by Joe Jackson
The city smelled like its people, but it was not as unpleasant as Kari expected. The people had a slightly musky scent, as was common to those with fur, but the elestram seemed more accustomed to taking baths than their mallasti neighbors. Kari didn’t see any obvious signs of sanitation or sewers, but the city lacked any scents of waste, garbage, or rot that so commonly marked “civilization.” The word civilization brought the coliseum back to mind, and Kari turned to glance at it, wondering what sort of gladiatorial combat or games might take place therein.
She didn’t get the chance to ask. “These glyphs...do the elestram inscribe them into the sides of the buildings?” Sonja asked as they continued into the heart of the city.
Kari studied the calligraphy Sonja indicated. She had initially thought it was something akin to the calligraphy that adorned the tents of the czarikk or the mallasti. If Sonja referred to them as glyphs, though, Kari understood such meant they had some arcane purpose on top of their aesthetic design. Kari knew elestram wizards were among the most feared of underworld demons, and the presence of so many glyphs immediately put her on edge.
“That they do,” Uldriana answered with a nod. “Are you familiar with these signs?”
Sonja started to respond, but closed her mouth and shook her head. Danilynn, on the other hand, swiveled her head side to side, taking in the many glyphs around them. “My word,” she said, and she walked over to inspect the closest one.
Kari marked the sudden interest of a nearby elestram laborer, but under Kari’s gaze, the demon turned and went back to his work. “What do you make of it?” she asked the priestess.
Danilynn glanced at Uldriana and shook her head. “Not here,” the priestess said.
The mallasti girl smiled and gestured for them to follow her again. She was as new to the city as any of the three rir women, but she had the advantage of being able to speak and read the local language. “Are you impressed with what you have seen so far?” she asked.
“Very impressed. It’s not all that different from some of the cities back home, excepting for the style of architecture,” Sonja answered.
“That and all the demons,” Kari finished, and Sonja nudged her with an elbow.
Uldriana looked at Kari over her shoulder and then her gaze swung back and forth across the open streets. “I have yet to see even a single succubus or incubus since we entered the city,” she commented. “Why would you…” She took another few steps but then stopped and turned slowly to face Kari. “Wait, you believe…? Oh my; that explains much.” She suddenly looked embarrassed, and she continued on her way hurriedly.
Kari looked to Sonja and Danilynn; both of them seemed just as surprised by Uldriana’s reaction. They followed her for several more minutes until she located a hostel near the center of the city. It was a simple, efficient structure with open archways and windows, and didn’t appear to have anyone staying at the present time. The lobby was empty but for a lone elestram reading a book in a corner by the open front windows. He put down his book and rose to his feet when he saw the visitors, and Kari saw that while he appeared to be an elestram, he had the heavier coat and coloration of a mallasti.
“I assume you have never seen a mallestrem before,” Uldriana said quietly. “My people can breed with the elestram and the erestram, though an erestram breeding outside of its own kind at all is unheard of. Mallestrem are uncommon, but you will tend to see more of them when in the cities, where our folk intermingle.”
She began to speak with the mallestrem proprietor in that other language of hers, but when Uldriana reached for her coin purse, Kari offered hers instead. The mallasti woman bowed her head in thanks and took an appropriate number of the metal marks. Once their rooms were paid for, the mallestrem showed them upstairs. He led them to a large, open sitting room with two smaller dormitories attached. The windows up here were open, but Kari could see that there were actual panes of glass in them that could be shut to give the women privacy. Kari looked around their temporary abode and saw a bath chamber among the smaller side rooms. While she looked around, she could hear Uldriana speak with the mallestrem in their other dialect.
The bath chamber was impressive, and Kari called Danilynn and Sonja over to look at it as well. Two of its four walls were comprised entirely of mirrors, and in addition to the bathtub, there was a commode and two wash basins. The wash basins had drains in the bottom of them, something Kari saw only in the most luxurious of nobles’ houses, and they also had spigots that she knew were like automated hand-pumps. She found it odd that there would be a commode inside and on an upper floor, but she soon saw that it, too, drained out through the bottom to who-knew-where. A quick glance showed Kari that the bathtub was the same, and she realized Uldriana’s praise of elestram advances was not an idle comment.
The mallestrem proprietor had left by the time Kari and her friends finished gawking at the lavatory, and Kari was curious what he’d spoken to Uldriana about for so long. “Was he asking about us?” she prodded, suspicious.
“In a sense, he was asking about all of us,” the mallasti girl returned, and there was the faintest hint of a smile on her features. “He was offering his…services, should we require them. Tempting though it was, I declined, and took the liberty of doing so on your behalf as well.”
“He was interested in us?” Kari asked curiously, and a glance to her friends told her they were wondering the same thing. Kari knew that exotic women sometimes drew interest from men who normally wouldn’t look outside their own race, but it still struck her as odd. On some level it made sense that a demon would want to sample women of all kinds, but then Kari paused when she considered Uldriana’s reaction when Kari had called them demons in the first place.
“He would not be a good or gracious host if he offered entertainment to only one of his four guests,” Uldriana returned, and she walked over to secure the door to their spacious abode. Once the door was closed and bolted, Kari and her friends shut the windows. The mallasti girl gestured toward the deep, cushioned chairs set about the sitting area. “Does it surprise you that a demon would offer you sexual pleasure? You will find that your kind are not considered at all unattractive to our peoples; you are alien and exotic, but there is an aesthetic pleasure to your forms that even…demons can plainly see.”
“You seemed surprised when I called your people demons,” Kari said evenly, keeping her eye contact with the mallasti girl strong. “My kind aren’t called demonhunters for nothing.”
“Yes, I suppose it all makes sense now: the name of your Order, the constant references to Mehr’Durillia as the underworld, your inherent distrust of all of my kind. You think…we are demons,” Uldriana said, trailing off with a shake of her head. She scoffed after a short stretch of silence and continued, “We have long believed that your kind are called demonhunters because of the way you viewed the creations of your Seril, and that your zeal against our own kind was, as you explained, due to the work of the kings and their servants on your world. Ketava, you are blind, ignorant, if you think we are the demons. It was long the belief of our people that your kind are demons.”
There was a certain reciprocal amusing quality to that, but Kari shook her head. “Why would your people think we’re demons?”
“Oh, we do not think that anymore, but when your race was young…,” Uldriana began. “Well, how else to put it? You have silver blood, and the nature of your gestation is completely magical. How many species have you ever encountered that have silver blood, or do not either attach to their young during gestation, or else encase them within the safety of an egg?”
“Huh,” Kari muttered, dumbstruck. When the mallasti girl put it like that, it was hard to come up with a sensible defense on cue.
“Think of how we reacted to the seterra-rir,” Sonja put in, though she didn’t elaborate too much, despite Uldriana’s curiosity.
Uldriana folded her arms across her chest as though a sudden chill had just gone through her. “My people are not demons, Karian
Vanador: we were conquered by them! Pray you never see the face or form of a true demon, for if you do, it will likely be the last thing you see.”
“Uldriana, you can hardly expect Kari – or myself, for that matter – to take your word for it on this,” Danilynn said with a gesture that was half placating and half dismissive. The fures-rir priestess reclined in a wide, deep chair and got to work with a brush she’d taken from her pack. “You’ve been very open with us about your people, your homeland, the kings, and some of the politics between them, and we’re very grateful for that. But there are deeper questions you’ll have to answer to avoid making it seem like you’re just leading us on with enough information to satisfy our curiosity without actually telling us anything.”
Kari suppressed a smile; she didn’t want to aggravate Uldriana, or make the girl feel as though she was being ganged up on. Instead, Kari simply turned and nodded thankfully toward Danilynn for putting her own thoughts into such a concise and civil package. Kari wasn’t sure how long she would hang onto her civility in the face of Uldriana’s assertions; to suggest that her people even thought that the rir were demons was insulting, doubly so if one considered they were never the aggressors against the people of Mehr’Durillia. Unless…
The mallasti girl made a clear effort not to get defensive, and sighed lightly through her nose before she spoke. “What else would you have me tell you? As I said the night we met, my people are an open and forthright people if you ask us what you wish to know. Have I not been honest with you on everything? What more can I tell you that will lead you to trust me?”
“Tell me who the title Great Mother refers to,” Danilynn said. “And if you have any idea why a syrinthian priestess may have served her.” Kari punctuated the question by drawing out the pendant she had found among Bosimar’s things.
Uldriana’s reaction was immediate and undeniable: she put her hand to the end of her snout, her eyes wide, and she reached out tentatively toward the pendant before drawing her hand away. She cast her gaze down to the floor and folded her hands before her, almost as if she was praying. Her breathing was slightly unsteady; if Kari wasn’t mistaken, the girl was making an effort not to cry right then and there.
“Uldriana…?” Kari prompted softly, leaning forward in her seat.
“If I am to share this with you, then you must swear to me, before your deities, that you will not repeat this to anyone while you are here on Mehr’Durillia. The gravity of what I am about to tell you is such that the mere mention of it is enough to get one arrested and executed. This is no idle threat; I have seen it happen myself. If you wish me to speak of these things, then you must swear to me that you will not repeat any of it until you have left Mehr’Durillia, else it may cost us all our lives.”
Kari glanced around the room nervously. “Sonja, Danilynn, see if you can make sure none of those glyphs outside were for eavesdropping, please.”
Danilynn shook her head. “Quite the opposite,” she said. “Many of those glyphs we saw on the sides of the building were put there to prevent eavesdropping. Based on how nervous our mallasti guide is, I’m going to guess they’re there to prevent the Overking and his agents from spying on the people here constantly.”
Uldriana nodded appreciatively in recognition of the priestess’ acumen. “To an extent, you are correct,” she said. “The elestram mask their enchantments well, and the protection they provide is not absolute, else their function and prevalence would be too readily apparent.”
Kari once again held out the pendant that mixed elements of a hawk, snake, and hyena, all superimposed over a strange symbol, and handed it to Uldriana. The mallasti girl accepted it tentatively this time, and Kari gestured toward it while the mallasti rubbed her thumb across its surface. “Why don’t you start by telling us what that is,” the demonhunter suggested.
The mallasti girl rose to her feet and took off her robe. Kari wasn’t surprised; it was hot on the upper floor, and the girl had a fairly heavy coat of fur. Uldriana sat in the center of the floor cross-legged, and she looked around at Kari and her friends for a few minutes before she spoke. “I can only relate to you the traditions and stories of my people, as they are told around the evening fire, or by my forebears over supper,” she explained. “These stories have been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, the only form of history we are able to keep that cannot be destroyed or altered by the Overking.”
Uldriana held up the pendant and something passed behind her eyes. “This is the symbol of the First Three, the Holy Siblings who formed the Great Circle. On the right is the hawk-like countenance of Huirelius, the Welcome Rain, Prince of the Skies, principal deity of the world of Hrastiria,” the girl recited from memory. “On the left is the great cobra-like face of Ashakku, the Eternal Sun, Lord of the Green, principal deity of the world of Irrathmor. And in the center is the mallasti goddess Be’shatha, the Lifegiver, Great Mother, creator of Mehr’Durillia – ‘her breath’ – and the mother of our peoples: mallasti, elestram, and erestram.”
Kari glanced to her right and saw that Danilynn had stopped brushing, transfixed on the mallasti girl in the wake of her words. Uldriana had paused for a moment, and Kari took the opportunity to sort through everything she’d heard. She remembered the dream of Sakkrass she’d had when in the castle of Lord Lajere; Sakkrass had been speaking to a hawk-man of some kind, and had turned into a hooded cobra just before Kari woke up. She had assumed it was a trick: some ploy by either Turillia or Sekassus – or both – to make her believe that Sakkrass was a fake, or an alter-ego of Sekassus. Now that she considered Uldriana’s words, Kari understood a chilling truth: Sakkrass had shown his true face to her, and she had turned away in terror. Now she wondered if she had offended him.
“Does Ashakku go by the name Sakkrass as well?” Kari asked.
“I have not heard that name before,” Uldriana answered. “Ashakku is the deity of the syrinthian people, though his worship has obviously been banned by King Sekassus and the Overking; they do not even speak of him, but there are still the remnants in our oral traditions.”
Kari quickly debated sharing her own secrets. “I had a dream of Sakkrass not so long ago, and in it he turned from a czarikk to a…a cobra-man of some kind. Maybe he was trying to show me and I just didn’t want to see.”
The mallasti girl looked confused. “Perhaps,” was all she could offer.
“Where is the Great Mother, or Bay-shah-tha?” Danilynn asked, sounding out the name of the mallasti deity.
Uldriana looked toward the floor again, took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. “She is dead; slain by the Overking and his lieutenants: Baal, Koursturaux, Baphomet, and Abaddon. At that point in history, King Koursturaux was the Overking’s mate, though their relationship soured over the long millennia since they conquered this world. Those five, they are the Ancient Ones: the five most powerful of the kings, and the true demon kings. They killed Be’shatha, and her sibling deities retreated to fortify their worlds against invaders from the…” – she paused and titled her head, trying to avoid a chuckle as her eyes met Kari’s – “…underworld.”
Kari looked at her friends, and she puzzled out what Uldriana was saying. “So the Overking is a demon – a demon king, and he killed your goddess?” The mallasti girl nodded, subdued. “But there are others? Other gods that fight against the Overking? Ashakku and Whir-rell-ee-us?”
Uldriana shrugged. “How much they fight against him, we cannot say. Our traditions speak to them being siblings to Be’shatha, but any influence they once had here is gone. Now the Overking rules this world, and even mentioning these deities is punishable by death.”
“Who is the Overking, though?” Kari asked. “And what sort of demons does he actually have in his army? Are they succubi and incubi?”
“No,” the mallasti girl answered. She looked around nervously. “It is very dangerous to even speak the Overking’s name; it is considered an offense to address him by name, even when one puts O
verking or Your Majesty or other such titles of respect before it. I suppose that with how much I have already told you, there will be little harm in committing one more crime; if any have been listening in on us, we will surely be killed anyway.”
Uldriana sighed. “His name is Asmodeus, as we know it,” she continued. “Whether this is his true name, or simply an assumed one, our traditions do not say. When the Great Mother fell, it was at the hands of Asmodeus and his lieutenants:”
Sonja and Danilynn were clearly just as floored as Kari by the revelations Uldriana had shared with them. Turning back to the mallasti girl, Kari asked, “And the demons?”
“My people rarely tell tales of them; they are terrifying to imagine, let alone to see with one’s own eyes. They are without true form or substance: black, shadowy masses that drain the very heat of life from around them. They are possessors, and at the Overking’s command, they sometimes take the bodies of my people and our kin to use in their war against the other gods.”
“Shadow demons?” Kari muttered. “I’ve seen…well, not seen, but I fought one when I was in Barcon. Katarina and Eli saw it; Sakkrass helped drive it away, but we didn’t kill it.”
Uldriana shook her head. “There is no need to add the word shadow to their name; those are demons. Those are true demons, the likes of which your Order is powerless to hunt.”
“Crap,” Kari blurted. “All this time we’ve been focusing on the serilis-rir and your people, and you’re not even the problem? No wonder I’ve had the feeling we’re flying blind.”
“You now know a great deal of the oral traditions of my people,” Uldriana said. “It is my hope that when you leave this world and arrive safely back home, you will take this information and use it. Use it, Karian, to protect your world and, if possible, to help Be’shatha’s siblings to protect theirs.”
