Hard Reign

by John Hook

  “I think you’re right. I think there’s something big going on and they, for right now, simply want me handled. When they get whatever they’re doing taken care of, they will make me a full-time project.”

  “Be nice to know what they’re trying to do.”

  A flicker of light caught my eye. It was coming from behind a rock at the far end of the tunnel. From where we stood, we could see flames licking up over the rock.

  “Look over here.”

  Izzy turned. “Someone left us a torch?”

  “I think so.”

  “Case, has anyone ever told you that you lead a charmed death?”

  While it did seem extremely odd that there would be a torch or a lamp in this tunnel at the bottom of a mine, everything that had just been happening seemed so crazy that I was hardly questioning anything. As I approached closer, it occurred to me that if it was flame, as it appeared to be, licking the top of the rock, and not lava, someone had to have been here recently or it all would have burned out by now. I didn’t think they had gas jets.

  I think I might have had a sudden thought of what it might be at the last minute, but I was still shocked.

  We were within a couple of yards of the rock when a fiery creature, one of the strange fiery monkey demons we had encountered before, leapt on top. It looked at us with bulging eyes, showed its fiery teeth and made maddening chattering sounds. The chattering suggested their bodies were real and physical, not just made of flame, but it was hard to tell. They were monkey-like, including tails, except their heads, which were typical of demons in shape and jaw anatomy. The flames, if that’s what they were, formed like wild fur over the bodies. The bodies were nearly translucent, leading to the perception that they might really be just composed of flame. However, they had weight and gravity—they could only leap and were drawn back to ground again, testifying to their solidity.

  The fire monkey demon gibbered, almost laughing, and rushed further down the passageway. A couple of other fire monkey demons had been lurking on a rock shelf above us and jumped down. One leapt off Izzy’s shoulder, catching his shirt on fire before skittering and tumbling down after the first flame monkey. I was going to try to pat out the fire, but Izzy was thinking faster. He whipped off the shirt and wrapped it around three arrows and held it like a torch.

  “Come on!” Izzy shouted. “This won’t last long.”

  We ran down the passage after the fire monkey demons who had disappeared, although we could still hear their gibbering. We tried for speed, but had to pick our way carefully. This was no longer a constructed tunnel but actually a section of natural caverns with an uneven floor and magnificent stalactites and stalagmites. It must have predated the mine shaft and they just dug through a tunnel to connect it. Luckily the cavern seemed to be fairly dry, meaning there weren’t slick patches from moisture dripping down the walls or from the stalactites.

  Every so often, we would catch a faint glow of the flame monkeys up ahead, almost as if they were taunting us, staying far enough ahead that we couldn’t catch them, but not so far that we didn’t occasionally see them. Most of the time we just heard echoes of their shrieks and chattering.

  The passage ended abruptly at the edge of an underground stream that flowed through the cavern. It was also at just that moment that Izzy’s makeshift torch burned down the arrow shafts far enough that he had to drop it. We were plunged into darkness. It was complete darkness at first and then our eyes adjusted. I managed to will my tattoos back, which gave us a soft blue glow. We could make out each other and the ground directly at our feet, but could not make out much very far ahead of us.

  We could see the other side of the stream was just a wall. That left turning back or following the stream as our only options and, with the mine pit filled in, going back wasn’t really an option.

  “Which direction?” I asked. I was looking both ways, hoping to pick up an orange glow to follow. However, although we heard the echoes of screeches, it was impossible to determine direction.

  Izzy bent down and felt the water.

  “To our right, I think. That’s the way the current is flowing. Assuming this water comes from an underground spring, it should either flow into that ocean we saw or into a river that feeds it. If we find nothing else, it’s our best shot at finding a way out of these caverns.”

  “So we’re set.”

  “You want me to tell you what can go wrong?”

  “You mean like underground cave monsters?”

  “No, more like the stream deepens with no place to walk on either side, or it drops down much steeper underground through a sink hole or...”

  “Oh, that stuff. No, just keep that to yourself.”

  “Ignorance is bliss.”

  “Might be my next vanity plate.”

  “They have vanity plates in Hell?”

  “We need to reinvent cars first.”

  “Glad you’re always thinking ahead.” Izzy chuckled.

  We set off following the stream. It was very slow going with just the soft blue glow of my tattoos, which were actually brighter than when I turned my body completely blue. I took the lead since, as I was the light source, I had the best view of the footing. Izzy could see well enough to just imitate what I did. We continued for what seemed miles. The stream made a gradual curve rather than being straight and then would curve in the other direction. Sometimes the path was fairly easy with a wide rock embankment on the stream. Sometimes the bank would disappear and we had to cross the stream to the other side to continue. Luckily, because we really couldn’t see well, the stream was never deeper than waist high and although the current was rapid, it wasn’t all that strong. Even more occasionally we were left no choice but to walk in the stream until an embankment reappeared.

  Finally, we came up to another bend in the stream and noticed an odd shape. At first I thought it was a very elaborate stalagmite rising out of the rock next to the stream. As I moved closer, it seemed to take more precise shape. At the bottom was a face. In fact, it was a series of faces, expertly carved into a stone pillar, like a totem pole. I stood very close so both Izzy and I could study it.

  When I say they were faces, they were, but not entirely human. They were animal faces, but not entirely animal either. Even in the dim light, their eyes were haunting and intelligent. Whoever had carved them was a master. The bottom face was a bear, then above that a coyote, then a raven, then a wolf, then an eagle. It was as if someone had merged a human and animal face, which made the bird faces the most changed, but I could see these depictions were of beings similar to Guido. Manitors?

  “You ever encounter anything like this?” I asked Izzy.

  “Other than Guido?”

  “Should have been our tip-off that there was something fishy about Knightshade. The head wasn’t morphed, if that’s the right term.”

  We moved past the stone column and realized there was a large cavern that opened past it. We took two steps into it and stopped.

  “You feel that?” I looked at Izzy. It was hard to read expressions in the dim blue light.

  “Yeah. Like heavy juju. Some kind of resonance that hits you in the pit of your stomach.”

  “Exactly.”

  In front of us were rows of stone markers. They weren’t like classic headstones. They were narrower with curved edges. They had letter-like characters carved on them, but not any alphabet I had seen before, nor were they like pictographs that I had seen. However, the impression that we were looking at grave markers was unavoidable. We couldn’t see how large the chamber was or how far they went back, but neither of us was inclined to step in any further.

  “Cemetery.”

  “Not sure, but there is a palpable spiritual force here.”

  “Good or evil?” Izzy asked in a low voice.

  “In this world, hard to tell. Feels—I don’t know—very old.”

  “Should we explore?”

  “Only way we learn anything, but for some reason I don’t think we should.�
��

  “I’m with you on that, Quentin.”

  We backed out of the chamber and continued up along the stream. We walked for what felt like another mile, curving around slowly and then back the other way, skirting, no doubt, the large cavern of graves or whatever they were. Finally the stream straightened out and we saw a reddish glow up ahead.

  “Fire monkey demons?”

  Izzy studied the glow for a moment. “Not quite the right shade. Looks more like...”

  “Lava.”

  We picked our way up the stream, getting closer and closer to the glow. There was no flicker of motion as you would expect if it was from the fire monkey demons. As we got closer it became gradually lighter until, finally, I let my tattoos recede. Not that I thought much about it. Handling the blue power seemed to be coming more naturally to me.

  What came next was completely unexpected. A final turn of the stream revealed a large city, easily as large as Ohnipoor, standing in the midst of a truly vast cavern.

  It was staggering. It wasn’t carved out of the stones of the cavern. It had very similar architecture to Ohnipoor, with sculpted white towers and ornate pillared gardens. Except, they weren’t gardens anymore. Nothing grew here, out of the sun, but there did seem to be mirrored pools, archways and open areas where those gardens once were. The city, tucked away underground, seemed even more lonely and deserted than Ohnipoor. In fact, much of the whiteness of the walls had been rendered dingy by drippings from the cavern ceiling as well as elements picked up from the air.

  The city was quite illuminated. The light came from a river of lava that passed through the center of the city. The stream actually entered a tunnel as it came up beside the city. The lava was directed into an aqueduct of material that also had the properties of not melting from the lava. The aqueduct passed over the tunnel that carried the water and headed away from the city in a perpendicular direction.

  “You find yourself looking for a jazz bar too?” Izzy grinned.

  “Yeah, the thought occurred to me. Doesn’t look like anyone is home. Don’t think there has been for a very long time.”

  As we talked, we stepped into the city and began walking down one of the main streets.

  “Look at this.” Izzy was examining one of the towers. I came over and he pointed to a series of cracks that ran through the rounded walls. I could see similar markings on other structures around us.

  “What are they? I didn’t see stuff like that in Ohnipoor and, as far as I can tell, it’s pretty old too.”

  “I’m guessing stress fractures.” Izzy looked up. “I don’t think this city started out here.”

  “So what? One of those sink holes you talked about?”

  “Maybe.”

  We continued walking down the avenue. It was such a strange thing to find here that it felt haunted. My nerves were on edge. I was waiting for something to happen. We had just reached a broad intersection with a fountain in the center. There was no water flowing from it and it was dingy, like everything else, but it was quite ornate. I was staring at it when it suddenly seemed to become more illuminated with orange highlights.

  Izzy and I snapped around, scanning. The windows all around us glowed orange. Then we were assaulted by the screeching of monkeys and they poured, en masse, from all the buildings around us.

  Izzy had his bow off his shoulder, but I stopped him. They were everywhere, chattering and jittering, maybe thousands of them. They jumped and turned somersaults. It was hard not to laugh at some of their antics. Others stood closer to us and stared at us with gaping demon-like jaws. We were completely blocked and surrounded.

  “Izzy, do you notice something?”

  “You mean besides hundreds of monkeys on fire?”

  “Loud and screeching too, I might add. They could easily engulf us. We wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “You might,” Izzy pointed out.

  “Maybe.”

  “But they aren’t engulfing us.”

  “Exactly.”

  Suddenly the noise stopped. The fiery monkeys just stood there, their eyes locked on us, heads cocked to the side. We could feel heat from the flames, but it should have been hotter, so I was beginning to think the fire that covered them was something other than ordinary fire. They seemed to be waiting.

  “Quentin Case.”

  The voice was deep and calm. It was also familiar. And it was in my head. I looked at Izzy and saw that he had clearly heard it too. We both turned in opposite directions, scanning. We both stopped as our eyes fell upon two large figures in a doorway. I suspect Izzy and I both knew at that moment who they were but they were all in shadow. Then the sea of monkeys parted in front of them and the shifting light better illuminated their faces. They smiled benignly at us, showing nothing more than a Buddha-like calm and unreadable yet intelligent eyes.

  “Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

  “How can you tell?” Izzy asked.

  I shrugged. “They knew my name.”

  “I think all of Hell knows your name.”

  “Think they have a picture of me in the post office?”

  Suddenly Tweedledum and Tweedledee were standing in front of us. It was always disconcerting how they could change location like that without actually walking.

  “It is good to see that you are all right,” one of them said blandly. Since I couldn’t tell them apart, I didn’t know which one and only referred to them in my own thoughts as a pair. Although they had never done anything to threaten me and I knew they were loyal to Guido, their lack of emotion and formality always got on my nerves.

  “I’m not all right! Neither is Saripha. Is Guido here?”

  For the first time I saw something that might have been emotion pass over their faces, something dark, but it was fleeting.

  “No. He is not. However, there is much you need to know and we have little time.”

  20.

  I was about to scold the two demons that if they didn’t know where either Guido or Rox were, they were wasting my time. I was feeling pretty grumpy. However, before I could say anything, we were no longer in the square with the monkeys and were in the chamber that, long ago, Guido had guided my spirit to. I always felt like it was a place in my head where he could communicate with me easier. Maybe it was, but it felt awful real now, with Izzy and both Tweedledee and Tweedledum standing here.

  “This place is real, I take it.”

  As they often did, Tweedledum and Tweedledee just gazed back at me with almost blank expressions.

  “Yes, it is part of this city,” I heard in my head. They moved their lips to give the illusion of speech, but I knew it was telepathy.

  “What is this city? This place?”

  “This is the most ancient of the original pre-invasion cities. It is also the most hidden. That is why the members of the Council who follow the old law fled here.”

  “There are Manitors here?”

  For some reason, Tweedledee and Tweedledum didn’t seem to feel the need to answer. I figured the answer was yes.

  “What’s this place called?”

  “Chadikar, although the name is nearly forgotten.”

  “And who else is here beside the Manitors?”

  “Only the fire monkey demons, as I believe you think of them.”

  “And what are they? Are you saying they’re on our side?”

  The pair of large frog-faced demons were quiet again, as if thinking.

  “They were an unfortunate experiment in demon genetics. They are curiously playful, but bear a great deal of enmity for the angels. They have useful abilities and know the underground of the world better than anyone. We have used them to keep tabs on you.”

  “Meaning, you folks can’t come out. You’re being hunted.”

  Again, no answer was needed so Tweedledum and Tweedledee stayed quiet.

  “I’m noticing a trend here.” I turned to Izzy.

  “That magical beings don’t always answer your questions?”

  “Well, ther
e’s that.”

  “That magical beings in this place don’t seem to have much power when it comes to the angels?”

  “Ding ding ding!”

  More silence from Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

  I walked over to the corridor at the back and turned the corner. It was a whim. I had a fleeting memory move through my awareness. It was something I thought I experienced in the pain tower. When I turned the corridor, there it was, lying on the floor where it had bounced around when I dropped it.

  One of the platforms.

  I had noticed there were only three now when there had always been four. That’s what must have triggered the memory.

  However, there was something else back here. I had never made it to this short hallway in any of my previous “visits,” real or otherwise. There was a large door, a twin of the one in Ohnipoor, made of dark, grained stone, like petrified wood, with a wheel in the center. I spun around and nearly jumped out of my skin. Both Tweedledum and Tweedledee were directly behind me, watching with empty expressions. I could hear Izzy snickering. It was hard to maintain decorum with Izzy snickering, but I made my best effort.

  “Where’s that door go?”

  “Everywhere.”

  My temper flared and I took a swing at the Azaroti, although I probably knew what the result would be. They were gone. I looked at Izzy.

  “Behind me again, right?”

  He nodded and then snickered a bit more. I turned around slowly and let the anger go. Like everything in Hell, these were alien creatures from my perspective and, in their own benighted way they were trying to help me. Most aliens here were trying to take my powers and/or kill me. I just had to roll with their style. I gave them a smile. They continued to stare back like a pair of inscrutable frogs. I sighed. Izzy giggled.

  Absently I stooped and picked up the platform on the ground. As I did, it felt warm. The strange sigil-like patterns on the talisman, as we called them, glowed green.

  “Whoa? Why is this talisman responding to me? I already absorbed mine.” I dropped it again as if it had bit me.