by John Hook
The big island actually had an inlet with a beach, although it was scarred and burned. The smaller island looked like a dome of rock projecting out of the water. Maybe it had been a mountain on this island once but the land bridge had been since blasted away.
We tied the boat, letting it sit out in the water at the end of a length of rope. We thought the boat might have a better chance of surviving a near energy strike in the water than on land. We waded up on the beachhead and looked around. I was pretty sure this was the place that had appeared in my dreams, the dreams of the little girl with the feathers in her hair, the shattered sky and the fires. The dream where I had first encountered the Black Angel. However, now, everything had been devastated. There was little soil, just exposed slabs of blasted rock with a few desperate scrubby plants in the cracks between. Fires had clearly burned here out of control as everything was scorched and blackened.
All of us knew how unlikely it was that Adaxa and Lazitar had come to this dangerous ruin of an island, but none of us dared make it real by speaking it. There seemed to be only one place of elevation on the island, a set of low hills that followed the shore. They weren't as tall as the dome of rock that was the second island, but you could probably survey quite a bit of the island from up there.
I pointed. “We might see something from up there. I could float over and save us a climb.”
“Stop it, Quentin,” Saripha said without anger. “I know how hopeless this seems, but I'm convinced they are here somewhere and I need to be in on the search.”
It took us a while to scale the hill, although it wasn't that difficult. From the top we could see most of the island. Through the middle of the island was a large crevasse. Out of it projected several metallic poles with blinking lights and what looked like some kind of sensor or instrument at the top.
“Quentin, could that be them?”
“I hate to be a spoilsport, but I think I know what that is. Let's take a closer look.”
It probably took a couple of hours to get there, but we arrived at the edge of the crevasse and I knew for sure what we were looking at. The walls of the opening were steep and almost glass smooth. Impossibly deep down there was a faint white-hot glow. The metallic poles were embedded in the sides of the glassy rock faces but much too high to be used to descend to whatever was glowing in the bottom.
“This is the main hive of the Idiri. This is the invasion force waiting for the sword to change our universe so they can survive outside this buried chamber.”
“You're sure?” Saripha let a little desperation creep into her voice.
“I'm sorry, Saripha, but I am.”
“So the one or ones we've seen can only survive a short time?” Izzy was studying one of the metal poles.
“Outside of their hive, yes. The form they've borrowed is like a diving suit with a limited oxygen supply. Who knows what they actually look like in the hive.”
“How does the Black Angel survive?”
“I don't think she is Idiri. She seems to be a survivor of the world they destroyed.”
“We could try damaging those poles.” Izzy had a glint in his eyes.
“Or we might just fall in. We don't know what those things do, but I'd just as soon not make our presence known right now.”
“Darn. Might have been fun to take one apart.”
“One quest at a time.”
Saripha let out a breath. “My intuition still says they’re here. Honestly, I agree, I don't see how, but I have to trust my intuition.”
“That leaves the dome of rock.”
As if for punctuation, the sky lit up overhead. An energy bolt hit the hills we were about to cross, churning up rock as that was about all there was to churn up.
“You think this is hopeless, don't you?” Saripha asked.
“Saripha, if there is one thing I've learned here, it's to trust your intuition.”
We crossed back over the hills and returned to the boat, pulling it in to shore and climbing in. We pushed off and paddled towards the small, dome-shaped island that might have once been part of the large island. As we got closer, things felt even more hopeless. It truly was a dome of rock and seemed to have been blasted smooth, probably by the energy blasts over time. There were no handholds for even climbing the rock, much less living on it. We sailed around it, hoping that maybe one face of the mountain might be different. We finally came around on the inside. We had to be careful here. There were no reefs for me to light up to guide our way. If this had been connected to the larger island, there could be a land bridge just under the water. There was no way to tell how shallow or deep the water was. Because of this, I was focusing more attention on the water than I was the mountain as we very slowly rowed. Then a nonverbal exclamation from Saripha made me look up.
It wasn't easy to see, but on the side of the mountain was what appeared to be a cave entrance. It was a hole in the side of the mountain about thirty feet above the water line. It wasn't clear how anyone would get up there as there was no shelf and the condition of no handholds on the mountain still held. You'd need to be a skilled rock climber with the right equipment. Or a Dreamer, I thought to myself.
I floated myself up and landed in the entrance. I could see the cavern opened up to a much wider tunnel, though it was so dark I couldn't see much more than that. I turned back to the others below.
“There's something up here. Throw me a rope and I'll hold it while you climb up.”
It took Izzy a couple of tosses, but I finally had the rope. I wrapped it around a stalagmite, anchoring it. Then I could just focus on holding the rope to counter the weight of the climber. Saripha climbed up first and then Izzy. We looked down.
“Not sure I'm looking forward to getting back in the boat.” Izzy shifted the pack of arrows and bow on his back that had bunched up when he was climbing.
I turned back into the cavern and brought up my tattoos.
“I think we hit pay dirt.”
In the faint blue glow, I could see a length of the path through the cavern ahead. First, it was a well-worn path, although that might have been done long ago. However, there were also impressions in the loose soil that had to have been much more recent.
“Looks like a pair of footprints.” Izzy took the bow off his shoulder.
“One large and one smaller.”
“Lazitar and Adaxa.”
“Hopefully. Not Angels, anyway.”
“You always did look on the bright side.”
“They probably won't be any happier to see us.”
“Why do you think I'm carrying my bow?”
“Then again, we may have blown it if you have to shoot them.”
“The hope is maybe they'd rather not get shot.”
I turned to Saripha. For the first time, the fire was back in her eyes.
“You want to take the lead?”
Saripha grinned. I lit myself up as much as I could to cast a wide light. We descended into a large cavern. Unfortunately, the scope of my light was limited, which meant most of the cave was dark and we could easily be passing something important off to either side in the darkness. Izzy hung back just a bit. He didn't have an arrow threaded, but he was quick. If something threatening arose, he'd have time to react.
The path led to a narrow passageway. We entered. Saripha was fine, but I had to duck down a bit. As we emerged into the next large chamber, I felt a slight dizziness and what almost felt like a headache coming on. I couldn't place it, but it was something I had felt before.
“Quentin! Izzy! Stay back!”
Saripha's warning was too late as I stepped into something sticky and found myself dangling above the ground bound in silvery strands of a very tough webbing. The more I struggled, the tighter it held me. Then I heard a sound.
The sound was a high-pitched chirping. In the dim light, which strangely seemed to increase although there was no source for the light, I saw a very large figure moving towards us from up among the stalactites.
It
was what appeared to be a very large spider, hairy legs and all, with the tail of a scorpion. And from what little I knew about scorpions, the tail looked like it was coming in for the kill.
16.
“I'm not really seeing this, am I?”
“What was your first clue?” Izzy asked.
“You mean, aside from the fact that you seem to be getting some amusement out of it?”
“Yeah, aside from that?”
“And aside from the fact that a big spider with a scorpion tail is a bit over the top?”
“You didn't write some old pulp story about one, did you?”
“It was the sort of squeaky clicking sound it was making. The only place spiders make sounds like that is in the movies.”
I turned my thoughts inward and then pushed my energy out. I felt another kind of energy. It wasn't like the energy of a living being. It was more like a fog draped over everything. My energy banished it, like wiping away cobwebs.
“Admit it,” Izzy pressed playfully. “For just a minute...”
“Maybe twenty seconds. So you two didn't see it?”
“I saw something quite different and equally unreal.” Saripha ran her fingers through her hair. “I sensed it was the dreaming and banished it.”
Izzy shrugged. “I was hanging back and noticed a ground mist rise up around you two. I stayed back. I don't think I got exposed.”
“So, do they know we're here?” I asked.
“Probably not, but they knew we might come and laid a trap. There will no doubt be more.”
“So I really have a spider-scorpion running around in my head?”
“Somewhere,” Saripha answered. “Could be a thought you had when you were five. Whatever the dreaming is, it can dig deep into your unconscious and pull things out.”
“How is it triggered?” Izzy asked.
“I think they can just cast a spell on a place. You walk through it and your body absorbs it, like what happened to us at the dreaming place in Antanaria.”
“How many do you think there are? Any way to recognize them before we encounter them?”
Izzy was thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I'm just thinking that the first time we encountered it, it looked like a purple light or maybe a gas. A few moments ago I didn't enter the cavern because I thought I saw a mist. I think there might be a slight visual distortion anywhere we might encounter it.”
“Do you think it's a gas?”
Saripha shook her head. “It's a spell cast upon a time and place. Its effects are magical, not biological.”
“Well, we know they're here somewhere.”
“There may not be many of these traps,” Saripha said, as if thinking aloud. “Most of the seafarers won't even venture here and this cave is not easy to find.”
I brightened my tattoos and we made our way carefully, deeper into the caves. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was supposed to be a path and what was just wandering around in the caves. We did quite a bit of descending and then the caverns opened up. That made sense. The dome of rock wasn't that big. We continued to descend. I was just thinking uncomfortably about the fact that there was ocean sitting on top of these caverns, though it was obviously a shallow channel between the islands.
We really couldn't see very far. My tattoos only lit up what was around us in about a twenty-foot radius. Our sense of how large or small a chamber was came mostly from auditory cues and how the air flowed. Anything could be lurking beyond our light and we would have had no clue.
Unexpectedly, I saw a glow far ahead. I stopped and Saripha and Izzy came up beside me.
“Bingo.”
“You think it's them, Izzy?”
“Too much light to be a dream trap.”
“I can sense them,” Saripha said in almost a whisper. “I sense the dreaming. It's very powerful here.”
“So what do we do when we get there?”
Saripha gave me a half smile. “Appeal to their humanitarian instincts.”
“And our Plan B?” I asked.
Izzy laughed. “You'll annoy them until they give us what we want.”
“I thought I was pretty annoying before and it didn't seem to work.”
“You'll just have to step it up.” Izzy patted me on the back.
We headed towards the light. For just a moment I wondered if it could be another hive, but I dismissed the idea pretty quickly. It made no sense for a hive to have easy human access. The chamber we were walking through narrowed down into a large tunnel that was funneling the light. We stepped through the tunnel and emerged on a shelf that wound its way down to the floor of a large cavern. In the center of the cavern was a glowing city. It was like Ohnipoor and Chadikar. It was an ancient city, with fluted towers that had tulip-like tops. There were open public areas with columns and pools. However, this city looked alive somehow. The material that in the other cities seemed to be either polished stone or porcelain, here had an actual glow. It wasn't reflecting a lighting source; it was the lighting source. We could see people moving in the city, though not a lot. We couldn't tell much about them from up here. However, they seemed to walk with a certain amount of animation and a few even walked arm in arm together, so clearly they were not the fearful or emotionally disconnected masses we had encountered elsewhere.
“The Dreamers,' I said, to no one in particular. However, a familiar voice answered me.
“Yes, And there are not many of us left.”
I turned. Lazitar stood behind us with four other men of the same race. The other men were not as large as Lazitar, but they were nonetheless big and in very good shape. All had the deeply blue to purple skin. And all of them brandished long knives formed from what looked like polished stone.
“Lazitar.” Saripha gave him a head bow out of respect.
“You should not have come.” Lazitar spoke more with regret than anger. He lowered his long knife slightly. It was less challenging than before, but it was clear it was still a threat.
“You knew I had no choice.” Saripha's voice was forceful.
“My job is to protect Adaxa and what is left of our people. I appreciate that you helped me rescue Adaxa...”
I interrupted, letting a bit of my anger show. “You betrayed us. You used us and failed to keep your bargain, for which all of us risked out lives.”
Lazitar locked eyes with me. He didn't say anything for a few moments.
“My only obligation is to Adaxa and our people. I understand you have your obligations as well. Those are not my concern.”
Lazitar turned to Saripha.
“Come, I will show you the city.” One of the men with Lazitar was collecting Izzy's bow and arrows.
“As your prisoners.” Saripha said it as a statement.
“For now.”
“I need to see Adaxa.”
Lazitar said nothing and took the lead down the winding shelf. The other four fell in behind us. We didn't offer any resistance. I didn't even enlarge myself. For right now, this was moving us closer to our goal. We had to get to the city and we had to find Adaxa. That didn't guarantee we would get what we wanted, but it was really our only hope.
Although something else kept nagging at me.
“You are blue,” Lazitar had said in the casino.
“So, did you bury this city to protect it from the Angels?” I didn't know if Lazitar would answer me, but I've found that beings in Hell are sometimes talkative when they think I've been handled.
“No, this city has always been hidden. That's why we made the seat of our power Antanaria. That was before the Angels came.”
“And now the hidden city is a refuge. With a nest of Angels sitting right next to it.”
“They cannot survive long in our world.”
“Then how did they almost wipe you out?”
“Initially, it was their entry into this world. The hole they tore in the sky. The angel forms they use are not their own, but they allow them to survive l
onger in this world. Those using those forms either promise power to others or enslave them to carry out their bidding. Many attribute their angel forms with spiritual significance and turn into unquestioning devotees. Like the Hadaran.”
“The Hadaran?”
“The horsemen.”
“They're from here? I always assumed they were alien, too.”
“They live in the ice lands.”
“Yeah, they had that kind of Norse, frozen white people vibe to them.”
“White people?”
“It's probably too hard to explain.”
Izzy started snickering. Lazitar looked back stormily. It was like the high school principal catching you passing notes in class. Izzy immediately sobered up, although I could see him fighting back the merriment at the corners of his mouth. Lazitar turned back and we kept going.
“So what, you are just going to hide here? Until what?”
“We are not hiding. I am afraid of no one. We are protecting Adaxa. We are protecting the dreaming.”
“Until what?” I repeated.
“Until we determine it is safe to emerge again.”
“And when will that be, Lazitar? The Idiri plan on wiping out the entire universe.”
“If the Idiri destroy everything, then all will be done and we will have no more need to protect Adaxa.”
“He's got a point there.” Izzy was trying hard to keep a straight face.
“Yes, but it's an insane point.”
“Apparently not in this world.”
I addressed myself to Lazitar again. “Why not help us? Help us stop the Angels before they can do this.”
Lazitar stopped and turned to us. “You really don't understand duty.”
“Duty to what?”
“You cannot stop the Angels.”
“Of course I can. I just haven't found the way yet.”
“You won't find the way. We can't stop the Angels.”
“You don't know that.”
Lazitar seemed to ignore me. “Since we are not capable of stopping the Idiri, our duty is to protect Adaxa as long as we are able. When the world ends, we are released from our oath.”