Free The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown Page B

children Charles and I haunted these woods,” he said. “Can you think of a more ideal place to play?” He smiled. “We’d be away for hours, and often got lost... father had to come hunting us.” I thought I detected sadness in his tone as he recollected those far-off days. He looked at us. “Do you know something, I was happier then than I’ve ever been since. The world seemed a limitless place, full of possibilities and opportunities, full of wonder. But we grow up, become mired in the petty concerns of the adult world, and somehow our horizons become narrowed.”
    He waved his stick. “This way!”
    Exchanging a glance with Vaughan, I followed.
    We took the path to the right, which climbed a slight incline past a tangle of tree roots that had obtruded through the surface of the earth and become weathered and smoothed over the years. I imagined Carnegie and his brother sporting here as children. As I watched him now, striding ahead with his stick and deerstalker, it seemed that he might hardly have grown up.
    We came to a clearing in the trees, a circular area perhaps thirty feet across. I knew, then, that there was something... peculiar about the place, but at the time I could not quite define what made me think this. Only later, in conversation with Vaughan back at the Grange, did it come to me: despite the lack of tree cover, not a flake of snow had fallen upon the clearing.
    “This is it, gentlemen,” Carnegie declared. “This is where it happened.”
    We were silent for a time, and then Vaughan asked, “Where what happened, Carnegie?”
    He did not immediately reply. As if in a daze, he wandered off into the middle of the clearing and gazed about him, first looking up into the sky, and then around at the enclosing trees. At last he regarded the ground at his feet, and nodded to himself. He poked his stick into the soil, as if having satisfied himself upon some point.
    I glanced at Vaughan and shrugged.
    Carnegie looked up, staring at us.
    “Step forward,” he commanded.
    We did so, and he said, “Do you feel it?”
    I said, “Feel what, Carnegie?”
    “The change, the subtle shift.”
    I concentrated. Undoubtedly it was warmer in the clearing, but this was accounted for by the fact that we were now standing directly beneath the midday sun.
    “There’s a charge in the air,” Carnegie was saying. “Something almost... I don’t know... electric. Look at the hairs on the back of your hands.”
    Feeling ludicrous, I did so. I noticed that Vaughan was also inspecting his hand.
    I started as I realised that, improbably, Carnegie was right: the hairs on the back of my hand and wrist were standing to attention. At the same time I convinced myself that I felt a frisson, almost a shiver, pass across my flesh.
    I stepped back into the shade of the trees and again inspected my hand. No longer were the hairs standing upright. Vaughan conducted the same experiment and frowned at me. “Very strange,” he murmured.
    I stepped forward into the clearing, and this time I told myself that I did feel something, a charge in the air, a certain heat that could not be accounted for by the presence of the sunlight alone.
    “Would you mind telling us what’s going on?” I asked.
    Carnegie paced to the far side of the clearing and stood with his back to us for a time, apparently lost in thought. At last he turned and said, “It’s a strange tale, gentlemen, and to be honest I don’t rightly know what to make of it myself. I can but describe the events as they occurred, and see what you think.” He paused. “I’ll begin at the beginning, or the beginning as far as I can tell.”
    I sat down with my back against the broad bole of a tree, and Vaughan joined me. Before us, Carnegie paced back and forth like an actor upon a stage, which in effect was what he was.
    “I first noticed the phenomenon twenty-four days ago,” he said, “though I dare say it had been occurring long before that. I’m in the habit of