by D. P. Prior
“Thwarted?” the homunculus in the tricorn said. “He once terrorized the Cynocephalus and waded through the black river to escape the Abyss. How do you think an upstart of the Sedition can thwart him?”
Nameless raised an eyebrow.
“We need to go,” Cordy insisted.
Nameless slapped Abednago so hard on the shoulder that the homunculus nearly stumbled from the walkway. “The Sedition, eh? Good on you, laddie. You’re not so stupid after all.”
Abednago gave him a vinegary look. “Funny. Very funny. Will you aid us?” he said to the woman. “You have my word it will go down well with the Sedition.”
“What’s a word worth between homunculi?” she replied. “I’ll give you mine in return.”
“Oh,” Abednago said. “If you must.”
“There are many paths to Arnoch,” she said, indicating the web of walkways, “and many that lead where you would not wish to go. The swiftest route takes you to the Bridge of Lost Souls. The wisp will lead you.”
The amber light once more flickered into life and hovered above an intersection.
“And Blightey?” Abednago asked. “What will you do?”
“He is a lich, when all’s said and done,” the woman said. “He’ll not risk himself against the city, and we would be ill-advised to start on him. If he asks, we will deceive. What would you have us tell him?”
“Send him some other way,” Abednago said, and the woman nodded.
“Better still,” Nameless said, “tell him to go shog himself, otherwise my axe here will gladly do the job for him.”
“Then why are you running?” the homunculus with the braided hair asked.
“Good question, laddie,” Nameless said, sticking out his belly and jiggling it. “Burn off the flab, strengthen the lungs, work up an appetite. Speaking of which, I can’t remember the last time I had a square meal and a flagon of mead.”
Abednago’s eyes flicked over the column of dwarves trailing back along the walkway then fixed on the bald woman. “You won’t betray us?”
“Of course not,” she said.
Abednago sighed and shook his head. “I understand. Thank you for your guidance.”
“You are welcome,” the woman said, stepping back onto her disk.
“Word of advice, lassie,” Nameless said. “You might want to stay airborne when Blightey arrives. He’s got a pack of very hungry minions with him.”
She cast a worried look along the line of dwarves, who were now flanked by hundreds of homunculi mounted on silver disks. With a wave of her hand, her people scattered, the disks speeding back down to the city until only the original three remained. She gestured for Abednago to follow the amber wisp, and he set off ahead.
Cordy took hold of Nameless’s hand and gazed steadily at him before they followed Abednago.
Duck, Kal and the rest of the dwarves settled in behind.
“Stupid is a homunculus?” Cordy asked.
“Apparently. Met him in this big fish-craft thing beneath the sea. He took me to Arnoch, Cordy. Led me to the axe.”
“Can he be trusted?”
Nameless shrugged. “Can any of them? They are the spawn of deception, after all.”
“I don’t like this,” Cordy whispered as they veered onto an adjacent walkway.
“Best we can do, lassie.” Nameless pulled her close to him, and they continued walking, Cordy’s head on his shoulder.
Lavender light rippled at the edge of the walkway then rose up in a curtain before them.
Abednago stood to one side and made a wide, sweeping gesture with his arm. “Come on,” he said with a glint in his eyes. “Looks like a shortcut. After you.”
Nameless and Cordy looked at each other, puffed out their cheeks at the same time, and stepped into the light.
A million ants crawled beneath Nameless’s skin. With a sickening rush, all the marrow burst from his bones. His heart flipped inside out, his lungs collapsed, and his brain fizzed and popped until it exploded in a cascade of sparks. Time stood still for the barest instant, and then the whole process reversed, sparks coalescing to form his brain, lungs unfurling like sails coming out of the doldrums, heart pounding, bones filling up again, and the army of ants buggering off back where they came from.
“What…” Cordy said. “What… What?”
Nameless shook his head and pounded his ears. Pins and needles numbed his arms and legs, but stamping and slapping his thighs helped restore circulation. He blinked his eyes into focus and put a steadying hand on Cordy’s shoulder.
“I can’t feel my fingers.” She clapped her palms together and made circles with her wrists. “My boobs. Where are my…” She touched her chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank shog.” She gave them a rub and a squeeze. “All present and correct.”
“Could have told you, if you’d only…” Nameless stopped mid-sentence as their surroundings took shape.
They were in a colossal cavern dominated by what Nameless thought were colonnades of twisted pillars stretching from ceiling to floor. On second glance, they turned out to be the most massive stalactites he’d ever seen, winding not to the floor, but into the blackness of a bottomless abyss that split the cavern in two. It was spanned by a gray stone bridge, warped by the ages, its balustrades resembling nothing so much as gapped teeth where bricks had been dislodged. It was flanked on the near side by a rocky buttress with rough-cut steps spiraling upward and disappearing behind a hanging ledge. Over on the far side, he could just about make out the mouth of a tunnel leading away into the gloom.
Metal cables ran from one stalactite to the next, here and there supporting meshes piled with debris that had at some time pitched from the ceiling. The steady drip, drip, drip of water dropping from the stalactites onto the bridge echoed eerily around the cavern, but there was another sound beneath it, low and rumbling, that caught Nameless’s attention.
“What is that?” Cordy said, clutching his arm.
Nameless shrugged her off and approached the bridge, peering into the chasm. The sound was definitely coming from down in the depths somewhere: sonorous, rattling, like the very earth was shaking. And then he realized what it was.
“Snoring.”
“Snoring?” Cordy came closer to look. “What kind of creature makes a noise like that? A dragon?”
Nameless shook his head. “Shogged if I know.” He had a fairly good idea it wasn’t a dragon, though. Whatever this thing was, it was big, at least as large as a dragon, but there was a quality to its snores that scratched away at the base of his skull and filled him with foreboding.
The air fizzed behind them, and there was a flash of lavender before Abednago stepped through the portal, along with Kal and Duck.
The homunculus was quick to recover, and joined them at the bridge.
“Seems my people were telling the truth, for once. Must be the mutual fear of Blightey. The others will start through in a minute,” he said. “We’ll have to start crossing or there won’t be enough…” He stopped and cocked his ear toward the bottomless pit.
“We were just discussing what that is,” Cordy said.
“Oh dear,” Abednago said, his face suddenly grim and haunted. “They betrayed us, after all.”
“What?” Nameless said. “How?”
Abednago pointed into the depths. “That sound,” he said in a quavering voice. “I know what it is. It is burned into the memory of my race. It comes from one of my father’s elder offspring.”
“Your father?” Cordy asked.
“Yes, the Demiurgos. He is father to all the homunculi. Down there, in the deep, there sleeps the most terrible of all his demons, one so fearful it occupies the space between the Abyss and Gehenna, for it is shunned by both worlds.”
He sucked in a breath and looked into Nameless’s eyes.
“I know now why my people called this the Bridge of Lost Souls. The demon in the chasm is as hungry as the Void, and just as empty. By itself, it has no identity, save for its need
to be filled by the souls of its prey, but my people have named it the Malady. I have not seen it myself, but our loremasters say it is a gibbering monstrosity, an amalgam of the ever-shifting faces of its victims, melted together in a blistered mass. It is a sickness, a plague of the nethers, a horror that cannot be resisted. We must tread silently.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It will be awakened by the sounds of the living. A small group might pass in safety, but there are hundreds of us needing to cross.”
Cordy was staring slack-jawed into the blackness. She appeared mesmerized by it, and leaned out so far that Nameless braced himself to grab her and pull her back should she fall.
“So, we’re still in Gehenna?” Cordy said.
Abednago shook his head. “Higher up. Look.” He unfolded his map and pointed at Arnoch. “This symbol,” he said, circling the mark with his fingertip, “means bridge.”
Cordy frowned. “But that’s miles from where we started.” She traced a line from the volcano to where Abednago said they were now.
“Miles and miles,” the homunculus said. “My people have saved us a lot of effort.”
“And yet they betrayed us,” Nameless said.
“Nothing comes without a cost, as far as we homunculi are concerned. Some of us are different.” He gave a little bow. “The movement to which I belong—the Sedition: we believe there is hope that the homunculi can transcend their nature, which is born of the stuff of deception.”
“Hardly seditious,” Cordy said.
“It is when you consider our objective.”
“Which is?”
“The death of our father,” Abednago said.
“Is that even possible?” Cordy asked.
“Seems to me we have a head start on Blightey,” Nameless said, not waiting to hear the answer. “Should give us time to cross in small groups.”
Lavender flashed, and four more dwarves appeared, carrying Old Moary on his stretcher. They reeled and staggered but managed to set him down on the ground. One of the stretcher-bearers doubled up and vomited.
“What’s this?” Old Moary said, raising himself on an elbow when he’d recovered his senses. “Standing around talking, when there’s an exodus to get underway. Thought I was the procrastinator.”
“The bridge,” Cordy said, going to his side. “It’s a trap. The homunculi tricked us.”
“Trap? Tricked?” Old Moary said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be any worse than what’s behind.” He looked to Nameless and Abednago for agreement and found none. “Oh, it is, isn’t it?”
Nameless nodded, his resolve evaporating in a long, drawn-out sigh.
“Can we go back?” Old Moary asked.
“If we did, it would be into a far worse trap,” Abednago said. “That’s part of the deal with my people. We could end up lost in Gehenna for a thousand years, or worse, reappear in the midst of Blightey’s horde.”
“Then what?” Old Moary said. “Can’t go back, can’t go forward.”
“We have to go forward,” Abednago said. “It doesn’t offer much hope, but if I know the homunculi, it’s the best chance we have.”
“Agreed,” Cordy said. “Nameless?”
Lavender flashed once more, and half a dozen dwarves stumbled onto the ground leading to the chasm.
If they didn’t do something, and do it soon, things were going to get a little crowded, and they’d have no choice but to spill out onto the bridge.
“You think dwarves can do quiet?” Nameless said.
Cordy rolled her eyes and looked to Old Moary, who simply shrugged.
“Small groups,” Abednago said, standing aside and gesturing for someone to cross. “No more than four at a time.”
“And Blightey?” Nameless asked, shouldering his axe. “What if he’s right behind?”
“If there’s one thing to breed collaboration in my people, it’s fear of the Lich Lord. No need to worry on that account. They’ll send him in completely the wrong direction.”
“Right,” Nameless said, not at all convinced. “I’ll still guard this portal or whatever it is until everyone’s safely across. Now, who fancies being first?”
There was a long silence, during which another group of dwarves appeared in a blaze of lavender.
“All right, I’ll go,” Old Moary said, gesturing to his bearers. “But one more word about me being indecisive, and you won’t hear the last of it.”
As the stretcher was borne out onto the bridge, the cavern was rocked by a particularly violent snore from the depths.
Cordy pressed up close to Nameless, her wide eyes locked on the chasm. She was trembling from head to toe, but the best Nameless could offer her was the lightest of strokes on her arm.
Thing was, he wasn’t feeling much better himself.
NILS
The moment Blightey’s shadowy disk carried them into the monstrous cavern, Nils thought he must have died and gone to the Abyss. It sprawled darkly like the night sky, only, instead of stars, there were near-invisible walkways lit by slender strains of green, which he knew had to be scarolite. They crisscrossed the cavern and rose in layers into the infinite darkness above. When he looked below, he reeled and had to choke back his flapping heart lest it fell out of his gawping mouth. Red lights glowed mistily from the depths, and he could just about make out the inky outlines of structures—towers, bridges, walls like rows of jagged teeth. Midway between the walkway he and Blightey were on and the tallest of the towers below, hundreds of silver disks floated in formations, and atop them stood little people, smaller than dwarves, all looking up with sparkling eyes.
Another of the creatures, a woman as bald as an egg with a red star on her forehead, hovered above their walkway, eyes glinting beneath heavy brows. She clutched something sleek and silver to her chest. It may have been a weapon.
If it was, Blightey didn’t seem to care as he looked brazenly up at her, flames licking about his skull like unruly hair.
“You know what I want, homunculus,” he said, even as he shoved Nils off the black disk onto the walkway.
The Lich Lord floated toward her and started a slow orbit, like a predator circling its prey, all the while leaning on the Ebon Staff and fixing her with his ember eyes.
The feeders, who had been subdued since their encounter with the flesh-eating fish, rushed past Nils, careful not to touch his protective sphere, and bayed up at the homunculus on her disk. They climbed over one another in an attempt to reach her, and a couple even pitched from the walkway to tumble head over heels into the darkness.
Five-hundred, that’s all Blightey said were left. To Nils’s reckoning, there may have been a few less, but in any case, he was thankful for his silver sphere. Shog only knew what would have happened if he’d had to face them with the dwarves.
The thought rankled him. He’d been trying to forget the pledge he’d given to Blightey. He knew in his heart it was just delaying the inevitable, but he’d well and truly buried his head in the sand, hoping never to have to do the deed.
Betrayal had been second nature to him back in New Londdyr. His dad saw it as a strength, and it had certainly helped get him where he was today, for what it was worth. But since being with Nameless, since seeing the dwarf’s fierce loyalty time and again, Nils had got a taste for it. It’s how he wanted to be, what he wanted to be remembered for.
His heart sank, now about as far from his mouth as it could get. With sullen hatred burning from his eyes, he watched Blightey circling the homunculus. If only there was some other way. If only Blightey could show him a weakness, any weakness. But he knew there was none. At least none that a backstabbing rogue from New Londdyr would ever find, let alone have the courage to exploit.
The homunculus drifted higher, but Blightey went with her. She veered to the left, but Blightey was there waiting. She raised her weapon in trembling hands, but the Lich Lord merely cackled.
“A simple question,” he said. “Which way did they go?”
The homunculus glanced down into th
e chasm at her kin and then, without even looking, pointed.
“You have my gratitude,” Blightey said, drifting down to the walkway she had indicated.
He snapped his fingers, and the feeders scrambled toward him.
“You too, boy,” Blightey said, smiling with his fleshless jaws in such a way as to infect every last ounce of Nils’s blood with a cloying dread. “You have a task to perform.”
“Tell me about it,” Nils grumbled to himself as he dragged his feet after his master.
NAMELESS
The last few baresarks stepped onto the bridge, heading over to where their mates and the rest of the dwarves waited on the far side of the chasm.
Nameless could already see the scouts spilling into the passage leading away from the cavern. The sooner they gave the people the go ahead to follow, the better, as far as he was concerned. He hardly dared hope they’d gotten away with it. Four hundred and twenty-three survivors, including himself, and not one of them had made more noise than a mouse as they crossed the abyss. He was proud of them. Proud and relieved. In spite of what had seemed an impossible task, the rumbling snores from the depths remained booming but regular.
“You too,” he said to Jaym, clapping the baresark on the back.
“Not till you go,” Jaym said, meeting Nameless’s gaze with unblinking eyes.
“No need to worry about me, laddie. Just making sure no—”
Lavender flashed, and Nils stumbled out of thin air, encased in silver light, puking his guts up, and cursing. The fingers of one hand were wrapped tightly around the Ebon Staff, and Nameless immediately felt its probing malevolence.
“Nils!” he said, “What… How—?”
“I took it.” Nils held out the staff and stumbled toward Nameless. His silver sphere flickered and disappeared. “Took it and ran.”
Paxy wriggled in Nameless’s hand then flipped herself over his head, arcing away until she floated above the bridge.
Flee! she screamed in his mind. Please, flee!