The Infernal City (36 page)

Some forty feet below him was a web that might have been two hundred feet in diameter. It looked very much like a spider’s web, anchored to three metallic spires, an upthrust of stone, and a thicker tower of what appeared to be porcelain. Below the web was a long drop into a cone-shaped basin half full of emerald water and covered with strange buildings everywhere else. The web was made of glasslike tubes about the thickness of his arm.
Every few feet along any given tube another sprouted and rose vinelike toward the sky. These in turn branched into smaller tendrils so that the whole resembled a gigantic bed of strange, transparent sea creatures—and indeed, most of them undulated, as if in a current.

Attrebus was about ten feet from the top of the bushy structure, where the strands were no thicker than a writing quill, and these were what held him up. They clustered thickly on the soles of his boots, pressed his back and torso and every part of him except his face with firm, gentle pressure.

He tried to take a step, and they moved with him, reconfiguring so he didn’t fall. They cut the sunlight into colors like so many prisms, but it was nevertheless not difficult to see in any direction. He noticed Sul a few feet away, similarly borne.

“You did it!” he shouted. The crystalline strands shivered at his voice and rang like a million faint chimes. “We got away.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Sul replied, shaking his head. “I never got close enough to the door to escape into Oblivion.”

“Then where are we?” Treb asked.

“In my home,” a voice answered.

Attrebus looked higher up and saw someone walking down toward them, the transparent tubules shifting to meet his feet.

He appeared to be a Dunmer of average size, his gray hair pulled back in a long queue. He wore a sort of loose umber robe with wide sleeves and black slippers.

“Amazing,” the man said. “Sul. And you, I take it, are Prince Attrebus. Welcome to Umbriel.”

“Vuhon,” Sul snarled.

The only strange thing about the man’s appearance, Attrebus noticed, were his eyes—they weren’t red, like a Dunmer’s; the orbs where milky white and the surrounds black.

“Once,” the man said. “Once I was called that. You may still use that name, if you find it convenient.”

Sul howled, and Attrebus saw his hand flash as when he’d fought and burned Sharwa, but the balefire coruscated briefly in the filaments and then faded. Attrebus ran forward, lifting Flashing, but after a few steps the web suddenly went rigid like the glass it resembled, and he couldn’t move anything below his neck.

“Please try to behave yourselves,” Vuhon said. “As I said, this is my home.” He let himself slump into a sitting position a few feet above them, and the strands formed something like a chair.

“You’ve come here to kill me, I take it?” he asked Sul.

“What do you think?” Sul said, his voice flat with fury.

“I just
said
what I think—I merely phrased it as a question.”

“You murdered Ilzheven, destroyed our city and our country, left our people to be driven to the ends of the earth. You have to pay for that.”

Vuhon cocked his head.

“But I didn’t do any of that, Sul,” he said softly.
“You
did. Don’t you remember?”

Sul snarled and tried to move forward again, without success.

Vuhon made a languid sort of sign with his hand, and the glassy vines rustled. A moment later they handed up to each of them a small red bowl full of yellow spheres that did not appear to be fruit. Vuhon took one and popped it in his mouth. A faint green vapor vented from his nostrils.

“You should try them,” he said.

“I don’t believe I will,” Attrebus said.

Vuhon shrugged and turned his attention back to Sul.

“Ilzheven died when the ministry hit Vivec City, old friend,” he said. “And the ministry hit Vivec City because you destroyed the ingenium preventing it falling.”

“You were draining the life out of her,” Sul accused.

“Very slowly. She would have lived for months.”

“What are you talking about?” Attrebus demanded. “Sul, what’s he saying?”

Sul didn’t answer, but Vuhon turned toward Attrebus.

“He told you about the ministry? How we devised a method to keep it airborne?”

“Yes. By stealing souls.”

“We couldn’t find any other way to do it,” Vuhon allowed. “Given time, perhaps we could have. At first we had to slaughter slaves and prisoners outright, as many as ten a day. But then I found a way to use the souls of the living, although only certain people had souls—well, for simplicity’s sake, let us say ‘large’ enough. We only needed twelve at a time, then. A vast improvement. Ilzheven was chosen because she had the right sort of soul.”

“You chose her because she wouldn’t love you,” Sul contradicted. “Because she loved me instead.”

“We were always competitive, you and I, weren’t we?” Vuhon said, almost absently, as if just remembering. “Even as boys. But we were friends right up until the minute you burst into the ingenium chamber and starting trying to cut Ilzheven free.”

“I meant only to free
her
,” Sul said. “If you hadn’t fought me, the ingenium would never have been damaged.”

“You put yourself and your desires ahead of our people, Sul. And all you see is the result.”

“You’re twisting it all up,” Sul said. “You know what happened.”

Vuhon shrugged again. “It’s not important to me anymore. Did you find the sword?”

“What sword?”

Vuhon’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose you didn’t find it. My taskers certainly haven’t.” His voice rose and his calm broke. Attrebus suddenly seemed to hear boundless anger and violence in the Dunmer’s tone.
“Where is it?”
he shouted.

“What do you want with it?” Attrebus asked.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“I think everything about you is my concern,” Attrebus
snapped back. “Whatever happened in the past, you’re many thousands of times a murderer now. All those people in Black Marsh …”

Vuhon sat back, seemed to relax. His voice became once again maddeningly tranquil.

“I can’t really deny that,” he admitted.

For a moment Attrebus was stunned by the casual confession.

“But
why?”
he asked finally.

“Look around you,” Vuhon said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Almost against his will, Attrebus once again took in the sight of Umbriel.

“Yes,” he was forced to confess.

“This is my city,” Vuhon said. “My world. I do what I must to protect it.”

“Protect it from what? How does destroying my world save yours? Are there no souls to feed on in Oblivion?”

Vuhon seemed to consider that for a moment.

“I’m not sure why I should waste my time telling you,” he replied. “I’ll most likely have to kill you anyway.”

“If that’s so, why haven’t you done so?”

“There are things you know that might be helpful to me,” Vuhon replied. “Or, if you could be convinced, do for me.”

“Convince me, then,” Attrebus said. “Explain all of this.”

Vuhon ran his thumb under his lips and shrugged.

“Sul told you how we were cast into Oblivion? How we met Umbra, and the deal I made with him?”

“Yes,” Attrebus replied. “And how you tortured him.”

Vuhon’s grin turned a little nasty. “Yes, but I grew bored with that. I could never torture him as much as he tortured himself.”

“A problem I won’t have with you,” Sul said.

“Ah, Sul. You really haven’t changed.”

The red bowls were gone, replaced by skewers of slowly writhing orange caterpillars.

“Vile had made it impossible for Umbra to leave his realm, and after your escape, Sul, he tightened his walls further so that I couldn’t leave either, even if I’d had the means. The only way to escape was to circumvent his restriction, to remain in his realm, at least in a way. I built my ingenium, I powered it with Umbra and the energies he had stolen from Vile. I turned our city, wrapped those circumscribed walls around it. Twisted it like a sausage maker twists a casing to form a link, the way a child might an inflated pig’s bladder to form a double ball. Twisted it until it broke loose, like a bubble.”

He bit one of the caterpillars, and it exploded into a butterfly, which he caught by the wing and devoured.

“That was a long time ago,” he went on. “We’ve drifted through many realms and places beyond even Oblivion. We cannot leave the city—Vile’s circumscription still surrounds it. Nor would I want to leave it—I’ve come to love this place I built. To survive in those long spaces between the worlds, we had to become a little universe of our own, a self-sustaining cycle of life and death and rebirth, a continuum of matter and spirit—all powered, manipulated, mediated by my ingenium. We’ve moved beyond the inefficiency some call ‘natural,’ and in doing so approach perfection. Everything here is in a real sense a part of everything else, because all flows from the ingenium.”

Sul—off to the right and in the corner of Treb’s vision—made a sudden gesture with his hands. Without turning his head, Attrebus shifted his gaze the tiniest bit. The Dunmer’s lips moved in an exaggerated fashion.

Keep him talking
, Attrebus thought he was saying.

Attrebus put his full focus on Vuhon, who didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Not so self-sustaining,” he countered. “Your world feeds on souls from the outside world.”

Vuhon nodded. “I said we ‘approach’ perfection. Beyond
Mundus, our need for sustenance is minimal. In some places, not necessary at all. Here, on this heavy plane of clay and lead, much more is required.”

“Then why have you come here?”

“Because this is one place that Clavicus Vile cannot pursue us, at least not in the fullness of his power.”

“Then you’ve won,” Attrebus said. “You’re free. Why are you still running? Surely there must be some way to land this thing—in a valley, a lake—someplace?”

“It’s not that simple,” Vuhon answered. “Vile can still work against us. He can send mortal followers to assassinate me, for instance.” He nodded pointedly at Sul.

“Sul’s not an agent of Clavicus Vile,” Attrebus protested.

“Do you know that? He was in Oblivion for a long time. And he hates me enough to make whatever bargains he thinks will get him his revenge. But that aside—Umbriel isn’t fully in your world yet.”

“Yet?”

Vuhon shook his head. “No, we remain a sort of bubble of Oblivion in Mundus, and as such we’re vulnerable. But I’ve found a way to change that, and to be free of Clavicus Vile forever.”

“And you need this sword of Umbra to do that?”

Again, that sudden uncharacteristic rage seemed to rise up in Vuhon.

“No,” he all but snarled.

“But you
do
want it,” Sul said, breaking his long silence. “It can still undo you, can’t it? Where is Umbra, Vuhon? You said he powers your ingenium. If Umbra is re-imprisoned in the sword, what becomes of your beautiful city?”

Vuhon seemed to be actually shaking with rage. He closed his eyes and drew long deep breaths. When he finally did speak again, it was in even tones.

“We didn’t come just for the sword,” he said. “I came to repair the rift into Vile’s realm, and now that’s done. Umbra wanted to find the weapon, and we shall still look for it, but we have other agents that can do that. If you know where it is, I will find out, I promise you. But it’s time to turn my attentions elsewhere.”

“Why didn’t you use these other ‘agents’ of yours in the first place?” Attrebus asked.

“They couldn’t have sealed the rift. Besides, this little meander gave me time to build my army. It’s already marching, you know. The walkers need not remain near Umbriel—they can go where I choose.” He scratched his chin. “And here is where you might prove yourself useful to me, Prince Attrebus,” he said.

“Why should I want to do that?” Attrebus asked.

“To preserve your own life, and the lives of many of your people. And to finally be the man you want to be.”

A little spark traveled up his spine. “What do you mean, ‘the man I want to be’?”

“I mean I suspect that your adventures have probably caused you to learn that much of your fame is based on fraud.”

“How do you know that?” Attrebus asked, backing away. “If you’ve just come from Oblivion …”

“Don’t you see?” Sul shouted. “He has someone inside the palace. That’s who tried to have you killed.”

“Is this true?” Attrebus challenged.

“Your fame was the problem, apparently. My ally feared you might create popular demand to attack Umbriel before we were ready, and to make the siege more bitter.”

“Siege?”

“Regrettably, I must attack the Imperial City. I suspect they will resist.”

“Why must you attack the city?”

“I need the city,” Vuhon said. “Specifically, I need to reach the White-Gold Tower. Then all of this can end. The dying can stop,
and I can bring Umbriel to rest somewhere. If you want to save lives, all you need do is convince your father not to fight—better yet, to evacuate.”

“My father spent his life putting the Empire back together. There’s no way he would surrender the White-Gold Tower. I certainly couldn’t convince him.”

“You could try. It’s the offer I’m making you. I have gifts for you, the kind that only a god can bestow. You can return to Cyrodiil and lead your people to safety. You can be a real hero.”

Attrebus looked at Sul, then back out at the city.

“What about Sul?”

Vuhon ate another butterfly.

“Sul is mine. I’ll learn what he knows and then he will die.”

“If you murder Sul, I’ll never help you.”

“Think carefully, Prince. I could have lied to you and told you he would live. I didn’t. If you don’t help me, you’ll die, too. And then I will still take what I want at whatever cost of life is required.”