Angus Wells - The Kingdoms 02 (43 page)

           
He saw that she had drawn her own
from the neck of her tunic and held it clasped firm in her left hand. He
fetched his out and held it in his right, taking Wynett’s free hand in a firm
grasp. Instantly he felt a return of confidence, optimism surging, and, his
eyes watering with the horrible odor, he stepped into the opening.

           
It was dark there, black as his
blindness, but filled with shifting, writhing things that pulped beneath his
feet and brushed against his face so that he held his mouth tight closed for
fear they might enter and contaminate him with their corruption. Wynett pressed
hard against him and he let go her hand to curve an arm about her shoulder,
feeling her reach across her breast to link their fingers again. The smooth
surface of the talisman was warm to his touch and as they proceeded into the
occultation it began to glow, gradually lighting their way with a soft blue
radiance that in itself was comforting.

           
He saw that they passed along a
tunnel, the roof curving low above them, the walls slimy with moisture and
reeking as if the midden of the Gathering drained there. The things that had
touched them went with the light, as if creatures of the blackness and unable
no bear the effulgence of the talismans. Before them, and behind, on the edges
of the soft-hued illumination he caught glimpses of them, white wormy
undulations like the maggots that cluster in untreated wounds, in the eye
sockets of dead things, loathsome to observe and emanating a sightless
malevolence. They slithered from the glow and Kedryn, still clutching Wynett
hard against his side, trod more swiftly down the ominous passage.

           
It ended abruptly in a vast,
gray-lit cavern, the way ahead sloping down, the walls sweeping up to
immeasurable heights, the roof lost in opalescent mist that seemed to rise like
fetid steam from the lake that filled the entire center of the vault. All was
gray and gloomy, walls and floor and water mingling in viscid union so that
perspective was impossible to judge, the descent before them seeming
simultaneously gradual and horrendously steep. Gray things with wings like
tattered cloth flapped painfully in the heated air, emitting shrieking cries
that stabbed at eardrums, while from the lake came a steady moaning as though a
thousand thousand souls wailed in hopeless remorse. Confronted with some degree
of light, the talismans lost part of their radiance, and as Kedryn began the
descent he let go the stone, needing his arm free for balance as he felt the
surface beneath his feet slick and treacherous. He brought his arm from
Wynett’s shoulder, taking her hand again that they might support one another on
the gradient.

           
The batlike flying things fluttered
close as they descended, the proximity revealing human faces set between the
ragged wings, tiny eyes filled with tears, little hands extending from the gray
membranes. “Go back,” their shrill voices called, “go back before you are
lost.”

           
It was hard to ignore them, for
there was an imperative in their warnings that struck deep into the soul, but
as the slope flattened, the two intruders in this land of the dead touched the
talismans again and found fresh strength, blocking their ears to the shrieking cries
and ignoring, as best they could, the unpleasant closeness of the winged
beings.

           
They reached the shore of the lake
and saw wavelets lap turgidly against the limitless extent of that doleful
strand, each one leaving a foul gray froth on the dripping stone. Things moved
beneath the surface, glutinous bubbles rising and bursting to release sharp
gasses that stung their nostrils, threatening to cramp their bellies with nausea.
There appeared no way across and Kedryn was loath to enter the colloidal liquid
so he began to walk along the shore, still plagued by the bats that fluttered
about then- heads, maintaining their fluting warnings like some horrible
airborne chorus. How long they walked he did not know, for time had no meaning
here and there was no way in that depressing uniformity to estimate distance or
duration, but finally they saw a difference in the shore and the surface of the
mucous lake. A slab of stone intruded on the mere, and beyond it others,
extending out into the mist-shrouded distance, precarious stepping stones. They
were rugged and uneven, like ill-formed teeth, offering at best a dangerous
footing, and lapped by the viscous, bubbling stuff. Kedryn studied them
dubiously, unsure whether to risk a crossing or continue along the doleful
strand.

           
“We might march forever,” Wynett
suggested, “and these at least offer a way forward. I think we must cross.”

           
“Or try,” he nodded, remembering the
warning of the guardian.

           
She smiled encouragingly and he
touched her cheek, wondering if he could have found the courage to attempt this
awful quest without her.

           
“Go on,” she urged, and he stepped
up onto the first extrusion of stone, taking a deep breath as he trod across to
the next, his arms thrust out to the sides, the blocks beneath his feet uneven,
threatening to spill him into the menacing fluid.

           
Wynett followed close behind and
they moved warily out over the lake. The spacing of the stones was irregular as
their surfaces and they proceeded in steps and hops and jumps, often teetering
on the verge of falling, aware that whenever they seemed poised to plunge into
the reeking brew the moaning grew louder, anticipatory, the bubbles rising
faster, as if creatures breathed below, eager to drag them down. The shoreline
was lost to sight when something huge rose to the right. A massive, crenellated
back humped from the surface, then a triangular head that dripped tentacular
whiskers that waved, questing of their own accord, about a wide lipless mouth
in which rows of saw-edged teeth glinted. Eyes the color of smoldering coals
turned toward the travelers and a sigh, more awful for its longing than its
loudness hissed from the gaping maw. The monster’s neck undulated as it dived,
and wide-spreading ripples marked its passage toward the stepping stones.

           
“Quickly!” Wynett called. “Mayhap we
can escape it.”

           
“No!” Kedryn’s answer was firm. “It
will reach us ere we reach the far shore. We must face it.”

           
He smiled at her, more confidently
than he felt, bracing his legs on the bumpy surface, studying the advancing
crest of ripples.

           
This time the head appeared first,
the long neck serpentine, writhing up until the jaws hung above him, the red
eyes glaring down, liquid cascading from between the ghastly teeth as the
feelers fluttered toward him. Kedryn clutched the talisman in his left hand,
raising the right as though to command the leviathan.

           
“You defy me?”

           
It was not possible for jaws so
shaped to speak, but words came out, sibilant, menacing.

           
“We seek to cross,” Kedryn answered,
not knowing what else to say. “We offer you no harm.”

           
“Nothing can offer me harm,” the
creature boasted, breath redolent of rotted fish gusting about Kedryn’s face.
“I destroy all.”

           
“We are not of your realm,” Kedryn
shouted into the piscine stink. “You have no right to take us. The guardian at
the gate gave us entry. ”

           
“That suit of stinking armor?” Fishy
contempt sprayed Kedryn. “That is nothing! I am everything.”

           
The neck thrust higher, the jaws
opening, poised to descend, wide enough to swallow Kedryn whole. He opened his
left hand, extending the talisman to the length of its retaining cord.

           
“Can you swallow this?”

           
The great head snatched back,
turning from side to side that each eye in turn might study the faintly
pulsating jewel, and angry breath hissed from the craggy nostrils.

           
“What are you?” it demanded.

           
“I am a man,” Kedryn said. “I am
Kedryn Caitin. I am the hef-Alador. And I would pass with my companion.”

           
“So,” the thing hissed slowly, “you
are the one. I know of you, and I know that you are awaited. There is one has
greater claim on you than I—so I shall let you pass. You and yours. But I
hunger, so you had best go swiftly.”

           
Kedryn nodded, unsure of the
creature’s meaning, but unwilling to risk questions or delay longer. If
something waited for him, it would appear in time, and for now the imperative
was to cross the lake and leave this thing behind. He turned to Wynett, seeing
that she, too, held her talisman out toward the monster.

           
“Come,” he called. “Come quickly.”

           
Wynett needed no further bidding and
followed him as he leapt from stone to stone across the mere, not turning to
see the leviathan sink slowly back beneath the surface, not seeing the smile
that decorated its impossible mouth.

           
Their legs ached from the jumping
before they saw the farther shore and sprang gratefully to drier ground, hard,
gray gravel that was hot to the touch beneath them. They halted, throwing
themselves panting down, at last daring to look back over the sullen gray lake.
It still bubbled, but now there was no sign of the monster, and they felt
almost relieved, happy to have escaped its threat.

           
“I have awaited your coming,” said a
husky voice behind them. “It will be good to have companions in this place.”

           
Their breath caught then and they
drew back from what stood before them, for it was recognizably human and that
rendered it, somehow, more awful than the nightmare creations they had so far
encountered. It stood on two blood-streaked legs, its loins wrapped in
gore-soaked furs, bones visible through the wounds that gashed its sides and
chest, its arms lacerated, tendons showing. Maggots crawled in the wounds,
blind and white and fat. Around the neck was a gash lipped with old,
still-oozing blood, the head set at a curious angle, as though barely
connected. The lips were dried and curled back from yellowing teeth, the
nostrils gone to ugly holes either side of a rotted jut of bone, the cheeks
hollow, stretched like ancient leather between the thrust of the jaws, from
which hung the mangy remnants of a beard. Worst of all were the eyes, for they
were no longer there, only sockets in which worms crawled, and more maggots,
falling loose as the apparition spoke. It plucked one absently from its ravaged
chest and popped the wriggling obscenity between its fleshless lips, gulping it
down casually as if it were a sweetmeat.

           
“Do you find me so distasteful?” The
carrion creature laughed, spewing maggots. “There are worse than I here. And it
was your father did this to me. Your father and the one called Brannoc.”

           
It touched its neck, fingering the
wound there, and its head tilted, more crawling things dropping from the opened
wound, “You are Borsus,” Kedryn said softly, his gaze transfixed in horrible
fascination on the vermiculate face.

           
“I am,” the creature nodded, the
movement threatening to topple the skull from its fragile connection, “and you
are Kedryn Caitin.”

           
Kedryn saw then that the shade of
Borsus was not alone, for across the graveled shore, where the stones seemed
hotter, steam rising to form a reddish mist, shapes moved, shuffling within the
fog. They were unclear, and he was thankful for that mercy, for they had the
delineaments of madness and they emanated a terrible lust, as if they waited for
some sign, the giving of which would propel them forward to slake the ghastly
hunger he felt in them.

           
“You took my sight,” he said.

           
“The sword that Taws gave me took
your sight,” Borsus responded, and there was an echo of grief in his voice. “It
took the life of the woman I loved—as you love her. ”

           
A hand rose to point at Wynett,
standing slightly behind Kedryn, to his right.

           
“That was how Taws put the glamour
in it,” the worm-eaten cadaver continued. “He took the blade and drove it
through her heart; through mine in the doing. I was his man, yet he condemned
me to this.”

           
His gesture encompassed the seething
mere and the steaming beach, grubs falling like tears from the sockets of his
skull.

           
“I would end such things,” Kedryn
said. “Give me back my sight and I shall give you a revenge.”

           
“Revenge?” Borsus shook his head.
“How can you revenge me? Taws is the Messenger; Ashar’s creature.”

           
“He deserted the Horde,” Kedryn said
urgently, seeing the things that skirted the edges of the mist creep closer,
sensing that all depended on this argument. “I slew Niloc Yarrum and Taws’s
magics failed against me. You took my sight, but not my life, and the Horde was
defeated. The Messenger fled and has not been seen again. Your people hail me
as the hef-Alador. I have the support of Cord, Ulan of the Drott. The shamans
of your people brought me to this place, that I might find you and gain back my
sight.”