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

distant until they faded away.
    As the voices diminished, she heard Mere-Glim resume breathing.
    “I don’t suppose you understood any of that?” he asked.
    “Remember how you used to make fun of me for studying old Ehlnofex?” she asked.
    “A dead language? Yes.” His throat expanded and he huffed. “They were speaking Ehlnofex?”
    “No, but it was enough like it for me to understand it.”
    “And?”
    “Someone saw us fly up here. They’re searching for us.”
    “Who?”
    “Whoever lives here. There was a word I didn’t understand—vehrumas—but it sounds like there are more than one bunch trying to find us.”
    “Wonderful. So what do we do?”
    To her surprise, she suddenly knew.
    She fumbled in her jacket and pulled out Coo.
    “Go to the Imperial City,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Find Crown Prince Attrebus. Speak only to him, hear only in his presence. He will help us.” She saw him in her mind’s eye, her own imagining based on the portraits she had seen.
    Coo clicked and tinged, and then flew off, dodging gracefully through the filaments, diminishing, a speck, gone.
    “How does that help us?” Glim asked. “Why should Attrebus care what happens to us?”
    “This thing isn’t stopping at Lilmoth,” she told him. “It’ll go on, through all of Tamriel. And you’re right, we can’t stop it, you and I. Most likely we’ll die or be captured. But if we can survive a little while, until Coo reaches Attrebus—”
    “Listen to yourself.”
    “—if Coo reaches him, and at least one of us survives, we can tell him what’s happening. Attrebus has armies, battlemages, the resources of an empire. What he doesn’t have is any information about this place.”
    “Neither do we. And it will be days, at least, before Coo reaches the Imperial City—if he does.”
    “Then we have to survive,” she said. “Survive and learn.”
    “Survive what? We don’t even know what we’re up against.”
    “Well, then let’s find out.”
    “I have a better idea,” Glim said, pointing to the oily black snout emerging from the cocoon. “Let’s grab onto one of those strands and ride it to the ground.”
    Annaïg frowned. “They’re moving too fast. Anyway, then we’d just be down there where everything is dying.”
    He paused, looked at her as if she was crazy, and then rolled his eyes.
    “You were kidding,” she said.
    “I was kidding,” he confirmed.

    The filaments that anchored the web sacs to the stone gave them purchase to climb down to the next ledge, where they found another tunnel. They went in quietly, mindful of what had happened before. As before, the way tended either upward and outward or back into the vault. After perhaps an hour they came across one of the now familiar cables.
    Less familiar was the person licking it.
    He hadn’t seen them yet.
    It was a man, naked from the waist up and clad in loose, dirty trousers rolled tight at his waist. His shape and features were those of a human or mer, except that his eyes were a bit larger than normal and recessed more deeply into his face. His hair was unkempt, greasy, and dingy yellow.
    She motioned Glim back, but the fellow’s gaze snapped over to them, and he stopped licking the cable.
    “Lady!” he exclaimed, in the same dialect she’d heard before, bending his head and battering his forehead with his knuckles. “Lady, this isn’t at all what it looks like!”
    Annaïg just stared for a moment.
    “Lady?” the man repeated. She saw fear in his eyes, but puzzlement as well. Clearly he thought he knew who—or more likely, what—she was.
    The man’s eyes widened further and he stepped back as Glim emerged.
    “What is it, then?” Annaïg asked, trying to sound haughty. “What is it if it’s not what it looks like?”
    “Mistress,” the man replied. “I hope you understand what you saw just now was just appearances. I wouldn’t actually—”
    “Lick the cable? That’s exactly what it looked like you