Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  When William stepped inside the morass of tumbled stones, entangled vines and clinging, vein-like root masses, he looked around and studied the faded but still impressive décor of the temple; intricately carved friezes of detailed scenes, featuring fantastical beasts and many-armed gods, some of whom sported animal heads. A life-sized statue of an arcane god leaned against one of the crumbled grey walls, its solemn face still bearing a few flecks of the vividly coloured paint that had once covered its entire body. The white paint that clung with tenacious determination to its eyes gave the statue an eerily lifelike quality, and it seemed to be glaring at William with a malevolent glower as he limped into the shadows of the still-standing tower.

  A roar reverberated through the maze of stones, and the gush of fear it brought with it spurred life into William’s aching, exhausted limbs. With the rumble still ringing in his ears he hurried into the nearest doorway, passing through its carved pillars and faded façades. Breathing heavily and racked with pain, he leaned against the wall and peered nervously through the gloom. A few splinters of daylight streamed into the dark space through a vine-choked window opening, and it illuminated the murky room just enough so that William could make out two passageways, each leading deeper into the heart of the temple. With fear pumping hyper-energised blood through his veins, he crouched down on the floor and fumbled around for something he could use as a weapon, but all he managed to find were broken stones and dry leaves and twigs. He jumped back in fright as a huge spider scuttled out from under one of the stone fragments he disturbed, and he cursed loudly, but immediately clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound.

  ‘William you fool!’ he whispered to himself, ‘you dunnae want those … those devils out there tae know you’re in here!’

  A series of rasping barks reverberated through the room from the foliage just outside, and William scurried through to the passage on the right, before whatever was outside the walls decided to peer in through the window. The heavy darkness of the corridor he found himself in smothered out any light from outside, and he had to fumble his way along, groping the rough and damp walls for guidance in the pitch black. He noticed that there were small alcoves every few paces, with empty mounts in which torches, presumably, could fit.

  ‘If only I had one ay them torches now,’ he muttered.

  He licked his lips with a swollen tongue, but the gesture only served to further irritate them; his mouth had been dry from this pervasive fear for quite some time now. He drew in a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but found that this only made his anxiety worse. He was alone out here, lost, unarmed and horseless, at least week’s trek away from the nearest human settlement, and currently being hunted by a troupe of savage beasts. Things were currently looking dire … very dire.

  ‘Zhe little man is in here somevhere,’ he heard a booming voice, coloured with a Russian accent, gnarl. ‘I saw him go in.’

  A new wave of panic began pulsing through William’s veins. Was this the strange man in the brown robe he had seen earlier, the master of these beasts? The voice that he had just heard, however, sounded completely different to the brown-robed man’s. How many of them were there? How many men? How many animals?

  A ripping, sustained roar blasted through the corridors of the temple, the tearing waves bouncing in sonorous ripples off the stone walls, rending the darkness like a hail of arrows punching through a flimsy sheet of cloth. William clamped his hands over his ears and whimpered with terror in the darkness, biting down on his lower lip to suppress the pressure-building scream that so desperately wanted to flee from his lungs. The roar faded out and the echoes subsided, and William slackened his arms, letting them fall limp by his side. He breathed in a large lungful of the damp, mouldy air, and then released it in a panicked gasp. There had to be a way out of this, there had to be … but how?

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ someone shouted from somewhere inside the stone corridors. This time the speaker was female, but like the other voice had been, hers was tinged with a foreign accent.

  William crept along, trying to steel his frayed nerves as he went. His heart almost stopped as a blasting sniff echoed abruptly through the passage, and through the darkness he saw two green, almost glowing eyes glint briefly.

  With a cascading gush of horror, he pressed his body against the stones as the probing eyes roved from left to right … and then started coming down the corridor directly towards him. He sucked a sharp breath of air into his lungs and held it there, and in the same motion he quietly slipped his body into the nearest alcove, pressing himself as deeply into it as he could. With bated breath he waited, trying his utmost to suppress the violent trembling of his limbs as he once more saw the flash of the eyes in the shadows.

  This time they were much closer. Through the gloom, to which his eyes had now become somewhat accustomed, he saw an enormous shape passing by him, close enough to touch. It was the great lion, no doubt; tall enough at the shoulder that it was almost his height, and easily the length of a horse. He inhaled the earthy rawness of its scent, an aroma that sent an icy chill tearing down his spine, while causing his knees to want to buckle beneath him.

  Despite the debilitating terror, he somehow managed to remain upright and did not move and did not release any of the air from his lungs until the huge animal had padded past and disappeared around a corner.

  Come on boyo, come on. You can escape this place. You can get out. Press on … Press on!

  William slipped out of the alcove and crept on tiptoes through the passageway, his heart feeling, with every percussive thump in his breast, as if it was about to explode. He saw a light growing in the distance, and as it grew in intensity it revealed a spiral staircase heading upwards. He inhaled deeply and slowly, and started edging up the stairs, hoping that they would lead, somehow, to freedom.

  The light bloomed in brightness as William rounded a corner, and, knowing now that the dark was his ally rather than his enemy, he kept himself pressed close to the rough stone as he craned his neck to see what the light would reveal. This light was not the diffuse grey glow of the gloomy, overcast day outside though; this was the swaying ebb and flow of orange torchlight. He smelled the charred scent of oil lamps wafting down the stairs, riding the trickle of cool air from above. Was this hope or was this doom? There was only one way to find out, for the massive beast was prowling the darkness of the corridors behind him and there would be no going back that way. William had to head out of this stairwell; out and up, up into the burning glow.

  When he reached the end of the stairs, he saw that the narrow stairwell spilled out into a large hall. This was the inner sanctum of the temple, where a huge altar had once stood, taking centre stage beneath the curve of the great domed tower that soared above the treetops. Now, however, part of that stone dome had collapsed inward and had crushed the altar, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble where that locus of worship had once stood. In the lost idol’s place, however, a mighty tree had grown. Its gnarled roots were wrapped around the stones and the remains of the crushed altar like the tentacles of some enormous cephalopod, while the trunk burst through the hole in the fallen-in ceiling, blotting out the daylight with its crowding of limbs and leaves that were all trying to force themselves through the opening to drink in the life-giving sunlight without.

  William craned his neck, keeping his back pressed against the wall of the stairwell, not yet daring to venture out into the vulnerability of the open space of the hall. Fresh torches had been lit and set in their mounting spots on the mossy walls, and the dancing oil-flames made the twisted bodies in the wraparound friezes seem to come to life, their ancient forms writhing and twisting in the primeval tar-pit of grey stone in which they were eternally entombed.

  Through the moving lights and shadows in the hall, however, William could not discern any living presence. Obviously those who hunted him were here, in this temple, somewhere – he had heard them, and it could only have been them who had put the torche
s here – but it appeared, for the present moment at least, that the strange people and their wild beasts were elsewhere.

  William crept into the hall, his senses on full alert, with fear chattering its driving beat through his temples and ears.

  ‘There he is!’

  His heart skipped a beat and his stomach lurched with sudden terror. He looked up – for above was where the voice had come from – and he saw in the high boughs of the tree, right where it pushed through the hole in the roof, a woman. She was crouched among the thick masses of leaves and twigs, and William would not have noticed her had she not spoken. He had no idea how she could have gotten up there, for the lowest branch of the tree was too tall for even a seven-footer to reach, yet there she was, way up in the heights. All he could see of her was her face; long, straight black hair cascaded around her shoulders, and intense phoenix eyes, nestled beneath strong eyebrows, that burned with contempt – or was it malice – in her oval face. Below her broad nose, her dark, pronounced lips were curled into a snarl of unmistakable aggression. She looked similar, in ethnicity at least, to the Chinese traders William had seen in Calcutta, but there was something vastly different about her when compared to his recollections of those studious and seemingly emotionless businesspeople.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ he managed to stammer.

  ‘Ve are zhe ones who vill be asking zhe kvestions!’ boomed the deep voice William had heard earlier.

  This voice had come from behind William, so he spun around to see who had been speaking. Standing behind a pile of stones was a hulking powerhouse of a fellow, with a shock of thick platinum hair that was virtually the same hue as his nearly translucent skin. With his wide face, ogre-like jaw and his coarse features, not to mention his tree-trunk limbs and barrel chest, the man radiated a sense of power and dominance that was undeniable in its intensity.

  ‘Now you vill tell me, vhy you did come here?!’ the man rasped in the tone of an inquisitor demanding a confession of a heretic. ‘You are a Huntsman?’

  His accent was similar to that of many natives William had spoken to in the Crimea, so he guessed that the man was Russian.

  ‘No, I, I, was just w-, working, h-, hired as a horseman, to ac-, ac-, accompany the mission,’ he stammered in reply.

  He hoped that these people couldn’t see how badly his limbs were trembling. Perhaps, though, like their wild beast pets they were able to smell the fear oozing from his every pore.

  ‘Oh, you vere just “doing your job”, vhere you?’ the man sneered. ‘Vell zhen, zhat makes it acceptable, does it not?! Vhat do you ssink, my friends? Do you ssink zhis little man vass just innocently “doing his job”?’

  The woman perched in the treetop shook her head gravely.

  ‘I think he came here to hunt, to kill, to destroy, Nikolai … just like the rest of them,’ she declared flatly, her accent unique and non-specifically foreign, it seemed. ‘Yes, I think he’s just like the rest of them. No different from his friends, I’d say.’

  ‘Zhat judgment does not bode vell for you, little man,’ the man named Nikolai growled.

  ‘Listen, listen,’ William spluttered almost hysterically, his voice rising in pitch as panic took hold of him, ‘I was just, I had tae go along with them, I had no other choice! I’ve a girl back home, who I love wi’ all my heart an’ soul, I had tae—’

  Nikolai folded his gorilla arms over his bulging midsection and chuckled mockingly.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got a girl back home?’ he snarled, the words dripping like caustic acid from his crimson lips. ‘Vell vhy didn’t you say so in zhe first place? Zhat makes everyssing completely different!’

  ‘Aye, aye, you see, I’ve, I’ve—’ William stammered, clutching desperately at whatever fragments of hope he could cling to.

  ‘SILENCE!’ Nikolai bellowed abruptly, cutting William off. ‘Zhis girl of yours is immaterial, I’m afraid. Inconsekvential!’

  ‘But, but, you dunnae understand, you dunnae … Listen, listen, please, please, I’m beggin’ you, fir the love ay all tha’s good an’ beautiful on this earth, please—’

  ‘Save your begging for someone else,’ the woman hissed. ‘That one isn’t your judge. He is. And you’ve already been convicted, and the sentence decided.’

  William turned around slowly, looking in the direction in which the woman was pointing, terrified of what would be revealed. And when he saw what she was pointing at, he wilted in horror, for there, just a few paces behind him, was the great lion himself.

  William froze, utterly paralysed with unadulterated, nerve-shearing fright. The monstrousness of the beast was even more awe-striking in the light of the temple hall than it had been when he had caught a glimpse of it in the forest earlier, or when it had passed him in the shadows of the tunnels below. It glared at him with its preternaturally green eyes, and then it opened its enormous mouth, releasing a roar that tore with apocalyptic fury through the chamber, rattling the stones to their very foundations. The sound made William’s knees gelatinous beneath him, and he could not help but whimper with terror. He felt a warm wash of liquid trickling down the inside of his thighs; he had just wet himself.

  At that moment, from a dark alcove just behind the gargantuan lion, stepped out an impossibly thin Indian man with a gaunt yet kindly face, almost perfectly oblong in shape, with big, almost bug-like eyes that seemed to protrude from their shallow sockets. Between them was a pronouncedly hooked nose, and topping his head was long, flowing hair, black but streaked heavily with licks of white, that danced playfully about his bony shoulders. A week’s worth of stubble, mostly white, in stark contrast to his dark skin, dusted the entirety of his jaw area, like the beginnings of a snowfall. He was wearing the same type of brown robe that William had seen the hirsute white man in earlier. He grinned devilishly at William, his teeth bright against the cocoa of his pitted cheeks.

  ‘Well boy,’ he said in a heavily accented voice, ‘what are you waiting for?’

  For a moment sheer confusion battered William’s panic-stricken mind, and as he stood, frozen with horror before the mighty lion, all he could do was to mewl in a helpless and pathetic tone, ‘Wh-, what?’

  The Indian man laughed jovially, his eyes crinkled around their edges with gleeful amusement, and then he spoke.

  ‘What? This, of course: run boy, run!’

  William needed no further prompting. He spun on his heels and catapulted himself into a desperate sprint, his eyes bulging white in their sockets, his nostrils flared and his mouth wide open as he tried to suck in every available ounce of oxygen to fuel his suddenly pumping limbs. The massive cat tore along behind him, and William could feel the heat of its breath scalding the back of his neck with every step of his madcap flight.

  ‘Au-ro-ra, Au-ro-ra, Au-ro-ra!’ he gasped with every breath as he sprinted, as if somehow her name could spur extra strength into his spent muscles and more speed into his leaden limbs.

  It was as he reached a sprawling set of stone stairs that led down into an open courtyard that the beast took him. From the top step William sprang into a hurtling leap, hoping to hit the floor below running, but as he was airborne an enormous weight smashed into him from behind. Suddenly his leap was taken farther and higher than any human legs could ever have propelled him – but this was because he was in the clutches of the lion, with its enormous paws wrapped around his torso and its dagger-sized claws puncturing their blades deep into his flesh. And then, as they both hit the stone floor with a ground-shaking impact, they began to roll in a fury of flying fur and spraying blood. As they came to a rest, the lion roared a blast of dragon-fire breath into William’s face, and it bit down onto his neck and shoulder with its gaping mouth, sinking its lance-point canines into his flesh and clamping down with all the force of a slamming-shut bear trap.

  William struggled and fought with all his might, but against the titanic power of this beast, which was pinning him down with its four-hundred-kilogram weight and fearsome strength, he was utterly powe
rless.

  This is it, I’m finally done for … I’m sorry Aurora … I’m so sorry my love. I hope that you can find happiness without me, and that we’ll meet up in the next life, somehow…

  ‘Aurora,’ he whimpered, flopping limply to the ground as the beast released him from its grasp. ‘Oh Aurora, Aurora, I’m dying my love, I’m dying…’

  As the agony and the pain began to fade into the oblivion of unconsciousness, the image of Aurora was the final thing that entered his mind. Her presence, her heart, the very soul within her body; these were the last things William registered before he plunged headlong into a yawning abyss of intense darkness.

  71

  WILLIAM

  ‘He’s waking up.’

  The dark-haired woman.

  ‘Not for long.’

  The Russian man.

  ‘Sleep, young cub, sleep. Don’t fight it.’

  The European man in the brown robe.

  Stars. Too many stars. A gargantuan black void, infinite and insatiably ravenous, devouring suns and planets and galaxies and time itself. The great blackness at the centre of all existence, twisting and sucking in streaks of light, obliterating time, melting planets into liquefied ore. With gooey strands of white-hot molten rock hanging like comet tails in the wake of their flight paths, the planets and stars and other celestial bodies try, try and try to pull against the irresistible force of the great hole. Its gaping yawn, its vast maw now takes on colours; first it is a deep, dark purple, but then, as the giddying sensation of acceleration pulls progressively harder, it becomes violet, then crimson, then red, red, red, red … now it morphs into a great lion’s mouth, with the melting planets and collapsing suns melding themselves together into scimitar canine teeth, the drifting precreation matter solidifying into pink gums. The teeth begin piercing, rending, tearing into William, devouring his flesh, flaying off his skin and slicing through meat and bone and ripping his inner organs to pieces and PAIN PAIN UNBEARABLE PAIN OH GOD WILL THIS EVER STOP IT’S TOO MUCH TOO MUCH OH JESUS TOO GREAT AN AGONY TOO—