by J F Mehentee
I shook my head. My tiredness had started me babbling.
Below, the terrain had turned featureless. I hadn’t noticed we’d taken off.
If there’s another entrance to Yahata’s home, Biyu said, it’ll be at least halfway up or at the very top. Look for ledges, caves, anything that’s a way in.
It grew chillier the higher we ascended, and the cold prevented me from falling asleep. Tears, however, blurred my vision. Without the basket I flew in, I felt exposed, as though Biyu might be distracted and drop me.
Don’t look down, I told myself, and hugged the orb tighter.
Higher up, the light from the searchlights softened. The air thinned, making it harder to keep my eyes open.
How many resistance fighters do you know fall asleep during a mission? I said, forcing myself to stay awake.
We, or rather Biyu, banked hard. The force of the turn pressed me flat against Biyu’s underside.
Found something, Biyu said
We descended, and my weight shifted to Biyu’s scaly foot.
I expected it to be farther up, Biyu continued. But it’s definitely an entrance.
Being moved around so much had confused me, and I wasn’t sure where and what I was searching for. Biyu’s grip on me loosened, causing me to take a deep breath before screaming.
Calm down, Sanjay. Stand up. I can only hover for so long.
Biyu’s command penetrated my mind and my limbs. I drifted down her foot. The soles of my boots brushed solid ground, a ledge.
Budge up and make some room, Biyu said.
I took a few steps forward. The darkness replaced my tiredness with caution. My night vision wasn’t on a par with Biyu’s, and I had to trust the space ahead comprised only empty shadows. A little farther up, I put down Biyu’s coat, rested the orb on top of it and shucked off my rucksack. By the time I’d recovered the torch, Biyu squatted beside me and reached into the rucksack for her clothes.
The torchlight reflected off two sidewalls. It didn’t reach far enough to illuminate a back wall.
A passage? I said. Unsure how far the Leyakians had penetrated the mountain, I thought it best to remain silent.
Biyu zipped up her parka.
Only one way to find out.
She sounded tired. Could flying have used up all the tablet’s qi? To avoid trouble, one of us had to remain alert.
Are you all right? You sound as tired as I feel.
Biyu pulled her hood up.
I should have waited longer before flying this high.
That didn’t sound good. Even dressed she shivered.
Maybe we should rest, wait until dawn and let sunlight replenish your energy.
She shoved her hands into her coat pockets.
Let’s see what’s inside, she said. It might be warmer farther in than out here on this ledge.
I hesitated before packing the orb. It had drawn so much energy from me. If I used the orb now, I’d most likely pass out.
I pointed the torch at the orb in my rucksack. I haven’t sufficient energy to use that. I turned off the torch. You’ve got better eyesight. You should lead the way.
Biyu nodded. She waited for me to rise before taking my left hand in hers, my right still gripping the torch.
I shuffled through the gloom, Biyu in front and slightly to one side of me, her reassuring grip leading me onwards. Our feet crunched against coarse sand. Although cold and dry against my skin, the air smelled musty.
Biyu’s grip tightened, the tips of her talons dimpling my palm. She halted and then pulled me down.
What is it?
Biyu let go of my hand.
Give me the torch.
I held out the torch for her to take it. Its light flickered on and continued to flicker after Biyu had shaken it.
It’s fully charged, I said. I washed the wards with saline this morning. The battery should be good for the rest of the night.
My attempt at vindication met silence. The light strobed and made the backs of my eyes ache.
It’s not the battery, Biyu said. The cone of torchlight had settled on a mound just ahead of us. Biyu rose and crept forward. It could be traces of ancient magic. Come on.
As we drew closer, the mound resolved into a skeleton, and the torch whined like a lightening pistol with its safety flicked off. Biyu shook the torch again. The bulb stopped flickering. Even under my parka, static lifted the hairs on my forearms.
The skull’s large eye sockets, powerful jaws and long incisors resembled a cat’s. This one had to be twenty times the size of the largest feral cat roaming the alleys of Bagh-e-Khuda. I followed its vertebrae down to a rib cage. The breastbone reminded me of the countless times I’d torn leftover meat from a chicken to make soup. Only the one in front of me would have fed the pair of us for months.
Biyu pointed at the limbs either side of the head. She counted four toes. We both sidled to the creature’s hind legs and counted just three toes. I spotted a humerus bone, short compared to the ulna next to it. Both bones had fallen from the rib cage to lie on the floor. I pointed with my foot.
Those are wings.
Biyu knelt and dropped the torch.
Frit, she muttered. She leaned in and thrust an arm between the creature’s ribs. Biyu shook her head as she waved her arm. It’s gone.
I grabbed the torch and shone it beneath the anzu’s spine—because that’s what this skeleton had once been.
Beneath the skeleton lay an oval hole, its sides compacted and smoothed by time.
The fritting Leyakians found it, she said, her voice rumbling between my ears. They have the anzu’s egg.
Before I could commiserate with her, a beam of light blinded me.
‘Hoi! What you do?’ a voice shouted. ‘Move back.’
I heard two clicks and whining. The beam shone down at our knees and the skeleton. The golden afterimage made it impossible to see who’d spoken.
‘Stand. Slow. Hands in air.’
Beyond the afterimage’s haze, I saw two figures with cone-shaped heads—no, they wore helmets. I stood and raised my hands.
Leyakians, I said. I heard fabric crumpling to the floor.
Bee, stop.
She’d shrunk to lose her clothes, to grow and take on the soldiers. In such an enclosed space, if she breathed fire and there was a backdraught, her flames would engulf me.
Low on qi and without sunlight to regenerate, I couldn’t risk Biyu being hit by a bullet.
I stood. My remaining qi energised my tattoos. With a massive leap, I vaulted over my shrinking wife and landed on my left foot. I ignored the zinging bullet that scraped skin from my jaw and earlobe, hopped as I raised my right foot and rammed it into a Leyakian’s breastplate.
Like Biyu’s clothes, I crumpled on impact, my body drained of what energy had remained.
‘Don’t kill them,’ someone said. ‘I need them alive.’
I rolled off the Leyakian struggling beneath me. The last thing I saw was the other soldier standing over me, the butt of his pistol’s handgrip on a collision course with my face.
11
I woke to the smell of what I can only describe as concentrated cat pee. The acrid odour originated from beneath my nose. I shoved it away and opened my eyes. Hands reached under my arms and hoisted me up.
A man wearing a conical helmet, his nose and eyes hidden behind a black visor, stepped away from me. The Leyakian held a piece of gauze in one gloved hand and a lightening pistol in the other.
Smelling salts. How long had I been unconscious?
‘Glad you could join us.’
The voice came from my right. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the bright artificial light. I’d thought I was in a room until I noticed how uplighters accentuated the walls’ rough contours—a cave.
Biyu?
I scoured the cave. My head stopped turning when I saw him. I recognised the sharp, flawless symmetry from the photograph taken at a conference dinner Biyu had attended.
Supervisor Yeong
-tae Pak sat on a block of granite, a throne. Its backrest had two spherical ears perched on each side. Even dwarfed by the god Yahata’s ancient throne, which had to be three times the size of a normal chair, the bastard looked poised instead of ridiculous.
‘Pak,’ I said. I lifted a foot, ready to march towards him and pound that smug look into the back of his head. The Leyakians guarding me—more like holding me up—gave me a yank. With barely enough energy to only stand, I couldn’t struggle against them.
Sanjay. On your left.
Relieved, I twisted slightly. Two Leyakians also restrained her.
They couldn’t wake you up, she said, concern straining her voice. I thought you were dead.
I pulled back my shoulders to gain my full height. My jealousy wouldn’t help either of us. I had to focus on our predicament.
I’m just dead tired, I said—my attempt at nonchalance.
An uninspiring effort, judging from Biyu’s eyes. She stared at Pak. Like windscreen wipers, her third eyelids flicked backwards and forwards. Her eyes didn’t describe a scorned lover. They reminded me of Toojan and when I’d offered him just one laddoo for his advice. Her eyes conveyed disappointment and pain.
And no wonder. Her former supervisor was a Leyakian collaborator.
I took no comfort from Biyu’s pain. My jealousy caved into guilt. Pak’s collaborating with the Leyakians had hurt Biyu. With both of us his prisoner, he could further harm my wife. I raised my chin.
‘What will you do to us?’
Pak’s hands rested on his knees. He leaned forward.
‘That depends.’ He sat up and stared past me. ‘I’m embarrassed to admit that after all the work I’ve done trying to find an anzu’s egg, a puzzle has me flummoxed.’ He traced a downward circle.
My Leyakian guards turned me round.
‘On our arrival here yesterday,’ Pak continued, ‘we found this… this puzzle box and not an egg. Please, examine it. It seems the trickster god, Yahata, won’t give up his anzu’s egg so easily.’
In front of me was indeed a box. The Leyakians released me. I glanced across to see they’d done the same to Biyu.
That space beneath the anzu’s skeleton, I said to her. I thought they had the egg.
Biyu’s attention remained fixed on the box.
I’m confused as you are, she said. Over there, on your left—they emptied your rucksack.
To avoid looking conspicuous, I studied the box first. Constructed from sandstone, the box stood four feet high and looked almost as wide. It comprised two halves. A dovetail joint on each side joined them.
I circled the box. My knees wobbled as I drew shreds of energy from my core. Biyu was right about my rucksack. Its contents lay in a neat row along the wall. My lightening revolver wasn’t among them.
‘Do not touch the box until you’re ready to open it,’ Pak said. ‘Four men have died trying.’
There are two exits, Biyu said. She’d begun a second circuit of the puzzle box. The one facing the throne leads to the tunnel with the anzu in it. There’s another behind the throne. Both are guarded.
As Biyu reconnoitred, I examined all four of the box’s dovetail joints. Thanks to the joints’ positions, a dovetail at right angles to the side being pushed, the top of the box wouldn’t budge. While Biyu could grow large enough to lift the box’s lid, the same joints would prevent the two halves from separating.
My cheeks tightened.
Are you smiling? Biyu said. You’ve figured it out—haven’t you?
I rubbed my mouth.
With both hands, I covered my face, then wiped imaginary sweat on my parka.
‘I’ve been following your relic hunting exploits, Sanjay,’ Pak said. ‘Unlike Biyu, you aren’t a trained academic. Yet you and Biyu have amassed an impressive catalogue of relics with the Ministry of Holy and Demonic Magic. Your success, in part, is because of your unconventional and unacademic approach.’ Pak stood. His smirk turned his eyes to slits. ‘I had Rahmat poisoned because I knew it would lead both of you here. And if anyone can figure out how to open this box, it will be one of you.’ Pak pointed. ‘And I think it’s you, Sanjay.’
You twerp, Biyu said. Pak caught you smiling.
I met Pak’s gaze and my fists curled. How I wanted to flatten those perfect cheekbones.
‘Why should we help you? Once we’ve opened the box, you’ll have your friends here kill us.’
Pak feigned shock. He lifted his hands from his sides, his palms facing outwards.
‘Believe me, Sanjay, I have no intention of killing you. My associates will, if you don’t open the box. So, consider and interview.’ He gestured at the box and then the cave’s walls. ‘If you pass, I shall offer you both plenty of work, work you’ll find stimulating and very lucrative.’ Pak sighed and shook his head. ‘But first, Sanjay, some advice: never play cards and gamble. Now, please, stop wasting time and open the box.’
Idiot, Biyu said.
I didn’t deny it.
‘I need my torch,’ I said, and pointed with my thumb at the rucksack and the rest of our belongings behind me.
Pak waved his approval.
What for?
I bent down to retrieve the torch and felt the pillboxes in my pockets—one was empty and the other contained the tablet I’d started rolling earlier.
Because it’s made of steel, I replied, an idea blossoming in my mind. Give me a minute.
I gripped the torch, hauled myself up with an involuntary groan—Khuda I ached from exhaustion—and shoved the end of the torch into the pocket with the pillbox containing the tablet.
‘I’ll need my wife’s help, too,’ I said.
Pak nodded as if he expected nothing less.
Biyu walked around the box to join me.
Sanjay, please. None of this is making sense. How do you know how to open this thing? And what’s it got to do with a steel torch?
I ignored her plea and questions and beckoned her over.
‘I’m going to shine some light between the cracks of this box,’ I said, then added telepathically, I still have your qi tablet. Take it. I’ll play for time. If I can’t open the box, or if we do and Pak’s about to run off with the egg, burn everyone in this room.
12
The first thing to do was test my theory. I pressed Biyu’s shoulder.
‘Wait here,’ I told her.
The soldiers guarding us had taken up new positions. Now, wherever Biyu or I stood, at least one of them could observe us.
I pulled the torch from my pocket and felt the tablet rattle inside the pillbox. I turned on the torch and shone it at the space between the puzzle’s two halves. Every time I approached a corner, I held the torch closer to the box. On reaching the corner closest to and to the right of the austere granite throne, I felt the magnet inside tug the torch. I heeded Pak’s advice about cards and not gambling and bit my cheeks. Before me sat a giant centuries-old version of the puzzle my father had made for my mother as an anniversary present. What were the chances? This could not be a coincidence.
I made a show of examining the rest of the box before returning to Biyu. I slipped the end of the torch into my pocket.
Don’t ask questions and just do as I say. When you’ve circled the box, I’ll pass you the tablet as you give me back the torch.
I spoke so everyone heard that I wanted Biyu to take the torch, stand at the opposite end of the box to me and shine some light through the gaps. With a deep breath, I reached deep into my pocket and pulled out both the pillbox and the torch.
Biyu took the torch from me and strode to the opposite side of the box. My hand shook as I attempted to prise open the pillbox one-handedly. I didn’t know if nerves or tiredness caused the shaking.
‘A little more to the right—to your right,’ I said, bent forward and pretending to check if the torchlight reached the space at my end.
Hang on a minute, Biyu said. I can smell something metallic. Whoa! It’s pulling the torch.
The pillbo
x’s lid popped off and both the lid and the tablet dropped to the sandy floor.
Shit.
I knelt.
‘Okay, hold it there, Biyu,’ I called, a quaver in my voice. I reached down as casually as I could, hoping all eyes were on Biyu instead of me. My fingertips brushed the lid, and I just managed to clasp its edge between my fingers. ‘Come back.’ I rose, my knees burning from the effort. ‘I’ve got it figured.’
Biyu swung round the side of the box.
Careful!
What?
The tablet. I dropped it. It’s by my foot. No! Don’t look down.
I pointed. ‘Your lace is undone.’
Biyu’s eyes widened.
‘Get on with it,’ Pak said. He’d risen from the throne and stood with his arms folded.
I walked around Biyu as she tied her laces. I pointed at the corner holding the magnet.
‘The box opens by pushing from a corner and not from the side,’ I said to Pak. ‘But it won’t open until it’s unlocked.’
One half of the collaborator’s mouth creased, and an eyebrow arched.
‘Then unlock it.’
I shook my head.
‘I can’t. I need Biyu to do it. But she has to be bigger.’ I nodded at the throne. ‘About the size of the god who sat on that.’
Pak’s eyes and lips tightened into dark lines.
‘If this is a trick, Sanjay.’
I heard pistols being pulled from holsters.
I raised my hands.
‘It’s the only way. No one here can produce the force required to disable the lock.’
I swallowed the tablet, Biyu said, reaching me. I still have some qi from the last one. I don’t know if I can breathe fire yet.
‘If she causes any trouble,’ Pak said to the Leyakians, ‘shoot Sanjay.’ He returned his attention to me and nodded. ‘Unlock it.’
I formed a fist and motioned over the spot for Biyu to hit.
‘I need you to hit the puzzle right here. Hit it hard, but not so hard you’ll break the box.’ I then added, There’s a magnet beneath the stone. A ball bearing is stuck to it, and the bottom of it is jutting into the puzzle’s lower half. Hit the corner with enough force to dislodge the ball bearing and drop it into a trough below. Then the puzzle will slide apart.