All These Shiny Worlds

by Jefferson Smith

  “Too far,” he said tiredly. “Too far have I traveled to lose the trail thusly. All the signs pointed to this being the location of fabled Dudael. It must be here. It must!”

  In a fit of anger he struck the sword blade against the pale rock face. The resulting sound echoed back—and echoed, and echoed, as if coming from a far larger space than the one they currently occupied.

  “What devilry is this?” Cain demanded, moving forward again and raising a booted foot to kick out at the wall. On his third kick as he moved steadily to his right his boot appeared to pass through the stone and he fell forward, his sword and torch tumbling from his grasp.

  Righting himself quickly, he snatched up his sword and whirled to see the three guides coming up behind him, each of them emerging, ghostlike, from the blank wall. They looked at least as disturbed by this as they had been by the bat-creature.

  “Some sort of illusion,” he reasoned. “Or an ancient spell, protecting this—this what?”

  He turned again and regarded the area he had fallen into.

  What had once been a natural cavern, much larger than the first, had been worked by many hands over long years into a vast, imposing circular space perhaps a hundred feet in height at its center and twice that in diameter. At the far side, carved and incorporated into the sheer rock wall of the chamber, stood the stone façade of what looked to be some strange and bizarre temple, complete with altar and eerie, twisted statues of angels and devils set into recessed sconces at various levels. Columns formed from gray stone struck through with veins of dark red and black towered high up to the room’s ceiling.

  Cain started forward, then hesitated as he looked down. At first he had taken the uneven nature of the floor of the chamber to be the result of broken and fallen stones alone. A closer inspection revealed that innumerable human skeletons in various stages of final decay lay scattered everywhere.

  “Name of the Devil,” Cain cursed as he regarded a particularly disturbing skull nearby that peered sightlessly back at him. Slowly he picked his way across the rugged stone floor, past the human remains and over and around jutting stones upset from their former positions during the long ages of the temple’s existence. The guides all gaped as they stumbled along behind him, torches held aloft.

  “Truly is this the work of Satan himself,” Cain pronounced as he arrived at the far side and looked from the horrific floor to the loathsome and demonic carvings set into the stone walls and columns. Some of the repulsive forms appeared to cavort in the flickering light of the torches.

  “Al-Shaytan, indeed,” muttered Aqhar, his bearded face twisted with disgust. He spat upon the shattered floor.

  Cain wasted no more time in conversation. He held his torch aloft and moved rapidly along the front of the temple façade, studying the structure carefully.

  The other three men joined him, but confused glances between them prompted Aqhar to ask, “What, exactly, are we looking for, effendi?”

  “Something…more,” was all Cain could say. “There has to be more than just this. There must be more.”

  After thirty minutes that felt more like two hours, Aqhar and Faruq had given up and sat wearily on a large piece of stone debris, torches resting to one side. Aziz, meanwhile, continued to search the temple front with the same quiet determination Cain was demonstrating. Nonetheless, after another half hour, even Cain himself was near despair of ever finding anything useful when suddenly a grinding sound echoed throughout the chamber and Aziz cried out in Arabic.

  The other three men rushed to where he stood, finding him staring down a narrow passageway that had been completely hidden previously. He motioned to indicate that he had pressed a small gargoyle statue and caused the panel to slide open somehow.

  “Yes,” Cain breathed. Holding his torch before him, he stepped cautiously through the opening.

  The room in which he now stood was much, much smaller than the one he’d exited. Its stale air smelled of great age, as though the door had not been opened in a millennium or more. The light of the torch revealed smooth, unadorned white marble walls curving upward to a point at the center of the ceiling, as if the room were the inside of a dome.

  “Ah,” Cain said to himself, stepping forward. “This would appear promising.”

  The puritan stood before a huge block of red granite. Its smooth, polished surface glinted in the light. About eight feet long, it stood perhaps four feet high with an equal width.

  “This—this could not have been brought through the door,” Aqhar gasped as he came up behind Cain and peered at the granite block. “How—how could it have been brought into this cavern?”

  “I do not question the works of the Devil,” Cain growled by way of response. “I smite them.”

  But instead of striking the huge granite block with fist or blade, as Aqhar half-expected him to do, Cain instead bent down and began pushing hard at the side of it.

  The other two guides had entered the chamber, and Aqhar glanced back at them in bewilderment. Then he said, “You cannot possibly hope to move such an object.”

  “With God on my side, I hope to accomplish greater feats than that,” Cain grunted, his face darkening with strain.

  The guides looked at one another, shrugged, and all three of them bent down beside Cain and pushed.

  The great granite stone creaked and then gave way all at once, sliding smoothly on hidden rollers. It moved until it encountered the far wall, where it was brought up short with a resounding thud.

  Cain and the others gazed down at what had been revealed underneath the spot it had occupied.

  A gaping opening, filled with darkness, stared back at them.

  Cain’s face expressed a wild mixture of exultation and determination. The torch aloft and ahead of him once more, he found the edge of a narrow, black, wrought-iron stairway twisting down into the bowels of the earth, and he set his foot upon it.

  “I do not ask for you to accompany me further,” he told the three guides after he had disappeared halfway into the opening. “You need only wait here for my return.”

  Aqhar shrugged. “And suppose you do not return? No, I believe I at least will accompany you to the end of this mad journey, Puritan.”

  Cain’s eyes met the Arab’s for a long moment, then he nodded silently and continued down the stairs.

  ***

  Stepping off the foot of the metal stairs, Cain breathed deep of the air that filled the underground chamber. It was much fresher than that which he’d left above. This fact troubled him deeply.

  “Is there another way in—or out?” he whispered to himself.

  Turning this way and that, he brandished the torch and studied his surroundings. Moments later, the light grew brighter as first Aqhar, then Faruq and Aziz wound their way down the steps and joined him.

  “There,” Aqhar said, pointing up to the chamber’s dark ceiling.

  Cain looked where the guide was indicating, and saw holes—open spaces—amidst the blocks of the ceiling.

  “Air passages,” the guide explained. “I have seen such things before, such as in the pyramids of Egypt.”

  Cain nodded, pleased that this might mean no other way of entrance into the chamber existed, and losing interest now that a possible natural explanation had been found.

  Quickly the men turned their attention to the central object in the room. Another huge, stone block, it appeared at first glance very similar to the one they so recently had moved to uncover the stairs. A closer look revealed that it was of a sort of black marble rather than granite, and that it was not made of one huge block but two—though the blocks had been fitted together so cunningly, so skillfully, that the horizontal seam which divided the two, one block on the bottom and one on top, was almost invisible to the naked eye.

  “This is a sarcophagus,” Aqhar muttered. “But—whose?”

  Cain ignored the question and kept his sword held aloft, even as he continued to stare intently at the black marble. It looked as if he were attempting
to read some hidden writing carved into its surface. After a moment, with the torch light playing on it, the face of the sarcophagus did indeed begin to shift and change, the pattern within the mottled marble swimming subtly before their eyes.

  Seconds later it had changed sufficiently to reveal a strange, narrow, curving script in red that covered the lid from one end to the other.

  “That writing—if writing it is—it matches what is inscribed on your blade,” Aqhar murmured.

  To this, Cain only nodded.

  “Can you read it?”

  “I know what it says,” Cain replied in a flat tone, his sword now held tightly in his outstretched right hand. “Thank your heathen god you cannot read it.”

  Aqhar glared at him a moment but then whispered a prayer and waited, curious what the puritan would do next.

  As if in reply, Cain moved his sword blade down and touched it to the black marble. Instantly the scripting seemed to catch fire, the words on the stone blazing up with foot-high flames. The guides gasped and stumbled backward, but Cain didn’t budge.

  Even as the fire atop the sarcophagus continued to burn, the ground began to shake. Gently at first, the earthquake grew stronger by the moment.

  “Effendi,” Aqhar exclaimed, “we must leave—now!”

  Before Cain could reply, the walls crumbled all around. But instead of falling, they merely slid down into the floor. And what lay revealed behind them caused the three guides to forget caution entirely and cry out with joy.

  “Treasures!” Aqhar gasped. “More treasure than I’ve seen—or heard of!”

  All around them, set into spaces carved deep into the rock, lay piles of gold and silver and sparkling gems beyond count. Golden plates and silver goblets and statues of all sizes, with eyes of ruby and emerald and diamond, glinted in the half-revealed recesses.

  The three guides stumbled across the room and dipped their hands into the treasure, then began shoveling it into their bags. Meanwhile, the ground continued to shake.

  Cain ignored all of this. His eyes had never left the lid of the sarcophagus, nor the flaming words that burned on its surface.

  “Hear me, Azazel,” he hissed. “I know that your body lies within yon tomb. I mean to destroy it now, before ever you can reclaim it, and wreak still greater evil upon this world.”

  And with that strange pronouncement, Cain laid his hands upon the black marble and shoved.

  Nothing happened.

  Cain glared at the sarcophagus, then whirled about and realized for the first time what his guides were doing. He peered at the piles of treasure, then frowned deeply and held his sword aloft, edge-on, between his eyes and the newly-revealed riches.

  The treasure vanished—at least to his sight. In its place lay a scattered few ancient iron implements—swords and knives, bowls and pots. To one side stood a tall mirror in a black metal frame, its glass surface covered in layers of ancient dust.

  Lowering his sword, the treasure returned to view.

  “Ignore these worldly temptations!” he shouted at the guides. “They are but illusion, sent by the Evil One, meant to weaken your resolve!”

  The guides ignored him.

  Furious, he strode to the nearest one—Faruq—and grasped the man by the arm, pulling at him.

  “Cannot you discern the work of the Devil, man?”

  Faruq shoved him away and continued to fill his packs with gold.

  “Aqhar! Order your men to obey!”

  The leader of the guides glanced up at Cain, wild-eyed, then back at the gold, as if weighing his options. His resolve wavered and his hands shook.

  “Effendi—such treasure! Even a man such as yourself must have need of—”

  “I have no need for the works of Satan! Now gather your wits—I require the assistance of all of you.”

  Cain looked over to the other guides, only to see the one called Aziz bent at Faruq’s side and whispering something in his ear, even as he pointed—directly at Cain.

  “So, you mean to betray me, do you? And for naught but a fool’s treasure.”

  The puritan brandished his blade and stood ready, his eyes shifting from one guide to the next. The ground beneath his feet shook still harder, and now tiny bits of stone rained down like hail all about.

  Faruq straightened suddenly and, with a mad cry, rushed at Cain. The puritan waited until the last moment before pivoting and striking the guide with the pommel of his sword hilt, sending the man crashing to the stone floor.

  “What madness overtakes you?” Cain demanded, staring down at his stricken guide, now his foe.

  Aqhar rushed to Aziz’s side and spoke loudly and rapidly in Arabic. The tall, slender man replied in soft but intense tones, and Aqhar’s eyes began to narrow as he listened.

  Cain had bent down to help Faruq to his feet when Aqhar suddenly rushed at him, slamming into his back. The three men all sprawled across the ground. The torches each had dropped tumbled here and there, causing the shadows to dance madly on the crumbling stone walls.

  “Curse you all!” cried the puritan as he struggled to his feet, snatching up his sword where he had dropped it and positioning it smoothly between himself and the two attackers.

  Faruq and Aqhar wasted no time. Even as the ground shook still harder and debris rained down, the two guides dove at Cain, one aiming for his legs and the other for his torso. Cain slashed out with his sword, not wishing truly to harm the obviously bewitched men but desperately anxious to finish his business here and depart swiftly, lest he and the others be crushed or entombed alive.

  Cain was able to fend the two attackers off for several seconds, during which time larger chunks of stone began tumbling down from the fractured ceiling. One of them struck Faruq and knocked the man momentarily senseless, but Aqhar merely attacked once again, his voice now ragged and his words incomprehensible. Coming in low and with the strength and stamina of a man possessed, he took Cain’s legs out from under him. The two wrestled on the ground for a few moments before Cain managed to free one of his pistols. Just as he fired it, Aqhar’s hand lashed out and struck it—and the shot fired directly into the now-revived Faruq as he had leapt over a piece of rubble at Cain. The shot caught him full in the chest, and the man was dead before he struck the floor.

  The sound of the shot seemed to startle Aqhar, who stumbled about in a daze. Meanwhile Cain whirled about, suddenly very aware that the third guide, Aziz—the one who had appeared to be poisoning the others against him—had vanished.

  “Aziz! Show yourself!”

  And then he realized what was happening: Aziz was leaning against the far side of the black marble sarcophagus, pushing with both hands.

  And the lid was sliding slowly open.

  The light of the fallen torches caused Cain’s shadows to twist and flicker madly as he leapt atop the sarcophagus and rushed toward Aziz. His sword lashed out—but the guide was already gone. He moved like lightning, casting himself to one side, rolling to a halt, and then springing to his feet in one smooth motion.

  Cain ignored the performance and leapt forward again, his sword singing and his other pistol now in hand.

  Aziz sidestepped the attack and brought his hand down in a savage blow—one that felt much more powerful than the wiry guide should have been able to generate. Cain stumbled back, crashing into the piles of treasure with a shattering sound.

  “No,” Cain gasped, “not treasure.”

  The sword held before his eyes once more, Cain saw that he had impacted not piles of gold and silver, but instead the ancient, dusty mirror that had stood in its metal frame. Now long, jagged shards of glass lay littered about the stone floor. Moving the sword away and back into a defensive position, Cain realized that, for whatever reason, the spell upon his eyes had broken. He could see the contents of the chamber clearly now, even without the sword to aid him.

  Aziz struck out at him viciously, newly-taloned fingers lashing out. Cain punched him in the face, to no real result. And now, as the two struggled
at close quarters, for the first time Cain saw the blazing red light dancing in the depths of the man’s eyes.

  “You!” he cried.

  Aziz struck hard and the sword tumbled from Cain’s nerveless fingers. Before the puritan could retrieve it, a huge stone slab—the largest yet—fell from the ceiling and smashed down upon the sword, covering it and crushing it.

  “No—no!”

  In vain did Cain attempt to move the stone, but it was far too large and heavy.

  Aziz watched this performance and laughed, deeply and long. His voice sounded different now, and his face had twisted beyond recognition. Now when Cain looked back up at him, all he could see of the man’s face was the merest trace of human features, all washed out by the bright glare of red light that spilled—flooded—from his eyes. With a wordless grunt, Aziz sprang upon him and wrapped his long fingers around Cain’s throat, leaning in close.

  “Too long have you dogged my steps, human fool,” breathed Aziz—or that which possessed Aziz. “Now, I believe it is time that I—”

  Cain’s coat sleeve had been pushed back, revealing the edge of a black line tattooed into his lower arm. Something about it caused Aziz to glance down—and he cried out in surprise and dismay. With a shout of fury, he shoved Cain away.

  Cain saw instantly what had happened, and he shoved his sleeve up, revealing the full tattoo on the inside of his arm. It was a rune, four inches in length, and exactly matching one of the signs etched into his sword blade.

  “This hurts you, does it not, demon?”

  Aziz hissed at him; it was a guttural sound, a sound that did not come naturally from the throat of any human who had ever lived.

  Cain ripped open his buff coat and revealed his bare chest, upon which a series of much larger runes had been burned.

  “My body is beyond you, demon! God and his precious works protect me from your evil!”

  Aziz stumbled back, clawlike hands held defensively before his burning eyes. Then he reached down and grasped a chunk of stone from the floor, hurtling it with blinding speed at Cain.