Taker Of Skulls (Book 5) (13 page)

“I knew what you were trying to say. There’s no need to bludgeon me over the head with it.”

He shrugged.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I am just nervous. Hell, more than that... I am terrified.”

“That’s understandable.”

“You don’t think we’re going to get out of here alive, do you?”

“I’ve survived worse places than this.”

She studied him for a moment, head tilted to one side. “You have, haven’t you? You’re not just saying that.”

“I thought I was going to die today,” he said. “Several times. I am still here. The same may be true tomorrow.”

“Or it may not.”

He smiled. “Or it may not. I have lived with the prospect of death since I was eight years old. I don’t find it as frightening as I once did.”

“Since... since the Old One came to your village?”

“Yes.”

She moved a little closer, placed her head against his shoulder. She was seeking comfort. He measured the distance to the door, decided he could push her off and get to his feet before anyone could reach him. The pressure of her head comforted him too.

“It’s not me so much I am worried about—all right, that’s a lie, I am worried about me—but I am really scared for Tam and Sal. What will happen to them if I don’t come back?”

“They’ll survive. I did.”

“You had Master Malan to look after you.” Kormak thought about that. He remembered how invincible Malan had seemed, so stern and just but reassuring at the same time.

“True.”

“If anything happened to me down here, there will be no one to look after them. Tam needs medicine. Sal can barely look after herself.”

He looked down at her. There were tears running down her face. She was fighting back sobs.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let it. I gave Tam my promise.”

“You could at least try and sound convincing,” she said.

“I am not likely to come back if you don’t.”

“That’s much more convincing and even less reassuring.”

“Apparently, I am not very good at this.”

“You are a little too honest.”

“You think?” Kormak thought of the many deceptions his life as a Guardian had forced him to perform, the many lies he had told to people he had later killed. Her words seemed like a joke to him and he was about to say so then he noticed her breathing was soft. Her eyes were closed. She was asleep. Exhaustion had finally caught up with her.

Kormak gently laid her head down on his pack, shifted his weight and kept his eyes on the door. He thought about young Tam. He thought about his own father. He thought about oaths he had sworn and promises he had made. Sasha had not taken his words seriously but he had meant them. If he could he would keep her alive. Now the only question was who was going to do the same for him?

Tired as he was, he stood guard until his watch was over. Only when Boreas had woken himself did he allow himself to drop headlong into deep, deep sleep.

KORMAK SAW THE city as it had once been. The streets teemed with dwarves, proud and noble. They were broad and powerful and they did not walk like men. Sometimes they lowered their long, strong arms to the ground and moved on all fours. Around the dwarves, moving in packs, were numerous other creatures, smaller, with tiny bodies and spindly limbs, adapted to moving through the narrow pipes and corridors, working at tens of thousands of menial tasks. There was something familiar about them suggestive of goblins, although these small beings were less savage, more docile, seemingly happy with their work and the positions of utter servitude. Among them, the Old Ones stalked like princes, surrounded by retinues of creatures glittering and monstrous, none more so than themselves.

Kormak knew he was dreaming. He wondered if he was seeing something real, some echo of the past caught within the endless geomantically shaped corridors of the city, or whether this had all been conjured up out of his own mind from the sights he had witnessed. The thought vanished, forgotten instantly as the scene changed.

War came to the world outside the city. The Old Ones fought among themselves with terrible weapons. Refugees sought sanctuary in Khazduroth bearing the seeds of its destruction. Plague was unleashed and the dwarves died. Their small servants changed. They had become smaller of head and torso, longer and spindlier of limb. They seemed more and more numerous as if breeding faster and faster.

There were fewer and fewer Old Ones present and those who remained looked different, more brutal, as if they had adapted themselves to war. There were fewer dwarves too and they looked haggard and haunted as the war raged on through their city. They wore armour now and they carried weapons that blazed with terrible runes. Madness took them and they fought with each other. Some fled the city through the open gates. Some stayed and were changed utterly.

Years became decades. Decades became centuries. Hordes of monstrously mutated menials and companies of armoured dwarves stalked through the near-abandoned city. The lights were dim. Many of the potent runestones had been defaced. Rubble blocked streets as if the whole place had been hit by an earthquake. He knew somehow that the destruction had affected the potent geomancies of the city, blocked the flows of magical energy, tainted them, added to the deaths and mutations.

The war built to a blazing crescendo. The dwarves were led now by a single surviving Old One. The menials by another. Both of them were changed from what they had been. The female leading the dwarves looked pale and ill although she still blazed with magical power. The male leading the mutated menials looked ever more like them but far larger, and he bore more than a passing resemblance to Graghur. The two Old Ones fought with the intensity of lovers turned enemies. The one that might have been Graghur wounded the female with a terrible runic weapon. She in turn cursed him with a power and vehemence that sent him fleeing from the city, filled with terror, body becoming ever more twisted.

The scene shifted again and Kormak felt as if he was on the verge of witnessing some new momentous change, but then the whole city began to shake once more as if in the grip of an earthquake. In the distance he could hear the sound of a great heartbeat, shaking the entire world so violently that it threatened to tumble apart. The vibration was so great that it swept him from side to side as he fell, battering him off the walls as he tumbled.

Mighty winds roared in his ears. They buffeted him relentlessly. The wind howled louder than any wolf and he realised at last that it was howling his name.

“Kormak,” it said as he slammed against a wall and burning lava rose to greet him.

“Kormak,” it said as a stone floor gave way beneath him, sending a sulphurous cloud up to greet him.

“Kormak,” it said. He looked up into the face of Karnea as he came awake.

“What is it?” Kormak swallowed. His mouth felt dry. His limbs felt weak. His neck felt tense. He rose, realising that he still clutched the blade in his hand.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she said. “In the Old Tongue.”

“What was I saying?”

“You talked about Graghur and menials and war.”

“I was dreaming,” he said, and told her what he had seen.

She tilted her head and looked at him oddly. “Have you had such dreams before?

“Yes. In the past. In other places. Why?”

“Where you have dreamed of things that happened in the deep past?”

“This was just a nightmare. Brought on by this place.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you are a sensitive. One of those who soaks up the events in a place.”

“I am no sorcerer, no diviner either.”

“It’s a gift some have,” Karnea said. “It’s not like casting a spell. Sometimes it only works when the conscious mind is at rest. Tell me honestly, do you think what you witnessed in your dream happened?”

He considered denying it. “It might have.”

She smiled at his surly tone. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was just a dream.”

A sound came through the open doorway, a sort of heavy slithering.

“Perhaps you should have paid more attention to our surroundings and less to what I was saying,” Kormak said. “You were on watch.”

Karnea looked guilty and moved over to Boreas to wake him.

Kormak rose and stalked to the entrance and looked out. Something massive moved by in the gloom. A long snake-like torso was visible on the street outside. A mouldy stink filled the air. He slid forward into the open shopfront, sword held ready.

He looked out and saw an immense serpent. Where the head would have been on a snake there was what, at first, looked like a human torso. It might have belonged to a muscular giant of a man, except that the head was the wrong shape. It had the huge bat-like ears of a goblin and the shimmering scaly skin. It was an unholy combination of goblin and devil python and something else, a Shadow demon perhaps.

Behind it was a trail of foul-smelling slime. Its head turned and it looked back and Kormak ducked out of its line of sight. He had a brief glimpse of whitish blind-seeming eyes.

The snake thing halted. Kormak wondered whether he had been seen. His one consolation was that if he had been, the monster would have great difficulty finding its way into this cramped space. Not that it needed to, he realised. It could simply wait for them to emerge or die of starvation. Clearly this was something the goblins feared and it must be even more formidable than it looked to have frightened them.

Kormak pressed his back against the wall of the shop front and held very still. He could hear only distant beating of goblin drums. Was the creature waiting to see what he was doing or was it, even now, gliding silently closer?

He fought down the near-suicidal urge to stick his head out and take a look. Long minutes dragged by. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber and looked at Kormak enquiringly. Kormak gestured a warning for him to stay where he was and not make any noise.

He waited a while longer and remained still. The slithering started once more and slowly receded into the distance. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber. Sasha followed him.

“What was that thing?” Boreas asked.

“I don’t know,” Kormak said. “I’ve not see its like before.”

“How did it not notice us,” Sasha said. She gestured back to the doorway. The light of the everglow lantern was faint but in the dark it might as well have been a beacon.

“Sometimes the Old Ones and their creatures do not see as we do. Perhaps it was blind to ordinary light.”

“It’s very possible,” said Karnea emerging from the chamber. “After all, what use do creatures who dwell in darkness have for eyes?”

“The goblins have eyes,” said Sasha. “The dwarves, too, if those statues are correct.”

“I was merely offering a suggestion,” Karnea said. She glanced over at Kormak, clearly made nervous by what she was about to say. Since they had ventured underground she had lost her natural cheerfulness. “This is where we are supposed to look for what we came for, Sir Kormak. I confess it all seemed much easier when we were outside. I had no idea how vast this place is. No, let me rephrase that. In my mind, I knew how big it was, but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it.”

“You mean we were going to have to search this whole place?” Sasha said. “Looking for clues to these runes you seek?”

Karnea nodded.

“Don’t you have some magic that will help you? An amulet of divination, a spell, a familiar that can sniff the stuff out?”

Karnea took off her glasses and began to polish them furiously. “I know what we are looking for can mostly likely be found in the smithies of the Forge Quarter.” She took a blade and scratched a rune on the floor, a stylised hammer inside a triangle. “This is the symbol we are looking for. The places will have anvils and forges in the dwarven style. Your father was a blacksmith, I believe, Sir Kormak so I can assume you know what we are looking for.”

Kormak looked at her sidelong. She seemed entirely serious. Maybe she was nervous and gabbling. Maybe Sasha’s attitude had annoyed her. Or maybe it was some sort of hangover from the quickleaf.

“What about the monster? It seems to roam the area. If so many goblins are afraid of it, we should be too.”

“It does not appear to be too bright,” said Karnea. “We should be able to hear it as it approaches and if we keep a watch we should be able to flee from it.”

“That seems like a long shot,” said Sasha.

“What would you have us do? We must at least make an attempt to find what we came for.” She looked at Kormak to confirm this. He guessed she was not quite as certain of that as she sounded. He nodded.

“Of course, there may be more than one of the beasts,” he said. “We can’t just make the assumption that it’s solitary.”

“Always look on the bright side, eh Sir Kormak,” said Boreas.

“Better to prepare for the worst,” said Kormak. “I have a feeling this is the sort of place that is going to throw it at us.”

“I don’t think you are wrong,” said Boreas.

“What about water?” Kormak asked. “If we’re stuck down here for long we will need it more than food, or at least long before we need food.”

Sasha said, “There are fountains in the plazas and squares. Some of them still work. There will be edible fungi.”

“We’ll need to find water that is not tainted,” Kormak said.

“I can perform a suitable divination if it comes to that,” said Karnea.

“Well, let’s keep our eyes peeled for a fountain as well as shops marked with the hammer rune.”

As they shouldered their packs and prepared to leave, Kormak wondered about his dream. He had experienced such things before and they had sometimes been proven true. Was that the case now or the whole thing was just a product of his feverish imagination and the after-effects of the quickleaf? Or was Karnea right about him having some sort of sensitivity to his surroundings. He pushed the thought aside. He had other things to worry about right now.

They emerged cautiously onto the street. Kormak inspected the slime trail left behind by the serpent creature. It was already starting to dry out, leaving a sticky glaze on the hard rock of the floor.