by Sam Sykes
And suddenly, those scars were turned on her. And suddenly, she couldn’t feel herself breathe.
“He will fix everything. You will see, child. Khoth-Kapira will remedy the errors of your creation.”
She felt its claws draw tight around her jaw. She felt its nails dig into her skin and her blood run cold beneath its grasp.
“Even if it must be done body by body.”
For a brief instant, she felt one panicked, fleeting thought.
Denaos.
And like a cloud on a sunny day, there he was.
Denaos appeared over the thing’s shoulder, arm looped around its neck. He held his free hand out and with a flick of his wrist, a blade sprang from the hidden sheath beneath his palm. The rogue whipped his hand forward and jammed the shiv deep into the beast’s temple.
The thing flinched, as though it had just remembered something important.
Denaos hid his befuddlement beneath a snarl as he tore the blade free and stabbed the creature, over and over, again and again. A few moments later and the creature had several holes that wouldn’t bleed.
“Oh,” Denaos said, soft realization in his voice. “It’s a demon. Well, that would explain—”
It was difficult to be witty when one was screaming, apparently. The demon’s hand shot backward and plucked Denaos from its back like a tick. With another snap of its withered arm, it sent him flying into the charred husk of a stall.
“It is natural to fight back, to resist,” the demon rasped, its attentions turned back to Asper. “That part which still yearns to walk on four legs demands it. Do not fear. This can be remedied.”
With a delicacy belonging to hands more tender, it gingerly peeled back the sleeve of her left arm.
“I can cure you.”
And promptly sank its nails into the flesh of her arm.
There was a scream. Not hers. But in her, flashing in her head, banging against her skull, trying to claw its way out of her eyes. But her mouth was sealed shut by its hand, her eyes were locked on the nails, sunk with needle-fine precision, and her flesh was on fire.
Skin began to alter, ripple, boil beneath its touch. Small bubbles blossomed across her skin, popped silently and exposed bloody sores. She felt agony. She felt terror.
But she was not the only one. The curse inside her felt it as well. And it spoke in shrieking nightmares.
Don’t like this what is it make it stop kill it get rid of it go away leave us alone don’t like it hate it hurts hurts hurts HURTS—
In two desperate breaths that faded, along with her terror. It felt as though she breathed in fog that slowly coated her mind, smothering thought and fear alike. All that was in her drained out of the sores the demon had opened in her arm. Nothing was left but the rasping.
“This crude thought, this vulgar flesh,” it whispered, “you can be more. I can fix you. I can shape you. I will heal the scars your creators left upon you and when I am done, you will be—”
Silence.
Then pain.
Feeling and fear returned to her in a glorious, reverberating scream. She landed hard upon the stones, and her body reacted to the feel of solid stone beneath her, sending her scrambling away.
The demon was on its chest, pulled to the ground, face pinched in anger. A noise of annoyance that sounded something like milk boiling in a rusty kettle rose in its throat as it looked over its shoulder.
Demons could not be killed, or even harmed, by mortal weapons.
And perhaps Gariath had only just annoyed it.
The hulking dragonman was at the creature’s back, hands wrapped around its tail, hauling it to the ground. His scowl was resolute, his claws sunken into the beast’s tail, his grip unwavering.
“The unwashed”—a hint of anger crept into the creature’s voice—“may not lay hands upon the learned.”
It sank nails into stone, bracing itself. Its tail cracked like a whip, lifting Gariath up and smashing him down onto the stones. The dragonman offered nothing more than a snarl, more irritated than agonized. And as the beast continued to whip its tail around in an attempt to dislodge him, as he smashed against the stones time and again, he would not let go.
Tenacity was Gariath’s strong suit. Timeliness, Dreadaeleon’s. A skinny, frail figure came stumbling out of the stalls, narrowly avoiding tripping on the tails of his own dirty coat.
Despite the carnage and the presence of a thing that should not be, Dreadaeleon’s first thought, and first glance, were for Asper.
“Are you all right?” he asked, breathless from his hurried flight over.
She looked at her arm. Four perfect circles glistened upon it. She tugged her sleeve down, as much to hide it from herself as from him.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“Lovely,” the boy replied. “I suspect Gariath will need your attentions shortly after I’m done.”
“And Denaos,” she said, looking over her shoulder to where the rogue had fallen.
“If you must.”
She glowered at him, but ignored the jibe. She clambered to her feet. “Tell Gariath to let go and make a run for it. We can still escape.”
“Escape?” Dreadaeleon pulled back his sleeves as though exposing stick-thin arms was something to fear. “Why on earth would we do that?”
“It’s a demon, Dread. What the hell are you hoping to do to it?”
He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath.
“Oh, you know.”
When he opened them, they were alive with a bright red light.
“Stuff.”
The light began to spread, through his veins, into his voice. He spoke words that were painful to hear. He held his palms out as they began to steam and glow bright red. His stride was calm as he approached the flailing demon. His voice was soft as he spoke the power. His hands were outstretched as if he were about to ask for a hug.
And then, he unleashed hell.
Flames erupted from his palms in roaring gouts, reaching out to devour wood and cloth and flesh in great, crackling jaws. Sound and air were eaten alive. All other light dimmed. The world and all of its dead people and all of its charred wood somehow seemed meaningless against the boy and his terrible fire.
Gariath flung himself away just in time to see the demon swallowed by two great red sheets. The fire cackled, chewed ancient flesh, and spat black ash.
The demon snarled, writhing within the flames. But there was no pain behind its sound or movement. There was only a throaty fury, the groan of an old man’s impatience with a young upstart. It writhed. It shrieked. It roared.
But it did not stop. It did not die.
And Dreadaeleon, grinning from ear to ear at the display of his own power, didn’t even notice.
Asper began to shriek something to him when she felt hands around her arms, hoisting her to her feet. She instinctively lashed out and struck a cheek with a flailing fist. A very familiar snarl met her.
She whirled and saw Kataria standing behind her, glaring.
“You’re all right,” Asper said.
“Yeah.” The shict drew back a fist and smashed it against Asper’s jaw. “You, too.”
“Are you not seeing this?” Lenk appeared a moment later, gesturing to the demon. “Why the hell would you hit her now?”
“She hit me first!” Kataria spat.
No time to respond, he turned to the inferno raging before them. “We need to move. Grab Denaos, tell Dread to break off, and we’ll run for the gates.”
“Run?” Dreadaeleon shouted to be heard over his own fire. “Did we not already discard this idea?”
“It’s a demon,” Lenk screamed back. “You can’t kill it with fire!”
“The common misconception of the common man, I assure you,” the boy shouted louder as his magic burned brighter, hotter, stronger. “Fire. Solves. EVERYTHING!”
The boy’s laughter was loud and triumphant and lasted as long as it took for a great, serpentine tail to lash out of the curtain of flame. It stru
ck him squarely across the ribs and, in an instant, a wizard was turned into a firefly, an insect fluttering on smoking wings and sputtering lights as he was hurled through the air, trailing black smoke behind.
“What now?” Kataria asked, watching him crash into a nearby pile of salt. “Retreat?”
“We’ll never outrun it unless we leave Denaos and Dread to—” Lenk began.
“We aren’t.” Asper cut him off with a glare.
The look he shot her in return bore no anger. Only weary resignation.
“Second plan, then,” he said with a sigh.
“That being?”
He hefted his weapon, sniffed a little. “Hit it with a sword. Hope we don’t die. You know.”
“What do you hope to change, child?”
A voice rose from the smoldering inferno of Dreadaeleon’s magic. And with it, a shape painted black against the flames.
“I have awoken to a world alive with suffering. Would you ask me to sleep through more?” The demon came slithering out of the fire, unscarred, unshaken. “Khoth-Kapira calls us to the waking world. He will show you a world beyond your crude dreams. And his Disciples will call you to him.”
The demon spread its withered arms in benediction. Its nails glistened obsidian.
“Come to me, child.”
Only one of them did.
And he came from behind.
Swiftly.
Gariath’s howl drowned out the thunder of his charge as he rushed forward on all fours, leaping atop the demon’s back and driving its face to the stones. He stood there, one foot lodged between its shoulder blades, the other hammering a heel down upon the back of its skull.
Its arms lashed up, bending behind it with unnatural ease. Gariath caught it by the wrists, jerked its limbs backward, and pressed his feet against its spine, prying it up from the stones. He shot a desperate look to the companions and snarled.
“Go.”
And they did.
Sword in hand, Lenk took off at a charge, Kataria close behind. A pair of arrows shrieked past his ear to sail unerringly into a gray collarbone and cheek. The demon did not flinch at the shafts embedded in its flesh. It barely twitched as it opened its mouth wide.
A long, purple tongue came lashing out, striking against the stones as it streaked toward the companions. It lashed across Lenk’s shoulder and cut through the cloth of his shirt. He felt the warm splash of blood as it took flesh with it. He could bite back pain; he could ignore it.
But he could not ignore the shriek that followed.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the tongue wrapped around Kataria’s leg. She fell to the ground, a bright red circle appearing around her calf as the tongue bit through leggings and into flesh. The tongue snapped forward, pulling her along the stones before Lenk even had a chance to raise his sword against it.
The demon’s mouth gaped impossibly wide, jaw unhinging as it drew the shrieking shict closer. She abandoned her bow, clawing at the stones in a desperate bid to slow herself down. And as she did, Lenk picked up speed, too quick for a single thought as to how stupid this was.
He sped past her. He ignored the tongue drawing her closer. He took up his blade in both hands. He leapt.
And in a spurt of black blood, he landed.
He drove the weapon deep into the beast’s chest. Where fire had failed, where mortal steel had faltered, his blade, his hands, his fury splashed black life across the sky. He had no fears that the only way to kill demons was to pay a price. He had no concerns for the blood splashing upon his face. He had no worries for the fact that he felt his body grow cold and his thoughts empty.
At that moment, with the steel in his hands and the blood in his nostrils, he felt something he had hoped to never again feel at the scent of metal and violence.
Complete.
The demon’s shriek tore Gariath from its back, released Kataria from its grasp, and sent Lenk flying backward. But the young man was on his feet again in an instant, rushing back toward the creature. He couldn’t let go of the steel. He couldn’t stop the bloodshed. If he did, Kataria would be in danger. Kataria would suffer. They would all suffer if he did not keep killing.
This is what he told himself.
He took the blade’s hilt in both hands and twisted it in the creature’s chest. It writhed upon the ground, coiling up and thrashing as it tried to dislodge Lenk. But its claws were too weak. Its limbs flailed helplessly as he drove it to the earth, as he raised a boot, as he brought it hard upon the sword’s crosspiece and the blade burst through its back.
But the demon was not screaming. The demon was barely struggling. Its voice was soft, almost mockingly gentle, a parent chiding a boy with his hand in a pastry jar.
“What have you changed, child?” it asked. “Did you honestly believe the Disciples did not plan for this as well? Did you think Khoth-Kapira would be so shortsighted as… as…”
Speech died. The demon died. In a pool of its own black blood, it coiled up into a tight ball, covering itself with its withered arm. There was a crackling sound as its skin grew hard and brittle, like old stone.
In another instant, a breeze blew hard across the Souk, carrying the scent of fire with it. The body of the demon, its skin and its many bones, sloughed and became as sand and was carried upon the wind into Lenk’s face. It crusted upon his blood-painted visage, filled his nostrils, filled his senses with the scent of hatred.
He stood there, as his companions staggered to their feet.
He let out a trembling breath, as his sword clattered to the ground.
He let the world around him go dark, as a voice in the cold part of him that dreamed of dead men said to him a single word.
Glorious.
TWELVE
PAGES IN THE BOOK
How often, Dransun wondered, had he ever really stopped and looked up at the sky since he had arrived in Cier’Djaal?
Since the day he had set out from his father’s little rice farm on the outskirts of the city, he had always been staring at something in front of him: the sword they put in his hands, the women they pushed him toward, the badges and promotions they pinned on his chest. But rarely had he thought to look up over the bustle of people and the clink of coins and stared at the sky until tonight.
Up there, the stars burned like lamplights hung from a thousand doorways of a thousand cozy homes. Through the webs of the Silken Spire, they seemed to shimmer like diamonds as the spiders, ever-aloof, crawled lazily across a sea of stars and silk.
Pretty, he thought as he looked at what was in front of him.
Down here, there were also stars. But they burned ugly, like dead moths around a candle flame. And while there weren’t nearly as many down here as there were up there, there were still far too many for his taste.
In the darkness of the ravaged Souk, the yellow glow of the Lanterns bobbed precariously. Gevrauch’s faithful, as befit their duties to the God of Death, combed through the ashes without a sound among them. The glow of their namesakes, bobbing over their heads like anglerfish, reflected against the glass circles sewn into their burlap masks. All throughout the Souk, they looked like morbid little fairies dancing over corpses.
When they found a body, they pulled what remained from the rubble and silently dragged it to a nearby tarp. Dransun’s Jhouche guardsmen stood watch—or rather, stood, trying not to watch—as the Quill glanced over the body and wrote, in a very large book, details about the victim: gender, apparent age, cause of death, how many limbs were missing, how much blood was lost and other gruesome details.
Dransun couldn’t bear to look back up at the sky again. The sight of light, he thought, would make him sick. So he stared down between his legs as he sat upon the bench. He laced his fingers behind his head and made a low, groaning sound.
If it turned out the footwar wasn’t over, if a Jackal thug or Khovura radical came up behind him and gutted him right there, that would have been fine with him. Then he wouldn’t have to go to the families of the
dead tomorrow, and the next day and the next. He wouldn’t have to see their faces.
Anguish didn’t bother him. But there was never anguish on the faces of the bereaved.
Sometimes, there was rage, angry questions about what kind of fools this city had hired that they couldn’t protect its own citizens. More often, there was greed, inquiries about how they would be compensated for the unlawful death. But these days, the most common look was one of acceptance, as though this sort of thing were just one more inconvenience of living in the city along with big rent and small living space.
As though this, all these bodies, were somehow normal.
This city is sick, his father had once told him. It eats people and craps out gold and people pick the filth up off the city streets and shove it in their faces and smear it on their lips.
Dransun often thought of his father when he reached for the flask of whiskey hidden in his boot. Usually because, at times like this, he often wondered why he hadn’t followed his father’s noble footsteps and become an alcoholic.
No sooner had he uncorked the flask than he saw a pair of black boots standing before him. He didn’t bother looking up as he took a swig. He already knew who they belonged to, even before he heard the calm monotone of the Quill’s voice.
“Good evening, Captain,” the priest said. “We believe we have recovered the last of the bodies.”
“Uh-huh,” Dransun replied, taking another swig, a longer one.
“At a tally thus far, we have recovered forty-three corpses. All human. Twenty-six were men, eleven were women, and—”
“Stop.”
The Quill’s feet shuffled slightly. “I beg your pardon, Captain?”
“I can count, priest. I know what you’re about to say, and if I hear it right now I’m going to pour the rest of this liquor on me, light myself on fire, and burn to death.” He held up his hands, trembling. “I… I’ll get to it. I just… I can’t hear that right now.”
The Quill said nothing. His boots did not move.
“Leave your report with one of my men.” Dransun took another long swig. “Take the bodies. We’ll inform the families. You can keep the ones that don’t get claimed.” He waved a hand. “You can go now.”
