Doomwalker

by Kathryn Zurmehly

  “The Temple should have checked them,” Valen muttered to himself. He reached a hand out towards Lorcial and offered a silent blessing to the dead and the fleeing, then turned to catch up with the elf.

  They rode out at a trot, careful not to press the horses. He might be able to snare a replacement mount somewhere along the Road, but it would eat up time he didn’t have. The herald’s warning was like a whip at his back. He wanted to gallop right to the gates of the Temple, but it was five days’ journey.

  If Beriskar’s raiding party— why would the elf lie? Why wouldn’t she lie?— caught up, it would be easy enough to slip into the darkened forest. How in the names of the fifty-four gods they had made it from Beriskar Holding to Lorcial in a matter of hours was beyond him.

  If the elf was telling the truth. That vision had been insane, but it had been as real as any visit of Lyrica’s herald. He didn’t know what that thing had been, or what that word meant, but it had felt like a warning.

  They road on for a while. The waiting feel of the quiet and the dark of the night started to close in. Valen broke the silence, if only to keep himself from trying to gallop stupidly to Crownshold. “What does immor mean?”

  She shuddered visibly. “When I know how to explain it to you, I’ll tell you.” She sighed. “My name is Maryx.”

  “I am Paladin Valen of Lyrica.”

  “You said you had a vision, when you knocked me out.”

  “I wondered if you saw it. And you knocked me out, though even…though you should not have been able to.”

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes. Her eyes were slightly luminous. A pretty woman, but certainly not a human one. “I saw…wings and eyes and fire. I heard what you heard, nothing more. Does that clear the air?”

  “In this,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. Exhaustion hit him like a heavy weight pressing down. “I’m useless if you’re spying on the Lords’ Council.”

  “I doubt there’s a Lords’ Council anymore.” The idea made Valen grit his teeth. Maryx saw his expression. “Ah yes, the Lords’ Council, image of the Tribunal. I forget about that. What a disappointment to the Temple that must be.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  She bowed her head. “You look like you’re ready to drop. Hope you can manage not to fall out of the saddle.”

  “I can.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “As you choose.”

  ✽✽✽

  The Paladin fell asleep two hours away from Lorcial. She doubted it was anything resembling a deep sleep, because he remained in his saddle and hadn’t tied himself to it.

  Paladins of Lyrica were not soft. She’d found them to be generally attractive, fighting and upright men. He fit the type, though taller than most human men, with the light skin and dark hair common to the Crownshold region. Judging from his expressions, he might be more upright than most Paladins, no small feat.

  Immor indeed! Harbinger of doom…no, that would imply he wouldn’t be the cause…

  Did his Tribunal goddess know what he was?

  Regardless of his status, he shouldn’t have been able to drag her mind into that vision. Gods and spirits and clergy of the old gods, they could make such things happen, but he was none of those.

  She watched him sleep. This wasn’t going to be a happy journey for him. She couldn’t just leave him to it, either, not immor. Not as an elf. She had oaths to keep.

  Well, the Hierarchs would care about this. They had to.

  Maryx felt it before she saw it.

  The nighttime warmth was stripped out of the air. The thin starlight faded to almost nothing.

  Maryx shifted, loosening her cloak from around and drawing her sword. The gelding she’d taken from Lorcial was dancing nervously. She could feel his muscles bunching to bolt and fought to keep him moving forward.

  Valen’s horse jolted him awake as she reached for him with her free hand. He snapped awake and drew his own sword.

  The silence was complete except for the snorts and clicking hooves of their mounts. The horses had slowed to a slow walk. They pushed them to keep moving forward.

  She spotted a feline shape bounding forward on Valen’s side of the road. “Behind you!”

  He turned, blindly. Humans couldn’t see as well in dim light.

  The great cat lunged and slammed into Valen’s horse. It fell screaming.

  That was too much for Maryx’s gelding. He threw himself away, dumping Maryx to the ground, and raced away into the dark.

  The elf rolled to her feet, bringing her sword into a guard. The cat-shape had left Valen and was now sitting at the side of the road. She could see two very long canines sticking out of its mouth.

  The dying brilliance of its heartstone sat on its brow. A godshard. Repulsion, awe, and fear mingled in Maryx’s belly.

  Valen surged to his feet, snatching up his sword, which began to dance with subtle golden light. His horse was a quiet lump nearby.

  The godshard did not move, but it cocked its head. She followed the direction of its dead white gaze.

  A small dimness was glowing at the ground by Valen’s side.

  The grim barrenness of the air turned heavy and warm with a sense of rot. There was a sick jubilance to it. The glowing became stronger.

  Valen felt at a pouch at his side, wide-eyed.

  A deeper darkness spun off from somewhere that was nowhere and coiled around the glow. With a yet greater rising sense of dread, Maryx realized that the glow was an unbound heartstone. A fragment of the heart of one of her dead gods, like the one on the rotting cat’s brow, but now severed utterly from its original identity. Free to anchor anything else that might be looking to enter the world.

  Valen must have been carrying it somewhere safe, but now it was out in the open, a door for powers outside the world to get in.

  The glow was subsumed by the consuming shadow. It thrashed and boiled, then coalesced into a man-shaped abomination, one hand replaced by a long thin blade.

  It stretched, weirdly physical, and moved its head as if looking at the godshard, Valen, and Maryx. It dismissed the first with a glance but lingered on the elf and the human for awful long moments.

  Seven defend them. A demon.

  It looked between them again, cackling like a lunatic at Valen. The sound split the night. Maryx wanted to cover her ears, but then it whipped itself around to her and charged.

  She caught the slender shadow-blade with her own sword. The force of the strike drove her back, nearly knocking her off her feet. She found her balance and rotated her blade to break the lock.

  The shadow was on her again after she took a step back, striking wildly. Its weapon was a black blur of motion against the night, swallowing the dim starlight light she hadn’t even noticed was still shining and seeming to leave burning trails of darkness behind as it moved, playing havoc with her ability to track it.

  The blows made her hands sting. Her padded gloves seemed to offer no protection and she winced as she blocked. If she couldn’t manage to disengage, it would wear her down and kill her.

  A golden-glowing blade caught the next swing. It took her a moment to realize it was Valen. She took the chance to draw back, find her balance…but it was hardly a chance at all.

  The thing grabbed Valen with its free hand and hauled him out of the way, dropping him ten feet away, the arm lengthening and snapping back again.

  As Maryx swung up at its side, it blocked her and flung her backwards to land on her hands and knees.

  Only many years of training and practice allowed her to keep hold of her sword. She knew, even as she began to throw herself back to her feet, that it wouldn’t matter.

  Well, she did travel with an immor. None of the old oaths promised happiness.

  Time moved slowly.

  She felt the shadow blade strike the bow on her back first, felt it not just break but shatter. The nearness of the blade both froze and burned her back.

  The weapon suddenly skewed aside, carving a hellish shallow wo
und on her back, but not killing her. She forced herself to stand, to see it once more move Valen aside.

  Its outline boiled briefly and a hand waved. Trails of shadowy slow-moving smoke rose in a circle around Valen. As he lunged forward again, his body spasmed back from the circle.

  The awful tearing pain of the cut in her back shut down every thought that didn’t involve survival. She forced herself into a defensive stance, flexing her fingers around her sword’s hilt once, trying to secure her grip. In a flash, she felt—no, knew— that she was going to die here.

  She slammed that thought down.

  The shadow boiled again, the rhythm different, slower, pleased. It stepped towards her again and began its mad strikes. Her blade vibrated painfully with every blow, ringing like a bell through the soundless corrupted night.

  She was going to die here.

  4

  Valen slammed his sword against the smoky wall that locked him away from the fight.

  The blessed blade pierced the wall, but his body spasmed again, tossing him backward to leave him sore and short of breath.

  He could only watch as Maryx blocked the demon’s supernaturally fast strikes with incredible speed of her own. He could hear the ringing of her sword and hoped it would not break.

  Any normal a sword would. Even a blessed one could only take two or three hits from a demon before breaking. If the person wielding it was lucky enough to block.

  Regardless of her speed or her weapon, it was going to wear her down. He could see it in her blocks, an incremental slowing, and the way her feet slid.

  “It is just that an elf should die so,” the blades of grass whispered against the stone of the road.

  Valen turned to look at the long-toothed cat that sat on the edge of the road. It looked back at him with utterly white eyes that seemed to glow through the shadowy cage that smoked around him.

  Like the elk from earlier, the godshard was an image of death, but not the same way. It appeared emaciated, even mummified. The heartstone set in its brow seemed to glow slightly stronger than usual.

  “You were one of their gods,” Valen said.

  “I…was...a piece.” The cat wavered, then settled. “But as I died—I was the last—I knew they were being used by it as humans were used to kill us, and with more joy. So bitterly did I curse them—worthless- and joyous am I to see this.” It turned back to watch the fight. “Joyous am I to watch an elf die by it. Oathbreakers, all.”

  Maryx slipped to one knee, but caught the strike. Incredibly, she forced it away and regained her feet.

  If it caught her, she would die in incredible agony, cursing her own birth, begging it for any mercy, offering everything and anything for release. Valen had fought a demon before. The first had killed his mentor and slaying it had been the end of his training. He thanked Lyrica with all his heart that every time he found a corruption source that was not a demon.

  “Maryx could not have been a part of what the elves did.”

  “They still want it,” it said snappishly, “They still broke their vows. Her people slaughtered yours like cattle and plan to do so again. I…I stood for…life…and they…it owns us, and there is no freedom, and so it now owns them, and they consent to it without regret.” It turned its blind gaze on him, and the voice of the whispering grass slapped against the road angrily. “Why do you, Paladin of Lyrica’s light, plead for the life of an elf?”

  He held its ancient dead eyes. “No one deserves to die like she will.” Maryx’s blade rang loudly like a Temple bell.

  The godshard held his gaze for a very long moment. Valen felt a hint of the tug he’d felt when he’d fainted in the guardhouse. The being let out a bitter laugh; it sounded somehow like green grass dying. “Deserve, deserve…by mercy none should, many shall, and you mark that.” It turned to the fight. “At the plea of a Tribunal Paladin, so do I sever this sliver of freedom away for one I despise.” The dead eyes seemed to flick at him. “For the sake of a memory of mercy. My pity to you for your fate, Doomwalker.”

  Great haunches coiled and the cat launched itself at the demon as it drove Maryx to her knees for the killing blow.

  They rolled away together. The smoky circle around Valen vanished and he rushed the fight.

  The demon threw up a limb and threw smoky magic out, sending him down to his knees in pain, next to Maryx. He dropped his sword somewhere into the dark.

  She had remained on the ground, watching the fight lit by the dim light of the godshard’s heartstone.

  The long-toothed cat and the demon were tumbling and twisting. The demon’s form shifted and whirled, arcing over and around and away from the cat, yet the fragment of a dead god anchored it in place, somehow, slashing and biting, digging into it.

  Looking for the heartstone.

  The demon drove a long blade into the cat’s neck, prompting a whistling scream in its grass-voice, but still it dug. It must have nicked the heartstone, because the shadow convulsed then drew itself into a tight ball. One long canine was lodged deep within it. The cat began to tug and claw. A whip of shadow struck for the heartstone at its foe’s brow, clearly blind in its current form but every hit won more cries of pain.

  One seemed to slam into the heartstone and the cat tore itself away, leaving the tooth to crumble to dust, still embedded in the demon.

  The cat threw itself back at its foe with new savagery.

  The godshard could only hold it off, and not long. The only thing that could strip the power from a heartstone was a blessed blade. Valen looked for his sword, trying to ignore the pain in his chest. It was a fading ache, now, but still strong.

  “It will die,” Maryx whispered, barely audible over the god-fragment’s cries.

  Valen could only nod, even though he knew she could not see.

  Suddenly there was a distinct crunch and separate a resounding crack, and starlight flooded back into the world.

  Two heartstones lay in the dirt alongside the road. The scent of Maryx’s blood still filled the air. But it was done.

  Valen shook himself. the pain in hi chest vanished. He looked to Maryx. Her back was covered in blood. She was breathing heavily.

  “Hurts bad,” she grunted, then slumped, unconscious but still breathing heavily.

  That was probably a good thing. Valen carefully examined the wound. It was a shallow cut on her shoulder blade and would have hurt even if a demon didn’t make it. As it was...nothing festered easier than a demon-wrought wound. Or so they had said in his childhood lessons; he’d never met anyone who’d only been wounded by one rather than killed.

  Gently as he could, he carried the elf off the Road. By some miracle, the renewed starlight revealed some old First Age ruins where other travelers’ had clearly made camp before, less than a hundred paces away. He took some comfort that the stubby pillars didn’t look elven at all, none of the elven swirling marks, just age-worn lines from centuries buried in long-gone ice. They were good luck, people said.

  He then snatched up the heartstones. He hadn’t known a godshard could strip the power from another one’s heartstone. He doubted anyone did. Then again, godshards didn’t stray near First Age ruins either.

  What was going on?

  Valen salvaged the mare’s saddlebags. Poor animal. The godshard’s pounce looked to have broken her neck. He made sure to grab Maryx’s sword, too, and lay it down by her side. Considering what it could do, it couldn’t be a normal weapon.

  He made a fire, watching as Maryx drifts into a fitful true sleep. His blood still hummed in his veins and he could only think and wonder.

  None of this made any sense. Godshards did not wander onto the Great Road, an old blessing of the elven gods and doubled again by the Tribunal. They didn’t go near First Age ruins, either. And while heartstones did eventually coalesce into demons, they did not do so that quickly.

  And embittered fragments of dead elven gods did not tell Valen they pitied him for his fate.

  He must have slept, but he did not re
member it. He watched the sun rise, murmuring a soft hymn of thanks to Lyrica and the Tribunal for the kindness of allowing him to see it today, a child’s song that long ago took on a special meaning to Paladins.

  Maryx sat up with a groan. She stared at him for a long time. “I should be dead,” she said at last, feeling at her shoulder gently.

  “I didn’t know elves were fast enough to block a demon’s blows,” he said. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t an important thing. “Or that their swords could handle it.”

  “The blade is ancient and made with old magics. I am an elf and well trained. And despite all that I should be dead.” She turned to watch the sunrise. “That didn’t make any sense. The godshard nearly killed you, then didn’t do anything after the demon showed up.” She shot him a glare tainted by pain. “I didn’t know Paladins carried heartstones around.”

  “I killed the other godshard yesterday.” A short sharp laugh tore its way out of his chest. “Only yesterday.”

  A village was burned and a demon had come and a piece of a dead god had offered him pity.

  “The godshard on the Road wanted you to die,” Valen said.

  Maryx shrugged. “They hate us.”

  “They’re your gods.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then laughed even more harshly than he had. “It’s not like I can ever return to Aeldamarc, so I’ll tell you some things that make for stupid secrets anyway.” She chuckled darkly. “I’ll tell you what immor means once I figure out how to do so. You will like none of it.”

  He glared at her. “I am a Paladin. You can’t scare me, elf.”

  She flashed him a smile, baring sharpened eyeteeth. It was disconcerting, which he knew she knew, so he didn’t show any reaction.

  “We had best get moving,” she said.

  “Let me look at your shoulder first.”

  She raised an eyebrow, then turned very slowly so that her back was to him, yanking her cloak off in the same motion. It was awkward and slow, though by rights she should be in too much agony to even do that. She lifted the back of her bloodstained tunic away from her shoulder.