by DB King
“It’s going to be less comfortable where we’re going,” Marcus warned Hammer. “There’s generally not a lot of food, and I hope to be taking a sea voyage soon, which might not suit you.”
The dog tossed his head as if he didn’t care. “I was so bored in the old place,” he said. “No one ever did anything with me. It will be worth a bit of discomfort to have a companion to do things with again.”
“Did you used to do things with Diremage Xeron?” Marcus asked. It crossed his mind that the dog might know something useful about the Diremage, but Hammer snorted.
“The Diremage?” Hammer said. “No. Not him. Never met anyone less interested in animals. Oh, he was never unkind to me, and he didn’t mind me sleeping in the house, but he never paid me any attention. I was there with the house when Xeron moved in. Used to catch rats in the cellars, and chase mice out of the pantries, but not for years. No, I’ll stick with you, and no one’ll miss me back at Xeron’s place, that’s for sure.”
“Very well,” said Marcus with a shrug, “good to have you along.”
Hammer barked once, and Ella grinned.
“Looks like you’re stuck with us,” she chuckled. Then she addressed Marcus. “But what did you mean a moment ago when you mentioned taking a sea voyage?”
“I’m planning to get out of Kraken City, Ella,” he replied. “That’s why I stole the magic dust. I want to sell it and use the gold to buy passage on a ship away from here.”
“Here,” said Ella thoughtfully. She glanced around. “Where exactly is ‘here’? What is this city that we’re in?”
Marcus shrugged. “I guess you were brought here on a ship in captivity and didn’t have much chance to look around. This is Kraken City. They say it’s the biggest trading port in the world. It’s an island, a big island almost entirely covered by the port city. The Kingdom of Doran is off to the north-east, several weeks sail from here. To the south, the many Isles of the Sun, where spices and many different kinds of exotic herbs are imported from. Off to the west are the shores of the Gronwold, the wildlands where the orkish folk rule. That’s where amber and furs and jet come from...”
Marcus told her about how Kraken City was the central trading hub for all these goods. Steel flowed from the Dwarven Realms north of the lands of men in Doran, across the sea to Kraken City. Here, it was bought by orks, who traded for it with furs and amber, and the rare healing plants that only grew in the valleys of the Gronwold. Marcus had never been anywhere but Kraken City, and yet he knew the world by its trade goods. To him, the Isles of the Sun, far south of Kraken, meant hot dried chilies and sweet cinnamon, and the lands to the west were soft wolf fur and the rich blacks and reds of jet, rubies, and amber.
The Kingdom of Doran was the place the people of Kraken City had the most traffic with. Kraken was technically a fiefdom of Doran, but in reality, it operated as an independent state, setting its own taxes and using mercenaries as a standing defense force who patrolled the coastal waters around the big central island.
Ella was quiet when Marcus finished explaining all this to her. Dawn was brightening the sky as they came to the edge of the slum district. Marcus stepped onto the wide expanse of boggy land on the south of the island they called the Wasteland. Ella’s tiny face scrunched up, and she held her nose. The Wasteland earned its name: it smelled of foul water, and ruined stone structures and unhealthy-looking groves of stunted trees spotted the desolate place. The Wasteland stretched for three miles from the ragged border of the slum district out to an abrupt edge, where steep, wind-blown cliffs dropped down 400 feet to the reef-torn sea.
The slums were beginning to encroach on the Wasteland, and regular foraging parties made their way to the larger ruins to collect stone for their buildings, but the land itself was too boggy for any serious building. It was well known that the woods and the ruins were haunted by the ghosts of the old peoples who had lived on Kraken Island before the Fall—the great calamity that had torn apart the civilization that once inhabited the islands long ago.
Marcus had seen the ghosts out here, but he hadn’t gone looking for any trouble with them. They were tall, gray creatures dressed in rusty armor and ragged chainmail. Skulls peered out from their helmets and long, notched swords hung from their bony hands.
Other foul creatures inhabited the Wasteland, too—you could hear them howling at night—and there were soft spots in the bog where an unwary man could lose a boot, or even be caught and sucked down into the warm stinking mud, never to be seen again.
“And where are you taking us now?” Ella asked after a few long minutes of silence as they pondered the desolate scene in front of them.
Marcus pointed. Half a mile off there was a significant outcrop of ruins—piles of broken stone and even part of one upstanding wall, surrounded by a ditch full of scummy water. “We’re going over there,” he said. “In those ruins there’s an entrance to the Underway. That’s where I live. You’ll be safe there, and we can lie low for a few days while the trouble blows over from the robbery at Diremage Xeron’s place. Then I can sell my loot and get my gold, and we can think about a ship to the Kingdom of Doran.”
She said nothing for a moment, then she asked. “This Underway, is it underground?”
He looked at her and grinned. “As the name suggests, yes, it’s underground. In the old days—long ago, I don’t know exactly how long—the land that now makes up Kraken Island was part of a much bigger landmass. There was a city here, a grand city, it’s said, and they created a network of underground tunnels to service the city. They had underground walkways, wide streets that carts could ride along, and also a big sewer network. After the Fall, the whole place was abandoned, and no one lived here for a long time. At first, it was a prison colony from Doran, but as the years passed, it became a trading port, and eventually the first docks were built. From there, it became Kraken City.”
They were approaching the ruins now. The gloomy stones cast long shadows in the early morning light.
“The underground tunnels are no longer used, of course,” Marcus continued. “They have different ways of dealing with the waste from the city these days, and most of the underground network has been left abandoned.”
“And people live down there?” Ella asked.
Marcus nodded. “That’s right. Lots of people. People fall down in life for all kinds of reasons. They get into debt, or drink catches them, or they get addicted to magic potions. Sometimes they are criminals, or exiles, or madmen. The people who live in the Underway don’t generally ask each other what brought them down in the first place—it’s never a happy story. But it’s safer in a group. We look out for each other, and we’ve got a good, defendable part of the tunnels to ourselves.”
Ella was listening intently.
“The Underway is vast,” Marcus continued. “It stretches right under the city, and there are ways in and out all around the edge of the island—here, and at the docks, out to the open water, and in the slums, too. Many entrances have been blocked up, and some shafts plunge down into the deeps and are drowned in seawater. Sometimes smugglers use the outer seaward exits to unload cargo. But one has to be careful in the Underway, too. There are… things down there, other things that aren’t people.”
Ella shivered. “Well, I trust you to keep me safe down there. And the fact that it’s underground is… good.”
He smiled reassuringly at her. “My gang will keep you safe. Why is it better to be underground?”
She smiled knowingly at him. “You’ll find out in time. I’ve got something for you that I can only give you underground.”
Marcus twisted his mouth in a wry smile but didn’t press her. He trusted her to reveal the powers she was going to offer him in her own time.
They walked into the ruins and over to a tumbledown wall. Half-hidden by a thick stand of thorny bushes that grew up through the cracked flagstones, there was a dark opening.
Hammer trotted up to it and sniffed, then turned his head to look at Marc
us. “Smells like rats down there,” he commented, sounding enthusiastic.
Marcus grinned at him. “And that’s a good thing?”
“I’d say so,” Hammer said. “I’d like a rat. Crunchy.”
With that, the dog hunkered down and squeezed his big body down through the gap. Marcus followed, squatting down and sliding his legs through the narrow opening, then slipping the rest of his body in, his pants scuffing against the dusty stone.
Ella was small enough that she didn’t have to squeeze. She sniffed the damp air coming up from the Underway. Her bare feet touched the ground, and she bounced up and down gently, her flying magic making her buoyant like a swimmer at the bottom of a pool.
Marcus looked back at her to see if she was following. She inhaled, then, with a small smile, she took the plunge.
Below ground, they found themselves in a rocky shaft that sloped steeply downward. The opening widened quickly, becoming high enough for Marcus to stand up with care. A long time ago, someone had carved crude steps into the rock. They were eroded with damp and many footfalls, but it was still easy for them to make their way down into the cool, damp-smelling darkness.
Hammer trotted ahead confidently. Looking around, Marcus found that he could see quite well in the gloom—better than usual, that was for sure. Normally, he would be stopping to light his candle by now, but he could see fine.
“That’s odd,” he said, “I can see in the dark down here. I’m sure I didn’t used to be able to.”
“That’s because you’re the ally of a faerie now,” she said patiently. “I can see well in the dark, and so you can too. My powers pass to you, remember?”
He looked at her. A thought struck him. “What about the power of flight?” he asked. “Will that pass to me too?”
She considered him for a moment. “I suppose it’s not impossible, but you’d need a vector. You don’t have wings, do you?”
He chuckled. “Nope. Not yet, at any rate, but who knows what might happen in the future?”
“Who knows indeed?” she said smiling.
They walked in silence through the Underway. Marcus led them with confidence through the changing chambers and passages. The walls of the tunnels were sometimes made of red bricks, sometimes of huge blocks of red sandstone, and sometimes carved from the bedrock itself. Sometimes the tunnels were huge and cavernous, where the least sound echoed back and forth around curved walls. Other times they were small, square, narrow shafts that Marcus had to scramble through on hands and knees.
In the wider tunnels, smaller passages broke away and led off into shadow on every side—left, right, and below, where wide shafts could be seen dropping straight downward. Every now and then, a tunnel opened above them, climbing upward and letting a faint ray of daylight down to illuminate a bit of brick wall or cracked flagstone floor.
Sometimes it smelled damp in the tunnels, and here and there Marcus’s feet splashed through puddles of stagnant water, but mostly it was dry and warm down here, with a dusty, earthen smell.
“We’re going back toward the city,” Marcus explained quietly as they walked. “This section of the Underway curves around under the slum district and toward the docklands. Back that way”—he pointed a finger off to the right—“there are tunnels that open out on the cliffs.” He pointed to the left. “Off that way, the tunnels all lead downward. We don’t go that way; that’s where the ratmen live. We usually get away without having to encounter the ratmen, but they are dangerous if you meet them in the tunnels. My gang lives in a section not far from the docks. There’s only one way in, and we’ve explored it all in detail. No one gets in or out without the Gutter Gang knowing about it.”
“The Gutter Gang?” Ella asked with a smile.
“That’s what we call ourselves,” he said grinning. “Not my idea, I have to add.”
She laughed. “Lead on, then. I’ll be proud to call myself a member of the Gutter Gang.”
They walked in silence, the tunnels widening and going straight ahead.
Chapter 4
After a half hour of walking, the group was approaching a sharp corner in the tunnel when suddenly, Marcus stopped.
“What is it?” Ella asked quietly, but he held up a hand for silence.
For a long moment, they all stood still, waiting. Hammer’s quiet breathing was the only sound that could be heard. Then, with a creeping sensation of horror, they all became aware of the sound of heavy footsteps moving toward them from the other end of the corridor.
They did not sound human.
Flop, flap, flop, came the dreadful sounds, like wet fish smacking against stone. Something big and wet was coming up the corridor, moving slowly and unhurriedly but with a deliberate purposefulness that was disturbing to hear.
Ella drew a breath to speak, but Marcus gestured frantically to her for silence.
Something must have alerted whatever was approaching them, however, because the heavy footsteps stopped abruptly. After a period of pregnant silence, a high-pitched snuffling noise could be heard. It echoed in the corridor, ringing off the walls. Whatever it was had begun sniffing for them.
Then it laughed. A gurgling, watery sound, somewhere between a crow’s caw and a frog’s croaking call. The sound boomed around the corner.
Hammer growled menacingly, the hackles standing up along the ridge of his spine. He raised his lip, showing a row of big teeth. Marcus reached for his belt and drew both daggers—his iron one and also the new jewel-encrusted one he’d taken from the guard.
“Get clear of the fight,” he ordered Ella. She obeyed, flying upward and casting her Brief Invisibility spell.
With Hammer growling at his side, Marcus dropped into a fighter’s crouch, his twin blades at the ready. When the approaching monster showed itself, Marcus’s suspicions were confirmed.
It was a murgal.
Murgals lived throughout the Underway, though it was uncommon to meet them so far from the edges of the labyrinth—they preferred to live near the sea-exits, since they were amphibian creatures who sometimes hunted in the water. They lived in packs of ten or twelve, but experienced older murgals would sometimes wander from the pack alone, looking for prey.
The hideous creature came around the corner in a rush. It was as tall as Marcus, a fish-faced, troll-like monster, with a hunched back, a mouthful of serrated teeth, and small, staring eyes. Its feet were huge and webbed, and each toe was tipped with a gleaming black curved claw like the talons of some monstrous bird of prey.
In its long, muscular, ape-like arms, the murgal carried the standard weapon of his kind, a stabbing spear as tall as its body. The spear was tipped with twin blades that could impale an enemy at a distance, but it also had three hooked blades that could be used to grab an enemy and pull him in close for the kill. The murgals sported razor-sharp teeth and vice-like jaws, and they liked to impale an enemy on their spears then pull him in close to finish him with a bite to the neck.
The creature was naked but for a loose loincloth of thick leather that protected its vulnerable reproductive organs. Its skin was rough, in some places pitted with scarring and in other places thick with dangling growths. Webbing stretched around the armpits and between the fingers and toes. Rows of fleshy fins stuck up aggressively around its head and down the ridge of its back.
Marcus knew that his Ultimate Stealth spell would not be able to hide him from the direct gaze of the creature, but the spell would almost certainly confuse it, giving him an advantage in the coming fight. Any advantage was to be welcomed. A glance showed him that this was an experienced fighter. Scars marked its face and its body where enemies had landed successful blows during past combats. This murgal would have killed before now. It would have fought men like him, and won.
He cast his Ultimate Stealth spell, feeling the warm rush of magic flow over him and through him at the successful casting.
The murgal glared at him, obviously confused at what he was seeing. Marcus took advantage of the opportunity and dived in, s
lashing left and right at the monster, and leaving long gashes on its forearms. The murgal tried to strike Marcus with the hooking spear but couldn’t get a clear fix on where he stood. The spear whistled ineffectively through the air a foot to Marcus’s left.
Hammer scooted in low down, growling and barking fiercely and moving very fast for a dog of his size. He clamped the murgal’s left ankle in his strong jaws and bit down hard.
The murgal howled in sudden pain at the bite, trying to leap backward and get away from the snarling dog, but Hammer held on, chewing at the murgal’s ankle until the monster was hopping about, frantic with the pain.
“Watch out!” Marcus yelled at Hammer as the murgal changed tactic, raising up its spear and preparing to bring the sharpened point at the base of the spear down on Hammer. But at that moment, Ella suddenly appeared behind the murgal. She flew fast, hovering like a gnat by the monster’s head. In her hand there was a rock.
With surprising strength, she smashed the rock down into the flapping gills toward the back of the murgal’s jaw. The monster’s strike at Hammer went wild, and the dog leaped backward, barking wildly at the murgal.
It was off-balance because of its injured foot, so it flapped its spear and snapped its jaws at Ella as she whizzed around its head, pelting it in the face with small stones.
“Brughwal!” the murgal said in a bubbling voice. A shimmering, curved field of light appeared in front of its face, and the handful of rocks Ella had flung at it rattled off. A ward! This murgal was using a ward spell, and it had spoken the spell’s name in the murgal language to cast it!
It was not unheard of, but it was certainly rare.
The monster laughed, an unpleasant sound like water gurgling down a drain. Ella backed off, but the murgal was quick. Ella had one last stone in her hand.
“Charm and Disarm!” Marcus cried, casting the ward disruption spell he had used in Xeron’s house to defeat the locks and wards on the windows. He’d never used it against a ward spell in a battle situation, but it was worth a try.
