Etherwalker (15 page)

“So the Ur’lyn were ‘retired.’ Removed from the arenas and replaced by the exciting new monsters. blackspawn. Manticores. Lamia. Many collectors, fans of the bloodsport, tried to keep the race alive out of nostalgia, a love of memories. The Ur’lyn became relics before they became a people.

“So when the Schism happened, these remnant Ur’lyn found each other. They shared their pains and created a culture. They became a tribe. And they turned the paradox of Red Instinct and Morality into a mystical belief in the cruelty of the universe. A belief that they are doomed souls, avatars of suffering meant to pay for the crimes of other races.”

“And this belief is what is killing them?”

“Well, it isn’t helping them. When an adult Ur’lyn has reached its prime, it is given a ‘Task of Atonement’ from the ruling Shaman Pride—a group of aged mystics. This task usually involves traveling to a distant land and ‘saving an innocent’ from evil. The Ur’lyn who comes back, and very few do, becomes an Atoned Beast. It can then fully enter the pack, select a mate, and breed.”

“The Ur’lyn’s own mysticism is their greatest killer. Because the ‘evil’ they try to save an innocent from is almost always the Vestigarchy.”

Lamech took the carved Ur’lyn and stood, placing it on one of his nearby “shelves.”

“Is it a tragedy that such an untouchable killer, the perfect predator in a fallen world of monsters, is bringing about its own end?”

The old angel was still for a moment, then turned and shuffled back to the window. He picked up a book from the sill and settled down to read.

This signaled that the storytelling was over.

Sera whispered a thank you and left. Flying back to her own perch as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, she considered Lamech’s last words.

Yes. Yes it is a tragedy. And I won’t let Nyraud kill the Ur’lyn in his Garden. I am going to rescue it.

Chapter 12

“You don’t walk the streets of Undertown at night. The shadows . . . they seep up from beneath; they clot like blood. They are angry, the shadows.”

—Gelven Menkatral, Scrapmonger

Enoch shivered. They had been moving through the tunnels under Babel for hours now, and it was
cold
. Even Mesha’s warm weight about his neck couldn’t hold off the chill. Cal whistled a short burst, stopping the ape. Sal sat back on his haunches and sighed. His breath came out as a thin puff of vapor in the frigid air.

“This cold is new. I’ve been further down than we are now, and it’s never been like this.”

Rictus paused, too, looking at Sal’s breath. “Is it getting cold? You should have said something, Cal. I’m less sensitive to this kind of stuff—” He pointed down at his legs. “No monkey.”

Cal studiously ignored the comment.

Rictus looked over at Enoch, who was rubbing his bare arms. “You want to head back and grab something less ‘summer shepherd’s garb’ to wear? I’d offer you my jacket, but this old leather is only kept in one piece by my LifeBeat—part of the upgraded package.”

Enoch shook his head.

“We’ve already come pretty far—I’ll be alright.”

Rictus looked at Cal, who pursed his lips. The ape scratched at its leg and seemed to be unaffected by the cold. Enoch wondered if it had been bred to be hardier than its tropical ancestors—he was certainly jealous of the creature’s shaggy pelt.

The tunnels beneath Babel were extensive. According to Cal, this network of metal passageways and machinery had been around since before the Schism, and was one of the few “relatively untouched” remnants of that forgotten time on this side of the world. The walls and ceiling were paneled with sheets of thin, pale metal. From time to time, they came across empty rooms—rooms with jagged holes in the floors and ceiling.

“Signs of ancient violence,” said Rictus.

“Looting by a disreputable tavern owner,” said Cal.

Occasionally, they passed dark hallways extending endlessly from one side to the other, but Cal kept them moving in a straight line. He said that this passage would take them to the “fully-functioning secret” he had discovered in his last trip down here, and that the same passage would continue to carry them straight through the bowels of the city and out into the northern swamps.

“We should be almost out from under Babel by now, right?” asked Enoch.

Rictus tipped his head back and laughed. “We haven’t even gotten under the tower yet, kid. Babel is a big city. Cal, are you sure you don’t want to head back now and try for a sunnier path?”

“You saw what I did, Ric. Those soldiers that arrived at the end of your show weren’t there for the ale. I had three separate informants tell me that they were all over the city looking for
a boy and his ghoul
 . . . and if I hadn’t cut your second encore and rushed you back here, we’d be in the tower by now. The part without any windows.”

Rictus started to mumble something but stopped and looked back up at the arched ceiling. “Well, this doesn’t look good.”

Enoch followed the specter’s stare up into the flickering blue light—a light which
he
had ignited back when he first paused
and noticed the remnant lines of power running behind the paneled walls.

After walking in the poor illumination of Cal’s flashlight for an hour, it had been nice to be able to see the area both in front of and behind them. The light snapping on overhead like that had brought Rictus leaping out in front of the group, his sword humming around in a protective arc. The specter shot quick looks up and down the tunnel before Enoch’s laughter broke the tension. Cal had laughed as well, commenting that traveling down here with a Pensanden may just have its advantages. Rictus had grumbled, detaching the flashlight cord from his LifeBeat generator and telling Enoch that he should warn him before surprising him like that. That maybe next time Rictus’s sword might decide to “go luddite on your head.” 

Whatever that meant. He had made Enoch agree to extinguish the light behind them as they descended, and that did make sense. No trail.

Now if only we could find some wood for a fire . . . 

Enoch shivered again, squinting up into the light. It just looked like a long glass tube. Like the hundreds of others they had passed as they moved through the paneled sections of this passageway.

“I don’t see anything, Rictus.”

“Don’t look
into
the light tubes, silly peasant boy. Look at the walls around them.”

Turning to glance at the sides, Enoch noticed dark stains on some of the highest panels.

“I’ve not seen those down here before,” mumbled Cal, “but I’ve lived long enough to recognize the arcs and spatters that blood can leave.”

The words hung in the chilly air for a long moment. Rictus had his sword out again, and Enoch followed suit.

“Have you ever seen anyone else down here, Cal?”

Cal shook his head.

“A few times, but that was years ago. People looking for shelter. For scrap to sell. It’s probably been half a century since I last ran across anybody. All of the entryways have been sealed up and bricked over—Nyraud doesn’t want anyone down here, that’s for sure. The only way I could keep my little secret door was by hiding it under a grimy, forgettable tavern and then outliving anyone who might remember its location. There are stories, though . . .”

“Here we go,” said Rictus, letting out a sigh.

“They are just stories,” said Cal, ignoring Rictus. “But you hear them enough over the years, and certain similarities begin to stand out. You know the sort, Ric—rumors of the labyrinths underneath the city being full of gold or unspoiled tek. Rumors of medicines, elixirs from the past which can return a man’s youth or heal any sickness. Silly stuff. But the constant stories? The ones where the details don’t change over the years? They are always the ones about monsters. About the trolls.”

“Trolls?” said Enoch. He’d already faced coldmen and a Silverwitch and a specter—this was getting to be too much.

“Oh, come on, Cal!” complained Rictus. “I know you—you wouldn’t be down here if you thought there was any chance of danger. You were a half-decent musician but a coward through and through. Remember that platabruja
ambush back in Septimo? Your screams had that mek-witch thinking she had trapped a caravan of monkeys—no offense Sal—and I took two daggers in the gut before I could stop laughing enough to take her head off.”

Cal stared at Rictus, waiting for him to finish. “Sure, Ric, make fun of the disembodied head riding on a monkey. Very big of you. But I’m serious—I hear a lot of rumors. A lot of stories. I preside over a place where people come to share their sorrows and forget their pain. After a century or two of this, you learn to see patterns.”

This caught Enoch’s attention, and he turned to give Cal his full attention. For a moment he forgot how cold he was.

I see patterns, too.

Cal had a strange look in his eye. Distant.

“You learn to recognize things. Patterns in how stories are told. When, and by whom. The repetition of certain elements, the plot and structure of a million tales through a million tongues can form . . . clouds of truth . . . over time.”

Rictus clicked his dry tongue. “Clouds of
truth
? Um, are we still talking about trolls?”

“I don’t know a better way to describe it, Ric. Things are so much more complex than we’d like them to be. The right and wrong of our world seems so obvious sometimes—too obvious. It’s vulgar. The Schism, the Hunt,” he laughed, “even our heroic little quest to help ‘the last remnant of a fallen race’.” Here he nodded over at Enoch.

“Do you think Ketzelkol saw this? Saw the meta-tale? I mean, here this all-powerful machine was charged with our protection, and instead it burnt our tek and turned us into cavemen. It’s like a bad morality play. Sure, we can’t nuke ourselves anymore or choke to death on smog. But this couldn’t have been the solution! Again, it’s too stupid and too simple—the true tales don’t work like that.”

Enoch and Rictus were silent. Cal had gone somewhere else in his mind, and they didn’t know how to respond.

“Maybe this was why the Winged One split with her sibling? For a tale to hope for resolution, there has to be a . . .” Cal noticed the others staring at him.

“Sorry.” He looked down. His voice broke. “I . . . I guess I don’t get much of a chance to talk with somebody who can see beyond the immediate concerns of day-to-day peasant life. Or somebody who remembers the time before. Who remembers what we used to be—what
I
used to be . . .” Cal was crying now, and Sal reached up to place a hairy paw on his master’s cheek. Rictus took a step forward.

“No, no. I’m alright. It’s been a long time, Ric.” Cal trembled. “So very long.”

Rictus ignored his friend’s protests and sat, putting his long arms around the ape and Cal in one smooth gesture. Enoch looked away. He recognized the pain in this moment, but his mind was racing.

I need to know more about these patterns Cal talked about. There is truth in what he said; I can feel it. I need to understand this “meta-tale.”

After a long moment, Cal cleared his throat, and Sal gently removed Rictus’s arms from around them. Rictus understood, and he gave his friend a bony smile. Cal whistled, and the ape leapt up to hang from a thick cable dangling from the ceiling.

“Okay, so about the trolls: I know, Ric, that stories with trolls in them are usually based on something mundane that scared the teller. They are usually, and obviously, fabricated accounts. You and I would both recognize a description of the
real
thing—” That caught Enoch’s attention.

The real thing?

“—so, what caught my attention is that the latest rumors are sharply different from the imagined ones I’d been listening to for years. More . . . 
accurate
. But also disturbingly wrong. They have the trolls foraying
above
ground, actually emerging from the old doors—doors which have been shut for decades—and dragging people back down underneath. Nobody important or noteworthy, just street children or alleyway drunks. This is why the stories haven’t caught the attention of Nyraud’s city guard. But I’ve heard enough of these tales from enough people to think that
something
is going on. Something.” Here he smiled up at Rictus. “Clouds of truth are notoriously unspecific. But I think we have trolls under Babel.”

The change of topic, specifically to bloodthirsty monsters, hit Enoch like a winter gale. His teeth chattered.

Oh yeah—I’m freezing!

“Rictus, Cal—I think I may actually be ready to head back and get some warmer clothes, especially if what you say is true about how far we . . . Hey!” Enoch flinched as Mesha sank her claws into his shoulder, hissing at the passageway behind them. He turned.

There was a shadow at the end of the hall. It was almost undetectable, a thicker darkness amidst the shadows where the blue light faded into blackness.

With a flash, Rictus was in front of Enoch, long sword humming to life. “Move back, you two—we don’t know who this is.”

As if in response to Rictus’s words, another shadow moved up next to the first. Followed by another.

Rictus turned his head slightly towards Enoch, keeping one eye on the shadows. “They’re deliberately staying out of the light. Can you turn on the light in the passageway behind us, Enoch?”

Enoch nodded and then put his hand to his forehead. Mesha leapt to the ground and stalked towards Rictus’s feet, growling.

The mind is a world, the consciousness its light. As day turns to night, so shall my mind; afila lumin setting as the nubla rises, and my mindworld revolves.

The familiar lines of the power network spread out around him, and it was an easy thing to re-ignite the lights in the hallway they had just passed through. The bulbs were still warm.

The light flickered on, and Enoch gasped. Even Rictus staggered back a few steps.

The hallway was full of trolls.

The monsters were startled by the light and scrambled back into the darker passages behind them. But in those few seconds, Enoch had seen enough to terrify him to the core.

The trolls were tall, easily eight feet at the lopsided crouch they seemed to favor. Large, meaty hands reached down to the floor—hands ending in misshapen fingers stained brown with blood and filth. They had small, bony heads with cruel black-button eyes placed closely together over a hooked nose. Drool seeped from wide, craggy mouths, rolled over chinless jaws, and disappeared into the matted hair of their naked chests. These monsters looked like horrible caricatures of men, twisted and swollen into forms that rippled with bestial strength.

“I told you so.”

That was Cal. He had whistled Sal up into the rafters above Rictus.

“So why didn’t you warn us about this before we got here?” growled the specter, his eyes riveted on the heavy shapes moving in the darkness behind them.

“Well, I’ve never actually seen any. And these stories are new. Really new. Only a few weeks old, actually, so I wasn’t positive—well, at least until we saw the blood. There was a chance we wouldn’t see anything; we’ve been in troll country before, Ric. Remember? They never attack an armed group, and certainly never in the light.”