Empire of the Worm (16 page)

“What is this place?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, but I think I’m beginning
to figure it out.”

He stared upwards. He’d only
slithered down Alyssa’s hole for perhaps fifty feet or so, so the ceiling could
not be that high, yet it seemed to stretch up forever. The darkness closed in
around him, greedy, cold and endless. Hastily he shoved the wick of his candle
into Alyssa’s flame, and the circumference of their light doubled.

She crouched beside the wall. She
had a small pile of bricks there and had sat her candle down, having already
started to replace the bricks back in the hole.

“In case any Avestines see the
hole,” she said.

He nodded, set his own candle down,
and helped. Shortly no one would know anyone had ever passed this way.

“But will
we
be able to tell where we came out?” he asked. “There must be
other windows.”

“There are. Many. But I will know. I’ve
spent a lot of time down here, wandering these halls, and I’ve had to memorize
a lot of it.”

He stared at her, so pretty, so
mad, with dirt smudging her smooth cheeks, her slender limbs and brief silken
garments.

“You are a marvel,” he said. “Where
is this meeting?”

“This way.” Holding her candle
carefully in one hand, she moved off toward the right, and he followed close at
her heels. She had to walk somewhat slower to suit his pace, but he had taught
himself to walk with his impaired leg so he didn’t slow them too much. The hall
stretched dark and high all around, and he shuddered, breathing in the stale air.
Just what in the world was this place? Was it somehow connected to the realm
beyond the Great Tomb? Was it somehow connected to Algorad? He didn’t think so.
This was the real world, the bones of history.

Nevertheless, at any moment he
expected something horrid to leap out at them. Dark pillars lined the hall, and
they rose up huge and fat, bloated and alien. The walls were curved strangely,
as well, bowed out in the middle. Everything had rounded, sinuous curves. It looked
ancient and somehow inhuman.

Alyssa saw him studying the
architecture. “Fascinating, isn’t it? And this is right under the city! Just
think, this place goes on for miles and miles . . .”

“You’ve been that far?”

“No, but it must. Look at the size
of it! In its day, it was a splendor of the age, have no doubt.”

“In its day . . .” He had vaguely
hoped that all this might have been mined out in secret over the years, like
the Avestine tunnels above. Unless, of course, the Avestine tunnels were not
mined out at all, but instead were connected to this network. And with the
shared windows and walls, that had to be the way it was. And yet there were no
earthen partitions here, no improvements or modifications on the ancient
architecture as had been done above.
That’s
why they didn’t want us coming down here
, he thought.
Then we would see that this place is more than we thought. Bigger.
Older. Much older.

He wished he had more light, a
lantern, a torch, a bonfire, just so that he could see. This place was amazing,
and bizarre, and sitting right under the Avestine Quarter! And, if it truly did
go for miles, it was right under the city. Could it truly be that massive?

He heard voices drifting through
the halls, voices pitched in argument.

“Quiet,” whispered Alyssa.
 
“We’re almost there.” She set her candle down
very deliberately against the inside wall—the one opposite the windows—and
motioned for him to do the same. That done, she led him past grand columns,
then to a particularly grandiose archway. Orange light flooded from it. Here
was where the voices came, from the other side of the archway. Davril could see
why she had made him put down the candle; she didn’t want the lights to betray
their presence.

She edged closer to the archway,
pressing her back against the wall, and he followed her lead. The voices grew
louder.

Davril strained his ears, trying to
listen. No good. The voices were too far away. He got down on his hands and
knees and crawled through the portal, awkwardly with his bad leg. The walls
here were thick, perhaps fifteen feet wide, so the archway formed a short
tunnel deep in shadow.

Davril wormed his way to the other
side, and he could hear the faint scuffle of Alyssa following him. Ahead, the
voices grew louder, more distinct.

“ . . . simply too dangerous,” said
one with a heavy Avestine accent.

“It must be done,” declared another—forceful,
authoritative. “They are enemies of the Worm.” This was met with many
enthusiastic agreements but a fair number of angry rebuttals, as well. There
seemed to be a great number of voices. Too many.

Davril reached the end of the
tunnel and peered out. Immediately, he shrank back. After a few moments, he
edged forward again. He peered into a massive, domed room, a great gathering
hall, perhaps temple. Fifty thousand Avestines—that was Davril’s estimation,
though he could be short a few thousand—occupied the main part of the room. Some
hunched on colorful woven blankets, while others stood, shaking their fists and
exclaiming loudly. All in the mass gathering stared ahead, to where the podium
would have been in a normal church. Here, however, was no simple podium but a
tiered set of daises, stretching up and up so that the Avestines in the
gathering had to stare up to see the top. There on the highest dais stood a
lone figure, tall and dressed in crimson and golden robes. Davril saw him, lit
by the blazing braziers to either side, and shuddered.

“Dear gods,” whispered Alyssa. “I
didn’t get this close before.”

Davril nodded. The man on the high
dais was a thing of nightmare, completely covered in tattoos that resembled
scales, as though he were reptile, not man, and his teeth were filed to sharp
points, every one. His ornate, delicate headpiece flared out from the back of
his tattooed, shaven skull, giving the impression of a cobra’s hood wrought of
gold and jewels. It was his voice that thundered so authoritatively.

“The High Priest,” Davril muttered.
He knew little of the Avestines’ religion, save that they worshipped some gods
of the elder world.

“They must be rounded up and fed to
the Great Serpent,” the High Priest proclaimed. Many shook their fists in
agreement, but not all looked so sure.

“They’re talking about us,” Alyssa
said.

“I gathered that.”

A new figure caught his eye. Below
the High Priest’s level were many forms, each on one of the daises. Many were
priests, Davril supposed, dressed in dark robes; they bore the same scaled
appearance as their leader but lacked his hood and rich garments. Not all on the
daises were priests, though; the one that stood now was Jeselri, the Patriarch
of the Avestine Quarter. Davril supposed that the higher in rank one was, the
closer he sat to the High Priest’s dais. Jeselri’s chair stood on the
penultimate level.

“Madness!” Jeselri said, eyes blazing.
“They are our guests—guests in our own halls! Killing them would be blasphemy.”
Many in the gathering thundered their agreement. “Besides,” the Patriarch
continued, when the roaring had died away, “Lord Husan has promised to release
us from the Quarter, to make us equal members of Sedremere if we aid him.”

“Bah!” said the High Priest. “Now
that Great Sythang has heard the call of the Worm, we need to ally ourselves
with the Lerumites. With Uulos. Long ago Sythang served the Worm, and it is to
Him that we owe our allegiance, not the Husans.” More Avestines called out
their agreement or contempt. Some were openly fighting each other. “Calm
yourselves!” the High Priest roared, and the combatants ceased their grappling.
“Waste your hate not on each other, my children, but on the enemies of Uulos. The
Old One is our Master’s master. We shall slay His enemies and deliver the
survivors to the Lerumites. Thus will we prove our loyalty and renew the
ancient bond between the Serpent and the Worm.” More fists pumped the air.

Jeselri was shaking his head. “Nonsense!”
he cried. Many of the priests around him cast him angry glances, and Davril did
not have to be told that in this highly religious society—for it could be
nothing else with the High Priest on the highest dais—speaking against the priesthood
was dangerous. “If we bring the rebels to the Lerumites, they will only see us
as servants, just as they consider Sythang a lackey of their lord. We’re mere
scum to them. If we act like their dogs, they will treat us as such!”

Angry mutterings of agreement
greeted this, but also many shaking of heads. Davril and Alyssa glanced at each
other nervously.

“Fool!” the High Priest was saying.
“The Husans are our foes, not our friends.”

“They can raise us up!” Jeselri
insisted. “The Lerumites can only cast us down.”

“Bah! You are a fool and a craven,
and I am glad that it is my decision to make, not yours.” Raising his hooded
head, the High Priest said, “The rebels shall be put down!” Many cheered, but
there still seemed to be a good number that were dissatisfied. “We will use
their blood to pay our way into Uulos’s favor, and then we shall rule Qazradan
side by side with the Lerumites.”

Jeselri glared at the High Priest,
and the High Priest glared at him, and a long moment passed. At last, perhaps
knowing he was defeated, Jeselri slumped back into his cushioned chair. The
High Priest smiled victoriously, sharp teeth gleaming.

Davril looked at Alyssa. “I think
it’s time to go.”

But just as they crawled back into
the hallway they had entered by, three Avestines stepped out of the shadows and
surrounded them. One drew his blade and placed it at Davril’s neck.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he
said.

They were priests, Davril saw, clad in dark robes, cowls
pulled low over their tattooed faces. It was dark in the hallway, and the
candles were behind the priests so that Davril could only see their
silhouettes. Three of them, robed and faceless in the dark, naked steel
outstretched like the fangs of serpents.

“Harm me and you’ll regret it,”
Davril warned. “I am Davril Husan.”

“The Emperor!” gasped one.

“Yes, I think it’s him,” said
another. “That face—”

The tallest one made a hissing
sound, silencing the others. “He is emperor no longer, and whoever he is
trespasses in sacred halls. The sentence for such is death.” He pressed his
blade against Davril’s throat, and a thin line of blood trickled down from
Davril’s neck over his chest, getting tangled in the sparse hairs there.

“Don’t!” Alyssa said.

“Silence!” said the priest.

Davril tensed, waiting. One hand
hovered near his waist, ready to snatch his dagger should the priest make a
move to slay him.

“An emperor should make a fine sacrifice
to the Great Serpent,” the head priest said.

“And what of her?” said one of the
others, stepping forward and running his hands through Alyssa’s hair.

She flinched away, but he only
gripped her hair by the roots and jerked her toward him, laughing.

“Get your hands off her!” Davril
said. “She too is of royal blood.”

“She is no Husan. I say we have a
little sport with her.”

“Yes,” said the second one. “The
Great Serpent won’t begrudge us a little fun, and our juices will purify her
pollution.”

“I have no pollution,” Alyssa spat.

The first one jerked her hair, and
she gave a sharp cry. Her eyes stared pleadingly into Davril’s.

The other two priests turned to
their leader, who stroked his chin and nodded, his eyes glinting. “Yes, I
rather think she could use some purifying. But
I
go first.”

Davril had had enough. The head
priest’s blade was still at his throat, but there was nothing to his back, and
he still had his dagger tucked in the waistband under his loosely-fitting
tunic. Without pausing to think, he wrenched it free with his right hand,
slashed it across his left palm, let it feed on his blood for just a moment,
long enough for him to feel it pulse with power—all this behind his back so that
the priests could not see—and slashed it forward.

He struck the head priest’s blade,
and such was the dagger’s power that the blade
exploded
. Davril tried not to let his shock slow him. In any event,
the priest screamed and recoiled.

The other two priests stared dumbly
as Davril climbed to his feet. Then, as one, they lunged at him, curved swords
flashing.

The blades leapt at his face. He
stumbled back, and back some more, clumsy on his bad leg. Even as edged around
a great column, he parried the thrusts with his dagger, feeling the contact
again and again as his dagger met the flashing steel. Several times he thought
the impacts would wrench the weapon from his fingers, but it was his only hope,
slender as it was, and he kept a firm grip.

At last one blade came down too hard
and met his pulsing, blood-fed weapon, and shattered into a hundred shards. The
priest cried out and covered his eyes as the shrapnel sprayed him.

The second priest hesitated, and Davril
lunged forward, knocked his blade out of the way and ran his dagger up through
the man’s belly, thrusting it under the ribs, feeling his hand encased in soft
warm flesh, feeling his knuckles scrape against the inside of the man’s
ribcage. The dagger screamed in Davril’s mind, rejoicing at the blood. Davril
jerked it loose, feeling the suck of the flesh that pulled at him, and the
priest fell away, flailing weakly, blood spurting from the hole in his chest.

The first priest turned to run, but
Alyssa tackled his feet, tripping him up so that he sprawled across the ground.
In seconds Davril had stabbed him through the heart.

“Thanks,” Davril panted, and Alyssa
nodded tiredly and released the dead man’s still-twitching legs.