Gog (Lost Civilizations: 4) Page 16

  Hearts melt, knees give way, bodies tremble and every face grows pale.

  -- Archives of the Accursed War

  A pale-faced Keros kicked open the door and jumped through in a knife-fighter’s crouch. He took in the room’s high ceiling, the lantern-lit walls and the awful mosaic patterned upon the floor. Fortunately, the vast room was empty.

  Behind him, Bessus stumbled out of Gog’s Lair. The beastmaster worked his mouth, and his lantern shook.

  There was a door at the far end of the room. Keros dragged the beastmaster there.

  “Our luck yet holds, Bessus. We have driven deep into his guts. But we cannot expect to go unnoticed forever. We need to find Lod fast and free the others.” Keros bared his teeth. His entire body prickled with nerves, with tension. This was the most dangerous time. He felt it, and knew it, emotion and logic. His muscles were coiled, ready to lash out, to strike. Any instant, a priest or two might stumble upon them. When that happened, the enemies must instantly perish.

  Keros held his blade. “Hit them hard and fast, Bessus. That’s the first rule of a raid.” They stood before an ornate door. Intertwined imp images practiced foul rites upon bound captives. “You said they keep the prisoners under the Chamber of Beasts. Do you remember the way?”

  Bessus nodded.

  Keros eased open the door. He peered into a stone corridor. Torches flickered upon the walls. They burned low. Keros tapped two of his incisors together. Torches like this meant routine inspection. Priests, or slaves, must regularly replace them. One torch smoked. Keros shook his head. Surely, whoever took care of them must know how long each burned. This was bad.

  “Come. We must hurry. Be ready. Be alert.” Keros squeezed the blade’s hilt. He lifted onto his toes. “Which way do we go? Quickly now, we must keep moving.”

  Bessus seemed to have none of his—Keros’s—tension. The beastmaster almost seemed languid, or was that a hint of a sneer quirking the corners of his mouth?

  The smoke from the guttering torch drifted right. It was a lazy drift, but there, nonetheless.

  Bessus pointed left. “The Chamber of Beasts lies down that path.”

  They hurried along the tunnel, Keros ready for a gutting stroke. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he didn’t know why. Primordial dread filled him, atavistic fear.

  Bessus’s fingers dug into his forearm. “Do you hear them?”

  “Hear what? What are you talking about?”

  “Beasts! The beasts of.…” Bessus grinned. It was a hideous sight. “The beasts of Magog call.”

  Keros bent his head, straining to hear. There. Yes. He heard a faint roar. It carried and rebounded along the tunnels. There was something deformed in the sound, something loathsome and twisted.

  “Oh, the beasts, the beasts,” crooned Bessus. “My fierce beauties, I am back. I have returned. Your… Bessus longs to embrace you, and send you forth to hunt.”

  Keros regarded his companion, and shifted minutely away from him.

  The beastmaster’s eyes were shiny and shadows played upon his features. The shadows lengthened his face, and seemed to elongate his nose and chin. Bessus shivered in something akin to delight.

  Keros wiped the back of his knife-hand across his mouth. Another torch began to trickle smoke. “Does the air seem thicker to you?”

  Bessus sniffed about like a wolf. His nose wrinkled. “The air has grown damp.” He chanced to glance at Keros. “Why do you stare at me?”

  “Damp, yes,” said Keros. “I agree. I think you said before that the Catacombs are under the Chamber of Beasts?”

  “True.” Bessus swept forward in a long-legged stride. His new boots clumped upon the stone corridor. He moved without a care, seemingly no longer concerned with stealth.

  Keros hurried to catch up.

  A new roar, louder and more demented than the first, caused Keros’s grip to tighten around his knife. He never wanted to meet what made sounds like that.

  Bessus withdrew from his mammoth-fur jacket something whitish and curved.

  “What is that?” asked Keros.

  Bessus ignored the question.

  “Beastmaster, what’s that you’re holding?”

  Bessus hardly gave him a glance. “It is the claw of a great sloth.”

  Keros trotted beside the beastmaster. The claw was as long as his hand, curved and had intricate swirls and etches. Someone gifted had done the artistry. The claw abounded with the marks. As Keros understood it, great sloths were monsters of the south. Only the most daring hunters stalked them. They were said to be shambling beasts, almost as large as mammoths and with similar furry coats.

  “Is it supposed to be a dagger?” asked Keros.

  Bessus sneered. “It is a beastmaster’s talisman.”

  “Talisman? Do you mean a magic totem?” Keros couldn’t keep the loathing out of his voice.

  Bessus’s sneer had frozen onto his lips. He fondled the great sloth claw.

  “What is it for?”

  Bessus turned intense eyes upon him. “How do you imagine a beastmaster controls the monsters of Magog? Do you think, perhaps, through whims and polite pleadings? No! It takes power, strength, dominance and an iron will. For such ‘magic’ one uses skulls. I lack those. This!” He shook the claw. “This must take its place. I must practice sympathetic arts. I must commune with the beasts without aids or protections—pure will is my path. So no more of your yapping and yammering. I must concentrate and ready myself for the great task.”

  Bessus strode to an intersection of tunnels. He had three choices. The beastmaster pinched his lower lip, examining each possibility in turn. Soon, he nodded. “We will follow the roars.”

  They moved downward. The torches were spaced at longer intervals here. Some had gone out. The air was damper. Twice they splashed through puddles. Moisture beaded the walls.

  Bessus grinned, although his eyes were strangely shadowed. The skin around them was black, as if he had been without sleep for days. The whites of his eyes were horribly, unbelievably bloodshot.

  “The beasts are huge,” Bessus whispered. “Oh, the beasts are terrible and ferocious, and are fed a diet of prisoners, wretched men that struggle pitifully. It’s no contest, of course.” Bessus chuckled. “The beasts of Magog are made dreadful by the beastmasters.”

  “Who, exactly, are these people, these beastmasters?”

  “You know so little about my guild, about the skills and needed talents. Beastmasters are priests, magicians, skull-bearers.”

  In alarm, Keros grabbed Bessus.

  The thin beastmaster recoiled. “How dare you lay your filthy paws upon me. Unhand—”

  “Listen,” whispered Keros. “There are people down here, our enemies.”

  Bessus cocked his head.

  Voices drifted up the tunnel.

  Keros glanced about wildly. He spied a dark opening. “This way,” he whispered, dragging a protesting Bessus. “Forgive me, beastmaster. I mean no disrespect. I fear for your safety. Please, this way, noble one.”

  Bessus muttered, but he no longer struggled. They crept into a pitch-dark corridor. Keros felt along the wall, until they turned a corner. He strained to hear. The garbled voices grew louder.

  “It’s a work party,” whispered Bessus.

  Keros shivered at the hot breath on his ear. There was something evil in the beastmaster’s voice. It hadn’t been there earlier. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

  They waited. Boots scuffled. Pails knocked together. Soon, the voices dwindled.

  Keros wondered what power, if any, the great sloth talisman had. Just how exactly had Bessus known it was a work party?

  “They’re gone,” whispered Bessus.

  When they stepped back into the torch-lit corridor, Keros studied Bessus’s waxen features and the arrogant tilt of his head. In Gog’s Lair, Bessus had been wilting, but here, he seemed invigorated, changed somehow.

  Once more Bessus’s stride lengthened, and in his growing excitement, he
grew talkative. He explained that only Flay Rank or higher could become beastmasters.

  “You spoke before of skulls,” said Keros. “What does that mean: the skulls of the beasts perhaps?”

  Bessus laughed. “Beast skulls? That’s foolish. Special human skulls are used, preferably of those who perished through horrible pain or loss. Such skulls are cleaned, polished and packed with….” Bessus leered. “They are filled with stolen souls ripped from their bodies at the moment of agonizing death. The greater the agony, the greater is the manna, the source of magic. Few know the art. Fewer still can flay with skill.”

  Keros had to restrain a desire to gut the beastmaster with his knife. Was this the same wretch who had fed slops to pigs, who he had felt sorry for against Esau and his pirate friends?

  Bessus hurried down an earthen ramp and onto a new level. The roars were louder, and more puddles slicked the floor. They turned a corner, and Keros slipped. He put his hand on the wall. He scowled, as he wiped cold slime from his fingers.

  “How far are we underground?” Keros asked.

  Bessus didn’t answer. His rhinoceros-hide boots drummed on damp stone, and he clutched the great sloth claw to his chest. Fierce emotions played on his face. The air grew rank with animal stenches, overpowering, choking, with taints of dead things. They turned another corner, and came to heavy iron doors. The doors were embedded into the very stone. Huge hinges held these doors. The smell here was fetid. Keros was reminded of—

  “Bears,” he said.

  “Beasts!” shouted Bessus.

  A savage roar shook the air and lifted the hair on Keros’s head.

  Bessus approached a small iron grille in a door. He lifted his lantern. Beast saliva hit him, as the bear roared practically in his face.

  Keros peered over Bessus’s shoulder at huge teeth and a black tongue. Bear didn’t seem like the right description. It was shaped like one, and had brown, shaggy fur, but it was monstrously huge. Keros recalled stories about cave bears: beasts of primordial strength. The monster behind this door was twice the size of those. Its tiny eyes were wild and evil. The beast glared at the lantern-light. It roared deafeningly. Then, it hurled its vast bulk at the door. The hinges creaked, and the iron seemed to bulge.

  Awed at the ferocity, the mindless desire to kill, Keros found himself shaking. “Let’s get out of here.”

  More beasts had awoken and roared from behind their iron doors. The choir of animal rage, of primitive power and bestiality, made it difficult to think.

  “My beauties!” screamed Bessus, holding aloft the great sloth claw.

  “We can’t stay here,” Keros shouted into the beastmaster’s ear. “We have to go down. This bedlam is sure to bring guards.”

  Bessus was beyond reason. In a trance, he approached the nearest door. The massive head behind it moved to the grille, so that a small beady eye peered at the beastmaster. “I have returned,” crooned Bessus. He reached to touch the beast.

  Keros moved. In that eye, there was rage and cunning. There was no love. Keros knew a trapped, vicious beast when he saw one. Bessus was deluded if he thought he could control it. If he tried to touch the monster—Bessus would lose his hand. A crippled beastmaster was a liability, of no help in a raid. Keros sheathed his dagger and grabbed Bessus with both hands. He expected the reaction: the stiff jerk of the shoulders, the hot retort and the beginning of a thrash and struggle for freedom. Keros switched his grip. It was one taught him by old One-Eye: the prisoner shuffle. Bodily, he marched Bessus past the heavy iron doors and deeper into the dungeon. The beastmaster’s strength surprised him. The muscles under the mammoth-fur jacket seemed like iron cables. When had Bessus gotten stronger? It was baffling.

  The roars lessened. They turned corners, went down another ramp. The water here, the puddles, had a scummy layer. It was cooler, damper. The oppression of being deep underground was magnified. The shadows from the fewer torches seemed longer.

  Keros released the beastmaster.

  Bessus stumbled from him. Then the beastmaster whirled around, his face twisted with rage. Bessus drew himself up to haughty stiffness. He thrust a hand into his mammoth-fur jacket. His gaze narrowed, and he said, in a voice dripping with malice, “Never lay a hand on me again. It will be your death if you do.”

  “What’s come over you? We’re in this together. We live or die as a team.” Keros kept his eyes on that hidden hand. If it came out too fast, with Bessus determined to carry out his threat—

  Bessus hesitated, as a mixture of emotions warred on his face. He appeared enraged, confused, scared and indomitable. The emotions flickered like a card dealer fanning a deck. It was uncanny, unsettling. Bessus finally chose on an angry sneer. “Why do you think I returned here? To help you find the Seraph? Surely, you are not that foolish.”

  “We had an agreement, an understanding,” said Keros.

  “An understanding—I do not make ‘deals’ with your kind?”

  His kind? “What’s wrong with you, Bessus? Why are you acting like this?”

  “There is nothing wrong. Everything is right. Now, swear to me that you will never lay hands on me again.”

  Quarrels during a raid were madness. “Yes, of course,” said Keros. “But I don’t know if you’ve considered all the angles. Did you have a key to any of those doors?”

  Bessus frowned. He pinched his lower lip.

  “What about those skulls you told me about?” Keros asked. “You don’t have one. Don’t you need soul-manna to control such beasts?”

  Bessus lifted the great sloth claw, as if that was the answer.

  “I don’t understand how a claw can help you control such monsters,” Keros said.

  “The essence of the great sloth is slow, deliberate thought,” explained Bessus. “Great sloths are calm beasts, not easily frightened. That essence I will pour into my beauties.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “That is the art of a beastmaster,” said Bessus, with a haughty smile. “Yet… what you say is true. I need the keys to the doors, and a skull in order to—we must find a beastmaster and kill him. Then I will be suitably armed.”

  “Sound reasoning,” agreed Keros. “Might that be easier to do with more men?”

  Bessus peered suspiciously at him. “You mean the Seraph, of course.”

  “Do you know of anyone else down here that will help us against Gog’s minions?”

  The suspicion became pronounced. “I’ll concede the point. But…” Bessus grew sly and secretive. “Yes, this way.”

  With his long strides, Bessus ate up the distance. They came to several choices: tunnels going deeper, higher and to the sides. Each time the beastmaster halted and examined the choices through half-lidded eyes. Then he would nod, make his choice and off they went.

  They entered a subterranean passage that was not lined by native stone, but red bricks mortared into place. Keros tried to imagine the laborious process that must have entailed. This entire warren boggled him. In its way, it was as mighty a construct as the vast Temple above. There were no puddles here. The floor had mosaic designs that had long ago been shuffled, smoothed and in sections, jostled out of place. It was like walking on gravel, the crunch and roll of it underfoot.

  Bessus held up a hand, the one clutching his great sloth talisman. “Listen: voices. People approach.” He bent his head, concentrating. Then he looked up at Keros. His eyes were agleam, and he had a crocodile’s smile. “Hurry. This way.”

  Bessus trotted over gravel. The voices grew louder. Keros was about to protest, when Bessus indicated a side passage.

  Had the beastmaster known of this niche? Was his memory that good?

  Bessus took a torch from the wall and led the way. There were no torches in this side passage. Bessus thrust ahead with the torch, burning old spider-webs.

  Keros crunched over brittle bones, tiny bones of bats or mice perhaps. Dark bloated spiders crawled into crevices. Keros’s skin crawled. His belly tightened. He pulled away from t
he wall. Why did no one use this old corridor?

  Voices of men interrupted his musing. Keros strained to make out what they said.

  “They bring pets,” whispered Bessus, “guard beasts.”

  “How can you tell?” whispered Keros.

  Bessus smirked in the torchlight. He thrust the wooden torch at Keros, who gingerly accepted it. From an inner pocket, the beastmaster withdrew the small copper tube. He pried away wax from each end, and then carefully balanced it, while holding the middle of the thin copper.

  Keros eyed it with distaste. What did it do that Bessus placed such high value upon it? From down the corridor, echoing toward them, armor rattled and boots crunched over the loose mosaic. Men spoke among themselves:

  “…Zepho hated women.”

  “You’re certain of that? It wasn’t just a ploy?”

  “Ah, Adoni-Zedek, my old friend,” Bessus whispered.

  “Yes. I’m certain, noble one. It wasn’t a ploy: Zepho permitted no woman to touch him. He claimed that even breathing the same air from the same room as a female tainted him.”

  “What do you say to that, girl?”

  “Girl?” whispered Keros.

  Bessus clutched his shoulder. The beastmaster’s lips were an inch from his ear. Keros heard him moisten his mouth.

  “As you value your life, do exactly as I say,” whispered Bessus. “Until I say otherwise, you must not step in front of me.” Bessus thereupon slid along the wall, edging toward the opening.

  The one Bessus had named as Adoni-Zedek spoke again: “It’s as I thought. You have nothing to say. A pity.”

  Silent as a shadow, Keros drew his blade and followed Bessus. The sounds from ahead spoke of a party, at least three or four minions of Gog. Keros marveled at the beastmaster’s calm. His arm twitched with pre-battle jitters. That coil in his gut, fear of injury, of the unknown, made a bitter taste in his mouth. There were more than four! The odds were getting longer. Keros set his teeth. He vowed to give a good account of himself, to slay as many of these wicked priests as possible. He peered into the main corridor. Their tunnel was not a ninety-degree turn, but more a forty-five degree shaft.