Empire of the Worm (25 page)

“No!” Davril said.

“Farewell, Lord Husan,” called the
Lady.

Davril swatted at the guard, who
ignored him. The Lerumite hauled him downslope, into bowed section where the
floor imitated the curves of a serpent’s mouth.

“No . . .”

The hole loomed wider, darker. He
fancied he could smell the reek of rotting bodies still emanating from it. Where
did it go? How many had gone down it before him?

Desperately, he turned to the Lady
of Asragot, who was watching him with disinterest. “Where’s Alyssa?” he
demanded. “What have you done with her?”

Then they were at the hole. The
guard contrived to swing him in by the ankle. Using his last once of strength,
Davril curled up, clutched the guard by the outstretched hand, and jerked with
all his might. The guard had been slightly off balance due to the curved floor,
and now he toppled over, taking Davril with him. Together, in grim silence,
they fell into the gullet of the Serpent.

Chapter
18

Davril cracked his skull on the pipe. Bit his lip. Tasted
blood. Was hardly aware of it.

The body of the Lerumite fell on
top of him, crushing him against the inner wall of the pipe. Flesh scraped off
his back, and blood ran between his shoulder blades. Down they tumbled,
grappling with each other in the dark. The stench of death rose about them,
thick and cloying. Davril had not imagined it, after all.

He balled his right hand into a
fist and smashed it into the gut of the Lerumite. A rush of air escaped the
creature’s lips. Its cold, slimy hands—it has eschewed its human guise—wrapped
around his throat. Squeezed. Davril struggled for air, could not find it. Pins
and needles filled his chest.

He smashed his fists again and
again into his opponent, and gradually the fingers around his throat loosened. Not
enough.

They fell, crashing down the twists
and turns of the pipe. Several times the body of the Lerumite crushed Davril up
against the curved, crusted wall, driving from him what little breath remained,
or smashing his head against the metal or stone. Stars and flashes wheeled in
his vision, though everything else was black. The only noises he heard were the
echoes of bodies striking metal and the sharp rasps of their grunts. The stench
of rotting corpses elicited bile from the back of his throat. Often he rolled
over greasy spots that must be old flesh, and several times he and his foe
smashed through brittle things that must be old bones, and twice they broke
through some wet, mushy thing that must be newer remains.

At last they crashed into a slimy, yielding
heap, the stench of which brought tears to Davril’s eyes. He felt the ruins of
partially liquefied bodies under him. All around him. He and the Lerumite had
come against a partial obstruction in the pipe, bodies heaped on bodies. And,
somewhere in the background, came the soft gurgle of water.

Against the dam of corpses, Davril and
the Lerumite fought until at last Davril’s bleeding fists pummeled the resistance
from the Lerumite. It slumped back, breathing raggedly and releasing its hold
of Davril’s throat. Davril collapsed backward, feeling a ribcage snap and mush
under him. Ooze slimed around his backside. This time the smell came even
closer to making him pass out.

There was a draft though—a faint,
vague draft—and the soft gurgle of water . . .

All else was blackness.

He heard the shuffling of the
Lerumite trying to rise and knew he must act quickly. He was so exhausted that
part of him wanted to just let the Lerumite do what it would.

He reached around him to the
shattered ribcage. Rotting, half-dissolved flesh still clung to the bones, and
he had to wrestle to snap off a rib, but he did. Then, using all his strength,
he rose, staggered forward, and half-collapsed atop the stirring Lerumite, who
had apparently slipped and fallen back down, judging from the squelching sounds
Davril used to guide himself. Quick exploration found the thing’s throat. It
squirmed, and he cooed to it to be quiet and still. Almost gently, he inserted
the jagged end of the rib into its throat, shoved it in, and leaned back and
forth, back and forth, trying to break the jugular. The creature thrashed and
mewled under him. Its fists beat him, but it grew weaker with every strike. Finally
cold blood sprayed Davril’s face. The creature went limp.

Davril panted in exhaustion,
surrounded by death. His gasps came fast and shallow, and sparks wheeled in his
vision. After a minute, though, the sparks faded and his breaths came easier.

Blackness surrounded him—plus the
stench of rotting (
human, dear gods
)
meat and offal. Without mortal combat to distract him, his eyes watered, bile
rose in his throat, and he vomited on the floor beside him. After, his stomach
ached and spasmed, and he spat to get rid of the taste. How had it come to
this? The emperor of the mightiest realm in history, mutilated and flayed alive
and cast into a pit?

Too weak to crawl away, he set
about exploring his surrounds by groping blindly with his fingers. He found the
end of the dam of bodies, and then, to his surprise, the lip of the pipe. Just
feet away from where he’d slain the Lerumite the Serpent’s throat ended, and
there was space . . . vast, echoing space.
The
stomach, I suppose.
He shouted into it, and the echoes reverberated
forever. Below him, far below, water ran, gurgling sluggishly.

A black lake. The Serpent’s gullet
dumped the High Priest’s victims into a subterranean lake.

Experimentally, he shoved one of
the bodies out. It tumbled and spun, he could hear the whistle of air as the
body parted it, hear its ragged clothes flap in the wind. He waited. At last he
heard the splash. There was no magic, there was no fell god waiting down here
to devour the bodies. Unless, of course, it waited in the lake . . .

Davril edged away.

For a while, he rested. When he was
able, he crawled up the pipe, slowly and torturously. At intervals he found
small round holes in the wall. Water-pipes, he thought. To flush out the bodies
periodically. But the High Priest had been dead and his flock scattered, and no
one had been around to pull the levers.
Thank
the gods
, Davril thought. If not for the dam, he and the Lerumite would
have personally found out if the Serpent visited the lake.

He pressed on, desperate to reach
the opening. He imagined the Davril imposter and shuddered. Even now the
Lerumites could have their slimy hands on the Jewel.

Frequently his hands felt bodies
and body parts around him, but at last he came across a form different from the
others.

It was warm.

Shocked, he drew back. When the
body didn’t attack him, he felt it again, more carefully. It was the body of a
girl, he decided, young and unclothed, covered in filth from the tunnels. Her
breasts rose and fell, and breath came from her mouth.

Emotion rose in him.
It’s not her. It can’t be her.

He shook her, gently. She didn’t
respond. He shook her more firmly.

He held his breath.

Finally, she murmured something. He
let out the breath. It sounded like her.

She murmured but did not waken. He
ran his hands over her body, trying to find some wound, and at last touched her
head. She cried out. Blood caked her hair.

No
,
he thought.
Surely I haven’t found her in
this hell only to lose her now.

He would have to carry her out of
here. There was no other way. The problem was that he had no strength; he’d
lost a great deal of blood, and flesh, and had vomited up what sustenance his
body had left to it.

But there was nothing for it. He
rose to a crouch and hefted the warm body of Alyssa over his shoulder,
straining with all his might and almost surprised when he did it successfully. She
neither protested nor helped as he carried her through the darkness, up around
the bends, slipping on greasy spots, entangling his feet in fetid guts, and
tripping on a flesh-covered skull, until finally he beheld a faint grayness ahead.
With renewed intensity, he pressed forward. With the weight over his shoulders,
his leg pained him even more than usual, and he cried out, but after what
seemed like days he flung Alyssa as gently as he could over the rim of the
Serpent’s gullet into the High Priest’s private sanctum, then dragged himself up
behind, his arms trembling.

The light seared his retinas. He
blinked, gradually able to see. Little light remained, only the fading embers
left in the two serpent-shaped braziers. The eyes and maws of the snakes still
glowed with fire, but it was a ghostly fire.

The Lady was gone. All that
remained of their encounter was Davril’s pool of blood and bits of flesh under
the protrusion he’d dangled from. He winced. Had he truly betrayed the location
of the key?

At least he’d found Alyssa, and he
was
her, he was sure. A sigh escaped
him. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful, even with the slight bump on her
head. Her lip was puffy, and there were bruises on her arm. The Lerumites had
not been gentle. Hopefully handling her roughly had been all they’d done.

He sat beside her, exhausted from
his labors, his leg throbbing, and suddenly her eyelids fluttered, revealing a
flash of blue-green. She gazed unseeing for a time, then settled on Davril’s
face.

“Davril!”

He smiled. “Alyssa . . .”

Gently, too gently, as if she were
afraid he might break, she sat up and cupped his bloody cheek in her hand. “What
did they do to you?” Her voice was horror-stricken. Her eyes roved up and down
his body, and he saw terror there. Pity. From somewhere, though, she found resolve
and composed herself.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t
remember it all. But I think I did a terrible thing.”

She cradled his head in her hands. “It
will be all right,” she promised. “It will, I swear.”

He staggered to his feet. “We’ve
got to leave,” he said. “I can walk now. They have the key to the room holding
the Jewel. And they have
me
—or at
least a fish-priest that looks like me.”

“We can’t let them have the Jewel,”
she said, rising.

And he thought,
Can’t we?

As they hastily dressed and departed the High Priest’s
suite, Alyssa explained how she had wound up in the gullet. Apparently the Lady
of Asragot and her accomplices had entered the suite through passages unknown to
either Davril or Alyssa; Alyssa speculated that the Lerumites had been closer
allies to the Avestines than any had previously supposed, and that the
fish-priest’s highest agents would from time to time visit with the High Priest
of Sythang, possibly to partake of his sacrificial rituals and orgies.

At any rate, the Lady had surprised
Alyssa and her guards; the Lady’s fish-priests had easily slain the men, but
not before obtaining a mouthful of their blood so that they could take their
forms. The Lady spoke to them in the tongue of the Lerumites, and the
fish-priests dragged Alyssa into the inner sanctum after removing its seals. What
they wanted of her Alyssa couldn’t say. Perhaps they meant to rape or torture
her. Davril thought it likely the Lady had wanted to use her against him, to
threaten him with her death and mutilation if he didn’t tell her where the key
was. In any event, Alyssa had wrestled one of their knives away and slashed one
across the side. It had struck her, sending her down the gullet, where she’d
struck her head. The next thing she knew she had looked up into Davril’s
blood-covered face.

“You should rest,” she said as he
strapped on his sandals. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere. You’ll only tear
open the wounds.”

“So be it.” He thrust his sword
into his scabbard. He was ready—almost. He marched into the bathing room.

As he stooped to retrieve his
sacrificial dagger, Alyssa tugged at his arm. “Please,” she said. “Just rest.” Tears
were in her eyes.

He stroked her cheek. “I’ve done a
terrible wrong,” he said. “I must right it if I can.”

Without another word, he marched
out of the suite. Alyssa followed, evidently determined not to let him out of
her sight. Immediately they were swarmed by frantic Avestines and rebels, all
surging frantically through the halls. The noise deafened. People brushed past
Davril, scraping his wounds. They were in such a panicked state most didn’t
even recognize him. They recognized his stench, though, and after the initial
contact most swerved to avoid him.

Davril pulled one man aside. “What
goes on? Where’s everyone going?”

The man looked at him, stunned. “You
mean you haven’t heard?”

“If we had we wouldn’t be asking,”
Alyssa snapped.

“It’s the Uulosons. They’re
attacking! Led by the General, I heard. And they’ve stolen the Jewel of the
Sun!”

This
is all my fault
, Davril thought.
Our
worst fears realized
.

Before the man could dart away,
Alyssa asked, “But where’s everyone going?”

“Some to battle. Some’re fleeing. There
are forgotten halls down in the deep earth where none will find us.” From the
tone of his voice, Davril didn’t have to ask in which camp he belonged. The man
nodded, a terse gesture of farewell and good luck, and disappeared into the
throng.

“What can we do?” Alyssa said.

Davril took her shoulders. “Let’s
go to the chapel. The thieves of the Jewel cannot have gotten far.”

She followed him as he pressed
through the throng. It was madness. People wailed in despair, or huddled to the
sides of the tunnels praying silently. He saw people in the chambers he passed
bowing to altars, sacrificing more chickens, deflowering more virgins. Some
participated in end-of-the-world orgies, others mass suicides. They would
rather die at their own hands than on the altar of the Worm. Others rushed to arms,
or combat. Many of the fighters rushed toward the chapel, and Davril followed,
coming upon the battle suddenly. The tunnel opened out into a great hall lined
with high, thick pillars, the arched ceiling disappearing into shadows
overhead. What Davril now recognized as bricked-up windows stretched vertically
on the walls to either side. In the large space, rebel soldiers many rows deep
drove against the invaders. All was the clashing of battle. In the pandemonium,
there was no way for Davril to reach the forefront of the battle and engage the
enemy himself.

To the rear, carried on a litter so
that his soldiers could see him and so that he could see the line of battle,
Jeselri shouted orders. “Wedge Three drive now!” he cried, and the
corresponding battle wedge drove deep against at the enemy soldiers. The lines
of soldiers were arranged in tight wedges, a dozen rows deep and more. It was
an effective battle grouping against barbarians and outlanders, but General
Hastur utilized the same tactics. “Wedge Four, SWITCH!” Jeselri shouted, and
the first row melted backward to take up the rear, while the second row took
the front position.