Waltz
By Alekto
Chapter 6: This place is too cold for hell.
I awoke with the fleeting image of the light touch of lips on my forehead then cool hands cradling, caressing my broken arm. I waited, still no more than half awake for the pain that I knew such an action would surely cause, but all I could feel was a remote, bone-deep chill, then that too receded. By sheer act of will I forced my eyes open, expecting to see . . .
There was no one there.
The ever present damp mist blurred my view of the jungle beyond the confines of the small clearing I found myself in. Whatever . . . *whoever* had woken me was gone.
A cursory glance at the ground gave no indication of tracks. Half- relieved, half-unnerved, I decided that whatever it was I had seen and heard must have all been a fever dream. The only thing that worried me about that explanation was that I felt far too well for someone who had just woken from such delirious imaginings. For that matter, the throbbing pain from my arm that had worn at me for so long had faded somewhat.
Wondering when along the way exactly I'd lost my mind, I carefully pulled it from the makeshift sling and support I rigged up. It hurt, but not as much as it ought to have. Nervously I tried moving it, clenching and unclenching my fist. That *did* hurt, but after some consideration I decided that the arm might be usable, albeit in extremis.
The rationalist in me wanted to believe the arm had been no more than strained, that my now being able to use it was nothing more than the result of the time I'd spent resting it, but it was a weak argument at best. Thinking about it, I couldn't avoid the mental image of Challenger hectoring me about 'logical scientific explanations' for everything, and wondered how he - how any of us, for that matter - could ever explain what had happened and what I'd seen.
I sat there a while longer, taking a short time to rest, drink some of the water and nibble at the pemmican. Then, somewhat refreshed, if no less confused, I got to my feet and carried on after Marguerite.
*********
Hours later I halted as the gloom at the forest floor was beginning to darken into twilight. I might have had the energy to go on further, but not even my overriding concern for Marguerite could enable me to track in the dark. For hours I'd neither seen nor heard any sign of raptors or any other big predator, so between that and not really feeling up to climbing a tree essentially one-handed, I decided to nap on the ground.
I'd barely sat down and started on my by now uninspiring dinner of pemmican when, suddenly, I knew I wasn't alone. It wasn't that I'd heard or seen or even smelled anything untoward, it was just that I knew - as certainly as I knew the sun would rise in the East - that I was being watched.
For a few seconds I sat there unmoving, wondering at how to react, wondering if by reacting at all if I'd be signing my own death warrant, but I decided that if I was going to get killed, I was damned if I was going to take it sitting down. I stood up, hefting the machete in my hand. If there were more than one of them out there, the machete would be a handier weapon than the spear. The background chirrups and cries of the jungle had faded into an uncomfortable, threat-laden quiet. I listened for any hint of movement from the concealing undergrowth, knowing that to rely on seeing them would most likely be too late to be of any help.
There was nothing, nothing at all, except the indefinable presence I could sense out there that was watching my every move.
"Well? What are you waiting for?" I challenged wearily. "I won't be hunter and hunted both. I won't sleep with one eye open. Let's finish this, here and now!"
Silence answered, as if the sound of my voice were swallowed by the weight of the undergrowth. All around me the green of the leaves was slowly darkening to shades of charcoal as the sun dipped lower in the sky, and I had a sudden sense of déjà vu. I'd had the same sense of being watched not so long ago, back in the cage in the village and before that when we had encountered the 'people' Veronica had described as Kothoga: the ghost people. And ghosts made no sound when they walked.
I called out again, this time in halting Tupi - the lingua franca along the upper Amazon that I'd learned long ago when I had first come to South America. "What do you want from me?" I paused, listened for any reply. None came. Then I took a deep breath and asked what perhaps I should have asked long before, a question that perhaps I didn't want an answer to. "Are you Kothoga?"
The stillness was absolute. I was uncomfortably aware of the sensation of sweat running down from my forehead, down my back. The rough hilt of the machete felt slippery and loose in my sweat-slicked hand.
From out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a pale flicker of movement against the gathering darkness. I turned in alarm and saw a grey figure standing there still half-hidden by the undergrowth, not fifteen feet away from me, tall and slender, a spear lightly grasped in its hand.
I hadn't heard it move. I looked left and right, fear sharpening my perceptions as I made out other figures, grey and as motionless as if they had been carved from stone. They were all around me. Watching.
"Are you Kothoga?" I repeated. They offered no reply, no gesture. "For God's sake say *something*," I swore in exasperated English.
Then, at last, one of them moved to gesture a direction through the jungle with its spear.
"You want me to go that way? Is that it?" I asked, repeating myself in Tupi for good measure. "That's all well and good, but let me tell you I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me just what the bloody hell is going on here!"
The sound of my angry voice only briefly relieved the oppressive silence. I looked around at the grey figures surrounding me, wondering for the first time if they were actually capable of talking. The one who had gestured before raised its spear again, and from all around a strange whispering arose, harsh, oddly accented, almost inhuman. "Maaaaah-- Gaaaaah-- Reeeeet- - . . ." The whisper echoed then slowly faded, and I couldn't escape the impression that it had sounded as if it had been spoken in a cavern or tunnel rather than the jungle.
Maaaaah-- Gaa-- . Marguerite? It had to be. I pointed in the direction indicated and looked back at the figure that had gestured. "Marguerite?" I queried. I wasn't surprised that the figure gave no answer. I think at that point I'd have been more worried if it had.
I shrugged mentally, picked up my gear and set off in the direction indicated. Around me the shadowy, grey figures slipped back into the cover of the jungle, noiselessly flanking me. Very occasionally I would catch the briefest of glimpses of one or other of them as we travelled. I felt oddly secure with my ghostly escort between me and the perils of the jungle.
*********
Hours passed as we travelled at a punishing pace. Whatever sense of reinvigoration I'd felt when I woke up was long past, and not for the first time I was running on nothing more than desperation and dogged determination to find Marguerite. I had the horrible suspicion that it wasn't going to be nearly enough.
The three women . . . ghosts . . . whatever that I'd spoken to had warned me that I would need my strength when I finally met their, and Marguerite's, captor. As it was, I barely had the strength to put one foot in front of the next.
I was tired enough that I almost didn't notice when my escort halted. It was only the breath of cold air that seemed to freeze the sweat on my face that gave me pause, and that, just in time. Before me the ground fell steeply away to form a deep hollow that I could hardly make out in the dark. I turned around, stumbling slightly in my exhaustion, to look for one of the Kothoga. "What now? Is this it? Is this where she is?" I sighed in weary exasperation. "Marguerite?"
One of them stepped to the lip of the hollow and pointed down into it with its spear. From all around the whispering arose again. "Maaaah-- Gaaaah-- Reeeet--."
"I suppose this *is* where she is, then," I muttered, largely for my own benefit as I peered down into the dark hollow. "Do I go down there now or-- ?" I glanced at where the figure had stood, noticing that it had disappeared in the short moments I had looked away with a distinct lack of surprise.
It would have been foolish to try to climb down into the hollow in the dark, so with dawn only a few hours away I decided to settle down and get what rest I could.
I knew it was never going to be enough for whatever was waiting for me down there.
*********
I was awoken by the warmth from thin tendrils of sunlight that reached my face through the trees.
That hint of warmth apart, I awoke to a bone-deep chill that was all the more noticeable after the sweltering heat of the past days. I was no botanist, but in the daylight I could see that even the plants here were different. For a brief, sad moment I couldn't help but imagine Professor Summerlee's gentle enthusiastic voice at such a phenomenon.
But Summerlee was gone and I had a job to do.
I finished the last of the pemmican and about half of the remaining water, then carefully began to make my way down into the hollow.
There was a distinctive chill in the moist, leaden air. The vegetation in the hollow was dark leafed and verdant: ferns and other species I couldn't begin to name scrambling over every exposed surface. I saw no trace of any animals there, and the canopy overhead was silent, bereft of birds or monkeys that normally teemed there.
The icy cold feeling that had settled at the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the temperature. Fear was an unwanted if all too familiar sensation.
I took a couple of deep breaths to try to steady my resolve, adjusted my grip on the spear and continued downward, telling myself as I did that there was nothing to fear from a hole in the ground.
Somehow, the rational approach wasn't working. Then again, as I'd always known, fear had little in common with rationality.
One of these days, I decided, I'd have to debate that one with Challenger.
If any of us lived that long.
I stopped again, muttering harshly to myself under my breath. "Dammit, this is no time to bloody fall apart!" And wondering all the while that I'd survived the horrors of the trenches only to be unnerved by a spate of nominally inexplicable events and a hole in the ground.
Gaining some sort of perspective on the matter definitely helped, and the hollow became again no more or less threatening than just another part of the jungle.
It was several minutes later that I reached its base where the ground had become a damp, sucking morass that made every step an achievement to be proud of. Looking around for some clue as to where I was meant to go, I saw the grey of stone through the foliage. It was the only stone the plant life had not colonised.
I went closer and the stone resolved itself into a doorway: two monolithic uprights topped by a massive lintel framing an opening of distinctly human proportions. I guessed I'd found what I was looking for.
Just inside the doorway I found the remains of a torch, old but probably usable. It took a few minutes' work but I got it lit and proceeded into the cave. After some thought, I'd decided to leave the spear outside as being too unwieldy in a confined space and rely on the machete.
The tunnel led gradually downward. Floor and walls were treacherously slippery, slick with some type of slime or algae and the air was dank and stale, heavy with the scent of decay. My progress was slow, but even so I lost my footing more than once and fell crashing to the ground. I'd already had to sheath the machete, needing the hand free to steady myself.
I was aching all over, shivering for the cold and gasping for breath when the tunnel finally ended in a heavy wooden door, bound with iron. It looked almost new, as if it had been put there no more than yesterday: there were no traces on it anywhere of rust or rot. When I reached out and pushed it swung easily and smoothly open.
The room that lay beyond was like a different world. The heady scent of incense filled the air, and the ponderous bulk of heavy furniture was visible in the dim red glow from massive bronze braziers. I could feel carpet under foot, and where I could see the walls, tapestries or other hangings covered the stone. In the centre of the room a table had been laid out, the pale red glow of the fire glittering in the cut crystal of a decanter and glasses.
"Udvozollek!" The voice was low and bass, yet nonetheless ringing and mellifluous.
"Welcome!" I turned in surprise at the sound of that achingly familiar voice.
Two figures detached themselves from the surrounding darkness: one a man richly dressed and accoutred, the other . . .
"Marguerite," I whispered, my heart suddenly in my throat, praying for her to reply, for her to be . . . her.
"Rad vartunk," the man intoned, and before the echo of his last word had faded, Marguerite murmured as if in counterpoint.
"We have been waiting for you."
"What the hell do you mean by that?" I shot back at him, unable to keep the edge of fear and anger from my voice. "What have you done to her?"
He smiled, the smile of a predator eyeing up its prey. "Mit aldoznal fol, hogy megmentsd?"
"What would you do to save her?" Marguerite's flat, uninflected voice echoed his words.
"Olnel erte?"
"Will you kill for her?"
"Meghalnal erte?"
"Will you die for her?"
"Yes!" I screamed back as his taunting questions tumbled one over the next. The words 'Just let her go' went unspoken in my mind.
"Lehet, hogy meg kell tenned."
"You may have to."
I looked up and met his gaze unflinchingly. He nodded slowly, then reached under his jacket and pulled out a golden key of medieval proportions. I'd seen that key before - in my nightmares. He held it out to me, and warily I took it. Then he gestured sharply, the braziers flared and in their light I could see an archway on the far wall.
In that instant all I could think was that it looked like the maw of hell.
"Felsz-e?" mocked his voice.
"Are you afraid?"
I steadied myself and threw him an angry look, but I was just as angry with myself for having given him even that small satisfaction. From his expression, it seemed to have given him some slight amusement as with a twisted smile he bowed me in the direction of the archway. "Kezdodik a jatek, Lord John Roxton."
"The game begins, Lord John Roxton," Marguerite echoed.
"Az egyetlen dolog amit meg kell tenned, hogy tuleled."
"All you have to do is survive . . ."
To be continued . . .
*********
A/N Endless thanks are due to Fahya for sorting out the Hungarian for me. Koszonom!
By Alekto
Chapter 6: This place is too cold for hell.
I awoke with the fleeting image of the light touch of lips on my forehead then cool hands cradling, caressing my broken arm. I waited, still no more than half awake for the pain that I knew such an action would surely cause, but all I could feel was a remote, bone-deep chill, then that too receded. By sheer act of will I forced my eyes open, expecting to see . . .
There was no one there.
The ever present damp mist blurred my view of the jungle beyond the confines of the small clearing I found myself in. Whatever . . . *whoever* had woken me was gone.
A cursory glance at the ground gave no indication of tracks. Half- relieved, half-unnerved, I decided that whatever it was I had seen and heard must have all been a fever dream. The only thing that worried me about that explanation was that I felt far too well for someone who had just woken from such delirious imaginings. For that matter, the throbbing pain from my arm that had worn at me for so long had faded somewhat.
Wondering when along the way exactly I'd lost my mind, I carefully pulled it from the makeshift sling and support I rigged up. It hurt, but not as much as it ought to have. Nervously I tried moving it, clenching and unclenching my fist. That *did* hurt, but after some consideration I decided that the arm might be usable, albeit in extremis.
The rationalist in me wanted to believe the arm had been no more than strained, that my now being able to use it was nothing more than the result of the time I'd spent resting it, but it was a weak argument at best. Thinking about it, I couldn't avoid the mental image of Challenger hectoring me about 'logical scientific explanations' for everything, and wondered how he - how any of us, for that matter - could ever explain what had happened and what I'd seen.
I sat there a while longer, taking a short time to rest, drink some of the water and nibble at the pemmican. Then, somewhat refreshed, if no less confused, I got to my feet and carried on after Marguerite.
*********
Hours later I halted as the gloom at the forest floor was beginning to darken into twilight. I might have had the energy to go on further, but not even my overriding concern for Marguerite could enable me to track in the dark. For hours I'd neither seen nor heard any sign of raptors or any other big predator, so between that and not really feeling up to climbing a tree essentially one-handed, I decided to nap on the ground.
I'd barely sat down and started on my by now uninspiring dinner of pemmican when, suddenly, I knew I wasn't alone. It wasn't that I'd heard or seen or even smelled anything untoward, it was just that I knew - as certainly as I knew the sun would rise in the East - that I was being watched.
For a few seconds I sat there unmoving, wondering at how to react, wondering if by reacting at all if I'd be signing my own death warrant, but I decided that if I was going to get killed, I was damned if I was going to take it sitting down. I stood up, hefting the machete in my hand. If there were more than one of them out there, the machete would be a handier weapon than the spear. The background chirrups and cries of the jungle had faded into an uncomfortable, threat-laden quiet. I listened for any hint of movement from the concealing undergrowth, knowing that to rely on seeing them would most likely be too late to be of any help.
There was nothing, nothing at all, except the indefinable presence I could sense out there that was watching my every move.
"Well? What are you waiting for?" I challenged wearily. "I won't be hunter and hunted both. I won't sleep with one eye open. Let's finish this, here and now!"
Silence answered, as if the sound of my voice were swallowed by the weight of the undergrowth. All around me the green of the leaves was slowly darkening to shades of charcoal as the sun dipped lower in the sky, and I had a sudden sense of déjà vu. I'd had the same sense of being watched not so long ago, back in the cage in the village and before that when we had encountered the 'people' Veronica had described as Kothoga: the ghost people. And ghosts made no sound when they walked.
I called out again, this time in halting Tupi - the lingua franca along the upper Amazon that I'd learned long ago when I had first come to South America. "What do you want from me?" I paused, listened for any reply. None came. Then I took a deep breath and asked what perhaps I should have asked long before, a question that perhaps I didn't want an answer to. "Are you Kothoga?"
The stillness was absolute. I was uncomfortably aware of the sensation of sweat running down from my forehead, down my back. The rough hilt of the machete felt slippery and loose in my sweat-slicked hand.
From out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a pale flicker of movement against the gathering darkness. I turned in alarm and saw a grey figure standing there still half-hidden by the undergrowth, not fifteen feet away from me, tall and slender, a spear lightly grasped in its hand.
I hadn't heard it move. I looked left and right, fear sharpening my perceptions as I made out other figures, grey and as motionless as if they had been carved from stone. They were all around me. Watching.
"Are you Kothoga?" I repeated. They offered no reply, no gesture. "For God's sake say *something*," I swore in exasperated English.
Then, at last, one of them moved to gesture a direction through the jungle with its spear.
"You want me to go that way? Is that it?" I asked, repeating myself in Tupi for good measure. "That's all well and good, but let me tell you I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me just what the bloody hell is going on here!"
The sound of my angry voice only briefly relieved the oppressive silence. I looked around at the grey figures surrounding me, wondering for the first time if they were actually capable of talking. The one who had gestured before raised its spear again, and from all around a strange whispering arose, harsh, oddly accented, almost inhuman. "Maaaaah-- Gaaaaah-- Reeeeet- - . . ." The whisper echoed then slowly faded, and I couldn't escape the impression that it had sounded as if it had been spoken in a cavern or tunnel rather than the jungle.
Maaaaah-- Gaa-- . Marguerite? It had to be. I pointed in the direction indicated and looked back at the figure that had gestured. "Marguerite?" I queried. I wasn't surprised that the figure gave no answer. I think at that point I'd have been more worried if it had.
I shrugged mentally, picked up my gear and set off in the direction indicated. Around me the shadowy, grey figures slipped back into the cover of the jungle, noiselessly flanking me. Very occasionally I would catch the briefest of glimpses of one or other of them as we travelled. I felt oddly secure with my ghostly escort between me and the perils of the jungle.
*********
Hours passed as we travelled at a punishing pace. Whatever sense of reinvigoration I'd felt when I woke up was long past, and not for the first time I was running on nothing more than desperation and dogged determination to find Marguerite. I had the horrible suspicion that it wasn't going to be nearly enough.
The three women . . . ghosts . . . whatever that I'd spoken to had warned me that I would need my strength when I finally met their, and Marguerite's, captor. As it was, I barely had the strength to put one foot in front of the next.
I was tired enough that I almost didn't notice when my escort halted. It was only the breath of cold air that seemed to freeze the sweat on my face that gave me pause, and that, just in time. Before me the ground fell steeply away to form a deep hollow that I could hardly make out in the dark. I turned around, stumbling slightly in my exhaustion, to look for one of the Kothoga. "What now? Is this it? Is this where she is?" I sighed in weary exasperation. "Marguerite?"
One of them stepped to the lip of the hollow and pointed down into it with its spear. From all around the whispering arose again. "Maaaah-- Gaaaah-- Reeeet--."
"I suppose this *is* where she is, then," I muttered, largely for my own benefit as I peered down into the dark hollow. "Do I go down there now or-- ?" I glanced at where the figure had stood, noticing that it had disappeared in the short moments I had looked away with a distinct lack of surprise.
It would have been foolish to try to climb down into the hollow in the dark, so with dawn only a few hours away I decided to settle down and get what rest I could.
I knew it was never going to be enough for whatever was waiting for me down there.
*********
I was awoken by the warmth from thin tendrils of sunlight that reached my face through the trees.
That hint of warmth apart, I awoke to a bone-deep chill that was all the more noticeable after the sweltering heat of the past days. I was no botanist, but in the daylight I could see that even the plants here were different. For a brief, sad moment I couldn't help but imagine Professor Summerlee's gentle enthusiastic voice at such a phenomenon.
But Summerlee was gone and I had a job to do.
I finished the last of the pemmican and about half of the remaining water, then carefully began to make my way down into the hollow.
There was a distinctive chill in the moist, leaden air. The vegetation in the hollow was dark leafed and verdant: ferns and other species I couldn't begin to name scrambling over every exposed surface. I saw no trace of any animals there, and the canopy overhead was silent, bereft of birds or monkeys that normally teemed there.
The icy cold feeling that had settled at the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the temperature. Fear was an unwanted if all too familiar sensation.
I took a couple of deep breaths to try to steady my resolve, adjusted my grip on the spear and continued downward, telling myself as I did that there was nothing to fear from a hole in the ground.
Somehow, the rational approach wasn't working. Then again, as I'd always known, fear had little in common with rationality.
One of these days, I decided, I'd have to debate that one with Challenger.
If any of us lived that long.
I stopped again, muttering harshly to myself under my breath. "Dammit, this is no time to bloody fall apart!" And wondering all the while that I'd survived the horrors of the trenches only to be unnerved by a spate of nominally inexplicable events and a hole in the ground.
Gaining some sort of perspective on the matter definitely helped, and the hollow became again no more or less threatening than just another part of the jungle.
It was several minutes later that I reached its base where the ground had become a damp, sucking morass that made every step an achievement to be proud of. Looking around for some clue as to where I was meant to go, I saw the grey of stone through the foliage. It was the only stone the plant life had not colonised.
I went closer and the stone resolved itself into a doorway: two monolithic uprights topped by a massive lintel framing an opening of distinctly human proportions. I guessed I'd found what I was looking for.
Just inside the doorway I found the remains of a torch, old but probably usable. It took a few minutes' work but I got it lit and proceeded into the cave. After some thought, I'd decided to leave the spear outside as being too unwieldy in a confined space and rely on the machete.
The tunnel led gradually downward. Floor and walls were treacherously slippery, slick with some type of slime or algae and the air was dank and stale, heavy with the scent of decay. My progress was slow, but even so I lost my footing more than once and fell crashing to the ground. I'd already had to sheath the machete, needing the hand free to steady myself.
I was aching all over, shivering for the cold and gasping for breath when the tunnel finally ended in a heavy wooden door, bound with iron. It looked almost new, as if it had been put there no more than yesterday: there were no traces on it anywhere of rust or rot. When I reached out and pushed it swung easily and smoothly open.
The room that lay beyond was like a different world. The heady scent of incense filled the air, and the ponderous bulk of heavy furniture was visible in the dim red glow from massive bronze braziers. I could feel carpet under foot, and where I could see the walls, tapestries or other hangings covered the stone. In the centre of the room a table had been laid out, the pale red glow of the fire glittering in the cut crystal of a decanter and glasses.
"Udvozollek!" The voice was low and bass, yet nonetheless ringing and mellifluous.
"Welcome!" I turned in surprise at the sound of that achingly familiar voice.
Two figures detached themselves from the surrounding darkness: one a man richly dressed and accoutred, the other . . .
"Marguerite," I whispered, my heart suddenly in my throat, praying for her to reply, for her to be . . . her.
"Rad vartunk," the man intoned, and before the echo of his last word had faded, Marguerite murmured as if in counterpoint.
"We have been waiting for you."
"What the hell do you mean by that?" I shot back at him, unable to keep the edge of fear and anger from my voice. "What have you done to her?"
He smiled, the smile of a predator eyeing up its prey. "Mit aldoznal fol, hogy megmentsd?"
"What would you do to save her?" Marguerite's flat, uninflected voice echoed his words.
"Olnel erte?"
"Will you kill for her?"
"Meghalnal erte?"
"Will you die for her?"
"Yes!" I screamed back as his taunting questions tumbled one over the next. The words 'Just let her go' went unspoken in my mind.
"Lehet, hogy meg kell tenned."
"You may have to."
I looked up and met his gaze unflinchingly. He nodded slowly, then reached under his jacket and pulled out a golden key of medieval proportions. I'd seen that key before - in my nightmares. He held it out to me, and warily I took it. Then he gestured sharply, the braziers flared and in their light I could see an archway on the far wall.
In that instant all I could think was that it looked like the maw of hell.
"Felsz-e?" mocked his voice.
"Are you afraid?"
I steadied myself and threw him an angry look, but I was just as angry with myself for having given him even that small satisfaction. From his expression, it seemed to have given him some slight amusement as with a twisted smile he bowed me in the direction of the archway. "Kezdodik a jatek, Lord John Roxton."
"The game begins, Lord John Roxton," Marguerite echoed.
"Az egyetlen dolog amit meg kell tenned, hogy tuleled."
"All you have to do is survive . . ."
To be continued . . .
*********
A/N Endless thanks are due to Fahya for sorting out the Hungarian for me. Koszonom!