The Godborn

Chapter Eleven

Drawn by the sound of the combat, devils swarmed into the courtyard, a roiling wave of spines, teeth, claws, and savagery.

“Shield me,” Gerak said to Orsin, who’d moved to Gerak’s side. The deva used Vasen’s shield to protect them both as best he could.

Gerak fired rapidly, answering volleys of flaming spines with shot after shot from his bow. He shot Sayeed a few more times, too, keeping the big man on his knees, although he stubbornly refused to die.

Soon Vasen’s shield was quivering with dozens of flaming spikes, while six spined devils and the seemingly unkillable giant had arrows sticking from their hides. The wounded fiends pelted wide around the courtyard, perhaps intending to come at them from both sides at once. Meanwhile, the huge man pulled Gerak’s arrows from his chest, rose, and strode toward them.

“Gods,” Gerak said. “Bastard won’t stay down.”

“We need to go!” Orsin said.

Sayeed shouted and charged.

Gerak double-nocked his bow draw and took aim at Sayeed. “Let’s see how you like two.”

He let fly and both arrows hit Sayeed squarely in the side. The impact knocked him down and he spun to the ground, shouting with rage. He sat up immediately, growling as he pulled the arrows clear of flesh and bone.

Two devils charged at Orsin and Gerak from either side. Orsin’s staff hummed as he spun it overhead. Orsin ducked under a devil’s leap and it slammed headlong into the stone wall. Bones crunched and the creature squealed. Orsin stomped on its head as he swung his staff at a second one leaping for Gerak. He hit it squarely in the side, and the impact sent it sprawling into the earth. Gerak put two arrows in its side and it rose on wobbly legs, snarled once, then collapsed.

Another hail of flaming spines hissed into the area, peppering their flesh. At least three caught Orsin and two hit Gerak in his chest. Gerak pulled them out before they burned his cloak, searing his fingers in the process.

“Aye,” Gerak said. “We need to go.”

“That way,” Orsin said, nodding at the arch behind them, the one through which they’d entered the courtyard. Orsin reached into his belt pouch for something as they ran. A volley of flaming spikes whistled after them. At least one of them hit Gerak’s side and stuck there, but Orsin pulled it out as they sprinted.

“Keep going,” Orsin said. “Keep going.”

The deva held a glass flask filled with a dark fluid. Flaming spikes flew all around them. The growls and tread of the devils sounded loud in their ears. Sayeed shouted challenges as he, too, gave chase.

Orsin threw the flask on the ground in front of them and smashed it with his staff as they ran by. A cloud of darkness exploded outward from it, so deep and inky that Gerak could not see his hand before his nose. A hand closed on his arm and pulled him along.

“It will only slow them!” the deva said. “Keep moving!”

Twenty paces later he and Orsin burst through the edge of the magical darkness.

“There,” Orsin said, nodding at the abbey. They exited the courtyard and were coming around to the other side of the structure.

“Where? What?” Gerak said. He saw no door, and there were no windows at ground level large enough to accommodate anyone larger than a halfling.

“Get on my back,” Orsin ordered, and took station before him.

“What?”

“Do it!”

Behind them, Sayeed burst from the darkness and ran toward them, his long, lumbering strides fearfully fast. The devils would be coming, too.

Gerak climbed onto Orsin’s back, feeling slightly ridiculous. The deva adjusted his weight slightly and started to run. Gerak gawped at the man’s strength. As they approached the side of the abbey, Gerak realized what Orsin intended.

“You can’t mean to-”

A hail of flaming spines landed all around them.

The shadows around Orsin deepened and he picked up his pace. As they neared the portico, the deva’s muscles tensed, the shadows around him flared, and he leaped into the air. He landed atop the portico with Gerak barely hanging on. Never breaking stride, the deva took two more running steps and leaped for a second-story window. He didn’t make it, but he didn’t have to. They crashed into the side of the abbey, both of them grunting at the impact, but Orsin gripped the sill and held on.

“Climb over me!” he shouted. “Quickly!”

More spines filled the air, thumped into the walls, a few struck Gerak and he cried out. Orsin did, too.

“Move!” Orsin said.

Using the deva like a ladder, Gerak scrambled over him and into the window. Orsin pulled himself in and fell to the floor under the window. Each pulled the flaming spikes out of the other. Orsin pulled another vial from his belt pouches.

“Healing,” he said, and poured some of the cool, soothing liquid right onto Gerak’s clothes and skin. Gerak felt immediately refreshed. He took the vial and poured the remainder onto the wounds on Orsin’s legs.

Looking around, they saw they were in a library or study of some kind. The darkness made it hard for Gerak to see, but he made out desks and shelves full of scrolls and books. Several spikes whistled through the window and stuck in the shelves. Immediately the dry books and scrolls started to burn. Outside, they could hear the devils snarling as they scrabbled at the stone walls of the abbey. Orsin jumped to his feet and slammed the butt of his staff on the ground. A cloud of shadow formed around the top of it. He moved the staff before the open window, trailing a curtain of shadows that blocked the aperture.

“Those devils can fly,” the deva said. “That won’t hold them long. We need to move.”

“We need to find Vasen,” Gerak said. “Where do you think he is?”

One of the devils snarled right outside of the window, on the other side of Orsin’s shadow curtain.

“The eastern tower,” Orsin said. “Where I saw the light. Come on.”

A devil perched on one of pews that lined the main worship hall, its claws splintering the wood. The devil held a brazier to its nose, sniffing at it. Vasen had no idea how it could have gotten inside the abbey.

Pews lay overturned. Tapestries had been torn down and shredded. Vasen smelled feces. The devil’s castings lay about the room in stinking piles, including on the altar. Anger warmed Vasen’s skin while the devil’s head swiveled toward him, eyes narrowing, the slits of its nose dilating.

“You’ll answer for this,” Vasen said, his hand white around the dagger’s hilt.” The devil snarled and launched itself at him with preternatural speed, the force of its leap toppling the pew it perched on and carrying it across the length of the worship hall in a blink.

The creature’s scaled, muscular body hit Vasen with enough force to drive him backward into the wall. His breath exploded out of him in a whoosh. A painting near him fell from the wall with a clatter. Claws, scales, and teeth seemed everywhere at once.

He squirmed, tried to bring his dagger to bear, but the creature used its weight and strength to pin him against the wall. Claws scrabbled over his armor, shrieking as they gouged metal. The foul breath of the creature, like decayed meat, made him gag. He pulled his head back as the creature’s jaws snapped for his nose. Spit sprayed into his face. The devil’s claws got under his armor and tore gouges in his side. Warm blood poured from the wound. The pain gave him strength. He freed the hand with the dagger and drove it into the devil’s belly once, twice, but the creature’s hide, infused with the dark magic of the Hells, turned its edge. He cursed, dropped the weapon, and tried to lever himself away from the wall.

The devil’s mouth opened wide and bit at his face, missing his nose by a finger’s width. The devil shook free one of its arms and slashed Vasen’s cheek, just missing his eye. The blow staggered him and the devil bit for his throat. Instinct caused Vasen to slam his forearm, protected by a vambrace, into the creature’s mouth.

The blow shattered teeth and the devil shrieked with pain, lurching backward.

He needed to arm himself. He feinted a lunge at the devil. When the devil retreated a step, he sprinted for the far door, bounding over pews. The devil growled behind him, its claws scrabbling on the stone floor as it pursued.

He wasn’t going to make it to the door. He whirled just in time to intercept the devil’s leap at his back. The weight of the creature drove him backward and down. He crashed into a pew as he fell, breaking the wood and cracking his ribs. But he used the creature’s momentum against it, brought his legs in and up and pushed the creature off and over him. It fell with a crash among the pews two rows distant.

Vasen clambered to his feet, wincing at the pain in his ribs. Blood flowed, sticky and warm, from the wound in his side. Without a holy symbol, he had no focus for his power and could not heal himself. He needed to get to his quarters, but now the devil stood between him and the far door.

He shouted and charged. Man and devil collided in a heap of scaled hide, armor, and flesh. For a moment each stood the other up, a counterpoise to the other, both striving to gain the advantage. The devil’s broken teeth locked onto Vasen’s shoulder, crushed his armor, and pain ran the length of his arm. He drew in close, hooked the devil’s hind leg with his foot, and tripped it to the ground. They fell together, a tangle of fists and claws. Blood from Vasen’s torn face dripped into his eyes, fell in droplets onto the writhing devil. The pain in his side felt like a hot brand had been driven through his ribs. He slammed a fist into the devil’s face, bursting its eye in a spray of ichor. The creature roared, squirmed frenetically, its claws digging at his armor. He felt them tear through the links of his mail, start to maul flesh. He pounded his fists into the creature’s head, over and over again. He felt his stomach get torn open, felt the blood pour sickeningly from the gash. All the while, he rained blows down on the creature. Vasen was weakening, failing, but he kept punching, metal smashing into flesh and bone, until he could barely lift his arms.

And then the devil lay still below him, its head a shapeless mass of scales, teeth, black ichor, and exposed bone. He stared at the gore for a moment, blinking.

Shaking his head to clear it, he rose, his breeches and tunic soaked with a mix of his own blood and the devil’s foul ichor. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, looked around. Dizziness caused him to sway. Each beat of his heart spit blood from his body.

He had to find a holy symbol to focus the divine energy he needed to heal himself. He started toward the door that led to his quarters, but remembered the potions the priests stored near the altar.

He staggered across the hall, but his hopes fell when he saw the cabinet where the potions were stored had been torn open, the metal vials within scattered over the floor. Liquid healing elixirs stained the stone. He bent, groaning with pain, and examined each of the vials. No good. All of them were open and spilled. He touched some of the liquid on the floor, hoping its magic might have survived the devil’s desecration, but found it inert. A few wooden roses-holy symbols-lay scattered on the floor, too, but all of them were fouled by the devil, unusable. He put a hand on his knee and pushed himself back to his feet.

The door on the far side of the worship hall looked a league away. Holding his wounded side, he staggered for it.

He pushed through the door without listening for anything beyond. If he encountered another devil, he would die. That much was certain. Fortunately, the corridor beyond was empty. He slumped toward his quarters. Doors hung askew from the rooms he passed, the contents within as fouled as the worship hall. Ahead, the door to his quarters lay flat in the hallway, torn from its hinges. He hurried forward as best he could, dripping blood.

His room was unmolested. His bed remained as he had left it. And the chest at the end of his bed. .

His breath caught when he saw the shield there, leaning against the chest. He moved slowly into the room, favoring his side, as if the shield were a mirage that would disappear if he moved too fast. He eyed the rose enameled on the shield’s face, scars from weapon strikes that were in no alphabet anyone could read but that scribed a history of the shield’s battles. He’d heard descriptions of the shield in stories.

The shield had belonged to Dawnlord Abelar. Tales of the Dawnlord had said the shield was lost. Yet here it was. The Oracle must have found it and kept it, a secret he shared with no one.

Growls sounded from somewhere down the corridor outside his room. Something heavy crashed. Ceramics shattered and something metal rang off the floor.

With shaking hands, Vasen took the shield. The metal felt warm in his hands, pure, and he knew it was as much a holy implement of his faith as any symbol he might ever wear around his neck. He held it before him so he could see the rose. Thin tendrils of shadow from his hands ran along the shield’s edge. He frowned, tried to will them away, but they clutched at the shield as surely as his hands. He hoped the saint would not object.

Channeling the power of his faith through the shield, he spoke a prayer of healing and the rose lit like a lantern, bathing him in its glow. The darkness leaking from his flesh resisted banishment from the light and lingered on the edge of the shield. But still the glow did its work. The gashes in his flesh closed, his ribs knit back together, and the pain and fatigue he felt vanished.

As the glow faded from the rose, he bowed his head, overcome.

The scrabble of claw on stone sounded from the corridor outside his chambers, closer now. He strapped the shield onto his forearm, found the weight of it ideal. He opened the chest at the base of his bed. His father’s sword lay inside, wrapped in oilcloth. He reached for it, the shadows so thick and swirling about his hands that he could scarcely see his fingers. He took the wire-wrapped hilt in hand. The metal felt cool, the texture slick. Shadows slipped from the weapon to join those bleeding from his flesh. He lifted the weapon, slid off the oilcloth, and revealed a blade as black as a sliver of night, like deep water under a moonless sky.

The hilt seemed made for his hand, the weight made for his style. He took a few practice cuts, marveled at the way the weapon left a trail of dissipating shadows in its wake.

Chuffing sounded from outside the door, the sound of a fiendish hound on the scent. He heard claws clicking on the stone floor, the low, predatory growl of an animal on the hunt. He held a sliver of night in one hand and a circle of light in the other and he felt as if he could walk through the Hells themselves.

“Devil!” he shouted. “Account for your presence in my abbey!”

He started for the door, but before he reached it a crouched form filled the doorway, the raised spines on its back like a forest of blades. Its lips peeled back from its long fangs, and its sleek head moved back and forth as it eyed the room. Seeing no one else, its tongue fell from its mouth and it snarled at Vasen.

“Come,” Vasen said, his anger rising, and beckoned it to close.

The devil hissed, tensed, whirled, and launched a dozen spikes at Vasen. They caught fire as they whizzed toward him. He sheltered behind his shield and most of the spines slammed into the metal and stuck there. A few thumped into the wall. Others hit the bed and caught it afire.

Vasen got out from behind his shield as the devil sprung at him, all claws, teeth, and rage. He braced himself and swung his shield left to right as the devil reached him. The slab of steel and wood flared with light as it slammed into the devil’s head and neck, driving it sidelong into the wall near the hearth. The fiend squirmed, bit, and clawed, trying to get around the shield, but Vasen threw his legs back, leaned his weight into the shield, still blazing with light, and pinned the creature against the wall while driving Weaveshear into it again and again. The blade bit effortlessly through the devil’s hide. The fiend writhed, shrieking as one blow after another sank deep into its vitals. Black ichor poured from its slashed guts. When at last it went silent and still, Vasen let it fall to the floor and jerked his blade free. Behind him, his bed was ablaze. Parts of the abbey were ablaze, too, and there was no way to stop it. Soon the entire structure would be gutted by fire.

He had to get to the Oracle.

He looked at his shield, still glowing faintly, and at his blade, leaking shadows. The shadows twisted themselves into a line that snaked out of the room and turned east.

A line to follow, he thought, smiling and thinking of Orsin.

Without looking back at his burning quarters, the room that had been his sanctuary for almost thirty winters, he followed the line of shadow emitted by Weaveshear and hurried to Dawnlord Abelar’s shrine.

Zeeahd moved rapidly through the dark abbey. On the way, he encountered two of his devils, who must have gained entry through an upper window.

“Follow,” he ordered them, and they fell in beside him.

Light trickled down the stairs that led up through the eastern tower, the light he’d seen from outside. The devils growled softly. Without a pause, Zeeahd and the devils climbed the stairs. A hallway opened into a circular shrine.

Two biers sat in the center of the room, but Zeeahd had eyes only for the frail old man who stood near them. He wore the elaborate red and yellow robes of a senior priest of Amaunator. His eyes glowed orange, and when they fixed on Zeeahd, Zeeahd halted in his steps.

“Oracle,” Zeeahd said.

The old man’s hand went to the holy symbol he wore around his throat, a sun and a rose.

“Do you know who I am?” Zeeahd asked, stalking into the room, the devils flanking him.

The Oracle stared at him, glowing eyes unblinking. “I know what you are.”

“Then you know why I’ve come.”

“You’ve come to further the purposes of forces beyond your understanding,” the Oracle said.

The old man’s confidence galled Zeeahd. The devils snarled, their claws scratching the floor. “I need an answer to a question, old man.”

The Oracle smiled faintly, looked away from Zeeahd to stare thoughtfully at the image of the woman carved into the lid of the bier.

“She never married another. The woman whose image is carved into the wood here. Her name was Jiriis. I’m sure she never loved another, either. She committed her life to service, but lived it alone.”

Zeeahd put a hand on the spines of the devils at his sides. Was the Oracle mad? Was he anticipating Zeeahd’s question and answering him somehow.

“We all make sacrifices, it seems,” the Oracle said.

“I don’t care about that. Where is the son of Erevis Cale. Tell me. If he lives, tell me his location. If he’s dead, tell me where I can find his corpse.” When the Oracle said nothing, he added, “Tell me and no harm will come to you, but be certain that I’ll have an answer, one way or another.”

“I long ago accepted the harm that would come to me. I saw it in a dream. But it has been a good hundred years.” The Oracle turned and looked down on the other bier. “Do you recognize the face here, Zeeahd of Thay?”

“You know my name?”

“Look on it and do what you came here to do,” the Oracle said, his voice stern. “You recognize it, do you not?”

Zeeahd looked carefully at the image carved into the bier. His fury rose as he recognized the face, the face forever branded by pain into his memory. The stump of his thumb began to ache. The curse within him began to writhe.

“Abelar Corrinthal,” he said, and the words came out a hiss, and the hiss turned to a cough.

“He was my father,” the Oracle said, looking back at Zeeahd. “A good man. A holy man. Very unlike you, Zeeahd of Thay.”

Zeeahd’s coughing worsened as his rage intensified. He felt the growth in his belly, the sickening, squirming mass that resided within him, that wanted only to become. His damnation had started a hundred years ago, but he had held it at bay since then. He refused to let it finish. He would free himself before he let the Hells have him.

“Then I’ll have something for you when we’re done, son of Abelar,” Zeeahd said between coughs and gasps. Black flecks peppered the floor. “The son, Erevis Cale’s son, where will I find him? Tell me now or I’ll make you suffer.”

The devils growled at that, an eager sound.

The Oracle’s glowing eyes fixed on Zeeahd. “You won’t find him, Zeeahd.”

“That is a lie,” Zeeahd shouted. “You lie!”

He could take no more. He ran across the room, the devils loping after him.

The Oracle remained unmoved, and Zeeahd grabbed him by the robes and shook his tiny frame, spitting black spatters of phlegm with every word.

“Liar! Liar!”

The Oracle shook his head, his face placid. “I speak what I see. You will not find him.”

A distant shout carried into the shrine from elsewhere in the abbey. Not far away.

“Oracle!” shouted a voice.

“You won’t find him, Zeeahd,” the Oracle said, and smiled into Zeeahd’s face. “Because he has found you.”

Zeeahd’s ruined flesh goose pimpled. “What? What did you say?” “He’s found you.”

Again the voice from below. “Oracle!”

“Then I will be free of this right now,” Zeeahd said, and shoved the Oracle away from him.

“No,” the Oracle said. “You will never be free. Your body will mirror your soul. That is your fate, Zeeahd.”

Another shout, closer this time. “Oracle!”

The darkness squirming in Zeeahd’s belly wriggled up his throat, caused him to cough, to heave. He clenched his stomach, heaved from the bottom of his belly, and gagged as he vomited a thick string of his pollution onto the floor, fouling Amaunator’s sun. The glistening string lay there, a stinking mass of putrescence-hell reified in his innards and puked forth into the world. He stared at it, the Oracle’s words replaying in his mind.

You will never be free. You will never be free.

The words snuffed whatever humanity remained in him. Zeeahd wanted the Oracle dead: He wanted the abbey burned.

“Kill him!” he said to the devils, waving at the Oracle. “Tear him apart!”

“That is denied you, too,” the Oracle said, and, before the devils could pounce, a beam of bright light shone through the translucent dome in the ceiling, fell on the Oracle’s face, and bathed him in clear light. His skin turned translucent in the glow, took on a rosy hue. He placed a thin, veined hand on Abelar’s bier.

The devils growled but did not charge him.

“Kill him!” Zeeahd shrieked.

The beam of light faded, as did the light in the Oracle’s eyes. His expression slackened, grew childlike. His mouth fell open partially and split in a dumb smile. He spoke a single word, his tone that of a lack wit, not the leader of a congregation, not the head of an abbey that had provided light in darkness for a century.

“Papa,” the Oracle said.

The devils snarled and bounded forward. The Oracle closed his eyes and started to fall but before he hit the floor, the devils struck his body at a run and drove him to the stone floor. Claws and fangs tore into his body, ripping robes, ripping flesh. Blood spread in a pool across the floor.

The devils lapped at the gore eagerly, chuffing, snorting, but then they began to whine, then to shriek as their flesh began to smoke. The dead Oracle’s flesh glowed on their muzzles and claws. They squirmed like mad things, snarling, growling, spitting, trying to get the Oracle’s gore off of them. Their skin began to sizzle, bubble, and melt. They shrieked a final time as their hides sloughed from their bones, the spines falling like rain to the floor, their organs melting into putrescence.

Zeeahd could only watch it, mesmerized, horrified, as even in death the Oracle took his final revenge.

Rage rose in him, hatred, darker and fouler even than the sputum he’d left on the floor, hatred for Abelar, for the Oracle, for himself and what he had become, for daring to hope.

“Oracle!” came a third shout from down below, perhaps at the base of the stairs.

Zeeahd dared the devils’ fate. He turned and kicked what was left of the Oracle’s body, once, twice, again, again. Nothing happened to him, and he warmed to the task, venting his rage in violence. Bones broke, flesh split, and blood seeped from the rag doll corpse. But his outburst served only to amplify his rage, not abate it. He began to cough during his tirade, felt again the stirring in his innards, but did not care. He stared at the image of Abelar Corrinthal, carved in the wood surface of the bier. The peaceful expression. He spit on the image, slammed a fist on the wood. His skin split and blood marred Abelar’s visage.

“You! You! You are why all of this has happened to me!”

He seized the lid of the bier and with a grunt threw it to the side, revealing the wrapped, mummified body within.

“You have rest!” he shouted to Abelar. “You have peace! And I have nothing but the promise of the Hells! Because of you!”

“The life he lived brought him peace,” said a strong, firm voice behind him. “The life you’ve lived will bring you something far worse.”

Zeeahd turned slowly, a snarl on his lips. The man who stood at the entrance to the shrine was only slightly shorter than Sayeed. Long, dark hair was pulled off his strong-jawed face in a horse’s tail. The beard and moustache he wore did not disguise the violence promised by the hard line of his mouth. Dull, gray plate armor wrapped his broad body. He carried a shield emblazoned with a battle-scarred rose, a large, dark blade from which darkness poured. A thin stream of shadow led off from the blade back the way the man had come. Shadows emerged in flickers from his exposed flesh.

Zeeahd’s fists clenched. “There is nothing worse!”

The man stepped into the room. Zeeahd backed off a step, his stomach writhing with hell.

Vasen took in the remains of the devils, the body of the Oracle, the defiled bier of Dawnlord Abelar. He fixed his gaze on the thin man.

“My name is Vasen Cale. My father was Erevis Cale. I’m the one you’ve been trying to find.”

“And yet you found me,” the man said, and a maniacal laugh slipped past his lips. The laugh turned to wet coughing.

Vasen took another step into the room, trailing shadows, bearing light. The man backed away from the bier, toward the double doors behind him. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he were awaiting something.

“Here he is, Lord of Cania,” the man said, and pointed a bony finger at Vasen. “He’s found. The son of Cale. Now free me of this!”

The man coughed, gagged. Vasen could make no sense of his babblings and didn’t need to. He needed only to kill him.

He held up Abelar’s shield and Weaveshear. “This is the Dawnlord’s shield and this is my father’s sword. I’m going to kill you with them.”

The man shrieked with despair, rage, and hate, spitting black phlegm as he did.

“Where is your promise now, Lord of Cania?” The man glared at the dark places in the room as if they held some secret. “I’ve done what you asked! I’ve done it! Here he is! Free me!”

“You’re mad,” Vasen said.

The man glared at Vasen, his breathing a forge bellows. “Maybe I am mad. And maybe I’ll be freed only if you’re dead!”

He raised his hands and a line of fire exploded outward from his palms. Vasen raised his shield and the fire slammed into the steel, drove him back a step. Shadows poured from Vasen’s flesh, from Weaveshear, and those from the blade surrounded the fire in darkness and contained it.

Still the man continued to shout, an animal cry of mindless hate, the fire pouring from his hands, black spit pouring from his mouth.

Licks of flame ignited the biers and spread to one of the wall tapestries, which quickly turned into a curtain of fire. In moments the entire room was ablaze.

Vasen pushed against the fire, enduring the heat, one step, another.

“Vasen!” he heard from the stairway below. “Vasen!”

“Here!” he called, the flames licking around his shield.

Orsin and Gerak ran up to the doorway behind him and stopped, eyes wide at the conflagration. Gerak drew and aimed with his usual rapidity, but the thin man separated his hands and sent a second line of fire into the bowman. It hit Gerak squarely in the chest and knocked him against the wall. He quickly aimed another blast at Orsin, but the deva dived aside and dodged it.

The man laughed. “I’ll kill you all! Then I’ll be free. Watch, Lord of Cania! Watch!”

Gerak’s bow sang and an arrow thunked into the man’s shoulder. The man grimaced with pain, staggered back, hunched, snarling. His flames faltered. He raised his left hand to unleash another blast of fire, but again Gerak’s bow spoke first and a second arrow sank into the man, this time his left shoulder. The impact spun the man around and he shouted with pain.

“Die,” Gerak said.

A third arrow buried itself in his left thigh, and the man went down. He collapsed, coughing, spitting gouts of black phlegm.

Gerak stepped beside Vasen, nocked and drew again, sighting for the man’s throat. Vasen lowered his shield and weapon and watched. The man deserved death, and Gerak had earned the right to give it to him.

Gerak’s bowstring creaked as he drew back to his ear.

The man writhed frenetically on the floor, snapping the arrows stuck in his body, his arms wrapped around his stomach, screaming wildly, maniacally, between coughs. His body pulsed, roiled, as if something within him were trying to get out.

“It hurts!” he shouted. “Kill me! Kill me!”

“Give him no relief,” Orsin said. “He deserves what pain comes his way.”

Gerak sighted along his arrow, and after a long pause, lowered his bow.

The man rolled over onto his stomach, dark, bloodshot eyes staring out of the pale oval of his face. His teeth, crooked and stained black, bared in a snarl.

“I’ll kill you! All of you!”

He lifted himself on his wounded arms, grunting against the pain, and staggered to his feet. He lifted a hand at them. Vasen readied his shield and Gerak readied a killing shot, but before the man could discharge any fire, his eyes filled with pain and fear. He went rigid, threw his head back, and uttered a piercing shriek of pain. His back arched and he cast his arms out wide, his hands bent like claws. Tapestries and the biers burned all around him.

“Suffer, bastard!” Gerak shouted. “Suffer like she did.”

“We should go,” Orsin said. “The other one’s still alive, and many devils besides.”

Vasen nodded. Shadows poured off of him, off of Weaveshear, and led off down the abbey’s corridors.

Another scream from the man, a wet gurgle that ended in him vomiting a black rope of phlegm down the front of his robes. He put his hands on his face, screaming, as black fluid poured from his eyes, his nose, his ears, saturating his robes.

“This is not what you promised!” the man screamed. “This is not what you promised!”

Snarls and the heavy, scrabbling tread of clawed feet on the floor of the corridor behind the man grew loud enough to hear over his screams and the crackle of the flames.

“They’re coming,” Orsin said.

“You’ve seen what you need to see,” Vasen said to Gerak. “Leave him to suffer or kill him. Your decision.”

Gerak looked at the screaming man, seemingly insensate of all but his pain. Anger twisted Gerak’s expression and he drew, nocked, and fired. An arrow sank to the fletching in the screaming man. He seemed barely to notice the wound as black fluid poured from the hole.

“Gerak,” Orsin said.

But Gerak was past hearing him. He drew again, fired. Drew, nocked, and fired, the arrows coming so fast that Vasen was dumbstruck. In moments, six more arrows sprouted from the man’s flesh. Black, putrescent fluid poured from the wounds, but still he stood, screaming, bleeding, dying, changing.

“We have to go!” Orsin said, as something large and strong slammed into the double doors behind the dying, bleeding man.

The man uttered an inhuman shriek as the skin on his thin body cracked and split, blood and ichor spraying the room all around as something expanded within him, his flesh an egg birthing a horror.

“No!” he screamed. “No!”

Sharp claws burst in a black spray from the tips of his fingers. His spine lengthened with a wet, cracking sound, making him taller, thinner. He screamed in agony as the transformation twisted his body. His skull elongated, the jaw widened. His teeth rained out of his mouth as fangs burst from his gums to replace them. His voice deepened. An appendage burst from his back, a bony tail that ended in a spiked wedge of bone that looked like a halberd blade. The devil-a bone devil, Vasen realized-used its clawed fingers to help it slip the rest of the man’s flesh and body, as if it were undressing.

“We must go,” Orsin said.

Vasen took Gerak by the arm. “She’s avenged, Gerak. Elle is avenged. Come on.”

The bone devil stood like a man but twice as tall, its nude body the color of old ivory, the flesh pulled so tight over it that it seemed composed of nothing but skin, sinew, and bone. Hate burned in eyes the black of the phlegm that polluted the floor. Fingers on its overlarge hands ended in black claws the length of a knife blade. The devil clacked them together, as if trying out a new toy.

Finally the double door behind gave way and a half-dozen spined devils and Sayeed burst through. All of them pulled up at the sight of the towering bone devil.

Sayeed’s emotionless, dead eyes went to the ripped pile of flesh gathered around the clawed feet of the devil, the face of the thin man still visible at the top of it, the eye sockets staring, the slack mouth open in a scream.

“Zeeahd?” Sayeed said, his blade limp at his side.

Orsin took hold of Vasen and Gerak, his grip like iron. “We have our path.” He nodded at the line of shadows that led from Weaveshear down the hall, away from the devils. “We must go. Right now.”

“This is freedom, Sayeed,” the devil said, his voice deep and gravely. “Freedom at last.”

Sayeed fell to his knees, staring at the devil. His expression went slack and Vasen saw something in him die. The spined devils abased themselves before their larger kin.

Vasen, Orsin, and Gerak turned and ran.

Before they’d taken five strides, he heard the bone devil say, “Kill them all.”

Vasen turned to see the spined devils tumble into the hall behind them, all spines and scales and teeth. They launched dozens of spines from their twisted forms, the quills lighting up as they flew.

He channeled Amaunator’s power through his shield and it blazed rosecolored light across the entire corridor. The quills hit the light and fell inert to the ground. Vasen turned back and ran on, following the twisting tendril of shadow put before him by Weaveshear.

The devils shrieked and gave chase, their claws clicking over the floors. Orsin plowed down the stair and through a set of doors, and Vasen slammed them shut behind them, hoping to delay the devils. He held Weaveshear before him, following the thread it offered. He had no idea where it would lead.

“It could be nothing!” he shouted to Orsin, indicating the thread of shadow that led them on.

“Follow it,” Orsin said. “Trust me! It’s happened before!”

Every corner they turned, every door they opened, Vasen feared encountering more devils, but the way remained clear. They burst through an outer door and into the northern courtyard, sprinting over the smooth flagstones and the shining sun symbol of Amaunator.

“The sword is leading us into the valley,” Gerak said. “We’ll be exposed in the woods. We should find a defensible spot and make a stand.”

“Always you want to make a stand,” Orsin said with a grin, pulling him along. “Keep moving!”

The devils burst through the doors behind them, caught sight of the three comrades, and loosed a hail of flaming spines. The missiles thudded into the walls, burning.

“Keep going!” Vasen said, and shoved Gerak forward. “Follow the line! Follow the line!”

They cleared the courtyard, the outbuildings and livestock pens, and sprinted into the pines. The devils pursued relentlessly. Vasen could hear them roaring and growling not only behind but off to either side.

Brennus stood before the tarnished scrying cube, his mind racing.

“Look, now?” the homunculi asked. One of the constructs was perched on each of his shoulders.

Brennus nodded. He raised a hand and shot a charge of power into the scrying cube, activating it. The tarnish on its silver surface flowed together to make dark clouds, revealing the shining metal surface beneath.

Shadows spun around him wildly, aping the wild beating of his heart. He took the rose holy symbol in one hand, took his mother’s necklace in the other, held them before him, the two pieces of jewelry crafted thousands of years apart, yet together forming another piece of the puzzle he’d long sought to solve.

He’d tried to scry the Abbey of the Rose hundreds of times and always failed. He had concluded that it was a myth. He knew better now. He’d tried to scry the son of Erevis Cale just as often, and also failed, and so concluded that Cale’s son was dead or out of reach. But now he knew better about that, too. Before those examples, the only other person or thing he’d been unable to scry had been Erevis Cale himself, and that was because Mask had shielded Cale from Brennus’s divinations. But Mask was dead, was he not? So who was shielding Cale’s son?

Everything had come together at just the right time. He thought Mask must have somehow been at the root of it. Brennus was probably helping the Lord of Shadows somehow, and that was fine with him. By helping Mask, he was, presumably, hurting Shar. And hurting Shar meant hurting Rivalen. And hurting Rivalen was all he cared about.

“Now for the test,” he murmured.

Possession of Cale’s son’s holy symbol would hopefully provide the focus he needed to pierce the wards, whatever their source.

His homunculi rubbed their hands together, reflecting his eagerness.

Holding the rose in his fingers, he held his hands above his head and incanted the words to one of his most powerful divinations. He focused the spell’s seeing eye on Cale’s son, on the Abbey of the Rose, and let power pour from him. Magic charged the shadows swirling around his body, veined them in red and orange, and they extended to the face of the scrying cube and joined with the churning black clouds of the tarnish.

The silver face of the cube took on depth, darkened, but showed him nothing. His spell reached across Sembia, feeling for the focus of the spell. Brennus continued to pour power into the spell until sweat soaked him, fell in rivulets down his face. He held the rose symbol so tightly in his palm that the edges bit into his flesh. The homunculi squeaked with fear and covered their eyes as ever more power gathered.

Dots of orange light formed on the surface of the cube, like stars in the deep. Controlling his exhilaration, he willed the scrying eye of the divination to move closer, realized that he was looking down from on high at a mountain valley. The orange lights were burning trees. Struggling to control a rush of emotion, he forced the eye of the spell downward so he could make out details. A river divided the valley. Tarns dotted it here and there. Ancient pines covered it in a blanket of green. Many of them burned, with fires blazing here and there throughout the woods. He saw movement among the trees all over the valley, but ignored it for now. Instead, he focused on the structures partially screened by the pines. Although dark, he recognized it as a temple or abbey.

“I have you,” he said.

He moved the scrying eye to the frenetic motion he saw among the burning pines. Perspective blurred as the eye whirled across the valley, focusing on three men pelting through the woods. One of them, tall, dark-skinned, and with darkness clinging to his flesh, had to be the scion of Cale. The others, a deva and a bow-armed human, were his companions. Spined devils bounded through the woods in pursuit of the men. A single bone devil plodded through the woods, too.

The devils meant that Mephistopheles was somehow involved. Not surprising given the Lord of Cania’s connection to Mask. Brennus could not let Cale’s son be killed or taken by agents of the Archfiend. Brennus needed the son, needed to know what he knew, what he was, and how he could use the son to harm Rivalen.

He studied the location with care, noted the details of the valley, the abbey, committed all of it to memory, and spoke aloud to his majordomo, Lhaaril. Latent spells in his abode projected his words to Lhaaril, wherever the majordomo might have been.

“Lhaaril, assemble a force of our trusted men and their mounts at the teleportation circle in the courtyard. This instant. No one else is to know.”

The reply came immediately. “Yes, Prince Brennus.”

Brennus considered returning to his chambers to arm himself with additional wands, but decided his spellcraft and the magic gear he carried would suffice. He pulled the darkness around him and stepped through it to an inner courtyard of his manse.

A single sheet of polished basalt paved the large, rectangular courtyard. The walls and spiked towers of the manse surrounded it on all sides. A large, thaumaturgic triangle was graven in the basalt, its grooves inlaid with tarnished silver. A servant stood near one end of the courtyard, holding the reins of Brennus’s veserab mount, already saddled. As he approached, the servant bowed and withdrew, and the veserab hissed a greeting through the fanged sphincter of its mouth. It pulled its wings in close as Brennus walked to its side and slid into the saddle.

Meanwhile, his men began to appear. Pockets of darkness formed here and there in the courtyard, and fully armed and armored Shadovar warriors, their faces hidden by ornate helms, materialized from the darkness atop their veserab mounts. In moments, a dozen men and their mounts filled the courtyard. The veserabs jostled and shrieked at each other.

Brennus heeled his mount and the veserab lurched on its wormlike body into the center of the thaumaturgic triangle. His men did the same.

“We travel to a valley in the Thunder Peaks,” Brennus announced. “The devils there are of no concern to you. There are three men, one who looks like a shade.”

The men looked at one another at that, their body language suggesting a question.

“He is not Shadovar. He travels with a deva and a human. I want all three of them alive.”

Forearms slammed into breastplates and with one voice, they said, “Your will, Prince Brennus.”

With that, Brennus began the teleportation ritual.