by Jack Conner
At the entrance, several Castle Guards interviewed those who had arrived early and allowed themselves to be cornered. Those that had had the foresight to evade the Guards wandered in and out of the main doorway, talking amongst themselves. Of these, Maximillian seemed the most moved, although he channeled his emotion into anger.
Sophia marched up to him until she was so close that her presence forced him to forget exactly what he’d been yelling about to the unfortunate underling at his side. Quick to recognize that an escape was possible, the underling disappeared into the general milieu.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Sophia demanded.
Max led her through the busy doorway and down several tunnels.
After several twists and turns, she said, “Damnit, Max, let go of me.”
Without breaking stride, he complied and kept plowing forward through a thickening sea of people. Sophia, pausing only for a moment, followed. She smelled blood ahead.
Pushing her way through the last small archway, she entered the room from which all the activity stemmed. This room was more rectangular than domed or rounded, as were most of the rooms, and apparently the main reason why this room had been chosen was that it had more corners than the others.
Max reached out his hand. Taking it, she stepped to his side and viewed the carnage in silence.
Taurke, one of the missing extras, hung grotesquely from the center of the room, blood congealing on the floor below him. Whoever had done this to him had somehow stretched his limbs in a most unnatural way so that, though his torso was mostly intact, his hands were nailed into two (respectively) upper, facing corners of the room. His feet were nailed into the lower corners.
The effect was to give his limbs an almost rubber- or root-like quality. Of course, they couldn’t really be as long as they appeared. Whoever had done this must have added some extra bones to flesh-out the illusion. Other, more subtle (if that is a word that had any bearing here whatsoever) atrocities had been committed to his being, but the Ice Queen chose not to see them.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Maximillian said.
“Fuck you, Max.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Sophe. We both know who did this, and the reason why. Because we did you and the albino a favor.”
“From what I’ve heard, he didn’t have to twist your arm. All you wanted was Vistrot’s blood.”
His head darted around like a snake’s, making sure no one was within ear-shot, and he hissed, “That’s right, sweets. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t want to piss off the Last of the Roving Balaklava!”
“Well, friend, it looks like they’re pissed off, alright. And this is probably just for starters. After all, Taurke was only one of four.”
He squeezed her hand, hard. “Eight.”
She reciprocated the pressure on his hand until, with a gasp, he released her.
“Eight?” she said.
“They didn’t stop with Vance. And it’s not just me they’re mad at, sister. Have you taken a look at this fucking room?”
“Yes.” She was the Ice Queen, and her voice was like ice at its most treacherous, almost to the point of breaking.
“It’s my room,” she said. “And up until tonight, it was also Danielle’s.”
Chapter 19
Very slowly, the horse stepped through the tunnel, taking extra care because the surroundings were so dark. Suddenly, light appeared up ahead in the form of two torches jutting from the rock wall on both sides of a large, round, metal door, if such it could be called. To Ruegger, it almost looked like a vertical manhole cover, except for the fact that it was much wider and covered by all sorts of elaborate inscriptions: ancient runes, he knew. Warnings, most likely. The only thing the door lacked was a handle of some sort.
Removing himself from the mind of the horse for a moment, Ruegger turned to Sarnova and said, “What’s the door for?”
Sarnova, who had also been seeing through the eyes of the animal, blinked a few times and said, “To keep the Sabo in, of course.”
“Surely it can tunnel around the door ...”
“Not with the spells that the door enforces.”
Ruegger raised an eyebrow. “Spells?” Next Sarnova would be telling him stories of wizards and witches. Dragons, too, probably. Ruegger didn’t put much stock in such things. He’d run into a few sorcerers in the abunka underground, but they were charlatans, one and all, surely, if not always entirely human. And though he was familiar with telekinesis and the like, he knew these to be mere powers of the mind, whereas a belief in actual magic symbolized a leap of faith that he wasn’t willing to take.
Seeing the look of skepticism on his face, Sarnova said, “It’s okay to believe, Ruegger.”
“I wish I could.”
“You can’t tell me that the Sacred Pillars of the Sahara never aroused your curiosity. And our own Pools of Pleasure?”
“I suppose …”
“You’ve been confronted with the truth many times, Ruegger. You’ve just never consciously acknowledged it.”
“Are you trying to tell me that magic is real?”
“I’m not telling you, I’m showing you.”
“Next you’ll be telling me elves and dragons exist, too.”
Mischief—actual mischief—twinkled in Sarnova’s eyes. “Maybe I’ll show you them, as well.”
Ruegger tried (but not very hard) to hide his impatience. “Is that the sole reason for the door, to keep the Sabo in?”
“It’s also to keep lesser creatures from entering through this side. When I want to feed the Sabo, I send humans in from the front way. This portal is primarily used by the Sangro Sankts, and they want to keep it that way.”
“You mean only a kavasari can open the door?”
“No. A strong shade of any species could get the job done. Would you like to test your strength?”
“Not really.”
“Still tired from the last one, I bet.”
Ruegger said nothing. He would not be goaded into wearing himself out. Not only had he been recently bled and starved, but now the Dark Lord was getting him to do taxing psychic tricks, making him weaker than he’d been to start with. Whatever was going on, Sarnova didn’t want him at his peak.
“You go ahead, Roche. I think I’ll sit this one out.”
He let himself drift back into the mind of the horse, let the animal’s eyes show him the bright torches and the ancient, circular door. The metal disc rolled to one side, disappearing into a slot carved into the wall—and leaving a tunnel in its wake. Though torches burned along the walls in different places, the horse could not see very far down the tunnel, as the first major twist appeared after about thirty feet.
From Ruegger’s side, he heard Roche Sarnova say, “Shall we?”
On the one hand, Ruegger hated to send the horse to its death, but it might be just this sort of morality on which the Dark Lord depended. If Sarnova was bluffing and there was no Sabo, then that changed things radically, whereas if the king were telling the truth Ruegger would have to call off Malie’s attack … which probably wasn’t a bad idea anyway. Nonetheless, he had to know for sure whether or not Sarnova spoke the truth. If Ruegger could actually trust the Dark Lord, that in itself could make a world of difference to upcoming events.
“Proceed,” he said.
The horse moved forward. As it rounded the bend, several large archways opened to either side. The horse passed them nervously.
Soon the main corridor spilled out into another, larger tunnel, leaving the horse to decide which way to go—right or left? It chose right. However, after passing many other archways, this new avenue turned out to be nothing other than a cul-de-sac.
Partially guided by the mind of Roche Sarnova, the animal made its way back to one of the archways it had passed and passed under it, slowly. Torches blazed along the stone walls at uneven spaces, throwing eerie light on the scene.
None of the parasites that Sarnova had spoken of presented themselves,
but perhaps they were waiting for the right moment. At any rate, the horse only grew more anxious, and since Ruegger was in its mind goose bumps sprang up all along his arms. He could even feel a few beads of sweat beginning to form on his brow.
To distract himself, he started examining the labyrinth in greater detail. It was elaborate and larger than he would’ve thought it to be. Twice the horse passed ramps that led up to different levels of the maze, and, once Ruegger glimpsed a large spiral staircase that led who-knows-where. Perhaps it could deliver someone to all eight stories of this labyrinth, if it was that large. Later on, the horse crossed over a narrow bridge, below which roared an angry red river. Large hungry shapes moved in its waters.
The horse wandered into a part of the maze where the walls were no longer stone, but damp and earthen. In fact, the tunnel seemed as if it had been formed by a giant worm tearing right through a sea of mud, which for all Ruegger knew was quite possible. Before he could ask the king why the earthen tunnels didn’t simply collapse, some large dark creature shot out of the ceiling directly ahead of the horse and plummeted down toward the muddy floor, which opened before it. The thing vanished, and the hole closed up behind it, leaving what looked to be solid ground behind.
In the brief moment that Ruegger had to observe the creature, he had seen a large worm-like beast with fins and tendrils and a large gaping mouth, surrounded by bristles like those of a catfish, which the thing vaguely resembled. Its mouth sported scores of large sharp teeth that would’ve scared even the most monstrous of fish, though.
Snorting in fear, the horse leapt back, shivering.
In the outside world, Sarnova shouted to Ruegger, “That was a parasite. One of many. I call them mud-sharks.”
“Why didn’t it eat the horse?”
“The Sabo wouldn’t allow it; the horse isn’t scared enough to have satisfied it. Yet.”
“So the Sabo can control these parasites?”
“To an extent. Here, this horse isn’t going anywhere without a jump-start. Let me give it a spur.”
The animal forgot its fear and started off down the tunnel once more, leaving Ruegger time to the think about what he’d just seen. Had he just seen proof of the Sabo’s existence? Maybe. If he had, perhaps he should cancel this expedition and allow the horse to turn around. At least then it would have a fighting chance. Before he could explore this option further, he heard something large moving behind him—rather, behind the horse.
The animal swiveled. With the dim light, neither Ruegger nor the horse could really appraise the new creature in any detail, but whatever the assailant was, it was large. Gargantuan. A countless number of arms that sprouted from its rotting flank propelled the new arrival swiftly down the passageway.
The creature stunk. Fetid and unhealthy, like the air of a mass grave.
Ruegger tried to force the horse to look a moment longer, but his psychic tricks couldn’t overpower the animal’s fear. It turned and bolted down the corridor.
Without bothering to extricate himself from the horse’s mind, Ruegger shouted to Sarnova, “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is that one of the parasites or not?”
“It’s something I’ve never seen before.”
Bolting down corridor after corridor, the horse struggled to outpace the monster, who followed.
“Faster,” Ruegger urged, suddenly hoping that the horse made it. He’d seen what he needed to.
The horse ran hard. Sweat lathered it. Constantly, its instincts told it to dart into one of the archways, but its velocity was so great that stopping would’ve taken too long. It did encounter many forks and in each case it chose the right path, perhaps at Sarnova’s prompting.
It never lost the creature that pursued it; the thing with all the arms could be heard scrambling even over the animal’s heavy breathing.
The horse stumbled out into a large domed chamber, maybe a hundred and fifty feet high at its highest point. This was not the only tunnel that led into this room; in fact, a quick inspection showed at least two dozen dark archways. Countless chains fell from the earthen ceiling, a few coming almost all the way to the floor. From several of the chains that ended maybe fifty feet off the floor, rusted cages dangled from large hooks. To Ruegger, they almost looked like bird cages, except they were large enough to hold a man. Even in the dim light, he could see the remains of several human bodies.
So this is where they come, he thought. The parasites drive them into this room or others like it, and the humans use the chains to get up to those cages, where they stay until they die. Meanwhile, the Sabo soaks up their fear like a sponge.
The horse darted into the center of the chamber, where it started circling nervously. The thing that had chased it here hadn’t yet made itself visible to its prey, perhaps because the light was somewhat brighter here.
Fins rose from the ground around the horse’s feet. Maybe ten fins in all, they started circling the horse like sharks.
“Those are the dorsals of things like the one we saw awhile back,” Sarnova said.
Each about a yard high, the fins sprouted from large swells below the muddy floor. Presumably the parasites were the cause of those swells. As they circled the horse, the animal reared and lashed the air with his hooves. When that didn’t work, it bolted twenty feet to the side. The shapes beneath the mud followed. Again, they began circling.
Sick to his stomach, Ruegger said, “When will it be scared enough for the Sabo to let them eat it?”
Before Sarnova could reply, a large strange shape emerged from one of the archways. Without a doubt, Ruegger knew it to be the thing that had chased the horse into this room, the creature that had forced this confrontation. It was infinitely larger than the mud-sharks and configured much differently.
It was composed of at least thirty human and immortal bodies—bodies which had been threaded together and molded in such a way as to create a whole new entity, a being with countless arms and legs and tails and faces and mouths—and thousands of teeth, some jutting from the snapping jaws of werewolf heads, or heads even more monstrous.
The bodies were those of zombies.
Amorphous, the creature seemed able to form many different body designs. It had been in its long worm-like form, but now it bunched up to became a towering predator with several long, many-jointed legs and arms, something like a titanic scorpion minus the tail. And there, amidst all the squirming body parts, a mouth shone wetly, its three tongues dripping slaver to the floor. Fashioned from different parts of many anatomies, the maw stretched almost five feet across, and its teeth would’ve made even a mud-shark cringe.
Ruegger knew instantly that this thing didn’t belong in the world of the Sabo, not like the sharks did. It was of the graveyard, of a world in which art and death were inextricably linked; and it was definitely a work of art, no matter how surreal it might appear.
“Goddamnit,” shouted Sarnova, apparently realizing it, too. “How the hell did they get in here?”
From behind (at least behind their human bodies; Ruegger was beginning to grow disoriented), Colonel De Soto said, “You’d better not be shouting at me, my lord. You’re the one who allowed those two to return.” He had been monitoring the horse’s progress, too, then.
“I was counting on you to keep them from getting up to their old tricks,” Sarnova said. “I’m holding you accountable.”
Still some mud-sharks circled the horse, but most were swarming toward the invader. Ruegger had no question as to how the Balaklava would’ve found the Sabo in their underground travels, but why would they chose to invade it? Of course, the answer was obvious.
“They like the Labyrinth,” he said aloud.
“What was that?” Sarnova asked.
“The Balaklava. They told us how they like labyrinths. They want this place to be their own.”
“They’re out of luck,” Sarnova said. “This is my land and the Sabo is under
my protection. The way I see it, there are more Balaklava in the world than there are creatures like the Sabo. Junger and Jagoda are expendable.”
Ruegger started. “Are you implying that there are other things under you protection?”
“Oh, there are—plenty—but now isn’t the time to go into that. Regardless, the Balaklava are laying claim to a valuable piece of my land, and I won’t allow it. If they want to fight over a piece of real estate, they’re free to do it somewhere else.”
From behind, De Soto said, “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to get you and your men to enter the Sabo and extricate them, and if the Balaklava aren’t there you will at least destroy any animals they’ve made in their spare time.”
“Animals?”
“They may call it art, but it’s not art when the people they made that thing from are my subjects. Organize a party and see to it.”
“Now?”
After a beat, Sarnova said, “No. Let’s see if the Sabo’s parasites can finish this thing off first.”
With what sounded like a sigh of relief, the Colonel said, “Fine.”
Meanwhile, the mud-sharks began circling the corpse-monster—the Collage, as Ruegger would later call it; he, and everyone else in the Castle.
The Collage didn’t need to rotate in order to track its enemies, as the horse had had to do (and was still doing), because it sported a plethora of eyes ... and just about everything else, too. As the first shark lunged out of the mud to snap at one of the monster’s legs, the Collage slashed a claw-like appendage through the air and caught the body of the shark in its pincers. Slowly, it began to squeeze. Blood and guts sprinkled the ground in a meaty rain. The abomination raised the worm-shark to its primary mouth and began to eat, while human arms that were arrayed about the orifice helped it devour every morsel.
The rest of the sharks kept circling.
Another parasite, ignoring the Collage altogether, struck at the horse, and in the process ripped open the animal’s side. As it began to bray in terror, a third and forth shark burst out of the ground and brought the animal to its knees.
