robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain

by Robert N. Charrette

  "Nakaguchi will oppose any such action."

  Hagen nodded. "His opposition must be avoided."

  How far was Hagen prepared to go? "Or overcome?"

  "If necessary."

  So bloody-minded. Was she any different? Hagen's suggestions were not wholly unattractive. If Hagen eliminated Nakaguchi, Nakaguchi's threat to her position would die along with him. She would be in control again.

  She lifted her eyes to meet Hagen's. "I suppose you have a plan."

  "Several, actually."

  "For contingencies."

  "Exactly so."

  "1 think it could be interesting to work together with you on a project, Mr. Hagen."

  "My feelings exactly, Ms. Martinez."

  CHAPTER

  14

  The world was so much bigger than it used to be. While the view from Quetzal's suite took in only a small part of that wide world, even that sometimes overwhelmed him.

  Buildings, buildings as far as the eye could see and beyond. Each twinkled with a constellation of lights, which from a distance appeared to be stars. Those man-made stars were poor replacements for the real stars. How deplorable that the imitations masked the real.

  There were few stars to be seen by looking up in this new age. The glow of the man-blight called the sprawl ate them and even dimmed the light of the moon's great globe. For truth, there were still lights to be seen in the sky: aircraft lights. The multicolored lights moving with deliberate speed across the night sky were another of mankind's mockeries of the celestial glory.

  He had liked the night—when he had been able to see and talk to the stars. Nights were different now. Very different. His nights were his days now, as his sensitivity to the sun's light was increasing.

  He did not like the constraint, but he had little choice; the antagonism of the sun was an unavoidable side effect of the magic he'd used to take himself into this new age. Full daylight was actually painful to him now. How ironic that his renewed life tied him to the darkness. Imhotep would have smiled with wry amusement to see him in this state.

  He hoped the old bastard's bones had long ago turned to dust and joined the desert sands to shift restlessly forever in the Saharan winds.

  A nocturnal existence was a limitation. He hated limitations. He resolved to find a way around it. He would find the answer. With sufficient power there was always an answer. At worst, he would have to wait until the Glittering Path was opened; after that, all was possible.

  Unfortunately, that time was not as near as he had hoped.

  The gathering of the followers had been a disappointment

  to him, even though he stepped without the slightest problem into the void left by Jeffries's unfortunate demise. For truth, they had welcomed him as their new leader, saying that it was only proper that the old die to make way for the new order. He had taught, he had praised, he had warned, and they had drunk

  It all in like the finest of wines. He had drunk deeply of their adulation, buoyed by their belief in his puissance.

  But he had expected to be working with mages. None of their paltry number, not even the members of the inner circle, showed more than an adept's mastery of the mysteries. Much potential, for truth, but little actuality. He could change that in time, but for now it was his expectations that he must change.

  His ship of dreams was running afoul of the strangest of rocks.

  Why were the followers so stunted? It was not as though there was no magic for them. He could feel it all around. There was more energy than there had been when he entered the dreaming chamber, much more. He could feel the creatures of the otherworld scampering about in the shadows. How long had it been since there had been so many of them? As the magic had been drained from the world, they had retreated to the otherworld. Clearly, that retreat was over.

  So, then, where were the wizards, the sorcerers, the enchantresses, and the shamans? The necessary energies for powerful spells were available. Why was no one using them?

  Was there some factor at work that he did not understand? Had the opposition become so skilled as to be able to hide from him? The thought did not bear thinking; its consequences were too great for the opening of the Glittering Path.

  Folly! What the sages of this age would call paranoia. It could not be so!

  And in his heart he knew that it was not so. There were manipulators of the mysteries in this new age. They were not as puissant as he expected; and they were so few. But then, had they ever been numerous? Certainly the true masters had never numbered many.

  One, he knew, was approaching. He'd sensed her last night when he drifted the astral, contemplating the sorry state of the followers. His contact with her had been fleeting, the lightest of touches. There had been much of the fuzziness that pervaded the higher planes in this age, but the contact had been enough for him to confirm her existence and to gain a taste of her power. She was in the sky, over the ocean, a clear confirmation of that power. The shade of her aura told him that she was not dedicated to the Wyrm. Was she opposed—or did she cling to the false hope of neutrality? In either case, he would have to confront her.

  But not yet.

  He was still too weak to contemplate a duel with a master. When he was better prepared, he would confront her. Perhaps he'd offer her a chance to join the followers; her skills would be an asset. Did she imagine the power that could be hers?

  If she was so dull as to refuse him, he would crush her, or take her as a bond servant. Better still, he could drain her of her essence, adding her vitality to his. What would a mage's soul taste like? Intoxicating, for truth. The thought of it wakened his hunger.

  He summoned Nakaguchi to bring him the evening's offering.

  The Asian was satisfactorily prompt, but draining the wretch he brought sparked Quetzal's appetite rather than sating it. The pitiful things Nakaguchi acquired had already lost so much of what he wanted.

  "I crave more."

  "It would be unwise." There was the faintest hint of disapproval in the Asian's manner.

  "What is unwise is the miserable dole of offerings you provide."

  Nakaguchi acted oblivious to the warning Quetzal was giving him. "We must be cautious," he said. "Too many disappearances and our work will be noticed. There will be questions asked. "You already risk exposure with your outings. Mitsutomo—"

  "Mitsutomo! Where is your loyalty, Nakaguchi?"

  "I follow the Glittering Path."

  "You follow the path of your own ambition. Beware that you do not stray from the true Path. Those who await the opening of the Glittering Path accept only unswerving loyalty. There is no place for those with dual masters. Forget Mitsutomo."

  Nakaguchi was uncowed. "That also would be unwise."

  The man's impudence uncapped the raging frustration that boiled within Quetzal. He backhanded the fool, knocking him against the wall.

  Did he think he was dealing with mortals?

  "Unwise? Unwise! What do you know of wisdom? What can you know? You are an ephemeral creature. Had you lived as long as I, your words might have weight. Your words are those of a blind child."

  Ashen, the Asian regained his feet, gripping the arm Quetzal had struck. Without a word, he backed away. Quetzal sneered at the fear glimmering in Nakaguchi's eyes; the dog had taken the blow without reply. The Asian fled, leaving Quetzal alone in his suite.

  In his cage.

  But not helpless. He had made contact with the followers' inner circle now. He had recourse beyond Mitsutomo's control now. And only this morning Nakaguchi had reported that Ihe resonators he'd ordered built had all been delivered to auspicious locations, ready to be activated. Quetzal was still not ready to activate them, lacking several crucial pieces of information. The major work for which he needed Nakaguchi was done; no longer need he rely on the two-faced Asian.

  For truth, he need no longer remain chained.

  It was time to put new plans into motion.

  He turned to the broad window that made up the o
uter wall of his suite. His view of the world. A great tower stood just to the northwest of the building. Letters of red light proclaimed it "Hilton." It was a place where travelers stayed, a hostelry of insane size; an entire town could live in the one building. From the windows of the tower, its inhabitants could stare down at the streets below them like gods. Once such lofty viewpoints had been the exclusive purview of mages.

  Did they think to pretend to power?

  Fools and dogs, all of them!

  He was power.

  With a sweep of his hand he shattered the window and sent the shards spewing out into the night. The wind howled in, far more chill than Mitsutomo's controlled air. He walked into it, stepping into the night.

  Let them do this with their machines!

  Lowering himself along the etherometric lines, he floated to the ground.

  The glass that had preceded him had skewered a half-dozen unlucky pedestrians. One was dead, but the others writhed and screamed in varying degrees of agony. He strolled among the wounded, touching them one by one. One by one their screams stopped, as did their breathing. Their pain gave a tang to their essence, and he grew giddy with the new strength they gave him.

  High above, the red signature of arrogance gleamed.

  No longer.

  At his command, the letters flared and sparked and died. The tower went dark with them.

  "Let darkness be the dawn of the coming age!" he screamed aloud.

  He would show them all. He stalked away from the Settawego Building, his cage. Where he passed, the lights on the poles and storefront buildings flickered and died.

  Mitchell Benton was not the sort of man who got involved in things that didn't offer a substantial return, so he didn't do anything when he heard the woman's first terrified squawk. He was on a job—for which he was receiving big bucks-—and his paymasters wouldn't care to have him involved in anything that might involve the police. Molested women were prime cop attractors. Not that there were many cops in this stretch of open country, which he supposed had motivated whoever was bothering the woman.

  It wasn't his business.

  She squalled again—a full-throated scream—just as he reached his truck. He looked around; his truck and her motorcycle were the only vehicles in sight. This stretch of prairie was awfully desolate for some pervert to wander in and set up a woman trap in the rest house. Maybe she was having a bad reaction to something she had pumped into her body. That was cop bait of a different kind, but a kind he had even less interest in being involved with.

  He unlocked the truck. A woman cruising through these parts on her own had best be expecting to deal with any problems she encountered on her own. His orders had him chasing phantoms, but they were the phantoms his bosses wanted him chasing. Dragons he was supposed to kill and cart back, but damsel rescuing wasn't on the agenda. Nowhere did his contract say he should spend any time pretending to be Sir Galahad. And since they paid the freight, he had their interests to consider. He slid behind the wheel.

  The rest house blew apart in a fireball that lit the night. Denton's eyes shuttered against the flare, but the sound dampers didn't cut in; there wasn't any bang. Benton didn't understand; the explosion was big enough for a couple of kilograms of C8, but there was no noise.

  "Be alert for the unusual," his boss had said. "Especially at night."

  This was sure as hell unusual.

  It got a lot more unusual when the woman came running out of the smoking wreck of the rest house chased by something the size, shape, and shagginess of a bear that was running on two legs.

  Bears didn't run that way, which meant that whatever was chasing the woman was no bear.

  The woman was headed for Benton's truck, which meant the whatever-it-was was headed in the same direction. Which meant Benton was about to be involved.

  He reached behind his head and snatched the gun off the rack. The weapon looked like a Remington Hawkeye™ hunting rifle, the Marcus Preiss signature model, but it was something completely different. Benton was confident that it would do the job. He scrolled through the settings readout and made his selection as he exited the truck.

  His shot took the shaggy thing in the chest, rocking it back on its heels. He could see the bloody cavitation that the explosive round had made in the thing's pectoral muscles. Benton had intended to take it in its forward-hunched shoulder, but he misjudged its speed—it didn't run quite like anything he'd ever seen. Not that placement mattered; shock from a wound that large would kill even the largest animal. The thing toppled over backward.

  The woman stumbled into him, panting and winded. He moved her over to the truck, where she could lean against it. She wasn't as good-looking as he'd first thought when she passed him on her way into the rest house. In fact, she looked pretty travel worn. He'd rescued her, but she didn't fit his idea of a damsel.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "I'll be all right." Her voice quavered. "Is it dead?"

  "God, I hope so."

  She was looking at the hairy thing's corpse and shivering. She might be on the edge of going into shock. He didn't need her doing that. She needed to be thinking of less bloody things. He put his arm around her shoulder and turned her away from the corpse.

  "My name's Johnson," he said. "What's your name, lady?"

  "Nym," she said, still trying to get a look at the carcass. "It moved."

  Benton let her go and spun, weapon ready. Shit! The thing was moving!

  He put another round into it. But he'd fired without aiming properly, and the round only took a divot out of the thing's leg. The beast groaned in pain, but continued to rise to its feet.

  The awful wounds it had taken were only slowing it down. It should be dead.

  Benton was spooked. This wasn't natural. The hell with orders; he wanted it ended. Taking aim at the beast's muzzle, he squeezed the trigger.

  The monster lurched as Benton fired. The round took it in ils burly neck. Blood and flesh and shards of bone gouted. It slumped forward, its head bounding free of its shoulders as it crashed to the ground.

  This time Benton watched until the blood stopped pulsing out of the shattered arteries. He wanted to be sure the thing was dead.

  When he turned back to see how the woman was doing, she was gone—like she'd vanished. Maybe she had. A scan of the area didn't pick up any thermal signatures big enough to be human.

  Weird.

  But over.

  Surely this episode fit his boss's definition of "unusual."

  There might be some decent profit in it. He hadn't destroyed the thing's head as he intended; and heads were high on his boss's list. "Heads are very identifiable," his boss had said. Looked like his boss was going to get one that would need identifying.

  Benton went into the back of the truck and got out one of the small preservation bags. The big ones wouldn't be large enough for the whole carcass, so he'd have to be selective. He bagged the snouted head. Seen up close the mix of animal and human features unnerved him, but those disturbing features also told him that he was doing the right thing collecting it.

  His boss had said to be sure any specimens were bagged and sealed before dawn. He hadn't said why. What difference did dawn make?

  Well, dawn wasn't that far away.

  He stowed the head in one of the refrigerated bins, and dosed up the truck before walking back to the cab. He could report in and be ordered to head to a pickup point at once or he could wait awhile. He decided to wait. Leaning against the front fender he settled down to wait. He kept the pseudo-Hawkeye near to hand.

  When the first rays of sunlight touched the carcass, it began to smoke. In a matter of minutes it was nothing but fine ash blowing away on the morning breeze.

  Benton began to wonder if he was being paid enough.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Spillway Sue's head snapped up as the door slid open. She relaxed when she saw John was alone; Wilson had allowed him to find his own way back to his rooms, which he had managed
pretty well. His sense of well-being evaporated when he saw what she was up to. Sue had the perscomp pried open and several components scattered around on the table. As the door closed behind John, she went back to poking around in the computer's interior.

  He shook his head. "They're not going to like that."

  "Their problem," her muffled voice returned.

  "I'm surprised someone hasn't been here already."

  "Been here already." She hoisted a thumb over her shoulder, directing John's attention to a smear of something dark and greasy-looking on the wall behind her. John noted three other smears, one on each wall of the room. "They didn't like what I did ta their vid pickups, so they came ta check it out. I told 'em / didn't like being watched all the time."

  "And they said you could tear their equipment apart?" Wilson had said they'd find something for her to do. Letting her tear up their perscomp seemed a strange sort of hospitality. "Didn't they tell you to stop when they came?"

  "I wasn't doing nothin' then. Just sitting. Told 'em, they wanted ta watch, they could do it here. They declined." A loud snap wrenched a curse out of her. John smelled ozone. Sue pulled her head and hands out of the casing. She slumped into a chair and sucked her finger, staring disconsolately at the guts of the computer. "Damn! I don't know enough about this shit."

  John picked up a circuit board. He knew a little about computers, but this was not quite like anything he'd ever seen before. "Can you put it back together?"

  "Sure."

  He was certain that she was lying, but he didn't say anything. "Wilson said he'd be down in a little while with some food. He won't be happy with you if he finds the console like this."

  "What's he gonna do, lock me up?"

  "Have you been locked up here all day again?" John was sure he wouldn't have been able to stand it. No wonder she'd taken to trashing the cage.

  "Nah. They let me outta the cell today."

  "That's good. Maybe they're beginning to trust you." Though what she'd done to the perscomp would reverse that.