“You know I’m going to.”
“You’ll bring nothing but misery to the world.”
“That’s not true, I—”
He lunged awkwardly at me, slashing at my legs with a knife he’d kept hidden.
I danced back beyond his reach. “I know you at least that well.”
He sagged back, closing his eyes, and I kicked the knife away. After making sure he didn’t have any other hidden weapons, I crouched at his side. Opening his eyes, he stared up at me. I saw no fear, only sorrow.
“You aren’t going to die,” I said.
“I am. This me will die. The me that was happy. The me that doesn’t hurt people.” He coughed blood. “The me that chose not to rip people’s souls out so he might feed them to demons.”
Hunger pulled me closer. “You know how to do that?”
“Have you not wondered that the obsidian heart holds his memories but not ours?”
“No. You know how to harvest souls, don’t you?”
He glared loathing at me. “Stop now, before it’s too late. It’s evil—”
I stabbed him in the chest.
Again and again I stabbed him, splashing myself with gore. I hated him.
Henka watched, pale and beautiful, as I hacked at his chest, driving my knife into the cartilage in the centre to open his ribs wide. She watched me cut his heart free and then carve away the excess meat to expose the shard of obsidian. She watched as I cupped it in my hand. She saw it sink into my flesh and tear its way through my body.
I wanted the pain.
I earned it.
I deserved it.
I screamed and screamed, and she comforted me, my head in her lap. I had no memory of falling.
Other things, however, I did remember.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PalTaq. The capital of the world. The centre of an empire so large, so all-encompassing, it didn’t need a name. The Empire.
My empire.
The empire I built from a thousand warring kingdoms. The empire I carved from chaos. The empire I held together for ten thousand years before the traitorous wizards brought me down.
When someone said ‘the palace,’ there was only one place they could mean. My palace, the beating heart at the centre of my empire.
Every branch of magic contributed to the empire, but demons were the cornerstones upon which civilization rested. Spirit demons, bound to every wall and door, warded the palace. Manifestations, physical demons called from other worlds, guarded the streets, patrolled the city. Demons maintained the aqueducts. Bound elementals lit the streets each night. The main thoroughfare was called the Street of Eternal Day. Water elementals turned mill wheels and kept wells potable and full. Demons and earth elementals laboured together to work mines, supplying the empire with steel and iron. Air elementals kept the breeze fresh, blew away the odours of civilization. Fire elementals powered forges. Demons maintained the roads that kept the Empire together. They were our means of communication. They chilled our drinks, built and protected our cities. And when the wizards killed the last demonologist, when they shattered my heart, they shattered my empire.
Though I still had no memory of that moment when they broke me, I remembered so much more.
Beneath the palace lay the catacombs, basements beneath basements. Some were libraries, some were prisons. Every empire, no matter how grand, has its malcontents. In most civilizations, such people were a burden. They fought to overthrow governments, they interrupted communications, practised foul acts of terrorism, all with only the vaguest idea what they’d replace the current regime with. Such people fed my empire. The dispossessed were the souls we used to strike bargains with demons. The enemies of empire kept it running.
And we never ran short on souls.
In the very deepest basement sat my personal sacrificial chambers. There were rare times when it was necessary to harvest a great many souls to bind a single, powerful demon.
I remembered the room.
Shallow trenches, blood runnels, lined the floor in twisted mind-shattering symbols, directing the spilled life into a single great bowl set deep in the stone. To look at them, to truly comprehend their meaning, was to crack one’s sanity. There were no shackles here. By the time the would-be sacrifices made it this deep, they were broken souls, long past struggling. My demonologists made sure of it.
On this day, thousands of men and women knelt on the floor, leaning forward, necks held waiting over the runnels. No one stirred. No one shifted or coughed. Silence reigned like a terrible god.
I stood, demon-bound knife in hand, surveying the room. This particular chamber was for the summoning of gods and Lords of hells. Today I planned the latter. With the help of my god I would bind this Lord to my service. Forever.
There, in the centre of ancient runes carved in stone, lay the sword. The ore it was made from had been mined by demons, transported be demons, forged by the greatest demon smith the world had ever known. No mortal hand had ever touched any part of the weapon. Even the leather wrapped around the hilt came from an animal no man had ever seen. It was slain and harvested by demons, cured by demons.
This would be a sword to kill gods, to end worlds.
Even without a Lord of Hell bound to it, the blade was already a work of art, already the greatest sword ever forged in a thousand realities.
The will of my god filled me. I did her work. I was her intent given flesh. She defined me. What I would do here, was right. It was necessary. She made it so. Unknown forces plotted against me. Hidden armies gathered. War would soon come to my empire. A war to end all.
I would wage that war with a god’s weapon. I would smite mountains, sunder the earth, split the sky.
Drawing breath, I let it out in a slow sigh. I would not sleep for days. The blended narcotics pulsing through my veins ensured my alertness. Killing this many—for I had to bleed each one myself—was a near impossible task. If I faltered, if I missed a syllable, stumbled a moment of the sacrifice, or wavered during the summoning and binding spells to follow, I would fall prey to this Lord of Hell. He would devour my soul. My god might back me here, but this, I had to do myself. She could not protect me.
For three days I slashed throats, my demon-bound dagger never losing its edge. For three days I chanted impossible words seared into my brain through decades of repetition. When my throat grew dry and raw, I drank the blood of those I killed. With no pause for water, no chance at rest, I had no other choice.
By the end of the third day, I was soaked with blood, much of it already dry and brown, turning my red robes into gore-encrusted armour. I stank like an abattoir, staggered with exhaustion. With the last throat cut, I paused for a moment to gather my strength. Chest heaving, I stared at my reflection in the black-veined red granite of the polished floor. An ebony-skinned nightmare looked back at me. Blood caked my hair, dripped from my chin. My eyes were gone, replaced by two gemstones of different sizes. The larger one looked to have cracked the orbital bone when driven into place, leaving my skull slightly misshapen.
I had no memory of that incident, no idea what the stones were, or when it happened. They appeared to be fused to my skull, the flesh around the sockets melted and ridged with ancient scars.
So much remained lost to me.
I remembered the huge bowl in the floor, brimming with blood. Demons, set in the stone, warmed the blood, kept it from clotting. I remembered the bodies, lying where they fell. By the third day, those I killed first were already beginning to stink. Though the labyrinthine basements were cooler than above ground, here, in the tropics, they were still stifling hot.
Arms numb and shaking, I lifted the fist-sized diamond I’d carried with me for the last three days. Cut by a demonic jeweller, it bore thousands of perfect facets. Part of my incantation had been aimed at capturing the fleeing souls of those I killed. The Soul Stone was full, loaded with the souls I would feed to this Lord of Hell.
I summoned him. I named him.
&nbs
p; The End of Sorrow.
It was a joke born in the horror of my actions. Killing so many left me teetering at the brink of madness. Calling upon a Lord of Hell, and forever binding him to a sword, shoved me screaming over that edge. Alone, surrounded by the thousands I sundered, I laughed, cackling insanity. This sword would end everything. There would be no more war. No more pain. If I couldn’t have the world, no one could.
I understood the joke. The Lord of Hell’s name: Kantlament.
But what went wrong? I’d bound the Lord. I remembered the finished sword. Yet here I was, thousands of years later, in a world ruled by wizards.
What stayed my hand?
CHAPTER THIRTY
I woke in the dark, the stars above bright sparks torn in the curtain of night. No clouds. No moon. That diamond in the wizard’s tower Shalayn and I broke into, was that the one from my memories? Did it, even now, bear thousands of souls?
I wanted it.
I wanted to destroy it, to free any souls within so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend them.
I could return to the wizards tower. Should I go get it?
What if only one soul remained in my stone, and the other turned out to be empty or something completely different? Dare I chance it?
I don’t want it, I told myself, knowing I lied.
Henka sat beside me. Porcelain skin glowing pale in the starlight, round face framed in black hair, she was ghostly beautiful.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
She wasn’t upset that I’d hunted and killed a man who looked just like me. Seeing me cut his heart out hadn’t bothered her. That obsidian shard sinking into my flesh, and my resulting screams and loss of consciousness, left no trace of concern on that perfect brow.
Parts of my heart might be missing, but she completed my soul.
I sat up, glancing around. Two dozen paces away, Chalaam stood alone, still as only a corpse can be. He stared off into the dark, lips moving in silent argument with some imagined opponent. Or perhaps he talked with himself, battling loneliness the only way he could.
“I had him drag the body away,” said Henka. “So we wouldn’t be bothered by scavengers.” She put a hand on mine, her skin warm, alive. “Chalaam,” she called to the dead man, “go for a walk. Be back in two hours.”
Chalaam wandered away without a word.
Blood.
“You used necromancy to make yourself warm?” I asked.
She nodded, eyes locked on mine. “Waste not want not.” She squeezed my hand. “And I have wants.”
She crawled on top of me, robes falling open to expose perfect breasts and the terrible steel-stapled scar running between them. She pulled my hand close, placing it on a breast. Flesh warm, the nipple hardened under my fingers. She ground against me, throat loosing a low, animal growl.
“What do you remember?” she whispered in my ear.
No matter the confusion in my thoughts, my body reacted to her proximity, to her heat and her need. I grew hard against her and she shed her robes, dropping them from her shoulders to puddle about her slim waist.
“What do you remember?” she asked again, voice husky.
I pulled her close, kissed her neck. “I remember how to collect souls. I can store them in Soul Stones.”
“That’s good.” She gasped as she writhed against me.
“I remember a sword.”
“Where is it?” She fumbled with the drawstring of my pants.
I shrugged, helpless. “No idea.”
Henka pushed me flat, dragged my pants open, and I was inside her. She groaned as I gripped the cheeks of her ass.
She leaned forward, nipples brushing my chest. “What else?”
“Killing. Thousands.”
She moved, rhythmic, hot and wet, above me. “What else?”
I searched my memories. “I remember the basements in PalTaq.”
“What else?”
What did she want from me? What was she hoping to hear?
“Do you remember women?” she asked.
“What?”
“Other women?”
“No.” That wasn’t quite true. Even in the beginning there’d been some deep memory of a pale woman with black hair and dark eyes. But acquiring this shard changed nothing. I knew no more of her now than I had before. Whoever she was, the memory of her lay ahead of me, in some other shard. And it didn’t matter. Like the sword, she was thousands of years gone, long dead.
“There’s only me,” Henka whispered, licking my ear. “Forever. Only me.”
“There’s only you,” I agreed.
And Shalayn. Had the wizards tortured her? Had she spoken of me, broken by agony? Had she died cursing the day she gave me her shirt?
I was going to bring the Guild down. The only wizards left would be the dead ones enslaved to me through Henka.
I woke the second time to the smell of meat cooking on open flame. Chalaam bent over a small fire, turning two spitted birds above it.
“Breakfast,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“She told me to,” he said, gesturing at Henka with a thumb. She sat on the far side of the fire, once again dressed. “I had no choice.”
“He’s quite good with a bow,” she said, flashing a shy smile at odds with her behaviour of the previous evening.
I remembered the heat of her. Her orgasm locking her body rigid, mine whiting out all thought.
‘What else do you remember?’ over and over. And she asked of other women. Was she jealous that I might remember some woman from three millennia ago? Who could know the hearts of women?
The scar. She had no heart.
“Henka.”
“Yes?”
“Come sit with me.” I patted the ground at my side.
She rose, circled the fire, and sat beside me, leaning her head on my shoulder. The heat of her had faded, though she wasn’t yet cold.
I shifted, uncomfortable with her presence, uncomfortable with what I had to say. “I have to go to PalTaq.”
“I know.”
“I mean…” I hesitated. “I made you a promise.”
She stared up at me, eyes huge.
“I promised we’d find your heart.”
“Later,” she said. “PalTaq first. The gods know I trust you.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled, and my heart broke. I hated myself a little more.
Why? Why should my desire to find myself come before fulfilling my promise to her? Why should she be all right with this? What or who did she think I was that she would trust me so completely?
“Maybe—”
She silenced me with a cool finger on my lips. “PalTaq first. My heart can wait.”
“Gods,” I said, remembering Shalayn’s claim there were no gods, that they were inventions of the demonologists, tools for compelling the populace.
I knew now she was wrong. Though I remembered little of my god, I knew she was real. Or should I say she was real? What happened to gods when their worshippers ceased to believe or were killed off? Had my god died, faded to nothing?
Or was she still here, even now waiting for me to once again feed her souls?
Henka waited, eyes wide and trusting.
“You said gods,” I said.
She nodded.
“I was told there weren’t any.”
“Who told you that?”
Shalayn. Another woman. Remembering Henka’s questions, I said, “It doesn’t matter.”
“They were wrong. There are gods. There are demons. There are heavens and hells.” She squeezed my hand. “I know, because I was in hell for a long time. And then you found me. You saved me.”
I wanted to deny her words. I’d done no such thing. In not ending her existence on the night we first met, had I done a terrible evil? Where I fed souls to demons, she called them back from wherever they went and forced them to inhabit their rotting corpses. She enslaved them. It took a conscious effort not to look to Chalaam.
“Kantlament.”
“The End of Sorrow,” she agreed. “You’re important. I’m nothing, a corpse.”
“You’re not nothing. I need you.” I wanted to tell her I loved her, but Shalayn’s death was too recent, too raw.
“I know you do,” said Henka. “Your need keeps me… alive.” Again, she lay her head on my shoulder. “Your need gives me purpose. Without you, I would revert to the animal I was already well on my way to becoming when we met. Eventually I’d lie down in the dirt. Let the earth bury me. I’d be so close to nothing.”
Her voice broke and I realized she was crying, though no tears fell. I pulled her close, an arm around her slim frame.
“Nothing,” she said. “That’s what scares me. Nothing is more terrifying than nothing.” She shuddered against me. “Sometimes I want it, I crave it. An end. But I can’t. I’m too scared. How long would I lie there, bones in the earth, helpless, alone, waiting? What if it never happened? What if I never became nothing?” Words spilled out of her, a torrent of emotion. “What if I was stuck there forever, slowly sinking deeper, further from the light and life of the world, unable to return?” Squeezing my hand hard she said, “I can’t chance it. I need purpose.”
“I’ll never leave you,” I swore.
Henka said nothing, her silence damning me with her doubt.
“The man I was,” I said, “he was immortal. I won’t die.”
“Together? Forever?”
“Forever.”
The nineteen-year-old in me meant every word. The ancient man, the Emperor of the World, mocked my naivety. The man I killed yesterday knew how to sacrifice people, how to store their souls. Yet he made no use of his knowledge. He said he was happy. He said that by continuing on my path, I would bring misery to the world.
He was right. I would make use of that knowledge. I would hurt people. I would harvest them for their souls.
Shalayn used to worry I’d become someone she didn’t like, someone who didn’t like her. Henka had none of that fear. If anything, she seemed excited by the prospect, like there was no way I could not love her.
Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1) Page 22
