Bazil Broketail (46 page)

By the pale light of the weed they could see that the floor of the tunnel was covered in sand with large things half-buried in it here and there.

Behind them the lamps had been lowered almost to the water level now, and they threw a brighter light down the tunnel ahead of them. It stretched away, curving slightly to the right until it disappeared.

“We must go on,” said Relkin.

But Lagdalen shook her head; she was examining the lady’s side, using the light from Lessis’s ring to get a better look.

“She cannot go far—look.”

Indeed, Lessis was bleeding from a six-inch gash across her lower ribs.

“Can we staunch the blood? She’ll die if we cannot.”

Lagdalen did not answer but tore off her sopping wet robe and began to rip it into strips.

The lights outside the tunnel were withdrawn. The watchers above were satisfied that the fugitives were not swimming in the deep pool.

Lagdalen had learned much in the lore of wounds during the past few days. She had seen Lessis bind up those of many men. Now she went to work to recreate what she remembered. With Relkin’s help she was able to shut the wound and bind it tight in just a few minutes.

Her robe was destroyed, of course, which meant she was down to a thin cotton shift, still soaking wet. She hugged herself but couldn’t stop shivering.

Relkin had taken off his shirt. He wrung out most of the water and now put it around her shoulders. She protested but he insisted.

“You’re shivering enough to drive me crazy. Put this on.”

He still had his leather joboquin and his leggings; when they dried they would help keep him warm. If they would ever dry in this clammy place.

“Now, we must move,” said Relkin.

Relkin lifted the wounded Lessis. She was surprisingly light, weighing no more than a child. Then with Lagdalen leading they went on into the tunnel beneath the mountain.

The heel of Thrembode’s foot throbbed horribly. Even worse for his precious sense of dignity, the bandages made it impossible to wear a boot and so his foot was encased in a grotesque slipper from the surgeon at the Gate of Mor. But despite the pain he endeavored to stand straight and to walk without limping overmuch. The Doom was notoriously impatient of human failings such as painful wounds.

A few years back some poor fool of a junior magician had sneezed in the Presence. He had gone into the Abyss, to lose his ears and tongue and become the Eyes of the Doom. This story had many companions, and thus did Thrembode do his damndest to ignore the lancing bursts of pain that shot up from his ruined heel.

Damn the witch!

A man slammed a heavy hammer down on a slab of steel. The huge double doors opened in front of him. Unsmiling guards, giant men with something of the look of trolls to them, waved him through.

The main chamber was lit from high above through tall, narrow windows. Those same windows offered views of the city and the amphitheater. Ahead, dominating everything, was the metal grille that surrounded the Doom’s Tube.

There it was. A lump rose in his chest, but it was not from love. A perfect sphere, a black marble, thirty feet across, within which dwelled the malignant intelligence that was the Blunt Doom. Created by the Masters in their dark citadel, the Doom was a projection of themselves, subordinate only to them, designed to extend their dominion upon the world.

The Tube was open on one side, to allow those humans that the Doom wished to interview to come close to the side of the great mass.

Within the Tube the rock was suspended in a web of steel cables that gathered together above it and rose to the pulleys and tackle that hung on the great hook in the ceiling of the Tube.

In front of that opening in the Tube a handful of men, clad in black with gold stripes down their fronts, stood murmuring together. As Thrembode passed them he felt their eyes on him and imagined their calculations, their intrigues.

With a jangle of chains the Eyes of the Doom were pulled up from the Abyss. In a narrow cage stood a gaunt, naked man with large protruding eyeballs.

A red spot had appeared on the front of the black rock, now it pulsed slowly.

- Thrembode came to a halt. He set his heel down, although it hurt so badly he had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out. The Eyes were gazing down at him from the narrow cage.

Thrembode knelt and made submission to the Doom.

More chains rattled, the Mouth was swung up.

“Ahah!” boomed the Mouth. “You have returned to us, Magician Thrembode, after a long sojourn in the cities of the enemy. You have sowed confusion there and sent us many useful reports. And now you have brought us a most interesting captive. Yes, this is very good.”

The Mouth was a huge man, now blinded and deafened and confined in another narrow cage. Sometimes he boomed, at other times he purred and hissed when the Doom moved him to some degree of nuance.

“But of course, we must balance all this against the knowledge that you were supposed to remain in Marneri and ensure a swift and peaceful succession for the Crown Prince Erald.”

Pulleys squealed above and the Ears, a woman of enormous girth who virtually bulged through the bars of her narrow cage, was swung into position.

Thrembode cleared his throat, he hated this feeling of helpless terror, but what else could one feel in such proximity to this thing, this monstrosity of the Masters.

“Yes, that is true.”

His voice sounded weak, almost hesitant. He paused and gathered himself. “But circumstances became difficult. The imperial organs were also involved in Marneri. I was detected, possibly by treachery on the part of our agents there.”

The red spot flared a moment.

“Or possibly by your own clumsiness, magician.”

“I do not think so. I am always careful. But in those hag-ridden cities the slightest thing can trip one up.”

“Indeed. And in my city, too, or so it seems.”

Thrembode kept silent. This was dangerous territory. The Mouth went on. “In fact an agent of the enemy accompanied by a handful of soldiers actually invaded the Gate of Mor and almost reached you and our prisoner. You know the identity of your ardent pursuer?”

“Indeed, it is the great hag herself, Lessis of Valmes.”

The Doom paused here, the red spot pulsing; the Mouth in his cage gripped the bars while drool ran from his mouth. Finally he spoke again.

“Yes. So it has been claimed. But we have no body. Lost in the abyss under Mt. Mor.”

“I was not in charge of the search, oh Great One.”

“No. You were incapacitated, they say.”

“A wound, nothing more.”

“You are sure you are able to continue?”

“Certain.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Good.” Again the Doom paused while the obscene puppet show went on and the Ears and Mouth moved and stabilized.

“I want the hag, either dead or alive. We know she was not alone—at least two companions fell into the abyss with her.”

“I’m sure your security forces are tracking her down even as we speak, Great One.”

“Possibly, but I doubt it. Instead I am appointing you to a special commission with the task of finding the hag or her body and bringing it to me.”

Thrembode paled. Hesitated. Then he realized it was useless to try and avoid this duty.

“Of course, Great One.”

“Do I detect a hesitation in your voice, magician?”

“It was only a throb of joy, oh Great One. I will dedicate myself to the task.”

“Good, because if she is not brought to me within three days I shall want to know why.”

“Yes, Great One,” said Thrembode, making submission once more. Then lifting his head Thrembode offered another thought, shifting away from his unpleasant prospect.

“In addition to the Princess Besita, I would point out that we have also taken a good haul of other prisoners.”

“Yes,” said the Voice more quietly. “Two dragons, that is excellent. And the princess will be most useful to us, I believe. However,” the Voice shifted from warm to cold in an instant and Thrembode became most uneasy, his foot was throbbing and his knees were aching, “we cannot overlook the fact that we lost a great many trolls, a great many imps, a great many men. Indeed, I am informed that the Baguti of the Red Belt have been completely disabled. There is now a great gap in our surveillance of the High Gan to the river. And my force in the woods of Tunina has been reduced to a negligible level.”

Thrembode said nothing; the Doom went on remorselessly.

“General Erks was here to report not long ago. He had many comments to make upon the generalship that was shown in your campaign, magician.”

“With respect to the general, he was not there. At Ossur Galan we took them in the flank and destroyed their force.”

The red spot pulsed.

“Destroyed their force?”

The Voice was loud, angry again.

“Well yes, they were left with a handful of men and a few dragons.”

“Then what happened to the Baguti of the Red Belt?”

Thrembode shrugged. “It was the witch. She created a blinding light, brighter than the sun at midday.” -The Doom’s red spot pulsed.

“Ah, then it was not of this world. She must have entered Dugguth. The siphon of the Thingweight still exists there.”

“I do not understand.”

“This is a secret beyond your level, Magician.”

“Well, it is a powerful weapon. By good fortune I was looking away when the light came, but the Baguti were not and they were blinded and rendered quite useless.”

“It is troubling to me to hear this. Somehow the hags have penetrated to the secrets of the Eighth Level. They must have a mole well-hidden in the upper hierarchy.”

Thrembode shuddered at the thought. A hag spy well-placed in Padmasa? It was unthinkable.

The Doom paused, as if mulling over this new intelligence.

“Anyway, your mission is finished and it has cost us much. But if you can find the hag for me, preferably alive though her body will suffice, then you will be redeemed. I have a mission requiring a magician to go south to the Friendly Isles.”

Thrembode willed himself to get to his feet without screaming from the pain as he was dismissed. The rock swiveled and suddenly descended, the chains rattling around it as the slaves below paid them out through the pulleys.

He went past the men of the Doom’s court once again. He lived, his authority was if anything greater than before. In their eyes was new respect, plus concern for their own positions should Thrembode succeed in capturing the hag alive.

Damn the witch! But if her capture led to a voyage to the south seas and the Friendly Isles, then captured she would be. Thrembode vowed it.

The tunnel led on and on, the walls coated with luminescent slime weed in which cavern snails and rock weevils moved busily. Their luminous trails made patterns criss-crossing the tunnel walls.

As they went on it grew warmer, and they crossed patches where warm water had flooded the tunnel floor. The air here was redolent of a swamp and echoed with the scritching of weevils as they fought and mated all around them.

Relkin eventually had to halt for a while. The lady was not heavy, but after a mile of tunnel he had to rest his aching arms. Lagdalen carried her for a while, then Relkin took up the burden once more.

Eventually the tunnel widened into a cavern with a pool of water in the center. The air here smelled of sulfur and the water in the pool was hot; gas was bubbling to the surface in the middle. Rocks had fallen from the ceiling in several places. They found a slab that was as flat on top as a table and here they set Lessis down.

Relkin sagged against the rock, his arms throbbing, and concentrated on simply breathing. The sweat was running down his face and neck—he was slippery all the way to his feet.

After a while he noticed that the wall of the cavern was punctuated with dark fissures that ran from floor to ceiling. Some of them were wide enough for a boy his size to slip into.

Lagdalen meanwhile examined Lessis with the aid of the-blue stone ring. What she found was both encouraging and depressing.

Her bandage had held up, and the worst of the bleeding had stopped, but the lady was still unconscious and her pulse seemed weak. Lagdalen was terrified that Lessis was going to die here in this dank and dismal place. This concern so dominated her thoughts that she barely considered her own peril.

And on the occasions when her thoughts did turn away from Lessis it was only to the agonizing realization that Hollein Kesepton was dead, or worse, taken for the amusement of the Doom.

There was no relief. She was caught up in the vortex of a terrible disaster. She knew how important the Grey Lady of Valmes was to the efforts of the empire. In her six months of service with her, Lagdalen had learned much of the true strength of the Empire of the Rose and equally much of its weaknesses. The loss of the lady would be a disaster of the first rank. Beside such a loss her own misery over the fate of the handsome young captain was too trivial for consideration. But that thought did not help her accept his death any more easily.

Relkin, meanwhile, gradually regained his strength. He was dying of thirst, but the hot water in the pool was laced with chemical salts and the taste was bitter.

“Got to have drinking water,” he said.

“She is dying, Relkin.”

He swallowed, his mouth and throat dry. They had to do something.

“Have to go on, we can’t stay here.”

“We can’t carry her any further—she probably shouldn’t have been moved in the first place.”

“Need water and food.”

She nodded.

“One of us stays here with her.” He pointed at Lagdalen. “The other goes on and tries to find a way out of here.”

“And some food and water.”

“Right.”

He gathered himself up. Lagdalen gave him the ring. “You will need this more than I will, I expect.”

He nodded and she changed tack.

“Where do you think we are?”

“Under the mountain.” He shrugged. “Marco Veli said it was a volcano and that there would be hot waters underneath it.”