by Sam Sykes
“The Decay.” Shinka looked from the clipboard to Dreadaeleon. “You did not think to mention this to us?”
Dreadaeleon finished chewing, swallowed. “A past condition. Long since healed.”
“Wizards rarely heal from the Decay,” Shinka replied. “And its conditions rarely stay in the past.” She narrowed her eyes. “Too much relies on you being able to perform, concomitant. If you can’t—”
“I can.” Dreadaeleon’s voice was a low growl. “I can bring down Lector Annis. I can bring this whole fucking tower down and everyone in it, given the chance.”
Shinka’s lip curled back. “I’ll remind you that, given the chance, Annis did to you what you did to that meat.” She pointed to the mess of crumbs and grease on his fingers. “And I’ll further remind you that I have no desire to bring down this tower and every desire to spare as many lives beyond Annis’s as possible. I will need them if I’m to save this city.”
“Ah, yes,” Dreadaeleon replied, licking his lips. “You’re still on about that, I see. Thinking you can drive the foreigners, the thieves, the cultists out of Cier’Djaal with just a wave of your hand.”
“I can’t drive them out.” Shinka’s eyes glowed red. Electricity danced across her fingertips in cobalt arcs. “But with a wave of my hand, I can make their bowels erupt out their anuses. So that’s a start.”
Dreadaeleon grunted, took another bite of his meal.
“The Venarium has stayed neutral for too long,” Shinka continued. “Wizards were trusted with both power overwhelming and the insight and reason with which to control it. It’s reckless to allow archaic traditions to shackle us when foreign armies run rampant through our streets and violence plagues every quarter.”
“How very noble of you,” Dreadaeleon said, swallowing. “Centuries of protocol be damned, I’m certain the Venarium will see the error of their ways and heed your keen insight of ‘war is bad.’ After all, all good reigns begin with assassination, don’t they?”
Shinka was a wizard in every sense of the world: clever, calculating, and conservative right down to her expressions. And when Dreadaeleon spoke, she did not snarl or spit or glare. She merely regarded him with the slightest coil to the corners of her mouth and spoke softly and easily.
“Annis’s dedication to a cause he believes in is admirable, but unfortunate. If his intervention hinders the efforts to secure safety in this city, then it is with a heavy conscience that he must be removed from his position as Primary Lector.”
As easy as though she had been filling out a form. Not a single word fumbled or a single breath out of place. How long had she been rehearsing that speech, Dreadaeleon wondered? And whom did she intend to tell it to once she killed Annis?
Well, let’s not be unfair, old man, he told himself. It’s when you kill Annis that she’ll tell it to someone.
That was his role in all this, after all: the dangerous heretic who would inexplicably break free of his restraints and bring down Annis, thus allowing Shinka to assume control and use the Venarium to save the city. Annis would be an unfortunate martyr, Shinka would be a triumphing heroine, and Dreadaeleon would be forgotten.
Free.
Stricken from every Venarium record. Expunged from every history. A brief footnote in a long, rambling diatribe that would be ignored by every dull-eyed, barknecked reader until he was long dead.
He smiled bitterly at the prospect.
“Regardless,” Shinka said, “you should know there’s been a change in plans.”
He looked up, eyes twitching. “You can’t go back on this. Not now. Not after—”
“Calm yourself.” She held up a hand. “I was hoping to persuade Annis to delay your execution by a few days to allow you to get your strength back.” She cast a glance over his skinny, naked form. “Unless that’s as big as you get.”
“I’m slender. Lots of men are—”
“But we have no time,” she interrupted. “There has been an incident in the desert. The tulwar clans have assembled into some manner of army. Jalaang has already fallen. They’ve got eyes on Cier’Djaal. There’s some kind of red lizard-thing leading them.”
Dreadaeleon’s brows shot up. “Gariath?”
“I don’t know what they call it and I don’t care. A bunch of backward savages is just that, no matter what kind of army they pretend to be. But I’d rather have Cier’Djaal secure before I deal with them.”
She held up a hand and extended four fingers.
“Your execution is going forward as planned. Four days. On the third, at midnight, you’ll be freed from your cell. Annis’s study is on the top floor of the tower. We’ll do our best to make sure our people are doing the patrols that night, but it’s up to you to get there.”
“Fine,” he said. He rose and brushed crumbs from his flesh. “And when I succeed …”
“You’ll get what you want,” Shinka replied. “Two days to collect whatever you need and leave the city. Once you pass out the gates, no one will so much as speak your name.”
“Are you certain? The man who brought down the Venarium would be the subject of some talk.”
“The boy who proved useful to progress will be of small concern compared to what we’ll have to accomplish. We have thieves to smoke out of their holes and foreign armies to drive away. Cier’Djaal will be a very busy place.”
“Someone’s coming,” one of the Librarians beside the door muttered. “I can hear them.”
Shinka glanced at Dreadaeleon, eyes alight with red power. She waved a hand. Invisible force roiled from her fingertips. An invisible grip seized him, raised him, and pressed him against the table in short order. The manacles clasped around his wrists of their own accord. He barely had time to grunt, let alone protest, before one of the Librarians was gathering up the Seen-And-Not-Heard and preparing to reattach it.
“Four days. Midnight. You’ll continue receiving visits until then,” Shinka said. She turned to move out the door. “And then you’ll be gone from my city.”
“About that,” Dreadaeleon called after her.
She hesitated, but did not look back.
“You seem to have forgotten about the people. What if they don’t support your rule? This is all about protecting them, isn’t it?”
Shinka remained silent before slowly turning her head to regard him out of the corner of her eye.
“As a rule,” she said, “I do not consider advice when given from men with their cocks flopping about.”
Dreadaeleon’s mouth hung open a fraction of a moment before the Seen-And-Not-Heard went back on. Just as well.
It wasn’t until well after she and her retinue had departed and the door slammed shut that he had even remotely come to think of a good retort for that.
SIX
A FEAST FOR POOR GODS
It was the moment that the last drop of liquid from the waterskin hit his tongue that Lenk noticed it.
He glanced to his left, to the man walking beside him.
He had once been broken—stooped of back, withered of limb—but one wouldn’t know it by looking at him anymore. Mocca’s power had changed him, as it had changed all the others.
It had made him tall and strong, straightened his spine, and sculpted his muscle into the creature that now towered over Lenk. Black hair shimmered in the desert sun; his skin glistened as he strode through the same sands that Lenk stumbled over. And where Lenk squinted against the glare of the sun, this man, this perfect creature, stared straight ahead with bright yellow eyes.
“Do you need any water?” Lenk asked.
The man did not look down, not at first. He didn’t even blink. So Lenk cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Hey. Hey.”
At this, the man stirred, as if from reverie. He looked down at Lenk. His features, though handsome and sharp, displayed a kind of distance that was swiftly shattered as a broad smile of perfectly white, even teeth flashed.
“Yes, my friend?” he asked in a voice that had not been his o
wn.
“Water.” Lenk held up the waterskin, dangling it. “Do you need any? I drained this one, but …” He gestured over his shoulder to the caravan of goods hauled by oxen toward the back. “I can go back and get some more, if you want.”
The man looked away, puzzled. “I … don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so.” Lenk shaded his eyes with his hand and glanced up at the sun blazing down. “Feels like you probably ought to know by now.”
“I know I should.” The man looked down at his broad hands. “When I was … imperfect, I was so terribly thirsty. No water could slake it. But now, I feel like I could walk forever on a single drop.” He smiled back at Lenk. “The master’s touch. It cures every pain, heals every wound, slakes every—”
“Yeah. He’s a peach.” Lenk tucked the waterskin back into his belt and turned away. “If you’ll pardon me.”
The man did—or at least didn’t protest. He just went back to staring straight ahead, continuing to walk.
Just like the thousands of others.
Silently, their eyes turned up toward the sun, they walked in singular purpose. Men and women who had once been shattered, twisted, torn apart, and fused back together. Now they were tall and strong as trees behind scanty silk garments and their faces were painfully beautiful to behold. Those few moments Lenk caught a glimpse of them, he realized they looked remarkably similar: all of them bearing similar sharp features, pointed chins, long noses. And all of them had those big, bright eyes the color of a waning moon.
They couldn’t possibly all have looked like that before they were changed. Yet if any of them missed their old bodies, they didn’t show it. And if Lenk felt like asking, he was sure they wouldn’t be up for discussing it. As it was, he found looking them in the eye uncomfortable. And not merely because they towered over him.
So he kept his eyes down as he wandered through their ranks. They idly stepped around him, smiled at him, but said not a word. They kept their eyes toward the west and their stride moving as he made his way back toward the oxen.
A few raggedy beasts found at some abandoned farms when Mocca’s “Chosen,” as he called them, had made their way down from the mountains and into the desert. The oxen were tasked with hauling what few possessions they had, mostly just food and water.
Yet as Lenk tossed his waterskin in and produced a new one, he realized that the supplies had only dwindled insomuch as he had taken from them. No one else had so much as touched the food or drink in the days since they had been traveling. And none of them seemed so much as winded from the long march, even though Lenk could still see the spots where he had napped in the wagon.
It worried him.
“Hello there!”
Then again, considering the company he kept, he suspected worry was reasonable.
He glanced up. Amid the sea of towering dark flesh, Mocca stood out like a ghost. His robes fluttered about him in the warm breeze, pristine white despite the sand and heat. He, short and fragile-looking among his creations, waved at Lenk with the carefree whimsy that somehow didn’t befit a demon lord.
The two Disciples, serpentine and withered and tremendous, that flanked him, though? Those quite befitted a demon lord.
“Hello,” Lenk replied.
He did his best to ignore the scribble-black eyes of the demons as they came slinking up, preferring instead to focus on Mocca’s gentle smile. Yet somehow that smile was just as unnerving, given that Lenk knew the demon that lurked behind it.
“You look ill at ease.” Mocca laughed. “Is the pilgrimage proving arduous?”
“I’m not complaining,” Lenk said. He glanced pointedly at the Disciples. “And I’ve been through worse.”
Mocca quirked a brow. He glanced up at the Disciples. “I believe you are making my friend uncomfortable. Would you mind going on ahead? Your brethren will be close by now and seeking us out.”
The Disciples exchanged glances through their withered old-man faces. When one of them spoke, it did so with the lash of tongue.
“Is it wise to leave you with this child of woe, master?” it asked.
“Our tongues are free of lies, our minds clean of doubt,” the other added. “But the world is sparse of one of the learned owing to this one’s unclean hands.”
Lenk bristled at the accusation, though he wasn’t sure why. It was true, after all, that he had slain one of these creatures before. Perhaps it was just the idea of being called unclean by something so foul as a demon-snake-old-man-thing.
“There is no creature so learned as to be free of mistake,” Mocca replied, wagging a finger. “The instant he achieves perfection of thought is the instant he is no longer part of this world and all its tragic beauties.” He glanced at Lenk and smiled. “We will be fine on our own, will we not?”
Fine.
Fine was a word that did not belong here. A demon was free by Lenk’s hand, walking the earth among an army of people changed. And though those people were happy, as this demon swore he could make the rest of the world, Lenk could not feel easy among them.
It was for a good cause. The best cause, even, he knew. The wars that had wracked Cier’Djaal would spread to the rest of the world, kill it slowly over a thousand years. The gods were deaf, they did not listen, they could not stop it. But Khoth-Kapira could. Khoth-Kapira listened.
Khoth-Kapira could save Kataria. He was the only one who could.
Lenk knew this, but he could not shake the memories: the people he had betrayed, the blood he had spilled, all for this desperate hope that the thing that had crawled out of hell would save the world.
No. He was not fine.
Yet he nodded, all the same.
At this, the two Disciples bowed low and then slithered away. Their ancient, withered grayness made them look like decaying statues among the Chosen, who did not look at them.
“Not that they aren’t charming,” Mocca said. “But I fear that the Disciples merely learned to regurgitate, rather than orate.”
“I’d just as soon they not open their mouths for either.” Lenk shuddered. “I’ve seen what comes out of them.”
Mocca laughed, beckoning Lenk to follow him. “They weren’t always the twisted creatures you see now. I counted them once as precious company, learned minds that at least tried to keep up with what I was telling them.”
“You talk as though they didn’t succeed.”
“To sound perfectly arrogant, who could?” He led Lenk farther away from the caravan and the crowd, in the direction of distant cliffs to the south. “Mine is an intellect formed in the wonders of heaven, shaped by the pleasures of earth and tested by the torments below it. One does not experience the entirety of creation and come away unchanged.”
“Feels like you’d have a lot in common with demons,” Lenk muttered.
Mocca cast a glower over his shoulder. “A term I don’t find endearing. We were branded that name by fanatics. Fanatics who took exception to the flaws we discovered with their masters’ creation and sought to slay us for it. We gazed upon this earth and saw its illnesses, its wars, its famines. They could not deny this, so they branded us, cast us out, and called our truths blasphemy. Fanatics are not useful to me.”
Lenk glanced over to the crowd. What, then, he wondered, did Mocca see in these Chosen who could not speak his name without going wide-eyed and breathless?
When he looked back, Mocca was standing not a foot away, his eyes locked on Lenk’s. The beard of serpents had returned, their beady stares fixated on him in a way that made his legs go cold beneath him.
“What I need is a champion.”
“What?” Lenk took a step back.
“We’ve been in each other’s company for weeks now, Lenk, and I’ve spent much of that time as a passenger inside your head.” He tapped his own temple. “With all my power, all my grace, have you never thought it odd that I never once attempted to control you? To exert my will over you?”
Lenk opened his mouth but found no words. Now t
hat it was spoken, it did seem odd that a demon should be so restrained. He had fought them before, knew their urge to dominate well.
“I would not be so arrogant as to say I could have tortured you, broken you down to madness and reshaped you as I saw fit.” He pursed his lips. “But I could have tried, Lenk. Just as I could have shattered this world, marched on it with a horde of demons at my back and brought it to its knees until they gazed up at me and begged me for mercy.”
There was something in Mocca’s voice, a coldness that slid off his tongue. He spoke in bitter poisons, his face coiling up in disgust as the serpents of his beard twisted and writhed excitedly.
Lenk felt that itch in his palm that went away whenever he gripped his sword. He fought to keep his hand at his side.
“So why didn’t you?” he asked. “Why are we walking to Cier’Djaal with this rabble?”
Mocca let out a sigh. His eyes closed shut. The serpents receded back into his flesh.
“I cannot shepherd them as a conqueror,” he said. “Were I to descend out of the sky on fire, they would only speak my name so that they could avoid being burned. Faith taught through fear only yields fanatics. For this to work …” He gestured out over the desert. “For me to be able to save this world, they must believe in me.” He looked at Lenk intently. “You must believe in me.”
“I let you out of hell, didn’t I?” Lenk asked. He silently congratulated himself on only feeling slightly disgusted with himself for saying it this time.
And, as though Mocca could see that revulsion coursing through him, he spoke. “You believe that I tell you a war is coming, but you’ve seen it coming for weeks. You believe that I can save your shict, but you’d do anything to save her. You believe me, but do you believe in me, Lenk?”
Lenk stared at him for a long time. And, after a long time, he whispered a single word.
“No.”
Mocca frowned. If God-Kings could weep, he might have. But there was no denying it—whatever miracles he promised or sicknesses he could cure, Khoth-Kapira was merely the means to an end. To Lenk, it had been a simple bargain: the God-King’s freedom for Kataria’s life and safety. Everything else was just a bonus. And apparently that was not enough.
