Seal of the Worm

Forty-Four

Esmail and the Hermit trailed the prisoners across the Worm’s vacant stone city, the Assassin taking care to step virtually within the other man’s shadow. Even then, and despite the fresh scars on his hide, there seemed to be a growing hostility amongst the Worm’s warriors. Those empty faces were turning his way more and more, as though catching him out of the corners of their eyes.

No, not just me – the Hermit as well.

Ahead of them, the band of Scarred Ones and their guards were picking up speed, the robed Centipede-kinden becoming more and more agitated.

‘What is going on?’ Esmail hissed.

‘Just keep moving,’ the Hermit shot back, and then, almost to himself, ‘I fear . . .’

‘You fear what?’ demanded Esmail. ‘Tell me.’

‘What is there here to fear, save one thing?’ was the Hermit’s hurried response.

Abruptly there was a choked cry from the group ahead, and Esmail’s lantern caught a fine mist of blood glittering in the air. The group barely slowed down – and soon it was moving faster than before. A corpse was left in their wake, though – one of the captive slaves, though thankfully not the man that Esmail was here to free.

‘Someone couldn’t wait for the sacrifice?’ he wondered aloud.

‘Just keep moving,’ repeated the Hermit, a real edge of urgency to his voice.

There was definitely a disruption to the pattern of movement across the city. The steady spiralling that had dominated the general flow through the streets kept breaking up, individual segments of the Worm finding themselves outside it, waiting blankly as though about to receive new instructions.

‘Seriously, will you tell me—’

There was another scuffle ahead. No cry this time, but Esmail saw a blade flash, the group moving on as before.

‘They’ll not have anyone left to offer up,’ he commented, and then he saw the body clearly.

Sprawled there, abandoned and now claiming that common kinship all human corpses shared, it took him an additional moment to understand why it was so wrong. It was a Scarred One, a priest – one of the elite.

‘A falling-out between your people?’ he asked of the Hermit.

‘No.’

‘What, then? He didn’t knife himself.’ The old man’s reticence was maddening.

‘It’s all coming apart at last.’ The response was close to a whisper. ‘He was killed by the Worm, by its warriors. They saw him, truly, for the first time in his life. They saw he was not of them, not really of them.’

A chill came over Esmail. ‘The Worm is rejecting its kinden?’

‘The Worm has no kinden, save these husks,’ the Hermit whimpered. ‘We only played at being priests, and it overlooked us. Now our god is turning away from us. Can you imagine?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in it?’

‘I don’t. Not any more. But I know how it must feel,’ the Hermit said hoarsely. ‘It’s the end of everything.’

An unpleasant thought caught up with Esmail. ‘Wait, doesn’t this mean that we . . .’

‘Yes, even we,’ the Hermit agreed. ‘They will penetrate our deception, yours and mine both, soon. It will be soon.’

‘Then we . . .’ Esmail saw the prison party vanish into one of the caves, down a steeply sloping tunnel that could lead only to one place. Immediately he was heading after them with as much speed as he could muster, desperately trying to blot from his mind the image of what he would find down there.

At the cave mouth his courage failed him at last – not the courage required simply to go on, but that additional strength of mind that would be needed to face the Worm itself.

‘We’ll catch up with them in the tunnel,’ he decided. ‘We’ll kill them there, then we’ll . . . Then we’ll . . .’ His plan had no second act. ‘You can scar him up quickly.’ Despite what the Hermit had said about the time that process would take, and the time they didn’t have. ‘We’ll . . .’ And he was running, then slowing for the Hermit to catch him, horribly aware that ahead of them the prison party was still speeding up, the stately stride of the priests shattered into outright panic. They were now desperate to appease their god with their offerings, to earn themselves a place back in its good graces.

Don’t they know? thought Esmail wildly. Don’t they understand that it doesn’t care? Certainly it had let them live in its shadow thus far, little parasites it could not be bothered to scratch at. But it was vast and inhuman, and how could its priests think it capable of entering into any bargain or contract that they might conceive of?

He wondered if it was his presence that had set off the Worm’s instincts: a foreign agent masquerading as one of the kinden that had created it. Or perhaps it’s just that it’s the end of the world, and nobody’s getting out.

He should have caught up with them by now, he knew, but the Hermit was slowing him – the old man growing more and more reluctant to follow in Esmail’s footsteps, until the Assassin realized that some old hook of his former life was still lodged in him – the awe, the dread, the sacrilege of it was tripping him up and holding him back.

Then it was too late, because they were there. Esmail was stumbling out into that vast cavern, seeing the group of warriors and priests and their victims right ahead, poised before that sudden drop, the abyss of the Worm.

They had a prisoner forward already . . . no, they were already throwing some others over the edge, just giving them to the pit as if desperate to attract their god’s attention, to reaffirm their non-existent bonds of mutual understanding with it.

The next man was thrust forwards, bleeding from their swords until he chose the drop over the steel. But he did not fall, for the vast darkness of the Worm surged into view and caught him between its pincering claws, its whiplike antennae thrashing like mad shadows about the ceiling. Esmail had frozen, his eyes fixed on the one armoured figure amongst the prisoners: Totho. How the poor Apt bastard must be shaking.

As he watched, he saw Totho strike out at the nearest priests, knocking them to the ground. The warriors encircling him got him at their blades’ points, but he was ignoring them, glancing briefly over at Esmail and his lantern’s light – so obvious to his surface-dweller’s eyes and yet something that the Worm simply couldn’t see.

Tynisa’s rapier point scored a line down the side of Tisamon’s helm, caught his return strike on her guard and cast him off, taking a step back to make distance her ally again.

Her leg buckled as she did so, the pain flooding back in double measure, lashing her for every step she had taken since the last time. Tisamon faded to a shadow even as he drove for her, and she stumbled sideways, seeking Seda. She had to bring this fight to a close quickly, or one of these sudden shifts would tear her apart.

Or the Worm would get here and kill them all. But, then, that was going to happen anyway, sooner or later.

Seda was standing with her good hand thrust towards Tynisa, but her face was crawling with conflicting expressions, and her eyes clearly saw something other than the crippled swordswoman before her. Tynisa could only assume Che was inside her mind, fighting the Empress furiously, taking up every ounce of her concentration.

The Wasp’s sting spat, nonetheless – Che’s hold on the Empress failing as the Worm’s influence smothered her magic – and Tynisa dropped to one side to avoid that wavering aim, the resulting shock of pain feeling fiercer than death. Then she was lurching back to her feet, screaming out a war cry to fight back the waves of weakness that threatened to drag her down. Abruptly her strength was back and she sprang forwards, desperate to close the distance before . . .

He was there again, claw scything down onto her, and she skipped out from under it, tried a jab towards Seda but then had to drag her rapier back to deflect Tisamon’s next blow. He fought her back by three hard-won steps, battering at her guard, the meticulous precision of his style disintegrating, as though he was infected by Seda’s own panic. She scored half a dozen strikes against his mail, failing to penetrate the ancient Mantis craftsmanship. The inequality of the fight was weighing on her, knowing that he only needed one good hit, and every step she took would be paid for when the tide of the Worm closed in on them again.

Thalric struggled to his feet, feeling something grind agonizingly within his shoulder. The Worm had so few slingers, it seemed dismal luck that one should have gone for him. For a moment, surrounded by the slaves, caught in the push and pull of the conflict that yanked and jarred him painfully, he could not think what he had been doing. Then it came back to him, and he tried his wings.

The Art had barely flickered before his shoulder was screaming at him, and he staggered, feeling the fight around him start to unravel, the inevitable triumph of the Worm on its way again.

He had to get to Che. He had to get to her and . . .

Of course now he would not be able to go with her. His own escape route had just been snatched from him.

He began pushing through the throng, good shoulder first, forcing his way upslope as fast as he could, as though he could outstrip the conclusion he had just come to. No escape, not this time. He had stayed alive a long time, had Thalric. He had outlived a mad Dragonfly set on vengeance, the rejection of the Rekef, capture by his enemies and an entire bloody siege dedicated to his personal extermination. He had even survived so far in this night-black place, but now it looked as though his legendary resilience and luck might just have reached their limits.

Someone crashed into him from behind and he let out a bark of pain and found himself falling. A moment later hands had caught him, and he was hauled up to stare directly into an eyeless, nightmare face.

‘Messel!’ he got out. ‘Help me. I need to get to Che – help me up there.’ His tone was somewhere between command and plea.

The blind man got an arm around him wordlessly and started pulling him upslope. He had brief, contradictory glimpses of the fighting up there. Tynisa and Tisamon crossing blades. Then Tynisa was falling, and her father was gone. Then they were back again, the girl recovering from the stab of her intermittent injury just in time to defend herself. It was as though he was watching the moments of this battle out of sequence.

Che and Seda seemed almost motionless in comparison, even as the duel jolted and surged between them. Thalric gritted his teeth and forced himself onwards, with Messel helping clear the way.