Tour Packages
Aubrey was happy just to be out of the rain. Water still sluiced past his boots, a steady flow down into the heart of the mine, into the blackness beneath him, but at least he was out of the rain.
He looked up at the shaft entrance, growing smaller and smaller as he descended. Along the rope above him clung his comrades, each of them walking backwards down the forty-five degree slope of the shaft. Except Arrafin, who was too exhausted and just slumped in the harness Aubrey had rigged for her, letting the others carry her insignificant weight downwards. She rummaged in her book bag and complained that it was too dark to read.
Aubrey's torch lit the walls and ceiling of the shaft with dim, flickering redness, but the tunnels to either side remained black and opaque as he went by. Straight to the bottom was their plan, reasoning that since the miners had stopped digging after Yannick uncovered whatever it was that he uncovered, it must have been found at the lowest point in the mine. After a long, long backwards descent, Aubrey saw the base of the shaft appearing out of the gloom behind him.
"Almost there," he called out, "I can see the bottom."
In a few moments they were all standing there, on loose jagged rocks beneath a good six inches of water. Arrafin was shivering from the cold and they hurriedly moved out of the shaft into the narrow tunnel that extended off into the mountainside. Philip lit a torch as well and they made their way along the rough channel, trying not to think about the vast weight of stone pressing down upon them.
"Wait, wait." Elena knelt down, tugging at something in the rocks underfoot. She stood up with a tuft of bushy white hair in her fingers.
What that implied appeared immediately on everyone's faces. Philip looked up, trying to imagine that immense creature forcing its way through this narrow passage. It could just barely fit, he decided, but it couldn't have been very comfortable.
"Well," said Aubrey with his usual bravado, "We'll be able to run much faster than him in this place, I'm sure. And hey, I don't have to run faster than him -- I just have to run faster than Philip."
Everyone chuckled at that and, looking at each other, they all took a deep breath and plunged deeper into the mine.
*****
Gap folks were crazy. Just plain crazy. Ilonka didn't know what else to say, watching Iseut and this Boyce character talking.
The girl's parents and younger brother had just been slaughtered and there she was, talking animatedly about a duel she'd fought when she was thirteen. Boyce didn't seem to think there was anything strange about that.
Crazy.
Trazik looked a little more sour than usual as he joined her at the counter.
"I told you to stay away from her."
Trazik glared. "You told me to go get her, you cow."
"What an impertinent suggestion. Me? I'm the very model of decorum and tact. As if." Ilonka elbowed Trazik in the ribs, unable to keep from grinning.
"Is that your tongue hanging out decorously? You haven't taken your eyes off de Geronton since he came in."
Ilonka's elbow acquired a little more force. But she sighed, watching Boyce's expressive face burst into delight at the finish of Iseut's tale.
"Yeah, he's... okay. You know. For a guy."
"Slut."
"Pig."
Trazik went behind the counter to help himself to some bread, absently putting up the dried dishes as he did so. He looked up to see Ilonka still staring across the shop at Boyce. He recalled kissing her at her front door once, at her insistence, since she was about to go to her first dance and she was sure a boy would try to kiss her and so she needed to practice and... As long as he could remember she had been mooning over other boys and complaining about them to him.
He cut himself two slices of bread and set to toasting them over the stove.
*****
"This looks pretty clear to me, I have to say."
Philip surveyed the spray of stone fragments from the doorway, the tufts of white hair here and there.
"Big and Nasty was in there, our miner friends found the door and boom! out he came."
Nevid considered the doorway, comparing the worked stone of the lintel with the rough chiseling of the mineshaft.
"How did he get in there in the first place? Who made this? How did it end up way down here, in solid rock? This isn't possible."
"Well, let's not stand around here." Now that a mystery had presented itself to her, Arrafin was eager to get moving. She stepped forwards, and was about to clamber through the shattered doorway when Elena, Aubrey and Philip all reached out to stop her.
"Maybe somebody else should go first." Aubrey stepped past her and carried his torch into the darkness beyond.
"Okay, Arrafin, get in here."
*****
In a dank room, filled with smoke and the stink of unwashed bodies, an old man leaned over a bowl that swirled with dark fluid. Chanting voices, faces only half-lit from the sputtering candles. A low, murmuring chant that wound up and down in volume and pitch but never stopped, never slackened.
The old man hissed. "Queen of Serpents, protect us."
A child began crying nearby. The chant wore on. The old man held up a knife.
"Once again your old enemies rise to torment your children. Once again your faithful call upon your wisdom and power. Protect us, Quitzlicoatl. Deliver us from your ancient enemies."
The knife cut flesh. Blood dripped into the bowl.
"Save us!"
*****
"Ooh, pictures."
Arrafin stumbled into the dusty passage and craned her neck to look up at the carving that covered one entire wall. She got so lost in the details of the image that she completely ignored the rest of her friends clambering over the rubble behind her.
"Wow. These are... these are ancient."
Aubrey studied the inches of dust piled along the walls. He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice and partially succeeded. "Really."
There wasn't as much dust as he'd expected, actually, and the few cobwebs up near the ceiling looked as if they'd barely survived a good sweeping.
"Are those claw marks? Those big gouges in the stone?"
Nevid was not panicking. He told himself that over and over again. Not panicking. Just a gigantic monster that carved stone with its toes. Nothing to panic over.
Arrafin gestured irritably at Philip as the big Saijadani moved away, taking his torch with him. He sighed and stood next to the girl, allowing her to start making sketches of the bas-relief carved into the wall. Aubrey, Elena and Nevid continued down the passage, peering into the gloom and following the gouges backwards. Arrafin muttered to herself in Naridic shaking her head.
She had seen carvings very like these before. On the Tukar Frieze, an ancient slab displayed at the Al-Tizim University. One of the few artifacts of the ancient Calegrian empire left. These were Calegrian carvings. In a mine in the north of Lasseux. It wasn't possible.
"Look at these, Philip. See this woman here, with the sticky-outy hair? She shows up here, and here and here. Look at how these people are bowing to her. Those are kings, see the rods? And look, are they dancing around her? What's going on here?"
Philip allowed how he might not be an expert on ancient bas-reliefs.
Elena stopped the others, listening. Nevid nodded and pointed up ahead. They took another few steps forward and the narrow passage opened to the right, the archway nothing more than a field of impenetrable blackness. Looking back, Aubrey could see Isaac standing next to Arrafin as the girl continued sketching like mad. The two torches, his and Isaac's lit only small pools around themselves, and between the two parties stretched a dark gulf where nothing could be seen.
"Well, let's have a look."
The three of them crept up to the archway, the passage continuing past into darkness. They peered into the room beyond.
Three slabs lay stretched out in parallel across the foor, each supporting a withered, rag-wrapped corpse. The torchlight flickered across their skeletal faces, the empty eyesockets filling each of the three explorers with horror.
"They're going to sit up and attack us any second, aren't they? The bastards." Anger was Elena's usual fear management system.
"I'll be bitterly disappointed if they don't." Light-hearted sarcasm was Aubrey's.
"Let's get out of here. This is bad." Nevid lacked a system entirely.
Isaac dropped the torch when he heard yelling erupt from down the hall. He charged down the passage, drawing both pistols and calling out for his friends.
Aubrey was not disappointed. The bodies, all three of them, sat up and lurched forward as expected. The one he fired his pistol at did not seem much incommoded by the ball, which passed straight through the brittle body and ricochetted off the far wall. Elena drew her sword and hacked at a reaching limb, backing away with a shriek of disgust. Isaac burst in and charged one, driving the dessicated thing backwards. The talons of its fingers clawed at his face in frenzied scrabbling, slicing open one cheek and drawing a curse as he let go with both guns into the thing's head.
Skull fragments blew across the room and Isaac turned to see both Aubrey and Elena being driven back by the other two horrors. He took a step and then reeled as long claws dug into his waist. He looked over his shoulder in shock as the corpse he'd just explosively beheaded took another swipe at him.
Nevid's terror vanished the instant the things sat up. He never considered drawing his sword, since he barely knew which end of it to stick in his opponent. He stepped aside as Isaac came in, and noted how little effect swords and pistols were having. Deliberately, but with great economy of movement, he slipped a coil of fine silk rope out of his shoulder bag, watching the battle as he did so.
Aubrey and Elena retreated to a corner of the room, helping each other hold the things at bay. Elena had a bad cut on her arm and neither of them seemed to be able to do much damage to their undead opponents. Isaac's big heavy sword seemed more effective, and he was methodically chopping his enemy into bits.
With two steps Nevid crossed to where Aubrey and Elena were, the two creatures with their backs to him as they silently reached out for his friends. He made a wide loop in the rope and threw it over the two, then yanked backwards with all his strength.
All Nevid's strength wasn't very much, but he weighed enough that he was able to drag them a few steps back. Elena got enough room to wind up properly then and nearly chopped one in half, and by then Isaac had joined them, and between the lot of them they managed to bash the things into inert splinters of bone. The four victors looked round at each other, eyes a little wild.
Aubrey grinned. "If that's the worse this place has for me, I may move in."
Arrafin screamed from out in the hall.
"I'll check the plumbing first, of course."
