‘I didn’t think you would, but I hoped I’d be able to convince you to hold off.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want you to end up in the same situation as I am. And, believe me, neither do you.’
‘What is it that Tomms is looking for here?’
Gurbin laughed, shaking his head. ‘The Dricheans’ orders.’
‘Good luck getting them to talk,’ Klegg muttered.
Gurbin shook his head. ‘Sealed orders. That means actual physical scrolls.’
‘Maybe with maps and suchlike?’ Wolfram suggested.
Tlanti nodded. ‘That would make sense. Where would the Dricheans have kept such documents?’
‘In their base of operations. It looks like they occupied the southernmost tower. It’s the most intact.’
‘Do you have a plan?’
‘Of course I have a plan.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well...’ Gurbin hesitated, and at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable.
She shook her head, cutting off any continuation. ‘Let me see if I can pluck it out of your head. Your plan is basically to lie to me about having a plan until you actually have a plan.’
‘I thought you could only read animal minds.’
‘Isn’t man an animal?’
‘Don’t even joke about that. Do you have a better plan?’
‘Could we make him think you’re dead? Or otherwise unreachable?’
‘Not with the Fates. They will always be with me, and he will always know where they are. Which means he will always know where I am. And I’d rather not actually die just to put one over on Tomms.’
‘Tomms doesn’t own you, Gurbin.’
Gurbin sighed. ‘He does. I wish he didn’t, but...’
‘You could have always taken yourself out of ownership,’ Klegg grunted, drawing a thumb across his own throat. ‘Every slave at least has that option.’
‘Do you think I didn’t think of that? Do you really?’ Gurbin snorted. ‘You have no idea. I have no way out.’
‘There’s always a way.’
‘Unless the Fates block it.’
Wolfram barked a mirthless laugh. ‘The Fates? The hell with the Fates.’
‘I’m in hell with the Fates,’ Gurbin snapped. ‘They’re what keep me in this hell. Klegg would be right, if I had free will of my own. But I don’t.’
Tlanti couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Since when did you become a believer in the Fates?’
‘Since they took me, and burrowed into me, and held me. Since the first day I tried to—’ He looked away, taking a breath. ‘Since the first day I tried to get out, and found I wasn’t in control of my own hands anymore. Since the first day my muscles refused to obey me no matter how hard I tried. Since the first day Tomms put those damn slug-things into me.’ He opened his shirt, revealing repulsive puckered scars on his chest. ‘Three in there and one in my head.’
Tlanti and the pirates drew back instinctively. ‘You mean... actual creatures?’
Gurbin nodded. ‘I call them the Fates because... well, because I don’t know what they actually are, but they’re the opposite of free will.’
‘That’s how he’s stopped you from getting away...?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t you... I mean, when you do that thing, where you walk through things. Can’t you just... leave them behind? Let them fall out of you?’
‘First thing you tried, wasn’t it?’ Wolfram said quietly. Gurbin only nodded.
‘Oh.’
‘They’re part of me now; they change with me. If I walk through something, they walk through it with me.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry.’ And then he ran, bolting away from the edge, and into the undergrowth. In moments he was gone, with not even the rustling of plants to indicate a direction.
Tlanti yelled obscenities after him, and then clenched her fists. Wolfram stilled his two pirates, before they could get far in pursuit. ‘Don’t bother. If Tomms does know where he is, Gurbin could lead us straight into a trap.’ He shook his head. ‘Tomms picked his pets well. He didn’t do this without thinking it through.’
‘Well, things have changed now,’ Tlanti said darkly.
‘In what way?’ Wolfram asked.
‘Now he has me to help.’
‘There’s something bothering me,’ Klegg said slowly. The others looked at him, quizzically. ‘I may only be an old salt with more rum than brains in my head, but... Were these things stopping him telling us what Tomms wanted?’
‘Yes...’
‘Then why didn’t they stop him telling us what they are and what he did to you with them?’
‘Probably out of Tomms’s range for such finesse,’ Tlanti grumbled.
Captain Wolfram shrugged. ‘Let’s go and ask him. After all, we know where he’s going now.’
* * *
The Southern tower was indeed still intact, draped with Drichean unit colours, and surrounded by a small camp of tents, and perhaps thirty Dricheans, some very old.
Tomms and Gurbin stepped out into the camp, both now wearing Drichean armour and uniform. Tlanti reflected with amusement that one could hardly see the teeth-marks on their appropriated gear. Two of the Drichean guards flanking them were wearing similarly damaged armour, and she wondered where they had dumped their mail hauberks.
‘Oh, Milady Tlanti,’ Tomms said smoothly. ‘What an unexpected pleasure.’
‘You mean an unpleasant turn of events.’
‘Yes. So, what is it you want, dare I ask?’
‘You know what I want, Tomms. Or should I call you Lochagos?’
‘Ah...suffice it to say that that isolated outpost has long been due an inspection by their superiors, and we are only a little delayed. As for what you want...I presume my Heritor.’
‘He was never your Heritor.’
‘No? Perhaps we should ask him? Or at least give him the chance to decide for himself?’ Tomms turned to Gurbin. ‘What say you, my friend? Should I turn you over to the lady here, and end our happy and prosperous partnership? Surrender you to the one who has hunted us so... unflinchingly?’
‘It’s hardly a surrender, and you have no right to turn me over to anyone.’
‘That’s very true.’ Tomms raised a forefinger, as if pointing out an idea. ‘Here is my proposal. Gurbin, my friend, why don’t you simply walk over to the lady, if that’s your preference? No one will stop you or harm you.’
Gurbin only frowned, his mouth a tense, thin line.
‘It seems to me that he’s happy where he is.’
‘Well I’m not. But I suppose we all have our wants and needs... and you have your orders?’
‘No one gives me orders, Tlanti, you know that.’ He couldn’t resist a smile, and drew a rolled-up scroll from a pouch around his waist. ‘Though, oddly enough, I do have—’
That was when Gurbin punched him, and all the hells broke loose.
* * *
As Tomms went down, Gurbin snatched the scroll, and Klegg began shooting arrows from the trees, every one finding a thigh; Klegg was too smart to aim for the bronze cuirasses that an arrow would simply bounce off from. Dricheans, real and impostors, swarmed towards the two struggling men, and right into the maws of the two stalkers. Out in the cleared encampment before the tower, they had the space to dash back and forth at full speed, tearing flesh from bone, slamming men to the ground with their powerful tails, and slashing with their claws.
While Tlanti darted in and took the scroll from Gurbin, Wolfram and Ironhand seemed to be having the time of their lives. Ironhand’s bastard sword slid into armpits and clove bronze helmets as if they were only walnuts, while Wolfram’s pair of curved blades spun like a whirlwind, opening arteries and sending limbs tumbling to the dirt.
Tomms backhanded Gurbin across the jaw, rolling aside to throw him off. ‘Bad timing, my friend,’ he snarled. ‘You’ve outlived your usefulness.’ He scrambled to his feet, beginning to tense and focus.
&
nbsp; Gurbin knew what would come next – burning immobility and a slow death from whatever weapon Tomms could first lay his hands on. The things he’d done today, however, had given him an idea. He had run through walls, and weapons, and he had also run through trees and plants. And trees and plants were living creatures of a sort. Just as Tomms was.
Focussing with all his concentration, Gurbin lowered his head and charged at Tomms, charged right into him. His vision was black and red, and for a moment they were one body. Now he focused still more, on himself, and only himself, pulling free from the guts and sinews of the other man. He felt as if he was trapped in quicksand, and then somehow he felt hands grabbing his, and pulling.
He stumbled, jerked forward by Tlanti’s grip on his wrists, and he fell before rolling back up onto his knees. ‘Run!’ she yelled in his ear, and pushed him.
Behind them, Wolfram, Ironhand, and the two stalkers fell back, still fighting. All were wounded and bleeding, but half the Dricheans were dead or crippled already, and arrows were still punching into them. Then they had enough distance to be able to turn, and run into the twilit undergrowth.
They rested in the cave until their shaking limbs had relaxed, and wounds had been tended. There had been no sign of pursuit. ‘Are you all right?’ Wolfram had asked Gurbin. The Heritor had simply shrugged.
‘He will be,’ Tlanti said.
‘You sure? Those things, the Fates...’
‘I’m sure. Tomms will confirm it for us; he’ll be here in a minute.’
‘What?’ He reached for his swords.
‘You won’t need those. He’s come alone.’ She led Wolfram and Gurbin out of the cave, and the short distance to the clearing they had used earlier. True enough, Tomms was waiting there, eyeing the stalkers that circled at the edge of vision. He was grimacing, either in pain or fury, or both.
‘What have you done?’ he hissed.
‘What do you think?’ Gurbin said. ‘The Fates are part of a person, so I couldn’t leave them behind myself. Until I passed through another person. They don’t mind who they feed on.’
‘But I do,’ said Tlanti. ‘And when I knew they were living parasites, I knew I could control them as well as you could. Well, maybe not as well, since they’re not my speciality, but well enough to bring you here.’
‘Well, I’m here.’
‘We just thought you’d like to know that you were right; the Dricheans’ orders have a nice map to a lovely nearby island with an ancient hall of records. Hopefully it has something about the Crystal Pool in it. You hoped that, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. And now you’re going to kill me, I suppose. I would, if the situation were reversed.’
Tlanti walked right up to him, and tilted her head, looking past him at the cliff edge. She shook her head. ‘Actually I’m going to let you walk away.’ He frowned, confused. She began to incant, and his expression cleared into one of terrified understanding.
‘No! You can’t!’ And, with that, he turned, and took a step towards the edge. Then another, and another. And he kept walking.
THE SERPENT ENGINE
BY
BEN COUNTER
It was Bresk who had died first.
The trapper had been checking the snares near the expedition’s camp, when a venomous insect had found an exposed point on his calf and sunk its stinger into him. The poison spread through him and the infection turned the wound a livid, writhing purple. By the time Thaal led them to within sight of the temple, Bresk could barely walk. When they woke the next morning to make the last leg of the journey marked out on the Heritor’s map, Bresk was dead.
Now the eight survivors stood on the threshold of the immense stepped pyramid, bellies rumbling because they had missed out on their trapper’s nightly catch. The Heritor Akmon Thaal was consulting his map again, checking the profile of the upper levels against the sketchy emblem on the map.
‘So,’ said Jorasca Pavine, leaning against the bole of an immense jungle tree. ‘That’s it.’
‘Yep,’ said Dolth, her fellow crossbowman. ‘Reckon it is.’
It could hardly be anything else. The journey from the isolated cove to the interior of the island had taken the expedition past stunted ruins long devoured by the ravenous jungle, but nothing like the temple. Its upper levels reached above the level of the canopy, festooned with eroded carved heads and decorative pillars covered in vines. Stained sandstone blocks on each corner were suggestive of altars where some primitive beings offered sacrifices up to their forgotten gods.
‘So,’ said Dolth, ‘we goin’ in?’
‘Suppose so,’ said Jorasca.
Thaal was consulting with the expedition’s Warden, Cirillian. Where Thaal was an immense, ruddy man packed with brawn, Cirillian was a slender and graceful woman. The expedition’s crewmen wondered if she was even human. She did not seem to suffer beneath her blue-green robes, even in the sweltering midday. Cirillian took a long look at the tattered parchment map, and nodded.
‘Brothers!’ shouted Thaal to the rest of the expedition. ‘We have reached our goal! The promised riches lie within yonder temple. We have only to take them. Onward, brethren! Onward!’
‘Welp,’ said Dolth, spitting out the mouthful of tobacco he had been chewing on. ‘Here we go.’
Jorasca followed Dolth and the other expedition members as they passed into the shadow of the yawning doorway at the base of the pyramid, and crossed the threshold at last.
* * *
‘You’ve seen this before?’ asked Jorasca.
‘Not like this,’ said Xavion. The knight was examining the carvings of the antechamber hall as the crewmen worked on opening the huge stone door. In spite of the relentless jungle heat and humidity, Xavion wore his breastplate and vambraces as if it was a test of his faith. ‘It’s not Drichean. Ran across some of them on my last expedition. Very stern fellows. Got us in quite the pickle. But they didn’t build this.’
‘Quite the pickle’ probably meant a harrowing brush with death. Xavion’s habitual understatement was one of the reasons Jorasca liked him – that, and the fact that in spite of his high birth, he thought of the lowly crewmen like Jorasca as an equal. That was more than could be said for Thaal. ‘You think we’re going to find the treasure Thaal promises?’ she asked, knowing that of all the expedition, Xavion was the one most likely to give her an honest answer.
‘The map says so,’ he said. ‘Our Heritor went through hell itself to get hold of it, or so I understand.’
‘And that’s good enough for you?’
Xavion looked away from the wall carvings at Jorasca. A greying moustache clung to his narrowed and battered face, lined and sunken even beyond the years of the oldest man in the expedition. ‘It must have been good enough for you, my dear, because you are still here.’
Jorasca was about to reply that she could hardly turn back, that the Fathom’s Faith they had arrived on would not be heading back until she was laden with treasure no matter how much Jorasca wanted to leave. But Xavion was right. She had joined because there were riches promised, riches that Jorasca’s lowly birth and poverty of station had decreed she should never see. She was as hungry for it as the rest of them. She couldn’t deny it.
‘Stand back!’ ordered Akmon Thaal. The crewmen working on the stone door scattered at the sound of his voice. The man had a natural authority that not one of them had questioned out loud since the Fathom’s Faith had set sail. ‘We will starve in here before you rabbit-hearted salts make headway. It is will alone that will see us through!’
Thaal crouched down by the lower edge of the circular stone door. He dug his fingers under its lower edge. Muscles bunched and corded beneath his sleeveless leather jerkin and the ruddy flesh of his upper arms bulged. Thaal grunted as his full, divinely-imparted strength shifted the door with a cracking of stone. The door rolled away from the circular opening with a tremendous grinding of rock on rock.
Thaal stood, panting, looking through the doorway into the magnificent ch
amber beyond. Enormous pillars held up a soaringly high roof, each one surrounded by a spiralling stone snake. Red and deep blue tiles picked out an intricate geometric pattern on the floor around an immense statue of a lizard-like god, a waterfall pouring from its open mouth into a plunge pool below.
For the first time, Jorasca could appreciate the grandeur of the temple. Its exterior was half-ruined and chewed up by the roots and vines of the jungle. Inside, it was as glorious as the day it was built.
She felt movement through the souls of her feet. Something shifted massively beneath the stone floor of the antechamber. Another movement caught her eye, and she glanced at the wall beside her to see dozens of tiny holes opening up in the dense carvings.
‘Run!’ shouted Jorasca.
With a battery of high shrieks, a fusillade of darts spat from the walls and streaked across the antechamber. Envin, the swordsman, caught one in the eye and screamed as he stumbled to the floor. Jorasca sprinted for the opening, the rest of the expedition behind her. Darts pinged and clanged off Xavion’s armour. Thaal was first through into the chamber as the eyes of the carved snakes slid open and streams of darts sprayed out.
Jorasca ran through the doorway and felt the tiles depress beneath her feet, setting off more mechanisms designed to turn the statue room into a killing floor. The lizard god’s eyes were open now and a projectile the size of a javelin thumped out, sailing across the chamber and spearing the wounded Envin through the thigh. Envin stumbled to one knee and a hail of darts snicked into his face and neck before he fell, dead before he hit the floor.
‘By the earth, by the sea, bring now our salvation!’ Cirillian’s black wood staff was in her hand, whirled above her head as a salt wind blew through the chamber. The water pouring from the statue’s mouth changed its course as if a sudden blast of wind had caught it. The water flowed out of the pool and around the expedition’s crew in a rippling, translucent ribbon, meeting over their heads to form a dome of water. Darts punched into the water, lost their speed and plinked to the tiles on the other side. A thin drizzle of salt water fell as Cirillian held the shield of water overhead and the crewmen crouched within its protective boundary.
Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: Tales of the Lost Isles Page 6