by Tad Williams
“Of coursse not. Not clever Ssskinwretch!”
As he watched the creature’s mad caperings, Fritti suddenly noticed something he had missed in his excitement. “Where’s Scratchnail?” he demanded. “You were to keep him with you.”
A sudden look of fear crossed Skinwretch’s ruined features. “Oh, Tunnelwalker, that one. He isss full of ossss. He would not stay by me, and I could not make him—he iss very powerful, you know. He ran off into the tunnelsss, crying and ssaying ssstrange thingsss. He wasss punished becaussse of the prissoner, and he iss sssick with the osss.”
Nothing to be done, thought Fritti. “Never mind,” he told Skinwretch, who brightened immediately. “Go on, now, and if I need you I will find you.”
Tailchaser darted out of the spur tunnel and across the main shaft, stopping in an alcove on the far side, shielded by darkness from observing eyes. When he looked back he saw Skinwretch, maimed face in a crooked smile, still leaping and jigging in the shadows.
Hiding in pools of deeper shade, stealing quietly past squadrons of bristling, congregating mound-dwellers, Fritti moved like a spirit-cat through the awakening underworld. The mound-beasts were everywhere—moving, whispering, flexing sharp red claws.
Fritti reached the junction of three tunnels that Skinwretch had described. Looking cautiously around, and seeing no one paying attention, he ducked down the passage that the Toothguard had instructed him to take. Tail erect, whiskers tingling and every bit of fur puffed upright, he crept downward.
A shaft entrance in the tunnel wall ahead. That was the one! He felt an urge to leap, but controlled himself. Carefully, carefully ...
He reached the hole and peered cautiously down. In the dim light at the bottom of the shaft he could see ... Pouncequick! His heart leaped. The young kitling and Roofshadow were being kept in the same cave! His luck was holding.
Leaning farther forward, he could now see two more shapes. Roofshadow! And was the old one Eatbugs? But why weren’t any of them moving? Could they be ... but no. He could see Pouncequick’s sides rising and falling.
Something crashed down on him like a toppling tree. With a yowl of pain he tumbled to the side of the cavern entrance. Standing over him with a massive paw cocked for another blow was a large black shape. The half-familiar face of the Clawguard leered down at him.
“What are you up to, then?” the brute growled.
“N-nothing!” squeaked Fritti. “M-m-my name is T-Tunnelwalker, and I’ve lost my way.” He tried to make himself small against the earth. The Claw leaned closer.
“Is that right?” he snarled, and his hot breath made Tailchaser blink. The beast’s eyes narrowed. “Just a moment. You look familiar. What’s that mark on your head?”
His head? Forehead? Skydancer’s Tears! Fritti cursed himself. He must have wiped the masking dust from his face when he had emerged from the slave tunnel.
Fritti made a sudden squirming movement toward escape, but the heavy paw descended on his neck, scarlet claws softly pricking his throat.
“By the Great One!” said the Claw. “If it isn’t our little escaped sun-rat! Isn’t that fine!”
In a rush of despair, Fritti recognized his captor. It was Bitefast, Scratchnail’s former companion, who now bared his teeth at the trapped Tailchaser in a terrible smile. “Well now,” chuckled the Claw, “it’s awfully good that I should be the one to find you. Because of you, they ruined the chief. All because of you!” The paw pushed cruelly down on Fritti’s throat. He coughed helplessly.
“Well, I’m the chieftain now.” Bitefast smirked. “And I’m going to make sure you get what you deserve.” The black beast squatted, and pushed his deep-set eyes up next to the face of his wheezing captive. The Claw’s voice descended to a vindictive whisper.
“I’m going to take you straight to the Fat One!”
28 CHAPTER
Wheresoever thou art our agony will find Thee
Enthroned on the darkest altar of our heartbreak
Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard. O dog my God!
—George Barker
Tailchaser was pushed, prodded, bitten and bullied down the now-crowded corridors by Bitefast. As they passed—the dark and muscular Clawguard driving the small orange cat—some of the mound-dwellers turned to stare curiously after the mismatched pair. There was nothing unusual in the sight of one of the captive Folk being herded to punishment or doom, but the small cat was snarling and balking—resisting! It had been a long time since any had seen the sun-dwellers showing any fight.
Fritti, in a haze of pain, frustration, and anger, did observe an unusual thing: there were no slaves; no work gangs to be seen sullenly treading the roads of Vastnir. Apparently their work was done. No wonder he had been discovered.
Bitefast directed Fritti down through crowds of indifferent Clawguard and hissing, wrinkle-skinned Toothguard. Down, from level to level, passing beneath the Greater Gate, to arrive at last at the vaulted antechamber to the Cavern of the Pit.
Before the entrance to the Seat of Hearteater stood a group of Clawguard, arguing. The apparent leader, a squat, chunky beast with only a stump where his tail had been, seemed to be trying to restore order. He snapped at one of his minions, who retreated growling, but crept back a moment later with head held low.
“Ho, Crushgrass!” Bitefast called to the tailless one. “What are you and your pack of mouse-huggers doing down here?”
Crushgrass turned to peer at the new arrivals. “Ah, it’s you, is it, Bitefast!? Very bad, very bad all this is.”
“What are you whining about?” asked Bitefast with a tongue-lolling grin.
“It’s Snapjaw here,” said Crushgrass worriedly. “He and some of my other fellows have been hearing strange things in the upper Catacombs.”
“Scratching, like,” said Snapjaw, low-browed and sullen. “It’s not right.”
Bitefast barked a harsh laugh. “What these fellows need is some sharp teeth put to ‘em. You need to keep these shirkers under a firmer paw, Crushgrass.” He laughed again. There was an unpleasant murmuring among Crushgrass’ guards. “And what are you all doing here in any case?” Bitefast continued. “The Master’ll have your eyes!”
Crushgrass winced. “They were going to come down here without me, if I didn’t come. How would that look?”
“Like a mutiny. Now, it’s a mutiny that you’re leading, my fine, stupid friend. Scratching! Hah! Stone-blood and fire! You’ll soon find that the Master is worse than any scratching!”
“And what brings you here, anyway?” Snapjaw hissed nastily.
Without warning, Bitefast was on him, knocking him to the ground and tearing his ear.
“You can talk to your chief like he’s a mewling kit, but don’t try it with me!” Bitefast rasped into Snapjaw’s bleeding ear in a low dangerous voice, then spoke up to the rest, who were watching avidly. “As it happens, I’ve brought an important prisoner to the Lord of All. If you’re lucky, he’ll be so pleased with me he’ll forget to tear your innards out.”
“Important prisoner? This little thing?” asked Crushgrass.
“The only escape we’ve had, this one,” growled Bitefast. “He must have had help, right? Stands to reason, doesn’t it? And you know what that means, don’t you?” The Claw leaned forward for emphasis. “Conspiracy! Think about that!” Bitefast bared his teeth, pleased.
“But if he escaped, what’s he doing back?” queried one of Crushgrass’ guards. Bitefast glared at him.
“I’ve had just about enough questions from your like,” he said menacingly. “I’ve got more important things to do than stand about jabbering with you scabby lot. I’m going in to see the Master. Go on, Crushgrass, take your whimperers and their ‘scratching,’ and get back to your tunnel. You’ve got no business here.”
“And you’ve got no place to order me, Bitefast,” said the other chieftain defiantly, but started away, his mumbling crew behind him. Snapjaw, with a hateful look, followed shakily.
“No backbone,�
�� said Bitefast in a self-satisfied tone.
Fritti had been motionless throughout the exchange, sensing the emanations that beat out from the chamber beyond—the grinding, reaching power of Hearteater. He barely felt Bitefast poking him forward toward the entrance. A mist swam before his eyes, and a blunt throb of pain started up at the front of his skull.
The two guards of the portal, one Claw, one Tooth, bobbed their heads minutely as they recognized Bitefast, but did not turn to watch as he led Fritti by. As they passed below the arch, cold mist swam up to meet them. Tailchaser was already shivering.
In the middle of the cavern the throne of the Impossible One rose up from the pit, the writhing, dying bodies making rippling patterns in the blue-and-violet light. Atop this monolith of pain lolled Lord Hearteater, blind and immobile like an immense, newly-hatched larva. Below him dozens of fevered servitors scurried around the rim of the pit.
Bitefast, his bravado gone now, pulled Tailchaser slowly toward the great beast. As they stood on the great circular precipice—the Claw chief working up courage to speak—there was a commotion at the far end of the cavern, near the main entrance. Fritti could see Clawguard running rapidly through the portal, but the ground-hugging mists made it impossible to tell what was happening.
The creature above the pit turned his head slowly in the direction of the disturbance. Bitefast coughed once, loudly, but the Master only stared away, across the great rock-rimmed cave.
“G-Greatest Lord ... Mighty One, hear thy slave!”
Bitefast’s voice carried out across the pit. The massive head pivoted slowly, turning back at last to fix milk-white eyes in their direction. Both the Clawguard chief and his captive took an involuntary step back from the rim. The Firstborn regarded them expres sionlessly.
“Greatest Lord, your servant Bitefast has brought you the escaped prisoner—the star-faced one. See!” The mottled beast stepped back, leaving Tailchaser cowering on the edge of the great pit beneath the unfathomable inspection of Hearteater.
Bitefast, unconsciously shooting and sheathing his claws as he waited, at last could bear the silence no longer. “Have I done well, Greatest One? Are you pleased with your servant?”
Hearteater turned his head slightly toward the Clawguard. “You will live,” he said. His voice sounded like centuries of decay. Bitefast made a spluttering noise, but before he could speak the dead, muddy voice added: “You have done well. Now go.”
Eyes goggling, Bitefast backed toward the entrance, turned and disappeared. Tailchaser sagged to the cold ground; the vapors swirled between him and the pit. When they receded, the Fat One’s ancient, blind eyes were focused upward, seeing nothing. The tortured heap on which the thing reclined heaved slightly, as in some strange collective shrug. The Lord of Vastnir appeared not to notice. Suddenly, like a cold, clammy intruder, Hearteater’s voice spoke inside Tailchaser’s mind.
“I know you.” The thick presence forced its way effortlessly into his thoughts. Tailchaser, in a sick frenzy, rubbed his head against the frost-hard ground of the cavern, but the voice could not be driven out.
“You are no threat. Free or prisoned, quick or dead, you are less than a pebble in my path.” The ageless thing, smothering Fritti’s panicked thoughts in flabby despair, droned on: “But I still need my minions ... for a while yet. All must know futility. All must know resistance is futility. I should render you to particles and set you afloat between the stars....”
A terrifying emptiness swept into Fritti’s mind, as if he had been suddenly cast into the endless abyss. Somewhere he could hear his body squealing in terror ... somewhere—remote, unreachable.
“But,” the awful hammering drone began again, “you are already promised. Bast-Imret and Knet-Mukri—all the Boneguard—have claimed you. You will be taken to the House of Despair, to be entertained there until your ka struggles to fly to the great void....”
As if silently summoned, gray mist-shrouded shapes issued forth from the caves high up on the wall beyond Hearteater’s pit. A stately, awful progression started down from the honey-combed cavern wall, as slow and relentless as black ice forming on a winter pond. In the dim indigo light that flickered from fissures in the rock they were indistinct ... formless. Bright sparks that might have been eyes twinkled.
A thin breeze sighed down from the heights of the chamber and the darkness settled a little closer. The other creatures drew back silently to let the Boneguard pass. A powerful force held Tailchaser pinioned to the earth, and he could only watch as the shadow company approached.
A sudden disturbance at the cavern’s far entrance, loud alarums from the Clawguard there, turned all the eyes but those of the blind beast in the pit. The line of Boneguard stopped, their indistinct forms rippling. Beneath Hearteater the dying bodies heaved again; then for a moment all was still.
A lone figure tottered through the entranceway, into the Cavern of the Pit. It was a Toothguard, leathery hide slashed and bleeding.
“We are attacked!” the creature shrieked. “There isss great sslaughter at the Vez‘an Gate! Other placesss, too!” A great cry arose from the gathered beasts, and now sounds could be heard from the tunnels beyond the great cavern.
“What is it? What is it?” cried one of the Clawguard, maddened.
“The treacherous Firssst-walkersss! They have come with the sssun-wormss of the Firssthome! Treachery! Attack!” Screeching and whistling, the Toothguard collapsed. The cavern was instantly a place of pandemonium—Tooth and Claw alike leaping, snarling, and screaming, spilling and surging out of the tunnels. From outside the cavern the noises of the struggle were louder, closer. Above the chaos Hearteater lay motionless as a glacier.
Tailchaser, sprawled on the earth at the edge of the pit, watched it all as if he were in a dream. The cries and furor had not touched him, had not penetrated the paralyzing frost that Hearteater had laid on his heart and ka. When a massive wave of struggling beasts poured through the entrance to the cavern, locked talon and fang in mortal combat, he watched the swelling madness with the same curious indifference he had once shown to ripples on a summer pond. Only when several of the figures near the front of the fighting began to look faintly, distantly familiar did he feel a thawing of interest.
A great black cat—like a slender, supple Claw—was laying about in spitting fury in the midst of gnashing Toothguard. Who was that? Why should it matter to him? He felt it important that he remember. Nearby a second tom, crisscrossed with thin scars, wrestled and tore at a Clawguard far bigger than he was. Another one. Should he know him, too?
A huge striped cat thundered through the entranceway, scattering guards before him. As he looked across the cavern from the summit of his detachment, Fritti felt an urge to smile—despite the fact that the swag-bellied tom was fighting for his life.
Why? he wondered. Why am I smiling?
Because it’s Hangbelly, and Hangbelly is funny.
Hangbelly. Hangbelly, and Squeakerbane, and ... and ... Quiverclaw! His friends. His friends had come!
The frost melted from his soul. The Folk had come at last! They had come!
Fritti climbed to his paws with a weak cry of happiness. The fighting was spreading, moving closer to where he stood—and gradually surrounding the pit where the Master lay in inscrutable power. Tailchaser staggered back toward the wall of the cavern, taking the slight refuge of a recess in the stone. The guards had already sprung past him toward the fray.
Slowly, as if by unspoken command, the mound-creatures were edging backward until at last they formed a ring around the misty, violet-lit hole in the cavern’s center. The attackers massed and charged, but broke against the line of the pit guards. Struggling shapes plunged howling over the rim, to vanish into the fogs that floated about the Master’s throne. The attackers withdrew, poised to throw themselves forward once more. There was a heartbeat of stillness, in which fur could almost be heard to bristle ... then the mud-and-thunder voice of Hearteater boomed through the cavern.
“STOP!”
Shocked silence, and for a moment nothing but the echoes of that terrible sound reverberated in the air. Quiverclaw, who had scrambled partway up the base of the chamber wall, stared into the dimness of the pit. His raspy whisper, charged with superstitious fear, fractured the stillness.
“Dugs of the Allmother!” Hisses of fear boiled up from the other Folk, and hundreds of backs and tails arched as one.
The voice of Hearteater welled up once more. “I wondered if the lackeys who worship the memory of my departed brothers would eventually gain the courage to try to take me in my den. Hear me, then, you Firefoot-sniffers and Whitewind-chasers: the last of the Firstborn is not to be dealt with by a mewing rabble like yourselves. You are beyond your depth, surface-crawlers.”
The pressure of his words weighed the attackers down like a tangible thing, but the mound-creatures did not move either, so great was the force of Hearteater.
Finally Squeakerbane stood, his battered old face firm, whiskers straight and proud: “Words!” cried the Thane of the Rootwood First-walkers. “We have brought more true Folk than there are stars in the sky, Lord of the Ant Heap—even now they swarm down your Praere-hole. Your day is over!” All around the attackers shook their heads, and purred with wonder and pride, so that a great humming filled the rocky vastness. “You may sit like a toad on your imitation Vaka‘az’me until the end of time,” cried Squeakerbane, “but we shall never rub our chins on the ground for you! Your power is broken!”
The laughter of Grizraz Hearteater rolled down like the grinding of an avalanche. “FOOLS!” he boomed. “You speak to me of power, with your tiny lives like the tumbling of leaves! What a mockery!” His laughter swelled again. There was a rumbling beneath, and Hearteater’s throne-mound pitched sharply. “You speak of the Vaka‘az’me,” he bellowed, and the rumbling grew louder. “You think you see the throne of Hearteater, but you see nothing!!” The Master of the mound shouted with mirth, a noise as chilling as freezing rain. The Folk quailed, and would have run, but Squeakerbane stepped forward, and the line held.
