Demonkin

by T. Eric Bakutis

  Paymon was the king of the Mavoureen. He ruled the Underside. He was as powerful as the Five.

  “What does your master want with me?”

  “He wants to make you scream.”

  Of course it would be something like that. Screaming was what the Mavoureen made people do. “Why would I agree to join you?”

  “Because you do not wish me to devour her soul.” The davenger caught a chunk of rock as big as Aryn's chest and shattered it. Tania had tossed it!

  The demon's hand burst into a mass of clutching tendrils. Wind roared and Aryn spotted Tania tumbling through the air. She flew into the crook of the demon's elbow and choked against it, trapped.

  How could this demon wield Aerial glyphs? What was it?

  “Should you refuse,” the demon said, “I will also devour the souls of every person in Dane.”

  Tania urked. She thrashed, kicked, and wriggled, but the demon held her with little effort. It was also freakishly strong.

  “Allow me to explain the great respect I accord you.” The demon extended its other arm, the one that was not strangling Tania. “You look upon me as none have looked in thousands of years.”

  Aryn's mouth went dry. “That's not possible.”

  “I am Davazet,” the demon said. “And you dare refuse me?”

  This was impossible. The Mavoureen could not enter Aryn's world in their true forms, and even if they could, Kara had closed the gate at Terras forever. How had Davazet come to be here? How had Paymon sent it?

  “You slaughtered the people of Lared's Row.” Aryn's stomach knotted up. “I passed through there three days ago. You ... tracked me?”

  “I hungered. You would not stop moving.” Its free hand burst into more scattered tendrils and those wrapped around Tania's arm. “I tormented those people for some time. Like this.” Its tendrils twisted.

  Tania's arm snapped, a sickening sound of bone breaking. She screamed, muffled by more tendrils, and the unnatural bend in her arm made Aryn cringe. The demon had snapped her elbow backward.

  “Come with me, Aryn Locke,” Davazet said, “or we will make music with her bones. She has so many.”

  Aryn had already thrown himself into the Underside once — to save one person, not a hundred — and his memory of Balazel's tortures terrified him. Yet heroes did not merely endure endless hardship. They also died, bravely, and dying was something Aryn could do.

  Aryn launched his Fingers of Heat at Davazet's head, eliciting a surprised snort. He lunged for Davazet's eyes and clawed, rending nothing. He punched and kicked and screamed as he assaulted scaled flesh.

  Tendrils snatched him up and choked him, ripping him right off his feet. His feet kicked and his spine screamed with pain. It felt like his head would pop right off.

  “Malkavet insisted you'd come if I was polite.” Davazet now held Tania in one arm and him in the other. “We wagered twenty vacuous souls.”

  Aryn couldn't breathe.

  “I'm so glad you attacked me. It's been so long since I've tortured anyone while they were still alive.”

  Aryn knew what a noose felt like now, wrapped around his neck. He knew what it felt like to be drawn and quartered. He couldn't even scream.

  “You remember my tortures, don't you? Will her shrieking rival yours?”

  Davazet adjusted its grip on Aryn, allowing him to breathe once more, and Aryn gasped. Breathing never felt so good! He stared as Davazet's long dark tendrils melted into sharp knives.

  “Tania,” Davazet said, rubbing its knives together, “in a moment I’m going to cut off your face. That will hurt you, very much. Please scream.”

  A dozen glyphs passed through Aryn's mind, all useless. One lingered and a desperate plan consumed him. Even if it succeeded he would damn himself forever, but he couldn’t watch this demon cut off Tania's face.

  He scribed the glyph of Davazet on Davazet himself.

  The Mavoureen dropped them both. It stared at its own chest as Aryn's blood glyph glowed and grew. Purple tendrils spread across its skin.

  “You.” It looked up. “What have you—”

  Purple ivy burst from Aryn's glowing glyph, eating its way across Davazet’s face and torso in a ravenous wave. That ivy consumed scales that regrew as fast as they were eaten. It consumed the whole of Davazet as the whole of Davazet grew right back.

  Aryn dragged Tania to her feet. Her neck was purpled and her face was ashen, but she coughed and stumbled away with him. “What?” she managed.

  “It’s a loop.” Aryn found himself laughing as they fled, laughter that sounded far from sane. He could not believe that worked!

  When a mage scribed Davazet's glyph on a person, Davazet remade that person's body in its own image. It stopped remaking them once that transformation was complete. The glyph’s termination point.

  Yet Davazet was already Davazet — it could not remake itself as itself — and so Davazet’s demon glyph would never reach its termination point. It would simply loop, remaking without end. Recursive glyphing.

  Davazet shrieked as its arms burst into tendrils that burst into knives that burst into arms. Its head blew apart only to grow again, purple ivy bubbling over its black scales and destroying its flesh. Aryn almost felt sorry for it until he remembered it wanted to carve off Tania’s face.

  “Run!” Aryn shouted.

  “I am!” Tania shouted back.

  They were in sight of her house when Aryn glanced behind them. The space Davazet occupied was now a globe of greenish energy as tall as a tree. It glowed bright, bright as the sun, and that was probably very bad.

  Tania dashed inside her house. Aryn tried but tripped on her front step. He went down hard and cracked his chin.

  That was when Davazet decided to explode.

  Chapter 6

  TRELL OPENED HIS EYES when he heard a quiet click. He sat up on the narrow bed in his spartan guest chamber and watched Kara enter. Her orange eyes were red from crying. He pushed up and grunted, pain stabbing his joints and bones, but Kara raised a hand.

  “Stay there.” She walked to the bed, lifted his heavy legs with both hands, and sat down. She dropped his legs atop hers, settled against the wall, and wrapped her arms around his chest. She wasn't supposed to do that.

  They had discussed this, hadn't they? Trell wasn't sure he was ready to love a woman again, not after learning Mavoureen revenants had murdered his wife. Not after her ghost came to him in a storm of bone powder.

  “Kara—”

  “I killed Sera.” Her head thumped the wall.

  Trell tried to understand and failed. “Why?”

  “She tricked me. She made me form a glyph that will execute her in two weeks. She left for Terras with Byn and if they don't find a cure, she's going to die.”

  Trell breathed. “This was a failsafe in case she becomes Demonkin. If they can't find a cure in time.”

  “And she's right,” Kara said. “And I hate it, but there's nothing I can do to help them. It's like my mother all over again, watching as that illness ate her away.” She squeezed him. “Like watching you.”

  Trell took her hand. Ona, Kara's mother, was in Tarna and doing well. Kara had cured her wasting disease shortly after they left Terras, but Trell saw the parallel with Sera and himself. “I'm sorry.”

  Kara nuzzled against his chest. Trell knew she was hurting and did not want to hurt her worse. One of her fingers traced circles on his chest and that felt very good, even though it shouldn't.

  Kara was not his wife. She also wasn't dead.

  “I thought finishing things at Terras would make everything better,” Kara said quietly. “It didn't. Everyone's going to die anyway.”

  “We don't know that.”

  “We might. Life certainly did.”

  “She warned her power would forever change me.” Trell remembered ice crackling through his bones, his blood, his veins, making him stronger. “Giving myself over to her was the only way I could defeat the revenant general who led Cantrall's army. It
had to be done.”

  The giant soldier in the grinning skull helmet had wielded a lightning sword as it faced Trell at the head of a demon army. Life had told him it was no champion or construct, but an actual Mavoureen. The demon had bowed to him as he sliced it in half.

  Kara snuggled against him. “Are you still cold?”

  “No,” Trell said, though he was cold all the time. His joints ached with constant pain and cold lived inside his flesh, his bones. It had started the day after he arrived in Tarna and grown worse with each new morning. In a week, he might not be able to walk.

  Kara rested her chin on his chest, staring up. Very close. A bit of newly shortened hair fell across one orange eye. “I've told you how I feel. How about you?”

  Trell didn't answer. He didn't know.

  “I don't want you to die.” She slid her arm across his chest and grabbed his other shoulder.

  “I won't die,” Trell said. “I'm not ready yet.”

  “Stubborn,” Kara agreed. She climbed on top of him and pressed so close a jolt of nervous energy crackled down his spine. “I'm tired of hiding how I feel and holding back. I think I'm in love with you.”

  Trell felt himself responding. “You think?”

  Kara held her face above his and smiled, even though her eyes glistened. “Well, I really don't know. I've never been in love before, but I know I want this.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  Her lips came for his and Trell rolled right out of his bed, almost taking her down with him. She yelped and caught herself on the edge. He hit the floor hard.

  Kara stared at him in shock, her face beet-red. Then she rolled up and clambered onto his bed, pressing against the wall. She drew her legs to her chest, eyes wide.

  “Drown me,” she whispered. “I'm sorry. I have no right.” She was trembling.

  “It's fine.” Trell blushed furiously as he stood, the heat pushing back the endless cold. “It's just—”

  “I know.” Kara rocked herself. “I don't know what I'm doing. I betrayed Anylus. I murdered Sera. I watched her march away to die and I can't make peace with that.”

  “You couldn't know what that glyph would do.”

  “But I would have scribed it if I did. I executed my best friend, after she gave her soul to save my life. What kind of a monster does that make me?”

  “It makes you human.” Trell sat beside her and took her hand, unwilling to let her hurt alone. “It makes you who you are, kind and brave. You worry about everyone, even when you know you shouldn't.”

  “How do you do it?” Kara did not try to hug him again. “How do you deal with losing those you love? Your wife died, and I know you loved her.”

  “I did.”

  “Which makes what I did even worse. I shouldn't even be here. I'm being horrible and I have no right to be.”

  Trell relaxed. “You're not horrible.”

  She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Well, thanks.”

  What could he say that was real? Lying wouldn't help her and he didn't want to promise affection he couldn't deliver. Then again, he did think about Kara an awful lot when they were apart. Would Marabella forgive him?

  “I do care about you,” Trell said. “We've been through so much together, horrors people should never endure. That's why we must be careful, why we can't be certain of anything right now.”

  “Because of the trauma.” Kara smiled faintly. “Because we don't know if this is real, or if I only want to jump your bones because I'm freaking out.”

  “Right.” Trell smiled back. “We have time. We'll take it day by day.”

  “You're right. You always are. Honestly, it gets kind of annoying.”

  Trell shrugged. Kara hopped off his bed and planted a kiss atop his head. She walked for his closed door.

  “You're going?” That was what he wanted, wasn't it?

  “I probably should. I did knock you out of your bed.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I'll find a way to save you. I mean it.”

  “I believe you.” If anyone could figure out what was wrong with him, what Life's power had done to him, Kara could. “Now get some sleep.”

  “I'll try. Five guard your soul, you gorgeous man.” Kara blew him a kiss and left. He was alone, again.

  Trell watched the closed door for a time. When he finally settled back on his bed, he knew there was no possible way he could sleep. He was all knotted up.

  His feelings for Kara were impossible to define, and was that so strange? He had died, after all. Life brought him back and made him her champion specifically for the purpose of protecting Kara. Life ingrained that desire deep within Trell's soul and it remained there, even if Life did not. Life made him care about Kara.

  Yet why wouldn't he? Kara was amazing, brave and loyal and smart, and any reasonable man would fall in love with her whether the Five were involved or not. Yet Trell could not be certain of his feelings, not yet. Not with Marabella's death so recent.

  The worst part was that he couldn't remember Marabella. He couldn't remember his own wife. Almost a month ago Cantrall's army of revenants slaughtered everyone in his birth town of Carn. They killed his parents and his wife and left a Mynt flag in the carnage, along with dead Mynt soldiers. Trell knew that now, but had not then.

  He understood why Melyssa had erased his memories — the entire world was at stake — but that didn't make it easier to lose everything and everyone he had known. It didn't make it easier to miss people he couldn't remember.

  It didn't make it easier to know if he was in love.

  Trell stood and practiced steps, working the ache from his joints. If he moved long enough, exerted himself enough, the pain lessened and he could wield a sword. He would be dueling tomorrow in the martialing yard.

  That was something he could still control.

  “ARYN. LET’S WAKE UP now, shall we?”

  Aryn murmured and hunched up. Tamen, his eldest brother, would be after him if he overslept. Tamen always slapped Aryn when he wanted attention, sometimes very hard. Aryn braced for the hit.

  “You're safe, Aryn. Remember me? I'm Tania, the talented and wonderful woman who offered you a free meal. You're in my home. There are no demons here.”

  Demons. Aryn had been a demon but was not one any longer. A cool cloth soothed his head as a soft finger eased his mouth open. A trickle passed his lips, water. Wonderful water.

  Aryn swallowed and remembered why he could not open his eyes. He did not have them. After the water was gone, after the spinning slowed and he grew calm, he took the dream world.

  Tania leaned over him, a blur of dream form orange. She was alive and so was he. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “You're the one who broke my stoop with his head.” There might have been humor in her tone, but Aryn couldn't be sure. “I'm fine. I splinted my arm. It'll do until we find a Bloodmender.”

  Davazet had broken Tania's arm and tossed her like a scarecrow. Still, with one arm broken, she had dragged Aryn into her home, put him to bed, and splinted her own arm. She was amazing, but if Davazet returned...

  “We're safe,” Tania said. “I have a bubble up, but I doubt we'll need it. Whatever you did set that demon off balance. It won't return until it understands it.”

  “That's good,” Aryn said, “because I don't think it would let me do that again.”

  “Aryn Locke is the third-born son of Dupret, mayor of Locke. A powerful and wealthy man. Is Aryn Locke the man who saved my life?”

  Tania had listened to Davazet. She knew everything and there was no hiding it now. “What else did you hear?”

  “Everything after it started choking me. I also saw the glyph you scribed on Davazet's chest.” Tania leaned closer. “Where did you learn demon glyphs?”

  “I'm not Demonkin, if that's what you're thinking.” To Aryn's surprise, that was true. He had scribed a demon glyph, yet felt nothing of their influence.

  From the forbidden texts in his father's library, he kn
ew the Mavoureen influence weighed on a soul, a weight that grew heavier with each passing day. That was what Sera was dealing with, stuck in Tarna waiting for a cure.

  How could this be possible? Tania waited. She had stood beside him against a Mavoureen made flesh, risked her life and soul. He could risk telling her the truth.

  “I saw a Demonkin scribe it when she made a man into a davenger,” Aryn said, “and it seems scribing it on an actual Mavoureen doesn't have the same effect as scribing it on people. I'm not damned and I don't know why.”

  “I'll take your word for that.” Tania settled cross-legged by his bed. “Now explain the rest.”

  Aryn did. He told Tania everything that had happened on the road to Tarna, every trial, every mistake, every death. He told her of his torture in the Underside and his time as a harvenger. He told her of their fight with Cantrall, Kara's resurrection, Jair's brave sacrifice. He told her Trell was the bravest soldier he had ever met.

  When Aryn finished, Tania nodded and tapped her chin. “Cantrall was nothing like the cruel man you described. He was a good man and a good teacher.”

  “That's the part you don't believe?”

  “I believe everything.” She dabbed at his forehead with the cloth. “But the Mavoureen can ruin a man's soul when they capture it, drive it mad and twist its thoughts.”

  Aryn's memories of torture made it far too easy to agree. What evil things would he have done to escape the agony of Balazel's furnace? What would he have become?

  “They took Cantrall's soul,” Tania said, “and turned him against all he loved. The best way to destroy Solyr would be to enslave one who knew all its secrets.”

  “But how did they get in?” Aryn asked. “I've always wondered that. How did they get to Cantrall in the first place? Solyr's wards should have kept them out.”

  “Ah.” Tania hesitated. “I know a bit about that. I may tell you some day.” She set the wet cloth aside and stood. “For now we must ride to Tarna and tell your friend, Kara, what happened here.”

  Aryn nodded. That made sense. “What about Dane?”

  “They'll do fine without me. So far as I know, the Mavoureen have never entered our world in their true forms. If that was Davazet, I don't know what to think, but Kara might. Tarna's mages will. Our world's in danger.”