She watched the shape of the great hooked mouthparts treading over the ruined corpse of the Mole Cricket, each curved claw a hole in the weave of the world that stretched longer than her body: the blindly working mandibles of god.
‘The Worm knows only enough to know that there are things it cannot accomplish. In order to live and last, in order to replenish its numbers and arm its warriors, there is thought and planning needed,’ the scarred old man went on. ‘That is why I exist. That is why the Scarred Ones exist. They think themselves priests down there, giving homage to god, but god doesn’t care. God permits us our petty freedoms because we advance its cause, and its cause is to consume everything, to be everything. When god has devoured the sunlit lands and made all the world like itself, it will have no need of Scarred Ones. When god has eliminated all who are not of the Worm, it will have no need of warriors. It will consume and consume until this thing you see will be the entire world.’
‘And the Scarred Ones know this?’ Che whispered.
‘We do, and yet we serve, because even that conscious servitude is better than becoming a thoughtless segment of the Worm.’
‘But . . .’ Che shook her head. ‘Just existence for existence’s sake . . . what could be the point?’
‘Why do you think I listened to Orothellin,’ the Hermit said grimly, beginning to retreat down the tunnel. ‘My poor kinden . . . myself, those scarred wretches down there, we are all that is left of our people. This is what the Moths wrought when they bound us down here. We are what they left us.’
The Hermit was keen to be gone, but Che turned back suddenly, staring down towards the cavern to which all paths led, the seat of the Worm.
Could she possibly destroy it, and destroy all of the Worm? Could she, right now, assassinate the Centipedes’ god, and release the world from their curse?
But all the strength she ever had would not be enough to pierce that lightless carapace. The very thought of drawing upon herself that colossal attention sapped her ability even to think about it. As she searched desperately for some possible weakness, it seemed to grow stronger and stronger in her mind. Even if she could bring an army before it, the army would be help-less. The crushing denial of the Worm would stifle the best weapons of the Apt, would see the magic of the greatest magicians fade to a mere dream. The greatest of Weaponsmasters would not have the courage to raise a blade against it.
What, then, could the slaves of the Worm accomplish? What would they have left to them? The strength of their arms, their Art, their skills. Could those possibly be enough to overcome what she had just seen? The Worm did not conquer as the Wasps did, by bettering themselves to overcome the advances of their enemies. The Worm dragged everything down to its own primal level. The Worm did not believe in Aptitude or Inaptitude. The Worm believed only in itself.
I will do this. But her thoughts seemed muted and tiny against the constant rush and rumble of the Worm.
They emerged again into the city, amid that wordless seething of the Worm’s human bodies. The Hermit crouched in the tunnel mouth, eyes alert for his former brethren.
‘Now you have seen enough,’ he declared. ‘Now you regret coming here. Now we go.’
‘I don’t,’ she insisted, but inside her was something dying and near dead, the fires of her hope dimmed to an ember.
They were halfway clear of the city when she heard it – shrill sounds piercing the constant murmur and scuff of the Worm’s movements. A new consignment had arrived. The Worm had been exacting its tax.
She stopped, and the Hermit dragged at her sleeve, but this time she stood firm, watching a train of warriors course between the walls of the city, bearing cages crammed with screaming infants. They were heading for the pits, as she had known they must be.
‘We must go!’ the Hermit insisted fiercely, but she could not – not until she knew the full scope of what was done here.
She saw the cages opened at the pits, the squalling captives hauled out, one by one and dropped in almost gently – as if to be kept alive for something. Something that likes live prey?
‘What are they feeding those children to, Hermit? Is it the Worm?’
He managed a sickening, wretched laugh. ‘Yes. No, no. They feed them to nothing. Come, we must go!’
The insincerity on his face was hideous. As a Scarred One he had never needed to lie, save to himself.
‘I’m going to see.’
‘No, you mustn’t. I’ll leave you here.’
Looking into his pale eyes, reading the twitchings and spasms of his expression, she shook her head, and set off for the pits. Instantly he was at her heels, begging her, clutching at her, and yet unable to prevent her progress.
She passed like a dream through the purposeful bustle of the Worm, all those enemies seeing only a Scarred One’s shadow. She came to the lip of the pit, the sounds of wailing, terrified children louder in her ears, the air below reeking of death and excrement.
What will I see? Is this the Worm’s stomach? Are these the pens where its beasts fatten themselves? What is the last piece of the puzzle?
She looked down.
Maggots.
That was her first thought, seeing those countless bodies writhing and clawing helplessly over one another, smeared with their own filth, turning their faces towards her to shriek out their need, to demand the human care and comfort that they had been torn from. Not maggots, though. Children, infants, carpeting the floor of the pit. Infants of all kinden, twisting and knotting and fighting, and here and there just lying still, already dead. Many of them were blankly silent, but some – probably the newest arrivals – were wailing at the tops of their voices, demanding their lives back, their parents, that fragile little slice of love that they had known. Their voices, that chorus of loss and loneliness, raked claws deep down inside her.
The Hermit was still trying to pull her away, but she had become immovable, nailed there by sheer horror and revulsion.
‘You must go,’ he mumbled. ‘This was always the way.’
At that intervention, she could break free some fragment of her attention for him, enough to lash out and take him by the throat with a strength she had not known she possessed. ‘What do you mean,’ she demanded, ‘“This was always the way”?’ For this was exactly what he had sought to keep her from, she realized. Not to protect her but to protect himself, the memory of his already-accursed kinden. He was ashamed.
‘Orothellin says . . .’ he whimpered. ‘He says this was why the Moths and the others warred against us. This . . .’
I should hope so . . . But it did not explain anything. It did not make sense. Her legs were shaky as she stumbled over to the next pit, although her grip on the Hermit did not weaken.
She had expected to witness the same scene, but the children here were older, larger. They struggled and fought with one another, and it was as beasts fought – in sudden confrontations just as suddenly abandoned. Again, some were dead, and there was a curious look to the rest that sent her hurrying on to the next pit, revelation curdling in her gut. They made no sounds here. Because they have learned it will do them no good, was the inescapable conclusion.
‘Orothellin . . .’ The Hermit’s voice came to her. ‘He says that my people ever sought to make the world in our image. That was what the others could not forgive – what our efforts showed them, of how the world truly worked. Our intolerable truths.’