“Dude, you got balls as big as church bells,” Ab said, making Duma start laughing before breaking into a raspy cough. Even I laughed for a second.
“Did any of you see where Medea went?” I asked, sitting back up, hooking a thumb over my shoulder toward the spot where I’d stabbed Medea.
Everyone shook their heads. I ran the whole scenario over again in my mind. I’d stabbed her right through the chest. There was no way she could have gotten away on her own. I stabbed her right through the freakin’ chest. When I tracked down her shriveled old ass, I’d definitely drop the damned rock on her head, put a stake through her heart, and bury her upside down, too, just to make sure.
I shook my head. “Crap. When you’re ready, get your asses to the rendezvous point.” I patted Ab on the shoulder and got back to my feet. “I’m not done yet.”
CHAPTER 40
I needed to locate the sword I’d hurled at Medea trying to save Sarah. It took me a few minutes, but I found it stuck in some rubble near the crater Hecate had made when I speared her. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the depression the so-called goddess had left behind. At least I knew she was gone.
I glanced back toward Sarah, Frigate, and Geek, who were sitting against the cavern wall and talking, and I exhaled heavily. Then I watched as dozens of Medea’s followers continued to wake throughout the cavern while others began to stagger around, shocked and confused. Sarah was probably right. I didn’t need to kill the survivors.
Those followers that were now on their feet lurched around aimlessly, tripping over dead bodies and live compatriots who hadn’t woken up yet. They displayed no regard for the dying and wounded among them, and they ignored my team completely.
It bothered me that Medea had intended to kill them, but I also wasn’t at peace with the idea that many of these people were probably here willingly. Even if Medea had lied to them, it was likely that the only part she lied about was the necessity of their deaths. Worse, she might have told them they would die for the cause. In that case, their survival made them unfulfilled martyrs. It was hard to stop people who were willing to die for their beliefs—that was exactly the kind of zeal that could drive one of those people to drag Medea’s body away someplace where a person could spend a lifetime trying to resurrect the old biddy. That kind of unquestioned devotion was what worried me most.
As I walked across the cavern toward the main entrance, I saw the Spartoi leader come out of a partially hidden tunnel at its mouth. He carried a little girl in his arms. Behind him, another of the dragon-tooth mercenaries carried a dark-haired old woman. The woman and the girl were both dressed in filthy, tattered robes. I felt a small sense of relief as I approached them.
Up close, I could see that the woman wasn’t as old as I’d first thought. Her physical condition made her appear much older. She and the child were cadaverously thin, covered in sores, caked in dirt, and reeking of their own filth. The woman’s legs were withered and useless, and her taut skin gave her an ancient, almost mummified appearance. The Spartoi were unfazed by both their appearance and smell.
In Farsi, I asked them both if they knew Fakhri Fawaz, and they almost imperceptibly bowed their heads in affirmation. The young girl couldn’t even lift her head from the squad leader’s chest as she did so. Despite the filth and the emaciated features, I could see the resemblance to Fakhri.
Satisfied these were her mother and sister, I spoke to the squad leader. “Have your men ready to leave as soon as possible. And I need to ask you to carry the Pelian Spear for me. I don’t want to take it with me while I locate the Cup and finish looking around.”
He took the spear and tucked it under the girl. As useful as the spear was, it was unwieldy in tight spaces, and I didn’t want anything slowing down my search for the Cup, Medea’s body, and whoever had dragged her off.
“General Diomedes, you should begin your search down that tunnel,” the squad leader said without expression, tossing his head back in the direction they’d come from.
“That’s where you found them?” I asked, gesturing at the woman and child.
“Yes, but it also seems to be some sort of living quarters and work space with many books and papers, as well as devices of magic and sorcery,” he replied in the same deadpan tone of voice.
I clapped the squad leader on the shoulder, and the Spartoi continued back toward the rest of the group. As the Spartoi left, Sarah and Frigate passed them, moving in my direction, propping Geek up between them as they walked. Geek, despite his battered and bloody appearance and the loss of his prosthetic leg, was grinning like an idiot and jabbering on about Jinns and witches. Sarah and Frigate just smirked and tolerated it, shaking their heads as he droned on.
“Head back to rendezvous. Ab and Duma will follow along with the remaining Spartoi and the Fawaz woman and child.” I pointed toward the Spartoi they’d just passed. “Just make sure you’re prepared for anything that may pop up along the way. Some of the survivors may still be looking to become martyrs.”
“What about you?” Sarah’s brows were tented, and she frowned at me.
I didn’t want to remind them that Medea’s missing body could mean that she was still alive in there somewhere, requiring me to find her. The last thing I wanted was for them to feel as if all this had been for nothing. “I need to find the Cup of Jamshid and make sure everything is secure, and then I’ll follow shortly. It won’t take me long. I just have to check out a few more things.”
“Be careful, Chief,” Frigate said, his expression solemn.
“I’ll be fine. Just clear out. Oh, and leave me your grenades, just in case I need to plug any holes when I leave.”
“Grenades are in our gear bags with our guns where we left ’em,” Frigate said, pointing up the entrance tunnel.
The wounded trio limped back to the rest of the group, and Sarah glanced at me over her shoulder and flashed me a suspicious grimace as they hobbled off. She knew I wasn’t being completely honest with her. If it kept her safe, I didn’t care.
I headed for the spot down the main entrance the sniper team had used. I threw their gear bags and grenades into a single bag and then returned to explore the passage where the Spartoi had found the woman and child.
The passageway lay concealed behind a rockfall just to the north of the junction between the entrance tunnel and the main cavern. Everything about it was different from the others. Like the entrance tunnel, this passage’s curved rock walls were completely smooth, and the floor was dry and level—not naturally formed. It was evenly and brightly lit, but as with the main cavern, I couldn’t determine the source of the light, which was a warm, pleasant glow that seemed to emanate from the rock wall itself. The smell wafting up from farther inside was musky, woody, and very exotic. Though I could smell a wood fire, the scents were more of a pleasant woodsy or earthy smell and not burnt at all. All of it was totally out of place in a rock cave.
The featureless tunnel continued straight for twenty yards, widening as it progressed, until it reached a turn that jogged to the left. I stopped to listen, swords at the ready, but the only sound I could hear was water dripping from around the corner. I had no idea what I might encounter given that the Spartoi had already been down here. There could be other prisoners, but because they weren’t ordered to free anyone but the Fawaz family, the soldiers would have ignored them. Part of me hoped I’d round the corner and see Medea standing there.
I cautiously poked my head around and saw a spacious, well-lit room, thoroughly decorated with magnificent rugs and tapestries and beautiful modern furniture. There was a sleeping area with a four-poster bed, a comfortable living area, and an extensive workspace complete with a giant, boiling cauldron. Hey, clichés are clichés for a reason. Several of the floor coverings didn’t appear to be carpets. A few were animal hides, including a shaggy pelt next to the bed, which had to have belonged to the mo
st massive golden bear in history. The open central space in the room was devoid of any floor coverings, though some type of writing obscured part of the ground in a manner similar to what had surrounded Perses.
I came around the corner and into the mouth of the room. If I hadn’t known it was in a cave, and if it weren’t for the even illumination that came from no visible source, I might have thought I was in a Victorian home in New England. It had to be Medea’s personal chambers.
I worked my way along the far left side of the room, where a good-sized cage held a nasty-looking salamander—not one of the slimy little amphibians kids kept in bowls but a fire elemental, three feet long and, well, on fire. It was banging around in its cage as I approached to get a better look. A long, low workbench was covered with papers and books filled with notations in writing I couldn’t identify and symbols I couldn’t decipher. I set my swords down and began searching for the Cup of Jamshid.
I rifled through the seemingly random collection of papers until I came across a torn page that contained a partial list of names of some of the nastiest dictators and most unstable countries around the world, including Assad from Syria, Gaddafi from Libya, Mubarak from Egypt, and Kim of North Korea. There were also names of leaders of various Paranthropoi races, some of whom I recognized. Each one had a unique symbol or some sort of sigil next to it. A chill traveled up my spine. I recognized some of the symbols from the circle of writing that had surrounded Perses back in the main cavern.
Some of those leaders were so deranged to begin with that it would only take a slight push to send them completely over the edge. If that happened to even half of the names on the list, the world could be at war for decades. And if she really could affect the various races of Parans around the world… I didn’t want to think about it, so I stuffed the stack of papers into my bag and kept trying to locate the Cup.
I shoved books off shelves and opened cabinets until I came across a small bronze vessel sitting in the center of an elaborate, narrow, chest-high table that looked somewhat like a lectern. Next to the table was a workbench. I recognized the Cup’s fluted shape and etchings instantly. I grabbed it and stuffed it into the gear bag with the papers and then shifted my attention to the rest of the room, determining what else I should check out before I left. As I looked around, the writing on the floor farther back, near the center of the room, caught my eye. The more I studied it, the more I realized it was more than just writing.
I approached and circled the spot cautiously, examining it. It was a circle of symbols set in the floor like numbers on a clock. Each symbol was connected to the other by a series of fine inlaid lines, and all of them were surrounded by another circle that was about fifteen feet in diameter. Each symbol was made of a different material—wood, bone, and various stones and metals—and the connecting lines were copper. The outer circle was a bright metal that could have been silver, nickel, or even platinum, for all I knew. I could feel a potent but subtle vibration of power emanating from it, but I couldn’t see it, which suggested to me that it was some sort of portal or doorway that wasn’t currently in use. Unlike the circle of writing out in the cavern, I didn’t recognize any of these symbols from the pages I’d taken.
I didn’t know much about magic, but I knew that when someone surrounded symbols with a circle like this, the perimeter would contain and isolate whatever the symbols conjured or created. This one was elaborate, to say the least. The conjuring circle was probably Medea’s, which meant that its purpose, whatever it was, was evil. And if it was hers, I wanted to destroy it. I retrieved my swords from the table and dragged them through the sigils. The supernatural blade gouged through the stone floor and materials that made up the inlaid design, ruining it as if I’d dragged my foot across a circle of salt. As I scarred the circle, a slight pop went through my head like an altitude drop as the power was released and the circle was ruined.
That’ll show her. Maybe I could leave a burning bag of poop on her doorstep, too.
After my wanton vandalism, I returned to my inspection of Medea’s opulent chambers. I recognized one of the tapestries from the keep she’d been holed up in when I attacked her with two of Arthur’s knights, almost a thousand years ago in England when she was calling herself Morgan le Fay. The tapestry was beautiful and close to thirty feet long. It depicted a fight between an enormous green dragon and knights led by a golden-armored warrior.
That was the last time we’d faced each other, and she’d managed to escape then, too. The reminder of yet another failure to destroy Medea just pissed me off. I grabbed a clay pot from a nearby shelf and threw it at the tapestry, shattering the vessel. It didn’t really make me feel any better, but the action did draw my eye to a series of dog-crate-sized cages hidden behind another tapestry that featured a battle with which I wasn’t familiar. I ducked behind the tapestry to view the cages. All of them were full of human waste, dirty rags, and maggot-ridden food. Several still held the desiccated corpses of prisoners. The cages couldn’t have been more than three feet cubed, and I knew instantly that at least two of these had held Fakhri’s mother and sister. Medea’s inhumanity knew no bounds.
Turning in disgust, I began searching the living space at the rear of the chamber, where several massive bookcases were jammed with tomes, baubles, and curios. Some emitted weak magical auras, but most did not. A prodigious cabinet of curiosities among the shelves housed a freakish collection of skulls, both deformed and normal, and preserved specimens that in normal circles might be perceived as oddities but that weren’t, in my opinion, all that strange. Where I came from, three-headed dogs just weren’t that unusual.
Over near the cauldron in her work area—over a fire that produced no smoke, only heat—was yet another workbench that held containers of some kind of liquid metal, and simple molds for quarter-sized disks. Several dull metal slugs lay on the desk. I searched around for magnets and didn’t see any.
I put my swords away and quickly undid the strap on my greave to get at the pendant taped to my forearm. I pressed that disk into a mold, careful not to remove my finger from it. It fit perfectly, verifying that the device was indeed one of Medea’s designs. I twined the live pendant’s chain around my hand to secure it and tucked the disk under the leather wrappings on my palm. Then I picked up one of the lifeless blanks and stared absentmindedly at it. And that was when an idea came to me.
I could throw all my grenades onto the sigil on the floor, along with the magnets I carried in my shredded vest, then chuck the disk at it and run like hell. Since the disk wouldn’t implode until it got near the magnets, I should be okay as long as I threw it from far enough away. Besides, if the size of the vortex created by the device was related to the power of the magnets, then the ones I had wouldn’t create that large a singularity until the first one set the grenades off. Still, the implosion-explosion should serve to obliterate most of the stuff in the room and set the witch back a few years until I could find her again. It beat leaving a bag of poop, anyway.
I set to work on my plan and placed the collection of grenades, including flash-bangs, white phosphorus, thermite and frags, as well as Sarah’s magnetic earrings, at the center of the ruined sigil. Then I revisited the worktable for one last search of Medea’s papers. I wanted to grab as much as I could for the Metis Foundation to analyze. I was making a valiant effort, riffling through page after page of unintelligible writing, until I got an odd sense that I was no longer alone.
“Did you really think I’d die that easily, Diomedes?” said a cracked and ragged voice. Medea was scowling, her eyes wide and crazy and her robe shredded and bloody, but she was very much alive and using Frigate as a shield.
“Honestly, I was hoping. Don’t you know when to give up and die?” I tried to hide my surprise. I tossed the book I’d been holding back onto the table. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Nice and homey… if you’re Voldemort.” I snickered.
/> She just glared at me. Frigate stared dully off into the middle distance and was incoherent.
“You know, the bad guy from Harry Potter? Don’t tell me—”
“Enough!” she shouted. “I told you I would kill your friends and let you watch, but he will have to do. Then I will finally kill you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Just relax.”
The chain from the necklace I’d wrapped around my hand came loose, dangling from the disk I’d tucked into the wrappings around my palm. I could see recognition register on her face as her eyes shifted rapidly between the necklace and me.
“Oh, this?” I said, holding the hand with the disk up slightly higher. “It’s just a souvenir. I have the earrings that match, too. Well, had, at any rate. They’re over there with the grenades.” I jerked my head toward the pile I’d made. “If it’s yours, I’ll give it back,” I said, holding the disk out toward her.
She backed up, dragging Frigate with her by the throat. He was being very compliant as all this happened.
“Frigate! Hey, Frigate!” I shouted. “You okay?” Dammit. The last thing I wanted was to put anyone back in danger.
“He is for now, but his mind is mine,” Medea said, sneering. “You will watch as I destroy it.”
“Not if I destroy you first.” I tossed the dud disk I had kept toward the grenades in an elaborate show.
“You fool,” she shrieked and let go of Frigate, who collapsed. She held out her arms toward the conjuring circle and murmured. When nothing happened, her eyes became wide. She jerked slightly and then faltered back a few steps.
Havoc Rising Page 35