Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) (26 page)

He became aware of a distant keening, muffled by the rock of the tunnel. Its echoes ghosted up the incline behind him, like a voice carried away on the wind. He stopped and pressed his ear to the floor. It was warm, and the eerie wailing grew louder. Despite the heat of the stone, insects of ice scuttled along his spine.

He quickly pressed on. If he lingered too long, he felt certain he’d be lulled into despair by those howling cries.

The tunnel twisted and turned, but always led down. Scuffles and the occasional rasp of breath told him the Black Cloaks weren’t far behind. Fearing being caught in an enclosed space, where he wouldn’t be able to swing his axe, he scooted along the slope of the passage faster and faster. Flickers of red light taunted him from up front, bringing with them a waft of hot air that prickled the skin of his face. When the tunnel ended and pitched him onto a precipice above a chasm, the heat was scorching, and he could swear his beard was starting to smolder.

He’d emerged into a cathedral cavern with a fanged ceiling of glistening stalactites. The ground fell away in a sheer drop—a deep gorge that divided the cavern in two. It was too wide to jump, that was for certain, but a narrow rope bridge spanned the gap. It swayed gently in the wafts of sulfurous smoke that billowed up from below.

There was no time to look for an alternative route. The sound of his pursuers scrabbling down the tunnel in his wake were growing nearer. He only hoped Lucius had come the same way. There’d been no sign of another, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a thousand concealed passages and paths down here. In the stories, the realm of the homunculi was an endless space of warrens with shifting walls, false trails, and a myriad misdirections. If the tales had any truth to them, Carnifex had to assume the route he was taking—the only way open to him—was the one the homunculi wished him to take.

Tentatively, he set foot on the rope bridge. As his boot touched the first board, he wobbled, and grabbed the rope railing to steady himself. With his axe in his other hand, it made for hard going, but by shifting his balance with each step, and waiting for the bridge to stabilize, he was able to slowly negotiate his way out across the chasm.

Smoke plumed about him, caused him to cough and splutter. He risked a look down and wished he hadn’t. Dark sludge oozed along the base of the canyon a hundred feet below. Scaly shapes undulated through it, indistinct through the smoke, but there was no doubting they were immense—great roiling leviathans. It crossed his mind such a creature might once have left Gehenna and formed the basis of the
Sanguis Terrae
Monster myth.

With infinite care, he took one precarious step after another toward the far side. The hand steadying him on the rope chafed from where he gripped so tight. Behind him, cries went up. He’d been seen. Air whistled past his ear. He flinched, and silver flashed in his peripheral vision—a crossbow bolt. A near miss.

Abandoning caution, he let go the rope and ran. The bridge swayed and swung wildly as he bounded over three boards at a time. When it threatened to sling him into the chasm below, he dived the rest of the way, hit rock, rolled, and came up standing.

He raised his axe to cut through one of the ropes holding the bridge, but a quarrel pinged from its blades. A second clipped his chainmail and skittered away across the cavern floor. Two more sent up chips of rock from where they narrowly missed his feet.

He turned and ran. Ten paces, and no more crossbow fire. Twenty, and it went quiet behind, save for the groaning of the rope bridge. It must have been swaying again as the Black Cloaks made the crossing. No doubt, they were too preoccupied to keep firing.

The cavern floor went on for a couple of hundred yards before it ended in another wall of scarolite. He kicked it in frustration, almost hit it with his axe, but then he glimpsed something to his left. A little way along the wall was a wooden door, utterly plain, save for a brass knob. It opened with a creak, and cold air blew over him.

Carnifex cast a look back toward the bridge. In the bank of smoke coming up from the sludge in the canyon, shadowy forms moved with jerky, lurching motions. The Black Cloaks had made it to half way.

He slipped through the door, pulling it shut behind him. As he crossed the threshold, his stomach lurched, and wooziness filled his skull. For a moment, he was bright-blinded by a white glare. He turned away from it, and as he blinked his eyes into focus, he saw that the door had a sturdy metal bolt on the inside. He snapped it into place. It might not hold the Black Cloaks, but it would delay them.

He turned back and let his eyes adjust to the blinding light, much of it reflected from the frost-rimed walls of natural cavern. Blazing spheres of silver orbited just below the ceiling at dizzying speeds. Though their radiance was excoriating, it gave off no heat. If anything, the cavern was freezing, and Carnifex regretted leaving his cloak behind.

His eyes were drawn to the white-carpeted ground. There were footprints leading away from where he now stood.

Ice crunched beneath his boots as he followed the trail, and he began to shiver. A sibilant hissing came from somewhere up front, then a multitude of thrashing, snapping sounds. The deeper he went into the cavern, the louder the susurration grew, until his teeth began to rattle, and his head felt fit to burst.

The glint of silver caught his eye. One of the footprints had disturbed something beneath the hoarfrost.

He stooped to examine the silver patch, then crouched to sweep away the ice with his hand. The silver extended in a broad band. He uncovered more and saw that it curved. He followed its line, clearing frost as he went, until it became obvious he was revealing a vast circle. He traced its surface with his fingertips, encountered a groove. He peered closer and saw that there were hairline symbols engraved into the metal. One or two he recognized: they were the same letters that had glowed on the golem’s forehead.

Back the way he’d come, a thud sounded, then a succession of rattles. The Black Cloaks had arrived at the door.

Brushing ice from his knees, he stood, glanced back briefly, and then crossed over the silver line into the circle.

His eyes snapped open—when had he closed them?—upon the flickering flames of the hearth back home. Droom stepped between him and the fire, silhouetted by its blaze. He held out a kaffa cup. It was empty.

Durgish Duffin’s painting slammed down between them, and Yyalla stepped from the frame. She looked at him as if he were nothing, not fit to be called her son. There was a haughtiness about her Droom had never mentioned. She looked down on him; thought of him as weak. He was a disappointment to her.

She thrust out a hand. He flinched, thinking she held a spear, but it was a spike like the ones he’d seen as he descended the tunnel. In place of a skull was a fully-fleshed head, the blood dripping from its severed neck steaming in the chill air of the cavern. Like a hammer blow to the sternum, recognition struck him, dropped him to his knees.
 

It was Thumil.

Then the spike became a spine, and a body grew up around it. The head warped and changed until Cordy stood before him. She was robed like a queen, and a coronet sat atop her golden hair. Behind her head, a hellish corona bloomed. It came from a pair of garnets set in the eye sockets of a skull. The flesh of Cordy’s face wept putrescence. The skin was livid, peeling away in layers, and a maggot flopped out of her nostril.

Stakes as tall as trees pushed up from the ground, forming a palisade between him and Cordy. There were bodies impaled upon them, ordure and blood staining their bases. Snow stretched out beyond the forest of the dead as far as the fir-topped hills that marked the horizon.

The vision flipped, and suddenly he stood atop a mesa. Far below, all he could see was mile upon mile of ocher desert. Above, the sky was brilliant blue, and astonishingly held only one sun. He was in the middle of a fierce battle between humans and corpses that just wouldn’t stop coming on, no matter how much they were hacked apart. There were skeletal riders on skeletal steeds, and metal men that discharged explosive bursts of fire. Above a ridge, the sky parted, and a man appeared on a throne; a man with a bloodless face and eyes of flashing blue.

At the foot of the ridge, another man looked on in despair. A wide-brimmed hat, a long coat. A short sword wreathed in aureate brilliance.

“Not good,” Aristodeus’s voice bubbled up from the ground. “Not good at all.”

Then he was before a mountain of scarolite within the ambit of a black moat. The land it stood upon was ashen. Silver spheres orbited its peak. In the distance, terrible storms raged: violent whirlwinds that warped the very air around them. Dark fractures webbed across the sky, and the ground beneath ruptured.

And then there was nothing. Nothing left. It was as if nothing had ever been.

“You can prevent this,” Aristodeus said out of the void. “You are needed. You cannot die.”

A thud startled him. His eyes focused on the frosted floor of the cavern. A second thud had him standing. The subsequent crash told him the Black Cloaks were through the door.

More images danced around his vision: a horde of flesh-eating monsters with no facial features save for ravenous mouths; a black sun in a slate-gray sky; a citadel of obsidian built into the side of a dark mountain.

He wrenched himself away from all that he was seeing. It was an illusion, he told himself. None of it real. And he didn’t have the luxury of imbibing such fantasies. Either he moved and kept on moving, or he and Lucius were going to die.

He took one step across the circle. Then another. His feet scuffed against the ice coating the ground. Shouts came from behind. The Black Cloaks had seen him. Invisible cords snapped, fell away from his mind, and he launched himself across the silver circumference, skidded, fell, and came up running.

The sibilant cacophony resumed, like he was passing beneath a waterfall. The cavern floor banked downward, then continued to drop away in a series of natural steps. At the bottom, the floor leveled out. Gone was the coating of hoarfrost: it was glistening, polished marble as smooth as glass. He slipped when he came barreling onto it and went crashing down on his back. His axe flew from his grip and skimmed off across the cavern. He slid after it, flailing about for purchase. His feet connected with something soft that broke his momentum. Someone yelped. Hands grabbed his arm and brought him to a complete halt.

“Carn!”—It was a breathy hiss, no more than a whisper.

He looked up into his brother’s pudgy face. “Lucius!”

Lucius raised a finger to his lips for silence. He indicated with his eyes where Carnifex should look.

Pillars of granite flanked them to left and right. There were eight of them. Not pillars, he realized, as he raised his eyes: legs. The legs of four golems.
 

THE SEETHERS

Carnifex’s heart bounded around his ribcage. He tried to stand but slipped on the polished marble floor and crashed back down again.

“My axe!”

“Gone,” Lucius said, still whispering. He stooped so he could help Carnifex up. “You get used to it.” He indicated the floor with a tap of his foot. “I landed on my arse at least a dozen times when I arrived.”

Carnifex looked off in the direction the axe had slid away from him, and he gasped and took a step back. He skidded, but Lucius steadied him.

Some kind of trench or pit marked the end of the cavern. There seemed to be nothing containing it; no ceiling, no walls. Just inky blackness above, and writhing from within the pit: thousands upon thousands of thrashing tendrils, swaying like a field of long grass in the wind. Scintillant blue veins pulsed inside them, and they were edged with serrations—delicate hooks that glistened with moisture. There seemed no end to them. They extended away into the hazy distance, an infinite sea of horror.

“The seethers,” Lucius breathed. “See, I can be wrong sometimes. I thought the mention of them in the
Annals
was one of the mythical elements, part of a morality tale.”

Carnifex eyed the golems to either side. Violet symbols shone upon their foreheads: the same letters as before: “Emet”, Aristodeus had said the word was they formed. “Truth.” Their lipless mouths were little more than fissures in the stone of their heads, curled into the slightest hint of a leer. The eyes were just depressions, calderas, with no indication they could actually see.
 

He flicked a look up front, at the seethers. Of his axe there was no sign. It must have slid into the pit. He returned his gaze to the golems, braced himself for an attack, but they didn’t move.

“It makes no sense,” Lucius said. He pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket and waved it about. “According to the
Annals
, the
Pax Nanorum
should be here, in this cavern.”

Carnifex took the parchment from him and straightened out the creases. It was a crude map, with “X” marking the spot close to the center of the cavern.

“Maybe you missed something.” He handed back the map.

“No, I don’t think so,” Lucius said. “Why do you think the golems are here? It’s consistent with the passage describing how the axe was lost. They are guarding it, I’m certain. Ensuring no one retrieves it and uses it against them.”

Carnifex gave the stone giants a wary look. “Then why haven’t they killed us already?”

“I don’t know,” Lucius said. “Do I look omniscient?”

“Omnipresent, maybe,” Carnifex said, slapping his gut.

“Funny,” Lucius said. “Glad I can still be of some amusement.” He looked out across the sea of seethers. “It has to be beyond the pit, maybe even beneath it.”

He may have been right, for all Carnifex cared, but right now, there were more pressing matters.

“Lucius, we need to get out of here.”

“Don’t be absurd. I didn’t come all this way just to—”

“We’re being followed. Black Cloaks.”

Lucius’s mouth gaped in horror. “Black Cloaks? So soon? How did they… I mean, they can’t have known. I slipped away when everyone was busy at the wedding.” Then realization hit him. “Aristodeus! I left clues, so at least someone would know what I’d done.”