Episode 13 of The Price of Friendship. Philip ‘Norvaljoe’ Carroll has been a podcaster without a home, and adds content where ever people will let him. Now, an editor at The Flagship of flyingislandpress.com, he is looking for positive, uplifting and well written Fantasy and Science Fiction between 2000 and 7000 words to add to the next issue.
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Text of the story after the break…
The Price of Friendship – Episode 13
Lorantelle stood in the shadows. The girl had clammed up almost immediately when he began his interrogation hours before. He didn’t want his presence to interfere with the harvest that Derrick was gleaning.
Lorantelle admired the tall, slender, dark haired boy. He had a nasty, cynical attitude and used tone of voice and body position to intimidate the girl into speaking. This teenage kid was a natural bully. He teased and tempted, coerced and cajoled, until Amy burst out in anger, opening flood gates of emotion, and information.
“Come on Amy,” Derrick sneered. “We know Snyder’s not your real name. There have never been any Snider’s in the dimensions, and no names that even sound like that. Tell us who you are, really who you are, and we can help you.”
“Help me?” Amy asked. Her words bounced off the brick walls of the wine cellar as her voice rose in pitch and volume.”Help me do what?”
Derrick stepped back theatrically as if Amy had physically slapped Him. He shook his head. A dazed and silly grin of astonishment spread across his face, and he said, “help us unite our people, Star Daughter.”
The boy walked far enough behind Amy that no matter how she craned her neck she wasn’t able to see him. He leaned against a dusty wooden wine rack and crossed his arms across his chest. The smile was gone from his face and in the dimness of the cellar his squinting eyes almost glowed the intensity. In a voice so low that Lorantelle wondered if the boy spoke to himself or to the girl, Derrick continued, “We know the prophecy, just like you do, and you know that’s why you’re here.”
Amy stopped straining to find the boy behind her. She relaxed her neck and looked to the rough stone floor in front of her, her head bowed forward and slightly to the side. She looked forlorn and beaten. Lorantelle had a sudden and uncharacteristic pang of sympathy for the girl, but quickly reminded himself of his responsibilities to the cause. She may be young and vulnerable, unlike the powerful and dangerous masters of her class, yet she was still the enemy. What was more important to keep in mind was if this prophecy had any validity, she was a pivotal piece in the coming dimensional changes.
When she spoke again, her voice was even quieter and more distant than Derrick’s had been. “I know nothing of a prophecy and the only reason I’m here is you tricked my friend into giving me to you.”
“Friend?” Lorantelle blurted from the shadows. Amy looked up from the floor, toward the sound of his voice. Angry with himself for reminding the girl he was there, his irritation flared when Derrick scowled at him as the boy stepped forward and continued his interrogation of the girl. Derrick must have known the person who had sold the girl into his hands, yet he had not shared that information with Lorantelle. They were wasting time with the girl when it was obvious who her champion was. This friend could be, must be, found and eliminated.
“So many lies, Amy.” Derrick leaned forward, his face close to her’s. “Isn’t that just like your people; always mixing in a little truth with the lies to make your deception credible, more palatable.”
Amy said nothing, but glared at the boy who gloated under the single bare light bulb glowing weakly in the narrow corridor of the wine cellar. She winced as Derrick forced a sudden, barking, laugh and said, “Your people have been in control of the dimensions for a thousand years now. You can’t maintain the traditional hold of your unprivileged aristocracy in these modern times. Your leaders can no longer disregard the desires, the rights of the people, of all the people.”
“The rights of the people?” Amy spat the words with such vehemence that Derrick backed up a half a foot, though he maintained his condescending sneer. “It’s your people, not mine, that have perpetrated campaigns of misinformation and historical inaccuracies to bolster your tenuous house of cards.”
Derrick stood and wiped his face with back of his sleeve. He turned to leave, looked into the shadows where he know Lorantelle stood and winked at the commander. He said over his shoulder to the girl tied to the chair, “Join us Amy. You can change us. You know that’s why your here.”
Lorantelle allowed the boy to walk ahead of him when they exited the cellar.
Felipe waited outside in the passage with a cup of water, bread and a few slices of cheese. Derrick took a slice of the cheese as he walked past the other boy, who scowled and pulled the tray away, though at that point, a useless gesture.
Derrick shoved the cheese in his mouth, headed up the passage, and laughed. “That went well, don’t you think?”
As they reached the stone steps leading up to the main floor of the villa, Lorantelle grasped the boy’s shoulder and spun him around. “No, I don’t think that went so well.”
Derrick stood with his mouth open in shock, bits of cheese clung to his teeth and lips, until his surprised turned slowly to anger and indignation. “What do you mean?” the boy asked. “I had her spilling her guts in there.”
“Spilled her guts? She hardly told us anything. In fact, the only thing of import that we learned in there is that you already know who the champion is.” Lorantelle’s own indignation gave fire to his words. “And you have known since the moment you secured the girl for us.”
Derrick said nothing, his face a mask of fury and hate.
“You’re as stupid as you are arrogant,” Lorantelle said. He pushed past the boy and leapt up the stairs.
“Don’t just stand there like the simpleton you are,” he called from the top of the stairs. “I need that information locked in your thick skull, and I’m tired of standing around in the dark.”
Lorantelle strode directly toward Julia where she sat at her glass and chrome desk. Derrick followed, several sullen steps behind.
“We need a conference room with data pads, access to the Family Genetic Data Base, and something to eat,” Lorantelle said to the secretary.
He didn’t think the woman could have sat any straighter in her seat or worn a more severe expression on her face. However, when Lorantelle spoke, Julia became the personification of a marble pillar. She turned stiffly to Lorantelle, her brows arched and her eyes narrowed, and said, “Commander Lorantelle. I am sure you are aware how late it is in the day, and that it is quite impossible to accommodate such requests without sufficient advance notice.”
He took the final step to the glass table, leaned across it and poked his index finger at the secretaries nose. The commander growled, “I’m sick of insolent and ineffectual subordinates like you and your boy over here, with your self serving and obstructive requirements. You’re delaying me and putting our entire mission at risk.”
Lorantelle took a quick breath, closed his eyes and said, much more calmly that he felt, “You’ll get me a conference room, now, and send Felipe in with some food, now, or you me and Henry Kissinger over there will march down the passage to the His Royal Highness, Lord Caltone’s office and have a picnic on his very expensive throw rugs.”
In an instant, Julia’s face drained of all color and then flared back to a fiery red, as a voice spoke from the intercom imbedded in the glass table top, “Julia. Do as he asks.”
“Yes, Lord Caltone,” she said. She passed her hand across the glass desk. Fluorescent greens and purples flashed from the chrome edges. Julia tapped here and there on the desktop and then looked up at the commander.
With her palm up, she indicated a door off the main lobby with her hand. “You may use this conference room,” she said. “There are data pads as you have requested. Felipe will be in with some bread and cheese, as it is well past the evening meal.”
As Lorantelle and Derrick turned in that direction, the door swung open inviting them in.
Lorantelle placed a small piece of the brown bread, smeared with soft cheese, into his mouth and chewed. He silently considered the youth as Derrick stuffed bite after bite of bread and cheese into his mouth.
He was amazed at how quickly his attitudes and opinions had changed lately. This morning he would have considered it absurd to take an active part in this, what was it? A revolution? A succession? An overthrow? And the boy, Derrick. At first the commander considered him a gifted tactician, a ruthless interrogator, a prodigy. And now, no different than any other petulant self absorbed teenager.
“Who was the friend the girl spoke of when you questioned her,” Lorantelle asked the boy who finally appeared to have reached his capacity for the food.
“Friend?” Derrick asked.
“Oh, for the sake of the Dimensions,” Lorantelle cried as he grasped fists of his hair. “Show me, please, that you are not as stupid as you keep acting. The friend. The one who sold out our little captive in the cellars.”
The commander was on his feet and leaned across the small table brought in for their late dinner. He gritted his teeth as he spoke. “You know who she is, don’t you? You ventured all the way to the prime dimension to find some girl and bring her back here, and you don’t know who she is, and who will be following her?”
Derrick got to his feet as well. He stood nose to nose with the commander and set his own jaw to respond. “Of course I know who she is. She’s the Star Daughter, supposedly here to unite or divide the peoples of the dimensions.”
Then he laughed, “But she’s just some little girl. She doesn’t look all that powerful and dangerous to me, tied to that chair between the wine racks.”
“You just don’t see it, do you?” Lorantelle asked and scowled at the youth who only shrugged. The commander shook his head and ground one fist back and forth into the palm of the other hand. “Let me enhance your perspective.”
Lorantelle sat back down into the padded arm chair and held up his hands in front of him, as if he held a large invisible ball and searched with in it to find the appropriate words. “I’ll try and make this simple. There’s the Star Daughter, potentially the most powerful person to enter the dimensions. And you, whoever you may be, are able to waltz up and trick some kid into giving her to you? Some powerless primer kid?”
“Yeah. Why not? What’s the big deal?” Derrick asked.
“First,” Lorantelle said, “to hand over the Star Daughter you have to have power equal to hers. And second, you have to be one of two people. A family member or her champion. Was the friend a family member?” The commander asked,
“No. Well, I don’t think he was related. No one ever said he was. I think he just had a crush on her,” Derrick said and giggled.
“Then he is the champion, and rather than eliminating him, you have allowed him to follow you into the dimension in an attempt to rescue that little girl down in the cellar. Think about it, you foolish child, that little girl has the power to tear our world apart, and now, somewhere in our dimensions is another of equal power, on his way to rescue her. If the two unite it won’t matter how many we persuade to our side of the battle, we can only lose.
“He was just some kid,” Derrick said, an underlying whine broke through his bravado.
“Our only hope is that he believes the same about himself,” Commander Lorantelle said and reached for a data pad.
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