The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “Who did they take it from?”

  He appeared to stare past the carnage, or so Asper thought. He had seen more and better than this before; perhaps it wasn’t all that exciting to him. Or maybe he just had no interest in who was dying.

  He stared past the blood; he stared past the bodies; he watched the people falling beneath the knives and heard them begging for their lives and didn’t care.

  But he saw the houn.

  He saw the gold glimmering as the tendrils of blood wept down them, the silk fluttering, painted with the shadows of knives descending. Pillars of gold towered around him, but he didn’t seem to notice the bodies stacked at their bases.

  He was surrounded by death.

  And he didn’t even care.

  The hairs on the back of Asper’s neck rose. She felt someone behind her. Her arm acted before she did, lashing out to wrap around a black-clothed throat. She felt a pulse racing beneath her thumb. She felt Amoch-Tethr grow giddy at the feeling.

  Denaos held up his hands. The fear present in his blood wasn’t on his face.

  “It’s me,” he said gently. “It’s me.”

  She released him and grabbed her arm to keep it from trembling. “We have to do something.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Gariath’s the best equipped for this. He should stay here and find Dreadaeleon while you and I go upstairs and find Lenk and Kataria. We’ll meet up outside.”

  “What? No.” She cringed. “I mean, yes, them, too. But these people”—she gestured to the carnage—“are being slaughtered! We have to help them!”

  “There’s too many of them and not enough time. We’re going to have to abandon the search for Miron as it is.”

  Asper’s face set into a hard scowl. “It can wait.”

  “What about Lenk and Kat, then? Can they wait?”

  “They’ll take care of themselves.” She shook her head. Too hard to think. Too much noise. “We can’t just… we have to help whoever we can. We can’t let all these people die!”

  “What do we do? The house is crawling with Khovura. They’re everywhere.”

  “I don’t know. We’ll… get them out? Evacuate them, maybe. Hold off the Khovura until—”

  “How? How are we going to hold off this many?”

  A cry pierced the air. A cry to Kapira. It started as a war cry, but it ended as a plea. And it came from the Khovura who was raised high above the crowd, screaming and arms flailing, by an invisible force.

  No God answered him. The air rippled around him as a magical grip tightened around his body. He was flung haplessly against the golden breasts of one of the pillars. With a sickening splatter, he peeled down the column, leaving the statue’s naked body streaked.

  The next words she heard, she recognized, even if she didn’t understand them. Dreadaeleon’s voice was a crack of thunder. A prelude to the arc of lightning that shot through the crowd, parting them and leaving twitching, electrified corpses in its wake.

  Asper took off running through the gap presented, leaping over the lightning-struck corpses, trying to ignore the fact that some were not Khovura.

  When she reached Dreadaeleon, he was surrounded by bodies. The corpses of Khovura lay, ashen and smoldering at his feet. His hands whipped about in gestures she couldn’t understand, seizing Khovura from the crowd with magical grips and flinging them into the air with invisible force.

  “Dread!” she cried out.

  He didn’t bother looking at her. “This is marvelous, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Look at me. I’ve killed two dozen so far and I’m not even breaking a sweat. But I suppose that’s to be expected, isn’t it?” When he finally looked at her, his face was painted with the biggest, smuggest grin she had ever seen. “I’ve been through a few changes, after all.”

  “How long can you do this, then?” she asked. “How long can you hold them off?”

  “All night and into the morning, if need be. Are my services required?”

  “Yes!” she shot back. “Do whatever you can. We need to protect these people. I’ll find Denaos and Gariath and try to get the doors to—”

  “Understood.”

  He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a red mist poured out. Magic, Venarie, whatever he called it: She recognized it coming out of him in bright ruby clouds.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He extended his arms to the sides, palms out. He began to speak something in the terrible language of wizards. Bright pinpricks of light burst out on his palms. His fingertips began to smoke.

  “Dread,” she said, “you can’t—”

  “I can,” he replied. His voice resonated with power. The red mist poured out of his mouth. “I can do anything. I can kill Lectors. I can kill demons. I can save everyone.”

  His hands burst into flames. They cackled wildly upon his flesh, eager to be put to use. His feet left the ground, the air rippling beneath him. He rose higher, the flames spreading up his arms; he resembled nothing so much as an angel falling from the sun, a halo of bright red vapor about his brow.

  “This is it,” he said. “I am the hero this time.”

  Asper looked around. The dark shapes of the Khovura ran everywhere. How could he possibly stop them all? There was blackness on every surface; they seemed to excrete it with every step, leaving it in puddles on the ground.

  Wait.

  She realized what they were, these pools of pitch black, glistening against the gold. On the banister. On the floor. On the silk.

  Oil.

  Everywhere.

  And Dreadaeleon loomed overhead, his limbs ablaze, his flames alive.

  She screamed something to him. Her voice was lost on the roar of flames as his great, fiery wings spread.

  And so, too, were the screams of the dying lost on a whirlwind of ash and cinders.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  VERSES IN OIL AND ASH

  It had begun like a song.

  In a verse of smoke that hung thick, in a melody of cinders that carried red through the darkness, reaching a crescendo in the sheets of flame that rose around her in a thousand crackling voices.

  “Lenk!”

  Kataria’s was just one more lost in the smoke.

  She yelled his name into the flames. The flames responded with a cackle, as though she had just told a wonderful joke, as though the thought of him still alive was positively hilarious.

  “LENK!”

  And the flames ate his name, swallowed it into their symphony and consumed it. She couldn’t even hear herself over the sound of the flames roaring, of the men dying, of wood creaking.

  And rafters breaking.

  She looked up at the sound of a groan. Red veins sprawled across the ceiling, burning against the stone and wood. She saw a fiery artery burst. She saw the rafter crack and a hail of cinders and stone and wood come crashing down.

  She felt the wind explode from her as something tackled her from behind.

  A spray of brimstone burst against her back, settled upon her clothes and in her hair. Firm hands swiftly patted her down, cinders extinguishing with a frustrated hiss. She struggled to catch her breath.

  Those same hands took her by their arms, gently now, as they helped her to her feet. She reached behind her, trying to find those hands, his hands, and wrap her fingers about them.

  She found someone else.

  “Easy.” Kwar’s breath was soft and clear; it didn’t belong here. “Breathe slowly. There’s too much smoke.” She tugged gently on Kataria’s arms. “Come on.”

  Kataria turned around. “Where are the others?”

  “They went back to guard our escape,” Kwar said. “Every place that isn’t on fire is swarming with Khovura. We need to leave.”

  “I can’t go,” Kataria said. “Not yet; I need to find…”

  She caught herself a heartbeat before she said it. She couldn’t let Kwar know. She couldn’t say—

  “Lenk?” Kwar as
ked.

  Kwar had heard. Over all the hell surrounding them, Kwar had heard her scream.

  “Who is Lenk?”

  Kataria’s mouth hung open, soundless. Kwar’s face fell, her frown a deep shadow painted across her skin by the firelight.

  Wood groaned. Stone cracked. Somewhere else, someone cried out.

  “Whoever it is,” Kwar said, “you’re not going to find them if you die here. We must go.”

  Kataria could hear her voice before it even left her lips, all the denial and desperation to fly out into the fire and try to find one man in a sea of death and ash. But she let those words die in her mouth before she could voice them.

  Kwar knew the right thing to do.

  She could but hope that Lenk knew, too.

  They ran through the halls. The smoke grew thicker around them. Kataria could see shadows in the shroud: humans running every which way, some screaming, some falling, others descending upon them with knives. The Khovura lingered behind to kill, even as flames licked at their heels and danced at their fingertips.

  Above them, the rafters continued to groan. The fire grew hungrier, eating at everything it could. The house of Ghoukha seemed as though it was holding its breath against the smoke coursing through it and, when it exhaled, everything would come down with it.

  Perhaps Kwar knew this. Perhaps that was why she ran so swiftly. Perhaps that was why she didn’t let go of Kataria’s hand as she led her along the twists and turns of the hallways.

  They rounded a corner and the smoke grew thinner, streaming out through an open window. She saw the other two khoshicts standing there, a rope at the ledge. Kwar shouted a command to them and they obeyed, hopping over the ledge and shimmying down to the courtyard below.

  Kwar swung one leg over the window’s ledge and paused, looking back. Kataria stood nearby, staring down the halls, searching. And not moving.

  “Are they that important?”

  She turned. Kwar stared at her intently.

  “Are they worth dying for?”

  Around them, the fire sang. Its harmonies raced down the web-lined walls. Its dirges were accompanied by the groaning of wood and stone. Its notes smoldered in pools of burning oil.

  And above it all, through it all, Kataria could hear Kwar.

  “Is he?”

  And the pain in her voice was a song all its own.

  The house shuddered. Something snapped overhead. Wood cracked, stone shrieked, and a hail of fire came crashing down from the ceiling.

  “KATARIA!”

  She could hear Kwar’s cry as she leapt backward, as the stone smashed where she had just stood. It carried through wood and flame and smoke. It echoed in her head.

  And it hurt to hear.

  Over the sound of the last fragment of rock settling and the brimstone smoldering, over the sound of bare feet padding down the hall toward her, she could hear someone approaching.

  Lenk emerged from the smoke. A sword was in his hand. Blood spattered his bare skin. He was completely nude. None of this appeared to bother him.

  “Hey,” he gasped.

  She looked him up and down. “Naked,” she observed.

  “Long story,” he replied. “Not the place. Have to go.” He pointed down the hall with the sword. “That way. There’s a window with some hedges at the bottom. We can jump, I think.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “No. Not at all. Let’s go.”

  He started running. After a moment, he became aware of her not following him. He reached back, took her by the hand, and started pulling. His grip was rough, bloodied, desperate.

  She yanked her hand from his and ran alongside him.

  Behind her, the symphony of fire grew louder. The groan of the collapsing ceiling became a scream as rafters continued to break. The song swelled to a cacophony, agonized, a thousand cackling voices straining to be heard over each other.

  And through it all, she could hear Kwar’s voice.

  “KATARIA!”

  Calling her name.

  “KATARIA!”

  Everything was silent.

  Only a moment ago that there had been so much noise. The people had been screaming. The Khovura had been screaming. The knives and the wounds and the spiders and her own voice had been screaming.

  But now, all the voices had been seared out of scorched throats, and all the pain wafted away on dissipating plumes of smoke rising from smoldering cinders like the sighs of satisfied lovers.

  And everything was silent.

  When Dreadaeleon had spread his wings, Asper ran. She had dived behind the corpsewagon and turned it upside down over her. She had shut her eyes and prayed empty words into a world of fire.

  Maybe he wanted to frighten the Khovura. Maybe he was thinking of a plan she couldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all.

  But the fire had spread in only a few moments, engulfing the houn and racing up to the upper floor and spreading everywhere. In a roar of ecstasy, it had opened its maw to consume everything it touched.

  And now she walked in the wake of its feast.

  The floors were black. The pillars carved like women were black, their golden faces and breasts dribbling down their bodies in molten slag. The silk tapestries still burned, shedding embers like tears as they wafted upon the walls and ceiling. The flames that remained smoldered in little patches on the floor, upon the bodies.

  She could have thought this place hell were it not for the silence. There was an air of desolate tranquility about the place, as though peace had only settled for want of anything left to kill. The fires burned contentedly, misplaced hearths offering cozy light and gentle warmth. But their gentleness was the fat, lazy placidity of a glutton too fed to move. The fires had eaten.

  And the people were dead.

  They curled up on the floor like little black snakes, limbs twisted into serpentine coils, almost as though they were asleep beneath blankets of ash. Had Dreadaeleon’s fire done that? Or, in their last moments, had they curled up to try to protect themselves? Had they prayed, then? Could she have heard them?

  Could Dreadaeleon?

  There was no sign of her companions. Maybe Denaos and Gariath had escaped. Maybe others had, too. Maybe Dreadaeleon had burned himself up in all this. They hadn’t fled through the door. It currently hung from its hinges, a barrier of burning wreckage, releasing smoking sighs into the world.

  Maybe they were all dead.

  “In days long escaped, they used to cower before us. It was our fire they feared before they even knew why it burned. They coveted it, for it was something unknown and magical to them. Do you remember?”

  She turned at the sound of the voice, looked to the top of the stairs and the demon looming over them.

  The doors leading to the upper floor still exhaled fire and smoke, weaving curtains of gold and black behind the Disciple. It rose up on its coils and stared out over the blackened houn at her. Slowly, down a staircase painted with cooked-on blood, it slithered toward her. Its tail flicked behind it, shrugging free the last vestige of the sack of split skin and burst fat that had been Ghoukha.

  “In those days, would they have turned this kind of fury upon each other?” the Disciple mused aloud. “Would they have turned it upon us?” It chuckled; the sound was like water being sucked into a patch of dry earth. “‘Despots,’ they called us, those who would abuse power to control them. But look around you.” It extended its arms to encompass the ruin of the houn. “Without us to guide them, they abuse themselves more than we ever could.”

  Its voice numbed her ears, the darkness in its words draining the thought from her. To her, it sounded like twisted babble, the ravings of a madman. But there was something in its stare: in the way its black gaze looked at her, in the expectant set of its old-man face.

  It looked into her, not at her.

  It wasn’t talking to her.

  It made a low bow, sweeping one arm across its chest in a display of respect. “Amoch-Tethr,” it said, “the
presence of the learned brightens this dismal scene.”

  She felt him stir beneath her skin.

  So nice to be recognized, he whispered into her thoughts. Though to my utter shame, I don’t quite place this one’s face.

  “You knew him?” she whispered back.

  Hmm? Oh, I suppose it’s possible. It was rather fashionable to know my company back in the day. I expect this one came to learn at my feet at one point or another.

  “And he… sees you?”

  Not “he.” It’s an “it,” dear girl. Whatever thin threads held it to mankind were cut long ago. You do it a disservice by referring to it as such. She felt Amoch-Tethr sigh within her. And no. It cannot look past your flesh, if that is what you fear. Nor can it hear me now. It merely knows my presence.

  “Tell me, master.” The Disciple leveled a black talon at her soft, pink flesh. “What is that you are wearing?”

  She took a defensive step backward.

  Have no fear, Amoch-Tethr assured her. I have no intention of letting it harm you.

  What, exactly, she wondered, did he intend to do about it?

  “Come, master,” the Disciple said, slithering toward her. Its black nails grew long upon its fingers. “Let me free you from that cage. Gaze upon this, our glorious conclusion, with your own eyes.”

  Ask it what it’s so proud of.

  “What?” she asked.

  Stall it.

  “What ‘conclusion’ is this?” she asked. Boldness edged her voice, cutting through the quavering fear. “Is this funny to you? All these dead people? All this destruction? All because of you?”

  It halted.

  She hadn’t expected that to work.

  It frowned.

  “No,” it said simply. “Knowledge is virtue, yes, but it is burden above all else. The learned were not placed here to sow discord, merely to observe it.” It gestured to the deflated and eviscerated Ghoukha behind it. “I did not force my way into this one. I was invited. His greed, his envy, his pride, presented before me like a sumptuous banquet laid out for myself alone. I fed, every bit the shameless glutton as my host, as he plotted and schemed.