Husk: A Maresman Tale

by Prior, D. P.

  He was suddenly aware of Maisie’s perfume clinging to the insides of his nostrils. It still inflamed him. How could that be right? His own mother, for shog’s sake.

  “Jeb…”

  “No, Marlec.” Jeb broke away from him, reeled across the cell. “Cut the crap. Just tell it to me plain.”

  “Like they do in Malfen?” Marlec attempted a gentle smile. He seemed heavier somehow, his head bowed, his eyes glistening with moisture.

  “I always knew,” Jeb said, voice rising shriller than he’d have liked. “Always knew she did it—killed my dad. When Mortis… when Mortis came for me, I knew he was telling the truth, but I went on, you know, just getting by, not paying it much mind.”

  “As I would have done, Jeb,” Marlec said. “As would almost anyone.”

  “She’s a monster, Marlec. You’ve felt what she can do, and by the Abyss, I’ve seen what she leaves behind.”

  “But you’ve seen this kind of thing before,” Marlec said. “It goes with the job.”

  Jeb shook his head and waved his hand in denial. It took a moment for him to find the words. “Not like this. No, this is worse. Much worse. Those Outlanders… It was obscene; and the three Maresmen she killed, all tougher men than me, and look at the state they were found in. Your lot are right this time, Marlec. Husk isn’t strong enough to describe her. She’s a demon. Even you can’t believe in redemption for demons.”

  Marlec said nothing, and the silence slowly came to a boil.

  “And I’m her son,” Jeb said, wishing he had a whiskey to combat the dryness in his throat. “So, tell me, am I damned?”

  “You want the honest truth?”

  Jeb nodded, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth. His heart thudded in his ribcage, and blood pounded in his ears.

  “Now, this is not me, but the Lord who speaks.”

  Every muscle in Jeb’s body tensed, and he bit down on his lip to keep from screaming out for Marlec to get on with it.

  “No one is condemned for what they are.”

  Jeb spat a silent curse. “That’s for people. A husk is hardly a—”

  “No-thing,” Marlec said. “Nothing is condemned for being what the Lord made it to be.”

  “But husks—”

  “I know,” Marlec said. He pressed in closer to Jeb, straighter than before, eyes unwavering and full of certainty. “Dreams of the Cynocephalus, the dog-headed ape at the heart of Aethir. What do you think he is, Jeb? I know they say he’s a god—the god of this world—but that’s just superstitious nonsense. What is the Cynocephalus but one of the Lord’s creatures? Son of the Demiurgos, pah! Even that old demon was created; even the Father of Lies is loved by our Lord.”

  “But he was condemned,” Jeb said. “Imprisoned at the heart of the Abyss.”

  “By his brother, the Archon,” Marlec said. “Not by the Lord. Although, ultimately, it is all the Lord’s will. Now, I’ll grant you, if anyone is beyond redemption, it’s the Demiurgos, but that’s the only exception I’m willing to make.”

  “You think she can change? You think my mother can—”

  Marlec shut his eyes and let out a long sigh. “You were right, Jeb, and I was a fool. I only thank the Lord she was merciful.”

  “Mercy? Is that what it was?”

  Marlec shrugged. “I can only hope so. But you, Jeb. It’s you we need to worry about. It’s not what you are that determines your fate. It’s not your nature; it’s what you do, the choices you make.”

  A question lingered in the air between them, but Jeb wasn’t sure what it was. He turned back to the window and pressed his face up against the bars. Already, the suns were falling, and gray light was inching over the scattered shacks and the darkening waves on the shore. The wind was picking up, and a woman was wrestling fiercely flapping clothes from a washing line. He watched her as she filled a basket and struggled indoors with it. Marlec was still as a mouse, and Jeb was thankful for that.

  … the choices you make. It did nothing to soothe the void opening in his guts, but they were words he could latch on to, maybe even words he could live by. Perhaps that was the clue, the third option he’d been seeking. Whatever he did, it was better than passively waiting for the sheriff or the Maresmen to decide his fate for him. Marlec was right, in that respect. It all came down to choice.

  He turned back to the monk. “Can you get me out of here?”

  “What?” Marlec looked like he’d been slapped in the face. “No. No, no, no. I can’t.”

  “I don’t mean break me out. But there must be something you can do.” He didn’t know what. “Speak to the sheriff? Make him understand?”

  Marlec cut the air with his hand. “No, Jeb. This isn’t what I meant. You are here because the Lord has put you here, at this time, for his own purposes, and ultimately for your own good.”

  “So I do nothing?”

  “What can you do?” Marlec looked around the cell, walked to the iron door and put his palm on it. “Even if you could escape, the question is, should you?”

  “That’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard,” Jeb said.

  “Is it? Is it, really? Think, Jeb. Think about what we’ve been talking about. Can you be saved? Yes, but only through redemptive suffering, not by opposing the rule of law.”

  “And if the law is unjust?” Jeb said.

  “Then it is, and your sufferings will not go unnoticed.”

  “That a fact? Are you insane, Marlec? You think I should put up with this and go quietly to the gallows, all in the hope of… of what, exactly?”

  “Your eternal reward.”

  Jeb dropped his chin to his chest and chuckled. “Right. So, I surrender to my fate and everything will be fine once I’m dead. Is that the gist of it?”

  “That’s a bit of an over-simplification.”

  Jeb came alongside him at the door and rapped on it with his knuckles. “Thanks for dropping by, Marlec.”

  “I’ll come again,” Marlec said. “If the Lord wishes it.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t.” Jeb knocked harder this time, and footsteps approached from the other side.

  “Just one thing,” Jeb said as the first of the bolts was thrown back. “My mother—the one I remember from when I was a boy… Was she…” Was she real? Was she a person, or just a surrogate used by the succubus? How much of what he was came from her, and how much from the demon possessing her? He could almost feel the husk nature bubbling beneath his skin, poisoning his blood, feeding off his human frailties like a parasite.

  “If the Lord wills it,” Marlec said, “and you get out of here, why don’t you ask her—Maisie… the husk?”

  The last bolt slid back and the door opened a crack, enough for Jeb to see Sheriff Tanner rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

  Marlec hesitated, held up a finger for the sheriff to give him a moment, then sucked in his top lip as he looked Jeb in the eye.

  “My lack of humility… I was, you might say, a pious soul. I would spend time alone in the chapel after our community prayers were concluded. I suppose that made me the logical suspect…” His cheek twitched, and he pressed a finger and thumb to his eyes, kneading them. “The novice master, who was never warm toward me, happened upon the broken statue of Our Lord’s mother. He reported it to the abbot, said it must have been me.”

  “Was it?”

  Marlec shook as he gave a slight chuckle. “Not unless I walk in my sleep.”

  “You coming or what?” the sheriff cut in.

  Marlec threw a hand out, caught the edge of the door before it could be closed on him. “You see, I think the abbot knew I was innocent. The problem was, I defended myself quite vigorously, when what was required was a simple act of submission.”

  “And that’s why they made you leave, because you told the truth?”

  Marlec nodded. “Pride, Jeb. When a man is full of himself, there is no room left for the Lord.” He slipped through the door, as if his duty were done.

  “Then your abbot’s
an ass,” Jeb said. He felt his blood boil at the stupidity of what he’d just heard, and more so because he should have seen it coming. Marlec was like the rest of the Wayists, befriending folk just so they could pounce the minute their guard was down. “And you’re a liar. Said you wouldn’t proselytize, remember?”

  Marlec’s face reappeared in the gap. “I wasn’t—”

  “There you go again,” Jeb said. “Defending yourself. Accept it, Marlec: you’re a lying shogger and a faithless coward. You try this crap on me, but one look from my mother and you lose your backbone. All that bullshit about me being the instrument of her salvation! Is that surrender to your god’s will, or are you just looking out for yourself like the rest of us?”

  Marlec’s mouth started working, but nothing coherent came out. “I-I-I,” he stammered, but then the sheriff yanked him back and the door slammed shut.

  23

  FINGERS OF SHADOW crept across the cell floor. They merged where they touched, oozed into puddles of darkness.

  Jeb lay back on the straw and stifled a yawn. He watched with detachment as the last shreds of gray light choked to nothing, and the bars on the window melted into the uncompromising black of night.

  Any other time, any other place, he’d have welcomed sleep, but his mind wouldn’t stop racing after that elusive third option. Problem was, the more he thought, the more he knew he’d never find it, and with each dead end, it seemed the walls pressed in a little closer, the ceiling dropped a fraction lower.

  He woke without the sense he’d ever fallen asleep. It was hot; hotter than it should have been so far into the night. Sulfur was thick in his nostrils, and the insides of his eyelids glowed red.

  He shot off the straw and snapped instantly alert.

  —Don’t wanna be setting that straw on fire now, do we?

  Fire!

  Tanner wouldn’t have…

  Jeb stamped on the straw, expecting to see it smoldering… but there was no straw, only coal—a pathway of blackest coal stretching along the banks of a river of tar.

  Blood pounded in his ears, and his heart lurched halfway to his throat. He spun a tight circle, eyes wide and unblinking. Flames licked across the surface of the black river winding its way like an artery through a charred tunnel. Stalactites hung heavy, ready to drop, and wisps of steam wafted from the sludge. They wove together in shapes vaguely human and drifted forlornly down the tunnel, wailing like the wind.

  An icy blast hit him in the face, and in its wake he could make out a ghostly figure wading upstream toward him. Each step it came closer, his guts twisted, and cold sweat broke out on his skin. It was a man—some kind of knight?—encased in the most intricate plate armor that left nothing exposed save for the head. At first, Jeb thought the man was completely bald, and with the whitest skin he’d ever seen, but then he realized there was no skin at all, just a skull with glinting rubies for eyes. Instinctively, Jeb shielded his face from them. He tensed and waited, but the man kept up his sluggish wade through the black waters, showing no indication he’d even seen Jeb.

  A greater dark tugged at the corner of Jeb’s eye, and he turned to see a dense shadow undulating along the same route the man had taken. Oily tentacles thrashed about a central mass that seemed to smother the orange glow of the flames. Jeb fumbled for his saber, changed his mind and went for the flintlock. He took aim, fingers numb, arm shaking so much he couldn’t have hit a mountain at point blank range. A sinuous limb flailed at his face—and passed right through it, as spectral and unreal as the armored man had been.

  Jeb blinked, and then he was in a cavern formed from the same black rock as the tunnel. Stalactites and stalagmites met in midair like the teeth of a colossal dragon. At the heart of the cavern, a block of ice as tall as one of New Jerusalem’s towers reached from floor to ceiling. It held the shadowy form of a giant within, and Jeb peered up into piercing eyes of violet. They were studying him with such intensity, he felt the flesh peel from his bones, exposing him to the core.

  Images swirled about his mind, like flotsam caught in a whirlpool: a man—except for the eyes, the spitting image of Jeb, only plumper, maybe a few years older. His throat had been torn out, and his hands could do nothing to dam the flood of crimson. Next came a woman with golden hair—his mother, the one he recalled—licking blood from her lips; then a slavering wolf-man in mid-pounce, followed by a raven-haired beauty with tufts of gray fur starting to sprout from her face and arms. There was something about her—the tone of her skin, the nose, or was it the chin?—that reminded him of Davy Fana.

  A short, stocky man coalesced in her place. He wore the same fluted plate mail as the ruby-eyed man, only his face was hidden by a dark helm. Severed heads hung from his belt, peeked above his shoulders on spikes; and in his hands he held a blood-drenched axe with runes carved into its black blades.

  Abruptly, the vortex stilled, and the last of the images dispersed like smoke from a campfire. Only the giant remained, frozen and unmoving, though his eyes had closed, as if he were bored. Jeb reached out to touch the ice and recoiled. It was so cold it burned, and prickles of malevolence seeped beneath his skin. His blood caught fire in response, and the husk-lust was suddenly upon him.

  Something gurgled and groaned to his right—Sheriff Tanner, naked, sweat pouring down his hirsute body. His hands covered his crotch, and spurts of blood gushed up between his fingers.

  A sigh to his left made Jeb spin back. The scent of honeysuckle hit him, then warm flesh pressed against him. Insistent hands pulled his face to a breast, and he sucked and licked like it was air to a drowning man. His heart clamored in his chest, and lightning coursed through his veins. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked the woman’s head back. She had no face, save for the contours of her cheeks, the ridge of her nose, the gaping void of her mouth. She pulled against his grasp, slowly, inexorably leaning in till her hot breath tickled his lips.

  Pressure surged within him, and he stepped back, pushed her head down, and gasped. A cloying chill took hold of him, set his stomach writhing, as if it held a nest of icy serpents. He shoved her away and dropped to his knees. Snakes wormed their way into his chest, his throat, and he vomited them forth in an endless stream.

  His eyes snapped open, and he wiped the filth from his face, wincing at the rank taste in his mouth.

  Straw.

  He was lying on straw.

  In the dark, he could just about make out the bars on the window, the line of buckets on the floor.

  A door bolt was thrown back, and Jeb froze. The image of Sheriff Tanner bleeding out between his fingers shot to mind. The second bolt clunked, and a key scratched in the lock.

  More than likely, Tanner was ducking beneath the law he so highly esteemed, and coming at night to get the job done on the quiet. Either that, or the Maresmen had arrived.

  Jeb scuttled back against the far wall, started to get his feet under him.

  The lock clicked, and the door inched open. It clanged when it struck the stone of the wall. Someone moved into the doorway, silhouetted against the soft glow of an oil lamp in the room behind. By no stretch of the imagination could it have been Tanner.

  “Oh, you threw up,” Maisie said, though her twang was gone. “Poor dear. It’s the effect I have on people.”

  Jeb swallowed down his pounding heart. He tried to look past her, into the adjoining room. “Where’s the sheriff? What have you done to him?”

  “Done? Me? Why nothing. Sheriff Tanner is just being accommodating.”

  A likely story, Jeb thought. Last impression Tanner had given was that he was gonna bring her in, dead or alive.

  “Between you and me, I think he has a thing for Maisie,” she said, and flicked her hair back. “Of course, going by her memories, the attention wasn’t exactly welcome.”

  “And the other one?”—the man who’d brought his food.

  “Not my type, darling.”

  Jeb scoffed. “Still alive, then.”

  “They both are. What do you
think I am, a monster? I’ve just persuaded them to take a break. They work so hard, you know, what with being the only two law men in town.”

  “You expect me to believe Tanner just let you walk in here? What, did he tell you to let me go, too?”

  Maisie—he couldn’t bring himself to call her anything else—rolled her eyes and pouted. “He’s given us time together, darling, that’s all. Let’s not talk about him; let’s talk about you. This sickness has me worried. You can’t blame a mother for caring.”

  “It was nothing. Just a bad dream.”

  “I know, dear. I know.” She started to walk slowly around the walls, keeping her eyes locked to Jeb’s, trailing her fingertips across the stone behind her. “But it wasn’t all bad now, was it?”

  Jeb got to his feet and circled away from her. When she stopped, so did he. He glanced at the open door, tensed for a sprint, but something about her easy smile stopped him. He was fast—faster than most—but he had no idea what she was capable of. She’d already entered his dreams, he was certain of that. Already worked her spell on him.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, tilting her head to one side and batting her eyelids. “Your weak stomach is proof you’re immune, and in any case, I would never harm you. Not ever.” She shot the last at him like an arrow. The words almost palpably hit Jeb between the eyes, and all the while her gaze tracked him, gauged his reaction.

  “Then why? In the dream—”

  “Blood calls to blood. You felt it before, remember, and you were awake then.”

  “And you didn’t?” Feel it, he meant.

  She narrowed her eyes and frowned.

  “You walked away, at the Crawfish,” Jeb said.

  “Well, what do you expect? I lay with you, I have to kill you, Jebediah Skayne.” She annunciated each syllable of his name as if she were speaking a foreign language. “I won’t do that. Not to you. Not to my only child.”

  “Only?” He was going to say, “I’m sure you have more,” given the number of men she’d taken—and those were just the ones he knew about from recent weeks. Shog only knew how many others there’d been over the years. Before he could say more, though, she cut across him.