Paragaea (15 page)

Though outside it was broad daylight, inside the dank, cool interior of the temple it was dark as night. The three travelers carried torches, which sputtered and popped in the still air, and made their way through the labyrinthine corridors of the temple.

The Aevum had mentioned that the legends spoke of perils, and of guardians in the temple of the forgotten god. After an hour of making slow progress through the temple passageways, sometimes reaching dead-ends or switchbacks, forced to retrace their steps and choose other branching paths, the trio had nearly decided that any such perils were the province of legends alone.

When they first heard the skittering, like the sound of hundreds of claws striking stone, again and again, they realized they had been entirely too quick to dismiss the stuff of myths. Hieronymus drew his heavy cavalry saber from his belt, leaving his Mauser C96 pistol holstered at his hip. His torch held high in one hand, the saber at the ready in his other, he slowly advanced forward. Balam drew his knives
from their sheaths on the leather harness crisscrossing his broad chest, while Leena tightened her grip on her chrome-plated Makarov.

“Don't waste ammunition, little sister,” Hieronymus reminded her, motioning to the short sword in her belt. “Use the blade if possible.”

Leena shook her head, her expression taut.

“I'll use what seems appropriate,” she said, “and from the sounds of whatever's coming, I'd rather be in firing range than at arm's reach.”

In the next instant, a sickly white wave surged around the bend in the passageway. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of strange creatures, all rushing towards the three wayfarers. A horde of lizard-rats, an unnatural amalgam, they were each about a foot long, with four limbs terminating in vicious claws. Their red eyes glinted evilly in the flickering torchlight, and their pale, hairless hides shimmered sickly like oil on water. Each had a wide mouth lined with double rows of serrated teeth, and a spiny ridge ran from the base of their triangular skulls to the tip of their whiplike tails.

“Der'mo!” Leena swore, swinging the pistol up.

“Wait,” Balam said, raising a hand to stop her.

The jaguar man stepped forward, and held his torch out to Leena. The lizard-rats were almost upon them.

“To train the royal children in the arts of defense, the warmasters of the Sinaa drop them into pits full of creatures like these,” Balam explained casually, taking a long, wicked knife in each hand, their blades pointed at the ground. “It's been a while since I had any real exercise.”

Hieronymus gave a slight bow, and then stepped out of the way as the jaguar man rushed forward, roaring a blood-chilling war-cry, teeth bared. Balam threw himself into the midst of the creatures, laying about on all sides with his twin knives, meeting the seemingly endless waves as they came. In a rain of gore, the foul creatures began to pile at his feet, some twitching their last, some already lifeless, as the jaguar man dealt with their remaining brethren, a vicious smile curling his black lips.

Once Balam had seen to the last of the lizard-rats, they came to a gallery of bronze statues made viridescent with age, easily a dozen of them. Each was of a warrior, each from a different culture or time period. They were tall, the shortest of them easily a foot taller than Balam, who himself towered over Leena. Some of the statues wielded swords, some spears, some war-axes, but all were armed.

The three wayfarers had made it halfway through the gallery, their torchlights casting shifting shadows on the statues, when Leena drew up short.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

Her two companions stopped in their tracks, their attention sharpened.

“A kind of creaking?” Balam said, his ears twitching.

“Yes,” Leena answered.

“Then no,” Balam said unconvincingly. “I didn't hear a thing.”

All around them, the statues began to move, slowly at first, and then with more speed and grace.

“Brilliant!” Hieronymus said with a laugh. “Clockwork soldiers. This is going to be fun.” As he brought his saber to the en garde position, he glanced over at Leena. “Promise me, little sister, that the next time you two are inflicted by curiosity, I'm not to talk you out of it!”

In the end, it was Hieronymus who dealt with the majority of the clockwork soldiers. He was much more adept at swordplay than Leena, and his saber was of a sufficient length to keep the animated statues at bay. Balam, with his claws and knives, was forced to get in too close in the melee, allowing one of the statues nearly to crush him between bronze arms at one stage.

The three advanced up the passageway as quickly as they were able,
Leena in the lead, Balam following closely behind, and Hieronymus bringing up the rear, fending off the pursuing clockwork soldiers. As strong as the statues were, the trio were lucky that they moved so relatively slow. Finally, the three wayfarers reached a point where the passageway narrowed before a junction, a space just wide enough for one to pass.

Hieronymus, holding his saber in a two-handed grip, rained blows against the bronze bodies of their pursuers, sounding like ringing gongs. He found, through sheer luck, that they were weakest at the joints between their torsos and legs and that by pounding continually at that juncture, he was able to sever the lower limbs from the body. Cut and bruised from the lunges that made it past his parries, Hieronymus finally succeeded in immobilizing a half dozen or so of the statues, their arms and heads still thrashing as they clattered to the cold stone floor. Packed in tightly together in the small space, they could not drag themselves any farther with their hands, and they were wedged in securely enough that those behind could not push or pull them out with ease. From the safety of this bronze wall of fallen attackers, Hieronymus was able to make quick work of the remaining mechanical foes, and in a short time all lay helpless on the passage floor.

Leaving behind the clockwork soldiers, the three wayfarers found themselves nearer the center of the temple labyrinth. Their path had taken them in a wide spiral, tracking several times around the circumference of the ruined temple, drawing inexorably nearer the center with every revolution. They entered a broad arcade and heard loud noises from the darkness in front of them. A giant scorpion emerged from a side passageway. It towered above them, easily ten meters long. If they managed to escape its wicked pincers, they would leave themselves vulnerable to its barbed tail. If they managed to survive being impaled by the thorny tip of the tail, the poison would claim them in a matter of minutes.

“I am tired of this nonsense,” Leena said, and raising her chrome-plated
semiautomatic, put three bullets one after another into the skull of the scorpion.

The monster danced awkwardly from side to side for a moment, its tail waving drunkenly in the air above it, and then it crashed to the ground, lifeless and still.

“That,”
Leena said to Hieronymus, “merited a little bit of ammunition, don't you think?”

She turned and, without another word, skirted around the scorpion's giant bulk into the passageway beyond.

They reached at last the center of the labyrinth, the heart of the temple. Coming out of the darkened passageway, they found themselves at a circular amphitheater, open to the sky. The day had come and gone since they'd first entered the temple, and the sun had long set. The thin light of the gibbous moon overhead filled the chamber, everything painted in shades of gray.

At the center of the space was a stone platform, as long and as wide as a coffin, upon which lay a young man, insensate, naked, and unmoving, eyes shut tightly. Where his generative organs should have been, the skin was smooth and unbroken, but otherwise he seemed a typical specimen of humanity. Over him stood an ancient, hairless man, dressed in white robes, with an opalescent gem the size of a man's palm in his hands. Ringing the room were strange twists and curves of metal tubing, carved stone shapes, bits of crystal and glass, a maddening assemblage of shapes and substances, though whether they constituted some sort of machinery, or sculpture, or something else entirely, none of the wayfarers could say.

Hieronymus was across the room in the blink of an eye, snatching the gem from the old man's withered hands. Before the old man could
react, before he could even speak, Hieronymus tossed the gem to Balam, and pinned the old man's arms behind him.

“Return the gem!” the ancient man wailed in the language of the Sakrian plains, without bothering to ask who his attackers were, or what they wanted. He turned milky white, sightless eyes towards the entrance, his expression pained. “You must return the gem to my keeping! My life depends upon it!”

Leena, her Makarov pointed to the stone floor, drew near the young man on the platform.

“What goes on here?” Leena said, prodding the still form with her pistol's barrel. She spoke in the same dialect the old man had used, the Paragaean lingua franca. Her skill with Sakrian was even less sure than her command of English, but she knew enough to get her point across.

The figure on the table did not respond to Leena's prodding, not stirring a centimeter. He was completely hairless, head to foot, without eyelash, brow, or body hair of any kind, his skin the color of polished marble.

“Please, I implore you,” the old man continued, shifting tactics to pleading. “I must have the gem, and immediately, or all is lost!”

“This,” Balam said, sauntering to Leena's side, tossing the gem lightly in the air and catching it, “is unexpected. Is this one the old man's patient, or his dinner?”

Leena's mouth drew into a moue of distaste, and she shivered.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the young man's chest. There, where his breastbone should have been, was a large cavity, big enough that Leena could just barely cover it with her outstretched hand. It was not a wound, but a perfect concavity, the skin smooth and unmarred.

“Perhaps his meal has already begun,” Balam said, glancing up at the old man.

“Well, Balam,” Hieronymus said, “I wasn't quite sure
what
to expect, myself. But I'll admit surprise.”

With a casual air, Hieronymus turned his attentions back to the old man, who struggled without effect against his bonds.

“Now, ancient one, let's exchange words. From the snake men, to the west of here, we have heard the legend of an undying man who returns to this temple to be rejuvenated once every thousand years. Can we safely assume that you are he?”

“Please,” the old man wailed piteously. In the moonlight, his milky eyes looked almost opalescent, twins to the bauble in Balam's hands. “The gem.”

“We'll return the gem to you,” Leena answered from across the chamber, not without compassion, “but only if you answer our questions.”

“Why must you torture an old man?” their prisoner wheezed. “Return my gem to me, ere it is too late.”

“Answer our questions, and it will be returned to you,” Hieronymus repeated.

“I don't know,” Balam said. He absently tapped at the emerald pendant hanging from his ear. “I quite like it, actually. It could make for a fine bit of jewelry.”