The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  “Do not think such a thuggish display will move us.”

  A voice, every word precisely pronounced and piercingly clear, came with the sound of boot steps upon cobblestones. Flanked by a pair of Librarians, a man emerged from the square’s gate. Beneath his clean black robes, not a hairbreadth of flesh was visible but a face, harshly angular, hard-eyed, and painfully familiar.

  “The Venarium frowns on such coarse displays of power,” Lector Annis said, folding his hands behind his back and regarding Dreadaeleon coldly. “But we are far too old and far too wise to be intimidated by mere fire.”

  “Perhaps if your masters taught the value of intimidation, you would not be down three apprentices,” Dreadaeleon replied.

  “Do not attempt to assign blame to me for your crimes, concomitant,” he said. “Though perhaps it was my mistake to assume you would respect the authority of the Venarium, considering your conduct.”

  “I have done nothing but—”

  “Violation of the Sovereign Tower Treaty,” Annis interrupted sharply. “Invocation of Venarium Law under False Pretenses, Involvement with Foreign Powers of a Military Nature, Unregulated Use of Venarie within a City.” He glanced down at the smoldering corpses of the apprentices. “Murder.”

  “They didn’t have to fight,” Dreadaeleon replied, voice cracking.

  “Their duty was to assess your power that we might better understand how to deal with a renegade of your particular status.” Annis sneered, glancing Dreadaeleon over disdainfully. “And we witnessed nothing more than a display of savagery. How you have not burned this city to the ground in your recklessness is nothing short of astonishing.”

  “Fine, then!” Dreadaeleon forced his voice into a cackle, threw his hands out wide. Flames leapt to his hands, pyres forming upon his palms. “If your assessment is complete, then come and test it! Let’s add a few more verses to my litany of charges!”

  He saw the twitch on Annis’s face, a crack in the perfect porcelain of his composure that indicated he was sorely tempted to do just that. The Lector raised a single gloved hand to shoulder level.

  “That,” he said softly, “will not be necessary.”

  He snapped his fingers. From behind him another Librarian came out. Or rather another Librarian was pulled out, hauled by the chain leash wrapped around his hands and the horrible thing that was attached to it.

  Dreadaeleon thought of it as a thing for, try as he might, he could not rack his brain for a word that would do such an aberration justice.

  To look at it, one would think it a dog of some kind: four legs, a thin torso, a square head, and something resembling a snout. But as it drew out into the square, he could see that it was without fur, its body instead wrapped in thick ribbons of parchment with arcane sigils inscribed upon them. But only when it came into the daylight did all descriptions fail.

  Between the sheaves of parchment was moist, quivering flesh. Flesh that was not its own. Rather, it seemed composed of many different kinds of flesh in many different pieces. Dreadaeleon saw tongues lolling, livers squirming, genitalia flopping; all long dismembered from whatever poor fools they had come from, all glistening like new in a shifting, heaving, twitching mockery of a living thing.

  It came to a halt beside Annis, sat obediently like a hound as the Lector leaned down and placed a hand upon its head. His eyes flashed open, bright crimson, as he whispered a single word.

  “Go.”

  And it obeyed.

  Its voice was something between a warble and a thick sucking sound, its appendages flabby and slapping as it bounded across the cobblestones toward Dreadaeleon. It had no eyes that he could see. Yet he knew it was looking at him, just as he knew that its eerie cry was for him and him alone.

  Without thinking he thrust his hands out. The flames upon his fingers became sheets of red, fanning out over the thing and engulfing it.

  For all of two breaths.

  It came leaping out of the fire, unscathed, unburned, glistening and wet as a newborn. It picked up speed, continuing its rush, its eerie cry reaching a crescendo as it closed the distance.

  And Dreadaeleon was running.

  What few refugees had dared stay when the magic had started flying now turned and fled screaming, trying to get out of the way as Dreadaeleon charged down an alley, and then another, and another, trying to lose the thing.

  Not fair, he thought with what mental capacity was not currently overwhelmed by fear. Not fair, not fair, not fair, NOT FAIR.

  That thing was immune! To fire? To magic? It didn’t matter, nothing should be immune.

  He could still feel the pressure on his temples, even as he twisted down each alley. He could still sense magic, even far away from the Librarians. That thing had its own Venarie, its own power, wild and twisting and clashing off it and barely held together with its parchment wrappings.

  The sound of its call grew loud in his ears and what energy he had left for thought was quickly subsumed by terror as he rounded another alley and came to a dead end. The wall of a house with a tall window loomed up before him. He whirled and saw the thing bounding toward him, warbling and wailing.

  Two fingers up, unsteady and trembling. A word on his lips, weak and stuttering. A bolt of lightning sprang forth, jagged and shrieking toward its target. It struck the thing as it leapt into the air. Electricity crackled off its flesh-and-paper body, leaving it unscathed and hurtling toward Dreadaeleon.

  It struck him in the chest, bearing him backward and through the window. Glass shattered and tore at his bare flesh as it bore him to the floor. Someone was screaming, running from whatever room he had ended up in. He didn’t know which. He didn’t know who that was. He didn’t know what was happening.

  Not until much later, when he felt the weight of the manacles around his wrists, the stifling heat of the gag across his mouth, the chill of the cobblestones as a pair of Librarians dropped him at a pair of well-polished boots.

  “Dreadaeleon Arethenes,” Lector Annis said softly, “by order of the Venarium, you are under arrest.”

  FOUR

  LEARNING TO DROWN

  It was a peculiar feeling to be walking among people who would eagerly plant a piece of steel in one’s neck for a few pieces of gold.

  Not that Lenk had never walked among people who wanted to kill him, but their motives tended to be a little more financially independent. Of course, he supposed, any one of the people walking along the docks might have reason to kill him besides the bounty—vengeance for the many, many people whose deaths he had likely caused when the war in Cier’Djaal erupted, for example.

  But if no one was stepping forward to demand that, he wasn’t about to compel them.

  For as detailed as the wanted posters had been, they hadn’t been detailed enough to account for what he might look like with no hair. And when he walked among them, bald and dressed in the shabby clothes of a merchant, his sword bundled up and hidden in a basket full of branches on his back, the people of the tiny village of Gurau seemed to pay no more attention to him than they would to any other pale, dirty fellow with too little hair.

  But even as much as his northern skin made him stand out, far more attention was offered to the woman walking beside him.

  Her notched ears were hidden beneath the dirty hat on her head, but her pale flesh—and so much of it on display from her hunter’s leathers—drew more than a few stares.

  Yet somehow, for all the fishermen and washerwomen who stared, she only ever got irritated when she sensed his eyes upon her.

  “The hell are you looking at?” Kataria growled.

  The first words she had said to him since they had left the safe house, and they came out on flecks of spittle. Angry as they were, they were better than silence.

  But he was content to shake his head, look away, and let the silence return. Because even that was better than telling her that he was looking at her clean skin and dirty leathers and wondering where she had gone and why he had spent six days without a wor
d from her.

  She had her reasons, he was sure.

  He wasn’t about to compel them.

  The farmers of Gurau had risen with the dawn and been long in the fields. Those who remained behind were the fishermen. Both had been prosperous enough for the village to thrive as a trading hub and expand over the shores and onto the Lyre River to better accommodate the traders who plied up and down the clear blue waters.

  A place like this was where he would have liked to settle down, before everything had happened: idyllic, peaceful, full of hardworking people who hadn’t seen a sword in their lives. It was some cruel god—or one with a solid sense of irony—who would show him such a place only in passing as he walked down the docks to the man at the end, the man who would put him back on the path to bloodshed.

  At the edge of the docks sprawling over the Lyre, Sheffu stood beneath a canopy tent set up for the comfort of traders. Yet only a few people milled around, fussing over various wares. Amid the fisherfolk in their shabby garb, Sheffu fit right in.

  Which, Lenk thought, must be a little insulting. After all, even if he was a saccarii, Sheffu was also one of the ruling fashas of Cier’Djaal.

  His threadbare robe was a match for the tattered silk veil he wore around his face, a garment that would have looked shabby even on one of the people of Gurau, let alone compared to the opulent robes and jewels normally worn by fashas. But Sheffu spent his fortunes on other pursuits.

  Pursuits, Lenk knew as he caught the fasha’s gaze, that he was about to become a part of.

  “You are late.” Sheffu cast a wary gaze around the docks as Lenk and Kataria approached. “I instructed you to arrive before dawn. The fishermen have already risen and I have no desire to draw the attention of strangers.”

  “Anyone who shows you attention will quickly realize the same thing I did,” Kataria muttered. “You’re a lunatic saccarii with paranoid delusions of demons.”

  Sheffu shot a glare at her, then looked to Lenk as if he would reprimand her. He merely shrugged.

  She was right, after all: Nothing about clandestine meetings between a fasha and a pair of northerners in a fishing village over the possibility of demons returning to the world sounded particularly sane.

  But then again, Lenk had met those demons.

  “I did not smuggle you out of Cier’Djaal in exchange for sarcasm,” Sheffu hissed. “I did not expend the last of my fortune to be branded a lunatic. You wish to see proof of demons?” He gestured in the general direction of Cier’Djaal. “Look at the hell I have plucked you from. Look at the ruin this city has become. Khoth-Kapira’s hand is in it. I know this.”

  Lenk heard a bemused chuckle in his ear. He saw Mocca at the corner of his eye, but he did not look. No one else could see him and it wouldn’t do for him to go staring at the empty air. After all, he wasn’t the crazy one here.

  “So you say,” Lenk said, rubbing his eyes. “And you say that you need me to help you prove it. Both of those statements sound insane to me, but you’re the one paying, so let’s just get on with it.”

  Sheffu regarded him coldly, clearly not pleased with his lack of enthusiasm. Yet he seemed to consider this enough, anyway. He beckoned the two of them beneath the tent to a nearby crate. He produced a scroll from the sleeve of his robe, unfurled it atop the crate, and hunched conspiratorially over it, gesturing for Lenk to join him.

  A map of the region, he saw: the blue scars of the Lyre’s tributaries twisting through the sands of the Vhehanna Desert. Yet there were no indications of cities or settlements. Even Cier’Djaal was not on it.

  “An old map, charted long before mortals raised their first houses. We are here,” Sheffu said, gesturing vaguely to a patch around the desert. “In ancient times this was nothing but dust. There was no need for the people to seek the bounty of the river. They had everything they needed here.”

  He slid his hand across the map, tracing the length of the Lyre to a drawing of enormous spires reaching out of what looked like a thick forest. Each one was carved into the image of a rearing serpent, eyes ablaze and fanged mouth gaping.

  “Rhuul Khaas, the Serpent Throne,” Sheffu whispered. “The first and last bastion of Khoth-Kapira. Its many subjects sweat and bled to erect statues of their God-King. Its countless cities were erected in glory to a crazed tyrant. Many things wrought by his hand were lost there.” He tapped the parchment. “This map was one of the few things that was not.

  “I spent no inconsiderable fortune to acquire it,” Sheffu continued. “And it will be what will lead us to the ruin of Khoth-Kapira’s ambition, that we might learn what brought him low and how to prevent his return.” He circled a finger around the spires. “And whatever secrets he had, we will find them here, in the Forbidden East.”

  Lenk heard a chuckle in his ear. Mocca’s voice was as airy and passing as a breeze. “We actually called it something else back then. Not so many people would be tempted to settle in a place called ‘the Forbidden East.’”

  “But it did exist?” Lenk muttered to his unseen companion.

  “It did,” Sheffu said, thinking the words had been meant for him, “it does. And that is where you must go.”

  “Right.” Lenk nodded. “And what, exactly, do you think we’ll find there?”

  “A demon’s work is never exact,” Sheffu replied. “They are shaped by sins we have yet to name. To know one’s secrets is to know one’s mind, to know one’s mind—”

  “So you don’t know?”

  Sheffu remained silent for a moment. “The legends are… muddled.”

  A long, weary sigh escaped Lenk. “Of course they are. If they were useful, we’d call them something else, wouldn’t we?”

  Sheffu glared at him for a moment. “Only fragments of tales survived the fall of Rhuul Khaas. But they all spoke of Khoth-Kapira’s hubris, his need for control… his pride.”

  Kataria’s ears twitched. “Sorry, do I hear a point to this or was that just you breathing hard?”

  “Of all his creations, his artifices, his slaves, he valued one thing above all else,” Sheffu continued, ignoring her. “Books. Nothing endured longer than the written word. You have seen one of his works, the book called His Word.”

  Lenk nodded, recalling an immense, pristine tome he had seen back in Cier’Djaal. A tome said to contain the last words of Khoth-Kapira. Or so Sheffu claimed.

  “Books.” Kataria all but collapsed with the force of her groan. “Why is it always books with demons?”

  “They understand what mortals always failed to,” Sheffu replied. “Nothing in this world is real until it is written down. And all that he wrote, he entombed in Rhuul Khaas, in a place he called Thafun Mokai. The Library of the Learned.”

  “That’s what you want me to find?” Lenk asked. “A library?”

  “Anything that we can use against him, we will find there.”

  “What, are you expecting me to find his diary so you can embarrass him to death?”

  Sheffu remained silent for a moment. “Tell me, Lenk, what harms a demon?”

  The fasha turned his stare to the young man. And the young man simply stared back before speaking a single word. “Memory.”

  “Indeed. The only pain they feel is the knowledge that they were once not so twisted with sin.” Sheffu rolled up the map, thrust it toward Lenk. “The Library of the Learned contains all of Khoth-Kapira’s memory. If we hope to stop him, we must find it.”

  “Stop me from what, exactly?” Mocca’s voice spoke beside Lenk’s ear, before making a tsking sound. “Ah, yes, I forgot. My work is never exact. Convenient, that.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Lenk asked, doing his best to ignore the phantom voice. “Not to second-guess this”—Lenk pointedly omitted the word insane—“plan, but going to a mythical place to find something that might not exist doesn’t sound easy.”

  “No?” Sheffu’s laugh was black beneath his veil. “Well, perhaps if it is too hard, you can go back to Cier’Djaal, yes? Find a nice litt
le home, tend to the hearth, and wait for someone to gut you and drag you through the streets by your innards?” He glanced at Kataria. “Bring her along, maybe. Hell, perhaps I’ll come, too. Everyone you ever spoke to can die along with you by the sin of association.”

  “Dramatic, isn’t he?” Mocca hummed.

  Sheffu apparently saw the ire spark across the northerners’ faces, for he held up a hand for peace.

  “If I speak harshly it is because our circumstances are harsh,” the fasha said. “And if my aim seems like it is to terrify, be assured, I merely speak the truth. Whatever hell our city might be in now has Khoth-Kapira’s hand in it, and whatever he has planned will make this war seem like afternoon tea.”

  “You expect me to do it for Cier’Djaal, then?” Lenk asked.

  “No,” Sheffu said. “I expect you to do it for Farlan Sandish.”

  “Far…” Lenk blinked. “Who?”

  Another scroll slid out of Sheffu’s sleeve. With a snap of his wrist, he unfurled it and handed it to Lenk. “An immigrant from Nivoire. Arrived in Cier’Djaal two years ago, owns a little rice paddy at the very edge of the Green Belt. Here’s a copy of his deed, his writ of immigrant citizenship, and his license to sell rice. Take it. I have more.”

  “And he fits into this because…”

  “Because he’s you,” Sheffu said. “Or who you will be, once you complete this deed.” Beneath the veil, the barest ghost of a smile could be seen. “This is your new life.”

  Just like that. A few words and this no longer seemed so insane, so futile. The thought of chasing down a library, a book, whatever Sheffu wanted, that seemed no more real. But the words on this paper, the name on this deed, that seemed real.

  Farlan Sandish.

  His new life.

  “Your journey will not be easy,” Sheffu said. “The Forbidden East cuts through the tribelands. Many clans of tulwar and war parties of shicts stand between you and Rhuul Khaas. It will take many days of travel and much…”