In the House of the Worm (4 page)

They were in a small junction, where three tunnels met at the huge metal doors of a great chamber. But Annelyn saw in a glance that the rope was the only way here; all three burrows were bricked-in. It was easy to see; the chamber doors were open, and light streamed out.

They watched from the shadows near the air duct, Groff crouching low with his ax in hand, Annelyn drawing his rapier.

The chamber was a large one, perhaps the size of the Chamber of Obsidian; there all resemblance ended. Inside, the Meatbringer had mounted a throne, firing two torches that slanted from brackets atop the backrest. Their flickering light mingled with a stranger radiance, a glowering purplish gleam that came from huge fungus-encrusted globes along the walls. Vermyllar was visible, sobbing incoherently, manacled to a wheeled bed close to the Meatbringer. From time to time his body shook as he strained fitfully against the shackles that held him down, but his captor ignored his struggles.

The rest of the chamber, in the curious mixed light, was like nothing Annelyn had ever encountered before. The walls were metal, time-eaten, rust-eaten, yet still bright in places. Panels of glass studded the high, dark flanks; a million tiny windows—most of them broken—winked at the flames. Along the side walls, fat transparent bubbles swelled obscenely near the ceiling. Some of these were covered by dripping, glowing growth; others were dry and broken; still others seemed full of some faintly moving fluid. A gulf of shadows and chaos lay between the walls. There were a dozen wheeled beds like the one Vermyllar was bound to, four huge pillars that rose to the ceiling amid a web of metal ropes and bars, a heavy tank of the sort the
yaga-la-hai
used for breeding foodworms, piles of clothing (some piles fresh, others covered by mold) and weapons and stranger things, metal cases with vacant glass eyes. In the center was the Meatbringer’s throne, a high seat of green-black stone. A theta of some impossibly bright silver metal was sunk into the backrest, just above his head.

The Meatbringer had closed his eyes, and was leaning back on his throne. Resting, perhaps, Annelyn thought. Vermyllar still made noises; whimpers and groans and choking sounds, words that made no sense.

“He is mad,” Annelyn whispered to Groff, certain that Vermyllar’s noise would cover their speech. “Or he soon will be.”

“Yes,” Riess said, crawling close to him. “When are we going to save him?”

Groff turned his head to face Riess. “We are not,” the bronze knight said, in a flat low voice. “He deserted us. He has no claim to my protection. It is better for the
yaga-la-hai
to watch and to follow, to see what the Meatbringer does with the great-grandson of a Manworm.” His tone gave no room for appeal or argument.

Annelyn shivered, and moved away from Groff, who was once again watching intently with no flicker of movement. Briefly Annelyn had lost himself, allowed himself to trust and obey the older man, simply because Groff was a knight, because Groff knew the groun-runs. Suddenly he remembered his pride and his revenge.

Riess came to him.
“Annelyn,”
he said, his voice trembling. “What can we do?”

“Vermyllar brought this on himself,” Annelyn whispered. “But we shall rescue him, if we can.” He had no idea how—it was one thing for Groff to face the Meatbringer with his great ax, but if the knight would not help  . . .

Groff looked over his shoulder at them. He smiled.

Annelyn saw with a start that inside, the Meatbringer had risen. He was undressing, stripping off his suit of milk-white grounskin and his cloak of colorless groun-hair. He turned his broad back to them, a well-muscled expanse of mottled flesh, while he tossed his clothing over an arm of his throne and rummaged through a pile of other clothes.

“Groff,” Annelyn said firmly, “we must save Vermyllar, useless though he is. He amuses me. There are two of us, you know, and only one of you, and you need our help.” Riess, behind him, was making faint choking noises.

Groff looked at them again, and sighed. “Do either of you know the way back up?” he asked, simply.

Annelyn fell silent. He did not know the way back, he realized. They would be lost in darkness. “Riess,” he started to whisper.

The Meatbringer pulled on new clothing and turned again toward Vermyllar. A knife was in his hand. He looked different. He wore a suit of fine mocha leather, and over his shoulders was draped a long cape of curling hair that glinted softly like spun gold in the firelight. He muttered something, deep in his throat, with a voice such as the grouns used in all the tales that Annelyn had ever heard.

Vermyllar was suddenly shockingly sane. “No,” he shouted. “No! My grandfather was a son of the Manworm!”

The Meatbringer slit his throat, and stepped nimbly aside as the blood came out in spurts and the body twitched. He caught some of the blood in a cup, and drank it with obvious satisfaction. The rest darkened the bed and ran across the floor, one trickle coming toward the worm-children as if it knew where they lurked in the shadow.

When Vermyllar was quite still, the Meatbringer loosed his shackles, and hoisted the body up on one broad shoulder. Annelyn watched, frozen in shock, and it came to him suddenly how often the Meatbringer had walked among the
yaga-la-hai
, carrying a groun carcass in just that way.

Groff glanced quickly around when the Meatbringer started toward them. None of the burrows offered even the promise of concealment. “Down the rope,” the knight whispered urgently.

“Down?”
Riess asked.

“No,” said Groff. “Too late. He would find us still climbing, and cut the rope.” He shrugged and straightened and hefted his ax. “No matter. We know all we need. He is not of the
yaga-la-hai
, as those close to the Manworm suspected. He brings meat to both men and grouns, this Meatbringer.”

Annelyn stood at Groff’s side, rapier in hand, balancing nervously on the balls of his feet. Riess, trembling, yanked free a knife. The Meatbringer appeared in the doorway, Vermyllar’s corpse slung over his shoulder.

The three worm-children were cloaked by shadows, in the darkest part of the junction, while the Meatbringer had just come from a well-lit chamber. It was no advantage. He looked straight at them.

“So,” he said, and he shrugged, letting Vermyllar’s body slide to the floor with a thunk. His own blade, long and just recently wiped clean of blood, materialized in his hand. “So,” he said again. “Do the
yaga-la-hai
now come this deep?”

“Some,” said Groff, lifting his ax lightly. Annelyn felt strangely light-headed and confident; bloodlust coursed through him. He would have his revenge, and Vermyllar’s too. The Meatbringer could never stand before Groff. He was so squat and ugly, while the bronze knight was a near-giant, invulnerable even without his armor. Besides,
he
was there, and Riess too, though Riess hardly counted.

“What do you want?” the Meatbringer said, in the coarse low voice Annelyn remembered so well from the masque.

“To quiet your torch-tending tongue,” Annelyn blurted, before Groff could answer. The Meatbringer looked at him for the first time, and chuckled.

“Who are you bringing meat to now?” Groff asked.

The Meatbringer chuckled again. “The grouns, of course.”

“Are you a man? Or a new kind of groun?”

“Both. Neither. I have walked black tunnels alone for a long time. I was born a torch-tender, yes. But a special kind. Like the grouns, I see in total darkness. Like the
yaga-la-hai
, I can live and see in light. Both sorts of meat are pleasing.” He showed a row of yellowed teeth. “I am flexible.”

“One other question, before I kill you,” Groff said. “The Manworm would know why.”

The Meatbringer laughed; his thick body shook and the cape of golden ringlets danced on his shoulders. “The Manworm!
You
want to know, Groff, not your mindless master.
Why?
Because among the
yaga-la-hai
I am something less than a man, because among grouns I am something less than a groun. I am the first of the Third People. The
yaga-la-hai
decline, as do the grouns, but I go among both and plant my seed”—he looked at Annelyn—“in those like Caralee, and in the groun-women. Soon there will be others like me. That is
why
. And to know. I know more than your Manworm, or you, more than the Great Groun. You live lies, but I have seen and heard all who live in the House of the Worm, and I believe none of it. The White Worm is a lie, do you know that? And the Manworm. I think I even know how that came to be. A pleasant tale. Shall I tell you?”

“The Manworm is the living flesh of the White Worm,” Riess said in a shrill, almost hysterical voice. “The priests shape him in that image, purifying, making him more fit to lead.”

“And less fit to live,” the Meatbringer said. “Until the pain drives him mad or the surgery kills him. You, Groff? Do you believe that? Or you, freethinker? See. I
do
recall you.”

Annelyn flushed and brandished his rapier. Groff was a fierce bearded statue of bronze-made-flesh. “So it is in the lore of the bronze knights,” he said, “and we remember things the Manworm has forgotten.”

“It shocks me that the Manworm remembers anything,” the Meatbringer said. “But I have talked to knights, too, learned their ‘secret’ lore, listened to stories of a long-ago war. The grouns remember better. They have legends of the coming of the
yaga-la-hai
, who changed all the high burrows. The grouns are the First People, you know. The worm-children they call the Second People. I was a great puzzle to them at first, with my four limbs and my eyes that see, neither First nor Second. But I brought them flesh and learned their tongue, and so taught them of the Third People. You mock groun secrets, and in truth they are as rotting as you, yet they know things. They remember the Changemasters, their great enemies and the greatest friends of the
yaga-la-hai
, who wore the theta as a sigil, and in times long gone made the spiders and the worms and a thousand other things. Here, where I live, was where they sculptured and shaped the stuff of life, so the
yaga-la-hai
might live. Here they fashioned the blood worms that still afflict the grouns, the light-hunger that drives them upward to their deaths if they catch it, and the huge white eaterworms that multiply and grow more terrible every day. You, all of you, have forgotten these things, but the Changemasters were gods greater than your White Worm could ever be. Grouns flinch before the theta. With good reason. The
yaga-la-hai
do not remember this room and the grouns had forgotten where it was, but I found it, and slowly I learn its secrets. I learned about your Manworm here. After the grouns had brought darkness to the burrows and killed most of the Changemasters, one was left. But he had lost all the runes, and he despaired. Still, he was the ruler. The
yaga-la-hai
followed him. And he remembered how worms, a thousand kinds of worms, had been men’s best weapons against the grouns, and he knew how worms flourished better down here than men. So the last Changemasters trained the surgeon-priests in a few arts and had himself made into a great worm. Then he died. You see? He wanted to fashion the Third People. He was a Changemaster, but a poor one, an animal. Since then, all the leaders of the
yaga-la-hai
are fashioned into worms. But no Third People exist. Except for myself. As I learn more Changemaster secrets, I will shape the Third People, and they will not be like the Manworm.”

“You will shape nothing,” Groff said. He started forward, and torchlight ran up and down the sharp-honed blade of his ax.

“Oh?” said the Meatbringer. And suddenly he reached out, and seized the two great doors on either side of him, and swung them shut behind him, ducking beneath the whistling blade of Groff’s ax in the same fluid motion. The doors came together with a great rending clang.

Darkness.

And the Meatbringer.

Laughing.

Annelyn thrust wildly into the black with his rapier, at the spot where the Meatbringer had been last. Nothing. He pierced air. “Riess,” he called, frantic. “The torch, our
torch
.” He heard Groff’s ax swing again, and there was a jarring of metal, and a scream. A match blazed briefly; Riess, wide-eyed, held it in cupped hands. Then, before Annelyn could even get his bearings, a knife flashed in the small circle of flame and Riess’s round face disintegrated in a rush of blood and the match was falling and there was darkness again and laughing. The Meatbringer, the Meatbringer. Annelyn stood blind and helpless, rapier in limp fingers. Riess dead and Groff he didn’t know and the Meatbringer laughing and he was next, he Annelyn, and
he couldn’t see
 . . . .

The air duct was behind him. He dropped the rapier, stepped back, fumbled for the rope in the shaft. In the darkness, a sound like a butcher cutting meat; thick fleshy chopping, and groans. Annelyn found the rope and swung out, started to climb. Something grabbed his ankle. He reached down with one hand to yank loose the grip and suddenly the other hand couldn’t support him, and he was falling,
falling
, with one hand still on the rope and his palm burning,
falling
, plunging into infinite black. He threw his body back and smashed against one wall of the shaft, sliding a few feet as his knees came up and he wedged himself in painfully and took a firmer hold on the rope. Then he had it again, by both hands.

A chill went through him. The Meatbringer was up above him now. And he remembered what Groff had said, about cutting the rope. The Meatbringer would cut the rope. He would fall forever.

He kicked, and his foot met only metal. As fast as he could, he began to descend, hand under hand, down in total darkness, kicking every foot of the way. Finally his foot swung free; a new level, and the grid was gone!

He swung out and lay panting on the floor. He was a blind man now, he thought, and shuddered. Then he remembered. Matches. He had matches. All of them, he and Vermyllar and Riess, all of them had brought plenty of matches. But Riess had their torch.

Annelyn listened carefully. There was no noise from the shaft. He stood, his hand still shaking, and fumbled until he found his match box, his beautiful carved match box of fine metal and wood. He struck a match, and leaned into the air duct.