“Did you see that?” Pierce pointed out across the water. “That was Erik!”
“Erik?” Fiona hadn’t seen anything. She looked around but there was no sign of him. “Where is he?”
“In the water.” Pierce swung the backpack again, knocking another of the attacking creatures out across the pool. He looked her in the eyes, entrusting her the same way she’d seen her father do with his teammates. “You’re my heavy hitter, Fi. You can help him.”
She scrambled to her feet and started kicking at the creatures. They were a lot more solid than she expected, like striking a bucket full of water, but her first kick launched one of the trilo-pedes into the air. The second one however, caught the sole of her hiking boot in its mandibles. She gave a yelp that was part frustration, part fear.
Pierce stepped in and brought the backpack down like a hammer, crushing the arthropod’s shell, releasing an explosion of rust-brown guts.
She shook her foot, but succeeded only in separating the pincer-like jaws — which were embedded in the rubber sole of her boot — from the crushed body. Focus, she told herself.
The golem’s hand rose, lifting them high above the surface of the pool, and it moved toward the spiraling walkway where they had first arrived. Even before it stopped moving, Fiona leapt onto the path and scrambled several feet until she was well clear of the water-line.
As soon as Gallo and Pierce were clear, she commanded the golem to move away, but as it did, half-a-dozen of the trilo-pedes dropped off the stone hand and began scurrying up the walkway toward them.
Fiona ignored the creatures and focused her intentions on the golem.
Find Erik.
The stone automaton plunged its head and shoulders under the water with a splash, sending out a wave that crashed against the wall below where Fiona and the others were standing, soaking them with spray.
A few seconds later, the golem emerged again, one of its massive fists curled around a motionless human form. The hand opened to deposit Lazarus at their feet, and Fiona saw that he was covered in trilo-pedes. Rivulets of diluted blood streamed down the walkway, as the squirming creatures continued tearing into Lazarus’s flesh.
Pierce started forward, probably intending to attack the menacing creatures with his bare hands, but Fiona beat him to it.
Prompted by another silent command, the golem’s hand detached at the wrist, splitting into five human-sized golems that landed on the walkway with a rapid series of earth-shaking thumps. They were rougher-looking than the giant; the large pieces of stone comprising them did not allow for fine details, but what they lacked in aesthetic appeal, they more than made up for in sheer power.
Two of them bent over Lazarus and began smashing trilo-pede carapaces between their bowling ball-sized fists. The other three began stomping the advancing creatures with reckless abandon, splattering the walkway with green-brown goo. In a matter of seconds, Lazarus was bug-free, and the area around them clear of the creatures.
Pierce and Gallo rushed over to the unmoving Lazarus and took hold of his arms, dragging him further up the walkway, even though the threat was held at bay. A moment later, the big man convulsed, breaking free of their grasp. He curled into a fetal ball and gave a great racking cough, spewing water from his mouth and nose, and then he howled as if he was being burned alive.
His agony was palpable, and for a fleeting instant Fiona felt like she might pass out again. Pierce and Gallo recoiled as well, but the moment passed. Lazarus mastered the primal fury-beast his resurrection had almost unleashed. He blinked several times, his head jerking as he took in his surroundings. His clothes were riddled with little gashes, each no more than an inch long, and through them, Fiona could see bright pink skin — new skin — growing back at an accelerated rate to replace the chunks torn away by the trilo-pedes. Beyond him, the golems continued stomping the creatures, each stone footfall sounding — and feeling — like a blow from a sledgehammer.
“I’m okay,” Lazarus rasped, his face still contorted as he endured the unimaginable pain of rapid healing. He rose to a kneeling position. “Looks like you guys didn’t need me after all.”
“We’re just glad you made it,” Gallo said, but despite her welcoming and relieved tone, her body language told a different story. She was afraid of him, afraid that he might lose control of the fury-beast and kill them all. Fiona knew better, but her attention was divided between controlling the golems and grappling with the mystery of her strange…dream? Vision?
She squeezed her fists tighter and realized she was still holding on to the bunched up piece of shiny fabric.
“Can you walk?” Pierce said.
Lazarus nodded. “If I have to, I can run.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to do that, as long as Fi can keep our retreat covered.”
“What are those things?” Gallo asked.
“Some kind of pre-historic crawdad,” Pierce said. “There could be an entire isolated eco-system down here. Fortunately, we’ve got what we came for, so I think we can forego further exploration.”
Fiona realized he was staring at the thing in her hand. “This?”
She held it up, opening her hand, and as she did, the fabric expanded with a pop. Instead of an amorphous crumpled mass, a perfect sphere, the size of a softball, now rested on her palm.
She remembered it now, remembered trying to pick it up and how unmovable it had been.
And then I passed out. That can’t be a coincidence.
It was feather-light now, like holding on to a soap bubble. She applied gentle pressure with her fingertips, distorting the precise symmetry, but it popped back into shape as soon as she relented.
“Okay, that’s a neat trick,” Pierce said, bending down to take a closer look at the orb. “Looks like it’s woven from some kind of memory metal wire. Definitely not from the Sintashta period.”
He straightened and glanced over his shoulder at the waterline. Trilo-pedes were still emerging from the pool, crawling up onto the walkway, only to be obliterated by Fiona’s golems.
“But that’s a discussion for another time,” he went on. “Fi, you brought us this far.”
“She needs a minute,” Gallo said, moving closer to Fiona. “You passed out back there. Are you okay? Did something happen to your insulin pump?”
While she could bend earth and rocks to her will, Fiona’s own body was not always as cooperative. Diagnosed with Type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes, she managed her blood sugar with a sophisticated computer-controlled insulin pump, tucked in an inside pocket at her hip, but in stressful situations — being trapped underground and menaced by giant bugs, for example — her body chemistry got too far out of whack, and she crashed.
She knew what that felt like, and this wasn’t it.
“The pump’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine. How long was I out?”
“Just a few seconds.” Gallo’s forehead creased with concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? Was it that thing?” She pointed to the orb.
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I had a…vision. Maybe it was just a dream. My subconscious trying to tell me something.”
“What did you see?” George asked with sincere interest.
“It was something from an old story my grandmother taught me: Raven Steals the Light.” She saw the others exchange a concerned glance. The vision…dream…memory…whatever, was still vivid in her memory, but the relevance of the underlying message was not so clear.
If you sing to the river…
“The river,” she blurted. “I think this pool is connected to an underground river. If we can find it, we can follow it to the surface.”