by Jack Conner
“I meant I don’t think we’ll get the chance. They take the women first, then massacre the men. By now they will have figured out one of their kidnapping parties hasn’t returned, and—”
Avery heard more distinctly what he’d detected a minute before. There came the scuffings of feet on stone, of powerful bodies propelling themselves down cold halls. Something hooted. Something shrieked.
They were very close.
Avery reached down and wrestled a metal trident out of the hands of one of the smoking ngvandi. The weapon was cold and heavy and charred. He stared at it in wonder. Am I really doing this?
“Shit,” said Janx, drawing his pistol.
Muirblaag claimed another trident. “Guess I always knew it would come down to this.”
Byron looked as if he wanted to weep. Then his eyes settled on Layanna. “She’ll save us.”
Layanna remained entranced in her ethereal substances. As Avery watched, she seemed to float higher off the ground, and her amoeba sac swelled. Strange lights filled the gelatinous substances inside. There was little left of the victimized ngvandi now, just bones. Even those were dissolving. Avery knew it hadn’t been the creature’s flesh that she had truly craved, however, but the energies within it, or fused with it on some other plane.
“They may not kill us,” Muirblaag offered. “They may just make us wish they had.”
“Sell it dearly.” This was Janx’s advice.
The hooting and gibbering drew closer, and the scuff of feet and claws on stone.
Sweat beaded Avery’s brow. Cornered, he thought. Mari, Ani, I’ll be with you soon. Squaring his shoulders, he backed away from the doorway that had no door and joined the others as they formed a semi-circle facing the entrance. Layanna occupied the center, swollen, majestic and terrible.
Visibly shaking, Byron drew out his knife. “Fuck me.”
Something hooted in the hallway beyond. The ngvandi had found the right floor.
Avery raised his trident. It was a fitting room to die in, he thought. The room that Princess Syra herself may have been a captive in.
The ngvandi came closer.
He blinked.
A howl sent shivers down his spine.
No, of course not. Foolish ...
The ngvandi screamed in bloodlust. They had almost reached the room.
But maybe ...
Shuffling, scraping. Very near.
Maybe ...
Holding his breath, Avery swiveled his head. His eyes scanned the room. It can’t be, he thought. Surely.
A horrible screech shook the room.
He quit the line of defenders and marched toward the far wall. All the stories agreed that it had been through the wall opposite the doorway that Prince Cort had come. It was always important because he’d been within sight of the door. Even as he’d spirited Princess Syra through the secret entrance, someone had opened the main door, spotted them and raised the alarm. The breathless escape that followed, including the masquerade, was one of the highlights of the tale, no matter which version.
Avery probed the wall.
“What the hell you doin’?” Janx said. “Get your ass back here!”
Avery threw down his trident and studied the wall.
The ngvandi burst into the room. The stink of fish and rot filled the chamber. Their howls chilled Avery’s blood. He turned once, to see the brachial, nightmarish figures fall on the line of defenders. Janx fired his pistol point-blank into one’s face. Brain matter mushroomed out the back of its head. Byron ducked one creature’s claws, stabbed it in the gut, then slashed the throat of another. Muirblaag rammed his trident into the ribcage of an attacker, and it reeled back, knocking into another.
Layanna’s amoeba form swelled still more. She lifted higher off the ground, her sac glowing brighter. Her limbs shot out.
The ngvandi screamed as her tentacles and flagella wrapped around them, crushed them, stung them, shoved them inside her sac wall. Others fell back and dropped to their knees, seeming to pray.
Avery returned his attention to the wall. His fingers felt, probed, explored. There! A sconce. Perhaps the sconce. Some versions held that it was twisting the torch which opened the door. The torch was long gone, but Avery played with the niche, his fingers probing. Nothing happened. Others held that a stone near the floor beneath the sconce did the trick. Avery tried it.
Byron screamed behind him. Janx cursed.
Shit. Avery shouldn’t be wasting time with this. He should be helping the others.
Still, he had to try out one more version. This one held that by depressing a stone to either side of the sconce ...
Nothing.
Muirblaag hollered behind him.
Avery started to turn back. No, he thought. Just one more. Some versions held that it wasn’t the stone immediately to the left and right but top and bottom—
He shoved. Something ... gave. He pressed the stones even harder. The mechanism was ancient, rusty and reluctant. With all his strength, he shoved, one hand on one panel, one on the other.
Shouts and echoes behind him.
With a groan, a panel in the wall swung open. Avery stared at it, astonished. The opening was smaller than he would have imagined, no more than four feet by four, and it was dusty and cold, spanned by spider webs, but—
“Come on!” he shouted over the sounds of battle. “This way!”
One by one, the others noticed what he was gesturing them to do. Shocked, Janx, who had fired his last shot, smashed one more ngvandi over the head with his pistol and loped toward Avery. Muirblaag and Byron followed.
Laughing somewhat hysterically, Avery scooped up a lantern and motioned for them to enter the opening. Byron went first, Muirblaag second, then Janx. Both had to stoop and squeeze to fit. Layanna, swollen and monstrous, held off the advancing ngvandi.
Avery paused at the door. “Layanna!” he shouted. “Come on!”
She remained where she was. She was not even engaged in combat with the ngvandi anymore. Instead, they ringed her, chanting and prostrate. They bowed toward her, lifted themselves up, and bowed again. Something cold slithered through Avery’s guts.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Hurry, while they’re distracted!”
Still she floated there, serene, basking in her worshippers.
A handful of ngvandi slipped around the edges of the room, making for Avery and his tunnel. He had time for one last try.
“Please!” he shouted. “All this will have been for nothing without you!”
She turned, just once, and made eye contact with him. “Go.” He heard the word even through the sac. Perhaps she had sent it directly to his mind. Then she returned to her worshippers.
Avery just managed to slam the door in the faces of the oncoming ngvandi. Holding the lantern, gasping, he turned to Janx, Byron and Muirblaag. They huddled on a tight set of stairs. Ngvandi fingernails scratched the stone on the other side of the wall. Avery heard muffled, horrible howls.
Byron speared a huge spider with his knife and shook it off. Avery’s lantern illuminated more spider webs beyond.
Janx and Muirblaag stared at Avery.
“She’s not comin’?” Janx said.
Avery ran a hand over his face. “No. She’s not.”
Fists pounded the door on the other side. More nails scratched.
“Let move,” Byron said.
The little man led the way, and Avery tried not to think about Layanna as they filed down the tight staircase, found a connecting tunnel, another set of stairs, and kept going. The secret ways wound and forked, narrowed and widened. A whole system of hidden passageways lurked between the chambers of the fortress. Avery did not really believe that this was Maar Keep, it couldn’t be, surely, the world didn’t work that way, and the chamber he had found the passageway in surely couldn’t be the old cell of Princess Syra, but either way this was a quite a complex system of secret halls. Some ancient lord had been quite paranoid, or perhaps he had simply liked to spy on th
e chambermaids.
In any event, in their bumbling, cursing fashion, the four eventually found an opening to the outside on the ground level. Cold air gusted in, bringing with it snow and the scent of pines. Avery wrapped his coat about himself and marched outside behind the others. Beyond was snow and mountain.
And a horde of ngvandi.
Layanna stood in their center. She was not encased in her amoeba-form anymore but looked normal, healthy, and strangely sad. The ngvandi grouped around her worshipfully. Hildra, bound and gagged, struggled against her captors some yards away.
Layanna stepped forward, toward the four, who now huddled by the opening, wary and tense. “I’m sorry, but the ngvandi have known of the secret passages for years,” she said in Octunggen. “They’re small and cramped and impractical for their use. Please, tell the others to drop their weapons.”
Avery translated, but Janx and Muirblaag made no move to disarm.
“Tell them not to worry,” Layanna said. “I’ve convinced the ngvandi that I’m a god, and I’ve instructed them not to harm you.”
“Tell ‘em to release Hildra,” Janx said.
Layanna spoke to the ngvandi in their own language, and in moments Hildra, freed of the ropes that had tied her wrists, hurried toward Janx and the others, cursing and rubbing her flesh where the ropes had dug in. Janx, surprising Avery, kissed her on the forehead, then passed her a knife. Muirblaag patted her on the back.
“You were right to run,” Layanna told Avery. “They would’ve killed you. But no more. They’re going to take me to their leaders, the Mnuthra—and hopefully to my friends in the Black Sect. My former Sect-mates and I agreed to meet at the place where the Mnuthra dwell if we ever got separated.”
“What about us?” Avery said.
The sadness in her face deepened. “I’m safe now, Doctor. You don’t need to go any further if you don’t want to.”
“Excuse me?”
“The ngvandi will take me to the Mnuthra and my friends, if any still live. The Mnuthra will tell me the location of an altar and together my friends and I will be able to make our way there and transmit the plans for the Device. The Mnuthra are the presence I came here to find. The ngvandi will help me, but I fear they’ll be hostile to you, and the powers I go to meet ... they will be even more dangerous.”
“And you think I’d send you to them alone?”
She stepped forward still more and squeezed his hands. “It must be your choice. I’ve gotten two of your company killed already, and I would not want to be responsible for more.”
Avery thought of risking Janx and the others further when he didn’t have to. Even if he chose to continue on, he could release them from their vows. And then I could protect her against the ngvandi with what—my wits?
“I’m going with you,” he told Layanna. “To the bitter end.” He did not have to add that he wouldn’t be going alone.
“Very well. But do not say I didn’t warn you.”
Chapter 14
“Wow,” Hildra said.
The view was impressive, Avery agreed. The ngvandi had marched them through a narrow pass and out the other side, and now jagged peaks piled higher and higher on the horizon, an infinite series of snow-capped walls and fangs that marched all the way to Ungraessot, clouds like a layer of sea foam drifting between them. The sight stole Avery’s breath.
Directly before them yawned a mist-filled gorge.
“We’re almost there,” Layanna said, raising her voice from the front.
“Thank the gods,” Byron said.
The ngvandi had led them on a march for days, rarely stopping, over one mountain, along a shoulder to another, then another. Avery’s feet had bled, and his soles had grown thick and hard. Constantly he’d kept on the lookout for rays, especially the one that had been sweeping in their direction the day of the attack, but if any were present, trees and bulwarks of stone kept them from view.
Wind blew up from the gorge, carrying with it chips of ice and snow. The ngvandi led the party toward it, and Avery saw that a rope-and-wood bridge spanned the space between this mountain and the next, a span that seemed enormous, maybe a mile across. Through the mist Avery couldn’t tell what waited on the other side. The bridge simply disappeared into a white wall.
“Don’t tell me we have to cross that,” whined Byron.
They did. The ngvandi and their guests filed across, only a few permitted on the bridge at a time. When Layanna crossed, no others went with her, such was their deference, and the group had to wait for what seemed like half an hour or more before horns sounded from the other side, signaling that Layanna had arrived safely. Then, with shouts and threatening gestures the ngvandi encouraged Avery and the others over the abyss, all at once. The bridge creaked and swayed beneath Avery’s feet, and he wanted to mash his eyes shut but didn’t dare. The drop below sucked at him, pulled him, almost hungrily.
As he approached the other side, the mist thinned, and he saw a great mountain face dotted with ruins. All three moons shone down, bathing the scene in ghostly splendor. The great fortress of some long-dead lord reared above the cluster of buildings, its towers limned in moon-lit snow, purple light flooding from its tall, stained-glass windows, many broken. Keeps and smaller dwellings thrust out from the cliffs beneath it, as well as slopes and flat areas covered in buildings. It was a sizeable town, perhaps a city. Likely it had been taken and re-taken by both sides more than once during the Severance. When Avery saw the dark cave-like openings in the mountainside, he understood. Mines. The mountain must be riddled with mines, and as such would be quite valuable.
The ngvandi herded him and the others over the bridge and into the city. Cobbled streets wound and forked, snaking up the mountain and down, a city built on tiers. The buildings leaned and crumbled. It was clear the ngvandi had made attempts to brace and repair them, as Avery saw hastily-applied patches of mortar and stones of various colors set in scars along building facades and sides, but the place was still a ruin. Despite the night’s comparative brightness, Avery stumbled often on the uneven roads, and he made himself go slowly, or as slowly as the ngvandi would let him.
The corpses of men hung from parapets and walls, some mutilated and rotting, some mere bones, and Avery was glad for the curtain of night. Crows and batkin pecked at them and wheeled away. Grisly monoliths stood in the city squares, towers of obsidian with shadowy heaps at their bases; indiscernible at this distance, but from the shape and smell Avery could tell they were composed of corpses and body parts, surely human. Sacrifices? The ngvandi bowed to the monoliths and moved on.
Ngvandi clans huddled behind icy, moss-covered walls, nesting in hay and mud. Some stripped flesh from bone; the bones looked human. Others sang eerie songs in high towers.
“What is this damned place?” Janx asked Muirblaag.
“I’ve never been here,” Muirblaag said, “but I’ve heard about it. If this is the place I think it is, I’ve sometimes heard it called the Mnuthra-con, the city of the gods.”
Bare-backed men and women were whipped and beaten as they applied repairs to buildings, cleaned gutters, or were driven in and out of the dark mines, which seemed to be in use. The slaves, probably captured Ghenisan and Octunggen soldiers, dragged blocks of black stone from the tunnels. Many looked infected. Avery noticed a fish-like ridge growing along the spine of one woman, a skull transforming into a dark, mottled carapace on a man. Others simply looked sickly and pale. Intentionally infected, Avery realized. It must be. But why? To infect the prisoners the ngvandi would have to force-feed them diseased seafood, and the sea was far enough away to make transporting food from it a burden. It made no sense. And the black stones—what were they used for?
Several ngvandi elders emerged from a large building and conferred with those who’d brought Layanna, and when she made the air shimmer around her (some demonstration of her power? Avery thought so) they fell to their knees in worship. When she bid them rise, they gladly led the way toward the fortress above.<
br />
“Runners have come before us and prepared the way,” Layanna told Avery. “The ceremony is already begun.”
“Ceremony?”
“We go before the Mnuthra.”
After Avery translated, Muirblaag swore and appeared unnerved. Byron noticed and grew even more agitated. “What?” the little man said. “What is it?”
“We’re going before the ngvandi’s gods,” Muirblaag said.
“You mean, like a statue or something?”
“No. I mean their gods.”
The ngvandi led through various courtyards and up a winding cobbled road, toward the great fortress that hunched above the town. Purple light blazed from the stained-glass windows, and as Avery neared the building the chanting he’d heard grew louder. Layanna and the ngvandi leaders—priests, judging from the respect the others showed them, as well as their robes—led through the fortress’s ornate entrance, and Avery followed, grateful to be out of the chill mountain winds. He saw a great fireplace, but unfortunately no one had lit it. Didn’t they get cold? He was tempted to offer to do the honors himself. Numerous depictions of the Crowned Phoenix, the symbol of Ysstral noble house at the time, looked out from the walls, but the images had been defaced and vandalized over the years; it was impossible to tell by whom, or if the Crowned Phoenix might be replacing some older Ghenisan symbol.
The strange chanting reverberated down the high stone halls, magnified and staggered with echoes, making the sounds even more monstrous and eerie.
Elder ngvandi, perhaps more priests, joined the group, and they pressed on, into the heart of the fortress. Avery was struck by how ragged even the priests looked. While they wore more clothes than the more savage creatures of the city—their subjects, he thought, or at least their flock—the clothes they did wear, long robes and cowls, showed many patches and stains, and then stains on top of those stains. Caked in layers of filth, almost saturated in it, the robes were ancient and falling apart, soiled to the point where they stank (perhaps they had never been cured properly), and made of some sort of leather or hide Avery wasn’t familiar with.