Chapter 41
Two long and pointed stakes plummeting through the steadily-darkening fog, that was the sight that greeted Jaysh as he hefted Serit’s sword overhead and stared past the point.
There was something behind the stakes as well, something large and white and making all manner of fluttering noises, but he wasn’t paying much attention to that something.
His eyes remained fixed upon the twin spears of ivory sinking towards him through the air, his forebrain calculating the intent of those bone shards and his hind brain sending him lunging out of the way.
He soared vertically through the air and time froze around him, a memory from earlier that day replaying in his mind. He saw himself and Serit walking beside the trail of pitch and discussing the possible origins of the trial.
…there were a few times I thought I heard something up there, Serit had said. It sounded like banners flapping in the wind, or a large mass passing through the air...
Perfectly parallel with the snot-covered ground, still frozen in time by shock and adrenaline, Jaysh had a moment to wonder if this was the manslug’s good friend, skyslug, come to save its buddy from a nasty beheading…and then time sped back up and resumed its course through the two remaining dimensions.
He hit the ground on his shoulder, felt his hip scream at him to knock it off (whatever he was doing), and then he was skidding through the mucus in a long, syrupy line.
Behind him, in the place where he’d been standing when he first spotted the twin spears of bone, the ground began to quake. It was difficult to hear with one ear packed with slime, but the sound reminded him of several feather mattresses striking the ground in quick succession, one landing right after the other.
He propped himself up on his arms, dazed but coherent, and sure that the worst was over as the creature, whatever it had been, was now dead with a broken spine, when the ground behind him began to trembling once more.
He chanced a look over his shoulder as he clambered to his feet and it appeared, from what he could see through the slate-gray fog, that the felled creature was beating itself upon the ground like a flopping fish. The thing was colorless and veined, as the melted biters had been, but the imitation of a drowning catfish was undeniable.
Jaysh faced forward and ran as fast as his hip would allow. As intriguing as the sight might be, he was more than willing to wallow in his ignorance and leave the creature behind. He broke into ambling trot and set a course for the banks of the Swa—
Some part of the flailing creature collided with his left moccasin and sent him skidding through the slime. He came to rest at a handful of melon-sized burrows and was back on his hands and feet at once, scrambling across the ground with his butt in the air and his beard plowing muck. He could only hope that his partner was doing—
Ah, shoot.
Still down on all fours, Jaysh jerked his head to either side, checking for the general. He didn’t remember seeing the old man die, not while bolting from the impact site, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
After spying the tusks in the fog and lunging to the side, he had no recollection of what took place behind him. He knew only that Serit had been standing rather close at the time (had been handing him his sword, in fact) and that it had required quite an acrobatic feat on his part to escape the descending creature.
Still crawling, Jaysh spied something off to the south, something moving through the mounds of soil and streamers of mist. It might have been a tall and gangly outline staggering sideways through the slime, but it might have been a shadow. There were plenty of those now.
Jaysh was getting ready to stand and race after the figure, to find out for sure if it was the general or not, but as he made it halfway to his feet he was stopped cold by a new sound coming from the creature.
Behind him, the thunderous flailing had been replaced by the sound of canvases billowing in the air.
Baffled by the sound, he continued on in his less-than-productive crouch for several more strides, his mind working feverishly to construct a picture of his attacker: tent posts for teeth, wet mattresses for head and body, boat sails for wings…
The last detail seemed fantastic even for a creature of the bottoms, but any lingering doubt was quickly relieved as the fog around him began to twist and swirl, turning lightly at first and then picking up speed, eventually streaking past him in a blur.
By then, he couldn’t have looked behind him even if he tried. Facing away from the thing, his eyes were no more than wrinkled slits and remained that way until the heavy whooping increased in frequency and ascended slowly in the air, gaining in altitude even as it diminished in volume.
Jaysh opened his eyes and stood to full height, spinning around in time to watch the fog pour into the cavity created by the wind. A part of him wanted to keep running—to turn and sprint until he was well away from this place—but several other parts of him (the rational parts) stayed his antsy feet.
Running from the point of impact had been a necessary course of action, but running for its own sake was futile. Whatever danger had existed behind him was now somewhere else (above him, no less) and fleeing randomly might actually lead him to the attacker.
He cocked his head back and his chin up and slowly turned in circles, searching the low-lying clouds for any trace of the creature’s passage—wisps and shadows, as Serit called them—but the shadowy ceiling remained motionless and smooth, nothing rippling, nothing billowing…
Now, jus stay that a-way, he thought, and took a single, delicate step to the south, setting a course for the place he thought he’d seen the general.
Overhead, a single heavy whoop echoed in the fog.
He glanced up, thought he saw a dark shape passing through the darker ceiling, but nothing came plummeting through. He lowered his head and resumed his search.
If Serit were still alive, he needed to locate the old man and warn him against making any loud noises. More than likely, the thing with the tent-pole teeth couldn’t see them any more than they could see it. So if they kept their mouths shut and their feet light, there was a good chance they could slip out of this place just as easily as they’d—
Twin daggers of bone descended from above, slicing through fog in a direct line for his skull. He sprinted forward, keeping his feet this time, and just avoided being leveled into the flat sweep of clay and mucus.
Behind him, the Bottoms rumbled with what sounded like a wagonload of feed sacks crashing to the ground. This time, however, the flailing started almost immediately and he barely had time to register the change before a part of the flopping creature struck him square in the back.
He went soaring through the fog like a child’s ragdoll, watched in horror as the general’s sword went sailing from his grasp and spinning into oblivion, and then the slop-covered ground came slamming into him and he went skidding along on his hip (the good one, thankfully).
He dug his fingers into the mud beneath the slime, brought the skid to a stop, and went scrambling in the direction he thought he’d seen the sword. The handle and blade, he knew, would be submerged beneath the ooze, but the guard would stick up for him to see, and probably the pommel.
Only they didn’t.
He thought he had the weapon pegged when he’d landed, but now he had no idea where it had gone. He knew only that the creature was still thumping at his heels, the sound a boulder might make if only it could hop. He looked a moment more and then pushed on, wishing to put distance between himself and the creature.
As if reading his mind, the thudding gave way to whooping, and the mists began to swirl.
Jaysh changed direction, staggering to the right in anticipation of what was to come. This would lead him away from the general, but it had to be done. His hip was starting to ache and he could feel himself wearing down.
Behind and above, the whooping of wings faded in the ether.
Jaysh changed direction again, trudging deeper into the dens and no longer gl
ancing behind them for man-shaped shadows. At this point, he’d given up on the general and was focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, his progress through Burrow City having slowed to a shoulder-slumping trot and his moccasins ceasing to rise from the ground.
He was literally skating through the ground-slime, slipping and sliding in no particular direction, and letting his eyes glide across the scenery. Everything began to look like everything else, his fear and fatigue having turned the basin into a uniform world of gooey black floors and hazy white walls.
He skated a little further and began to see things that weren’t there—eyes in the burrows, bodies in the mist—he skated further still and began to see things that were there…only seeing them too late, like the knee-high den that came sweeping out of nowhere and cut his legs out from under him.
He went sprawling on his face, a flare of pain erupting in his hip, and then he was clawing his way to his feet, panting and groaning and sliding through the dens.
Overhead, a solitary whoop beat at the storm-cloud sky.
Jaysh looked up, a much easier feat at his new snail’s pace, and saw nothing but ceiling mist overhead. He lowered his head, took two more slippery strides (muscles aching, lungs burning), and felt the last of his energy seeping from his pores.
It was the oddest sensation, really, like someone snuffing out the fires of his passion in a single, stifling stroke, some unseen force licking its thumb and forefinger and bringing them together on the burning wick of his desire. All of the feelings he’d ever shared, limited though they were, terminated in the blink of an eye.
In his head, as clear as crystal waters, he saw his hobbies pass before his eyes, saw himself sleeping on the Hill with Beth watching over him, saw Zeph fleeing through the grasses and Gariel hobbling through her hovel (old and wrinkled and leaning on a cane), he saw Serit crying in mist and saw himself skewered through the brainpan by a pair of long, calcareous lances…
...none of this registered in his heart, absolutely none of it, no love, no pain, no momentary pang of loss or regret.
The betraying whoop came again and Jaysh stumbled to a halt, looking up into the cumulus white and watching as it parted around a pair of dirty-white spears.
He watched them come and took a good hard look at the grubby white creature behind them. In his simple but accurate mind, it seemed only fair that he know the face of the creature that was about to smoosh him into the next life.
The beast he saw had the veined skin of a biter—only not so much melted as it was swollen—and the body of a bloodless fishing worm, segmented lines encircling a hard pasty flesh, twin fangs jutting out from either side of its black, circular maw.
Jaysh was still staring at the mouth, and wondering stupidly if his shoulders would fit through the opening, when a hand came out of nowhere, rested delicately against his right shoulder, and shoved.
The shove was not delicate.
For what felt like the twentieth time, Jaysh flailed sideways and landed on his side, skidding several body lengths before coming to an unceremonious stop in the slime. The air behind him filled with the sound of boulders striking at the clay.
Still wrestling with his own coherence, he watched as part of the gray and segmented sack protruded from the mist and pounded in his direction, only this time the flailing was less emphatic, perhaps even subdued. He wondered if that was because the worm was devouring the man who’d saved his life instead of flopping over to knock him from his feet.
He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled to the nearest burrow, moving slowly and with little care for what was about to happen to him or the man inside those coils. He clutched at the mound and climbed to his feet.
For a fuzzy moment, he thought that perhaps it was Serit who’d tracked him down and pushed him to safety. He reflected on this as the thrashing continued, then remembered that Serit struggled to push his boots into the openings on his stirrups and wondered how he would manage.
Behind him, the fanged worm stopped thudding and began to whoop.
Jaysh peeked around the burrow holding him up and stared at the place where the mist was whipping into ghostly strips. A dark shape lifted into the clouds and he had time to wonder how anything so large could ever get off the ground. He watched it moving towards him through the lower clouds, then disappear in the obscuring mists.
There was a moment of darkness and calm, a moment for Jaysh to catch his breath before he died, and then the lonely whoop of a wing from directly overhead.
He found the strength to lift his head, but before he could see the tip of those bony pikes descending from the gloom, the hand came again. He felt it press itself against his shoulder with such gentleness that it might have materialized out of thin air.
Jaysh had a fraction of an instant to wonder how the man had survived the last attack, and how he could see through the infernal clouds to know it was time, and then the hand was shoving him so fast and so hard that he could not help but grunt as it feet left the ground.
Several paces away, he hit the ground on his chest and slid over several gourd-sized burrows, coming to a stop only when he crashed into one the size of a chicken coop.
Gasping for breath, one arm draped over the mound that had stopped him, he turned and caught a glimpse of the mystery-pusher in the corner of his eye, the outline of a man sprinting through the fog as the larger shape of the worm crashed into the ground and began to throw itself up and down against the dens.
Taking less time to thump about the slime, the beast spread a set of large and membranous wings—full of purple veins and scar-tissue tendons—and began ascending to the sky. As it did, Jaysh caught sight of its freakishly long tail and the bulging deformity at the end.
He sat up and stared limp-eyed at the swirling mist where the monster had disappeared, more specifically at the spot where the bulging tail had vanished. It could have been a man, and maybe he’d even seen an arm sticking out the side, maybe even a huge mustached-face if he let his imagination go.
He crawled back to his feet and ambled in the direction of the worm, reaching for the bow on his shoulder. He didn’t know what a shaft of pointed wood might do against an enemy this large, but it didn’t matter. His hand grasped empty air and he realized his bow and pack had fallen off during one of his many tumbles.
He lowered his hand and kept marching, his eyes staring into clouds as black as night, his lips mumbling out the general’s first name, his left shoulder feeling something materialize against its flesh.
It happened so fast this time that he didn’t even think to tense. He felt a palm, four fingers, and a thumb—so soft, he thought, so very, very soft—and then he was sailing through the air, landing on his back and grating through the area where the worm had last attacked.
He felt pieces of broken burrow slapping against his head and neck, lumps of clay gliding beneath his shoulders, and then a pain like none he’d ever known—a deep, razorblade pain tearing gashes down his back.
Only later would he discover that the soil within the ground—the soil which had been brought to the surface by whatever pasty hands had made the dens—was full of jagged stones and petrified wood. For now, he knew only that the soft meat of his back was being sliced to ribbons by something in the burrows.
He opened his mouth and vented anguish at the world, but his cries were devoured by the crash of the worm as it collided with the ground and came writhing towards him, its bloated tubes rising and falling in the ooze, sheets of black snot squirting from between.
Still screaming, Jaysh listened to the rumble as it drew near. He listened as it slowed. He listened as it stopped and writhed in place.
Lifting his shredded back from the muck—still screaming—he watched the worm begin to coil about itself, watched each layer of its body sliding against the next, the overlapping bands tightening in a knot.
Inside those coils, where Jaysh could no longer see, there would be a man with his legs bending
flush with his stomach and his arms twisting up behind his spine, a man with his head tucking against his chest and his guts trying to pop like a soap bubble.
Jaysh leaned forward to place weight atop his legs and his back began to sizzle. He lay down on his side almost immediately, gasping for breath and scrunching his eyes.
His back hurt so bad he’d lost track of the worm, the pain so potent that it seemed to be alive, to have its own voice. He could hear it back there even now, creeping up behind and whispering in his ear.
Hey, old friend, the pain said. Remember me? Remember the good times we had way back when, back in the days of the garden and the times before the
—lumpy green—
wall? I remember, even if you don’t. I remember you nearly died that one time, when Lorn came to get you. You nearly died and I wasn’t even half as big as I am now. I mean, you really tore yourself up this time, didn’t you.
What do you think your shoulders look like? Scrambled eggs with tomato sauce? That stuff you used to play with in the alley behind the Butcher’s shop? You remember the butcher’s shop, don’t you?
The sizzling became mere discomfort and Jaysh’s eyes focused on the ever-coiling monster in the fog.
Yeah, the pain-voice said, you remember the butcher’s shop. It’s the other parts before that you can’t recall, the time you spent in the straw, way down deep in all that dark and itchy straw, all those dark and itchy thoughts trying to come through the
—lumpy green—
wall, trying to come through from the dark and itchy place where all your nightmares seek to sleep…
The pain subsided and Jaysh slid himself sideways to the clod-pile, leaning against it.
The coiling stopped.
Jaysh shivered and winced and waited for his turn.
The worm began to move again, but this time the movement was different. Jaysh couldn’t put his finger on the difference, but he thought the movements were less coordinated and not as structured. Instead of a collective motion, where the whole of the beast strove to constrict the life from its prey, the movements seemed like isolated jolts from random points on its girth.
After a good deal of this erratic twitching, one of the coils on top of the pile slid sideways and struck the ground. Something slid out of the hole this made, something that looked like an arm. After more wriggling occurred, and another section of worm slumped to the ground, a head and shoulders followed after the arm. They wrestled their way free of the coils and landed on the ground with a definitive thud.
After righting itself, the kryst took several thundering steps towards Jaysh and peered down at him, a giant silhouette against a dark and cloudy sky.
Jaysh thought, I’ve seen this b’fore, back on the Hill, back ‘fore the happenins took off an’ e’rythin got messy…Here in a few, it’ll make with the finger-touchin an’ the fist-poundin and then…
…and then…
Jaysh felt a slime-covered clod rising up to meet his head. He let the clod come, watching as a swell of ebon vapor formed at the edges of his vision and converged upon the center.