by Mike Wild
There was only one thing to do. Turn and run. All did, except for Trix. She stood transfixed by the doors. They were opening. And beyond she could see the maelstrom. She could feel Kh’Borian’s presence within the tumultuous mass, hear his laughter, and knew it was directed at her.
Then she heard other sounds. Cries that barely penetrated at first but then became louder, more urgent.
“English, what the hell are you doing?”
“Patricia, move, child! Move!”
She was aware, suddenly, that the bridge had collapsed to within ten yards of her, and that the next section was already inclining, about to break away and fall. She turned, feeling it slip beneath her, and ran for her life. She found herself running uphill, the collapse keeping pace with her, and the concerned figures of Yuri, Ralph, and the others seemed an impossible distance away. She leapt as rock vanished from under her tread, just making the resultant overhang, and then that, too, tipped, making her skid momentarily back. Her legs pumped, and she thought of nothing but moving forward, but there was still some twenty yards to go. A crack appeared ahead of her, and then another, and she vaulted over them.
But she knew then and there that it wasn’t quite enough.
A moment later there was no more bridge, and she was flailing through the air.
XVIII
Five Hundred Heroes
A gauntleted hand clamped tight about Trix’s wrist. She looked down to see the last section of bridge tumble away into the dark, then looked up into Jentiss’s face. The warrior woman showed no strain holding her deadweight, none also when she heaved her to safety.
“Thanks,” Trix said. “That was a close one.”
“You were foolish to delay.”
“Yeah, well …” Trix turned to look back at the doors. They were closed and had clearly never opened. Kh’Borian had been taunting her. “I get the feeling none of that was an accident.”
“Accident or design,” Ralph said, staring across the now impossible-to-cross chasm, “it does present us with something of an impasse.”
Yuri cursed. Looked up. “Perhaps we could all hop on a harpy.”
“The situation,” a voice said, “may not be as hopeless as it seems.”
“Shen?”
“Loud and clear. A lot of interference has gone, though I don’t know why.”
“Soulstripper, rocket, kaboom,” Trix said absently. “What’ve you got?”
“My map projections are a bit hazy, but all indications are there’s a second chamber down there.”
“A second chamber?”
“Adjacent to the first, in fact.”
“Who the hell’s in that one—Cthulhu?”
“That, the probes do not tell me. But it could be a way in.”
“Maybe. If we didn’t still have a chasm in the way.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Its entrance is elsewhere in the dungeon.”
Trix frowned. “Jentiss, did you know about this?”
The warrior woman shook her head. Surprisingly, it was Ralph who came up with an answer.
“There were hints in the histories I read that following their defeat in battle the Five Hundred Heroes were buried in the lower levels. It is possible Shen-Li’s deep probes have detected that burial site.”
“Abandoned in the dark,” Yuri frowned. “A strange and unfitting end.”
“Supposing it is their tomb,” Trix said. “how are we supposed to get from it to Kh’Borian?”
Yuri fished in his backpack, brought forth a number of small packs of plastic explosive. He winked. “It’s a kind of magic.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Trix turned to retrace their steps but found an unexpected obstacle blocking the path. Torb. The wizard loomed over her.
“You cannot. The seals must not be broken.”
“Torb, we must. We have no time and we have no choice.”
“You cannot. Those sleeping beyond the iron gates must never be disturbed.”
There was a clank of armour beside Trix. Jentiss had stepped forward. “Iron gates? So you know about this place?” The tall warrior woman stared up at the wizard, challenging him, but Torb did not respond. Jentiss placed a hand on the hilt of her sword. “My friend, I understand your respect for the dead, but stand aside. That’s an order.”
The wizard stared, his strange mane of hair stirring unnaturally, his tattoos letting off a light crackle, and for a moment Trix thought he was going to defy his commander. But then, with a low rumble and an air of more sadness than defiance, he complied and stood aside.
They left him standing where he was. Began an urgent yomp back to the hub. More than once they staggered as more quakes hit. The weapons on the inclines groaned ever more dangerously, and this time one of them gave up the ghost and finally let fly. Luckily, the rotted war machine buckled as it did, its projectile, a giant arrow, deflected off course on a trajectory that took it away from them and through two other weapons, shattering them, before landing to skid and skew heavily down the incline below. Trix and Jentiss paid it no heed, their minds on the bridge and Torb and striding on to make up the time the delays had cost them.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I do not know. Torb has never questioned me before.”
“Do you think he’s … you know, gone over to the dark side?”
“The supervillain in your CD Comics? I do not like him.”
“DC. And not Darkseid, dark side … as in Star Wars?”
“I have not read that tome.”
“Er, no, Jentiss, it isn’t a—well, it is, there are quite a lot, in fact, but …”
Trix gave up trying to explain the concept of a VR theatre as they returned to the now-secured hub. She felt a wave of relief as she saw Jackson had brought Ian back from the almost-dead, though from the number of spent medications and potion bottles scattered on the floor, it had taken some doing. Cleanly bandaged, her brother limped beside her.
“Something’s happened?”
Trix gave a brief synopsis on the way to the bridge.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Like bollocks you are. I’m not losing you twice.”
“Nor me you. I’m coming.”
“I really wouldn’t argue with him,” Jackson said, gathering his kit to keep up. “I’ve had to pump him full of steroids. Besides, you seem to be missing Torb, so you will need a medic. Your brother goes where the medic goes.”
Trix couldn’t argue the logic. Their ranks boosted by two, both proved soon to be needed. Shen’s directions took them back through camp, then down steps to an area similar to where the mages had been working on the ring. After that, they passed through a guarded, rolling stone door and descended into hostile territory, a maze of passages still infested with the spawn of the original prisoners. Trix, Jentiss, and the others waded in when needed to fend off the hordes who came at them from the dark, but tactically it was best to rely upon points, flanks, and sixes to create a cordon sanitaire inside which they could progress quickly. Even so, there were frantic, sense-shattering moments of melee that took Trix back to day one, to her nightmares, and she tried her best to not make her brother aware of how many times she glanced his way, confirming he was still amongst their number.
The dungeon’s denizens were not their only problem. The quakes had become so frequent as to be almost constant and now came with an added bonus. Trix blinked and shook her head as, during the shaking of the corridors around her, she segued momentarily into the mezzanine of DOME.
“Shen, I got something weird going on here.”
“Tell me about it, Trix. Diablo can’t tell whether it’s a shantytown or some weird fucking jungle.”
“Your balloons?”
“My balloons. The skins are staring to rub together. Not blown yet, but it must be a sign that the final suppressor is nearing its new home. That’s the bad news. The good news is, you’re almost there.”
Rounding a corner, they stopped, th
eir path blocked by a pair of iron gates, overgrown, rusted, and heavily chained. It was impossible to see what lay in the darkness beyond them. Ralph lobbed a blob through their bars, and it lit something in the distance. Shapes. Strange shapes. A snake … and a unicorn?
“That is the crest of House Manzarra,” Jentiss said. “Their eldest son, Pyron Redhand, fell in the final battle, one of the Five Hundred.” She took a breath. “So, it is true.”
“Yuri?”
The Russian was ahead of Trix, already swinging his battle-axe in a great arc at the chains. The rusted links shattered, and he booted in the gates. No way to treat a tomb, perhaps, but they were in something of a hurry.
As it turned out, it was no tomb. They entered what first seemed to be another hub, but, while similar in size, no passages led off. Instead, around its outer edge was a ring of shields mounted on the front of fixed upright spears. Draped in cobwebs so thick they created a circular curtain, the shields were at a height where they would be held by a fighting man. Blood-stained, battered, dented, burned, some almost cleaved through, each held a House crest and all had seen battle. It wasn’t difficult to work out which. Trix laid her hand on one and found it turned on its horizontal axis with an ancient creak of protest. She looked at the others and shrugged.
“Maybe you were wrong about their being buried here, Professor,” Yuri said. “Maybe this is just some kind of memorial?”
“Or maybe it isn’t,” Shen replied. “I said only that you were ‘almost there’.”
“Do not be cryptic, little man,” Jentiss barked. “Where is the tomb?”
“Ninety metres beneath you.”
Trix, who’d been randomly turning shields trying to work out their purpose, stopped dead. Because one of them, back to front, had locked into place. “A key,” she said. “The shields are a key.”
“A combination lock,” Ralph agreed. “But there are so many. The possible combinations …”
“No clues in the stuff you read?”
“I had one night to read ‘the stuff’, Patricia.”
“Thankfully, I’ve had a few more,” Ian said, limping forward. “Jentiss keeps an extensive library. And while she prefers a good shoot-’em-up or murder mystery, me, I go for history every time.”
Jentiss gave him a hard stare.
Trix coughed. “So, what’s your idea?”
“The Houses, it has to be. Order of seniority? Size? Name?”
“Okay. Whose House is the shield I just turned?”
“House Anthura.”
“We’ll try alphabetical.”
Trix and Jentiss positioned their people around the ring and tried alphabetical. As the second shield was turned, the first—House Anthura—clanged back to its starting position. They tried seniority. They tried size. Everything they could think of, including matching the colours and shapes of the crests. Only once did they get two shields in turn to lock, and then, on the turning of a third, all clanged back.
“Anthura, Rovelt,” Trix said. “I suppose it’s a start …”
Trix’s words were drowned out as the dungeon quaked once more. A bad one, rocking them on their feet, it drew choking amounts of dust from above, and, fleetingly, visions of another world.
Ralph steadied himself against a shield. “We’re running out of ti—”
The old man stopped. Looked, as did Trix, as did Jentiss, as did everyone else in the room, at Yuri. The Russian was sitting in the middle of the ring of shields, singing. And for once, it wasn’t Queen.
Anthura, Rovelt and the good men of Thro’nin
Didst battle the hell of the heavens brought down
The sons of Qanir and the heirs of the crown
Fought shoulder to shoulder with people of town
“Yuri?”
“A song—more dirge, actually—heard around the campfire last night. I tried to join in, but it was in Yillarnyan and my tongue went arse over tit. My friends were good enough to sing in English. It is two thousand years old. Coincidence, or not?”
“Anthura, Rovelt, Thro’nin!” Jentiss ordered. The shields were turned. And all locked. “Qanir?” she queried. “Heirs of the crown?”
“Qanir was the head of House Marth,” Ian smiled, knowing they were on to something. “The crown of the time belonged to House Bezeem.”
Two other shields were turned; they locked. Nothing happened.
“Is there another verse?” Ralph asked.
“Nyet.”
“But there is another line,” Trix said. She stared at the shields. One stood between Qanir and Bezeem. She stripped away cobwebs, revealing it was blank with no House crest at all. “Fought shoulder to shoulder with people of town?”
She turned the shield. It locked.
The rumble of stone that followed made Yuri jump, but only because he was sitting on its cause. A rectangular length of stone dropped some way into the floor beneath him, followed by another, deeper and slightly angled in front of it. A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and more followed, on and on, until there was the curve of a spiral stairway heading down.
“Did I do that?” the Russian asked innocently.
“Don’t play the idiot, Yuri. You know you did. Spasiba.”
“Pazhalsta.”
Jentiss chose a party of fifty warriors, soldiers, and wizards to accompany them, and they moved down as quickly as the stairway allowed. It was tricky because, after a few metres, the steps were still appearing, growing from and circling a stone column descending into open air, what their torchlight revealed bit by bit to be a vast crypt. The effect was dizzying. The slight thrum of the torches’ flames stirred by some slight breeze in this expanse added to Trix’s dizziness as she stared into a cathedral-sized chamber filled with neat columns and rows of sarcophagi. She didn’t attempt to count them. It was a reasonable stab in the dark that there were five hundred.
They reached floor level. Trix raised her wormglass. “Shen—which way?”
“South, Trix, but be careful. I’m getting flashes of interference from down there that I don’t like the look of at all.”
“Understood.”
Jentiss waved go, and they began to filter through the first rows of sarcophagi, moving between columns four or five abreast, splitting again, and again, until most avenues were trod. There was an atmosphere to the place that kept all wary, holding weapons at the ready. The south wall seemed a long way away.
Trix trailed a finger along the lid of a sarcophagus, carving a track through an inch-thick layer of dust. Beneath, she saw the faint green glow of runes. A moment later, another quake striking shook the dust as if sieved; it fell away from the lid’s edges, revealing more. The runes covered the entire lid and were more complex than any she’d seen so far. She felt a faint dread and slowly turned in a circle—most of the sarcophagi were glowing the same way.
“Ralph?”
“Barrier runes, the most powerful I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Patricia, these are meant to last an eternity.”
“Then why are some of them dark?”
The old man’s complexion turned a contrasting white. He moved to a dark sarcophagus. It had a number of cracks, and as he examined them, another quake came. Ralph recoiled as a stench poured through the cracks that was far more rotten than it should have been.
“Patricia …” he coughed. “Get …”
His warning came with more cracking, which echoed like gunshots throughout the vast space. A considerable number more of the sarcophagi went dark. What was happening was obvious to Trix. The collapse of the bridge had been no accident. Their taking the alternative route, planned for. Kh’Borian knew the effects the quakes would have. He’d played them. Led them right where he wanted them to be.
“Jentiss!” she shouted. “Pull your people back—it’s a trap!”
It was too late. Across the crypt the runes on sarcophagi went dark. Their lids exploded, showering the troops between with wounding shards of stone. In the choking, dusty aftermath things rose from the
uneasy rest forced upon them for countless years. ‘Things,’ because—what they’d once been, what they’d once done—those entombed here were no longer the Five Hundred Heroes. This was the reason they were buried in the depths. The reason they’d been abandoned in the dark. The unspoken truth about their fate.
Kh’Borian had transformed them as they’d died.
“Trix, behind you!”
The rusty broadsword struck the sarcophagus with a clang, cleaving deep into its side. The blade had missed her by an inch. For a moment, she was frozen like a rabbit in headlights, except the headlights were what burned within the otherwise empty eye sockets of the huge semi-skeleton looming over her—two sorcerous, flaming spheres of belligerence and hatred so strong Trix knew they could only have been ignited by Kh’Borian. She ducked and rolled as the broadsword was wrenched free to swing at her again, this time in a sideways swipe that took off the head of a nearby soldier. The swipe unbalanced her attacker, tipping it over the edge of its tomb, where it landed in a heavy clank of armour and bone. It took a second to recover, what brain it had taking that time to process its lot, and nothing illustrated more what puppets Kh’Borian had made of it and its clan. Though heartbreaking to see, Trix could spare neither time nor thought for what this poor bastard had once been, because what mattered was what it had become. It and the rest of the greatest gathering of warriors Yillarnya had ever assembled were more powerful than ever, though now only mindless, momentum-driven killing machines.