It did not come free when he tried to pull it back. He attempted to step forward, the better to brace himself, and found that Sedrik was still clamped onto his ankle. Enraged beyond all thought, he released his axe, letting the dying soldier fall to the ground with the weapon still in him, then flung aside the broken hilt of Galt’s sword, reached down with both hands, and yanked Sedrik free.
The man’s mouth opened and blood spilled out. “Monster,” he tried to say; the word emerged as a croaking gurgle. He struggled to lift and swing his axe.
Garth saw that the man was obviously dying, too weak to be anything but a minor annoyance; infuriated, he flung Sedrik away in the general direction of the surviving soldiers.
At that instant the door burst open and light poured in from the remaining torches, allowing Garth to see clearly what next took place.
Sedrik’s body slammed against the central column, his arm flopping and the blade of the axe bit into the yellowed substance of the thing, the cut penetrating the tubule whence the black fluid oozed. Three great drops spattered forth across the steel head of the weapon, and the beating stopped.
For a moment nothing more happened; the combatants, human and overman, in the inner chamber or the long hall, all froze in astonishment.
“Gods,” someone said.
A low rumble sounded, far different from the earlier sound, and the beating returned—but not as the tortuously slow thing it had been before. The new sound was higher in pitch, but still bone-shakingly deep; it was much louder, and faster as well, a single beat now taking no more than a few seconds.
One of the soldiers in the outer room turned and ran; Garth heard others moving uncertainly.
A new sound added itself to the racket, a loud rumble; Garth felt the floor vibrate beneath him. Somewhere, something broke with a sharp cracking. The wounded maceman Garth had disarmed screamed and ran, and others followed him.
More rumblings sounded, and the throbbing grew still louder and faster, as if whatever creature possessed the mighty heartbeat were awakening from sleep. The floor shifted, then seemed to drop a few inches beneath Garth’s feet; he saw that the column was sinking downward out of sight.
Then it paused, with only the uppermost foot still showing, and the rumblings subsided for a moment; the heartbeat continued unabated. Garth had a sensation of knowing that something was about to occur without knowing what it would be.
The remaining soldiers who were still capable of fleeing did so during this brief interval, but Garth resolved to stay where he was. He had come to this place seeking a magical device of great power, and it was possible that the shaking of the earth and the mighty rumblings and beating were somehow connected with it.
At his feet lay three corpses; just ahead lay Sedrik, still twitching slightly, his eyes open and staring at the overman. The various movements of the room had left him lying on the floor, free of the strange column, his axe still clutched in his hand.
Then the rumbling began again. With an immense crashing, the column thrust upward, splitting the floor of the chamber into scattered shards and sending Garth back against the wall. The wall itself turned and gave, and he fell back into dark emptiness; all around him, he could hear the grinding of stone on stone and the sound of breaking rock. Hot, fetid air rushed past him. He had a final glimpse as he fell of a vast monstrosity rising up before him, its hideous visage twenty feet across. Flat, golden eyes gleamed from sunken black sockets on either side of a great curving nose-horn, its tip broken and oozing dark fluid. Garth recognized that horn; its upper end had been the mysterious column. Here, then, was the beast whose heartbeat he had followed, awakened and unleashed.
A piece of rubble smashed against the back of his head, and he saw nothing more.
Chapter Fifteen
Garth awoke with sunlight warm on his face, and with no idea of where he was. He lay sprawled across a small heap of rubble, a sharp stone digging into the back of one thigh, his head hanging down off the edge of something, his whole body tipped at an uncomfortable angle.
He lifted his head with effort, closing his eyes against the glare of light, and shifted his leg off the point that gouged it. With a little struggling, he managed to get himself sitting upright, then opened his eyes and looked about.
He was perched on a slab of broken pavement—or perhaps a broken wall—that lay atop a mound of debris, three or four feet high. This pile was one of many, in varying sizes, scattered across a broad stone floor. Most of the wreckage was also stone, but Garth saw metal scraps, shards of tile, bits of wood, fragments of furniture, the remains of various tapestries, drapes, carpets, and hangings, and at least one human body, that of one of the soldiers he had fought, half-buried in a pile near his own. He and the heaps of rubble were all scattered about an immense chamber, but most of the walls were lost in shadow, and he could not guess what the chamber might be, or where. Only one section of the far wall was in full sunlight, a small area centered on an arched doorway. A yellow symbol gleamed brightly on the black door; it seemed familiar, but Garth did not recognize it.
The uneven light and drifting dust made it difficult to judge the size of the place, but Garth estimated that it was a good fifty feet to the far wall.
He turned around to see what lay behind him and discovered that he was only a few feet from the wall. He saw no door, no windows, and wondered where the sunlight was coming from. He looked up.
The room extended upward incredibly far, easily a hundred feet; graceful columns soared out from the walls into elaborate vaulting, the details lost in distance and shadow. Much of that vaulting was in disarray; a large section of the roof was missing and, Garth realized, a large part of the wall directly behind him was gone as well. He had not noticed it sooner because the wall was intact to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, but from that point up, most of it was gone.
That explained where most of the rubble had come from.
The sunlight was spilling in through the break, and the steep angle indicated the middle part of the day—though Garth could not be certain which day it was. Dust was drifting everywhere, sparkling and blurring in the beams of light; surely, Garth told himself, it would have settled if more than one day, or at most two, had passed since the wall was shattered.
The overman considered his situation. He had no clear idea where he was; he could not even be certain he was still in Ur-Dormulk, but the presence of the dead soldier implied that Garth was still wherever he had fallen when the immense horned monster had burst up from beneath. It seemed reasonable to assume that the break in the wall and roof had been made by the creature. Of the beast itself, however, there was no trace, save a faint, lingering, unpleasant odor; the sound of its heartbeat was gone. The silence, in fact, was nearly total; Garth felt as if he could hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat, and perhaps even the faint hiss of the dust sifting down onto the stones. The air, too, was almost still; no wind could be heard blowing around the broken columns overhead.
That did not necessarily mean that he was safe from the monster; it might be lurking just beyond the walls.
Almost anything might be out there, Garth thought. He had no way of knowing that there had been only one monster. Even leaving monsters aside, he could reasonably assume that any humans he might find would be hostile. After all, he had been attacked for no reason he knew of, and now any survivors might consider him responsible for awakening the creature—though Garth was sure it had been the blow of the human’s axe on the thing’s horn that had done that.
He could not in good faith deny all responsibility. He had been investigating where he was not welcome, and perhaps he had interfered in things best left alone. He had not, he had to admit, known what he was doing. He had apparently been the indirect cause of more destruction; it seemed that ever since he had first touched the Sword of Bheleu, he brought destruction wherever he went.
That was not of immediate conc
ern, however. He had no desire to sit where he was all day. The sun was reassuringly warm. He was stiff and sore, with several minor wounds, but he was well rested and thirsty. It was time to be up and about.
Garth stretched, hoping that the movement would not reopen any of the cuts he had received in the fighting and his fall, and climbed down off the slab.
He looked himself over carefully; he still wore his mail, which was dented and twisted here and there, with several broken links. The black metal was stained brown in several places, but Garth did not think any of the blood was his own.
His breeches, too, were bloodied but intact, though no one would ever again take them for new. One leg had come untucked from his boot top; he stuffed it back in.
The boots themselves seemed sound, but something had gashed one of them across the instep; Garth doubted it was still watertight.
His sword, axe, and helmet were gone, but his belt was still in place and his dagger still in its sheath; he was not completely unarmed. He recalled that the sword—Galt’s sword—had been broken. That was unfortunate.
Nothing remained of his surcoat but tatters; he removed them. His cloak was missing.
He glanced around, seeing nothing but broken stone, scattered debris, drifting dust, and sunlight. There was no sign of life, nothing that could be considered threatening. He decided to take a complete inventory. Slowly, he removed his coat of mail.
The gambeson beneath was filthy, soaked through with sweat and blood, and pierced in several places, though Garth could not remember feeling anything stab through it. He untied it and began to peel it off.
Blood had clotted inside it, and yanked painfully at his fur and flesh as he tore the garment away, but at last he managed to get it off.
He looked himself over, tugging here and there at matted patches of his sparse black fur. He found half a dozen scratches, none of which he could remember receiving. All were healing adequately, though he had reopened at least one when he removed the gambeson. Bruises were more numerous; one arm in particular ached.
He had nothing to clean his wounds with, save his own saliva; he moistened one of the scraps from his surcoat in his mouth and then dabbed at the cuts with it. He had kept medicinal salves in a pouch on his belt, but that was missing; he was not sure what had happened to it. Only his dagger remained on his belt; the pouch and his purse were gone. A wild slash might have cut the pursestrings and the strap that held the pouch, he thought; he had been fortunate that such a blow had not done far worse, if that was what had occurred.
Though the sun had seemed almost hot on his face when he first awoke, he found himself growing chilly with only his fur protecting his chest and back; reluctantly, he donned the stiff, stained gambeson again and pulled the battered mail back on.
That done, he considered his next step.
He had several things he wanted to do. He wanted to find the Book of Silence, do whatever he could to damage the cult of Aghad, and see what had become of the monster, whether it had gone on a rampage or just settled down quietly somewhere. He felt responsible for it and hoped that it had not done too much damage. He had caused more than enough death and destruction already, without the aid of any monsters. He might also want to investigate the attack on him, to find out whether the overlord had sent those soldiers. If he had, retaliation might be called for. Garth had come to Ur-Dormulk on a peaceful errand—relatively peaceful, at any rate, vengeful though it was—and the trouble had begun only when he was attacked without warning or cause.
If the monster was on a rampage, he might want to do something about that, too—but he was not about to try to defeat anything that large without a great deal of help, preferably magical.
All of that could wait, however, because his first priority, as always, was survival. He did not know where he was; he was stranded here without food or water or decent weapons.
Water seemed like the most important concern. He had the dagger and no visible foes, so weapons were not urgent, and if he grew sufficiently desperate for food, there was the corpse of the soldier. He hoped that it would not come to that. He had never eaten human flesh, nor wanted to; no overman had, so far as he knew, despite what some of the nastier human legends suggested. The idea of eating what had once been a fellow sentient being was slightly revolting. Still, if it came to a choice of that or starvation, he did not intend to starve.
Water, then, was what he had to find.
If he was still where he thought he was, in Ur-Dormulk, then water should be available one way or another. He had not forgotten that lake.
He saw no sign of water in the vast chamber about him, however. He would have to find a way out.
He looked up at the broken wall and the missing section of roof. He could, if he had to, leap high enough to pull himself up to the bottom of the opening—but he was not at all sure that he wanted to. He could not be certain that he would be able to go much farther from there. Furthermore, if there were enemies or monsters anywhere about, they would, he thought, probably be in that direction.
The door on the far side of the room looked more promising. He had no idea where it led, but at the very least it promised a more complete shelter than the great, broken chamber. It was a sign of civilization, and civilization could not exist without water.
It occurred to him that he was far below the level of the city streets—assuming that he had awoken where he had fallen. He had been deep in the crypts beneath and behind the temple and had, he was sure, fallen still farther. This door, then, whatever it was, was also part of the crypts rather than part of the city.
He wondered whether he was below the level of the lake; he had descended a goodly distance, but the lake itself had been sunk down far beneath the city. If he was below the water line, then it would be wiser to turn and head upward; the monster might have damaged the walls enough for water to find its way through the ruins at any time, and he might be trapped and drowned.
Even as he thought of this possibility Garth dismissed it, without knowing exactly why. He intended to investigate the door. He felt himself drawn to it by something more than simple curiosity.
Besides, he told himself, if the chamber did flood, he would be able to swim out through the break in the wall, and at least he would not die of thirst.
He began picking his way cautiously across the pavement, dodging the scattered heaps of rubble and watching for any place that looked as if it might crack beneath his weight; the thought that the monster might have damaged the structure of the crypt made him suddenly very suspicious of its stability. He looked up at the vaulting overhead, and around at the walls, trying to learn as much as he could about this place where he found himself.
The hall was square, or nearly so, and about sixty feet on a side, he judged. The walls began curving inward about a hundred feet up, and the peak of the central vault was another twenty or thirty feet above that. The broken side appeared to have been smashed outward all at once—undoubtedly by the horned monster. Garth regretted that; it was one more act of destruction that could be laid to his account.
The architecture was rather odd, in that there was no ornamentation above eye level save the vaulting—if that could be considered ornamentation; it was not needlessly elaborate. There were no galleries, no sign that there had ever been hangings or any other display. The room was bare and coldly functional, which seemed very peculiar in so vast a space. A chamber this size was surely built to be ostentatious, Garth thought, yet it showed no sign of ostentation beyond its size.
As he passed the center of the chamber he noticed that the floor seemed slightly warmer there, and the air fouler, with a vague fetidness about it. That was, he guessed, because the leviathan had stood in this spot while it slept, presumably throughout the city’s recorded history.
With that, it seemed plain that this immense hall had existed solely to house the creature; it had been the cage wherein the crea
ture was pent. That would explain its dimensions and architecture; nothing else Garth could think of would do so as well.
Realizing this, Garth grew slightly uneasy. What if, after so long a residence here, the monster considered this its home? How would it deal with any piddling little pest, such as an overman, that it found here upon its return? Most likely, Garth thought, it would stamp him flat, if it had feet in proportion to its head. He felt instinctively for his weapons.
Sword and axe were gone, as he already knew; he had only the dagger on his belt.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. The monster would barely notice his best blow with either axe or broadsword. Human enemies he could handle with the dagger or whatever weapons he might find, if there were not too many of them at any one time, and the monster he couldn’t handle at all with any ordinary weapon. He glanced back at the breached wall, wondering what the creature had done to Ur-Dormulk and what had become of the city’s people.
Whatever had happened, there was nothing he could do about it. He stepped forward and studied the door he had come to investigate.
It was not large; he would have to duck to pass through it. It was made of some dull black substance, not ebony, though it appeared to be wood. The yellow symbol, only a single character, was etched upon it in bright metal—not pure gold, Garth was sure, as the hue was more vivid than gold. It was no metal he recognized, and the symbol was also strange—yet somehow familiar. He had an uneasy feeling that he had seen it before and that it had not boded well. He realized he was staring at it and turned his gaze away.
His hand was on the latch, though he did not remember putting it there. It was a very curious latch, made of a metal that gleamed like silver, yet had no trace of tarnish, though surely it had been centuries since any mortal hand had touched it. There was no simple lever to lift, no bolt to draw, but a handle that Garth gripped and squeezed, without having consciously figured out the mechanism.
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