Empire of the Worm (27 page)

“Die!” the General said, and
stabbed at Davril’s neck.

Davril leapt back. He teetered on
the very brink of the Pit. At his back darkness dropped down and away, forever.

Hastus brought his blade down at
Davril’s head. Davril raised his sword, catching the blow. The General shoved
down, using all his muscle, and Davril’s arms trembled with the exertion of
fighting him. Hastus’s eyes glared into Davril’s—contemptuous and triumphant.

Davril, however, had prepared
himself for this moment. He removed his left hand from the sword handle,
holding off the General with merely his right. He only needed a moment. Just an
instant and it would be done. Lightning-quick, he jerked his blood-thirsty
dagger out of his waistband in the small of his back and—just as his right arm
gave out under the strain—plunged it up into the General’s abdomen. Hastus
gasped, and his eyes widened. His arm fell away, and his blade clattered to the
floor.

“For Hariban,” Davril told him. “For
Sareth.”

The General stumbled backward and
fell, sprawling on his back, his wound open and visible, blood running from it
across the floor.

The sight halted the advance of his
men, who stared down at the body. Some made religious gestures, though none
were the sign of the Worm.

Then, anger taking the place of
sorrow in their eyes, the troops lifted their gazes to Davril. As one, they
advanced on him. He had nowhere to go. His back was to the Pit, his front to
the advancing soldiers. It was an even bet whether the soldiers would end him
or the Serpent. Its stench was so thick he felt nauseous.

A cry made Davril wheel about.

Alyssa, Jeselri, and a handful of
soldiers stood on the far side of the chasm. A rope arced out, away from one of
the soldiers. Two others held its far end. Its near end, weighted with a piece
of metal, fell to the floor at Davril’s feet—fell, and began to slip, back
toward the Pit —

“Don’t let him escape!” the Uulosons
called.

They rushed over the General’s
body, trampling it underfoot, even though it still moved.

Davril dove for the rope.

Missed it with one hand.

Caught it with the other.

A sword came down at his head. He
rolled out over the edge of the precipice. Plunged down into darkness. His
stomach lurched. Two fires burned below. They rose toward him.

The far side of the pit rushed up
at Davril. He braced himself. Struck. The impact nearly knocked him off the
rope, nearly crushed his hip. Somehow he hung on.

Above, the guards began reeling him
up, inch by inch.

Still weak from the impact, Davril
looked unsteadily down. The two fires rose at him. A thin, curved line appeared
below the eyes. The line grew broader, and he thought he could see the silhouettes
of teeth, sharp, against that inferno. The stench made his eyes smart. The
earth shook, and pebbles and dust rained down all around him.

He put one hand in front of the
other and climbed, madly, desperately, unheeding of anything else. He was
hardly even aware that he had clamped his dagger between his teeth, and that he
could still taste the saltiness of Hastus’s blood.

Alyssa cried out in fear. Jeselri
shouted at his soldiers to reel Davril up faster.

The Serpent roared below. More dust
and pebbles rained down.

The Uulosons screamed in panic. Davril
could hear them scrambling back, some beating at the huge main doors, closed. Metallic
booms echoed through the Chamber.

The soldiers hauled Davril over the
edge. Instantly Alyssa threw her arms about him and covered his face in kisses.
He stuck the knife back in his waistband and let her embrace him. Then he
allowed Jeselri to offer him a hand up from the floor.

“Come,” Jeselri breathed. “Let us
hurry.”

They reached a narrow doorway,
where many Avestines waited for them, huddling in the narrow, winding passages
of the Order of the Serpent. Here was the Order’s monastery, a nightmarish
affair of labyrinthine passageways and obscene sculptures.

Davril turned back to see the General,
or the General’s replacement, trying to hold his guts in and drag himself away
from the lip of the Pit. All over the room, the ten thousand soldiers under his
command screamed or pounded at the doors, slew themselves, each other, or
prayed.

Even through the distance, Davril
saw the still-living General’s eyes widen as an immense black Shape rose up
from the Pit. The General screamed. Then the Shape eclipsed him, and Davril saw
him no more. The Serpent scooped up a score of Uulosons with its first bite,
and the General’s screaming ceased when it chomped.

At Davril’s side, Alyssa wept.

“I’m sorry,” Davril said.

She nodded solemnly. “You had no
choice.”

A dozen Uulosons had seen the open
door through which Davril and his party had gone, and they rushed to it, even
as the Serpent craned its head around and started leaning in their direction,
fire gushing from its maw.

Davril helped shut the thick metal
door in their faces, but he did not smile when they banged futilely against it.
They did not bang for long.

The screams of the rest lasted for
nearly half an hour, and Davril could hear each one, even through the thickness
of the metal door.

Not all the Uulosons had followed the General down to the
Chamber of the Serpent. Some had remained behind to loot or rape; thus Davril,
Jeselri and the other commanders, after making their way from the Order’s
monastery, led different companies throughout the Avestine tunnels, cleansing
them of trouble-makers. Meanwhile Davril dispatched his spies through the streets
of Sedremere to find the location of the Jewel.

An hour after the battle, and at
the end of the clean-up, he met with his commanders and priests in the brisk
night air atop a tower rising from the Avestine Quarter. The stars twinkled
brightly across the expanse of night, but the towers and domes of Sedremere
were dark, as the Lerumites had summoned all citizens to Sraltar Square to
witness the ascension of the Worm. Even now Davril could hear the tolling of bells
calling the Sedremerans. The result was a dark, hulking city, empty and silent
save for the bells. Waiting.

“There,” Davril said, gesturing to
the north. “My scouts have found the Jewel, and the Lady who bears it. They
ride toward Sraltar Square in a great caravan, surrounded by two full legions.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed General
Montieb. “Then we can catch them yet. Two full legions will be difficult to
overcome, especially with the head start they have on us, but after the battle
we just won I’m apt to believe you’re capable of anything, Lord Husan.”

Davril smiled. Since the close of
the battle, all those he had come in contact with had shown him the deepest respect.
Would that I could live to enjoy it.

“Thank you,” he said. Davril frowned
as he stared north, toward the great darkness that had congealed in Sraltar
Square. He could see nothing of Uulos, just a darkness blacker than the night. However,
he didn’t need eyes to find the Worm. He could
feel
it, all malice and power. Uulos radiated evil like heat off a
hot road, and Davril felt it every time he looked toward the square.

“I appreciate the trust you all
have in me,” he said, “but even I can’t get the Jewel back now. It’s lost to
the Worm.” They made noises of shock and protest, but he raised his hands and
called for silence, and when they obliged, he said, “I fear retaking the Jewel
will not win us the war, anyway.”

“What is this?” demanded Father
Elimhas, and Father Trisdan nodded agreement.

“Now that our hiding place is known
we will have to relocate,” Davril said, “and there’s simply nowhere to relocate
to. The enemy’s spies are everywhere. In no ghetto or hole could we hide. And
Uulos’s agents will be back within the hour to finish us off, General or no
General. We’ll barely have time to evacuate a tenth of our people, and they’d
be butchered in the streets when they couldn’t find a place to hole up. No. We
strike now. It’s our only choice. That or complete oblivion.”

The Lady of Behara let out a breath.
“Surely you do not mean to let them
have
the Jewel!”

Alyssa stood in the crowd, looking
at him strangely. Evidently she saw something in his eyes, as suddenly she let
out a sob and turned away.

“Alas,” he breathed, “that is
exactly what I mean to do.”

Chapter
19

When they all erupted in protests again, Davril waited it
out. “Let me explain,” he said.

Tensely, they listened as he
outlined his plan, the wind howling and screaming about the tower while he
talked. When he finished, Alyssa sank to her knees and wept. The others looked
at him with new respect, but also a certain sadness. They were being addressed
by a dead man.

“You see,” he finished, “this is
the only way. Our finding of the lost books at the Light-House, and Father
Trisdan’s subsequent quickening of the egg, has given us a great opportunity. The
Jewel itself is now a threat to Uulos. We must take advantage of that while we
can, while Uulos is still consolidating His power, before He’s reached His full
might.”

Shaking her head back, Alyssa said,
“No! No, darling. You cannot
do
this.”

“It’s the only way. We cannot hope to
win, not even if we retake the Jewel. I don’t want to do this—”

“You do!” she accused him. “You
do
.”

The others made way for him as he
went to Alyssa and knelt beside her.

“No,” he said. “I want to stay with
you. But I must confront the Worm. It’s because of me that He has come, it is
because of me that He has the Jewel, but it will be because of me that He is
slain.”

“There!” she said, her blue-green
eyes flashing. “
That’s
why you want
to do this.” She stormed angrily down the stairs.

He called out for her to stop, but
of course she didn’t, and he knew the sight of her narrow back slipping into the
darkness of the stairwell would be the last he would ever see of her.

For a moment, he stood, hoping she
would come back, then returned his attention to his lords and priests. Wind
screamed over the rooftop, billowing their robes and tunics dramatically, and they
regarded him with still, frightened eyes. Still, there was resolve in their postures
and firmness in the set of their chins.

Wesrai, looking confused, for he
had likely just run into Alyssa going the other way, emerged from the stairwell
holding the burden Davril had sent him to fetch. Silently, he handed Davril the
Lerumite robe and staff, and Davril wrapped the robe about him. It was the same
one he’d taken from the fish-priest the night he saved Alyssa, and again he
hoped to utilize it and the staff for the same purpose.

“Are you sure about this?” Wesrai
asked.

“It’s no shame to change course,”
Jeselri said. “There must be another way.”

Davril looked at him. “If any of
you can think of one, I’ll stay. I give you one minute.” He stood there staring
at them—the Lady of Asragot bringing her burden closer to Sraltar Square with
every heartbeat—and at last they hung their heads.

Davril nodded. “Then I must go.”

Alyssa watched from a window as Davril mounted a horse in
the courtyard. Weeping, she cursed him, and herself, even the night sky above. Why
did he have to do this? How could he abandon her? Qazradan?

That was unfair, she knew. Tearfully,
she watched Davril take the reins of his horse. His right leg clearly pained
him, but he used it anyway. Alyssa was surprised he could even walk with all
he’d been through tonight. The Lady of Asragot had used him cruelly.

The generals and advisors gathered
around Davril in the courtyard, their horses brought to them by handlers. None
mounted, however. All stood in a half-circle about Davril, listening to his
final instructions and wishing him well. Alyssa couldn’t hear their words, but
she could imagine them. She should be down there. She should be with him.

Suddenly she quit the window and
rushed down through the building, wiping her eyes. She burst out into the
courtyard, the wind snatching at her hair.

Davril was just a dark speck
vanishing down the avenue.

The hooves of Davril’s horse clattered on the cobblestones,
the sound echoing off the dark and empty buildings that on either side of him;
he felt like he was riding down a dark valley toward his doom.
I am.
Over the sound of hooves tolled of
the hideous bells, summoning the Sedremerans to Uulos. They weren’t the
poignant, mysterious bells of Algorad, but heavy, inexorable, their echoes
sounding off the empty buildings long after the bells themselves had been rung.

Every clatter of the horse’s hooves
shook Davril’s body, turning every one of his wounds into a fiery blaze. He
grit his teeth against the pain. Blood wept from his cuts, from the hole where
his right nipple used to be, from the strips of raw meat where his skin used to
cling, soaking his clothes and running down his legs to drip off his sandals. He
rode down that valley of darkness, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, with
the sound of the bells in his ears.

But it was not to Sraltar Square
that he rode, at least not at first. He rode toward the Palace on its silent
mountain. He reached it in good time, the streets being empty. And
still
the bells tolled, summoning any
stragglers. All must witness the final victory of Uulos.

Davril rode through the many arches
in the walls encircling the Palace, past the mansions, past the guard outposts,
and finally into the gilded courtyard before the stairs leading up to the high
doors of the Palace. There, in the shadows before the doors, stood yet more
shadows.

Davril dismounted and went to them,
bowing his head to his father, whose pale face he could just see, ghostly and
gray by the dim light. His brothers stood behind the old emperor, and their
eyes regarded Davril, surprisingly, with warmth. There was even the suggestion
of a smile on the old emperor’s face.

“You may rise,” he said, and Davril
straightened. “Have you come to bid us farewell?” his father asked. “Tonight
the Phoenix dies. Even now he is borne toward the Worm. We can feel it. And we
can feel the Worm’s attention begin to be directed at us. After He devours the
bird, His might will swell. His gaze will turn. He will be strong enough to
destroy the Great Ones, to avenge Himself of their betrayal.”

“I go to stop Him.”

“What would you ask of us?”

“You aided me last time. I would
never have been able to steal the Jewel without you. If you hadn’t helped my
men distract the Lerumites, we wouldn’t have been able to quicken it, and I
couldn’t do what I intend now. But I need your help again. One last time.”

His father smiled. “One last time,
you mean, before we take that final journey together. Down to glittering
Algorad, where there will be singing and merriment until the end of days.”

“Yes,” Davril said, and he returned
his father’s smile, though sadly. “It will be as you say, if we can bring down
Uulos.”

He told his father what he wanted. It
was simple enough.

Behind him, down the slope a piece,
a rider watched him. She had followed him silently, trailing him at some
distance, and she dismounted and sheltered herself in an archway. She strained
forward, listening, but she could not hear his words.

The Lady of Asragot rode at the head of the procession
bearing the Jewel of the Sun toward her eternal master, the Great Uulos, Lord
of All. Behind her, the thousands of soldiers safeguarding the Jewel rode in
grim silence, though their horses’ hooves made thunder on the cobblestones. The
wave of sound rolled before them to announce their arrival.

All Sedremere had gathered to
Sraltar Square. Only half a million could fit in the Square proper, so many
ascended to the buildings near it. They stood at windows, or upon rooftops, or
in the streets and alleys converging on the Square. There were so many of them,
and all had worn their finest, not that Uulos cared. The Lady smiled when she
saw them, and smiled wider as they made way for her and her procession.

She led the train of soldiers through
them, and they pressed back into the alleys, almost trampling each other to get
out of her way. She half-expected some to attack her, or perhaps another assault
would come from some remnant of the rebels. Either way, she was prepared. She
was a mighty being, and Uulos had blessed her with some echo of His own might
to better carry out His will. None attacked her. General Hastus must have
destroyed them all, then. Even now he would be rounding up the rebellion’s survivors
to be brought to the Master as sacrifices. She hoped many
had
survived. Her lord needed souls, and they were running out of
prisoners of war. He had returned to this world, but He was not yet at His old
strength.

Soon,
though
.
He will devour the Jewel and be
mightier than He has ever been.

Passing through the grand south
entrance of Sraltar Square, she beheld the massive gathering that had come to
witness Uulos’s triumph. Horns blew at her arrival, and people cheered—some,
anyway. Most had yet to truly take Uulos into their hearts.

They
will learn
, she told herself.
They
will learn.

Here and there among the gathering
rose great mounds or tall, unearthly figures, or strange fires, and more. These
were ancient beings not unlike the Lady, things that had slumbered or hid for
eons awaiting the Master’s return. Now they’d come, some eating the humans that
stood too near, some indulging themselves in other ways. But one and all had
come to witness their lord’s ascension and bask in His greatness. Soon His
swelling power would summon even more, greater allies, like Sythang who dwelt
below. Soon, with the destruction of the Jewel, when Uulos’s might could spread
unchecked, the world would be fit for their habitation. The age of man would
end.

She rode forward into the cleared
space around her Master, seeing the lines of soldiers and Lerumites, the column
of sacrifices being herded toward Him. Her eyes fell on the Worm, and all her
smiles and eagerness fell away, to be utterly eclipsed by wonder and awe.

Davril stared, too.

He’d entered through the east
entrance and was shoving his way through the dense crowd when a space opened up
before him around one of the beings drawn by the Worm—a creature of purple fire
—and suddenly his eyes fell on Uulos Himself.

Davril gasped. There where the
Pyramid of Eresmed had stood, where Davril himself had been crowned in another
age, loomed the Worm.

At first all Davril could see was a
great pall of blackness. It was something like living shadow congealed into a
single mass, a mountain of shadow swelling and throbbing, sitting in the midst
of Sraltar Square, leaving not a trace of the pyramid that had stood there
before. The longer Davril stared, the more he could see slight irregularities
in the shadow. Sometimes it would swell, or swirl, or part, and he would get a
glimpse of what lay beyond. He saw a hint of a massive amorphous limb, something
like a great pincer, and a tendril, and behind it a monstrous bulk, glistening
and heaving. Then the shadow folded shut.

Summoning his courage, Davril
renewed shoving his way through the crowd. They gave back, as he wore the robes
and carried the staff of a Lerumite.

Almost
there
, he thought.
Damn it, I
shouldn’t have taken the time to visit my father
. But he’d had to do what
he could to protect her.
I’d better get
there in time, then.

He wondered if the men were in
position yet. He’d spoken with his generals and spymasters before he’d departed
the Avestine Quarter, had ordered them to send word to the men they had placed
within the Lerumites’ acolytes and the General’s military. He had told them
what they needed to do, and they had, very reluctantly, agreed. Even now the
men should be preparing themselves.

The press of people was too thick. Alyssa had to climb down
from her horse. Frustrated, knowing Davril had already dismounted and was
somewhere ahead, perhaps far ahead, she slipped her way through the crowd with
desperation burning through her veins. The people cursed her and elbowed her, but
she passed through them without getting entangled.

She had to reach him, had to tell
him that he didn’t have to atone for anything, that if she could be forgiven so
could he, there had to be another way —

Crying, she groped her way forward,
overwhelmed at the mass of humanity all around her. The archway rose ahead. Davril
must have already passed through it. He was far ahead of her now, he must be. His
robes and staff cut through this crowd much faster than anything Alyssa had. Almost
ruefully, she realized this was no longer a world that appreciated human
beauty. She might never catch up with him, might never tell him what she
suspected, what she had felt, a change in her body, a sense of fullness . . .

Suddenly a shadow rose before her,
a shadow with a pale, cold face. People all around shrieked and shoved away
from it. And from the others. Four other shadows stood arrayed behind this one.
As one, they closed on her. For a moment, fear overwhelmed her. Then rage
melted it away.

“No!” she screamed.
“No!”

Their cold, iron grips closed on
her arms. As one, they hefted her up.

“No!” she screamed. “No, you can’t
do
this!”

But the late Lord Husan, Davril’s
father, whom Alyssa had known all her life, said, “Let him do what he must,
child. And what we must. He asked us to do one thing for him, and one thing
only.”

He nodded to his sons, and they
bore her kicking and screaming away.

Reverently, the Lady dismounted before the presence of the
Great One. Behind her, her priests removed the Jewel of the Sun from the
carriage that had carried it and spoke words of power over it to dampen its
bite so that when Uulos swallowed it it would not pain him unduly. Even so, she
could sense that it was stronger now. The rebels had done something to it. No
matter. As long as the Master swallowed it whole, and it did not break, then He
could absorb its power over eons, taking as much time as He needed.