Banshee

by Terry Maggert

  “If whatever it is we’re hunting won’t eat that, I will,” Saavin remarked, earning a low chuckle from French. “What are we expecting, and should I be ready?”

  He cut his eyes to the ceiling. “Arachnid. Very toxic, but slow. Use your spear to pierce in the crown of its eyes, and keep it away from you. They’ll begin descending in a moment if I’m any judge of their senses.”

  True to his word, French pointed at a globular shape that swung ponderously down on a silken strand. “Ahh, our first customer.” If Saavin didn’t know how seriously he regarded the danger of the cave, she would swear he sounded smug. “I’ll take it. We want a single killing strike so as not to ruin the body.” As he spoke, the creature spread wide, fat limbs and began an audible hiss at the approaching point of French’s spear. With the casual motion of a seasoned hunter, French sent the weapon flickering up into the front of the corpulent shape.

  He was rewarded with a jolting squeak, as the legs snapped outward and a death rattle shook every limb with short, violent spasms. When lowering his spear, Saavin got a good look at their prey. It was something between a crab and a spider, she thought, although the legs ended in dual claws that looked to be capable of piercing stone. There was dark reddish hair in whorls over the tight skin, and a ring of eyes identified an arachnid as being somewhere reasonably close in the genetic heritage. There were pale, pink gills that sagged flat against the underside. Saavin’s eyes rounded at that, but before she could examine the creature further, French expertly sliced the abdomen of the pumpkin-sized animal open, revealing a pair of lurid black glands that quivered when he placed the spear point against them.

  “Venom. Unbelievably toxic, and thick. Hand me that small bottle from my pack?” he asked, removing the glands with a reverent dexterity. When the two sacs were safely encased in glass, he smiled. “I’m betting that our odds of killing anything we encounter just increased dramatically.” His grin deepened, and then a wisp of silk began to fall between them, like a cable cut away to a long fall. He swatted at the strand and looked up again, seeing nothing, but Saavin’s nerves went to general quarters when she saw several more strands begin to descend, free of their owners.

  “What is it?” she whispered. When he shook his head in silence, they both raised their spears toward the cave roof.

  “More,” was his simple reply. First one, then three, and then more than a dozen of the arachnids began dropping around them with an economic motion that the previous, and now quite dead, relative had been lacking. “These look bigger. Different colors, too.” He motioned Saavin to stand, and they moved silently toward the dunes that fell away from either side of the hog’s back. The spiders followed them with the gait of drunken sailors, losing their footing and splaying out with nearly every step. The spiders did not stop advancing, and soon Saavin found herself backpedaling with the same difficulties of their clumsy pursuers. The spiders began to hiss low, like a call.

  “French, those spiders?” Saavin pointed. He struck with blinding speed at the nearest of the creatures, pinning it to the sand with a ripe splat as his steel paralyzed his target. “Do they seem . . . young?”

  The mother arachnid dropped onto French’s back with a whisper, slamming him into the sand and grappling his torso with eight muscular legs. Saavin gasped and lashed out with her spear from sheer instinct, striking the beast in one gilled flank, even as it rode French down the side of the dunes in a shower of sand and flying spittle. She could see the spider’s wicked fangs rhythmically stabbing at French’s whisperskin to no avail, but his arms were brutally pinned by the hairy, segmented legs of the pony-sized predator. It was only simple gravity and the bulbous body’s ungainly ride on the dune that stopped French from being crushed. With a massive leap, Saavin cleared a stray pile of rockfall, driving her spear into the pink gills and then repeating the savage action until the spider’s legs began to open unwillingly. Tissue was cut with each punishing blow, and then Saavin went down, tripped by three of the young who had industriously reclaimed the high ground and leapt at her from the hog’s back. As she whirled and spat the sand from her mouth, a single image caught her eye as French drove his belt knife into the giant spider, opening a rent in the turgid abdomen that shot clear fluids into the dark of the cavern. With a rolling kick, he flipped the beast and slashed at the joints, taking one leg at a time from the fight in a series of mercilessly surgical cuts. Saavin pounded each of her immature foes with feet, hands, and spear, reducing them to squashed sacks leaking their innards onto the sand. French circled the enormous female arachnid and leaned on his spear, driving the point deep into the junction between two of eight eyes. An infantile scream burst forth from the creature, and its gills flared once before deflating as death claimed the stealthy huntress. French leaned against his spear, gasping, and asked Saavin if she was hurt. In between gulps of air she said no, and they both sagged to the rock of the hog’s back after taking stock of their own limbs.

  “Were you bitten?” she asked, giving him a look of appraisal, even as her chest heaved with the efforts of combat. Adrenaline still sizzled in her veins, and her hands twitched on the spear, setting the leaf like point to vibrating in the cool air of the cavern.

  He shook his head in an effort to concentrate on breathing. A spate of soft clicking rose behind them, and their eyes snapped as one to the carcass of the immense spider. A deluge of young began dropping out of the gloom at accelerated rates, covering the corpse and beginning to visibly rip and tear at the bulk of their mother. Nothing was wasted in the cave, no matter what the pedigree of a potential meal. When the pile of squabbling youth became too many to count, French stood and backed away from their position.

  “We’d better leave while they’re occupied. There isn’t enough of her to feed all of them,” he stated, appraising the rate at which the industrious young were feeding.

  Saavin backed away with him, feet sliding occasionally on the erratic conditions of the hog’s back and, when their wind returned, they both broke into an unspoken trot, eager to leave to carnage behind. Their pace quickened when the air turned moist, and the cave bloomed once again into an exultation of life. The distant roar of water told Saavin they were close to the Chandeliers, but the wind drops on her tongue tasted of minerals and secrets. The sense of other penetrated all of her senses and, without so much as a glance from French, she knew that this was the end of anything remotely terrestrial. They were entering the realm of demons. Despite the water, and the riot of life, they were crossing a liminal into hell.

  “Ropes first?” Saavin asked.

  French knelt in answer. They stood on a raw outcrop of scaled debris that descended toward a watery chaos. Columns of flowstone whirled away in every direction, and there were no less than three moving streams cavorting over and around the erratic landscape. Water splashed and bounded in punishing spumes, throwing the myriad colors of light that spangled from an abundance of lichens. Plants of unearthly design grew in profusion, clinging to every moist surface with roots like desperate fingers. Gravity seemed to have no effect on the luminescent stalks, and French mouthed the word kelp over the roar of the water when Saavin raised a questioning brow.

  He stood behind Saavin and shouted while pointing, “I’ve got pitons driven already from my first visit. The first part is simple. When we get to the flat table rock, freeze. Do not move further.” He turned her face to his and nodded with gravity. “Trust me. We’ll rest at the base. Stay left. We cannot allow the water to push us right.”

  Saavin unspooled her rope and began tying off to a large metal stake that protruded from a glimmering boulder. “Why not right?”

  French paused working with his rope as the water sprayed around them, snapping his teeth together dramatically.

  Saavin smiled grimly. “Good enough. Left it is.” Her shout was carried away in the cacophony of the waters.

  As one, they approached the Chandeliers. Slickly knurled stones pulsed in and out of visibility as the rebellious waters refuse
d to stay within any graven channel. The flowstone lip rolled away into the blackness, and their feet stepped into the frigid unknown. With a confident surety bred from years in the wilds, French led the fighter who plied her trade in the air. Steps led to sliding impacts against the irregular rocks, worn smooth by the water, but no less punishing for their less angular shape. Time and again, Saavin and French slipped, only to slam in teeth-jarring impacts that bruised them steadily during their tumultuous descent. Mercifully, after two long hours, French felt his feet touch the unyielding base of the final waterfall. Saavin collapsed next to him, safely away from the undisturbed waters of an eddy that was curiously still.

  “Pull your feet back from the edge,” French said into her ear.

  She jerked her black-clad legs back in a savage reaction, even as a minor ripple began to disturb the rare quiet of the pool that vanished from sight under a carved overhang. They both withdrew toward a spray-covered ridge of stone that wound along the left wall, elevating gradually into a distinct path. Saavin vomited water onto the stones as adrenaline shook her hands with a brute staccato.

  “That’s the hard part,” French said, wiping blood from his ear. There wasn’t an inch of their bodies that hadn’t been pummeled by the journey. “Now, comes the dangerous part.”

  Saavin’s eyes widened at that. “What could be more dangerous than those?” She jabbed a finger weakly in the general direction behind them.

  French struggled to his feet, thankful that the water covered his groans of protest. Despite his excellent condition, he doubted that anything was going to be easy. With one hand, he pulled Saavin upright. Her wincing first step toward their path brought a weak chuckle from him, but he sobered swiftly when she looked expectantly at him for the answer to her question.

  He shrugged in a wild understatement, given their surroundings. “This is as far as I’ve been. From here on, I don’t know what could kill us.”

  Bedraggled and sodden, the pair of intruders clambered up a low slope that huddled against the soaring wall of rock. Gaining elevation with grudging steps, French tested his footholds with a delicacy beyond his size. Twice stone chips slid from beneath his question foot, clattering below into the diminishing roar of the waters. The path grew drier as quiet gathered around them, save their labored breathing.

  “How . . . much further?” Saavin gasped. The bruising aftereffects of the Chandeliers caused spikes of pain that stole her breath. Illumination from lichens flared and stabilized as the tough life forms found better purchase on the moderate moisture of the curving walls. Shades of blue and green cast dim shadows along the widening path, until French turned to Saavin, sweat dripping freely form his face, and patted the air indicating they should stop. The ledge was broad, flat, and high enough above the Chandeliers that their noise had been shushed to a background of watery whispers.

  “This is it.” French slid to the dry stone without ceremony. “That was a bit rougher than the first time.”

  “Must be the rains, from somewhere?” Saavin said. She too collapsed with relief, and took a long look around their vantage point. “We’re close enough to the ceiling to pick out individual colonies of lichens.” She pointed weakly.

  French didn’t respond. He busily pulled supplies from his pack in a virtual repeat of their earlier battle against the arachnids. In seconds, he’d lit a second small bundle of sticks for a cooking fire. It cast a remarkable bulwark of cheer against the alien oppression of the cave. “We need to eat, and rest. This is as safe as we’ll be . . . I think.” He appraised the shelf again, noting the lack of activity. “It looks like the path falls away toward that side passage. If you can call it that; it seems to be wider than the original opening.”

  Saavin watched him with interest as he prepared the crayfish. Her stomach rumbled in protest, loud enough to earn a wry grin from French. “I never thought I’d miss the sun this much.” Her voice carried the unspoken fear of every human in history. Even with modest light, willfully leaving the sun behind was an abrogation of everything rhythmic that she’d known living in the merciless desert heat.

  French stopped amid his task to look at her sharply. “If we don’t stop these things, the entire world will be dark. We’ll be reduced to living in holes and fighting for scraps, like vermin on a ship that we longer control.” An angry shake of his head flung water from his still-damp hair. “I can’t let that happen. None of us can afford to let it happen, but there are those who. . .” He stopped with a soft curse as the cooking meat singed his finger. “Not everyone is adamant about winning. There are rumors of coexistence,” he spat in anger.

  “Watley means to—he thinks he can negotiate?” Saavin asked, aghast at the concept of treating with demons.

  French nodded, handing her slices of lobster. The aroma made her eyes close in appreciation before she took the first bite. “He does, but he’s too cowardly to admit it. I know that he regards these creatures down here as foot soldiers. He’s always been curious about who or what is in command. He doesn’t think that hell is real. It’s a question of biology to him . . . and his followers. They’re deluded. That’s the problem with his kind of petty tyrant; they never see themselves as workers, only leaders. He’s blinded to the possibility that, if the spawn of hell are under some sort of command, that—”

  Saavin broke in, saying, “Someone would be willing to share power.” She shook her head ruefully. “How incredibly vain, not to mention outright stupid. They’d open the gates of hell for a lie? I hadn’t realized it was that bad,” she mumbled around a bite of steaming lobster.

  French spread his hands helplessly. “Harriet’s sick. I’m an outsider to some. Colvin Watley doesn’t care about the future, he wants control now, not later, or through some sort of democratic process that makes sense for the entire community. He’s sick with avarice, and it’s blossomed into a wide gulf, but we’re not the worst case I’ve seen. The settlement at Baton Rouge went under six months ago when their militia split the night before an attack. 8000 people dead and the breakaway fragment were chased down by water demons. Their boats were ripped apart like kindling. They were eaten alive, to the man.” He contemplated his bite of food with a fatalism rarely seen during a meal.

  “The water is dangerous at any time, let alone when it’s rife with demons,” Saavin said with some conviction. At French’s inquisitive look, she explained, “My folks are sailors. Not the oceanic variety; they use flat-bottomed skiffs to fish and trade along the Alabama inland waters. I grew up with a healthy respect for the ocean, and the things within it.”

  “Are they still alive? Your parents?”

  “Oh, quite. Dad more or less founded the outpost at Theodore. It’s where he met mom.” Saavin grinned at the explanation of her origins.

  “How did you get from there to the back of a dragon?” French asked. His question held a hint of reverence.

  “Oh, that.” She pulled at her lip before reaching a decision. Her eyes glittered with remembrance and laughter. “I sort of fell into it.”

  5

  Dragons

  “It isn’t like dragons stopped rising just because the war began. It was just that everyone was too busy running or dying where they stood to pay as much attention to them, like when the Firsters came up out of the cold ground to the fear and applause of an entire planet. The bigger cities didn’t fall because of demons; they collapsed out mass panic and uproar. I mean, caves aren’t exactly an urban feature, but there were subways, landfills, even abandoned cellars under factories . . . those were good enough to keep the light at bay, I guess. The demons used what was forgotten, and then, once the spark of terror was lit, the monsters became superfluous. My grandparents told me that we did all the heavy lifting for them. The first creatures that came howling out of the darkness put a taproot into the primal fears of every human being. Those attacks unleashed the very worst of humanity and, by the end of the second month, the veneer of humanity was scoured away. Blood ran in the streets, and it wasn’t from
the teeth of monsters. We did it to ourselves.

  “The dragons stepped in almost immediately, unleashing their killing potential like a weapon of light. I’d seen dragons before, but had never really been close to one. A pair of swift red dragons attacked and killed a series of sea monsters near the little port where my parents docked their boats. I’d never seen anything move that fast; they descended from the low clouds of a late summer rain just past daybreak, and I could hear the impact from a mile away as I stood on the beach pulling nets, with my pony grazing on the dunes nearby. I remember the sense of wonder at those two saviors; one minute, the night was a maelstrom of howls and screams, but then the dragons arrived with the sun and reduced the attackers to ribbons of silvery flesh. The dragons were laughing as they tore into the beasts, and I listened to the voices carried to me on the wind, trying to place the emotion that I heard in their deep, cheery words.

  “It was joy. And purpose, fulfilled. Standing there with my scabbed knees and salt-toughened hands, I hoped and prayed that I would find a dragon, but I was wrong.

  “A dragon found me.”

  “I was sixteen. I’d been sent, with four other kids from the port, to cut bamboo from the massive stands that were choking the remnants of Lake Conroe. We would saw and bundle the deep blue-green timber bamboo that ran in endless groves around what had once been a wide open lake; we didn’t know how it got there, and cared little for the reason. Those forty-foot stands of bamboo were the frames for our houses, our drying racks, and the myriad of piers and davits that every port town used in the business of daily life on the water. We would cut it, roll the lengths together, and leave them for the adults with the operable trucks that made the trip inland to the lake once a month. By the time we would return, there would always be more bamboo than when we departed; it grew with such wild abandon that nothing short of a sweeping prairie fire could stop it, and even that fiery catastrophe only served to enrich the soil for the runners that would spring up through the freshly cooled ashes.