Circle of Skulls w-6

by James P. Davis

  Sathariel shook with rage, his wings eclipsing the last of the room's light. The wizard's audacity was almost fragrant, like so many challenges Sathariel had accepted in the throne rooms of dark gods without question, but despite all, he remained patient. He felt threads upon threads tightening into a weave he had worked to orchestrate over centuries, and he would not let the arrogance of one human deny him the fires he so desired to set in Waterdeep.

  "Let us not assume too much," he answered at length, drawing close to the averted gaze of the wizard. "The prophecy of the First Flensing was written centuries ago, divinely inspired by our master. You should have more faith."

  "Faith in what, pray tell?" Tallus asked.

  "That you are superfluous to our requirements, less than a footnote in Asmodeus's great plans," Sathariel replied, enjoying the twitch in the archmage's eye. "You were merely convenient and far less than ideal. We applaud your duplicity and eagerness to be of service, but do not estimate your worth as too much higher than the drying remains of young Gorrick. Be grateful you have lived this long."

  Tallus turned and limped back up the stairs. Sathariel found the scent of the human's fury delightful and ascended in his wake, amused also at the scent of blood on Tallus's hands. There was blood and something else, something sweet-perfume. The angel chuckled, the susurrus of his laughter hissing through the remains of the archmage's tower.

  "Find something amusing?" the wizard asked from the doorway.

  "Indeed. It is a riddle, one that I look forward to being answered," he replied, rising into the tower, the whoosh of his wings stirring up the dust into tiny whirlwinds.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Worry not, human," Sathariel said, his voice booming through the tower as he rose toward the shattered roof. "We have not placed all of our faith upon you, and I have others to visit this night."

  He broke through the remains of rotted rafters, winging into the night and leaving the aging wizard to stare after him, confused and mystified.

  Good, he thought.

  He banked south over Sea Ward, gazing upon the whole of Waterdeep, his appointed place to watch over and cultivate for his master. As the mortals below shivered in their beds and awoke to the horrendous murders of morning, they would scramble for meaning and search for the guilty. Sathariel almost pitied their ignorance, their fascination with the insignificant details of a crime that served only to trap their attention.

  "All is well," he whispered, and he began a slow descent, to one last meeting before dawn.

  FIFTEEN

  NIGHTAL 22, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

  Jinn sat quietly in the pale light filtering through the cracks of the hidden sewer entrance. The stone floor was cold but thankfully dry, one of the few spots free of the city's sludge, if not its stench. He stared at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, their pale, ivory skin and the deep black whorls that reached across his wrist from beneath the sleeves of his coat. His palms bore few of the creases he had witnessed in others, only a few prominent lines crossing from finger to thumb, the marks of a short life in a body forged by mystic forces he might never understand. The prints of his fingertips were like none he'd seen-save one-and seemed too false, a manufactured show-a god's estimate of flesh that had no understanding of mortality or suffering or the scars of a long life.

  Night black hair, the match of his skin's designs, fell into his golden eyes as he pondered the hands that had worked so hard for so long to do what was right.

  He blinked, not turning as a pained gasp echoed through the tunnel behind him. Tight, leather straps creaked in the shadows as muscles flexed, knotting as an old man applied the gentle pressure of the torturous art to the flesh of Lucian Dregg. Something wet slapped to the floor, near the edge of the thick sewage, cast aside as Briarbones worked. Dregg whimpered.

  Jinn stared into the dark at the indiscernible lump of meat, the shape of it providing no clues as to its origins or purpose, though its future was certain. The deva could hear rats gathering to the south, drawn to the scent of blood. Tiny wisps of steam rose from the flesh, cooling as the work behind Jinn continued.

  "Who am I?" he said under his breath, studying his hands and trying to see the immortal spirit beneath them, the celestial soul he had stained while working for the greater good.

  "You are yourself, I assume," Briarbones replied absently, muttering as he worked. Dregg was eerily quiet. "I have heard of devas driven mad, unable to recollect the details of a current incarnation and lost in a veritable eternity of identities, all only half remembered. But such cases, I do believe, are rare. You appear to be quite lucid, so I doubt you are so afflicted."

  "And are you aware of devas who have lost their way? Turned to evil?" Jinn asked, knowing the answer in his blood but needing to hear it said out loud, confirmed by someone other than the doubting voice in the back of his mind.

  "Demons. Rakshasas. Foul spirits, trapped in infinite existences and cut off from whatever wellspring of power kept them in the world. Damned," Briar replied, and Jinn nodded, exhaling as the words were spoken and letting them echo in his thoughts, something to remember as he walked the fine line between light and dark, something to remind him of his lost Variel. "I believe he is ready to speak now. I must admit, he resisted far more than I had predicted."

  "Hate and ignorance can make a man strong," Jinn said as he stood. "But only for a short time."

  He approached the human, strapped to a wooden table, bleeding slowly, a testament to the precise skill of Briarbones. Each breath came as a desperate gulp. Dregg was a murderer and a conspirator to murders, the very antithesis of everything Allek Marson stood for, yet Jinn found he could not help but pity the man-and in that moment, he valued his pity. Leaning close, he kept the wide eyes of Dregg focused on him.

  "Tell me about the archmage," he said, an edge in his voice suggesting he would not hesitate to punish the human for lying.

  "Tallus… g-gives them power. The circle of skulls," Dregg stammered, his pained gaze fierce and unwavering. "He helps them to kill… only certain families. Like the Marsons."

  "Why did you help him?" Jinn asked.

  "He promised me power… and wealth," the human spat. "I was to assist Rorden Marson, keep the killings quiet, until Allek grew nervous, started looking for answers in the wrong places."

  "So they removed him, making way for you," Jinn supplied, careful to keep his hands at his sides, lest he choke the human. "What else? Tell me what I want to hear, and your pain will end."

  "My pain will end?" Dregg asked, incredulous, chuckling and coughing on his own blood, flecks of it spattering on his chin. "Say what you mean, deva. You will kill me."

  Jinn stood back, narrowing his eyes. "All right," he said at length. "I will kill you, but before you die, tell me who you would like to join you? Who failed you such that you have fallen to this place?"

  Dregg's breathing slowed as he was taken aback by the question.

  "Tallus," he said quickly. "He used me, lied to me. And he uses her…"

  "Who?" Jinn asked, leaning close again, though he suspected the answer.

  "Rilyana-Rilyana Saerfynn," the human answered, sighing in between heaving breaths. "He lusts after her, though he knows she is mine, and he forces her to choose. She chooses those to be taken by the skulls, marks them for possession. If she had refused, Tallus would have slain her brother. All I could do was make sure she was never investigated, but then Rorden Marson started to get too close…"

  Jinn removed the bound letters from his coat, the discourse between Rilyana and Allek that stood in stark contrast to all he had witnessed. He wondered how close Dregg and Rilyana had been, wondered if the man's desire had crafted a relationship that didn't truly exist except within his own arrogance-but then, Jinn had seen them together. It seemed that if Rilyana had been too frightened to resist, she might have sought help from Allek, and if they had somehow fallen in love

  …

  "You requested
Allek's death, didn't you?" Jinn asked.

  "Marson had gone too far," Dregg growled, his eyes rolling back. "He spoke against my promotion countless times, said I was too angry to lead. I enjoyed watching him squirm, looking for killers that had never really existed, but then he wanted Rilyana. Never!"

  Dregg's tirade devolved into a choking cough, his chest rising and falling violently, little streams of blood becoming rivers from his wounds as he thrashed against his bonds. Jinn waited for him to spend his strength, stood by as the convulsions slowed before continuing.

  "Who else is helping Tallus?" he asked.

  "I don't know. He never told me," the human answered weakly. "But Rilyana's brother, Callak, was never in any danger. He and the wizard had some kind of an agreement."

  Dregg's voice trailed off, his head lolled from side to side, delirious and either dying from his wounds or driven to madness by the pain of them. Jinn grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly.

  "The angel, Dregg!" he shouted. "What about the angel!"

  "Voices… wings… he kept asking for the souls…," the human slurred and muttered, falling deeper into a feverish dementia. "A circle of souls… Tallus betrays them all for loose fingers, hidden souls, and immortality. Kill me, deva. Go and let them use you too, so I can see you soon…"

  "Gods have mercy," Quessahn whispered, standing in the doorway and staring at the rorden as he managed a weak laugh, rusty stains between his teeth as he began to bleed out, his life pouring onto the floor of Briarbones's chamber. The eladrin turned away, pushing past Mara as the hag entered the room and regarded the dying human.

  "I was wondering when you would get your hands dirty," Mara remarked with a sly grin. She pulled forth a small, red gem from beneath her cloak. She approached the rorden with a hungry gleam in her eye. "No sense letting him to go to waste."

  "No," Jinn said, grabbing her wrist and meeting the crimson glare that flashed beneath her illusory eyes. He ignored her anger, disgusted by her greed for souls and by himself for tolerating it for so long. "Let this one go."

  "You overstep your bounds, deva. We have an agreement," she snarled, ivory teeth wavering, revealing the lioness fangs hidden behind her human lips. "What makes this soul special? Why protect it?"

  "Because I haven't yet lost my own," he replied, forcing her hand away as gently as possible. His gold eyes gleamed in the candlelight. "I believe there will be dark souls aplenty for your gems in the days to come, do you not agree?"

  "Very well," Mara answered curtly, putting the ruby away. "I suppose we all need something every now and then to help us sleep at night, eh?" She gestured at the rorden's broken body. "I trust your tender mercies did not keep you from questioning the poor dear?"

  "Do you have the book?" he asked, ignoring her taunts.

  "Of course," she answered, a suspicious glint in her eye as she stepped away from him, one hand hidden beneath her cloak. "It is quite fascinating so far, though parts are difficult to decipher-"

  "Draconic?" Briar supplied, edging closer, his hands fidgeting. "Elvish? Infernal, Abyssal, Primordial, Deep Speech, or perhaps-?"

  "Gibberish, in fact," Mara said, producing the tome, though she kept it far from Briarbones's reach. "The archmage's handwriting is atrocious, rambling, and excited, but all that the skulls had to tell him, he did indeed put to paper."

  "Good," Jinn said abruptly. "Figure it out. Look for references to souls, special ones. Sathariel is after them, and I want them first."

  "And in the meantime, you will be…?" Mara asked.

  "The skulls have more allies," Jinn replied. "Tallus is dead, the Loethes are dead, so someone else is helping them, giving them the power to possess."

  "Any leads?" Mara asked, gesturing at Dregg with a raised eyebrow and a vicious smile.

  "Callak Saerfynn," he said. "He may know enough to finish the spell, if nothing else." He paused, a thought occurring to him mid-stride. "How do we know the ritual isn't already finished?"

  "We are still alive," Mara answered absently, pages turning in her deft hands. "The completed spell will not be an event one would wish to witness, unless Tallus's descriptions of widespread destruction are wrong."

  Her words, cold and humorless, took hold in Jinn's thoughts, evoking images of burning homes, bodies in the streets, and a city's mourning, all over the ambitions of a greedy few. The idea of continued murders sounded almost appealing compared to the alternative.

  "Are you ever going to rest?" Quessahn asked, sitting in the dark just beyond the pale light from above. Jinn did not move, fearful of seeing her face again, fearful of the memories she might arouse within him.

  "I've grown accustomed to long nights over the years," he answered. "It makes things easier. I find that people tend to be more honest in the dark."

  "I'm curious, then. What would you have done, had you slain Sathariel two nights ago?" she asked. "Would you still be here?"

  "I don't know," he said. "It never crossed my mind."

  "What did he do? What did he take from you?"

  Jinn sighed under his breath, attempting to cool the sudden anger that raced in his heart, but he could not deny it its due course, just as he could no longer accept Quessahn's deliberate avoidance of what they both knew.

  "Another of my kind. A deva," he replied. He turned to her, narrowing his gold eyes to fine points as he found hers in shadow. "A woman I loved."

  She remained still as he studied her, watching for some reaction, seeking some quiet admission of guilt from the eladrin.

  "He-he killed her?" she asked at length, a barely perceptible catch in her voice.

  "No," he answered. "He corrupted her, confused her, and made her soul as black as his own. In the end, she took her own life."

  Though he said the words, he found that he no longer felt them, unmoved by the gruesome truth of Variel's death, despite the hate that had taken root within him. Of all his time with her, the peace he'd once known, he had spent far longer tracking down the angel. He realized that the place in his heart where he'd once kept her memory had been filled by his hunt for Sathariel… and the attention of Asmodeus.

  "Now he corrupts you," Quessahn muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  Jinn looked up to the surface, tiny shafts of light beckoning him to leave the eladrin in the dark with her righteousness. He smiled, a forced grin.

  "What about you?" he asked. "Was my death not closure enough? Did my grave, assuming I had one, not suffice your mourning so much that you felt inspired to bring your grief to this city? To find me?" He turned, voice rising as he confronted her. "Is it comforting to find me somehow less than what you knew? To judge me with your every breath?"

  "Oh, gods," she whispered, breathless and shaking, a single choking sob escaping her as she covered her ears and shook her head in her hands. "No…"

  Jinn stopped, her tears stabbing into his chest as he turned away, unwilling to witness what he had done.

  Quessahn's hope for a lost love sat bitterly in the pit of his stomach, crushed by his words and devoured by a petty rage that melted away as swiftly as it had come. He took hold of the ladder, his arm heavy and the climb to the surface seeming more difficult than before.

  "I–I cannot be the man you once knew. My kind, no… I do not work that way," he managed, his voice softer as he climbed. "You should not have found me."

  He slid the sewer covering away and rolled into the street, covering the entrance and staring blankly up at the gray sky, the damp cobbles soaking through his clothes. He listened for her voice, wondering if she might stop him to scream and curse his name. He imagined her again as he had in Tallus's tower, smiling and surrounded by an ocean of waving green, the faint memory of a bygone life reaching out to torment him.

  Only silence kept him company on the cobbles of Seawind Alley, even the ghostly whisperers did not break the stillness that held him.

  At length he stood and dashed into the streets, losing himself in the cold and racing against the harsh
light of sunrise, bending his focus back to the hunt, to Sathariel, and to all the things that his immortal blood demanded of him, a fool of long-lost gods.

  A swift wind swept through Pharra's Alley, its soft moan fading into a chorus of groaning voices that swirled together, a whirlwind of wails and roaring, green flames far below the wings of Sathariel. Empty eyes spun in slowly dying circles as the Nine gathered in their places, bobbing and regarding one another in silence. With as much emotion as fixed bone and lipless teeth could convey, they glowered at one another for several breaths, slowly turning round and round the place where they'd been bound, appearing as a tiny, green ring from the angel's place in the sky.

  "We should have killed the deva," said one abruptly. "He is too close, too unpredictable. His witches are-"

  "Be silent, Graius," another said. "The deva, while misguided, shall be our failsafe in the end. He has no choice."

  "Then the angel shall kill him if we do not," Graius replied.

  "Better that Sathariel is kept busy elsewhere, no?" the other responded as the rest of the circle nodded. "We have managed to evade the angel for centuries; no doubt we can fool him a few days more."

  "One day, in fact," Sathariel added from above, his large wings beating as he descended into the alley. Out of the range of their green flames, he hovered between the buildings, capturing their attention in his cold eyes. He enjoyed the fear he inspired in them and wished nothing more than to fulfill their every nightmare, but he was powerless over them as of yet and attempted a note of diplomacy. "In one day Tallus will attempt to betray you and steal all that you have worked for."

  "He lies!" Graius shouted. "He only speaks in traps and snares, much like his master."

  "Why, angel?" another asked, the circle turning to accommodate the speaker known as Effram. "What does your lord gain from telling us this?"

  "No, my old friends," Sathariel answered. "It is you who may gain, should you desire to survive what is to come. It is my understanding that survival is quite important to you, yes?"