Charlene raised her hand, and then Hippogryph, and Max. Eviane’s shot up an instant later.
“All right. Here’s the plan-”
“Ah-just a second, Yarnall,” Hebert interjected. “Who died and made you king?”
“If you’ve got a plan, now would be a terrific time to share it.” Yarnall was smiling indulgently. “Otherwise, I would suggest that we proceed.”
Hebert reluctantly agreed.
Yarnall was warming to his task. “All right. Two groups. Volunteer group, how are you at climbing?”
Charlene was most enthusiastic. “I can do that. I’ve been feeling stronger every day.”
“All right, then. Both groups will work their way around, one at a time. Each group watch for the other. Cover in teams. When we reach the far side, that’s when we need the most care. Then we send the volunteer team in… ”
He began to draw a diagram on the ground.
I’ve been here before, I’ve…
Eviane stumbled, but darling Max caught her hand and pulled her to safety.
The jumble of tumbled slabs was disturbing in a way that she found difficult to express. At other times during their adventure she had experienced deja vu. Here, she had the feeling that some of the angles weren’t angles at all, that they were illusory pockets. When she stared at them, it was like staring at one of those damned optical illusions where the angle went from obtuse to acute as your depth of focus changed.
She waited in the shadow, waited for Yarnall to give her the signal to cross. The space was so vast, the hieroglyphics so disturbingly unearthly that she felt like a bug dashing across an alien cereal box.
She ran as fast as she could, heart pounding in her chest. Hippogryph caught her hand and pulled her up to the level of the next slab. Their eyes met for a long, tense moment, and then he crinkled in a smile. “Come on-too late for that-you’re spoken for.”
From somewhere deep inside she summoned a laugh, but it was in no way genuine. Her hand found a grip, and she pulled herself up. The last few feet of horizontal slab had been somewhat spongy. Damned lucky, in case anyone fell-
She looked down at the slab. From where she was, the hieroglyphics took on a new appearance, like viewing the abstract rock drawings in the Andes that old von Daniken had used to “prove” that the ancients had set out welcome mats for vacationing aliens.
From up here, the hieroglyphics seemed to fit together. She could see that the images were in series. As she climbed higher from slab to slab, she could see more of them. In this whole area, the crumbled wall which seemed to stretch a thousand yards and more, the hieroglyphics resembled nothing so much as a comic strip, an illustrated story. As Max helped her to the top slab, she lay down on her stomach and read the story stretched out below.
“Do you see what I…?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t quite understand what it means.”
Trianna was climbing below her. She stopped too, and brushed a few strands of blond hair out of her face to examine the pictures below.
“Come on,” Max hissed. “Time to read the comics later.”
Eviane crawled across a pitted stone surface to the other side, where, finally, they could look down on the stronghold of the Cabal.
The sound of chanting and screaming had grown more pervasive, and Robin Bowles’s voice more distinct.
Eviane clutched her hands to her head. Visions of horror crushed in on her, devouring her desperately needed confidence.
When she thought about the plain of hieroglyphics below, she could see the pieces, the shadows and outlines, but she also saw a hideous shape, a form that was only hinted at in the drawings; and this was no drawing. In her mind she saw it: titanic, octopusheaded, making sounds that it would be blasphemy to translate into any human tongue.
“Are you all right?” Trianna asked. Eviane opened her eyes, stared into her companion’s face. Was this woman going to die? She had had visions about some of the others, and one of them had already come true.
They were trying to rescue Robin Bowles, but with every fiber of her being, Eviane knew that it was already too late.
But was Trianna, specifically, already one of the dead? Eviane stared into the face, trying not to listen to the wind, to remember the creature around her, to resolve her riddle named Michelle, and discover Was Trianna going to die? “Why are you looking at me like that?” the girl asked. Eviane lied. “I just realized that this is almost over, and we never really sat down and talked. I don’t know you at all.” Trianna smiled. “We’ll have time after it’s all over.”
“I hope so,” Eviane said. “I really hope so.”
The Adventurers looked down over the rocky decline that separated them from the stronghold of the Cabal. A wisp of pale smoke drifted up from a round ventilation hole, marking the spot.
“I think I see a path,” Francis Hebert said. “See there?”
Max shielded his eyes. “Dammit, I can’t tell whether that’s concave or convex. This place is crazier than chopsticks for a snake.”
“I’ll go first,” Francis said.
Hebert slipped the first couple of feet, adjusted himself, and found purchase. Eviane noted the bone-breaking distance that he would fall if the next slip were as bad as the first. She held her breath.
Ollie and Orson followed him down the side of the cliff at intervals. Ollie had jury-rigged a bandoleer from his belt, and strung a string of flare grenades from shoulder to hip. They clanked when he moved.
Hebert winced at one of the clanks. He glared back at Ollie and, just for a moment, forgot to watch where he was stepping.
Eviane saw what was going to happen a good three seconds before she managed to scream.
One of the shadows fluxed. It concealed an angle which had seemed convex until Hebert’s foot moved across it. Then it was no angle at all; it was a black gap, and Hebert’s foot was in it, and Hebert was still descending. Then it was too late.
Hebert scrambled for purchase, eyes mad. Ollie tried to get down to him, but it was to no avail.
Hebert didn’t cry out. Even at the moment of death he kept control, knowing that the sound of a scream would betray them all.
And then he was gone.
“Mistake,” Max said nervously. “He made a mistake.”
Orson looked back over his shoulder. “Test the ground. Test the ground at every step.”
“Too late for Hebert,” Eviane muttered.
Ollie tested the ground where Hebert had fallen through. There was no ground there, just the illusion of solidity, and a shadow that seemed too dark to be entirely natural.
Cautiously, Ollie moved around it.
Three!
They had lost three in as many hours. It made them nervous. They slid down the side of the defile, testing those odd, hallucinogenic angles one after another, staying in the shadows, ever closer to the place of Robin Bowles’s torture and imprisonment.
They reached the smoke hole without incident. And paused, as the music fluxed, and Robin Bowles screamed again.
The stone throbbed beneath Eviane’s feet. She could hear the chanting, and she could feel the moans of agony. What were they doing to Bowles? She remembered those sounds-deja vu-but she had no image of what was going on. Just the deep, terrible dread.
She bumped into Yarnall’s foot, and swallowed an “oops.” He touched a finger to his lips, then scooted sideways so that she could move in next to him.
There was a spot where the stone slabs parted to make room for a rising column of smoke. From time to time the pulse of smoke ceased, and then Yarnall shielded his eyes and looked down into the hole.
He pulled his head away, struggling against a retching cough. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered as another soul-tearing scream vibrated the stones.
Charlene reached into her backpack, extracting a pair of snow goggles. She whispered, “Here, try these.”
Eviane adjusted the strap, and snugged the glasses down over her eyes. She touched Yarnall’s shoulder to move him out of the way, and peered down.