by D. P. Prior
“Take them!” Grago shouted.
Confused looks passed among the soldiers. Some of them advanced a step until an older dwarf in a red cloak and horned helm raised a hand to still them. He turned to the white-robes and shrugged.
Graybeard coughed into his fist and then said, “You get above yourself, Councilor Grago. We have yet to—”
“Discuss? Debate? Deliberate?” Grago said, playing to the crowd. “Haven’t we seen enough? The philosopher’s arch revealed the threat. What will it take, councilors, for you to actually do something?”
“A demon was unveiled, Grago, and it was dispatched. But of these others, we can say very little.”
“She has a black sword, Garnil!” Grago fumed. “You heard the demon; it’s an instrument of the Abyss.”
“Yes, well,” Graybeard said, “but what if—”
“No!” Grago yelled. “No, no, no, Councilor Moary. No more ‘what ifs’. Arx Gravis came this close—” He held his hands up to illustrate. “—this close to allowing the enemy inside. Have you forgotten what happened last time exceptions were made? I bet you haven’t, Councilor Thumil, for it was your friend, after all, who nearly destroyed us.”
The dwarf with the bald patches in his hair and beard bit down on his lip. He looked furious—or distressed to the point of despair.
“And let’s not forget how he did it,” Grago continued, whirling to take in all the assembled dwarves. “With a demonic axe not so different to the sword this woman carries!”
“Nevertheless…” Thumil said in a quiet voice. All eyes were immediately on him, and when he continued to speak, not a word was missed by the white-robes and the soldiers. He had their rapt attention. “…we are a cautious people, Grago, and the Deceiver is prowling round like a roaring lion, looking for someone to eat.”
There were grunts of agreement from the white-robes, although Shader noticed a couple of them leaned their heads together and whispered something. The soldier in the red cloak folded his arms across his chest and nodded, and a palpable calm settled over his men.
“We cannot afford rash action, not when we’ve seen today how close he is to our gates.”
“But we never act at all!” Grago said. “Uggghh!” He threw his hands in the air and then slumped, shaking his head.
“I propose that we lock them up until we’ve had time to confer,” Thumil said. “All those in favor say ‘aye.’”
There was a chorus of assent from the white-robes, and then they all turned their eyes on Grago.
“Aye,” he grumbled. “If we must.”
“Good,” Moary said, scratching his beard. “Captain Stolhok, would you mind terribly relieving our guests of their weapons?”
“Counfilor!” the red-cloak barked with a pronounced lisp. He approached Shader first and reached for the gladius.
Shader tried to warn him. “I’d take it—”
“Ouch!” the captain cried and flapped his hand about, blowing on it like he’d just stuck it in a blazing fire.
“—by the scabbard,” Shader finished. He re-sheathed the gladius, unfastened his sword-belt, and handed it over.
“What’f thif?” Stolhok lisped, fiddling with the belt.
“Prayer cord,” Shader said.
Stolhok looked to Moary, who looked to Thumil, who nodded. The captain handed it back, and Shader put it in his coat pocket.
Rhiannon sullenly pulled the black sword from its sheath and held it out, but the captain blanched and recoiled. He nodded for her to lay it on the walkway and then gestured for soldiers to take hold of her and Shader.
“We’ll leave it where it is,” the captain explained to Moary. “Better’n bringing it inside the city.”
Moary looked to the other white-robes for approval, and they nodded, all the while eyeing the sword warily.
Stone manacles were snapped over Shader’s wrists, and then Rhiannon’s, and they were bundled away through the arch and onto a walkway leading across the chasm. The stone door at the end ground its way upward, and Shader was shoved into a dank and musty corridor that felt like it hadn’t seen the light of day for a very long time. There was some kind of dim illumination, barely enough to see by, emanating from the stone walls themselves.
He cast a final glance over his shoulder, hoping against hope for some sign that Shadrak was still out there, but all he found was Rhiannon glaring at him like she wanted to scratch his eyes out and throw him from a great height.
He was almost relieved when they were separated. Rhiannon was dragged through an open doorway opposite the one they’d entered by, but Shader was taken down a winding staircase and along a series of low passages that forced him to stoop. At one stage, the soldiers up front walked straight through a wall. Shader tensed as he was thrust after them, then he was on the other side, as if the wall wasn’t there. He looked back at it, and sure enough, it appeared to be solid. He lifted his manacled hands to touch it and encountered cold hard stone. Soldiers grabbed his elbows and set him moving once more.
They marched him along a sloping tunnel that bored deeper and deeper into the ravine. After an age, they stopped outside an iron door with a grille set into it at head height for a dwarf. Three bolts, each as thick as a forearm, reinforced a sturdy lock. A soldier unhooked a ring of keys from his belt and noisily matched one to the lock, while another wrestled with the bolts. The door squeaked open on rusty hinges, and Shader was thrust inside. His heart sank when it clanged shut behind him. The key was turned to a trio of answering clicks, and then the bolts clunked into place, one after the other.
A dim, greenish glow suffused the walls, lending its sheen to the draping cobwebs and spiraling motes of dust.
It was a circular cell, empty, save for a shadowy shape seated on a stone bench. As Shader’s eyes adjusted to the low light, he could see it was a dwarf, powerfully muscled, wrists manacled to the bench. A black great helm covered his head, and chainmail hung down to his knees. His britches and boots were spattered with something dark that may have been blood, and he was coated with so much dust that he could have been mistaken for a statue. He was certainly as still as one, frozen in the rigidity of death.
The air was stale and musty, just like that in the domed tomb Shader and Barek had discovered in Fenrir Forest. His fingers automatically touched his forehead in memory of poor Osric, banished to the Void by a mawg shaman. Maybe this is what it had been like for him, all those centuries of captivity at the hands of Dr. Cadman. Shader fought to calm his pattering heart, told himself this was only temporary, until the dwarves had discussed what to do.
The brooding presence on the bench told another story, though. How long had he been left there before he finally died? And then the thought struck Shader: What if he wasn’t dead? There was no stench, no sign of rot. A prickling sensation fanned out beneath his skin. What if this wasn’t so different to what Osric said had happened to the Elect?
Shader edged nearer and reached out with a finger, gently touched an exposed forearm. Cold. Lifeless. He checked the fingernails for blueness, but there was none, leaned in close to the helm and listened for breathing, but all he heard was his own reflected back at him.
It had the feeling of wrongness, of some dark magic he couldn’t explain.
He stepped back and stared at the eye-slit of the great helm. Green flecks glistened on the black casing, which appeared to be fused with the skin of the dwarf’s neck. Was it for protection in battle, or part of his imprisonment? Why would they need to chain him in such an impregnable cell, particularly when he was virtually fossilized? Even in such a docile state, the dwarf radiated immense strength.
Shader took another step back. Maybe this was some kind of demon, even worse than Dave. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to kill it and could only bind it and lock it away in the bowels of the city. That didn’t bode well for Shader, though. What if they planned on doing the same with him, leaving him here for all eternity, or until the next victim was shoved in the cell and found his petrified
body, or more than likely, his skeletal remains?
A great pit opened up in his stomach, and his hope plunged into it. He groaned and whirled about, vainly seeking a window, a vent, the merest crack. A desperate cry began to well up within him, and he opened his mouth to let it out but then slapped himself in the face. He couldn’t give in to panic. One howl like that would be an admission of despair, and that would help no one.
He lowered himself to the cold floor and pulled the prayer cord from his pocket. As he picked away at the lesser mysteries, he sent up mental pleas to Nous. He ran through the litany of holy names in the vague hope that one of them might trigger a miracle, all the while knowing there was as much chance of Sektis Gandaw converting to religion and confessing his sins.
There wasn’t the time for this. Shader bit down on his lip to stop from shouting out his frustration. Who was going to stop the Unweaving if he was shut up down here? Didn’t the dwarves realize how close the end of all things was? Did they even care? He grimaced as he unraveled one of the knots and started on the next, steering his mind back to the litany: Nous, glory of Ain, save your servant. Nous, light of the world, have mercy on me. Nous, eternal word, comfort me. He was ripping at the threads on the prayer cord, whispering the words now against the back of his teeth. “Nous, scourge of demons, rescue me.” His face was on fire with pent-up rage and frustration; his shoulders bunched up around his ears. “Nous, lord of the living,”—and then the dam burst—“Hear my prayer!”
The cry reverberated around the cell until it lost itself in the cobwebs, only to be replaced by the silence of the grave.
But then there was a clink, and Shader spun round to face the figure on the bench.
The dwarf’s fingers splayed open and snapped shut into fists, and this time there was a fierce rattle as the chains clashed against the stone. A low growl echoed from within the great helm, and veins popped up along the swollen thews of his arms. He half-stood, chains pulled taut, his stocky frame shaking with effort. With a demented roar, he wrenched his arms together, and the bolts securing the chains to the bench sheared.
Shader gasped and edged away, but the black helm swiveled in his direction. Thrashing from side to side, chains whipping about him in a clashing fury, the dwarf bellowed a bloodcurdling battle cry and lumbered toward him.
NOT A GOD
Bloody amateurs, Shadrak thought, clinging like a sloth from one of the struts underpinning the walkway. How the Abyss were they planning to save the world by handing themselves over to a bunch of stunty, beardy… He stopped himself; felt the sting of old wounds. Bit close for comfort, that. How often had he been called the same, or worse?
Hooking his legs through one of the crossbeams, he let go with his hands and eased himself back until he was hanging upside down.
The city below was arranged in descending tiers, like badly stacked plates. Broad, spiraling avenues and corkscrewing steps spanned the spaces between levels all the way down to a glimmering lake in the bed of the chasm. Ant-like figures shuffled along roads and cobbled pavements, and here and there laden carts trundled behind beasts that may have been goats. An intricate system of canals carved up the lower city into perfect geometric shapes, while above, stone barges drifted along aqueducts that served the loading bays of squat warehouses. On the fringes, colonnaded arcades merged seamlessly with the ravine walls, linked to the central sprawl of buildings by granite viaducts and bridges suspended from cables of wound steel. Smoke puffed from chimneys, wafting toward the sides of the ravine, where it was sucked into vents hungry as a pituri smoker’s lungs. An immense tower rose through the center of the city’s layers like the hub of a wheel. It had countless archways, and windows of stained glass, and its patinated bronze cap rose to within a hundred feet of Shadrak’s upended head.
He hung lazily, lapping up the topsy-turvy view, enjoying the calm that washed over him. That was the way it was with heights for him; always had been. Prob’ly why he’d made such a good cat burglar in his youth. All good experience that had transferred well into the killing trade. Always made him laugh how the rich bastards, secure at the top of their impregnable towers, crapped their britches when they woke up to find him at the foot of their beds. Most of ’em blustered or denied what was happening, right up until their brains were splattered across the headboard. He almost smiled at the memories. There was a time when he’d loved the job. Except on the rare occasions the guild stuck its nose in, he worked alone, and that meant he could do things his way. The right way. There was something extremely satisfying about a murder well done. And then that whole thing with Bovis Rayn had happened, and Kadee had worked her way through the fault lines cracking open the husk of his conscience. He didn’t like it one bit. Didn’t like the confusion. Now, more than ever, he needed certainty. Everything else was just a distraction that would likely get him killed.
But what to do next, that was the issue. If he’d been his own man, like he’d been back in Sarum, he’d have lowered himself to the central tower and shuftied around for sellable pickings, coz you could bet your bottom copper people who could build a city like Arx Gravis had stuff worth nicking.
Problem was, he weren’t his own man no more, not since his pact with the Archon. Granted, he’d had no choice, not if he’d wanted to live, and not if Kadee had anything to do with it. Then there was the small matter of a lack of rope; what he’d brought with him was still staked to the hard earth above the ravine, and while he might’ve had a love of heights, he weren’t stupid enough to chance the jump.
No, best thing for it was to get going. He swung his torso up and took hold of the struts so he could crawl back to the central hub and the archway that had exposed Dave for what he was. It had been amusing at the time. Left to his own devices, Shadrak would’ve watched the fun and then buggered off and abandoned Shader and the bitch to their fates, but a nagging voice at the back of his mind kept warning him not to piss the Archon off again.
The whole thing was starting to grate. Hadn’t he done his part by bringing Shader to Aethir? He couldn’t be expected to babysit him as well. It weren’t like it was his fault the moron had gone and got himself caught. That was it, far as Shadrak was concerned. Quest over, and it weren’t him that’d screwed up. If the Archon didn’t like it, he could go shog himself.
He chinned up to the edge of the walkway, and when he was sure it was clear, clambered onto it.
The archway that had burned red when Dave enter it was dull and lifeless now, and Shadrak hunkered down beneath it, wrapping his cloak about him like a shadow in case there were still dwarves watching, concealed against the walls. He caught sight of Rhiannon’s black sword lying on the stone. Thing like that would fetch a shitload of denarii in certain parts of Sarum. He started toward it, but then light exploded inside his skull, and he reeled away. He bit his lip to keep from screaming. Felt like a crown of jagged glass had been forced down tight over his head.
“All right, all right,” Shadrak yelled, then clamped his jaw shut and whispered through gritted teeth. “Shog’s sake, what am I s’posed to do? Weren’t my bloody idea to come here. If you ask me, you’d be better off using your hocus-pocus to get me inside Gandaw’s mountain. Then we’ll see how almighty he really is.”
He could feel a presence before him, but the white fire behind his eyes made it impossible to see.
“You lack the purity of heart,” the Archon said.
“Yeah, right, and Shader has it?”
The light faded, and Shadrak blinked the Archon into focus. He was ghost-like, translucent, as if he were midway between worlds.
“I am beginning to wish I hadn’t agreed to this approach,” the Archon said. “But it is too late to find another way.”
“Your choice, your problem,” Shadrak said.
The Archon studied his face for a long while and then said, “Shader was not my choice.”
“Oh?”
Smoke plumed from beneath the Archon’s cowl, and when he raised his ivory hands, the heat
of a furnace rolled off them. “I do not enjoy inflicting pain, Shadrak, but time is not with us.”
Shadrak’s hand went to his pistol grip, for all the good it would do. “What I don’t get is this purity shit. I don’t need to be shogging holy to put a bullet through Gandaw’s skull. Like I said, get me to the mountain, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
The Archon shook his head. “If it were just the Technocrat, then I might agree with you, but he has harnessed the power of…” He paused, as if what he was saying pained him.
Shadrak grew suddenly alert, watching for any sign of weakness.
“He has harnessed the power of my sister. You cannot stand against her.”
“Family, eh? And you’re leaving this to a loser like Shader?”
“I can only—”
“Yeah, yeah, act through idiots like me who are stupid enough to do your dirty work for you. What the shog’s up with you god types?”
“I am a servant, not a god.”
Well that was good to hear. Gods couldn’t be killed. At least that’s the way Kadee’s people told it. Them and the bloody Nousians, who said their god was put to death only to come back to life again. Shadrak had an answer for that: steady supply of bullets, and he’d keep the shogger dying and resurrecting all day. Sooner or later, Nous’d grow tired of it and stay shogging dead.
“So, let me get this straight,” Shadrak said. “You’re the servant of Nous All Bleedin’ Mighty, the Lord of Shogging Love, and yet you’re gonna fry my brains if I don’t do what you say, right?”
Light flickered at the edges of the Archon’s hood. “Nous is not who you think. Indeed, even the name is a fabrication of the Liche Lord’s. He is as far above me as I am you.”
Shadrak scoffed. “You got a problem with my height?”
