Owl and the Electric Samurai

by Kristi Charish

  I examined the spot Captain had found. It looked identical to the other, right down to the faded lotus petals. I took out my bottle of watered-­down blood and started to spray. Nothing happened.

  Maybe Captain had been chasing mice. There was something about this mural though—again I heard the whispered voice on the breeze that came through the temple, pushing me to keep looking.

  “We’re running out of time,” Carpe said. I glanced up from the mural. Sure enough, Hermes’s voice was carrying down the stairs. The steps and height amplified his voice, but Carpe was right. We didn’t have much time until the tour group returned.

  I turned back to the mural. Looks could be deceiving. “Maybe the portal part is central on the wall,” I said to Rynn. That would have made more sense; the center would be less likely to crack with age.

  I winced as Rynn kicked the wall with his boot. Plaster crumbled away, revealing more of the fresco and the start of a colorful tree of life. I tried with the chicken blood again. Still nothing.

  Yet Captain wriggled around my feet and started scratching at the wall once again.

  Wait a minute.

  Plastering. Shit—Jebe would have come through here in the twelfth century. There was no way the inhabitants of a Tibetan stone fortress had any reason to plaster anything—not when they had the smooth stone surfaces to work with.

  “Guys, I think whatever magic they hid here is on the rock itself, underneath the plaster.” And there was no way we had time to excavate it properly. I grabbed a small hammer out of my bag, along with a medium pin. I lined it up against the wall. Seeing what I planned to do, Rynn followed suit with a knife.

  I closed my eyes and lined up the hammer over the pin. Oh God, this wasn’t how I wanted to start my day, ruining a four-hundred-year-old fresco . . . I struck the pin and watched it crack the surface plaster and the heavier one with the fresco underneath. Rynn had better luck, sending a large swath crumbling. I took another swing and hoped the meditation room had been built with some sound dampening in mind.

  On the third strike the remaining plaster slid down the wall, taking the four-hundred-year-old relief crumbling all the way with it, revealing the artwork underneath.

  Unlike the paints that had been used on the plaster, this was a scene of carved and colored bones set into the stone. It wasn’t a gate at all but a battle. “I think that’s Jebe,” I said, brushing the remaining plaster off one of the images, a white-gray figure in a sea of black and red, shrouded in what looked like lightning.

  There was something written underneath.

  I set to work brushing away the remaining plaster to uncover the script with my hands, and when that failed, with a brush from my backpack.

  “Careful, Alix,” Rynn said.

  “I am being careful. It’s a warning—in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Cyrillic. They all say the same thing. ‘Beware he who searches the Lightning Suit’—or something to that effect.”

  As I said the words, a chill fell over me—and anger, deep red anger at the scene before me. I shook it off. What the hell was coming over me? The suit was here; I didn’t have time for my brain to take a vacation. All I had to do was figure out where the next stop along the treasure trail was.

  “Remember what happened the last time, Alix,” Rynn said, the warning heavy in his voice. I looked down at my hands, where the spray bottle was. I hadn’t realized I’d picked it back up until Rynn said anything.

  Carpe rounded the corner from where he’d taken up a lookout just outside. “Hermes is stalling them in the other temple, but you need to hurry.”

  “Yeah, ah, let’s start taking photos—fast—then we’ll run some tests with UV before I get the blood out.” Less likely to make the whole thing explode.

  I placed the blood bottle by my feet and tossed a camera to Rynn before turning my UV light on the image. It was ominous—and strange for a Tibetan temple, with the blacks and reds whirling together . . . angry at Jebe, for coming here, for staying, for locking everything up.

  I shook my head again, clearing it. “What?” I asked, realizing Rynn had said something.

  “Nothing active, not in any of the different spectrums.” It looked like Rynn was going to say something else—he was frowning at me—but there was a noise back in the hallway that even I heard.

  Carpe was no longer hanging by the doorway.

  Rynn swore. “Stay here, I’ll see what the elf has gotten up to. I’ll be back in a second.”

  He added a few choice words, but my attention was already back on the mural of Jebe.

  I picked up more bits of color mixed in with the dark blacks, grays, and reds. Pinks, oranges, even yellows—the details on the various armies’ dress. The colors were well preserved; not all that surprising, considering the arid nature of the place and the fact it was hidden away from bleaching sunlight.

  I blinked as I picked up a line of pink—no, make that red. Thin red lines peeking out from pieces of bone inlay. Something made me lean in and smell the stone. The metallic singe of magically preserved blood flooded my senses. Now that, I most definitely recognized. . . .

  I held my flashlight up to get a better look. There were a few etches made into the wall where the red had been laid. I could see the lines of blood now woven into the mural, brilliant red, surrounding the combatants with their strange phosphorescent-like glow . . . if the phosphorescence was on an acid trip. . . .

  I blinked. Then again . . . Wait a minute, those were active. How the hell had they been activated? I took a step back and swore as it continued to spread.

  The ground shook. Rynn and Carpe both ran back in to find me backing away from the mural. Son of a bitch, I’d only touched it.

  Rynn took one look at the activated magic inscriptions and then back at me. His face was white. “What the hell did you do?” he said.

  I stood there shaking my head. “Me? Nothing. I swear to God, all I did was touch it . . .” I trailed off as my eyes fell to where both Rynn and Carpe were staring. At the spray bottle of chicken blood still in my hands. What the . . . ?

  “We left you here for less than a minute, Alix—” Rynn started, not bothering to hide his anger.

  “I swear, Rynn, I don’t know how this got here. I didn’t—” But before I could finish my defense, the floor began to shake.

  “No. One. Move,” I mouthed to Carpe and Rynn, not willing to risk whispering. No one made a sound. Not even Captain, who gripped the floor as if his life might depend on it.

  The room stopped shaking. Carefully, oh so very carefully, I edged my foot along the stone floor—the solid stone floor that should be stable.

  Shit! With a crack that echoed through the red temple and likely through the entire city, the stone floor crumbled out from under us. We dropped, not down but along a wide stone chute leading down. Rynn was the only one who didn’t scream, Captain included, as all of us madly tried to find a handhold on the smooth sides.

  After sliding down for longer than I cared, we hit the ground, sending up a cloud of dirt that probably hadn’t been disturbed in almost six hundred years.

  I rubbed my tailbone. Oh, that was going to leave a mark. “Is everyone alive?” I called out.

  “Yes” came Rynn’s strained reply.

  “Define ‘alive’?” Carpe said.

  Captain decided to join in and mewed as well.

  Okay. Everyone alive and un-maimed. Score one for lucky streaks. I winced as my head revolted. I hoped the cave-in was restricted to the one room and Hermes got the tourists out. I did not need that on my conscience. I extracted myself from Carpe’s and Rynn’s limbs while I coughed and scrambled to find my flashlight. I swear I’d heard it clatter somewhere around here.

  My fingers brushed against the handle, and I turned it on. We were in a cavern—or cavern-like space. Originally a natural structure but definitely altered and excavated by huma
n hands.

  The ceiling was only seven odd feet—high, considering how far down we were. And it looked like it expanded. “How far down do you think we fell?” I asked, stifling a cough as dust filled my lungs and throat.

  “Five hundred feet or so, give or take,” Rynn said, sounding like he wasn’t doing so hot with the dirt and dust either, despite his supernatural constitution. Carpe? I just hoped he wouldn’t die from sneezing or coughing.

  I checked the slide. Even if we could boost ourselves up, we’d never be able to climb the polished surface. I moved my flashlight over the rest of the cavern and found a circular opening with a graduated ramp headed down.

  “Guys, where do you think this goes?” I said, highlighting the ramp for them.

  “Considering how far down we are? I’d say it’s a tunnel out of the base of the mountain—for escape, or trade, or a combination of the two.”

  Well, it was certainly wide and tall enough to fit carts—a caravan, by the looks of things—and it beat carrying goods up the stairs one by one.

  Something reflected my flashlight off the ground near my feet, and I made out what looked like a pattern worked into the floor. From what I could see through the grime, it was the same kind of colored bits of bone inlay that had been fixed into the wall above, only instead of a dark and gloomy battle accentuated with swaths of red, these looked to be depictions of brightly colored animals . . . and they were traveling in various directions. I don’t know why, but my eyes fixated on a particular procession—pink elephants decorated with bright orange . . . tiny, but still intricately done.

  A rarity if not completely unknown this side of the Himalayas, especially at the time these images would have been laid. But on the other side of the mountains, in India and Nepal, when Guge would have been a flourishing trade center . . .

  I wondered . . .

  The parade of various animals all disappeared into the darkness past where my flashlight could reach. I got up and followed the winding procession of elephants along the cavern floor.

  “Remember what Hermes said about the labyrinth nature of this place,” Rynn called out as he examined the chute. “That part I don’t think he was lying about.”

  “Don’t worry, if I get lost I’ll look for the pink elephants,” I said as I followed the pink parade until they ended fifteen feet away, at the base of a mural that stretched along the wall. It was painted in the outline of a gate not quite like the one I’d seen in Nepal; different styles and colors had been used. But the fact that it was here . . .

  “Guys,” I called out. “I think I found something.” Maybe it was the drop in altitude or the fall itself, but a thrumming in my head had started. I blinked, trying to clear my vision.

  Both Rynn and Carpe turned in my direction, looking none too relaxed.

  I shone the light on the bone mural carved and set into the cavern wall. “Looks like the people of Guge really did escape through a gateway to Shangri-La,” I said.

  Unlike in Nepal, where there had been yaks, oxen, and horses dragging wagons and ware through the gate, this time there were elephants and tigers.

  Was it functional, or did it just signify a different region? Before I could stop myself, I found my hand stretched out to the wall.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Something was clouding my thoughts; it wanted me to touch the mural. It was so intense I couldn’t think.

  Rynn came up beside me, evaluating me, as if trying to solve a puzzle, before turning his attention on the mural.

  “It looks like another doorway, like the one we found in Nepal. Only difference is, this one is still active.” He crinkled his nose. “I can smell the magic leaching off of the paints.”

  Well, Neil and Frank had told us they’d meet us here—they’d said as much in the directions. They just hadn’t said anything about a slide of death and a large pit. And the mural above had been of Jebe and the armor; it hadn’t even hinted at Shangri-La. We should have been stumbling into a treasure room.

  There was something about the gate that was mesmerizing. I leaned closer to brush away the centuries of dust caked over the small bone elephants. The cold chill descended over me again.

  Captain, who’d been sniffing the nooks and crannies, had made his way to my feet. He sniffed at the mural. Jumping back, he arched his back and let out a long, drawn-out hiss.

  “What’s his problem?” Carpe asked.

  I frowned as Captain continued to back away. He hissed again until he reached the back of the cave, the farthest point from the mural possible. “I don’t know, could be the magic.”

  “Or he remembers what happened upstairs,” Rynn warned.

  “Don’t worry—I’m not turning this one on.” Well, not yet, anyways. There was time for that. And why wouldn’t I? How many people could say they’d been to Shangri-La?

  “That’s what you’ve said twice now—back in Nepal and right before the floor collapsed upstairs.”

  I didn’t answer. There were more bone animals; yaks, oxen, cows, pigs, even horses pulling carts.

  “How does it open?” Carpe asked this time.

  I tore my eyes off the mural. “If Nepal was any indication, there’s a substantial trick to it. One Texas and Michigan didn’t see fit to share.” Carpe frowned at me. I sighed and added, “No, I have no idea how to open it, not without causing a massive explosion of magic.”

  But that’s not true. You know how to open it. All it takes is a little blood.

  I frowned at Carpe. Where the hell had that thought come from? “Maybe the Guge left clues—or an instruction manual.”

  I stepped away from the mural, a pang of loss coursing through me. Something was wrong . . . very wrong. For the life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I shone my flashlight on the rest of the massive cavern, and Rynn and Carpe followed suit. “Look for pictures, diagrams—anything that might be a reference for the gate.” With any luck there’d be a set of instructions, or, at the very least, a hint as to how the door opened properly—as in, without the explosion parts.

  “We’re supposed to be looking for Jebe’s treasure, not the gate to Shangri-La,” Rynn said.

  “Keep your eye out for that too, but at the moment I plan on working with what we have. Well?”

  Rynn and Carpe exchanged a look but began combing the walls. I checked another section of pictures, this time a ring of birds flying over what looked like the Himalayas. No clues as to how to open the gate.

  “Maybe the instructions were destroyed?” Carpe said as he checked another section on the far wall. “I mean, it doesn’t look like anyone has been through here in a hundred years.”

  “Closer to five hundred,” I told him. “Maybe more.” A hiding spot? Or a secret compartment or a map to another location where they kept the instructions? I’d seen stranger things. . . . There was a trail of red bone, up above. I traced it along the wall while Rynn and Carpe continued to bicker about the best way out.

  “We’re not here to open a gate, elf, we’re here to find the armor,” Rynn said.

  “Well right now the only thing in front of us is the gate.”

  I winced as my vision clouded over, just like it had before the floor had given out. If I could just see straight, let alone think straight. . . . I frowned. Was it me, or was Carpe looking a little nonplussed too? And Rynn was watching me now in earnest, his eyes narrowed.

  The supernaturals getting their panties in a bunch that the human in the room is doing a better job finding all the clues they should have picked up on already. . . .

  I shook my head. Where the hell had that come from?

  I wrote it off to stress mixed with lack of sleep and the fall. My ­vision cleared and I continued to follow the trail of red bone. It led to a small pictorial, set away from the gate with another series of images, all ­contained in their own circles of designs and borders.
Stories, or more likely a history of things that went through the gate: what looked like people fleeing a war, carrying livestock and possessions, another ­showing ­people fleeing a famine, disease. The gate hadn’t been used once by the Guge to flee disaster; it had been used for centuries, maybe longer.

  And there was Jebe wearing the Lightning Armor, following a group of monks through the gate.

  Jebe hadn’t hidden the armor in Tsaparang—he’d hidden it in ­Shangri-La. That’s why no one could find it, why it had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet. The blood rushed to my head again and the fog descended, making me see an angry red when I closed my eyes.

  “Even if we find the instructions, just what do you plan on doing exactly?” Rynn said to Carpe. “Blow us and all of Tsaparang up?”

  “I don’t know about you, but before we explore those tunnels and wake up some troll or other monster who decides elves might be tasty, I at least want the thin trace of hope that there might be another way out, which, unless you have a way up that chute, is the gate.”

  I shook off the fog. “Guys, hate to break this to you, but your argument is about to become a moot point.” I shone the flashlight on the mural of Jebe so both could see.

  Carpe crept forward to get a better look.

  Rynn was still skeptical. “It still doesn’t address the problem of how to open it without blowing ourselves up and leveling Tsaparang.”

  Begrudgingly, I had to admit he was right.

  “Unless you only activated half of it,” Carpe said.

  “What?” I said, turning to Carpe.

  “You’re thinking of this as a two-dimensional doorway, but it doesn’t have to be. What if there are multiple points that need to be turned on—and not necessarily in the same place or line of sight?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way before. It could work . . .

  “Alix?” Rynn implored. “You’re not seriously considering this?”