James Axler - Outlander 08 - Hellbound Fury

JAMES AXLER

HELLBOUND FURY

And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging Flame

-Tennyson

The Road to Outlands-

From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust,

Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought

the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear

device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington,

D.C. The aftermath-forever known as skydark-

reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands-

poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life

forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies,

while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the

redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations

with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the

locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts

hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government

cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consoli-

dated their power and reclaimed technology for It1e

villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority,

extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now

called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of

humanity survived, IMng with hellzones and chemical

storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced-to atone for the

sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future.

That was the barons' public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant,

had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands exped-

ition. A displaced piece of technology...a question to a

keeper of the archives...a vague clue about alien mas-

ters-and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid

Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and

Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgive-

ness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron

Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his

friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysteri-

ous and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then

what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the viDe.

Brlgid's only link with her family was her mother's red-

gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant's clues to

his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique.

But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander

pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltvllle. She at least

knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that

the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community-the very rootedness d

humanity was denied. WIth no continuity, there was no

forward momentum to the future. And that was ~

crux-when Kane began to wonder if there was a futlft.

For Kane, It wouldn't do. So the only way was out-

way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten

Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist,

Cobaltvllle's head archMst, and secret opponent of ~

barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threat-

ened, only one thing was left to give meaning to ~

outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist

the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing,

end them.

Chapter 1

The first thing Kane heard upon returning to the gal-

lery beneath the tower was a woman weeping pite-

ously. The girl Trai sat on one of the paving stones

at the rim of the depression, huddled in a little ball

of grief, hugging herself, rocking back and forth. To

his surprise, Brigid sat beside her, patting her back,

speaking to her soothingly in her own language. They

were alone, the bodies of Gyatso and the slaia triplet

nowhere in sight.

"What's with Zakat's bitch, Baptiste?" he de-

manded. "She'll have more to cry about once she

hears about where he ended up."

Brigid glanced at him reproachfully. "She knows

already, somehow. She felt the link she shared with

him disappear."

"Good. I wasn't sure if the son of a bitch was dead

or not."

"What about you?" she asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Just don't ask

me to stand on my head for the next couple of days."

Brigid got to her feet, a hand on Trai's shoulder.

"She's just a child, not really to blame. She was a

servant in the monastery and the monks, particularly

the high lama, treated her badly. Zakat seduced her

with kindness-and probably his psi-abilities."

Kane shrugged disinterestedly. "Where's Balam?"

"Attending to the body of his son."

"His son?" Kane echoed, startled.

"The triplets are his children, born of a human

woman nearly four hundred years ago. Like he said,

they are the last of their particular breed."

Kane shook his head and covered his eyes for a

moment. He tried to loathe Balam again, even tried

to pity him, but he could find neither emotion within

him.

"Kane."

At the hoarse whisper, he dropped his hand and

saw Balam, flanked by the drooling twins, stepping

into the depression. "You recovered the facets of the

Trapezohedron. ' ,

Balam wasn't asking, he was stating. Kane re-

moved them from his pocket and held them out.

Balam made no indication he even uoticed. He in-

clined his head toward the ebony cube laced within

Lam's fingers.

"Take it and go."

Kane's blood ran cold and his flesh prickled. "And

end up like Gyatso? Offltand, Balam, I can think of

a hundred easier ways to check out."

"The new human was responsible for his fate. The

energy he directed into the stone was strong, but it

was of an incompatible frequency. It was deflected,

turned inward, and it destroyed him. Take the Trap-

ezohedron, Kane."

He looked into the face of Lam, eyes closed again

in placid contemplation. He stepped into the depres-

sion.

"Kane!" Brigid spoke warningly, fearfully.

"What if-" She bit off the rest of her question.

"If the 'what if happens, you know what to do,"

he replied.

He heard the overhung firing bolt on her Uzi being

drawn back, and he threw Balam a cold, ironic smile.

It wasn't returned.

Reaching out, he touched the black rock in Lam's

hands, feeling his pulse pound with fear. He tugged

gently, experimentally. The Trapezohedron came

away easily. Without resistance it nestled in Kane's

hands.

Almost as soon as it did, the flesh on Lam's face

and limbs dried, browned and withered. His eyes col-

lapsed into their sockets and his body fell, his robe

belling up briefly as he joined the skeletal remains

around the altar.

Kane froze, the hair lifting from his scalp, his mind

filling with primal, nameless terror. He gaped wild-

eyed at Balam.

"His vigil is complete. Yours begins."

Kane despised the tremor in his hands and voice.

"My vigil for what?"

"To find a way for your people to survive, as mine

did."

Kane swallowed with painful effort. His throat felt

as if it were lined with sandpaper. "The only way is

to displace the barons, you know that."

Balamnodded.

"What do you want in return?"

"Nothing in return. I have returned to the old, old

ways of our forebears when we passed on truth rather

than burning it."

"But you did bum it, " Brigid said accusingly.

"To preserve ourselves," Balam replied. "A sac-

rifice made for an appointed period of time. That time

is over. Our blood prevails."

Kane shook his head in frustration. "I don't- Are

you betraying the barons, blood of your blood?"

"They are blood of your blood, too, Kane. I no

more betray them than you do."

" A state of war will exist between our two cultures

again," Brigid pointed out. "Rivers of that mixed

blood will be spilled."

"If that is the road chosen," Balam said faintly,

"then that is the road chosen. Blood is like a river.

It flows through tributaries, channels, streams, re-

freshing and purifying itself during its journey. But

sometimes it freezes, and no longer flows. A glacier

forms, containing detritus, impurities. The glacier

must be dislodged to allow the purifying journey to

begin anew."

"And what of you?" Brigid asked quietly. "What

will you do?"

Balam stood, swaying slightly, his huge fathomless

and passionless eyes fixed on them. Then he flung up

one long, thin arm in an unmistakable gesture, point-

ing to the entrance to the gallery. "I will do nothing,

and you must do what you can. Go."

Then he turned and walked away, trailed by his

sons.

For an instant, Kane grappled with the desire to go

after him, but he knew there was no reason and no

point to it. Taking him back to Cerberus served no

purpose. What Balam actually was Kane could not

know, but a strange, aching sadness came over him

as he watched him stride gracefully away.

He didn't know why he felt such a vacuum within

him, then he realized he was reacting to an absence

of hate.

Kane turned toward Brigid, and she saw the con-

fusion, the uncertainty in his eyes. "Now what do

we do?"

Brigid looked from Kane to Trai and to the black

stone nestled between his hands. ' 'We wait for to-

morrow."

Kane shot her a glance, an irritation borne of

stress, pain and exhaustion glittering in his gray-blue

eyes. "It's tonight I'm worried about, not tomorrow.

It's full dark outside the caverns, and the temperature

will be well below freezing."

Brigid nodded thoughtfully, then ran a hand

through her tangled, red-gold mane. She cast a furtive

look toward the retreating backs of Balam and his

twin sons. "I don't want to be the one to ask if Balam

can put us up for the night. Do you?"

Eyeing the skeletons scattered in the depression on

the floor, Kane repressed a shiver. "No, I don't. We

can try to make our way back to the entrance and

make camp there until dawn-and hope our horses

haven't frozen to death."

He took a long, last look around the oval gallery

whose walls, floor and ceiling seemed coated by a

lacquer of amethyst, reflecting the light cast by

flames dancing in a huge bowl brazier. He shoved

the black stone into his coat pocket, ran a hand

through his dark hair and announced, "Let's go."

Brigid gestured to Trai, spoke a word to her and

the three of them left the chamber by the way they

had entered it, ascending the flight of small rock steps

to a narrow corridor. The passageway curved past a

pair of power generators. Twelve feet tall, they re-

sembled two solid black cubes, a slightly smaller one

placed atop the larger. The top cube rotated slowly.

producing a murmuring drone and the odor of ozone. I

Although Kane and Brigid had seen similar genera-

tors twice in the past, they still had no idea of their

operating principles or the form of energy they pr0-

duced.

The three people emerged from the base of a stone

tower that formed the hub of a wheel, the city of

Agartha radiating out around it. All the squat, win-,

dowless buildings were of black basalt, quarried from

the walls of the cavern itself.

From the high, arched roof spilled a ghostly blue

luminescence, tiled as it was with square light panels.

The outskirts of the settlement sloped gently upward

toward a broad shelf of stone forming a natural door-

step to a tunnel.

Yal, the Dob-Dob soldier from the Trasilunpo

monastery still sat at the base of the boulder where

Kane's fists and feet had battered him. He hung his,

shaven head despondently, making no effort to wipe

away the blood dripping from his flattened nose. It,

mixed with the froth flecking his loose lips.

"Tell him Zakat is dead," Kane said to Brigid.

"Ask him if he wants to stay or to go."

Brigid repeated Kane's words in the Tibetan's lan-

guage, but he made no response. Trai spoke to him

sharply, and the man slowly lifted his head. His eyes

were wide and showed no recognition of the girl. His

teeth gleamed in a griInace of pain behind his writh-

ing lips, and a low moan bubbled up his throat. He

poked at the gravel-strewed ground with the point of

a khanjarli dagger.

Kane's flesh prickled with horror at the madness

glittering in the Dob-Dob's eyes. The man's reason

was broken, shattered into a thousand pieces that

could never be put together again. He reached out

and took the mini-Uzi from Brigid. His own side arm,

his Sin Eater, had been damaged in his brief struggle

with Yal.

"Tell him to drop the knife," Kane whispered

tensely, resting his finger on the trigger of the sub-

gun.

Brigid snapped out a few words, but Yal' s only

response was a high-pitched tittering. His madness-

clouded mind didn't allow him to recognize the Uzi

as a weapon-or if he did, he simply didn't care.

"Let's move away slow," Kane said to Brigid

from the side of his mouth, taking a careful backstep.

At his motion, Yal gave a sobbing cry. He

launched himself to his feet, the double-curved thorn

of steel glittering in his right hand. His eyes rolled

back in his head, displaying only the whites as he

rushed toward Kane, the dagger held high.

Kane quickly stroked the trigger of the autoblaster.

The staccato drumming of the 3-round burst sounded

obscenely loud in the cavern, the echoes rolling and

rebounding.

Yal catapulted backward from the triple center

punch to his chest. Robe flapping, he crashed to the

ground, the dagger blade chiming on the rock. Trai

shrank against Brigid, too shocked by Yal' s behavior

and his swift execution even to scream.

In a low, quavering tone, Brigid said, "This was

all too much for him. The mental link with Zakat

was probably the only thing that kept him from fus-

ing out long before."

Kane only nodded, silently agreeing with Bap-

tiste's assessment. Either through the Russian's own

psionic abilities or with them enhanced by the two

facets of the black stone in his possession, Zakat had

achieved some kind of mental link with his followers.

When it was broken, so was Yal's mind. Reared in

a land bound by the ancient traditions of Agartha, the

holy abode of the eight immortals, when Yal realized

he had followed a path of blood and greed to reach

it, he was overwhelmed by guilt and horror. Kane

felt no particular sympathy for him. Brigid had told

him Dob-Dobs, the soldiers of the monasteries, were

recruited from the ranks of convicted Tibetan crimi-

nals.

Bending over the man's body, Kane searched his

robes and found a bulky hand torch with a box-

battery attached to it. He guessed it was of Russian

manufacture.

"We've certainly brought more than our share of

death and bloodshed to the sanctuary of Balam' s people,"

Brigid murmured.

Kane threw her a swift, hard-eyed glare. "What's is

that old phrase Lakesh uses-quid pro quo? Balam's

people came to within a hair of exterminating our

people. I'm not going to feel ashamed over this little

bit of payback."

Despite his harsh words and tone, Kane did feel

shame. Judging by the knowing light in Brigid's em-

erald eyes, she felt it, too.

He nodded to Trai “Ask her if there are more

Dob-Dobs waiting outside the cavern."

Brigid translated the question, receiving a sad head

shake in response.

Kane took point as always, the white rod of the

flashlight piercing the gloom. The three facets of the

black stone in his coat pockets seemed to weigh very

little, but he was acutely aware of their burdensome

presence all the same.

He still had no clear idea of the nature of the

stones, and he wasn't sure if he could comprehend it,

if one was offered to him. According to Balam, they

were pieces of an inestimably ancient artifact pre- I

dating humanity's rule of Earth. The existence of the

black stone had been hinted at through all the ages

of man, whispered about since the dawn of recorded

history to the near-annihilation of the species in the

nukecaust nearly two centuries before.

The stone had been known by many names, by

many peoples of civilizations both primitive and ad-

vanced-Lucifer's Stone, the kala, the Kaa'ba, the

Chintamani Stone, the Shining Trapezohedron. Al-

ways it had been associated with the concept of a key

that unlocked either the door to enlightenment or

madness. It had served as the centerpiece, the spiri-

tual focal point of Balam' s people, even after it had

been fragmented and the facets scattered from one

end of the Earth to the other. He claimed that through

it, they glimpsed all possible futures to which their

activities might lead.

But the black stone was far more than a calculating

device that extrapolated outcomes from actions.

Balam had said, "It brings into existence those out-

comes."

He had referred to the stone as a channel to "si-

dereal space," where many tangential points of re-

ality lay adjacent to one another, the parallel case-

ments of the universe. He had also called it a

something else, a doorway to "lost Earth," and the

memory of those two words still sent a chill down

Kane's spine. He found it almost impossible to grasp-

the concept of a multitude of realities coexisting with

his own. He couldn't wrap the fingers of his mind

around it. The notion turned to smoke and drifted ,;

away.

It took a great mental effort not to replay the vision

he had glimpsed upon first touching the primary facet

of the black stone. He had seen himself dying on a

street. He watched himself sprawled across a cobble-

stoned gutter, and the cadaverous Colonel C. W.

Thrush nudged his body with a booted foot.

Even after that demonstration or vision, he still

didn't understand what Balam had meant by a "lost

Earth."

Neither had Grigori Zakat, but that ignorance

hadn't prevented him from embarking on a quest to

recover all the pieces of the stone, following a path

so many others had trod before him. His life was

dedicated to the accruing of personal power, accord-

ing to an esoteric religious tenet he practiced.

The Russian assumed if there were people of great

power, then it stood to reason there were objects of

equally great power, perhaps far older than humanity

itself, swirling with forces that defied any attempts to

measure or evaluate them.

Zakat's dreams now lay entombed with him in the

eternal darkness of a subterranean abyss, deep be-

neath the mountains at the border of Tibet and China.

Kane couldn't help but wonder if the fragments of

stone that so obsessed Zakat should join him there.

They continued on through the tunnel, the crunch

of their feet on gravel sending up a steady echo. The

passageway opened into a wide cavern, a city of sta-

lactites and stalagmites, and rock arches and fonna-

tions.

Kane led the way through it, past the signpost that

Balam's folk had erected ages before-an erect-

standing statue, about fifteen feet tall. It depicted a

humanoid creature with a slender build draped in

robes. The features were sharply defined, the domed

head disproportionately large and hairless. The eyes

were huge, slanted and fathomless. One six-fingered

hand pointed toward the shadow-shrouded end of the

cavern from which they had just emerged.

The three people continued along the trail to the

bank of the underground river, more of a stream at

the point where Kane and Brigid had left the boat.

The craft was made of yak-hide and wood, and they

carefully climbed into it, not wanting to rupture the

ancient seams.

Kane relegated the task of poling the boat against

the current to Trai. He felt more than justified be-

cause of the various aches and pains the girl's former

master had inflicted on him only a short while ago.

Besides, she was sturdily built and very strong.

It was hard, laborious work, and Trai grunted and

gasped with the exertion. The stream widened into a

seventy-foot-wide waterway, and Brigid directed Trai

to pole toward the opposite bank, where she and

Kane had first launched the boat. The girl's arms

trembled and sweat glistened on her face, despite the

dank, chilly air.

After they beached the boat, Kane allowed Trai to

rest a few minutes before they moved on again

through the tunnels. None of them spoke much. Trai

remained silent except for a few sniffles, in mourning

over the death of Zakat.

Kane didn't voice his own worries to Brigid. He

feared that if the horses they'd left in the valley wan-

dered away, the return trek to the Trasilunpo mon-

astery and the mat-trans gateway there might be too

rugged to make on foot. The arduous journey from

the Byang- Thang plateau on horseback had required

a full day, from sunrise to sunset. Their supply of

concentrated foodstuffs and water had been in a pack,

which Balam had dropped before entering the so-

called kingdom of Agartha. He prayed it would still

be there.

The tunnel became little more than a curving

ledge, with a rock wall on one side and yawning,

impenetrable blackness on the other. It inclined. and

the three people inched their way along it, flattening

themselves against the wall.

Finally, the ledge stopped slanting upward. wid-

ened and leveled out. They made their way through

the passageway to a natural foyer, and the beam of

the flashlight illuminated the tiny steps carved out of

rock that led to the mouth of the entrance tunnel,

about ten feet over their heads. Pursued by Zakat and

his party through the tunnel, Kane and Brigid had

suffered bruising falls because they hadn't known the

crude stairway was there.

Kane handed her the flashlight. "Stay here with .

her. I'll make a recce."

He quickly scaled the steps, wincing as flares of

pain ignited allover his body. The spill he'd taken

and the brutal hand-to-hand fight with Zakat made

his limbs feel as if they were sewn together with

barbed wire.

On hands and knees, he crawled down the tunnel,

heading toward the indistinct glimmer of light at its

nether end. Pushing aside clumps of dry grass, he

climbed out of the cleft in the base of the mountain,

grateful of the fresh air, as cold as it was. Standing

at his full six-foot-one-inch height, he stretched in

relief and surveyed the area. The frosty stars shining

above snow-gilded peaks cast the box canyon into a

stark vista of shadow and light. After hours of silently

suffering the claustrophobic fear of being buried

alive, he immediately felt better looking up at the

open sky.

Bulwarks of granite stood like huge tombstones all

around, providing something of a break from the icy

gusts of wind that howled down from the mountain

passes. He sighed with relief when he saw the pack

still lying where Balam had dropped it, but he saw

no sign of the ponies, either the ones he and Brigid

had ridden or those belonging to Zakat and his party.

On impulse, he whistled and an answering whinny

floated from behind the upstanding slabs of stone.

All of the horses were there, grazing on the

scrubby grass and chewing the stems of underbrush.

The squat, sturdy bodies of the five animals were

covered by pelts of shaggy fur. Kane figured they

would have no trouble withstanding the low temper-

atures for the rest of the night if they remained behind

the windbreak. Consulting his wrist chron, he saw

with a slight start of surprise that it was only a few

hours shy of dawn. His sojourn in the underground

galleries of Agartha had seemed to comprise a life-

time and a half.

He hobbled the ponies as best he could with their

reins, then returned to the tunnel with the pack of

provisions. Carefully climbing backward down the

James Axler - Outlander 08 - Hellbound Fury

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