Empire of the Worm

by Conner, Jack

  Despite himself, Davril looked down. At first all he saw was darkness. Then, movement. The darkness stirred.

  Behara, save me. Asqrit had done him precious little good. Why not give the god of the sky a chance?

  The thing in the pit surged upwards, and the light of the torches and braziers picked out two glints that must be eyes, huge, hideous, reptilian eyes, amber and slitted, far apart, and then a crack of fire appeared, what must be the mouth. Flames crackled in the back of the throat, silhouetting long sharp needle teeth, and any doubts Davril had of this being an otherworldly being vanished.

  It surged upwards, and the Avestines fell to their knees, crying out their love and fear, even the High Priest —

  Screams erupted from the hall, in the direction of the stairway. Screams, and more screams. The clink of armor and the swish of swords.

  “What’s this?” the High Priest said.

  He and Davril both turned their heads to see a tide of figures, some wearing armor, charge into the domed chamber. Swords flashed by the light of the braziers. Blood spurted. Tattooed priests fells screaming and bleeding. People shrieked and fell back. But there were too many people, and the space was too small. People began tumbling into the pit.

  Davril hunkered low as a body hurtled over his shoulders, howling as it fell into darkness. The roar of fire came and the howling ceased. Another body fell, and another. The snap of monstrous teeth chilled Davril, but he did not dare look back, did not dare look down. The priests that gripped him let go and turned to confront the attackers.

  Alyssa! Davril thought. Bless her. She hadn’t gathered the rebels to flee as he’d instructed her, but had roused them to save him. The wonderful, foolish girl.

  As the invaders stormed in, cleaving right and left and wreaking havoc among the faithful of Sythang, Davril turned to see the High Priest level his staff at one of the armored rebels. The air blurred at his tip.

  Davril launched himself at the priest and knocked the staff aside.

  The High Priest struck him with his free hand, drawing lines of blood on Davril’s cheek with sharpened fingernails. Growling, Davril rushed forward, ramming the priest with his shoulder and sending him flying backward—into the pit.

  The High Priest vanished into the darkness, toward those glimmering, reptilian eyes, and to his credit he did not scream. He fell piously silent, and Davril watched him until he the Thing’s mouth opened in a line fire, then snapped hideously shut, and the High Priest was no more.

  Davril spun just in time to avoid a press of tangled figures being forced back into the chasm. He flattened himself on the ground and hung on with his hands and toes to the ancient tiles as Avestines poured over him, either giving themselves up to their god willingly as a way to avoid a less noble death at the hands of their enemies, or else simply because they were pushed. Davril felt a heel grind his palm, another step on his head, shoving his chin down into the floor. Someone tripped on him, hooking his ribs. A toe nearly gouged out his eye.

  Slowly, painfully, he inched forward. Some of the Avestines were fighting, striving against the invaders. Others fled down narrow side-tunnels that Davril had not even noticed before. Behind the daises was a semi-circular wall with many niche-like doorways, likely to the priests’ apartments.

  It was a raging chaos, a battle with little order and less planning, but at last Davril came upon some of his rescuers. He chose one that knew him and presented himself.

  “The Emperor!” the man shouted. “He lives!”

  Quickly Davril wrested command of the attack.

  “Surrender!” he called to the Avestines, cupping his hands to amplify his voice. “Surrender! There can be no victory!” The Avestines were unarmed and unorganized, and they had walls or a great pit at their backs. The side-tunnels were narrow and would only admit a few at a time. Originally they had possessed the greater numbers, but that was not the case any longer.

  At last Davril saw Jeselri leading a pocket of people, wielding severed arms and legs torn from their fallen as weapons. Some had staffs or knives, but that was it. Davril’s men swarmed Jeselri’s defenders, and a sword nearly took off Jeselri’s head before Davril could stop it.

  “Help me,” Davril said to Jeselri when the Patriarch was safely captured. “Help me, and we can put an end to this. I would have the Avestines as our friends.”

  Sweat drenched Jeselri’s face. “The priests are fools. Consider it done.”

  Soon Davril strode through the battle, Jeselri at his side. “Hold!” Jeselri shouted. “Hold! Put down your weapons, sons of Ave! Put them down and submit! Make peace! These are our allies!”

  Slowly they listened, and at last quit their struggle. It had been a long, bloody melee, and heaps of bodies lay on the ground, both Avestine and rebel.

  While the Avestines were being escorted from the chamber, Davril navigated his way through the bodies until he stood on the lip of the pit. He saw nothing, not a pinprick of a monstrous eye, not a crack of fire for a mouth, nothing. Even the heat and the stench was gone. The Serpent, evidently gorged satisfactorily, had returned to his lair.

  Jeselri stepped to Davril’s side, and for a moment Davril tensed, fearing the Patriarch might try to shove him in. Jeselri saw his tension and smiled.

  “You’ve nothing to fear from me,” he said. “I never worshipped that thing.”

  “So he was a god.”

  “As much as the Worm, anyway, if not as powerful. And as deserving of worship.” Jeselri looked at Davril candidly. “What will happen to us now?”

  “Some of your people escaped through the rear. They will put out the word that my people are attacking.”

  “Yes,” Jeselri said. “But have no fear. The rule of the priesthood is over. Most died during the fighting, anyway. I will rule now. And I hate the Serpent, and Uulos, and all those like them. I would help you rid us of their yoke for good and all.”

  Davril stuck out his hand. Jeselri considered it, then shook hands.

  Casting one last look into the pit, Davril said, “I only wish the Worm were as easy to get rid of.”

  Jeselri sighed. “I know.” He gestured around him. “This is His city.”

  Davril stared at the Patriarch. “What . . . ?”

  “Sagrahab of legend. We are in one of its buildings. In their day they stretched to the sky. Oh, they are massive. They would dwarf any of our buildings. Over the eons the earth has swallowed the city, but . . . yes. This is Sagrahab, ancient capital of the Empire of Uulos.”

  Chapter 13

  Davril learned that Alyssa had accompanied the warriors to the Serpent’s lair. It had been she who had rallied them and led them there.

  As soon as she saw Davril through the press of people, she ran to him and flung her arms about him, and he didn’t stop her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he told her gently. “I instructed you to—”

  “To let you die.” Her voice was firm, and her eyes were still as they gazed up at him. “Now you’re alive, and the Avestines will support us willingly.”

  “So we hope.”

  “Yes.” She stared up at him, and he noticed the tear-streaks on her cheeks.

  He pressed her head to his chest. She wants this to be it, he realized. She wants this to be the thing that allows me to forgive her. Feeling her in his arms, he wondered if perhaps that time might have come.

  That night he dreamt of her—the feel of her breath against the hollow of his neck, the smell of her hair, her round breasts mashed up against his chest—and that thought, coupled with the fresh memories of the Serpent, kept him from getting much sleep. During the next days he conferred often with Jeselri and the new order of elders that led the Avestines. The Avestines now supported Davril’s rebellion, and he hoped they could prove of more than passive aid.

  He also learned more of the true nature of the subterranean tunnels. Of Sagrahab. It is from this city that Uulos had ruled for countless years, until at last he was betrayed and forced into exil
e by Subn-ongath and the rest of the Circle. Davril had thought Sagrahab fallen, and but it had merely been swallowed, devoured by time. Thousands, perhaps millions of years had passed since then, and time and dust had buried the city, but it still stood, patient, ancient and dark, beneath the very streets of Sedremere, just waiting to be wakened once more. Avestine legends held that when the Worm returned to glory, the city would rise and slough away the grime of Sedremere, and all the ancient allies of Uulos, like the Serpent they served, would be roused and rule the world once more, though always beneath Uulos, their supreme god.

  It was amazing and horrifying to Davril to realize that all this time a vast city had slumbered beneath his very feet, beneath the feet of everyone. And it was vast. Jeselri took him on grand tours of the city’s avenues and buildings. Most of it was inaccessible, being buried under the cold, heavy earth, but the Avestines had excavated more of it than Davril would have thought possible—they had been working on it for centuries, since even before his ancestors had conquered them; indeed, it is why they had settled here: they had heard the call of their then-slumbering god and had gone to wake him with blood. It was fantastic, and nightmarish. Davril saw awful statues of things with wings and tentacles; blood gutters trailing down the sides of towering spires; he saw great black altars in the city squares; the grim bas-reliefs on ancient walls of great battles of demons and of tortures and orgies of things no mortal was ever meant to look upon; he saw buildings rearing at mad geometries, with a profusion of stalks and ramparts and terraces and abutments that no natural law could support; and more, much more.

  At times Alyssa would accompany him, and they would discuss what they had seen in whispers of awe. It was humbling, and oppressive, to realize just how ancient and powerful Uulos truly was. Humans had not even existed when the buried city was built, and it had been built by fantastic creatures that did not even vaguely resemble Man. Sometimes, just touching the stonework, Davril received a thrill. The stone seem to hum beneath his fingers.

  He didn’t know if Uulos was truly a god, or perhaps a being of some alien race from the deep gulfs of the void, but it didn’t matter. He must be destroyed at all costs. And if humans did come to serve the Old One, Davril feared what strange aspect man might take. Davril himself was already tainted by lesser beings than Uulos, and he had seen in his father and brothers just what this could mean; he could not imagine what horrors Uulos would turn men into.

  In any case, while Davril explored the city and consolidated his rebellion, Uulos grew more powerful. Davril sent out his spies and gathered his reports, and with each day he saw the tapestry of the Old One’s plans coming together. The other cities in the empire had been purged of their gods save the Worm and his servants. All of Qazradan’s temples were now temples to the Worm or his subordinates. The empire was once more stable and strong. Trade had resumed with her allies, and her armies had been reformed and even now marched on her foes, principally those who had attacked her in her hour of weakness. This was not done out of hate or any sense of revenge on Uulos’s part, Davril suspected, but out of hunger. Uulos, whatever he was, remained a thing of blood and darkness, and for him to live, to exist in this plane, on this world, meant he had to steal the lives and souls of others. He must feed. Thus he sent out his armies to gather prisoners to be brought back to him, and these poor wretches were constantly marched through the cobbled streets of Sedremere, bound and stripped and whipped. Several times Davril stood on terraces overlooking the city, feeling the sun warm the stone beneath his feet, feeling the sweat trickle down from his hair, shading his eyes from the glare on helm and spear as Qazradan soldiers—his soldiers—ushered in of prisoners-of-war. Some would be taken and sold as slaves, as under General Hastus’s rule slavery was once more practiced in Qazradan, and the slaves would be the lucky ones. Most would go to the Temple of Lerum, and they would not be seen again.

  As Uulos sent out his armies, his empire expanded. In time, Davril knew, it truly would encompass the world, and then Uulos would not feed on his foes but on his loyal flock, penned sheep for him to consume at leisure. Meanwhile they would be tainted and take on loathsome aspects, at least those who served him. They would cease being men at all. Davril wondered if, when Uulos reached that point, he truly would raise Sagrahab from the darkness and slough away Sedremere like a snake shedding its skin. Was it possible? Would Sedremere simply cease to be? In Davril’s dreams he saw dark, strange towers thrusting up through the crust of the earth, knocking aside the golden domes and palaces of the city as though they were a child’s toys.

  The time to strike was now. Davril was not quite as strong as he would have liked to have been, his supporters not as unified, well-placed or organized as he would prefer, yet if he hesitated Uulos would grow too mighty to be hurt, and he would devour the Jewel of the Sun, and any hope of his defeat would be gone.

  Davril set his plans in motion. Now that Jeselri had fully adopted Davril’s cause, he had made known to the young emperor many of the secret passages he had previously hidden. From him Davril learned of tunnels that led right up to the Temple of Uulos, as Davril thought of the Temple of Lerum now. In Davril’s previous efforts to devise a plan with his generals to assault the Temple, he’d been stymied by all the Lerumite lookouts, but if they could get close enough without being seen . . .

  There was only one problem.

  “We won’t have enough men,” General Trias explained. Trias had been a general under Hastus, but he shared none of Hastus’s loyalties. At Davril’s instigation, he’d made an extensive study of the tunnels and the area of attack. “We can’t bring enough men with us through those rat-holes. Rather, we could, but it would take too long to form the company in Lord Ulesme’s warehouses, sliding up through the gutters as we’ll have to do. We’ll have to come out one by one. It might take hours to assemble enough men to assault the Temple. We can get close with those tunnels, but . . .” He shook his head. “We can get close, but we can’t storm it.”

  Davril nodded. “I believe there’s a way.”

  “Are you sure about this, sir?” asked Wesrai.

  Davril looked at the abandoned wall he was just then passing through, felt the shadows as they fell over him, and said, “Why not?”

  His aplomb did not seem to cheer Wesrai, and the priest frowned as they wound their way up through the checkpoints toward the Palace. Shortly they rounded the last bend and the great Palace with its riot of red and gold spires and domes loomed over them. The setting sun cast crimson fire on its minarets and made the glass dome over the aviary glow. Davril sighed to see the neglect, the ruin. Townspeople, likely daring each other, had thrown rocks to shatter the windows, had chiseled off the faces of Emperor Melin and his daughters, had drawn graffiti along the wall of the fountain, had knocked off the tails of the fountain fish.

  Over it all hung a feeling of darkness, and watchfulness. Davril found it oddly reassuring after having just made his way through the streets of Sedremere. A heaviness had seemed to fall over his mind, driving out all his other thoughts save hate, and fear. But now, as he entered the grounds of the Palace, that stain of Uulos retreated. The oily bitterness, and the smell of sulfur and seaweed, disappeared. To be sure, the taint of Uulos was simply replaced by the taint of his Circle, but the Circle was bound to Davril. It’s my family. Here, in this one place, Uulos was weak, and he was strong.

  “You stay here this time,” Davril told Wesrai, and this time Wesrai did not argue.

  Davril dismounted from his camel and limped his way up the stairs, past the grand columns and through the high main doors of the Palace. All was dark and empty. Cobwebs spanned the spaces between ornate pillars, and furniture had been dragged and torn apart by looters. Some of it was doubtless missing—and some of the looters, as well.

  Davril lit a torch and crossed directly to the stairwell to the catacombs. As he hobbled down the stairs, the feeling of darkness and waiting increased. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he shuddered.
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  He entered the catacombs and passed the grand sarcophagi and tombs of his forefathers, marveling that these were mere husks, monuments housing nothing. Suddenly, he sensed movement in the darkness around him. All was shadow save where his torch clove a path. Now the darkness swirled, grew thick, and out of it stepped a broad figure, his face ghastly white, his eyes black as coal.

  “Son,” he said.

  Davril bowed his head. “Father.”

  The shadows pressed closer.

  “Brothers,” Davril added.

  “Have you come to repent your sins and to accept the truth of things?” the dead emperor said.

  There was anger in his voice, and warning. Davril knew that if he said anything but yes, the shadows would feast on his blood.

  “I have,” he said.

  The shadows relaxed.

  His father’s face did not flicker. His eyes bore into Davril, and Davril had to fight to keep himself from twisting.

  “You must be baptized,” Emperor Husan said. It was not a request.

  “How?”

  “Normally it would be different. There would be ceremony, ritual, but now . . . Kneel.”

  Somewhat nervously, and awkwardly, Davril knelt before his father. His right knee pained him, and he had to struggle to keep it straight, while his left knee supported his weight. When he had knelt, he bowed his head. What am I doing here?

  “Produce your knife,” the Emperor said. “Surely you have not lost it.”

  “I have not.” Davril produced the knife, which he had retrieved after the Battle of the Pit, as the fight was now called, and it flickered in the light of the torch he’d set beside him. The smoke from the torch teased his nose, and he prayed the light would not go out.

  “Hold out your right hand,” the Emperor commanded, and Davril obeyed. “Slash yourself and say, Noscrum un ra ta. I give myself to you.”