"When I want to fool someone," Gad says, "I talk to them of their magnificent destiny."
For an instant, she bridles.
She regains her glacial poise. "Distrust is laudable. When correctly directed. There are many who would disrupt our activities. But you must never mistrust me."
"You are one of several generals," chews Gad. "Or is the term intermediaries?"
"The term is demonic, and not precisely translatable. And what of it?"
"Do I trust them also?"
Her hand is on his wrist. It is as cold as a snowdrift. "You must trust only me."
Chapter Seventeen
The Case
Hot, yeasty air buffets the back of Jerisa's neck. She stands in a soft, tubular passageway. Outstretched feelers along its floor brush across her boots. Torchlight streams through the end of the passageway, thirty feet ahead. The opening is circular and bounded by muscle. Though neither engineer nor anatomist, Jerisa guesses that the aperture can close itself tight on command.
The others are around a bend and out of sight while she deals with its guardians. Two cultists, better kitted than the norm, stand at lazy attention on each side of the hole. Their bizarre helmets mimic bulbous insect heads. Fearsome as they may be, Jerisa can tell that they limit their wearer's peripheral vision. She can creep close to them—unless they turn their heads.
A chewing sound emanates from the wall as she presses her back against it. Shuddering, she creeps ahead.
Soon she is near enough to them to hear them converse.
"If you cock your head to the right angle, you can see everything," says the nearer of the guards.
"I wouldn't want to be caught looking," says the farther.
"She's a tigress, I wager."
"A mantis, more like. Rip your head off at the pivotal moment. Then eat it. With pepper and salt."
"Might be worth it," says Nearer. "For that one instant of supreme pleasure. Better than standing here forever, guarding another bunch of guards."
"You wouldn't be able to get it up."
Nearer scoffs.
Farther gestures to his groin. "Mine hasn't worked since the day we arrived."
"Speak for yourself."
"I should have done like Shchoka. Put the dreams out of my head. I was a fool to come here. What did I expect to gain?"
"Don't say that," Nearer says, helmet swiveling.
Jerisa, dagger already drawn, pushes herself into the yielding wall.
"I want to be back home. Back in my shop. Kneading dough."
"Shut up," hisses Nearer. "We can't go back. Not after what we did."
Jerisa lunges. She drags her knife's sharp edge across Nearer's throat. It opens easily, gushing blood. She shoves his dying body into Farther. His arms trapped, the second man is helpless to defend as she surges at him. She stabs her knife deep into his kidney. She keeps stabbing until he collapses and dies.
From below the circular opening, Jerisa peers up to see, as Nearer said, a second complement of guards. At a glance she assesses them as more formidable than Nearer and Farther. They wear a mix of plate and chain armor, as opposed to the robes and helmets of the common cultist. Each of the soldiers is an impressive specimen: none are more than two inches shorter than Tiberio, or concede to him a weight advantage greater than thirty pounds. Their rare expanses of exposed skin show off tight, heavily demarcated muscles. Scars of past battles lay proudly atop them.
There's a wrongness about them that she can't quite specify. It lies in their stance or attitude. They seem drunk, but not. They move as if unused to the construction of their bodies.
She sloshes back around the bend to gather the others.
"I need you to take a look at this," she tells Calliard.
She leads him to the circular opening. Calliard eases his head up along with her.
Five guards stalk listlessly through a squarish waystation. Each of the walls is upholstered in muscle; each has a circular opening in it. Beside the openings, on pegs, rows of weapons hang: swords, glaives, hatchets, clubs, and daggers.
Two guards spar with greatswords while the other three dully observe. They battle jaggedly. Certain of their swings are clumsily thrown, while others land with the certainty only long experience brings. The weaker of the two combatants seems at times to be impeded by an unseen force, and at others to lash out with shocking speed. He brings his sword down against its parrying counterpart. Sparks fling out as the defender's sword breaks in two.
The defender unleashes a torrent of demonic expletives.
One of the observers slurs at him, vowels drawn out and consonants sodden. "Talk only in the mortal tongue!"
The defender dashes erratically for a hanging sword. He jabs it at his scolding comrade, still exclaiming in the demon language.
"Xaggalm decrees it: we must seem to be as they are," shouts another of the soldiers.
The defender relents. "I hate this soft and mewling speech."
"Yet we must speak it, to catch traitors in our midst."
The defender drops his volume. "Those two outside. They are waverers. I say we tear out their livers."
"Only on Xaggalm's command."
Calliard motions for Jerisa to retreat back into the tunnel with him.
"You know what that is, don't you?" she says.
"Demonic possession," he responds.
"Which means?"
He takes her around the bend, where the others wait. "The cultists we've seen until now were influenced by Yath, but still chose in the end to follow him. Those bodies are stolen. They belong to ordinary crusaders—likely brave and good ones, or else they'd have been suborned, rather than dominated outright."
"Taken over by demons?"
"Yes. Their true souls are still in there, but they've been pushed into the deepest slumber. Discarnate demons from the Abyss animate their sleeping bodies."
"So whatever wrong they do," Tiberio interjects, "it's not them, but the demons who control them."
"That's right," says Calliard.
Tiberio sets his brow. "They're not our enemies, then. They're captives."
"No, they're both," says Jerisa. "And if they're in our way, I know which of the two I find relevant."
"We have to save them, not hurt them," Tiberio says.
Jerisa ignores him. "And who might Xaggalm be?" she asks Calliard.
"Xaggalm?"
"It was a name they mentioned. Sounded like a commander or something."
"I don't know."
"No idea?"
"Uh, judging from the name, it might be a shadow demon." Calliard feels the hollow ring in his words. He adds a quick touch of pedantry to cover it up: "Or ‘invidiak,' as they are sometimes called."
"Like the one leading the demons during that last attack on Suma."
"Like that, yes, I suppose. An especially powerful one, perhaps, if it's one of Yath's commanders."
An enraged exclamation echoes down the corridor.
"They've discovered your cultists," says Calliard.
"Shit," says Jerisa.
Gad looks longingly at his plate. He still has a third of his steak left. He wants to eat it, but has conceded enough to Isilda already. There are also some beets. He wonders how much he'd be giving up to finish the beets.
Isilda tugs at her neckline, redirecting attention to her cleavage.
"What would you have me do for you?" he asks.
"I'll find many uses for you, I'm sure," she purrs.
"Do you want me here, or back in Mendev?"
"You I'll want to keep close at hand."
"To deploy against your rivals?"
"Among other purposes."
"What should I know about them?"
"I'll tell
you," she says, rising. She moves to the inner set of curtains. She gestures for him to follow. "At a time better suited for tedious discussion."
He moves to her. Folds his arms around her waspish waist. "Before we slip entirely from the realm of the tedious, there is one piece of business ..."
She pushes him away. "What is it?"
"My people," he says. "If we're to stay here, we require a safe place to bivouac, where we won't be bothered by an endless stream of demons and rivals seeking to dislodge us."
"Your lackeys? When the time is right, I'll examine your subordinates, and determine which of them can be of permanent use to us."
"If there is greatness in me, as you say, it's this: I pick my people well."
"It is good that you believe so," Isilda says, gliding his way.
He grabs his chair, turns it around to put its back between them, and sits down on it. "If I'm to serve you, we must understand one another."
"Naturally." The response oozes concealed ire.
"I am nothing without my people. They are my greatness."
She leans against a side table. She considers the erotic statuette, perhaps weighing the effect of throwing it against a wall. "What favor do you seek?"
"First of all, that you attach your seal to the chamber we've seized, so no one here can take it from us."
"Done," she says.
"Second, if I am to be at your beck and call, they must likewise be given no other distracting assignment. If suddenly I need to move against your rivals, I'll need their abilities at my constant disposal."
"You're right," Isilda says. "This is a tedious subject. Very well, I'll grant you what you desire. Let this not be a precedent. You are my retainer, Gad, not a supplicant seeking constant favor."
He grants her a cocky grin. "Understood, my priestess."
She sweeps his way. "And now, the favor I require from you ..."
Tiberio approaches the possessed crusaders.
The tallest of them, a ragged beard obscuring his jaw, drops into a fighting stance, greatsword held to strike or parry. He jabbers out in demonic syllables.
Tiberio copies their odd, jerking movements. "Speak in the human tongue, as Xaggalm commands!"
The tall one shifts to common speech. "You too are clothed in flesh?"
"You need to ask?" Tiberio bellows.
A bald crusader behind him sniffs the air. "I cannot smell two souls."
The tall one clouts him. "Because you are restricted to the five mingy senses of your borrowed form, you coruscating chunk of quasi-matter."
The bald one attempts a grimace and nearly manages it. "When Xaggalm lets me depart this stinking rack of flesh, I'll break its useless fingers. I'll hurl it from a turret."
"Silence yourself," the tall one orders. He grabs one of the dead guards by the collar and hauls it up to shake at Tiberio. The difficulty of the effort surprises him, and the corpse slips from his grasp to land at his feet. "Is this your handiwork?"
"They were weak. Complainers. Said they wished they were back home and had never heeded the call."
"So you slit their throats?"
Tiberio recalls Jerisa's whispered account of her kills. "That one's throat I cut. The other I stabbed in the side. We are better off without them."
"We did not hear you do it."
"I am trying to train this clumsy form to move silently. It is a useless thing—strong but graceless. It hears well, but compared to the last mortal I possessed, that is its only virtue."
"Why did you not approach us as soon as you slew them?"
"The mortal bodily need. The one that follows food consumption ..."
Possessed faces wrinkle in disgust. "Speak no more of it, newcomer. What are you called?"
"Has Xaggalm also commanded you to use only mortal names?"
"That he has."
"Then my name is Tiberio."
They tell him their meat-names and lead him to the guardhouse.
"I heard you sparring before," Tiberio says.
The bald one shoves him. "And we will spar again. Wait your turn."
Tiberio bares his tusks. The bald one chokes out a stillborn laugh. The fight resumes.
Tiberio watches it for a while, then exclaims: "Do you hear something?"
The contending warriors pause.
Tiberio concentrates, an ear cocked in the direction of the northward exit. "It is likely nothing."
The tall one twitches its cheeks. "You said your meat-shell hears acutely."
Tiberio shrugs. "Sounds abound here."
The tall one kicks his shins. "We must guard this post against intrusion. Do you wish Xaggalm to consign us to oblivion?"
The possessed mortals plunge through the circular opening. Tiberio follows, marveling. Days ago, he was afraid to speak to Fraton and pretend to be an aspiring crusader. Now he has demons convinced that he is one of them.
Stepping through the opening, he quickly whistles.
Jerisa leads Vitta, Hendregan and Calliard through the guardhouse and down another corridor.
They slide down a damp slope. It leads to a low-ceilinged tunnel. Vitta can still stand normally here, but the others have to stoop. Their boots squish into its earthen, puddled floor. The usual dim green light emerges from the ceiling's cracked tiles. They seem ceramic, but when touched they shrink back as if alive.
Vitta picks up a moist handful of dirt. "We must be at the tower's deepest point now," she says. "Where it ends, and the Worldwound begins."
"Or vice versa," says Calliard.
The tunnel takes them through a series of twists and turns. "Which way are we going?" asks Calliard.
"North," says Vitta.
"No, south," says Jerisa.
"Toward madness," says Hendregan.
"Welcome back to the conversation," says Jerisa.
He giggles.
The ceiling opens up again. They find themselves facing a high wall. It stretches up for at least a hundred feet. Spooling green mist conceals its upper reaches. Like so much else of the tower, it is of a mottled material, alternating patches of stone, metal, skin, and insect skeleton. Innumerable sculpted faces bulge from its surface. Each depicts a slumbering demon. Calliard counts at least one example of every documented Abyssal denizen, and many unfamiliar ones besides.
"I've lost all sense of where we are," says Jerisa.
Vitta adjusts her pack. "I just hope we're still in the Worldwound, and haven't stepped through a gate into the Abyss itself."
"That distinction," Calliard says, "holds no meaning here."
"Hoo hoo hoo," says Hendregan.
"Something strange about these images," Calliard mutters.
"What?" says Vitta.
"I'm thinking," says Calliard.
Hendregan points to one of the nearer heads. It represents a fly-demon, like the herald of Isilda's entourage. "Eyelids," he says.
"What?" repeats Vitta.
"He's right," says Calliard. "In life—"
"Not the correct term," Hendregan interrupts.
"An actual demon," Calliard corrects, "a demon of this type, would not have eyelids. Its eye is a compound eye, eternally open, like that of a fly. A fly does not sleep, not like we do, and neither does a fly-demon." He edges closer to the sculpted head. "Not that any demon sleeps, for that matter. As far as I am aware."
"What does that mean?" Vitta asks.
"Stop that," says Hendregan.
"Stop what?"
"Stop looking for meaning here," the fire sorcerer replies.
A softly breathing tiled material extends from the base of the wall. It ends a few feet away from them, giving way to the wet earth that lines the floor of the low tunnel. To continue onward, they must step onto the purr
ing tiles.
"I'll do it." The words come out in Hendregan's lucid voice, but trail off into a crackling giggle.
With a sliding motion, first his left boot, then his right, he moves onto the tiles.
As one, the demon faces open their shuttered eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
The Guards
Tiberio trudges back toward the station behind the demon-possessed guardsmen. He commits to memory the mortal names they are forced to go by. The tall, bearded one is Aprian. The bald one calls himself Baatyr. The guard whose helmet is cut to expose a pair of notched ears is Ergraf. Pachko grimaces through a face like the head of a mace. The fifth is Matesh; thin-browed and beak-nosed.
The flesh-clad demons twitch and snarl. Tiberio's false report raised, then disappointed, their urge to violence.
Baatyr wheels on him. "I sense weakness in you," he grunts.
Of course you do, Tiberio thinks.
He butts his chest-plate against Baatyr's. "You wish me to slay this rancid rack of stolen flesh?" The absurd bravado of demon-speak is surprisingly easy to fall into after being immersed in it for a few minutes. The hard part, Tiberio realizes, is to speak it as if it is not ridiculous. The demons spout their nonsense with utter belief, with neither wink nor smile. There is no humor in them. They do not step outside of themselves or care how others see them. This must, he concludes, fit what Gad was saying before. They are abstractions. Walking, talking exaggerations. Tiberio must be as they are. He must carry on as if this is his normal way of being, too.
Aprian, at the head of the formation, spins on his heels. He pushes his way through the group to get at Baatyr and Tiberio. He bangs their helmets together. "You wretched dung stacks!" he exclaims. "These bodies must be preserved! Xaggalm has so ordered!"
Fear tightens around Tiberio's heart. He'll hide it, he decides, by pushing his luck.
"Mortals are plentiful! Let me murder Baatyr's meat-form, then let him find another."
Aprian batters his own helmet against Tiberio's. The half-orc judders back. Spots caper across his field of vision.
"Fool! The bodies we might take here are spavined, wormed, depleted by hunger and deprivation! We had to find these in the humanlands! You don't mean to say you came upon this solid specimen—" He jabs Tiberio in the join between shoulder- and breastplate. "—in the tower, or out in what mortals call the Worldwound?"
The Worldwound Gambit Page 20
