The Black Road

by Mel Odom

  Runnin’ ain’t the answer, Mat said. Ye have the power, Darrick. We have the power. Me an’ Raithen, why, we done brung ye this far, but the rest of it is up to ye.

  “Worshippers of Dien-Ap-Sten,” Buyard Cholik’s voice thundered. “You see before you infidels, people who would see this great church torn down and stripped of its ability to house and hold the Prophet of the Light and the Way of Dreams.”

  Howls of fear and rage filled the cathedral.

  Darrick battled for his life. Outnumbered as they were at the moment, he knew it was only going to get worse. He parried and riposted, turning a blade aside, then following through behind the point as it sank through the heart of a mercenary. Placing his foot against the dead man’s chest, Darrick kicked him backward into three others who rushed to take his spot.

  Hands moving with grace and speed, Taramis inscribed mystic symbols in the air. At a shouted phrase, the symbols flew toward the cathedral’s peaked roof.

  A black cloud formed near the high ceiling as Darrick blocked another blade. Holding the weapon trapped, Darrick stepped up and delivered an elbow and a backfist blow to a church guard who had hard pressed Rhambal, who was having trouble due to his wounded arm. The guard dropped in front of Rhambal.

  “Thanks,” the warrior gasped. His face looked pasty white beneath his helm.

  But even though Darrick had dealt with the one opponent, others stepped up immediately to take his place. And the man Darrick had engaged had slipped his weapon free. The guard slashed at Darrick’s face as the dark cloud overhead roiled and flashed. Darrick trapped the man’s blade again, set himself, twisted, and drove a foot into the man’s head, knocking him from his feet and back into a knot of worshippers.

  Breathing hard, feeling the chill in the air now, Darrick swept the cathedral with his desperate gaze. Even now, some of the worshippers pulled belt knives and were on their way to join the fight.

  They’re innocents, Mat said inside Darrick’s head. Not all of ’em are evil. They’re just drawn to it.

  “Where’s the demon?” Darrick asked.

  Inside the snake, Mat said. Where the Black Road is. Kabraxis has returned to his place of power. He knows you have Hauklin’s sword, he does.

  Darrick blocked, blocked again, parried, and riposted, putting his point through a man’s throat. Scarlet bubbled at the guard’s throat as he stumbled backward, dropped his sword, and wrapped both hands around his neck in an effort to stem the blood flow.

  The cloud Taramis created suddenly unleashed a wintry keening. Freezing storm winds whipped up and tore through the cathedral, twisting the flames wreathing the snake’s snout into a flickering frenzy. Frost formed on the great stone creature but quickly melted away as the snake belched fire. Steam shimmered around it.

  Cocking its head, the snake focused on the group of demon hunters. Baleful flames danced in the snake’s eyes.

  Buyard Cholik is the first, Mat said. He must die, Darrick, for he holds Kabraxis anchored to this world.

  A blizzard suddenly filled the cathedral, whipping fat snowflakes over the central area as well as the worshippers. The whirling blanket of whiteness made it hard to see, and naked skin burned at the snowflakes’ touch like acid.

  The stone snake struck, flashing forward, fire wreathing its exposed fangs.

  “Look out!” Palat yelled, knocking Rhambal from the snake’s path.

  The demon hunters cleared the area, but not all of the guards got free. Three of the guards were smashed to bloody pulp by the impact. Despite the stone that shattered across the cathedral floor and the chunks that skittered through the pews, the snake wasn’t harmed at all.

  Gathering his courage, overcoming the doubts that assailed him, Darrick ran toward the snake. Curling in on itself, bloody pieces of the three guards still caught in its fangs, the snake pursued Darrick. Conscious of the unnatural beast closing on him, Darrick cut to the right and hit the ground rolling, sliding up under the snake’s own body.

  Reaching up, Darrick caught hold of the carved scales with his free hand. The snake head pummeled the cathedral floor, tearing flagstones loose and shattering others. Darrick pushed himself up, clinging to the carved scales along the stone serpent’s underside, pulling himself to his feet. He leapt, landing on the snake’s snout. Hissing, gurgling flames, the snake opened its mouth, and a forked tongue made of flames stabbed out at him.

  The flames singed Darrick’s hair as he ran up the snake’s snout. Aided by the unnatural beast opening its mouth, Darrick hurled himself into the air toward the platform where Buyard Cholik stood.

  Suddenly understanding Darrick’s desperate move, Cholik lifted his hands to work his magic. But it was too late. Before the spell was complete, Darrick grabbed the man’s robe. Cholik’s only saving grace was that Darrick hadn’t managed to land on the platform with him.

  Knowing that he’d missed the platform in his desperate lunge, Darrick flailed with his free hand and caught Cholik’s robe skirts. When his weight hit the end of his arm, Darrick pulled Cholik from his feet, slamming the man against the iron railing and breaking his concentration. Holding on to the robe with one hand, swaying wildly, knowing the snake was curling again, trying to dislodge him and cause him to fall so it could get at him, Darrick flexed his arm, bending his elbow and pulling himself closer to Cholik.

  The blizzard swirled around them with blinding intensity. Cold burning his face and exposed skin, buffeted by the storm winds that Taramis had raised with his magic, Darrick drew back his sword, flipped his hand on the hilt, and threw it like a spear.

  Hauklin’s enchanted blade sailed true even in the terrible wind. It pierced Buyard Cholik’s heart, causing the man to stumble backward, tripping over the robe that Darrick held so tightly to.

  “No,” Cholik said, clutching the sword that had transfixed him. His hands burst into blue flame as they gripped the sword, but he seemed powerless to let go just as he was powerless to pull the blade from his chest.

  Taking advantage of Cholik’s inability to fight against him, Darrick caught the edge of the platform in his other hand, then pulled himself up. Cholik stepped backward, freed from Darrick’s grip, and fell over the platform’s edge.

  The sword! Mat yelled in Darrick’s head. Kabraxis is still ahead of ye!

  Clinging to the platform mounted behind the snake’s bobbing head, watching the movement around him with his peripheral vision, Darrick held fast to the platform with his left hand and stretched his right out for the sword. He willed it to come back to him just as he had that day at Ellig Barrows’s house.

  Even as Cholik’s corpse fell toward the cracked stone floor below, Darrick felt the power binding him to the sword. He watched as the enchanted blade pulled free of the dead man. Hauklin’s sword was in the air, streaking toward Darrick as the snake suddenly popped its head up, flinging him high into the air and knocking the sword away.

  Whirling, almost colliding with the cathedral ceiling because he was thrown so high, Darrick flailed and tried to get control of his body. Horrified, he watched as the snake lowered its head below him and opened its massive jaws. Flames roiled in the snake’s throat, promising a fiery death if it caught him.

  Get the sword! Mat yelled. If ye don’t have the sword, ye ain’t got nothin’!

  Darrick focused on the sword, but he couldn’t clear his mind of the snake below as he reached the apex of his flight and started back down. Even if the snake somehow missed him, he felt certain that he wouldn’t survive the fall.

  The sword! Mat cried. The sword will protect ye if ye have it. An’ I can help ye through the sword’s magic.

  Darrick pushed thoughts of death from him. If he died, it would only put an end to the pain he’d lived in for the last year, and from all the pain he’d borne in those years before that.

  He concentrated on Hauklin’s sword, strengthening the bond he felt between the weapon and himself. Cholik’s corpse plummeted toward the waiting stone floor beside the yawning snake’s mou
th. But the enchanted blade pulled free of the dead man and flew toward Darrick’s waiting hand.

  Hold to the sword, Mat said. Hold to the sword that I may help ye.

  Unable to change directions in the air, Darrick fell, dropping like a stone into the waiting snake’s mouth. Flames wrapped him, and for an instant he thought he was going to be incinerated. Unbelievable heat surrounded him and stole his senses away.

  Stand easy, Mat warned. His voice, even though Darrick was certain it came from within his head, also sounded distant and small. This is going to be the worst of it, Darrick, an’ there ain’t no way around it.

  Darrick couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead. The fall alone against the stone mouth of the snake should have killed him, but the addition of the flames had taken away all chance of his survival.

  Yet—

  He lived. He knew it from the way he felt, from the ragged and tortured breath he took and the way he hurt all over.

  Ye can’t lie there, Mat said, and his voice was thin and distant. This here’s the Black Road. The Twisted Path of Shadows. Kabraxis rules supreme here. At least, he believes he does. He’ll kill ye if ye lie there. Get up—

  “Get up,” a harsh voice grated. “Get up, you worthless bastard.”

  Darrick recognized the voice as his father’s. His eyes snapped open, and he saw the familiar stable area behind his father’s butcher shop. He found himself lying on the sour hay that lined the hayloft.

  “You didn’t think I’d catch you back up here sleeping, did you?” his father demanded.

  Instinctively, Darrick curled into a ball, trying to protect himself. His body hurt from the beating he’d remembered getting the day before. Or maybe it was the same day, only earlier. Sometimes after a beating Darrick had lost track of time. He suffered blackout periods as well as lost time.

  “Get up, damn you.” His father kicked him, driving the wind from his lungs and perhaps breaking yet another rib.

  Fearfully, Darrick got to his feet before his father. Something dangled from Darrick’s hand, but when he looked he could see nothing. Perhaps he had another broken arm, but this one felt different from the last.

  He thought he heard Mat Hu-Ring’s voice, but he knew Mat would never come around when his father was in one of his moods. Even Mat’s father wouldn’t come around during those times.

  “Get up, I said,” his father roared. He was a big man with a broad belly and shoulders as wide as an ax handle. His hands were big and tough from hard work and long hours and countless tavern fights. A curly mop of brown hair matched the curly beard he wore to mid-chest.

  “I can’t be here,” Darrick said, dazed. “I was a sailor. There was a church.”

  “Stupid, worthless bastard,” his father roared, grabbing him by the arm and shaking him. “Who’d make a sailor out of the likes of you?” His father laughed derisively. “You’ve been having another one of those dreams you cling to so much when you hide out up here.”

  Face burning in shame, Darrick looked down at himself. He was a boy, no more than eight or nine. No threat at all to his father. Yet his father treated him like the fiercest opponent he’d ever encountered.

  His father slapped him, causing his head to ring with pain.

  “Don’t you look away from me when I’m talking, boy,” his father commanded. “Maybe I haven’t taught you anything else, but you’ll know to respect your betters.”

  Tears ran down Darrick’s cheeks. He felt them hot on his cheeks, and he tasted their salt when they reached his quivering lips.

  “Look at you, you sniveling coward,” his father roared, and raised his hand again. “You don’t have sense enough to come out of the rain.”

  Darrick took the blow on the back of his head, watched the world spin around him for a moment, and remembered how only last week he’d watched his father beat three caravan guards in a fight in the muddy street outside the Lame Goose Tavern. As a butcher, his father was passable, but as a fighter, there were few who could compare.

  “Have you fed the livestock like I told you to, boy?” his father demanded.

  Peering over the edge of the hayloft, afraid he knew what the answer was, Darrick saw that all the feed bins and water troughs were empty. “No,” he said.

  “That’s right,” his father agreed. “You haven’t. I ask so little of you because I know that’s all I have the right to expect from an idiot like you. But you’d think you’d have enough sense to feed and water livestock.”

  Darrick cringed inside. He knew there was no winning when his father was in one of his moods. If he had fed the livestock, his father would have found fault with it, would have insisted it was too much or too little. Darrick’s stomach lurched as if he were on a storm-tossed sea.

  But how could he know what that felt like? Other than one of the stories he sometimes overheard outside the taverns his father frequented in the evening. His father always tried to leave Darrick at home, but his mother was seldom there in the evenings, and Darrick had been too afraid to sit at home alone.

  So Darrick had secretly followed his father from tavern to tavern, having an easy time not being seen because his father had been deep in his cups. As mean as his father could be, he was also the most permanent point of Darrick’s life because his mother was never around.

  . . . not there . . .

  Darrick breathed shallowly, certain he’d heard Mat Hu-Ring’s voice. But that couldn’t be, could it? Mat was dead. He’d died . . . died . . .

  Died where?

  Darrick couldn’t remember. In fact, he didn’t want to remember. Mat had died somewhere far from his family, and it was Darrick’s fault.

  Ye’re on the Black Road, Mat said. These are demon’s tricks. Don’t give in . . .

  Mat’s voice faded away again.

  The weight hung at the end of Darrick’s arm.

  “What is this, boy?” His father yanked Darrick around, displaying the rope and the knotted noose at the end of it. “Is this something you were playing with?”

  Darrick didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Only a few days ago, using the tricks he’d learned from Mat, who had learned them from his uncle the sailor, Darrick had made the rope from scraps of rope left by farmers who brought their animals to his father’s shop to be butchered.

  For days Darrick had thought about hanging himself and putting an end to everything.

  “You couldn’t do it, could you, boy?” his father demanded. He coiled the rope up, shaking the noose out.

  Darrick cried and shook. His nose clogged up, and he knew he sounded horrible. If he tried to speak, his father would only make fun of him and slap him to make him speak better, not stopping till Darrick was unconscious or nearly so. He knew he’d taste blood for days from the split lips and the torn places inside his cheeks.

  Only this time, his father had something different in mind. His father threw the rope over the rafter support on the other side of the hayloft, then caught the noose when it came back down.

  “I wondered how long it might be before you got the gumption to try something like this,” his father said. He peered over the side of the hayloft and lowered the noose a little. “Do you want to just hang yourself, boy, or do you want to snap your neck when you fall?”

  Darrick couldn’t answer.

  It didn’t happen like that, Mat said. I found the rope. Not yer da. I took the rope away from ye that day, an’ I made ye promise that ye’d never do somethin’ like that.

  Darrick thought he almost remembered, then the memory slipped away from him.

  His father fitted the noose over his neck and grinned. His breath stank of sour wine. “I think snapping your neck is a coward’s way out. I’m not going to let no bastard son of mine be afraid of dying. You’re going to meet it like a man.”

  It’s the demon! Mat yelled, but his voice tore apart as if he were shouting through a strong wind. ’Ware, Darrick! Yer life can still be forfeit in there, an’ if the demon takes it on the Black Road, it’s his to keep forev
er!

  Darrick knew he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. Dying would be easy. Living was the hard part, stumbling through all the fears and mistakes and pain. Death—slow or quick—would be welcome relief.

  His father cinched the hangman’s knot tight under the corner of his jaw. “Time to go,” his father growled. “At least when this story goes through the town, they’ll say my son went out with the courage of his da.”

  Darrick stood at the edge of the hayloft. When his father put his big hand against his chest, there was nothing he could do to prevent the fall.

  His father pushed.

  Arms flailing—Hang on to the sword, some part of his mind yelled—he fell. But his neck didn’t snap when he hit the end of the rope. His father hadn’t let it down enough for that.

  Darrick dangled at the end of the rope, the life choking out of him as the hemp bit into his neck. His right arm remained at his side while he gripped the rope with his left and tried to keep his breath.

  “Just let go,” his father taunted. “You can die easily. It’s only minutes away.”

  He’s lying, Mat said. Damn ye, Darrick, look at the truth! This never happened! We’d have never gone to sea if this had happened!

  Darrick stared up at his father. The man had knelt down on the side of the hayloft, his face split in a wide grin, his eyes on fire with anticipation.

  Look past him! Mat cried. Look at the shadow on the wall behind him!

  Through dying vision growing black around the edges, Darrick saw his father’s shadow on the wall behind him. Only it wasn’t his father’s. Whatever cast the shadow on the wall there wasn’t human. Then Darrick remembered the cathedral in Bramwell, the stone serpent with the flaming maw.

  Without warning, Darrick suddenly realized he was full-grown, dangling from the strangling rope thrown over the rafter.

  “You’re too late,” the demon said. His form changed, shifting from that of Darrick’s father to his own true nature. “You’re going to die here, and I’m going to have your soul. Perhaps you’ve killed Buyard Cholik, but I’ll use you to anchor me to this world.”