Shallalu

by Danielle L. Parker

Part 2

Impossible to see in the mist. Captain Blunt, removing his night vision goggles for the third time to impatiently adjust them, peered into impenetrable darkness.

“I don’t like this fog,” he muttered. “Why is it so thick here, and not elsewhere?”

“Fool!” his companion whispered. “Silence! Do you wish to draw the Sleepers on us? It will be the last wish of your miserable life!”

Blunt replaced his newly adjusted goggles. The thick darkness sprang into clarity. Well, almost clarity — his view was still blurred with that silvery precipitation, but it was no doubt as good as he was going to get, with the unexpectedly touchy spectacles.

At last he distinguished his surroundings. Blunt and his companion stood in an empty courtyard. A round ring of wall fifty meters in diameter surrounded them. The top of the wall, pierced by many variable-height openings, was higher than he could reach with his hand.

A queasy ripple of light passed slowly around and around the wall, hopping over the unevenly spaced gaps, like some listless flounder endlessly swimming a circular tank. But Blunt could not describe the color of the moving ripple. The color was somewhere on the far side of purple — a frequency he felt his eyes really should not see. Was it possible for light to be black? To suck up even the dim reflection cast by that wet, disagreeable fog?

Only one bright object was in view — the greenish glow of the strange device his companion held. Clasped in the Asp’s thin digits was a round electronic handheld, and the reptilian creature studied the mysterious display avidly.

“There,” Hzuma said at last, lifting its thin arm to point toward one of the openings. “What we seek is that way. Quickly!”

“What is there?”

The Asp strode toward the gap, its gun tucked ready in its belt. But it turned its neck like an owl when it heard him, farther than a human could, and smirked over its bony shoulder. Its reddish eyes were fever-bright.

“Gold,” it sniggered, forgeting its former caution. “Gold, jewels, and artifacts, and women. Whatever your heart desires, human. You will find it in Shallalu!”

A thrill of unease touched Jim Blunt’s nape. “Stake a goat to catch a tiger,” he muttered. As he followed, the gun in his hand no longer swung to cover the shadows. It wandered but a little from the tall striding form ahead. Hzuma strode with sudden inappropriate zest, steel-plated spacer boots ringing upon stone, as if he no longer cared what noise he made. Indeed, Hzuma seemed to have only one care now — speed.

Blunt stretched his own legs to follow. Steps led downward to a lower level. The captain comprehended, with a thrill of unease, just how perfectly preserved the long-dead city was — not a stone lay overturned; not a column had toppled. Doors — some too wide and too short for his species, others tall and wide enough to admit elephants — stood shut in silent buildings, as if, at any moment, their ghostly inhabitants might step out, and take up their long-vanished lives.

His nervousness swelled. How many thousands of years had this fossil waited, frozen like a fly in amber? How was it not even a weed found a crack to grow in, and the fountain they passed still tinkled, waiting for some thirsty traveler? Where were the bones?

The Asp, pausing at the base of the steps, consulted its strange device once. Blunt heard it mumble through its rheumy gums. Hzuma was singing, some wordless, triumphant tune. Yes — something was wrong.

The captain took a long stride. He seized his companion’s shoulder in an biting grip. He hurled it backwards. The alien’s mysterious handheld spun free and clattered to the ground. The Asp crashed against a wall with a teakettle whistle of rage, and snatched for its gun.

But Blunt smashed the thin wrist, and the creature let go of its weapon with a gobble of pain, clutching its injury in its other hand.

“You’re playing me for a fool,” the captain said, shoving the muzzle of Old Eliminator into the Asp’s chest. “There’s no gold. There’s something you want — something you want bad, that I can see — but unless I get some straight talk right now, snake, I’ll blow your head off.”

But the creature paid him no heed.

“The temporal locator,” it snarled, lifting its bleeding arm to point. “You’ve smashed the temporal locator, fool! Now we’ll both die!” It scrabbled for the handheld. With a wail, the creature, heedless of the gun’s unwavering aim, swooped on the little device. The Asp shook it. Pressed keys in desperate haste. But the green glow was gone.

“Perhaps there is still hope,” it croaked at last, lifting a gaunt, strained face. “The temporal break is most likely still ahead of us — perhaps we can reach it. If...”

A sound interrupted its musings. The sound began as a soft sigh of wind; then another moaning voice joined it, and no longer was it the sound of wind. Now the voices were howls. Rising and falling like the lost, chill Arctic, Blunt heard more, all around them.

The hairs on the nape of his neck stood stiff.

“What is that?” he whispered.

The Asp tucked its broken device into its belt.

“The Sleepers,” it replied in a low voice. “We woke the Sleepers. Now you and I must reach the temporal rift and pass beyond it into Shallalu-That-Was, or here and now, in the Shallalu-That-Is, we will be torn to shreds, and our bones snapped like threads. Follow me!”

It stooped for its gun and fled with fleet, sharp-striking feet.

Blunt turned to follow. But out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed movement. A shadowy, half-transparent shape stood at the head of the stairs behind him. The shape was like a massive dog, but larger than any dog had business being. As its huge head trailed low to the ground, swinging this way and that, Blunt saw two extra limbs growing out of its shoulders. The little arms were strangely stiff; they seemed fixed in their peculiar upward posture.

But the arms terminated in disemboweling claws. The mouth, as the creature lifted its heavy head and howled, was filled with triangular, shark-like serrations. It snacked its jagged teeth as it spotted him. It gave forth its cry, and as the captain stood frozen in shock, another creature crowded beside the first, then another.

Blunt turned and ran for his life.

The swift-running Aspian had already passed out of sight. But the captain heard the staccato strike of its steel-shod boots. With the horrid howls of the pack behind him, he rushed after the rhythmic beat of those feet. “And the devil catches the hindmost,” he panted, and a grim smile stretched his lips. For it was clear this had been Hzuma’s plan. He, Blunt, was to be the diversionary snack, while Hzuma, meanwhile, vanished — wherever he meant to vanish.

He gained on the Asp as the minutes fled, but the pack gained on both. Blunt could hear the snuffling pants close now, and the scrabble of nails on the stone, and sense the glimmering reflection of their flaming eyes in the center of his shrinking spine.

Suddenly color and sweet music washed over him. Abruptly it was bright daylight. In the next instant, all light was gone. The captain skidded, grabbing for a support, disoriented and confused. A ribbon of somewhere other had drifted like a cobweb across his face, then vanished — leaving him once more in dark Shallalu, his fingers knotted upon the back of a stone bench to hold himself upright, gasping the acrid air.

He looked back. The guardians were almost on him. Shining slaver flew from foam-flecked jaws. They no longer howled. Blunt heard an eager whine, like a dog begging for a treat.

“Human! Here!”

Blunt turned. The air rent. The gap lit with daylight and movement. On the far side of the strange tear stood the Asp, its thin hand held out to him. The rip was closing — even as he watched, it narrowed rapidly.

“Jump,” the Asp shrilled. “Jump now, human, or die!”

Blunt gathered his legs. As he propelled himself forward in a mighty leap, the Asp seized his outstretched hand in its cold fingers. Something else snatched at the hem of his shirt. Blunt heard cloth ripping — the sound of the beast snarling and snapping on its mouthful — then, as he tumbled through, he passed from the dark, foggy horror of Shallalu-To-Be, to the life and bright color of Shallalu-That-Was.

Proceed to part 3...