The Conquering Dark: Crown (20 page)

They ran faster now, risking a broken limb on the slippery rocks. Finally Malcolm recognized the area ahead of them. This was where they had landed. But when they rounded a rocky outcrop, the dock was empty. The boat was gone.

Penny let loose a hoarse shout, “No!”

Malcolm exhaled heavily, fear gripping his chest. Did the crew somehow overpower the girls? Or some other of Gaios's sentry creatures happened onto them? Either way, he should never have left them.

An ear-rending crack split the earth. The ground shifted unnaturally under their feet and they struggled to keep their balance. A huge fissure opened high on the shore and ripped its jagged way along the edge of the forest, creating a domino crash of trees. Gaios was going to tear off a piece of his island to smash them.

Behind them, a high-pitched shout pierced the low rumbling. “Mr. Malcolm! Miss Penny!”

The paddle steamer came chugging around the shoreline. Charlotte leaned over the bow, waving frantically. Imogen stood in the wheelhouse. The boat rocked in the rough water, but Imogen angled awkwardly for the dock. Penny and Malcolm ran out onto the twisting jetty. Charlotte lifted a coil of line, but Malcolm motioned her aside.

“Jump for it!” he roared at Penny, hoping she heard him, as the boat rolled toward them, smacking into the pilings. They both leapt as wooden planks cracked. They cleared the rail and spilled onto the deck in a heap.

“What's happening?” Charlotte's eyes widened as she stared at the fracturing island.

“Get us out of here!” Malcolm waved his arm at Imogen. “Head for open water.” As she frantically wrestled the wheel over, he shouted to Penny, “Get to the engine and scrape whatever you can out of her.”

Penny ran to the stern and pulled open a hatch. She grabbed tools from her bag, peering through the access way at the churning machinery of the motor. She whistled and shook her head at another example of the Baroness's design prowess. Then she grinned with excitement and leapt into the hatch.

Malcolm joined Imogen in the wheelhouse. “Do you know how to handle this thing?”

“Father took us sailing.” Her mechanical eye jutted out to focus far beyond the bow.

“This isn't a pleasure skiff.”

She cast a baleful glare at him. “I'm an Anstruther. We don't use pleasure skiffs.”

Malcolm grinned at her spirit. “Then take us out, love.”

Crack after resounding crack echoed from the island until it became a single roar, almost like an artillery barrage. The fissure widened. Enormous piles of dirt and rocks cascaded in with a hissing sound. The shoreline behind them started to roll. The roar filled their ears. A huge expanse of rock lifted in a spray of water, almost seeming to rise from the ocean, before it crashed back down in a vast plume of spray. A wave of rolling water came at them, growing larger with each second.

Ahead of the steamer rose the jagged spears of rock that surrounded the island. Malcolm stood by the wheel and helped Imogen steer toward the barrier of dragon's teeth. Charlotte perched at the bow, trying to shout directions, but the roar of the earth and sea made it impossible to hear her.

Imogen pointed as the waterline dropped away ahead, exposing more of the deadly shoals. “We'll be crushed!”

The massive wave caught up and lifted the boat. They tipped forward, eliciting a scream from Imogen as they almost pitched on their prow. The sluggish paddle wheels groaned at the amount of fast-moving water rushing through them. They were heading helplessly for the massive rocks.

The engine revved suddenly loud and furious. The stovepipe above belched a huge green cloud. The paddle wheels spun faster with a frantic whine at Penny's command, digging hard into the water.

The crest of the wave rushed past them and they rolled back, prow in the air. The flood filled in the shoals, but the boat was still caught in the tumult of surging water. The force of it was trying to shove the vessel over. Malcolm heaved back on the wheel, his hands next to Imogen's tentacle fingers. Her grip was solid but it needed both their strength to keep the wheel from spinning wild.

Charlotte clung to the bow, sodden and desperate, now in full werewolf form. Only her inhuman strength kept her on board the boat as it flung itself about in the chaos. She pointed frantically to the left and Imogen spun the wheel as a craggy spire of rock jutted out from under the water. They missed it by inches. The water was deep now, but jagged teeth still loomed close. One terrible stone bent over at nearly a sixty-degree angle. Half of the stovepipe sheared off with a horrendous groan. Charlotte barely dodged the dark iron that slid across the deck and crashed over the starboard side, taking out the rail before it fell into the torrent. She waded through cascading waves, her claws digging deep into the wooden deck. A loud howl erupted from her throat, her arm gesturing wildly to the left again. The long deadly spear of stone reared up in their path. Malcolm and Imogen tried to steer away, but too much force of water was pushing them. The stern swung wide. They were going to hit.

Malcolm's ears rang. Imogen's human hand went to her head as the whine built in intensity. It was Penny's sonic weapon. The base of the jagged stone abruptly shattered to bits as the sound wave hammered it. The boat swept over the spot where it had been.

Suddenly they were in open water. Imogen shouted in triumph and Charlotte answered it with a howl that pierced the steady roar of the sea. Penny staggered up the ladder to the wheelhouse, drenched and weary, wearing a smirk of victory. Even Malcolm felt the elation of survival in his chest. He took a step toward Penny, but Imogen jumped in and hugged him in her jubilation.

Charlotte bounded onto the upper deck and grabbed up Penny, jumping up and down. “We did it! We did it!” Laughter swelled out over the boat as it settled over the gradually calming water.

Malcolm sobered. They had to get back to London. He took the wheel and steered toward home. They had accomplished little and his disappointment must have been plain on his face. Penny extracted herself from Charlotte and came over to him. The two girls went belowdecks to check on the prisoners and the damage.

“We'll find a way to help your friend,” Penny told Malcolm.

“She doesn't want our help.” He bitterly shook her head. “She's his.”

“No. She just doesn't know him yet.” Penny wrung out her hair. “Trust me. Even I could see that your friend isn't the evil type. Gaios preyed on her most obvious desire. Helping her father. Anyone might fall for that. She'll tumble to the truth.”

“Then she'll be in even more danger.” Malcolm gave a final glance at the rapidly diminishing view of the island. He hoped the rest had fared better in India.

The cold tore though Simon's thick fur-lined coat. Overwhelmed by the colors of white and grey, he feared the key had malfunctioned. He turned his head to orient himself and sensed Kate beside him.

She exhaled in frosty amazement and immediately reached up to fasten her collar. “Good God! How is it this cold?”

“This is horrible. People can't live in these places.” Nick's incredulous voice came from behind. He had steadfastly refused to dress for the trip and he looked ludicrous now standing in wintry Nepal in his usual rough London tweeds.

They all stood on a craggy trail. A huge mountain behind them jutted up into the clouds. Stark grey rocks protruded from the white ground broken only by the occasional yellowed scrub or frozen ice flow that had once been a powerful cascading waterfall. Columns of bleak sun stabbed through the cloud cover. Their narrow trail led along the side of the mountain up to a hazy plateau.

Hogarth was the last from the portal. He wore an outfit similar to Simon's, remnants of an old arctic expedition by Sir Roland. He surveyed the surroundings without reaction, hefting a heavy rucksack and his large mace. They all leaned into the bitter wind. Simon anchored his hood with a heavy-mittened hand and closed the portal. He spotted a small glimmer from the familiar compass-shaped rune on a rough stone column standing only a few feet away.

Nick's hand glowed red as he attempted to keep warm. He drank water from a tin canteen, or at least it should have been water. “No Ishwar to meet us, I see.”

“We can't wait out here for long.” Simon felt his cheeks numbing against the cold. It was difficult to breathe at this altitude. “But wandering off into the snow might not be wise.”

He went to the stone column where the portal rune was etched. He noticed a whitish coloring below the rune and pulled on the tangling dead roots. They fell away easily as if they had been torn free previously and simply replaced. An arrow had been chipped into the surface of the column along with another simplistic carving of the word
El.
It appeared to have been done recently because it was not weathered to the color of the rest of the stone, and Simon's glove brought away a fine trace of dust when he touched it. The arrow pointed up the barely passable trail. “Seems to be a message here.”

Kate joined him to study the mark. Her wild auburn hair tried to escape from a fur hat that fit snug over her ears. “El. It means
god
in Hebrew.”

“And?” Simon blinked stinging windblown ice from his eyes.

“And Ishwar is a modern version of the Sanskrit word for
god.
This was carved here by Ishwar, sending us up that trail.”

“That's a reach.” Nick snorted derisively. “You want to walk into that stark hell based on a few chips on a stone?”

Kate cast him a scathing stare. “Perhaps you prefer to sit here pointlessly, then go home?”

“Easy.” Simon's voice was harsher than he intended.

“How do we know this Ishwar is still alive?” Nick buttoned his thin coat as high as he could, not quite as daunted by the cold as the others. “How do we know he even exists?”

“We don't.” Simon wore thick leggings, probably sealskin, stuffed into fur-topped boots. Drawing his stick sword from the back of his rucksack, he shifted the bag, which carried simple food and medical material. “We're going to move.”

He started up the trail. Kate followed in heavy pants and boots, showing no discomfort. She wore her bandolier over her coat.

The path was rarely used. Large fallen boulders threatened to block the way in spots, and scrub grass broke through the coating of dry snow that continued to swirl. The wind gusted so violently at times it stopped them in their tracks for fear of being blown off course. They climbed, legs growing weary, breath rasping. Hogarth took the lead because he alone had experience in this sort of endeavor, having traveled distant continents with Sir Roland for many years. He forged ahead with his compass, making note of their movements and keeping them from straying off the path into a crevasse even when their trail vanished under heavy snow. Simon welcomed Hogarth's reconnoitering expertise because, despite their magical key, if they were unable to find their way back to the rune where they had arrived, there might be no escape short of walking off the mountain.

Simon could dress the part, but he knew that he was no explorer and was out of his element here. He could lead them through Paris because at least in a city there were streets and proper destinations, and ready food and water. In general, his most audacious expedition usually consisted of venturing from Soho to Kensington without a specific café destination in mind. The rest of his team was no more at home in the Himalayas. Kate was the daughter of a famous explorer, but she had never accompanied her father on his great journeys. And while Simon didn't know everything about Nick's past, nothing in the man's tavern-loving nature hinted at being a mountaineer.

Simon caught a slight glint in the light. The white snow and pale stone ahead of them hid filaments hanging in midair like a spider's web. He yelled, “Trap!”

Hogarth looked down suddenly at the feel of something on his legs. A gentle click came from beneath his feet. Kate grabbed the back of his coat and yanked with all of her might. He fell backward with a shout as three small circular blades curved up out of the snow and slashed across the path.

Simon rushed forward, helping Hogarth to his feet. The manservant gaped at the bright blades as they slowly spun to a stop on thin flexible stalks. The top one would have taken his head, the middle his waist, and the last his knees.

Kate cautiously slid her foot under the snow and touched the edge of a metallic plate. Now that she was aware of its existence, she saw short translucent posts only a few inches high on either side. The triggering thread had been strung between them. The trio of saws had been encased somehow in the metal plate and sprang into deadly action when the thread was broken. She grimaced. It was a hunter's trap of some sort. It was beyond just being an efficient killing machine; it was gruesome. Any one blade would have been enough to kill. Three was just cruel.

“Someone doesn't want us around.” Nick observed dryly.

Hogarth brushed snow from his clothes. “Thank you, Miss Kate.”

Kate smiled at him. “I'll not be the one to bring back such sad news to Imogen and Charlotte. I didn't see the blasted thing, even so close.” She glanced back at Simon.

The magician touched a long thread. “If the light hadn't hit it just right as I turned, I wouldn't have either. Sophisticated little death trap.”

They continued on, much more wary of what lay before them. Simon and Nick walked slowly ahead of the compass-wielding Hogarth. Simon waved his walking stick and used it to prod the snow. Nick sent bursts of flame out to intercept any other hidden triggers. They encountered none, but it was nerve-wracking.

Finally, Simon struggled over a lip of stone to find himself at the edge of a plateau where a crumbled wall stood. He peered through a jagged gap in the masonry. Kate came up beside him and gasped. Stretching out before them was an incredible city of temples. Some of the structures were rubble, while others retained their grand beauty. It appeared to be a ghost city.

Simon cautiously passed through the wrecked wall. Their footfalls crunched over the icy ground. They saw endless grey stone structures along grand avenues and huddled over narrow alleys. The walls and façades were peopled with countless carved figures, crowded bas-reliefs of dancing deities and fantastical creatures. Thick snow drifts clutched columns and slouched over domes and high spiked minarets. Scattered around the complex were numerous pools, temple tanks, some with water, some ice, some empty.

As they slowly rounded the corner of a collapsed shrine, they came to the edge of a courtyard. It was littered with dead bodies. Half a dozen men, monks by their bright red and yellow robes, lay in horrific positions. Each had been killed in some grisly way. One impaled by several metal spears. Another one lay in pieces, dismembered by the same saw trap that almost killed Hogarth. Coiling steel tendrils crushed yet another monk's broken and twisted body.

In the chilling silence, they heard voices. One sounded strong and threatening, and the other was broken with cries of pain. They seemed to be coming from farther ahead along the central avenue they had been skirting. Hunching low, they crept up, keeping hidden in the shadows of the scattered ruins. Simon settled behind a broken staircase to a pagoda and pulled a telescope from his pack.

Through the blowing snow, about a hundred yards away, he saw a great temple with several towers layered like stepped minarets, and festooned with sacred carvings and spires reaching up to rival the mountainsides in the background. Those towers sat atop a monumental palace of dark stone with a fine long veranda. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace was a large temple tank.

A man, or what had once been a man, stood in the center of the veranda in the blowing snow. His attention was directed at something lying at his feet, obscured by a bonfire. The man's face was badly scarred and his eyes were covered, or perhaps replaced, by gogglelike protuberances. Atop his head, he wore a multicolored turban of the sort often adopted by military officers of the Company. Long blond hair tied in a queue draped down his back. He sported the blue tunic of the Honorable East India Company fastened tight as if for inspection despite the fact that it was stained and its gold piping was torn. Beyond the frayed cuffs of the tunic, his hands were unnatural; they appeared to be composed of four metal claws not dissimilar to the grasping arm on the Baroness's monstrous machine in London. Below his waist, the wide trousers couldn't conceal his increasingly strange nature. He stood tall upon wide metallic pads that appeared to be his feet rather than shoes or boots. His legs bent backward at the knees and moved in an unusual way that revealed them to be metal. He held a massive bow, far too large for a normal person to wield. Strapped onto his back was a quiver full of arrows the size of javelins.

Several small shapes hopped about him. Monkeys. They appeared to be normal little simians except their eyes were replaced with jutting cones, like small telescopes. No doubt minions of the Baroness. Simon handed the spyglass to Kate.

“My God, it's Emmett Walker,” she breathed with shock. “At least I think it is.”

Simon glanced at her. “Your father's old hunting companion?”

“We've believed him dead all these years. At least my father said he was dead.”

“He looks spry enough,” Nick noted.

“Though hardly whole,” was Simon's response. “It appears he fell afoul of the Baroness.”

Simon took a telescope provided by Hogarth and studied the area around the distant temple. He spotted an odd pile and, tightening the focus, saw more bodies all wrapped in torn red cloth. There were at least twenty dead monks in the heap, and perhaps more. “Not shy about killing.”

Kate leaned her elbows on a broken stone tablet and peered out. She made a variety of angry and disgusted noises as she scanned the scene. “Wait, there's someone with him. Tied to a column on the terrace.”

The bound man was Indian, tall and thin with a long white beard. His head slumped against his chest. He wore a simple white cloth and shivered in the cold. There were scars and welts on his body and he was covered in dried blood.

Walker approached the prisoner, dragging something in his steel grip. The burden was another monk, still alive but barely so. Simon and the others couldn't hear what was being said, but the intention was clear. Walker shook the monk like a rag doll, furiously growling down at the bound man. Then through the thin air, Simon heard a sharp voice ring clear.

“The Stone! Where is it?”

The bound man shook his head. Walker tightened his grip on the monk's neck. The holy man thrashed. At first Simon thought he was trying to get free, but then the monk pulled a kris knife from his robe and thrust the wavy blade triumphantly into Walker's chest. Oil and green fluid spewed forth. Walker jerked, and for a moment, Simon thought the monk's desperate gamble had been successful. Then Walker crushed the monk's neck in his hand. When he tossed the dead man aside, the body went one way and the head went another. The bound man slumped.

“Damn me! Let's go.” Simon rose to his feet, getting ready to move forward to save Walker's prisoner.

“Miss Anstruther!” a voice hissed from behind them. “Do not move.” On the far side of a small covered platform, an elderly Indian man crouched. His bright blue eyes shone with alarm. He was tall and thin with a long white beard. He wore nothing more than a simple thin white dhoti, which seemed incredible in the frigid air.

Simon spun on the old man, sparking a tattoo to call forth his strength.

The man who had beckoned to Kate raised a cautioning hand, and whispered, “You are a few feet from one of the hunter's traps. Come toward me. You're fortunate not to have been killed on your way across the city.”

Kate raised her crossbow. She twisted her head to look at the old man, face clouded in confusion. “That man there tied to the column, are you his twin brother?”

“No. I am the man you see bound there. He is Ishwar. As am I.” The old man gestured for them to follow. “Hurry! This way. One of the hunter's spies may see us.”

Kate looked to Hogarth for confirmation. The manservant studied the elderly man, and said cautiously, “It has been many years, but he certainly resembles the Shri Ishwar I remember.”

She hissed to the stranger, “What are you playing at?”

The old man came out from behind his protection and scurried toward them. His voice was hushed. “I'm afraid the hunter captured me yesterday, just after I contacted you. He knows me; knows I am connected to Sir Roland. So he believes I know where the Stone is hidden. He has been torturing me quite mercilessly. But it is becoming difficult to be elsewhere. If you don't steal the Stone away very soon, knowing myself quite well, I may falter and tell him where it is.”