Corbbmacc wasted no time. He’d already shrugged off his empty pack and pried open one of the nearest crates with the blade of his sword. Emily let her own pack slide off her shoulders and began examining the stores around her. The boxes were of varying sizes, but all seemed unmarked. There was no way to know what was in any until you opened them.
“Take only one or two things from each,” he whispered to her, shoving what looked like a sack of flour into his pack. “We don’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that any of it is missing.”
Emily moved down the aisle of crates, chose one at random, and used the blade of her sword to pry up the lid as Corbbmacc had done. Inside were what looked like hand-thrown pottery jars. She pulled one out and hefted it in her palm. It was heavy, and its top was sealed with wax. Something sloshed inside.
She looked back at Corbbmacc, who had paused to watch her, one of those drawstring bags of jerky dangling from his fist. She lifted the jar up for his inspection and raised her eyebrows. He nodded, and she dropped it into her bag.
They worked in silence until the packs were full, then carefully hammered nails back down into the lids of the crates with the hilts of their swords. The silence was oppressive. Every creak of wood, every thud of a nail, and every scrape of foot on stone seemed as loud as thunder, and Emily felt her heart race faster with nervous tension the longer they worked. What if someone heard them? Could they get out through the hole in time to elude anyone who came down to investigate the noise?
As quietly as she could, she hammered the last nail into place. She swung her pack back onto her shoulders and turned toward the hole in the wall. Corbbmacc wasn’t there.
She craned to see over the piles of crates, trying to figure out where he’d gone. She couldn’t see him anywhere.
She was stepping up onto a crate to gain a better vantage when she heard the groan of wood from the far end of the room.
She weaved her way through the stores to find Corbbmacc kneeling at the top of a set of wooden steps. They led up to a small door, no more than three feet high, that must lead into the rest of the house.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, but he shook his head at her and pressed his ear to the door. The seconds ticked by.
Finally, he raised his hand and lifted the latch, and the little wooden door creaked open. He crawled through, then turned around and motioned for her to come up with him.
Nervously, she climbed the stairs, needing to stoop as she neared the top, then crawled awkwardly through the door.
The ground floor of the house was much larger than the basement, but filled with more boxes and what appeared to be pieces of ancient, rusting machinery.
“More food?” she mouthed at Corbbmacc, but he shook his head.
He stood, brushed the ash from his legs, then began wending his way through the stacks. The house was as still and silent as a cemetery. It was unnerving. Shouldn’t she be able to hear the sounds of the city now from here?
He led her up three more flights of stairs, each level of the house more or less the same as all the others. Hundreds of crates of supplies stacked with little rhyme or reason filled them all, along with unidentifiable pieces of old equipment.
At the top of the last flight, another tiny door, the twin of the one to the basement, seemed to lead out onto the roof, judging by the light that came from the minute windows on either side of it.
Corbbmacc turned to face her, his back to the door, and motioned her closer. Emily turned and sat beside him on the top step, and he leaned in close.
“The house is clearly empty for now,” he said, his voice low, “but there will be guards in the street below. I’m taking you out onto the roof so you can see…” he stopped, as if debating how best to phrase what he wanted to say. At last he settled on simply, “So you can see Hellsgate.”
His face was pale, and Emily got the distinct impression he was steeling himself for something. A thread of unease began worming its way into her stomach. How bad could this be, really?
Corbbmacc started to turn toward the door, then seemed to think of something else and looked back at her again.
“You need to stay quiet,” he said, his gaze boring into hers. “No matter what you think about what you see, don’t forget that. You have to keep silent. If they hear us…” He let the thought trail away between them.
Emily nodded, her unease growing. The thudding of her heart was loud in her ears. That was one sound she wasn’t going to be able to do anything about.
Corbbmacc turned and opened the door.
A gust of wind brought ash swirling in at them, and with it came the stench of decay, stronger and more terrible than ever. Smoke stung her eyes, and tears began streaming down her face almost at once. She wiped them away as Corbbmacc lay down on his stomach and slithered out onto the roof.
She copied him, moving as quietly as she could. The scrape of her chain mail and sword on the smooth, ash-covered tiles made her heart beat all the harder, but Corbbmacc did not seem alarmed. All his concentration was focused on the edge of the roof as they slithered toward it. From somewhere far away, she heard a burst of deep, boisterous laughter.
Together, they wormed their way to the edge of the roof, and Emily looked down, taking in her first close look at the streets of Hellsgate.
Guards stood in small groups along the street at intervals. They were clad much as those from Seven Skies had been, and she could see the same insignia of the sword being broken over a boulder emblazoned on their armor and shields.
The streets themselves were filled with people. Thousands of them. They shuffled along in silence, heads bowed and shoulders slumped. They did not speak to one another, or even raise their eyes to acknowledge those they passed. Their feet hardly left the stones as they moved, leaving long, narrow tracks behind them. Their clothes were little more than torn, dirty rags, and long hair hung lank and filthy past their shoulders.
As she watched, a large wagon rumbled into view from around the corner of the building next door. A dozen men, women, and even one small child, were hitched to it, pulling it through the city like horses. A tarp had been pulled over the wagon’s contents, and a guard sat in the driver’s seat. He had a whip coiled around one fist but did not use it. He didn’t need to. There was no protest from his charges—no sound of any kind.
One of the men pulling the wagon stumbled over an uneven patch of the road and fell to his knees. The others did not slow or even look around at him. The wagon simply kept moving, rolling over him, and pulling the ropes by which he was hitched to it free of his shoulders. There was no scream; no cry of pain or dismay issued from the man’s lips. Only the sharp snap of breaking bones mingled with the rumble of the wagon’s wheels on the stones.
When the wagon had passed, she got her first clear look at a citizen of Hellsgate. The man who had fallen lay on his back upon the cobbles. He was dead. Not newly so, but dead for weeks, perhaps. Decaying flesh was peeling away from the bones of his arms. Maggots festered in the cavity that had once been his nose. A few had crawled out and were exploring his blank and staring eyes. One hand had nearly rotted entirely away, and black mold clung to his chin and cheeks like a gruesome five o’clock shadow from hell.
Emily’s stomach clenched, and gray shadows began to intrude at the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to faint. When she opened them again, the man was trying to get back to his feet. The bones of his legs had been broken by the wagon’s wheels, and each time he rose a little, they folded as though they suddenly had an extra set of knees. Flesh tore away, and a bright shard of bone gleamed in the dull sunlight.
Two women broke away from the crowd and went to the man. Their movements were slow, shuffling motions that brought back memories of Halloween parties with zombie marathons at Casey’s house. She wasn’t in It’s A Wonderful Life or White Christmas. This was fucking Night of the Living Dead. The women grabbed the man under his arms and hauled him away down the street. A mangled
ear dangled alongside the smaller woman’s face like a meaty pendulum from the end of a strand of rotting gristle. It bounced rhythmically against her neck beside the mass of matted and tangled hair that was still left to her.
Emily had seen enough. She squirmed away from the edge of the roof and scrambled blindly for the door back inside, tears blurring her vision.
Corbbmacc followed her wordlessly, closing the door softly behind them.
In a daze, Emily followed him as he descended through the house, entered the basement, then returned to the tunnels beyond. She understood why this place was called Hellsgate now. How could they have just taken her to see this without warning her?
But of course, that was a stupid question, wasn’t it? Nothing could have ever prepared her for the nightmare outside. Nothing.
Corbbmacc replaced the stones in the wall, then sat against them, looking up at her, his expression unreadable.
Emily stared back, but she couldn’t really see him through the blur of images that kept chasing one another across the desolate landscape of her mind. The sight of that dead man being carried off by the two dead women kept playing itself over and over before her eyes, and she couldn’t make it stop. Every time she thought she’d seen the worst this world had to offer, it sprang some new horror on her, each more terrible than the last.
“Sit down,” Corbbmacc said gently, and he brushed the ash away beside him, making a space for her. For once, there was no biting sarcasm or irritation in his tone. The words were spoken with a soft, understated empathy.
Numbly, she sank down beside him, leaning against the wall and saying nothing.
She closed her eyes, brought her knees up to her chest, and laid her head on top of them. She tried to push the memories of what she’d seen away, but they just kept coming back, more vivid and hellish with each new assault.
“You have questions now,” Corbbmacc said. It was a statement. He waited for her to respond, and when she didn’t, he went on anyway.
“Slaves…prisoners…others…they’re brought here to work the mines. They work until they die, and then some of the wraiths with allegiance to Marrianne bewitch their bodies to keep working even after death. They work until their bodies fall apart or are too badly broken to be useful. Then they’re burned to make steam in the mills.”
His voice had remained steady, but on the last word it broke. Emily lifted her head and looked at him. His face was pale, and she could see tears glistening on his lashes in the glow of the moss that hung about them.
He saw her looking and turned his face away, staring down the long, dark tunnel. In the distance, she once again heard the click of tiny claws on stone.
“That’s how our parents died. Paige and the rest of the Brood got me and Mona away, but they weren’t able to help Mom and Dad.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered, feeling fresh tears sting her eyes.
“It’s life,” Corbbmacc said, but the indifference in his tone fell flat.
They sat in the gloom, listening to the sounds of their own breathing in the stillness for a long, long time.
At last, Corbbmacc got to his feet and offered her his hand.
“C’mon, Em,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find something to help Celine.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“How did your parents end up here?” she asked.
They’d been trudging through the endless passages beneath the city in silence for what felt like hours, each lost in their own thoughts. Now and then, the scurry of tiny claws or the leathery flap of wings came to their ears from somewhere ahead as their presence disturbed the denizens of this subterranean labyrinth. So far, though, she hadn’t actually seen any of the creatures that had made these tunnels their home, and she was grateful.
Corbbmacc looked at her sharply, then away. The shuffle of his boots through the ash was his only response for so long that Emily thought he wouldn’t answer the question at all, but at last, he spoke, his low voice echoing hollowly from the stone walls around them.
“They were leading a company of Broodsmen in Coalhaven. They were very successful, too. Successful enough that recruitment was very high. Not that that’s very surprising. Discontent runs pretty high there as it is.”
He turned down another passage, and Emily could see what looked like sunlight far down its length. It shone like a star amidst the otherworldly glow of the moss. Water dripped from the ceiling, dampening her hair and turning the layer of ash at their feet into a sticky paste.
“They recruited Paige, actually,” he went on, not slowing his pace. “They got so good at getting people to join that, after a while…” He shrugged. “They got complacent, I guess. They brought in a very promising young man named Mortheus. He was a good mage, and he was very passionate about what the Brood was trying to do.”
He sighed. “We were all taken in by him. Mona…well, I guess she loved him, a little anyway. But it was all a lie. He owed allegiance to Marianne, and he brought down utter destruction on the Dragon’s Brood in Coalhaven. A lot of Broodsmen died…including Garrett’s parents. The rest scattered or were caught and sent here to work in the mines. The four of us, plus Garrett and a few others were together and alive, though, so we counted ourselves lucky.”
He shot her a glance as if daring her to say otherwise. She didn’t say anything at all. The story was a terrible one, and she felt fresh tears prick the corners of her eyes as she imagined Corbbmacc, a little boy, walking among the restless dead in the city above, his handsome face and hair coated in ash.
“Anyway, Paige and some of the others from Coalhaven found out somehow that we were in Hellsgate. I really don’t know how. Maybe the wizard found them and told them. Probably he did. She led a group who came and tried to break us out. They freed the children first—me, Mona, Garrett, and a boy named Victor. Paige and some of the others who could fly…they were carrying us away while more Broodsmen fought to reach the adults.”
Corbbmacc’s voice began to grow husky, and the flow of his words faltered. He stopped and turned to face her. His face was a pale oval, hanging ghostly in the dim light.
“I heard one of the guards shout, ‘Kill them. They’re as good dead as alive.’ I twisted around in Paige’s arms—she almost dropped me—and I saw…”
He took a deep breath, and Emily reached out and laid a hand awkwardly on his shoulder. He was trembling.
“I saw one of the guards run a sword through my mother. The blood seemed to explode out of her. It poured from her like a fountain. He pulled his sword out again, and before she’d even hit the ground, Dad was on him, trying to beat him with his fists, but of course his hands were chained and he couldn’t really do much. The guard gutted him…sliced right through him and let his guts fall out of him onto his feet…”
Corbbmacc pulled away from her, turning and heading down the tunnel again.
Emily stood stunned for a moment, then hurried after him. She fell into step at his side, wondering what to say. What could she say? Suddenly, the trials of her own life seemed very trivial indeed by comparison. She remembered having the same thought about Celine’s life as well. How terrible must the world have become that horrors like these were somehow commonplace?
She watched the glimmer of daylight grow larger and brighter as they neared it.
The light at the end of the tunnel, she thought. Never had she wished more for something to be true.
When they reached it, she saw that the light was falling through another grate up at street level. As before, a chain ladder led up to it, and ash and soot poured in from the street above in a series of miniature dry, gray waterfalls.
“Same rules as before,” he whispered to her, leaning close. His voice was brusque, and he seemed entirely composed again. “Stay quiet. There may be guards around, so we need to be careful. I’ve done it before, but it’ll be easier if you help me.”
He slid the pack of food off his shoulders and set it against the wall. “We can be faster if we leave these he
re. We’ll get them on our way back.”
“Okay,” she said, shrugging out of her own pack and setting it beside his.
Corbbmacc turned and began to climb.
She stood at the foot of the ladder, watching his silhouette against the light from outside. Images from the story he’d told overlapped with those of what she’d seen from the rooftop of the storehouse. She wondered whether or not it would be so bad to go back to her old life. Each world had its own nightmares, and some of those nightmares had claws and teeth that were sharp. The monsters that had killed Corbbmacc’s parents were flesh and blood—or at least creatures you could see. The demons that had brought her mother to an end had been internal, but no less real for all of that. Maybe people made their own private hells. Maybe the place or time or circumstance meant little or nothing. Maybe those were just the details.
She felt something shift against her breast, and she reached up and touched it in surprise. Through the chain mail, she could feel the little pouch with its mysterious contents still in the pocket of her jerkin.
A king…a knight…a bishop, she thought. And then another thought came unbidden, just on the heels of the first: The devil is in the details…the devil…devil…
Above, she heard a quiet scraping sound as Corbbmacc slid the grate away from the hole. She saw him wait for a minute, perhaps listening, then he crawled out onto the street.
She shook off her reverie and started up after him, climbing carefully up the slick chains.
She was hardly out of the hole before Corbbmacc was sliding the grate carefully back into place. She brushed soot out of her eyes as she got to her feet and took in their surroundings.
They were in another alley, this one behind a long, low building that extended a hundred yards in each direction. Broken and empty crates were piled haphazardly against the wall like a child’s discarded blocks, and everything was still and silent.
Haven Lost Page 28