“Two Judges have always safeguarded our lands. Judges derived from Inquisitors willing to core their very souls for the greater good. To become more than the sum of their parts. You, Pax, have been chosen to become one such Judge.”
So this was how the Inquisition rewarded a man who went against everything he believed in? They made him a symbol of the Inquisition’s supposed purity. The last two Judges had been found with their throats slit a few decades ago. No replacements had been forthcoming. But why? Why had the Inquisition waited until now to send a Judge-elect into the Conventus to bond with a previous Judge, and most importantly, why in the hell had they chosen Pax to do it?
“This ritual will reveal truths the Inquisition has kept secret for millennia. Are you prepared for what is to come?”
“I am, Arch-Inquisitor Mastus,” Pax said as his mind’s eye looked upon a festering hill in a small town.
Judge, Jury, and Executioner
I am the law. I need neither writ nor stamp to deem a soul worthy of cleansing.
Pax slammed the boy’s left hand onto the decrepit table and drove a golden nail through it.
A scream ensued, the Inquisitor teasing the nail between muscle and bone. The child thrashed against his restraints, flinging blood and tears across his skin. Sweat hung from his chestnut-colored hair only to be shaken loose by the spasms the Inquisitor elicited.
Sweat weaved its way between Pax’s close-cropped hair, past his favorite—and only—wide-brimmed cattleman’s hat and into his scraggly beard.
“Confess, boy. Tell me where the Cult of Nil is, and I’ll let yer transgressions be. If not—”
The Inquisitor slammed his gloved fist on the nail, the child’s agonizing symphony reaching a crescendo. Then thankfully, he blacked out, smacking his face on the table before him, and kept still.
His name was Tamlin, and he was an orphan.
An orphan apprenticed to the town cooper, and considered to be a kind, if not quiet, boy. Folks claimed him to be a hard worker and one respectful of the pagan beliefs the people of Cairn kept to without shame.
A part of Pax was sorry. Sorry that unconsciousness was one of the few bitter gifts he had to give Tamlin. He shook the sentiment off as though it were a gossamer robe. This boy, according to the anonymous missive sent to the Inquisition, was in league with the Cult of Nil, and purported to have summoned a demon somewhere outside of Cairn. A town close enough to the Terminator—that fragile boundary where Cre’s light and Nil’s shadow bled together—that it was certainly possible.
But demons beyond the Terminator could only mean one thing: Nil was making for the big push, Her grotesque vanguard clearing the way. The Judges had been gone for decades now, and without their presence keeping Nil’s shadow at bay, the Terminator encircling Cre’ continued to shrink year after year. Wouldn’t be long before She swallowed Cre’, and brought with Her a hell so black it’d make the space between the stars downright luminescent.
The Inquisitor fished within his worn out duster and produced a copy of the missive sent to the Inquisition’s—and Cre’s—capitol, Augre a few weeks back. The parchment hissed as Pax dragged a gloved finger across it, reading between any possible lines, but the details were as dry as the parchment itself: Tamlin seen skulking into the woods a number of times in the last two months since his arrival, eldritch lights and sounds, sightings of something neither human nor beast.
Pax sighed, taking a look around the shack he’d appropriated. All it had to offer him was a broken boy, cracked windows revealing torches fighting the dark outside, and walls too lazy to keep the whistling winds away. It reminded Pax of home.
A home occupied by a mother who slept alone on a bed made for two. A father whose name was a mystery to Pax, but not to her. It was only in the throes of cheap drink that she would slur on about the Inquisition’s oppression, their hidden slavery, and why Pax’s father had abandoned them in the disheveled town of White Well; a place whose namesake might’ve been sacred once, but had since been lost to time and apathy.
At the time, White Well had sidled the Terminator, that swollen wall of black that looked as if the apocalypse had been slowed to a crawl. The town’s proximity to the Terminator provided its inhabitants with nothing but acrid water to swell the gut, squinting winds, and the sense that some unseen clock was ticking down to its last. Pax had spent his whole life staring down the end of the world, wondering what he could do to stop it. What he could do—if at all—to make a difference.
The Inquisition had come one day, its Initiates recruiting more fodder, and ensuring that none had abandoned the Chain in favor of pagan fabrications. Maybe they thought folk so close to the edge of eternal night would seek any escape provided, to take succor in the Inquisition’s promises of protection. They’d been wrong. The Terminator may not have swallowed White Well yet, but Nil had done Her dark work there all the same. All that was left to the Inquisition were slumped shoulders and gaunt dogs.
A young Pax lounged at the town square amidst an amalgam of orphans and fellow bastards; the byproducts of continuous war with Nil. They’d watched as the Initiates and their superiors packed up, preparing to leave the stagnant town on lean horses; the beasts’ eyes bulging whenever the Terminator started moaning in tongues beyond the ken of mortal men. Pax had fixed his gaze on an armor-clad, one-eyed man staring at him from across the town square. Assuming the cyclops had a taste for boys, he’d hurled curses across the square at him.
Armored steps announced the man, scattering all miscreants save Pax. The Inquisitor stopped before him, looking his harasser up and down. Then he kicked Pax square in the gut. The blow expelled any air he’d been keeping to himself as scraped knees hit the dust. More a nudge than a kick sent Pax on his back. He looked up at the man whose armored frame eclipsed what lean light the sun had on offer. “You want to die a bastard, or find the man that left you here to rot?”
Within the hour, Pax had leased his soul to the Inquisition, signing with an X, swearing to fight Nil and Her demons tooth and nail—anything they asked so long as he got a chance to find the man who’d left him and his mother with nothing but bitter water from a forgotten well.
They’d have words then.
Before running away from home, Pax had asked the cyclops—Mastus was his name—to write words so that he could copy them in his own hand. He’d left his mother a meager note after she’d blacked out that very afternoon:
Ma, gone to hunt him down. Don’t die without my being there.
~Pax
He was twelve.
Pax’s eyes snapped back into focus, resting on Tamlin. The Inquisitor inhaled, puffed air out a nose that’d been broken more times in his two decades of service than he cared to count. He didn’t like the stink of Tamlin’s blood, but he’d yet to find a type he could tolerate.
According to the folk being rounded up outside, Tamlin had been adopted into Cairn two months ago. He’d claimed to have been in Lesser Cairn (a town populated by as many pagans as not) when it’d been swallowed up by the Terminator. The town had been projected to stand for another year before her people would have been relocated and reeducated by the Inquisition. Nil was catching up to Her atrophied prey, pagan or otherwise.
Pax leaned over and spat. Pagans. The Inquisition didn’t have much love for them folk. Not one bit. Of course, the Inquisition didn’t much care for anyone who didn’t wrap themselves in the stolid embrace of the Chain—an ethos founded by the first Judges, and that had drawn up the people of Cre’ ever since.
An ethos Pax found pleasantly simple. Everyone was a link in the Chain: an unbroken, binding philosophy that applied to one and all. Either you were a link, making everyone stronger and doing your part to support Cre’ in her perpetual hour of need, or you fended for yourself. Simple. Made you feel as though you were a part of something bigger than yourself. Like you had a family no matter where you went.
Pax liked it that way.
But pagans insisted there was a god of light so
mewhere above. There was a goddess swallowing up what remained of their pitiful world, ergo, there was a divine mirror just waiting to banish Her darkness. But centuries of prayer, incantations, and sacrifices by fire had stoked no counsel from any supposed god of light. And so the pagans prayed on.
That was fine with Pax. No god of light meant no one to judge the things he’d done in the name of the Inquisition. He was a strong link, alright, but one rusted red by what his soul had weathered over years of service.
Banging at the door interrupted Pax’s ruminations. One of his Initiates letting him know the folk outside had finally been rounded up like he’d ordered.
Pax leaned over and spat onto the dusty floorboards, gluing a lame cockroach in place. His spurs jingled as he dropped a heavy boot, mashing spit and pest into the splintered floorboards.
He could hear folks outside demanding they be released. They were scared, starting to whip themselves into a frenzy.
Orders and curses from the Initiates ensued. They were getting riled up too. Pax would need to get his people and the pagans back in line. No need for things to get out of hand here.
Pax replaced the scroll and approached the door of the meager shack, unsure of what might lay on the other side.
He opened the door, stepping onto a dilapidated, yet elevated porch. It placed him a few heads above the townsfolk. They’d been poked and prodded into standing before the shack en masse, flanked on all sides by Pax’s Initiates, their utilitarian armor layered atop white robes. They'd crowded the townsfolk shoulder-to-shoulder with blade, pistol, and torch. Pax hadn’t ordered they be penned up as such, but there was no undoing it now.
He took a deep breath, noticing a cloying weight in the air. Something he could almost taste. The Inquisitor ignored it and sank into his orator’s voice, just like Mastus had taught him. “Townsfolk of Cairn, y’all know why I’m here.” He paused, letting his words do their simple work on simpler folk.
He took a step forward, setting a spur to spinning. The locals backed away until they were poked stock-still by the Initiates. “I’m told Cairn’s nothing but pagans. Those who’ve refused to become links in the Chain, refusing to make Cre’ stronger. Some even say you’re nothing but cultists of another stripe.” Pax shook his head. “But this is ignorance making itself known, and I do not agree with such sentiment. Misguided? Most definitely, but not cultists.”
Pax removed both of his gloves, placing them in a pocket of his duster, and jammed his thumb toward the shack behind him. “Missive to the Inquisition claims there to be a wound in the belly of this here town.” He patted his duster before reaching into a pocket for some rolling paper. He reached inside a pocket for a small pouch of tobacco and a wooden box of matches. With a dexterity born of boredom, Pax poured the brown leaf shavings onto the thin square of paper, rolled and licked it, before pinching it between cracked lips. He spoke around his cigarette, “Been festerin’ for some time, I s’pect. Like an ache y’all grown up with, ye done become ignorant to it.” Pax struck a match, searching nervous eyes for wisps of guilt as he puffed his smoke to life.
Nothing, yet.
Pax extinguished the match with a whip of his hand and took a drag, the smoke appearing thicker than he was used to. He expelled fumes with each syllable. “Will any here come forth and admit to sending for the Inquisition’s aid?” He exhaled the rest of the smoke through his nose like some dragon wearing the suit of a weathered man. “One amongst you claimed the boy in that there shack to be in league with Nil, demons, and the like. Won’t one of you come forth and level with those tasked with fightin’ the darkness threatening your town, and Cre’ for that matter?”
The townsfolk shifted, looking from one to the other, but held their tongues.
Pax took another drag, contemplating. Was their silence a product of fear? That’d make sense seeing as how the Inquisition tended to use torture over sweets to elicit answers. Pagans in particular. But total silence? Something was amiss here. That thickness in the air was making Pax’s lungs work overtime just to take a normal pull of air. His Initiates and the townsfolk were breathing deep too. Air had a charge to it.
A child started mewling into the sunken belly of a withered woman. Pax drowned it out. He gave them until a long count of ten, smelling the fear-sweat of folks penned in by his all-too-zealous associates, knowing each was eager to prove themselves before the notorious Inquisitor.
Pax sighed. “I am sorry to say that your silence is the very indictment of guilt. We’ve our orders.” Pax nodded to his Initiates to tighten the noose, just as planned. The herd made their anxieties known in wails and whimpers, looking to one another for salvation. He shouted over their baying. “I asked, but I’m choosing to beg now, folks. Will none of ye confess? Who sent the missive and leveled such dire accusations at the boy?”
An old man toward the rear raised a palsied hand. “Please, we can’t speak of such things!”
An Initiate—Caleb—slapped him upside the head with the flat of his blade. “Cain’t speak of such thangs ‘Inquisitor’.” The old man wobbled but kept to as the Initiate grinned, looking to Pax for approval. Finding none, he resumed a threatening stance.
The old man continued through that concussive fog Pax knew all too well. “We struck a bargain, Inquisitor.” The crowd hissed at the old man like the pagans they were, but Pax quieted them with a placating gesture. “A bargain, old feller? With whom?” He nodded for the man to continue.
“Our silence in exchange for the Inquisition's mercy. We cannot speak of who guaranteed our safety. Our lives are forfeit should we say as much.”
Pax took a long drag of his smoke, the crackle of thin paper burning down to the end, just like his patience. He flicked the remains aside, placing his hands on his belt, putting both of his pistols and a hatchet hanging from a leather hoop on display. “As an Inquisitor, you know the many ways in which I can compel a man to speak his truth, don’t ye?”
The old man nodded. “Aye. That I do, Inquisitor.”
“And yet?” Pax spread his hands wide, palms up, “You seem unable to elaborate. Let me assure you that silence will not vouchsafe your soul nor that of any other in attendance.” Pax took off his hat, running hands through hair that came away slick with sweat. He replaced his hat, leaned over, and spat. “But I must say, ol’ man, I am intrigued.” Pax nodded at Caleb, “Bind and bring him to the shack.” Pax turned his back on the mass.
A scuffle broke out behind him.
The Inquisitor turned just in time to see the old man, faster than he’d have thought possible, whip a pistol from Caleb’s holster, bite the barrel, and pull the trigger. He coated his people in blood, bone, and the cryptic words Pax had been aiming to divine.
Caleb stood stock-still before rage twisted his features. Pax ordered him to stand down, but it was too late. The Initiate was seeing red, his heart beating to fury’s crimson rhythm. He unholstered his remaining pistol, and hardly aiming, fired into the crowd of townspeople.
Pax stormed through the panicking pagans toward Caleb. “Hold your fire!”
The townsfolk bolted, some knocking down and stampeding over the Inquisitor. He curled into a fetal ball as the roar of gunfire breached the muffled stomps of those treading over him.
Bloodied and bruised, Pax pushed himself up, the smell of gunpowder thick in the air. But it was too late. Fear had dried up the withered branches of Cairn’s sanity, and inchoate sparks of violence had touched off the waiting wildfire. Pax attempted to rally his people, but they were too far gone; the scent of blood and sulfur had become fuel for their ire as they stabbed, chopped, and shot at anyone not wearing the colors of the Inquisition.
And, like wheat before the scythe, Pax watched, helpless to stop their grim harvest.
The monastery grew cold, torches roaring at errant winds.
Arch-Inquisitor Mastus spoke. “Yes, what happened in Cairn was,” he paused, “unfortunate.”
Pax stared at the yellowed marble he knelt upon; it r
esembled petrified veins of black blood in a glass of goat’s milk.
“But the Inquisition, as heavy-handed as it may seem at times, Pax, cannot suffer such weak links in the Chain. Pagans least of all.”
Pax clenched his fists until the knuckles went white. For all its comforting pragmatism, since Cairn, Pax had finally seen the Chain for what it really was: a tool. A way to justify the Inquisition’s dark deeds in a darker world. As much as he respected Mastus, little remained of the man that had practically raised Pax. All he saw through that one good eye of his was the bigger picture, one where Cre’s survival was buttressed by the bones of folk who simply wanted to live free of the Inquisition’s yoke.
The Arch-Inquisitor paused to cough, wet and phlegmatic. Pax kept his head down, listening to the man’s insides gurgle their way to the surface. Mastus’ health had been waning for years, but it seemed to have accelerated exponentially in the time it took for him to recall part of what had happened at Cairn. “But neither does the Inquisition—and the Chain—have need of sycophants, sadists, and the like. We rose up millennia ago to wage war against the darkness enveloping our world. Rest assured that this Initiate, Caleb, has been thoroughly reprimanded for his actions. And, as tragic as that night’s events were, they did reveal the demon purported within Cairn.” Mastus paused, taking a few labored breaths. “Your purification of that very demon demonstrates why you are worthy of becoming a Judge, a stronger link in the Chain. Why Cre’ demands your continued service and protection.”
What little of Cre’ there was to protect. Entire towns and cities gone dark as the Terminator swallowed them up. Communiques from outposts reporting demons, blight, and all manners of hell howling at the frothing black frontier choking Cre’. They were living on borrowed time, and everyone knew it.
So what was there left to fight for?
The First Stain Page 4
