U’Sumi took one and ignited it. Torch in left hand and the blade Phoenix Fire in his right, he and Taanyx continued into the gloom.
The twisted tunnel had few side chambers and no forks. After nearly a half-hour, they entered a large cavern lit by several of the green torches.
Shadows draped the chamber, except for small patches illuminated by the emerald lights. Ceremonial head-wear and knives decorated in gold filigree winged serpents and long-necked leviathans cluttered several stone tables. U’Sumi stopped midway through the cavern when he heard a noise from beyond the tables. He circled around, sword ready, to see what it was.
A pre’tween boy lay manacled by his ankle to a chain in the wall at the far end. His captors had attired him in a kind of Temple wear, except his garment was light green, or maybe pale blue, tinted by the torches. U’Sumi approached him silently so as not to disturb him. Taanyx meandered around the tables with the cutlery and masques, emitting a series of low snarls.
U’Sumi practically stood right over the prisoner before he noticed that the boy’s eyes were opened, staring blankly off into space. They reminded him of those in the corpse on the slab. He stooped down, and waved his hands in front of the youngster’s face, not expecting any response.
“Are you here for more practice?” the boy asked in a passive, potion-induced voice.
“I didn’t realize you were aware of me.”
“I feel like dream-time and I don’t care about stuff.”
“Did they make you drink a potion?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you feel dreamy and numb. Try to fight it. How long have you been like this?”
The Prisoner seemed unable to gather his thoughts. “They took my li’l brother—could’ve been a day ago—and my other brother a-fore that. Thar’s no time here. You’ren’t with’em, are you?”
U’Sumi surmised that the most recent brother had been the body he had seen in the ruins. The kid’s strange dialect was thick.
“No I’m not one of them. They captured my father and my wife-to-be on the same night they took your brother…” he hesitated at the indelicacy of finishing the sentence and left it to hang. “I’m here to free them.”
“Take me with you,” the boy said with an eerie detachment. “I might know whar they be holding your people.”
“Is there a key to this manacle?”
“They grab one from by that torch when practice time it is.” He pointed to an alcove opposite the tables then let his arm flop to his side.
U’Sumi retrieved the small metal rectangle and released the prisoner. “What’s your name?”
The boy paused in his reclined position, as if trying to recall. “Yafutu,” he said after a few seconds.
U’Sumi paused at the irony. Yafutu was a Far Western version of the name Iyapeti. He shook away the thought and asked, “How did you get here?”
“They took my family’n me the night we put into port. We’re Outriggers from the Bay of Whales—with our own rig and everything. They killed my parents then dressed me’n my brothers in Temple suits. My two brothers they took away. I be last.” At the mention of family, a brief trace of sorrow and fear brushed across his face, only to submerge again into the soulless apathy of whatever spell the dark acolytes had bound on him.
An idea began to form in U’Sumi’s mind. “Did they take your boat?”
Yafutu swooned, as if he fought to remain focused on the questions. “Don’t know. They captured us while we climbed to visit the Setting Sun Gates. Our fleet-mates say there was once good magic here. They’re wrong.”
“Did the ones who took you ever mentioned your boat or shown any interest in where you came from and how you got here?”
The boy looked for a moment as if he might break free of his fog. Even stripped of his emotions, he could not meet U’Sumi’s eyes, as if a palpable sense of shame hung over him that loosened his limbs into a slump that was far more than just the effect of some potion. “They show interest only in practice,” he mumbled, and then huddled himself into a tight ball as if some rudimentary self-consciousness were beginning to return.
U’Sumi wanted to ask more, but thought better of it. At least the stimulation of his questions seemed to bring the youngster out of his languor.
“Can you take me to where they are holding my people now?”
Yafutu sniffed and then slowly wobbled to his feet. “Follow me.”
They exited the chamber into another passage just outside the torch glow, nearest the manacle platform. Yafutu walked like a living corpse, stilted, drawing will from an outside source—in this case, fortunately, from U’Sumi. Taanyx padded silently alongside, wary of their new companion. They twisted further downward through more tunnels doubtless carved by drainage waters from when the lands had first risen above the endless sea. Echoing ocean waves grew louder as they went.
A tight turn brought them to another chamber filled with ensconced green crystals that amplified the light of the seaweed torches. Right, a grotto pool foamed with black ocean water, connected by some undersea passage to the deep bay outside. Something large and fast swam in there, for U’Sumi noticed a dark shape break the surface and heard the puff of a blow-hole. He would have looked closer, except he then saw what lay beyond the pool.
The huge jade idol of a gryphon with outspread wings of gold-laced bronze filled the other end of the hall beyond the undersea tunnel. The dark pit of agitated water extended into the stone floor between the idol and U’Sumi, narrowing the passage between them. Chained to a pedestal beneath the gryphon’s wings, his father and T’Qinna sat, seemingly unharmed.
A’Nu-Ahki shouted, “Look out for the mirrors!” when U’Sumi stepped into the chamber.
“What mirrors?”
Three hooded fighters stepped into existence from thin air in front of U’Sumi. Stunned by what appeared to be sorcery, he soon realized that his father had referred to reflectors placed to multiply the illumination of the crystals and torches. From his vantage point at the portal, the large glass-metal mirrors also concealed swordsmen.
“Stay behind me!” he warned Yafutu, as he launched himself toward the hooded swordsmen and raised Phoenix Fire in battle for the first time.
The strange berserker dance U’Sumi had experienced in the Balimar Straits trench many months ago overcame his movements. Time everywhere else slowed to snail pace and left him free to wreak havoc. His grandfather’s careful swords-manship training took over, transforming him from a gawky ‘tween into a combat seasoned veteran formidable in his own right even without the savage anointing.
Taanyx, ears boxed and muscles tensed, leapt at the throat of another fighter. The tremendous release of compressed feline energy looped past the man’s uselessly flailing blade and whipped around him in a twisting melee of fangs and claws. The fighter went down in a spray of blood, his throat ripped open by the sphinx’s razor-sharp talons.
U’Sumi spun, using the oiled seaweed torch in his other hand as a flaming club against the remaining hooded foe. More cloaked guards stepped out from behind other mirrors as he dispatched the last of the first three, forcing him to divide his attention between them. U’Sumi pressed forward, a searing phantom that scorched and battered on one hand and swirled the air with enraged metal on the other. One after another, the hooded figures fell to his rampage.
A bizarre and terrifying laughter filled the cavern, enveloping everything in its dark echoing mirth. U’Sumi almost paused, frightened by the sound, only to realize that it came from his own throat. He leaped ahead, hacking and laughing, jabbing and roaring. One corpse after another tumbled underfoot, their lives released into Underworld’s black maelstrom beneath his hand. Five… six… seven… he lost count, vaguely aware that he was not alone in racking up a tally.
The sphinx bit a deep gash in the throat of her latest victim, and left him to bleed, choosing yet another prey for her next pounce. She flew from attacker to attacker, talons flared, harassing their attempts to converge
on U’Sumi as if they had worked out the tactic together before hand.
In the background, T’Qinna called out for the sphinx to watch out for this or that swordsman or to bolt left or right, parry, and attack. U’Sumi believed her now; she literally could speak to the animal, and the sphinx understood her.
As U’Sumi pushed onto the narrow section of the floor, where the pool reached nearest to the wall on his left, he began to entertain hope that he could reach his father and T’Qinna. One by one, the last few swordsmen either fell back toward the idol or crumpled beneath his sword or Taanyx’s fangs and claws. When enemy reinforcements stopped appearing from behind the mirrors, his hope grew to assurance.
Then everything changed.
The dark pool exploded with a thunderous splash, followed by a black mass that flew up from the depths and slid across the flag-stones to cut off U’Sumi from the altar. Slapping flippers and coiled-snake neck on a spade—like body, the dripping creature careened sideways into the retreating marauders and a remaining mirror.
Glass shattered everywhere, as the creature crushed two men to death against the wall beneath its writhing middle. Another man screamed until steel-trap jaws snapped him up by the arm and hurled him with the flick of its head into the black foaming pool. There a seething brood of young dismembered the shrieking man until the water frothed purple in the garish emerald light.
The sea dracan uncoiled its neck, raising its head so that yellow bio-glow eyes could survey the chaos it had made. Its cold gaze settled upon U’Sumi, who had frozen, sword poised before its spiky teeth. Taanyx retreated, hissing and growling, back to the tunnel, where Yafutu leaned against the archway. The boy watched as if none of it really mattered.
The monster pivoted its neck to give itself a variety of observation angles on this new foe. It seemed to consider its next move with great care.
U’Sumi set himself as a steel sculpture, following the marine reptile’s motions only with his eyes. Although he stood still, the battle-dance time-dilation had not released him.
When Leviathan’s head began its lightning thrust, it first withdrew backward and up, muscles like teeming worms constricting beneath black scaly chainmail. The coils unleashed, launching the monstrous head with a slow-motion snap of its jaws. U’Sumi twisted aside with preternatural ease and swung his blade, using the momentum of his turn to strike hard against the creature’s neck.
Startled at closing its teeth on thin air, the sea dracan did not seem aware of its own wound. A gash oozed blood like a ruptured gill behind its head. U’Sumi had missed the main artery. Again, it flailed its head at him, only to close jaws on a dissolved wraith. Broken teeth tinkled like porcelain on the stone floor.
U’Sumi had tumbled under its neck to swing up on the other side. Another slash tore into Leviathan’s serpentine coil. Yet the creature’s scales, like rocks embedded in hardened rubber, deflected much of the blade’s force. While ugly, the new wound was no more serious than the first.
U’Sumi realized that he had succeeded only in angering the beast. For its black scales were more tightly knit together than a crocodile’s, and far more flexible. The sea dracan lashed out again, faster in its pain-driven fury.
The side of its jaw caught U’Sumi and bludgeoned him into one of the few remaining mirrors. Shards exploded in angry diamond-stars across the flagstones and into his flesh. Leviathan heaved forward on its flukes, awkwardly straining like a giant black maggot to where U’Sumi had fallen.
He rolled to his feet in time to face it.
The dracan was out of its element. If the space between the cave wall and the pool were only a bit wider, it would have been easy to run around the creature. Instead, U’Sumi positioned himself before the monster to defend the tunnel where Yafutu still wobbled in his dream fog. A long while they stared each other down, while each caught their breath.
Dracan leviathans were smaller than the kind that had snapped the Piper from the ironclad. U’Sumi began to consider himself a reluctant expert on them. Strangely, he felt no fear—even when the monster shuffled at him again with cautious half-motions from its flippers. Perhaps the spiritual combat gift still rested on him. In either case, he glared at the creature and took a defiant step forward, raising Phoenix Fire with elbows behind his shoulder to jab upward at its throat, as if with a giant dagger.
True to his uncanny expectation, the dracan faltered, lowered its head, and swung it to one side. U’Sumi took another step. This time the creature shoved its great oar-like flukes in reverse, sliding backward with the sound of dragging wet leather. Another step proved that this was no mere tactical retreat. The monster somehow feared him. Why?
An eerie knowing possessed U’Sumi, a new dimension of his battle anointing. He again stepped forward and pointed his sword at the pool.
“Back to the pit prepared for you!” he shouted.
The sea dracan hesitated, as if trying to comprehend this new thing.
“Go, by the Divine Name!” U’Sumi commanded, shaking Phoenix Fire toward the pool.
The beast blew a puff of noxious phosphorescent gas from its mouth and blow-hole as it wriggled back to its pool. With a lamenting squeal, it slid over the side into familiar murky depths.
U’Sumi raced to his father, outrun by a joy-crazed Taanyx.
Again the tide turned.
A flash of white light and purple smoke exploded on the floor in front of U’Sumi, cutting off the idol pedestal from view. Taanyx scrambled back to the portal in panic, where Yafutu now clutched at the arch stones.
As the violet haze dissolved back to green dimness, a last swordsman dressed in a tied black robe and wearing a golden masque appeared from the dying flame.
“Light tips the scales well by your sword!” shouted the golden masqued man in a strangled voice.
U’Sumi rushed forward and locked blades with him, pressing too close for his opponent to swing. Then he butted heads with a quick diagonal thrust that knocked the masque from its wearer. The first thing he saw as he leaped backward to evade the counterstrike was his adversary’s broad teeth, grinning with yokel pride. The second was his dead, sharky eyes.
A’Nu-Ahki’s son almost dropped his weapon in surprise. The Caretaker, Iskui of the Gates of the Setting Sun, used that moment to lunge. He nearly succeeded in running U’Sumi through where he stood.
“If you wanted me dead, why didn’t you just take me up at the shrine where you had me unarmed?” U’Sumi asked, as he twisted aside.
“Would’ve been sacrilege,” huffed the Caretaker, who evaded U’Sumi’s counterstrike.
“Why should that bother you?”
Iskui, panting, somehow managed to take on the tone of a sage in lunging phrases that chopped with his sword; “E’Yahavah and the Winged Basilisk—they’re one and the same! They’re balanced forces of light and darkness, good and evil. One cannot exist without the other!”
The Caretaker jumped back to evade U’Sumi’s counter-stroke.
A time transcending insight from U’Sumi’s battle gift revealed that Iskui’s fish-cold eyes and lecturing mouth somehow called their wisdom up from the nearby offshore ocean trench, a place where fire and water met under pressure; a place that would soon be glutted by the world’s silt-infused dead.
Iskui attacked again, chattering, “We’re made in E’Yahavah’s image, are we not? Is not every man a mix of light and darkness—good and evil? Can you separate the good in you from the bad? Can one get rid of the other? No matter how good you try to be, you will still catch yourself doing evil—or at least wishing you could!”
U’Sumi swung and missed.
The Caretaker said, “No matter how far a man flees from goodness, his heart betrays a desire to love, and be loved. Can Q’Enukki’s son not know this?”
U’Sumi locked blades with him in a metallic clang that echoed in the stony blackness above. “No darkness at all!”
Iskui shoved him away, waving his sword as they circled each other looking for the next opening
to strike. “You can’t deny it! The Old Ones—they tried to deny the truth! They lied and cheated, raped children, stole wives, twisted laws, and perverted justice! Yet still they claimed to serve the Shrine only in the Light! They wouldn’t admit how they pretended—that they couldn’t stop pretending! I was there! I saw, and I gathered the young with me! Every revolution of positive change starts with the young!”
“So you rose up in united treachery and in one night slew them all in their sleep!” U’Sumi finished for him, and then thrust his sword tip at the Caretaker who blocked the stroke.
Iskui’s babbling was slowing him down. “It started that way, then spread to other cities. They wouldn’t listen! They wouldn’t face the truth! People can’t deny who they are and what they feel!” He pushed himself forward sloppily in wild, arcing chops.
U’Sumi jumped clear. “And who are you?”
“Nobody! But, at least I’m authentic and balanced! I can see whom I reflect, and know when to be what!”
U’Sumi parried and jabbed. “You’ve forgotten the Curse! This isn’t how we were made in the beginning! When is it ever right to molest and murder young boys?”
Iskui smiled. “E’Yahavah’s darker half is insatiable!”
The suggestion that any of this reflected E’Yahavah made U’Sumi’s blood boil. He attacked faster than at even before. The Caretaker quickly fell back toward the gryphon idol, outmatched by such speed. Within seconds, U’Sumi hacked his opponent’s sword hand, causing his adversary to tumble backwards onto the pedestal steps and drop his weapon.
A’Nu-Ahki’s son commanded, “Release the prisoners!”
The Caretaker gripped his bleeding wrist. “The key is on my belt.”
U’Sumi snatched it and unlocked his father, keeping a steady eye on Iskui. He then gave the key to his father to release T’Qinna.
Iskui said, “I don’t think you’ll get far, but not because I have any others on their way down from above.”
The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) Page 23