The sergeant snorted, then followed. ‘And why is she mad at you, soldier? As if I need ask.’
‘Just something I said.’
‘Oh, I am surprised.’
‘I don’t want to go into it, Sergeant. Sorry.’
‘I’m tempted to throw you down and pin you for her.’
They reached the crest. Behind them, Nether began shouting curses. Bottle quickened his pace. Then he halted and crouched down, reaching under his shirt, and gingerly drew out a placid lizard. ‘Wake up,’ he murmured, then set it down. It scampered off.
Strings watched. ‘It’s going to follow them, isn’t it?’
‘She might decide on a real curse,’ Bottle explained. ‘And if she does, I need to counter it.’
‘Hood’s breath, what did you say to her?’
‘I made a terrible mistake. I agreed with her mother.’
‘We should be getting out of here. Or…’
Kalam glanced over. ‘All right, Quick.’ He raised a hand to halt the soldiers flanking them and the one trailing behind, then uttered a low whistle to alert the huge, red-bearded corporal on point.
The squad members drew in to surround the assassin and the High Mage.
‘We’re being followed,’ Sergeant Gesler said, wiping sweat from his burnished brow.
‘It’s worse than that,’ Quick Ben said.
The soldier named Sands muttered, ‘Isn’t it just.’
Kalam turned and studied the track behind them. He could see nothing in the colourless swirl. ‘This is still the Imperial Warren, isn’t it?’
Quick Ben rubbed at his neck. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘But how can that happen?’ This from the corporal, Stormy, his forehead buckling and small eyes glittering as though he was about to fly into a berserk rage at any moment. He was holding his grey flint sword as if expecting some demon to come bursting into existence right in front of them.
The assassin checked his long-knives, and said to Quick Ben, ‘Well?’
The wizard hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right.’
‘What did you two just decide?’ Gesler asked. ‘And would it be so hard explaining it to us?’
‘Sarcastic bastard,’ Quick Ben commented, then gave the sergeant a broad, white smile.
‘I’ve punched a lot of faces in my day,’ Gesler said, returning the smile, ‘but never one belonging to a High Mage before.’
‘You might not be here if you had, Sergeant.’
‘Back to business,’ Kalam said in a warning rumble. ‘We’re going to wait and see what’s after us, Gesler. Quick doesn’t know where we are, and that in itself is troubling enough.’
‘And then we leave,’ the wizard added. ‘No heroic stands.’
‘The Fourteenth’s motto,’ Stormy said, with a loud sigh.
‘Which?’ Gesler asked. ‘And then we leave or No heroic stands?’
‘Take your pick.’
Kalam studied the squad, first Gesler, then Stormy, then the lad, Truth, and Pella and the minor mage, Sands. What a miserable bunch.
‘Let’s just go kill it,’ Stormy said, shifting about. ‘And then we can talk about what it was.’
‘Hood knows how you’ve lived this long,’ Quick Ben said, shaking his head.
‘Because I’m a reasonable man, High Mage.’
Kalam grunted. All right, they might grow on me at that. ‘How far away is it, Quick?’
‘Closing. Not it. Them.’
Gesler unslung his crossbow and Pella and Truth followed suit. They loaded quarrels, then fanned out.
‘Them, you said,’ the sergeant muttered, glaring over at Quick Ben. ‘Would that be two? Six? Fifty thousand?’
‘It’s not that,’ Sands said in a suddenly shaky voice. ‘It’s where they’ve come from. Chaos. I’m right, ain’t I, High Mage?’
‘So,’ Kalam said, ‘the warrens really are in trouble.’
‘I did tell you that, Kal.’
‘You did. And you told the Adjunct the same thing. But she wanted us to get to Y’Ghatan before Leoman. And that means the warrens.’
‘There!’ Truth hissed, pointing.
Emerging from the grey gloom, something massive, towering, black as a storm-cloud, filling the sky. And behind it, another, and another…
‘Time to go,’ Quick Ben said.
Chapter Four
All that K’rul created, you understand, was born of the Elder God’s love of possibility. Myriad paths of sorcery spun out a multitude of strands, each wild as hairs in the wind, hackled to the wandering beast. And K’rul was that beast, yet he himself was a parody of life, for blood was his nectar, the spilled gift, red tears of pain, and all that he was, was defined by that singular thirst.
For all that, thirst is something we all share, yes?
Brutho and Nullit speak on Nullit’s Last Night
Brutho Parlet
*
The land was vast, but it was not empty. Some ancient cataclysm had torn through the scoured bedrock, splitting it with fissures in a chaotic crisscross skein over the plain. If sand had once covered this place, even filling the chasms, wind or water had swept away the very last grain. The stone looked polished and the sun’s light bounced from it in a savage glare.
Squinting, Mappo Runt studied the tormented landscape in front of them. After a time, he shook his head. ‘I have never seen this place before, Icarium. It seems as though something has just peeled back the skin of the world. Those cracks… how can they run in such random directions?’
The halfblood Jaghut standing at his side said nothing for a moment, his pallid eyes scanning the scene as if seeking a pattern. Then he crouched down and picked up a piece of broken bedrock. ‘Immense pressures,’ he murmured. ‘And then… violence.’ He straightened, tossing the rock aside. ‘The fissures follow no fault lines – see that nearest one? It cuts directly across the seams in the stone. I am intrigued, Mappo.’
The Trell set down his burlap sack. ‘Do you wish to explore?’
‘I do.’ Icarium glanced at him and smiled. ‘None of my desires surprise you, do they? It is no exaggeration that you know my mind better than I. Would that you were a woman.’
‘Were I a woman, Icarium, I would have serious concerns about your taste in women.’
‘Granted,’ the Jhag replied, ‘you are somewhat hairy. Bristly, in fact. Given your girth, I believe you capable of wrestling a bull bhederin to the ground.’
‘Assuming I had reason to… although none comes to mind.’
‘Come, let us explore.’
Mappo followed Icarium out onto the blasted plain. The heat was vicious, desiccating. Beneath their feet, the bedrock bore twisted swirls, signs of vast, contrary pressures. No lichen clung to the stone. ‘This has been long buried.’
‘Yes, and only recently exposed.’
They approached the sharp edge of the nearest chasm.
The sunlight reached down part-way to reveal jagged, sheer walls, but the floor was hidden in darkness.
‘I see a way down,’ Icarium said.
‘I was hoping you had missed it,’ Mappo replied, having seen the same chute with its convenient collection of ledges, cracks for hand-and footholds. ‘You know how I hate climbing.’
‘Until you mentioned it, no. Shall we?’
‘Let me retrieve my pack,’ Mappo said, turning about. ‘We’ll likely be spending the night down there.’ He made his way back towards the edge of the plain. The rewards of curiosity had diminished for Mappo, over the years since he had vowed to walk at Icarium’s side. It was now a sentiment bound taut with dread. Icarium’s search for answers was not a hopeless one, alas. And if truth was discovered, it would be as an avalanche, and Icarium would not, could not, withstand the revelations. About himself. And all that he had done. He would seek to take his own life, if no-one else dared grant the mercy.
That was a precipice they had both clung to not so long ago. And I betrayed my vow. In the name of friendship. He had been brok
en, and it shamed him still. Worse, to see the compassion in Icarium’s eyes, that had been a sword through Mappo’s heart, an unhealed wound still haunting him.
But curiosity was a fickle thing, as well. Distractions devoured time, drew Icarium from his relentless path. Yes, time. Delays. Follow where he will lead, Mappo Runt. You can do naught else. Until… until what? Until he finally failed. And then, another would come, if it was not already too late, to resume the grand deceit.
He was tired. His very soul was weary of the whole charade. Too many lies had led him onto this path, too many lies held him here to this day. I am no friend. I broke my vow – in the name of friendship? Another lie. No. Simple, brutal self-interest, the weakness of my selfish needs.
Whilst Icarium called him friend. Victim of a terrible curse, yet he remained, trusting, honourable, filled with the pleasure of living. And here I am, happily leading him astray, again and again. Oh, the word for it was indeed shame.
He found himself standing before his pack. How long he had stood there, unseeing, unmoving, he did not know. Ah, now that is just, that I begin to lose myself. Sighing, he picked it up and slung it over a shoulder. Pray we cross no-one’s path. No threat. No risk. Pray we never find a way out of the chasm. But to whom was he praying? Mappo smiled as he made his way back. He believed in nothing, and would not presume the conceit of etching a face on oblivion. Thus, empty prayers, uttered by an empty man.
‘Are you all right, my friend?’ Icarium asked as he arrived.
‘Lead on,’ Mappo said. ‘I must secure my pack first.’
A flash of something like concern in the Jhag’s expression, then he nodded and walked over to where the chute debouched, slipped over the edge, and vanished from sight.
Mappo tugged a small belt-pouch free and loosened the drawstrings. He pulled another pouch from the first one and unfolded it, revealing that it was larger than the one it had been stored in. From this second pouch he withdrew another, again larger once unfolded. Mappo then, with some effort, pushed the shoulder pack into this last one. Tightened the strings. He stuffed that pouch into the next smaller and followed by forcing that one into the small belt-pouch, which he tied at his waist. Inconvenient, though temporary. He would have no quick access to his weapons should some calamity arise, at least for the duration of the descent. Not that he could fight clinging like a drunk goat to the cliff-side in any case.
He made his way to the chute and looked over the edge. Icarium was making swift progress, already fifteen or more man-heights down.
What would they find down there? Rocks. Or something that should have remained buried for all time.
Mappo began his descent.
Before long, the passage of the sun swept all light from the crevasse. They continued in deep gloom, the air cool and stale. There was no sound, barring the occasional scrape of Icarium’s scabbard against stone from somewhere below, the only indication that the Jhag still lived, that he had not fallen, for, had he lost his grip and plummeted, Mappo knew that he would make no outcry.
The Trell’s arms were getting tired, the calves of his legs aching, his fingers growing numb, but he maintained his steady pace, feeling strangely relentless, as if this was a descent with no end and he was eager to prove it, the only possible proof being to continue on. For ever. There was something telling in that desire, but he was not prepared to be mindful of it.
The air grew colder. Mappo watched the plumes of his breath frosting the stone face opposite him, sparkling in some faint, sourceless illumination. He could smell old ice, somewhere below, and a whisper of unease quickened his breathing.
A hand on the heel of his left, down-reaching foot startled him.
‘We are here,’ Icarium murmured.
‘Abyss take us,’ Mappo gasped, pushing away from the wall and landing with sagging legs on a slick, slanted floor. He flung his arms out to regain balance, then straightened. ‘Are you certain? Perhaps this slope is but a ledge, and should we lose our footing—’
‘We will get wet. Come, there is a lake of some sort.’
‘Ah, I see it. It… glows…’
They edged down until the motionless sweep of water was before them. A vague, greenish-blue illumination, coming from below, revealed the lake’s depth. They could see to the bottom, perhaps ten man-heights down, rough and studded with rotted tree stumps or broken stalagmites, pale green and limned in white.
‘We descended a third of a league for this?’ Mappo asked, his voice echoing, then he laughed.
‘Look further in,’ Icarium directed, and the Trell heard excitement in his companion’s tone.
The stumps marched outward four or five paces, then stopped. Beyond, details indistinct, squatted a massive, blockish shape. Vague patterns marked its visible sides, and its top. Odd, angular projections reached out from the far side, like spider’s legs. The breath hissed from Mappo. ‘Does it live?’ he asked.
‘A mechanism of some sort,’ Icarium said. ‘The metal is very nearly white, do you see? No corrosion. It looks as if it had been built yesterday… but I believe, my friend, that it is ancient.’
Mappo hesitated, then asked, ‘Is it one of yours?’
Icarium glanced at him, eyes bright. ‘No. And that is the wonder of it.’
‘No? Are you sure? We have found others—’
‘I am certain. I do not know how, but there is no doubt in my mind. This was constructed by someone else, Mappo.’
The Trell crouched down and dipped his hand into the water, then snatched it back. ‘Gods, that’s cold!’
‘No obstacle to me,’ Icarium said, smiling, the polished lower tusks sliding into view.
‘You mean to swim down and examine it? Never mind, the answer is plain. Very well, I shall seek out some level ground, and pitch our camp.’
The Jhag was tugging off his clothes.
Mappo set off along the slope. The gloom was sufficiently relieved by the glowing water that he was able to make certain of each step he took, moving up until his left hand was brushing the cold stone wall. After fifteen or so paces that hand slipped into a narrow crack, and, upon regaining contact, immediately noted a change of texture and shape in the surface under his blunt fingertips. The Trell halted and began a closer examination along its length.
This stone was basalt, ragged, bulging out until the slope beneath his feet dwindled, then disappeared. Sharp cracks emanated out across the angled floor and into the lake, the black fissures reappearing on the lake’s bottom. The basalt was some kind of intrusion, he concluded. Perhaps the entire crevasse had been created by its arrival.
Mappo retreated until he had room to sit, perched with his back against the rock, eyes on the now rippled surface of the lake. He drew out a reed and began cleaning his teeth as he considered the matter. He could not imagine a natural process creating such an intrusion. Contrary as earth pressures were, far beneath the land’s surface, there was no colliding escarpment shaping things in this part of the subcontinent.
No, there had been a gate, and the basalt formation had come through it. Catastrophically. From its realm… into solid bedrock on this world.
What was it? But he knew.
A sky keep.
Mappo rose and faced the ravaged basalt once more. And that which Icarium now studies at the bottom of the lake… it came from this. So it follows, does it not, that there must be some sort of portal. A way in. Now he was curious indeed. What secrets lay within? Among the rituals of inculcation the Nameless Ones had intoned in the course of Mappo’s vow were tales of the sky keeps, the dread K’Chain Che’Malle fortresses that floated like clouds in the air. An invasion of sorts, according to the Nameless Ones, in the ages before the rise of the First Empire, when the people who would one day found it did little more than wander in small bands – not even tribes, little different, in fact, from mortal Imass. An invasion that, in this region at least, failed. The tales said little of who or what had opposed them. Jaghut, perhaps. Or Forkrul Assail, or the Elder Go
ds themselves.
He heard splashing and peered through the gloom to see Icarium pull himself, awkwardly, onto the strand. Mappo rose and approached.
‘Dead,’ Icarium gasped, and Mappo saw that his friend was racked with shivers.
‘The mechanism?’
The Jhag shook his head. ‘Omtose Phellack. This water… dead ice. Dead… blood.’
Mappo waited for Icarium to recover. He studied the now swirling, agitated surface of the lake, wondering when last that water had known motion, the heat of a living body. For the latter, it had clearly been thirsty.
‘There is a corpse inside that thing,’ the Jhag said after a time.
‘K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘I have found the sky keep it emerged from. Part of it remains exposed, extruding from the wall.’
‘A strange creature,’ Icarium muttered. ‘I have no memory of ever seeing one before, yet I knew its name.’
‘As far as I know, friend, you have never encountered them in your travels. Yet you hold knowledge of them, nonetheless.’
‘I need to think on this.’
‘Yes.’
‘Strange creature,’ he said again. ‘So reptilian. Desiccated, of course, as one would expect. Powerful, I would think. The hind limbs, the forearms. Huge jaws. Stubby tail—’
Mappo looked up. ‘Stubby tail. You are certain of that?’
‘Yes. The beast was reclined, and within reach were levers – it was a master of the mechanism’s operation.’
‘There was a porthole you could look through?’
‘No. The white metal became transparent wherever I cast my gaze.’
‘Revealing the mechanism’s inner workings?’
‘Only the area where the K’Chain Che’Malle was seated. A carriage of some sort, I believe, a means of transportation and exploration… yet not intended to accommodate being submerged in water; nor was it an excavating device – the jointed arms would have been insufficient for that. No, the unveiling of Omtose Phellack caught it unawares. Devoured, trapped in ice. A Jaghut arrived, Mappo, to make certain that none escaped.’
Mappo nodded. Icarium’s descriptions had led him to conclude much the same sequence of events. Like the sky keep itself, the mechanism was built to fly, borne aloft by some unknown sorcery. ‘If we are to find level ground,’ he said, ‘it shall have to be within the keep.’
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