“Make way for the Dark Lord!” Torch shouted as he led Aiul through the crowd. Ahead, Aiul could see a lone building rising above the makeshift dwellings, an island of permanence in a sea of transient squalor. The place looked newly built of rough-hewn lumber, triangular and single storied. Various blasphemous sigils, many bordering on the pornographic, were carved into the sides of the place. Foot long metal spikes jutted upward from the corners of the roof, like fangs from a lower jaw. The moon, orange and swollen, hovered above, a single, unblinking eye over the teeth. Smoke curled from an unseen vent in the roof.
Torch led him to the entrance, a heavy wooden door, also covered in sigils, and stopped. “I can go no farther,” he said. “Only those chosen by Elgar himself may enter the tabernacle.”
Aiul glared at the cultist for a moment, his mind racing, suspicious of a trap. “Fine,” he growled at last, and opened the door.
A wave of heat poured from the opening, accompanied by the sound of chanting voices. Soft, flickering candlelight illuminated a short passage that ended in a heavy curtain. Resigned to whatever fate awaited him, Aiul pulled the door closed behind him and moved down the corridor, shoving the curtain aside as he passed.
There were twenty-some-odd cultists in the room, all chanting and mumbling. They rocked back and forth on their knees, muttering their dark songs and offering supplication toward a makeshift throne of skulls in the center of the room. To either side, two bloodstained altars sat, each bearing a gagged, bound, terrified woman. Their eyes locked with his, pleading silently as they struggled in vain against their bonds.
Upon the throne sat a girl of no more than six. Blood oozed from a hideous gash in her throat, a wound that Aiul’s practiced eye recognized as quite fatal. And yet the child moved, turning eyes black as midnight upon him. Steam rose from her skin in tiny wisps, creating a ghostly halo about her.
“The scion has come,” the girl said, her voice, like her body, that of a small child.
“What is the meaning of this?” Aiul barked.
“Enlightenment,” the girl said, her voice no longer her own, but the now all too familiar assault on the senses that characterized Elgar’s speech. As the images and sensations ripped through the room, the cultists cried out in terror and pain, but Aiul stood fast, weathering the storm as a grizzled sea captain stands against a gale.
“You have much to answer!” Aiul spat, his hands balling into fists.
The child spoke again, her voice once again sweet and innocent. “There can be no answers until you have shown your loyalty to me. Blood must be shed in my name.”
“Damn your barbaric rituals!” Aiul spat. “You will give me answers now.”
The child shook her head in sadness. “I cannot guide any but my true followers,” she said. “You must show yourself to be mine before I can aid you.”
“I will not kill for you, fiend!” Aiul said.
The child shook her head again, her black eyes glittering in the torchlight. “You are not yet ready,” she declared. “These creatures are here to assist you.” She gestured to the cultists and their victims. The voice of the Dead God roared from the impossibly tiny body, “Show him the way!”
The five cultists on the left side of the room rose as one, grinning despite Elgar’s vocal assault. They moved to the altar closest, and began viciously beating the bound woman with their fists. One fumbled with dirty fingers, finally tearing the gag from her mouth, letting her cries of pain fill the room.
“Stop it!” Aiul shouted. The cultists on the floor continued to chant as if nothing were happening, their song seeming more and more like the beating of a heart. The throne of skulls stared at Aiul with empty, black eyes, as did its occupant. Aiul blinked, and his vision blurred, then focused again, but the image before him had changed. There was now a huge, blackened mace propped against the stacked, grinning skulls. The girl’s tiny hands caressed the hilt of the weapon like a favored pet. The head, resting on the dirt floor, was shaped like a mailed fist. Spikes circled the gauntlet, jutting out several inches from the fingers, like nails driven through to keep it clenched forever. It was a brutal weapon, without doubt, as tall as the girl on the throne, and heavier than any Aiul had ever seen.
“Make them stop!” Aiul shouted at the girl, ignoring the sudden presence of the weapon. Perhaps, if he paid no attention to the fact that he seemed to be losing his mind, he could recover from such insanity. Still, it was difficult to ignore. He was beginning to feel dizzy. Blood pounded in his temples, and the entire room seemed hazy, indistinct, slightly veiled by a thin, red mist.
“They will show you the way,” the girl said sweetly.
The cultists had begun raping the woman on the altar. They cackled at her misery and her cries.
“Think back,” the girl said. “There is a bright place in your mind. Try to remember.”
“No!” Aiul shouted. “I will not join in this, monster! Stop it!”
Elgar’s roar ripped through the room, a cry of rage that stretched on and on. To Aiul, the Dead God’s voice was now little more than a slap, but it was not so for the cultists. They began screaming. Smoke rose from their clothes. Wailing in fear and pain, they tried to beat out the rising flames on their robes. Two drew knives and tried to carve out their ears.
The silence when it was over was marred by three more cultists, who did not stop screaming, and would not, for the remainder of their brief lives.
“Show him the way!” Elgar roared again. The Dead God’s voice tasted of copper, smelled of lightning, thundered like a hurricane, splattered like drops of blood from a slashing blade. Cultists leapt from their knees, drew blades, and rushed at both of the struggling captives.
Aiul saw the indescribable symbol once more in his mind. It beckoned to him to hate, to destroy, and suddenly, all was clear.
With a mad cry, Aiul rushed forward to the throne and seized the mace. He swung it around in a fluid motion and brought it crashing into the child’s head. Her tiny skull flattened and exploded beneath the giant metal fist, scattering fragments of gore over Aiul and across the throne. Yet Aiul was certain that he had seen the child’s dead lips turn upward in a satisfied grin even as the weapon had wiped everything away.
The cultists gaped in silent horror as Aiul slowly turned from the ruins of the host body. Blood and gore dripped from his face and hands. His chest heaved with excitement. He hefted the mace as if it were a feather and stared back at them. “You want blood?” he roared. “Take your fill!”
One of the bound women screamed.
And then he was among them, the vicious black mace swinging like a scythe. For a moment, they stood, confused, but panic quickly ensued as Aiul killed one, then another, and another still. They trampled each other as they scrambled for the door, and Aiul waded forward, striking them down from behind as they grappled with one another. Three managed to escape the building. They barred the door behind them, leaving the rest to Aiul’s mercy.
Aiul had no mercy to give them.
Some raised their arms in feeble attempts to ward off his blows, while others tried to grapple with him, but he had the strength and stamina of a madman. He swung the enormous mace over and over, splintering bone and splitting flesh, until they all lay splayed on the bloody floor, shattered and still.
Even then, he was not finished, not satisfied. He dashed frantically about the room, smashing the corpses, pounding them over and over until they were nothing but bloody chunks of meat hanging from bones and rags.
Finally, the madness released its grip on him, and slowly, he began to tire, faltering in his swings, staggering as he moved, until at last he fell to his knees amidst the gore, gasping for breath. As the pounding in his temples gradually receded, he slowly became aware of a quiet sobbing, and the intermittent dripping of blood from the ceiling.
Spent as he was, he still struggled to his feet and looked about for the source of the weeping. One of the sacrificial victims still lived, and had somehow, in the chaos, managed to
free herself from her bonds. She was huddled against the door, scratching at it with weak fingers. As he approached, she turned her face to him, eyes wide, trembling.
“It’s all right,” he said to her in as gentle a voice as he could muster, though it still came out as little better than a croak. He dropped the mace to the ground and held up his hands. “I’m a doctor.”
The woman stared at him in horror as he knelt before her and considered the several stab wounds she had received. They were superficial, but one on her arm would definitely need stitches. He reached for her, and she began screaming.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “I can help.”
Her screams grew hysterical as he took her wrist. He tried to hold on, but she was frantic, struggling against his grasp. He released her before she did herself further damage.
Aiul knew that he should be more patient, that he should appreciate that the woman was in shock, but it was all too much for him. Proper bedside manner was simply too much to ask at the moment.
“I am not the villain here!” he shouted at her, but his words were wasted. She simply continued her vain attempts to open the door, screaming all the while.
It was useless. He was too tired to help her at the moment. Exhaustion rolled over him in black waves, and his legs were suddenly weak. With a groan, he reached down and retrieved the mace. It made a fine crutch for him, bearing some of his suddenly enormous weight as he staggered to the throne. He collapsed into it, feeling as if he might never rise again. He closed his eyes to the gruesome scene, and waited.
The woman stopped screaming after a while, and Aiul fell into fitful sleep.
Logrus was unprepared for what he found in the black lodge. Not many things were truly unsettling to him, certainly not a few corpses, but the grim tableau before him seemed to whisper of dire events to come.
Aiul, looking as if he had bathed in blood and viscera, sat upon a throne of skulls, his head tilted low, chin on his chest.. His long, thin fingers curled like talons over the hilt of a great mace propped against the throne as if it were a scepter. The weapon’s head, shaped to depict Elgar’s symbol of war, was likewise crusted with red. The Nihlosian’s sunken, haunted eyes rolled upward beneath his furrowed brow, glaring at Logrus through a screen of matted, gore-streaked hair. Dust and ashes, stirred by Logrus’s swinging of the curtain, circled Aiul’s head, the motes winking and glinting in the light from the door. About the mad king, his subjects lay in silent supplication; their broken bodies needed no explanation.
Logrus raised an eyebrow as a question, but Aiul, he remembered, preferred many words to few. “Are you king of the dead, now?” he asked.
“Of these dead,” Aiul mumbled. “You did say to kill a few of them.”
Logrus nodded. “Why this one?” he asked, pointing at the woman by the door.
“I didn’t kill her,” Aiul sighed. “They did.” He stared at the floor again, shamed. “She wasn’t hurt that badly. I could have saved her, but….”
Logrus pushed at the woman’s arm with the toe of his boot, exposing a ragged tear in her wrist. “I think you could not have saved this one,” he declared. “This was done by teeth. Her own, I would guess.”
“You knew,” Aiul said. He stared at Logrus, his eyes glinting with undisguised hatred.
“You are of the other order,” Logrus said with a shrug. “I do not know your rituals.”
“I killed him,” Aiul said, his voice stronger now. He pushed himself up and stood on still weak legs. At Logrus’s blank look, he added, “Your Dead God is truly dead, now.”
Logrus rolled his eyes at the madness of such a statement.
“Look for yourself,” Aiul told him, gesturing to the corpse of a tiny girl. It lay where it had fallen, its head an unrecognizable wreck of flesh and bone.
“He wears bodies as you or I wear clothes,” Logrus shrugged.
“You’re a fool,” Aiul told him.
Logrus shrugged again.
“You’ll see!” Aiul shouted.
“King of the dead, slayer of gods,” Logrus sneered. “If this was a test, I’d say you passed. No ordinary man is so arrogant. Or deluded.”
Aiul started toward Logrus, hefting the mace for a mighty swing, but Logrus snatched a candlestick from the wall and hurled it at Aiul with deadly accuracy, catching him squarely in the crotch. Aiul fell to his knees, gasping.
“I am no weakling cultist,” Logrus told him. Aiul, clutching at his groin, had no reply. “I think it is necessary to kill you.” He reached for one of the cultist’s blades and advanced toward Aiul.
“It is not necessary,” a voice whispered from the floor. Logrus turned to see the foreign woman’s corpse stirring, dead lips twisting as it hissed, “You must have patience with him. He does not understand.”
Logrus fell to his knees and lowered his gaze to the floor as the dead woman rose to her feet. Her cold, black eyes seemed to warm a bit as she regarded him.
“I understand well enough!” Aiul said. He rose and glared at Elgar.
“Do you?” Elgar asked, her eyebrows rising in amusement. “Tell me what you have learned, then.”
Aiul sputtered, “I see what your servants do, monster! What you would have me do! Is that not enough?”
Elgar shook her head patiently. “You have done what I wished, scion,” she said. “You were slow to act, but the first lessons are difficult. I am pleased with the final result.”
“Are you mad?” Aiul shouted. “I killed your people!”
“Not my people,” Elgar replied.
“Then who are these lying here on the ground?” Aiul sneered.
Elgar’s black eyes grew cold again as she regarded the fallen cultists, her delicate features twisting into a mask of hate. She spat upon the corpses. Where the spittle fell, it smoked and bubbled, eating into the flesh and cloth.
“I do not kill for amusement,” Elgar said, speaking once again in the voice of the Dead God. “I kill for hatred, for vengeance.” He raised his hands before his eyes and regarded them, turning them back and forth. “What reason was there to hate this flesh I now wear?”
Aiul’s eyes fairly bulged as he tried to reconcile the situation. “But you stood by! Your people tortured them and you did nothing!”
“You did nothing,” Elgar rumbled. The tabernacle shook and vibrated with his words. “I am constrained by the order of things. I told you as much, but you did not listen. They are not my people.”
“They use your name!” Aiul shouted. “They follow you!”
“Jackals follow war,” Elgar said. “Maggots revel in the aftermath. Which side do they serve?”
Aiul began to tremble, and his breath seemed to stutter in his chest. Logrus almost felt sorry for the Nihlosian. He seemed less a bad man than simply a poor combination of ignorance and arrogance. Both, I think, will be reduced in you this day, demon man.
“So I am a fool,” Aiul sighed. “Why did you not explain? If I had understood….”
“I am constrained by the order of things,” Elgar said. “I can only point the way. Faith is the key.”
Aiul nodded, saying nothing.
“My Lord, I have questions,” Logrus said, his voice low and respectful.
“You wonder about your master,” Elgar said.
Logrus nodded.
“I have taken him to me,” Elgar said. “And many others. Few but the two of you remain.”
“Am I to know why?” Logrus asked.
“I am weak, child,” Elgar told him. “I am dying. You know this. I needed the power I lent them to bolster you. You must undertake a dangerous quest, or all is lost.”
“I will do as you command, Lord,” Logrus told him.
“And you, scion?” Elgar asked. “Will you, too, serve me?”
“I will do what I must to have my vengeance on Nihlos,” Aiul hissed. “But I will not do it for your sake. I do not care if you die.”
“It is your vengeance that will aid me,” Elgar said, his voice once aga
in the woman’s. “But you will need weapons.” Elgar smiled, as if contemplating a beloved memory. “Weapons such as can only be found in Torium.”
Aiul gasped at the name of the forbidden city, and rose to his feet. “Madness! Torium is death! Even Alexander gave it wide berth!”
“Nevertheless, you must go there,” Elgar said. “You must claim my blood, and the Book of the Gods. Only then will you be able to crush Nihlos under your boot.”
“There must be another way!” Aiul shouted.
“There is no other way,” Elgar said. The corpse that he wore dropped to the floor, lifeless.
“We will die there,” Aiul muttered to the dead woman.
After a moment, Logrus rose. “We must prepare for our journey.”
“We’ll need a shovel,” Aiul told him.
“Eh?” Logrus asked, confused. “Why?”
“The better to dig our own graves with.”
Chapter 7
Ilaweh’s Will
Ahmed and his men had made for open sea as a first destination, well beyond the reach of any of the other vessels in Brust, and held position. He had decided it would be a good time to give the men a day of rest, and Sandilianus agreed.
It is good. I need time to think. Ahmed had yet to broach the most difficult subject with his second, the question of where to go and what to do next. Sandilianus had been pretty clear on what he thought of the prophesy months ago, when Brutus had thrown Ahmed an honorably earned beating. Sandilianus would obey, but he did not believe, not in the way Ahmed needed. In the end, the price to turn doom aside might be all of their lives. A man needed to be more than loyal to pay the ultimate price. He had to be unwavering, convinced of the truth. Sandilianus could prove difficult to sway, perhaps impossible unless Ahmed's reasoning and persuasion skills were flawless. This cannot end as it did with Brutus! I will not fail us again.
In the meantime, there was much to learn. The sun was already sinking, and only a few hours of daylight remained. Ahmed walked along the starboard side of his new ship, examining each of the captive sailors as he passed, looking for some sign of…what, exactly? Whatever Sandilianus had sensed, the unformed evil that had yet to surface. Sandilianus, on the port side, was doing much the same. So, he does not know yet, either. At least I have learned that much about him.
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