Wrath of Kerberos tok-9

by Jonathan Oliver

  “These beings — gods, if you like — thrive on the life energies of the planets they shape. For instance, Kerberos feeds on the energy of the departing souls of this world. So, your Final Faith has something when they say our souls fly to the clouds of Kerberos when we die. Without us, Kerberos’s power would diminish and it would eventually perish, burning out like a dying star. And the conflict is far from over. The two remaining entities covet each other’s creations and the lives that enrich them, and it will only be a matter of time before Hel’ss shows its hand and launches an attack on Kerberos. When that happens, it could mean the end of everything.” Keldren noticed Kelos blanch. “Oh, there’s no need to be alarmed. Hel’ss won’t enter the orbit of our world for a good long while yet.”

  “How long do we have?”

  Keldren opened a drawer and took out a long vellum scroll, which he rolled out onto a table. Kelos saw star charts and calendars inked on the soft leather.

  “Hel’ss will enter Twilight’s orbit on… well, see for yourself,” Keldren said, pointing to a date on the scroll.

  “That’s… why, that’s next year. I mean… I mean it will be next year, in our time, as it were. There must be something we can do! It… we have to get back. Warn everybody.”

  But even as he said the words, Kelos realised that there was genuinely nothing he could do. He just didn’t have the power to take them all home. Just as the god of Illiun’s world had been consumed by Kerberos, Kerberos would be consumed by Hel’ss. Their world would end.

  “Take comfort in the fact that you are safe here,” Keldren said, laying a hand on Kelos’s shoulder. “You shall die long before the final battle between Hel’ss and Kerberos. Anyway, that is entirely by the bye, since you and your companions will not be allowed to leave the city.”

  There was something Kelos didn’t like about Keldren’s tone, and he turned to see that the academic’s expression had darkened.

  “You can’t keep us here, surely?”

  “Oh, but we can. You are humans; you were created by the elves to serve. And, besides, as unusually evolved examples of your race you must be studied.”

  “This is outrageous! We’re not subjects in some scientific experiment.”

  “All I can promise is that I will supervise your treatment myself, Kelos, along with those companions of yours… Emuel and Silus, was it? As magic users, they too must be studied.”

  “And what will happen to the rest?”

  “They will go to the camps. They will be treated well.”

  Having already seen the humans in the city, Kelos doubted this very much.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The last thing Katya could recall was eating the meal of thin, peppery gruel the servant brought them, some hours after Kelos had been taken away.

  When she opened her eyes, it was obvious they were no longer in the palace dormitory. The ceiling here was much lower and the room considerably smaller. By the light of the weak fire that guttered in the centre of the room, she could just make out the mounds of bodies scattered across the earth floor. Several of them were groaning as they came to. A hand reached from the darkness and gripped her arm; she turned to see Dunsany struggling out of sleep.

  “Gods, my head!”

  “It was the food,” Katya said. “The bastards drugged us. Where are Silus and Zac? Zac! Silus!”

  When there was no response Katya ran to the door, but however hard she tugged on it, it wouldn’t open.

  “Where is my son?” she shouted at the iron-banded planks. “What have you done with my child?”

  “They separate the adults from the children,” a voice said, the speaker hunched by the fire, wrapped in a dirty cloak. “You won’t see him again.”

  “But… this is monstrous. We’re not slaves!”

  “You’re human, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then it’s no more than you deserve. It’s what we are. The elves made us. The elves own us.”

  The cloaked figure drew back its hood. The pale face that looked up at her reminded Katya of the workers they had seen outside the palace. The man’s expression was blank, almost imbecilic, and his large round eyes seemed to absorb the firelight.

  “You know,” Dunsany said. “One day you will be far more than slaves. The human race will rule this land. The elves and the dwarves will be mere memories; stories we tell our children.”

  The man chuckled thickly.

  “Get some rest, for now,” he said. “Work starts soon.”

  “Work?” Katya asked, but he would say no more.

  She found it impossible to rest. The anger that burned within her demanded focus, but she could hardly rage at her companions, and all her pounding on the door achieved was bleeding fists. Silus, Zac, Kelos and Emuel had been taken away, the rest of them discarded like so much human trash.

  “I swear to the gods, Dunsany. The first pointy-eared bastard that comes through that door is going to get my fist right in its face.”

  Several hours later, there was the sound of bolts being drawn back and Katya leapt to her feet. But when she launched herself at the tall, lithe woman who entered the room there was a crimson flash, and a smell of burning hair, and darkness swiftly descended.

  Zac may have only recently just learned to walk, but he could crawl alright, and that was all that was required of him. He was gathered with the other human children before a vast wall, its apex lost far above them in the gloom of the cavern. Deep holes had been tunnelled into the wall at regular intervals, and it was in front of these that they now stood. The man who had led them down here had handed each child two glazed clay balls. He told the children that all they had to do was crawl as far as they could into their assigned tunnel, before dropping the balls and crawling quickly out again. It was a game, he said. But people who played games didn’t generally look as terrified as the children around him, Zac considered, and, anyway, what sort of game did you play deep underground, in tunnels lit only by the glowing minerals veined through the rock walls? Because Zac was so young, he was given into the care of a slightly older child, one who had more grasp on what they were being told.

  “And remember,” the man said. “When everybody gets back out of their tunnel, we all have to run away, really really fast. The first one out gets a prize. Sound fun?”

  The man may have been using the language of play, but his face was deadly serious, cruelly stern. Already some of the infants in the group had started to cry. Fat tears trickling through the dust on their cheeks; snot heavy with grime pouring from their nostrils.

  By the look on the man’s face, he wished he could slap the children into silence. But he didn’t.

  “Okay, everybody before their tunnels. Good. Now, on three. One. Two. Three. Go!”

  Zac hesitated for just a second before following his companion into the narrow slit in the cold rock wall. Within, he could barely move his shoulders, but the man shouted something behind him and, remembering his angry face, Zac forced himself onwards. For a while he could hear the shuffling and sniffling of children in adjacent tunnels, but as they went deeper that soon faded away, until the only sound was their breathing. Zac couldn’t see a thing, and he thought that maybe this wasn’t a game at all; that they would be trapped here in this never-ending darkness and he would never see Mummy and Daddy again. Zac had been in frightening situations before, had seen many scary things (like the monster Daddy had turned into), but none of them had been as terrifying, or as lonely, as this. He began to cry.

  “Shh!” the boy in front of him snapped. “We’re almost there.”

  There was light up ahead: a soft glow permeated the darkness. Just before it ended, the tunnel widened slightly and Zac found that they could stand.

  Before them, the entire wall of the tunnel was glowing. Zac could feel the warmth pouring from the stone, and he knew that this was where the man wanted them to place the clay balls. He looked up at the spheres in the boy’s hands. They were giving off a strange s
mell. The boy grinned nervously before dropping them at his feet, where they began to sink into the stone floor with a hissing sound.

  “Go!” he said.

  Zac hoped that he would be the first one out. He hoped that he would win the prize the man had promised them. Giggling, he thrust himself back up into the darkness of the crevice, wriggling for all he was worth. He was almost out — he could see the lights in the vast cavern beyond the next turn — when, with a loud thud, jaws of rock snapped shut before him. The tunnel behind him shook and filled with rubble, thrusting his knees painfully up against his chest. Zac struggled to breathe through the clouds of rock dust enveloping him, stinging his eyes and scouring his throat.

  Then there was silence — absolute and terrifying — before the cries of trapped children reached him in the darkness. Zac looked behind him and saw a pale, bloody hand reaching from a pile of rock, the fingers barely grazing his ankle. He heard the shouts of the overseer as if from a great distance, before he was silenced by what sounded like metal ringing on stone.

  Zac struggled, but all he could move were his fingers, and these could do little more than weakly paw at the rock before him. It struck him, then, that he might die. He’d never seriously considered his own death before, but now that he did, he realised what a terrible and unjust thing it would be. He wanted his parents; Mummy and Daddy would make it alright. But they weren’t here, and there was no way they could get to him.

  Zac yelled for all he was worth and was answered by the many voices of the children trapped in the darkness. Some of the cries were cut short when a tremor shook the walls. The rock creaked and groaned; Zac could feel the floor rippling beneath him and he cried out even louder as panic gripped him.

  When a warm liquid began to trickle over his hands, he thought that it was his own tears or blood. But then the trickle became a gush and soon a tepid stream was lapping about his body. There was a strange smell; a charged feeling like the approach of a thunderstorm. Zac blinked as a shaft of light punched through the rock before him. The stone was melting, trickling away like wax before a flame. He could hear movement beyond: adult voices; children responding with delight and relief.

  The last of the boulders blocking Zac in dissolved, and he could see a short, bearded man crouched in the half-light of the open shaft. Steam wreathed his hands where he moved them about the tunnel’s walls, and he was muttering something beneath his breath, in a tongue that Zac didn’t recognise. He looked up as Zac crawled towards him and grinned.

  “We’ve got a live one here, boss. Come on, wee man, let’s get you out of this mess.”

  The man enclosed him in his broad arms and helped him from the shattered mouth of the tunnel. Zac blinked in the lights of the main cavern, seeing other children being helped from the collapsed tunnels by more of the short, bearded men. One whole side of the chamber wall had collapsed, spilling rubble far into the cavern.

  At least twenty-five children had been sent into the tunnels; Zac saw only six amongst the men and women who now crowded the chamber. He looked around for the elf who had led them down here and saw his headless corpse at the feet of a squat, broad man, who was cleaning blood from the blade of his axe. He noticed Zac gazing at him, and smiled.

  “Don’t yer worry yourself, sunshine. That pointy-eared bastard won’t be bothering you no more.”

  The dwarf’s grin scared Zac more than the blood on his blade or the corpse at his feet. The jagged teeth that loomed out of the patchy ginger beard covering his face looked just like the broken stones that surrounded them.

  “You might want to stand back somewhat,” said a voice behind him. It was the man who had rescued him. His hands were flat against the cave wall and sweat beaded his forehead as he began to chant. Zac stumbled back as the rock began to give way beneath the man’s hands. One whole section of the wall above him bowed outwards, looming over the dwarf like a great belly of stone. The man looked up nervously, but maintained his litany.

  When the stone began to drip and trickle around his hands, the dwarf stepped away from the wall.

  “Everyone back,” he shouted. “It’s going.”

  Zac was swept aside by a woman with bright red hair as a dark waterfall tumbled into the chamber, sloshing up against their feet in a warm flood and filling the air with the sharp smell of liquid rock. He could see pale shapes tumbling within the wash and as the tide drew back, revealing their true forms, he gasped.

  Eight children lay on the cavern floor, their bodies crushed and broken.

  “No, no, no!” the dwarf shouted as he attempted to revive one of the children.

  “You weren’t to know, Orlok,” the woman holding Zac said. “None of us knew the elves were using child labour in this part of the mines.”

  “It was my idea to force our way into this chamber. It was my sorcery that led to the collapse of the tunnels. If we’d come in further up the shaft, none of this would have happened. We’re supposed to be here to liberate the humans, Greta, not kill their young! ”

  Orlok’s voice rose to a fierce shriek, startling the surviving children and eliciting fresh cries of distress.

  “The longer we stay here fretting over what has been done, the longer the elves will have to mobilise. You can’t throw away our mission because of collateral damage.”

  “You call children ‘collateral damage’? Is that really what you think?”

  There was a tense silence as the dwarves glowered at one another.

  “I knew that this would turn out to be a stupid idea,” Greta finally said. This was met with a collective sharp intake of breath, but though Orlok’s face turned a deeper crimson, he made no move towards the woman.

  “I want Mummy and Daddy,” Zac wailed.

  Orlok looked at the small boy, the threat of tears glistening in his own eyes. His face hardening, he drew his axe. The double-headed blade caught the light of the cavern and made Zac blink.

  “Oh don’t you worry, little man,” Orlok said. “We’re going to find your parents and then we’re going to bring this whole place crashing down around those elven bastards!

  “Soldiers!” There was the rattle of metal as a hundred men and women stood to attention. “Move out!”

  Katya’s fingers were bleeding. For the last six hours or so she had been standing in the blazing sun, sorting through tray after tray of rocks, picking out the stones with even the faintest glimmer of green mineral before discarding the rest. Although she was aware that she had been assigned one of the most tedious tasks as punishment for her attack on the elf guard, she would much rather be doing this than toiling in the tunnels far beneath their feet.

  The mine was located several miles from the city, in a deep valley bordered by precipitous granite cliffs on one side and a thickly-forested ridge on the other. Soot-stained chimneys rose from the valley floor, belching noxious fumes which rose to gather into a dark cloud, turning day to dusk. Beyond the smoke stacks sat the head of the main shaft, crowned with a creaking wooden frame. The frame supported a vast oak axle, on which two iron wheels turned, lowering and raising the huge cage that carried workers into and out of the depths. From the great lengths of rope that played through the metal wheels, Katya assumed that the mineral seams must lie many feet beneath them. She could only imagine the hellish conditions down there; the men and women who emerged from the shaft often appeared to be on the verge of collapse, their bloodshot eyes staring out blankly from faces black with soot.

  Two days ago she had seen Illiun, Shalim, Rosalind and their compatriots enter the cage. Before it had descended, Rosalind had reached out to Katya.

  “If you see Hannah, tell her that Mummy and Daddy are okay.”

  But Katya hadn’t seen their daughter, and when Illiun and Shalim had come back up, Rosalind was no longer with them. Katya had tried to talk to Shalim, asking him what had happened to his wife, but he wouldn’t speak. Katya had been alarmed to see blood on his lips, and had appealed to one of the elves for help, but she had been roundly ign
ored. Workers, it would seem, were eminently expendable.

  Katya flinched as a shadow fell over her, afraid, for a moment, that it was one of the guards come to berate her for some presumed slight. But when she looked up, it was Dunsany, carrying another tray of rocks for her to sort through.

  “Have you had any further thoughts on making our escape?” she said.

  “Beyond how impossible it would be, you mean?”

  “Well, we can’t stay here for much longer. Have you seen Shalim? If he’s sent down again, he won’t come back up.”

  “You talk as though this is a temporary situation, Katya. As if there’s any hope at all.”

  For a moment Katya didn’t know what to say. Here was a man who had been full of a lust for adventure, who had never hesitated to throw himself into the most perilous of situations; and now he had been reduced by slavery to little more than a shell.

  “I don’t know about escape, Katya, but I’d do anything to have Kelos back.”

  When Dunsany’s shoulders began to hitch, she took the tray of rocks from him before he could drop it on his feet. She held him and was shocked by how frail he felt, as though he had aged decades in just a matter of days.

  “I’m sure that wherever Kelos is, he’s thinking the same thing,” Katya said. “Trust me, we’ll get out of this. You’ve got to have faith.”

  “Like Ignacio and his friends, you mean?”

  Katya looked over to where their former crewmate was breaking rocks. The crew he sweated with all wore a scrap of rag tied to their upper right arm, upon which was painted the crossed circle: the symbol of the Final Faith. It hadn’t taken Ignacio long to start preaching to his fellow slaves and, with Bestion’s help, he had soon amassed a regular congregation. The elves didn’t seem at all alarmed by this burgeoning faith. Katya supposed that with their minds on Kerberos and the rewards He would give to them in the hereafter, the members of this new cult were less likely to foment rebellion. Indeed, gauging from the way the elves allowed them to gather in prayer every time they broke for lunch, they were actively encouraging the belief.