Dark Immolation

by Christopher Husberg

  And yet here she was, still as shocked as ever. Would she ever get used to it?

  “Thank you, thank you,” the mother kept saying, over and over, and transferred her embrace from her son to Jane, nearly knocking Jane over.

  Jane laughed. “It was not me,” she said. “It was Canta. Canta healed your son, and She has many more yet to heal today.”

  “Of course,” the mother sobbed. “Thank you,” she kept repeating, turning back to her son.

  “Is this why we’re out here?” Cinzia asked Jane as they both stood up. Jane’s forehead was beaded with sweat; the healing had taken a great deal of energy.

  “Yes,” Jane said. “We are here to heal. We are here to bind wounds with Canta’s love.”

  * * *

  Astrid stabbed her sword down, straight through the man’s neck. She put one hand to her cheek, feeling the burned skin. Her hood had been partly knocked away from her face, and the sun had scorched her. It would heal within the hour, most likely, but it still hurt like a bitch.

  Eward called out to her, and Astrid turned. He pointed toward the hill, where a large group of people—Odenites, not Kamites, Astrid realized—were fleeing. Astrid shook her head. Whatever was going on there was not their immediate concern. “As long as they’re safe, we can’t concern ourselves with them,” Astrid said.

  Then, to the left, Astrid heard a shout that she knew was not from one of their own.

  “There they are! Get them!”

  Astrid swore under her breath as she called a halt, and turned to face the oncoming threat. A dozen men on horseback bore down on Astrid and her guards, waving their weapons in the air.

  “Form a line!” Astrid shouted.

  The guards around her turned quickly, more disciplined than Astrid could have hoped. The men who bore down on them were screaming. That was good. That meant Astrid and her group had been noticed. Many of the attackers had fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind. Their biggest mistake had been splitting up, attacking the Odenites in small units. That had made it easy for Astrid and her guards to take them out one by one.

  “Hold!” Astrid shouted. “Wait for my signal.”

  Then, Astrid moved forward, quickly. Horses, as a general rule, did not like her.

  Sure enough, a couple of the horses spooked as Astrid approached, and when she ran up to them, ducking attacks from above her and stabbing a horse in the belly for good measure—if the creatures didn’t care for her, why should she care for them?—the horses all but scattered.

  “Charge!” Astrid shouted to the guards. Immediately they moved forward, shouting, weapons held high. As they crashed into the flank of the confused attackers, Astrid struck from the other side, stabbing and flailing about with her sword. Men and animals screamed around her, and in seconds the skirmish ended with a half-dozen of the enemy fleeing on horseback, while the other half lay dead and dying at Astrid’s feet.

  Astrid looked around, and she realized that the end of the skirmish might have marked the end of the battle, too. The only remaining Kamites she could see were fleeing. All around her were bodies, men and women groaning. And the smell of blood, everywhere.

  Astrid scowled. In the distance she saw Jane and her disciples, wandering the grounds. It seemed the women had chosen to leave the house, despite what she’d told them.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  Astrid turned to see Eward approaching her. He was covered in blood and sweat, his voice hoarse. “We’re going to regroup,” she said, turning to address all of the remaining guards. “We’re going to find Knot, tend to the wounded. And we’re going to find out where that group of Odenites went.”

  * * *

  Cinzia watched as Jane lifted her hands from the young girl. Almost immediately, the girl’s eyes opened, and she looked around. When her eyes fell upon her parents, staring anxiously back down at her, they shone brightly in the light of dusk.

  People gasped. “Praise Canta!” they whispered as the young girl stood, melting into her parents’ embrace. “Bless the Prophetess!” As Jane and her disciples had walked through the grounds, a crowd had begun to gather around them to witness Jane’s healing.

  To witness the miracles.

  Cinzia had lost count of how many people Jane had healed. Even those who seemed on the brink of death, who seemed impossible to bring back, Jane placed her hands on them, and soon afterwards they stood up, smiling, walking, as if they had just woken from a dream.

  Jane reached for Cinzia’s hand. Cinzia did not know how Jane was doing what she was doing, but it certainly took a physical toll on her sister. Jane was practically soaked through with perspiration; strands of her hair clung to her face. Her disciples had to help Jane up every time, one of them always by her side, holding her arm, as she walked from casualty to casualty.

  “Where next?” Jane asked. Cinzia craned her neck, looking for the nearest person who might need healing. Elessa and Ocrestia had both begun healing as well, although it took them significantly longer than it took Jane. Cinzia noticed Elessa out of the corner of her eye—the woman looked exhausted.

  Cinzia felt a sudden pull on her arm, and reached out as Jane’s legs collapsed beneath her.

  “Jane!” Cinzia knelt by her sister, prone in the grass. “You must rest, this is taking too much of a toll on you.”

  Jane shook her head. “I can’t rest. Not yet.”

  “Jane, you can’t possibly walk any further, you—”

  “Then you will have to carry me, sister.”

  Cinzia stared at Jane. She did not know how much more her sister could take before the consequences became irreversible.

  “If you don’t, I will find someone else,” Jane said quietly, her eyes pleading.

  Someone rushed to Cinzia’s side. It was Arven, breathing heavily.

  “Disciple Cinzia, I found another group. There are so many of them, Goddess, it’s like—” Arven stopped, looking down at Jane, eyes widening in surprise. “Oh! Is she all right? What happened?”

  Before Cinzia could respond, Jane spoke. “There are people who need me, Cinzia. I can help them. We can help them. Please. Do as I ask.”

  Cinzia wrapped her arms around her sister almost before she knew what she was doing. Fear crawled across her heart, but she knew Jane was right. Her muscles strained as she lifted her sister. Jane held her tightly.

  “Where are they?” Cinzia asked, turning to Arven.

  “This way,” Arven said, walking east towards the trees, towards the setting sun.

  Cinzia followed, praying for the strength to carry her sister that far. She was not strong, and Jane was already heavy in her arms.

  “How far?” Cinzia asked.

  “Not very, just up ahead.”

  The crowd moved with them, having grown silent since Jane’s collapse. Canta was silent today, too, at least for Cinzia. She felt no supernatural strength in her limbs, no imbued focus or speed. She could only trudge forward, one step at a time.

  She had slapped Jane. She was not sure she deserved Canta’s power. She was not sure she was ready to trust again.

  Cinzia was suddenly ashamed for her thoughts. Jane had healed many people that day, dozens at least, and was about to heal more. She brought men and women and children back from the brink of death, with a power that Cinzia couldn’t understand. And yet here Cinzia was, complaining that she couldn’t carry her sister a dozen rods.

  “Let me take her.”

  Cinzia turned in surprise, and saw Eward. Blood and sweat smeared together on his face and clothing, but he looked unharmed.

  “Let me take her,” he repeated.

  No, Cinzia wanted to say. I can carry her.

  Instead, she nodded, and handed Jane over to her brother.

  Cinzia had not realized her cheeks were wet until after she gave Jane away. She sniffed, wiping her face with her sleeve. Canta had not seen fit to give her strength today. Cinzia found it confusing that she felt both bitterness towards her Goddess for not dei
gning to give her that strength, and shame towards herself for not being worthy of it.

  As they approached the crowd of wounded before them, Cinzia gasped. Arven was right; there were many of them. People groaned and sobbed on the bloodstained grass, clutching wounds. But the worst was how many people were silent, unmoving.

  Ocrestia knelt down beside one of the wounded, and Cinzia witnessed the same soft glow she had seen around Jane envelop Ocrestia and the young man on which she laid her hands. Elessa, too, had reached down to an injured woman, soft light surrounding them both.

  Eward helped Jane sit next to more of the wounded, and Jane began healing.

  Eventually, Cinzia mustered the courage to kneel by a man, perhaps her father’s age.

  Trust comes first, she told herself. I must trust.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Cinzia whispered. The man reached up to grab Cinzia’s hand, his movement so sudden it startled her. His face was unnaturally pale, eyes wide in horror. Then he looked up at her and spoke, but his voice was different; hearing his voice, somehow, she knew.

  It was not this man who spoke to her. The voice was dark, deep, wreathed in flame. The voice was the same voice that had spoken to her from Kovac, before she had killed him, in Izet.

  “You will all die,” the man said, the words rumbling up from beneath him, his eyes wide and rolling up into his skull.

  Cinzia tried to pull her arm away, but the man’s grip was far too strong.

  “You will all die screaming,” the man said, his hand squeezing Cinzia’s like a vice. Pain shot through her and she whimpered, looking around. Everyone was focused on Jane and the other two disciples, on the miraculous healing taking place. Cinzia wanted to cry out, but her voice made no sound, as if she were in a dream, in a nightmare.

  “You will all die screaming, and I will watch, and take pleasure in it.”

  Cinzia couldn’t speak, but her thoughts were still her own. I know who you are! she cried, the words echoing in her mind. I know who you are, and I am not afraid.

  “You’re right,” the man rasped, and his lips parted, the corners shifting in an unnaturally wide, horrific grin. “What you feel now, you think it is fear. But you know nothing. You will know true fear soon enough.”

  The man’s grip tightened further on Cinzia’s wrist; she felt the bones crunching in her hand, heard the snap of them grinding and breaking together. Cinzia let out a soft, silent sob.

  “We will consume you.”

  The man pulled, and Cinzia felt tears streaming down her face as she screamed silently at the pain. One of her knees pressed into the man’s chest, and the man’s horrifying grin faltered. In desperation, Cinzia moved her knee up to the man’s throat, pressing with all her weight.

  “We will consume you, and all of your pride, and you will know it not.”

  Cinzia pressed harder, watched in horror as the man’s face turned brighter and deeper red, almost purple. Then, she felt something give way beneath her knee, and the man’s grip on her released. He lay there, his head lolled to one side, all the strength gone.

  Cinzia cradled her arm, sobbing quietly to herself, the sound now suddenly audible. Behind her, she heard gasps of awe and reverence. Cinzia was grateful for that, as she stared down at the man she had just killed. Jane healed the people, while Cinzia killed them. Why such a dichotomy between the two of them? What was the purpose? She thought she had exercised faith during the inductions, when she saved Jane. Had she been wrong?

  Cinzia sat back, holding her injured arm close to her chest. Behind her, Jane and the disciples continued to heal, and Cinzia stared at the dead man before her until the sun had set and all those who could be healed were healed and Jane had collapsed from exhaustion.

  42

  Forest surrounding the Harmoth estate

  HE WOKE WITH DEW on his face and a strange, worming thought in his mind that something was wrong. He raised a hand to wipe the cold moisture away. The strange sensation that something was off, that either the world around him had changed, or that he had, was not so easily removed.

  Who am I?

  He tried to think, tried to search the deepest recesses of his mind, but it was like diving into a lake that had frozen solid. Where he had been the night before—or earlier that night, as the sun seemed to not have risen yet—was an impossible memory. Where he had been and what he had been doing a week prior even more so. He could think of no familiar face, no family member or friend or acquaintance or lover.

  The man observed all of these things, or the lack of all of these things in his mind, with a strange indifference. It was as if he were watching someone else wake up in the middle of a forest with no memory of himself or his life before that moment.

  Who am I?

  As the man sat there, bent at the waist, his clothes damp with dew, there was only one thought that wormed its way through the rest, that gave way to real fear.

  He did not know his own name.

  It seemed a silly thing, a name. What did it matter what he called himself, after all? What did a series of sounds matter in the face of a life, of an entire experience?

  And yet, it did. As the man racked his brain to discern what others called him, the fear grew slowly into something greater, more tangible, a cold, bubbling terror in his gut. If he had no name, he had no identity. If he had no identity, he had nothing.

  He might as well be in Oblivion itself.

  A noise to his left. He turned his head sharply, and pain shot through his neck. A pulled muscle or kinked nerve. The man tried to stretch out the sharp, tweaking pain that ran from his shoulder to his skull, but it did not lessen.

  The noise again. He twisted his torso to avoid moving his neck too much. He squinted into the foliage around him, dark and indiscernible. The terror bubbling within him had subsided with the sudden pain in his neck, but it now rushed back with a vengeance.

  The forest was silent, now. It took the man a moment to realize that there was no noise at all, and the silence around him couldn’t be natural.

  Then, in the dark trees straight ahead of him, a shadow. A shadow within shadows, somehow darker than all of them. The shade was vaguely human-shaped, and was moving towards him.

  His breathing quickened. He scrabbled backwards away from the shade. He felt a stabbing pain in his hand and stopped, holding his injured hand in front of his face. A large thorn protruded from his palm, a bead of blood just beginning to bloom at its base. He was in a briar patch, he realized. He had been lying in a briar. The man stared at the thorn in his hand in horror at the drop of blood, but his focus shifted from his hand to the shade that stalked him.

  The shadow now stood directly in front of him, a shadow cloaked in darkness, a black hood that overshadowed an even blacker pit where a face should be. The cloak hung loosely around the figure, and it was long, its folds reaching down into the foliage. The folds, the man realized, reached outward, blending with a dark fog that seemed to roil forth from the figure’s feet. The fog moved forwards slowly, threatening to engulf him entirely.

  He recoiled immediately, heedless of the pain in his hands, pushing himself backward, farther away from the terrible figure. More thorns pierced his hands, tore long scratches into his arms, but he did not care. The thorns did not matter, only getting away from this figure, only—

  The briar beneath him began to move. The long, curving, entangled branches snaked around the man’s arm. He tried to pull his arm free, but he couldn’t. He looked up, saw the figure cloaked in darkness before him, at his feet once more. The figure’s face was still nothing but a black pit, but as the man gazed into it he had the strangest sensation that this thing was smiling at him, smiling from beneath its shaded cowl, smiling as more branches wrapped around the man’s other limbs, and then around his torso and neck, a dozen sharp thorns piercing his throat as a branch closed tightly around it.

  He did not die.

  The man knew, based on the length of the thorns—almost as long as his fingers�
�and how tightly the branch was constricted around his neck that he should be dead. He should be dead twice over.

  “What… what do you want…” he rasped, barely forming the words.

  The shadowy figure’s hidden smile widened. “This.” It spread its arms wide. “And her.”

  And then, in a rush of air, the shadowy figure was gone, the thorns were gone, and the man was alone among dead leaves in the forest, and his name was Knot.

  Knot gasped, gulping in air.

  The figure was the same one he had seen in Izet, when Winter died. The figure was Azael, master of the Nine Daemons.

  And as Knot remembered his name, and remembered Azael, he remembered what had happened before he found himself in this forest. The Kamites. The attack. The guards fighting, and Knot remembering, and then…

  Knot swore. He had left them.

  He leapt to his feet, and began sprinting west towards the sea, towards Harmoth.

  43

  Imperial palace, Izet

  COVA RUSHED TO THE ballroom of the imperial palace, picking up the hem of her gown as best she could to move faster. She had lost track of time in the library, and now she would be late for her father’s inaugural ball.

  The ballroom, of course, was nothing compared to the throne hall, but while the great dome was being repaired, this was the best alternative.

  She dropped the hem of her gown and stood outside the doors for a moment trying to regain control of her breathing. Running from the library to the ballroom in her childhood home would have been taxing enough, but the immensity of the imperial palace made Castle Amok seem a shack in comparison.

  The buzz of hundreds of chattering voices drifted out of the ballroom. Cova could smell the food, too. Her stomach growled, and she realized she had not eaten since breakfast.

  Goddess rising, there was just too much going on. Too much to do.

  Cova smoothed her gown—a dark, deep purple dress, of the same new style she had worn to her engagement ball—and walked into the ballroom.