Seal of the Worm

Thirteen

It was vast, what she saw. If the chasm of Cold Well had been like a wound in the earth, this was a body in advanced decay, the substrate not mined out but genuinely eaten away as though the mere presence of the Worm was corrosive and even the stone could not bear its touch.

A slope-sided pit hundreds of yards across, declining shallowly but inexorably towards a busy centre – that was what she saw. She thought of ant lions more than centipedes, on viewing it, but the scale was immense, city-sized. And it was a city of sorts. There were buildings there – crude slab-sided constructions that might have been barracks or civic offices or warehouses, or nothing of the sort. They were not packed together like the homes of Collegium or Helleron, though, and much of the Worm’s city was open ground that was riddled with pits and openings, so that she knew there must be far more than she was seeing, beneath the surface.

There was much movement but no sign of Apt industry, and of course no feel of magic came to her. Seeing all that scurrying activity without either artifice or ritual brought back the gnawing sense of wrongness she had known when looking upon the soldiers of the Worm themselves. What it did not remind her of was an ant’s nest, nor yet an Ant city-state. The linking that the Ant-kinden shared allowed them to act together, in concert – to build great things, to have their ordered and tidy society – but they were individuals beneath it. Even watching the insects that the Ants drew their art from, she could have discerned individual effort and initiative, each ant contributing to the nest’s well-being through its best judgment. Not so here, though. Ants would have wept to witness such coordination, but not for joy. The entire city moved like the coils of a single living thing, and so much of it about a business that she could not understand; it looked as though simple coursing, in their lines, from place to place was an end in itself for whatever mind directed the Worm.

She watched a caravan approach, no doubt bearing produce from some place like Cold Well: food, metals, crafted goods, plus the terrible tax that the Worm exacted on its slaves. Huge millipedes, burdened along every segment, hauled the goods, and she saw big men and women, large as Mole Crickets but of a different kinden, guiding the beasts’ progress. Then they were unloading outside the city, strings of the Worm’s people issuing out to take the load and carry it back in. She heard a shrill and distant squalling and saw how some of that load consisted of cages, and she knew that the same tax had been levied on some other luckless place.

And is that the meat the Worm feeds on? It could not be, though, for there were thousands of the Worm thronging the city below. They would have consumed all the future generations of their slaves long ago if it had been mere sustenance they sought. Then what . . .?

Like so much else about the Worm, Che felt that she would far rather be in a position where she would never find out than have to remain in this cursed place. Even as that thought came, she remembered Orothellin, who had stayed: the huge weary man a volunteer in this prison, because to do otherwise would be to leave all the Worm’s victims to an unwitnessed fate.

They are not my responsibility. Who can tell me I should bleed for them? A desperate plea, because she wanted out, she so very dearly wanted out.

And that was why she was here. The Seal was broken, and the Worm itself was finding a way out, and so she should look . . .

But her eyes were now following those cages. There were pits, she could see – a ring of round apertures in the rock. Even at this distance, she could just make out the course the Worm took. She could follow the sound of the screams, the sound of the inconsolable forever parted from home and family, and yet too young to comprehend truly. She could watch as they were consigned to whatever fate the Worm reserved for innocence.

They were emptying the cages into those pits. She felt ill with her understanding, thankful only that it was not complete. What dwells in the pits? What horror is the Worm hiding there? I hope I never know.

She dragged her eyes away, let them follow the twists and turns of the Worm until she found the midpoint, and there she felt it.

A pulse, a flicker, a touch of magic.

Her heart leapt: There is a way! But she was still watching, seeing that vortex of bodies in the lowest point of the city – too far away to distinguish individuals, just the great spiral that all those bodies made up. It seemed they were dancing with a regular ordered step, dancing ever inwards, though, not one of them returning out: a spiral that consumed itself. And she understood.

They were passing beyond this place to the greater world beyond, a raiding party of the Worm. This was what she had come to see. Deny it as others might, here they were surely using magic to step beyond – and, if they could, so could she.

Again that brief flare of magic, like a snatch of conversation heard when a distant door is opened. What was it that the Worm was doing? How was it summoning up power in this powerless place?

The spiral was devouring itself at a regular pace. Soon they would all be gone, escaping into the place that she had been banished from, that world of magic that was already seeming like a memory.

With that thought, she understood it: the Worm was not using magic. Whatever they were doing to slip past the jagged edges of the Seal was nothing she herself could comprehend. What she sensed now was the world beyond, the very magic she had been cut off from. As each segment of the Worm crossed over, as the fabric of their prison twisted and stretched to let them through, there was a tiny window opened, letting in a breath of air that had known the sun and open sky.

She could not open that way, even if she could have fought her way through all the Worm to get there. Indeed, she had no reason to believe that the centre of the city here was special, rather than simply convenient for the Worm. She could no more do what they did than she could operate an automotive.

But, with magic, I could find my own way. I could construct a ritual out of whole cloth and cut my way to the sun.

And if I had an army I could put the lot of them to the sword, but I have neither.

But the thought nagged at her, and there was still that regular breath of magic from the Worm’s progress, and at last she reached out to it.

So little, so little, but now she had nothing at all and so even a stray thread was something, and she unravelled and unravelled, tugging and tugging, harvesting scrap after scrap from the table of her enemies, marvelling that they could not know what she was doing.

They had no sense for magic, of course. They were as blind to her theft as Messel would be to a heliograph signal, but they had detected her already by some means. When a faint scuffling sound made her look down, there they were, the Worm. A score or so of them were scuttling rapidly up the side of the Turning Spire, Art guiding their hands and feet swiftly and surely. They were no more than twenty feet below her when she heard them.

She cried out, and her instinct was to reach for her magic but, as soon as she saw them, it was gone, her mind losing the ability to unlock the power she had been scraping together. For a moment she just stumbled about atop the Spire as the creatures closed on her, but then at last she remembered her Art, and cast herself up and away into the stone-edged void.

They reached the top behind her, where she saw them scurry around as though still looking for her. Then one or two had slings out, stones whipping through the air towards her, but she herself kept high and put distance between them, leaving the Worm behind.

Too close. But she had stolen a little strength from the rift the Worm was feeding itself through, and she had a plan, if only Orothellin would help, and . . .

A sensation went through her, as though some great retort had sounded and resonated in every part of her except her ears. She faltered in her flight, some instinct checking her wings for a second, so that when the monster swooped past her, she was outside the sweep of its claws and sent tumbling away through the air.

She fought for control – seeing a wheeling glimpse of those great wings of skin, the horrible almost-human face of the monster – but she had never been a skilled flier. Again that thundering vibration coursed through her, making her feel sick and weak.

She saw it plainly as it came in, vast fingered wings spread wide, feet like taloned hands webbed together to form a net to catch her. Its mouth was filled with needle-sharp fangs.

She sought for height, climbing and climbing, but the monster adjusted its heading without effort and was upon her in seconds. Remembering training older than her piecemeal dealings with magic, one hand found her sword hilt and dragged the blade out even as the monster scooped her out of the air with its hook-clawed feet.

Those jaws were her whole world, a beast more horrific than anything she could have imagined – all the worse because it seemed to be some distant, distorted cousin of the human form. Is this a kinden? Is that even possible?

Then she had stabbed up with all her might, her blade gashing the creature across its lips and wildly flaring nostrils, bloodying its gums. It jerked its head away without letting her go, twitching upwards in the air.

A moment later it went berserk, wings flapping and twisting madly, spinning without falling, and she realized it had gone too high. The threads of the ceiling-dwellers, the star-mimics, had caught it.

She had a brief glimpse of them sliding down along their threads, unhurriedly, mandibles questing towards this chance meal. Horrible, yes, but they at least seemed more wholesome than the thing that had taken her,

She was now off the creature’s mind, which was entirely focused on its own survival, and so she let herself fall from its claws, her wings catching her, bringing her down gently as she looked up at the struggle above.

Seeing it at this distance, diminished almost to a manageable size, she recognized it at last. Surely not . . . In Collegium they kept little furry flying pets that must be looked after at all times to keep them from falling prey to wasps or dragonflies. She had once named a duelling team after them.

No flying insects here, save for the moths, she reflected as she dropped. How lucky we are, in the world beyond.

It took her some time to locate Messel, to pick out landmarks from the broken terrain, and then of course there was the long trek back to Orothellin. But she had a plan now. She had a little power that she was husbanding, holding deep within her, away from the rigours of this place. There was a way.

‘It must be done now,’ Che explained. ‘This place is just a bottomless pit for the Worm’s power to fall into, I know that now, and it will do the same to all of us. What little I have scraped together will evaporate soon. The Moths built this place well – save that they must have driven the Worm to find some source of strength other than magic.’

‘Very true,’ Orothellin confirmed mournfully. He seemed visibly younger after the rest that Che’s friends had granted him, and she dared to hope that he had somehow regenerated power of his own. After all, he had lived here so long, and he could still deflect the senses of the Worm to hide himself.

‘Will you help me?’ she asked him. ‘A ritual to breach this place for just a moment? With the Seal cracked through, and with our combined strength, it may be possible – just for the moment it takes for us to step out.’

‘This is not what the Worm does.’

‘But it will give the same result. What the Worm showed me was that it is possible.’

Che looked about at her friends: Tynisa and Thalric plainly willing to trust her and follow her wherever she went; Esmail suspicious; Maure sunk in misery, her arms clasped about herself. ‘I have no other plan, and I cannot do it alone.’

Orothellin sighed. ‘I am sorry,’ he murmured, and for a plunging moment Che thought he was speaking to her, that he would deny her, or deny that the venture could ever succeed.

But it was Messel who shrugged awkwardly, and Che looked between them, uncertain what was being apologized for.

Then Orothellin said, ‘Let us at least make the attempt.’ And she forgot about everything else.

‘Maure, you’re a better ritualist than I am,’ she directed. ‘Let’s give ourselves the best chance. What have you got?’

They made a fire, and Maure set out her candles and her herbs, emptying her pack of all the paraphernalia her trade made use of. She drew symbols in chalk on the rock floor of their cave, descendants of the ancient glyphs of Khanaphes, as passed down from mentor to apprentice over the centuries, their true meaning lost.

Save to Orothellin, of course, who studied them curiously, altering each one minutely when he thought Maure was not looking.

‘This will not work, of course,’ he whispered to Che, whilst Maure continued working herself into a frenzy of preparation.

‘Is she . . .?’

‘She prepares as well as anyone can, but we do not have the strength,’ he told her sadly. ‘That little you have come back with is nothing, while I have next to nothing – the last dregs of my craft from a thousand years ago, all this place has left me with.’

‘We have to try.’

He shrugged massively. ‘I suppose you do.’

‘Ready!’ Maure turned, hands clasped before her. Her eyes were mutely pleading, Please let this work. Please let us get out of here.

‘Form a circle,’ Che advised. ‘Just . . . kneel down and keep quiet. Unless there’s anything you can give . . .?’ She cocked an eyebrow at Esmail, who shrugged.

‘Come on, then.’ She took Thalric’s hand in her left, feeling the rough calluses there. He was an Apt man in the circle of a ritual, an utter dead weight, but she would bring him out of this place; she would bring them all out. And then let the Worm beware. She would find some way of locking them back in their tomb – of recreating the Seal that had formerly banished them.

Orothellin sat down across the circle heavily. He took Maure’s and Esmail’s hands as Che took Tynisa’s in her right, the circle joining link by link.

The Slug-kinden, the former Master of Khanaphes, looked over his shoulder at Messel lurking unhappily at the back. ‘Never fear,’ Che heard the big man murmur. ‘I will be here still. I’m not going anywhere.’

Che felt her mind enclosed in the shell that was the Worm’s prison, the curved-away world that the Moths’ great ritual had made of their underground fastness. She felt as though she was scrabbling at its inner surface, unable to gain purchase on it when she needed to rip and tear her way out. Still, she had some strength to spend now, if she could but muster it. Then perhaps, just perhaps . . .

Maure opened to her: the halfbreed woman had a thimble of power she had somehow hung on to in the face of the Worm, and it came now to Che across the bridge of clasped hands. Within it was that spark she had gained from Orothellin, given to Che guilelessly, desperately. Esmail, too – a weak magician but one whose power was only ever used on himself, and less amenable to being siphoned away. He gave to her willingly, to her surprise. It was the first time she had had any real sense of him as a person since their banishment, feeling the economic strength of purpose that moved him, willing to do whatever it took to get home. From Thalric, nothing, of course. From Tynisa, some wretched thread, but Che’s sister had no training, no way to make real use of what little magic she had: the magic of her sword and her badge.

From Orothellin . . . she sensed a great reluctance there, a man who had been holding on to his strength for so long. But it was more than mere habit. Once he had given this all up to send them on their way, she saw how he would be unable to hide forever. The Worm would catch him, tomorrow or in a hundred days, or a thousand. His long, dragging life would at last be brought to an end.

And more: his charges, his students, those he had exiled himself to help. He was abandoning them in helping Che, turning his back on Messel and all the other slaves of the Worm.

Then why help? Che asked him.

Because what have I accomplished in all that time save be a witness to their losses, the price of living with the Worm? You are right. You, at least, should escape this place.

And he gave her all the power he had, a great tide of it like the river Jamail in flood, eclipsing Maure and Esmail’s meagre contributions, and Che took it all in, held it in her mind and opened the gates of her power.

Out. We are getting out right now.

Because this place was not a physical place, and it had no fixed connections to the world beyond, there was no gateway to journey to, no portal to unlock. The exit was everywhere and nowhere. It was wherever someone tore a hole, whether that someone was the Worm using the Worm’s ways, or whether it was a desperate Beetle magician.

She shaped her power like a knife in her mind, making the substance of the world around her like taut cloth.

Time and strength enough for one strike.

She felt the hands of all of them on the hilt of the knife, Orothellin’s most of all, a thousand years of skill to cut just so.

I want to see the sun, and I will see it.

They struck together, and she felt the walls of the Worm’s domain stretch and protest, the ancient Moth ritual that had made it was fighting her, even as the power she expended bled out into the abyss.

More! Drawing on them, leaching their strength, clawing at their very breath, feeling that imaginary knife shake and shudder as its tip grated across the walls of the world. More! A desperate plea, ransacking everything she had within her, all that unasked and unearned power that had been thrown on her shoulders by the Darakyon, by the Masters of Khanaphes. It must be good for something, or what was it all for?

And it was not enough. They began falling back, all that hard-won strength haemorrhaging into the cold void; Che lunged for something more, and in a moment she found it.

Give! she insisted, and only realized afterwards whom she was demanding this of. For one moment her mind touched her sister’s – not Tynisa, whom she had grown up with, but that other sister that fate had thrust upon her. Seda, the Empress, her enemy.

That thin cord still linked them, the bond of their shared throne, the mocking curse of Khanaphes.

And Seda gave. There was little enough that she could force through that tenuous link, but what she could, she gave, and Che felt that knife-point scrape and dig—

And cut.

For a frozen moment she felt the sun just beyond her fingertips, the world she knew, maddening in its proximity, just out of reach.

No, just in reach. She could do it. She could step through, force her bulky frame into the light and air, the Worm just a rancid memory behind her. But only her. In that moment of the possible, there was strength for just one to step through.

She had no time. She had them all there, linked in that circle, their minds as open to her as they could ever be. She was holding the knife. She was the judge and arbiter of what happened next. She would live with the consequences.

In that moment, that split instant, she weighed a great many things on the scales of her life, and she understood Orothellin, and the others, and herself most of all.

Then the knife was slipping, and she had a brief wave of despair and loss, at all the possible futures she was confining herself to, and she made her choice.