by D. P. Prior
Judging by the terrain he’d seen in the mirror, his test run had been more than a little successful. He wasn’t back atop the Homestead, that was for certain, but the desert told him he might be in the vicinity. Probably Barraiya lands. The mesa should be visible from miles away in every direction, so if he just nipped out and got his bearings, he’d be able to try moving the plane ship again. Either that, or he might run into a group of itinerant Dreamers and get them to guide him back to civilization in return for something nice and shiny.
Shadrak would likely kill him for this, but the little runt was no doubt miles away. Probably the best thing now, Albert thought as he entered the code and waited for the door to open, was to make his way back to Sarum and—
Well, bugger me senseless!
Two suns glared down at him from gray-blue skies. Ochre terrain spread as far as the eye could see, and here and there, outcrops of what looked like limestone stood as high as a man. There were craters dotted all over the place, reminding him of that perforated cheese he’d tasted in one of the provinces of Gallia.
He stepped out onto the desert sand and scanned the horizon. The plane ship had jumped quite a way, by the looks of it. Quite a way, indeed. Way off in the distance, he could just about make out the hazy peaks of a mountain range. Which distance, it was a little hard to say, what with there being two—
Oh, scu-scu-scu-crap.
Blinking did nothing to change the terrible truth. They were still there: twin orbs suspended in the heavens like duo Swords of Damocles. Not that they’d need to fall to wreak their havoc; Albert hadn’t felt this crushed since Dana Woodrum had scoffed at the beautiful cupcakes he’d presented her with for her birthday and accused him of making them just so he could get into her knickers (perish the thought; should have made the little trollop a tart instead).
He shivered, shaking his head to stop the thoughts from cementing.
Yuk, yuk, yuk. All those bumpy bits and her slimy, stinky grease-pot. Ugh.
He was imagining, of course, but he was sure he’d hit the nail on the head. How could it be otherwise?
Breathe, Albert, breathe.
He knew he’d nearly lost it, then, nearly shut the door on the outside world and locked himself into another endless spiral of slights and missed opportunities, embarrassment and regret. Fortunately, he’d played the Dana Woodrum scene out ad nauseam, and he had the perfect remedy: the very vivid recollection of her ever-reddening face and swelling lips, her hands clutching uselessly at her throat, and yellow drool dripping down her chin. How could he forget the stench of her shit as her organs collapsed and she slopped to the floor like a drowned invertebrate? “Allergy, allergy!” he’d screeched to her gobsmacked entourage. “How terrible, how terrible!” It had been a performance as sublime as Kenlith Brinsley’s Faerie King. Oh, the gloating satisfaction. He’d observed her forever, haunted all the parties, endured the scathing remarks, but it had been worth it to know that she couldn’t resist Sachertorte with a dollop of cream and chocolate sprinkles.
Albert became aware of his fingers questing through his jacket pockets. He could almost feel the wooden ends of his cheese-cutter and started to run his fingertip along the wire—but it wasn’t there.
Two suns.
He could have a concussion, he supposed. Maybe it was a heat mirage. Maybe someone was playing a trick on him—Shadrak, most likely. Pallid little midget doesn’t want anyone messing with his toy, now, does he?
He stared down at the ground, back up at the suns, the far off mountains. In the opposite direction, light shimmered and sparkled where the horizon became a faint strip of cobalt. Off to the left was—he thought it was another mountain at first—a city? Whatever it was, it was either very near, which he doubted, or very large. White walls—curtain walls, like he’d seen on the castles in Gallia—with tall towers and minarets poking their heads above. Now he knew the ship hadn’t just hopped closer to Sarum; they didn’t have architecture like that anywhere in Sahul. Even the gargantuan towers of the Ancients looked like rubble heaped up by cave dwellers compared to this.
He visored his eyes to squint across the stark landscape in the other direction and noticed plumes of dust swirling in the air. Was that a road? Black dots snaked out beneath the dust cloud, too far off for him to make out, but he’d have sworn on Mumsy’s grave it was a caravan of some sort, and it was heading his way. Beyond the ant-like specks, he could see more mountains, or perhaps hills that weren’t quite so distant, but other than that, he may as well have been on the moon.
He reached out behind and tapped the invisible hull of the plane ship, then crouched down and gathered some pebbles into the shape of a cross to mark the entrance. Brushing the dust from his palms, he straightened up and found his eyes drawn to one of the craters—or was it a blowhole? It was one of those things he knew he shouldn’t do, but there were times his curiosity was irrepressible.
It’ll be the death of you, Mumsy always used to say. Funny that, he thought as he set off for a butcher’s at the hole, because her favorite saying had certainly rung true for her in the end.
Blasted thing was further off than it looked. Wasn’t that always the way? Sweating like the proverbial pig, the fabric of his suit no doubt fading doubly quick in the collective sunshine, he scrabbled up a scree bank and saw that the hole was actually set into a gentle incline, where the ground had blistered into a low mound. Hole probably wasn’t the best way to describe it. Cave mouth might have been better. Gaping maw was even closer to the mark. It was as wide as a house and the height of two grown men. The edges of the entrance glistened with what looked like dew, but when Albert stepped closer to examine it, he saw it was metallic.
Oh my gilded backside! Gold!
—All that glitters is not—
—Not in my experience. He quickly shut that train of thought down. He wouldn’t be who he was today if he gave in to that kind of negativity.
The moment he stepped across the threshold, the stench struck him like a fist in the face. His guts roiled, and he had to clench his arse cheeks to avoid an accident. The smell was a cross between putrefying compost and off-meat. He whipped out his handkerchief and held it over his nose and mouth. Blasted thing still stank of snuff. Washing seemed to have no effect, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. It was the only thing of Papa’s left, so Mumsy had said. He took a couple of wary steps into the cave mouth, marveling at how the specks of gold continued to sparkle even out of the sunlight. When he went in deeper, it was like walking on stars that wound downward into the receding distance. Not a cave, then, Albert mused. A tunnel. And a big one at that. Hardly looked natural, either, the way the width remained uniform, the smoothness of the walls.
He pressed on until the light from outside was lost around a bend. The steady downward gradient became sheerer at that point, and he had to touch the left-hand wall for support. He’d gone no further than a few steps when he trod in something sticky. His foot came free, sock and all, and he had to balance on one leg and bend from the waist to try to retrieve his shoe. It came away from the ground trailing a thick rope of goo. He scraped off what he could against the wall and then dropped it so he could put his foot back down. He was still wiggling his toes and straining to get his heel in fully when a blast of wind rushed past him from the depths. Rotten wind, if such a thing existed, like a belch from a toothless crone with a mouthful of vomit. Not wind, then, he realized.
An exhalation.
The ground shook as something squelched and rustled down the tunnel to the accompaniment of an echoing hiss. The darkness ahead shifted and then got a whole lot darker as the specks of gold winked out, or were smothered.
Albert took a step back, crouching so he could use his finger as a shoehorn. Another wiggle of his toes, and he was backing up the tunnel. More of the gold flecks were swallowed by shadow, and another rush of fetid breath blasted him and sent Papa’s handkerchief into a crazy spiral. He watched it like an enraptured child at a puppet show,
reaching out a lazy hand to catch it. In that instant, a colossal maw ringed with serrated teeth opened right in front of his face. Albert whimpered, broke wind, and stumbled backward at the same time. The handkerchief hit the ground, the monstrosity roared, and Albert squealed his most high-pitched squeal and was running back up the tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him.
When he reached the cave mouth, he glanced back over his shoulder.
Papa’s hanky—
A gargantuan flat head surged into the light, trailed by a purplish, segmented body. A dozen yellow eyes flickered open and locked onto Albert. He stumbled outside, not daring to take his gaze off the thing. Papa would understand. Bye, bye, hanky.
He watched, spellbound, as its sinuous body coiled into the cave and then undulated toward him, head swaying like a cobra’s about to strike.
Albert had one thought: Plane ship! as he turned and ran, hell for leather. He half-slipped, half-rolled down the scree slope, leaping to his feet with the grace of a far more agile man. The monstrous worm roared from just above him, but Albert never stopped to look back. He scanned the ground for sign of the pebble cross he’d left, heart doing a tap dance against his ribcage, and a whole train of despairing thoughts ricocheting around his skull.
There! He spotted the cross and was about to sprint for it when the earth ahead ruptured, and another giant worm started to writhe forth.
Shit!
He turned and ran to the left, figuring he could cut a semicircle behind it, but a third wriggling body burst from the ground to block his way.
Shog!
Albert whirled and ran in the opposite direction, even as the first worm slithered down the scree slope in a cloud of dust and rubble. A fourth head split the earth ten yards in front of him.
Scutting, shogging, shit!
Dozens of the things were surfacing all over the place. Albert just kept moving, jiggling and wobbling this way and that, wincing and berating himself for uttering the word, screeching and whimpering every time a new worm emerged. He was done for, he knew it.
Curiosity will be the—
“Oh, shog off!”
Didn’t I tell you? All that glitters—
“Shove it up your arse!”
He cut a zigzag course between the forest of writhing behemoths, and suddenly he was through and pelting along hard-packed earth toward the dust cloud following the caravan he’d spotted earlier. It didn’t matter that he was fatter than a tub of lard; didn’t matter he was as fit as a ten-day-dead corpse; he kept going and going. Even when the worms were just black lines in the distance. Even when the first wagons and carts were clearly visible, clattering their way along a road—A road! A bloody civilized road!—made from perfectly mortared flagstones.
“Help! Somebody! Help!” he yelled, waving his arms.
“Whoah,” the driver of the lead wagon called out, snapping the reins and pulling the horses up sharp. “What’s your bleedin’ game, mate? Scared my ol’ nag right proper, you did.”
Curses sounded all the way along the caravan; horses nickered and snorted, and dozens of wheels ground to a halt. People jumped down, swigging from waterskins or heading in amongst the rocks, presumably to relieve themselves.
“Scared my bleedin’ horse, I tell you. Ain’t right. Ain’t right at all.”
He was a wiry whelp, ruddy from too much time beneath the suns, clothes caked in ochre dirt and looking a couple of sizes too big. Lean times, Albert thought. Wolf at the top of the hill now scraping around for scraps like a hyena? Either that, or he was wearing borrowed clothes. Stolen, even.
“My most heartfelt apologies, Mr.…”
“Fargin. Buck Fargin. Surprised you don’t know that.”
Albert gave the cretin a bow, the most obsequious he could manage, given the circumstances. “Is this your caravan?”
“Not exactly.”
“You hired it?”
“Not exactly.”
Albert reached for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his eyes and then winced as he remembered what had happened to it. “Head guard?”
“Nope.”
This is like getting blood from a stone. “Then I must beg your pardon, sir,”—you asinine halfwit—“but I am not from around these parts.”
“I’d say.” The man looked Albert up and down, hawked up a great gob of phlegm and spat. “Sorry. I get your shoe?”
Albert gave the offending matter a long stare before meeting the moron’s gaze. He knew there would be no mistaking the look in his eyes, just as well as he knew this man was about as dangerous as a turkey among lions. “Your aim appears to be awry.”
“A what?”
Albert wished he had his cheese-cutter. Now would be the moment to make a show of running his finger along the wire as nonchalantly as could be, while keeping eye contact and giving a sinister little half-smile. Still, intimidation could take many forms.
“I’m getting ahead of myself,” he said, taking a step toward the wagon. The man visibly blanched and leaned away. Albert took another step. “I’m quite certain you almost spitting on my shoe was an accident. Perhaps you are unwell. I have some skill as an apothecary. Would you like me to—”
“What we stopped for, Fargin?” a deep voice rumbled from the back of the wagon. “There’s less’n five hours till closing. You don’t get me to Dougan’s soon, I’ll be shaking like a… like a… Oh, spew in a bucket, what the… Oh, shog it. Shogging forget it.”
Buck rolled his eyes, looking relieved at the interruption. He craned his neck and hollered, “Just stay put. I got it under control.” He gave Albert a conspiratorial nod. “Ain’t that right.”
“Indubitably.”
“What?”
The wagon rocked as someone moved about inside.
“I’m coming down. Only thing you got control of is your pisser, and then only if no one says ‘boo’ to you.”
Buck stood, still clutching the reins. “Don’t you come down, you hear me. Just stay with the merchant’s dice. Right?”
“Uh?”
“I said stay with—”
“What dice?”
Buck gave Albert a despairing look and dropped the reins so he could put his hands on his hips. “The stuff, you stumpy pillock. You know, the goods.”
“Merchandise?” Albert offered.
“That’s what I said.”
A group of men from the other wagons had gathered halfway down the line. Your typical merchant types by the look of them. Heavy robes and gaudy jewellery, dandified hats that were no doubt all the rage in their obviously barbaric excuse for a culture. Mind you, the same could be said of Sahul, or indeed anywhere that wasn’t Gallia. They were putting their heads together and then looking Albert’s way, nodding and gesticulating.
“Never did,” said the voice from the back of the wagon. “You said—”
“You want paying, or what?” Buck said, this time with venom in his voice, although it was more of a wasp’s sting than a scorpion’s. “Coz I can make sure you don’t get no booze never again, right? Gaw, I ask you! Bloody thick twat. Never bleedin’ heard of merchant’s dice!”
Albert feigned a look of utter incomprehension. “Neither have I.”
“You’re joking, ain’t you? Educated bloke like you. Merchant’s dice. You know, it’s a bleedin’—what do you call it?”
“Malapropism?”
Buck’s eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, like a particularly fat caterpillar. “Don’t be a plonker. It’s a, oh piss, it’ll come to me… a… you know. When you buy something and sell it to someone else, you’re taking a risk, like, ain’t you? Like rolling a dice. Get it?”
“Die,” Albert said. “Dice is plural.”
“You trying to be funny? Coz if you are—”
“Not at all. I think I understand your meaning. You are a trader.”
“Sort of,” Buck said.
Ah, my favorite sort. “So what are you trading?”
Buck tapped the side of his no
se with a finger and sat back down. “Mind your own. I ask, you answer. Got it?”
“Indeed.”
“What I wanna know is, what’s a ponced-up gentleman like you doing all the way out here? You from a rival guild?”
“Can’t say a merchant’s life has ever appealed to me.”
“I didn’t say merchant, now, did I?”
Albert narrowed his eyes and discreetly ran them over Buck’s apparel. No recognizable insignia. Plain as a common laborer’s.
“What other kind of guild could you mean? Agriculturalists’? Weavers’? Or perhaps you’re referring to the archaeologists’ guild; after all, there are some fascinating tunnels back the way I’ve just come. Riddled with gold.”
“I reckon you know,” Buck said. “See, I can tell. I call it my sixth sense. Who you with, the Scarfers? The Patterfeet?” He touched a brown-stained finger to his lips. “Nah, I’d say you’re… Wait a minute. Gold? You ain’t been messing around in no boreworm tunnels, have you?”
“If you mean by that, gigantic purple things with multiple eyes and lots of sharp teeth, then—”
Buck snorted and bent double, his mouth agape like an incoherent idiot’s, which wasn’t so far from the truth.
“That’s fool’s gold, you plonker.”
“I know.” (He knew now). “What do you take me for?” Though Albert had to admit, Buck had a point, and Mumsy would have no doubt agreed. Reckless, Squidgy—Don’t call me that!—Reckless to the point of stupidity.
“Oh, that’s ripe, that is,” Buck said. “You hear that, Rugbeard? Geezer here’s run into some boreworms.”