by Adrian Cole
“Konnar might fancy it,” snorted Mears. “But not me. And I’ve had my fill of this blessed reef anyway.”
“One moment,” said Reverence, holding up his hand in his familiar imperious way. “This place might have its uses.”
“What do you mean?” said Jameson.
“It’s obvious to me that Fung Chang has been exercising a greater degree of deceit than we had realised. I am beginning to think that we have been in danger of making a serious blunder. Consider, why should that Ricketts fellow be taking Bannerman’s body to such a place as that? He would, would he not, seek to get it to his master with all possible haste?”
“Meaning?” said Darkwing.
“Meaning that Fung Chang is not in the Temple of Seven Winds. Oh, doubtless it is staffed by a good many of his agents. And providing a superb façade. No, gentlemen, I submit that Fung Chang is housed in that architectural nightmare you see before you. Why else would Bannerman be taken there?”
His words fell like a cold blast of air over them all. They became silent, each contemplating the dark island.
“How do we know for sure?” said Darkwing.
“There is a way. I said this reef might have its uses. I need to see inside that place. And I need to contact Bannerman within the system, as before.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Reverence,” said Jameson, horrified by what the detective was implying, “you can’t mean to project yourself from here!”
“This is a place of power. Corrupt no doubt. But the principles are the same.”
“Pardon my ignorance,” said Darkwing, “but surely we have no time for this. By the time you’ve got back into the system and out again, the sea will have cut us off.”
Reverence waved the objection aside rudely. “No need for you to delay here. It will take me a matter of moments to project. At that point, my body will have to be carried. Until I am ready.”
“Carried!” gasped Jameson. “My dear fellow, that’s absurd.”
“Nonsense!” riposted Reverence. “Cradoc here could carry all of us across if he set his mind to it. Now, come along, we’ve wasted more than enough time quibbling.” Without waiting for further comment, he strode out across the flat sands to the centre of the amphitheatre.
Cradoc was leaning over Jameson, eyes creased in as close to a smile as he could get. He simply nodded.
Konnar chuckled. “He’s right. He’ll be no heavier than a babe in arms to Cradoc.”
“Come on, Jameson!” Reverence called impatiently. He was already drawing something in the sand.
The others joined him, watching as the detective marked out a pentagram in silence, only ceasing his work when he was satisfied. He had aligned its points with some of the menhirs. Mears assumed he intended to draw on their hidden powers, though he shared Jameson’s misgivings. Any powers here would be dark and obscene, linked possibly to the things from the stars, the elder deities that the monstrous denizens of the underworld worshipped.
“Work quickly,” the Barbarian suddenly called from his vantage point at the edge of the circle. “A fresh attack.”
Mears felt the cold clutch of terror anew. In spite of himself he dashed to Konnar’s side. The Barbarian pointed. “Coming up the slopes. Dozens of them.”
“Are they men? Or more of those fish things?”
“Whatever they are, they do not fear the moonlight.”
Mears turned back to the circle. “You’d better postpone the —” he began, but his jaw dropped. Reverence was lying prone in the centre of the sand circle. Jameson knelt outside it, face drawn.
“Cradoc!” shouted Konnar. “Lift him! We must get away now.”
The huge figure strode into the circle, bent down and scooped up Reverence’s inert form like so many rags, draping it over one broad shoulder.
Konnar led the way across the sand to the crude path that led down the reef to the mudflats. The others kept close to him as they began the hurried descent. The Barbarian had gone no more than a few steps when he pulled up sharply, sword lifted. His hesitation was temporary, but the others saw at once what had caused it.
From out of the waters another mass of quasi-human beings climbed the shore, seemingly intent on cutting off the flight to the mud causeway.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Island of the Sorcerer
As Reverence projected his astral self out of his body and across the gulf to the towering island, he felt the presence in the air of invisible forces, a drawing together of powers that he could not put a name to. But they radiated a deeper darkness, not satanic but of something beyond normal earthly regions. The things he had glimpsed on his first astral visit to Fung Chang’s lair were coalescing here now. Like other dimensional watchdogs, they picked up his scent, pulsing forward. He fought a wave of cold terror as he came to the bastions of the outlandish building and drifted quickly down into the recesses of its weird construction. He was not a moment too soon, for a cloud of those other things thickened overhead, blotting out the moonlight, swirling like an aerial fog.
Reverence made out a minute maze of stairs and stepways which criss-crossed parts of the top of the curious building, like goat trails across a mountain. Only here did it strike him how singularly huge this building was, sculpted as it was from the entire rock that made up the island, even down to its base. From this vantage point he was able to take one last look out across the sea to the reef he had left. He realised now how extensive the withdrawal of the tide had been. It must have been unprecedented, for it had laid waste mile upon mile of sea bed, exposing depths that would never normally have seen the light of day. And in the countless lakes and pools, things flopped and slithered, things best seen dimly. As Reverence stared in awe, they seemed to crawl and undulate towards the island, like supplicants to a shrine.
Fung Chang was summoning every force at his disposal, no matter how alien, how blasphemous. Reverence had no further time to watch this monstrous calling. He melted into the stone. No sooner had he done so than the vacuum he had left was filled with the swirling entities. They sliced the air in their frustrated passes, unable to go into the stone as their prey had done.
Reverence came through several feet of rock and out into a corridor. It was angular and uneven, not hewn for human feet, though in his astral form it did not matter. Whatever creatures had first used this place, they were not of his world. On the leaning walls there were carvings and writings, similar to those he had seen in the church. He paused, knowing that he would have little time to find Bannerman’s essence. But he knew instinctively that he had been right in his assumption that this was the place he had come to previously, where he had first encountered Bannerman. The Temple of the Seven Winds was a façade.
Concentrating, he began an investigation of the stone maze, moving at the speed of thought. He was aware that something indefinable was picking him up, a psychic detection by whatever elementals Fung Chang had set to guard his inner sanctum. They had been caught on the hop the first time he had intruded, but not this time. Even so, he reached a section of stone that housed what he was looking for. The wiring that was the vital nerve complex of the system.
He flowed into it, mingling his essential energy with that of the electrical currents, renewing his experiences, more confident now and thus moving instantaneously from one part of the system to another. For the moment he had left his seekers behind.
Within seconds he had located and locked on to Bannerman’s hidden essence. It reacted defensively, about to slip away like a dream, but Reverence held it in check with a word.
“Reverence?” came the reply.
“Yes. Listen, Bannerman, time is short. Your body is already here in the building. I will locate it with as little delay as possible.”
“I’ve almost been pulled out. The trap is closing. There’s only so much cyberspace left I can use without being snared.”
“Do they know who you are?”
“I don’t think so. They’re treating me like a virus. Trying to wipe me. They wouldn
’t do that if they knew what I am. Find where my body is. What other help is there?”
“Enough, I hope.” But even in this form, Reverence found it hard to keep the anxiety from his words. He quitted this part of the system, concentrating his energies now on finding where Ricketts had taken Bannerman’s physical body. He was prepared for an exhaustive search, but in the event achieved his goal quickly. The huge megastructure contained many chambers, most of them devoid of any signs of life. All activity was confined to a number of particular areas, one of which was the immense central chamber. Reverence avoided this, concentrating on the smaller ones adjacent to it. It was in one of these that he found what he sought.
It was a laboratory. Its walls were white, lined with benches and computer hardware, the wires plugged into the walls like the living veins and arteries of a leviathan. Screens flickered, some covered in a mass of numbers, others in glyphs that Reverence recognised at once as those that were carved on the walls of the tunnels. In the central part of the laboratory, a number of glass tanks, several feet long, were monitored by technicians. Within them, beneath viscous fluid, human bodies reclined, waiting to be brought to life. Beside them, in silent rows, several dozen Shuddermen were arraigned in statuesque silence.
Reverence drifted into the laboratory as silently as air, invisible, undetected for the moment. At the end of the row of tanks, he saw what he had come for. It was a metal trolley with a single sheet draped over it. On this rested the naked body of Bannerman.
As Reverence hovered above it, two men approached and bent over the body, one of them an Oriental.
“Remarkably preserved,” this man said. He lifted Bannerman’s arm. “No rigor mortis. And not as cold as one would have expected.”
“Could this be the superhuman element?” said his companion.
“It would seem to be. Even so, I want to begin soon. We cannot risk losing whatever powers remain within the body. We have achieved so much with one single vial of the blood!”
“I’ll have everything prepared.”
They left together and Reverence wasted no further time here. Moments later he was again with Bannerman in the system. “There are dozens of computers adjacent to your body in that laboratory,” he told him. “You could use any one of them.”
“Where will you be?”
“I have to go back to the others. I have to bring them inside.”
“How long before Fung Chang begins the opening of the way?”
“I believe he has already begun.” Reverence said no more, quitting the system and drifting back through layer upon layer of stone. Again he sensed the closing in of sentinels, but avoided them. He gathered himself for one last dash across the astral to a reunion with his body, focusing his attention on the outside, trying to pinpoint the Mire-Beast and the others.
* * * *
“They won’t want to kill us,” said Darkwing, watching the growing mass of creatures as they shambled up the lower reef. “Capture us, maybe, but not kill. Fung Chang wants us.”
Mears nodded, but it did little to soothe his shattered nerves. To add to their problems, a further host of creatures had appeared along the far edge of the reef, closing in.
“You are right,” called Konnar. “I have experienced this before. Let us move as quickly as we can. If we go towards the island, they won’t hamper us.” He and Cradoc had taken the initiative and were climbing down the path with extraordinary agility. Cradoc may as well have been carrying a towel across his shoulder for all the impediment that Reverence’s body was to him. But Jameson did his best to keep up, horrified at the sight of his friend, slumped there like one dead, so much rag and bone.
“You okay, Mears?” called Darkwing, who seemed even more agile than the others. He turned to watch Mears picking his way more awkwardly down the reef.
“If I break a leg, who gets to carry me?” Mears tried to joke.
Darkwing actually chuckled. “Judging by the way Cradoc is managing Reverence, I’d say he could take the lot of us over. Come on, the mudflat isn’t far. Once on that, we’ll show them a clean pair of heels.”
The sea creatures, mercifully shrouded in darkness, were nevertheless like a bobbing, shambling host of zombies, dragging themselves up the reef slowly, arms reaching out almost mechanically. It would have been laughable, Mears thought, only the thought of being touched by those repugnant hands nauseated him. It gave an edge to his determination and Darkwing’s words proved correct. Getting to the mudflat took far less time than he had thought. It had become clear that the gathering freaks were not intent on attacking or capturing them at all. If anything, they were ignoring them: their goal was the island, the dreadful holy of holies where they were to assemble for worship.
As the company got on to the mudflat and felt it firm under them, the swollen moon again broke out from its cloud cover, directly over the massive bulk of the island. Its light seemed somehow altered, as if in those glaring rays there pulsed a power, deeply unearthly, redolent with the crawling evil that had so thoroughly seduced Fung Chang to his plans. Mears knew that this invasion, this rupturing of dimensions to admit whatever horrors Fung Chang intended to control, would be tonight. Everything pointed to it. The monstrous island was bathed in the lurid glow, like some titanic colossus waking from sleep, shouldering its way up from the depths.
The company raced across the mudflat, half a mile from the base of the island. Behind them the hordes of sea beings closed in like a wave, themselves plodding forward mechanically, cutting off the way back. Beyond their vanguard, hidden by the poor light, other things also splashed and wriggled towards the island, as though all life in the seabed had focussed its attention there, drawn in by the powers being unleashed.
At the foot of the island, Cradoc scented out a stairway, the same that had been used by Ricketts and his followers. Like a ragged scar slashed across the rock strata, it went upwards in a narrow defile. It was a long and tortuous climb. Mears looked back once but it was enough to make him groan. The landscape below was like something from his wildest nightmares, totally alien. Weed and wreck poked up from the gnawed rock terrain, the smell of the sea overpowering. And the darkness seethed, alive with invisible things, flopping, hopping and slithering.
What in God’s name are we going to do when we reach the citadel? he asked himself. We are a small group. Any hope of reinforcements has been thwarted by Fung Chang’s deceptive use of the Temple of Seven Winds. Riderman and all the others will be camped around it. They won’t know we’re not inside it.
They got above the water line and the stairs were less dangerous but no wider. The air up here grew cold as they came deep under the shadow of the towering building. Moonlight bathed its upper ramparts, but they yet seemed a long way off.
Cradoc paused. He had felt movement in the body he was carrying. He got to a natural landing on the stair where there was a little more room and laid the body down.
Jameson was quick to bend over it. “Reverence! Wake up, man!”
The prone detective opened his eyes, blinked a few times, then heaved himself up on an elbow. “Jameson. Good to see you.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Yes. Halfway up the stair. A little further ahead there is a branch. We can’t follow the trail that Ricketts took. It will only lead us straight into Fung Chang’s hands.” He got up unsteadily, clearly drained by his exertions.
“What do you suggest?” said Jameson, gripping his arm, afraid that the detective was about to pass out.
“We have to get up on to the roof. I’ve seen Bannerman — and his body. He will restore himself very soon. Then we must all unite. Mr. Mears, you’ve said all along that Fung Chang wanted to draw our powers out of us, fuse us into some kind of superman.”
“So I believe,” Mears nodded.
“But he dreads us being together as a unit. If we get to the roof, somewhere near that accursed central chamber, Bannerman will try and come to us. Fung Chang has started the rituals that will open t
he gates to whatever demented regions he wants to sap.”
“Can you walk?” Jameson asked him concernedly.
“Yes, yes. Come, no time to lose. Upward!”
They began again, Konnar watching their back, eagle eyes scouring the night sky for signs of watchers.
* * * *
Bannerman felt a brief surge of power, a flexing of mental muscles, as he surged back into his body, a discharge of electrical energy that came perilously close to overload, fuelled as it was by one blazing emotion. Rage.
In the laboratory, a handful of technicians moved about the tanks, checking their contents, going about their work quietly, seemingly oblivious to the events taking place elsewhere in the citadel.
Bannerman ran a body check in an eye-blink. No damage, nothing broken, everything as it was when he had last been fully alive, before that damn storm. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, attention focussed on his hearing. And he heard men coming towards him. He recognised the voice of the Oriental. The rage had not subsided. It welled up anew.
And woke the beast.
Fujimoto stood before the outstretched body. It was perfectly proportioned, the muscles finely tuned, the build that of an athlete. As a model for cyber-clones it was absolutely ideal.
But it moved, the hands flexing.
Fujimoto blinked, thinking he had imagined this. But as he watched, he saw the transformation beginning. It accelerated rapidly. Fujimoto could only gape. This was impossible!
Beside him the technician gasped. “What’s happening to it —?”
Too late Fujimoto realised. “Cyberwolf! Bannerman is far from dead.” He swung round, glaring at the computer screens. Data was flashing like lightning across the nearest one. “The virus, the intruder. It was him!”
Behind him an extended arm lifted, long scythe-like claws flexing in the glow of the overhead lights. In a blur they ripped downward into Fujimoto’s flesh, opening him up the length of his spine, dragging him backwards. Sheets of agony enfolded him, so intense that he did not feel the teeth clamp on his neck, snapping it with one violent motion. He was dead before his ripped corpse smashed against the computer banks.