by Gregg Taylor
There were some surprised shouts from the ground at how far he had travelled by the time they had him back in sight, and he tried not to smile. He hauled himself up to Anubis’ shoulder and crouched there, as if considering the final stage of his climb, out along the upraised arm. It was not easy to tell from here, especially since he was looking without turning his head, but he certainly couldn’t see Kit. He tried to resist the urge to scan the shadows for her. No sense drawing their attention until it was time. Besides, once he was out near the elbow, he should have a full view of the space below.
The upraised angle of the arm made it necessary for him to shimmy out, like he was climbing a tree. Ahead of him, the light from the outstretched hand of the god was more brilliant, and it danced around in every color of the rainbow casting bright beams far into the darkness. From here the Red Panda could tell that one beam of white light was stronger than any of the others, but what that could mean, he was not certain.
At the elbow, the climb got still steeper, and the Red Panda paused. He was actually feeling a little winded, and this next bit would be tricky even if he used his Static Shoes. He turned his head just a little, as if he were still focused on his task, and scanned the assembly below. Just as he expected, the Flying Squirrel was nowhere to be seen. How on earth a group of men could lose track of a girl that looked like that was quite beyond him, but there it was. He shook his head a little, partly in dismissal of his foe’s folly, partly to dispel the almost pin-up quality picture of his partner that had sprung, unbidden, into his mind. These sorts of things seemed to strike him at the most absurd times.
The steady murmur of excited whispers from below that had been building for the last few minutes fell suddenly and totally silent as he completed the last stage of his climb. From Anubis’ long wrist, a crimson-gloved hand reached up to the outstretched hand and searched for a grip. Finding one, the Red Panda pulled himself up at last, and dropped forward onto the outstretched palm on his knees.
Far below, it was difficult to see much beyond the head and shoulders of the man in the mask at the top of the climb, and as elated as every man was, it was still unexpected when the Red Panda began to laugh.
“What is going on up there?” Pavli called.
“You’ve been had, Pavli!” the Red Panda called. “We all have. The last laugh by some cunning fiend that died thousands of years ago.”
“Throw down the Eye of Anubis!” Thatcher demanded. “Do it now!”
“It isn’t here, you fool,” the Red Panda said, “it never was. There’s an enormous crystal up here, with a focused beam of white light coming in from high above. It can only be sunlight… we must be almost at the peak of the mountain, and there has to be an opening to the surface up there, however small. The crystal is acting like a dozen prisms, breaking the light into colors and scattering it. It looked astonishing from down there, especially after our eyes grew used to the darkness… but it’s nothing!”
“He’s lying,” Thatcher hissed. “You’re lying!”
“Shut up, Thatcher!” Pavli snapped as one might to a dog. Without his power, the wounded wizard did not command much respect. “I’m trying to think.” Pavli’s eyes fell on Falconi, who stood calmly and impassively, knowing that conflict was inevitable, but doing nothing to provoke it or begin it himself. “Well, Maxwell?” Pavli asked. “What do you make of this?”
The Stranger smiled and shrugged. “They didn’t build all of this for nothing,” he said, “but even if I wanted to help you, I’ve no ideas to offer.”
A thought seemed to strike Pavli. “You say there is a beam of light, coming from the surface?” he called.
“That’s what it looks like,” came the reply.
“That would have been a major undertaking,” Pavli said to Thatcher with a smile. “They would never have done such a thing simply as a trick.” He looked up to the man in the mask. “Break the beam,” he called.
“Break the beam?” The Red Panda saw where this was going, but elected to play dumb.
“Yes, the light from the surface,” Pavli cried excitedly. “The light that feeds into the crystal, interrupt the beam.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” the Red Panda called.
“Do it or I will kill the girl!” Pavli cried, furious.
“You’d have to find her first,” came the taunting reply.
Pavli and his men realized in that instant that none of them still had the Flying Squirrel, and they turned quickly, scanning in every direction for her, but she had faded into the shadows. Peals of laughter rang out from above.
“A swell lot of thieves,” the Red Panda said.
“Perhaps not,” Pavli called, returning his gun to its shoulder holster. “But then again….”
He made a sudden motion with both of his hands, which culminated in a thrust forward toward where the Red Panda stood high above. There was a concentrated blast of wind that blew straight up and hit the masked man like he had been struck by the fist of a giant. He left his feet from the force of the blow, knocked sideways into the palm of Anubis’ hand. For an instant he felt the crystal poke into his chest and knew that he had broken the beam of light, just as Pavli had demanded, but the energy of the blow he had been struck was too great for him to recover quickly, and he could feel his legs dropping off the hand of the god and pulling him out, into empty space!
Twenty-Seven
The Red Panda struggled to clear the cobwebs from his head, but he had hit the ground hard. Only the last-second hit of his Grapple Gun on the statue’s upraised arms had prevented him from being killed by the impact against the stone dais at Anubis’s feet. While it had slowed his fall, it had not kept him from getting his bell rung once or twice as he rolled. If he had been unconscious at all, it had not lasted more than a few moments, but he was still seeing spots when the laughter forced him to lift his head.
The laughter was Thatcher’s, ringing off the hard stone and throughout the vast space as he stepped forward to a hidden panel at the base of the statue. A panel that none of them had seen before, but which had obviously opened when the beam of light had been broken as Pavli had suspected. The Stranger made a slight movement as if to intervene, but he found himself suddenly the object of the attention of a dozen firearms. Falconi’s eyes narrowed. He could deal with these underlings, but what would Pavli do while he did? They were running out of options and almost entirely out of time. His eyes flashed to where the masked man lay, having been left as if dead where he fell.
The Red Panda tried to force himself to stand, or at least sit, but his head still swam. He could only watch as Thatcher stepped forward and reached into the chamber, his hand emerging wrapped around an enormous jewel, so black that light seemed to simply fall into it. A hush fell over the assembly as he held it aloft, the jewel glowing with a deep black energy that almost drank the lustre of the gold in which it was set. An instant later the power of the jewel began to spread over Thatcher’s body, oozing like a thick paste of black light.
“Yes!” Thatcher cried in triumph. “Mine at last! Power over the living, dominion over the dead! And now I will add the Eye’s power to my own and overcome these filthy bands.”
Thatcher closed his eyes in concentration that bordered on exultation as the power of the Eye flowed through him. An instant later there was a hollow, metallic ring as the copper-colored bands fell to the stone floor, rattling like enormous coins. Thatcher’s laughter rang throughout the hall once again, growing in its fevered pitch until it seemed to be the only sound in the world.
The Red Panda pushed himself up from the floor again, his head still ringing, but unwilling to meet his fate lying down. If only he could stand-
Suddenly, there was a bright, blinding flash and Thatcher’s laughter ceased abruptly. Another burst of energy flew forth and the Eye of Anubis fell to the ground. Thatcher, still weakened by the bands, had been no match for the powerful spell that had been unleashed upon him, but how had Max managed that? Even now he stood stock-
still, and the men guarding him had not responded to the attack at all. Lightning seemed to flash a third time, and it was only then that the Red Panda realized it had not been the Stranger who had attacked Thatcher at all.
The third hit put Thatcher down on his knees, cursing. Smoke reeked from his shoulders, and his damaged face was a mask of rage.
“Pavli,” he hissed, “you treacherous worm! I will kill you for this!”
Pavli smiled. “That was on the agenda anyway, was it not, my dear Thatcher? Certainly you would never have abided by our agreement to sell the Eye. And these men have not faced danger and seen their fellows die just to make you a god. Power is all very well and good, but it is money that makes the world go around, old man.”
Thatcher spat blood onto the stones and tried to push himself to his feet, but the gesture was futile. Pavli smiled and drew his revolver.
“If only you had left those bands on, Thatcher,” he said, “I might have been able to trust you. At least long enough to have put the Eye of Anubis in our client’s hands. I would have freed you then, if only you hadn’t made your move.”
“Pavli, wait,” Thatcher said as his partner pushed the gun against his temple.
“I think not,” Pavli said. “This is ever so much easier than sharing.”
The roar of the gunshot rang throughout the room, swiftly fading echoes that seemed to transform themselves into laughter from the shadows. It was the Flying Squirrel, mocking Pavli in his moment of triumph.
“Enjoy it while you can, peaches,” her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “You’ll never get that pretty necklace out of this room.”
The gunmen’s focus was divided now, some covering the Stranger, others scouring the shadows for any sign of the girl. All of them had at least half an eye on their master as he stooped to pick up the prize near his dead partner’s outstretched hand.
“Will I not, little one?” Pavli sang happily as his fist closed around the stone, lifting it high above his head. “The Eye of Anubis is mine to command!”
At this, there was a blaze of power and light that flooded the room, making the torchlight seem like a pale shadow and filling the entire hall with a luminescent black glow. There were shouts from the guards, and they raised their rifles as they spotted the Flying Squirrel darting for cover against the far wall of the chamber, which was covered in enormous hieroglyphs and ringed with golden sarcophagi standing upright on their feet, blazing in the light of the Eye like a hundred suns. The Stranger turned quickly, realizing that every wall in the enormous room was covered with identical ornamentation, and felt his blood run cold.
“Pavli, wait!” he called in vain.
The first of the rifle shots barked loudly as the men took aim at the Squirrel. She was racing for the cover of one of the enormous statues that served as pillars around the room, but she would never make it once the gunmen had dialed in their range. Or so it seemed until the fourth man to raise his rifle to his shoulder was hit by something that felt like an out-of-control truck, but was in fact a very angry Red Panda. The masked man blocked an overhead blow with a rifle butt and threw the attacker over his shoulder as if he had been a paper doll. The man to the Red Panda’s right took a high-kick to the chest that caved in his ribcage on the left side and he fell, gasping.
The Red Panda turned the opposing force of his kick into a cross-punch to his left that put another gunman down as if he had been shot himself, but the masked man was still groggy and could not keep this up forever. A man at the fringe of the group who had the benefit of more distance raised his weapon and promptly fell down shrieking, his left arm reaching desperately back over his own shoulder to try and grasp something unseen. The Red Panda did not have to see the throwing knife his partner had dispatched to know what it was, so another piece had been taken off the board. But what good was any of it going to be if Pavli used the power of the Eye against them? He turned in his tracks leaving the henchmen for the Flying Squirrel to pick off, and pulled a pair of throwing stars with each hand from under the folds of his jacket. He wished now that he had taken some of the anti-magic gear that Kit had loaded up on earlier, but if he was fast enough, perhaps something would get through. This would have to be perfect.
“STOP!”
The order was possibly the loudest thing the Red Panda had ever heard, and it had the desired effect. The Red Panda recognized Falconi’s voice, and could feel the effect of the enchantment in the order, but could not resist it. Only Pavli seemed blithely unaffected.
“What have you done, Max?” the Red Panda thought ruefully. “You’ve given him all the time he needed.”
Pavli seemed to think so too, but he regarded the Stranger with amusement, almost condescension.
“Far too little, Falconi,” he said, “and far too late.”
“Pavli, you fool,” the Stranger cried, “you’ve murdered us all! The walls! Look at the walls!”
There was just enough power left in the enchantment that had frozen the combatants in their tracks to compel them to turn and face the far walls and corners of the room. The sound of metal scraping against stone could be heard from everywhere.
“The guardians of this place are rising, Pavli,” Falconi said. “The dead will have their day.”
Twenty-Eight
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It isn’t always a perfect concept, and at the very least it is a great deal more complicated than it seems, most of the time. If there was an obvious exception, it seemed to be when a rising horde of the undead was involved.
From behind the statue under which she had taken cover, the Flying Squirrel had a front row seat. Bone-thin arms tightly wrapped in ancient linens creaked as they fought their way out of the golden sarcophagi that had been their prisons for thousands of years. They were relentless, and the stones rang with the ringing of precious metals striking the floor as they were cast aside and short-bladed swords of bronze were raised. These were warriors, given a king’s burial in exchange for their eternal vigilance over the Eye of Anubis. And if they served the Pharaoh who had entombed them, rather than the god or the Eye itself, their mission would be to destroy any who tried to return the Eye of Anubis to the surface world.
Kit Baxter was brave by nature, and by training had developed those instincts into something like fearlessness. But she was anything but stupid, and when the first mummy to stand free of his golden casket looked directly at her and emitted a hissing sort of a groan, she broke cover and made tracks. No shots rang out as she sprinted across the floor. The small assembly of well-dressed men in fezzes who had been their chief enemies until moments ago were backing up the steps of the dais, desperately scanning the walls for some break in the ranks, some means of escape, and finding nothing.
The Red Panda began running toward her, which she took to mean that there was something immediately behind her which she could not handle alone, and she dug a little deeper and moved a little faster. They practically collided moments later, and she turned at once to see that the solid line of undead warriors was still some distance away, marching evenly like an army.
“Hi,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied.
“I thought something was chasing me,” she said, a little winded.
“Yes, well, there are these mummies,” he offered. “If they broke into a run behind you I didn’t want to be all the way over there.”
This made sense to the Flying Squirrel. Were their roles reversed, she would have done the same thing without a thought. This she found good, and the sparkle in her eyes said so, though she did not speak. They turned and ran back together toward the only thing that felt at all like cover, the statue of Anubis, where Falconi and Pavli were arguing.
“Don’t you see, Stranger?” Pavli’s voice rang out in something like exaltation. “The dead arrive, ready to serve me! Their new master! Isn’t it astonishing?”
“You’re a fool, Aris,” Falconi warned. “This is the final trap of the pyramid,
set thousands of years ago when these warriors yet lived. A reaction to the use of the power of the Eye. You can’t control these monsters.”
“Look at them, Falconi,” Pavli said, his voice barely a whisper. “No wonder they will pay a king’s ransom for this.”
“What the heck are they waiting for?” the Flying Squirrel said breathlessly from the steps. The mummified warriors ringed the inner chamber now, three men deep, weapons at the ready, and made no motion.
“The Eye of Anubis is an amplifier,” Falconi cried desperately, “it takes what it is given. If it has the will of a mighty king behind it, it can command the dead, build astounding structures, bury them under mountains, do anything. This army awoke when the Eye sprang back to life, but it is the imprinted will of a long-dead Pharaoh you see, not the inherent power of the relic. They will not let you take the Eye from this place.”
“The Eye of Anubis is mine!” Pavli shouted, holding the great jewel aloft to command the fealty of the mighty army of the dead. Instead, the warriors crouched low, as if preparing to charge and began to emit the same low, hissing groan that had sent Kit Baxter running moments ago. Except that it was now hundreds of times louder, and there was nowhere left to run.
“The Eye takes what it is given,” Falconi said sadly, “and your energy still reeks of betrayal and murder. The Eye has betrayed you, Pavli, and you have murdered us all.”
And at that, the mummified warriors broke into a run. Pavli’s guards began to shriek in terror and peppered the advancing line with gunfire, which did not seem to have much effect. The bullets collided with mummified flesh and produced small clouds of dust, but they did little to slow the undead soldiers, and none of them seemed to be stopping.
