The Black Road

by Mel Odom

“I won’t go! I won’t go, I tell you!”

  Darrick Lang watched the young boy struggle and fight against Mat and one of the other sailors who pulled him toward the Hawk’s Beak Mountains, escape, and Lonesome Star in the Gulf of Westmarch.

  “Please!” the boy yelled. “Please! You’ve got to listen to me!”

  Frustrated, Darrick waved Mat and the other sailor to halt. They were far enough up the mountainside that he had a clear view of the harbor and the city ruins. The second burning cog was passing beside them out on the river far below. A straggling line of pirates still extricated themselves from the ruins and made their way toward the cliffside harbor, but the line of lanterns and torches streaming up the stone steps announced that the pirates weren’t ready to abandon the port yet.

  “Listen to you about what?” Darrick asked.

  “The demon,” the boy said. His breath came in ragged gasps because they had pushed him hard after getting him to the top of the cliff. He was too big to carry and run, so Darrick had grabbed the boy’s clothing and pushed and pulled him up the mountainside till he couldn’t run anymore.

  “What demon?” Mat asked, dropping to one knee to face the boy squarely.

  After all those years with his younger brothers and sisters in the burgeoning Hu-Ring household, Darrick knew Mat had far more patience with children than he did.

  “We don’t need any talk of damn demons,” Maldrin snarled. The old mate was covered in blood, but little of it was his own. Despite the battle he’d fought while holding the top of the stone steps until archers among the group could kill or chase away pirates eager to die, he still had stamina. Every hand aboard Lonesome Star believed that the crusty old mate could walk any sailor who shipped with him to death, then lace up his boots and walk another league or more. “We’ve been blessed with no bad luck thus far, an’ I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “The pirate captain,” Lhex said. “He showed me a sign of Kabraxis.”

  “An’ this Kabraxis,” Mat said, “he’d be the demon you’re referrin’ to, would he?”

  “Yes,” Lhex said, turning and gazing back toward the ruins of Tauruk’s Port. “The door to Kabraxis’s Lair must be somewhere in that. I heard the pirates talking about the priests who were digging there.”

  “What sign?” Mat persisted.

  “Captain Raithen showed me Kabraxis’s sign,” Lhex said.

  “And how is it, then,” Darrick asked in a sharp manner, “that you’d be knowing so much about demons?”

  Lhex rolled his eyes at Darrick, showing obvious disapproval. “I was sent to Lut Gholein to be priest-trained. I’ve spent four years in school there. Some of our main philosophy books deal with the thematic struggle between man and his demons. They aren’t supposed to be real. But what if they are? What if Kabraxis is somewhere lost in the ruins of this city?”

  The wind came down out of the peaks of Hawk’s Beak Mountains and chilled Darrick. Sweat from his exertions matted his hair, but it lifted as he gazed at the ruins of the city. Pirates boiled along the top of the cliff overhanging the Dyre River, their lanterns and torches cutting through the stirring fog and reflecting in the river below.

  “We’ve naught to do with demons, boy,” Darrick said. “Our orders are to see you safe and home, and I mean to do that.”

  “We’re talking of a demon here, captain,” Lhex insisted.

  “I’m no captain,” Darrick said.

  “These men follow you.”

  “Aye, but I’m no captain. My own captain has ordered me to bring you back, and I’m going to do that.”

  “And if the pirates find a demon?” Lhex asked.

  “They’re welcome to any foul demons they might find, says I,” Maldrin offered. “Honest men don’t have nothin’ to do with demons.”

  “No,” the boy said earnestly, “but demons steal the souls of honest men. And Kabraxis was one of the worst while he walked through these lands.”

  “Ye ain’t gettin’ me to believe in demons,” Tomas said, his face dark with suspicion. “Stories, that’s all them legends are. Just meant to give a man a laugh an’ maybe a sense of unease now an’ again.”

  “Kabraxis,” Lhex said, “was also called the Thief of Hope. People died wearing his chains, chains that they wove themselves because they believed he offered them redemption from sin, wealth, privilege, and everything else mortals have ever put stock in.”

  Darrick nodded to the carnage left of the city. “If Kabraxis is responsible for that, I’d say the pirates and the priests aren’t going to find him any too thankful to be woke up.”

  “Not woke up,” Lhex said. “Returned to this world. The Prime Evils helped work to seal him from this place because Kabraxis grew too powerful here.”

  “He was no threat to them three, I’ll warrant,” Maldrin declared. “Else I’d have heard tell of him, ’cause that woulda been one damned bloody battle.”

  The wind ruffled the boy’s hair, and lightning seared the sky, painting his features the pale color of bone. “Diablo and his brothers feared Kabraxis. He’s a patient demon, one who works quietly and takes his time. If Kabraxis has a way into this world, we have to know. We have to be ready for him.”

  “My job is to get you back to Westmarch and to the king,” Darrick said.

  “You’ll have to carry me,” Lhex said. “I won’t go willingly.”

  “Skipper,” Maldrin said, “beggin’ yer pardon, but tryin’ to negotiate them cliffs while carryin’ a bellerin’ young ’un ain’t gonna make for good or safe travelin’.”

  Darrick already knew that. He took a deep breath, smelling the approaching storm on the wind, and hardened his voice. “Better I should leave you here and tell the king I didn’t get to you in time.”

  The boy’s dark eyes regarded Darrick for only a moment. “You won’t do that. You can’t.”

  Darrick scowled fiercely, hoping to scare the boy.

  “And if you take me back without checking on the demon,” Lhex threatened, “I’ll tell the king that you had the chance to find out more and you didn’t. After the troubles in Tristram, I don’t think my uncle will take kindly to a sailor derelict in his duty to find out as much as he could.” The boy raised his eyebrows. “Do you?”

  Darrick held his tongue for a moment, willing the boy to back down. But even if Lhex did, Darrick knew the truth of the boy’s words would weigh on him. The king would want to know. And despite the possibility of seeing a demon, which filled him with fear, Darrick was curious.

  “No,” Darrick said. “I don’t think the king would take kindly to such a sailor at all.” He raised his voice. “Maldrin.”

  “Aye, skipper.”

  “Can you and Mat and a couple others manage getting the waif back to the longboat on your own?” Darrick stared at the boy. “If he agrees to be his most peaceable?”

  “I can do that,” Maldrin said grudgingly. “If it comes to it, I’ll tie him up an’ lower him by a rope down the mountainside.” He glared at the boy for a moment, then turned his attention back to Darrick. “I don’t know that I agree that ye a-harin’ off right this minute is all that bright.”

  “I’ve never been overly accused of brightness,” Darrick said, but it was only bravado that he didn’t feel.

  “I ain’t gonna be left behind,” Mat said, shaking his head. “No, if it’s to be demon huntin’ in the offin’, ye got to count me in, Darrick.”

  Darrick looked at his oldest and best friend in the world. “Aye. I will, and glad to have you, but we’re not about to have a good time of it.”

  Mat smiled. “It’ll be an adventure we can tell our grandkids about whilst we dandle ’em on our knees in our dotage, me an’ ye.”

  “I should go with you,” Lhex interrupted.

  Darrick looked at the boy. “No. You’ve pushed this as far as needs be. You leave the matter with us now. The king wouldn’t be happy to hear that his nephew wasn’t amenable to being rescued by men who laid down their lives for him, eith
er. Understand?”

  Reluctantly, the boy nodded.

  “Now, you did yourself a good turn back on the pirate ship by getting yourself free,” Darrick said. “I expect the same behavior while you’re with these men I’m asking to guard you with their lives. Have we got a bargain?”

  “But I can identify the demon—” the boy said.

  “Boy,” Darrick said, “I believe I’ll know a demon should I see one.”

  The coming storm continued to gather strength as Darrick led the group of sailors back into the ruins of the city. The moon disappeared often behind the dark, threatening masses of storm clouds, leaving the world cluttered with black silk, then appeared again to draw harsh, long shadows against the silvered grounds. The alabaster columns and stones of the city blazed with an inner fire whenever moonlight touched them.

  The sailors moved in silence, unencumbered by armor the way militiamen would be. The king’s army corps seldom went anywhere without the rattle and clangor of chainmail or plate. Those things were death to a man fighting on a ship if he somehow ended up in the water.

  Finding the entrance to the underground cavern in the ruins turned out to be easy. Darrick held his group back, then followed the last of Raithen’s pirates down into the cleared path that led into the bowels of the earth beneath the remains of Tauruk’s Port.

  None of them spoke over the droning buzz that filled the cavern farther down. The dank earth blocked the wind, but it kept the wintry chill locked around Darrick. The cold made his body ache worse. The long climb up the cliff as well as the battles he’d fought had stripped him of energy, leaving him running on sheer adrenaline. He looked forward to his hammock aboard Lonesome Star and the few days’ journey it would take to reach Westmarch.

  Fog or a dusty haze filled the cavern. The haze looked golden in the dim light of the lanterns Raithen’s pirates carried.

  Gradually, the tunnel Darrick followed widened, and he saw the great door set into the stone wall on the other side of the immense cavern. The tunnel went no farther.

  Raithen and his pirates stopped before entering the main cavern area, and their position blocked Darrick’s view of what lay ahead. Several of the pirates seemed in favor of turning and fleeing, but Raithen held them firm with his harsh voice and the threat of his sword.

  Hunkering down behind a slab of rock that had slid free during the excavation, Darrick stared into the cavern. Mat joined him, his breath rasping softly.

  “What’s wrong?” Darrick whispered.

  “It’s this damn dust,” Mat whispered back. “Must not have settled from the explosion earlier. It’s tightenin’ me lungs up a mite.”

  Taking the sleeve of his torn shirt in one hand, Darrick ripped it off and handed it to Mat. “Tie this around your face,” he told his friend. “It’ll keep the dust out.”

  Mat accepted the garment remnant gratefully and tied it around his face.

  Darrick tore the other sleeve off and tied it around his own face. It was a pity because the shirt had been a favorite of his, though it was no comparison to the Kurastian silk shirts he had in his sea chest aboard Lonesome Star. Still, growing up hard and without as he had, he treasured things and generally took good care of the ones he had.

  Slowly and tentatively, Raithen led his pirates down into the cavern.

  “Darrick, look!” Mat pointed, indicating the skeletons that lay in the cavern area. A few looked old, but most of them appeared to have been just stripped clean. Ragged clothing, torn but not aged, swaddled the skeletons.

  “I see them,” Darrick said, and the hair at the back of his neck lifted. He wasn’t one for magic, and he knew he was looking at sure proof that magic had been recently worked. We shouldn’t be here, he told himself. If I had any sense, I’d leave now before any of us are hurt. In fact, he was just about to give the order when a man in black and scarlet robes stepped through the immense doorway in the far wall.

  The man in scarlet and black looked as if he was in his early forties. His black hair held gray at the temples, and his face was lean and strong. A shimmering aura flowed around him.

  “Captain Raithen,” the man in scarlet and black greeted, but his words held little warmth.

  The droning buzz increased in intensity.

  “Cholik,” Raithen said.

  “Why aren’t you with the ships?” Cholik asked. He crossed the cavern floor, oblivious to the carnage of freshly dead men scattered around him.

  “We were attacked,” Raithen said. “Westmarch sailors set fire to my ships and stole the boy we held for ransom.”

  “You were followed?” Cholik’s anger cut through the droning noise that filled the cavern.

  “Who is that man?” Mat whispered.

  Darrick shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t see a demon around here, either. Let’s go. It’s not going to take that Cholik guy long to figure out what Raithen and his pirates are doing here.” He turned and signaled to the other men, getting them ready to withdraw.

  “Maybe it wasn’t me who got followed,” Raithen argued. “Maybe one of those men you buy information from in Westmarch got caught doing something and sold you out.”

  “No,” Cholik said. He stopped out of sword’s reach from the pirate captain. “The people who do business with me would be afraid to do something like that. If your ships were attacked, it was through your own gross ineptitude.”

  “Maybe we should just skip all this faultfinding,” Raithen suggested.

  “And then what should we do, captain?” Cholik regarded the pirate captain with contempt and cold amusement. “Get to the part where you and your murderous crew kill me and try to take whatever it is that you’ve imagined I’ve found here?”

  Raithen grinned without humor. “Not a very pretty way to put it, but that’s about it.”

  Cholik drew his robes in with imperious grace. “No. That won’t be done this night.”

  Striding forward, Raithen said, “I don’t know what kind of night you had planned for yourself, Cholik, but I aim to get what I came for. My men and I have spent blood for you, and the way we figure it, we haven’t gotten much in return.”

  “Your greed is going to get you killed,” Cholik threatened.

  Raithen brandished his sword. “It’ll get you killed first.”

  A massive shape stepped through the door in the stone wall. Darrick stared at the demon, taking in the writhing snake hair, the barbaric features, the huge three-fingered hands, and the black skin slashed through with pale blue.

  TEN

  Raithen and his pirates drew back from the demon, filled with fear as the nightmare from the Burning Hells strode into the cavern. Men yelled in terror and retreated quickly. “Okay,” Mat whispered, fear shining in his eyes, “we can tell the boy an’ his uncle the king that the demon exists. Let’s be away from here.”

  “Wait,” Darrick said, mastering the thrumming fear that filled him at the sight of the demon. He peered over the stone slab they hid behind.

  “For what?” Mat gave him a disbelieving look. He made the sign of the Light in the air before him unconsciously, like the child he’d been when they’d attended church in Hillsfar.

  “Do you know how many men have seen a demon?” Darrick asked.

  “An’ them livin’ to tell about it? Damned few. An’ ye want to know why, Darrick? ’Cause they were killed by the demons they was gawkin’ at instead of runnin’ as any sane man should do.”

  “Captain Raithen,” the demon said, and his voice rolled like thunder inside the cavern. “I am Kabraxis, called the Enlightener. There is no need for disharmony between yourself and Buyard Cholik. You can continue to work together.”

  “For you?” Raithen asked. His voice held fear and awe, but he stood before the demon with his sword in his fist.

  “No,” the demon replied. “Through me, you can find the true path to your future.” He strode forward, stepping in front of the priest. “I can help you. I can bring you peace.”

  “Pe
ace I can find in the bottom of a cup of ale,” Raithen said, “but I’ll not resort to serving demon scum.”

  Darrick thought the reply would have sounded better if the pirate captain’s voice hadn’t been shaking, but he didn’t doubt that he would have had trouble controlling his own voice if he’d spoken to the demon.

  “Then you can die,” Kabraxis said, waving a hand in an intricate pattern before him.

  “Archers!” Raithen yelled. “Feather that hell-spawned beast!”

  The pirates were stunned by the presence of the demon and slow to react. Only a few of them nocked and released arrows. The dozen or so arrows that hit the demon glanced off, leaving no sign that they had ever touched him.

  “Darrick,” Mat pleaded desperately, “the others have already gone.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Darrick saw that it was true. The other sailors who had accompanied them were already beating a hasty retreat.

  Mat pulled at Darrick’s shoulder. “C’mon. There’s naught we can do here. Gettin’ ourselves safe an’ to home, that’s our job now.”

  Darrick nodded, getting up from behind the stone slab just as waves of shimmering force shot out from the demon’s hand.

  Kabraxis spoke words Darrick felt certain no human tongue could master. The droning inside the cavern increased, and what looked at first like fireflies dropped from the stalactites above. Flashing through the torchlit cavern, the fireflies slammed into Raithen’s pirates but stayed clear of the pirate captain.

  Frozen with horror, Darrick watched as the insects reduced the pirates they struck to stacks of bloody bones. No sooner did the freshly flensed corpses strike the stony ground than they lurched back to their feet and took up arms against the few pirates who had survived the initial assault.

  The sound of men screaming, cursing, and dying filled the cavern.

  Kabraxis walked toward the survivors. “If you would live, my children, come to me. Give yourselves to me. I can make you whole again. I can teach you to dream and be more than you ever thought you could be. Come to me.”

  A handful of pirates rushed to the demon and supplicated themselves before Kabraxis. Gently, the demon touched their foreheads, leaving a bloody mark tattooed into their flesh, but they were saved from the insects and the skeletons.