War of Powers
Page 31
'We'll do what we can, Guardian,' Moriana said.'Very well, then,' the glacier said. 'Enter.' The icy mountain shook. Clutching each other, Fost and Moriana fell against the cliff. At any moment they expected tons of ice and snow to smash down on them from above.
Instead the ice gave with a tremendous groan and split with a cracking like a million thunderbolts. Debris rained down, but nothing struck the travelers but wet clumps of snow.
'Enter,' Guardian said again, 'But be quick, I cannot hold the way open for long.'
Fost and Moriana grabbed their packs, recapping Erimenes's jar and stuffing it into the satchel. Slipping, they ran into the crevice. It was about as wide as Fost was tall. An upward glance told him it didn't reach more than fifty feet up the cliff face.
Errie, glistening dark surrounded them. They moved as rapidly as they could into the glacier, keeping arms outstretched to keep themselves upright. The ice underfoot was incredibly slick.
'We need to get out of this damned crack,' Fost said, then clamped his mouth shut as his own voice exploded in his ears, trapped by walls of ice. More quietly he went on, 'We'll never find away without light. I wonder if it's safe to light a torch?'
'Guardian,' Moriana called, wincing at the loudness of her voice. 'Can we light a torch here inside you? We must have light to see.'
'If you must, you must,' The glacier spoke with unwonted haste. The strain of holding open the crack ran like a taut thread through its words. Razor-sharp shards of ice fell from the ceiling, and Fost thought the walls lurched inwards an inch. 'But hurry! I can't. . . keep . . . this up . . . much longer.'
Moriana dug in the pack. 5he found two splinters of pine and thrust them toward the courier. His groping fingers found them in the blackness. From his own pack he drew flint and steel and a tinder-bowl. Here in the bowels of the glacier the air was moist and not good for fire-making. Fumbling with haste, it took Fost several tries to get a spark into the tinder. One fell into the dry lichen, glowed, waned. He blew frantically.
With a small sizzling noise, a flame flared up. Hastily Fost lit the splinters. The resinous wood caught eagerly and burned with a smoky yellow light. The ice walls of the crack threw back the light in eye-stabbing golden spears. Fost blinked away the glare and the party hurried on.
A moan came from the bouncing satchel. 'Oh, make haste, make haste!' Erimenes cried. 'I can feel Guardian weakening. The walls will crush us at any moment, and I shall be entombed in ice forever. Woe!'
'Your home city is ice-entombed, so it's not unfitting you should be too.' Fost panted the words, short of breath from the effort of running along the slick, uneven surface. Despite his flip response he was no less worried than the spirit. He felt the trembling in the walls, as if their muscles were overtired and failing fast.
A sharp report rolled through the crevice. The ice walls shifted. Moriana screamed as they touched her shoulders.
Running ahead of her, Fost gasped as the hardness pressed in on both sides. His shoulders were forced inward, his arms beginning to pop from their sockets, Erimenes keened despair.
The glacier groaned. The walls slid back, though not as far as they'd been before.
Time is short,' Guardian groaned. The words boomed out around Fost and Moriana, who felt as though they scurried along the inside of a giant drum while it was being beaten by a drummer. 'The next time the walls slip, I can help . . . you . . . no . . . moooore!'
Fost pounded his hand against Erimenes's satchel. In his own frenzy of fear and desperation he could not bear the spirit's wailing. Is this how it ends ? he thought frantically. So near to eternal life, to have life crushed from me? I see no end to this crevice. How can we get out before the walls close in? Claustrophobic fingers clutched at his throat. O Ust, how can we escape?
Moriana seized his arm. 'There,' she shouted. 'Up ahead - to the left!' The dark gleam of ice was interrupted by a patch of blackness perfectly round and wider than Fost was tall. Fost put on a burst of speed, racing with Moriana at his side. Halfway, his feet slipped. His legs pumped harder and the last ten yards were crossed in a sort of running fall. He reached the tunnel, twisted to the side and dived in, sliding thirty feet on his belly. Something soft bumped his bootsoles.
He turned. 'Moriana!'
The princess nodded, brushing back blonde hair. Behind her the crack slammed shut with a sound that made their insides quiver.
Moriana and Fost crawled toward each other, reached and clung like babies, shakingwith reaction. Had it not been tor the tunnel, they would have been pulverized more thoroughly than any denizen of the Valley of Crushed Bones.
The same thought struck both at once. Why was the tunnel here? And why hadn't it closed as well?
'I shouldn't tarry here, if I were you two.' The terror was gone from Erimenes's voice, and his usual truculence had taken its place. 'This tunnel was made by the ice-worms, if you haven't guessed, and that's why it hasn't been closed off. If the Guardian could shut them, he would have put an end to the worms long since.' The spirit paused. 'The worms are attracted to vibrations, you know. Best move along lest they put an end to you.'
The pair struggled to their feet. Swords swished into their hands. Fost still wore the long mail vest the bear-folk had given him; he had left behind the helmet and shield, which, while useful, were too burdensome to carry. It seemed pathetically little with which to defend against such beings as his imagination made the worms.
'Erimenes’ he said softly, hoping the vibrations of his voice wouldn't carry to any questing monsters. 'Can you get your bearings? Can you sense how we should proceed?'
'Naturally. If you fare along this tunnel, in a few hundred yards you'll come to a cross-tunnel that should bring you to the outskirts of Athalau. Ah, to see my home again!'
Sounds came through the ice as Fost and Moriana paced along the icy passage. Some were readily identifiable as the sounds of the glacier, settlings and rumblings and deep shifting. Others they couldn't recognize: sounds that had a furtive tone that made the two uneasy. Fost wondered if Erimenes had lied about being able to sense where they were and how to reach the city from there. If he told the truth, it was further evidence that the shade possessed formidable powers. Who knew what he might be able to do as he came even nearer to the city of his birth?
'Erimenes,' Moriana asked, 'is it wise to burn these torches? Won't they eat our air?'
'Tut, tut, my dear, fear not. The ice-worm tunnels have thoroughly honeycombed our friend the Guardian; little wonder he's so annoyed. Some of their tunnels reach the surface. The beasts feed on other dwellers in the glacier and sometimes on each other. But at times they venture out at night to feed on the ice.' 'At night?' 'They loathe the I ight. Even the antarctic sun, feeble as it is, suffices to kill them.'
The tunnel twisted ahead of them. The two tried to go as quietly as they could, but it proved difficult. Footfalls slap-slap-slapped away from them, seeming to grow in volume as they preceded the travelers. When Moriana tried running her feet along the ice without lifting them, the rasping sound was nearly as loud. They just had to run lightly and fast-and pray.
'Just a few yards more, my children,' Erimenes told them. 'Around this next bend is the crossway I told you about. So I regret to inform you . . .'
Fost rounded the bend and dug in his heels. The ice failed to give purchase. He slid forward, pinwheeling his arms, and fell onto his rump.
'. . . there are the worms,' Erimenes finished unnecessarily. Scrambling, Fost got to his feet. Moriana stood beside him, her sword a crimson arc in the torchlight. Twenty feet away the ice-worms waited.
Like greatly magnified earthworms, but the color of snow, their segmented bodies tapered to blunt ends, and these were tipped with hard-looking black caps, A knot of them filled the passageway, writhing together so that the horrified pair couldn't tell how many they faced. The creatures came in assorted sizes, from one a foot thick to a giant better than four feet through the middle. How long the things might be neither Fost nor Mor
iana could guess.
The largest worm moved forward, crowding aside its lesser fellows. Short, stiff cilia in its rear segments gripped the ice while its forepart squeezed toward them, elongating. The travelers drew back, swords warily extended. The monster's anterior segments widened, the bristles bit and it drew its body forward with a gruesome slithering.
The head rose, blind and questing. The black cap opened like a flower. The shiny surface split into four even wedges like pieces of a pie and opened to reveal a broad, slimy throat. Inside were toothed sphincters that pulsated even as the humans watched.
They loathe the light went through Fost's brain. He thrust his torch before him like a rapier and lunged. Hissing, the worm drew back.
'Ha!' the courier shouted. 'These worms are not so much. See how it fears the flame? Into the tunnel, Moriana.' Advancing a step at a time, he drove the giant worm back far enough that the princess could slip by and into the side passage. Behind the great worm others thrashed in rage, slamming their heads against the walls and hissing angrily.
'There,' said Fost smugly. 'Nothing to it.' The ice-worm lunged. Fost threw himself backward. The vast mouth encircled the torch and the jaws slammed together. The tunnel plunged into absolute darkness.
Fost fell again, propelling himself backward with his legs. He felt rather than saw the bulk of the worm coming after him.
'Erimenes, you threacherous blue fart! You said they hated the light, said it could kill them!'
His eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. From the side passage Moriana's torch cast a feeble glow. It illuminated the head of the worm, striking this way and that in blind agony.
'Sunlight can kill them,' the spirit's voice floated out. 'They hate light of any sort, but torchlight poses no danger to them. Athalar scientists long theorized that some component found in sunlight but missing from torchlight is what kills them. And, as has just been amply demonstrated, sufficiently keen hunger can overcome their aversion to light weaker than that of the sun.'
'I don't want a lecture. How do I kill the damned things?' 'That,' said the philosopher primly, 'is rather your problem, is it not?'
Distracted, Fost missed the creature's quick, purposeful movement. It had recovered from the frenzy of pain the torch had caused it. Nearly too late, Fost snatched back his hand as the head darted forward. Chitinous jaws clacked shut an inch from his fingertips.
He jabbed with his sword, felt it bite. The head jerked back with a hiss of annoyance. The worm's breath smelled like a mouldering corpse. Fost heard a sound like an axe chopping wood. The head reared back, giving off a thin, whistling scream.
'I'll help you, Fost,' he heard Moriana call. 'I'm attacking the thing. Great Ultimate, but it's slimy!'
Her sword struck again. The worm keened and went for Fost. He hacked, his blade bouncing off a mandible. The head pulled back, swaying. Moriana's blows fell with a regular rhythm, but the worm ignored her now, keeping its attention firmly on the courier. He was on his feet again, crouched low, dagger in one hand and his sword in the other. He tried to match the unpredictable movements of the ghastly head, but the thing was quick. Again and again the worm's head snapped forward. Fost met it as best he could with parries. The worm shot forward, lurching over the defense of his dagger. The quartet of jaws gouged his left bicep even as the dagger sank into wormflesh. He thrust his sword deep into the fourth ring-segment. The worm withdrew. His blade slipped free covered with foul yellow slime.
'Fost! I've done it!' Moriana cried in triumph. 'I've cut the thing in two!'
'Many thanks, Princess,' he called. Thinking his enemy slain, he started forward.
The worm's head slammed into his breast. The jaws closed with a crunching sound. Mail rings snapped like spun sugar, and Fost gasped as muscles tore. He cut wildly at the gleaming segments, dropping his dagger to push at the rubbery, slick hide.
'Gormanka, won't anything kill this thing?' A frantic wrench freed him. He fell back, feeling his blood gush from the wound in his chest.
'Merely dissecting it will most assuredly not do so,' Erimenes said. 'You must strike the brain to kill it.'
Not seeming to miss its latter half, the worm hunched forward, stalking Fost. It had the taste of his blood now. It hungered for more.
'Where is its brain?' Fost shouted. 'In the head, naturally. On top, within the fourth and fifth ring-segments. Can't miss it.' The philosopher indulged in a chuckle. 'At least, you'd better not...'
Fost heard the other worms feasting on the large one's tail. The flesh tore with a blubbering sound that sickened him. He wondered how his own would sound as the black jaws rent it.
With sudden inspiration he reversed his grip on the sword. The basket made it hard to hold point-downward. He met the worm's sallies with jabs, goading it to fury. It was too quick for him to sink a killing thrust, but he lacerated the flesh around its mouth until the head was smeared with ichor.
At last, frustrated in its attempts to reach the man-thing with its crushing jaws by rearing, the worm dropped its head low and struck serpentlike along the floor. It was what Fost had been awaiting. As it struck he dived, flinging his legs out behind him and stabbing down. The sword point struck between the fourth and fifth segments and sank deep.
The worm's death-throes slammed Fost against the roof of the tunnel. He hung on grimly, but the spasms were too violent and tore loose his hold on the sword. Dashed to the floor, he lay there feeling like a giant bruise until the thing was still.
His hilt protruded from the monster's neck. Its struggles had driven the sword full-length into it so that Fost had to pull with both hands to free the weapon. Then he stood back taking stock of the situation.
The bulk of the dead worm lay between Fost and its fellows, leaving no room to pass. It also lay between Fost and Moriana. He frowned, absently wiping blood and worm gore from his chest.
'Well done, Fost,' congratulated Erimenes. 'You didn't seem any too concerned, spirit in a jug. Did the prospect of riding about in a worm's gut not upset you?' Fost asked.
'Oh, I was confident of Moriana's overcoming the brute, even if you failed.' Erimenes sounded cheerful. 'Besides, I might have been able to make it -' He bit off the sentence abruptly.
'Make it what?' Fost asked, suspicions blooming within him. 'Make it, uh, well, you see - make it into an enlightening experience?' A rising note made the sentence into a question. Fost shook his head. The spirit was lying, and he didn't like what that implied.
He opened his mouth. Moriana's cry overrode his question. 'Fost! Hurry! The worms are eating their way through the dead one's tail.'
Cursing that he had no time to pursue the matter with Erimenes, Fost cast about for a way of reaching the side tunnel. The worm had drawn its forepart up to anchor itself for the fight with Fost, which meant its segments had spread out to fill most of the tunnel. He couldn't get by on the sides and there wasn't sufficient room to squeeze along its top. The grisly sounds of feasting grew nearer.
'If I may make a suggestion?' Erimenes asked hesitantly. Fost stared at him. 'The ice-worms, like their earth-delving cousins, consist largely of a tube within a tube. This one's alimentary passage, as I'm sure you noted, is more than sufficient to accommodate your girth.'
'Are you suggesting . . .?' Fost swallowed heavily as he eyed the body of the worm.
'Do you see any other way?' Moriana called again for him to hurry. He chewed the inside of his cheek. Nausea and horror squirmed to knot in his belly at what Erimines proposed, but he could see no alternative. He sheathed his sword, unslung the satchel and dropped to his knees. Taking a deep breath, he forced open the ice-worm's jaws and crawled in.
Blackness and stink assailed his senses. The teeth rimming the large sphincters tore at his flesh where it was exposed. He shut his eyes, mouth and nose and began to wiggle forward, glad he didn't have to see where he was going.
The oozing walls of the intestine closed in around him, caressing him with a touch unsettlingly like that of the tentac
led, human-faced guardian of Kleta-atelk's cliff. His mouth filled with sour vomit. He made himself swallow it and moved on.
Digestive acids stung his flesh. The open cuts on his arms and chest felt as though coals had been dropped into them. His face stung. Ropes of mucus trailed over his lips and nose and tangled in his hair. He felt madness rising within him. I'm trapped in here, he thought irrationally. Trapped forever in the stench and the filth and the clamminess and the darkness, gods, the darkness. ..
His hand probed ahead of him and found cool air. Then the other, dragging Erimenes's satchel, broke free of the worm's gut. Finally his head emerged, dripping and fetuslike into the glare of Moriana's torch. The princess dropped to her knees with a glad cry, leaned forward to kiss him. She stopped abruptly.
He shook his head. Droplets of milky digestive fluid flew. He carefully rubbed his eyes clear of it before opening them.
'Fost, I'm so glad you made it,' said Moriana. He marked how she kept her head held away and smiled. 'If you're so pleased, how about a welcoming kiss?'