Tome of the Undergates (68 page)

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Authors: Sam Sykes

BOOK: Tome of the Undergates
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‘You’re aware there’s a knife jutting from your back, aren’t you?’ She took a step towards him, reaching for the handle. ‘Here, just hold on for a moment and I’ll—’
‘
NO!
’
He whirled on her with eyes flashing and the back of his hand colliding with her jaw. She collapsed to the floor, more shocked than pained. The dragonman loomed over her, blood pooling in the furrows of his scowling face, and levelled a single accusatory claw at her.
‘
You will
not
ruin this for me.
’
‘Ruin . . .’ There was not nearly enough room on Asper’s face to express her incredulousness. ‘Are you demented?’
‘This is a beautiful fight,’ he said, sweeping a trembling arm over the melee. ‘You don’t belong here.’
That wasn’t entirely untrue, she realised as she clambered shakily to her feet. There was no reason to be here, trying to convince a murderous reptile to let her pull a chunk of metal out of his back. There was no reason to be here, in the midst of a battle between two breeds of creatures that should not be. There was no reason to be here, chasing friends who would kill each other in a heartbeat and undoubtedly deserved to die on their own merits.
Then why am I here?
she wondered as she rubbed at her left arm. It still burned, seared her from the inside. She grimaced; the pain was coming in sharper now. It wasn’t supposed to come so soon, she thought, not after what had happened on the
Riptide
. But it still throbbed, still seared, still was angry.
Perhaps that was why she was here. For as she looked out over the melee, filled with people who wanted to kill her, to kill her companions, she knew of only one way to make it stop hurting.
No, no, no.
She shook her head.
Bite through it. You know you can. You don’t have to—
‘
GNAW! BITE! GNASH!
’
The war cry shattered her thoughts. She looked up as Gariath whirled about, both spying simultaneously the frenzied longface charging with shield and spike held high. Shrieking, the female lunged into the air, her weapon slick and whetted, her eyes crazed and bulging.
There was little time to appreciate the howl, however, for the echoing word of power that resounded behind her drowned out all other noise. There was the crack of thunder as a jagged bolt of electricity split the air to pierce the longface, reaching through her breastplate, through her breast, and leaping out of her back.
She landed, a smoking hole in her chest, muscles twitching with involuntarily convulsions, teeth forever locked in a sudden rigor. They both turned to regard the scrawny boy lurching forwards, Asper with shock, Gariath with ire. Dreadaeleon seemed rather unconcerned with either them or the woman he had just struck from the sky.
‘That one,’ the dragonman growled, ‘was
mine
.’
‘If I had thought you were capable of killing her in a timely manner, I would gladly have let you trade blows until one of you wet yourselves.’ The boy blew on his smoking fingertip. ‘I didn’t think I had time for that, though.’
Asper noted the tremble in the boy, the limp that was swiftly developing in one of his legs. He made no effort to hide it, nor his heavy breathing or the sudden bags that hung like purple fruits under his eyes.
‘You should probably sit back for a while,’ she suggested. ‘You . . . don’t look so good.’
‘How about that,’ Dreadaeleon muttered, ‘I wasn’t actually
lying
when I said magic drains me. Thus, forming a raft made out of ice using only my
brain
actually
might
leave me looking not so good.’
‘There’s no need to get all smarmy about it.’
‘He gets smarmy over everything. The little runt could pull a gerbil out of his pants and he’d somehow manage to end up in a coma
and
complain about it.’ Gariath snorted, prodding the boy in the chest. ‘I’ve got a
knife
in my back, but I don’t go crying about it. You don’t get hugs for doing things right.’
‘What do I get for killing that last longface?’
‘Punched in your ugly face.’
‘The fact that you’re decidedly unbothered about a knife in your back and the troubling questions it raises does not concern me now.’ The wizard swept a glare about the carnage. ‘Where is the heretic?’
‘The what?’
‘The renegade,’ Dreadaeleon hissed. ‘The defiler of law. The male. Where is he?’
Answer came in the form of a sudden pyre that cast the room into a glowing orange hell. A vast circle formed within the battle, charred black figures collapsing around its centre. The male longface, however, seemed to pay these no mind as he turned the plume of flame that leapt from his palm upon the pulsating sacs infesting the hall.
With methodical patience, he reduced them to ash. With contemptuous casualness, he flitted a hand at any frogman that rushed towards him, sending them spiralling against the stones.
‘Ah,’ the dragonman replied, ‘there he is.’
‘Incredible.’
The male, having torched one cluster of the fleshy sacs, strode across the water upon stepping stones of ice, smirking slightly as he drew back curtains of frogmen to make a path for himself towards the next.
‘Simply incredible,’ the boy repeated, narrowing his eyes.
‘How so?’ Asper asked. ‘You can do the same thing, can’t you?’
‘Not like that,’ the boy muttered. ‘I made a boat out of ice and almost lost consciousness.’ He pointed a trembling finger. ‘
He’s
channelling three schools of magic at once
after
doing what he did to the Omens and he’s not even sweating.’
‘So . . . he’s better than you.’
‘It’s simply not possible!’ His protest came as a wheeze. ‘Spells can’t just be hurled about without regard! There are laws! There must be pause, there must be rest, there—’ He stiffened suddenly, turning the expression of a scolded puppy upon Asper. ‘Wait, you think he’s better than me?’
‘Well . . . I mean,
you
said he was.’
‘I said he did something different. That doesn’t make him better than me.’
‘I’m sure you’re very talented in other respects, but . . .’ She scowled suddenly. ‘Does it really matter now?’
‘No,’ Dreadaeleon muttered. He studied the male through a scrutinising squint, his lip crawling further up his face with every spell cast. ‘If his magic were just stronger, I’d sense it. I’d
know
it.’ With cognitive suddenness, he slammed a fist into a palm. ‘He’s
cheating
.’
‘Cheating.’ Asper raised a brow.
‘Well, he is!’ Dreadaeleon stamped a foot. ‘Even in the most skilled hands, magic is a controlled burn. It strains the body, but not
his
. He’s not even breathing hard. He’s ... I don’t know . . .
using
something.’
‘Search him when he’s dead,’ Gariath growled.
With a low snarl, he reached behind him. His body jerked, spasmed, then relaxed at the sound of particularly thick paper being torn. Asper cringed as dark rivers poured down his back, then fought violently against the rising bile as he thoughtfully flicked a glistening fragment of red from one of the blade’s sharp prongs.
‘For now,’ the dragonman grunted, ‘there’s plenty to kill. If you’re smart, you’ll sit back and wait for a real warrior to finish it.’ He looked over the pair contemptuously. ‘Being that you’re human, though—’
‘Naturally.’ Dreadaeleon’s fingers tensed, beads of crimson glowing at their tips. ‘I don’t care who kills him. The laws of the Venarium must be upheld.’
With grim nods exchanged, the dragonman and not-yet man turned and stalked grimly towards the melee, ready to rend, to freeze, to bite and to burn. The battle raged with a yet-unseen fury, tides of pink and purple flesh colliding as the Abysmyths waded through to leisurely pluck opponents up and dismember them with disinterest.
Beautiful
, Gariath thought.
The dragonman snorted. The wound felt good in his back. He would not be walking away from this fight, he knew. All that remained was to make certain that he got there before nothing was left to kill.
‘Wait!’
His eyelid twitched at the shrill protest. He scowled at Asper over his shoulder, meeting her objecting befuddlement with abject annoyance.
‘What about the others? Lenk, Kataria, Denaos—’
‘Dead, dead, dead quickly,’ he replied. ‘Honour them. Give them company in the afterlife.’
‘But I . . .’ she whimpered, ‘I can’t fight.’
‘So die.’
‘I left my staff behind.’ Her excuse was as meek and sheepish as her smile. ‘I’m not much use. I . . . could remain here and tend to you, though. You are bleeding quite badly and I—’
‘
Moron!
’ he roared, turning on her. ‘There will be
nothing
for you to tend to here. Nothing will survive if I can help it.’ He stomped towards her, scowling through his mask of gore. ‘You cried about wanting to fight.’ He thrust the jagged blade into her hands, staining her robes red. ‘Now prove if you’re worthy of life.’
‘I . . . no, it’s not that.’ She tried to return the blade, her grasp trembling. ‘I don’t want to . . . I mean, I can’t. My arm, you see, it—’
‘I don’t care,’ he snarled in reply. ‘No one will ever care what you did while you’re still alive.’ He snorted, spraying a cloud of red into her face. ‘Your life will be nowhere near as great as your death, if you manage to do it right.’
Her eyes were those of an animal: frightened, weak, quivering. But she held on to the blade, he thought, and more importantly, she stopped talking. For the moment, that was enough for him; if she managed to do something worthwhile in the time she still breathed, it would be a pleasant surprise.
She disappeared from his thoughts and his sight as he turned his back to her, stalking towards the throng. He ignored her cries of protest, ignored the boy who had already disappeared into the battle, ignored the thought of the other dead humans. He would mourn for Lenk later, laugh at the rest of them with his last breath.
The wound in his back felt good, the chill that filled him refreshing. The sound of his life spattering onto the ground was a macabre reassurance that he would not be walking away from this fight, that he would be seeing his ancestors before the day was done.
And he would not be going alone, he resolved.
When the first of the longfaces looked up at him, pulling her spike out of a pale corpse and loosing a war cry, it was not death that he smelled, nor sea, nor salt, nor fear. There was only the scent of rivers as she charged him.
Rivers and rocks.
Twenty-Seven
TO SEE WITH EARS
‘ K
at?
’
That was her name, wasn’t it? No shict had ever called her that, of course; shicts had full, proud names that all meant something. Kat meant nothing, Kat was not a name, Kat was not a word.
‘
Kat!
’
Kat was her name, she remembered. Not her true name, not her shict name. Kat was a name that some silver-haired little girl had called her. No, she remembered, he had been a man. A human.
‘
Kataria!
’
She remembered him now. Skinny fellow, not at all impressive to look at; but she looked at him often, didn’t she? She followed him out of a forest, a year ago. Where was he now?
His voice was hard to hear. Her ears twitched against her head. They felt disembodied, hanging from her head and heavy with lead. Too deaf to hear her own breath, much less some weak little human girl . . . man.
But she heard him, still crying out her name, still shrieking, still screaming as if in pain. He had a lot of pain, she remembered.
What was his name again?
‘Lenk.’ Her lips remembered. ‘Don’t be dead.’ The words came unbidden. They were not shict words. ‘I’m coming.’
‘Well, that’s just delightful. I’m sure if he wasn’t already dead, he’d be thrilled to hear it.’
Another voice: grating, simpering, unpleasant. She frowned immediately, her eyelids flittering open. The face she recognised: angular and narrow, like a rat’s, except more obnoxious. His wasn’t entirely concerned, his frown not particularly sympathetic.
‘Denaos,’ she hissed. Her voice was a croak on dry lips.
‘Oh, good. You remember my name. Everything else upstairs working?’ He tapped her temple with a finger. ‘Nothing feel loose? Leaking?’ He waved a hand in front of her. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘However many as will fit up your nose if you don’t get away from me,’ she snarled, slapping at his appendage. She rose from the stones beneath her, head pounding with the blood that rushed to it. ‘What happened?’
‘So, you
are
whole in the mind, right? That question was just your natural stupidity?’ He sneered and gestured down a dark, drowned hall. ‘Just listen, nit.’

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