by D. H. Dunn
Entering the space, he could see it was tall and triangular chamber, carved out the mountain like the others.
Standing at the far side of the room, the small, armored figure of Garantika stood, his squat form facing Drew as it blocked his view of an open portal.
The swirling, green mists inside the oval revealed an image that looked like the world he had seen Nima on when he and Sinar were in the Over. Sirapothi, Upala had called it.
As he had expected, the remaining walls of the chamber on every side were filled with portals, all of them inert except the one behind Garantika.
Between Drew and the platform, the Line’s leader stood upon was a channel that had been dug into the room, filled with bubbling, red lava.
Where Kater had managed to get access to magma was a question Drew left for another time. Drew supposed it might have something to do with Kater’s planned defense against the dragons.
He sighed as he locked eyes with Garantika, the small man glaring at him, waves of heat blurring his face. If the Line’s leader was here, then they were too late.
Sinar was already through.
“The one you pursue, I could not prevent him,” Garantika yelled at Drew from across the pit of lava. “But I will prevent you.”
The man’s legs were spread, as if a wide stance gave him further strength. He held no weapons. The muscles in his broad arms flexed as he smiled at Drew, baiting him to attack.
It was a challenge Drew was more than happy to answer. He charged forward into the room, leaping over the channel of lava, feeling the searing heat as he sailed over the bubbling liquid.
Whatever response Garantika had been expecting, Drew could see it wasn’t this. He had the satisfaction of seeing the man’s eyes go wide with panic and surprise as Drew sailed across the gulf.
Drew had landed cleanly, not losing a step of momentum as he surged forward, happy ten years out of high school hadn’t killed all of his football speed.
With a roar, Drew crashed into the unprepared leader of the Line, slamming him hard onto the stone floor of the chamber.
He was small but thick, Drew feeling nothing but solid muscle underneath the leather armor as Garantika struggled with him. Unable to contain the man, Drew slammed his forehead down onto his foe’s face and was awarded with a satisfying crunch.
He popped back to his feet, catching his breath as Garantika slowly hobbled into a standing position. Blood was pouring from his nose and running into his dark beard, a few drops landing on the white insignia of the Line on his breastplate.
Determined to press his advantage, Drew swung a right at the man’s jaw, only to have Garantika catch his fist in one beefy hand, stopping his attack cold.
Blood stained teeth smiled up at him. Pulling his arm with all his strength, Drew managed to pull his hand from his opponent’s grip.
“So, you can fight after all,” Garantika hissed. “Good, I have not had to use my skills in a while.”
Drew spread his hands out, trying to prepare for whatever might be coming next. The shift in Garantika’s demeanor was concerning. Drew’s experience in fights started and ended at the bar, dealing with guys who had usually had a few more beers in them than he did.
This was the leader of the Line, a man who likely trained for combat all his life.
Garantika snarled, swinging in with his left. Drew moved to block it, realizing too late the attack was a feint.
With a whirl the shorter man’s leg swept out, connecting while Drew was off-balance and sending him tumbling forward.
Garantika’s hand was a blur as a quick strike to Drew’s midsection then knocked the air from his lungs, his own falling momentum adding to the strength of the blow.
Another shot came from Garantika, a chop of his hand across Drew’s neck. Drew collapsed to the floor, hands on his throat. He landed roughly on the unforgiving stone, his world suddenly a chaotic swirl of pain.
He could hear the cries of the others, distant. Upala, Merin. Were they here now? He was curled in a ball on the floor, unable to do anything to avoid Garantika’s boot as the man kicked him in the skull.
The world turned black, he was unsure if his eyes were open or not. His mouth was filled with blood and bile, his head a swimming daze. He thought perhaps he had rolled with the blow, maybe he had seen it at the last second. He blinked once, the room a mix of reds and grays.
Garantika was speaking, somewhere above him. He could feel the now familiar tingle in his lower chest, the healing energy going to work as the room continued to swim around him. He placed one hand on the stone, then another. Perhaps he could get to his feet.
A fist drove into his left ear and he went back down, an explosion of fresh pain. More bile filled his throat, new agony flooding over old like a tsunami.
“Outworlder!” Disgust filled the man’s voice. “I did not see you on the bridge for what you were, or I would have killed you then.” Another kick, this time in his side. He may have cried out, he wasn’t sure.
Where was Upala? Merin?
“Perhaps I can no longer kill you,” Garantika ranted from above him. “Somehow you have become Manad Vhan, and that makes you my enemy. If I cannot kill you, I can at least take pleasure in hurting you!”
A huge weight landed on his back. Something snapped and broke inside him.
He lay flat on his stomach, the cold stone against his cheek. Fluid was leaking out of his mouth. Blood, vomit, maybe both. It didn’t matter. He could feel the healing energy running through his body, but there were too many fires, too many infernos of pain. He was lost, defeated.
Through blurred vision he could see across the lava-filled canal now. A stone door had lowered into the passage he had entered from. Perhaps he had triggered some old trap of Kater’s, or perhaps Garantika had planned it.
Beyond the stone he could hear the sounds of combat, the roar of Yeti along with battle cries from Upala and Merin.
“When my daughter returns, it will be the end.”
Garantika was still talking, the portal beyond them still open. The path to Sirapothi and Nima, to Sinar.
“The end of the Manad Vhan, at the claws and teeth of the Dragons. She will bring about the end of your line. The gods will be dead!”
Drew felt a heat growing inside him, a boiling of his blood that ran through his veins, firing through his heart like a cannon. Into his legs and feet, his aching skull and shattered back.
More sounds and cries from the distant room.
Upala, Merin and Trillip!
Cries of pain from people he respected and loved.
More anger and boasts from above him. Garantika.
A portal that sputtered and spun. Nima.
All around him were friends that needed his help, problems that needed solving and an enemy that needed defeating. Those needs fed the blaze inside him, building it into an inferno, the whole of his body becoming kindling to its flame.
The fire seemed to burst from him, jets of flame pouring from his hands, lifting him off the floor in an inferno. He stood, his pain gone, all of his agony burned away by his rage.
He faced Garantika, the man’s eyes wide as he looked up at Drew in horror.
In that moment, looking with the eyes of his new power, Drew saw his enemy for what he was.
An irritant, a minor mote of dust that had been allowed to cause far too much damage. The terror in Garantika’s face fed his rage even further, heat bursting from Drew’s fingers as he balled them into fists.
Now finally, he would strike.
For the victims of all the insects that had come before, for all the evil he had allowed life. For men buried under Everest’s snow by Jang, for Kaditula, Wanda, and Ham lost inside the Under. For a mother destroyed by a grief she could not process, for sailors sitting on the bottom of the Indian Ocean from a torpedo Drew had failed to see.
For Artie, he raised one burning hand. More than enough to end a nothing like Garantika.
Across the lava, the stone barrier expl
oded as Upala and Merin burst through.
Drew barely noticed, the cowering man in front of him had his focus. He brought one hand down, the flames licking from his fingers as he gently reached to Garantika’s face and tilted the man’s chin toward him, the dark hairs of his beard curling and singeing with the contact. Drew wanted him to see this coming.
“Drew! No!”
A voice cut through the inferno of his anger, the one voice he could not tune out. Enhanced by the rasi sakta, the chimes and strings of Upala’s words froze him, kept his hand trembling in the air. He fought against the distraction.
Two feet landed deftly next to him. A strong but loving hand on his shoulder, another closing gently around his wrist.
“Drew, you do this and Merin’s people will think the Line is right about the Manad Vhan. About people with power.”
Her words were just debris in the whirlwind of his mind, only the weight his emotions for her allowing this pause, this moment before he burned the life out of this man.
It was right, to be here and have Garantika’s existence in his palm. The wrongness, the revulsion inside him that Upala was giving voice to, it felt like a lie.
Still her voice continued, even as the man’s terrified eyes looked into his.
“I know you, Drew,” she said. “I know what is most important to you. You will not forgive yourself for this.”
Forgive himself? He was already past unforgivable. What was one more life after hundreds went into the sea? After Artie, after Mom?
He hadn’t even meant those deaths, he would mean this one. This man who deserved it. Didn’t that make it better, make it right?
Would that replace Artie?
“I want to see his plans ended as well, but not like this. Let me.” Upala reached up, pacing her own hand around his clenched, shaking fist. The fire licked against her glove. She looked into his eyes, a woman who had fought challenged the Line and the Yeti alongside him.
He looked back at her, her face dirty and bruised from her own struggles. Her eyes showed care, just like Artie’s had. She didn’t want this, and neither did he.
“Let me,” she repeated, her voice betraying none of the pain his fire must have been causing her.
The light of flame in his heart went out, the darkness taking away the eyes of his brother, his mother, his shipmates.
He dropped his hand, the flames running out of his body as if a switch had been thrown. Drew looked down at his fingers, at hands that had been ready to murder just seconds before.
Leaping across the chasm, Merin landed next to them. She turned and punched the cowering Garantika across the jaw, the impact echoing throughout the chamber. The leader of the Line dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Drew collapsed towards Upala, falling into her arms. He had been there, right at the top of a mountain of anger and rage, ready to murder a man for all the pain and guilt that Drew had suffered.
She had pulled him back, helped him safely descend from that peak. Her arms were about him now, keeping him warm and protected. Her embrace was the safest place he had ever known.
Drew was falling again, Upala’s warmth and acceptance washing over him, cleansing him of his pain. Beckoning him deeper, tempting him to simply release himself and drown inside her love.
“Drew! Upala!” There was a shuddering lurch, a sensation of being ripped away, as if his rope had snapped and he was falling away from her.
His chest heaving, he opened his eyes to see Merin standing between them, holding them apart with one hand on each of their chests.
Upala backed away immediately, her hands adhering to Drew’s skin for a moment before she was able to pull them free.
“Sorry,” she said. “By the Hero, I am so sorry, Drew.” Her eyes conveyed her dismay, that her very touch might be dangerous to him.
“It’s fine,” Drew said. “Really, Upala. I know … we can’t help it. It is a good thing you were here, Merin.”
Upala nodded, eyes watering but a faint smile on her lips.
Merin gave them a look wrung with intensity and irritation, moving away from them and standing next to the glowing portal, still swirling only a few feet away.
Drew looked down at his hands, hands that just moments ago had been shooting fire from them like he was some kind of sorcerer. Or Manad Vhan.
Was that what was happening? Could he handle that kind of power? Could he deserve it?
There was too much here to question now. Upala had stopped him from murdering Garantika, that would have to be enough.
“It’s fine,” he repeated, knowing Upala needed more but he had nothing left to offer.
“Where’s Trillip?” he asked, looking around the chamber.
The portal continued to fluctuate, but was still open, Sirapothi still clear through the mists.
“Amazing man,” Upala said, her voice cracking with admiration. “Led the Yeti who found us off on a chase, gave us time to get here. To get to you. I only pray to the Hero that he will find some way to escape.”
“Then let us not waste his sacrifice,” Merin said. “There is much that waits for us through the portal. The Line agent. Nima. Sinar.” She paused. “Last hopes,” she added, almost a whisper.
Sinar was so powerful, how could they face him? It didn’t matter, they had to try. He stepped toward the portal, Upala on his left and Merin on his right.
As a trio they stepped into the mists.
Chapter 31
Tumbling out of the portal, Drew fell onto the snow-covered rocks of the bitter cold mountain, clutching his stomach. Shadows danced on the frozen ground before him, the magical tendrils of the gateway dancing in the air.
His insides felt tied in knots, a far different experience than the other portals he had been through. Even his first trip from Nepal into the Under had not been as unpleasant. He felt altered, as if someone had taken the pieces of his insides and scrambled them up. Digging his gloves into snow that was up to his wrists, he pulled himself away from the portal exit and toward the edge of the small, rocky outcropping the gateway had placed itself on.
Drew peeked over the edge of the mountain while his guts slowly recovered. The differences between this mountain and Everest were immediately noticeable, far more so than Ish Rav Partha. While he was cold, he was not nearly as frigid as he had been on Everest, even at lower altitudes. The oxygen content seemed much richer, he suspected they were more than two-thirds up the mountain, yet his lungs felt fuller here than they did on Gorak Shep.
What was really altered was the landscape. The other parts of the massif were still there, Lhoste and her sister peaks. At first glance, everything else was gone, replaced by water. An ocean that seemed to creep right up to this Everest’s foothills, making the treacherous Khumbu Icefall into a beach. Where there were brief flashes of lightning across the clouds, Drew thought he could see the tips of trees here and there, as if the ocean itself had risen to meet the mountain.
Behind him, he could hear another figure tumble to the ground. It may have been Merin or Upala, before he had time to ask or summon the strength to look over his shoulder, there was a third pop and another female grunt. Either way, they were both there.
“Drew.” Upala’s voice, behind him. He turned, looking over his shoulder.
She sat in the snow, Merin right behind her. Merin looked pale, and there was a little color drained out of Upala’s dark cheeks as well. Upala’s braided hair blew in the wind, her diamond-like eyes looking back into his. Drew looked at her, struck at once by just how beautiful a woman Upala really was.
Yet the power of the rasi sakta had left him. He saw her with his own eyes, the passion and admiration he felt for her finally truly his own.
He smiled as the blowing snow melted on his cheeks.
She opened her mouth, but her words were cut off by a clap of thunder and a flash above them, a yellow-and-orange flash that Drew recognized was not borne of lightning, but rather of magic.
He looked around the ledge, se
eing footsteps that were fresh but not his own. Footsteps that led around the corner to a wall of stone that was riddled with nooks and cracks, an easy climb even for someone who was not accustomed to it.
Sinar was here, and he was fighting someone higher up on the mountain. There was a second flash and thunderclap, the wind carrying something that sounded like a cry upon it.
Drew pulled himself to his feet, pushing through the snow and over to the stone wall. He called out to the women, Merin already moving.
“Come on!” he shouted, the storm gusts picking up again. “Sinar! He’s up there!”
He attacked the wall, the mixture of snow and ice feeling like soft clay after all the time on Aroha Darad, finally he was again doing something that came as second nature. As his hands and feet kept pulling him higher, his mind swung back and forth between what might wait for them above and what he had just discovered.
If it was indeed Sinar at the peak, what could they hope to do against him?
Drew’s own driving reason for coming here was to protect Nima, to warn her and find somewhere safe. He hadn’t considered many options beyond that, but he reminded himself there was much more at stake.
This agent of the Line was an equal threat, a danger to every Manad Vhan and Rakhum.
Would I put Nima’s safety before that of Upala or Merin? Or their people? Nima would not want that.
He heard Merin’s grunt of exertion behind him. She was keeping pace with him easily, showing the same aptitude for climbing he had seen in her during Kater’s long descent in the Under. Merin had been moving like a woman driven. Driven, Drew was sure, to stop the Line and protect her family. Her children had seen enough loss.
Yet Drew could not shake that there was something off about Merin, something had changed since their assault on the Yeti camp. There was a new fire burning just behind her gaze.
Drew pulled himself up to what he expected to be another ledge, only to find himself at the top of the mountain. This version of Everest seemed to have had its peak shorn off somehow, replaced by a nearly flat and featureless plain of snow dozens of feet across, broken only by a few small hills. It took him a moment to register that there were any other features at all, his mind struggled to process the unexpected sight.
