*
*
*
Ruegger
and Sarnova stopped before a large boulder, twice the height of the Darkling
even on horseback. They’d gotten here by following the ledge as it wound around
to the other side of the mountain, where it became a trail. The far side of the
mount (which Ruegger had always envisioned
to be
just
as sheer and stark as the one in which the castle was planted) was
characterized by wooded areas and a more gentle slope.
In some places, there had been rockslides, and
if appearance was any judge these avalanches were regular occurrences; Ruegger
could see older layers of rocks buried beneath the newer ones. In some places,
certain rock formations that in the past had prevented an avalanche from going
any farther didn’t look as if they would survive much longer. However, in one
place, a large boulder seemed to have withstood the onslaught. Half buried in a
short, steep slope itself half-covered in scree, it stuck out proudly.
“So behind that stone is a tunnel that leads
into the catacombs?” Ruegger said. “That’s the secret entrance?” Off Sarnova’s
nod, he added, “And somewhere between this entrance and the catacombs is this creature
of yours.”
“The Sabo.”
Ruegger lit a cigarette and leaned back in his
saddle, savoring being outdoors. It was cold, but at the same time he wished
Danielle could be here to see it with him. The snow-covered mountain-top with
misty white peaks glimmering through the pale veil all around was quite
beautiful. Hard to imagine that just behind that boulder lurked a terror even
Roche Sarnova seemed in awe of.
“Tell about this thing,” he said.
For some reason, that relaxed the Dark Lord. “Here’s
the story. The Sabo—which is what I first heard it called, although I don’t
think it calls itself anything in particular—is not like anything you’ve ever
experienced before. It’s a living maze.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Sabo not only creates the maze, but it
lives in the labyrinth—is a
part
of
it.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ruegger
said.
“It’s intelligent, but not like we are. Its mind
doesn’t process information the same way ours do. In a way, it’s kind of
insectile. To it, we’re just food.”
“Even you?”
“No,” the Dark Lord said. “I’m the one that
rescued it. Without me, humans would’ve discovered it and destroyed it. It’s
their way, not that I blame them, at least in this. But when I saw humanity
becoming so spread-out—and especially at the first hint of mass media—I had the
Sabo brought here to begin a new labyrinth. Here it would be safe and I could
keep an eye on it. It’s ambitious, don’t let it fool you. It would make itself
known to humanity, as it did once before.”
“What happened then?”
“Long story.
The point is that, no
matter how strong it is, humans could find a way to destroy it—and if they
didn’t, it would be to their detriment. So I brought it here, figuring I could
use it to guard my emergency escape route.”
“What
is
it, exactly? What does it live
off of—blood, brain fluid, hearts, flesh, semen—what?”
“Fear.”
“
Fear
?”
“From what I know about it, yes,” said Sarnova.
“That’s why it creates the maze.”
“To trap its victims,
right.
Then what? Does it just let them run around, trying to find their way out until
they die?”
“Sometimes.
Usually the parasites
get to them first.”
“The parasites.”
“They’re creatures that live within the
labyrinth and feed off of the people that get trapped there. The Sabo allows
them only because they enhance the fear of its victims.”
Ruegger frowned. “This is where the Libertarians
will try to enter the Castle.”
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“No. If you enter it with me, it would assume
you to be my ally and in the future would leave you unharmed if you tried to
use it.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Not a bit.”
“Is that what you came out here to tell me, that
you don’t trust the man you want to be your heir?” Ruegger said.
“I wanted to tell you about the Sabo so that you
would realize the danger the Libertarians are in. After that, you’d leave some
signal to warn them off.”
“So,” Ruegger said slowly, “on the strength of
what you’ve just told me, the existence of a creature you won’t allow me to
examine, you expect me to call off the attack against you—the one thing that if
successful might get you to answer the truth about Ludwig’s death. Is that
right?”
“The Sabo will kill them, Ruegger. It’s your
duty to your friend and her army to lead them away from a trap, which is
exactly what the Sabo is. The last time I entered it, the labyrinth was eight
stories tall and very wide … and full of parasites.”
Ruegger passed a hand across his face. “I need
to see this thing.”
With a snap of his fingers, the Dark Lord
summoned a knight, who held the reins of his reserve horse. With a slight bow,
the knight handed the reins to his king and withdrew.
Ruegger could see Colonel De Soto on his stumpy horse,
and though the faceplate of his helmet concealed the colonel’s expression
Ruegger could feel the man’s scowl nonetheless. For his own reasons, De Soto didn’t like this
knight displaying such deference to Roche Sarnova, even though the knights as a
whole seemed to hold the colonel in some regard.
Unsmiling, Sarnova examined the animal for a
moment,
then
turned his eyes on Ruegger. “This horse
will go into the tunnel, where it will be killed inside the Sabo. If you let
yourself see through its eyes, you’ll catch a brief glimpse of one of the
strangest creatures in our realm.
The only one of its kind
that I know of.”
He gestured to the boulder. “Would you like to do the
honors?”
Ruegger hesitated. On the one hand, he knew that
he could lift the rock, but on the other he wasn’t so sure he wanted the Dark
Lord to know what he was capable of.
“Ruegger,” said Sarnova, who looked slightly
amused. “You don’t have to pretend around me. Besides, I’d expect any shade
worth his salt to be able to lift it.”
Ruegger used his mindthrust to roll the big stone
out from where it was lodged, and as it rolled forward, it displaced smaller rocks,
which tumbled over each other like pups fighting over a teat. They kicked up a
cloud of snow and dust, momentarily obscuring the slope.
As this cloud died down, a thin ring of black
appeared behind the boulder, hinting at the tunnel beyond.
Ruegger let the rocks settle for a few seconds,
then lifted the boulder high into the air, over the heads of the assembled
knights, and as the rock passed over, it temporarily blocked out the night sky.
He could feel other psychic talons hovering close by just in case he decided to
set his payload down on the king. Using all the grace he cared to grant the
job, Ruegger placed the boulder in the middle of a large nest of bushes.
“Well done,” said Sarnova.
Ruegger blew out a stream of smoke. “If we’re
going to kill the poor horse, let’s do it now before I have to think too long
about it.”
“Here goes.”
The animal crept up to the mouth of the tunnel,
now revealed as a hole ten feet in diameter, and hesitated before entering.
Throwing down his cigarette, Ruegger extended his mind into that of the animal
and prodded it forward, into blackness.
*
*
*
Max
and Claude were livid over the disappearance of their employees. The vanishing
act meant that inexperienced people like Sophia had to be promoted just to
ensure that things ran at all.
Nevertheless, she enjoyed taking a more active
role, despite the fact that she didn’t really know what the hell she was doing.
And though her part (if it could be called that) was so meager it might as well
not have been at all, she felt a rush of adrenaline at performing in front of a
large number of people; it wasn’t something she’d done in quite a while.
When the show ended (to the great relief of
everyone, audience included) she joined hands with the rest of the cast and
crew and bowed. The clapping wasn’t overwhelming, but it was there. When the
curtains closed for the final time, no one shouted for an encore.
Afterwards, Sophia helped the rest of the troupe
clean up, a procedure which seemed slow and ever-more depressing as the realization
of what had happened sunk into the collective consciousness of the troupe and
its hangers-on.
When the clean-up was complete, the mood seemed
to shift to the satisfaction of just being alive. By the time she slipped back
into her party clothes for the now-famous Post-Show Blow-Out—which had become a
nightly event in the Castle—the general mood had ripened into anticipation.
The troupe and its groupies migrated upstairs to
the warren of rooms they occupied, and Sophia saw that her group wasn’t the first
to arrive, but it quickly became apparent that tonight’s celebration would be
delayed—if it occurred at all.
The rooms were now a crime scene.
At the entrance, several Castle Guards
interviewed those who had arrived early and allowed themselves to be cornered.
Those that had had the foresight to evade the Guards wandered in and out of the
main doorway, talking amongst
themselves
. Of these,
Maximillian seemed the most moved, although he channeled his emotion into anger.
Sophia marched up to him until she was so close
that her presence forced him to forget exactly what he’d been yelling about to
the unfortunate underling at his side. Quick to recognize that an escape was
possible, the underling disappeared into the general milieu.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Sophia demanded.
Max led her through the busy doorway and down
several tunnels.
After several twists and turns, she said,
“Damnit, Max,
let
go of me.”
Without breaking stride, he complied and kept plowing
forward through a thickening sea of people. Sophia, pausing only for a moment,
followed. She smelled blood ahead.
Pushing her way through the last small archway,
she entered the room from which all the activity stemmed. This room was more
rectangular than domed or rounded, as were most of the rooms, and apparently
the main reason why this room had been chosen was that it had more corners than
the others.
Max reached out his hand. Taking it, she stepped
to his side and viewed the carnage in silence.
Taurke
, one of the missing
extras, hung grotesquely from the center of the room, blood congealing on the
floor below him. Whoever had done this to him had somehow stretched his limbs
in a most unnatural way so that, though his torso was mostly intact, his hands
were nailed into two (respectively) upper, facing corners of the room. His feet
were nailed into the lower corners.
The effect was to give his limbs an almost
rubber- or root-like quality. Of course, they couldn’t really be as long as
they appeared. Whoever had done this must have added some extra bones to
flesh-out the illusion. Other, more subtle (if that is a word that had any
bearing here whatsoever) atrocities had been committed to his being, but the
Ice Queen chose not to see them.
“This is
all your
fault, you know,” Maximillian said.
“Fuck you, Max.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Sophe. We both know
who did this, and the reason why.
Because we did you and the
albino a favor.”
“From what I’ve heard, he didn’t have to twist
your arm. All you wanted was Vistrot’s blood.”
His head darted around like a snake’s, making
sure no one was within ear-shot, and he hissed, “That’s right, sweets. That’s
all
I wanted. I didn’t want to piss off
the Last of the Roving Balaklava!”
“Well, friend, it looks like they’re pissed off,
alright. And this is probably just for starters. After all,
Taurke
was only one of four.”
He squeezed her hand, hard. “Eight.”
She reciprocated the pressure on his hand until,
with a gasp, he released her.
“Eight?” she said.
“They didn’t stop with Vance. And it’s not just
me they’re mad at, sister. Have you taken a look at this fucking room?”
“Yes.” She was the Ice Queen, and her voice was
like ice at its most treacherous, almost to the point of breaking.
“It’s my room,” she said. “And up until tonight,
it was also Danielle’s.”
Chapter 19
Very
slowly, the horse stepped through the tunnel, taking extra care because the
surroundings were so dark.
Suddenly, light appeared up ahead
in the form of two torches jutting from the rock wall on both sides of a large,
round, metal door, if such it could be called.
To Ruegger, it almost
looked like a vertical manhole cover, except for the fact that it was much
wider and covered by all sorts of elaborate inscriptions: ancient runes, he
knew.
Warnings, most likely.
The only thing the door
lacked was a handle of some sort.
Removing himself from the mind of the horse for
a moment, Ruegger turned to Sarnova and said, “What’s the door for?”
Sarnova, who had also
been seeing through the eyes of the animal, blinked a few times and said, “To
keep the Sabo in, of course.”
“Surely it can tunnel around the door ...”
“Not with the spells that the door enforces.”
Ruegger raised an eyebrow. “Spells?” Next
Sarnova would be telling him stories of wizards and witches.
Dragons,
too, probably.
Ruegger didn’t put much stock in such things. He’d run
into a few sorcerers in the abunka underground, but they were charlatans, one
and all, surely, if not always entirely human. And though he was familiar with
telekinesis and the like, he knew these to be mere powers of the mind, whereas
a belief in actual magic symbolized a leap of faith that he wasn’t willing to
take.
Seeing the look of skepticism on his face,
Sarnova said, “It’s okay to believe, Ruegger.”
“I wish I could.”
“You can’t tell me that the Sacred Pillars of
the Sahara never aroused your curiosity.
And our own Pools of Pleasure?”
“I suppose …”
“You’ve been confronted with the truth many
times, Ruegger. You’ve just never consciously acknowledged it.”
“Are you trying to tell me that magic is real?”
“I’m not telling you, I’m showing you.”
“Next you’ll be telling me elves and dragons
exist, too.”
Mischief—actual mischief—twinkled in Sarnova’s
eyes. “Maybe I’ll show you
them
, as
well.”
Ruegger tried (but not very hard) to hide his
impatience. “Is that the sole reason for the door, to keep the Sabo in?”
“It’s also to keep lesser creatures from
entering through this side. When I want to feed the Sabo, I send humans in from
the front way. This portal is primarily used by the
Sangro Sankts
, and
they want to keep it that way.”
“You mean only a kavasari can open the door?”
“No. A strong shade of any species could get the
job done. Would you like to test your strength?”
“Not really.”
“Still tired from the last one, I bet.”
Ruegger said nothing. He would not be goaded
into wearing himself out. Not only had he been recently bled and starved, but
now the Dark Lord was getting him to do taxing psychic tricks, making him
weaker than he’d been to start with. Whatever was going on, Sarnova didn’t want
him at his peak.
“You go ahead, Roche. I think I’ll sit this one
out.”
He let himself drift back into the mind of the
horse, let the animal’s eyes show him the bright torches and the ancient,
circular door. The metal disc rolled to one side, disappearing into a slot
carved into the wall—and leaving a tunnel in its wake. Though torches burned
along the walls in different places, the horse could not see very far down the
tunnel, as the first major twist appeared after about thirty feet.
From Ruegger’s side, he heard Roche Sarnova say,
“Shall we?”
On the one hand, Ruegger hated to send the horse
to its death, but it might be just this sort of morality on which the Dark Lord
depended. If Sarnova was bluffing and there was no Sabo, then that changed
things radically, whereas if the king were telling the truth Ruegger would have
to call off Malie’s attack … which probably wasn’t a bad idea anyway.
Nonetheless, he had to know for sure whether or not Sarnova spoke the truth.
If Ruegger could actually trust the Dark Lord, that in itself could
make a world of difference to upcoming events.
“Proceed,” he said.
The horse moved forward. As it rounded the bend,
several large archways opened to either side. The horse passed them nervously.
Soon the main corridor spilled out into another,
larger tunnel, leaving the horse to decide which way to go—right or left? It
chose right. However, after passing many other archways, this new avenue turned
out to be nothing other than a cul-de-sac.
Partially guided by the mind of Roche Sarnova,
the animal made its way back to one of the archways it had passed and passed
under it, slowly. Torches blazed along the stone walls at uneven spaces,
throwing eerie light on the scene.
None of the parasites that Sarnova had spoken of
presented themselves, but perhaps they were waiting for the right moment. At
any rate, the horse only grew more anxious, and since Ruegger was in its mind
goose bumps sprang up all along his arms. He could even feel a few beads of
sweat beginning to form on his brow.
To distract himself, he started examining the
labyrinth in greater detail. It was elaborate and larger than he would’ve
thought it to be. Twice the horse passed ramps that led up to different levels
of the maze, and, once Ruegger glimpsed a large spiral staircase that led
who-knows-where. Perhaps it could deliver someone to all eight stories of this
labyrinth, if it was that large. Later on, the horse crossed over a narrow bridge,
below which roared an angry red river. Large hungry shapes moved in its waters.
The horse wandered into a part of the maze where
the walls were no longer stone, but damp and earthen. In fact, the tunnel
seemed as if it had been formed by a giant worm tearing right through a sea of
mud, which for all Ruegger knew was quite possible. Before he could ask the
king why the earthen tunnels didn’t simply collapse, some large dark creature
shot out of the ceiling directly ahead of the horse and plummeted down toward
the muddy floor, which opened before it. The thing vanished, and the hole
closed up behind it, leaving what looked to be solid ground behind.
In the brief moment that Ruegger had to observe
the creature, he had seen a large worm-like beast with fins and tendrils and a
large gaping mouth, surrounded by bristles like those of a catfish, which the
thing vaguely resembled. Its mouth sported scores of large sharp teeth that
would’ve scared even the most monstrous of fish, though.
Snorting in fear, the horse leapt back,
shivering.
In the outside world, Sarnova shouted to
Ruegger, “That was a parasite.
One of many.
I call
them mud-sharks.”
“Why didn’t it eat the horse?”
“The Sabo wouldn’t allow it; the horse isn’t
scared enough to have satisfied it.
Yet.”
“So the Sabo can control these parasites?”
“To an extent.
Here, this horse isn’t
going anywhere without a jump-start. Let me give it a spur.”
The animal forgot its fear and started off down
the tunnel once
more,
leaving Ruegger time to the
think about what he’d just seen. Had he just seen proof of the Sabo’s
existence?
Maybe.
If he had, perhaps he should cancel
this expedition and allow the horse to turn around. At least then it would have
a fighting chance. Before he could explore this option further, he heard
something large moving behind him—rather, behind the horse.
The animal swiveled. With the dim light, neither
Ruegger nor the horse could really appraise the new creature in any detail, but
whatever the assailant was, it was large.
Gargantuan.
A countless number of arms that sprouted from its rotting flank propelled the
new arrival swiftly down the passageway.
The creature
stunk
.
Fetid and unhealthy, like the air of a mass grave.
Ruegger tried to force the horse to look a
moment longer, but his psychic tricks couldn’t overpower the animal’s fear. It
turned and bolted down the corridor.
Without bothering to extricate himself from the
horse’s mind, Ruegger shouted to Sarnova, “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is that one
of the parasites or not?”
“It’s something I’ve never seen before.”
Bolting down corridor after corridor, the horse
struggled to outpace the monster,
who
followed.
“Faster,” Ruegger urged, suddenly hoping that
the horse made it. He’d seen what he needed to.
The horse ran hard. Sweat lathered it.
Constantly, its instincts told it to dart into one of the archways, but its
velocity was so great that stopping would’ve taken too long. It did encounter
many forks and in each case it chose the right path, perhaps at Sarnova’s
prompting.
It never lost the creature that pursued it; the
thing with all the arms could be heard scrambling even over the animal’s heavy
breathing.
The horse stumbled out into a large domed
chamber, maybe a hundred and fifty feet high at its highest point. This was not
the only tunnel that led into this room; in fact, a quick inspection showed at
least two dozen dark archways. Countless chains fell from the earthen ceiling,
a few coming almost all the way to the floor. From several of the chains that
ended maybe fifty feet off the floor, rusted cages dangled from large hooks. To
Ruegger, they almost looked like bird cages, except they were large enough to
hold a man. Even in the dim light, he could see the remains of several human
bodies.
So
this is where they come
, he thought.
The parasites drive them into this
room or others like it, and the humans use the chains to get up to those cages,
where they stay until they die. Meanwhile, the Sabo soaks up their fear like a
sponge.
The horse darted into the center of the chamber,
where it started circling nervously. The thing that had chased it here hadn’t
yet made itself visible to its prey, perhaps because the light was somewhat
brighter here.
Fins rose from the ground around the horse’s
feet. Maybe ten fins in all, they started circling the horse like sharks.
“Those are the
dorsals
of things like the one we saw awhile back,” Sarnova said.
Each about a yard high, the fins sprouted from
large swells below the muddy floor. Presumably the parasites were the cause of
those swells. As they circled the horse, the animal reared and lashed the air
with his hooves. When that didn’t work, it bolted twenty feet to the side. The
shapes beneath the mud followed. Again, they began circling.
Sick to his stomach, Ruegger said, “When will it
be scared enough for the Sabo to let them eat it?”
Before Sarnova could reply, a large strange
shape emerged from one of the archways. Without a doubt, Ruegger knew it to be
the thing that had chased the horse into this room, the creature that had
forced this confrontation. It was infinitely larger than the mud-sharks and
configured much differently.
It was composed of at least thirty human and
immortal bodies—bodies which had been threaded together and molded in such a
way as to create a whole new entity, a being with countless arms and legs and
tails and faces and mouths—and thousands of teeth, some jutting from the
snapping jaws of werewolf heads, or heads even more monstrous.
The bodies were those of zombies.
Amorphous, the creature seemed able to form many
different body designs. It
had
been
in its long worm-like form, but now it bunched up to became a towering predator
with several long, many-jointed legs and arms, something like a titanic scorpion
minus the tail. And there, amidst all the squirming body parts, a mouth shone
wetly, its three tongues dripping slaver to the floor. Fashioned from different
parts of many anatomies, the maw stretched almost five feet across, and
its
teeth would’ve made even a mud-shark cringe.
Ruegger knew instantly that this thing didn’t
belong in the world of the Sabo, not like the sharks did. It was of the
graveyard, of a world in which art and death were inextricably linked; and it
was definitely a work of art, no matter how surreal it might appear.
“God
damn
it,” shouted Sarnova, apparently
realizing it, too. “How the hell did
they
get in
here
?”
From behind (at least behind their human bodies;
Ruegger was beginning to grow disoriented), Colonel De Soto said, “You’d better
not be shouting at me, my lord. You’re the one who allowed those two to
return.” He had been monitoring the horse’s progress, too, then.
“I was counting on you to keep them from getting
up to their old tricks,” Sarnova said. “I’m holding you accountable.”
Still some mud-sharks circled the horse, but
most were swarming toward the invader. Ruegger had no question as to how the Balaklava would’ve found the Sabo in their underground
travels, but why would they chose to invade it? Of course, the answer was
obvious.