9
See part one for explanation and disclaimers. I don't own 'Dinotopia', James Gurney does. Hallmark still owns the characters and I'm still not profiting from this. Hope you're enjoying this. Still recommended for teens and up for action/violence and mild language.
Dinotopia was almost beautiful when viewed from places like this little cove, Gabriel Dane mused. Gull's Bay and its stretch of beaches were a few miles from the coastal city of Zuru and was surrounded on three sides by high cliffs and the forest. The waters were a dozen shades of blue and the waves were gentle here. The endless thunderstorm that marked the barrier razor reef was so far away from this beach that it was little more than clouds on the horizon. The bay lay at the very edge of the sunstone's protection, close enough to its boundaries that the roars and noises of predators could be heard and made the men and women gathered on the beach cringe, sometimes even jump. Their eyes watched the cliffs above nervously as if half-expecting to see a T-Rex appear at the top at any moment. The white-haired pack leader was the only one not looking over his shoulder for predators. "I won't miss you, you scalie bastards," was all he said, and this was mumbled under his breath.
The carnivores were the rub that prevented the island from ever truly being "beautiful" in Dane's eyes. This island was not about beauty. It was about surviving the dangers hidden within the beauty. It was about fighting. It was about pain. He had a daily reminder of the latter in the form of the mangled, gruesome remains of his right arm. The island and its forests and hills were littered with the bones of the dead and the scalie traps Gabriel had spent a lifetime building and putting to use. Like the rest of the outsiders, he had grown up endlessly wandering Dinotopia, killing its predators on good days, running for his life and watching his fellows be killed in turn by the predators on bad days. Very bad days. "Fellows", his pack, his followers and nothing more, for he dared not allow himself the weakness of friendship no matter how much loyalty was shown him. If he hadn't learned as much already, his stump of an arm would have been a daily reminder that such weaknesses were invariable fatal. He would not allow this place to kill him. It had tried. It had sent death in the form of snapping jaws and flapping wings and traitorous followers, and he had survived, sometimes screaming, sometimes by the skin of his teeth and the mercy of angels. He had been tempered and reborn stronger and wiser by the pain of his brushes with death, but he had survived.
He loathed the island, the scalies, the scalie-lovers, and the giant space rock that had fallen to earth and created Dinotopia. He greeted each day by cursing the place. He even hated the cove for its deceptive beauty.
Gabriel Dane was ready to leave.
He kept his eyes on the bay and the object he couldn't see from the shore but knew lay beneath its waters. The object that was his last hope of salvation from this wretched place…if he could just get to the damned thing.
"I'm going to one of them restaurants the off-worlder was going on about. I want to try one of those…what did Barrett call them?"
The name alone made Dane grimace, though imperceptibly to the man standing beside him. "Steaks," he supplied the word.
Robere nodded. "Yeah. Steaks. What do you suppose they taste like?"
Standing beside Robere, Miguel answered, "Got to taste better than these damn, overgrown lizards. Ice cream. That's what I want to try. And 'teley-vision'. And cars. I never want to walk again."
"What about you, Dane? What do you want to try?" Robere was trying, as always, to suck up to the pack leader, this time by trying to bring him into the inane conversation he was having with Miguel. Today, Gabriel tolerated it because the snively, dim-witted duo had brought him interesting news about his submarine, and because he had no choice but to wait until his guest arrived from Zuru.
"I wish to sleep," Dane was surprised at his own honesty. "To sleep and know the carnies not wake me up trying to make me their breakfast. I try anything…long as I try it any place but here." That brought a murmur of agreement from the group.
Robere paced a bit. "He should have been here by now."
"It's a long walk from Zuru. You give him time before you start twitching, Robere," Dane reprimanded his underling. "If I know Payden…"
"If you know Payden what?" The deep voice boomed before the figure emerged from the undergrowth that concealed the trail down the cliffs.
Dane grinned. "…he sneaking about waiting to pop out like a scalie and surprise us. My friend!" Gabriel greeted Payden Borale with a vigorous handshake and slap on the shoulder, a respect he offered few people on the island, but then, there were no others beside the dark-skinned man who had saved Dane's life over and over. Borale Dane trusted unconditionally. "I begin to wonder if you show."
"Never doubt, at least not me," Payden reassured him. Borale glanced at the waters. "I thought your message was a joke, but I see I was wrong. You really think Cyrus' boat is here?"
Gabriel corrected, "Not 'think'. Know. I know it. I feel it in my blood."
"I will be damned," Payden said simply.
"Ah, you cannot be damned if you already in hell, my friend. I wish you change your mind and go with us."
"My family's here. My place is here." Payden fell silent, pondering the bay and the boat that was Dane's Holy Grail that lay beneath the water. "And, I have my doubts that you're going anywhere. Even if you do get that boat off the sea floor, I hear you don't have a power source for it." Payden glanced at Robere, who shrank back a bit, indicating just who had supplied Borale with that bit of information.
Gabriel patted the nervous lackey on his shoulder. "Robere tell me, too, what Barrett steal. That boy---I know he special from the first day he wash up on the island. To see him embrace his larcenous, double-crossing nature…eh, it fill my heart with pride and joy. Like my own son, that boy." Dane beamed. "Last night, I receive a message from our traitor David."
"Let me guess: He wants to trade you the power source for a ride on the submarine that you can't get off the bottom of the bay?"
"We teach him well. Not just the power source. Our friend wish to offer his help, and the help of that black hearted Le Sage, recovering our beautiful treasure from the water."
"How? Is Le Sage going to turn the water to ice with her frosty stare and walk out to the boat?"
"Hah! That, perhaps, work better, but no. You hear the stories about David and his scalie friend?"
Payden was rarely surprised, however, this was one of those times. He knew that David had crossed Gabriel by saving a pterosaur, but the boy couldn't stare down the side of a cliff without nearly falling over for vertigo. Payden had not believed the rumors of him actually riding around on one of those flying scalies, not for a minute. "The stories are true?"
"They true. The scalie, I think, pull the boat up nicely."
"You trust them?"
"Unusual circumstances, they call for strange bedfellows."
Payden was skeptical. He knew his friend too well to think that Dane would let the open defiance Barrett had shown---defiance that had split up his pack---go unanswered. "'To forgive is divine'?"
Gabriel's mood was suddenly deadly serious. His remaining hand fingered the sleeve covering his ruined arm. "To forgive is to be weak. To use my traitors for my own purpose be wise, yes?" He held up his mangled appendage. "I promise Barrett a visit to my hunting pits to repay him for this. After he make good on his offer to raise our boat, I make good on my promise."
Payden nodded slightly. That sounded more like his old friend. "If Le Sage and David don't have the same thing in mind for you after you deliver the sub," he warned. "If they have the boat and the power source---"
"Then why they need me? This occur to me as well. I ask you here to perhaps offer me a solution before I meet them?"
"I thought that might be the case." Borale fell silent, considering their options. "You need leverage against Barrett. That won't be easy to find. Like you said, we taught him very well. He knows better than to allow himself loyalties that can be used against him."
"But, he still have them."
"And he's cleaning them up…fast. Robere here saw Barrett talking to Alano yesterday at the Scott Tavern. It was right after Barrett stole the sunstone from the scalie-lovers. Alano hasn't been seen since. You can be sure Barrett told him to lay low just to keep him out of our reach. And Le Sage hasn't poked her nose out of that palace of hers since David showed up there last night. What about the girl? The matriarch's daughter? The one he rescued from you on the beach?"
"She would keep our scalie-lover friends at bay, oui. But, it's no good. She too well guarded. Anyway, I think Barrett save her to spite me, not 'cause he want her. He not so foolish that he trade his way home for one pretty chere. If we take her and Barrett have no feelings for her, then we wasting our time."
"I guess that rules out using Le Sage," Payden concluded.
Gabriel answered before Payden finished the question. "She have her pack between us and her. Besides, I think, for a ride off the island, she and Barrett would toss each other into the hunting pits." He added, "But, once I have the boat, she might overlook it if David had an 'accident' at the pits…or she might not. With Doris, you cannot tell. She give you loving kiss with poison on her lips, that woman. No, we need someone who Barrett definitely protect for our leverage."
Robere, not daring to interrupt up to that point, finally spoke up. "I know."
"See? Robere agree."
"No, I know. I know a weakness of Barrett's…" Robere was mostly thinking aloud, growing more convinced as he turned over his idea in his mind. "…Yeah, in fact, it's a weakness I'll bet Barrett doesn't even know he has. And if I'm right, you grab this someone, not only will Barrett do whatever you tell him, the scalie-lovers will think twice about coming after you, too."
"You know for sure?" Gabriel demanded.
Robere grinned. "I know for sure."
"Who?" Payden asked.
Karl hadn't said a word to her since they'd been thrown out of Le Sage's castle. Granted, Marion wouldn't have heard a word he'd said with the wind roaring in her ears as Pterra carried them away from the fortress, but she could sense tension radiating from him and wondered about it. For her own part, she was disappointed. They had retrieved the Tohma Faiere, and she was grateful about that, but it wasn't good enough. They needed David's help if they were going to reverse its…'spell' she supposed was one word for it. Perhaps 'curse' was a better word. Yes, it was definitely that as well. The feeling of having had reality altered without being aware of what had changed or how the change affected her life was unsettling. She hadn't expected David to believe them, not at first. She'd hoped he would, yes, but hadn't expected it. Getting him to cooperate was going to be difficult enough, but it seemed they would have to remove him from the protection of Le Sage and her crew before they could even begin to convince him to help. That would be more than difficult, it would be almost impossible.
Almost impossible…but not entirely. The stone had glowed for Karl. She didn't know why—yet---but if there was any chance that the Tohma Faiere would work for Karl the way it did for David, then he could help them figure out what had been altered. At least, Karl could be trusted to tell them the truth and to cooperate in whatever had to be done to restore the timeline.
Or rather, Karl could help if she could snap him out of whatever was bothering him. By the clench of his jaw and the way he was avoiding her eyes, Marion knew Karl was feeling put out about something that had happened at the castle. Maybe it was the unanticipated contact with the faith stone. She'd find out soon enough.
She's find out sooner than she thought, as it turned out, because they didn't fly far. Karl guided Pterra to land atop the cliffs that overlooked Le Sage's hideaway. Then he jumped from Pterra, turned his back to Marion, and began scouting for a vantage point among the rocks and trees. Marion had expected that they would return to Waterfall City. They would need reinforcements if they were forced to take David to the temple against his will. She hoped it wouldn't come to that. Forcing anyone to act against their wishes was not a course of action the Dinotopians took lightly.
"What are we doing?" she asked.
Karl fixed his gaze on the castle below, still refusing to face her as he crouched behind the boulders. "We need Barrett to give us back the sunstone medallion and tell us how he screwed up reality with your faith stone, right? I'm setting up a stakeout. Soon as he sticks his nose out of that palace of Le Sage's, I'll grab him."
"We have to talk about what happened back there," she began.
"Nothing happened---well, 'cept for that horror show in Le Sage's room."
"I saw the Tohma Faiere glow for you, Karl."
He still wasn't looking at her, but she didn't miss the way he tensed at the question before he squared his shoulders and lapsed back into stony silence. His attitude baffled her---Karl always told her everything. Now was a strange time for him to stop. But, if he was going to be stubborn…well, she could be stubborn, too. This was too important. Marion collected her patience. Better find out what's bothering him right now and resolve it. "What did you see when you touched it?" she pressed.
"I won't go to the Dawn Festival with you, Karl. I'm sorry."
He was acting like a jerk, and he knew it, but he couldn't bring himself to even think of telling Marion what he'd seen when he'd touched the faith stone. The humiliation Karl had felt in the vision---or dream or hallucination---produced by the Tohma Faiere burned as hot as if Marion had really rejected him...that is, really in this timeline. He didn't know what the images meant. Were they the 'reality', the 'real' timeline, like Noree and Marion said? Karl didn't see how that was possible. In that vision, he hadn't been in a skybax rider's uniform. He hadn't even known what a Dawn Festival was. How was that possible? Was Karl, 'real' Karl, a freaking idiot in the other timeline?
And Marion had said 'no'. Karl had asked her to the Dawn Festival and Marion had said 'no'. What if it wasn't a vision of the 'real' timeline---what if it was the Tohma Faiere creating a dream? A dream to warn Karl that he was going to get burned if he was dumb enough to ask Marion to the festival?
"…because if the Tohma Faiere glowed for you, it's possible you were there when our reality was changed…" Marion's words finally sank in.
Karl whirled now, adamant, "I don't care if it lit up like Fourth of July or the sunstone towers, there's no way I did anything with that rock in any reality. I couldn't have been there when the Tohma Faiere did anything because I didn't have the damn thing. You're friend Barrett did."
"'My friend'?" she echoed. Comprehension filled her eyes and Karl instantly realized he'd let too much slip. "Karl, are you upset because David kissed me? You know he that was his way of goading you and distracting me from the medallion and the Tohma Faiere until those guards arrived." Surely, Karl didn't think that kiss was anything more than David trying to upset them?
"You looked distracted---and when did you two get on a first-name basis?"
Marion had the urge to scream for frustration. Karl could be such a---what was Jack's off-worlder expression? 'Mondo-doofus'?
It was true, Marion had been a bit taken aback when she'd seen…but she hadn't expected to find Barrett with Le Sage, not like that, when she'd barged into the castle. She simply didn't understand that particular outsider. He was very nearly as unpredictable as…well, as Karl. One minute he was stealing Marion's sunstone, the next minute he was returning the Tohma Faiere to her. He called the saurian populace "scalies" and made known his disdain for the island and its 'scalie-lovers', but he rescued Marion from Gabriel Dane and, from the sounds of it, saved a pterosaur from Dane's hunting pits. If Marion had been rendered speechless for a minute, it was only because she'd been caught off-guard, just like she'd been caught by surprise when David had robbed the temple. Somehow, after he'd saved her life, and the fact that a wild pterosaur would accept him as a rider, and after seeing such---kindness---in his eyes, she had expected more from the off-worlder than to find him stealing and…and…cavorting, and with Doris Le Sage of all people! Marion didn't often misjudge people so badly. She didn't know how anyone could have such kind eyes and the ability to form a telepathic connection to a pterosaur, and yet behave so reprehensibly…
By contrast, there was Karl Scott. Yes, he could get stubborn, but his…determination… was one of the reasons that Marion loved Karl. The problem was that his determination became inconvenient when it turned to bull-headedness, like it had now. Hadn't she made her feelings for him plain by now? She had been in love with him from the day she found him and Jack in that small coastal village. She had told Karl she loved him the day that he and Jack and Cyrus set out in that submarine. She loved that Karl could alternate between being the dutiful skybax rider and the unpredictable off-worlder. He could be rescuing people from rampaging T-Rex one minute and in the next minute do the most outlandish, un-Dinotopian things (in a good way)---like teaching Flippeau to play ping-pong and talking Marion into moonlight skinny dipping in the lakes and figuring out how to use sunstones to power broken radios.
At the same time, she also loved that, in spite of Frank and Jack's resistance and longing to return to off-world, Karl had made a home and a place for himself there on Dinotopia. He understood the responsibilities that Marion would be taking on when she became matriarch and had shown his capacity to take on such leadership responsibilities when he'd joined the skybax riders and helped save her people time and time again. She was certain Karl was planning to ask her to the Dawn Festival (it didn't hurt that Jack, never one to be able to sit on a secret, had all but blurted out that bit of information to Marion). It would be a good match, and Marion would say 'yes'.
So why was Karl in any way jealous of the outsider and his nonsense?
"Karl." Marion took his face in her hands, gently forcing him to look her in the eyes. "It. Didn't. Mean. Anything. Do you trust me?"
Crap. Karl hated that question. He was the first to admit that he had insecurities where Marion was concerned, but it wasn't that he didn't trust her. If Marion said nothing was going on between her and David, Karl bel—okay, he wanted to believe her, but his insecurities still got the better of him. He was sure that Marion believed that kiss hadn't meant anything----she was Dinotopian, and that made her naïve about some things. She was barely used to the rotten things that outsiders were capable of. She hadn't even gotten a taste of the things off-worlders could do…the bad things. Karl knew Barrett had rescued Marion from that Dane character, and—grudgingly---Karl even appreciated that one-time act of decency from the guy. Up until now, Karl had thought Marion stuck up for the creep out of gratitude for his saving her life. But, Barrett kissing Marion, and Marion's getting way too bent out of shape seeing Barrett with Le Sage…it had worried Karl. Was there something more going on between Marion and Barrett that she wasn't telling him?
He knew Marion was right---Barrett probably was just trying to piss off Karl by kissing his girlfriend. Maybe it was god that Marion had seen Le Sage and Barrett together. Better that she find out now what kind of loser she kept sticking up for and give up any idea that there was a decent guy buried in that smug pain-in-the-butt. Maybe then she'd listen to Karl and lock Barrett up somewhere or let him go back to whatever sick and twisted relationship he had with the outsider queen, or better still let one of the outsiders drop him down a deep hole somewhere. David Barrett couldn't be out of both their lives fast enough to suit Karl.
Marion was waiting for an answer, and Karl gave the only answer that wouldn't get him in deeper with her: "Trust you? Yes." He had to add, "Barrett? No way." He laid his hands over her own and squeezed, forcing a smile he didn't feel.
She returned the smile, hoping that they'd resolved the issue of David Barrett and that kiss.
Karl started turning over the problem of the Tohma Faiere in his mind. "How could that stone glow for me? I mean, you said the faith stone was a 'one customer at a time' deal, right? So I couldn't have used it if David Barrett used it first, could I?"
Marion sat down beside him in the grass. "I can't explain it either. Somehow, you—the you in the other timeline---must have been there when Barrett used the faith stone."
"Makes sense. I was probably trying to arrest him," Karl smirked a bit.
"This may work to our advantage. You can activate the Tohma Faiere, you may be able to use it to see what David altered with it."
Karl shook his head. "I'm not touching that thing again!"
"Karl, please, it's better that it's you. I can trust you to tell me the truth about what you see," Marion reasoned.
Guilt bit at him, but he still couldn't force himself to tell her what he'd seen in his vision. "I saw---a riverbank, and some trees, and a waterfall. Nothing about changing reality."
Marion was disappointed. "That's a start. Noree knows the incantations. When we go back to the Sanctuary and she can guide you---"
Sudden activity in the castle below distracted Karl. He turned his full attention to the palace, watching as a dark figure climbed onto the albino pterosaur. "That's going to have wait. Barrett's on the move. Let's go." He said a prayer of thanks for the diversion.
Marion followed his gaze to the rider and dinosaur below. As she watched, the pterosaur leveled its head at David and gave a shriek of warning that was audible even at this distance. The noise startled some birds right out of the nearby trees. Marion knew that cry. She reached out to catch Karl's shoulder as he passed her. "Karl, wait."
"What?" he asked, impatient to be going.
"Listen. Something's not right." She pointed to the albino, which was bobbing its head in agitation. The dinosaur let out another wail and Pterra bellowed in empathy.
"Pterra! Shush! We're undercover here!" Karl patted his mount. He watched the scene below, listening to the tone of the albino's keening. He caught Marion's meaning. "I've never seen a skybax greet its rider like that. How about you?"
She smiled. "Never."