by Tom Abrahams
In parts, he stood erect as he walked, stretching his spine and moving as easily as one might in a dark tunnel lit only by a single burning torch. In other spots, the uneven walls narrowed and the floor rose as if to meet the ceiling. In those places, he bent over at his waist and used his hands to navigate his course. More than once, the back of his head scraped the rough, porous surface above him.
The tunnel seemed blasted a chunk at a time rather than carved or drilled with purpose. Branch said nothing as he moved, the tall shadows of his party absorbed into the black rock.
His discomfort extended to his thoughts. He’d been wrong to discount Anaxi’s warning. He sensed this. He should have engaged her, not blown her off. Sometimes, his insecurity undercut his guile and wit.
Anaxi Mander walked in front of him. She was small enough that she didn’t concern herself with the often-cramped conditions. She moved easily, if not methodically, along the drop.
More than once he considered saying something to her. He had questions. But he thought better of asking, having chastised his man at sword point for doing the same in the jungle. A good leader set a good example.
Flickering light drew his attention from Anaxi as it danced along the ragged curve of the walls. It looked to him like the reflection of water or snakes writhing in clusters.
Behind him, the shuffle of his men’s feet scuffed along the rock. Altogether, it gave him the feeling of a funeral procession and not of a victory march. That sensation stuck in his gut. He couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.
He touched Anaxi’s shoulder. She didn’t react. Unsure if she’d felt his touch, he spoke aloud.
“What is it?” he said to her, voice echoing. “What’s the final challenge?”
The unknown clawed at his cramped psyche as much as anything. He needed to know. He had to prepare himself. Not knowing what he and his men would face, what final obstacle they must overcome, was grinding on him.
Anaxi kept moving, dragging her left hand along the ragged wall. Only the side of her face was visible as she partially turned to answer him. “I don’t know.”
Branch took two elongated steps to pull even with her on her right. She kept moving, unfazed by his approach. It was as if he wasn’t there. She didn’t skip a stride or blanch at his approach.
Hunched at his waist, with an eye toward the sloping ceiling ahead, he seized her shoulder to slow her. His fingers gripped the joint and squeezed like dulled talons. “You don’t know, or you won’t tell me,” he growled.
She shrugged, rolling her shoulder to try to free herself from his grip. It didn’t work. She faced him and scowled. “Both,” she bristled.
He let go and wagged a finger at her. “You’re lying. You know what danger awaits us.”
She stopped cold. He did too. The men behind them piled into one another, but kept their feet.
It was Anaxi who poked her finger now. Standing up straight, she had an advantage over the hunched and off-balance Branch. He stumbled back a step when she connected, and hit his head on a sharp curve of rock.
“What I know is that you’re not worthy of the Kalevanmiekka,” she said. “It won’t matter what you do. The energy around it won’t let you take it.”
Adrenaline flushed through his body. His muscles tensed. His instinct was to take her tiny finger in his hand and twist it until it cracked like a clamshell underfoot.
He contained himself, instead sucking in a deep and patient breath.
With one hand, he reached back and blindly grabbed Le Grand’s collar. Branch yanked his torchbearer closer and took the flaming club from his hand. He dipped the flame toward Anaxi, and it brightened her face in a warm glow. Everything around her darkened to onyx black. The heat from the torch licked at his face, and he was certain it did the same to hers.
“If I weren’t worthy, little girl, I’d be dead.” He elongated his words for effect. The baritone vibrated in his throat and melted into the crackle of the flame between them. “Quit the nonsense. Get me to where I need to be. And if there are any surprises, you’ll be the first one I sacrifice to the gods or devils running this carnival. You understand?”
The flame flickered in her eyes, reflected in the shrunken dark pupils struggling to repel the bright orange and yellow tongues of heat. He thought he saw fear there too. For a second. Not even that long. Then it was gone and resolve returned. Her upper lip curled into a sneer.
She looked away from him and said, “Keep up, then. I’m getting tired of waiting for you.”
It took another two hours before they reached the end of the winding tunnel. Desmond Branch’s legs were heavy with exhaustion. His mouth was dry. His head pounded at the temples.
Torchlight revealed a round wooden door in front of them. Or was it a wall? It had no hinges. There was no handle. Only a single iron ring and, below that, burned into the aged, cracked wood, were four icons.
The first image was a simple diamond shape. The second image was a rectangle.
The third was a simple cross. The horizontal was much shorter than the vertical and it extended along the bottom half, below the horizontal line’s center.
The fourth image was the most ornate, though that was relative. It was a circle with eight straight lines extending from it. It reminded Branch of a cartoonish eyeball with false lashes.
Anaxi stood with her back to the door. She aimed a thumb over her shoulder. “This is it. The sword’s on the other side of that door.”
Despite his exhaustion, Branch was again renewed. He wiped the crust from his good eye.
“What are those?” he asked.
“What are what?”
“The symbols. The carvings. Whatever they are. What do they represent?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Frustration swelled. There she went again with the half-truths. “How is that?” he said. “How is it you know some things and not others?”
Again, Anaxi shook her head. “I’m not—”
Branch could feel the blood warming his face. He snarled through clenched teeth, cutting her off, “You memorized cute little rhymes but didn’t know what they meant. You find the one island on the entire planet where the sword is kept, a place nobody has found since long before the melt, but you couldn’t tell me that biting insects would kill my men.”
He jabbed at the air with a pointed finger blanched white from a clenched fist. He spat as he barked. Some of it hit the girl in the eyes and she flinched.
“Now you know the sword is behind that door but can’t tell me what these markings mean! How is that?” he roared. “How is that!”
His voice reverberated off the walls. In its fading tenor, those walls shook. So did the floor. He thought it might be some odd effect only he felt. The vibration started in his boots and worked up his legs into his gut.
But it wasn’t only him. Anaxi swayed and balanced herself against the door in front of him. To his right, Le Grand lifted his free hand to the low ceiling and planted his fingers there, as if anchoring himself to the rough volcanic rock. Behind him, his men stumbled and used one another to keep themselves mostly upright. Black dust rained on them from the low ceiling. It ran down the walls like rivulets of black rain.
When the quake stopped, its echo ran through his bones, like a string humming long after the pluck.
One of his men pronounced the cause. “Earthquake.”
Others mumbled in agreement. Their chorus of anxiety rose in volume until Branch halted it.
He turned to his minions and snapped, “We don’t know that!”
Branch hoped it wasn’t an earthquake. This far underground, inside a volcano, he worried about what a fracture in the earth might do. Would it open a gaping endless hole beneath their feet? Would it close off their exit and trap them alive in a black tomb? Or would they melt in an endless flow of magma?
None of those options were appealing. As much as Desmond Branch relished opportunities to inflict pain, he wasn’t much for being on the rece
iving end.
Anaxi placed her palms flat against the door. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not an earthquake.”
He watched her press the side of her face against the wood as if listening for a heartbeat. She closed her eyes. Then opened them wide. Fear stretched her features.
“What is it?” he asked.
The men behind him fell silent. A low vibration shook from the other side of the door. The iron ring on the door rattled against its strike plate.
“Whatever it is,” she said, barely above a whisper, “it’s enormous.”
She stepped away from the door. The quartet of burned images were at eye level for her, and she traced her fingers across the thick lines, pausing at the circle with the lashes extending from it.
Without turning around, she said, “Are you ready?”
Branch swallowed against the dryness in his throat. He checked his men over his shoulder, scanning their faces and gauging their expressions.
For all his adult life, Desmond Branch had led men into battle. On the endless sea or on the spots of land drizzled across the roiling globe, he’d fought for what was his even if it wasn’t. In every case his soldiers were hardened. The grit set in their jaws, the anticipatory glisten in their eyes had always told Branch they were ready. They’d foam at the mouth like rabid dogs for the fray in front of them. They fed on it. Sustained themselves on the blood and treasure of others.
As he studied their expressions now, he didn’t see that resolve. He didn’t recognize their unflinching willingness to risk their limbs and lives for the cause.
In their expressions, he saw hesitation. Fear.
It didn’t matter.
They’d not come this far to stop now. He faced Anaxi and nodded.
“Always,” he said.
She lifted a hand to the iron ring and then knocked it against the strike plate three times. The sound of metal tapping on metal echoed against the silence.
She quickly retreated behind Le Grand. Then she regarded the rest of the men and warned them, “Prepare yourselves. Most of you will die.”
The sound of metal sliding emanated from behind the door. There was a click and a thunk. Then the door creaked open on hinges in need of oil. Firelight flickered brightly from the inside, a shaft of yellow widening on the tunnel floor as the door swung inward.
Branch drew his sword and gripped it with both sweaty hands. His pulse was rapid in his chest and loud in his ears.
When the door opened completely, Branch leaned forward on his toes.
The room was awash in both light and shadow. Along the walls were a row of mounted torches. Where the flames reached, Branch could see. Where they didn’t, it was as dark as a moonless night on the endless sea.
At the far end of the room, Branch spotted three black pedestals rising from the floor as if molded into the igneous rock. If it weren’t for the objects set atop them, the pedestals would blend into the curved obsidian walls behind them.
In the warm light, the objects appeared to sparkle. The shapes distinct.
One was a large multifaceted diamond that reflected the firelight in prisms of vibrant colors. Its shape echoed the rhombus on the door.
On the middle platform was a large full-length mirror. Its glass reflected the flame of a torch opposite it, and its gilded frame almost glowed against its black surroundings. This, Branch understood, was the rectangle.
The podium on the left held the prize. The Kalevanmiekka stood tall. Its pommel and grip were closest to the ceiling. Its guard stretched outward and separated the hilt from the shining blade. That blade stretched downward to the podium, its point disappearing into the top of the black stone column from the start of the central ridge. This was the cross.
Branch processed all of it in two blinks of his healthy eye. If there was one thing he knew, it was treasure. Before the third blink, however, he witnessed the true-life representation of the circle-with-lashes symbol. His breath caught in his chest as if the air was sucked from the chamber.
Emerging from the shadows, visible in flashes, was a beast unlike anything Branch had seen or even dreamed of. It was a monster, true and simple. And now it moved between him and the Kalevanmiekka, its large shifting shape blocking the view.
The monster’s body was coiled. It was thick, and as its length writhed along the floor, a rhythm of pulses across the black, its dappled skin appeared slick. At first, in that instant, Branch thought it was a tail. It wasn’t. It was a serpent’s body larger than anything he’d ever seen. The size of a small whale, the serpent slithered toward the open door.
Branch’s eyes lifted from the body to see it split into a collection of tapered necks, which ended in diamond-shaped heads. Atop the heads were catlike eyes with narrow vertical pupils. Flared nostrils decorated reptilian snouts. Forked tongues flicked between razor-sharp rows of white fangs.
Quickly, Branch counted in his mind. One. Two. Three. And then he knew it. Eight. There were eight heads, like the eight lashes atop the circle on the door.
Without thinking any more about it or waiting for the beast to move, Branch drove forward into the room. He lunged at a shadow. One of the serpent heads recoiled and struck.
Its fetid breath engulfed the air around Branch, but he was quick. Even injured, the pirate moved with a twitch that couldn’t be taught. It was an innate skill, the ability to move and shift, to dance and strike.
Branch countered the serpent head with an upward stab of his blade. He missed the meat of it, but grazed its long neck with the side of his sword. Warm blood sprayed from the wound.
He unleashed a guttural war cry and lunged again. This time he waited for the beast to strike, sidestepping its clumsy move and swinging downward. The blade connected at the back of the diamond-shaped head at its widest part.
Branch felt the edge chop into the thick outer layer of its leathery skin before it hit bone. He jerked back, slicing deeper as he withdrew the blade.
The beast hissed and snapped, but it was wounded. Blood drained from the injury and the neck’s whipping motion slowed. Lazily, it tried again to strike. Branch deflected the attack and drove the blade into one of the monster’s eyes. Its mouth gaped open and flexed as if biting at air. Then it flailed and flopped to the ground, pulling with it the closest of the seven other heads.
That head jumped from a shadow and wound toward Branch, but was too far away to strike. The beast’s body was focused on the heart of the battle, turned away from Branch.
So focused on his own efforts, Branch didn’t notice what was happening right next to him. His men engaged the other sextet of viper-heads striking at them.
One of his men, he couldn’t tell which, was in the jaws of one of the snakes. His lower body hung from the clenched jaws of the beast as it whipped its neck back and forth. The man’s legs twisted at odd angles before the beast tilted back its head, unhinged its jaw, and swallowed the man whole.
Distracted as Branch was by the sight, the seventh serpent caught him. Its snap clacked inches from his hip. He jerked away in response and swiped his sword across the side of the beast’s long neck. It split its flesh like a fruit peel and exposed the layers of skin and muscle underneath. The beast recoiled into the shadow.
The aches and pains that had slowed Branch’s approach to this final stage of the quest were absent memories now. Adrenaline and sheer force of will flooded his body. Seizing an opportunity, he used the slain head of the beast to launch himself toward the seventh head.
Still in the shadow, Branch didn’t see the lithe neck swerve away and cut underneath him. When he landed, the snake struck. Jaws wide, it lunged with uncanny speed at his chest.
Just enough torchlight reflected off the venomous web of spittle stretched between the fangs, allowing Branch to parry the strike and manage a quick chop that sliced off the forked end of the snake’s tongue.
The beast threw back its head and flailed. When it whipped its head downward, Branch met it with the tip of the sword and drove
it through the underside of its jaw. Skewered, the beast thrashed twice before the lifeless appendage hit the ground with a sickening thud.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Anaxi stood frozen in the sweltering round chamber. The man who’d fought next to her was gone. Devoured. She watched as one of the beast’s snakelike heads unhinged its jaw and gulped. The flesh along its neck flexed in a wave as the muscles worked to slide the whole man deeper into its body.
To her left, Branch battled a second head. And then a third.
On both sides of her, more men fought. Le Grand and two others worked the farthest head to the right. To her left, another two men bobbed and swayed, using light and shadow to avoid the beast’s quick strikes. None of them went on the offensive the way Branch did. He was the only one, it seemed, not content merely to survive. Anaxi took her cue from him and not from the others. Offense was the best defense.
She shook herself from the momentary stupor and spotted a long spear on the ground, which had belonged to the man now dissolving in the juices of the snake’s digestive system.
She bent and plucked it from the ground. Her knuckles scraped across the rough stone, tearing skin away in flaky patches. Ignoring the sting, she hefted the spear’s shaft into her right hand and lifted it to her shoulder. She balanced the polearm, tilting the point upward in her sweaty palm. Hair stuck to her face, obstructing her vision as she worked her plan.
The snake head above her relished its meal and hadn’t returned to the fray. This was her chance. She studied the entire underside of its long neck and diamond-shaped jawline.
An oblong swell stretched the base of its neck. The swell moved lower and lower with each muscular undulation. Anaxi ignored what this meant for the man whose weapon she now held.
The snake flicked its tongue in the air. Testing it. Smelling it. Its body shifted and its chest heaved. The throbbing pulse of its heart seemed to ripple against the scaly construct of its skin. There was almost a glimmer where the source of all its life thundered beneath the surface.
