Arran looked at Megrithe, who did not meet his eye. If he took the pendant, he would be killing her and everything she stood for. He would be killing everyone who stood up against the neneckt. He would be killing the Guild. He might have received the short end of that particular stick, but he had no true hatred for her and her compatriots.
When it came down to it, he didn’t know whom he was supposed to hate. It sounded like a very good idea to put a collar on the Siheldi, even if it meant accepting a neneckt master instead of the human ones that ruled the slums and the banks and the courts of well-heeled men.
What would be the difference? Most people worked themselves to the bone until the day they died, anyway. They saw little reward in their short and painful lifetimes, and they still had the night spirits to fear. Wouldn’t it be an improvement to do the same labor for the neneckt, but add the security of peaceful nights and long lives for their children? He didn’t know too many people who would turn down a deal like that.
Part of him thought that perhaps he didn’t have the right to decide for the rest of humanity. But did they not already put their fates in the hands of chieftains and rich men they did not choose and did not have power over? He could pick rightly. He could be better than King Malveisin, cocooned in the luxury of his iron palace in Paderborn, aloof and removed from the suffering of his naked citizens. Maybe Bartolo was trying to save them, not destroy them. Maybe it was the right choice.
And I would live, he reminded himself. But instead of hope, the thought simply brought the ice of indifference crackling through his heart. Death would come for him no matter what he did. It came for all men regardless of their riches. It would come some day for Tiaraku, too. There wasn’t a right side to history. There was only choosing whom to hate.
“Must it be now?” he said, looking down at his hands, too confused and overwhelmed to make such a decision.
“You can have some time if you like,” Bartolo said. “Just not too long.”
Arran nodded. “Thank you.”
“But perhaps I will hold onto this for now,” he added, taking the pendant back and putting it in his pocket with the tube of gemstones. “And the lady’s token, if you please,” he said, pointing at Megrithe’s pocket. Faidal reached around her, making her flinch away as he put his hand in the pouch sewn into the hip of her dress. He drew out a flat disc of blush-colored iron stamped with the Guild’s coat of arms and handed it to his master.
“Good,” Bartolo nodded, tucking it into his own coat. “Now you may take them away.”
Arran stood up and walked out without Faidal needing to lay a hand on him. He felt a little sick and very heavy, as if whatever was keeping his feet on the ocean floor was also weighing down his insides, every thought a pellet of lead added to his burden.
“What are you going to do?” Megrithe whispered as they paced down the long corridor leading back to the reef city, but Arran just shook his head. “You can’t even think about doing what he said.”
“You must,” Faidal said. “You have no choice. He won’t let you die until you appease him.”
“Then he’ll be waiting quite a long time.”
“Just do it,” Faidal urged. “Or at least say you’ll do it. He will give you the stones, but then you’ll have the power. You can have the Siheldi kill him instead. And then I can get you out of here.”
“Oh no,” Arran said immediately. “No. I am not trusting another word that comes out of your mouth ever again. No, thank you.”
“What do you mean?” Megrithe cut in, much more interested than Arran was. “How?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Arran warned her. “He’s lied a hundred times over. He’s lying now, and he’ll betray me again.”
“That’s not true,” the neneckt retorted. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do. I am nothing more than a slave to Tiaraku. He promised me my freedom if I brought him you and the gems.”
“So? You got what you wanted. Congratulations.”
“Not until you do what you’re supposed to.”
“Then why would you help me get out of here first?”
“I didn’t say first,” Faidal said. “You may survive what Bartolo has planned, but he will most assuredly kill you afterwards. If you just listen to me and do as I say, I can get you back to the surface before that happens. Bartolo will be annoyed, but he will have no reason to go after you or Megrithe. You can both live.”
“I have to warn them,” Megrithe said quietly, looking at Arran with pleading in her eyes. “The Guild can fight back if we have time to prepare.”
“It’s your only chance,” added Faidal. “I promise I can help.”
“But only after that lunatic takes over everything? What’s the point? Even if I wanted to live in a world like that, I just can’t trust you, Faidal. Slave or not, truthful or not, you have done nothing but try to ruin me time and again. I’m not interested in any more of your scheming. This is absurd.”
“Arran –” Megrithe tried, but he shook his head vehemently.
“No. He said I could have time to think. I’m just – I’m just going to think. By myself. Just take me back to my cell and shut up.”
“You’re not going back to the cell, Arran,” Faidal said, sounding more annoyed than anything else as he grabbed hold of him. “If you refuse to listen to me, I will have to take you to die.”
CHAPTER TEN
The noontime sun shone brightly over the undersea city, its tumble of rocks and reef casting speckled shadows on the pure white sand, the hidden jewel of the deep still eerily deserted by all but its finned residents. The neneckt were cloaked as currents, passing to and fro under Arran’s vacant stare as Faidal brought them arcing overhead, away from the direction of the cell where he and Megrithe had spent the night.
“I thought he said I could have time to think,” Arran said when he noticed the change.
“You’ll have time,” Faidal replied.
“Where are you taking us?” Megrithe asked.
“To the place where the worlds meet,” the neneckt said shortly, and would not add anything else despite her repeated questions.
Arran didn’t know what he meant, and he wasn’t sure he particularly cared. It was all a mistake, Bartolo had said. His father’s death. His mother’s suffering grief. His spare and dismal childhood under the dark shadow of blame, fear, and regret. His luck had been a mistake, too, he thought with a wry smile. Not worth much to the eallawif now, even if she did come to collect her debt. He was not worth much to anyone.
He had always been curious about death. Not morbidly fascinated like the dour old men who had escaped too many storms, nor jubilantly optimistic, like the religious zealots who eschewed their duties on earth in favor of fantasizing about the glory of heaven. He had seen men die in all manner of ways, and they seemed evenly split between terror and rapture, hope and disappointment, regret and relief. He had never done anything to hasten the moment for himself, of course, but in the shrieking nights when the hunters were abroad and the moon dared not show itself, he had wondered with what courage he would meet his end.
Now he only wondered if it would matter. There were no gods to welcome a man who had spent his life pained by every mention of their existence. Heaven was not open to a soul enraged by the pull of an immortal allure that had sopped up any lingering tenderness from his only remaining parent, scarred in her mortal life by the very fates she appealed to for her eternal salvation. There would be no endless peace and joy for him. It was too late to pretend that the gods would hear him if he begged for help in his last moments.
Had his father begged? Had he changed his agonized, terrified mind as the Siheldi drained every last drop of his spirit from his muscles and his flesh? As a young man, he had despised his father for abandoning them with his foolishness, but now, in the midst of his own predicament, he realized that Giles had done the best he could – better than most men could have. It just hadn’t been good enough. If any feeling in the world w
as familiar to his hapless offspring, it was that one.
“What the bleeding hell is that?” Megrithe gasped, interrupting his gloomy train of thought.
He hadn’t been paying much attention to where his effortless motion was taking him as Faidal guided them through the water, but they seemed to have traveled quite a long way from the black bulk of Niheba while he poked at his confused and wounded heart.
Megrithe was pointing at a long, craggy chain of mountains, sunken into an enormous rift in the ocean floor. They were taller than any edifice that marked the land, and yet their peaks were still far below the waves. A smoking monstrosity of cooled lava and jagged stone stood alone above them, its head spewing roiling ash and scalding water across shoulders devoid of life. The sunlight could not pierce the blackened clouds of silt and slag that shot forth from the crater, and as they approached the volcanic mountain, the sea dimmed, warming around them and smelling of low tides and burnt foul eggs as the shadows draped themselves around the tiny figures speeding through the depths.
Faidal slowed as it got harder to see. Megrithe started coughing, choking on the noxious fumes, and Arran tried to put his sleeve over his mouth and nose, his eyes stinging.
“We’re not going in there, are we?” he asked Faidal. “I’m not going in there.”
“Under there,” Faidal corrected as he moved them towards an opening. “Don’t worry. It won’t kill you. Not on its own, anyway.”
“Pity.”
“Faidal, please,” Megrithe tried as they drew nearer. “There’s no reason for me to be here. I have nothing to do with any of this. Let me go and we’ll say no more about it, yes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the neneckt told her as their feet touched down on a ledge crowded with boulders outside a deep, strangely circular tube that led into the mountain’s heart. “You will run straight to the Guild. You just said so. Besides, we need you.”
“For what?”
“Bait,” said Faidal, suddenly shoving both of them forward into the tunnel and quickly picking up an enormous chunk of stone with his uncanny strength, rolling it in front of the entrance as Arran and Megrithe shouted at him to stop, unsuccessfully pushing against the boulder, trying to prevent him from plugging up their only escape.
Faidal dropped the brass tube containing the two gemstones through the last little gap before the light was completely shut away. The container rolled along the sloping floor before Arran put out his foot and trapped it under his toe.
“Oh, God, Arran. This is not good,” Megrithe said, straining to keep her voice steady as her throat tightened with panic in the blind, confined space.
He expected the whisper to echo, but under the water the sound just fell flat, lending an additional eeriness to the lightless place. He reached down and groped under his boot for the container, picking it up and reaching out for Megrithe’s hand as much to make sure that she would follow him as to do what little he could to allay her fears.
“I think we go this way,” he said, trying to gauge the distance and danger of the darkened passageway without the help of any of his usual senses.
“Of course we do. We don’t exactly have a choice,” she replied matter-of-factly, moving forward so she was standing beside him instead of behind his shoulder, but she didn’t let go of her firm grip on his hand, nor did she argue when he moved into the lead down the narrow stretch of the tunnel.
The ground was smooth and somewhat powdery, and a long, straight groove along one wall gave Arran somewhere to anchor his fingers as they trailed along. It was strangely warm – well, not that strangely, he thought, remembering the towering plume of overheated air that spilt into the sea above them. It was making him clammy, though, and he wondered how long Megrithe would hold on to his sweaty palm as they inched deeper under the mountain.
“Is that a light ahead?” she asked eventually. Arran had been wondering the same thing as the spots in front of his eyes danced and squirmed each time he blinked, melting and shimmering in blobs and rods of greenish purple as he tried not to hope too much that they were real. But in front of them was a different glow: red and warm as the tunnel descended deep into the uncharted bowels of the earth.
“I hope not,” Arran said, wiping away a drop of sweat that had started to roll down his cheek, but the light was getting stronger with each step. Though it was clearly the product of fire, it was no welcoming hearth or a cheerful window lamp.
“At least it will be bright enough to keep the Siheldi away, won’t it?” she said, drawing a little closer.
“That won’t much matter if we melt to death first.”
“I don’t think you can melt to death, strictly speaking.”
“We’ll sure as hell be giving it a go,” Arran replied, a little annoyed that she would correct him at such a time when she clearly understood what he meant.
“It’s getting hard to breathe.”
“Do you want to stay here while I take a look?”
Megrithe shook her head. “I’d rather be in the light. Unless you don’t want the bait bag hanging around, that is.”
“Don’t be daft. I’d be perfectly happy if you happen to get out of here with me.”
“How chivalrous.”
“At least I’m giving you a chance,” he said. “I could knock you out cold and leave you to get eaten while I run if I wanted to.”
“And I could do the same,” she replied indignantly, taking a step away from him and dropping his hand.
“Unlikely, but all right. If you say so.”
“You are just asking for a thrashing,” she said darkly.
“You’ll have to get in line, miss,” Arran replied, turning away and heading towards the glow. “Are you coming?”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “Not if you’re going to be like that.”
He stopped and looked back at her, feeling bad about his teasing when he saw the thin line of her lips pressed together and her tightly knitted brow. She was only standing there because of him. It was his fault she was so frightened. It was his fault that she was probably going to die with him in a matter of minutes. It might be too late for heaven, but that didn’t mean she should have to live the last few moments of her life listening to him being glib and uncaring.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I would never do that. We’ll get out of here, all right? As soon as we figure out what we’re actually doing. Maybe Faidal will come back for you.”
“He won’t. You made sure of that.”
“I’ll make sure you get away from here somehow,” he said instead.
“Don’t do that,” she said sharply. “Don’t give me your stupid false promises. Haven’t you lied enough already?”
“More than enough.”
“Then just stop. I am unlikely to feel good about this situation no matter what you say, so don’t say anything at all.”
He shrugged and did as he was told. They were both quiet as she followed him down the path. It was very stuffy and infernally hot, and there was a low, humming noise like the rigging of a ship taut and straining under stiff sail. There seemed to be a current picking up in the water as they moved closer to the mouth of the tunnel, which opened up to a sight so incredible that it made Arran reach for Megrithe’s hand again before she could even start doing the same.
The mountain was entirely hollow. The twisted, melted walls of cooled lava stretched for half a mile above them, the roof obscured by the roiling smoke and ash that gathered into a great cloud. In front of them, fifty feet below where the tunnel abruptly stopped, ran a veritable river of cracked and cooking stone, angry gashes of bubbling red showing through like burning scars as saucers of black rubble floated and slowly shifted like ice floes on a bed of liquid earth.
Beyond the river, over an arcing bridge of rock as narrow as a gutter, was a more stable place. There was an open disc of thickly hardened stone, bulged and swollen like pimples on a stripling youth, its uneven surface punctuated with giant, gleaming bright boulders
that didn’t look at all like they belonged. The stones formed a ring surrounding the mountain’s heart: an enormous well of roiling magma that sputtered and spurted from the very center of the world, the sheer sides of the pit dropping untold miles under their feet.
“Fyrendor,” Megrithe whispered, staring wide-eyed in front of her, a glassy look of fear coming over her normally shrewd and composed features.
“It is not,” Arran retorted, wiping his face again to hide his expression. “That’s a myth. It’s just a – it’s just a mountain.”
“It’s the gateway to hell. It has to be. Just as the scriptures describe it,” she replied, the firm conviction in her voice making him cringe. She almost sounded like his mother.
“I don’t know,” he said, not wanting to start an argument and not entirely sure that she was wrong. “Whatever it is, we have to –”
“Stop that!” she shrieked suddenly, recoiling as if he had slapped her across the face.
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“You touched me,” she replied, putting her hand to the back of her neck and shivering like she had a chill.
“I didn’t. I swear.”
“Something did.”
“Well it wasn’t me,” Arran said.
“Something did,” she repeated, sounding almost as if she was going to cry.
“It was probably a fish,” he tried, but she just glared at him.
“It was a Siheldi. I know it was. I just know it. I’m going to die here,” she added, her voice sinking to a shaky whisper.
“No, you’re not. I’ve got these, remember?” he said, holding up the brass container. “Bartolo said I could control them. So I will. I’ll tell them to let us out of here, and then I’ll throw the stones in there,” he told her, pointing towards the volcano’s center. “No one will ever get to them again, and this will all be over.”
Dark the Night Descending (The Paderborn Chronicles Book 1) Page 20
