Depths of Madness

by Erik Scott De Bie

  The creatures looked at them, then lifted their respective weapons.

  “Gargan,” she murmured. “Slowly … put the sword … down …”

  The goliath seemed to understand, and he lowered his black blade. He put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder and stepped in front of her, protectively. It was a gesture she hadn’t expected but appreciated nonetheless, as ludicrous as it might have been.

  It was a great and spacious hall. Pillars wider than four dwarves standing shoulder to shoulder held up a tall dome whose belly was decorated with mosaics depicting suns and flames. In the center of the room, lying before an altar, a vast slab of black metal rested, looking like nothing so much as a great hatch. A sun with a grim face hung at an angle above the altar. A faded sun mapped the floor, a withered candelabra at the tip of each of its twenty rays. It reminded her of the symbol of Erevan.

  A strange golden moss marred the formerly beautiful architecture, and it was only when she looked away that Twilight realized it was moving, pulsing slightly. She fell into magic sense. The walls exploded with light, and she dismissed the sense with a wince.

  Something Lilten had told her came back—a bit of knowledge that she shouldn’t have, yet did. She’d thought it a lie, but she realized what she was seeing. Her face went pale. “Oh, gods,” she murmured, finding breath hard to come by.

  “Fox-at-Twilight?” Gargan’s hand clutched her shoulder.

  “Heavy magic,” she breathed. “The walls … the walls are covered in it.”

  Indeed, the golden stuff dripped from the stone, caking it as mud on the soles of a boot. It covered the interior of the cathedral almost completely. No magic could penetrate the barrier that surrounded the cathedral, and only the strongest archmage could even think of the Art within its walls.

  And, as though to address that point, Twilight saw a silvery window open in the air before a section of wall. A black mass reached through—she recognized it after a breath as a muscular arm—and pushed the gold jelly back into place as though caressing the flesh of a yielding lover. Twilight trembled as she watched the arm snake back through the shimmering window, and another window opened across the room, then another just a few paces from them. Gargan leaped back with a growl, his sword hissing from its scabbard.

  Then a portal of light, reflecting the back of the cathedral upside down, appeared before them, and through it came a creature of such power and majesty Twilight found herself forced to her knees. All her tales of seducing archmages and staring down archdevils fled her mind and she was emptied. In short, she was terrified.

  For Twilight, who had never had the gift of verse, its form was almost indescribable. The best she could manage was brute analogy. Its body was that of a bulbous tree with three limbs that split into six branches, each a muscular arm thicker than Gargan’s chest. These arms ended in clawed fists that contained an eye in each palm. The arms constantly shifted location, as though the flesh were jelly. Sprouting from its body came three fanged, and nosed, but otherwise featureless heads amongst the arms, all of which spoke at once, making for a nigh incomprehensible cacophony.

  “Welcome to my realm, dusssstlingssss,” it said, echoing itself. The sheer majesty of the sharn, understandable or not, was enough to make Twilight want to bow down and worship, but she couldn’t move.

  Then the mouths began alternating syllables, but spoke them all at once, so three beats became one. “Sssshort lived racessss go by like dusssst in the wind. But you have not died thussss far.” Then it ceased speaking, glaring down with eyeless faces and eyes dotting its six hands.

  Twilight realized it was probably the closest the creature would come to complimenting them.

  She could not see the details of its body well, even with eyes so attuned to darkness. It was a shapeless bulk of black and silver flesh constantly shifting in a way simultaneously sensual and discordant. Tiny sparks of magic burst and squeaked into being around it constantly—if anything about it could be said to be constant. Its heads and mouths twitched, as though it skipped through time and space every few heartbeats, the number varying as time passed. The six empty hands waved about, casting blank gazes this way and that.

  “Chaos embodied,” she whispered in a tone both bleak and awed.

  Even though she had never seen one, nor wanted to, Twilight could tell at a glance that something was the matter with this sharn. Multicolored veins stood out along its sinuous frame, and here and there, tightly clustered matrices of light gleamed through its skin like radiant bones. Its mouths constantly oozed green-white fluid, and half its eyes had gone white, as though blinded, or burst entirely, leaving dripping sores.

  “My-my lord Sharn,” Twilight said with a bow.

  “Ruukthalmuramaxamin,” it corrected in two syllables, not looking at her. “Elf ssssings like bird on the wing.”

  From its display of Art and the presence of its guardians, Twilight realized that this creature controlled the golems they had seen. And that meant … Taslin.

  “Not I. The hangman not mine, the death of thine not mine.”

  “What do you …?”

  “Ssssilence!” it shouted thrice, its voice shaking the temple. She heard the scream in her mind louder than outside it, a vice that crushed her head.

  Twilight fell to her knees. Doom was upon her—how dare she speak, or even think. The sharn could snuff out her existence with a thought. She had no right to …

  Liet.

  She knew she was mad to show spine to a sharn. But Twilight was simply too tired and heartbroken—too worn—to care. She struggled onto one knee, looked it in the eye—an eye, anyway—and said, in a tone that would brook no argument, “What have you done with my friends?”

  Silence reigned in the chamber.

  One warm afternoon, Lilten had told her a legend of a sharn who turned a cabal of mighty sorcerers to toadstools and fed them to a gibbering mound—which it had summoned with a gesture much like what mortals use to stifle a sneeze. This was simply for pausing, confused, when the sharn asked for goblin pelt tea. Then it annihilated an unseen servant that delivered the noxious brew, on the grounds that it tasted bad.

  In short, questioning a sharn was madness.

  The sharn laughed. Rather, its central head laughed. The head on the right muttered homicidal promises in a long forgotten language Twilight only understood with the talisman. The third serenaded her with an ode to a desert posy in some ancient dialect of Elvish that predated the Crown Wars.

  “Very well,” it said. “Prisonerssss.”

  “Release them,” she said, then quickly amended it to, “such I desire. Name—”

  The sharn just laughed. “You dessssire, detesssst, dessserve nothing!”

  The declaration rippled through the air, and the golden ooze caked on the ceiling hissed with a thousand spells and memories flooding through it.

  Twilight found herself prostrate on the ground. Betrayal lay beneath paralyzed fingers. “Test me, then,” she said.

  The sharn did not pause, as though it expected this, and immediately shouted at her again, this time in a sort of half-mad, half-ordered poem. “Child of liessss, liar in love, lover of children,” the sharn’s three heads said, each beginning at the last’s final word, eerily like a roundsong. “Do you know your mother, father, daughter?”

  “My lord Sharn, this is not what I ask,” Twilight said, rising to her feet.

  For the first time, Ruukthalmuramaxamin turned all of its eyes upon the shadowdancer, and Twilight sank to her knees with a cry. Her head burst into flame within and she screamed, pressing her palms to her temples. This wasn’t the mind-scream. It was reading her thoughts, tearing deep down into her memories. It took all her willpower not to tear out her own eyes to get at the agony or crush her own skull, much less resist. Tears poured down her face and she whimpered. She could do nothing else.

  “He emptiessss you firsssst and fillssss you after,” Ruuk continued unabated. “Chokessss with blood and ssssoakssss with laughter, but giv
e him up you will, leading him to the kill.”

  “My lord, I do not under—” Her head felt as though it would rip itself free if her hands didn’t tear it off first.

  “Are the applessss in sssseasssson? Issss your essssence broken, assss is mine? Hassss the inquissssitor come? Where issss the ssssword that wassss sssstolen, the life it took, the life it killed, the life it definessss?”

  “My lor—”

  “For whom would you fall, child? Who would feel the blade meant for your breasssst? Who puts a ssssword in your heart? Whosssse kissss would you sssswallow and whosssse betrayal you lament?”

  In her agony, Twilight opened her mouth to cry that she did not understand, but then she went pale. She knew the answer, though she’d never heard the question.

  “For whom would you fall?”

  Ruuk’s gazes crushed her even further. It took all her furious determination—her rage at her betrayals, her hatred of those who had loved and wronged her—to resist the crushing hands that sought to annihilate her mind, the claws that shredded her soul, and the ever-tightening chain that grasped her heart.

  How could it know? Did its eyeless gaze penetrate so deep? How could it know what she didn’t even know?

  “For whom would you fall, daughter of foxessss?”

  Twilight’s lip trembled and her body screamed, but she said it anyway. “All of them!” she moaned.

  The sharn paused, considering. Twilight knew that upon its whim lay her life, that of Gargan, and those of her allies. She had been a fool, trusting in chaos …

  Then the agony vanished and she fell breathless to the ground. If Gargan had not darted forward to catch her, Twilight might well have split her face on the burning stones.

  As the goliath cradled the limp elf, Ruuk loomed over them, its three heads gleaming hungrily. Its hands traced patterns in the air—whether meaningless or slaying spells, she knew not. Then it spoke, and Twilight could hardly believe her ears.

  “Two livessss for a death, two deathssss for a life,” the sharn said. “Sssslay him, and your companions I-I-I …” It coughed, hissing ochre magic that flowed to the ground like blood. Veins like metal ribbons stood out on its black carapace. “I free will.”

  “Who?” Twilight croaked. “Who must I slay, my lord?”

  The sharn coiled in upon itself, hissing madly, both in pain and in hatred.

  “Gessstal!” Three throats screamed in unison.

  Lord Divergence gazed down into the blood, scanning the overgrown city. Their scrying swept into the great hive, as far as the sharn’s defenses would allow. As before, they could see only the borders of Amaunator’s temple. That was far enough.

  Yes, mayhap the heavy magic Ruukthalmuramaxamin kept in place would shield against farseeing. It would probably burn their eyes from their sockets or fry Gestal’s mind to a blackened husk. But the way the sharn boomed—well, heavy magic did not keep sound from traveling.

  Gestal heard their plan. Not that he expected anything different. For Ruukthalmuramaxamin was mad, and what lovelier madness could there be to a Sharn but predictability?

  The eyes turned to a lifeless husk propped in the corner. “Time to go,” they said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Gestal?” Twilight dared speak back. “Who is …?” Ruukthalmuramaxamin screamed in her mind and the world went fuzzy.

  “Ssssilence!” the sharn shouted with enough force to drive even Gargan to his knees. The thing lunged, mouths slavering, and the elf’s heart skipped.

  But death did not fall upon her. Instead, a new sound assailed her ears and a heavy mist struck her skin. Ruuk drew back, issuing an involuntary assortment of sounds ranging from growls to crows to outright coughs. Fluid trickled between the jaws of one head, which slumped down for just an instant, then shot up and leaned over its back, as though to hide itself.

  “Then,” Ruuk said. “We have a foe, you and I. He dwellssss above, in cavernssss dark, there deceivessss, demon sssservessss.”

  Twilight opened her mouth but wisely did not speak. Instead, she reached up at the black fluid coating her face, and realized it felt like blood—blood mixed with bile and tears, but blood nonetheless.

  The sharn spoke more softly then, though its voice was no less powerful.

  “Long ago,” the sharn said. “Before the elf ssssang, before the human dreamed, my and mine came, out of the formlessss darknessss from which had arissssen moon and her dark ssssisssster. Chaossss had ever been our sssstrength …”

  Ruuk hissed with one mouth, screeched with another, and whined with the third.

  “Now dying,” he said. “Killed by antihessssissss, buried by logic. Ssssoul-sssstuff becomessss bane, madnessss issss death to him-her-it. Trapped!” The last was a shout, with all three voices. “Now demon-fiend-prince’ssss power waxessss and wanessss that of my people.”

  Twilight was uncertain whether he was talking about the race or himself. That Ruuk might be dying, Twilight had not realized, but once that thought occurred, she accepted it as a possibility—an unsettling one. What could kill a sharn?

  A buzzing warned her. She cleared her mind as best she could.

  The sharn gave a gesture with its three heads that might have been a nod. “Ssssink to rise, do the deed. Kill Gesssstal, your friendssss be freed.”

  Though Twilight’s blood raced at the suggestion, she had negotiated too often to be fooled. “What if we refuse?” she asked, having no intention of doing so.

  Gargan blinked at her in shock. As she could separate truth from falsehood as easily as an angel might, so could she lie with the best devils.

  “Ruukthalmuramxamin issss not cruel,” the sharn said. “You and he remain here, my guesssstssss until you go.”

  So those are the stakes, Twilight thought. She did not know how long a sharn could live, but fancied it would prove much longer than her own span.

  “What if Gestal kills us? Will you release them, or keep them as prisoners?”

  The sharn answered instantly, having already considered that. “No use for them,” it said. “They go free.”

  “Your word?” she asked. Gargan looked at Twilight as though she had lost her mind, but she did not react.

  The sharn growled, hissed, and spat at her, all at once with three heads. A spasm shook its body, and rune-shaped veins stood out on its black torso. It wrenched its heads toward her and bowed. “My word bindssss,” it said. “My word given.”

  “All of them go free?” she asked, her heart speeding up.

  “Both them.”

  A weight pressed upon Twilight’s chest, then, and she would have fallen had not Gargan reached out strong arms to steady her. In one three-pronged syllable, the sharn had told her that Liet might live, yet his chance was only two in three.

  “Which?”

  “Those whom order definessss,” said the sharn. It spat the word “order” with another gob of the blackish blood.

  Twilight’s mind raced. Surely that included Davoren—he was vile, yes, but predictably vile, to a fault. And devils had created the most rigid hierarchy in the multiverse outside the planes of law and clockwork. So that was one. One other …

  Was it Slip or Liet?

  Twilight closed her eyes and swore inwardly. What did it matter? She owed it to both of them, and if she might save one … she preferred Liet.

  It was not that she felt remorse. Twilight had never had much use for morality. Foolish concepts like right and wrong fell before necessity, in every instance. Two things she understood, though, were weakness and shame, and her cheeks colored in both.

  What kind of monster could have wished the sweet halfling dead in that moment? One with black hair, pale skin, and eyes that seemed gold-red in the light of heavy magic.

  Oh, Liet.

  “Release one of them now,” Twilight said.

  The sharn glared at her with something much like surprise, mingled with a goodly amount of outrage. “Who, why, what?”

  “The one called Liet Sagr
in. If you release him, we will—”

  Ruukthalmuramaxamin’s mouths curled downward, and she would have fancied it confused. “No and no.”

  “Why not?” She cursed the desperation in her voice.

  “No and no,” the sharn warned.

  Heedless of the pain she knew was coming, Twilight opened her mouth to argue, but Gargan caught her arm in a hard grip. She hissed at him, but the goliath ignored her.

  “What is Gestal?” he rumbled.

  “Powerful priesssst,” said Ruuk. “Demon-priesssst.”

  A demon thrall. Twilight’s eyes narrowed. A servant of chaos in darkness, then, even as Davoren had been a servant of order, of a fiendish sort. But was not the sharn born of chaos? Did he not possess the very powers this Gestal worshipped? Why …?

  “Why do you not face him yourself?” asked Twilight. “He must be mighty indeed, for surely you—”

  Then the sharn eyed her with a look that stole more of her breath than when he had nearly killed her at a glance. Not only did her head explode in agony, but her throat closed of its own accord and she staggered. Gargan reached out and caught her, and she didn’t have the strength to fight him off.

  “Do not quesssstion!” Ruuk roared. “Agree! Agree or die!”

  Barely able to breathe, Twilight coughed. “Well,” she said. “Then we … agree.”

  The sharn hissed, spat, and clucked in what must have been approval. Twilight assumed it must, for she was still alive a breath later.

  “Here.” Its mood changed utterly. “Take,” the sharn said most amiably, as though offering them tea.

  One of its arms stabbed into the air, through reality, to extend through a silvery portal before them. In the palm was a pair of crimson boots, which appeared to be sized for a human.