THE HAND OF SHADOW

At the foot of the stairs stood another stela, which Rainbow took upon herself to activate, causing the jaws in the serpent’s head above to close with a grinding sound. She caught up to us, a sheen of sweat on her forehead despite the dank chill and her breathing heavier than it had been.

Yet she carried on as if everything was fine, translating for me as I began to explain to Cahal about automatons. “They are machines made out of steel and brass, usually in the shape of a human, fully able to walk and use tools, or weapons, depending on the commands they have been given. Normally Professor Bella could not give it instructions, being an Eldarion, but she is strange for one of her race. She is likely the only one authorized to give it orders, so kill her and the automaton may not obey anyone afterward.

“No one knows how to use Ka’thorn crystals as an energy source anymore, so the spirit inhabiting the crystal animates the device using Ka’thorn vapor to give the machine power. I really do not know a great deal about Ka’thorn spirits. However, from what my grandfather told me, they cannot think for themselves like Aethyr spirits do but must be given a series of instructions, which the spirit can use to carry out whatever it is they are supposed to do. I do know that when they are confronted with a new situation, they often go with the instruction that seems to make the most sense to the automaton, even when common sense would tell us otherwise.

“The Gatling gun? I saw it aboard Capt Lafitte’s ship. It is six barrels set in a circular pattern that rotates as the gun is fired, the bullets hooked together by their casings in a belt which is fed into the body of the gun. The automaton fires it by cranking a handle. It has a crosshair sight on the end of the circular mount, but in practice the automaton will likely just point and shoot at people until it is told to stop, or the weapon runs out of bullets. Anything else?”

Cahal shook his head and rejoined his men, leaving me and Rainbow walking together while my friends and Je’kyll walked behind us, conversing in the Orku tongue they had learned from their mothers. Jack moved forward and joined Ripper ahead of the war party, both of them acting as scouts.

I found myself alone, more or less, with Rainbow, and giving her a sideways glance, felt a strong twinge of guilt. “Miss Rainbow, I feel I need to apologize for our making fun of you earlier. Goro knew how embarrassed I felt and was trying to make me feel better, but it was at your expense and I should have stopped him. I will offer no excuses, only my promise that I will be more of a gentlemale in the future.”

Rainbow regarded me for a long moment. “Is it really so embarrassing for a female to see your dangling bits?”

I was glad my friends were not paying attention as I tried to put it in context. “Were we back in Londinium and a female saw me in the altogether, I would soon find myself a laughingstock as the tale spread. I say this because it happened to someone I was to attend university with. People like to gossip, and the scandal eventually caused the young man’s family to disown him, leaving the poor fellow without any prospects whatsoever. Last I heard of him, he had become a gin crawler living somewhere on the East-end… that is, if he has not drowned himself in the Thames, as he threatened.”

Rainbow was staring at me. “All because a female saw him naked?”

I shrugged. “It was several females of distinguished families, and he had been drinking, so when they came upon him he decided to start performing naked cartwheels. Yet his nakedness was the cause of the scandal.”

“Human society has a great deal of hypocrisy concerning these matters,” Je’kyll said as he joined us. “All males have baser natures, and even though upper class human females are taught to regard carnal pleasure as something wrong, men are under no such restrictions. They visit places where they can pay for illusionary passion; gentlemale clubs for the upper classes and brothels for the lower. There are even women who walk the streets, which is often the only employment they can find.”

Rainbow looked horrified. “How can you live in such a society that believes carnal pleasure is wrong and makes you pay money for something natural?”

“Not to be rude,” Je’kyll said, “but the young half-blood lady on the docks made such an offer for Jonathan.”

Rainbow waved his words away with her hand. “Our cousins use Artifacts as a way of controlling their encounters with men not of the Maya race, who might otherwise try and take advantage of them.” As she looked outward into the darkness, her voice grew thoughtful. “My mother hinted this might be the case in England, yet I never truly believed her. She’d be serving me a big dish of ‘I-told-you-so’ if she was still alive.”

I made my voice as gentle as I could. “For what it is worth, I wish she had gone with my grandfather and not tried to act as a decoy. In the end it made no difference.” This led to me telling here about the affair in Londinium, going into detail about the Lion Dance, and then farther back about life on my grandfather’s estate, Je’kyll at some point drifting back so it was just Rainbow and I walking together again.

Rainbow, in turn, told me about her life among the Eldarion-Maya. They were not lords of an estate, as most of the upper class Eldarions in Europe were, or making a living on the edges of human society, as those fallen on hard times often had to do.

Instead, they were a vital part of their society. They were judges and guardians and healers, producing Artifacts they traded to Maya humans in exchange for basic necessities, the Yucatan and the area beyond the peninsula in the highlands, a web of interconnecting city-states that quarreled constantly, yet never fought.

“They used to,” Rainbow said as we left the caverns for a tunnel like the one Jack and I had traveled, except the white road continued through this one. “But then the Spanish came and conquered the Aztec empire. We’d had some warning from a shipwreck survivor named Guerrero, so when the Spanish arrived to conquer us, we banded together and fought back. Smallpox was a problem for our humans at first, but the Eldarion-Maya knew how to give them a weak form of a disease so their bodies could fight it off when exposed to it again. So after a short while, smallpox went away.”

I looked at her in wonder. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

She shrugged. “Mother said we’ve got a wealth of knowledge the rest of the world knows nothing about, and the idea was to bargain that knowledge for independence.” She shook her head. “Now, though, I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

“Because of what Bella’s done.”

“My people are in shock,” Rainbow said in a quiet voice. “At least the Mexican army was even more shocked than we were and less prepared, though last I heard they were mobilizing forces in Merida to retake the city.”

“Jack said there are people there who want a French king instead of a republic.”

“Now do you see our problem? We don’t know who we can trust.”

Our hands brushed together, and on impulse I grasped hers with my own. “Well, you can trust me to stand with you until this is over. My word of honor.”

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Rainbow glanced down at our hands before looking up again. “You do realize I am violating one of our unwritten rules by touching you without the proper ritualistic consent.”

“What? Oh bloody- I mean, I am terribly sorry.”

I tried letting go but she held on fast. “I’m discovering I like breaking the rules. At least with you.”

Before I could come with anything like a response, Jack came trotting back into the blue light with Ripper on his heels. “Kinubal, I need you to tell Cahal there’s a stopping place up ahead, with a fire pit and running water.” His face turned grim. “There’s also something Ripper found that he’s got to see.”

Rainbow let go of my hand and hurried toward the front with Jack as Baroda and the others came up to take her place. ‘Ooh, la, la,” Baroda said in an atrocious French accent, clasping his hands together in a mock delicate way.

I hit his shoulder. “Will you stop?” He only laid his head against his hands and fluttered his eyebrows. The sight was so ludicrous I laughed and hit him again, my friends and Je’kyll laughing with me as we continued along the white road.

The tunnel widened into a cavern again, the white road continuing forward into darkness while an area designed as a resting place stood off to one side, with a circle of white stone, blackened on the inner side, arranged near an underground stream burbling close to the wall. The dank air had an acrid, smoky edge, like someone had recently put out a fire, and as Rainbow created another ball of light and directed it to move over the fire pit, I could see firewood stacked beside it.

The cavern continued on into darkness, and as Cahal’s warriors with the serrated clubs got the rest of their men situated, Jack led Cahal and Rainbow along the wall following the white road. Ripper, who was with them, turned around and gave me a loud woof. Drog put his hand on my shoulder. “Boss, I’ll get things organized if you want to go along with them.”

What I really wanted was to stop moving and maybe sleep for a while, my body aching from fatigue, but I nodded instead. “I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem.” He began organizing things as I began walking towards Jack and the other two, who had stopped and turned around. Acorn fell in with me, the young Eldarion whose ears had barely begun to spiral upward, giving me a challenging look as if daring me to order her back. I knew better, instead motioning towards the passage, and she smiled.

Jack called out, “Je’kyll, reckon we might need you as well. Bring your medicine bag.” Je’kyll did not hesitate but grabbed the pack he had just set down and hurried over, as Ripper turned around and disappeared into the darkness. Jack followed, and we followed him.

Cahal’s Aethyr light bobbed overhead as we walked along the rock wall, taking it straight back then continuing to the left as it narrowed until almost touching the white stones, before it widened again. The walls opened into a larger area as Jack stopped and turned around. “Kinubal, reckon you and Acorn don’t want to get too close to this. It ain’t pretty.”

Rainbow put her hand to her mouth, but then took a deep breath as she schooled her face into calmness and translated his words. Acorn’s expression reflected her uncertainty, but Cahal strode forward, the light following him as it rose higher into the air. The Aethyr ball revealed a wide chamber with passages leading off it, the white road curving slightly right to take the furthest one. There was a stalagmite directly in front of us and several more off to the right where the cave walls formed an open pocket beside the white paving stones.

A man’s still form with both hands clasped on his chest lay inside. He looked to be Maya, wearing stained white clothes with skin the deep brown color of chocolate. His face was quiet and unlined, which I found surprising as his trousers had been sliced away and both legs cut off at the knee, the gaping wounds bound with tourniquets. A few feet away was the blackened remains of a fire.

The smell of burnt meat hung in the air, reminding me of Kobol encampments, yet something was missing. “Jack,” I said as we approached the Maya man, “if this man is dead, we should be smelling him by now.”

“Reckon so, but there ain’t no smell to him except sweat.”

“Alive?” Je’kyll started towards the Maya. “I need to examine-”

Jack put out a hand to stop him. “Rein in your hoss and listen. The wounds are open, but they’ve been painted with something orange looking, maybe to keep them from rotting. The man’s warm to the touch but he didn’t wake up, even when I poked him with the tip of my Bowie knife. Also, his shirt’s been cut away and he’s got a hand with the flesh cut away from the fingers, right here,” Jack poking at his chest over his heart, “which seems to be embedded.”

I shuddered as a dark memory returned. “Is there a stinger like a scorpion’s tail in the palm?”

“Durned if I know. The hand’s laying flat against his chest, so if there’s a stinger, it’s embedded as well.”

Rainbow looked at me. “It’s the same type of Artifact that Bella used on you, isn’t it?”

I nodded as the six of us plus Ripper moved to a spot next to the Maya man. His arms were at his sides and his face had a blissful smile upon it, as if he wandered in a pleasant dream. Cahal looked angry enough to chew iron nails as he crouched down next to him, examining the hand with its bone fingertips filed into sharp points, without touching it. He looked up at me and spat out a question. “He wants to know if European Eldarions use these kinds of Artifacts all the time,” Rainbow translated.

“Tell him that a respected Eldarion I met called creating a Hand of Shadow like this insane. Only cultists are evil enough to do it.”

Rainbow translated, but Cahal still did not appear satisfied as he got down close to the Artifact hand and pulled out his knife. Rainbow asked him a question in a sharp voice and Cahal responded in a gruff one, delicately using the point of his blade to push the palm up enough to see the stinger. He pulled the knife back, sheathed it, and put his hands together as he created a piece of blue webbing like spidery lace. A feeling of unease rose up inside me. “Does he know what he is doing?”

“I asked him the same question,” Rainbow replied, “and he told me he needs to know more about the Artifact so he can save this man of our people, who was kidnapped when Bella’s group overwhelmed the village watching the entrance.”

Jack began waving his hand as if telling him to stop. “This is a bad idea. We need to break the thing by getting someone with Terramagica affinity to touch it, not risk setting it off.”

Rainbow translated, but Cahal shook his head. “He says the stinger’s extended well into the man’s chest, maybe into his heart, and if we break it, removing the thing might end up killing him.” Cahal made another comment, causing Rainbow to give him a derisive snort. “Now he claims he’s got a more delicate touch than the rest of us. He’s about as delicate as Ripper was killing the Chak’pat that almost got Jon.”

She proceeded to tell him that, Cahal giving her a dark look before extending the blue webbing towards the Artifact and letting it go. It touched the dead skin and expanded, its surface becoming a series of glyphs which Cahal could obviously read, for he flashed Rainbow a smug smile before leaning over the webbing and examining the glyphs. His eyes widened.

He yelled something at Je’kyll as the dead hand contracted, the Maya man shrieking as he opened his eyes, arms and leg stumps flailing as he thrashed about like a dying fish. “Touch the hand,” Rainbow shouted at Je’kyll, who was desperately trying to grab the man’s arms and hold him down. “Touch-”

The man spasmed with his back arched so far upward I thought it would snap. Then he flopped onto the rock floor and went still. Je’kyll put his hand to the Maya man’s throat while the skin of the Artifact hand shriveled, the flesh burning away inside with the fetid stink of a Kobol’s graveyard.

In seconds, the hand was only blackened skin and bone. Je’kyll’s eyes met mine as he searched for a pulse.

After a few moments he shook his head and took his hand away as Jack crouched down next to the corpse. He pulled out his large knife. “See this?” he said as he used the tip to point out something on the middle finger of the blackened hand.

Shouts were coming from the encampment as I crouched down beside him. The skin between the knuckle and the middle joint had been cut away, as if the hand had been wearing a wide ring that took the skin with it when the ring was removed. “Did Bella make a ring out of skin?”

“Bella or whoever made the Artifact. Reckon the whole thing’s tied together, so when the Artifact hand’s skin gets all burnt like, the skin ring goes black as well.”

The truth hit me like the ground after a fall off a horse. “Bella knows we tampered with the Artifact. She set this man here as a trap.”

“Reckon so,” Jack said with a grimace as he sheathed his knife.

Rainbow was translating, and now Cahal barked out a question. “He wants to know why you didn’t tell him that before.”

Jack rose to his feet. “Because I didn’t know it before and I ain’t in a mood to tell you why.” He gave the Eldarion a hard stare. “Tell him the next time I say something might be a bad idea, to use his head as something better than a spot to hang his hat from and listen.”

I got to my feet as well. “I am listening. What do we do now?”

Jack made an angry gesture at Cahal. “Ask him; he’s the trail boss, even if he’s a durn fool.” Jack walked back towards the encampment as Je’kyll folded the Maya man’s arms across his chest and closed his eyes.

Hands of Shadow were developed in the Olde Norse Empire, using an extremely dark energy source associated with the old god Loki, and the knowledge used by many of its Eldarion field agents.