The Savage Realms

by Willard Black

  All around the room, grimlacs chiseled away at hard rock, unearthing more of the pulsing green crystals. A confusing tangle of passages branched off from the center chamber and a hive of man-apes grunted and huffed in their animal language. They wielded crude tools made from polished bone and sharpened stone.

  Cinder stood in an open door, high above the expansive dig, where a series of slender stone bridges crisscrossed the black pit and the laboring grimlacs. She snuffed her torch—there was enough light here by which to see—and hunkered in the doorframe, waiting and watching. After studying their movements, Cinder recognized a hierarchy among the brutes. There was a pecking order; smaller grimlacs were laborers, using hammer and chisel, hauling water and digging, while the largest grimlacs were overseers. They went about cuffing the others over the head to keep them on task.

  While she watched, one of the workers turned on his taskmaster with a hammer and was quickly beaten into bloody submission by the larger grimlac while others hooted and cheered in their brutish language.

  Occasionally an overseer would cross one of the bridges, mean little eyes casting about for trouble on the factory floor, and then disappear through one of the many doors leading away from the central chamber. Sooner or later, Cinder would have to cross and hope she could make it all the way without being seen. She pictured herself halfway across and being spotted by some studious taskmaster who happened to look up at the wrong time. Or worse, reaching the middle of the span when a grimlac decided to cross the bridge from the other side. Then what would she do? The only thing she could do; run.

  She was just screwing up her courage to make the attempt when her ears pricked up at the sound of a heavy tread behind her. Before she could react, a powerful hand clamped over her mouth, sealing off her air and cutting short a scream.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Cinder’s eyes opened wide and her heart crowded up into her throat. The beat of her pulse sounded like a hammer against her eardrums. She tried to shriek, but the calloused hand cut off her air and hauled her back from the doorway. She lashed out, flailing with her arms and legs, trying to draw her short sword, but it was too late. One powerful arm wrapped her up in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides, and then she heard a hoarse whisper in her ear.

  “Quiet woman!” Mercer hissed. “You’ll have the whole pack of ‘em after us.”

  Relief flooded through her at the sound of his voice. She stopped flailing and her hand relaxed on her sword grip. Her heart sank back down into her chest where it belonged, but it went on slamming against her ribcage.

  Mercer relaxed his grip and Cinder turned to face him.

  “Merc.” She wrapped her arms around him and planted a kiss on his stubbly cheek. “Thank God you’re alive.”

  “We’ve been tracking you for miles,” he told her.

  “We?” Cinder looked over his shoulder in time to see Trix and Drake appear out of the darkness. A crooked grin turned up one side of Drake’s lined face. Trix wore a much different expression.

  Cinder let go of Mercer in a hurry and took a step back.

  “We thought you’d been crushed,” Mercer said. “But Drake picked up your trail once we had escaped the pillar room. We’ve been following you ever since.”

  “It wasn’t easy, let me tell you,” said Drake. “I think we must have passed you a few times in the dark. Or you were going in circles.”

  “I had to backtrack several times,” Cinder explained.

  Mercer looked past her to the expansive quarry crawling with grimlacs. “We’ll have to backtrack again. We can’t get out this way.”

  “This is the only way,” Cinder told them.

  “How do you know that?” Trix asked. She stood with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side. Her mouth was turned down in a frown.

  “I found a map,” Cinder explained. “There was a group of dead adventurers not far after the pillar room. One of them was mapping Eternal Night before he died. I’ve been following it ever since.”

  “You found Scribe’s map?” Mercer asked.

  “How did you know his name?” Cinder said.

  “Scribe was a legend in the Realms,” Mercer said. “Most of the maps we have are because of him. He was a cartologist in the Real. The Realms was his retirement. He claimed he had made a rough sketch of Eternal Night, but his whole crew got killed before they could get out again. That was the last attempt he ever made.”

  “What happened to him?” Cinder asked.

  “Died,” Mercer said. “In the Real, I mean. Old age.”

  “I heard it was liver failure,” Drake said and mimicked taking a swig.

  “Yeah, well, he did make a map,” Cinder said. She pulled out the folded parchment as evidence. “It’s got directions, notes, locations of water, everything.”

  Trix stuck out her hand and said, “Rubies.”

  Cinder frowned in question. “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” Trix said. “Scribe said he and his crew found a dozen or more rubies before they died. If you found his map, then you found his stash as well. I want a share of the rubies.”

  Cinder bristled. “You weren’t with me when I found them. Wasn’t that the deal? Anybody who falls behind loses out on their share of the treasure?”

  “That was for the ten million,” Trix objected. “In dungeons, we split equally.”

  Mercer gave Trix a hard look. “We weren’t with her when she found it.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Trix said. “We’ve always split loot equally.”

  Even Drake said, “Trix. Come on . . .”

  But Trix held out her hand and said, “One ruby.”

  Cinder stood there a moment. She considered refusing, but she didn’t want to have a fight with Trix within earshot of a pack of bloodthirsty grimlacs. She dug in her pack, pulled out three rubies, and passed one to each of them. “Happy?”

  “Thank you,” Trix said in a voice as cold as the stone beneath their feet.

  Mercer refused his with a shake of his head. “I didn’t earn it.”

  Drake took the broken spear shaft from Cinder and wedged his ruby into the splintered end. He muttered a spell, breathed on the stone, and it gave a faint pulse—like a beating heart—before fading back to darkness. Drake then handed the shaft back to her. “You were going to use it as a focus, right?”

  “That was the plan,” she said. “But I didn’t want to try it and cook my noodle.”

  “Probably good you didn’t,” Drake told her. “If we make it out of here, I’ll show you how to control it.”

  “What is the plan?” Mercer asked. “Cross the bridge?”

  Cinder handed him the map. “This is the only way out. This chamber is the halfway point. All roads lead to Rome, as it were. If we want to reach the north, we have to go through. And judging by the map, this bridge is our best bet. Once we reach the other side, it’s almost a straight shot to the next watering hole and then out.”

  Mercer studied the map. Trix and Drake crowded around him, peering over his shoulders. His brow bunched and his mouth turned down while he traced the lines on the parchment. At last he nodded. “You’re right. This path is probably our best shot at making it out of here undetected.”

  Drake pointed to the chamber on the map. “Beholder.”

  Mercer let out a groan.

  “I saw that,” Cinder said. “I thought it might be Bug Holder. What’s a beholder?”

  “Something we’d best avoid,” Trix said.

  Drake said, “An insanely strong, magical beast that can rip our skins off with the power of its mind.”

  “We don’t know that,” Mercer said.

  “That’s what happens in the books,” Drake pointed out.

  “What books?” Cinder asked.

  “Willard Black,” Drake told her. “You’ve never read him? The Savage Realms are based on his books. Savage Tales of the Asher Sukkal? Savage Wars? Savage Maidens of the Deep?”

  She shook her head. “Kind
of a one-trick pony with the titles.”

  Mercer said, “Never mind all that. If there’s a beholder, we’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

  He handed the map back. “You did good, kid.”

  A smile broke over her face. She folded the map and stuffed it down the front of her leather armor. “Now all we have to do is get across without being seen.”

  “Yeah,” said Trix, and she drew the word out. They all turned to gaze at the slender stone arch spanning the vaulted chamber.

  “Drake,” said Mercer. “Anything you can do?”

  “With a beholder in the area?” He gave his head a firm shake. “The simplest spell might bring the thing down on us. Even something as innocent as light would announce our presence. We’re lucky I didn’t attract attention by activating that ruby.”

  Mercer blew out his cheeks with a sigh. “Okay then, no time like the present.”

  With his axe in hand, he went to the door and looked out over the grimlac mining operation before stealing out onto the narrow span. Cinder went next, staying close to Mercer. Trix came behind her, and Drake brought up the rear. They walked quickly and quietly across the stone arch. There was a dizzying drop on either side. A fall from this height would end with a nasty splat. The grimlacs wouldn’t even have the pleasure of mutilating the corpse.

  Cinder focused on the far door and refused to look down. They had made it halfway across and were right in the center of the span when grimlac overseer on a lower level looked up. His beady little eyes locked onto them and he let out an outraged snort, like the high-pitched shriek of a hog.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Mercer felt his guts turn to ice water. He was running, pumping his muscular limbs for more speed, before the grimlac’s snort even faded away. He heard Cinder close on his tail. Trix brought up the rear, urging Drake to move faster.

  All around the quarry, grimlacs were looking up and belching out indignant squeals of protest. The foremen quickly organized the workers. Knots of enraged grimlacs, wielding clubs, hurried toward the nearest openings in an effort to cut off their escape. They knew these tunnels, and their underdeveloped eyes allowed them to see in the dark. Mercer gripped his axe in one hand and pulled his sword with the other, knowing they would meet a pack of the brutes on the other side of the bridge.

  One of the grimlac overseers on a bridge overhead leapt down with a high-pitched snort. Mercer saw him and swung his axe to meet the grimlac foreman as he landed. The blunt side of Mercer’s axe blade cracked the foreman in the skull, knocked him off balance, and he went tumbling to the ground below.

  The miners raised an unholy din which echoed off the stone walls and bounced around the chamber. Mercer realized they were no longer shouting in rage at the interlopers, they were chanting in their barbaric language. It sounded like Gah-gak-lak! Gah-gak-lak! Their guttural chants filled the chamber like the half-mad cries of some lunatic cult and made Mercer run that much faster.

  Behind him, Drake gave a shout. “Holy crap! They’ve summoned the beholder.”

  Mercer glanced down long enough to see the grim form of the beast rising up from the black chasm in the center of the floor. Dozens of long alien stalks tipped with blinking eyes protruded from the monster’s bulbous body. One of those swaying tendrils swiveled in Mercer’s direction, and a cold blue alien eye locked onto him. He could see unreasoning hatred in that eye. He heard a mind-shattering scream that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere; it felt like thousands of razor blades ripping at his mind. He stumbled and nearly fell, fighting to keep his balance atop the narrow footbridge. The far door was in sight, close at hand. If he could only make it.

  Cinder let out a terrible shriek that trailed off into a raw gurgling sound filled with agony. Trix was laughing hysterically and Drake was too stunned for speech. His eyes rolled in their sockets and his mouth worked soundlessly.

  The beholder continued to rise up from the pit and now one large center eye was visible. Beneath the center eye, a gapping maw full of razor-sharp teeth opened and closed. Grimlac fled in terror from the floating orb with its many eyes. Several of the pale-skinned brutes threw themselves into the bottomless chasm with loud shrieks that trailed off as they disappeared into the blackness, living sacrifices to their dark god.

  Cinder’s head thrashed from side to side, whipping her hair about, and she clawed at her arms. She would have blundered right over the edge of the bridge, but Mercer let go of his sword, hooked an arm around her narrow waist, and hoisted the screaming girl onto his shoulder. His long sword clattered over the bridge and fell. His mind was still in exquisite pain as countless invisible razor blades attacked his brain. Putting one foot in front of the other took tremendous concentration, but he pushed himself to keep moving and finally made the safety of the open door.

  As he passed from the central chamber and out of sight of the beholder, the pain vanished. His muscles relaxed, and he nearly dropped Cinder. He hitched a deep breath, staggered, and let it out in a long sigh. Cinder stopped struggling and her shrieks cut off. Trix passed the doorframe and her laughter died away. Drake bolted through right behind her, nearly bowling her over in the process, and passed Mercer before the effects wore off. He slowed, blinked, looked around, and said, “It was only an illusion.”

  Mercer put Cinder back on her feet. “You okay?”

  She looked at her arms and hands, like she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. “My skin . . .” she said. “It ripped off my skin . . .”

  “It was only in your mind,” Mercer told her. “Get a hold of yourself. You’re fine. The beholder’s power is only an illusion.”

  She swallowed, touched her face with trembling hands, and said, “Only an illusion.”

  Mercer nodded.

  Trix put her back to the wall and breathed deep. “I thought I was going insane.”

  They stood there, trembling and covered in sweat. Trix was white as a sheet and Drake groped the wall for support. Mercer felt like his knees would buckle. Cinder looked like she might vomit.

  “We need to get out of here.” Drake passed a hand over his face. “We need to get out of here before it catches up. Bloody thing nearly unhinged me.”

  “What did you see?” Cinder asked.

  “Never mind that,” said Mercer. “Let’s get moving.”

  They sprinted along a straight corridor toward an intersection.

  “Which way?” Mercer shouted.

  “Left,” Cinder said.

  They started around the corner and drew up short at the heavy tread of grimlacs getting closer, closing in from the other direction. Without a word, they turned and fled down the right-hand passageway, up a flight of stairs, and then along another broad stone hall with doors that opened on either side.

  “Which way?” Mercer asked.

  Drake had to kindle his light and Cinder pulled out the map, unfolding the brittle parchment as she ran. Mercer and Trix were in front now, going slow so the others could keep pace.

  A half dozen grimlac poured from a doorway on their right. The pale-skinned brutes snorted and swung crudely crafted hammers with terrific force. Mercer ducked a blow aimed at his head and opened the beast’s belly with a well-aimed swipe of his axe. Ropes of sticky entrails poured out onto the ground with a wet plop, and the grimlac fell back in horror, trying to hold his guts in.

  Trix, moving with all the grace and speed of a jungle cat, sliced the hand off one grimlac and kneecapped another. They worked together to hold off the other three. It was a furious exchange of blows. Mercer’s axe turned the most dangerous attacks with a ring of steel, and Trix moved around their clumsy assaults, jabbing with her curved swords.

  “Get clear,” Drake croaked.

  Mercer and Trix leapt aside as Drake unleashed a powerful blast that knocked the remaining grimlacs flat. One of the brutes slammed into a wall and split his skull open. The others were thrown down. Trix speared one while Mercer hacked the head off the other.

  They had just
dispatched that group when another knot of oinking grimlacs spilled into the passageway behind them. Mercer cursed. They turned and fled down the hall. Mercer yelled, “Which way?”

  “Um . . .” Cinder held the map up, trying to read the yellowed parchment by Drake’s light as she ran.

  “Come on,” Mercer urged.

  “Left!” she said. “Go left.”

  Mercer darted down the narrow passage and then through another arch, across a stone footbridge which passed over another bottomless chasm, and flew along a broad boulevard. The grimlacs eventually fell behind and gave up the chase, but Mercer didn’t stop running until their outraged squeals finally dwindled to silence.

  Half an hour later they were forced to stop, spread the map out on the floor, and try to make sense of where they were. They used the opportunity to relax their aching feet and drink some water. Drake passed his flask around and everyone took a hit. There was some debate about which way they had gone when they escaped from the beholder. At length, they were able to trace their progress, pinpoint their location, and plot another course to the northern exit. They were repacking their gear when Mercer tapped the map and said, “What are these numbers?”

  According to Scribe’s map, there was a chamber not far from there, with the number 25k underlined.

  Cinder shrugged. “Don’t know. I thought about checking a few of them out, but I was alone and they were too far out of the way, so I headed straight for the center chamber,” she said. “Or as straight as possible.”

  Mercer exchanged a look with Trix and Drake. They both nodded.

  “Let’s go see what there is to see,” he said. They were all thinking the same thing. Mercer sketched a quick path and announced, “Two rights and a left.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Two rights and a left in Eternal Night turned out to be over two-and-a-half hours of plodding along in the dark, avoiding sudden pitfalls and the occasional sound of grimlacs prowling the tunnels, still searching for their prey. They were all drooping with exhaustion by the time they stumbled into a long room with a low ceiling and niches cut in the walls. It reminded Cinder of the crypt where they had done battle with the skeletons. That seemed a million years ago. It had been her first real fight, not counting the hodag, in which her only part had been wild shrieks; it was also her first wound. Her hand went to her side where she still bore a nasty gash from the spearhead that nearly skewered her. It was healing up nicely and the pain was a distant memory. Far worse was the pain of being skinned alive by the beholder, but that had turned out to be only an illusion She trudged into the cramped room and cast her eyes about, wondering what new surprise Eternal Night had in store. What she saw was a heap of gold ByteCoin spilling from a ruined chest in one corner, draped with cobwebs and layered in dust.