“Yes?”
“A fierce dignity.” She paused. “He was talking to my father like an old friend. Never seen another Guardian do that.”
Korliss sighed, then said, “I don’t think your father has too many friends anymore.”
“He never cared about that. But he does care about you, Korli.”
“People are talking... about a police state, Mevrik. They’re talking about the exiles being an excuse for greater Guardian control.”
“But we know that’s not true. You know it.”
“But why did he have Didi arrested? Your father thought Didi was the greatest man in Haven.”
“Only you and my father know why he did that.”
“And I can’t figure it out!” said Sevrik, shaking.
“Listen,” said Mevrik. “I know this is a big shake-up for Haven. But, for one thing, my father has thick skin, so I know you’re worrying about the state of things a lot more than he is. For another thing, I saw my father cry like a baby when he picked up that boy Wodi. He was happier than I’ve ever seen him before. You can’t fake joy like that - and that proves that he’s still the man you’ve always known him to be. He will always fight for as much power as he thinks the Guardians need - and not an ounce more. He has a noble soul, Korli, so as for why he arrested Didi... all I can say is that I know he has a plan and that everything will be put right in the end.”
Korliss was indeed comforted for the first time in many weeks. He hugged Mevrik close, and felt the roundness of her muscular, lithe body against his own flabby shell.
“So now that you know he’s okay,” said Mevrik, “I should probably tell him about us.”
“Good gods, woman!” said Korliss, twitching.
“You’re so easy!”
Calming, Korliss said, slowly, “Your father’s a very conservative man. Our age difference is so great...”
“I think it’s great, too,” she said laughing.
“You know what I mean, blockhead. He’d probably euthanize my wrinkly ass.”
They laughed together for a moment. Korliss lifted himself up. Mevrik idly poked at a roll of fat near his waist.
“Sometimes,” said Korliss, “I think that you think I’m soft. Like a child.”
“I thought you were the greatest firebrand I’d ever met when I was in your class,” she said without hesitation. “I have to deal with so many dullards every day, and here you were talking about heroes, about the philosopher kings that founded Haven. I loved you from the start. So stop fishing for compliments.”
Korliss sat still for a very long time. Mevrik could see his eyes widen slowly in the darkness. “Mevrik,” he whispered. She had to strain to hear him. “One of my students spoke with me. I’m not sure, not so sure anymore. What he said to me. The things I taught him. The things I didn’t teach him. What he may become. Mevrik, I think I may have done a very terrible thing.”
Chapter Two
The Living Scar
A room of corpse-colored granite sat in the middle of the labyrinthine fortress-cathedral of the Ugly in the wasteland city of Pontius, and in that room sat the Head of the Ugly. The room was illuminated by one window covered with a thin red sheet so that only the color of blood seeped through. Aged murals hung on the walls and showed scenes of demons frolicking on battlefields strewn with the forms of mutilated men with faces contorted in agony. A faded purple flag with the scarred skull of the Ugly hung on one wall, and about the face of the skull were the words
THE DEAD CANNOT BE SCARRED
In a corner of the room stood a man in black clothing. He wore a black mask and a thin, dark film covered his eyes. Because he moved his head infrequently, it was impossible to know where he fixed his gaze. He was one of the two Ugly who were called the Hands. One Hand was a master of poison, diplomacy, and infiltration. The other Hand was a master of combat, a destroyer of bodies without peer. Both Hands served the Head.
Before the window stood an uneven desk cut from a single slab of translucent, obsidian stone as smooth as glass. Behind the desk sat a beautiful man. His long, blond hair curled just where it reached his shoulders. His skin was smooth and pale, his features sharp, both commanding and serene, and he sat so still that only his blue eyes gave any assurance that he was not a likeness cut from marble. He wore radiant black robes, and the only feature that marred his perfect grace was a strange bulk concealed under his robes around his torso. His name was Boris, the mouthpiece of heaven on earth, a man worshipped by the Body of the Ugly, served by the Arms, and enforced by the Legs, for he was Head of the Ugly. He bore no scars like the rest of his clan, for he was the Living Scar.
Without moving his head, Boris said, “If ever I say the words, ‘We will always be friends,’ then you are to kill the man to whom I am speaking.” He spoke with the assurance of who is accustomed to shaping reality by words alone.
“Yes,” said Hand, his voice distorted oddly by the masking gauze and wire structure he kept in his mouth. Honorifics were not required of the Hands when addressing their lord. In accordance with their religion, not only did the Right Hand not know what the Left was doing, even the Head did not know the true identity of his own Hands. Though the Hands had no soldiers or servants at their command, it was said that the Hands were the two most dangerous men in the world. The power of the Hands was the power of death, and their authority came from men’s fear of death. The fact that Boris could control men such as these without them turning on him and swallowing him whole was a statement of power not lost on his underlings.
The door to the room opened and a group of men entered. They wore motley dark clothes of fine make, black with markers of red or purple. Their faces and hands were scarred and tattooed. The man who stood at the center of them was tall and wide, and wore armor suitable for the wastes, worn leather shod with plates. He had a great mane of black hair done up in a bun for the occasion. His stern, terrible face was scarred such that it looked as if a devil had chewed on it. One of the men with him announced, “My lord Boris, here is Happiness Joe Heffer, leader of the Left Arm of the Ugly.”
Heffer and the witnesses to the event bent their knees and bowed to Boris.
“Rise,” said Boris, “and get on with your business.”
Heffer cleared his throat and said through permanently clenched teeth, “My lord, you know that I have come to submit my petition to assume leadership of the Right Arm of the Ugly.”
Boris surveyed those gathered, then rested his eyes on Heffer. The leader of the Left Arm tried to stand as still as stone, as if giving evidence of his unswerving force of will, but his eyes jumped to the bundle under Boris’s robes. Something stirred there. Boris moved one hand to stroke the bundle, as if calming it.
“Then submit your petition,” said Boris, “using the only means that I can understand.”
Heffer extended his hand to one of the witnessing Ugly, who gave him a flat piece of wood and a hammer. Heffer approached Boris’s desk, glanced at Hand, then laid the board and the hammer on the desk. He unzipped his pants and removed his penis, then laid the thing on the board. He took a quick breath and braced the board on the desk with his left hand, then picked the hammer up with his right.
“Impressive,” said Boris, “but I would expect no less from any rank and file soldier.”
Heffer spun the hammer around in his hand, so that the flat end no longer projected downwards. Instead, the two curving, dull blades of the nail-removing end stood ready for business.
“I’m not screwing around here,” said Heffer.
Boris raised an eyebrow. “Proceed,” he said.
Heffer raised the hammer. The room became still, the air close and hot, and Heffer’s knuckles grew white as he braced the board. To Boris it seemed that the penis twitched once, feebly, a shy act of rebellion to preserve its structural integrity. The hammer went up slowly, Heffer readied his war cry - then the door behind them flew open and slammed against the wall.
They saw wild red hair, a tattered blac
k cape, the tall shell of a man that still radiated the memory of great power. “Heffer, put that thing away!” said Barkus, leader of the Right Arm of the Ugly.
“My God, man!” said Boris. “Mother’s been worried sick!”
They watched as Barkus entered slowly, one of his legs shaking under his weight, the black sun tattoo on his face burning with intensity. Hand snapped his fingers angrily and one of the witnesses shook himself awake, grabbed a chair, and scooted it in front of the desk just as Barkus completed his sitting motion.
“Good to be back, brother,” said Barkus.
Boris nodded. This was the first time many of them had seen the serenity of his face broken by anything. His eyes were wider than usual, his head tilted forward slightly. During the long moment of silence they heard Heffer zipping up.
“Did Fachimundi tell you why I left?” said Barkus.
“He returned with a small cargo of nearly ruined human resources and babbled on some wild story about a rebel, an uprising, an escape,” said Boris. “He said you willingly sacrificed yourself and some of your best men to run off after a handful of rebels. He said you gave him permission to take a great number of valuable resources and to bury however many of them he fancied in the desert.”
“You didn’t have him killed, did you?”
Boris’s finely sculpted lips turned up into a snarl. “He did nothing to earn that reward.”
“You know I wouldn’t have left my post if I didn’t have good reason.”
“Tell me what I know, then,” said Boris, his tone condescending.
“There was a rebel among the slaves. I swear, brother, it wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. Not just anger, youthful energy, unwillingness to cooperate... no, those are shadows of the thing I encountered.” As Barkus spoke, it became clear to the others that he was half-mad from his trials, sunburnt and starved and dehydrated. Still, they hung on his every word. “I’ve always been able to break any animal or man, but anything I did to him only made him stronger. He infected some of the slaves; slaves that, without him, would never have been able to escape.”
“Why didn’t you just kill him?”
“I was fascinated by him. It’s one thing to inflict suffering on a people whose lives are defined by suffering, but I saw in him a chance to do something to another human being that I had not envisioned since I was a young man. To see him in pain, to see his face cry out for mercy, would have validated everything I thought was true. It turns out that it was a good thing I did not kill him, my brother.
“His escape nearly drove me insane. He killed many of my men and took one of my fingers from me. One of my favorite fingers. And so I rode with Wallach and some others and told Fachimundi to return here, after Sunport, without me - with orders to treat the slaves in such a way that the memory of the boy would be driven from their minds forever.”
“We lost a great investment in them!” said Boris, the words running together.
“You don’t understand how he infected those slaves,” said Barkus, leaning forward. “He was naïve like a child, but cunning like a man… but no, you can’t imagine it, not yet at least. But you will.”
At this the bundle in Boris’s robe twitched. Boris moved his hand to stroke the bundle. It made a soft mewling sound. Boris’s hand gripped the thing and cut off the sound.
“During our ride,” Barkus continued, “we stumbled upon some demons. They led us down into one of their caves, blindfolded, and a demon spoke to us. I do not care to relate everything that happened to me there. But they told me that they had reason to suspect that there were others like this boy, and that they wanted to track him as he returned to his homeland. They wanted him and his kin destroyed for much the same reasons that I did.
“But the demon lied to me,” said Barkus. His voice was raw, for he had grappled with understanding this idea for many dark nights, and enduring it was more than he could bear. “They sent a scouting demon with me and promised that it was an immortal warrior, and even promised that I was immortal as well, and that no one could stand against us. In the end, the devil betrayed me! Everything he told me - it was all lies!”
Many Ugly cried out in anger and fear. Some of them stumbled away from Barkus. Boris rose and cried out, “Get out! All of you, GET OUT NOW!” Barkus sat staring ahead as the other Ugly stumbled over one another to reach the door, shoving against each other to be the first to leave. Their voices echoed in the hallway.
“Hand!” shouted Boris.
He stepped forward, said, “The witnesses?”
“Have done their job too well!” said Boris.
Hand sprang forward past Heffer, who had stood still the entire time, and shot through the door with terrifying speed. Almost immediately, screams reached them from the hall: Cries for pity, the movement of feet, death cries, the dull thud of a body smacking against the wall. Then there was deathly silence.
Boris glanced at Heffer. Heffer exhaled slowly. He knew that the only thing that had spared his life was that he had not left with the others when he’d been ordered to do so.
Boris sat and nodded to his brother.
Continuing as though he had never stopped, Barkus said, “We went to Sunport and there I sold all our souls to Filius Bilch, all for one ship fast enough to follow the outsider to his homeland.”
“I don’t know if we can afford a war with Bilch right now,” said Boris, without emotion and without considering the nature of the deal his brother had made. He knew that any deal could be renegotiated at gunpoint.
“We followed them, all right, all the way to their island hideout. We killed many of them, but then the outsiders descended on us in overwhelming numbers in their terrible machines. They slaughtered us and the demon laughed at me for thinking things would come out any different. I hid from the massacre and ran to my ship. I saw it leaving me behind. I saw the flying machines of the outsiders dropping bombs. They destroyed what I thought was one of the world’s most powerful warships as if it were dry kindling.
“I wandered around the mountains without food or shelter... for how long, I do not know. The worst pain was knowing that the gods I had trusted my whole life had lied to me, had used me as I would use a common slave.”
“As one of the leaders of our faith,” said Boris, “why did you think that the gods would treat you otherwise?”
Barkus drew up for a moment, stunned. Then his face melted in exhaustion.
“That is why you will never lead the Ugly,” Boris said quietly. His face was full of black serenity. “Continue.”
“Without knowing what I was doing, I returned to the beach where we originally landed. I felt like I was trapped in a dream, I hadn’t eaten or slept in days. A devil came to me. It was like a fish, but it breathed air. It opened its mouth and I crawled inside. I think I wanted to crawl inside so that it would eat me. I wanted it to complete the process it had begun; I wanted to be turned into shit. But its gullet was wide and it did not swallow me. It took me away from the island. It swam for days, it seemed, and even regurgitated some stinking bile onto me so that I could eat. At one point I even kicked the thing. It opened its mouth a little, and the black ocean flooded in, and I was terrified that the monster would abandon me in that horrible darkness... I nearly drowned. I did not fight back after that.
“The thing spit me onto a beach in the middle of night. I had slept so much in the thing’s mouth that I found it impossible to wake fully. I would have fallen back into the water and drowned if not for the abuse the demon gave me whenever I came near it. I walked into the desert with no idea where I was going. I was ready to die... but the demons were not done with me yet.
“Another devil came to me. I remember a great gust of wind, then something huge blotted out the stars. I could barely see it in the dark, but when the thing landed I heard a crash like warships colliding. Thousands of pounds of meat and metal and bone, creaking and bending, great teeth grinding, the working of massive jaws... it’s normal for us to call the demon’s prese
nce a god-like force in the wasteland, but this thing truly was a god! It lifted its wings and cast me into total darkness. When it spoke the earth shook.”
Boris and Heffer glanced at one another, then back to Barkus, who looked ahead into nothingness.
“The demon told me that he was an old god, older than any devil I had ever seen on the surface of the world. When I bowed to him he said that he did not need my worship, my awe, or my existence in any way. I was completely powerless. He told me that the gods had held a great council concerning the hidden land that my rebel had come from. He said that there were countless others like himself, more devils than man had ever dreamed, devils enough to eat the entire world a thousand times over - but, as it was now, they were taken up in some secret business of their own. He commanded the obedience of us, his faithful, in the undertaking of a crusade. Meaning - a war to destroy that haven of evil.”
They waited for Barkus to gather his thoughts. They heard something like a machine humming. The door opened suddenly and Hand returned, weighed down by a load of soggy heads. He hummed a tune distorted by his mouthpiece, dripping blood from his hairy burden all the while.
“Hand,” said Boris. “Some decency, if you will.”
Hand stopped humming. He crossed to the window. Heffer saw a red caricature of terror on one of the heads as it passed by. He cleared his throat involuntarily, glad that he was not a part of that collection. Hand maneuvered himself behind the red curtain. They heard a sickening crunch as Hand forced one of the heads onto a spike that hung outside the window. There were many such spikes, all visible from the courtyard and the distant avenue. They heard another sickening crunch, then a mechanical grunt of satisfaction.
“Go on,” said Boris.
“The great dragon,” said Barkus, “commanded that the Ugly put together an army and sail to the island, without giving a thought to the price it will cost us to do so. He said that all the generations of our order will meet their climax in that battle. We are to write as many blank checks as we need, break as many alliances and steal any materials we can. He said that we now exist for this purpose alone.”
Demonworld Book 2: The Pig Devils Page 3
