Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

(next one this P.M. Last one Wednesday morning -A)

We found them in the dungeon – a dark, airless space dripping with water. The torch that Cumin held to light our paths was too dim for me to see the floor, but I could smell – smell – the blood on the floor around us. Hung spread-eagle against the wall were Ghyslain, Norbu, Trevor, and Rex. Their bodies slouched tracing a curve against the wall that terminated at the cruel manacles that held them up. I heard a low, incessant murmur – it was Trevor. I realized with a start that he was praying.

“God good!” said Lessig, shocked at the sorry state of the prisoners.

“Rex what the hell are you doing hanging up there are bloody and sad looking like?” spat Kathy as she moved towards him.

“Heh…” laughed Rex lowly with what appeared to be all the energy he had, “the last time you saw me you told me to drop dead.”

“Well I didn’t think you’d up and do it,” said Kathy, disgruntled, as I cut Rex and the others free of their chains with my light saber.

“Oh look at the poor cute little injured Jewish boy!” said Cumin delightedly as she took Trevor from his chains and laid him carefully on the ground.

“He’s Mennonite, not Jewish.” I corrected.

“He’s not?” asked Cumin, obviously crestfallen.

“They both wear the weirdo suits, but the Jews have the funny hair,” I said, making peyot-like corkscrew motions around my ears with my fingers.

“Well,” said Cumin, as if making her mind up about something, “he’s still very injured and very cute. How do you feel, dear?” she asked, mopping Trevor’s brow.

“They tried magic… torture… nothing worked…” he moaned feverishly.

“No wonder,” said Kathy expertly as she looked over Rex, one eyebrow cocked skeptically as if torn between helping him and kicking him in the crotch, “Mennonites have unbelievable savings throws. Magic, cold, breathweapons, you name it.”

“Breathweapons?” asked Lessig, wide-eyes.

“You see a lot of things when you’re the world’s number one operative for ballroom dance espionage. Trust me. Someone out there is looking out for them – I saw a guy named Horst take it full on from a Silver Dragon once and the only thing that was singed was his bible.”

Rex tried to say something but coughed up blood instead and his head fell back on the floor, lolling blankly to one side.

“Ah Christ Masterson,” said Kathy with an air of resignation, setting down her crowbar and putting her purse under his head, “don’t die on me, ok?”

“Ghyslain’s got almost no pulse,” said Lessig, feeling his friend’s wrist.

“We’re all going to die,” croaked Norbu.

I rushed over to his side.

“Rinpoche,” I said fiercely, “I’m not going to let that…” was about to continue but gave a yawlp of pain instead as the Saami blood magic ran through my head again. I saw red and recovered a minute later to find myself on my kneed, clutching my head.

“Anne are you all right?” asked Cinnamon concernedly.

“It… hurts…” I whimpered.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Cinnamon to Kathy.

“Well what the fuck are we going to do? We can’t leave the others in this condition!” shot back Kathy heatedly, looking up from where she was stroking Rex’s forehead.

“I’m ok,” I said, standing uneasily. I felt myself totter and reached for the wall to hold myself up.

“You’re pale as a ghost dear – we need to do something and soon. If I were in better condition…”

“You’re not going anywhere!” said Andrew, coming to her side and staring imperiously at her. He was about to touch her but she waved him away. She met his glance, wavered, and then looked down and took his hand, squeezing it.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” she confessed.

“We’re going to fix this,” I said with determination, “and you, Norbu, are going to be fine.”

Norbu laughed dryly and a thick vein of red ran from his mouth.

“We’re are all going to die. Today, tomorrow, in the future. The question is not whether we will,” he said, turning over and beginning to crawl on all fours over to Rex and Ghyslain, “but what significance our life will have, and what we will be in the next.”

He put his hands on Rex and Ghyslain’s head and looked up at me.

“The question is not whether we are attached to the things of this world, Anne Kawharu,” he mumbled weakly, echoing the words he had said to me before, “the question is how much it comes to matter to us.”

He closed his eyes, and began chanting softly. I felt a wave of something purple wash through the room, and then he collapsed.

“Norbu!” I cried, running over to him, “Norbu!”

I turned over his fallen body. He wore a small smile on his face, and he was dead.

“Norbu!” cried Trevor, stumbling over to him. He took his friend’s head in his hands and began weeping uncontrollably.

“There there,” said Cumin, coming up behind him and comforting him, “there’s nothing you can do now. There there.”

I was about to go over to her, but stopped in amazement as I watched Ghyslain’s eyes flutter open.

“Tabernac,” he swore softly before collapsing into a fit of coughing, “I don’t have very long to live, Lawrence.”

“No my valiant francophone comrade, you don’t,” said Lessig looking at us in wonder as he realized what had happened, “but longer, perhaps, than you once did.”

“Oh man,” moaned Rex with a sort of strength, “I feel like shit.”

“Rex? Rex?! Do you feel better?” exclaimed Kathy.

“A little he confessed,” smiling and taking her hand.

“Good,” she said, standing up abruptly and letting his head fall out of her lap and back onto her purse. She looked down at him, had a second thought, and snatched her purse out from under him.

“Oh! God Kathy!” swore Rex as his head hit the hard stone.

“You bled all over my new purse Rex,” said Kathy, chastising him, “this is Prada! Do you know much this sort of thing costs?”

“Well it looks like you’re back to normal too,” said Rex, standing up slowly. He made it to his feet and then began to fall. I caught him.

“Well it looks like there’s someone I can depend on,” he said, smiling at me weakly as I held him.

“Hmph.” hmph’d Kathy, crossing her arms and looking away sulkily.

* * *

“We should have kept Baklava with us,” said Cinnamon, worried, as we walked down the hall, “how will we find Elvira now?”

“Oh we’ll find her,” I said, turning left at a t-intersection, “I know exactly where that bitch is.”

“Language!” warned Rex from my arms.

“Let me handle this, Rex,” I said, surprised at the command in my voice as I made another turn. We had come to a huge wooden door with an impressively thick lock on it.

“Oh boo hoo,” I said grimly, making my light saber live, “looks like it’s locked.”

I slashed an X through the door with my blade and then held out my arm. I narrowed my eyes, concentrated, and the door flew inward in a massive explosion of splinters.

“Mon dieu,” said Ghyslain, who was limping along with Lessig’s help, “how did you teach a Padwan to force-push like that?”

“I didn’t,” said Rex, slightly amazed, gazing up at me.

I strode through the door. Inside it was like a Marilyn Manson video, all candelabras, inky darkness, and gauzy curtains. Elvira was sitting at her desk, without her antler-helmet this time, poring over an enormous book. She turned in surprise and looked at me.

“YOU!” I said, handing Rex to Andrew and walking towards her. She stood up in surprise. As soon as I reached her I slapped her with the back of my hand so hard that she went sprawling.

“You killed Norbu!” I said, grabbing her by her neck and arms and throwing her across the room. She slammed into the wall so hard that dust fell from the ceiling.

“You hurt my friends!” I grabbed her by her hair and tossed her to the floor. She skidded to a stop about three feet away from me.

“My hurt my teacher! My best friend! The man I look up to like a father! And you nearly. Killed. ME!” I grunted, grabbing her and tossing her away as she inched, wounded, back towards her book.

“Anne…” said Rex in a low, warningly voice.

“And I’m not going to let it happen ever again.” said, taking the book from its stand and tearing it in half.

The room shuddered and moaned as a crackle of black-blue lightning sizzled around the book before dissipating around the room. The pain I had been fighting to keep in the back of my head was gone. I glanced at Rex and the others. Cinnamon took his head in one hand and stared into his eyes. With her other hand she felt his pulse with two fingers, like Chinese doctors do.

“It’s better,” said Cinnamon, “but they’re still weak – they’ll need days to recover their strength.”

Elvira had hunched herself up against a wall. One arm hung useless at her side, a bit of bone poking up through a vicious tear at her shoulder. Dazed, she reached up with the other and felt the blood flowing from her jaw. She pulled her hand away and looked at it.

“Bleeding?” I said, mocking her cruelly, “how does it feel?”

“Anne!” said Rex, “don’t. Don’t get angry. Don’t do this, Anne. Don’t do it.”

“Shut up!” I spat back at him, “I’m tired of your complaining. I just saved your life – don’t you dare tell me how to live mine!”

Elvira looked up at me and smiled twistedly.

“You are pathetic,” she said in an uneven, deeply accented voice, “you use anger like a virgin uses a man. If I had your skills you all would have been dead the moment I first met you. You may have taken my book, but there’s still one last thing I can do to you…”

She began chanting gutturally. Even from across the room, I could feel her throat in my hands. I turned to look at them, already closing into a grasping half-fist, bent at two digits. I felt her windpipe, felt the cartilage giving in softly in my grasp, amazed at my own power. I slowly raised my outstretched arm up. Across the room I saw her stop chanting abruptly and begin scrabbling madly at her throat. Drawn by my power her body, puppet-like, began lifting up against the wall as if lifted by some invisible force. I exulted to know it was my own.

“Anne,” I heard Rex’s voice in my ear, and felt his hand on my shoulder, “Anne – don’t.”

Then I snapped out of it. Elvira dropped to the ground like a rag doll. I began crying, sobbing, and now it was Rex’s turn to hold me in his arms. And that was the closest I’ve come, back then and even now all these years later, to ever going over to the dark side.

“You’ve broken my body,” I heard Elvira say from behind me, “you’ve destroyed my power. But there is one curse you can never avoid, never escape. I swear, Anne Kawharu, that you will die – and soon. This is my death wish.”

She closed her eyes and finished the final lines of her incantation. As she let loose a wild howl a massive bolt of energy leapt out of her and enveloped my body. For a moment I was wracked with an all-enveloping pain more intense than any I had ever experienced in my life. Her body collapsed, limp and dead, against a wall.

“Anne, how do you feel?”

I couldn’t even hear her, the pain was so intense.

“Anne?”

Slowly I reached into myself and pushed it down as far as I could. My bones still ached with whatever she had done to me.

Then the room shook. At first I thought it was me, but I saw the others looking too.

“What was that?” asked Lessig, eyeing the ceiling dubiously.

“Whatever it is, we’ve got to get out of here,” said Kathy firmly.

“No,” I said with certainty, “it’s the pool. It’s coming. Epps and D’Alogna… they’re summoning it. We’ve got to find it. Except,” I said, weakly, “I can’t walk on my own.”