Fortress of Lost Worlds Read Online Free Page B

walls, their subjects unpleasant enough that Gonji turned from them quickly and, setting his jaw and concentrating on calming his fears, turned back again. Certain now that no escape lay in that direction.
    The savage chanting echoed in the depths of the mountain as they searched for the exit. Gonji kept the Sagami fisted at his side as he peered into one chamber after another, awaiting the framing of each slowly dawning vision in the indifferent light of the magic stones. Blade clenched in two-handed middle guard, he anticipated in each murky glow the attack of some coil-sprung horror. Now and again Tora would stamp back so fretfully from a cavern entrance that the samurai would back away from that haunted cell, sword at the ready, until another would threaten with its imminent adit.
    He at last happened on a chamber whose contoured arch seemed familiar. Furthermore, a wash of frigid air pulsed from the cave—by now a welcome sensation; the bite of the merciless winter wind was much preferred to this nefarious place. But when he stepped into the archway, there issued no nascent sparkle, no hint of magic from the ensorceled stones. Only a peculiar odor coming in wisps that the cold air sought to deaden.
    Gonji selected a stone about a span in diameter that glowed magenta in his gloved hands. He beat one side of it against a wall until it blazed like the August sun, and he could no longer hold even its farther side. This he tossed into the freezing antechamber.
    Even in the bounding, strobing light, the shock of what he saw set his hair to bristling. Carcasses hung in the deathly air of the cave. Animals and men. Streaked with the reflected colors of frost and blood. Suspended upside down to swing gently in the air currents. Some whole, some sectioned. Preserved or curing for obvious future use.
    The samurai grimaced, his fingers working over the hilt of the Sagami. A naked man hung nearest him, arms reaching limply for the floor, face set in a rigid distortion by gravity and dishonorable death.
    Gonji’s breath came in gasps of frustrated anger as he yanked Tora around and hurried back the way they had come. He moved too swiftly for the rock glow to keep pace, relying now on faulty memory of their steps, pausing scant seconds when he became too disoriented, the chanting welling up through the foreboding mountain tunnels.
    He found the stream again and used its splash to set his course, eschewing caution for speed. He felt certain that he must turn off to the left at some point. But where?
    After a tortured few moments of plunging through the threatening darkness, he paused and cast about helplessly, straddling the stream gully, allowing the stones to ignite, illuminating the tunnel and drying his wet boots. He regulated his breathing while he calmed Tora with a reassuring hand. Was it his imagination or was the chanting growing louder? Nearer. It was insistent in its pulsating rhythm. Now Gonji fancied that he could discern syllables: huk-huk—huk-huk— Throaty and militant. A chant suitable for the breaking of backs and skulls.
    There issued from a cavern farther ahead a soft, shadow-dappled archway flicker. The telltale sign of habitation. It waxed and waned tauntingly, sunset red to burning rust.
    Gonji gritted his teeth and let go the reins. He could not resist a look at the enemy, for surely it must lie in wait beyond that arch.
    Huk-huk—huk-huk —
    He scampered in a crouch toward the cave, blade at the ready. Negotiated the head-high slope to peer warily within.
    Nothing moved inside. The outre glow emanated from piled glowstones heaped into four mounds. A branching of the stream—or perhaps another stream altogether—formed a serene raised pool near the cavern’s center. The gnarled branches of a tree—a larger version of the one he’d partaken of—veined the air above the pool. On it the berries grew to palm-sized bulbs resembling tomatoes. Sustenance for a long, cold ride.
    Gonji scurried into the cavern