by Michael Shea
I looked at our visitors. "If you will be so kind as to explain why you have come down here," I told them, "then perhaps we can proceed to a discussion of where we mean to go from here."
What we next learned was not had without trouble. In the verbal pouring forth that followed, Ha'Awley Bunt and Costard flared up at each other with a lively rancor. Luckily, Sha'Urley had the knack of silencing them both, and maintaining order amidst contention. Through her crisp narrative, with some vituperative amplifications from Bunt and Costard, we had the gist of what had transpired up in the mine compound these last few days.
Before Ha'Awley had even left Dolmen with us, Sha'Urley, ever alert to her brother's speculations (for she seemed to feel some affectionate contempt for his business acumen) had sensed that he had some costly venture afoot. She engaged two armed retainers, trusted swordswomen long in her service, and took ship for KairnGate Harbor the night after we did. She had arrived at the Superior Sap Mine bare hours after Barnar and I went rattling down the Gangway in the bucket.
Only her power to debunk Bunt's own false persona compelled him, at her warning glances, to a temporary connivance in her fiction. She presented herself to Costard as a businesswoman of Dry Hole who had heard of the Superior Sap Mine's fiscal straits, and had seen opportunity for investment in an industry she had long craved to assay.
Despite the eye-play and the awkwardness that must have passed between the brother and sister during this first encounter, and despite the improbability of a wandering investor seeking Costard out like this, that young man, implacably self-important, heard everything with judicious nods and complete belief. Sha'Urley, after all, shared her brother's polished manners and persuasive skill.
Thus we learned that the catastrophic handling, topside, of our first attempts at tapping, were caused in part by Costard's and Bunt's distraction with Sha'Urley's arrival.
Costard speedily accepted Sha'Urley's hefty pouch of specie, and tendered to her the freshly drawn up instrument of partnership in the Superior Sap Mine, which he had signed with a flourish.
Sha'Urley immediately expressed interest in a tour of the operations down in the larval chamber. Costard fatuously declined to subject one of the "fair sex" to those subterranean rigors. Sha'Urley, piqued, made Costard aware of fundamental realities—that she now had a legal propriety in the mine, and that she had as well, unlike Costard, two resolute young women, skilled at arms, in her employ.
The three retired that night on uneasy terms. Sha'Urley and her brother took a nocturnal ramble through the main building, and were shortly plunged into an argument that echoed in the empty structure. Bunt fumed that, for all his sister's doubt of his acumen, she herself had foolishly over-invested in the mine. Why secure a source of giants' pap before its worth was known? Sha'Urley, however, had ascertained the sum that her brother had withdrawn from the Hivery's assets to pay Barnar and me. She snapped that she had just secured partnership for a fraction of that sum, and that now, if the pap proved out, they stood ready to make a fortune at once—for if the pap worked, how could its effects long be hidden from competitors?
Meanwhile, she continued, if she and Ha'Awley now went down and harvested the pap themselves, before Barnar and I went after it, they could save the huge second payment promised us.
The upshot was of course that Costard, overhearing, came discreetly out of his chambers, harkened, and learned all.
The three of them plunged into furious controversy, and arrived at stalemate, since Sha'Urley refused remittance of her investment, and had, with her armed retainers, the means to enforce her partnership. They quarreled for days. Our long cessation of tapping activity was what finally brought them to a concerted action. They imagined the pair of us down here, bottling the Royal pap; perhaps they began to picture us purloining it for ourselves by some contrivance. Costard, still denying them an iota of ownership of the pap, agreed to their all going down together, with the swordswomen posted above to protect the compound.
When we'd heard all this, Barnar and I excused ourselves, and retired a few paces to confer. "Here's a mess indeed, eh?" "Suddenly, everything we had in view looks ten times harder!" Barnar sighed.
"But perhaps not without added profit. Look at them. They came down all in a flutter and a clatter of contention. But see how they look uneasily about them? They're beginning to feel where they are. Suppose they saw the Queen for themselves? How much more do you think they'd be willing to pay us to get the pap for them, once they understood the task? Let's offer to guide them to the Brood chamber for a hundredweight of specie. We'll re-collect our jewels on the way." This idea greatly cheered us; the prospect of easy profit warmed us like a sunbeam.
"What of the Unguent?" Barnar asked. "What if they want to come with us in pursuit of that?"
"Can you see them, any of them, actually walking into the subworld of their own free will? They are all administrators, adepts of accounts, of panelled chambers, and letters of draft."
The three of them had drawn together slightly as we watched them, unconsciously huddling up a bit as they felt the grandeur and danger of this place. Costard, moreover, was probably recalling the terror and indignity of that mishap which ended his very brief career as a tapper.
Barnar and I became the gracious hosts. We urged our vile wine and jerky on them, and anxiously saw to it that they were comfy on the bales and lockers we'd assembled to seat them. When they were settled, Barnar beamed. "Here is how Nifft and I have reasoned the matter out, my friends. The three hundredweight we have received of Bunt we consider fully earned by our entry of the Brood Chamber, followed by our attempt in good faith to execute your commission, at the near loss of both our lives. Naturally we are despondent at losing the second three hundredweight which was to have rewarded our success. Still, at present we cannot contemplate a second attempt on the pap. More obtainable goals claim our thoughts just now. Nevertheless we may yet have occasion to assist your own pursuit of the ichor. We will guide you to the Royal Brood Chamber for the sum of one hundredweight of prime specie, if you will all assent to leave at once, and to provide us with a fiftyweight of specie in advance . . . do I sense hesitation?"
"Honest thief," Sha'Urley answered, "my brother started by giving you impossibly large sums of money. Bunt Cellars is an old and prosperous House. We 'still our mead at no less than seven 'stilleries throughout the Angalheims. But to speak as casually as you do of hundredweights of specie is a wild exaggeration, both of our resources, and of this pap's real value. You must drastically scale down your expectations."
"But we won't, you see," I told her as amiably as I could. "We would as soon be on our own way, come to that, so I'm afraid our price is firm, and you must take or leave it. I hope you don't think me unpleasant. It just happens that my friend and I are in a very acquisitive frame of mind of late."
Some haggling followed, a twenty-fiveweight was offered as advance, more time was requested before departure, the price was vainly protested as inordinate, the doubtfulness of the pap's real value was urged, and the like. They already knew we would yield them nothing. At bottom, they dickered mainly for delay, as a way to ease into the fact of where they were about to go. When the talk wound down at last, the three of them seemed slightly dazed, trying to digest the fact that they had just agreed to pay a huge sum of money to be led on foot into the unimaginable dangers of the Royal Brood Chamber.
"Well, then," I said. "It's settled. Before we disperse, though, I feel I must say a few words about this alleged Unguent of Flight. We, who plucked this demon from a larva's jaws, regard him as strictly our own, along with any information of value he may possess about any Unguents real or putative."
"Luminous Ones!" fluted Ostrogall. "I affirm myself yours! It is only to your two revered selves I will divulge the Unguent's source!"
No doubt the demon was sincere in yielding himself to the most battle-ready of his potential escorts. On the other hand he had done his cause no harm by arousing the competing interest of o
ur colleagues as a stimulus to commit us to his expedition. Costard piped, "Surely, Good-uncle Barnar, the demon had just been brought into my larval chamber by one of my Nurse Behemoths when you found him, and just as surely he is at least as much mine as he is yours! Moreover, this means in principle that, should he lead you to the Unguent, that Unguent too is at least as much mine as yours."
"One of your Nurse Behemoths," Barnar echoed him. "What? Will you call one of them to heel for you now? That one there, for instance. Is that Nurse yours? Make her do something, then! Bid her dance you a jump-up in obedience to your august ownership of her! What? You can't do this? Nephew, I will put the matter concisely. You will not be a part of our search for the Unguent. And, if we obtain it, we are keeping every jot for ourselves. Now, if you don't go up and get us our advance fairly soon, we will grow impatient, and go follow our own concerns."
So, back up the gangway bucket went Costard and Ha'Awley Bunt, to get our fiftyweight of specie and to alert Sha'Urley's two retainers to our setting forth from the larval chamber. Barnar sat down to oiling and sharpening his weapons. Mine I deemed still sharp enough from our preparations for our last setting-forth. And while I wished to be civil and hostly to Sha'Urley, I was anxious to have another look at my cache of gems and specie. So I airily excused myself, saying I was going for a ramble.
But a moment later as I strode along the chamber wall, here was Sha'Urley catching up to me. "Will you show me all this, honest Thief? Be sociable, good Karkmahnite. Negotiation's done for a while."
"Well, why not? Come, then, and let me guide you into the midst of our little sap-skins, and their wondrous Nurses."
So I showed Sha'Urley this and that. The chamber was still a-boil with the heightened activity that had moved us to our recent foray. New larvae were borne in, new pupae rushed out, and demon-meat distributed, in a turmoil that would have paralyzed Barnar and me had we confronted it on our first days down here.
I liked Sha'Urley for her unfeigned awe at the spectacle, when sharp dealing would demand that she should scant the challenges we faced down here. At the same time, I could not help but feel that her eyes, when they met mine, were playing a kind of smiling game with me.
I wondered if she had noticed that, while we were all talking, I had forgetfully allowed my gaze to dwell upon the lovely abundance of her body. She gestured at the larvae, her eyes playing with mine again. "Are these sap-swollen creatures . . . hard to mount?"
"Some tremble when we set the Spike in them, but in the main they are at ease beneath us."
"Unlucky for them," she smiled. "Oh, what a piece of work they are, Nifft! We are blessed indeed to enjoy even the fraction of their bounty that we are able to extract."
"It's a miracle we can steal so much, yet never cause them harm. Indeed we cannot speak of ownership down here—only of lucky theft."
"Yes. And, since we are speaking plainly, Nifft, I see no reason not to tell you that I have always had a keen carnal appetite for men of your veiny, sinewy make." Now she was looking me straight in the eyes.
"Nor can I conceal," I croaked, "an equal craving for women of your opulent design."
"Indeed you cannot conceal it," she smiled more broadly, "short-kilted as you are. Are we safe here to indulge ourselves—here in this nook of soft earth perhaps?"
"Oh yes! Perfectly safe!" I answered her, for we had wound our way back out to the perimeter again, where a fissure in the wall offered its safety near at hand.
I think life's profoundest joys are just such simple pleasures, simply had, as Sha'Urley and I partook together while the Nurses wheeled and glided through the larval host, and those huge white loaves of living tissue baked and swelled in the great Nest's genial womb! We sang the paean of life together, none more surprised than I to be given this delight. We ended with some nuzzling and laughing together, and at length stood up with happy sighs, and regirt our loins. And I remember quite distinctly having at that moment a genuine glint of clairvoyance. For at that moment, the thought came to me: This is the most pleasant thing that is going to happen to me for quite some time to come.
Again we walked, and shared the marvels of the place. Sha'Urley poked a friendly fist in my shortribs. "Let's not be stiff and formal in our dealings now, Nifft. Let's talk bluntly, as good friends should. Not to put too fine a point on it, don't you feel you are charging us rather . . . stiffly, for your guide services?"
"Sweet Sha'Urley! It's not that long a walk in miles, but it is long indeed in perils. And when we show you the Royal Chamber, you will understand the princely fee we set."
XV
Behold thy babe, that doth beseech a crown,
And would go mantled in thy majesty.
Bestow on her an army of thy spawn,
Or else reweave her in thy tapestry.
WHEN THE SIX OF US finally set out (the fractional but loquacious Ostrogall, riding holstered on my hip and bagged for silence, being the sixth) the Bunts and Costard went in such awe of the tunnels, and of the titans that trafficked them, that they hung well back of our lead, and clung to the tunnel wall as they crept along. We also gave them the responsibility of blazing our course with additional dye marks, which task further deflected their attention. Thus for a while we recollected our dropped gems without being noticed by our newcomers.
But after they had experienced the first few surges of Behemoths, had weathered the terror of those encounters and caught on to the stop-and-start rhythmn of our travel, they began taking note of our gem-gleaning. Costard, spotting a gem we'd missed, leapt on it. Barnar roared, "Desist! Is it not plain? These gems, which you can see we have come equipped to regather, are ours, lost here by us scant hours ago!"
"Yours, Uncle!?" shrilled Costard. "Is every damned thing now yours down here in my mine?"
So we had to stop in a safe recess, and reveal to our visitors our recent foray through the subworld. "So you have seen it then," Sha'Urley mused. "The subworld. Is it, ah, lively?"
"We have seen it more than once," I answered stiffly. "In this sector, at least, wide tracts of it seem virtually deserted, save for the Foragers coming and going." I was uneasily aware that this determined young woman had far from abandoned her interest in a venture for the Unguent of Flight.
"Our main point, at least, is clear, is it not?" Barnar asked the three of them. "If you really wish to own demon jewels, as we own these, you must needs go down and get your own, as we did."
They respected our property after this, though they kept a tactless, sullen eye on us as we regathered it. I had for a moment the strangest feeling as they watched me; that, vigorously gathering my gems as I was, I cut a somehow grotesque figure—that there was something, well . . . piggish, even swinish about my thrifty diligence! The bizarre delusion quickly passed, however.
The traffic grew thicker, the galleries bigger, and the tremor of footfalls unceasing. Then, long before we thought we could be near that ultimate Chamber, the ground-vibrations grew sharper, and we breathed a gust of raw fecundity. The echo-y sound of a huge and thronging interior was audible not far ahead. We huddled for a penultimate conference, eye-to-eye in a narrow cranny.
"You are about to understand how much we have dared in bringing you here. You will behold, and cease to cavil at our fee," Barnar told them. "We will keep to the chamber wall, following it leftward from the entryway. Wherever we are forced to cross open ground, you must keep moving. If you let the dread of where you are freeze your legs, you will surely be crushed."
And in the next moment, we were running all-out, caught in the contagion of furious momentum that surged around us. In heartbeats, the great antechamber of the Royal room engulfed us in a turmoil of legs that churned the gloom like the ranked oars of war galleys. High overhead, blue light corruscated across all those faceted Behemoth eyes, great ocular nets too coarse to catch the images of our little selves.
There was the Royal Brood Chamber. Within, the Queen's immensity lay upon the sea of her dwarfed, adoring spawn. We crosse
d the threshold, and plunged along the wall. Mad dodges, fierce, quick climbs above onrushers, footwork, footwork, footwork, and our hearts and lungs laboring, laboring—for a time these struggles engulfed us.
Then a ridged seam of harder stone jutted into our path. "Up this one!" I called, and up we clambered.
High above the Chamber floor, the rough stone gave us secure and even restful perches, whence we drank in the stupefaction of the Queen amidst her generations. For a timeless time, speech seemed impiety. I mutely pointed where the nuzzling workers nursed, in clusters of like caste. We gazed, and supped the vintage of pure Awe. Once Sha'Urley spoke, as she watched a stream of workers—issuing from the gloom that shrouded the Queen's caudal region—carrying the Royal eggs high in their jaws. These eggs streamed like pearls through the underwater light, rivering toward the Incubaria, whence the larvae would be borne to the Nurseries. Sha'Urley surprised me by reciting: "Great mother, deathless Demiurge,/Mankind's nurse and demon's scourge/Our hopes are hammered in thy forge!"
"By the Black Crack!" gasped Barnar. "What is that they are bringing Her?"
We looked where he pointed, and our jaws hung ajar. Something easily ten times the size of the largest Forager was being carried on the flood of workers. Lying on its back, like a rudderless vessel it moved veeringly towards the Royal Presence. It was surely a Behemoth but, apart from its great size, it was of a make we had not seen before. Its abdomen was tapered toward a caudal point; its folded legs were inordinately massive and long. It had as well, jutting from its thoracic segment, a pair of long, bladelike wings, and by these its bearers gripped it.
They staggered under their mighty burden. The throng melted from their path and closed behind them, seeming to urge them forward toward the Queen. The Queen, for her part, twitched her jaws and tilted her head as if inquiringly towards the approaching bearers and their offering.
