BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue004

by Unknown

  There was some murmuring, then, though I could no longer hear the words. The murmurs brought darkness.

  When I awoke, the gray-veiled sun had nearly dropped below the distant peaks. My thinking seemed slow and my head ached dully, but I breathed well. “Master?”

  “Kem.” Then I saw him, seated not far away. “Candrin has healed you. He is not such a charlatan as he appears.”

  The mage, also nearby, hunched his shoulders a little more and said nothing to this.

  “But, Master—”

  “You will be well by tomorrow, Candrin tells me, and you’ll not fall ill again. We bed here tonight.” He stood and walked away, towards the long view of valley and stone. Candrin looked as though to speak to me, but I turned on the cloak where I lay to face away.

  My mouth stung bitter with some herb or potion drunk while I was ill. Before my closed eyes I saw the village healer again, the first devil the master slew after I joined him. The healer had smelled of the same bitterness, shedding it in sweat and fear as the master closed upon him against the sloping wall of a stable dug from the earth. The healer flung his gnarled hands before him, and his fingers were stained with the juices of pain-easing roots.

  When the master drew his saber, the healing man shrunk into the wall, trembling, until he dropped to earth with a screeching cry that gurgled to nothing as he turned. His body lengthened, his worn leather footings bursting as his legs, now fused, spiraled behind, scaled and glistening black.

  The master circled, watching the devil’s face to ready for the strike.

  When it came, the master leapt aside and slashed deep across the chest. The devil howled and struck again, frenzied, and the master thrust his saber deep into the belly. As the devil writhed, the master struck off the head with a last swing of his blade.

  I edged towards the prone form, for even dead the devil was fearsome. “Why should a devil be a healer, when they wish us harm?”

  “Devils are foul things, and if they do not do us harm, it is not for virtue. It is only the stifling of their nature, for a time.” His voice fell lower as he spoke, and when I looked to his eyes I saw some depth of grief there that I did not understand. “They call great evil upon mankind, with a power they’ve neither wish nor will to control.”

  We had gone then, collecting supplies from the village as payment and journeying towards the town where rumor called us next.

  The memory seemed strange to me now, and it rolled in my mind without rest. I lay long on my cloak before sleep came again.

  It was only when the skies finally emptied and the mountain trails wound beyond Candrin’s ken that the master led once more. We were deep in the mountains then, crags and cliffs at every turn. Our pace was the same, yet there was a tenseness in our step. Candrin and the master agreed it would be only a day or two more.

  I met Candrin with distrust when he slid behind to me again, our second day after the rain had stalled.

  “Your master knows these mountains well, does he not?”

  I scowled. “He is wise in the ways of the devils. He catches their scent. That is how we follow the trail of the she-devil now.”

  “He is indeed very wise in their ways,” said Candrin, scrambling over a low stone that he might stay at my ear. “How is it, I wonder?”

  I shrugged. “He is champion of the Dales, and now all the greater plains. He is a mighty warrior against the devils.”

  “Aye, indeed, but you do not catch my meaning. How does he know such things—the methods of seeking the devils, of slaying them?” He peered sidelong at me.

  “He is very wise.”

  “Has he studied, then, as I have studied?” growled Candrin. “I must weave a costly sorcery to seek out a lone devil, yet he finds tens of them without any sorcery at all. How? Has he spent long years in search of the knowledge of these creatures?”

  “He has not said.”

  “Can it be he knows their ways for some other reason?”

  I turned to him, tired of his questions. “And what reason would you have?”

  “He is one of them.”

  Before thinking, I had thrust him against a boulder. “How do you slander my master? How dare you?”

  “Think, man. He has the nose for them, smells them like only one devil can smell another. He knows their ways. They reveal themselves to him. Think on it.”

  “I think we’ve no more need of you,” I said, a hand to his throat as I reached for my knife with the other.

  Before I’d drawn it clear of my belt, I was pulled roughly back and slammed into the rock beside him.

  “What is this?” asked the master.

  “Master, he slanders you,” I cried. “He dares say —”

  “I’ve no wish to hear what he dares say,” said the master. “Leave him. Mage, bear your tongue well in your mouth. We’ve yet long to travel today.” He turned his back to us and continued up. Candrin glanced at me, searching, and then followed the master.

  I took the rear, and in the hours until dusk imagined thrusts of my knife to the throat, the eyes, the belly of the cloaked man climbing ahead of me.

  As the last light in the gray sky dimmed on the edges of the horizon, we stopped and prepared for sleep. Candrin drifted behind the nearest boulder for some preparation of his own devising, and as he did, the master was suddenly at my side.

  He dropped close, his voice hushed and tinged with strain. “Kem, you are my manservant. We go tomorrow to hunt a she-devil, and perhaps you’ll sorrow to see a woman die, even one such as she. Look to me, Kem.” He clutched my cloak. “Swear me an oath that if any devil crosses your path, you’ll slay it. Swear it!”

  “Aye, Master, I swear it.”

  He let go my cloak and I tripped back.

  “But Master—”

  He turned away and knelt by a rock across the clearing, where he pulled his cloak about him and lay down. Candrin, returning just after, seemed not to see either of us, but lay at another edge of the clearing. I went and took my place near the master, between him and Candrin.

  I slept ill, fitfully, and some time before dawn I crept away to the edge of the long, stumbling slope of stone that fell away from our path. Far across that expanse of edges and shadows, at the peaks spearing the horizon, I watched for the sky to lighten. How I could have wished for a glimpse of the natural sun through the close-hanging fog that had dogged us all through the mountains. At that dark hour even a pale, weakened glow would have been most welcome. I could not judge the time to know how long I must wait, but there seemed no chance of sleep again.

  Candrin’s accusations angered me, but the master’s command, that I prepare to slay a devil, left me far more uneasy. In my years serving him carrying baggage, keeping watch, bearing witness to his fatal duels with the devils, I’d never had need to strike one. Always the master had slain them. I mean him no dishonor when I say that the slaying was no difficult thing, for when they have just turned devils are sluggish and slow to strike. The master’s greatness was in the finding and the knowing of them, not the slaying.

  All about this quest was strange. Never had the master allowed any to accompany us, surely no sly magicker like this man Candrin. And why would he not listen to my worry?

  He had not trusted me less since we first journeyed together, when he’d bound me hand and foot each night and kept my boots near him as he slept. It was wise he did. I cannot think now what I would have done had I freed myself, for I had little skill but the thieving my father had taught me. It was this that the devil, still a man, had murdered him for. But the master gave me no such chance for escape, taking me far across barren wilds and past lonely clusters of huts in search of the devils. On those long roads between the dwellings of man, the master showed me the throwing of the hunter’s knife, the earths the healing herbs love, how one may sleep in deepest cold and not die. Perhaps some of these things might be called magic by the unknowing, but they are not, for I know them and I am no mage.

  I might still have taken my
own way, then, but there came a time when I was shown two roads, and I bound myself by my choice. We traveled near these same mountains, though further north, across the same wildlands ranged by wolfhounds. My master had a rumor of devilry in a village in that direction. We rested by turns, the waking one tending the fire while the other slept. I woke to a cry, and saw the master wrestling a hound, its teeth snapping at his throat.

  Acting without thought I spun to the fire, grabbed a burning limb, and clubbed the hound with it, swinging with the strength of all my fear and my courage woven as one.

  As the wolfhound howled, the master found the knife he’d been reaching for and plunged it into the hound’s head. With a weak moan, the hound fell to the ground, its teeth still bared.

  The master took the pain from my burned hand, though the rippled flesh never healed smooth. He gave me a knife, as well, and did not again bind my feet. There was no need.

  Thinking these things, I watched the eastern sky until it began to pale. The others arose. After a quick, silent meal from our packs, we set out again, the master leading with a long stride that I hurried to keep up with.

  The way grew treacherous, for we followed no path. The stones we climbed were still damp, and slick under our feet. As we were slipping between the walls of two peaks whose stony heads were not so far above ours, the master drew to a halt, his hand in the air to call silence.

  Staying us with a motion, he passed through the crevice and was gone.

  “In your years with such a champion,” Candrin rasped, “I am sure you know the one sure way of causing a devil to reveal its nature.”

  I drew away from Candrin’s rasp in my ear. He followed. “Has he never told you why they always turn as he attacks?”

  I glared at him. “I know. It is because they fear to die in human form.”

  He nodded his cloaked head at me. “Indeed. Remember that.” After a pause, he said, “I wonder why it is. It does them no good in the fight. Perhaps some final hunger for the truth. Eh? Knowing their lives short, they wish to spend one moment not skulking, not hiding. Doubtless they have some less noble reason. Some twisted mysticism, maybe fear for their souls.” He shook his head slowly. “Yet I cannot but give them honor for such honesty, be it selfish or foolish or noble.”

  “You’ve no honor to give any creature.”

  He twisted to look at me, and his eyes narrowed. “How do you think I found your master but by the spells that find devils?”

  “You lie.”

  “Fool.” He spat the word in my face. “Two devils will die this day, whether I’ve your hand or no.”

  Wearily I turned away to watch the passage. Behind me Candrin shuffled and murmured under his breath. I could have struck him then, turning to him on a pretense and crushing his skull, if only to still his fidgeting and his foul mouth. But the master would not want it, and besides, Candrin had not yet freed the she-devil we sought.

  The master came some time later, his face pale but his features set. “She’s there. Candrin, come break the enchantment, that I may slay her.” He turned back the way he had come, and we followed. The way was thin in places and the stone walls stretched above us, seeming to flatten us as we went.

  From the darkness of the passage, we broke out onto a plateau, studded with stones and grown thick with weed. Opposite the passageway, across this strange meadow, stood the devil, trapped in her prison of crystal. Had the sun broken through the clouds there, the great crystal would have shone like a hundred lamps, like water set somehow afire.

  “What must you do to free her?” asked the master.

  “I must look closer,” said Candrin, his eyes on the devil.

  With cautious stride we approached the she-devil, as though at any moment she might break from her block of shining stone and strike at us. But finally we stood before the pillar, and she remained coiled within, her arms thrown up before her face, her black hair forever floating about her. Had any clothing been thrown off when she turned, it must have long since rotted away.

  Candrin knelt and began taking things from his pack: thin-pulled leather scrawled with intricate symbols, a tiny dagger, a cloth filled with some pungent herb. Meanwhile the master circled the stone. He peered at the she-devil with a great intensity of some emotion I could not identify.

  I had never been so near a devil still living, enchanted or not. Her great black tail wound several coils thick beneath her. I shuddered but could not look away. That line where the immense serpent form melted to that of a woman thrilled me with a horrified fascination. There the scales faded to skin, pale against the ebony. There curved breasts small, neatly shaped—I flushed, for in serving the master I’d had little experience with women.

  She was terrified. Her eyes showed it, wide and white, around coins of yellow like brilliant gems with knives of black at their centers. Her mouth was open in a silent cry.

  “Candrin, have you prepared?” The master’s voice seemed far too loud in that still place.

  “It will not be so much longer,” said Candrin. The master drew back some distance away and sat to wait. As we watched, Candrin built a fire before the pillar, muttering strange words over it and finally throwing in the herb I had smelled. My eyes smarted and my nose stung at the odor. Beside me, the master sneezed harshly.

  “Candrin,” he called. “What purpose has that foul stuff?”

  “It subdues the devils,” Candrin replied. “They cannot abide the scent.”

  The master sneezed again but said no more.

  “Master,” I whispered, “Why was she caught in stone? What had she done?”

  “Her fate was a warning to the others,” he said softly.

  “She is very young.”

  “Hush,” he said, his stare fixed upon her. I looked, but of course she had not moved. I asked no more questions.

  Finally, Candrin called to us, “I’ll break it now.”

  The master hastily arose with his saber drawn. As we approached, Candrin took the small dagger, heated in the fire, and pressed its tip into the stone. With a sudden crash, like that of water at the base of a falls, a great mist rose around the stone, obscuring it. When it had drifted clear, the stone was gone, and the she-devil lay gasping on the earth.

  The master strode forward, choking on the smoke from Candrin’s fire.

  He stopped just a stride away from her to look upon her as she lay. As her breathing steadied, she finally seemed to see his boots before her face, and she peered up to him. She stilled.

  It was as though they themselves hardened to crystal. An air of silence hung about them like that at a grave after the mourners have gone.

  Abruptly the master turned on his heel and came to me. “Kem, it is your time.”

  “What?” I stared into his earnest face. The smoke had drawn tears from his reddened eyes.

  “I am weak. Pity strangles me. You must slay the devil, Kem.”

  “Master, I cannot,” I said, shocked. “It is yours to slay.”

  “You must.”

  “I am no champion, Master. I am only your servant.”

  His breath was ragged. “Then serve me now. You’ve sworn to me your will.”

  “But, Master—”

  He fell to the earth, choking.

  Candrin was at my side. “You see it, Kem? He is a devil, for only they suffer so under the scent I’ve brewed. Do you see it now? You’re not harmed by the smoke.”

  I sniffed at the scent again. It stung, but it did not choke me.

  “Now, go slay that she-serpent while I tend to this one.” Candrin shoved me towards the she-devil, still lying where she’d fallen. With shaking hands, I took the saber from the master and moved towards her, not even thinking what I did, for my mind whirled.

  It could not be. He was a champion. He had slain tens of devils just before my eyes, and many more before I served him. Surely it could not be.

  Some sound behind me caused me to turn. Candrin knelt at the master’s side with his dagger in his hand, raising i
t to strike.

  I did not think. With one motion, I lunged and swung the saber at Candrin.

  He howled a stricken animal cry of pain. I drew the saber from his shoulder and swung again, now at his side. Again, another bite in his shoulder. Again—

  Something tugged at me, and I whirled with the saber raised above my head, nearly striking at my master, whose hand clung to my shirt.

  “Leave him, Kem,” he whispered. A spreading crimson stain marked his chest. I glanced to Candrin and saw that his dagger was already blooded.

  “Master,” I cried. Dropping the saber, I reached for his cloak and shoved it to his chest.

  “No use,” he gasped. “Poisoned.”

  Beneath my touch, he writhed. I fell back. His face twisted and in long convulsions, his body swelled. He gave a low moan, and from within him burst a long black tail, shiny with scales. Shudders coursed through his body.

  The poison was swift. Even as I watched, his breathing shallowed. His face, already pale, grew waxen. He looked to me with yellowed eyes. “Slay the she-devil.” I rushed to him and again held the cloak to his chest, but in a moment his struggling breaths ceased.

  My eyes swelled with hot tears. “Master.” Kneeling there, not minding the seeping blood or the scales, I fell across my master’s body and wept.

  When I had spent my first flush of tears, I looked stupidly around me. A few strides away Candrin lay curled in the grass, his hand to his shoulder as though to staunch the blood. It had done him little good, for the cuts were deep. Now he slept as one who would not wake again.

  A gasp caught my ear, and I turned.

  The she-devil was pulling herself upright. When I caught her eye she paused, her mouth open as she stared back at me.

  Young, barely of marrying age. Wielder of a power no man could claim, a knowledge and a skill that worked so often for ill. Who could blame her if, in all those long centuries frozen in stone, she had nurtured a seed of spite?

  I knelt to pick up the saber and wipe its curved blade clean on my shirt. When it shone again, I stood and looked to the she-devil.