Stones rattled in the passageway ahead.  Djaren made a sign, and the children stopped, listening.

            “Professor?” Djaren called.

            “We have the man you call,” an accented voice came from out of the shadows ahead.  A robed man came around the corner.  Four more men with torches followed him, holding the Professor, who was bound and looked a little the worse for wear.  His face was bruised, and blood trickled down from a shallow cut on his temple.  He looked at them eagerly.  “Thank the One, you’re all right,” he breathed.  One of the robed men struck him.  Djaren cried out in protest.

            “We have orders,” the foremost of the robed men spoke.  “If the master rises, we follow his words.  If the master does not rise, we slay this man, and take two of you to the holy temple.  The rest we slay.”

            Kara reached into a pocket and pulled out the dagger she’d picked up in the tomb.  “I can give orders too,” she said.  “I say we lay out a bunch of idiot cultists who lack the sense to think for themselves.”

            “Yes, Ma’am,” Tam said grimly.

            Djaren had kept his bronze sword with him, Jon noted.  Tam pushed Jon behind him and Djaren did the same with a protesting Ellea.  Anna stood beside Kara and gripped her belt knife.

            There was a sound behind them.  Jon and Ellea heard it first, then Djaren and Kara.  They turned slowly to look back into the passage.

            “That can’t be right,” Tam muttered, looking where the others were looking.

            Lurching slowly into the torchlight came the rotting man.  He was dragging one twisted arm behind him, and half his skull was shattered.  His left leg bent oddly beneath him as he staggered forward, one unnatural step after another.

            The children backed away, to find themselves surrounded again. 

            The Professor stared at the rotting man in some surprise.  “What is that?”

            “We’d hoped you would know, sir,” Djaren said, edging further away from it.

            “I’ve never,” the Professor began.

            “Met me?” the corpse said.  Its jaw didn’t seem to be working properly, and its cracked skull was twisted sideways, but its speech was still understandable.  “How soon children forget.”

            The Professor’s brow creased.  “No,” he said softly.

            There was a sharp, high cracking sound and the corpse-creatures “good” arm was blasted away. 

            All eyes went to the ledge overlooking the corridor.  Hellin Blackfeather stood there, face lit in torchlight, form outlined by a sky full of bright desert stars, her copper hair flying loose about her and her pistol leveled now at the rotting man’s head.  

          “Ma’am!” Tam cried.  “Where’s the Doctor?”

            “Close,” Hellin said.  “Are you all well?”

            Jon could see Doctor Blackfeather.  He stood beside his wife, his huge black wings outstretched about her, forming even as Jon watched from the darkness of the spaces between stars, and the long shadows cast by torches.  He wore armor of obsidian scales and held in one hand a strange sword of black nothingness that flickered and writhed like a flame.

            Kara’s open-mouthed stare informed Jon that she could see him too.

            “Yes, Lady Blackfeather,” Jon answered.  “We are now.”

            “Corin,” the rotting man croaked. “Hellin, how nice to see you.  I’ve so often wanted to visit.  You do realize, Hellin, that your pistol is useless.  This is not my real body.”

            “If it was, I’d say you were in a sorry state indeed.  Who did you steal that from?”  Hellin asked coldly.  Her pistol hand did not change its aim.

            “Does it matter?” the corpse cackled.  “Do you remember, Corin lad, that it was nearly you, eighteen years ago?  That would have been interesting.”  The rotting man looked right at the Doctor; he could see him too, though evidently the other robed men could not.

            “And do you remember what we did to you, eighteen years ago?” Hellin asked.

            “Every day,” the rotting man said, spitting teeth. “Every hour.  And I have come to exact my vengeance.”

            “And I thought you’d never get to the point,” Hellin sighed.

            “Always remember,” the rotting man hissed, “it was you who stole something from me first.”  He turned and looked at the Professor, who looked too stunned even to struggle against his captors.  “You’ve eluded me for quite some time.  He always found a way to hide you from me.  You must remember me.  It has been some time, but years are the blink of an eye for your kind.  Do you still have nightmares?  Have you ever remembered your name?  Or is that why you dig in graves, trying to find the people who forgot you, who abandoned you to me?”

            The Professor was very pale.  His scars stood out across his skin.  “I have blocked you from my memories,” he whispered.  “I have forgotten you, and will forget you.  You have no power over me.”

            “But we both know that’s not true.”  The rotting man grinned.  “What is your name, Eabrey?  What is your real name?”

            One of the robed men pushed Eabrey away to join the children, and began to level a rifle at him.  Hellin shot the man, with a crackling copper flash, but another man raised his rifle in turn and trained it on the Professor.

            “Answer,” the corpse man said, grinning.

            The Professor swallowed.  “I don’t know.”

            The corpse grinned wider.  “Because it is in my keeping.  As are your children, Hellin,” he said, looking up again at Hellin.  He frowned, suddenly.  Jon saw why.  Doctor Blackfeather was no longer on the ledge.  He was nowhere to be seen.

            “Kill the scarred one now!” the corpse ordered.  “At once!”

            The Professor flinched.  Jon grabbed his hand in both his own, wishing Doctor Blackfeather would act fast, wishing for a miracle.  The tingle in his hand became a rush as something pulsed all through his arm, through his palm, and the Professor gripped his hand more tightly.  Jon could not close his eyes, though he wanted to, as the robed figures all raised rifles to point at the Professor.   Jon felt something odd, and saw a metallic gleam moving out of the corner of his eye.  A sheet of liquid silver flowed up across the Professor’s chest from their joined hands, as the first rifles barked. 

            Hellin was already firing her pistol at the rotting man.  He fell to the ground but was still moving. 

            Something dark and shadowy was moving among the robed man, wielding a black flame like a weapon.  Even as the rifles fired, they were sheared in the wake of the fury of Doctor Blackfeather.  His eyes burned an unearthly glowing green, and his hair and robes billowed about him in an unseen, unfelt wind.  Form after form was cast either into the walls, or up and out of the excavated trench altogether, thrown like straw dolls. 

            Bullets struck and bounced off the silver armor that covered the shocked-looking Professor.   John found his own arm covered in the silver as well.  It was cool, and molded to his shape.

            The rotting man had taken cover behind the children, and Hellin was maneuvering for a clear shot at him.  Kara dashed up to stab him, but before she could, his remaining broken limp arm twisted suddenly round and grabbed Djaren.  Kara stopped, staring horrified first at Djaren’s face, and then at the rotting man. 

            “Wait,” the rotting man said to her, in what was almost a whisper, “I don’t have much time left.  Listen!”

            Kara stood very still, furious.  Djaren met her eyes.  His hand, still holding a bronze sword, moved a little.  Kara saw.  The rotting man didn’t.  He spoke quickly, impeded by his broken jaw.  “I will find you.  I will restore to you all that was stolen from you. I will give you back your destiny.  You are meant to be so much more than this, Kara.”

            Kara threw her dagger at the same time as Djaren stabbed the man and Hellin got her shot at last.  Bits of rotting man covered both Djaren and Kara.  They stared at each other.

            There were quite suddenly no enemies left to fight.

            Jon, gripping the Professor’s hand hard, looked up at him.  The Professor was staring with wonder at his chest.  A sheet of liquid silver armor covered the front of his body.  A number of bullets were scattered at his feet.  Jon began to release his hand, and the silver melted away.  When Jon lifted his palm to examine it, the emblem there was very bright.

            “What got the others?” Tam asked, looking up and down the corridor in confusion.

            Doctor Blackfeather, wingless, unarmored, and almost ordinary, walked over the unconscious bodies.  “The ones who did not flee, fell,” he said.  “It’s over now.”

©2007 Ruth Lampi