get here?” Annie asked.

  Charlie frowned and thought about this. “Want a juicy fruit?” he asked, and gestured vaguely to what remained of his enormous mango. “They’re just up the shore a bit, near the temple.”

  “I’d love one,” Annie said. She stood and offered Charlie her hand. I almost intervened, expecting the kid to sprout fangs and take a bite, but he did nothing more than slip his small hand into Annie’s with a smile.

  We set off walking up the beach again. I kept some distance from Annie and Charlie, just in case. He seemed harmless enough, but without my Will to get a sense of the kid, I just couldn’t be sure. Forget was a lot of things but rarely merciful to the incautious.

  “Are there other people in the temple, Charlie?” Annie asked.

  “Dunno about other people,” Charlie said. “I’m not allowed inside the temple. If I get too close, my head hurts and my nose bleeds.”

  Annie shot me a quick, curious glance. I shrugged. “Do you know the name of this beach, Charlie?” I asked.

  He nodded enthusiastically and jumped on the spot, leaving two deep footprints in the sand. “The Shore of Distant Stars,” he said, as if reading the title of a book slowly and carefully.

  I didn’t recognize the name—it wasn’t from any tome or story I’d ever read, which was not an inconsiderable amount, given my line of work. Libraries upon libraries wrapped in the annals of history. “And the temple? Does that have a name, too?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Maybe. It’s old. Like, ancient. If I ever knew it, I’ve forgotten.”

  “And you get nosebleeds when you get too close,” Annie said.

  “Right. But you won’t, I bet. You neither, Mr. Declan.”

  “Why’s that, kid?”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “Because you’re not from here, silly.” He tugged at Annie’s hand and pulled her up the beach toward a tree bulging with thick, sticky mango fruit. I watched him carefully, keeping a hand on the hilt of my sword.

  However insubstantial this world felt, the football-sized mango I plucked from the tree was, perhaps, the most delicious piece of fruit I’ve ever had the pleasure of devouring. The flesh melted on my tongue and released a tart sweetness that ran down the back of my throat and made me shiver. Annie moaned as she took her first bite and quickly chewed through the rest, making a mess of her mouth and hands.

  “That,” she said, “was extraordinary.”

  “Glad you like ’em,” Charlie said. “I grew this grove meself. Took... took a long time, it did.”

  “They’re very nice,” I said. These trees were at least a decade aged, if not more. So how old was probably-ten-no-more-than-twelve Charlie? He grinned at me through a mess of bright yellow pulp. “Are we near the temple?”

  “Yup, this way. Come on, Annie and Declan!” He dashed along a path of blended dirt and sand and disappeared into the forest.

  The air under the canopy of trees was almost as sticky as the mangoes. After a few minutes of following the boy through the forest, I wiped a sheen of sweat from my brow and felt droplets trickling down my back under my shirt and waistcoat, clinging uncomfortably to my skin.

  The path meandered up and down, over hills and under massive, gnarled tree roots that had formed natural bridges from banks of grass. Long vines, as thick as my arm, hung from the boughs high overhead. A canopy of broad leaves obscured the awesome sky and the triplet moons, but a warm, ethereal light seemed to shine from the tree bark, like sun glinting on the water.

  “This is a magic forest,” Annie said. “I feel like I’ve stepped into a fairy tale.”

  “Keep an eye out for the Big Bad Wolf,” I muttered. Charlie gave me a grin that was all teeth. Something about this kid rubbed me the wrong way.

  A sense of time passing settled on my shoulders as we followed the boy, Charlie Dusk, through the forest. He led us deeper into the trees, through cool air carrying the scent of honeydew, and time marched idly by. I couldn’t say if minutes became hours or became days, but the canopy never broke, and the light never faltered. A soft, ghostly glow that felt indifferent to our passing.

  “I’ll be going home soon,” Charlie said, after what felt like only minutes and long hours. “I’ve been waiting, yeah, to get home. Soon now.”

  “Do you live around here?” Annie asked.

  “Not really, no.”

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “There’s a knife in the temple,” he said, ignoring my question. “A magic knife what can take you anywhere. To other worlds, even. You won’t be lost then, right? And I can go home, too.”

  “That sounds nice, Charlie,” Annie said, casting me a quick, excited look. “Are we near the temple now?”

  “Soon. It’s still up a ways.”

  We crossed an ambling, bubbling little river of glacier-blue water. Tiny frogs, bright orange, swam under the surface. The path became less distinct as we climbed a steady series of switchbacks up a ridge toward the tree line. Some minutes later, we stood on the crest of the ridge and stared at the ruins of what must have, once upon a time, been an impressive structure of stone—like the pyramids of Egypt.

  “Here we are,” Charlie said, and he set off across a field of knee-high grass dashed with pockets of tulips and poppies.

  Emerging on the other side of the grass put us within about fifty feet of the temple walls. The wall spanned a good mile in length, disappearing down over the side of the ridge, and, although broken and crumbling, claimed at least forty feet of height before coming to a ragged and battered stop. Just above the edge of that wall, I could spy distant snow-capped peaks on the other side of the temple.

  Pillars of broken, white stone ran parallel to a metal emblem set into the ground before the dark, arched entrance into the temple. The emblem was burnished gold, and the runes inscribed into its face were Infernal. I recognized only a few and thought I was looking at wards and protective enchantments.

  Charlie sniffed and massaged his forehead. “Can’t go any closer,” he said unhappily. “Can already feel it biting. What about you?” he asked Annie.

  “No,” she said. “I feel fine, Charlie. Declan, do you...?”

  I ran a hand back through my hair and smiled. “Feelin’ fine.”

  Charlie laughed. “See! I knew it, I did. You can go and get the knife and we’ll wait here, won’t we, Miss Annie?” He slipped his tiny hand back into hers and the grin he gave me was predatory.

  “Oh,” Annie said. “Well, if you’d like—”

  “I think it best you come with me, Annie,” I said, and my tone, while light, brooked no argument.

  For just a moment, a snarl crossed Charlie’s face, but he recovered fast. He plonked himself down on the edge of the long grass and twiddled his thumbs. “Well, okay, but come back and get me after you find the knife, okay?”

  “We will,” Annie promised.

  I said nothing.

 
“Mr. Declan?”

  “I promise, kid.”

  Together, Annie and I walked the short distance to the temple and crossed the golden emblem set into the ground between the fallen ivory pillars. I walked at a slight angle, keeping young Charlie in view the whole time.

  We stepped under the arched entranceway and disappeared into the inky blackness of the temple without rousing any ancient demons or angering the wandering gods.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Most Peculiar Way

  “No headaches or nosebleeds?” I asked as Annie and I headed down a straight corridor, strewn with centuries of dust. Little plumes swirled around our ankles. The entranceway behind us was a distant circle of pale light.

  Annie shrugged. “He seemed genuinely distressed the closer we got to this place. Do you think he’s okay?”

  “He’s not human, Annie. I’m sure of it.”

  Annie grinned as if I were telling a joke. Her grin faded when she saw I was serious. “He’s a little odd, I’ll give you that, but he was sweet enough, wasn’t he? And he led us here. I don’t know if he’s making up stories about something that can help us get home, but why would he lie?”

  “I don’t know. Why is water wet? Could be a slave to his nature, like the best of us. Just be wary if we bump into him again. I get a bad feeling from the kid.”

  “Well, I thought he was perfectly charming. A little rough around the edges but harmless.”

  I rubbed my hands together, a touch nervously. “We’re in a world I’m pretty sure isn’t even part of the Uncharted Realms, a thousand universes from True Earth without a way home, and the first person we come across just so happens to know of something that can help us out?” I chuckled without much mirth. “The voice of long experience is screaming in my ear, telling me we’re being played.”

  The corridor widened after the first fifty feet or so, and torches on the wall—dusty glow globes of the kind I’d seen in Atlantis—flared to life as we moved past, lighting our way. From the dust and the way the lights flickered and spluttered, I’d say it had been centuries if not more since anyone had been this way. The temple was a ruin, inside and out. Every ten feet or so, a slat high in the walls allowed natural light to stream into the corridors, supplementing the failing torches.

  Up ahead, I could hear the sound of...

  “Gunfire,” Annie said, drawing her sidearm. “Can you hear it? And... voices?”

  We rounded a curve in the corridor and entered the command deck of an Eternity-class cruiser. A ship that belonged in the fleet of the Knights Infernal. My eyes widened, and I gaped.

  “Declan?”

  “Annie, this is...” The Dawnstar. I recognized her command console, the panoramic display, and the bank of weapons arrays. Moreover, I recognized the people. Hell, this had been my first command, at seventeen, two years out of the Academy and keeping Atlantis a close secret.

  I looked behind us and saw the old, dusty temple corridor. I looked ahead and saw we were flying through the lower stratosphere, above a world of cascading mountain peaks capped with snow. In the commander’s chair sat a young, handsome rogue.

  “That’s you,” Annie said. “You look so young.”

  The crew of the Dawnstar ran across the bridge, and the weapons platform was in full operation, bombarding a fleet of enemy ships off the portside. I stepped forward and tried to get the attention of Sentinel Amanda Hooper. She dashed right through me, like a ghost might, and I felt nothing.

  “This isn’t real,” I said, as if it needed to be said. The Dawnstar was eight years ago. This battle, if I remembered correctly—there had been so many—was above the world of Adena, against a contingent of Marauders. “We’re still in the temple.”

  “It looks pretty real,” Annie said, squinting against the snow-glare and the sun streaming in through the windows of the Dawnstar.

  “Engage the eastern quadrant,” my younger self said from his chair, watching the battle on a heads-up display that tracked ships and weapons fire and generated tactical advantages. “Targets marked on my visor in order of priority.”

  The Dawnstar swerved through the sky, and the display reeled through more mountains and turned up. We hung to the edge of space, as the Marauders’ ships tried to get behind us. I grinned as my young self grinned, dressed in his battle uniform—the enchanted armor of a Knight Infernal.

  “Oh my,” Annie said. “Those are spaceships.”

  “Yes.”

  The Marauder vessels were pirate ships, scrapped together from a thousand bastardized cruisers. No match for the Dawnstar or the rest of the fleet. Overhead, static burst through the communications speakers, and a familiar, lost voice spoke directly to me.

  “Commander Hale,” Admiral Levy said. “There’s a tradition in my homeland, no longer greatly observed, but nevertheless… When a young man wanted his prospective father-in-law’s blessing, he would go out into the wild and return with the biggest buck he could find as a gesture of respect. The larger the horns, the greater the respect.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Commander Hale, I see a mighty big pair of horns on that enemy ship.” The radio fell into static for a long moment. “Bring me those horns.”

  Both Annie and I stepped forward into this illusion—or whatever it was—and stared down at my younger self. His fingers danced over a square control panel built into the arm of the chair and, all at once, the illusion vanished.

  We stood in a room of old walls covered in creeping vines. More runes, coated in dust and partially hidden by tree roots, made up the stone tiles of the floor. The runes had a slight sheen to their design.

  “Well, talk about dredging up the past, huh?” I tried for a chuckle, but the sound caught in my throat. “That was a particularly nasty day.”

  “Who were they?” Annie asked. “Flying those ugly ships?”

  “Renegades, but of a different sort—more like pirates. Men and women who sail the seas of the Story Thread, looting other worlds and running a trade in stolen and illegal goods across Forget. They’re rich and ruthless, and it was the blow you just saw me about to strike, more than anything, that undermined their entire structure and allowed the Knights to get a foothold on Voraskel—the Renegade home world.”

  Annie shook her head. “You’ve led an... interesting life, Declan.”

  “That’s a kind way of putting it, yeah.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, I don’t know how or why we saw that. Something to do with these runes, messing around in my head, no doubt. Come on, I get the feeling we’re almost there.”

  “Hold on, who was that man on the radio?”

  I tried to stifle a grimace and failed. “Admiral Abrahem Levy. Sophie’s adoptive father. It was never official, but there was a time five years ago when I was engaged to her sister, Levy’s biological daughter, a lovely girl named Tal. Long story short, Tal’s physical existence was destroyed, and her soul and essence currently play host to one of the Everlasting. Lord Oblivion. You know, that old story.”

  Annie left the topic alone after absorbing that.

  From the rune-strewn room, we entered another corridor with a slight incline. The corridor led us outside into the heart of the temple and an undulating courtyard at least a good mile wide, open to the deep, navy-blue sky above painted with two of the three moons. One moon was cherry red and the other honey yellow. I whistled low at the sight. Lush vegetation, abundant wildflowers, cascading waterfalls of silver light, and old, viny, stone walls littered the courtyard. I thought of the Garden of Eden, of Shangri-La, of Atlantis before the city was lost, and every dreamed up place of beauty and splendor conceivable. All those places thrown together here, this dream world, to create a portrait of perfection so real that you could taste the bird song and hear the scent of rose petals.

  “Is this real?” Annie whispered. She held a hand to her chest, breathless.

  Snow-capped peaks rising to the west just beyond the temple walls hid the long walk back to this Eden, but
at the center of the garden, a small pyramid of black rock, unevenly polished, rose up above the landscape. Something shining as if it were the North Star sat at the pinnacle of the pyramid.

  The stroll through the gardens was, again, like a stroll through a dream. The beach of gently crashing waves, the football-sized mangoes, and the arboreal, humid, fairy tale forest, had all felt insubstantial, and here again time seemed to slide on by with little care. I couldn’t say how long it took Annie and I to traverse the mile from the inner temple to the black pyramid at the heart of the gardens—only that it was no amount of time that could be measured on a watch.

  A set of fine, grey granite steps led up the outside of the obsidian pyramid. The structure was pristine, untouched by the creeping vines or the groves of wildflowers. The vegetation came to a sudden stop in a perfect circle around the outer edges of the pyramid.

  “Only way to go is up,” I said and placed a tentative foot on the first step. When nothing happened—I’d been expecting hellfire at the very least—I took another step and breathed a sigh of relief. “Steady as you go,” I said to Annie.

  We climbed up the pyramid side by side, the heels of our shoes clicking on the stone. A warm breeze ruffled my hair and carried the scent of something indescribable... but wholesome. A rich taste of seasons passing, I thought, but I had no idea what that could mean.

  At the apex of the pyramid was a small plateau just wide enough for two, and suspended in a pedestal of brown stone was the hilt of a weapon. The blade, if indeed there was a blade, was sheathed in the stone. Set into the pommel of the hilt was a diamond the size of a golf ball, and it had been that diamond we had seen glinting like a star in the distance. A small, rectangular brass plaque, ancient and weatherworn, was built into the stone before the sunken hilt.

  I kept a hand near my sword, just in case, but I felt as though Annie and I were alone here, alone in this whole world, save for Charlie and his mango-stained smile.

  “What’s that say?” Annie asked, gesturing to a series of runes and glyphs inscribed into the faded brass plaque. “Can you read it?”