King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  Daniel shook his head. “What the hell is this about?”

  “I need to know what religious rituals you practiced.”

  “What for?”

  “What I’m about to do defiles them all.”

  Daniel retreated from the corpse-man. “And what exactly are you about to do?”

  “Cheat the Cosmos.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you understand. Well? Have you?”

  “What does it matter if I’m circumcised?”

  “You’ve had the Covenant of Circumcision?”

  Daniel swallowed. “Yes.”

  “You’re an Israelite?”

  “I’m from Babylon. The Long Island Babylon. The only thing biblical that happens there is the number of boring people who live there.”

  “You’re a Jew?”

  Hesitantly he said, “Yes, so?”

  “Were you Bar Mitzvah’d?”

  “Yes. Why is this important?”

  “Rituals are power, protection against curses. This may not be possible. This will either work or it won’t. Only one way to know for certain.”

  “What will work?”

  Grug closed his eyes and began chanting in a language that seemed to be full of curses and imprecations, even though Daniel didn’t understand the words. Grug’s voice oozed despair, like the moans of someone stuck in a nightmare. Quickly, too quickly to be possible, Grug grabbed Daniel’s head and yanked him close. Daniel winced as Grug leaned in, as if to kiss him. The man’s breath was foul, his face rotten, and Daniel screamed.

  That’s when the corpse-man bit off the tip of Daniel’s tongue.

  Daniel screamed again, but now his voice made no sound. Instead a column of air flowed out of his mouth. A terrible, empty hiss.

  “Quickly!” Grug said. “Bite off the tip of mine!” He held out his tongue, a shriveled, wormy, pus-white thing.

  Daniel winced and fell back against the wall.

  “Hurry, you fool, or you’ll lose all language, forever!”

  Daniel screamed silently, trying to wake up from this nightmare. Grug unsheathed his sword and with a deft motion sliced off the tip of his own tongue. Black blood spilled from his mouth onto the stone floor. He leaned over and grabbed Daniel’s neck.

  “Open your mouth!” he said. “And swallow this!”

  Daniel tried to break free, but Grug was too strong.

  “Open it or you’ll gzyxqmlzbyp! It will qthcfaplmitf if you zswqnjkzyehf!”

  Grug’s words made no sense. And Daniel’s own thoughts dissolved into gibberish before they were born. He knew what he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Grug kicked him in the stomach, and when Daniel gasped, Grug flung the piece of meat into his throat, pressed his jaw closed, and said, “hnzaqwiu-llow, swal-low! Swallow!”

  The corpse-man was right! This defiled all faiths! Daniel didn’t eat animals, but this was infinitely worse! Human flesh! He gagged as the meat lingered in the back of his throat. Grug held Daniel’s nostrils closed, and when Daniel gasped for air he choked on the meat. Oh, hell of hells, he had no choice! He had to swallow the vile thing!

  And down the lump went, that heinous thing, down into his stomach. Grug released him, and Daniel retched against the wall. A terrible, high-pitched whine echoed down the corridor and after a while he realized it was his own scream.

  He tried to make himself vomit, but the meat would not come up. “Oh, God,” he said, his head against the wall. “Please, God, I want to go home.”

  “Are you done yet, Grug?” the woman said. “Because we need your help.”

  Daniel rose from the wall, sensing a curious shift in the air that he couldn’t place. Something was profoundly different.

  “What the hell did Grug just do to him?” Rana said, grimacing.

  The woman put her hands on her hips. “We had no choice! We had to give him Azazel’s Curse, to speed things along.”

  “We?” Rana said. “I didn’t choose to do that to him.”

  The realization came to Daniel like a punch to the gut. He understood Rana. And the woman too. A moment ago they might have been speaking Urdu, for all he knew.

  “You speak English?” he said as he staggered toward them.

  “No,” the woman said. “You’re speaking Wul. Can’t you tell?”

  He felt the tip of his tongue. There was no pain, no evidence of injury.

  “We shared flesh,” Grug said. “Now we are brothers.”

  “Get away from me, freak!” Daniel said. The lilting words that flowed from his mouth felt strangely familiar, and yet, as far as he could tell, he had never uttered these arrangements of syllables in his life. “I’m not speaking English, am I?”

  “No,” the woman said. “You’re speaking Wul.”

  “But I thought he didn’t understand Wul?” Rana said.

  “I don’t,” Daniel said. “I mean, I didn’t. What the fuck?” He felt his lips and heard the strange sounds echoing down the tunnel. “You . . . who are you?”

  “I am Marul Menacha, The Witch Who Gives Demons Pause,” she said with a smirk. “And you’re Daniel, I presume?”

  “Daniel. The man who has no idea what the hell is going on.”

  Marul squinted. “You seem familiar. Have we met?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Rana says the dog led you here, that he was impaled by an eagle demon and fell to the rocks. Why are you with the demon dog?”

  “I’ve no idea why he brought me here. Adar is the one with all the answers. He will die unless we help him. Can you do something?”

  Marul squinted at the dog. “I know a ritual to heal a demon. It requires human blood and near total darkness. We’ll need a black candle. Grug, will you? Rana, my Little Plum, may I see your blade?”

  Grug leaned into a pile of candles, his arm across the flames, and pulled out a squat black one. He tossed the candle to Marul, who lit the wick with another. Grug muttered something brief and waved his hand, and all the candles winked out, save the black one and its ruby flame. The room turned bleak, blood-hued, and their shadows haunted them from the walls.

  The smell of snuffed candles reminded Daniel of the mountainside, of charred houses. He shivered, reeling from his new fluency, as Marul sliced her forearm with Rana’s blade. The blood dripped into a copper cup.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said in English, then in Wul.

  She eyed him sharply while holding the knife. “Do you know how to heal a demon?”

  “No.”

  “Then kindly shut the hell up! Rana? I’ll need your blood.”

  “Are you sure?” Rana said.

  “Blood is life. Please, I’ll do it quickly.”

  Rana frowned and offered her injured arm. It didn’t take much to reopen the wound. Marul sliced it, and Rana gasped as her blood spilled into the cup.

  “Now you,” she said to Daniel. “Give me your arm.”

  He shook his head. “No fucking way! I’ve had enough bloodletting for one day.” The words of this new language poured from his lips as if he’d spoken Wul his whole life. It was utterly astonishing.

  “Two may not be enough,” Marul said.

  Daniel retreated from her. “It will have to be. You’re not cutting me.”

  Marul shook her head and pointed the knife at him. “If he dies, we may all be trapped. This dog holds the key to our escape.”

  “Sorry,” Daniel said. “Try Grug. He seems happy with cutting himself.”

  “Grug is a Mikulal. His blood is tainted.” She spat, just like Gram did whenever she mentioned evil.

  “You mean the blood that I just swallowed?” He wanted to vomit.

  “Your blood hasn’t quickened. You’re still not . . . I think we can still use your blood.”

  “Quickened?”

  “Forget it! We’ll make do with what we have. Now, give me total silence! If any of you interrupt me for any reason, disastrous consequences could result. Do you
understand?” Rana nodded. He swallowed and nodded too.

  She danced around the candle, all showy and ridiculous, like a budget magician about to pull the wool over the eyes of her audience. She enjoyed this immensely, he sensed, having people to dazzle and impress.

  She held the cup of blood over Adar as she chanted, “We freely offer our blood to you, demon, as a symbol of healing. Take it and rise!”

  She wasn’t speaking Wul, but an older language, one that called to mind Druid temples and planetary occultations and huge effigies of long-forgotten gods. But Daniel understood this language and knew the power in its words as if he’d spoken them his entire life.

  Marul poured the blood onto Adar’s wounds and it sizzled like water on a hot skillet. “We offer our blood to you as strength against wards.” She poured it onto Adar’s tongue. “We offer our life-essence to you, so that you may rise. Accept our offering, demon, and be whole again!”

  She flicked blood into the candle flame. It flared, and the flame brightened after she drew her hand away. Like a beating heart, the flame throbbed, growing wider with each beat. It grew into a miniature sun, expanding outward, a red giant, spinning faster and faster. The sound of the crackling flames was deafening.

  Daniel backed away from the intense heat as the ball grew. Tongues of flame swam across its surface. They formed fiery letters, burning words. Hebrew words.

  Minupatz. Shattered. Shavour. Broken. Afelah. Darkness.

  Their meaning came easily, even though he didn’t know the Hebrew words before this moment. But they were more than words. Each was meaning itself, conveyed in thought forms, wordless gestalts.

  Minupatz, and his soul dissolved into atoms. Shavour, and he was a continent, crumbling into the sea. Afelah, and he plunged into a black hole.

  Words, the root of all thought. Thought, the root of reality. Gram’s teachings burned in his mind.

  Marul’s eyes grew wide, seas of flame reflected in them. She shouted above the din, breaking her own admonition for silence. “Something’s wrong! It’s drawing too much power! Stand back! Get back!”

  Adar’s skin crawled, as if a thousand insects inside him were probing for a way out. His limbs bent against their joints, snapping like tree branches. Adar howled as his long snout shrunk into his face. His fangs vanished, and his coat of black fur dissolved into bare skin. He became a lump of quivering pale flesh. Five arms spilled out slowly from the lump, like leaking streams of milk. Four long arms, plus one short and fat. The arms resolved into the vague shape of a person, four limbs, a head.

  The milk hardened into a skeleton, calcified hands and feet, vertebrae like dragon’s teeth, a large human skull. The hands opened and closed without muscle or sinew to coerce them. Ribs reached up from the spine like claws. Blood dripped into the skeleton from the flaming ball, hardening into muscle and sinew, lungs and bowels, a reverse dissection. Last came a suit of skin, white as chalk, wrapping itself around the figure.

  Where the dog had been, now lay a naked, muscular, middle-aged man with a cap of snow-white hair. A familiar man. The one who had abducted Daniel from his wedding, who had brought him here, to Gehinnom. The man smiled, opened his eyes.

  Marul screamed.

  The ball of flame exploded. Sparks slammed into the walls, bounced. They glowed like a sky full of orange stars before winking out, one by one. The room plunged into darkness and silence. His ears rang from the echo of the miniature sun. He blinked away spots, hoping to find purchase on something besides the impossible darkness.

  He heard slow, deep breathing from where the man lay. A few paces away, Grug muttered a few words, and a constellation of a dozen candles blinked to life. The room filled with their weak yellow light.

  A tall man stood before them—the stranger from his wedding—and the horror of that moment came flooding back.

  In a deep and calm voice, the man said, “It’s good to see you again, Marul. Have you been well?”

  Marul screamed so loudly that Daniel had to cover his ears. “It’s him!” she wailed. “The demon who imprisoned me! And I just saved his worthless life!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Awake! Alive! He was man again! Oh, the lovely sinews of human flesh, the blissful nectar of masculine form. The demon stretched his arms, twisted and craned his neck as Marul, that self-aggrandizing witch, screamed at him.

  “Shut your damn screeching!” he said.

  Marul—what a hag she had become—wailed as she pointed at him. “I’ve saved the life of this beast! The one who imprisoned me!”

  “Marul, Marul!” Rana said, trying to calm her. “I don’t understand?”

  Marul stared at him, her eyes full of hate and malice. “This beast that stands before you,” she said, “is none other than Ashmedai, King of Demonkind.”

  “Please,” he said, holding his hand over his heart and bowing. “I much prefer Caleb. Ashmedai is so Old Testament, don’t you think?”

  “No,” said Daniel as he walked around him, as if he were examining a statue. “Apocrypha, actually. The Book of Tobit.”

  “Impressive, Daniel,” the demon said.

  “You’re Ashmedai?” Daniel said, squinting.

  He smiled and nodded. “Caleb, please.”

  Rana pulled out her dagger, a lovely bejeweled thing, and threatened him with it, while Grug fell to his knees and bowed in deference. A few lonely candles burned beside him. In the oldest language, which could not be heard by human ears, nor spoken with any tongue, conveyed by thought alone, Ashmedai commanded Grug to light the other candles. Grug’s lips weaved a song of fire into the fabric of reality, and three hundred more tapers awakened with light.

  “The Mikulalim,” Caleb said, “do have such a lovely courtship with fire, don’t you think? Come now, Rana, there is no need for violence.”

  Rana examined him in the full light. Her eyes scanned his naked body, and there was a hint of blush on her tawny cheeks, a subtle dilation of her eyes. Though she might hate him, some deep part of her, he guessed, was curious of what she saw.

  “Please,” Caleb said, “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

  Rana furrowed her brow and frowned. “Did I really bring your jailer to you, Marul?”

  “You were amazing, Rana,” Caleb said. “Far braver than I’d imagined. You confronted the eagle demon without pause. I’m proud of you!”

  Rana lowered the knife a fraction.

  How often, he thought, has Rana heard praise for who she is, instead of criticism or fear?

  Marul shook her head over and over. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” she stammered. Her eyes flitted around the room as she gibbered. “I could have destroyed him. Just had to let him die, and my cage would have opened. I would have been free!” She clutched her head and tugged on her greasy locks.

  “If he dies, you’re free?” Rana said.

  Marul screamed, “Yes!”

  Caleb sensed from her body language what Rana was about to do. She lunged at him with her knife, but he easily parried the blade, snatched her wrist, and raised her arm high. Blood from her wound dripped down her forearm as he squeezed. She swung at him with her free hand but he grabbed that too. He dug into her wrist with his fingernails and she dropped the blade. She squealed, two bracing notes.

  By Sheol’s suns! There was music even in her cries! So much power within this small creature. But hers was feral power, in need of taming.

  “You are brave, but impulsive, Rana,” Caleb said. “You must think before you act. Marul is wrong. If I die, the three of you will remain in this mountain until the last star burns out. And, besides,” he said, “you would never find out why I’ve brought you here.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “We need answers. Let Rana go. You’re hurting her.”

  Daniel spoke in Wul. Curious. When had he learned that? “Look at you, Daniel,” Caleb said. “As ignorant of your nature as a newborn is of his one day being able to walk and run and even fly.” He released Rana’s hand, and she fell to the ground. She r
etreated to Marul’s side, rubbing her wrists.

  “I was this close to letting him die,” Marul mumbled.

  “Enough!” Caleb said. “I’m alive, and that is that.”

  “If he’s a demon king,” Rana said timorously, “then is Daniel his prince?”

  “Of a kind,” Caleb said. “Daniel, tell Rana and Marul how we met, if you please.”

  “All right,” Daniel said. “I first saw him the night of the big storm. I was checking in on a homeless shelter . . .”

  Daniel told his story, beginning on the night when Ashmedai followed him home, to his unexpected entry into Daniel’s wedding, where the guests turned into, as Daniel put it, “giant cubes of salt.” Rana stared at Caleb, blushing. Though she tried to hide it, she kept glancing between Caleb’s legs as if she’d never seen a naked man before.

  Caleb smiled as he listened to Daniel’s interpretation of events. Cubes of salt! he thought. What a reductive metaphor! In the last major redaction of the coded scrolls that had been eventually compiled into the Five Books of Moses, the scrivener Samuel ben Eliyahu described the death of Lot’s wife in much the same way, as “pillars of salt.” But Caleb supposed comparing Daniel’s experience to seeing “cubes of salt” was easier to imagine than trying to explain explosive sensory decoherence as a result of one’s consciousness matrix being forcefully separated from its long-time world-vessel. But humans always preferred metaphors to the truth.

  “. . . and then this girl—Rana—walked in and found us hiding on the floor,” Daniel said. “Rana knows the rest.”

  “Goddess,” Marul said. “You leapt into the Great Deep without a vessel?”

  Caleb smiled proudly. “Only you comprehend what could have happened if we missed the infinitesimal doorway to Gehinnom.”

  “You would have fallen through the Abyss for all eternity,” she said, “without respite of sleep or death, with nothing to occupy your minds except your stillborn fantasies that would slowly drive you mad.”

  “Not so different from the fate that awaits us all if we don’t act now!” he said. “Daniel, will you tell us about your lovely wife, Rebekah?”