Read Online In the House of the Worm by George R. R. Martin - Free Book Online Page A

years than he had lived. And they were unusual grouns, at that. Males and females alternated, and each in the long row was partially flayed, a section of its skin peeled back to reveal inside. A different section on each groun, at that. There were also statues of grouns and groun skulls, and a six-limbed skeleton. The last groun was the most singular. Though colorless, its garments were as fine and rich as any of the yaga-la-hai . On its head was a metal helmet, such as a bronze knight might wear, all of black metal with a thin red window curving around the front for its eyes. And it held something, pointing it.
    A tube of some sort, fashioned of the same black metal as the helmet. Strangest of all, both helmet and tube were emblazoned with silver thetas.
    Annelyn used four of his matches examining the row of grouns, hoping to find something that would help him. He had so few left, but it was foolish to hoard them now. Finding nothing, he crossed the room, groping for the other wall. He tripped over a table, went around it, and collided with another. They were both empty. Finally he felt glass again.
    This wall was full of worms.
    Like the grouns, they were dead, or stuffed, or cased in the glass; Annelyn did not care which it was, so long as they did not move. A four-foot-long eaterworm dominated the display, but there were dozens of others as well. Most of them were unknown to him, though he had eaten worms all his life. They had one thing in common: they looked dangerous. A lot of them had teeth, which Annelyn found very disquieting. A few wore what looked like stings in their tails.
    He explored the rest of the chamber; it was long and narrow, sheathed in metal, seemingly untouched by time, and capped by a large, wheeled door at each end. A lot of tables were scattered about, and metal chairs, but nothing of interest to Annelyn. Once he came across something shaped like a torch, but the shaft was metal and the head glass, totally useless. Perhaps he could fill the glass part with the glowing fungus, he thought. He tucked the instrument under his arm. Other things he found as well, bulking pillars and shapes of metal and glass, vaguely like those he had seen shattered on the edge of the bridge in the Chamber of the Last Light, and in the Meatbringer's throne room. He could not fathom their purpose.
    At length, his matches all but exhausted, he went back to the wall of the grouns. Something was nagging at him, pulling at the back of his brain. He looked again at the last groun in the row, then at the tube. That was being held almost like a weapon, Annelyn decided. And it bore a theta. It might be useful. He took the metal shaft of the thing-that-was-almost-a-torch, and smashed at the thick glass with a series of sharp blows. It cracked and cracked and cracked some more, but did not shatter. Finally, when his arm had begun to ache, Annelyn ripped through with his hands, clawing aside splinters of not-quite-glass that still hung maddeningly together. He grabbed the groun's tube, and began to play with its various bars and handles.
    A few minutes later, he discarded it with disgust. Useless, whatever it had been.
    Something still bothered him. He lit another match and considered the helmeted groun. A wrongness there....
    It hit him. The helmet, the reddish window. But a groun had no eyes! Annelyn widened the gap he had made in the glasslike wall, and lifted the helmet from the dead groun's head.
    This groun had eyes.
    He moved his match very close. Eyes, all right; small and black, sunk deep in moist sockets, but definitely eyes. Yet this groun was the only eyed groun in the wall; the next one down, a heavy female, was eyeless, as were all the rest.
    His match died. Annelyn tried on the helmet.
    Light was all around him.
    He shouted, whirled, bobbed his head up and down. He could see! He could see the whole room, in a glance! Without a match, or a torch! He could see!
    The walls were glowing, very faintly, smoky red. The metal