Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) (25 page)

Carnifex turned to leave.

“Carn,” Thumil said. “You know if you go after him, you’ll suffer the same fate.”

He spun back to face the three of them. “I know. And you knew that, too, but you summoned me all the same. You did the right thing, laddie, and I’ll not forget it.”
 

Cordy’s hand flew to her mouth. Tears were brimming in her eyes.

“Lassie,” Carnifex said. He wanted to hold her, tell her it was going to be all right, but the first would have been inappropriate, and the second was a lie. “I can’t abandon my brother when he needs me the most.”

“You have to know I’d come with you, Carn,” Thumil said, “but I… Cordy… the Council.”

Carnifex gripped his arm and looked him in the eye. “You can’t come, laddie. I won’t allow it. Your place is here, with your wife. Just remember this: we are still friends, and always will be.”

This time, when he broke off, Cordy said, “But the
Sanguis Terrae
… You can’t swim.”

“He won’t need to,” Aristodeus said, waving about the page from the
Annals
. “Not if I’m right about this.”

“Be careful, Carn,” Thumil said. “Grago’s likely to send assassins.”

Carnifex nodded that he knew. “Then it’s a good job you bought me this axe.”

“This is what I feared,” Aristodeus said, huffing and puffing as he followed Carnifex down the steps of the Aorta. “What I’ve been trying to avert.”

“You knew Lucius was going to do this?”

“Not him, necessarily. One of you. Both, maybe. All I know is that something pivotal happens right here, right now. Choices will be made. Either the axe is a ruse and best avoided at all costs, or it’s real and is essential to what comes next. I’ve been reasoning it out night and day, and still I’m no closer to a solution. It’s a game, Carnifex. A battle of wits between me and the Demiurgos.”

Carnifex stopped and shot a warning look at him. “Laddie, this is anything but a game, not if it involves my brother.” He continued on down, but threw over his shoulder, “And the Demiurgos? You need to lay off the somnificus and leave your imaginary friend out of it.”

 
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Aristodeus said. “How could you? How could any of you? Suffice it to say, the stakes are high. Impossibly high, and a great deal hinges on what we do next; what Lucius does. One false move, and there will be blood.”

They paused for breath at the tenth. Carnifex’s legs were burning, but Aristodeus was feeling it even more. He was bent over with his hands on his thighs as he sucked in great gulps of cold air. His eyes had a ghastly pallor, and were focused elsewhere, as if he were glimpsing some hellish future.
 

“A moment more,” the philosopher said, when Carnifex wanted to press on.

“One, and then we go. I’m not losing my brother because you’re out of condition.”

Aristodeus winced, and ever-so-slowly drew himself upright, as if every straightening vertebra caused him pain. “Maybe it’s a mistake going after him. It’s you I see in the patterns. You are the important one.”

Carnifex started down the steps without him. “No. No I am not.” No one and nothing was more important to him than Lucius at that moment, least of all himself.

They stopped three more times on the way to the bed of the ravine, but if anything, the closer they got, the more anticipation or dread seemed to fuel the philosopher’s tired limbs. When they reached the bottom of the ladder leading down from the twenty-first, Aristodeus strode ahead, and Carnifex had to jog to keep up with him.

Gibunas shrieked and gibbered from the shadows of the chasm walls. The night crowds were thin, but the stalls were still plying their wares, and the clamor of the circle fight audience was as loud as ever.

They took a shortcut along the banks of a canal, ignoring the calls of scantily clad baresark whores, who’d rip your dwarfhood off and feed it to you if you didn’t hand over enough tokens after the deed. A lantern at the prow of a barge cut eerie swaths of orange through the mist rising from the ravine floor.

A crowd had gathered along the shore of the
Sanguis Terrae
. Out in the center of the lake, green light shimmered. It was coming from deep beneath the surface.

“The portal is active,” Aristodeus said. “He must have gone through.”

“To Gehenna?”

Aristodeus nodded. “The gateway to the Abyss.”

Carnifex stared across the water, spellbound by the the rills of argent moonlight that picked out each and every ripple.
 

The philosopher held up the page from the
Annals
and used it to guide him to various points on the low wall hemming the lake. When someone objected he was pushing in, Carnifex told them to go shog themselves.
 

“Oi, ain’t you that Butcher what took down the Crusher?” an aged baresark said.

“So what if I am?” Carnifex said, and the old dwarf took a respectful step back.

A space cleared around them, and Aristodeus set about identifying specific bricks in the wall and running his hand over them. Once or twice, he cursed and started over, but finally, the bricks he touched began to wink on and off in sequence with a violet glow. Carnifex counted as they flared and then died down: There were ten in all, and when the last had dulled, the center of the lake began to boil and froth.

Gasps passed through the crowd as a silvery disk broke the surface and skimmed across the lake until it came to a halt before Aristodeus. It was identical to the one the homunculus had used to escape from the Scriptorium. The philosopher moved aside and gestured for Carnifex to step on.

“You’re not coming?”

Aristodeus flinched, as if he’d been struck. “Me? No. I can’t. I mean… I just can’t.”

Carnifex shook his head and walked onto the disk. He didn’t have time for explanations. Either the philosopher was in or he was out. Last thing they needed was a shogging discussion, like the Council of Twelve had every time they were asked to do something.

Shimmering bands of silver sprouted from the surface of the disk and encased his boots. He tried to move his feet, but he was locked in place.

“Don’t worry,” Aristodeus said. “I suspect it’s to stop you floating away when you go under. They’ll release once you arrive.”

Carnifex sucked in a whistling breath through his teeth. They’d better do, otherwise he was shogged.

With a jolt and a judder, the disk moved back out onto the lake. Carnifex swayed in place, held out an arm for balance. He craned his neck to look behind when he heard angry cries from the shore. Aristodeus’s white robe weaved in and out of the onlookers, as if he were in a hurry to get away. And then Carnifex saw why.
 

Black Cloaks emerged from the crowd, six of them, armed with hand crossbows. One took aim, but his bolt fell short and punched through the water with a phwat. Another held up a piece of paper and ran his eyes over it. It had to be the page of the
Annals
Aristodeus had used to summon the disk. The philosopher must have dropped it, or the Black Cloak had taken it from him.
 

Thumil’s delay tactics clearly hadn’t worked. Or maybe they had, and he didn’t know action had already been taken. Maybe Grago had ordered his goons to give chase before the Council meeting had even started. If the Black Cloaks hadn’t fired at Carnifex, he might have thought they’d come to prevent him from committing the same transgression as Lucius; but the fact that they had told him exile was no longer an option.

When the disk reached the bubbling maelstrom in the middle of the lake, Carnifex clutched his axe to his chest and held his breath. The disk lurched, and then it plummeted beneath the surface, plunging him into icy water. He fought the urge to close his eyes in case he missed something. The pressure of the descent screamed in his ears. The green glow coming from below intensified the deeper the disk took him, until its scorching radiance burned his eyes. Looking down, he saw it came from the maw of a monstrous head on the lake bed: a dragon’s head carved from scarolite.

The disk entered the dragon’s jaws, and Carnifex was immolated by emerald fire. He shut his eyes and gripped his axe so tight he thought the haft would snap. Waves of nausea washed over him, and his guts flip-flopped into his mouth.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the sensation left him, and the silver clamps fell away from his feet.
 

He opened his eyes onto blackness, but gradually he was able to pick out seams and flecks of green. Sulfurous fumes filled his lungs and made him gag.
 

He stepped away from the disk and turned a slow circle.
 

He was in a cavern so vast he couldn’t see the ceiling. Stalagmites grew up from the floor, twisting horns of scarolite. He’d never heard of it taking such a form. The entire floor was made of the same dark ore, and the closest wall, the only one he could see, was also black and veined with green.

Behind him, the disk had come to rest in a circle of gold. Symbols he could not decipher ran round the rim, some of them similar to the letters on the head of the golem. He touched his foot back to the surface of the disk, and in response, it shuddered, and a column of misty green light sprang up above it. Apparently, the return journey required no secret combinations. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be going back, and neither would Lucius. Not if they wanted to live.

GEHENNA

Carnifex walked between the stalagmites, looking for some clue, some trail that could tell him which way Lucius had gone. But he needed to get his mind straight, if either of them were to have a chance of making it through this nightmare.

 
Gehenna.
 

Even seeing it with his own eyes, he couldn’t quite believe that’s where he was. When he’d dreamed of leaving the city, it was always by way of the top of the ravine, not the bottom. He’d hoped one day to be beneath cobalt skies, searching out the forests and mountains he’d heard so much about in the stories, not skulking around further beneath Aethir than even the miners had gone.

As he approached the scarolite wall of the cavern, intending to follow its contours until he found some means of egress, it shimmered and changed.
 

Glistening strands beaded with quartz hung like a curtain, where just now there had been a solid wall. He touched a strand and recoiled. It was hot and slimy, and reminded him of the goat-gut strings musicians used for their fiddles. But these were long. Impossibly long. He lost sight of them as they stretched away toward the invisible ceiling.

Through the grisly curtain, he glimpsed a forest of crystalline trees and a path of ivory stepping stones wending away across the coal-black floor. The trees were lit by some internal luminescence, and stood out starkly against the darkness that surrounded them.
 

The curtain parted to either side of him, an invitation to pass beyond.

The minute he set foot among the trees, they were no longer crystal. Trunks of twisted flesh wound upward from sinuous roots, and the branches were thrashing serpents that hissed and spat poison. He ducked his head and ran, leaping between the stepping stones, and feeling in his guts, if he missed a jump, he’d slip through the gaps into an infinite void. Or maybe worse. Maybe into the Abyss itself.

Green flashed behind him. It had to be the column of light from the cavern. The portal was in use once more. The Krypteia were coming.

Tinkling laughter chimed amid the treetops, which were now festooned with cobwebs. In place of spitting snakes, the branches had become limbs of bone. Creatures sat upon them. They were laughing at him—hundreds of them, each no bigger than a dwarf child. Yet these were no dwarves: they were homunculi.

About the only thing they had in common with each other, besides their stature, was their gnomic faces and glittery eyes. It seemed they all had their own manner of dress: There were rags and motley, animal skins and seamless robes; some wore pleated britches and matching jackets; one had on a silver outfit like a second skin. And their hair: it went from bald as an egg to tangles of vibrant color; spikes and crests to ringlets and ropes.

As Carnifex reached the last stepping stone, the trees in front of him disappeared, banished by a sheer wall of obsidian that appeared out of nowhere. Close to its base was a gash like a leering smile, an aperture that opened up onto a passageway.
 

The sudden silence from the treetops had him turn round to see what was happening. Back the way he’d come, dark shapes emerged from the curtain of goat-gut, and one of them pointed his way.
 

The Krypteia.

If it were just his life to lose, he’d have turned back and confronted them. But if he slipped up, if they brought him down, then Lucius was as good as dead.

He rolled over the lip of the gash and crawled the first couple of dozen yards inside, until there was room to stand. The passageway sloped downward, and as he descended, it took on the semblance of a fossilized gullet. Deeper still, and skulls atop metal spikes lined the way. They were dwarf skulls, all still with their beards, and yet caked with the dust of ages.
 

Tinkling laughter commenced once more behind him. The Black Cloaks must have entered the forest.

He felt like they were all being herded—Lucius, him, the Krypteia. Funneled toward some innominate horror.

But maybe that’s what he was supposed to feel. The homunculi were creatures of deception, it was said, begotten from the very stuff of the Demiurgos. Maybe they were just protecting their realm the only way they knew how. Perhaps the dwarf skulls were an illusory warning, not necessarily real.

But then a thought occurred to him: What if they were the remains of the Founders, those who’d pursued golems into the bowels of Gehenna and never returned? Those who had lost the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. Assuming, of course, Lucius had got it right, and wasn’t himself a victim of deception.

The gradient grew steeper, and the skulls on spikes petered out, until he was left in a tunnel of absolute blackness. He inched down on his backside, axe clattering against the floor as he went. Once or twice, his fingers connected with something soft and squelchy. His heart pounded as he snatched his hand away. The skin burned, and he wiped his fingers off on his britches.