In the House of the Worm Read online

  Suddenly Annelyn felt Groff’s hand on his chest, pushing, pushing. “Back,” the knight whispered, oh-so-softly, and this time Annelyn gladly went deeper into the shadows. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

  Neither Vermyllar nor the Meatbringer was carrying a torch.

  “Get up,” the Meatbringer said. “Get up and walk. I’m not going to carry you.”

  Vermyllar rose unsteady and whimpering. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s dark. I can’t see. Don’t.”

  The Meatbringer pricked him with the knife. “In and to the left,” he said. “Feel if you can’t see, animal. Feel.” And Vermyllar went into the tunnel, groping for the wall, sobbing, seeming to look straight at Annelyn before he turned to the left. But the Meatbringer never glanced their way as he went by, prodding Vermyllar forward with his blade.

  To Annelyn it seemed a solid hour that he stood in the black of the middle tunnel, but it could only have been minutes. Finally the sound of Vermyllar’s protests and wails dwindled to a small noise down below them. Then Groff spoke. “No torch,” he said, and even his stern voice seemed shaken. “The man’s eyes are possessed by a groun.”

  “Are we going back?” Riess said.

  “Back?” Groff was outlined in the red light of the door. “No. No. But we must see. A torch, we must have a torch. We will catch them. We know the way he went, and the Manworm’s great-grandson was making much lament.”

  “Why does he want Vermyllar?” Annelyn said, in a whisper. His wits had fled him.

  “I can conjecture,” Groff said. “But we will see.” He gave orders, and the three of them began to roam the small length of burrow, feeling for torch grips. Riess found nothing but an air duct, but Annelyn’s hands finally closed over a familiar bronze fist. It held a torch.

  While Riess lit it, Annelyn turned to Groff. “A fist, the work of the yaga-la-hai, here, in the groun-runs. How is that, Groff?”

  “These were not always groun-runs. The worm-children carved these burrows, a million years ago. The grouns drove them upward in a great war, or so it is said. The burrows that have always been the grouns’ are different. Now the grouns cluster below, and the yaga-la-hai above; both were created many and strong, and both we and they have decayed, as all things great and small decay in the sight of the White Worm. So these tunnels and the Chambers of the Last Light and our Undertunnel are all empty where once they were full.”

  Riess, holding the torch, made the sign of the worm.

  “Come,” Groff said. “The burrow goes straight a long way, down and down, but it finally breaks, and we must not lose them.”

  So they began to walk—Riess with the torch and Groff with his ax, Annelyn clutching his stiletto—and they made good speed. The burrow was utterly empty: a long, wide stretch of hot-mouthed air ducts and broken bronze fists that clutched at air. Twice they passed bones—whether groun or human Annelyn could not tell; the rest was all dark nothingness. Finally, when they reached a juncture where many tunnels met and branched, they could hear Vermyllar’s weeping again, and they knew which way to choose.

  They followed for a long time, losing the sound twice in the maze of interconnecting burrows, but each time quickly retracing their steps when the sobs began to grow faint. These, Annelyn realized with a shiver, were the groun-runs, the real things, and he was in them, descending to infinity. His blue eyes grew wide and sharp, and he watched everything in the flickering torchlight: the black beckoning squares of the tunnels they passed, the endless corroded fists, row on row, the carpets of dust that lay thick in some places and were strangely absent in others. Noises, too, he heard, as he had when they waited for the Meatbringer: soft mutters and softer footsteps, growls, the stirring of impossible cold winds in tunnels not chosen, and a dim, distant rumble like nothing he had ever imagined. Real noises, phantoms, fevers of a nervous brain—Annelyn did not know. He only knew that he heard them, so that the empty burrows seemed to fill with dark and unseen life.

  There was no talk. They went down and around until Annelyn had lost track of their turnings. They descended twisted stone stairways, climbed down rusted ladders in echoing empty wells (always afraid that the rungs would snap), passed wide, slanted ramps, and vast galleries that swallowed the light of their torch, and furnished chambers where all the furniture was covered with dust and worm-rich rot. Once they walked through a high-ceilinged room much like a mushroom farm; but here the water-runs were dry and empty, and the long, sunken growing tanks held only a foul-smelling fungus that glowed a faint and evil green. Another hall they found was rich with tapestries, but each of the hangings was a gray rag that came apart at the touch.

  The noises went ahead of them. Always.

  Groff spoke only once, when they had stopped at the end of a bricked-in tunnel and were preparing to descend another of the round, black wells. “There are no grouns left,” he muttered, more to himself than to them. “These are the places they once swarmed, and now they are empty.” He shook his head, and his face was troubled. “The Meatbringer goes deep.”

  Neither Annelyn nor Riess replied. They found the rungs, and began to climb down. Then there were more tunnels.

  Finally, though, they seemed to lose the way. At first the noise was ahead of them—Vermyllar’s sobs, holding steady—but suddenly the sound grew less. Groff muttered something, and the three of them walked back to the last turning and chose another burrow. But they had gone only a few steps into the blackness when they lost the sound altogether. Back again they went, and into a third path; it proved silent and bricked-in.

  “This was the right way,” Groff insisted when they returned yet again to the junction, “the way we went first, though the noise did dwindle.” He led them back, and they heard Vermyllar again, but once again the sound began to fade after they had followed it a short way.

  Groff turned and paced down the tunnel. “Come,” he said, and Riess hurried to his side with the torch. The knight was standing next to an air duct, its breath warm around them. The torch flame danced. Annelyn saw that the duct had no gridding. Then Groff reached inside. “A rope,” he whispered.

  Suddenly Annelyn realized that the sounds were coming from the shaft.

  Groff fixed his ax to his belt, gripped the rope with both huge hands, and swung into the plunging dark. “Follow,” he ordered; then, hand under hand, he vanished below. Riess looked at Annelyn, his eyes frightened, questioning.

  “Spidersilk, no doubt,” Annelyn said. “It will be strong. Put out the torch and come after.” Then he, too, took the jerking rope.

  The shaft was warm, but not as warm as Annelyn had imagined; he did not burn. It was also narrower than he had thought; when he grew tired, he could brace his knees against one side and his back against the other, resting for a moment. The rope had a life of its own, with Groff climbing below him and Riess above, but it was strong and new and easy to hold onto.

  Finally, his feet kicked free; another level had been reached, and another grid was gone. Groff grabbed him and helped him out, and both of them helped struggling, panting Riess.

  They were in a small junction, where three tunnels met at the huge metal doors of a great chamber. But Annelyn saw in a glance that the rope was the only way here; all three burrows were bricked-in. It was easy to see; the chamber doors were open, and light streamed out.

  They watched from the shadows near the air duct, Groff crouching low with his ax in hand, Annelyn drawing his rapier.

  The chamber was a large one, perhaps the size of the Chamber of Obsidian; there all resemblance ended. Inside, the Meatbringer had mounted a throne, firing two torches that slanted from brackets atop the backrest. Their flickering light mingled with a stranger radiance, a glowering purplish gleam that came from huge fungus-encrusted globes along the walls. Vermyllar was visible, sobbing incoherently, manacled to a wheeled bed close to the Meatbringer. From time to time his body shook as he strained fitfully against the shackles that held him down, but his captor ignored his struggles.


  The rest of the chamber, in the curious mixed light, was like nothing Annelyn had ever encountered before. The walls were metal, time-eaten, rust-eaten, yet still bright in places. Panels of glass studded the high, dark flanks; a million tiny windows—most of them broken—winked at the flames. Along the side walls, fat transparent bubbles swelled obscenely near the ceiling. Some of these were covered by dripping, glowing growth; others were dry and broken; still others seemed full of some faintly moving fluid. A gulf of shadows and chaos lay between the walls. There were a dozen wheeled beds like the one Vermyllar was bound to, four huge pillars that rose to the ceiling amid a web of metal ropes and bars, a heavy tank of the sort the yaga-la-hai used for breeding foodworms, piles of clothing (some piles fresh, others covered by mold) and weapons and stranger things, metal cases with vacant glass eyes. In the center was the Meatbringer’s throne, a high seat of green-black stone. A theta of some impossibly bright silver metal was sunk into the backrest, just above his head.

  The Meatbringer had closed his eyes, and was leaning back on his throne. Resting, perhaps, Annelyn thought. Vermyllar still made noises; whimpers and groans and choking sounds, words that made no sense.

  “He is mad,” Annelyn whispered to Groff, certain that Vermyllar’s noise would cover their speech. “Or he soon will be.”

  “Yes,” Riess said, crawling close to him. “When are we going to save him?”

  Groff turned his head to face Riess. “We are not,” the bronze knight said, in a flat low voice. “He deserted us. He has no claim to my protection. It is better for the yaga-la-hai to watch and to follow, to see what the Meatbringer does with the great-grandson of a Manworm.” His tone gave no room for appeal or argument.

  Annelyn shivered, and moved away from Groff, who was once again watching intently with no flicker of movement. Briefly Annelyn had lost himself, allowed himself to trust and obey the older man, simply because Groff was a knight, because Groff knew the groun-runs. Suddenly he remembered his pride and his revenge.

  Riess came to him. “Annelyn,” he said, his voice trembling. “What can we do?”

  “Vermyllar brought this on himself,” Annelyn whispered. “But we shall rescue him, if we can.” He had no idea how—it was one thing for Groff to face the Meatbringer with his great ax, but if the knight would not help . . .

  Groff looked over his shoulder at them. He smiled.

  Annelyn saw with a start that inside, the Meatbringer had risen. He was undressing, stripping off his suit of milk-white grounskin and his cloak of colorless groun-hair. He turned his broad back to them, a well-muscled expanse of mottled flesh, while he tossed his clothing over an arm of his throne and rummaged through a pile of other clothes.

  “Groff,” Annelyn said firmly, “we must save Vermyllar, useless though he is. He amuses me. There are two of us, you know, and only one of you, and you need our help.” Riess, behind him, was making faint choking noises.

  Groff looked at them again, and sighed. “Do either of you know the way back up?” he asked, simply.

  Annelyn fell silent. He did not know the way back, he realized. They would be lost in darkness. “Riess,” he started to whisper.

  The Meatbringer pulled on new clothing and turned again toward Vermyllar. A knife was in his hand. He looked different. He wore a suit of fine mocha leather, and over his shoulders was draped a long cape of curling hair that glinted softly like spun gold in the firelight. He muttered something, deep in his throat, with a voice such as the grouns used in all the tales that Annelyn had ever heard.

  Vermyllar was suddenly shockingly sane. “No,” he shouted. “No! My grandfather was a son of the Manworm!”

  The Meatbringer slit his throat, and stepped nimbly aside as the blood came out in spurts and the body twitched. He caught some of the blood in a cup, and drank it with obvious satisfaction. The rest darkened the bed and ran across the floor, one trickle coming toward the worm-children as if it knew where they lurked in the shadow.

  When Vermyllar was quite still, the Meatbringer loosed his shackles, and hoisted the body up on one broad shoulder. Annelyn watched, frozen in shock, and it came to him suddenly how often the Meatbringer had walked among the yaga-la-hai, carrying a groun carcass in just that way.

  Groff glanced quickly around when the Meatbringer started toward them. None of the burrows offered even the promise of concealment. “Down the rope,” the knight whispered urgently.

  “Down?” Riess asked.

  “No,” said Groff. “Too late. He would find us still climbing, and cut the rope.” He shrugged and straightened and hefted his ax. “No matter. We know all we need. He is not of the yaga-la-hai, as those close to the Manworm suspected. He brings meat to both men and grouns, this Meatbringer.”

  Annelyn stood at Groff’s side, rapier in hand, balancing nervously on the balls of his feet. Riess, trembling, yanked free a knife. The Meatbringer appeared in the doorway, Vermyllar’s corpse slung over his shoulder.

  The three worm-children were cloaked by shadows, in the darkest part of the junction, while the Meatbringer had just come from a well-lit chamber. It was no advantage. He looked straight at them.

  “So,” he said, and he shrugged, letting Vermyllar’s body slide to the floor with a thunk. His own blade, long and just recently wiped clean of blood, materialized in his hand. “So,” he said again. “Do the yaga-la-hai now come this deep?”

  “Some,” said Groff, lifting his ax lightly. Annelyn felt strangely light-headed and confident; bloodlust coursed through him. He would have his revenge, and Vermyllar’s too. The Meatbringer could never stand before Groff. He was so squat and ugly, while the bronze knight was a near-giant, invulnerable even without his armor. Besides, he was there, and Riess too, though Riess hardly counted.

  “What do you want?” the Meatbringer said, in the coarse low voice Annelyn remembered so well from the masque.

  “To quiet your torch-tending tongue,” Annelyn blurted, before Groff could answer. The Meatbringer looked at him for the first time, and chuckled.

  “Who are you bringing meat to now?” Groff asked.

  The Meatbringer chuckled again. “The grouns, of course.”

  “Are you a man? Or a new kind of groun?”

  “Both. Neither. I have walked black tunnels alone for a long time. I was born a torch-tender, yes. But a special kind. Like the grouns, I see in total darkness. Like the yaga-la-hai, I can live and see in light. Both sorts of meat are pleasing.” He showed a row of yellowed teeth. “I am flexible.”

  “One other question, before I kill you,” Groff said. “The Manworm would know why.”

  The Meatbringer laughed; his thick body shook and the cape of golden ringlets danced on his shoulders. “The Manworm! You want to know, Groff, not your mindless master. Why? Because among the yaga-la-hai I am something less than a man, because among grouns I am something less than a groun. I am the first of the Third People. The yaga-la-hai decline, as do the grouns, but I go among both and plant my seed”—he looked at Annelyn—“in those like Caralee, and in the groun-women. Soon there will be others like me. That is why. And to know. I know more than your Manworm, or you, more than the Great Groun. You live lies, but I have seen and heard all who live in the House of the Worm, and I believe none of it. The White Worm is a lie, do you know that? And the Manworm. I think I even know how that came to be. A pleasant tale. Shall I tell you?”

  “The Manworm is the living flesh of the White Worm,” Riess said in a shrill, almost hysterical voice. “The priests shape him in that image, purifying, making him more fit to lead.”

  “And less fit to live,” the Meatbringer said. “Until the pain drives him mad or the surgery kills him. You, Groff? Do you believe that? Or you, freethinker? See. I do recall you.”

  Annelyn flushed and brandished his rapier. Groff was a fierce bearded statue of bronze-made-flesh. “So it is in the lore of the bronze knights,” he said, “and we remember things the Manworm has forgotten.”

  “It s
hocks me that the Manworm remembers anything,” the Meatbringer said. “But I have talked to knights, too, learned their ‘secret’ lore, listened to stories of a long-ago war. The grouns remember better. They have legends of the coming of the yaga-la-hai, who changed all the high burrows. The grouns are the First People, you know. The worm-children they call the Second People. I was a great puzzle to them at first, with my four limbs and my eyes that see, neither First nor Second. But I brought them flesh and learned their tongue, and so taught them of the Third People. You mock groun secrets, and in truth they are as rotting as you, yet they know things. They remember the Changemasters, their great enemies and the greatest friends of the yaga-la-hai, who wore the theta as a sigil, and in times long gone made the spiders and the worms and a thousand other things. Here, where I live, was where they sculptured and shaped the stuff of life, so the yaga-la-hai might live. Here they fashioned the blood worms that still afflict the grouns, the light-hunger that drives them upward to their deaths if they catch it, and the huge white eaterworms that multiply and grow more terrible every day. You, all of you, have forgotten these things, but the Changemasters were gods greater than your White Worm could ever be. Grouns flinch before the theta. With good reason. The yaga-la-hai do not remember this room and the grouns had forgotten where it was, but I found it, and slowly I learn its secrets. I learned about your Manworm here. After the grouns had brought darkness to the burrows and killed most of the Changemasters, one was left. But he had lost all the runes, and he despaired. Still, he was the ruler. The yaga-la-hai followed him. And he remembered how worms, a thousand kinds of worms, had been men’s best weapons against the grouns, and he knew how worms flourished better down here than men. So the last Changemasters trained the surgeon-priests in a few arts and had himself made into a great worm. Then he died. You see? He wanted to fashion the Third People. He was a Changemaster, but a poor one, an animal. Since then, all the leaders of the yaga-la-hai are fashioned into worms. But no Third People exist. Except for myself. As I learn more Changemaster secrets, I will shape the Third People, and they will not be like the Manworm.”