Who Hunts the Hunter (32 page)
“What do you know of
Roggoth’shoth
?” Old Man says.
"I know the book holds evil,” Bandit says.
“You know nothing.”
The smoky incense becomes thick, obscuring all from sight.
“Open your senses.”
When Bandit looks, he is in another place, looking down on a large room lined with old books and radiating power. At the center of the room stands an old man with a long gray beard. He wears a hat shaped like a cone and a long daric robe inscribed with mystic symbols. With the glowing tip of a radiant wand, he writes symbols in the air. The symbols speak."
I
am
the
mage
Penticlese
. ..
The
phenomena
described
in
this
text,
the
knowledge
that
I
now
relate,
comes
to
me
from
the
Ancients
...
The
dark
ages
of
our
forebears
...
“
Know
that
we
are
doomed
...
That
worlds
upon
worlds
exist
of
which
mortal
man
cannot
conceive
...
That
beyond
the
threshold
of
darkness
lies
the
greatest
horrors
...
The
Vault
of
Roggoth’shoth
."
“Do you know this place?” Old Man says.
“I have never been here,” Bandit says.
“What do you see?”
Bandit describes what he sees.
“What do you see in the symbols?”
The symbols waver and blur, swell to fill his vision, and then form images. A passageway into darkness, greater and greater darkness, till finally all is black and a pinpoint of light appears somewhere far ahead. As this light comes nearer, it grows. It becomes a brilliant white figure, the image of his sister, Amy."You shamed me,” she says."You and your shaman’s ways. You embarrassed me in front of my friends, in front of our parents. You made me wish I could curl up and die. Sometimes I laid awake all night crying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You never knew the truth. You didn’t care.”
“Now I know.”
“Do you? Do you really? Can you say it?”
It is like the first test of an astral quest. He comes before the Dweller on the Threshold only to be confronted by some secret out of his past. Nothing can be hidden from the Dweller. Not even the most personal, most closely guarded secret.
What the Dweller speaks of is plain. Bandit knows to what it refers. He knows what answer he must speak. He struggles to get the words out through his mouth."My sister . . . Amy ... She loves me.
She
has
always
loved
me
. She wants only for me to return that love.”
“And will you?”
“I will try.”
The Dweller vanishes from sight.
Abruptly, Bandit feels himself moving forward, hurtling through places uncounted and unknown. Coming to a place where darkness rules and shadows lurk, where malignant shapes flicker at the corners of his eyes and danger looms from barely an arm’s length away.
“Where are you?” Old Man says.
“I do not know,” Bandit replies.
“What do you see?”
Bandit describes it.
“Look into the shadows.”
When Bandit looks he sees a murky human shape moving toward him. At first, it seems all shadow and dark
,
but then Bandit sees deeper. He sees the power within, the dazzling power of a thousand souls, all burning with the radiant purity of life energy. And then he sees deeper still. Within the dazzling aura of life lurks a darkness blacker than black, a malignant core, feeding on life itself.
The horror comes nearer. Bandit feels himself shaking with fear. Abruptly, he’s hurtling away from the core of darkness at a speed beyond comprehension, and still the horror comes, pursuing him to the very threshold of the metaplane, and beyond. Claws reaching out to snare him, tearing at him, reaching inside him ...
Bandit’s senses dim. He feels himself swaying. He finds himself sitting before Old Man’s small fire, and his head aches, and his heart thumps in his chest. He feels the danger lurking beyond the boundaries of the medicine lodge, and he shivers.
“What do you know of evil?” Old Man says.
Bandit considers long, and says, “I know its name. I know it comes from beyond the threshold. That it preys on life. Feeds on life. Steals souls.”
Old Man closes his eyes."What will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Old Man nods."The shaman’s path is hard to know. I remember a long time ago I heard two men talking. One claimed that Raccoon shared in the Eagle spirit, just as all men share in this spirit. The other man said that Raccoon is only a thief, just as all men are thieves. I remember my father once told me that nature is very powerful, but sometimes even nature needs help. You decide who’s right. I’m just an old man. I don’t have any answers.”
Bandit considers, and says."Good and evil are both part of nature.”
“Maybe that’s your answer.”
Bandit ponders, and says, “It’s in the nature of good to oppose evil. To fight it. Even to destroy it.”
“If that’s what you think,” Old Man says, “maybe you’re right.”
Bandit wonders. Maybe this time Raccoon must bare his teeth and go for blood.
“Hey. Doobies.”
Monk opens his eyes. A pair of orks are leaning down into his face and grinning. They have red glaring eyes and really big fangs and they seem kind of amused. Their names are Erin and Paige, two of Minx’s friends. Monk gives her shoulder a squeeze. She lifts her head from his lap, looks up and says, “Oh! Wiz! How’d you find us?”
Erin says, “Poochie found you.”
That’s the other name for the Prince of Darkness, the big reddish-black Doberman Pinscher with the red glaring eyes, standing there beside Paige. At the mention of his name, Poochie snarls viciously, like he wants to tear something apart. Poochie makes Monk a little nervous.
Minx giggles."Which way to the old subway tunnel?”
"This way.”
Monk stands and stretches. He’s stiff. He feels like he’s slept for days. Maybe all day. He isn’t exactly sure what happened. things got kind of confusing after ... After ... something or other. He and Minx walked and crawled through a lot of tunnels and kind of got lost. He started feeling really tired and so did Minx, so they sat down to rest and fell asleep. Minx must’ve called Erin and Paige on her headfone.
Just down the tunnel a ways is a steel mesh that leads to another passage that ends in an old subway tunnel with reddish rusty rails. Erin and Paige stop abruptly. Paige motions with her head back the way they came."We’re going to feed the Master.”
That’s what it was: the Master.
“Oh, okay,” Minx says."Kintama,
omaes
."
“Sure,” Erin says.
They walk on, Erin and Paige and the Prince of Darkness in one direction, Monk and Minx on through the old subway tunnel. Once the orks’ footsteps fade away, Monk says, “What does that mean? Kintama.”
Minx smiles."Oh that means ‘balls.’ ”
“Balls?”
“Golden balls.”
“Yeah?”
“You booty,” Minx says, grinning at him."Haven’t you ever heard the old saying? Beware the golden balls.”
“Who said that?”
“How should I know?”
Monk scratches behind his ear, wondering, then says, “It kinda sounds like this thing I read once. By this guy Mark Twain. Mr. Bloke’s Item, it was called. It ended with this warning. ‘Beware the golden bowl.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Twain didn’t know either.”
Minx giggles."It’s just another mystery of our age.”
“I guess.”
They come to a rusty reddish door marked UTIL. It squeals as Minx pulls it open. The squarish passage beyond fades into a reddish haze. Maybe twenty meters into the haze, two figures appear. They look like they’re wearing
combat armor. Monk puzzles.
“Oh, no,” Minx whispers.
“Blast ’em, kid!” one of the figures shouts.
Minx shrieks, “
Run,
you
booty!
RUN
!”
They turn and run. Automatic weapons clatter and roar. Something explodes. Monk feels bits of things like maybe grit and dirt spraying the back of his head and jacket. Minx suddenly seizes his wrist and tugs him across the old subway rails, and the ground beneath them abruptly disappears.
They fall.
Maybe two or three meters. It’s more of a surprise than anything else. Monk shouts. Minx clamps her hand over his mouth, tugs him up and pulls him ahead, running again. They’re in a winding passage that seems chopped out of raw reddish rock.
“Who are those slags?” Monk asks.
“Killers!” Minx blurts."Keeping running, booty!”
No drek.
Harman doesn’t answer any of his phones. Amy supposes that he’s in a meeting or some other place where he can’t talk, and it’s probably just as well. She sits back in her desk chair and exhales deeply. She needed a break, a moment that had nothing to do with Tokyo auditors and fears about fraud and ruined lives, such as her own, but she shouldn’t be wasting time like that. She should be on the phone to Dr. Phalen, requesting an immediate interview, insisting on it, so she can present her discoveries and ask his opinion.
She swings around in her chair to look through the wall of windows spanning the rear of her office: the subtle grays of early evening, the golden wash of light filling New Bronx Plaza, the riverfront, the fountains, the condoplexes, the unfinished arcology. She must call Phalen now, like she told Mercedes Feliz she would. She’ll need the Executive VP on her side if the wind doesn’t blow her way.
“Stop vacillating,” she tells herself.
Amy straightens up in her chair, but before she can turn back to her desk, something catches her eye.
For a moment, she isn’t sure what she’s seeing—a bird, a missile, a meteorite—a dark patch coming through her Windows, coming straight for her nose. Involuntarily, she jerks back, feet thrusting at the floor. The back of her chair bangs against the back of her desk. She stiffens, gasping for air, then gapes.
The dark patch resolves into a hole, like a hole in the ground, in bare earth, but hanging in the air perhaps a meter in front of her face.
For possibly the first time in her career, Amy remembers the PanicButton under her desk. She’s hit it half a dozen times with her knee, completely by accident, only to look up in surprise when a squad of armed guards came bursting into her office. Now she wishes she could reach it, reach it without being obvious about it. She has no doubt that she’s witnessing some sort of arcane phenomenon.
Her heart hammers.
A figure appears, head rising from the hole. It looks like an animal, dark and furry, kind of like a raccoon. It crosses its forelegs on the edge of the hole, and says in an oddly pitched voice, “Stay away from Phalen. He’s dangerous.”
Amy gapes."W-what?” she stammers.
Her voice lilts upward about a thousand octaves. The figure gazes at her, scratches its head, then says, “Stay away from Phalen—”
“Who are you?” Amy blurts.
“Me?” The figure cocks its head to one side and scratches its brow, seeming puzzled."I’m just another creature of quicksilver and shadow.”
Quicksilver?
Amy stares.
She’s a good five minutes catching her breath and collecting her wits. She remembers Scottie’s lifelong obsession with raccoons, and wonders. Is that just a coincidence? Does this apparition warning about Dr. Phalen have something to do with Scottie?
She remembers a trideo show called
The
Shattergraves
from a few-seasons past. It enjoyed a brief but intense popularity on account of its hero-magician, who might have stepped out of a Vashon Island catalogue. Even her aide Laurena was talking about him. Aragon, he was called. In the show, he had a helper, a kind of spirit. The spirit’s name was Quicksilver. It wasn’t very bright. Aragon would sometimes send Quicksilver to deliver messages. The spirit seemed able to find almost anyone, no matter where they might be, in just the wink of an eye.
If that bears any resemblance to the way magic really works, and the abilities of spirits, then Scottie might have sent this creature resembling a raccoon to warn her about Dr. Phalen.
But, why?
It doesn’t make any sense. Dangerous? Dr. Phalen? Even if he’s personally responsible for defrauding Hurley-Cooper, Amy can’t believe that the man would make any attempt to harm her personally. This is not some violence-prone street-person with a long criminal history. This is a man who’s devoted his life to science. A man who’s always spoken to her, to everyone, in her experience, with the manners of an Old World gentleman: polite to a fault, kind and considerate, and rather charming. Dangerous? That’s just not possible.