Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) (43 page)

“Says the wizard who can fly,” Nalvin said dryly.

I could see Othvin was thinking about it, though. “You’ve tested this spell? You’re sure it will work?”

“Oh, you can not be serious,” Withril complained. “Riding in a flying ship is crazy enough. Now you want us to jump out of it?”

“Never assume that your enemy is incompetent,” Othvin replied, sounding like he was quoting something. “It would be perfectly feasible for the andregi to have scouts keeping a watch on our movements, and Gaea knows how the hidden ways run. But individual elves aren’t nearly as visible as the ship, and a simple color illusion would make us almost impossible to spot. You have to admit, it’s a gambit no one would expect.”

The other elves stared at him in stunned silence for a moment. Then Withril groaned, and hung his head.

“Great buggering centaurs, we’re about to jump out of a perfectly good airship.”

“Look on the bright side,” Nalvin said. “At least it will be a new experience.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes putting a single-use safe fall enchantment on each of them. Unlike the version on my amulet this one also projected a small x-shaped force field above the subject’s head, to provide a little drag to keep them from tumbling. While I did that the elves brainstormed the exercise with surprising creativity, sounding almost like a group of gamers back home. They quickly deduced that scattering and tumbling were likely problems, so I explained what I was doing about that.

“Using ropes to stay together is a bad idea,” I went on, addressing an idea they’d been discussing. “Groups that try that kind of thing usually end up with someone getting badly injured by the rope. Strangling, broken limbs and snapped ropes are all serious issues, and for a short drop like this it’s not that big a deal anyway. The ship is only half a mile up and it doesn’t move that fast, so as long as we jump at short intervals we probably won’t land more than a few hundred feet apart.”

Telvaris, the one elf who hadn’t spoken up before, eyed me suspiciously. “You’ve done this before.”

“Not with this exact spell. But yes, my people had elite military units that used to do this. It was a way to get raiding forces deep into enemy territory.”

A little misleading, but as close to the truth as I was willing to get. I wasn’t going to go around telling people that Hecate had violated some divine treaty to bring an outsider into this world.

They took me at my word, and went on to do a little more last-minute contingency planning. I have to admit, I was pretty damned impressed that they were willing to play magical paratrooper out of the blue like this. I was even more impressed when it came time to jump, and all of them actually did it.

I’m not sure if elves are just inherently more together than humans, or if it’s a side effect of being hundreds of years old. Either way, I was glad Hecate had sent them my way.

I was also glad I could fly. I was the first one out the door, but I flew along next to the ship for a minute while the elves filed out the bridge hatch one by one. Then I dropped into a power dive to catch up, and made it to the ground just as the first man bounced to a stop. It looked like a pretty rough landing, as the giant ball of force magic around him absorbed the impact and bounced him back ten feet into the air. It came down again, only bouncing a few inches this time, and then shrank to deposit him on the snow.

The others landed moments later, all without incident. Well, Withril spent a couple of minutes kissing the ground when he was down, and Leskin threw up. But there were no injuries, which was pretty good for a first drop. We regrouped under an isolated clump of trees, where Othvin pulled out a map and cast some kind of divination.

“Looks like we’re only a mile from the earth nexus we were aiming for,” he said. “We’ll start building our walk along the way, so we have a good charge going by the time we get there. Telvaris will act as pathfinder, with Nalvin sealing the way behind us.”

“So I’m finally going to get to see how this mysterious ‘hidden ways’ business works,” I observed.

Othvin grimaced. “Yes, there’s no avoiding that. But from now on you’re Vinyil, a junior mage working to master earth lore. You look young enough for the part, and that should be easy to fake. Try to copy the rest of us, and don’t talk to anyone if you can help it.”

“Alright,” I agreed. The less I interacted with anyone, the fewer chances I’d have to slip up and give myself away.

It was a cold, cloudy day, and out here on the plains there was a good three feet of snow on the ground. The elves walked lightly over the top of the stuff, leaving footprints barely deeper than the ones a human would leave in dirt. I practiced duplicating the effect using my flight magic, which was trickier than it sounded. Just making myself super-light made it impossible to get any traction, and slipping around like a dog running on ice wasn’t going to help my cover. I played with different ideas as we moved, and eventually figured out how to wrap my feet in a force spell that would support my weight without doing anything else.

Once I was finally satisfied with that, I looked around and discovered that our party was now enveloped in a field of some subtle form of magic I wasn’t familiar with. At first glance it didn’t seem to be doing anything, but as I watched I realized that something strange was happening to the landscape around us. Terrain features that had been well ahead of us would suddenly jump closer when I took my eye off them, and places we’d just passed would suddenly be twenty or thirty yards behind us.

“Don’t study it,” Withril said. “Attention makes things a lot harder to shift.”

“Noted.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and then went back to watching my step.

“Better,” Othvin said. “Here’s the convergence.”

We came around a snow-choked clump of bushes, and our path descended suddenly into a shallow depression. Once we were in it the hollow turned out to be much deeper than it looked from the outside. The shallow slope to my left quickly turned into a steep rise. I focused on watching Othvin’s back in front of me, and tried to ignore the feeling that the terrain was somehow warping around us.

We rounded a large boulder, and came upon a cave mouth. Telvaris went right in, even though it was so small we had to crouch to enter it in single file. Inside was a dry, winding little cave that descended quickly into the earth. In the space of maybe a hundred feet it expanded to a size that allowed us to walk comfortably again, and then more until we could have gone two abreast.

The interior was lightless, of course. But a dim, phosphorescent glow rose up around us as we walked into the gloom. The bracers and headbands we all wore glowed in various shades of blue and green, individually no brighter than a candle, but collectively more than enough to light our path. The light gradually dimmed as our eyes adjusted, which I thought was a particularly nice touch.

“Welcome to the Underways,” Othvin said quietly. “From here any member of our clan can find a path to any place that knows the touch of earth. Some journeys are longer than others, but this one will only take a day or so. Any sign of other travelers, Telvaris?”

“Just the andregi army. The Earth Mother punched a giant hole in the Ways for them, just like we expected.”

“Let’s avoid meeting them, then. A horde of males out for human blood is more likely to take what they want than pay for it, and they won’t be carrying much of what we’re after in any event. We’ll have better luck talking to the matriarchs in Skogheim. Vinyil, from here on in anything you say might be overheard by some power of the earth or the underworld, so do take care to be polite.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied. Message received. From here on we were in enemy territory, and the closer we got to Skogheim the worse it would get.

The elves traveled in silence for the most part, either concentrating on their magic or keeping an eye out for trouble. The way the caves kept twisting and mutating around us made it clear that their travel magic was still running, so I tried not to watch the scenery too closely. That left me alone with my own thoughts.

Was this crazy expedition really a good idea? What if Gaea had some way to track my movements? Would we have any chance at all of escaping if we got caught? Or would the tunnel walls just suddenly close in around us, crushing the elves and leaving me entombed far underground until my air supply ran out?

Dwelling on that was a bad idea. I went back to studying the translation ring for a while, contemplating other uses for the design. Was it possible to encode arbitrary skills in an enchantment? Could I build something like that quickly enough to matter, or would it be a multi-year project? What if the enchantment held only a small amount of information, like a secret message?

When I got tired of chewing on that I took a few peeks at the travel magic, trying to understand those weird magical fields. For once my metamagic sorcery didn’t tell me much about what they were doing, although it laid out the structure of the spell easily enough. Did that mean the effect was something I didn’t have a good frame of reference for? Probably. Some kind of reality manipulation effect, to cross space and alternate dimensions in a way that was lot less straightforward than opening a wormhole?

There was so much I didn’t know about the magic of this world. I really needed to spend a few months learning what my witches could tell me about that, and reading the Conclave’s library.

I snorted. Yeah, fat chance of that happening anytime soon.

It was hard to keep track of time in the caves. It felt like we’d been marching forever when we finally came to a cave that showed signs of life. It was big, probably hundreds of feet across, and lit by a faint green glow emanating from patches of giant toadstools growing here and there. Most of the cave’s center was occupied by a small lake, fed by a stream cascading down one wall.

Most of the floor was steeply sloped and terraced, like a lot of natural caverns I’d seen back home. Telvaris led us along a narrow trail to a relatively flat terrace several feet above water level, and stopped. Othvin looked over the spot approvingly.

“Yes, this will do for a campsite. Cold camp, obviously, and we’ll post watches. There’s not enough flora here to support large predators, but there’s always a risk of something wandering in from elsewhere.”

I did my best to copy the others as I laid out the thin bedroll Tavrin had given me. There wasn’t much conversation among the others, probably because of where we were. We ate a light meal of elven trail rations, which rather reminded me of granola bars, and then laid down to sleep.

My bedroll was surprisingly comfortable, which I really should have expected by this point. But I still found myself tossing and turning. Worrying about all the things that could go wrong on this mission. All the things that could go wrong back home, when I wasn’t there to defend the island. All the problems I was putting off dealing with, in hopes of removing the andregi as a threat.

Sleep was a long time coming.

Unlike the road from Midgard, the path into Skogheim was not unguarded. A few hours into our march the next day we encountered our first patrol, a rather ragtag band of ape men carrying javelins and stone axes. They were accompanied by a pair of dog-sized dinosaurs, bipedal things with long legs and oversized mouths. Their handler led them up and down our column, where they sniffed all of us suspiciously while Othvin answered their questions.

Apparently dark elf traders weren’t entirely unexpected, because they eventually let us pass. We encountered a second party an hour later, and not long after that we came to the gates.

When Tavrin had mentioned the gates of Skogheim I’d pictured some giant stone fortification, but the reality was rather different. As we approached Skogheim the tunnel opened out into a huge underground chamber, probably a quarter of a mile across. What looked like a giant tree trunk, gnarled and twisted with age, rose from the center of the cavern to stretch all the way through the roof. It must have been a hundred feet thick, and its roots turned much of the cavern floor into an uneven obstacle course.

A wide opening in one side of the trunk was obscured by a shimmering veil of magic, from which an army of ape men marched forth. Infantry, triceratops cavalry, stegosauruses with rows of huge sacks hung along their sides. There must have been a thousand andregi in the cavern, but they paid us no mind. The whole column marched along a path between the roots, and vanished into a tunnel mouth on the other side of the cavern.

I could see all of this because there were bamboo poles supporting glowing orange balls set up all over the cavern. Winding trails of them marked the routes to several other tunnels, and a double circle lit the area immediately around the tree. There were clusters of them at various points around the edge of the cave as well, including our own position.

The army might be ignoring us, but there were a hundred or so guards that didn’t. These ape men were armed and armored a lot like the ones I’d fought in Kozalin, and a squad was immediately sent out across the cave to challenge us.

“Halt! Who comes to the Hidden Land?” their leader called once we were within shouting distance.

“Traders from Clan Vinyathos,” Othvin replied. “We come to do business with the matriarchs.”

The ape man spat in disgust. “Money grubbing elves. Can’t you see that the Great Mother’s holy crusade has finally begun? Do you think we want our moment of triumph sullied with your greed?”

“On the contrary, I think this would be an excellent time to introduce certain human kings to the wonders of cocaine. Perhaps immediately before they meet to make battle plans? But in any event, wouldn’t that be a decision for the matriarchs?”

The patrol leader eyed him uncertainly for a moment. Then he gave a snort. “Treacherous elves. Fine. Plead your case in the market, for all the good it will do you. Don’t cause any trouble, or none of you will be going home.”

He spat again, and I realized he had a wad of something in his mouth. Chewing tobacco? Something like that, at any rate.

As we passed on into the lighted area I saw that the glowing balls were actually some kind of gourd. Weird, but I suppose it was in line with the rest of the andregi magic I’d seen. Their version of ‘nature magic’ seemed to involve a lot of magical mutations, and glowing vegetables were probably easier to make than giant dinosaurs with extra horns everywhere.

We had to wait at the gate for a few minutes, as the soldiers continued to march out. There were already a couple of andregi that looked like messengers waiting, as well as some laborers hauling two-wheeled carts full of… was that dinosaur dung? Lovely. I guess someone had to clean up after the armies, or they’d be knee-deep in the stuff after a week or two.

About fifteen minutes after our arrival the flow of troops finally stopped. A harried-looking andregi with patches of gray in his fur stepped through, and waved us forward.

“Move it, you sad sacks. I don’t have all day. Wait, elves? Hah! Better move those skinny asses, before you get trampled!”

We hurried forward as he stepped back through the gate, and found ourselves blinking in bright sunlight. I was glad the light in the cave had been relatively bright, or I would have been completely blinded. As it was I squinted against the glare, and followed Othvin in a hasty move to our right.

The reason for that became apparent a few seconds later, when a troop of triceratops cavalry started through the gate. If we’d moved a little slower they would have walked right over us.

“Friendly, aren’t they?” I muttered.

“For them, this is friendly,” Othvin replied.

As my eyes adjusted I saw that we were standing in a wide field of hard-packed dirt. Behind us was a vast tree, apparently a continuation of the trunk we’d seen in the Underways, that rose hundreds of feet into the air and shaded the whole field. The gate looked pretty much the same on this side, but there were thousands of andregi moving around in the field. Companies of troops waiting for their turn at the gate, older andregi directing traffic, vendors hawking their wares to the troops, even a small crowd of what seemed to be spectators.

It was blazing hot, a shocking contrast to the bitter cold of Kozalin. An immense stench of sweat, dung and rotting meat filled the humid air, along with the din of thousands of people crammed far too close together. Trees surrounded the field on every side, but we were clearly in the middle of a settlement.

Perhaps the most disorienting thing, though, was the sky. Or rather, the lack of one. Instead of a featureless blue dome overhead, I could make out the shapes of seas and land masses far away on the opposite side of Skogheim. Almost like those pictures of the Earth from space, except that there was a faintly bluish haze that obscured the smaller details.

Othvin looked around for a moment to get his bearings, and then led us off towards one edge of the clearing. We fought our way through the crowd of pushy, smelly giants, and finally made it onto a wide path winding through a stand of banana trees. Things were a lot less crowded there, although the smell wasn’t much better. Swarms of insects filled the air, and I was sure at least half of them wanted to suck my blood.

Oddly enough, none of the bugs actually settled on me for long. Oh, yeah, one of those bangles in my hair was an insect repelling charm, wasn’t it? Now if only I had one that turned off my sense of smell.

“The market is this way,” Othvin announced. “For those of you who haven’t been here before, this is the town of Ugrot. It’s spread out over several square miles of jungle, and the permanent population is around thirty thousand. But don’t ever make the mistake of referring to it as a city. The andregi would consider that a mortal insult.”

I noticed then that there were buildings placed here and there among the trees. Most of them looked like someone had warped a stand of trees into a crude approximation of a building, and then finished it off with bamboo walls and grass roofs. Between these large edifices stood clumps of smaller huts, built from various combinations of wood, bamboo and woven grass. They all seemed to be residential structures, rather than shops or other businesses.

I didn’t even want to think about how many bugs had to be living in those buildings. Especially the roofs. Ugh. Kozalin was bad enough, but at least they had some concept of basic sanitation there. The andregi were clearly still at the ‘throw your shit in the street and let the rain wash it away’ level of urban development.

“Do they have inns here?” Withril asked, sounding about as enthused by the prospect as I was.

“Thankfully, no,” Othvin said. “There is a campsite at the market reserved for visiting traders. We’ll set up there, and wait for a matriarch to contact us. No wandering around to explore, though. There’s no law enforcement in Ugrot, and as you may have noticed we aren’t especially well liked here. Most likely no one will bother us as long as we’re in a group, but going off alone would make you a target. Oh, and no killing, no matter what happens. If someone does attack you you’ll have to beat him up with your fists, or else we’ll end up having to deal with all his friends and relatives too.”

“Lovely,” Withril muttered.

“Any other dangers to be aware of?” Telvaris asked. Considering how rarely he spoke that caught my attention, and I realized he was probably asking for my benefit.

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot. This is a rather important area to the andregi, and not just because of the gate. The Halls of Slumber are only forty miles that way, and the residence of the Great Earth Mother is not far beyond. Those of her children who live there actually visit Ugrot sometimes, so it’s possible we might encounter one.

“Most of her sons here had andregi fathers, so they look like the locals only bigger and meaner. If you encounter one, your best hope of survival is to give him whatever he wants while seeming as boring as possible. Don’t bow and scrape too much, or he’s likely to become disgusted and kill you out of hand. Just act like a junior warrior in the presence of a general.

“As for her daughter, well, the Unraveller probably has greater concerns on her mind than an elven trading party. But in the unlikely event that you meet a beautiful woman with long red hair, be polite and entertaining and give her whatever she wants. Do not, under any circumstances, flirt with her. Either she’ll take offense and incinerate you, or she’ll drag you back to the palace and fuck you to death.”

“Wait, seriously?” I broke in. “Why? Is that even possible?”

“We’re talking about someone with divine strength, Vinyil. Of course it’s possible. As for the rest, I wouldn’t dare speculate about the motives of a daughter of Loki. Just hope we don’t meet her, and if we do, try not to irritate her.”

“Understood.”

Mara had never struck me as the type to do something like that. Granted, she’d also been undercover, and she was a pretty decent actress. But I still couldn’t see it. What kind of insanity would drive a woman to act that way?

I was struck by a sudden, terrible thought. Mara had no andregi blood. Her half-brothers did, and all of them were older and probably more powerful than she was.

“Othvin? That bit you explained about andregi mating customs. Is there anything that prevents them from reacting to-”

“Drop it, Vinyil,” he said gruffly. “Some subjects aren’t fit for conversation, especially here.”

Well, fuck. That pretty much answered the question, didn’t it?

Was that why she’d been so desperate to keep the amulet she’d stolen from me? At the time I’d thought she just wanted to use it against the Aesir. But what had she actually said?

‘As long as I have it they’ll never… well, it would be really useful.’

Yeah. Maybe I’d just irradiate Gaea’s palace too, as long as I was here. No, damn it, they were all demigods. Death wasn’t necessarily permanent for them, and besides for all I knew Mara might be there.

I brooded the rest of the way to the market.

This time we set up tents as part of our camp. They were clever folding things that I didn’t dare touch, for fear of making it obvious I had no idea how they worked. The guys got them unfolded into a trio of good-sized domes in no time, of course. They even had a magical heating stone, so we could theoretically cook without violating Gaea’s ban on fires.

After that there was nothing to do but sit back and wait.

It didn’t take five minutes for the first female andregi to wander over for a chat. Given the character of this place I’d half expected her to be covered up like a nun, but the reality was a lot more National Geographic than that. Most of the male andregi in the market didn’t wear more than a loincloth unless they were soldiers, and the women weren’t much different. Not that I particularly wanted to see what they were showing off. Ugh. Hair. Hair everywhere. Not to mention the big, square jaws and brow ridges.

I retreated into one of the tents, trusting Othvin to handle our cover mission. I was going to be busy this evening, but right now I needed to think. Or maybe work. Could I put up a divination ward tight enough to hide enchanting work? Yes, with the tent to anchor the ward it would be easy.

I spent some hours engrossed in an interesting bit of enchantment. Maybe not the most productive thing I could have done, but it distracted me from my worries. I probably would have spent all afternoon at that, if I hadn’t been distracted by Nalvin frantically shaking my shoulder.

“Vinyil,” he hissed. “Come, quickly.”

I followed him out of the tent, and found Othvin trying to pacify a disgruntled andregi who made Brand look puny in comparison. He had to be nine feet tall, with a chest so broad he must have to turn sideways to fit through doors. Damn, his biceps were bigger around than my torso. The tusks protruding from his mouth didn’t fit the rest of the picture, though, and his skin had an odd gray tone to it.

“-don’t care about your excuses!” He was shouting. “You little cocksuckers promised me a ring that can stop dragon fire, and you’re not going to weasel out of the deal.”

“If you’ll just give me a moment,” Othvin temporized.

“I’ve waited two years for this!” the ape man roared. “I’m not waiting any longer. Now cough up my ring before I start cracking skulls.”

Othvin’s gaze fell on me. “Vinyil! There you are. It seems that someone has been bargaining in bad faith with the mighty Korak. Do you have anything on you that will meet his requirements?”