Fable: Edge of the World (16 page)

“The men can’t take much more,” Ben said quietly. “Setback after setback, horror after horror, watching their friends turn into those … things … well, it nearly broke some of them right on the spot. Something’s got to go right, or else.… ”

“Or else what?” asked Kalin quietly.

“Well, let me put it this way. There’s been an overthrow of a king before in their lifetimes.”

“You cannot be serious!” exclaimed Kalin.

“I certainly wish I weren’t,” said Ben.

“I can’t say that I blame them,” said the king. “It looks like I’m leading them to their doom.”

“Oh come on,” said Ben, “don’t you go making their bleeding argument for them!”

“I’m not, really, I happen to like being their king. I’m just saying I can understand their unhappiness. Which means, ladies
and gentlemen, that this Cave of a Thousand Guardians better pan out.”

“No pressure, right, eh Shan?”

They continued marching. Eventually they were able to make out, if not a glorious, golden door, at least a boulder shoved up in such a way as to look like it was blocking an entrance. The king ordered the army to halt and made his way up to the front. Despite how unprepossessing it had looked from a distance, up close it was astonishing.

Someone might have stolen the golden door, but something else had survived unscathed. A huge section of the stone cliff side had been smoothed out. The boulder was lodged up against this. Dancing around the boulder were intricate, interconnected carvings of fanciful beasts and heroic-looking people.

“How many carvings are there, I wonder?” asked Kalin, craning her neck to look up at them.

“At a wild guess, I’d say … a thousand,” drawled Ben. Shalia elbowed him. The king was briefly reminded of Page, and that reminded him of Laylah, and while that made him sad, it also steeled his resolve.

He strode toward the boulder and stepped to one side of it. Summoning his Will, he let the energy build up inside him, then thrust out his gauntleted arm.

The huge boulder rocked. A second time the king used his Will to shove the boulder, and this time it rolled away several yards. A cheer went up.

“That was the easy part. The way our luck’s been running, I’m going to guess there’s something unpleasant waiting in the cave for us,” said the king in a falsely cheery voice. “Wouldn’t want to break the record, now would we?”

“Oh, heavens no,” said Ben.

“We will leave the heavy artillery behind and enough soldiers
to use it if need be. The horses and oxen too. But those who can go on foot and swing a sword and fire a pistol—let’s go. I want to be prepared for whatever we have to face. And if nothing’s inside … we’ll enjoy paying our respects to these thousand guardians.”

“Agreed,” said Ben. “Heaven forbid we should actually have an uneventful visit to someplace in this land.” Shan looked downcast, and Ben’s expression softened. “Hey now,” he said to the boy, squeezing his shoulder. “You can’t be thinking any of this is your fault?”

“I remember what they said on the ship, Mr. Finn,” Shan said quietly. “That I might be already corrupted by the darkness. That I might be leading you all to your deaths. It certainly does look that way, doesn’t it?” His voice was bitter and full of self-loathing.

“I’d say rather you had the bad luck to be living in a time when your whole country is running amok,” said the king. “Nothing more sinister than that. You recognized the sirens before they got all of us.”

“If anyone here has done anything wrong, it is I,” said Shalia. “Your only crime, Shan, is ignorance of what has happened in parts of Samarkand. We are both doing the best we can.” Her eyes flickered up to Ben’s, seeking reassurance. He gave both Shalia and Shan a gentle smile.

“All right then,” he said. “Let’s see this spectacle you’ve spoken of, Shan.”

The king, Ben, Shan, Shalia, and Kalin led the way. The entrance was narrow, only wide enough for two or three to walk abreast. Sconces filled with unlit torches lined the sides, which Kalin lit as they passed. The tunnel took a sharp left, and as Kalin lit the next torch, everyone gasped.

Until now, the walls had been carved smooth, but unadorned. Now, as the torches sprang to life, a beautiful tableau was illuminated.
On every side, it seemed as though they had an army for company—Heroes, male and female, clad in colorful and exotic clothes, appeared to walk beside them. Some of them had beautiful faces, dark-skinned and tranquil, the very lines of their bodies radiating peace. Others bristled with weapons, their eyes hard and greedy, their powerful muscles clearly toned and strong, but their skins an angry reddish shade. Some of them even had horns and what appeared to be leathery wings fanning out from their shoulders. The noble Heroes bore large baskets of fruits and breads, sharing their wealth; the cruel ones bore not only bloody weapons, but sometimes the heads of those they had defeated.

“So beautiful,” murmured Kalin, reaching out a hand as if to touch the brown face of a long-haired male Hero. “They seem almost alive.”

“I am rather glad this one isn’t,” said Shalia, sticking close to Ben as she passed a sharp-toothed woman with bloody hands.

“This is called the Walk of the Heroes,” Shan explained. “Each Hero is depicted here performing his most famous deed, be it for good or for ill.”

“ ‘Hero,’ ” said the king, “can mean a great many things. Garth was a great Hero of Samarkand, and worked with my father. And Reaver was a Hero as well.”

“Takes all kinds, I suppose,” said Ben airily, and gave his friend and ruler a grin. The beautiful paintings, their colors as fresh and vibrant as if the paint had only just dried, were reassuring, even if they did depict some of the nastier Heroes of Samarkand as well as the good and true ones. The king felt as if they had company, somehow. As if the darkness that seemed to have its tendrils woven into every part of the land they had yet seen had not quite reached here. As if the Heroes themselves held it at bay.

Shan seemed the happiest of them all, his face relaxed and smiling, his movements energetic and quick. The worry that had dogged him like a shadow thus far seemed to finally be falling away.
Maybe our luck has changed
, thought the king.
Maybe, finally, we’re on the right path
.

“Up ahead,” Shan said, sounding more like an excited teenage boy than he ever had before, “this pathway will open up into an enormous cavern. There will be statues there of every single Hero of Samarkand!”

“How many?” asked Ben, feigning innocence. By now, they were all relaxed, and everyone laughed.

“Forty-two, I think,” said the king, and they laughed harder.

“No, no, it is said to be spectacular! And as I said, there is a fresh spring that never runs dry. It pours forth in a waterfall into a pool, and the Guardians stand watch over the pool and all who visit! It will be dark, of course, but there is a winding path down to the pool, and a large brazier there will illuminate the whole cavern. It is said that not only do they guard those who come here to pay their respects, but there is a great treasure for the next Hero of Samarkand to discover.”

“That might be you, Shan,” said the king. “Or you, Shalia?”

“Me?” she yelped. “Oh, I’m no Hero.”

“My father was a street urchin,” said the king. “You never know.”

“Well, I for one would be bloody happy if it turns out I’m traveling with two or three Heroes,” said Ben. “Especially such a brave and beautiful one.”

Shalia ducked her head and smiled.

“Let’s hurry!” said Shan. “I can’t wait to see the cavern!”

They picked up their pace, as excited as Shan was to see the glorious cavern. Without any warning, the path suddenly widened. Cool air swirled about them, and though it was too dark
to see anything, the king could sense that they had entered an enormous cavern. The single torch barely illuminated the path Shan had told them about, so they fell into single file as the king led the way.

“I can see them—sort of,” Ben said. He pointed to the shadows beyond the dancing flame of the torch. Huge shapes loomed up in the darkness, but no one could make out details.

“And there’s the pool, I can see the water glinting,” said Kalin.

“There’s the brazier, too, just like you said, Shan,” said the king. It was laid and ready to be lit, the wood no doubt so well dried and seasoned that it should give more than enough light. He took a deep breath and touched the torch to the piled wood.

A sheet of flame sprang up, its heat almost scorching them, and they all took a step back, defensively shielding themselves. When the king lowered his arm and looked around, his eyes widened.

The sight was as enormous and commanding as Shan had described. The thousand statues of Samarkand’s Heroes stood, each twenty feet tall, carved in such exquisite detail as to look like life writ large. The pool splashed and bubbled, liquid tumbling forth from the aperture in the side.

Except the liquid in the pool was black and viscous, and the Guardians had no heads.

Shan cried out in anguish at seeing the sacred place so defiled, and that sharp, pained sound shattered the paralysis that had frozen everyone in place. At that same moment, the thick liquid that had fouled the pool seemed to take on a life of its own. It formed what looked like a gigantic teardrop, falling
upward
in defiance of all natural law. Hundreds of smaller droplets splashed onto and oozed down the bodies of the statues, seeping into the porous stone.

And the king knew what to expect next.

Nearly ten years past, in a dark, best-forgotten place deep inside the desert of Aurora, he had watched a similar horror unfold—watched as the black, sludgy evil had animated empty suits of armor, which had turned into some of the most dangerous opponents the monarch had ever faced.

Galvanized to attention by Shan’s wail of torment, he cried, “To arms! Stay out of the reach of the black fluid! Destroy the statues!”

Samarkand had certainly been full of dangers thus far. Sirens, jakala, sand furies, and treacherous villagers, all had attempted to halt or kill the king and his army. But this—here was their first true fight against a manifestation of the darkness they had come here to defeat, and to the king’s surprise, he was eager for it.

There was a righteousness to this fray that had been lacking before, a sense that not just an enemy was now being directly faced but that if they won here, all that the enemy existed to do would be harmed. There was no latent guilt at taking a human life as in the case of the sand furies or jakala, no fraction of hesitation in dealing a death blow. No, this was pure evil, which needed only an animated stone statue of a dead Hero to use as its weapon.

His soldiers seemed to feel the same. They shouted their battle cries as they began hacking at the statues. A man could reach only to a statue’s knee, but that knee was made of stone, and stone could be cracked and the statue would stumble. Bullets peppered the torsos of the headless Heroes, chipping relentlessly away until a huge section cracked and a chunk fell down. Black goo oozed out, and the king’s men made certain to steer clear of the horrific splashes.

The king used his Will freely, sending fireballs directly into the chests of the stone monstrosities. They shattered into harmless
shards, like pots dropped on a floor. He whirled, splaying both hands, striking two at a time. Another’s motion was slowed so that the soldiers battling it could get in more blows. The king, his attention honed to razor sharpness, looked over at a cluster of statues descending on several of his men. Grunting, he thrust his hand out and the four statues stumbled backwards, falling and becoming easier prey.

The fight went on and on. Statues were defeated, but others trundled forward to take their places. Male, female, short, tall, slender, muscular, the images of the Heroes of old were perverted and used to fight for a darkness that all of them would have abhorred in life. The king was glad he could not see the carved faces.

Some of the soldiers, beaten back by the attack, fell into the pool. The darkness seized them, thrusting slender tendrils of slick black ooze into eyes, mouths, ears, and nostrils, then pulling them under. Others were slain by the oversized weapons the statues bore, their bodies lying broken on the stone floor.

Still the statues came, and still they were met with defiance. “We came to fight the darkness!” shouted the king. “Well, we’re fighting it now, and we’re winning!
We’re winning!
”

He could tell they were, though it was at a bitter cost. Only a few dozen of the thousand guardians remained, fighting with the strength of the Heroes they were intended to honor, but with none of their wisdom or intelligence. The statues were dangerous, deadly—but defeatable.

More and more stone bodies toppled. A handful remained, now. The king was weary, but knowing they were so close to triumph revived him. He summoned every ounce of his Will, forcing his arms not to shake and blinking back sweat dripping into his eyes. One statue exploded from a ball of fire to the chest. Another fell to the onslaught of gunfire.

A final one remained, and as everyone turned attention on the armored figure with two swords, it fell almost at once, the echoing crash thunderous in the silence.

The king, exhausted, dropped to his knees. His body was shaking so badly it felt like the whole earth trembled beneath his hands and knees.

No—the ground really
was
trembling. The king forced himself to his feet just as something broke the surface of the black pool. The rising object was as black as the vile stuff that had kept it hidden from their view, but the thing itself was clean—the dark liquid did not cling to or sully it. Its hue was deep and compelling, and runes were etched on it in glowing blue light. Up, up it went, towering over the broken pieces of statuary, a base emerging now that provided a safe place to step. The dark fluid receded—almost recoiled, from the clean, chiseled beauty.

For a long moment, everyone stared. A soft blue glow jumped from the etched runes to slowly whirl around the obelisk, like a star dancing around it.

“What is it?” breathed Kalin.

“It’s … for me,” the king said, staring raptly. He knew, without knowing how, that this obelisk was intended for a Hero. The evil that had corrupted this very cavern dedicated to the most powerful Heroes of this land had been defeated. The darkness had retreated, scuttling away almost fearfully. And now, this humbling creation had appeared. He wasn’t sure if it was a message, or a gift … but whichever it was, only he could receive it.