by Tom Lloyd
‘Perhaps so. I doubt they can digest them, but a fragment in their belly will constantly feed them power.’
‘Until they eat one too many,’ Lynx finished, ‘and they can’t handle it. Remember Lastani hurt one by unleashing more magic than it could cope with?’
With the battle ended, Toil looked further around the cavern. Huge slopes led upwards, mostly staggered ramps up to high plateaus, some of which continued all the way to the cavern roof. A few of the raised levels seemed to have the walls of buildings visible on top, others were swamped with trailing foliage. It remained dim, but almost every part was lit with the bioluminescent fauna – a vast light garden left to grow rampant over centuries or more.
‘What can we do to fight that?’ she wondered aloud. ‘How do we get close enough?’
The deepgod was perhaps two hundred yards from them, easily in icer range but it would be a long way to make up the ground for anything more effective. While it seemed to have been heading down the length of the cavern, it now bent over its victim – tearing the creature apart as though needing to confirm Atieno’s theory.
In the distance, she could see dark spots amid the patchy glow of foliage which could have been tunnel mouths. Nearer to them was movement however, shapes Toil couldn’t make out. She guessed they were creatures of the deepest black rather than more Charnelers. By its haste, the deepgod seemed well aware of the presence and keen to be done quickly.
‘There are more golantha?’ Lynx said, seeing what she was looking at. ‘Deepest black, they can’t all have consumed God Fragments, can they?’
She shook her head. ‘Maspids. They probably just see golantha as threats. They don’t feed on magic.’
‘They’re rivals still,’ Atieno pointed out. ‘Magic affects them, you said, they can sense it and act intoxicated. This cavern’s alive with power. The maspids might not be thinking straight – just like the tysarn in the Mage Isles.’
‘Yeah,’ Lynx said slowly. ‘The razing, that’s what the locals called it. Great – maspid packs swarming in a frenzy like tysarn? Definitely nothing to worry about.’
Chapter 42
‘Maybe time to start reconsidering on the prayer front, Safir,’ Anatin muttered.
Lynx saw the former nobleman frown. ‘My prayers may not be much help.’
‘I’m just sayin’ – of all of us you’re the one most likely to.’ Anatin grinned. ‘Just this once, the gods might agree that killing this fucker’s in all our interests!’
Beside him, Lynx could feel the tension in Toil, the realisation that they stood little chance in a straight fight. Quite how they evened up the odds appeared to elude her. He could hear the Cards shifting behind him as they grew anxious at their position, but then fate handed them one last boon.
It began as a clatter, a distant fall of stones. Instead of fading, it built and grew, slowly intruding on Lynx’s awareness as he watched the deepgod rip through the entrails of its vanquished foe. All four arms were soon coated in the golantha’s blood, a sickly white colour that showed up in stark contrast against the deepgod’s dark iridescence. Finding what could only be a God Fragment it raised a grisly handful up to its face and seemed to gulp down the contents. As it stooped for more, the sound of falling rocks made the huge monster pause in its work.
The Cards followed the sound off to the left – struggling to make out anything in the dark until movement in front of a huge thicket of red-lit tanglethorn attracted Lynx’s eye. He pointed, hissing, and Toil cursed in the next breath as she saw the tattoo on his hand glow white. Rocks and earth falling yes, but also twisting aside and wrapping around one of the great stairways. In the wake, appeared figures, tiny in the distance but lit up by magery and scraps of daylight behind.
‘Insar’s nightly pinprick,’ she muttered. ‘We’re not done with those bastards yet.’
‘The Sons of the Wind?’ Lynx asked, startled. ‘How?’
She unexpectedly chuckled. ‘Our allies have come to our rescue once again! Just as well they fucked us over a few weeks back, eh?’
‘Huh?’
‘The earth mage,’ Atieno answered. ‘To sense the safest path and open it up requires a powerful mage. Without sneaking one into a ritual to break that final seal of the Labyrinth, they would never have managed this.’
‘At which point their only choice would be to follow us,’ Toil added. ‘Catching us between a rock and an even bigger rock. Come on.’
She stood and pointed down the slope.
‘Enough lazing around, we’ve got an ambush to prepare.’
‘Ambush? How?’ Lynx asked.
Toil paused and gave him an unexpected dazzling smile. ‘With my impeccable sense of direction,’ Toil declared. ‘Aided by that bunch of tasty mage-treats that just announced themselves, we might just have the distraction we need!’
She didn’t leave it open for discussion, immediately setting off, leaving the others to follow. For a while no one did but then Anatin shrugged.
‘Fuck’s sake … fine. Let’s go.’
‘We can always shoot her in the back if it’s stupid, right?’ Deern asked.
‘Hardly needs to be said, does it?’ Anatin agreed. He set off and the rest followed, hurrying to catch her up.
Lynx cast one look over at the Sons of the Wind. They had opened a stretch of the cavern roof on the far side, just short of the mid-point. A long shelf of rock projected out from the uneven cliff-like wall, abutting a huge stepped slope that worked its way down one of the largest pillars supporting the cavern roof.
One side of the pillar was covered in foliage – a dark mass speckled with what Lynx guessed was glowing flowers, yellow, orange and red. It resembled molten metal as it cascaded towards the still reflective surface of water below. The Sons would only be able to head down one side of the pillar, the other seemed entirely impassable without machetes and burners to clear a path.
A blade of weak daylight now shone down from the hole, revealing packed soldiers at the top of the great stairway. How many they were bringing down, Lynx couldn’t see, but he guessed it wouldn’t be long before the Cards were outnumbered a second time.
Avoiding the raised road used by the deepgod, Toil led them down into the dry bed beyond. What foliage was there seemed withered and tired, long trails lying flat across the dusty ground. Clumps of green and yellow populated the cavern wall just a dozen yards away on their right, but once they were past the trails of blue creeper there were only low desiccated clumps. As they walked, Lynx saw insects rise up from the sandy floor, a sign of life he’d rarely found in his other ventures underground.
One insect, the size and shape of his finger with a dark body and green glowing eyes, zipped across his path and hovered over a creeper leaf. Lynx watched in fascination as the beetle darted up and down above the leaf, almost teasing it with its abdomen. Its third or fourth attempt proved too low, however. Instead of buzzing up again it seemed to stick – frantically straining to pull clear as the shuddering leaf began to curl in on itself and wrap the insect up.
Lynx felt a nudge on his arm. ‘Remember,’ Aben said, grinning, ‘fucking everything down here wants to kill you.’
He nodded and turned back to the ground at his feet, careful to avoid even the dead-looking plants. From where they walked, Lynx’s view was severely restricted. Dark clumps of tanglethorn obscured their view of the deepgod and distance limited what he could make out of the Sons. The ground was even and clear for the main part, however. Toil led them away from the path to skirt the right-hand wall as best they could.
Even on this safer route Toil moved cautiously. Any small amount of cover could conceal danger that at best risked giving away their position as they shot it. She was also checking the ground as she went, her gaze forever shifting up and down between their surroundings and where she was about to tread. After a hundred yards she signalled for the company to halt and pointed to a depression off to her left.
Aben stepped forward: as the other experienced
relic hunter, her lieutenant was leading that flank of the company. With his mage-gun he pantomimed prodding at the depression and Toil nodded. He held the gun by the barrel and drew a long knife before jabbing the gun down into the depression. Immediately something whipped up out of the dirt and slammed into each side of the gun stock.
They looked like snakes, dark and slender, but eyeless and working in unison. Lynx didn’t get a good look before Aben slashed at the nearer, chopping it in half. Something underneath the dirt thrashed and tried to pull back, but its fangs had driven into the wood of the gun. Aben had enough time to twist the gun and cut the other away too.
‘The fuck’s that?’ someone behind Lynx croaked.
‘Venomous,’ Toil replied darkly. ‘Kill you before you walk ten paces so don’t wander off.’
Without a word spoken, the Cards all bunched up behind Toil and Aben. Moving into a narrow gully they kept well clear of the uneven walls, spotted with tiny plants that cast a faint white light. In the distance, gunfire started up again and Toil immediately stopped, cocking an ear to the sound.
‘Want me to take a look?’ Kas asked, pointing at the gully walls.
Toil hesitated then nodded. ‘White-light first,’ she ordered. When someone pulled out a mage-sphere, still shining bright, she took it to the easiest path up the wall and held it out. Toil inspected a stretch of uneven rock from top to bottom, checking the shadows for dangers before waving Kas forward. The scout bit her lip then scrambled up as quickly as she could. Safely reaching the top she crouched there and stared out across the cavern.
‘It’s the Sons,’ she reported. ‘Eh? Someone’s shooting at ’em – must be the Charnelers.’
‘Doubt they realise they’re allies,’ Toil said. ‘Given they were the enemy this morning. Poor General Erazil, she comes looking for this beast to make it her god and some bastard Charneler has already got his tongue up its backside.’
‘Sons are shooting at something else too – the ones on the plateau and the stair, they’re firing down.’
‘Looks like we’ve got our distraction. Can you see a clear way around so we can get ahead of the deepgod?’
Kas spent a while inspecting the terrain. ‘You want to avoid all foliage?’
‘If possible.’
‘I …’ She paused and peered forward. ‘There’s something up ahead. Did the Duegar have trees down in these places?’
‘Trees?’ No.’ Toil hissed. ‘Does it look dead and fallen, roots pointing this way?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fuck – a crawler.’
Kas looked down. ‘Want me to kill it?’
‘With your bow?’ Toil sounded sceptical. ‘It’ll take something bigger than an arrow – or an icer for that matter.’
‘O ye of little faith,’ Kas said with a smile. ‘I learned a trick or two in the Mage Isles.’
She reached into her quiver and pulled out a slender wooden case bound with metal. From that she pulled an arrow with a fat head crudely daubed in black paint. ‘Time to test our new toys out, eh, Atieno?’
Lynx gasped as he looked at Atieno. The mastrunners in the Mage Isles had used charged weapon-heads in a variety of different forms including crossbows. Kas had clearly had a number of those arrows adapted for her larger recurved bow and if Atieno had been involved …
‘Dark arrows?’ Lynx asked.
Kas gave him a mischievous smile. ‘Among others. I’m a girl who likes to have options.’
She nocked the arrow and stood as she drew it, settling herself for the shot. Lynx could see her lips move as she aimed, guessing she was reminding herself of the differences the larger head would make. The arrow sped off through the gloom, swallowed by twilight in an instant. There came a muted crack and a brief flurry of sound, legs or something flailing against the ground, before it fell silent.
‘Well, girls and boys,’ Kas reported. ‘Turns out I really am that fucking good.’
‘It’s dead? You sure?’
‘Aye, not much is getting up after that, not with a hole in its middle. Come on, let’s go see.’
Toil led the way, as cautiously as before in case anything had been attracted by the sound or magic. A long open stretch narrowed to a bottleneck and just around the corner of that the Cards found a crumpled body. Ten yards long, more than half of that was comprised of a mass of angular legs stretched out in front. Kas’s shot had struck the rear half and cut it almost entirely in two. If the thing had once had a face or head, there was only dust remaining, but still Lynx felt his skin crawl to be close to it.
A bulbous body leaked blood at the rear of the corpse, stinking entrails hanging loose over the grey dust where once the rest of it had been.
‘Come on,’ Toil ordered as the Cards stood around it. ‘We don’t want to be here once scavengers smell this.’
The gunfire in the background had slowed to stuttered bursts, but it hadn’t stopped. As they reached another open stretch, Lynx got a better view of the pillar where the Sons of the Wind had descended. There didn’t seem to be any more troops coming down. Either they’d taken significant losses or only a trusted cadre had been brought here to witness the deepgod. Whether they were here through simple fanaticism or in thrall to this new god, Lynx couldn’t tell. Toil’s references to the Jang-Her conclave suggested the power of the gods affected followers nearby. It didn’t seem a great stretch to wonder if the deepgod could do something similar.
They made slow, anxious progress through the unreal, dull-lit darkness. Even the few hundred yards Toil took them over seemed to take an age to Lynx; each turn a threat, every clump of foliage potential cover for an ambush. Despite that the deepgod made less headway. Kas reported the troops seemingly at its command, Knights-Charnel and Sons of the Wind alike, were disordered and keeping apart. Whatever control the great golantha had on its new followers, they weren’t totally in thrall to its will. The usual human failings were getting in the way.
The Cards stopped once for a few minutes while Toil and Kas conferred up on an outcrop, their boots at Lynx’s head height. Something had changed and defensive lines had been thrown up, but it took the pair a while to work out what.
‘So there’s good news and bad news,’ Toil explained. ‘Good news is that the deepgod’s stopped, we can get ahead of it now.’
‘And the bad’s why it stopped,’ Kas added. ‘We’ve got more golantha out there, four of the fuckers.’
‘They’re in a staring match right now. It’s not a pack, they all look different so far’s we can tell. They’re keeping well clear of each other for the moment, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to last.’
‘One looks a whole lot like our friend from Shadows Deep,’ Kas said, looking at Anatin as she spoke. ‘Hopefully not the same one, that’d be awkward eh?’
‘Aye – we’ve also got some spidery horror that looks drunk on God Fragments and is leaking sparks, plus something not so different from the crawler Kas killed, just three times the size and mimicking the plant lights around it. The fourth we can’t even see properly. It’s tall, but it’s keeping to the darkest parts.’
‘You got a plan to deal with all o’ that?’ Anatin asked.
Lynx noted the man didn’t suggest fleeing for their lives, which frankly wouldn’t be an insane suggestion at this point. The commander of the Cards wasn’t exactly looking happy at the prospect in front of them and took a swig from a hip flask after speaking, but that was all. You’d have to be drunk and mad to react any other way and the Cards had been sober for weeks now. Mostly.
‘Reckon I do,’ Toil said in a grave voice. ‘It’s not going to be fun though.’
‘We’re way past fun,’ Anatin growled. ‘Just lay it out.’
She turned to point at a pillar further down the cavern. Like the one the Sons of the Wind had used, there was a jutting plateau well above the cavern floor. A stairway led all the way up to the roof. The very top was too dark to see, this pillar being less colonised by foliage, but a lack of lig
ht could conceal maspids as well as bushes might.
‘That’s the goal. Two teams – mine goes to stir up some trouble. See if we can’t kick this stand-off into action. The second goes to occupy that plateau and lay a little surprise.’ She sought Lynx out amid the crowd and he felt his guts turn cold.
‘Which means I’m going to need a hero – one who’s too dumb to say no whatever the risk.’
Chapter 43
Toil divided the Cards into two groups – assigning the larger to herself. With Lynx she sent both mages, one to get them there with the minimum of noise and the other to help enact the plan. With Aben to direct them, the smaller group set off through a jagged series of rock formations and Toil turned to her own task.
‘We get the harder job,’ she said to the rest. ‘Who’s got the best arm here?’
All eyes turned to Reft though he was clearly in no condition for much. The huge man winced at the idea before nodding towards Darm. The big red-head’s leg was bandaged but it wasn’t seeping too badly.
‘Safir too,’ Deern added, answering for Reft. ‘It ain’t all about muscle. Joas too.’
Toil nodded. ‘We get closer and toss grenades as far as we can. A little mayhem might set it all off.’
‘At what?’ Safir asked. ‘Which enemy?’
‘Golantha, if we can manage it. The creatures o’ the deepest black are in a near frenzy. A few grenades might send ’em over the edge.’
She turned and pointed towards the centre of the cavern, knowing most of the Cards would be able to see very little despite the lambent light emanating from the foliage. ‘The deepgod’s that way, Sons of the Wind past it over there. By my reckoning the nearest golantha’s about a hundred yards over there. See that pillar? That’s where we saw one.’
She sensed as much as saw Anatin open his mouth to comment, but then the company commander thought better of it. They were committed now. Second-guessing her wouldn’t help anyone.