He marveled at the sight of the great stone statues arrayed around the chamber. There were eight in total. Half of them were stone renditions of Deep People, all armored and some wielding great steel weapons.
“What are those creatures?” asked Neenahwi, pointing at the other statues.
“That one there is an umber hulk,” he said, happy that Neenahwi demonstrated such curiosity, as he pointed to an insectoid statue standing on two legs. “That’s a blind spider, they only hunt by vibration and smell. The one with the big clawed forearms, that’s an armavole.” Kyle whistled in admiration as he pointed to the final statue. “And that’s a deep drake.” The deep drake was his favorite; it reminded him of the children stories of dragons. Though, of course, he knew they were quite different.
“I thought drakes had wings. I’ve seen them on Mount Tiston.”
“Oh, they do. The winged ones anyway. Deep drakes have forelimbs instead. They hunt in the passageways that the adult purple worms carve out. There’s a whole world of things that live down here, you know.” Neenahwi nodded and smiled.
The priest walked over to the statue of the deep drake. Kyle and Neenahwi followed, eventually noticing another priest in black robes standing by the large reptilian head of the statue. As he neared, Kyle could see the detail in the work of the statue. Overlapping scales from the nose to the top of its tail. The sharp teeth visible in the open mouth were not stone but a metal of some kind—sharp as any blade. The statue was large, each stubby leg about the same size as Kyle, and he estimated the drake to be thirty feet long from snout to the barbed end of its tail.
“This is Torkel,” said the priest who had escorted them from the library. “I will leave you in her capable hands.”
Torkel stepped forward to shake Kyle’s hand. She had a round face, her hair was braided in many small plaits that she had tied together on the top of her head—they hung down in cascading ropes, like a geyser erupting from her crown. Torkel was thinner than many of the Deep People, taller too, but Kyle was not sure how much of that was hair and how much was dwarf.
“Nice to meet you, Kyle the Chiseler,” she said warmly.
“The pleasure is mine,” said Kyle, bowing his head.
“And this must be Neenahwi,” said Torkel, taking the human’s hand in hers. “I have heard much about you.”
“All of it good I hope,” laughed Neenahwi.
“All of it interesting,” said Torkel smiling. “It is not often we have a human amongst us, and the daughter of the great Jyuth of course!”
Kyle’s attention snapped to Neenahwi. In developing their plan, they had discussed her magical abilities but her parentage had not come up. The great Jyuth. A human who had lived longer than any dwarf, and proven himself to be a friend of the Deep People numerous times. Neenahwi shrugged.
“There is a friend of mine who was quite unhappy not to be chosen to help you,” said Torkel, still talking to Neenahwi. “He is taken with the surface world. That is his juggernaut over there.” She pointed to a great statue of a dwarven warrior across the room, armored, with massive gauntleted hands held together in prayer. “But I was chosen, or should I say, the Forger thought that the drake would be most useful to you.”
“This a juggernaut?” asked Neenahwi, inspecting the statue of a drake.
“Yes. Or it is when I take control. I am the pilot. Right now, it’s just a rather beautiful statue.”
“Thank you for your help, Torkel,” said Kyle.
“Not a problem, Kyle the Chiseler. Now, let us go downstairs so we can eat and you can tell me your plan. And hopefully, Neenahwi, you’ll let me ask you some questions about the world outside Unedar Halt. My friend has given me a list…”
Pavak, as he had been named by his usual handler, was bigger than Vidin. Two years older and half as big again. He made quick work of the rubble that had been packed into the tunnel that Vidin had previously carved out.
After he and Neenahwi had met Torkel, Kyle had gone down to the worm pens to arrange the last thing they needed. Pavak occupied the pen next to the empty one that used to be Vidin’s. Kyle had stopped and stared at that empty pen, remembering the warm welcome that he would always receive, the memories that were now tinged with sadness at his missing friend. He remembered how some mornings he’d seen the two worms attempting to nuzzle together through the bars separating each of the pens, and so it had been Pavak that he had asked to join them.
Pavak was nearly thirty feet long, so there was not much in the way of telling a worm that size what to do; you asked and explained. Kyle knew the worm would listen. Pavak was worried about his friend and wanted to help.
It was not long before the previously carved tunnel was back to its former size and length, only a thin wall separating them from the cavern where the spectre had been lurking. Kyle asked Pavak to move aside so the juggernaut could step forward. The stone drake moved with nary a sound, except for the thud of stone on stone with each step—Torkel remaining in the House of Varcon but able to see through the eyes of the juggernaut. This was where the plan started in earnest.
Kyle looked at Neenahwi, who nodded in return.
“Do it,” said Kyle.
The drake lowered its head and rushed forward, stone-taloned feet gouging rips in the floor as it gained purchase for its dash—Kyle would need to fix that later. The deep drake crashed into the thin wall and it crumbled around it; boulders, fist sized and larger, bounced off its stone skin. For a moment it looked like the juggernaut was buried under the rubble, until it gave itself a shake and the debris scattered all around.
Now would be the time to see if their assumptions from their collective research were correct. Neenahwi had said that magic is attracted to magic, and inside every living thing is a little bit of magic. The spectre was likely to be very old, it’s eyes no longer useful to see. Kyle remembered the tentacles waving in the air, as if searching for its prey. Obviously, it was an effective method as evidenced by the fate of the two cleaner crews, but Neenahwi had hypothesized that it did this by sensing the life force, or magic, in each of the Deep People that had come to his aid. And so, keeping this assumption in mind, there were two major elements of the plan at this stage.
First, the juggernaut, a massive living statue of magic, would be the flame to attract the spectre’s attention.
Secondly, Neenahwi could disguise the life force of herself and Kyle, creating an illusion that would render them invisible to the spectre against the cavern walls.
It was time to see if their plan was going to play out.
Neenahwi grasped Kyle’s hand in hers and he led her, clambering over the piles of rubble, past the deep drake that was standing still in the entranceway to the cavern. The chamber was as he remembered in his dreams—vast, walls streaked with shimmering blue, great stalactites dripping down to the floor. And there, in the middle, was the monstrosity that had killed his friends.
The specter’s worm like mouth was closed, the head’s wedge shape visible, and a writhing mass of tentacles along its body waved in the air. Neenahwi gripped his hand tighter. Or was it the other way around? It looked like the spectre was looking right at him, and he felt his limbs freeze, unable to move. This is insane! It will see us!
“Move,” whispered Neenahwi, “it’s looking at the juggernaut. Not us.”
Kyle’s body unfroze, and he inched along the wall away from the deep drake, leading Neenahwi behind him. Afraid to release his hold on her in case the magic would stop protecting him, they moved away from where it seemed the spectre was looking. Kyle was relieved to see that it did not turn.
Fifty feet or so away from the drake they sprinted across the cavern to the far wall, where the blue streaks were at their widest. Kyle ran his hand across the stone, feeling what lay beneath. He licked the blue with his tongue and felt a shiver of a spark in his body. Granthium. He had been right! Had Kyle been mistaken about the granthium, their plan had been to beat a hasty retreat and seal up the monster for ever more. B
ut now the prize was real, they had to go about claiming it.
“It’s what we came looking for, Neenahwi,” said Kyle. “Time to see if Varcon is with us and get rid of this thing.”
Neenahwi nodded and reached one hand into the satchel she wore across her body. She pulled out three arrows, made completely of steel, fletching replaced by sharp razors. Neenahwi had shown these to Kyle when they had been planning, and though he was not a metal worker, he recognized the work of the Deep People when he saw it. She’d even demonstrated what she could do with them, much to his amazement.
Neenahwi squeezed his hand three times, the signal that their cloak would end, and released his hand. Kyle dashed twenty feet away, drawing a short-sword from his waist. Though he trained one day a week on the drilling fields as all the Deep People do, he never considered himself a warrior, and he was unsure what eighteen inches of steel was going to do to a beast so big. But it was better than having his hands in his pockets.
She threw the arrows up into the air, which then flew away in different directions. Kyle followed one as it arced upward—a silver blur in the dim blue light—did a loop, and descended toward the spectre. He struggled to follow it now as it moved so fast, a shiny buzzing hornet that lifted into the air once more, a tentacle dropping to the floor with a wet thud in its wake. Two more tentacles fell to the floor, victims of the other arrows, squirming a final squirm before they lay still.
The spectre screamed and twisted its head round to see what was attacking it and Kyle found himself staring into its great open maw. His feet became rooted to the spot, but he was at least thankful that the wax pressed into his ears had dulled the spectre’s cries; as he would be on his knees again otherwise. The great body of the spectre rolled and twisted as it turned, and Kyle knew that it’s charge would soon come. Neenahwi’s silver arrows continued to sever flailing appendages, but the spectre appeared to be staring right at him. Could it sense Neenahwi’s magic?
The juggernaut, the statue of the deep drake, had been still since it had broken through the wall. Its magic had drawn the attention of the spectre, neither creature making the first move. But now that the spectre had turned and exposed its soft body, the deep drake launched itself forward with a great kick of its hind legs. The massive jaws of the deep drake opened to reveal the knife-sharp teeth; and before the spectre could charge down Kyle, swallowing him up in to the circular mass of teeth, the juggernaut attacked. The deep drake’s mouth closed on the spectre’s flesh, just behind the hard carapace of its head, gripping it hard and stalling its charge.
The specter screamed again, louder this time—a cornered beast attacked from multiple sides. He could see the stone of the juggernaut’s mouth bulging where the muscle would be in its real-life counterpart as it clamped its jaws down on the soft flesh. The head of the spectre raised into the air and it twisted and rolled, the juggernaut hanging on even when it was lifted into the air and came crashing down on its side. But still the deep drake held.
The spectre twisted. Tentacles reached forward from its mouth and sides to grasp the stone juggernaut, but Neenahwi’s arrows buzzed through the air, slicing them away. More tentacles grew in their place.
The juggernaut’s forelegs raked at the spectre’s flesh with its long stone claws, rending putrid flesh that fell to the floor. The spectre screamed and rolled sideways, its whole body rotating over the top of the deep drake. The juggernaut disappeared under the great mass of the spectre before it emerged on the other side and was flipped over the spectre’s body. The stone statue came crashing down with a great noise, a huge chunk of the spectre’s flesh coming away in its bite.
Kyle could see the vast wound in its side, the doughy white flesh oozing and crawling—like a million maggots lurking below the surface of the skin. Maggots truly or was it the tentacles that continued to sprout anew even as they were cut?
The juggernaut flung away the rotten flesh in its jaws, scrambled back to its feet, and the two titans met head on. Tentacles, ten of them. No fifteen. Too many to count, shot out of the spectre’s mouth and wrapped around the limbs of the juggernaut, pulling it toward the great mouth made perfect for eating stone. The juggernaut tried to brace itself but it was being slowly, inexorably, dragged forward. Kyle nearly called out to Neenahwi but caught himself just in time. Instead he waved frantically in her direction. She could not see what was happening, the great bulk of the spectre blocked her view. She turned and nodded at Kyle’s beckoning arm, joining him where he stood, and now she saw the danger the deep drake was in, only feet from the crushing, grinding, circle of death.
The silver arrows flew to the juggernaut’s aid, tentacles no longer pulling the drake, instead hanging off it like garlands on a festival day. Free now, the juggernaut jumped forward again to bite at the spectre—upper jaw scraping against the hard carapace of the head, blind eyes bursting from the pressure, the lower jaw grasping the spectre on the inside of its mouth. For a moment it seemed like the drake once again had a firm grip but the spectre had been waiting for this moment. A chance for it to test its own bite.
The great worm mouth closed around the lower jaw of the juggernaut like a baby’s lips around a stone teat, the screech of stone being sliced by razor sharp teeth filled the air and then the deep drake toppled to the side. It crashed to the floor, its jaw shorn away. The spectre moved in for the kill as the juggernaut clambered back to its feet. The deep drake swung its head to bash into the side of the spectre like a flail, the force of the blow visible in vibrations down the spectre’s worm-like body. But the size difference was too great, and though the spectre was a corrupted purple worm, its body was still made to withstand crushing weights of stone.
Unfortunately, the drake was not similarly constructed.
Kyle watched on in ever increasing horror as the spectre lifted its head high into the air, before crashing down onto the juggernaut. The hard carapace around the spectre’s head slamming once, then twice against the deep drake, and with a resounding crack, a foreleg of the juggernaut snapped in two.
What had he done? Thought Kyle. He was going to be responsible for the Deep People losing a juggernaut. At least he was surely going to die and not have to deal with the shame.
The juggernaut was down. Its limbs broken, it tried to regain its feet but it was no use. And the spectre knew it. Leaving the lame construct, the spectre’s head turned slowly to face Kyle and Neenahwi. Its mouth was gouged from the deep drake’s bite, and severed tentacles oozed a clear ichor. It roared a greeting to its new prey. The spectre advanced.
Without thinking, Kyle put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
The spectre moved forward, tentacles reaching out, searching for them, ignoring the attacks of Neenahwi’s arrows. And then, from the tunnel back to Unedar Halt, a long purple shape burst forth. Pavak! The purple worm bit at the rear of the spectre, and though it was smaller than the undead beast, it was able to brace itself against the rock of the tunnel. It held the spectre back, away from Kyle and Neenahwi.
The silver arrows had stopped their buzzing. Neenahwi was picking fist size rocks up from the floor. Kyle shook his head—that wasn’t going to do anything. She held the rock in her hand and it began to glow orange, then bright red. Neenahwi threw the rock at the spectre’s head. It exploded on contact, chunks of flesh sent flying. Kyle mouthed a silent prayer to Varcon at this unexpected talent of his companion.
Kyle bent over to pick up more rocks for Neenahwi and began to hand them to her.
“What are we going to do?” he shouted.
Neenahwi shrugged. “Get ready to run.” She looked unsteady on her feet, her exhaustion apparent, and so Kyle moved close to support her.
Suddenly, from the ground near the spectre’s head erupted another purple shape. Smaller than Pavak, its mouth opened wide, it bit into the spectre near its head. The smaller worm’s body scrunched back onto itself as it tried to reverse its course into the hole that it had come from, pulling the spectre down with it.
“Vidin!” cried Kyle. Vidin was alive? “Don’t hurt that one,” Kyle pleaded to Neenahwi, pointing, “that’s my worm!”
She nodded, and threw another red stone at the spectre’s head.
The spectre was pinned down now. Pavak held it in place at the rear and Vidin the front. But how long would these two smaller worms be able to last against something that wouldn’t tire? Could Neenahwi kill it with the exploding rocks?
He wasn’t sure.
Kyle looked around the cavern, looking to see if there were other options to get out of there, to see where they could flee. They were closed off from the tunnel to Unedar Halt, and Kyle couldn’t lead the spectre into the city anyway. They’d have to escape through another passageway and hopefully draw the worm away. Maybe they’d be able to find their way back to Unedar Halt again one day, though he knew that was unlikely.
Slowly scanning the cavern, Kyle’s eyes were drawn upward to the ceiling. To what hung ominously above the spectre.
“Neenahwi!” shouted Kyle. “Stalactite!”
She nodded and switched her target. She threw a red rock toward the base of the stalactite, the flight of the missile incredibly straight and true, surely enabled by magic. The rock exploded where the stalactite began at the cavern ceiling, rubble blasting into the air. And though the stalactite quivered, it did not fall.
Kyle picked up a larger rock, as big as his head and handed it to Neenahwi. “Try this.”
Neenahwi blew out her cheeks and took the rock from Kyle. She did not look good, her face was flushed and speckled with sweat, her eyes tracked slowly.
Neenahwi held the rock between two hands and it slowly changed color as she poured in magical energy; first orange, then a bright hot red. The red turned to a brilliant vivid purple. The rock must contain granthium!
Tales of Kingshold Page 6