King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  “A powerful one. Azazel’s Curse of a Thousand Tongues courses through my blood, directing my being. Azazel is our true king, but Lord Ashmedai rules over us while his brother lies chained at the bottom of a chasm in Dudael. Azazel is very different from his brother.”

  “Azazel is Caleb’s brother?”

  “Lord Ashmedai’s brother, yes.”

  “So your loyalty is passed from one hand to the next, like a tool?”

  Grug did not answer. Maybe he couldn’t.

  She gazed at his sorry spectacle. Underneath his black cloak, his ugly shell, Grug was a prisoner too, locked in an invisible cage. She found herself pitying him.

  “I’d lived so long in darkness,” Grug said, “I’d forgotten what kindness felt like. Marul was kind to me.”

  “She was kind to me too,” Rana said. “A long time ago.”

  Grug glanced up at the growing storm. “For her sake, mistress, put on the necklace that Havig gave you.”

  “Why? Will it put me under a spell? Make me your slave?”

  “It will keep you hidden from them. Please, mistress.”

  She took the necklace from her pocket and held it up. In the fading light its facets sparkled like stars. The pendant leaned away from the storm as if blown by a strong wind, though there was, for the moment, none.

  She dropped the necklace to the sand and stomped on it. “I’m going home, Grug. Will you stop me?” She held the hilt of her knife.

  Grug sighed. “No, mistress. I will protect you to my dying breath.”

  The sun touched the DanBaer, and its cool shadow spilled over the desert. The storm crackled with blue lightning, and the thunder echoed for minutes after. A stiff wind whipped up, throwing sand into her eyes, but she pressed on, and Grug stayed beside her.

  In the growing twilight she reached the outskirts of Azru, where the Csilla Homes, long abandoned, leaned steeply into the desert.

  “Seems you were wrong about the tides,” she said.

  “We were lucky.”

  The watermaids had abandoned their posts, which was rare. Across the city, the palace flickered with lamp- and firelight. Her parents and Liu were just minutes away, across the city’s center, and she felt a pang in her heart as she longed for Mama’s arms.

  Crimson rays fanned over the DanBaer in a glorious sunset. The Ukne Tower scintillated in the reflected light, but the rays vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. The sun had set, and night had begun.

  There was a curious shift in the air. Grug threw back his hood. His face was doubly horrid in the ruddy twilight. He stared up at the cloud. Lightning flashed across its center, its two ends spinning within the vortex.

  “I feel them,” he said. “They’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “We need to leave this place, now.”

  “I’m going home,” she shouted over the wind. “I have to see my parents.”

  A circle of darkness formed in the cloud’s center. It widened into a pit blacker than a moonless night. She felt as if it were pulling her soul from her eyes one sand grain at a time.

  A four-legged beast came spinning out of that hole, and Grug shoved Rana down beside a large cracked stone. An enormous giraffe floated down. It had spiraling ram’s horns and a vicious rat’s face. Skinless, it was a blood-red mass of muscle, sinew and bone.

  “What the hell is that?” she said.

  “Kokabiel!” Grug said. “We need to go!”

  The skinless giraffe landed on its hooves ten streets away. This beast named Kokabiel raised its enormous head, and thundered, “where is the rana?”

  Her blood turned frigid. “Me?” she whimpered. “Why the hell does it want me?”

  Kokabiel’s voice shook the city, echoing like thunder from the mountain.

  The giraffe used his cloven hoof to skewer a man running beneath him. The demon held the bleeding, weeping man before his eyes, turning him left and right. A scintillating stream of blue smoke floated from the man’s mouth into the demon’s, as if he were drinking his essence.

  “you are useless to me!” Kokabiel shouted. The skewered man fell limp, and the giraffe tossed him away.

  The palace horns blew the staccato call to arms. Soldiers began gathering by the western palace wall.

  “give us the rana!” Kokabiel shouted. “or you shall all perish!”

  Rana dared not breathe, lest that hideous beast turn his gaze toward her. Grug, in one swift motion, threw back her hair and clasped the necklace around her throat.

  “What the hell did you—”

  “Hush!” he said as a tingle began in her neck and quickly enveloped her whole body, as if she wore an invisible robe. “It will hide you from them!”

  Multicolored beasts began spiraling out of the storm’s black center.

  She held the pendant as Kokabiel skewered a fleeing woman. Scintillating blue smoke floated out of the woman’s mouth into the demon’s. Then she collapsed, dead.

  “useless!”

  Motion, everywhere. The whole city was bleating like frightened goats. In some windows, fires were lit. In most, they were snuffed.

  “I have to get home!” she said.

  “It’s too dangerous!”

  “I know a secret way.” She leaped away from him, climbing up steep cobblestones.

  “Stop!” Grug said, sprinting after her.

  Panicked people slammed into Rana as she ran. “Just give the demon what it wants!” someone said. “Goddess, give them the mad bricklayer!” shouted another.

  Rana bumped into an elderly woman and knocked her to the ground. She paused to help the woman up, when a flash of recognition passed before the woman’s eyes.

  “You!” the woman said. “You’re Rana Lila, the—”

  “No! I’m—”

  “Yes, it’s you!” she said. “The demon girl!” she shouted. “She’s here! Rana is here!”

  Rana sped off. Behind her she heard the woman shouting to others.

  As she ran people shuttered windows and doors, snuffed out lamps. Animals wailed as she wended through the streets. She sped onto Ramswool Row just as three enormous snakes fell from the sky as if a giant’s intestines had just been eviscerated.

  The snakes swallowed people ten at a time. As the still-living victims struggled to get out, the snakes’ translucent skin bulged. A stream of blood and bone flowed from its rear.

  “Rana?” they slithered. “Where isssss the Rana?”

  One snake turned, dashed for her. I’m done! she thought, shrieking. But the snake turned at the last moment and devoured a young man beside her.

  Grug leaped from the shadows. “Come!” he said, grabbing her arm. “Hurry!”

  They ran through the streets as bats with sword-like beaks swooped low over houses. When she glanced at their dull-silver eyes she was struck with a wave of despair that nearly stole her breath. With twisting dives the bats lanced dozens around her with their sharp beaks.

  But not me, she thought. They do not see me. She touched the pendant. It was hot as burning coal, but strangely did not burn her hand.

  She crested a hill, where she could see the upper districts. A gigantic ram was knocking over buildings with its coil of horns. The Kelilah Tower toppled into the DanBaer, collapsing a corner of the king’s palace. The whole word shook and thundered.

  The king’s army was mounting a resistance at Azzan Square. Arrows flew up from their serried ranks, when a phalanx of black boars as big as houses barreled through the archers and the arrows ceased.

  Acrid smoke filled her lungs as fires began to spread. The smell of charred human flesh turned her stomach. Quickly, the smoke grew opaque. She gagged and retched as she lost her way, stumbling randomly. “Grug?” she said. “Grug, where are you?”

  She slammed into something hard. She felt its shape and recognized what her hands had stumbled upon. She had rubbed these sharp teeth a thousand times. This was Dusty Square, and she was beside the stone lions Papa had carved. Just a few hundr
ed paces from home.

  A bull emerged from the smoke, standing upright on its hind legs. Three stories tall, its eyes were milk-white, like a blind man. Inside its womb, clear as glass, five fetuses writhed. Their malicious eyes searched hungrily as their blind mother groped onward, rocking the ground as it walked. It paused paces away, sniffing the air, before groping on.

  She crawled through more smoke. The storm cloud above was shrinking. The stars were coming out, little diamonds of promise. Screams and moans leaped from every corner of the city. A thousand homes burned, many she had built with her own hand. Gasping, she found the walls of her house. The huge stone door she had painstakingly mounted on its tiny pivot lay shattered. The rubble formed a heaping pile.

  “Mama!” she shouted. “Papa!”

  She climbed over the rocks and into her courtyard. Bloody footprints of man and beast covered the ground, as if a herd had been slaughtered here. When she passed a severed human ear, her fear grew to a fever pitch. All the plants had been toppled, their basins shattered. She ran into the house. On the table was an open satchel half-filled with supplies. The cistern sighed a cloud of steam, the paddle slowly spinning around the rim.

  “Mama! Papa! Liu!” she called.

  No sound but distant screams, the close crackling of fire. The house was empty. How far could they have gotten with Papa’s broken back?

  She ran into her studio and found only paintings, busts, statues. Suddenly she hated them all, these inanimate things. They had stolen time from her family. Lorbria, her pet bird, lay unmoving at the bottom of her cage. A trail of bloody footprints led around to the rear of the house, and she followed them, her heart feeling as if it might burst from terror.

  Something whimpered, a sound as faint as a feather brushing a harp string. Behind the house two oxen hung from slaughtering hooks. Why oxen, here, now? Rana thought.

  And then she understood. These weren’t oxen.

  She screamed. Mama and Papa hung upside down from hooks. Bound and flayed, their skin lay on the ground like shavings of wood. Blood dripped from their gently swinging bodies. She froze, struck by the horror of it. Then she ran to them.

  With three quick knife strokes she severed the ropes. She lifted Papa off the meat hook—she pretended not to hear the repulsive sound—and nearly slammed his head, he was so heavy. She took Mama down next. Rana’s arms dripped with her parents’ blood. She let out a scream so loud she thought it might crack the world.

  “Mamaaaaaaa! Papaaaaaa!”

  Mama’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Mama? Oh, Mama! Mama I’m here!”

  “. . . p-p-please . . .” Mama’s voice was more tenuous than the wing beat of a moth. “No more . . .” Mama said. Blood rolled from her mouth as she turned her head. “Please, no more. I told you. I told you!” Mama’s eyes were glued shut with dried blood, and Rana tried to wipe them clean, to open her eyes.

  “Mama, I’m here! I’m right here!”

  “Goddess, forgive me,” Mama said. “I told you, my daughter went to the Smelter’s House. To the Smelter’s House! Now, please stop. Please! Let me down. Goddess, forgive me. Goddess forgive me . . . I’m sorry, Rana. I’m sorry . . .” Mama’s mouth fell open. Her eyes stopped.

  “Mama!” Rana screamed. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  But she didn’t wake. And Rana sat there for a while, beside her parents, weeping, until the flies had begun to peck at their faces.

  Liu! she remembered, after a time. Goddess, where is baby Liu?

  The stink of blood was strong on her as she searched under the beds and in closets. Where was she? Where was she? Rana tore through the canvases in her studio, toppled statues by the dozen. Maybe Liu had crawled into a nook to hide?

  She searched everywhere, but Liu was gone.

  She heard footsteps. Grug appeared at the top of the rubble, covered in ash. “Are you hurt?” he shouted. He ran to her. “Are you bleeding?”

  “It’s not my blood,” she said weakly.

  “It’s not? Then whose—Oh. I’m sorry, Rana. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “My sister is missing.”

  “Perhaps she has fled to safety.”

  “She’s just a baby.”

  Rana gazed at her studio, its contents upturned. “This is where it all began,” she said. “If I had told Daniel and the dog to fuck off, as I should have, if I had called the king’s sentinels, if I had told Mama or Papa—” her voice cracked “—that a demon had come into my studio, I’d be sitting down for supper with them now. It’s all my fault. I did this!”

  The world spun, faster than the demon vortex, and she bent over and threw up.

  Beyond the pile of rubble that had been the courtyard door, someone was shouting. “Here! It’s just inside here!”

  She knew that voice. She wiped her face and stood, but Grug grabbed her arm. “No, we should hide.” He led her to the rear of the house and they crouched in the shadows. Her parents lay nearby, attacked by flies. She closed her eyes and thought she might be sick again.

  “Here, just in that small building!” the familiar voice said. She knew it from another time, another place, a world as far away as Daniel’s Earth.

  “A king’s treasure!” Emod said. “Worth as much as the palace gold!”

  Emod, the hawker from Bedubroadstreet. Emod, the homeless man who sold her creations for small fortunes and gave her a pittance. Emod, the only one in Azru who wasn’t scared of her. Her only true friend.

  Another voice, gruff and low, proclaimed, “If you lie, my sword takes your tongue.”

  “No lies!” Emod said. “Come see! Come see!”

  More voices echoed from her courtyard walls. At least three others, maybe more. “Why aren’t we looting the palace?” one said.

  “Because there’s nothing left, maggot!” said another.

  Grug gestured for Rana to remain still and reached for his sword. But she had to see them, whoever these men were. She peered around the edge. Five shirtless men, their chests covered with tattoos, stood beside her studio, wielding huge scimitars. Their unruly dark beards hung to their breasts, and many scars crossed their bodies like distressed stone. A thin man with long white hair waited alongside them. He wore a colorful robe and a gem-encrusted belt that seemed more apt for a bride than a man.

  Three men came out of her studio, each carrying stuffed sacks. The other men yanked the sacks to the ground and the contents fell out.

  “What’s this shit?” one said. “Wooden heads? A rusted flute? How is this treasure?”

  She wanted to bite their heads off. Those were hers! As if sensing her intentions, Grug pressed her down.

  “There are jewels too!” said Emod. “Rings, bracelets, necklaces, charms! You name it!”

  Emod, she thought, how could you?

  “You see?” Emod said to the largest of the men, a beast of a man with a scar that ran down his left arm and ended with a missing finger.

  “Yes, I see,” the beast man said. Taller and stronger than the others, they all faced him. Probably the leader. “I see that we don’t need you anymore.” He lifted his sword.

  “Wait!” Emod said. “I’m worth something to you too! I speak the Chthonic tongues. I could be an interpreter!”

  The man guffawed like a choking camel. “We have no need for an interpreter.”

  “Then a slave! I’ll do whatever you ask of me.”

  “Heh. You’re not my type.”

  “The witch queen of Ektu El,” Emod said, “pays a hefty sum for interpreters! And her harems are world renowned for the beauty of their women!”

  The man scratched his chin. “Very well, interpreter. You live, for now, but only because I’m in a good mood.” He sheathed his sword. Then to this men, he said, “Check the buildings. Take anything you can carry. We’ll leave this festering city before Onai’s fifth star rises.”

  The men charged into her house. They flipped beds, knocked over tables, shattered the cistern. Water flooded through cracks in the foundation
, pooling at her feet. Emod waited in the courtyard, guarded by the leader, while the white-haired man rifled through a bag of jewels.

  “Impressive cut,” he said in a high-pitched, effeminate voice. “Hand polished, I think.”

  She held her knife to her chest, breathing heavily.

  Inside her house, a man said, “What the fuck is this?” His voice came from the window just an arm’s reach away. If he stuck his head out he would see them both.

  “That’s the Goddess, you goat! Ain’t you never seen an idol of Mollai?”

  “Yeah, but never like this.”

  It must have been the bronze bust she’d made for Mama. The one that had sat next to the dining table. The idol they prayed to before every meal.

  “Well, oxface, toss it in the bag!”

  Rana wanted to tear them to bits. She let slip a grunt of rage.

  “Hey!” squeaked the white-haired man in the bridal belt. “I think I just heard something from behind the house.”

  Grug gestured for her to stay low as the men ran out of the house.

  A man stepped into the shadows close by, just five paces from where Rana and Grug were hidden. The man hovered over the bodies of her parents. “Whoa!” he said. “Guess somebody ain’t coming home tonight.”

  “Not there,” the robed one squeaked. “The sound came from the other side!”

  Before the man turned to investigate, Grug leaped from the shadows and sliced the man’s head off in one stroke. The head plopped to the ground beside her parents, eyes still flitting around in horror. His body collapsed in a quivering heap.

  “Kill him!” the leader shouted.

  Scimitars held high, they charged Grug. Their swords clanged and echoed as Grug parried their blows, while Rana crouched and held her knife. Grug fought like no one she’d ever seen. He evaded their blows in movements swift and sudden. A man spotted Rana and came for her. She stabbed him in the leg. He screamed, snatched her by the hair, and yanked her up. He raised his sword, about to swing, when blood spilled from his mouth. Grug’s sword emerged from his stomach.

  She slid from the man’s grasp as another man hooked his arm around her neck. His breath was fouler than camel shit.

  “I got the bitch!” he said. He held his sword to her chin.