by Garon Whited
Is that a voice I hear, calling to me?
On the opposite side of this ribbon of a path, there is color and life. I hear the voices, the laughter, although I cannot make out the words. Tamara laughs, Lissette speaks, Tianna is singing, and a dozen other familiar voices chime in happily.
I run faster through the dust and bones, trying to circle around again. If I run fast enough, far enough, I will catch up to myself. Unless the path is cut and twisted around? Is it all one path, with death and destruction following me like a cloud? Or is it a simple loop with the life on one side, dust and darkness on the other? If twisted, can I run fast enough? Or must I catch the edge and swing around, landing in the light?
The path runs with me as I run along it. Does it carry me like a river or am I the engine that drives my movement? We pass through tunnels of cold stone bloody mud. Behind me I hear the rolling of a giant ball. I’ve thrown it away, but here it can still crush me, if I let it. There is no way off the path. I run faster as it crunches through bones and squelches through bloodied earth. I hear it laughing.
Ahead is a light, a candle at the end of a tunnel. I sprint for it and I feel the wind at my back as the giant Orb rolls after me, a Juggernaut pushing air ahead of it, trying to catch me, to crush me, to become me.
“You cannot escape. I am part of you.”
I want to argue, but I am busy running. I know it isn’t part of me. It’s a copy, only a copy.
“And the original,” it replies, knowing what I would say, “lives still inside you. You deny it. You resist it. So it serves me in every conflict. You will never be stronger than your own darker nature redoubled.”
It has a point, but perhaps I can be faster.
The trouble is the people. They line the tunnel, hands held out. Someone wants one thing, someone else wants another. Faceless people, or people with many faces, all pleading, begging, asking, demanding. Their outstretched hands brush against me, clinging, clutching. I want to scream at them, to order them back, away from the crushing, rumbling presence behind me, but they don’t listen, won’t listen, and the screams behind me are even louder.
Each scream, each sickening crunch seems to drive back the light. I chase it, but it retreats, as though the horrors behind me drive it away. Am I gaining? I can’t tell.
Even in the midst of my flight from a heart’s horrors, there is a voice, faint and distant, still calling to me.
There is a flash like bloody lightning and everything changes. I slow my headlong rush, walking, staring all about me. The path is not a path, but a dim and shadowed room. Beneath my feet is a mosaic floor with abstract designs. Or, no, not quite abstract. The portion about me is illuminated well enough to see, but the design is a line, twisted, braided in itself, circular. It reminds me of the Arch of Zirafel, but this is no spell, no creation of the Heru. This is merely a conductor. Faint flickers of power course through this great, twisting circle, but I only see the fraction nearest me.
A ghost walks the circle with me. He is gaunt and pale, thin and indistinct. He is a shadow of a ghost, difficult to make out. He mouths words at me though I cannot hear him. His gestures are pleading, his expression agonized. I have seen enough of wandering spirits to know what he wants. He has walked too long as a spirit and has only one desire, now—to cease, to make an end, whether into some afterlife or into oblivion does not matter. There is only the escape from the torment.
He walks with me, still trying to be heard, still trying to communicate by expression and gesture. Ahead, along our circular path, there is another. She is much like him, eager for release, and the first ghost falls behind. As I walk past her, I try to take her hands and tell her I know what she wants, but she cannot hear me. She points behind her, into the shadows outside the arc of the circle, and there is something large, something dark and grim looming there. The idea comes to me of a great, shadowed hand holding her, as a man might hold a fledging bird to prevent escape. I walk on, and she is left behind, but another stands ahead, imploring, pleading, trying for speech without the strength to speak. I have seen them before, I know it, but their faces elude my memory. They are silent things, marching by like half-reflections in a sheet of glass, yet something else—someone else?—does speak, with a voice as pale and shadowless as their forms. What are the words of this unseen presence? I cannot make them out.
I pass on, and the next ghost is absent. Instead, where I expect a ghost, there is a statue standing in the shadows, softly glowing. It is a wizard, ten feet tall and nobly featured. It reminds me of my own statue, for it holds a scroll, but this one wears robes and holds a wand in its other hand.
The eyes of the statue are alight with living, vital force. I feel the threat, the danger. This is no wandering spirit, condemned to haunt the material realm. This is different. It holds too much force to be a ghost, so it must be a celestial being. Yet it lives as a mortal man, for the colors of its spirit are those of flesh and blood.
I stop. We regard each other across a gulf of shadow. Sparks of power in the circle occasionally leap the gulf, like drops of liquid electricity falling sideways. The figure gathers in the brilliant drops, drinking them with a grimace of pain even as his flesh shimmers with the iridescent hues of power.
A shout sounds all around me, loud as thunder and bright as forty-three deadly flowers of light and smoke.
There is a sudden pain in my chest and the dream slams shut like a book.
Boss! Wake up! Firebrand demanded, again.
I finally opened my eyes. The woman standing over me drew her arm back for another swing of the knife. From the sharp ache in my ribs, she tried to stab me in my heart, but hooray for bulletproof underwear!
I raised both hands, crossed at the wrists, and caught hers on the downstroke. One hand grabbed hers, twisted, and the other batted away the knife. A moment later, I had both her hands in mine, her on the floor, and her neck under the back of my knee. She struggled, but she wasn’t a big girl. I leaned a fraction of my exceptional weight on her and pinned her in place.
I’ve been yelling at you to wake up, Boss.
I had a dream.
You had one of your psychic episodes, Firebrand corrected. You know what happens when you sleep!
Yeah, but I’m still not sure what it means. Give me a minute. I’m running on reflex. I’m not all awake, yet, and I want to orient myself.
I kept her pinned while she squirmed. I yawned and blinked, rubbed sleep out of my eyes with my free hand. I rubbed the sore spot between my fifth and sixth ribs. My fingertips came away with a trace of blood. It’s what I get for wearing open-weave armor while someone tries to knife me. Maybe I should sew some scales into it to spread impaling attacks.
Feeling more awake and oriented, I considered my captive. She wasn’t a warrior and wasn’t dressed as one. Her hands weren’t callused from weapons. They were soft. Her bone structure was much more delicate than the typical warrior and her musculature was definitely below par. She scored highly on the babe-o-meter, though. Fine eyebrows, full lips, large eyes, smooth skin, the works. She wore makeup of a sort, as well, coloring her lips and eyelids a dark purple. She wore vivid, silky skirts in shades of purple, a top resembling a collection of diaphanous scarves, and a mess of black hair, long and artfully curly, held in place with a collection of combs.
I drew one of the combs out. Part of it slid silently out of the hidden sheath, revealing a three-inch stiletto of razor steel. I placed the point alongside the bridge of her nose and smiled at her.
“I haven’t seen such a pretty assassin in ages,” I remarked. “Let me guess. You got in here claiming I sent for you?”
Her answer was to struggle harder. I moved the point of her weapon closer to her eye. She stopped struggling.
“Let me explain how this is going to go,” I told her, using my best reasonable tone. “I’m going to ask you questions. You’re going to answer. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will put your feet in a grinder and slowly mince your toes to s
hredded meat. The grinding will continue until you answer or die a hideous, painful, slow death. Are we clear?”
“My soul is prepared,” she stated, looking me in the eye and ignoring the blade. “Is yours?”
“Ah, you work for the Temple. Thank you.”
I was bluffing on both my threat and on my assumption she was a religious nut. I won my second bluff when her face twisted in fury and I had to squish her a bit to keep her from writhing out of my grip. I called for a guard and two of them clattered up the steps, burst in through the door.
“Mazhani?” asked the first, eyeing me and my captive. No doubt she was confused by the situation.
“Where’s Leisel?”
“Escorting the triskarte around the valley.” Her eyes widened as she spied the blood on my shirtfront. “Are you bleeding, sir?”
“Not anymore. Any idea where they are?”
“No, sir.”
I started stripping the jewelry—potentially deadly or not—from my captive.
“Bring me some rope and a lot of twine.” Silently, I wished for duct tape, but you can’t have everything.
“Twine?”
“Ropes are easy to wiggle out of. Twine is much more difficult.”
“At once, Mazhani!”
I continued to search my captive. Aside from an obvious dagger, she had nothing to interest me under her clothes. Her hair, though, was an armory Mary would have been proud of. Mary didn’t have as much hair to use—my captive had nearly three feet of it, unbound—so this one had the advantage.
I’m not sure how I feel about someone trying to assassinate me. On the one hand, I don’t like it when people try to kill me. On the other hand, it does imply I’ve pissed someone off enough to make them break the rules. I have the feeling—it’s only a feeling, probably based on local meals—assassination is a serious faux pas. I should probably ask.
The guards brought me the rope and twine. They bound my captive at my instructions—wrists, ankles, and knees—while I put on some real clothes. My underwear is more than sufficient, but I can be self-conscious. Once I dressed and they trussed her up, I went on to tie loops of twine around each pair of her fingers, making sure her hands stayed behind her back. The rope itself was probably superfluous, but it made for good handholds when carrying her down and out of the tower. I ignored the yelp and the cursing until we were outside.
“Do you like having teeth?” I asked, hoisting her up by her ropes, one-handed, and shaking her. “How about a tongue?”
She shut up, glaring at me.
I slung her up on Bronze’s broad rump and pulled out my pocket mirror. Leisel answered after a bit.
“Sir?”
“I have a Temple assassin who tried to stick a knife in me. She’s alive and relatively unharmed. I’d like to give her back to the priests since I suspect she came in with them. The triskarte showed up today, yes?”
“They’re here,” she agreed.
“Seems quite a coincidence. Where are you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, forcing a casual tone. “We’re on our way to Akmenogles—” Literally translated, it was coal-mining town. “—to look around a little before nightfall. We’ll probably overnight there and see Terauda—” makers of steel “—tomorrow. I’m sure you have someone on hand who can answer that more fully.”
“Ah. They’re right there and can hear you. Got it. I’ll interrogate the subject and get back to you later tonight. Need anything from me?”
“It is my pleasure to be of service, sir.”
“Right. See you later.” I signed off and turned to my captive. “You have no idea how unlucky you are.”
She spat in my face. Instantly, Bronze galloped off with her about a hundred yards. It hurt me deeply to think she had so little faith in my own self-control. Then again, I’m an almost-soulless monster and she knows it.
I carefully wiped spittle from my face and then my hands. I didn’t chase after them, merely walked calmly. Bronze waited where she stood, letting me have a nice, long walk as an opportunity to consider exactly what I planned to do. When I reached them, I circled around to look my captive in the eye.
“I take it back. You’re not unlucky. You’re stupid.”
She tried to spit at me again, but I backhanded her hard enough to bloody her lips. While she was dazed, I took long locks of her hair, wrapped them across and in her mouth, and tied them like a gag.
“Congratulations You get to see the new dungeons.”
The underground portion of the keep developed even more quickly than the aboveground structures. The dungeon was now a collection of rooms, all connecting through the basement area under the tower. A second, even lower level was present, but still only tall enough to be a crawlspace. On the first sublevel, someone—someone? Leisel.—saw to it the open doorways were equipped with thick, heavy doors.
I need to find time to move the prisoners from the central room to one of the satellite rooms. I don’t think I want them watching every bit of traffic through the basement. Then again, parading my would-be assassin past them made something of an impression on her. Maybe it was seeing the manner of their restraints.
Once we were in a private room, I propped her in a sitting position against one wall. I settled into a Japanese seiza position, kneeling a few feet from her, and considered things carefully.
Maybe it was Bronze. She ran away with my captive in order to keep her alive. This implied many things to me. I know I need to work on my anger management issues, but I hadn’t thought it was quite so immediate. Bronze disagreed. When la belle dame sans merci spat in my face, she was in mortal peril and Bronze knew it before I did.
This is a good thing and a bad thing all at once. It’s good Bronze knew it and acted. It’s bad she had to, and also bad I didn’t realize it myself.
My captive simply glared at me, face framed by tight bundles of hair leading to her makeshift gag. It didn’t stop her from breathing hard or mouthing indistinct insults, but it worked well enough to keep her from spitting. I ignored the muffled insults and regarded her intently. What was I going to do with her? What did I want to do with her? I had a whole laundry list of things I might do, but sometimes it’s good to question myself, to be more aware of how much of a bad-tempered, cowardly hypocrite I really am.
In asking, I found my answer. I wanted to hurt her.
This was shocking, but not surprising, and it saddened me. I dislike to cause pain for no reason. There should be a purpose, a point behind it, even if the pain is only a landmark on the way to gory, dismembered death. Punishment, discipline, whatever—sure, pain has its place. True, I don’t like torture to extract information—I don’t even like painlessly stealing it from someone’s mind—because I feel it’s a violation of free will. It seems a silly quirk, when you think about it. I’ve done things I don’t like. I’ve done things far worse. Nevertheless, pain for the sake of pain does not interest me.
Except now I found it necessary to admit I didn’t want anything from her. Nothing besides the privilege of watching her suffer.
Nobody said being a monster was easy.
“If I untie your hair, will you use your mouth to talk?”
She seethed at me without answering.
Boss?
Hmm?
She’s terrified.
Not yet, she isn’t! I thought back. Give me a minute!
Not of you, Firebrand corrected. Of a priest.
Hold on for one cotton-pickin’ second. Do you mean to tell me someone is more afraid of a priest than of me?
I find it hard to believe, too, but she doesn’t know you like I do.
I had to admit, Firebrand had a point.
She looks more angry than scared, though, I protested, even as I realized: I suppose if she’s scared of someone else, it could be expressed as anger at me.
I think it is. You want to ask questions while I listen for answers?
Not especially, but if she’s been terrorized enough, I might not
have a choice. I’d rather she answered me.
Good luck with that, Boss.
My sword is almost as cynical as I am.
My captive, meanwhile, continued to glare back at me. Why was she so afraid of someone else? Why was she trying to kill me? Who, specifically, sent her? What was their reason? What did they hope to accomplish, aside from my death?
I didn’t have much to go on, not even enough information to make good guesses. This is the drawback to trying to avoid all contact with religion. For a while, it keeps me out of trouble, but when it inevitably shows up, I have no idea why. Did someone figure something out and report me? Did the gods hand out some omens and portents? Or is the Temple carrying out a political agenda without knowing what I am?
From the look on her face, she wasn’t likely to educate me willingly.
Come on, Boss. You know she isn’t going to talk.
Maybe you know that, but I’m having issues.
Softie.
Sometimes. There’s more going on here than some angry bitch trying to knife me.
So ask questions!
And I will. I think I’ll ask questions of other people, though, before I resort to straining her brain.
This is because she’s pretty, isn’t it?
That may have something to do with it, I admitted, but I think it has more to do with me being a worse person than I used to be. I’m becoming less of a nice monster and more of a total monster. I don’t like it. If I don’t do anything about it, I’ll like it even less.
Is this the time to have ethical issues? Can’t we just do what we need to this once and get it over with?
I’m trying not to compromise what I think of as my ethics for the sake of expedience.
Firebrand muttered something about inconvenience, but I ignored this.
Leisel was busy, so who else could I bother about the workings of the Temple? Someone who, for certain, wouldn’t rat me out for either not knowing or for simply asking?
Didn’t I promise Hazir a communications mirror?
I found a guard and had her take charge of keeping my prisoner.