Garia faces her first session with the Royal Questor. She tries to explain her world to Morlan but it seems he finds it difficult to believe anything she says. A furious argument erupts...

Somewhere Else Entirely

by Penny Lane

5 - Nothing but the Truth

Disclaimer: The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2011-2016 Penny Lane. All rights reserved.

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Garia dutifully followed as Morlan stalked off, black robe flapping. To her surprise, however, her guide did not head for the doors but instead angled across the room and out into the cloister surrounding the enclosed garden. He stepped through one of the numerous arches which made up the covered walkway and strode out on a pathway between the flower beds. With a little hesitation Garia followed.

He went back into the cloister on the opposite side and through a doorway into a large room. This room had windows each side, another courtyard could dimly be seen beyond. The room was filled with tables and benches, the walls were lined with shelves. All were covered with scrolls, books, apparatus. There were unidentifiable objects piled in odd corners, half-built or half-demolished constructions on the benches, glass, bronze, steel, wood, leather. This was obviously Morlan's laboratory. It looked like it hadn't been tidied for years. Morlan didn't stop in the room, however, but led Garia towards a door at the end. As he reached it he turned and frowned.

"You!"

Garia turned as she realized he had not been addressing her but someone behind, and discovered that Jenet had followed them.

"Master?"

"Have you other duties to perform? I shall not be requiring..." Morland paused, considering. "I have changed my mind," he eventually said, with a look that implied that he resented having to do so. "It would be unseemly for me to interview a young woman in my chambers without a chaperone, so you may accompany your mistress. But," his face twisted, "if I discover that anything of what we may discuss in my study is broadcast to the palace staff I'll have you flayed, do you understand?"

Jenet looked suitably penitent and curtseyed. "I understand, Master."

"Then enter, both of you." Morlan opened the door and gestured with his arm. He followed them in, closing the door, and then went to sit behind a huge desk with his back towards the window. Garia noticed that her Earth belongings were all spread on the desk, on top of the jumble of documents already there.

"Sit, Mistress," he instructed, pointing to a chair facing the desk. Jenet was a servant, so he ignored her completely.

"Now, Mistress," he continued, "you have had all night to put together a story to entertain me." He favored Garia with a sour look. "Once you've got that out of the way, you will tell me what really brings you here. I will have the truth of this matter."

"Master Morlan," Garia began, "I have no story to tell you but the truth, what I know of it. Whether you choose to believe it is your affair, but I will promise to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." She almost automatically added so help me God, but until she discovered what religions there were in this world it was best to keep one's options open.

Morlan gave her another sour look. "As if that pretty little speech means anything. What does a slip of a thing like you know about the truth? Very well, let us begin. These clothes and other things, you maintain that they belong to you, is that so?"

"Yes, Master Morlan."

"They belong to you, and not a male traveling companion."

"Yes, Master Morlan, they belong to me personally. I recognize them, they are mine, I have worn them before."

"This is that silly claim you made yesterday that you were a boy."

"Yes, Master Morlan. Although in this world I am undeniably a woman, before I came here, in the world in which I lived and grew up, I was a man of just over seventeen years of age."

Morlan gave a disparaging grunt before continuing. "This is the next claim, that you come from another world."

"Yes, Master Morlan, I do claim that. It is very easy to tell that this is not the world of my birth. The animals are different, the food is different, the people and languages are nothing like I remember from my own world, and the decisive fact is that there are too many moons here. On my world there is only one moon, about the size of the biggest one you have here."

"Too many moons, indeed! What a crazy idea! What do you call this moon of yours, then, if you only have one of them?"

Garia looked puzzled. "Why, the Moon, of course. There is no need to call it anything else, although it has other names in other languages. We sometimes call it Luna, I suppose."

"Other languages," Morlan mused. "Which brings me to another point. If you're from some other world, as you claim, how is it you speak our language so well? Does that not point to your origin being a lot closer than some made-up 'other world'?"

"Master Morlan, I have no idea how or why I can speak your language. I cannot explain it, just as I cannot explain how I came from my world to this one."

"Or explain how you were an seventeen-year-old boy in one world, and a fifteen-year-old girl in this one." Garia opened her mouth to protest but closed it again. Did she really look that young? Morlan carried on speaking. "This fantasy of yours would be entertaining if it occurred at another time. I would rather I heard the truth from you today, however." He drilled her with a stare. "How did you come to be on that road, for Tanon to find?"

"Master Morlan, I have absolutely no idea."

"What do you mean by that? For him to find you, you had to travel there or be taken there by someone. What was his name?"

"Master Morlan, when I was found I had no memory of anything. I did not regain my memory until I was in that room with you yesterday afternoon. When I was found, I had no idea who or what I was, or indeed where I was. I naturally assumed that what I was told was true, that what happened round me was normal."

Morlan tried another line of questioning. "Tanon's man Jaxen said that you had never seen a dranakh before, that it frightened you. How can this be? Everyone in Alaesia knows all about dranakhs, they are everywhere."

Garia thought. "Then, by your own logic, this must mean I don't come from Alaesia."

"That is possible," Morlan grudgingly admitted. "However, I don't see how you could have come from another part of the world to where you were found and not seen a dranakh before that point."

"Master Morlan, I don't even know what Alaesia is or how big it might be. Until I came to this world I had never heard the name. Is Alaesia a country, an island, a continent or what?"

Morlan's eyes glinted dangerously. "What might a 'continent' be? I have never heard the word before."

Garia finally realized that whenever she spoke out loud, whatever she had composed in her head in English had been silently translated into whatever the local language was. Sometimes, the local word was different to what she thought she said, as with her original attempt to say her name. Sometimes, entire phrases were substituted without her consciously being aware of the fact. Sometimes, as now, there was no correspondence at all and the English word was used.

"In my world," she explained cautiously, "a continent is what we call the very largest land masses in the world. Some of them are joined to one another by narrow strips of land, but are otherwise just very large islands. There are also many smaller islands of different sizes as well, of course."

"Of course," Morlan repeated. "In that case, I suppose you could call Alaesia a continent. There is no real need for the word since only Alaesia exists, other than the many island groups that surround it, of course."

"There is only one continent in the entire world?" Garia said, amazed. "How big is it? Can I see a map of your world, please?"

Morlan's face lit up, and the dismay was plain on Garia's face as she recognized the blunder that she had just made. In a world without mass production maps were precious things giving power to those who owned them. He pounced.

"So, you expose yourself, girl! Only an incompetent spy would ask to see a map, now, wouldn't she, spy?"

Garia gulped, and her stomach felt as though someone had thumped it hard. She thought rapidly about what a map might represent here and found a response.

"I don't know, a map might be useful to a trader, perhaps? Someone like Tanon? A map might be useful to a farmer, a town council, even a builder of bridges."

"That might be so," he sneered, "but I can't see a farmer or a bridge builder being interested in a map that shows the whole of Alaesia, can you? Besides which," he added off-hand, "I doubt a little thing like you can even read or write, can you?"

"I can read and write," Garia flung back, "of course I can!"

"I don't believe you," Morlan snapped. He jumped to his feet and scrabbled among the documents scattered over his desk, pulling one out. "Here, read me from that if you're so clever!"

Garia took the proffered parchment but didn't even look down at what she held.

"I can't read this, of course I can't! I've been in this world less than four days, how could I have possibly learned to read your script! But I can certainly read and write my own language, the one I used at home."

She tossed the parchment back on the desk. She glanced around at something she had noticed on her way into the study but not appreciated the possibilities it provided, a blackboard. Jumping up in her turn, she strode the width of the room to it and grabbed a lump of chalk from the holder under it. Huh, real chalk, not manufactured sticks.

"What are you going to -" Morlan shouted.

"This is my name," Garia said, writing 'GARY CAMPBELL' on a clear space at the bottom of the board. Underneath she added her signature as Gary's usual scrawl to prove that it wasn't just capital letters she was capable of.

Morlan had rounded the desk after her but stopped at the undeniable evidence that the 'slip of a girl' actually could write, albeit in a script that looked alien to him. The fluid way in which she had written made him realize that it was quite possible she was telling the truth and a cold shiver went down his spine. Just what was this girl? What did her presence mean for Palarand? The need for answers to these and other questions suddenly became more urgent. He returned to his desk and sat down, motioning Garia to return to her chair. White-faced and shaking from the adrenaline rush she sank back down.

"So," Morlan resumed, "you can read and write. That just makes you more dangerous, doesn't it? You can write your reports for your masters instead of having to recite them back. That script looks totally unfamiliar, perhaps your story about not coming from Alaesia is true." His expression hardened. "That doesn't mean that any silly story about you being a boy is true, or that you come from another world." He leaned back, his face now thoughtful. "Perhaps your tale of memory loss is true also, perhaps it has muddled your past memories and you really come from another - what was it? - continent that lies beyond the explored seas. Tell me about the place where you come from."

Garia shook her head. "I will tell you, but I don't think you're going to believe most of it, it's just too different for you to understand properly."

"Let me judge that for myself, girl. I am the Royal Questor of Palarand, head of the Society of Questors. We know more about thinking than you could ever possibly understand yourself. Do not attempt to judge others by your own limited experiences."

"Master Morlan, I'll try to keep that in mind." Of course, that's only what you're attempting to do with me, isn't it? Judge me by your own experiences? How on Earth can I get through to such a closed mind? She took a deep breath.

"I live, or lived, near a small town called Hays which is in the State of Kansas," she began. "Kansas is one of fifty States making up my country, which is called The United States of America."

"One moment," Morlan interrupted. "A small town? How small, exactly?"

"Oh, about twenty thousand people," Garia replied innocently. If he persists with this line of questioning, I can bury him in numbers until his head explodes.

"Twenty thousand? And you consider that small?"

"It's quite small, but not unusual. The State capital, Topeka, has about a hundred twenty-five thousand or so, I guess. The whole State is probably around three million these days."

"Three million?" Morlan choked out. Maker, Palarand might have four hundred thousand all told. "Girl, are you making fun of me?"

"I told you at the beginning, sir, that I would tell you the truth and you wouldn't like it. I am doing just that."

"Maker, this tale gets crazier and crazier. Wait, you said that your state is one of fifty that make up a country, how does that work?"

"It's complicated, Master Morlan. Kansas is self-governing, but belongs to a um, union or federation, I suppose you could call it. Some laws are state laws and some laws are federal laws. People can move freely between states."

"Federation? Of different states?"

"Yes. Um, I don't know how anything about the different states that I assume exist in the Great Valley where we are, nobody has seen fit to tell me anything like that yet. Do any of those co-operate with each other?"

She's at it again. Well, I suppose I shouldn't blame her, I started it this time.

"Occasionally," Morlan grudgingly replied. "From time to time."

"If you can imagine all of those states co-operating, using the same money, talking the same language, having a combined army, that will give you an idea of what the United States is."

"Each one of those has three million people?"

"No, not at all. Some states have a lot more, some a lot less. Some are mountainous, some are plains, some are coastal, some are desert. I don't know about the total figure, that sort of thing didn't interest me that much. I guess around two hundred sixty million, maybe more, maybe less."

"This story has to be nonsense, Mistress!" Morlan waved his arms in agitation. "Imagine, two hundred sixty million people! The amount of farmland required to feed that many people would be many times the size of Alaesia. Think of the difficulty of transporting that much food to cities as big as you describe. Impossible! You're just pulling figures out of the sky to make yourself sound important and dangerous. Admit it!"

"I admit nothing, Master Morlan. You asked me for numbers, I gave them to you. As for farming and food transport, we have much more efficient ways of growing food, and transporting the required food is no problem at all. In fact, we grow so much food that we have to give a lot of it away to other countries."

"Now you are making fun of me!" Morlan growled, his face becoming red. "Aside from the stupidity of just giving food away, how is it that you know so much about the subject? I shouldn't think a girl of fifteen years can possibly know such things."

Garia gritted her teeth. "I'm not a girl of fifteen years, I am seventeen years old! I told you that before!"

"You also told me you were a boy before!" Morlan raised his voice as he became more angry with the person in front of him. "You're a girl, you can't possibly pretend that you used to have a boy's body, and you're definitely not seventeen years old!"

Garia lashed out without thinking. "How would you know exactly how old I am?" she asked hotly. "Have you had so much experience of young girls to be able to judge their ages that accurately?"

Morlan looked as if he was about to explode, his face bright red. He stood and pointed a shaking finger at Garia, his face suffused with rage.

"Get... out... of... my... sight," he managed to say, "before I call the Palace Guard and have you thrown into the cells for insolence!"

White-faced, Garia stood and tried to back away. Her hand touched something, it was Jenet who had approached fearfully as Morlan lost his temper. Jenet grabbed Garia's arm and practically dragged her to the study door. Not bothering with permission to leave, she opened the door and pulled Garia out into the laboratory.

"This way, Mistress!" She led the way, her hand still on Garia's arm. "We have to find somewhere for you to calm down." She looked through the window. "No, not that side, there's too many people, let's try the other side."

Jenet angled across the room and found a door that opened onto the courtyard which bordered the other side of that part of the building. She looked each way and found a seat against the wall, shaded from the sun by the inevitable cloister which ran round the courtyard.

"Sit here, Mistress, sit."

Garia collapsed onto the seat, her whole body shaking from the ferocity of the exchange that had just happened. Jenet sat down beside her and Garia buried her head on the older woman's breast, tears flowing freely now that she was away from Morlan. After an initial jolt of surprise Jenet's maternal instincts took over and she gathered Garia into her arms.

"There, there, Mistress. He's out of sight, now, take time to calm yourself down. I know you didn't mean to say what you did, not in the way he took it."

What's the matter with me? Why did that man manage to turn me into a puddle of jelly? I didn't say anything bad, did I? Oh. Perhaps it's the girl thing. Damn! This is going to make life so much more fun, isn't it? What exactly did I say anyway?

Prince Keren walked through a door into the corner of the cloister opposite the seat where Garia and Jenet were sitting. He was dressed only in soft, snug leather breeches and soft ankle boots. He had been exercising and he was drying his hair, face and upper body with a towel as he entered the courtyard. As he wiped the sweat from his face he caught sight of the seat and recognized not the two people but the dress which had once belonged to his sister Malann. His brow furrowed and as his step changed he identified both women and immediately altered direction. Hanging the towel round his neck he jogged across the courtyard.

"Mistress Garia? Whatever is the matter?"

She raised a tear-stained face to him which instantly caused unexpected feelings to surge through his body.

"Who did this?" he asked in a harder voice.

"I did, sort of," she replied shakily. "I'm afraid that I might have said something I shouldn't. I..." She trailed off, still shocked.

"Highness, it must have been accidental," Jenet explained, "but Mistress Garia essentially accused Master Morlan of molesting young women."

"You were there?" Keren asked. Jenet nodded. "Did he..?"

Jenet shook her head. "No, Highness. They were arguing. As Mistress Garia foretold, Master Morlan didn't believe much of what she told him, and he as much as called her a liar."

Keren rolled his eyes in disgust, then sat on the seat next to Garia. She turned her head to him, tears still streaming down her cheeks. His arms automatically started to reach out to her but he thought better of it and made himself fold them together across his bare chest. Who knows, perhaps she might accuse him of molesting her!

"Jenet, have you a cloth, to wipe Mistress Garia's face?"

"Of course, Highness."

Jenet dipped into a pouch tied at her waist and produced a square of soft cloth which she handed to Garia. Garia dabbed the cloth on her cheeks and then attempted to clean herself up.

"Here, Mistress, let me."

Garia allowed Jenet to wipe her properly while Keren considered the situation as he understood it. Morlan certainly should have the brains to determine the truth of this matter, but on the other hand the man had never been known for his social skills, even among those of his own generation. Putting a vulnerable young woman in alone with him was certainly going to cause trouble. Particularly if the fragments of story she had told the previous day were even remotely true! Keren shook his head. All parties had been well-intentioned, but the approach taken was the wrong one. Well, he'd see if he could do anything about that.

"Mistress Garia?"

"Your... Highness?"

"I'm afraid Master Morlan, while having a huge intellect, isn't used to normal people like you or me," he said with a smile. The point was understood by Garia who managed to twitch a small smile of her own. "He spends his time buried in his books and documents, trying to find the meaning of the universe or something else just as useful. While he is the Royal Questor, I think that interviewing you like that was not a very clever move by any of us, don't you agree?"

"I suppose not," she said in a small tearful voice. "But, I'm new around here, how am I going to know what's right and what's wrong?"

Keren shrugged. "You shouldn't have to. But we shouldn't have subjected you to that, and I apologize for the distress that has been caused to you."

She twisted round straight on the seat so that she could talk to him more easily.

"It's nothing to do with you, Your Highness. Oh." She put both her hands to her mouth in horror. "Oh, no! Now I think I've just insulted the King."

Keren grinned and Garia struggled to remain calm as his face lit up. "Oh, I think the King will survive. I would suggest that Jenet take you back to your room and keep you there until lunch time, that way you won't get into any more trouble. By the way, Jenet, which chamber has she been given?"

"The Lilac Chamber, Highness."

"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to change." He looked down at his bare torso and sweat-stained breeches. "After which, I will go and find my father and see if something can be arranged. I'll talk to you again at lunch, Mistress."

Keren stood, gave a short bow towards Garia before she could rise, and walked off towards the other corner of the cloister. Her mind wanted to consider him as just another guy but her nose and eyes were insistently telling her different. She had wanted to rest her hand on his leg when he had been sitting down, and only the fact that she would have been touching the heir to the throne had stopped her.

God, what am I even thinking of? He's a boy! And part of her replied, And? You're a girl, at least for the duration. You're going to have to think those thoughts sometime.

But, he's the Prince, dammit! One day he's going to be King! I've been a girl less than four days, and I'm on a strange planet, stuck in the dark ages! Suddenly the whole crazy situation reared up in her face and she burst into tears again, falling into Jenet's lap.

~o~O~o~

Having rinsed himself off and changed into more appropriate clothing, Keren made his way through the palace complex in search of his father. The prince suspected that he was still in the Counting Room with his accounting clerks so headed that direction. As he approached he saw that the door was open and raised voices could be heard from within.

That's unfortunate. Morlan got there first. I suppose at least he gets the backlash for interrupting my father.

"Father, may I come in?"

Morlan turned to see who had come in and scowled, not caring that Keren could see his expression.

"You might as well, Keren," Robanar replied, sighing. "I can see that I'm going to get nothing else done before lunch." He turned to his clerks and said to them, "We'll resume again after lunch." They all rose with a single motion, bowed, and then filed out of the room.

"Sire, I tell you again, the girl is plainly mad," Morlan resumed after the room had been cleared. "I doubt that I can get anything sensible out of her, she just comes out with nonsense. I grant you, the clothes that Tanon claimed she was wearing present a problem, but the girl herself is nothing. I think she should be transferred to a holding cell and a physician asked to examine her."

"Well, perhaps," Robanar said to stop the flow of Morlan's complaints. "Keren, you wanted something?"

"I've just come from the Small Courtyard where Mistress Garia was crying her eyes out," Keren said. "She is a very frightened young woman, Father."

Morlan turned on Keren, his nostrils flaring. "I'm not surprised, Highness. Did you hear what she called me?"

"Morlan," Robanar inquired quietly, "did you lose your temper again? I'm not surprised the poor girl is in tears if you were your normal difficult self."

"Sire, it is difficult to remain calm when the person you are supposed to be questioning persists in telling you things that are clearly fantasy. She can't even get her own age right!"

Keren responded, "Father, I think that asking Morlan to interview Mistress Garia in this manner was not the best idea. She has, by her own admission, been here for less than four days. Morlan, in your opinion, in four days, do you think you could learn full command of a new language? You might by some means or other gain knowledge of all the words, but would you know common expressions, things that people say in the street?"

Morlan grunted acceptance of the point but persisted, "Highness, that may be true, but we only have her word that she's been here for four days."

"That's not the case," Robanar rebutted. "Tanon himself told us how she was found, and that she had very little memory of anything until she came to the palace. Morlan, I think you're being a little selective about what you want to be true and what you don't. I shall think upon this over lunch. The problem of Mistress Garia needs to be solved, but Keren's right, I think we need a slightly different approach."

~o~O~o~

At the lunch bell Garia appeared in the dining room, pale and drawn. She hadn't wanted to come but Jenet had insisted. Morlan was not present which made the prospect of the meal a little more bearable. She was seated, much to her discomfort, between Robanar and Keren.

"Are you feeling a little better, Mistress?" Robanar asked.

"Yes thank you, Sire. I find it not as easy to shrug off an argument as I might once have done. Perhaps I'm still feeling... the effects of arriving here, before Tanon's men found me."

"Master Morlan has complained that you insulted him."

"I did not mean to, Sire," Garia said in a small voice. "He started making assumptions about my age which are plainly wrong, and I asked him how he thought he could accurately work out how old I was, if he had had much previous experience of such matters."

"Ah! I see! The old fool, I thought it was something like that. Well, Keren has suggested that we try a different approach this afternoon. You do understand that we must still ask you questions, and that we will keep asking until we are satisfied that we know what we are dealing with?"

Garia gulped. "In that case, Sire, I suspect that you will never stop asking questions, since I myself truly do not understand what has happened to me, and I doubt that you will believe much of what I can tell you."

"Why is that, Mistress?" Keren asked.

Garia paused to collect her thoughts. "After you left me and I went back to my... chamber, I began to think about my situation here, in relation to where I was before. I have come to some conclusions, but," her eyes flicked around the other diners, all trying to listen to what was being said, "I'd rather not discuss them in front of anybody else, not just yet."

"Ah," Keren said. "Yes, that might be wise."

She gave Keren a weak smile. "Highness, could you come with me after lunch to Morlan's study? I believe your presence may help to keep the conversation... peaceful, and I would welcome your views on what I have to say."

As well as providing another witness, one Morlan's not going to easily get round.

As well as providing me with a friendly face and a source of comfort this afternoon.

Did I really just think that?

"Mistress," Keren replied, "my father and I briefly discussed your situation before lunch and we came to more or less the same conclusion. I would be delighted to accompany you. Now, I am hungry, I suggest we eat. Might I suggest you try some of these? They are early fruit from this year's crop..."