by Dave Gross
I reached for my absent satchel before realizing I had to rely upon my memory library once more. Closing my eyes, I envisioned the room, a far larger and more complex version of my library at Greensteeples. There I went to the shelves upon which I stored my personal chronicles of the journeys I undertook on behalf of the Society, and lately on my own. Selecting the most recent volume, I lay it upon the reading stand and opened it to my amalgamated version of the map of Sarkoris.
"Here," I said, pointing to a map the others could not see. "This forest across the northern border of Sarkoris. Its eastern side is known as the Living Library. How literal is that name?"
Alase considered the question, nodding slowly, then more affirmatively. "It was a place of knowledge," she said. "There the druids shared their learning with the stones and the trees."
"Is it possible we've been approaching this problem backward?" I said.
"The Lexicon is a collection of knowledge from different sources," said Jelani. "Perhaps this Living Library was one of them."
"It is a long way to travel on such a slender hope," I said.
"It's at least a hope."
Alase spoke up. "Will this vampire prince not also guess about the Living Library?"
"Not likely," I said. "He lacks the benefit of a local guide as knowledgeable as you. Also, he is profoundly stupid."
Jelani laughed.
"In life he enjoyed all the wealth and privilege of his station without bending his own efforts toward study. His death was a direct result of his stealing what I had gained through my own efforts—and those of my local guide. Because he did not earn the knowledge himself, he could not recognize his own doom as it approached."
As we talked, Alase drowsed and eventually curled up to sleep beside the Thuvian sorceress. Jelani and I continued our conversation throughout the night and into the small hours. Sometime before dawn, our conversation halted as we felt the carriage slow and stop. Outside, our escorts did the same.
I leaned out the window to call for Radovan, but the hush that had fallen over our company gave me pause. Soon my bodyguard returned on foot, breathless.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Valahuv," said Radovan. "The joint is crawling with demons."
We had already lost the town as a haven, but the thought that our actions at Undarin had brought the horde to the previously inviolate sanctuary struck me like a blow from a cold iron fist. By chasing off its guardian fiend, I feared we had exposed it to the entire horde.
"Is there any way we can—?" I began.
He was already shaking his head. "The demons got scouts flying all around. We've got to be out of here before dawn."
Behind Radovan, Aprian had already quietly given the order to withdraw. His crusaders passed the word along, while the Kellids looked toward the carriage, uncertain. "Let us go with all haste," I said.
"Which way?"
Thinking back to the map of Sarkoris, I said, "Northwest. We shall at least have a look at Dyinglight before continuing."
Radovan nodded and withdrew. After a word with Aprian, he climbed onto the roof of the carriage and gave the drivers their instructions.
Alase slept through the dreadful news, and I saw no reason to wake her.
After a long, uncomfortable silence during which I weighed our culpability in the destruction of Valahuv, Jelani offered to return the rune-carved sticks I had shared with her.
My first impulse was to refuse her kind offer, but without them I was of little use as a wizard. By the grace of Desna, Oparal had not discovered all of my riffle scrolls. I transferred those in the compartment beneath my seat to my coat pockets and my bandolier. Noting Jelani's curious eye, I displayed my inventory on the table.
"Far too few subtle spells," I confessed. "But I can at least contribute to a battle or two before I must rely solely on my blade."
"Don't be so sure," she said. "I have a feeling you don't need those scrolls."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you never considered the possibility that you're not a wizard after all?"
Of course I had often questioned my abilities, but I found it insulting for her to state the obvious. "I admit mine is an unusual case, but I have learned to circumvent the issue. I have only to endure a short period of discomfort while consigning my spells to scrolls."
"But why endure even that much struggle to obey a process that comes so unnaturally to you?"
Her question left me speechless. I couldn't comprehend what she was suggesting.
"Isn't it obvious by now, Count Jeggare? You aren't a wizard. You're a sorcerer."
Chapter Sixteen
The Spear-Bearer
Oparal
Vescavors swarmed the Tower of Zura. Their caustic stench blasted my face as I bound my latest captive to the rail.
The tiny demons' eyeless heads were barely larger than my fist, composed mostly of a maw full of chisel-shaped teeth. I had seen the damage those jaws could wreak, on flesh, stone, and even steel. Noxious fumes leaked from their mouths as they jabbered nonsense. Their bodies were no longer than my forearm, their wings forming a wedge. They flew in an unpredictable series of turns and stalls, never a coherent path. Watching them dizzied me. I grasped the rail to keep from falling.
Commotion surrounded my body. My brain buzzed like a hundred vescavors caught in a barrel. My thoughts fought, killed, and devoured each other. Strange new ideas emerged like larvae from the bodies of the fallen. No sooner did I focus on one idea than another swooped down to tear it to pieces.
I clutched the railing with both hands, the iron bending under my grip. From the tower's highest balcony, I peered east. Even the bright starlight could not gentle the ravages of the land between Undarin and the nearest fissures of the Worldwound.
As I watched, a distant ridge sank back down into the salt flat from which it had erupted only hours earlier. Its dying gasps sent sulfurous clouds into the sky. Malicious stars peered through the dark veil.
A scream rose above the dozens of others emanating from the experiment chambers below. The voice sounded familiar, but I struggled to remember who it was who suffered beneath me. The shrieks of the vescavors kept dislodging my thoughts.
An apocalypse of vescavors. That's what my master had called the swarms. He had explained it to me with pride, demonstrating his knowledge of taxonomy.
I heard the familiar scream again.
An overwhelming impulse made me turn to go to the voice, but before I could take a step away from the balcony, I forgot what had drawn my attention. The gibbering of the vescavors confused all thoughts but one: the prince had given me a task.
I took another bolt from the dozens left on the table. Each was barely longer than my index finger, its tip sharp and barbed. With great care, I affixed another tether to the bolt. Checking to ensure the other end was bound to the iron railing, I loaded it into the little crossbow.
I raised the weapon and sighted along the top. The previous few hours had taught me the folly of leading the shot ahead of such unpredictable targets. Instead, I aimed for the thickest cluster of vescavors and fired.
A fiend squealed as the barb pierced its wing. Setting the crossbow aside, I pulled in the captive, careful not to tear through the membranous wing and let it escape. When it was close, I grabbed it just behind the jaw, holding fast as it wriggled around to bite me. I had not yet lost a finger to the little fiends, and I didn't intend to.
The danger reminded me of some other creature known for severing fingers. A dog, I thought. An exceptionally large hound. Before I could think of the animal's name, the clamor of vescavors turned the tide of my thoughts in another direction, and everything was lost in the haze.
Almost everything. I still had to complete this task for the prince.
My master.
First I removed the tiny harpoon from my captive, widening the wound in its wing as little as possible. The tiny abominations healed quickly, but there was no telling how soon the prince would wish to fly
.
The last time he used the vescavors to draw his chariot, there had been too few. Constrained by their tethers, the little fiends turned on each other, slowing our journey, even endangering our lives. That would not happen again, not while it was my charge to amend the failing.
Pinning the vescavor to the table, I thrust the barbed hook deep into its body, careful to avoid the spine and to ensure the barb emerged inside its mouth—yet not so close to the teeth that it could bite off the hook. After paralyzing a few vescavors and losing a few barbs, I had acquired the knack. I tugged the tether to ensure a firm connection. Then I flung the vescavor into a cloud of its fellow prisoners.
They stirred like wind-buffeted balloons strung to the balcony railing. Once tethered, none of them tried to enter the tower or attack me. I didn't know why, unless there were some repelling enchantment on the tower interior. Prince Kasiya had explained only why the trapped demons couldn't gnaw through their tethers: the strands were made from the gut of a demon known as a shemhazian, famed for its toughness.
The vescavors shrieked in unison, parting in a rare coordinated motion as a large crimson figure plunged through them to land inside the chamber.
Blood splashed on the floor as the fiend landed to crouch on eight bloody legs, turning as it peered about the room. Its eyes fixed on me.
I gazed back, chin held high in defiance. Prince Kasiya had claimed this room for his own. As his spear-bearer, I had every right to be present. The daemon was an unwelcome visitor, and I would not let it see my fear, however terrible its appearance. No matter what destruction it had wreaked on my—
On my what? I had seen the daemon slay and devour someone, but I couldn't remember his name.
Ommors remembered me, however. We had chased it from ...from some place called the Delvegate. That was where the daemon had taken someone from me, someone for whom I was responsible.
If only I could think of his name.
The winged spider-daemon chattered as it folded its red gossamer wings along the back of its bulbous body. "Where is your master now, thing? Will he return before I bind you up tight and suck the sweet blood from your corpse?"
"I serve Prince Kasiya," I warned the fiend. My hand moved toward a sword I no longer wore. "Interfere with me at your peril."
On its spindly, blood-soaked legs, the daemon moved crablike to the side, considering me from another angle. It positioned itself between me and the door, beside the desk where my master had been studying earlier. Above it hung a candelabra of mingled human and demon bones. Beside it stood an iron brazier in which smoked both coals and a queer purple substance more pungent than brimstone. "You appear to have gathered plenty of those pests to draw his chariot. I doubt he will miss you."
"I am his spear-bearer," I said. "And when I tell him you have threatened me, doubtless I will have the honor of handing him the weapon that destroys you."
"A vampire, destroy me?" Ommors's mandibles quivered. "It has been long since I found one, but in my youth I devoured vampires as a delicacy. It was a vampire, you see, that first set my fledgling soul upon the path of hunger."
"How fitting, then, that a vampire be the one to end your journey." Somewhere in my swimming thoughts, I felt a pang of fear. It slipped beneath the waves, devoured by anger. If I had my sword, were I not prevented from using it—
But no. I could not act without the prince's leave.
"I have heard quite enough." The prince's voice came from a point behind the reading table, where a pair of red candles slowly melted over demon skulls.
On one side of the table lay stacked Count Jeggare's stolen journals, atop them his thick grimoire of spells. Seeing them brought me a faint pang of emotion.
I remembered Count Jeggare. He was my ally, although I had not always thought so. Yet he had failed to save me when I fell. He did not come to my aid.
The prince did.
What was this feeling that probed my guts? Was it guilt?
The count was no friend to my master, and yet we had once cooperated. I struggled to resolve the paradox, but the squealing and jabbering of the vescavors scattered my thoughts before they could gather into a coherent shape.
In the center of the table lay the prince's most precious treasures, the Lacuna Codex and the Lexicon of Paradox. The prince himself appeared in a chair of ligament-wrapped bones, his bandaged hand raised in a gesture dispelling the illusion that had concealed his presence.
Ommors rose up on its eight legs in a posture of feline displeasure. Ripples of blood formed on its back, like the surface of a lake disturbed by a sudden breeze.
The prince gazed at the daemon through his golden mask, his mesmerizing eyes calm even in his anger. "Do not forget, Ommors, you remain here only at my sufferance."
"You are not master of this place," said Ommors.
"I shall be," said Kasiya. "Once I unlock the powers of these dread tomes, all shall fear me—fiend and mortal, living and dead. You may benefit from my ascension, or you may be among the first sacrificed to the new god of blood."
The blood daemon leaned back, stretching its forelegs in an arachnid bow. "As you say, Prince Kasiya."
The sight of them, daemon and vampire, revolted some buried portion of me. Their bickering might have been pitiable in less dangerous creatures, but in them it was horrifying.
I struggled to tamp down the disloyal thought.
The chattering of the vescavors. The stench of the brazier. I couldn't focus on any one thing for long.
"Why have you stopped?" said Prince Kasiya. He turned his cold, dread gaze upon me.
"Forgive me, Your Highness." I threaded another tether through a harpoon and reloaded the crossbow. As I took aim at another vescavor, I tried not to think about the screams from the chambers below—especially that one familiar voice.
Gemma. Her name was Gemma, and I was responsible for her.
While I continued gathering vescavors, Ommors moved to join Prince Kasiya at the reading table. I watched them out of the corners of my eyes.
"What is this other book?" said the daemon.
"The Lacuna Codex," said Prince Kasiya. "Centuries ago, the rebel prince of Ustalav gathered the most fell rituals and spells of his domain to oppose the Whispering Tyrant. Yet when the Shining Crusade defeated the lich, the prince hid the book rather than use its great powers."
"What sort of powers?"
"Great powers," said Kasiya. "Far too many to waste my time cataloging them to sate your idle curiosity."
Ommors shuddered, its gelatinous body rippling again.
"Do you laugh at me, daemon?"
"Oh, no, Great Prince. I do but tremble to imagine the great powers."
I disliked hearing the prince mocked, especially by such a monster as Ommors. The daemon had killed one of my men.
Porfirio! That had been his name. And I was as responsible for him as for Gemma.
My heart ached for justice, but even that pure thought felt like treachery.
Kasiya lifted the Lacuna Codex in one linen-wrapped hand. Unlike the Lexicon, it appeared relatively new, its pages uniform and white. I recalled something Count Jeggare had told me about it, that the Codex was not an original, but rather the magically stolen contents of that original. In its way, it too was a paradox.
With that thought in mind, I shot the crossbow. The barb flew into empty space, but an errant vescavor flew directly into its path. The less I focused on aiming, it seemed, the more likely I was to strike one of the creatures.
Ommors continued pestering the prince with questions as I reeled in my prey. Kasiya answered in vagaries, insisting that the key to unlocking the mysteries of both the Codex and the Lexicon was not understanding but intuition. "That is why these books are useless in the hands of a glorified clerk like the Chelaxian," he said. "They were not written for dabblers in arcana but for born sorcerers."
"What's the point of opening another channel to the Abyss?" said Ommors. "The Worldwound yawns before us."
"An
d so it does, my inquisitive insect, but without direction," said Prince Kasiya. "Without focus. All these gates do is allow passage. Combining the powers of both books, I can direct the power of the Abyss into myself."
"And into others?"
"Yes," said Kasiya. He looked toward me. I felt his gaze upon my neck. "Into those who prove their loyalty to me."
The chamber door opened as of its own accord. A moment later, Yavalliska entered.
Scarlet horns curved upon her brow. The succubus held her dark wings folded upon her back, their scarlet hooks hanging above either shoulder, bobbing as she walked. Her sinuous tail twitched behind her as the long fringe of her corset trailed upon the floor. Barefoot, she strode to the reading table and slammed a pair of bloody hearts upon its surface, spattering the open pages of the Codex. "It is done."
Prince Kasiya scowled at the bloodstains upon the page he was reading. He blotted them with a bandaged thumb. "What is this?"
"The hearts of my last remaining rivals." Yavalliska sucked blood off her own thumb. "Enjoy them in celebration of the first success of our cabal."
Ommors fell upon the nearest heart, sinking its black mandibles deep into the bleeding flesh. "So warm," murmured the daemon.
"That was Synfonia, Areelu's favorite. She volunteered her blood to allow Areelu to complete her own transformation from mortal to half-succubus. How I detested that fawning sycophant."
"I have never tasted succubus heart before," said Ommors, draining the organ to a pulpy husk. "It is more bitter than I had expected, but no less delectable."
"Don't become accustomed to the taste," warned Yavalliska. "With my rivals slain, the other succubi have fled. I now rule Undarin with a free hand."
"Until the return of Areelu Vorlesh," said Prince Kasiya. "She shall surely flay you for this treachery."
"Just so, Your Highness," she said. "But by the time she returns from Iz, you and I shall be gods among demons."
"And I," said Ommors, still gnawing at the desiccated flesh. It slurred its words ever so slightly. "I also want to be a god."
"Do you not thirst, Your Highness?" Yavalliska sat upon the edge of the reading table and curled her tail around Kasiya's leg. "The blood of Wyrlassa grows cool."
