Lod blinked heavily and glanced up at Kulik. The half-Nephilim was speaking, but Lod couldn’t understand the words.
Lod rubbed his forehead.
“—Bring me ore, slave, much ore.”
As Kulik finished speaking, another slave shuffled near. He held a lamp and carried a rake and ore-sack. The slave was muscular and might have been tough looking, but his terror of Kulik was obvious.
“It’s time to earn the privilege of living,” Kulik said, although his mocking smile twisted his words.
Lod stared at the low tunnel. The strange feeling… he shuffled toward the opening. He squatted and began to crawl into the passage.
-6-
Lod lay on his side and swung the ten-pound mallet. It struck the gad and chiseled out another flake of rock. The position was awkward and the air was rank and hot. Behind him, Javan’s rake snaked out and slid the flake away.
The terracotta lamp lay between them. Its tiny wick provided their only light.
“Are you thirsty?” Javan asked.
Lod wiped his forehead with the bloody rag on his wrist. This was murderously hard work, but the half-Nephilim was right. This was better than lying chained to the rock of Tartarus. Lod swung the mallet harder than before. Another flake fell, and tiny particles struck his forehead, made him blink furiously.
This was fabulously rich ore. The heat made breathing hard and the low ceiling, it felt as if it might collapse at any moment. Kulik had spoken about a quota.
Then Javan’s question penetrated. Lod set down the mallet. “Water,” he said.
Javan slid up a small water-skin.
Lod lay on his back and greedily drained the skin. It left him thirstier than ever, the next thing to torment. He wiped dust and grit from his face. The circles around his eyes had darkened and the skin stretched across his cheekbones seemed brittle, as if the bones might tear through. He trembled like an old man, although Lod was unaware of it.
“You want me to chisel?” Javan asked.
Lod was more than exhausted. He seemed to be killing himself, working to death. He rolled onto his side and touched the stone he’d been chiseling. Something was on the other side. He felt it calling. Was that Elohim? Was that why Kulik had given him the reprieve?
Lod scowled. If it wasn’t Elohim… then Kulik… might have selected him for a nefarious reason. Those with the blood of the bene elohim laid diabolical schemes. Yet Lod had found in his short life that Elohim sometimes reversed those schemes on the evil ones. Lod smiled like a grinning skull. As rat bait he’d survived the canals of Shamgar, had become the legend of the canals. Later, he’d survived the Stadium of Swords. He was determined to survive the mines of Tartarus, to beat Kulik at his own game.
Lod laughed madly. Had he not survived the rock of Tartarus? That was a sign. He yearned to shatter Kulik’s teeth, to break the half-Nephilim’s bones.
“Are you well?” Javan asked, sounding nervous.
With a trembling hand, Lod picked up the mallet and set the gad against stone. He swung, and he chanted as he hammered.
“Charging chariots, flashing swords and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses—all because of the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft. I am against you, declares Elohim. I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will—”
Lod struck the gad, and this time it slid into the rock like a nail into soft wood.
“What happened?” Javan whispered.
Lod set down the hammer and stared at the gad. Then he pried it out.
Foul-smelling air drifted into the tunnel. Lod almost dropped the hammer to slither away. The foul air… he sniffed a second time. The odor was like something he’d smelled once in a death house where priests had embalmed corpses.
Lod grasped the hammer and gad, and mechanically widened the crack into a hole. Cooler air rushed into the tunnel, bringing with it the funeral odors.
“This makes no sense,” Javan whined.
Lod laughed harshly. He slid nearer the hole and smashed his stone hammer against rock. Ore tumbled from the blow and plunked into hidden water. He hammered again, fiercely. Stone dust billowed and more plunks sounded from the unseen water.
“We must tell the guards,” Javan said.
Lod glared down the length of his body at Javan, a big man, his face pale with fright and his eyes staring.
“Elohim aids us,” Lod muttered. “We can escape the mines.”
“No one has ever escaped.”
“A Nephilim lie,” Lod said slowly.
Javan swallowed hard. He was shaking and his sweaty hair was lank. “It’s just a hole in the wall.”
“…Can’t you smell the air?”
“It’s evil,” Javan whispered, and he slid back several feet.
“Gird your courage,” Lod said. “Join me.”
“It’s evil,” said Javan, his voice higher-pitched than before.
Lod slid away from the hole until he reached the lamp. It had perhaps another two hours of oil left. He picked it up and crawled back to the hole.
“You can’t leave me here,” Javan said.
Lod smashed away more rock. Then he took the lamp and eased his head and shoulders through. He’d broken into a large corridor. On its walls were hieroglyphs and on the bottom water shimmered.
“Hello?” Lod shouted. The sound echoed.
“We should summon the guards,” Javan said.
Lod drew back and stared into Javan’s eyes. He crawled toward the slave.
“What’s wrong?” Javan asked in a high-pitched voice.
In the narrow confines of the tunnel, Lod reached the smaller man. He grappled with Javan as once he’d grappled with the furry balls of muscle that had been the giant canal rats of Shamgar. Javan yelled in surprise. Lod snaked an iron-limbed arm across Javan’s throat.
The wretched slave feared the Nephilim more than he loved freedom. Javan was thus a tool of the dark ones and had to be silenced. Lod crushed the windpipe.
Javan thrashed wildly, but Lod overpowered every effort. This was necessary because Javan was in league with the Nephilim. Yet, as Javan purpled, as his struggles lessened, a strange sense of pity overwhelmed Lod. He knew the wise move was to kill Javan, but Javan was a fellow man trapped in the hideous mines of Tartarus. Lod looked down as Javan’s eyes rolled in terror.
Lod slackened his death grip. He allowed Javan to breathe. The rattle was a horrible sound. The mangled, bruised throat hardly worked.
Drenched with sweat, gasping, Lod let go. Javan slumped unconscious.
Wearily, Lod shoved the gad through his apron’s belt and shoved the hammer’s haft at the other hip. He squeezed himself around, picked up the lamp and backed into the hole.
-7-
Lod splashed into water. He’d held the lamp up high and feared that as he climbed down that the oil might spill and snuff out the wick. It flickered, and for a moment, it seemed to wink out. Then the lamp burned as brightly as ever.
Lod stood in cold water up to his mid-thighs. The hole above… it was out of reach. He began to wade. The bottom was tiled. He could see his feet. Lod chuckled like a drunkard, one about to collapse. He was thirsty. How could he have forgotten that?
With a cupped hand, he brought water to his lips. It tasted odd, but it seemed drinkable. So he quenched his thirst by lapping up handful after handful. The water surely had not been here when the corridor had originally been built. The water table had likely changed over time. Water seeping into deep mines was another of the eternal problems digging ore. It felt as if the water flowed from his gut and to his arms and legs, maybe into his toes.
Abruptly, Lod straightened. He frowned, and his legs almost collapsed. He began to tremble and his heart fluttered. He took three agonizing breaths, staggered through the water and leaned against
a wall. It came to him that he’d been killing himself while hammering ore. Despite his massive weariness, his head felt clearer now—
Lod stood rigid. The fog over his thoughts—Kulik had given him drugged wine earlier. The half-Nephilim had wanted him to work himself… to death, it seemed. Had Kulik worked a spell over him? Did the half-Nephilim wish for him to break into here?
Lod took a sobering breath. His lamp would only last so long before he was pitched into darkness. He levered off the wall and gingerly began to wade. He studied the evil hieroglyphs and grew grim at the sight of stylized pictures. They showed robed priests carrying caskets. They showed worshipers with their hands raised to a seated giant, a Nephilim.
Lod sneered and spit into the water, and he switched the lamp to his left hand. Then he drew the hammer. He kept wading, turned a corner, and the corridor led downward. The water inched up to his groin, over his hips and finally to his chest. If it continued—but no, the water level rose no further.
Then the feeling from earlier intensified. It beckoned as it had before. Now, however, a wretched sense of danger pulsed with each tug. The hair on the back of Lod’s neck rose. He began to feel the water’s chill. He’d forgotten what it was like to be cold.
He almost stopped. Yet what could he do then? If he turned back, all that awaited him was death on the rock of Tartarus. So he took a deep breath and continued to wade into the devilish darkness, knowing that something evil enough to frighten a half-Nephilim waited in this underground crypt. It waited and it called with bewitching power.
The hieroglyphs turned even more sinister, with countless human sacrifices symbolized and open graves from which floating beings rose. Lod had never learned to read, so he had no idea what the glyphs said, if they were spells or legendary tales or simple boasts of former kings.
He waded into a vast circular chamber, a Sheol for the dead, a wicked place. It was full of gigantic furniture and treasures. Shelves in the walls held militant idols with tridents, whips and morning stars. They stood such that wherever Lod moved they stared at him with vile longing. Other shelves contained giant golden armor and black spears. Lod glimpsed bowls filled with sparkling gems, opals, rubies, garnets and others. Maybe they were offerings to dead spirits. A huge, half-sunken chariot stood in the water, hitched to great stone horses. There was a mighty throne sized for a giant. There were wagons with shields on the sides, a sunken riverboat, with the prow and sternposts sticking up out of the water. There was also an underground chamber with fluted pillars and a golden-tiled roof.
Lod grew queasy. Maybe the chamber was the grave for an ancient Nephilim or the resting place for a First Born. Or maybe this was a tomb for a bene elohim, a fallen god.
Sweat stung Lod’s eyes. He glimpsed a great altar that had channels for blood. Water gently lapped at the bottom of the channels and around the altar’s base. Ancient skulls were impaled on spikes.
The water was suddenly too cold to bear. Lod waded as fast as he could and lurched up the stone steps. He shivered. His teeth chattered. With goosebumps on his flesh, Lod entered the chamber and raised his lamp. In the weak light, he spied a mighty sarcophagus, perhaps twenty feet long. Someone had chiseled faces into the great stone lid. The largest was a screaming face that seemingly tried to tear free of the sarcophagus. It had mad onyx eyes, a howling mouth and a long dog’s tongue of jade. Smaller faces gnawed at each other like mad things.
The sight revolted Lod.
Despite that, he lurched to the great stone lid. He reached out to the largest face, as if to touch it. He snatched his hand back. The siren call… it came from within the sarcophagus. Lod stood frozen, his teeth clenched and his blue eyes bulging. Loathing filled him, and he felt certain he imperiled his soul being here. Kulik, the treacherous half-Nephilim, wanted him here. And Lod wanted to be here. He wanted to open the casket. But why? The siren call implied a malignant presence.
“No,” Lod said in a low voice, as if he spoke to the thing embedded in there. He stepped back, and with relief turned to go. Then a new thought trickled into his mind. It was cunning. What if he opened the sarcophagus and obliterated the thing within?
Lod gave a low laugh. With an ominous clunk, he set his hammer and lamp on the ground. He touched the stone lid. A strange shock jolted him, but instead of making his hand jerk away, it invigorated his resolve. He caressed the ancient stone. He must open it. He had to… so he could smash, crush and destroy the thing coiled within. Lod ground his teeth together and began to heave. The great lid was stuck or very heavy. He bellowed, straining so that his muscles bulged and squirmed under his skin in stark relief. He fought harder than he’d wrestled against Javan. He roared. He yearned to obliterate this evil. With a grinding, sliding sound, the stone lid moved an inch. It felt as if his muscles would tear loose from his joints. At that moment, the lid crashed upon the tiled floor.
Panting, trembling, picking up the lamp, Lod gazed upon an ancient corpse fully eighteen feet long. Shreds of dried flesh yet clung to the skull. The orbs were black sockets, lifeless and yet strangely ominous. The corpse wore olden battle leather and rusted mail, with dusty hobnailed boots. A sword and jeweled scabbard lay beside it.
Lod lifted his stone mallet to smash the olden corpse. That’s when hellish flames ignited in the corpse’s hollow eye-sockets.
Lod bellowed, and he tried to swing his mallet, to crush the obscene thing. His arm refused to budge. So he tried to yank away, to stagger out of the chamber. He could not. He was caught like a child in the fist of a giant. To his horror, an evil vapor trickled out of the skull’s nostrils. Like a tentacle, the smoke slithered toward him. Lod tried to shout Elohim’s name, but his lips were like ice. The sickly vapor caressed his neck. Lod strained so mightily that greasy droplets of sweat oozed from his pours. His skin crawled with loathing. The tentacle of vapor wound around his neck and slithered across his face. He strained so hard that his throat muscles stood up like cables. He tracked the vapor with his eyes. He yearned to flee. The black vapor trickled into his nose and seemed to ooze upward toward his brain. Like a deadening blanket, a hellish fog, his thoughts darkened. Then all became as black as death.
-8-
As if from a deep hole, from far, far away, Lod’s head throbbed. His heart thudded, seemed to shudder and then spasm with odd beats.
He groaned. Evil pressed upon him, a vile spirit. He felt soiled, unclean.
Once again, he tried to whisper Elohim’s name.
The vile stain on his soul blanketed everything. Madness touched him. It tried to engulf him. Abruptly, he fought with all his rage against it. It was a touching of souls, of spirits. Demonic madness warred against him. There was gibbering and idiotic yammering in his heart. Like a rock, Lod resisted. He refused to rave in lunatic evil. He would die rather than submit. He clung to his most cherished vision: that someday he would smash the teeth of Nephilim and break their bones. He would cleanse their evil strongholds with fire and purify their devilish schemes with the copiously spilt blood of First Born. Against the swirling, shrieking laughter of cosmic futility and the absurdity of life, he clenched onto his promise of fierce retribution. He howled—in his mind—that he would rise up and crush those who had ground him under their heel. He would war against those who warred against humanity.
With baffled rage, the smothering evil departed, although it promised that its children would slay him in stygian darkness and ignoble isolation.
-9-
Lod awoke with a monstrously throbbing pain in his head and a coppery taste in his mouth. His muscles ached. He felt old. Yet for the first time since being chained to the rock of Tartarus, he felt like his own man.
It came to him with enraging clarity that Kulik the drunken Bear had slyly tricked him with drugged wine and a subtle spell. Ah. First, the half-Nephilim had drained away much of his life by letting him bake two-and-a-half days on the blistering rock of Tartarus. Kulik had used him the way a matador toyed with a bull for the enjoyment of the crowd.
With painful sluggishness, Lod dragged himself upright to sit against the sarcophagus. His vision was fuzzy and it felt as if someone drove a spike between his eyes.
A distant scream sounded, followed by faint maniacal laughter. If he had to guess, the sounds came from the galleries above, if they were real at all.
A scuffle of skin against stone alerted Lod that he had company. The olive oil lamp still flickered with its weak light, although it lay on the other side of the sarcophagus. Lod lifted his chin from his chest. It felt as if his neck-bones creaked as he turned his head.
A horrible parody of Javan crouched by the chamber entrance. He resembled a mangled dog in the doorway of its master’s house. Javan’s mouth hung open and drool spilled in elongating lines. Infinitely worse were the bloody sockets where his eyes should have been.
Lod’s flesh rippled in loathing as it dawned on him what he saw.
Javan leaned forward on his left arm and he cupped his gory right hand, holding—
Lod paled as the blood drained from his face.
Javan held one of his own eyes. The orb lay in a welter of blood and tissue. Incredibly, impossibly and horribly, the eye moved. It shifted as if it looked at him, as if it still functioned for Javan.
Perhaps in response to Lod’s horror, a grin burst upon Javan’s face, a ghastly thing of lunatic madness.
A distant scream, a howl of joyous raving, floated down from the mines.
“You did it,” Javan rasped with his ruined throat.
Lod’s only reaction was a twisting in his guts.
Javan chuckled obscenely. It must have hurt him to use his throat, the purple-pulped flesh that Lod had left him.
“I tried to warn you,” Javan rasped.
Lod blinked with gritty slowness.
Javan hideously shoved his hand closer as if to get a better glimpse of Lod’s reactions. Again, the bloody eye twitched in Javan’s palm.
The Lod Saga (Lost Civilizations: 6) Page 5
