by Clara Woods
31 The Keyhole
To their side, they could see the parked ships, and a guard fixated on staring into the sky. If he still expected the dangers to come from there, maybe that meant he hadn’t seen the Star Rambler land a few kilometers down.
Good.
Further down the wall of the temple, a set of provisional ladders led up the lava stream. Cassius put a finger to his mouth and motioned for them to stay back. On silent feet, he ran to the guard. The man never saw him coming, and within seconds he was tied up and gagged.
“Why are you here?” Cassius was asking the man when Lenah and the others approached. He flexed his enhanced arm, getting a fearful look from the man.
The guard didn’t speak, but the perspiration on his forehead gave away his fear.
“Why are you here?” Cassius repeated, lifting his arm, ready to strike.
“Wait, let me,” Lenah interrupted. Cassius shot her a questioning look, but didn’t move on the man.
She knelt next to the guard with a smile, reaching out with her talent. Hopefully her group would think he’d simply succumbed to her charm, but she didn’t want to use violence where it wasn’t strictly necessary. This group of people might be here for totally different purposes. Maybe they were archaeologists.
“Who are you?” she asked in a friendly voice, finding his aura. She spread the idea of him trying to impress her, a beautiful woman interested in him, in his mind. It went in easily, his defenses low by nature, not like Cassius had been. She still felt bad for influencing him that day in his cabin. Usually she had strict rules about not using her talents on friends. But back then, Cassius hadn’t been a friend.
“Peter Krohn,” the man answered, staring up at her with eyes full of admiration.
“Peter, it’s nice to meet you.” Lenah forced a smile onto her face. “Tell me, why are you here?”
“Guarding the ships. There are monsters out there, and earlier, I thought I heard a ship,” Peter answered, lifting his chin.
“That’s quite observant of you,” Lenah said. She sent an image of her looking at him with admiration if he continued to answer her questions. “And who are you here with?”
The man wrinkled his brows, as if that question was pushing him, but he finally answered. “With her and her men.”
“Her?” Lenah asked.
“The Queen.”
That startled Lenah enough to lose the train of thought she was pushing toward the guard. So much for him being some innocent archaeologist.
His face contorted in an angry grimace. “Hey! What did you do to me?”
He tried to get up, but Cassius stepped close.
“How many men are in there?” he asked, grabbing the man’s throat with his metal arm.
“I don’t know. Too many for your group to— ah.” Cassius was pressing his throat. “Around thirty!” the man shrieked. Cassius let go and finished him off with a blow to the back of his head. The guard sank to the ground, unconscious.
They quickly made their way to the temple a few hundred meters left of where the ladder was, not prepared to face thirty men there.
“How did you do that?” Cassius asked, catching up to her.
Lenah shrugged. “Just my natural charm.”
He actually snorted.
“What? I am charming,” she insisted with a smile.
He arched an eyebrow. “Sure.”
She was relieved when they reached the towering hill of lava. It loomed several meters tall against the temple, but left a narrow passage in between.
Cassius neatly jumped onto the highest point of the lava stone as if it was just a step. His landing was accompanied by another loud screech. This time it sounded close. Lenah turned around to scan the sky and could make out three dark dots, circling high above from the direction of their ship. They seemed to spiral down, as if trying to figure out what had come to intrude into their world.
“Let’s hurry,” Cassius said, leaning down and giving Uz a hand. He pulled her up neatly, and followed to do the same with Persia and the doctor. Finally, Lenah grabbed his outstretched arm and found herself standing in front of the tall temple a moment later. The building looked ancient, both contrasting and fitting into the mountain at the same time. It was masterfully built. One rounded tower sprouted out of the next, leaving her vision full of domes of different sizes. Some had tall, thin towers, and many of those ended abruptly in an uneven rim of stones where time had eaten away the domed tops. She couldn’t make out a single window anywhere. Where the provisional ladder was, a hole gaped in the temple wall. Its uneven shape indicated some man-made influence, like an explosion.
“Do we take their entrance?” she asked.
“There’s a door down there,” Uz answered, pointing down. There was a very small corridor between the lava stream they were standing on and the lower walls of the building. Lenah had to search for long seconds before she saw anything but smooth lava coming up to smooth walls.
“How is it possible that the lava stopped here?”
“At first glance, it’s not,” Doctor Lund said, and rubbed his chin. “Something must have guided it from the top of the mountain around the building, and only then further down. Maybe they had a channel here at some point, but it crumbled away.”
“Nonsense,” Uz said. “Can’t you even see magic when you’re standing right on top of it?”
Persia was throwing worried looks over her shoulder and to her sides. “Let’s continue that discussion later, shall we?”
Lenah felt the same, expecting company either from the winged creatures still flying over their ship or the thirty men inside the temple.
Cassius seemed to agree, because with one well-aimed jump, he leapt down into the corridor. “Uz, jump down, and I’ll catch you,” he said in a whisper.
One by one, they landed into the semi-darkness, and not one moment too soon. Suddenly a large shadow fell over them and let out an ear-piercing shriek. They ran down the corridor, which was just big enough for a normal-sized person to walk in. Cassius had to put his shoulders sideways to fit. He took the lead, making his way toward the doorway. They found it closed, but before she got the chance to further investigate, Lenah was smashed violently into the wall. Confused, she got up to see the others in similar situations. Then something came at her again from above. A giant tail was swooshing by, accompanied by another ear-piercing shriek. It was answered by several more close by. The dinosaur’s big body might not fit into the small space between the lava and the building, but its tail certainly did.
“Behind me!” Cassius yelled, getting out his knife while pulling Doctor Lund up from where he had fallen. Lenah shuffled to get in position and aim her pistol, but with the monsters coming from above, she couldn’t see the vulnerable eyes. Suddenly, two more tails crowded the corridor. Cassius jumped forward with his knife, hacking at the tips. Before long, he was slammed backward, crashing into Lenah and the doctor. Lenah landed hard, her back hitting the frame of the portal. She tried getting up, but the force of the blow had taken her breath away, and she had to pull herself up with the help of the wall behind her. Cassius was already up and slicing his knife at the tails again. Uz was inspecting the door.
“Uz, any luck on that door?” Lenah asked her.
Uz looked up, shaking her head. “It doesn’t have a visible mechanism. Just a smooth stone surface.”
They were interrupted by another swoosh of the giant tails that Lenah only managed to avoid by ducking into a narrow crevice between the door and its frame. Her hand caught hold of something, and this time, she kept her footing while lifting her pistol again. Shooting, even if it didn’t have any visible effect, was better than not doing anything. Cassius was hacking at one of the tails and edging his knife in between the scales. Finally the creature flew up, bleeding from a deep cut in the tip of its tail. She didn’t know whether it left to lick its wounds or to ready itself for its next attack, but there were still two more creatures, and Lenah didn’t see how Cassius woul
d be able to fight them off much longer. Her grip tightened again on the handle she had found, and she pulled herself fully upright, aiming her pistol.
“Lenah, what is that?” Uz’s urgent voice broke her concentration.
“What’s what?”
“There, by your hand.”
Lenah snapped her hand away, afraid something was going to bite her any second. She turned, but there was nothing there, only a round hole that she’d been using as a handhold.
“Persia,” Uz said, her voice still urgent, “give me the stone. Now!”
Persia, who was kneeling a few meters away, struggling to move her hammer in the tight space, looked puzzled but pulled the stone out of her pocket and threw it toward Uz. The Cassidian caught it neatly, then dove toward Lenah and put the stone in the opening, where it blended perfectly with its surroundings. Lenah realized with an excited jerk of her stomach that the stone and the temple were made of the same material.
Then the temple opened in front of them.
32 Silent Souls
The door closed silently behind them, and darkness engulfed them completely. However hard Lenah tried to pierce through it, the only thing she could see was some faint light deep inside what appeared to be a large hall. Again, Cassius took the lead and Lenah followed close behind, clutching the hilt of her weapon hard, not that she’d be able to aim at anything in the pitch black.
It was utterly quiet in here, the screeching of the creature outside inaudible through the thick stone walls, and Lenah couldn’t shake feeling like an intruder in a long-lost grave. Cassius stopped after a few steps, trying to listen for any sounds. When he moved on without a comment, Lenah gave up trying to pick up anything for herself and trusted his better hearing. Persia pulled up a dim light, giving them some vision of their immediate surroundings. Lenah couldn’t make out the ceiling, but judging by how their careful footsteps echoed, it loomed high above them. After they’d walked for a while, something large came into view over their heads. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks; only Cassius continued to creep closer. With her laser pistol lifted, Lenah stared at the dark outline for movement. Then Cassius’ posture relaxed.
“It’s two statues,” he whispered back to them. Lenah stepped closer and took in the structure. It was a large humanoid with wings in the back – an angel, like in the Old Earth mythology. The material was light gray and smooth, polished to shine and reflect the little light they were throwing at it. Persia lifted her lamp, and a detailed depiction of a face, also humanoid in its features but at the same time foreign and cruel, came into view. Bright purple gemstones drew Lenah’s attention to the icy stare from its eye sockets.
Barely able to suppress the shiver that went through her shoulders, Lenah stepped into the corridor that lay beyond the two statues lining its entrance, expecting them to come to life and keep her group from passing through. But nothing happened. This corridor wasn’t empty either, however. Murals covered the walls from floor to ceiling.
“By the stars, I know what this is. I’ve seen this in the Book of Humility,” Uz whispered in awe next to Lenah.
“Isn’t that part of the Cassidian Canon?” Lenah whispered back, referring to the old books Cassidians spent all their lives studying. She stepped close to look at a scene of a group of people working with pickaxes on cutting stones. With their big heads and purple skin, they weren’t quite human. Their dress was light and spoke of a summer or warm climate, with everyone dressed in the same sleeveless gowns, covering short stubby legs to their knees.
Uz nodded, wide-eyed, lightly touching the mural with a long finger. “Yes,” she finally said, and her voice sounded pressed. “By the founders, I never believed it. I thought it was all made up millennia ago, to keep us from changing our ways. But here it is. The original.”
“That means Cassidians have been here before,” Cassius said from behind Lenah.
That surprised Lenah. Most Cassidians never left Cassidia. But who knew how old this temple was? After all, humans had only arrived to the new home system two thousand years ago. What they were looking at was probably older.
“What do they teach you about this?” she asked Uz.
“Oh, it’s a lesson on greed. It’s the tale of the Syrr princess, a small folk living in great numbers on a lush planet. The princess fought a war against the ruler, a man who brought them great suffering. I don’t remember the exact wording in the canon, but he enhanced his intellect by killing his most able people and transferring their power into himself. The Cassidian Canon considers this a forbidden action. The princess was locked away, left to die, but instead, she passed her soul into a stone, to never have her message forgotten. The message is this poem.
“Farmers weeding, cooks roasting, masons building,
I can enjoy a grander life.
In death, my soul becomes a stone.
Washed round by water,
In swirls of a thousand galaxies I glitter.
Listen!
It is my soul, it is my soul.”
“A stone that’s round and has glittery swirls?” Lenah croaked when she’d finally found her voice again. She shot one look at Persia, who only shrugged. Apparently the poem hadn’t had the same effect on her, but Lenah could have sworn Uz was describing their stone.
A low rumbling, accompanied by the floor shaking under their feet, jerked them all into action. Was that a volcano erupting over their heads? They took a few hurried steps forward, passing another pair of angels lining the wall and stopped right outside the hall beyond.
“Uhm…” Persia breathed after the tremors had stopped. “That was either a very strange coincidence, or we weren’t supposed to come here.”
“The front doors opened for us. I believe the bringers of the stone are welcome here,” Uz said, but her voice was missing its normal conviction, and was barely audible. Everyone quickly stepped through into the chamber and, as if on a motion sensor, dim spheres started casting cold blue lights. Lenah noticed that the light glowed from the tops of hundreds of small statues. No, not from the top, from the eye sockets. Made from the same light material as the angels, these were smaller, the size of a ten-year-old human’s, and clearly were the stone versions of the people depicted on the mural. Syrr, Uz had called them.
They stood in countless rows, like an army, leaving only a narrow corridor in their middle. Lenah joined Cassius, who was inspecting the first statue to their right, touching the smooth part of the stone that was giving off the soft glow. The effect of the hundreds or thousands of lights was creepy enough to make Lenah wish they’d never come here. It was so incredibly cold.
They all waited tensely to see if something would happen, but all stayed silent. With Cassius in the lead, they stepped into the middle row. After a few moments, Lenah heard a struggling sound behind her. She whirled around, pistol drawn, to see Doctor Lund being crushed between the first two statues on each side, both of which were holding him by the throat. Without making a sound, they had moved up.
In the distance she could now hear a soft humming, gradually getting louder.
Something was coming from the direction they’d been headed in.
Cassius rushed by Lenah to grab one of the two statues. After several seconds of struggling, he managed to break off the stone arm that had found its way over the doctor’s throat. The arm fell down with a clatter. Then he repeated the same with the other statue, but this triggered a multitude of movement around them. Five more statues moved up at the same time, while the humming was coming closer as well. Afraid to shoot either Doctor Lund or Cassius in the mangle of human and stone, Lenah put her gun away and grabbed one of the statues herself, trying to pull it away from the doctor. It couldn’t have made less of a difference. Despite being small, these things where made of solid stone and wouldn’t budge. The figure of the Syrr – a female one, if long hair and earrings were any indication of gender roles – kept moving further toward the doctor. Cassius was busy amputating stony limbs, but the more he broke, the
more moved up to fill the gaps.
With all the statues around them, Lenah pulled out her gun again, but when she was about to shoot, her attention was pulled toward the back rows. The statues there stood still, but something was coming nonetheless. It was a lot smaller, and judging by its height and smooth movement, it was flying. She aimed her weapon, but it adjusted course too fast for her eye to see, and she lost track of its location. To her, it looked as if it had teleported somewhere else. Whatever she’d done also caused several statues around to step close to her. She instinctively held up her arms to protect her face, but all they did was rip her weapon out of her grasp. It fell on the ground several meters away, and the statues moved back to stand in line.
“How —” She was still staring open-mouthed when something spoke right next to her. At least, that’s what Lenah thought it was doing. All she heard was a series of hissing sounds in different tonalities, coming from a little creature that had already pulled close. Only now she saw that it wasn’t a living creature, but rather a robot or drone. It was similar to the statues and made from stone, but the material was dark gray, as dark as the volcanic material the building seemed to be made of. It was also smaller, the size of a toddler instead of a ten-year-old child.
“Is this thing speaking to us?” Lenah asked in the general direction of her group, though everyone else was only paying attention to the fight going on behind her.
She addressed the little drone. “We are not looking for a fight. We are peaceful,” she said in slow G-Standard once the hissing stopped. The drone turned toward her and came closer, making several more hissing noises. Up close, Lenah saw that it was, in fact, a small drone, a perfect imitation of the humanoid statues. It had delicate facial features, though wrinkled, and an equally fragile body. Its head, however, was hairless, though whether that was its age or because it was made out of stone, she couldn’t tell. The mouth moved while it spoke.
“We can’t understand you,” Lenah said.
Uz jumped in as well, saying something in her native Cassidian tongue. Lenah didn’t understand, as she’d chosen in school to learn the antique English Earth language, from which G-Standard was derived.
