Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

by Jack L. Chalker

  We did not, of course, dare land anywhere near the Castle. Since there were no legitimate landing areas for the big creatures we could use, we made do with an area more than forty kilometers southwest of the seat of Charon’s government and managed to get the big thing back off the ground ourselves.

  Our equipment was surprisingly spare. Koril had risked laser pistols, with the understanding that we might have to get rid of them for any number of reasons. We also carried a small store of projectile weapons and ammunition, on which we’d practiced and been checked out at the redoubt’s firing ranges long before. Darva never did quite get the art of laser pistol down well, but she was a whiz at the projectile pistols—just the reverse of me. In addition several of us, including Darva, carried that most ancient of weapons, the sword; others carried small but deadly daggers. The burly Kaigh, to my awe and fascination, carried what seemed to be a crossbow, a kind of early weapon I’d only read about but had never seen before.

  We carried no papers or documents of any kind. All information had been hypnoed into our minds to save weight and problems. We all wore tough clothing of jungle green, a sort of forest version of the trooper uniforms, Darva’s and mine having been specially cut and tailored for our peculiar requirements. Beyond some prepackaged food cakes and canteens, we had nothing else.

  On the road we ate mostly by transmutation, a rather fascinating process. Just as Garal had changed fruit punch into acid and Korman had changed it back, so our own sorcs could take almost any vegetable matter in the jungle and make almost anything of it we desired. To this day I’m still not sure if we really were eating transmuted stuff or just leaves and the like we were fooled into believing was the good food it seemed to be. In the end, it probably made no difference. At least our bodies not only accepted the stuff but seemed to make good use of it

  We had two and a half days to reach the Castle, which was easy enough considering the distance involved. Still, the trek was through the rough of the jungle, and not even Darva and I were any longer prepared to feel completely at home there. As we approached the mountains, though, the jungle gave way first to thick forest and then to intermittent groves with bare glades and rocky outcrops. The going was steep, since we could hardly use the known roads, and tough. Much of the open spaces had to be negotiated at night We had our first practice with Koril’s little nocturnal vision spells, but still needed the more natural and nearly perfect night eyes of Ku to keep us from breaking our fool necks.

  By the morning of the appointed day, we had made it to the place where we knew we’d be entering the caves. It was a good spot, really. Nearby, through a small grove of trees, was a sheer cliff and we were able to look out on the valley below. From any point we could see the top of the Castle, which looked even more fearsome in person than it did in any pictures.

  We settled down to wait for the late afternoon, when the real work would begin. Standing short watches, we tried to get as much sleep as we could. With some interest I noticed that, somehow, Zala hadn’t been included in the watch schedule.

  I slept in short stretches, but couldn’t really relax. I was simply too keyed up, although I knew that was an amateur’s problem and wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Early in the afternoon, before the start of one of Charon’s interminable rains, I wandered down through the grove of trees to the cliffside and looked out, perhaps for the last time, on the landscape below.

  And, finally, I saw a tabarwind.

  The view across the valley was fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers at worst, although it was obscured by ram. The cloud cover remained above the line of hills on both sides, though, allowing fair visibility with no real resolution of fine detail on the ground. Still, there was no mistaking what I was seeing—I watched it form.

  First a small area far off to the east seemed to Sash on and off with upper-level lightning. But instead of the intermittent and irregular illumination within the clouds it grew quite regular and very strong, so strong that it was almost as if a bright light was shining in the center of the cloud mass. Still nothing had emerged from the cloud. Then, suddenly, the immediate area began to swirl around. I had seen something of the pattern before, although not with the central globe of increasingly steady light Tornado, it was called, or sometimes cyclone.

  From that bright center in the clouds long fingers of electricity shot down to the ground, and seconds later, reported their arrival to me with a series of loud booms that echoed back and forth across the valley. I couldn’t make out much of what was under those bolts, but I felt relieved that it wasn’t me.

  Now, out of that bright, shining center a funnel shape seemed to emerge, not like a tornado but almost mathematically regular. A conical shape of charged—what?—moving down, surrounded by a maniacal dance of lightning all around. The yellowish cone began to change, darken, take on colors as it reached for and then touched the ground. Reds and oranges and purples swirled within but did not mix.

  I could see where the ignorant might ascribe a supernatural power to such a thing. It was a swirl of color and forces, and as I watched, it flattened into an almost cylindrical shape and began to move.

  Others, bearing the thunder, came and joined me at my watching place. The storm, although far off, was awesome, and everyone seemed magnetically attracted to its grim, erratic march across the valley. Everyone but Koril.

  “I think it’s time we went in,” he said calmly.

  A couple of us turned and looked in surprise at him. “But it’s not nearly five yet,” I noted.

  He nodded. “They won’t risk a shuttle landing with tabarwind conditions in the area. The automatic systems will close down completely for the duration so as not to attract the storm. That means no electricity or automatic watchdogs, no landings, nothing. And right now any laser charges are being hauled down the long tunnel away from the Castle. That means we’ll be between the charges and the people who can use them, and that’s fine with me. The storm’s a godsend! Let’s move!”

  The tabarwind’s almost hypnotic effect was hard to leave, but we all understood his urgency. We slipped on our packs and headed for ah undistinguished grove of trees some sixty meters from our camp.

  The watch has retreated,” Koril said, almost gloating.

  “That’ll make it easy. If we can get past the ulterior guard-post without being seen we’ll be in without a trace.”

  The roar of the tabarwind sounded very close, and the wind picked up to almost gale force. “Hadn’t we better ditch out laser pistols?” Kindel asked nervously.

  “I think not,” the chief sorcerer replied. “I’m willing to take the risk. With the luck we’re having, it just might mean we have ‘em and nobody else will”

  The spell in the grove was a good one, tightly woven and nearly impossible to detect Few knew that the Castle had any back entrances and exits in the first place, although nobody builds a fortress without both an escape system and a hidden route of supply. This was one of four such, and the second closest to the Castle itself—but the most direct. The closest in, and most used, of these back doors actually led away from the Castle to the underground storerooms in natural caverns in the mountain Though it would be the easiest to uncover and enter, an enemy force might never find the Castle from there.

  Koril and two of our other sorcerers worked quickly on the spell, with a skill and ease I found fascinating and enviable. I might have their potential, but I was a long way from having their skill.

  Two of the trees seemed to shrivel, wither before our eyes, then they bent backward to reveal a solid metal door. Medusan metal, I knew—and totally inert to us. Both door and lock were beyond our powers, but not the rock in which the lock was imbedded. I watched as our advance team of sorcs sent then combined energies into and around the rock, and saw the wa of the rock respond as if it was some living thing, compressing back from the locking mechanism. In a matter of minutes a hole appeared on one side of the door large enough for an arm to go through. Koril nodded to himself, walked forward, rea
ched in almost to his elbow, and slid the door back. We could all see that the locking mechanism also slid back, still in place. No alarms had been tripped because the lock had not been tampered with.

  Quickly we were inside the tunnel entrance, then waited there as the door returned to its original position and our wizards replicated the spells they had broken on the way in, moving the trees and the rock back into place. A Class 1 sorc could detect the tampering if he was in any way suspicious, but I sure couldn’t.

  With the door shut, we were suddenly encased in total darkness, but we were neither blind nor helpless. Ku scampered up the wall and stuck firmly to the top of the cave. He would travel with us that way and be our surprise insurance policy. As for us, we could see each other’s distinctive wa—Zala’s twin mind was particularly visible—thus providing us with our own outlines as well as the wa in the rock of the cave itself. The sight, uncomplicated by anything visual, was eerie, and useful—but not only to us. Anyone else could see us, too.

  Ku in the lead proceeded slowly about five meters ahead of us. As silently as possible, in this configuration, we began our walk down that long, dark tunnel, most attention focused on Ku. Koril took the lead in our group, Darva remained the last, her attention less on Ku than on Zala, as agreed. This was, in fact, one of Koril’s little master strokes. The weakest in power, Darva’s wa was linked immutably to mine. If she saw anything unusual, she could signal me with a prearranged pinch code. If anybody tried anything on her, I’d know it immediately, too. Koril, I now understood, had good reasons for everything he did, including bringing both Darva and me along.

  We rounded a turn in the runnel and suddenly had some sight—a flickering torch not in the cave itself but coming from a small room just off it Ku was a nervy bastard, I had to give him that much. He scampered on the cave roof right up to that door, which didn’t reach his position, and peered cautiously in from his upside-down angle. Then, cautiously, he made his way back to Koril.

  “Two troopers,” he hissed to Koril in a voice barely audible to me in the middle of the group. “Repeaters with exploding bullets. Power’s still off.”

  Koril nodded to him and appeared to be satisfied. Then, as Ku went on ahead once again, the man who used to own both cave and troopers stepped forward, almost to the open door itself, and raised his hands in what I knew was a power gesture. He seemed immobile, frozen but majestic, and yet the index finger of his outstretched right hand wriggled, telling us to proceed.

  One at a time, as silently as we could, we approached Koril, then the door, then passed it, walking right under Ku. We could see the two men in the room, looking bored and occasionally glancing up at some device beyond our gaze. Neither seemed to notice us.

  Once Darva was past, Koril himself finally moved, retaining his outstretched form and moving first sideways, then back to the far cave wall, past the door, under Ku, and to the rest of us waiting on the other side. Only then did he relax, move forward, and allowing Ku to go ahead once again, he led us down the tunnel and around another curve, back into the darkness once again. There was no need to explain what he had done. We all knew he had maintained the illusion of peace, quiet, and no intruders for the two men while we all passed.

  We continued another forty or fifty meters when the cave opened up into a large, circular area—an obvious junction point. The trouble was, once you stepped into it the wa glowed brightly all around, indicating solid rock. We couldn’t even tell where we’d entered. This, then, was the first of the maze traps, and a very good one it was.

  The tunnel system had the intricate workings of a circuit diagram, as I knew from my earlier sessions with the diagrams and floor plans. It would be obvious to anyone getting this far that the solidness of the chamber was a blind, but you had no real clue as to which opening to take, even if you found it. Of the five tunnels that actually fed into the place, only one led towards the Castle. Another, of course, led back the way we had come. The other three were laced with very nasty traps and ultimately led to storage areas away from the Castle itself.

  I slipped back to Darva. “How’re you holding up?” I whispered.

  “Fine, except I feel like I have to pee,” she responded just as quietly. I patted her comfortingly and retook my position.

  Koril looked around, then urged us back and again stretched out his arms. He began to turn, slowly, for more than a minute, making three complete circles before he stopped. Finally he said, in a very low voice, “Somebody very good’s done a nice job. They’re all badly booby-trapped, and they’ve added a new cross-tunnel about ten meters out. —follow me closely and don’t get ahead of me. Ku, no more than a couple meters at a time.”

  With that he made his decision, pointed his finger, and some of the if a to his left dissolved a bit He walked cautiously through it allowed Ku to go on, then waited for the rest of us. The wa curtain, made of some thin strands of something or other that simulated rock but were easily penetrable, slid back into place.

  Slowly, cautiously, we reformed and started down the new path. After only two or three meters, though, Koril gestured for us to stop.

  “Dumb shits,” Koril mumbled. “They ought to know better than to use offworlder traps.” He pointed to the floor, and we all could sense what he meant. All around us was wa—in us, in the walls, floor, and roof. Everything shone with its distinctive wa pattern—except an area four meters long that ran the width of the cave on the floor right in front of Koril. Inert matter meant Medusan metal, and its very lack of any sight, including wa, outlined it perfectly.

  Ku needed no prompting; he was already on the roof of the cave and working. I saw a small laser drill snap into place, and, soon after, he was affixing a ring to the roof with an instant-bonding cement. Darva and I, being the largest, carried the miscellaneous packs, and she was already ahead of me. The rope, made from some really nasty jungle vines in Koril’s shops, tested out at over 500 kilos. For our sake I hoped it still did.

  Kindel was nearest me, and I whispered to her, “What would we do without Ku?”

  “Why, we’d turn another of us into something like him,” she replied matter-of -factly.

  “Oh,” was all I could manage, and turned back to watch -the work. The system was simple enough—grab the rope and swing across the pressure-sensitive floor plate to the other side. It wasn’t quite as easy as all that though—the roof- of the cave was less than three meters high, while the plate was four across. Since the rope couldn’t touch the plate, that meant you needed good speed and a slight jump at the end. It would be tricky indeed.

  It was a nervous eternity as each of us made our crossing, but we were all trained professionals. We had only one close call, and no other problems. I made it very easily, almost to my surprise, and the thought struck me that, if Kara were a double agent, primed to betray us, she could do so very convincingly now. She didn’t, though, demonstrating that nice timing and power she tried so hard to hide.

  In fact, only the tiny Kindel needed several swings until she felt confident enough to let go, and, even then, only fast action by the Ku overhead pushed her the last few precious centimeters.

  We all waited while Ku used his little laser tool to cut the knot and retrieve the rope, then return, cut off and bring back the ring also. Again, anyone who passed by would have to be looking for something to find any sign that we had been here.

  Much of the rest of the tunnel was arranged with other traps, some easier to spot than others. A few were actually powered and thus not active, but most were basic, mechanical types that were bad enough. Each caused a little heart trouble but each had its answer in our packs, and none deterred us.

  We found countless blind junctions too, and in each we had to rely on Koril’s old experience and the probing sense of the top sorcs. Approaching one, though, we were held up by Koril from entering. We had reached areas close to the Castle—and now we were going to face the real problems.

  For one thing, this junction had traffic; a fan- amount by th
e sound of it. Troopers and maintenance personnel pushing dollies of various things to and fro, or so it seemed. There was never a lag of more than a minute or so between such sounds, hardly enough time to enter, determine the right path, and move on through.

  Koril was still deeply in thought when the power returned. A band of light came alive all up and down the corridors, illuminating us dimly but completely—and illuminating the junction as well. We moved quickly back into the tunnel, just in time to miss four red-clad people emerging from another tunnel mouth on the run, pushing a large yellow cart filled with cases of something or other across the open space, and into another opening. They never glanced in our direction.

  “Well, we made it a lot farther than I thought, thanks to the tabarwind,” Koril sighed. “Now the real fun begins. We’re less than fifty meters from the bottom floor of the Castle right now. These tunnels lead to the art storage rooms, the precious metals rooms, and the like. That one to the right, there, at two o’clock, leads to the Castle.” He stopped, and we all froze as yet another team came through, this time with what sounded like a powered vehicle of some kind. As the last sounds were receding, he continued.

  “The booby traps have got to be down by now. I’m not sure anybody ever expected anyone to get this far undetected. I’m not sure I ever did, I’ve had an education in security myself these past hours. Now, I know you’re all tired but we have to push on. I’m sure all this fuss is over the attack that has surely been launched by now, and all hell is breaking loose. That means they’ll be coming up or down here any moment now. We can’t stay here and we can’t go on. I think—”

  Just as he said that last a small powered tractor towing a trailer entered the Junction point, paused a moment, then turned our way and started right toward us.