Escape
Chapter 5: The Soul Stealers. Ryan escapes from the high temple but if the hunter doesn't kill him the elevator ride just might.
Gurgling and burping noises woke Ryan. His eyes opened to a strange moving vista. A rock face scrolled past.
He turned and mountain peaks in serried ranks went into the distance as far as the eye could see, low cloud rendering them hazy and blue below the lilac skies.
Either side of him and behind, that sheer cliff moved. Dizzyingly, it rose up from a forest carpet below, to a cloud bank above.
Finally Ryan’s eyes focussed and saw the bars, saw the wooden cage he was in that slowly lowered on a rope.
The gargoyle, who sat next to him, perked up. Ryan put his palms on the floor of the cage.
Stout planks bolted to cross-members formed the cage’s base. Set back from the floor’s edge by a perimeter beam, solid hardwood bars rose to support the cage’s roof. The thing was solid, but a museum piece.
And the rope it all hung from looked perilously in need of maintenance too. There were no guides, rails or brakes. It had been a foolhardy act to pull the lever and leap in.
But that dark silhouette coming down the road made Ryan’s eye twitch. Something about that long and murderously intentional thing over the figure’s shoulder.
Ryan rubbed his face.
A nagging itch crept over him, as though eyes were on his every move right now. And it wasn’t the oncoming dark clad figure. He felt his body trying to shiver, but the physical reflex didn’t take hold in this new heavy incarnation.
The cage jolted again, this shake worse than the one that had woken him.
The rope twanged taut with the jolt. Dust jumped from it, but it held.
Ryan had fallen asleep sitting up apparently, hands on his knees, mentally exhausted from the onslaught of bizarre experiences.
As he woke he’d hoped for it all to have been a nightmare, but sure enough as he peered into the cloud bank there came the glow of the twin suns, and the sky in the distance still maintained its lilac ombre.
His sleep had been disturbed and dark, but there was a moment when he’d felt loved.
It was almost as though Miranda’s hand was on his. Her smell in his nostrils. And Lucy, she was there too.
He’d so hoped that when he woke up the things that’d happened would turn out to be some fever dream and Miranda would be there chiding him for leaving his work clothes on the floor.
Ryan gripped his hand where the ghostly impression of Miranda’s touch had been.
And there around his left wrist was a copper bracelet. It had arcane, twisting patterns etched into it.
It’d definitely not been there before.
Even by the standards of the current torrent of insanity, manifesting a hippie charm bracelet out of thin air was a mind bender. There was no possible way anyone could have gotten into the cage.
The occupants of a temple seemed able tamper with what was real. But they’d refused to answer the front door. Whomever was in there must know something, know how this had happened to him.
This had to be more of their bizarro-world tricks.
“Am I dead?” Ryan said in a quiet voice.
It came in that low rumble, much deeper than his real voice. Ryan had always been a bit embarrassed that his natural speaking voice was more TV chef than action movie star. But talking still worked, which was a comfort in this maddening place.
That feeling of being watched came back with a vengeance. There were no signs of anyone near.
Gurgle. Lurch.
Gary jumped and skittered a few steps. The cage dropped a few feet suddenly, before resuming its slow descent, past a large fissure in the wall of rock. The rope vibrated like a guitar string.
A trickling sound emanated from deep behind the cliff face. Water in a pipe, not a natural water sound.
This stone age contraption operated seemingly by itself. Ryan turned and looked up, gripping a bar. The rope fed out from the shed somewhere far above.
If the machine in the shed at the top pumped water as the cage descended that would explain it. With a reservoir somewhere behind the cliff, stored water could be used to power the cage on its journey back up.
Ryan craned his neck against the bars to look down over the edge of the platform. If there was another lever like the one he’d found in the shed above, it was out of sight.
Brarrkk!! Gary bared his teeth, and rolled his head. The damn ugly-cute creature likes being petted.
“What’s up Gary?” Ryan said, scratching the creature behind its ears.
If he was dead, then the engineers of this hell were an imaginative bunch.
Ryan stood, and stretched. He leaned forward to look at the area they’d be landing in. Rolling woodlands spread from the cliff. A mile or two away down the valley a collection of ochre and red rooftops peeked through the green. A band of silver glinted in the forest near the floor of the valley, marking a river.
“OK, Gary, what’s next?” Ryan said.
Brarrkk!! Gary spun around and pointed his nose toward the sky. He raised his front claw and rested it on the bars of the cage.
Talking to a stone gargoyle is a bit of a sign of insanity. When it answers back, when it behaves like something from re-runs of ‘Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo’ it’s time to be fitted for a canvas jacket that does up at the back, and a padded cell.
Ryan blinked, then looked up anyway.
Where Gary’s gaze pointed, in the sky, a black dart rocketed toward them. It resolved into a flying creature with a long cruel beak, and webbed wings. Very different to the huge carrier beasts he’d seen landing in the plaza, it was the size of a big albatross, but its flinty eyes seemed more malevolent, intelligent even.
Brarrkk!! Gary tipped his head back and tracked the creatures flight.
“I don’t like it either Gary,” said Ryan. The creature banked and came around for another pass. “It’s definitely watching us. Right?”
Even behind the cloud bank, the twin sun’s glare made Ryan squint and he shaded his eyes. Ryan rubbed at his left wrist again. The copper bracelet was not actually separate from his body. It seemed welded to his ‘flesh’ or whatever this stone-like substance was. A chill ran through him and he shook his arms.
You must kill Cletus of Nothville.
The words rattled in his ears with a metallic tone like an old gramophone. The perimeter of the cage’s floor just outside the bars, became a marquee. That text began marching round it like the lights on an old fashioned movie house advertising its next show.
Kill.
Ryan gripped the bars and looked down. The wooden platform swayed dizzyingly underneath him. The feeling grew stronger of another presence, an intellect with malevolent intent. The grip of it; the coldness of its demands in his mind made nausea press in his belly, bitter bile rise in his throat.
Kill.
Along the perimeter the instructions marched relentlessly. Ryan closed his eyes, and gripped the bars so tightly his hands hurt. He felt the hardwood start to crumple under his fingers.
Not good. He released his grip, and opened his eyes.
“You’re not the boss of me!” Ryan shouted.
Brarrkk!! Gary’s gaze tracked between Ryan and the cage, as if trying to see what he saw.
A patch of loose shale on a hill mere feet below them marked the wooden cage’s landing spot. It was ringed with scrub and tussock, a man-made clearing beyond which the forest pressed dense and dark. Behind the cage’s landing pad, a lever stuck out from a large recess carved into the rock face.
No point pulling that, and sending the cage back up. That’d just make things easier for the hunter.
The cage touched down, and Ryan leapt out.
You must kill Cletus of Nothville.
“C’mon Gary,” Ryan said, ignoring the metallic voice and scrolling text. The gargoyle hesitated at the lip of the cage.
Ryan tapped his foot, and sighed.
The cage shuddered, and began to rise.
“Gary!” Ryan said, as he walked into the tree-line.
Brarrk! The gargoyle leapt from the gate and scampered after him into the undergrowth.
A clear, narrow paved cart-track led out from the clearing toward the town.
But avoiding the obvious route, and staying in the forest, would provide cover from the flying creature.
Also road led in the direction of the town, likely where this Cletus was, and avoiding that was top priority.
Ryan pulled a bramble bush out of the ground, tossed it to one side and plunged ahead deeper into the forest.
Far into the forest Ryan wandered for hours. The bigger sun had moved across the sky and the smaller one dipped near the horizon, setting an orange glow to the clouds. Nearby a the river chattered loudly over rocks.
Unseen creatures moved in the undergrowth, hidden by curtains of creepers and moss. Gnarled tree trunks and dense thickets blocked the path.
The first two or three Ryan encountered, he grabbed and tore them out of the ground to get past. But that needless destruction was noisy and time consuming, once the novelty wore off.
Instead relying on his new tough grey hide for protection, Ryan bulldozed through light undercroft, or sought ways around really thick brambles. He’d made good progress, dodging brambles and rocky outcrops heading in a generally downhill, down river direction.
He paused in a small clearing.
Brarrkk. Gary bared his teeth.
Above, through a gap in the canopy, that dark “v” soared in an arc and then swooped lower. Ryan ducked under a group of tall oak trees. The flyer made another pass and dropped close enough that he could see the scales on its belly.
Gary scampered up behind, and let out a low grating sound.
“Stop your growling, mate,” Ryan said, and he scratched Gary between the ears. “Yeah, I don’t like it either.”
Ryan broke a thick branch off a fallen tree, and snapped it over his knee to make a solid staff about his own height. The bird-thing probably would’ve attacked already if that’d been the plan. But it wouldn’t hurt to have something handy.
That creepy instruction sending routine was obviously not the only trick those temple guys had up their sleeves. They could definitely reach further than just the front door of their building. Tracking him through the forest was not a surprise.
But there must be limits to their party tricks. Maybe like a cellphone dead spot, but for whatever this weird science was.
Ryan moved along the crest of a low ridge near the river. He could see a peek of the valley below the town.
The forest on the other side of the town looked thicker, more lush. He could find a route, avoid the roads and head down to the lowlands and the coastline he’d seen.
Ryan shook his fist at the sky, then pressed on.
Ryan followed the river closely now at his right hand, as it thundered and crashed through a rocky defile. The forest became a narrow stand of trees. He pushed through a thicket and found himself at the roadside.
It had been a good plan. He couldn’t have known the river ran right through the town.
There was no choice but to climb up onto the roadway or go back the way he came. Ryan stomped along the muddy thoroughfare with a thunderous scowl on his face. The gargoyle sniffed at the piles of dung and cart tracks.
The bigger sun lowered in the sky over the distant mountains. In an old oak tree on the corner he’d just passed the scaly-bird thing roosted. It looked to be the same one that’d followed him through the forest, and it perched, its head on one side, eyeing him.
“Sure, laugh it up scale-face,” Ryan muttered under his breath, as he kicked a clod of dirt. “Bargain basement toy dragon doesn’t scare me.”
He trudged past a stone road marker with an arrow chiselled into it, and the word “Nothville” graven underneath. Soon he turned a bend to see the settlement ahead. Ryan stopped and leaned on his staff.
The town was fortified by a large stone wall that ran from the river up towards the hills on Ryan’s left. From the vantage of the raised road, he could see over the wall. Inside the town a skyline of tiled and thatched roofs stretched along a ridge toward a huge arched bridge.
Ryan gritted his teeth. The damned roofs looked like the one in the stone relief at the temple. They seemed taller than needed, and curved up to a steep peak, like a pair of praying hands. So far not much signs of people.
One man, a tiny silhouette in the distance, drove a cart on the bridge. The man sat atop a jump seat and looked as human as anyone Ryan remembered from Earth. Maybe up close this alien would have antennae sticking out of his head or look weird but from here he looked unremarkable.
The man seemed in a hurry, shaking the reins for all he was worth. The creatures on the end of the reins, pulling his cart looked like bison from this distance, with shaggy brown hair and curving horns.
A noise came from behind, and leaves shook. Leathery wings flapped.
Ryan turned to see the dragon-ling perching on a new vantage point in a large elm tree. It opened its beak and let out a quiet little cry.
Ark-ark. Ark.
Ryan kept moving until he reached the town gate. The wall’s foundations followed the bottom of a gulley, and a watercourse ran in a stone channel in front of it.
It was a moat. Medieval, but effective.
The road crossed a wooden bridge, hinged in the middle. It was held up by chains that ran into fortified columns either side of the gate. Unwelcome visitors could be dropped right into the watercourse where they’d be swept into the river.
Two or three faces darted out, wearing helms, peering over the parapet of the columns. Arrow-heads and spear-tips gave away the positions of still more.
“Hello?” Ryan called, and waved. “Just passing through!”
No response. There really was no way around. At least not without trudging far up into the hills. Who knows what happened to the wall up there.
Camping out in the forest and sneaking through at night did not seem workable. A stealthy approach over a wooden bridge would not have been on the cards for a well over six feet tall guy made of stone, in the company of a stone gargoyle.
This welcoming committee just upped the ante. The whole town seemed to know he was coming.
Ark-ark. The dragon-ling’s call set Ryan’s teeth on edge
The gargoyle turned and bared its teeth at the flyer, roosting in the elm.
Brark! Gary snapped with bravado, but then darted up close behind Ryan.
“Gary, mate, this does not look good,” Ryan said.
