The Cypher (14 page)

Tarsaa O Hergelin

The next morning their usual breakfast on the lawn had an unexpected visitor. Tony stopped pouring maple syrup on the Canadian pancakes and peaches he’d bought close to Pier 21 in Halifax, and looked behind Thomas.

“Morning your highness,” Tony said a little bit sarcastically. “How can we serve you?”

Thomas turned around to see Tasha standing there wearing a simple green and white plaid shirt over jeans. Her hair was loose, gently falling over her shoulders and she wore a simple white headband.

Anyone could have dismissed her for a high school girl going out for a walk at the mall or to the movies with some friends.

She flashed them a shy smile. “I want to apologize,” she said, “for yesterday.”

Tony exchanged a quick glance with Henri, but it was Thomas who spoke first. “Have you apologized to Elise?” he asked. “She’s the one you attacked.”

“I was a little bit over the top, but both the Doctor and Elise agree that I’m better suited to protect you.” She bit her lower lip.

“So you apologized?” Thomas asked directly; it seemed that she was evading answering. Grandpa always said that realizing you’d make a mistake was one of life’s precious lessons, but only if you made amends for it. Apologizing to them meant nothing if Tasha didn’t apologize to Elise.

Tasha sighed. “I have,” she said meekly, “to her and Doctor Franco.”

“And?” Tony asked when she kept quiet for a couple of seconds.

Tasha spoke through her teeth, “They accepted my apology. There. That’s what you wanted to hear right?”

Tony exchanged a nod with Henri and Thomas and extended a hand toward the open side of their red and white mantel. “Care for breakfast?”

Tasha sighed again, “Thank you, but I can’t. I have to prepare our trip for Ormagra, but I wanted to apologize first and,” she flashed Thomas a smile, “talk with Thomas for a minute.”

Thomas looked back at Tony, who only hunched his shoulders. “Sure,” he cleaned his hands, stood up, and followed Tasha toward the mansion’s back.

“You must think I’m a terrible person,” she said after they’d gone around the mansion’s side and into the mansion’s back gardens.

He didn’t answer. He realized now that he was dealing with a grownup instead of a girl, but it was just too difficult to think of Tasha as a three-thousand-year-old woman. Besides, Tasha had not only surprised him with her callousness, but also scared him.

“That bad, eh?” she asked as they reached the center fountain. A white marble statue of Poseidon rising from the waves dominated the fountain’s center and was surrounded by different mythological creatures. Water spouted from thousands of tiny holes surrounding the waves, and marble sirens holding water vases rose from the water around the circumference of the fountain.

“You could’ve killer her,” Thomas said. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Erisham is family.” Tasha sat down on the fountain’s edge. “I wasn’t going to hurt her, but I needed to make sure that I was your protector.”

“Why?” Thomas asked evading her eyes; he centered his gaze on the flowing water.

“I was a Queen once,” she said looking away at the flower gardens surrounding the fountain. “My kingdom was in what is now Oregon, in a beautiful canyon by the Columbia River. We lived at peace with the humans and the fauns.” Thomas noticed the trembling in her voice and he turned toward her. “My people were poets and artists; we worked the land and tended our forest. We protected our friends and respected our neighbors. We didn’t care for wars or territory and knew humans needed their little tinker toys to survive. We understood why the Oracle was helping humanity so we helped humans whenever we could. I became a Guardian almost eleven hundred years ago. I thought I could save my people by ensuring humanity’s supremacy over Magic.” Tasha looked at Thomas; her eyes were brimming with tears. “I was wrong.”

Thomas relaxed his stance and approached her, but she recoiled as tears flowed freely for her eyes.

“I joined the Guardians because of the Wraith – their magic is different, powerful. It gnawed at the soul of our scholars and mages. It gave us an edge the other elven and faun kingdoms didn’t have and it was slowly corrupting my kingdom. I joined because in a contest of Magic, Wraith Magic will always beat ours in the long run. But they can’t beat technology; humans will always keep them at bay. I thought that by helping humans I could rescue my kingdom from the path they were taking.” She paused and looked directly at him.

Tasha wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’ve never shown this to anyone.” She waved her hand over the water and an image of her kingdom reflected off it, like a slow moving picture. Thomas saw their houses and farms grown from the very trees that covered them. The dock that rose from the edge of the river was beautifully carved and boats moored on the pier.

“I was returning from an assignment with the Guardians in Malta. It was the turn of the eighteenth century and I had unlocked a powerful spell that would block Wraith Magic from entering our domain. I think the Wraiths sensed that they would lose their foothold in my kingdom because they attacked as I returned.”

As Tasha continued, Thomas saw an image of her riding a winged horse. As she approached the city, dark tendrils rose from the ground and sprouted from inside the buildings. Some of the elves fought back with magic; most of them tried to flee. Many were caught and pulled into a dark mass that kept rising from the ground. The tendrils entered the soil and traveled underground toward the mountains.

At the top of the mountains, they exploded and pulled on the mountainsides. In a cataclysmic second, the whole sides of the mountains gave way and the landslide fell over the city, destroying everything under its weight, damming the river, and leaving only debris behind.

“I was too late. I let them die.” Tasha waved away the image from the water and centered her gaze on Thomas. “I’ve studied Wraith Magic since then. To beat it we need to understand it, control it. If we can control it, we can destroy it.”

Tasha stood up from the fountain’s rim. “I can’t trust anyone else to see this through. I won’t lose anybody else again, I won’t lose…” She looked at him, leaving the words hanging on the air.

Thomas was unsure about what to say. Was she really going to say that it was because of him that she couldn’t let Elise be his protector? Was he so important for her? Tasha looked away. If there had been a moment for him to act, it was gone.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said brusquely and walked away, leaving him by the fountain to wonder about what she had told him about her kingdom, but more importantly about what he meant to her.

He thought about Elise. She was half elven – that meant that humans and elves could go beyond their differences and fall in love.

Could that be happening between him and Tasha?

Ormagra

“I ride with Thomas.” Henri flexed his chest. The sound of grinding rock filled the hangar.

“You can transform and we’ll put you in the trunk,” Tasha said. Her Land Rover only had two seat rows and was never designed to carry the Grotesque in his present form.

Thomas tried to stay away from the discussion; he was still very confused about his talk with Tasha and preferred to keep a little distance from her for the time being, at least. He concentrated instead on the gear the techs had given him for the mission. Thankfully, Tasha seemed to read his mind; she just greeted him from afar when she saw him.

“I could hurt someone if I need to transform inside the car.” Henri groaned.

“Then you won’t transform until its safe,” Tasha replied.

“Bolswaithe is getting another car. We’ll wait for him,” Tony offered from behind Henri. He was dressed in desert camo and carried crisscrossing belts over his chest. A contraption that resembled a miniature Vulcan gun was strapped to his back.

“You’re not in command,” Tasha said, flashing Tony a chilling stare.

“You’re not either,” Tony replied dismissively while pointing at Thomas. “He is. We’re his team.”

All heads turned to Thomas who was fiddling with the strap of the bulletproof vest he had been given in the morning briefing.

“Thomas, do we wait for the bigger car or do we ride separated from Henri?” Tony asked. Thomas finished with the strap and clapped nervously. On one side, Tasha was flashing a smile that made his insides melt, and on the other stood Tony and Henri crossing their arms. He evaded Tasha’s face. It might make her angry, but Henri had saved his life once already and he trusted the Grotesque.

“We ride with Henri,” he said.

Tasha furrowed her brow and waved her driver away.

“That’s showing her who’s in command,” Tony whispered.

“What’s that thing on your back?” Thomas asked and Tony pulled the miniature Vulcan gun from his back and slapped it with satisfaction.

“This baby here is something I’ve been working on at the engineering bay. Meet
Il indolore
: The Painless. It’s an intelligent Gatling version of the flash rifles.” He pointed the gun at a wall and pulled the trigger. The revolving barrel let out a concentrated stream of changing colored light that flashed on the wall. “Most mashcrits are susceptible to a specific frequency. This baby cycles through all of them, including Ultra and Infra spectrums. Once it finds a suitable one, it sticks to it.” He pressed a button on the side and the gun kept a stream of intense green light. “Let’s say there’s many mashcrits, or a very big one.” He pressed another button and the beam widened as the barrels stopped spinning and all of them lit up.

Tony released the trigger and showed the underside of the gun to Thomas. It had a built-in double barrel shotgun and trigger. “I had this installed for those close encounters where light doesn’t cut it. Bella swears by them.”

“It’s a nice toy.” Tasha approached them and opened her hand. A floating sphere of electricity hovered above her palm. With a flick of her wrist, she launched the sphere and it struck the wall leaving a burnt mark where it had exploded. “But Magic will always be more elegant. Remember that, boys.” She closed her hand as Bolswaithe’s car arrived.

The butler was in the driver seat of a typical brown family minivan. The shocks had been replaced by a larger suspension and it had wider tires for desert use.

“Oh, come on! Is this it? Not even an SUV?” Tony opened his hands. Thomas had to agree that the car looked ridiculous.

Bolswaithe opened the back door of the minivan. “Gentlemen, the best I could do on such short notice. We can fold the backseats and…” Bolswaithe was interrupted as Henri ripped the backseats and threw them out of the van. The Grotesque climbed into the minivan with a thump and then closed the back door.

Bolswaithe offered the keys to Tony. “Care to drive, sir?”

“Yeah right,” Tony dismissed him and opened the front seat door.

Tasha winked at Thomas and opened the sliding door. Henri was crouched in the back, but he was out of sight from the exterior by the polarized windows. Tasha sat close to Thomas, too close, and patted his leg.

“Let’s go.” Tony opened his window and motioned to the trucks behind them to follow.

As they drove around the mansion, they saw Doctor Franco and Elise preparing another convoy.

The Doctor waved at them and Bolswaithe stopped beside him. “We had an emergency call from one of the teams in Guatemala,” he told them. “The pyramids at Ixkun are being enveloped in darkness.”

“That sounds like Wraith Magic,” Tasha said from her seat. “Should I go with you?”

“I’m sure that Elise can take care of it. You go find us that sign.” The Doctor slapped the van and stepped away. His convoy was made up of at least six personnel trucks and what looked like a wheeled tank. A small army getting ready for a fight.

“Let’s go, Bolswaithe,” Tasha said.

They left the mansion grounds and entered the lonely streets of Kiryat Gat in Israel. Thomas’s watch changed from 9:37 a.m. to 7:37 p.m. The sunset was in its final moments in that part of the world.

“Not a good omen,” Tony said as they passed a cemetery on the left.

“I’m sorry,” Bolswaithe offered, “but these are the closest suitable streets for us to come out from the mansion.”

“And the closest ones to run to if we need to,” Henri grumbled from the back. Thomas felt Tasha’s hand finding his own. Her touch was electric. She immediately rekindled the hope in Thomas that she was interested in him more than just as a Cypher.

“We won’t need to,” Tasha said without looking at Thomas. She interlocked her fingers. He didn’t know what to do. He sat frozen and couldn’t believe just how soft her hands were. He finally dared a look at her and smiled, pressing on her hand.

She returned it.

***

A portable fence surrounding the entrance to the Bell Caves kept a couple of dozen people from entering the site. They were carrying angry signs protesting a medical company and the government, and demanding immediate action.

“The cover story is that we are checking for misplaced medical waste,” Tasha told them as they approached the gate. “It stopped headlining in the Israeli news about a week ago, but we keep the demonstrators out here until we finish.”

“So these are our people?” Tony asked from the front seat while he waved happily at the protesters.

“Most of them. Some are true locals. The company has agents in most governments and Seryaan’s Kingdom has increased its interaction with humans during the last eighty years.” Tasha turned to Thomas. “My nephew’s idea.”

“You don’t approve?” Thomas asked. She’d told him already that elves realized that helping humans was the best thing for them, but she sounded bitter when she spoke about the King.

Tasha released his hand and checked her watch. “Elves are mostly magical beings. In the human world we either adjust or die.”

Thomas made a mental note that she was indeed very touchy about King Seryaan.

“That’s true for everyone,” Henri grumbled from the back; the van shook as he wiggled in his seat.

Three Guardians Inc. trucks were already on site. Technicians ran back and forth from tents carrying instruments and paperwork.

Once past the fence, the techs opened a curtain for the convoy to go inside a cave. Large reflectors tied to a portable generator illuminated the inside.

“The portal is in a deeper cave that was sealed to non-company archaeologists,” Tasha said as they parked and stepped out of the van.

Thomas took notice of the holes on the roofs of the cave and remembered the photographs he had seen in the Control Room. The filtering sunlight made the caves look strikingly beautiful in the pictures, but at night, they took on a more ominous feeling. The same hole on the roof that allowed sunlight to enter and reflect off the walls during the day seemed to suck out the light from the caves at night.

His parents had drilled into him the horror stories of children who had fallen in old wells in Ohio. The state was littered with hundreds of holes that had never been adequately covered and were dangerous. His parents made sure that he always checked first where he played outside and never played near any old trapdoor just lying in the ground.

During the day, the caves were beautiful, but right now they gave him the impression of being trapped inside an old well.

An involuntary shiver ran up his spine.

They followed Tasha through a maze until they reached a cave with a single, wide opening directly above. A thick electrical cable was strewn on the floor.

“The way to Ormagra,” Tasha announced as she approached a wall. A vein of dark material was imbedded in the wall’s surface and the cable seemed to run into the base of the wall.

Without any other explanation, Tasha stepped into the wall and the black vein engulfed her. Bolswaithe quickly followed. Tony touched the dark material. It reminded Thomas of dark molasses, thick and slimy; it began to run over his finger. Tony walked back with a shudder.

Thomas stepped forward. Tasha and Bolswaithe were already through the vein, so it seemed safe to walk into, but Tony grabbed his arm.

“Wait, kid,” he said. “It might be dangerous. Let’s scout first.” He then turned to Henri and nodded. The Grotesque stepped into the wall after rolling his eyes.

A couple of seconds later, Henri’s claw startled them as it came through the wall waving them to go through.

“Safe, go ahead.” Tony nodded at Thomas who also rolled his eyes. “Come on, Thomas! I’m the rearguard!”

Thomas took a deep breath. There was a cold tingling sensation as the black stuff enveloped him. When he was in transit through the wall, he heard dull noises, whispers and moans, calling from far away, but he resisted the urge to open his eyes. Then, as fast as the cold had enveloped him, it was over and he was in another cave carved out from a dark polished rock.

Dominating the entrance to the cave was a warrior statue made of pristine marble. The statue stood about twenty feet tall. The warrior’s helmet and the sword in his right hand were covered with bronze, and in the other hand he held the severed head of a monstrous creature. Instead of hair, the head had snakes and was locked in a terrible screaming visage.

“Perseus and Medusa,” Bolswaithe told them. “An ancient guardian statue.”

The statue was facing toward Ormagra. Thomas approached the inscription at the base, but before he could read it, Tasha pulled him by the hand to the archway that led into Ormagra.

The entrance spilled into a huge cavern. Strange black structures and buildings were carved on the walls as the city surrounded a chasm that seemed to have no bottom. They followed the electrical cable as it snaked into the ledges that formed the streets of the city. Tasha’s team had mounted scaffolds where the ledges abruptly ended or turned inward into the wall. The walls were cold to the touch, and the large polished bricks were made of obsidian. Yellow lichen grew out from the junctures of the bricks and over any surface it could.

It was like being on the inside of a tube wall. They couldn’t see the roof nor the bottom, and the city grew out from the inside walls. All they could hear was a muted silence broken only by their footsteps.

“Where are we?” Thomas said holding on to Bolswaithe’s arm. Looking at the city structures made him dizzy.

“Deep inside the Earth, I guess,” Tasha answered. She couldn’t suppress her happiness at the find. “Give it a moment. Your mind will adjust.”

Henri and Tony were also supporting themselves against the walls. Statues of tentacled creatures, similar to the one that attacked Thomas in his house, were scattered on the buildings, and a hollow hum reverberated through the ancient city. Some of the shadows and geometries of the buildings played tricks on their eyes. Staircases crisscrossed only to run into solid walls, doors opened directly into the void, handrails laid upside down, domes were intersected by square and pyramid-like structures and bridges and passageways twisted into themselves and ran vertical against the walls. Angles formed intersections that appeared concave from afar only to disappear as they approached, the lines of the structures mixing with each other in a sickening dance. A statue would seem to follow their movement and the tentacles reached out for them as they passed by it. More than once, they turned around, flash rifles at the ready, only to find the statue unchanged.

Only Tasha and Bolswaithe were unaffected by the unnerving architecture.

“Ormagra is lifeless,” Tasha said, “but an echo of the Wraith Magic that created it remains. Two of my techs had to be taken out of the city in stretchers and placed in mental treatment.”

“Will they recover?” Thomas tried to keep his eyes locked on Bolswaithe’s back, but the city seemed to dance on the corners of his vision.

“Hopefully.”

Tasha entered an alcove where two techs dressed in white and wearing thick glasses were working on a computer. Thomas could see the wall of writhing insects on one of the screens.

“That wall is in the room beyond this corridor.” Tasha pointed out a circular tunnel. “We have a remote inside and we are clearing the air and ground from the insects’ waste.”

“The quicker in and out the better,” Tony said. “Is it poisonous?”

Tasha pulled a vial filled with orange liquid from her pocket. She popped open the top and the pungent smell made Tony’s eyes water. “Your call,” he told Thomas.

“You’ll be able to go in without a mask in about three hours,” a tech offered. “If you want to go in right now you can use that.” He pointed at a freestanding rack with gas masks. “But some of the smell seeps through, and the liquid burns the skin like acid.”

Tasha placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “We can wait,” she said. “Meanwhile, there’s something I would like you to help me with.” She turned to Tony and Henri. “You can inspect the surroundings if you want, just don’t go too far away from the lighted trail.”

“I’m okay,” Tony sat down on a chair by the computer and pulled his cap down over his face. He reclined back and put his feet up on a desk.