Demonkin

by T. Eric Bakutis

  “Five take me.” Aryn sat up with a grunt. “How many times must I save it?”

  Tania brushed his blistered cheek with a finger, an unexpected touch that tingled. “You'll save the world again, soon enough. Now, you're sitting. Can you walk?”

  “Probably.” Aryn swung his trembling legs off the bed. “I don't feel broken.”

  “Then we'll head to Dane tonight, take horses and provisions. Kendra trusts me and Zeb won't question her. If we ride hard and rest perhaps six hours each night, we'll reach Tarna in five days.”

  “It takes a bit longer,” Aryn said. “Walking.” The way she seemed certain of everything reminded him of Kara, though not in an unpleasant way.

  “Trust me, Aryn Locke.” Tania rested her working hand on his shoulder. “I'll get you to Tarna.” Her hand felt warm and soft. “It might even be a pleasant trip.”

  Aryn didn't know what to make of this. She couldn't be attracted to him. He was a monster now.

  “You're very kind.” Aryn looked down at the bed.

  “Yes.” She pulled back her hand. “I am.”

  Aryn somehow knew she was smiling, and that felt better than it should. He missed a woman's touch and knew he would never enjoy that again. Not now.

  Tania sat on the bed beside him, closer than he found comfortable. Her proximity made his body tingle and he couldn't trust that. What did she want from him?

  “I do have one question before we leave,” Tania said. “The sensitive kind.”

  Aryn shifted on a bed that now seemed much smaller than before. “Ask.”

  “The woman you gave your soul to the demons to save. Sera. What happened between the two of you?”

  “Nothing.” Aryn didn't dare look at Tania's dream form. “She's safe in Tarna, and I pray Melyssa finds a way to cure her. But if not ... she's going to kill herself.”

  “That's terrible,” Tania said, “but that's not what I asked.” She pressed two fingers to his blistered chin and turned him to face her. “Why isn't she with you?”

  Aryn clenched his teeth. “She loves Byn.” He slapped Tania's hand away and stood, blood rushing to his face. “She always will.” He wanted to walk out of Tania's home but didn't know where to go. He needed a horse.

  Tania was mocking him, pretending to be interested when she saw nothing but a charred and broken man. Of course Sera hadn't stayed with him. Why would she?

  “I understand perfectly.” Tania stood but didn't approach. “Yet doesn't this make you all the more impressive? You gave yourself to torture for a woman who did not love you back. You loved her that much.”

  Tania turned him around, slid her working arm around his waist, and kissed him on his blistered forehead. Her lips were warm and moist. Aryn froze.

  “I doubt there are a hundred men in this world who would do that for the woman they loved. I doubt there are ten.” She smelled like grass and earth, a comforting scent. “What you look like now doesn't matter. You are a good man, brave and true, and there's no reason for you to give up on finding love again.”

  Tania kissed him on his blistered mouth, fingers resting on the back of his scarred head as she held his lips to hers. It felt very, very good. Finally, she stepped back and adjusted her splint.

  Aryn couldn’t say anything.

  “See?” She sounded amused. “Everything still works.”

  Aryn tried to remember words. He had never thought anyone would kiss him like that again. He was not sure anyone had ever kissed him like that.

  “Now get your robes on.” Tania pulled on a travel cloak and took up her quarterstaff. “You've incited enough mobs.” She walked out the door of this small room.

  Traveling. Yes, it was far past time for that. Tania's gentle kiss reminded Aryn of his first romance at Solyr — a comely young woman named Gery Taen — and that turned his skin cold. Gery had taught him that most women at Solyr only sought him out because they hoped to inherit his fortune or his father. They wanted a noble's life.

  Did Tania think she had some chance to inherit his father's fortune, even though Aryn was a third son? Did she hope to gain favor with the nobility, or did she hope to use his connection with Kara to get her closer to King Haven? What was her scheme?

  “Aryn!” Tania called. “Let's be off.”

  Aryn pulled on the cloak Tania had left for him. He wouldn't be tricked, not again. Whatever Tania wanted from him, she wasn't going to get it.

  Aryn walked into her front room to find her waiting at an open door. “What if Davazet comes after us?”

  “Then you'll destroy him!” Tania strolled out the open door. “Or he'll devour our souls.”

  Aryn frowned and followed her.

  Chapter 7

  “JYLL!” HER MOTHER shouted. “Wake up!”

  Little Jyll opened her eyes. Their house burned around them and a Mynt soldier died on the floor. Marel stood over him with a bloody axe in hand. She was alive. Her oldest sister and mother were alive!

  Yara pulled her out of the cupboard and placed little Jyll on her shoulders. Jyll wrapped her arms around her mother's neck and buried her face in her mother's floury hair. She knew better than to cry.

  “Where now?” Yara asked.

  Marel grimaced at the broken door. “Out there. If we can get to Nat and Lehma, we can get out of here.”

  “They're alive?” Little Jyll could not believe it. “You said they died!”

  “Don't talk nonsense.” Marel's lopsided, cocksure grin gave Jyll hope. “No one kills a Malconen woman with a blade in her hand.”

  Marel led them through the broken door, Yara following with Jyll on her shoulders. Jyll gasped at the devastation the Mynt had wrought in Talos. In the distance, the tall wooden palisades that warded the town were shattered.

  Homes burned everywhere and smoke thickened the air. Giants in blood-red armor, Mynt legionnaires grown impossibly large, stalked and hacked away at the last of their small militia. They were killing people, people Jyll knew, but her mother was still alive and her sister was too. Little Jyll knew it was selfish to be grateful for that when so many others were dead, but she was. Grateful.

  “The north gate.” Marel jogged off at an easy pace and Yara followed, one hand holding Jyll and the other gripping her knife. Screams sounded all around them as legionnaires kicked in doors and people died, but no one challenged them.

  Nat fought at the north gate, facing down a massive soldier with nothing but a pair of iron daggers. Even at thirteen she was faster than the wind, her red braid whirling behind her like a tail. The giant's lumbering strikes could not catch her as her knives stabbed his knees, his elbows. Nothing could drop him.

  Marel rushed forward. “Distract it!”

  Jyll wanted to cheer as Marel and Nat surrounded the giant, Nat stabbing his knees and forcing it to turn its back on Marel. Marel swung her axe and took off its helmeted head.

  Blackish blood spurted as the dead soldier slammed onto his knees, then his chest. The gate was clear. They were going to escape!

  Nat ran over, a wisp of a girl. She was skinnier than Marel but tall and quick, and a match for any boy in Talos. Her freckled face was flushed from exertion.

  The gate pushed open. Lehma was pushing it from outside, her thick boots digging in the mud. She was sixteen and muscular as a boy, the only Malconen sister with dark hair. Lehma took after the father stolen from them years ago, and shared his large frame.

  “Move!” Lehma roared.

  Together, Jyll and her family fled into the burning fields outside Talos. Crops had grown here, corn and barley. Now all that grew was flames.

  “Where do we go?” Yara asked.

  “Pale Lake.” Lehma led them to a wagon wrecked by Mynt giants, then motioned them down behind it. “No one will look for us there. We'll be safe.”

  “Then we'd best get moving.” Yara set Jyllith down and Jyllith stumbled, confused. She was a woman once more, tall and slender and practiced at death. Why had she been scared of the Mynt?

&nb
sp; “Hurry!” Nat pleaded. She took the lead.

  They hurried down a muddy road choked with smoke and ash. This world blurred at the edges of Jyllith’s vision yet the ash she breathed felt real, catching in her throat. Hard rock pushed against her tired feet.

  Something was wrong with this world, but Jyllith couldn't remember what. Her mind felt muddy and unfocused. That bothered her for some reason she couldn't recall.

  “You all right?” Marel asked. “You're slowing down.”

  “I'm fine.” Yet the farther they moved the stranger the terrain became. Trees bent oddly. The path shimmered.

  Rain — Jyllith's home province, the place she had grown up — was a mass of rainforests bordered by open grassland. The older tribes lived in treetop villages high above the ground. They built around trees as thick as castle walls.

  The newer tribes, those who regularly met and traded with people from other provinces, made villages in the grassland beyond the forests. Talos had been one such village. To the forest tribes, Jyllith and her family were Flatlanders — those who left the safety and bounty of the trees to make their lives beneath open sky. Yet all from Rain aided and supported each other.

  They should be heading south, to the great rainforests and safety, not Pale Lake. In Mynt's long war to conquer Rain, they had never truly conquered the forest tribes. They had settled for the Flatlanders.

  “Mother?” Jyllith asked.

  Yara shushed her and kept them walking. “Wait until we're away from the village.”

  Jyllith glanced behind them. No Mynt pursued and Talos was little more than a smoking pyre in the distance. She looked ahead and stopped walking. She would walk no more until she knew why everything felt wrong.

  “What are you doing?” Marel spun on her and started back, fists clenched. “C'mon!”

  “No.” Jyllith stood her ground. “Something's wrong with what's happening to us.”

  The Mynt weren't killing people back in her village. Cantrall's revenants were doing that. Someone showed Jyllith that truth, someone she needed to remember. Her grandmother? No, her grandmother was years dead.

  Nat grabbed Jyllith's hand and tugged. “Did you hit your head? Keep moving.”

  “Where? Pale Lake?” Jyllith focused her thoughts as Cantrall taught her, breathing in deeply, then out. She made herself stop seeing what she wanted to see and did all she could to see what was actually there.

  In the years Jyllith served as Cantrall's apprentice he had taught her methods to focus through drugs, exhaustion, even torture. She breathed and counted blades of grass. Pale Lake was important, but not for the reasons Yara said. Jyllith had to go there, but why?

  Her family was dead. Yara, Nat, Lehma and Marel — all of them were dead. Their deaths were the reason Jyllith had damned herself a dozen times over. She might be awake, walking, but she was not seeing.

  “Move, damn you.” Marel turned on her, shaking an axe stained with red blood. “You're going to get us caught!”

  Revenants bled black, not red. More wrongness. The details of this world were melting together.

  Lehma grabbed Jyllith's arms and locked them behind her. Why would she do that? Yara walked toward her, knife raised, eyes narrow and hard.

  “I won't let you endanger this family,” Yara said. “Start walking or I'll drag you.”

  “I did not endanger anyone.” It surprised Jyllith how easy that was to admit. “Revenants attacked, you all died, and Cantrall took me. It wasn't my fault!”

  “Who is this Cantrall?” Yara asked. New blood trickled down her face, one thin stream and then more. “You are changing the story.”

  Jyllith trembled in Lehma’s grip as fresh blood pooled at the edges of Yara’s nose. Flesh slipped away below her gray eyes. Her mother’s skull split, baring bloody gray matter.

  Jyllith understood. Every time she questioned something, she made this world less real. Who would create a world so horrible as this?

  “This is no story!” Jyllith bucked in Lehma's arms. “This was our lives, and I won't let you use those against me! You aren't my mother!”

  “You let us die while you cowered in that cupboard.” Yara leaned close, her voice a low hiss. “Now you disown us?”

  “I did not kill you!” Jyllith broke from Lehma's arms and backed away. “I was eight years old!”

  Marel had a giant gash in her head now, and a necklace of blood wrapped Nat's throat. A nightmare was too simple for horrors such as these. This was something else, something real. How to escape? How to wake up?

  “You were old enough to fight,” Marel said.

  “Old enough to die,” Lehma added.

  “I'm very disappointed in you.” Yara dashed forward and throttled Jyllith. Jyllith gurgled like her mother had once, failing to breathe.

  More flesh peeled from Yara’s bloody face, wet veins and raw muscle pulsing underneath. “Join us,” her mother whispered. “We miss you.”

  Black spots danced before Jyllith’s eyes as impossibly strong hands crushed her neck. As much as she had thought she wanted it, she was not ready to die. She took the dream world and scribed a bubble of air.

  The world exploded. Jyllith opened her eyes, gasping and choking, as thunder rumbled around her. Her mother landed on the blasted earth and rolled end over end. Yara tucked her knees against her chest and sat.

  The spectral storms of the Unsettled Lands lit Jyllith's surroundings in purple and green and gray. Cracked rock formed the ash-covered ground. Jyllith's camp site, her pack, and everything else was gone.

  As the thunder faded, Yara's corpse bared rotting teeth. Her false mother’s flesh caught fire, sloughing off her blackened body in waves. A nightmare uncurled on the broken ground, and when it stood it was twice as tall as Jyllith. It had thin black legs that bent backward at the knees.

  Jyllith stepped back, trembling. A demon smiled at her now. Was she already in the Underside?

  This demon looked like a twisted, walking tree. It had an emaciated black torso and stringy arms and fingers that resembled gnarled tree limbs. Its oval eyes glowed yellow and its head sported horns longer than a buck's. It bared sharp yellow teeth.

  “Malkavet,” Jyllith whispered.

  She could not mistake it for anything else. She had come across sketches of this horrific Mavoureen in the library of Terras. Now it smiled at her in a real world that was far more nightmare than dream.

  Davengers surrounded Jyllith, massive demon hounds who had once looked like her sisters. Now they were four-legged beasts with dark skin, thick horns, and dagger-sized teeth. Malkavet was a master of deception, illusion, and nightmares, and it had come here to deceive her.

  Why would it do that?

  “I am impressed.” Malkavet sketched a gracious bow, bending like a tree in a fierce storm. “Few maintain the presence of mind to tear through a waking dream.” It rose and winked an oval yellow eye.

  Jyllith found her voice. “What did you do to me?” How could Malkavet be in the Five Provinces? How could it make the real world look so much like a dream?

  Malkavet waved her concern away. “I offered you a bauble. My master desires the pleasure of your company, and I thought this a pleasant way to obtain it. A lovely walk with those you love.”

  Jyllith scribed two Hands of Breath. They hovered before her, vortexes waiting to be unleashed. “I'm not going anywhere with you.”

  “I'm truly terrified, you foolish, luscious girl.” Malkavet spread its spindly arms. “Destroy me.”

  “Don't think I won't.” That was an empty bluff, but it gave Jyllith time to take a few steps back and evaluate her options. How could she escape?

  The storm roaring overhead would kill anyone without Melyssa's blessing, so humans could not help her here. Jyllith had never learned to scribe the Hand of Heat and certainly couldn't channel enough blood to destroy a davenger. She could run, but these demons were faster.

  Malkavet glanced at its davengers. “Take her down, please. But gently. I want to see her
struggle.” Three demonic hounds advanced on Jyllith.

  Jyllith turned her Hands of Breath on herself and catapulted her body out of reach. She spun in midair and spread her arms, channeling more Hands of Breath one after the other. Blood left her body in a sickening rush.

  A vortex caught the first davenger, spinning it about. Another vortex hit the second, flattening it against the cracked earth. Her last two Hands of Breath converged on Malkavet from either side, but the demon turned to shadow.

  Jyllith spotted her camp in the distance from her elevated vantage point. She had walked in Malkavet's dream for quite some time, but her escape couldn't start until she gathered her things. She could not leave without her provisions, her quarterstaff, and Melyssa's head.

  Jyllith dropped into a controlled fall, using another Hand of Breath to guide her gliding body to the south. It was difficult, but she had trained years to do this. She landed on a cushion of dense air, snatched up her belongings, and sprinted for her life.

  Davengers huffed behind her, closing. Spending blood and sprinting would only exhaust her, and then these demons would run her down. What now?

  Jyllith took the dream world and scribed a Hand of Breath, igniting it and sending another vortex at the closest davenger. It tumbled away and then Jyllith unslung her quarterstaff, screaming a challenge with her raw throat. Her blood roared in her ears.

  Each breath burned as the second davenger bounded toward her, an eager, snarling mass of teeth and claws. Jyllith stepped forward and swung hard, accomplishing nothing. The demon's speed and bulk flattened her.

  Her staff tumbled away as the davenger crushed her against the ground, hot drool stinging her face. It burned where it touched her, tearing a scream from her lips.

  Malkavet clapped its thin hands in mock appreciation. It did not walk so much as slip from shadow to shadow, place to place, and it loomed over her now. It snapped its fingers. Its davenger leapt off Jyllith.

  “Get up,” Malkavet said. Eagerly.