Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [90]
I experienced a sickening feeling of falling, as when one dreams of falling. The fall was gentle, however, and I hit the ground running, fearful of pursuit. I almost immediately tripped over the hem of a long robe.
I tumbled forward and landed painfully on my hands and knees, scraping my knees against the cloth of the robes and cutting my right hand on an exposed tree root.
The fall left me shaken. My entrance through the gate left me more shaken still. I sat back on my heels, drew a shivering breath, and looked around. My first thought was of Eliza: was she safe? My second thought was in question marks and exclamation points: what in the Almin’s name had happened to me?!
My blue jeans and sweater were gone. In their place, I was wearing a long robe, made of cloth that was white in color. The cloth was velvet, and very fine, soft and smooth. Though well made, the robe was plain, devoid of any decoration save for a red band of trim around the hem of the sleeves, and the skirt, which reached to my ankles.
Feeling an unusual coolness on my head, I lifted my hand to discover that my long hair was gone, cut short, and tonsured! Gingerly, and with a certain amount of horror, I felt the smooth round bald spot on the top of my head, where my hair had been shaved, and now grew in a ring that framed my face and just barely covered my ears.
The magic of the gate must have done this, I realized confusedly, yet the information I had just read on Zith-el indicated that the gate would change us into creatures of the Zoo. I had never read that the people of Zith-el kept catalysts in their Zoo, yet that is most certainly what I was dressed as—a catalyst in Thimhallan.
A catalyst in a Thimhallan which no longer existed!
I pondered this amazing and perplexing occurrence and wondered what I should do next. I was alone, so far as I could tell, in a thick and shadowed forest. Had I not fallen over my robes, I would have run headlong into a large oak tree. I was encircled by trees—oaks, mostly, though here and there some pines and ferns grew, vying for the meager sunlight which filtered through the oaks’ green foliage. I was just noting in relief that I did not see the heart-shaped leaves of the Kij vine, when it occurred to me that what I was seeing, I was seeing by the light of the sun.
It had been near nightfall when we ran into the gate.
Slowly I rose to my feet, the white robe falling in soft folds around me. I could not call out to my companions to let them know where I was, which was—on second thought—probably just as well. I might have been discovered by our pursuers. I looked around, trying to see some sign of my companions. Almost the moment I moved, I heard a soft voice.
“Reuven? Is that you? Over here.”
I heard at almost the same instant another voice say worriedly, “Your Majesty! Are you all right?”
I stumbled through the undergrowth toward the first voice, which I had recognized as Mosiah’s, and emerged into a small clearing. He had his back to me, for he had turned at the sound of the other voice. It resembled Scylla’s, though its accent was strange.
We heard the clink of metal and the rattle of chain and a crashing in the brush and Scylla’s voice again calling to Her Majesty.
I touched Mosiah on the arm to attract his attention.
He turned and looked at me and his eyebrows shot up, his mouth gaped, and his eyes widened. By that I knew that the white robes and tonsured hair were not an illusion of my own making, as I had been most desperately hoping.
“Reuven?” He gasped out my name, and it was more question than recognition.
“I think so,” I signed. “I’m not sure. Do you know what is going on?”
“I have no idea!” he replied. His words were heartfelt and uttered with such sincerity that I believed him. My first thought was that he or the other Duuk-tsarith had been responsible for this transformation. I knew now that was not the case.
A flash of sunlight glinting off metal some distance away caught my eye.
A knight clad in silver-plate armor worn over chain