The Black Road

by Mel Odom

  The sword flashed across the distance and embedded itself in the lezanti’s chest. The blade halted the creature, then quivered in its chest as the eldritch scarlet energies gathered again. With a sudden fiery flash, the lezanti crisped to ash. The sword dropped point-first to the ground and stuck.

  Out of reflex, Darrick thrust his hand out for the blade. The weapon quivered again, then yanked free of the earth and flew back to his hand.

  “How did you know to do that?” Taramis asked.

  Shocked himself, Darrick shook his head. “I didn’t. It just—happened.”

  “By the Light,” Ellig Barrows said, “you were the one destined for Hauklin’s sword.”

  But Darrick remembered Mat’s voice in his head. If Mat hadn’t been there, somehow, Darrick felt certain that he’d never have been able to pick up the weapon. He turned and gazed across the battleground, not believing the carnage that he’d somehow survived almost completely unmarked.

  “Come on,” Taramis said, walking to help his men. “We can’t stay here. Somehow Kabraxis has discovered us. We’ve got to leave as soon as we’re able.”

  “And then what?” Darrick asked, sheathing the sword in his belt and catching the bag of medicants the sage tossed his way.

  “Then we make for Bramwell,” Taramis replied over the moans of the wounded warriors. “Kabraxis knows we have Stormfury now, and I’ve never been one to hide. Besides, now that we have the sword, the demon has every reason to fear us.”

  Even though he knew the sage’s words were meant to be reassuring, and even though the power contained in the sword inspired a lot of confidence, Darrick knew the quest could still take them all to their deaths. The warriors who had fallen today and wouldn’t get back up were grim reminders of that. He opened the medicants bag and tried to help those who still lived.

  But confusion dwelt in his thoughts as well. If I was the one meant for Hauklin’s sword, then why couldn’t I pick it up immediately? And where did Mat’s voice come from? He felt those questions were important but had no clue what the answers were. Grimly, he set to work, trying desperately not to think too far ahead.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Perched high on a northern hill overlooking Bramwell and the Church of the Prophet of the Light to the south, Darrick scanned the imposing edifice with the spyglass he’d managed to hang on to even over the worst of the past year. A quarter-mile distant, the church was lighted, festooned with lanterns and torches as worshippers continued their pilgrimage into the structure. Farther out into the harbor, several ships remained lighted as well. Along with the influx of worshippers wanting to try their luck at getting to walk along the Way of Dreams, smugglers had also seen opportunities to reap financial gain by supplying the populace with black market goods. Guards stayed with the ships during all watches, and it still wasn’t unusual for some of them to be attacked and raided by pirates. Thieves picked the pockets of worshippers and robbed them in the alleys.

  Bramwell was fast becoming one of the most dangerous port cities on the Gulf of Westmarch.

  Darrick lowered the spyglass and rubbed his aching eyes. It had taken the group almost three weeks to reach Bramwell as they journeyed down from the north. It seemed that winter had followed on their heels, blowing in on cold gusts.

  Seven men had died at Ellig Barrows’s home, and two more had been permanently crippled during the attack of the lezantis and couldn’t continue. Seventeen men remained of Taramis Volken’s original group of demon hunters.

  Seventeen, Darrick mused as the cold air cut through the forest around him, against hundreds and maybe thousands that Kabraxis has inside the church. The odds were overwhelming, and their chances of success seemed nonexistent. Even an army wouldn’t stand a chance.

  And yet Darrick couldn’t turn away. There was no fear left in him, and no anticipation, either. For the last three weeks, his father’s voice had been inside his head—during his waking moments as well as his sleep—telling him how worthless he was. His dreams had been nightmares, looping segments of events that had transpired in the small barn behind the butcher’s shop. Worst of all had been the memories of Mat Hu-Ring bringing him food and medicines, being there to let Darrick know he wasn’t alone—yet all the while he had been trapped. Until he had made his escape.

  Brush stirred behind Darrick. He shifted slightly, his hand dropping to the hilt of the long sword across his thighs. The blade was naked and ready as he faded into the long shadows of the approaching night.

  A dim sunset, a thin slice of ocher and amber, like grapes smeared through pale ale, hung in the west. The last dregs of the day managed to cast a silvery sheen over the harbor, making the ships and boats look like two-dimensional black cutouts on the water. The light barely threaded through the city and seemed not to touch the Church of the Prophet of the Light.

  Darrick released his breath slowly so it wouldn’t be heard, emptying his lungs completely so he could draw in a full breath if he needed to go into action. The demon hunters had camped within the forest high in the mountains for the last two days and not been disturbed. In the higher reaches where they were, where the cold could reach them, game had been chased up from the foothills by the tent city that had sprung up outside Bramwell and was plentiful.

  Maybe it was only a deer, Darrick thought. Then he dismissed the possibility. The sound he’d heard had been too calm, too measured.

  “Darrick,” Rhambal called.

  “Aye,” Darrick said in a low voice.

  Tracking the sound of Darrick’s voice, Rhambal crept closer. The warrior was a big man but moved as quietly as a woodlands creature through the forest. A square-cut beard framed his broad face, and he had a cut across his nose and beneath his left eye from a lezanti claw that hadn’t quite healed during the past three weeks. Exposure to the harsh weather and not being able truly to rest had slowed the healing. Several of the other warriors bore such marks as well.

  “I’ve come to get you,” Rhambal said.

  “I’d prefer to stay out here,” Darrick said.

  The big man hesitated.

  Despite the fact that Darrick was the only one among them who could carry Hauklin’s enchanted blade, Darrick’s lack of interest in getting to know the other warriors had made him suspect to them. If it hadn’t been for Taramis Volken’s leadership, Darrick thought the warriors would have abandoned him or forced him to leave.

  Of course, without Taramis Volken, the quest to break into the Church of the Prophet of the Light would have been abandoned. Only Taramis’s charisma and his own unflinching courage kept them moving forward.

  “Taramis has returned from the town,” Rhambal said. “He wants everyone to gather and talk. He thinks he has a way into the church for us.”

  Darrick had known that the demon hunter had returned. He’d watched Taramis come up the mountainside less than an hour before.

  “When do we go?” Darrick asked.

  “Tonight.”

  The answer didn’t surprise Darrick.

  “And I for one am ready to do this thing,” Rhambal said. “Crossing all this distance from the north and haunted by nightmares the way we’ve been, I’m ready to get shut of it all one way or another.”

  Darrick didn’t reply. The nightmares had been a constant in all their lives. Even though Ellig Barrows and Taramis had carefully constructed a warding around the group that prevented Kabraxis’s scrying on them, they all knew their lives were forfeit if they were caught. The demon had identified them. Several times during the last few weeks, they’d barely escaped patrols of warriors as well as herds of demonic-forged creatures that hunted them.

  The group hadn’t been able to escape the nightmares, though. Taramis had said that he was certain the night terrors were inspired by an insidious spell that they hadn’t been able to escape. Not a warrior among the group avoided them, and the three weeks of sleepless nights and private hells had taken their toll. A few of the warriors had even suggested that the nightmares were a curse, that th
ey’d never be free of them.

  Palat Shires, one of the oldest warriors among them, had tried to leave the group, unable to bear whatever it was that had haunted him. Darrick had heard whispers that Palat had once been a pirate, and as vicious a killer as any might fear to meet, till Taramis had exorcised the lesser demon that had crawled into Palat’s mind from the enchanted weapon he carried and almost driven him insane with bloodlust. Still, even though he knew it had been the demon’s possession of him that had caused him to do such horrible things, Palat had never been truly able to forgive himself for the murders and maiming he had committed. But he had sworn himself to Taramis’s cause.

  Three days after he’d left the group, Palat had returned. All knew from his haggard look that he had failed to escape the nightmares. Two days later, in the still hours near dawn, Palat had slashed his wrists and tried to kill himself. Only one of the other warriors, unable to sleep, had prevented Palat’s death. Taramis had healed the old warrior as much as he could, then they’d holed up for four days to weather out a rain squall and let Palat regain his lost strength.

  “Come on,” Rhambal said. “There’s stew still in a pot back there, and Taramis brought up loaves of bread and honeyed butter. There’s even a sack of apple cakes because he was in such a generous mood.” A wide grin split the warrior’s face, but it didn’t get past the fatigue that showed there.

  “What about a sentry?” Darrick asked.

  “We’ve been here two nights before this,” Rhambal said. “Hasn’t anyone come close to us in all that time. There’s no reason to think it’s going to happen in the next hour.”

  “We’re leaving in the next hour?”

  Rhambal nodded and squinted toward the dimming of the day. “As soon as true night hits and before the moon comes into full. Only a fool or a desperate man would be out in the chill of this night.”

  Reluctantly, because it meant being around the warriors and seeing the damage the harsh journey and the sleepless nights had wrought on them, Darrick stood and crept through the forest, heading higher up the mountainside. The heavy timber blocked most of the north wind that ravaged the mountain.

  The campsite was located in a westward-facing cul-de-sac of rock near the peak of the mountain. The cul-de-sac was a small box of stone that stood up from the scrub brush and wind-bent pine trees.

  The campfire was that in name only. No flames leapt up around piles of wood to warm the warriors gathered there. Only a heap of orange-glowing coals sheathed amid white and gray ash took the barest hint of the chill away. A pot of rabbit stew sat in the coals and occasionally bubbled.

  The warriors sat around the campfire, but it was more because there was so little room in the cul-de-sac than out of any vain hope that the coals might stave off the cold. The horses stood at the back of the canyon, their breaths feathering the air with gray plumes, their long coats frosted over. The animals filled the cul-de-sac with the scent of wet horse and ate the long grass that the warriors had harvested for them earlier.

  Taramis sat nearest the campfire, his legs crossed under him. The dim orange glow of the coals stripped the shadows from his face and made him look feverish. His eyes met Darrick’s, and he nodded in greeting.

  Holding his hands out over the coals, the sage said, “I can’t guarantee you the success of our foray this night, but I will tell you that it is warmer down in Bramwell than it is up on this mountain.”

  The warriors laughed, but it was more out of politeness than real humor.

  Rhambal took a seat beside Darrick, then picked up two tin cups from their meager store of utensils by the campfire. The big warrior dipped both cups into the stew they’d made from vegetables and leaves they could find and three unwary hares caught just before sunset. After pulling the cups back from the stewpot, Rhambal dragged a large finger along their sides to clean them, then popped his finger into his mouth.

  Despite his fatigue and the feeling of ill ease that clung to him, Darrick accepted the cup of stew with a thankful nod. The warmth of the stew carried through the tin cup to his hands. He held it for a time, just soaking up the warmth, then started to drink it before it cooled too much. The bits of rabbit meat in the stew were tough and stringy.

  “I’ve found a way into the church,” Taramis announced.

  “A place as big as that,” Palat grumbled, “it should be as full of holes as my socks.” He held up one of the socks that he’d been drying on a stick near the campfire. The garment was filled with holes.

  “It is full of holes,” Taramis agreed. “A year ago, Master Sayes arrived in Bramwell and began the Church of the Black Road from the back of a caravan. That sprawl of buildings that makes up the church now was built in sections, but it was built well. There are secret passages honeycombing the church, used by Master Sayes and his acolytes, as well as the guards. But the church is well protected.”

  “What about the sewers?” Rhambal asked. “We’d talked about getting into the building through the sewers.”

  “Mercenaries guard the sewer entrances,” Taramis answered. “They also guard the underground supply routes into the building.”

  “Then where’s this way you’re talking about?” Palat asked.

  Taramis took a small, charred stick from the teeth of the dying coals. “They built the church too fast, too grand, and they didn’t allow for the late-spring flooding. All the building along the shore, including new wells to feed the pools and water reservoirs inside the church, created problems.”

  The sage drew a pair of irregular lines to represent the river, then a large rectangle beside it. He added another small square that thrust out over the river.

  “Where the church hangs out over the river here,” Taramis continued, “offering grand parapets where worshippers can wait to get into the next service and look out over the city as well as be impressed by the size of the church, the river has eroded the bank and undermined the plaza supports, weakening them considerably.”

  Accepting the chunk of bread smothered in honey butter that Rhambal offered, Darrick listened to Taramis and ate mechanically. His mind was full of the plan that the sage sketched in the dirt, prying and prodding at the details as they were revealed.

  “One of the problems they had in constructing that parapet that was more vanity than anything else,” Taramis continued, “was that the pilings for the parapet had to be laid so that they missed one of the old sewer systems the church had outgrown. Though the church’s exterior may look polished and complete, the land underneath hasn’t improved much beyond the quagmire it was that persuaded the local populace not to build there.”

  “So what are you thinking?” Palat asked.

  Taramis gazed at the drawing barely lit by the low orange glow of the coals. “I’m thinking that with a little luck and the theft of one of those boats out there, we’ll have a way into the church tonight as well as a diversion.”

  “Tonight?” Rhambal asked.

  The sage nodded and looked up, meeting the gaze of every man in front of him. “The men I talked to down in Bramwell’s taverns this afternoon said that the church services go on for hours even after nightfall.”

  “That’s something you don’t always see,” Corrigor said. “Usually a man working the field or a fishing boat, he’s looking for a warm, dry place to curl up after the sun sets. He’s not wanting a church service.”

  “Most church services,” Taramis said, “aren’t giving away healing or luck that brings a man love or wealth or power.”

  “True,” Corrigor said.

  “So we go tonight,” Taramis said. “Unless there’s someone among us who would rather wait another night.” He looked at Darrick as he said that.

  Darrick shook his head, and the other men all answered the same. Everyone was tired of waiting.

  “We rested up last night,” Rhambal said. “If I rest any more, I’m just going to get antsy.”

  “Good.” Taramis smiled grimly, without mirth and with perhaps a hint of fear. Despite the
sage’s commitment to hunting demons and the loss of his family, he was still human enough to be afraid of what they were going to attempt.

  Then, in a calm and measured tone, Taramis told them the plan.

  A light fog shrouded the river, but lanterns and torches along the banks and aboard the ships at anchorage in front of the warehouses and taverns burned away patches of the moist, cottony gray vapor. Men’s voices carried over the sound of the wind in the rigging and the loose furls of sailcloth. Other men sang or called out dirty limericks and jokes.

  Stone bridges crossed the river in two places, and both of them were filled with people walking from one bank to the other in search of food or drink. Some of the people were tourists, whiling away the time till the church let out and the next service began. Others were thieves, merchants, and guardsmen. The prostitutes were the loudest, yelling offers to the sailors and fishermen aboard their boats.

  Darrick followed Taramis along the shore toward the cargo ship that the sage had selected as their target. Blue Zephyr was a squat, ugly cargo ship that held the rancid stench of whale oil. Not a sailor worth his salt would want to crew aboard her because she was such a stinkpot, Darrick knew, but she could guarantee a small crew a decent profit for their efforts.

  Three men remained on board the small cargo ship. The captain and the rest of the crew had gone into the taverns along Dock Street. But careful observation of the crew revealed that they also had a bottle on board the ship and gathered in the stern to drink it.

  The thieves and smugglers in Bramwell wouldn’t want Blue Zephyr’s cargo, Darrick knew. The barrels of whale oil were too heavy to steal easily or escape with from the harbor.

  Without breaking his stride, Taramis reached the bottom of the gangplank leading up to the cargo ship. The sage started up the gangplank without pause. Darrick trailed after him, heart beating rapidly in his chest as his boots thudded against the boarding ramp.

  The three sailors gathered in the cargo ship’s stern turned at once. One of the men grabbed a lantern sitting on the plotting table and shined it toward them.