by Joe Jackson
“That’s what worries me,” Kari said. “Everything we say is followed by ‘as far as we know.’ What we know is actually next to nothing. When Turik Jalar was Avatar, he went into the underworld on several occasions, and once even laid a list of demands at the feet of the Overking – again, from what we know. I can’t help wondering why we haven’t continued sending hunters to the underworld to build on what little we know. Being reactionary when it comes to fighting demons is only effective for so long.”
“I’m not asking for an answer right now, but would you consider going to the underworld with me to try to find Se’sasha?” Danilynn asked, though she didn’t wait for an answer. “If we accompany you to DarkWind, we can check with one of our sources of information there, if Eli still has that celestial token she was after.”
Kari drew forth the platinum disk from her purse. “We have it,” she said.
“Good. If we give that to Amastri,” Danilynn said, glancing to Eli for some sign that he’d told Kari of the succubus, “then she may be willing to get us some information. If she can get us good, reliable information, and find us someplace safe to cross into the underworld, you can make your decision then. I won’t ask you to walk blindly into the underworld; I’m not willing to do that myself. But if we can get some good information from Amastri, we may be able to do some reconnaissance while we rescue Se’sasha – and whatever we do, we’ll be very quiet and subtle about it.”
“I’ll have to check with the Council of the Order first,” Kari said with a shrug. “If they tell me I can’t go, then it won’t matter what we find out from Amastri. We definitely need more information either way. I’ve got a mate and child to think about; I can’t risk my life needlessly, or to rescue what amounts to an enemy.”
“Do you think Tor would go with us? He’s one of them; he might be able to pass among the mallasti and get us more information once we’re there,” Eli said.
“I don’t know that I’d want him to take that risk,” Danilynn said. “He’s only half-mallasti, and he’s never lived among them, so he’d probably be discovered pretty easily. If anything happens to him, remember, we may have a very angry, vengeful Emma to deal with.”
“Your Master seemed less-than-thrilled to see us,” Kari said to the priestess. “Is he going to object to you leaving the temple to go chasing old promises and adventures?”
“He can object all he likes,” Danilynn said bluntly. “I serve Garra Ktarra, and as far as he and I are concerned, this is unfinished business.”
“All right, then,” Kari said. “I’ll go with you to speak with Amastri, but I won’t promise anything in regards to either going to the underworld or letting Amastri stay in DarkWind. I’m not sure what I find more disturbing: the number of underworld spies we have in our midst, or the fact that the Order has known for decades and done nothing about them.”
“Jason was very particular about who he trusted and who he simply tolerated,” the priestess said. “Amastri was among those he tolerated, because now and then she could prove to be a valuable source of information. She was the one who originally told us about the celestial token, which explained why there were numerous syrinthian agents causing trouble in and around DarkWind. She told us what we were looking for, and even when she had the opportunity to steal it from us, she didn’t. She said her assignment was to take possession of it if she could do so without causing a stir; she was strictly forbidden from killing for it, or drawing any negative or undue attention onto King Koursturaux.”
“Right, she serves Koursturaux; Eli mentioned that,” Kari muttered. “So I guess it’d be pretty dangerous to just kill her.”
“Exceedingly dangerous,” Danilynn agreed. “In these instances, we must always bear in mind that demons like Amastri are sources of information to us so that they can be sources of information to their masters.”
Kari rose to her feet. “Well, I can tell you this much: the Council is not going to like this one bit. But if you can get reliable information from Amastri, I’ll at least discuss the matter with them, and see where they stand. At the very least, I’d like to actually be able to talk to someone from the underworld, and try to figure out a lot of what we’ve been missing all these years. If Se’sasha is willing to talk, she could be invaluable to the Order.”
“And I’m sure that’s part of the reason her mother wanted us to go find her,” the priestess agreed, and she stood up. Danilynn looked toward Eli then. “So you’d be willing to go, too?”
Eli glanced at Kari as he rose. “I told the high priest of Zalkar I’d follow this woman into hell itself. I guess I was being more literal than I thought.”
Danilynn smiled and nodded, and she made her way toward the door to escort her friends back to the temple’s main hall. “Eli wanted to ask you something,” Kari said, drawing the fures-rir woman’s attention back to her half-corlyps friend.
Eli hesitated, but then he took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, but then, you know, the Apocalypse happened, and, well…”
Danilynn walked over and took Eli’s hands in hers. “Elias Sorivar, are you trying to ask me on a date?” she asked.
“No,” the half-corlyps said with a shake of his head, surprising both of the women before him. “Dates are for people who don’t know each other yet. I don’t need to court you, Danilynn: I want to know if you’ll be my mate. I want to know if you can live with the fact that I’m a half-corlyps, and if you might want to have kids with me.”
Danilynn ran her fingers along Eli’s jaw. “I’ve waited for so long for you to tell me how you feel,” she said quietly, and she gave his hands a tender squeeze. “Let’s get reacquainted, and see to the rescue of Se’sasha, and then we’ll take things as they come.”
Eli nodded, and his expression was one of anxiety mixed with relief. “Can…can I kiss you?”
“I’ve been waiting twelve years for you to kiss me,” Danilynn said. “Don’t keep me waiting too much longer.”
Kari smiled and left the room. She made her way back to the temple’s main chamber to give the two a couple of minutes alone. She sighed wistfully in the quiet chapel of Garra Ktarra, and glanced up at the glowing green eyes that stared at her impassively, and she thought of her mate and child. Grakin would not be happy with any plan that involved Kari going to the underworld, and neither would any of the rest of Kari’s family. It was an inherently risky proposition, but the fact that they would be relying on information from a demon if they decided to go made it so much worse.
As she thought about it more, though, Kari looked at it from a different perspective. Se’ceria had given her life to protect the people of Citaria, and asked one small favor in return. To ignore or refuse that favor would be an insult to the woman’s sacrifice and memory. Kari thought of her own child, and what she would want others to do for her son if the worst ever happened to her. She would want someone to protect her child from further harm, and make sure that her sacrifice made her son’s life better, not worse.
Before they had even left Sarchelete, let alone spoken with Amastri, Kari had made her decision. She didn’t tell Eli and Danilynn, though: she wanted to make sure they were thorough in finding out all they could from Amastri and whatever other sources they had. The three took the griffons back to DarkWind, and Danilynn rode with Eli in a specially-crafted double saddle. The high priest wasn’t happy to see Danilynn go, but he was surprisingly supportive of her decision, and blessed their journey. The trip was long, but not terribly so, as the flight speed of the griffons coupled with avoiding ground obstacles and wild creatures saved them a lot of time. It took a couple of weeks to return to DarkWind even on the griffons, but it would’ve taken months had they traveled on foot or by horse.
Kari tried to give Danilynn and Eli what privacy she could during the trip back, letting them romance each other as much as possible while on the road. At times it seemed they had never been apart, and Kari still had to wonder exactly why Eli had never gone t
o see Danilynn in the three years since the Apocalypse. She thought it was at least partially on account of his race, as he still seemed a bit unsure of himself where the priestess was concerned. Day by day, though, Kari could see that his self-confidence grew, and the love that Danilynn felt for him was more and more obvious. Kari was simply glad the two were still relatively young, and that their love might blossom with children if they so desired – Eli had already said he did.
Once they arrived in DarkWind, they set the griffons free outside of the city. Muireann and Dougal were hesitant to leave, and though Kari tried to “remember” how to say farewell in that avian tongue, the words wouldn’t come to her. Kari dismissed them with a bow of her head and a gesture to take wing. With the majestic creatures on their way home, Kari led her friends into DarkWind, toward her own home.
*****
“Kari!” Grakin said excitedly as he rose from his rocking chair. He dashed along the porch and down the stairs before Kari could even start to ascend, and he nearly bowled her over to wrap her in a tight hug. She returned the embrace in full, and simply held him for a few minutes. She basked in his love and the warmth of his half-guardian body, and she sniffed at his shoulder and neck, taking in his masculine scent mixed with that of their child. As she smelled their son upon Grakin, Kari could already imagine the child’s hands upon her, and his playful laughter in her ears.
“Where’s Little Gray?” she asked breathlessly.
“He is upstairs, taking his nap,” Grakin said. “Who are your friends?”
Kari introduced Eli and Danilynn, and the two priests bowed to each other graciously. “Eli helped me find and kill the succubus in Barcon, and Danilynn came back here with us to look into another matter,” she told her mate. She could see he was staring at the scar that ran down her chin, so she gave him a look to let him know not to get too worked up or ask any questions just now. “Is everyone else home? Did Erik get back from Topo yet?”
“Yes, Erik has returned home, but he is at the campus with Typhonix,” Grakin answered. “Mother is at the temple, Aeligos is out…somewhere, Serenjols is with his lady friend, and Sonja is still at her studies with Gareth Maelstrom. I have not seen her for nearly a week.”
Kari sighed. “Well, I need to go check in at the campus, and then I need to go meet with someone with Eli and Danilynn,” she said. She turned to her two friends and asked, “Will you two excuse me? I want to go up and see my son.”
“Yea, sure, go right ahead,” Eli said, and Danilynn agreed.
“Your friends may join me inside for some lemonade,” Grakin said. Eli and Danilynn followed the priest in behind Kari, who wasted no time in rushing up the stairs.
Little Gray sat right up when Kari approached down the hallway. “Mama!” he shouted happily, and Kari dashed in and picked him up, holding him tight to her. She squeezed him for a couple of minutes and danced silently around the room with him in her arms. She separated from him enough to rub her nose against his, and he giggled before asking her in the rir tongue, “Did you kill the monsters, mama?”
“Yes I did,” she replied in the rir tongue. “The monster is all gone now.”
Kari heard someone enter the house downstairs. She hoped it was Sonja; she hadn’t seen her sister-in-law in over a month. She’d be just as happy if it turned out to be any of her other in-laws, especially Erik, who she’d also not seen for over a month. Absently, Kari walked over and nudged the reading chair back into the corner, and she wondered who kept moving it so that it partially blocked the doorway. After she did so, the footsteps coming up the staircase revealed Irressa, the young shakna-rir demonhunter.
“Good afternoon, initiate,” Kari greeted her politely. “What brings you here?”
“Greetings, Lady Vanador,” Irressa said with a salute. “I apologize for bothering you at home, but there were some things I discovered while you were gone, regarding that gnoll in the ducal army. I thought it might have some bearing on the mission you’ve just returned from, so I wanted to come see you when I heard you had returned to the city.”
“I guess flying in on a griffon does attract attention,” Kari said with a chuckle. “Let me just put my son back down for his nap, and we can go downstairs and speak.”
“As you wish, Lady Vanador,” Irressa said.
Little Gray protested being put back down, but Kari would have none of it. She much preferred he get his rest and be his normal, jubilant self when he got up and spent the rest of the day with her. After a minute of fussing, he lay back down, and Kari pulled the blankets up over him. She gave him a kiss, but she straightened out and spun, startled, at the sound of a sword being drawn behind her.
When Kari spun around, she wasn’t sure what Irressa was doing. The shakna-rir girl’s sword was hanging limply in her dangling hand, and she was hunched over strangely. It was only then that Kari saw there was some shadowy blade protruding from her chest, and that the shakna-rir girl was quite dead. Kari drew her scimitars and moved defensively to stay between Little Gray and whatever ghost or other entity had just killed Irressa. After a few seconds that stretched out like an eternity, the shadowy blade turned to the side, and the corpse slid to the floor, where it began to form a pool of red blood. The shadowy blade disappeared.
Kari’s mind whirled, and she cursed herself for not doing more to ensure that her home – and more importantly, her child’s bedroom – was safe from whatever entity had just killed the young initiate. While Kyrie had said she’d used every divination she knew to detect hostile spirits or demons, Kari had never been satisfied with that. Something in her primal core had known something was there, and that it was not friendly. Now a young demonhunter lay dead in Little Gray’s bedroom, murdered right in front of Kari because she had let her guard down.
She did no such thing now: her guard was fully up, and she hushed Little Gray and told him to stay put as she tried to detect any trace of movement or sound around her. Unlike the first time she thought she’d encountered the spirit, this time she heard a barely-audible snort. It had come from directly in front of her, and Kari got into a defensive stance with her scimitars up before her chest. Her eyes strained with the desire to see whatever was in front of her, but still she saw only the hallway stretching out toward the stairs. And then her heart nearly stopped when the spirit creature took physical form and became visible, for it was not a ghost at all...
It was an elestram.
The jackal demon was almost as tall as Sonja, standing nearly six-foot-seven, was well-groomed, and even while standing only a few feet away from him, Kari couldn’t detect any sort of musky scent that usually betrayed the presence of a furry demon. He wore a leather outfit that may have qualified as armor, but it seemed more stylish than practical, with a vest, bracers, half-trousers, and shin guards. His fur was a dark brown, but there were black patches in the proper places to accent his form, and there were a few grey patches that betrayed his age to some degree. While his body was nearly as tall as Sonja’s, his long, pointed black ears made him even taller, rising well above his head.
Most curious of all, though, were his eyes. Kari couldn’t actually see them: they were covered by some sort of goggles. She had seen alchemists use similar eyewear to protect them from splashes and other hazards of their trade, but she doubted the demon wore them either for alchemical protection or style. She recalled Little Gray telling her that the Fuzzy Man had funny eyes, and Kari knew then what she was looking at. This elestram had, by some trick of magic or malevolent, evil power, managed to hide himself right under Kari’s nose, and put her son in danger for months. And whatever power that was, it was strong enough that even Kyrie’s divinations had not detected him. Kari’s nerves didn’t ease up in the slightest even after the demon’s shadowy blades retracted into his bracers, which were clearly not large enough to house such weapons.
“Fuzzy Man!” Little Gray exclaimed from behind Kari, and he jumped up to his feet on the bed. “Look mama, the Fuzzy Man!”
The el
estram started to move toward Little Gray, but Kari stopped him with a scimitar held toward his chest. “Stay away from my son,” she warned in a low voice, her scowl offering no room for debate or argument. She told her son over her shoulder, “Lie down and stay put, Little Gray.”
The elestram cocked his head to the side and regarded Kari, and after a moment, he reached up and set his goggles on his forehead. His eyes were a deep orange shade, not unlike Emma’s, but there was a coldness in their depths that even the mallasti girl hadn’t possessed. His eyes were what Kari might have described as dead or lifeless, but there was a canniness in his expression that she couldn’t dismiss or figure out. He stared at Kari without moving or saying a word, a furry statue in the middle of Little Gray’s room, its stare fixed on the demonhunter.
His leg moved, and Kari brought her other scimitar before her and low to ward off any potential kicks. She realized that was not his intent when he shoved Irressa’s corpse with his foot. Kari glanced at Irressa’s body lying in a pool of red blood only briefly before she fixed her scowl back on the elestram. She wondered if he was hoping Irressa’s death might shake her or cause her to lose her nerve, but his intention occurred to Kari after a moment. She looked back down at the pool of red blood, and only then realized what was wrong with it. She gasped when the elestram turned the corpse over.
Irressa was a syrinthian. How she had changed her form, crossed Kyrie’s protective ward, or gotten so close to Kari without anyone discovering her, were mysteries Kari couldn’t wrap her head around, and hardly had the time to. Intentionally or not, the elestram had just saved Kari’s life. She met his gaze again, but still the demon hardly moved, and spoke not a word. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Kari hesitated when holding a demon at sword-point. She wasn’t sure what to do, and even when the elestram took a step forward, still she hesitated, frozen with indecision.
