“I know the area,” Jeffers said. “Vaguely. Went there a time or two in my youth.”

“We can’t go in the front, obviously, or what I’m calling the front—the way Evers went,” Avery said. “Whatever killed those men will be waiting for us there.”

“Think it’s another big squid?” Janx said. “Like in Lusterqal? One with a human brain in it?”

“Very possibly,” Avery said. “At any rate, I doubt there’s more than one of them, two at the most. The Collossum will not have the resources of Lusterqal or the ability to get very many large creatures here. But he does have many followers who will die for him and a city—well, town—that is difficult to locate and, presumably, which can be defended easily. But if we reach it, in stealth, from a direction they won’t expect ...”

He glanced to Jeffers, who let out a long breath and rubbed at his face with a squelching limb.

“Sure,” the boatman said, “there’s a back way or two, but it will take some navigatin’ through the dark. It’s a long way, goin’ round, and tight halls. If ya plan to bring men along, it’ll be difficult to go that way quiet enough not to—”

“No men,” Avery said.

Jeffers raised his eyebrows. “I know Vassas is in touch with more blokes in other under-towns, who’d jump at the chance to strike back, and—”

“This isn’t a mission that will be won by force,” Avery said. “The enemy is stronger than we are. Another five or ten men won’t help us, but they could hurt considerably. Our best ally is stealth.”

Hildra swore. “Layanna said she can’t come with us.”

“It will sense me—the Collossum,” Layanna said. “I can feel him enough to know he’s at least that powerful. I’d betray our presence before we even got close.”

“Fine, you pussy. I’ll go.”

“There ain’t room but for three in my boat,” Jeffers said.

Avery nodded. “We should number as few as possible, anyway. I will need to go in order to deal with the relic Davic gave Sheridan, if I can, and the other should be Janx.” He patted his pocket, where the god-killing knife rested. “If I get close enough, I can take care of the Collossum myself.”

“And if you don’t?” Layanna said.

To that he said nothing.

*   *   *

“You’ll need these,” Jeffers said. “Well, at least you will, young man.”

He passed Avery a nosegay, which the doctor (wondering when the last time he’d been called a young man was) applied gratefully, just as he had on the ride to Givunct. Jeffers did the same. Janx, of course, had no nose on which to fasten one. Doctor and whaler clambered into Jeffers’s rickety boat, Janx carrying a shotgun, and the boatman slid two of his tentacles into little wooden collars with oar-like fins sprouting from them, dipped them in the water, and began to row. Janx offered to help, but Jeffers demurred.

All too soon, they left the others behind. Once they were far from the cistern chamber, Jeffers yanked the cord of the small outboard motor using his third tentacle, and the boat shot forward. Black sludge parted before its bow.

“This your top speed?” Janx said, pitching his voice over the roar. “That engine’s noisy enough, but damn if it ain’t slow.”

Jeffers turned a barnacled leer at them. “Don’t worry, mates, I got ways.”

“Ways, huh?”

He guided the boat down channel after channel, then took a series of locks that led downwards into even more dismal areas. At one point they crossed through a large, open cistern, and lights bobbed on the water far away. Avery tensed. Then Jeffers flicked his flashlight on, off, on, off, in two long beats, then two fast ones. The distant boats responded likewise. Avery realized they must be a patrol sent by one of the other sewer settlements. The patrolmen were simply signaling each other, making sure they didn’t attack by mistake. You stay on your side of the lake, I stay on mine.

Jeffers turned down a narrow tributary. The halls down here stank even worse than the ones above.

As luck would have it, they were lit. The bulbs looked down through wire mesh from the ceiling, but only one out of every ten was on and those that were flickered or were dim. The result was that the boat passed in and out of small, sometimes strobing pools of light, then into deep oceans of darkness.

“I bet you seen some things down here,” Janx said.

Jeffers nodded. “Oh, aye. I seen things. Things that’d curdle your hair if’n you had any.”

“Like what?”

Jeffers cast him a look. “Well, y’know. They say the L’ohens carved these chambers outta the living rock. They used natural caverns. Natural underground lakes, rivers. Some are deeper than you’d believe. Some hit fissures down below. Fissures gods know how deep. There’s abysses down there may go all the way down. Deep, deep underground oceans.” He let that sink in. “Y’know, long ago some mutes opened the sewers up to the sea. We get Atomic waters in here, mixing with that we got, and that’s a cocktail from hell if e’er there was one. Imagine those abysses mixed with those waters. An’ we got muties what’ve adapted to the sewer rivers—that live down there. In the abysses.”

“Bullshit,” said Janx.

“It’s true. They’ve grown ... strange. Been down there, in those damned abysses for hundreds of years. Say there’s things down there, things that was already there, that’ve been there forever. Things what’ll drive ya mad. They’re the gods o’ the deep-mutes.” He cast them a certain look. “An’ ever now and then, when the tides are right—and yeah, we get tides down here; we’re hooked to the sea—I’ll see somethin’. Somethin’ out in these black tunnels.” He looked all around. “On a night like tonight, fer instance ... Something that ain’t right.”

Janx’s voice was admiring, as one storyteller to another. “Yeah?”

“Oh, aye. Great shapeless things and devils what come outta the core of the world. They breach right in the middle of huge cisterns, and they howl and scream and roar and sing and fill the air with a stench like lightnin’, and everywhere down here the blind will see and the dreamers will go mad, start hackin’ people up, and the learned’ll hide in their rooms waitin’ for daybreak, or what passes for it down here.” He let a beat go by. “Oh, aye, I’ve seen things.”

He rowed on, turned down a tributary that was nearly black, and Avery and Janx fell into silence until Jeffers swore softly.

“What is it?” Avery asked in a whisper. They were traveling through a dark area.

“Don’t you hear them?”

Avery cocked an ear but heard nothing save the gentle lapping of water. However, was there possibly more lapping than there should be?

“The Collossumists,” Jeffers said. “A patrol.”

“Let ‘em come,” Janx said. “I’m armed.”

“So are they. There’s better ways to get clear. I’ll show you.”

He rowed faster, moving into even darker tunnels. After a couple of bends Avery could hardly see at all. Then, slowly, with the help of Jeffers’s lantern (set on low), his eyes began to adjust. It wasn’t much, but he made out the vague shape of stone walls arching to either side, tight and overgrown with slime mold. Thick fluid gurgled and glurched, and the sounds echoed and reechoed off the walls for a long way in each direction. From time to time things plopped or hopped in the water. The boat motored on, more slowly now.

Suddenly, Avery saw them.

At first he thought it was just one, a strange mound floating in the water. He thought he detected movement below the surface. Tentacles. At first he thought of Evers’s tale of a giant squid, but this wasn’t nearly so big. The thing was some sort of jellyfish, maybe four feet across, only like no jellyfish Avery had ever seen before. It seemed to be composed of slug-like flesh and have more in common with snail physiology than with jellyfish. The skin was thick, rubbery and slimy, and the main section was a huge lump, something that made Avery imagine a great, brain-shaped slug.

Its eye stared right at him, huge and covered in film and mucus. There were more behind it, Avery saw. Mound after mound after mound. Scores.

“They like to meet up here,” Jeffers explained. He’d cut the engine and rowed slowly. “Don’t know why. Water seems a little warmer here. I think they mate here. Damned things are scattered all over, but here ... the slugmines love it.”

“Slugmines,” Avery repeated.

“I’ve heard about ‘em,” Janx said. “Aren’t they deadly?”