Taker Of Skulls (Book 5)

by William King

  He fought down the near-suicidal urge to stick his head out and take a look. Long minutes dragged by. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber and looked at Kormak enquiringly. Kormak gestured a warning for him to stay where he was and not make any noise.

  He waited a while longer and remained still. The slithering started once more and slowly receded into the distance. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber. Sasha followed him.

  “What was that thing?” Boreas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kormak said. “I’ve not see its like before.”

  “How did it not notice us,” Sasha said. She gestured back to the doorway. The light of the everglow lantern was faint but in the dark it might as well have been a beacon.

  “Sometimes the Old Ones and their creatures do not see as we do. Perhaps it was blind to ordinary light.”

  “It’s very possible,” said Karnea emerging from the chamber. “After all, what use do creatures who dwell in darkness have for eyes?”

  “The goblins have eyes,” said Sasha. “The dwarves, too, if those statues are correct.”

  “I was merely offering a suggestion,” Karnea said. She glanced over at Kormak, clearly made nervous by what she was about to say. Since they had ventured underground she had lost her natural cheerfulness. “This is where we are supposed to look for what we came for, Sir Kormak. I confess it all seemed much easier when we were outside. I had no idea how vast this place is. No, let me rephrase that. In my mind, I knew how big it was, but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it.”

  “You mean we were going to have to search this whole place?” Sasha said. “Looking for clues to these runes you seek?”

  Karnea nodded.

  “Don’t you have some magic that will help you? An amulet of divination, a spell, a familiar that can sniff the stuff out?”

  Karnea took off her glasses and began to polish them furiously. “I know what we are looking for can mostly likely be found in the smithies of the Forge Quarter.” She took a blade and scratched a rune on the floor, a stylised hammer inside a triangle. “This is the symbol we are looking for. The places will have anvils and forges in the dwarven style. Your father was a blacksmith, I believe, Sir Kormak so I can assume you know what we are looking for.”

  Kormak looked at her sidelong. She seemed entirely serious. Maybe she was nervous and gabbling. Maybe Sasha’s attitude had annoyed her. Or maybe it was some sort of hangover from the quickleaf.

  “What about the monster? It seems to roam the area. If so many goblins are afraid of it, we should be too.”

  “It does not appear to be too bright,” said Karnea. “We should be able to hear it as it approaches and if we keep a watch we should be able to flee from it.”

  “That seems like a long shot,” said Sasha.

  “What would you have us do? We must at least make an attempt to find what we came for.” She looked at Kormak to confirm this. He guessed she was not quite as certain of that as she sounded. He nodded.

  “Of course, there may be more than one of the beasts,” he said. “We can’t just make the assumption that it’s solitary.”

  “Always look on the bright side, eh Sir Kormak,” said Boreas.

  “Better to prepare for the worst,” said Kormak. “I have a feeling this is the sort of place that is going to throw it at us.”

  “I don’t think you are wrong,” said Boreas.

  “What about water?” Kormak asked. “If we’re stuck down here for long we will need it more than food, or at least long before we need food.”

  Sasha said, “There are fountains in the plazas and squares. Some of them still work. There will be edible fungi.”

  “We’ll need to find water that is not tainted,” Kormak said.

  “I can perform a suitable divination if it comes to that,” said Karnea.

  “Well, let’s keep our eyes peeled for a fountain as well as shops marked with the hammer rune.”

  As they shouldered their packs and prepared to leave, Kormak wondered about his dream. He had experienced such things before and they had sometimes been proven true. Was that the case now or the whole thing was just a product of his feverish imagination and the after-effects of the quickleaf? Or was Karnea right about him having some sort of sensitivity to his surroundings. He pushed the thought aside. He had other things to worry about right now.

  They emerged cautiously onto the street. Kormak inspected the slime trail left behind by the serpent creature. It was already starting to dry out, leaving a sticky glaze on the hard rock of the floor.

  Karnea knelt over it and smelled it. She wrinkled her nose. “Pungent,” she said. “But odd, snakes are normally dry skinned. Why would it leave such a trail?” She seemed to be asking the question more of herself than anyone else. No one tried to answer.

  “At least we’ll know where the thing has been. Maybe we can figure out the extent of its territory,” said Boreas.

  “Let’s just try and keep out of its way,” said Kormak. They moved off along the corridor, moving in a small pool of dim light. They could tell the edge of the Forge Quarter by the glimmer of green light at its edges but that did not help them much up close.

  It was a long, slow tedious process moving along each street, checking the runes above every arch and then when they found shops bearing the sign they were looking for, entering and searching them. It was not helped by the fact that they had to change routes when they heard the bellow of the serpent creature and of something else, equally as menacing. Sometimes they went down ramps and the buildings took on multiple levels above them. Kormak was sure there was a pattern to it but it was not one he could see. In the distance something huge roared.

  There were other shrieks and thunderous rumbles, all in a different tone from that of the creature they had seen. There was definitely more than one monster loose in the Forge Quarter and more than one type. Kormak wondered if they were all as large and deadly as the first one he had seen.

  “You ever heard of these creatures before?”

  “Monsters? In the Forge Quarter?” Sasha replied. “No, though I’d heard they dwelled deep down, far below us and hardly ever came to the upper levels.”

  “Maybe something is driving them up,” said Boreas, a little too cheerfully for Kormak’s liking.

  “I don’t want to think of anything that could frighten that serpent beast,” said Sasha.

  Boreas grinned. “It’s best to prepare for the worst. As a wise man once said.” She grinned back at him although on her the expression looked sickly.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Kormak said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  AHEAD OF THEM the sounds of combat rang out. There were bellows of rage interspersed with the impact of something heavy on flesh. There was something else too, the sound of someone almost human shouting out in a tongue that was strangely familiar.

  Karnea’s hand fell on his shoulder, “That is a dwarvish battle-cry,” she said.

  Of course. He had heard such a voice before in the mines below Mount Aethelas. It was deeper than any human’s, with a much richer timbre.

  “He sounds like he’s having a hard time,” said Kormak. “If one of those monsters has caught him, there’s not much we can do.”

  Karnea shot him a reproachful look. “Think, Sir Kormak. A living dwarf. A native of Khazduroth. Who knows what he might be able to tell us?”

  “We won’t be able to listen if we are dead,” said Kormak.

  “You are a Guardian of the Dawn,” said Karnea. “You were trained to fight monsters.”

  “I prefer fights I can win,” said Kormak. “And we are here to find these runes of yours.”

  “This dwarf might be able to help us do that,” said Sasha.

  Kormak moved in the direction of the combat. “Stay behind me,” he told Boreas.

  He rounded the corner and was confronted by a battle, but not the one he had been expecting. The serpent thing was fighting with a creature eq
ually as huge. This one was more than twice the height of a man, a bat-eared, scaly skinned abomination that might have been a cross between a goblin and a giant. It clutched a monstrous axe in one mighty hand. On its head was a horned helmet. Its eyes glowed a sickly yellow. Two huge tusks protruded from its lower lip. It was keeping the serpent thing at bay with sweeps of its club. Its opponent slithered forward, its sinuous body writhing on the slippery slime trail it created.

  Kormak looked for the dwarf who had been shouting, fearing that he was already dead. Eventually he saw the small figure, backed into a doorway, sheltering from the conflict. Kormak had the vague impression of a figure almost as broad as it was tall, bearded, half-naked, armed with a hammer and a shield, skin marked with tattoos, a massive horn slung from his neck.

  The yellow-eyed giant lunged forward, cleaving the serpent thing’s flesh. It got a massive coil in the way and let out a bellow of pain as the axe impacted, drawing blood. The giant howled triumphantly and raised its axe for another blow. The snake creature moved with lightning speed, looping around the giant’s body. The giant still had his arm free and brought his weapon down, but the angle was wrong, and his blow fell on the back and shoulder of the serpent thing. Bone cracked but the serpent did not let go of its tenacious grip. It looped more and more of its coiled length around the giant and began to squeeze.

  Sensing its peril too late, the entrapped victim let go of its weapon and tried to wrestle its way free. Its hands were big enough to grasp a man around the chest, and its muscles looked powerful enough to uproot trees but it could not get a good grip on the slime-coated coils draping its body. It reached out for the serpent thing’s throat. Its opponent weaved its upper body from side to side, avoiding having those shovel-like hands wrapped round its neck, all the time squeezing and squeezing with tremendous force.

  The giant’s glowing eyes bulged. The tendons on its neck stood out like ships rigging drawn taut in a storm. Something cracked, perhaps a rib. The giant let out a high-pitched scream of agony. The serpent creature looped more and more coils around its weakening foe. The grinding, cracking sound continued and the giant began to flop helplessly, bones broken, spine shattered. Pungent death stink filled the air. Excrement and piss spattered the ground beneath it.

  Kormak raced forward and leapt, slashing at the serpent thing’s neck, aiming for the spinal column. His dwarf-forged blade sliced flesh and cut through bone. The monster spasmed, coils unwinding themselves from around the body of its dead foe. Kormak rolled clear as the huge whip of muscle lashed randomly about. The serpent thing was probably as deadly in its death agonies as it ever had been in life, and Kormak was careful to keep himself out of its reach.

  After a few minutes the violent flailing died away. The serpent thing lay still. The dwarf emerged from the archway in which it had been sheltering.

  Karnea managed to get to the dwarf before Kormak did. She bounded passed the still-twitching corpse of the serpent thing and picked her way around the jellied remains of the giant to do so. She stood confronting the dwarf who stared back at her.

  Kormak got to her side as fast as he could and studied the dwarf. He came only about halfway up Kormak’s chest but he was much broader. His arms were longer than a man’s and as muscular as a blacksmiths. His legs were short in proportion to his size. He was wearing leather britches and boots but his whole massively muscular upper body was naked, revealing detailed tattoos of dwarf runes. His beard was what held Kormak’s attention though. It was long and loose and ran almost to his belt. It swayed even though there was not a hint of a breeze. It reminded Kormak uncomfortably of the movement of the serpent thing.

  “You killed the Slitherer,” said the dwarf. His language sounded very much like the tongue of the Old Ones. His voice was as deep and rich. There was a strange undertone to it though. In a man, Kormak would have said, of hysteria, but he did not know dwarves well enough to judge whether this was the case. “You bear one of the forbidden weapons.”

  His great blind-seeming eyes focused on Kormak’s sword. His beard rippled, each individual hair like a tiny snake. Now that he was close enough Kormak could see that it was not composed of hairs but of almost translucent tubes.

  The dwarf’s face superficially resembled that of a human. The eyes were much larger than a man’s. There seemed to be no whites and the only indication of a pupil and retina was an area darker than the rest. The ears were large and pointed. The nose was massive and broad, flattened against the face with huge nostrils. The mouth was wide. The teeth were like tombstones. A large rune had been tattooed in the middle of the dwarf’s forehead. More had been inscribed beneath his eyes.

  “Greetings, Child of Stone,” said Karnea. The dwarf’s mouth fell open. His hand went to the great horn hanging from his neck as if he was considering sounding it and summoning help.

  “You speak the Mother’s Tongue,” he said. His accent was strange to Kormak’s ears and the words sounded slurred and mangled. He had some difficulty understanding what the dwarf was saying.

  “Not well but I have been taught it,” Karnea said. “Taught it by dwarves.”

  She spoke very slowly and very clearly and it came to Kormak that she was having the same difficulty he was, and expected the dwarf to be having the same.

  “Why would any of the People teach a Shadow worshipper?” The dwarf’s words were blunt. There did not seem to be any malice in them. It was as if he was unaware that he was making an accusation that could get him killed.

  “We are not followers of the Shadow,” Karnea said. The dwarf tilted his head to one side. His grip on his axe tightened.

  “All who dwell outside the Hold are worshippers of the Shadow,” he said.

  “That is not true,” said Karnea.

  “What are they saying?” Sasha asked Kormak. Kormak told her, dividing his attention between speaking to her and listening to what Karnea and the dwarf were talking about.

  “He bears one of the forbidden blades,” said the dwarf. A nod of his head indicated Kormak. “One that bears the runes for Chaos and Death. They spell out a sentence of death for the Eldrim.” Eldrim was what the Old Ones called themselves. Their servants did too.

  “It is a weapon consecrated to the service of Holy Sun,” said Kormak.

  “The Sun was never our friend,” said the dwarf. “Nor the friend of those we once served.”

  “Nor was he ever allied with the Shadow,” said Kormak.

  “There may be truth in what you say,” said the dwarf.

  “Why do you call the sword a forbidden weapon?” Karnea asked. “It was forged by your kin.”

  “Not by my kin,” said the dwarf. “I belong to the Faithful. We have kept our oaths.”

  Kormak was starting to realise that he did not understand dwarvish history as well as he thought. Clearly this powerful, primitive-looking creature had a different understanding of the world than the dwarves who were allied to his order. He bore no resemblance to the proud warriors the statues depicted either. He looked like a barbarian tribesman, not an artificer to False Gods. Something very strange had happened to the dwarves amid the rubble of Khazduroth.

  The dwarf spoke again. “There is blood-debt between us. You saved my life and debts must be balanced,” the dwarf said.

  “What is your name?” Karnea asked.

  “I am Verlek Lastborn,” said the dwarf. The humans introduced themselves. The dwarf bowed, without ever taking his eyes off them.

  “We came seeking knowledge of the Lost Runes,” said Karnea. She revealed her armlet. “If you could tell us where we might find more like this, all debts will be discharged.”

  “You will not find it here,” Verlek said.

  “We were told this was found in the Forge Quarter.”

  “Once perhaps you would have found its like here, but this place has been picked clean of all precious stuff by the goblins and the Shadow worshippers.”

  “Then our quest is in vain,” said Karnea. Her shoulders slumped.
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  The dwarf’s beard rippled oddly. He made a chopping gesture with his hand. “Perhaps not. I am young and not wise. Among the clan I am considered least. There are those who know more than I. Guttri or Ferik or Branhilde the Beautiful may know where to find what you seek. Guttri knows about runes. My mother does too.”

  “Would they help us?”

  “I do not know. Only I have blood-debt to you. Yet I am owed some small debts myself. Perhaps they would aid you if I asked them, in return for cancellation of such. It is worth attempting.”

  “Where can we find this Guttri?” Kormak asked.

  “He dwells within the Hold of the Faithful.”

  “Will you take us there?”

  “I cannot give you permission to enter the Hold, but I can take you to within hailing distance of it and then we shall see what we shall see.”

  Karnea looked at Kormak. There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes. It seemed like their mission might not be doomed after all.

  Kormak shrugged. “We would be grateful for any aid you might render us,” he said.

  Verlek led the way deeper into the darkness. There was no hesitation in his manner. He moved with the ease of a man walking through a familiar neighbourhood in his home city. He moved swiftly, on all fours, long arms touching the ground like those of the apes Kormak had seen in southern lands beyond the Dragon Sea. He realised now that this was what the dwarf reminded him of, even down to the facial shape and features. His people seemed more akin to those huge beasts than to men.

  The main difference from the apes was the lack of body hair and the beard. Its tendrils rippled constantly. His ears moved slightly as well, tracking around as if intent on finding the source of any sound. Occasionally the dwarf paused and let his beard dangle on the ground between his fingers. He looked then like a man listening carefully.

  They moved in his wake, following him down ramps and stairwells, passing more giant statues of Old Ones and massive stone pillars from which strange gurgling sounds emerged, as if water or other fluids were running through their cores.