The Black Road

THIRTEEN

"Master."

Buyard Cholik looked up from the comfortable sofa that took up one long wall of the coach he traveled in. Drawn by six horses on three axles, the coach had all the amenities of home. Built-in shelves held his priestly supplies, clothing, and personal belongings. Lamps screwed into the walls and fluted for smoke discharge through the sides of the coach provided light to read by. Since leaving the ruins of Tauruk's Port and Ransim almost three months ago, almost all of his time had been spent reading the arcane texts Kabraxis had provided him and practicing the sorcery the demon had been teaching him.

"What is it?" Cholik asked.

The man speaking stood outside on the platform attached to the bottom of the coach. Cholik made no move to open one of the shuttered windows so that he might see the man. Since Kabraxis had changed him, altering his mind and his body-in addition to removing decades from his age-Cholik felt close to none of the men who had survived the demon's arrival and the attack of Raithen's pirates. Several of them were new, gathered from the small towns the caravan had passed through on its way to its eventual destination.

"We are approaching Bramwell, master," the man said. "I thought you might want to know."

"Yes," Cholik replied. He could tell by the level ride of the coach that the long, winding, uphill trek they'd been making for hours had passed.

Cholik marked his place in the book he'd been reading with a thin braid of human tongues that had turned leatheryover the years. Sometimes, with the proper spell in place, the tongues read aloud from profane passages. The book was writ in blood upon paper made from human skin and bound in children's teeth. Most of the other books Kabraxis had provided over the past months were crafted in things that Cholik in his past life as a priest of the Zakarum Church would have believed to be even more horrendous.

The bookmarker made of tongues whispered a sibilant protest at being put away, inciting a small amount of guilt in Cholik as he felt certain Kabraxis had spelled them to do. Nearly all of his days were spent reading, yet it never seemed enough.

Moving with the grace of a man barely entering his middle years, Cholik opened the coach's door, stepped out onto the platform, then climbed the small hand-carved ladder that led up to the coach's peaked, thatched roof. A small ledge was rather like a widow's walk on some of the more affluent houses in Westmarch where merchanter captains' wives walked to see if their husbands arrived safely back from sea.

The coach had been one of the first things Cholik had purchased with the gold and jewels he and his converted priests had carted out of the caverns with Kabraxis's blessing. In its past life, the coach had belonged to a merchant prince who specialized in overland trading. Only two days before Cholik had bought the coach, the merchant prince had suffered debilitating losses and a mysterious illness that had killed him in a matter of hours. Faced with certain bankruptcy, the executor of the prince's goods had sold the coach to Cholik's emissaries.

Standing on the small widow's walk, aware of the immense forest around him, Cholik looked over the half-dozen wagons that preceded the coach. Another half-dozen wagons, all loaded down with the things that Kabraxis had ordered salvaged from Tauruk's Port, trailed behind Cholik's coach.

A winding road cut through the heart of the forest. Cholik couldn't remember the forest's name at themoment, but he had never seen it before. His travels from Westmarch had always been by ship, and he'd never been to Bramwell as young as he now was.

At the end of the winding road lay the city of Bramwell, a suburb north-northwest of Westmarch. Centuries ago, situated among the highlands as it was, the city had occupied a position of prominence that competed with Westmarch. Bramwell had been far enough away from Westmarch that its economy was its own. Farmers and fishermen lived in the tiny city, descendants of families that had lived there for generations, sailing the same ships and plowing the same lands as their ancestors had. In the old days, Bramwell's sailors had hunted whales and sold the oil. Now, the whaling fleets had become a handful of diehard families who stubbornly got by in a hardscrabble existence more with pride and a deep reluctance to change than out of necessity.

Almost ancient, Bramwell was constructed of buildings two and three stories tall from stones cut and carried down from the mountains. Peaked roofs crafted with thatching dyed a dozen different shades of green mimicked the forest surrounding the city on three sides. The fourth side fronted the Gulf of Westmarch, where a breakwater had been built of rock dug from the mountains to protect the harbor from the harsh seasons of the sea.

From atop the coach and atop the mountains, Cholik surveyed the city that would be his home during the first of Kabraxis's conquests. An empire, Cholik told himself as he gazed out onto the unsuspecting city, would begin there. He rode on the platform, rocking back and forth as the heavy-duty springs of the coach compensated for the road's failings, watching as the city drew closer.

Hours later, Cholik stood beside the Sweetwater River that fed Bramwell. The river ran deep and true between broad, stone-covered banks. The waterway also provided more harbor space for smaller craft that plied the city's trade farther inland and graced the lands with a plenitudeof wells and irrigation for the farms that made checkerboards outside the city proper.

At the eastern end of the city where the loggers and craftsmen gathered and where shops and markets had sprung up years ago, Cholik halted the caravan in the campgrounds that were open to all who hoped to trade with the Bramwell population.

Children had gathered around the coach and the wagons immediately, hoping for a traveling minstrel show. Cholik didn't disappoint them, offering the troupe of entertainers he'd hired as the caravan had journeyed north from Tauruk's Port. They'd taken the overland route, a long and arduous event compared with travel by sea, but they had avoided the Westmarch Navy as well. Cholik doubted that anyone who had once known him would recognize him since his youth had been returned, but he hadn't wanted to take the chance, and Kabraxis had been patient.

The entertainers gamboled and clowned, performing physical feats that seemed astounding and combining witty poems and snippets of exchanges that had the gathering audience roaring with laughter. The juggling and acrobatics, while pipes and drums played in the background, drew amazed comments from the families.

Cholik stood inside the coach and watched through a covered window. The festive atmosphere didn't fit with how he'd been trained to think of religious practices. New converts to the Zakarum Church weren't entertained and wooed in such a manner, although some of the smaller churches did.

"Still disapproving, are you?" a deep voice asked.

Recognizing Kabraxis's voice, Cholik stood and turned. He knew the demon hadn't entered the coach in the conventional means, but he didn't know from where Kabraxis had traveled before stepping into the coach.

"Old habits are hard to break," Cholik said.

"Like changing your religious beliefs?" Kabraxis asked.

"No."

Kabraxis stood before Cholik wearing a dead man'sbody. Upon his decision to go among the humans and look for a city to establish as a beachhead to begin their campaign, Kabraxis had killed a merchant, sacrificing the man's soul to unforgiving darkness. Once the mortal remains of the man were nothing more than an empty shell, Kabraxis had labored for three days and nights with the blackest arcane spells available, finally managing to fit himself into the corpse.

Although Cholik had never witnessed something like that, Kabraxis had assured him that it was sometimes done, though not without danger. When the host body was taken over a month ago, it had been that of a young man who had not yet seen thirty. Now the man looked much older than Cholik, like a man in his twilight years. The flesh was baggy and loose, wrinkled and crisscrossed by hair-fine scars that marred his features. His black hair had gone colorless gray, his eyes from brown to pale ash.

"Are you all right?" Cholik asked.

The old man smiled, but it was with an expression Cholik recognized as Kabraxis's. "I've put many harsh demands on this body. But its use is almost at an end." He stepped past Cholik and peered out the window.

"What are you doing here?" Cholik asked.

"I came to watch you observe the festivities of the people coming to see you," Kabraxis said. "I knew that this many people around you, and so many of them happy and needing diversion, would prove unnerving for you. Life goes much easier for you if you can maintain a somber vigilance over it."

"These people will know us as entertainers," Cholik said, "not as conduits to a new religion that will help them with their lives."

"Oh," Kabraxis said, "I'll help them with their lives. In fact, I wanted to have a word with you about how this evening's meeting will go."

Excitement flared within Cholik. After two months of being on the road, of planning to found a church and build a power base that would eventually seek to draw its constituencyfrom the Zakarum Church, it felt good to know that they were about to start.

"Bramwell is the place, then?"

"Yes," Kabraxis said. "There is old power located within this town. Power that I can tap into that will shape your destiny and my conquest. Tonight, you will lay the first stone in the church we have discussed for the past month. But it won't be of stone and mortar as you think. Rather, it will be of believers."

The comment left Cholik cold. He wanted an edifice, a building that would dwarf the Zakarum Church in Westmarch. "We will need a church."

"We will have a church," Kabraxis said. "But having a church anchors you in one spot. Although I've tried to teach you this, you've still not learned. But a belief-Buyard Cholik, First Chosen of the Black Road-a belief transcends all physical boundaries and leaves its mark on the ages. That's what we want."

Cholik said nothing, but visions of a grand church continued to dance in his head.

"I've given you an extended life," Kabraxis said. "Few humans will ever achieve the years that you've lived so far without the effects of my gift. Would you want to spend all the coming years in one place, looking only over the triumphs you've already wrought?"

"You are the one who has spoken of the need for patience."

"I still speak of patience," Kabraxis insisted, "but you will not be the tree of my religion, Buyard Cholik. I don't need a tree. I need a bee. A bee that flits from one place to another to collect our believers." He smiled and patted Cholik on the shoulder. "But come. We start here in Bramwell with these people."

"What do you want me to do?" Cholik asked.

"Tonight," Kabraxis said, "we will show these people the power of the Black Road. We will show them that anything they may dream possible can happen."

Cholik walked out of the coach and toward the gathering area. He wore his best robe, but it was of a modest style that wouldn't turn away those who were poor.

At least three hundred people ringed the clearing where the caravan had stopped. Other wagons, some of them loaded with straw, apples, and livestock, formed another ring outside Cholik's. Still more wagons, empty of any goods, made seating areas beneath the spreading trees.

"Ah," one man whispered, "here comes the speechmaker. The fun and games are over now, I'll warrant."

"If he starts lecturing me on how to live my life and how much I should tithe to whatever religion he's shilling for," another man whispered, "I'm leaving. I've spent two hours watching performers that I didn't have time to lose and will never get back."

"I've got a field that needs tending."

"And the cows are going to be expecting an early morning milking."

Aware that he was losing part of the audience the performers had brought in for him, knowing not to make any attempt to speak to them of anything smacking of responsibility or donations, Cholik walked to the center of the clearing and brought out the metal bucket containing black ash that Kabraxis had made and presented to him. Speaking a single word of power that the audience couldn't hear, he threw out the ashes.

The ashes roiled from the bucket in a dense black cloud that paused in midair. The long stream of ash twisted like a snake on a hot road as it floated on the mild breeze wafting through the clearing. Abruptly, the ash thinned and shot forward, creating whorls and loops that dropped over the ground. In places, the lines of ash crossed over other lines, but the lines didn't touch. Instead, the loops and whorls stayed ten feet away, creating enough distance that a man might walk under.

The sight of the thin line of ash hanging in the air caught the attention of the audience. Perhaps a mage might beable to do something like that, but not a typical priest. Enough curiosity was created that most people wanted to see what Cholik would do next.

When the line of ash ended its run, it glowed with deep violet fire, competing just for a moment with the deepening twilight darkening the eastern sky and the embers of the sunset west over the Gulf of Westmarch.

Cholik faced the audience, his eyes meeting theirs. "I bring you power," he said. "A path that will carry you to the dreams you've always had but were denied by misfortune and outdated dogma."

An undercurrent of conversation started around the clearing. Several voices rose in anger. The populace of Bramwell clung to their belief in Zakarum.

"There is another way to the Light," Cholik said. "That path lies along the Way of Dreams. Dien-Ap-Sten, Prophet of the Light, created this path for his children, so that they might have their needs met and their secret wishes answered."

"I've never heard of yer prophet," a crusty old fisherman in the front shouted back. "An' ain't none of us come here to hear the way of the Light maligned."

"I will not malign the way of the Light," Cholik responded. "I came here to show you a clearer way into the beneficence of the Light."

"The Zakarum Church already does that," a grizzled old man in a patched priest's robe stated. "We don't need a pretender here digging into our vaults."

"I didn't come here looking for your gold," Cholik said. "I didn't come here to take." He was conscious of Kabraxis watching him from inside the coach. "In fact, I will not allow the gathering of a single copper coin this night or any other that we may camp in your city."

"The Duke of Bramwell will have something to say to you if you try staying," an elderly farmer said. "The duke don't put up with much in the way of grifters and thieves."

Cholik pushed aside his stung pride. That chore was made even harder by the knowledge that he could haveblasted the life from the man with one of the spells he'd learned from Kabraxis. After he'd become one of Zakarum's priests and even while he was wearing the robe of a novice, no one had dared challenge him in such a manner.

Crossing the clearing, Cholik stopped in front of a large family with a young boy so crippled and wasted by disease that he looked like a stumbling corpse.

The father stepped up in front of Cholik protectively. The man gripped the knife sheathed at his waist.

"Good sir," Cholik said, "I see that your son is afflicted."

The farmer gazed around self-consciously. "By the fever that come through Bramwell eight years ago. My boy ain't the only one that was hurt by it."

"He hasn't been right since the fever."

Nervously, the farmer shook his head. "None of them has. Most died within a week of getting it."

"What would you give to have one more healthy son to help you work your farm?" Cholik asked.

"I ain't going to have my boy hurt or made fun of," the farmer warned.

"I will do neither," Cholik promised. "Please trust me."

Confusion filled the man's face. He looked at the short, stocky woman who had to be the mother of the nine children who sat in their wagon.

"Boy," Cholik said, addressing the young boy, "would you stay a burden to your family?"

"Hey," the farmer protested. "He ain't no burden, and I'll fight the man that says he is."

Cholik waited. As an ordained priest of the Zakarum Church, he'd have had the father penalized at once for daring to speak to him in such a manner.

Wait, Kabraxis whispered in Cholik's mind.

Cholik waited, knowing the audience's full attention was upon him. It would be decided here, he told himself, whether the audience stayed or went.

Something lit the boy's eyes. His head, looking bulbous on his thin shoulders and narrow chest, swiveled toward his father. Reaching up with an arthritic hand with fingersthat had to have been painful to him all the time and could barely be expected to enable him to feed himself, the boy tugged on his father's arm.

"Father," the boy said, "let me go with the priest."

The farmer started to shake his head. "Effirn, I don't know if this is right for you. I don't want you to get your hopes up. The healers at the Zakarum Church haven't been able to cure you."

"I know," the boy said. "But I believe in this man. Let me try."

The farmer glanced at his wife. She nodded, tears flashing diamondlike in her eyes. Looking up at Cholik, the farmer said, "I hold you accountable for what happens to my son, priest."

"You may," Cholik said politely, "but I assure you the healing that young Effirn will shortly enjoy shall be the blessing of Dien-Ap-Sten. I am not skilled enough to answer this boy's wish to be healed and whole." He glanced at the boy and offered his hand.

The boy tried to stand, but his withered legs wouldn't hold him. He folded his hand with its twisted and crooked fingers inside Cholik's hand.

Cholik marveled at the weakness of the boy. It was hard to remember when he'd been so weak himself, but it had been only scant months ago. He helped the boy to his feet. Around the clearing almost every voice was stilled.

"Come, boy," Cholik said. "Place your faith in me."

"I do," Effirn replied.

Together, they walked across the clearing. Not quite to the nearest end of the long rope of black ash that still sparked with violent fire, the boy's legs gave out. Cholik caught Effirn before he could fall, overcoming his own discomfort at handling the disease-ridden child.

Cholik knew that every eye in the clearing was upon him and the child. Doubt touched Cholik as he gazed up at the tall trees around the clearing. If the boy died along the path of the Black Road, perhaps he could hold the townspeople off long enough to get away. If he didn't get away,he was certain he'd be swinging by a noose from one of those branches overhead. He'd heard about the justice meted out by the people of Bramwell to bandits and murderers among their community.

And Cholik intended to help them suckle a serpent to their breasts.

At the beginning of the black ash trail, Cholik helped the boy stand on his own two feet.

"What do I do?" Effirn whispered.

"Walk," Cholik told him. "Follow the trail, and think about nothing but being healed."

The boy took a deep, shuddering breath, obviously rethinking his decision to follow a path so obviously filled with magic. Then, tentatively, the boy released his grip on Cholik's hands. His first steps were trembling, tottering things that had Cholik's breath catching at the back of his throat.

With agonizing slowness, the boy walked. Then his steps came a little smoother, although the swaying gait he managed threatened to tear him from the path.

No sound was made in the clearing as the audience watched the crippled boy make his way around the black ash trail. His feet kicked violet sparks from the black ash with every step he took, but it didn't take long for the steps to start coming more sure, then faster. The boy's shoulders straightened, and his carriage became more erect. His thin legs, then his arms, then his body swelled with increased muscle mass. No longer did his head look bulbous atop his skeletal frame.

And when the black ash trail rose up in the air to pass over a past section, the boy stepped up into the air after it. Before, even omitting the impossibility of following such a thin line of ash into the air, the boy would not have been able to meet the challenge of the climb.

Conversations buzzed around Cholik, and he gloried in the amazement the audience had for what was taking place. While serving at the Zakarum Church, he would never have been allowed to take credit for such a spell. He turned to face the audience, moving so that he faced them all.

"This is the power of the Way of Dreams," Cholik crowed, "and of the generous and giving prophet I choose to serve. May Dien-Ap-Sten's name and works be praised. Join me in praising his name, brothers and sisters." He raised his arms. "Glory to Dien-Ap-Sten!"

Only a few followed his example at first, but others joined. Within a moment, the tumultuous shout rose above the clearing, drowning out the commonplace noise that droned from the city downriver.

Buyard Cholik!

The voiceless address exploded in Cholik's mind with such harshness that he momentarily went blind with the pain and was nauseated.

Beware, Kabraxis said. The spell is becoming unraveled.

Gathering himself, Cholik glanced back at the maze created by the line he'd cast, watching as the starting point of the line suddenly burst into violet sparks and burned rapidly. The small fire raced along the length of the line of ash. As the fire moved, it consumed the ash, leaving nothing behind.

The fire raced for the boy.

If the fire reaches the boy, Kabraxis warned, he will be destroyed.

Cholik walked to the other end of the line of ash, watching as the fire swept toward the boy. He thought furiously, knowing he couldn't show any fear to the cheering audience.

If we lose these people now, Kabraxis said, we might not get them back. If a miracle occurs, we will win believers, but if a disaster happens, we could be lost. It will be years before we can come back here, and maybe even longer before these people will forget what happened tonight to let us attempt to win them over again.

"Effirn," Cholik called.

The boy looked up at him, taking his eyes from the path for a moment. His steps never faltered. "Look at me!" he cried gleefully. "Look at me. I'm walking."

"Yes, Effirn," Cholik said, "and everyone here is proud of you and grateful to Dien-Ap-Sten, as is proper.However, there is something I need to know." Glancing back at the relentless purple fire pursuing the boy, he saw that it was only two curves back from Effirn. The end of the ash trail was still thirty feet from the boy.

"What?" Effirn asked.

"Can you run?"

The boy's face worked in confusion. "I don't know. I've never tried."

The violet fire gained another ten feet on him.

"Try now," Cholik suggested. He held his arms out. "Run to me, Effirn. Quickly, boy. Fast as you can."

Tentatively, Effirn started running, trying out his new muscles and abilities. He ran, and the violet fire burning up the ash trail chased him, still gaining, but by inches now rather than feet.

"Come on, Effirn," Cholik cheered. "Show your da how fast you've become now that Dien-Ap-Sten has shown you grace."

Effirn ran, laughing the whole way. The conversation of the audience picked up intensity. The boy reached the trail's end, sweeping down the final curve to the ground, and was in Cholik's arms just as the violet blaze hit the end of the trail and vanished in a puff of bruised embers.

Feeling as though he'd just escaped death again, Cholik held the boy to him for a moment, surprised at how big Effirn had gotten. He felt the boy's arms and legs tight against him.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Effirn gasped, hugging Cholik with strong arms and legs.

Embarrassed and flushed with excitement at the same time, Cholik hugged the boy back. Effirn's health meant nothing but success for him in Bramwell, but Cholik didn't understand how the demon had worked the magic.

Healing is simple enough, Kabraxis said in Cholik's mind. Causing hurt and pain are separate issues, and much harder if it's going to be lasting. In order to learn how to injure someone, the magic is designed so that first a person learns to heal.

Cholik had never been taught that.

There are a number of things you haven't been taught, Kabraxis said. But you have time left to you. I will teach you. Turn, Buyard Cholik, and greet your new parishioners.

Easing the boy's grip from him, Cholik turned to face the parents. No one thought to challenge him about why the ash trail had burned away.

Released, wanting to show off his newfound strength, the boy raced across the clearing. His brothers and sisters cheered him on, and his father caught him up and pulled him into a fierce hug before handing him off to his mother. She held her son to her, tears washing unashamedly down her face.

Cholik watched the mother and son, amazed at the way the scene touched him.

You're surprised by how good you feel at having had a hand in healing the boy? Kabraxis asked.

"Yes," Cholik whispered, knowing no one around him could hear him but that the demon could.

It shouldn't. To know the Darkness, a being must also know the Light. You lived your life cloistered in Westmarch. The only people you met were those who wanted your position.

Or those whose positions I coveted, Cholik realized.

And the Zakarum Church never allowed you to be so personal in the healing properties they doled out, the demon said.

"No."

The Light is afraid to give many people powers like I have given you, Kabraxis said. People who have powers like this get noticed by regular people. In short order, they become heroes or talked-about people. In only a little more time, the tales that are told about them allow them to take on lofty mantles. The stewards of the Light are jealous of that.

"But demons aren't?" Cholik asked.

Kabraxis laughed, and the grating, thunderous noise echoing inside Cholik's head was almost painful. Demons aren't as jealous as the stewards of Light would have you believe. Nor are they as controlling as the stewards of Light. I ask you, who always has the most rules? The most limitations?

Cholik didn't answer.

Why do you think the stewards of Light offer so many rules? Kabraxis asked. To keep the balance in their favor, of course. But demons, we believe in letting all who support the Darkness have power. Some have more power than others. But they earn it. Just as you have earned that which I'm giving you the day you faced your own fear of dying and sought out the buried gateway to me.

"I had no choice," Cholik said.

Humans always have choices. That's how the stewards of Light seek to confuse you. You have choices, but you can't choose most of them because the stewards of Light have decreed them as wrong. As an enlightened student of the Light, you're supposed to know that those choices are wrong. So where does that really leave you? How many choices do you really have?

Cholik silently agreed.

Go to these people, Buyard Cholik. You'll find converts among them now. Once they have discovered that you have the power to make changes that will let them attain their goals and desires, they will flock to you. Next, we must begin the church, and we must find disciples among these people who will help you spread word of me. For now, give the gift of health to those who are sick among these before you. They will talk. By morning, there won't be anyone in this city who hasn't heard of you.

Glorying in the newfound respect and prestige he'd gained by healing the boy, Cholik went forward. His body sang with the buzzing thrill of the power Kabraxis channeled through him. The power drew him to the weak and infirm in the crowd.

Laying hands on the people in the crowd as he came to them, Cholik healed fevers and infections, took away warts and arthritis, straightened a leg that had grown crooked after being set and healing, brought senses back to an elderly grandmother who had been addled for years according to the son who cared for her.

"I would like to settle in Bramwell," Cholik said as the Gulf of Westmarch drank down the sun and twilight turned to night around them.

The crowd cheered in response to his announcement.

"But I will need a church built," Cholik continued. "Once a permanent church is built, the miracles wroughtby Dien-Ap-Sten will continue to grow. Come to me that I may introduce you to the prophet I choose to serve."

For a night, Buyard Cholik was closer to lasting renown than he'd ever been in his life. It was a heady feeling, one that he promised himself he would get to know more intimately.

Nothing would stop him.