Leading them all forward was the betrayer, his footsteps steady and certain as he led his accomplices toward their fate.
And last but certainly not least, and still a babe in the making, was the half-human creature whose voice would tell its mother what to do when they breached the sacred inner chamber that would be either the tomb for all of them or the crucible for a dead universe.
Tara sat up, one hand clutching at her throat as the dream shredded and broke all around her. Her hands flew out and banged into empty space. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness as she looked around for Blade, but he was gone. She stood, her naked body glowing in the dimness. She hastily donned her clothes and made her way to the small doorway of the shelter. She pulled it open and peered outside. Blade stood under the moon, his head tilted back in his hair blowing slightly around his face. She walked up behind him and placed one hand on his shoulder. The dream had left her feeling sick and dazed, and she wasn’t sure if it had been just a dream or something else. The solid contact of his skin under her hand helped her to ground herself into reality again.
The night lay soft and gentle; the wind bore a faint floral scent now that all of the pyres had finally stopped burning and the rubble below the city had caved in over the fires burning below it and trapped the fire there.
She asked, “Can’t sleep?”
His smile was rueful. “It seems you cannot either.”
She wanted to tell him about the dream because it felt important, but at the same time, it was just a dream. Her imagination had always been overeager. She had been thinking of those books that she had pilfered and read from the library, and many of them had the same eerie setting as the one she had just dreamed up.
It would do no good to tell them about it. It meant nothing. She cleared her throat, “It’s hard to sleep knowing that tomorrow we go to find a place that people say doesn’t exist, but somehow does.”
His laugh was real. “True. But I was just too hungry to sleep.”
She sighed. “There’s not enough food. I don’t know how the people are going to survive without some assistance.”
He said, “They are coming in from the places that escaped being bombed so terribly and still have food; they are bringing with them supplies. They should arrive tomorrow. And the ships still have printers. They’re able to put out just enough to keep people from starving until they can have better.”
She said, “What will we do for food on the journey?”
He tilted his chin toward the sky. “There are planets outside the fight zone who are well-equipped to supply the ship. We will stop by a few of them, I’m sure.”
There were too few outside the fighting zone now. The Federation, like an animal cornered and trapped, had begun killing off planets it thought might hold alliance with the rebels. It was the worst thing that they could have done because now planets and systems who had sworn to stand with them found themselves outraged and horrified and afraid that they would be next. Their only protection had been to join with the rebels, and so they had.
The Federation, the dictatorship that was so willing to kill everything rather than lose its hold, was the one thing that could not be allowed to stand. If that meant going to a place shrouded in myth and secrecy, if it meant dying while trying to use whatever was there that might stop the Federation, then that was what they would do.
There was no choice at all, and maybe there never had been a choice.
Maybe fate was real, and maybe fate had put all of them in each other’s path just so they could go to Tralam and find whatever was there.
So be it.
The dream came back to her, and she shook it off again, telling herself it was just her imagination running wild on her and that now was not the time to let that happen.
She wound her fingers into his, and they leaned together, shoulder to shoulder and their heads meeting. Overhead the sky was prickled with stars and the full moon. The silence, still as the grave she was sure she would soon find herself in, became too much to bear. She said, “Do you know what I was just thinking?”
He said, “No. Tell me.”
She said, “I was just thinking that until I met you, my life was flat and stale. I had no idea that I wasn’t even alive. Oh, I was drawing breath, and I was eating and sleeping going about my job as was my duty. I was enjoying what I had, but what I had wasn’t real life. It was just a shadow of it.”
He turned to her, and his hands rested on her shoulders as he turned her to face him. His lips came down on hers, and he gave her a soft short kiss that he broke off far too soon.
He said, “I would die for you. If it comes down to it, I will die for you, and I would hope that you would have enough sense to go if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can survive. I can die knowing that I saved your life but I can’t die knowing that you died because you would not leave me. Swear to me that if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can live, you will go.”
No. She could not do that. She could not live without him. She searched his face. His expression told her that he needed this promise to be made. That this promise was what would bolster him. She said, “I swear.”
Not to leave you. To be there with you in your final moments. To love you forever even if it means I die beside you. That’s what I swear to.
Overhead, the sun began to peek above the horizon, casting a golden nimbus of light along the outer edges of the world. Morning had come, and with it had come the burden that was the quest they had agreed to take on.
Birds began to sing. They stood there not moving as the others slowly made their way out of their shelters and stepped up beside them. None of them spoke. There was no need to. The ship was a hundred yards to the right, and their duty also lay in that direction.
Tara realized then that Blade wore the same skin-hugging suit that he had worn the first time she had met him. That he wore his armor told her everything she needed to know about just how dangerous this thing that they were going up against was.
Sun broke and spilled sunlight tinged with an ominous red light across the people who gathered there. Shivers broke out and ran up and down Tara’s skin at the sight.
