Iceblood

by James Axler

  It took his wine-addled senses a moment to register Zakat's presence. Gazing blearily in his direction, he belched and burbled, "Comrade… be with you in a moment… just a moment…"

  Trai uttered a faint cry of helpless rage. Zakat strode toward Dorjieff, giving his right wrist a little shake. The bone-handled knife dropped from his belled sleeve into his palm.

  Reaching over with his left hand, he grasped Dorjieff's beard and yanked. The big man had no choice but to stumble in Zakat's direction or have his beard pulled out by the roots. A bellow of pain and rage started up his throat. His foam-flecked lips writhed.

  Zakat pressed the flat of the blade against his lips, stifling the cry. The cutting edge sliced into the thick flange of flesh between his nostrils. A thin film of bright red blood sheeted over Dorjieff's face. He gasped, coughing and choking as it sprayed up his nasal passages.

  Dorjieff staggered back, clapping his hands to his face, his pants dropping around his ankles. He sat down heavily on the floor, a squeal of shock bursting from his mouth, crimson spraying out in a fine mist.

  Trai pushed herself up from the desk, groping for her trousers, but blinded by her tears, she collapsed sobbing against Zakat. He put a comforting arm around her quaking shoulders.

  Dorjieff gaped up at Zakat in total incredulity, then with a mounting rage… He managed to sputter, "You Khlysty scum bastard, I'll have you scourged, your skin peeled off, toss you naked and blind out onto the plateau! You're nothing but a filthy khampa!"

  Mildly, Zakat said, "I am not one of the diseased robbers you drove from this land when you truly were Tsyansis Khan-po. Things have changed."

  Dorjieff's bloody face contorted in shame, then fury. At the top of his lungs, he roared, "Gyatso! Gyatso.'"

  Zakat didn't hear or see the Bon-po shaman enter the room. The bio-psionic field in the chamber shifted ever so slightly and subtly, and Gyatso stood flanking Zakat.

  Blowing scarlet drops from his lips, Dorjieff blurted, "Gyatso, this man is a viper in our midst. He endangers our pact. Deal with him."

  The black-turbaned man didn't blink or even appear to breathe.

  Fear began to shine in Dorjieff's eyes. "Gyatso! Deal with him!"

  Gyatso inclined his head toward Zakat. "Shall we proceed, Tsyansis Khan-po?"

  Dorjieff's mouth dropped open, his labored breathing inflating tiny blood bubbles on his lips. His stricken eyes flickered back and forth between the two men. Terror swallowed up the disbelief. Twice he tried to speak before managing to stammer, "You betrayed me? Gyatso? Me?"

  "You betrayed yourself," the slightly built man replied in a silky whisper. "Or rather, your fear betrayed you when you allowed it to reign over you. When that happened, you abdicated your title."

  Zakat cocked his head to one side, beaming down into Dorjieff's red-smeared face. "The king is dead, Dorjieff. Long live the king."

  He gestured with the knife. "On your feet. You still have a service to perform to your monarch."

  Dorjieff didn't move, staring glassy-eyed, still grappling with the words spoken by Gyatso. Blood clung to the matted hair of his beard in gummy strands.

  Zakat's lips tightened, and he gently pushed Trai aside, transferring the knife to his left hand. He reached inside his robe with his right and withdrew the stubby Tokarev automatic. He loudly cycled a round into the chamber.

  Not aiming the pistol, he said, "I won't kill you, old man. But I'll trim that peg of yours for the entertainment of Trai, even though it's a small target."

  The threat brought Dorjieff around, and he made a convulsive movement to pull up his pants and conceal his wilted organ. Groaning, he lumbered to his feet, swaying from side to side. Zakat pointed with the Tokarev toward the door. "Take us."

  "Take you?" he repeated in a dead voice. "What are you talking about? Take you where?"

  Zakat grinned. "Directly beneath the center of the Earth. To the vault."

  "The vault where the stone is kept," Gyatso said. "The stone."

  The terror of those two words flooded Dorjieff's face. He echoed, "The stone?"

  "The stone of Sirius," Zakat said. "The stone of Allah, of Solomon, the stone of the Eight Immortals." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "The key to Agartha. The Chintamani Stone."

  8

  With the utterance of the name, Dorjieff's nerve broke. He turned and attempted to dash across the room, tugging desperately at his pants.

  Zakat didn't shoot at him. "Gyatso," he stated, his tone chillingly neutral.

  There was a splitting, echoing snap, and a plaited length of oiled leather looped like a streak of fire around Dorjieffs ankles. The man fell heavily, face first, to the stone floor. The air went out of his lungs with an agonized grunt.

  The man was too frightened to be outraged over the assault to his dignity. He allowed himself to be dragged to his feet by Zakat, then stood motionless as Gyatso uncoiled the whip from his throbbing ankles and hooked it on his belt.

  As Dorjieff shambled to the door like a sleepwalker, Zakat turned to Trai. "Stay here until I send for you."

  She ducked her head, adoration shining out of her wet black eyes. "As you wish, Tsyansis Khan-po."

  Gyatso and Zakat manhandled Dorjieff out into the narrow hallway, pushing him around several sharp curves. The corridor broadened, and at its end stood an immense granite door with a dragon carved in bas-relief coiled across it. Torches in wall sconces flared smokily on either side of it.

  With slitted eyes, Zakat studied the recessed lintel, the threshold and the fluted jambs.

  "Open this."

  Dorjieffs tongue touched his blood-coated lips. "If I do not?"

  "Then you will die, as will every monk and serving boy in the monastery."

  Dorjieff stepped to the door. He pushed at the stone moulding in a certain place, and a small square of stone flipped open. Beneath it was a small hole, its sharp angles showing it was man-made. Raising his right fist, the bearded man pressed the stone of his ring into it. A loud metallic click echoed in the corridor, as of a hinged spring snapping open.

  Very slowly, the heavy slab of stone swung inward at the top. It was precisely balanced on pivots oiled with animal fat. The opening beyond was very dark, shrouded with musty-smelling shadows.

  "Lead the way." Zakat prodded the bearded man with the short barrel of the Tokarev.

  For a moment, Dorjieff didn't move. "The time is not nigh. The prophecies have not been fulfilled."

  "So you have been saying for years," Gyatso said. "The fact that a new Tsyansis Khan-po has arrived proves the time is indeed nigh."

  In a low, scholarly tone, Zakat stated, "From Milarepa's Hundred Thousand Songs for the Wise — 'That which is held within the heart of the aged king of the East will be taken by the new king fallen from the Western skies.'"

  In a hollow, whispery voice, Gyatso said, "And did he not fall from the skies?"

  When Dorjieff didn't reply, the black-turbaned man spun him around and pushed him into the gloom beyond the portal. The firelight from the corridor barely penetrated into the murk. Dorjieff walked slowly along the passageway past walls covered with silken, painted thang-ka, faded tapestries depicting the lives of various lamas and Buddhas.

  With Grigori Zakat digging the bore of the pistol into his left kidney, Dorjieff descended crude stairs hewed out of rock. Ahead and below glowed a dim aurora. The stairway ended in a bowl-shaped chamber. The light shone from a dozen animal-tallow candles in brackets around the curving rock walls.

  Drawn on the cavern floor with colored powders was a large kyilkhor diagram, a triangular form designed to ensnare Dre, messengers of death. Dorjieff carefully stepped around it. Zakat deliberately scuffled his feet through the intricate lines.

  On either side of the cavern, two life-size effigies crafted out of stone faced each other. The statue of a cherubic-faced man squatted cross-legged in the Buddhist attitude of meditation. The image was of Tsong-ka-po, founder of the Trasilunpo monastic order.

  The o
ther statue was of a ten-armed monstrosity, wearing a diadem of grinning human skulls above a leering, tusked face. It was Heruka, one of the many wrathful manifestations of the Buddha.

  Hanging between the pair of stone effigies was a number of wilted but brilliantly colored tapestries, all bearing twisting kyilkhor geometric designs. Gathering a handful of fabric in his right hand, Zakat jerked hard, ripping it loose from the crossbar. The ancient cloth tore easily, and dust puffed up around it in a cloud. In an alcove beyond, a bank of electronic equipment followed the horseshoe shape of the stone walls. Lights flickered on consoles, and the faint hum of power units sounded like a swarm of distant insects.

  In the center of the cavern stood a six-sided chamber, all the walls of the same glassy, translucent substance. They had a murky, purplish tint.

  The color of twilight, Zakat thought with a half smile.

  He turned to face Dorjieff, whose knees had acquired a definite wobble. "A quantum-interphase matter-transfer inducer, part of the old Szvezda Project. The only aspect of the American Totality Concept fully shared with the Soviet Union."

  Dorjieff was beyond surprise, but he asked, "How did you know that?"

  "How do you think?" Zakat snapped contemptuously. "Have you become so besotted you've forgotten the prime directive of District Twelve, why it was organized over twenty years ago?"

  Dorjieff did not answer. With a sleeve, he dabbed gingerly at the blood still flowing over his lips.

  "The primary function of District Twelve is to secure any and all predark technology, particularly that related to the Totality Concept," Zakat recited flatly. "Though its parameters have expanded somewhat over the last decade, that was its initial operational protocol. Officially, you may have been dispatched here to keep your eye on China, but you were actually following up on a fragment of damned data. Is that not so?"

  Dorjieff blinked in surprise. "Damned data" was a coded reference to predark intel of the highest security classification, less than fact but more than rumor.

  "Answer me."

  Dorjieff nodded. "Yes."

  Zakat gestured with the Tokarev. "Show us what that data led you to."

  Dorjieff slowly shuffled past the statue of Heruka. Hidden behind its broad base and draped with a shroud of black cloth rose a stone pillar some four feet in height. The bearded man tugged away the cloth, sending up a scattering of dust motes.

  The pillar was covered on each side with crudely incised, bizarre faces. The faces were humanoid, but with oversize, hairless craniums, huge, upslanting, pupil-less eyes and tiny slits for mouths. Eight of the faces were arrayed around the perimeter of the pedestal.

  Atop the pillar rested a box of hammered silver, its hinged lid thrown back. The box was lined by a dusty layer of red silk. Inside was an asymmetrical shape, a dark spherical object six inches around.

  Both Gyatso and Zakat stepped to the pedestal and stared at the ovoid within the box. It was a nearly black polyhedron, with purplish striated highlights and many flat, pitted surfaces, like the facets of a crystal. It didn't touch the bottom of the box, but hung suspended by eight delicate silver wires extending from the container's inner walls.

  Zakat noticed the fascination the stone exerted upon the Bon-po shaman. A smile tugged at the corners of his lipless mouth, and his eyes glittered with an emotion Zakat couldn't identify.

  "This is the stone intended to impose order on chaos," said Zakat flatly. "And to hold forth a key to the arcana of the Eight Immortals of Agartha."

  "Yes," Dorjieff confirmed.

  "This is but a fragment of a larger piece, cut and broken ages ago. It was originally a trapezohedron, was it not?"

  "Yes."

  "Other than the piece once kept in the Ka'aba of Mecca, this is the largest fragment in the world."

  "Yes."

  "And there is one other, smaller piece somewhere."

  "Yes."

  "Where?"

  Dorjieff wagged his head, bullishly, from side to side. "That I do not know"

  "What do you know?"

  Dorjieff bowed his head, his voice a wheezing rasp. "I came to this lamasery in search of something else. I found the stone. And far, far more."

  Very slowly, as if his tongue were suddenly heavy as lead, Dorjieff continued, "I was privy to damned data which I'm sure was withheld from you. Some twenty years ago, District Twelve was much smaller, comprising only a handful of officers. A discovery was made among our predark intelligence archives, and District Twelve expanded its duties beyond counterintelligence and parochial concerns."

  Zakat bristled at the implication he knew less about the inner workings of his organization than a fat drunkard. Scornfully, he said, "Speak then of this discovery."

  "There is a force, a power, if you will, whose entire purpose is to subjugate humanity, regardless of nationality. It is very likely they orchestrated the nukecaust, and they may have been responsible for much of Mother Russia's tortured history."

  Dorjieff started to point to the metal box, but dropped his hand. Beseechingly, he said, "Comrade, you must understand. I found more than a key, I found an object of power that transcended my orders, overruled my oath to my country and District Twelve. I stayed here to safeguard it, to stand sentry so it could never be used against us."

  "Patriotism is a very thin covering for your own avarice," Zakat sneered.

  Dorjieff straightened, his shoulders stiffening, as he tried to draw the tatters of his dignity around him like a cloak. "I speak not of patriotism, but of responsibility for what is left of the human race." He nodded toward Gyatso, adding contemptuously, "That hell-spawn is driven by avarice, by worse than avarice. I knew it the moment he arrived here last year."

  Gyatso said softly, "I came here to claim my birthright, to hold within my hands the legacy of Agartha. I am the descendant of the Maha Chohan, the ambassador of the nation of Agartha. All this was foretold by prophecy."

  Dorjieff snorted, blowing tiny blood droplets. He winced in pain. "A nation you have never seen, Gyatso, one that is more myth than reality. And what little reality may be attached to it is something we should not interact with."

  "Why conceal a key which unlocks no door?" Gyatso's question sounded as sharp as the crack of his whip. "Why stand guard over the gates to a kingdom of myth?"

  Dorjieff did not answer.

  Zakat's smile became a chuckle. "You're a very clever dissembler, old man. You should have been a Khlysty priest. Whether Agartha — the Valley of the Eight Immortals — exists or not, this stone certainly does."

  He lowered his voice to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. "And why is this lamasery equipped with a mat-trans unit, a gateway? It had to have been installed before the nuclear holocaust."

  Dorjieff still said nothing.

  "That is why you came here," continued Zakat. "That was the piece of damned data you uncovered. You wanted to learn why this machine from Szvezda had been placed here and to find out if it still worked. Following up on rumors of a Chinese incursion was only secondary to your mission."

  He paused for a tiny tick of time and declared, "I'm not asking you, old man. You needn't say anything. Your stubborn silence gives assent."

  Dorjieff's shoulders sloped in resignation. Bitterly, he said, "You've got it all figured out, don't you? Yes, old Szvezda documents indicated a gateway here, but not the reason for it. I tortured the abbot here for the information, but either he didn't know or he refused to tell me.

  "I cannot be sure if the gateway was placed here by our countrymen or others, but my suspicion is that its installation was meant as an escape hatch for either the guardian of the stone — or its rightful owner, if such a one exists."

  Gyatso announced coldly, "He stands before you."

  Dorjieff forced a derisive laugh. "You're a complete fool, Gyatso. If the stone is a key, it is also like a bomb waiting for a detonator. As you pointed out, some of its facets are missing. It may be incomplete, but it is by no means inert."

  "How do you
know that?" Zakat demanded.

  Dorjieff dragged in a shuddery breath. "Many years ago, I was foolishly arrogant as you. I dared to touch it. Knowledge of its true nature flooded into my mind. I was illuminated."

  "No," Zakat corrected snidely, "you were terrified."

  "Terror can be a form of illumination. The terror of finally realizing that what man knows about reality is nothing compared to what he doesn't know — or what he may never know. Damned data indeed."

  Dorjieff's bushy eyebrows drew together as he glared at Zakat. "This lamasery was built at least six hundred years ago, a continuation of other lamaseries that had existed here for thousands of years. Its sole purpose is to house the stone, to keep it segregated from the other fragments scattered across the world."

  "To keep it from being restored to a full trapezohedron?" Zakat inquired.

  "To keep the gates of Agartha forever locked?" demanded Gyatso.

  "Yes, on both counts. Though there is far more to it than that."

  "You believe the stone is a thing of evil?" the shaman challenged.

  Dorjieff shook his head. "It is not evil, but it is not good, either. Those are human concepts and the stone is much older than humanity. In its original form, the stone was fashioned by a prehuman race known in various cultures as the Nagas, the Annunaki, the Na Fferyllt. It was believed to be a spiritual accelerator, used to advance the intelligences and perceptions of the first primitive human beings."

  Dorjieff swept his arms around the cavern. "As humanity climbed up the ladder of evolution, the stone was treasured by them, worshiped. It crossed strange lands and seas that no longer exist, it sank with Atlantis and was recovered by the forerunners of the Egyptians. It rested in an underground crypt between the paws of the Sphinx before the Flood. It was found aeons later, split by priests and scattered across the Earth."

  "Why?" demanded Gyatso. "If it is not a thing of evil, then why hide it from the sight of man?"

  "Because it is a window on Agartha — on the black, forbidden things which no one has ever heard of, not even in whispers. You think Agartha is a magical, fabulous kingdom? No, it is a repository of secrets and the seat of five hundred thousand years of man's hidden history."