In the House of the Worm (8 page)

Other grouns moved through the burrows. Annelyn saw one, a skeletal red shape with a long sword and one missing limb, and then two together with knives crouching near a junction. They gave him ominous eyeless looks. Later, they passed whole crowds of grouns, some of them in long garments that dragged on the floor and shone softly in many colors. All gave him a wide berth. He saw worm-holes, too, most dark and cold, others ringed by faint halos that sent chills up his spine.

After more climbing and turning than Annelyn cared to remember, they came out into a large chamber. A dozen grouns sat over smoking bowls at long metal tables, shoveling food into their mouths. They regarded him impassively.

Annelyn caught the scent of food—a fungus mush, torch-tenders’ food—and was suddenly, ravenously hungry. But no one offered him a bowl. His guide spoke to another groun seated near the center of the table, a grossly fat individual with an enormous, misshapen head. Finally the huge groun—he must have weighed more than Groff, Annelyn thought—shoved aside his bowl of steaming food, rose, and came over to Annelyn. His head moved up and down, up and down, as he inspected the intruder. Four soft hands began to pat him all over, and Annelyn gritted his teeth and tried not to flinch. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected. He found himself regarding the new groun almost like a person, instead of a thing.

The fat groun cocked his bead to one side. Annelyn remembered and did the same. The groun joined four hands together in a huge fist, raised it, lowered it. Annelyn, with only two hands, did his best to mimic the gesture.

Then the groun held up one finger, and jabbed at his own chest with another hand. Annelyn started to imitate him, but the groun restrained him. This was something more than a vision test. Annelyn was still.

The groun held up two fingers on a hand of an upper limb, his two middle limbs went out to either side, and his great body shook. His opposing upper arm came up, and
that
hand flashed three fingers. The groun looked from one hand to the other and back again, then repeated the gesture. He looked at Annelyn, and was still.

Annelyn glanced from the groun’s upper right hand—two fingers—to the upper left—three. The Meatbringer’s words returned to him. He raised his own hand, and spread three fingers.

The groun lowered all his hands, and again the immense body quivered. He turned back to another of his kind, and they spoke together in their soft, mournful way. Annelyn could not follow their talk, but he hoped he had made himself understood.

Finally the leader turned and walked back around the table, seated himself, and returned to his bowl of fungus. Annelyn’s erstwhile guide took him by the elbow, and beckoned him to follow. They went together from the chamber. The groun began leading him upward once more.

As they walked on and on, climbing one ladder after another and ascending stairways only to descend others, wandering through long burrows full of grouns shuffling and muttering, Annelyn grew increasingly conscious of his exhaustion. Whatever magic had kept him functioning until now was rapidly wearing off—his ankle hurt, his thigh hurt, his hands hurt, he was starved and parched and filthy, and he badly needed rest and sleep. But the groun showed no mercy, and Annelyn could only strive to keep up with his rapid pace.

Afterward, of all the burrows they passed through, only a few pictures lingered in his memory.

One time, the two of them walked down a narrow passage that was frightfully, eerily cold; the gloom was thick enough to cut, and Annelyn saw pipes, intensely black and throbbing, along the low ceiling. Wisps of ebony fog curled around them, then fell like slow streamers to the floor; Annelyn and the groun walked boot deep in chilled black mist. Under the pipes, wicked metal hooks curved outward. Most of them were empty, but two held the carcasses of rope-thin worms of a kind Annelyn had never encountered. A third held poor fat Riess, naked and dead, an obscene carving of obsidian, with a hook in the back of his neck so he dangled grotesquely. Annelyn started to make the sign of the worm, stopped himself, and shuffled by. If he had held up two fingers instead of three, he suspected, he might now occupy the hook right next to his one-time friend.

Two others chambers struck him forcefully, for both were among the largest open spaces he had ever seen. The first of these was so hot that sweat ran down his arms, while the orange glare of the air stung his eyes. It was a room so large he could barely see the far side. Pipes were everywhere, thick and thin, some strangely dark and others brilliant, like metal worms running over floor and walls and ceilings. The vast spaces above were filled by a web of thin bridges and ropes: up there, Annelyn glimpsed a thousand grouns, limber on six legs and born to the air, scampering up and down and around on the web, turning wheels and pushing bars, tending five immense shapes of metal that stood several levels high and burned with stabbing white light. His guide led him through the chamber on ground level, detouring through the maze of pipes, while the other grouns swung by and paid them little attention.

The second chamber, three levels higher and long minutes later, was just as huge, but desolate. No light here, no shapes of metal, no ropes or bridges; and the only groun Annelyn saw here was a lone, armed hunter who stood like a tiny red bug in the far distance across the room, and watched them as they passed. The floor and the walls were stone, dusty and dry and melancholy, but in places they were lined by a metal paneling that shone faintly with lights of many different hues. When Annelyn and his guide walked near one of these, he saw that a picture was glowing on the panel. It was an intricate, la-bored depiction of sword-swinging grouns battling a giant whose eyes were thetas and whose fingers were worms. He had to look hard and long to make sense of the scene, however; as with the tapestries of the
yaga-la-hai
, here too the colors were dim and fading, and rust had eaten black, flaking holes in some of the panels. One more thing Annelyn noted about the great, abandoned chamber: wormholes. The floor was full of them.

Afterward, they went straight for a long time. Annelyn noticed broken bronze fists on the walls then, and some of his weariness lifted. He was closer to home. The
yaga-la-hai
had lived here once.

Abruptly, the groun stopped. Annelyn stopped too.

They stood beside an air duct. It had no grill. Annelyn smiled wanly, leaned forward, and reached inside. His hand brushed rope.

The groun made an odd sweeping gesture, turned, and set off back the way he had come, moving rapidly on four limbs. Soon Annelyn was alone. He reached into the warm shaft, gripped the rope, and started to climb. This time he could see where he was going. The metal sides around him were a friendly reddish color, the air faintly misty and moving steadily upward, past him. When he was between levels, he could look up and down, and in both directions see the shadowed squares of exits.

He swung out one level up, and removed his helmet, cradling it under his arm. The great metal doors hung open. Annelyn stood in shadows, and let his eyes adjust to the pale, purple gloom. The fungus-encrusted globes still shone in the Chamber of the Changemasters, but the torches had been snuffed. Of the Meatbringer, he saw no sign. He waited until he was sure, then went inside.

The first thing he took up was a weapon. His own rapier was there, on top of a pile of rusting blades, and he reclaimed it with satisfaction. He tested Groff’s great ax, lying up against the throne, but found it too heavy and awkward. Instead, he slid Vermyllar’s dagger into his belt, and Riess’s into a boot. If he were to blood the Meatbringer, it seemed appropriate to use those tools.

Then he wandered around the chamber, picking at things, exploring, searching for food. He finally found a cache of meat, strips salted and hung. Plenty of good white groun-meat, and some other kind as well. But Annelyn found he could eat none of it. He settled for a bowl of spiced spiders and a plate of mushrooms.

After eating, he rested on one of the wheeled beds, too tired to sleep, and too frightened. Instead, he scrutinized a book he had found lying open beside the throne. Its covers were heavy leather, impressed with the theta and a row of symbols, but the pages inside had not endured the long passage of time as well. Some were missing entirely, others were damp and overgrown by paper mold, and the few fragments still legible made no sense to Annelyn. The symbols were vaguely like the writing in the crumbling libraries kept by the Manworm; Annelyn had learned to read a little of it from Vermyllar, who in turn had learned the dark art from his grandfather. It did not help. He could puzzle out a word here, guess at one on the page following, and yet another, ten chapters on, but never two words together that made sense. Even the pictures were meaningless tangles of lines, depicting nothing that he recognized.

Annelyn set the book aside. Noises were coming from the air duct. He stood, took his helmet and rapier, and went outside the chamber doors to wait.

The Meatbringer emerged from the shaft, dressed in white grounskin with a colorless cloak. Ropes of spidersilk bound the body of a small male child to his back. The boy was of the
yaga-la-hai
.

Annelyn stepped forward.

The Meatbringer looked up, startled. He had begun to untie the knots that held his prey. Now his hand went to his knife. “So,” he said. “You.”

“Me,” said Annelyn. His rapier was extended, his helmet cradled by his free hand.

“I searched for you,” the Meatbringer said. “After I hung a new rope.”

“I fled,” said Annelyn, “knowing that you would search.”

“Yes,” the Meatbringer said, smiling. His knife came out, a whisper of metal on leather. “I feared you were lost. This is better. The grouns pay well for meat. Your friends, by the way, were delicious. Except for the knight. Unfortunately, he was quite tough.”

“I wonder how you will taste,” Annelyn said.

The Meatbringer laughed.

“I suspect your flesh would be foul,” Annelyn continued. “I will not eat you. Better you be carrion for the eaterworms.”

“So,” said the Meatbringer. “More of your great wit.” He bowed. “This meat I carry hampers me. May I cut it loose?”

“Certainly,” said Annelyn.

“Let me place it inside, out of the way,” the Meatbringer said. “So we might not trip over it.”

Annelyn nodded, and circled warily to the side, suppressing a smile. He knew what the Meatbringer intended. The other took his knife and slit the knots that bound the child to his back, then placed the body on the far side of the door. He turned, framed by the purplish light.

Laughing, he said, “The
yaga-la-hai
and the grouns, you are so alike. Animals.” He reached out and swung shut the wide doors, and again Annelyn’s ears rang to the clang he had heard once, long ago.

“No,” Annelyn said. “Alike, yes. But not animals.” He put on his helmet. The thick darkness vanished like a mist.

The Meatbringer had danced silently and deftly to one side. A great grin split his face, and he advanced with stealthy steps, his knife ready to thrust and disembowel.

If Annelyn—like the late, unfortunate Groff—had tried a rush attack on the place where the Meatbringer had
been
, in the last instant of light, the thrust would have left him open and vulnerable to a fatal stab from the Meatbringer where he now
was
. It was a crafty, polished technique; but Annelyn could see. For once, darkness and deception were of no use. And Annelyn’s rapier was longer than the Meatbringer’s knife.

Quickly, easily, casually, Annelyn turned to face his enemy, smiled beneath his helmet, and lunged. The Meatbringer hardly had time to react; it had been years since he had fought on even terms. Annelyn ran him through the abdomen.

Afterward, he pushed the body down the air shaft, and prayed that it would fall eternally.

* * *

The Masque of the Manworm was still in progress in the High Burrow when Annelyn returned to the
yaga-la-hai
. In the dusty libraries, men in dominoes and women in veils writhed and spun; the treasure rooms were open for viewing, the pleasure chambers open for other things; in the Highest Hall, the Second Vermentor lay beneath a thousand torches while the worm-children danced past him, and sang chants of his demise. The Manworm had no face now; he was one with the White Worm. Beside him, the priest-surgeons stood, in white smocks with scalpel-and-theta, as they had stood for a week. The Seventh Feast had just been laid.

Caralee was there, bright golden Caralee, and the bronze knights, and many who had once been friends of Annelyn. But most only smiled and made soft witticisms when he came striding unexpectedly through the doors.

Some, perhaps, did not recognize him. Only a short time ago, at the Sun Masque, he had been brilliant in silk and spidergray. Now he was painfully gaunt, cut and bruised in a dozen places, his eyes restless in dark hollows, and the only clothes he wore were black tatters that hung on him like a mushroom farmer’s foul rags. His face was bare, without so much as a domino, and that set the guests to muttering, since the time of unmasking had not yet come.

Very soon they had more to mutter about. For Annelyn, this strange, changeling Annelyn, stood silently in the door, his eyes jumping from one mask to another. Then, still silent, he walked across the gleaming obsidian floor to the feasting table, seized an iron platter piled high with fine white grounflesh, and flung it violently across the room. A few laughed; others, not so amused, picked slices of meat from their shoulders. Annelyn went from the room.

Afterward, he became a familiar figure among the
yaga-la-hai
, though he lost his flair for dress and much of his fine wit. Instead, he spoke endlessly and persuasively of forgotten crimes and the sins of bygone eons, painting deliciously dark pictures of monster worms who bred beneath the House and would one day rise to consume all. He was fond of telling the worm-children that they ought to lie with grouns, instead of cooking them, so that a new people might be fashioned to resist his nightmare worms.

In the endless long decay of the House of the Worm, nothing was so prized as novelty. Annelyn, though considered coarse and most unsubtle, wove entertaining tales and had a spark of shocking irreverence. Thus, though the bronze knights grumbled, he was allowed to live.