by Joe Jackson
“Your father did the same things to you?” he asked, and in his voice and his tone Kari heard a gentleness and a compassion that had been lacking when the half-corlyps spoke to her before. In that tone, she found strength; not because he pitied her, but because he admired her.
“Yes,” she said, and though she still had to fight back tears, that liberating feeling swept through her again. “For a few years, til I was strong enough to run away…like you.”
Eli sighed and returned to his bedding to sit cross-legged once more. “I’ve heard a lot about your, well, lives,” he said after some thought. “As I said before, I didn’t think you could be the same Karian Vanador I’d heard and read about, but even so, there’s just been something about you, something I could sense in you. Somehow I just knew you’d been through the same sort of thing as me, but the way you hold yourself, it was hard to see except in certain situations. But I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you; you’ve been a good friend to me, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
Kari waved off his concern and sniffled as she got her tears under control. “This is something I live with every day,” she said. “It never seems to get easier. I’m getting better at dealing with it, I think, and to be honest, it helps to talk to someone who knows what I’ve been through. Not just understands, but really knows. But still, it never seems to get easier.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, turning his gaze away from hers. “I can remind myself that I’ve done some great things: helped stop a demonic invasion, helped save a tribe of czarikk, hell I’ve even been conscripted to work for the Demonhunter Order…twice. But I never forget what was done to me, and…,” he trailed off for a moment. His gaze swung to the door, and he shook his head at his own repetitive actions. “And as you can see, it still haunts me.”
“But you’re wrong about one thing,” Kari said, and Eli turned to face her. “People do love you, myself included.”
“You don’t have to say that,” he said, keeping his gaze away from hers.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” she returned. He finally met her stare again. “I know when you walk down the streets of Lajere or visit its taverns, it seems like everyone hates you. But keep something in mind: I’m one of the highest ranking demonhunters in the world, and scholars seem to agree I’m a ‘hero,’ but when I walk down those same streets without my dog tags showing, those people give me the same looks. That’s not a reflection of who you are, Eli – it’s a reflection of who they are.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “But it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. I’ve had total strangers spit at me or in my direction for no reason other than being half-corlyps. And then the funny part is, I have to show restraint and not beat the crap out of them or I just end up proving them right. It’s a pretty rotten deal.”
“I think you need to get out of that city,” Kari said. “Find a nice little town, a pretty girl who loves you, and stop trying to prove yourself to morons who’ll never accept it anyway.”
Eli chuckled. “I was in love with a girl once, but…I’m half-corlyps. I appreciate what you said, and I don’t doubt your words are true, but still…no woman wants a half-corlyps.”
“You might be surprised, if you ask,” Kari returned. “My mate was afraid to talk to me at first, and he’s half-guardian. Just tell me the girl you were in love with wasn’t Jori-an.”
The half-corlyps laughed more fully. “Oh gods, no,” he said. “That woman…she was pretty, but colder than a fures-rir icebox. Besides, she was already spoken for.”
Kari nodded, recalling that Jori-an did have a mate and at least a couple of children back on Salkorum. She wondered just who Jori-an might have ended up marrying, and whether it was someone else who had occasionally worked with their adventuring party. Ultimately, she decided it wasn’t the most pressing of her concerns. Kari reached out her hand and Eli took it in his, and she gave him a comforting squeeze. “I know it’s painful, but you should tell me more about Ciceria and your work with her.”
“Ciceria, Ciceria,” Eli muttered with a sigh, and he leaned back against the wall. He folded his wings over himself, almost as if he was trying to hide behind them. In his pained expression, Kari could again see that he had feelings for the syrinthian woman. She wondered if Ciceria was the woman he meant he’d been in love with once. It seemed unlikely, considering how little contact he’d apparently had with her, but Kari’s own relationship with Grakin had sparked out of little contact, so she had to wonder. And when she recalled that Trigonh, an erestram, had fallen in love with her, Kari chuckled inside; she had indeed seen stranger things.
“Was she pretty?” Kari prompted. She was curious to know what Eli thought of the woman. He seemed to be having trouble putting his thoughts in order, so she thought perhaps some easy banter would loosen him up a bit.
The question seemed to catch him off-guard, and Eli gave it a bit of thought, which served to answer Kari’s unspoken question, to her thinking. “I’d say she was,” he said at length. “I’ve never really found humans attractive, but that’s not to say they’re ugly. Ciceria, well, the syrinthians are like humans but with a certain…animal magnetism about them, with some of the smooth serpentine features of snakes. Their eyes are pretty wild when you first see them, but yea, I guess I’d say they’re a handsome enough race, and she was a fine-looking woman.”
“And you met her while looking into a problem with dark elves?”
“Yeah, weird situation, that,” he answered, and Kari smiled softly as he finally loosened up. “I don’t want to get off-topic, but she was being held captive by some dark elf marauders that had been scouting out the dwarven strongholds in the Barrier Mountains. I don’t know how they came across her or took her prisoner; she never bothered explaining any of it to us. Maybe she did to Bosimar, but I don’t know. We took her back to Bosimar to let him decide what to do with her, and she was…not happy about that. She was pretty sure the Order would simply cut off her head, and that would be that. But Bosimar wasn’t interested in getting rid of her without finding out where she’d come from and what she was up to. He let her go, and had us wait a while before we tried to track her down again.”
“Eventually, we located her and her people in that valley out near Atrice, and it didn’t take long to figure out they were up to no good. We were laying plans to possibly siege the temple, but before we could, we obviously needed information on what kind of numbers we were looking at engaging. Danilynn started using divination magic to try to get a fix on how many enemies were in the temple, what kind, and what the general layout of the temple was, but she was caught spying, so to speak, by Ciceria herself.”
“And she told you they were sacrificing czarikk?” Kari asked.
“No, no, that wasn’t until several months later,” Eli said. “Ciceria told Danilynn to not cut off the contact, but to keep watching her. From what Danilynn relayed to us, Ciceria then walked to some sort of calendar engraved upon the wall of her room in the temple, and pointed out a specific date. Thought she wasn’t able to tell Danilynn exactly what she meant, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out that she was telling us to invade on that date.”
“How did you know it wasn’t a ruse or trap?”
“Danilynn sketched out what she had seen in her vision,” he answered. “We were able to figure out that the date she pointed to was the date the portal was going to be opened. She wanted us to stop it from happening; there really wasn’t any other explanation. She knew where we were when she caught Danilynn spying, and there were several sylinths, that elestram wizard, and several dozen warriors that she could have sent after us. We had to take it a bit on faith, but the circumstances pointed to her basically asking us to help her double-cross whoever it was she was serving.”
Kari nodded, and Eli paused while she soaked up everything he’d told her. She was more confident in what he’d told her of Ciceria and the priestess’ goals and motivations, but there was still so much of the picture missing that K
ari couldn’t quite pull it together. Had Bosimar known something was coming? Had Ciceria admitted she was going to double-cross Sekassus, and Jason just didn’t write it down for fear of her plan being ruined? Or was there something else in all of this, that neither Bosimar nor Eli had told her yet, that was the real reason there was such secrecy around it all? And where did Emma fit into all of it? When the mallasti came up in her thoughts, Kari decided that was the most pressing of her questions.
“What can you tell me about Emma?” she asked. “I know you said you can’t say too much about her, but if she’s behind this succubus’ appearance the same way she was behind the incident on Tsalbrin…I’ve got to stop her, Eli.”
Eli drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, and he folded his wings to his sides. “Emma is a tough one to figure,” he said. “She was polite and courteous on those occasions when we spoke, but she was a… demon on a mission, and what or who for are two things we never figured out. I’ll tell you what I know, though: Emma is a slave. To who, I’m not sure, but she executes their wishes without question. It’s no secret that the demon kings would like to conquer this world for themselves, but every time one of them gets their servants on this world, it seems Emma shows up and undermines or sabotages their efforts. She did so with Sekassus and this portal up near Atrice; she did so with Sekassus’ plan on Tsalbrin, as you’ve explained…”
“She helped betray Curlamanx – a vassal of Arku – during the Apocalypse,” Kari said, remembering the tale the Tesconis siblings had told her during their trip to Tsalbrin.
“I bet if you dug deep enough, you’d find out she helped betray Arku when he set foot on Terrassia during the War, too,” Eli said with a nod. “I don’t know who she’s a slave to, but whoever it is, they’re bent on sabotaging the efforts of their enemies on the Council.”
Kari glanced at him curiously, though not because of his knowledge of the underworld or its workings. “But you trusted her? You worked with her?” she prodded.
Eli gave a slight shrug. “We had a common enemy. She’s ridiculously powerful. You don’t sense it when she’s just standing there, but she does this thing – I don’t know if it’s common to all wizards and sorcerers – where her power just sort of flares up around her, and you can feel it. It makes your hair stand on end, and you get this feeling here,” he said, gesturing between his eyes, “like a massive pressure in the front of your brain. If she wanted to kill us or force us to work for her, I don’t think we would’ve posed much trouble to her. But once Sekassus and the portal were dealt with, I never saw her again, though I suppose it was because she had to go get ready to betray this Curlamanx you mention.”
“Hard to figure,” Kari said with a sigh. “I wonder if she’s mixed up in this situation.”
“That,” Eli said, “will probably depend on whether there’s a demon king behind all this, or if it’s just Kaelin Black or one of his enemies masterminding things.”
Kari nodded, suddenly very tired with the weight of what Eli had told her. She bid him goodnight, but watched him glance toward the door one last time. After he stared at it for a few moments, he turned back to her, smiled, and lay down to sleep. Kari remained awake for a while, thinking about Emma and, more pointedly, whoever Emma worked for. Kari had heard enough about how strong Emma was, and she had seen the results of the mallasti female’s machinations on Tsalbrin, and her mind swam as she tried to consider how powerful one would have to be to keep such a creature as a slave.
Chapter XIII – Resistance
Eli was already gone when Kari woke the following morning. Kari was an early riser, so it was unusual for anyone else to be up and about before her. She wondered if Eli had gone looking for the Black Dragon Society, and whether Black had sent word regarding his contact within the assassin’s guild. The room was warm, and based on the trace amounts of sunlight coming through its little window, Kari guessed the day was just dawning. She put on her undergarments and her padded clothes, picked up her swords and the brush from her pack, and made her way downstairs. She resolved to take a bath in the commons – assuming there were public baths – and then begin her actual hunt.
Kari replayed the events of the previous day in her mind as she descended the stairs. Kaelin Black knew Sherman and Katarina were working with Kari, which meant that if Black was in some way connected with the assassin, then she would likely know as well. Such put the twins in more danger than Kari had anticipated, but it also presented the possibility that Kaelin Black would trip himself up and expose himself as the criminal her Order assumed he was. It was hard for Kari to know what to expect: it was entirely possible Kaelin Black was a victim in this scheme, in more ways than one. Still, her Order had considered him a problem for centuries, and it was hard for her to dismiss that based on a few minutes’ worth of relative civility from him. In deciphering Black’s place in things, Kari was glad of Earl Lajere’s help: she was sure with the paladin occupying much of his time, it would be tougher for Black to manipulate events from within the shadows if it turned out he was a part of the problem.
Despite the appearance that Black was as much a victim as a problem, Kari was in no position to trust him, nor did she believe his innocent façade was real. After all the time she’d known Aeligos and Eryn, and watched the way the two so easily manipulated people – whether in a simple game of cards or in their mission on Tsalbrin – she figured it safest to assume that Black was playing her for a fool. Kari’s face creased into a smile as she considered how much better she was getting at reading people and countering their schemes, but she resolved to neither overbalance herself nor become too complacent with her own game. She was involved in a deadly match of chess, and while she had learned a lot from Eryn and Aeligos, she knew she was still badly outclassed when facing so many foes at once – particularly when she wasn’t sure who all of them were.
Alyssa was already up and preparing food for her morning patrons when Kari reached the common room. The innkeeper asked Chelsea to prepare a nice hot bath in the back room for Kari. The bath commons was separate from the kitchen despite the appearance that both of the back doors led to the same room. Soon the bath was ready, and Chelsea left to go help her mother prepare breakfast, so Kari stripped completely to wash her undergarments. Once they were clean, she hung them on a rack near the bath commons’ little hearth, and then she settled into the steamy bath herself. She wanted to wash her padded clothes, but they took much longer to properly wash and dry, and while she could wear her paluric armor without them, it was uncomfortable and dangerous.
Kari wasted little time relaxing in the bath, and she set to washing herself quickly. There was a lot of work to be done, and she knew it was going to take some time not only to find the assassin, but to unravel the mystery of why she’d drawn Kari to Barcon. The demonhunter was sure there was more at stake than just some simple killings or a plan for revenge against her; the syrinthian-succubus clearly needed Kari in Barcon for some reason. No other explanation made sense: if she’d just wanted Kari dead, she could have made good on her attempts in DarkWind and Lajere, and if it was simple murder and mayhem she was after, she would’ve been better served not drawing the attention of the Order so dramatically. The fact that she had not moved immediately upon Kari’s arrival in Barcon was also strange; if it was simply a matter of killing Kari here, it didn’t make sense that the succubus was hesitating to strike.
Kari’s thoughts turned toward her mate and child, and she couldn’t help but smile and laugh as she thought of bathing her son. She normally ended up just as wet as her child by the time his baths were done, something he took an immense amount of pleasure in. Kari longed to find and kill the assassin quickly, regardless of whether it exposed Kaelin Black or the Black Dragon Society. She wanted to get home and have another child with Grakin. By her best estimation, Kari figured she was nearly forty years old, and she understood that between her age and Grakin’s disease, their window for having more children was closing qui
ckly. A part of her wanted to continue to hunt and reach the rank of Avatar, but she was finding that she wanted a daughter much, much more. The fact that her windows of opportunity for both were closing made the decision a fairly simple one, in her mind.
She tried not to dwell too much on her desires or wondering when her mate’s siblings would have mates and children of their own, and she finished washing. Her undergarments were still slightly damp, but she put them on anyway once she’d dried herself off, and after giving her padded clothes an appraising sniff, she put them on as well. They didn’t smell terrible, but since it was unlikely she’d be wearing leisure clothes around the city, she knew she’d be wearing them a lot. She made a mental note to wash them when she returned to the inn later in the evening, and Kari made her way back upstairs to put on her armor and retrieve her pack.
Once she returned to the common room, Kari thanked Alyssa for the offer of a breakfast, but declined, and she made her way out to the streets. The sun was just beginning to peek over the walls of the city, and as the streets lightened, people began making their way to the temples for morning prayers. Kari set her feet to the northeast, determined to find the inn where Sherman and Katarina were staying. She figured she could have breakfast with them while they discussed what they’d found so far. She didn’t imagine it would be very difficult to find the two paladins: according to Black, they had already stirred things up quite a bit.
The bazaar was just starting to come to life when Kari passed through the center of the city. It was a pleasant contrast to the last time Kari had walked through it, when she could barely press through the throng to get from one side to the other, and had to be wary of pickpockets. Now it was mostly empty, so she took only a few moments to glance around and gauge whether there was any trouble. She saw little of interest or out of place, and the guards posted around the square nodded politely whenever her eyes met theirs. Satisfied that nothing here needed her attention, Kari continued on her way.
