Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Too close. But she had stolen a little strength from the rift the Worm was feeding itself through, and she had a plan, if only Orothellin would help, and . . .

  A sensation went through her, as though some great retort had sounded and resonated in every part of her except her ears. She faltered in her flight, some instinct checking her wings for a second, so that when the monster swooped past her, she was outside the sweep of its claws and sent tumbling away through the air.

  She fought for control – seeing a wheeling glimpse of those great wings of skin, the horrible almost-human face of the monster – but she had never been a skilled flier. Again that thundering vibration coursed through her, making her feel sick and weak.

  She saw it plainly as it came in, vast fingered wings spread wide, feet like taloned hands webbed together to form a net to catch her. Its mouth was filled with needle-sharp fangs.

  She sought for height, climbing and climbing, but the monster adjusted its heading without effort and was upon her in seconds. Remembering training older than her piecemeal dealings with magic, one hand found her sword hilt and dragged the blade out even as the monster scooped her out of the air with its hook-clawed feet.

  Those jaws were her whole world, a beast more horrific than anything she could have imagined – all the worse because it seemed to be some distant, distorted cousin of the human form. Is this a kinden? Is that even possible?

  Then she had stabbed up with all her might, her blade gashing the creature across its lips and wildly flaring nostrils, bloodying its gums. It jerked its head away without letting her go, twitching upwards in the air.

  A moment later it went berserk, wings flapping and twisting madly, spinning without falling, and she realized it had gone too high. The threads of the ceiling-dwellers, the star-mimics, had caught it.

  She had a brief glimpse of them sliding down along their threads, unhurriedly, mandibles questing towards this chance meal. Horrible, yes, but they at least seemed more wholesome than the thing that had taken her,

  She was now off the creature’s mind, which was entirely focused on its own survival, and so she let herself fall from its claws, her wings catching her, bringing her down gently as she looked up at the struggle above.

  Seeing it at this distance, diminished almost to a manageable size, she recognized it at last. Surely not . . . In Collegium they kept little furry flying pets that must be looked after at all times to keep them from falling prey to wasps or dragonflies. She had once named a duelling team after them.

  No flying insects here, save for the moths, she reflected as she dropped. How lucky we are, in the world beyond.

  It took her some time to locate Messel, to pick out landmarks from the broken terrain, and then of course there was the long trek back to Orothellin. But she had a plan now. She had a little power that she was husbanding, holding deep within her, away from the rigours of this place. There was a way.

  ‘It must be done now,’ Che explained. ‘This place is just a bottomless pit for the Worm’s power to fall into, I know that now, and it will do the same to all of us. What little I have scraped together will evaporate soon. The Moths built this place well – save that they must have driven the Worm to find some source of strength other than magic.’

  ‘Very true,’ Orothellin confirmed mournfully. He seemed visibly younger after the rest that Che’s friends had granted him, and she dared to hope that he had somehow regenerated power of his own. After all, he had lived here so long, and he could still deflect the senses of the Worm to hide himself.

  ‘Will you help me?’ she asked him. ‘A ritual to breach this place for just a moment? With the Seal cracked through, and with our combined strength, it may be possible – just for the moment it takes for us to step out.’

  ‘This is not what the Worm does.’

  ‘But it will give the same result. What the Worm showed me was that it is possible.’

  Che looked about at her friends: Tynisa and Thalric plainly willing to trust her and follow her wherever she went; Esmail suspicious; Maure sunk in misery, her arms clasped about herself. ‘I have no other plan, and I cannot do it alone.’

  Orothellin sighed. ‘I am sorry,’ he murmured, and for a plunging moment Che thought he was speaking to her, that he would deny her, or deny that the venture could ever succeed.

  But it was Messel who shrugged awkwardly, and Che looked between them, uncertain what was being apologized for.

  Then Orothellin said, ‘Let us at least make the attempt.’ And she forgot about everything else.

  ‘Maure, you’re a better ritualist than I am,’ she directed. ‘Let’s give ourselves the best chance. What have you got?’

  They made a fire, and Maure set out her candles and her herbs, emptying her pack of all the paraphernalia her trade made use of. She drew symbols in chalk on the rock floor of their cave, descendants of the ancient glyphs of Khanaphes, as passed down from mentor to apprentice over the centuries, their true meaning lost.

  Save to Orothellin, of course, who studied them curiously, altering each one minutely when he thought Maure was not looking.

  ‘This will not work, of course,’ he whispered to Che, whilst Maure continued working herself into a frenzy of preparation.

  ‘Is she . . .?’

  ‘She prepares as well as anyone can, but we do not have the strength,’ he told her sadly. ‘That little you have come back with is nothing, while I have next to nothing – the last dregs of my craft from a thousand years ago, all this place has left me with.’

  ‘We have to try.’

  He shrugged massively. ‘I suppose you do.’

  ‘Ready!’ Maure turned, hands clasped before her. Her eyes were mutely pleading, Please let this work. Please let us get out of here.

  ‘Form a circle,’ Che advised. ‘Just . . . kneel down and keep quiet. Unless there’s anything you can give . . .?’ She cocked an eyebrow at Esmail, who shrugged.

  ‘Come on, then.’ She took Thalric’s hand in her left, feeling the rough calluses there. He was an Apt man in the circle of a ritual, an utter dead weight, but she would bring him out of this place; she would bring them all out. And then let the Worm beware. She would find some way of locking them back in their tomb – of recreating the Seal that had formerly banished them.

  Orothellin sat down across the circle heavily. He took Maure’s and Esmail’s hands as Che took Tynisa’s in her right, the circle joining link by link.

  The Slug-kinden, the former Master of Khanaphes, looked over his shoulder at Messel lurking unhappily at the back. ‘Never fear,’ Che heard the big man murmur. ‘I will be here still. I’m not going anywhere.’

  Che felt her mind enclosed in the shell that was the Worm’s prison, the curved-away world that the Moths’ great ritual had made of their underground fastness. She felt as though she was scrabbling at its inner surface, unable to gain purchase on it when she needed to rip and tear her way out. Still, she had some strength to spend now, if she could but muster it. Then perhaps, just perhaps . . .

  Maure opened to her: the halfbreed woman had a thimble of power she had somehow hung on to in the face of the Worm, and it came now to Che across the bridge of clasped hands. Within it was that spark she had gained from Orothellin, given to Che guilelessly, desperately. Esmail, too – a weak magician but one whose power was only ever used on himself, and less amenable to being siphoned away. He gave to her willingly, to her surprise. It was the first time she had had any real sense of him as a person since their banishment, feeling the economic strength of purpose that moved him, willing to do whatever it took to get home. From Thalric, nothing, of course. From Tynisa, some wretched thread, but Che’s sister had no training, no way to make real use of what little magic she had: the magic of her sword and her badge.

  From Orothellin . . . she sensed a great reluctance there, a man who had been holding on to his strength for so long. But it was more than mere habit. Once he had given this all up to send them on their way, she saw how he woul
d be unable to hide forever. The Worm would catch him, tomorrow or in a hundred days, or a thousand. His long, dragging life would at last be brought to an end.

  And more: his charges, his students, those he had exiled himself to help. He was abandoning them in helping Che, turning his back on Messel and all the other slaves of the Worm.

  Then why help? Che asked him.

  Because what have I accomplished in all that time save be a witness to their losses, the price of living with the Worm? You are right. You, at least, should escape this place.

  And he gave her all the power he had, a great tide of it like the river Jamail in flood, eclipsing Maure and Esmail’s meagre contributions, and Che took it all in, held it in her mind and opened the gates of her power.

  Out. We are getting out right now.

  Because this place was not a physical place, and it had no fixed connections to the world beyond, there was no gateway to journey to, no portal to unlock. The exit was everywhere and nowhere. It was wherever someone tore a hole, whether that someone was the Worm using the Worm’s ways, or whether it was a desperate Beetle magician.

  She shaped her power like a knife in her mind, making the substance of the world around her like taut cloth.

  Time and strength enough for one strike.

  She felt the hands of all of them on the hilt of the knife, Orothellin’s most of all, a thousand years of skill to cut just so.

  I want to see the sun, and I will see it.

  They struck together, and she felt the walls of the Worm’s domain stretch and protest, the ancient Moth ritual that had made it was fighting her, even as the power she expended bled out into the abyss.

  More! Drawing on them, leaching their strength, clawing at their very breath, feeling that imaginary knife shake and shudder as its tip grated across the walls of the world. More! A desperate plea, ransacking everything she had within her, all that unasked and unearned power that had been thrown on her shoulders by the Darakyon, by the Masters of Khanaphes. It must be good for something, or what was it all for?

  And it was not enough. They began falling back, all that hard-won strength haemorrhaging into the cold void; Che lunged for something more, and in a moment she found it.

  Give! she insisted, and only realized afterwards whom she was demanding this of. For one moment her mind touched her sister’s – not Tynisa, whom she had grown up with, but that other sister that fate had thrust upon her. Seda, the Empress, her enemy.

  That thin cord still linked them, the bond of their shared throne, the mocking curse of Khanaphes.

  And Seda gave. There was little enough that she could force through that tenuous link, but what she could, she gave, and Che felt that knife-point scrape and dig—

  And cut.

  For a frozen moment she felt the sun just beyond her fingertips, the world she knew, maddening in its proximity, just out of reach.

  No, just in reach. She could do it. She could step through, force her bulky frame into the light and air, the Worm just a rancid memory behind her. But only her. In that moment of the possible, there was strength for just one to step through.

  She had no time. She had them all there, linked in that circle, their minds as open to her as they could ever be. She was holding the knife. She was the judge and arbiter of what happened next. She would live with the consequences.

  In that moment, that split instant, she weighed a great many things on the scales of her life, and she understood Orothellin, and the others, and herself most of all.

  Then the knife was slipping, and she had a brief wave of despair and loss, at all the possible futures she was confining herself to, and she made her choice.

  Part Two

  Tremors

  Fourteen

  ‘You obviously left most of your wits behind when you quit the College,’ decided Metyssa. ‘This is what we Spider-kinden would call a stupid idea.’

  They were in the cellar of Poll Awlbreaker’s workshop, after dark, which meant that it was a question of either staying as his houseguests or breaking curfew in order to leave. Of course, Metyssa was enforcedly his houseguest anyway, but right now her hidden retreat was getting crowded.

  Sartaea te Mosca, at whom the jibe was aimed, drew herself up with dignity. ‘I have not “quit the College”. I am on extended leave from teaching until they stop having Moth-kinden leering over my shoulder. Which temporary cessation of my duties allows me to serve the city in other ways.’

  ‘Such as giving yourself up to the Wasps, apparently,’ Poll Awlbreaker grumbled.

  ‘I am not giving myself up. I am merely presenting a petition to the general. I am, after all, a law-abiding citizen with no connection to any form of wrongdoing – or that is how the Wasps see me.’

  Poll sighed heavily. ‘Firstly, when has that stopped them? Secondly, you don’t know what they know. They could have you on a list even now.’

  ‘If they wanted me, they could have taken me. Raullo, you see why this is necessary, surely?’

  The artist sat sketching in the corner of Metyssa’s cellar, although odds on it was one of his new-style works, the ones that left te Mosca with a sick feeling in her stomach but that she couldn’t look away from. His eyes stared out of his pouchy, dark face like prisoners. ‘I agree with you: it needs to be done. I agree with them: do it now and you’ll get vanished like the rest. According to her –’ and his finger jabbed at the other Fly-kinden in the room – ‘things are about to shift. So just wait.’

  Te Mosca glanced at Sperra, the bringer of word from Sarn. ‘If what we’re told is true, then this must be done now. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that the moment the Empire believes that there are forces actively mobilizing against it, then I might as well tear this scroll of mine up and walk away. Tomorrow isn’t too soon. I only hope it isn’t too late.’ She glanced from face to face, seeing nothing but grim, miserable expressions.

  ‘And, besides, who knows how things will go? Perhaps the general and I will get on splendidly,’ she added brightly.

  ‘Who’s my contact, then?’ Sperra put in flatly. It was a moment before anyone understood her meaning, and she had to repeat herself before Poll forced an answer.

  ‘Sartaea will still be your contact when you’re here next, don’t you worry.’

  ‘No, it’s a fair question.’ Te Mosca held up a small hand. ‘Jen Reader has volunteered for it, and you have everyone else here to rely on as well. We’re not lacking in patriots here in Collegium, although we might be deficient in soldiers – at least at first. The student rebellion has stuck in people’s minds. It will take a lot to make people risk taking up arms.’

  ‘They’ll see,’ promised Sperra.

  Sartaea te Mosca managed a smile. ‘Probably. And I’d argue that a certain caution is probably no bad thing when undertaking an armed uprising. Have you everything you need?’

  ‘I’m stuck here for another day before Taki picks me up,’ Sperra explained, not for the first time, from the sound if it. ‘Will you have more letters for me to take to Sarn, Sartaea?’

  ‘I’m sure that someone will, anyway,’ te Mosca replied, managing a smile.

  When the Fly-kinden woman was brought before him, General Tynan was not entirely sure what he was looking at. She was hauled in under armed guard, so that at first he assumed that she was a dangerous insurgent or Sarnesh agent. After something of an awkward silence, and then some murmured questions, with the woman standing between two soldiers throughout, it was plain that nobody had any idea what it was she was supposed to have done. Certainly, if she was something as simple as a criminal or a curfew-breaker, she would never have got as far as the general himself. He had an entire apparatus devoted to keeping Imperial law in Collegium. The whole point of the Empire’s order was that things worked on their own, without his constant intervention.

  He nearly decided to lump her in with that particular mob and have her taken away. In the end it was her demeanour that convinced him otherwise. Through all this wrangling, with th
e tangible threat of the Imperial army on all sides, she had shown no fear. Instead, her expression had been one of polite attention. It was Tynan’s curiosity that got the better of him.

  ‘Does nobody know who she is, then?’ he demanded of his people. ‘Is she even a citizen?’

  By that time the machinery of government had finally got its wheels engaged, and one of the quartermaster’s clerks who were running so much of his administration turned up with a stern-looking Moth-kinden and some information.

  Tynan eyed the Moth without love. This was one of the Tharen ambassadors who had descended on him, unasked and unexpected, shortly after the conquest. Tharn was nominally an Imperial ally, and this collection of arch, disdainful men and women were here, somehow, with the Empress’s blessing. They spent most of their time over at Vrakir’s headquarters, and thus Tynan saw them as his enemies. While he and the Red Watch major were maintaining their uneasy truce, however, there was no reason that this grey man should not turn up in Tynan’s commandeered townhouse.

  ‘Well, then?’ he demanded.

  ‘This individual is known as Sartaea te Mosca, General,’ the Moth declared. ‘She was formerly a teacher of magic at the Great College, but abandoned her post under suspicious circumstances shortly after I and my colleagues arrived. Our belief is that she has been responsible for spreading sedition and anti-Imperial sentiment.’

  ‘A teacher of magic,’ Tynan echoed with some disgust.

  ‘I do not imagine she had much to teach,’ the Moth sniped, obviously looking to drag a reaction out of this te Mosca, but the Fly woman’s composure was equal to the challenge.

  ‘Lieutenant, what does Intelligence say?’ Tynan prompted.

  ‘She’s on the watch list, sir,’ the quartermaster’s man reported, meaning that the woman was not sufficiently under suspicion to have been arrested, but she was the next best thing. Whether the Moths’ antipathy alone had done for her, or whether others had noticed her being in places she should not, Tynan did not know, but the information told him that there was a formal duty here beyond his personal whims.