The Valley of the Gods

by Phil Tucker

  Sisu’s eyes widened. “We were about to be slaughtered! We only escaped because I—”

  “Enough,” said Acharsis. “And more than enough. Sisu. Listen to me. You are not to use your powers without my express permission. No matter what. No exceptions. Am I understood?”

  Sisu drew himself up. “You are not my master. We are in the netherworld, and if anything—”

  “Sisu,” growled Jarek.

  The youth hunched over and scowled. “Very well. But if your foolish rules get us all killed, I will mock you for eternity from beside Nekuul’s throne.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” said Acharsis. “Now, Nahkt. How do we orient ourselves to get past this cliff?”

  Jarek drew close to the edge, and saw that the gray grass gave way to reveal carved stone beneath - a long rectangular beam, worn by the passage of time and ingrained with dirt. “The stone looks worked,” he said to the others, then carefully lowered himself to one knee on the stone’s edge and peered over.

  The cliff dropped into the misty depths, but it was its face that drew Jarek’s eye: the stone was composed of an endless series of temple facades, each crushing the one below it; pillars and pilasters, shattered steps and crumbling entrances, broken porticos and ruined facades. Some were grand on a scale of the ziggurat back home, while others were humble, dwarfed by their neighbors, slotted together like the stones of a farmer’s wall.

  “If I had any doubts,” said Acharsis, carefully stepping up alongside him and placing his good hand on Jarek’s shoulder for balance, “as to our being in the netherworld, well, they’re gone now.”

  Nahkt stepped up on Jarek’s other side. “We proceed down. Not by climbing, but by reorienting our understanding of what is ‘down’. Like so.”

  He stepped out into the void and swung forward so that his foot connected with the face of the temple below them. A second step, and he turned to regard them, feet solidly planted on the cliff face.

  Nobody spoke. Jarek stood and dusted off his knees. His stomach clenched in apprehension. But there was no sense in wasting time caviling. He took a deep breath, blew it out to clear his mind. But before he could step out into nothingness, Nahkt screamed.

  Their guide had teleported a good thirty or so yards down the cliff face, standing confidently on a weathered column of stone, waiting and watching, when a serrated blade shot up from the shadows beneath him to plunge through his lower back and out his stomach.

  Nahkt’s scream was terrible, and he gripped the serrated blade with both hands, not tugging or pushing but simply trying to come to terms with its emergence from his body. Jarek froze. The blade curved as if alive, like a beckoning finger, turning into a hook which was then yanked by a chain back down into the dark. Nahkt screamed once more as he was pulled off his feet, and disappeared into the ruined temple.

  “No,” said Kish. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Nahkt!” Acharsis cupped his hand to his mouth. “Nahkt!” Grimacing, he sat on the cliff’s edge, drummed his heels on the temple stone below him, then yelled wordlessly and pushed off.

  Jarek watched, stunned, as Acharsis fell. He didn’t reorient himself as Nahkt had done, but plunged past the ruined temples, falling ever faster.

  Down! thought Jarek, clenching his fists. Come on, change your down!

  He willed Acharsis to fall into the cliff face, and in a burst of terror and anger stepped out into the void. For a horrifying second, his stomach lurched as he started to fall, but then the temple swung up to become his ground and he found himself running after Acharsis, helpless, too far away to do a blasted thing.

  Acharsis tumbled around, caught sight of Jarek, cocked his head and then crashed into the ground. He skidded along a temple facade and then slammed into a column and came to a wrenching stop.

  “Acharsis!” Jarek took a half-dozen steps after him, then turned back to the cliff’s edge where Sisu and Kish were staring at him. “Come on! Hurry!” He stepped right up to them and crouched, reaching over the edge to where they stood. “Look at me. Look at my feet. Don’t overthink it, just come!”

  Kish gripped his hand and stepped out with a gasp. She shot past him, pulled by her own gravity to sail along the ground as Acharsis had done, but Jarek was ready. With a grunt he pivoted on his heels, holding on tight to her wrists, and held her up, her body stretched out from the ends of his arms parallel to the ground.

  “Look at my feet, damn you!” He leaned back as his sandals began to slide along the stone. “Down!”

  Kish closed her eyes, frowned, and then with another gasp set her feet on the stone.

  “Sisu,” said Jarek, turning back. “You coming?”

  Sisu looked down at him. “Yes. In one moment. Just give me one moment.”

  “I’m not going to wait. Acharsis!” Jarek drew his Sky Hammer. “Hold on, we’re coming! And you two, watch out for that serrated hook.” He took off at a run, charging down the temple face and leaping over a dark doorway, up the steps that led to the base. He swung his legs over that horizontal beam and onto the next temple. It reminded him of running across the rooftops of Rekkidu, over the retaining walls and leaping over the occasional trapdoor or skylight.

  Acharsis was slowly rising to his feet, hand to his head. “I’m all right,” he called, though his voice sounded strange. “I might have hit my head a little.”

  Jarek reached his side, watching the temple doors and windows in the grounds for any sign of movement. “You sure? You can walk?”

  “I’ll be honest with you,” said Acharsis. “I could really use a beer. But - Nahkt. We have to find him.”

  “Go down into these temples, you mean?” Jarek studied the closest doorway. It led directly down into the darkness. Turning, Jarek considered the eerie ground all around them - the endless temple fronts with their endless entrances. “It must be a warren below. We’ve no source of light. We’d be slaughtered down there.”

  “We can’t go on without him!” Acharsis’ voice rose to a shout. “We need—”

  “They’re coming!” Sisu’s voice was faint, but then he launched himself over the edge. Legs kicking, he fell toward them, his shout growing louder with every moment.

  “Fuck!” screamed Jarek, and ran out wide to intercept him. At the last moment he placed his foot on a column and leaped out to tackle Sisu midair. They spun, momentum carrying them a good six or seven yards across, and then Jarek’s greater weight brought Sisu crashing to the ground.

  “Run!” Kish was sprinting toward them, hammer out. From where he lay, waiting for gravity to capture Sisu, Jarek saw the restless dead spill out over the cliff’s edge like a waterfall. Hundreds of them.

  Jarek scrambled to his feet, hauling Sisu up by the nape of his neck. Acharsis staggered over, staring wide-eyed at the flood of the dead who arced out into space only to fall back onto the cliff, landing in a rush of splintering limbs to pour toward them like a breached dam.

  “Time to run?” asked Acharsis.

  “No,” said Jarek. The dead were moving too fast. More were spilling out over the cliff’s edge. “Kish! Wrap your arms around my neck.”

  She didn’t question, but simply moved behind him and hopped up onto his back. Jarek grabbed Sisu by the belt, slid his arm around Acharsis’ waist, and then closed his eyes.

  The whispery screams of the dead were rising, the bony thuds of their heels on stone a staccato, their headlong approach the stuff of nightmares.

  He had one chance. Mere seconds to pull it off.

  You’re not standing on the floor. It’s the face of a cliff. The world is below you. Let go. It’s time to fall.

  With all his might he wrenched his mind, his sense of perspective, and forced the ground to become a wall once more. The whispery screams were upon him, his skin prickled with danger, and with a cry he jumped back into the air.

  With Kish on his back and Acharsis and Sisu on his arms it was more of a hop than a leap, and he immediately crashed back into the cliff face - but then slid back,
plucked by gravity, dragging the other three with him. He thrust off the wall again, falling now, into the void, Sisu’s scream of confusion rising as the restless dead reached for them, their boney claws snapping inches from his face.

  Jarek fell, dragging the others along with him, and when their own sense of up and down reoriented itself the last of the resistance melted away and they plummeted.

  Down and away from the horde of hungry dead who streamed after them, hissing their frustration, blackened eyes narrowed in fury. Down and away from the cliff, ever faster - until a black, serrated blade flew out from a darkened doorway to punch through Jarek’s thigh.

  The pain was tremendous and for a moment he saw only white. Then the chain went taut and he - along with everyone else - arced down to slam into the cliff face. Kish tumbled from his back and fell five yards onto a ledge. Sisu slipped from his grasp but was able to catch hold of the edge of a step, but Jarek managed to hold on to Acharsis.

  Jarek hung head down, the black links of the thick chain scraping across stone, the blade tearing through the thick muscles of his left thigh. With a gasp he swung Acharsis wide so that his friend could fall onto the same ledge on which Kish now stood, and then rolled up to grasp the chain and take the pressure off his leg.

  The restless dead were racing toward him, bounding over the temple features, a tidal wave of need and hunger.

  Grunting, Jarek eyed the blade. It was a foot long, wickedly serrated, its length gleaming with his blood. He’d no choice but to tear it out. A bad idea. He’d lose much more blood that way. With a grimace, he held onto the chain with one hand, contorting while upside down, and gripped the base of the blade… which curved like a living snake into a hook, the tip of which had perforated his thigh, curling around and making it impossible to tear free.

  “Jarek!” Kish was trying to climb up toward him.

  He was drenched in sweat. Pain rolled through him like heat shimmers off a clay road. Blood was pouring down his leg to soak his hip. He could feel the blade’s serrated teeth chewing at his muscle from within his leg, grinding against bone. It made him want to faint.

  “Jarek!” Acharsis’ cry was sharp with warning. “They’re on you!”

  Jarek looked up. Here came the dead. They swarmed forward and around him, pressing their faces to his wound, pressing their dry tongues to his blood-soaked clothing, digging their nails into his flesh. Teeth worried at his skin, hands tugged at his clothing, and he swung back and forth, jerked by their attentions like an erratic pendulum.

  Kish was screaming. He had to focus. The wound in his thigh was widening as the blade cut up along his bone, shearing the muscle free. Pain blossomed all over his body as the dead sought to consume him. Looking up the length of the chain, he saw a shadow rising from the temple entrance, a vast, slithering mass of arms and legs, a composite without reason, a demon from the depths with one great eye. The chain emerged directly from its pupil, and with a jerk began to retract, drawing back into its head and bringing Jarek with it.

  Kish leaped up, snatched at the limbs of several dead and jerked them away with her as she fell back down. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  Instinct kicked in, that brute desire to survive that had seen him through countless battles. The pain was distant, a roaring fire that didn’t touch him. Hot blood was pouring down his chest now. The blade had cut its way almost up to his knee.

  Jarek closed his eyes. He twisted and jerked as the restless dead bit and clawed at him. It’s below me. Rocks falling in an avalanche. Falling down toward that fucker. Down. The word reverberated through his very being as he forced the notion upon his soul. Down!

  The tension in the chain went slack, and then the demon was below him. He fell toward it, breaking free of the morass of the dead, sailing over their heads with gathering speed. The arms and legs that composed the front of the demon’s corpus shifted apart, revealing a maw, hands writhing within in their eagerness to grasp hold of him and tear him apart. With a scream he twisted his sense of down to the left, so that he veered away from the demon in an arc, falling down and around it, the chain slithering after his descent.

  Roaring with effort, he forced his sense of down to slide back to the right, so that he swung around the demon, which went from being across from him to above. The chain wrapped around its head, sinking into its fleshy side. Faster and faster Jarek fell, and as he did he kept moving his down around the demon so that he was always falling past it, a meteor circling the world. The mouth chased him around the demon’s body as it sought to keep him before it, but he was moving too fast. The chain wrapped around the demon again and again, tighter and tighter, so that Jarek was falling in ever smaller circles.

  He grabbed the Sky Hammer. Blood flew into the air behind him in ever tightening arcs, and then he was upon it. He brought the Sky Hammer down with all his strength, splattering it through the demon’s body, sending twisted limbs flying through the air.

  It wasn’t enough. The demon accommodated the blow, reformed, but Jarek didn’t give it a chance to react. He planted his feet on the side of its body, forced the demon to be below him so that he stood on it as if it were a massive, writhing tree branch of ichor-soaked limbs, and wrapped the chain three times in quick succession around his own forearm. Then, gritting his teeth and praying he wouldn’t pass out, he hauled, straightening both legs, blood fountaining from his wound, and tore the demon’s eye clear from its head.

  It shrieked as tendrils and black blood burst free, and then retreated sloppily back through the temple door into the dark, the chain tearing free.

  Jarek allowed himself to fall off it, spinning slowly, chain and hammer in hand. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever felt. Limp, loose, he plummeted along the temple faces, wind ruffling his hair.

  Jarek closed his eyes, not in an attempt to reorient, but simply from exhaustion. The hissing screams of the hungry dead fell away. Would he continue to fall in this direction forever? Would he awaken as a demon in his own right? He had to gather himself. Had to open his eyes, direct himself toward his friends.

  But it was too much.

  Darkness reached up to envelop him, but before it could, he felt a hand grasp him by the shoulder. It grabbed him tight, and then someone was there, taking hold of him mid-fall, falling alongside him, climbing up his length and turning so that they fell together.

  “Jarek!”

  He knew that voice. Even on the brink of death it made him smile. Opening his eyes, he saw her. Black hair waving in the wind, eyes wide with terror and determination.

  Kish.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The process of crowning Elu pharaoh seemed endless. Annara stared at her reflection in a bronze, full length mirror that had appeared as if by magic within her chambers, and blew a lock of her hair out of her face. All the Maganian noblewomen shaved their heads so as to better accommodate their wigs and headdresses, but Annara wasn’t ready to take that step.

  Even for the final ceremony that would present Elu formally to the gathered lamassu of Magan, a sunset ordeal before the gathered nobility of the land that would forever cement him as their true and rightful ruler.

  The outfit she was expected to wear was ridiculous. She’d barely be able to walk under the sheer amount of gold and jewelry she was supposed to wear, and her robes were to be bound and laced so tightly that she the odds of her asphyxiating were just slightly better than those of her falling on her face before the entire assembled crowd.

  Glad for once for the assistance of her serving girls, Annara just stood there and stared through her reflection, trying to piece together the puzzle that had slowly coalesced before her eyes over the past week. They’d failed to locate Pebekkamen, the missing lieutenant commander whom Jarek had liked, and whispers around court suggested that he’d drunk himself to death in some obscure dive. That or been killed in the recent political turmoil. They’d turned up a variety of other rumors, including that he’d once been responsible for a terrible loss that h
ad resulted in the death of all his men, had himself murdered a variety of citizens in drunken bar brawls, and worse of all was a complete coward that fainted at the sight of blood. Still, she’d continued to order her private guards to search for him each morning, with no luck thus far.

  By tilting her head slightly, she was able to study the reflection of her two eunuch guards. Large and placid like sleepy bulls, they were easy to ignore, their presence ubiquitous throughout the Women’s Courtyard, but she’d discovered to her chagrin that their master, the Captain of the Courtyard, was unflinchingly loyal to the high steward, who ran the palace and almost every aspect of its upkeep. Nothing could be whispered in their presence without it making its way to the steward’s ear, but nor could she have them dismissed.

  It took effort not to grind her teeth. Nethena had issued her a half dozen invitations to socialize, and she’d accepted exactly half. Each time she’d been subtly mocked before different parts of the Maganian court, often in Maganian so that she could only smile stiffly as the others smirked behind their hands.

  Blast Acharsis!

  A great and subtle web existed beneath the beautiful exterior of the palace, one whose many connections she’d yet to sound out. A number of individuals had stepped forward, offering her confidences and advice, but she trusted none of them. She’d divined the most obvious of connections, but the answers to many subtler questions eluded her: what had the head magistrate meant when he’d confessed over dinner two nights ago that the moon was going to eclipse the sun? To whom did the scribes send the jade embossed scrolls to every evening? Why had that cousin to the former pharaoh hung himself, and why was General Dagi given an assignment that sent him to the eastern edge of the empire without notice to Elu?

  Wisps and hints of conspiracy, daggers in the shadows, factions pulling for favor, promotions and demotions, even murders seemed to be happening around her so that the very palace seemed to heave like a straw pallet absolutely infested with bugs.