by Darren Shan
Standing in the middle, I can touch both walls. Keeping to the center, I start walking, feeling for openings on either side. After 659 steps the walls give way to emptiness. Exploring, I discover a four-way junction. I focus on each tunnel in turn, listening closely, peering through the darkness for the slightest flicker of light. There isn’t any. No sounds either, apart from the dripping of water. Then, as I’m examining the passages a second time, an extremely faint noise—perhaps a human cry, maybe only a rat squeaking—carries to my ears from one of the tunnels.
My choice made for me, I start ahead cautiously. This passage is the same width as the last. I’m progressing as before, hands outstretched, when the ground ends and I drop. Stifling a yell, I grab for the bricks of the walls. Then my feet hit and I relax. It was a short fall. Drawing in my hands, I stoop and feel the ground—concrete. I run my fingers forward into air, then down to more concrete. I’m on a step, the first, I suspect, of a set of stairs. Standing, I slide onto the next step, feel for the edge with my toes, find it and carry on down, deeper under the earth, in search of the origin of that elusive sound.
Fifty steps… a hundred… one-fifty… I’m only four shy of the two hundred mark when they finally run out and I hit level ground. I’m in a tunnel with an arched roof. I can tell because it’s lit by the most welcome torch I’ve ever seen, burning faintly ahead of me. The desire to rush to the light is strong, but I fight it and study the terrain. The tunnel runs in both directions, seemingly without end, but this is the only torch. Turning right, I walk to the torch. It’s set in stone, the head a replaceable wick, which runs down into an encased container. No way to remove it. I’ll have to continue without it and hope there are other torches ahead to light my way.
Concentrating solely on finding a way out, ignoring thoughts of my father, Ama Situwa and the villacs, I proceed, hand no longer on the wall, navigating by the glow of the torch, which gets fainter the farther I progress. I’m almost surrounded by total gloom again when I hear sounds from somewhere ahead. This time the noise is definitely human—men arguing loudly. Hurrying, I come to the mouth of another tunnel. There are no torches in this one, but fresh air wafts through it, and the sounds of the men are stronger than ever.
The tunnel’s long—I quit counting steps now that I’m no longer scouting blind—and the voices dwindle as I close in on them. By the time I reach the end the argument has come to a halt, but there are grunting, scuffling sounds. I pause, listening intently. I thought there were only two men, but by the varying noises I revise that figure upward. Then, since there’s nothing else to do, I step forward to face whatever awaits.
I find myself in a large, man-made cavern, ninety feet wide, maybe a hundred and fifty long, with a high ceiling. The walls are bare, save for candles. The floor’s covered by a thick, green, padded mat.
There are fifteen men and three women inside the chamber. All are young—the youngest looks thirteen or fourteen, the oldest no more than twenty-five—and most are black. Their heads are shaved and down the cheeks of each run tattooed snakes similar to mine, but monochromatic—plain blue, red, green, et cetera. All eighteen are clad in jeans and dark T-shirts. They’re barefoot.
I believe I’ve found the Snakes.
The young men and women are sparring in pairs or threes.
They punch, kick and twist with remarkable agility. Their fists and feet are unprotected and leave cuts and bruises where they connect too sharply, but nobody takes any notice of the wounds, getting up when knocked down, fighting on, pausing only to wipe blood away when it gets bothersome. They say nothing as they spar, although every so often one of the older members chastises a younger participant for making a mistake. The girls and boys contest equally, taking and meting out their fair share of the punishment, no allowances made.
I watch in silence, unseen, for several minutes. Finally I’m spotted by a young woman who steps aside to remove her ripped T-shirt. She pulls it off over her head, baring her breasts—none of the men bat an eyelid—then turns back toward her partner to continue—and sights me. She stops, hands dropping by her sides, and stares at me expressionlessly. Her partner turns to see what she’s looking at and soon everyone is facing me, silent, impossible to read.
Stepping forward, I come to a halt five feet short of the nearest member of the group, a tall, lithe, dark-skinned man in his early twenties. I croak, “Where am I?”
The man says nothing, just raises a hand and strokes the red snakes on his face, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Do you have a name?” I’m finding it hard to speak.
In response the man walks around me, sizing me up, noting the marks on my throat. He’s rippling with muscles but there’s an air of uncertainty about him—he’s trying too hard to act cool—and I sense from the way he moves that he’s untested in real combat.
The man stops behind me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck but I don’t turn to face him. The woman with the bare breasts steps forward, her left hand going to my groin, hard brown eyes staring directly into mine, watching closely to see if her nudity or the contact unsettles me. They don’t and I stare back calmly, unaroused, waiting for her to quit with the games.
“How did you get here?” she asks, removing her hand.
“I walked.”
“Who are you?”
“I asked for your name first.”
The girl raises her right hand and makes a signal with her thumb and middle finger. In reply, eight of the group fan out behind her, four to her left, four to her right. They surround me, dangerous intent in their expressions.
“Your name,” the woman says.
I consider lying, but see no reason not to tell them. “Al Jeery.”
The woman relaxes, as do those around her. “You’re expected,” she says and turns her back on me, looking for her sparring partner. They resume their contest. Within moments the other sixteen have also returned to their original positions and training continues as before.
I stare at the men and women, mildly astonished. “Who’s expecting me?” I ask. No answer. I grab one of the younger men and whirl him around. “Who the hell—”
He flicks his left hand towards my face, fingers stiff. I have to move swiftly to avoid being blinded. Slapping his hand away, I snap out of range. As I steel myself for a counterattack, he recommences sparring. I feel like drawing him out and laying him flat, but that would be pointless. There are no answers here. Best move on and seek them farther ahead.
Circling the trainees, I come to a door in the opposite wall of the chamber. The handle turns smoothly. Sparing the sparrers one last, bewildered glance, I step through into a brightly lit corridor, let the door swing shut, and press on.
There are several doors in the walls of the corridor. I open each as I come to it. Storerooms, more corridors, all dark and empty. No signs of life. At the end I come to a set of swing doors. Pushing through, I enter a kitchen where a handful of men and one woman—dressed, shaven and tattooed the same as those in the sparring hall—work in silence over old-style stoves, baking bread. One of the men spots me and scowls. “You can’t come in here!”
I ignore him and wander forward, noting microwave ovens in the background, a curious mix of new and old utensils, three huge freezers running along one wall, two refrigerators along another. The man with the scowl moves to block me. “You can’t come in here,” he repeats, softly this time, anticipating a fight.
I take stock of the chef and realize he’s as dangerous as those in the cavern, if not more so. I have to be careful. “My name’s Al Jeery,” I mutter.
The chef relaxes. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“You know who I am?”
“You’re Al Jeery,” he laughs.
“Is that all you know—my name?”
He nods. “We were told you’d be joining us.”
“Who told you?”
He pulls a face, as if he thinks I know the answer and am testing him. “Probably the same person who brought
you here.”
“And that’s…?”
“You know,” he chuckles and returns to his dough, which he kneads clumsily. I think he’s more of a warrior than a chef.
I watch the men and woman work for a while, then ask the chef for his name.
“Ray,” he says.
“Ray what?”
“We only use first names here.”
I change tack. “How many are you cooking for?”
“The eighteen of phalanx 5C.”
That could be the group I encountered earlier. “How many phalanxes are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which do you belong to?”
“4A.”
“How many in your group?”
“Eighteen, the same as the others.”
“How many of you are there in total?”
He smiles. “You already asked me a question like that. I still don’t know.”
“Who does?”
He shrugs. “The Cobras.”
“Cobras?”
“The captains of the triumvirates. There are three phalanxes per triumvirate.”
He’s mixing Greek and Roman terminology, but I let that pass, doing the math. Eighteen multiplied by three is fifty-four. If there are at least five triumvirates, that makes two hundred and seventy—not counting Cobras.
“Where did you come from?” I ask Ray. “How did you get here?”
He shakes his head. “We don’t ask questions like that.”
“Who controls the Cobras?”
A flicker of irritation crosses his face. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Who should I report to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who were you told to send me to?”
“Nobody. We were just told you were coming and not to interfere with you.”
“Where can I find the Cobras?”
“They have their own quarters. I don’t know where. They come to us, not the other way around.”
“Is there some kind of central meeting place?”
Ray walks me to the swing doors and points out a door on the left. “Take the corridor through there. When you get to the third door on the right, turn off. That leads to the main hall, though I doubt you’ll find anyone there now.”
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Ten to four. Everyone will be in training or on assignment until six.”
The last time I checked my watch was in the Manco Capac statue and it was a few minutes shy of midday. Less time has passed than I thought. I thank Ray for his assistance. He grunts and returns to the kitchen. I start for the door, then stop, follow Ray and ask for a glass of water. I slide a knife from a counter without anyone seeing, then go looking for the main hall.
Ray’s directions were true. Within minutes I’m standing inside the entrance to an enormous cavern that I recognize. I was here ten years ago, summoned by the villacs. It’s much the same as I remember, walls adorned with symbols, many blood-red depictions of the sun, a huge gold sun medallion hanging from the ceiling over a round stone platform, like the one in the Manco Capac solarium, only larger, maybe 120 feet in diameter. Three thrones sit at the center of the platform. Around the circumference mummies are lashed to chairs, though there are gaps. The priests must have moved some of their dead ancestors up to the compartments in the solarium.
I approach the platform warily, scanning the shadows of the candlelit cavern for villacs and Snakes. I appear to be alone. Skirting the platform, keeping my knife low, I edge farther into the cavern, feeling isolated and exposed.
“You found your way here quicker than I expected,” someone says from the darkness above. I raise my knife and peer uselessly into the layers of blackness that mask the ceiling. “Put away the knife,” the speaker says and a rope drops. “You won’t need it.”
A man shimmies down the rope and lands catlike. He turns and smiles. He’s older than the others I’ve encountered, in his thirties. He’s bald, and sports light blue snakes on his cheeks, but he wears a leather jacket over his T-shirt.
“Are you a Cobra?” I ask, not lowering the knife.
He raises a thin eyebrow. “You learn quickly. Yes. I command the second triumvirate. You know about those?”
“I’ve gathered the basics. How many triumvirates are there?”
“Seven. We’re in the midst of forming an eighth.”
That bumps the number up to almost four hundred. No wonder Davern’s worried about the Snakes.
“Who commands and finances you?”
The Cobra smiles. “Ask no questions, told no lies. Come, Mr. Jeery, the master awaits.” He offers the rope to me.
“I’m not climbing up there until I know what’s going on,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “Then you’ll stay here and rot.”
“Who are you taking me to?”
“You’ll see when you get there.”
“Is it…?” I can’t bring myself to say the name.
The Cobra’s smile fades and he jerks the rope. Since I’ve got no real choice, I take it and start up, followed by the Cobra, to a balcony. Once there, I turn, stop the Cobra from mounting, and press my blade to his throat.
“I want answers and I want them now,” I snarl, but he laughs at the threat.
“Kill me if you must, Mr. Jeery, but you won’t scare answers out of me. Nobody fears death down here. We’re taught to accept it.”
I’m tempted to slice his throat for the hell of it, but that wouldn’t bring me the truth. Standing back, I let him climb and I fall into place behind him as he marches to the end of the platform, into another tunnel.
“How many tunnels are there?” I ask after we’ve wound our way through several more passages.
“That’s a question I couldn’t answer even if I had a mind to,” the Cobra says. “I’ve been down here six years and I’m still discovering new routes.”
“Six years is a long time to spend underground,” I note.
“Yes,” he agrees, just a touch of bitterness to his tone.
“Did the villacs build these tunnels?”
He considers the question, then nods.
“Do they still control them?”
Clicking his tongue, he shakes a finger at me. We advance down one dark tunnel after another, twisting and turning. Finally we come to a door and the Cobra stops. “We’ve arrived. I’ll leave you. Proceed as you wish.”
“Wait,” I stop him. “What’s your name?”
“Cobras don’t have names. Not as far as you’re concerned anyway.”
He leaves.
I stand in the gloom a few moments, then push open the door. I enter a short corridor, both sides lined with human skulls, a few with scraps of flesh still clinging to the bone. The tops have been sliced off all of them and candles set within. I’m not given to superstitious fears, but my spine tingles as I walk the short stretch to the door at the opposite end of the corridor.
Driving the fear from my mind, I focus on the door and open it. Stepping inside, I study my surroundings. I’m in a fair-sized room, a single bed in one corner, knives, chains and other weapons in another. The third corner’s bare. In the fourth rests a desk decorated with human bones—dozens of them are pinned to the legs and around the rim. At the desk sits a man with his back to me. He’s breathing lightly, busy with something. Stepping closer, I peer over his shoulder and see that he’s prising the eyes from the sockets of a dead child’s head.
“Have you ever killed a child?” he asks conversationally.
“No,” I sigh.
“They afford great sport.”
There’s no answer to a statement like that. Looking away, I wait for him to speak again, which he does presently. “You know who I am?”
“I know who you claim to be.”
I sense his smile. “Surely you do not doubt your own eyes and ears?”
“I know how easy it is to mimic a man. I’ve been doing it for ten years.”
“The appearance, y
es, but not the voice,” he retorts. “I have eavesdropped on you many times. You never mastered my dulcet tones.” He swings around and faces me. This close, there’s no mistaking him. The face, the eyes, the snakes can all be copied, but that expression of sheer, gleeful, inhuman evil is unique. I’ve never come close to matching it and I don’t believe anybody else could either.
“Salutations, Al m’boy,” Paucar Wami says, then spreads his arms and grins his most charmingly twisted smile. “Don’t you have a hug for your dear ol’ pappy?”
2
pappy
You’re dead.” The words sound ridiculous said to him in the flesh. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, across from my father, a man ten years deceased. He hasn’t moved from his seat at the desk.
“No,” he says thoughtfully, fingers toying with the child’s head as he speaks. “I have been, and shall die again soon I’m sure, but for the time being I live.” He chuckles. “You could say this is one of my better days.”
“Where have you been?” I ask.
“Most of the time… deceased. The rest down here, training my boys and girls to be good little killers.”
“You recruited the Snakes?”
“A few, but most were brought to me by the priests. I am the figurehead leader, the assassin who returns from beyond the grave. The priests slaughter me in front of the Snakes every so often, then resurrect me. It impresses my followers no end. I also make impassioned speeches and participate in training. And occasionally I accompany a phalanx on a raid to the upper world, where I glory in death’s wondrous embrace once again.”
“You killed Tasso’s and Davern’s men?”
“Some of them. The Snakes took care of the rest.”
So Davern was right. Paucar Wami did kill his men. It was just a different Paucar Wami from the one he assumed.
“I don’t understand this. You were an Ayuamarcan. You should have died with The Cardinal. Hell, you did! How have you come back?”
“I have not come,” he answers, eyes dark. “I have been brought.” He tosses the child’s head away, stands and stretches. He’s exactly as I remember. Hasn’t aged a day. He should be an old man, but time doesn’t weigh heavy on him. He looks younger than I do.