Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 (16 page)

“I see him, too!” shouted Apoj. “He’s got dark skin and white fur.”

Soon Eltiar joined them in visualizing Phaeon. That left only Tol still in the dark.

“I can’t help thinking this is some kind of practical joke being played on me. Do you guys
really
see something there?”

“I believe,” Phaeon interjected, “Your lifelong detective skills may be working against you here. You see only what makes sense for you to see; spacetime aberrations such as myself do not make sense in the classical universe your brain is trained to see and comprehend. It simply edits me out.”

“Yeah? What do you suggest I do to up my gullibility factor, then?”

“I suggest you look past me, to the other side of the room. Now walk in a large circle, with the circle I drew on the floor at its center. Keep your line of sight aligned with the air above the circle, but focus as far away as you can. As you rotate, at some point your brain should suddenly fill in the missing details when it realizes that the view is inconsistent.”

Tol complied, but on the third roundabout he was about to declare the whole premise absurd when he caught a glimpse of something that he knew wasn’t there. He stopped and backtracked. The something reappeared, although in a slightly different location and orientation from the first time. It was like a cutout of a goblin that was so thin it utterly vanished when seen on edge.

Tol decided there might be something to this after all, so he stopped walking around in circles and just concentrated. As he did, a marvelous occurrence took place: he watched in amazement as the figure of a young goblin filled in, complete in all three dimensions. He looked to be just barely a full adult, wearing one of those trendy outfits popular in the nightclub sector of Sebacea. This was, as Phaeon had explained, because his native appearance contained no relevant, useful information, as a result of which the observer’s brain had to fill it all in with bits and pieces from their own experience. Tol gawked and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

The entity Phaeon regarded them; concluded that they had each established some form of mental representation for him that would enable further social interaction.

“I bid you all welcome to my home within your own,” he began, “What hospitality I have to offer is yours to enjoy.”

A table set with all manner of delicacies and laden with exotic drink sprang invitingly into their midst from nowhere. They gaped at it. Eventually Tol shrugged and pulled out the goblin-sized chair. He was, as usual, rather peckish, now that the subject had been broached. The titans looked at one another somewhat uneasily, but at last followed suit.

“Nice trick,” Tol observed between appreciative bites, “You must be some kind of mage, too.”

“Mage?” their host asked, “Ah, no, I am not a magic-user. Magic draws upon the Dark Energy Continuum as a power source. I simply manipulate the spacetime fabric directly. Less overhead, as it were.”

“How are you able to accomplish that?” asked Eltiar.

“When you read a tale, do you visualize the story, as it unfolds, in your mind?” asked Phaeon.

“Of course. It would be very difficult to derive any enjoyment from it otherwise.”

“You are, in effect, manipulating that bit of the spacetime fabric that resides within your neocortex: the part of your brain where higher reasoning is located. I do the same, except as a result of my origins I can manipulate the fabric on a far grander scale. What you share amongst a few million neurons, I can bring into objective existence.”

“Is this food imaginary?” asked Tartag, “That is; would it exist even were I not here to witness it?”

Phaeon smiled. “Well, in fact nothing at all exists until you witness it. This is one of the foundational principles of quantum behavior. Prior to being processed by your sensory organs, events and objects are merely probabilities with a certain n-dimensional quantum causality vector associated with them.

“Are you trying to say that if I weren’t aware of this table it wouldn’t be here?”

“Only if nothing else was aware of it, either. Not the air, not the floor, not the light reflecting off of it, and so on. By ‘aware,’ I really mean, ‘impinged upon by’.”

“But,” Apoj broke in, “That’s really the same as saying that it wouldn’t exist, since by definition anything that exists will impinge upon
something
else.”

“Precisely so. See how it works?”

Tol had reached his philosophical, not to mention his gastronomical, limit, so he changed the subject.

“We’re looking for someone. A titan, to be exact. His tracks show he came through here within the last few hours. He is most likely injured. Have you seen anyone else lately?”

Phaeon looked thoughtful. “I have seen no one, but if he is within this realm I can locate him for you.” He moved over to a wall; it transformed into a giant map covered with squiggles and brightly-colored dots, some of which on closer examination were moving slowly.

“This map shows the position of every sentient organism in or near what you call Hellehoell,” Phaeon explained, “It works by detecting the slight distortion sentient brains produce on the enveloping spacetime fabric. We are…here.” He pointed to a spot at the lowest point of the map.

Tol peered at it. “There’s one too few dots here to account for all of us. Unless your map doesn’t consider somebody here to be sentient.”

“You can scarcely blame it for that,” replied a faint voice from Tol’s overjack pocket. Everyone looked at Tol, who rolled his eyes. “Ignore that. It’s an electronic heckling machine I carry around for reasons known not even to me.” The pocket chuckled.

“
I
do not appear on the map,” said Phaeon, “I have no external effect on the fabric, but am rather part of it; or it of me. I blend into the background, in a manner of speaking.”

“So, that’s
us
?” The titans seemed truly besotted by the idea that they were represented by those little blotches. They began to walk around in the room, watching the map as their dots got relocated. Tol was not similarly fascinated by his own dot, but he was by another nearby blob. He traced the passages from their current position to that of the dot of interest, then walked over to a matching position on the wall, shrugged, and passed straight through. None of the titans noticed at first.

Tol wasn’t sure why, but somehow he knew that he would be able to walk through the seemingly solid stone wall without hindrance: he didn’t even flinch. Behind the wall was a rather fetching hallway lined with polished granite and lit by tasteful soft pink radiance emanating from hidden recesses along the ceiling. Complex filigree patterns were picked out in gold leaf in a series of panels along each wall. Despite magmatic heat radiating from the surrounding stones, the air flowing down the corridor was cool, dry, and fragrant.

After a hundred meters of level travel with side hallways branching off every so often, the passage abruptly assumed a positive grade, gradually increasing until it took considerable effort for Tol to continue. He persevered, stopping every so often to catch his breath and massage his tired leg muscles. Not only did the passageway slope upward, it had taken to spiraling quite tightly to the left. As it climbed, it gradually lost the polished marble walls and other artifice. There had been no spoor from his quarry in some time, but Tol remained confident that he was still on the right trail, based on what he’d seen on Phaeon’s map. He realized he hadn’t told the others where he was going, but he wasn’t about to retrace his steps now. They’d figure it out eventually.

Finally the grade decreased substantially and the corridor he had been following opened out into what appeared to be a natural, active cave system. It hit Tol that he’d spent an inordinate amount of time lately underground. He suddenly longed to see sunlight and quaff a laden breeze off the meat-packing plant on the southern edge of Sebacea. Great. Now he was hungry again, as well.

He came to an intersection of sorts, where roughly-hewn passages led off in several directions. Tol studied the floor, walls, and cave formations for a sign he’d almost given up on spotting before a glint of something shiny on the floor caught his eye. He picked it up; it was a mineral layer inside a broken stalagmite reflecting in the dim light of the caverns. Searching around, Tol found the formation it had come from and inspection convinced him it had been broken off recently. Not iron-clad proof that his quarry had passed this way, but a clue nonetheless.

A few meters away he found much more substantial spoor: wet footprints from shoes that had passed through a water puddle on the floor in the last few minutes. He had almost caught up with the elusive fugitive. For someone who’d presumably been injured in a collapse, he sure was difficult to track.

Tol followed the prints for as far as they held out, then extrapolated that they led to a niche high up on the wall, accessible via a series of hand and foot-holds carved into the rock face. In full stealth mode he crept up the wall, pausing just below the rim of the niche to catch his breath. When he felt ready, Tol leapt up into the niche and was surprised to find a young adult titan cowering in a corner.

“Please. I don’t want to go back. Don’t make me go back!” the titan wailed, pitiably.

“Easy there, youngster,” Tol answered, in a soothing voice. “Nobody’s gonna make you do anything. Are you the one who was trapped by the collapse back there?”

“I wasn’t trapped. I ran away when it happened.”

“But your beacon was activated.”

“I ripped it off and tossed it down a crevice, to throw off any pursuit.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be a slave anymore.”

“What do mean, ‘a slave’?”

“I am a half-breed. My mother was a troll who was raped by my father. Titans are rabid racial purists; half-breeds are considered abominations and forced into slavery.”

“I didn’t know that. What’ll you do now?”

“If I can escape, I will travel to my mother’s family in Aspolia. We have corresponded, and they seem willing to accept me for who I am.”

“I’ll get you out of here, kid. Slavery is contrary to Tragacanthan edict.”

“You are a true benefactor. How may I call you, master?”

“Don’t you be calling
anybody
‘master.’ That’s part of your problem, right there. My name is Tol. What’s yours?”

“Yes, mast... Tol. My name is Korq. How will you get me out, past all these titans?”

“Piece o’ cake. If we get caught I’ll tell them you violated an edict and I’m taking you back to Goblinopolis for trial.”

“You could do that?”

“Yeah, I’m a cop. A special investigator, as a matter of fact.”

“Wow. Think it will work?”

“I hope so. If they try to interfere with a Tragacanthan edict enforcement officer in the conduct of official duties they’ll seriously jeopardize their application for sovereign standing, I can promise that. Now, come on down and let’s figure a way out of this hole.”

Together they climbed down the wall and then began to scout for an exit.

“I came in the same way you did, so we know where that direction leads,” said Tol, waving toward the corridor out of which he’d emerged. “Let’s do some exploring.”

Tol led the way as they investigated every possible passage out of the room, one by one. At last Tol stopped at the entrance to a small irregularly-shaped corridor that led sharply upward. He wiped his hand across the damp stone just inside the opening, sniffing it.

“This one leads to the surface.”

“But Tol, how do you know this?” asked Korq, his eyes wide. Tol held up his hand and swirled his finger around on some fine particles smeared on his palm. “See the little grains? They’re pollen from plants on the surface. They were carried down here by the wind, which tells me that this passage connects to the surface. Doesn’t promise that the opening will be big enough for us to get through, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“How can you tell there is a bridge?”

Tol looked at the half-titan for a few seconds with puzzlement; chuckled.

“Just an expression, kid. It means we will solve one problem at a time.”

“I am seeing it now.”

“Great. Let’s get moving.”

The going was slow along the steeply-graded passageway, with frequent stops to rest and catch their breaths. More than once Korq slipped and began to slide, forcing Tol to slide down after him and halt both their descents with a great outpouring of strength.

“I’m getting’ too old for this smek,” he exclaimed after one such exertion. “Watch your footing, kid. I might not be able to stop you next time.”

“I will endeavor not to be so clumsy in the future, master, I mean, Tol. I am unaccustomed to traversing such pathways,” Korq apologized, wringing his hands.

“No sweat, kid: you’re doing fine. Just be a little more careful about where you step, and try to find handholds whenever you can.”

“I will gladly comply...Tol.”

During a rest break after about half an hour of steady, laborious effort, Tol’s head suddenly snapped up. Korq glanced over in alarm.

“Is something amiss, Tol?”

“You smell that? It’s the smell of rain in fresh air. We’re almost to the surface!” Tol was practically dancing a jig. He was
really
tired of being underground.

“Yes: I do smell it now.”

“Wait here,” Tol commanded and scrambled up the last few meters of the passage to where it dead-ended into a pile of rubble. He scrutinized the area both visually and nasally until he pinpointed the opening to the surface.

“Hang tight to the left wall,” he called back down to Korq, “I’m going to do a little excavating; I’ll toss the rocks as far to the right as I can.”

Korq did as he was told and hugged the left wall while Tol dislodged larger and larger stones that crashed and bounced their way back down the shaft. Finally he called down to the half-titan.

“Come on up now, Korq. Very carefully. If you slip now I won’t be able to stop you from sliding all the way back down.”

“I am proceeding with great care, Tol.”

Korq made his way slowly up to the top of the shaft, one step and handhold at a time, until at last he stood with his goblin rescuer. Tol heaved one final boulder aside and crawled through the resultant space. He stood up and found himself unexpectedly looking out over the broad entrance to Hellehoell, sprawling some twenty meters below. He turned his head as Korq came clambering out.