by Paul S. Kemp
“Uh…”
Even in the dark and the rain the Afterbirth could read the horror as it took root and grew on the man’s bearded face and his eyes widened into shadowed, startled holes. The man took his hand from his pocket, took a tentative step back, and swallowed. The smell of fear-summoned sweat surrounded him like a fog now.
“What in the Gods are…?”
The Afterbirth started to answer, for a moment forgetting himself and thinking he could converse with this frail man. A dozen mouths opened at once, emitting a rain of words in languages the Afterbirth alone spoke and the man lurched back as if the words had struck him a physical blow. He stumbled, mouth open, eyes wide, his face a mask of raw fear, and still the Afterbirth gargled and babbled and growled at him.
The man whirled and ran, babbling and garbling himself, syllables in the inarticulate language of terror. He slipped in the mud and wet as he went, and the wind tore his hat from his head, and it blew to the Afterbirth’s blocky feet, stuck against his boots as if the gust were presenting him with a gift. He bent and picked it up in his twisted fingers and placed it on his head but it was too small of course and the fact enraged him for no reason that he could say except that rage and loneliness and despair were the only things he ever felt with clarity and he hated the world and those who lived in it and those who could feel and those who could die.
The man he’d frightened was shouting as he ran up a rise and out of sight off the road. “Up and armed! There’s something out here! A creature! Up and armed!”
Shouts answered the man, the barking of dogs, the sounds of alarm building.
The man had spoken true, for the Afterbirth was a creature, but hearing the dying man say it of him put a flame to the kindling of his ever-present anger and he vented it in a growl, a wet, guttural sound issuing from his mouths and promising blood. He snarled and moved after the man, toward the shouting, toward the stink of them all, the trunks of his feet sticking in the mud as though the world itself—not his world but theirs—was trying to slow his pursuit and let time diminish his rage. But nothing could diminish it, nothing except that he somehow be unmade and thus made free.
More cries and shouting carried from beyond the road, and the afterbirth heard the ring of metal, smelled the rush of adrenaline, the acridity of controlled fear.
He lumbered up the rise, hand over foot, slipping in the wet, his heavy tread putting dents in the soil. He could see well in the dark, and as he crested the rise he saw the caravan’s camp before him, a dozen wagons on the grass of the plains, the circle of them ringing two large campfires, the milling silhouettes of two score people framed against the light of the flames. They darted about in alarm, several of them gathered around the man who’d fled from the Afterbirth. A few were shouting, pointing back toward the road, and the whole camp had the frenetic feel of a disturbed hive. They couldn’t yet see him through the night and rain but the dogs that caught his scent barked and growled from within the ring of wagons. The horses, too, must have smelled him, for he heard their frightened whinnies and saw two of them rear up, pulling against their traces.
He moved in his ungainly fashion toward the camp, growling, and the sound of his voices was the inarticulate roar of worlds long gone. The animals in the camp went mad at the approach of him. The two horses that had reared now screamed, snapped their traces, and galloped off into the night. More shouts from the men and women. Dogs crouched and barked and growled to hoarseness but kept their distance. He got close enough that the glow of the firelight showed him to them.
“There! Over there!” shouted a man from within the gathered crowd, pointing at the Afterbirth.
“Kill it!” yelled another.
A dozen men holding sharp steel broke away from the rest and rushed out toward him. He picked up his pace, mumbling, and rushed headlong at them. They slowed some when they saw his size, and he smelled the fear on them. He ran into the crowd of them and hit them like a tide, trampling one, smashing another’s skull with a blow from his fist. He didn’t bother to defend himself as the rest of the men shouted and slashed and stabbed. Blades sank deeply into his flesh, the angry rhythm of violence, but he only heard it. He felt none of it, could feel none of it. The world could mark him, scar him, but could not hurt him. He was in the world but not of it. He could feel only the pain of his unending existence, the isolation of being entirely, utterly, forever solitary.
And anger. He could feel the anger.
Dogs rushed out, hackles high. They snarled at him from the edge of the melee, foaming at the mouth, but kept their distance. Women screamed, gathered children to them. Another horse broke free of its tie and bolted off into the night. The camp was in chaos. Men not yet in the fray shouted and sprinted toward him. Something disturbed one of the bonfires and a shower of sparks went up into the night, temporarily casting the whole of the area in an unearthly orange glow.
He lashed out with a thick arm and struck a man on the head, sending him careening backward and down. He bowled another man over as the man drove a thick-bladed sword through his abdomen, the blade scraping the teeth of one of his mouths. He roared and stomped on the downed man, crushing him underfoot.
“It should be dead!” another man shouted, slashing at the Afterbirth’s neck.
He grabbed the speaker by the throat, lifted him kicking and gasping from the ground, and squeezed until he felt something give way. The man went still and the Afterbirth threw the corpse into another man, knocking him down, then stomped that one to death. Throughout he moved inexorably toward the circle of wagons, leaving broken bodies in his wake, the pressure in him creating the need to do violence.
“It can’t be killed!” someone screamed. “Run! Run!”
The barking of the dogs grew crazed, terrified, the screams of the women and the wails of the young likewise. The acidic stink of pure terror filled the air and yet more men ran toward him, another six, shouting, blades in hand. They chopped and stabbed but he took the blows and killed them each in turn, one after another, breaking bones with his fists, crushing bodies under his boots. Their blows put gory ravines in his flesh, but only for a moment before his otherworldly nature sealed the gashes to scars.
Crossbow bolts thudded into his flesh from somewhere within the ring of wagons. He felt the vibration of their impact, but no pain. He tore the bolts from his flesh, stabbed a young man through the face with one of them, drawing ever closer to the wagons. He could smell a few people hiding within them, terrified.
“Burn it!” shouted a woman, and another echoed her shout. “It’s the only way!”
Another took up the call to burn him, another.
He trampled another man and ground the corpse into the rain-soaked earth. He broke the skull of another with a blow from his fist and lurched into the bright firelight within the ring of wagons, roaring.
His cloak was torn, the hood that normally shrouded his visage knocked back from the combat, and in the light of the bonfire the remaining caravanners saw him clearly. They froze for a moment, their faces sculpted into looks of horror and disgust. He murdered the quiet with a growl from his ruined lips and malformed mouths.
At that, most of the survivors turned and fled, some screaming, some in silent terror. Those who remained wavered, holding blades or clubs in drooping grips. Two men, however, found their nerve and hurriedly lit torches from the fire. Their bravery spread to some others and postures straightened. The men advanced, the flames dancing wildly in the rain as the torches shook in their hands.
The Afterbirth charged at the nearest of the men, the clubs of his fists held high. The man lurched backward, stabbing defensively with his blade and torch. The sword went into the Afterbirth’s stomach and out his back; the torch put flames to his cloak, and the frayed material, though wet, caught fire. The Afterbirth ignored the blade and the flame and drove a fist into the man’s face. Bones crunched. Blood sprayed and the man fell in a heap.
The other man, who’d circled behind the Afterbirth, cu
rsed and jabbed him with his torch. The cloak burned in another place, the fabric curling and smoking.
“Die, demon!” the man said.
The Afterbirth spun on the man, who tried to retreat but slipped in the wet grass. He backed off crabwise, his expression a mask of terror, but was too slow. The Afterbirth grabbed him up by his jerkin, lifted him overhead, and cast him several strides away into the bonfire. Another cloud of sparks exploded into the night, carrying with them the screams of the man, the smell of burning flesh. The man writhed for a moment, dislodging some of the logs, then went still.
The Afterbirth’s cloak smoked and burned but fire could harm him no more than could steel. He let his clothing burn, framing him in flames, and roared.
Those who had found their bravery behind the torch-armed men turned and fled into the night.
The Afterbirth didn’t pursue. Instead he rampaged among the wagons. Fire blistered his flesh only to reheal as he overturned crates and shattered urns, tore off doors and smashed in walls. He found a few elderly hiding in the wagons and beat them lifeless, letting their pain serve as a proxy expression of his own. His burning cloak had spread flames from him to the wagons and soon he stood naked and solitary amid a growing inferno. The flames sputtered and danced and raged against the rain. The smell of blood and death and smoke filled the air.
His chest heaved with exertion. He looked around upon the fire-lit slaughter, his anger slowly draining away, the pressure of his hateful existence eased, at least for a time.
He’d murdered more than two dozen, murdered them because…because…
Because the world shouldn’t exist, because he shouldn’t exist, because he didn’t know why he walked the world, didn’t know why he was forced to live with no respite and no hope of escape and he should not be in the world that was not his world and the pain should not be his pain and he needed it to stop stop stop.
He shouted his frustration into the sky for several minutes, his mouths wailing, doing battle with the rolls of thunder as the rain increased.
And when he was done and his rage had reduced down to mere despair, he found a new cloak among the wagons that could cover his malformed body and resumed his walk.
His body carried more scars but his hope was unincreased.
“Afterbirth,” he muttered again and again.
He was the Afterbirth.
And he did know why he existed. He had no purpose, no reason for being. He walked the earth that was not his, aimless and alone.
He existed only because of the Great Spell and he was its afterbirth.
—
Raised voices and a man’s drink-sloppy laugh carried from the hall through the closed door, startling Nix awake. He jerked in the cushioned chair, instinctively putting a hand on the hilt of one of his daggers. The voices receded, the laughter died, and he blinked dumbly in the dim green moonlight that filtered through the shutters and stained the room in viridian.
For a moment the remnants of a dream clung to his consciousness—he recalled a steaming swamp, a throng of reptile men in outlandish robes speaking a language he could not understand, a great spell of some kind or other, screams, but whether of exultation or terror he could not be sure. He tried to hold the images in mind because in his sleep-addled haze they seemed important somehow, but wakefulness gradually pushed them away, turned them to ghosts that leaked through the seams of his memory. He sat up as the real world exorcised the dream. He wiped drool from his cheek and oriented himself.
He’d fallen asleep in the worn, overstuffed chair beside Kiir’s bed. She’d been febrile, bothered by bad dreams, and unable to sleep. Tesha had given her the night off to get well and Nix had offered to sit by her bedside until she fell asleep. He had little else to do, with Egil off on one of his drinking binges.
Kiir lay there now, her slim form wrapped in blankets, her breathing regular, her long red hair a cloud on the pillow.
Nix still felt discomfited from the dream, and the unhelpful green light of Minnear gave the room a surreal, unnatural feel. He ran a hand through his thick hair.
“Fakking moon,” he whispered. He hated sleeping in the light of a full Minnear. It had given him nightmares ever since the events with Blackalley. He pushed those memories from his mind on the double quick.
He yawned and the yawn turned to a burp and he winced at the fishy aftertaste of Gadd’s eel stew, which he’d forced down as supper hours earlier. Likely the squirming fruit of the Meander had done his dreams few favors, too. No doubt, he’d be resurrecting the stew by way of fish-flavored belches for the next several hours.
He solemnly swore then and there to keep future suppers restricted to meat that walked rather than swam, ideally accompanied by liquid composed of hops and fermented wheat. He put a hand to his chest: So oathed.
He glanced at Kiir, her body a shapely rise under the thin blankets, and it hit him that he was sitting watch in a chair beside a beautiful woman’s bed instead of trying to charm his way into it.
“Huh,” he said, vaguely surprised at himself.
Had he gotten respectable somehow? Honorable? If so, when the fak had that happened?
Somewhat disgusted with himself, he looked about the floor for a bottle of spirits, anything to kill the taste of eel stew. Seeing nothing, he could only endure the taste while he coexisted with his own nobility of character.
He was turning into Egil, was what was happening. And that was because Egil was turning into something else, and one of them had to carry the weight of respectability in their partnership. The priest, the sole worshipper of the dead god Ebenor, who’d been a god for only a moment, hadn’t been himself since the events with Rose and Mere and that fakking serpentman mindmage in the Deadmire. Rose had been inadvertently caught up in an assassination plot by the Thieves’ Guild, and had been afflicted with a condition that only a powerful mindmage could relieve. So Egil, Nix, and Mere had journeyed to the Deadmire, seeking the legendary mindmage Odrhaal, all the while pursued by agents of the Thieves’ Guild, intent on killing Rose as the sole surviving witness to the assassination attempt. The three had eventually found Odrhaal deep in the Deadmire and he’d fixed Rose, but at a price. The sisters had opted to stay as apprentices to the serpentman mindmage, and Odrhaal had placed false memories in the surviving guild men. Egil still regarded the events as a failure, and felt as though they should’ve killed Odrhaal rather than let Rose and Mere go. Nix, however, knew that they’d had no choice. They were no match for Odrhaal.
Still, Nix had no way to know if the choices they’d made in the swamp had been of their own free will or if they’d been manipulated by Odrhaal’s mind magic. It ate at him sometimes. It ate at Egil worse, no doubt because it reminded the priest of his failure years earlier to keep his wife and daughter safe. Egil had grown increasingly taciturn recently, and drank even more than usual. Nix had been of little use in helping his friend navigate through his despair.
His train of thought caused something from his dream to try to bubble its way back up to consciousness, but it slipped away before breaking the surface. He shifted in his chair to get more comfortable, failed in the effort, mentally cursed the chair for being terrible as a chair, and watched Kiir sleep, as he’d promised.
The chair attempted to cramp him into standing but he refused out of spite and soon drifted off despite his discomfort; his last thoughts before sleep took him hovering in a half dream state in which he imagined a great war between armies of wizards and serpentmen, all of them wielding the green magic of the moon, the power of it beyond anything Nix had ever seen, and in the process destroying the world.
He awoke sometime later to hear Kiir mumbling and making small, alarmed noises. He opened an eye to make sure she was all right. Nix could not tell how long he’d dozed, but Minnear still polluted the room in a miasmic glow.
She was still sleeping, waving a hand in front of her face as if to shoo an insect. Lines furrowed her brow, and her lips turned down in a frown. She moaned and mumble
d. Her gestures sharpened, her tone grew louder, and her body spasmed as if she were pushing something away.
“No!” she said. “Stop!”
Nix roused himself fully, wincing at the cramp in his back. He leaned forward and placed a hand on her forearm. His touch stilled her, but her brow furrowed more deeply and she shook her head.
“No. No.”
“Kiir,” he said, and gently shook her. “Kiir, wake up.”
She opened her eyes and for an instant they looked filled with terror, but when she registered Nix’s face, her location, she relaxed. She covered his hand with hers.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Fever dream?”
She nodded. Her touch was warm, still somewhat feverish. “I’m so thirsty.”
“I can go get you some water.”
“No, don’t leave. What’s the hour?”
“Dunno for sure. Late, though. Nightmare, was it? You were shouting. Small wonder you’ve slept so poorly of late.”
She looked past him at the wall, her eyes distant. “Not a nightmare so much…just a dream. I’ve had it often lately.”
“Well, not a nightmare is good, yeah?”
She brushed a few wisps of sweat-dampened hair from her face and gave him an absent half smile that highlighted her freckled beauty. Were he a lesser man, then and there he’d have been tempted to ask her if he could share her bed.
“I wouldn’t say ‘good,’ ” she said softly. She focused on him and smiled more broadly. “Thank you for staying, Nix.”
He felt his cheeks warm and pulled back his hand to give her space. “Of course. I said I would.”
“You did.”
The moonlight colored her skin but did not damage her beauty.
He cleared his throat. “So, are you…going back to sleep, then?”
He winced at himself for asking, but he couldn’t help himself. She was beautiful and he wasn’t that good a man. He just wanted to give her an opening.
She sighed and pulled the sheets tightly about her, closing her eyes. “Mmmhmm.”
