The Magic Rain

Chapter Seven: The Portal

The following days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months as Jo-Bri kept moving, concentrating on the task at hand: survival.

He slogged through the hills, avoiding the plains where he might be run down by Hodon or his henchmen, growing harder and tougher both inside and out.

But if survival had been all he had to look forward to, it might not have been enough for him to stay away from the edge of the cliff that Lenui had saved him from.

No, it was the Other World Jurna had spoken of that kept Jo-Bri going, moving back and forth, doubling back, moving in any way he needed to in order to avoid Hodon and his men, but always eventually heading southwest, toward the woman who supposedly knew of the Other World.

Along the way, Jo-Bri carefully mined strangers for information about the "woman of the Other World" as he came to think of her. He would cross paths with fellow travelers, avoiding villages and other settlements, but still getting enough information in the form of rumors and even legends to keep moving toward his goal.

But Jo-Bri also knew that, although he had backed away from the edge of the cliff, he remained close to it. If the choice returned to him, the choice between ending his life and being responsible for any more deaths, he might yet choose to end it all.

And through it all, the Voices remained inside his mind, sometimes loud, as when Hodon’s men were near, and sometimes quietly in the background… but always there, their presence a blessing and a curse and a seeming invitation to madness.

And though Jo-Bri’s parents, especially his mother, had always warned him against the concept of revenge, he knew that the memories of Hodon destroying his world and the people in it would always be there as well, alongside the voices, and that those memories would always be pushing him toward vengeance.

Maybe that, as much as anything, was why he sought out the Woman of the Other World; to find some way to avenge himself against Hodon.

His mother’s Voice rose in volume, and he felt her disappointment.

* * *

Jo-Bri looked down over the edge of the cliff at the buildings in the valley below. The sun shone bright overhead.

He moved to get a better look and winced. He looked at his shoulder and pulled his tunic back to reveal a bright red burn. One of Hodon’s wizards had nearly killed him with that spell a week before, some spell he had never heard of, that had actually set his flesh on fire.

A thought struck Jo-Bri hard – it was nearly the one-year anniversary of Kawille’s death and the deaths of everyone he had ever known, including his parents. His mother’s whisper rose momentarily above all the other whispers in his head, and then receded into the background along with the others.

Jo-Bri shook his head, but only slightly. He was almost used to the madness in his mind. Almost. At any rate, the voices weren’t always a curse. They had more than once saved his life, including on the day Hodon’s wizard had set him afire.

Jo-Bri refrained from rubbing the reddened flesh, carefully replaced his robe over the wound and returned his attention to the buildings below.

Jo-Bri knew that there was a woman in those worn buildings, a witch or sage of some sort who knew something that might be of value to him. And it had to do with the Other World.

Jo-Bri carefully withdrew from the ledge and sat back against a rock face. He would wait until nighttime, just to be safe.

* * *

A partially clouded moon dimly lighted the night.

Jo-Bri paused at the front door of the compound’s largest building, a ramshackle affair seemingly held up as much by age as by dowels and mud. He glanced around and also sent his senses out to the surroundings, trying to sniff out danger.

His whispers had gotten slightly louder. From experience he knew that meant that there was danger here, even if not clearly defined.

He tried the door. Thankfully, it opened silently, the hinges holding it straight and true, as it swung inward.

The first room was sparsely furnished with ancient, broken-down chairs and a dust-covered table with three legs. There was no light in the room and Jo-Bri had to use the senses of a wizard and hunter to make his way quietly through the house.

He passed through a series of small, dusty rooms filled with similar broken furniture, until he stopped in the open doorway to another room, this one lit.

"Come."

He had known there was someone here, so the voice did not startle him. He walked forward into the room and saw it was larger than the other rooms, though just as ramshackle and dusty.

A woman, old enough to be his grandmother, stood at the far end of the room, dressed in a tattered blue robe. Her white hair hung to her waist.

Jo-Bri glanced around, with his eyes and his wizard’s senses, before approaching the woman.

She stood as tall as his mother, perhaps taller, at least a foot taller than he was. Her face was worn, but at one time must have been beautiful. He remembered what his father had once said about one of the village elders, that she had once been beautiful and still was, "just differently now."

He stopped a few feet from her and saw quickly that the woman was blind. No, not blind… staring off into some other reality, maybe the reality of dreams or memories. Her eyes were a startling green.

"I knew your father," she said, and Jo-Bri stepped back, glancing around again. Was this a trap?

"How do you know my father?" he asked, sounding angry to his own ears.

She slowly moved her gaze from that unknown distant place to his face, and her eyes slowly came back into focus on him. He shivered, feeling as if he were being examined and judged and that a lot depended on what that judgment would be.

"We were betrothed," the old woman said.

Jo-Bri suppressed a laugh. He had come to think of himself as a powerful wizard -- not as powerful as Hodon, but he had survived an encounter with that dark wizard and several battles with his henchmen, so he was confident he could handle himself. Nevertheless, something told him not to anger the seemingly harmless old woman who towered over him.

"Betrothed," Jo-Bri repeated.

The old woman smiled and it transformed her face, as smiles often did to women, and the hint of beauty he had seen in her aged visage now became a full-fledged reality – he knew now what his father had meant – old, perhaps, but still beautiful in a different way.

"We…"

He waited.

She closed her eyes a moment, and then opened them again.

"We were lovers before he met your mother," she said, smiling kindly now.

He believed her suddenly, because seeing her face this close, with her still-full lips curved upward in a smile, those large green eyes seeming to stare into his inner self, seeing this woman’s aged beauty, he knew that he too might have fallen in love with her in a different time and place.

"I’m not as old as you think I am," she said, and laughed. "Your father and I were the same age, but…" She shrugged. "Life can be given, it can be taken, and sometimes it is taken more quickly than it should be, and suddenly you are old without ever having lived the years to justify that age."

He nodded.

"I understand."

And he did. How much of his life had already been taken? How old would he look when he was this woman’s age, the weight of the years pulling his body and soul down toward death, one painful loss at a time?

"You are a witch," he said.

She nodded. "I knew your mother too. We were all there at the Emperor’s coronation, but your father…" Her smile remained but now it was filled with sadness. "He had seen your mother a few weeks before and, well… that had been that."

His heart broke, thinking of his parents as youngsters in love.

"I’m sorry," he said.

She laughed. "I could have been your mother," she said, and there was so much pain and loss in that one statement that his heart broke even more.

"The Other World," he said, because it hurt too much to stand there speaking of his dead parents.

She nodded. "What do you know of it?"

"It exists. So I have been told."

"It exists," she agreed. "And it is like nothing you could imagine even in your wildest dreams." She frowned. "You seek to enter the Other World, but you have no idea what that entails, what you would lose, what you would suffer, and what harm you might cause with your ignorance."

"So you will not show me how to get there?" he asked, his hopes sinking. The voices inside his mind became louder now.

"You have many inside you," she said, tilting her head as if listening. Then her old eyes lit with joy and pain. "He is there! Your father!"

He closed his eyes a moment, a rarity for him, for he did not know if this woman was friend or foe and he never ever took his eyes off a foe. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yes. There was a merging."

A tear ran down the old woman’s face. "I knew that Hodon had… I… felt it when your father..." She took a deep breath, and then smiled again, examining his face. "You look like him," she said, and then, reluctantly, "and like her." She examined him. "Except much…"

He began to back away from the woman but she held up a wizened hand, a hand larger by far than his own.

"I loved your father," she said, and paused. "So of course I must help you."

He stopped, waiting.

"The reason your father left me for your mother," the old woman said, "was that I was headstrong and selfish. Oh, I was beautiful -- perhaps you can see the remnants of that."

"I can," he said, meaning it.

"But I always had to have it my way. So did your mother, but she knew how to make your father think that it was his way." She laughed.

The whispers were getting slightly louder, and he glanced about, worried.

"It is the home of evil," she said.

He frowned.

"We have one Hodon in our world," she continued, "a few who would follow him out of ambition, a few more who would follow him out of fear, and many who allow him sway because they do not know how to stop him."

Jo-Bri nodded, still scanning the area with both ears and magic, to seek out signs of the very evil of which she spoke. The whispers rose a bit more in his mind and he resisted the temptation to shake his head.

"In the Other World there are many Hodons. And many others who aspire to be Hodon. Great evil has been wrought in the Other World."

"So my choices," he said, "are to stay here with one Hodon, or go to a world filled with Hodons."

"There is more," she said.

The Whispers became even louder now, not alarmed but… worried. Afraid. And he realized that he was afraid too. Not just tense, or on guard, but actually afraid, a kind of fear that he had not experienced since Hodon had originally attacked his father’s village so many months before.

Hodon brings fear. It was a phrase his father had used.

"He comes," the witch said, nodding.

"What else?" he prompted, taking another deep breath to calm himself.

"The Other World is tied to our world," she said. "And it… bleeds… into ours."

"I don’t understand," he said. He could almost sense Hodon now, and he had to push the fear back down into his belly from which it was trying to rise and take over his body and mind. The whispers had grown to become loud voices now.

She tilted her head, as if listening, then nodded before continuing. She spoke a little more quickly now. "You must go soon. There is no time to prepare you. When you reach the Other World, you must not trust anyone until they have earned that trust, and even then…"

He nodded.

"Their evil is destroying our world," she said, suddenly revealing in one sentence what she had been trying to say all this time.

"Literally?" he asked, too worried about Hodon to be startled by her words.

"Literally. There is more you must know but there is no time."

"But what do you want me to do? Destroy the other world to save ours?"

"No!" she snapped. "That is Hodon’s way. To destroy."

"But if they are evil," he said, glancing around now, both physically and magically. Hodon was near, very near now... The fear was nearly paralyzing.

"You must find a way to heal their wound," she said, "so that it does not kill us too."

The voices shouted within him now. How could she expect him to change an entire world, a world he didn’t even know the name of, the language, the --

"Come," she said, opening her arms.

He hesitated, not knowing what she wanted him to do.

"Come!" she snapped, then smiled sadly. "Come to the mother who might have been."

He stepped forward into her arms, his face level with her upper chest, and she embraced him. His world began to spin and he barely suppressed the panic he felt. And it was panic, growing by the second, overwhelming, suffocating…

"It is opening," he heard her say and saw that they were surrounded by light, a light that grew larger and larger.

The portal.

"I loved your father enough to want to possess him," she said, squeezing him so hard that he feared his ribs would break and he was amazed by the strength her aged arms possessed, reminding himself that she was not as old as she seemed, "but your mother… she loved him enough to let him possess her."

"Stop!" he heard Hodon’s voice ringing in his ears and he tried to turn to face the dark wizard-king, but the old woman’s arms crushed him to her bosom and he felt her pain and her sadness overwhelming him. He fought against her, but it was useless. And he realized that it was only the witch who kept him from screaming in terror and running for his life.

Hodon brings fear.

"Kill him!" he heard Hodon say… and then heard nothing at all, his world becoming a flash of blinding light, and he wondered if this was how death felt.

* * *

Hodon saw the witch embrace the boy, the light around them growing in size and brilliance. One of his men, Calen, was closer to the portal.

"Kill him!" Hodon yelled at Calen, who leapt toward the light.

The light flared so brightly that Hodon staggered backward, covering his eyes. When the light had faded enough for him to uncover his eyes, he saw the witch lying on the ground, unconscious. The boy and Calen were gone, and so was the portal.

"Bring her to me," he said, indicating the witch.

His men moved quickly toward her.