by D. H. Dunn
Jang’s anxiety level stayed high. The fact he was unbound and alone with the old man demonstrated the belief that even alone he would be more than a match for Jang should he try to take advantage of the situation.
That confidence came from something, a power that Jang could detect in the loyalty the Others showed their leader, though the old man had displayed none.
With each turn of the stone pathway, with each drip of water landing on some unseen pool inside the Under, Jang felt his doom getting closer. The key was to be ready, stay ahead of it. It was likely the old man was taking him away from the others just to kill him. There was a chance though, a thin hope, that he had other plans.
Turning again, they stopped in a chamber that was about the size of Jang’s tent. He guessed six people could fit comfortably inside it, if not for the massive white furred Yeti standing in the center of the room. Though he could not restrain his sudden intake of breath at the sight of the fearsome beast, he was glad he had not cried out in surprise.
“He is an impressive sight,” the old man said. “I do not begrudge your reaction. The Yeti are magnificent.” He had heard his intake, sensed Jang’s fear. It was another point against him, but there was nothing Jang could do except move on and try to steer the conversation. If they were talking Jang was living, and he had seen in the old man a desire to talk. In Jang’s experience powerful men often liked to fill a room with their own words.
“Is there something you wish of me, my lord?” Jang had noted the woman Perol had used this honorary for Kater when she addressed him. Using it himself was risky, Kater might think it presumptuous.
“There is,” Kater said with a smile, completely accepting of Jang’s presumption. His confidence rose, but he buried it quickly. “There is indeed, my newfound friend. Yet, first I think we should be clear as to where we stand with each other.”
Jang’s mind kept trying to shift to the white monster behind Kater, this beast of impossible size and obvious power. Yet the real power here was the old man, and Jang forced his concentration to focus there.
“You have the authority here,” Jang said. “Our positions are clear. I offer myself to you, as I have proven useful. I delivered the scout and the Sherpa’s sister, who is a strong climber as well. Even the Westerners should have value to you.”
“They do,” Kater said, taking a step forward. He was closer now, Jang able to see the man’s eyes more clearly as they studied him from underneath grey eyebrows and wiry hair. The look in Kater’s eyes was one Jang had seen before and knew to respect. As a clerk in Kathmandu he had seen this look on many of the great men who walked the Palace. Men who did what needed to be done to achieve their goals.
“But their value is not the question,” Kater said, now just a step away. “The question is yours, Gagan.”
Though he was able to keep his smile steady, he still felt his jaw clench on being addressed by his former name. The name of a small man of papers, blown around like those papers when the winds changed. He was Jang now, he would not allow fate to control his destiny.
“Ah, the name is a raw point for you,” Kater said, his smile framed by his wiry beard. “Adley showed me that. Let us not pretend, eh? I do not like you, small man. I have seen men of your kind through a thousand of your lifetimes. Petty, scheming. Thinking themselves destined for bigger things. Reaching for heights they are too small to touch.”
He pokes and prods, Jang thought to himself. He had to keep steady, respect the fear he felt inside him while still looking for the path through this.
“Yet I live,” Jang said, glad he was able to keep his voice flat. “The wise and powerful do not need to like a man to find a use for him.
Kater grunted a laugh. Behind him, the Yeti loomed over them both yet betrayed no reaction to their conversation. Kater held one hand close to Jang’s face, smiling as small traces of flame began to erupt forth from his fingers. Tiny candles, they danced around the digits as Jang followed their movements.
Now wonder began to rise inside him alongside his heightened fear. Fire, called from within his own body! Like the massive Yeti behind him Kater represented possibilities of magic and sorcery. With allies of these powers, the dynasty could be more than restored, it could be expanded. As the deliverer of such gifts, Jang’s would be assured a high place in that hierarchy. Perhaps even leadership.
He pushed these thoughts away as Kater extinguished his flame. Looking too far ahead was how one fell into the pit at their feet. For now, the goal would be usefulness, even subservience.
For now.
“The man you brought to us,” Kater said, taking a step back from Jang, “the scout. I need you to go to the refugee camp he came from and retrieve a person from that camp. The man’s mate, a woman named Merin.” Jang noticed the mixture of scorn and respect with which Kater used the name.
“A woman?” Jang asked. “Just one woman? I have seen this camp, surveyed it from the shadows. There are many able men there, men who could―”
“Those men are not climbers,” Kater interrupted. “I now have all the climbers here with me. What I still need is someone wise in the lore of the portals. This woman, Merin, was a student of my sister, her mind contains much that might be helpful during the descent. You will retrieve her, by force if needed.”
“Surely your own men are capable of overpowering this camp,” Jang said. Perhaps Kater intended for him to die after all.
“Those who serve me are from a race called Rakhum, the same race as those who serve my sister. Near as I can tell, the same as your kind in all but name.”
Rakhum? The terms did not matter.
“They are fragile quicklifes,” Kater continued. “No different than you. My numbers are few, and I have no more I can afford to trust with this assignment, save Perol, and I did not want to risk her, and now, perhaps, I do not have to.”
Jang considered this as Kater stared back at him. If Kater had the force to take the camp, he would have done so by now. His own scouting of the refugees put their number at a dozen or less, with many injured or infirm. Still, he was but one man.
“With no soldiers at my command, how am I to―”
“You will take him,” Kater said, pointing at the Yeti behind him. “He will be all the force you might require. You will need nothing else.”
Jang looked up at the wall of white fur, the crystals visible through the beast’s shoulders pulsing now between red and orange. The creature looked back at him with eyes as black as night. Jang felt as if his heart was being laid bare for the monster to view. The creature was fear given life; a monster of magic and muscle, capable of rending Jang to shreds in an instant.
He was to command such a beast?
The Yeti startled Jang by speaking, its voice soft and deep with power.
“Trusted,” it said, turning to Kater and addressing him. Its eyes passed over Jang as if he were not present. “This is not in line with our agreement. This is not in line with our rocha.” It walked forward, dousing both men in shadow. Jang retreated a few steps, looking over his shoulder to ensure the path back through the cave was still available.
“Your rocha was left for me to interpret,” Kater said, unmoving in the face of the Yeti’s advance. “I determine what is in line. Your council has named me Trusted, thus you must follow that title.”
The Yeti froze, and Jang retreated another pace backwards. Kater wants me to work with this monster? This creature from another world?
“I mislike the violence,” the Yeti said. “Your quarrel with Upala the Sentenced has cost many rakhum lives.”
“My sister is titled Sentenced by the Yeti for good reason. How many of your fallen has she harvested for their crystals? Defiling them for her own purpose?” Kater laughed in the face of the beast, an action brave in its audacity. The action of a leader. “It matters not. What you mislike matters not. Your rocha alone is the concern here.”
If the Yeti had further issue with Kater’s words, it did not voice them. If it
had emotions, they were hidden inside the depths of the white fur and hints of blue skin around the creature’s face. Only the crystals on the beast’s back betrayed any reaction as they shifted from red to a softer blue.
“Go with this man,” Kater said, indicating Jang. “Protect him and follow his instructions.”
Jang felt the fingers of fear clamp around his heart and was glad for them. He would listen to them and manage this beast. He would achieve this task and retrieve the woman.
Jang had fallen from a great height, but he had fallen before. He was wise enough to know there were always ladders if you were patient enough to wait for them. The wood might be rickety and the ascent might be long, but none of that mattered if his hands were still on the rungs.
Nodding his acceptance to his mission, he turned and walked back toward the cave, the pounding feet of the Yeti following.
Jang was climbing again.
Drew sat against the wall, the blanket the Others had left for him laying unused on the cave floor. He and Wanda had been placed in the small, isolated cave with a bowl of warm mushroom water several hours ago, with the one-word instruction from Perol: “Sleep.”
Guards stood near enough that their presence was known, but far away enough for them to rest in accordance with the Attendant’s command.
Drew was not interested in sleeping. A few feet away, Wanda lay on her blanket with her eyes open. He had watched her spend at least the first hour jotting in her notebook, fueled by a seemingly endless supply of pencils from her satchel. Once that was complete, she had placed her hands behind her head and simply stared at the rocky ceiling.
He drifted off for a moment or two, his eyes drooping shut only to fly open again. He found he could not completely surrender to sleep. His mind was a mix of Jang and Carter mingled with worries about Nima, Pasang, and Kad.
“I should have shot him when I had the chance.” Wanda’s voice broke the silence after what may have been minutes or hours.
“You did,” Drew replied. He didn’t want to have this conversation now, yet part of him jumped at the chance to engage in it. “You tried to bury him and his men. You may have failed to kill Jang, but you did kill three other people.” Shamsher, for one. A Sherpa like Nima. Rumored to be indebted to Jang’s family, and saving the man with his last action.
“You don’t know they’re dead,” Wanda said. “Jang survived.”
“It doesn’t matter to you if they are.” He kicked a stone across the small cave with his boot. It reminded him that his feet ached. “Even now you are disappointed you failed to murder him.”
“Murder?” She laughed, a small sound devoid of humor. “You wished him alive?” She sat up and looked back at him. In the dim light, her red hair looked brown, the lines of worry on her face clearer. “Even though he sought to kill you by the same method I used?”
“What Jang wanted has nothing to do with me. What he wants is only about him until I let it cause me to make the choice to kill. Then I have let him define me.” He reached forward, untying his boots but leaving them on, the reduced pressure was still a relief.
“I think at last I understand you now, Drew Adley.” Wanda lay back down, her arms behind her head as she stretched out her legs. Several joints popped loudly as she did. “You are an idealist. You would rather die than let your enemy change you.”
Drew bit the inside of his lip for a moment, a bad habit he had never been able to break. He supposed she was right, even if he had never laid it out so clearly in his mind.
“Something like that,” he said.
“And what of Nima?” Wanda asked. “You call her your ‘little sister.’ Would you kill to defend her? Would you allow that to change you?”
He thought of Nima, off somewhere in the cave worrying about Pasang, with no one to comfort her. It had been her hand reaching out to his that had pulled him out of that crevasse, pulled him into a better life. What had he done for her in return?
“I honestly don’t know. So far, it hasn’t come to that.” He sighed as Artie’s face pushed its way back into his thoughts. The tired smile as his brother headed off for a watch he’d never come back from. No hand had come to pull Artie out of the water.
Water Drew had condemned him to.
“I’d hate for her to live with the guilt of someone dying for her,” he added after a moment. He let his eyes close, not out of fatigue, though he certainly felt it, rather he needed to clear his mind of the images, to let them come to the surface so he could push them away.
Artie. The parade of faces and memories came once again, a parade that in the end led him to this cave. The ship sinking into the Indian Ocean. Dad’s face at the train station when he finally came home. Mom’s grave. His father’s angry silence at the funeral.
A trail that started from one moment, both a simple mistake and a staggering failure of responsibility. He had been assigned to lookout duty late one night in the Indian Ocean. After weeks upon weeks of twelve-hour shifts, he had fallen asleep. Perhaps his eyes had closed for a minute, or an hour. He couldn’t say now, and it didn’t matter. They had been closed long enough. Long enough for the enemy sub to slip into range. Long enough to change everything, destroy everything.
The lone survivor of the USS Machias had been Drew Adley, the man who had killed it and everyone onboard with his incompetence.
“Yet you joined the military.”
Wanda’s voice again, pulling him out of the past. Had he dozed? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. He felt the anger rising inside him, the rage that often accompanied exhaustion.
He opened his eyes. Wanda was still lying there in the same position, unchanged. “Is this really what you want to talk about, Wanda?” he asked, not caring if the irritation got into his voice. “If we’re not going to sleep, shouldn’t we be discussing how to escape?”
“There is little point in escape,” she replied. “Kater is right, Merin said as much to me yesterday morning. Without this Upala’s help, we may never return to our world.”
“So, we work with him then? Work with Carter―I mean Kater.” He gritted his teeth at the correction. The damn old man had fooled him well. He had liked Carter. How could he have been so wrong? “Or we work with Jang, for God’s sake?”
“We have a goal. We work with the people who can help us achieve that goal while our objectives are congruous.” She looked back at him, and he felt that her eyes were focusing on his rather than just looking in his general direction. “Drew, I am not saying it is a pleasant prospect, I am merely saying I don’t see another option.”
Drew filled his lungs with the cold air of the cave. He held it for a moment, then let it out slowly, feeling his ribs contract. His pulse beat a little less in his temples. She wasn’t wrong.
“What do you suppose will happen once we reach this Upala? When our goals are not so . . . congruous?” There was no reason to trust Kater again, after all.
“We have time to prepare for that,” she replied. “When that time comes, we will stand. Together.”
Drew raised an eyebrow at Wanda, who offered no reaction. He had come to see her as an organization of one, only aligned with Nima and himself out of convenience. Was it possible her view was changing? He took another deep breath.
“To answer your question, I joined the Navy because I didn’t like what was going on in Europe. America was not yet in the war, but I felt that day was coming. When the day came, I wanted to be ready to fight, I couldn’t just stand by and wait.”
When the time had come, he had never considered any option other than the Navy. He never even spoke to the Army people, despite his father’s history in the infantry.
“Serving on a ship you would never have to look your enemy in the eye when you kill him, yes?”
“That was a factor, yes,” he said. “Among others. I thought my time climbing in Oregon might help me there, and as stupid as that sounds, I was right. I spent a lot of time on the yardarms of the Machias, Artie and I both did
.” He thought of them sitting on the superstructure as the sun set over the Pacific, painting antenna relays while the warm rays tanned them both.
“Your brother, he joined for the same reason? This desire to help?”
She laid back down, and Drew came to realize at some point he had too. They each stretched out on their thin blankets, staring up into the nothing of the ceiling.
“No.”
Artie. Poor, lost Artie. Who broke his arm his first time on Mount Hood with Drew, he had been too young to go, but too determined to stay home. Football, climbing, working on cars―Artie was always right behind Drew.
“Artie joined because I did.”
They lay in silence for a long time, Drew’s mind taking him back to the decks of the Machias, as it always did. He had joined to help Europe yet ended up in the Pacific. While he was sweating Japanese submarines and oiling Halsey’s fleet, Wanda’s family was being rolled under by the war machines of two nations.
“The war was ugly and cruel to me, but I chose to be there,” Drew said. Nothing but darkness lay above him, but Artie’s face was plain as day. “I know you didn’t get to make that choice, Wanda. The war came to you, to your family. It was for people like you that I signed up, and I believe stopping that evil is what my brother died for. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I-I don’t think I have any answers.”
He laced his fingers behind his head. Artie’s face slowly melted away, as if drifting under the waves. “I only know that my life―the life my brother gave―I want it to stand for something.”
“The war took much from everyone,” Wanda said. “Perhaps too often I act as if I alone were hurt by it. I have lost much, but so have you.”
“I’ve also found much; things I didn’t deserve. With Nima I have a bit of family again.” He stretched his legs further, moving his feet around inside his boots. He could feel his weight settling into the blanket, the cold stone underneath him not dissimilar from his metal bunk on the ship.