by Chuck Wendig
“A futile effort.”
“So you’ve tried.”
“Of course I tried. But I’ve settled into it. This place is my home.” He pauses, thoughtful. “No. It’s beyond that. I am this place and this place is me. You feel that, surely. Your blood and the black rivers of the Great Below. Running together, each arterial—the chambers of Hell equal to the chambers of your Hellbound heart. You are married to this place and it is wedded to you, in turn. Why would we ever want to leave?”
Hope, leeched out of her. Bleeding fast. Stuck pig. “You never found a way?”
Oakes smiles. The tendons and muscles in his face tightening—it’s like watching puppet strings pulled to make limbs dance. A skinless body has a sense of artifice about it, as if it’s just a mechanism, an automaton with all the ropes and pulleys exposed.
“I found a way,” he says, quietly. “It was not a way that worked for me.”
“Tell me.”
A small, soft laugh. “No. I am afraid not. It is not my place to offer favors to a girl so impudent. Who thinks the world owes her everything while she owes it nothing in return. Who would, in fact, bring a Knight of Aristovanus to my door—a foolish creature ascribing to an old dead cultish creed whose goal would be to cut my head off the moment he laid his crystalline eyes upon me. More to the point, I am a selfish creature, Eleanor Jessamyne Pearl. That is my creed: I serve myself, and as the Great Below is part of me, I serve it. You escaping this place does not serve me. I will not bear to watch another eat the cake that I am not allowed to taste. I am not charitable.”
He walks over to the counter. Picks from it something underneath a smooth, silken cloth. Oakes removes the covering, showing the severed head of a Trogbody.
Nora gasps.
Oaks shakes his head. “It isn’t your friend, if that’s what you’re asking. No, this is a different golem, though I do wish for Hrothk’s head, as well. See, an interesting thing about the golems: they’re very, very old. Both individually and as a species. Oldest in the Great Below, except for the god-worms themselves. They were given life out of the rock to serve the god-worms as workers. It explains their... servile nature.”
“Get to the point,” she hisses.
“Patience, please.” He seems truly offended. As if a student interrupted his lecture. He pauses, almost as if consider whether or not he should go on—but a man so in love with his own voice wouldn’t dare retreat from such pedantic waffle. “Golems,” he continues, “are very hard to kill. The head must be taken off, you see? Otherwise they can, as long as they are in the Great Below, heal themselves. But, once you take the head...” He clears his throat. “Are you family with Viewfinders? The toy, I mean. I had one as a child. A little pair of red... almost binoculars and you put them to your eyes and then you can flip through slides and—”
“I know what they are.” She offers a grim smile. “Before my time.”
“Mm. Yes. Well. Think of the golem’s severed head as exactly that. Press your eyes to his and you can gaze through all the things he’s seen. It takes a great deal of will on your part to do it but if you know what you’re looking for...” He shrugs. “This, then, is the head of Kekt. A golem of some age and experience. A treasure hunter—not on his own but serving someone else. He’s seen a great deal, including some of the old golem gospels—big books, you see, tablets of stone, really, bound together with rings of old rope or with looping vine. And these books when you find them offer history, but also rituals and mysteries from the deepest places. When looking through Kekt’s dead citrine eyes, I saw something. A book he’d found. A book that detailed a very curious ritual to help those trapped in this place to escape. A ritual that would help me. And you.”
He turns, puts the cracked geode skull back on the counter. Covers it.
She thinks, That’s it. He’s looking for something. For a deal. It’s not much but it’s something—dust in her hand is better than nothing at all. “What do you want for the skull? Tell me.” A bold-faced admission. Placing herself at his mercy. “Tell me.”
Another soft chortle. “No bargain to be struck here.”
“But you just went through all that trouble—” And then she understands. He went through all that trouble just to torment her. To dangle the keys to her prison in front of her, then tuck them gently pack into his pocket. He’s laughing at her.
The door opens behind him.
The woman from the boat enters.
Still nude. Her skin so pale, it’s almost blue. The striations of banded black scale spiraling up her body, shimmering like bits of black glass under a swaying light. She’s soft and swollen in the hips, her thighs, her breasts, but her face is all sharp—cheekbones that would cut your lips if you dared to kiss them, thin eyebrows like the barbs of razor wire, lips that look like they were cut out with a pair of scissors.
Nora cannot look away.
The woman is no woman. She is more and less than that.
She’s one of the Hungry Ones. One of the god-worms.
Oakes seems to notice her staring. “You’ve met Pelsinade, yes?”
The woman turns, shows a puckered scar above where her kidney should be. She traces it with a languid nail and shudders.
“You should thank me for the ride,” the woman says, her voice actually two voices: the deep, husky human voice but then, behind it, the hum of a restless hive of honeybees, the sound of glass breaking again and again, the high-pitched garbage transmission of a spinning radio dial zipping through all the stations and snippets and static. Music and noise, chaos and voice.
It’s then that Nora understands. And remembers. Mookie sticking his cleaver into the side of a worm-god. A voice booming in their ears like a king announcing a guest at court: Pelsinade. This is her.
“We’ve met,” Nora croaks, her voice smaller and quieter than she would like. She tries to summon more venom to her voice. “You killed Hrothk.”
The woman shrugs.
Oakes jumps in: “You just met him days ago. He was not your friend, nor were you his. He would put a bullet in your head the moment you were perpendicular to his zealous creed. Perhaps we did you a favor.”
“And Burnsy?”
Oakes has no eyebrows to lift, but she can see the red meat arch above his eyes. “He lives. Soon we will convince him to give up his flesh and join our crusade—we can free him of that burden. He can cast off his pain. We will attempt to convince you of the same, Miss Pearl.” Here, Pelsinade saunters over, extending out a long, crooked finger topped with a black, ichorous nail. She traces that nail along Nora’s belt line, and wherever it touches, it leaves a burning scratch like the kiss of a thorn. “And if you refuse to be convinced we may have to take your skin anyway. Just to show you. The freedom you seek is not the freedom you need.”
“Fuck you,” Nora hisses.
Oakes nods to Pelsinade.
The woman smiles, and sticks her black nail into the meat of Nora’s back.
It’s hot and cold. She feels something in her veins moving fast away from the impact point—like roots growing swiftly through soft dirt.
A little snap as the nail breaks off and Pelsinade steps back.
The world wobbles and oozes, and Oakes steps up as the god-worm retreats. “Your father. I knew of him. He was a part of a machine. Not a sophisticated part—easily replaceable, just a piston, just a gear. You’re a finer component. Crafted with a more competent hand. Not irreplaceable, certainly, but you have a far greater value. I look forward to seeing how you serve me. I look forward to seeing the gospel you write on your own skin. I do not need a Queen. But perhaps you shall be my temple whore.”
The venom crawls through her, faster and faster.
It seizes her heart. And her brain. It clamps down with clawed nail.
“I’ll...” she growls. “... have... what you... couldn’t...”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll... escape,” she hisses.
And then all is dark.
16
We are divided. Cults, castes, broods, families, fools. But if we can all be made to align once more, if we can join with the Hungry Ones and help to destroy the pillars that separate the worlds, then our most ancient history becomes the soon-to-be. Past becomes prologue. And then we will all be one. All light will die. All men and women will die. Death will be its own light. Death will be its own life. Above as Below. Above as Below.
— from the Histories and Mysteries of the Riven Worlds, by John Atticus Oakes
*
Nora awakens on a cot. One wrist fixed to a metal bedrail with a pair of handcuffs. The other hand free. The room is dark. Everything sways.
Still on the boat, then.
It takes her a moment to get her bearings. She feels ill. She’s sweaty. Feverish. Everything aches and her insides queasily climb up and down like a slow-creeping slug. The god-worm. Pelsinade. Her nail, poisonous. Or is it venomous? Is there a difference? A difference that actually matters right here, right now?
It feels like her head contains her throbbing heart. Like her head is both a dribbling basketball and the ground on which it bounces. She smacks her lips together.
Tries not to puke.
She yanks on the rail with her cuffed wrist. It clangs and bangs and suddenly she’s afraid: If I make too much noise, someone will come and check on me.
And she doesn’t want that.
Nora looks at the cot. It doesn’t move. It’s bolted to both the wall and the floor.
Think, think, think.
Her side hurts. Like a stitch from running, but ten times that.
She feels there with her free hand—
Something with a sharp texture. As soon as she touches it it’s like an antenna drawing a signal of pure fucking misery. It’s like flicking a chip of a broken razor stuck in her side—
Pelsinade’s nail. It’s still in her.
Nora bites back her own moans of pain, breathes quickly through her nose—in out in out in out—and then pinches the nail and pulls.
Floodlights of anguish behind her eyes. Her fingers slip off the nail. They find purchase but then they lose it and all she’s left with is pain, pain, more pain.
She stops. Has to refocus. This shouldn’t be that bad, she tells herself. It’s not like she’s trying to scoop out a bullet with her pinky finger. It’s a fingernail. In her skin. That’s it. No bigger than her own fingernails once. (Now she’s got them short—no reason to have pretty, pretty nails down in the dark.)
Teeth gritted. Eyes puckered to slits.
She reaches back and tries again.
This time, she pinches and pulls.
And the nail comes out.
She feels blood trickling down her side, to her pants line.
And instantly, it’s like the thorn plucked from the lion’s paw. Already the pain recedes. She still feels hot, but now the haze is gone. A windshield wiped clean of its smeary gunk. Clarity and focus. She slows her breathing.
She goes to fling the accursed nail—
But stops.
She looks at it. Feels its margins.
It’s not like a human fingernail, not exactly. It’s a little more like if a human fingernail and a carpentry nail merged together. It starts flat but tapers to a round, needle-like point. She almost laughs.
For a god-worm, that bitch is dumb as shit. Because Pelsinade just gave Nora a key to unlock these cuffs. Nora slides over to the cuff, presses the broken worm-nail into the lock, fidgets—like feeling around the dark for something small but crucial (a coin, a pair of eyeglasses, a wedding ring). She’s picked handcuffs before. Run-ins with the cops sometimes ended with her and a bobby pin popping the cuffs and then bolting, but here, the nail isn’t as flexible, isn’t bendable, and so—
Click.
Pop.
The cuff opens.
She almost cracks up laughing: a stress-release reflex she quickly stomps on because she can’t have them hearing her.
She eases the cuff off her wrist.
I have to get out of here.
No. That’s not right.
She has to free Burnsy, then get the Trogbody skull. Then get out of here.
The skull. Jesus. Poor Kekt. And here she has a genuine moment of remorse for Hrothk—a moment that surprises and disgusts her. She doesn’t need her humanity. Not now. So what if he reminds her of Mookie? Like a virtuous stone-bodied version of her father. Ugh. Not now, brain!
This boat isn’t very big. That’s a plus and a minus. Not far to escape. Not far to find the skull. But that also means she’s in close proximity to Oakes as well as the god-worm and—suddenly, it hits her. Pelsinade was the one she felt out there when they were creeping through the fissure. The beast was close by. Monitoring them.
But Nora monitored her back.
And she can do that right now. Can’t she?
She touches her hand to the floor. It’s cold. She can feel the rhythmic slapping of the river against the hull of the boat up through her arm, to the base of her neck, and—
There. Her senses drift and spread like oil on water.
Burnsy is one room down.
Oakes slumbers.
And Pelsinade? The god-worm isn’t even on board. Nora detects her at the margins—somewhere out on the river. Rolling over and over again like a gator. Having a swim? Eating? Killing? Nora doesn’t know and cannot care.
What does matter is that could change. The whims of a deranged subterranean god are not hers to interpret or, frankly, fuck with.
That means it’s time to move. She stands. Almost falls.
Get your shit together, Eleanor.
She takes a deep breath, then exits the room.
*
Burnsy’s arm looks like a pepperoni with the casing pulled off. The blistered flesh sits piled up on the toilet behind him like the skin of a molted snake. What’s left is all muscle and tendon, braided around the bone. Flies land on it, then fly to the walls, leaving tiny little blood-speck footprints.
With the light on in the bathroom—they have Burnsy hung up like she was, like a slab of meat in a freezer—he snorts and comes to.
“I was hoping you were all right,” he mumbles.
“You look like hell.”
He grins: a mad, suppurating rictus. “I wasn’t exactly a freakin’ beauty queen before, you know.”
“We need to get out of here.”
“Don’t like the amenities? I know, a continental breakfast is always such bullshit. And the little shampoos—”
“Shut up, Lister.” She fidgets with the ropes above his head. Smells the competing odors of rot and moisturizer and fresh blood. Like a butcher shop closed up too long, the air gone stuffy and spoiled. Her fingers undo the ropes. He drops, his legs gone rubbery underneath him. As she helps him up, she says, “Oakes has something. A golem skull. It has what I need. It has answers.”
He shakes his head and laughs.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“No. What?”
“You came and rescued me first? Instead of going to get your prize?”
“So?”
“You might have to come to terms with the idea that you’re a better person than you think, Nora Pearl.”
“Fuck you, Burnsy.”
“Me thinks thou dost protest too much...”
“Go to Hell.”
“Already there.”
She growls and helps him stand.
*
The skull.
Right where Oakes left it.
Nora thinks: too easy. This is a trap. She can’t just... grab the skull, waltz off the boat like nothing happened. But then she remembers the pain in her side. The death of Hrothk. Burnsy with the skin already stripped from his arm.
They paid their costs.
She takes the skull. It feels warm, like pressing your hand to sun-baked tile.
“We good?” Burnsy asks.
“We good.”
*
They’re not
good.
The gobbos come out of nowhere.
Nora and Burnsy got off the boat easily enough—just ease over the side, drop into the water. Nora worried about the splashes (and the fact her head felt like an overinflated balloon), but nothing they could do about it. As the boat chugged along one way, they went the other, trudging along in hip-deep dark water, the muddy “river” more like a swamp-on-the-move. They pulled themselves along by grabbing rocks and knobby roots, Nora careful not to drop the golem’s skull into the turbid drink.
And then: ahead, splashes. It was hard to see. The only light here was distant stripes of opalescence from fungus smeared on the walls—it did little to illuminate where they were. But in that distant light, Nora saw movement. Shadows shifting. Fast.
She touched her hand to a rock. Sent her senses out.
Goblins.
And now Nora finds herself back up against a craggy spire, goblins circling her. Just dark shapes with their fish-egg eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. One hisses, swipes at her with a stick topped with a milk-spider. Its legs flail, its chelicerae click together, hoping to take a taste. Another goblin stands back, gently winding a bit of barbed wire around one of his fists. A third hisses at her, “Meat, meat, meat, meat. Girl-meat.”
Upriver, she loses sight of Burnsy—a pack of the things chasing after him, them hopping from stone to stone like demon monkeys, him staggering and splashing and cursing. “Run, Nora!” he shouts over the din.
One of her attackers lunges. She uses the golem skull to deflect the attack, crack him in the head.
The others laugh as their cohort drops into the muck and floats away.
“What you have, girl-meat? What that you have?”
The one with the spider-stick comes at her. Nora side-steps the thrusting weapon, and the stick breaks against the spire behind her. The spider shrieks. The goblins rush her. She kicks, but the water slows her down, slurry-mud sucking at her feet. The gobbos are all over her, hands pinning her wrists to the stone. Teeth bite into her side. Greasy fingers like frog fingers try to pluck the skull out of her hand—
The rock spire behind her shifts. Starts to slide, suddenly.