THE DEEP
I
Tyrus found adjusting to the tunnel difficult. The twists and turns quickly doused them in pitch darkness, and although he had runes for his eyes, there was always a black point in the far distance beyond which he could not see. The nephalem had a natural affinity for the pitch blackness, and the Norsil all had runes for their eyes. The only one lost in the shadows was Marah. Silas asked that they maintain the darkness until they found dwarven tunnels again because light attracted the tribesmen.
Sounds became eerie and bizarre. The Deep had no insects or breezes or rustling of leaves, but the tunnel shaped the sounds of the party and magnified them so Tyrus heard hundreds of footfalls and dozens of people breathing. The echoing march became oppressive—he found himself on edge as the clomp of boots grated on his nerves.
The ground underfoot was freshly dug and spongy. He felt as though he was walking along a beach, and it was occasionally muddy as well. At odd intervals, the group tracked through muck that smelled rank. He thought the tunnel had smelled bad at the surface, but down in the bowels of the thing, it made his eyes water. Everyone improvised scarves from their cloaks or bedrolls, and Tyrus noted that the dwarves all wore a scarflike neck guard that they pulled over their noses.
Klay walked beside Tyrus, as did Silas. They both checked on Marah several times, but she had buried her face in Tyrus’s neck. She trembled in his arms but did not complain.
Klay said to Silas, “There are no supports. Why doesn’t the tunnel collapse?”
“It will, in time. You see that slime?” Silas pointed at a ring of ichor that covered the tunnel and pooled on the floor—it was the mud that they trekked through. “When that dries, it will crack, and the tunnel will become unstable.”
“Where did that come from?”
“You do not want to know.”
“Actually, I do.”
“Well, it smells like a latrine for a reason.”
Klay gagged. “That’s disgusting.”
“They can be ingenious, in an animal kind of way,” Silas said. “We would spend weeks building a tunnel like this, bracing it with supports. Dozens of masons would be needed to keep it stable. But then, we would expect it to last longer than a few days.”
Tyrus blinked water from his eyes. His empowered senses were a curse in the tunnel. Many times, he had wished he could remove etchings or snuff out the power of his runes—he imagined it would be like snuffing out a fire—but they didn’t work that way. At the time when he would give anything to not smell at all, he had a rune that made his sense of smell five times stronger than another man’s. The etching had come in useful on a few occasions when he caught the smell of ambushers, but it was torture in the tunnels.
Tyrus tensed as the air chilled. Marah radiated a coldness, but her nerves calmed, and her breathing became even. She relaxed in his arms and no longer crawled against his neck.
He asked, “What is wrong?”
“There’s too many of them,” Marah said. “So many. I need silence.”
Silas was walking beside them, but Tyrus forgot sometimes because he only came up to Tyrus’s elbows. The dwarf was the only one who stayed beside them. The rest of his followers scouted the tunnel and set ropes whenever the passage twisted down too sharply.
Silas said, “Dura was right to teach her meditation—with practice, it is possible to control one’s mind, but this is not the place to learn. The suffering in the Underworld is many times greater than the surface. Many of the Avani marched to reclaim Skogul, and all of them died poorly. If you can hear the shadows, the warrens beyond are pocked with mass graves.”
“I know,” Marah said. “I hear them.”
“Marah, I can paint your face again until we reach a city. We have temples that are warded against many dark runes. Once we reach safety, things will be better.”
“No.”
“It is a minor thing. We wouldn’t have to stop for long.”
“I don’t want to be blind.”
“It would only be for a few days.”
Marah said, “This is not a safe place.”
Silas agreed with a grunt, and they continued down the tunnel. Tyrus wiped more water from his eyes. His world had become a narrow tunnel, about as wide as ten thanes and packed with warm bodies. He couldn’t see beyond the turns in the passage, and all around him, steel rattled and a horrid stench suffocated him. The claustrophobia grew worse as they journeyed deeper. He imagined all the rock and dirt above their heads growing unstable. At the slightest shift in the tunnel, a minor collapse, he would be buried alive.
Silas asked him, “Would you like me to carry her for a while?”
“I don’t need help.”
“We all need help,” Silas said. “Especially down here.”
Time became measured in steps, but Tyrus lost the count many times. The tedium of the dark passage was broken only by sharp falls in the tunnel that required rappelling. The deeper they went, the more nervous Tyrus became. He relived old memories of traveling the Underworld with Azmon. The worst memories came after they had passed the Black Gate when they traveled the Nine Hells to find Mulciber’s prison. Tyrus had fought demons, and the memories gave him a lifetime of nightmares.
Marah said, “You’re squeezing me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I came here once. I’ve spent most my life trying to forget it.”
“With my father.” When Tyrus nodded, she asked, “Did he make you go?”
“I was his guardian. It was my duty.”
“But why did you follow him?”
“He was like a brother,” Tyrus said. “I couldn’t let him fight them alone.”
“But he didn’t fight them.”
“No, he didn’t. He meant to, though. He used to say that once he had the right runes, he would turn on them all.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I did,” Tyrus said. “I think he believed it too.”
Talking with Marah made Tyrus feel old. He had been a fool, blinded by glory and ambition. He and Azmon had viewed the shedim as another weapon, a tool to expand the empire. Only later did they learn how poorly they had underestimated them. Once the demons set their hooks in the empire—once Azmon needed them to survive—their commands grew darker. One by one, they had conquered the nations of Sornum and handed the entire continent over to the demons.
Marah asked, “What was he like?”
Tyrus shook his head. He didn’t know how to tell the story to a child. She would ask why they had done horrible things, and it was a painful history to explain. In the beginning, they had been blinded by power, and in the end, they had become slaves to it. At least, that’s how Tyrus liked to think of it. Azmon viewed it as a betrayal. He had always complained that the demons kept the best runes for themselves, and he had become obsessed with stealing their secrets.
In each city they conquered, Azmon’s first move was to pilfer libraries, temples, and towers for scrolls. He had hoped that some scrap of paper might hold an old secret from the Second War of Creation. They never did, but Azmon was relentless. Runes had become his last hope to fight off the shedim.
Tyrus asked, “Do the dead tell you about Azmon?”
“Oh, yes. They hate him.”
“I’m sure most of the stories are true.”
“But you knew him before all the wars.”
“I did.”
“What was he like?”
“He was a hero once… and my friend. We saved Rosh from a war, and everyone loved us.”
“What happened?”
“Azmon wanted revenge on the people who attacked us.”
Tyrus found the old memories a decent distraction from the filthy tunnel and the looming walls. He could stop imagining them caving in, and he remembered Azmon razing the Hurrian capitol to the ground, which had sp
arked outrage among the Five Nations, which had driven Rosh into the arms of the shedim to survive.
None of his stories were fit for a child. He wondered if the dead had already told her about the Five Nations. She might have talked with the dead guardsmen and bone lords around Shinar. Tyrus saw then that she was playing the same game he did. She wanted to think about something other than the shadows of the tunnel.
Tyrus asked, “How did you survive the beasts on the wall?”
“I was with Dura.”
“But in the stories I heard, you were there when the first wave of beasts attacked, and you led Dura down the wall.”
Marah whispered to Tyrus, “I can hear the beasts too.”
Tyrus stopped walking for a moment but then hurried forward. Old training, years in the imperial guard, kept him moving in pace with the rest of the column even though her words made his heart race.
“You mean, like the dead?” he asked. “You can hear them like that?”
“I asked for help, and some of them listened.”
Tyrus licked dry lips. “You took control of Azmon’s beasts?”
“Not all of them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” Her whispers became distracted and soft. “Dura was going to die. So I begged for help… Some of them listened.”
Tyrus swallowed and kept his thoughts to himself. Nothing he could say would make things better, and he could almost sense Silas hanging on their every word. Tyrus had seen Lilith and Azmon take control of beasts before—the two of them could control hundreds of the monsters and often stepped in to direct the creatures of the minor bone lords. But no one had ever wrestled control away from Azmon before.
He had always been the strongest of the bone lords.
“What about my mother?” Marah asked. “What was she like?”
Tyrus wiped his eyes. “Those are good stories.”
He began at the beginning, when he had first arrived in Narbor to present himself to Ishma’s court as her new guardian. The younger Ishma, before the civil war, and the invasion of Argoria, was part of the golden age of the Roshan Empire. For a few years, they had been happy and unconquered, but like many fools, they had chased things they could not have, and everything turned to ash.
Tyrus slogged through the tunnels, talking about Ishma, until the column came to a halt. The dwarves at the front sent back word that the tunnel met an end, and it did so after a large spiral downward. Tyrus thought he understood—half of the column was below their feet somewhere, which meant he and Marah were stuck in the middle.
Silas hammered his shield once. The elves knew the signal and dropped packs to arm themselves. The sound of metal being drawn echoed through the tunnel. The Norsil followed the example and closed ranks around Marah. Tyrus wanted to tell them to spread out because they were clumped together. He was about to bark orders when Marah interrupted him.
She said, “We’re not alone.”
Silas asked, “Where?”
“The walls.”
The claw marks on the dirt walls trembled and crumbled. Sheets of dirt cascaded to the ground, revealing more tunnels and dozens of red eyes glaring in the dark. Along the walls, several side tunnels opened, and tribesmen charged forth, screaming. Their high-pitched screeches pierced the darkness, echoing throughout the tunnel, and Tyrus flinched.
Clashing metal, grunts, and screams filled the darkness. Tyrus held Marah close, but he wanted to draw his long knife and charge. He feared she would be trampled, though.
The air chilled, and a thunderclap knocked everyone down. Many of the tribesmen were either thrown back down the new tunnels or flung into the dirt walls. Tyrus staggered. The blast had ignored his head and shoulders, where he cradled Marah close, but it had ripped into his feet.
Marah said, “Put me down.”
Tyrus fell to a knee and placed her on the ground. He drew his knife because the space was too cramped for his great sword. However, he stayed beside her, acting as a screen. Anyone who wanted to step on her would have to push him out of the way first.
Lightning erupted from Marah’s hands. The sudden flashes were too much for Tyrus’s eyes. His runes fought to adjust between pitch blackness and flashing lights, and he had to blink through yellow afterimages. Many of the Norsil staggered at the lights, and the tribesmen screeched in pain. A strange burning smell filled the tunnels, and then Marah used fire.
“No,” Silas said. “Wait!”
Walls of fire blocked the new tunnels. The air thickened—at least, Tyrus thought so as he gasped harder to inhale—and then he realized the air had actually thinned. The fire seemed to pull the air from his very nostrils, and he clawed at his throat as he struggled to breathe. Then the air shifted again. A strong wind tore at Tyrus’s hair, and he sensed the currents being pulled from the side tunnels. The fires also created clouds of smoke that swirled around them and blinded them all.
The tribesmen became quiet, but Tyrus heard them fleeing from the fire. Their screams vanished as they scurried away.
Tyrus knelt and held onto Marah. He was determined not to lose her in the smoke, and the haze had become too thick to stand in. The haze left him with gritty eyes and a raw throat.
He said, “Sound the retreat.”
“No.” Silas choked and sputtered. “Marah, where is the main tunnel?”
Marah coughed.
“The one they blocked,” Silas said. “We need air.”
Marah moved toward one of the walls. She used lightning to strike at the wall, hitting it several times, but she only made small dents that quickly filled back in by falling dirt.
Silas said, “That won’t work.”
The air became even colder as Silas used sorcery, and he used runes Tyrus had never seen. The wall churned and moved, then the ground fell out from under them. Their tunnel collapsed into the one below them, and everyone tumbled through mounds of fresh dirt.
“Hurry,” Silas shouted. “Keep moving before we’re buried.”
Marah used more sorcery to light the way. A blinding white light shone around her, piercing the smoky haze and illuminating the tunnel. Norsil and elves scrambled toward the light, and Tyrus hurried to Marah’s side to pick her up and shield her from the press of armor and weapons.
“Keep moving, deeper,” Silas said. “Before they come back.”
Silas pressed himself against a far wall and directed people farther down the tunnel, toward fresh air. The last to hurry past them were the wardens. They helped pull a few elves and thanes from mountains of dirt and pushed them down the tunnels. One of them nudged Tyrus and told him to bring the Reborn. Tyrus followed them as the tunnel became unstable and more sections collapsed.
II
Azmon began calling himself the Demon Emperor of Rosh. The wind caught his black robes, and blasts of it stung his eyes through his golden mask. He walked through another razed town near the border of Holon, which had once been home to maybe a thousand residents. His beasts slaughtered them all. They worked to carry and dispose of the corpses in the town center, near the well. Azmon sensed the joy his creations experienced when they hunted.
In his mind, a web of little strands connected all the beasts together, and he was the spider dancing on the strings. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the horizon. Thousands of his beasts stalked the countryside, hunting in packs, the smaller ones sprinting forward while the largest beasts, the wall breakers, loped behind them. Nothing survived. They killed for fun and slaughtered whatever they came across, whether it was squirrels, livestock, or people running in terror.
Each kill filled Azmon’s mind with pleasure. The web that connected them hummed when they were happy, and it also sent warnings if they were fighting. Whenever a victim got in a lucky strike with a spear or a staff, Azmon sensed the beast’s pain.
The net he cast gave him the confidence to stroll through the town without any worry of
assassins or ambush. He had hundreds of beasts with him and two enormous wall breakers behind him.
A wall breaker clomped into town. In its giant claws, it carried a young couple that had been cut and bitten by smaller beasts. The breaker tossed them on the ground before Azmon, and he absorbed their souls with little regard for their whimpers.
After they died, two more faces spawned on his body. He had dozens of them by then, and each one made him swell with strength. If he had known the secret of the shedim’s power before he had fought Marah and Dura, he would never have been driven out of Shinar.
The demon in his blood enjoyed the carnage. Unnatural hungers plagued him, but a piece of the old Azmon looked at the stacked bodies with revulsion. The beasts had once been only weapons, but now they were his only friends. The voice of the old Azmon grew dimmer by the day. The Demon Emperor was slowly devouring the Prince of the Dawn.
Azmon closed his eyes and reached out across the web of creatures. He experienced them all, thousands of them, hunting for miles and miles around the town of Olari. He saw no armies or sorcerers hunting him.
He tried to relax, but he caught the murmur of other demons. The sensations were new and troubling. They puzzled him at first, and he feared the bone lords might be staging another attempt on his life. He concentrated on the disturbance and knew it wasn’t made by people. The voices had the texture of the beasts, only more intelligent, conniving.
Azmon turned an angry glare on his creations. He slowly spun in a circle and considered them one by one, worried that they might have turned on him. But the thing he felt didn’t come from his beasts.
He wasn’t alone, and his paranoia grew. His fear of the Red Tower and the angels might mean nothing if the real danger was the shedim. The yellow eyes on his forearm contained more secrets, and he needed to unravel them. Perhaps he had grown strong enough to sense when Mulciber was near.
He closed his eyes and reached out with his senses, listening for demon spawn like himself. The murmurs were distant, below him. He caught glimpses of creatures fighting in dark tunnels, among the monsters of the Deep. He opened his eyes again, surprised at how his powers had grown. Such knowledge had once required runes and human sacrifice.
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 28
