In the House of the Worm (2 page)

“Freethinker!”
the Meatbringer finally choked out when his laughter had subsided. “I doubt that you have ever had a free thought. You are nothing, less than the Manworm.” He pushed past Annelyn and began to fill his own goblet with wine.

“I have killed a groun,” Annelyn said, quickly, not thinking, regretting the words the instant they were spoken.

The Meatbringer simply turned on him, and grinned, and then
everyone
began to laugh. There was no need to comment; all of the worm-children knew that the Meatbringer had killed perhaps a hundred grouns, not one. Even Caralee joined the general laughter, though Vermyllar and Riess were mercifully silent. Tall as he was, Annelyn suddenly felt as if the Meatbringer towered over him. He glanced down and saw his own face looking up, foolish and shaken, from the cold obsidian.

The Meatbringer studied Caralee with approval. “Share my bed tonight,” he said suddenly, as blunt as any torch-tender. The Meatbringer had no shame. Annelyn looked up again, shocked. Caralee wore blue-and-spidergray, even as he did; clearly they were together. And he had given her the cup of the mating-worms!

She looked at Annelyn briefly, then seemingly dismissed him with a toss of her bright curls, turning toward the Meatbringer. “Yes,” she said, strange excitement in her voice. Then they went off together onto the vast black mirror of the dance floor to whirl and writhe and slide together in the intricate ancient patterns of the
yaga-la-hai
.

“He has humiliated us,” Annelyn said furiously to Riess and Vermyllar as he watched the Meatbringer clumsily parody Caralee’s graceful moves.

“We should go to the Manworm,” Vermyllar suggested.

Riess said nothing, but his round face was screwed up in agitation as he reached for another spiced spider.

“No,” Annelyn said. Beyond the sea of wriggling dancers in all their gorgeous colors, Groff had returned the Manworm to his sand pit. Squat torch-tenders were moving around the fringes of the chamber, snuffing two flames of every three. Soon the obsidian grew clouded by darkness, and the bright reflections faded to red streaks on the glass. In shadowed corners, a few bold couples had already commenced the unmasking-of-the-bodies; others soon would follow their example. Annelyn had planned to unmask Caralee. Now he was alone.

“Why not?” Vermyllar was demanding. “You heard him. He called me an animal, and I am the grandson of a man who might have been Manworm.”

Annelyn waved him quiet. “You will have your revenge,” he said. “But my way,
my
way.” His deep blue eyes stared across the chamber. The Meatbringer was leading Caralee off toward a corner. “My way,” he repeated. Then: “Come.” And he led them from the room.

* * *

They met the next morning, early, amid the dust and fading tapestries of the seldom-used Undertunnel, which connected most of the main burrows of the
yaga-la-hai
before curving away on its long descent into infinity. Annelyn was the first to arrive. He was dressed all in shiny-smooth black, with a hood of the same color to hide his bright hair. His only concession to vanity was a gold theta, embroidered on his breast. A belt of black rope held both rapier and stiletto.

Riess soon materialized, in a tight-fitting shirt of mail and leather and a heavy cloak of spidergray. He and Annelyn sat together on a stone floor across from a black mouth that belched hot, moist air at them through a rusty grid. Light, such as there was, came from scattered torches set in bronze hands on the walls, and from the windows—narrow slits in the ceiling, twenty feet above their heads—that leaked a dim red radiance. The windows were set ten feet apart all along the Undertunnel, until it began to sink. Once, as a boy, Annelyn had piled junk high in the middle of a burrow and climbed to look out, but there had been nothing to see—the glass, even as the stone of the walls, was thicker than a man is tall. It was fortunate that
any
light got through.

Vermyllar was late. Annelyn sat cross-legged, his eyes on the hanging tapestries whose images had all turned to mottled gray. Riess was very excited. He was talking about imaginative tortures they could inflict on the Meatbringer. “When we catch him, we should hang him upside down by running cords through his ankles,” the stout youth suggested. “Then we can buy a pot of bloodworms from the surgeon-priests and set them all over his body to drink him dry.”

Annelyn let him prattle, and finally Vermyllar appeared, wearing black and gray and carrying a torch and a long dagger. The other two sprang up to greet him.

“I should not have come,” Vermyllar said. His face was very drawn, but he seemed to relax a bit in the presence of his friends. “I am the great-grandson of the Manworm himself,” he continued, sheathing his dagger while Riess took the torch from him, “and I should not listen to you, Annelyn. We will all be eaten by grouns.”

“The Meatbringer is not eaten by grouns, and he is only one while we are three together,” Annelyn said. He started down the Undertunnel, toward the endless gray where the bands of red light no longer striped the stone, and the others followed.

“Are you sure he comes this way?” Vermyllar asked. They passed another of the square black mouths, and their cloaks stirred and flapped in its warm breath. Vermyllar gestured at the opening. “Perhaps he climbs down one of those, to where the grouns live.”

“They are very sheer and very hot,” Annelyn told him, “and he would fall or burn if he went that way. Besides, many people have seen the Meatbringer come and go along the Undertunnel. I asked among the torch-tenders.”

They passed beneath the last window; ahead, the Undertunnel slanted down and the ceiling was featureless. Vermyllar stopped in the zone of light.

“Grouns,” he said. “Annelyn, there are
grouns
down there. Away from the windows.” He licked his lips.

“I have killed a groun,” Annelyn reminded him. “Besides, we have talked of this. We have our torch, and each of us is carrying matches. There are old torches all along the tunnel, so many can be lit. Besides, the grouns never come this high. No one has seen a groun in the Undertunnel for a lifetime.”

“People vanish every month,” Vermyllar insisted. “Mushroom farmers. Groun hunters. Children.”

Annelyn began to sound cross. “Groun hunters go deep, so of course they are caught. The others, well, who knows? Are you afraid of the dark?” He stamped a boot impatiently.

“No,” said Vermyllar, and he came forward to join them again. But he rested his hand on his dagger hilt.

Annelyn did not start again immediately. He walked over to the curving wall, and reached up, pulling a torch from a bronze hand He lit it from the flames of the torch Riess was carrying, and suddenly the light was doubled. “There,” he said, handing the torch to Vermyllar. “Come.”

So they began to walk down the long dark burrow as it curved and sank, almost imperceptibly: past tapestries that hung in rotten threads and others that were thick tangles of matted fungus; past an endless series of torch-clutching hands (every other one empty, and only one in fifty alight); past countless bricked-up tunnel mouths and a few whose bricks had shattered or turned to dust; past the invisible warmth of the air ducts one after another. They walked in silence, knowing that their voices would echo, hoping that the dust beneath would muffle the sounds of their footsteps. They walked until they had lost sight of the last window, and for an hour after that. And finally they reached the spot where the Undertunnel came to an end. Ahead were two square doorways whose metal doors had long since crumbled into flakes of rust. Riess thrust a torch through one and saw only a few heavy cables, twisting around in tangles and sinking into the yawning darkness of a shaft that fell down and down. Startled, he pulled back and almost dropped the torch.

“Careful,” Annelyn warned.

“What is it?” Riess said.

“Perhaps a trap,” Vermyllar suggested. He thrust his own torch into the second doorway, and they saw a stone stair that descended rapidly. “See? There were two doors here, once. An enemy or a groun might choose the wrong one, and fall down that shaft to its death. It was probably just an air shaft that they put a door on.”

Annelyn moved over next to Riess. “No,” he said, peering into the shaft. “There are ropes. And this shaft is cold.” He shook his head, and his hood fell back, revealing blond curls that shone softly in the dancing torchlight. “No matter,” he said. “We will wait here. Deeper than this and we
would
meet grouns. Besides, I do not know where that stair leads. So better to wait, and let the Meatbringer lead us.”

“What?” Vermyllar was shocked. “You do not mean to take him here?”

Annelyn smiled. “Ha! That would be a child’s revenge. No, we will follow him, deep into the country of the grouns. We will learn all his secrets, all the knowledge that he boasts of. We will see why he comes back and back again, always with meat, while other groun hunters vanish.
Then
we will kill him.”

“You didn’t say
that
,” Riess objected, openmouthed.

“We’ve already come too far from the windows,” Vermyllar said, and started to go on.

Annelyn laughed lightly. “Child,” he said to Riess. “
I
came this far when I was half your age. This was where I killed my groun.” He pointed to the stairway. “He came out of there, scrabbling on four of his legs, not the least afraid of my fire, and I met him with only my torch.”

Vermyllar and Riess were both looking at the dark portal of the stairway. “Oh,” said Riess.

“Really?” said another voice, from behind. Vermyllar dropped his torch, and pulled out his dagger. All three of them whirled.

On the edge of the light, a huge, red-bearded man dressed in black stood staring at them, a bronze ax on his shoulder. Without his armor, Annelyn hardly recognized him, but suddenly the memory came.

“Groff,” he said.

The bronze knight nodded. “I have followed you all down the Undertunnel. You are very noisy.”

They said nothing. Vermyllar picked up his fallen torch.

“So you mean to kill the Meatbringer?” Groff said.

“Yes,” Annelyn said. “Do not interfere, Groff. I know the Meatbringer provides much grounmeat for the
yaga-la-hai
, but we shall do that too when we learn his secrets. The Manworm has no cause to take his side.” His mouth was set stubbornly.

Groff chuckled, deep in his throat, and hefted his heavy ax. “Don’t fret, little worm-child. You shall have your carrion. I too was sent to kill the Meatbringer.”

“What?” Riess said.

“Did the Manworm order it?” Vermyllar asked eagerly.

“The Manworm thinks of nothing but his coming unity with the White Worm,” Groff said. He smiled. “And of pain, perhaps. Perhaps he thinks of that. No, his advisers ordered it. The Meatbringer has too many mysteries about him. He is not truly of the
yaga-la-hai
, the advisers think, and he is not tranquil. He is ugly and disturbs things, and he lies. Moreover, since we first grew aware of the Meatbringer, two years ago, fewer and fewer groun hunters have returned from below, save him alone. Well, I have hunted grouns, once. I may not have been as deep as the Meatbringer, who says he has descended to where the bronze knights warred against the grouns a million years ago. I have not been that far, but I have run the groun-runs, and I am not frightened of dark burrows.” He looked at Annelyn. “Did you truly meet a groun here?”

Annelyn felt the steady gaze of Groff’s eyes, beneath their thick red brows. “Yes,” he said, a little too quickly, afraid that somehow Groff knew the truth. The groun had been lying at the top of the stairs, mumbling its death rattle, when Annelyn had found it. The boy had watched, terrified, while the creature’s six gangling limbs trembled fitfully (and briefly) and the moist sunken pools of flesh that the grouns had instead of eyes roamed back and forth, without purpose. When the carcass had been quite still, Annelyn had charred it with his torch, then dragged it back to the burrows of the
yaga-la-hai
.

Groff shook his head. “They seldom come past the grounwall,” the bronze knight said. “During the last years of my hunting, they seldom came at all. The Meatbringer must truly go deep.” He smiled. “But so shall we.”

“We?” It was Vermyllar.

Groff nodded. “I am not averse to help, and Annelyn’s idea is a good one. We will learn the Meatbringer’s secrets before we kill him.” He waved his ax in a broad gesture. “Down the stair.”

The doorway loomed pitch-black and ominous, and Annelyn began to feel nervous. It was one thing to impress Riess and Vermyllar with his bold plan to descend to groun country, but no doubt in time they would have talked him out of it. Perhaps the three of them would have fallen upon the Meatbringer
here
—beyond the light, true, but only a short way, and Annelyn had been here before. But to actually go
down
 . . .

It was Vermyllar who protested. “No,” he said. “I’m not going any deeper than this.” He looked at Annelyn. “You kill the Meatbringer, or Groff can kill him, or Riess if he can, but he’ll be just as dead without me along as with me. I’m going back.”

“Down the stair,” Groff said sternly. “I’ll have no desertions.”

Vermyllar stood fast. “My grandfather is a son of the Manworm,” he said. “I do as I please.” To Annelyn and Riess he made the sign of the worm, then with his torch in hand he started back the way they had come.

Groff made no move to stop him. “Down the stair,” he repeated after Vermyllar’s light had vanished behind a curve of the wall. They hurried to obey.

Down. The worst of all possible directions. Down. Where the grouns lay. Down. Away from light. Yet they went, and Annelyn remembered that even at the best of times, he disliked stairs. He was lucky, at that. Riess, holding the torch, had to go first.

At the foot of the stair was a narrow landing with two bricked-in doors, another gaping entrance to the still, cold shaft, and another stair. Down. There was another stair beyond that. Down. And another beyond
that
.

Finally they emerged. “Put out the torch,” Groff said. Riess complied.