‘That’s impossible,’ she told him flatly. ‘He’s no . . . he’s nothing that could come here. There’s no way . . .’
‘He walked,’ Messel insisted. ‘He entered a cave he had seen the Worm use, in their raids.’ His hands clutched at the air, as though groping for understanding. ‘Cheerwell, the Seal, you said it cracked . . . and then that it was broken.’
‘Yes.’
‘If only we had the Teacher,’ Messel muttered, for Esmail had brought back the news of Orothellin’s death. ‘I do not understand the way things were, in that time he spoke of, before this place was made as it is. But . . .’
‘The domain of the Worm – of the Centipede-kinden – was underground,’ Che said slowly. ‘That means . . .’
‘I understand “underground”, from the Teacher’s stories. But at that time there was no seal, and the Worm walked in and out of its domain, and he said that there were those of the Old World who walked in also – ancestors of some of us here. What now, with the Seal gone?’ Messel asked at last. ‘If the Seal kept us from the Old World, what keeps us from it now?’
Che stared at him, knowing that Thalric and Tynisa must be wearing kindred expressions.
‘You mean . . .’ the Wasp said, ‘we can get out.’
Che took a deep breath. ‘Everyone can get out. Every single person can get out. If we can get people to some caves, any caves that carry on through into the world. It doesn’t defeat the Worm. It won’t save the lands above. But it can save the people here, for now. Messel . . . did Totho say where he came in?’
‘I know the place,’ the blind man told her. ‘There are caves there. They go . . . when I was there, they went nowhere. Now . . .’
‘Where is Totho?’ Tynisa asked.
Che froze, an appalling dismay falling upon her. Why did I not even think to ask? For surely Totho was not amongst the handful that Messel had been trailing.
Messel’s hands twitched, and he explained.
He and Totho had been with a fleeing band of refugees. The Worm had been behind them, gaining pace, but it had still seemed as though they might break away, at some cost – that some at least of the fugitives might escape.
Then the second Worm column had been sighted ahead of them. Messel did not know if this was some actual plan of the Worm, or just unfortunate chance. At that point, of course, it had not seemed to matter.
‘Some fought,’ he recounted sadly. ‘Most . . . just remembered how life had been under the Worm. That it had still been life, despite all. And they gave up: some the Worm killed, and others the Scarred Ones took away, to their city.’
Esmail had said that the priests of the Worm seemed to be sacrificing more and more to their uncaring god. Che imagined that they must see the end of their own world here, with the Worm focused more and more on its intended new conquests.
‘And Totho?’ she pressed.
Messel shrugged. ‘He did not break free with the few I managed to get out. I cannot say what his fate was.’
She sent for Esmail and the Hermit, and they came reluctantly. The Assassin had been brooding since his recent return from the city of the Worm, and his news regarding Orothellin had hit the renegade Scarred One hard. Neither looked impressed when Che told them she needed their help.
She explained about Totho. That did not help much.
‘So this friend of yours, whom I wouldn’t know from a stranger, might have turned up down here and might have been captured, and might be in their city right now, instead of just torn apart and already feeding their fields, or their bellies,’ Esmail summarized in disgust.
‘Esmail, please,’ Che said simply. ‘The two of you can go to that place safely. Or I’ll go myself, but I need one of you to take me.’
‘And she’s needed here,’ Thalric interjected, over her shoulder. ‘Because at least some of the people will listen – and listening to Che’s the only thing that’ll save them.’
Esmail moved to make some sharp retort, then bit it back. ‘Is it true that you can get out? That we can all get out?’
‘I hope so,’ Che told him. ‘We have nothing else, now.’
The Assassin closed his eyes, considering. ‘If I – we – go, he may not be there. He may even be there but hidden from us. Even if we find him, we will not be able to get him out.’
‘Cut the scars into him and hide him. At least try,’ Che insisted, a surge of frustration welling up inside her. She had intended to say, ‘please’ like the good Beetle girl she had been brought up as, but instead she found herself standing up, with some unspoken word echoing about them. Esmail’s eyes were wide as he scrabbled back.
‘What?’ Thalric demanded, and Tynisa’s sword was already clear of its scabbard. But Che was still trying to work out what had just happened, what she had done. Esmail was regarding her in a different way, now – respect and fear together.
‘You have it back,’ he murmured. ‘For just a moment . . .’
‘I have what?’ Che asked, almost plaintively.
‘The crown, the mark of the Masters that I saw on Seda . . . and on you, before we came down here. The magic came back for a moment.’
It was true that they were far from the Worm – or so she hoped – and so its deadening, levelling smog was not robbing her of the ability even to consider magic. Still, this place was parched dry of power, choked off from the world beyond, a dead place drained of its strength by the Moths and their Seal . . .
Their broken Seal.
Che felt an odd flutter. Like a disarmed duellist finding a dagger in her belt. That door was open only a crack, but did she perhaps have more options than she had realized? The Worm’s cavern realm was open to the world once more, and she could reach out for the magic that still existed outside. But, more, the Seal was gone. All that magic tied up in one place to keep the Worm locked away, and now the great knot of it was undone, all that magic was freed to . . . to do what? To drain away, even as all the magic had? Or could she still grasp for it?
‘Will you do it?’ she asked Esmail.
‘I cannot promise that I can accomplish anything, still less save your friend,’ he told her, ‘but I will go. I will search for him.’
‘And you?’
The Hermit had stood silent through this whole exchange, merely glowering at her. ‘Me? Return to that place? To my people? Forget myself that much, eh? Would I come back, I wonder? Now that he’s dead, should I even care?’
‘Please . . .’
The old man shook his head angrily. ‘I would lose myself. Then I would be gone. Without Orothellin, what am I but a broken-off piece of the Worm. I will not go. Let this fool go back to that place. I will not go.’
That night she tried to dream. She lacked the props she had once used to retain the pictures that issued from her sleeping mind, but she simply concentrated, meditated and absorbed the slow filtering of magic that was permeating this world for the first time in a thousand years.
Who else here, after all, could make use of it?
To her reopened mind, the cavern world was a continuum strung from the bright flare of the outside down towards the obscuring murk of the Worm itself. Up above, beneath the sun and moon, she could touch Seda distantly and feel the Wasp woman trying to reach back towards her.
Che, I need your strength! I am so close! I can defeat the Worm!
And then there was a sense of some great plan in motion, forces of ritual like great stone slabs sliding into place, leaving Che terrified and appalled and yet unable to say exactly why. The details did not come through.