She didn’t flinch. It wouldn’t hurt her; it couldn’t hurt her. Despite its monstrous proportions, the hand, along with the rest of the golem, was an extension of her own consciousness.
The hand came down in front of her, palm up, as if extending an invitation. She stepped onto it, then turned to Pierce and Gallo. “Coming?”
The two exchanged a look, a silent dare perhaps, then joined her on the golem’s open palm. Fiona barely had to think it, and the golem was moving, twisting its body and bearing them out to the center of the chamber, right where Fiona knew they needed to be.
“What the hell is that?” Pierce whispered.
A metallic sphere the size of a softball hovered just a few inches above the surface. Despite the disturbance caused by the golem’s emergence from the pool, there was no trace of moisture on the object.
“I think it’s what we came here for,” Fiona said, reaching out for it.
Pierce caught her wrist. “Slow down. We don’t know what that thing is.”
“It’s safe.” She couldn’t explain how she knew it, she just did. “Trust me.”
“You know I do.” Pierce let go. “I also know your father will throttle me if I let anything happen to you.”
“That’s probably true,” she said with a grin. As she started to reach for it again, something broke the surface beside the object. It was brown and shiny, segmented like a serving platter-sized cockroach. Pierce pulled her hand back, and this time, she didn’t protest. The creature disappeared with a faint splash.
“Okay. Gross. What was that?” Fiona pointed where the creature had submerged.
“Some kind of subterranean crayfish,” Pierce said. “Probably harmless, but let’s not tempt fate.” He reached out for the orb. “I’ll just grab the thing and you can—”
Behind them, Gallo let out a yelp. Fiona glanced back just in time to see her punt a large arthropod, which had climbed out of the pool and onto the golem’s hand. The kick sent it flying, but even as it sailed away, Fiona spotted three more of them crawling up the stone colossus’s forearm.
They were much bigger than she’d first thought, with three-foot-long segmented bodies connected to the eighteen inch-wide carapaces. Dozens of six-inch long legs protruded from the bodies—they reminded Fiona of Freddy Krueger’s knife-blade glove both in appearance and the way they moved. The creatures looked like a cross between a pre-Cambrian trilobite and a giant centipede.
Only bigger. Much bigger.
Two more of the creatures appeared on the golem’s fingertips.
“Fi,” George said. “Can the big guy lend us an assist?”
Fiona nodded and a simple thought command, practically a reflex, caused the golem to raise its other hand out of the water. It began sweeping the creatures off itself the way she might brush lint from a sweater. Unfortunately, the crawling things were on that arm as well, and dozens more of them swarmed across the golem’s shoulders.
“Crap,” she muttered. “I thought that would work.”
“Fi!” Pierce kicked at another of the creatures racing toward her, but after sliding just a few inches, the thing dug its claws in the golem and held on.
Fiona sent another mental command to the golem, shifting the hand on which they stood closer to the hovering orb, so close that the hand bumped against it.
The sphere didn’t move. Despite the fact that there was nothing visibly supporting the strange metal ball, it was as immovable as Fort Knox. She tried again, willing the golem’s hand to slide underneath the object, but instead of moving the sphere, the hand was forced under the surface. Cold water sloshed over her feet, and with it came several more of the giant arthropods. She commanded the golem to raise its hand, but as soon as it encountered the sphere, it was stopped cold.
“This could be a problem.” She knelt down and put her hands on the sphere—it wasn’t solid, more like a woven wire mesh—and even though she knew it would be futile, she tried to lift it.
Nope. The sphere was as unyielding as a mountain.
The answer hit her like a slap. This was the center. The axis.
As Gallo and George kicked the creatures back, she recited the same chant she had used to open the passage above.
For a fleeting instant, she felt the orb change, becoming light and pliable. Her fingers dimpled the surface, crushing it, as if it was no more substantial than a paper lantern.
Then darkness rushed up out of it and swallowed her whole.
SEVEN
For a long time after the floor stopped moving, Lazarus remained still. There was a chance that his team would find the means to activate the mechanism controlling the ancient elevator. In fact, he knew they would exhaust every effort to do so, and if and when they succeeded, he knew he would have to be ready to move. After five silent minutes, however, he began considering his options.
The single passage back to the surface beckoned him. While it was true that tons of earth and rock now filled that tunnel, he could not ignore the most obvious route back to the surface. It might take days for him to dig through, weeks even, most of it spent in total darkness since the battery on his headlamp would only last a few hours at best, but time was something of which he had plenty. Such was the nature of his curse. He was a regen, virtually indestructible.
His fingers would crack and bleed from tearing and digging, but then they would heal and he would keep going. He would suffer dehydration and starvation. His body would begin breaking down fat reserves and muscle tissue, and then when there was nothing left, his organs would fail and he would die, but then he would wake up, and begin again. To say that it would be unpleasant was the worst kind of understatement, but there were worse ways to die over and over again. He had once spent four days at the bottom of a lake in Africa, drowning, then coming back to life only to drown again. That experience, in part, had prompted him to change his last name from Somers to Lazarus, after the Biblical personage who had died and spent four days in a tomb before being brought back.
He wondered how many days he would spend in this tomb?
The regen serum he had been exposed to, many years before, promoted rapid cellular growth—healing—but it was not a pain-free process. Every single test subject who received the serum had experienced total mental breakdown from the unimaginable pain associated with recovery from mortal wounds. He had flirted with that rabid madness once or twice himself in the early days. But he had returned from that dark abyss through intense mental discipline cultivated since early childhood.
Rage was something he knew how to master.
Even so, being buried alive would test his discipline, and push the limits of what he knew he could endure.
But what other choice did he have?
He wondered what the others were doing, whether they were still trying to find a way to reverse what had happened, or if they had resumed exploring the ancient city. Would they find another exit? If not, their situation might prove much more dire than his.
He decided to have another look around the chamber. Perhaps they had missed something in their initial hasty survey. Unless they had misread the signs, the earthquake had caused the ancient elevator to cycle the first time. Maybe there was another way to trigger it again, something simpler than an incantation in the Mother Tongue.
He moved around the circumference of the chamber, scrutinizing the smooth walls and brushing away pieces of rubble to see if a fulcrum release trigger or some other mechanism lay concealed beneath. When his search proved fruitless, he returned to the center and began searching the place where Fiona had stood.
Nothing.
“Looks like I’m going to have to dig,” he muttered.
Despite being barely louder than a whisper, the sound of his voice echoed back at him, disrupting the unearthly silence that he hadn’t even been aware of. Then, the floor began moving again.
Lazarus felt a surge of hope. Was that it? Was the mechanism activated by sounds—any sound, not just the Mother Tongue—emanating from the
exact center of the chamber?
The question of how it operated seemed less important than the bigger question of whether he ought to go through. As the floor rumbled through its downward cycle, he wondered if he ought to remain where he was so he could open the passage for the others when the time came to leave. But if he was wrong about the trigger, this would be his only chance to rejoin them, and for better or worse, staying with the group was the best way to protect them.
The floor shuddered to a stop and he was confronted with a different problem.
Which of the passages lining the outer wall was the correct one?
He closed his eyes, trying to remember what the room had looked like earlier, and where the elevated opening back to the surface had been located relative to the passage Fiona had indicated. His memory told him one thing, but his gut wasn’t so sure.
How long did he have? Fifteen seconds?
The floor started moving again, forcing him to decide. He sprinted across the floor, angling toward the passage he hoped was the correct one. If it wasn’t…well, it had to lead somewhere.
He reached the opening with plenty of time to spare, and dove through headfirst. The landing wasn’t as graceful as he might have hoped for, a little like stepping off a high-speed treadmill, but he scrambled back to his feet and took off running.
“Pierce!”
No answer.
He kept going, sprinting down the curving passage, nagged by the fear that he was moving further away from the others. Then he heard shouting, faint but urgent, and a different set of concerns took over.
The passage opened up, giving him a glimpse of what was happening far below. He couldn’t make out all the details, but he could see that the others were in trouble, stranded on some kind of enormous statue in the middle of a subterranean lake, under attack by… He couldn’t say what the things were, but there were a lot of them.
Pierce was swinging the backpack like a club, knocking the creatures back into the pool. Gallo was back to back with him, kicking at the squirming things and covering his blind side. Another figure lay between them, not moving at all.
Fiona!
Lazarus felt a fist close around his heart. He threw himself forward, leaping off the balcony and out into open space above the pool. He had no idea how deep the water was, or how many of the creatures might be lurking beneath the surface. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Whatever happened, he would survive it, and then he would help the others.
But was it too late to help Fiona?
He hit the water feet first, throwing his arms out wide to put on the brakes. The pool’s depth, or lack thereof, wasn’t a problem. The bottom remained out of reach. The cold was a shock, but one he was ready for. Before his downward plunge was finished, he started pulling himself through the water, kicking furiously to reach the surface. After a few seconds, he began to feel the familiar burn of carbon dioxide building up in his lungs. He needed to breathe, but the surface remained out of reach.
A memory of drowning arose unbidden, blindsiding him. He doubled his efforts, frantic now to reach the surface before necessity forced him to take that lethal liquid breath. Fiona needed him. Pierce and Gallo needed him. If he drowned, his death would only be temporary, but theirs would be forever.
“No!” he raged, the shout turning into a storm of gas bubbles that swept across his face.
He was not going to die this way.
Not again.
He swam harder, reaching up and pulling the water down with frantic strokes. He kicked his legs back and forth, as fast as he could.
His right foot snagged on something. He kept kicking, trying to dislodge it, but the thing held on tight.
No, not now.
Another one of them landed on his thigh, sinking in claws that felt like thorns dipped in acid. Then they were all over him, immobilizing his arms and legs, tearing into his flesh, bearing him down once more into the depths.
EIGHT
The darkness is absolute, like the inside of a coffin buried under a hundred feet of earth. She cannot see the plants that no longer grow, or the nearby river, frozen into ice harder than diamonds. She cannot see anything.
The ground beneath her feet is impossibly dry, the moisture long since leached away by the bitter cold, and no matter how carefully she walks, every time her foot comes down, it makes a sound like bones breaking.
“Where has the light gone?”
She turns toward the voice. It is Raven. In the darkness, his bright plumage is as black as everything else, but she can hear the faint sound of his feet as he hops from foot to foot, unable to bear the touch of the frozen ground.
“My father took the sun and the moon from the sky,” she says, feeling both sadness and guilt at his selfishness. “So that he will not have to share their light with anyone.”
“There is enough light for all. Why would he want it all for himself?”
She does not know the answer.
“You are his daughter,” Raven says. “Surely, if you asked him, he would restore the light to the sky for you.”
“He will not do it for me.”
“Perhaps there is something we can give him in exchange for just one day of light.”
She knows it is a futile endeavor. “What could we give him that is better than the sun and the moon?”
“I know of a light that is even brighter and more beautiful.”
“Then you have no need of the lights in the sky.”
“This is a different kind of light,” Raven says. “A light that can melt a frozen heart.”
“My father’s longhouse is far from here. I cannot find it in the darkness.”
“I can help you find it, if you will let me ride upon your shoulder so that I do not have to walk on the cold earth.”
Although she does not believe anything can melt her father’s frozen heart, the possibility of finding her way out of the darkness is not something she can ignore. “I know that my father’s house is on the shore of a lake that feeds the river, but the water is frozen as hard as the ground. I cannot tell where the land ends and the river begins. And I cannot tell which way is upriver.”
Raven hops up onto her shoulder and whispers in her ear. “If you sing to the river, it will wake up and sing with you.”
Sing? Sing what?
She realizes it doesn’t matter, so she begins singing whatever comes into her mind, and as she does, the ice—all of it—melts, and the river joins in the song. She moves toward the sound, and soon there is a splash as she steps into the rushing water. She turns until she knows she is facing upstream. Now she knows which direction to go.
She hears another splash and realizes that Raven has leapt off her shoulder and into the water.
“Raven!”
She listens, but there is no reply. The only sound now is of the river, rushing all around her.
Raven is gone.
She wonders what to do now. She can find her way to her father’s house now, but without the light Raven promised, she will never be able to convince him to return the sun and the moon to the sky. At least in her father’s house, she may hope to catch some glimpse of the sun, and feel its warmth again.
The longhouse is not far away, but as she draws close to the sturdy structure of logs and earth, she hears her father’s voice. Shouting. Yet, there is something different about the sound. Curious, she goes nearer and sees radiant light shining from within.
“Higher!” shouts a new voice, child-like and full of innocence, and very, very familiar.
“I cannot throw it any higher, grandson,” booms her father.
Grandson? How can this be?
She is her father’s only child, and she herself has no husband. Her father guards her as jealously as he guards his other treasures.
She goes closer, and pushes past the heavy blanket that covers the door. Her father is there, and so is her son. They are playing, throwing the sun and moon about the room, as if the shining lights are nothing more than pine cones. A
s she looks at the boy, she remembers bringing him into the world, suckling him, nurturing him, and yet she also knows that none of it is true. It is a fiction, spun of spider silk and dreams, but it is a fiction her father believes.
Now she understands what Raven meant when he promised a light brighter than the sun. The light of a grandfather’s joy.
“Let’s go outside, grandfather” the boy cries, but it is not a boy, and not her son. It is Raven, wearing the skin of a beautiful human child. “I can throw it higher than you can. I’ll show you.”
Her father, blinded by the light of joy, does not see how Raven is tricking him. “Oh, you think so, little one? Here, take the sun. I will take the moon. We will throw them together, and you will see who can throw higher.”
The two of them—the angry old man who is, for the moment, not quite so angry, and the boy who is not a boy—rush past her, outside into the open. Without a moment’s hesitation, the boy draws back and throws the sun with all his might.
Or so he makes it seem. The golden light barely rises above the roof of the longhouse before falling back into the boy’s hands.
“Oh, ho!” cries the old man. “Impatient, are we? Now it’s my turn. Watch this.”
He bends his knees, reaching down as if to gather strength from the earth itself, and then hurls the moon up, up, up into the inky blackness.
Suddenly, with a rustling, Raven bursts out of his human skin, spreading his wings and lofting into the sky. One talon clutches the sun, the other grasps at the velvet darkness, tearing tiny holes in the firmament as he claws higher and higher, chasing the still rising moon.
The old man cries out in dismay, but whether he mourns the loss of his prize or the loss of his joy, she cannot say. His cry becomes a shout, then a peal of thunder, chasing after Raven. He howls again and again, beating the Earth in frustration, and the Earth shakes with such ferocity that the longhouse falls apart, but nothing he does can bring Raven back. And while he rages, the moon sails past the horizon and slips behind the firmament.
Helios (Cerberus Group Book 2) Page 6
