by James Axler
Pulling off the glove from his left hand, Kane wetted a forefinger and tested the air currents that swirled around unseen obstacles. He detected a movement of air to their left and, taking Brigid by the hand, began a shambling run in that direction. Chunks of rock clattered at their feet as they threaded their way between outcroppings of granite and basalt. He kept listening for the approach of Zakat and his crew or the sound of their fall when they reached the point where the tunnel opened into empty space.
After a couple of minutes, when the sound had still not come, Kane and Brigid set out along a narrow corridor of stone. Holding the microlight out before him, Kane led the way quickly, occasionally confused by his own writhing shadow.
"Balam didn't have that much of a jump on us," he said. "We ought to come across his tracks or something."
Brigid patted her pockets and said grimly "My Nighthawk is gone. It must have fallen out of my coat when I fell."
Kane nodded, but said nothing. The microlights emitted a powerful beam, and therefore the batteries didn't last very long. Relying only on one source of light in an environment like this didn't do much for his sense of optimism.
The corridor widened and the ceiling grew higher. Irregular stalactites hung from above, and they wended their way around stalagmites thrusting up from the floor. The light beam glinted off mineral deposits embedded in the rough walls — silvery mica, brilliant quartz and soapy limestone. A brooding, unbroken silence bore down on them, like the pressure of a vast, invisible hand. Then they heard the scuff of footfalls.
Cursing under his breath, Kane set off at a trot with Brigid beside him, both of them trying to move as quietly as possible. The passage they walked branched into a Y. They chose the opening on the left, because it had the strongest current of air.
They strode along it for only a short distance, then stopped. The movement of air was almost a breeze, wafting up from below. The cavern floor dropped straight down into utter darkness. Brigid kicked a pebble over the edge and counted quietly. She got to five before they heard it strike far, far below.
Shuddering, Brigid and Kane backed away. They heard the sound of voices and saw the glow of a flashlight, dimly illuminating the branching-off point of the tunnels. They ran noiselessly, on the balls of their feet, toward the Y. They paused a moment at the junction to make sure they couldn't be seen, and then darted into the right-hand shaft. They flattened themselves against the wall. Kane turned off the Nighthawk and double-fisted his Sin Eater. They watched the halo of light grow brighter.
Framed by the aura of two flashlights, Zakat, Trai, Gyatso and a black-faced Dob-Dob — the man Leng had called Yal — appeared at the junction. They looked warily around. If any of the four had taken the tumble out of the tunnel into the cavern, they looked none the worse for it.
Though he knew he was nearly invisible in his black coat, Kane pressed himself harder against the side of the tunnel. He watched Zakat check the air movement with a wet fingertip and, as he and Brigid had done, they turned down the left-hand tunnel.
Kane removed a concussion gren from its clip on his combat harness.
Because of the darkness, Brigid couldn't see what he had done, but she heard the faint clinking of metal. In an alarmed tone, she whispered, "What are you going to do?"
"I hate being chased," he grated.
He soft-shoed back to the junction and heard Zakat and Gyatso speaking in low tones. Peering down the tunnel, he saw they had reached the end. Kane unpinned the gren and lobbed it down the shaft with a gentle, underhanded toss.
Zakat heard it bouncing and silenced Gyatso with a sharp hiss. Kane stepped back swiftly and turned, but he saw the Russian bounding forward with inhuman speed. He kicked the gren like a football, propelling it down the tunnel into the branching-off point, back toward him.
A blaze of light illuminated the junction with a yellow-white glare. The detonation was a brutal thunderclap, which instantly bled into a loud rumble, as if a great wheeled machine were approaching. Bits and pieces of rocks pelted down from overhead, and Kane moved back to the right-hand tunnel, glancing behind him. Chunks of stone fell into the branching-off point of the passageways. Rocks and debris rained down with splintering cracks and crashes. The entire cavern roof seemed to be in motion.
Kane grabbed Brigid by the sleeve and pulled her farther into the shaft as a small rockfall filled the junction with heaps of stone. The floor trembled under their running feet, riven with ugly, spreading cracks.
With an earsplitting roar, an entire section of cavern floor collapsed, plunging downward and carrying Brigid with it. Kane still had a tight grip on her sleeve, and her unsupported weight caused him to fall flat on his stomach.
She dangled at the end of his arm over a void of impenetrable blackness. There was a crack of splitting rock, and her weight abruptly increased. Kane felt himself slipping forward, and he fought to dig the toes of his boots into the hard ground. He heard Brigid's boots groping for purchase.
"Grab me with your other hand," Kane directed through clenched teeth.
Brigid's other hand grasped his forearm, just below the elbow, and Kane was dragged forward a few frightening inches. Straining every muscle in his shoulders, arms and back, he wormed backward, pebbles pressing cruelly into his thighs, groin and chest. He ground the side of his face into grit and dirt. Sweat slid down into his eyes, and his limbs quivered with the strain.
Finally, he lifted Brigid to the level where she was able to swing up a leg over the edge of the rockfall. For a long minute, they lay on the cavern floor, panting and gasping. Finally, Kane pushed himself into a sitting position and turned on the Nighthawk.
When the microlight illuminated Brigid's face, Kane almost wished they were in darkness again. The woman's face was clotted with dried blood from her scalp wound, and her emerald eyes were dulled with fatigue and pain and surrounded by dark rings. Even her curly mane of hair drooped listlessly.
She looked at him and said, "You look terrible."
"Thanks to you," Kane retorted angrily. He scowled at her, then forced a laugh. He stood up slowly, silently enduring the spasms of pain igniting in his back and legs.
"Well," he said after a moment, "Zakat and his crew are behind us, so we can't go back. Balam is somewhere ahead of us. So we have to go out."
"And down," said Brigid gloomily. Gingerly, she stepped forward and peered into the yawning blackness below.
She took a deep breath and inched out onto the ledge, flattening herself against the rock wall, digging the fingers of her hands into the fissures and crevices. After a moment of hard swallowing, Kane stepped out after her, strapping the microlight around his left wrist.
The ledge made a sharp turn to the right after a few steps, and its pitch descended at an increasingly steep angle. Kane and Brigid were forced to edge along it with their hands gripping the wall tightly. Kane wondered how deep beneath the surface they were. He couldn't hazard a guess, but he suspected the ledge beneath their feet wasn't natural. Its smoothness spoke of craftsmanship, though whether it was carved by human hands, he had no way of knowing. Nor did he particularly want to know.
It was slow, laborious work and it was perilous, for ominous cracklings at the lip of the ledge warned that their combined weight might start a slide, sending them both plunging into the blackness.
Kane worried that the batteries of the Nighthawk were dangerously low, but he didn't turn it off. The ledge gradually widened into a true path. Both of them breathed easier when they no longer had to inch sideways, but the dim glow of the microlight diminished their relief. The flashlight offered little more than a firefly halo where the ledge met and joined with a rocky floor.
A faint rumble sounded to their right, and they halted, expecting another downpour of stones. A few seconds of hard listening told them the noise was that of an underground stream or river. Kane was suddenly, sharply aware of how thirsty he was.
They moved along the path, beneath ponderous masses of stone. The Nighthaw
k abruptly went out. The echoes of Brigid's despairing groan chased each other through the impenetrable blackness.
The two people stopped walking, hearts trip-hammering within their chests as they stood motionless in the stygian darkness. Kane's breath came in harsh, ragged bursts as he struggled to control his mounting terror. The mission priority was the spur that drove him to start walking again, taking Brigid by one arm and feeling his way along the rough walls. Then, far away, he saw a tiny blue-yellow flicker of light. He pointed it out to Brigid, and they increased their pace. The crunch of their footfalls sent up ghostly reverberations.
The path suddenly debouched into a gloomy underground gallery with walls of black basalt. Stalagmites and outcroppings thrust up from the floor. To both Brigid's and Kane's dismayed surprise, they saw that the source of the ectoplasmic light came from a small square panel of a glassy substance inset in the gallery wall.
Walking over to it, Brigid eyed it curiously, reaching out a tentative hand to touch it. "I've never seen anything like this before."
"I have," declared Kane grimly.
She jerked her hand away and turned to face him. "Where?"
"In the Black Gobi, in the tent of the Tushe Gun. I guess there isn't any need to wonder where he got them… or where this one came from."
Brigid nodded and stepped away from the glowing panel. The self-styled Avenging Lama had made the ancient Mongolian city of Kharo-Khoto his headquarters. Beneath the black city lay an even more ancient structure, a space vessel. The Tushe Gun had looted much Archon technology from it, without understanding what it was.
Softly, Brigid said, "And I guess there's no more need to wonder why Balam was drawn to this place."
They strode through the gallery, accompanied by the ever present echoes of their footsteps. Every few yards, they came across more of the light panels. They provided a weak, unsatisfactory illumination, but they were grateful for them nonetheless.
The gallery narrowed into a crevasse, which they squeezed into, clambering over fallen masses of stone. The splash of rushing water grew louder as the fissure turned to the left. After a few steps, they found themselves standing on a stone shelf a foot or so above the surface of a river. The opposite bank was about seventy feet away, butting up against a wall of basalt.
The water looked black, but Kane rushed to it anyway, lying flat and plunging his head into the icy current. Brigid kneeled beside him, taking off her gloves before cupping handfuls of water to her mouth.
The water had a peculiar tang to it, a sour limestone aftertaste, but they drank their fill anyway, washing away the blood and grime on their faces. When Kane blunted the edge of his thirst, he became aware of a gnawing hunger and he wondered aloud if there were any fish in the stream.
Brigid didn't reply. She peered in the direction of the river's current. "There isn't a path. If the river leads to a way out, we'll have to swim. Or go back."
Kane raked the wet hair out of his eyes. "There's nothing to be gained by that. Zakat and his crew are better armed than we are."
Brigid nodded. "Yeah, but I'm not up to swimming. The river is cold, probably fed by meltwater. We'd both succumb to hypothermia inside of a couple of minutes."
Kane rose, looking past Brigid to the other side of the stream. Though the light was uncertain, he was sure he saw a long object bobbing on the surface, almost directly across from their position. Leaning against the rock wall, he tugged off his boots, shucked his coat and slid into the water.
"What are you doing?" Brigid demanded.
"Wait and see, Baptiste."
His feet touched the gravelly bottom. The water was shockingly, almost painfully cold, and it took all of his self-control not to curse. He started wading across, moving as quickly as he dared. After a few steps, the icy water lapped at his thighs, then up to his waist. He kept walking, fighting the strong current. A time or two, loose stones turned beneath his feet and he nearly fell.
When he reached the other side, he was gasping and out of breath. From the hips down he was completely numb, but the bobbing shape was what he had hoped it would be. A six-foot-long boat made of bark and laced yak's hide was tethered to a boulder by a length of leather. A wooden pole about ten feet long lay on the bank.
Pulling himself ashore, Kane snatched the tether free and took the pole. Tentatively, he eased into the little boat. The craft sank a bit, the hide-and-bark hull giving a little, but it seemed river worthy.
With pushes of the pole, he propelled the boat across the river. He had difficulty crossing it because of the current, but the pole always touched bottom. When the prow bumped against the opposite bank, Brigid handed him his boots and coat. She hesitated only a moment before gingerly climbing into it.
Hastily, Kane put on his coat and boots. He shivered as he did so. Taking the pole again, he pushed off and the boat slid out into the river, rocking a bit. He poled the craft so it hugged the right-hand wall, close to the light panels, not voicing the host of new fears assailing him.
He was afraid the river might debouch in a dozen different directions, or lead to a waterfall or that the boat might spring a leak. But after twenty minutes of steady poling, with none of his fears bearing out, he tried to relax. When his strained shoulder muscles couldn't take any more abuse, he turned the task of poling over to Brigid.
Kane sat down while she expertly directed the craft. She said, "This used to be a form of recreation. It was called punting."
"Offhand I can think of a dozen recreational activities I'd rather be doing."
"All with Rouch, I'll bet," she replied with a studied nonchalance.
Kane glowered at her, but didn't respond. Linking his hands behind his aching neck, he inquired, "What do you think, Baptiste?"
"What do I think about what?"
"Is this Agartha, the Valley of the Eight Immortals Zakat is so crazy to reach?"
Brigid pushed her shoulder against the pole. "If it is, it's a far cry from the way the city was described in legend. I haven't seen a speck of gold or a chip of diamond yet. If there ever were Agarthans, they came down here ages ago to die."
Brigid paused, started to say something else, then stopped talking and poling. Kane straightened up. The waterway opened into a huge, vault-walled cavern. It was immense, most of it wrapped in unrelieved darkness. Black masses of rock hung from its jagged roof.
The river narrowed down to a stream, and the current carried the boat beneath an arching formation. A constant sound of splashing beyond it indicated a waterfall.
Brigid pushed the craft toward the nearest bank. She poled them aground on the pebble-strewed shore. They climbed out of the boat and looked around at the city of stalactites and stalagmites rising all around them. Illuminated by dozens of light panels, they saw towers of multicolored limestone disappearing into the darkness overhead, flying buttresses and graceful arches of rock stretching into the shadows.
Kane and Brigid moved forward uncertainly, struggling not to be overcome by awe. Then Brigid stabbed out an arm, pointing ahead. They stopped and stared, surrendering to astonishment.
The figure was a statue, standing in erect position. At least fifteen feet tall, it represented a humanoid creature with a slender, gracile build draped in robes. The features were sharp, the domed head disproportionately large and hairless. The eyes were huge, slanted and fathomless.
The stone figure pointed with one long-fingered hand toward the farther, shadow-shrouded end of the cavern. There was something so strikingly meaningful about the pointing arm and the intent gaze of the big eyes that the statue seemed not crafted out of stone at all, but a living thing petrified by the hand of time.
"Somebody lived down here," Kane muttered.
Brigid nodded thoughtfully. "A long, long time ago."
They started in the direction of the statue's solemnly pointing arm. It led them across the cavern, to a crevasse that yawned at the far end. A worn path was still discernible, and they followed it toward the black opening.
/> Kane suddenly tugged Brigid to a stop. "Are you sure nobody's lived down here for a long, long time?"
Nettled by the hint of sarcasm in his tone, she followed his gaze downward.
In the fine rock dust on the cavern floor, they saw the clear, fresh print of a small foot with six delicate toes.
24
In the wavering glow of the light panel, Kane and Brigid looked at each other, at the footprint, at the solemn statue and back to each other.
"If Balam made this footprint, then he's not too far ahead of us," Kane said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper.
"That print could have been here for ages," replied Brigid. "There's nothing down here to disturb it."
She studied the looming sculpture. "There must have been a migration down through these caves. Balam's people set up that statue as a marker, a guidepost so that they would know the way to follow."
Kane stepped forward. "I think we should do the same thing."
They followed the worn, broad path that led into the cavern and to a fissure at the far end. Another light panel illuminated a very narrow, winding stair hewed out of stone, a route taken by a doom-driven race. The stairs angled steeply into darkness.
When Kane and Brigid started down, they discovered its downward angle was not quite as sharp as they feared. The stairs led to a wide, vault-walled space from which many other fissures radiated. A square light panel shed a feeble glow over one of the cracks.
They didn't speak as they entered the passage, but Kane's mind was in a fever of speculation and conjecture. He understood now why Balam and his kind had such huge eyes, why they were most comfortable in low light levels, why historically they had been slandered as hellspawn. They had no choice but to shun the light, lurk in the shadows, and early man had viewed them as demons, scuttling up from the bowels of the Earth to practice devilment.
Perhaps the myth of Agartha was a long-range public-relations campaign, to plant in human consciousness the concept of a semidivine race living in a subterranean city, not a horde of inhuman devils.