WoP - 01 - War of Powers

by Robert E. Vardeman

Moriana and Fost crawled toward each other, reached and clung like babies, shakingwith reaction. Had it not been tor the tunnel, they would have been pulverized more thoroughly than any denizen of the Valley of Crushed Bones.

  The same thought struck both at once. Why was the tunnel here? And why hadn't it closed as well?

  'I shouldn't tarry here, if I were you two.' The terror was gone from Erimenes's voice, and his usual truculence had taken its place. 'This tunnel was made by the ice-worms, if you haven't guessed, and that's why it hasn't been closed off. If the Guardian could shut them, he would have put an end to the worms long since.' The spirit paused. 'The worms are attracted to vibrations, you know. Best move along lest they put an end to you.'

  The pair struggled to their feet. Swords swished into their hands. Fost still wore the long mail vest the bear-folk had given him; he had left behind the helmet and shield, which, while useful, were too burdensome to carry. It seemed pathetically little with which to defend against such beings as his imagination made the worms.

  'Erimenes’ he said softly, hoping the vibrations of his voice wouldn't carry to any questing monsters. 'Can you get your bearings? Can you sense how we should proceed?'

  'Naturally. If you fare along this tunnel, in a few hundred yards you'll come to a cross-tunnel that should bring you to the outskirts of Athalau. Ah, to see my home again!'

  Sounds came through the ice as Fost and Moriana paced along the icy passage. Some were readily identifiable as the sounds of the glacier, settlings and rumblings and deep shifting. Others they couldn't recognize: sounds that had a furtive tone that made the two uneasy. Fost wondered if Erimenes had lied about being able to sense where they were and how to reach the city from there. If he told the truth, it was further evidence that the shade possessed formidable powers. Who knew what he might be able to do as he came even nearer to the city of his birth?

  'Erimenes,' Moriana asked, 'is it wise to burn these torches? Won't they eat our air?'

  'Tut, tut, my dear, fear not. The ice-worm tunnels have thoroughly honeycombed our friend the Guardian; little wonder he's so annoyed. Some of their tunnels reach the surface. The beasts feed on other dwellers in the glacier and sometimes on each other. But at times they venture out at night to feed on the ice.' 'At night?' 'They loathe the I ight. Even the antarctic sun, feeble as it is, suffices to kill them.'

  The tunnel twisted ahead of them. The two tried to go as quietly as they could, but it proved difficult. Footfalls slap-slap-slapped away from them, seeming to grow in volume as they preceded the travelers. When Moriana tried running her feet along the ice without lifting them, the rasping sound was nearly as loud. They just had to run lightly and fast-and pray.

  'Just a few yards more, my children,' Erimenes told them. 'Around this next bend is the crossway I told you about. So I regret to inform you . . .'

  Fost rounded the bend and dug in his heels. The ice failed to give purchase. He slid forward, pinwheeling his arms, and fell onto his rump.

  '. . . there are the worms,' Erimenes finished unnecessarily. Scrambling, Fost got to his feet. Moriana stood beside him, her sword a crimson arc in the torchlight. Twenty feet away the ice-worms waited.

  Like greatly magnified earthworms, but the color of snow, their segmented bodies tapered to blunt ends, and these were tipped with hard-looking black caps, A knot of them filled the passageway, writhing together so that the horrified pair couldn't tell how many they faced. The creatures came in assorted sizes, from one a foot thick to a giant better than four feet through the middle. How long the things might be neither Fost nor Moriana could guess.

  The largest worm moved forward, crowding aside its lesser fellows. Short, stiff cilia in its rear segments gripped the ice while its forepart squeezed toward them, elongating. The travelers drew back, swords warily extended. The monster's anterior segments widened, the bristles bit and it drew its body forward with a gruesome slithering.

  The head rose, blind and questing. The black cap opened like a flower. The shiny surface split into four even wedges like pieces of a pie and opened to reveal a broad, slimy throat. Inside were toothed sphincters that pulsated even as the humans watched.

  They loathe the light went through Fost's brain. He thrust his torch before him like a rapier and lunged. Hissing, the worm drew back.

  'Ha!' the courier shouted. 'These worms are not so much. See how it fears the flame? Into the tunnel, Moriana.' Advancing a step at a time, he drove the giant worm back far enough that the princess could slip by and into the side passage. Behind the great worm others thrashed in rage, slamming their heads against the walls and hissing angrily.

  'There,' said Fost smugly. 'Nothing to it.' The ice-worm lunged. Fost threw himself backward. The vast mouth encircled the torch and the jaws slammed together. The tunnel plunged into absolute darkness.

  Fost fell again, propelling himself backward with his legs. He felt rather than saw the bulk of the worm coming after him.

  'Erimenes, you threacherous blue fart! You said they hated the light, said it could kill them!'

  His eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. From the side passage Moriana's torch cast a feeble glow. It illuminated the head of the worm, striking this way and that in blind agony.

  'Sunlight can kill them,' the spirit's voice floated out. 'They hate light of any sort, but torchlight poses no danger to them. Athalar scientists long theorized that some component found in sunlight but missing from torchlight is what kills them. And, as has just been amply demonstrated, sufficiently keen hunger can overcome their aversion to light weaker than that of the sun.'

  'I don't want a lecture. How do I kill the damned things?' 'That,' said the philosopher primly, 'is rather your problem, is it not?'

  Distracted, Fost missed the creature's quick, purposeful movement. It had recovered from the frenzy of pain the torch had caused it. Nearly too late, Fost snatched back his hand as the head darted forward. Chitinous jaws clacked shut an inch from his fingertips.

  He jabbed with his sword, felt it bite. The head jerked back with a hiss of annoyance. The worm's breath smelled like a mouldering corpse. Fost heard a sound like an axe chopping wood. The head reared back, giving off a thin, whistling scream.

  'I'll help you, Fost,' he heard Moriana call. 'I'm attacking the thing. Great Ultimate, but it's slimy!'

  Her sword struck again. The worm keened and went for Fost. He hacked, his blade bouncing off a mandible. The head pulled back, swaying. Moriana's blows fell with a regular rhythm, but the worm ignored her now, keeping its attention firmly on the courier. He was on his feet again, crouched low, dagger in one hand and his sword in the other. He tried to match the unpredictable movements of the ghastly head, but the thing was quick. Again and again the worm's head snapped forward. Fost met it as best he could with parries. The worm shot forward, lurching over the defense of his dagger. The quartet of jaws gouged his left bicep even as the dagger sank into wormflesh. He thrust his sword deep into the fourth ring-segment. The worm withdrew. His blade slipped free covered with foul yellow slime.

  'Fost! I've done it!' Moriana cried in triumph. 'I've cut the thing in two!'

  'Many thanks, Princess,' he called. Thinking his enemy slain, he started forward.

  The worm's head slammed into his breast. The jaws closed with a crunching sound. Mail rings snapped like spun sugar, and Fost gasped as muscles tore. He cut wildly at the gleaming segments, dropping his dagger to push at the rubbery, slick hide.

  'Gormanka, won't anything kill this thing?' A frantic wrench freed him. He fell back, feeling his blood gush from the wound in his chest.

  'Merely dissecting it will most assuredly not do so,' Erimenes said. 'You must strike the brain to kill it.'

  Not seeming to miss its latter half, the worm hunched forward, stalking Fost. It had the taste of his blood now. It hungered for more.

  'Where is its brain?' Fost shouted. 'In the head, naturally. On top, within the fourth and fifth ring-segments. Can't miss it.' The philosopher in
dulged in a chuckle. 'At least, you'd better not...'

  Fost heard the other worms feasting on the large one's tail. The flesh tore with a blubbering sound that sickened him. He wondered how his own would sound as the black jaws rent it.

  With sudden inspiration he reversed his grip on the sword. The basket made it hard to hold point-downward. He met the worm's sallies with jabs, goading it to fury. It was too quick for him to sink a killing thrust, but he lacerated the flesh around its mouth until the head was smeared with ichor.

  At last, frustrated in its attempts to reach the man-thing with its crushing jaws by rearing, the worm dropped its head low and struck serpentlike along the floor. It was what Fost had been awaiting. As it struck he dived, flinging his legs out behind him and stabbing down. The sword point struck between the fourth and fifth segments and sank deep.

  The worm's death-throes slammed Fost against the roof of the tunnel. He hung on grimly, but the spasms were too violent and tore loose his hold on the sword. Dashed to the floor, he lay there feeling like a giant bruise until the thing was still.

  His hilt protruded from the monster's neck. Its struggles had driven the sword full-length into it so that Fost had to pull with both hands to free the weapon. Then he stood back taking stock of the situation.

  The bulk of the dead worm lay between Fost and its fellows, leaving no room to pass. It also lay between Fost and Moriana. He frowned, absently wiping blood and worm gore from his chest.

  'Well done, Fost,' congratulated Erimenes. 'You didn't seem any too concerned, spirit in a jug. Did the prospect of riding about in a worm's gut not upset you?' Fost asked.

  'Oh, I was confident of Moriana's overcoming the brute, even if you failed.' Erimenes sounded cheerful. 'Besides, I might have been able to make it -' He bit off the sentence abruptly.

  'Make it what?' Fost asked, suspicions blooming within him. 'Make it, uh, well, you see - make it into an enlightening experience?' A rising note made the sentence into a question. Fost shook his head. The spirit was lying, and he didn't like what that implied.

  He opened his mouth. Moriana's cry overrode his question. 'Fost! Hurry! The worms are eating their way through the dead one's tail.'

  Cursing that he had no time to pursue the matter with Erimenes, Fost cast about for a way of reaching the side tunnel. The worm had drawn its forepart up to anchor itself for the fight with Fost, which meant its segments had spread out to fill most of the tunnel. He couldn't get by on the sides and there wasn't sufficient room to squeeze along its top. The grisly sounds of feasting grew nearer.

  'If I may make a suggestion?' Erimenes asked hesitantly. Fost stared at him. 'The ice-worms, like their earth-delving cousins, consist largely of a tube within a tube. This one's alimentary passage, as I'm sure you noted, is more than sufficient to accommodate your girth.'

  'Are you suggesting . . .?' Fost swallowed heavily as he eyed the body of the worm.

  'Do you see any other way?' Moriana called again for him to hurry. He chewed the inside of his cheek. Nausea and horror squirmed to knot in his belly at what Erimines proposed, but he could see no alternative. He sheathed his sword, unslung the satchel and dropped to his knees. Taking a deep breath, he forced open the ice-worm's jaws and crawled in.

  Blackness and stink assailed his senses. The teeth rimming the large sphincters tore at his flesh where it was exposed. He shut his eyes, mouth and nose and began to wiggle forward, glad he didn't have to see where he was going.

  The oozing walls of the intestine closed in around him, caressing him with a touch unsettlingly like that of the tentacled, human-faced guardian of Kleta-atelk's cliff. His mouth filled with sour vomit. He made himself swallow it and moved on.

  Digestive acids stung his flesh. The open cuts on his arms and chest felt as though coals had been dropped into them. His face stung. Ropes of mucus trailed over his lips and nose and tangled in his hair. He felt madness rising within him. I'm trapped in here, he thought irrationally. Trapped forever in the stench and the filth and the clamminess and the darkness, gods, the darkness. ..

  His hand probed ahead of him and found cool air. Then the other, dragging Erimenes's satchel, broke free of the worm's gut. Finally his head emerged, dripping and fetuslike into the glare of Moriana's torch. The princess dropped to her knees with a glad cry, leaned forward to kiss him. She stopped abruptly.

  He shook his head. Droplets of milky digestive fluid flew. He carefully rubbed his eyes clear of it before opening them.

  'Fost, I'm so glad you made it,' said Moriana. He marked how she kept her head held away and smiled. 'If you're so pleased, how about a welcoming kiss?'

  She blanched. He laughed, wiggling from the disgusting cocoon of the worm's belly, and stood.

  'You can owe it to me,' he said. 'They're after us,' Fost said, ear pressed to the wail of the tunnel.

  'I could have told you that,' Erimenes informed him loftily.Fost shook his head. 'I'm none too sure how far to trust you.' 'That again!' Erimenes's voice quavered with outrage. 'I warned you of the worms before, did I not?'

  'For reasons of your own,' Moriana said. 'I wonder if they are ours. You sold me to Synalon readily enough. What do you call that, if not treachery?'

  'Expedience. It's all in the point of view.' As they talked, Fost and Moriana jogged along the sinuous tunnel. The spirit informed them they were drawing steadily to the limits of Athalau. They didn't know how much stock to put in his words.

  'I've helped you both again and again,' Erimenes said. 'I've saved your lives - both of them - on many occasions the last few weeks. Admit it!'

  Moriana exchanged a glance with Fost. 'You have,' she said grudgingly. 'But somehow your solicitousness troubles me more than your earlier eagerness to involve everybody around you in wholesale slaughter.'

  Erimenes sniffed. The fleeing pai r passed another tunnel entryway. Many passages crossed the one they followed. Erimenes had counseled them to ignore these. The tunnel they were in would bring them to where they wished to be.

  'Fost?' Erimenes asked. 'Pipe down, you noisome old bottle of wind.' The courier had had enough of the spirit's weasel-words for now.

  Then he and Moriana rounded a new bend. The worms were waiting. The huge slimy creatures shrank away from the light.

  'How did they get in front of us?' Moriana asked. 'You said this was the straightest route!'

  'So I did, child. But you aren't thinking clearly. These are not at all the same worms you encountered before. It's an entirely new . .. pack? Flock? Dear me, what is the proper collective for ice-worms?'

  'Why didn't you warn us?' demanded Fost, drawing his sword. '1 tried to. 1 was told to pipe down,' the spirit said. 'Ahem. A wiggle of worms? No, no, that's still not right. Incidentally you'd best make short work of these worms. The others are just a few minutes behind.'

  Fost looked uneasily over his shoulder. This group of worms seemed to number more than a half-dozen, though with the worms twining together and swaying in the uncertain light it was hard to tell. None was as large as the patriarch Fost had slain, so perhaps he and Moriana had a chance. But if the other worms came upon them from behind while they were engaged, their quest for eternal life would end here, fruitlessly.

  The worms had recovered from the shock of meeting light and advanced with their strange bulging-squeezing movement. Their cilia glided like skates along the ice. Moriana moved to meet them, scimitar in hand. Fost followed.

  'Hold,' Erimenes said. 'Let me out first. How can I truly enjoy the shedding of blood-even rank, yellow blood-all cooped up in this wretched flower pot? Release me.'

  Fost did. Time sped away, inevitable death hunched nearer with each second and fear and battle lust filled Fost with manic energy that could find release only in combat. Yet he paused to draw Erimenes's jug from his knapsack, unstop the vessel and stuff it back into the bag as the blue vapor swirled forth.

  Erimenes materialized at Fost's elbow as the courier came to stand beside Moriana. Materialize was the word, too,
Fost thought. When he'd first seen the philosopher's shade out on the lonely steppe-road south of Samadum, Erimenes was only a pallid wraith, virtually invisible at times. Now he seemed more substantial, almost solid. Had he not known better, Fost would have believed the man beside him as corporeal as he or Moriana, albeit blue.