David Drake - The Gods Return

The atmosphere had a silent chill, very different from the normal unpleasantness of rocks dripping lime water in a cave. Ilna supposed it was a result of Brincisa's spell. It didn't affect her, precisely, but she felt like she was moving in something thicker than air. Ilna began to work. She smiled, remembering the secretary's blithe offer to cut the box free. These knots bound far, far more than merely a wooden box. Some of what they controlled was harmless or even beneficial when properly treated, but even those aspects were dangerous if they weren't respected. And they were only part of the greater fabric with the box at its center. The remainder could blast the world and beyond the world if freed by the drag of a blade. Mind, Ingens couldn't possibly have cut the filament. Uniquely, Ilna didn't know where the pale strand came from or what it was. All her fingers felt was sunlight, sweeping and dancing and flooding all things. Nothing but pure light could have bound the powers gathered here; but the work had been done for an evil man, by a thing that was the soul of Evil. Ilna was aware of that the same way she was aware that she was breathing in and out. None of it mattered now, because she had work to do. Brincisa had been right to believe no one but Ilna herself could unknot this shimmering fabric. If she'd therefore arranged the earthquake that brought Ilna to Ortran, that too was a matter for another time. The work came first. Nothing existed save the work. She was Ilna os-Kenset. She undid the last knot and paused, breathing deeply. She felt a vast crackling: the universe, bound by the pattern she'd untied, had broken free like a creek at the spring thaw. The filament lay about her like the sun spilled on crystal. It shone brighter than the feeble lantern that should have been the only light down here.

"Mistress Ilna!" Brincisa called from above. "Have you succeeded? Tie the casket onto the end of the rope and I'll bring it up." The candle was little more than a smudge of wax. It wouldn't have mattered if it had guttered out after Ilna began. Her eyes hadn't-couldn't have-guided her on a task like the one she'd just completed. "Mistress Ilna!" the wizard repeated. "Answer me!" Irritation brought Ilna out of the mood of soft accomplishment she'd been basking in. Well, softness was for other people. "I'll be up shortly," Ilna said. She deliberately didn't raise her voice; that expressed her opinion of Brincisa daring to give her orders better than a shout would've done.

"I assure you that I don't want to stay down here longer than I have to." She wished she had something to wet her throat. A pitcher of the bitters Reise brewed in his inn would be the best. It was one of the few things Ilna remembered about Barca's Hamlet that had remained constant, utterly trustworthy. Even water would do, though. Ilna smiled coldly. A moment to breathe would be sufficient. She was used to making do with what she had, rather than having the things she wanted. "Just tie the casket onto the rope," Brincisa said. "You can do that, can't you? Then I'll let the rope down again. You can bring up some of the grave goods. There must be a king's ransom accumulated over the years in the cavern." Ilna frowned. Does Brincisa really think that I care about baubles? Aloud she said, "I'll bring the box up myself. It won't be long." She smelled decay. To her surprise, Hutton's cheeks had fallen in and his eyes, gray and staring a moment ago, were covered by bluish fungus. Something moved in the depths of the cave. Ilna heard a dull clicking, the sound stones made when weight made them slide against other stones. She'd loosed more than the box, it seemed. "Send up the casket!" Brincisa said. "You mustn't try to carry it. Send it at once!" Ilna had started to tie the box with her silken rope the way she'd carried the lantern when she came down. Something shifted slightly inside; it wasn't particularly heavy.

She paused and looked up at the opening. "Master Ingens!" she called.

"Ingens!" "Mistress, I'm giving you a last chance!" Brincisa said.

"Send up the casket alone. Otherwise you'll stay down there and I'll send one of my servants to fetch it at a later time." "Nothing goes up until Master Ingens assures me that he's standing by the rope and that it's secure!" Ilna said. "I'll bring the box up or it won't come!"

Heavy footfalls thudded closer from the darkness. She wondered how deep the cave was and what lived in it. The rope rustled down, flailing like an angry snake. Stone clacked above. Ilna didn't recognize the sound until there was a second clack and a moment later something massive crunched, then settled. Brincisa had knocked the chocks out so that the roller returned to its resting position over the entrance. A massive shadow lurched toward the lantern's faint circle of light.

Interlude "Hail, Lord Archas!" the new recruits shouted raggedly.

They were probably weak with relief not to have been executed. Or fed to the Worm, of course; they had to be thinking about that. "Hail, the Prince of the East!" "By the Shepherd!" muttered Tam, Archas' deputy, as he watched the Worm writhe through the ruins of the fallen city. He rubbed his scalp with the knuckles of his right-and only-hand while gripping his helmet in his fingers. "I tell you, Archas, I wish you'd send it away." "Members of the Army of the East!" Archas said. "You've sworn obedience to me on your lives and souls. Don't think those are just words! It won't be some lady or shepherd in Cloudcuckooland waggling a finger at you if you foreswear me! Look and look well at what your oath means!" He gestured toward the Worm with a curved sword. In his other hand was the talisman wrapped in golden hair, the tool by which he raised and-thus far-dismissed the monster on which his power rested. A row of walls collapsed in powder. The Worm had destroyed the rear of those buildings as it squirmed through city previously, but Archas had learned it was best to let the creature completely raze the cities he loosed it on. Otherwise it resisted his efforts to send it back into the gray wasteland it had turned its homeworld into. "Go with the captains I've given you!" Archas said.

His voice boomed over the terrified recruits, about two hundred survivors from the ruin which was now being ground into the bedrock.

"Obey their every command." Women had been saved as well, the younger, prettier ones. No children, though. "You'll have wealth and power beyond your dreams, all the best of everything," Archas said. "But-"

He waggled the sword again. "-never dare disobey me!" The cities here on Charax had walls of brick instead of using stone over a rubble core like those of Telut. A furlong of wall-what was this city's name?

Archas wasn't sure he'd ever heard-still stood, including one square tower. The Worm, moved by some impulse of its own, bent suddenly in a hairpin and advanced on the remaining section. Its circular maw pulsed open and closed. The creature's body towered over the thirty-foot battlements. "Youcan send it away, can't you?" Tam asked uneasily.

"Archas! Are you listening to me?" "Of course I'm listening to you, Tam," Archas said with false good-humor. He bobbed the talisman in his left hand as if he were estimating its weight. "And of course I can send the Worm back. You've seen me do that a score of times already, haven't you?" It was easy to underestimate his one-armed deputy. Tam wasn't smart, exactly; nobody would say that. But he was perceptive in a way few smart people ever were. In the old days he'd twice noticed plots against Captain Archas-and had quashed them with strokes of his axe before anybody else knew what was going on. "I'm just giving a warning about what it means to try to fight us," Archas said. "It'll be easier yet if they open their gates when we arrive, the way places had started to do by the end on Telut." Tam sighed. "I suppose," he muttered. "I don't like it, though. I'm no saint, Archas, but…"