Seal of the Worm

Twenty-Three

There came a night where the following morning – or its sunless surrogate – would see them putting Che’s plan into action, to whatever extent that was even possible. In the Hermit’s high cave they sat around a fire that burned with salt colours, whilst outside the world of the Worm waited for them, ready to break all their hopes against its vast scale and its uncaring brutality.

Then the Hermit shuffled into the back of his cave and returned hesitantly with a jar of something that reeked like paint. He held it out to Orothellin, who took it almost reverently.

‘Is that supposed to be wine?’ Tynisa demanded.

‘Approximately.’ The huge man took a draught, his eyes creasing about the sudden tears the taste had pricked there, before handing it over to her.

Tynisa had never drunk much wine, and the mere smell of the stuff made her gag, but everyone was watching her now, Thalric especially. It was like being back at the College, engaged in some ridiculous student dare – only then she herself had always been the one to set the stakes. And now I have become merely a follower, somehow.

She took a half-mouthful, and that almost overpowered her. The sharp, acrid taste was so much the antithesis of wine that she felt almost awed to be in its presence. ‘Did this . . . did this come from the surface?’ she demanded of Orothellin. ‘Have you been saving this for a thousand years?’ She would have believed it.

For a second the Slug-kinden just goggled at her, but then something happened to his mournful, majestic face and he exploded into a belch of laughter. ‘Thousand-year wine? Not even my people would drink thousand-year wine! No, no, the Hermit brews it from—’

‘Don’t!’ Thalric interrupted. ‘Nobody cares. You’d only put us off. Let’s face it, there’s nothing wholesome out there to ferment. I don’t want to hear that it’s crushed mushrooms and cricket piss or something.’ He snagged the jar from Tynisa and tipped it back almost contemptuously. A moment later he almost spilled the lot, Che rescuing it from him just in time as he doubled over, coughing ferociously.

‘So much for the Empire,’ Tynisa remarked, sounding somewhat croaky herself.

Che sniffed at the jar’s lip and recoiled. ‘I think I’ll abstain.’

‘Oh, get some in you,’ Thalric managed – or something like it.

‘Well, yes, I can see the power of good it’s done you.’

Tynisa met her eyes, the two of them grinning at each other just as though they’d never left Collegium.

‘Go on, drink. Perhaps it’s magic,’ Thalric pressed.

Are we drunk, already? Tynisa wondered, but it was not the vile concoction of the Hermit’s that had brought on this mood. Rather it was the knowledge of what they were about, the terrible odds, the horrors of the Worm that Che had brought back from that cursed city. What was there to lose, therefore? The worst was already here, and had been squatting and growing in these caverns for a thousand years.

Like the wine, thought Tynisa, and she snorted. In their minds they were making the Worm small enough to manage. They were belittling it, each of them inside their heads, because otherwise it was so large and appalling that they would have given up.

Che tried some of the Hermit’s vintage and gagged, pulling a face that Tynisa remembered from years before. ‘That’s what you do with real wine,’ the Weaponsmaster taunted, remembering when Stenwold had first let his niece try the stuff.

‘Oh, yes,’ Che was blinking furiously, ‘it’s quite lovely. Esmail?’

For a moment the Assassin was going to remain aloof and preserve his dignity, but then he took the jar and took a long swallow, keeping his face meticulously composed, though Tynisa saw one of his hands crook itself into a claw.

‘A little tame,’ he decided, each word precisely pronounced, and handed the jar back to the Hermit, who had watched stony-faced through the entire routine, blankly baffled by all of it.

A few days later they walked into Cold Well, and the reaction of the locals was gratifying. Thalric looked at their faces and saw every emotion there that he would have looked for in a slave: guilt, terror, shame, shock. These wretched downtrodden animals had no doubt consigned the memory of their surface-world visitors to their impoverished histories. No doubt they had been telling each other how the Worm had caught those impossible visitors, those imposters, those renegades. They would have nodded at each other, oh so sagely – how right they had been not to fight the Worm.

And here we are, you worthless maggots. How he felt about Che’s current venture was hard to say. Thalric looked on these creatures with disdain. Not only were they slaves, they had been enslaved in such a humiliating way as even the Empire had never contrived. Born and dying in the dark, barely more than a herd of sheep with useful skills, kept about in order to breed the next generation of their oppressors.

Che had told it all, spared nothing.

And Thalric had thought, The vermin are beyond saving, and yet at the same time something had risen up in him, contradicting and complementing that part of his Wasp upbringing that still saw slaves as something inferior. What the Worm was, what it did here in its lightless places, was an abomination – something more unnatural, by whole orders of magnitude, than anything he had seen in Khanaphes or the Commonweal. Even the horrors of Argastos paled before the Worm the man had been set to guard.

The panic, the scattering of the slaves, was predictable. They had no resources, no resolution, no purpose other than to run about and babble.

So come listen to us. We have your resources and your resolution and your purpose, right here.

There were seven of them that went striding into Cold Well like figures out of some Inapt legend. Che went first, her arm bandaged about the spiral scars she bore there. Tynisa limped at her side, gaunt and silent, balanced by Esmail’s slender shadow. Bringing up the rear came the ponderous figure of Orothellin, and at his side the Hermit, picking nervously at his filthy robes. He had never come down here before, nor to any of the other slaves’ places. Nobody knew how they would react to him.

Messel was keeping close to the big Slug-kinden as well, to shield himself from the ire of his kin here, but Thalric ranged out wider, taking advantage of his wings now that the fires of Cold Well were lighting his way. If any of the slaves did have more steel than the Wasp gave them credit for and chose to turn it on Che rather than the Worm, then his sting would be ready for them. It would serve as a solid object lesson.

There was a welcoming committee rather reluctantly assembling ahead, a few levels down. Thalric overflew them, realizing that not one of them even looked up. He caught a few familiar faces: the Moth woman – Atraea? – was there in the centre, and that big Mole Cricket smith – something Forge-Iron – and a handful of others: Woodlice, Beetles, another blind Cave Cricket like Messel. Forge-Iron had a weighty hammer in his hand, his clothes sooty from his work. There were a few staves otherwise, and probably some knives.

And yet Esmail saw scores of those nasty little Worm swords all waiting for delivery, the stupid bastards.

‘What do you want?’ Atraea demanded, her voice shaking. ‘You must not come here!’ With her blank white eyes it was impossible to know whom she was most frightened of.

Thalric swooped down and found a perch overlooking the meeting, landing delicately enough that still nobody noticed him. He saw Che stop and regard the delegation grimly.

‘To get you to fight,’ the Beetle girl began.

There was a murmur that passed back through the crowd, one of horror, of incredulity, as though they had never heard the word ‘fight’ before. Some were already shepherding their children away as if they did not want them to learn such inappropriate language.

Keeping them safe for the Worm, Thalric reflected derisively.

Atraea stepped forward, leaning on her staff. She had one hand about her stomach, and Thalric suddenly realized that she was pregnant – would have thought she was too old, myself – and after that he saw how many of the women were, or might be. The thought struck him as depressing beyond all the tales that Che had told. Not so long ago they had been handing over their babies to the Worm, and even then they had been working on the next batch. This was not a community of slaves. It was a factory.

‘You cannot be here,’ the Moth woman hissed desperately, as though trying to wish Che out of existence. ‘You will bring the Worm down on us with your madness. They will punish us.’

‘They’re already on their way,’ Che told her, and Thalric fancied he saw in her face at last a little of his own scorn, at these pathetic specimens. The reaction was certainly the one he expected from such craven wretches, the underland slaves wailing and moaning and lamenting and yet doing precisely nothing, not even offering a threat of retaliation against the bearers of bad tidings.

Except, no – here came the big man, Forge-Iron, pushing past his fellows, jaw jutting angrily. ‘You have drawn them here,’ he accused.

‘No, but we are here because we saw them on their way. They are coming to exact another tax.’

‘That’s impossible!’ Atraea insisted. ‘They’ve only just . . . they’ve been, already been.’

‘And you still have children to spare, so they will come again, and again, until you have no more, and you are no use to them. Then they will come for you instead, for your own flesh. They will tax and tax, and take and take, and in the end your fires will be cold ash, your homes just empty caves.’

‘And how do you know this?’ the Moth demanded.

‘He has shown me.’ Che indicated the Hermit. ‘He knows. The Worm is entering the Old World, as your Teacher calls it, those lands beneath the sun that so many of your ancestors sprang from. They will not need you any more.’

Atraea made to speak again, but Forge-Iron laid a broad hand on her shoulder. ‘Evastos, fly a circle and look for the Worm.’

A younger Moth – barely more than a boy and therefore one of the younger generation’s few, a veteran of taxes that must have stripped away his siblings – flared his wings and rose unsteadily into the air. It was quite the worst flying Thalric had seen in a long time, but then, he had even wondered if the Moths here had lost the Art altogether. Che had mentioned the unpleasantness that hunted above them, the star-makers and their sticky threads, and the appalling flying monsters – the White Death as the locals charmingly called them.

‘And if they are coming, what do you suppose we should do?’ Atraea exclaimed, although Thalric felt that she was losing the sympathy of the crowd a little. ‘We cannot fight the Worm!’

‘You must,’ Che told her flatly. ‘You have no choice.’

There was a chorus of despair and denial already rising up, but Orothellin struck his staff once on the stone and they all fell silent. Thalric blinked: for a moment the haggard, run-down giant had mustered a little of the majesty of the Masters of Khanaphes, his voice resounding with the cavernous echoes of their last stronghold, and tomb.

‘Listen,’ the huge man said, not loud, yet clearly heard. ‘These are the end times. No prophecy, but a promise. The Seal is broken – it has been real, all this time, and now it is gone. The Worm works its way upwards to claim the world that I still remember, just. That world is vaster than you can dream of, peopled by kinden you cannot imagine. The Worm is ambitious. It will scour this place of everything it can use and consume so as to gain its foothold, and after that it will treat the people of the Old World – your cousins – just as it has treated you. And for you – nothing. Oblivion. If you think that would be kinder, then await it. For those who wish a chance at tomorrow – and a tomorrow where none come demanding a tax of your flesh and blood – then take up arms now. Fight, now. Die, if you must, so that others may live, for you will die anyway in the end, and better it be for something.’

Silence fell, after that, and Thalric found himself nodding, impressed despite himself. Give that man a general’s rank badge.

Then the Moth boy, Evastos, was back, already yelling out as he dropped from the sky, ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

My cue.

‘Fight now!’ Che was calling. ‘Take up the same weapons you’ve made for your oppressors, and put them to use. Take up your hammers, your slings, your staves, the blades of your Art! Fight now, because they will take the last of your children, and then they will take your lives! Fight, or be extinguished so that none will know you ever were!’

Thalric had stepped into the air, his Art wings catching and lifting him, already looking for the Worm’s soldiers encroaching into the light spilling from Cold Well’s fires. Before, when they had fought outside the Hermit’s hole, the darkness had been his greatest enemy. The Worm’s slaves feared the dark, though, even those of them without eyes. They feared the cold and the isolation. They feared the Worm, and kept the fires burning, and now Thalric could see.

The band of the Worm approaching was made up of a couple of pack millipedes, a score of warriors and a Scarred One, not unlike the group who had come to exact the tax before. It was Thalric’s job to strike, to use his natural advantages to kill as many of them as he could. He would give the slaves a little time to overcome their fears and arm themselves. He would also commit them. He was not sure whether Che had quite seen her plan evolving in that light but, by striking first against the Worm, they would be forcing the slaves’ hands.

They’re dead anyway, so who cares? In this subterranean world there was no place for sentiment.

And here they come. The first of the Worm resolved from shapes in the dark to shapes in the light, the lead soldiers rushing forwards with that constant hurrying tread as they danced to the mindless urgings of their god. Thalric coursed over them and wheeled, seeing them begin to spread out as they sensed him but could not quite locate him.

There. And Thalric’s sting spat fire, and the Scarred One in their midst, the only human mind amongst the lot of them, was down and smoking before he had had the wit to look up.

Thalric had hoped that there would be a few shots’ worth of milling panic or blank stillness as they tried to digest what had happened, but the Worm’s bodies were on to him almost before their priest had hit the ground. Some of them had slings, and they had the weapons to hand on the instant, fitting stones to them and whirling them up to speed.

At least the bastards don’t have bows, and Thalric let his hands speak for him, lashing into them with his sting, his Art searing streaks of gold across them, striking down, burning them, melting their armour. Of all the gifts of the Wasp, this one had always been strong with him, reaching further, striking harder, sapping his strength less. He kept on the move, darting and diving through the air above them, lashing left and right with both hands, feeling his wings eat up his strength. Let the Worm be as coordinated as it might be, let its aura of denial smother all thoughts of Aptitude in him, but he was no artificer and he needed only what nature had given him.

Then a sling stone struck the armour of his shoulder hard enough to spin him in the air, and the next moment he was skimming the rocky ground, knowing that they would be running for him with those nasty little swords drawn. He tried for height, but then another rock hit him in the chest, knocking him on to his back even though his mail took the brunt of it. He lurched to his feet, hands out and blazing, seeing one onrushing figure cut down in the flash. How many did I get? Not enough, apparently.

Then Esmail was with him, darting past to open up a Centipede-kinden as a conjurer would, mail and all, just with a sweep of his hand. Thalric took the chance to back off, hands up and hunting for targets, seeing a dozen of the Worm still on their feet and running full-tilt towards them. Another slingshot skimmed past his ear.

Tynisa was there too, although she was holding back with him, and he remembered how she had fallen before the Worm the last time, how her fighting grace had deserted her and left her crippled. Che was on his other side with her sword drawn, and he wanted to shout at her to get back – except she was rousing the rabble, and the rabble sometimes needed to be led by example.

His hands flashed again to send a further Worm down, seeing Esmail dancing between two of them, another whose Art was equal to the task.

And if something doesn’t happen about now then we know this is a lost cause.

He was ready to fall back, to grab Che by the arm and haul her out of the way, to let the others do the dying. But the rabble had apparently made its decision, and not a moment too soon.

Thundering between Thalric and Tynisa went the enormous figure of Forge-Iron, the Mole Cricket. He whirled his great hammer in one hand, and Thalric saw it strike a Worm soldier square on, practically turning the creature to paste. There were now sling stones zipping past towards the enemy, too, and then a ragbag of fighters deigned to present themselves: men and women without armour or any real idea about how to fight, but suddenly the odds were in their favour, for all that they looked terrified of everything that they saw – and of the Worm most of all.

‘Now!’ Che yelled, and charged forwards, and although Thalric cursed her for it, he knew it was the right thing to do. He drew his own blade and hurried after her and, like the feeblest tide of history, the slaves came as well.

Once the Worm had been dispatched, all of its bodies strewn at the periphery of Cold Well like broken dolls, the slaves stood around, staring. Not one of them seemed to know what came next, and Thalric felt that he could share their apprehension. Did Che really think she could forge anything from this downtrodden dross, even with the threat of extinction as the whip?

Still, Thalric had been a soldier once. ‘Strip the bodies!’ he shouted at them. ‘They have armour, weapons! Things you lack, you wretches! Come on, do yourselves a favour!’

A few did pick up a sword or pluck disconsolately at the mail of the dead, but most just stood there, staring at the corpses, staring at him, staring at each other.

Then he heard a voice, and knew it for Atraea the Moth woman: ‘What have you done? You have killed us all!’

‘You’re as good as dead, anyway,’ Thalric spat back, but then Che was there, hands extended to call for attention.

‘Listen to me,’ she called. ‘This is just the start! Now you must go to the other communities nearby, all those other people who have lived under the tax, who have suffered as you have suffered. I know that they are there. You must tell them what we have told you. They must do as you have done. They must rise up against the Worm, if they value their lives, and the lives of their kin. This is their only chance.’

‘It is forbidden to travel to other towns!’ someone called back, and Che blinked, plainly finding a complication she had not anticipated.

Thankfully, Messel came to her rescue. ‘And yet it is done! I have done it. Many of you have done it. The word must be spread – so fly, run, follow paths of stone, but go swiftly!’

‘Not swiftly enough!’ Atraea insisted fiercely. ‘Raise a hand against one soldier of the Worm, and all the Worm knows of it! They are on their way here even now! You have only ensured that everyone in Cold Well will die.’

‘Then there shall be no one in Cold Well when they arrive,’ Orothellin’s voice boomed out. ‘You must leave, all of you – strike out into the wilderness, set off for False Hearth or The Shelves. Take all you have, and most especially the food and the weapons that you have already gathered for the Worm.’

‘This is madness!’ Atraea insisted. ‘This . . .’ And her jabbing finger found Che. ‘This is because she knows the Worm is attacking her people in the Old World. She thinks to sacrifice all that we are just to aid her kin under the sun!’

A silence fell, and Thalric looked from face to face: Mole Crickets, Beetles, Woodlice, all the detritus of this grim place, and not one of them with a thought in their heads, or so he assumed.

Then one of the Woodlouse-kinden women coughed and said, ‘So you believe in the Old World now?’

Despite himself, Thalric’s heart leapt. Is it possible? Did one of them just have an idea? Wonders will never cease.

‘That is . . .’ Atraea’s pale eyes flashed as she stared around, trying to muster support. ‘They are using you! That is all that matters. They don’t care about you!’

‘Do you care about yourselves?’ Che countered. ‘The Worm doesn’t care. The Worm remembers the sun. From the moment the Seal was broken, you became nothing to the Worm but a resource, a vessel to be emptied and cast aside. Ask him, he knows – he hears the Worm still though he tries to deny it.’ She was pointing at the Hermit, who hugged himself and flinched away from her. ‘The Worm doesn’t care about you, for all that you have been the fat it has lived off all these centuries of imprisonment. If you sit here like good, obedient slaves then the Worm will harvest all you have, down to the flesh from your bones. But the Worm is already marching. If you make it work, if you run and hide and fight, then it will spend its blood and its time hunting you down.’

The Mole Cricket smith loomed beside Atraea, and she sagged into him, hands about her midriff.

‘We will die,’ she got out.

‘Some of you will, surely. Perhaps I will too,’ Che said equably. ‘But you mistake me if you think I do this for my kin. I do this because the city that gave birth to me teaches what is right and what is wrong, even if we do not always practise it. We hold no slaves, where I come from, and we value human life, of all kinden. And in the Worm’s blind hunger, and with the collaboration of its priests, a great evil has been created here, and it must be fought. Perhaps a year ago you could indeed have said that to live in the Worm’s shadow is better than to die on its swords. Now you will die, every one of you, unless you set yourselves free.’

‘Gather everything you can take, everything you can carry. Use the pack animals the Worm has so thoughtfully brought you!’ Orothellin boomed. ‘Fill those cages with something more wholesome for once. Cold Well must be emptied. Take everything you can.’

‘Teacher . . .’ Atraea’s taut, frightened face turned towards him. ‘There must be some way . . .’

‘It is the end of many things,’ the big man told her gently. ‘Unless we act now, it will be the end of all things.’

Around them, the people of Cold Well began to move, slowly at first but then with a gathering urgency, preparing for their exodus, whilst others were already setting off to pass word of what had happened across the Worm’s realm.