Empire of the Worm Read Online Free PDF Page A

father inclined his head toward
the great seal of the Tomb. “We’ll show you.”
    Davril backed away. “I’m not going
anywhere with you.”
    “Then you’re abandoning Alyssa. She comes with us.”
    Alyssa struggled ever more
violently, squealing into Milast’s hand. Davril took a step toward her, but two
of his other brothers clapped hands on his shoulders and stopped him. They all
wore swords, as was tradition. The only people allowed to wear arms within the
Palace were the male members of the Royal Family. Yet they didn’t go for their
weapons. That alone should have reassured him.
    It didn’t. His hand flew to his own sword.
    The Emperor strode forward and
stopped before Davril, and Davril’s sword hand trembled, then fell away from
the pommel. Looking into his father’s hard eyes, Davril knew a greater terror
than ever. Fear of the unknown was one thing, but fear of losing his father’s love
and favor was quite another.
    Alyssa . . .
    His hand strayed back toward his
sword.
    “Draw your blade and be drawn
upon,” the Emperor growled.
    Davril swallowed past the lump in
his throat. “Don’t harm her,” he managed. “I’ll protect her with my life.”
    The Emperor studied him for a long
moment, a longer moment than Davril could remember, and at last the older man
grunted. The ghost of a smile touched his lips.
    “You make me proud,” Lord Husan
said. “I acted much the same way when confronted with the truth of things. But
if my faith in you is as well placed as I think it to be, I’ll be prouder
still. Now come. If you come only to keep an eye on Alyssa, then so be it. But
come.”
    He turned away and drew the
ceremonial dagger he wore in a scabbard on his breast. With it he drew a line
of blood from his palm and flung the red droplets at the massive, horror-faced
Door.
    “By this blood I command you!” he
shouted. “Open!”
    The Door changed . With a grating of metal on metal, the closed but snarling
mouth of the golden demon opened, almost hungrily. Three obscene tongues
unrolled flat on the ground, serving as steps leading up to the portal, from
which coldness and darkness emanated.
    Impossible ,
Davril thought.
    “Onward!” shouted his father, and stepped
inside that high dark cavern, between the golden fangs. Milast, bearing Alyssa,
followed immediately behind, and one by one Davril’s other brothers did
likewise, until at last he was all alone in darkness of the chamber.
    The fact that none of his brothers
compelled him on by direct means for some reason made up his mind. He was not
being forced ; it was his decision. Besides,
he could not simply let Alyssa go to her doom.  
    The hall twisted and turned,
slanted at mad angles, but always it led down, deep into the bowels of the
earth. The passageway, which had been high and wide to start with, opened up by
degrees till Davril imagined that they didn’t travel through a cavern at all
but walked under the open sky. A sky not of this world. Blackness, stark and
horrid, looked down on them from above, vast and limitless.
    Fear showed in the torch-lit faces
of his brothers, and more than once they clapped each other’s arms or whispered
reassurances to one another. To his surprise, Davril was not denied this. Though
things were tense between them, his brothers seemed to share a sense of . . .
camaraderie, he supposed . . . with him that he did not feel toward them. They
had been through what he was going
through, but he hadn’t been through what they had, and he couldn’t believe they
would be a part of something so evil.
    “It’ll be all right,” Salbrind
reassured him, patting him on the back. Salbrind was the next youngest, and he and
Davril had always been close. Salbrind used to protect him when Firhad, the
second oldest, picked on him growing up.
    “How?” Davril said, shaking off his
brother’s hand, his own hand still on the hilt of his sword. “How can it be all
right? You plan to kill her!”
    Salbrind sighed. “We have