* * *
They met the next morning, early, amid the dust and fading tapestries of the seldom-used Undertunnel, which connected most of the main burrows of the yaga-la-hai before curving away on its long descent into infinity. Annelyn was the first to arrive. He was dressed all in shiny-smooth black, with a hood of the same color to hide his bright hair. His only concession to vanity was a gold theta, embroidered on his breast. A belt of black rope held both rapier and stiletto.
Riess soon materialized, in a tight-fitting shirt of mail and leather and a heavy cloak of spidergray. He and Annelyn sat together on a stone floor across from a black mouth that belched hot, moist air at them through a rusty grid. Light, such as there was, came from scattered torches set in bronze hands on the walls, and from the windows—narrow slits in the ceiling, twenty feet above their heads—that leaked a dim red radiance. The windows were set ten feet apart all along the Undertunnel, until it began to sink. Once, as a boy, Annelyn had piled junk high in the middle of a burrow and climbed to look out, but there had been nothing to see—the glass, even as the stone of the walls, was thicker than a man is tall. It was fortunate that any light got through.
Vermyllar was late. Annelyn sat cross-legged, his eyes on the hanging tapestries whose images had all turned to mottled gray. Riess was very excited. He was talking about imaginative tortures they could inflict on the Meatbringer. “When we catch him, we should hang him upside down by running cords through his ankles,” the stout youth suggested. “Then we can buy a pot of bloodworms from the surgeon-priests and set them all over his body to drink him dry.”
Annelyn let him prattle, and finally Vermyllar appeared, wearing black and gray and carrying a torch and a long dagger. The other two sprang up to greet him.
“I should not have come,” Vermyllar said. His face was very drawn, but he seemed to relax a bit in the presence of his friends. “I am the great-grandson of the Manworm himself,” he continued, sheathing his dagger while Riess took the torch from him, “and I should not listen to you, Annelyn. We will all be eaten by grouns.”
“The Meatbringer is not eaten by grouns, and he is only one while we are three together,” Annelyn said. He started down the Undertunnel, toward the endless gray where the bands of red light no longer striped the stone, and the others followed.
“Are you sure he comes this way?” Vermyllar asked. They passed another of the square black mouths, and their cloaks stirred and flapped in its warm breath. Vermyllar gestured at the opening. “Perhaps he climbs down one of those, to where the grouns live.”
“They are very sheer and very hot,” Annelyn told him, “and he would fall or burn if he went that way. Besides, many people have seen the Meatbringer come and go along the Undertunnel. I asked among the torch-tenders.”
They passed beneath the last window; ahead, the Undertunnel slanted down and the ceiling was featureless. Vermyllar stopped in the zone of light.
“Grouns,” he said. “Annelyn, there are grouns down there. Away from the windows.” He licked his lips.
“I have killed a groun,” Annelyn reminded him. “Besides, we have talked of this. We have our torch, and each of us is carrying matches. There are old torches all along the tunnel, so many can be lit. Besides, the grouns never come this high. No one has seen a groun in the Undertunnel for a lifetime.”
“People vanish every month,” Vermyllar insisted. “Mushroom farmers. Groun hunters. Children.”
Annelyn began to sound cross. “Groun hunters go deep, so of course they are caught. The others, well, who knows? Are you afraid of the dark?” He stamped a boot impatiently.
“No,” said Vermyllar, and he came forward to join them again. But he rested his hand on his dagger hilt.
Annelyn did not start again immediately. He walked over to the curving wall, and reached up, pulling a torch from a bronze hand He lit it from the flames of the torch Riess was carrying, and suddenly the light was doubled. “There,” he said, handing the torch to Vermyllar. “Come.”
So they began to walk down the long dark burrow as it curved and sank, almost imperceptibly: past tapestries that hung in rotten threads and others that were thick tangles of matted fungus; past an endless series of torch-clutching hands (every other one empty, and only one in fifty alight); past countless bricked-up tunnel mouths and a few whose bricks had shattered or turned to dust; past the invisible warmth of the air ducts one after another. They walked in silence, knowing that their voices would echo, hoping that the dust beneath would muffle the sounds of their footsteps. They walked until they had lost sight of the last window, and for an hour after that. And finally they reached the spot where the Undertunnel came to an end. Ahead were two square doorways whose metal doors had long since crumbled into flakes of rust. Riess thrust a torch through one and saw only a few heavy cables, twisting around in tangles and sinking into the yawning darkness of a shaft that fell down and down. Startled, he pulled back and almost dropped the torch.
“Careful,” Annelyn warned.
“What is it?” Riess said.
“Perhaps a trap,” Vermyllar suggested. He thrust his own torch into the second doorway, and they saw a stone stair that descended rapidly. “See? There were two doors here, once. An enemy or a groun might choose the wrong one, and fall down that shaft to its death. It was probably just an air shaft that they put a door on.”
Annelyn moved over next to Riess. “No,” he said, peering into the shaft. “There are ropes. And this shaft is cold.” He shook his head, and his hood fell back, revealing blond curls that shone softly in the dancing torchlight. “No matter,” he said. “We will wait here. Deeper than this and we would meet grouns. Besides, I do not know where that stair leads. So better to wait, and let the Meatbringer lead us.”
“What?” Vermyllar was shocked. “You do not mean to take him here?”
Annelyn smiled. “Ha! That would be a child’s revenge. No, we will follow him, deep into the country of the grouns. We will learn all his secrets, all the knowledge that he boasts of. We will see why he comes back and back again, always with meat, while other groun hunters vanish. Then we will kill him.”
“You didn’t say that,” Riess objected, openmouthed.
“We’ve already come too far from the windows,” Vermyllar said, and started to go on.
Annelyn laughed lightly. “Child,” he said to Riess. “I came this far when I was half your age. This was where I killed my groun.” He pointed to the stairway. “He came out of there, scrabbling on four of his legs, not the least afraid of my fire, and I met him with only my torch.”
Vermyllar and Riess were both looking at the dark portal of the stairway. “Oh,” said Riess.
“Really?” said another voice, from behind. Vermyllar dropped his torch, and pulled out his dagger. All three of them whirled.
On the edge of the light, a huge, red-bearded man dressed in black stood staring at them, a bronze ax on his shoulder. Without his armor, Annelyn hardly recognized him, but suddenly the memory came.
“Groff,” he said.
The bronze knight nodded. “I have followed you all down the Undertunnel. You are very noisy.”
They said nothing. Vermyllar picked up his fallen torch.
“So you mean to kill the Meatbringer?” Groff said.
“Yes,” Annelyn said. “Do not interfere, Groff. I know the Meatbringer provides much grounmeat for the yaga-la-hai, but we shall do that too when we learn his secrets. The Manworm has no cause to take his side.” His mouth was set stubbornly.
Groff chuckled, deep in his throat, and hefted his heavy ax. “Don’t fret, little worm-child. You shall have your carrion. I too was sent to kill the Meatbringer.”
“What?” Riess said.
“Did the Manworm order it?” Vermyllar asked eagerly.
“The Manworm thinks of nothing but his coming unity with the White Worm,” Groff said. He smiled. “And of pain, perhaps. Perhaps he thinks of that. No, his advisers ordered it. The Meatbringer has too many myst
eries about him. He is not truly of the yaga-la-hai, the advisers think, and he is not tranquil. He is ugly and disturbs things, and he lies. Moreover, since we first grew aware of the Meatbringer, two years ago, fewer and fewer groun hunters have returned from below, save him alone. Well, I have hunted grouns, once. I may not have been as deep as the Meatbringer, who says he has descended to where the bronze knights warred against the grouns a million years ago. I have not been that far, but I have run the groun-runs, and I am not frightened of dark burrows.” He looked at Annelyn. “Did you truly meet a groun here?”
Annelyn felt the steady gaze of Groff’s eyes, beneath their thick red brows. “Yes,” he said, a little too quickly, afraid that somehow Groff knew the truth. The groun had been lying at the top of the stairs, mumbling its death rattle, when Annelyn had found it. The boy had watched, terrified, while the creature’s six gangling limbs trembled fitfully (and briefly) and the moist sunken pools of flesh that the grouns had instead of eyes roamed back and forth, without purpose. When the carcass had been quite still, Annelyn had charred it with his torch, then dragged it back to the burrows of the yaga-la-hai.
Groff shook his head. “They seldom come past the grounwall,” the bronze knight said. “During the last years of my hunting, they seldom came at all. The Meatbringer must truly go deep.” He smiled. “But so shall we.”
“We?” It was Vermyllar.
Groff nodded. “I am not averse to help, and Annelyn’s idea is a good one. We will learn the Meatbringer’s secrets before we kill him.” He waved his ax in a broad gesture. “Down the stair.”
The doorway loomed pitch-black and ominous, and Annelyn began to feel nervous. It was one thing to impress Riess and Vermyllar with his bold plan to descend to groun country, but no doubt in time they would have talked him out of it. Perhaps the three of them would have fallen upon the Meatbringer here—beyond the light, true, but only a short way, and Annelyn had been here before. But to actually go down . . .
It was Vermyllar who protested. “No,” he said. “I’m not going any deeper than this.” He looked at Annelyn. “You kill the Meatbringer, or Groff can kill him, or Riess if he can, but he’ll be just as dead without me along as with me. I’m going back.”
“Down the stair,” Groff said sternly. “I’ll have no desertions.”
Vermyllar stood fast. “My grandfather is a son of the Manworm,” he said. “I do as I please.” To Annelyn and Riess he made the sign of the worm, then with his torch in hand he started back the way they had come.
Groff made no move to stop him. “Down the stair,” he repeated after Vermyllar’s light had vanished behind a curve of the wall. They hurried to obey.
Down. The worst of all possible directions. Down. Where the grouns lay. Down. Away from light. Yet they went, and Annelyn remembered that even at the best of times, he disliked stairs. He was lucky, at that. Riess, holding the torch, had to go first.
At the foot of the stair was a narrow landing with two bricked-in doors, another gaping entrance to the still, cold shaft, and another stair. Down. There was another stair beyond that. Down. And another beyond that.
Finally they emerged. “Put out the torch,” Groff said. Riess complied.
They stood clustered on one end of a slender metal bridge that spanned a cavernous chamber a hundred times the size of the Chamber of Obsidian. Far, far above was a vast roof of glass panes (each of them the size of the one behind the Manworm’s pit, Annelyn thought) set in a latticework of black metal. The sun loomed over it, with its oceans of fire and plains of ash, so they did not need the torch.
There were other bridges, Annelyn saw—five of them; slim threads that swung from one black wall to the other, above a pool of some sluggish liquid that stirred and made noises just below their feet. And there was a sixth, or had been, but now it was shattered, and the twisted ribbon of its span hung down into the moving blackness below them.
There was a smell. Strong, thick, and sickly sweet.
“Where are we?” Riess whispered.
“The Chamber of the Last Light,” Groff said brusquely. “Or so it is called in the lore of the bronze knights. But groun hunters call it the grounwall. This is the last and deepest place where the old sun can peer in. The White Worm created it to keep the grouns from the burrows of his children, some say.”
Annelyn walked to the rail of the bridge. “Interesting,” he said casually. “Are there no other ways for the grouns to climb up, then?”
“No more,” Groff told him. “Once. But bronze knights sealed them with bricks and blood. Or so it is said.”
He pointed his ax toward the shadows on the far side of the bridge. “Across.”
The span was narrow, barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. Annelyn stepped forward hesitantly, reaching out to the guardrail for support. It came away in his hand, a small piece of metal tubing, eaten through by rust. He looked at it, stepped backward, then chucked it away, off into the liquid.
“The damp,” Groff said, unconcerned. “The bridge itself has rust holes, so be careful where you step.” His voice was stern and inflexible.
So Annelyn found himself edging forward again, step by careful step, out above the sloshing blackness into the abyss of dim red light. The bridge creaked and moved beneath his feet, and more than once he felt something give as he set down a tentative foot, so he was forced to pull back quickly and step somewhere else. Riess came after him, holding the useless rail tightly whenever there was a rail to hold. Groff cheerfully walked on the places the others had tested.
Halfway across, the bridge began to sway—slowly at first, then with greater speed. Annelyn froze, clutched for the rail, and looked over his shoulder at Groff.
The bronze knight swore. “Three is too much,” he said. “Hurry!”
Not daring to run, Annelyn began to walk as quickly as he could, and as he did so the swaying got worse. He walked even faster, and behind him he could hear the others. At one point, there was a sudden snapping and a crunch, followed by a screech of pain. Then he ran, all but jumping the last few feet to the stone semicircle that anchored the bridge on the far side of the chamber. Only then, safe, did he turn back. Riess had hit a rust spot; his right leg had plunged right through the metal. Groff was helping him out. “Hold it steady,” the bronze knight shouted, and Annelyn went back to the stone precipice and steadied the shaking bridge as best he could.
Soon Groff joined him, supporting a limping Riess. The leather he wore had saved him from serious injury, but the jagged metal edges had still cut into his leg, and there was some blood.
While Groff tended to him, Annelyn looked about. The stone platform on which they stood was ringed by dark shapes, great square boxes that stood along its edge like a row of rotten teeth. He went to one. It was metal, scarred by rust and disuse, and studded by a dozen tiny glass windows, behind which was nothing but dust. There were holes in the boxes, too, and several of them had been smashed. Annelyn could make no sense of it.
Riess was on his feet again, looking shaken. “I dropped the torch,” he said.
“There are others to be had,” Groff said. “We could not have used ours, in any event. The Meatbringer would see its light. No, we must enter the groun-runs in the dark, and wait there until we see the light of his torch. Then we will follow that.”
“What?” said Annelyn. “But Groff, that is madness. There will be grouns in the dark, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” Groff replied. “Not likely, not this close to light, to the grounwall. Groun hunters, in my time and even before, had to go deeper to find prey. The upper runs are empty. But we will not go far.” He pointed toward the wide black door that waited for them where the platform met the wall.
Annelyn drew his stiletto and went swiftly forward, not to look a coward. If a groun lurked in the blackness, he would be ready for it.
But there was nothing. Faintly, in the small light that still bled from the chamber, he saw the outline of three burrows, each darker than the one bef
ore.
“The left leads down,” Groff said, “into the richer parts of the runs. The center is bricked-off and abandoned. We will wait there. We can watch the bridge, hidden by darkness, and follow the Meatbringer’s torch when he passes.”
He herded them forward, and they sat on the dusty stone to wait. The door to the Chamber of the Last Light faced them, like a dim red window; all else was black and silent. Groff sat unmoving, his ax across his lap and his legs crossed under him. Riess fidgeted. Annelyn put his back to the wall, so no grouns could creep up behind him, and toyed with his stiletto.
It was not long before he began to hear noises, soft mutters and low sounds, like the ugly voices of grouns grouping to attack them. But the tunnel was a solid blindness, and the harder he listened, the more the noise became blurred and indistinct. Footfalls? Or only Groff’s breathing? Or perhaps it was the sound of the stirring liquid, not far off? Annelyn gripped his blade tighter. “Groff,” he warned, but the other only silenced him.
He was remembering stories—of how the grouns could see in total darkness, of how they padded up so quietly on soft white feet and wrapped their six long limbs around straying yaga-la-hai—when the other noise began. Soft first, then louder; this could be no mistake. It was thin and ragged; it rose and fell, full of chokes and sobs. Groff heard it, too. Suddenly, silently, he was on his feet. Annelyn leaped up beside him, then Riess.
The bridge swayed slowly in the red window before them. Someone was coming.
The noise grew, and became more human. A voice, a real voice, warped by fear. Then Annelyn heard words: “ . . . please . . . not into the dark again . . . grouns . . . they’ll . . . can’t do . . . .” And then, very clearly, “My grandfather was a son of the Manworm.”
They saw. Vermyllar was coming across the bridge. Behind him, holding a long knife half-seen in the light, was the Meatbringer, squat and ugly in his suit of grounskin. “Quiet!” the Meatbringer said, and Vermyllar stumbled onto the safety of the stone, looking up fearfully at the black door that gaped before him.