CHAPTER 20
here had been no period of transition. The journey from rural
Vermont to this unseen world had been as sudden and as extreme as
the leap from a sun bleached dock into an icy pond.
Enoch Bloodwyn hung suspended fifty feet in the air. The narrow beam of his flashlight flickered across a forest of stone columns. Pillars of living rock had grown upward like plants ending in branching tendrils that twined to form a gargantuan domed ceiling. Blackness swallowed up their bases far below.
Bloodwyn thought of Pike’s assertion that he could feel the presence of sad trapped people. Ridiculous! Even with a flashlight, it was impossible to see anyone down there, let alone determine their mood. Bloodwyn snorted derisively.
He brushed against a cage of braided stone wrapped around a massive and intricately carved volcanic boulder. He aimed his light between the tendrils that formed the cage. Staring back at him was a colossal stone head as big as a Volkswagen.
“Hmm, an Olmec head. An impressive souvenir, Malakaan,” mused Bloodwyn. “That predates the Aztecs and has to weigh six or eight tons.”
From his current vantage point, he could clearly see that the tendrils of several more columns were twisted into tightly packed storage cages, or curved outward like gigantic crow’s nests piled high with loot. No doubt there were many more treasure troves in the further reaches of the dark dome. An elaborate Northwestern totem pole hung in the air, supported by stone tendrils wrapped around it like pythons squeezing their prey.
“You really have been a greedy packrat, Malakaan,” said Bloodwyn, with a wicked grin. “And a very naughty boy.”
As Bloodwyn leaned backwards to get a better view of the dome, Casey’s sneakers slammed into his chest. The sudden impact made his jaws clack together. The flashlight slipped from his fingers, its beam cutting a ribbon of light through the gloom as it fell. The buckskin bag slapped against Casey’s back. He lost his grip on the rope, and grabbed at Bloodwyn’s coat, desperate and disoriented.
Bloodwyn clamped his hand around Casey’s thin wrist. The cable twisted, smacking him against one of the tendrils. He wrapped his free arm around the stone just as the end of the heavy rope snapped through the portal and dropped past them. Bloodwyn jerked as it reached its limit, pulling against his harness as it snaked back and forth. For a moment, Bloodwyn and Casey both clutched the column and each other, holding their breath.
“Well, this is a surprise,” said Bloodwyn through clenched teeth. “Not a pleasant one, unfortunately.”
“I just…” blurted Casey.
“Don’t say a word, boy, or I will willingly drop you on your empty head,” hissed Bloodwyn. “Work your way around, and put your arms around my neck. I will do my best to keep us from dropping to our untimely, if, in your case, not entirely unwelcome, doom.”
Bloodwyn unlatched the rope from his harness and let it fall. Casey clung tightly as they began to slowly inch their way down. Bands of luminous moss circled up the trunks of columns and dangled from their limbs. Pike had been right about the glowing moss. Fortunately. Without it, the darkness would be total.
“I saw something moving up there in one of those cages,” said Casey. “That moss was growing over a big statue of some kind. It looked like something ducked behind it.”
“I saw them too, before your dramatic arrival relieved me of my flashlight,” said Bloodwyn. “Timid skeletal beings. I have the feeling they are some sort of custodians whose sole purpose is to look after Malakaan’s treasures.”
“Prisoners,” said Casey. He looked up, trying to catch another glimpse of the ragged caretakers. “Spending their lives trapped up there in the dark.”
“Several lifetimes, possibly. We have no idea how quickly time passes in this place.”
They reached a cluster of stone branches that offered them a safe spot to rest for a few minutes. Bloodwyn unbuckled the now useless climbing harness and draped it over one of the branches.
“Shall we continue?” he asked. His voice was laced with irony. “I shouldn’t wish to rush you.”
Casey wrapped his arms around Bloodwyn’s neck once more and they continued to climb down. Ridges circling the pedestal of the column offered a fairly secure foothold, but with ten feet left to cover, the stone crumbled away and Bloodwyn fell. He landed in a dune of gritty dust which cushioned the impact, and rose in a cloud thickening the air.
A heartbeat later, Casey landed squarely on top of him. He rolled onto the ground, a little dazed from the fall, and collapsed against a leathery mound. “I’m all right, I guess.”
“I am positively overjoyed to hear it,” said Bloodwyn. He spat some grit out of his mouth. If he did indeed feel any joy, his acid tone concealed it quite effectively. “Do you mind if I get up, or shall I just lie here so you can come over and stomp on my head?”
“I’m sorry. Really I am. I didn’t realize how far the drop would be.”
“Mr. Wilde, please explain your unwelcome arrival here.”
“I wanted to rescue my sister,” said Casey, running his fingers nervously over the mound. Its dry leathery surface was studded with beads. “I didn’t think that…”
“That I would actually bring the little witch back?” asked Bloodwyn. “Believe it or not, that is my intention.”
Casey looked around a little shamefacedly. The glow given off by the phosphorescent moss really wasn’t much, but it did help keep the dark at bay. “How could all of this possibly exist under our riverbank?”
“Surely, even the unfortunate offspring of poor, dim Oliver Wilde must have some degree of native intelligence. Think for a minute.” Bloodwyn stood up and brushed off his coat. He spotted his glowing flashlight, half buried in one of the gravelly dunes and snatched it up. “This place clearly does not exist under your dear little riverbank. There is no telling where we are. That stone ring is a temporary paranormal gateway. You entered a portal to another dimension, boy. You didn’t fall through the trapdoor into Grandma’s root cellar.”
“So then…you don’t actually know where we are?”
“Where we are physically? I have no idea.” Bloodwyn slowly turned around peering into the murk. “But I am fairly certain we are visitors to the dark city of Aaxicall. A labyrinth ruled by that thing we saw tearing up Whistlebrass, and the home of the Moquidin, those shimmering living shadows. The dark city appears in the legends of many tribes under many different names. Aaxicall is the one used by the Kokinoke.”
Bloodwyn aimed the flashlight in Casey’s direction. The boy squinted and turned away as the light played across the beaded leather he was leaning against.
“Fascinating. Beautiful workmanship,” Bloodwyn whispered reverently.
“What did you…” Casey’s mouth gaped open and he went scrabbling backwards through the filth and lurched up onto his feet. “Just leave it alone. We’re lucky we didn’t land on that thing.”
The leathery mound was a human being, sprawled at the base of the column. Once a confident warrior dressed in beaded buckskin, a necklace of turquoise and bone draped around his neck, the man was now a papery shriveled thing, nearly buried in drifting dust.
“This isn’t the first mummy that I’ve come across, Mr. Wilde. Grow up a little and look around you. This odd realm is bursting with things that any museum in the world would be desperate to have. Do you think that I plan to return to that Vermont backwater without bringing some proof of our experience?”
Bloodwyn fingered the turquoise dangling from the mummy’s neck. He paused, and looked up at Casey with an unpleasantly smug smile, like a cat who’d gained access to an unlocked cage of overweight canaries.
“This little memento might be just the—”
An ancient claw gripped his arm. Sunken yellow eyes stared up at him. Bloodwyn remained frozen for an instant, and then pried open the withered fingers. The warrior’s initial burst of strength was fading, and his eyes closed. The gnarled hand sank back into the grit where it had lain for years.
“Remarkable. This is certainly the liveliest mummy I’ve ever run across. Judging by the symbols in this intricate beadwork, this could be a chieftain of the Tonktoll tribe.”
“Beadwork? That poor guy is still alive, and you are giving me a lecture about beads?”
“Alive? I’m not quite sure that alive is the word I’d use, although he’s not exactly dead either. Try to understand where we are, Mr. Wilde. Normal labels no longer apply.” Enoch Bloodwyn turned toward Casey. His eyes were shining, a little diamond of spittle glistened at the corner of his mouth. “Come now. Let’s see what else we can find.”
They weaved along through the darkness between the mammoth stone bases of the columns. Casey felt as though he was exploring a redwood forest at midnight with a madman.
“Breathe deep now,” he told himself. “Try to focus. The main mission here is finding Pearl. She’s got to be here someplace, but where?”
A British soldier in the long red coat and knee breeches of the 1700s stood ankle deep in drifting dust. One pale eye followed the glow of Bloodwyn’s flashlight.
“This is extraordinary, sir,” said Bloodwyn, circling the soldier and studying his dusty, but otherwise pristine, uniform. He reached out and tapped a pewter button. “You must have been snatched right out of your regiment during the American revolution.”
Casey turned away from the flashlight’s glare and the sound of Bloodwyn’s aristocratic voice. He focused on the pale light coming from the luminous white moss that grew in patches throughout the cavernous space, and listened carefully for any noise.
At first there was nothing. Then, from somewhere nearby, he heard a familiar and very welcome sound. He turned toward it and waited, stock-still and barely daring to breathe. There it was again—the deep reassuring bark of a Saint Bernard.
“Just look at that uniform!” said Bloodwyn. “You are still a rather dapper fellow after a hundred and eighty years or so. You would indeed be a prize for any museum, my good man.”
He started to say something to Casey, but the boy had already vanished. He turned his attention back to the officer.
“Don’t worry,” Bloodwyn whispered. His mouth curved in an unpleasantly self-satisfied smile. “He won’t get far.”