“Weak. Traitor. Betrayed us.”
“Never wanted them here. Killed them. Too dark.”
He shook his head. Whispers. Memories of whispers, no less. Easily ignored. He believed maybe one-quarter of that.
“We don’t have a lot of options left,” he said. “The tome can’t fall into the netherlings’ hands.”
“Not like there’s a lot of choice,” Asper replied from the other side of the room. “They’ll break through, eventually.”
“Not if the demons kill them first,” Denaos chimed in. “If you pray hard enough, maybe the Gods will take pity on us. The demons will kill the longfaces and be left without a way in and we’ll have the privilege of starving to- oh, good GODS.”
His curse came with the shuffle of stone as the rogue fell backward.
“Something. . something. .” he stammered. “I just touched. . something!”
“Something?” Kataria asked. “Is it big and black?”
“No.”
“I don’t see it, then.”
A soft light bloomed in the darkness. It grew, painting a slender, writhing body, vacant, glassy eyes, faint dots of green light that grew brighter with each breath. The fish twisted, slithered in midair, upward.
Toward a dozen more lights that blossomed in sympathy. Fishes swirled about the ceiling of a large, circular chamber carved into the mountain, illuminating the darkness in a soft nausea of blue and green. Carved upon the walls were images of tall, powerful women with hands extended in benevolence and faces scarred out by fire and sword. “Death to heathens,” “Glory to Gods,” “Kill all Demons” and other more colorful phrases were smeared across the walls in dark, soot-stained graffiti.
“In many different languages,” Kataria noted.
“Huh?”
“That one’s in shictish,” she said, pointing to a line of writing upon the wall. “That one in something else.”
“The mortal armies,” Lenk muttered. “All peoples bound together to fight Ulbecetonth.”
“Well, so long as every culture got the chance to write something dirty,” Denaos said, walking past them. “But unless one of them has a curse you haven’t heard yet, I suggest you come look at this instead.”
“Uyeh!”
“Toh!”
Another tremor shook the stone door. It was all the persuasion anyone needed to follow Denaos to the other side of the cavern. A great archway rose up, flanked by two statues posing as pillars. Both depicted strong, young men with long, flowing hair and fins on the sides of their heads, tridents held in webbed hands.
Their stone skin was worn, however, by the intricate web of chains that wrapped around and between them to meet at a focal point at the center of the archway.
Another statue, shorter though far more imposing, stood there: a hooded man with a tremendous stone eye for a face, left palm outstretched in a warding motion, like the others Lenk had seen on Teji and Jaga. The chains bound it to the pillars and, hanging from every third link, a scrap of paper with barely legible script was woven to the metal.
“Do they say anything?” he asked, peering at the slips of paper.
“‘Turn back, ye who wanders,’” Denaos read off a slip, “‘the way ahead is shut to all but the dead. Enter, ye who seeks their joining.’”
“Really?”
“No, not really. I just thought that sounded ominous enough to make you stop thinking about it for a while.” He tried to pull a pair of chains apart to make a gap large enough to pass through. “Give me a hand with these.”
“Right.” The young man stepped up and took the links. “Kat, watch our back. Asper-”
He certainly hadn’t meant to finish that sentence with a scream that was usually reserved for people with hot pokers in the eyes. But the moment he had tried to pry the chains apart, he felt something inside him tear. His shoulder became damp, sticky. He could smell something pungent.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Denaos asked, cocking a brow.
“Uh. .”
Any chance he might have had of coming up with something more clever than that ended as Asper pulled the collar of this tunic away, exposing the glistening infection in his shoulder.
“I told you,” she snarled. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I?”
“Tell him what?” Kataria asked, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m fine,” Lenk said.
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be stoic, clever, or stupid,” Asper said, pointing at his shoulder. “But this sort of precludes two of those.” She studied the wound, wincing. “It looks bad.”
“How bad?” Kataria asked.
“Not bad enough to stop,” Lenk muttered, pushing one leg through the gap in the chains.
“Very bad. He shouldn’t be up and around, let alone doing. . well, any of this,” Asper said, reaching for the bag at her hip. “But if we can spare a moment or two, I might be able to-”
“UYEH!”
“TOH!”
The word came with a shattering sound. A great stone hand came smashing through the door. Ulbecetonth’s arm, fingers cracking and crumbling to powder, carved a hole, fragments of timber and stone clattering to the floor as it withdrew, pulled by black-plated hands.
“UYEH!”
“TOH!”
Another blow splintered it totally. The arm fell, making way for what came shrieking out of a cloud of dust.
“Move! MOVE!”
Lenk’s scream, and the subsequent cries of alarm, were lost in the sikkhun’s gibbering laughter as it charged into the chamber. They scrambled to get out of the way as it rampaged across the floor, tongue lolling, smile wide with excitement. Denaos released the chains, letting them pull tight over Lenk’s leg as he darted away.
“Denaos!” Lenk screamed at him. “You son of a bitch!”
“You said to move!” the rogue screamed back, already far away.
The young man tried desperately to pull his leg free. The pain in his shoulder and his thigh weren’t easy to ignore. The sound of a gibbering mass of muscle and fur thundering toward him, even less so.
He pulled himself free with a wrenched scream, falling to the floor. Kataria was there in a moment, seizing him by his ankles and dragging him ignobly away as the sikkhun threw itself wildly forward.
The statue buckled as its skull collided with it, its robes cracking, chains clinking. The pillars groaned, swaying as the chains pulled them from their roots. That might have been more alarming, Lenk thought as he rose to his feet, if not for the sikkhun scrambling to its feet. It shook a cloud of granite dust from its fur, loosed a delirious giggle as it turned and began to stalk toward the companions.
That, too, wasn’t the worst thing at that moment.
“QAI ZHOTH!”
They came charging through the sundered door, spears alive, metal rattling. Lenk was already running to the archway, even before he heard a violent crack and scream behind him. The chains slackened as the pillars swayed. The others had already picked up on this idea. Kataria was alongside him, Asper right behind him, Denaos. .
Even farther behind him, on the floor with a metal boot digging into his back. Xhai stood over him, blade raised above her head, a joyless smile on her face as her sikkhun came padding up, grinning broadly.
“Oh, Gods damn it,” Asper snarled.
By the time he had discerned what that meant, Lenk and Kataria were already through the chains. The priestess had whirled about, charging past the netherlings to tackle Xhai at the waist and knock her aside. The longfaces didn’t seem to notice her, intent on what was clear to everyone.
The pillars were collapsing.