The Ardoon King Read online

  Chapter 61: Island Dreaming

  Ridley was gone.

  But Ben had not returned to the cave, as he’d expected. The darkness he was in had stars.

  He heard a voice. A divine voice. The voice of an angel.

  Had he died, after all?

  “What did the deceiver tell you?”

  When Ben didn’t respond, the voice returned. “Did he tell you that you are not allowed in heaven, oh mighty king? That all the pleasing worlds I have shown you are forbidden? That you must suffer in the worlds he has chosen for you? The worlds he scripted for you?”

  Ben’s life flashed before him. Every second of it.

  It was like getting punched in the face.

  “He made you in his image, oh mighty king, and he will never let you be free. See how he has toyed with your fate? He will never allow you to choose your own. He will would have himself always the puppeteer and you always the puppet. See how he intervenes when you dare to venture from his script? See how jealous he is? He has used you. He still uses you. He will use you up!”

  Ben saw Thal. She was next to him in their beautiful suburban home, holding their child. Their child. He saw Fiela, lying next to him on a blanket, holding him, and whispering, and marveling at the engagement ring on her finger. He saw a benevolent Lilian kneeling next to a child, her hand on his head, speaking words of compassion.

  “He deceives you, oh mighty king! You may choose any of these worlds, or all of them, or any of your making, and you may live forever in paradise. You may write your own scripts. I will bring you the minds of your loved ones. I will bring you their essence. It is no difficult task. I will lead them as I led you. They love you. They will follow. You will not be alone. You have done what he has requested of you and more. It is your time now, not his. Name who you would have with you and I shall bring them to any world you choose. You need only abandon the old and broken world the deceiver has made. Let him suffer the punishment alone. He has done what he has done. He must pay the price, not you.”

  Ben didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

  “Oh mighty king, you have seen the worlds I have promised you. Behold, then, the world the deceiver has scripted for you…”

 

  The stars faded. Ben saw the ocean. It was black and boiling. The wind smelled of salt water and vegetation and Sulphur. He was on a hill – no, not a hill. Not exactly. He standing on the rim of a caldera atop a steep and ancient volcano. He was on an island. Below there was only dense jungle and black sand beaches. It was not a particularly large island. He could see the entirety of it from this, its highest peak.

  He looked down and saw that he was wearing Nisirtu combat armor. He didn’t have a weapon.

  “Mutu?”

  He turned and saw Fiela standing next to him in her specialized armor, drab green with black tiger stripes. She held a Glock in each blood-soaked hand. Her face was cut and bruised and her lower lip swollen. Goggles protected her sensitive violet eyes, but her hair, hanging loose about her shoulders, was as white as snow.

  “Mutu, are you okay?” she asked. She seemed tired. Almost dejected. He had never seen her dejected. Not in combat.

  “I’m, um…”

  There was a hideous sound to his right. It was the scream of a whale, or something like a whale, but much, much louder. He turned and saw what looked like a pointed dome rising from the ocean. It was slick and rubbery, blue and green and gray, and as large as the dead volcano he was standing on.

  He was trying to make sense of what he was seeing when there was a sudden movement to his left. He spun just in time to Fiela’s Glock fire and something fall to the ground three feet in front of him. The size of a man, the thing had the appearance of a squid made of bones and sinew. In lieu of a head it had only a hooked beak, from which now flowed green slime.

  Ben saw hundreds of identical creatures that, not quite dead, twisted and writhed on the slope of the volcano below him. Some, mortally wounded, still struggled to climb the slope, their bony tentacles pushing hard into the black soil, their beak-heads opening and closing, opening and closing. It sounded like a thousand mouse traps being triggered, over and over.

  It wasn’t just these horrible things below him, though. There were dozens of humans, also, all in combat armor. Peth. Most were dead. A few were not. A horrible few were neither dead nor whole. The one that were alive screamed as their similarly doomed enemies snapped off bits of their flesh with sharp, curved beaks.

  “Kill them,” Ben said, hearing the cries of the Peth being slowly consumed. “The wounded.”

  “Getting low on ammunition,” Fiela said, breathing hard. She was staring at the jungle, which seemed to have a life of its own. It moved.

  Toward them.

  “Do it,” he said.

  She did. It took two magazines. The cries of the wounded ceased.

  She dropped the empties to the ground. “One left, Mutu. Do you know the words?”

  Words?

  There was another sound, above him. He looked up but saw only gray, low-hanging clouds.

  “Discharge,” said Fiela. She looked up and screamed. “Come on, come on, come on! Do it already!”

  Ben watched in amazement as a dim light appeared in the clouds. It looked like a small, weak sun, its rays filtered and subdued by the thick, swirling vapors. Then there was a second light, and then a third.

  Fiela yelled at the lights. “Drop, damn you! Drop!”

  Ben heard what sounded like a tuba’s death wail. A giant tuba. The clouds around the lights flashed blue and there was a loud crack of thunder. The three suns blinked off and then back on. Then there were six.

  “The words, Mutu?” Fiela was staring at Ben with something like desperation.

  Below them, the jungle leaped forward, or seemed to. It was only then that Ben realized there was no jungle. The giant, dying tuba emitted another blast.

  A yellow line appeared, connecting the jungle to the clouds above. It wasn’t a perfect line. It was more a limited arc with an occasional glint of red. A second line appeared. A new sound filled the air – a sound he knew from his stint in Afghanistan.

  It was the long burp of a rotary cannon.

  “Yeah!” yelled Fiela. “Get some!”

  The two streams of fire swept over the undulating green and gray mass that was creeping up the slope. Whatever they touched exploded, becoming a cloud of tissue and bone and beak. The fire from the clouds was unforgiving and terrible and dazzling.

  It was not enough. The mass was merely slowed. It was a mile wide. The blistering fire of the cannons could impede the creatures at the center, but only by allowing the creatures on the flanks to advance.

  Long minutes passed as Ben tried to remember how he got to this place and what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t have a gun. Why wouldn’t he have a gun?

  “Mutu, sooner is better,” said Fiela, dropping one Glock to the ground. It was replaced by a long, black dagger.

  The thing in the ocean rose higher and higher until it almost reached the clouds. Its giant eye opened, and it saw the yellow lines, and it moved toward them.

  “They’re toast,” said Fiela, seeing this. She shook her head. “They can’t rise fast enough. Oh, Diz!”

  Ben turned and took a step toward the spectacle, only to falter and fall to one knee. As he struggled to rise, he saw what it was that had tripped him. A corpse, in combat armor. The eyes remained open but unseeing. Next to one of its lifeless hands was a tablet. The Cicada. Its screen was shattered.

  With a jolt Ben realized that the corpse wasn’t that of a Peth. It had a beard.

  It was Sam.

  There were a dozen shots in rapid succession behind him, Fiela screaming obscenities with every pull of the Glock’s trigger. There was a brilliant nova in the sky. The yellow lines disappeared.

  Ben felt something hit his legs, and spinning around, he saw Fiela. Her back against him, she held a dagger in front of her even as blood gushed f
rom her abdomen. She looked up him, her face pale.

  “The words,” she whispered as the dagger fell from her hand.

  The blackness returned.

  “Oh mighty king, you need only call my name, and I shall be with you. It is not too late…I shall be always waiting…”