by Jack Conner
Janx, Hildra and Avery looked at each other. Janx shrugged. Avery raised an eyebrow at Layanna. She seemed more pale and sickly than ever.
“We’re a great enemy of Octung,” Avery said, speaking in what he hoped was passable Ungraessotti. “That may sound melodramatic, but it’s true. And we need your help.”
Hunried blew a plume of smoke at him. “Speak on.”
“Are the Tunnels of Ard still accessible?”
A wry smile twisted Hunried’s face. “The Hallowed Halls? Yeah, I guess. Lot of it’s been collapsed, but the Soul Door still stands—and will, long as the Palace does.” His expression went flat. “Why?”
“We need access to them. We need to reach Cuithril.”
That seemed to surprise the captain. “You want to die?”
“No. The real city.”
Hunried frowned. “The Halls are sacred, and Cuithril doubly so.”
“Nevertheless, it’s our destination.”
“Only the God-Emperor can give living men access to the caverns—that’s why his fathers built the Palace over the entrance—and I can tell you right now—”
Janx stepped forward. Hunried’s eyes widened slightly, taking in the whaler’s massive dimensions.
“Then I guess we need to see the God-Emperor, don’t we?” said Janx.
Hunried frowned. Behind him an anti-aircraft gun thundered. Overhead the bi-wing of a whizzing fighter caught flame. The plane spiraled out of the sky and smashed into an already-pocked building that lined the courtyard. The impact sent burning bricks and shattered glass in all directions. The band hunkered low. Flames roared and crackled all around.
Hunried continued to stare at them, thinking. Smoke curled up from his hand-rolled cigarette.
Finally, he said, “I’m just a captain. I don’t have clearance to give you access to the God-Emperor. I’ll need to get you an audience with the General.”
While he orchestrated this, Avery and the others waited. In the distance the boom of anti-aircraft guns eventually faded, as did the rattle of machine guns and the roar of planes. The Octunggen had broken off their attack, but surely only for the moment. Avery held no doubt they would try again, and soon, especially now that the Over-City had arrived. Idly he wondered what had become of Sheridan. Had she and the rays given up the hunt once they entered the warzone? He doubted it. He thought of her glistening naked by candlelight. He thought of the shotgun shell she had given him.
Hildra and Janx spoke some measure of Ungraessotti, as it was one of Ghenisa’s closest neighbors, and so they were able to communicate when called upon. To Avery’s relief, the Ungraessotti were able to provide him with medical equipment, and he saw to Hildra—a piece of shrapnel had sliced her arm—and Janx, who had several deep cuts from the crash. Another doctor treated Avery’s wounds on his back and neck.
The sky darkened, and freezing winds tore through the streets, bustling with cement and asphalt dust. Avery alternately shivered and coughed. He was exhausted and simply wanted to sleep. His stitches itched. In the distance dogs howled, or perhaps wolves—these were the mountains—and bands of soldiers patrolled the streets. There were still people living here, hard as it was for Avery to believe. He saw them from afar, drifting like ghosts through the ruins, coming home from their jobs—jobs, in this insanity—or venturing to the meager markets. The nearest temple had been shelled, but worshippers had cleaned it out, done what repairs they could, and as Avery watched they filed into the building and began a service. Candles flickered in the broken, dust-streaked windows. He wondered if they were faithful Vericans worshipping the God-Emperor and praying to their ancestors in the Hallowed Halls.
Two hours after dark, an aid came and requested that the band accompany her to one of the command tents. General Rossit sat, tired and irritated, behind a fold-up desk in his mobile office. He seemed a hard, grim sort, bone-thin, almost bird-frail, but he held himself with dignity and authority. He did not ask his guests to sit. There was only one chair other than his, and by unspoken consensus they let Layanna occupy it.
The general’s eyes fell on her. Avery had told them she did not know Ungraessotti, but it was obvious from the general’s glance that they still had questions about her.
The wrinkles to one side of the General’s mouth deepened. “You lot continue to demand to see the God-Emperor? Not just anyone is granted an audience with His Eminence.” When no one spoke, he went on. “However ... because of the unusual nature of your arrival ... the obvious fact that Octung considers you an important threat, I am tempted to allow you a visit to the Palace.” His voice lowered, and Avery heard a note of lament in it. “But, I warn you, you would rather deal with me. The God-Emperor is ... well, let us say ... eccentric. You will not find him easy to deal with.”
Avery glanced to the others, then the general. “If you can grant us access to the Halls, we’re very happy to deal with you.”
The general shook his head wearily. “Only His Eminence can grant you that. The Halls are off-limits to the living. And for good reason.”
“Then we’d better see him.”
“And you won’t say why?”
Avery sighed. “All we can tell you is we’re on a vital mission to stop Octung. To end the war.”
The general drummed his fingers on his desk. “That seems unlikely, but so be it. I’d rather not have you here as a distraction. The troops are very curious about you. I’m dispatching Captain Hunried to take you to Lord Haemlys himself, and I’m officially washing my hands of the lot of you.”
Maqarl, capital of Ungraessot, was far from Azzara, and it was determined that they would set out for it at first light. That night the band was given a tent to sleep in. To the sound of wounded men crying out in the background and large military vehicles trundling by, Avery lay down on the ground, as there were no more cots available, and prepared for slumber.
“You sure this is the right thing?” Janx asked. The whaler lay on his back, fingers threaded behind his head, staring at the ceiling, which rippled in the wind. A lamp on low flame flickered, throwing leaping light onto the walls. “Goin’ to see the Emperor?”
“We need access to those tunnels,” Avery said. “To the Soul Door. It’s the only way I can think of to reach Cuithril, whatever it really is.”
“I don’t like this,” said Hildra. “Caves! At least you can see what’s coming at you on the surface.”
“Yeah,” Janx said. “Bullets.”
“But do we need to go all the way to Maqarl? Hunried said the Tunnels’d been bombed. That some’d collapsed. Might be there’s a way open, a way easier than dealing with the damned God-Emperor.”
Avery shook his head. “First of all, we’re not going to be aimlessly wandering the Front exploring caves. Second, Cuithril is said to be far away, near Maqarl. Furthermore, if we did find a cave that led to the Halls, and we were willing to travel for hundreds of miles in the darkness of the caverns, lost and going in circles ... they’re not empty.”
“What d’ya mean?” said Janx.
“I don’t know the details, but there’s ... things ... living down there. The only way for us to survive the Halls is to ride in the Emperor’s dirigible.”
“Dirigible?” said Hildra. “In a cave?”
“The Emperors all take sojourns into the Halls to commune with their fathers,” Avery said, “and ultimately, according to legend, to dwell there. It’s where they go to die, I suppose. At any rate, the Emperor will keep a dirigible at the Soul Door, in one of the main cavern halls. It’s that dirigible we need, and that hall. There we can fly it above any ... things ... that live there.”
Janx looked glum. “If you say so, Doc.”
“Then it’s settled. All that’s standing between us and reaching Cuithril is the eccentricity of the God-Emperor.”
In Octunggen, Layanna said to him, “It will not be that easy.”
He tried to put it out of his mind and sleep, but instead he found himself fantasizing about Maqarl. Ungraesso
t was the last country left still ruled by a L’ohen Emperor; technically it was all that was left of L’oh now that Es’hem was gone. And he was about to visit its palace! He’d studied L’ohen history all his life, fascinated by the romance of the ancient empire, with its jade temples and crimson knights, and now he was going right to its heart. He was even going to meet an emperor.
The fantasy faded, and the nightmarish shape of Uthua loomed above him, mountainous and awful, pseudopods crashing down. A shiver coursed up his spine, and he prayed the Mnuthra would not find them.
He awoke with a gasp to the sound of bombs.
The ground shook. People screamed in the distance. The roar of great planes split the night. Anti-aircraft guns boomed, and somewhere sirens rang.
Avery crawled to his feet, trying to get his bearings. The others were stirring too, swearing and wide-eyed. Janx was already shrugging on his clothes.
A great explosion ripped through the night nearby. The ground jumped beneath Avery’s feet and nearly sent him back to the ground.
The tent flaps burst in. There stood a breathless Captain Hunried, unshaven, shirtfront open. “Get going! We leave now, while it’s still possible.”
They stared at him. Avery felt his mind shifting gears, too slowly.
“You want your visit with His Eminence, right?” Hunried demanded. “Then get a fucking move on!”
Janx shoved a duffel bag into Avery’s hands, and Hildra called to her monkey, trying to calm him. Layanna grimaced and stood. They readied themselves while the captain brought around a jeep, and they all piled in.
As Captain Hunried stomped on the gas, Avery’s belly lurched, and he hung tightly to the back of the seat. Hunried wound his way through the chaos of the encampment, which was still dark, the eastern horizon just turning the ghostly gray-white of early dawn. Men and women hurried among tents and tanks like phantoms. A sharp chill cut the air.
Bombers lumbered overhead and pounded anti-aircraft guns on ground and rooftops. Buildings flamed and crumbled. The greatest concentration of bombs smashed around the largest of Azzara’s functioning processors; once it was destroyed, the Octunggen could bring their otherworldly weapons to bear on the city in force. In the distance Avery heard the rattle of thousands of guns, and with a feeling of horror he realized the Octunggen were striking by land as well as air. They had used the night as cover to draw close enough to spring.
Captain Hunried drove the band through Azzara and out. As the jeep bounced down dim mountain roads, Avery watched the silhouette of the city flame and smoke on the horizon, and he thought of all the soldiers, all the citizens praying to their gods for deliverance, then looked to the others in the jeep, who were turned backward in their jouncing seats. They too stared at the fires, grim and silent. He knew they were all thinking the same thing he was, that the Octunggen attacked because of them, that the Azzarans were dying because of them. Of course, the Octunggen were going to strike at some point no matter what, it was just a matter of time, he knew that. And yet ...
Avery looked to Layanna and saw flame dancing in her eyes.
* * *
For nearly two weeks they traveled through the mountain roads of Ungraessot. They passed innumerable convoys headed toward the front lines, crossed over wide, sturdy bridges between mountain slopes and a few small, shaky ones. Several of the larger ones had been bombed, and Captain Hunried was forced to find alternate routes, some of them quite time-consuming. Once they crossed over on what the locals called a high ferry, which consisted of a platform suspended from a huge crane. The crane swung the platform from one mountain shoulder to another, over a steep, narrow gorge. Looking down into the mist that filled the gorge and seeing rocks poke through the cottony layer (and wondering if that was lichen or blood that covered them), Avery had never felt so ill. He would be monstrously glad to be out of the highlands. Unfortunately, Ungraessot was about half highlands, and the flat areas were all occupied by Octung.
The jeep passed not just military and supply convoys but ragged lines of refugees. Their homes and cities had been destroyed and now they wandered, homeless and hopeless. Avery saw endless campfires dotting the peaks at night between the pines. From time to time, planes flew overhead toward the front lines, and when they did Avery could hear refugees cheering raggedly to the side of the road. Ungraessot still had some fight left in her.
The jeep stopped among the little rag-tag settlements to purchase food and necessary items when available, though more often it was the refugees that begged aid from the occupants of the jeep. From the vagabonds Avery heard tales of conflict with local ngvandi, as well as stories of refugees banding together into companies of bandits, rapists and highway robbers. The people had become desperate, willing to do anything to survive, even if it meant preying on their own. Captain Hunried and the others wound their way through the mountains with caution after that, trying never to travel by night, when the bandits were at their worst. Then they would park and sleep. And every evening before he drifted off, Avery wondered where Sheridan was. And Uthua.
During the day they passed through and near Ungraessotti cities, and in them Avery saw gaunt, grim people, waiting only for the day when Octung arrived at their doors. Some of the cities were intact, some ruined, some claiming secession from Ungraessot and therefore neutrality in the war. One even boasted a banner that read We worship the Collossum. All hail Octung!
“Fools,” Hunried spat. “That won’t save them. It will only make it easier for the Octs. They can concentrate on subduing the cities that offer resistance and save the rest for later. These lot deserve what they get.”
Despite his harsh words, he waxed on with obvious pride about the grandeur of his country. “One of the oldest nations in Urslin, you know,” he said one day as they were nearing a tunnel. “Existed two thousand years before the coming of L’oh, and some say even before that.”
“We’re more curious about the Soul Door,” Hildra said, surprising Avery, who hadn’t thought she had an interest in such things.
Hunried nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Most people are. It’s not every country that has a portal to the afterlife.”
“That’s why the God-Emperor guards it, eh?” This was Janx.
“His sacred duty,” Hunried said. “And being God-Emperor, when it’s his time to go through the Door, he won’t do it merely in spirit but body as well. When he tires of the mortal plane and wants to join his fathers in the Hallowed Halls, he’ll appoint one of his sons as heir and take the long journey through the dark.”
“Why do they call him the God-Emperor?” Hildra said.
“He’s descended from the gods,” Hunried said, as if it were self-evident. “His Eminence is directly descended from the line of emperors. His branch of the line Ascended during the Fall. When L’oh was breaking up and Emperor Hurn died under mysterious circumstances, his two sons warred for power—you know the story. Lord Mycra and Lord Tallis. Civil war. No? Come now, everyone knows it.”
Avery knew it quite well, of course, but he let Hunried speak on.
“Well, Lord Mycra insisted on worshipping the L’ohen gods,” the captain said, “but Tallis had an epiphany. He was ruler of the Eastern Islands at the time and had learned their gods. The gods of the sea. Story is that they communed with him. Spoke with him. Entered him. Changed him. With their power, he was able to survive the war waged on him by the villainous Mycra, who was forced to flee to Es’hem, while Tallis took over lordship of Ungraessot, greatest L’ohen nation still standing after the Fall. And so his line have led us ever since.”
Avery didn’t comment on the obvious bias in the story. Hunried was only repeating what he’d been taught. But the mention of gods of the sea ...
He turned to Layanna, who sat beside him.
She raised her eyebrows. “Yes,” she said. “We tried other countries before Octung.”
He was stunned. The story of the Fall of L’oh was legend, myth, infused with every aspect of the cultures of Ursli
n, and it was one he had studied intently.
“That was thousands of years ago,” he said.
She gave a slow nod. “We have been here some time.”
“But the Atomic Sea became the way it is only a thousand years ago.”
“No. It started long before that. It started small and slow, then spread rapidly later, once the process was well under way.”
Suddenly the light dawned. “The Ilaunth Quarter ...” A once-infamous region of the sea where ships were said to sink, or disappear and then return years later, sometimes with crews turned into monsters that then preyed on other ships. A million tales were told of that quarter, though it had faded into legend long ago.
“Yes,” she said. “It started there. It took ages for us to develop our processors, get them going at full capacity. Only then did the affected region spread to encompass the first sea—the original Atomic Sea, though they didn’t call it that back then, of course; atomic power hadn’t been dreamt of—and go on to affect the rest of them. Back then they called it the ‘Foul Sea’ or the “Sea of Death’ or the ‘Doomsea’, or what-have-you. But it was always one name, not multiple, and always ‘sea’, even when it spread to encompass one ocean after another. And the Change isn’t done yet. There are still a few bodies of water left unaffected.”
The jeep passed into the tunnel, and the darkness made Avery shiver.
That night they camped with a hungry-looking group of refugees. Huddling in their torn jackets, some shaking in the cold, they grouped around barrel fires and listened to a radio whose static-warped voices filled the night. Avery went hollow when he heard the news.
Azzara had fallen. Azzara, home of the Half-Lord, proud bearer of the Amber Ziggurat, had been wiped out by Octung. Its processors had been destroyed, and the Octunggen had been able to turn the Deathlight on its inhabitants. Avery, who had seen the effects of the Deathlight firsthand, imagined Azzara’s streets strewn with writhing, gasping figures clawing at their boil-covered skin as a strong red light shone from a mountaintop.