The creature stomped in, with its weapon raised, and looked around. Christian held his breath as it stomped towards his hiding place.
It came closer and closer. He could hear the creature's breath, far too loud and rasping for such a small thing. It turned from side to side-it was looking for him.
Christian seized his chance. He pushed the suit of armor over.
The armor hit the creature with a clang, knocking it over. It lay still, but Christian clubbed it in the head with the flat of his blade for good measure. He would have liked very much to use his sword the way it was meant to be used, but dead men didn’t speak. He couldn’t kill this demon until he’d had a chance to see why it was here and what it wanted. ...Unless he'd killed it already, but he didn't like to think about that.
He picked up the strange weapon, though he had little idea of how to use it, and tucked it into his sword belt. Then he examined the creature, trying to gain some clue as to what it was and where it had come from.
Christian paid attention to the details he hadn't been able to while he was being chased. Two tiny lights, one red, one green, blinked on the front of the creature's armor. Its gauntlets were strange, but Christian hissed through his teeth upon seeing them; whoever had made them had engineered them to perform tiny, precise motions. It was a work of craftsmanship like none he'd ever seen. Its face was covered by a blank mask.
“Truly you are a demon from hell,” he murmured. He laid down his sword and tried to take off the helmet, to see what horrors lay beneath.
It wouldn’t budge. He strained with all his strength, but it wouldn’t budge. Even using his blade to lever it wouldn't really shift it.
As he finally thought he might have gotten it loose, a loud noise, like a trumpet, sounded from inside the creature’s armor.
“Perimeter breach,” a voice said. “Perimeter breached in Corridor 413-H.”
Christian heard the stomping of a thousand demons’ feet coming towards him, like the charge of a herd of horses. He raised his sword, but, thinking better of it, sheathed it. Instead, he took out the creature’s weapon. He held it as the creature had, finger at the crook. It was a demon’s weapon, but it didn’t seem as though it would corrupt him, and he’d do penance for using it later.
He raced down the corridor, hoping to escape them. Instead, though, he ran right into their ambush.
The creatures surrounded him. They were identical: small, short, squat creatures, encased in blue metal.
Christian cursed, and raised the weapon, aiming it at the one he thought to be the leader.
“Do not move. Or I will use this,” he said.
The demons stayed silent for a long moment, but somehow, Christian got the uncomfortable feeling they were laughing at him. He knew he'd made the wrong choice as soon as the words left his mouth, and he felt as if he was a child, trying to lift his father’s sword.
There was no use in trying to use a weapon he didn’t understand. He dropped the gun and unsheathed his sword, ready to make a final stand. The demons conversed for a moment in a guttural language Christian couldn’t understand.
He murmured a hurried prayer under his breath, readying himself for the death he thought inevitable. He would go down fighting, of course, but while he still had a chance, he needed to prepare himself. He only wished he could have been shriven before this, but it was too late for that now.
Christian charged, sword raised. The demons' leader raised a weapon that looked subtly different from the first, and fired.
He felt something sharp poke into his side. The world around him swum, growing indistinct. He tried to pull whatever it was out, without much success. His hands felt like they were wrapped in cloth; his thoughts blurred.
Darkness swallowed him.
Chapter Four
Christian awoke in a bare, dimly lit room. The walls around him were white, and the floor was made of iron. His vision was still blurred, and he wiped at his eyes.
Something sharp stuck into his side, like a thorn in his flesh. He pulled it out. It was a needle, a little like the ones Linna used for sewing, but with a barbed tip like an arrow. His blood had dried on the tip. There was a glass ball at its other end; droplets of blue liquid stuck to the glass. He stared at it numbly for a long moment, before he dropped it; his hands were shaking too badly to hold onto it.
He felt weak and dazed, and his thoughts moved in circles. He stared at the wall for a long moment, unable to think of anything much, or even move. It took him an age to begin to feel like himself again; when he did, he took a deep breath, and tried to think.
It was obvious what had happened; they’d captured him. But why?
The knights of Christian's homeland, Aviganis, took prisoners of noble birth for ransom. A knight captured on the battlefield could languish in a castle dungeon for years while his relatives tried to negotiate with his captors. There were still captives from the last Moorish war, on both sides, that hadn't been freed.
It was a fate Christian would prefer to avoid, but he suspected that demons didn’t ransom prisoners. He guessed that they wanted either to torture him, or to make a bargain for his soul.
He shakily got to his knees and stared up at the roof before praying again. It wasn't the mumbling that he'd heard called a 'soldier's prayer'- the prayer that even a heretic uttered in times of stress, 'don't let me die, God'. It was a true prayer, to his patron saint, Lazarus.
The words didn't flow properly. His tongue felt leaden, and he’d never been particularly eloquent anyway. It was a cry for help, simple as he could make it, but his mind stumbled over it. Hopefully, the saints, and God in heaven, would understand what he'd meant.
Once he’d said everything he could think of, and a little more, he rose to his feet and looked around. The room had no windows and no door. Had he been put in here by magic?
The only opening, if you could call it that, was a hole at the base of one wall, at the level of his ankles. It was small enough that a housecat would have trouble crawling through. A lukewarm breeze leaked through it. When he reached up to put a hand through it, it shocked his finger.
He pulled away as quickly as he could. There was no escape there, then.
They’d taken his sword. He felt unmanned without its reassuring weight at his hip. They’d taken his sword belt, which felt like a dirty trick. They’d even taken his clothes. He was dressed in a strange, slippery one-piece, that stuck to his skin with sweat. It was dark blue and intensely uncomfortable. The sleeves covered his arms to the wrist; the breeches-like part covered his feet to the ankles. His hands and feet were bare.
Time seemed to pass more slowly than it did in a nightmare. He paced the room... practiced sword forms, as best as he could, without his blade... prayed and paced and practiced again. There was no sign of the creatures that had kidnapped him, and no sign of anyone from Court.
A few eternities later, he heard a voice.
“Psst!”
Christian flinched. His gaze flickered over the room, looking for the speaker, but he couldn't see anyone. At first he thought it was the voice of God, or of some undiscovered saint. But he saw no manifestation, no holy light or radiant glory. And besides, what saint-let alone God Himself-would say ‘psst’?
“Who’s there?” Christian put his hand to his hip, remembered his sword wasn’t there, and cursed in annoyance.
“Sorry." The voice didn't seem too apologetic, but he could pin it down a little bit more easily. It was coming from the hole in the wall. Christian could see a shadow moving in the gloom. Two catlike eyes watched him.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He wished he had any kind of weapon, even a pocketknife. He felt completely defenseless, and his shoulders hunched.
“Who are you?” he barked. “Show yourself.”
“If you insist...”
The air shimmered. Where before there had been nothing but darkness, there was a slim, white creature. It looked like a very small dragon, long and lithe, with six stubby
legs. It had a face like a lizard, and long whiskers, like a catfish's. A collar, made of the same blue, alien metal as the demons' armor, constricted its neck.
The dragon looked around the room, spotted Christian, and turned its head to one side.
“There. Are you happy?” The voice was coming from the creature, but its lips didn't move. It was obviously magical, and that confirmed his fears. Whatever it was, it was neither human nor holy.
Christian stifled an oath.
“What manner of demon are you?”
“Now that’s not very nice.” The dragon’s voice was high and piping, and a little toneless. It didn't sound human; it didn't have nearly the range of emotion that a human voice would have.
“I’m no demon, mister,” it continued. “And I need your help.”
“Help?” Christian was intrigued. What could a demon need help with? He forced himself to keep his curiosity in check; it could damn him.
“Yes. Help. Please don’t tell me that’s a foreign concept here.” The dragon’s whiskers twitched.
“It’s not.” Christian frowned, and put a hand to his sword belt. He remembered that neither sword nor sword belt was there, and mentally cursed again. “And I am pledged to succor the needy. But how do I know I can trust you?”
“You want to get out of that cage, don’t you?”
The demon had a point. Then again, that was what demons did best. They were the masters of seeming plausible, and making you agree with them, until they stole your soul away.
“What sort of help do you need?” he asked, cautiously.
The dragon reared up on its four back legs, crossing its sixth pair in front of its chest. It was a very human gesture, despite its inhuman body, and that startled Christian.
“When they feed you, it’s going to be through a hole in the ceiling. Get me onto the dumbwaiter. Then I can open the door and get you out.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
“From there, we can rescue your conspecifics-”
“My what?” Christian blinked. He squinted at the dragon, hoping that if he stared at it hard enough, it would disappear.
“The other humans?” The dragon’s tail twitched. Its voice grew annoyed. “I thought you lot were supposed to be bright.”
“...What in God’s name are you?” Christian frowned. “You don’t seem like any dragon I’ve ever heard tell of.”
The dragon made an odd snuffling noise, and its whiskers flicked from side to side. Its voice was heavy with amusement.
“I’m a Teliat.”
“A what?” Christian felt hideously out of his depth. The demons’ drug had given him a slight headache, and it didn’t help that the dragon was trying to shove all manner of new thoughts into his head. He felt almost as dizzy as he had when he'd woken up.
Christian pressed his lips together again, trying to focus.
The dragon’s tail twitched again. “I’m a creature from another world. An alien, you could say.”
Christian frowned. He put his hand on his hip, to compensate for the sword-weight that should have been there, and glared at the creature.
“Alien is a strange word to use for a creature from the depths of Hell.”
“How'd you know about Hel?” The dragon sounded perplexed for a minute; then it made that snuffling noise again. Christian was beginning to think that it was laughing at him.
“Oh. Right, your religion.” It kept snuffling. "Sorry about that-"
Christian gritted his teeth and his hands clenched into fists. His face felt very warm, and a lump churned in his stomach. His God was not there for it to mock.
“Get thee behind me, demon,” he said, using the archaic phrasing.
“I meant no offense, I swear!” The dragon held up its forelegs as if to calm him. “I'm sorry. Let’s start this conversation over. What’s your name?”
“Christian Lazare Thomaset, Lord tel Arundel,” Christian said through clenched teeth. He’d decided to be as coldly polite to the creature as possible, on the off-chance that it wasn’t a demon. If it really was just another one of God's creatures, it needed-and deserved-his help.
The creature held out a clawed foreleg.
“Miriet Tekari. It’s nice to meet you.”
It shook three of his fingers, carefully, and tilted its head to one side. For a demon, it was dreadfully small, not much bigger than a housecat. He suspected that if this meeting came to blows, he could easily defeat it.
Of course, that wasn’t how demons fought. Usually they turned any contest into a battle of wits, or worse, a moral battle. Christian knew he was no scholar, and he was most definitely a sinner. He'd come far off the worse if he tried to fight it.
This demon seemed genuinely interested in helping him, for some inscrutable reason of its own, so he’d let it. For now, he told himself. Even entertaining the idea made him want to claw his skin off and wash it, inside and out. He told himself that as soon as it put his soul at stake, he would be through. He’d rather swallow his own sword than try to fight it on its terms.
“I’m female-identified, by the way,” Miriet added. “Uh... what are your pronouns?”
“Pronouns?” Christian frowned. He had no idea what it was talking about.
"Yeah. I use female ones. 'She, her, hers'?" Miriet tilted her head to one side. "Are you 'he', 'she', 'they', 'ze'...?"
She left it hanging. Christian's mind went blank for a long moment. It took him a minute even to realize what she was asking, and when he did speak, his words came haltingly.
"Uh... 'he'?" he said. "Isn't it obvious?"
"My species doesn't really have a concept of gender," she said. "If I don't ask, I get it wrong. You know how it is."
"Right..." Christian attempted to wrap his mind around this.
Not only was he in the company of a demon, it was a female demon. Or a female-analogue, whatever that meant.
He’d have to protect her, even to the giving of his own life. After all, he’d taken an oath to protect damsels in distress, and they were both in dire distress.
Christian's hand clenched into a fist, until his nails bit into his palm. This was a nightmare made flesh, and he was helpless to fight it. All he could do was hold on. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, trying to anchor himself.
A panel opened in the ceiling with a wheeze like a dying horse’s last gasp. Miriet darted back into the shadows. Christian looked up.
The opening was about two handspans wide, and the air above it shimmered. Christian knew he wouldn’t be able to fit through-he couldn't even squeeze half of his torso in-but it looked like Miriet could squeeze through it easily.
A metal tray slowly came through the hole, suspended by two whisper-fine threads. He tried to touch one, and found that it was stronger than it looked. It was like pushing against a steel thread when you’d expected spider’s silk.
The tray held a lump of gray-brown bread and a mug. The mug was full of water, and it was made of something clear and hard that looked like glass. It was typical prison fare, but at least his captors weren’t planning to starve him.
He took a cautious bite of the bread, and gagged. He spat the bite out onto the floor. It tasted like rotten wood, and he scraped his tongue against his teeth to get the taste off. He knew he needed to keep his strength up, but there was no way in the world he was going to eat that stuff.
The water, on the other hand, was delicious. It tasted as clear and pure as the water from any legendary spring or enchanted pool. Christian drained the mug and placed it on the tray.
The bread still squatted there like a toad, and the tray didn’t budge.
“It works on a weight limit,” Miriet whispered. “They want to make sure that you're eating.”
Christian took the mug off the tray and weighed it in his hands, trying to figure how much Miriet weighed. It was heavy, but not in the same way glass was.
“Miss Tekari...” he whispered. He wasn't sure if they were being watched-though the thought made hi
s skin crawl, and he dearly hoped they weren't. Either way, it was safest to keep his voice down. He wasn’t sure quite what to call her, so he used the title one would use for an inferior, such as a serving girl.
It was supposed to be an insult, but she seemed to take it as a compliment.
“Yes?” She looked up at him, whiskers flicking from side to side.
“May I pick you up?”
Miriet nodded-another strangely humanlike gesture, coming from such an inhuman form.
He picked her up gently, between her forelegs and middle legs, the same way he’d held the acoata lizards from the manor’s gardens when he was a boy. She clung to his hand tightly, her sharp claws pinching his skin. He winced, but didn't let go.
Christian placed her on the tray, shoving the bread aside. Her skin changed color, matching the grain of the wood, as the tray started to move upward.
“I’ll come back soon. Promise,” she said.
Then she was gone, and he was plunged back into solitude.
Chapter Five
Please, return me to the world of men. Help me to rescue my sister and my king and my ... comrade. Give me the strength I need to overcome in the battles ahead, both the physical and moral, I beg you-
Christian was on his knees.
He’d heard it said that one needed to pray with a pure heart, and his heart was anything but pure. He was tormented by vile passions, a constant longing for sin, and hatred of what was right. He hated himself for it. But if ever anyone needed intercession, it was his family, now.
He hoped Saint Lazarus, and God Himself, would understand, and forgive him for his unworthy prayer.
Christian had run out of words, now, and stayed on his knees, waiting for any sort of answer. But not only was there no visitation-that was a blessing he'd long-since given up hope of receiving-he didn't even feel the warmth of the Spirit around him, as he had before. It was as if Heaven was busy and didn’t particularly care to answer him.
Perhaps it was just that the Lord helped those who helped themselves. He told himself that, but even in his own ears, it sounded like a lie.
The Court Of Stars (The Commonwealth Quartet Book 1) Page 3
