Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1)

by Prior, D. P.

  He turned back and let his eyes adjust to the blinding light, much of it reflected from the frost-rimed walls of natural cavern. Blazing spheres of silver orbited just below the ceiling at dizzying speeds. Though their radiance was excoriating, it gave off no heat. If anything, the cavern was freezing, and Carnifex regretted leaving his cloak behind.

  His eyes were drawn to the white-carpeted ground. There were footprints leading away from where he now stood.

  Ice crunched beneath his boots as he followed the trail, and he began to shiver. A sibilant hissing came from somewhere up front, then a multitude of thrashing, snapping sounds. The deeper he went into the cavern, the louder the susurration grew, until his teeth began to rattle, and his head felt fit to burst.

  The glint of silver caught his eye. One of the footprints had disturbed something beneath the hoarfrost.

  He stooped to examine the silver patch, then crouched to sweep away the ice with his hand. The silver extended in a broad band. He uncovered more and saw that it curved. He followed its line, clearing frost as he went, until it became obvious he was revealing a vast circle. He traced its surface with his fingertips, encountered a groove. He peered closer and saw that there were hairline symbols engraved into the metal. One or two he recognized: they were the same letters that had glowed on the golem’s forehead.

  Back the way he’d come, a thud sounded, then a succession of rattles. The Black Cloaks had arrived at the door.

  Brushing ice from his knees, he stood, glanced back briefly, and then crossed over the silver line into the circle.

  His eyes snapped open—when had he closed them?—upon the flickering flames of the hearth back home. Droom stepped between him and the fire, silhouetted by its blaze. He held out a kaffa cup. It was empty.

  Durgish Duffin’s painting slammed down between them, and Yyalla stepped from the frame. She looked at him as if he were nothing, not fit to be called her son. There was a haughtiness about her Droom had never mentioned. She looked down on him; thought of him as weak. He was a disappointment to her.

  She thrust out a hand. He flinched, thinking she held a spear, but it was a spike like the ones he’d seen as he descended the tunnel. In place of a skull was a fully-fleshed head, the blood dripping from its severed neck steaming in the chill air of the cavern. Like a hammer blow to the sternum, recognition struck him, dropped him to his knees.

  It was Thumil.

  Then the spike became a spine, and a body grew up around it. The head warped and changed until Cordy stood before him. She was robed like a queen, and a coronet sat atop her golden hair. Behind her head, a hellish corona bloomed. It came from a pair of garnets set in the eye sockets of a skull. The flesh of Cordy’s face wept putrescence. The skin was livid, peeling away in layers, and a maggot flopped out of her nostril.

  Stakes as tall as trees pushed up from the ground, forming a palisade between him and Cordy. There were bodies impaled upon them, ordure and blood staining their bases. Snow stretched out beyond the forest of the dead as far as the fir-topped hills that marked the horizon.

  The vision flipped, and suddenly he stood atop a mesa. Far below, all he could see was mile upon mile of ocher desert. Above, the sky was brilliant blue, and astonishingly held only one sun. He was in the middle of a fierce battle between humans and corpses that just wouldn’t stop coming on, no matter how much they were hacked apart. There were skeletal riders on skeletal steeds, and metal men that discharged explosive bursts of fire. Above a ridge, the sky parted, and a man appeared on a throne; a man with a bloodless face and eyes of flashing blue.

  At the foot of the ridge, another man looked on in despair. A wide-brimmed hat, a long coat. A short sword wreathed in aureate brilliance.

  “Not good,” Aristodeus’s voice bubbled up from the ground. “Not good at all.”

  Then he was before a mountain of scarolite within the ambit of a black moat. The land it stood upon was ashen. Silver spheres orbited its peak. In the distance, terrible storms raged: violent whirlwinds that warped the very air around them. Dark fractures webbed across the sky, and the ground beneath ruptured.

  And then there was nothing. Nothing left. It was as if nothing had ever been.

  “You can prevent this,” Aristodeus said out of the void. “You are needed. You cannot die.”

  A thud startled him. His eyes focused on the frosted floor of the cavern. A second thud had him standing. The subsequent crash told him the Black Cloaks were through the door.

  More images danced around his vision: a horde of flesh-eating monsters with no facial features save for ravenous mouths; a black sun in a slate-gray sky; a citadel of obsidian built into the side of a dark mountain.

  He wrenched himself away from all that he was seeing. It was an illusion, he told himself. None of it real. And he didn’t have the luxury of imbibing such fantasies. Either he moved and kept on moving, or he and Lucius were going to die.

  He took one step across the circle. Then another. His feet scuffed against the ice coating the ground. Shouts came from behind. The Black Cloaks had seen him. Invisible cords snapped, fell away from his mind, and he launched himself across the silver circumference, skidded, fell, and came up running.

  The sibilant cacophony resumed, like he was passing beneath a waterfall. The cavern floor banked downward, then continued to drop away in a series of natural steps. At the bottom, the floor leveled out. Gone was the coating of hoarfrost: it was glistening, polished marble as smooth as glass. He slipped when he came barreling onto it and went crashing down on his back. His axe flew from his grip and skimmed off across the cavern. He slid after it, flailing about for purchase. His feet connected with something soft that broke his momentum. Someone yelped. Hands grabbed his arm and brought him to a complete halt.

  “Carn!”—It was a breathy hiss, no more than a whisper.

  He looked up into his brother’s pudgy face. “Lucius!”

  Lucius raised a finger to his lips for silence. He indicated with his eyes where Carnifex should look.

  Pillars of granite flanked them to left and right. There were eight of them. Not pillars, he realized, as he raised his eyes: legs. The legs of four golems.

  THE SEETHERS

  Carnifex’s heart bounded around his ribcage. He tried to stand but slipped on the polished marble floor and crashed back down again.

  “My axe!”

  “Gone,” Lucius said, still whispering. He stooped so he could help Carnifex up. “You get used to it.” He indicated the floor with a tap of his foot. “I landed on my arse at least a dozen times when I arrived.”

  Carnifex looked off in the direction the axe had slid away from him, and he gasped and took a step back. He skidded, but Lucius steadied him.

  Some kind of trench or pit marked the end of the cavern. There seemed to be nothing containing it; no ceiling, no walls. Just inky blackness above, and writhing from within the pit: thousands upon thousands of thrashing tendrils, swaying like a field of long grass in the wind. Scintillant blue veins pulsed inside them, and they were edged with serrations—delicate hooks that glistened with moisture. There seemed no end to them. They extended away into the hazy distance, an infinite sea of horror.

  “The seethers,” Lucius breathed. “See, I can be wrong sometimes. I thought the mention of them in the Annals was one of the mythical elements, part of a morality tale.”

  Carnifex eyed the golems to either side. Violet symbols shone upon their foreheads: the same letters as before: “Emet”, Aristodeus had said the word was they formed. “Truth.” Their lipless mouths were little more than fissures in the stone of their heads, curled into the slightest hint of a leer. The eyes were just depressions, calderas, with no indication they could actually see.

  He flicked a look up front, at the seethers. Of his axe there was no sign. It must have slid into the pit. He returned his gaze to the golems, braced himself for an attack, but they didn’t move.

  “It makes no sense,” Lucius said. He pulled a crumpled piece of pa
rchment from his pocket and waved it about. “According to the Annals, the Pax Nanorum should be here, in this cavern.”

  Carnifex took the parchment from him and straightened out the creases. It was a crude map, with “X” marking the spot close to the center of the cavern.

  “Maybe you missed something.” He handed back the map.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lucius said. “Why do you think the golems are here? It’s consistent with the passage describing how the axe was lost. They are guarding it, I’m certain. Ensuring no one retrieves it and uses it against them.”

  Carnifex gave the stone giants a wary look. “Then why haven’t they killed us already?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucius said. “Do I look omniscient?”

  “Omnipresent, maybe,” Carnifex said, slapping his gut.

  “Funny,” Lucius said. “Glad I can still be of some amusement.” He looked out across the sea of seethers. “It has to be beyond the pit, maybe even beneath it.”

  He may have been right, for all Carnifex cared, but right now, there were more pressing matters.

  “Lucius, we need to get out of here.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I didn’t come all this way just to—”

  “We’re being followed. Black Cloaks.”

  Lucius’s mouth gaped in horror. “Black Cloaks? So soon? How did they… I mean, they can’t have known. I slipped away when everyone was busy at the wedding.” Then realization hit him. “Aristodeus! I left clues, so at least someone would know what I’d done.”

  Carnifex nodded. “He told Thumil, but I think Grago already knew. I’m certain he was having you both watched. Come on, if we’re quick, we might be able to double back behind them, find some place to hide.” Their only hope was if the Black Cloaks had been delayed by the silver circle, as beguiled by its illusions as he was.

  Grabbing Lucius’s arm, he started back toward the natural steps. Lucius slipped and fell on his arse. A quarrel whizzed over his head.

  Before the Black Cloak could drop his crossbow and draw his sword, Carnifex barreled into him and knocked him flying. He barely noticed how, in the heat of battle, his footing grew as secure as a ravine goat’s.

  To Lucius he shouted, “Get back!” as more Black Cloaks surged down the steps. He threw himself to the ground as they fired, and bolts skimmed off the marble beyond him. He glimpsed Lucius up on his feet, slipping and sliding toward the seethers’ pit.

  If Carnifex backed off now, he knew they were both dead. The Black Cloaks would just use them for target practice. He rolled to his feet and ran up the steps. The Black Cloak he’d put down was on his knees. A kick to the head put him back down again.

  As the other five Black Cloaks fumbled for their swords, Carnifex threw himself among them. They were quick to react and tried to grapple him to the ground. He crashed his head into a nose, felt it split. Wrenching his arm away from a grab, he lashed out, caught one of them on the jaw. Someone got him in a chokehold. Carnifex spluttered and swooned. A Black Cloak hit him in the stomach, but he tensed his abs, then kicked the shogger in the fruits. He reached behind for the Black Cloak on his back, shifted his weight, and slammed him into the ground. A fist caught him in the mouth, and he spat out blood. A flash of silver came at his heart. He caught the wrist of the dwarf holding the sword and cracked the shogger’s head round with a hook.

  Lucius shrieked.

  Carnifex craned his neck, glimpsed his brother backing up, slipping on the marble. The walls either side of Lucius blurred, and two assassins in concealer cloaks launched themselves at him. One grabbed him either side, and they dragged him kicking and screaming toward the seethers.

  “Lucius!” Carnifex cried.

  He punched, kicked, blocked, and shoved with such ferocity, he broke clear of his attackers and ran toward his brother.

  The assassins glanced back at him, and one of them gave a sickening grin as they edged Lucius closer to the pit.

  “No!” Carnifex cried.

  He came off the steps and skated across the marble floor, perfectly balanced, perfectly in control. He could reach them. He was going to reach—

  With staggering speed, the golems jerked to life and stepped into his path, forming a wall between him and the assassins dragging Lucius. He hit at full tilt. Pain lanced through his shoulder.

  He screamed his frustration, hammering at a granite torso with his fists. Blood sprayed from his knuckles, but he didn’t feel a thing.

  He made a dash past the golems, but one lashed out with a massive hand and caught him by the arm, lifting him from his feet. Then it took a two-handed hold, splaying his arms till he hung helpless in its grasp. It turned, forcing him to watch as the assassins flung his brother into the pit.

  Carnifex’s scream joined with Lucius’s, and together they drowned out the hissing of the seethers.

  Tendrils lashed about Lucius, caught him in midair. Where they touched, his clothing smoldered, and his skin bubbled and blistered. First the fabric of his jacket and britches was flayed, and then his flesh. His screams kept rising in pitch, till they became an endless shrill keening. He should have been dead already, but even as flesh sloughed from his bones and his head was reduced to a glistening skull, he continued to wail like the damned of the Abyss. The blue veins in the tendrils throbbed as if they drank him in, and at the same time, in some diabolical way, they drew out his suffering.

  The six Black Cloaks, most of them nursing injuries, stepped past the golems to watch alongside the two assassins. They were rapt with horror, too fascinated to look away.

  Carnifex kicked and thrashed, but nothing he did had the slightest effect on the golem’s hold. He slumped in despair, sobbing as his brother continued to howl, no more now than a skeleton. Carnifex forced his eyes shut. He half-expected the golem to rip his arms from their sockets. Willed it to. Longed for it to grind him into pulp and end his torment.

  Then the keening stopped, and the seethers’ sibilant hissing gave way to silence. Carnifex risked a look, but of Lucius there was now no sign.

  Slowly, as if still assimilating what they had witnessed, the Black Cloaks and the assassins turned to face Carnifex, and the golems didn’t make a single move against them. Were they in league? Or was it something else? And why was he still alive? The golems could have killed him a hundred times over by now. Why did they all just stand there waiting?

  “Well, that was novel,” one of the Black Cloaks said. He was an evil-looking shogger with a hooked nose and eyes so brown they were almost black. “You, though,” he said, running the edge of his shortsword along his finger. “You are going to bleed real slow for what you did to Kloon.”

  The golem holding Carnifex lifted him out of reach. The other three golems stepped in front to prevent the Krypteia from following as it turned away and took long lumbering strides back toward the steps.

  It carried Carnifex to the center of the silver circle. This time, there were no visions, no disorienting feelings. Instead, waiting for him within the circle was the homunculus that had broken into the Scriptorium.

  The golem set Carnifex down and retreated outside the silver perimeter. One by one, the three others filed up the natural steps, and then all four turned to clay and merged with the floor.

  Further down the steps, the Black Cloaks crept cautiously into view, and at their sides, the air shimmered and blurred where the assassins in concealer cloaks came with them.

  The homunculus held out a slender hand for Carnifex to take.

  Body still racked with sobbing, mind a stinging nest of insects that left him both enraged and numb, he accepted.

  The homunculus led him to the hub of the circle. As the assassins reached the top of the steps, it said, “What’s bad is good; what’s good is bad,” and then it stepped away.

  The floor split open beneath Carnifex’s feet, and he plunged into a well of darkness.

  THE BLACK AXE

  Gradually, imperceptibly at first, Carnifex’s fall began to slow, until he was n
o longer plummeting; he was drifting down like a feather.

  He dropped interminably through blackness so complete, the only thing that told him he was still moving was the passing of air across his skin. The deeper he went, the more ragged his sobs for Lucius became, until at last they were no more than involuntary shudders accompanied by wheezing snatches of breath. By the time his feet touched solid ground, he was iced over with clenched rage.

  Dark light winked on around him, a crepuscular radiance that came from within the ebon walls of a sizeable chamber. Five walls there were—just like the Ephebe; black mirrors that cast shadowy reflections. In each, he looked wraith-like, not fully existent. Above, an obsidian funnel flared from the ceiling. It was how he’d entered the chamber, but there was no sign of how he’d get out. A cell, then. The homunculus had set a trap for him, and he’d walked straight into it.

  Not that it mattered now. His brother was dead. But the manner of his death: no one deserved that, least of all Lucius. Carnifex closed his eyes, as if doing so could ward off the memories. The black dog mood crept from the recesses of his mind. He called out to it, begged it smother him in a cloud of forgetting. But it wasn’t his to command, and instead, it wolfed down the images of Lucius’s flayed flesh and disgorged them in ever more terrible forms.

  His eyes snapped open, scoured the room, and there before him, at the apex of the pentagon, was an axe hovering in midair.

  It was no wonder he’d missed it before. It was a deeper black than the walls, no more to his sight than a particularly dense shadow. He recoiled on instinct, pressed himself up against the wall opposite. Tingles of wrongness prickled beneath his skin. His heart slowed to a torpid slosh that echoed in his ears. Tremors spread from his fingers along his arms. They entered his legs and caused his knees to buckle. He sunk down the wall to his haunches.