Assassins of the Lost Kingdom

by E. J. Blaine

  Soon he was back in the heavy jungle and could hear the river somewhere ahead of him. He recognized landmarks now, and knew he was close to their camp. While he walked, he considered how to steal an airplane from the Silver Star camp and escape.

  They’d have to do it during the day; it would be suicide to try and make the flight through the canyon in the dark. But in the early morning the sun would be low behind them and not in his eyes as he flew. That would work, he decided. They could approach the camp during the night. That was the best choice since the valley mouth was mostly open grassland that offered little cover. Then, when dawn came, they could go for one of the planes. He’d have to disable the other one, he realized. The last thing he needed while threading his way through the canyon in an unfamiliar airplane was another plane on his tail, spraying them with machine gun bullets.

  He froze suddenly. Had he heard something moving? A moment later he heard it again. A faint tearing sound. Some of the parasitic vines clung to the tree trunks through thousands of tiny fibers. As he’d moved through the forest he’d yanked handfuls of the vines aside to clear his path, and they made that sound as they ripped away from the nearby trees. He recognized the top of the rock overhang where they’d built their camp off in the distance. It might be Doc, but Jack knew it wasn’t when he heard the sound once more. Whoever it was was moving slowly, with a caution Doc didn’t need.

  Jack edged closer, careful to avoid the vines. He kept low, angling toward a smaller clutch of rocks that would hide him. When he reached them, he put down the Leica and crept up the slanted top of one of the larger boulders.

  There. A figure moved between the trees. Jack could see the lean-to a few dozen yards to his left. The figure was creeping slowly in that direction. He was shielded by a tangle of undergrowth now, but he would have to cross into the clear to reach the shelter.

  Jack unsnapped one of his holsters, but then thought better of shooting. He didn’t know if the man was alone. If he was an advance scout for a Silver Star search party—or even if he wasn’t—a shot would alert any others nearby.

  A moment later the figure emerged into view, and Jack held his breath. He recognized the dark field jacket and pants of the Silver Star field uniform, as well as the matching boots. Those boots would have been perfect for making the prints he’d found earlier. But the most worrying thing about him was the spear he gripped. It had a bamboo shaft perhaps six feet long, and he’d thrust a bayonet handle into one end and wrapped it tightly with leather thongs. It was obviously improvised, an unusual weapon for a Silver Star soldier.

  His unkempt blonde hair and several days’ worth of beard was unusual for the Silver Star as well, as was the ratty condition of his uniform. He looked like he’d been out here for some time. This had to be the scout who'd made the snare trap.

  He was edging closer to the shelter where Doc was busy and distracted with her plant samples. Jack plotted his slow course across the open ground between them and the lean-to. He waited for the man to take a few more cautious, silent steps forward, until he was in the perfect position. Jack moved into a low crouch on top of the stone, like a sprinter getting into position. One more step…

  Jack unleashed all his strength. He powered through the few steps to the edge of the boulder and then leapt into the air. The man caught sight of Jack as he hurtled toward him, but too late. Jack slammed into him. The impact ripped the spear from his grasp, and it flew across the clearing as they both fell in a heap.

  The man whipped a second bayonet from his belt, and Jack jerked his head back as the blade flashed an inch in front of his eyes. Then he sank a knee into the man’s side and struck the inside of his elbow. The bayonet flew away into the brush, and Jack rolled on top of him. He grabbed the man’s throat with his left hand and slammed his head back against the ground. He drew back his right hand in a fist and was about to unleash a devastating cross when suddenly Doc screamed.

  “Jack! No!”

  They both froze, Jack on top of the other man with his arm cocked to finish him off. The blonde man looked up at Jack in confusion.

  “Wait, you’re not…” Then he looked over at Doc. “Dorothy?” Now he sounded even more mystified.

  Doc nodded. “It’s okay. Jack, for God’s sake, put your arm down. You look ridiculous.”

  Jack unclenched his fist and slowly lowered his arm. Now he was just as confused as the man he was still pinning down by the throat.

  “You two know each other?”

  “That we do,” said Doc. “Jack, allow me to introduce you to Dr. Christopher Rhys.”

  Chapter 16

  “You’re Rhys?” Jack said in disbelief. He noticed his hand was still on Rhys’ throat and hastily removed it.

  “At your service,” said Rhys.

  “Boy, when you go missing, you don’t do it halfway!” said Jack. He got off Rhys and extended a hand to help him up. “Jack McGraw. Sorry about that. I thought you were Silver Star.”

  Rhys looked down at his scratched and stained uniform. “What else would you think? When I saw your camp, I assumed you must be Silver Star too. I mean who else is here? How are you here anyway? Did you come looking for me?”

  “Sort of,” said Doc. “We have a problem we hoped you could help us with, but we couldn’t reach you. When we got here, your man Adesh told us you’d disappeared in the hills. But I never dreamed we’d find you here.”

  “This problem,” Rhys said, brushing off his jacket, “it wouldn’t have anything to do with poison, by any chance?”

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” said Jack. They walked back to the lean-to that hid the shelter—not well enough apparently, Jack told himself. Rhys retrieved his spear and sat down on a rock.

  “It started several months ago,” he said. “I was visited by a young German mountaineer. He was full of questions about ancient alchemy and the lost kingdom of Shambala. Nonsense, I thought, and I sent him on his way. You see it from time to time. Westerners come to India and get caught up in the ancient mysticism of the East. I thought no more of it. But then I set out on a walking tour through the hills. Looking for examples of pandanus furcatus mainly. Local subspecies of screw pine. Say, you wouldn’t have some cigarettes with you?”

  Doc smiled and shook her head. “Sorry,” said Jack.

  “Oh well,” Rhys said without obvious disappointment. “Anyway, I was two days out when along comes a whole troop of very heavily armed Germans on motorcycles. They hauled me off to the top of a nearby hill. A few minutes later the biggest bloody airship I’ve ever seen in my life settled right down, as pretty as you please. They bundled me aboard, and a few days later, here I was. And that was my introduction to the Silver Star.”

  “Some people have had worse,” Jack observed.

  “I believe it,” said Rhys. “Nasty bunch. I got off light because they wanted my expertise in the local botany and folk medicines.”

  “I can guess why,” Doc said. She quickly filled Rhys in on the poisonings in America and how they’d followed the trail here. Rhys looked pale when she was finished.

  “Knew they were up to no good, of course,” he said. “But they didn’t give me much choice. I helped them. Have you found the white flower? Yes, good, you know to stay clear of it then. Well, they found it too. They call it totenspitze, Death Lace. The substances they were able to isolate from it are…very troubling.”

  Rhys was silent for a moment, then he shook it off. “Eventually I managed to escape, and I’ve been out here playing hide and seek with them ever since. So you must have been the cause of that commotion yesterday. I thought they were looking for me. You’ve got an airplane, then?”

  “We’ve got a pile of junk that used to be an airplane, I’m afraid,” said Jack. “We went down in the jungle a few miles from here.”

  “Ah, the red smoke,” Rhys said. “Of course. Too bad, that. An airplane would come in handy right now.”

  “I’m working on a plan,” said Jack.

  “We
ll, in the meantime, this is where you’re setting up camp? This won’t do at all. If the Silver Star doesn’t find you, the Tarasques will.”

  “The what?” Doc asked.

  Rhys grinned. “I named them Amphicyon Rhysi,” he said, “though I’m just guessing about the genus really. More commonly, Tarasque, after a monster from an old French legend. You’ll have noticed the animal life here is rather different from what we’re used to.”

  There was a bit of the professor in this man, Jack thought to himself. Still, he found himself liking Rhys. He might have been forced to help the Silver Star, but he’d found a way to escape and deny them his knowledge. Perhaps he’d slowed their research down a little in the process.

  “Apex predators,” Rhys was saying. “Huge blighters, ugly as sin. Not picky about what they eat. Can’t afford to be, I expect. But it turns out they’re especially fond of a large worm that lives under rocks. They’re very well adapted to digging them out.”

  “I found a hole like that today,” Jack said. “Rocks and dirt thrown everywhere. I thought the Silver Star had been digging.”

  “No, that’s the Tarasques’ work all right. They go about eating anything that crosses their path and devastating the countryside. Thus the name. But you can see why this place just won’t do. I’ve got a base of my own up in the cliffs across the river. Well concealed from the air, and much less trouble with the wildlife. I’ll take you there. Plenty of room. It’ll be nice to have houseguests!”

  Doc and Jack traded a questioning look. Jack thought for a moment. Doc apparently trusted this man, and Jack remembered the hole he found. If that was the work of an animal, he didn’t want to tangle with it.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said after a moment. “We appreciate the warning. And the hospitality.”

  They packed up their gear. While they were working, Rhys broke down the lean-to and scattered the branches so there would be less for Silver Star search parties to find if they came this way.

  Then he led them down the river with his spear over his shoulder. He had snares and other traps for small game scattered about and veered off from time to time to check one. Doc confirmed that Rhys had found quite a few plants and species of small game that were safe to eat.

  “I’m mainly after the civets, though,” he said as he reset a snare that had tripped but failed to hold its prey. “They’re for research.”

  “Civets?” said Jack.

  “Paguma Rhysi,” Rhys answered with a sheepish grin.

  “I’m noticing a trend,” said Doc.

  “All I wanted was a nice hike through the foothills and to draw some trees,” said Rhys. “If I’m to be subjected to this kind of adventure against my will, I don’t think a touch of scientific immortality is too much to ask in return. Don’t worry, there’s plenty left to name after you two. But the civets are important. They actually eat the Death Lace. It ought to drop them in their tracks, but they adore the stuff. Something protects them. If there’s an antidote, that’s where we’ll find it.”

  They headed back to the river and Rhys led the way downstream. The river channel grew narrower, and boulders lay strewn across the stream bed. Then they lost sight of the river as the trail veered away into deep forest, and they descended a steep slope. Jack could hear the river roaring to his left. When the slope leveled off again, the trail turned back toward the river.

  “Want to see something impressive?” Rhys shouted back.

  They broke through the trees and stopped, stunned. Doc gasped. “Caroline Falls!” Rhys announced proudly. “After my mother. It’s something, isn’t it?”

  Jack had to admit it was. The land fell sharply away to a deep gorge. They’d followed the slope down perhaps halfway, Jack realized. But the river had carved the land farther back to create a sheer lip a couple hundred feet above them. The water fell past them and plummeted down into the gorge where it vanished into a cloud of mist.

  “What’s down there?” Doc shouted.

  “No idea!” Rhys answered. “Not keen to find out, really. This way!”

  They followed him down a path along the edge of the gorge. On the other side were jagged cliff walls with scattered ledges and a few hardy trees in those rare places where the ground was flat enough to hold soil.

  A few hundred yards farther down, a huge tree had fallen across the gorge. It formed a natural bridge to a wide ledge on the other side. Rhys hopped onto the massive trunk and started across. Doc glanced back at Jack, and then followed. Jack let them get a few feet farther ahead, then followed them. He could feel the faint touch of spray from the falls against his skin and realized the smooth worn wood of the trunk was damp and more slick than he liked.

  When they reached the other side, Rhys turned and led them along the grassy ledge until it gradually narrowed to a bare stone shelf a few feet wide winding along the cliff face.

  Rhys walked along it with confidence, looking over his shoulder and conversing with Doc about the local plants as he walked on the very edge of oblivion. The man certainly didn’t lack courage. Jack brought up the rear, watching where he stepped.

  “Almost there,” Rhys announced cheerily. “Home sweet home.”

  He stepped around a blind turn in the path and then into a wide crack in the cliff face. They followed and found themselves in a surprisingly comfortable space. Rhys had lanterns for light, a bedroll on what looked like a very comfortable pad of local vines and tree fronds. He even had some simple furniture lashed together from what looked like bamboo.

  “Well this is impressive,” said Doc.

  “No reason to give up civilized comforts,” said Rhys. “We’ll get you set up soon enough. Tomorrow we’ll get you some of these Drynaria fronds to put your sleeping bags on. In the meantime, come see the lab!”

  “Lab?” Doc said. They followed Rhys into a side chamber. Here, on a long table made from roughly hewn logs, was an impressive collection of scientific equipment. Some of it was improvised from local materials, but there was a surprising amount of glassware, metal frames, and rubber tubing. Jack noted bottles of various chemical reagents, boxes labeled in German, and a thick notebook.

  “I raid the Silver Star camp for what I need,” said Rhys.

  “What in the world are you working on?” said Doc.

  “Oh, just studying the native biology. Have to occupy myself somehow. Take a look at this!”

  He turned to the far wall, and Jack realized the place was naturally lit. Rhys had punched through the stone face of the cliff with a hammer and chisel to create two windows that let in the afternoon sun.

  “And here’s the water supply,” he was saying, pointing out a crack in the back wall of the lab chamber. A spring trickled water into a natural stone basin until it overflowed and disappeared through another crack in the floor.

  Jack was impressed, but he recognized that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something wasn’t right. He looked over the lab equipment, the dozens of stolen glass bottles lined up and neatly labeled. He flipped through the notebook. The pages were filled with chemical diagrams and lined with dates and symbols. Along the right edge of each page was a column listing a number of milligrams, and always a final entry, “no effect.” These continued until Rhys had started simply jotting “NE.”

  Rhys returned with Doc and noticed Jack looking over his notes. “We’ll get you set up, don’t you worry,” he said, and he subtly but firmly put a hand on Jack’s shoulder and guided him away from the table and back out of the lab. “My word, it’s good to have someone to talk to. So much you have to tell me.”

  They filled Rhys in on AEGIS and their long battle against the Silver Star while Rhys prepared dinner. He cut some meat off a dried hind quarter of what Jack realized was one of the caprids they’d seen at the water hole. He added some roots and vegetables, and soon had a hearty stew bubbling over a fire pit.

  “Home cooking,” Doc said softly.

  “I’m glad your friend’s okay,” Jack murmured back.

>   Doc nodded. “I know. But he’s lying to us.”

  “To carry all this stuff back here by himself? That’s got to be six trips at least.”

  “Just for the lab gear alone,” Doc agreed.

  “Sneaking into a Silver Star camp like that’s a heck of a risk. Nobody does that a half dozen times without a real good reason.”

  Then they fell silent as Rhys returned with the stew pot. “Dinner is served!” he said cheerily. “So good to have company. I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s just wonderful you’re here. Well, not for you, I suppose. But it’s good to have visitors. Especially one who can fly an airplane, right?”

  He ladled the stew out into metal bowls from a Silver Star field kit. Over dinner, Jack laid out his plan to steal an airplane and escape the valley. “We won’t be able to take much,” he said, “but we can make it. And we’re leaving soon. We’ve identified the poison. As soon as you two can get a working antidote, we need to get back to the outside world with it, before the Silver Star kills more people.”

  “An antidote may be trickier than you think,” said Rhys, and Jack could sense the meaning behind his words. For some reason, the man was reluctant to leave.

  ###

  After Dorothy and her friend had gone to sleep, Dr. Rhys slipped up from his bedroll and made his way into the lab. Outside was darkness and a few scattered stars, so he turned up one of the lanterns until it cast a faint glow over his experiments.

  He opened a stolen box of hypodermics and took out a needle. He’d sterilized this one yesterday, but all his instruments were so crude. It was a miracle he’d survived at all, and now to actually have a way out of this cursed place…

  He filled the syringe from a glass jar of a clear liquid and rolled up his sleeve. He tapped the needle to clear air and was clenching his arm to bring up a vein when he realized he wasn’t alone.