The Infernal city es-1

by Gregory Keyes

  She heard the pain in her friend’s voice, and despite how she felt, dragged herself back to the edge and opened her eyes.

  Again her first impression failed her. She imagined she was seeing an Argonian army, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to slay this foul enemy as they had the forces of Dagon in times past.

  But then she got it.

  “They’re just standing there. They aren’t fighting.”

  Glim nodded. “Yes.”

  The air was thick with fliers and threads.

  “I don’t understand,” Annaïg wailed. “Why does the tree want your people to die?”

  “Not all of us,” Glim whispered. “Just the Lukiul. The assimilated. The tainted. The An-Xileel, the Wild Ones—they’ve gone away. They’ll come back, after this is over, and every Imperial taint will be scoured.”

  “It’s mad,” she said. “We have to do something.”

  “What? In three hours every living thing in Lilmoth will be dead. Worse than dead.”

  “Look, we’re here. We’re the only ones who have any chance of doing anything. We have to try!”

  Glim watched the slaughter below for another few breaths, and in that moment she feared he was going to fling himself down to join his people.

  But then he let out the long, undulating hiss that signified resignation.

  “Okay,” he repeated in Tamrielic. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  They left the edge and walked back into the crack. The holes that the fliers had come through were high, and the climb looked difficult, but the split in the island continued back, gradually sloping down. Daylight was soon behind them, and while the ghost of it followed them for a while, eventually they were in near complete darkness. She wished she’d foreseen this—one of her earliest concoctions had been to help her see at night. But without any proper materials or equipment, there wasn’t any way to make one now.

  The going was easy enough, though—the walls remained about twice her shoulder-width apart, so it was easy enough to keep a hand on each rough surface. The floor was a little uneven, but after a few stumbles her feet grew cautious enough.

  She could hear Glim breathing, but after they left the ledge, he hadn’t said anything, which was just as well, because not only would it be foolish to make any more noise than necessary, she didn’t feel like talking, either.

  She reckoned they had gone a few hundred yards when she saw light once again, at first just a veneer on the stone, but soon enough to see where they were stepping again. A good thing, too, because the path led them to another cliff.

  This one opened in the belly of the mountain, a vast, dome-shaped cavity open at the bottom so they could once more see the destruction of Lilmoth. They were already over the old Imperial quarter, where her house was.

  “Taig,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure he left,” Glim hissed. “The tree couldn’t affect him.”

  She just shook her head and turned her sight away, and through tear-gleamed eyes she saw masses of the threads shooting down—so many it looked almost like rain. She followed their course and saw them, thousands of them, in every nook and cranny of the stone. She couldn’t make out much; they, too, seemed vaguely insectile, but she saw the thin, stone-colored tubes the threads issued from, because the rest of whatever-they-were were concealed in circular masses of what appeared to be the same material. They looked a lot like spider egg sacs, but larger, much larger.

  “Here,” Glim murmured.

  She had almost forgotten him. She turned to follow his pointing knuckles and saw steps hewn into the stone, leading up.

  There wasn’t any other way to go except back, and so Annaïg started up, filled with a sudden, panicked determination. She had to do something, didn’t she? If she could get up there, cut those things loose, maybe the horror would end.

  The steps wound up a few feet and vanished back into another tunnel. This one was illuminated with a palpable phosphorescence. It twisted to curve steeply skyward, and Annaïg realized they were making their way up above the domed space. Almost immediately it began branching, but she kept to her left, and after several breathless moments they came to a silvery-white cable, emerging from the stone below them and vanishing into the ceiling.

  “It looks like the threads,” she whispered. “Only bigger.”

  “Not bigger,” Glim said. “More.”

  A little closer, she saw what he meant. The cable was composed of hundreds of threads wound together.

  She reached out to touch it.

  “Well, that’s not smart,” Glim said.

  “I know,” she replied, trying to sound brave. Closing her eyes, she touched the back of her hand to it.

  Something whirred about in her head and she felt a sudden giddy surge.

  She saw now that the hole was larger than the cable that came up through it and, lying flat she was able to make out the jungle floor again. Below her, the ropelike structure unwound itself, sending threads off in every direction. She could see some of them vanishing into the web sacs.

  “If we cut this, we’ll get a lot of them,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘get’ them? What do you think will happen?”

  “They’re all connected here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then if we cut it …” She flailed off, gesturing.

  “You think it will, what, shut this whole thing down? Destroy this island?”

  “It might. Glim, we have to do something.”

  “You keep saying that.” He sighed. “What will you cut it with?”

  “Try your claws.”

  He blinked, then stepped forward and experimentally raked his claws across the thing. He shivered and stepped back, then hit it again, with such force that the cord vibrated.

  It wasn’t scratched.

  “Any other ideas?”

  “Maybe if we can find a sharp rock—” She broke off. “Do you hear that?”

  Glim nodded.

  “Xhuth!”

  Because somewhere in the passages, she could hear voices shouting, several of them.

  “Come on,” she said, and started up another branch of the tunnel.

  They kept going, taking random branches, but the voices were gradually growing louder, and there was little doubt in her mind now that they were being pursued.

  Whenever they came to a turn that seemed to go down, she took it, reasoning that so far they hadn’t been bothered by anything from that direction, but inevitably the passages seemed to move them upward.

  She couldn’t have known, could she? How big this was all going to be, how utterly beyond her? It was ridiculous.

  As if the gods had decided to punctuate that thought, the tunnel suddenly debouched onto a steep ledge that vanished into the interior space of the island.

  She drew up short, panting, but Glim grabbed her arm and they were suddenly skittering down the tilted surface. Her surprise was so complete that all thought was pushed from her brain by white light, so when the Argonian caught a knob at the edge and swung them sharply down and under, she had nothing to be relieved about. She found herself on a rounded, springy surface.

  It was one of the web sacs.

  Glim pulled her up to where the thing was anchored to the stone, the sloping shelf now a ceiling above them, and they crouched there, trying to calm their breathing for many long moments.

  A voice suddenly spoke above them, in a tongue that sounded teasingly familiar. The voice might have been that of a man or mer. Another, stranger voice replied. This time she caught a few words; it was Merish dialect of some sort. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sounds.

  “—could be dead already,” she made out.

  “We can’t take that chance. He’ll have our heads if another vehrumas gets them.”

  “Who else is looking for them?”

  “Word gets around fast. Come on, let’s try this way.”

  The two continued talking, but the sounds grew gradually more distant until they faded a
way.

  As the voices diminished, she heard Mere-Glim resume breathing.

  “I don’t suppose you understood any of that?” he asked.

  “Remember how you used to make fun of me for studying old Ehlnofex?” she asked.

  “A dead language? Yes.” His throat expanded and he huffed. “They were speaking Ehlnofex?”

  “No, but it was enough like it for me to understand it.”

  “And?”

  “Someone saw us fly up here. They’re searching for us.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever lives here. There was a word I didn’t understand—vehrumas—but it sounds like there are more than one bunch trying to find us.”

  “Wonderful. So what do we do?”

  To her surprise, she suddenly knew.

  She fumbled in her jacket and pulled out Coo.

  “Go to the Imperial City,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Find Crown Prince Attrebus. Speak only to him, hear only in his presence. He will help us.” She saw him in her mind’s eye, her own imagining based on the portraits she had seen.

  Coo clicked and tinged, and then flew off, dodging gracefully through the filaments, diminishing, a speck, gone.

  “How does that help us?” Glim asked. “Why should Attrebus care what happens to us?”

  “This thing isn’t stopping at Lilmoth,” she told him. “It’ll go on, through all of Tamriel. And you’re right, we can’t stop it, you and I. Most likely we’ll die or be captured. But if we can survive a little while, until Coo reaches Attrebus—”

  “Listen to yourself.”

  “—if Coo reaches him, and at least one of us survives, we can tell him what’s happening. Attrebus has armies, battlemages, the resources of an empire. What he doesn’t have is any information about this place.”

  “Neither do we. And it will be days, at least, before Coo reaches the Imperial City—if he does.”

  “Then we have to survive,” she said. “Survive and learn.”

  “Survive what? We don’t even know what we’re up against.”

  “Well, then let’s find out.”

  “I have a better idea,” Glim said, pointing to the oily black snout emerging from the cocoon. “Let’s grab onto one of those strands and ride it to the ground.”

  Annaïg frowned. “They’re moving too fast. Anyway, then we’d just be down there where everything is dying.”

  He paused, looked at her as if she was crazy, and then rolled his eyes.

  “You were kidding,” she said.

  “I was kidding,” he confirmed.

  The filaments that anchored the web sacs to the stone gave them purchase to climb down to the next ledge, where they found another tunnel. They went in quietly, mindful of what had happened before. As before, the way tended either upward and outward or back into the vault. After perhaps an hour they came across one of the now familiar cables.

  Less familiar was the person licking it.

  He hadn’t seen them yet.

  It was a man, naked from the waist up and clad in loose, dirty trousers rolled tight at his waist. His shape and features were those of a human or mer, except that his eyes were a bit larger than normal and recessed more deeply into his face. His hair was unkempt, greasy, and dingy yellow.

  She motioned Glim back, but the fellow’s gaze snapped over to them, and he stopped licking the cable.

  “Lady!” he exclaimed, in the same dialect she’d heard before, bending his head and battering his forehead with his knuckles. “Lady, this isn’t at all what it looks like!”

  Annaïg just stared for a moment.

  “Lady?” the man repeated. She saw fear in his eyes, but puzzlement as well. Clearly he thought he knew who—or more likely, what—she was.

  The man’s eyes widened further and he stepped back as Glim emerged.

  “What is it, then?” Annaïg asked, trying to sound haughty. “What is it if it’s not what it looks like?”

  “Mistress,” the man replied. “I hope you understand what you saw just now was just appearances. I wouldn’t actually—”

  “Lick the cable? That’s exactly what it looked like you were doing.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a funny accent, lady. Some of the words are strange. I’ve never heard them. And your companion …”

  “Who are you?” Annaïg asked, feeling her feeble attempt at a bluff crumbling.

  “Wemreddle,” the man replied. “Wemreddle of the Bolster Midden, in fact, if you must know.” He lifted a finger and shook it. “You’re not supposed to be here either.” He waved violently at Glim. “And there’s no such thing as you, you know. No. No such thing as you. You’re the ones they’re talking about. The ones from outside. From down there.”

  “Look,” Annaïg said, “we don’t mean anyone any harm—”

  “No, listen,” Wemreddle said. “I’m of the Bolster Midden, didn’t I tell you? What business do I have with them upstairs? Sump take them and keep them. But come on now. I’ll get you safe and cozy. Come on with me.”

  “He’s not armed,” Glim lisped, in their private cant. “I can kill him.”

  “You’ve never killed anyone.”

  “I can do it.” There was a new hardness in his voice.

  Wemreddle stepped back. “I mean to help.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hate all this,” he said. “I hate them at the top of the chutes. And you—you might be able to help with them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “This new place. You know things about it? The plants, the minerals, the ways of things. They say you flew here without wings.”

  “I know a little,” she said.

  “Yes. That’s powerful knowledge. Enough to change things. Will you come?”

  Annaïg looked sidewise at Glim, but his expression offered no opinion.

  “This might be what we’re looking for,” she told him.

  “I can’t follow him. What’s he saying?”

  “I think he’s with some disenchanted group, a resistance maybe. They want our help against another faction. We can exploit this, as Irenbis did the various factions of Cheydinhal.”

  “Irenbis?”

  “Irenbis Songblade.”

  “That’s from a book, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a chance, Glim. You agreed we have to do something.”

  “Something it is, then,” he replied.

  SEVEN

  “What is that?” Annaïg asked, trying not to gag at the stench. Her belly was already empty and her throat and chest ached.

  “That’s the Midden,” Wemreddle said. “Of the four lower Middens, Bolster has the richest scent.”

  “Rich?” Annaïg drew another breath, this one worse than the last. “I wouldn’t describe it as rich. How far away is it?”

  “We’ve still some way to go,” Wemreddle said. Then, defensively, “If you wouldn’t say rich, then what? Savor the layers of complexity, the contrast of ripe, rotten, and almost raw, the depth and diversity of it.”

  “I—”

  “No, no, wait. When we’re there you’ll understand better. Appreciation will come.”

  Annaïg somehow doubted that. It seemed more likely that her lungs would close themselves and suffocate her rather than take in any more of the waxing stench. As they progressed, the floor and walls of the tunnels became first slick and then coated in a dank, putrid sheen, and she began to picture herself climbing up through the bowels of some enormous beast.

  “What is this place?” she asked. “Where is it from?”

  “This place?”

  “The whole—island. Floating mountain, whatever you want to call it.

  “Oh. You mean Umbriel.”

  “Umbriel?”

  “Yes, Umbriel, it’s called.”

  “And why is it here?”

  Again he looked puzzled. “Here is here,” he said.

  “No, I mean why have you come to my world? Why are you attacking it?”
r />   “Well, I’m not, am I? I’m just in the Bolster Midden.”

  “Yes, but why has Umbriel come here?” she persisted.

  “I’ve no idea. Does it matter?”

  “People are dying down there. There must be a reason.”

  He stopped and scratched his head. “Well, yes, Umbriel needs souls. Lots and lots of souls—there’s no secret there. But he could get those plenty of places. If you’re asking why here in particular, I’m afraid I’ve no way of knowing that.”

  “You mean it’s just feeding?” Annaïg asked, incredulous.

  “Well, we’ve lots of mouths to feed, don’t we,” he replied with an air of diffidence.

  “Why do they become—if their souls are taken up here—why do their bodies keep going?”

  “Do I really have to explain this?”

  “If I’m going to help you, I think I deserve whatever explanation you can give me.”

  “Oh, very well. Look, something beneath us dies. The soul-spinners nick the soul with their lines, and then the larvae fly down and get all snug in the bodies—which then harvest more souls. You see?”

  “The larvae have wings and round heads?”

  “Yes. See, you do know this.”

  “I saw one of them,” she replied. “It seemed like it should have been perfectly capable of murder on its own.”

  “In Umbriel, sure. But they have to leave Umbriel to find souls, which means they lose their substance.”

  “So that’s what I saw,” Annaïg said. “But why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do they become ethereal?”

  “That’s a big word,” Wemreddle said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t know,” Wemreddle said. “I’ve never thought about it. You fall in water, you get wet. Stray from Umbriel, you lose substance. It’s just how things are.”

  Annaïg digested that for a moment.

  “Very well. But how does it start? I mean, if larvae can’t kill anything unless they have a soulless body to steal, how do the first ones get bodies?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “And what becomes of the souls?”

  “Most go to the ingenium, which keeps Umbriel aloft and moving. Some go to the vehrumasas.”