The Demon Shroud

by T. A. Miles

  Tahlia ducked around Merran and went in to ensure the man was finished. Merran followed after her.

  When they arrived, the man was rising. He did so swiftly, swinging what appeared to be a heavy axe head mounted on a short hilt.

  Tahlia danced back at once, avoiding the initial sweeping of the man’s blade. He wore a singed hole in his apron, owed to the Blast spell, and it had burned into his flesh, but he seemed unconcerned with injury. It was the gliding past of a second blade, one which came from an arm situated lower on his torso than it should have been, which ensured that there was no misunderstanding about their opponent.

  Merran struck him with another Blast while the cleaver arced in front of him. Again, the butcher went down.

  Once again, he rose. He seemed quicker doing so after the second attack than he had the first. The blades cut through the moist shadows, one way and then the next. Merran and Tahlia moved back to accommodate his progress, but not his intent.

  “There’s more room outside!” Tahlia announced, by way of leaving.

  Merran agreed with her plan by turning to run with her.

  When they exited, Syndel shoved the door closed behind them, gaining a few moments for Merran and Tahlia to recollect their bearings.

  Merran swiftly made the motions of a different spell while Tahlia planted herself for defense.

  The door was sundered by the butcher and his swinging blades. Syndel managed a Barrier to block the splintering wood, which was flung heaviest in her direction. Merran wasn’t able to notice how effective her spell was while he cast his own. Megrim struck the assailant with an invisible push of atmosphere that carried only the merest sound, like an inverted Blast.

  The butcher’s human mind was receptive to the assault, and his balance was immediately compromised. He reeled, still swinging, and ultimately tripped over his own feet. Tahlia moved on him while he was stumbling, laying a strike against him with her staff, which ensured that he fell to the edge.

  With his free hand among three, the butcher managed to grab hold of the corner between the stairs and the shelf’s lip, but his weight pulled him. He slipped with something dark attempting to birth itself from his neck and back. As the incoherent shape of a newborn demon attempted to rise through the air, Merran set a Blast upon it, ensuring that it continued to fall. Aspects of the Vadryn filtered away, like wet ash on its way to the river.

  Twenty-One

  Syndel retrieved Jhac from his hiding place along the interior corridor while Merran and Tahlia entered the butcher’s lair. The chamber covered an impressive area, but it was in no way spacious. Natural cave growth cluttered the floor and ceiling, allowing few open routes except where enormous compartments had been carved out of the floor with a solid path between them.

  Resting his hand on a near stalagmite for balance, Merran crouched down beside the compartment on the left and peered through the darkness. He reserved casting Lantern, having no desire to roust anything prematurely.

  “Here,” Tahlia said, handing him a torch from among those that had been mounted sparingly throughout the area.

  Merran took the fire and swept its light over the pit. The glow traced over the abstract details of several forms …of bodies. “I think these are our soldiers.”

  “They’re alive,” Tahlia announced.

  Merran continued to examine them, presuming that it was her empathy that made her alert to that. When one of the bodies shifted, he confirmed what she detected. “Yes, they are.”

  “But, are they infected?” Tahlia wondered.

  Merran did as well, and there was no positive answer immediately present. He looked around the area, then stood, walking away from the pit. He went to the alcove at the back, which turned out to be much larger than it had appeared with the butcher blocking it. The narrower space was an entry into another, which was furnished with a broad wooden table and the hooked remains of men and some animals. The general putrescence of the area had settled somewhat on Merran’s senses, but the heavy rank of the butcher’s work station brought all of it to the fore. Merran set his jaw against the rising taste of bile and practiced minimal breathing.

  He had no desire to explore deeply into the area, but he did have to examine it enough to ascertain precisely what was happening in this hellish fortress. It was plain that the butcher was murdering people and reducing them to portions, but for what purpose? There were also buckets of blood along the wall and near the table.

  “It’s been stocking bodies …for blood?”

  Tahlia’s guess was a valid one. Still, Merran wasn’t totally satisfied with that. The Vadryn tended to prefer fresher resources than corpses, unless desperate or much less developed than what could be considered typical.

  Merran withdrew from the alcove, slowly letting go the breath he’d been holding. He walked to the pit opposite the one containing living bodies. He said to Tahlia, “Regarding the beasts Korsten and I have seen, only minimal blood is required for this particular brand of demon. Though, that doesn’t mean that these people haven’t been bled for Endmark’s benefit, and possibly for others as well. It’s nothing I would consider to be typical of their behavior.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, joining him. “But I know that you hunters witness some unusual things, more so than the rest of us.”

  Merran surveyed the area around the pit before lowering to see inside of it. By all appearances, it was no different than the other.

  “Perhaps that was why Shalex came to this place so frequently and erratically,” Tahlia suggested. “To feed.”

  There seemed to be fewer bodies in the second pit and it appeared that they were shackled, though the forms were still largely heaped upon one another. “I doubt the master of this place would have tolerated him imbibing like that for much longer, if that was the case. We’re all aware that demons don’t appreciate competition from their own.”

  “It makes it seem impossible that they can work alongside each other at all,” Tahlia said in agreement.

  “They space themselves, usually,” Merran said, continuing to observe the forms below, noting the odd twitch of a limb here and there. “It may be that, among these new ones, they’ll be less territorial.”

  “You mean, if they’re …brought up, for lack of a better term, in a community?”

  The suggestion tied together some loose ideas and inspired Merran to search for a rock. He soon found one and tossed it into the pit. The bodies reacted belatedly, which let Merran know that there had quite possibly been movement of something else first. Just like Governor Izwendel. The pit was undoubtedly full of contamination, and the butcher had been supplying recently dead bodies, or parts of bodies, to newly growing demons.

  “I wonder what it is that keeps the others from simply possessing the bodies of the Morennish soldiers and fighting each other?” Tahlia continued to speculate, and Merran let her while he considered what could possibly be done about the infected victims, if anything. “It might make things easier, if they savaged one another over their own intolerances and greed.”

  “Their instinct which prevents them doing that to some extent, I imagine,” Merran answered, standing. He observed the approach of Syndel and Jhac. “They wouldn’t survive, if they exhausted their food source all at once. And it’s their fear of the stronger and more ancient of them which keeps them in line, once they come to be in near proximity to one another. Their fear, plus their greed, when they’re promised a vessel and access to some of the other humans around them.

  “That was the example Korsten and I witnessed at Lilende. The resident demon had been let in by a traitor to the Order. It had taken up a position among the soldiers and been feeding from them only in insignificant amounts.”

  “Keeping them weak.”

  “So that Morenne would meet little resistance when they arrived.” Merran shook his head. “But this is different than anything
else we’ve seen yet.”

  “This is what it’s become in a century’s time,” Tahlia marveled, her tone of amazement and disgust. “One hundred years ago, Morenne was simply our neighbor. The Vadryn were monsters relegated to the shadows, spreading disease and murder, yes, but not like this.”

  “We knew this was coming, Tahlia,” Syndel said as she arrived with Jhac. “The Vadryn have been leading up to this for nearly a thousand years. They influenced enough of Morenne and its people to start a war …and now they’re influencing the people of Edrinor, so that they may conquer them. And through them, they get to us. Through the Rottherlens, they got to Ashwin, but it wasn’t enough to put him down, so they’ll keep trying.”

  “When Ashwin falls …” Jhac inserted, perhaps without the intention to finish.

  Merran finished for him. “So will the Order. They believe.”

  •—•

  Tahlia struggled to digest what they had come upon. It looked as if one side of the butcher’s prison was for victims to be fed to the people in the opposite pit, who were to gestate new demons. Contamination was a delicate situation; reversible, yes, but not always. And there were so many.

  “These people were not possessed in the traditional sense,” Merran explained once more, on the chance that anyone didn’t want to believe the situation. “They’ve been poisoned. Their bodies will never be right. And we cannot risk that they might enter back into the world, still carrying enough poison to spawn another beast.”

  Tahlia shook her head, staggered by what they were faced with. “But for so many of them to die …”

  “I’m uncertain what else to do,” Merran said. “At the same time, I’m not prepared to take responsibility for this much death without knowing whether or not some of them can be saved.”

  Some of them probably could be saved, but how would they determine that? How would they even sort through the victims in the contaminated pit, without first serving themselves up as an offering? Even if they could coax the infected men out, it would be impossible to perform that many Release spells in a single session. The casting priests would give in to exhaustion before they had gone through even a third of the victims. And that wasn’t even accounting for any conflicts that might arise with any of the more developed beasts they would stir up.

  Tahlia understood that one like Shalex had probably been a long time growing, but even a lesser demon—even a newly formed demon—could be the end of a priest, never minding that three of those present were not even at their proper strength.

  Tahlia preferred the pragmatic view, but this was a bit much, even for her and, she could see, even for Merran.

  “Let’s get these other people to safety first,” Syndel suggested, gesturing toward the pit of those who had been, for whatever reason, deemed Vadryn fodder. “It would be foolish to risk going through the castle with so many, but there’s enough ledge alongside the water that we could probably take it to an outlet, if we can find a way down to it.”

  “The water’s not rough,” Jhac inserted in reminder. “We could swim part of the way if need be, even with some injured.”

  Merran considered that, and seemed to be still considering everything else prior to that, even as he spoke. “I have to go back for Korsten.”

  “I’d nearly forgotten him,” Tahlia admitted. “I hate to let you go back there alone.”

  Merran, who she knew had worked alone extensively in the past, scarcely dignified the statement with his response. “It’s going to take all three of you to assist the soldiers. Herrel is probably among the ones not contaminated, if he isn’t being kept somewhere else entirely.”

  “If he’s here, we’ll find him,” Tahlia assured him. “You get going after Korsten, before he gets his pretty self into a worse fix. We’ll start work here and meet you outside.”

  “No,” Merran said. “You should head directly for Vassenleigh. It will be a long trip, but we can’t leave these men anywhere else. Tell them that they’re to be reassigned to other fronts, if they ask. For the ones who are well or fast to recover, that will likely be true. If any of them are contaminated, it will be best to get them to the Superiors as quickly as possible.”

  “Right,” Tahlia agreed. “Thank you, Merran. We’ll see you back home. Both of you.”

  •—•

  Time passed with conversation that was as intoxicating as if Korsten had drunk from the goblet Leodyn had passed to him. It was all he could do to hold his head steady against the lulling sound of Leodyn’s eloquent voice and the stories he told of a distant land that brought Korsten back to his early childhood.

  “My mother used to tell me such tales,” Korsten said, his eyes yet on the glass, which he believed was becoming heavy in his hand.

  “She could only have been serene and beautiful,” Leodyn said.

  And it was that—the demon’s deliberate attempt to flatter—which made Korsten alert to what was happening. At least, for the moment. He blinked intentionally, insisting to himself that he was neither tired nor enchanted.

  When he felt more focused, Korsten sought Leodyn with his gaze. He was surprised to find him seated on the bench, and took a moment to retrace how the demon had gotten there. That he was forced to do so let him know how dangerous the atmosphere happened to be. He nearly met with the afflicted gray-green eyes of Leodyn and avoided the meeting, looking down instead, at the book which lay upon the bench between them. The spine was embossed with the same peculiar characters as the tomes Korsten had come upon earlier.

  Leodyn took note of Korsten’s interest and lifted the book. “The pages contain very unique energies. They allow me to quickly see things throughout my domain.”

  With the words, Korsten recalled having touched one of the books, and how the eye from his dream had opened in the same room not long afterward. The area was the same as what Syndel had described, where she and Jhac had encountered the eye. But how had it gotten into Korsten’s dreams? He was certain that he did not have a talent for Foresight, not even in a dormant state. It implied that the demon may well have extended his sight to the walls of the village itself …but how? Contemplating the characteristics of the eye, Korsten concluded that the mist may have been responsible for Leodyn’s range. He wondered if that range included only the cold haze around Endmark, or if it encompassed more of the northern reaches, as far as Feidor’s Crest.

  “Sight is not important for the moment,” Leodyn said.

  The statement continued to return Korsten to his dreams and to recent experiences. The empty sockets of the old man in Korsten’s dream, who may have been Governor Izwendel, who was blindfolded …the eyes of Shalex being displaced by its mouths. Leodyn’s love of color.

  “Leodyn was blind,” Korsten realized aloud. He dared a glance at the present bearer of the name. The eyes were closed for the moment. “You lured him with sight.”

  “Yes, I did,” Leodyn answered. He turned his face, eyes opening.

  Korsten caught only a glimpse of the bloodshot gray and green before escaping.

  “He had only words to describe to him the colors and the shapes, and the beauty, of everything around him. He had only words to express to him how beautiful he himself happened to be. He could not have truly realized any of it before me. Even before his accident, he perceived only a mottled haze—a cold, dead light. The accident brought blackness, and me. And now he sees what beauty means. He sees color and how much it is beyond anything he could have hoped to imagine in his darkness.”

  “But he had to enter into a new darkness,” Korsten said.

  “He volunteered.”

  “You tricked him.”

  Leodyn took hold of Korsten’s face with swiftness he could not have coped with at such a range, even had he known of it in advance. Turning Korsten’s head toward him, the demon shouted, “I helped him!”

  Korsten shut his eyes against the demon’s gaze,
believing they would pull him into a place he may not escape from. His current state of mind syphoned from memory, all the moments Renmyr had become so instantly and presently hostile, and how it had often been a very simple argument between them that had ignited it. It seemed to justify the Vadryn’s lack of individuality.

  That was the sentiment Korsten believed would start the physical fight, the one that he would have no hope of winning. But no violence came at him. Instead, Leodyn’s mouth lowered upon his own.

  The kiss drew breath from Korsten, as if the demon had been attempting to draw his blood. Simultaneously, it was drawing strength from him. This was not the same as Renmyr. This was not the same as any of the Vadryn Korsten had faced before.

  Korsten pried Leodyn’s fingers from his jaw and pulled back, with enough strength that when Leodyn released him, he fell from the bench. Korsten again braced himself for some act of retribution, but Leodyn merely stood from the bench and walked away.

  “I’m undecided whether or not you’re deliberately trying to provoke me,” the demon said. “If you are, you should consider that it will have been you, in that instance, who insisted on the continuation of struggle. Of war.”

  Korsten got to his feet. His limbs all felt heavy, but he did not believe all strength or ability had been taken from him.

  “It was no spell,” Leodyn said to him, his scowl displayed over his shoulder. “You’re so bent against admitting that we’re not a hive and utterly devoid of autonomy, that you won’t admit that what you feel now is the weakness of desire …possibly of the potential to love what is not very different from you.”

  “I won’t allow you to manipulate my thoughts,” Korsten determined, ignoring the burning in his eyes as the past was dredged brutally forward by what was a horror of the Vadryn …and not anything more. “My abilities to love are well known to me.”