Banshee

by Terry Maggert

  New Madrid

  As a dragon, Banshee wasn’t used to being questioned in anything other than the most obsequious manner, save for a small circle of friends and confidants. His late morning nap, entirely different from his midmorning nap or post-lunch drowsing, was shattered when two dozen angry residents of some standing woke him with rude, demanding shouts, effectively ending his sun-drenched dozing with a hacking draconic snort in response to their affront to his rest. At the violent sound, everyone moved back respectfully as Banshee’s enormous presence overwhelmed their collective indignation.

  “What’s that?” Banshee belched, rising to full height and scattering clods of grass for twenty yards, as his claws dug furrows into the soft earth of the river bank. He then proceeded to blink his nictitating membranes twice, yawn in a dangerous exposition of daggered fangs, and settle once more to his forelegs with an expression of polite, if not entirely diffident, interest. “I assume that by rousing me from a well-deserved rest, you’re here to inquire about where Saavin and French have gone? You’ve all done so without so much as a glance at the rather guilty face of Harriet, who stands before us with some suspicions of her own, if I’m any judge. Correct?” He furrowed bony ridges above his eyes in a capable approximation of a schoolmaster’s inquisitive glare.

  Every face in the fulminating mob turned to Harriet, who stood looking wan and slightly discomfited by the attention. Something else moved across, or perhaps underneath, her face in barely repressed waves. Banshee narrowed his enormous eyes at her in a brief examination, and realized that the woman was fairly swaying with hidden pain.

  “Everyone except Harriet, please leave us.” Banshee’s voice cracked, startling the protestors yet again. Dragons did very little that could be deemed delicate, and his command was loud and possessed of a clarity brought on by his regard for Harriet’s wellbeing. The back dozen residents were slow to move, so Banshee sweetened the pot. He’d seen fear before, and would do nothing to darken the mood of the town. “Please, friends. Let me speak to Harriet in a mannerly setting. I am a beast, but it doesn’t mean I have to act the part.” At his lipless, toothy smile, the crowd began to break up, but not before a wiry farmer pointed a work-hardened finger at the dragon in a show of moxie that outstripped his diminutive size.

  “You owe us honesty, Banshee,” said the farmer simply before turning and stalking off.

  In moments, the entire group drifted away, their anger quelled by the sun and proximity to a reasonable dragon. Harriet eased herself to the grass and crossed her legs delicately. With an expectant wave, she invited Banshee to speak.

  “How long do you have to live?” Banshee asked. Quick and to the point, he reasoned, given that honesty seemed to be the word of the day.

  Harriet didn’t blink, just let a grudging smile spread across her face. “You are remarkably perceptive from twenty feet up in the air.” A light chuckle emitted from the tops of her lungs, restrained by her desire to keep movement at a minimum. As a combat fighter, Banshee knew injuries, but he recognized disease. Her condition was not the result of an injury.

  “A month, maybe two. Depends on how quickly whatever it is that’s eating me gets to the bottom of the bowl.” Her voice was resigned, and tired. She managed a weak grin. “Started about four months ago, like a stone rolling downhill. Do you understand why I asked French to send Orontes across that barren hell to find you?”

  Banshee nodded, sending scales into a rolling click along his neck. The sun spangled along the motion to cast jeweled motes of light across the turf between him and Harriet; she watched the display with a sad, childish delight. “And you fear the schism among your people will kill this place?”

  Harriet pulled a strand of grass, considering the paler root. “No, I don’t. I know New Madrid will be torn apart by infighting at first, and then the demons will root through the remnants. I’m worried about the lands beyond our fields.”

  Banshee scratched the earth idly with a black talon. “Why?” His neck ridge elevated to signify his curiosity. For all his hard angles and fangs, he really did have a masterful array of tricks to impart his emotional state.

  Harriet began to mark the dirt as well. “I’ve known about the subsidence since shortly after French discovered it on horseback. It didn’t take much of a logic leap to see what the end game was, so I asked a few discreet questions of trustworthy traders as they came to do business with us. Would you like to know what I found?”

  “Other settlements were being surrounded, too?” Banshee asked.

  Harriet sketched something more elaborate in the dirt. “Mmmm-hmm. It isn’t just a crescent burrowed out under the town; it’s what the crescent connects to, as well. I have—had, rather—a good crew to do business with that worked out of the ruins of Sioux City, Iowa. Turns out there were quite a few survivors in that area; they were a tough bunch, and they already knew agriculture, so the collapse didn’t hurt them as badly as . . . well, any truly urban centers. This crew invested in a good docking system, totally rendered from recycled metals and telephone poles. They even had a crane, and they used the entire Missouri River basin as their area of operations. By their accounts, trading was spectacular. There was talk—serious talk, mind you—of creating something like Asheville, a regional capital.”

  Banshee interrupted, saying, “You’re using the past tense. What happened?”

  “Two years ago, one of their captains told me the dock was sinking. Fast. As quickly as they could build it up, it receded into the soil. This wasn’t some half-assed effort, you understand, there was an entire local economy depending on that structure to survive. They took its maintenance seriously. I think the dock was placed, rather unfortunately, over an access point for the local branch of hell, and I’ve got evidence to back it up.”

  “Sioux City is no more?” Banshee asked, although it was more of a statement.

  Harriet squinted against the growing sun, until Banshee helpfully moved his head to shade her. “Ah! Thanks.” She awarded him a smile, and he saw that once she had been a vibrant woman, but no longer.

  The dragon withheld a mournful sigh. “The city was gone, partially collapsed into some sort of pit that had been flooded with a branch of the river. The lone survivor of that crew was a guy named Diamond. I’m convinced the only reason he lived was his speed and direction; he’d been fleeing the exact same calamity upriver at another trading post named South Onowa; it had been built after the fall, but there were several thousand people there. He’d met up with two overland survivors from Sioux Falls, nearly ninety miles to the north. That particular town had been inundated with giant eels that raged out the river and ate everyone in their path.” She leaned forward on her elbows and raked Banshee with a febrile glare. “Two settlements, gone in hours. Two thriving bastions of humanity, filled with a small remainder of what the demons hadn’t gotten to yet.”

  “And yet, the demons found a way to eradicate that which had not been debased.” Banshee growled. His neck frills flattened in rage.

  “Yes, they did, or rather hell itself found a way. I don’t think that demons are particularly bright. Do they strike you as intelligent?” Harriet peered up at the dragon, who narrowed his eyes in thought.

  She answered with an indignant snort. “They’re barely capable of planned attacks, let alone sentient thought. What they lack in cognitive capacity, they make up for in sheer viciousness, but in truth, the beasts my brethren have been summoned to fight aren’t even noticeably cunning.”

  Harriet tapped a frail finger against her teeth. “You say you were summoned, Banshee? By whom?”

  “I thought that would be obvious. It was you.” The dragon smiled again, teeth bared to the brilliance of the sun.

  “Me? How—wait, you mean, humanity?” she asked. Her voice was slowed by consideration.

  Again, Banshee nodded, and splayed the talons of one foot to wave them uncertainly. “All of you. Some instinctive, deep racial memory. Saint George and the Chinese wind dragons, and
all of the serpents, well, those stories all began somewhere. We, and by that I mean every wakened dragon, feel that you need look no further than us for the source of such legends. We are here to fight, Harriet, and we are intelligent. That means, in our estimation, that these brutes we struggle to purge from the continents are under the control of something.”

  “Or someone,” she said. Her frown was graven on skin that seemed paper thin in the daylight.

  “Again, that would seem to be true. Now that you’ve told me of these burrowing attacks, I think it only prudent to tell you the information you came to find out.” Banshee lowered his head closer to Harriet, as if to impart a secret. “Saavin and I took French aloft hours after we arrived. We flew a close, detailed sweep of the entire surrounding territory.”

  “And what you found is the reason that they’re nowhere to be seen?” she asked. Exhaustion made her voice leaden.

  “The pattern is the same. There were multiple areas of subsidence, and outright collapse. New Madrid is encircled, as are two smaller towns to the north and west. This entire area is a warren of demonic presence and, if what Orontes says is true, the next assault will be the last, unless something decisive is done.” Banshee’s eyes lost focus as the inner lenses examined something in the distance. He returned his gaze to Harriet and the great irises contracted in a silvery flash. “You are wondering where French and Saavin have gone, and how they could plan something without your knowledge.”

  Harriet sat on the ground with an aura of defeat. She rubbed her face and muffled into a hand, “No, I’m not. I know how they planned it. I’m sick and this community is coming apart at the seams. Colvin has secret meetings that aren’t really secret, there are three distinct factions among the people I’m supposed to protect, and I lost my best commander to God knows where. Does that about sum it up?”

  Banshee managed a rumbling chuckle. “Quite nicely.”

  She resumed her level gaze at the dragon’s inscrutable eyes. “So where are they?”

  Banshee swung his head unerringly in the direction of the underneath. Harriet gasped and covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

  “How? For God’s sake, why? They can’t even breathe down there.” She seemed on the verge of collapse, aging by the minute.

  “Let me assure you, this is not a suicidal gesture on their part. I wouldn’t allow Saavin to do anything of the sort, and trust me when I tell you that the denizens of that stinking hole should fear them, not the other way around. Do you recall the train that arrived from Louisville?” Banshee asked. His eyes were calculating, quite a feat for a creature whose face was covered by interlocking scales. When Harriet simply nodded, he continued, “French had a contact in the crew, and made some discreet purchases on behalf of the town. He was in competition with Colvin Watley and an unknown buyer as well, but he procured some items that are going to make the next battle turn decisively in our favor.”

  “What did he buy?” she asked. Her voice was refreshed by a spark of curiosity.

  Banshee shook his head again, this time in denial. “It’s better if you don’t know. Frankly, New Madrid isn’t safe with such knowledge in the hands of anyone who isn’t absolutely necessary.”

  Harriet Fleming, who had been a wife and mother, let a single tear roll down her pasty cheek. Smiling, she wiped the offending droplet and nodded in understanding. She was physically weak; her illness made even the most basic days into chores. It made good sense that the fluidity of the political climate made such knowledge unwarranted, even for someone of her position. She hated feeling superfluous, but she understood why such actions had been taken without her knowledge.

  Banshee reached out a tentative claw to her, placing it before her feet in apology. “I am sorry to have hidden such things from you.” His voice seemed small in the deep chest. Apologies have a way of making everyone seem shorter, no matter who is putting such a humbling sentiment to words.

  “It’s alright, I understand,” Harriet said. That was the closest thing to kindness she’d known for a long while, with the exception of French’s considerate presence. It was in that moment that raw anger flared within her. The enormity of Colvin Watley’s vainglorious desires heated her from within like a fever. She smiled reluctantly. “I truly do. I hate being irrelevant; but soon, I won’t be anything other than a memory.”

  “Look around, Harriet,” Banshee said with an expansive wave. “Nearly everything is only a memory, but we will change that, and you will be present to see the first steps. Today’s first order of business is something that we should have done immediately upon arriving.” He punctuated the last with another toothy grin.

  “What might that be, my friend?” Harriet leaned against Banshee’s foreleg companionably. The presence of so formidable an ally bolstered her flagging spirit, and a genuine smile warmed her face.

  Banshee’s expression went stony. “We shall call a general meeting, and my friends and I will do what we do best. Quell an uprising.” At that, the laughter burbled forth from his center, a deep musical note that intimated an unpleasant experience for Colvin Watley and his would-be rebels.

  4

  Underneath: Day Two

  They slept in turns, high above the cavern floor on a ledge that provided defensible ground and an excellent view. There was a new scent in the air, and there were no anemones bumping merrily about as they waged their colorful air war. Stretching, Saavin saw French crouched at the edge of their aerie; he studied the oncoming stretch of passage with great interest.

  “What’s ahead that has you worried?” she asked, rising on her toes to loosen muscles left tight with sleep.

  He pointed to a lazily curling chamber that branched to the left. It was nearly as large as the main passage, but it lacked the vibrancy of the previous areas they’d traversed.

  It’s dry, mused Saavin. There were lichens, but far less than they’d become accustomed to, and none of the telltale gleam from sporadic condensation and water sources. The cave ahead was a wasteland in comparison to the Eden they were leaving. She quirked a brow at French and asked, “Is it a desert?”

  “Something like that. The main waters of the cave system are held at bay by a hog’s back. Think of it as a continental divide several hundred feet under the surface. That’s why we’ll be moving at speed. There was a salt ocean here at some point, and the entire area is nothing more than a desiccant. If we stay to the ridge and keep moving, it shouldn’t take more than two hours from here to the first sign of the Chandeliers, but we’re making a stop just before we leave the sands. There’s something that we need to collect.” French punctuated that with an ominous wave of the spear point, which flashed blue in the light of the cavern.

  “Does it involve killing, fighting, or trapping something dangerous?” Saavin asked brightly.

  “Indeed. All three, in fact.” He smiled at her upbeat reply.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” She motioned that he should lead, and they began to pick their way down the path. They walked in silence along a path that ranged from flat to rolling. Great sheets of buttery flowstone swept down from slagged walls, broken only by irregular boulders that lay strewn casually, as if by some giant hand. Crinoid stems thicker than tow cables serried upward in columns to vanish in the dark, the surrounding matrix eroded by water or the passage of unknown animals. Flowstone covered dung heaps along game paths filled with tracks deep enough to cast their own shadows. Pooled water rested in the broad, three and four toed imprints. Some of the miniature reservoirs were clear, others fetid and covered with algae that pulsed lightly with a purpose known only to the soul of the cave. Fossils were everywhere in a profusion that boggled the mind. French pointed out examples of animals that were known to him, but there were other unknown species frozen forever in the darkened stone, never to be understood. Saavin tapped a whorled shell so delicately formed that her finger collapsed the out chambers into a small cloud of calcified dust.

  The cave transitioned from a dynamic ecosphere to
something that was unnervingly familiar. If anything, the chamber opened even wider, and the ceiling receding into the gloom of the weak light given off by the sporadic lichens. There was a different color to their glow; it tended toward warmer hues and the roseate gold of Saavin’s home suffused the air, leaving her more at ease than any other place she’d stepped since they went underneath.

  There were rolling white dunes carved with the distinct riparian marks of receding waters, yet no evidence remained from this more hospitable time. The chamber was dry. It was also utterly silent, unlike the living sections of the underneath that crackled with life and the businesses of predation and mating. A light, warm wind pushed against their faces as they slipped quietly over the spine of the chamber; a black rock face that punched through the depths of white silica and ran in a serpentine arc before vanishing once more under the weight of the dunes. French kept looking up at odd intervals until they approached the remnants of a small creature that had clearly fallen from the ceiling to its death.

  “What is it?” Saavin asked. She poked at the airy bones with her spear. The skeletal remains were light, and held together more from habit than tissue. It had been a lizard of some sort, or perhaps a ferret, or one of a dozen other possible creatures. It was, to Saavin’s eyes, a mystery.

  French knelt and began to remove items from his pack. “That thing we need? It’s directly overhead. Don’t look.”

  Saavin suppressed a jerk and kept her eyes fixed on French before asking in a quiet voice, “What is it, and how do we kill it?”

  French selected a section of lobster meat from his foil, saying only, “We’re going to have a barbecue.” He winked and began arranging a small bunch of twigs that were bone white. She’d seen him pick them from a washout near the cavern opening, wondering what his intent would be for the battered driftwood. With a single match, he lit the wood with a hissing pop. Fragrant smoke began to drift straight upward for several feet before being disturbed by the currents of the chamber. With one of the longer sticks, he pierced the lobster meat and placed it over the fire where it began to sizzle invitingly.