The Black Road d-2

by Mel Odom

  Trying not to show his fear, Lord Darkulan stepped forward and allowed Cholik to take his arm and guide him.

  "Be brave, Lord Darkulan," Cholik advised. "You are going to see wonders seldom seen by human eyes. Step into the snake's mouth, and all your fear will be taken from you if you but believe."

  Lord Darkulan followed a half-step behind Cholik. They stepped over the stone snake's sharp teeth and followed the black, smoldering ribbon of tongue down into the snake's throat, where it became a black road that wound down into a long hallway.

  "Where are we?" Lord Darkulan asked.

  "On the Way of Dreams," Cholik replied. "We're going to find your destiny. It takes a strong man to follow the teachings of Dien-Ap-Sten. You will become an even stronger man."

  The hallway widened and changed a number of times, but the Black Road remained constant beneath Cholik's feet. He'd talked to several parishioners who had ventured along the Black Road to be healed or receive a blessing, and all of them had described the path differently. Some had said they'd journeyed down familiar hallways, while others were taken through places they'd never seen and hoped they would never see.

  A green sun dawned in the hallway before them, and suddenly they were no longer in a hallway. Now the Black Road clung to a cliffside. The path they followed was so high that clouds obscured the view below. Still, the harsh mountain range towered above. Ice glinted on the peaks only a little farther up.

  Lord Darkulan stopped. "I want to go back."

  "You can't," Cholik replied. "Look." He turned and pointed back along the way they had come.

  Flames clung to the Black Road, twisting and curling three times the height of a man.

  "The only way open to you is forward," Cholik said.

  "I've made a mistake," Lord Darkulan announced.

  "This was not the first," Cholik replied.

  Spinning abruptly, Lord Darkulan raised his sword, bringing it to within inches of Cholik's unprotected throat. "You will let me out of here now, or I'll have your head from your shoulders!"

  Secure in the knowledge that Kabraxis watched over him, Cholik grasped the sword. The sharp edges cut into the flesh of his hand. Blood trickled down the blade and dripped to the Black Road, giving birth to fist-sized fires at their feet.

  "No," Cholik said, "you won't." Power coursed through him, turning the sword red-hot in a heartbeat.

  Screaming in pain, Lord Darkulan released his weapon and stumbled back. He held his burned hand in disbelief.

  Cholik ignored the sizzling pain of his own burning hand, ignored the stink of scorched flesh and the smoke that curled up. Much worse things had happened to him during the trips down the Black Road that Kabraxis had led him on. He could still occasionally feel the demon's talons rooting around inside his brain, scraping against his skull.

  Swiveling, Cholik flung the lord's sword over the cliff's edge. He held out his burned and bleeding hand for inspection.

  "You're insane," Lord Darkulan said in disbelief.

  "No," Cholik stated calmly. "I believe in Dien-Ap-Sten and the power of the Way of Dreams." He held his hand up. Even as he watched, the cuts knitted together, and the burns healed and went away. In less than a moment, his hand was completely healed. "You can believe, too. Hold out your hand, and accept what I am telling you."

  Trembling, afraid, and hurting, Lord Darkulan held his hand up.

  "Believe," Cholik said softly. "Believe, and you will be given the power to heal yourself and end your misery."

  Lord Darkulan concentrated. Sweat popped out on his brow. "I can't," he whispered hoarsely. "Please, I beg you. Make the pain go away."

  "I can't," Cholik said. "That is for you to do. Just come to Dien-Ap-Sten willingly. Only a little faith is needed. Trust that."

  Slowly, then, Lord Darkulan's hand began to heal. The burns scabbed over, and only a moment or two after that, smooth flesh remained where the horrible burns had been.

  "I've done it." Lord Darkulan gazed at his uninjured hand in disbelief. His fingers still trembled.

  "Yes," Cholik said. "But the worst is yet to come."

  Without warning, the ledge broke away, dropping them into the abyss over the clouds.

  Lord Darkulan screamed.

  Cholik controlled his own fear. He was on the Black Road now. The warriors and priests who had become part of his inner circle had all experienced much worse than this. All of those men who had reached this point had to relive a horrific nightmare that was their deepest secret.

  The bottom of the long fall through the cottony clouds wasn't the bone-breaking stop against jagged rocks that Cholik had expected. Instead, he landed light as a feather in the midst of a moon-dappled bog under a clear night sky.

  Lord Darkulan plummeted into the bog, disappearing with a huge splash that threw black mud in all directions.

  Cholik grew worried after a time that something had gone wrong. Initiates had died along the way of the Black Road, but generally Kabraxis was selective about who was brought into the inner circle.

  "He's fine," the demon said. "Give him a moment more. I found this place and this event in a tight secret place that he seldom goes to these days. Pay attention."

  Cholik waited, amazed that he could stand on the bog's surface tension.

  Then Lord Darkulan shoved an arm up through the bog, clapped it onto a semi-submerged tree trunk that had fallen a long time ago. Mud covered his head and face, stripping away the regal look and leaving only the frightened man behind.

  Lord Darkulan reached toward Cholik. "Help me! Hurry!"

  "What is he afraid of?" Cholik asked Kabraxis. Neither of them made a move toward the struggling lord. "The bog is not so deep that he will drown."

  "He fears the past," the demon said. "And he should."

  Fearfully, Lord Darkulan gazed over his shoulder at the swamp. Naked and dead trees stood out from the loose mud. Dead brush with ashy, curling leaving lined the shore. Skeletons of small creatures, some of them recently dead so that patches of fur clung to them, lay partially submerged in the swamp and on the shore. Dead birds clung upside down by their claws from naked tree branches. Frog corpses floated in the bog.

  Lord Darkulan screamed, then was pulled under the bog by something strong and fierce. Bubbles erupted from the mud.

  "Is he going to die here?" Cholik asked.

  "He will," Kabraxis answered, "if I don't save him. He can't fight this nightmare. It's too strong for him."

  The man's arm shot out of the bog again, found the tree trunk, and succeeded in pulling himself out of the muck. When he appeared, a skeleton clung to his back.

  Years of submersion in the bog had turned the dead woman's skin to leather, and it sank in tightly to her skull. Once, Cholik knew, she might have been pretty, but there was no way to know that now. The soft blue dress that might once have hidden womanly curves now clung to the emaciated form of the horror that rode Lord Darkulan's back. The dead woman bent close to him, teeth showing through her ruined flesh. She licked out a dead, leathery tongue that caught his ear, then drew it back between her broken teeth. When she bit down, crushing the earlobe like a grape, crimson sprayed.

  Lord Darkulan screamed in pain and flailed, trying desperately to shove the dead woman from him and haul himself onto the tree trunk.

  "Help me!" the lord called out.

  "Who is the woman?" Cholik asked.

  "Once," Kabraxis said, "she was his lover. It was during the early years before his marriage. She was a common girl named Azyka, a shopkeeper's daughter. Before the marriage, she told Lord Darkulan she was going to have his child. Knowing he couldn't allow that, Lord Darkulan killed her and left her body in this bog outside Bramwell."

  "The girl was never found?" Cholik asked.

  "No."

  Cholik watched the horrified lord fighting to maintain his grip on the moss-encrusted tree trunk. The dead woman's weight steadily bore him under. Cholik was not amazed by Kabraxis's story. As a priest of the Zakarum Church,
he was no stranger to the special privileges invoked by royalty. In Westmarch's history, several murders had been forgotten about and the murderers absolved by special dispensation from the church.

  "Help me!" Lord Darkulan screamed.

  Kabraxis strode forward. His large feet left only small ripples on the bog water and never once became wet. "Lord Darkulan," the demon called.

  The lord glanced up, seeing the demon for the first time. For a moment, Lord Darkulan froze, but the dead woman chewing his ear into ragged, bloody bits caught his attention again. He fought against her, losing his grip on the tree trunk and plunging into the bog up to his chin. The dead woman's hair floated on the bog water.

  "Lord Darkulan," the demon said. "I am Dien-Ap-Sten. I am your salvation."

  "You're no salvation," Lord Darkulan cried. "You're a demon."

  "And you're a drowning man," Kabraxis stated. "Accept me or die."

  "I'll not be tricked by one of your illusions-"

  The dead woman reached up behind Lord Darkulan and knotted her skeletal fingers in his hair. When she yanked, Lord Darkulan vanished beneath the black muck of the bog.

  Kabraxis stood patiently waiting.

  For a moment, Cholik believed it was done and that the lord had died in the bog with the specter of the girl he had murdered so long ago. The chill of the swamp blew through Cholik, and he wrapped his arms around himself. As many times as he had ventured down the Black Road, he had never gotten used to the experience. Each time was unique, each fear different.

  Lord Darkulan's hand broke the surface, and Kabraxis's hand was there to catch it. Effortlessly, the demon hauled the lord from the muck and the mire with the dead woman still riding him.

  "Live or die," Kabraxis offered calmly. "The choice is yours."

  Lord Darkulan hesitated only a moment. "Live. May the Light forgive me, I want to live."

  A cruel smile carved Kabraxis's horrendous face. " I forgive you," the demon mocked. He continued pulling the muddy, bloody lord from the swamp. The dead woman still clung to Lord Darkulan's back, biting his mangled ear and scratching his face with the claws of her free hand.

  Kabraxis backhanded the dead woman from Lord Darkulan's back. When he finished hauling the man up, Cholik found that they all once more stood on the solid ground of the Black Road twisting through the high mountains. The swamp was nowhere to be seen.

  Lord Darkulan gave in to his fear, shaking and shivering before the demon's wrath. "Don't kill me," the lord pleaded.

  "I won't kill you," Kabraxis said, pushing the man to his knees before him, humbling him. "I am going to give you your life."

  Shuddering, Lord Darkulan stayed still before the demon.

  "You are weak." Kabraxis spoke in deep tones. "I will beyour strength." The demon wrapped one of his large hands around Lord Darkulan's head. "You are unguided. I will be your design." The fingers elongated into sharp spikes. "By your own hand and childish desires of flesh, you are unmade. I will make you a man and a leader of men." With a quick snap of his wrist, the demon drove his spiked fingers through Lord Darkulan's skull. Blood leaked down his face, threading through the mud that clung to his features. "Mind, body, and soul, you are mine!»

  Lightning flashed through the dark sky above the mountains, followed immediately by the rumbling roar of thunder that shattered all other sounds. The Black Road trembled beneath Cholik's feet, and for a dreadful moment he thought the whole mountain range was going to fall.

  Then the lightning and the thunder faded, and Kabraxis withdrew his spiked fingers from Lord Darkulan's skull.

  "Rise," the demon ordered, "and begin the new life that I have given you."

  Lord Darkulan rose, and as he did the mud and fatigue and blood vanished from him. He stood straight and tall, clear-eyed and calm. "I hear and obey."

  "Only one thing yet remains," Kabraxis said. "You must bear my mark that I may keep watch over you."

  Without hesitation, Lord Darkulan stripped away his tunic, chainmail shirt, and blouse beneath to bare his chest. "Here," he offered. "Over my heart that I may keep you close to me."

  Kabraxis placed his palm over Lord Darkulan's chest. When he removed his hand, the tattoo that was the demon's mark marred the lord's flesh.

  "You are in my service," the demon said.

  "Till the end of my days," Lord Darkulan said.

  "Go then, Lord Darkulan, and know that you have the power to heal your mistress and prevent your wife's hanging. Draw a bit of your blood, mix it in wine, and have her drink it to cure her."

  Lord Darkulan agreed and offered his undying loyalty to the demon once more, then followed the Black Roadback out of the stone snake's mouth. At the other end of the Black Road, Cholik once more saw the interior of the great cathedral.

  "So now you have him," Cholik said, watching as Lord Darkulan rejoined his guards.

  "We have him," Kabraxis agreed.

  Surprised that the demon didn't sound more satisfied, Cholik looked at him. "Is something wrong?"

  "There is a man I have learned of," the demon said. "Taramis Volken. He's a demon hunter, and he has picked up my trail."

  "How?"

  "It doesn't matter. After tonight, he will no longer be a concern to me. But after the burned man attempted to kill you today, which I did not see coming, I think you should tighten security around the church." Kabraxis paused. "Lord Darkulan should be more than willing to aid you with that."

  "There's no way to tighten security completely in the church," Cholik objected. "We admit too many people, and many of them we can't identify, to screen everyone."

  "Do it better," Kabraxis snapped.

  "Of course," Cholik said, bowing his head and watching as the demon vanished from sight. Cholik's thoughts rushed, scrambling over one another in his head. Who was this demon hunter Kabraxis feared? In their year and more together, Cholik had never seen the demon concerned about anything. The matter was puzzling and more than a little unsettling, even after Kabraxis's assurances that the matter was taken care of.

  And how was it that Kabraxis had taken care of the man who hunted him?

  NINETEEN

  Although he'd ridden horses a few times while working with overland trade caravans, Darrick had never grown used to their lurching gait. Even a ship's deck riding the crests of a storm-tossed sea felt more certain than the beast beneath him as it picked its way down the forested hillside.

  Luckily, the animal followed Taramis Volken's mount along the narrow trail and required no real guidance from him. He only wished he could sleep in the saddle as some of the other men accompanying them seemed able to do.

  Last night at the Blue Lantern tavern, Darrick would not have guessed that Taramis headed the small army of men encamped outside Seeker's Point. But after witnessing their professionalism and dedication to their quest, he understood how they could have escaped notice.

  All of the warriors rode in single file along the trail. Two riderless horses testified to the fact that scouts ranged on foot ahead of the group. The men rode with hardly any noise, their gear carefully padded so that nothing clinked or clanked. They were hard-eyed men, like wolves that hunted in a pack. The wintry wind and the leaden, overcast sky of morning further brought that appearance out.

  Darrick straightened in the saddle, trying to find a comfortable position. Since leaving the Blue Lantern last evening, he'd ridden all night. A few times he'd dozed in the saddle, exhaustion finally overcoming his fear of falling off the horse, but that had been reawakened after only a moment or two when he woke and found himself sliding.

  A birdcall sounded in the quiet of the forest.

  Darrick's sharp ears picked the sound out, recognizing that it was false only because he'd heard the same cry earlier. The call came from one of the two scouts ahead. During the night, they'd used owl calls to communicate, but this morning they emulated a small ruby-throated wren that sailors sometimes took on board sailing ships to raise.

  One of the scouts stepped from th
e forest and loped alongside Taramis Volken's mount, matching the long-limbed animal with ease. The scout and the sage talked briefly, then the scout disappeared again.

  Taramis appeared unconcerned, so Darrick tried to relax. His muscles were stiff and sore from hauling cargo the day before and the long ride during the night. More than anything, he wanted off the horse, and he wished he'd stayed in Seeker's Point. He had no business among these men. They all seemed to be veteran warriors, and the few words that Darrick had overheard them say alluded to past battles with demons, though none of them was as powerful as Kabraxis.

  Darrick pushed his breath out, watching it fog briefly in the chill of morning. He couldn't imagine why Taramis had asked him to come along when there were already so many warriors.

  A little farther on, the trail they followed led out into a cleared space. Among a littering of tree stumps sat a small house with a thatched roof. The land to the south of the house had been cleared for gardening. The current crop appeared to be onions and carrots, but there were stands where vine crops had grown during the summer. In back of the garden was a door set into a small hill that Darrick believed would lead to a root cellar. A well occupied the space between the garden and the small barn.

  An old man and a young boy came out of the barn. They looked enough alike that Darrick believed they were family, probably grandfather and grandson.

  The old man carried a pitchfork and a milking pail. Hehanded the pail to the boy and waved him back into the barn. The old man was bald and had a long gray beard. He wore deerskin outer garments, but the neck of a purple blouse showed under the jacket.

  "May the Light bless you," the old man said, holding the pitchfork in both hands. A little fear showed in his eyes, but the confident manner in which he wielded the pitchfork told Darrick that the old man was prepared for trouble.

  "And may the Light bless you," Taramis said, reining his horse in at a respectful distance from the old man. "My name is Taramis Volken, and if I got your directions right, you'd be Ellig Barrows."

  "Aye," the old man said, keeping his stance open. His bright blue eyes roved over the warriors and Darrick. "And if you're who you says you are, I've heard of you."