[Cenotaph Road 05] - Fire and Fog Read online

  “I’ve been in worse.” She harkened back to the time spent in the Twistings, a prison filled with sudden death and prisoners both human and inhuman. Inyx had survived that and thwarted Claybore. She could do it again.

  “After all,” the woman said, brightening, “this maze doesn’t have the monsters in it that the Lord of the Twistings put in his. This is home to a huge number of gnomes. They’d remove any monsters out of self-defense.” She worried over that for a moment, then added, “Broit Heresler would certainly do that. If only to bury the bodies.”

  Laughing, she set off in a random direction. At one cross-tunnel, a faint breeze blew across her perspiring face. She turned and walked into it, hoping to find an entrance populated with people she could ask for directions.

  The woman stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the aqueduct. Coming through a huge hole in the side of the mountain, the waterway filled with rain and spiraled the water to lower levels in Yerrary. She swallowed hard when she saw that the water set the ductways afire. The acid rain had the same effect on this artificial creation as it did on the natural plains outside Yerrary.

  “What do they drink here?” she wondered. Such water would sear and burn away anyone’s innards. Inyx felt her throat tightening as she tried to remember when last she’d had a drink of water. The battles had caused her to sweat freely and she had been on another world when last she’d eaten.

  Inyx walked forward until she stood only a few feet from the trough of burning water. Looking upward through the tiny entrance, she saw the leaden sky outside. The fiery rains continued to pelt down their acid punishment and what little she saw of the mountainside burned in tiny, maniacally dancing watchfires. The ductway itself was filled to the rim with the acid water.

  Dropping to her knees, she peered down, trying to see where the water exited the system. Level after level below Inyx saw, until darkness robbed her of any idea exactly how deep the aqueduct went. She saw a full five hundred feet and there was no end in sight at that point.

  “The mountain is the highest thing to be seen on this world and the gnomes have hollowed out the world all the way to the core.” She shook her head in amazement.

  Slinging her sword over her shoulder and onto her back, she edged over to the ductway and carefully swung down. The water splashed onto her fingers and burned, but not to the point of real pain. She knew she could stand the acid’s action for a while before flesh began to peel away. Still, Inyx felt the need to hurry her explorations.

  Hand over hand she went down the spiraling aqueduct until she came to the next level. More tunnels. There was nothing to differentiate these from those above.

  Down to the next level and the next and the next. All the same, until she came to the seventh level below her starting point. On impulse she walked through the tunnels for a short distance, then stopped and simply stared at the wall and wanted to cry.

  “My mark!” she wailed. Scratched at her eye level was one of the first cuts she’d made in the stone to give her some idea as to direction in Yerrary. Somehow she had managed to go up all those levels in her wanderings and not even know it.

  Then she brightened a little. She stood a much better chance of finding Lan and Krek if she stayed here than blundering about up where she had been.

  “Then again, I might explore a lower level, then return here. It wouldn’t be so hard.” She returned to the aqueduct of fire and lowered herself one more level. Inyx was glad she had done this, because it satisfied some of her curiosity about the gnomes’ arrangements for drinking water.

  The acid rainwater came to a halt at this level by pouring into a giant vat that steamed and smoked. Looking at it dissuaded her from wanting to take a quick swim. The very flesh would be stripped off her body in seconds if she immersed herself in that water. But the water itself ran from the vat into a tangle of lead pipes and from there into glass distillation units.

  She explored, but found no one around. Everything appeared to be fully mechanized and didn’t require constant attention. She toyed with the idea of turning off the water and seeing who would come to fix the problem—or if anyone at all would come. The gnomish clans had their society’s jobs segmented and some clans apparently were more diligent than others about performing their tasks. Perhaps whatever clan ran the stills had simply left to go about other more entertaining activities.

  She came to another vat, this one filled with crystal clear water. Hesitantly Inyx stuck her finger into the water. No burning. Nothing. Her thirst assailed her more than ever. Inyx had to make the effort. Cupping her hand, she pulled forth enough for a taste. While the water had a curiously flat taste to it, no burning sensation accompanied the coolness laving her tongue or running down her throat.

  “Water. Drinkable water,” she said with some satisfaction.

  As she leaned forward to truly drink, a voice snapped out at her, “You’re not allowed to drink. Only the Wartton clan is allowed to decant from that vat.”

  She jerked erect, hand on sword. Inyx’s bright blue eyes slowly scanned the dimness of the distillation room. She saw no one.

  “Mind’s playing tricks on me,” she said aloud, hoping the words would soothe her. Instead, it provoked an answer from her unseen watcher.

  “That may be, but you are not allowed to drink from that vat. Only the Wartton are allowed. Please leave.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you?”

  “Please don’t make me get tough. I don’t like beating up on people. But I will if I have to!”

  The way the words were spoken, the tone, the quavering inflections told Inyx a different story. Whoever spoke not only didn’t like fighting, he had never done it at all.

  “Join me in robbery, then,” she said. She drank deeply of the water until she had her fill. All the while the voice blustered and threatened ineffectually.

  “How dare you! I shall have to report this immediately!”

  “Do as you like,” Inyx said. “But we can talk this out if you’ll show yourself. I won’t hurt you. I promise that much.”

  “Will you take more of the water?”

  “I might.”

  “But you won’t hurt me? And you won’t tell the Warttons what you’ve done?”

  “No, I won’t,” she said, laughing.

  From the shadows of another vat scuttled a brown toadlike creature with a wattle bobbing nervously under its bony chin. Saucer-huge eyes peered at Inyx, trying to evaluate how much she had lied about not wanting to harm it.

  “Come along,” she said. “Let’s sit and talk.” On a level with the creature, she saw it was even more offensive looking and even more harmless than she’d thought on first glance. Tiny fingers nervously twined and untwined and a long tongue flickered out and back as if snaring insects from midair.

  “Who are you?” the creature demanded, trying to draw itself up to match Inyx.

  “I’m a traveler along the Cenotaph Road. Friends of mine and I entered Yerrary and became separated from our guide, Broit Heresler. Do you know him?”

  “Broit? Well, he’s all right, I suppose. Bossy. He thinks he ought to be the head of the Heresler clan.”

  “He is now. The former clan leader, uh, met with an accident out on the plains.”

  “Oh.”

  Inyx frowned. Getting information from this little beast might prove impossible. It didn’t appear too intelligent.

  “I’m Eckalt,” it said finally.

  “Your name or position?”

  “My name, of course. My position is obvious. I am director of the distillery.”

  “All this is yours?” Inyx asked in surprise.

  “I built it all. I told those awful gnomes how to get real water from the acid. And how do they treat me? Terribly, that’s how. Without me, they’d die. As it is, they let me distill their water and give me supplies enough to survive. I do have a quite nice pond in the back.”

  “I’m sure it has lily pads and everything.”

  “What
are lilies?” Eckalt demanded. “Is there another who gets these lilies when I don’t? How dare they! The gnomes misuse me horribly!”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  “Where would I go? Yerrary is my home, too, as much as it belongs to them.”

  “If they aren’t treating you as you’d like, stand up for your rights. Surely, someone as important as you are to the gnomes should be accorded some respect.”

  “I have a plan,” the toadlike being said, rubbing his hands together in a conspiratorial fashion. “I know how to get even with them all. And I’ll do it, too!”

  “You’re going to poison the water?”

  “Who told you? Who told you?” The creature bounced around on oversized hind legs until Inyx thought he’d jump into a vat of his own water. Then pure panic seized him and he cowered away from her. “You’re a spy. The gnomes sent you to spy on me, to find out my plans. How’d you do it? I demand to know!”

  “I’m no spy. It only makes sense that the easiest way of retaliating would be for you to do something to the water. If they rely on you, then you control them. Destroy the water supply and they have to do as you say if they want it built up again.”

  “They’d never go along with that,” the creature said dubiously.

  “Have you tried it?”

  “Well, no.”

  “They have sorcerers, don’t they? How likely would a sorcerer be to come down here and dirty his hands with all this plumbing?”

  “The Tefize sorcerer is one of the last. All the others got made into corpses. The Hereslers enjoyed that, I’m sure. But Lirory, he’d never even think of it. Sooner would he send some minion out onto the plains to find the naturally occurring pure waters.”

  “The sweepers?” Inyx pressed on. “Would they do anything to you?”

  “They can’t even keep the corridors clean.”

  “The Heresler?”

  “All they do is dig graves and drag bodies about. Frightful people. And they smell bad, too.”

  “Who else?” Inyx pressed. “Is there any group who could duplicate all you’ve done here?”

  “Not in Yerrary.”

  “See?” The woman didn’t know why she was bothering with the timid little creature. She knew he would never do any of the things he plotted. Still, it intrigued her that such a being proved to be the mastermind that kept a vital part of Yerrary functioning.

  And, she had to admit, she had taken a liking to him.

  “But there’s another who would make me do it.”

  “Who?” The way Eckalt spoke of this other person caught her attention. Awe and fear intermixed in a way different from the toad-being’s talk of the gnomes.

  “The Resident of the Pit.”

  Inyx sat and stared at Eckalt, wondering if the creature made this up. She had heard Lan’s stories of his home world and of how the Resident of the Pit had persuaded him his only escape lay along the Road. It could be no more than coincidence if two beings used the same title.

  “He is all-powerful, but he is like I am. He never does anything. He sits and waits and watches. Like I do. He says he is an elder god whose time is past. I don’t believe him. He… he waits for something. I model myself after him and his patience. My time will come, too. Wait and see!”

  “I’m sure it will, Eckalt. Where is this Resident of the Pit?”

  The toad creature made a vague motion upward and said, “Directions in Yerrary are so confusing. I find the pit now and again, more by chance than anything else. But he is around. He is always in the pit. I don’t think he can leave.”

  Inyx decided the pit had to be somewhere near. She didn’t think Eckalt was the type to go exploring as she’d done in her modest way. The creature probably traveled no more than a few hundred yards in any single direction from his distillation equipment before hopping back to his lilyless pond and cowering in fear the rest of the day.

  “Do you know anything of Claybore?” she asked.

  “The skeleton with the mechanical legs?”

  “You do know of him,” said Inyx. “Tell me all you can of him, Eckalt.”

  “He and the Tefize are in alliance. It is his assistant whom I dislike. An ugly woman, much like you.”

  Inyx decided not to take offense. Anyone Eckalt thought ugly might be considered comely by human standards. After all, Eckalt had wattles, was a dun color, and had warts discoloring his skin in a hundred spots. On top of that, he was more frog than human.

  “Light brown hair, a certain feral look in her eye? Her name is Kiska k’Adesina?”

  “Possibly. The physical description is close enough, but I’ve never heard a name.”

  “Why does she come here—to bother you?”

  “Oh, does she ever bother me!” Eckalt exclaimed. “All the time badgering me about increasing supplies, cutting off water to some clans and aiding others. I tell her it is no good, that my system is perfect as it is. But she always makes suggestions—silly suggestions, too.” Eckalt appeared indignant at such effrontery.

  “Where can I find her?” asked Inyx as innocently as she could. The answer didn’t please her.

  Eckalt shrugged, his sloping shoulders hunching strangely.

  Before Inyx said another word, the ring of metal on metal reached her ears. She froze. This was the familiar sound of battle and it came from the level just above this one—the one on which she thought she’d left Lan and Krek.

  “How do I get up one level?” she asked.

  “I do not know. There is a way,” Eckalt began. “I think there is, at any rate. I seldom leave and…”

  Inyx didn’t stay to listen to the creature’s further woes of not being adventurous. She raced back through the vats and lead piping and found the aqueduct. Flexing her muscles, she leaped, caught hold, and began inching her way back up the spiraling ductway. It took longer to reach the upper level than she’d thought; she feared the battle would be over and Lan would no longer need her assistance.

  Inyx need not have worried about the struggle ending quickly. The woman pulled herself onto the level and traced her footsteps back to the spot where she’d blazed the mark on the wall. Not ten paces further down the corridor, she saw the broad back of a dark-headed man furiously lunging and swinging his sword. Every stroke severed fingers and hands and ears and still the gnomes rushed him.

  Inyx let out a war whoop and drew her sword from over her shoulder. In her haste, the blade struck the ceiling. But this accident brought the fight to a momentary halt. Bright sparks leaped from the nicked edge of her blade and caught the attention of all those battling.

  The gnomes muttered something about sorcery.

  Inyx didn’t give them the chance to think differently. They outnumbered the man forty to one. She vowed to cut down the odds from forty to two to even less.

  Her first fleche skewered the lead gnome. He went down, air hissing obscenely from his punctured lungs.

  “Nicely done,” complimented the blood-soaked man to her right.

  She blinked at him. He reminded her so of—but no, that wasn’t possible. Her husband Reinhardt was long dead; she had held him in her arms and had buried him herself, a victim of Claybore’s grey-clad legions. Only memories and magically induced visions of Reinhardt lingered to haunt her.

  But the resemblance was still uncanny. This man had the same dark eyes, the same smile that curled sardonically at the corners of his lips, the straight nose and perfect bone structure. But there Inyx saw the similarity truly ended. This man was much more powerfully built. His wrist was half again the thickness of her dead husband’s—and this man’s skill with the blade surpassed even Reinhardt’s.

  “You’ve been doing a fair job yourself, good sir.”

  “Ducasien, my lady. My name is Ducasien.”

  “Inyx,” she said.

  “From Leponto Province?”

  “You know my home?” She made a quick backhanded cut and heel-toe advanced cutting, slashing, thrusting. The Nichi clan gnome was no match wi
th only a broom handle.

  “I am from Leponto, myself.”

  “We must explore this further. When we have a spare moment!” Inyx began a serious attack and found herself coordinating smoothly with Ducasien. When she tired, he took up the fight. When his mighty thewed arms knotted from effort, she stood ready to join in, rested and ready for any number of attacking gnomes.

  Before long even the Nichi clan recognized that the pair they fought were too skilled in combat. They broke off their attack and fled.

  Panting, Inyx leaned on her blade and watched the tiny, hunched backs vanishing down the corridor.

  “We put them to rout in good order,” said Ducasien, laughing. Inyx felt shivers racing up and down her spine. When he spoke his voice came out as melodiously as Reinhardt’s. The woman worried that Ducasien would prove another illusion, an hallucination conjured by her tired brain.

  “Now that we have time,” the man said, “let us compare lineages.” He started in, detailing his ancestors and finishing with several of whom Inyx had never heard. She said as much.

  “How long,” Ducasien responded, “has it been since you were last home?”

  “Time is fluid along the Road. Who can say? Perhaps five years is all it seems to me.”

  “It might be closer to fifty actual,” said Ducasien. “My family moved only within the last twenty to Leponto. And I have walked the Road myself only for one year.”

  Inyx felt faint at the idea of being so totally cut off from her home world. Not only were her family and Reinhardt’s dead, most of her onetime friends would be dead also. Even with Claybore’s legions gone, there was little for her to return to in Leponto.

  Ducasien read this sadness in her face.

  “That is the price we pay for walking the Road. We trade security for adventure. But is it not worth the price?”

  Inyx nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Again she was reminded of Reinhardt. Those were sentiments he might have uttered.

  “I found this world by accident,” Ducasien went on, filling the silence left by Inyx’s thoughts. “Only a day or two has elapsed since I came here from a world almost totally covered with water. Finding the cenotaph on that world proved difficult. It was under water and guarded by the oddest of fish creatures.”