He was perfect.
She could
feel it at once; he was a priest, junior but respected, middle-aged, quiet,
polite. He had been a shop-keep once,
and had risen through his trade as a polisher, using dusts and slurries to
smooth the imperfections in gemstones cut by more expert men. She felt the wearing residue of his
long-practised skills in the skin of his hands – rough, calloused, toughened by
centuries of work. He was muscular, too,
despite his advanced years; long hours leaning over the stone and the wheel had
given him a wrestler’s shoulders and a strangler’s hands. These had served him well in the exercise of
his baser appetites.
The ancient,
lofty city of Starmeadow, the site of elven greatness and glory since Tîor had
first laid stone upon stone in the long-distant past, was a place of gilt
splendour, shining like a jewel in the light of the Lantern, reflecting its
glory back at the sky, as a mirror reflects the image of the vain, primping
beauty seated before it. There were
those who held that the great city shone brighter than the sun, and that the
golden eye in the sky above was nothing more than a reflection of its eternal
and unchanging glory. Such overweening pride, such casual blasphemy, were all
too common in the capital. Starmeadow
taught its inhabitants many things, but humility was not one of them. The Anari were revered, to be sure; but so
too were the oldest of all Kindred gods: pride, ambition, and appetite. The priest-polisher was an avid worshipper of
them all.
Even the most
beauteous of gems has flaws; and what distinguishes the great gem from the
truly magnificent one is not the absence of defects, but whether they are
visible. Starmeadow was a great gem,
perhaps the greatest gem in all of Anuru, and its flaws were equally great; but
the ancient city had become adept at concealing them. Its inhabitants overlooked its manifest
faults, seeing without noticing, without understanding what it was that they
saw.
In shadowed
alleys, in dark corners; in the depths of the gardens and groves, along the
riverbank beneath the adamant spines of Xîardath’s ancient walls; in back rooms
and bedrooms, between the rows of books in the libraries, behind curtains in the
public houses, and even in the gloomy nooks of the great mansions, the small
evils lurked. Like spiders, they wove
webs of malice and despair; in their contempt for the contented, self-satisfied
pride and narcissism of the great city, they exuded their stench. To some, dissatisfied with what the lights
and brightness of Starmeadow offered, the perfume of vice was so very sweet...
She had
followed the polisher-priest for more than a week, certain that she had found
her quarry, that he was the one she sought.
She could smell it on him; she could taste his need, feel
the warped and roiling desire that lurked within his heart of hearts,
struggling, shrieking for release. The
roil of his sielu did not astonish
her; she had preyed upon the Kindred for eons, and knew well what lay within
the deepest wells of their innermost thoughts.
Most of her kind dreamed only of ravening and destruction; few, very
few, understood how much could be accomplished by giving, by satisfying the urges she observed,
rather than simply taking.
It was Bræa’s
fault, after all; the Golden Hag had made the mortals, had infused their
essence with the same unconstrained, ravening desires that animated all of the
beings that had their roots in the Void.
The Kindred were weak; but they were many. And in the seething turmoil of their
unbridled spirits, she had found the only kin she would ever know.
The thing
that surprised her, astonished her, was how oblivious the others of their kind
were to signs that seemed to obvious to her.
The instant she had touched the priest, she had known what he was. But none of his countrymen had ever seemed to
sense it. Not even those privileged,
damned few to whom he had shown his true face.
Not even the
girl, a wan and empty-eyed thing that he approached now, near a dockside
tavern, in the shadowed lee of one of the ancient watchtowers.
The mechanics
were of no interest to her; she hung back, maintaining her contact with the
priest with only the lightest of feather-touches, mind-to-mind, as with
blushing fumbles he negotiated a price, showing the chit a heavy purse that
clinked most enticingly. The girl made a
wry comment about the silver medallion he wore about his neck; engraved with a
stylized black tree, she had regarded it with loathing, for it stymied her, and
she longed for him to take it off.
Her hope was
realized. The girl said something about tumbling priests, and the man
obligingly doffed his talisman. She was
so delighted by this sudden development that she paid their banter no heed as
the girl, with an air of experience belying her years, led him down an alley to
a shadowed place, a hutch that had once been a shed, and that smelled of tar
and rope and smoked fish, and old, mildewed wood. There, on a pile of discarded
sacking covered by a thin, dusty blanket, the agreed exchange was
effected. The mechanics of that act,
too, were of little interest to her; she had been observing mortals for
hundreds of their generations, and there was nothing of their tastes or desires
that she had not witnessed and did not understand.
When the
polisher’s fingers went to the girl’s throat, though, she came forward, feeling
with careful tendrils of thought for the currents of sensation that arose in
his spirit. The medallion no longer
blocked her perceptions, and she longed to taste what he felt. This was joy; this was ecstasy; the
apotheosis of his being, the only thing he truly longed for, truly enjoyed, the
only bright spot in all the long, dreary centuries of his mortal
existence. A few moments only it lasted;
but in those moments he was a lord, a king, a god holding within the span of
his calloused hands the struggling, twitching spark of life itself, squeezing
and squeezing until, like the last ember of a smothered fire, it went out.
At the
culminating moment, she was there with him; an invisible, intangible passenger
riding the currents of his lust like a boatman negotiating a torrent, or a
horseman breaking a new mount. At the
shining heights of his passion, his spirit was laid bare to her; and like a
kite, she dove down upon it, seizing the cords and ligatures of his thought,
insinuating herself into and between the sparks of his being, setting the teeth
of her soul into his own with speed and skill born of long practice.
As she did
so, her control nearly failed, for she had not anticipated the strength of will
and purpose that rose up in him at this, the very moment that his greatest
dreams and glories were realized. The
force of his reaction to her presence nearly expelled her. Had she fought, will to will, she would have
failed; but she was too canny a rider to attempt to meet strength with
strength. Instead of struggling against
his outrage and lust, she fed them, with images of greater conquests, greater
glories to come; with the taste, touch, smell and sensation of endless
delights, which, with the powers she could grant him, were now within his reach.
In the end he
agreed, ceding her the tiller of his soul, just as she had known he would. His struggles to expel her ceased, and he
accepted the gifts she offered. As he
left the hovel, walking with newfound purpose and confidence, he spoke a single
word; and behind him, a gout of black, ravening fire exploded, igniting the
sacking and dry timber, and consuming the cooling distaff flesh that he had
left, sprawled and ruined, in his wake.
No rider, now.
A passenger, a fellow traveler, she worked her way into the interstices of his sielu, learning
everything about him, reading in full things of which she had hitherto only
scented the surface, tasting the delicious, dark glory of the full litany of
his past and squirming in ecstasy at the memories she found. He was an old hand at murder, and she gloried
in the remembered thrill of crimes long past.
His mind, too, was a labyrinth of purpose and mystery; with his willing
connivance, she could hide there, tucked into the folds of his consciousness,
and none would descry her.
He was her chance; her
chance for power, and aggrandizement, and most of all, ascension to the heights
of glory longed for by all of her sisters; that acme of advancement for her
kind, that eternal glorification that had eluded her for millennia. The polisher-priest was her road to
greatness. The others she had touched at
the temple had had their peccadilloes, their little hatreds and sins and
transgressions; but these had been but a wine-cup of water next to the deep and
delicious ocean of her new ally’s catalogue of perversion, lust and evil. He stood low in their hierarchy, true; but
with her knowledge and her powers, that would soon change. She could give him that which he lacked; and
with her aid, he would soon surpass the others.
And if her
skill did not suffice to remove those others from their shared path...why,
then, she reasoned gleefully, there were always his talented fingers...
♦♦♦
“AH!”
Breygon tore his hand out of Kalena’s grasp. He had felt his own fingers close about the dying
girl’s slender throat, and they were cramped and slick with sweat. He felt a mild stinging in his palm, and was
unsurprised to see that the wizard’s nails had dug shallow half-moons into his
skin.
They were standing side-by-side in the stables that
fronted Domus Casia. With Karrick’s aid,
the ranger had tugged the flat-bed cart containing the ghastly, staring demon’s
head into the shallow barn, disappointing the crowd that had come to stare at
the horrid thing, and closing and barring the heavy wooden doors behind
them. There he had prevailed upon Kalena
to work her divinations upon the grim thing; and with obvious reluctance, she
had agreed.
She had one hand flat on the thing’s slimy, scarred
forehead, between the two horns that curled up and inwards, and just above its
wide, staring eyes. Even in death, those
orbs leeched a terrible power of compulsion into the air, and Breygon had found
himself gulping in an attempt to control a suddenly rebellious gorge. The stench of decay and foulness was overpowering;
Karrick had been forced to lead the horses away, and was watching them in the
alley next to the house.
The spell, once begun, had immediately assaulted the
wizard’s senses; she’d recoiled from the overwhelming power of the images
flooding into her. She’d flailed for
support, and Breygon had provided it, clenching her slender hand in his; and,
with the same skill she’d shown in an obscure jeweller’s shop in Joyous Light,
had allowed a little of what she saw to seep through the link. That little had smitten him like a mace to
the brow.
“Hold!” she commanded.
Her eyes were still clenched shut; but tears were leaking from beneath
the lids, cutting tracks down her cheeks.
“Hold, man! You must...must see...”
She held out her hand, beckoning insistently. At that instant he would rather have grasped
a viper than touch her fingers and feel again the things that she had shown
him. You
asked for this, fool, he raged inwardly.
Shoulders quivering with anticipation, he reached out,
steeled himself, and took her ha –
♦♦♦
They came; in
their hundreds, their thousands, they came.
Deadened by the bland and leaden preaching of the other priests and
priestesses of the Forest Gods, downtrodden by heavy taxes and capricious
lords, wearied by the sneers and jibes and the innumerable, petty harassments
of life in the stratified and rigid society of the great city, they came. They came for different reasons; for comfort,
or release, or understanding, or assurance that they eyes of the Anari were
upon them. Some came for healing, or for
atonement; or to seal vows, or name children.
Always, they came with hope in their eyes, words of praise on their
lips, and secret desires in their hearts.
Hidden deep
within the recesses of her new ally’s mind, using his tongue, his influence,
and her ancient craft, she touched them all.
With a twisted phrase, weariness became exhaustion; a gentle,
understanding bit of counsel turned frustration to rage; a few honeyed words
made discontent slide towards hatred, hatred towards rebellion, and – in a few
memorable, delicious cases – rebellion towards murder. Some responded readily to the advice and
blandishments she administered with her ally’s tongue, and with her powers, she
turned them swiftly and unerringly towards malice and evil. Those, she embraced.
In the still, silent shadows of the old temple
she whispered to them, touched them, granted them a portion of her power;
weakening herself, yes, but gaining from each small sacrifice a willing, ready
slave, one eager to do her bidding. Such
new allies were few, oh so very few, in the first months; for the masses of the
temple’s parishioners were, by and large, folk of good character, and some
recoiled at the thought of the things she, through her mouthpiece,
suggested. At least at first. When she met resistance, she withdrew at
once, assuaging alarm with nimble speech and tiny gifts. It nearly always worked; and when it did not,
she simply closed the doors and drew the curtains; and her ally had new flesh
upon which to sate his dark desires.
With the
power she leant him, he rose swiftly through the ranks of the hierarchy; his
matchless piety, it seemed, was accompanied by great knowledge, great wisdom,
and great strength of spirit. The common
folk heeded his words, and came in vast throngs to listen when he spoke, and be
blessed by his touch. The elders took
note of this; and soon he was given opportunities that others were denied. He always made good; for the strength of his
secret friend, she who whispered to him in the cold stillness of the night, was
proof against all ills, and sufficient to all of his needs. At first he feared
and adored her; but in time the fear disappeared, and only the adoration
remained.
Her lore
aided him, too, in his depredations; for her power did not sate the desires
that drove him to seek new, supple flesh.
If anything, her presence sharpened his tastes. She became a willing participant in his
crimes, as eager as he to savour the life that seeped from those he took in
violence. The powers she leant him made
it easy, all too easy, so that soon the thrill of the chase palled; and so,
drawing upon eons of knowledge, of the horrors of the deepest pits of
corruption of the dark places whence she had come, she educated him in the
boundless depravity of her kind. His crimes, though perhaps less frequent than
before, took on a new, innovative character.
He came and went like a ghost, leaving behind him twisted, violated
bodies, rooms sponged black with blood, limbs bent into unnatural shapes – or
severed entirely, and arranged into configurations that pleased him (and her),
but that drove more than one unlucky passerby to madness.
He, though…he
did not go mad. Not entirely. He had
made an accommodation with his ally, and madness was his bedfellow. She gave him her strength, and he allowed her
to feed upon the stinking offal of his lusts.
They were perfectly matched, the priest and his secret friend. Together in the day, they worked to climb the
tower of ambition, to seek ever new heights, striving for the mastery of the
temple; and together in the night, they haunted the side-streets and shadows of
the greatest city in the world, tasting its degeneracy, revelling in its
despair, plumbing the depths of suffering and dismay, drinking deep of its wantonness
and vice, and painting its ancient stones with terror, blood and screams. So
his life ran, and he was content.
Until the
girl came – and everything changed.
♦♦♦
“That’s her!” Breygon gasped, shaking with the effort
of maintaining his concentration.
“Younger, but...but I’m almost certain...”
“Silence!” Kalena hissed. “Concentrate! I cannot maintain this link much longer!”
The ranger shuddered and tried to still the quivering
of his limbs. The Hîarsk woman was so
slight, so slender, so bookish; and yet there was a strength in her that in
many ways surpassed his own. It was not
will, exactly, but he recognized it nonetheless. It was poise; a sure and certain trust in her
own skill and knowledge, the confidence that her wit and power would see her
through this trial, or any other.
He had no such strength. He was content to stand toe-to-toe with the
demon, plying his bow and blades, and trusting to his strength and skill to spare
him from death; but these arcane workings were beyond him. His body was not at risk, now; instead, his
mind, his sielu, were drowning
beneath the tsunami of hideous impression that washed through the thought-link
like a flood of refuse, lust and gore.
It was a thing wholly beyond his ken, a horror out of all reckoning, and
he feared it. He feared that he would be
lost beneath a tide of filth and decay.
At the last possible instant, when his heart and mind
were foundering, the green came to his rescue.
He felt the warmth, the native strength, of the earth beneath his feet;
through it, he felt the tender shoots of kesatuan,
grasping them in the fist of his spirit, and drawing strength and focus from
them. He was no wizard; no shaper of
forces unseen. He was neither elf nor
man. He was Lewat, and he would not be
cowed by this evil, or any other. He was
Lewat, and the strength of kesatuan
buttressed the essence of his being, and upheld him, and exalted him.
He was Lewat, and he would endure.
♦♦♦
“I am
Shaivaun,” the girl said, her voice crisp and clean, resonant with
promise. Oh, his fingers ached, ached for her
throat; but his secret friend would have none of it. She saw, with eyes far more ancient and
knowing than his, what it was that knelt before them; a vision of perfection,
of loveliness, of pure and untainted faith, of devoted service to the green,
and to kesatuan, and to the glory of
the White Fire.
“I come to
serve,” she continued placidly, and his hands twitched with involuntary desire;
but his dark ally had ridden him now for a ten-year, and held his reins
firmly. She denied him.
As his sieulu quaked
and quivered with longing she came forth, as she almost never did anymore,
smothering his will with her own, and bringing her own potent spirit and
strength to the fore. His own feeble
spirit retreated, wailing and gnashing its teeth, to the depths of his intellect. No longer a mere rider, she was mistress
now. His body was her body; his hands,
her hands.
“Welcome,
Shaivaun,” she said – gently, oh so gently.
She took the girl’s hand and raised her up, saying, “I see your
strength, daughter of Istravenya, and the potency of your will. Apply yourself, and learn our rites, and you
will prosper; for the time is coming when others will stand aside, and cede you
their places, and you will stand high in the service of the White Fire.”
And the girl
was exalted by the high priest’s praise, and gloried in the touch of the high
priest’s hand; and she went forth from the high priest’s presence a changed
woman, invigorated, confident, and ambitious. And she never new that the high
priest that she so trusted and admired was in truth a fiend in mortal guise.
Years
passed. The girl Shaivaun grew in power,
while the high priest grew old. His ally
had withdrawn a portion of her power from him, and was using it instead to
shape the girl’s ascendancy. It was
difficult, to aid her without possessing her; but the dark one had a feeling,
deep in the dimmest recesses of the viscid pit of slime that served as her
soul: this girl was different. She could
not escape the notion that, properly raised and assisted and instructed, this girl
might one day become a willing and potent acolyte, bringing power and glory to
them both. That would bring greater fame
to the dark ally than any other conquest, and greater power, too.
As the years
passed, their numbers grew. The White
Fire had always been a narrow sect, confined to worship by happenstance,
centred among the Torvae. The
high priest, controlled almost entirely now by his shadowy passenger, worked to
change that, making the White Fire an exclusively High Elven phenomenon;
barring from the priesthood all but pure-blooded scions of the Third House, and
condemning all others as unclean and unfit for holy office. The girl Shaivaun played a part in that. Her fame spread wide ‘round the realm; her
beauty and the strength of her words were all the talk of high tables and of
low. All came to lay their troubles at
her feet, and receive her blessing and the blessing of the high priest. To some, the dark ally granted gifts; to
others, strength; still others begged for children, and got them. And if these children were a little feral, or
a little dire, what mattered that? None
so desperate as to plead for increase would scruple at birthing a whelp that
was healthy, even if it cried incessantly, or struck the other children, or
harmed livestock, so as to suckle at the blood that flowed from seeping wounds.
With numbers
came influence, and with influence, wealth.
The temples of Istravenya had always been a refuge for the rural folk,
or the commoners in the great cities; but now, for the first time, the nobility
flocked to hear the words of the White Fire.
The dark ally had to tread softly, now; for the highest of the elven
houses counted among their number many subtle children of Hara: mighty lords,
great ladies, stern warriors and cunning wizards, any of whom might have seen
through her mask, penetrating her guise, descrying her true nature and intent,
to the ruin of all her carefully laid plans.
As it happened, though, she needn’t have worried; the nobility were as
beguiled by her words, as besotted by the girl Shaivaun’s beauty, as were the
common folk, and the nobles were as wearied and as jaded as any. It was only their distractions that
differed. Indeed, she found many among
their number to be easier converts to her own extreme tastes and desires than
the commoners she had worked so hard to seduce.
The scions of the Duodeci, the storied houses of the Divine Twelve,
proved to be readier clay to her wheel than the subjects that served them.
Soon, sooner
than she had ever thought possible, the time was right. The priest, the one-time stone-shaper, was no
more. His body was still there, to be
sure; but it was hers, now. She had held
the reins for so long that his mind had fled, leaving the shell of his mortal
existence in her claws. She was tired of
his form; it was old and spavined, wracked with the consequences of the dual
life he had led. Ravished by iniquity,
the meat had failed her time and time again, and she had been forced to restore
it repeatedly through magic. Soon her
repairs would become visible, too obvious to hide through any means.
But it no
longer mattered. The time was right. Her parishioners, seduced by her words, drunk
on the glory of her voice, thronged to the old temple. On Slaughter’s-Eve, the most auspicious of nights
for the worshippers of the Forest Gods, she
spoke, and the temple was filled to bursting.
The nobles in their finery occupied the comfortable chairs near the
front of the hall, the better to be seen by their peers, while the commoners
stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind them, filling the old stone nave from front
to back, and from wall to wall. In the
very forefront of the crowd stood her own clergy – both those she had duped,
and those who were her willing subjects, full of lust and hate and venom and
profane knowledge. At the forefront of
all were the acolytes; and in their midst stood the girl Shaivaun, untouched
and pure; a thing of glory and glamour, radiant with promise.
As the moons
sank to their nadir she spoke, and her words seized and captivated them
all. The spell spread, and sharp voices
cried out in the night. Casting aside
now all restraint, all artifice, all concealment, she wove her magic, working
the art as only one of her ancient wiles could do. In moments, all within reach of her voice
were enraptured by the glory of the White Fire; and when she called upon them
to worship ‘in the old way’, there was only the briefest instant of hesitation
before garments and inhibitions were flung aside, and the whole of the ancient,
sacred place had become a vast, heaving, throbbing mass of flesh, caressing and
carousing, shrieking with madness, worshipping their twisted vision of the
goddess with cries of agony and ecstasy.
The moons
sank below the horizon. With a word she
sealed the great doors; with another, the windows; and with a third, she cast
off the last lingering shreds of her disguise.
The old priest’s withered body, the husk that had confined her for so
long, burst like an infected pustule, showering nearby revellers with corrupted
blood and stinking yellow ichor. Like a
serpent shedding its skin, she tore away the tatters of ruined meat and assumed
her true shape: a being of white flesh and wonder, fully six feet tall, with a
body forged of delight and dreams, a fair and beauteous visage; long, golden
hair, slender ebon horns, a curling tail, and vast, leathery wings.
To the centre
of the hall she strode, treading on the writhing bodies of her worshippers, her
talons ripping through flesh, snapping bones, hauling entrails behind her like
some gruesome bridal train. Shouts of
ecstasy and pleasure turned to screams of horror and fear; and they fled from
her.
“Too late!” she thundered, using for the
first time her true voice.
“Too late, vermin!”
Slicked by
lust and gore, the people shrank from her, giving her a wide berth in the
centre of the temple. That suited her
immensely.
“Welcome!” she roared, and flames jetted
from betwixt black lips. “Welcome, fools, to the service of the
Mistress of the Rod! Welcome to the worship of the Worm! Welcome all, to Slaughter’s-Eve!
Spreading her
wings to the walls, and opening her hand and heart to the darkest depths of the
outer world, she screamed a foul prayer of fulfilment. And to the cries of fear and terror that
surrounded her, she laughed, “Now,
mortals…taste my sacrament!”
And with
those words, she opened a portal to the fires below. And the true rite of Slaughter began.
♦♦♦
Breygon woke gasping from the vision. His hands were shaking. “She burned them!” he whispered. “She burned them to death! All
of them! Hundreds!”
“Six hundred at least,” Kalena agreed,
white-faced. “Maybe more.” She coughed suddenly, doubled-over, her
shoulders quaking; and to the ranger’s horror, a wisp of smoke issued from
betwixt her lips. When she looked up
again, her eyes were red.
“Why?” he
whispered.
“She was a demon,” the wizard shuddered. “Is not murder its own justification, for
their kind?” She clenched her fists
spasmodically in an effort to still their tremoring.
“There must be some other reason,” Breygon mused. “She had built up an enormous following. That means power, here. Why throw it all away?”
Kalena stared at him.
She looked fatigued, spent…even broken.
“Do you really wish to know?” she sighed heavily.
“We have to
know.”
“Very well.”
She took a deep breath. “Prepare
yourself.”
Before he could protest, she placed two fingers of her
left hand against his forehead, and put her right hand back on the demon’s
brow…and the world exploded into –
♦♦♦
– fire!
Scorching,
savage flame poured from the portal at her feet, flooding into the temple like
a tide of conflagration. All around her,
screaming worshippers burst into flames, their bodies sizzling and crackling
like roasting pork. The otherworldly
flame was hotter than any of the fires of the mortal realm, and it burnt not
only bodies, but souls, eating through the bonds of the spirit, destroying
everything in its ravening hunger. The
stones themselves caught and burned, flaring and melting and running like
water. Overhead the beams exploded and
collapsed, and a shower of embers and roof-tiles thundered down, crushing and
killing those few who had miraculously escaped the flames.
In the middle
of it all, she stood stock-still, immersed in and mesmerized by her
glorification. The fire burned her, too,
consuming her flesh, and searing her soul.
But because she had worked the ritual in the correct wise, assembling
the necessary number of followers, ensnaring and corrupting and sacrificing
them in the fires of the Great Pit, the flames did not destroy her.
Fire, after
all, not only consumed and destroyed; it also changed.
In the
forge-flame of screams and death, she felt the transformation begin. First to go were her wings; the fire ate
through the membranes, burning the aillelles down to ragged stumps jutting from
her shoulders. The agony was penetrating
and exquisite, but she endured it, revelled in it, for she knew what it portended. Fire licked at her flesh, consuming the last
shreds of imperfection; and what had once seemed a divine, otherworldly beauty
was enhanced tenfold. Golden tresses
changed to red, the red of the blood and the flame that had altered them; and
her horns shrank, becoming little more than nubbins protruding from her brow. Her nails toughened and became claws; and
talons burst from her toes. Her tail was
eaten away by the unholy fire; and from her ribs, just beneath her heavy
breasts, four long, fang-tipped tentacles exploded in a welter of viscid pus
and gore. She could smell the venom oozing from them, and despite the tearing
agony of the change, she smiled.
As the fire
and shrieks spiralled to a crescendo and the culmination approached, she felt
the blood rise in her – true blood, mortal blood, the blood of all those that
she had slain in achieving her apotheosis.
Their blood empowered her, filled her, filled her to bursting…and as the last of the screams was silenced
she gasped into the void, howling an unearthly shriek of her own. Fountains of blood burst from her eyes,
exploded from her nostrils and mouths, ran freely from beneath her nails and
her gums and her fangs, poured like a damning benediction from every gap and
orifice in her body. She inhaled the
blood, tasted it, bathed in it; luxuriated in it, running her hands over her
new, altered form, shuddering in the delight and the power and the finality of
the transformation.
And at last,
as the fires were dying, she turned to the girl.
The unholy
deflagration had taken everything else; there was nothing left in the temple
but scorched stone and charred chunks of bone.
But in the midst of it all, the girl Shaivaun stood untouched. Before beginning the ritual, the dark ally
had woven a web of protection around her acolyte, and it had held. In the face of all of the unbridled might of
the Abyss, it had held. That Shaivaun
still lived was proof of her mistress’ newfound power.
Blood
streaming from her, dribbling from her eyes and nostrils and lips, she strode
toward the girl, who was standing stock-still, paralyzed both by magic and by
the shock and horror of all that she had witness. With a flicker of thought, the demon released
the arcane web, and the girl staggered and nearly fell.
She seized
the girl by the arms and held her upright, talons digging into fair flesh, the
residual apocalyptic heat of the sacrifice raising blisters, and causing the
thin cloth of her vestments to smoke.
She put her
face close to Shaivaun’s. The girl shied
instinctively away from the blood-streaked visage, the gleaming scarlet eyes
overflowing with gore. “We shall forge a new beginning, we two,”
the demon husked. “Together.”
Her fangs
shone bright and bloody in the dying firelight; and her breath washed over the
girl, foetid and stinking of burnt flesh, and blood, and the rot of the
grave. “You are mine. My ally. My cloak.
My face, and my mouth, and my tongue.”
The girl,
shaking in mortal terror, said nothing.
The demon
grinned horribly, and whispered, “Taste
my sacrament.”
At this the
girl opened her mouth to scream. In an
instant the demon was upon her, pressing her backwards to the floor, burning
her flesh against the still-hot flagstones, tasting her terror and drinking it
in like wine; vomiting her blood-soaked, corrupted essence into unspoiled
flesh, filling the girl, becoming one with her; owning her, as completely and
thoroughly as she had ever owned the stone-polisher. But this was no aging,
failed relic of a man. This was a new
form, new flesh. Such youth, such innate
strength, such potential!
It was, in
every sense of the word, a new beginning.
♦♦♦
“Arrgk!” On his knees, the ranger vomited, purging
himself again and again. He could taste the blood, smell the burnt
flesh. It was all he could do not to
claw at his tongue with his fingernails.
He had felt the demon slither
into him, seeking the byways of his body and spirit, insinuating itself into
every nook and cranny of his being. It
was a violation far more intimate and horrid than any rape, and he felt weak
and sickened from having experienced even the tenth part of the girl Shaivaun’s
ordeal.
Kalena had managed to control her gorge, although just
barely; she was green and groaning, clutching at her staff for support like a
drowning man reaching for a lifeline.
“Your pardon,” she whispered plaintively. “Your pardon!”
Breygon waved her apologies away. Struggling to his feet he spat to clear his
mouth, and spat again. When he could
trust his stomach once more, he said bleakly, “I asked, you answered.”
She seemed about to expostulate, and he cut her
off. This was not time for an
argument. Forcing a grin, he said, “This
should teach me to listen when mages tell me that I really don’t want to know
something.”
The wizard shook her head wearily. “I am glad we learned it all. The last mystery, explained.”
“How so?”
“The demon was a pleasure-fiend, expert in the ways of
seduction and domination,” Kalena murmured.
“One with some skill at the divine arts.
Such fiends can rise to the heights of power through the corruption and
sacrifice of the worshippers of the Anari.
When they do, they lose their wings, gain new limbs of prehensile flesh,
and become immensely more beautiful and potent.
They are called lilitii; the
Corrupters of the Flesh.”
“That’s what happened at the old temple, is it?”
Breygon asked. “A…a succubus, yes? She
possessed an old priest, built a following, cultivated Shaivaun as a young
acolyte...and then slaughtered all those people to secure her own advancement?”
“And it worked.
All know the tale,” the wizard shrugged.
“How Shaivaun Shabat, though only an acolyte, rose to the heights of the
hierarchy because she was the only survivor of the great fire a ten-year ago,
the blaze that killed all of the worshippers who had gathered at the old temple
on Slaughter’s-Eve. She alone was found,
alive and all but unharmed, in the burnt wreckage of the place.” She snorted.
“It was assumed that she owed her life to divine intervention.”
“She did,” Breygon said tonelessly. “She certainly did.” He put his face in his hands.
“What is wrong?” Kalena asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Other than the obvious, of course?”
“She was an innocent,” the ranger sighed. He lifted his head again and ran the back of
one shaking hand across his brow. “An
innocent victim of a demon. Shaivaun, I
mean. I destroyed her possessor…but I – we,
I mean – we killed her, too.”
“Stop there,” the wizard snapped. “Possession is the mightiest power available
to the denizens of the Abyss. Once they
have established control and long held it, it is all but impossible to pry them
out of a host. Nor would the wronged one
wish it. Better to slay the creature
outright; then, if you so desire and it is possible, you may have the innocent
one returned to life. Death, in such circumstances,
is a boon; it not only destroys the possessor, but also erases the taint and
corruption of the act itself.”
She shuddered.
“Even then, it is not always a kindness to call back the spirit of one
so wronged from the ease of the world beyond the world. Unless the mind is…altered…the memory of what
was done to the host, what tortures and blandishments were applied, can be nigh
unbearable.”
“You’re adept at altering memories,” Breygon said
softly. “Or so I’ve heard.”
The wizard’s lip twitched. “I am,” she acknowledged. “And if you see fit to return Shaivaun to
life, then I promise you, I will help to undo the…the memories that we just
witnessed.” She shook slightly. “But I repeat – I do not think she would
thank you if you returned her to the world.
Some taints cannot be expunged save by the Powers themselves. Perhaps in Hara’s care, her sielu will be healed.”
“I’ll think about it,” the ranger murmured. “What…what’s to keep the same thing from
happening again?”
“How could it?” Kalena asked, taken aback. “You did not merely banish the creature; you
destroyed it. It cannot now return. Not for many years.”
“Then we’re done.
Problem solved,” Breygon chuckled weakly.
The wizard stared at him in disbelief.
“What is it?” he asked.
“How, solved?” she exclaimed, aghast. “Have your grandmother’s shrine and temple
been purged of all vestiges of the evil done there? The murders committed in the name of the dark
powers have tainted the earth itself, perhaps for all time!
“Have the Lustroares
been found and defeated? Have their
supporters among the nobility been identified and chastised? For that matter, have you rooted out the last
of Shaivaun’s willing acolytes – those who knew her for what she was, and
enjoyed a share of her power?”
“Er…no,” the ranger admitted.
“Then you still have some way to go before you can
declare this matter ‘solved’,” she said primly.
Breygon shook his head. “You remind me of Qaramyn,” he sighed.
Kalena stared.
“I assure you,” she said coldly, “that I would happily accept death
before I would chance the Ars Anecros
in search of damned immortality.”
“That’s you,” the ranger laughed weakly. “Believe it or not, becoming a skeletal
abomination of unlife is not the most odd or annoying thing Qaramyn’s ever
done.”
♦♦♦
