by Paul S. Kemp
“I think it’s in that head, Minser. And I’ll have it out one way or another.”
He cast the medallion at the feet of the bleeding peddler. Elle stepped forward and tried to help Minser to his feet, but the peddler seemed in no mood to stand. Instead, he sat there, stunned and bleeding.
“I’m all right, lady,” Minser muttered, but he was weeping. “I’m all right.”
Elle whirled on them, face red with anger, a vein bulging in her forehead. “Get out of here!” she shouted, and pointed at the road. “Get out of here now!”
Zeeahd ignored her as he gathered his tunic and cloak. The cats paced around him, meowing, licking their chops, eager, hungry. Sayeed could not deny that he felt some of the same hunger, looking on the faces of the stupid peasants and their foolish reverence for Abelar Corrinthal. He had not come into the village intending to kill, but the desire to do so rose in him now, ugly and bloody.
“The peddler comes with us,” Zeeahd said.
Sayeed stepped forward, pushed Elle away roughly, grabbed Minser by the arm, and jerked him to his feet.
“Leave him alone!” Elle said.
“It’s all right, lady,” Minser said, his speech slurred, daubing at his bleeding forehead. “I’ll be fine.”
The cats continued their insistent meowing. Zeeahd rubbed their heads.
“Hungry, are you?”
He looked up at the crowd, a sly smile on his face.
“Please,” Elle said. “Just go.”
“We are going,” Zeeahd said. “But first, something for those who revere Abelar Corrinthal.”
A nervous rustle from the crowd, one uncertain laugh, a cough. “Come out,” Zeeahd said to the cats. “Show them.”
The villagers watched in wide-eyed horror as the cats’ mouths opened so wide it looked as if their jaws were unhinged. Their faces seemed nothing but an open hole. Something wriggled within the cats’ bodies, under the skin, causing their forms to bulge grotesquely. Their eyes rolled back in their heads and their bodies convulsed.
A woman screamed. Another fainted. Everyone took a step back. Terror moved in a wave through the crowd.
“What’s wrong with them?” someone shouted.
“Gods!” said another.
Scaled hands reached out from within the cat’s throats, took hold of either side of the gaping mouth, and began to pull back. The cats’ skins stretched as blood-slicked diabolical forms wriggled out of the maws.
More screams, shouts of horror.
Diabolical forms wriggled forth in a slick, bloody mess of scales and horns and claws and teeth, the bodies much larger than the skin of the cats that contained them. They snarled as they emerged, drooling, shedding the feline skins like cloaks.
“The light preserve and keep us,” Minser whispered beside Sayeed.
Sayeed backhanded him in the face with a gauntleted fist. The peddler did not even groan, just fell to the ground unmoving.
As the devils stretched, panic seized the villagers. They gathered children, screaming, and fled. All except Elle. She stood her ground, her hand to her mouth, terror in her eyes.
The gore-slicked devils crouched on all fours, their sinewy muscles coated in a blanket of long spines. Their slit-eyed gazes darted about as they fixed on one and then another of the fleeing villagers. Long black tongues ran over mouths fanged like a shark’s. The one nearest Sayeed lifted its head to the sky and uttered an eager, clicking ululation.
“Feed,” Zeeahd said to them, and gestured at the fleeing villagers. “All but this woman and the peddler. They’re mine.”
The devils snarled and pelted after their prey like a pack of wolves, howling for blood and flesh, their clawed feet throwing up clods of sod with every stride. One of them thumped into Elle as it passed, nearly knocking her down.
“The woman, Sayeed,” Zeeahd ordered.
Two of the devils pounced on the villager who had fainted. They seized her by head and feet and tore her apart in a spray of gore.
Sayeed grabbed Elle by the wrist. She whirled, terror in her eyes, and kicked him hard in the groin.
“No! No! No!”
The blow might have doubled over another man, but Sayeed barely felt it. He pulled the woman close while she slapped and clawed at his face, her nails digging bloody furrows in his cheeks.
“Leave me . . . alone!”
Sayeed grabbed her by the hair and thumped her in the temple with the pommel of his sword. She sagged to the ground, as limp as a grain sack.
He stood over her and watched Zeeahd’s creatures work.
The devils prowled heedlessly through the village, gleeful in the bloodletting. They overturned wagons, knocked down doors, shattered fences. From time to time they launched groups of spines from their backs, the missiles catching fire as they flew, thudding into flesh and wood and setting it all aflame. Screams sounded from all over the village, terrified shrieks from inside cottages and barns, wet ripping sounds from the street, gurgling groans of pain. The devils slaughtered everything within reach, not even sparing the livestock. Pigs squealed, impaled on devil’s claws. Dogs, cows, goats, and cats were chased down and torn to pieces. The devils careened wildly through the streets, soaked in blood, bits of flesh and fur hanging from their claws, arms or legs dangling in their fangs, an orgy of gore.
Zeeahd came to Sayeed’s side.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
When Sayeed said nothing, Zeeahd kneeled beside Minser and pulled him to a sitting position. Slaps to his face opened Minser’s eyes. Seeing the slaughter, the peddler clamped his eyes shut, shaking his head.
“No, no.”
Zeeahd slapped him, once, twice, a third time.
“Open your eyes, peddler! Open them or I will cut off your eyelids!”
Wincing, jaw clenched, his entire body trembling with the effort, Minster opened his eyes. He wept at the screaming, the blood.
“What have you done? What have you done? The light preserve us.”
Zeeahd grabbed him by the hair.
“That will be your fate and worse, if you don’t take us to the abbey. The light won’t preserve you. Nothing will.”
“You’re a monster,” the peddler said, sobbing. “A monster.”
Zeeahd roughly released his hold on Minser’s hair. “You have Abelar Corrinthal to thank for that, peddler.”
Sayeed watched the devils work with a peculiar sense of detachment. He knew he should feel something—horror, sympathy, elation, something. But he felt nothing except tired. He might as well have been watching the slaughter of dinner chickens. He just wanted to get on with finding the abbey, the Oracle, and end his perpetual self-loathing and bitterness.
He ran his fingertips over his cheek and felt only smooth skin. The grooves that Elle’s nails had carved in his face had already healed. Everything healed. Except his spirit. That wound where it should have been had never healed and never would.
“The Lord of Cania will cure us, Sayeed,” Zeeahd said, as if reading his thoughts. “We need only get to the Oracle and from him, learn the location of Cale’s son.” He kicked Minser. “And now we have a way.”
Fewer screams carried from the village. The devils had killed most everything. Sayeed heard mostly the sound of feeding, tearing meat.
Sayeed put a boot in Minser’s belly. The peddler groaned, curled up into a fetal position on the ground. “And if this oaf cannot lead us to the abbey? He said—”
“He can and he will,” Zeeahd answered. “Won’t you, Minser?”
The peddler made no answer other than sobs.
When the devils had devoured their fill of the corpses, they stalked back to Zeeahd and Sayeed. Minser covered his eyes at their approach.
Their yellow, reptilian eyes glared at Sayeed as they passed.
“Back now,” Zeeahd said.
“We serve,” one of the devils croaked, and each went to the bag of cat skin it had vacated, picked up the fur, extended the mouth over their horned heads, and beg
an to squirm back inside. They seemed to diminish as they wriggled and writhed their way back into cat form. Soon the devils were gone and thirteen cats stared at Zeeahd and Sayeed.
“The woman?” Sayeed asked, although he suspected he knew the answer.
“I have something special for her rude mouth,” Zeeahd said. His bare, scarred, distended stomach began to lurch and roll as he dredged up the poison he carried within him. “Put her on the deck.”
Sayeed picked Elle up under her armpits and dragged her atop the deck. Her eyelids fluttered open when Sayeed dropped her there. She sat up, still woozy, recoiling as Zeeahd advanced on her, his body heaving with the effort to expel the darkness within him.
“Please, don’t,” Elle said, backing away crabwise. “I’m with child.”
“Not anymore,” Zeeahd said, the words distorted by the black phlegm filling his mouth and dribbling down his chin. As quick as an adder, he lunged forward, grabbed her by the wrists, and pinned her arms to her sides. He leaned in toward her face, his mouth open, drooling. She clamped her mouth shut, turned her head from side to side, making little grunts of fear.
Sayeed sheathed his sword and walked away. He’d rather survey the slaughter of Fairelm than watch his brother purge. He felt eyes on him and realized that several of the cats were following him, or perhaps they wished to revisit their slaughter.
Looking on the cats, Sayeed imagined something lurking within Zeeahd, too, some secret form waiting to burst forth from his brother the way the devils had heaved themselves out of the cats.
Blood, bodies, and gore littered the village’s streets and buildings. The eyes of the villagers—where eyes still remained—stared accusations at him. Seeing the blood and death, he thought it was good that he no longer had a soul. If he had, by now it would be a withered, shriveled remnant of feeling, a thing that brought only pain, far worse than nothing.
Chapter Eight
Gerak awoke shivering, face down in the sodden whipgrass, the taste of Sembia’s wretched soil in his mouth. He lifted himself to all fours, his body rebelling at even that slight exertion, and forced himself to his feet. The rain had stopped. He eyed the dark slate of the sky, the shadowpolluted air. How long had he been asleep? Was it evening? He’d completely lost his sense of time.
He blinked away his exhaustion, slapped his face a few times, and started moving again. Thinking of Elle, of the baby, brought him strength. Exertion warmed his body, loosened his muscles, and soon he was making good progress. He alternately ran, jogged, or walked, stopping only to drink.
He saw the village’s elms ahead, their massive height materializing out of the shadowy fog like columns supporting the sky. He did not smell any chimney fires, and their absence caused him a pang of concern.
He found the road that led through the gateway elms and picked up his pace. He was running by the time he entered the village.
Twenty paces in, he found a body. Or the pieces of a body. A headless torso lay in the street, the entrails spilling into the mud. Torn clothing, partially eaten flesh. The rest of the remains lay scattered elsewhere in the road, a head, an arm.
He stared at it for a long moment, unable to process what he was seeing. When the reality finally registered, bile rose and he vomited.
Another body lay nearby, the throat torn open, the abdomen split and emptied, the ribs visible.
A dead cow lay in a nearby pen, flayed, the exposed muscles glistening wetly, the poor creature’s mouth frozen open in a scream of agony.
Gerak couldn’t breathe. His heart was a drum in his chest. His vision blurred. He feared he would vomit again.
Something had come in from the plains, it must have, and attacked the village—some horror created by the Shadovar.
He started running for his cottage, heading around the edge of the village, spitting puke as he ran. He slowed enough to draw his sword, his fist white around the hilt. A buzz filled his ears, the muffled, internal roar of growing panic. He stumbled, slipped, and fell in the mud, but rose and ran on. Tears poured down his cheeks. Someone was speaking, despondent murmurings that sounded like a foreign language. It was him, he realized, the words drawn from his throat by the hook of his despair.
“Not Elle. Not Elle. Not Elle.”
He passed more and more bodies, more body parts both human and animal, people he knew, friends and neighbors. Blood spattered everything. Viscera festooned fences and doorways as if placed there as part of some celebration of horror. He did not stop to look at the remains with care. He feared what he would see. Nothing was more important than getting to his cottage, to Elle. Nothing.
“Please, Elle. Please. Please. Please.”
The cottage stood ahead, the door still closed. He saw no blood or bodies near it and prayed that Elle had hidden herself somehow, maybe in the shed. He slammed into the door, nearly knocked it from its hinges.
“Elle! Elle!”
She wasn’t inside.
His heart fell to his feet.
The smell of her stew, still warm in the cauldron over the hearth’s embers, filled the cottage, and its familiarity brought him to his knees. He dropped bow and sword, covered his face, and wailed like a child. Everything drained out of him. He did not even feel anger. He just felt . . . empty, hollow, a ghost, a shadow.
He cursed himself again and again. He should have taken her away from Fairelm years ago, left the village and the thrice-damned realm of the Shadovar. He would blame himself forever, hate himself forever. He never should have left her to hunt. He should have been here to defend her.
As if of its own accord, his hand went to the skinning knife he kept on his belt. He drew it from its sheath, held its blade before him, eyed the edge he kept so meticulously sharp. It could cut flesh and veins with the lightest touch, a simple pass over his wrist, a momentary flash of pain. He extended his arm, held the blade over his arm, saw the veins pulsing under his skin. Tears blurred his vision. He could join Elle with the smallest of gestures, the slightest movement.
A muffled scream from the direction of the village center stayed his hand. He was on his feet in an instant and sprinting out the door, sword and bow in hand. Another scream drew him on. He recognized it as Elle’s voice, his Elle, and she was frightened, in pain.
“Elle! Elle! Where are you?”
Another scream pulled him onward. He made straight for the gathering elm in the center of the village.
He would kill whoever or whatever had slaughtered Fairelm, he would gut it, slit its throat, pull out its innards with his hands.
“Elle!”
He sprinted around the corner of the Ferrods’ livestock pen, hardly noticing the heap of blood and gore that had been the Ferrods’ cow, and into the commons. A thin, bald man, his shirtless torso covered in boils, scars, and tumors, had just finished . . . kissing her?
The man heard Gerak’s approach and turned. His eyes narrowed in anger and he slid behind Elle, his forearm wrapped around her throat. Inexplicably, a dozen or more mangy cats, their faces all fangs and eyes, sat on their haunches around the man. She didn’t look at Gerak; her eyes were open but vacant, staring out at something Gerak couldn’t see.
Gerak’s emotional state distilled down to a singular need to kill, to murder, to put arrows into this diseased bastard’s eyes. He dropped his sword, drew an arrow and nocked, all of it instinctive, as rapid as thought.
“Get away from her, now!”
Elle gave no response to the sound of Gerak’s voice, and the thin man’s wide, fevered eyes squinted as he focused on Gerak. He smiled, showing the mess of his mouth, the crooked teeth of various sizes and shapes.
“Where have you been hiding?” the man said, his voice much deeper than the frame of his body would suggest.
Gerak trained his sight on the center of the face, a hard shot, but he’d made harder. He advanced and the shot got easier with each step he took.
“I said let her go.”
A man lay on the ground near Elle, his face bloodied,
his filthy shirt pulled halfway up, exposing a fat, hairy stomach. The man lurched up and shouted, “Gerak! Kill them! They want me to take them to the Oracle! I won’t do it, Gerak!”
At first Gerak did not recognize him, but then the moustache and girth brought recognition: Minser. The peddler’s unexpected presence made no more sense than his words.
Gerak put Minser out of his mind, walked slowly toward the man holding Elle, sighting along his arrow. A few more steps closer and he’d take the shot. The man maneuvered to keep Elle between them, but he seemed more amused than fearful.
“You know this woman?” the man said. He shook Elle and her arms and legs bounced sickeningly, as if unconnected from her body, as if she were a doll, as if she were already dead.
Gerak picked the spot he’d fire, right between the bastard’s crazed eyes. He visualized the arrow’s flight, prepared to loose.
“Gerak, look out!” Minser shouted, then screamed and curled into a ball as the cats pounced on him, clawing and biting.
Before Gerak could make sense of things before him, the splash and thud of heavy boots from behind whirled him around. A massive man in a battle-scarred breastplate, his hair long and disheveled, his eyes as dead as those of a fish, pelted toward him, a massive sword held high. Instinct and adrenaline seized Gerak—he sighted and released and his arrow sizzled through the air and slammed into the man’s chest, knifing through the plate armor, sinking half the length of the shaft, and spinning the man to the ground, dead or dying.
Gerak spun back around while drawing another arrow—nock, pull, sight. The rat-faced man still sheltered behind Elle. The cats crawled all over Minser, nipping casually at his ears, fingertips, cheeks. The peddler lay curled up on the ground, screaming, crying.
“Get them off! Get them off!”
“Now you die,” Gerak whispered to the man, and prepared to loose his shot.
An unexpected blow to the side of his head caused him to see sparks and drove him face down into the wet earth. He was distantly aware that he had fired his shot into the ground. Adrenaline allowed him to hold onto consciousness, but barely. He rolled over, bow held defensively before him, his vision shaky.
