[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants

by Kyle B. Stiff

  “Ah, but what do you know of me, lonely ghoul? I became king by my own hand, and I didn't do it because the crown was handed to me without struggle. I faced pain and fear and loss and violence, but I got back up every time. You have tasted a little suffering yourself. Has it poisoned your soul, ghoul? Or will you ever be able to smile again? I can. You have fought against the world. Everyone is your enemy… and I know exactly how you feel. Now you have come to a place where no one can stand with you. Now that you are fighting alone, with no help, will you ever be able to find joy ever again? I can. Can you still laugh, without bitterness, though the world is dark? I can. You cannot even face the people who live in the Valley, and yet I created them all. You cannot gain audience with the rulers of the world, ghoul, and yet I outwit and overpower them all. Men more powerful and more experienced than you think of me. They lose sleep worrying over me. Men who take no notice of you say of me, “Where the slain are, there is he.” Who then is able to stand against me? Tell me, if you can!”

  King Wodan finished, and Vendicci sat in silence. The walls of his world had collapsed around him. His intentions were shattered, and his sense of self was cast into a void. Vendicci wept.

  “Now I know,” said the ghoul, not fighting the tears, “that you can do all things. You ask me these things, but I… but I…” Vendicci realized that, before, he had only seen a dim image of the King, a reflection of rumors and envious stories. Now, finally, he saw him clearly, face to face. Still the tears came and ran down his wrinkled face, cleansing him of a feeling of filth he'd never realized was there. “I repent,” he finally said. “I am only… I am only dust and ashes.”

  Wodan looked away while Vendicci cried, then turned toward Nobody and Haginar. “I understand what you were trying to do,” said Wodan. “And I am grateful. But a secluded monk and a child simply don’t have enough life experience to understand this kind of suffering. You cannot pass judgment on the kind of pain that leads to acts of revenge.”

  Nobody looked away in shame. Then they heard footsteps marching up the hillside. Nobody's shame redoubled and he pressed balled-up fists into his eyes.

  “There it is,” said someone. “There’s the signal, the orange light.”

  A dozen soldiers of San Ktari marched up with rifles in hand. Behind them stood a gang of black robes. “There he is,” said a black robe, pointing his finger like a claw. “There’s the killer!”

  The soldiers surrounded Vendicci. One pressed the end of a shotgun against the back of his head while another clamped a manacle around his throat. A black robe sidled up to Nobody. “Good work,” he said.

  The orange robe dug his face still further into his fists. “Friend?” said Vendicci, eyes darting from Nobody to his captors.

  “Shut up!” a soldier shouted at him. “Get up! Walk!”

  The black robes muttered angry prayers while the soldiers led Vendicci away. Once the last of them had gone, Nobody swallowed the last of his tears and disappeared into the night.

  Wodan kicked dirt onto the fire. “Let's go,” he said to Haginar. “I’ll take you back to your father. There’s one last thing I have to do before I leave this place.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Passover

  Wodan sat on the ledge of a wide window in the Temple of the Summons. He leaned against the stone frame, facing both the stone chamber on his right and, on his left, a grand view of gray mountainside and cloud cover tinged deep orange and red. A few orange robes passed by quietly. No one disturbed him. He had snuck inside by leaping ravines and climbing over paths that no human could follow. He had wanted no trouble from San Ktari soldiers who now occupied the lower levels of the Temple. The protests were over, and a heavy calm had fallen on the Upper Valley. It seemed that while Wodan was in the Vale, Kommander Won Po had achieved some measure of conquest through diplomatic channels.

  Wodan watched a group of soldiers talking as they stood on a balcony far below. His mind drifted. He wondered why the High Priest had not sent his Cognati thugs to pick up the ghoul. It would have been easy for Jared to subdue him. Instead, foreign soldiers and monks had cooperated to bring him in.

  He turned away from the soldiers and closed his eyes. The answer came quickly. It's because the High Priest and his black robes want their conquerors to become used to the idea of working for them and doing favors for them. The High Priest knows that conquest is inevitable, so he must have extended the request to Won Po in exchange for partial access to the Temple and legalization of the conquest. It re-establishes a relationship between Srila and San Ktari, but it’s by the High Priest's design.

  Wodan smiled, imagining Jared's discomfort at the partnership. Then his smile faded. He wondered how Jared would have turned out if he'd been a citizen of the Black Valley. If his potential had been spotted early on, could his arrogance and violent nature have been turned into a heroic willingness to help his fellow humans against demonkind?

  But we don't know how to train Cognati, he said, discarding the foolish idea. We don't even know what distinguishes them from the rest of us.

  Wodan knew things would get ugly if Jared or one of the Cognati spotted him, but so far he'd been left alone. He thought back on how he'd snuck into the Temple. After training with Setsassanar, it was shocking to see how unaware people were. Everyone was lost in thought, unmindful of Wodan slipping from one hall to the next. He'd seen many paintings of the Redeemer on his way here. Each painting came from a different era, each depicted different messiahs caught up in the same story of prophecy, rebellion, and execution, a series that embodied the same template… the Redeemer, who sought to wake humanity from its slumber, and died because he spoke uncomfortable truths.

  He saw Setsassanar's face in almost all of the paintings.

  Wodan wondered what his childhood-self would think if he went to church and somebody told him that the nice guy in the robes would one day be his personal combat instructor. He laughed quietly, a venting of mixed emotions. But the feelings were not so disorienting that he became wrapped up in them. He wondered if meeting Lucas and hearing about his philosophy had had an effect on him. Whatever the case, it now seemed foolish to worry about who or what had started all of the Redeemer-oriented religions that everyone from the Ugly to the flesh demons to the Temple of the Summons hijacked for their own purposes.

  It doesn't matter what shape of shadow the form casts, he thought. Only the form behind the shadow matters. I'll do what I have to do.

  At once he was greeted with the vision of his own large hand slowly crushing the world, a chalky wad of dry dirt that blew away in a soft breeze.

  As he dropped off to sleep, he saw the lion-god run in terror from a small, weak man. It was a memory, but the colors were vivid, the image in hyper-rich detail. The strange event seemed so obvious when he was on the edge of dreaming. He woke before truly dropping off and saw monks arranging things on the far side of the room. He feared a trap, then saw that they were taking no notice of him. They wore robes of either purple or yellow, and they set up wooden racks lined with bells and chimes. They spoke little, mostly whispers or grunts. Others arrived with more musical instruments, but none that he was familiar with. He saw pipes made of polished metal arranged in bizarre shapes, steel drums and beating-pipes that looked as if they might have come from ancient starships or the bones of clockwork automatons. Without a look in Wodan's direction or any verbal preparation, the monks sat down and played.

  First a knobby-headed purple robe used an ornate stick to stroke a brass gong in a slow circle. This teased out an eerily organic bass rumbling. The others seemed to wait as if in expectation, then a young yellow robe blew into a long set of curving pipes. It sounded as if something was waking, but never fully rising; an ancient being lost in deep, dark waters. Time faded in those depths. This was not the sort of carefully controlled musical beat that Wodan was used to. This was swirling stillness, the eternal note of an ocean slowly rippling against the shore, or the background hiss of radiation lef
t after the world's creation. Then a yellow robe joined in with tinkling cymbals, small hollow notes, spattering raindrops. Wodan began drifting into sleep once again as he soaked in the music. He felt grateful. The monks were performing a ritual and his role as audience was purely accidental. Like an act of nature, he knew that if he had not been here to hear the music, then it would still have occurred, unobserved. It would have been just as real as if he had never existed to hear it, but now it was holy for having entered the Temple of his awareness.

  He must have fallen into a deep sleep, because when he woke the musicians were gone and night had long since fallen. The sky seemed unnaturally bright. With a start he realized that the ubiquitous cloud cover had lifted. The black sky was streaked by vivid pinpricks of light. Gray slabs of mountaintops stretching out endlessly, a dizzying sight. He had gotten so used to fog that now the night seemed far too clear.

  Wodan felt eyes on him before he became aware of what was sitting on the windowsill right next to him: A small old man wearing a black robe and a gray cloak. His little feet hung off the floor and his large, milky eyes were glued to him. His mouth hung open slightly so that he could see long teeth without gums. Wodan distinctly felt his own great size and eternal youth by looking into the reversed mirror of the tiny old man.

  Wodan never introduced himself. He knew the old man knew his identity the same way that Wodan knew he sat alongside Globulus, the High Priest of Srila.

  They looked at one another for a long time. Wodan considered that they were both considered two of the most influential minds in the wasteland. Both were completely ideologically opposed to one another, and both had spent years cultivating others and changing the landscape in preparation for a new age.

  The old man spoke first.

  “Have you ever felt as if you were in the presence of someone who could destroy the world?” he said, measuring each word with careful deliberation.

  Wodan was immediately put off by him. Their species had its back against the wall now that the “easy days” of living alongside demonkind were over, and now this old man, who had somehow perverted Vito, one of humanity's greatest soldiers, into thinking it was his duty to destroy civilization itself, was now trying to chide Wodan… for what? For killing a few of the creatures who profited from humanity's suffering?

  “Yes, I have,” said Wodan, looking him up and down.

  Globulus recoiled. “As if you would be capable of understanding me or my motives,” he said, equally perplexed by Wodan's perspective.

  “I don't understand you,” said Wodan. “But I might understand your motives. Did you send a ghoul to kill me?”

  A miniscule flicker of the eyelids. Wodan was impressed by Globulus's self-control. “No,” he said. “No, I did not.” A note of disappointment in his exhalation at the end made Wodan trust his answer, but it also supported his idea that the old man had at least planned on using the ghoul at some point. So, Wodan thought, he does know that I killed Vito, then.

  “Just let the poor thing alone,” said Wodan. “You don't have the will to kill it. I understand that. But don't let it get out, either. Give it food, a good bed, let it look at some picture books – but all behind a locked door.”

  “What do you care? After the beatings you've given it, why should you care what's done with it now?”

  “It crossed a line and deserved some pain,” said Wodan. “That's life. But there's no sense in devising more ways to make it suffer.”

  “We don't have to. Life already is suffering.”

  “Is that why you taught Vito to end life on a grand scale? To end suffering?”

  “Ah… but could a brute like you ever really understand?”

  Wodan was surprised by the childish response, and was immediately reminded of the cave goblin. He studied Globulus's features, and by his self-assured expression he could see that the old man was not baiting him. Perhaps Globulus had lived in his own head for so long that he was used to thinking that everyone besides himself was a mindless goon. Had he grown so used to being deferred to and revered as an intellectual that he had become like a sleep-walking automaton?

  “Suffering may be innate to living,” said Wodan, “but I don't think it’s the basis for existence.”

  “Typical macho posturing,” said Globulus, laughing. Again Wodan was surprised at how quickly Globulus had defined something, and thus sheltered himself from experiencing the thing as-it-is rather than how he expected it to be. Wodan was a powerful man, and a king as well; therefore he must be “macho”. Globulus is in dire need of a conversation with Lucas, he thought. But would he be open to ideas he was not already comfortable with?

  “The thing about people like you,” said Globulus, smiling slightly in anticipation of teaching an ignorant savage, “is that you always mistake force of arms for bravery. You strut around so full of yourself, fighting your fellow man so that you never have to stop and think about what you're really doing. Just because you don't know you suffer doesn't mean you don't suffer, and it certainly doesn't mean you aren't forcing suffering onto others. Hm? You see?”

  “We have inconvenienced you, my people and I.”

  “Ah, well. It's natural for people who have become wealthy to afterwards seek redemption, isn't it? So you have come to Srila. Ah – you smile. You don't believe me.”

  “I sought novelty.” And power, he thought.

  “What you truly seek requires bravery, my boy. That is what we are here for. Submission to the new aeon requires something from us that we are terrified to give.”

  Now Wodan was truly becoming disturbed. “New… aeon? You can't possibly mean… submission to what the demons are doing to us?”

  “Young man, if force of arms could stop them, then humanity would have claimed the earth as his domain long ago.”

  Wodan felt both dread and boredom – the latter because he had heard Barkus say very nearly the same thing over a decade ago. It's as if they don't see any difference between a human who is organized and prepared for the future and a human who has given up and drinks until he passes out in the street. They think that the mere existence of past failures erases any hope for victory. Is it because they hate the idea of responsibility, or simply because they hate themselves?

  Wodan put his thoughts aside because Globulus was in fact on the trail that he wanted to follow. He braced himself. “I see the truth in that,” he said. “Did the king of Hargis see no wisdom in that?”

  Globulus locked milky eyes onto him and pursed his mouth slightly. Wodan could tell that he was now truly being analyzed. Wodan believed that Globulus was wondering if he would be exposed and humiliated; the truth was that Globulus was wondering if Wodan would kill him. Tales that stated the wasteland king came from a civilized land beyond the sea were difficult for Globulus to believe, and were most likely the product of a narcissistic imagination developing a cult of personality. Globulus now wondered if Wodan (an outlandish, made-up name) was actually a loyalist soldier of Hargis. He may have followed Vito and waited for an opportunity to kill him. No wonder the dogman Naarwulf walked bowed-over with such existential guilt! He would have helped Wodan murder Vito, of course.

  But Wodan had not killed Globulus yet. If he had plans for revenge, he was certainly going about it in a lazy manner.

  “No,” said Globulus. “No, the king of Hargis was intent on his own people's destruction. He had a chance to save them. His own pride forced his hand, and now Hargis is no more.”

  “But Hargis was destroyed by demons long before we had any idea that they would gather in such large numbers.”

  “I warned Vito.”

  Now Wodan had the sense that they were talking in circles, each making simple observations about worldviews that were completely different.

  “Vito never said anything about a warning,” said Wodan.

  “Perhaps he would have, if you hadn't murdered him.”

  “Vito killed himself,” said Wodan, hoping that Globulus understood he did not mean it literally.
“He was insane with self-loathing, lashing out at the world because he was sick. I'd give anything to have him by my side, healthy and ready to use his gifts for something useful.”

  Globulus had not expected such a response to his accusation. The two looked at one another in silence.

  Finally Globulus spoke. “Do you want to know what happened to Hargis?”

  “I do.”

  Globulus turned away. “Then I will have to tell you what happened to me. No one else knows this… no one would understand. It is… too much… to understand.”

  “I'll listen.”

  Wodan leaned back against the stone wall. Globulus found the gesture almost offensive, as if Wodan was trying to show him just how composed he could be. He felt envy. It's no wonder Jared hates him so, Globulus thought, chiding himself. His expression! It's infuriating that he can pretend to be so open, as if he's allowing me to speak!

  “Fine,” Globulus said, sighing. “I haven't always been the High Priest of the Temple. I'm… ah, I'm too old to take the title seriously. But I was once a member of a fraternal group called The Order of the Secret Flame. Have you heard of it? No, of course you wouldn't have. We were charged with safeguarding the knowledge of humanity and passing it from one generation to the next. Now I write treatises on the nature of God that, when I'm dead, will be considered holy writ. I'm sure my former brothers would be astounded if they knew that an… an atheist was now High Priest of the Temple of the Summons.”