The Ishim Underground

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They collected twigs and dry grass to wrap around a chunk of punk Eron cut from a rotting log.

  “Couldn’t you give us some web to bind the torch?” asked Eron.

  “No,” said the spider. “I have to conserve my matter.”

  “You seemed human when you were a man,” said Eron pulling some threads from the bottom of his tunic. “Couldn’t you stay that way now?”

  “This is easier,” said the spider indignantly. It crawled onto Amit’s hand and climbed into its tube. “And I can’t be seen leading you into the Den.”

  “You’re banned?”

  “Novices enter alone or not at all,” it said. The tiny voice rang with a tinny echo. “Not for forty days.”

  “And nights?” said Eron, lighting his shabby torch from the coal still smoldering in the fire horn, which had been packed in moss. “But not Micah. That’s who I’m supposed to go see.”

  “Especially not Micah,” said Tunkukush.

  “Don’t you know anything about the Den,” asked Amit sounding more smug than Eron was comfortable with.

  “I know they say its guarded by two monsters,” said Eron. “And there are some pictures on the back of the map that look like lamassu. It’s probably some sort of code.”

  Hrmmmph! came the metallic peep from the canister. “‘Monster’ is a kind way to say ‘idiot.’ And I wouldn’t speak to those big-headed abominations more than necessary. Just ask for the riddle.”

  “They’re real, too?” said Eron.

  “Listen,” said the Ishim. “Failing all other things, remember no hoofed creatures eyes face forward for a reason.”

  “Is that the riddle?” asked Eron.

  Amit placed the cord attached to Tunkukush’s canister around his neck. The boy wandered ahead through the ruins following a jagged trail of black graffiti hands followed closely by Eron, who was holding the torch. Eventually, amid the haunting cries of the loogaroo, they reached a jagged edge of a round modern wall. Eron followed the boy as Tunkukush rattled out directions through the labyrinth of broken stones. On the interior curve of the ruin, they passed a series of nomadic symbols imbedded in between scraps of flaking paint and obscene images, which matched the ones scribbled on the back of the shepherd’s map.

  Though Eron had learned to live without the sound of the great Auckian clock booming every day light hour from the square until sunset when the guardsmen silenced the internal mechanisms, designed in a bygone era, it was the hour when the crier roamed the streets bellowing about how safe and secure they were, that he missed the most.

  “Nine of the clock and all is well,” whispered Eron.

  The trail of black hands was freshly painted and easy to follow. And they were everywhere. Three fingers bent against the palm and one beckoning them on down the rocky paths covered in bits of building, roots, and trees jutting out from crumbled walls. Even in the dark, they could make out the outline of the hand, but the debris never seemed to end as if they were walking in circles.

  In the modern era, the city had been smaller than Auck City and the surrounding villages. But, it seemed to Eron, like a beefalo carcass picked and cleaned to the bone. Only walls and the foundations gave any evidence of what had once existed before it was leveled by earthquakes and time. No one knew what they had worn. What did they eat? What was modern music like? What did they know about the gawds? What secrets had been lost?

  Amit strained the rubber band of his slingshot and released a chunk of concrete between Eron’s feet.

  “Put that away,” hissed Eron. “Where are you getting more rubber if that breaks?”

  “I’ll steal some,” said Amit.

  “From who?” said Eron. “They only ship it from the islands once every five years. And last time they were in port in Auck City was two years ago.”

  “I don’t care,” said the spotted boy firing another piece of stone. “I’m going to be a highway man. I’ll have everything I want while you work on the chain.”

  “Every thief must think they have a good excuse,” Eron muttered to himself as they approached a dark hole in the side of the mountain crowned with a rugged arch of chiseled rock with a single black hand on the keystone.

  Overgrown, weedy, dark and clearly of modern construction, inside the tunnel was as tall as two men and wide enough for four or maybe five vardos. It was incredible. The torch cast its light onward, but did not reach the other side, but its light reveal rock fallen everywhere from the ceiling. Stones spilt upon landing on the tunnel floor and mounds, endless mounds of small hard pieces of something caught the flickering light.

  They made a crunching sound as Eron and Amit stepped on them. Never a good sign.

  Bones.

  The tunnel floor was covered with bone fragments.

  “You go first,” said Eron pushing on Amit’s back and knocking him forward. But, he was feeling more fear than guilt.

  “No heroes among Auckians,” said the boy shoving him back.

  “You mean thieves,” said Eron.

  “The answer to the riddle has the same number of letters as the last word in the riddle,” whispered Tunkukush. “Remember that.”

  “I can’t spell!” cried Eron.

  “That could be a problem,” said the Ishim.

  Eron’s imagination was racing like a panthera attacking his thoughts on a downhill slope. He didn’t stand a chance. He treaded purposefully over the bones as if he could limit how much of the underside of his boot was exposed, but as Amit picked up speed, Eron hit a rock with his toe. Sliding onto his palms, he buried his face into an ashy heap of ribs. It was horrible. Amit’s shoes were little more than two wads of leather tied and bound with slender strips, but they offered significantly more tactile control.

  May the gawds forgive me if I pulverized anyone’s peaceful remains,” he whispered to himself.

  It was the most pious thought he could muster. In Auck City, bones were buried whole, because most Auckians believed that a person’s spirit was still connected to the body after death.

  What had been mild discomfort finally erupted into terrified shudders as a scent darker than the latrine on the South end of the central square in Dunedin entered his unprepared nostrils. Blood, death and decay. He pulled the corner of his tunic over his mouth, but it made little difference.

  The light at the end of the tunnel was the cool blue moon hanging low in the night sky. It opened into an enclave formed by rock and hillside. Eron dusted himself off and sprinted out into the opening. Around them, the grassy hillsides surged upward beyond the stark enclave, covered with trees, ferns and tree ferns. On the far end of the steep enclosure, a large black cavern mouth waited. There were few bones on the ground between the tunnel and the cavern, but what small piles there were had bits of flesh and fabric clinging to them.

  A flash of light caught Eron’s eye as he saw it. Them. There were two. Nothing could have prepared him.

  On four thin legs, they rested, the heads of the Lamassu spanning the length of his torso. Their bodies seemingly thrown together from scraps of other animals. The shoulders, back and legs of the beefalo. The wings of the giant moa. The head of a man. With melon-sized glossy brown eyes and iridescent beastly rows of hornlike teeth, the Lamassu commanded the full power of his terror as they bobbed around, driven to a frenzy by the sight of two humans entering their foul smelling space. They were smiling. Each lamassu could easily fit a normal human’s head in their wide maniacaly grinning mouths.

  “TREATS,” came the disturbing rumble of the beast on the left. Its voice echoed. And even Eron’s softest hairs to stood on end.

  They got to their hooves swiftly, the most nimble intelligence imaginable on four legs. The short rough fur from the purple body of the beefalo softened into the long curls that crowned their heads. And where their body hair ended, the dark purple plated braids began encompassing both hair and long beards that reached the middle of their beastly chests. And from their sides, the massive silky
grey wings of moa brushed it aside.

  “Balls,” said Amit as the beasts advanced, swishing their tails behind them.

  Amit bolted for the tunnel, but the smaller of the two abominations charged.

  “Don’t run!” screamed Eron, but it was too late.

  It skidded to a halt, dry bones snapping where it landed. A blood curdling yelp reverberated through the passage.

  The smaller of the two creatures pounded toward the hole and pranced back with the boy hanging from its fleshy lips. It spat him onto the ground at Eron’s feet.

  “FAINTED,” it said.

  The other circled Eron and start sniffing him. Its nose was disproportionately flat and its glee unyielding like a loogaroo with a bone. No, this was worse. They were lamassu with a collection of bones. The rim around Eron’s line of vision began to fade and darkness threatened to take him. Nothing felt real. Something warm hit the inside of his trousers as a wide bristly pink tongue slithered from the mouth of the smaller of the two beasts to taste Amit’s face.

  “Stop!” said Eron.

  “I CANNOT EAT ANOTHER HUMAN,” groaned the smaller beast.

  “How can you eat something that talks to you?” Eron yelled.

  “HOW CAN YOU NOT?” said the broader and taller of the two and they both rumbled at its beastly wit. The boy’s pale hair and spotted fur cloak stuck to the lamassu’s rough tongue and lifted him slightly off the ground.

  “HE’S RIGHT, MOSUL,” boom the bigger one. “DON’T PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD.”

  “PATIENT,” said Mosul, the beast nudging Amit with its forehead.

  It stifled a giggle.

  “DOCTOR,” it said.

  The Ishim’s tube rattled.

  “I want,” said Eron remembering what Tunkukush had said at the ruins. “I demand a riddle.”

  The smaller and lighter of the lamassu continued grooming the spotted boy with it’s tongue while the other pranced around and kicked its hind legs.

  “YOU MAY HAVE THREE,” said the big one.

  “ONE,” said Mosul.

  “Germs,” moaned Amit regaining consciousness.

  “GERMS!” shouted the beast, its hooves clicking as it backed away.

  “CLEVER LITTLE LIES,” said Mosul, blinking its dense lashes.

  “LIES,” agreed the other, but it hesitated before it resumed preening its new toy. “NAME?” it said looking at Eron.

  “I’m Eron,” said Eron.

  “HIS,” said the beast leaning over Amit almost tenderly.

  “Amit,” said Eron. “Yours?”

  “HE IS NINEVEH,” laughed Mosul, the larger of the two beasts circling Eron, the lamassu and the spotted boy.

  “SPOTS,” said Nineveh grinning down at Amit who was still unconscious.

  “Is the this the entrance to the D.O.T.?” Eron asked blinking painfully. The acrid fumes of the enclave were burning his eyes and though his head still spun, he had given up breathing through his tunic.

  The lamassu looked at the cave and starred back at him blankly.

  “Nevermind,” said Eron.

  “RIDDLE,” said Mosul breaking into an exuberant gait and circling Eron with its beaded beard wagging under its heavy chin. “WHAT CONNECTS TWO THINGS, BUT DIVIDES MEN. ONE MAY DRAW A SMILE, BUT IT TAKES MANY TO MAKE A SINGLE WORD.”

  “You could just let us go,” Eron muttered.

  ‘Word’ was the last word in the riddle. So, the answer had four letters.

  Tunkukush’s tube rattled aggressively. Nineveh nipped at it, but it was too small to catch in his teeth without biting Amit and for some reason, he seemed to have decided not to do that yet.

  “YOU CAN GO,” said Mosul.

  “Simple!” breathed Amit as he tried to raise himself from the ground. Eron was almost more worried to see him awake than lying limp, but silent.

  “JOKE!” roared Nineveh, placing a purple hoof on the boy. Its laughter echoed around the enclave and water rolled from its glassy eyes. Nineveh wrapped its wings around the front of its body and covered its face with the graceful tips. “BOO!”

  Eron jumped. His heart pounded and the anger burned inside him. He had never really hated a predator before. He respected the loogaroo and the panthera. They ate to live, but the lamassu seemed to feed off their captives’ fear and had their bodies for dessert.

  Words were made up of lines. No matter where they were drawn. A smile could be drawn with a line. Lines could connect things. And a line could be drawn in the ground.

  “Line,” he blurted, not wanting to second guess himself.

  The answer had come from the void from which all knowledge enters the mind. Sometimes it flowed to freely and other times it trickled to as if blocked by a large wad of stupidity. Eron had been lucky.

  “BOTHER,” groaned the smaller beast and it hung its head mockingly. Its chest heaved as if to cry. Mosul comforted it with his wing. They didn’t care. It might have been different if the lamassu were hungry, but they weren’t.

  Still, there was no time to waste.

  Eron pulled Amit up from the ground and draped him over his shoulder as Mosul made a sad face, which might have been cute if he didn’t have dried blood clinging to his beard. They shuffled into the cave as fast as they could clear the entrance and were in complete darkness before passage narrowed enough that Eron was sure the lamassu couldn’t follow. He took the fire horn from his shoulder. The coal nestled in the clump of moss, which protected it, was almost too small. But, with a little effort, he relit the torch by setting it in the burnt end of the torch and blowing slow and steady. Then they slipped and skidded down the steep path into the den, which opened again and was clear and wide enough to walk comfortably. No more pulverized bones to tread on. And the smell of death behind them was faint.

  “Leave the torch,” rang a tiny echo from the spider’s home as it dangled around Amit’s thin neck.

  “We can’t see,” said Eron.

  “It may take an hour for your eyes to adjust, but the den has its own light source.”

  “If you say so, but uh, where did those things come from?” asked Eron turning the torch and warming his hands on it.

  “Dr. Uri made them,” said the Ishim. “What is more frightening than a superior predator with average intellect and inferior compassion?”

  The point was taken. Eron dropped his pack onto the dusty, but solid ground and unbelted the straps which held his bundle together. He put the tip of the torch to the floor of the cave. The flickering shadows lowered on the walls and the embers broke free, rolling back toward the entrance as if being sucked out, as he pressed down on it. Eron looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the lamassu any longer. He couldn’t see anything. Not even a gleam of moonlight pouring from the cavern mouth. It was pitch black.

  “Don’t relax yet,” said Tunkukush. “The den has more for you.”

  “Like what spider man?” said Eron. Eying the dark for a good spot to lie down.

  “No one will speak to you,” it said. “The thieves may seem to look straight through you, but most likely they’ll have everything you own by the end of the first day.”

  “We can take it back,” said Amit.

  “If they catch you, they’ll kill you,” said Tunkukush.

  “Wait. Why should a line connectify two points?” said Amit.

  “It’s called geometry,” said Eron. “A form of knowledge. You’d have to study it. Like writing and reading.”

  “Is it better than writing?” asked Amit.

  “Yes,” said Eron who wasn’t really listening.

  “Are you going to teach me gem-on-a-tree?” grabbing his slingshot and pointing it at Eron. Eron couldn’t see it, but by the sound of it, he knew what the boy was doing.

  “Geometry,” corrected Eron as they trudged downward. “Geo has something to do with the Earth and ‘metry’ is when you measure the distance around and between and through things.”

  “Eron,” sounded the metallic ring of the spider
’s voice from his home still hanging on Amit’s chest. “You don’t have many friends, do you?”

  “No,” said Eron sounding a bit morose. “And the one I do have hid the medicine I needed to keep the other one alive.”

  “I told him to take it,” said the spider.

  “Well,” said Eron. “I’m glad we’re getting to know each other.”

  “How far to the Den?” said Amit.

  Eron shrugged.

  “How far?” the boy repeated clearly unable to see him.

  “Not far,” said Tunkukush. “I will tap once to turn left and twice for right. There is a cave up the river where you can hide.”

  “When was the last time you were there?” asked Eron. He didn’t really care. He was getting so tired he would have napped where they stood.

  “Around 2342,” said the spider. “Or 2358? Either way, it was the end of the anti-fundamentalist revolt about the time when all the holy texts were burned.”

  “What good are books with preholes in them?” said Amit.

  “They were books about gawds and the ancient world,” said Eron. “All lost to history now.”

  “There are digital copies on the Golem’s hard drive,” corrected the Ishim.

  Even in the dark, Amit and Eron’s blank stares were deafening.

  “Oh, right,” said Eron although he had no idea what the Ishim was talking about. But, being openly told he was wrong by the creature, who had lived five centuries, didn’t feel good. He just wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or anger. No, it must be humiliation.

  It was much colder underground.

  Clean and crisp air flowed steadily through the cavern. Counter to Eron’s expectations, it wasn’t warm. Just a bit dank. It didn’t smell of thievery, but instead the chilly corridor smelt like a tomb, dusty and old, as if the air were carrying the scent of cheese and fresh compost.

  Eron and Amit sat waiting in the passage for just a few more minutes. And Amit contented himself with throwing rocks against the wall after the Ishim forbade him to use his slingshot in the cave.

  “Why are we waiting so long?” moaned the kid.

  Eron was tired. He stank. He could easily pass three days, four days, five days in a bed, especially his own bed back in Auck City, with nothing more than a blanket, some scrolls and a lamp. And bread straight out of the oven. With butter.

  Each night on the road from Dunedin, Eron had pictured Micah and the comforts he might offer once they arrived, but with one leg already in the underworld of the thieves, his fantasy had evaporated.

  D.O.T.

  Den of thieves.

  How could he have not made the connection?

  Eron repacked his bundle by feeling the textures and shapes of its contents, a faint hint of their outline seemed visible when held each item close, but it could have been a trick of the mind.

  Crunch.

  It seemed like he could almost see where were shards on the ground beside his pack. It was his lamp. He went for his fire horn. He could use what was left of the ember to check the floor and see if he left anything.

  “No,” said the Ishim. “Put it down. No light.”

  “You haven’t been here for 250 years? Right?” moaned Eron feeling the clay texture of one of the broken fragments.

  “That’s about right,” said the spider.

  “And we only have supplies for about four days,” grumbled Eron completing his inventory.

  “I’ve got seeds,” said Amit. “Pumpkins.”

  “Naturally,” said Eron. “Pumpkins don’t need light.” But, he thought again quickly and added, “They may be useful sometime down the road. Just keep them for now.”

  “No light,” said Eron slumping down against the wall of the cave.

  “Careful!” screamed the Ishim. “Don’t touch anything. Your eyes are already starting to adjust. Now, let’s get moving.”

  “Why don’t we find Micah and ask him for help,” Eron groaned.

  “Micah wrote the code,” said the spider. “Listen, no one comes to the den under anything, but extenuating circumstances.”

  Amit was sneaking one of the pieces of Eron’s lamp. He set it quietly into the cradle of his slingshot.

  “I can see that,” said the spider.

  And it was likely the Ishim told the truth since the metal canister around Amit’s neck hung only inches from the boy’s hands.

  Eron started to worry that his brain would invent the information it lacked. A border of light appeared to circle the impression of his body where he had leaned against the cavern wall. It was greenish. And pale. He spread his palm and fingers and pressed them against the rock. A dark handprint remained on the surface as he drew it away, but there was no residue on his hand. Something was growing on the surfaces and whatever it was congregated in the corners, along the floor and ceiling.

  “A-M-I-T,” said the wild boy smugly withdrawing his finger from the cave wall. “How do you spell ‘here.’”

  “You don’t,” said the spider.

  They were interrupted by the sound scuffling feet, which resonated through the cave from somewhere behind them. Amit brushed his name away leaving a trail on the surface of the cave. Eron was now able to see the path leading into the Den as well as the dark streaks where people tread in and out. Everything in the corridor glowed faintly green. Every surface had become imperceptibly brighter moment by moment, even the boulders and the fallen rocks and the stalagmites, but they couldn’t make out any details of the people approaching steadily.

  “Slave raiders are quasisending everyone on the run,” grumbled a man. His voice carrying well enough.

  “Yeah,” agreed a more feminine voice. “Maybe they’ll get too fat to catch us after eating all the food they’re planning to grow.”

  “But, how many have gotten in?” said the first voice.

  “Two,” said what sounded like a child.

  In total, seven thieves passed.

  None of the weathered glares made contact. Among them four wore tricorn hats and three tattered akubra. Braids. Eron could see the texture of their leather pants clearly. Though the green light distorted the colors, which looked faded and dull, he was even starting to distinguish shades of blue, which looked greenish, from red, which appeared brownish.

  “Were those monks?” whispered Eron as soon as they had gone.

  “Thieves,” said the Ishim. “If you met one of the monks, you’d know it.”

  “Why is that?” asked Eron.

  “They’re all Ishim,” said the Ishim.