by Michael Shea
I unbagged Ostrogall, and cut short his effusive thanks. "Tell us, Demon," I bade him, "if you know what approaches the Queen."
"By all the Powers," fluted the unctuous fragment. "This is the Presentation of the Scions! Do you not grasp what passes here? In the Mythos that surrounds our dire predators, this scene, most darkly figured, forms the central horror. And now I find it literally, fully true! O woe for my tormented homeland! Woe for all my murdered kindred! Woe and wail!"
"The Presentation of the Scions . . ." muttered Costard. "You mean that's a, a princess there being carried to the Queen?"
"It is a Queen in bud," the demon answered. "Whether the Queen approves its investiture or not falls according to a law none understand. But somehow, in just such confrontations as we now behold, the Queen determines which of her Royal infants shall go forth with a conquering army to extend, by one more Nest, her species' empire in my helpless land! Now is the recent stir in the Nest explained! The army of the New Queen is a-forging!"
Now the Royal babe had arrived at the only point in the Chamber where she might seem small; directly under the Queen's jaws. Could there have been in actual fact the ripple of tension that I sensed throughout the host? Could the sea of giants, with their hundred thousand individual aims and errands, have shuddered as one—as it seemed to me they did—a restive rearing of heads, a palpitant pause of pistoning legs, a stir like the horripilation of a single flesh? We scarcely breathed, our minds wholly given to this chthonian epiphany.
The Queen's globed head tilted left, then right, the blue light flaring across the facets of Her eye-spheres. Within those globes She seemed to view all Time, all Space. Her mouthparts moved, tasting the air above Her supine daughter, while that Royal Scion, with an infant's unknowing urgency, wrestled in her bearers' grip. The terrible beauty of her slender, bladelike wings cut my heart—their veins pulsed with the insurgent sap of her nascent power. Her great legs plucked gracefully at the air. The Queen bowed Her head.
She bowed Her head, and declared Her Royal will by plucking off Her daughter's head and devouring it with a loud, wet crunching. She ate Her daughter's thorax in three bites—ate it and its kicking legs, these uprooted limbs jutting briefly from the Royal jaws and twitching there before they were crunched into the multifoliate maternal maw. . . .
"And so the young Queen is not to be," intoned Ostrogall solemnly. So rapt was I in the spectacle I did not even mind the demon's unsolicited declamation from the podium of my hip. "The daughter is to re-sinew the Nest's ever-multiplying body. She is to become jaw and leg-joint, Forager and Nurse and gluttonous grub, her flesh re-fashioned into theirs! The Queen disgorges them in their thousands, and in their thousands She devours them."
Barnar, with an effort, broke our trance. "I suggest we bend our thoughts to the business at hand. We invite you to note a certain system in the pap pores' arrangement. By now you have surely perceived how different castes imbibe at different levels on the maternal flank?"
"It is most encouraging!" assented Ha'Awley Bunt. "Plainly, there is a pap specific to the Foragers' caste!"
"Whether that which they drink," I admonished them, "is as specific to their caste as the fonts they drink it from, is of course uncertain. And if the beverage be different, can we still be sure that bigness is a specific property that it imparts? Even to the Foragers, I mean—let alone to . . . other living things?"
I spoke with some sense of rectitude, for my profit, after all, did not lie in discouraging our companions' lust for the pap. In any case, their lust seemed unaffected by these reminders. "All these things," I continued, "about the pap are uncertain, while the dangers of obtaining it are past doubt. Firstly, how is the Queen to be climbed? And if she be climbed, how is the climber to survive? For I note that you three have been as slow to see your ultimate obstacle as Barnar and I were to see it. Study the Royal flanks more closely. Look for movement, especially in the black parts."
And just then, a brace of low-flying creatures made a fortuitous swoop above the Queen and, in the next instant, a ragged blackness surged up and dragged one squawking down. All now gazed with wakened eyes.
"By the Crack" gasped Sha'Urley after a moment. "She's crawling with . . . vermin! Look there! And there, in that tangle of marbling!"
The essence of the situation was soon clear to our companions: the Royal pap-pores might or might not be oases of liquid wealth, but they were most certainly environed by armies of monsters.
"Well, it seems our course is plain enough," Ha'Awley Bunt announced, his tone resolute, yet not without a quaver in it. "The Unguent of Flight would offer us the only feasible means of harvesting the pap."
"Why do you willfully misunderstand us?" Barnar barked. "You are not invited to join our pursuit of the alleged Unguent. This demon here is ours—he even affirms it himself!"
"What will you do, good Chilite?" Sha'Urley drily asked. "If we follow you, will you drive us back with your drawn blades? Will you kill us if we refuse to be repulsed from following you?"
What, in the end, could we do? "We have reached a juncture," I said at last, "where some sharp lines must be drawn. Of course we cannot prevent your following us on a subworld venture whose object we regard as highly dubious—be silent!" (This to Ostrogall's attempt at protestation) "—though naturally if you thrust your presence on us you cannot expect our protection on the journey, and must fend for yourselves in that regard. But you must understand that the Unguent of Flight is to be ours, mine and Barnar's, exclusively. If it is to be had in abundance, of course, then how could we object to your having some? But if the supply is limited, we most firmly declare it now in advance to be ours alone."
"Do you know, Nifft," Sha'Urley said, "leaving aside questions of claim and title, don't you feel it's a bit churlish, a bit knavish, a bit villainous of you not to grant me even a little of the Unguent, if only in affectionate acknowledgement of the intimacies we have shared?"
"Let the heavens witness that I cherish those joys as you do, my dear!" I protested. "But you are over-wrought. What assurance do we have of the Unguent's reality? And supposing it real, well, to speak plainly, there is a kind of fever that thieves are prone to—perhaps never experienced by persons of business like yourself—and this is the fever of concupiscence. Barnar and I, dear Sha'Urley, are in its throes. The augmentation of our personal gain is our obsession and all-mastering aim."
"Your charming frankness disarms me," she answered with a little bow and a cool smile. "I accept your terms because I must. As for lacking your protection, I can bear it. I do not wear this sword of mine for ornament alone. Brother? Partner Costard? Are we of one will in this?"
They were, though one wouldn't say they looked blithe about it. And what shame in this? Who lightly undertakes a journey into the subworld?
"Look there," piped Ostrogall, "where they bear another Scion to the Queen!"
Her clawed feet plucked the air, as her sister's had. Her wings twitched in the grip of her bearers—did she dream she was airborne? Leading her legions on their sweep of plunder to fuel the digging of a new Nest in the hell-wall? More awesome than this princess' size—and she might have plucked a town aloft and carried it away—was the limitless fecundity that could fashion such as she and, on a regal whim, swallow her up again. She drifted in her dreamy struggle till she lay beneath her mighty Mother's jaws.
The Queen's inspection, as before, was long protracted. With little movements of Her mouthparts, She seemed to feed upon Her offspring's aura. Then slowly, slowly, She brought down Her jaws and touched them to the infant's lesser mouth, sustaining for a trembling time a contact not unlike a kiss.
"She is chosen!" cried Ostrogall, his voice a croon of tender terror. "Chosen! She now imbibes the Mother's all-empowering regurgitation. She will be sequestered in a Royal chamber, and her growth to her full flying size will be swift. In not a score of days, flanked by royal consorts winged like herself, she and her army will stream from the Nest and scourge a path of conqu
est through my world, till they are fed to readiness, and she has mated. Then will they go to ground, and another Nest of Death be planted in my homeland. Oh my embattled nation! Woe to my fatherland, fair to behold!"
The coronation of her Mother's kiss complete, the Royal Princess—unstruggling now, as if sated or sleepy—was borne out. "Quick!" I cried, and Barnar in the same breath cried, "Let's see where they take her!" Thus did our ambitious thoughts leap perfectly together, for my friend and I had, in the same heartbeat, imagined the incalculable loot to be had by anyone who followed the wake of a conquering army of Behemoths through the subworld. What resistance could be left standing? What riches, unregarded by the giants, would not lie spilt from their shattered coffers, shining all unguarded?
"Peace!" intoned the knowing demonstump. "I understand your urgency to be on hand when she sallies forth upon her Nesting Flight. But be at ease, my benevolent masters! All royal Incubaria lie close at hand here to the Brood Chamber. She may easily be found again, and followed, when you come back . . . on the wing."
"Well then," I said. "It seems we are all bound to the same place now. Is there any reason we should not be on our way?"
XVI
Heliomphalodon Incarnadine
Did crave to clutch the splendor of the sun. . . .
NEAR THE NEST-MOUTH, we knew, the light of the subworld discolored the light of the tunnels. This was our greatest fear through that long downward journey. Through the dodging, and dashing, and diving for cover, it came back to us, and haunted our talk when we rested. Would our orange hue, outside the blue gloom of the Nest, remain invisible to Behemoth eyes? Going out astride our Forager, Barnar and I had invisibility by our position. Down on the tunnel floor, where every Behemoth eye bent automatic scrutiny for parasites, would our cloaks of dye still conceal us? Before we must worry about finding cover in the demonrealm, we must worry about managing to exit the Nest at all.
We had a full "day" of trekking behind us, and a bone-tired sleep in a cramped crevice, and almost another day again of the quick-march (to judge by the weariness in our muscles) when, as we crouched together for a rest, Barnar said, "There's no doubt we're near. You can smell it, can't you?"
For the Nest-smell, though rank in places, was a vital fetor, an oven aroma of life a-rising; the poisoned carrion scent of the demon-realm came coldly twisting through this womb-smell like a venemous reptile.
So we trotted the last leg of our descent with a fated, falling feeling, that hollow-gutted sensation of knowing you're launched, a loosed arrow.
We passed a turning, and there was the atrium, thunderous with traffic, awash with purple light, and windowed at its far end by the Nest-mouth raggedly framing the blood-red void of the demon-realm beyond.
"Can you run all-out? A half mile and more?" I asked the Bunts and Costard. The three of them were in the condition to be expected: eyes glazed with weariness, blistered and breathing hard. They nodded gamely, even soft Ha'Awley, but still I silently cursed them. They must surely die on us! Because—Cauldron scald them!—Barnar and I were damned if we'd let them slow us up by even one stride! "Hold close to the wall then," I gritted, "have a scent flask in hand, and run!"
The downward pitch was helpful, and the terror like a wave that lifts you from behind. From the giants that rushed towering by us too there came a kind of impetus, as if the gust of their passage pulled us along. Even so we slogged through the wine-red air as if submerged, our limbs and lungs fighting the drag of a thickening dread. I couldn't believe we ran unseen, though the Behemoths rushed past unheeding, high knees pumping.
"Faster! Nearly there!" I looked back to bellow—and saw a Digger, overtaking us with her jaws full of tailings, suddenly drop her burden and tilt an alert eyeglobe at Bunt and Sha'Urley, who were bringing up our rear.
Horror thrilled me, stopped me, spun me round. The Bunts still owed us a fiftyweight of specie, and should we lose the pair of them, there was no hope of extracting the sum from feckless Costard. Doubling back, I bellowed "Faster! Faster!" and, meeting the Digger, I flung my flask of brood-scent. It burst between her eyes, as I doubled round yet again, and sprinted for my life after the others.
The Digger thundered after me, her jaws thrust almost to my back (I dared not turn, but felt the whelm of air their hugeness shoved before them) and then a mighty scuffling resounded behind me and I pelted on unseized.
Just short of the Nest-mouth's threshold, I dared to look back. Two Foragers had lifted the struggling Digger in their jaws. Almost comic was the labor that she gave them, herself not far inferior to a Forager in size. But the Foragers' strength prevailed as, staggeringly, they carried her up-tunnel, returning (as the scent persuaded them) a strayed babe to the safety of its nursery.
Out the Nest-mouth we leapt, and slid down the steep pitch of the hell-wall. For a short eternity the stone ate us alive. And then, as Ostrogall had promised, a fissure, transecting our descent, stopped our plunge.
It was just deep enough to hunker down in, and it deepened as we followed it downslope. At length we could crouch and catch our breath. The Foragers pouring out of the Nest overstrode us, their hard claws loud against the stone. I lifted Ostrogall from his holster on my hip, so that we might speak eye-to-eyes.
"Thus far, you prove a faithful guide, oh Fractional Demon. We urge you to remain so—else you suffer swift incineration."
"Ineffable benefactor! My adoration and my gratitude aside, you remain indispensable to my humble survival! I must be planted in some safe recess. Repose yourselves in my complete devotion. Press on, and trust those measures I've described."
There was nothing else to do, of course. The seam, as it descended to the plain, grew into an arroyo of moderate depth, which wound away as far as we could see. While it sank us below the line of sight of errant Foragers, this arroyo was no haven, for demon lair-mouths, gates, hatches and doorways honeycombed its walls. Yet Ostrogall had suggested a countermeasure, and we implemented it at once.
Every tapper's equipage included jacks of brood-scent. From one of his, Barnar wetted a clout-tipped knout he had prepared for the purpose. Bearing this scented cudgel aloft like a flameless torch, he walked in the lead down the arroyo, while we followed, arms at the ready.
This scent-torch, while to an adult Behemoth it signified specifically the presence of a misplaced egg or larva, to be hastily returned to safety, signified to demonkind nothing so specific. To demons it simply declared the nearness of one of their devourers. And the hellspawn's sensitivity to the scent proved quite extreme, with the result that Barnar's flameless brand thrust, as it were, a phantom Behemoth before us, an invisible vanguard, as we advanced. Far ahead down the defile, the invisible, olfactory Behemoth awoke panic in the laired demons who might have hunted us. Far ahead we saw vague, busy movement in the ruddy gloom. We heard the boom of distant hatchways slammed shut and secured, and as we advanced, long stretches of emptiness received us, where we found every portal sealed up tight against our coming.
Our ploy's danger was that the brood-scent summoned an occasional Forager from her quest for food. But these randomly attracted few were always announced by the noise and tremor of their tread. Barnar then only had to fling the torch from the ravine. We would take cover, the Forager would solicitously rush back Nestwards with its minute wooden foundling, and we would anoint another knout and resume the ploy.
Here and there were things that eyed us before nosing us, especially airborne things. Harpies of a huger, more wolfish make than our late assistant swooped shrieking down on us. I swung Ready Jack in great, whistling circles, while Barnar's axe and Sha'Urley's surprisingly deft broadsword wrought equal havoc. That stalwart young woman, when it came to a stand-and-fight, made a very good account of herself. She swung powerful two-handed overhead eights, in the Jarkeladd nomads' style, and our attackers' lopped talons danced clattering down around her in showers of smoking blood; these stubborn claws still clutched at our feet when their shorn possessors had winged shrieking
off.
Long and far we travelled this ravine. We slept, and woke, and travelled long and far again, till once more we most sorely craved our rest. Once more we found a recess in the ravine wall, and stretched out our leaden limbs.
Even the sour wine of the Supreme Sap Mine's rations glowed on our palates like the most exquisite vintage, such was our weary loathing of this place, and our craving for all things born beneath the sun. Barnar and I gave the others first sleep, and they dropped straight into it.
"The approach to the Unguent of Flight seems relatively easy," I said to Ostrogall. "Even, I mean, considering this admirable evasion of the brood-scent you have so cunningly suggested."
An evasive ripple moved through the jewelry of the demon's eyes. "The approach to Unguent," Ostrogall conceded, "does, as it happens, present few dangers from my kind—at least since the spread of Behemoth into this region. But the tunnels down to the Talons of 'Omphalodon—for I may tell you now that the Talons of Heliomphalodon Incarnadine are the source of the Unguent—the Talons of 'Omphalodon themselves are guarded by demons from the Second Subworld."
We bent our most menacing scowls on him at hearing this, and the demon hastily bleated, "Access to the Unguent is readily obtainable from the Secondaries, oh Luminous Masters! They merely require a toll, you see, from suitors for that treasure. And while I confess I don't know precisely what this toll is, it is at least absolutely certain that one may pay this toll, and still live!"
Barnar nodded thoughtfully. "Yet this is far," he said, "from assuring us that this toll is slight enough to pay. Perhaps, good Ostrogall, you should now share with us all that you know regarding the Unguent of Flight."
"I assent wholeheartedly! The matter lies thus: Less than an eon past, Heliomphaladon Incarnadine, a demon of the Tertiary Subworld, was enkindled by myths and legends of the sun sufficiently to covet that world-bathing orb for his own. 'Omphalodon reasoned that the sun's radiance, once seized and brought below by a greatsouled act of daring, would melt away the binding spells and thaumaturgic toils that chained his giant nation within the planet's bowels. His folly was his faith that the sun, once had by daring raid, would enlighten and liberate his baneful, chthonian breed—would free them to do their awful will abroad upon the earth, and possess the planet entirely and forever.
