22

JORDAM’S DESCENT

The Usher turned the crank. The cage rose, swinging into view like some spider’s capture.

At first Jordam thought it housed a different passenger than it had carried down. When the guards opened the cage, Goreth leapt out onto the black mirror, larger, laughing with deep strength. Dark syrup ran from his beard to the floor, blotting out patches of the reflection. The teeth of his triumphant grin were inky with the broth that the Sopper Crone had served him. His eyes swelled in their sockets, aligned again, burning in fierce focus. He shook out his mane and slapped his shaggy tail against the floor.

Jordam knew what Goreth felt. Like swallowing a fistful of rockbeetles, he thought. But the beetles don’t stay in the belly. They crawl out the arms. Crawl out the legs. Spreading fire. Spreading strength. He wanted to look away. In this intoxication, Goreth would strive to indulge any impulse and unleash his burgeoning power. Mordafey would direct him, and he would be deaf to any hint of caution or restraint. He would have no patience for second thoughts.

“Good,” murmured Mordafey. “Strong.”

“Strongest!” Goreth laughed.

Mordafey cuffed him. Essence splashed from Goreth’s beard to spatter Jorn’s face. Jorn licked it up, ecstatic, leaping about like a young ape. Grasping Goreth by the throat and lifting him up, Mordafey proved to all observers that he was in control here and that even in their fever of new power, his brothers would not resist him.

As Goreth choked an apology, Jorn interrupted the reprimand. Inspired by that slight taste of Essence, he had lost all patience, shoved aside the guard who held the cage door, and jumped inside, desperate for his turn. Enraged, the guard spun around and pressed his spear into Jorn’s chest. Jorn squirmed, whimpered, and called Mordafey’s name.

Mordafey dropped Goreth to the floor. “Jordam is next. Come out.”

But Jorn did not dare move with that spear tip digging in against his ribs. His gaze shifted to Jordam and burnt with jealousy. Jordam remained where he was, searching again for a way to delay his descent.

The guard waited as if hoping for permission to impale his offender. Then he stepped back, grunted a warning, and barked a question into the abyss. When a shrill note answered, he closed the cage on Jorn. As Mordafey hissed in protest, the Usher took hold of the crank.

Mordafey stepped forward and seized the bars. “Crone will serve you. Be fast. Mordafey is thirsty.”

“Hel hel hel.” Jorn laughed all the way down.

Mordafey turned to Jordam, furious. “You next.”

Jordam knew that when he returned from that abyss, he would not be so capable of questioning Mordafey’s orders. He would not be free to refuse. He remembered that troubled patch of ground, where Mordafey’s footprints had veered off from a crowd of Cent Regus. He wanted to understand Mordafey’s intentions now, before the Essence set his appetite ablaze and overwhelmed his thoughts.

“The plan,” he murmured to Mordafey. “rrFour brothers start tonight?”

Mordafey’s brow crumpled. He nodded slowly. “The plan already started,” he said carefully. “Tonight Mordafey will tell the brothers. You will know everything. Then we run. Far and fast.”

The guards’ pincers squeaked, bone scraping bone. Jordam wondered how much they understood. He leaned close to Mordafey and whispered, “rrBrothers take Abascar’s weapons. Yes? rrFinish Abascar’s king. Finish Cal-raven like you finished Deuneroi.”

Mordafey stifled a growl. “Not here, Jordam.” He glanced at the guards. “Too many ears. Skell Wra already interferes. Stole prizes from our wagon.”

“Stole prizes?” Jordam growled.

“Deuneroi’s treasure.” He seized Jordam by the beard and spit out his rage. “Deuneroi’s bones…missing from our wagon. Skell Wra took them, or somebody stole them. Sssneaky.”

Jordam flung curses to affirm his brother’s rage, relieved that Mordafey did not suspect him. “rrBrothers will get Abascar prizes soon. No one will steal them.”

Mordafey hesitated, unsettled by Jordam’s sudden surge of interest in the plan. “Yes,” he admitted, but guardedly. “Four brothers will take Abascar. Cal-raven is mine, like Deuneroi.”

“But the tall one?” Jordam ventured. “The white giant? With the firestick? Will he go with us? Help take Abascar’s prizes?”

Mordafey cast anxious glances at the guards, then snorted. “The white giant thinks he tells Mordafey what to do. But Mordafey will laugh at him.”

“rrWho is the white giant?” Jordam put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Four brothers have no secrets.”

Mordafey pulled away and glanced at the pit. “Jorn is late. The Sopper Crone gives him too much.”

Jordam persisted. “We may be strong, but Abascar has many fighters. Will the white giant with the fiery staff help us?”

Mordafey lashed at the air with his claws, barking at Jordam in a fury. But Jordam was astonished, for the words his brother spoke were Common—“Mordafey’s found help. The white giant made promises, gathered many Cent Regus to take orders and fight together. Mordafey leads them.”

Goreth and the guards gaped as if Mordafey had been seized by some enchantment. Only slaves spoke Common in the Core.

But Jordam understood. And Mordafey, knowing this, pressed his browbone against Jordam’s and murmured an explanation. Passing on the white giant’s promises of reward, Mordafey had mustered a force of fighting Cent Regus—a swarm—larger than the Expanse had seen in generations. Under the direction of that fearsome stranger, Mordafey would lead the pack and lay siege to Abascar, wiping out the survivors and looting their hideaway. This would prove his quality to the white giant, who had promised even greater conquests upon their success.

“rrBigger prizes than Abascar?” Jordam swallowed his other questions hard.

“He says so,” sniggered Mordafey, continuing in Common to keep the guards in the dark. “But whatever happens, Mordafey will surprise the white giant. Mordafey will lead the swarm to take down Skell Wra.”

“Mordafey,” Jordam whispered. “The white giant will trick us. The white giant will take our prizes and—”

“No,” said Mordafey. “White giant has promised. Many prizes. So much Essence.” Then he turned to the abyss, which was strangely silent.

“I can bring help too, Mordafey.” It was a risk, but Jordam lunged for an advantage. “Let me go. Now. I can bring you help for the swarm. A power I found. Fixes what gets broken. Stops bleeding. Stops hurting. I go now. rrBring you that power. I will go—”

“Jordam won’t go anywhere. Brothers stay together now. Tonight we run to Abascar.” Torn between aggravation with Jorn and misgivings about having revealed his secrets, Mordafey turned and tugged at the dangling ropes. Far below, the cage rattled against the floor of the Sopper Crone’s chamber. The guard prodded Mordafey back from the chasm, but Mordafey snarled, “When Jorn drinks Essence, Jorn gets…dangerous.”

“Let me go,” Jordam pleaded in Common. “I’ll bring back more help for the brothers. Goreth comes with me. That way we can bring you more power. One brother cannot carry enough.”

“Four brothers go together!” Mordafey’s voice shook the chamber. The guards lowered their spear tips toward him. “Jorn!” he shouted at the chasm. “Jorn!”

Jordam found Goreth staring at him with surprise and dismay, and he realized that his conversation in Common had left his twin feeling abandoned, cut off. Brusquely Goreth huffed, turned, and rattled the bars of the chamber’s iron gate, eager to hunt in the rush of new power.

“Jorn!” Mordafey throttled some imagined enemy in the air before him.

As if persuaded, the gear wheels pinned to the wall began to turn at last.

When Jorn reappeared, he shuddered as if his body had broken free from his mind. Essence ran from his head and hands. His eyes swept the scene as if he were surveying the frenzy of battle.

Guards unlatched the gate, swung it open, and Jorn crawled forward on all fours, painting the floor with a swath of pitch. He pulled himself into a corner where a fit of choking seized him. Essence spread around him in a puddle as if oozing from his flesh. Jordam’s nostrils flared. Something wasn’t right about Jorn’s scent. Was he wounded?

“Too much,” Mordafey laughed. “Too much for Jorn.”

“You.” One of the guards raised a claw to Jordam. At first he stiffened, thinking he was being accused. But then the guard pointed to the lift.

“Drink deep, Jordam,” snarled Mordafey. “Strength. Strength for the plan.”

Jordam’s feet felt nailed to the floor.

“Go.” Mordafey seized Jordam’s mane and dragged him to the cage. Stumbling inside, Jordam heard the cage door latch behind him.

The Usher began to turn the crank.

“Rockbeetles.” Goreth smiled at him with blackened teeth. “Strength, Same Brother.”

“Strength.”

As he plunged into the dark, the ropes sang to the end of their reach. The warm oily fragrance of Essence intensified as if he were sinking into a pool. A mouth behind his ribs opened, demanding to be fed. His hands shook. He dragged his tongue across his lips.

The cage rattled as it touched the ground. Jordam waited for Kreanomos the Sopper Crone to lift the latch and invite him to her cauldron. He groped about for a last-minute revelation, an unlikely escape. Perhaps he could just pretend to drink. No, the Crone would punish him if he spilled Essence on the floor. Moreover, he knew that he would have no power to reject it when it came within his reach. If the Sopper Crone lifted that large iron ladle, he would drink.

Perhaps he should drink, he thought. Perhaps he could receive that strength and control it, break free from the brothers forever. Perhaps he was stronger than other Cent Regus and could use this power to achieve something good.

He turned, reached through the bars to unlatch the door, and stepped out to face Kreanomos.

All across the walls of the Essence chamber, bulbous tendrils of a foul weed wriggled, a plague of devouring vines. In previous visits Jordam had taken them to be part of the construction, a sort of reinforcement. But now he observed they were a species of parasite, destroying whatever they touched. Where they had once been only sparsely spread, now the entire wall was consumed by them, and they had come alive. He recognized them now. Feelers. These were the rootlike predators that dug up through to stone and soil, snakelike arms invading the ground, seizing and dragging down anything uncorrupted by the curse. He wondered if the tendrils that had troubled the snow near the merchants’ barn were anchored here, so far away.

But the feelers did not hold his attention. Bulging from the ceiling like a tumor, a dark, fleshy sponge seeped an oily brine, which spilled down into a smoking cauldron.

Warily he stepped forward, licking his lips.

Jordam remembered Kreanomos. She was not easy to forget. An ancient female with a long curved snout like a turtle, her wide milky eyes ran perpetually to clean away the glaze of steam from the cauldron she guarded. She stood between the cauldron and an apparatus of rusted metal that bristled with levers, a heavy wheel-crank affixed to the top. Her back, shoulders, and neck bulged with muscles to support an array of spindly arms—six knobby spans of bone wrapped in papery flesh. With some of her hands, she worked the levers and the wheel, controlling the flow of murky pitch from the sponge. With the others, she stirred and ladled out the portion for her visitors.

“Strength,” she would say quietly. “Strength for all Cent Regus.”

But today Kreanomos did not stand and work the machine or trouble the contents of her cauldron. Her ladle lay on the floor as if she had cast it down in a tantrum. Jorn must have given her trouble. She reclined on the cushions, the bed where she slumbered between the visits of hungry guests. Her six arms splayed wide, her knees bent, and her beak sagged open. Her translucent eyelids, which allowed her to see with her eyes closed, slid slowly up and down.

She did not greet him.

He reached for the ladle, but as his hand closed over its sticky iron handle, the skin of his fingers tasted Essence. He felt a slight charge, and it shook him. He smacked his lips together, and the cauldron pulled him forward. He stepped onto the stone block that supported it, reached over the edge and broke the roiling surface with the ladle’s bowl. It was all he could do to keep from plunging his face into the stew. He lifted the ladle to his lips and drew the hot soup into his mouth.

As the Essence took hold, he glanced nervously at the Sopper Crone. She made no move to assist him. He paused. Was she testing him? Perhaps she waited to see if he would follow the rules. Perhaps he was, right now, failing that test and ensuring the brothers would be punished. He spat the Essence to the floor, staggering away. A trickle of pitch drew a hot line down his throat, and a presence throughout his body awakened and raged like a hungry infant, demanding more.

Jordam waved the ladle in the air. “Crone,” he gasped. “Serve me.”

Kreanomos answered with a gargling cough, and Jordam smelled that strange, rancid air again, the foul vapor that Jorn had brought out of the pit.

He stepped around the cauldron, and the matter became clear to him.

The Crone’s belly was open, gaping.

The ladle fell from Jordam’s hand. “Jorn,” he muttered.

The Crone examined what had happened to her as if for the first time. Her hand reached out, trembling for the spoon. “Strength,” she rasped, tonguing blood. “Help me.”

Help me. Jordam thought of Bel. So much the same. So different altogether.

The comparison shook him. The cauldron. Like the well. But, no, not like the well at all. The Essence, pungent and enervating, while the perfume of O-raya’s blue cast a spell of calm. This cavern, a cold and colorless ache in the belly of the earth—the glen, alive with summer.

He pressed his hand to his chest. “Let go,” he groaned. His steps heavy, he staggered back into the cage and tugged at the ropes. “Mordafey!” The cage did not rise. It was too early.

Jordam climbed out of the cage, jumped on top of it, and began to climb the ropes. A lightning storm sparked and flashed in his head, and the pit below pulled at him. Striving to release his hold on the Essence, he could feel that the Essence had a grip on him. He strained, dragging himself up through the abyss toward the platform. Halfway, he paused to catch his breath, suspended between the source of his power and his waiting brothers, and he realized that his chance had come.

As if sensing his plot, the walls began to move, tendrils prying themselves loose in an effort to seize him. Jordam flung himself up the ropes like a frightened gorrel scrabbling up a tree.

When he burst up through the fanged maw of the floor, the confusion amongst his brothers and the guards threatened to break into violence.

“Nobody to serve Essence,” he shouted. “rrJorn finished the Sopper Crone!”

Mordafey shook his mane in confusion. The guards twitched, clacked their pincers. One uttered a guttural clatter, and the others looked to Jordam.

Jorn, who seemed to have swallowed more Essence than even Mordafey could safely stomach, blinked silently, crazed and disoriented, until Jordam’s accusation sank in through his confusion. Seized then in a sniveling fit, he lunged, shrieking, “Y’liar!”

Jordam ducked, caught Jorn in the air, and flung him against the gate of the chamber. Jorn sprawled on the ground, slipping on dripping hands.

“Say again, Jordam.” Mordafey stalked up to Jordam and pushed him to the edge of the abyss. “Say again.”

“Sopper Crone’s dead,” he replied, cautiously subservient. “You can smell it. Not just Essence, but the Crone’s blood on Jorn’s claws.”

Mordafey stared deep into Jordam’s eyes as if to sift his mind for a lie.

“Older Brother,” Goreth whined, leaning against the gate. “Your turn.”

Mordafey roared with such wrath that Jorn leapt straight up, clubbed his head against the rugged stone of the ceiling, and then shoved himself against the bars of the gate.

“No escaping, Jorn,” said Mordafey.

Jorn whimpered, turned to Jordam, and hissed, “I run up behind you. You no see me. An’ I finish you next.” In a surge of power that stunned everyone, Jorn bent the bars of the gate and opened a gap. Before Mordafey could stop him, Jorn wriggled through, knocked down one startled guard, and flattened another who was marching down the tunnel. Like a bushpig in a charge, he fled.

Mordafey sprang after him but could not fit between the fractured bars. “Skell Wra will punish brothers unless…unless we catch Jorn.” His silhouette trembled, volcanic, and his eyes glowed red as embers. “Skell Wra will kill us all.”

The guards fumbled at the gate latch and sent it crashing up.

“I go after him,” Jordam growled.

“What?” Mordafey barked. “You said that before.”

“rrThis time it will be different,” Jordam promised quietly. “Watch. I’ll surprise you.”

Mordafey took a moment to grind his teeth, scorching Jordam with his burning gaze. Then he shouted at the guards. “Jordam is fast. He’ll catch Jorn and bring him back.” Their glimmering eyes did not blink, but they lowered their weapons and waited, seeming to understand. “Then…” Mordafey turned to Jordam. “Then you have your Essence.”

Jordam clasped Goreth’s bristling shoulders and looked into that baffled face. “Remember,” he said, his voice suddenly faint as if it were disappearing entirely and forever, “I’m your Same Brother. I’ll come back.”

Goreth stared back without expression.

Jordam forced himself through the gate, making a vow as he went. If he could escape this power, his twin could learn to leave it too. He would find a way to draw Goreth away from the others someday, to break him of the curse’s hold.

Goreth hated the Cent Regus guards. He hated their hairless arms. He hated their joints—the shrill scraping sounds they made sent chills ripping up and down his bones. He hated how they moved in fits and pauses like the hard-shelled pests crawling on the bottom of Deep Lake. To be held under their guard made him want to smash their shells.

“Let me run too, Older Brother.”

“Jordam goes alone,” said Mordafey. “You stay.”

He wanted to run with Jordam. To run and to keep running. The urge grew within him. The thrill of the kill had become complicated. Mordafey demanded more and more, and Jorn twisted everything into anger and blood.

Only Jordam made him feel at ease. Goreth felt like a reflection, an extension of his brother. He wished it could be the other way, that Jordam would seek to be like him. But in moments of crisis, it was Jordam who took charge. Jordam could deflect Mordafey’s tantrums through clever words. Goreth admired that.

But Jordam had been absent lately. And now he was leaving Goreth behind again. Jordam always found ways to break away from the brothers, even if he knew Mordafey would make him pay. Goreth wanted to break free as well. He found himself imagining what it might be like to venture away from the four brothers’ den, to hunt and kill by himself. Some beastmen hunted alone. They did not need Mordafey’s permission to feast upon their kills. They did not have to cringe.

Unaware of his fidgeting, he began to whine like an anxious hound. The guards stared at him and flexed their pincers. He wanted to kill them. But that would make Mordafey angrier.

So it was with trembling alarm and a sob of dismay that he received Mordafey’s instructions to stay there. “Wait. Jordam will bring Jorn back.”

“But you will stay here?”

Mordafey stared up the tunnel. “Mordafey’s earned his Essence. Mordafey will take it before they find another Crone. And then the plan, Goreth. Four brothers follow the plan.”

Seizing the ropes, Mordafey descended through the hole in the floor.

The Usher, caught by surprise, grumbled at the guards through his stitched lips. One reached out and severed the ropes. They dropped and disappeared. Far below, Mordafey crashed to the floor.

Goreth’s breath hissed in, out, in, out. Paralyzed, he stared at the hole. He waited a very long time.

When Mordafey finally returned, climbing up the walls with ease, unstoppable, he was soaked from head to toe in Essence, and Goreth did not like the change in his eyes.

Nor did the Usher and the guards. But their worries were brief, their deaths quick and sure.