by Jim Butcher
A few moments later Hale stepped up beside him.
Hale surveyed the room and then asked, “Do you see the path?”
Logan shook his head. There was a thick coating of dust on the floor, covering most of the tiles, and it didn’t look like anyone had come this way in a very long time.
Hale gave voice to several words of power and then flung the energy his spell had conjured up into the room before them. It ripped through the small space, blowing the dust from the surface of the stones and turning several of them as dark as charcoal before the power exhausted itself against the far wall.
In its wake, a clear path across the room was laid out in darkened stones.
“Stay to the path; do not stray from the revealed stones,” Hale told him.
Logan wanted to ask what would happen if he made a misstep, visions of poisoned dart traps à la Indiana Jones running through his head, but the look on Hale’s face told him in no uncertain terms that he really didn’t want to know. Apparently ignorance truly was bliss.
Logan set off, carefully making his way across the room step by step, never straying from the darkened stones. Then, and one by one, the others followed until they were all on the far side.
With their first obstacle successfully navigated, the group continued onward.
They moved as quietly as possible, as if afraid of waking something lingering here in the depths of the earth. No one spoke, and the only sound came from the occasional rock rolling away underfoot or the swish of their equipment brushing up against the tunnel walls.
They had just moved through a long stretch of straight tunnel—the sameness of the rock around them lulling them into a kind of mental daze—when Logan stopped short, causing the next man in line to bump into him, nearly sending them both to their deaths.
Less than five feet in front of Logan the floor abruptly ended even as the curved walls went onward, creating the illusion that the tunnel continued ahead of them.
If I’d been looking forward rather than down at my feet . . . He shook himself, chasing away thoughts of what could have happened, even as the man behind him passed the word back down the line to hold in place.
Logan took another step forward and extended his torch, looking over the edge of the drop.
At the bottom of the cliff face, forty, maybe fifty feet below, was an open space, like a roofless chamber. The tunnel continued forward on the opposite side.
While this particular trap hadn’t been included in their intelligence briefing, they’d come prepared for a wide variety of eventualities.
“Ropes!” Logan called, and two of the men behind him got to work, removing long doubled-nylon climbing ropes from their packs and securing one end of them to the tunnel floor with pitons. Once they were tested, the ropes were passed up the chain to Logan, who threw them over the edge. The ropes cascaded down the cliff, coming to rest in a puddled heap at the bottom.
Length was not going to be a problem, it seemed.
Logan fashioned a makeshift harness by straddling the cord, then wrapping it around his hip and over his left shoulder, around his neck, and back down past his right arm. The weight of his body would act as a brake as he slowly lowered himself down the side of the cliff.
Bones crunched beneath his feet when he reached the bottom, the remains of jungle animals who had wandered into the cave in search of food and had apparently not paid enough attention to the path ahead. Logan glanced at them fondly—he was at home with dead things—and then unwrapped the rope from his body and shouted for the others to make their way down.
When Hale and the rest of the group made it to his level, Logan took the lead once more. The first two obstacles had been successfully navigated, but there were certainly more to come, and Logan found himself increasingly nervous as his sense of security was slowly stripped away. At some point, one of these traps was going to get them; he was sure of it.
About fifteen minutes later, Logan brought the group to a halt once more. This time he found himself staring at a narrow rock bridge that stretched across a gaping chasm that dropped away for hundreds of feet below them.
The bridge looked to be about fifty feet across, maybe a bit more, but what it had in length, it lacked in width. Logan figured it was no wider than a foot, and that was only at the start. The center of the bridge looked to be just a few inches in width and would require putting one foot very carefully in front of the other.
Logan turned and called back through the tunnel to Hale.
“We should probably rope ourselves together—”
He didn’t get any further.
“And have you drag me to my death when you slip and fall? Not a chance, you imbecile! Get moving!”
Fucker, Logan thought, but he got moving nonetheless, not wanting those behind him to crowd him on the narrow causeway ahead.
Taking a deep breath, he put his arms out to either side to help his balance and stepped out onto the bridge.
The rock felt sturdy enough beneath his feet, which helped. He didn’t want to think about what crossing this thing would have been like otherwise. Setting one foot carefully in front of the other, he began making his way across.
He was fine for the first few steps; psychologically, he knew he could always turn and throw himself back to the ledge if something went wrong. But as he got farther out, the realization that there was nothing to hold on to—nothing that could support him in the event of an emergency—began to take its toll. His body began to tremble as if with cold, the shaking impacting his balance, until suddenly Logan found himself wobbling side to side as he tried to take another step. His foot skittered off the rock before him, and for a frantic moment he thought it was all over—he was going to slip off the stone bridge and plummet hundreds of feet to his death in the darkness below—but then his foot found purchase and he managed to steady himself anew.
Easy, he thought to himself as his heart raced like wildfire and he tried to regain control of his fear. You can do this. Another twenty feet, that’s all.
Summoning his courage, he managed to get himself moving again, and before he knew it he’d reached the other side. He stepped off the bridge onto the far ledge with a huge sigh of relief.
He turned, gave the hold sign to the next man waiting in line, and then pulled a rope of his own out of his pack. He attached a cam to the rope with the help of a nylon sling, then seated the cam deep in a crack in the nearby wall. He used a second cam to anchor the rope even more firmly in the same manner, and then tugged on the rope to make sure it would hold. When he was satisfied, he stepped up to the edge of the bridge and hurled the other end of the rope back across the gap to his companions.
A man on the other side secured it in a similar fashion, and suddenly the party had a hand line to use; the rest of them made their way across. Even Hale made use of it, though he couldn’t be bothered to compliment Logan on his foresight and ingenuity when he reached him on the other side.
Another obstacle down, Logan took point once more. The tunnel began to twist and turn at sharp angles, growing narrower as well, making him thankful that he didn’t suffer from claustrophobia.
He had just finished squeezing himself through a particularly narrow section when the passage ahead of him opened up and he found himself on the threshold of another chamber.
Holding the torch in his hand high above his head, Logan took a good look around.
This room was rectangular in shape and about twice the size of the previous chamber, but still small enough for the torch in Logan’s hand to reveal the interior to him. On the far side of the room stood an altar. Atop the altar was a stand made from human bones, and hanging on that stand was a necklace.
That was what they had come for: the Necklace of Yum Cimil.
The artifact barely drew a glance from Logan. He was far more interested in the room’s other occupants.
Between him and the altar, lining both sides of the room, stood two ranks of dead Mayan warriors in full regalia. The weapons
and feathered headdresses they wore looked as fresh as the day they had been placed there, but their bodies were dry and desiccated with mummification.
Logan had seen his share of dead bodies—what necromancer hadn’t?—but something about these particular corpses left him feeling unusually unsettled. Before he could figure out why, however, the rest of the party caught up with him and stepped into the chamber to make room for them all.
“At last!” Hale exclaimed, pushing past Logan to stride between the silent guardians on his way to the altar.
Logan felt something shift in the air around them.
He glanced about, taking in his fellow acolytes as they examined the stalwart warriors. He watched Hale climb the steps of the altar and examine the necklace, but he didn’t see anything particular that would set his alarms ringing.
And yet . . .
Something had changed. He was certain of it.
Unable to figure out what that something was, however, Logan turned his attention to the mummified warrior standing in front of him. He stepped closer, peering into the dead man’s face, wondering who he had been and what had possessed him to give up his life to stand here in this chamber for the rest of eternity.
What prompted such a sacrifice?
Logan turned just in time to see Hale lift the necklace free of its bone stand and carefully place it in the silk-lined wooden box held by one of the other acolytes. Hale spent the entire time berating the other man, telling him to hold the box steadier, to lift it higher, to stop staring at the artifact with such greed—a litany of failures, Hale’s hallmark response to those he considered inferior. Logan couldn’t wait for the day when he was powerful enough to best the man . . .
When Logan turned back, he found the dead warrior’s eyes had opened; the corpse was staring directly at him. Or would have been, had there been eyes left in the dead man’s sockets.
Logan froze, staring back, wondering if the figure was actually looking at him. Had the dead man’s eyes opened of their own accord? Or had the eyelids flicked open as a result of the disturbances Logan’s party was generating in the air of the chamber after all this time?
However, when the warrior turned his head to track Hale as he strode past Logan on his way to the exit, there was no longer any doubt.
“Look out!” Logan cried, even as the warriors surrounding them all sprang to life and attacked.
Two of their number lost their lives in those first few seconds as the Mayan warriors lashed out with their spears, both men impaled through their chests before they even knew what was happening. Logan used the torch in his hand to parry the strike of the warrior in front of him and then swung it like a club, crushing his skull.
Logan’s exultant cry of victory died stillborn in his throat, however, as the warrior picked himself back up, spear in hand, just as dangerous as before.
In seconds, the room was utter chaos. Acolytes were fighting for their lives against the undead guardians of the necklace while at the same time doing their best to protect their leader. Hale, meanwhile, was preparing to cast a spell of banishment; Logan recognized the hand motions even as he did his best to keep the creature in front of him from skewering him like a piece of meat.
A horrified scream burst from the man next to Logan as one of the other warriors managed to sink his teeth deep into the flesh of the man’s arm. Logan looked on in horror as the life was literally sucked from the other man, his flesh shriveling right before everyone’s eyes as the Mayan warrior drank his fill. In seconds the acolyte was reduced to little more than a shriveled husk, not unlike the guardian itself.
Now that he understood the consequences of letting the Mayan get his hands on him, Logan redoubled his efforts to keep his attacker at bay, mentally screaming at Hale to hurry the fuck up!
Logan didn’t know if Hale heard him—who really knew the extent of the man’s powers?—but in the next second a powerful wave of magick burst from the council leader’s fingertips, washing across the room like a miniature tsunami, sweeping over everything in its path. Logan could feel the tug of the magick as it swept over him, but it was looking for the dead, not the living, and so it didn’t have any effect on him.
As for the Mayan warriors, that was another story.
The spell had been cast by a master necromancer, with all of his power behind it. Rather than attempting to control the creatures, it was designed to rip the life force animating them from their dead flesh and cast it aside, leaving nothing more than inanimate husks in its wake.
One minute Logan was feverishly fighting for his life, the next the Mayan warrior in front of him collapsed to the floor like a puppet that had just had its strings snipped.
Turning, Logan found the same was true for all of the other warriors; the room was littered with their desiccated corpses.
“Quickly now,” Hale said, clutching the wooden box to his side as he stepped over the shriveled body in front of him and headed for the door.
Logan didn’t need a second invitation to follow suit.
He was almost at the entryway when the sound of something dragging itself across the floor behind him drew his attention.
He spun around to find the dead men littering the floor stirring back to life, the force that had animated them visibly rushing back into their bodies like smoke sucked into their mouths.
Logan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. For the dead men to resist a banishment spell cast by one of Hale’s ability was so utterly outside Logan’s experience that it was like waking up to find the inmates had taken control of the asylum. He stared in horror as the corpses began to move with a bit more alacrity, dragging their limbs behind them even as they sought to follow those who had dared to disturb their sleep and steal the precious artifact they had been placed there to protect.
“Run!” Logan shouted, then took his own advice.
The next several moments were a blur as the group of artifact seekers fought their way through the narrow twists and turns of the tunnel leading back to the bridge. As they hurried along, Logan was aware of the sounds of pursuit growing behind them, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the warriors caught up with them. He wanted to move faster but was hampered by those ahead, just as the man behind him was hampered by Logan’s progress.
Things came to a head when they reached the bridge, as the man behind Logan tried to shove his way past, sending them both sprawling. Logan managed to catch himself against the tunnel wall, but the other man wasn’t so lucky; his scream seemed to go on forever as he slipped over the edge of the bridge and plummeted into the darkness below.
The man’s death barely gave Logan any pause; he had a horde of undead Mayan warriors at his heels that would have been just as happy to throw him off the bridge as his companion had been, and he wasted no time in scrambling back to his feet and heading out onto the bridge. Never in his life had he been so thankful for his foresight in stringing the guide line, for none of them would ever have been able to make their way across without it.
The fall had cost him precious time, though, and the horde at his back had gained on him as he reached the opposite side. He glanced back, saw the dead men rush onto the bridge without slowing, and knew his lead was dwindling by the second. With his heart in his throat, he rushed after Hale and the others.
He’d barely gone another twenty yards beyond the chasm when one of the Mayans tackled him from behind. They crashed to the floor, though the dead man lost his grip on Logan in the process. Not about to let the small blessing go to waste, Logan scrambled to his feet, snatched the torch he’d dropped off the floor, and ran headlong down the tunnel even as the dead man behind him was crushed beneath the feet of the rest of the undead rushing forward.
When Logan reached the cliff face his team had descended, he found those above rapidly pulling the ropes up behind them.
“Hey!” he shouted. “You can’t leave me here! Throw me the rope!”
A glance back down the tunnel showed the horde closing in on him.
“Hey!”
There was no reply from above; they continued working in silence, ignoring his pleas.
Fuck!
Logan looked frantically about, searching for another way up. He grabbed the rock face in front of him, tried to pull himself up with his bare strength, but there were too few handholds, and he slid back down in seconds.
Turning, he put his back to the wall and watched the pack of mummified warriors getting closer with every step. If he didn’t get out of here, he was a dead man!
The Mayans were less than twenty feet away when he spotted it—a small hole in the wall at floor level to his left. He hurried over and bent down to check it out; it was a tunnel, leading heaven knew where, but wide enough that he could probably fit in it if he squeezed his shoulders tight.
Without another thought he threw himself into the opening, squirming forward as quickly as he could, reaching out and pulling himself forward with his hands while pushing with his feet.
The Mayans didn’t hesitate, either. The lead warrior followed him right into the tunnel; Logan could hear it scrambling along in his wake.
If he didn’t do something, the creature was going to grab his feet, and it would all be over pretty quickly after that. Even as the thought occurred to him, he felt the thing’s fingers scramble across the sole of his boot; another few inches and it would have had him.
Logan did the only thing he could think of. He relinquished his hold on the spell illuminating his torch, pointed his hands back down the tunnel behind him, and sent a bolt of power into the ceiling just above his feet.
The walls shook around him as the little tunnel was plunged into darkness, and Logan prayed to every dark god he could think of that the entire rock wouldn’t come crashing down on his head. He scrambled forward as the ground beneath him bucked and swayed and the tunnel was filled with the rushing roar of falling rock.
And then, silence.
Logan lay still, the neck of his shirt pressed over his mouth, doing his best not to breathe in all the dust filling the narrow tunnel around him. He listened for pursuit but didn’t hear anything beyond the occasional settling of the stone behind him. He could see nothing.