That was its undoing. The beast’s talons caught in a Wolverine’s jerkin. Just for a second, but that was long enough to unbalance the monster. Crashing to lie dazed on the stairs, it couldn’t even shapeshift. A groaning trooper rolled over, yellow cloth draped over his arms. Another came to help him and just as the demonic creature jackknifed upright, the curtain billowed over his head.
At once it too began to transform into a snake but, by now, enough of the orcs had recovered to give it a pounding. The stink of its black blood rose thickly into the air. Steaming faintly through the fabric, it died.
With that, the dazzling pain was lifted from the band’s minds. Most of them were able to stand, or at least to hang on to a less injured comrade. This time it was Jup who led the way, advancing one step at a time on the overturned insect that obstructed the stairs beneath them. He brought down his weapon on its neck but the metal clanged off its jointed scales. Acid filled the Wolverines’ minds again, its keenness quickly dampening as Serapheim and Sanara came down as close as they dared.
“You dare to challenge me?”
the Sluagh shrieked into their minds, so fiery it darkened their vision. It renewed its frantic scrabbling but still couldn’t right itself.
“Damn right, I dare,” Jup snapped, hammering at it blindly.
His blow tipped it over a fraction. Before the dwarf could blink it was spidering straight up the wall above his head. A scorpion tail slashed down at him.
That was its undoing. The extra weight made it bottom heavy. It skidded downwards and landed on Haskeer’s rail. Its own weight drove the makeshift spear through its body. The top burst through the dome where its skull should have been. A pulpy mess fountained out, raining down in sticky black globs.
Stryke sank down onto a step, leaning his back against the balustrade. “Good work, everybody.”
The orcs were rejoicing, slapping each other’s backs or just grinning as they tottered to their feet.
Serapheim spoiled it. “Don’t celebrate too soon. It’s almost dawn and we still have to make it down to the cellars.”
Trying not to get any of the disgusting ichor on them, orcs and humans clambered down over the Sluagh’s body. It wasn’t easy on the spiral stairs, but they managed it, eventually reaching the floor of the great hall where they were captured the day before.
Crouching behind the railing, Stryke watched a dozen Sluagh going about their business. In ones and twos they were heading sluggishly in different directions. All would be lost if just one decided to come their way, but miraculously none did. Then the last group had crossed into one of the shadowy arches and none of the hideous creatures was in sight.
Serapheim hissed, “Quick! This way!” and they set off at a lope across the vast hall. They made for another staircase on the far side and began running up it.
“Hold on,” Stryke said. “I thought we were heading for the cellars. Why are we climbing stairs?”
“A small diversion for weapons.” He motioned for the orcs to be still as they reached a wide gallery overlooking the hall. “See that corridor about halfway along? It leads to the armoury. Stay alert. There are other Sluagh about.”
Indeed there were. Once more, grey-skinned horrors were going about their daily activities below. Crouching, the Wolverines kept in the shadows as they tiptoed along the gallery.
Typically, the way to the armoury was a maze of stairs and passages. But at least this part of the palace seemed to be deserted. The yellow light was patchy here, the dust deep underfoot, muffling their footsteps.
Serapheim and Sanara drew to a halt by yet another bend. The man made a gesture to Stryke, who peered round at what lay ahead.
“Two of them, either side of a door,” he reported in a whisper. Using the band’s hand signals, he split his forces. Jup, Coilla and Haskeer were to take the further creature. He and Alfray would lead half the grunts against the gryphon-headed monster nearest them.
This time the fight was brief. It was much easier to attack when all the warband could come at the Sluagh at once. The creatures themselves were pinned against the wall with no place to retreat. Despite the lancing headaches it didn’t take long before the monsters were no more than an oozing mush.
Stryke gestured to Serapheim to go first. The humans opened the door onto an armoury like no other. More than half the weapons weren’t even things the orcs recognised. They headed straight for the ranks of spears and pikes clipped to the wall. As they went further, daylight from an iced-up window reflected off a heap of metal on the floor.
“My axe!” Jup exclaimed joyfully, sweeping up the butterfly-headed weapon. Soon, each of them had back the arms the Sluagh had taken the day before. In the more exotic part of the armoury Sanara and Serapheim helped themselves to bulbous tubes of what looked like glass.
Pillaging done, Serapheim guided them down a different way. Stryke got the feeling that this had once been the servants’ area, for the stairs were of rough granite and the walls were plain.
The air, already cold, began to grow damp. There was a smell of decay, and mould began to appear in corners. It was beaded with frost. The square windows no longer showed daylight but the strange blue of the glacier outside. Then there were no more windows and they realised they were underground. Eventually they found themselves in the palace’s cavernous cellars. Creeping through a labyrinthine series of tunnels, they had to watch their footing, for ice slicked the stone. Ahead there was more of the yellow glow. The band stopped while Jup scouted cautiously. “There’s eight Sluagh in front of the weirdest doors you’ve ever seen,” he reported.
Again Stryke detailed the band to separate targets. With swords, pikes and axes the Wolverines felt much happier about attacking a large force. Even so it was a bloody struggle. The Sluagh came at them with claws and webs of agony. Serapheim and Sanara edged round the walls, trying to get behind the monsters. When they did, their glass tubes began to glow eerily. Bolts of light shot from them. There was a deafening explosion and suddenly it was raining Sluagh blood. Then it was all over.
“Useful weapon,” Coilla remarked admiringly.
Jup had been right. The doors formed a circle set deep into the rock. Once again, there was no obvious handle but ten little dimples were set into the frosty metal. It was Sanara who matched her fingertips to the depressions and pushed.
The doors swung back. Ducking, Serapheim led them inside. They found themselves in a doorway that must have burrowed ten feet through the rock.
Inside was the portal.
It stood, a platform canopied in granite, within a ring of standing stones. Here and there jewels winked in spiral patterns on the floor of the dais. Others glimmered from all the stones but one, which looked somehow dead. Some of the gems were the size of a pigeon’s egg.
Haskeer bent down to caress a huge sapphire but recoiled, a look of confusion on his features as coloured lights swirled up into the musty air.
There was no hint of what the portal might do, but Stryke shivered all the same.
Coilla stopped. “What the hell is
that?
”
Serapheim said absently, “Something that’s stood here for a long time.”
The last of the warband crowded into the room. “Secure these doors,” Stryke ordered.
It took five grunts to do it. When the doors slammed shut a hollow boom shook the ground. Now the only light was the rainbow flicker from the jewels.
When it was done, Stryke turned to the man, who stood with his arm around the Queen’s shoulders. “All right, Serapheim. It’s time you explained things.”
Serapheim nodded. He and Sanara sat on the edge of the jewel-encrusted platform. “Think of this world as being just one of many others,” he began. “An infinite number. Many of them would be more or less like this one. Many more would be unimaginably different. Now picture all these worlds existing side by side, stretching out forever. As though they had been laid out on an endless plain.” He checked the faces of his audience to see if they were following. “Long ago, something fractured this plain. It left a gap, if you like, a corridor that beings could use, like mice between the walls of a house. This portal is one entrance to that corridor.”
“So it was made by mice then?” Haskeer piped up.
The brighter ones took a moment to explain it to him in a more basic way. Finally he seemed to understand.
“Who found the portal, I don’t know,” Serapheim continued. “Nor who might have adorned it in this way. That was long ago, too. But the sorceress Vermegram, mother of Sanara here, and Jennesta and Adpar, rediscovered it in more recent times. She also discovered that with the aid of her magic she could actually see some of the other plains, as Stryke unwittingly has.”
“What do you mean?” Stryke said.
“Your dreams.”
“How did you know I’ve been having dreams?”
“Let’s just say that I am attuned to the energies of the earth, and knew you had made that connection.”
Stryke was speechless.
“The point is that they were not dreams. They were glimpses of another place. A place of orcs.”
“I had another dream recently,” Stryke confessed. “It wasn’t about the . . . orc world. I was in a tunnel at the start, then I broke out of that into a strange landscape. Mobbs was there.” By way of explanation he added, “A gremlin scholar we met.”
All this was news to the Wolverines, and Stryke could see he’d have some explaining to do later.
“That dream would have been inspired by the instrumentalities’ power too,” Serapheim ventured. “The tunnel represents death and rebirth.”
Stryke didn’t know about that. He only hoped Mobbs would find peace.
“But the point is that this portal has been here since before the ice came,” Serapheim went on. “The Sluagh’s numbers have been dwindling since the climate changed. They have tried in vain to activate the portal in order to return to their world.”
“And you want to
stop
them getting away?” Coilla said.
“I want to stop them having control of the portal. It would enable them to send conquering hordes into untold other worlds. That’s unthinkable.”
“This is a load of horse-shit,” Haskeer sneered. “You said you’d
show
us something.”
“That’s why I brought you to the portal,” Serapheim replied. “Without the stars, I can’t activate it. But the vortex within can be made to give a view of the parallel worlds.” He moved to it and did something at one of the stones. They couldn’t see what.
Stryke’s jaw dropped. There were gasps and exclamations.
A picture that moved, like a window on to a landscape, had appeared in the air. The scene it showed was unmistakably the world of Stryke’s dreams. The verdant hills and valleys, mighty full-leafed forests and sparkling blue seas. There were hundreds of orcs battling in the sort of raid that blooded young warriors. Then views of orcs in rough-gamed carousing before roaring fires.
Stryke’s strongest thought was that he wasn’t insane. What he had been seeing was a vision of . . . home.
The picture dissolved in a glitter of golden motes and was gone.
“Now do you see?” Serapheim said. “
All
the elder races have their own worlds.” He stared straight into Jup’s eyes. “And that includes dwarfs.”
Now the scene showed orc hatchlings laughing as they practised with their first wooden swords, their birth-mothers looking on proudly from the doors of longhouses.
“In the beginning the portal was just a kind of window that let Vermegram see as you are seeing. But as she observed the orc world, she conceived the idea of using your naturally militaristic race for her own ends. At last she . . . found a way to bring a number of your race through the portal, activating it with magic. She wanted to establish an army of super warriors she could control by sorcery.” He paused. “The next part you might not favour. Something went wrong and the orcs she transported were altered in the process. They remained just as warlike but their intelligence was diminished, a defect that continued through subsequent generations.”
Haskeer thrust his jaw out belligerently. “You saying we’re stupid?”
“No, no. You’re . . . as you should be. The one who is a throwback is you, Stryke. A sport. You’re the closest to the orcs on your race’s home world.”
“If orcs were . . . changed going through that thing in the first place,” Alfray pointed out, “what’s to stop it happening again? Is it safe?”
“Quite safe. The accident, shall we call it, happened because of Vermegram’s inexperience with the portal. The instrumentalities prevent it occurring again.”
Suddenly they heard a heavy pounding on the door.
“It will take time for even them to get through that,” he judged. “Let me finish quickly. Vermegram meant only to bring orcs into this world. But activating the portal meant that beings in other worlds who had access to their own portals could also come here. I suspect that for most it was an accident. In its natural state, an invisible cleft in space and time, a portal, is often impossible to detect. It would be easy to be swept into one unawares.”
“Just a minute,” Coilla interrupted. “Vermegram was a nyadd, wasn’t she? So how could she be here before the —”
“No, she wasn’t a nyadd. She was human.”
“But everybody says . . .” She cast an eye at Sanara. “Her offspring. They’re symbiotes, aren’t they? Where did they get their nyadd blood?”
“When they were in her womb. A nyadd colony had been established here by then.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She found a way to insert nyadd seed into the forming child she was carrying.”
“Why would she do such a thing?”
“What interested her was the fact that nyadds always give birth to triplets. She wanted that too, and thought she had isolated the tiny particle of nyadd matter that caused it. Shortly after, the sole child she carried mutated into a triple birth. This was done as much in a spirit of curiosity as out of a desire for three offspring.” He gave Sanara a sympathetic smile.
“She sounds a charmer,” Jup said.