Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (38 page)

The dimensions were elusive in the darkness, but Lynx guessed some sort of upper level ran around the whole chamber twenty yards above. Only piles of rubble suggested where the way up might once have been. A smooth conical roof bore several black fissures and water dripped steadily through one, running off the upper level and carving a silvery trail across the stone floor to the pool at the centre.

The Wisps paid the whole chamber little regard, marching straight through towards a zigzagging staircase built for longer legs than those of humans. Only Reft could take each step one pace at a time and before he reached the top the big man had given up, preferring the slow method forced on the rest. Great protrusions of fungi lined the walls of the chamber and while those were ignored by the Wisps the soft scurrying behind tumbled stones made several of them look up. They didn’t wait to flush out whatever game or scavenger was hiding there, however, but kept up their pace.

Sitain lingered a little longer than the rest, falling behind until Kas dropped back and gave her a nudge. The young woman ducked her head and muttered an apology. ‘Caught a glimpse of a night elemental,’ she said, nodding towards the upper level. ‘Was hoping it’d come closer but I guess with various types of mage here, they’re skittish.’ She straightened and pushed on to catch up the rest.

‘If they’re close,’ Toil called back, ‘that’s enough for me. Probably a good sign nothing else is.’

Lynx felt his fingers twitch at that thought, the desire for a weapon in his hand pulsing stronger. He’d seen nothing in the threatening curtain of liquid blackness, but the memory of that night on the road felt less wonderful now he was underground. The magic of the elemental’s presence dimmed in his mind, eclipsed by darting angular movements and knife-sharp edges.

Unexpectedly the tunnel branched left and right, the old debris of a rockfall visible on the left-hand branch. The nearer stones were just about visible as they passed and bore strange tapering grooves on them, too regular to be naturally formed but like no tool-working Lynx had ever seen.

‘Stonecarver beetles,’ Toil supplied, seeing a few of the mercenaries look that way. ‘Must be a nest down there somewhere.’

‘So we’re steering clear?’

‘You keep clear of their nests, they won’t bother you,’ she confirmed. ‘Easiest way to die down here, just wander down the wrong tunnel. By the time you realise there’s a nest nearby, it’s too late to back away and they won’t ever give up if their queen’s threatened.’

The Wisp warriors led them down the other path, one that wound an oblique route for reasons Lynx couldn’t fathom, but he did wonder if he could made out regular breaks in the glowing veins of rock above, as though there were ledges or windows near the peak of the tunnel. Rounding one corner the right-hand wall opened up on them and revealed a similar highway to the one they were walking on, a great rounded lump of stone punctuating the join of tunnels as they made for the Duegar ruin.

Without warning a grey blur erupted from a high fissure and smashed into Olut. The woman was knocked sideways, twisted right around as she was thrown to the ground. Lynx threw himself back as something whipped past his face and Sitain screamed. Shouts and movement whirled around them as Olut yelled, battering at some shape around her waist. Then the mercenary howled in pain as she was wrenched right and left. Her gun went off with an ear-splitting roar and orange flames exploded over the tunnel wall.

Lynx abandoned his gun and dived away as the wash of heat and stabbing light surged towards him. Sitain’s shrieks grew louder, but in his peripheral vision Lynx saw a haze of night surrounding her, not fire. The tunnel was divided into darkness and light, a blurred boundary reaching up in the air for a second until the fire fell back. Olut continued to cry out, slashing madly with a knife while the Wisp warriors jumped forward and darts of fire and stone hammered into the writhing confusion surrounding her.

The hammer of gunshots followed, white streaks lancing through the dark. Reft roared and jumped forward, slamming the spiked reverse of his hatchet into their attacker. A great blade-like shape whipped through the air towards him, cleaving into the pack on his back and dashing the giant to the ground. Then the deep boom of an earther sounded and the creature was punched in the side by a huge dark fist. It crashed hard into the still-burning rocks behind it. Olut fell, now silent, while the Wisp warriors advanced, firing gouts of flame at the head of the creature while shards of stone cracked its pale underside. It writhed and lashed, twisting itself into a tight ball bigger than a man as it sought to hide from the onslaught, but Lynx could hear and smell its flesh burning.

Before he could retrieve his gun to join to the attack he heard Anatin roar a curse and fire his pistol from beside the Wisps. The jagged line of a sparker tore through the dark and enveloped the creature in crackling energies. It wrenched around under the impact then fell limp, uncoiling in a clatter of armour and claws.

There was a long moment of silence before Teshen and Ashis ran to Olut’s side and turned the woman on to her back. Lynx saw her legs twitch, but then she stilled. Even before he saw the blood he knew the big northerner was dead.

‘What,’ panted Anatin, ‘the hairy fuck was that?’

They all turned to Toil but the woman looked as shocked as they did. ‘Buggered if I know,’ she said hoarsely, reloading her gun and advancing gingerly.

The Wisp warriors looked less wary than the humans, and one drew its axes and hooked one edge of the creature to tilt it back. It was long, twenty feet or more, and as thick as Reft’s torso, with curved grey plates of chitin armour and spear-like legs.

‘Shattered gods,’ Anatin breathed. ‘It’s a centipede.’

As soon as he spoke the words the image seemed to resolve itself into some sort of sense for Lynx. A centipede, albeit one of monstrous proportions. He could see the half-dozen wounds in its plated underside, most obviously the great hole punched by that earther. He could even see the remains of the legs shattered under the impact, pale fragments embedded in the bloodied mess of the wound.

‘Did you not think to warn us about these?’ Anatin roared, waving his spent mage-pistol in Toil’s face.

Her expression twisted into anger and Toil snatched at the gun, yanking it from his grasp in one deft movement. ‘I’ve never seen one of those things before, so fuck right off!’ she snarled. ‘You want a full list of all the nasty shit I’ve seen down here, fine. There wasn’t much time before, remember? But even if I’d told you about the horrors down here, the risk’d have been better than the certainty of getting caught up on the surface.’

‘Tell that to Olut.’ Anatin pointed back at the dead mercenary. Ashis stepped aside so the brutalised mess of her abdomen was clearly visible, but the sight of terrible wounds didn’t make Toil hesitate a moment.

‘Dead up there or dead down here, you think she gives a shit? You’re mercs and this is no different to a battlefield. I can try to help us avoid the fight down here, but folk like us don’t get promises that it’ll all be okay. You’re a gambler at work and play, you choose the hand to go with and let the cards decide your fate. You know the risks.’

‘I know what’s going to happen on a fucking battlefield! Down here, I got nothing.’

‘That’s why I’m leading the way,’ Toil said, pausing just long enough to swallow her anger. ‘It’s darker down here, but it’s still a game you know. The pictures on the cards may be different, but some bastard big centipede or a burner – both’ll kill you and the difference don’t really matter in the end.’

‘Hey,’ shouted Kas behind them, loud enough to startle both.

They turned to see her interposing herself between one of the Wisp warriors and Sitain. The young woman was sat on the ground, wide-eyed with terror at the attack and now scrambling backwards as the strange figure loomed over her. Lynx moved to join her but the Wisp didn’t force its way past, merely raised a flat palm towards Sitain. Before it the air twisted briefly, a spiral of turning dark that vanished almost as soon as it had appeared.

‘He’s saluting you,’ Toil explained, casting one last angry look at Anatin. She tossed the man’s gun back to him and went to help Sitain up. ‘Best you return the gesture.’

‘Saluting me?’ Sitain asked, looking dazed. ‘Why now?’

‘He’s a night mage, same as you. What you did when that burner went off made it pretty obvious to everyone. Don’t worry. They don’t like humans much, but mages they’ve got something in common with at least.’

Shakily Sitain stood up and raised her hand. It took a moment but at last she gathered a few twists of darkness and let them play across her skin. The Wisp made an elegant sweeping gesture with its hand and turned away to rejoin its kin, but as it did so Toil took its place.

‘You’re cut,’ she said, touching her fingers to Sitain’s arm.

Sitain hissed and pulled back, seemingly noticing the bloodied tear on her sleeve for the first time. ‘What happened?’ she whispered, opening the cloth to reveal a short spine protruding from her flesh.

‘Oh, that’s not good.’ Toil gripped Sitain’s arm firmly and held her still while she touched the spine. Sitain hissed, but it didn’t seem to be barbed and Toil delicately withdrew the needle-like spine from Sitain’s arm. Toil glanced back at the Wisps and attracted the attention of one while the others continued to surround the dead centipede.

‘I don’t feel well,’ Sitain murmured.

Kas eased her back down to the ground while Toil held the spine up to the Wisp’s attention. The two had a brief conversation with their hands, the only part of which Lynx could make out being when the Wisp gestured back to its fellows by the centipede.

‘There’s good news,’ Toil called, inclining her head to the Wisp. ‘Bit o’ bad too, though, I’ll admit.’

‘It’s poisoned?’ Sitain asked, her breath coming in tight little huffs.

‘Aye,’ she confirmed, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. ‘But don’t worry, only a little bit.’

‘A bit?’

She shrugged. ‘Some things down here have the most lethal shit you’ve ever seen. When you’re huge with massive fangs, though, it seems like you can afford to skimp on the venom.’ Toil nodded back at the Wisps. ‘I’ve had a dose o’ this myself once, I think, didn’t know it came from a centipede but they’re harvesting the venom. If it’s what they call a Whiteshadow, you’ll live.’

It was too dark to tell if Sitain paled at the news, but when she spoke again it was in a weak voice. ‘And the bad news?’

Toil’s grin widened. ‘You’re going to have really messed-up dreams for the next day or so. We’ll need a travois of some sort, mebbe the carapace of the centipede will work. You ain’t going to manage one foot in front of the other soon, so just lie back and don’t fight the spinning. It’ll all go dark soon enough.’

‘How did you get dosed, then?’ Lynx asked. ‘You said you’d not seen one o’ these before. This like some sort of shaman’s mushroom?’

‘Something like that, but this isn’t the stuff of rituals. The warriors take it; they say they can explore the lower depths with just their minds.’

‘Eh?’

‘I dunno, they get all spiritual about the darkness, but they’re not so stupid as to travel too deep underground. The low places are the hunting grounds of the maspids; the deepest black home to horrors that we don’t have names for. The deep mines hold treasures beyond your wildest dreams, but only the crazed go down after them, and none come back.’

‘Is that why you took it? To see what you could find down there?’

Toil shook her head. ‘I ain’t that stupid.’ She paused. ‘It was because I lost a bet. Anyway – what I saw didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it
was
a whole lot of fun in parts. Now come on, help me with this travois. She’s glazing over.’

The landscape of the surface changed dramatically as they neared what Exalted Uvrel guessed was the ruin proper. It was difficult to be sure. She had never been so close to one before and the Duegar had been extinct for a few thousand years, but where they rode had the feel of a dead city rather than the life of the wilds.

There was a natural path running a winding route towards the great peaks of the dead city. It was a strange middle ground between a narrow glacial valley and wide streets of another age. Great slabs of stone rose up on either side; sheer rock faces and tall monument-like outcrops defined their path. She occasionally glimpsed lines too regular to be natural and a few weathered devices carved into the stone, all mostly obscured by great trailing creepers and yellowed grass seemingly able to grow in the smallest space.

They were forced to backtrack only once, their path rising suddenly to cross a sharp gorge and narrowing so sharply it would have been madness to try and persuade any horse across. Bottlenecks started to appear on the meandering path, the scouts forced to race back and forth to clear the way of possible ambushes without losing the main group. Uvrel could see the cavalry troopers starting to look increasingly nervous as the looming formations took on a greater variety and size. The hardened dragoons remained wary and professional, while the grenadiers just grew increasingly animated.

The work of centuries had broken some structures and obscured almost everything else, but as they pushed on Uvrel found herself more easily able to imagine the shapes of the civilisation hidden underneath the decay, preserved far better than human structures thanks to the stone magery used. Archways and gently curved roofs became more frequent, and once they passed a colonnade that screened a vast recessed plaza, now an enclosed miniature forest.

Huge half-covered windows opened on to the overgrown interiors of stone buildings the size of palaces, flocks of chattering yellow-capped birds wheeling through the twisting lines of some unfathomable structure. Uvrel watched them swoop like a hunting cloud on the insects that surrounded the pinkish flowers of dense spiked bushes that seemed to themselves be devouring the stone formations they had grown up around.

The day passed in unnerving quiet – the song of birds and hum of insects unable to break the reverential hush that surrounded them. The breeze dwindled early in the day to a feeble whisper through creeper fronds and a dull sun shone down on the sheltered path. When the sun began to fall and kissed the misshapen tower-like peaks ahead, Uvrel gave instructions for a campsite to be found. They had passed several shallow-sloped ramps that led to rooftops or grand terraces according to the scouts and she had hopes of finding something similarly defensive again.