Part 1 (2/2)
”Yes, what is it?”
”And how is my Lord this morning?” The elderly adviser bowed as low as his aging back would allow.
”Impatient, as always. So don't bother inquiring after my condition. I know that you, as much as everyone else in this benighted pile of stone, would rejoice at the sight of me dead.”
Tergamet fluttered a protesting hand. ”Oh no, Lord! How can you think to say such a thing to me, one of your most trusted and loyal retainers!”
”I don't trust anyone, old man, and loyalty is a commodity to be bought, like expensive wine and cheap women.” His irritation was growing. ”What news? Not the harbor pilots again, with this nonsense about Krakens interfering with their work. I've told them how to fight back, and what poisons to use.”
”No, Lord. It is not the harbor pilots.” Eyes that still saw sharply rose to nearly meet his. ”It is the Worm, Lord. It wishes to speak with you.”
Hymneth considered, then nodded slowly. At this news, the two small eromakadi that attended his ankles danced excitedly around his legs. Termaget was careful to keep them in view. Simple contact with either one could suck the life out of a man. The Possessed they merely bounced off like agitated spaniels.
”The Worm, you say. What about?”
The senior adviser bowed again and spread his arms wide. ”I do not know, my Lord. It will speak only to you.”
”And quite properly so. Very good, Termaget. You may go.”
”Thank you, Lord.” Bowing and sc.r.a.ping, the old man retreated toward the main doorway. As he turned to depart, Hymneth considered whether to let the eromakadi take a playful nip at his heels.
Nothing serious; just a week or so out of his remaining years. Days someone like Termaget would probably waste anyway. Hymneth decided against it, knowing that the old fellow probably would not see the humor in the situation.
His cape flowing behind him like blood running down the outside of a chalice, he exited the dining room.
Instead of striding toward the audience chamber as he normally did this time of morning, he turned instead to his right in the middle of the main hall. The door there was bolted with a hex and locked with a spell, both of which yielded to the keys of his voice. He did not bother to seal it behind him. It would take a braver man or woman than dwelled in the castle to try the steps that began to descend immediately behind the door. Hex and spell were designed not to keep them out, but to seal something securely within.
Torches flared to life at his approach, the flames bowing briefly in his direction. As Hymneth descended the corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g stairway, one of the eromakadi darted swiftly upward behind him to suck the life out of one torch. The flame screamed, a high-pitched conflagratory shriek, as it died. When Hymneth turned to reproach the black gust of horror, it hid behind its twin like a censured child.
Down the Lord of Ehl-Larimar went, below the sewers that carried water and waste away from the castle, below the dungeons where men and women and children wailed and whimpered in forgotten misery, below even the unshakable foundations of the ma.s.sive fortress itself. Down until there was nothing left but the raw Earth-and the Pit that had been gouged from its heart.
At this depth nothing could live that basked in the light of the sun. In the perpetual darkness, things that rarely saw the surface burrowed and crept, mewling and cheeping softly to others of their own kind, hoping to avoid the mephitic, malodorous monstrosities armed with teeth and claw that would prey readily on anything that moved. An eerie glow came from the phosph.o.r.escent fungi that thrust bulbous, deformed stalks and heads above the surface of the Pit, giving it the appearance of some ghastly, unwholesome garden. In this place even the air seemed dead. All movement took place below the surface, out of sight, out of light.
Until Hymneth arrived, with eromakadi in tow.
Pausing on the last step, the final piece of clean, hewn stone that bordered the Pit, he gazed speculatively down into its depths. His boots, he knew, would require days of scrubbing to make them clean again. As he slowly lifted both arms up and out, his steady, st.u.r.dy voice shattered the diseased stillness.
”Alegemakh! Borun val malcuso.Show thyself, and speak!”
For a long moment there was nothing. No sound, no movement except the breathy stirring of the eromakadi. Then soil began to tremble, and s.h.i.+ft, disturbed by some movement from below. Clumps of moist loam shuddered and individual particles of dirt bounced and quivered until at last they were thrust aside by something monstrous.
The Worm arose.
It burst forth from the earth, shedding dirt and uprooted fungi from its flanks. Pellucid mucus glistened along the length of its body. A length that no man, not even Hymneth the Possessed, had ever measured.
The Worm might be ten feet long, or twenty, or a hundred. Or it might curl and coil all the way through to the other side of the Earth. No one knew. No one would ever know, because attempting the knowing meant death. Of all men, only Hymneth had power enough to meet the Worm in this place, chiseled out of the solid rock halfway between air and earth, and survive.
It lifted above him, s.h.i.+mmering and immense, its great tubular body arching forward like that of a questing serpent. Its upper girth, if not its length, was measurable. From where it emerged from the ground to its head it was as thick around as a good-sized tree. The last eight feet of it tapered to an almost comically small mouth, no bigger around than a barrel. From this darted and fluttered, like the tongue of a snake, a long, wet, flexible organ tipped with four tapering, sharp fangs that pointed forward.
It was not a tongue, but a device for piercing the body of prey and sucking out their soft insides. The Worm's diet was varied-it would eat dirt as readily as blood.
Darting away from their master's side, the twin eromakadi began to feast on the light emitted by the bioluminescent fungi. Completely enveloping a helpless mushroom or toadstool, they would hover thus until its light had been consumed before moving on to another, leaving behind a shriveled and dying lump where before there had been life, however humble.
The Worm too pulsed with its own pale, necrotic glow, but they kept clear of that ma.s.sive, hovering body. Not because they were afraid of it, but because they knew it was there to meet their master. And of all the things in the world, the eromakadi feared only Hymneth the Possessed.
Vestigial eyes no larger than small coins focused on the tall, armored figure waiting on the lowermost of the stone steps. Black as the eternal night in which they dwelled, they had neither pupils nor eyelids. But they recognized the tall figure. Long ago, Worm and man had struck an accord. Hymneth provided the Worm with-food. The Worm, in turn, kept a kind of watch over the realm of the Possessed. It had the ability to sense disturbances in That Which Had Not Yet Happened. The great majority of these it ignored.
But out on the fringes of the future it had detected something. Something active, and advancing, and imbued with might. In keeping with the covenant it had made with the man, it duly remarked upon this commotion.
”He comes. And he is not alone.”
Hymneth had lowered his arms. As the eromakadi spread small deaths throughout the chamber, he concentrated on the tapering head of the Worm swaying high above his own. ”Who comes, eater of dirt?”
The Worm's voice was a high hollowness. ”A master of the necromantic arts. A questioner of all that is unanswered. One who seeks justice wherever he treads. He comes this way from across the Semordria.”
”That is not possible. The eastern ocean is not a lake, to be crossed at will by casual travelers. They would have to travel far to the south, pa.s.s through the Straits of Duenclask, and then sail north against the current through the waters of the Aurreal.”
”A strong boat guided by a bold Captain brings him, and the three who journey by his side.”
”Only three?” Hymneth relaxed. This descent to the depths had been unnecessary after all. ”That is a small army indeed.”
”I render no judgment. I speak only of what I sense.”
The Possessed chuckled softly, the crimson helmet reverberating with his laughter. ”I will alert the navy to keep watch for any odd vessels entering the harbor. As always, I thank you for your attention, Worm.
But in this matter your insight seems to be sorely lacking.”
”Sense,” the Worm whispered. ”Not judgment.” It was silent for several moments, its upper length weaving slowly back and forth above the churned surface of the Pit. ”They come for the woman.”
That piqued Hymneth's interest. ”So the young Beckwith was not the last. I thought with putting paid to him and his crew I had seen the last of these misguided aristocrats. They worry me like fleas.” He sighed.
”Well, in the unlikely event that any of them should reach Ehl-Larimar I will tell Peregriff to alert the castle guards. But I have more confidence in the ocean. Even if they reach these sh.o.r.es my gunboats will stop them before they can cross the outer reefs.” He shook his head sadly.
”You would think they would recognize who they were dealing with, and stop s.h.i.+pping their sons off to be slaughtered. The error of false pride. As if running this kingdom didn't make demands enough upon my time.”
”Feed me.” The immense, looming ma.s.s of the Worm swayed hypnotically back and forth, the flickering light of the stairway torches gleaming off its terrible piercing teeth. ”I tire of soil. I have done my share.
Feed me.”
”Yes, yes,” Hymneth replied irritably. He had already virtually forgotten all that the Worm had told him.
As if a mere four possible invaders were anything to worry about, even if one happened to be a so-called master of the necromantic arts. There was only one dominating master of matters sorcerous and alchemical, and that was Hymneth the Possessed.
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