Read Online The Infernal City by Greg Keyes - Free Book Online Page A

loose, maybe the horror would end.
    The steps wound up a few feet and vanished back into another tunnel. This one was illuminated with a palpable phosphorescence. It twisted to curve steeply skyward, and Annaïg realized they were making their way up above the domed space. Almost immediately it began branching, but she kept to her left, and after several breathless moments they came to a silvery-white cable, emerging from the stone below them and vanishing into the ceiling.
    “It looks like the threads,” she whispered. “Only bigger.”
    “Not bigger,” Glim said. “More.”
    A little closer, she saw what he meant. The cable was composed of hundreds of threads wound together.
    She reached out to touch it.
    “Well, that’s not smart,” Glim said.
    “I know,” she replied, trying to sound brave. Closing her eyes, she touched the back of her hand to it.
    Something whirred about in her head and she felt a sudden giddy surge.
    She saw now that the hole was larger than the cable that came up through it and, lying flat she was able to make out the jungle floor again. Below her, the ropelike structure unwound itself,sending threads off in every direction. She could see some of them vanishing into the web sacs.
    “If we cut this, we’ll get a lot of them,” she said.
    “What do you mean, ‘get’ them? What do you think will happen?”
    “They’re all connected here.”
    “Okay.”
    “Then if we cut it …” She flailed off, gesturing.
    “You think it will, what, shut this whole thing down? Destroy this island?”
    “It might. Glim, we have to do something.”
    “You keep saying that.” He sighed. “What will you cut it with?”
    “Try your claws.”
    He blinked, then stepped forward and experimentally raked his claws across the thing. He shivered and stepped back, then hit it again, with such force that the cord vibrated.
    It wasn’t scratched.
    “Any other ideas?”
    “Maybe if we can find a sharp rock—” She broke off. “Do you hear that?”
    Glim nodded.
    “Xhuth!”
    Because somewhere in the passages, she could hear voices shouting, several of them.
    “Come on,” she said, and started up another branch of the tunnel.
    They kept going, taking random branches, but the voices were gradually growing louder, and there was little doubt in her mind now that they were being pursued.
    Whenever they came to a turn that seemed to go down, she took it, reasoning that so far they hadn’t been bothered by anything from that direction, but inevitably the passages seemed to move them upward.
    She couldn’t have known, could she? How big this was all going to be, how utterly beyond her? It was ridiculous.
    As if the gods had decided to punctuate that thought, the tunnel suddenly debouched onto a steep ledge that vanished into the interior space of the island.
    She drew up short, panting, but Glim grabbed her arm and they were suddenly skittering down the tilted surface. Her surprise was so complete that all thought was pushed from her brain by white light, so when the Argonian caught a knob at the edge and swung them sharply down and under, she had nothing to be relieved about. She found herself on a rounded, springy surface.
    It was one of the web sacs.
    Glim pulled her up to where the thing was anchored to the stone, the sloping shelf now a ceiling above them, and they crouched there, trying to calm their breathing for many long moments.
    A voice suddenly spoke above them, in a tongue that sounded teasingly familiar. The voice might have been that of a man or mer. Another, stranger voice replied. This time she caught a few words; it was Merish dialect of some sort. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sounds.
    “—could be dead already,” she made out.
    “We can’t take that chance. He’ll have our heads if another vehrumas gets them.”
    “Who else is looking for them?”
    “Word gets around fast. Come on, let’s try this way.”
    The two continued talking, but the sounds grew gradually more