Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(105)

“No,” he groaned, rolling onto his side, clutching his torch with trembling hands. “Not yet.”

It took him a dozen tries to light it. His arms felt like lead weights, his lungs wheezed against his chest, and he couldn’t concentrate on the simple striking action of flint against steel. The torch was pitch-soaked, and the flint would make a spark, even wet, but he couldn’t seem to focus on the task.

“Come on, Hull,” he begged as the torch finally caught fire, tossing its flickering light onto dull stone and glinting quartz. “Just a few minutes more.”

With a staggering effort he dragged himself to his knees, panting desperately, then to his feet. The cavern was huge, twice again the size of anything he’d yet encountered, as high as the Temple of Light, back in Annur. Great teeth of stone thrust up from the floor, hung from the ceiling, some joining into huge pillars wider than his arms could span. The place felt like the gullet of some massive beast, heavy, not just with the unfathomable weight of stone, but with a cold, brooding malice.

Valyn stared blearily about him, took a few steps toward a low ledge, stumbled, then forced himself up again. There was something there, something … a nest! It was larger than the rest, much larger, but the combination of stone and calcified slime was the same as everywhere else. Stomach heaving, hands shaking, mind reeling, he staggered forward, tossed the torch onto the bare stone, and dropped to his knees before it. Please, Hull, he thought, with the part of him that could still think, let it not be too late.

He groped blindly into the nest, felt his hands close around an egg, a huge egg, and lifted it out. He stared. Unlike the other slarn spawn, it was black, black as pitch, and almost the size of his head.

“What?” he mumbled, clutching it before him as a starving man might hold a rotten shank of meat. “It’s not white.…”

Was it slarn? The walls of the cavern seemed to be flexing around him. A low grating rasped at his ears. From what seemed like another world, another life in which he had lived under the sun, and his body had obeyed, a life in which other people had cared for him, had tried to help him, the Flea’s voice filled his head: When you’ve only got one choice, you can bitch and moan, or you can draw your blade and start swinging.

“All right, Hull,” Valyn snarled, fumbling his belt knife free of its sheath and plunging it into the shell. The albumen of the egg spurted forth, thick as tar between his fingers and stinking of stone and bile. “I guess it’s time for a drink now, just you and me.”

He raised the shell in both hands above his head like a chalice, then brought it to his lips and tilted it back, his gorge rising even as he gulped down the slick, stinking liquid, gulped it and swallowed, tilting the egg until the black ooze ran down his chin, down the front of his shirt, down his throat, heavy as oil as it filled his stomach. He paused, gasping, savagely wrestled down the urge to vomit, to pour his guts out on the floor, then forced the shell to his lips once more, sobbing mindlessly as he did, slurping and struggling, the slime thick as marrow in his throat.

When there was no more to be had, he collapsed backward, his head against the nest, heart struggling to leap from his chest, skin ablaze, mind a bright spike of pain. Moaning filled his ears, a terrible, wounded sound. He tried to shut it out before he realized that it was coming from his own lips. He curled into a ball, his knees to his chest, while his stomach rolled and seized. This was death, he realized, this was what death felt like, and he squeezed his eyes closed and wished it would hurry up.

After a time—he had no idea how long—he realized the moaning had stopped. His stomach still kicked, but he could straighten out, could sit up. He eased himself back against the wall, then raised a hand, stained splotchy black with the remnants of the egg. He had dropped his torch. It lay on the cold stone a few feet away, still burning. He tried to remember what Shaleel said before she sent them down into the Hole, tried to guess how long he had stumbled in darkness before finding the egg. Pain still gouged at his forearm, but it was the bright pain of an honest wound, not the sick, gnawing burning from before. He took a tentative breath, then a deeper one. His heart seemed to have calmed itself. Once again he considered his black and sticky hand. The feeble torchlight danced across his outstretched arm and fingers, flickering and enigmatic. The light moved, but the hand was steady. For what seemed like the first time in his life, he smiled.

“Hull,” he said, saluting the shadows of the hall. “If you’re listening—next round’s on me.”