The Sapphire Cutlass

by Sharon Gosling

  “What are you doing?” Thaddeus asked.

  “What do you think? Use your brain, copper! Why else would they put us over this pit unless they intend to drop us right into it? If you ask me, we’ve got until those infernal drums stop their racket.”

  “So? What is dashing about like a lunatic going to achieve?”

  Kai didn’t look at him, still moving swiftly from one side of his cage to the other, rocking it wildly. “We can’t stop them from dropping us. The only thing we can do is try to change where we’re going to land.”

  Thaddeus watched as Kai’s prison swung again. The chain rattled harshly, pulled as taut as it would go as the cage hovered, just for a moment, over solid ground rather than over the pit. If the chain had snapped then, the cage would have crashed to the floor of the cavern rather than down into the writhing mess of snakes.

  “He’s right!” Thaddeus exclaimed. “Everyone — do what Kai’s doing. Do it now!”

  {Chapter 21}

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  The drums led Rémy and Upala to a ruined temple, an intricate stone façade cut straight into the base of the mountain. They crouched in the shadows of the jungle leaves, watching for signs that anyone was standing guard. There was no movement anywhere. The place seemed deserted, though both women knew better.

  Creepers had grown into every crack and crevice of the temple’s fascia. They wound around the carved pillars like snakes.

  “Better not go in the front door,” Rémy whispered to Upala, pointing up to a high window. “Do you think you could climb up there?”

  The pirate woman flashed her a sharp grin and before Rémy knew it, Upala was halfway up the wall, using the creepers to reach the window. Rémy followed, impressed by her fearlessness and stealth.

  Within minutes, both women were standing inside the temple. The sound of the drums was even louder here, echoing through the dim torchlight that could be seen beyond the open door of the window room. They moved toward it together, checking this way and that before beginning to traverse the passageway outside. There was no sign of anyone at all.

  They moved quickly and quietly, pausing at each room to search for any sign of their people. They found none. Instead, the temple was bedecked with all manner of marvels: stone carvings of what looked like a goddess depicted in several terrifying warlike poses. There were piles of precious stones, too — the sapphires from which Aruna had drawn her fame and fable. They glinted in the meager light, calling to Rémy as surely as if they had spoken, but she resisted the temptation to take one.

  Upala showed no interest in any of the rooms they passed at all — a strange pirate indeed, Rémy thought, who was not in the least distracted by such unattended wealth. She thought of Kai’s story about her, and wondered what kept Upala going — what interested her now that her life was so empty of family. Although, Rémy reflected, her own life wasn’t so different. They had both made families out of the people around them.

  The drums pounded on, faster and faster. The two women followed the sound, seeking its source. It couldn’t be much farther — the sound was like a summer storm now, close and cloying, hovering right overhead.

  They turned a corner, and the tunnel they were in ended so swiftly that Upala almost walked straight out into the open. Rémy caught the other woman by the arm and pulled her backward, out of sight. Together they dropped to a crouch beneath a narrow arch that formed the end of the passageway, staring out at the scene playing out in the vast cavern below them.

  Rémy found it difficult to take everything in at once. The first thing she saw was the huge carved statues standing in alcoves hewn out of the rock around the walls of the cavern. They were massive and as intricately formed as the stone carvings she and Upala had found on their way through the mountain. These, though, were many times the size, standing on spindly legs and looking for all the world as if they would lurch forward into life at any moment.

  The second thing she became aware of was the people. Hundreds and hundreds of people, mercifully all standing with their backs to where she and Upala hid — there were too many to count easily, but their number was dizzying. She felt a hand grip her arm and glanced at her companion to find Upala pointing at something in the room below them.

  Five golden cages were swinging unevenly from the ceiling, each filled with a figure that Rémy instantly recognized. Her heart sank. They had found their friends, all right — but how to reach them? Upala squeezed her arm again and nodded with her chin at the great pit they could see in the floor.

  “Snakes,” she whispered in Rémy’s ear. “It is full of snakes. They are about to become a sacrifice.”

  “A sacrifice?” Rémy asked, horrified. “Who for? What to?”

  A movement across the cavern caught their eye. A figure appeared through the archway at the top of the slope that led down to the stage. He took up position beside the winch fixed in the wall. Rémy realized that the chains fixed to it led to the cages, and her heart clenched. A second later, the drums stopped. The silence filled the space, expanding with the final drumbeat, and in it the new arrival spun the winch.

  “Swing harder!” Kai’s voice shouted, echoing through the cavern. “Harder!”

  The cages dropped. Four missed the pit entirely, crashing instead onto the raised stone platform. The fifth, though, had not swung far enough. It crunched down onto the very edge of the pit, bars folding around the ledge so that it rested there. A thin, high scream of terror echoed from it.

  “Dita!” Rémy cried.

  “Go!” Upala hissed. “Go, go, go!”

  The two women ran along the narrow ledge between them and the winch. Below them, Dita’s screams rose higher as the cult members rushed forward and tried to dislodge her cage. The man beside the winch saw the two women coming and pulled his blade from his waistband, but it was Rémy who launched the first sally. She parried his sword with a kick, spinning her shoulder into his chest. Upala followed with a slash of her talwar that knocked him off balance and also off the ledge.

  Together they grabbed at the winch, trying to turn the wheel that would lift Dita’s cage. It was heavy and stiff, so much so that Rémy thought it wasn’t going to move at all. Below her she could see more of the cult members surging forward, some joining the cause to push Dita’s cage into the pit, others clawing their way up the stage wall like ants. Thaddeus, Kai, Desai, and J had squeezed out of their damaged cages, and J was leaning over the edge of the pit as if he could reach Dita himself, while the others tried to keep the rest of the cult at bay.

  The winch gave just as Dita’s screams reached a crescendo and the cage toppled into the pit. Rémy and Upala spun the wheel, rushing to take up the slack as it thundered over the edge. In truth, Rémy thought they were too late. The cage disappeared from view, and she imagined it crashing to the bottom, snakes writhing up and around Dita in a slithering morass. But then the chains pulled taut and the winch bit back, raising the cage precious inches.

  “There’s no time,” Upala managed through gritted teeth.

  She was right. Some of the cult members who had made it onto the stage were ignoring Thaddeus and the rest in favor of heading for the slope. Upala threw the winch lock and grabbed her discarded sword, turning to Rémy.

  “You go help them,” she hissed. “I will find a diversion — a way to stop the rest.”

  “How?”

  But Upala had already spun away, and another scream from Dita drew Rémy’s attention back to the pit.

  Kai, Thaddeus, and Desai were trying to hold off the cult horde by kicking back as many as they could before they made it up onto the stage, but it was hopeless. Kai was already grappling with one and many more were behind.

  Rémy looked around. There was no way she’d be able to fight her way down to them. She’d have to help some other way. She looked at the chains that had held the cages in place. They formed a bridge right
over the heads of the army below. She couldn’t walk them like a tightrope: they were at too much of an angle. But she could climb.

  She leapt onto the winch and leaned forward, gripping one of the chains with both hands and pulling herself up, hand over hand, foot over foot. Rémy moved as quickly as she knew how. As she got higher, Dita’s cage came into view, swinging slightly as it hung low in the pit. It hadn’t touched bottom, but it was very close, just a few inches from the base. Dita had clawed herself as high up the bars as she could and was clinging to them, trying to keep her legs above the snakes that writhed and slithered just below.

  The drums started again as Rémy reached the hook in the ceiling. The beat inspired a surge in the cult members, as if the sound had renewed their energy. They climbed onto the stage doubly fast. Rémy could see her friends backing away, herded into a smaller and smaller space with their broken cages at their backs.

  Dita or Kai — who should she go to first? Rémy felt Upala’s sword in her belt and knew the answer. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she wrapped her booted feet around one of the chains that led to the ground. Then, keeping her hands loose and wishing they were gloved, she slid down it. The clang as she landed on the downed cage was loud enough to make Kai and Thaddeus turn toward her.

  “Rémy!” they both shouted.

  Rémy leapt to the stone floor and drew Upala’s sword from her belt, thrusting it toward Kai as she passed him. He seemed to be limping but, even injured, her brother would know how to use it better than Thaddeus could.

  Rémy ran toward where J was still leaning over the pit. Rémy didn’t even pause before she jumped, soaring past him and landing on top of the cage. The girl was still holding on, but she wasn’t high enough. The snakes were winding themselves around the bars, slinking higher and higher.

  Rémy dropped to her knees above the girl, tugging at the locked hatch to no avail. “Dita,” she urged, “climb! Climb higher!”

  “I can’t!” Dita sobbed. “My arms aren’t strong enough!” She was pale, tears streaking her face.

  “You can do it,” Rémy told her. “You must!”

  “I can’t!” the girl wailed again, too terrified to make herself move.

  “All right, all right,” Rémy soothed. “I will help you. You can do this. D’accord?” She quickly undid her belt and then climbed down the side of the cage herself to loop it through the bars and around the girl.

  “Remember what we have been learning, Dita,” she said to the terrified girl as they faced each other and Rémy fastened the belt. “A little at a time, yes? I am here. You’re not going to fall. Take it slowly. Do what I do. We will climb back up together, d’accord?”

  Dita nodded through her tears. Then she took a deep breath. Rémy began to move, slowly and purposefully, her feet braced against the bars, one hand holding on to the belt, the other grasping at the cage. She moved one foot and then another, a few inches at a time before pausing to let Dita do the same. When they got to the corner of the cage, Rémy had to undo the belt, but Dita clung on until she’d done it up around her again.

  “You’ve done it!” Rémy shouted over the maelstrom of noise around them. “You’re at the top. Look, Dita! The snakes can’t reach you here!”

  Dita smiled and hugged her through the bars, hard. It was only a temporary solution and the belt wouldn’t support the girl forever, but it was something.

  Rémy looked up to see Thaddeus struggling with a woman who looked as if she could snap him like a twig. As Rémy watched, he dodged backward as the woman swung her razor-sharp cutlass. For a second she thought he’d been sliced through the stomach, but then Rémy saw that it was only his shirt that had been a victim — this time, anyway.

  Come on, Upala, Rémy thought. Whatever you’re going to do, do it!

  “You have to help them,” Dita shouted to Rémy through the bars. “I can hold on now. They need —”

  Dita’s words were swallowed by a sound so loud that it even drowned out the noise of the drums. It was the crash of thunder trapped inside a room, accompanied by the creak of a tree big enough to hold up the world falling to its death. The noise drowned out everything else that was going on around them, and the crash that followed shook the ground.

  Rémy, still holding fast to Dita, twisted around to see that one of the huge stone statues had toppled from its alcove. The colossus had smashed into the stone slope and had begun to roll down it, crushing everything in its path — cult worshippers and pieces of the cavern alike. Rémy watched open-mouthed as another statue began to fall just like the first, rocking in its alcove for a moment and then, as if in slow motion, toppling forward into the cavern.

  {Chapter 22}

  A DIVERSION

  When the sound came, it was so loud that at first Thaddeus thought the roof was caving in. His momentary distraction was enough for the woman in front of him to smash him to the ground. He had to scramble back to avoid the blade that followed the blow.

  As he fought his way back to his feet, Thaddeus saw one of the huge stone figures set into the walls around the cavern toppling forward, its limbs crumbling into chunks of rock the size of boulders as it went. It crashed to the ground, cracking the surface of the slope before what was left of its body began to roll down toward the platform. As he watched, another of the statues began to fall, smashing into the first. At this impact the second statue fractured, limbs cracking and splintering into stone dust and shrapnel as the two colossal forms battled for space as they rolled. They picked up speed despite their size, crashing against each other, urging one another on as they hurtled down the slope.

  At first the cult worshippers seemed entirely oblivious, too intent on their human foes to notice what was happening behind them. The woman struggling with Thaddeus battled on, regardless. But then something began to happen. One by one, the soldiers turned toward the approaching statues. They raised their arms and walked forward, armored limbs outstretched before them even as they stood in the path of the immense stone tide.

  The woman trying to kill Thaddeus abruptly abandoned her attempt. She turned away, walking back to the edge of the platform and quickly descending it. Joining the other cult members, she raised her arms and began to walk toward the statues.

  “What’s happening?” Kai shouted, and Thaddeus realized that he, Desai, and J had also all been left alone.

  The cult members began to chant again. They stood, most of them three-deep in a row that blocked off the end of the slope from the platform. The first row dropped to their knees, arms outstretched, the second leaned over the shoulders of the first, their arms also outstretched. The soldiers in the third row, made of the tallest of the masses, remained upright, reaching out over the heads of the first two rows, also with their arms outstretched. The statues continued their journey down the slope, each smash of their stone bodies sending more and more dust and sharp chips of rock into the air. The cavern was full of it, as thick as the mist had been out in the forest.

  “Look!” J shouted, pointing through the smog at the wall where one of the statues had previously stood. “Who’s that? She ain’t dressed like the rest of ’em!”

  A lithe figure slipped out of the now-empty alcove, making back up the stone slope. It was a woman, Thaddeus could make out that much, but no one he recognized.

  “That’s Upala!” Kai exclaimed with distinct relief. “She’s still alive. Where is she going?”

  “I have no idea, but I believe,” came Desai’s voice over the sound of crushing, careening stone, “that this is intended as a diversion to help us out of our predicament. In which case we should take advantage of it while we still can. We have to find the source of the power. We have to stop it, now.”

  “What about Dita?” J cried. “We can’t just leave ’er!”

  Thaddeus looked over to the cage, still dangling low in the pit. Rémy was working at the lock while Dita clung to the
top of her prison for dear life.

  “She’s all right, J,” said Thaddeus. “Look — Rémy’s with her.”

  “She ain’t all right!” J cried. “She’s still stuck in that thing!”

  As if she’d felt their eyes on her, Rémy glanced up and met Thaddeus’s gaze.

  “Go!” she shouted, her voice only just carrying above the sound of disintegrating rock. “Get out of here while you can! I know how to get us both out of here. I’ll take care of her, J. I promise.”

  “An’ who’s going to take care of you?” J yelled back. “Eh, Rémy? Who’s going to take care of you?”

  Thaddeus grabbed J’s arm, dragging the boy around to face him. “I don’t want to leave them either, J, but staying isn’t going to help them. If we can work out why this is happening and stop it, then maybe we’ll all be saved. We have to go.”

  “You go,” J said, trying to wriggle out of Thaddeus’s grip. “Go on. Go. But I ain’t going nowhere.”

  “J, you have to. Do you want Rémy to have to rescue you, too?”

  “She won’t ’ave ter —”

  Thaddeus was through arguing. Every second they tarried in the cavern was a second lost for escape. He dragged J away from the pit, though the boy did his best to resist. Kai grabbed his other arm, and together he and Thaddeus practically carried J out of the cavern, heading for the dark recesses beneath the arch at the far end of the platform. Kai was still limping, but if he was in pain, the pirate did not show it. Desai followed behind them.

  As they reached the archway that led out of the cavern, a new sound reached them: a rumbling scrape like the magnified screech of chalk scraping over slate. Thaddeus turned to look back, feeling Kai, J, and Desai do the same beside him.