Can't Look Back (War for Dominance Book 1) (3 page)

John woke up, cold and stiff. His head hurt so much that he was sure he was going to die. He hoped it would happen soon.

It didn’t.

Spared the mercy of a quick death, he opened up one eye. The only thing in view was a rough wooden floor that ended in a rough wooden wall. He figured at least one of the numerous pains he felt was a splinter; the wood was that rough. Who builds with wood like that?

He opened the other eye, which let him see a little further up the wall. He saw the mirror and everything came crashing back to him. It was an exact replica of the one in the hotel room (his mind shied away from the term ‘mirror image’). He realized in a flash that he had been transported somewhere far from home. As he looked at the rough floor and wall, he also recognized that it was a place far less advanced.

John rolled onto his back. Some of the aches and pains eased; others intensified. His head cleared a little, to the point that he realized the buzzing noise in his head was someone snoring. He rolled a little further and saw that there was a man asleep on some sort of no-frills bed. It was nothing more than a thin pad on a wooden frame, and it looked less comfortable than anything John had ever slept on in his life. The only thing it had going for it was that it was better finished than everything else in view; at least the snoring man probably wouldn’t wake up full of splinters.

John levered himself onto an elbow, nearly passing out with the increased pain. Slowly the blackness faded back to the edges of his vision, allowing him to see again. Moonlight shone through the window, glinting off the blade of a very large sword leaning up against the head of the bed. It looked ready to use at a moment’s notice...like if the occupant of the bed woke up and found a stranger in his room.

He needed to leave, and he needed to do it now.

John gathered his aching muscles and stood up. Being barefoot helped him be quiet until he stepped on another splinter. “Mmmph!” He tried to keep anything from coming out, but a small grunt escaped his lips.

The man in the bed twitched in his sleep and rolled over. The snoring stopped. John froze, hoping that the snoring would start again. It didn’t. As he stood waiting, John realized that he needed to go to the bathroom. Badly. The longer he stood there with nothing else to think about, the more urgent the need became. The snoring still did not restart.

The urge to go changed from a need to a full-fledged pain that soon exceeded the agony in his foot from the splinter. John realized he had two choices, try to escape or relieve himself on the floor. As the second option also had the potential to awaken the man, he decided it was time to try to sneak out.

He tentatively moved one foot, easing his weight down onto it. Success. He took another cautious step toward the door, but then was doubled over by the wave of pain his bladder sent to remind him that he needed to relieve himself
now!
As the pain receded, he took two more steps and reached the door.

The moon went behind a cloud before he could get a close look at the door’s locking mechanism; all he had been able to tell was that it looked unlike any door handle he had ever seen before. He waited, wanting to jump up and down like a 3-year-old, but after 30 seconds, moonlight flooded back into the room. The handle didn’t look difficult after all; there was a lever to push down and a key hole under it.

He wondered what the odds were that the man had left the door unlocked. He pushed down on the lever and found his suspicion confirmed; it was locked.

He looked around the room wildly; fear and pain making his head spin. The bed! The key was hanging from the bedpost on some sort of weird-looking string. He walked warily to the end of the bed, pausing every other step to make sure the man’s breathing hadn’t changed. Reaching the end of the bed, he saw the key was actually on some kind of leather thong. He lifted the thong off the bedpost, his heart jumping to his throat when the lanyard hit a snag that threatened to pull it from his grasp. The thong slid from his hand, but he caught it just before it bounced off the bed post.

He crept back to the door, his bladder screaming its need with every measured pace. He had to go so badly that he turned the key faster than he should have. With a ‘
snock,
’ the bolt was withdrawn.

The noise was too loud and woke up the man. “Grekle shamret?!” the man yelled.

John slammed down the lever and pulled. The door opened, and he threw it wide as he ran. He turned left as he went out the door, only to run into the end of the hallway. Dead end. He turned to go the other way and heard the bed creaking as the man got up. John ran back down the hall, barely seeing the stairs in time. His bare feet hurried down the stairs with a slapping noise, pain shooting through his right foot every time it hit a stair and drove the splinter deeper.

The room at the bottom of the stairs glowed with the half-light of a fire that had been reduced to embers. He made it to the landing and accelerated to full speed toward the door on the other side of the room. He might have made it, too, if a large man hadn’t come around the corner to his right at the same time. They collided.

John went one way, crashing to the floor; the man was driven back the other. Although the other man didn’t fall, the staff he had been holding was knocked from his hand, and it rattled across the floor toward the fireplace on the right side of the room.

The man asked something in a strange language, and then he began advancing on John. Looking up, John could see the doorway on the other side of a large table. Much smaller than the man, John went under the table on his hands and knees. The man tried to follow, but hit his head on the table and fell backward with what was probably a curse.

That was all the head start John needed. “Sorry!” he called as he ran across the room, “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong!” He could hear other doors opening and excited voices calling out to each other. He didn’t stop to look or listen to any of it. The main door was unlocked; he ripped it open and ran out into the night.

The rest of the night passed by with tortoise-like alacrity; John couldn’t remember a longer one. He had a splinter in his foot that he couldn’t get out, despite several attempts, and he was walking through the woods barefoot. His feet hurt with every step. John also didn’t know where he was going. He had run into a wooded area when he left the inn, with several people following him. After a couple of minutes, he heard his pursuers give up and go back to the inn. John stumbled on for a few more minutes, just to make sure that he had lost them, and then he had turned around, too.

However, John found that he had lost his sense of direction in the dark, and he had no idea which way to go. He desperately wanted to stop and rest, but the night was too cool. The one time he stopped, he was shivering uncontrollably within a few minutes of sitting down. A t-shirt and a pair of underwear briefs were not what the weather called for; unfortunately, they were all he was wearing when he came through the mirror. The only thing he had going for him was that he was finally able to relive himself on a large tree.

John had no idea about where he was supposed to go, or what he was supposed to do once he got there. Unlike the orc that had come into his hotel room, none of the people at the inn had given any indication they could speak his language...however the orc had done it. As crazy as it seemed, it looked like she had cast a spell, and then they had all understood each other. Crazy...but no crazier than a mirror that transports you to somewhere else. He wondered how many people here were able to do whatever it was that she had done. Hopefully, more than just the orc. He didn’t know how big a land mass he was on, but finding her was probably going to be difficult. Very difficult.

After several hours of walking, he came upon a road. At first he was disappointed that the packed earth track wasn’t even as good as the road through his neighborhood back in Canada, but then he laughed at himself. Of course it wasn’t; if this was some sort of medieval world, they weren’t going to have paved roads...or cars. He’d have to find a way to get the splinter out of his foot soon; he was probably going to have a lot of walking to do in the upcoming days.

There wasn’t a soul to be seen in either direction; apparently no one traveled by night. He had no idea which way to go and no way to find out, so he began walking to the right. At least the ground was fairly smooth and the splinter didn’t hurt as much.

He walked about a half an hour, and then the sky began to lighten, and the sun came up. Although this was a good thing in that it let him see well enough to finally remove the splinter, it also let him see how badly torn up the bottoms of his feet were. After several hours of walking through the woods at night, they were bleeding in several places. He would have to get them treated when he got to where he was going...wherever that was.

With the sun’s appearance, people also appeared on the road, almost as if by magic. While John had been hoping for this, the people presented a problem of their own, as it soon became apparent that all of them thought he was crazy. John couldn’t blame them; if he saw people walking around wearing only what he was wearing, he’d probably think they were crazy, too. Or French...he’d seen some of the bathing suits they wore.

He tried a variety of approaches to interact with the people he encountered, but was unsuccessful. If he approached people slowly, they ran away in the opposite direction. If he tried to approach people quickly, they ran away even faster. Trying to speak to them in a strange language only assured them of his lack of sanity, causing them to run faster still.

Balling his fists in frustration after unsuccessfully trying to approach a sixth group, he gave up. The loaded wagon that he had seen was heading toward the rising sun; he guessed that the closest town was in that direction. As he trudged into the sun, he realized that the day was warming up rapidly and was already starting to get hot. Great, he thought. In addition to his feet hurting and being hungry and tired, he was about to add thirsty and sunburned to his litany of woes. What a wonderful day.

What had possessed him to go through the mirror in the first place?

“
Aqua!
” said Solim. Water poured into the cup, and he smiled as he chewed on his day bread. The night before, he had experienced some sort of transformation while he slept. He woke in the middle of the night to find his mind seemed somehow larger. He really didn’t know how to describe it in any other way. His mind just seemed larger. It was the same sensation that he heard mages reference when they moved up in level. But he wasn’t a mage, he was a beastmaster, and beastmasters didn’t level up...did they?

Arriving at the office, he sent his assistant to find out the cantrip words for each of the different elements. The cantrips were the lowest level spells that mages first learned. He cast the earth cantrip first and was amazed to find that it worked. He had created a piece of the magical day bread that was the ‘fruit of the earth.’ Now the water cantrip worked, too? Incredible. If this meant what he thought it meant—

The innkeeper strode into Solim’s office, pushing past the scribe outside. He slammed open the door, and his eyes swept the room. He sniffed at the poor quality bookshelves and obviously faux bearskin rug to his left, figuring that Solim only had them to lend a pretense of culture. He
was
a beastmaster, after all; how cultured could he actually be? His eyes lit on Solim sitting behind a desk to his right, and he stomped over. Human, the innkeeper was almost three feet taller than Solim, and he thought that the height difference would intimidate Solim.

It didn’t.

“I am here for my reward,” he said without indulging in any of the normal niceties of conversation.

“You are?” asked Solim, raising an eyebrow. “And what reward would that be?”

“The reward that you promised two years ago for letting you know if someone appeared at the inn,” replied the innkeeper. “You haven’t forgotten it, have you?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. Where is this person now?”

“How should I know?” asked the innkeeper. “He scared one of my guests and then ran off into the woods. I think he was crazy. He was running around half-dressed, and, as he went out the door he yelled something in a weird language I’ve never heard before. I’ve been an innkeeper for over 20 years now, and I’ve heard every language on the continent of Tasidar; this wasn’t like any of them.”

“I told you that you would get the reward if you found out where he went before you came here,” said Solim. “You failed me. Can you at least tell me what he looked like?”

The tone of Solim’s voice was beginning to scare the innkeeper, who was having second thoughts about coming to see the halfling by himself. Based on some of his past dealings, the innkeeper knew that Solim made a large amount of money in the black market...probably enough to afford a swordsman or two. He must have at least one of them somewhere out of sight, the innkeeper decided, which would explain why he wasn’t able to intimidate the beastmaster. He decided that a little more discretion was probably in order if he wanted to leave with his reward...and possibly his life. “He was short and thin,” said the innkeeper, in a more helpful tone of voice. “He was on the scrawny side; he didn’t look like he had ever done any hard work or manual labor in his life. He might have been some sort of scribe. Certainly, he didn’t get outdoors much; his skin was very pale.”

“Is that all you remember about him?” asked Solim, his voice taking on a more distracted tone.

“One last thing,” said the innkeeper, thinking back to when the young man had run into him. “He had some sort of things that sat on his nose. They made his eyes look big.” He shrugged, not caring. He realized that Solim was distracted and decided on a bolder path. “I’ve told you all I know,” he added. “Now, are you going to give me my reward, or am I going to have to take it from you?”

“Oh, you’re going to get your reward,” agreed Solim.

As the innkeeper watched, Solim’s eyes went blank. Annoyed at the delay in getting paid, he didn’t hear the bear rise from where it had been lying behind him. Despite its bulk, it made very little noise as it crossed the room.

“When am I going to get it?” asked the innkeeper.

“Right now,” said the bear. The innkeeper turned around just in time to see the bear’s paw that slapped him to the ground.

Later, when the bear had finished feeding and had gone back to lie down again, Solim’s eyes refocused. He looked down at what was left. “They’re called glasses,” he said.