Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (19 page)

“He was supposed to be able to completely heal people of almost any wound or sickness,” Myshtal continued. “Even those who were near death.”

“He was probably just extremely charismatic,” Vicra interjected. “Able to inspire even wounded men to gather their weapons and head into battle.”

Vicra’s explanation sounded reasonable to me; I had heard stories of people whose personal charm and magnetism had inspired their followers to do great things – for instance, generals who had galvanized soldiers under their command to victory, despite being greatly outnumbered. That sounded more plausible to me than an ancient ruler simply healing wounded warriors and sending them right back into battle.

“Well, regardless of how he did it,” Myshtal went on, “J’h’dgo somehow managed to maintain a fierce and loyal combat-ready force for years on end.”

“At least until he conquered everybody,” Vicra added. “Then there was finally peace.”

“So, in essence,” Nylerin said, summing things up, “we’re supposed to believe that J’h’dgo was a peacemonger at heart, but a conqueror in his actions. Doesn’t that strike anyone as odd?”

Vicra frowned. “What are you trying to say?”

“Maybe he was just a megalomaniac, intent on conquering the world,” Nylerin said.

“That’s not what the history books say,” Vicra noted defensively.

“In war, winners write the history books,” I countered. “Still, if he was just intent on world domination, why would he ever turn everything over to Plavicre?”

“The history books could have gotten that wrong as well,” Nylerin countered. “Maybe Plavicre staged a coup – removed a despot from power.”

“In that case,” Vicra countered, “why would Plavicre make scores of dedications to the man all over the planet: parks, buildings, trees, and so on?”

Nylerin wasn’t one to give in easily, and began vehemently arguing her point. Vicra, also not willing to yield, began adamantly defending his position. However, their squabbling faded into the background as something else caught my attention.

I was looking at the Cantillate tree when I noticed an object fall from one of its branches. Whatever it was, it hit the ground and rolled, coming to rest against the edge of the walkway.

Curious, I walked over and picked it up. It appeared to be a nut of some kind – oval-shaped, roughly the size of my thumb knuckle, and purplish-brown in color.

“You should keep that,” Myshtal said, suddenly appearing at my side. I hadn’t even noticed that she had followed me.

“Keep it?” I repeated.

“Yes. It’s a seed from the Cantillate tree. It’s supposed to bring good luck.”

“If you say so.” With that, I put the seed in my pocket.

I sensed that there was more she wanted to say, but at that moment, Nylerin and Vicra began moving towards us, still arguing.

“I suppose we should be getting back,” Myshtal said. “I just wanted to show you that, despite what Vicra said about cursed names, at least one person named J’h’dgo did great things.”

“That’s nice to know,” I said. “Maybe there’s hope for me yet.”

The conversation was mostly superficial as we walked back towards the area where the transports were parked, touching on a number of light topics such as the variety of animals we saw in passing, what other parks in the Acropolis were actually better than this one, and so on. Oddly enough, no one had mentioned the
prexetus
even once, which honestly seemed like more thoughtfulness than Nylerin and Vicra were capable of. (I didn’t think they were bad people; they just lacked tact.) It occurred to me later that Myshtal had probably wrung a promise from her two friends not to mention it, for which I was grateful.

We were not quite within eyesight of the transports when Vicra laid a hand on my shoulder, causing me to stop and turn to him. Nylerin and Myshtal, noting that the two of us had come to a halt, stopped walking as well and looked in our direction.

“I need to talk to J’h’dgo about something,” Vicra said to the girls. “You two go on and we’ll catch up.”

Nylerin took the comment at face value, turning almost immediately and continuing towards the landing pad. Myshtal looked less comfortable with the situation, but – after a subtle nod from me – followed in Nylerin’s footsteps. A moment later, they disappeared as the walkway curved behind some shrubbery.

I turned my gaze back to Vicra. Truth be told, I had actually been expecting something like this. Although he had kept his face impassive throughout lunch, I had felt tension and anxiety building in Vicra all day. My guess was that it related to Myshtal, and I assumed that he was about to tell me to keep away from her.

“I want to apologize for my behavior last night,” he began. “After you ran into me.”

I stood there silently for a moment, taken by surprise by his statement.

Okay, maybe this isn’t about Myshtal…

“Uh, I’m sorry,” I finally mumbled in a low voice. “It was my fault. I guess my feet got tangled up.”

“Regardless, I could have responded more appropriately.”

“It’s okay. Teleporting disorients some people, and can be less than pleasant if you’re not used to it.”

“Understood,” he said. “But I…”

He trailed off, and then let out an exasperated sigh.

“Maybe it’s best if I just showed you,” he said.

I frowned, totally mystified as to what he was trying to saying. And then it happened: one second, Vicra was standing in front of me, and the next he was twenty feet away. I did a double-take, trying to figure out what had just happened. Before I could apply any reason to what I was seeing, Vicra vanished again, appearing in front of me once more. Then I realized what he had done – what he was.

“Vicra!” I said excitedly. “You’re a teleporter!”

A sly grin came onto his face. “I suppose.”

“But how? When?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a year ago? Basically, I was late for an important event one day and wishing I could hurry up and get there, and suddenly I was. There, I mean.”

I was having trouble hiding my surprise. I knew that Caelesians had abilities – just like supers on Earth – but again, they were supposed to be rare. Now two of the three people I’d been hanging out with of late had revealed that they had powers. What were the odds of that? Was it possible that some event was giving rise to supers among my grandmother’s people? How many Caelesians might there be with abilities that they were keeping hidden? My brain was overflowing with questions.

“How many people know about this?” I asked.

“Practically no one,” Vicra said. “Plus, it’s not a consistent ability. It doesn’t always work when I want it to. It’s a little frustrating.”

Vicra’s statement answered another question that had started to form in my brain. Basically, a teleporter has the power to be wherever they want to be. Thus, you can’t forcibly make them go anywhere, even by teleportation. In short, I shouldn’t have been able to teleport Vicra at the party the night before. However, the fact that his power was a little sporadic explained how I’d been able to do it.

Vicra started walking again, following the path the girls had taken, and I fell into step beside him.

“Anyway,” he said, “you displayed a mastery of your powers when you teleported us, and I couldn’t get my own ability to work. I suppose I became peeved about what I perceived as the unfairness of the situation.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation,” I replied, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“No?”

“Not at all. I–”

My voice froze in my throat and I came to a complete halt. We had just come from behind a hedge and stepped into an area with a clear view of where the transports were parked. Nylerin and Myshtal were near the vehicle they had come in and seemed to be waiting for us; the transport I’d come in was still where it was when we’d left to see the Cantillate tree.

None of that, however, was what had grabbed my attention. What had frozen me in my tracks was the sight of a familiar metal object marching with swift, determined strides through the park.

It was the Beobona.

I stared at the crab-like suit of armor in disbelief for a second.

Where had it come from? How had it gotten here?

It seemed to be moving from the direction of my transport. The most obvious solution was that it had hitched a ride. It certainly wasn’t impossible; I hadn’t gone through the trouble of checking every compartment on the craft before we took off. (In fact, I hadn’t checked any of them.)

It took me only a second to make up my mind. If the Beobona was here, there had to be a reason – and an important one, to boot. I took off after it without a word to any of my lunchmates.

If it had been a person, I would have said that the Beobona walked with confidence. It appeared to move with single-minded purpose, as if it knew exactly where it was going. (And presumably it did.) Thankfully, although it traipsed along at a healthy pace, it wasn’t difficult to keep up with. To my great surprise, however, it moved in almost complete silence, which made keeping it in eyesight all the more important. Still, I tried to follow at a discreet distance, but the Beobona didn’t seem to notice or care. It was clearly on a mission.

After about five minutes, we ended up on a path which ran along an embankment of soggy loam that descended towards a muddy creek bed. The Beobona came to a sudden halt ahead of me and seemed to contemplate its options. Naturally, I stopped as well, at which point a voice sounded next to me, catching me unawares.

“Where are we going?” Myshtal asked, slightly out of breath.

I looked at her in surprise; I hadn’t even known she was behind me. And not just her – Vicra and Nylerin had tagged along as well.

“I don’t know,” I said after a few seconds, then gestured towards the Beobona. “I’m following it.”

Nylerin’s eyes narrowed. “What is that?”

“The Beobona Onufrot,” Vicra answered, before I could say anything. “It made an appearance at J’h’dgo’s banquet two days ago.”

He didn’t expound on what had happened and neither of the girls asked, but there was a sharp intake of breath from Myshtal. Of course, she and Nylerin already knew what had occurred – how I had been saved from poisoning – by the Beobona. They simply hadn’t seen it before.

“What’s it doing?” Myshtal asked.

I shrugged. “Who knows?”

At that moment, the Beobona went charging down the muddy embankment. When it reached the bottom, it began marching parallel to the creek bed, in the same direction it had previously been headed. Staying on the path above, we followed.

I looked ahead, trying to see where the Beobona was going, and noticed that fifty yards farther down, a bridge had been built over the creek bed. Presumably this was to allow visitors to traverse the small waterway and enter a different area of the park. In constructing the bridge, its builders had created a tunnel for the creek that ran from one side of the structure to the other. Moreover, there appeared to be some kind of paved walkway in the tunnel running alongside the creek bed.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the Beobona was headed. As expected, when it reached the tunnel, it charged right in, at which point I lost sight of it.

“What now?” Nylerin asked.

“We follow it,” I said.

“I’m not going down there!” Nylerin insisted. “It’s wet and dank and muddy!”

“Then stay here!” Vicra practically hissed.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep things civil. “None of you have to come along, but I need to figure out what’s going on.”

“I’m not afraid of getting a little dirt on me,” Myshtal said, giving me a supportive wink.

“Maybe we don’t have to,” I said, then explained what I had in mind. A moment later, I teleported us to the tunnel.

When we popped up on the paved walkway, I took a moment to make sure everyone was okay. Nylerin looked a little unsettled, which wasn’t unusual for someone who had probably just teleported for the first time. Oddly enough, Vicra also looked a little wobbly, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

I took a few steps into the interior of the tunnel, which was pretty dark. Rather than give my eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of light, I switched my vision over to the infrared. Suddenly, the darkness was no longer a problem.

“Can you see anything?” Vicra asked.

“It’s up ahead,” I replied, noting that the Beobona was now on the walkway and standing in front of what appeared to be a metal framework of some kind. A moment later, I realized that it was a door, and from the way the Beobona was gingerly poking and prodding it, apparently it was locked.

Without warning, the Beobona seemed to swivel in our direction. We had been carefully inching forward, with me in the lead, but suddenly having our quarry focus its attention on us brought an immediate halt to our advance.

“What is it?” Nylerin whispered. “What’s happened?”

I made a shushing sound to my companions; evidently their vision hadn’t adapted to the darkness yet.

I watched the Beobona warily, but it didn’t move. Obviously, it knew we were there, had surely known we’d been following it. However, it had ignored us up until now. Why did we suddenly merit its attention? A moment later, the answer came to me, almost spontaneously, and I nearly laughed as I figured out what it wanted.

I phased the metal door, making it insubstantial. The Beobona obviously sensed the change in some way, because it immediately turned back towards the door and then marched right through it.

“Come on,” I said to the other three, and we hustled forward. When we reached the door, I ushered Vicra and the girls through it. Once we were all inside, I made the door solid again and looked around.

We were in a small, rectangular room – perhaps two hundred square feet in size. It was lit well enough to see, so I switched my vision back to normal. There were storage lockers against the walls to the left and right of us, and a table near the middle of the room was covered with odd tools.

“It’s some kind of maintenance area,” Myshtal said.

“Maintenance for what?” Nylerin asked.

“At a wild guess, I’d say the park,” I volunteered. “If it’s anything like the ones we have back home, there’s a lot of effort that goes into the upkeep of a place like this: keeping it clean, fixing broken swings, making sure the water fountains work – or whatever the Caelesian counterpart of all that is.”

“You’ll have to forgive Nylerin,” Vicra said sardonically. “For her, like so many royals, the notion of actual work is a foreign concept. Her definition of hard labor is figuring out which servant should have the honor of cleaning up behind her
gnuglebbin
.”

“As if you’ve ever gotten a callus on those dainty hands!” Nylerin countered. “You’ve nev–”

“Quiet!” I interjected. I pointed at an open doorway directly across from us. “The Beobona must have gone that way. Let’s go.”

I started walking, not waiting to see if they’d follow. The doorway turned out to be the entrance to a long, narrow corridor. As with the first room we’d entered, there was adequate illumination here. The passage had a length of maybe thirty feet, and had two doors, evenly spaced, on both sides.

Acting on instinct, I ignored the doors, although I heard my companions try them and mumble something about each being locked. The corridor ended in a T-junction, branching off to both sides. I stood still and listened for a second. I thought I could hear noise (presumably the Beobona in motion), but the acoustics were so messed up that I couldn’t tell which direction the sound was coming from.

“Stay here,” I said to my companions, then shifted into super speed and zoomed off to the left. The passage in that area terminated in an L-shape, but when I glanced down the connecting corridor I didn’t see anything. I then zipped back the other way, slowing slightly as I passed by Myshtal, Vicra, and Nylerin so that the gust of wind in my wake wouldn’t bother them too much. At this end, the passage ended in another T, but this time I saw the Beobona moving towards one end of it.

“Pssst!” I said to my companions after shifting back to normal speed. They looked at me, and I made a come-hither gesture. Assuming they’d be right behind me, I went jogging down the corridor (at normal speed) after the Beobona, which had already rounded another corner.

As I got near the end of the passageway, I noticed that the sounds I’d heard earlier were growing louder. I was clearly hearing more than the Beobona’s footfalls; in fact, it sounded like some type of machinery.

I reached the next intersection and turned in the direction the Beobona had gone. Here the corridor was short, terminating in an entrance to a new room.

The other three caught up with me as I took in this new space, which was in all ways much larger than the first room we had entered and filled with lots of industrial equipment – what appeared to be boilers, air compressors, etcetera – as well as control panels, monitors, and gauges. I also noticed what I assumed were turbines, and saw what appeared to be water moving through transparent pipes overhead.

“Interesting,” Vicra said as he glanced around.

“I think it’s some kind of hydroelectric plant,” I said.

“Of course!” Myshtal exclaimed. “This is what happened to the creek. They must divert a portion of the water – or all of it, if necessary – down here to generate power for the park’s needs, and maybe more.”

It was a pretty astute observation, and once again I was forced to reassess my impression of Myshtal in an upward fashion.

“What?” she asked, noting the appraising look that I (and probably Nylerin and Vicra as well) was giving her. “I can’t know about this stuff because I’m a royal and a female?”

I didn’t answer, but instead scanned the area for the Beobona. Oddly enough, there were no workers around – not live ones, anyway. We only saw robots, all of whom seemed focused on specific tasks in the plant. That being the case, they took almost no notice of us. Finally, I caught sight of our target, striding across the floor and heading towards a door on the far side of the room.

“We gotta move,” I said, and set off in pursuit.

*****

Ultimately, we ended up following the Beobona for about another hour. From the hydroelectric plant, its path took us on a winding course through a number of connecting passageways and rooms (most of which I assumed were underground because I never saw any windows). As in the plant, we never saw any people – only robots and automated machinery. I got the distinct impression that, whatever its final destination, the Beobona was choosing its route with care and avoiding places where it might actually be seen by a living person.

We stayed close the entire time, following as quietly as possible (which was probably unnecessary and made no sense, as the Beobona was clearly aware of our presence). Still, we came close to losing it once, about half an hour into our little jaunt.

At that point, we had just followed the Beobona from a dank hallway into a wide open area that clearly served as a major hub. There were numerous corridors branching out from here in different directions, as well as several of the automated walkways. Also, off to one side, there was a group of multi-directional elevators.

In an unforgivable lapse of judgment, I allowed myself to momentarily be distracted by some insipid comment from Nylerin. When I looked back at the Beobona, it had boarded one of the elevators and was taking off, rising into a shaft above it.

I almost screamed in frustration. I could fly into the shaft and trail it, but that would leave Nylerin, Vicra, and Myshtal here. Would that be stranding them? Could they even find their way back?

Wait! The other elevators!
They could take one of those; they’d be fine.

Mind made up (and relieved that I wouldn’t be abandoning anyone), I was about to go flying off when someone grabbed my arm and began pulling me.

“Hurry!” Nylerin shouted, dragging me towards one of the elevators, with Myshtal and Vicra behind us.

“Hurry where?” I asked.

“The elevator!” she answered. “We can still catch it!”

Still unsure of this course of action over my own plan, I nevertheless let myself get dragged inside the elevator. Nylerin went straight to the controls, which were essentially a touchpad screen set in one of the walls. As soon as we were all inside, she closed the doors and then began punching in a destination. Moments later, were in motion.

“So where are we going?” I finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Nylerin said.

My face must have showed the incredulity I was feeling, and I drew in a deep breath in preparation for calling her every name in the book.

“But,” she continued, before I could say a word, “I’ve slaved this elevator to the one that took off before – the one your metal friend was on. Where it goes, we go.”

The expression on my face was still incredulous, but internally the emotion had switched from one of unmitigated fury to angelic relief.

“How’d you manage that?” Vicra asked. “How’d you even know how to do it?”

Nylerin crossed her arms and gave the rest of us a self-satisfied smile. “A few years back I had Maja with me on vacation and, in the middle of a guided tour, she somehow got away from me” – I believe Myshtal rolled her eyes at this point – “and jumped onto an elevator with a bunch of strangers just as the door was closing. Fortunately, our tour guide knew how to link the next elevator to the one that had just departed, and she showed me how.”

“That was nice of her,” Myshtal said.

“I think she showed me as a way to keep me preoccupied,” Nylerin said. “To keep me from getting hysterical about Maja.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

Nylerin laughed. “Not really, but it’s a tip I took note of – just in case I needed it again. I guess it’s a good thing I did.”

“And considering where we are right now,” Vicra added, “it’s probably a good thing that, for once, you left Maja at home.”

Nylerin made a sound of annoyance at that but didn’t comment. However, Vicra’s meaning was clear: Nylerin didn’t need to take her little pet everywhere.

There wasn’t much conversation after that, and eventually our elevator came to a stop in what appeared to be the lobby of a large building. Upon stepping out, I couldn’t help but notice a healthy coating of dust on the floor. Wherever we were, the place had been abandoned for a while.