Cursed

by Sue Tingey

After a few yards we stepped into a well-lit cavern with a paddock to one side. Four creatures grazed on hay hanging in baskets from the rails of their compound; other than cursory glances they paid us no heed. Despite the danger, I was fascinated. I had assumed the cart and carriage had been pulled by horses, but these beasts were bovine and bore a similarity to oxen. Their coats were a glossy, chocolate brown, their eyes of a slightly darker shade and framed with long black lashes. Each had a double set of long handlebar horns plus a tusk midsnout for good measure.

  Behind the paddock there were entrances to two more gated caves and I assumed that was where the Sicarii housed their other animals. I was sure some of my captors had been riding animals very similar to horses—more similar than these bovines, at any rate.

  We hurried on and into another passageway hewn into red rock. The animal smells faded, but the stench of decay grew stronger until it was almost overpowering. Then the corridor we were following forked into two.

  “Wait here,” Jinx said and strode off to the left.

  Jamie and I exchanged a glance and he went after Jinx.

  “Wait here,” I told the others and then jogged after my two men.

  “Bollocks,” I heard Jinx say.

  “Oh shit,” Jamie’s voice echoed along the passageway, then I was stepping into another large cavern and the smell was so terrible it made my eyes water and bile rise into my throat. I clasped my hand over my nose and mouth to try and shut it out, but it was impossible.

  Jamie saw me first and went to stand in my way. “Don’t look,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders and trying to turn me back.

  I put my hand on his. “Jamie, you can’t protect me from everything.”

  “Let her see,” Jinx said, his voice cold.

  I went to stand by his side. He didn’t look at me. His jaws were clenched and his eyes narrowed. He was angry, angrier than I had ever seen him; angrier even than when he had seen the severed tip of my little finger. I followed his gaze and God help me, I wasn’t even surprised; disgusted but not surprised.

  In the center of the cavern there was a hole, a chasm really, that could have gone down into the center of the world as far as I could tell. In that hole, discarded like pieces of rubbish, were the broken bodies of the Sicarii’s victims. Rotting corpses, some not much more than denuded bone, were heaped in a nightmarish jumble of rags and body parts.

  “There must be hundreds,” I whispered.

  “Could be thousands,” Jamie said his voice bleak.

  Then I saw something move amongst the dead. A body shifted and a head fell back revealing deep, empty eye sockets and a skeletal grin. Images from every zombie apocalypse film I had ever seen flashed through my head, and if I could have got my legs to move I would have run. Instead, frozen to the spot, I clasped onto Jinx’s arm and fought back the scream building up inside me.

  Down in the pit an arm flopped to one side and a skull toppled over, tumbling down the pile to rest against the rock face. Another body shivered and its chest began to move.

  “My God,” I whispered, “he can’t be—” and the flesh burst outward as a gore-covered snout forced its way through the ribcage and I began to gag.

  “Filthy creatures,” Jamie said, his lips twisted in disgust.

  “Nature’s cleaners,” Jinx said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jamie said, taking my hand and leading me back out into the corridor.

  Jinx held my hair out of the way as I threw up while Jamie put his arm around me to stop me falling.

  “It’s okay,” Jamie kept telling me, but it wasn’t; nothing was ever going to be okay again, not while creatures like the Sicarii and Amaliel Cheriour remained in this world.

  When I eventually finished making a fool of myself we followed the passageway back to the others. “I wish I had a packet of peppermints right now,” I said.

  “If you’re asking for wishes to be granted I’d stick with the 44 Magnum,” Jamie said, “we could certainly do with one.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Why are there no spirits here? At the other temple there were some spirits outside, where their bodies rested.”

  “Maybe they are otherwise engaged,” Jinx said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Amaliel is conducting a ritual tonight.”

  “I do hope you’re wrong,” Jamie said, but his expression told me he didn’t think so.

  When we joined the others they didn’t ask us what we had found; they knew. We followed the right hand corridor; dark shadows between red walls. Then, as though a line had been drawn, the rock to either side of us, below our feet and above our heads turned black as coal, and ahead of us was a blackened brassbound door.

  “It’s probably more to do with keeping the smell out than blocking intruders from entering,” Jinx said. “It should open easily enough.” Sure enough, when he turned the handle and pushed, it swung open without a sound.

  We all hurried through, and with the door closed behind us the smell lessened, though I was sure it had permeated into my clothes, skin and hair, like smoke would when you’re close to a bonfire. I scrubbed at my lips with the back of my hand, scared of licking them in case they tasted of death.

  Four steps into the corridor I felt Kayla’s presence, and like the first time I had entered the great hall after arriving in the Underlands, I felt myself being drawn to her. Forgotten was the smell of death lingering on my body, forgotten were the heaps of putrefying bodies and the horror of the rats scavenging amongst them.

  “I recognize this passageway,” I murmured to myself, but when I reached the door to her cell I didn’t stop; I knew she wasn’t there.

  I opened the door to Vaybian’s prison, but the gate to his barred enclosure was wide open and he was nowhere to be seen.

  “We have to hurry,” I said to no one in particular as I pushed my way past Jamie and then Jinx.

  “Lucky,” Jamie hissed. “Jinx, stop her.”

  A hand encircled my arm and tried to hold me back, but I forged on. I had to find Kayla. I had to get to her before Amaliel sacrificed her in one of his terrible rituals. I tried to shake off the hand gripping onto me so tightly. Jinx spun me around to face him.

  “Lucinda, stop it.”

  “I have to get to her, I have to find her,” I said, trying to pull away.

  He grabbed me by the upper arms and shook me and I began to fight him. Why wouldn’t he let me go? I needed to get to Kayla.

  “This is going to hurt me more than it will you,” he said, and let go of my arm, drew back his hand and slapped me hard around the face.

  I glared at him, lashing out with my fist. His hand closed around my wrist. “You can hit me later,” he said, and the anger drained out of me along with the compulsion to find Kayla—whatever the cost.

  “Are you all right?” Jamie asked me. Then he turned to Jinx, “Did you have to hit her so hard?”

  “I pinched her arm and she didn’t even feel it,” Jinx said. He was right: I hadn’t. “I think this was more than Lucinda being drawn to Kayla, I think this was Amaliel using their connection to compel Lucinda to go to Kayla.”

  “In other words, he knows we’re here,” Jamie said.

  Jinx gave a nod. “You can count on it.”

  “So much for the element of surprise,” Kerfuffle said.

  “What do we do now?” Kubeck asked.

  “What we need to do,” Jinx said, “is march right in there and rescue Kayla and Vaybian. We knew they’d be expecting us to do something, maybe they won’t expect us to be so bold.”

  “You do realize there could be hundreds of them in there,” Jamie said.

  “There isn’t,” I said.

  “How can you be so sure?” Kubeck asked.

  “There are five gray Sicarii and twelve minions,” I told them, “plus Amaliel and possibly Henri.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “The spirits told me.”

  Kubeck’s brow bunched into a though
tful frown. I wondered whether he had a problem with me and what I was, but then he said, “That is eighteen against us seven,” and grinned. “I like those odds.”

  “Particularly when we have a drakon as back up,” Shenanigans said.

  “Don’t get too confident,” Jamie said, “Amaliel is bound to have something up his sleeve; he knows what he’s up against.”

  “Come on,” I said, setting my shoulders and looking toward the main chamber. “Let’s do this thing.”

  We started down the corridor again, moving at speed now, making hardly a sound; even Pyrites somehow managed to pad along without the telltale click of claws on rock.

  Then the chanting began, or rather a cacophony of voices: at first a low rumble echoed through the mountain, then it got louder with every step we took until I doubt they would have heard us above the roar of their discordant cries.

  “By Beelzebub’s balls,” Jinx said with a wince. “What a racket.”

  “It’s like fingernails down a blackboard,” I said, my front teeth feeling like someone had set about them with a metal file.

  The jarring hubbub abruptly ended and silence reigned for a few seconds before they began again, this time with a chant: regular, rhythmical, and it could have been in time with the beating of my heart.

  I couldn’t make out the words, but they were probably in Latin or some other long-dead language. Strangely enough, nearly everyone in the Underlands spoke in the language of humans; or maybe it was that we spoke in theirs?

  This chant rose, though at least it didn’t have me gritting my teeth. Then a drum started to beat and, in a most ridiculous moment of mind babble, I had a vision of the actor Danny Kaye being marched around in a scene from a very old film as he tried to remember whether it was the vessel with the pestle that held the brew that was true.

  I nearly giggled, but it was a hysterical giggle, the type that probably came before you got yourself killed, so I sucked it back, stood tall and thought serious thoughts, like: let’s hope I’m not about to get myself and my friends slaughtered within the next few minutes.

  The corridor widened and then there we were moving into the sacrificial cavern. There was no point stopping on the periphery and waiting to see what was about to happen. We were about to happen; and they were clearly waiting for us.

  Amaliel was up on the dais behind the altar, Kayla pressed back against his chest with a very sharp blade to her throat. Vaybian was hanging upside down by the ankles from a rope above the dais, blood leaking from cuts sliced into his chest, legs and arms. None of them were life threatening, but the steady patter of blood upon the stone below him was forming a shimmering jade pool.

  “How nice of you to join us,” Amaliel said, his voice a slimy gurgle of phlegm, which made me want to puke all over again.

  Kayla’s eyes were immediately on me. Her lips moved, “tell him to go fuck himself,” she mouthed, and she meant it—I knew her better than I knew myself. She saw my indecision. “We’re dead already. Save my world and save yours.”

  I started to shake my head. No, I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t let this monster take her away from me. Then she smiled, and I knew she was right; this was bigger than both of us. We had to stop Amaliel because once he ruled the Underlands and the afterlife, what was there to stop him looking further? But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try and save her if I could.

  “Lucky,” Jamie whispered and I glanced his way, “look.”

  Rising up out of the black rock floor and floating down from the high vaulted ceiling were hundreds of spirits; their faces contorted with misery. “Help us!” they cried.

  “You can see them?” I asked. Jamie nodded.

  “So can I, mistress,” Shenanigans said.

  “And I,” Kerfuffle added and Kubeck muttered, “yes.”

  “They’ve started the ceremony,” Jinx said.

  “They say the true Soulseer can open the door between this world and the next. Do it and I will let the Lady Kayla live,” Amaliel said.

  “Do it and he’ll have his way into the afterlife,” Jinx whispered, his mouth close to my ear.

  Well, I thought, Jinx’s guess had been right: Amaliel wanted me so he could get to the other side. And now we knew what he wanted, once and for all: he didn’t just want the Underlands, he wanted to rule everything—the living and the dead. “Maybe,” I said, “but maybe not.”

  His forehead creased into a frown. “What are you thinking?”

  “The doorway into the next world, when opened, doesn’t necessarily let everyone enter. Remember Dreyphus.”

  “But he was cursed.”

  “It’s like Shenanigans said: do you think the door would remain open for the living? I’m not sure it would.”

  “Willing to risk it?” Jamie said.

  “If I can get Amaliel to free these souls, I might.”

  Jamie and Jinx exchanged a look. “Do it,” Jinx said.

  “I’m waiting,” Amaliel interrupted, “and I think I’ve been more than patient.”

  “To open the doorway there needs to be souls waiting to pass. Free them,” I said, gesturing to the spirits surrounding us, “and I can open the door.”

  “No, Lucky, don’t do it,” Kayla said.

  “Shut up or I will open your throat like a second mouth,” Amaliel hissed.

  “Free them,” I said, trying to distract him.

  Amaliel’s red eyes bored into mine. “If this is an attempt to trick me—she dies.”

  “Do you want the door open, or not?”

  He stared at me for a few moments more then turned to the dais where the five Sicarii waited. “Release the souls.”

  “My Lord?” one said.

  “Do it, they can always be replaced.”

  The Sicarii bowed, then he and the four others gathered behind the altar and began to chant. At first nothing happened and then a couple of the spirits brightened, then a few more and a few more.

  Amaliel turned back to face me, still holding Kayla tight against his chest. “Your turn,” he said.

  I took a deep breath and walked forward. “Are you ready to leave?” I asked the spirits.

  “We are free to go?” the tall, slim demon I had spoken to before asked.

  “When you’re ready,” I told her.

  “Nothing’s happening,” one of the Sicarii hissed.

  “I’m waiting,” Amaliel said.

  I ignored both of them. “Please welcome these poor souls into the afterlife,” I whispered to myself, hoping that some divine being could hear me.

  The spirits who had been whispering excitedly to each other fell silent and the atmosphere changed. There was a weight in the chamber. I wasn’t sure whether it was our tense anticipation of what was about to occur, or the door itself opening, until a warm glow filled my chest and a pinprick of light appeared just in front of the altar. Like before, the small dot lengthened into a glowing slit and began to open, golden light spilling out across the blackened floor, and again I felt an overwhelming urge to walk toward the light.

  I gestured toward it. “You can go now,” I said.

  A couple of the long dead stepped toward it, but then hesitated. “Is this the way?” one asked.

  “Yes,” I told them as my right foot took an unwanted pace toward it, “it is the way.” One of them stepped into the light and was instantly transformed from a gray wraith into a bright gold creature of beauty.

  “Ahh!” he cried. “It’s so warm!” and he stepped through the widening slit. From the other side I could hear tinkling laughter that sounded so beautiful I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop my feet from taking me there.

  It was enough for the others. Those who had hung back surged forward; some going straight through into the unknown while others stood, bathed in the golden light for a few moments before taking that final step. A steady stream passed through the gateway until at last they were all gone.

  “Now you,” Amaliel said.

  I turned to face him. “It’s not a
doorway for the living, it’s for the dead,” I told him even as my feet betrayed me by taking a couple of steps more toward the light.

  “That can be arranged,” he said.

  I glanced at my two men. Jinx gave a tiny nod, though Jamie didn’t look so sure. As Jinx was the expert on death I’d have to hope he knew more than the rest of us. My feet didn’t need telling, they continued to move even as I worried about the implications; I just hoped they weren’t about to get me killed.

  I stepped into the light, fists clenched tight by my sides and, as the golden rays caressed my skin, all my troubles and fears disappeared, and a wonderful warmth seeped into my bones, leaving my body fizzing like a fine French Champagne.

  I walked on until I was standing in the entrance between the two worlds. Through the doorway I could see golden figures and could hear laughter and singing. If this was what came after death I was no longer afraid; it was a beautiful, joyful place.

  I stepped inside and two figures who could have been Jamie’s brothers walked to greet me.

  “Welcome Soulseer,” one said.

  “Though, sadly for us it’s not your time,” said the other and gestured with his hand that I should leave.

  “But—”

  The first angel lifted his hand and waggled his forefinger from side to side. “No buts. Return to your world; you have much work to do.”

  Hoping they knew what they were doing, I gave them a small smile and stepped back out through the slit and onto cold, black stone. Any warmth and sense of wellbeing I’d had was instantly sucked from my bones, leaving me feeling almost bereft.

  The five Sicarii were grouped around the entrance waiting for me to return. “She survives,” one hissed, turning to Amaliel.

  “Then it is safe for us to enter,” Amaliel sneered. And it hit me: he didn’t know I’d been turned away at the gate; he thought I’d gone in and come back safely. He gestured to the Sicarii. “Go then brothers,” Amaliel said. The Sicarii hesitated, standing just outside the pool of light. “Go forth into the new world.”

  One, braver than the others, or possibly more stupid, walked forward and into the light.

  “It feels warm,” he hissed as he glided toward the slit of light. He reached out his hand and passed it through the opening—then the light changed.