Empire of the Worm (19 page)

“Father,” he said, and his voice
was raw.

“Son.”

The shadows that had been swirling
around him stilled, and each one become a solitary figure. His brothers, their
faces pale and ghostly by the flickering light, gazed back at him. As one, they
bowed their heads.

He bowed back. Remorse welled up in
them. “Brothers. I . . . I am sorry. Look what I’ve turned you into.”

“There is still time to make it
right, if we act quickly,” the dead emperor said. “The Old One has not returned
yet. He’s only brought His doorway here, and now He maneuvers to shove it open.
We can stop Him from doing that.”

“Yes,” Davril said. He took a breath,
steadied himself. “That’s why I’ve come. I have a plan to defeat Him, and I’ll
need your help to do it.”

They talked for some time. Then,
with Wesrai beside him, Davril made his way back through the city streets, past
the Uuloson temples whose congregations were performing their evening sacrifices,
and finally into the Avestine tunnels once more. He was weary and ready for
sleep by the time he finished his bath and climbed into bed.

Almost as soon as he did, Alyssa
came to him. She was just a slim, shadowy figure gliding across the room. She
hesitated for the merest instant at the edge of his bed, then slipped under the
covers.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She wriggled closer. “What do you
think?” Her voice was soft. He could feel the heat of her body.

“No.”

She wriggled even closer, pressing
herself against him. She had worn at least a slip as she had glided across the
room. Now she was naked. Her small round breasts pressed against his chest. Her
nipples were hard.

“
No
.”

She kissed his upper chest, his
neck, his cheek. Blood rushed through him, and his manhood lifted, poked
against her thigh.

“Oh, Davril . . .”

He shook his head. “No. Sareth. Hariban
. . .”

“
No
.” There was anguish in her voice. She kissed him again, and he
tasted the salty tang of tears on her lips. “Davril, my love.”

For a moment, he kissed back, and
her mouth filled his with her heat. Her heart beat against his chest,
bu-bump, bu-bump, bu-bump
, as fast as a
rabbit’s.

He pushed her away. “No.” His voice
was firm.

She struggled closer. “Davril—”

“Out!”

“Davril, please . . .”
“Fine, we’ll do it the hard way.”

He stood and ripped the covers away
from her, exposing her nudity. She gasped and covered herself.

“Out!” he said.

She scowled, then meekly slid off
the bed, stooped to retrieve her scanty garments, and made to depart. Before
leaving, she turned and said, “Will you never forgive me?” He could just see
the tears coursing down her cheeks by the light spilling in from the hall
beyond. Then she was gone.

For a while, he stared at the space
where she had gone. At last he slumped back, exhausted. He kept seeing the look
in her eyes.
She betrayed me. It killed
Hariban. Sareth. And led to her father’s usurpation of the throne. Now the very
government of Qazradan is guided by the Worm!

Despite it all, he could not quite
convince himself.

Focus
,
he told himself.
Tomorrow night’s the
night.

Tomorrow they would retake the
Jewel of the Sun.

Chapter
14

There was only the scuffle of footsteps and the hissing and
spitting of the torches. All else was silence and echoes, and the occasional
whispered curse, as Davril led his company through the sewers. An unnamable
stench filled his nostrils. His eyes watered, and his stomach clenched.

It was unnerving to think that he
was not in fact in the lowest part of the city, that there was a whole other
city below him, perhaps with its own hellish set of sewers—the sewers of Uulos!;
it was almost laughable. Indeed, at the thought, he felt an almost irresistible
urge to throw his head back and cackle, but he knew that if he began he would
not be able to stop.

The Lady consulted her maps. “We
are here, I think.”

“Yes.” Davril could
feel
it. They were close.

He led his men up through the
gutters and into the streets of Sedremere. Over the stench of the sewers that
clung to him, he could smell the briny scent boiling off the River, and the foulness
in the air was stronger here. The buildings around him seemed to vibrate, to
shimmer, and from time to time a trace of purple or red or green seemed to
swirl through the hot night air, as though the very fabric of reality were
changing.

“The Temple’s just a little ways
ahead,” he told his group. “The other teams should already be assembled.”

They nodded tersely, and he allowed
himself a smile. They were a fine, brave group, a score of his most veteran,
loyal soldiers, plus a handful of high priests to insure things supernatural
were seen to. All the faces he stared into looked nervous and grim. Eyes
flicked here and there, and sweat dripped down from lank hair. They all stank,
of course, but they were so nervous he doubted they even noticed. He barely
did. They were about to invade the very lair of the Lerumites, and the
Lerumites held all the advantages. His people were jumping and flinching at
every sound, every gust of wind, every scrape of pebble.

“It will be all right,” he told them.
“Tonight is the night we take back our dignity. Tonight is the night
we
go on the offensive.”

They straightened, sort of smiled—brief,
hard smiles—and wiped the sweat from their eyes.

He took a deep breath. “This way,”
he said, and led the way through the tight, tangled alleys. This was the
industrial quarter, where the wealthy families of the River had their factories
and warehouses. It was an ugly, bleak place, cut through with canals for the
tributaries that filtered into the River, and in the midst of it all rose the
Temple on its marshy island. Davril could feel it, lurking ahead in the
darkness, a burning hole in the shadows.

The buildings opened out, and there
it was—the Temple, hunched and twisted, squatting like some grisly carrion
eater upon its isle. Moonlight glimmered off the high, dark towers. In daylight
they would have been purplish, but now they were black as death. The bulk of
the Temple was squat and bowed and hideous, like the body of a spider, but the
towers were slender and gnarled. They clawed at the stars as if seeking to pull
them down.

The Lerumites sang. Their horrid,
fishy warbling rolled through the streets and made the hairs stand up on the
back of Davril’s neck. There seemed to be many singers, and the lights of the
Temple blazed. The purple and red stained-glass windows glowed in long,
curling, uneven strips all along the Temple’s walls, and Davril could feel the
air stir against his skin in time to the singing.

He shared dark looks with Fathers
Trisdan and Elimhas—who had agreed to accompany them—the Lady of Behara, and
the fourth high priest, Cabalas, leader of the Illyrians. “Can you feel
anything?” Davril asked them. “Can you feel Him?”

Father Trisdan nodded tightly. “He’s
near, my boy. The Door is opening, greased on the bloods of His sacrifices. Soon
it will be wide enough for Him to drag himself through.”

“We must hurry,” said the Lady.

Davril led his men into position at
the mouth of an alley on the northwest side of the Temple. The night was hot
and humid, and swirls of fog drifted up from the nearby swamp and slithered
through the streets. While his men waited in the shadows, he stepped out into
the street and scanned the rooftops. He did not have to wait for long before a
figure appeared at the edge of one.

The man raised a shield, then
lowered it quickly, not wanting to attract attention. The signal meant that one
of Davril’s other teams had taken its position on the roof. During the great
ceremony of the Lerumites, all the roofs and many of the streets had been
guarded. Davril’s father and brothers had, with their unnatural stealth,
managed to deal with these guards, using the guards’ blood to sustain them. Afterwards,
Davril’s men had taken their positions. This close to the Temple, it would be
difficult for Davril’s father and brothers to maintain their strength, but
somehow they had. For him.

Davril raised his sword, the answering
signal. It was time to begin.

“Get ready,” Davril told his men as
he returned to the alley.

It all happened very fast after
that. His men on the rooftops stepped forward, all in a line, each raising
their bows and drawing the strings back to their ears. A darting figure
carrying a torch went from one to the other, lighting the oil-soaked rags that
bound the arrow shafts. The signal was given, and the arrows streaked through
the misty night, from the rooftop of the factory, arcing over the black waters
of the marshy moat, to embed in the Temple. The archers were on the other side
of the Temple from Davril, and their arrows struck too far down on the Temple
for him to see the strikes, but after the third volley he started to see flames
licking up on the far side, and smoke curling amongst the stars.

The Lerumites had placed watchers
in the Temple’s high towers, and even as the first volley arced through the
night, a fishy cry went up, making Davril start. Quickly two more volleys followed,
the archers mere shadows on the rooftop.

The fish-priests exerted their power.
There was a loud blast from the high towers, and the air seemed to blur from
the towers to the rooftop. The archers stumbled back, dropped their bows, and
placed their hands over their ears as though they heard some awful sound and
could not stand it.

Davril had expected something like
this and had placed two more archery teams on roofs neighboring the first one. Now
they sprang up and targeted the fish-priests. Shafts sped through the night
like black needles, and one robed form tumbled from a tower, spinning into the
brackish water, then another. The strange blurring in the air faded, and the
archers on the first rooftop shook themselves and picked up their bows.

Abruptly, the singing that had
marked the Lerumite ritual stopped.

The Temple doors burst open. Purple
light washed the flagstones before the high, arched entrance, light spilling
out from within the Temple. As Davril watched, a tide of robed figures streamed
out of the Temple interior and across the grounds. The gates in the wall
surrounding the compound swung open, and the tide of Lerumites surged over the
bridge, toward the factories and warehouses, most owned by Qasan Ulesme and his
family, on whose rooftops the rebels were stationed. More and more poured out
before the tide ceased.

“Now!” said Davril. “While the
gates are open.”

He hobbled toward the Temple,
moving as fast as he could. The others followed at his back. His lack of speed
would not be a problem. He needed to give the Lerumites time to reach the buildings
and give battle to his men.

His heart slammed against his ribs.
His breaths came fast and shallow. His veins sang.

The putrid fog slithered across the
courtyard, yellow-ish and sticky. Pushing his way through it, he led his men
through the open gates. The Lerumites in the guard towers to either side of the
gateway had been slain, either by his men or by his father and brothers. He led
his company over the bridge, across the dark courtyard, past the shrines and
strangely-shaped hedges, past skulking figures writhing with tendrils—the hairs
stood up on the nape of his neck—and finally through Temple doors and into the
antechamber. To either side of the great black doors that led into the chapel
reared a giant, horrid statue, each a figure with a vaguely human body, but a
fish-like head. Each scaly hand gripped a trident. The fish-heads glared down
at the intruders.

“On!” Davril gasped, leading his
company into the chapel.

A wave of darkness and fear shoved
down on him. It was oppressive and cloying, and he wanted nothing more than to
drop to his knees and weep. His men felt it too. He heard their choking cries,
saw the fear in their suddenly pale faces.

“Fight it!” he urged. “Fight it!”

One of them started to sink to his
knees. Davril slapped him, jerked him by his tunic and pulled him onward. He
cuffed another one and propelled him on. The men shook themselves and followed
his lead.

They threaded their way across the
wet obsidian floor toward the horrid wall that stretched ahead, with all its
twisted faces and limbs, tentacles gripping terrified victims. Leading up to
the bas-relief was the half-moon dais with its many stairs, all wet, as though
misted by the sea. Atop the dais was the great black slab of the Lerumites’ altar—the
one they had been using for countless years, not the Black Altar taken from the
ship.

Just the same, nausea rose in Davril
as he approached it. His fingers trembled, and his gorge rose. Three of his men
had to lean over and retch, right there on the chapel floor.

Davril focused on the thing astride
the altar, flaming and smoking.

The Jewel. Thick and crusted and
heavy, more like a rock than anything else, the oblong shape egg-shape flared
and roared, its inner fires permeating the rock and wreathing the ceiling with
smoke. Davril sensed that its power was muted somehow, that its fires were not
as bright as they should be.

“The altar,” Father Trisdan said. “It
truly is weakening it.”

“Yes,” said Elimhas. “Of course. That’s
why
I’m
here.”

“Be quick about it, then,” Davril
said.

Elimhas, looking like an overfed
corpse with his bright, gleaming eyes, sharp nose and sagging jowls, nodded
irritably. The High Priest of Asqrit did not like being ordered about, but he
nevertheless collected the other priests of the Light together. For the first
time in ages, the four sects would work in concert for the common good. The
heavy chains were removed from their packs, where they had been kept wrapped in
cloth to silence them, and the holy books opened. Carrying these items like
weapons, the priests converged on the altar, muttering prayers to drive away Uulos’s
evil.

The altar throbbed, a violent blast
Davril felt in his mind and through the soles of his feet. He reeled, shaken. Uulos
was fighting them. But with the holy words, and the presence of the Jewel, the
priests approached.

In the background came the sounds
of fighting—yells of hate, cries of pain, the whistling of arrows, Lerumites
warbling, metal crashing, a body falling from a great height to smack the
flagstones, a hastily cut-off scream.

“Hurry!” Davril said. The tide of
battle could only go one way; the Lerumites were just too strong.

Seeming in a trance, the priests
neared the holy egg, if that’s what it was, not bothered by its heat or smoke. They
uncoiled their heavy, blessed chains and threw them about the Jewel. With a
mighty heave, and more words, they pulled it off the altar.

It crashed to the ground, flamed
and sparked. The priests stared at it, then said more words. Davril and his
soldiers gave them space as they dragged the great flaming orb down the black
steps, off the dais and away from the altar, bumping down the stairs, grating
along the ground the whole way, leaving black char-marks in its wake. The egg’s
flames danced higher now that it was removed from the altar, but not as high as
Davril remembered. Hopefully Uulos and his Lerumites had not permanently
weakened it.

The sounds of fighting began to
fade. If the men fled, the Lerumites would pursue them and buy Davril and his
party more time.
Father, help them.

The priests wrestled the Jewel to
the chapel floor. Elimhas, the Lady, and Trisdan slumped back, exhausted,
wiping sweat from their faces.

“Your men will have to carry it
further,” Elimhas said. “We’ve done the hard part, separating it from the altar.
Now it is strong.”

“Strong enough to do what must be
done?” Davril asked.

“Not yet,” Father Trisdan said.

The Jewel was brought to one of the
warehouses, where it was loaded onto a horse-drawn carriage, one of many. At
Davril’s order, the doors were opened and the tide of carriages rolled outward
to join the other teams from the other factories and warehouses owned by the
Ulesme Family. Qasan himself accompanied Davril, riding in the same carriage he
did. He would never again be able to return to his mansion or his businesses,
and he would have to give warning to his father. The risk that they had been
associated with Davril’s underground was too high. He had given up everything
for the rebellion, just so that they would have a place to stage their attacks
and regroup afterward. Without that they would not have been able to stop Uulos’s
return, nor steal the Jewel, and yet Davril sensed Qasan’s bitterness.

“Thank you,” Davril told him as
they clattered along.

Qasan nodded. “It was the least I
could do,” he said, and Davril could tell it cost him a lot to say.
Another friend lost
, he thought.

The procession of carriages came
upon a troop of soldiers that had been marching toward the Temple, summoned by
the Lerumites to deal with the attackers, but the procession broke through
their lines and rolled on. Some of the enemy soldiers gave chase, but Davril’s
archers riding on the carriage-tops scattered them.