King of Chaos

by Dave Gross

  "The boss calls me an ‘aberrant paradigm.'"

  "I don't know what that means."

  "That's because you're all right."

  He had to look at me a second to tell I was giving him a compliment. After that, we talked a while about other stuff, like who to put on watch first, who'd do the night's cooking, boring stuff.

  Every now and then, Aprian said something that reminded me he was from a noble house—a high-class phrase, or a word I'd learned from the boss. Maybe his family wasn't so rich and powerful as the Jeggares, but being born noble was still a big deal. Even so, he never rubbed my nose in it. To listen to him talk to me, you might think he grew up on Eel Street.

  After a while, we smelled sulfur in the air. Brown and yellow plumes stained the mist of the swamp. That must have been from the hot springs the boss told me about the last time we looked at the map.

  Me and Aprian, we led the carriage and wagon behind a wild mass of blackthorn shrubs. Once we got the horses unhitched, unsaddled, and watered, Dolok made a beeline for some three-foot-tall mushrooms. Alase yelled at him, but it was too late. Thin tendrils shot out of the cap to stick in his arm. They turned red as we ran to him. Dolok was on the ground by the time the Andoren Tollivel hacked at the "tongues" while Kronug pulled Dolok away.

  Lucky for Dolok, we still had a paladin on hand. Aprian put his hands on the wounds and prayed. I'd say Desna smiled on the idiot, but it was Iomedae's power that healed him. Pity Aprian couldn't do anything for the poor guy's face rash. He looked like somebody had beat him with a cheese grater.

  We made sure none of the other plants and rocks were going to kill us before settling in to camp. I looked in on the boss. I half-expected he'd be back up with his nose in the book, but he was sawing logs, so I let him alone.

  By the time it was getting dark, we settled down to some grub, which Urno and Gannak had been arguing over until the dwarf threatened to pull off the Kellid's nipple rings. Gannak was no dummy. He gave in and let the dwarf finish cooking alone.

  Nobody talked much. Kala didn't play or sing. Nobody was telling jokes. Even I knew better than to try and lighten the mood.

  Jelani sat alone near the fire, shivering. It got plenty cold after the sun set, especially close to the swamps. Something told me it wasn't the temperature bothered her, though.

  "Hey." I pulled the boss's journal from my saddlebags. "You want to take a look at this?"

  She frowned, curious until she opened the book. Then she winced. "Is this a copy of the Lexicon?"

  I nodded.

  She flipped the pages, closing her eyes a few times at the ugliest drawings.

  "I know," I said. "Nasty stuff. Can you read any of the text?"

  "Some of it," she said. "Here, this is Thassilonian. I'm not fluent, but I can understand some. This here I think is a form of Hallit. I can speak it, but you rarely find it written."

  "Before you read any more, I got to warn you: I think it's making the boss peculiar."

  She looked a question at me.

  "It's not just the wine. It's not just that he's upset about Oparal."

  "We all are."

  "There's something more going on. I got a feeling it's something to do with this book."

  "I've heard of tomes whose contents threaten the reader's sanity."

  "Yeah, we bumped into stuff like that a few times. This one time, the boss cut out the pages and divvied them up among a few other scholarly types. They read their parts and compared notes."

  "So that no one of them suffered the full brunt of the effect."

  "Just like that."

  "Thanks for the warning. I'll glance through this and consult with the count."

  "Actually, maybe just get back to me. He doesn't know I took it."

  "Oh."

  I grimaced. "Yeah, it's like that. Or maybe after I put it back in his satchel, you can mention you're curious, all casual-like."

  "I understand."

  "Thanks," I said. "You're a doll. I owe you one."

  She rolled her eyes, but as I got up to leave, she added, "I'll collect later."

  I turned away, grinning until I saw Alase staring at me from across the fire. She raised an eyebrow and gave me The Look.

  She'd been full of cuddles on the way from Gundrun to Valahuv, but nothing had happened. Most of the time it was just on account of we were on a job with lots of others around us. Still and all, we'd had our chances. Instead of slipping away, like I'd have done any other time, I got an itch on my neck when I looked south.

  It shouldn't have bothered me. It just did.

  "I'll take first watch," I said to nobody in particular. With the boss out of commission and Oparal out of the picture, it was just me and Silvio who could see any good at night, so I checked he'd heard me. He had. Throwing the saddlebags over my shoulder, I slipped out of camp.

  I moved out far enough that I wouldn't get caught between the banked fire and anything that was looking in that direction. Pretty soon I couldn't see it, either. I didn't get lost, but all of a sudden I was in a colder, darker spot. Trees reached up on either side of me, leaves rustling.

  A hoarse voice called out, "Hellspawn!"

  For a second I thought it was one of my devils, but my ears heard the voice—it wasn't just in my head. I turned and saw the unicorn.

  In the dark, he looked like a charcoal sketch, not that he looked much different in daylight. Except for his blue eyes, the big fellow was all shades of gray from the wounds he suffered from the demons of the Fierani Forest.

  I looked around for Jelani or Alase. Somebody was doing a magic trick, and this wasn't the boss's kind of gag. "Very funny. Knock it off."

  "Nothing is funny," croaked the unicorn. This time I saw his horse lips move all unnatural, like how Tonbarse's wolf jaws formed human words. The way his lips peeled back at every word, it looked painful for him to talk.

  I reached back and tugged the big knife from its sheath. Maybe demons could possess unicorns the same way they did humans. "Whoever the hell you are, get out of the stupid unicorn now. We got wizards. We got paladins. We'll exorcise your ass right out of there."

  "Idiot! I am not possessed." He lunged a step forward. I was starting to believe this was the actual unicorn.

  Even demons don't hate me that much.

  "How come you never talked before?"

  "You hear my ruined voice and still ask such a question?"

  He did sound pretty bad, but it wasn't like I couldn't understand him. "What does that mean? You don't talk because you're vain?"

  He charged me that time. I jumped out of the way and got a roll in some stinging brambles for my trouble.

  "Hey, truce! You got something to say, spit it out."

  "It's your fault she's gone."

  He was talking about Oparal, of course. Maybe it should have made me mad, but I'd been telling myself the same thing ever since the boss came back without her.

  "Listen, I'm sorry." I said. "Turns out I'm not so tough without a devil riding me. I couldn't stay any longer."

  "I would have died beside her. Gladly!"

  "Yeah, I get that."

  With no warning, he reared, screaming. "But she stood beside you!"

  Of course she had. It wasn't like we could sneak a unicorn into the Tower of Zura. But maybe that wasn't what he was driving at. "Hold on, are you saying you're jealous because Oparal was sweet on me?"

  He reared and screamed again, coming down hard just inches from my face as I threw myself back. "You conceited hellspawn! You and your half-breed master, you dirtied her thoughts with talk of compromise and complications. You dimmed her purest light! You inhuman ...thing!"

  "Inhuman? I don't got to take that kind of crap from a defective unicorn."

  "Oparal saw past my injuries to see my true heart. She chose me, not you."

  "I'd say she took some time to warm to both of us."

  "You aren't even a man, you're—"

  "Hey! Without that horn, you'd be pulling a plou
gh. You're the one who's not a man."

  That tore it. The big fellow came at me again. Much as he deserved it, I didn't want to stick him with the big knife. Instead I threw myself back into briars, rolled through and started running. Maybe I could make it back to camp before he caught me.

  Maybe I could hide behind Aprian.

  As it turned out, I didn't have to. The unicorn ran off into the darkness. His hoofbeats faded as I listened.

  I should have been glad about it. Instead I was worried the big jerk would run into more trouble than he could handle on his own.

  Jelani intercepted me on the way back to camp.

  "Are you all right? I heard Bastiel whinny."

  "It's all right," I said. "I didn't hurt him."

  "But what did he do to you?"

  I looked down at my dirty jacket. Hundreds of little stickers poked out of the leather. I was a mess. "Damned stupid unicorn! Mostly we just had words."

  She looked at me funny.

  "What?" I said.

  "You make it sound like you were talking with him."

  "I was. Turns out he could talk this whole time."

  She frowned.

  "It's true!"

  "Surely one of us would have heard him communicating with the captain before this. Maybe you also need a rest. How much of this notebook did you read?"

  "None! Come on, I'm telling the truth about the talking unicorn."

  "Whatever you say." She held up the journal in both hands. "You were right about this book, in any event. I'm no expert, but I'm certain it's having an effect on the count. I could read barely more than a page before the confused and contradicting statements began to give me a headache. And that's not even mentioning the horrors in its illustrations."

  "The boss spent the whole day with his nose in that Lexicon." I took it from her and stuffed it back into the saddlebags. "That was before he used a spell to make a copy. That must have been even worse than reading it."

  "I can only presume that would intensify the effect."

  "Maybe I ought to look in on him."

  She said something else as I walked away, but between her and Bastiel, I'd had enough. It wasn't time to wake up the next shift, so I did another couple rounds of the camp. By the time my head cooled, I felt the weight of the day and the night before. Sleep sounded like a good idea.

  When I got back, I heard the carriage door open and close. I waited, figuring the boss was taking care of business on the other side.

  Gannak was sitting watch in the middle of camp, Arni snoozing on the Kellid's feet. Gannak had been my last hire back in Gundrun. At first I was going to skip him because what the hell kind of idiot thinks nipple rings are a good idea in a fight? But once Alase signed on, she vouched for him. When I saw him giving Arni the fat of his meat, I was glad to have him along.

  When he saw me, Gannak got up to wake Barek. Arni whuffed as the swordsman's feet slipped from beneath him. The hound nosed the air and whined.

  I agreed. "The whole place stinks."

  But Arni wasn't done. He stood up. A low growl rumbled from his chest.

  Staying low, I crept around the carriage, knife in hand. There was nothing on the other side, but I saw someone had pushed through the nearby bushes. I started to follow, but the carriage jostled behind me.

  Standing to the side, I reached over and opened the door. Inside, the boss lay sprawled over the map table, his face a bloody mess. I checked him. He was breathing.

  "Aprian!" I opened the opposite door and yelled again. "Everybody, wake up! Boss, snap out of it." I slapped his face.

  He moaned and blinked. Blood poured out of his nose and ran down his chin. He reached for his satchel, but it wasn't under the table. "The Lexicon ...gone!" He crouched under the map table. "My satchel. My spellbooks!"

  "Who took it?"

  His mouth opened. His lips moved, but he couldn't—or wouldn't—say it.

  Outside the carriage, someone shouted, "Look!"

  I stuck my head out just in time to see Kasiya's chariot flying up toward the east. Instead of the lean dogs the boss had incinerated over the West Sellen River—salukis, the boss had called them—something like a swarm of bats pulled the thing through the sky. The vampire prince held onto the chariot with one hand. In the other he clutched a book against his chest.

  Kasiya wasn't alone. A tall woman stood behind him, holding the boss's satchel in one hand. The other hugged Kasiya around the waist. I couldn't see her face, but her outline sure looked familiar.

  "Who is that?" I said. "Boss, who took your stuff?"

  He cradled his head and moaned, "Oparal."

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Betrayal

  Varian

  I don't believe it," said Aprian.

  "What possible reason would I have to tell such an appalling lie?" Under other circumstances I might have been outraged by the crusader's doubt, but I could hardly believe the evidence of my own eyes—not to mention my bruised face. My head still rang from the impact of Oparal's fist.

  When she first entered the Red Carriage, face pale and eyes bloodshot, I imagined myself in the throes of nightmare. I struggled to distinguish between the real horrors of the past day and those I had seen in the pages of the Lexicon of Paradox.

  By the time Radovan revived me, Oparal had vanished along with my satchel and its contents: my journals, my grimoires, and the Lexicon.

  "You must be mistaken," said Aprian. "The captain would never do such a thing."

  "Because she's a crusader?" I suspected more than half of Oparal's crusaders had left behind unsavory pasts. Considering the fate of the street thief Gemma, I thought it best not to raise the point.

  "No, Count," said Aprian. "Because she's a paladin."

  A motion at the edge of camp caught my eye. Well behind Aprian, Bastiel approached. Even in the cloud-dimmed moonlight, I saw his coat was flecked with lather, tangled with thorns and swamp muck. The unicorn regarded me in a manner most disconcerting. I could not meet his gaze.

  The loss of Oparal at Undarin haunted no one more than me. Her perverse return tortured my imagination even as it threatened my alliance with her crusaders. Nevertheless, it was imperative that the others understood what I had witnessed, and what I was beginning—however reluctantly—to understand. "We saw Oparal on the chariot beside Kasiya. Tell them, Radovan."

  "I definitely saw someone," he said. I fixed him with a glare. "Yeah, I think it was Oparal."

  "I saw her," said Roga. With his missing front teeth, the Kellid was unpleasant to regard, yet I was glad of his corroboration. Barek and Gannak also nodded.

  "It was the crusader captain," said Selka. "I am sure of it."

  "Did anyone not employed by Count Jeggare see this woman?" said Tollivel. Of all the crusaders, he was the most belligerent. The animosity between our homelands only exacerbated his hostility.

  "I dislike your insinuation, Andoren."

  He mimicked my noble's dialect. "I dislike Chelish lies."

  Before I could reach for my blade, Aprian put himself between me and Tollivel.

  "It makes no sense," said Urno. "I won't believe she came all the way back from Undarin only to steal the Lexicon."

  The crusader's laudable devotion to their leader blinded them to the obvious explanation. Again it fell to me to illustrate it. "Among the vampire's many dread powers is the ability to bend mortal minds to its will."

  "Not the captain's will," said Aprian. "We have all of us—every one of us—watched her stare down the most terrifying foes. She's fearless."

  "I do not dispute you, Sergeant. In Kyonin, Radovan and I both witnessed her incredible strength and courage. Yet she was in combat with fiends. Who can say how much they had already weakened her body and soul?"

  "You were fooled somehow. You said this Osirian vampire is a sorcerer. Maybe he cast a spell to make himself or one of his minions look like the captain."

  "Yes," said Naia, "just as you set those illusory guards before the gate in U
ndarin."

  I drew my weapon. Tolliver's hand went to his blade, but Aprian stayed him as I held the Tian sword for all to see. "The Shadowless Sword is so named both for its swiftness and for its power to cut through illusions. When Oparal entered the carriage, I touched its hilt—not to strike her, but to confirm her identity. Alas, it was indeed she who assaulted me, not Prince Kasiya cloaked in a disguise. Loath as we all are to accept the fact, all evidence indicates he has bent her to his will, through the power of his mesmerizing gaze ...or worse."

  "What do you mean by ‘worse'?"

  "You will recall the men we fought in Gundrun," I said. "They were the spawn of Kasiya. Fledgling vampires."

  "No," said the man called Silvio. In his accent I heard both his Mwangi origin and his Chelish enslavement. "No vampire could turn the captain."

  "Believe me, Kamau, we all share your faith in Captain Oparal's virtue, but she is as mortal as the rest of us."

  Kamau had confided his birth name to me a week earlier, as we exchanged stories of his homeland. By using it I meant to show him respect and remind him that we shared some experience of both lands. Yet I had miscalculated. His eyes narrowed as his comrades looked between him and me, wondering what mischief I intended.

  "The count is right," said Jelani. "Even a paladin as virtuous as Oparal is not immune to such a transformation, especially if she were weakened."

  "Those demons that killed Erastus, they sucked the life out of us," said Radovan. "It felt like when that vampire hit me back on the barge. Oparal was definitely weakened when I ..." He trailed off.

  "When you abandoned her," said Tollivel.

  "I didn't want to go," said Radovan. "If I ..." Once more, he left something unsaid.

  "How convenient for Jeggare that the only ones left behind at Undarin were crusaders," said Tollivel.

  All the heat of my anger turned to ice. I prepared to issue a formal challenge, but Radovan spoke first, thrusting a finger at the Andoren's face. "I was there and you weren't. You got a problem with what I saw? We can work it out right now."

  "Of course he would back up Jeggare's claim." Tollivel turned, addressing his fellows but not quite turning his back on Radovan. "The hellspawn is the rat-catcher's creature."

  Radovan took a step toward Tollivel, but Aprian put a hand on his shoulder. I expected Radovan to shove it away, but instead he stopped.