Heights of the Depths (38 page)

For the first time in what seemed ages she was sated. However tired she had been earlier, she was even more so now. Her pathetic little bunk had never looked better. She crawled into it, allowing exhaustion to overwhelm her completely. The last thing she wondered before she fell asleep was what sort of dreams she would have now that she had finally arrived in the city that had been calling to her and haunting her.

She had a dreamless slumber.

Perriz

I.

The Zeffers filled the skies
 over Perriz, blocking out the sun. Their strength was beyond anything that anyone could stand up to. And that was just the Zeffers; their Riders were equally as formidable. They had armed themselves with boulders brought from the Upper Reaches of Suislan, and were casually tossing them down upon the hapless residents of Perriz who were trying to run and increasingly were finding nowhere that was safe. They would take refuge in buildings that the Zeffers would casually knock over with their massive snaking tentacles.

High above it all, Thulsa Odomo was taking pleasure in seeing the Firedraques running for their lives, and those lives were rapidly being dispensed with. There were Mandraques running as well, but none of them were of the house of Odomo, and so their fates were of no consequence to Thulsa.

Seramali was crouched next to him upon one of the largest of the Zeffers. He was howling in triumph, pointing and shouting to the Riders where they should next focus their efforts, and those of the Zeffers. “You are enjoying this entirely too much,” said Thulsa, amused at his enthusiasm. “The thrill of war can be a heady experience. And experiencing a slaughter, well…there’s no greater feeling.”

“Greater than being in a battle where both sides are evenly matched, so that you can face an opponent who is your equal and might kill you before you can kill him?”

“Oh yes. Much better,” Thulsa said. “Equal fights are overrated. Give me a lopsided massacre any day. The more who are able to survive and thus enjoy the fruits of their endeavors, the better. And this,” and he gestured below proudly, “is most definitely a massacre. The pathetic Firedraques and those Mandraques not of our house have no—”

And then something extremely strange happened.

The Zeffer upon which they were perched suddenly jolted. It happened so abruptly that all those who were astride it were staggered, and one or two were nearly thrown off the edge before others grabbed them and prevented their tumbling off.

“What was that?” said Thulsa. “A shift in the wind? Some sort of downdraft?”

Once again the Zeffer tilted, this time to the other side. It swung wildly and now Thulsa was able to look to the ground and see what was happening.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Ocular? Ocular?”

Sure enough, there were Ocular upon the ground. The Mandraques and Firedraques had been running in confusion, the tentacles resistant to swords, or flame breath, or even spit acid. The Ocular however, were doing nothing to try and damage the snaking tentacles. Instead they were simply grabbing the tentacles and yanking as hard as they could. Every time the Zeffer would lash out with one of its remaining tentacles, trying to get one of the Ocular, to beat at them or yank them off their feet, the Ocular would simply reach out with their massive hands and snag them. With staggering strength and relentless determination, the Ocular were hauling the Zeffer out of the sky.

“Bring another Zeffer around! Get at them!” shouted Thulsa.

“We can’t! The streets are too narrow! We can’t get down at them!” said Seramali.

The Ocular were pulling the Zeffer down, foot by foot. The Zeffer still had plenty of altitude, but the Ocular were making headway. Their strength was beyond anything that Thulsa had ever experienced, and he could not for the life of him figure out what the hell they were doing in Perriz.

He did know, however, that he couldn’t simply stand by and wait for the Ocular to yank his Zeffer down from the skies. He and the other Mandraques and Serabim who were with him upon the Zeffer were going to have to take a more direct hand.

“Down! Go down!” he shouted, and without hesitation he threw 
himself off the top of the Zeffer and snagged one of the trailing tentacles.

“Go with him!” said Seramali to the Riders. The other Mandraques, and a number of the Serabim, followed suit.

The Mandraques and the Riders slid down the tentacles toward the Ocular, howling shouts of defiance. The Ocular saw them coming, but their hands were occupied and they were helpless to take any defensive actions while grasping the Zeffer’s tentacles. So they did the only thing they could: They abruptly released their hold on the tentacles.

As a result the Zeffer, which had already been trying to pull away, abruptly hurtled skyward again with almost violent buoyancy. The Riders managed to hang on, but several of the Mandraques were so jolted that they lost their holds and tumbled downwards. A couple of them landed wrong, landing flat on their backs. It wasn’t sufficient to kill them, but it was enough to cause them tremendous pain and anguish as they lay there flopping about with their spines shattered. Their pain was ended quickly enough, though, as the Ocular stepped on their heads.

The rest of the Mandraques, though, and the Riders, landed without incident. Among the survivors was Thulsa Odomo, and he faced the Ocular, brandishing his sword, ready for the attack.

“You should not have—” he started to shout, and then he stopped, fully registering what he was seeing. “Children! They’re children! We’re fighting children?”

“You’re fighting us!” bellowed one of the males and he came straight at Thulsa Odomo.

Thulsa appreciated the lad’s fighting spirit and bravery. He appreciated even more the fact that the Ocular had absolutely no fighting technique at all. The Ocular obviously expected that his size and his strength would carry the day.

Thulsa spun, dodging easily between the Ocular’s outstretched arms, and came in fast with his sword. He cut it straight across the Ocular’s stomach and the giant’s entrails spilled out right in front of him. The Ocular gasped once, which was all he had time for, and then fell forward heavily and lay still.

Had he been dealing with full-grown, battle-hardened Ocular, his action would simply have spurred the rest of them to action. Instead the sight was more than enough to quell the desire for combat among the other Ocular. They stumbled back at the sight, their eyes widening behind their oversized lenses, and then as one they broke and ran.

“You! Go after them! Subdue them if possible; kill them if necessary!” bellowed Thulsa Odomo to the Riders, who set off in pursuit of the fleeing Ocular. Thulsa then rallied the half dozen Mandraques around himself. “Since we’re down here, we might as well do something constructive. Come: We find Evanna, the daughter of that infernal Nicrominus. She’s the only Firedraque that matters. We find her, we kill her, and we put her head on a pike outside,” and he smiled, “the newly dubbed Mandraque Hall.”

ii.

Covered in hood and cloak,
 staying to the shadows as much as she could, Clarinda followed Xeri as he led her, Evanna and Kerda through the streets of Perriz toward what they hoped would be at least a modicum of safety.

She glanced up, shielding her eyes against the daylight, as the Zeffers hovered above, wreaking destruction and havoc with their tentacles. Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm and she jumped, startled. It was only Evanna, but there was fury on her face as she growled, “If I find out you had anything to do with this—”

“Me? Are you insane?”

“None of this happened until you showed up! Everything was fine!”

“Obviously everything wasn’t fine or you wouldn’t be under attack! How did you not think that this was inevitable? You Firedraques, all high and mighty, with your treaties and your proclamations, telling everyone that they should not be at war with each other. What did you think was going to happen? You brought this entirely on yourselves! Acting in a domineering fashion, as if you’re so much better than the rest of the Twelve Races, when the only thing the lot of you can truly agree upon is that you’re all better than my people. And now look where you are! Side by side with me, running for your miserable life, while the blood of your enemy is trickling into my stomach. I don’t hear you complaining about my having saved your ungrateful life!”

“Can we please do this later?” said Xeri, looking with terror toward the skies.

“We don’t know that there’s going to be a ‘later,’ so now seems as good a time as any,” Clarinda shot back.

The air around them exploded with the sounds of another building shattering from nearby. Debris, thrown far by the impact, rained down around them. Kerda grabbed Clarinda and brought her close to herself, shielding her from the rubble with her own body. The Ocular grunted several times as bricks and mortar ricocheted off her, and yet all she asked was, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Are you all right?”

She looked up and saw that there was blood running down the side of Kerda’s face. Something had rebounded off the side of her head and opened a sizable gash. She wiped it away with her palm. “Don’t worry about me.” She stared at her hand, then back at Clarinda, and held up the bloodied palm. “Are you hungry again? Do you need to…to eat? You can lick this if it will help.”

This was quite possibly the worst moment to laugh in the entirety of Clarinda’s life, and yet she couldn’t help but do so. It was such an insanely sweet thing to say. It was Kerda’s way of trying to tell Clarinda that she was willing to be as accepting as possible of the bloodthirstiness she had seen her display earlier. “I am…not in need. But I appreciate the thought.”

“Here! Over here!” Xeri called, standing outside a building that looked so small, it was doubtful whether Kerda would even be able to fit. He pulled open the door and they looked down. Darkness beckoned to them. Xeri headed in.

“You next,” Clarinda said to Kerda. Screams from fleeing victims floated to them from nearby. “If you’re too large to fit, then we might as well know now so we can find another way.”

“But—”

“No arguing. Do it.”

Kerda nodded and then stepped into the small building, leaving Evanna and Clarinda behind. Evanna turned to face Clarinda and said in a low voice, “We were not trying to be domineering. We were trying to make the Damned World a better place. It is what the Overseer wanted.”

“Is it? Or is it what you were told he wanted? How gullible are the Twelve Races anyway? How much do you really know about anything?”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Evanna actually chuckled. “Believe it or not, my father would ask that very same question of me all the time. I suspect he would like you. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to meet him.”

“You truly believe that he is still alive?”

“I do.”

“In that case, you are even more stupid than I had credited you.”

Before Evanna could reply, Xeri’s voice shouted from within, “Evanna! Piri! Get in here, hurry!”

They did as they were bidden, running into the building and shutting the door behind them.

Had they moved just the slightest bit faster, Thulsa Odomo would have come around the corner a second too late and not seen them.

But they didn’t.

And he did.

iii.

Seramali looked upon the death
 and destruction being rained down upon Perriz, and he found it to be good.

He was not stupid. He knew that the next step would be for the Mandraques to turn upon them, and he was not going to give them the opportunity. The Mandraques were useful for ground troops—perhaps even aiding in the reconstruction of Perriz—but that was the limit of their place in his vision. The Mandraques proclivity for parties and celebrations was legendary, while the Serabim were virtually incapable of becoming inebriated. Even their beloved yond could, at most, leave them feeling relaxed. In the coming days, relaxation would not be called for. And so all that would be required to dispose of the Mandraques would be to have one truly great, vast bacchanal, at which point the Serabim would slice the Mandraques’ throats with their claws while the Mandraques lay in drunken stupors, and that would be the end of that.

After that, the Serabim could turn their attentions to wider matters. There were other Serabim tribes to bring together, coalitions to form. A world to tame. With their power, their build, their durability, and their command of the air, there was nowhere that the Serabim could not go, no height they could not reach. Even the waters provided no barrier to them. Let the Merk and Markene putter around in the depths of the oceans; the Serabim sailed over it with impunity.

He looked down upon those below who were fleeing the unfettered power of the Serabim, and he thought, 
Demali will understand the necessity.
 Then he remembered, and for just a moment, mourning clutched at his heart. He pushed it away. There would be time for it later, once more important matters were attended to.

That was when something grabbed him from behind and lifted him off his feet.

iv.

It always comes back to
 
this,
 thought Clarinda. 
It always comes back to me running around underground. Is this what my fate is to be? Is this what my child has to look forward to? Shunning the light? Hiding in the dark? What the hell kind of existence is this?

“I’ve never been down here,” said Evanna.

“You haven’t missed much,” Xeri said.

Despite her reservations, Clarinda considered the darkness of the sewers oddly comforting.

Every so often they heard a crashing or thudding from far overhead. Evanna winced with every impact. Clarinda ignored it. She had other things on her mind.

“Is this the way that you led the others?” said Kerda. “When you led them out?”

“Yes, this was it,” said Clarinda.

“Do you think they’re all right?”

“I’m more concerned about whether we’re all right.” Then she froze so thoroughly that Kerda walked past her and Xeri nearly ran her over.

“What—?” Xeri began.

She shushed him, putting a hand up, listening. There was the steady dripping of water, the squealing of rats, and something else, something coming behind them quickly and noisily.

“Pursuers. They’re right behind us.”

“Who is it?”

“I’m not entirely sure that it matters. Come on.”

They started to run, moving as quickly as she could. They moved right, right, left again, Clarinda leading the way, trusting her instincts.