The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  “And it is all thanks to you.”

  EPILOGUE

  SALVATION

  Ah.”

  Mundas opened his eyes. He looked up. Something had changed.

  “He has returned.”

  “He?”

  It took him a moment to recall where he was. A meal of spiced mutton, grilled potatoes, and rice sat before him, untouched. A goblet of wine was beside it, likewise ignored in favor of a simple cup of water. All of this was upon a fine dining table in a fine room, bedecked in tapestries depicting symbols of many hands interlinked in a circle.

  “Pardon,” Mundas said as he looked across the table. “She.”

  Teneir’s eyes lit up with joy above her veil. Her claws drew deep furrows in the wood of the table. But to her credit, she did little else.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I knew my faith would be rewarded.”

  “Indeed,” Mundas said, inclining his head to her. “Your cooperation is much appreciated, though the cost of life it came for is regrettable.”

  “The cost was necessary,” the fasha said from her side of the table. “I am willing to pay any price for Ancaa’s return.”

  “Your enthusiasm is noted,” Mundas replied. “Though it is our immense hope that her return will prevent the need for any further bloodshed. To preserve life is the entire cause for the Renouncers lending their aid to you.”

  “And that is noted, as well.” Teneir raised a goblet to him. “Your insight and planning were essential to this. And finally, all the pieces are coming together.”

  “Your negotiations were fruitful, then, I take it.”

  “Indeed. Ghoukha is long dead. Mejina, likewise, is gone. The remaining fashas will look for a leader. They will find it in me.”

  “And the Venarium?”

  “Shinka has pledged to stay out of our way. Whether she intends to honor it or not will not matter once Ancaa returns.” Teneir ran a finger around the rim of her goblet. “Likewise, my contact within the Jackals has just assured me that all the remains of his gang are loyal to him and him to me.”

  Mundas frowned. “I trust in your discretion, though I lament the need to associate with murderers. I mistrust that one.”

  “As do I. He will doubtless try to betray me. But treason is only good as long as it’s hidden. I will tame him.”

  Mundas nodded, but said nothing. Teneir’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’re concerned about something,” she said. “I don’t like that look.”

  “The priestess of Talanas is a subject of discussion,” Mundas replied. “We are concerned that more may flock to her banner and divide the faithful.”

  “Her,” Teneir hissed in displeasure. “Worry not. Once I expel the Sainites and Karnerians, faith in her will falter.”

  “As you say.” Mundas rose from his chair, inclined his head. “I shall leave.”

  “So soon? But you did not even touch your food.”

  “I am not hungry at the moment. Thank you for the water, fasha.”

  “Priestess,” Teneir corrected him.

  “Pardon?”

  “Ancaa is coming. I wish to welcome her properly by the title of priestess.”

  Mundas nodded, but said nothing. He left without another word.

  He made his way through the decadent halls of Teneir’s manor at a swift pace. When a servant emerged from a nearby room and began walking alongside him, he didn’t even look up.

  “She seemed happy,” the servant said, chuckling.

  “Fanatics are easy to placate,” Mundas said. “I will not begrudge her indulgence so long as she can unite Cier’Djaal for the coming of the God-King.”

  “And you think she can?”

  “If I did not, I would not have aided her as I have,” Mundas said. “The Talanite concerns me, but not overmuch. I believe the people will see the wisdom in uniting once the God-King makes himself known.”

  The servant hummed an agreement. There was the sound of skin stretching. When Mundas looked over, the servant was gone and the late fasha Mejina walked alongside him.

  “I have received word,” the creature known as Azhu-Mahl said.

  “Troubling word, I assume.”

  “Our plans have apparently caught the attention of other Renouncers.”

  “This was not unforeseen. Who?”

  “Qulon.”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t seem concerned.”

  “The pact we swore is still in effect. Though Qulon may oppose our ideals, I trust she will not interfere with us directly. What mischief she can cause won’t be enough to stop what we’ve put into motion. We were fortunate to have avoided her notice until now.”

  Skin stretched again. Azhu-Mahl’s shape changed once more into that of a tall, grandfatherly man in the white robes of a Talanite priest.

  “I wish I shared your optimism,” he said.

  “I am not optimistic. I am certain. For too long has this world suffered under the yoke of deaf gods who hide away from their faithful. A living god, a god-king, will provide the guidance that mortalkind needs.”

  “So you say. Though you’re aware he is a demon, no?”

  “A meaningless title. I would think that you, who shed shapes like clothing, would understand the fleetingness of such things.”

  “Mm. Funny thing, what I do. If shapes were so meaningless, I wouldn’t be able to see the hope in a man’s eyes when I appear as his long-dead wife. I wouldn’t be able to convince three dragonmen to slaughter a mob. And I certainly wouldn’t have been of much use to you.”

  They emptied into the houn lobby of Teneir’s manor, halted before the door. Mundas glanced to Azhu-Mahl.

  “Your point?”

  “Titles are meaningless to you,” he said. “Much is meaningless to the Renouncers. We are… detached from mortality. Let us not forget that when we presume to save them.”

  Azhu-Mahl smiled, opened the door, and disappeared in the night. Mundas turned, looked around the houn. The circular linked arms of Ancaa were emblazoned on every tapestry and sat in sculpture on every pedestal.

  He wondered if their impending guest would find this symbol flattering when he arrived.

  But then, perhaps that, too, was meaningless.

  He closed his eyes. He took a breath.

  And he was gone.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Libbi Rich

  SAM SYKES is the author of the acclaimed Tome of the Undergates, a vast and sprawling story of adventure, demons, madness, and carnage. He lives in Arizona. He once punched an ostrich. What a great guy.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE MORTAL TALLY

  look out for

  GOD’S LAST BREATH

  Bring Down Heaven: Book 3

  by Sam Sykes

  Lenk had no idea what to call them. He could barely stand to look at them, let alone name them. Their own names they had given up long ago to become what they were today, and any word he might have had for them seemed somehow insufficient to describe them.

  Except the one leading him.

  He had decided to call this one Jef.

  It just seemed polite.

  “Wait,” Lenk said as he looked up at suddenly unfamiliar buildings. “This isn’t the way to his quarters.”

  “Not quarters,” Jef hissed. “Not today. The master is in the square. He has something you must see. He has something he must show. We must watch. We must know. We must…”

  The creature’s voice trailed off into a witless burble that Lenk strove to shut out. He hated listening to these fiends, hated looking at them, hated being reminded what they were.

  And what he had done to aid them.

  Their path wound them through the city streets, up a long staircase and into the city’s upper levels. A stone walkway circled a great plaza. And what lay within it, surrounded by great statues of benevolent robed men, Lenk could not ignore so easily.

  A wou
nd in creation, a scar that could never heal, a hole that stretched below the streets of Rhuul Khaas, beneath the earth itself, and into someplace much darker. It stretched across the plaza in a jagged scar, a gaping black hole around which the dawn hesitated to tread and left the statues and their smiling faces bathed in shadows.

  Lenk could not look at it.

  And Lenk could not look away from it.

  Every time he looked upon it, his mind slipped away from him, back through the days to the fateful night he had stood before it. Back to the night when it had bled a red light and stained the black sky. Back to the night when he had looked into a woman’s eyes, as blue and deep and full of fear as his own, and made his choice.

  His choice that had made her try to kill him.

  His choice that had summoned these abominations here.

  His choice that had freed the thing that had lurked in that dark scar.

  He turned away, hurried to catch up with Jef as the creature shambled across the walkway and between nearby buildings. But he could not outrun his thoughts.

  Often, he wondered if Shuro had escaped, if she had made it out of Rhuul Khaas unharmed. Only rarely did he wonder if she sharpened her sword for him, if she hated him for his choice.

  He suspected he already knew the answer to that.

  But he could not think on this for long. For it wasn’t long before he couldn’t think over the noise.

  A distant burble. A formless wail. A verbal poison that seeped past his clothing and into his skin, echoing in the deep sinew.

  Noises. Hundreds of them. Straight ahead.

  “Come,” Jef gurgled, shambling forward. “Come with me. He wants you. He needs you to be here… he needs you to see…”

  Lenk glanced over his shoulder, as if wondering if he could flee from this. But he knew he could not. This city was not his home. And one did not reject an invitation from its master.

  And so, keenly aware of the sword on his back, he followed Jef into the crowd.

  He lost his guide within moments, the misshapen creature disappearing into the hundreds of other misshapen creatures as their fleshy throngs closed in around him. Yet for all the glistening flesh and molten deformities pressing in on him, there were deeper horrors.

  “—master, please, master, help me—”

  They groaned.

  “—it hurts! Oh gods, what have I done, it hurts so—”

  They wailed.

  “—told me I was foolish, I was insane, they never listen, they NEVER—”

  They screamed.

  Their words clawed at his ears, at his flesh, burrowed into his sinew. Their every letter was wracked with agony, with fear, with desperation. It hurt to listen to, hurt to be around, like their every word poisoned the air around him and made each breath like agony.

  And in the space between each word, he could hear his thoughts.

  You did this.

  Between his ragged breaths, he knew.

  You brought them here.

  And when he shut his eyes, he heard it.

  You let him out.

  “Children.”

  A single word, spoken softly. Yet it rang out over the square as clear as a note from a glass bell. And the reverent and their wailing fell silent at it.

  “Stand aside.”

  And in a shuffling, awkward mass, they did. A great curtain of flesh parted, leaving a long wake of stone that stretched between Lenk and the center of the square where a dais rose.

  Lenk wasted no time in hurrying down it, keeping his ears shut and his eyes down at the street. He only knew he had reached it when he saw the shadow stretching out upon the stones before him.

  The shape of a stately robed man.

  “You’re late.”

  Whose beard writhed.

  “Did my child find you all right?”

  Lenk looked up and the first thing he noticed was Mocca’s smile.

  Set beneath gentle eyes and framed in a face with elegant, dark-skinned features, it was a warm, grandfatherly smile. The kind that perfectly complemented the soft white robe that Mocca was garbed in and matched his thin arms outstretched in benediction. Still, Lenk thought it odd that he should notice that first.

  As opposed to the beard of serpents coiling out of Mocca’s jaw.

  “It’s not your child,” Lenk replied.

  At this, the serpents hissed, perhaps offended on behalf of their host. Mocca merely smiled and shook his head.

  “Do they offend you, my friend?” he asked.

  Lenk stepped up onto the dais beside Mocca and turned and gazed over the assembly. And they, with their thousand terrified eyes, stared back. It wasn’t long before Lenk cringed and turned away.

  “They’re monsters,” he said.

  And they’re here because of you, he added.

  “You lack respect.”

  An ancient, rasping voice reached Lenk’s ears. A darker shadow loomed over him.

  He looked up into eyes that were black, as though someone had scribbled over them with coal. An old man’s face, skin gray and fraught with wrinkles, scowled down at him from its position in an elongated head. Withered limbs ending in black claws stretched out as its old man’s body, flabby and emaciated all at once, leaned forward. In lieu of legs, a great serpent’s coil brought the demon closer to Lenk.

  “It is the burden of the layperson,” the Disciple hissed, a long purple tongue flicking out of its withered mouth. “Come, let us show you what we have sacrificed.”

  “Enough.”

  Mocca raised a hand. The demon froze, inclined its massive head, and settled back upon its coils. Lenk shuddered—it hadn’t been so long ago that he was killing demons like these, wiping their stain from the earth. Now he stood alongside them.

  And their king.

  “I suppose they are hideous to you, as they are to me,” Mocca said, looking over the crowd. “But then, I suppose you only see the flesh: the twisted muscle and jagged bone.”

  “Do you not?” Lenk asked. “Can’t you hear them? They’re in pain.”

  “They were in pain long before my Disciples changed them,” Mocca said, gesturing to the demon. “The ugliness I see here is the fear and desperation that drove them to this. The ugliness is the city that cared not a bit for the mother whose children were killed in a thieves’ war, it’s the people that would not loan a man a shovel that he might bury his father.” Mocca’s expression grew cold. “It’s the world, Lenk. It’s the fear and hatred and terror they were given that drove them here, to me.”

  He spread his arms out wide over the crowd. And they raised a hooting, gibbering, wordless screech at his gesture.

  “And it is I who shall cleanse it.”

  Admittedly, Lenk didn’t intend to snort.

  Because, admittedly, it wasn’t the brightest idea to backsass a man with snakes growing out of his face.

  Yet it wasn’t rage that painted Mocca’s face when he turned to look at Lenk. Rather, it was a decidedly unamused frown.

  “I’ve had centuries to rehearse this, Lenk,” Mocca said. “Don’t rob me of the drama.”

  “You just make it sound so simple,” Lenk replied, shaking his head.

  “Is it not?”

  Lenk stared at him flatly for a moment. “Not a week ago, you crawled out of a hole to hell. I’m standing in the middle of a city that shouldn’t exist, surrounded by ungodly monsters who look at you like a god, hanging around a demon and, if that wasn’t fucked up enough, you’ve got snakes growing out of your face. There is no part of this that is fucking simple, Mocca.”

  “Khoth-Kapira,” Mocca corrected him. “And do not forget why you are standing here, why you helped me out of that pit. You know as well as I do that this world is ill. Its plagues are wars and violence. You have seen them up close.”

  Lenk could only nod weakly. So many weeks later, so many miles away, he could still remember it all: the battles between the Karnerians and Sainites that had driven him here, the brutality of the shicts and
the tulwar in the tribelands that had harried him. Just thinking about them made the sword on his back feel heavier.

  As if to remind him that this was not a world where it could be dropped so easily.

  “Mortality is defined by its brevity, Lenk,” Mocca continued, folding his hands behind his back as he looked over the crowd. “By its very nature, it is in a headlong rush to end itself as quickly as possible. The wars you have seen, the wars that will yet come, are but a symptom of a base plague that wracks this world.”

  “You sound so certain,” Lenk said.

  Mocca hesitated. “Should I not be? When I speak of a war of wars, a time of strife and of suffering so great and so vast as to boggle the minds of gods, do you truly believe such a thing could never come to pass?”

  Lenk closed his eyes. His scars ached. His shoulders sagged with the weight of his sword and all the weight of the blood it had spilled.

  “The lives I will save here, Lenk, are nothing compared to the lives I will save by preventing this cataclysm. So many will owe their lives to you, Lenk.” Mocca paused, glanced over his shoulder and regarded Lenk out of the corner of his eye. “Or perhaps you would be satisfied with just one?”

  All other pains in his body fled at the sudden chill that swept through Lenk’s body. Mocca’s words sank into him deeper than the abominations’ ever could. And as they settled in Lenk’s flesh, he knew what Mocca spoke of.

  Kataria.

  She was still out there, somewhere. Somewhere in that wasteland, filled with its violence and its hatreds and its countless people and their countless bloodthirsts. Wherever she had disappeared to, Lenk did not know. But he knew she needed his help, as he needed her.

  And he needed her to stay alive.

  And that was the reason, he told himself. That was why he had freed Mocca. That was why the abominations were here. That was why he shared the company of demons. That was why this was all worth it.

  He told himself this.

  He shifted his feet. The weight settled on his back.

  The sword didn’t believe him.

  Something touched his shoulder. Mocca squeezed his arm gently. With a hiss, his beard of serpents slid away, retreating back into his flesh. What was left was just a man with dark eyes and a gentle smile.