Half-Demon's Fortune

by Lina J. Potter

  “No. I won’t break. They’ll be looking for me.”

  “You’re lying. Your father is dead—a pure accident, of course—and your sister is busy with her minstrel and not that smart to begin with. Nobody will find you until the grass grows over your bones.”

  “It matters not. I won’t break. And you won’t learn anything, filth!”

  It was as if the mask of decency had been pulled away from the man’s face, revealing the face of a rat. Wait, I’m wrong. Next to Darius, rats would look cute.

  Well, let him refuse. Nobody really understands a simple truth: all you had to do to survive pain was to have a good enough motive. And even then, not many people could withstand prolonged torture, and I had time and experience on my side. Part of it was just theory, but necromancers were often master torturers. Some rituals required specific sacrifices: people full of pain, suffering, and fear.

  We couldn’t use animals; you can get so much more from a human. An animal’s pain and fear wouldn’t hold a candle against a persons. You could torture people for so long and gain so much—as long as you had the right approach.

  Darius didn’t last long. After one intricately carved ear and several fingers, he broke and told me everything I wanted to know.

  The Church of Riolon, the Church of Radenor. Names, temples, and positions poured forth from his lips like a torrent, and I could barely remember all of them.

  I couldn’t summon his soul later and question it; I had to learn everything in a single interrogation. Ak-kvir paid attention as well. He wasn’t particularly interested, but what if I forgot something? It would give him an opportunity to prove his usefulness to me, as I would have to summon him again and treat him to tasty blood. Fortunately, I still had a large enough supply of thieves and murderers in my country.

  All of my guesses were confirmed, and even the death of my father-in-law was completely justified, as it had been his plan in the first place. Specifically, faced with my cruel oppression, Radenorian servitors had run to their Riolonian colleagues and enlisted their help. The Riolonians hadn’t even asked for anything in return—it was a matter of principle. If Alexander Radenor could give them the finger, then who knows if Darius of Riolon might follow suit?

  That wasn’t right! Such a king should be overthrown!

  Abigail? No, she didn’t have anything to do with it personally; I had locked her up far too tight for that, and they couldn’t establish contact with her right away. The rest of her family had helped, however. I really shouldn’t have contented myself with simple confiscation of property; they deserved an execution. I had been a fool to take mercy on them, and now I had to face the music. I listened to Darius’ story to the very end, cut him up some more, and ascertained that he had kept nothing back.

  He hadn’t; he would have told me everything he could up to the underwear his first woman had been wearing, but I had no inclination to learn that. I grabbed him and dragged him toward the pentagram.

  As soon as Darius saw it, he threw a fit, thrashing and screaming so loudly that the pines started to shake.

  “You promised me! You promised!”

  “Not really. I didn’t promise you anything,” I explained to him in detail. “We never had a deal. I would have given you a quick death if I didn’t have to get my hands dirty, and now, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Darius’ response was a string of expletives. I shrugged.

  “People sure are strange nowadays. Killing me is fine, but getting the same is bad? Inconceivable, simply inconceivable!”

  “You...you...”

  “Ah, I’ve almost forgotten. See, I’m not human.”

  I sneered and switched to my second form.

  Darius fainted—again. I didn’t care, I didn’t have to torture him anyway, the spell didn’t really require that, but if it did... Whatever. I’ll find somebody else to blow off steam.

  I laid him on the ground, aligning him with the pentagram’s corners, and bound his hands and feet. Darius regained consciousness, but this time, he didn’t scream. He just sobbed without saying anything, and large tears rolled down his bloody cheeks, his lips twitching.

  I felt no pity for him. He was a venomous predator who had sentenced me to death without any hesitation. I would have died, if not for Innis...

  Stop. Don’t think about her. Don’t ever.

  I stared at Darius.

  “Nothing personal, but I need royal blood. As your father is dead, that makes you the king of Riolon, at least, nominally. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been crowned; rituals can be empty, but blood never lies. Your blood, my blood...both are royal. I can’t put Dariola on the altar, and Tevarr is too far away, plus its dynasty is only in its first generation. More trouble than it’s worth. You, however, will do perfectly. So...”

  I started casting the ritual.

  The hissing sounds of the spell escaped my lips. The first part went off without a hitch. I breathed out, and a playful black flame lit up above the heads set in the corners, burning bright and strong.

  Darius was still whimpering, emitting such an odor that I surmised the contents of his stomach had long since been emptied into his pants, followed by his brain. The heads gleamed with an infernal glow, reflecting the dark light, and the flesh burned away, reeking of roast meat. Blood in the grooves was the last to flare up. Everything was finally ready.

  The second part of the spell was much simpler; it was a string of verbal commands. The words had to be clear and precise, but I also needed to give much more of my power. I cut my wrists and continued chanting, as my blood fell on the ground in large drops, producing smoke. In the darkness, it looked like miniature black snakes that scattered away from the spots touched by my blood, and at last, something appeared in the air.

  What smell was that? Sickly sweet and putrid, like a decomposed body.

  The sound? Yes, at the very edge of my hearing, there was something, either a moan or a howl, scratching at my nerves, whittling away at my soul. A more impressionable man would have turned gray with shock and suffered from diarrhea for the rest of his life. As for me...

  I finished chanting the spell, and the last word plunged into the darkness. Silence fell, only to explode with Darius’ blood-curdling howl.

  He had a good reason to scream. His stomach swelled up, inflated and covered with bulges, and finally burst with an indescribable sound. From there, a stream of...of...

  To a human, they would have looked like jets of darkness. I, however, saw rats; their little heads, their beady eyes glowing scarlet, their long wriggling tales... The belly of the poor man was host to an entire brood of rats, and it grew, feeding and squealing, while I waited until Darius’ heart stopped beating, only to say one word.

  “Dedition!”

  It was an old word, almost forgotten. It meant yielding, submission, surrender. A single drop of my blood fell into the swarm.

  That was enough. The rats merged together as if rolled up into a harness, and in a second, the King of Rats stepped out from the body of the former king.

  “You have summoned me, human...”

  I stared at him blankly, then changed forms a few times and examined the claws on my hand. The rat changed his tune.

  “So you’re just like me. Release me.”

  “First, you have to serve me.” I was succinct.

  “What do you want?”

  He didn’t seem antagonistic. After seeing my demonic guise, probing my aura, and trying to subdue me, he was ready to bargain.

  That said, when he spoke, even Ak-kvir shivered in fear, hiding in the bushes. And I...I didn’t care. I was empty and unmoved.

  “I will release you from the circle and allow you to play. For that, you’ll grant me a service.”

  His scarlet eyes flashed with excitement.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You and your brood will travel the lands of two kingdoms, Radenor and Riolon.”

  That clearly piqued his interest. Unfortunately, I
was going to put a fly into the ointment.

  “You will eat only one kind of people: the servitors of the Bright Saint.”

  “What is that?”

  “Look into my memory.”

  A cold sticky tendril drew close to my head, and I carefully opened the memories of the last few days to him.

  The Church. Servitors in white robes. Thralls and the other rabble. The Hounds.

  “That prey is dangerous.”

  “You’re no cuddly bunny yourself. You can do it.”

  The king flicked his tail: long, naked, scaly. Just like a proper rat.

  “Of course. What’s your payment?”

  “Their souls.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “If you try hard enough, I’ll add two hundred more,” I promised.

  The rat licked his lips.

  “What about royal blood?”

  “If it comes by, I’ll try and get you some.”

  “Then it’s a deal.”

  “I need an oath.”

  The King of Rats gave me a formal oath, imbuing his words with power. He swore to walk the lands of Riolon and Radenor, consume the servitors and only them, never touch anybody else, and in thirteen days, come back to me so I could release him.

  That was how that spell was designed. He could disobey me and stay in this world, but that would throw him into true agony, the most painful torture one could imagine. Even if each part of your body got slowly cooked in a frying pan, it would be pleasant tickling compared to that horror. While my aura covered the King, he didn’t feel it...for thirteen days, at least. And after that...

  Whether I would be dead or alive made no difference; the oath had been spoken. The rat licked off my blood and I gulped down two drops of his.

  “Can I send a plague?”

  “Only upon the servitors.”

  “What about cities?”

  He was asking for a reason, the King of Rats. Who knows how many diseases rats could carry? Do you know? You don’t? Lots of them, and he has power over all of them. Even a month ago, I would have given him the whole of Riolon without thinking twice. Let them all die! But after meeting Innis, I became...more human, I guess. And that’s why my target was the Church and only the Church. Infect them with a plague, cholera, kill them—I didn’t care, but as soon as one commoner fell sick, the oath would be broken, and the ratling would burn.

  He definitely didn’t like that, but I had all the trump cards. Summoning the King of Rats was no easy feat. It required a royal sacrifice, a lot of power, and a very particular skill set.

  Necromancers preferred servants, not the masters of the demon world. When would he get such an opportunity next?

  “I sense the blood of a powerful demon inside you. A destroyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you summon him?”

  I shrugged. Why, indeed?

  Because he was a raven of battle. A warrior, a mighty one, but nothing more than that. He could have leveled an entire city, but he couldn’t sow horror and panic. Rats, however, were the experts of such things, and their march would be a true terror. Lots of people feared rats, for some reason. I didn’t, and had no understanding of such fear, but that didn’t prevent me from capitalizing on it.

  I spent half an hour giving out instructions to the King, and I fleshed out the list of those he could eat on top of servitors. I have to admit, it was a pretty long list. In addition to the members of the Church, I let him hunt highwaymen, beggars, thieves...

  That might have been cruel.

  I had no idea what forced them to rob, steal, and beg. I wasn’t going to find out, either. I wasn’t kind and merciful. I was a half-demon and that’s it. Maybe some of them had no other choice? Possibly. Then, after leaving this world, their souls would go on to be reborn a bit earlier and have a worthy afterlife. And if they thought me too cruel, they could have complained to the Church...provided it was left standing after I was done with it.

  ***

  Tyrimma was praying.

  Prayers calmed her and brought her peace. Warmth spread all over her body, and she wanted to cry. Her knees quivered and her head felt light and clear as if anointed with holy oil. If anybody told her that achieving that state didn’t require the Church, but just a man who cared about her needs well enough, she wouldn’t have believed it; she would have cursed, screamed, and called that person a heretic, yet it was true. Russie preferred swinging his fists at his wife to making her feel good, and the only way to deal with the accumulated frustration was to worship.

  It’s all right, child of light, just keep praying. Everybody gets beaten up—it’s hard to admit that you’re a nobody who cannot take care of her own spouse. Make your peace and pray.

  Tyrimma believed the servitors and prayed. She left the temple content and illuminated. Even now, when Russie had gone to sleep, she suppressed her sinful thoughts and went to the holy place.

  All of a sudden, something rustled in the corner. Startled, she stepped back, shivering. It’s not that she was so afraid of rats or mice...but upon seeing a rat, all she wanted was to climb as high as possible and shriek loud enough to rouse the dead. Those nasty things, their vicelike claws, their bare tails, their red eyes...eww. She didn’t want to think about such nasty creatures entering a temple.

  She didn’t have to. A moment later, Tyrimma started to scream in such a shrill tone that it was a wonder her shriek didn’t shatter glass windows around her.

  Rats swarmed around the temple walls.

  Small and large, light and dark, with torn ears, tails, or having lost their tails in fierce battles, they ran forward, single-minded, focused on their destination, as their little eyes shined in the twilight, and the most terrible thing of all was how unimaginably silent they were.

  They never made a sound.

  Tyrimma’s screaming didn’t last long either—only until the first rats reached her feet. Then, she fainted and collapsed onto the floor of the temple. The rats sniffed her...and the grey wave rolled over her like a fur blanket, leaving her untouched. They didn’t care; they had another prey...like an altar boy who was changing the candles. He didn’t even have the time to yell. Running away was not an option, either. The grey carpet enveloped him, sucked him inside, and covered him from head to toe.

  Did you think rats couldn’t kill? You were wrong. They could sink their teeth into a man’s eyes, his throat, his arteries...a few hundred bites, and even a mighty mage would be powerless to resist.

  The altar boy wasn’t even a mage. The rats tore him to shreds, and when the grey mantle scattered, only a bare skeleton was left in its wake, picked clean by the rodents.

  They continued on their way, climbing the upper levels of the temple, where thralls, servitors, and the Confidant himself were blissfully sleeping. Some of them had a chance. They could run, but would they make it in time? Who could wake up and fight off an attack while being overwhelmed and eaten in their own bed?

  I had a good reason to pick the King of Rats; wherever other rats go, he goes. He has a hive mind: he lives in a thousand bodies and can be in a thousand places at once. Every rat is his eyes, his voice, his will, and his power, and how many of them live in a human city?

  Thousands.

  By morning, a lot of temples were empty.

  ***

  The body of an unlucky servitor had been lying in the street for a while. The bandits didn’t want anything to do with it, law-abiding citizens never looked inside the trash heap, and the guards... It was embarrassing to admit but the patrolling guards simply played cards, and the loser would deal with the body.

  After all, it wasn’t just a random sucker. It was a proper servitor! They would have to get him into a temple, answer inconvenient questions, and none of them were without sin. Who would tell the truth about everything in his life, starting with the color of his mistress’ underwear and right up to the names of his snitches? Would you want to do something like that? Neither did they. A Church interr
ogation was a creepy affair; you lost all your will and under the servitor’s kind and gentle gaze, told him everything, and Bright save you if you lied even a little. They had dungeons, deep ones. Few lived long enough to leave them.

  And thus, the losing patrol picked up the body and dragged it into the temple, calling the poor shmuck all the names under the sun and drawing respectful stares from the beggars they met along the way.

  Two carried the stretcher, while two more went along, watching the surroundings, as the city rabble sometimes didn’t stop even after seeing a guard uniform. And really, after getting hit with a brick and waking up—if you’re lucky—naked in a trash pile, one would do well to prove he was a guardsman...and reaching the others would be a challenge, anyway.

  Beggars...yeah, about beggars... It took some time for the guards to notice the simple fact that there were no beggars in the streets, at all. That was odd for that time of day and the area of the city, but...

  They didn’t get the chance to finish the thought and exchange their findings with each other. A rat jumped onto the servitor’s body, a huge grey thing that bared its teeth and hissed at the guards.

  “Shoo!”

  One of the guards took a swing at the creature and froze like a statue.

  The first rat was joined by a second and a third. They leaped up from below and jumped down from above, hissing, while the bravest of them started to feed.

  The stretcher fell on the ground with a thud. The guards backed down in unison, pressing themselves against the wall, and froze.

  They couldn’t believe their eyes as the rats, as if obeying someone’s malevolent order, destroyed the remains of the servitor. They tore away bits of meat and blood and ate his stomach from the inside out. The guards watched the vermin consume the contents of his chest cavity and jump through his rib cage...

  Scary? That doesn’t even begin to describe it.

  They didn’t even vomit; all they could do was stare. The rats fled, leaving a skeleton gnawed down to the bone as if some outside force had commanded them to.

  No matter how much they feared the Church, the guards didn’t dare touch the stretcher. They took off running for their lives.