Lindsay Buroker - Torrent

Something black had fallen to the ground during the fight. It took me a moment to realize it was Jakatra’s wool cap-he’d lost it somewhere amidst the somersaults and being hurled off the creature’s back. He had a ponytail of dark blond hair-we’d known that-and he also had-I stared-a pair of pointed ears. The bottom halves were as normal as any person’s, but the tops… yes, they were distinctly pointed.

“Do you see…?” I whispered.

“I see,” Simon whispered back.

“What are they?” Temi breathed.

Jakatra stalked over, grabbed his cap, and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked more defiant than mortified that his… unique cranial features had been revealed.

“We can damage the jibtab ,” Eleriss explained to our group without acknowledging Jakatra’s bare head, “but it is, as you saw, a battle of attrition.”

“To kill it will take a great many blows. We must set a trap for it,” Jakatra said, speaking to his comrade and ignoring us, though he did deign to use English.

“Unfortunately, the jibtab is clever.”

I decided not to mention that we were only down here because it had trapped us .

Simon raised a hand. “We’re good at setting traps.”

Jakatra gave him a disdainful sneer, said something in his own language, and stalked up the chamber to study each of the alcoves in turn.

“What’d he say?” Simon asked Eleriss.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked.

“My comrade observed that you are holding that weapon incorrectly if you wish to use it.” Eleriss pointed to the katana.

Somehow I doubted the original words had been as politic.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain these dead people,” I said.

“No,” Eleriss said. “You must leave now. Forget what you’ve seen.”

“We’d be happy to, but the door’s been locked.”

Eleriss tilted his head.

“The creature shoved a boulder over the tunnel entrance,” I said. “We’d need you to burn a new hole to the surface for us to leave.”

As soon as I said it, a part of me wished I hadn’t given him the idea. He might boot us out right that moment, and I was more curious than ever about what was going on down here. Especially now that we were standing next to someone who could hold off the creature…

I frowned at the train of thought. Not five minutes ago, a dying man had pointed at Jakatra and Eleriss and said not to let them enslave us. I couldn’t let myself think we were safe around them.

“There is no time for that,” Jakatra said from behind me.

I jumped. I hadn’t heard him approach. Temi, too, looked surprised and took a step back from him. No longer so intrigued after she’d heard the centurion’s dying words?

“These are all dead,” Jakatra continued, ignoring us. His words were for Eleriss. “We should not have bypassed-” He glanced at us, then finished speaking in his own language.

“We must reach the last station before the jibtab ,” Eleriss said, striding toward one of the tunnels, not the one the creature had chosen.

Jakatra fell into step at his side.

I shrugged at my comrades, and they shrugged back. With few other options, we jogged to catch up with them. They’d have to get out when they were done doing whatever it was they were doing, and that’d be our chance to escape as well.

The tunnel we entered was wide enough for Temi, Simon, and me to walk side by side, though the floor had the evenness of a rock slide, and we had to scramble up and down lumpy hills. Temi kept up, but sweat soon bathed her brow.

“What happens if he turns that sword on us?” she whispered.

“No point in killing us now,” Simon said. “We can be cannon fodder for them.”

“Any theory on the ears?” I murmured. I’d been waiting for Simon to triumphantly exclaim that his hypothesis had been correct and that Star Trek aliens were real.

“We already knew they weren’t human, at least not entirely,” Simon said. “From the blood sample.”

“I’m surprised you’re not eager to proclaim them Vulcans.”

“Vulcans have green blood.”

Not to mention being make believe…

“All right, then what has red blood and pointed ears?” I asked. “The experiment of some mad scientist who happens to be a Gene Roddenberry fan?”

“I was thinking elves,” Simon whispered.

“Elves? Come on, this isn’t RealmSaga .”

“No? That elf is toting a magical sword around.”

I jostled him as we clambered up a bumpy slope. “Please.”

“What, they didn’t make you take mythology as part of your degree?” Simon asked. “Elves come up in a lot of cultures’ old stories.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “They were one of the misbegotten creatures mentioned in Beowulf, and they were all over Norse mythology, not to mention that they star on cookie boxes these days. Perhaps we should ask those two if they bake chocolate-covered shortbread treats from a kitchen inside a tree?”

Up ahead, Jakatra and Eleriss exchanged glances. I had a feeling our whispers weren’t as soft as we’d like, so I dropped the conversation. Temi had fallen behind. I slowed down to wait for her. Just because the creature had given up for the moment didn’t mean it wouldn’t try for Jakatra again-or take out its fury on some easier prey along the way.

Temi waved for us to go on. “I’ll catch up.”

I waited anyway, adding my flashlight’s beam to her own to better illuminate her path. Simon waited too.

The glow of Jakatra’s sword faded from sight when he turned a bend. The passage was a lot darker with only the power of our flashlights to drive back the blackness.

Temi caught up, and we started again, only to halt when a bright yellow warmth bled into the tunnel from around that bend.

“What’s that?” I asked. “More than the sword.” It was as if a bank of lights had been turned on.

“Let’s find out.” Temi urged us forward.

Despite my resolution to wait for her, I found myself jogging at the end. If there were more people in alcoves, I felt obligated to try and help them before the monster found them and attacked. Or before our pointy-eared friends did something to them. Who knew if their plans were any friendlier than those of the creature?

I rounded the bend ahead of the others, entering a chamber of alcoves like the first one, except that a couple of impressive stalactites dangled from the ceiling with water dripping from their tips. The rivulets ran down the slope, filling a pool in front of a striated wall. A round oval on the ceiling was acting like a light fixture, shedding powerful illumination that pushed the shadows from every corner of space. It also brightened the four alcoves, these with the stone columns still framing their entrances. I picked out another Roman, this one from an earlier era, a Mongol warrior, a Celt in chain mail, and a Spartan hoplite in crimson chiton and cloak with a spear, shield, and short sword. We hadn’t seen anyone from a period later than 150 °CE or so. No suitable warriors to select from in recent centuries? Or was someone a fan of the earlier time periods?

At the moment, the men appeared like statues, though their feet dangled a foot above the stone floor, their bodies suspended in midair. Their eyes were closed, as if they slept. Eleriss had gone to the end and waved his hand, causing an oval that I could only guess was a control panel to protrude an inch. It was made from the same limestone as the cavern wall and blended seamlessly. If there’d been a similar panel in the other chamber, I hadn’t noticed it.

Jakatra waved at the first two men, made a disgusted sound, and spoke a few words in his own tongue.

Trying not to draw their attention, I sidled closer. I paused to consider the last man more thoroughly, not only because he had a handsome face-I could imagine some sculptor trying to get him to stand still in pre-photography days to capture his prominent cheekbones and strong jaw-but because he might be some ancestor of mine. Well, probably not-my grandparents claimed they could trace our family’s heritage all the way back to the scholars and philosophers of Athens, people who probably would have sniffed in disdain at Sparta’s militaristic isolationism. Still, we had the country in common. If he’s real, I reminded myself. Then I shook my head because I had no idea what “real” would mean. These couldn’t possibly be actual human beings who’d been snatched from different periods of history. They had to be a part of someone’s modern science experiment. Fakes.