Page 26 of Spelunking Through Hell

I couldn’t think of a polite way to tell them there were reasons for that. Cornale was a backwater dimension, no real exports, no real appeal to criminals, and they had no big incentives for the tourist trade, such as it was. They’d been fortunate enough to avoid colonization attempts thus far, mostly because the worlds directly to either side were also fairly unpleasant—the landing point I’d used on Atl had been a swamp the size of North America, humid and sticky and rich with mosquitoes and other nasty swamp dwellers. The approach I’d taken the last time I’d been to Cornale had been similar, but substitute “desert filled with cacti that flung their thorns of their own volition when you got within six feet” for the swamp. Yes, both were probably part of bigger, richer ecosystems, but if those were where the overlap occurred, it was no surprise they didn’t get a lot of guests.

“Our tables have been poorer for the absence.”

Or maybe they liked to eat their company.

The jaghirdar smiled at me, and for the first time, I realized how sharp and serrated the teeth on the locals were. “It was kind of you to come.”

I uncrossed my arms, dropping my hands to the revolvers at my hips. None of the onlookers seemed to think this was strange. Guess they really didn’t know what a gun was. Cool by me. We’d traveled about two miles to reach the meeting house, and while I’d need to course-correct a little bit, at least it hadn’t been in the opposite direction of what I needed to do. I could still make it out of here.

“Yeah, I’m not here for dinner,” I said. “I’m heading somewhere.”

“There aren’t many places to go from here.”

Maybe these people could help me before I had to kill them all. “I’m looking for the entrance to a dead world,” I said.

The jaghirdar’s face hardened, and in that instant, we were no longer friends. “The parasite?” they asked. “You seek the parasite?”

“If that’s what you call it, then sure, that’s what I’m after.”

“It drains the life from our lands,” they snarled. “We were a thriving world once, part of the trade network out of Ithaca. We bought and sold with a dozen worlds, we filled our tables with the fruits of the field and the profits of the pasture, and we did more than just survive. We prospered. Then our neighbors dabbled in things that were better left alone. The blight came, poisoning our world.”

That was something I hadn’t heard before. I blinked and raised my eyebrows, hoping my silence would be a prompt to continue. Fortunately for me, some things are almost universal, and the lack of recent visitors meant the jaghirdar, young as they appeared, was already primed to let their frustrations out.

“The parasite refuses to be cut loose, and its taint infects our membrane, making us less and less appealing to travelers. It fuels nothing. It powers nothing. It only devours. We are gangrenous flesh, and one day, when someone finds a way to sever the infection, we may be banished with it for the crime of our location. Is that fair? Is that justice?”

“No,” I said. “But neither is eating me because I’m passing through. Look, I don’t know much about how this system works.” I was starting to figure out just how ignorant I really was. Even after fifty years of running rampant through the dimensions, I didn’t know how to contextualize half the things they were saying. That didn’t feel right.

I could tell you more about how sorcery works after knowing Thomas for a year—not even dating him yet, justknowinghim—than I could tell you about dimensional travel and interactions after fifty years of switching wildly between them. And sure, I’ve been sort of focused on finding Thomas and bringing him home, but that’s long enough that I would have expected Naga to sit me down for a remedial class at some point, if only so I wouldn’t embarrass him runningaround out there telling people I was getting his help and having no idea what was going on.

It didn’t make sense.

“Clearly not,” said the jaghirdar. “We haven’t much here. Our larders are bare. It is an honor to grace my table.”

So much for the vague hope that I was wrong, and these were perfectly nice people who weren’t going to try to strip the flesh from my bones and devour me whole. “Yeah, well, I’m not big on honors. I was always a solidly average student.”

“Not all honors can be refused.”

“And not all honors are worth receiving.” These people were starting to get on my nerves. They were making me ask too many questions about how this whole thing worked, and they were threatening me without coming out and saying it, like honest people would have done. Not that I’ve ever met an honest cannibal, using the term to mean “someone who eats other intelligent beings” rather than “someone who eats their own kind.” I used to be a librarian; I can be pedantic with the best of them.

I drew my revolvers in one smooth motion, holding them out in front of me. Even after calling in reinforcements, there were fewer of them than I had bullets in my guns, and when you’re talking about people who can fly, the trick is to shoot before they can get into the air.

None of them reacted. I started to feel a little bad. They really had no idea what was about to happen here.

And that couldn’t be my problem, not when they were planning to make me their special dinner guest. “We have two choices at this point,” I said. “You can let me leave peacefully, and not try to stop me again as I make my way to the exit, or you can decide that this is going to get ugly. I can do ugly. I can do ugly real, real well.”

The jaghirdar actually looked amused. I began to feel bad. They were just a kid, and they were hungry enough to be considering eating random strangers. And here I was, planning to kill them without even learning their name. Maybe I was the monster people had started to say that I was.

And maybe the crossroads had set up their prison on the other side of a dimension full of people who were way too interested in travelers as part of the effort to keep people like me away. Maybe this was proof that I was on the right track. You can spend a long, long time in maybe. You can put down roots there.

But everything that matters happens a hell of a lot faster.

“Funny,” said the jaghirdar. “We have our own skill at ugliness.”

They smiled then, and this time their smile grew and grew, well past what I would have guessed to be the reasonable outline of their mouth, extending almost from ear to ear, and every inch of that smile was alive and bright with teeth. The threat in that expression was unmistakable, even before the seven spear carriers swung their weapons down to point at me.

I shot the first five of them before they had a chance to do anything more. They fell heavily, bodies hitting the ground with a soft, heavy sound like sacks of wet cement. I turned. The other two spear carriers were already in the air, positioning themselves above me, while the jaghirdar and the two unarmed adults were still staring in shock.

“That enough of a dinner for you?” I demanded. “Because if we’re done now, I’d really like to be going.”

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