Doomwalker

by Kathryn Zurmehly

  “Feel! Pah! This is my city as well, Brandtalus! More than any lord’s, and I’ll not bow to any of them! I’ll not have my city bow to them!” She subsided, shaking and leaning all her weight on her cane. “I will organize the storage of some supplies and transportation for the same. Every shrine I can convince will send a few Initiates to the place from Valen’s vision. It would be wise to heed the Herald as best we can. We will have little to spare soon enough.” Because of the refugees, though Valen was certain they wouldn’t tell him about that.

  “I think that best.”

  “You are like a mother hen.” Her shaking stopped. “Now, Paladin, I asked you here because we have a mission for you.”

  Valen tried to look devotedly obedient.

  “There have been reports of something outside the walls. Strange marks on the ground and gouged into the stone,” the Commander said, “There are always superstitious tales and tired men seeing horrors in nighttime shadows, but there’s been evidence this time.”

  “I know you would rather play the roving champion,” the High Priestess said, “I’ve had a few of the Paladins stationed locally look into it but they are…out of practice. You are the best at extinguishing dark powers and you’re not inclined to go bragging at The Sunshield for a free ale.” She smiled kindly at him. “The Keepers reported that you brought in two more heartstones yesterday. A rare feat, though perhaps not so rare for you.”

  He hated being manipulated by his ego and he hated more that it worked. “Again, all glory is Lyrica’s, High Priestess.”

  “And here I thought humility wasn’t a trait valued by Lyrica,” the Commander muttered none too quietly.

  The High Priestess regarded Valen like a well-fed cat. “It isn’t. He’s just attempting to cover up his ego with his piety, which doesn’t work too well, since his piety has a bit of ego about it as well.”

  Valen stared at her.

  “Not to impugn your character, Paladin. Pride is a flaw that we mortals all have.”

  “I…yes, High Priestess.”

  “My men on the wall and on patrol will know you are coming,” the Commander told him, amused, “It seems the marks appear at night, since we only ever find new ones early in the mornings.”

  “I’ll head to the wall this evening, then, Commander.”

  “Thank you, Paladin.” They both smiled at him, and Valen knew he had been dismissed.

  He left the room with a nod at the guards. The death priest of Alberan swept past him and ordered the doors to close for some discussion about the course of many lives, no doubt.

  At least he wouldn’t feel useless while they waited for Beriskar’s army.

  He headed up a floor to collect Maryx from an alcove and found her deep in thought. “I’ve been assigned to hunt down a power prowling outside the city,” he told her as they left the Councilhouse.

  “Killing time.”

  “That’s how it feels.”

  They exited the building in silence. The afternoon crowd was less dense, but the street was still busy. They walked back towards the Temple in no hurry.

  “I had a vision of my Herald this morning,” he said, since no one else would listen, “She said the Temple needed to leave Crownshold soon. I told that to the High Priestess.”

  “I take it that she refuses to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “The journey would probably kill her and I doubt her followers would leave her behind. I’m certain that you wouldn’t, so that’s how I’ve reached that conclusion.” Valen was tired of having women tell him about himself today. “Orishal’s clerics won’t leave with the refugees here. That red priestess, Meera, whoever she worships—”

  “Jaryt,” he supplied, “Goddess of love and lust.”

  “Ah. If that is the one with the sacred whores, they will survive conquest well enough. I think the death god’s worshippers can figure out how to escape if they feel the need. As for the other fifty, I have no idea, but I imagine those four are the most powerful people in the Temple.”

  “Yes.”

  “So your Herald is demanding the impossible.”

  “You’re not being very comforting.”

  “I wasn’t trying. Doesn’t hitting a monster with a sword usually do it for you?”

  He touched his throat, where the bruise was nearly gone, and then his holy sigil. “I pray that it’s not a demon.”

  10

  Valen was certain he was looking at bootprint. A bootprint sunk into the ground, the dirt stripped of everything nourishing about it, leaving a shallow depression, but a bootprint nonetheless, with a distinctive gap between heel and sole.

  He sat back on his heels. That didn’t make any sense. Powers took animal forms or the mad shadows of demons. They could leave marks, not tracks as such, in places where they manifested. Those marks would grow into full blown corruption if the owner stayed in place too long. He’d seen smaller ones like this before, but none looked like bootprints.

  There were a lot of them, a haphazard pacing along a very short span of the wall. If it weren't for the way they killed everything, they wouldn’t even be visible.

  “Are you sure there was no one here last night?” Valen asked the guard standing next to him.

  “Absolutely, Paladin,” the man said, nervous. The men who worked on the wall didn’t care to be outside of it, even without this monster prowling. “We’ve been watching like hawks.”

  Maryx tapped her knife loudly against the wall next to where she leaned against it, her hood concealing her face in shadow. Valen stood and looked at what she had pointed out.

  Small deep black marks had been gouged into the wall. He reached to run a hand along it but Maryx snatched his wrist. “I can feel it through my knife. It’s not right.” She handed him her knife and he rested it against the mark.

  He snatched it away immediately. It reminded him of the demon’s touch, slimy and burning and freezing and sick. “Is that what your shoulder feels like?”

  He could make out her fanged grin within her hood’s shadow. “Not anymore so much.”

  He turned to the guard. “Thank you for showing me. We can handle this from here.”

  Maryx took her knife from him as they watched the guard gratefully leave. “I can hardly look at him without realizing he’ll probably be dead in a few weeks at most,” she said.

  “Less, if they’re moving as fast as that priest said,” Valen told her, “Some demon made the mark on the wall, but the footprints were made by boots.”

  “Huh. Do demons ever—”

  “No.”

  He wandered further down the wall, the setting sun turning the yellow stone a vibrant gold. His stomach growled. He ignored it.

  “I have a more disturbing question, then.”

  He stopped and waited, head turned to hear her.

  “Do humans ever work with demons?”

  He looked at her. “That would be insane,” he said, “They want to kill anything they see.”

  The elf rolled her eyes and tapped her throat. “Not quite.”

  Valen frowned. “That’s the last thing we need. Some kind of demon cult.” There were stories about that kind of thing, but there were also stories of men who turned into wolves during the full moon and maidens made of frost who danced on the ice-caps at dawn.

  The warning horn sounded from above the gate, a great trumpeting cry heard for miles. Maryx and Valen sprinted for the gate and slipped in just as the guards began to close it.

  Valen watched them finish. Every muscle in his body was humming with anticipation and fear. They’d been warned that they could be shut out if the alarm was called, but so soon…

  Maryx slapped his shoulder as she sprinted past, dodging past several Crownsguard men, heading up the nearby stairs. Valen followed less gracefully, making excuses as he followed.

  He found her at the top, standing on the parapet.

  A long, dirty column of people and wagons came up out of the forest from the south. The column we
nt on and on, led by a group of Orishal clerics clad in white. Men, women, children, some in fine health, others merely tottering along, moved forward only by the force of the crowd.

  “The priest said they were coming,” Maryx said, “He didn’t say how soon.”

  “Or how many.”

  “He hedged about that, didn’t he?”

  “The army is probably not far behind.”

  Maryx dropped off the rampart to Valen’s side. “So a demon outside the walls, where the refugees will soon be camped. This is the last thing we need.”

  He looked down into her purple eyes. They seemed bright even in the shadows of her hood. “Leave, Maryx. Get away while you still can.”

  “I owe you my life.”

  “Consider the debt forgiven.”

  “Immor,” she said. He winced at the word. “Your fate is already mine by the nature of the world. It’s the city’s, as well, and that of all people who cross your path. If I could change any of that at all, any one piece, I would free you of the burden, but I can’t.” She glanced at the approaching column of people. “I’m not actually a very good elf, but I keep my vows.”

  “Why did anything tell me I was Immor, if it can’t be changed?”

  “I don’t know. I just know I won’t leave you to it alone.” She stared at him. “You’re the last person who deserves this.”

  “It won’t be easy,” was all he could think to say.

  “It will kill me, probably painfully. Life does that to everyone, eventually, you know.”

  They watched the refugee column approach until the sun set on it.

  ✽✽✽

  In two days, they got nowhere with the demon hunting.

  Maryx decided it was time to talk to Ryl about it, on the off chance that he’d encountered anything like this in his travels. The older elf had not yet gotten over his hangover and was seated at Belarael’s bar, hunched bitterly over his mug. She’d passed him when entering and leaving the place, giving and receiving wordless acknowledgement each time.

  She slipped onto a chair next to Ryl one evening, wondering if she’d get more use out of extra sleep. Valen had returned grimly to his quarters in the Temple. She’d suggested that perhaps the Temple would have demonlore of its own, but he’d shaken his head. What the Temple knew, he knew.

  Considering the evidence, then, the Temple clearly didn’t know everything. Ryl didn’t either, but his travels had been extensive and he’d been a historian, among other things, until circumstances had driven him to join the scouts.

  “Headed to the Plaguelands soon?” she asked Ryl. He fixed her with a malachite glare over his cup.

  Maryx signaled for a cup of her own and returned his stare. Eventually he put his drink down. “You want something.”

  “A scout has no idle actions.” She grinned at him and got the hint of a furrowed brow. “Have you ever heard of a demon working with a mortal?”

  The question pulled him from taking another drink. “Possession is a myth. No matter what backwater story you grew up with, the Murderers weren’t possessed.”

  “Murderers?” The way he said it made it a title, not just a description. She puzzled over that for a moment. “Of the gods?”

  “Yes. They weren’t possessed. They…made a deal.” He scowled quite openly. “I forget that the Hierarchs locked the details away. They were afraid someone else would figure out how they did it. You probably haven’t even heard the possession myth.”

  “I haven’t,” she confirmed, intrigued. No one talked about the murders of the gods, except that it had happened and that human Immor were responsible. How and why were secrets the Hierarchs kept, and they kept many secrets for many very good reasons...or so it was held. “They made a deal with demons?”

  “Five humans contacted and spoke to demons. I don’t believe they were trying to kill the gods, originally, but they were talked into it. The demons gave them gifts, they killed the gods in return. That sort of educated insinuation gets you thrown out of Aeldamarc.” He sighed and drank.

  “What do you mean by gifts?”

  “Dark weapons and armor. Elven magic is divine, these were demonic. A perversion.”

  Maryx tapped the cup that had been set in front of her and then took a drink. That was useful information, and probably the answer to the question of what the thing outside the walls was. “What else do you know about it?”

  “More than anyone else alive. What are you up to?”

  “Assisting a Temple Paladin with a problem.” He stared at her in mute shock. She thought about telling him, wondered if he’d believe her or just think she’d lost her mind. It happened, sometimes, to scouts. “Have you ever had visions out here?”

  “Yes. Don’t eat the mushrooms with purple spots. Don’t lose that much blood. Eat at least every three days.”

  “Not after any of those things.”

  “What did you see, Maryx?”

  “Wings and eyes and fire.” He tensed, hand clenching around his mug so tightly the already fair skin turned white. “Out of the blue.”

  “You should not see that. There is no assistance, even, for seeing that.”

  “What was it?”

  “A...power. An outsider, a watcher, a...herald of something worse than doom. Judgement, maybe, or...no one was every sure.” He shook himself and slammed his cup fiercely on the table. “There are reasons the Paladins hunt down extra-Tribunal powers, as there are reasons for the secrets of the Hierarchs. Stop delving into either!” Ryl hunched over his mug. The conversation was clearly over.

  Maryx finished her ale and stood, heading upstairs to her long-awaited down bed, thinking.

  She had seen enough of both ambition and desperation to know that fools would deal with demons for power, though why the destruction-hungry powers would bother made no sense. They killed everything as soon as they were aware of it.

  Of course, maybe not Immor. She rotated her wounded shoulder gently as she stripped her sweat-ridden tunic off. The demon on the road had refused to slay Valen, laughing at him all the while. Perhaps there was more than one Immor out there. More than one person had killed the gods, all Immor.

  She wished Ryl had not shut her down. They needed more information. They’d had no luck tracking down their quarry, but if they could figure out it wanted, they might be able to catch it.

  Maryx laid down, reveling in the softness of the bed. “It only matters until the war drums start sounding, really,” she muttered sleepily to herself.

  Morning did not bring them, however, and she dragged herself outside the gates once again. The refugees huddled close to the walls, most camping in the open, though some had managed to find tents. It was as noisy and crowded as Crownshold, but less colorful.

  Valen was not in their usual meeting place. Maryx stood there, trying not to pace in circles.

  Demons only wanted destruction, so any lunatic who made a deal with one would have a destructive goal in mind, though so far there was only a pattern of scratches in the wall…

  Something bumped into her leg and dragged her out of her thoughts. She looked down into wide eyes in a dirty face.

  A child. A little girl, her hair shorn close to the scalp; Orishal priests had been cutting the refugees’ hair left and right to prevent the spread of lice.

  The child stared up at her unblinking, utterly terrified. She’d dropped a dirty bit of cloth when she’d bumped into Maryx.

  Maryx’s first impulse was to bare her teeth and send the kid running, but it wouldn’t have been right and she damn well knew it.

  Instead, the elf crouched down slowly to pick the dropped object up. She’d expected a doll, but it was a floppy horse sewn from scraps of cloth, dirty and much loved. She held it out to the child.

  The girl stared at Maryx. Maryx stared at the girl.

  She snatched the ragged horse and bolted.

  “That was kind of you,” Valen said from behind her.

  “You’re a terrible influence,” she said, stand
ing and turning towards him, “Tomorrow, I’ll probably be late, myself, just to give it a try.”

  Valen’s smile, toothy enough to be annoying, faltered. “I was…delayed.” He nodded back through the camp’s morning bustle.

  Another Paladin, shorter than Valen but not small, came tromping over. He wore a big grin and his green eyes stood out brightly in his dark face. His tunic was Lyrican blue, but brighter than Valen’s, with vivid gold accents.

  She had never before seen someone she found annoying on sight, but there was a first time for everything.

  “This is Galian, my brother Paladin,” Valen said as the other man arrived, “He’s helping out on his day off. Galian, this is the mercenary I mentioned, Maryx.”

  He nodded at her. “My pleasure. Sorry you had to get caught up in this.”

  Maryx looked at Valen. He returned her gaze without any expression whatsoever.

  She was impressed yet again. The Paladin was capable of duplicity. She was so shocked that she couldn’t even think of a reply to Galian and just nodded.

  “So,” Galian said, “What now?”

  “We’re going out into the forest this time,” Valen said, “It didn’t arrive with the refugees and it’s not lingering on the farms. It would leave a mark.”

  She really needed to tell him about what she’d learned from Ryl, but she didn’t care for this other Paladin at all. Valen hadn’t introduced her as an elf, she’d noted. “Then let’s head out,” she said, gesturing towards the forest, “It’s been lingering on the southside, conveniently enough.”

  They started through the camp. The ring of cultivated hills around Crownshold was wildly asymmetric, and an hour’s walk could take you to the woods on the northern edge. The camp itself all downhill, sprawling inelegantly on the grassy slopes of Crownshold’s hill. Not grassy for much longer, Maryx noted as they wove around the traffic and campsites. The crowd was going to tramp it all down to dirt. Some patches were already little more than mud puddles near cooking sites. Wagons and carts could be seen here and there, most with Temple markings, headed out to bring food and supplies.