Saddler stood transfixed, taken off his guard, when the stout, grinning figure of the barman stepped out from behind the enormous tree trunk.
‘Welcome.’ He beamed at Saddler. ‘You haven’t met my friend, have you?’
But before Saddler had a chance to see who the ‘friend’ might be he was shoved roughly from behind. At the same moment, a yawning hole appeared in the trunk of the tree, accompanied by a bright light and swiftly followed by a familiar, pulsating splodge of black.
Saddler stumbled forward, unable to stop his own momentum and was pitched helplessly through the darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Pictures swam in and out of Saddler’s vision that made no sense at all. They made him feel nauseous, so he closed his eyes tightly and the darkness helped. He drifted in and out of a doze and was finally woken by an odd scraping noise. He risked opening his eyes just a sliver, fearful of the shifting images that had made him feel so queasy before.
This time however, all was still and he realized that he was lying on a small bed. The room he was in had curved walls and was lit by the soft amber glow of a solitary lantern.
The scraping sound happened again, causing Saddler to lift his head sharply. A pain shot through his head and he winced, putting his hand up to feel a sizeable lump on the back of his skull.
‘My apologies,’ soothed a disembodied voice, ‘that was most unnecessary and decidedly clumsy!’
The voice rippled silkily, but Saddler could hear the menace beneath the surface. Moving his head more carefully this time, he focussed at last on the owner of the voice, who sat at a desk, the contours of which were purposely curved to follow the shape of the wall. The speaker stood, moving the chair as he did so, the carved wooden legs producing a harsh scraping noise on the flagstones.
The figure was tall and imposing. Where had he heard that before, wondered Saddler?
The figure moved closer, its lithe body rippling with grace and power. It towered over Saddler and the beautiful, strong face leered down at him, eyebrow arched, mocking smile giving the lie to his expressions of concern.
‘Crevitos!’ breathed Saddler. He tried to sit up, but collapsed again with a groan.
‘The very same,’ smirked Crevitos. He leant over to retrieve something from a small table set by the bed. With surprising gentleness, he lifted Saddler’s head and commanded, ‘Drink!’
Looking up into Crevitos’s face, Saddler realized there was very little point in refusing. He certainly didn’t have the strength to fight Crevitos off and if he was supposed to be dead, he no doubt would be by now.
As though tracking Saddler’s thoughts, Crevitos twisted his mouth into a wry smile and held the small phial to Saddler’s lips.
‘Herbal,’ was Crevitos’s only comment.
Which could, Saddler thought ruefully, mean anything; after all, arsenic was herbal.
A brief bitterness touched his taste buds, followed by a warmth that tracked its way all the way down his oesophagus and into his stomach. Crevitos then busied himself with something at his desk, whilst Saddler rested his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. In no time at all however, Saddler’s headache eased and the warmth created by the drink transformed into a glowing feeling of well-being.
Saddler opened his eyes and studied the powerful back of Crevitos, as he sat straight, but relaxed, on his desk chair.
‘Feeling better?’ Crevitos turned to look at Saddler. Every movement he made was agile and unhurried. He exuded power and a supreme confidence in himself. He has the knack of making you feel very insignificant, Saddler thought.
‘Are you ready?’
Saddler detected a certain excitement in Crevitos’s voice. He sat up, grateful that the pounding in his head had ceased. He looked at Crevitos warily.
‘Come!’ That half-smile flickered again. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
Even with his newfound energy, the steps down from Crevitos’s eyrie seemed interminable and Saddler’s legs were trembling by the time they reached the bottom. Crevitos appeared to be totally unaffected and when he looked at Saddler that mocking smile never seemed to be far from his lips. They crossed a rough stone floor to a heavy iron gate.
‘We have a way still to go,’ said Crevitos, thoroughly enjoying the look of dismay on Saddler’s face, ‘but you’ll no doubt be glad to hear that it doesn’t involve any more steps.’
Crevitos opened the gate to a very small, box-like room and unhesitatingly stepped inside. Saddler followed him suspiciously, unable to fathom how this tiny, square and completely empty room could lead anywhere.
At first glance he could see no means of exit other than an iron gate through which they had just passed and which Crevitos now clanged noisily shut behind them.
Crevitos pulled a lever by the side of the gate.
Before Saddler could utter a sound, the bottom dropped out of his world!
Thrown off balance, Saddler stumbled but was steadied by Crevitos’s vice-like grip.
‘An amazing invention!’
Saddler could hear the amusement in Crevitos’s voice and was annoyed at his own feeling of helplessness.
‘It’s called a lift,’ Crevitos continued, ‘an ingenious way of going either up or down – don’t you think?’
Still struggling to will his stomach down to its natural position, Saddler was in no mood to be impressed. In all his travels, strangely he had never actually been in such a contraption. He wasn’t sure he’d missed much.
The lift’s descent seemed as interminable as their previous trek down the stairs but, once Saddler’s stomach had settled, he had to grudgingly admit it was a lot easier on the legs.
Finally, the contraption came to a grinding, jolting halt and the murk of the lift was replaced by a flickering glow. Crevitos slid open the heavy iron gate and surged forwards with his customary energy.
Saddler, who had very little option but to follow, stepped more cautiously out of the lift, trying to gauge his surroundings. They were clearly very deep underground; vast tunnels hewn out of the rock stretched in every direction, lit by blazing torches. Saddler knew about the mines of course from Boff. Was he going to be put to work down here? He could think of no other reason for being here and yet, somehow it made no sense.
Crevitos disappeared round a bend and Saddler, anxious not to be stranded alone in this vast underground labyrinth, hurried to catch him up. As he rounded the corner, Saddler was amazed to see a huge network of rail tracks, which obviously carried the workers to the mines and back. At one end of the cavern, a gigantic stone stairway ascended round in a spiral until it disappeared out of sight.
Following his gaze, Crevitos smirked.
‘Be grateful we came down in the lift. My slaves don’t have that luxury!’
Saddler wondered whether it was day or night, but there was no way of telling down here and Saddler had no idea how long he’d been unconscious for. Not to mention, time could be completely different here to Emajen. Again, Crevitos almost seemed to read his thoughts.
‘There is no day or night here, for those who toil in my mines,’ he said scornfully, ‘only work and sleep. While one slave sleeps, the other works. How else would I extract the vast quantities of diamond I need?’
He gestured to Saddler to sit in one of the empty carts. It began to trundle slowly along one of the tracks, to the point where it divided into two separate tunnels.
Boff had told Saddler about the ‘diamond’ that was Crevitos’s driving passion and he also knew that it was of no value in Doomland. Despite himself, Saddler was curious.
‘So, what do you need all this diamond for?’ he asked in what he hoped was a casual voice.
‘Ah, that’s exactly what I want to show you! This track –’ he indicated the one that disappeared off to the left – ‘leads to one of the mines. The one we are about to follow is far more interesting.’ Crevitos smiled and the effect was one of startling beauty, a stark contrast to the cold malicious glea
m in his eyes. He folded his arms and would say no more until they had reached their destination.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The cart ran steadily, as the track twisted and turned, sometimes going downwards and sometimes slightly up. On the whole, though, Saddler was certain they were descending further still.
To begin with, the thick silence was only broken by the rattle of the cart’s wheels on the track, until Saddler became aware of the distant hum of voices. As they drew closer, the noise increased and he could also hear the clash of metal and then other indefinable wailing sounds that chilled him to the core.
They rounded a final bend. What greeted Saddler’s eyes took his breath away.
Crevitos stopped the cart and watched Saddler’s face with amusement. The cavern they were in was so vast that the ceiling and the walls vanished from view into the shadows. Huge fires blazed, some on the ground, some high up on rocky protuberances. Figures scurried from one place to another, hurried on their way by the stinging end of a whip if they hesitated or seemed to deviate from their task. Great machines rumbled and roared, eating into the rock like voracious dinosaurs, as weary Creations ceaselessly stoked the fires, struggling to lift the heavy baskets of wood needed to keep them burning. Everywhere he looked was a straining hive of frantic activity.
Then came that blood-curdling wail again and Crevitos whipped the cart back to life, pushing it faster now as though there were something that he simply must not miss.
The cart lurched to a halt as the track ended. Crevitos leapt lithely out, beckoning impatiently for Saddler to follow.
The wailing rose in pitch and intensity, but Saddler was so horrified by what he saw that the noise faded momentarily into insignificance. All around them in this part of the cavern were enormous cauldrons, full of some noxious, viscous looking substance. It belched and spat like molten lava and the stench was so vile it made Saddler gag.
Crevitos hurried them to a small ledge where they would have a perfect view of the proceedings. He pointed to the nearest cauldron with barely contained excitement, but Saddler’s gaze was already riveted to it with horrified fascination.
A Creation, not dissimilar in looks to a human being was being dragged screaming and struggling to the cauldron. The guards holding it paused briefly to glance up at Crevitos. Crevitos gave them a nod of approval and the Creation was hoisted unceremoniously into the air. Its tormented scream was abruptly silenced as it was plunged into the heaving liquid and sank helplessly below the surface.
There was a brief moment when all the turmoil and noise seemed to ebb away. Saddler tried to turn away, but found he was rooted to the spot.
For the longest few seconds he had ever known, the contents of the cauldron stilled, the surface of the liquid as calm as a pond on a tranquil summer’s day.
The next instant, all hell broke loose. The vile liquid churned. The Creation erupted from its depths, writhing and screaming, no longer just a human caricature, but a grotesque parody. Its body contorted with agony as the guards deftly scooped it out of the cauldron with a huge net.
Crevitos pulled at Saddler’s sleeve and set off after the guards. Saddler followed numbly. Just a few yards away the guards disappeared through a steel door set into the rocky side of the cavern. Crevitos leapt lightly up some steps to one side and onto a platform, where he peered through an observation hole in the side of the rock. He motioned Saddler to do the same. Sickened, but unable to refuse, Saddler did as he was told.
What he saw was a kind of antechamber with a large vat in the centre. Even from this distance Saddler could see that whatever was in the vat was so cold that a thin layer of ice had formed across the top. Blanching at the thought, Saddler had no doubts what was coming next.
He found the strength to turn away, but was unable to blot out the horrendous shrieks of shock and pain as the traumatized creature was lowered bit by bit into the vat.
‘Slowly does it,’ murmured Crevitos, ‘we don’t want you to fracture, my lovely!’
Saddler could not believe what he was hearing. He stared across the hellish scene to where the cart sat empty and waiting. Could he make it across without being caught? And if he did, what then?
But Crevitos had other ideas.
‘Look!’ he commanded. He grabbed Saddler’s collar, virtually lifting him off the ground, so that he faced the antechamber one more. Miserably Saddler looked and, as he did so, the horrendous wail that he had heard before began to reverberate around the chamber. The wretched creature now crouched on a plinth that had risen up in the centre of the vat. As Saddler watched, the viscous substance from the cauldron began to freeze, forming tight, brittle scales everywhere except the creature’s throat, palms and feet.
Finally, after what could only have been a minute, but must have felt like a lifetime to the pitiful creature below, the process was complete.
At last the wailing stopped. Shackled and broken, the creature shuffled behind the guards, but not before raising its head to where Crevitos and Saddler stood watching.
Saddler recoiled.
There was simply nothing left behind those dull, lifeless eyes.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Saddler barely noticed the journey back up to Crevitos’s tower, despite the pain in his back and legs from the long climb. In Crevitos’s bleak chamber, he sat numbly on the bed. His mind was so traumatized by what he had just witnessed that, for the moment it refused to process the information. Crevitos had left the tower almost immediately after their return. Saddler had not noticed the thoughtful look on Crevitos’s face, but had just been glad to be left alone.
At some point, unaware of his own actions, Saddler had lain down on the bed. He drifted in and out of sleep, troubled by those same images he had seen the first time he was brought up to the tower. In one of his waking moments it occurred to him vaguely that he must have been in the mines before. Maybe that was where the gateway had taken him.
He was briefly conscious of Crevitos’s return, but had no sense of how much time had passed. The next thing he knew for certain was the warm, bitter taste of the herbal concoction sliding between his lips and down his throat. Much as his brain would have preferred a continued oblivion, his body was now revitalized. Saddler had no option but to wake up and start the process of coming to terms with a procedure he could barely comprehend.
At length he sat up on the edge of the bed, only to find that Crevitos was sitting in the desk chair quietly watching him. Crevitos’s expression was again thoughtful. He seemed calm, but energy radiated from him like a magnetic force.
There was a knock at the door. When Crevitos opened it, Saddler shrank back in horror, memories of what he had witnessed flooding back like a tidal wave. A creature entered carrying a large tray. Obviously Crevitos had ordered refreshments, but Saddler barely noticed. His eyes were riveted to the creature. There was no doubt in his mind where he’d seen it before; the dull copper coloured scales, the dead eyes – was this the very same creature or just one of many?
The creature dully placed the tray on Crevitos’s desk. As it turned to go, Saddler couldn’t restrain a gasp from escaping his lips. A long, thin rat-like tail hung from its waist, looped and was fastened by a belt at its side.
Then the creature was gone and Saddler stared uncomprehendingly at Crevitos. Crevitos’s lip curled. He was enjoying this. Then his face took on a serious expression.
‘We have much to discuss,’ he said, ‘but first we eat.’
The last thing Saddler felt like doing was eating, but it crossed his mind that if there were to be any chance of him escaping at all, he would need to keep his energy levels up. Reluctantly he accepted what Crevitos offered. There was a kind of flat bread and cheese and some type of fruit he had not come across before, which had hints of apple, strawberry and coconut about it.
The food was delicious and Saddler realized he had no idea how long it was since he’d last eaten. His unexpected hunger brought with it pangs of guilt. His mind chose this
moment to bring Anthony, Destiny and Boff to the fore and his stomach lurched as he pictured their concern when he didn’t return.
What an idiot, he berated himself. You’ve only gone and ruined everything!
At last the repast was finished. Crevitos brushed a couple of imaginary crumbs from his front and leant forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. He pinned Saddler to attention with his gaze.
‘There are many things to talk about and then I have a proposition for you!’
Saddler couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of ‘proposition’ Crevitos might want to put to him. Not to mention it was probably highly unlikely that any proposition suggested by Crevitos would have a refusal option attached.
Crevitos pulled his chair forward so that his knees were virtually touching Saddler’s. It was uncomfortably close. Saddler had to force himself to stay where he was and resist the urge to shift further back on the bed.
Crevitos’s eyes were burning with a passion so intense that Saddler could almost feel its scorching heat. Suddenly Crevitos leapt up; he appeared unable to contain the energy that coursed through him.
‘Power!’ he exclaimed as he paced the floor, ‘is really all that matters. Knowing what you want and having the power to make it happen.’
He spun to face Saddler. ‘I want … everything! I want to be the ultimate ruler of every world it is possible to reach. What you have witnessed is just the beginning, but soon, very soon I will have created the most powerful army the Cosmos has ever seen!’
Crevitos sat back down and peered intently at Saddler through narrowed eyes.
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