The Last Summoning---Andrew and the Quest of Orion's Belt (Book Four) (49 page)

As soon as Andrew finished the letter he
lowered it. “Hold aloft the light I bear?” Andrew wondered. “But
how?” He quickly fell silent, hearing the sound of two strangers
talking just outside the porthole. They were conversing in low,
clipped tones. “Where do you think the boy is hiding?” One voice
whispered.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” a gravely
voice replied. “I’m tired of the endless searches, the sleepless
nights. Marching, marching, always marching. The boy has been
assumed dead or wounded. That’s good enough for me.”

“Oh, then you haven’t heard?” the other
speaker asked. His voice was smooth, and hushed. “The Fallen has
offered a reward for those who find the boy.”

“What kind of reward?”

“A reward far greater than anything you and I
could ever imagine. He will bestow twenty-two thousand rotmogs,
upon the man who catches the brat. And enough light to see by for a
lifetime when the sun is gone.”

“What a pretty reward,” the inquirer
murmured. “Worth more than any amount of gold. I saw a rotmog once.
It was a pretty thing. It was dark as a moonstone, but when you
picked it up and held in your hand it glowed and shone real
pretty-like.”

“Would be worth it to find the brat.”

“Yes, it would.”

The two speakers whispered something Andrew
couldn’t hear, then slowly moved away from the opening. When they
left, Andrew breathed out, causing a waft of fog to rise up around
him.

“I’m worth twenty-two thousand rotmogs and
enough light to see by for a lifetime,” he told himself. “Not too
bad.” He slowly stood up and moved down the damp passage, repeating
the words from Kesper’s letter, “Step into the dark…That is what
I’m doing right now. But I don’t see much.”

After a long while of walking in the same
direction through the oily sewage channel, the passage broke off
into three directions. Andrew paused at the fork to catch his
breath, shivering in the cold. He was thirsty, and his stomach
growled. “Which way now?” he wondered. After studying each tunnel,
he decided that he would take the passage that turned left. Not for
any particular reason, only that the damp sludge on the bottom
didn’t look as black and oily as the others. The further he went
into this new tunnel, the smell of rotting carcasses began to
lessen, and a new, albeit, horrible smell drifted up from the
ground, and seeped through the cracks and bricks of the tunnel. It
was a smell Andrew could not put his finger on. It was a thick,
slippery smell, putrid, and almost suffocating. It reminded him of
what a shadow might smell like. It smelled sooty and burnt,
tar-like, oily, stale, and arrogant.

Andrew followed this smell until the tunnel
came to a dead end. “Great,” Andrew told himself, “where are you
going now, Andrew?” He groped around the darkness, looking for some
sign of a door or anything that could lead to a potential opening.
He was about to turn back towards the other tunnels when his hand
came in contact with a long, stringy root that felt like a wet
worm. The root was wedged in the crevasses of the tunnel, growing
in, around, and over the bricks.

Andrew dug his fingernails into the cracks of
the brick, prying up bits of the root with his fingernails. The
strands of the root were rebellious and were slow to yield to his
commanding touch. Finally, he managed to pull a long string of root
away from the wall. Then he wrapped the root around his hand,
willing his power over plants to make this root obey. He tugged
hard, letting out a loud cry as dirt and rocks fell around him. He
pulled harder. More dirt and rocks fell.

Angry, and filled with a thousand pent-up
emotions, he pulled again, using everything he had in him.
Instantly, it was as if the root came alive. It recoiled at his
touch, causing the tunnel walls and bricks to crumble. He held on
to the root with his good arm letting the root draw him inward and
upward. It hoisted him up through the mud, bricks, and dirt, like
an earthworm pushing its way through complex passages of roots,
until Andrew’s head suddenly broke through the surface of a
poorly-tiled basement floor. He felt like a gopher, or a mole,
digging through the earth.

He gasped in air, expelling dirt from his
mouth. The root slithered out of his hands, recoiling still further
up through the basement ceiling, causing stones and loose earth to
rain down upon him. He groaned, and tried to pull himself up and
out of the hole. But with only one arm for support, he struggled
considerably. He pressed his fingernails into the cracks of the
unbroken tile, and heaved himself out of the hole.

Andrew lay face down, panting. He was covered
in damp earth, and his face and skin were stained black from the
oil, and coal he had slogged through. To onlookers he looked like a
dark, oily worm, a shadow, perhaps, given some form.

“What is it?” a low voice whispered deep
within the room. Its voice sounded old, and shriveled. A scraping
sound like hard claws clicking against the tile ticked over the
floor towards Andrew.

“I don’t know,” another voice breathed,
letting out a woeful moan.

Andrew froze, listening.

All sounds ceased except for the low scritch-
scratch that scrapped across the floor, like metal hitting the
tile. He sat upright peering through the darkness. The room was
dismal, with only a small window. The moon was shining through it,
but it looked like its light was having a hard time penetrating
through the thick dirt and grime plastered across the glass. The
light it offered was very dreary, and made everything look more
frightening than even being in total darkness.

Then the voices whispered again, harsh and
resonant. Andrew whirled around, tense and unsure. A scraping
sound, like knives being sharpened ensued, as several figures
appeared out of the darkness, their forms, just slightly
silhouetted by the gloomy light from the window. “It’s alive,” one
of the creatures hissed, pointing a long finger in Andrew’s
direction. “I knew it!”

“Yes,” another squealed. “I saw it move!” It
howled, its voice filling the room with a splintering cry that
caused Andrew’s ears to ache.

“If it’s alive,” another cackled, raising a
barbed, rusty weapon, “it won’t be for long.”

“Wait!” one cried, placing a bony hand out to
stop the being.

Andrew quickly stepped back, his hand resting
on the hilt of his sword. He glanced at these fiendish creatures,
and then to a rickety looking set of stairs in back of the
room.

“Perhaps it is a cave troll, a mollrat, a
travelog?” one of the figures asked. “It may be useful to us.” They
stepped nearer, probing him with their slimey-yellow eyes.

“Stay back,” Andrew warned.

“You stay back!” the one of the beings
howled. “It’s human. Smell it.”

“Human?” the one murmured, sniffing the air.
Its eyes filled with alarm. “Ah, you’re right it is. It is! We
should kill it!”

“Nooo!” one howled, running towards Andrew
and standing in front of him. “We mustn’t kill it.”

Andrew scrambled back against the wall
beneath the window where the small patch of moonlight shone. The
creatures’ watery eyes gleamed in the darkness as they gathered in
around him, standing just outside the line of moonlight. Their
flat, smashed-in features were repulsive to look at. Their faces
were long, pasty, and gray. Their features looked stretched out and
morphed. Their hands, legs and faces that had perhaps once looked
human, had been pulled like soft taffy into strange contorted
shapes. The skin around their eyes was sagged, like a worn
out-sack, as if their large watery eyes might at any
moment fall from their heads. Their mouths,
noses and ears looked as if an earthquake had shaken up their
original positions and left them slightly skewed.

“Don’t be afraid,” one of them spoke, holding
out a gangly hand, beckoning. “Come, come with the Withers. You are
safe with us. We shan’t hurt you. No we won’t. Will we?”

“No,” the other Wither answered.

Andrew shook his head, and shrank away from
the Wither’s outstretched hand.

“What? You don’t trust us?” It murmured,
reaching out, straining to grab Andrew. But the second the Wither’s
hand came into contact with the moonlight, the skin on its hand
shriveled. Still it reached, taking a brave step into the
moonlight, so that its whole face started to sag and shrivel like
wax under heat.

Andrew pressed his back against the wall,
just inches from the creature’s grasp, and raised his sword in his
defense. “Touch me, and I swear I will kill you!” he cried. The
sword felt awkward in his left hand. The hollow, empty feeling
inside it still lingered. The sword felt strangely
ordinary---strangely empty, used up and dry, like a body without a
soul, like a glove without a hand. Though the sword had held back
the fire from the lake of oil, he doubted it could hold back this
mob. The sword’s light was dim, yet to the Withers, the light was
brilliant to their murky eyes. All the Withers shied away from the
sword and stepped back into the shadows, hiding their drippy,
watery eyes from the sword’s light. “Get back!” Andrew cried,
jabbing the sword at them. “I warn you!”

“The light!” the Withers howled. “It hurts.
Oh, take it away. Take it away. Kill it. Oh.” They moaned
pitifully. “The light, oh it hurts. Hurts.”

Andrew gazed at the Withers’ pitiful figures
in derision. All the Withers that fell under the light of the sword
began to shrivel, and wither, like a plant plucked from the ground.
Their skin sagged, and wrinkled. Their eyes dripped, and ran like a
stream. Their ears sagged and fell down their necks. Their mouths
began to fall down their faces, slanted and skewed. They howled and
screamed and moaned, until one by one, they tiptoed away, shrinking
into the darkness, like spiders, hiding their faces and eyes from
light, like it was a deadly acid.

Once their murmurs and the sound of their
clicking feet faded, Andrew took a step outside the line of
moonlight.

The room felt odd. It was too quiet. Above
him, one of the floorboards on the stairs creaked. A sound like
rustling sheets stirred the dead air in the room. He glanced to his
side, feeling someone’s hard eyes on him. There was a sudden
clicking of feet, a groan, then the raspy sound of someone
breathing.

A smell like sulfur wafted in around him. The
hair on Andrew’s neck stood on end. Without seeing what it, Andrew
knew what it was. He swung around, pressing the creature against
the wall, holding his sword to its throat. The light from the sword
caused its skin to wrinkle like a raisin. Its eyes drooped down its
face, big and fearful.

“Stop!” the Wither howled. “Please!
Stop!”

“Name one good reason why I should,” Andrew
growled.

“Because,” the Wither panted. “Because. I
have seen your other friends. I know where they are. I will lead
you to them.”

Andrew’s face softened. “You’ve seen them?
Where?”

“You must promise me that once I tell you,
you will not harm me.”

Andrew lowered his sword. “Now tell me. WHERE
ARE THEY!”

The Wither's eyes gleamed with a shallow
darkness. “I will tell you where they are. They are dead. Dead!
Dead because of you. Once The Fallen found that your friend wasn’t
you, he killed him. Killed them all, even that raccoon that ratted
on you. First they tortured them. Yes, tortured them in the most
painful ways. Then they hung them, hung them, and the shadows
picked their bones! And if you follow me, I will take you to your
death as well!”

“Silence!” Andrew shouted, pressing the
Wither against the wall, and squeezing its withered throat. His
hand shook, and his whole body trembled. Heat and tears came to his
eyes. He could not see, could not feel anything but anger.

“Let me go!” the Wither coughed and
sputtered.

Andrew’s eyes filled with fire. He raised his
sword, ready to thrust the beast through.

“No. No. No…!” the creature howled, recoiling
under the sword’s light, holding its arms over its head. Its face
and body had withered so much that the creature looked more like a
puddle with arms trying to pull itself out of itself.

Andrew suddenly stopped. He lowered his
sword. The creature wasn’t worth killing. It was already
incapacitated as it was. Andrew turned from the puddling
figure.

The Wither howled in disgust, then hobbled
into the shadows.

Andrew watched the Wither disappear into the
darkness, a heaviness weighing down on him. “Yes…” he whispered.
“Go! Go and hide yourself from the light. Go tell your Master that
I am coming for him!”