Sybal - Part 3

Here is the third part of a current short story I am working on called Sybal.
If you haven't read the previous parts, you can find part one here and part two here.
I hope you enjoy this third installment.
mip

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It had been ten years.  Unbelievable.

Ten years of wandering in foreign lands; deserts, mountains, densely populated cities to desolate abandoned towns long forgotten by their once present residents.  He and Barrett had covered thousands of kilometers in their ten years, and in all that time, Brady never once thought he’d see his home again.  It was an odd feeling now, standing outside of the condominium as the wind pushed at his back at the corner of Bay and St. Joseph Street.  Clare had given him the spare key to his apartment.  His car had still been parked outside the park.  For the small Honda Civic it had been only a night, but for Brady, a decade had dulled his sense of being able to drive and his driver’s license had gone missing years ago somewhere in the town of Mirohanté. The risk of being caught without the license now was too great so Clare had given him some change and dropped him at the subway that he rode in silence back to his condo. 

He walked into the lobby feeling very conspicuous, certain that the concierge would say something, but he did not.  They did not even notice him stroll toward the elevator and wave his key in front of the security pad that gave tenants access to the elevator.  He went up to the tenth floor and slipped his key into the locked door that read 1015. 

Click.

He pushed the door open and a strange feeling washed over him.  It was like walking into a museum.  He let the door close behind him and turned on the lights.  Everything was just as he’d left it. 

‘Of course it is for Christ’s sake,’ he thought offhandedly, ‘You’ve only been gone for a day.’  He had to remind himself of that as he walked reflectively through his condominium.  In his bedroom he found items he’d long since forgotten about but immediately recalled when he saw them: his computer on his desk, the Cartier watch his parents had given him when he’d graduated, the hand written note that read “I love that you are an earlier riser” that Clare had stuck to his lamp one morning after they’d made love before work. 

He sat on his bed and simply looked around the room, feeling like he’d come home but had done so a stranger.  Resisting the urge to start traveling down memory lane, he went back to the condo door and locked it.  He wanted to shower.  It had been days that he and Barrett had been walking to find the natural portal and a shower was what he needed to clear his head and shake of the dust from the countless hours spent hiking on the escarpment where he’d left Barrett sleeping. 

In the shower, with the warm water streaming over him like a blessing from God Himself, Brady let his thoughts drift back to Barrett.  He knew Barrett would come looking for him, the question would be when.  Time passed slowly there.  Even if Barrett wanted to wait a month only minutes would have passed here in Toronto.   Knowing Barrett, he would not have waited a month, or even a day.  He would have set out immediately upon discovering Brady’s absence.  With that in mind, Brady was puzzled that Barrett hadn’t emerged minutes after his arrival in Claridina park.  With the amount of time that Brady had already been in Toronto, over a year would have passed in the other word.  The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Barrett had decided to push on without him?  Or perhaps something had happened to him.  Killed?  Lost? Kidnapped?  As the shower water bathed and warmed him, Brady felt a sad feeling of guilt creep into his thoughts.  Barrett had come into his time, into his world, to save him, to draw him into something so terrifying but also tremendous.  Barrett had watched over him, and educated him about who is was and what he could do.  Barrett had done all these things and more, and now, Brady had betrayed him.  Abandoned him.  What would he say to Barrett if he did show up?  That he missed home?  Missed Clare?  Was tired of running?  None of it would matter to Barrett.  He would say that the prophesy was what was important and that protecting Brady was one of the most important things in securing the prophesy would come to be fulfilled.

“Fuck the prophecy,” Brady murmured under the shower’s hot water.  He showered for nearly half and hour.  It was blissful.  He emerged wet and dripping, pulled a towel around him and went back to his room.  The room felt a little more, familiar.  He smiled.  Exploring his closet he pulled out some freshly ironed shirts he’d done a few days before and laughed at the preposterous paradox his mind was in.    “Shirts freshly ironed…ten years ago,” he said laughing to the room.  Once dressed he lay down on his bed, closed his eyes and unexpectedly drifted off to sleep.

*    *    *

Fenton Niles walked around the abandoned camp high on the edge of the escarpment.  He let his eyes move slowly, deliberately over the area, hunting for clues.  The camp itself was gone: food, fire, a tent and its inhabitants, but the clues remained.  For a moment, Fenton thought it might be someone else’s camp because the man traveling with Sybal, Barrett of Ja’Lo Ras, was always very clever to cover his tracks at previous places they’d bedded down.  He’d been hunting Sybal for a decade and never had he seen their departure look so sloppy.  Barrett had been clever, never making it easy for Fenton to follow.  It had become a personal vendetta for Fenton, his employer Byros in Blackrock having publicly shamed him and hired dozens of other trackers and assassins to pursue the man named Sybal but went under the name of Brady.  Fenton was determined to pursue him to the very ends of the universe and kill him, no matter the cost. 

He squatted and surveyed the ground around him.  To his trained eyes, Fenton could easily see where the tent had been pitched for an evening, where Barrett and Brady had slept waiting for the morning.  A little to the right of the tent, a haphazardly cover fire pit remained. 

‘They left in a hurry,’ Fenton thought curiously.  ‘But why?  Why leave to hurriedly knowing that eventually I would arrive here to find the clues?’  He entertained the thought that perhaps Barrett was trying to confuse him by leaving so many traces of themselves at the camp location.  His fingers traced the outline of a shallow footprint near some slightly bent blades of mountain grass.  His eyes stretched out away from his finger and followed the footprints.  Then he found the second set of footprints that seemed to circle around the camp and then wander off toward the edge of the escarpment.  There towards the cliff edge he could see faintly that the first set of footprints converged with the second set. 

‘Did they walk off the cliff?’ Fenton thought rhetorically to himself.    Easing himself carefully to the edge he could see the incredible drop to the bottom where the water crashed relentlessly against the sharp rocks below.   The footprints ended there but it made little sense.  He backed away slightly due to the vertigo sensation that dizzied him.  He squatted and stared hard at the footprints.  One set seemed to have been made earlier than the first set.  On close inspection Fenton recognized the first set of footprints as Sybal’s. 

‘He walked off before Barrett, at least an hour, maybe two hours before,’ Fenton thought to himself as he continued to look at the footprints.  His heart stepped up a beat.  For a decade he’d been pursuing Sybal but Barrett had been a constant obstacle, but now it seemed that perhaps Sybal had parted from Barrett.  Fenton didn’t know why, he didn’t care what the reason was.  All he cared about was that now Sybal was alone.

‘Alone, but where?’ Fenton thought.  He stood up and looked around again, his instincts urging him to be careful this wasn’t some type of trick.  He’d learned his lesson well not more than a year ago in the forests of Kiramanhi.  After drawing so very close to finally catching Sybal, Fenton found himself in a dangerous situation that day as Sybal had lay in wait for him, creating a deadly trap.  As he’d drawn nearer, Fenton had moved silently through the forest when suddenly without warning the massive trees around him began falling. Trees towering thirty, forty and fifty feet tall began to thunderously crash around him threatening to crush him.  He’d turned and ran that day nearly being flattened by falling trees on several occasions.  For nearly half an hour the crashing sound of trees shook the woods.  When it was over and Fenton made his way slowly back into the forest to continue the pursuit, Barrett and Sybal had disappeared.  With that incident in his mind, Fenton now surveyed his surroundings here atop the escarpment with the greatest of care.  He looked back at the footprints walking to the cliff edge.  He rationalized that perhaps Sybal had conjured a way down the cliff side?  Peering over carefully again, Fenton looked for any signs that the pair had descended the escarpment, but only the sea lay below. 

After several moments he circled the campsite again looking for more clues.  Sybal had left before Barrett.  Barrett had been left to clear their tracks here at the site, but he had not done so.  Had he been rushing?  He’d realized that Sybal was gone and raced after him?  The questions swirled in Fenton’s mind and he sat on a rock nearby so he could think of his next course of action.  His eyes traced Sybal’s footsteps from the place where they had bedded down in their tent to their final place at the cliff edge.  Then he glanced back at the second set of footprints; they circled the campsite then moved about sporadically, probably as Barrett packed, then they moved to the same spot as Sybal’s. 

‘An hour or two later Barrett walked exactly to the same spot at the cliff’s edge as Sybal had taken,’ Fenton thought pensively.  His eyes lingered on the spot where both sets of footprints terminated. 

A shimmer.

Fenton stared harder at the spot.  Had he seen something there?  The air blurring as though hot; shimmering.  He walked toward the small bramble of bushes that lined the cliff edge. 

‘A natural portal?’ he thought to himself.  ‘If it is a portal, where does it lead?’  Fenton squatted and picked up a small stone, then he walked over to the first set of footprints and place his feet in the same place, standing directly in front of the small group of overgrown grasses.  From where he stood, he could see nothing, only the open air and the sea stretching out below the cliff.  He tossed the stone straight ahead.  It sailed through he air and just as it seemed ready to obey the downward pull of gravity and begin its decent down toward the sea, it suddenly disappeared.  Fenton laughed out loud.

“A natural portal,” he said amusingly.  They were a rare phenomenon and Fenton was pleased he’d discovered the little secret that had brought Barrett and Sybal to the top of the escarpment.  The natural portal left an interesting dilemma however.  Sybal had obviously left before Barrett.  An hour or two later, Barrett followed, but he was rushed.  All signs pointed to the fact that Sybal’s departure had not been expected. 

“He went home,” Fenton thought in a calculating fashion.  “Homesick.”  His eyes narrowed like slits and he seemed somehow snakelike standing there before the natural portal’s shimmering air.  Natural portals worked one of two ways: they either always took you to a certain connected place in some other world, or, they took you to any place you could focus your mind on, given that there was a corresponding portal somewhere nearby in that other world. 

Toronto.

Fenton let his mind rest on the city name.  He tried to visualize that place by the river where he’d tracked them to nearly ten years ago.  It was difficult to recall all the details, but Fenton forced himself to concentrate.  For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, focusing his thoughts.  Then he finally took a slow, deliberate step forward.  Then a second step, followed by a nervous third.  If he was wrong in someway, he could be pitching himself over the cliff’s edge, killing himself on the rocks and sea below.  He stepped cautiously forward still until finally his left foot hung raised before him and the place where the escarpment met the sky.  Swallowing thickly he closed his eyes and leaned forward.

As had been the case for Barrett, Fenton’s stomach seized with a sickening feeling as it momentarily felt the downward pull of gravity and sent a quick message to Fenton’s brain - “YOU ARE GOING TO FALL!” – which in turn caused him to gasp and throw open his eyes.  For a dreadful second Fenton could see himself tipping forward and down into the sea.  And then the feeling was gone and the sea below him seemed to blur, the jarringly move to the left, then up, then forward.  The movement was so abrupt visually that Fenton thought he would spill the contents of his stomach.  Then it was over and he was standing in the middle of a forest, the rich smell of damp earth filling his nose. 

He laughed, then sat down quickly to gain his bearings and catch his breath.

Comments

[Glen Wright]

You have a very interesting and engaging style of writing. I'm finding this story to be very intriguing and look forward to seeing the conclusion. How many parts are remaining?
Glen