Empire of the Worm

by Conner, Jack

  EMPIRE OF THE WORM

  by Jack Conner

  Copyright 2013

  Cover image used with permission

  PART ONE:

  RISE

  Chapter 1

  Sunlight glittered on the golden pyramid, and all around her Elin heard her neighbors whispering, “She’s coming! The day has come at last!”

  They had waited for so long.

  Sweat trickled down Elin’s scalp and ran between her shoulder blades, paradoxically raising gooseflesh on her arms. In front of her, moisture glistened on the thousands of bent backs that curved toward the Pyramid. Prayers, laughter and weeping rose up all around her. The gathering knelt on the flagstones of the Grand Courtyard, from the center of which rose the Pyramid, shimmering redly in the light of the rising sun, almost hurting Elin’s eyes to look at, but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

  The air thrummed with expectation. Hope and excitement lit the faces of the people like candles burning from within.

  “At last,” they said. “She comes at last . . .”

  Elin tried to contain herself. Beside her Sam smiled. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “That we should be the ones to live to see it.”

  Elin patted her husband’s arm. “Soon.”

  For thousands of years their people had waited. The trappings of a mighty civilization, with tall buildings and awesome sculptures, loomed in all directions. The great city-state of Asragot stood steeped in the mythos of ages, and it had all begun with this pyramid. The Pyramid. It had stood here when grass covered this land, and sand the beach to the west. Now all the years of waiting would end.

  The Dreamer was waking.

  It was a strange time for such an event. Even then the city was under siege from one of the lords of Qazradan, a not-uncommon occurrence. Asragot was a proud city and did not accept the yoke of empire lightly. Often their conquerors were forced to such extremes to extract tithes. If Erin strained her ears, she could just dimly hear the shield-banging that the enemy soldiers used (ineffectively) to demoralize the Asragotians. She smiled, thinking of them on their hill, watching the gathering bellow; they wouldn’t know what to think.

  It happened.

  The sunlight turned the Pyramid into a great burning thorn of gold, and from the very center something flashed.

  “The Door opens!”

  All around Elin people bent their heads with new vigor.

  Sam gasped. Then, as if gripped in a dream, he reached over and gently massaged Elin’s swollen belly, feeling the new life there.

  “You’ll be born in Paradise,” he said, a soft smile on his face.

  The great stone door that had sealed the inner workings of the Pyramid for millennia swung open with a groan. Darkness yawned, a black pit in the center of all that crimson gold. Thousands of faces that had been pressed to the flagstones of the courtyard looked up. Elin’s own breath caught in her throat.

  “Now!” she heard herself say.

  For a long moment nothing happened. The blackness simply hung there, a hungry void of dashed hopes.

  Something stirred.

  A slender white figure slipped from the Door, the rising sun casting fire on her golden armbands and anklets. Her thin white gown glowed with an unearthly sheen, hinting at the curves beneath. She stretched as one might stretch who had slept for ages, and the crowd gasped at her exquisiteness. She was voluptuous, yet supple as a cat. Black hair cascaded over white shoulders and framed a face of such delicate beauty that it could only have been that of a goddess. Elin felt no jealousy, only love.

  The Dreamer’s vibrant green eyes, twin explosions of jade, swept the assembly, and a smile played over her lips.

  “My children!” she cried. “I have come!”

  Elin shouted, wordlessly, all her love and worship pouring out, and around her the crowd roared similarly. The sound boomed louder than the breaking waves along the coast, louder than thunder, louder than an earthquake. It seemed to sweep Elin away, seemed to bear her up to the clouds. Such was their love, their devotion. For hundreds of generations they had waited for the Awakening, for the Dreamer’s slumber to end so that she may lead them all to the promised Paradise.

  Still smiling, she descended the smooth stairs to the long low golden slab of the Altar, where she ran smooth white hands across the rough stone, pausing at a rust-colored stain. There the stone was chipped, scored by countless thrustings of the ceremonial dagger as it plunged through soft virgin breasts to get at the heart. How many thousands had died upon that altar to sate the hunger of the Dreamer? Only she knew for certain. She smiled, caressing the slab as one might caress a lover.

  Then, to Elin’s surprise, tears sprang from the Dreamer’s eyes and leaked over the rust-colored spot, and for a moment the stain turned to blood once more.

  “Thank you,” she said to the slab, or the ghosts that lingered there, and even though she spoke softly those in the gathering could hear it. “Thank you all.”

  The moment passed. The goddess swept past the Altar and down the glittering stairs. The gathered thousands gasped as she drew near. Elin felt as if she stood in a storm, with sparks of lightning dancing all around. Her hair nearly stood on end.

  “My children!” the Dreamer cried, and Elin imagined that her voice carried to every ear. “My children, you’ve looked after me well, and you have raised a fine civilization around me. Even as I dreamed, I bent my thought to you, and I was with you through many long years. I know how you suffered, how you prospered, how you strived. And I know how you have waited. That, most of all. Now that time is over!”

  She paused, and Elin glanced up, soaking in the sight of her, standing there so resplendently.

  “I shall lead you to Paradise!” the Dreamer said, raising her arms above her head. “Follow me, my children, and I shall lead you to the Great One, He Who Waits Below, and there we shall serve Him as His highest disciples, and He will make for us a Paradise. Yes, my children, come! Follow me!”

  The crowd gave way before her, parting like a flower unfolding, but she was the flower: tall, beautiful, shining. Her smell, the culmination of all roses, tugged at Elin, at everyone. It drew them to her, yet she walked unimpeded down the aisle.

  “Praise you!” they shouted as she walked past. The luckiest of them received a smile from her, or a look in the eye, or, greatest of all, a pat on the head or caress on the cheek. Elin and Sam struggled through the press to reach her, but they could not get close enough.

  The Dreamer strode out of the courtyard, crying over her shoulder, “Come with me!”

  Elin and Sam shared an excited glance. He reached out his hand to hers, and, trembling, she took it. She almost laughed when she realized he was trembling, too. Together they turned and followed.

  A great mass of humanity, thousands, hundreds of thousands strong, they surged after the Dreamer. They flowed through the streets, around massive buildings and monuments, and at times Elin lost sight of the Dreamer, but always Elin felt her, was drawn on by her.

  The Dreamer led them through the great city and down to the sea. The waves crashed upon the beach, and gulls screeched warning. The people followed unheeding.

  The Dreamer smiled gloriously as her gaze fell on the heaving darkness of the sea, its black depths coated with a layer of blood as the sun sank on the horizon. She didn’t pause when cold waves blasted her ankles, her knees, her thighs. She continued walking at that same inexorable pace.

  “Come!” she cried over her shoulder. “I’ll keep you from harm!”

  Her people followed.

  The Dreamer marched into the surf, and shortly even her glorious head vanished from sight. Still her people followed, likewise vanishing into the water, a thousand at a time. The young and the old, the
sick and the lame, mothers clutching babies, everyone, the whole population, followed her into the deep blue sea, and one by one the water closed over their heads.

  Elin felt a tremor of fear as the cold water sent shivers up and down her spine, as the waves nearly knocked her off her feet, but she kept walking. Beside her Sam was singing a hymn, his eyes closed, his face serene.

  Elin took a deep breath and submerged. Coldness enveloped her. She walked on, under the sea, staring about her at all her friends and neighbors as they made their way, adjusting to the different pull of gravity. At last fire filled her lungs and she could take it no longer. She opened her mouth and sucked in a great lung-full of water. For a moment she supposed that this would be her doom, that she would drown here, surrounded by her friends, but, to her shock, she realized that the water . . . was breathable. Somehow the Dreamer must have changed it. Or them.

  Elin smiled and turned to look at Sam, who had just come to the same realization. He gripped her hand tighter. Together they strode off into the darkness.

  The Great One was waiting.

  Davril laughed when he heard the news. He looked up from his game of dice to regard General Hastus, who looked grave.

  “What do you mean, into the sea?”

  “Just that, my lord. At first I thought it was part of their ritual, some sort of mass baptism, but when they waded farther out . . .” He shook his head.

  Davril looked around at the officers with whom he’d been playing dice. They looked as incredulous as he felt. He hated to leave the game—he’d been winning for once—but if what the General said was true . . .

  “Show me,” he said.

  General Hastus walked with him through the camp, past men sparring or grooming horses, some haggling with the camp-followers—or after a successful negotiation leading the young women into their tents—past charioteers practicing maneuvers, and everywhere Davril saw his men exchanging hushed, awe-inspired words. He and his army had besieged Asragot for two weeks, meaning to force the Asragotians to pay their annual tribute to the empire of Qazradan, to which they reluctantly belonged. Just yesterday Davril had ordered the aqueduct blocked. It was his first campaign, and he’d looked forward to bringing the tribute home to Sedremere amidst much fanfare, but now —

  “I see no movement,” he said, gazing at the city from an open area. “None at all.”

  “I told you,” Hastus said.

  Davril shook his head. “I won’t believe it till I see it myself. I’m going into the city.”

  His men had already taken the encircling wall of Asragot and opened the gate, which had been their obstacle for weeks. Now, his hairs standing up on the back of his neck, Davril simply walked through the archway and into Asragot. Just as the General had said, it was empty. Utterly. Davril stared over the domes and towers, expecting movement, some small twinge—it was a trap, it had to be—but the wind blew, and the trees in rooftop gardens waved, and the shadows grew long as the sun sank burning to the west. That was it.

  No movement, no sound. Not a child crying, not a wife chiding.

  They must think I’m a fool, Davril thought.

  “Send the men in,” he said. “Go door to door. Search every house. Secure every block. They want us to go in heedless first, headless second.”

  “Such was my thinking, my lord.” It was still odd to hear grizzled old Hastus refer to him—Davril, who had only recently turned fifteen—as my lord, and the young man had to resist a smile every time he heard it. “Of course, the Asragotians are not like us. Human sacrifice, strange gods . . .”

  “That was us a thousand years ago, General.”

  “Less, some say.”

  Davril’s men combed the city with its gleaming buildings of white stone, arches, corners and balustrades trimmed in turquoise-and-burnished-gold. From his position in the hills overlooking the city, he could see the waves breaking against the shore to the west, and he found himself staring at the water. Had it really just swallowed the whole population of Asragot? Was it his imagination, or did it seem darker than usual? How could they have done this? How could they have all slain themselves—a tragedy on an unthinkable scale? It was madness.

  He shook his head again when, two hours later, General Hastus returned to him with the report. The Asragotians were gone. Not even the prisoners in the prison tower remained. All that was left were a few dogs and birds.

  “Madness,” was all Davril could say.

  He descended again into the city, through its narrow, twisting streets, with the sinuous lines of buildings all around him. The buildings were not square, nor circular, but swayed and curved to imitate the sea. He passed open courtyards, walked under the turquoise archways, all the time marveling at the abandoned buildings all around him. Just that morning it had been a bustling metropolis. To see the streets deserted made his blood run cold.

  He took himself to the square before the great Pyramid. He felt the heat beneath his sandals as he marched up its stairs, previously trod only by the Asragotian priests and their sacrifices. Davril and his people, and all the rest of Qazradan for that matter, had considered the Asragotians barbaric for their practice of human sacrifice, but to think they had leapt from that to mass suicide was quite a jump.

  Davril paused before the dark hole leading into the Pyramid. The Door, he was surprised to see, was open. Here’s where she had slept, according to the legends. The fabled Lady of Asragot. Could she be real, and if so what did it mean that the portal was open? When Davril’s spies had reported to him of the mass pre-dawn gathering in the square, he’d shrugged it off. Likely they had been petitioning their slumbering goddess for aid against Davril and his army. How could he have been so wrong?

  “Light torches,” he ordered his guard. “Let us see what’s left in here.”

  “You mean to go in?” General Hastus said. “Is that wise?”

  Davril smiled and looked up at the sun shining overhead. Sweat stood out on his skin. “I don’t know about wisdom, General, but I could do with a bit of shade.”

  He ordered one of the soldiers to go before him, not out of any sense of fear, but prudence. He would not deprive Qazradan of a prince simply to satisfy an urge to be first.

  Warily, he entered the Pyramid second, feeling the darkness, the coldness, clinging to him. Two soldiers went with him, one before, one after. Their torches flickered and flared, driving back the shadows. The stairwell led down into a medium-sized chamber with a star-shaped stone bed at its center. The torch-light cast fire off the heaps of gold and jewels lying all about, making the faces of the golden statues scowl and leer.

  “This should do for our tribute,” Davril muttered.

  He moved closer to the white marble bed. It was intricately carven along its sides, but the top was plain—and bare. He traced his fingers along it, fancying he could feel a lingering warmth. Here she’d lain—for thousands of years, supposedly—and it was not even a comfortable bed. Not even a pillow. Had she been asleep all that time? Had she occasionally opened her eyes? If she had, what had she looked at? There were only pretty statues and heaps of gold, not enough to satisfy an acute mind for eons.

  Davril glanced up. The room was pyramidal in shape, and at its apex was the keystone, where all four triangular walls met. There, on the keystone, was a carved symbol, looking down directly over the bed. At first Davril thought it was a representation of the Sun, the sacred symbol of Asqrit, but then he saw that what he had taken for rays leading out from the central hub were not straight but curved, even undulating . . .

  A chill coursed up his spine.

  The two soldiers had seen the direction of his gaze. Instantly, they gasped and muttered praises to their own gods under their breaths.

  “The Worm,” Davril breathed. It was the symbol of the Worm.

  It took a month for Davril to return to his home in Sedremere, capital of Qazradan, and despite the vast heaps of treasure he brought with him—in addition to the hoard he’d found in the Pyramid, he had seized
the contents of the Asragot Treasury—he found no hero’s welcome upon his return. No crowd waited for him as he passed through the northern gate and between the grand, shimmering Jade Ziggurats that flanked the square before the gateway. Strangely he felt only relief. He’d dreaded a celebration in his honor, a celebration at which he would have to explain to the people how neither he nor his soldiers had so much as unsheathed their swords in combat. Of course, he had never intended to butcher the Asragotians, hoping that the siege would force them to capitulate peacefully. They were subjects of Qazradan and must pay their tithes like anyone else—or so he’d thought.

  Still, he smiled to see the familiar spires and domes and fortresses and minarets stretch away before him in a seemingly jumbled profusion all the way to the sea. Sedremere was a vast city, the greatest in the world, home to four million, and it was gleaming and bright and colorful, a city of amber and gold, of gleaming ivory and sparkling topaz, dazzling to the eye with its radiance.

  Scents blew in from a nearby market, and Davril smelled roast mutton, red peppers and wine, and breathed deep. Home at last. The sun soaked into him, and he relished it, just as he relished the sounds of his horse’s hooves striking the cobblestones.

  He led his host through the broad, tree-lined avenues and past the many temples. Sedremere was called the City of a Thousand Gods, and Davril knew it was more than a name. There was the great white-and-gold temple of Desrai; the doors were closed but, judging from the great, susurrus moaning and gasping, the Desrains were participating in one of their orgies. There the temple to Uligne, the Horned God, whose silver-gray steeple looked like a cluster of horns; the doors were open, and Davril could see the high priest wearing a goat’s head sacrificing a swine while the gathered assembly chanted in unison and anointed themselves with the sacrifice’s blood. He passed the Temple to Illyria, Goddess of the Sky. One of the gods of the Flame, her worshippers merely held hands and sang. The sects of the Flame had grown strong in recent centuries; even the imperial family bowed to Asqrit, the Sun-God.