Free The Infernal City by Greg Keyes Page A

particular, I’m afraid I’ve no way of knowing that.”
    “You mean it’s
just feeding?”
Annaïg asked, incredulous.
    “Well, we’ve lots of mouths to feed, don’t we,” he replied with an air of diffidence.
    “Why do they become—if their souls are taken up here—why do their bodies keep going?”
    “Do I really have to explain this?”
    “If I’m going to help you, I think I deserve whatever explanation you can give me.”
    “Oh, very well. Look, something beneath us dies. The soul-spinners nick the soul with their lines, and then the larvae fly down and get all snug in the bodies—which then harvest more souls. You see?”
    “The larvae have wings and round heads?”
    “Yes. See, you do know this.”
    “I saw one of them,” she replied. “It seemed like it should have been perfectly capable of murder on its own.”
    “In Umbriel, sure. But they have to leave Umbriel to find souls, which means they lose their substance.”
    “So that’s what I saw,” Annaïg said. “But why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why do they become ethereal?”
    “That’s a big word,” Wemreddle said.
    “Yes, but—”
    “I don’t know,” Wemreddle said. “I’ve never thought about it. You fall in water, you get wet. Stray from Umbriel, you lose substance. It’s just how things are.”
    Annaïg digested that for a moment.
    “Very well. But how does it start? I mean, if larvae can’t kill anything unless they have a soulless body to steal, how do the first ones get bodies?”
    “I don’t know that either.”
    “And what becomes of the souls?”
    “Most go to the ingenium, which keeps Umbriel aloft and moving. Some go to the vehrumasas.”
    “I don’t know that word,” she said. “What does it mean?”
    “The place where they prepare food. Where the furnaces are.”
    “Kitchens? You people eat souls?”
    “Not all of us. I don’t—I’m not that elevated. But them at the top, and Umbriel himself, or course—well, they like their delicacies. We don’t see that in the Middens, do we?”
    “And yet you were licking the cable,” she said.
    He blushed. “It’s not against nature to want a taste, is it? Just a little taste?”
    Annaïg had a sudden, unpleasant thought.
    “Are the lords—
are you
—daedra?”
    “What’s a daedra?” Wemreddle asked.
    “You’ve never heard of daedra?” she asked. “But didn’t this city come from Oblivion?”
    Wemreddle just looked blankly at her.
    “There are sixteen daedric princes,” Annaïg explained. “Some are just—well, evil. Mehrunes Dagon, for instance—he tried to destroy our world, back before I was born. Others—like Azura—aren’t supposed to be so bad. Some people worship them, especially the Dunmer. But besides the princes, there are all sorts of minor daedra. Some people can conjure them and make them do their bidding.”
    “We do the bidding of the lords,” Wemreddle said. “If I were a daedra, would I know it?”
    “Maybe not,” Annaïg realized. “What is the name of your highest lord?”
    “Umbriel, of course.”
    “There’s no prince that goes by that name,” she mused, “although I suppose a daedric prince could be known by any number of names.”
    Wemreddle seemed entirely disinterested in the conversation, so she let it drop. She had so many new questions now, she didn’t know what to ask next, so instead of questioning him further, she filled Glim in on what Wemreddle had been telling her.
    “It’s horrible,” she said. “What if it’s really aimless? If our world is being destroyed just so this thing can keep in the air? What if there is no other agenda?”
    “There must be more to it than that,” Glim responded. “There has to be. Otherwise why would Umbriel ally with the city tree? Why would it spare anyone?”
    “Maybe it didn’t. If the tree is insane, as you think, it might have just imagined an alliance.”
    “It’s possible.” He snicked his teeth together. “You were right, in a way,” he said.