Empire of the Worm

by Conner, Jack

  Looking about him, eyeing the throngs of rebels and refugees, Davril wondered how many of those about him were turncoats—or worse, Lerumites in disguise. He had had his priests perform tests on every single one, to be sure—a prerequisite for anyone wishing to join Davril’s cause—but with the priests’ diminished abilities, it was difficult to be sure the tests were working. Still, they continued to aid Davril, as much as they could, and indeed on his way into the tunnels Davril and Wesrai had passed through the newly ensorcelled archway that was supposed to alert the rebels of enemy infiltration. Davril had ordered one constructed at all entrances. This location was secret, but he could not afford to be too trusting. Still, there were many tunnels, and many entrances, and it would take months or years to install ensorcelled archways at every one.

  One of Davril’s lieutenants approached. “It’s good to have you back, my lord. Really, you should let one of us handle the tasks you set yourself. Meeting with conspirators, turning Uulos’s agents against Him—it’s too dangerous.”

  Davril raised his eyebrows. “Is it not more dangerous to stay here and allow my plans to unfold without my supervision?”

  The lieutenant bowed his head. “It’s as my lord says, of course. May I fetch you anything?”

  Davril recalled the empty sarcophagi and the look of awful triumph on his father’s face. “Some wine.” Whatever he had drunk earlier had long since been burned up.

  “And me as well,” added Wesrai, whose order forbid drinking in excess but not altogether.

  As Davril’s lieutenant melted away, the Lady of Behara appeared. Her eyes dark in the smoky room, she moved with languid grace, white robes just trailing the ground; her tiara caught the light of a nearby brazier, twinkling.

  She smiled and curtsied. “Your Grace,” she said. “We’d expected you earlier.”

  “Yes. I had an . . . appointment I could not break.”

  “Did you learn anything useful?”

  “No,” he said darkly. “I did not.”

  “Well.” Her voice was light. “Not every meeting can be fruitful. You simply must do the best you can and hope something works out. The Flame is on our side, after all.”

  Davril grinned humorlessly. “Yes, but the darkness is on our enemy’s.” And not altogether absent here . . .

  The lieutenant returned and pressed a wineglass into Davril’s hands first, then Wesrai’s. Davril sipped gratefully.

  “Would my Lady . . . ?” the man began, but she waved him away.

  “If you will excuse us,” she said. When he was gone, she looked down at Davril and said, “Have you forgotten the feast tonight?”

  “Remind me.”

  “This is a very important dinner. We’re meeting with the Trading Guild chairmen. They are very powerful and could aid us greatly, but we must impress them with our competence or they will want to have nothing to do with us. They’re risking torture, death, the swallowing of their very souls and that of their families. They need to see us as strong and sure. And being late is not a good start, I might add.”

  “And do, evidently.” He sighed. “Very well.” Draining his glass, he rose to his feet. “They were blindfolded when they were taken here?”

  “We followed your instructions explicitly.”

  “Then let us go to them.”

  Using his cane, he walked beside her through the halls, Wesrai at his heels as usual these days; the priest had become an excellent manservant. Davril noticed something strange in the Lady’s manner. She seemed tense, her back rigid, her head held even higher than normal.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She let out a ragged breath. Not turning to look at him, she said, “Uulos.”

  “What about him?”

  She hissed impatiently. “No, I mean it’s him. Rumors have been circulating all day. Apparently the Lerumite high priest gave a speech last night, and the faithful have been spreading the news.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Uulos’s return, of course.”

  “What of his return?”

  She stopped and stared at him. She was taller than he was, and her expression was one of pique. “You truly are slow at times, my lord.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Don’t you understand? Uulos is now powerful enough. That’s what the Lerumites are saying. Those of his Circle have been driven away, the people’s faith in the Flame has waned and their devotion to the Worm blossomed. He’s feeding on that devotion, that worship, as well as the blood and souls His flock give him. He’s strong enough, or so his High Priest says.”

  “Strong enough.”

  “To return. To cross over into our world once more. All it will take is one mass sacrifice. The one we had been waiting for.”

  Davril shared an uneasy look with Wesrai. The priest blinked sweat out of his eyes and licked his lips.

  “When?” Davril asked.

  “Soon,” the Lady said. “That’s all I know. But it will be days, not months. Then he will devour the Jewel of the Sun, the skies will darken, his ancient allies will rise from the deeps and the civilizations of Man shall fall.”

  Davril had little patience for the feast. He constantly had to curb his wandering mind from empty sarcophagi and the return of the Worm, to force himself to pay attention to the members of the Trading Guild. He still couldn’t quite believe he was a descendant of Subn-ongath, it didn’t matter how diluted the blood was. Cold sweat beaded his brow, and it was all he could do to focus on the members of the Guild.

  They were tense and edgy. They’d heard the rumors of Uulos’s imminent return, and Davril could not tell if that encouraged their defiance of the Old One or dampened it. Either way, it was an uncomfortable meeting, as they ate roast mutton around a long wooden table deep underground with braziers casting a cloud of smoke overhead, and the eyes of the traders flicking about uncertainly as if expecting some treachery, even tasting their food with open suspicion.

  Surprisingly, when the meal ended the traders agreed to aid Davril, but it was anybody’s guess what they would really do when the time came. It was with grave doubts and paranoid fantasies that Davril retired to his bedchambers, and even though he was tired and longed for sleep, slumber was a hard-fought victory rewarded only with the sound of bells ringing from the steeples of fabled Algorad —

  Someone shook him, and a voice whispered in his ear: “Davril, you must wake up! Wake up, Davi!”

  Cracking his eyes, he glared up at the supple shadow bending over him.

  “Alyssa?”

  “Davi, you must come with me.” She grabbed his hand and tugged on it.

  He shook his hand loose. “What is it?”

  Alyssa let out a breath and sat down beside him. She wore only a silken nightie.

  “Davril . . .”

  “No. Return to your bed. I—we—it’s not meant to be. Hariban . . .”

  She sucked in a breath, and he was aware of the rising and falling of her breasts. “That’s not why I’ve come,” she said.

  “Then why?”

  “I’ve found more doors and windows.”

  He groaned. “Gods! That can wait till tomorrow.” She’d let her fascination with the strange architecture of the subterranean passageways become an obsession. She wandered them constantly, making notes and often coming to Davril to inform him of her most recent discovery. He tolerated it because it kept her busy, but he reflected that he might have to put an end to it.

  “Enough is enough, Alyssa. Let me sleep.”

  She sidled closer. The heady smell of her perfume teased him.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I found more doors and windows on the level below.”

  All threads of sleep vanished. “You’re mad! We’re forbidden to go below this level. What are you trying to do, get the Avestines to turn against us?”

  She seemed to have expected his ire. With a firm voice, she said, “They’re keeping something from us, Davril. Some great secret.”

  “Well, p
erhaps—”

  “They’re having a meeting now. Right now. A great meeting. Tens of thousands of them. When I heard their voices, I followed . . .” She swallowed, and now she did sound nervous. “They’re trying to decide what to do with us.”

  His hair prickled. “What to do? As in . . .”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her. “And what did they decide?”

  She rolled a shapely shoulder. “They were still discussing it when I left. I thought I should wake you and take you there so that you could overhear them for yourself. Be able to prepare. I doubted you would believe me.”

  “You did right. Take me to them.”

  He slipped from bed, shoved his father’s dagger in his waistband, donned a pair of sandals and followed her.

  “This way,” she said, showing him through the quiet warrens to her own private cell. In place of a door was a pretty tapestry. The walls, like those in Davril’s cell, were earthen, like most of the interior walls of the warren. Clearly these were later additions to the tunnels, as they did not match the advanced stone- and metal-work of the tunnels as a whole and especially on the outer walls. Indeed, it was almost as if the Avestines had come along ages after the stone tunnels had been formed and erected the earthen partitions themselves so that they could make better use of the space. They could make vast halls into a thousand rooms—if that were true.

  Behind the pile of blankets and pillows Alyssa used for a bed another hanging depended from the wall—one of the outer walls, he realized—and in a corner Davril saw a mound of dirt and bricks.

  “You’ve been digging again. I thought we talked about that.”

  She ignored him. She stepped to the hanging and swept it back, revealing an ancient, bricked-up window frame, obviously one of the ones that so fascinated her, and within it a dark hole.

  “Alyssa,” he said, “I thought I asked you to stop this nonsense.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “If we overhear something important, you’ll be glad I didn’t.” She grabbed a candle-holder for herself and pressed a second one into his hands. “Come,” she whispered, and wriggled into the hole where she had removed the bricks that sealed the window and the dirt beyond. In seconds she had vanished from sight.

  This is madness, Davril thought. If the Avestines should find us . . .

  On the other hand, if the Avestines were discussing the rebels’ fates and Davril had the opportunity to prepare for their decision, it would be foolish not to go.

  He followed.

  At once it became apparent that Alyssa had been digging for herself and alone, for it was tiny and narrow. Cold, moist dirt pressed in from all sides. Davril strained, forcing his way down inch by inch. His ribs ached and he had to labor for breath, which was filled with dust. He couldn’t look down, could only stare ahead. It was very dark, but he could just barely see a stone or metal wall (he couldn’t tell which) pressed up against his face, while all around him was dirt. It was as if he scaled the outside of some strange building, the building the window was set in, but over time the earth had swallowed it . . .

  But no, that would take ages. Millions of years . . .

  Just what was this place? He saw why the puzzle gripped Alyssa. Still, she should not have gone exploring. What if the Avestines had caught her and decided to kill the rebels for her transgression, or simply turn them out? Either decision would have the same effect, as Davril’s party of the discontented and displaced had nowhere to go save to some black altar of Uulos.

  At last he came to a narrow sliver of light—another window frame, he realized, with another hole in its bricked-up face, and beyond the hole a chamber or hall. Alyssa was standing there, her candle lit, its light bathing her pretty face with her scared, determined eyes.

  Davril struggled through the opening and spilled out onto the cold stone floor. Coughing and wiping the dust from his nightclothes, he rose and stared about him. The hall he found himself in was huge, so tall he could not see its ceiling in the darkness, nor the opposite wall. All was blackness save for the small orange bubble of Alyssa’s candle, and it illuminated only herself, the stone floor, the near wall, and a great column that soared up into the blackness.

  “What is this place?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know, but I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

  He stared upwards. He’d only slithered down Alyssa’s hole for perhaps fifty feet or so, so the ceiling could not be that high, yet it seemed to stretch up forever. The darkness closed in around him, greedy, cold and endless. Hastily he shoved the wick of his candle into Alyssa’s flame, and the circumference of their light doubled.

  She crouched beside the wall. She had a small pile of bricks there and had sat her candle down, having already started to replace the bricks back in the hole.

  “In case any Avestines see the hole,” she said.

  He nodded, set his own candle down, and helped. Shortly no one would know anyone had ever passed this way.

  “But will we be able to tell where we came out?” he asked. “There must be other windows.”

  “There are. Many. But I will know. I’ve spent a lot of time down here, wandering these halls, and I’ve had to memorize a lot of it.”

  He stared at her, so pretty, so mad, with dirt smudging her smooth cheeks, her slender limbs and brief silken garments.

  “You are a marvel,” he said. “Where is this meeting?”

  “This way.” Holding her candle carefully in one hand, she moved off toward the right, and he followed close at her heels. She had to walk somewhat slower to suit his pace, but he had taught himself to walk with his impaired leg so he didn’t slow them too much. The hall stretched dark and high all around, and he shuddered, breathing in the stale air. Just what in the world was this place? Was it somehow connected to the realm beyond the Great Tomb? Was it somehow connected to Algorad? He didn’t think so. This was the real world, the bones of history.

  Nevertheless, at any moment he expected something horrid to leap out at them. Dark pillars lined the hall, and they rose up huge and fat, bloated and alien. The walls were curved strangely, as well, bowed out in the middle. Everything had rounded, sinuous curves. It looked ancient and somehow inhuman.

  Alyssa saw him studying the architecture. “Fascinating, isn’t it? And this is right under the city! Just think, this place goes on for miles and miles . . .”

  “You’ve been that far?”

  “No, but it must. Look at the size of it! In its day, it was a splendor of the age, have no doubt.”

  “In its day . . .” He had vaguely hoped that all this might have been mined out in secret over the years, like the Avestine tunnels above. Unless, of course, the Avestine tunnels were not mined out at all, but instead were connected to this network. And with the shared windows and walls, that had to be the way it was. And yet there were no earthen partitions here, no improvements or modifications on the ancient architecture as had been done above. That’s why they didn’t want us coming down here, he thought. Then we would see that this place is more than we thought. Bigger. Older. Much older.

  He wished he had more light, a lantern, a torch, a bonfire, just so that he could see. This place was amazing, and bizarre, and sitting right under the Avestine Quarter! And, if it truly did go for miles, it was right under the city. Could it truly be that massive?

  He heard voices drifting through the halls, voices pitched in argument.

  “Quiet,” whispered Alyssa. “We’re almost there.” She set her candle down very deliberately against the inside wall—the one opposite the windows—and motioned for him to do the same. That done, she led him past grand columns, then to a particularly grandiose archway. Orange light flooded from it. Here was where the voices came, from the other side of the archway. Davril could see why she had made him put down the candle; she didn’t want the lights to betray their presence.

  She edged closer to the archway, pressing her back against the wall, and he followed her lead. The voices gre
w louder.

  Davril strained his ears, trying to listen. No good. The voices were too far away. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the portal, awkwardly with his bad leg. The walls here were thick, perhaps fifteen feet wide, so the archway formed a short tunnel deep in shadow.

  Davril wormed his way to the other side, and he could hear the faint scuffle of Alyssa following him. Ahead, the voices grew louder, more distinct.

  “ . . . simply too dangerous,” said one with a heavy Avestine accent.

  “It must be done,” declared another—forceful, authoritative. “They are enemies of the Worm.” This was met with many enthusiastic agreements but a fair number of angry rebuttals, as well. There seemed to be a great number of voices. Too many.

  Davril reached the end of the tunnel and peered out. Immediately, he shrank back. After a few moments, he edged forward again. He peered into a massive, domed room, a great gathering hall, perhaps temple. Fifty thousand Avestines—that was Davril’s estimation, though he could be short a few thousand—occupied the main part of the room. Some hunched on colorful woven blankets, while others stood, shaking their fists and exclaiming loudly. All in the mass gathering stared ahead, to where the podium would have been in a normal church. Here, however, was no simple podium but a tiered set of daises, stretching up and up so that the Avestines in the gathering had to stare up to see the top. There on the highest dais stood a lone figure, tall and dressed in crimson and golden robes. Davril saw him, lit by the blazing braziers to either side, and shuddered.

  “Dear gods,” whispered Alyssa. “I didn’t get this close before.”

  Davril nodded. The man on the high dais was a thing of nightmare, completely covered in tattoos that resembled scales, as though he were reptile, not man, and his teeth were filed to sharp points, every one. His ornate, delicate headpiece flared out from the back of his tattooed, shaven skull, giving the impression of a cobra’s hood wrought of gold and jewels. It was his voice that thundered so authoritatively.