by John Kerry
“Good,” Sammy said.
Hami opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. He turned his head. Waited.
“What is it?” Eva asked.
Hami gave no answer but ushered everyone into the darkness of the stables. The greenbucks edged away, but otherwise seemed unconcerned and returned to eating their food. Hami pulled the stable door most of the way back across, but left a gap to see out of.
“What are we hiding from?” Leiss asked as everyone gathered by the opening.
“Quiet,” Hami whispered.
A group of seven horsemen entered the square between the stables. All were dressed in furs, bar a man at the front who wore a hooded black cloak that billowed with smoke.
He raised a gloved hand and the others stopped.
The man in black leapt forward over the top of his horse’s head and seemed to float to the ground on a blanket of smoke that trailed out behind him.
He knelt down, placed a hand to the ground and remained that way for many moments.
Then he turned to the stable where Sammy and the others hid and lifted the cloak back from his head.
It was a person unlike any Sammy had seen before. A man forged of molten rock. Glowing orange fissures split the blackened crust of his head and his face was dark and featureless, inset with burning yellow eyes that roved across the stables devouring everything in their gaze.
Sammy held her breath and concentrated on a stirrup dangling close by. She pictured it in her head. Closing off her brain and thinking of nothing else.
“She’s been through here,” the magma man said. “I want her found undamaged. If she’s brought before me in any other condition, I will incinerate every last one of you.” He strode purposefully towards the stable Sammy and the others hid in.
Hami silently guided everyone backwards through the dark, into the horse stall furthest from the entrance. They made it inside just as the door crashed and an orange glow filled the stables.
They couldn’t see the magma man, but the greenbucks whinnied, reared up and pulled at their reins.
Even hidden in the stall furthest from the door, Sammy could feel the heat coming off him. She thought of the stirrup. Iron and leather. Cold iron, atoms moving slowly.
Silence.
“The magi are here,” the man said at last. “Find them and bring me Azertash!” Then the orange glow dimmed, followed by receding footsteps.
Hami held everyone back until it grew quiet. “It can’t be Azertash,” he whispered, almost to himself.
“I only know one Azertash,” Mehrak said. “Azim Azertash. The General. And he died a hundred years ago..”
“Sammy and I are going after the burning man,” Hami said, leading Sammy out of the stall. “The rest of you, see if you can find Gisouie, but don’t get caught.”
“Wait!” Mehrak called after them, straining to keep his voice low. “Shouldn’t we stick together?”
“We’re too big as a group. I need to find out what’s going on here and Sammy has powers that are useful to me.”
“You’d better not be scheming to send Sammy away through that portal,” Mehrak said.
Hami opened a door in the back wall. “I’m not,” he said and stepped out.
–FIFTY-FOUR–
TRACKING THE MAGMA MAN
Sammy and Hami crept around a second stable block and past an empty kitchen hall before they joined the trail of the magma man.
How did you know which way he was heading? Sammy communicated.
I was following the sound of his footsteps. Magi can magnify sound. It’s not that powerful, but it can give you an edge.
Why hadn’t Hami taught her how to do that yet? Sammy listened and zoned in on the area up ahead. With a little concentration, she managed to increase the sound of snow crunching underfoot accompanied by the hiss of it melting. She refocused her hearing, aiming higher, and was able to pick up the ragged inhalations of the man’s breathing.
Now she could add enhanced hearing to her list of superhero skills. Not one of her best abilities, but certainly a useful addition to her repertoire.
Tracking magma man turned out to be super easy. Not only did he leave wide, melted footsteps, but he trailed a substantial amount of smoke in his wake too.
They ducked out of sight when he stopped to speak to a guy in furs – Sammy utilised her enhanced hearing to discover he was asking after Azertash – then he was off again, working his way through the compound towards the black cathedral at its centre.
When magma man entered the building closest to the cathedral, they followed the trail to the door and stopped outside.
Hami opened the door a crack and they both peered inside. A single long hallway ran the length of the interior with multiple rooms lined up on either side.
Magma man took a left at the end of the corridor and disappeared.
Hami led the way in and along the hallway. The left-hand turn took them to where the building joined the dark cathedral. Grey stone was cemented to black, framing grand double doors in the centre.
On the other side of the doors, a high vaulted hallway curved away to the right and left. A wide, doughnut-shaped space that could only be the hollow centre of the loop that formed the crown shape. It was a vast space and lacking in furniture or decoration. Only columns of black stone holding the ceiling distant above their heads.
Sammy followed Hami across the hall feeling conspicuous in the wide open space. They moved slowly, trying to keep their footsteps from echoing on the stone, moving towards a door on the opposite side, a door that presumably led to the inner circle.
Either side of the doorway were stone steps leading up and around the outside of the curved walls.
He went through that door in the middle, Hami communicated. Let’s find a vantage point. And he led Sammy up one of the curved staircases and along the tunnel at the top.
They slowed as they neared the end.
The area inside the crown was a colosseum of sorts. Seating consisted of increasingly large stone rings stepping up from the flat central area, up to Sammy’s tunnel and past, all the way to the ceiling, like terraces at a football ground.
It’s an amphitheatre, Hami said. This place will have been built when Perseopia was in its infancy, maybe even before it was sealed from the Mother World. The veil between worlds is thin here. But I can sense other strange forces that I don’t recognise. Some sort of convergence of power. There’s clearly a reason why the portal was built here.
Sammy’s skin prickled. She could feel it too. A deep permeating chill but unlike the type you get from cold.
In the centre of the amphitheatre, a metal plate had five curved prongs reaching up around the circumference giving the impression of a grasping claw. Inside the claw, blue wisps of light streaked around a central core of expanding and contracting air. Cables trailed from the plate across the room to a large steam-powered machine. It was covered in levers, oscillating pistons, whirring cogs and hissing tubes. Two women were shovelling coal into a boiler at one end. A third was at a control panel on the side. And three other women were at a trestle table nearby making notes in books and mixing colourful chemicals in weird-shaped bottles.
Above the claw, in the centre of the room, hung a doughnut-shaped gantry with three radial walkways leading out from it. Each stretched all the way to the top terrace of the amphitheatre near the ceiling.
Magma man had stopped behind the woman working at the machine’s control panel. She had a slight frame and black hair tied up in a bun, and continued to tweak dials and scratch notes onto a piece of parchment apparently unaware of the man looming behind her.
Sammy focused her hearing on him and increased the volume.
“Why is the portal powered up?” magma man asked.
The woman flinched. She began trembling as she turned to face him. “The General told us to keep it powered up. For when Ramaask arrives.”
“Ramaask is dead.”
/> The revelation appeared to catch the woman off guard and at first she had no response. “I … I was not told,” she stammered. “Please don’t punish me, Lord Mantis.”
Hami froze. Sammy had been watching the exchange on the floor of the colosseum, but she felt his tension as he seized up.
Who is it? Sammy asked. The name sounds familiar.
The sorcerer that brought Ramaask into Perseopia. The one that died when the Sultan’s Palace blew up.
How can he be here if he’s dead?
Quiet! They’re saying something.
“He’s said nothing?” Mantis asked.
“Only that the portal should be operational for Ramaask’s arrival.”
Mantis tore a golden ball of light out of the air. He held the burning mass in his hand as black smoke curled around it and floated up towards the ceiling.
Hami half-rose from the floor, lowering his staff, poised to leap.
“Stop!” the woman screamed. She threw herself between Mantis and the machine.
Mantis made no move. He watched her calmly as the orb continued to burn in his hand.
“I’m sorry.” The woman dropped to her knees. “I should not have screamed, my Lord, but the portal has to reach equilibrium before we power it down, otherwise we risk setting off a chain reaction that could destroy half the mountain.”
The orb vanished from Mantis’s hand and the smoke dispersed. “How long to shut down?” he asked.
Hami lowered himself back into a crouch.
“I can’t be sure, it’s not an exact science. The sequence changes every time we run the machine. A few hours maybe. Sorry, that’s the best answer I can give. I would speed up the process if I were able. We have to finish powering it up, equalise the pressure and energy flow, then we can ease it off and begin shutdown.”
“Begin now.”
“The General has threatened to kill us if we do that.”
“Where is he now?”
“In his quarters.”
“Start it up. Run it. Shut it down. Whatever you need to do, but make sure it’s shut down as soon as possible. I will talk with the General. No harm will come to you. I’ll see to it.” Then Mantis left the hall, passing under Sammy and Hami.
Hami pulled Sammy back from the edge of the tunnel.
“The portal will soon be powered up. This may be your only chance to use it if Mantis convinces the General to close it down.”
“Mehrak was right about you. You split us up so you could send me back unchallenged.”
“Does that matter? You have the opportunity to escape the Ahriman. You’ve seen what it can do.”
“You’re asking me to jump into that pulsating blue thing in the centre of the claw?”
“I’d suggest waiting for the portal to fully power up first, but yes. Why not? Home is just on the other side.”
“Home? Or the Mother World? It’s not the same thing. The portal might not be configured to take me to the same time and location I came from. The Mother World is huge and history was … long. What if I land in the middle of an ocean? Or a desert? What if I get taken to a time when dinosaurs were roaming the earth?”
Hami led her back down the tunnel to the hall they’d entered from. “That didn’t happen last time you left Perseopia by portal, did it? You got taken back to the exact moment you left.” He watched Mantis walk back the way they’d come.
“I was using portal pearls,” Sammy whispered. “I arrived using one and I returned using another that was identical. That portal thing is different.”
Hami turned to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I have to go after Mantis. Ramaask said this portal will take him to the Mother World. This is your chance to get out of the problems created by your arrival.”
“You’re the one that took me to the fire temple.”
“I didn’t tell you to go looking for the Temple of Paths or to cross the seal!”
“Maybe if you’d been honest with me from the beginning I’d have done what you asked me.”
Hami took a deep breath and glanced back over his shoulder. Mantis passed through the doorway on the opposite side of the hall and was gone.
“You know what? You’re right. You aren’t responsible for this mess. I am. You don’t need to get involved. Perseopia is not your problem.”
He had a point. Sammy needed none of this. Perseopia was going down the toilet. Maybe she should bail while she had the chance.
“Are you going or not?” Hami asked.
Sammy shook her head. “We promised Mehrak.”
“He’ll understand.”
“I’m not going until I see him.”
Hami scowled. “Keep up then, we need to catch Mantis.”
They picked up the sorcerer’s trail in the snow and caught up with him on the outskirts of the snow base. A lone building sat apart from the others, not far from the plateau edge. They watched Mantis enter, then took a wide detour around to the side.
So he doesn’t see our footprints when he comes back out, Hami explained.
They crept up to the building, crouching under the windows on the dark, far side of the building. Sammy shivered and pulled her hood up over her head, tightening it around her face. Away from the shelter of the other buildings, a harsh wind cut through her, bringing the misery of bone-deep cold. Using the portal to take her to a world blessed with central heating was getting more attractive by the moment, but she wasn’t going home, even for central heating. And besides, Eggie had a stove. That was good enough.
Hami pointed to his ears and Sammy homed in on the conversation taking place on the other side of the wall.
“I have their lightning staffs here.” A man’s voice. One Sammy hadn’t heard before. A big voice that could only belong to a big man.
“And where might the owners of those staffs be?” It was Mantis talking now.
“Hanging from the walls of the castle.”
Hami sighed, but the news didn’t seem to surprise him.
“You killed them?” Mantis asked.
“They’re magi. What would you have me do with them? They were sneaking around my portal.”
“Ramaask’s portal.”
“Ramaask is dead. We’re free men.”
“Then why is the portal still running?”
“Because, now that Ramaask has no need of it, I mean to have the golden poniard for myself.”
Hami gripped Sammy’s arm, his face became pale even in the shadows.
“To do what with?”
“To rule, Mantis. What else? Ramaask is gone, who will stop us ruling Perseopia?”
“The Ahriman is closing in on this location as we speak. He covets the same object you do.”
“Even the Ahriman will fall before the one who carries the poniard.”
“And the magi?”
“Like the two that came here tonight? I can kill most magi without the poniard. With it, I can kill them all.”
“The two that came here were middle tier magi. How would you fair against a grand master?”
“And when am I likely to run into one of them?”
“Sooner than you may think.”
“I’ve heard enough excuses, Achaemen. Tell me where the poniard lies, then step aside so that I may retrieve it.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“So you’d put yourself in my way?”
“You aren’t going through that portal.”
Hami pulled Sammy towards him just before the side of the building exploded outward, ejecting the two men. They barrelled through the rubble and rolled to a stop in the snow.
Sammy was geared up to run but Hami held her down, keeping her in the shadows.
The big man was up first. A skin-coloured hulk. Big head, hands, chest. A giant dressed in furs. He stood over Mantis, arms and legs as thick as tree trunks. His head was like a block of stone, solid, grim and ancient as if it had weathered centuries of hardship
and pain, like it belonged jutting out of the earth on Easter Island.
He brought a huge fist down on Mantis. The sorcerer barely raised his hand in time and the fist collided with an invisible barrier and rebounded. Mantis pulsed a second shockwave that sent the General flying backwards towards the building, landing close to where Sammy crouched in the dark.
Hami held her still. Panic made her want to get up and run, but Hami placed a hand on her shoulder, letting her know not to move.
Mantis ripped a fireball from the air and held it aloft. “I wish there was another way, Azertash. It always saddened me to know I’d be the one to kill you, but you left me no choice.”
As Mantis raised the burning orb, a stone block came flying towards him, clipping his shoulder. The fireball went out as Mantis staggered backwards and the General dived on him.
We should go, Sammy transmitted to Hami.
Not yet, he replied, but he was poised. Ready. They’ll see us.
The General swung a fist at Mantis. It only glanced off his head, but he went down. The sorcerer managed another shockwave that sent the General back a little way, but not far enough.
Mantis rolled to the side and tried to get to his feet, but he was all over the place. He staggered, fell to one knee.
The General came at him again. He unsheathed a giant broadsword from his belt, stepped over Mantis, raised it up and brought it down.
The blade stopped short of Mantis’s neck.
Hami was standing now, his arm outstretched.
What are you doing? Sammy screamed in his head.
The General turned towards them then. “Magi?” There was confusion on his big face, then a colossal force knocked him backwards across the snow towards the mountain’s edge. Mantis stood and turned towards Hami, his yellow eyes burning in his blackened and cracked face. He nodded once, then leapt towards the General, streaming a comet tail of smoke behind him.
Mantis landed beside the General, tore a fireball from the air and pounded it into the General’s skull.
Azertash shrieked as a second fireball slammed into his face.