But an answer like that?
“You seem primitive, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Were there mysterious lights in the sky? A big noise?”
The woman didn’t share his humor. Her expression hadn’t changed.
“Your Empire has no reach here,” she said, cold and sharp. “You’ve heard our answers. Now turn around and go.”
“I’m not here to conquer or recruit you. I’m only investigating what killed that envoy.”
“Oh, I see. Dozens of our people have died already at the monster’s hands, but your benevolent Empire doesn’t deign to recognize our plight until one of your own is taken.”
“If you’d agreed to join us, perhaps we would have noticed sooner.” Kestrel flipped the remains of the spent smoke down at her feet. “We can’t be held accountable for every tiny problem on every planet.”
“There is nothing tiny about this problem, angel. This is a creature that would threaten both our communities.”
Kestrel raised a dubious eyebrow.
“Nothing threatens the Empire.”
“Your overconfidence is surpassed only by your arrogance.”
“Then show me this monster.”
“It lives in the caves among the mountains.”
“Show me.” Kestrel tilted up his chin. “Then the quicker we’ll be rid of each other.”
For a moment they stood at a standstill. The wind continued to flit and burst around them in tiny, short-lived gusts.
The woman blinked first.
“I’ll show you the way,” she said. “But first, there is a ritual—”
A hot waft of instant rage rolled over Kestrel’s shoulders.
“I’m not participating in any of your Godless rituals,” he bristled.
One corner of the woman’s mouth turned up.
“Then you’ll have to find the way on your own.”
For the space of several heartbeats, Kestrel stood his ground. He wouldn’t be moved. Not on this. His faith in the Temple and the Creator was held above all else. The idea of these savages and their false ceremonies had already left a bad taste in the back of his mouth that no amount of spitting would get out.
The woman didn’t budge, either.
They would have stood there all day.
“Alright,” Kestrel finally relented, tossing his hands. “I’ll walk through your motions. But don’t think for an instant that you have any effect on me, shaman.”
“The ritual provides protection,” she answered, “whether you believe in it or not. You’re going to need it if you’re so eager to face horror.”
She turned, and reached for a long, straight stick of wood propped up near the entrance to the rock face.
“And my name is Compassion.”
Kestrel looked at her, dubious at best. His thoughts were already reconciling with his conscience to what he had just agreed. Not much was known about the people here on Kailash. If the feed he provided of one of their rituals could glean some information for the Temple, perhaps that would bring them one step closer to converting these heathens over to the Empire.
Still, he calculated his odds of navigating the mountains on his own. Should this supposed monster even exist.
“You may call me Passi.”
“Kestrel,” he muttered, finally nodding his head. “Let’s get this over with.”
***
The ritual was blessedly short.
It involved walking several times around a circle Passi etched into the ground inside the shelter of her rock home. She spoke words in a language he didn’t know, and moved a lit candle in her hand. The trailing smoke it left smelled of spice that burned the top of Kestrel’s nose.
There was bowing and turning and handing things back and forth. Kestrel rolled his eyes for most of it and kept quiet, letting his senses take in what they could for analysis later.
Once it was done, Passi lifted her walking stick, and threw a shawl over her shoulders.
Kestrel didn’t feel any more protected than he had before.
He made her walk in front of him as they left.
***
The settlement lay covered in the ridge’s shadow, but light still shone on the mountain face in the distance. Bright and dusted with snow against a dry, dull landscape.
Monsters.
Inwardly Kestrel huffed. Alien planets were full of wild animals and unfamiliar creatures. Occasionally nature would produce a freak.
He didn’t believe in monsters.
Kestrel thought darkness would catch up with them quickly as they left the sheltered protection of the ridge. But as they climbed, the division of light cast from the horizon appeared always just before them. They chased it up and up the scale of the mountains, leaving the valley and flatland in shadow behind.
Either they traveled quickly, or the days here were long.
Neither of them spoke. They saved their breath for the climb, which wound its way over boulders as big as the ship that brought him here and inched along ledges no wider than the palm of Kestrel’s hand. Wind tugged constantly at their clothing and hair.
Only once did Passi lift her hand and point, speaking a single word.
“There.”
She indicated a mountain’s peak that rose up among the rest, separated by size as well as grandeur.
Kestrel squinted as he scanned it with a cybernetic eye, then cross-referenced the location with what data the ship had collected before their landing.
It wasn’t the highest peak in the mountain range. Nor the most difficult to get to. But it was oddly regular for a natural formation.
It had four faces, each one lining up almost directly with the cardinal directions of the planet. Certain formations in the rock suggested the peak was also the starting point for a river. Maybe several.
Dips before the mountain held low clouds of mist that lingered all throughout the day, never fully burned out of existence by the sun.
Passi led the way through one of those clouds to the cave.
Inside the cave was dry, and dark. Rather than warmer where it was sheltered from the wind, a still coolness in the air bit all the way down to Kestrel’s bones, making him shiver.
The chill of the planet.
The reach of the wind didn’t go beyond the first few steps, but the sound of its whispers hissed and flickered through the cave’s channeled roof.
There had once been water here.
Kestrel took a clip from his belt and held it out to one side. A press of the proper combination, and the clip unfolded into the shape of a handle, with a guarded hilt. Another press, and the blade of the sword ignited into fire.
Light and warmth flooded the cave’s entry way.
Passi made a breathy noise.
“The creature will see us coming with that.”
Kestrel took the lead now that they had arrived, not dimming his sword in the slightest.
“If this monster is half as horrible as you make it sound, then it will know we’re coming anyway.” He looked back to see if she was following. “I’d rather be ready.”
She looked resolute, and moved slowly after him.
The cave turned and dove down. Several times the passage became so narrow they had to squeeze through sideways, or crawl along on their bellies.
“I don’t know the way from here,” Passi grunted among the stalagmites. “I’ve never had enough of a death wish to come this far.”
“How can a large monster move around in this place?” Kestrel growled back, blowing loose dust and a few mites from his face. There were things living here, at least.
“When we find it, I’ll ask.”
The path branched off numerous times in different directions. The first time it happened, Kestrel squinted through the dark, scanning the rock walls to keep a running map in the back of his mind. He wouldn’t let himself come all this way just to get lost again on the way out.
Passi knelt down on the ground and made a gesture across the dirt.
�
��These caves were formed by water.” Kestrel gestured with his sword. “Statistically, the larger break-off points would lead further downward because of the volume being carried—”
“It’s this way.”
She got up, brushed off her robe, and took the smaller path.
Kestrel glared after her.
“What?”
“The planet told me.”
If this was some elaborate attempt to kill him just as that envoy had been killed, Kestrel wished she would make her attempt and be done with it. He was tired of waiting.
But he followed.
“What do you mean, the planet told you?”
The tap of her staff clicked in uneven time with the brush of Passi’s footsteps. She kept her voice low. Even then, it echoed and rounded back behind them from the jagged rock walls.
“You gain your information through enhanced senses, am I right?” she asked, her tone more like an insult.
Kestrel scowled.
“Yes.”
“If you would shut down all that advanced babble and just listen, you might hear what is already right in front of you.”
“Natural senses are dull compared to what they can be.”
Passi stopped. Sudden.
Kestrel almost walked into her. He growled and reached for her shoulder.
“I said—”
“It’s here.”
A vile taste soured the back of Kestrel’s throat that made all other thoughts of speech die. Quiet closed in. They held their breath, listening to the barely-there sounds that issued over the hiss of the blade of his sword.
Something was breathing.
He took the lead, and crept forward to a ridge of crumbled rock that dropped away into an open cavern. Drip-worn mineral deposits allowed a steep path down. There Kestrel crouched, reaching to that connection he felt in his cybernetics. As long as he could feel Metatron, he was connected to the mainframe, and thus to the Temple. He wasn’t alone.
That reassured his confidence.
He hoped they were getting all this feed without interference through the layers of rock.
The sound grew louder. A deep, throaty gurgle. Like trying to breathe through water.
Kestrel stopped only when the constant tug and pull of breath threatened to put out the flame on his sword. As it was, the fires danced and flickered in the hot, irregular movements of air, casting wild shadows about the cavern. He lifted it, blazing the fire as bright as he could without scorching his own arm, and looked at the black mass before him.
A mass was exactly what it was.
Eyes. Mouths. A boiling black writhe of wagging tongues. It held no distinct shape or size, but seemed to expand and contract with its breaths, each one producing raspy sounds as it was sucked through a gaping maw lined with teeth. The teeth were jagged and uneven, cutting the monster itself any time it tried to close its mouths.
For the space of several heartbeats Kestrel couldn’t move. He could only stare.
Eyes sickly and yellow decorated the thing’s hide. Uncoordinated, they blinked at him and rolled in every direction. There was no order to the thing’s movements. No place lungs could be for it to draw breath. It was raw chaos. No reason to its existence.
If it saw Kestrel, or if it cared at all he was there, it didn’t react. Only a few of its eyes shut at the brightness of his sword. It shrank minutely away from the light, contracting like a gas cloud.
Behind him, Passi muttered something.
Kestrel pushed his dead feet forward.
Sword held over his head, he braced himself, and ground out through a clenched jaw.
“I am Kestrel of the Holy Temple of Raphael, here on behalf of the Infinite Empire. In the name of the Creator Most High—”
The creature whipped out a black tendril of darkness and struck him across the cheek. It would have been no more than a tap from any other being – a light scold from his mother – but in that instant the breathe was knocked from Kestrel’s chest. He went rolling backwards. His back struck hard against the rocks near where Passi crouched. For an instant Heaven and Hell were uprooted and spun around him until they decided to reorient themselves.
Kestrel shook his head, and looked to his sword. The blade had gone out.
“You annoyed it,” said Passi.
Kestrel spit the taste of blood from his mouth and got up, readying his stance again.
Was this the creature behind the killings? It didn’t matter. This thing was a blight to creation and a threat to the Empire.
He would end it.
Kestrel reignited his sword.
He charged the thing, and blazed his sword bright as he stabbed deep into the black mass. The creature didn’t move. It didn’t even make an attempt to avoid it. Perhaps being isolated and unchallenged for so long made it unaware of what it should fear.
But it did scream.
It screamed a scream of a thousand voices, each mouth opening wide to shriek as Kestrel’s blade sank into its side. Kestrel felt the soft give of something not quite flesh. His blade nearly extinguished in the black mass, the fire of it rippling back to life as he tore it free and slashed long along the creature’s side. Mouths bit down and tried to close around it, seared and scorched for their effort. They recoiled, tongues and lips blackened to ash.
It was a solid hit.
But the thing lunged back at him without any sign it had even been touched.
Black tentacles reached out and latched onto his sword. Ignoring the still burning fire, it slid down along the blade like a thick liquid, hissing and burning and filling the air with the stench of scorched meat. Kestrel pulled himself back but the thing wrapped around his ankles and grabbed his wrists. Its form shifted, altered, as amorphous as a shadow.
Kestrel clenched his jaw shut tight as tendrils of living dark wrapped over his face. Around his back. Pinning his arms to his sides.
He didn’t try to move again. The thing constricted like a snake.
But he didn’t have to move much to squeeze the pressure pad on the wrist guard of his left hand.
The pack on his shoulders opened, and to either side stretched out his wings. The sharpened metal edges were enough to slice the creature’s writhing mass as it wrapped around him. It shrieked that alien shriek and withdrew, trailing thick black blood in its wake.
If it could bleed, it could die.
Kestrel swept his sword in an arc in front of him once the creature retreated. The trailing fire cleared the air of lingering tendrils and lit the way briefly before he leaped. The subtle whir and whine of electronic circuitry sounded just over his shoulder as orders issued at the speed of thought from cybernetic implants up to his wings. Enough to propel him from the ground into the air.
He dove at it from above, sword raised to strike.
The creature parted, splitting in two so that he landed hard against the cave floor. His sword left wide black scorch marks across the rocks.
It came together behind him and dove at his back. Kestrel felt the full weight of it bear down over his shoulders. Taking him to the ground.
He went down beneath its mass, jagged rocks digging into his ribs. The sword clattered from his hand. Landing somewhere among the shadows.
He reached for it, but the magnetic grip in his hand was too far away to be strong enough to pull it back.
He couldn’t breathe.
The creature’s tendrils slid across his mouth. Over his ears. He beat his wings, slicing through black with metallic feathers.
He clenched his eyes shut tight and prayed for strength.
It started faintly. The distant sound of an echoing voice. Then it grew and grew until even with the sick pulse of the creature’s heart – or hearts – over his ears Kestrel could hear it.
He opened his eyes, squinting against the black, and could just turn enough to see when a burst of blinding light erupted through the cavern.
For a moment, everything was white.
The creature screamed, but Kestrel had al
ready gone deaf from the energy that ripped through his circuitry. Everything at once overloaded and stung. He was sure he cried out, but he couldn’t hear that, either.
He could feel it.
He felt it when the creature died, it’s weight collapsing on top of him, before it dissipated like mist before searing morning light.
Then it was quiet.
When he could move again, Kestrel pushed himself up. Bones ached and joints creaked. His neck snapped in protest at the twist to lift his head, but he did it anyway.
Passi stood at one end of the cavern, everything in the path before her laid to waste. Rock had reformed into tortured sculptures, twisting to get away from her before they melted and froze. If there had been any organic material left strewn across the cavern floor, it was ash.
She sat down heavily, and wiped a sleeve across her brow.
The top of her walking stick glowed faintly with markings Kestrel didn’t recognize.
He got up slowly, wary of his own movements.
His sword lay across the cavern, extinguished again.
“What,” he asked, hearing his own voice at a distance for the pressure in his ears, “was that?”
Passi took a few moments to catch her breath.
Then she said: “It was what it was.”
Kestrel’s eyebrow twitched. He performed a quick scan through the cybernetics in his eye. Nothing remarkable about her. Life readings were within typical humanoid range.
But the lingering traces of power radiating from her staff made his interface flicker and briefly short out.
He nodded to it.
“Is that an artifact?”
“No. It’s just a stick.”
“Where does that power come from?”
“It comes from the planet.”
Kestrel turned his gaze slowly over the cavern. No trace of the creature remained.
“How…?”
“I asked for its help.”
“That’s not…” Kestrel shook his head. He turned away enough to pull his sword handle back into his hand. He felt more grounded with it.
“Possible?” Passi finished for him.
The Shining Cities: An Anthology of Pagan Science Fiction Page 11