by Alex Archer
Ken held up his hands. “I said there must be a way to go forward. What else would the point of this be?”
Annja smiled. And turned.
“That’s it.”
Ken frowned. “What?”
“We don’t go forward at all,” Annja said.
Ken shook his head. “I’m not walking backward to my death, Annja.”
“No. We don’t take this bridge at all. We never had to. But this was built to protect the vajra, and that protection seems to rely on using people’s preconceptions against them.”
“Explain,” Ken said.
“So, you manage to make it into the right cave, maybe by instinct, maybe by blind luck. Then you get to the chasm, and perhaps you find out that there’s a cleverly disguised bridge across. You think that’s it. You can see the other side and skip right across and fall to your death midway.”
“Okay.”
“But maybe if you find the bridge, you’re not supposed to go forward.” She dragged Ken back to the edge of the chasm where they’d started. “Look!”
Ken squinted and then barely saw what Annja was pointing at. A small crawl space made to blend into the rock. He glanced back at Annja.
“I guess we go this way,” he said.
Annja nodded. “I think so.”
35
Annja led the way as the crawl space opened down at a sharp angle. “Hold my ankles,” she called back to Ken. “It drops off farther ahead.”
“Don’t get complacent, Annja,” Ken said. “That’s what has probably killed everyone else.”
That and the fact they weren’t legitimate heirs to your family, Annja thought. But she kept her wits about her and moved slowly. Every few feet she would stop and close her eyes. Every time she felt a pull to keep going.
The crawl space emptied out into a large room. Annja didn’t step down onto the floor until she’d tested it both physically and using her instincts. Both proved sound, so she slid all the way out of the crawl space and waited for Ken to join her.
He slid out and shook his head. “I don’t know how earthworms do it.”
Ahead of them a single door awaited. Annja frowned. “Not much of a choice here, it would seem.”
Ken held her back. “Let’s exhaust every other possibility before we take the obvious choice.”
They spent the next twenty minutes going over every inch of the simple room. They both reached the same conclusion that the door was the only way to proceed, or as Annja reminded them, go backward.
Ken pulled the door open, and a strong updraft greeted them, extinguishing both of their torches and plunging them into absolute darkness.
“Uh-oh,” Annja said.
Ken cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t suppose you have any matches, do you?”
“Eiji and his boys cleaned my pockets out before we came into the labyrinth. I don’t have a scrap to work with here,” she replied.
Ken dumped his torch. “No sense carrying it along with us if we can’t rely on it.”
Annja dropped hers, as well. “I guess this is the real test, huh?”
“Yeah. The entire thing has been designed to whittle away at what we use and take for granted on a daily basis. Now we’re deprived of the one thing that really makes our conscious mind work against us—our eyesight. If we’re to continue on, it will have to be by using our other senses.”
“And instincts,” Annja said.
“Exactly.”
They both paused. Finally, Ken said, “Did you still want to take point?”
Annja laughed and felt Ken brush against her. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a point of reference.”
“That was my butt.”
“Seemed like a good enough point for me.” He chuckled. “Actually, that was an accident. I was looking for the door frame, so at least I know which way we came in.” He paused. “You, uh, didn’t turn around when you came in, did you?”
“No.”
“Good, I’d hate to get started going in the wrong direction.”
“You wouldn’t get far,” Annja said. “You’d run into the walls of the room we came into from the crawl space.”
“Good point.”
Annja felt him brush past her again. “You got that reference point?”
“I think I’m ready. But we’re going to crawl if that’s all right with you.”
“Absolutely.” Annja got down on her hands and knees.
“Take my ankle,” Ken said. “We’ll do this the way they do in search-and-rescue situations.”
Annja grabbed for his ankle. “Okay.”
“Go ahead.”
“I just did.”
Ken paused. “Annja, hurry up and grab my ankle so we can get going.”
Annja squeezed harder. “I have your ankle.”
“No,” Ken said. “You don’t.”
NEZUMA STOPPED just short of the door.
He could hear breathing on the side of it. Two distinct breathing patterns, he decided after another minute.
Guards?
Or meditating monks?
He frowned. It didn’t really matter. They would have to be killed. They prohibited his access and that simply wouldn’t do.
The question was how to get them to open the door.
Nezuma slid back and to the side of the door, checking the entire perimeter of it. It didn’t seem to have a lock.
So why not just open it?
He grinned. The two monks on the other side were about to get the surprise of their lives.
He gripped the door handle and pulled.
“ANNJA?”
She felt higher and found skin. Searching for the inside of the ankle, she tried to palpate the skin and detect a pulse.
There was none.
“I think I just found another seeker who didn’t quite make it.”
Ken scrambled back and bumped into her. “You okay?”
“Just a bit startled. I was going to comment on how cold your leg felt, but then when I realized it was a corpse, I felt better, if you can imagine that.”
“Probably better than finding another live person in here with us,” Ken said, sounding shaken.
“Yeah.”
Ken sniffed. “He hasn’t decomposed. Is it stiff?”
Annja nudged the body. “Yeah, definitely rigor mortis but not decomposition. Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. I’m not used to being around the dead.”
“Let’s move,” Annja said. “Staying in the room with a dead body doesn’t do much for me.”
“Good thing,” Ken said. He scrambled back up but not before taking Annja’s hand and placing it on his ankle. “You ready?”
“Now I am.”
Ken started crawling and Annja followed.
NEZUMA KNELT in the darkness of the room. On either side of him, the bodies of the two monks lay with their necks snapped. He’d decided it wouldn’t be good to shoot or stab them. Too much noise and too much blood.
By snapping their necks, they could still be positioned in such a way that they looked as if they were meditating.
Provided no one examined them too closely.
It ought to buy him some more time.
That was all he needed.
Nezuma stood and stole down the new corridor.
“I’VE HIT A WALL.”
Annja came up alongside Ken. She let her hands travel up and over the surface, but she found nothing but solid stone. “Weird.”
“How far do you think we crawled?”
“Felt like it had to be at least two hundred feet.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
Annja sighed. “Have you been checking your internal compass?”
Ken chuckled. “Good phrase for it. Yeah, I have. And everything seems to indicate this is where we need to be.”
“I agree.”
“But what is here?” Ken asked.
“Let’s check all over the walls and see if we can fin
d something that we’d be able to see immediately if we had light.”
She felt Ken’s hands on her. “Something’s been bothering me,” he said.
“What?”
“How did the person back in the room die? We haven’t seen anything that I’d say is dangerous for a while now. So what made him die like that? And why hasn’t he decomposed?”
“Maybe he’s the swamp vampire,” Annja said.
“I’m being serious.”
“I know. I’ve been wondering about that, too.”
“The only thing I can think of,” Ken said, “is that there must be something in here that killed him.”
“There’s a comforting thought.”
“I think maybe he crawled back there when he realized he was dying.”
“Which means whatever killed him is still in here.”
“Yes.”
“Swell.”
Ken sighed. “Just one more thing to think about as we explore.”
NEZUMA STOPPED and frowned.
He could hear voices. The sound of lots of voices was coming from behind the door down the hall.
They were excited about something. And from the numbers he heard, there was no way Nezuma could successfully take down all of them without the risk of injury or death to himself.
He did what made the most tactical sense to him.
He waited.
“I FOUND SOMETHING.”
Annja followed the sound of Ken’s voice to another wall. “What is it?”
“A series of three holes in a horizontal line, spaced about twelve inches from each other.”
“How big are the holes?” Annja asked.
“Only big enough to get my hand into.”
Annja took a deep breath. “Why is it I’m having flashbacks to when I went scuba diving and the dive masters told us to never stick our hands into the holes in coral because of the moray eels that lived there?”
“I was thinking there might be spiders up here,” Ken said. “But I understand what you’re saying.”
“You think there’s any other way to do this?” Annja asked.
“Have you found anything else?”
“No.”
“Neither have I.” Ken sighed. “Yes, I think this must be it.”
“I don’t suppose you can see anything by looking in?”
Ken chuckled in the darkness. “I didn’t stick my eye right up to the opening but I tried to squint and see. Nothing.”
“Figures.”
“I’m going to do it, Annja. I have to stick my hand in one of these holes and see what happens.”
Annja heard him breathing deeply and knew he’d be closing his eyes to check with his instincts about which hole might be the safe one.
“Okay,” he whispered.
“You know which one you’re going to choose?”
“The middle one,” he said.
“Good luck, Ken.”
“Thanks. Here I go.”
Annja held her breath. She heard the rustle of skin against stone as Ken stuck his hand in.
“It’s deep.”
Annja waited.
Ken breathed out in a rush. “There’s something in here.”
“Pull your hand out, Ken!”
She heard him bringing his hand back. He was breathing fast. What could have bitten him? Annja wondered. Would they be able to get help? Where were those stupid monks?
“Annja.” Ken’s voice sounded like a faint whisper.
“Yes?”
“I think I have the vajra.”
As soon as the words registered, Annja felt like screaming. But she didn’t because the next thing she knew, the entire room was filled with brilliant golden white light.
Annja couldn’t see a thing.
36
When she finally managed to blink her way back to full vision, Annja saw that they were in a large room surrounded by roughly twenty monks including Eiji. All of the monks smiled, but Eiji’s smile was larger than any other.
“You found it,” he said.
Ken held it aloft. “Yes.”
Annja looked at the golden vajra. Ken handed it to her. “I couldn’t have found it without your help.”
Annja took the vajra and found it heavier than she’d expected. It lay across her palm, roughly six inches long with five prongs at either end curving in toward the center. Ornate metalwork adorned the length of it. Just holding it, Annja felt as though she might be powerful enough to rule the world.
She handed it back to Ken. “This belongs to you and the Yumegakure-ryu.”
He accepted it and stood facing Eiji and his monks. “Thank you all very much for your service in the protection of this relic. My family and I thank you most sincerely for your time and devotion to its protection.” He bowed low and Eiji and his monks returned the bow.
Ken helped Annja to her feet.
Eiji regarded them both. “You found it without too much hardship?”
Annja smiled. “There were a few times I thought we might not reach it.”
“Ah, thought,” said Eiji. “That devious little inclination we all have to reason things out can often cause us more harm than good. Imagine if our prehistoric ancestors had stopped to consider a rational solution to the sudden appearance of a saber-toothed tiger?”
“We wouldn’t be here today,” Annja said.
“The labyrinth was designed to only let those through who could trust their instincts and know that they would be safe no matter what appearances presented themselves,” Ken said.
“Not an easy lesson,” Eiji said.
“As evidenced by the dead who have tried before,” Annja said. “Speaking of which—”
“Yes?” Eiji asked.
“There’s a corpse back in the room before this one. You might want to take care of it.”
Ken frowned. “One thing before you do that.”
Eiji smiled. “You want to know if I lied to you when you asked if I knew how to defeat the labyrinth?”
“You could have just brought us to this room and we could have gotten it much more easily than we did.”
“I did know about the existence of this room,” said Eiji. “We all do. But it would do no good for you to have forced me here. The vajra can only be retrieved going the route you traveled. Trying to force it out the back way would have had terrible consequences.”
“Like what?” Annja asked.
“This monastery is built over a fault line, and whoever designed the labyrinth made sure that any fraudulent attempts to get it would result in a massive cave-in that would kill everyone in the mountain and forever trap the vajra under tons of rock.”
Ken nodded. “Sounds fair.”
Eiji turned and spoke quietly to two of his monks and then turned back to Ken and Annja. “They will take care of the body.” His eyes twinkled. “I imagine that must have been a big surprise.”
“Something like that,” Annja said.
Eiji nodded. “You must be tired and hungry. We will celebrate the return of the heir to the Yumegakure-ryu with a feast.”
“I don’t think so,” a voice said.
Annja turned and jumped. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Nezuma stood in the doorway, holding a gun in his hands. Judging by how he held it, Annja guessed he knew precisely how to use it if he needed to.
Nezuma grinned at her. “Nice to see you again, Miss Creed.”
Annja frowned. “You didn’t get enough of me at the budokan tournament?”
“Oh, I had plenty of you there. I imagine you’re healed up nicely now? Your ribs all better?”
“Still sore.”
“Ah, pity.” Nezuma shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped, though. I’m sure you understand. Just a friendly match and all.”
“That doesn’t explain you being here, though.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Annja glared at him. “I assume you want the vajra.”
Nezuma nodded. “How quickly you forget our arrange
ment.”
“What arrangement?”
“If you like,” Nezuma said, “I can come over there and whisper in your ear the way I did in your hotel room.”
“That was you?”
“Of course.”
Annja gritted her teeth. “If you weren’t holding that gun, I’d knock your teeth down the back of your throat.”
Nezuma smirked. “No. You’d try to do that. And of course, you’d end up getting your ass handed to you the way I did it back at the budokan.”
“I drew blood, too, Nezuma. Don’t forget that,” Annja said.
“Every dog has their day. You were bound to get lucky once or twice. I wouldn’t bank on that saving your life today.”
Annja caught a subtle movement out of the corner of her eye. One of Eiji’s monks moved.
Nezuma’s gun swiveled and spit two rounds into the monk’s head. It happened so quickly that the sudden explosion of bullets caught Annja completely unaware. She clapped her hands over her ears and cried out.
The young monk slumped to the floor, already dead.
Nezuma shook his head and looked at Eiji. “That was a very stupid thing to do, old man.”
Eiji simply looked at him with no hatred or animosity in his eyes. “My fate has already been decided. It makes no difference what you do.”
“Is that so?” Nezuma’s gun barked again, putting a single round directly between Eiji’s eyes. The abbot of the monastery crumpled to the floor at the feet of the other monks.
Ken held up the vajra. “Enough! Isn’t this what you want?”
Nezuma regarded him coolly. “Give that to me, ninja.”
Ken smiled. “You spit that word like it’s an insult.”
“It is. Your kind have no honor.”
Ken’s eyes danced. “There’s honor in killing unarmed monks and old men?”
“And lots of other people, too,” Nezuma said. “I’m very good at it.”
“Proud, too,” Ken said. He raised the vajra. “What’s so special about this that you would come here and cause so much destruction?”
“The dorje was given to your family by my family.”
Ken’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care,” Nezuma said. “It’s the truth. I am the last in the Taishi family line. And that dorje belongs to me.”
