Pathfinder Tales: The Redemption Engine
Page 15
The assembly on the floor bowed their heads. The machine's whine grew louder.
The bound man began to scream, shaking and thrashing back and forth. As Salim watched, a bead of red appeared on his sternum, trickling and then rushing as a long, bloody needle pushed its way through, growing to a tapered metal spike. Purple lightning arced and snapped around its point, then shot out toward each of the manacles binding the man in place. There was a flash, so bright Salim had to blink away tears, and in the afterimage Salim could see a second figure on top of the man—a transparent copy slightly out of phase with the original. Then the ghostly image broke apart, seeming to follow the lightning down into the glowing manacles. The machine's hum grew to a triumphant crescendo, then quieted as the lightning cut off. The man slumped in his restraints, chin resting on his punctured, unmoving chest.
Salim tore his eyes from the sacrifice and looked quickly around the rest of the room. Several of the pillars held men, sitting on the floor with their arms tied around the columns behind them. Two were unfamiliar, but one was the big man in the lamellar armor, his hood removed and battered face exposed. Salim turned to say as much to his compatriot.
The little man was gone. Salim scanned the room, finding nothing until he thought to look up. The gray-robed spellcaster was already halfway across the ceiling, clinging like a spider to the great mural as he made for the pillar that restrained his partner.
On the floor, someone shouted, and Salim looked back down to find several of Caramine's Freemen pointing his direction.
Time to move. Putting one hand on the balcony's railing, Salim vaulted up and over. There was a moment of weightlessness, and then he hit the floor, collapsing and turning the motion into a shoulder roll to spread out the momentum. Then he was back on his feet, sword out.
Which way to run? Clearly, this bizarre machine was what he'd been looking for—that last overlaid image of the cult's victim couldn't have been anything but his soul, sucked from his body and somehow stored inside the machine. But for all his goddess-granted abilities, Salim was no wizard. On his own, he'd have to resort to slashing at the thing with his sword and hoping he broke something important—which, in turn, would require either killing everyone in the building or somehow immobilizing them first.
He turned and ran toward the pillar where the veiled man's partner sat tied, reaching it just as the spellcaster began his eerie headfirst scurry down the pillar. Through bruised eyes, the big man watched impassively as Salim slashed through the rope binding him in place, enchanted blade ringing on stone.
"Bors!" the veiled man yelled, flipping over and dropping the last few feet to land in front of the prisoner.
Finally the big man registered an emotion. He smiled broadly, stony countenance softening. "Roshad! You took your time."
"And you clearly got so much done in my absence," the little man snapped, ripping aside his veil to reveal a narrow, smooth-shaven face. He grabbed the armored man's chin in both hands and pulled it upward, kissing him fiercely.
Salim left them to their moment. Recovered from their shock, half of the Freemen had drawn weapons and were bearing down on the intruders, even as the others formed a protective line between them and the machine.
Salim stepped forward to meet them, shielding the reunited lovers with his body. He half-crouched, sword extended, and the advancing Freemen slowed, sensing something in his movements that kept any of them from wanting to be the first.
"Roshad," Salim asked over his shoulder, "can you destroy that machine with your fire spell?"
"Are you crazy?" Roshad asked. "Can't you see how much magic's in that thing? It could blow this place to splinters."
Salim had no particular desire to explode. Besides, he had no way of knowing if the missing souls were somehow stored inside the machine. If it came down to it, he'd sacrifice them in order to shut down the operation, but it would hardly be the sort of victory to rub in Ceyanan's face.
Behind him, Bors lumbered to his feet. He and Roshad took up a position to Salim's left, squaring off against the circling Freemen.
"We need to get out of here," Roshad said. "There are more of these people outside."
Salim ignored him, focusing past their enemies on the machine and Freewoman Caramine, who still sat in the middle of her nimbus of tubes, watching the proceedings with a frown. Salim wondered briefly if his suspicions had been wrong—if in fact Caramine was the mastermind after all, and was somehow using the souls as a power source.
No—that was backward. What was it Gav had said about bloatmages? Their power was in their blood.
"Can you two handle this lot?" Salim asked.
"Two on six?" Roshad asked, then gave a dark chuckle. Bors just cracked his massive knuckles.
"Do it," Salim said, and took off running.
The Freemen shouted and closed. Unfortunately for them, they'd circled around the intruders, hoping for an advantage, which left only two within striking range as Salim made for Caramine's throne. The first, another bald man with a dragon tattooed over one ear, cut high with a cutlass, and Salim blocked it, kicking out as he ran past and being rewarded with a scream as the man's knee bent inward at the wrong angle.
The second warrior, a woman in chainmail with a heavy two-handed sword, swung it in a wide arc. Unable to avoid it or angle his blade properly, Salim was forced to block it straight-on, the shock of the blow nearly making him drop his weapon. Before she could bring it back around, however, he was already past her, darting toward the steps.
Behind him, a shout rang out, and Salim glanced back just in time to see several of the attackers engulfed in a cloud of what looked like gold dust, its particles catching the lantern light in a blinding fog. The men inside the cloud screamed and scratched at their eyes, weapons forgotten, even as Bors launched himself at the remaining Freemen, one huge fist lashing out like a battering ram to slam into an axe-man's jaw. Roshad moved with him as he went, slipping in and out of the cover of the big man's armored form as he slashed at arms and calves with his dagger. A man swung a sword toward Bors's back, and Roshad thrust out a hand, freezing the man in place like a flesh statue. The two were so perfectly synchronized in their movements that it might have been a dance.
Then there was no time to look back. In front of Salim, the remaining six guards stood in front of the stairs, weapons out.
So be it. At the last possible moment, Salim jerked sideways and swept his blade low, sending a spurt of blood pattering to the floor as the hamstrung man screamed and fell. The guard next to him thrust for Salim's head, and Salim ducked underneath it, drawing his blade across her exposed forearm. He drove hard between them, trying to sow confusion, stabbing through boots and elbowing faces.
A staff cracked down on the back of his shoulders, and he staggered. Spinning, he grabbed the weapon with his free hand and pulled, yanking its owner off balance and slamming his sword's bloodied pommel into her cheek.
Then he was through, dashing up the rest of the stairs toward the throne. Caramine's mouth opened in surprise as his blade came up and around in a whirling arc, severing two of the conduits connecting her to the machine. Blood sprayed hot in his face, coating the floor as he grabbed the throne and spun around it, laying his sword across her bulging throat.
"Hold!" he shouted. "Hold or she dies!"
The chaos of the room slowed and halted. At the foot of the stairs, the crowd he'd just passed through froze in the act of leaping up after him, teetering uncertainly. Back with Roshad and Bors, the men caught in the cloud of shimmering dust blinked away blindness as the golden particles disappeared. Roshad stood back to back with Bors, who now gripped a salvaged axe, its owner's blood still staining its haft. All looked toward the dais.
Caramine didn't move. Beside her chair, the flow of blood from the tubes slowed, then ceased. The machine's humming quieted to the drone of a fly.
"He told me that someone like you might come." Caramine's voice was calm, steady—she wasn't even breathing hard. "You'r
e a Pharasmin, aren't you?"
"The Lady of Graves wants to know what the hell you think you're doing."
Incredibly, Caramine's lips twisted up into a smile. "An interesting choice of words." She raised a finger and touched the blade at her throat. "Please. This isn't necessary."
Salim wasn't sure he agreed with that, but he came around the side to where he could see the woman's face more easily, while still keeping an eye on the rest of the room. He removed his blade from her throat, instead positioning its tip over her ponderous left breast, ready to end things quickly if she started casting a spell. "The church knows about your soul-stealing."
Caramine's smile broadened. "Stealing? From whom? Asmodeus and his devils? We're no more thieves than any priest. We save souls."
Salim jerked his head toward the corpse that still hung suspended on the machine. "Like you saved him?"
"Yes." Caramine didn't even blink. "He was a bad man, and would have come to a bad end eventually. But by the grace of the angel's miraculous engine, he's been shriven. Even now, his soul sprouts wings and bears a burning sword in the armies of Heaven."
Salim stared hard into her blue eyes. He'd spent a lifetime determining whether someone was lying. "You really believe that."
"Of course." She gestured toward the rest of the room. "We all do."
Salim looked out at the assembled guards once more and saw that she was right. Though limping and red-faced with rage, the Freemen who followed Caramine didn't carry themselves like thieves or thugs. They stood tall, proud, ready to throw themselves at him as soon his sword moved far enough from their leader.
In response, Salim pressed the point closer, letting it dent the cloth of her robes. "You can't prevent a soul from reaching its judgment. If these men were as bad as you say, their souls belong to the evil planes."
"Why?" Carmine's face flushed, her voice growing louder. "Why should we follow the dictates of devils and demons? With our machine, we can save the souls of even the unrepentant, turning mortal evil into absolute good. We take the filth of our kind, the living embodiments of human waste, and transform them into angelic soldiers. Heaven's armies are bolstered. An evil soul is turned to the light. And the Prince of Darkness has one less devil to do his bidding."
"No one deserves slavery," one of the men on the stairs growled. Shirtless, his well-muscled body was covered with the striped scars of the lash. "Death, sure. Maybe even a bad death. But never slavery."
"The Freemen are happy to assist me in our cause," Caramine said. "The pure-hearted ones, at least. Asmodeus is the god of slavery. My warriors are proud to die if it means denying him souls."
Salim could see how that logic would appeal to the abolitionists. "Tell me about the angel."
Caramine's face brightened into the sort of beatific radiance one normally found on statues of martyrs.
"I was working in my shop," she said, "when he appeared to me. He was huge, nearly touching the ceiling, and beautiful—so beautiful." A tear welled up and trickled down her cheek. "His wings were bound with chains, representing the evils of slavery, and he wept tears of blood for the sins of mortals. I fell to my knees before him, but he raised me up and told me I was chosen, that I could lead the Freemen in redeeming our fallen brothers and sisters. It was he who showed me the plans for the engine, and made me the sacrament by which the evil might be purified."
To Salim's practiced eye, it was obvious she was speaking the truth, as least as she understood it. "And what did these plans look like?"
"Diagrams," she said, eyes distant. "A collection of blessed pages. The words were in an angelic script I didn't recognize, but as I watched they shifted, allowing me to read them. The angel gave the pages to me one by one, and explained that it was my duty to memorize them while he watched, so that I might build the machine."
"So you don't still have them?"
"No. The angel took it with him."
Damn. "And has he made contact since? Does he ever come to inspect the machine or collect the souls?"
"No," Caramine said. "He doesn't have to. I told you—the souls are redeemed. They go straight to Heaven."
By all rights, what she claimed should be impossible. The River of Souls pulled all deceased souls on toward the Boneyard for judgment, and only the most powerful magic could prevent it. But if an angel really were involved...
"Why you?" he asked. "Why here?"
Surprisingly, Caramine shrugged. "I don't know. The sacrament requires power and blood as the catalyst. I have both. And Kaer Maga has plenty of evil souls that no one will miss. But as for why it's me, and not another hemotheurge..." She trailed off.
She seemed so calm, so sure in her faith. Salim bristled. "How do you know your angel's not really a devil in disguise? You could be feeding souls straight to Hell."
Another shrug. "So? They were headed there anyway. At least they're not hurting anyone else."
Salim again considered breaking the machine, perhaps slicing up the rest of Caramine's grotesque tubes. Regardless of Roshad's warning, anything so complicated must surely be easy to disable. But he couldn't know what would happen to the souls if he did, and unless he killed Caramine, she and her followers would simply build it again. As easy as it would be to simply push forward, letting his sword slide into the bloatmage's chest like a knife into overripe fruit, Salim was no murderer. Pharasma may have taken most of who he once was, but she couldn't make him execute this woman who only wanted to make the world a better place. That much, at least, was still his.
"Roshad," he called. "Bors. Come up here."
The two men looked at each other, then walked toward the dais. At the bottom of the stairs, the remaining guards parted resentfully only when Salim cleared his throat and gestured with his sword.
Once they were with him, Salim whispered, "Roshad, how many times can you cast that spell you were using above the stairway? Not the climbing one."
Roshad's brow furrowed, then his eyebrows shot up. "Ah! That one. Yes, there's enough for all of us."
Salim nodded. "Good. Use it when I tell you." Then he turned back toward Caramine. "Freewoman Caramine, you're walking a dangerous path. No matter how good your intentions, no one can circumvent the judgment of Pharasma's Court. The church will see this as a declaration of war."
Caramine snorted. Two fingers pinched the tip of Salim's blade. "And what do you call this?"
Salim fought the urge to puncture some of that easy confidence. "The next time you see me, I may not be able to show leniency."
The bloatmage blinked in surprise. "You're not going to kill me?"
Now it was Salim's turn to smile, even if he didn't feel it. "Why would I? If you're actually working for an angel, you'd go to Heaven. And if you're not, you're just another victim yourself."
He turned and nodded to Roshad. The little man returned it, then spoke a few low phrases and vanished as if he'd never been. A moment later, Bors winked out of existence as well. Salim turned back to Caramine.
"Just remember," he said, "be careful who you trust. Heaven has its own interests, and the angels can always find new prophets."
Then a cold hand touched the back of his neck, and the chamber exploded into shouts.
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Thirteen
The Iridian Fold
And you just walked out of there?" Gav eyed them all with well-honed teenage skepticism.
"More or less," Roshad said. The tight veil across his nose and mouth did nothing to hide the grin in his eyes.
In fact, they had. Roshad's invisibility spells had allowed them to slip out of the manor unnoticed in the resulting uproar, and by the time the magic wore off, they were many streets away. They'd kept to the shadows all the way back to Canary House, where Salim had greeted Gav's questions with a raised hand and instructions to keep his eyes peeled for Freemen, then dropped into bed.
The next morning, Salim had been surprised to find Roshad and
Bors waiting for him in the inn's common room, their table the closest to the stairs in order to ensure that Salim couldn't miss them. As soon as he and Gav emerged, they waved him over.
Bors still looked worse for wear. Both his eyes—so dark that the irises were almost black—were ringed with deep purple bruises, and a long scab from a shallow cut marred one stubbled cheek. Still, beneath his short black hair his face was so blocky and stoic that the injuries seemed like scratches on stone. The scales of his dark-lacquered armor, on the other hand, had been polished to mirror brightness, and a long straight-bladed sword protruded over his right shoulder. The chain that had run from Roshad's metal collar the first time Salim had seen the pair now ran from a ring on the big man's belt to a delicate bracelet on Roshad's wrist.
"I see you traded up from that axe," Salim noted.
"Those bastards who took him left it for me," Roshad said, jerking a thumb at Bors's sword. Roshad himself carried no weapon besides his dagger, and Salim had him pegged as a sorcerer rather than a wizard, as he'd yet to see a spellbook. "Probably thought it would help me protect my new ‘freedom.' Or maybe they just expected me to hock it. Regardless, it was lucky."
"Lucky," Bors agreed. His voice was a rich, melodic bass.
"How did you end up with the Freemen in the first place?" Salim asked.
Roshad reached out and grasped Bors's hand. "We were stupid. We had heard that there were a number of Iridian Fold men here, so we presumed folk would be familiar with us. We made the mistake of walking through the Bottoms at night." He snorted. "The crew that jumped us thought they were freeing me, but the first one to take a swing at Bors missed, and his cudgel caught me in the head. I woke up the next morning in a cheap flophouse with Bors's sword, a few coppers, and a message from the innkeeper that I was ‘free' now." He hocked, ready to spit to show his opinion of such things, then noticed his fine surroundings and swallowed it. Bors laughed and kissed the top of his head.