The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  “Last warning!” Arjuna aimed for the woman’s left shoulder and drew back the steel arrow. The draw took every shred of power in his arms and back, and as he held the string ready to fire, he felt his hand and elbow begin to tremble.

  “Shut up!” Strauss picked up another rock.

  Arjuna let his arrow fly.

  The steel bolt shrieked against the bow’s riser and flashed through the air like lightning. It tore through the woman’s left shoulder in an instant and blasted into the stone wall behind her. Strauss dropped her stone and roared as she clasped her hand over the bleeding gash in her upper arm. As she staggered back, the dry stones of the wall scraped and cracked, and several steady trickles of dust began to spill from the new gaps on either side of the steel arrow.

  Arjuna stared in stunned silence at the damage he had just caused with a single shot. Then he looked down at the shining bow in his hand, and he saw that the fabric of his left sleeve had been shredded from his elbow down to his wrist, revealing the bare skin of his forearm.

  That was damned close.

  Kaiser looked from Strauss to the arrow buried in the wall, and then to the detective. The thief held up his empty hands as he slowly straightened up and assumed a less terrified expression. “Ladies, gentlemen, can we all please stop hurling deadly projectiles for just a moment and discuss this situation like civilized people?”

  Magdalena turned her pained grimace to him and growled, “No.” She grabbed another rock off the floor, one that was still partially buried and required an extra second of pulling before it came free in her hand.

  Arjuna nocked his second arrow and aimed for the same shoulder. The reflected flames of Kaiser’s torch danced in the blood on Magdalena’s arm, and the amber beam from the electric torch settled on the floor where tiny clouds of dust drifted around their feet. “Put the rock down or I will shoot! Again!”

  Strauss tossed and caught the rock in her good hand and grinned. Her teeth shone dimly in the darkness. “You really like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”

  “Not particularly, no.” Arjuna pulled his second arrow back to a full draw and instantly his arm began to shake. A bead of sweat trickled down into his eye, where it burned, but he didn’t dare blink it away. “Put the rock down.”

  “Yes, let’s all just put our things down,” Kaiser said, eyeing the crumbling rock wall beside him.

  “Shut up.” Strauss spat on the ground, and then raised her rock to throw it.

  Arjuna loosed his arrow but twisted his left arm as he did so. The sight of his shredded sleeve and bare skin caught his eye and he bent his arm just a hair to the side to make sure the ancient steel bowstring would not flay him as he fired. As his arm shifted, so did the gleaming Inselmond weapon and his arrow flew wide, missing the woman’s arm completely and striking the rock wall just above the first arrow.

  A black crack raced up the wall like a thunderbolt, splitting the stones and loosing a torrent of dust and gravel from the ceiling.

  “No!” Kaiser covered his head and dashed aside.

  Strauss dropped her rock and covered her nose and mouth with her arm as she staggered back from the cracking, crumbling wall.

  Slowly, a narrow section of the wall from the floor to the ceiling tipped forward beside the crack, leaning toward the center of the tunnel where Arjuna stood clutching his bow.

  Nope. No luck at all.

  The detective turned and bolted back down the tunnel, his torch smacking his leg on every other step and hurling its light wildly across the walls.

  The stones crashed to the ground like thunder and a thick cloud of dust billowed down the tunnel. Arjuna shut his eyes and covered his face with his sleeve. His eyes burned and teared, and he coughed into his arm as the dry motes tickled and scratched at his nostrils and throat.

  As the cloud settled back down to the ground, his light revealed that the bottom half of the tunnel behind him had filled with debris, but the top half remained open.

  Stones were still clattering and thumping quietly here and there, but two sounds carried clearly through the darkness.

  Voices.

  Footsteps.

  They’re moving… away.

  Arjuna coughed one last time as he nocked the third and final arrow to the string of the ancient bow. Hunching his shoulders and shuffling crab-like, he headed back down the tunnel again.

  Let’s hope this last arrow doesn’t bury us all alive in here. Betty would never forgive me if I died with my suit all torn to shreds like this.

  He took two careful steps on the loose stones and earth, and his light flickered. Arjuna glared at the filthy, dented device.

  Don’t you dare.

  The electric torch died, and the darkness swallowed him up.

  Chapter 16. A Rusty Box

  Arjuna squinted and glared and strained, but he still couldn’t see anything in the tunnel ahead. The darkness was absolute, so black he began to wonder if his eyes were even open. He blinked just to be sure they were.

  He waited, listening.

  They had a torch, but the cave-in must have blown it out. So they’re as blind as I am. I guess that’s something.

  Arjuna crept forward and held the cold steel bow out in front of him, hoping its long limbs would tap the walls and let him know where he was. The third arrow rested on the string, pointing into the void.

  The passageway narrowed, the floor rising bit by bit. Arjuna bent down lower, shuffling and stumbling over the broken stones and crumbled dirt. A cobweb brushed his face and he gasped and hurried past it, wiping furiously at his nose and eyes.

  Wait. What was that?

  He paused.

  Voices.

  A few more steps carried him over the last of the debris and he found himself back on the level floor with enough room to stand up straight. The bow tapped the walls and he carefully slipped through the narrow gap in the rock wall that his first two arrows had made.

  A blush of pink appeared in the darkness, a shapeless blur that hovered in empty space on his right side. Arjuna paused, squinting at it.

  All right…

  He came closer and reached out, and found the pink blur was just a splash of light falling across the cave wall. Looking lower he saw two more pink gleams in the dark at his feet. From the dust he pulled out his first two arrows, which he gripped in his bow-hand, and then he went in search of the source of the pink light.

  The soft glow did not waver like fire or hum like an electric bulb. It simply bled through the air like a gentle breath, like star light. It came from everywhere, and nowhere.

  But the voices were louder now, and he could almost tell what they were saying.

  Kaiser sounds scared.

  Strauss sounds angry.

  So, business as usual.

  The pink light clung to the walls in more and more patches, painting a ragged picture of the shape of the tunnel, and Arjuna began to move a bit faster. He raised his bow and readied his fingers for the draw.

  Strauss has an injured arm. Kaiser is a coward. Neither one is armed. This will be easy.

  He slowed a bit.

  Should be easy.

  The bow in his hand seemed to grow heavier with each step. His arm began to ache, and slowly he lowered the weapon until it was pointed at the ground.

  This place is old. Sacred ground. They shouldn’t be in here.

  Arjuna shivered and almost dropped his weapon.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  He clenched his jaw and took a few more steps. The pink light grew a bit more solid, a bit more evenly spread across the smooth walls and floor. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face and he felt his pulse quicken. His mouth ran dry, and he swallowed, and blinked, and tried to clench his teeth harder.

  For a moment his right leg refused to move and remained rooted to the ground. With a grunt, he forced his feet to keep shuffling forward, but with every step his heart pounded a bit faster and a bit louder, his breath came in thin gasps, and the sheen of swea
t on his face began to trickle and drip. His hands shook and a cold maelstrom of acid whirled in his stomach. He edged around the last corner of the tunnel and peered into the next chamber.

  It was a small space, barely large enough for half a dozen people to stand together without touching. The walls were a bit straighter and flatter here than elsewhere in the catacombs. Fewer stones had broken and less dirt had tumbled from above. A thin carpet of dust covered the floor, marred by trails of fresh boot prints that led to the two thieves standing in the room.

  Ranulf Kaiser stood with his back to the detective, his whole body bent inward as though threatening to collapse into the fetal position. His hands hovered over his ears, his knees shuddered together, and his voice shook. “…isn’t what I want… not what I came for… need to go, we need to leave, please!”

  Magdalena Strauss stood on the far side of the small chamber, her back against the wall. Sweat poured down her face, and her breath came in quick, shallow gasps, but her teeth were bared in an angry rictus and her eyes flared in the pale pink light. “You wanted a treasure, well there it is. Just take it!”

  Arjuna squinted at the treasure in question. The soft illumination bleeding from the walls fell gently on a pillar of stone, a simple table formed from a single block of black rock that had only barely been carved and shaped into its cube-like form, leaving many natural facets and gaps intact. Its inky sides seemed to ripple and writhe in the sickly pink light as the shadows of the two thieves played across it.

  And atop the black altar Arjuna saw a rusty box.

  It was a large box, an old block of iron without a trace of design or detail or embellishment. Just blank metal facets welded together, all scratched and dusty, reflecting almost none of the light at all. Rust-coated hinges lined the back of the lid, and rust-rimmed rivets lined its edges.

  “Simple, simple, simple!” Kaiser struck himself on the skull. “It was supposed to be simple. A ring, a knife, maybe a painting, or a gem. Whatever was lying around in the biggest house. That’s all. That’s ALL!”

  “Shut up,” Strauss growled. She pressed her palms to her eyes and groaned. “Just open the damn box!”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Kaiser whimpered. He only glanced at the iron box briefly from the side, not daring to stare at it openly.

  Arjuna slumped against the tunnel wall and swallowed loudly.

  What’s wrong with them? Hell, what’s wrong with me?

  His head was spinning and he could hear himself breathing loudly through his open mouth. He swallowed hard, trying to keep the meager contents of his stomach in place. Blinking, he shook his head viciously and pushed away from the wall as he raised his bow. It was almost more effort than he could muster, and he could only vaguely aim it at Strauss as his shoulder threatened to collapse under the strain.

  Don’t look at the box, don’t look at the box…

  “Back away, both of you,” he said. It was no command, no order. It was barely loud enough to hear over the blood pounding in his ears, but it was the best he could do. His throat was dry and his eyes were burning. The thought of sweet cool water on his tongue and a clean breeze blowing over his face nearly turned him about and sent him running back the way he had come.

  Kaiser twisted his neck to look at the detective. The thief’s thin gray hair was tangled and plastered to his sweaty forehead. His eyes were narrowed to miserable slits and his mouth was stretched and warped down into a hideous glare as if the man was struggling to hold back a torrent of sobs. He nodded and staggered away from the black pillar toward the far wall where there was, as Arjuna now saw, a second exit from the room.

  Strauss looked positively green in the pink light. She was leaning all her weight against the wall and staring up at the ceiling as her chest heaved. Slowly she lowered her gaze to Arjuna’s face. Her lips curled in a half-hearted snarl and her right hand clawed weakly at the wall as though in search of a weapon. But her hand fell limp and she slid along the wall toward Kaiser and the exit without a word.

  Arjuna heaved a long sigh and shuffled into the room. The pink light was thicker here, not merely illuminating the room but filling it like a miasma. He winced as he tried not to inhale the sultry fumes, whatever they were. Peering around quickly, he saw the tiny crystalline flecks in the walls, ceiling, and floor.

  Is the light coming from the crystals? From the crystal dust in the air?

  As he passed the black altar, Arjuna let his bow fall against his side. His fingers could barely keep the steel arrow nocked. But he paused and flared his nostrils.

  I’m not afraid of pain. I’m not afraid of death. I’ll be damned if I’m afraid of a rusty box!

  Frowning and glaring and wincing, he dragged his face to the side to look down at the dull black box atop the shining black stone altar.

  Just a box. Nothing special. It’s just a rusty old box. Nothing to be afraid of.

  A voice echoed dimly in the air, a voice from nowhere and everywhere, shivering through the stones and earth of the chamber walls and reverberating from the black pillar. The voice was small and weak, like a child’s whimper from far away. There were words in that cry, but no words that Arjuna could understand. All he could understand was the emotion behind the voice.

  The voice whispered of fear, endless fear trapped alone in the bowels of the earth, a fear of being touched, a fear of being seen, a nameless horror of the warm sunlight and the sweet caress of black waters. And there was pain as well, a physical aching and burning, a longing and yearning for something precious, something of the flesh that had been torn away, torn apart, stolen and shredded, making life unbearable, making life impossible.

  Arjuna felt as though his own arms and legs were being gently torn from their sockets as a soft pressure swelled around his neck, and he gasped. Icy claws pressed against his chest, freezing and burning as they slipped under his skin and bones to wrap his heart in black frost.

  “No!”

  He reeled back, swinging his heavy steel weapons in wild pinwheeling arcs all around the room as he tried to fight off the formless tendrils of ice and steel worming around his body and choking him, tearing at him, crushing him. The ancient bow crashed against the stone wall, and the razor-sharp point of the arrow whistled through the air, left and right.

  Suddenly the pressure vanished, the icy knives in his heart evaporated, and Arjuna stumbled back, feeling once again whole and solid and strong. Behind him he could hear the echoing footfalls of his two thieves running down the tunnel. He froze for a moment, and then once again nocked his arrow and looked straight at the iron box.

  The floor shuddered and groaned, and a mass of earth and stone crumbled and fell into the gap where Arjuna and the thieves had emerged from the back of the catacombs, sealing it shut once more. And then from the pale pink haze a shape appeared, a shape with two mournful eyes and a baleful mouth wailing in agony, the face of a young girl, and she cried out a strange and hideous word.

  Arjuna ran.

  He crashed down the tunnel after Kaiser and Strauss, clutching his weapons to his chest to avoid clipping the jagged rock and earth walls. He leapt over black holes and gaps in the floor and dodged around beams and bricks leaning out from the walls. He plunged his face through sticky cobwebs and choked on mouthfuls of dust.

  The air grew lighter and cooler, and a faint breeze began to blow over his cheek. His legs were aching and burning, and his weapons shook in his hands, but he ran on and on, and the farther he went from the chamber with the iron box, the lighter and stronger he felt.

  A pale white light began to gleam softly here and there on the walls, drawing thin silvery outlines of rocks and grave markers, on stone arches overhead and grates underfoot, and then he raced out the tunnel mouth through a rusting iron gate into the wide open air beneath the wide starry skies. A brilliant smile split his face as he gazed up at the heavens and felt the cold night wind on his sweaty skin and his hair shivered and danced across his head. He arched his back, stretchin
g, and he exhaled with a soft laugh.

  Look at me, running from shadows. I must be getting claustrophobic in my old age. Or maybe I’m just tired, seeing things, having waking dreams…

  He rotated his aching shoulder and nocked his arrow once more. The bow felt far lighter now and he raised it easily to aim at the two thieves hurrying west down the dirt road. But beyond the fleeing thieves he saw two more figures standing in the road. One was an old man with shining gray hair, and beside him was a woman in a long dress leaning on a cane.

  “Strauss!”

  Arjuna loosed his arrow and the steel shaft flew faster than thought down the open road, sliced through the flapping edge of Strauss’s jacket, and thumped down into the earth. A thick plume of dirt and dust flew up into the air, obscuring their view of Bettina. But the two thieves simply veered to their right, leaping off the road and into the trees where they quickly vanished into the dappled shadows and only the distant sounds of grunting and twigs snapping betrayed their flight.

  Arjuna dashed down the road and yanked his arrow from the ground as he came face to face with his wife. He grinned at her astonished expression and said, “Everything’s under control, darling. They haven’t stolen a thing, and I’m about to round them up. Why don’t you head back and get our gyro ready to go?” He kissed her hard on the lips and then turned and plunged into the woods to continue the chase.

  No sooner had their kiss ended than he heard his wife say, “Darling, what’s that in your hand?”

  And he called back over his shoulder, “What’s that? I can’t hear you, my love!”

  Crashing through the dark forest, he felt himself coming alive again. The cold night air snapped his eyes wide and his muscles swelled with fresh blood, warm and supple. He leapt lightly over fallen branches and smashed through fragile bushes and saplings. The frail amber lights of the angler beetles glowed on every other branch like a sea of stars floating all around him. Crickets chirped in the undergrowth and in the distance an owl hooted.

  Kaiser and Strauss ran like frightened deer, bolting wildly through the woods, but they soon began to tire and slow their pace. Within moments Arjuna could see them both of them clearly, two black figures jogging and stumbling past the warm gleams of the anglers.