by Steve Vera
And still Gavin didn’t lower his blade. His heart was pounding so hard his vision rattled. He could hear a rushing in his ears. It took another dozen tense seconds for Gavin to finally reel himself in while the cold wind of their Deaths’ Breath mixed with the mist seeping from the cracks of the landscape.
“Consider yourself warned, Donovan,” Gavin said in quiet voice. “Touch her again and die. Neesh,” he then said and his Quaranai slid into repose. Tarsidion and Cirena followed suit though both were locked onto Donovan like the targeting computer of a missile.
“Do you agree, Sur Stavengre?” Dwensolt asked.
“Sure.”
“Do you agree, dark warrior?” Dwensolt asked.
Donovan said nothing. Gavin’s simmering anger went right back to a boil. He’d rather hoped Donovan wouldn’t.
“Do you or don’t you, Donovan?” Tarsidion asked. His long hair fell down his shoulders and blew in the cold, humid breeze.
Donovan swiveled his head toward Tarsidion. “I don’t know how to break this to you, dipshit, so I’ll use small words. I don’t have the slightest fucking clue as to what he’s talking about because I speak English.”
Silence.
Awkward silence, followed by a collective “oh yeah, that’s right” moment. Noah stepped in smoothly and explained the arrangement calmly. Now that his fury was interrupted he was able to compose himself, calm his raging emotions. Lucian would have never come so close. Why aren’t you here, brother? It should be you here. I’m the one who should be dead.
Gavin caught Amanda’s eye and gave her a forced wink. She didn’t wink back. Instead she looked utterly dejected, so dejected in fact that the Sprite had settled on her shoulder, which was unheard of. Sprites neither liked nor trusted the “giant folk.”
“So do you agree?” Noah asked when she was done.
“No,” Donovan said.
“Oh, for the love of God, why not?” Skip asked in exasperation before Gavin could amputate his head.
“I’ll need something more.”
“Like what?”
Donovan turned to Gavin. “A blade.”
“What?” Gavin demanded.
“In that contraption the Druid carries that holds your gear, I saw you put a katana in it. I want it.”
“You think I’m just going to give you my sword?”
“You will give me that blade for the duration of our trek through the pass and I will yield my authority over Amanda to this...crazy-ass fuck. When we get to the other side of the pass I will give it back to you and reclaim my authority over Amanda.”
Finally Amanda showed a spark. A glint of resentment across her eyes.
“That is how this is going to go.”
Don’t you realize that if I wanted to I could point and light you on fire and there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do about it, you piece of shit?
Donovan just smiled.
“Dwensolt, would you kindly hand me our supplies?” Gavin asked in a voice so controlled it sounded gentle.
“Aye, Sur Stavengre,” Dwensolt said, unstrapped the “dumpling” from his shoulder and tossed it to him.
Gavin caught it, untied it, opened it, quickly rummaged through the various camping racks, backpacks and duffelbags and encircled his fingers around the hilt of a Japanese national treasure. He loved this sword. It wasn’t his Quaranai, but the gracefully curved style of the Samurai katana was unknown on Theia. Just holding it summoned a burst of memories from another life, what he’d done in order to earn it, this priceless gift from a very grateful, very rich businessman back on Earth—the father of Gavin’s old boss, Max Sullivan. Not only had Gavin saved Max’s life that night a thousand years ago in Berlin, but he had taken two bullets in the process.
Forcing himself to feel nothing, Gavin handed Donovan the sacred blade with one hand, palm down, in the middle of the scabbard. Donovan accepted the sword with a quick, dark look, two hands, palms up, showing that he indeed did know the subtleties of Japanese sword handling. Which was quite interesting and surprising. Donovan’s glare indicated that he understood that Gavin was treating him as a person of lower rank. Had Gavin presented the katana with both hands, it would have implied equal or greater rank.
Donovan accepted the blade with a formal sense of intrigue. In fact, there was a faint ripple of something resembling emotion under Donovan’s default cyborg countenance. Pleasure?
As if he’d been handling swords his whole life, Donovan pointed the katana away from him, grasped the hilt and gently, blade up so it could ride on its back, withdrew it from its scabbard. Until that moment, Gavin was unsure if Donovan’s face was even capable of such a facial configuration, but there it was. A genuine, unbitter, non-sarcastic, venomless smile.
The unmistakable ring of steel against scabbard whispered into the night. Fully revealed, the sword gleamed softly as if the blade were wet. Donovan studied the curve of the blade, the shape of the point, even the grain of the metal. “This is a Mitsutada tachi from the Kamakura Period,” he said, holding the blade up to his eye. “Which has been cut down to katana.” He looked up. “This is priceless.”
“Which means don’t lose it or Amanda is mine forever.”
“Is it agreed?” Noah asked.
In one liquid movement Donovan glided the spine of the katana over the pad of skin between his thumb and index finger and seamlessly sheathed it into the saya in perfect Iaido form. It was an odd thing for Donovan to be so good at it. After a moment of rigid silence, Donovan nodded. “We have a deal.”
* * *
So far, Skip had seen a Lord of the Underworld, a Sylph, some psycho will-o’-the-wisps, a walking tree, a crazy-ass druid, five Pegasi and now it seemed he’d soon be seeing...the Lord of Death.
His bucketlist was getting shorter every day.
Despite the earlier Donovan incident and the noise it had entailed, they were maintaining radio silence. The only sounds were the crunch of their footsteps, the light, whispery hiss of the plumes of steam leaking through the vapor holes that cratered the ground and the continuous rumble of thunder within the peaks.
Every once in a while a pale moonbeam would pierce the blanket of clouds above and refract within the mist that rose around them, splashed with glimmers of blood from its distant crimson sibling. Unmovable and merciless, the World Ridge sawed through the heavens and divided this world; even its shadow seemed to have weight as if they were at the bottom of the ocean in the Mariana Trench. There was nothing like it on Earth.
“Here,” Pyrk the Sprite said, stopping to hover over a gray stone. A closer inspection showed what it really was—a petrified stump.
Skip caught a micro-tremor go through the old man’s hands and the staff that he carried, and for the first time Dwensolt looked old to Skip. Frail. His face was ash, his lips dry. Then he licked his lips, tightened the muscles in his slackened jaw and lifted his chin.
“This way,” he said and walked into the mist.
* * *
The ravine was narrow, allowing them only to walk single file. Once it carved deeper through the hill it widened. To Gavin, it seemed to possess its own ecosystem. Mist clung greedily to its crevices but within it, strange things grew—pale pink, flesh-colored mushroom caps, vomit-colored lichen and the occasional kielbasa-sized centipede skittering from one hole to another. After about two miles the ravine widened so that they could stand three abreast, then narrowed until finally depositing them in a barren patch of rocky soil. Not a single modicum of life seemed to exist beyond the mouth of the ravine.
“What are the chances of that not being the way we have to go?” Skip asked. Like two sentries, two huge boulders hulked on each side of a crack in the mountain face that went up for at least ten feet. Each boulder was wrapped in dead orchids and even from here Gavin could smell their sickly sweet
perfume—a mix of dying flowers and four-day-old roadkill.
“Zero,” Tarsidion said.
“That’s what I thought,” Skip muttered.
Although it was high, the crack wasn’t that thick, maybe four feet across, max. As for the rest of the cliff, even craning his neck Gavin couldn’t see the top; it was just too big. Or he was just too small. Even a Blackhawk wouldn’t be able to get over those peaks. Which left them with only one option.
Through it.
Dwensolt pointed with his staff. “There lies the Pass of Almitra.”
Chapter 23
Dead things did not have auras. Live things did. The electric purple seeping from the ground permeated the air above it like black light, neither living nor dead. And that was Donovan’s introduction to the Undead. He assumed that the Shardyn and the Druid saw them as well, but Gavin’s caution was general and unfocused. He was leading them right for it.
“Hold,” Donovan said from the middle of the group. They stopped, including Gavin and Dwensolt who were ahead of him, and looked back questioningly. “Thirty paces in front of you is a buried ambush,” he said. His harsh whisper seemed to float on the thick vapors of fog that eddied around them.
Gavin looked suspiciously at Donovan but turned and then searched deeper.
“He’s right,” Tarsidion rumbled beside him. The big man sniffed. “There’s a slight swell in the ground like a recent grave.”
“I don’t see shit,” Skip said, hefting the ax that Cirena had let him borrow instead of the cumbersome Bronto-killer. “How can you see anything in all this stupid fog?”
The ax, like the Osafune Mitsutada Donovan now carried, was an intriguing masterpiece. Donovan should like to get his hands on it to study it further, but he was more than satisfied by the weapon he presently brandished. More than satisfied. What Gavin didn’t even know was that his sword had a soul. Four of them.
There were four distinct color combinations encased within the argent metal, three dim, the fourth dominant, a reflection of Gavin’s own colors. His unique color signature rippled above the others, and yet it was not superior, or even stronger for that matter. It was as if the others had yielded peacefully their position and watched.
Donovan wanted this weapon. It fit his grip perfectly, felt like an extension of his arm, as beautiful as it was deadly. Back on Earth he’d had several blades, all of them exquisite, but none like this. This was a masterpiece. Like Donovan.
“They know we’re here,” Donovan rasped.
“I guess stealth is out of the question then,” Skip said.
Gavin regarded his comrades and nodded. He agreed. “Who’s going to be the rabbit?” he asked.
“I will,” Tarsidion said and stepped forward. Donovan didn’t like any of these people; their self-righteous confidence oozed from their pores, but he disliked Tarsidion the least. Perhaps it was because the long-haired giant rarely spoke. “Prepare yourselves,” he said and strode forward fearlessly, shoulders back. “Efil,” he whispered and his sword shot up in a spray of blue light and ringing steel. Donovan could smell Amanda’s fear beside him.
Ten strides in, fists punched through the ground and ripped themselves from their graves, filling the cold air with carnal, slobbering growls. Once free, a half dozen sets of angry orbs danced violently in the air within the bloody mist. Donovan could hear their footsteps charging through the fog with rabid speed.
Quaranai drawn, blue light blazing, Tarsidion pointed at the charging carcasses and like tracers from an A-10 Warthog, blades of light rained into them from his outstretched hand, shredding their bodies as they ran. Their screams were ghastly and unnatural against the silence of the pass; all but two were cut down by the volley, reduced to heaps of spasming nerves. With the same hand a bolt of vivid blue lightning wreathed in flames crackled from Tarsidion’s fingertips, forked with a sizzle, and speared the other two like arrows through pigeons. Overkill. The impact blew them back ten feet and in pieces, consuming them in electrical fire. Their screams were drowned out by the peal of thunder that was unleashed by the attack and went echoing down the ravine into the mountain.
Donovan smiled darkly. His dislike for Tarsidion lessened another notch. He liked the man’s style; the thunderclap boomed one simple message.
Knock, knock.
* * *
So much for sneaking through, Gavin thought as they moved into the Pass. Not that their passing would have remained a secret long anyway, but he should have known Tarsidion’s propensity for grand entrances. The whole world knew they were coming now.
The first wave that came at them were the walking dead. Zombies.
The quick ones, the ones that could sprint as quickly as a rabid dog, were hardly rotting at all, a few patches of skin here and there hanging from jaws and fingers to reveal the bones beneath. Others looked like they’d been dead for a hundred years, their flesh hanging in tatters over their shuffling skeletons. Only the fresh ones screamed. The older ones did little more than breathe harshly and gurgle. Scary, yes—especially the purple-green light that burned deep in their skulls—but not particularly formidable. At least not against them. Arms, legs and headless torsos littered the floor of the pass. They didn’t have blood, per se, but the thick, viscous fluid that sprayed from their wounds not only reeked, but was slippery and stubborn and didn’t like to be wiped off.
Then came the walking bones.
In stark contrast to the snarling, feral zombies, the eerily silent jumbles of bones and discarded armor would scrape across the mountain floor to assemble into fully formed, ghastly faced skeletons. Once complete, they would raise their ancient battered weapons and attack. The same, rotting moss pinpricks of light shined cruelly from deep within their skulls.
The group advanced in three-to-one formation, three point offense in front—Gavin, Tarsidion, Cirena—anchored by a single point of defense—Noah—as rear-guard. In the middle were the Earthlings, centered by Dwensolt and his golden sickle staff glowing green-gold light.
Everybody fought. Tendrils of lightning vaporized chest cavities and balls of blue-hot light incinerated fleshless skulls. Those who breached the magical missiles were cut down by a wall of glowing blades, ax-heads and katana strikes. Even Amanda got in the mix, strategically shooting the occasional head and kneecap, blunting attacks for others to wipe up.
The pass twisted and snaked into and out of caverns and caves, some of which were blacker than deep space, others as bright as the night outside. The farther in they went, the narrower the path got. Soon they were reduced to single file, Gavin at the point, Noah at the rear. Dripping water echoed. Fighting out in the open was one thing; fighting in claustrophobically tight quarters single file in the pitch black was quite another.
It was just such a cave where they encountered their first Spirit. Pyrk saw it first.
“On the ceiling,” he whispered into Gavin’s ear, voice tight and high with fear. It appeared at first as a shapeless mass of lesser darkness, lurking on the ceiling of the cave.
“Nightshade,” Gavin whispered down-line and pointed up.
With a thought he summoned a cocoon of glimmering blue light. Noah, Tarsidion and Cirena repeated and three more cocoons formed, overlapping and covering all. The presence on the ceiling hovered coldly, floating like a black light helium balloon. It followed them in silence.
The path carved deeper into the mountain forking and splitting like a labyrinth. Each time the passage split, Dwensolt would point and lead them deeper still. Soon they could barely stand. The passage had shrunk to barely six feet high by three and a half feet wide. Gavin’s heart boomed like a subwoofer, sending blood coursing to every capillary in his body. Despite his fear and adrenaline, he summoned the dry, practical voice of the strategist and took notes, leaving an imaginary trail of bread crumbs behind them. Just in case. The only thing that could
be worse than crossing the Realm of the Undead would be doing so...lost. That would be the end of them and any warning this world might have.
The first statue they came across seemed so out of place and strange that it interrupted his dread. Gavin leaned close and pointed the tip of his burning Quaranai by its face so that he could study the details. It was of a man, thick beard and mustache, dressed in old-style armor with a sword grasped within his hand. The expression of terror on his face—bulging eyes, silent scream—had been captured so well by the sculptor that Gavin shuddered and looked away. That type of thing was contagious.
“Don’t look at their faces,” he said over his shoulder.
As they crept forward through the narrow catacomb, they began to see other statues in various poses of terror, some broken while others had turned black with age. The cold light of their blades made the passageway look like a deranged house of horrors.
“We are surrounded,” Donovan announced. His dry whisper hovered in the confined space like the Nightshade still above them. Every time one of them prepared to attack it, the spirit would dissipate into the stone, only to reappear later. Watching.
At least we have Donovan.
It was a crazy thought, flying across his mind like a rock from a slingshot, but dammit it was true. More than once Donovan had sniffed out ambushes and traps that could have proved problematic even for their Shardyn senses. They came upon another cluster of statues, but these were broken and toppled, as if some bored vandal had taken a sledgehammer to them. Among them were older bones, real bones, un-animated that snapped like sticks with every step. It was a terrible sound, stomach-turning but unavoidable. There were bones everywhere, the bones of those who’d attempted exactly as they were attempting.
Forward. Survival. The Drynn were coming.
The radius of light thrown up by their Quaranais and Dwensolt’s staff gave them just enough illumination to see the rows of glistening stalactites hanging from the roof of the deeper caverns like shark’s teeth, while stalagmites jutted up to impale or block. Every once in a while, Gavin would see faces in the stone.