Heights of the Depths (30 page)

“I’m going to look around,” Karsen informed Eutok. Eutok simply grunted and kept at his work. This was the happiest that Karsen had seen Eutok since they had first embarked on this insane escapade. That was not saying much since Eutok had never been happy to any degree since their association began. Apparently the only thing that Eutok enjoyed was mindless digging. No wonder Trulls were so good at it. Karsen wondered if it might not be a substitute for sexual frustration, and decided that it would probably be best not to ask that. Ever.

He looked around the city, not wandering too far from the dig site. It wasn’t necessary to go far afield; he found supplies in abundance. He was able to find plenty of food stored in those peculiar but terribly effective metal cylinders that humans appeared to adore. (He still remembered that breakthrough moment in his youth when he had actually connected the odd tool that the Bottom Feeders had unearthed during a surveying expedition with the metal cylinders and realized that the tool was the key to opening the cylinders. They had had no clue that there was food inside until he had managed, through much trial and error, to open one. It was the first time in his life that he could recall that his mother had embraced him and sung praises of him. It was also the last. Zerena Foux was many things, but demonstrative of her affection was not one of them.)

To this day he kept that tool with him at all times, so he would continue to be able to open the cylinders and feast on the contents. He found plenty of those cylinders now, which should not have been a surprise. The cylinders tended to be remarkably strong, defying any conventional means of opening them. Indeed, some members of the Twelve Races would use them as throwing weapons since they could do a considerable amount of damage if hurled with sufficient force. They could be dented and even opened if battered sufficiently, but in those instances the contents were generally mashed beyond use. To the best of his knowledge, only Karsen had discovered the secret to opening the cylinders and leaving the food inside edible.

He shoved as many cylinders as he could reasonably carry into his bag, but that was not what concerned him. What concerned him was that there was much food still lying around that had remained unconsumed. Meat, in particular, or at least the remains of the meat, was hanging in windows of various shops. There wasn’t much left there; bones for the most part. The rest had either rotted away or been picked clean by animals.

The question was, why were the bones of animals still hanging there? Minosaurs ate damned near anything, including bones. Karsen had been startled the first time he’d seen Mingo cheerfully chowing down on a skeleton, crunching the bones. He’d seemed to consider it quite tasty. If that was the case, why had the Minosaurs left the bones in the windows untouched?

Karsen had seen far too many sites of devastation and war not to know what was normal and what was not.

This was not normal.

As much as he wanted to get to Jepp—as much as he was convinced that this Crossing he’d been told about was the means by which to go about it—he was becoming increasingly convinced that there was something here that he was overlooking. Something that could have catastrophic consequences if he did not figure it out soon enough.

Shouldering the bag with the cylinders in them, he hurried back to the dig site. There he found a massive mountain of dirt and debris. “Eutok?” he called cautiously. “Eutok?”

“Down here!” came the Trull’s voice from deep in the hole.

Karsen cautiously made his way to the edge of the dig site and looked down. He couldn’t see a damned thing except a very dim glow. “Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Can you see down there?”

“There are still glow torches left here from the excavation. They appear to be functioning.”

“Powered by hotstars?”

“Of course. How else?”

“Considering how inconsistent they have been as of late, I wasn’t assuming.”

“Yes, yes, it’s hotstars,” Eutok said with growing irritation. “Are you coming down here or not? I’m weary of shouting up to you.”

Karsen hesitated and then said, “I’ll be right down.” He reached into his bag, pulled out his rope, looked around and found an upright metal projection of some sort in the walk nearby that he could use for an anchor. He affixed the rope to it and then pulled on it as hard as he could to assess how good a job he’d done securing it. It appeared to be holding solidly. He carried the rest of the rope over to the hole and dropped it down.

“What was that?” called Eutok from below.

“A way up in the event that things don’t work out for us.”

“You have no confidence.”

“Just trying to anticipate all possibilities.” Having no idea exactly how far down it was, and not wanting to risk breaking his leg, Karsen gripped the rope and eased himself into the hole. He could not believe how deep the Trull had managed to dig in such a relatively short period. He knew they were formidable excavators, but this was simply absurd.

He climbed down, his hooves skidding off the walls whenever he sought purchase. No point in trying to establish toeholds when one doesn’t have toes. He lowered himself hand over hand, depending entirely on his considerable upper body strength. The hammer weighed heavily on his back since he had no ground to support him.

He made his way down as quickly as he could. He didn’t bother to look down; doing so wouldn’t get him there any faster. Besides, he knew that it wasn’t any further than the length of his rope since Eutok had seen it.

Moments later he dropped into the tunnel. Eutok was standing right there and put out a hand cautiously lest Karsen hit the ground and fell over. “You all right?”

“Your concern is appreciated.”

Eutok grunted. “It has nothing to do with concern.”

“What, then?”

The Trull shrugged. “You are tolerable company. When one has lived his life for as long as I have without such, one tends to…
appreciate it. Anyway,” he continued brusquely, as if talk of such things was annoying to him, “it’s this way.”

Karsen followed Eutok along the tunnels. It wasn’t as if rock or dirt was a particularly vital organism, but these seemed dead even for underground. When Karsen and the other Bottom Feeders had ventured into the subterranean lair of the Trulls, even though it was underground, there was a sense of life there. It was clearly somewhere where the Trulls were residing. It was abundant with purpose and vitality.

Where they were walking now felt as if they were striding through a grave.

Even though there was some lighting, it was minimal, and Karsen made his way slowly. Eutok moved with more confidence, probably because he was in an environment that was much more to his liking. Soon it was all that Karsen could do to keep up with him.

The corridor widened out and they got to an intersection. Eutok moved with confidence to the right. Karsen didn’t know if Eutok genuinely knew where he was going or just wanted it to appear that way since he would be loathe to admit that he was just guessing.

Before Karsen could round the corner to keep up with him, he heard Eutok’s voice utter a clear and frustrated, “Damn it!” He came around the corner and found Eutok standing next to an overturned Truller car. It was lying on its side, covered with cobwebs. It was extremely large, much bigger than the one that Karsen and his family had leaped into when they’d gone to the Underground.

There were twin grooved tracks set into the rock that led down a darkened tunnel. “Is that it?” he said in a low voice.

“That’s it. That’s the Crossing.” Eutok was barely affording it a glance. “But this Truller has certainly seen better days.”

“How is it going to function, anyway? From what I understood, the Trullers back at the Hub operated via some sort of central command station.”

“Not this one. There’s no intersection of the Crossing with any other vehicles. It’s a straight shot, there and back. Once we get it moving…assuming we can get it moving…it will just keep going until we reach the other end.”

Eutok gripped the Truller firmly and, with a grunt, shoved it up and over until the bottom engaged with the twin grooves. He pushed on it tentatively. It didn’t seem interested in moving. “Hold on,” he said and pulled it back over so that it lay on its side again. Then he tugged open a hatch beneath it and began muttering to himself.

“What’s wrong?”

“The hotstars that are supposed to be powering the damned thing seem dead. We were having this same problem in a scattered fashion around the Hub,” he said. He pulled out three hotstars and glowered at them as if they had failed in order to cause him personal aggravation. “I do not understand why this keeps happening. The things aren’t supposed to become depleted.”

“We were having the same problem with the hotstar that powered our vehicle. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t.”

“We can’t afford to have hotstars that are unpredictable. The last thing we need is for the Truller to run out of energy halfway across. Walking the rest of the way would not be pleasant.” He glanced around thoughtfully. “The ones powering the lanterns seem to be functioning.”

“Can you adapt them to use in the Truller?”

“Easily.”

He walked past Karsen and started looking over the lanterns. Karsen followed him, not feeling as if he had much to offer in the way of advice or observation and so decided to remain silent.

Then Karsen noticed something lying off to the side. At first he thought it was a rock of some sort, but it did not appear shaped like any others that he had seen. Leaving Eutok to his inspection of hotstars, he crouched next to the rocks and sifted through them.

It took him almost no time to realize that they were not rocks.

They were bones.

Slowly he held one up, studied it closely. It was long and tapered and came to a point. The point was stained with what Karsen was reasonably sure was long-dried blood.

It was a horn. The exact sort of horn that projected from the heads of Minosaurs.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered.

He heard a noise behind him and jumped to his hooves, but it was only Eutok holding up three hotstars in triumph. “I found us—”

“We have to leave. Now.”

“Now?” Eutok frowned. “Well, give me a few minutes to attend to—”

“We may not have a few minutes. We need to get out of here immedi…”

Suddenly Eutok put up a hand. “Did you hear that? Some sort of scraping noises. Like…”

“Something approaching, perhaps?”

The severity of their situation registered on Eutok. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Let’s get out of—”

Then Karsen’s nostrils flared as he picked up a new aroma. It was a smell with which he was unfamiliar, but it chilled him to the bone nevertheless. It was like rotting meat. Moving, rotting meat.

The clicking and scraping noises were becoming more pronounced. Something was heading their way and showing less and less interest in trying to mask its presence.

Eutok and Karsen began to head for the hole that had been their means of entrance, but dark forms were blocking the way. They seemed to be emerging from the walls, as if the very darkness around them had come to life.

“We have a problem,” Karsen said under his breath.

Eutok pulled out his battle axe and backed up, as did Karsen. He didn’t reach around for his war hammer. The tunnels were narrow and he didn’t think there would be sufficient space to swing it. Instead he kept the Minosaur horn up in a ready stabbing position. “Yes. I was noticing.”

“The Truller. Back to the Truller.”

Karsen didn’t bother to point out the obvious flaw with the plan: The Truller wasn’t functioning. Eutok was going to need at least a few minutes to fix it, and it seemed unlikely that whatever was converging on them was going to provide him that opportunity.

But there was no choice. They were cut off from the way they’d come. Besides, the Crossing was the only means at their disposal of getting to the Spires. If they were going to find Jepp, then retreat was not an option.

They backed up as quickly as they could, and then from around the corner, from the direction that the Truller car was waiting for them, there were more sounds, more scraping, and this was accompanied by the unmistakable sounds of derisive laughter. It was high-pitched and nervous and yet not really nervous because whatever was stalking them unquestionably had the upper hand.

By that point there was no question in Karsen’s mind what was approaching them from either side. “Piri,” he whispered.

Eutok nodded. “Aye. Piri.”

Hearing the name of their race spoken aloud, the Piri gave up any pretense of caution. They emerged from the shadows, their fingertips rubbing together in anticipation, their lips drawn back to reveal their fangs. They were deathly pale, and there were dozens upon dozens of them, far more than Eutok and Karsen could possibly handle. Above ground, perhaps, but not here, not in their lair.

They killed the Minosaurs. The Minosaurs came here and wiped out all the humans, and endeavored to settle here, and a colony of Piri made it here through tunnels that the Trulls had constructed, and they emerged during the night and killed and drank the Minosaurs. Poor bastards probably never knew what hit them.

But we’re going to know.

“Stay back!” Eutok shouted, and then he waved his axe threateningly and bellowed, “Stay back! Or let he who would be the first to die come at me!”

They attacked en masse.

the upper reaches of suislan

Demali, daughter of the chief
 of the Serabim, fled down the mountain as quickly as her furry legs would allow her to.

The wind and the snow whipped fiercely around her, and the passages through which she was moving were treacherous, at times narrow, at other times slippery, and all too often a combination of the two. Occasionally she would stop to catch her breath, and at those times she would flatten herself against the mountain’s walls in hopes that her blondish-white fur would enable her to blend in.

It isn’t true…it cannot be true…
The same words kept floating through her head, telling her that the things Akasha said had to be mistakes or misunderstanding or in some other way not related to reality. But the things he said had made so much sense, and he had seemed so sure. Why would he lie? Why would he make up such things?

The answer was obvious: To divide her from her father. That brought her back, though, to the whys of the situation. Why would he be interested in trying to drive a wedge between her and her father? What would he have to gain from that?

Nothing. He had nothing to gain. It made no sense for him to take such actions, which for Demali underscored the likelihood that everything he had told her was the absolute truth. All the more reason, then, for her to get as far from her father as she possibly could. At the very least, it would give her time to think.

The wind blew even more fiercely. Darkness painted the skies above her, and Demali whimpered, afraid. She had never been off on her own like this before. The mountains of her homeland, always so familiar to her, now seemed foreign and alien. Every step was fraught with peril, and she knew it was all in her own mind, but she couldn’t help herself.

Something blocked out the moonlight.

She looked up and gasped.

A Zeffer was hovering above her, its surface rippling in the wind. A rider was astride it, but she couldn’t make out who it was. Someone else was being held by one of the Zeffer’s long tentacles and being lowered down to the narrow path upon which she stood. She was able to discern who that individual was all too easily.

“Get away!” she howled above the wind. “Get away!”

Her warnings were not heeded, and moments later her father, Seramali, had been deposited on the narrow path in front of her. The Zeffer, guided by its Rider, floated up and away, leaving the two of them alone.

“Where,” he said, “do you think you’re going?”

“I need to get away! I need to think!”

“Think about what?” He was clearly trying to sound reasonable, but there was clear irritation in his voice. “What did Akasha tell you?”

“What makes you think he told me anything!”

“An educated guess.” His fur was rippling in the wind. He tried to smooth it out, which simply looked ridiculous. “Demali…”

“He told me you killed Pavan’s parents! That you had them killed! That they had no desire to see their son become a Keeper and did not want to turn him over to you, and you killed them because of it!”

“Demali!”

“And then you let Pavan believe all these years that his parents had abandoned him! Is it true?”

“Demali, you have to understan—”

“Is it true?!”

He hesitated, emotions warring with each other on his face, and then he shrugged and said, “Yes.”

“Oh my gods—”

“They left me no choice!” he shouted above the winds. “They were going to take him away! They were going to leave with him and find another tribe to live with! Is that what you would have wanted for us? For Akasha’s heir to depart? I know how you feel about him. If his parents had their way, he would not have been here for you to be with!”

“But that doesn’t excuse…”

“Yes, it does,” he said forcefully. “I am the chief of this tribe of Serabim. Anything I do to benefit this tribe is excused! I have to make the decisions that no one else can make! Pavan’s parents refused to acknowledge that! I had to do it!”

“You’re a monster! That is what you are. Nothing but a monster!”

“Am I?” Seramali’s face twisted into a sneer. “Akasha knew of it! He knew all this time. Pavan’s mentor knew what I had done, and he allowed Pavan to believe it. What of that, eh? Why did Akasha not tell him?”

“Because he said he was waiting for Pavan to reach his twenty-first cycle! To reach his first communion with the Zeffers. Once he accomplished that, he was going to trust Pavan with the knowledge. He didn’t know that you were going to betray us!”

“I’ve betrayed nothing and no one!” Becoming impatient with Demali and the entire situation, he grabbed at her arm. “Come here!”

She yanked her arm clear of him, shouting, “No! Get away!”

“Demali, I have had more than enough of this…”

“You turned Pavan over to them! To the Mandraques! This whole thing is your fault! I’ve heard you through the years! Do you think I haven’t? Your mutterings about how our people have exiled themselves here! How we could do so much more with the right alliances! How you did not believe that the Overseer was as all powerful as others say!”

“You are distorting my…”

“The Mandraques, father? You allied with the Mandraques? Are you insane?”

“The Mandraques have a vision for the Damned World!” he said. “And it is a vision that does not include the Firedraques, with their endless treaties and attempts to deprive us of our true nature. So we are going to do something about them, and about every Mandraque who is spineless enough to be in their service! And everything is in motion, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it because it’s already happening, and we are going to lead the Serabim to greatness, with you or without you!”

“It’s definitely going to be ‘without’!”

“You are right about that!”

He lunged for her then, and this time when he grabbed her, Demali did not simply try to pull away. Instead she pushed back, shoving hard, and she let out a challenging roar. Seramali howled back, his voice carrying, and he slammed her up against the snow covered surface of the mountain. He pinned her there with one hand and she saw that in his other hand was a knife.

He drove the blade forward and Demali twisted her body. It grazed her torso but not deeply enough to cause any damage. He tried to pull it back, to assault her again. Demali shifted her weight, bracing her feet, and the next thing she knew she had his arm immobilized, trapped between her own arm and her body. Seramali shouted her name in fury and now he was the one who was trying to pull away.

She drew back a fist and hesitated only a moment before, with a roar, she drove it into Seramali’s jaw. Seramali reeled, his eyes wide in pain. He looked stunned for a moment, and then before she could strike him again, he recovered his wits and head butted her, slamming his forehead into her face. She cried out, staggered, and he tried to slip out of her grasp so that he could bring the knife around again. But even though he was the stronger of the two, she was quicker of hand and nimbler of mind. She managed to position herself so that she caught his wrist and bent it back and around. Her leverage advantage more than compensated for his superior strength. The knife clattered to the path and Demali, for good measure, sank her teeth into her father’s arm.

Seramali howled like the damned, and that, as it turned out, was the last straw.

There was a rumbling from overhead, a noise that the Serabim knew all too well. Demali was momentarily startled by it, fear striking her in a way that even her father’s attempts to murder her had not, and Seramali chose that moment to pull loose from her. He drove his foot forward and caught her in the pit of the stomach, knocking her backwards. As his daughter hit the ground, the ground shook furiously under Seramali’s feet. He turned and saw an avalanche of ice and snow, hurtling not just from down the path, but from overhead.

There was an overhang about ten feet above him that was projecting outward. Seramali leaped upward, sinking the claws of his hands and feet into the icy wall. He crushed his body against the mountainside as a sheet of white descended past him.

It was only at that moment, with his daughter’s death imminent, that the immensity of what he was doing apparently truly began to sink in on Seramali. “No! Wait! I was just trying to scare you! I…I never truly wanted to…” With a frightened and alarmed cry, he reached out toward her. It was too late. In a cascade of snow and ice, Demali was knocked off the narrow path and sent plummeting off the mountain. Her white, furred body blended in with all the snow around her and within seconds she had disappeared from view.

Seramali turned away, hugging the wall for long moments until the last of the snow and ice fell past him and left him clinging there, sad and pathetic alone.

He sobbed then for as long as his grief as a father would permit him to.

He sobbed for about ten seconds.

Then he stepped down, brushed himself off, and worked to make his way back up the side of the mountain, already determining exactly what he was going to say to explain to his people that Demali had, as near as he could tell, slain Akasha out of some rage-induced haze and then thrown herself to her death when reason had returned to her.