by Kenyon, Nate
“Let him tell it,” the woman in the sack dress said, motioning toward the storyteller. She grinned, exposing black gaps where her front teeth should be. “The city’s got troubles enough. We could use a good story or two.”
The bartender, built like a barbarian, scowled and resumed scrubbing the bar with a dirty rag, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.
“It’s no story, I assure you,” the narrator said quickly. “Every word is true.”
The fire was hot at his back. A trickle of sweat ran from a receding hairline down his temple. He nodded once at the woman, his gray-whiskered jowls twitching with the slightest smile, before settling back into a proper expression of abject terror.
“Where was I? Ah, yes. This was the lost tomb of a powerful Horadric mage, mind you, one who had been corrupted by the most foul evil and who conspired with demons. The mage was long dead, but my master had confirmed through extensive research that his resting place was surely haunted and protected by deadly spells. We all suspected what might await us belowground was not of this world, and not one—man, woman, or the young lass who had helped lead us to the cursed place—was willing to go first. And yet we had to proceed, because the very fate of Sanctuary itself depended upon it.
“ ‘Twas then that an inhuman cry came from below, like some kind of creature tortured upon the rack and torn limb from limb! The sound of death itself. I was consumed with a fear that bled the strength from my bones, but al-Hazir grabbed the torch from the wizard and marched to the steps. ‘Hurry up, then,’ he said. ‘I may be only a poor travel scribe, but I shall provide the first light upon this black demon’s hole!’ ”
His voice grew louder as he described the descent into the tomb. The crowd murmured, and the sound of scraping stool legs momentarily drowned out what the fat man said next as more patrons turned to face him. Several more coins jingled into the hat; many listeners shook their heads and laughed at such nonsense, while others smiled uneasily. Caldeum was a city in turmoil, and tales of black magic and demons always served to spark the imaginations of its citizens.
At a table in the corner, about ten feet away, a blond man sat with his hands wrapped around a mug of mead, only the slightest tilt of his head giving any indication that he was also listening. He wore the plain, dust-colored robes of a nomad, a black sash around his waist with the sheath of a short sword tucked into it. The man was slim, his angular features in shadow. Nothing else in particular about him stood out. He did not appear to be a native of Caldeum, but if asked which lands he properly belonged to, nobody in the tavern would have been able to say. Since he had entered the Wanderer, the other patrons had left him alone, as if sensing his reluctance for company.
As the narrator’s tale grew, his stubby arms began waving so wildly that he threatened to topple backward off his stool at any moment. His master, al-Hazir, encountered massive, inhuman beasts made of stone and sand, the storyteller said, and defeated them with his wits when the other adventurers failed with their spells and swords. “Kulle had been beheaded by the Horadrim centuries ago, to keep him from rising from the dead,” the man said. “We found the grisly remains in a ritual chamber, where the witch began her spells in spite of my master’s warnings. Al-Hazir had read the Demonicus, written by Zoltun Kulle himself—”
“Aw, get out with you!” the bartender suddenly shouted. He had continued scrubbing furiously at the bar’s scratched and worn surface with the filthy cloth as the fat man rambled on, and his face had grown red with rage. “I’ve heard enough! Peddle your nonsense on the streets—not in my place of business!”
The lyre player stopped abruptly, and the few remaining patrons who had been ignoring the spectacle around the fireplace turned to stare. The fat man blinked furiously. “Another round, Marley, for your troubles—”
The bartender slapped the cloth down, removing a stained apron and stepping out from behind the bar. He picked up a piece of split wood from a pile by the wall and brandished it like a club, marching toward the narrator. “Not for you. Now, get out, I said.” He waved the wood at the circle of listeners by the fireplace. “The rest of you can go with him and set up on the corner in the cold, if you’re still of a mind to listen to such swill. Or spend your coin to fill your bellies here, where it’s warm.”
The bartender tossed the wood roughly onto the fire. The crowd grumbled as sparks flew up and a cloud of black smoke puffed over those who occupied the circle of stools, making them cough and draw back. Other patrons in the tavern laughed as the storyteller, still protesting, stumbled drunkenly when he rose. He grabbed his hat, nearly spilling the coins as the bartender took his arm while muttering more curses under his breath.
“Go find your master,” the bartender said, and led him toward the exit. “Perhaps he can cast a spell on your tongue to stop it from wagging.”
“I beg you to reconsider,” the storyteller said, making one last stand as the bartender flung the door wide and a gust of icy air blew in. “I have much to tell, things that the people must hear! Al-Hazir has met Tyrael himself, the archangel of Justice—”
“I don’t care if he knows where the boy emperor last shat,” the bartender said. “He won’t do it in here, and neither will you.”
He pushed the fat man out. The door slammed closed, cutting off the cold. For a moment, the fire guttered, casting wavering shadows across the faces of the people watching. None of them moved. Then the bartender motioned to the lyre player, and the off-key melody began again, and people turned back to their drinks, some of them still laughing as the fire crackled and spit.
Nobody noticed when the blond man from the corner table stood a few moments later and quietly slipped to the door, disappearing into the blustery night like a ghost.
Outside, the Wanderer’s weathered wooden sign banged and slapped against its post, chains rattling in the icy chill. Gusts of wind threw grit from the street in stinging sheets and brought clumps of straw and the smell of dung from nearby stables. Several torches had already gone out, and the evening moon was masked by clouds, adding to the gloom.
Jacob of Staalbreak took a moment to raise the hood of his tunic and tighten it around his neck before squinting through the blowing sand for the storyteller’s location. Tyrael, he’d said. The archangel who carried El’druin. The fat man had gotten many of the details surrounding the resurrection of Zoltun Kulle spectacularly wrong; he was a buffoon who had likely never come close to an actual demon. But his casual mention of the archangel as he was being tossed out on his ear had sent a charge through Jacob. He had to know whether there was a kernel of truth to the story.
The proprietor of an alchemist’s shop was frantically hammering thick-hewn boards across the shutters to keep them from blowing off. The sound echoed through the empty street like the hollow booms of battle axes falling upon shields. Other than that, the city seemed abandoned, everyone else hunkered down against the storm. Jacob spotted the fat man just before he faded into the darkness, his back hunched against the wind, staggering with drink. Jacob set off, moving quickly and closing the gap.
The storyteller turned a corner and kept going at a regular pace, never looking back. He had emptied the coins into his pocket and set the old cap on his head, and it bobbed with each step. As he walked, his strides steadied. By the time he had reached a muddy street of ramshackle hovels on the outskirts of Caldeum, the fat man was no longer staggering at all, and Jacob was only a few paces behind.
This section of the city near the trade tents was mostly inhabited by day laborers and prostitutes, thieves and madmen, and there were no torches. The shadows deepened, only the vaguest shapes revealed. As drunk as he had appeared, the storyteller did not belong here—even guardsmen did not often come after dark. The dwellings were made of mud and sand, their roofs thatched with cornhusks that hissed and rattled in the wind. The sound masked Jacob’s footsteps, but the fat man would not have heard him regardless; he had spent many years learning how to approach his target with stealth
and cunning.
Perhaps the loss of the Sword of Justice, El’druin, had left him weaker, Jacob thought, or more desperate. The sword would have given him a better sense of this man’s true intentions. Jacob had been roaming these lands for nearly twenty years, seeking out places where the balance between right and wrong had become skewed, and the archangel Tyrael’s sword had become as much a part of him as breathing. Without it, he felt blind to the outcome, fumbling about in the dark until his hands met resistance, and that was a dangerous thing, particularly here, where he might be knifed for his boots.
He was no hero, not anymore. He had never considered himself one, even if others might have disagreed; he had simply dispensed justice the way the sword demanded. But he had come this far, and turning back now made even less sense. He had to see how things would end.
Jacob could barely notice the fat man’s bulk as he made for the largest of the dwellings, the only one with any light. A reddish glow flickered from a small window set within the extra-thick mud walls, enough to make the hovel stand out like a beacon in the night. Perhaps the storyteller was drawn to it at random, searching for a warm place away from the storm’s icy breath. Or perhaps he did belong here, after all. Although his clothing indicated he might have once had money, no member of Caldeum’s gentry would have been caught dead at the Wanderer. These streets stood as the final outpost on the way to oblivion.
Jacob caught him at the door. The fat man, fumbling at the rough, looped clasp of rope that held it shut, startled at the hand on his shoulder and let out a small cry. Jacob turned him and found the man’s face bled of all color, white skin standing out like a phantom in the dark. He was about the same height but had two hundred pounds on Jacob, if not more. Still, he wasn’t in any condition to present a threat.
“Your story,” Jacob said to him. “How does it end?”
“I b-beg your pardon,” the fat man stuttered, his piggish eyes bulging as he peered into the shadowed recesses of Jacob’s hood. “I—I don’t have any money—”
The wind tore a cornhusk free from the roof and sent it tumbling and scratching down to the ground. “What you said back at the Wanderer. What do you know about the archangel Tyrael?”
“I—nothing. I mean, not really. I’m just looking to make coin for a meal.” The fat man’s eyes squinted, seeming to search for any kind of connection. “Have you been sent here to hunt down poor Abd al-Hazir?”
“Al-Hazir, the travel scribe? Is he inside?”
The confusion on the fat man’s face seemed more than was warranted by the question. He opened his mouth as if to answer, but nothing came out. Instead, he made a fumbling move toward the pocket of his trousers, spilling its contents onto the ground at his feet.
Coins rolled in the dust. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head and backing away until he was against the door. “Take whatever I have, just leave me be . . . or are you some kind of demon come for my life?”
Jacob did not answer him. He scooped up a medallion that had dropped from the man’s pocket and held it aloft by the gold chain. It winked in the red glow from the window. The surface was inscribed with the image of scales, an alchemist’s charm. A chill ran through Jacob as his heart skipped a beat.
“Where did you get this?”
A moan drifted across the dark. At first, Jacob thought it might be the wind around the eaves, but it came from within the dwelling.
There was nothing but the rustle and hiss of corn for a long moment.
And then came a woman’s high, piercing scream.
The fat man moved faster than Jacob had thought possible. He glanced at the window, and when he looked back, the door to the dwelling was yawning open, and the storyteller was gone.
Jacob shoved the medallion into his tunic and stepped through the doorway, into the deep gloom. The smell of rotten meat was thick in the air. He slipped the hood from his face and drew a short sword, a family heirloom, from its sheath, holding the worn wooden grip with the blade pointed out. The front room was completely bare except for a bale of hay in one corner. A stone fireplace stood next to it, but the coals were cold and long dead.
The man was nowhere to be seen. The red glow was coming from another room, deeper inside the home. Jacob paused, listening, just outside a second door that hung open a crack. He could hear rustlings from the other side.
Whatever you might find in there is not worth the risk. And yet he felt compelled to follow the storyteller. The medallion . . . and the woman screaming. It meant something important. He pushed the door open. The door squealed like a stuck pig as it swung wide, ticking against the wall where it came to rest.
Inside the next room, a half-circle of sticklike shadows stood around a bound figure on a chair, slender and clearly female. A filthy cape had been draped across her shoulders, and a sack had been tied around her neck, masking her face. The shadows were men in dark robes, and they held long, curved, wicked-looking knives that gleamed blood-red in the light from glowing runes drawn on the worn wooden floorboards. Jacob did not recognize the runes, but the ritual they described would surely end in bloodshed.
It was not the first time this room had been used for evil. He recoiled, breath catching in his throat, which had suddenly gone dry. Spatters of old blood, black as pitch, speckled the walls and floor.
Cultists, in service to the witch.
He had thought the Coven had been wiped out by now, or at least scattered to the wind after Maghda’s death. Jacob held still, his sword out, his heart racing. His long-dead father’s words came back to him: Don’t go rushing in like a wounded bull unless you want it to be your last fight. He had broken a basic rule, one he had followed faithfully before. He considered turning to run; Jacob was no match for them, not anymore. He was no longer the avatar of Justice now that El’druin was gone, vanishing in the night and leaving him powerless.
But if he ran, the woman would die. She is an innocent. He could not let that happen.
The room was silent for a beat, and then the men turned their hooded faces toward him as one. The creak of the chair as the woman struggled sounded desperate and ugly, and Jacob could almost feel the cold bite of the cultists’ blades as if they were against his own flesh, sense his lifeblood leaking out and painting the floor red.
A noise came from behind him. Jacob whirled and found the fat man had somehow gotten around to flank him, although he couldn’t have missed him on the way through. The man now stood blocking the exit, meaty arms folded across his chest.
The fat man chuckled and shook his head. “Jacob of Staalbreak.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You have gotten lazy in your retirement. Did you really think it would be such an easy thing, robbing me of the spoils of my labors? Did you think I would tell you everything you want to know without a fight?”
“Do I—Have we met?”
The fat man chuckled again. “Not in this flesh.”
He reached up and clawed at his face, running his nails through puffy jowls, pulling his own skin down in long yellow strings that stretched and cracked like clay in the sun. Exposed beneath it was a dripping monstrosity of glistening sinew and muscle and horned bone, red eyes glowing as if with the fires of the Hells far beneath their feet.
“Bar’aguil,” Jacob whispered. He had encountered this demon before, years ago. The Burning Hells had been pushed back, but their minions were still wandering Sanctuary and thirsting for innocents’ blood. He thought back to the tavern, the casual mention of Tyrael; with little effort, the seemingly bumbling fool had drawn him out into the storm. A trap had been set, and he had walked right into it.
And the medallion? The chill in Jacob’s blood deepened. What that meant was too terrible to imagine—
“Murderer,” the demon hissed, moving forward. The flesh of the former storyteller hung from his glowing face like a grotesque mask. “Hypocrite. Monster. You have hunted us for years. It is time to repay the favor.”
“Maghda is dead. And Be
lial is long gone.”
“We are in service to new masters now.” The demon scuttled ahead like an insect, then stopped, cocking his head at Jacob. “You would be surprised to hear of it. But you won’t live that long. Do you know what we’ll do, murderer? Do you know where you will end up, once we are finished with your bones?”
Jacob swung the sword one way and then the other, trying to keep both sides at bay. The hooded cultists had also shifted toward him, and he felt the old squeeze of panic begin low in his belly.
When one of them leaped at him, Jacob barely had time to turn fully in that direction before his attacker was draped across his shoulders, his foul breath in his face, the smell of meat heavy and sour.
The weight of the man’s body drove Jacob down. But he had gotten the blade under the cultist’s ribs. Yanking upward as he fell, Jacob felt a hot gush of blood wet his robe. They landed hard. The man grunted and moaned, twitching, his legs shuddering against the floor.
Before he could push the dying cultist away, the others had Jacob by the arms, lifting him and twisting cruelly at his sword hand until he dropped the blade. The two largest ones pinned him against the wall, feet off the ground, as Bar’aguil approached, face dripping blood and fat, demon eyes glowing in the shadows. Bar’aguil reached out a hand, the tips of the fingers now split like cooked sausages, claws extending from them and ending in curved points.
“You shall pay for that,” the creature hissed, bloody foam and spittle forming where the storyteller’s lips had been. “Your precious archangel’s sword cannot protect you now. Tyrael is dead, and judgment rains down on Sanctuary! Men shall suffer. And we shall emerge from the ashes, stronger than ever.”
The runes on the floor pulsed red. The demon gripped Jacob by the throat. Claws sliced into his flesh, and he choked as his air was slowly cut off, stars winking deep within his eyes, the whirl of lights growing brighter until they threatened to consume everything that he knew and loved . . .