by Conner, Jack
“To me it sounds like they’re ... gearing up for something,” Avery said.
Layanna could only shake her head in answer.
“It’s getting louder,” he added. “More frenzied.”
Even as he watched, a group of zealots burst into a listing tenement down the block and, with chilling efficiency, began to haul the screaming people that lived inside toward the church. Avery couldn’t see the church itself over the rooftops of Muscud, only an eerie violet glow he knew emanated from it. As Layanna had indicated, the glow pulsed, going dim, then throbbing brightly, painting the buildings—indeed, the whole town—in that otherworldly hue, then fading again. The converts had been going door to door for hours, snatching those within and bearing them away toward the church. With every dwelling they entered, they drew closer to Vassas’s casino.
Someone pounded on the door, and all those inside jumped.
It opened to reveal a tense-looking man: Muln Evers, one of the men Vassas had assigned to watch the Collossum chapel.
“Got a report?” Hildra said, recovering.
“Yeah. We’ve moved back to the rooftops and the underneath, but we’re still keeping watch.”
“Has there been some activity?” Avery said.
“That’s why I’m here. The priests are readying a boat. Just a few of ‘em, but some of ‘em are high ones, you can tell by the hats. There’s some big event goin’ on, it looks like—not here, you understand, but that they’re going to. What with all the excitement I figure they’re journeying to the holy place. I figure all the goings-on here are just a side-effect of what’s going on there.”
“That would make sense,” Layanna said. “I wonder what the event could be.”
“Could have somethin’ to do with what’s goin’ on up top,” Evers said.
“Yeah? What’s that?” Hildra said.
“You didn’t hear? Admiral Haggarty is having some big event tonight. A huge thing over at the City Square. Lots of people and press.”
Layanna passed a hand across her face. “This must be it. When he makes the announcement that Ghenisa is now a Collossum-worshipping state.”
“That’s the rumor. There’s rioting up top. People are freaked. This’s what we fought the war to prevent. A month ago, I thought Octung was down, out for the count. Now it’s almost like they won after all.” Evers made a sour face. “Some folk’re glad, though.”
“Glad?” Janx said.
“If we convert, the Starfish’ll spare us. That’s what Haggarty’s been sayin’.” Evers shrugged. “Not that I’m a believer or anything. Anyway, should we follow? The priests, I mean. I know that was the plan, to follow them back to the Collossum, but ...”
“It’s more important now than ever,” Avery said. “If we can locate the Collossum, we could kill it.” In theory. “Kill Haggarty’s god and Haggarty’s regime falls apart.”
“But the Starfish—”
“We have other plans for the Starfish.” And, of course, there was the matter of the Atoshan relic. Avery had never forgotten about that. The Collossum would have it nearby.
Layanna opened her mouth to say something, perhaps about the destroyed crane and the impossibility of boring a hole in the Starfish’s exoskeleton, but Avery shushed her into silence with a shake of his head, and thankfully she complied. The last thing they needed was more fear to spread among Vassas’s crew. Avery’s group must be seen to have a plan and the ability to carry it through.
To Evers, Avery said, “Can you and your men follow the priests?”
“We have boats waiting.”
“And you can get past the cordon?” The Collossumists had set up a perimeter around Muscud to keep any of the townspeople from leaving: cattle trapped in a slaughterhouse.
Evers patted a bulge in a side pocket, and for the first time Avery realized what a hard-looking sort he was.
“We’ll be fine,” Evers said. “Will you folk be coming with us?”
“Not yet. Find the holy city and scout it out. Once you’ve come back and we have a map of the city and of where it is in the sewers—once we have enough information to develop some sort of plan—then we’ll go.”
“Fine. Um, will you people be able to get out all right?”
“If all goes well, we’ll be waiting for you in the east corridor.”
Evers wasn’t gone five minutes when Pete summoned them to see Boss Vassas. They shuffled down the hall to the Boss’s study, where Vassas stood staring out a huge window streaked with flail snot and drinking from a cut glass. A throb of violet outlined him for an instant, then faded. At first Avery thought him a tower of calm in a mad sea, but then he saw that the hand that gripped the glass trembled. With a pale, drawn expression Vassas turned to them.
“Sit, if you want.” He gestured to chairs and couches.
No one sat. Janx moved to the bar and poured himself a drink. After a moment, Avery went to the bar beside him and poured himself one, too.
“Well?” said Hildra.
Vassas let out a long sigh. He returned his attention to the window, gazing out of it sadly. Through it Avery could see dark figures grouping in the street beyond, waiting silently, grimly, their numbers growing. All wore the trident necklace or some other token of the Collossumist faith. It wouldn’t be long now.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Vassas said. “That I’d have to abandon my own town.”
Hildra stood beside him at the window. With surprising tenderness, she said, “Yeah. This whole thing blows.”
A moment of silence passed. Straightening just a bit, Vassas said, “By the way, a runner found me from one of the other Stink-towns: General Hastur’s given up on finding Denaris. She’s ready to make her move if I’m willing to join up with her.”
“And are you?”
“What else have I got?” To Pete: “Ready the men.”
“They’re ready, Boss.”
The group moved downstairs, joining a larger group of Vassas’s people, goons and pimps, prostitutes and waitresses, casino staff and clerks, all waiting in eerie silence while that abominable singing continued in the background. At Vassas’s arrival, they stirred. Trapdoors were thrown and they descended into what Evers had called the “underneath”, the glorified crawlspace that ran under some of the city, between the floorboards and the water. There boats waited for the gathering. One by one, they boarded the craft, then shoved off, a few going ahead to do what needed to be done while the others lagged behind. When Avery’s craft emerged, he saw the goons just then dumping the bodies of zealot sentries over the sides of their own boats. Through the gloom that surrounded the town it was impossible to see the other members of the cordon that hemmed the Muscudites in, but they were out there, Avery was sure.
With the breach in the cordon made, Vassas led the exodus of his people from the town that he had helped to found and vanished into the darkness of the tunnels.
The group settled in to wait in the corridor east of Muscud, just huddling in the blackness as screams and singing drifted over the foul waters, each of them trying to look at each other as little as possible, until eventually a boat approached out of the mists. In it were several dirty and bloodied men, among them Muln Evers.
“You make it to the holy city?” Hildra said.
“Not in, but to.” Evers sounded wearied to the point of exhaustion. “I can map its location for you.”
Avery paused, then said, dreading the answer, “You were to leave in two boats.”
“It ... had tentacles.”
“Shit,” said Hildra.
“It killed everybody in the other boat. We just barely made it away.” Darkly, Evers added, “It’s blocking the way to the city.”
They all shifted uncomfortably, and Janx said, “Well, we knew it wouldn’t be easy, right?”
Evers set to work mapping the route, and half an hour later they all sat down to study it with Jeffers.
“Well?” Avery asked the boatman, crouched in his own craft.
>
“I know the area,” Jeffers said. “Vaguely. Went there a time or two in my youth.”
“We can’t go in the front, obviously, or what I’m calling the front—the way Evers went,” Avery said. “Whatever killed those men will be waiting for us there.”
“Think it’s another big squid?” Janx said. “Like in Lusterqal? One with a human brain in it?”
“Very possibly,” Avery said. “At any rate, I doubt there’s more than one of them, two at the most. The Collossum will not have the resources of Lusterqal or the ability to get very many large creatures here. But he does have many followers who will die for him and a city—well, town—that is difficult to locate and, presumably, which can be defended easily. But if we reach it, in stealth, from a direction they won’t expect ...”
He glanced to Jeffers, who let out a long breath and rubbed at his face with a squelching limb.
“Sure,” the boatman said, “there’s a back way or two, but it will take some navigatin’ through the dark. It’s a long way, goin’ round, and tight halls. If ya plan to bring men along, it’ll be difficult to go that way quiet enough not to—”
“No men,” Avery said.
Jeffers raised his eyebrows. “I know Vassas is in touch with more blokes in other under-towns, who’d jump at the chance to strike back, and—”
“This isn’t a mission that will be won by force,” Avery said. “The enemy is stronger than we are. Another five or ten men won’t help us, but they could hurt considerably. Our best ally is stealth.”
Hildra swore. “Layanna said she can’t come with us.”
“It will sense me—the Collossum,” Layanna said. “I can feel him enough to know he’s at least that powerful. I’d betray our presence before we even got close.”
“Fine, you pussy. I’ll go.”
“There ain’t room but for three in my boat,” Jeffers said.
Avery nodded. “We should number as few as possible, anyway. I will need to go in order to deal with the relic Davic gave Sheridan, if I can, and the other should be Janx.” He patted his pocket, where the god-killing knife rested. “If I get close enough, I can take care of the Collossum myself.”
“And if you don’t?” Layanna said.
To that he said nothing.
* * *
“You’ll need these,” Jeffers said. “Well, at least you will, young man.”
He passed Avery a nosegay, which the doctor (wondering when the last time he’d been called a young man was) applied gratefully, just as he had on the ride to Givunct. Jeffers did the same. Janx, of course, had no nose on which to fasten one. Doctor and whaler clambered into Jeffers’s rickety boat, Janx carrying a shotgun, and the boatman slid two of his tentacles into little wooden collars with oar-like fins sprouting from them, dipped them in the water, and began to row. Janx offered to help, but Jeffers demurred.
All too soon, they left the others behind. Once they were far from the cistern chamber, Jeffers yanked the cord of the small outboard motor using his third tentacle, and the boat shot forward. Black sludge parted before its bow.
“This your top speed?” Janx said, pitching his voice over the roar. “That engine’s noisy enough, but damn if it ain’t slow.”
Jeffers turned a barnacled leer at them. “Don’t worry, mates, I got ways.”
“Ways, huh?”
He guided the boat down channel after channel, then took a series of locks that led downwards into even more dismal areas. At one point they crossed through a large, open cistern, and lights bobbed on the water far away. Avery tensed. Then Jeffers flicked his flashlight on, off, on, off, in two long beats, then two fast ones. The distant boats responded likewise. Avery realized they must be a patrol sent by one of the other sewer settlements. The patrolmen were simply signaling each other, making sure they didn’t attack by mistake. You stay on your side of the lake, I stay on mine.
Jeffers turned down a narrow tributary. The halls down here stank even worse than the ones above.
As luck would have it, they were lit. The bulbs looked down through wire mesh from the ceiling, but only one out of every ten was on and those that were flickered or were dim. The result was that the boat passed in and out of small, sometimes strobing pools of light, then into deep oceans of darkness.
“I bet you seen some things down here,” Janx said.
Jeffers nodded. “Oh, aye. I seen things. Things that’d curdle your hair if’n you had any.”
“Like what?”
Jeffers cast him a look. “Well, y’know. They say the L’ohens carved these chambers outta the living rock. They used natural caverns. Natural underground lakes, rivers. Some are deeper than you’d believe. Some hit fissures down below. Fissures gods know how deep. There’s abysses down there may go all the way down. Deep, deep underground oceans.” He let that sink in. “Y’know, long ago some mutes opened the sewers up to the sea. We get Atomic waters in here, mixing with that we got, and that’s a cocktail from hell if e’er there was one. Imagine those abysses mixed with those waters. An’ we got muties what’ve adapted to the sewer rivers—that live down there. In the abysses.”
“Bullshit,” said Janx.
“It’s true. They’ve grown ... strange. Been down there, in those damned abysses for hundreds of years. Say there’s things down there, things that was already there, that’ve been there forever. Things what’ll drive ya mad. They’re the gods o’ the deep-mutes.” He cast them a certain look. “An’ ever now and then, when the tides are right—and yeah, we get tides down here; we’re hooked to the sea—I’ll see somethin’. Somethin’ out in these black tunnels.” He looked all around. “On a night like tonight, fer instance ... Something that ain’t right.”
Janx’s voice was admiring, as one storyteller to another. “Yeah?”
“Oh, aye. Great shapeless things and devils what come outta the core of the world. They breach right in the middle of huge cisterns, and they howl and scream and roar and sing and fill the air with a stench like lightnin’, and everywhere down here the blind will see and the dreamers will go mad, start hackin’ people up, and the learned’ll hide in their rooms waitin’ for daybreak, or what passes for it down here.” He let a beat go by. “Oh, aye, I’ve seen things.”
He rowed on, turned down a tributary that was nearly black, and Avery and Janx fell into silence until Jeffers swore softly.
“What is it?” Avery asked in a whisper. They were traveling through a dark area.
“Don’t you hear them?”
Avery cocked an ear but heard nothing save the gentle lapping of water. However, was there possibly more lapping than there should be?
“The Collossumists,” Jeffers said. “A patrol.”
“Let ‘em come,” Janx said. “I’m armed.”
“So are they. There’s better ways to get clear. I’ll show you.”
He rowed faster, moving into even darker tunnels. After a couple of bends Avery could hardly see at all. Then, slowly, with the help of Jeffers’s lantern (set on low), his eyes began to adjust. It wasn’t much, but he made out the vague shape of stone walls arching to either side, tight and overgrown with slime mold. Thick fluid gurgled and glurched, and the sounds echoed and reechoed off the walls for a long way in each direction. From time to time things plopped or hopped in the water. The boat motored on, more slowly now.
Suddenly, Avery saw them.
At first he thought it was just one, a strange mound floating in the water. He thought he detected movement below the surface. Tentacles. At first he thought of Evers’s tale of a giant squid, but this wasn’t nearly so big. The thing was some sort of jellyfish, maybe four feet across, only like no jellyfish Avery had ever seen before. It seemed to be composed of slug-like flesh and have more in common with snail physiology than with jellyfish. The skin was thick, rubbery and slimy, and the main section was a huge lump, something that made Avery imagine a great, brain-shaped slug.
Its eye stared right at him, huge and covered in film and mucus. Ther
e were more behind it, Avery saw. Mound after mound after mound. Scores.
“They like to meet up here,” Jeffers explained. He’d cut the engine and rowed slowly. “Don’t know why. Water seems a little warmer here. I think they mate here. Damned things are scattered all over, but here ... the slugmines love it.”
“Slugmines,” Avery repeated.
“I’ve heard about ‘em,” Janx said. “Aren’t they deadly?”
Jeffers nodded. “Hold your breath when we get close. If I do this wrong, you don’t wanna be breathin’. They spew this gas what clogs you up, lines yer lungs with snot and mucus. Suf’cates ya.”
“Death by mucus,” Avery said. “Lovely.”
“I think I hear ‘em behind us,” Janx said. “We’d better hurry this up.”
“Have to be careful now.” Jeffers’s voice was low. “Approach ‘em too fast, with too much noise, they’ll spew right off.”
He shucked the oar-fins off one of his tentacles. He had a long pole he must use for shallow water, and his tentacle curled around it, lifting it up.
Avery tensed. If he harpoons that thing—
They were very close to the first slugmine, just a dim, glistening mound in the darkness. Its filmy eye stared at them but showed no reaction. Avery wondered if it actually saw them. Possibly it was blind like many of the cavefish he’d read about.
But no.
Jeffers leaned forward with his pole. Delicately, almost lovingly, he prodded the pole against the monster’s eye. Avery wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first, but then he realized the slugmine’s eye was covered by a membrane of some sort. Jeffers peeled back the membrane.
Then, in one smooth motion, his third tentacle jabbed a flashlight into the thing’s eye and flipped it on at full brightness.
A strange watery shriek filled the tight hall. The slugmine flailed about, then shot away from the boat, squid-like. Alerted by its shriek, the slugmine’s mates—lovers?—panicked and fled. The whole mass of them squirted around the bend, screaming wetly.
Jeffers threw back his head and laughed, and laughed. He laughed so much he had to wipe his eyes.