Neophytes of the Stone

by C Lee Tocci

  Awe held them silent. The only sound was the whirr of the road beneath them.

  Finally, Marla spoke. “Jeff. You play way too many video games.”

  Todd leaned in until his nose was only an inch from his monitor. “What kind of security do they have?”

  The satellite image zoomed in and showed a scraped and desolate landscape with a wide strip of concrete slicing into its center.

  “There’s only one road, in and out. It’s about a mile and a half long, enclosed like a tube, concrete slabs on both sides and above. It’s monitored with cameras, heat detectors, motion detectors and under-pavement sensors. There’s a strip of land right around the building that’s patrolled by guard dogs. The rest of the grounds, all five thousand some-odd acres, are monitored by radar and there are between three and four hundred sharpshooters stationed at all times in bunkers and towers all over the complex. And here’s the weird part: they’ve got orders to shoot everything that moves. Anything larger than an insect, they’re to blast into ground beef.”

  “Apparently, Syxx is expecting us.” Keotak-se said, not taking his eyes off the road.

  “Or at least he’s expecting you,” Todd said. “You don’t think he knows that we can morph, do you?”

  “No,” Keotak-se caught Todd’s eye in the rear view mirror and then went back to watching the road. “Under normal conditions, neophytes would not possess sufficient powers to concern Syxx, but after your encounter on the palisades last fall, Syxx might be prepared for additional resistance. We shall plan accordingly.”

  The highway thinned out to two lanes, empty in both directions as far the eye could see. Beyond the pavement, there was also little to be seen; not so much because of the dark, but because the gleaming moonlight had so little to reveal. The land was flat, barren and dead. Hills, trees and even the scrub had been stripped away. It was the most desolate landscape Todd had ever seen and it only seemed to get worse the closer they got.

  They pulled off the highway and down a new road that ran dead east; level, straight and smooth. Keotak-se turned off the headlights and slowed as, in front of them, an unnatural glow lit the horizon. They pulled over and parked.

  The compound was brighter than day. Countless halogen spotlights stood a hundred feet apart, casting overlapping pools of brilliance that showed every crushed pebble of the scarred land. Three sets of sixteen-foot high barbed wire fence lined the perimeter. They climbed out of the S.U.V.

  Keotak-se stood as still as a tree, his eyes raking the fortifications. Todd waited for him to say something but the Stone Warrior was silent.

  “So we’ve got three options,” Todd said at last, impatient for action. “We can travel on the ground; we can try to master the bird morph and fly in, or we can go in underground. Marla, where is Ulex right now?”

  Marla clutched her stone as she spoke to Ulex. “Ulex says it’ll take him another six or seven hours to get here. Even using the underground rapids, he only averages about forty miles an hour. He’ll probably catch up with us around daybreak.”

  “I don’t want to wait until morning.” said Todd. “So do we morph into wolves and run in, or do we try to fly in?”

  Still Keotak-se said nothing.

  “Neither,” Jeff answered. “I told you that there are dozens and dozens of sharpshooters on patrol. Look how well that place is lit. We take one step past that fence and we’ll be good for nothing but cafeteria mystery meat.”

  “So?” Todd snapped. “Do you have any other ideas?”

  “Yeah.” Jeff smirked back. “We walk up the front drive.”

  “But you said it’s protected by cameras and all kinds of detection stuff!” said Todd.

  “Yeah, but they’re monitored with computers. All I have to do is hack into their systems and disable them. As for the manned camera monitors, I’ll record about five minutes of no activity, then loop it back. They won’t see us coming!”

  “How are we going to get past the gate?” asked Marla.

  About a half a mile up the road was a manned gate. While the lights of the compound didn’t reach the SUV, they could clearly see two men in each of the two gatehouses and a fifth man, a rifle on his back, walking back and forth between them.

  “Well,” Todd said. “Maybe we can fly in over the gate.”

  Jeff smirked at Todd. “You’re just aching to try the bird-morph again, aren’t you?”

  Todd glared at him for a moment before shrugging. It was true. If it hadn’t been for Lilibit’s disappearance, he’d have probably spent the rest of the day trying to master this new skill. He shot a glance over to Keotak-se, but the Stone Warrior still stood silent, not a hint of his thoughts on his face. Todd decided to give it a shot.

  “Kissy Face!” Todd cried.

  Like the last time, everything seemed bigger, but Todd felt less disoriented. He flapped his wings and rose a few feet in the air before losing his focus and dropping back to the ground.

  “The bird-morph is harder to hold than the wolf-morph.” Todd’s breath was choppy as he stood up.

  Keotak-se’s stare was flinty, but he did not speak.

  Todd had them all practice the bird-morph. Todd’s raven-form was all black except for one white feather in his tail. Jeff turned into a bright bluejay, Donny was a golden eagle and Marla, a red-tailed hawk. Keotak-se unbent a little to offer a few pointers. At the end of a half hour, they were able to hold their bird-forms for almost five minutes.

  “That’ll be enough to get us past the gatehouse.” Todd huffed with exhaustion. They were all drained from pushing themselves so quickly. “Once we’re out of their sight, we’ll morph into wolves and run the rest of the way in.”

  “I’m disabling their security now,” Jeff said, tucking his computer into a holster on his belt. A thought struck him. “Keotak-se, where does our stuff go when we morph? How come our clothes and our stones and stuff disappear but then reappear when we turn back?”

  “That is something that I will explain in more detail when we return to Kiva,” Keotak-se was curt, “but in short, your stone allows your body and all items within your mind’s influence to hop over to the Void, what you might call a parallel dimension. Your body and mind reside there until the morph is complete; meanwhile a host body crosses into this world to do your bidding. Your mind is not actually in your morph-body, but is controlling the morph from the other side.”

  “What happens if your morph-body is killed?” asked Marla.

  “The dead morph-body would be trapped in this dimension and your true-body would be trapped in the Void. It is assumed that those abandoned there eventually die, but since no one has ever returned…” Keotak-se didn’t finish the thought.

  “Oh.” Marla whispered.

  They didn’t have time to think about that. Todd was anxious to start. “Let’s get going,”

  A flock of assorted birds traveling together overhead might attract notice, so they flew one by one over the gates and into the tunnel. Keotak-se went first, choosing to morph into a small brown bat rather than the massive condor that he usually chose for his bird-morph. The rest followed one at a time.

  Todd was the last to fly over. He cleared the guardposts and flew two hundred yards up to where the others had morphed back to themselves and now stood in the middle of the roadway. There was nowhere to hide. The fluorescent lights in the tube were painfully bright and the road was straight and unobstructed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jeff said, seeing Todd twitch anxiously. “They’re corporate peons. They’ll never look in this direction. They’re paid to watch the driveway leading up to the gates.”

  Nonetheless, Todd’s scalp was buzzing. “Stupid Nov’m!” he whispered and, as a wolf, started racing down the road.

  He heard a chorus of “Stupid Nov’ms” and one at a time he felt the others join him. It was strange but he didn’t need to turn to see them, he could sense them. It was a combination of the vibrations under his paws, their scent in the air and a faint electricity that
ran through his fur. But he was also aware of their presence in the back of his mind like a whisper. Even though his body was who-knew-where in some other dimension, he felt closer to them when they ran together as wolves than when they were humans.

  They ran, single file, Todd in the lead, until the road suddenly ended.

  Todd pulled up sharply. The building was directly in front of them, but the road had disappeared. The last fifty feet between the road and building simply didn’t exist. The lights from the tunnel splashed down into a chasm, illuminating rocky rough-hewn walls for twenty or thirty feet, but Todd could tell that the pit went much deeper than that. Cold, stale air wafted up, hinting of a vast blackness.

  Behind him, the others pattered to a halt. Todd morphed back into his human form and, picking up a handful of gravel, he tossed it into the pit. It hissed as it fell and the sound faded out long before he heard it land.

  “This isn’t on the plans.” Jeff’s cockiness was gone; he sounded panicked.

  “This was not fashioned by men.” Keotak-se stated. “The Hand of Evil is at work here.”

  “Syxx.” Todd didn’t ask. He knew.

  Keotak-se nodded. “Most likely one of his minions.”

  “I think we should wait for Ulex.” Marla said, clutching the stone around her neck. “I’ve told him about the pit and he’s freaked out about it. He says that it’s not one of the chasms of the Nether Rock and that it won’t be safe until the Elders have secured it. He says that there’re things beneath the Nether Rock that only the Elders can deal with. Evil things. Deadly things. The Elders are on their way.”

  “I don’t want to wait ‘til morning, Marla.” Todd scrubbed his scalp. “We need to move now.”

  “Can we fly over?” asked Jeff.

  They all turned to Keotak-se, who nodded once. “I shall go first. After I have made it across, you shall all fly over at the same time. Pass high over the chasm. We cannot know what lies within its depths.”

  Keotak-se stepped back a dozen paces before crying “CHEE-ot-say. Toh-GEE-na. Sha-be-KAH.”

  Todd saw the shadow of the condor pass over him, but his eyes were intent on the chasm. The air flowing up was frigid and dank, but not completely dead. Something was moving down there. It started with a faint rustling, but now a sound, whistling from the depths, sounded like a freight train rushing without an engine. He would have cried out a warning to Keotak-se, but everything happened too fast.

  Something long, black and thin barreled up out of the chasm. It shot past him almost too quickly to see; it looked like a scorpion’s tail, its stinger pointing straight up. It stabbed the condor as it flew over and retracted back into the chasm in the same heartbeat.

  The four of them froze, staring down into the blackness where they’d seen Keotak-se disappear.

  “KEOTA---” Marla started to scream but Jeff covered her mouth, his eyes darting around.

  “Don’t scream.” Jeff hissed. “I’ve disabled the mechanical sensors, but the guards might be close enough to hear.”

  Marla trembled, her eyes showing all the horror that Todd was feeling.

  “Wait here,” Todd ordered. “If I’m not back up in five minutes, head back to Kiva. Jeff’s in charge.”

  Then with a quick “kissy-face” he flew into the chasm.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Chasm of the Scorpion

  The fluorescent lights from the tunnel made a glowing shaft that lit only a narrow cone in the cavern. Todd tucked his wings and plunged. As the light above him dimmed, the sounds of a struggle below increased. He spread his wings to slow his descent, making wider and wider circles as he tried to see what was happening in the depths.

  Finally reaching the cavern floor, he morphed back into himself and pulled out his father’s knife. Sounds of pain and struggling mixed with a frantic scrabbling noise, but the light from above was too dim to see even his own hands. He wished Lilibit were there with her stone Ewa-Kwan. When they’d been trapped in the caverns before, Lilibit had been able to make her stone glow brightly.

  It was a stupid thought; if Lilibit were here then they wouldn’t. But then he remembered what Gil-Salla had said: that once a Stone Voice mastered a skill with her own stone, her stone warriors should be able to do the same. Todd pulled out his stone, Tai-Kwee, and held it in his hand.

  He tried to recall what it was that Lilibit said or did when she’d made her stone glow, but she hadn’t said anything special those times, she’d just held her stone and stroked it. Without thinking his thumb rubbed along its smooth side.

  Tai-Kwee brightened obligingly. A white light, almost silver, flared in his hand. He had no time to wonder how he did it, because the light from Tai-Kwee exposed the chaos in front of him.

  Keotak-se, bleeding and battered, struggled in the pinchers of a scorpion-like beast; two stinging tails telescoped in and out, striking at the Stone Warrior as he fought to free himself.

  The beast was huge, bigger than a school bus, and covered with black crystalline scales. Its body was shaped like a fat black beetle with eight legs, but its head looked man-like, with two large vacant eyes, dead of all thought except hate. Todd had the flash of a thought that this beast reminded him of the snake-demon that had attacked them on their way to Kiva, mostly because they both had animal-like bodies and human-like heads.

  With no plan in mind, Todd charged.

  The beast froze for a moment as it became aware of the new intruder. It turned and aimed one of its tails. Like a telescoping spear, the tail sped towards him, covering the hundred plus feet that separated them, its stinger extended and headed directly for Todd’s chest,

  Todd dived to the side; the stinger missed him by inches and plunged into the stone floor of the cavern. Twisting, Todd wrapped himself around the tail and rode it up as the scorpion-beast retracted it. His father’s knife still in his hand, he stabbed at the tail.

  The beast made no sound, but its body arched and both tails flailed as if it were screaming. Todd let go just before the tail whuld have crushed him against the ground. The momentum sent him skidding across the grit. He rolled back to his feet in time to see the beast turn and send both stingers barreling at him, twisting so that they would stab him from two angles, trapping him like a vice.

  “Kissy-face!” Todd called out. His plan was to fly straight up, but the tails were too close and too fast. He changed just as the stingers reached him, but since they were aimed at where his human chest had been, about three feet over his now-raven head, the stingers stabbed empty air and crashed into each other.

  Startled, Todd lost his bird form and was human again. The stingers were retracting and re-aiming; he needed to move fast.

  “Stupid Nov’m!” he cried and as a wolf, darted away.

  Each time Todd morphed, it was pitch black; Tai-Kwee wasn’t there to light the darkness. Now, as a wolf, he galloped blindly with only his hearing and his sense of smell to guide him. He ran until he reached the cavern wall, and then morphed back. Tai-Kwee was already in his hand; he lit it with a touch of his thumb.

  With Keotak-se still trapped between his pincers, the monster lumbered towards Todd. Something caught Todd’s eye, something on the ground where the beast had stood. It was a well-worn shaft of wood and Todd recognized it as Keotak-se’s staff. Memorizing its location, Todd cried out “Kissy-face!”

  Vague memories of algebra quizzes flickered through his mind as he soared upward at one angle and then calculated his turn before descending. Rethinking the angle, he corrected his path. Just in time. The scorpion beast must have been able to see fine in the dark, because Todd felt its tail brush past him as it stabbed the spot where Todd would have been if he hadn’t veered.

  Landing behind the beast, he turned back into Todd and flicked on Tai-Kwee’s light. The beast shuffled frantically to face him. Shoving his knife into his belt, he ran to where Keotak-se’s staff lay and scooped it up.

  He wanted to stand like he did in Quaybo class with his staff at the ready,
but if he used both hands, he’d have to put Tai-Kwee in his pocket. So he faced the beast with one hand on the staff and the other, holding the glowing stone overhead.

  As the scorpion-beast turned to confront him, he saw Keotak-se still struggling in the beast’s grasp. Blood ran from his head and shoulders where the stingers had struck him and his eyes were red with blood too. But they were still open and they flashed angrily.

  “The quaybo!” He ordered, his voice raspy, his arm extended.

  Todd didn’t hesitate. The staff felt foreign and unresponsive in his hands, almost rebellious. He didn’t think it would obey his commands anyway, so he tossed it to Keotak-se and drew out his knife.

  Keotak-se snatched it from the air and brought the end down on the ground, striking three times in rapid fire. The apex flared so bright that the light of Tai-Kwee was dimmed to insignificance. Todd shoved the stone into his pocket and crouched, unsure what to do next.

  The flare of light shot directly into the beast’s vacant eyes. It had multiple lids, like Ulex, and they slammed shut as the beast reared its head away, but the beam held and although the tails still flailed and stabbed, they thrashed blindly, looking for the attacker it could not see.

  “The Dagger of Quaban!” Keotak-se’s words were all air and fury, but no voice; Todd could barely make them out. “Stab it! Stab it! The Dagger! Stab it!”