Wodan had been fine with the Chess Bear’s sage-like acceptance of things, and his inability to worry about the future, until this evening. It had grown cold and Wodan had insisted that they make a fire together. The great bear refused, and pointed all around. Having been attacked by ghouls after making a fire so many days ago, Wodan was aware of the danger. Perhaps he wanted the ghouls to return. Perhaps he wanted to fight alongside the lord of the beasts. But the great bear would not hear his arguments, and only turned away.
Now Wodan and the Chess Bear sat in the cave, cold and unwilling to sit near one another for warmth. Wodan watched the entrance of the cave for a long time. The stars were not visible; he saw only darkness. He turned to the Chess Bear and watched him. The great bear’s eyes were open. He was awake, but seemed content to sit in meditation. He did not react to Wodan’s gaze like a human, did not stir, did not smile or speak or react in any way. He was whole, and needed nothing, and did not give anything.
Finally Wodan spoke. “Chess Bear, I need your help. I won’t bring up making fire again. I’ll drop that matter. But I need help with something more. I was attacked by ghouls before I met you. I ran for a long time, and even before that I walked in a random direction, and I have no idea how to get back to my friends. If I wanted to find them, I’d have to wait until morning, make my way south, find the river, and hope I’m not so close to the demons’ lair that they kill me immediately. I’m lost.
“But I’m not just lost in terms of my location. I was lost even before then. I don’t know how much you know about the people in the valley, but I was the leader of a band of humans and dogmen that I led here. We attacked the demons, but we were too weak to overcome them. No… I was too weak. I failed them. My people no longer wanted me as leader, so I left them before they could kick me out. I gave up on them. Or maybe I just gave up on myself.
“The thing is, they still need me. Maybe not as a leader, but they need me. A demon lives in this valley, and he’s stronger than any I’ve ever seen. My men told me that he has a shield that can deflect bullets, and I know from my own experience that he can get inside of the minds of men and attack them directly. He can crush a man’s will before a fight can even begin. I was too weak to kill him, but out of all the people that I brought with me, I’m the only one who even has a chance of defeating him.
“But I don’t know how.”
The Chess Bear sat and listened to Wodan. When Wodan grew silent, the great bear stared into him for a long time. Finally the great bear lifted a paw and gestured dismissively at the opening of the cave.
“You would abandon them?” said Wodan. “You would leave all those people to the mercy of demons and ghouls?”
The Chess Bear looked away quickly, and Wodan realized that he had hurt his friend. He remembered the stories he’d heard of the mercy that was shown to him by humans when he was just a cub: Life in a cage, amusing tricks taught by an entrepreneur who wielded a club, and separation from his home and family.
“I’m sorry,” said Wodan, flinching. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to assume that you were only a tool to be used by humans.”
They sat in silence for a while, then Wodan said, “The demons and the ghouls have never bothered you, have they?”
The Chess Bear snorted in acknowledgment.
“But humans have. You have no family, and live alone, because of humans.”
The Chess Bear turned away, then nodded once.
“And you think that if you help me against the demons, then the people I brought with me will destroy your home. They’ll tear up your forest, kill your friends, and place cages everywhere.”
The Chess Bear turned to Wodan and stared directly into him. Wodan stood and paced, then said, “I can’t promise you that they won’t.”
The Chess Bear turned away, but for a split-second, Wodan saw terrible rage burning in the bear’s eyes.
“I can promise you this,” said Wodan. “You know me. If that… if that strange vision… was true, then you know me far better than I suspect you do. You know that I’m not cruel, or hungry for more than I deserve, or calculating, or mindlessly greedy. I can set an example for these people. I can… what?”
Wodan saw that the Chess Bear was laughing at him without humor.
“Fine. Perhaps I am cruel and calculating and hungry. But so are you, friend. You know more about this valley than any other creature. You know what I need to do in order to kill this demon. You say that they do not bother you now, but I say that someday they will. You’re sitting on some secret that my people need in order to survive. I don’t need your help in a battle – you can use us as a shield, we’ll willingly fight this thing ourselves. But I think you know something that I don’t. You’re hiding something.
“I realize you think it’s for the best, but you have to understand one thing. There are many, many different kinds of people in this world. The type of man who would put you in a cage and try to profit from your suffering – I’ve been hunting down that type of man my whole life. At first, I only made him uncomfortable. Now, I have the power to kill him. Do you understand, Chess Bear? I am a terror to inhuman people who live that way. And those demons that I want to kill, they are no different from the mean-spirited little goon who put you in a cage so long ago.
“Please, Chess Bear. Help me out of this cage.”
Wodan could sense the unease building in the great, shaggy sage. The beast sighed, then rose and Wodan had to move as he brushed past him. He did not look back as he left the cave.
The frustration tore through Wodan as the bear left him. Now, not only did he not know what to do, he had also pressed his companion to the point where a cold night alone was preferable to his company.
Maybe the Chess Bear knows nothing more than I do, Wodan thought, trying to console himself. Maybe my only options are to abandon the people at the fort, or throw myself at Zamael in a suicidal rush. Or maybe there really is nothing that I can…
Wodan felt eyes on him. He looked and saw the Chess Bear watching and waiting. The great bear nodded to the side, to the edge of the gully. Wodan moved to the entrance of the cave, and the Chess Bear turned and walked toward the dark forest. Again the bear stopped and waited for him. Wodan followed him, and they went off into the night.
The Chess Bear had long debated, in his own heart, whether or not Wodan should be eaten. It would be the merciful thing to do for his old friend – to put him out of his suffering. The Chess Bear was old and wise and knew many things, but in the end, he decided to take Wodan to one greater than himself. One who was older and wiser than any other in the valley. That one would judge Wodan, and decide what must be done with him.
* * *
For hours Wodan walked blindly, stumbling in darkness, listening to the Chess Bear’s nose as he sniffed and snorted about their path. The stars were hidden behind a dense black curtain of leaves, and the moon seemed to shift this way and that until Wodan had no idea where they were going.
They climbed down into a stony ravine where the roots of trees hung over them. The Chess Bear stopped suddenly. He lifted onto his hind legs, and dead leaves and twigs fell from his coat in a shower as he twisted his head this way and that. Wodan knew that the Chess Bear suspected they were being followed. Wodan remembered the invisible stalker who had led the ghouls to him many days ago. He nudged the Bear and they moved on.
They came to the wide river singing its endless note. The Bear trudged into it, splashing and holding its head above the water, and did not offer to assist Wodan. Wodan remembered how the river had seemed impassable so long ago, but it did not seem insurmountably wide at this point. Wodan went back into the forest, crouched and gathered his strength, then ran and leaped over the rushing current and splashed into the cold, muddy shallows on the other side. He scrambled onto the bank, dripping wet and freezing cold. The great bear climbed onto the bank with water streaming down his flanks and, without looking at Wodan, he continued his journey into the woods.
Th
rough cold and darkness they walked, then Wodan saw lights moving through a break in the branches ahead. Wodan felt something calling out to him. He quickened his pace and walked alongside his friend. Time weakened, then lost its hold on him, then the forest ended and they came to a clearing where the sound of a stream rushed over stones at the base of a great, round hill. Atop the hill stood a lone tree, old and weathered with wide branches held overhead and covered with silver leaves swaying in the moonlight. Thousands of glowing insects hovered, blinking purple, orange, red.
A fragrance touched him, and Wodan knew that he had been here before, but he had never seen this ancient place with his eyes open. He made his way up the grass-covered hill, each footfall a heartbeat. His mind shifted, but now he knew it was not because of any drug. His thoughts changed because the tree, the great and ancient tree, was trying to communicate with him. The thousand blinking lights were not insects speaking in senseless, mechanical binary; they were stars among the branches of the dark nursery, dancing an endless dance, singing in their own language, their own attempt to communicate with the father and crown and root of all trees. They were singing, “Beauty, beauty, horror, horror,” each a mouth belonging to the same timeless creature that changed with each age but was reborn without end.
Wodan saw the Chess Bear gallop up the hill slowly, saw each muscle flex, saw the black and white hairs bounce along waves of loose skin, and then under the tree the bear slid and rolled, slowly, slowly, rolled onto its back, eyes closing dreamily and mouth smiling full of fangs. The Chess Bear dug its spine into the ground and let its paws knead the air gently over its fat belly, and Wodan laughed, the notes extending, echoing, bouncing off one another. Though the earth below slid into unreality, like a mist pushed aside by the wind, the sound of his laughter was hard, as solid as ringing metal struck by metal, a world all its own.
Wodan saw this world shivering, existing alongside other worlds. Wodan saw his head enclosed by the Chess Bear’s mouth, saw the great jaw muscles work to crush and grind up his head, saw his own body spasm in death because he had been granted a mercy, a reprieve from a task he was not fit to undertake; then he saw himself grow old with the Chess Bear, saw himself with a wiry beard, sitting beside a stream and cleaning fish while the Chess Bear crouched in the shallows and knocked fish out so that Wodan could collect them, and Wodan knew that he had not bothered to speak a word for many years because words had become unnecessary between the two friends. Wodan saw a world where all of his friends were dead. Wodan lived in a sort of resigned contentment while monstrous beings lurched about in the earth beneath his feet, carving up the world in a frenzied, jerking dance, glutting themselves on blood and wondering when happiness would finally come after so many violent conquests. Wodan saw black things like eyeless, mouthless automatons lean forward in their thrones, watching, wondering what he would do. Their bellies were so full of blood that it was impossible to digest, the blood had grown stagnant and coagulated and full of rot, the eyeless things were full of maggots and yet still they were hungry, glutting themselves and waiting for happiness as they carved up one world after another.
Then Wodan was once again standing under the tree, bathing in the light of the dancing insects. He wiped tears from his eyes. From his strange perspective, he could see that his body was in agony, wracked by sadness, and he felt pity for the creature called Wodan because he knew that still more would be demanded of him. Then he was flooded with still more images, and these were angry, and Wodan knew then that he deserved no pity because others suffered far worse. He saw Yarek, the mightiest man in Haven finally surrounded by creatures far stronger than himself, and he wore a crown of pure terror. He saw Naarwulf completely unafraid of death but worried sick to his core that his people were turning into beasts, resources, bargaining chips, cannon fodder to be thrown at one another. He saw Jarl sitting by a fire, colder than he’d ever been, fighting off the terrible feeling that he sat beside creatures who had lost the will to live, and would only mock him if he tried to rouse them to fight for their own survival. He saw farmers and other humans hiding behind walls of wood, cursing themselves for living, for being born, and knowing that they had been taken advantage of and brought into a new land that did not need them any more than the old. But worst of all, he saw Freyja, her face covered in blood and tears and terrible lacerations, arms shattered, legs shattered, mouth screaming in senseless rage.
Wodan pulled himself back, then choked as he stopped himself from vomiting. He vowed that he would allow none of those horrors to continue. He turned to the Chess Bear and saw him looking back. The great bear looked content, but his claws were unsheathed. Wodan shook his head slowly. He looked up at the tree one last time, then looked down into the earth. He knew that the tree had a shadow, a negative image, with many branches down below. Wodan knew that that was where he must go.
Wodan turned and descended the hill. The Chess Bear barked at him.
“There is a devil stalking us in the darkness,” said Wodan, glancing back. “You should go, my friend.”
The Chess Bear sat unmoving, and swore that it would remain there, and watched as Wodan walked through the stream at the base of the hill and disappeared into the darkness of the cave.
Chapter Nineteen
The Scapegoat
Whisper into the ear of the goat all of the sins of the people. Then a man who stands in readiness will send the goat away to a lonely place, and through the scapegoat will the people be cleansed.
- from the Book of the Red
* * *
Twenty-Three Years Ago
“It’s been years,” said Childriss, entering the dusty chamber in the DoS that he had shown Didi long ago in the beginning of their friendship. “Warm spring night outside. But, for some reason, it makes sense that you would want to meet in this old forgotten freezer.”
Didi stood in the center of the round chamber, lit only by a small green torch humming in the corner, and as he turned he said, “Cold places for cold business.”
Childriss closed the door and walked about the room. He could see the dim lights of Haven in the distance. “Cold? Since when was our friendship cold, Didi?”
“Are you happy as Ethics Manager?”
“Of course not,” Childriss said without hesitation.
“No song and dance?”
“I never sing and dance unless I’m screaming at someone. Come on, Didi. You were never the kind of person who needed a lie from me before.”
“And I still don’t. I need honesty. I need the Childriss I knew so many years ago.”
“The Childriss who kisses ass and stabs backs in a play for the position of Head of the DoS and the Childriss who created life and then threw it into the incinerator are one and the same.”
Didi laughed, a sort of curt hiccupping sound. Childriss stopped, smiled, and put a hand on Didi’s bony arm. Didi knew that it was necessary for the illusion that he not shrink away. Childriss nodded, accepting the illusion, and they stood side by side and watched the stars outside.
After a long time, Childriss said, “So?”
Didi cleared his throat, then said, “I’ve thought about it, and I’ve concluded that there is no other way to fight the flesh demons but by enhancing a human being. Unnatural, immoral, whatever - the thing must be done. Only the strong survive, and I am interested in survival. I assume you still are as well, seeing as you’ve made certain concessions in your bid for mastery of the DoS.”
“Hm. You came to this conclusion yourself? Your old reluctance - gone, by your own doing?”
Fear stabbed into Didi. The subtle weapons employed by Childriss were amazingly adept. Didi felt his posturing weaken, and he fought against the impulse to surrender and tell the truth. How much did Childriss know about his secret alliance? Just how much did he know about Didi’s plans for their own “friendship”?
“Fine,” said Childriss. “Only the most autistic sort of individualist would have been confused by such a question. The older you get,
Didi, the more you stay the same.”
Could I really have him fooled? thought Didi. The man who continually chided me on my lack of social finesse - have I really gone so low as to master the master?
“You will want to use the parasite code,” said Childriss. “I still have it.”
“You’ve done nothing with it?”
“Not with the code itself, no. I have made a few variations on it. A purely theoretical venture, mind you...”
“Ah! Does that mean you know more about the function of the thing itself?”
“I still look through the code. Often. What little I’ve gathered of the thing is that it’s built into layers. In short, certain parts of the code manifest at certain times.”
“That’s no different from any other genetic blueprint.”
“Mm,” said Childriss, screwing up his eyebrows. “Yes and no. The quality that makes the blueprint so damned hard to study is that the vast majority of it is designed to sit within the shadows of the host-organism and just... wait. Most of the holy parasite, as it was called, simply bides its time. Only a little bit of it can be triggered by the host, and even then, the circumstances of one unlocking or another are...”
“Unlocking?”
Childriss sighed, then laughed and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I guess I’ve developed my own way of thinking about the blueprint. What I’m trying to say is that the thing is more complex than we’d originally thought. But it’s also simple, in that it manifests itself in stages. Stages that are triggered by great events.”
“Events?”
“Violent events.” Childriss’s eyebrows danced obscenely as he leaned in close to Didi. “The thing feeds on conflict. And while it’s designed to follow the patterns of its host, it seems that it develops a neural network all its own.”
“All... its... own...”
“Meaning - once introduced, it feeds. And once it feeds, it develops a belief system that it lives by.”
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 29