The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (36 page)

There might have been a ceiling, but it was so high, and the details were so hazy overhead that he couldn’t be sure.  He stood, it seemed, on the edge of a vast, underground plain.  There were hills and spires present throughout the landscape.  And there was movement.

He could see his own friends moving, not far ahead of him.  But there were many, many other movements as well all around the cavern.  There were soft, indistinct shapes in motion, some moving towards the people he was with, some moving away, most not bothering to relate to the living beings at all.  They were the inhabitants of the underworld, the spirits of the dead, as his friends stood still, turned to look at him and the light he had cast throughout the underworld.

Marco felt a chill pass through his soul at the thought of walking among the dead.  But there was no alternative he knew.   He would rather walk with the other living beings than be left alone among the spirits of the dead, which meant that he needed to hurry.  Taking a long, slow breath to try to reduce the pain from his ribs, he hurried back down towards the rest of his group, and diminished the amount of light his hand broadcast.

“What are you trying to do, call attention to us?” the minotaur asked as Marco rejoined the group.

“I wanted to see where we were,” Marco answered.

“You’re surrounded by the dead,” the minotaur stated the obvious.  “Now let’s get moving,” he turned and started moving again.

Marco managed to keep up with the others for the next long spell of traveling, not because he could manage any greater speed, but because the others were slowed down by the interruptions of the constant attention of the dead.  Time after time, each of the four humans were approached by spirits who began to speak to them. 

“Tell my son I still love him.”

“Tell my wife I’m here.”

“Don’t trust Iagaon; he will betray you.”

“The sun has set on my fortune, after three generations.”

Spirit after spirit had messages they wanted to deliver to the visitors, or wanted the visitors to take back to the living.  Yet as many as there seemed to be, Marco remembered the teeming mass he had seen on the floor of the cavern, and knew that the vast majority of those who were present did not pay any attention to the living at all.

After what seemed like hours, they stopped to eat, but none of the travelers felt any appetite, so they resumed the trip until they came to a small tunnel that climbed steeply upward.

“We’re not far from the gate here,” Asterion told the others.  “We have time to rest if you want.”  They had left the spirits of the dead behind when they had left the great chamber, and in the relative privacy of the small space, they all gratefully dropped to the ground.

Marco thought about the advisability of setting a watch schedule, but decided that they were in such a precarious and unpredictable set of circumstances that it would do little good, so he curled up carefully and began to breathe the steady rhythmic breathing of those who are asleep.

“Poor Marco,” he heard Pesino’s voice speak quietly in his ear when he began to awaken.  “You should be happier.” She stroked the hair that had grown so long on the back of his head.  “You have the scale you needed, and now we’re on the way to take you back to see your beloved Mirra.  We’re close to doing the impossible things you set out to do, and I couldn’t be prouder of you than I am.  All you need to do is heal from a few injuries.”

He rolled over.  “What’s going to happen to you?” he asked quietly as he looked up and saw her in the glow of Gawail’s light.   “Are you going to be happy?”

“I am going to be happy.  The dreams tell me I am on the way to finding happiness.  It’s not the life I ever remotely expected, but it will be satisfying for me, and thank you for caring so much about me,” she said.  “Asterion is ready to go, so you need to get up,” she told him, then left him to awaken Kate and Cassius.

Marco felt the soreness in his ribs as he sat up, then cautiously rose to his feet.  Pesino helped him put his tattered pack on his back, and then they all fell into line and began to march behind the minotaur on their way to their escape from the underworld.

Just a couple of hours after they began, they came to a stop in an odd looking chamber of the cavern system.  Curious about the obscured details of the chamber, Marco raised his hand and lit it, illuminating the room they stood in.  His light revealed an extraordinary room, one in which stripes of differently colored stone ran up-and-down through the walls and the ceiling of a room that was a perfect dome overhead.

“This is the crossing point, beyond which no spirits of the dead may pass,” the minotaur said.

“We’ve done it?  We’ve left the underworld?” Cassius asked with amazed triumph in his voice.

“It is not the end of the underworld, yet.  It is only the limit of the spirits of the dead.  We have to pass through one more extraordinary chamber, and then we will reach Persophone’s gate,” Asterion explained.

“And before we go any further, I will find out if your pledge is true.  If this vial contains a potion that can make me wholly human, we will continue our journey to the surface,” he held up the small jar that Pesino had donated to him.   “But if it fails to make the change, I will kill you all, and you will have only a short journey to reach your next home, the underworld of the spirits.”

The minotaur looked closely at each of them, looking to see any hint they might reveal of duplicity regarding the potion.  Seeing none, the monster took the vial and poured its contents into his mouth, then casually threw the small stone jar over its shoulder with a cavalier toss.

He stood expectantly, looking around at all of them.  He waited ten seconds, then displayed his suspicion with narrowed eyes, and he slowly drew his sword.  “So you thought you could fool me,” he said, turning towards Pesino.

And at that moment he shuddered throughout his body.  He dropped his sword as his fingers spasmed, and then he began to undergo the metamorphosis.  His back began to arch and he bent over low, as his arms became legs with hooves.  “Traitors!” he halfway moaned, halfway lowed, while his torso lengthened and a tail sprouted.

He stood in the center of the cavern, and then fell to the ground, stunned by the wracking change to his body while a flash of light glowed from him.  He lay on his side, his tongue hanging from his snout, and then his body shuddered again.  He gave another low of pain, and his body went through the second stage of the extraordinary change.  His legs began to shrink, his coat of hair melted away, and his snout receded into his face, along with his polished ivory horns, as he made the rapid transformation into a human man.

Pesino stepped over to him and cradled his head in her lap as he lay dazed once again.  “Asterion, breathe easy,” she cuddled him.  “I know how you feel right now.  Just rest and catch your breath,” she advised in a gentle voice.

His eyes looked up at her, then rolled in his head for a moment.  He closed his eyes and kept them closed, as his hand reached up in the air and came to rest on Pesino’s shoulder.  He gripped it tightly, while keeping his eyes closed.  “Thank you,” he whispered.  “You were true to your word.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Marco stepped back a pair o
f steps, back in the direction they had come from, trying to take in all that he had seen, and the additional occurrences he had sensed.  The extraordinary conversion of the minotaur into a man was the beginning of a whole new chapter in their adventure, he sensed, and the ending of one as well.

As he stood he thought he detected a motion out of the corner of his eye, and he looked at the nearby wall, then gaped in astonishment at what he witnessed occurring.  The walls and the ceiling of the chamber were beginning to pulse.  Waves of activity passed through the variegated stripes that surrounded the chamber, making each stripe expand and contract, expand and contract, producing an almost hypnotic effect that mesmerized him.

“Marco, what’s happening?” Kate shrieked, coming over to grab his arm, arousing him from the trance the movements had induced in him.

As she asked, all the stripes began to glow, and began to turn the atmosphere in the chamber warm.

“It is the mother!” Gawail shouted, glowing brightly.  “She is aware of us within her heart, and she does not take kindly to us being here.  The magical transformation of the minotaur aroused her, blessed one!” Gawail flew over to Marco to speak to him.

“Can you tell her to leave us alone?” Marco asked.  “Cassius, help Pesino get Asterion to his feet,” he said as he became alert, and realized the danger they might be in.

“Great mother!” Gawail called out as loudly as his small size allowed.  He flew up to the top of the domed ceiling and addressed the volcano above them from there.  “I am one of your children, great mother!  Do not harm these friends of mine, please!”

The ceiling of the dome glowed even more brightly, and then a profoundly low voice seemed to reach them from all directions at once.  “Because you are one of my own children, I hear your voice.

“These beings have profaned my chambers with magic.  I should destroy them at once, but on your behalf, I will give them two minutes to escape before I lower my weight upon them.”

“Cassius!” Marco called.  “Kate, go help him,” Marco urged, as he saw Cassius struggle to raise the large form of Asterion from the ground.

The former minotaur was still groggy from the transformation he went through, and he struggled against the efforts to help him.

“My lord,” Pesino said after several seconds, using the alluring siren voice she possess, “what struggle is this my lord?  Great pleasures await you, but you must cooperate.  We must leave this place immediately to go to a place more suitable,” she told Asterion, moving past him and towards the exit of the chamber, attempting to lure him out.

Asterion rose to his feet, but knocked Cassius and Kate to the ground in the process.

And at that point, the ceiling gave a great cracking sound, as it began to drop towards them.

“We must go!” Gawail shrieked.

Marco raised his hand by instinct, and closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the magical power of his ensorcelled hand reaching up to hold the ceiling in place.  He could do it, he knew, and he needed to – badly needed to – for the sake of his friends and for the sake of the scale he had captured and was determined to deliver to the Isle of Ophiuchus.

He felt his hand expand, or he imagined it expanded, and reached up with enormous strength to hold the ceiling up.  He opened his eyes and saw that a field of sparkling light was being emitted from his hand and was spreading out to form a barrier against the ceiling’s deadly fall.

“Go!” he shouted.  “I can hold it for only a few seconds!  Run out!  Go!” he repeated.

Cassius and Kate scrambled and rolled and crawled toward the opening that was the exit, when Pesino was grabbing Asterion and pulling him to safety.

“Come on Marco!” Pesino called, as Kate and Cassius rolled past her legs into safety.  “We’re all here now!”

“I feel the great mother’s anger at your obstruction, blessed one!  Come to us!” Gawail called from Pesino’s shoulder, and as the last words of his cry were uttered, there was a tremendous booming noise, then a cracking, and Marco felt his energy field being overwhelmed and shut down.

There was an explosion, and a gust of searing hot air knocked him off his feet, blowing him backwards into the tunnel that the party had used to reach the chamber.

“Marco!  No!” he heard Pesino scream, and he looked across the distance of the chamber to see her anguished face staring at him.

For just a second their eyes locked upon each other.  “I love you!” Marco shouted.  “Take care of Asterion!” and then the ceiling crashed down to the floor, obliterating the empty space that had formerly existed there.

Chapter 26 – Alone With a Ghost

Marco lay in the dust of the darkened cavern, stunned by the incredible turn of events.  His ribs hurt worse than before, their pain aggravated by the force of the volcano’s reaction to his battle with it.

He was completely separated from his friends;
he hoped that they were on their way to freedom, on their way back to the surface and back to life among the living, while he had been knocked backwards and cut off from all that, knocked backwards and thrown back among the spirits of the dead.

“No!  Oh no!” he shouted, and he pounded his fists against the floor in frustration.

There were tears falling down his cheeks he realized.  He was alone now, separated from his friends, still carrying the all-important scales of the Echidna that he had worked so hard to acquire, sacrificed so much to possess, and now he was at a complete loss as to how to deliver them to the surface, let alone how to stay alive and travel through the underworld on a further journey.

He sat up and groaned in pain, then rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek and wiped the tears away.   Marco rose to his feet in the darkness, and raised his hand over his head, then produced the glowing energy that lit up the cavern he was in.

And he shouted in surprise and fear.

Standing directly in front of him was a spirit, a filmy figure of a warrior woman.

“Do you recognize me, blasphemer?” the spirit asked.

“I do not know you,” he answered, drawing his sword.

The spirit laughed.  “Go ahead, swing a sword at a spirit.  See how safe that makes you feel.”

Marco did so, goaded by the pain and the fear and the confusion and despair that filled his heart and soul.  The sword swung through the air with a slight whistle, and the spirit made no motion to avoid it or block it.  The blade passed through the spirit, experiencing no resistance, and Marco snapped it to a stop, then swept back through the spirit on the back swing, and the entity laughed again.

“Would you like to feel my sword?” she asked, and casually pulled her own sword free from the insubstantial scabbard that held the filmy blade, then swung it slowly at Marco, who was paralyzed with fear.

He felt extreme cold as the blade touched his body, and the cold became piercing pain that traveled through his body along the route of the wispy blade.  It left no mark on him, drew no blood, but the pain he felt made Marco drop to his knees and howl with pain.

The guard looked at him with a satisfied expression on her face, then thrust the sword back into the scabbard she carried, and stood in front of him, watching him writhe in agony.

“I owed you that,” she said.  “We’re not even, but it’ll do.”

“You owed me what?  What did I ever do to you?” Marco cried, looking up as he continued to kneel in front of her.

“You killed me, for one thing,” the spirit answered. 

Marco stared in astonishment.

“My name was Mitment, one of the lady’s guards on Ophiuchus.  One night on the beach you killed me,” the spirit explained.

“You tried to kill me!  I defended myself,” Marco shouted back.  He struggled to his feet, then bent over in pain.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have killed you all the way – who knows?” the spirit said with a shrug.  “I was there for a purpose, to carry out my duty to protect the lady, and it turned out to cost me my life.”

“I was no threat to Lady Iasco!” Marco said hotly.  “I respect her.  And she has been good to me.  She has saved my life a time or two, if truth be known.”

“She has to now.  But you are also the reason she has to.  You triggered the prophecy, and now her days are numbered,” the spirit answered.  “Get up, and let’s get going.”

“Going?  Going where?  What did I have to do with a prophecy?” Marco asked.  He reached out to grab the spirit’s shoulder, to force answers from her, but his hand passed through the filmy nothingness that she possessed, making her laugh.

“Come follow me for a while, and we’ll talk.  You’ve got a long journey ahead of you,” Mitment answered, and she started walking down the sloping tunnel, back down towards the vast cavern of the dead.