The Hammer Unfalls

Ryn slapped a couple of buttons on the wall panel. The chamber vibrated and surged into motion. The walls whined as they picked up speed.

“Lie down,” Glim said, easing Ryn onto her cot. Crimson blood pooled from slashes in her cloak. Glim removed it, trying to ignore Ryn’s moans of pain as he did so.

Her gray tunic, also slashed, weeped blood.

Remembering his pack, Glim grabbed a handful of clean rags. He balled one up and shoved it against Ryn’s back, then pressed another over that. He pressed her into the cot, keeping pressure on her back like a vise.

“How bad is it?” Ryn asked through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see any guts.”

Ryn laughed, weakly. “Those are typically in the front.”

“Where did you learn to fight so well?” Glim asked.

“Like I told you. I wasn’t always a gardener.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence. Ryn’s breath came in ragged shudders, with the occasional hiss of pain.

“Can I get anything from your pack? Like that stuff you put in my mouth to stop the bleeding?”

“That won’t work. Just keep the pressure on. The bleeding will slow, or it won’t.”

At last, something clicked in Glim’s mind. A puzzle piece fallen into place.

The memory of the herbs she’d packed into his mouth had done it. Now he knew what he’d missed. The observation he’d overlooked when wondering why Ryn was so keen to help him.

This ‘gardener’ had dragged him into the wilds, scaled a tower in a snowstorm, and faced down a pack of slavering hyaenas with full composure. But the thought of Glim heading south alarmed her so much she’d slapped him.

Eyes wide. With fear.

Glim had terrified her. Simply by attempting to run away.

It all made sense. Her constant scrutiny. The way she’d kept him occupied and distracted. The way she’d taught him to ply, having no essentiæ of her own. Leaping from the hillside. Taking risks. As Glim now realized, huge risks. Life or death. Ryn had literally leapt off a cliff just to teach Glim a lesson.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Why did you slap me?”

“I didn’t!”

“Back home. In the glass house.”

Ryn sighed. “Oh, that. To knock some sense into you.”

Glim’s jaw clenched. “Do not treat me like a child. What rattled you so? Why have you risked everything to train me?”

“Someone had to.”

“Why? Why is it so important to you that I ply algidon?”

Ryn said nothing.

“Why?” Glim said again.

“If I told you, the reason why I care would vanish the moment my words left my lips.”

“Are you my mother?”

Ryn laughed, which turned into a wheezing cough, then a moan of pain.

“I am not. I was halfway across Æronthrall when you were born.”

“Where?’

“A small town in the middle of nowhere.” Ryn chuckled weakly. “You might see it someday.”

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing at all. Yet everything.” Ryn wheezed again. “Are you sure you didn’t… see any guts?”

Her question chilled him. “No, Miss Daryna.”

“You might need to check again.”

“But… the blood hasn’t stopped.”

“One thing at a time. Look closer this time.”

Glim looked at the blood weeping between his fingers. He peeled back the soaked rags, and dabbed at the wound with a clean cloth. Ryn moaned. Blood puddled back in place immediately.

“What… do you see?”

“Just blood.” Ryn shuddered. A flicker of white moved as she did so. “Wait! I see something white.”

“Oh, gods no. Touch it. Gently. Very gently.”

Glim extended a trembling fingertip and touched where he’d seen the white.

Ryn’s fists clenched and she screamed. He immediately pulled his fingertip away, but she screamed more.

“I’m sorry!” Glim clamped the rag to the wound again and pressed down as he had before.

“Glim. Listen to me. When we get there—”

“—that’ll take days!”

“We aren’t going home. When we get there, you need to take me directly to the maggot tank. Face up, please. When you get there, you’ll need to infuse the tank with algidon and aeolia. The… the squiggles like…” Ryn moaned.

Glim grabbed the rune cylinders he’d collected from his pouch. “Like this one?” he held it up to Ryn’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“And this one?”

“NO! That’s phyr.”

“These two?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a maggot tank?”

“It’s full of flower petals.” Ryn coughed. “What do you think? It will be silver. It’ll have a control panel. You might need to get it powered up.”

“How?”

“Figure… it…” Ryn slumped and lapsed into silence.

“Ryn!” Glim sobbed. But the woman said nothing.

After what seemed like days, the brass chamber slowed and came to a stop.

Glim let go of the bloody rags. His forearms throbbed from keeping pressure on, but he ignored it. Glim balled up Ryn’s cloak, set it over her wound, and pulled the belt straps from the wall. He looped them under the cot, buckled them, and cinched them tight. Ryn moaned weakly.

“Hang on, Ryn!”

Glim flung the door open. Just as the first time, a stone tunnel with lights led to a room beyond. He ran into the chamber and looked around. Stairways went up and down. A wide doorway to the right opened into another hall.

Glim ran along that hallway and came to a huge, round room. Beds and strange devices lined the walls to one side. To the other, he saw a table bathed in white light. Spheres like the ones in Master Willow’s library illuminated that half of the room.

Near the table, Glim found cabinets filled with vials and metal boxes. Next to that, a row of three silver boxes, like coffins. Tarnished, with a blue-black patina.

Glim opened the first. It had a faint odor of rot. Inside, he saw thousands of shriveled black specks on the bottom of the tank.

The second one assaulted his nose with a putrescent stench. It had thousands of brown specks on the bottom, which reeked like rotted death.

The third tank seemed like the second, except some of the brownish white specks still wriggled.

Suppressing an urge to retch, Glim scooped the dead maggots from the third tank and dropped them into the second. He scraped the smooth bottom and sides, clearing away as much of the dead as he could. The remaining squiggle of maggots seemed too paltry to do any good.

Running back to the first chamber, Glim looked around in desperation. He saw nothing of use. He only smelled rot, from the hallway, and the stairs.

The stairs?

Glim ran down them to a darkened floor, which he ignored, and ran down to the next. The unmistakable scent of dung lures drew him. The wide, circular room had four massive tanks embedded in the floor. A single yellow light shone above each, reflecting across the water. Above two of them, Glim heard the soft plops of maggots falling into the water.

He snatched a pail from a nearby table and climbed to the scaffolding above the tanks. He ran to the cage above the first tank and shook it violently. Swarms of maggots squirmed out of the desiccated carcass of some huge rodent. He caught them in the pail and moved onto the second. To his relief, this kill seemed fresher, and more maggots fell into the pail. By the time he’d harvested all of the cages, he had half a pail of maggots.

He had no time to wonder how or by whom these tanks had been baited. Glim ran back up the stairs two at a time and raced back to the maggot tank. He almost threw the pailful of maggots in, but stopped.

It wouldn’t be enough.

Instead, Glim scooped the living maggots from the tank into the pail. When he’d finished, Glim looked around for some type of switch on the control panel. To his relief, the chamber responded to his first try. It hummed as a pale light grew stronger inside the chamber.

Next to the power switch, Glim saw a triangle of divots with squiggly lines. With great care, he took out the two runeplugs Ryn had indicated and plugged them into the matching divots.

The chamber hissed with steam. Silver light swirled in its depths.

Glim set the pail inside and closed the lid.

Running once more, he went back inside the brass chamber. It smelled of blood. He undid the belts and picked Ryn up by her armpits. Turning her over as gently as he could, he hauled her down the hallway, with her feet dragging along the floor.

“It’ll be fine, Miss Daryna. We’re here now.”

Dragging her to the maggot tank, Glim paused. He looked around the room, thinking furiously about what to do next. Tossing her in like this seemed reckless.

Glim found a tray with sharp shears.

“Sorry, Ryn,” he said, and cut her tunic away.

“Sorry again,” he said, removing the pail and setting her facedown into the tank. Glim used the shears to cut her undertunic in half, then dumped the writhing pail of maggots onto her back. He tipped the bucket upside down and set it onto her back to contain the spread of maggots, and keep them focused on one place.

Glim closed the tank’s door, listened to the steam, and started crying as the tension overwhelmed him.