BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue004

by Unknown

  Her pale neck lay exposed, bright as desert sand in moonlight to Khatire’s Gift. The blue veins pulsed under the skin. Khatire’s fist tightened on the dagger.

  The spinrag’s legs came toward them, tat-tat-tat. She threw another ghost of light and shadow across its path, but this time it did not jump. The creature had learned.

  Khatire dropped the dagger into her pocket. Her heart pounded, and her hands sweated. Nothing stood between them and the spinrag. Extending the shadow over Nefaria, she reached under her and helped her to her feet. Nefaria’s head hung to one side, her left eyelid drooping, lips slack. One leg dragged behind her, toes kicking for purchase, but the other seemed steady enough. Her weight did not feel that much heavier than Anut-ka.

  The spinrag lunged at the spot where Nefaria had lain, jabbing at the ground with its pincers. The head came up and swiveled from side to side. The tail flexed and tensed, coiled, ready to strike.

  Khatire crafted another illusion, cat-like and darting, on the other side of the refuse pile.

  The spinrag took a few steps in its direction. Tat, tat, tat. Then it stopped and cocked its head again.

  Khatire tried once more—a tiny lightburst along the far wall that made the stones sparkle. The spinrag didn’t move.

  They were nearly to the wall, to the steep climb and the narrow squeeze between the rocks. The spinrag swiveled its head from side to side again. Khatire dragged Nefaria up the slope, pulling her toward what she hoped was the safety of the ledge. Nefaria helped, clutching with her one good hand, balancing their climb with her good leg.

  Her dragging leg dislodged a small rain of stone.

  The spinrag crossed the distance in less than a blink, its huge tail smashing into the rocks where their feet had just been. Nefaria flinched, nearly slipping away, dragging both of them down the slope.

  Khatire panicked.

  She exploded light so hot, so dazzling, that pain seared her eyesockets. Nefaria whimpered, flinching again, shielding her face. Khatire gritted her teeth and yanked Nefaria’s body up the ragged rock as the spinrag’s tail slapped the stones again, splashing hot venom across her bare ankles. She blasted ball after ball of light, on one side and the other. The spinrag skittered upslope through the lightbursts, dislodging splatters of stone. Its pinchers smashed within inches of Khatire’s face. Its tail lashed all around them.

  And then they tumbled onto the ledge. Nefaria, sobbing, dragged herself with one arm to safety through the crevice in the stone. Khatire fell on her back, nearly spent, nearly blind.

  A vague shadow reared over the lip of the rocks.

  Khatire shaped a thousand darts of light and flung them at the spinrag’s head in a focused blaze as bright as the midday sun. The creature jerked back so suddenly it tilted off-balance, and tumbled head over tail down the slope, bringing a slide of rock crashing around it.

  Or so Khatire guessed from listening. Her world was only black.

  She sat there in the dark for a long time, with no idea where the ledge was, where the crevice was, or where she could find her son’s still-poisoned body. Even when she heard Nefaria stir, cloth whisking stone, she sat, trying again and again to make light blossom, even a spark. But she could see nothing. Tears wracked her body until she heard the wounded limp of Nefaria’s footsteps and felt a hand fall on her shoulder.

  “It’s almost dawn,” Nefaria whispered. “We have to go where they can’t see us from the windows.”

  “I’m blind,” Khatire answered.

  “I didn’t call Ankha,” she said. “She doesn’t know where we are.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You must live,” she said urgently.

  Khatire laughed. “Must I?”

  “Anut-ka stirs.”

  What could she do for him, blind and helpless? Then she he heard his voice, muffled, confused, and her heart leapt toward it. She staggered to her feet, nearly falling over. “This way,” Nefaria said, lifting Khatire’s hand to her shoulder.

  Together they felt their way through the rocks. Anut-ka’s mumble resolved into mama. “Shh, I’m here,” Khatire whispered. Nefaria led her to his side, and he climbed into her arms even as she was kneeling, his weight tipping her over against the rocks. She clutched him tight, feeling his eyelashes brush her cheeks, his hair between her fingers, and she thought how she would never see his face. She began to weep again.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?” he murmured. His breath was sour, as if he had vomited.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said, almost laughed as the tears flowed even stronger. The poison was out of his system. She held his head in her hands and kissed his face until he pulled away. “It’s going to be fine.”

  “We found a staircase,” he said, tugging at her hand.

  “It’s old,” Nefaria said at her side, startling her. “Made by workmen maybe, centuries ago. It leads over the ridge and out of the valley to the desert.”

  Which was the way they must go to escape.

  Khatire rose, wiping the tears from her eyes, and listened. The waves pounded the rocks on the other side of the palace, and the air was filled with salt. Somewhere up above them was the Bridge of Broken Wings, and beyond that the emperor’s spire and his plan to find the Paha Vaim and escape his exile. If she had survived the intrigue, and Anut-ka had become the heir, she would have lived the rest of her days in a splendor known only to emperors and gods. Now, she would be a blind beggar woman with a useless Gift and a son to raise, both of them living in an exile of their own making.

  “Mama, look at it shine,” Anut-ka said, tugging at her hand again, insistently.

  “It’s the wet rock, lit up by the dawn,” whispered Nefaria.

  “Is that it, mama?” Anut-ka asked. “Is that the Crystal Stair?”

  “Yes, it is,” Khatire said. She squeezed Anut-ka’s chubby little fist and held tight to Nefaria. “Let’s climb it together.”

  Copyright © 2008 by Charles Coleman Finlay & Rae Carson Finlay

  The Last Devil

  Sarah L Edwards

  My master was a mighty man. He slew devils with a sure hand as none other did, finding them when no other could and striking them down with a great strength. They say if he had prevailed, our land would be free of devils. I doubt this very much. Though my master was a great man, even if he had by a miracle found and killed the last devil that walked among men, surely others would have arisen from the bowels of the earth.

  The master and I sought the strange ensnared she-devil, held in the grip of some enchantment of old and hidden deep among the twists and peaks they call the wolfhound crags. Yet we sought to slay not only a devil but a legend, made so by some glib-tongued prophet in ages past who said she in the mountains, when slain, would be the last of her kind.

  The first gentle slopes of foothills made a barren landscape. Stone-filled earth prevented any kind of farming and the grass grew too thin to graze, except perhaps for sheep, though the legends of the wolfhounds kept most shepherds away. I had no true horror of the hounds, for we had met before and I judged them mortal creatures. Still, I had not much more wish to die by a mortal creature than a cursed one. I assured myself that the master would have caught scent of any that dared draw near, but still I kept a sharp eye.

  So it was that I first saw, a half hour or more behind us, a black speck just coming up a rise as we fell behind another. When we climbed again I looked behind and saw nothing, but on the next ascent I again caught sight of the figure, no nearer and soon dropped from view, but still following our trail.

  The master strode in the way he would when his thoughts were turned inward, and I concluded not to disturb him. Perhaps if left alone, the follower might find his fate in the teeth of a wolfhound without any interference of ours.

  Finally, as dusk grew close as a wet fog, the master turned, his eyes bright and distant a moment before seeing my face. “Kem, we’d best bed soon.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said. Dropping my voice, I said, “We’re followed
.”

  “Yes.” He looked up beyond me, and though the dark figure could only have been one shadow among many, even were he out of the valleys, still the master nodded. “Light a fire and warm the meat. We’ll have a visitor tonight.”

  “But Master, the beasts?”

  He shook his head. “They’ve not touched him, so they’ll not touch us.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  I built a fire of the few wood scraps we’d packed with us and propped the roast mutton over it. A seeping damp crawled over us and added to the chill of late-harvest air.

  The master sat some short distance from the fire and fingered his saber, the bright-polished knife that had freed the world of a great count of devils. As he turned it over, the curving blade gleamed in the firelight, flashing like another flame. The fancywork glittered black against the shine. What the fancywork meant, whether it was words in some foreign tongue or sorcerous symbols or even a family crest, the master had never said.

  Finally, he looked up and spoke into the darkness. “Join us at the fire. No need to skulk with the shadows.”

  And then some shadow to my right stepped away from its brethren, into the light. It was a hunched, sour-looking man I remembered from the last settlement we’d left. He’d whispered fiercely against the devil-slayer, Saman of the Dales – my master. A fool’s hero, he’d called him, just a man with a sword who knew more of devils than any right man should. But he’d whispered only, for if my master were a fool’s hero than the land held a great quantity of fools.

  “Have a meal with us,” said the master.

  Without any rustle of his black cloak, the man sat near me before the fire. “I am called Candrin.”

  “And I Saman, which you doubtless know.”

  “Of course,” the man said, and I tensed.

  The master nodded to me. “Now the meat, Kem.”

  When we each held some of the warmed mutton, the master turned to Candrin. “You follow us – a weary task, I’d guess.” Underneath his voice’s warmth there was a sharpness like a saber blade.

  “A weary task indeed,” Candrin said. “You wonder, why in the name of plowed earth have I tramped after you all this day? Through lands ravaged by wolfhounds, what’s more. It’s a fair thing I’ve still all my limbs.”

  “It’s no wondrous thing,” said my master, all the humor gone. “You stink of disease, like a rabid cur.”

  Candrin peered closer. “Indeed.”

  I sniffed the air, but with a nose full of woodsmoke I could smell nothing else.

  “They say you seek the she-devil,” said Candrin.

  “Do they?” said the master.

  “Aye, the serpent-woman trapped in crystal, high in the mountains where no man treads.”

  “They say many a strange thing, as you surely know,” said the master.

  “Do you know how to find her?”

  “I’ve never failed to find those I seek. So the ale-songs say.”

  The man leaned nearer. “And do you know the way to free her from her prison and drive your dagger through her heart? It’s cunning knowledge – not just any know it.”

  “I know well enough.”

  “The she-devil is imprisoned in such enchantments that you will fall prey yourself before you’re near enough to catch sight of her! No unstudied man—not even you, champion—could unknot that tangle. None but a devil could, or a mage. Which do you claim?” His eyes glittered in the firelight.

  “The devils I’ve slain are claim enough. And you, stranger, what is your claim? You threaten and cajole all at once. Would you hinder me? Do you favor the devils?”

  Candrin hunched nearer. His eyes sparked like cinders. “The devils must die, every last to the smallest hatchling still feigning to be a human babe. They curse the earth and set disease on the wind.” He spit at the ground. “It is by their sorcery that I am before you, a man set rootless by misfortune.

  “But I’ve no faith you can end this devil, hero. Unless I journey with you, you and your manservant will die some tormented death in the mountains, and you’ll be mourned as one more champion too foolhardy for anyone’s good.”

  The master sat back, the tension I’d seen before eased to watchfulness. “And what would you care to do about this, murmurer, meddler?”

  Candrin shrugged. “I am a magician, in a small way.”

  “I’ve little use for small magic.”

  “You’ve use for mine.” He laughed softly. “I’m a day or so older than I might look, hero, and that’s old enough. Since devilish sorcery withered the crops of my village and the people drove me away in distrust, I’ve rooted among heroes and witches, magicians and medicine-women and lone shepherds to find the secrets of the devils. I know more of the she-devil you court than you could know if you circled her with your nose to the air for the next fifty years—if you lived that long.”

  “You offer some hidden knowledge in return for journeying with us? Why not tell me now and save yourself the danger?”

  Candrin shook his head. “You’ll never find your way. You need me to cast the spells. She’s encased in crystal, did you hear that, hero?”

  “So the legends say.”

  “You’ll need magic to break her loose before you can even think of stabbing her with that shiny knife of yours.”

  My master sat back until shadows masked his eyes, the stray of his glance hidden. Candrin returned to the remains of his mutton, gnawing at it with ivories that, though somewhat yellowed, appeared too strong for the age he claimed.

  The master leaned forward again and looked at me. “Kem, how do you judge his offer? Is there malice behind it, or is it only the man’s slinking ways I mistrust?”

  Candrin smiled faintly, but he did not speak.

  I glared towards him and said, “I cannot see his motive, Master.”

  “No more can I. What say you to that, magician?”

  Candrin shrugged, a long, slow sweep of the shoulders so studied as to belie the calm he pretended. “I have told you, I wish the devils dead. Perhaps she is the last, eh, as it is said? I’ve peered into deep mysteries that I might lend aid to such a quest as this, hero.” He looked the master in the eye. “I’m old enough a man for superstitions. I believe the tales. On this quest, the last will die.”

  But hadn’t the master heard him in the settlement? He called him murmurer; didn’t he know what he’d said?

  The master nodded. “Candrin, if you care to travel with us, you may. I warn you, any harm you intend to us will haunt you instead.”

  Another shrug. “I wish only the devils to die.”

  These words ought to have comforted, but something in Candrin’s voice left me so uneasy I kept watch that night while they slept each on his own side of the fire.

  Near dawn, cloud and fog joined in a drizzling rain, not hard but long, so that any fire we might have wished would have drowned in wet fuel before it ever drew breath. We wrapped our cloaks around us, burdens at our backs, and turned again to the mountains.

  We walked until the hills we strode began nudging the foothills, which grew always steeper and stonier, with little plant growth save the rare scrub bush. We broke for a rest while the master and Candrin growled about paths and maps, just low enough that I couldn’t tell what the argument was, or even whose way we finally chose.

  Candrin gradually slowed, dropping from his place just behind the master until I drew even with him.

  “Tell me, Kem, why do you follow this man?”

  I grunted. “A devil, sir, slew my father some years past.” It had saved me the trouble, though I doubt now I would ever have killed him myself. More likely I would fled some desolate night than repay the man the bruises and deep-cut sores he’d often given me.

  Candrin’s glance flicked to me before again staring ahead. “Aye?”

  “My master slew the devil.”

  I had watched from among the gathered crowd. Yellow eyes, the devil had, and a hide of scales glistening black. Even when the foul thing ha
d fully turned, its hands still grasped at the air while the twisted mouth shrieked fearful things. It would have seemed only a beast, powerful and deadly, were it not for those hands and eyes, so like a man’s but not, a living sacrilege. They gave the true dread of the thing.

  “And so you offered yourself to him in gratitude?” Candrin asked.

  Still stumbling and sore from my father’s last beating, I had stolen into the champion’s room at the inn the night of the slaying. I had nearly made away with the fabulous saber he had wielded when he, walking silently, drew up behind me. In one movement he wrested the blade from me and struck off the small finger of my lesser hand. Did I prefer the whole hand to follow for thievery, he asked in a voice of quiet thunder, or would I sell myself to him for the price of a finger?

  I nodded. “Aye.”

  Candrin hummed. “A noble tale.” There was likely a sting in his voice, but I did not notice. I was rubbing the seam of the finger where the master had joined it again with my hand. Were it not for the faint scar, none could tell I had ever lost it.

  In his lore Candrin knew trails that the master could not smell out for the rain, which plunged steadily to earth and to us standing in its path, lingering upon our caps and down our necks and in our boots until even the memories of dryness and warmth were faint. The earth was drenched, the stones we climbed slick, though there appeared continually less earth and more stone.

  When I woke the fourth morning plagued with aches I guessed them to be from the climbing. We scrambled down into a narrow valley and mounted the heights on the far side. The way was hard, and I grew hot, though a breeze blew cool. My clothes grew sodden beneath my cloak. I was glad to sink onto a stone when we paused, for the mountains were blurring and swaying before my eyes.

  “Your man has fallen to devils’ ills, champion,” Candrin said, from a great distance. “It haunts these regions, killing those who draw too near to devils’ haunts.”

  “Have you a cure?”

  “No, Master,” I cried, my voice thick in my throat. “Heal me yourself.” Always he had before, when I was wounded by an animal or fell foul of unclean air.