Briv, Briv and Briv crowded up behind him.
“Is this a good idea?” Cook’s helper asked as the eunuch slid the key into the lock.
“Ooh,” sighed Rope Braider.
Key turned. Tumblers clicked.
“Is this a good idea?” asked Cook’s helper once again.
Sech’kellyn were bad enough. but Sech’kellyn wearing ensorcelled collars, well, that boded ill indeed. Homunculi, of sorts, Sech’kellyn were Jaghut creations, modeled-it was said by the scant few with sufficient authority to voice an opinion-on some ancient race of demons called the Forkassail. White as bone, too many knees, ankles, elbows, even shoulders. Being perfectionists of the worst sort, the Jaghut succeeded in inventing a species that bred true. And, even more typical of Jaghut, they went and made themselves mostly extinct, leaving their abominable conjurations free to do whatever they pleased, which was usually kill everyone in sight. At least until someone powerful showed up to hammer them back down and chain their life-forces and then maybe bury them somewhere nobody would ever disturb, like, say, under a poorly made alley in a fast-growing city.
A powerful enough sorcerer could subsequently reawaken the geas on such creatures, could indeed bind them to his or her will, for nefarious and untoward purposes, of course.
Perhaps this was what had been done to the six Sech’kellyn in the strong room.
But in truth, it was nothing like that at all.
It was much worse.
Oh yes.
Wizards delegate. one could always tell the wizards who did by the way they sat around in their towers day and night concocting evil schemes of world domination. Somebody else was scrubbing out the bedpan. Wizards who didn’t delegate never had the time to think up a black age of tyranny, much less execute what was necessary to achieve it. Dishes piled up and so did laundry. Dust balls gathered to conspire usurpation. Squirrels made the roof leak and occasionally fell down somewhere in the walls where they couldn’t get back out and so died and then mummified, displaying grotesque expressions after wearing their teeth out gnawing brick.
Mizzankar Druble of Jhant-which had been a city on Stratem that fell into dust centuries past and the presence of which was not even guessed at by the folk of Jatem’s Landing, a new settlement not three thousand paces down along the very same shore-Mizzankar Druble of Jhant, then-who had been, it was agreed by all now long dead, a most terrible sorcerer, a conjuror, an enchanter, a thaumaturge, and ugly besides-Mizzankar Druble of Jhant, aye-who’d raised a spire of gnarled, bubbly, black, glassy stone all in a single night in the midst of a raging storm which was why it had no windows and the door, well, it was knee-high and about wide enough for a lone foot as if that made any sense, since Mizzankar was both tall and fat so everyone who were now dead decided he must have raised that tower from the inside out, since the poor fool ended up stuck in there and Hood knew what terrible plans he was making which more than justified piling up all the brush and logs and such and roasting the evil wizard like the nut in a hazel-Mizzankar Druble of Jhant, yes, he had been a wizard who had delegated.
Like hounds needing a master, the Sech’kellyn were demanding servants. And as such, the task was indeed full time and not much fun either. Mizzankar Druble-who in truth had been a minor wizard with the unfortunate penchant of attempting rituals far too powerful to control, one of them resulting-in a misjudged battle with an undead squirrel-in the explosive, terrifying eruption of molten rock that rose all round him where he stood in his pathetic protective circle-thus creating a towering prison he never did escape-but Mizzankar Druble, wise enough to delegate, and happily possessing six demonic servants hatefully created by some miserable Jaghut, understood-in a spasmodic moment of clarity-the need for a powerful, preferably enormous, demon that could assume the burden of commanding the Sech’kellyn.
In the most ambitious and elaborate conjuration of his life, Mizzankar summoned such a creature, and naturally got a lot more than he bargained for. An ancient, almost forgotten god, in fact. The battle of wills had been pathetically short. Mizzankar Druble of Jhant, had, in his last few days of life before the villagers roasted him alive, been set to the task of scrubbing bed pans, rinsing dishes, wringing laundry and chasing dust balls on his hands and knees.
Gods, even moreso than wizards, understood the notion of delegation.
Now the tale of the god’s subsequent adventures, and all relating to the Sech’kellyn and the tumbling disasters that led to their theft and burial in what would one day be Toll’s City, is a narrative belonging to someone else, at some other time.
The vital detail was this: the god was coming for his children.
Bleary-eyed, half-crazed with throbbing pain in numerous parts of his head, Emancipor Reese, Mancy the Luckless, clawed his way onto his knees, then paused while everything reeled for a few dozen heartbeats. His face pressed against the damp wicker, his gaze shifted so that his left eye took in Bena Younger-crouched once more opposite him, knife raised in case he should lunge murderously her way-but of course that wasn’t likely. He might lunge indeed, but if he did it would be to heave out whatever was left of Cook’s dubious supper, and the thought of that-a most satisfying image dancing in his mind’s eye of the vicious child covered in fetid slop-while gratifying on one level, thrummed a warning echo of blistering pain through his skull.
No, too much action demanded by such explosive, visceral expression. He closed his eyes, then slowly edged up a little further, until his head cleared the basket’s tattered edge. Opened his eyes again, blinking smartly. Emancipor Reese found himself looking astern.
Still night? Gods, would it never end?
Black looming overcast blotting out everything above the murky rolling seas. Dhenrabi breaching the surface on all sides, racing faster than any ship. Damn, he’d never seen the behemoths move so fast.
Somewhere below a fight was going on, sounding entirely unhuman, and reverberations thundered through the ship, rocking the mast with each blow against the hull.
Another massive bulge in the water, this one directly behind the Suncurl, swelling, rising, looming ever closer. And Emancipor now saw Master Bauchelain, standing wide-legged a couple strides back from the aft rail, sword held in both hands, eyes seemingly fixed on that surging crest.
“Oh,” said Emancipor Reese.
As two enormous, scaled arms thrust up from the foaming bulge, crashing down in a splintering, crushing grip on the rail-wood snapping like twigs-the long, curved talons plunging into the aft deck. Then, in a massive heave of cascading water, the elongated reptilian head reared into view between those arms. Maw open, articulated fangs dropping down as water slashed out to either side.
The entire ship stumbled, hitched, seemed to stagger into a deathly collapse astern-the prow lifting high-as the apparition pulled itself aboard.
And all of it-the entire scene with creature and Bauchelain, who now leapt forward, sword flashing-raced fast towards Emancipor as the crow’s nest, and the mast to which it was attached, pitched down. Something slammed into Emancipor’s back, driving all the air from his lungs, and then a scrawny body, wailing, was rolling over him, out into the air-ratty hair and flailing limbs-and he threw himself forward.
The sudden lift of the prow flung Lich and misshapen child down hard, collapsing the planks of the o’er keel gangway. At this moment, unfortunately for the child of Korbal Broach’s unnatural procreation, the lich was on top. Crushing impact, percussive snapping of various bones, including a spine, and as ribcage buckled, everything unattached within that monstrous body was violently expelled. Spurting, spraying fluids in all directions, and, spat out like a constipated man’s triumph, the upper half of a body that had once been deeply embedded within a murky, diluvian world. Coughing, hacking, flinging out gobbets of weird phlegm, Birds Mottle reeled away, falling down between hull and splintered gangway.
While the lich raised itself up from the leaking carcass of its foe, fists lifting in exaltation, head rocking back as it prepared to loose a howl of entirely gratuitous glee.
But even the dullest scholar knew that forces in nature were inextricably bound to certain laws. That which plunges downward, in turn launches upward. At least, that which floated on the seas did, just that. Upward, then, the floor, shooting the lich straight up-another such law, one permitting the invention of things as, say, catapults And the gnarled, hard-boned, vaguely Ably Drutherly head-for the lich was all too corporeal at the moment-smashed like a battering ram, up through the foredeck’s planks. And jammed there.
Momentarily blinded by the concussion, the lich failed in comprehending the sudden shouts that surrounded it.
“Kick it!”
“Kick it! Kick it!”
All at once, hard-toed boots slammed into the lich’s head, from all sides, snapping cheek bones, brow ridges, maxilla, mandible, temporal, frontal. Kick kick kick slam slam slam-and then a boot crashed into the lich’s gaping, fanged mouth.
And so it bit down.
As the horrifying creature bit off half of his right foot, Gust Hubb howled, staggered back, spinning as blood sprayed, and fell to the deck. Toes-now missing-were being ground to meal in the lich’s jaws, crusty nails breaking in all the wrong ways, even as more boots hammered at the crumpled, deformed head. Chewing, aye, just like one ear was being chewed, the other gnawed to nearly nothing now and hearing only slow leaking fluids, and as for his nose, well, he was smelling mud. Cold, briny, slimy mud.
Any more of this and he was going to lose his mind.
Someone fell to their knees beside him, and he heard Mipple cry out-“Stick his foot in a bucket!” And then she laughed like the ugly mad woman she was.
Snarling (and chewing), the lich retreated from the pummeling, back down through the hole, and as it blinked one of its still functioning eyes, it caught the brief blur that was Birds Mottle, who had, upon retrieving Ably Druther’s shortsword, rushed to close, the broad, savage blade plunging deep into the lich’s chest.
Shrieking, the creature batted the woman away with a half-dozen arms, sending her flying, skidding and finally tumbling.
Tugging out and flinging aside the offending weapon, the lich advanced on the obnoxious mortal. Paused a moment when something big that had been in its mouth suddenly lodged in its throat. Paused, then, to choke briefly before dislodging the pulpy mass of boot leather, meat, bone, nail and, sad to say, hair. Greater indignity followed, when it shook its head, only to have its lower jaw fall off to thump accusingly pugnacious at its feet.
The roar that erupted from its gaping overbite was more a wheezing gargle, no less frightening as far as Birds Mottle was concerned, for, shrieking, she crabbed back along the gangway, into the grainy patch beneath the hold, then past that, heading for the stern-where, from above and indeed, from the strong room behind her, there came sounds of ferocious fighting.
Long-fingered, clawed hands with bits of meat hanging from them lifted threateningly, and the lich stamped ever closer.
Emancipor Reese’s frantic reach caught Bena Younger’s skinny ankle, halting her headlong flight towards the giant fiend scrabbling aboard at the stern. The manservant grunted as the girl’s weight nearly ripped his arm from its socket, then, as she swung straight down, he heard the thump of her forehead against the mast, the crack of her arms against the top yard At that moment, the ship’s prow surged back down, whipping the mast and crow’s nest hard forward. Something hammered into Emancipor’s back and withered, bony arms buffeted about his head. Toppling backward-dragging Bena Younger back up in the process-Emancipor cursed and flung an elbow at the clattering corpse assaulting him. Elbow into shrunken chest, sending the thing flying-and over the edge.
Gust Hubb rolled onto his back, in time to see a ghastly hag plunge down from the night sky, straight at him. Screaming, he threw up his hands just as the thing crashed down onto him.
Knobby, desiccated finger stabbed his left eye and Gust heard a plop! as of a crushed grape. Shrieking, he flailed at his attacker. An inward drawn breath netted him a mouthful of brittle grimy hair.
“Kill it!” someone shouted, voice breaking in hysteria.
“Kill it! Kill it!”