by Mark Eller
* * * *
Exhaustion still pulled at every muscle in Simta’s body. She checked her appearance in the mirror one last time before leaving her room to meet Malaria in the commons below. Getting ready had been almost unbearable, her limbs felt too heavy to apply her makeup and put her hair into its customary array of dark red curls atop her head as best she could without servants. Heavy, but she had gotten it done, gotten dressed, and was leaving to attend her own farewell party. At least it was how she felt as she left her room and headed for the stairs. From the top of the stairs, she saw and heard a number of party goers just coming into the Dancing Unicorn, resplendent in all their finest dresses and pants and waist coats. Only two more nights of the festival remained. Simta knew these partiers were trying to get in as much debauchery and as many drunken revelries as they could in a short time. With such dark happenings upon the land, the people of Yernden needed every excuse they could find to rejoice, to forget the hellborn who dared walk in the open, and forget the hellhounds who chewed on friends and neighbors in dark alleys. The citizens of Yernden needed these five days to push back the trappings of Hell that were slowly consuming the very life force of its inhabitants with rumors saying King Vere contemplated changing his allegiance away from the seven virtuous gods to give it to the Two.
Sweat trickled down what little cleavage Simta owned, making her dress’s silken green material cling in an itchy, uncomfortable way. Her shoes, pointed prisons of torture, were not what she would have chosen for such a dire meeting, but she had to dress the part Calto had given her. Men’s traveling boots would have looked out of place with the rest of her finery. If she had to run for her life, she was as good as dead. One small consolation was the blade strapped to her calf. With it, she could cut her shoe’s laces and rip them from her feet when a moment presented itself. Even barefoot was better than what she presently wore.
Although people were arriving, the commons room wasn’t overly crowded yet. Good thing. The knights had planned a special show just for Malaria, a show Larson promised the demon would never forget. Her eyes scanned the crowd trying to figure out which were the knights and which were just celebrants. No one seemed out of place, but that was what Calto and Larson wanted, the element of surprise. There was laughter, tankards of good ale and jugs of the best wine, along with the smell of roasted pork, arvid, and chicken. If Simta didn’t feel so wretchedly nauseous, the commons would have smelled like a slice of heaven. As it was, she could barely stand to breathe without puking.
Scanning the room, Simta felt a glimmer of hope when she didn’t see Malaria. Maybe he had decided to not show, but from the corner of her eye she caught the wave of a hand. She turned slowly toward the gesture, horrified at seeing Malaria’s languid hand motioning her over. Did she really have to sit with him to fulfill Calto’s orders— within reaching distance? She knew from rumor how fast demons and devils could move. She once saw a demon change its hands into weapons, and hellborn were strong. How easy it would be for Malaria to simply reach over and rip her head right off her shoulders. At least if he killed her, Simta wouldn’t have to suffer much, that is as long as he decided not to hold her on the brink of death and play with her afterward. Of late, many walking dead had been seen in the dark recesses of the city streets. No part of Simta wanted to join them.
Oh gods, this is not helping. Think happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy, happy— oh screw it. I’m dead.
Drawing a deep breath, Simta gave Malaria a small smile. Well, more like a grimace, but it was the best she could do at the moment, especially considering the fact she was about to die.
Simta’s hand strayed to the satchel by her waist. Another book, one given the appearance of the book she had been sent to steal, had been handed to her by Calto with simple instructions. All she had to do was hand it to the demon. When she had asked what it would do to Malaria, Calto had given her a cold smile and said, “You will just have to watch and see.”
Needless to say, this dubious assurance only cemented the fact she was going to die.
The demon stood. His eyes narrowed, but his calm smile never left his face. Sweat formed upon Simta’s brow and did a slow slide down her neck as she drew closer. The satchel hung so heavy upon her shoulder Simta thought she was going to drop it. Malaria slowly came around the table to pull a chair out for her before returning to his seat.
The air felt thick and heavy with her own fear. When Simta sat, she envisioned shackles coming up around her ankles and upper arms, effectively trapping her in the chair so Malaria could kill her slowly once he discovered the book was a fake. If worse came to worse, she could lie and tell him she only did as he had asked, that the book she took from the Evertrue mansion was exactly the book he had wanted because it looked like the book she had been sent to steal. How could she know it was a fake?
“Things went well I assume?” he asked.
“Yes. It wasn’t too difficult to get in and grab the book, but I’m a bit nervous. Anothosia’s seal was on top of it.”
Amazingly, her voice didn’t shake or crack like she feared it might. She found it difficult to not crane her neck around looking for the knights. Somehow, she managed to continue staring in Malaria’s eyes without screaming. For once, she had not had a thing to drink. Simta sincerely doubted alcohol would have helped anyway. She would never be able to get drunk enough to forgot what Calto had shown her, the horrid vision of her own body being torn apart by this evil monster’s teeth, watching herself die.
“Well, let me have it.” Malaria looked hungry, anxious. Both hands pressed face down on the table’s surface. “That’s it in the satchel, right?”
Nodding, Simta placed the plain brown leather satchel upon the table.
“Show me.”
With hands that shook only slightly— which was a miracle because she was close to peeing herself— Simta untied the strings. Malaria leaned closer, his expression both anxious and greedy. When Simta lifted the flap, a bright light burst forth, striking Malaria hard in his chest, sending the howling demon backward into the wall behind him. He struck with a thick, meaty thunk.
To Simta, the world slowed down for a moment before erupting into motion. The first thing was Malaria changing form. His change wasn’t the slow melting that occurred on the night he raped and ate her. No, his human flesh blew off from him in every direction, spattering everything, including herself, with gobbets of bloodied meat. Beneath was blue, charred skin, both cracked and bloodied from Anothosia’s light. Black demon blood ran from his injuries.
Malaria grabbed the table and ripped it in two like it had been made of paper machete. The pieces went flying in opposite directions, barely missing fleeing customers. An insane look, one of pure fury and unfathomable rage, distorted Malaria’s features.
“You lying, back stabbing whore.” The demon’s words crashed into her like a physical blow, sending her scrambling from her chair, across the room, and into a group of panicked partiers.
If breathing had been difficult before, now it was even worse. What little air she had been taking in seemed to be knocked from her body. Every bone, every muscle ached protest as she scrambled to get out of the way, to flee like the rest of the people. The room’s air became frigid. Frost formed on the surfaces of tables and chairs. Choking, Simta tried to force air into her burning lungs. The horrid blue demon with poisonous spikes Calto had earlier ripped from her ravaged memory advanced on her, staring with eyes blacker than night, silently promising a long and painful death.
No longer able to think, move, or feel, Simta stood rooted to the spot, frozen in place by Malaria’s horrid, burning stare while those nearby fled. Her mind told her to run, to hide, but where and how?
A hard jolting sensation brought her about as a powerful hand roughly shoved her aside. Simta landed with a thud upon the dusty floor, the pain knocking at least a semblance of awareness into her. Around her, the room was a madhouse. Screaming people ran for the stairs, windows, or doors while others, too te
rrified to move, paid the price with their lives as Malaria sent his spikes flying through the air, piercing them with his poisonous barbs.
The need to live overcame Simta’s fear. She scrambled up and over a fallen table but she didn’t dare try for the door. The crush of panicked people made it too late for that. The inn’s air stank of burnt flesh and sulfur. The room lit up with magic. Red, blue, yellow, white, the colors flashed to a thunder of harsh sound and horrible screams as knights closed in on Malaria.
One of those knights flew across the room and thumped hard against the wall to her left. The gleaming silver of his armor was covered in blood. A chest piece and his faceplate were missing as the poor soul slid slowly to the floor, his hands full of his own intestines. The air smelled of shit, bile, and other things she could not identify. Blood bubbled up past the knight’s lips as he tried to speak.
Shouted commands filled the air, jerking Simta’s head away from the horrific sight beside her.
“Damn it! Form up you fools! Surround him. Don’t let this abomination escape again.” Calto’s voice rang through the inn, demanding all who heard him to obey, to fall in and do as told. His voice could not be denied, did not dare be refused.
Unable to listen to her own common sense which demanded she stay down, Simta peeked over the table’s top edge.
Five knights remained standing, all but Calto and Larson showing the gleam of light armor through rents in their evening clothes. Those two wore full armor. Two of the knights bled badly from body wounds. Another didn’t bleed even though his severed left arm lay on the floor. Instead, a brilliant yellow light, seeming to boil with living things, took the place of his missing limb. Simta clung to the table’s edge, shocked into utter stillness by the sight of the armless knight wielding his sword with a beam of light. Never before had she believed any of the tales she had heard about the Knights of Anothosia, but there before her very eyes the legends had come to life. Each of the five knights bore an aura of a pulsing whitish-yellow light. Their blades moved about them with unbelievable agility and speed, becoming nothing more than blurs to her untrained eyes, and all wore expressions of fierce determination. Beaded drops of blood and sweat flew through the air around them, not all of it theirs. Malaria, too, bore injuries. He stood in the middle of their circle. Ragged slices crisscrossed his body. Blood ran freely down his torso and legs. Even so, he still stood, a look of triumph on his face, a look saying pain would not stop him from murdering these remaining knights with his Hell poisoned claws.
“Give up and I might let a couple of you live!” Cackling, Malaria reached out to casually knock the knight with the missing arm across six tables and into a wall with a bone grinding crunch.
The knight howled in pain and gasped for air as he tried to sit upright. Laughing, Malaria reached for another knight, for Calto, with lazy arrogance, and that was a mistake.
Dodging to the side, Calto slammed his staff hard against Malaria’s horned skull before the demon had a chance to lay his hands upon him. With that blow, the room exploded into a cacophony of sound and a blinding flash of light. The Dancing Unicorn’s remaining mugs, cups and tableware exploded into wooden splinters and pottery shards. Ducking beneath her table’s edge, Simta held tight while the magical backlash nearly sent her tumbling. Screaming in pain, the blue-skinned demon leapt up and over the bar at the back of the inn. Its scream traveled through the room on a wave of muddy light, sending knives of agony through Simta. The cry simultaneously shivered into her bones with wrenching pain while also bringing vivid visions of torture and mutilation to her already fragile mind. Her own scream burst forth with such force she thought it ripped her throat and shriveled her lungs.
She wanted to faint. She wanted to die, wanted to sink down into the earth, deep into the dark and disappear from sight. Malaria’s cry assured her life was nothing but ruined dreams and pointless aspirations. There was no reason to live when the worms needed so desperately to feed. Ragged sobs shook her body as she raised her eyes once more above the table’s edge to see the battle continued.
The remaining four knights sped over and around the bar in a blur, trailing white glowing after images behind them. With a roar which made the floor vibrate beneath her bruised knees, Malaria sprang from behind the bar to land on its top only to be knocked in the gut by Calto’s staff. The demon barely had a moment to show shock as the blow lifted him off his feet and flung him into the low hanging ceiling before he crashed back down on his stomach among a scattering of broken cups and mugs atop the bar. The white light shining from the moonstone atop Calto’s staff leapt from the polished jewel to the demon, spreading across his body in jagged lines. The smell and sound of sizzling flesh filled the air as smoke began to pour off of Malaria.
While Calto had been keeping him busy, the remaining knights had made their way around the back of the bar. One was Larson. The lights seemed to shine brighter around him and Calto than they did the others, almost as if the brothers not only shared the same looks, but also the same power.
“Anothosia!” Larson cried, raising his sword high. With another mighty shout, he plunged its steel deep into Malaria’s back, pinning him to the bar top. The other two knights quickly began hacking and chopping into the hellborn, hewing little pieces of the demon’s legs free.
A horrible, vile feeling started in the pit of Simta’s stomach, traveled up her burning esophagus, presenting itself in the form of wracking, choking spasms. Her last sight before she fell to her hands and knees in shuddering dry heaves was Calto shoving the moonstone into Malaria’s mouth just before the demon’s head exploded.
How long she crouched behind the table spewing her bile on the floor, Simta did not know. Not until two mail-shod feet stood before her did she become aware of the room growing almost silent.
An ungloved hand reached down in front of her face and stroked her cheek, a calloused hand, gentle, caring. “He’s gone Simta. We sent him back to Hell. You can get up now.”
Tears pouring down, Simta covered her face and sat back on her heels, her body shaking. Strong, metal sheathed arms scooped her up and carried her across the room. She felt so pathetic, so little, frightened and lost. What would she do now? How could she pick up the pieces and carry on after all this horror, after Calto had stripped away her blinders to show how she had been mind and body raped by Malaria.
“Coddling her still?” Calto’s cold voice demanded. “Look around you brother. Several of us are dead, another barely alive, and one of the remaining fine businesses in Yylse is a total ruin, all because of her.”
Again, Calto’s frigid voice tore at her mind, the sound of it shriveling her soul.
“Calto.” Larson sounded weary, exhausted. “Just stop, please. This is not her fault. We’re lucky she brought us the opportunity to trap Malaria. As for our dead and wounded, well— it’s the risk they knew they took, a risk all of us take every time we don our armor and weapons. It’s part of the oath we swore. This is a war, Calto. People die in war.”
Sadness crept into Larson’s voice toward the end. He pulled Simta tighter to his chest, cradling her like a small child. Like a father with an infant, he placed a gentle kiss upon her head. “Forgiveness, Calto, it’s not just for those you think are worthy to receive it.”
A small measure of relief flowed through Simta. Opening her eyes, she looked up at Larson. Dirt and blood streaked his face, but his eyes glowed faintly, their lights almost swirling like falling snow when she looked up into a blue winter sky at daybreak. Peace and serenity seemed to play within the wintery storm. If ever Simta were to believe in the gods, now would be the time. Of all the magic, lights, and sorcery she had witnessed, none came close to the power she sensed within Larson.
“Are you a god?” she whispered.
Larson’s summer smile slowly appeared. He shook his head once and kissed her forehead. The brush of his lips sent warmth through her cold body all the way down to her very soul. Simta relaxed against him, and her tears stopped.
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br /> “Not I,” he said, “but rest assured cousin, the gods are out there, and not all of them evil. There are god’s who fight for our souls every day, gods who need us as much as we need them.”
“Why are you bothering with her?” Calto snapped. He had been quietly shuffling about the room but came up behind Larson to stare scathingly at Simta. “She will not change. An arvid does not stop being an arvid because you saddle it and paint it to look like a horse. Simta will not stop being Simta because you tell her there are such things as gods. She hasn’t believed her whole life. I am sure this night will only have a moment’s impact upon her little world.” Calto sneered at her. “Give Simta a couple of months, and she’ll once more be lifting her skirts for anyone who will have her.”
Larson’s features turned hard as he looked up at his brother. “If we were not in a public place and suffering the effects of battle, brother, we would be exchanging more than words right now.”
“Don’t let the location stop you if you’ve a mind to try and best me. All the civilians have fled and our remaining knights are gone.”
For a moment, anger burned brightly in Calto’s expression, and the same strange wintery look Larson held in his eyes blew dangerously within Calto’s. His, however, held a winter storm, merciless, cold, and cruel. Would they really fight one another, two grown men, priests and brothers?
The moment stretched on painfully. The air was charged with a prickly energy, making the hairs on Simta’s body stand on end.
“Go take care of Arlot,” Larson finally said. “I’ll see Simta safely home.”
Just like that, Larson’s anger dissipated. He looked back at Simta, dismissing his older brother as if he were a servant.
A look of shocked rage came over Calto’s face, and then solidified into cold anger. “This is not over, little brother. You need to remember who is the head of our family. I will enjoy showing you.”
With a quick turn, Calto stomped off like an angry child. Watching him, Simta fought back the insane urge to laugh. After all the blood, death, and horror transpired but moments ago, the church’s supreme leader was acting like a four-year-old. This was a side of Calto she had never seen. His petulance helped put things in perspective, reminding her no one was perfect, not even his supreme snobbiness, Lord Calto Morlon.
A soft chuckle brought her attention back to Larson. A barely suppressed smile teased his mouth. “He really can get into a twist when he’s mad. I think I’m the only one who can truly get away with pissing him off.”
A giggle escaped Simta’s mouth before she could stop it. Quickly, she clamped her hand over her lips and turned her face into Larson’s chest so he wouldn’t see her fighting a laughing fit. Had she finally gone crazy, fallen over the edge? If she had, at least this kind of crazy was better than the screaming kind this situation deserved.
Larson’s body shook as he, too, suppressed his mirth. All too quickly though, reality reasserted itself. Sadness and fatigue crept back into them both.
“Is Calto right? Am I going to Hell, Larson?” Sniffling, Simta wiped at her eyes. “I don’t want to go there, but I don’t know how to stop being me. I feel like I’m fighting the world, and I’m all alone.”
A puzzled expression crossed Larson’s face, and then he shook his head. “Anothosia says all sins can be forgiven. If you truly repent in your heart and soul, there is the promise of salvation for you. No one is ever alone if they believe in the power of faith, love, and forgiveness. Simta, you will never be alone if you believe not only in the power of the gods, but also yourself.” He gave her a quick smile. “Besides, you really haven’t done all that many bad things. At least I don’t think you have. Why don’t you marry your man and settle down?”
Larson must have noticed the look of distaste upon Simta’s face, because a sharp laugh escaped him. “Oh, come on. Marriage isn’t all so terrible, and if you marry more for love and a little less for money, you may actually enjoy being Charmaine’s wife.”
Simta shook her head. “No, Larson, I can’t. I just can’t. It’s not that my life’s ambition has been to disgrace my family, but I feel there’s something missing, something I’m supposed to be, know, or have. I can’t make the feeling go away. I might not know what I want. I may not know my destiny. I do know marrying that simpering, money grubbing idiot is not it.”
Despair washed over Simta anew as she realized Charmaine was the only option left to her. After tonight, she could no longer steal, drink, or whore around. Larson had given her a second chance. She would take it, but by the Seven Gods and Two, she didn’t want to marry Charmaine even to save her soul. There had to be some way out of it.
“Hmmm,” Larson said, nodding thoughtfully. “I might be able to help you delay matters. Trelsar’s church needs young women to do charity work. It’s a one year commitment, and only single men and women can do it. Trelsar’s priests don’t want married people because the work demands a lot of time and dedication. Most of the married are too busy with their spouses and children. The priests don’t want to take people away from tending their families. It would buy you at least twelve months and give you time to find a better suitor. I have several good friends within the mission. Getting you accepted wouldn’t be a problem despite your engagement.” Larson laughed softly. “Not to mention most of Trelsar’s priesthood detest Charmaine. Nothing would please them more than putting a bee in his butter and slow his rise to nobility.”
Oh gods, no. Simta hated religion, but the look in Larson’s eyes and the memory of the love and peace she felt within his arms came back to her. If ever there was a time she could believe in the gods, it was now. Would it hurt to give them a chance? Could things truly change for her if she prayed to Trelsar for help or asked Anothosia for guidance?
Maybe, but maybe not. Either way, twelve months might buy her enough time to find a solution to her Charmaine problem. Hell, what did she have to lose?
Looking up at Larson, Simta nodded. “I’ll do it. If I have faith in nothing else, I’ll at least have faith in myself to find a better life.”
A broad smile lit up Larson’s face, and by the gods, Simta actually thought she could feel the summer sun caressing her skin, warming her body.
“Good girl, Simta, good girl. I know you can do this. Now up we go. You still have time to make the party over at your house and start your new life. I hear your father had a small fountain erected in the main hall with wine instead of water pouring from it, but before you go, I suggest you clean the blood from your hair and change your clothes.”
They stood. Simta swayed before righting herself. The smell of blood and other body fluids made her stomach clench and her head throb. The thought of drowning herself in a barrel of wine and whiskey was tempting. Okay, so maybe she would start her new life in two days, after the festival.
Lifting a hunk of flesh off her dress, Larson flicked it to the floor.