.

.

.

Two Narrow Escapes

.

Long after sunrise there came into Jake's sleeping mind a sensation which, had he put it into words, would have sung, "Be glad thou sleeper and thy sorrow offcast. I am the gate to all good adventure." And after he had wakened and found himself lying in pleasant languor with morning sunlight falling across his bed, the mood continued. "Bronze must be coming soon so that I can send him off," he thought. Sometime after this his mother came in and lit the fire and brought the breakfast. Jake wonced as he sat up. A crick had developed in his neck and back.

After finishing his eggs Jake heard the doorbell ring. His mother opened it, finding both Bronze and Cypress standing on the large doormat. Cypress was wearing a bowler hat and had a dapper cane in his right hand. Neither he or Bronze were smiling; they looked positively morbid. This undefinable difference in their behavior alarmed Jake. "Well, come in," he said. "But what's with the faces? Who died?"

"It's ever so nice us both being here, isn't it, Mrs. Albans?" said Cypress, and somehow the tone seemed to imply a closer relation than Jake had envisaged between them. But he was too lazy to wonder much about it.

"Thank you for letting us in, Mrs. Albans," said Bronze, cordially. "We're not expecting to do any work today. Jake, come and sit on the other side of the fire and talk to us. This is Cypress, who has no right to be here, but he'd better be present."

"If Cypress is here, why aren't your folks, Bronze?" Mrs. Albans asked. "They usually come over for these occasions."

"I can't give you their location right now, I'm afraid," Cypress said.

"Do you mean you don't know it?"

"I can't give it. Mrs. Albans, without disrespect, but Bronze would rather tell Jake something in private."

"Oh, all right," said Mrs. Albans. "I don't understand but it must be one of your scientific things again."

She left to her bedroom all sore. "Where are your parents, anyway?" Jake asked.

"If you have any regard for your safety then you will not ask me to tell you where they have gone," said Bronze.

"Safety?"

"Safety," said Cypress with great sternness.

"Safety from what?"

"Don't you know what has happened?"

"What's happened?"

"Last night, during the riot, they were taken by some men claiming to be Association Police," said Cypress. "We found bullet casings at the house. Bronze's parents are now in the custody of a hostile party. We believed that they were tortured."

"Tortured? What do you mean?"

"Burned with cigarettes," said Bronze. "We found traces of the things in the living room. Now you learn of this outrage."

"Then what had been done about it? Haven't you gone to the police?"

"The men that took them?"

"No, the real police."

"Do you really not know that there are no ordinary police left in Roria?" whispered Cypress. "There are not even some magistrates. You seem to misunderstand. The men who can pull something like this off can do anything they want, most likely. This is a conquered city, even if the people aren't standing for it."

"Look here," Jake said. "You don't…it's too fantastic! You don't imagine you can't do anything about it! You don't really believe that the Association would send police to manhandle Bronze's parents!" He had begun on the note of indignation, but ended by trying to insinuate a little jocularity. If only Bronze would give even the ghost of a smile: anything to move the conversation onto a different level. But Bronze said nothing and his face did not relax. He had not, in fact, been perfectly sure that Jake might not have sunk even to this ignorance assumption, but out of charity he did not wish to say so.

"I know you've always disliked my opinions," said Jake. "But I didn't know it was quite as bad as this!" And again Bronze was silent, but for a reason Jake could not guess. The truth was that his shaft had gone home. Bronze's conscience had for years accused him of a lack of charity towards Jake and he had struggled to amend it: he was struggling now.

"Not the Association," Cypress guessed. "Something worse, but don't expect me to know. The battle has started, Jake, and we are offering you the chance to join the right side. I don't know who will win. But you must do it at once! This is a question of damnation or last chance."

"But what does this have to do with me?" said Jake.

"If I leave," said Bronze, "which I must, these men will return. No doubt they wish to learn something from my parents. There was no ransom demand. However they might resist interrogation, there are techniques that no one can withstand. They will fold once their captors threaten my life. And if I am gone, then they will take you to deal with, and very slowly. Do not tremble! You should have known what you were getting into once I told you about the Plan. The only way you can be safe, or safe-ish, is to come with us."

"Then where are you leaving?" said Jake.

"I intend to set out on the Gym Challenge," said Bronze. "If I must leave, then why not keep the Plan alive? But first I will make for Cheshma Town to meet an acquaintance of Cypress. She has something I need. And you are going to come along with me. Cypress will remain here, of course, doing his work and helping us in whatever ways he can. We cannot just vanish. I know a way to get out of the town without it being generally known, but we must not delay too long."

"Where will we go, exactly?" said Jake. "When shall we return? As far as I can see the nearest Gym is in Silvent City a hundred miles north."

"But you cannot see very far," said Cypress. "Neither can I. It may be your task to win in the League, for whatever designs Bronze has, but that quest may be for others: I do not know. At any rate you are not ready for that long road yet."

"No indeed!" said Jake. "But in the meantime what course are we to take?"

"Towards the Gyms; but not too rashly, nor too straight," answered Bronze. "After Silvent, if we find it clear of spies and foes, we will make for Brimber City. That journey should not prove too perilous, though the Road is less easy than it was, and it will grow worse as the year goes on."

"Bronze," said Cypress, "you are now a Pokedex Holder, and have certain responsibilities. But this turn in events is troubling and I will give you more autonomy to govern your own affairs in the name of your safety. The Chairman will understand. No, neither you nor Jake may remain here. I will find a place for Mrs. Albans to stay. But I have one question: what do you think your parents were wanted for? Did they uncover something desirable? Do you know what and where they are?"

"I can only hope that you have no power in doing anything with the answer," said Bronze. "If you have no power, then you cannot protect the secret. If you have, then you are identified with its policy and will become a target. In neither case will I tell you."

"A shame," said Cypress, and he stood to leave. "Another curiosity for me to dwell on. I will keep in contact with you, Bronze, through the Pokedex. Be careful and don't go looking for the men that were responsible for this. That will get you killed and then I will have failed to keep you safe."

Cypress took his coat and left. "Now that he's gone, I can tell you what I really think," said Bronze. "He's a loyal fellow, but the fewer ears we have listening, the better. I have something; I won't tell you what it is. But the enemy cannot get it. That's clear. So you are going to come with me. Staying is too dangerous for you and your mother. Whatever I do is my own business and you will not interfere. This, and to never desert me save upon my biding are my only commands."

"Am I a leper or a criminal who cannot be trusted with the secret?" said Jake.

"If you are captured, it would be better for you not to know," said Bronze. "I do not know who is responsible. Perhaps it is the Association; that I doubt. But we cannot go to them for safety. That safety would be hard bought. I have a feeling that this will be revealed in time. When I find out who, I'll raise hell and break them, even if it means breaking the whole government. Are you with me?"

Jake shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

"Jake," said Bronze. "This is not a time for foolery, or compliments. It may be that both of us are within a few days of death. You have probably been shadowed into the house. And I, at any rate, don't propose to die with polite insincerities in my mouth. I don't trust you. Why should I? You certainly won't hold up under torture, (at least in some degree) not against the diabolical devices belonging to some of the worst men in the world. Me coming to you was very dangerous. I am now marked for death and danger. We have protection in this town, protection from friends and good Rorian's, but that will not last forever."

"Don't you know me better than this?"

"Stop talking nonsense!" said Bronze. "Stop posturing and acting, if only for a minute. Who are you to talk like that? I'll bet our enemies have corrupted better men than you or me before now. Everyone was a good man once. Think! Cyrus was at least a great genius. Even Ghetsis (yes, yes, I know he is in jail) was at least a plain murderer: something better than the dark forces have now made of him. Who are you to be exempt, if they get their hands on you? Nevertheless, knowing all this, knowing that you might be walking into a trap, I will take a risk. I will risk things compared with which both our lives are a triviality. If you seriously wish to leave this town and follow me, I will protect you. We're going into action at last. I'm sorry to send you out into the field, but the battle has started."

"I need time to think it over!"

"There is no time. We have a day at most before they return, this time with an army." Bronze did not really think so, but Jake needed incentive.

"Fine!" cried Jake. "I'll go." His head had begun to ache. Damn the whole thing. Damn, damn! Why had he such a rotten heredity? Why had his education been so ineffective? Why was the system of society so irrational? Why was his luck so bad?

"Good," said Bronze. "You best get packing. We'll meet in two hours at the Old Bridge. Cypress will be there to explain everything to your mother. Better him than me; I think she fancies him."

...

Bronze walked out to the Old Bride dissatisfied with himself, haunted with the suspicion that if he had been wiser, or more perfectly in charity with this very miserable young man, he might have done something for him. "Did I give way to my temper? Was I self-righteous? Did I tell him as much as I dared?" he thought. Then came the deeper self-distrust that was habitual with him. "Did you fail to make things clear because you really wanted not to? Just wanted to hurt and humiliate? To enjoy your own self-righteousness? Is there a whole Association inside you too?" The sadness that came over him had novelty in it. "And thus," he quoted from his father, "thus I shall always do, whenever You leave me to myself."

Once clear of the town, he moved slowly and cautiously, almost sauntering on his feet. The sky was golden but the moon was still out. Far away northward, below him in a valley, he saw the lights already lit in Cheshma. "Thank Heaven it at any rate is far enough from Mitis to be safe for now," he thought. The sudden whiteness of a Swanna flying low fluttered across the wood on his left. It gave him a delicious feeling of approaching noon. Still, he was very troublingly tired; he looked forward to an agreeable rest of the day and an early bed, though he knew he would find neither.

He was terribly afraid. Bronze knew that he was the last of Logaria, that he carried its future in his body. All that could be done was for him to run, showing his hand at some later date. It was the moment when danger had come. Bronze did not know the faces of his enemies, whatever banners they marched under or evil words that they spoke. How would they extract the information from Lily and Robert that he had the Bronze Brick? Some kind of hypnotism probably covered most of it. He was afraid, afraid because these enemies would try their tricks.

Were his parents abandoned to torture and death? Perhaps. Though it would be desirous, he knew that it was likely that he would never see them again in this life. Or if he did, they would be wholly changed and twisted. All answers could be produced from Lily and Robert by a number of injections, and then they would be hunting for Bronze and his parents would have expended their use. Again Bronze felt a spasm of retrospective terror. Only a day ago he would have swallowed any hook with that bait on it, if the same kidnappers had come for him promising the life of his parents in exchange for the Brick, and nothing but the imminence of death and the hounds behind him could have made the hook so obvious and the bait so insipid as it now was. At least, so comparatively insipid. For even now his purposes would remain unchanged, and the Plan would go on.

He realized that he was standing idle. Going on eventually he came to the Old Bridge that crossed the Lightbright Stream. He heard no other sound than the water swirling around its three great arches. Standing beside the entrance he saw something glint near his foot. Bending over he picked up something very strange. It was a beryl, a Rorian-stone.

How came it there? Was it some sign that it was safe to pass the bridge? Certainly he would not keep to the main road, without some clearer token. Beyond the bridge was a somber forested country of dark trees winding among the feet of sullen hills. In any case Bronze resolved to keep waiting for Jake.

What supplies he had: twenty Poke Balls. Medicine. Rope. Ten thousand dollars in money. A Charmander. Military rations from the days of his father's service. Baradye dart gun. Emergency repkit. Night-vision goggles. Pokedex. There were only clothes left after that. Bronze cursed when he realized he had forgotten a good knife. He felt unprepared in his madness of haste.

Soon Jake and Cypress came to the bridge, driving in one of Cypress's obsolete petroleum-fueled model cars. "You are in danger, Jake," Cypress said once his passenger had left, "but you are also in the reach of great opportunity. Go with Bronze as far as you will. If anyone asks you what you are doing, say you are traveling for the League. Do not journey at night!"

"I gather," said Bronze, "that you will go to the Association mentioning this crime and not a police station."

"That is correct, though it makes no difference in the danger. If our enemies are in the government, they have the official power of liquidation. It has anticipated them. You and Jake will both be liquidated if they catch you. Such actions we are taking now are demanded of us. You better be praying to Arceus, Bronze. He's the only thing that can help you now."

"I'll tell you once we're out of Cheshma," said Bronze. "And as for Arceus, He helps those that help themselves."

Bronze and Jake were glad to cross the bridge in safety. Cypress dithered behind as their rearguard. Once they were over the Lightbright they heard tires coursing through gravel on the other side. Sunlight was glinting on a long black car. The arrivals stopped before Cypress, who was standing in the middle of the road. Out poured from the black car, flowing like liquid melancholy, suited men in pairs, advancing in formation toward the bridge. They were talking to Cypress and inspecting his car. A few were making for the bridge with chandler blasters in their gloved hands.

Run! Run now! Bronze and Jake crouched low and hid in a bushwhack of heather. They still could see Cypress, nodding his hat-rimmed head and coming to some agreement with the enemy. Then suddenly shouts and cries: Cypress was running and fighting with a Serperior at his command, taking his enemies by surprise. Trees were coming down and soil was flying through the air. Bronze knew that this was their distraction. Already the foes stationed on the bridge were running back to the onset.

Bronze and Jake sprinted along the path. The last thing they saw of Cypress was him standing upright, his hat gone, looking like the very angel of doom as he fought with a blaster in his hand and a Serperior by his side. The two boys plunged into the margin of a green and wild world, and never again did they see Jonathan Rowell Cypress a wholesome man.

...

This new country seemed threatening and unfriendly. As they ran forward the hills about them steadily rose. Here and there upon heights and ridges they caught glimpses of ancient walls of stone, and the ruins of towers: they had an ominous look. Whenever they rested the two had time to gaze ahead and to think. Jake recalled accounts of his earlier journey's down that outbound road and the threatening towers on the hills north of the path, in the country near Cheshma. They were not always visible driving down the main path, but in the leafless depths of winter, at the height of August, the grim sentinels could be clearly seen.

"That was perfectly brave of Cypress," said Jake. "Do you ever think we'll see him again?"

"I don't know," answered Bronze. "He is harder to kill than me or you, anyway. But once he falls our enemies will be in pursuit again. They are not far behind and we must be swift."

"Cheery. Who once lived in this land?" Jake asked. "And who built those odd towers? Was it Pokemon?"

"No!" said Bronze. "Pokemon do not build such things. No one who built them now lives in this land. Logarians once dwelt here, ages ago; but none remain now. Nearly none, by any right. They became an evil people, as legends tell, for they fell under the shadow of the Evil Djinn. But all of the wicked kind were destroyed in the tumults and floods from Arceus that brought the Empire to an end. But that is now so long ago that the hills have forgotten them, though a shadow still lies on the land."

"Where do you hear those stories?" Jake asked. "You wouldn't find them in the books the library."

"My family does not forget many things, being the heirs of the Logarians," said Bronze. "Many more things than I can tell my father remembers, and they were told to him by his father, and his father, back into the ancient days."

The hills now began to shut them in. The Road behind held on its way to the River Lightbright, but both were now hidden from view. The travelers came into a long valley; narrow, deeply cloven, dark and silent. Trees with old and twisted roots hung over cliffs, and piled up behind into mounting slopes of pine-wood. They were descending through the dale to Cheshma.

Advancing swiftly they came to the city gates, before which was a grassy place where the trees had been cleared away. There was an old brick-and-mortar wall that stretched from the banks of the Lightbright three hundred feet away on the left and to the rolling hills five hundred feet on the right. They came to the gate and found it shut, but at the door of the lodge beyond it there was a Weavile sitting. It jumped up, fetched a little plastic card, and looked over the gate at them in surprise.

The card read: "What do you want and where do you come from?"

"We are making for the inn here," answered Bronze. "We are journeying north and cannot go further today."

The Weavile chittered softly, as if speaking to itself. It stared at them darkly for a moment, and then slowly opened the gate and let them walk through. Above them were several brick arches going from upraised pillar to upraised pillar after the gate that cast lines of shadow on the concrete. Sitting on a bench by the gate was a gruff old man. "We don't often see boys on foot going through the southern road," he went on, as they halted a moment by him. "You'll pardon my wondering what business takes you away north of Cheshma! What may your names be, might I ask?"

"Our names and our business are our own, and this does not seem a good place to discuss them," said Bronze, not liking the look of the man or the tone of his voice.

"Your business is your own, no doubt," said the man; "but it's my business to ask questions."

"We are two friends from Mitis, and we have a fancy to travel and to stay at the inn here," put in Jake. "I am Mr. Frost. Is that enough for you? The citizens of Cheshma used to be fair-spoken to travelers, or so I had heard."

"All right, all right!" said the man. "I meant no offense. But you'll find maybe that more folk than old James at the gate will be asking you questions. There's queer folk about. If you go on in town you'll find that you aren't the only strange fellows that are staying here."

He wished them good day, and said no more; but Bronze could see behind them that the man was still eyeing them curiously. He was glad to hear the gate clang to behind them, as they went forward. He wondered why the man was so suspicious, and whether anyone had been asking for news of a duo of boys. Could it have been Cypress? He might have already escaped or had been planning ahead. He was now delayed, of course. But there was something in the look and the voice of the gatekeeper that made him uneasy.

Bronze and Jake went up a gentle slope, passing a few detached houses, and drew up inside the town square. The ground was paved with bricks and in the middle was a gurgling fountain shaped like a Squirtle. The houses looked large and strange to them. Jake stared up at the inn with its three storeys and many windows, and felt his heart sink. He pictured unfriendly Pokemon standing all brooding in the shadows of the inn-yard, and enemy operatives peering out of dark upper windows. "Go and get a room for us," Bronze said. "I have business elsewhere. Don't worry! I'll tell you about it when I return." He turned away and went down into a quarter of the city covered in shadow.

...

Bronze left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, following the directions Cypress had given him, where he had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.

"If I had control over things I'd clean this up," Bronze thought. "I'd make bad people pay for ruining this town. Yes, that's right. They'd get what they deserve."

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and other curiosities, precious or otherwise, were bought. A sign above the entrance said Vander and Co. Antiquities Shop. Buy or sell. Bronze opened a worn screen door that creaked geriatrically on its shaking hinges. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchers of bones.

Sitting in among the wares she dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a female rascal, nearly thirty years of age; who had screened herself from the sunlight without, by a frowsy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked a cigar in the luxury of calm retirement. While Bronze did this, the woman cast a bundle of something off a desk and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the new arrival.

"What odds, then!" she said. "What odds! A lad has come to my fine establishment. Don't mind the bones. They're no fouler than mine. Ha! Ha! But every person has the right to sell to me, or buy. What is it for you?"

"I have an item I would like you to examine," said Bronze. "I will pay you handsomely for speed and secrecy."

"Why then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, boy;" said the woman. "Call me Linda. Let me see it! I won't tell anyone who's the wiser. We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose. I'll take a thousand, whatever it is."

"Very well, then," said Bronze. "That is as much which can be paid." He withdrew the Brick from his travel-pack and showed it for appraisal.

"Not a very extensive token," said Linda. She procured a magnifying glass from a drawer. The Brick was then summarily examined and an account was given to Bronze. "Heh! This one will get you in trouble if it slips away. Not really any standard weight on this. It fluctuates. The limp-dick highbrows call it morphological metallic bonding or whatever. Magic, maybe. That would be valuable. And the age! Not Logarian; it's even older." She looked at him with a bright light in her eyes.

"Boy, who was in the country before the Association came?"

"The Wild Men," said Bronze. "They're our ancestors. You know that they were a brave race. They lived by the rules of the forest and the hills. They feared Arceus, at least some of them. The others honored the stars and dark gods instead. I know that they ran and fought below the huge night moons. I know that they sacrificed virgins to the Mbelekoro, before the Association made them stop."

"You're a cogent one," said Linda. "Who was before the Wild Men?"

"The Wild Men were always there. But there were also Logarians, I suppose, who are now long gone. Yet even before the Logarians sailed south and made their kingdom the Wild Men were already in the lands they conquered. Before the Wild Men, before the Atantari, the Fathers of Men, there was nothing save the Pokemon. No footfall was yet upon stone or leaf." A vision came to Bronze. Suddenly he saw a sun, far younger than the sun that was shining outside, and two children, sons of Adam and Eve, peeking out of the Wood of Awakening to see the First Sunrise in wonder.

"This is older than the Pokemon, I'll reckon," said Linda. "Millions and millions of years, heaped like coal. Can you feel the groan of the eons? It would drive lesser men mad. The Brick in your hand there is too old. It needs to be buried. Cast it into the sea to lie forever! It is something that you found, or your father and mother found, but they did not make it."

"I have thought about throwing it away," said Bronze. He felt like he was being drawn into something. "But I don't think it can be cast aside so easily. And what would the sea help? The lands and rivers do not remain fast. It would be found again."

"Charmed," said Linda. "Care for tea?"

"No, thank you," said Bronze. "This is a fearful place. But you have taught me much. I didn't know how old the Brick was, or at least the material. I will pay you now."

"There is no need for that," said Linda.

"You do not request payment?" asked Bronze.

...

Suddenly he felt a great push in his head and in agony he fell to the drear floor. He saw a great red vision, stretching for hundreds of leagues. There were steps before him, the steps of feet like giant's feet, sounds given form. He saw Linda above him, hanging back, circling. The image condensed and with one terrible movement Linda seized the precious Brick from where it lay. Bronze felt that he was falling forever like a row of dominoes, repeating ad infinitum toward unknown expanses of inconceivable length. He was burning in anger, so frustrated and impotent to act.

"You're between the enemy and the hound," Linda said. Her voice sounded like a non-person, like human debris.

And as Bronze thought it, sharp canine teeth caught at the light, pulling at his eyes until they moved along their allotted paths and began to tumble wildy in their sockets, to where a huge grey animal, like a dog but far larger, growled and drooled, and stood over him, an animal with flaming eyes and white fangs and huge paws. The Mightyena panted and stared at Bronze.

A pale light was rising up to Bronze's head. He glanced again toward Linda. Her steady hand was pointed to the Brick. He was horribly careless; such a simple bite across his spinal column had rendered him paralyzed. If only he could move! He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the cold feeling than dismiss the Mightyena at his side.

"A rich reward," said the half-woman Linda. "I heard the masters were looking for something old. Worth a try. Mightyena, stay and guard him. Meet me at Gale Forest at sundown."

Cold and rigid, Bronze lay still as Linda walked away. The door shut behind her. Boom. He was alive but the Bronze Brick was already in the hands of the Enemy.

Damn his stupidity! Did he not say that spies were everywhere? He had been acting under the conception that all of Cypress's associates were scrupulous. Even Cypress might have been fooled. He had been sent here on his recommendation of a skilled examiner of antiques in Cheshma and had been double-crossed. There was no conceivable way of escape and that made him so furious that the coldness began to fall away. He felt wrath rise in an overwhelming wave and his blood turn to fire. Was he dead? The bite could have broken his spine. And what would he do against a Pokemon? There was no time for that wondering. He had to stand.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honored head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is too burdened and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

No voice pronounced these words in Bronze's ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the roof. He thought, if a dead could be raised up now, what would be his own ability? What should he worry about? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? He lay in that dark empty house, wishing he had the power to rise.

"Let me leave," he thought. "Arceus, let me leave! I will not depart from its lesson, surely. I beseech you!"

There was no answer save for that, with the strength that dying men have to contort steel and shatter bones, he was rising from the ground. He was still weak and standing fully upright seemed like an unimaginable tumble of distances that he dreaded to comprehend. But slowly he stood. The Mightyena snarled, but he howled a challenge. Monster or no monster, he needed to run.

With his blood warm again and the aching ebbing he now was whole again. He had a moment to move unhindered, for the Pokemon was just as confused as he. Bronze pushed past the beast. It was like every dream of running you have ever had: scared and frantic moving through space, pursued by the unknowns competing for your death. He had quite forgotten Charmander's Poke Ball: it was Linda's mistake in her fear and speed to forget to disarm him of it. Not indeed that it mattered to him much.

He ran harder, though Bronze had no idea how the paralysis was actually inhibiting his ability to move. He had perhaps progressed ten feet from where he had fallen to the screen door in an odd sort of flailing dance. The Mightyena was still surprised but eventually got some wit about it and started forward.

The beast was closing in. There was a defense that Bronze conceived of, entirely irrationally; that he should fight the great Pokemon himself. Strangely, at this thought his pride stirred. No doubt he was meant to go ahead with it and get himself killed, according to the Enemy's reckoning at any rate. But first he saw something glint on a desk about a foot away. It was half-covered by tattered newspaper wrappings that had been used for fire-fuel. He lurched to it and grabbed hard (fortunately by the hilt) a knife.

It had a curved blade, in the manner of the ancient daggers of Logaria. It had a yellowish hilt with traceries of running Rapidash, forged from a kind of alchemical brass, devised by the master scientists of the South long ago: to be a metal untouched and undimmed by time.. Bronze did not notice these details at the time. He was facing the Mightyena eye to eye now and had only a knife for protection. Bronze Tercano went slowly to meet the enemy. Then in delirium he gave a cry and ran forward, shocking the monster, and brought the blade down again and again on its snout.

For those who know some biology, you will also know that it is quite impossible to harm any Pokemon with a knife. By all rights the fine steel should have broken at the first strike and Bronze would have been mauled and perhaps eaten. That consideration is what made the following event so extraordinary. Unlike the manner of ordinary metals, the blows were making little bloody gashes over the Pokemon's face. The wounds were not very deep, but the Mightyena howled. Not ever before had any human foe endured its eyes and fangs, nor set metal to its hide. Those glowing hunter's eyes that Bronze had thought so fearsome were now daunted and repelled.

The pain and shame were too much. Yipping like a street dog the great Mightyena, hound of darkness, stronger than the huge hunting beasts, turned and ran, knocking aside refuse and cutter in a rude tramp toward the dark back of the building. Bronze had regained some sanity by then and knew not to follow it. He turned toward the door and left that accursed house, reeling into the dirty street.

So it was that Bronze found and wielded the Dagger of Old Logaria, the Blade of Southernesse, by which many a deed of valor has been done. Spells of power had been wrought in its metal long ago by the Logarian smith that forged it slowly in the South-kingdom, spells for the bane of evil Pokemon. No other weapon seized in Bronze's madness could have dealt his beastly foe an attack so bitter, and cleaved the foul flesh that clad the vitals of the Mightyena. Glad would Bronze's ancestors have been to know that the dagger had found a new bearer among the Men of the South at last.

...

When Bronze had fled to the city square and hurried down the path that a marker said led to Gale Forest, Jake was waiting in the inn's first floor and did not see him. The entirety of Bronze's lower back was numb and he was not running naturally; he looked like he had a bad limp and seemed to be struggling to escape from it. He would have cared to know where exactly the thief was in the wide wood, but he would have burned it all down to lure her out.

He had never till now been at close quarters with death until the Mightyena's bite. Now, glancing down at his hand (because his hands were cold and he had been automatically rubbing them), it came to him as a totally new idea that this very hand, with its five nails and the dirt-stain on the inside of the second finger, would one day be the hand of a corpse, and later the hand of a skeleton. He did not exactly feel horror, though on the physical level he was aware of a choking sensation; what made his brain reel was the preposterousness of the idea. This was something incredible, yet at the same time quite certain.

What a fool, a blasted, babyish, gullible fool, he had been! His legs felt weak, as if he had walked twenty-five miles. Why had he come to Linda in the first instance? Ought not his very first interview with Cypress to have warned him, as clearly as if the truth were shouted through a megaphone or printed on a poster in letters six feet high, that here was the world of plot within plot, crossing and double-crossing, of lies and graft and stabbing in the back, of murder and a contemptuous guffaw for the fool who lost the game?

Cypress...that was how he had come to find Linda: on Cypress's recommendation. Apparently his folly went further back. How on earth had he come to trust Cypress, a man with a mouth like a shark, with his flash manners, a man who never looked you in the face? Robert and Lily had seen through him at once He had "crook" written all over him. He was fit only to deceive puppets like his office staff and many mistresses. But then, at the time when he first met Cypress, he had not thought his workers puppets. With extraordinary clarity, but with renewed astonishment, he remembered how he had felt about the man when he was first admitted to his confidence; he remembered, even more incredulously, how he had felt as a very junior boy while he was outside it, how he had looked almost with awe at the heads of Cypress and his associates bent close together in their laboratory, hearing occasional fragments of their whispered conversation, pretending himself the while to be absorbed in a periodical but longing, oh, so intensely longing, for one of them to cross the room and speak to him. And then, after months and months, it had happened. He had a picture of himself, the odious little outsider who wanted to be an insider, the infantile gull, drinking in the husky and unimportant confidences, as if he were being admitted to the inner government of the town. Was there no beginning to his folly? Had he been utter fool all through from the very day of his birth?

There were no moral considerations at this moment in Bronze's mind. He looked back on his life not with shame, but with a kind of disgust at its dreariness. He saw himself as a little boy, hidden in the shrubbery beside the paling, to overhear his mother's conversation with Juniper, and trying to ignore the fact that it was not at all interesting when overheard. He saw himself making believe that he enjoyed those Sunday afternoons with the athletic heroes of school while all the time (as he now saw) he was almost homesick for one of the old walks with Jake, Jake whom he had taken such pains to leave behind. He saw himself ten years old laboriously reading rubbishy grown-up novels and drinking stiff water when he really enjoyed the Legends of Arceus and ginger ale. The hours that he had spent learning the very slang of each new circle that attracted him, the perpetual assumption of interest in things he found dull and of knowledge he did not possess, the almost heroic sacrifice of nearly every person and thing he actually enjoyed, the miserable attempt to pretend that one could enjoy modern philosophy, or humanism, or Cypress's company: all this came over him with a kind of heart-break. When had he ever done what he wanted? Mixed with the people whom he liked? Or even eaten and drunk what took his fancy? The concentrated insipidity of it all filled him with self-pity.

He was now thick in the forest. Most of the trees were still standing, but some had been smashed up by vandals, felling them even without the poor excuse of feeding fires. Bronze noted with disgust that some of the urkil-work had been done with explosives, as some trees had a depth of earth on their splintered bark that had been thrown up by some convulsion of the very earth they once were rooted in. It was a remarkable thing that the squalid elements of society would be let into the forest for their own cruel purposes.

Linda herself was smoking her cigar on a bench that bordered the broken gravel path. Bronze was not able to shout for the moment. He was injured, who had been tired before he set out, and now his heart and lungs were doing things to him of which his doctor had told him the meaning some years ago. He was not frightened, but he could not shout with a great voice until he had breathed. And while he stood trying to fill his lungs he sent out Charmander with specific instructions.

And Charmander did carry out those particular instructions. Do not be mistaken that Bronze was inhumane; that trait will be disproven presently. But he was very angry, and that anger made him hard. Now walking at measured speed, keeping his face away from Linda (who was still occupied with her cigar), he sat down beside her. "Really, woman," said Bronze, "if you were going to kill me, why all this farce of waiting for your Pokemon?"

She turned and her face expressed all the possible surprise that you could imagine. Reaching into a pocket for something that Bronze assumed to be an illegal projectile weapon, Linda's face went pale and slackened when a sharp claw pressed into her neck hard enough to draw blood. Charmander had not been idle.

Bronze took the Brick from the pocket that had a correctly sized bulge and held it tightly. Now you are really in danger," said Bronze, "and you are going to answer my questions. Who do you work for?"

"They'll kill me if I tell you."

"They will kill you anyway. You have been exposed and discovered. Because you have failed in your mission to retrieve the artifact they will dispose of you. Linda, you have already displayed your incompetence and instability. I do not think that your employers will be merciful. Certainly they will not be even sentimental. You are waiting for them to retrieve you? Then they will see your failure. Your life is now in my hands. Saving or slaying at my hand will mean little."

"If I am going to die, then there is no reason to tell you," said Linda.

"I can guarantee that you will live," said Bronze. "When your handlers come to fetch your person say that you failed but did not expose your identity. They will subject you to a number of chemical exposures to determine the truth. But they will not kill you unless the revelation of their organization to one person will have negative effects. They will look at the whole situation very objectively and not let anything distract them from the facts that their organization has not really been harmed. After a period of detainment, once I have done nothing and they see that all their plots move along as expected, you will be released. That is your chance to escape, to go to the Association and become free."

"Free!" cried Linda. "What a delightful thought! What do you mean by 'free?'"

"Exactly what it means," said Bronze. "By free you would be without bond or obligation, nor any restraint to where you could go. I do not really wish to hurt you, which you would have already judged if you understood my motives. But if you do not tell me the identity of your employer then I will have Charmander bite off every one of your fingers, and then your toes, until I feel satisfied. Your wounds will be cauterized to keep you alive and conscious."

"You really would?" said Linda.

"Yes," answered Bronze. "A king can not only be chivalrous when building his empire."

"The Eclipse Alliance, then!" said Linda. "It's them that orders me. I'm a member. Is that what you want?"

"Luckily for you, I do not think that was a lie," said Bronze. "Charmander will now strike you in such a way as to knock you unconscious. Hopefully you can say that you were forced, and they will be more lenient. That is unlikely. But you have sided with the wrong side in this war, and now I am judging you far more mercifully than my God Arceus would. I have another question. Who is Jonathan Cypress to you?"

"A client," said Linda. "That's all."

"No lies there," said Bronze. "Thank you for your cooperation. In another world you could have been an honorable woman."

Charmander struck her heavily on the head. She spasmed and then slumped over the bench like a drunkard. Bronze took the cigar and snuffed it out before throwing it in a waste bin. He and the Pokemon went out of that blasted forest, leaving behind a woman that Bronze knew had just been condemned to death.

...

Bronze's new insight into Team Eclipse kept him resolved not to believe one word their spokesmen said, not to accept (though he might feign acceptance) any offer they made. He felt that he must at all costs hold onto the knowledge that these men had become his unalterable enemies; for already he felt the old tug towards yielding, towards semi-credulity, inside him. Team Eclipse was a very charitable organization, and though he could not be wholly sure that they were the designers behind his parent's abduction, it seemed very likely.

Once he came to the end Bronze sat with his eyes fixed on the floor. He had felt, in fact, very little emotion at the news of the identities of Linda's handlers; indeed, he almost discovered at that moment how little he had ever really cared for those remote futures and universal benefits whereon his opposition to torturing his prisoner had been based. Certainly, at the present moment there was no room in his mind for such considerations, not in a war. He was fully occupied with the conflict between his resolution not to trust these Eclipse-men, never to be lured by any bait into a real co-operation, and the terrible strength, like a tide sucking at the shingle as it goes out of an opposite emotion. If Linda had remained recreant he would have been very harsh with her.

Now the Eclipse Alliance was his enemy. It did not really matter the sincerity of their motives (whatever they were), the virtue of its leaders, or the ignorance of its members. From that moment his hatred of the Eclipse Alliance would continually increase, eventually reaching a high shelf that it never descended from. Bronze Tercano had gone to war against the Dark Lord's pawns.