EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (376 page)

With our bodies rested and No-Kill’s help, the gnome corpses were buried quickly, their final resting place a mountain of rocks and dirt in the biggest of the tunnels. The sickly-sweet smell began to recede.

Once again No-Kill seemed more exhausted than the two of us. I gave No-Kill a few strips of glowbug meat from my haversack, much to Khavi’s chagrin. He stared daggers at our prisoner as she consumed the lion’s share of our meagre supplies. She didn’t seem to like the taste, though, which helped.

The grim business was finished, and we turned towards the gnomish settlement, No-Kill walking before us. Our weapons remained sheathed, although Khavi kept his claw resting on the hilt at all times. The route we took was different this time, through smaller, poorly maintained passages that were covered in dust.
 

The idea was strange to me and must have been strange to Khavi too. All kobold tunnels were either maintained to the common standard and well patrolled, irrespective of their use, or collapsed to prevent their use by our enemies. I couldn’t understand the thought process that would allow a race to be so lackadaisical with the defence of their community.
 

Their existence proved useful to us though. Based on my reckoning, the journey to the gnome settlement was shortened significantly.

I was glad for this, and glad No-Kill was cooperating with us, although every time she helpfully bypassed one of the gnomish traps or led us through a hidden side passage, I could feel Khavi’s rage building. He hated being shown up, hated not being right, and most of all, he hated taking orders from a gnome.

No-Kill took us to the wide passage to the underground stream. My instincts begged me not to approach the water again, but No-Kill waved for us to proceed.

We did, weapons in hand, and as we drew close, the water once again rose up to meet us. The elemental's body coalesced from the flow of the river, limbs made of bubbling water dripping onto the stone as it regarded Khavi and I impassively.

No-Kill said something in her own tongue and the monster relaxed, slowly sinking back down into the water like a wineskin with a hole in it, becoming one with the stream once again.

“Do you think it can still see us?” I asked, peering at the water.

“Maybe it’s a trap,” replied Khavi.

“It didn’t kill us before; it won’t now,” I said, a faint hint of exasperation creeping into my tone.

“No kill,” said No-Kill, pointing to the river and then to my backpack. I fished out the empty bug-container and handed it to her. Moving to the water, No-Kill leaned down and filled it with a single scoop, screwing on the lid and handing it back, beaming widely.

How could she be so friendly to us all of a sudden? Khavi hated her, but I could feel my resentment weaken. It was difficult to be angry and suspicious of someone who was so cheery.

At least we had water again. I worried, though, if some part of the elemental was inside the bottle, and what might happen to my insides if I drank it. Would the creature burst out from within me? Would my body absorb it and take control of my very blood, using my vital fluids as the new carrier for its spirit?

Sometimes knowledge of magic can be a scary thing indeed. At times like these I envied Khavi with his much more simple thought processes and outlook on life.

Khavi snatched the hollow glowbug from No-Kill’s hands, growling angrily. “Well, at least it replaced what it drank,” he said, unscrewing the top and sniffing within. He regarded the water with the same caution one might give to a vial of poison.

Perhaps he and I thought more alike than I had guessed. Khavi gave the bottle’s contents another suspicious sniff, then he dipped a claw and tasted it, rolling the drop around on his tongue. Unable to find anything immediately wrong he screwed the top back on and thrust it to me. “Bah.”

“It’s water,” I said.

“What if it put the water monster in the bottle?”

I was reluctant to let Khavi know I was thinking the same thing, so I just replaced it back in my backpack. “It’s twenty kobolds tall. There’s no way it could fit in a tiny bottle.”

“Gnomish magic is built on deception. What if it’s a fragment of the monster?”

“Are you afraid of a water elemental the size of a glowbug? Look, if No-Kill wanted to smash us with the thing, she’s had ample opportunity to do so.”

“
She?
” asked Khavi questioningly, inclining his head. “You’ve been doing that for a while now. Monsters shouldn’t be addressed with such familiarity.”

“It is clearly female.”

He wrinkled his snout. “How can you tell? They all look alike to me.”

“Tzala told me that the females of the surface races have two squishy flesh-growths on their chests. That’s how you know they’re female.”

“What purpose would they serve?”

“Apparently they use them to nourish their young.”

“They allow their hatchlings to eat their own flesh?” Khavi shook his head and looked away, sticking his tongue out. “That’s vile.”

“They have their ways of raising children,” I said, although I immediately regretted bringing up the subject around Khavi. “And we have ours. It’s just how they are.”

“Well, at least we know it hasn’t spawned. It still has both.” He paused. “Maybe they grow back?”

That was likely. We continued on, leaving the sweet-smelling water behind us, once more walking through tunnels lined with the glowing crystalline growths.

The passage began to open, wider and wider, towards a faint purple glow—a dot at the end of a vast funnel. As we drew closer, the source became clear. An opaque wall of energy ran from floor to ceiling, thick and shimmering purple. A grid of arrow slits were carved into the tunnel walls, each approximately a kobold and a half’s height above the other and surrounded on either side by spear holes. Near the ceiling, more slits were spaced farther apart and the steel tips of ballista bolts poked, armed and ready to fire. Below our feet were grates designed to filter away poisonous gasses and flooding waters, others filled with a black liquid that smelled of flammable oil. Some were filled with arrays of darts, angled upwards in a wide cone, their tips wickedly sharp. My power felt faint, an unseen force suppressing my magic, silencing the inner roar of the dragons within my soul, a feeling that was amplified the closer I came to the end.

With every step down the long corridor, I expected to die. We were being toyed with; silent watchers waited to give the signal to kill.

We made it all the way to the end, closer to our enemies than, any others of our kind had ever done before. We stood outside the entrance to the gnome city, staring down the sights of enough arrows to repel an army ten thousand strong. Here we were, two tired and footsore kobolds and a gnome whose intentions were as opaque as the shimmering wall that stood between us and the city. We were nothing before the might of these fortifications.

Yet they did not kill us.

No-Kill gestured for us to put away our weapons. I did so, and as my rapier slid into its sheath, a sinking feeling grew in my belly. The ominously silent defences stared us down, hundreds of dark slits mocking us, mutely daring two reptilians to attack for the amusement of all. How did I ever think we had a hope of succeeding?

No-Kill called something in her own tongue but received no reply. She turned to us and pointed to the floor. “No march,” she said, jabbing her finger at my feet, then towards the opaque shimmering wall. “No march. Kobold die. No march.”

“No march,” I echoed. No-Kill stepped through the purple wall and vanished.

Khavi exhaled a loud hissing sigh beside me. “Perhaps she is going to tell them to cut us down,” he said, his eyes darting from arrowslit to arrowslit, expecting to be shot at any moment. “We should have kept her in front of us as a shield.”

“I don’t see anyone at the ballistas,” I said, pointing to crossbows that stood without crew, their loaded bolts pointing beyond us to the entrance.

“Perhaps they are invisible. Our own defences use invisibility to confound our enemies.”

“It doesn’t make sense to use invisibility to mask the presence of siege engine crews. Our sorcerers could simply lob fireballs into the rooms. Being unable to be seen doesn’t mean you can’t be burned.”

“It’s a trick,” Khavi insisted, “some kind of wicked deception. Perhaps they intend to test our will?”

“To what purpose?”

“They saw us coming,” he reasoned. “The gnomes have much reason to fear us. Perhaps the weapon crews deserted.”

Khavi was so fixated on seeing danger that he couldn’t see the broader picture. What was odd about the gnomish defenses wasn’t that our enemies were waiting for the right time to pull some ingenious trick on us, it was that they didn’t seem to be waiting at all. “You think that dozens, possibly hundreds, of gnome defenders pissed themselves and ran because
two kobolds
approached their gates?”

“I don’t know what to think!” Khavi hissed, and snapped his jaws. “I just want them to get it over with! They should kill us already instead of drawing it out!”

The tip of one of the bolts gleamed in the crystal light. It seemed so sharp. “Do not wish for death so easily.”

The purple glow became a bright light, and I brought my hand up to shield my eyes. It faded quickly, and when the spots cleared, the wall had dropped away. A tunnel climbed the length of my sight.

No-Kill stood on the other side of the passage, a purple glowing orb in her hand, the light fading as the last of the wall evaporated. She beckoned us forward, then turned up the incline, moving out of sight.

“Ren?” said Khavi.

I turned to him, eyeridge raised. “Yes?”

“I’ve always obeyed your orders, haven’t I?”

“Yes, you have.” I hesitated. “Are you all right?”

He looked directly at me, and there was something in his eyes—something dark and sinister, something fierce and determined, something I had never really seen in him before.

“Ren, we need word to reach Ssarsdale, to warn our cousins and prepare the army for war, and you have seen the gnome defences. You’re a sorcerer, you’ve got the dragon’s art; you’re a leader. You’re young, yes, but you’ve got potential. If this hadn’t happened, you would probably be running Atikala in a few generations.”

“Khavi, what are you—”

“I want you to use the scroll to seal up the arrow slits,” he said, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword. “You should be able to do it before they fire. Then, turn around and run away from here, and make for Ssarsdale. Tell them what happened today, and do what your duty compels you to do. I know what
mine
tells me—that this gnome has lived too long, that I can’t go on living knowing that Atikala is in ruins.”

“Khavi—”

But he was already gone, his eyes solid red, his weapon flying into his hands. A shiver danced down my spine as Khavi’s voice boomed all around, echoing off the stone walls, a primal vocalisation that shook the very foundations of the city.

The scroll was on my hip. I could use it to seal up the arrow slits as he’d suggested, but if they were going to fire, or pull some trick, or stop Khavi in any way, it wouldn’t come from there.

Khavi charged up the incline towards his doom, bellowing his warcry. He reached the top of the lip, disappearing from sight, and his ferocious, fate-defying shout was abruptly silenced.

I turned to the passage behind me. There were other passages, other routes I could take, ones that would bring me to the surface and then to Ssarsdale. I could run or I could stay. There were worse fates than dying here.

My hands trembled right above the scroll. Khavi’s words rang true; my duty called, inexorably pulling me towards my cousins so they could rally an army, assault this city, and make each and every gnome within pay for the kobolds they had crushed underneath the stones. Khavi was the better fighter, his blade strong and sure, but his voice had been silenced instantly. To follow him up that ramp, that incline leading to the city proper, was to embrace certain death. Duty, logic, reason—every part of me that was kobold implored me to use the scroll and retreat, to let Khavi’s death serve a community that no longer existed. The souls of all those kobolds cried out for revenge, pleading with me to return to this very spot with an army at my heels, ready to repay blood with blood.

But try as I might, my feet would not allow me to turn away from Khavi, to take even a single step away from the spot where I stood. Instead I found them moving in front of each other, one by one, moving up the incline and bringing the scene beyond into view.

No-Kill knelt on the crest of the lip, her hands by her sides, staring out at the cavern beyond. Khavi stood beside her, his arms limp and his weapon lying on the ground. For a brief moment I wondered if he was paralysed again.

Then I saw. A vast emptiness, a hole in the underworld disappearing straight down. The entire city had been scooped out by the spoon of a giant, the creature digging down further and further, creating a city-sized well in the earth that stretched out further than I could see. A red glow burned at the bottom of the pit, bright and angry. I could see no smoke. Above was a circle of the brightest light, a yellow disk in the blackness.

The gnomish city had fallen, dropped so far into the underworld that it was beyond sight, plummeting to its destruction below us, falling far enough that there was no rope long enough to reach it.

It was with a terrible realisation that I once again turned back to the entrance to the city and saw the empty ballistas, the unmanned arrow slits with bows left where their wielders had dropped them.

The gnomes
had
deserted. Weeks ago after their city had fallen out from underneath them. The weight crushed Atikala’s ceiling and, like a collapsing stack of scrolls, buried it beneath the ruins of what had once been an impregnable gnomish fortress.

No-Kill wailed, the first sound any of us had made. She clutched her head, babbling in her fey tongue. She grasped hold of the edge of the abyss, staring at the vast nothingness.

I reached out, touching No-Kill’s uninjured shoulder, drawing her back from the edge. The gnome shuddered and shook, her eyes wetting as her eye-tears came, crying in the right place at last.