by Paul S. Kemp
“I’ll take all the luck I can get.”
She smiled. “You need your haircut.”
“You’ll cut it when I return,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”
With that, he headed out into the storm. He opened his mouth to the sky and tasted the rain, found it normal, and thanked Chauntea. The crops would live another day. He stood for a moment, alone in the dark, alone with his thoughts, and eyed the village, nestled amid the elms.
The other cottages sat quiet and dark, each a little nest of worry and want. The dozen or so elms rose like colossuses from the plains, whispering in the wind. The rain beat a drumbeat on his cloak. Gerak had always liked to think that the elms protected the village, wood guardians that would never let harm befall those who sheltered under their boughs. He decided to keep thinking it.
Holding his bow, he pulled up his hood and cut across the commons to the pond, where he filled his waterskin. Then he headed up the rise and toward the open plains.
Chapter Three
The limbs of the malformed trees rattled in the wind and rain. Sayeed recalled the Sembia of a century before, before the Spellplague, even before the Shadowstorm: fields of barley, forests filled with game, rivers that ran fast and clear, merchants everywhere. But all of that was dead.
Like him, Sembia was alive while dead.
The last time Sayeed had walked the Sembian plains, the nation had been in the midst of a civil war, and he and Zeeahd had worn the uniforms of the overmistress’s armies. They and many others had been captured and maimed at the order of a Lathandarian, Abelar Corrinthal. Sayeed had taught himself to fight left-handed over the intervening years. And now Sembia was in the midst of a war again. Damp air and bad memories caused the nub of Sayeed’s thumb to ache distantly.
“Why do you slow?” Zeeahd barked over his shoulder.
Sayeed had not realized he had slowed. He hurried forward, the cats eyeing him as he moved through them to his brother’s side. Zeeahd’s hood obscured his face.
“I was . . . thinking.”
“About?”
“The plains dredge up old memories.”
Zeeahd grunted.
“I was thinking about the Spellplague. About why we were . . . changed as we were. I wonder if there’s purpose in it.”
Zeeahd spat, the cats pouncing on the spittle. “There’s no purpose in it. We were on that ship when the blue fire struck, just the wrong place at an ill time. And we were there because of this.”
Zeeahd held up his own right hand, the stump of his thumb a mirror of Sayeed’s, although marred with scales and a malformed joint.
“And we owe that to Abelar Corrinthal. Look for no more meaning than that. Men do awful things to other men. That’s the world.”
“That’s the world,” Sayeed echoed.
“We’ll be free of all this soon,” Zeeahd said. “The Lord of the Eighth promised. We need only find him the son.”
The son. They’d been seeking their prey for decades, scouring Faerûn. By now, the son of Erevis Cale would be an old man. Or dead.
“You think this Oracle will tell us how to find him?” Sayeed asked.
“We’ll make him tell us,” Zeeahd said. “And if the son is already dead of age, we’ll find out where his corpse is and give that to Meph—to the Lord of Cania. And he will free us. Come on. We must find a village.”
Zeeahd picked up his pace, his gait lumbering, awkward, bestial. Sayeed fell in after him.
Over the next several hours the rain picked up until it fell in brown, stinking sheets. The whipgrass under their feet squirmed at the foul water’s touch.
“Do you require shelter?” Sayeed asked Zeeahd. “Sleep?”
“No,” his brother said, in a voice deeper than usual. The hood of Zeeahd’s cloak hid his face. “You know what I require, and I require it soon.”
They hustled through the rain, the wet ground sucking at their boots, the anticipatory cries of the hungry cats driving Sayeed to distraction. His brother wheezed, coughed frequently, and spat a black globule every few steps—to the delight of the cats, who feasted on it.
After a time, moans began to slip through Zeeahd’s lips and his form roiled under the robes. Sayeed could not help but stare. He’d never seen his brother so bad.
“Stop looking at me!” Zeeahd said to Sayeed, half turning his cowled head, his speech slurred and wet from malformed lips.
Sayeed licked his lips and looked away, queasy. The plains looked the same in all directions. The road they traveled appeared to lead nowhere. He feared that they would not be able to stop whatever was soon to happen to his brother.
A small, secret part of him wished that whatever was to happen would happen. His brother disgusted him. Their lives disgusted him. He tried to exorcise the traitorous thoughts with a half-hearted offer of aid.
“How can I help, Zeeahd?”
Zeeahd whirled on him. “You can find me a vessel! Or become one yourself!”
Sayeed’s eyes narrowed. His hand went to the hilt of his blade. As one, the cats turned to face him, all eyes and teeth and claws. He tightened his grip on the hilt, prepared to draw.
But a sound carried out of the rain, the distant scream of a woman from somewhere ahead. The cats arched their backs, cocked their heads.
“You heard it?” Zeeahd asked, still eyeing Sayeed out of the depths of his cowl. “It’s not a phantasm of my mind?”
“I heard it,” Sayeed said slowly, and relaxed his grip on his blade. More screams carried through the rain, terrified wails, dogs barking feverishly. “Someone requires aid.”
“Come on,” Zeeahd said, turning and staggering over the wet earth toward the screams. Despair raised his voice. “Hurry. I can’t continue like this.”
They ran over the slick earth, Sayeed leading, the cats trailing. Twice Zeeahd slipped and fell. Twice Sayeed turned back, lifted his brother to his feet, and felt the flesh and bone of his brother’s body swell and roil under his touch, as if something were nested in his flesh, squirming underneath it in an attempt to burst forth. Bile touched the back of his throat and shock pulled a question from him before he could block it with his teeth.
“What in the Hells is in you, Zeeahd?”
Zeeahd kept his cowled head turned away from his brother. His voice was guttural. “I told you before! I don’t know. He put something in me. To make sure I did his work. It’ll . . . change me.” He shoved Sayeed ahead. “Please, hurry.”
Closer now, Sayeed distinguished the screams of several women and men, the frantic barking and growls of not one but two dogs. He topped a rise and crouched low amid a stand of broadleaf trees. Zeeahd crawled into position beside him, wheezing and moaning. The cats formed up around them, silent and staring.
Below them, the ribbon of the packed-earth wagon road stretched east to west. Two wagons lay overturned on it. A flotsam of household goods lay scattered in the grass: rain-sodden blankets, a small table, broken stoneware. Two bodies lay among the debris, both torn open at the abdomen, the ropes of their entrails smeared on the grass, glistening in the rain. A third corpse lay a few paces from the first two, arms and legs at grotesque angles, the skin drawn tightly against the bones, mummified, as if sucked dry.
A misshapen bipedal creature twice as tall as a man stood in the road. It appeared almost skeletal, but sickly black flesh and chunks of muscle wrapped the bones here and there. Overlong arms ended in finger-length black talons, and large, pointed ears walled a hairless, misshapen head. Green light burned in the depths of its sunken eye sockets. The fanged mouth was opened wide and a pink tongue as thick as Sayeed’s wrist and as long as his forearm dangled grotesquely from the opening. Currents of dark energy swirled around it, gathered on its claws.
It shrieked in hunger and hate, a high-pitched, ear-splitting sound that would have stood Sayeed’s hair on end a hundred years earlier.
Zeeahd coughed, spat a globule of dark phlegm. The cats pounced and consumed the black mass in a moment. “It’
s a devourer. An undead that draws power from the Shadowfell.”
Two men—simple villagers, to judge from the homespun they wore and the wooden axes they wielded as weapons—circled the devourer at a distance of two paces, the weapons trembling in their grasps. A mastiff, barking frenetically, harried the devourer opposite the two men.
A boy’s body lay on the ground near the devourer’s feet, his head nearly ripped from his neck. A girl lay not far from the boy, her dress torn and covered in mud, face down, unmoving. The bodies of three other children lay around the road, their clothes and bodies torn, pieces of them scattered about like the wagon’s debris.
Two women hovered on the outskirts of the combat, shouting, cursing, crying, hurling rocks and stones and whatever they could find at the devourer, all to no effect. A second mastiff stood near the women, barking and growling.
“Run!” the tall, bearded man shouted to the women. “Run!”
“I won’t leave you,” the thick-set woman answered, crying. “Leave us be, creature!”
The bearded man lunged forward, axe held high. Before he could bring his weapon to bear, dark energy flared around the devourer, a cloud of darkness veined with green streaks that knocked the man from his feet. The second man, much younger, perhaps the first man’s son, shouted in anger, bounded forward, and sank his axe into the devourer’s leg. The weapon barely bit and the devourer showed no sign of pain. The creature lashed out with its overlong arm and claw and caught the young man across the face. The impact spun the youth completely around. Blood sprayed and he fell to the mud without a sound.
As he fell, the younger of the two women screamed in despair, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. The dogs’ barking grew manic. The heavier woman tried to pull the younger girl away, but she seemed frozen to the spot.
The devourer lumbered forward, grasped the older, bearded man and lifted him triumphantly into the air. The man’s arms were pinned against his body, his axe hanging futilely from his fist.
“Run!” the man screamed at the women, his face twisted with pain and fear. “Please run!”
The devourer pulled the man close and ran its tongue over his face, leaving a road of blood and blisters and a ruined eye in its wake. The man wailed, legs kicking against the devourer’s chest, all to no effect. The devourer opened its fanged mouth as if in glee, tongue dangling. The dark energy that animated the creature spun and whirled in a black cloud around the man and the undead.
Green lines flared within the cloud, baleful veins connecting the man to the devourer. The man’s screams rose to a high pitch, and then turned to a distorted wail as his body began to shrink in on itself, the hole of his mouth appearing to get larger as the skin drew tight against his bones. The green lines pulsed, netted the dying man. A green glow formed within the devourer’s abdomen, a vile egg.
The energy flared, causing Sayeed to see spots, and the man’s wails stopped. When his vision cleared, Sayeed saw the devourer drop the shriveled, lifeless form of the man to the mud and turn to face the women.
Within the devourer’s abdomen, caged by the bars of its ribs, squirmed a tiny, naked effigy of the man, the devourer pregnant with horror. The effigy’s eyes and mouth were wide with pain and terror.
Sayeed knew what had occurred: The devourer had caged the man’s soul and would use it to power its own unholy force.
Seeing that, the women finally broke entirely. They shrieked and turned to run. The older slipped and fell in the mud, and the younger turned to help her. The devourer keened. Green energy flared from the effigy in its abdomen, traveled to its claws, and shot out toward the women and their dog. It struck all of them at once, and the barking and screaming ended, cut off as if by a blade. All three fell to the sodden earth, limp.
The tiny body within the devourer watched it all and opened its mouth in a wail of despair. The devourer ran its tongue over its lips and fangs, shuddered as if in ecstasy.
The surviving dog whined, turned circles in its agitation.
Sayeed stared at the small form of the trapped soul, wondering if he could die were his soul so trapped. It had been so long since he’d rested. He wondered if he could find peace in the belly of a horror. What would it would be like, to have his soul slowly—
“What are you doing?” Zeeahd said. “I need someone alive!”
Zeeahd stood and pushed past Sayeed while drawing his sword. He spoke words of power, his voice ragged and deep, and extended his blade in the direction of the devourer. A twisting spiral of smoking, deep red flames exploded from the steel and slammed into the devourer’s chest.
The creature staggered backward, bent, flesh charred and smoking, steadying itself by placing one clawed hand on the wet ground. Its green eyes scanned the rise, fixed on Zeeahd and Sayeed, and flashed with unholy light. It crouched, flexed its claws, and shrieked.
The cats hissed in answer.
The surviving dog took to barking and growling but did not get within the devourer’s reach. The soul of the trapped man writhed, veins of green energy pulsing from it to feed the devourer.
Black energy swirled from the devourer’s form. Green light flared in its abdomen, and the tiny effigy of the man imprisoned there squirmed, shrinking ever smaller as the devourer consumed him for power. As the effigy shrank, the burns Zeeahd had inflicted on the flesh of the devourer healed, the flesh knitting closed.
A coughing fit seized Zeeahd and he bent double, slipped in the wet, and fell to the grass on all fours. His form twisted under his clothing, getting taller, thinner. Sayeed started to help him up—feeling his brother’s bones twisting—but Zeeahd pushed him away.
“Go!” he said, and coughed. “That’s all I can do for now.”
Sayeed stood, drew his blade, and readied his shield.
Zeeahd’s hand reached up and closed on his wrist. His brother’s hand was feverishly hot, although he still kept his visage hidden within the cowl.
“That creature cannot give you peace, Sayeed. Your soul and mind would live on in its form, regenerating constantly, forever sating its appetite. You would suffer eternally.” Another cough, then, “The Lord of the Eighth has promised me a cure. Promised us a cure. Only through him will we find an end to this. He has already gifted me with hellfire. You saw, Saied. You saw.”
The devourer shrieked again and padded across the grass toward them, stepping heedlessly on the corpses of those it had slain, driving the bodies deeper into the mud.
“I saw,” Sayeed said to his brother. He didn’t trust Zeeahd—he hated Zeeahd—but what choice did he have?
The devourer broke into a loping run.
Sayeed didn’t wait for it. He roared and ran down the rise, his armor clanging, meeting the creature’s charge head on. The thrill of battle filled him, the only thing he felt with clarity anymore.
They closed in five strides. The devourer slashed with one of its huge claws, but Sayeed deflected it with his shield and did not slow, instead slamming his body into the devourer’s larger form while he drove his blade into the creature’s abdomen, through the effigy, and up through the neck. The enchanted blade vibrated gleefully in his hands as it found purchase in flesh, and the movement made the already deep wound jagged, more painful.
The devourer and the effigy both keened with pain. Dark energy swirled around them, a black fog that pulled at whatever withered bits of Sayeed’s soul remained. The stink of the creature, like a charnel house, filled Sayeed’s nostrils. The devourer shoved him away, nearly causing him to slip on the wet earth, and bounded after him, claws slashing. Sayeed parried with his shield and ducked under another blow, but the creature pressed, heedless of Sayeed’s blade.
Sayeed slashed the creature’s arms, leg, but the devourer grabbed his face with an enormous clawed hand and squeezed, the nails piercing Sayeed’s cheeks, penetrating gums, and scraping teeth. Blood poured into Sayeed’s mouth. He felt no pain but nearly vomited at the taste of the creature’s foul digits in his mouth.
With
preternatural strength, the devourer lifted Sayeed by his head and cast him five paces away. Sayeed hit the ground in a clatter of metal, rolled with the momentum, and bounced to his feet. Already the flesh of his face was knitting closed. He spat out the taste of the devourer’s fingers and a mouthful of blood.
The devourer cocked its head and licked its fangs with the rope of its tongue, perhaps puzzled that Sayeed had not remained prone.
Sayeed’s weapon shook in his hands, hungry for more violence. Sayeed, eager to feed it and high on the rush of battle, roared and charged anew. He blocked an overhead claw strike with his shield and cleaved the creature at the knee. His blade bit through flesh and sheared bone, severing the leg.
As the devourer fell, it lashed out with its other claw, catching Sayeed on the shoulder, ripping through mail and flesh, and spinning him around with the impact. A blast of dark energy from the devourer engulfed him, cooled his body, and once more pulled at his soul.
His rage proved the hotter and he resisted the dark magic. He spun and drove his blade downward into the prone creature’s chest. He left it there, pinioning the creature to the ground, while the devourer tore at his legs and abdomen. Black energy from the devourer churned around him, a seething cloud of unholy power. Sayeed felt the blood running warm from his body, but ignored it. Straddling the creature, he took his shield by the sides, lifted it high, and slammed the sharpened edge of its bottom into the devourer’s neck. The slab of enchanted metal severed the devourer’s head, ending its shrieking, extinguishing the green light in its eyes. The dark energy around Sayeed subsided as the head fell away from the body, tongue still dangling from its mouth like some grotesque pennon.
Sayeed stood over the corpse while the rain fell, while his body healed its wounds. With battle over, the rush left him, and he once more returned to his usual emptiness.
The devourer’s corpse began to leak shadows, the stink of them like rotting meat. Its flesh fell away from bones that began to crumble. The trapped soul in its abdomen, like a malformed fetus, was the last to go, screaming as it dissolved into putrescence.
