by Sam Sykes
And the young man began to walk.
In the vast, rock-hewn hall, he was watched. By his fellow Khovura, kneeling upon the floor and staring with envy in their eyes. By the many hard-faced statues carved out of sandstone to march the walls of the hall, granite frowns observing his progress. And by Mundas, from a spot wedged neatly between two of those statues, who watched him closely.
“Kapira, Kapira, Kapira…”
The chant followed him as he walked down the long gap. And as he did, he began to shed. His clothes were doffed scrap by scrap, until he was nude, leaving a black trail behind him. Dark-skinned and bright-eyed, his gait slowed as he drew closer to his goal.
The dais stood at the end of the hall, painted crimson in the sultry glow of the many braziers. Four tall pillars flanked it, each one inscribed with an ancient language the Khovura only barely knew. They could read a few of the words, to be certain.
“Kapira, Kapira, Kapira…”
And they certainly could regurgitate them at a moment’s notice. But only Mundas could fully understand the script.
Flesh is the prison your ignorance is held in, the first read. Know that in change there is truth, said the second. Within eternity, find Him, the third. Within Him, find eternity, the fourth.
Cryptic. Ominous. Looking as though it had been wrought by the hands of some deranged naked prophet in the desert.
As demons tended to prefer.
The young man stepped upon the dais warily, as though it were sacred ground instead of dirty sandstone. He tapped his foot, possibly fearing that it might hurt to do so. Satisfied, he took a bold, triumphant step upon the dais and turned to present himself to his fellow Khovura in all his fleshy, vulnerable glory.
Whether the poor fool ever saw the long, gray limbs ending in long, black nails reaching from the shadows, Mundas was not sure.
Whether that was a scream of ecstasy or agony that tore itself from his throat as those black talons sank into his flesh, Mundas did not care.
The nails slipped into his skin like pockets, lifting him from his feet to hold him with ornamental reverence above the dais. From the darkness beyond, the Disciple emerged on gray coils. Its old man’s face was pinched into a frown, its eyes scarred black staring holes into the weak creature it bore in its talons.
The Disciple was silent. Its sermons had been heard many times before.
The crowd was raucous, roaring the fragments of language they knew with the fervor they thought it deserved.
And the young man was screaming.
Within his body, beneath his tender flesh, the Disciple’s power began to work. The young man’s skin boiled, bubbled, burst, and exposed tender sores. His veins grew fat with blood, pressing against his face, his chest, his legs. His eyelids fled back into his skull, his white eyes bulged from their sockets, his lips curled up over his gums.
Sound burst from every contracting pore, seeped out of ears that were curling like burnt paper, ripped itself from rippling skin. The young man was crying many things, many confessions that he wasn’t ready, many pleas for it to stop.
They all did that, at first.
But soon, lips became wires, tongue became porridge, language became meaningless. The young man was all sounds now: of bubbles bursting, of voices choking, of thick chunks of flesh made into stew sloughing off bones turning to twigs and plopping upon the floor.
It continued, the young man melting until he was but a saggy, shapeless blob in the Disciple’s hands. His teeth were where his shoulder had once been, his hands hung as limp tendrils, his softened tongue lolled from a nondescript hole in his body. Only a single eye remained intact: wide and rolling desperately in its socket as it looked over the crowd.
Did he search for help? Mundas wondered. And what did he feel when he saw only adoring, envious eyes cast his way?
Mundas’s curiosity lasted only as long as the young man did. Soon, the mass of dark skin, hair, and teeth slid off of the Disciple’s talons. It lay there—for it was no longer a man—as a puddle of skin upon the dais.
“Unworthy,” the Disciple rasped softly.
It slithered back into the shadows, disappearing and leaving the man-made liquid to cascade over the edges of the dais and seep into the sand.
Demons did not give. The power offered to the Khovura, the ability to resist wounds and fight their petty wars with petty thugs like the Jackals, came with a price. Not everyone was able to pay.
There would be more chants. There would be more writhing devotion. There would be more praise heaped upon Khoth-Kapira’s name, invocations for him to return and alter the unworthy to a more pleasing form, more brave souls sent to the dais and more human puddles that someone would eventually remember to scoop unceremoniously into a jar and place with the other failed candidates.
Mundas hardly begrudged them it. Ritual was grass for the sheep, after all. But at that moment, he found himself in the rare position of having seen a man be turned into liquid too often for it to be a novel experience anymore.
He turned away from the spectacle below to retreat deeper into the halls. The Khovura were in every nook and cranny of the labyrinthine hall. Some prayed at small altars. Some sharpened their blades. Some rocked back and forth, hugging their knees and muttering to themselves.
More than once, as they often did, they raised their hands to him in reverence. He waved back with weary contempt.
He did not think them fools. Merely like children: all enthusiasm, no matter the cause. Children could be useful. Children could be taught. No matter how many bright, shiny lights and human puddles were needed to do so.
At the end of one of the many branching halls, he found his quarters: a humble cell furnished with cot, table, basin, and bookshelf. Crossing to the basin, he stared into the water: a stern-faced, dark man bereft of hair, eyebrows, or stubble stared back. He dipped a hand into the basin, drinking from his cupped palm until his thirst was quenched.
The heavy wooden door barred, the sounds of the Khovura muffled, he could hear the sounds of droplets striking the face of the water.
The only thing the tiny room offered in abundance was silence. And this was all he required.
“Miss me?”
Not that it’s common enough to not be stolen by fools, he thought resentfully as he turned about to face Azhu-Mahl.
He squatted just at the edge of a shadow, thin as a dead tree. He would have been just as tall, as well, if he ever bothered to stand up straight. Azhu-Mahl, however, rested on skeletally thin haunches the color of a body six days dead, long fingers drumming impatiently on knobby knees. His face was bereft of any feature beyond a smile broad with teeth as long as fingers.
It always struck Mundas as odd that a creature without eyes or nose could look so smug. Even having undoubtedly spent hours waiting for this entrance, Azhu-Mahl was far, far too pleased with himself.
“You survived,” Mundas noted.
“Easily,” Azhu-Mahl replied. “The Khovura provided ample enough cover for me to slip away.”
“And the adventurers you hired?”
“Likely dead.”
“And if not?”
“They likely assume I am dead and have gone off to lick their wounds or rut in an alley or whatever it is they do,” Azhu-Mahl replied. He looked expectantly at Mundas for a moment. “I’m fine.”
“Pardon?”
“I said I’m fine. You know, having been away for all these many months, in near-constant peril, I thought you might be wondering.”
Mundas stared back blankly.
“Do you possess the item?”
Azhu-Mahl sighed. He produced a small satchel, laying it upon the table and sliding it toward Mundas. The hairless man looked at it for a moment before opening the flap and easing out the item.
A book. Perfectly square, perfectly flat, perfectly black. It lay with an unexpected weight upon the table, as though it had been waiting its entire existence to be right here, right now.
The key to the gates
of heaven and hell. One of the last records of the Aeons, those creatures that had become the demons. The Tome of the Undergates. A rare prize.
Mundas took it in both hands and delicately set it to the side. Azhu-Mahl frowned.
“You’re not going to look at it?”
“Not now.”
“You await the moment to be alone with it?”
“I merely await a moment I have to myself. It is a book. I will study it when I have quiet.”
“It is not a book,” Azhu-Mahl replied. “It is the book. The key to all that we have fought for. The reason I have been absent all these months. That which so many lives have been sacrificed for.”
Mundas stared at him, then spoke flatly.
“A book. While rare, there are more like it. It is a book. A possible answer to a question with many possible answers and only one of them correct. A lead you were intent on pursuing, despite my advice. Something that likely did not require so many lives to be taken for which I am not at all regretful.
“That you have returned it is fortunate. I will study it at my convenience and reveal my findings to you. If your travels were such a burden to you, you are more than welcome to take the time to recuperate.”
A flash of anger twitched across Azhu-Mahl’s features.
“I have handed you the end,” the creature said. “I have seen seas red with blood. I have waged wars on less. I have watched people die in the thousands for what you so casually put aside.” He slammed his hands upon the table, rose from his chair. “I have ruined lives and destroyed faiths to deliver enlightenment to you, Mundas, and you are taking all the fun out of it.”
Mundas had no eyebrows to raise in surprise. He trusted his usual, deep-set, unrelenting frown to suffice as apologetic enough.
“Would it soothe you if I were to read it now?”
“We stand between worlds.” Azhu-Mahl spoke forcefully, his words pointed like a spear’s tip. “The archaic past, rife with idolatry and stagnant philosophy, is at our back while a glorious new future awaits us, brighter than any desert sun.”
Mundas hummed; the creature, as ever, seemed incapable of saying anything in less dramatic fashion.
“The Khovura are ready,” Azhu-Mahl said. “They are hungry with victory. The people will follow. They will change, as we all do. Can you not hear them? Do you not share their hunger? Their glory?”
“I do not.”
“Why?”
“Because I am not a fanatic,” Mundas replied curtly. “I do not bow. I do not kneel. I do not pray. I trade faith for thought, zeal for action. I am in the business of enlightenment, not devotion. I do not traffic in deities. I abolish them. As I thought you did”—he paused a moment before he began to speak the next word—“my dear lord—”
“NO.”
Azhu-Mahl’s frown deepened. His thin, gray lips were so used to smiling, baring finger-long teeth, that the flesh cracked with his displeasure. He held up a long, gray hand before an eyeless face and shook his head.
“Do not use that name.”
Mundas inclined his head in acknowledgment. It was, of course, generally considered poor manners to speak a shape-changer’s name. Doing so tended to offend them terribly.
But Mundas had a point to prove.
“The plan goes well,” he said; “this much is true. The Khovura are dedicated. The Jackals are routed. The people are listening, watching, and willing.” He closed his eyes. “My enthusiasm remains contained for one reason.”
He opened them, looked into Azhu-Mahl’s teeth.
“He has yet to contact us.”
It was impossible for the demon not to smile. But there were certain indicators as to Azhu-Mahl’s mood that Mundas had become attuned to over the years: the way his lips tugged at the edges, the way his ears laid back, the way his claws sank into the wood of the table in barely controlled anger.
“Usually, creatures like Him take a greater interest in their own release,” Mundas continued. “Usually, they can’t resist the allure of worship. Yet for all the pleas sent to Him, all the sacrifices made, all the followers assembled, he remains silent.”
“He sent his Disciples, did He not?” Azhu-Mahl asked.
“The Disciples pride themselves on not being fanatical devotees,” Mundas replied. “They are loyal, yes, but not unthinking. They indulge the Khovura and perhaps that’s a signal that He is not displeased, but He has yet to make his presence known.”
He laid a hand on the Tome of the Undergates.
“Hence why this is of limited value,” he said. “We cannot roust from prison that which does not wish to be freed.”
“He wishes to be free,” Azhu-Mahl said blackly. “I have seen His prison. I cannot fathom a being that finds it comforting.”
“Regardless,” Mundas said, “the Khovura interpret His will as they choose to. He does not punish them, so they believe themselves to have pleased Him. I am not so certain.”
“We are attempting to summon Him, Mundas,” Azhu-Mahl said. “The God-King. The Shaper of Flesh who was ancient when mortals started crawling out of the muck. You would be forgiven for finding His motivations inscrutable.”
“Motivation concerns me less than execution. We stand on the edge of a new age, free from superstition and petty concerns of mortal trivialities. We are so close to the next evolution of the world and we have invested much and risked more to come to this point. If He does not come when called, that is one thing. If He cannot…”
Azhu-Mahl made a hum of displeasure. “Then what do you suggest?”
“What I have always suggested,” Mundas said. “We continue with our plan. We continue to shape and mold. We lay the foundation for the moment He decides to speak to us.”
“And then?”
“Then…” Mundas leaned back, crossing his arms and staring flatly at Azhu-Mahl. “We hope He likes our vision enough to spare us when we pull Him out of hell.”
ACT TWO
THE CIVILIZED PREDATOR
FOURTEEN
LEFT A BLADE
Cier’Djaal
Some crappy little inn
Second day of Yonder
Ask a Karnerian, and he’ll tell you Daeon made mankind out of iron and flame to be the perfect weapon in his arsenal. Ask a Talanite, he’ll tell you Talanas made mankind selflessly out of his own breath and tears that we might know life. Ask a Gevrauchian, he’ll tell you we’re just blood and meat and it’s all we get so try not to die.
Ask me, I’ll tell you mankind is made of sterner stuff than all that.
Because if you ask me, I’ll tell you how surprising it is how much a man can take and still call himself a man. Gouge out his eyes, carve out his tongue, chop off his fingers, toes, legs; so long as you leave him one arm, he’ll keep dragging himself through the dust and thanking whatever God he worships for the opportunity.
Likewise, it’s surprising how little you can take from a man to make him just… stop.
I guess it’s been about more than five hours since Denaos led us out of the Souk and into a little inn where they don’t ask questions.
Two hours to shake any guards that might have followed us.
One hour to find the place.
One more hour to negotiate payment with the owners, for rooms and for silence.
And another hour I’ve been lying here in a cold straw bed with itchy sheets.
She isn’t coming back.
I’ve been looking over my shoulder the whole time, thinking I’d see her. Then when I didn’t, I’d let my gaze linger, hoping she’d be there when I turned my head forward again, smiling like it was all a big joke and I was stupid for falling for it, like she was always going to come back.
But I know that’s not her.
And the more I think about her, the harder it is to think about why I should ever get up from this shitty bed.
I can’t remember too much of what my life was like before I picked up this sword. I came from a village called Steadbrook. I had a family. Then
there was fire, shadows. It was gone. So were they. All that was left to me was the sword.
And I just kept on dragging myself through the dust.
So it’s not like I have a great idea of what life I was hoping to reclaim by getting the money Miron owed me. A farm somewhere. Maybe a shop, I don’t know. All I knew was that I was tired of killing, tired of blood.
And now, my first day in the city I was going to start my new life in, all I have left is blood.
She’s gone. She isn’t coming back.
Money’s gone. I don’t know where it went.
I don’t know if I can get it, either. The way Miron looked at me in the Souk. He saw me. I know he did. And he just kept walking. I don’t think finding the money is going to be easy as finding him. Hell, maybe he doesn’t even have it.
But I’m not a man of sterner stuff.
If I stop here, all I’ll have for this is an empty bed and a lot of blood. What will it all have been for? How many more would I have to kill to make that kind of money back?
But if I keep going, there’s going to be more blood. Wherever Miron went, he didn’t go to safety. Blood’s a sticky thing. A blade doesn’t get easier to put down once it’s caked in it.
I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard, getting up tomorrow, going to find a job as an apprentice somewhere. Some blacksmith’s shit shop, maybe. I’m older than they like for the job, but I could persuade them. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, just working for a living.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the life I wanted. Maybe it’s not how I wanted my last adventure to end. But it’s honest. It’s bloodless. It’s clean.
It’s a new life.
And it still wouldn’t have her.
And I guess that settles it.
I can’t stay here. Fortunately, everyone else agrees with me. We’ve decided to split up, scour the city for any trace of Miron. We’ll meet back up at this crappy little room in two days. That ought to be enough time to try to dig up something.
I can’t tell you what men are made of for certain. I mean, really made of. I can tell you what comes out when you stick a sword in them. I can tell you what comes bubbling out between their lips when you smash a pommel down on the back of their neck. I can tell you what godless screaming comes out of their mouths when you gouge out their eyes, cut out their tongues, chop off their fingers, toes, legs, arms.
