Neither of them moved or made any signs of the beginnings of emotion. Then the one she had addressed said: ‘The red key.’
Triumphantly she picked up the green one.
Both creatures suddenly made a lunge towards her. She tossed the key on the floor behind her, stepped back, softened her knees and raised her arms, adopting a fighting position.
‘Is the Protectorate home to creatures who do not keep their word?’ she snarled, ‘I have no sword but I will take you down!’
Still they came on.
Ready to fight, she decided on a final stratagem.
‘The Lord Korok will not be pleased with your cowardice.’
They stopped, turned to look at each other.
And vanished.
They did not become translucent, transparent or misty.
They just vanished.
Shana wiped her forehead and then touched her scalp. The visualiser was back.
Once again Jon found himself looking down on an unconscious Shana. She had torn the visualiser off her head and immediately fallen into a deep sleep in which she lay completely motionless except for her breathing.
He paced back and forth in the room: What if she didn’t come out of it this time, if she had pushed herself too far?
It was then he heard a movement behind him and spinning around was overjoyed to see her sitting up, and not just sitting up but with a broad smile on her face!
He rushed over to her. ‘Shana are you all right?’
She continued smiling and swung her feet onto the floor.
‘Yes I’m alright and I won’t be going back in. Jon, I’ve found it!’
‘Found it? What are you talking about?’
She reached up and held his face between her hands. ‘Jon, I found books that weren’t written by the Protectorate!’
He looked puzzled.
‘Jon, they were written by the people who were conquered by the Protectorate, or at least, those who inspired that civilisation.’
‘Go on.’
‘The names meant nothing to me but the books talked of cultures called Classical Greece, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment.’
Jon looked singularly unimpressed. ‘Go on.’
‘The books talked of people like Siddhartha Gautama, of Immanuel Kant and many others. Jon, I was in there for periods and periods!’
‘You were not,’ Jon said in annoyed tones, ‘Do you think I would have let you in there that long!’
She ignored him. ‘But there was one man whose writing gave me the answer!’
Jon looked sceptical but he gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
‘If you have it then please tell me. I’d really like to know.’
She seemed to look past him, through him as she said in an increasingly excited voice:
‘There was a man called Plato who wondered long and hard about the nature of reality. He told a tale of people who were imprisoned in a cave with their backs to the entrance so all they could see was the wall in front of them. And as things happened outside the cave, as people passed by, their shadows were cast on the wall.’
‘And so?’
She grasped his hand in a grip he found excessively tight.
‘Jon, those people had never seen the outside world! All they had ever seen were shadows! They thought the shadows were the real world!’
He tried to remove his hand but found he could not. ‘And just what has this got to do with us?’
She stood up, tall, strong, triumphant: ‘Jon, we are the prisoners! We are in the cave of shadows!’
Nine
Jon and Shana walked along the village street, ignoring all the people who were studiously ignoring them.
Shana felt somewhat dispirited; after all, it is one thing to know that you are a prisoner in a cave but quite another to know that fact but not to know the location of the exit from that oubliette. As she thought over and over about their situation, she had felt exultation slowly drain out of her. Where could the exit be? Where?
Jon had been no help: she was not even sure that he believed her about the cave of shadows. Yet it had seemed so obvious when she had been reading about it; it answered so many problems, solved so many mysteries. She looked around, looking out over the edge of the hill to where the savage terrain that she had crossed to reach here lay unfolded below her like a map and then looked up at the bright green sky.
Where?
It was then a shrill, excited voice cut through her musings like a knife.
‘Today is the day! Today! The time of the hunt!’
She felt Jon stiffen beside her as he came to an abrupt halt. She felt tension crackle across the air between them.
‘We should go back to the house,’ he said, looking around in an agitated fashion as if expecting to see something. ‘And quickly.’
‘Why Jon? What’s the matter?’
‘Something I don’t want to see again,’ he muttered.
They turned but found their retreat hampered by a throng of people excitedly going in the opposite direction.
‘We’ll wait until they’ve gone,’ Jon growled, still looking around as if something dangerous was approaching.
But the crowd came to a halt and they found themselves trapped in a mass of chattering, gabbling people in a state of high excitement.
‘Jon, what is it? Tell me!’ Shana said in a quiet voice, brittle with concern.
‘Something very bad,’ was the only response.
Just then someone standing close yelled: ‘Here it comes!’
Shana looked in the direction in which he was pointing and saw a small ball of bright blue light floating leisurely through the air towards them. Then it began to dart this way and that as if hunting for something.
‘Jon what is it?’ she whispered in growing alarm. The way it was now moving was horribly like a predator hunting for a small animal in the undergrowth.
‘It’s one of the traditions here,’ Jon grated, ‘when it settles on someone they’re marked for death.’
‘What!’ Shana gasped. She spun back to follow the movements of the ball of light.
It had stopped directly above a man who immediately looked terrified and began crying out ‘No! No! Not me!’
Instinctively Shana moved forward to see if she could do anything but Jon’s strong grip held her fast.
‘Don’t move. You can’t save him now.’
But then the unexpected happened. The ball did not touch the man but rose back up and began its questing again. Then its side to side movements stopped and it began a straight-line path.
Straight toward Shana.
It hovered briefly above her head and then descended, sending rippling waves of blue-white light cascading down her body. She was motionless within the curtain of light and Jon could see her wide-eyed expression of horror and her lips forming the words: ‘Help me Jon!’
Immediately the cry went up: ‘The Degenerate! Kill the Degenerate!’
The light disappeared leaving them facing a spittle-flecked crowd that was now surging forward, gripped in roaring blood lust.
Jon roared: ‘Shana! To my back – now!’
She turned and stood so they were now back-to-back facing the mob. And they were not alone.
Jon had the terrible short stabbing sword of the Lords of the Sands and Shana wielded Akraz’s dreadful long slashing sword. Jon’s sword absorbed every scrap of light that fell on it but Shana’s blazed brilliantly like captive lightning. Together they formed a whirling circle of deadly steel that few dared approach.
‘Now what?’ Shana gasped.
‘We leave the way we came,’ was the grim reply.