Banshee

by Terry Maggert

  The pyramid soared overhead, only to be crushed by the darkened slab of earth that slipped during an ancient earthquake. The ziggurat dominated their vision, but they did their best to ignore it while standing before a dual entrance to the low structure that captured their interest. Two pairs of doors lay open to the elements of the cave, swung back on pinioned hinges that were cut from single logs nearly a foot across. The two central behemoths were plank construction, gaudily painted with an inscrutable red emblem. There was a distinct aura of warning in the indecipherable shape, which was most similar to a footprint, but elongated and primal. The doors were three times the height of a man, and bound with plating of metal so tarnished with age, its presence nearly matched that dark burl of the wooden timbers. To either side of the massive opening a standard, if wide, doorway stood, free of adornment or warning. French gave the door on the left an experimental tug, found the resistance nearly total, and shrugged.

  “Through the open gate, but slowly,” he admonished, then realized that his reminders were unwarranted. They were both at the highest state of readiness a human could maintain, and he smiled in apology. They stepped as one into the looming darkness, and Saavin put a hand on his arm, causing him to freeze in place, mild concern trickling across his features. French replaced his mask of implacability, only to see an expression of recognition firmly on Saavin’s face. Before them, two rows of cages ran the entire length of the building, beginning in a small size before gradually increasing into the distance.

  “It’s a zoo,” Saavin announced, looking into the nearest cage. Heavy plank fence covered the bottom third of the cage front, yielding to bars that were metal, but so darkened that they couldn’t determine what composition it was just by sight. French scratched one of the vertical bars with his knife; the bright scar left behind was neither bronze nor copper.

  “Iron? Could they have been working iron?” His voice oozed admiration. Whoever these people had been, their skills were anomalous to everything he understood of mankind’s dark history.

  Saavin rang a knuckle against another bar, wincing. “Certainly feels like it. Dull, but strong.” She examined the low space with narrowed eyes. There was precious little light to use, even though they stood mere feet from the huge opening. “I think I’d better use a flash in here. We’re going to need it.”

  “Set it low. Protect your eyes.” French pulled his own light from the pack and flicked it on pointed straight at the dusty floor. He let the beam wander upward just as Saavin did the same while investigating the other side of the . . . barn, he decided, there could be no other term for it. He’d let the thin beam travel toward the gloom of the ceiling when the light played over a long display that began where they stood and disappeared into the depths of the building.

  “Saavin.” His voice was thick with amazement.

  She turned to him, light down like a loaded weapon. Her brows rose in recognition of his tone. “What is it?” She knew not to ask for any other clarification than that.

  “Not a zoo. A stable.”

  Her gasp told him his translation was correct.

  Above them, images of men and demons curled away into the black, painted in shades of gold, deep red, and black. Animal husbandry looks the same regardless what species is being tamed, and the miraculous artwork above them was no different. The small cages housed scalehounds—or had housed them, in some distant year before the earthquake. Confident handlers rested their hands on the necks of demonic hounds wearing wide metal collars, their stances of master and servant subtly portrayed by the skilled hands of the long-dead artists.

  “They lay eggs!” Saavin shouted involuntarily. The word eggs echoed twice before being swallowed by the stone spaces ahead of them. Stylized nests with neatly arranged eggs were above certain cages; these indicated a breeding hound and were painted in deep green. Nearly one in five of the kennels were for females, it seemed, and Saavin found herself touching the bars of each, her curiosity at a fever pitch. Inside each space, a small pallet of stone was raised above the floor. The beds looked well-worn and comfortable.

  “I don’t think that this was a place of torment. There’s something about it that seems symbiotic, except for the bars,” Saavin said quietly.

  “You’re giving them too much credit. They could have bred these animals for food, for all we know. Making them comfortable might not have been charity; it could be a desire for efficiency.” French took the cynical view.

  Saavin merely nodded, willing to concede that they probably would never know the purpose of the kennels, and then they advanced into the depths of the barn, the story unfolding above them. It was over the first of the medium-sized cages that the decorative fresco changed, and French began to see the broader picture. Saavin’s wit and insight let her glean the same meaning, and they both connected the elements of a war story from the depths of time. The scalehounds were domesticated; even bred for size and number, according to the pictographs that spelled out a clear lineage of the demons’ role in the city of pyramids. The larger species of demons were clearly far from tamed, but they had been present in the kennels, caught by squads of hunters who wielded nets, scalehounds, and weapons that resembled hauberks, the handles nearing two times the height of a man.

  “They drove the demons with their chaser hounds, and then . . . brought them here? Why?” Saavin asked. The risk of wild demons present in a city of this size seemed incomprehensible.

  French rubbed his cheek in thought. “To tame, maybe, but it could have been anything. It seems as if these people were winning their war.”

  “They were winning.” Saavin’s voice was wistful and laden with the pangs of unknown loss. “But the earthquake killed them. They beat hell, but lost to nature.”

  French had continued walking as they spoke, shining his light in an endless arc. They stood nearly at the end of the deceptively-long space. Metal bars were bent in tortured shapes, scattered across the central floor in an explosion of violence. Shattered wooden planks radiated out in three directions from the last cage, a space nearly twenty feet in height and twice that deep. The floor was scored with talon marks, and the ceiling itself was buckled upward from an unseen animal strike. The demon, for it could be nothing else, had not escaped. A partial skeleton greeted them at the furthest reaches of the main corridor. It had been a magnificent beast of utterly alien construction, thickly built with a broad skull, six limbs, and tusks that jutted out in random directions. The eyes sockets were widely set, and the cause of death was readily apparent. A spear shaft pierced both eyes, the points hidden deep with then cavernous skull, but presumably driven into the bone to stop the beast in mid rampage.

  “This is the only evidence of anything alive. It’s like the entire city just walked away, but why? They could contain things like that,” Saavin said, tapping a giant femur with one foot.

  French and Saavin looked out a matching pair of immense doors, the twins to the others that they’d come through two hours earlier. This pair were cracked enough to slip through, which they did in total silence. On the other side, they were greeted by a covered breezeway that connected to the cultured spaces before the ziggurat. French lifted his nose into the dry, still air, inhaling deeply. The low base notes of before rattled their chests at that instant, a dolorous moaning that percolated up from a hidden source beyond the collapsed cavern roof. The sour odor of minerals and something repellent filled their senses. Saavin looked askance at French, who stood unmoving. His body quivered lightly, and she wanted badly to comfort him, but kept to herself. There was a coiled violence in French that had not been present seconds earlier, and Saavin chose to let it rest.

  “Brood pigs.” French’s whisper raked her ears as he looked up at the sullen glow of the ceiling. Lichens were present in every variety of gold and sepia, casting unholy warmth across the expanse of stone that hung overhead. The scar of brood pig activity running across their field of vision was wide and glistening, and it narrowed in the distance, but not before twig
ging wildly into multiple channels.

  “What is that?” Saavin asked, just as another bass tone fizzed the blood in her veins.

  French walked forward, his eyes never leaving the wide scar above them. “It will end at the subsidence. It’s those filthy brood pigs. They’ve carved this place apart, and we need to get out of here now.”

  Saavin noticed a light patter of gravel in the distance. After so much silence, her sensitive ears interpreted flecks of stone falling from a height into a noise like Banshee’s roar. She winced and advanced with purpose. A clearing that was less a path than opportunity invited them to follow, its serpentine bend going away from the cave opening some twenty miles distant. “We go deeper, and hope for the subsidence as a way out?”

  French answered with a curt nod. Another groan from the earth reached their ears as he mounted the path before her. “We don’t have five days and, judging by the presence of the brood pigs, neither does New Madrid.”

  14

  New Madrid

  “I’m telling you, patrols have to go farther than the edges of our fields,” Amy Delacroix was saying to whoever would listen. The dragonriders gave her courteous attention, but she felt as if her words weren’t carrying any weight. Alvaro looked her eye to eye, an expression of respect on his broad features.

  “It might help if we knew what to look for,” he began, holding his palms up to stall any protest from the councilwoman. “We know coastal danger. We know demons. But now, we’re looking for something that can potentially poison a water supply that’s under the surface. Believe me, our dragons want to fight, not just wait on French and Saavin to come out of that stinking hole.” His voice cracked with frustration at that. Waiting was not a strong suit for combat dragons and their riders. They were creatures of action all, and seeing New Madrid prepare for the killing moon kept everyone on edge.

  For the hundredth time, Amy wished Harriet was there to make this all go away. What Amy lacked in experience, she made up for in sheer stamina. She stood mulling her response, then spoke carefully to the assembled riders. “I wish I had more to tell you, but any demon spoor, tracks . . . anything that seems out of place. C’mon, you’re all seasoned fighters; you know what those creatures do to the land. We know that the river is a target, so fly that route. We know that the three wells in town are targets, but too risky to assault directly, at least not without a massive effort—in the dark, I might add—by waves of demons. We know that splitting our supply of water has reduced our exposure; it’s grim, but it makes good sense and, until engineering or medical can figure a way to test for poison, we’re screwed. So, in the meantime, you’ll have to fly. I’ve got foot patrols out, limited people in the far reaches of the fields, and we can be buttoned up at a moment’s notice. Until we hear from French and Saavin, we’re as in the dark as they are.” Amy finished with a wintry smile at her impromptu pun. She had no doubt that the conditions in New Madrid were far better than whatever existed underneath them, and privately, she made it a one in three chance that French Heavener ever saw the sun again.

  Bertline uttered a thoughtful grunt, pointing to the lower river, past the town. “What do we have for assets in that direction? Downstream?” It was a good question, and it brought Amy up short.

  “I don’t know. I assumed that any attempt to poison us would have to come from upstream,” Amy said, slowly. Her oversight caused a red flush to her cheeks. She’d missed the possibility of an attack from somewhere outside her own expectations.

  Lurvy and Delandra, who had been silent to that point, snorted in unison. Delandra stepped forward to gesture at the riverbank. Her eyes were slits as she considered the distances from water to town center, and the wells within that inner protectorate.

  “I didn’t see what killed Trinity, but there was water access at several points. If we can’t test the aquifer, we can at least boil the water until further notice. Don’t you people exist solely on that mint tea, anyway?” Delandra’s tone revealed her less-than-enthusiastic response to having mint tea at every meal. The ubiquitous tea was served in between meals as well, although she did her best to school her features into a respectfully bland arrangement.

  Amy diplomatically ignored the implied message, and said, “We do, and yes, we boil it to prepare. So, no water, just tea takes care of a great deal of our concerns.”

  Lurvy Rostov held up a small finger. “What about the dragons? They require hundreds of gallons a day, and New Madrid doesn’t have the ability to process that. At Trinity, our desalination lines could have met that call, but here? We’d need all three thousand residents to work around the clock. That won’t solve anything.”

  Amy Delacroix stole a glance at Jindy, who was peering in through the window with one enormous obsidian eye. His pupil followed her as she paced, and she considered her question with care. “How often do the dragons need water?”

  “Morning and dusk, unless they’re working hard,” Bertline replied.

  “So . . . when you fly this new, wider set of patrols, you could have them drink to the west, from the lake. It’s only twelve miles, and it’s fed by two creeks. Would that be feasible?” Amy asked. She needed this to work. They couldn’t survive without the dragons, not knowing what was coming. Tension charged the room for the long moment that the riders considered their options, until they began to nod in group assent.

  “It will, and it might actually serve us better by rotating in pairs to drink and fly the westward patrol,” Bertline replied. “We’ll schedule an order of flight, beginning at dawn. The last wings will land at dusk, it’s about ten minutes of flight time, so we’ll have enough light at altitude that we can fly slightly into the dark of night. Can you arrange for lights in the town square? More lights, I mean? They don’t need to be bright, just define the outer edge of the square; the dragons can pick out the contrast with their night vision.

  “No problem. I’ll have engineering on it within the hour. What else can we do to help you rest and feed? I know that you’re going to be aloft for much of the week,” Amy asked. She was cognizant of the rider’s needs as well. Thus far, they’d slept on the river bank with their beasts, but the offer of some additional comfort was well aimed.

  “Oh, that.” Alvaro grinned impudently. “Hot showers and chow we can eat in the air would make things go smoothly. Dauntless informed us that there are enormous sturgeons for the taking in the river; the dragons will eat well. If we’re clean and well rested, we can fly a virtually endless coverage of this area out to . . . say, thirty miles or so. That’s well past the origin point of the subsidence, and a good ten miles past anything that looks suspicious to us. Teo’s been mapping anything that even hints at a point of entry from underneath. With your permission, I’d like to copy his notes and get ground crews to each location. You know this land better than we do and, from a height, things might seem dodgy when it’s really just frost buckling or some other innocent feature.”

  “Good point. We’ll start that immediately as well. I’ll have some of the guys from Building ride out with you, if your dragons don’t mind taking passengers?” Amy asked.

  “No worries. They’re happy to do it. We can drop your people off on our loop, and pick them up as we circle back. That’ll give them time on the ground to make sense of what we’re seeing, and if they think that a spot looks dangerous, our beasts can help investigate,” Alvaro said.

  “Investigate? How?” Several members of New Madrid’s engineers and other factions all asked at once.

  They were answered by Jindy sticking his enormous muzzle close to the open window. A warm rush of animal breath filled the room.

  “I like to dig,” Jindy said.

  “Seriously?” Amy asked him. Dragons confused her to no end.

  The dragon chuckled at her discomfort. “I do, Councilwoman Delacroix. It lets me get closer to my work.” With that, he pulled back to show her a toothy smile, and Amy felt a delicate shudder run down her spine at the sight of those immense teeth. For the hund
redth time, she thanked whatever deities were watching that the dragons were on their side.

  Delandra’s voice was roughly urgent, her hands waving with emotion as she made her point. The council had convened late at night only for her request; when she said the survival of New Madrid depended on it, they’d listened, albeit grudgingly. It seemed every meeting was necessary to forestall some newly-discovered threat stemming from the oncoming violence of the killing moon. Delandra’s information was different. As a physician, she dealt with the science of survival, and that meant her news was not going to be well received. There were less than thirty people present in the hall; all were in sour moods from the hour and general exhaustion as they prepared for the next fight. Several of the attendees looked around in confusion, wondering openly why they’d been summoned to a meeting with the doctor from a dead city.

  “I’ll get right to it,” Delandra began. “I’ve been to your medical station, and New Madrid won’t survive without an infusion of surgical equipment, medicines, and staff.”

  “Wait a minute, lady. You don’t fly in here and pronounce our staff incompetent!” Robin Lopresta barked.

  Anger flushed her face and, if she’d been sleepy before, that state had passed. She was a thin, dark woman, with riotous black hair mussed by unquiet rest. Her black eyes flashed at Delandra with open hostility. As the closest thing New Madrid had to a doctor, the nurse practitioner was fiercely protective of her role. Albert Coffey bolted up next to Robin, his gawky frame jerking with heated gestures. He ran one long hand over his thinning blonde hair and pointed at Delandra, then the council in general.