by JM Guillen
Inside were horrors from another age.
Fear pounced again like a fiend waiting in the darkness. A hellish red light was cast by a series of strange glyphs, gouged deep into stone and wood. They shone and shimmered independently of each other. They seemed to leer at me, their glow undulating through the air, moving by their own will. Every wall, every door, the ceiling, and the floor were covered in tiny intricate carvings. Seemingly at random, blood-red brilliance poured forth from them.
“Sorcery.” Sire Mattias grimaced.
He had to be right. This wasn’t alchemy or some artificery. I couldn’t explain what this was beyond terrifying. The lights rippled malevolently, like eyes peering from behind some great, cosmic veil. I felt watched, and part of my mind realized it was being stalked, hunted, by unknowable creatures that slinked behind nightmares.
“Peace, Handmaiden. Breathe.”
The sickly sweet light showed a room of horrors. Three tables, with one in the center of the room and one on either side, were covered in strange books and stranger tools: rusty clamps, blades with bizarre curves cut into the metal. The entire ceiling made a meticulously painted skyscape with glyphs representing stars. I only recognized it because I could make out the Mantle of Selis, then the Dread Sickle, and then Dylanns’ Stave. The glyph must have taken weeks to finish.
I found taking all this in difficult, however. My dreaming mind screamed, raving at me to run, get as far away from this place as I possibly could. The sigil-stars seemed to move, a rolling, disorienting motion like waves on the ocean. I found myself weaving on my feet on the edge of dizziness. It needed every scrap of will I possessed to simply stand there, unmoving, as the abyssal light tickled its way across my skin.
Breathe.
Two other doors led from this place. One also had an eerie red cast, while the other was pitch. I stepped carefully to the left, pushing the dark door open. It swung lazily, with more of that red light glimmering from behind.
I peered in the doorway.
Someone was there.
I jerked away, back around the doorframe, but no one came rushing out. I bit down my fear and stepped back into the doorway.
Sire Mattias must have heard my movement, for he hurried to my side, Rydia’s light shining from his rod of office.
“Who—?” He stepped in fast, certain someone had been lying in wait.
Little more than a glance told me she was no danger.
Her body hung suspended in the center of the room, arms tied over her head. Her pretty, blonde hair fell in a tangled mess around her face. I stepped in, gently pushing her hair back. Graceful, pointed ears hid beneath the hair.
A human-kin.
She dangled limply, her naked form covered in thousands of small markings. I turned her so I could see her face, and my heart pounded in my chest. Tiny symbols had been burned into her face, her breasts, even her eyes. The symbols shone a sinister red, illuminating a table of sharp tools that had obviously been used to mar her body.
“Rydia’s Fire,” I choked in horror.
Dead and used. Taken by the foulest rites.
Sorcery.
Sire Mattias walked over to the bookshelf and thumbed through the titles there.
“Alchemie Dragus.” He muttered as he pulled one from the shelf and opened it. “It’s a complete primer. Work like this was done over weeks.”
“This—” I couldn’t take my eyes from the young woman. The bowl at her feet was stained from where it had caught her blood.
“It can’t be comprehended, Handmaiden. It’s nothing sane or whole.” He shook his head grimly. “Lithia let this happen. I told her. I told her.”
I took my eyes from the woman’s body. I wanted nothing more than to take her down. Take her down and wash her body with lilac and vetiver.
I doubted she even spoke my tongue, but she deserved better than this.
I fought back tears. The sigils flared, a dull heat, as anger washed through me. During my training, I had studied histories of the ancient cults and some of their lore. This, however, was something entirely different.
I had never seen anything like it.
She had a small, inked tattoo on her wrist, ivy with a rhinna flower entwined.
That tiny tattoo made her real, made her a person.
My fury turned to hot coals in my stomach.
20
I cannot say how long I stood there, gaping at her.
Eventually, Sire Mattias insisted that we move on. “There may be more. We might be able to stop whatever horror he is working tonight.”
That idea pulled me back into focus. Of course. Both the guards and Emlie had claimed that Devariis was planning something tonight. We came too late for this one, but perhaps—
“Yes.” I could feel the fire in my sigils and felt their righteous wrath, a burning twin to my own. “Whatever Orin is doing tonight, he will be stopped. He will be stopped from doing anything like this ever again.”
Sire Mattias could only nod. Leaving the woman behind, we pushed through the abyssal light to the other side of the room.
There, we found a door that whispered, a door that held only darkness.
We exchanged a glance but said nothing.
He took my hands gently in his. His grip felt firm with the familiar calluses on his large palms.
I looked to his face, and his mist and lightning eyes seemed to search mine.
One of his hands rose to cup my cheek.
I nuzzled it and laid a light kiss across his palm.
Mattias uttered a slight groan.
For a moment, behind his eyes, I saw everything: every time he had touched me, every rose, every blooded thorn.
In that moment I knew.
He loves me.
My heart glowed with a sudden surge of happiness.
“Keiri.”
I saw him struggle. I watched as my Sire wanted to speak, but for the first time, he found no words.
“No. We will have time after.” I wanted to speak with him, to carol our love to the mountaintops. There was no time. Not now. Orin had to be stopped.
He nodded slowly. “Yes. After.”
We pushed into the darkness.
He whispered a word that was not mine to hear, and his rod began to glow again. Faint against that velvet night, it was all we had.
I stayed by his side, my breathing steady. I remained focused, prepared.
I was flame, ready to unfurl.
We pressed on for ten strides, then twenty. The earth beneath our feet turned damp, and the smell of seawater tinged the air. Moss lined the walls, which soon gave way to the juts of a natural cavern. The well-packed earth underfoot became studded with stepping stones.
I smelled something else. Cook fires, perhaps.
“Keiri.” His tone carried both warning and question.
I peered ahead but could scarcely see what he was speaking of.
It looked like a person sitting in an odd stone chair.
“Present yourself.” My Sire stepped forward as he spoke.
As light washed over the figure, I noted a wide, leering grin that spoke of mania and madness.
“A mask,” Sire Mattias whispered.
Yes, a mask, easy enough to tell now, made of bronze or maybe copper. I couldn’t tell in the faint light.
The person did not move.
Sire Mattias took my hand and crept forward, holding his rod before him.
“Are you injured?” His whisper was hoarse but carried in the roughly hewn tunnel.
Silence.
The light from Sire Mattias’ rod fell glittering on the mask, highlighting that leering smile and blank, smooth eye sockets. The wearer wouldn’t be able to see through it at all, but nonetheless, the mask seemed to gaze through me.
“The chair,” I whispered, but my voice seemed loud. “There’s something strange on the armrests.”
We edged forward again, peering through the dim light. The armrests were stained dark with blood. It looked as if the figure had b
led out through the wrists, and channels on the chair had guided the blood down. Two more small bowls sat at the person’s feet, and they brimmed with dark liquid.
Then, pain. Pain in the form of a word.
A word that may not be written, that none who walked by light might speak, the word echoed in memory, in the depths of who I was. It felt sharp, a word that cut.
It meant pain. It meant pain in a tongue so old that the creatures who spoke it were lost to history. It was scorpions in my ears, stinging, their venom like fire.
Sire Mattias stood tall and screamed into the darkness. At the sound, I felt my sigils sing, felt the fire that shines but never flickers.
The pain shattered. It fell apart like glass before a stone.
Then there was laughter in the deeps.
Orin Devariis spoke into the darkness.
“A great expanse exists between knowing and believing.” His voice came in a rich, deep timbre that sent shudders along my flesh. “I knew you would come. I knew it the moment we were together. I felt the bond you cast between us, love.”
My eyes flickered to Sire Mattias.
He was calm, focused. He held his rod aloft. He seemed ready.
I stood straighter. I touched my sigils with the edge of my mind.
Together, we said nothing.
“I didn’t believe it. Even after my cottage burned. Even after you vanished into the night. I couldn’t believe that you would ever harm me. Ever do anything against me. But my senses don’t lie. I knew you’d left a portion of yourself behind, within me. I didn’t know how it was possible. So I began to seek. I asked questions.” He chuckled darkly, “Oh, the things I found.”
Then he spoke again, a different word in that same strange tongue. The air seemed greasy just having borne the sound.
Suddenly, bursting forth from some lost dream, a mockery of light filled the room. It shone from twisted pattern-strings cut into the walls, a strange, dizzying violet-green glow. The shadows cast by that light twisted, bent.
Seeing horrified more than blindness.
The corpse we stood next to—for it was a corpse, of that there was no doubt—was only one of many. Five more of the restraining chairs sat along the walls, first to the right, then, not five strides further, another on the left. All were naked, save those strange copper masks. Each held different leers of death and madness upon their face. The sallow flesh not hidden by the masks sagged. The closer I looked—
Oh.
The masks weren’t strapped on. While red hot, they had been seared to their faces. These deathmasks could never be removed; the leering grins would never rot.
I remembered the smell of cook fires.
At the end of the hallway, Orin Devariis sat like a king before his court.
He wore leather and black sable fur with silver rings and studs. His mask flashed silver, similar to the others, but ferocious, with a toothed maw and wide, fury-filled eyes.
Sire Mattias did not flinch from his strangeness. “If you found half of what is true, then you know this is at an end, Devariis. Sorcery will not be abided.”
Orin chuckled, a mocking, twisted thing. “You will wish for an end, Mattias. I will see to it. Alas, no end will come.”
Things happened very quickly then.
Sire Mattias leapt forward, his rod shining in the maddening light.
I stepped behind him. My mind grasped the edge of my sigils; my heart wept over the nameless people whom Orin had tortured and slain.
Before we took two steps, Orin rose to his feet. He spoke again, a clever, depraved word that had teeth, a word that took children in the night.
One of the masked corpses stirred, then trembled. Slowly, it’s leering, shining face turned toward me.
I felt like I would drown in those smooth, black eye sockets. Drown and die in the dark and cold.
“Sire,” I beseeched. My heart screamed, pounded.
“I see them, Keiri.” Not Handmaiden. Keiri. As if he wanted to hold my name in his mouth before he began to scream.
Then, they stood, broken puppets under the control of a mad monster. They moved graceful, like the shadows of the damned. They walked like the dead laughed.
My Sire did not hesitate.
He was the flame that did not flicker.
He was Her rod and Her lash.
Sire Mattias leapt forward at the first of the twitching, grinning abominations. His rod sang with the light of Rydia as he swung it, crushing the side of one of the creature’s heads.
Then, like a swarm of darkness and filth, they set upon us. Grasping, clawing, they caught my clothing. One of them raked deep gashes along my stomach and breasts.
They whispered quietly, the kind of sound that children hear when the land sleeps. They whispered words that had no place in this world.
“Keiri!” Sire Mattias’ voice sounded tight, almost panicked.
His rod shattered one of the creature’s knees, but it remained unaffected. It crawled after him on the ground. Several of them crushed against him as they rent with their teeth and clawed with their nails. The entire time, the corpses showed nothing but those leering faces while whispering secrets that the living never knew.
“You think I am a monster to be sure.” Orin spoke as if to converse over dinner. “I did not slay these. They gave themselves to me. They asked, begged.” He sat back in his seat. “Learn then, the meaning of faith. This is devotion. Devotion undying. Nothing like the shadow of faith you bear.”
I could not listen to him, could not care. The creatures bore me down with weight alone. I reached for my sigils. Quariin yearned to be used.
I released passion’s fire.
“Your body is like a song, pet.” He paused inside me and bent over my body. He was the entire world. “It’s a song I would never tire of hearing, would always—”
He gasped then, as I ran my nails down his back, pulling him deeper.
Now was not for poetry, for control.
Now was only for burning.
Like the sun’s kiss, the blaze of the forge enveloped my hand, first yellow, then blue, then white. Blessed by Her fire, it singed not so much as a hair. Yet when I touched the closest masked abomination, my smile grew wicked and sharp.
“Burn then. Burn and rest.”
It caught like tinder, like old, dry wood. Even as it lashed at me, the fire born of my passion spared me. The flames ate at the monstrosity, hungry and fierce.
Still the corpse never stopped whispering. Even when it fell to the ground and moved no more, it still whispered.
The others knew no fear of the fire, no understanding of what had happened to their fallen ally. The next one to bear down on me had been a woman. Pale and naked, she lunged like a ravenous insect, a thoughtless puppet to Orin’s demented will.
I reached for her. She burned as easily as the first, her skin boiling, blistering, and running beneath my touch. Yet the fire in my hand dimmed. It would not burn forever, I knew.
No passion ever did. More’s the pity.
Orin called out then, and the flames devouring the woman died like a snuffed candle. He called to his servants, crying commands in a tongue I did not know.
I noted my Sire, overrun with three of them bearing down upon him. The ones that my Sire bludgeoned simply crawled or dragged themselves forward.
Only Rydia’s flame had truly felled any.
They had no fear; they felt no pain.
Orin. He commanded, and they obeyed.
I dodged around the scrambling woman, ignoring the strange leer on her face. I moved past Sire Mattias, accepting that he could only keep them at bay. At best, he had a stalemate against three of the whispering masks.
I ran for Orin.
He realized my intent before I made five strides. He turned toward me, his terrifying mask gleaming in the odd violet-green light.
He spoke pain into being.
It was different this time. Before, he had called the word into the darkness. He could not see us
but only knew we were there. This was almost intimate, like a man who has lain with a woman, telling her a secret. The sharp word was mine, meant only for me. It was a song of agony, a cacophony of every pain I had ever felt.
I screamed.
Pain. It’s only pain.
“I discovered it all, you know.” He sat back again, watching me writhe, watching my Sire fight for his life. “After you left, I learned so much. I learned about Gryn and his loyalties. I discovered little Emlie right in my own house.” His voice held a secret smile.
I sank to my knees. The pain ground like glass shards in my joints and churned like snakes of agony in my stomach. My nose began to bleed.
Breathe.
“Why are we doing this Handmaiden”
“They will suffer as well. They and their families. Gryn’s wife will beg while she watches me defile their children. She will offer me everything a man could want.”
“Stop? You know better, Handmaiden.”
Orin leaned forward. “Emlie is more difficult, of course. Her brother is one of the Sires. I will have to tend to her over months. I will return Emlie to her family only after she is a desolation. She will be your shadow, Keiri. Her passion and depravity will blot out the sun, and her family and your temple will despair.”
“This is Her Crucible.”
Sharp, white burning agony sliced into my mind.
I stood. I cried out, but I stood.
I took single, perfect step.
“Do you think this is all the Once Ways have to offer, whore?” Tight fury laced his voice. He spoke darkness again, and the pain doubled, tripled.
It was ten thousand tiny cuts. It was iron nails in my flesh. It was the loss of everything I loved.
Trembling, I still stood.
“Creating the bond will place a tiny shadow of him within you. I worry for you, Handmaiden.”
With all the will I could spare, my mind reached for Ouigiin, the sigil that bound me to Orin, the sigil that revealed his secrets. I grasped it and released its awakened power.
The passion bond tethering Orin to me burst into life.
For the moment, we were one. In that brief, shining moment, we became the same entity.
The world darkened, cold. The townsfolk held me in disregard. If they couldn’t use me to their ends, they wanted nothing to do with me. Considering me unworthy of their time, they left me friendless. They thought their disdain didn’t show, but I knew! I would show them! I would reveal my glory, my power! If they would not bow, they would be destroyed, their corpses piled before my fe—!
