False Horizon - Alex Archer [61]
“Are you sure you won’t come along?”
“Completely.”
Tuk paused and looked down the hallway at the portal. The torch fire danced from the slight breeze that seemed to snake through the hallway. Tuk caught a touch of the chill across his neck and shivered involuntarily.
For a moment, he seriously considered going off to bed and doing this later. But then he shook his head and started forward toward the doorway.
He paused and looked back. “Can I bring the torch?”
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
“Not at all,” Tuk said. “I’m afraid of what I can’t see. I don’t want to step over the edge of something that would send me hurtling toward my death.”
“I don’t believe you will.”
“And yet…?”
Guge took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Oh, very well, take the torch along. But be ready for it to go out the moment you cross over. The winds are strong. And there may be a lot of snow.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“And make sure you pay very close attention to where you are,” Guge said. “If you don’t, you will never find the way back to us and you will perish in the cold over there. Your mother would never let me hear the end of it.”
Tuk paused and a slight frown crossed his face. That almost seemed an odd thing for his father to say. But Tuk shook his head and then grabbed the torch from the wall bracket.
He looked back toward his father. “All right. I’m going to go through the doorway now.”
“Good luck.”
“Thank you.
Tuk turned back to the blackened doorway and held the torch aloft. But for some strange reason, the torchlight could not penetrate the interior of the doorway.
Tuk held the torch up and ran it all along the perimeter of the door, but there was nothing that he could see inside.
“You will not be able to see until you actually cross the threshold,” Guge said from behind him.
Tuk looked back. “Why is that?”
“It is that way simply because it is that way.”
Tuk nodded. Another strange answer from his father. Very well, he thought. If there’s only one way to do this, then he would simply do it. Perhaps then he would know what to tell Garin when he called again.
Guge’s voice was behind him then. Very close. “I nearly forgot to ask you something.”
Tuk turned around. “What is it?”
“You received a phone call earlier this evening. Didn’t you?”
Tuk felt his face redden. “I did. I forgot that I had the telephone with me.”
Guge pointed at the doorway. “You cannot go through with the telephone from this side.”
“Why not?”
“As far as I understand it,” Guge said. “The technology is too advanced to be transported back.”
Tuk frowned. “But I came through with it from the other side and it seems to work just fine.”
Guge shrugged. “I will hold on to the phone for you while you go through. That way, you can be sure it will work.”
Tuk took the phone out and hefted it in his hand. “All right. I’ll just take a quick peek and then come back.”
Guge nodded. “Good. I hope you will satisfy your curiosity once and for all. Then we can move on to other things.”
Tuk smiled. “We have a lot to talk about, I assume.”
“A great deal indeed.”
Tuk turned back to the doorway. “All right, I’m going through.” He held the torch high above his head and then stepped closer to the doorway. He still felt Guge behind him, though, and turned back around. “Aren’t you too close?”
Guge smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you are certain of this.”
“I am, Father.”
Tuk turned around. Before him, the gaping maw of the darkened doorway stood.
Tuk took a deep breath and then started to step through the doorway.
The phone rang.
He stopped.
Then felt a heavy push from behind, and before he knew what was happening, Tuk went sprawling through the doorway and into the darkness beyond.
23
Annja tossed and turned on the bed of silky soft pillows and tried to get comfortable. From her quarters, an open window looked down upon the pavilion. Tropical breezes swept through the curtains and across her skin. The temperature was absolutely perfect for sleeping.
And yet, she couldn’t.
The idea that Garin was somehow involved in this whole mess had