Tailchaser’s Song

Crushgrass winced. "They were going to come down here without me, if I didn't come. How would that look?"

"Like a mutiny. Now, it's a mutiny that you're leading, my fine, stupid friend. Scratching! Hah! Stone-blood and fire! You'll soon find that the Master is worse than any scratching!"

"And what brings you here, anyway?" Snapjaw hissed nastily.

Without warning, Bitefast was on him, knocking him to the ground and tearing his ear.

"You can talk to your chief like he's a mewling kit, but don't try it with me!" Bitefast rasped into Snapjaw's bleeding ear in a low dangerous voice, then spoke up to the rest, who were watching avidly. "As it happens, I've brought an important prisoner to the Lord of All. If you're lucky, he'll be so pleased with me he'll forget to tear your i

"Important prisoner? This little thing?" asked Crushgrass.

"The only escape we've had, this one," growled Bitefast. "He must have had help, right? Stands to reason, doesn't it? And you know what that means, don't you?" The Claw leaned forward for emphasis. "Conspiracy! Think about that!" Bitefast bared his teeth, pleased.

"But if he escaped, what's he doing back?" queried one of Crushgrass' guards. Bitefast glared at him.

"I've had just about enough questions from your like," he said menacingly. "I've got more important things to do than stand about jabbering with you scabby lot. I'm going in to see the Master. Go on, Crushgrass, take your whimperers and their 'scratching,' and get back to your tu

"And you've got no place to order me, Bitefast," said the other chieftain defiantly, but started away, his mumbling crew behind him. Snapjaw, with a hateful look, followed shakily.

"No backbone," said Bitefast in a self-satisfied tone.

Fritti had been motionless throughout the exchange, sensing the emanations that beat out from the chamber beyond-the grinding, reaching power of Heart-eater. He barely felt Bitefast poking him forward toward the entrance. A mist swam before his eyes, and a blunt throb of pain started up at the front of his skull.

The two guards of the portal, one Claw, one Tooth, bobbed their heads minutely as they recognized Bitefast, but did not turn to watch as he led Fritti by. As they passed below the arch, cold mist swam up to meet them. Tailchaser was already shivering.

In the middle of the cavern the throne of the Impossible One rose up from the pit, the writhing, dying bodies making rippling patterns in the blue-and-violet light. Atop this monolith of pain lolled Lord Hearteater, blind and immobile like an immense, newly-hatched larva. Below him dozens of fevered servitors scurried around the rim of the pit.

Bitefast, his bravado gone now, pulled Tailchaser slowly toward the great beast. As they stood on the great circular precipice-the Claw chief working up courage to speak-there was a commotion at the far end of the cavern, near the main entrance. Fritti could see Clawguard ru

The creature above the pit turned his head slowly in the direction of the disturbance. Bitefast coughed once, loudly, but the Master only stared away, across the great rock-rimmed cave.

"G-Greatest Lord… Mighty One, hear thy slave!"

Bitefast's voice carried out across the pit. The massive head pivoted slowly, turning back at last to fix milk-white eyes in their direction. Both the Clawguard chief and his captive took an involuntary step back from the rim. The Firstborn regarded them expres-sionlessly.

"Greatest Lord, your servant Bitefast has brought you the escaped prisoner-the star-faced one. See!" The mottled beast stepped back, leaving Tailchaser cowering on the edge of the great pit beneath the unfathomable inspection of Hearteater.

Bitefast, unconsciously shooting and sheathing his claws as he waited, at last could bear the silence no longer. "Have I done well, Greatest One? Are you pleased with your servant?"

Hearteater turned his head slightly toward the Clawguard. "You will live," he said. His voice sounded like centuries of decay. Bitefast made a spluttering noise, but before he could speak the dead, muddy voice added: "You have done well. Now go."

Eyes goggling, Bitefast backed toward the entrance, turned and disappeared. Tailchaser sagged to the cold ground; the vapors swirled between him and the pit. When they receded, the Fat One's ancient, blind eyes were focused upward, seeing nothing. The tortured heap on which the thing reclined heaved slightly, as in some strange collective shrug. The Lord of Vastnir appeared not to notice. Suddenly, like a cold, clammy intruder, Hearteater's voice spoke inside Tailchaser's mind.

"I know you." The thick presence forced its way effortlessly into his thoughts. Tailchaser, in a sick frenzy, rubbed his head against the frost-hard ground of the cavern, but the voice could not be driven out.

"You are no threat. Free or prisoned, quick or dead, you are less than a pebble in my path." The ageless thing, smothering Fritti's panicked thoughts in flabby despair, droned on: "But I still need my minions… for a while yet. All must know futility. All must know resistance is futility. I should render you to particles and set you afloat between the stars…"

A terrifying emptiness swept into Fritti's mind, as if he had been suddenly cast into the endless abyss. Somewhere he could hear his body squealing in terror… somewhere-remote, unreachable.

"But," the awful hammering drone began again, "you are already promised. Bast-Imret and Knet-Mukri-all the Boneguard-have claimed you. You will be taken to the House of Despair, to be entertained there until your ka struggles to fly to the great void…"

As if silendy summoned, gray mist-shrouded shapes issued forth from the caves high up on the wall beyond Hearteater's pit. A stately, awful progression started down from the honey-combed cavern wall, as slow and relentless as black ice forming on a winter pond. In the dim indigo light that flickered from fissures in the rock they were indistinct… formless. Bright sparks that might have been eyes twinkled.

A thin breeze sighed down from the heights of the chamber and the darkness settled a little closer. The other creatures drew back silently to let the Boneguard pass. A powerful force held Tailchaser pinioned to the earth, and he could only watch as the shadow company approached.

A sudden disturbance at the cavern's far entrance, loud alarums from the Clawguard there, turned all the eyes but those of the blind beast in the pit. The line of Boneguard stopped, their indistinct forms rippling. Beneath Hearteater the dying bodies heaved again; then for a moment all was still.

A lone figure tottered through the entranceway, into the Cavern of the Pit. It was a Toothguard, leathery hide slashed and bleeding.

"We are attacked!" the creature shrieked. "There isss great sslaughter at the Vez'an Gate! Other placesss, too!" A great cry arose from the gathered beasts, and now sounds could be heard from the tu

"What is it? What is it?" cried one of the Clawguard, maddened.

"The treacherous Firssst-walkersss! They have come with the sssun-wormss of the Firssthome! Treachery! Attack!" Screeching and whistling, the Toothguard collapsed. The cavern was instantly a place of pandemonium-Tooth and Claw alike leaping, snarling, and screaming, spilling and surging out of the tu

Tailchaser, sprawled on the earth at the edge of the pit, watched it all as if he were in a dream. The cries and furor had not touched him, had not penetrated the paralyzing frost that Hearteater had laid on his heart and ka. When a massive wave of struggling beasts poured through the entrance to the cavern, locked talon and fang in mortal combat, he watched the swelling madness with the same curious indifference he had once shown to ripples on a summer pond. Only when several of the figures near the front of the fighting began to look faintly, distantly familiar did he feel a thawing of interest.