by Jen Williams
‘Shit!’
Clinging to Mendrick’s neck she closed her eyes and braced for the splash, but instead they landed with a messy crunch, quickly followed by a deafening chorus of chittering and clicking.
‘What the—?’
Wydrin opened her eyes. They had landed in a swirling mass of giant centipedes, all squirming together on the floor of a giant chamber. She and Mendrick had apparently fallen directly onto the back of one of them, causing its stringy yellow guts to explode messily all over its neighbours. Glancing to the head of the creature, she saw it raise its head weakly and wave lightly furred antennae, before keeling over.
We’re here, said Mendrick in her head.
‘We’re what?’
‘Wydrin? Wydrin, are you there?’
Nuava appeared out of the gloom, clambering over the back of one of the writhing creatures, stumbling slightly as she came. Her clothes had been torn and she was spattered with centipede gore, but otherwise she looked unharmed. Wydrin waved at her.
‘It just dropped me,’ she said. Her voice was trembling. ‘It brought me all the way down here and just dropped me.’
‘Perhaps it was giving you a lift.’
Now that they were down in the chamber, the centipedes did indeed seem to be ignoring them. Wydrin urged Mendrick towards the girl, and the werken moved awkwardly against the whirling tide. The centipedes were all moving together, circling a stone edifice in the middle of the cavern which Wydrin couldn’t see clearly.
‘I could do without help like that,’ said Nuava. They reached her and Wydrin pulled her up onto the back of the werken. ‘I think I threw up a little.’
‘Entirely understandable,’ said Wydrin. ‘I think I need to throw up a little myself.’
Next to them, a centipede moved past with something stiff and furry in its mandibles. It took Wydrin a moment to figure out that it was a dead fox like the ones outside the cave, now hanging from the monster’s jaws, its legs limp.
‘Where’s it going with that?’ she said, to no one in particular. ‘Do they just enjoy carrying things around?’
I imagine, she heard Mendrick within her head, that it’s taking it to feed her.
‘What do you mean, “her”?’ asked Wydrin, but already her stomach was trying to crawl out of her throat. Looking closer at the stone edifice, she realised that it wasn’t entirely made of stone at all but of grainy grey flesh and strange, bulbous sacs. She saw a great pulsating maw in the middle, fleshy and pink, and a set of nine black eyes set in a circle around it, all vibrating slightly. There were skeletal appendages sprouting from behind the jaws, and as Wydrin watched, one of the centipedes approached the creature, with what looked like a dead goat in its mandibles. The centipede reared up, launching the front half of its body into the air, and the skeletal arms of the vast creature reached down and plucked the offering from it. There was a brief moment of consideration as it turned the goat around in its claws, before the animal was popped whole into the gaping throat.
‘Oh, shit.’
I did say that the centipedes were not themselves carnivorous, said Mendrick in his polite, distant tone. The nexus is beneath her, by the way. She is resting her egg sacs upon it.
‘Oh shit.’
36
‘Did you hear that?’
Prince Dallen was up on his feet, ice-spear in hand. Sebastian blinked rapidly – he’d been dozing off, thinking of Ephemeral and her sisters, wondering what they were doing now – and looked around. Evening had been settling over them in this strange land with its short days, and now the snow and rocks were soaked in a deepening indigo light.
‘Hear what?’ He stood up, trying to shake some life back into his limbs.
‘There was a rumble, far below.’ Dallen lifted up his cold-light, turning it on the dark, and then back onto the cave entrance. There was nothing. ‘More than likely it was just the earth shifting far below, but I might take a quick look around.’
Dallen made to walk away, but slipped on a loose patch of stones. His wounded leg gave out on him, dropping him towards the ground but Sebastian was faster. He grabbed the young prince by the upper arm, and held him steady.
‘Hold on, Dallen, take it easy. That leg of yours hasn’t quite caught up with the rest of you yet.’
Dallen laughed, a rueful expression on his face.
‘At least I got you to call me Dallen. And it only took me falling over like a newly born calf.’
Sebastian smiled back. ‘I could never resist a prince in distress. Uh, that’s to say—’
Suddenly Dallen had slipped an arm around his neck and was kissing him, his lips cold against Sebastian’s own. Startled, Sebastian took an involuntary step backwards, before thinking better of it and wrapping his arms around the smaller man’s waist. The prince tasted of snow and strong alcohol, and a deeper mineral taste Sebastian couldn’t place. After a few moments in which Sebastian completely forgot how cold he was, and how dangerous their situation, Dallen pulled away from him, staggering slightly. His blue eyes were wild.
‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered, shaking his head, ‘I don’t . . . I’m sorry.’
Sebastian cleared his throat. He could still taste the prince, so cold and strange and completely welcome. He ran a hand through his hair, his heart racing. He hadn’t kissed anyone since Gallo, and he’d forgotten what that heady rush was like. How terrible, to forget such a thing, he thought.
‘Nothing to be sorry about. Nothing at all. Really.’ The prince was leaning over slightly, one hand on his chest. ‘Are you unwell, Dallen?’
The prince laughed slightly, shaking his head. ‘It’s just that you’re so warm. I’ve never . . . not with a warmling. Being near you is exhausting.’
That surprised a laugh out of Sebastian. ‘I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.’
Dallen looked up at him, grinning.
‘It’s pleasure and pain at the same time. To be near such a source of warmth.’ He shook his head. ‘It was an exhilarating experience, but I suspect too much could kill me.’
‘Well,’ Sebastian took a step towards him, ‘I’m not sure I’ve said this for a number of years, but . . . we could take it slowly?’
‘We’ll have to be fast.’
They’d found a small alcove at the outer edge of the chamber. Wydrin and Nuava had scrunched up inside it, peering out at the centipedes over the barrier of Mendrick’s still form. Now they were out of the way the centipedes paid them no attention at all, but that wasn’t making Wydrin feel any safer. The sound of thousands of chitinous legs scratching against the stone was deafening, and there was a rank, alien smell to the place, like the wet underside of a forgotten rock. The giant creature at the centre of this mass adoration was continuing to accept its offerings, happily pushing each new corpse deep into its cavernous throat. The thing didn’t look to be getting full up any time soon.
‘Are you insane?’ hissed Nuava. ‘You’re seriously going to go over to that thing? They were going to feed me to it!’
‘That’s where the nexus is, so that’s where we’re going.’ She glanced at Nuava’s stricken expression. ‘Yes, I said we. Unless you’d like to stay here and study these creepy-crawly bastards? Just in case they hold the key to your mastering the Edeian and becoming an all-powerful pain in the arse like your aunt?’
Nuava scowled. ‘We won’t get more than ten feet.’
Wydrin shifted so that she was leaning on one elbow and pointed with her free hand.
‘You see that hideous wobbly yellow sac thing that’s draped over the lower half of the rock?’
Nuava nodded.
‘Mendrick says there’s an entrance under there, a gap that leads directly to the net of Edeian that connects all of these mountains together. It’s the only way through. Now, I doubt that Mummy Centipede is going to move for us, even if we ask nicely.’ Wydrin wriggled a little further out of their hiding place, trying to see better. It actually looked like the giant sprawling monste
r couldn’t move, or at least couldn’t move much; Wydrin could see large patches of the strange glowing foliage growing over both the creature’s egg sacs and the rocks below it. The thing probably hadn’t moved in years. ‘So what we’ll need to do is distract it.’ Reaching to her belt she pulled Frostling out of its scabbard and passed it to Nuava, who took it with a look of horror on her face. ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose that. I’ll feed you to Mummy Centipede myself if you do.’
‘What am I going to need this for?’ Nuava was still looking at the dagger like Wydrin had handed her a freshly toasted weasel.
‘You’re going to need it, Nuava, to cut through that thing’s egg sac.’ Wydrin pulled herself out of the hole entirely, and, still crouching, drew Glassheart from its scabbard. ‘I’d do a quick job of it, if I were you.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to keep its attention elsewhere. Just get that egg sac out of the way for me, and be ready to run.’
‘But I can’t . . .’
‘Of course you can. You’ve got my lucky dagger, haven’t you?’
Nuava watched, speechless, as the sell-sword woman, sword in hand, scrambled up on top of the werken and crashed off into the crowd of centipedes. There was an immediate uproar as Mendrick stamped over several segmented bodies, and Nuava saw centipedes leaning back on their rear legs, mandibles slashing at the air as Wydrin and the werken passed by, heading for the centre of the cavern.
‘By all the gods, what is she doing?’
Wydrin was shouting now, waving her sword at any centipede that got too close. Her blade connected with the side of one’s head, slicing clear through its wetly shining eyes and splattering Wydrin’s leather armour with black ichor. The enormous creature with the egg sacs stopped its relentless feeding session and turned to watch, its gore-smeared mouth hanging open.
With a lurch, Nuava realised that this was her moment. She shuffled out of the hole, both hands wrapped awkwardly around Frostling’s hilt, and then stopped. The centipedes were still churning by, still ignoring her, but she would have to go past them to reach the egg sac. She would have to go through them.
‘I can’t do this,’ she muttered. ‘I just can’t!’
Across the cavern, Wydrin had reached the stone outcrop where the giant creature sat, and was now leading Mendrick in tight circles, jabbing her sword at the rolls of shiny, grey flesh. Horrifyingly, she looked as though she were enjoying herself. Nuava shook her head to try and clear it.
‘I can’t do this,’ she said again, all too aware that there was no one there to hear her excuses. ‘I’ve never even held a proper weapon before. I’ve barely even been outside the walls of Skaldshollow!’
Except that wasn’t entirely true, she reminded herself. She remembered the knife Tamlyn had given her, that she had used to cut the fingers from a Narhl corpse, and then later failed to use on the resurrected Joah Demonsworn. In the uncertain greenish light and the alien-smelling dark, Nuava’s face flushed with shame and guilt.
‘I did that demon’s bidding,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘And I failed to avenge my brother. If nothing else, I can do this. I can try to do this.’
Without pausing to think about it further, Nuava got to her feet and ran. Immediately she was met by the scurrying form of a centipede, its narrow legs scrabbling in the dust, so she used her momentum to clamber up over it. The creature’s back was smooth and slippery, and it wriggled in outrage, almost causing her to lose her balance and fall straight back to the floor, but she jumped, landing on the back of another. This one writhed, rippling its back to throw her off and, without thinking, Nuava plunged Frostling down between one of its segments. The blade bit deep and she held on for dear life as the insect bucked like an untamed horse.
Nuava glanced over to where Wydrin was. The sell-sword was still shouting, her sword a flickering sliver of silver in the poor light, but there were more centipedes around her than there had been before. It seemed they had finally perceived her as a threat to their queen, and Nuava suspected Wydrin had only a few minutes before she was overwhelmed by insectile bodies.
Pulling the blade free with a yell, Nuava threw herself from the back of one centipede to the next, keeping her eyes on the distant egg sac that was her goal.
They can’t stop me, she told herself, nothing can stop me.
Twice she fell, hitting the rock floor on her side, briefly lost in a terrifying world of translucent orange legs, needle-like and unrelenting, and once the head of a centipede hit her flat on the stomach, its furred mandibles churning against her vest, its antennae slapping wetly against her neck. Nuava slashed out with Frostling, screamingly wordlessly, and fled before she could see what damage she had done.
And suddenly she was there. The rock rose in front of her, dotted here and there with the weird glowing plant. Nuava shoved Frostling through her belt and scrambled up until she saw the fat yellow bulge of the egg sac. She glanced up. The centipede queen rose above her like a quivering monolith, strange skeletal arms striking out at something Nuava couldn’t see. At the moment, it was paying her no attention.
That’ll soon change, thought Nuava grimly.
She focussed back on the egg sac. It was enormous, almost as long as she was tall, and it thickened towards the bottom like a great teardrop. The skin of it was tight and faintly see-through; in the intermittent light she could see the shadows of tiny, many-legged things, curled and waiting within the sac. And somewhere beyond it was the opening that led to the nexus.
Nuava drew Frostling from her belt, preparing to start slashing at the sac, and then paused again.
‘If I just start stabbing wildly, that thing will turn on me,’ she muttered under her breath. Her mind immediately provided an image of her being speared by one of those skeletal arms, and dangled over the queen centipede’s hungry mouth. ‘I need to do this quickly, and in the least number of cuts.’
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to look again, more slowly this time. Look at how it fits together, Nuava. She could almost hear Tamlyn’s voice in her head, her stern face devoid of sympathy. One of the key principles of crafting a werken was looking at how an object’s component parts fitted together. Except apparently they’re not objects, she thought, and then pushed the thought away.
The sac was attached to the main body of the creature only at the very top, where it hung from a number of waxy-looking pustules. Nuava pulled herself up further onto the rock, until she was lying alongside the sac, and with one quick movement drew the edge of Frostling across it, just under the pustules.
Several things happened at once. First of all, the centipede mother screamed, a noise so loud and piercing that Nuava very nearly fell straight off the rock and back into the press of centipedes. The sac itself dropped like a stone and hit the ground below in an enormous splash, scattering white fluid and half-formed baby centipedes everywhere. The centipedes on the ground stopped their endless circling and began to writhe, driven into some sort of madness by the contents of the egg sac. Nuava was so busy watching this that she was very nearly impaled by the flailing skeletal arm that swung down from above her. She glanced up to look into the shivering, nine-eyed gaze of the centipede queen.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought such a face could convey anger so accurately. Fascinating.’
‘Watch out!’ Wydrin came careering around the corner on the back of Mendrick, sword outstretched. As she passed she leaned out and scored a long tear in the queen’s gut, spilling more foul-smelling blood. ‘Get in the bloody hole, you idiot!’
Nuava didn’t need to be told twice. Dropping to her hands and knees she crawled into the hole as rapidly as she could, scraping and tearing her trousers on the jagged rocks. Inside it was pitch-black and she couldn’t see an inch in front of her face – no wobbling light plants in here – but it was still preferable to the screaming horror in the chamber. She heard Wydrin climb in behind her, followed by the solid stone footsteps of Mendrick, who promptly s
at in the entrance to the tunnel, blocking off all light and any overly attentive centipedes. Despite herself, Nuava gasped as a strong hand grabbed her upper arm. She could hear the grin in Wydrin’s voice.
‘I’d say that went pretty well, wouldn’t you?’
37
It was a mistake to be here.
Sebastian knew it even as he passed the low stone walls that marked the boundary of the village. His father had hewn those stones, and had built part of that wall. He had spent many of his later years repairing it, often while young Sebastian watched, dangling his legs off the side, munching on the handful of nuts his mother had given him that morning.
It was a mistake, but the brood sisters needed things that couldn’t be grown or scavenged from their hiding place – rope, oil, soaps, salt – and this was the closest place.
There are other villages, he told himself even as he walked past the wooden smoking huts that marked the boundary of Ragnaton, the scent of the yellow fish thick in the air. Another day’s walk and you would find yourself in a village where you did not grow up. And you swore you would never come back here.
‘It seems I never made an oath I wouldn’t break,’ Sebastian muttered under his breath.
It had been many years since he’d walked this dirt track, but everything looked much as it had done. The stone markers that led the way to the village square – again, most of them carved and put down by his father, Samuel Carverson – were still there, pitted and colourful with moss, yellow and green. He passed the shrine to Isu, which had at least seen a coat of paint since he’d left, shining blue and red in the sun. Idols carved from mountain rock twirled at the end of their ropes, the copper bells clattering their childish music to the air. Sebastian paused, as he had always done before, mouthing a brief prayer to the mountain god before moving on.