by Paul S. Kemp
“Devil!” he shouted. “Account for your presence in my abbey!”
He started for the door, but before he reached it a crouched form filled the doorway, the raised spines on its back like a forest of blades. Its lips peeled back from its long fangs, and its sleek head moved back and forth as it eyed the room. Seeing no one else, its tongue fell from its mouth and it snarled at Vasen.
“Come,” Vasen said, his anger rising, and beckoned it to close.
The devil hissed, tensed, whirled, and launched a dozen spikes at Vasen. They caught fire as they whizzed toward him. He sheltered behind his shield and most of the spines slammed into the metal and stuck there. A few thumped into the wall. Others hit the bed and caught it afire.
Vasen got out from behind his shield as the devil sprung at him, all claws, teeth, and rage. He braced himself and swung his shield left to right as the devil reached him. The slab of steel and wood flared with light as it slammed into the devil’s head and neck, driving it sidelong into the wall near the hearth. The fiend squirmed, bit, and clawed, trying to get around the shield, but Vasen threw his legs back, leaned his weight into the shield, still blazing with light, and pinned the creature against the wall while driving Weaveshear into it again and again. The blade bit effortlessly through the devil’s hide. The fiend writhed, shrieking as one blow after another sank deep into its vitals. Black ichor poured from its slashed guts. When at last it went silent and still, Vasen let it fall to the floor and jerked his blade free. Behind him, his bed was ablaze. Parts of the abbey were ablaze, too, and there was no way to stop it. Soon the entire structure would be gutted by fire.
He had to get to the Oracle.
He looked at his shield, still glowing faintly, and at his blade, leaking shadows. The shadows twisted themselves into a line that snaked out of the room and turned east.
A line to follow, he thought, smiling and thinking of Orsin.
Without looking back at his burning quarters, the room that had been his sanctuary for almost thirty winters, he followed the line of shadow emitted by Weaveshear and hurried to Dawnlord Abelar’s shrine.
Zeeahd moved rapidly through the dark abbey. On the way, he encountered two of his devils, who must have gained entry through an upper window.
“Follow,” he ordered them, and they fell in beside him.
Light trickled down the stairs that led up through the eastern tower, the light he’d seen from outside. The devils growled softly. Without a pause, Zeeahd and the devils climbed the stairs. A hallway opened into a circular shrine.
Two biers sat in the center of the room, but Zeeahd had eyes only for the frail old man who stood near them. He wore the elaborate red and yellow robes of a senior priest of Amaunator. His eyes glowed orange, and when they fixed on Zeeahd, Zeeahd halted in his steps.
“Oracle,” Zeeahd said.
The old man’s hand went to the holy symbol he wore around his throat, a sun and a rose.
“Do you know who I am?” Zeeahd asked, stalking into the room, the devils flanking him.
The Oracle stared at him, glowing eyes unblinking. “I know what you are.”
“Then you know why I’ve come.”
“You’ve come to further the purposes of forces beyond your understanding,” the Oracle said.
The old man’s confidence galled Zeeahd. The devils snarled, their claws scratching the floor. “I need an answer to a question, old man.”
The Oracle smiled faintly, looked away from Zeeahd to stare thoughtfully at the image of the woman carved into the lid of the bier.
“She never married another. The woman whose image is carved into the wood here. Her name was Jiriis. I’m sure she never loved another, either. She committed her life to service, but lived it alone.”
Zeeahd put a hand on the spines of the devils at his sides. Was the Oracle mad? Was he anticipating Zeeahd’s question and answering him somehow.
“We all make sacrifices, it seems,” the Oracle said.
“I don’t care about that. Where is the son of Erevis Cale. Tell me. If he lives, tell me his location. If he’s dead, tell me where I can find his corpse.” When the Oracle said nothing, he added, “Tell me and no harm will come to you, but be certain that I’ll have an answer, one way or another.”
“I long ago accepted the harm that would come to me. I saw it in a dream. But it has been a good hundred years.” The Oracle turned and looked down on the other bier. “Do you recognize the face here, Zeeahd of Thay?”
“You know my name?”
“Look on it and do what you came here to do,” the Oracle said, his voice stern. “You recognize it, do you not?”
Zeeahd looked carefully at the image carved into the bier. His fury rose as he recognized the face, the face forever branded by pain into his memory. The stump of his thumb began to ache. The curse within him began to writhe.
“Abelar Corrinthal,” he said, and the words came out a hiss, and the hiss turned to a cough.
“He was my father,” the Oracle said, looking back at Zeeahd. “A good man. A holy man. Very unlike you, Zeeahd of Thay.”
Zeeahd’s coughing worsened as his rage intensified. He felt the growth in his belly, the sickening, squirming mass that resided within him, that wanted only to become. His damnation had started a hundred years ago, but he had held it at bay since then. He refused to let it finish. He would free himself before he let the Hells have him.
“Then I’ll have something for you when we’re done, son of Abelar,” Zeeahd said between coughs and gasps. Black flecks peppered the floor. “The son, Erevis Cale’s son, where will I find him? Tell me now or I’ll make you suffer.”
The devils growled at that, an eager sound.
The Oracle’s glowing eyes fixed on Zeeahd. “You won’t find him, Zeeahd.”
“That is a lie,” Zeeahd shouted. “You lie!”
He could take no more. He ran across the room, the devils loping after him.
The Oracle remained unmoved, and Zeeahd grabbed him by the robes and shook his tiny frame, spitting black spatters of phlegm with every word.
“Liar! Liar!”
The Oracle shook his head, his face placid. “I speak what I see. You will not find him.”
A distant shout carried into the shrine from elsewhere in the abbey. Not far away.
“Oracle!” shouted a voice.
“You won’t find him, Zeeahd,” the Oracle said, and smiled into Zeeahd’s face. “Because he has found you.”
Zeeahd’s ruined flesh goose pimpled. “What? What did you say?” “He’s found you.”
Again the voice from below. “Oracle!”
“Then I will be free of this right now,” Zeeahd said, and shoved the Oracle away from him.
“No,” the Oracle said. “You will never be free. Your body will mirror your soul. That is your fate, Zeeahd.”
Another shout, closer this time. “Oracle!”
The darkness squirming in Zeeahd’s belly wriggled up his throat, caused him to cough, to heave. He clenched his stomach, heaved from the bottom of his belly, and gagged as he vomited a thick string of his pollution onto the floor, fouling Amaunator’s sun. The glistening string lay there, a stinking mass of putrescence—hell reified in his innards and puked forth into the world. He stared at it, the Oracle’s words replaying in his mind.
You will never be free. You will never be free.
The words snuffed whatever humanity remained in him. Zeeahd wanted the Oracle dead: He wanted the abbey burned.
“Kill him!” he said to the devils, waving at the Oracle. “Tear him apart!”
“That is denied you, too,” the Oracle said, and, before the devils could pounce, a beam of bright light shone through the translucent dome in the ceiling, fell on the Oracle’s face, and bathed him in clear light. His skin turned translucent in the glow, took on a rosy hue. He placed a thin, veined hand on Abelar’s bier.
The devils growled but did not charge him.
“Kill him!” Zeeahd shrieked.<
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The beam of light faded, as did the light in the Oracle’s eyes. His expression slackened, grew childlike. His mouth fell open partially and split in a dumb smile. He spoke a single word, his tone that of a lack wit, not the leader of a congregation, not the head of an abbey that had provided light in darkness for a century.
“Papa,” the Oracle said.
The devils snarled and bounded forward. The Oracle closed his eyes and started to fall but before he hit the floor, the devils struck his body at a run and drove him to the stone floor. Claws and fangs tore into his body, ripping robes, ripping flesh. Blood spread in a pool across the floor.
The devils lapped at the gore eagerly, chuffing, snorting, but then they began to whine, then to shriek as their flesh began to smoke. The dead Oracle’s flesh glowed on their muzzles and claws. They squirmed like mad things, snarling, growling, spitting, trying to get the Oracle’s gore off of them. Their skin began to sizzle, bubble, and melt. They shrieked a final time as their hides sloughed from their bones, the spines falling like rain to the floor, their organs melting into putrescence.
Zeeahd could only watch it, mesmerized, horrified, as even in death the Oracle took his final revenge.
Rage rose in him, hatred, darker and fouler even than the sputum he’d left on the floor, hatred for Abelar, for the Oracle, for himself and what he had become, for daring to hope.
“Oracle!” came a third shout from down below, perhaps at the base of the stairs.
Zeeahd dared the devils’ fate. He turned and kicked what was left of the Oracle’s body, once, twice, again, again. Nothing happened to him, and he warmed to the task, venting his rage in violence. Bones broke, flesh split, and blood seeped from the rag doll corpse. But his outburst served only to amplify his rage, not abate it. He began to cough during his tirade, felt again the stirring in his innards, but did not care. He stared at the image of Abelar Corrinthal, carved in the wood surface of the bier. The peaceful expression. He spit on the image, slammed a fist on the wood. His skin split and blood marred Abelar’s visage.
“You! You! You are why all of this has happened to me!”
He seized the lid of the bier and with a grunt threw it to the side, revealing the wrapped, mummified body within.
“You have rest!” he shouted to Abelar. “You have peace! And I have nothing but the promise of the Hells! Because of you!”
“The life he lived brought him peace,” said a strong, firm voice behind him. “The life you’ve lived will bring you something far worse.”
Zeeahd turned slowly, a snarl on his lips. The man who stood at the entrance to the shrine was only slightly shorter than Sayeed. Long, dark hair was pulled off his strong-jawed face in a horse’s tail. The beard and moustache he wore did not disguise the violence promised by the hard line of his mouth. Dull, gray plate armor wrapped his broad body. He carried a shield emblazoned with a battle-scarred rose, a large, dark blade from which darkness poured. A thin stream of shadow led off from the blade back the way the man had come. Shadows emerged in flickers from his exposed flesh.
Zeeahd’s fists clenched. “There is nothing worse!”
The man stepped into the room. Zeeahd backed off a step, his stomach writhing with hell.
Vasen took in the remains of the devils, the body of the Oracle, the defiled bier of Dawnlord Abelar. He fixed his gaze on the thin man.
“My name is Vasen Cale. My father was Erevis Cale. I’m the one you’ve been trying to find.”
“And yet you found me,” the man said, and a maniacal laugh slipped past his lips. The laugh turned to wet coughing.
Vasen took another step into the room, trailing shadows, bearing light. The man backed away from the bier, toward the double doors behind him. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he were awaiting something.
“Here he is, Lord of Cania,” the man said, and pointed a bony finger at Vasen. “He’s found. The son of Cale. Now free me of this!”
The man coughed, gagged. Vasen could make no sense of his babblings and didn’t need to. He needed only to kill him.
He held up Abelar’s shield and Weaveshear. “This is the Dawnlord’s shield and this is my father’s sword. I’m going to kill you with them.”
The man shrieked with despair, rage, and hate, spitting black phlegm as he did.
“Where is your promise now, Lord of Cania?” The man glared at the dark places in the room as if they held some secret. “I’ve done what you asked! I’ve done it! Here he is! Free me!”
“You’re mad,” Vasen said.
The man glared at Vasen, his breathing a forge bellows. “Maybe I am mad. And maybe I’ll be freed only if you’re dead!”
He raised his hands and a line of fire exploded outward from his palms. Vasen raised his shield and the fire slammed into the steel, drove him back a step. Shadows poured from Vasen’s flesh, from Weaveshear, and those from the blade surrounded the fire in darkness and contained it.
Still the man continued to shout, an animal cry of mindless hate, the fire pouring from his hands, black spit pouring from his mouth.
Licks of flame ignited the biers and spread to one of the wall tapestries, which quickly turned into a curtain of fire. In moments the entire room was ablaze.
Vasen pushed against the fire, enduring the heat, one step, another.
“Vasen!” he heard from the stairway below. “Vasen!”
“Here!” he called, the flames licking around his shield.
Orsin and Gerak ran up to the doorway behind him and stopped, eyes wide at the conflagration. Gerak drew and aimed with his usual rapidity, but the thin man separated his hands and sent a second line of fire into the bowman. It hit Gerak squarely in the chest and knocked him against the wall. He quickly aimed another blast at Orsin, but the deva dived aside and dodged it.
The man laughed. “I’ll kill you all! Then I’ll be free. Watch, Lord of Cania! Watch!”
Gerak’s bow sang and an arrow thunked into the man’s shoulder. The man grimaced with pain, staggered back, hunched, snarling. His flames faltered. He raised his left hand to unleash another blast of fire, but again Gerak’s bow spoke first and a second arrow sank into the man, this time his left shoulder. The impact spun the man around and he shouted with pain.
“Die,” Gerak said.
A third arrow buried itself in his left thigh, and the man went down. He collapsed, coughing, spitting gouts of black phlegm.
Gerak stepped beside Vasen, nocked and drew again, sighting for the man’s throat. Vasen lowered his shield and weapon and watched. The man deserved death, and Gerak had earned the right to give it to him.
Gerak’s bowstring creaked as he drew back to his ear.
The man writhed frenetically on the floor, snapping the arrows stuck in his body, his arms wrapped around his stomach, screaming wildly, maniacally, between coughs. His body pulsed, roiled, as if something within him were trying to get out.
“It hurts!” he shouted. “Kill me! Kill me!”
“Give him no relief,” Orsin said. “He deserves what pain comes his way.”
Gerak sighted along his arrow, and after a long pause, lowered his bow.
The man rolled over onto his stomach, dark, bloodshot eyes staring out of the pale oval of his face. His teeth, crooked and stained black, bared in a snarl.
“I’ll kill you! All of you!”
He lifted himself on his wounded arms, grunting against the pain, and staggered to his feet. He lifted a hand at them. Vasen readied his shield and Gerak readied a killing shot, but before the man could discharge any fire, his eyes filled with pain and fear. He went rigid, threw his head back, and uttered a piercing shriek of pain. His back arched and he cast his arms out wide, his hands bent like claws. Tapestries and the biers burned all around him.
“Suffer, bastard!” Gerak shouted. “Suffer like she did.”
“We should go,” Orsin said. “The other one’s still alive, and many devils besides.”
Vasen nodded. Shadows poured off of him,
off of Weaveshear, and led off down the abbey’s corridors.
Another scream from the man, a wet gurgle that ended in him vomiting a black rope of phlegm down the front of his robes. He put his hands on his face, screaming, as black fluid poured from his eyes, his nose, his ears, saturating his robes.
“This is not what you promised!” the man screamed. “This is not what you promised!”
Snarls and the heavy, scrabbling tread of clawed feet on the floor of the corridor behind the man grew loud enough to hear over his screams and the crackle of the flames.
“They’re coming,” Orsin said.
“You’ve seen what you need to see,” Vasen said to Gerak. “Leave him to suffer or kill him. Your decision.”
Gerak looked at the screaming man, seemingly insensate of all but his pain. Anger twisted Gerak’s expression and he drew, nocked, and fired. An arrow sank to the fletching in the screaming man. He seemed barely to notice the wound as black fluid poured from the hole.
“Gerak,” Orsin said.
But Gerak was past hearing him. He drew again, fired. Drew, nocked, and fired, the arrows coming so fast that Vasen was dumbstruck. In moments, six more arrows sprouted from the man’s flesh . Black, putrescent fluid poured from the wounds, but still he stood, screaming, bleeding, dying, changing.
“We have to go!” Orsin said, as something large and strong slammed into the double doors behind the dying, bleeding man.
The man uttered an inhuman shriek as the skin on his thin body cracked and split, blood and ichor spraying the room all around as something expanded within him, his flesh an egg birthing a horror.
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
Sharp claws burst in a black spray from the tips of his fingers. His spine lengthened with a wet, cracking sound, making him taller, thinner. He screamed in agony as the transformation twisted his body. His skull elongated, the jaw widened. His teeth rained out of his mouth as fangs burst from his gums to replace them. His voice deepened. An appendage burst from his back, a bony tail that ended in a spiked wedge of bone that looked like a halberd blade. The devil—a bone devil, Vasen realized—used its clawed fingers to help it slip the rest of the man’s flesh and body, as if it were undressing.
