by Jen Williams
Tor unsheathed his sword. ‘I can hide very little from you these days. Would that be so terrible? I am dying anyway.’
‘You are a fool.’
‘Come on, old friend,’ Tor leaned back in the harness, bracing for the jump, ‘Vintage will be waiting.’
The powerful muscles bunched and they sprang outward into the gloom, landing in the midst of the crawling horrors, scattering enough to briefly create a free space around them. Tor grinned and waved his sword.
‘Come and face your doom, you ugly worm bastards!’ His shout echoed around the cavern, fluttering against the walls and bouncing back like a frightened bird, but something about it made him grin all the wider. Here we are, in your secret den, he thought. Crawling right up your arsehole.
Slumped on the floor of the chamber, Bern rolled to a stop, his cheek pressed to the slightly porous floor. For a time he knew nothing but a swarming darkness behind his eyes – the Jure’lia were so loud and close, he could almost believe he was one of them – and then he snapped back to consciousness with the realisation that he couldn’t breathe. He gasped, trying to get some air back into his lungs, but the muscles across his chest wouldn’t obey him. Instead he thrashed on the floor, fingernails tearing at the soft material beneath.
‘You gasp like a fish.’ Celaphon was watching him again, his huge malformed head hanging above him like a dark cloud.
In desperation, Bern tried to roll away. Bright bands of white pain were circling his chest and arms, and more than anything he didn’t want to be looking at Celaphon when he died. A thin trickle of air wheezed into his throat, but it wasn’t enough.
‘You are dying,’ said Celaphon.
Bern squeezed his eyes shut, trying to summon an image of Aldasair, or even his parents, but his body betrayed him, bringing forth only the roar of the worm people, deafening and inhuman. I’m going to die, and that’s where I’ll be stuck forever, he thought in between gasps. I’ll be a tiny strand in their giant, diseased web.
Dimly, he was aware that Celaphon was still talking, although he could make no sense of it, and then he felt his arm being lifted by something wet. There was a sense of pressure, and abruptly the pain in his chest was dwarfed by a crushing sensation at his wrist. He could breathe again, taking great gulps of air into his lungs only to scream it back out again as a pain unlike anything he had ever felt travelled up his arm. Through eyes streaming with water he saw the dragon Celaphon with the end of his arm in his mouth; saw his own blood streaming between the dragon’s teeth as he patiently chewed his hand off. There was a terrible wet crunching that seemed to travel through his body in a wave, and then his arm dropped away. Where his hand had been with its jagged blue crystal was a ragged stump, pumping bright arcs of arterial blood onto the floor.
In the next moment, the pain was replaced with something else: sweet, blessed silence. For the first time since the queen had forcibly joined him to the Jure’lia, his mind was quiet, safe – clean. And more so, he could fully feel his connection to the war-beasts again, and through them, to Aldasair.
‘You are free now,’ said Celaphon. The dragon threw his head back, and in a motion like that of a greedy seabird, swallowed down the remains of Bern’s hand.
‘Free,’ croaked Bern. Already, the floor around him was covered in a crimson slick of blood, and his vision was dimming at the edges. He felt unutterably tired, and the heaviness that crowded his brow, closing his eyes, promised the longest possible sleep. Aldasair came into his mind, and Sharrik, as they had been when he had first seen them: Aldasair a lost figure in a crowd, looking for all the world like a painting come to life; and Sharrik as he tore himself free of the silvery pod, covered in sap and already fierce, his blue feathers the brightest thing Bern had ever seen. ‘That will do . . .’
‘What have you done?’
The queen swept into the room on strings of fluid, and the brief glimpse Bern got of her mask-face was unsettling – he wasn’t sure he had ever seen her so obviously angry before. It didn’t matter. He turned away from her, feeling cold, and waited for the darkness to become complete. Celaphon stepped around him, snorting and stamping.
‘You do not command me,’ the dragon said, an odd hint of triumph in his voice. ‘Hestillion might, but she is not here.’
‘I need this creature alive!’
‘You are killing him anyway,’ Celaphon pointed out, quite reasonably, to Bern’s mind, and then slim feelers of black fluid were curling around his body. He no longer had the energy to move against them, but when they flowed over the ragged stump where his hand had been, he gave a low, disgusted cry. There was heat, and a strangely lively sensation, as though a thousand tiny fish were biting at his skin.
‘If he dies, Celaphon of the corpse moon, we will tear your skin from you and use it . . .’ The queen stopped, her attention elsewhere. Bern shifted in the puddle of his own blood, trying to see what she was doing, but she had moved away from both him and Celaphon, and then without a word she vanished back through the wall.
The burning pain in his chest and arms was back, but Tor barely felt it as the Jure’lia swarms fell back before him. Kirune leapt from patch to patch, tearing anything that got too close to pieces, while Tor dragged his sword through the bodies of anything tall enough for him to reach from the big cat’s back. There were things here he had never seen before, shambling beetle creatures that walked on two spindly legs, pulsating worm-things, segmented and grub-yellow, that tried to curl around Kirune’s paws. Tor laughed at them and slaughtered them all, his sword growing thick and heavy with ichor.
‘How much longer must we do this for?’ growled Kirune.
‘Listen out for it,’ said Tor between gritted teeth. ‘We’ll soon know when Vintage has started causing trouble.’
The horde was growing every moment, even as they stood on the bodies of those minions they had already killed, and it was evident to Tor that eventually they must be overwhelmed. The thought of that was thrilling somehow, it was right. It was as it should be. All except for one thing.
‘Listen Kirune, when I tell you to, you must go and help Vintage.’ He kept his voice level, casual almost, even as he paused to drag his sword across the throat of a lumbering maggot-man. ‘Once they’ve exposed themselves, I’ve no doubt that the Jure’lia will be after them too, and if they don’t make it out, all of this will have been a waste.’
‘You speak to me as if I am an idiot,’ snapped Kirune. They leapt over a crowd of spider-mothers and then span around to cut their legs out from under them. ‘Like I cannot tell what you mean to do.’
‘It’s just what has to happen, Kirune.’ Tor thought of Egron, wasting away in his suite in the Eboran palace, diseased blood oozing from his wounds as he coughed away his life. That, or a warrior’s death, his sword in his hand and defiance on his lips. There was little contest. ‘They will need your help, and I will need to stay here. We’ve only got a short—’
The cavern filled with white light, and there was sound a little like an enormous cough. Half a second later and the light grew so bright that Tor had to hold his arm up to shield his eyes.
‘I’ll give you two guesses what that was.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Together Vintage and the fell-witches had flown to the very back of the egg chamber; it had taken a worryingly long time to do so. Finally, it was possible to see the craggy surface of the interior wall, pocked with strange fungus and a few outcrops of the straggling fronds with their soft, eerie lights. Below them, the eggs seemed to steam slightly, their slimy casings glistening unpleasantly.
‘We should space out, in a line,’ called Vintage. She was no longer concerned about alerting the worm people; it was clear from the racket Tor was causing that their attentions were currently elsewhere, and the eggs themselves did not seem to be sentient. ‘Those of you unfamiliar with this, be careful not to take too much life energy from your mounts. An unconscious bat is going to land you right in the shitter. Then, ladies, you should direct your
winnowfire downwards, whilst moving back towards the entrance. Helcate and I will do what we can with his acid spit. Does that make sense?’
Chenlo nodded tersely. ‘We shall have to be cautious, at least to begin with.’
‘Very wise. Chenlo, I shall leave you to direct, in that case.’
The woman nodded. Too late, Vintage noticed she had changed into the red silk shirt Vintage had bought her in Jarlsbad. When had she taken the time to change into that, and why? Forcing such irrelevant questions to the back of her mind, Vintage turned Helcate away from the back wall, and waited. The fell-witches flew out, spacing themselves along the length of the wall, becoming tiny moth-like shapes in the greenish gloom.
‘My darling, there’s every chance we will have to get out of here very fucking quickly,’ she murmured into the war-beast’s ear. ‘I shall trust you to get us to safety.’
‘Helcate,’ agreed Helcate.
‘Are we ready?’ called Chenlo. There was a chorus of affirmatives, some more enthusiastic than others, and she raised her hand, which was doused in a guttering flame. ‘Fire!’
The stream of her winnowfire shot down into the dark, followed by the streams of the other fell-witches. Just as it had been in Jarlsbad, the heartbright-enhanced fire was strange and unstable, more black than green and fizzing with embers that poured in all directions, yet Vintage could see immediately that it was working; the greenish moon-metal casings of the eggs blistered and broke apart, spurting a greyish substance that burst into yellow, oily flames.
‘That’s it!’
The fell-witches moved back, bats’ wings beating so quickly they were blurs, and the next row of eggs went up. Beneath her, eager to join in, Helcate hiccupped a long stream of clear acid, which spattered all over the nearest eggs. The effect wasn’t as impressive as the winnowfire, but she saw the casings turn black and buckle, almost appearing to wilt. Quickly, huge gouts of a foul-smelling smoke began to unfurl towards the ceiling, and Vintage could see that the super-heated contents of the burning eggs was even causing the black fluid to boil. She leaned down, trying to get a closer look, and her mouth turned down at the corners. The things were bursting into flame faster and faster, catching each other alight before the fell-witches had even got to them. The conflagration below them roared higher and higher, yellowish flames licking at the walls.
‘The bastard stuff is too flammable. It’s going to overwhelm us before we get back to the entrance.’ She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Chenlo!’
But the Winnowry agent had already figured it out, and was shouting at the fell-witches to get away. Abruptly, several of the eggs below them exploded from the heat, sending gouts of boiling liquid up towards the ceiling. Several women screamed as they came very close to being knocked out of the air, and below them the fire raced.
‘Shit! Shit shit shit.’
As one they flew for the far side of the cavern, lungs now itchy with the foul smoke, but the eggs were exploding one after another, so quickly they made Vintage think of the little red strips of popping crackers her family had bought on festival days. Pop, pop, pop.
‘As fast as you can!’ she called, urging Helcate forward. Boiling fluid filled the air around them, haloed with flame, and one of the women was caught by it. Vintage saw the splash of light to her left, and then the fell-witch was gone and the bat was on fire, shrieking and flying blindly up into the roof. Vintage cried out wordlessly, and saw Chenlo swoop to catch the woman, but it was too late. The fell-witch was lost in the steaming fire and fluid below.
‘Sarn’s bloody bones curse us all. Chenlo, get away from there!’
The Winnowry agent swooped back up just slightly too late. Another explosion caught her, searing her bat with fire and nearly knocking her from its back. Helcate surged forward, his narrow snout pointed like an arrow, and as they reached the bat – collided with it, more truthfully – Vintage yanked the woman from her harness and bundled her onto Helcate. The little war-beast dipped once, but with a few powerful beats from his leathery wings was back on course.
‘I couldn’t save her.’ Chenlo looked deathly pale under the soot smudging her face. ‘Vintage, I saw her burn, I saw her . . .’
‘There was nothing you could do. Hold on!’
The entrance to the egg chamber was in sight, although the roaring wall of fire that came on behind them threatened to beat them to it.
‘What the fuck is that?’
The cry came from one of the Winnowry agents, and it took a moment for Vintage to realise what she was talking about. Something pale and sinuous was unfurling itself from the top of the entrance – long white fingers of something that looked like wax but wasn’t, oozing down from somewhere above.
‘It’s covering the way out,’ said Chenlo. ‘It’s going to trap us all in here with the fire!’
‘Can you feel him, Sharrik?’
The griffin tossed his head with agitation. They were in a corridor, although Aldasair hardly thought that was the right name for it; the walls were curved and yellow-white, porous and moist to the touch. It was more like being inside the bones of a living animal, and the continual scratching hum that filled the place only added to the sensation. They had been searching blindly for what felt like hours, although he knew that in truth that was very far from the case, and Aldasair was filled with the creeping suspicion that they were lost; children in a garden maze who had boasted they knew the way to the centre.
‘I can,’ said Sharrik. He sounded more certain than he had before, and Aldasair cast him a quizzical look.
‘Brother?’ Jessen nudged his shoulder with her snout. ‘What is it?’
‘He is close, and growing closer,’ he replied. ‘But more than that. His mind – it’s free of the Jure’lia taint!’
‘How can that be?’ Together, they moved a little faster down the corridor. Perhaps, reasoned Aldasair, the queen had broken the connection between Bern and the worm people. Perhaps she had not wanted a human in their web after all – which still led to the question: what was she doing with him?
He was just dreaming up all manner of tortures when the wall to their right abruptly flexed apart to reveal Celaphon, the huge worm-touched dragon. Immediately, Sharrik roared, leaping to the front of their small group with his head lowered and shoulder muscles bunched.
‘Murderer!’ cried Sharrik. ‘Villain, it is time for you to pay for your outrageous strike against us!’
Curiously, the dragon did not react with the howling fury Aldasair was expecting. Instead, he looked at them closely, as though seeing them properly for the first time. The discoloured scales across his face where Helcate had burned him looked like scorched copper pennies.
‘The boy, Eri,’ said the dragon. ‘I saw all that when I joined with you, so briefly. This is why you hate me.’
‘He was one of ours,’ said Jessen, coldly. Aldasair joined his hatred to hers, flowing so clearly in the bond between them, and he felt clean. ‘He was our family. You are not.’
‘You will not use his name,’ added Aldasair, surprised at the venom in his own voice. ‘You have no right to it.’
‘Will you not fight, coward?’ bellowed Sharrik. Somewhere up the corridor there was the sound of something with many legs approaching. The dragon did not look like he was about to fight, however. Instead, he curled his long neck back over his shoulder and tugged at something lying on his back. At first, Aldasair thought it was a strange pile of bloody rags, and when it hit the floor with a solid thump, he felt a wave of shock pass through him that seemed to drain all the strength from his legs.
‘Bern!’
He scrambled down from Jessen’s back and fell to his knees next to Bern. The big human man looked dead already, even though Aldasair could feel the faint flutter of his presence through the connection they shared. His skin was white as parchment, and there were dark shadows on his cheeks, eyes and throat. His right hand, the one that had been merged with the crystal, was gone; instead his arm ended in a ragged stump
that appeared to have been sealed with tar. Except that Aldasair knew very well what it was.
‘What have you done?’ thundered Sharrik.
‘I have done exactly what he wanted,’ said the dragon, in a mild tone of voice. He paused, before fetching something else from his back. Bern’s axe dropped onto the floor next to him. ‘I have freed him from us so that he did not lose himself here when he died. He wants to die elsewhere, free. Under the sky, I expect.’ The dragon’s big-horned head dipped up, gesturing to the outside world they could not see. ‘Take him up there, so he can die in peace. That’s what I want for him, brother-who-will-not-be. But I should hurry – humans leak a lot when they lose a part.’
‘Bern? Bern, my love?’ Aldasair touched the big man’s face, feeling his heart sink further at how cold and clammy his skin was. There was no response from the human, and Aldasair forced himself to look at the ragged stump again. An Eboran might survive such an injury, but a human? Even one as strong as Bern would die quickly from the loss of blood. He got his arms under Bern’s shoulders and lifted him, carrying him back to Sharrik’s harness.
‘Sharrik, leave now and get out of the caves. Head north, back to Deeptown. It’s the closest place and someone might be able to help him there.’
‘But . . .’ The griffin looked stricken. He tossed his head back towards the dragon, who was still sitting placidly in the opening to the corridor. ‘We must destroy the abomination! For what he did to Eri, and for what he has done to my Bern!’
‘There’s no time, brave one.’ Aldasair picked up the axe and pushed it through the loop at Bern’s belt, before glancing down at his own hands. They were smudged and ruddy with Bern’s blood. The terrible, cold idea that Bern might die on the way to Deeptown – that he might die without Aldasair at his side – had wedged in his heart like a cold blade. ‘You must fly as fast as you possibly can, stop for nothing. Go now!’
With one more half-reluctant glance at Celaphon, Sharrik went back down the corridor, picking up speed as he went.
