King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  Elizel said, “And where do you hail from, Caleb, son of . . . ?”

  “I have disowned my progenitor. I am Caleb, and that is all.”

  “And your origins?”

  “Irrelevant.”

  Elizel sat up. “Not to us.”

  “I’m sorry, Elizel, but this is a terrible waste of time.”

  The Synedrium stirred. “You shall address him as your lord!” Otto said. “And you shall answer his question.”

  “My lord,” Caleb said. “While you obsess over trivialities, a demon army hunts for Daniel, the Pillar of the Kuurku. On Earth, demons are preparing to destroy another Pillar. If the Pillars are destroyed, Gehinnom will be destroyed too.”

  “And you, alone, plan to save us all, do you?” Elizel said.

  “Not alone, my lord. With your help, the Bedu, the most knowledgeable people on Gehinnom, will ferry us to Earth, which swims in the waters of the Kuurku.”

  Uriel raised his palm, and Elizel gave him permission to speak. “What you ask,” Uriel said, “is impossible. We do not know how to ferry you to the land of Erte.”

  “No,” Caleb said. “But Marul Menacha knows how to create a vessel that can traverse the Great Deep as a boat sails the oceans.”

  “Let us assume that she knows such a spell,” Uriel said. “It would take tremendous power to loft you between the worlds.”

  “Is it not said that the Bedu shake the sand and sky?”

  “We were mighty once,” Otto said. He turned an accusing eye at Elizel. “But we have fallen from our glory. Our robes hang ragged. The luster of our gold has tarnished. Above us, this crystal sphere wavers, cracking. Once, we might have crafted this shield with a single mage. Now we need dozens.”

  The fool plays politics, Caleb thought, while the Cosmos teeters on the edge!

  Elizel frowned as he twirled his fingers in his white beard. “Enough!” he said. “We are still a strong people.”

  “Strong as a blade of grass in the wind,” said Otto.

  Uriel hung his head and said, “I’m afraid it is true, Caleb. The power you ask for does not exist among the Bedu anymore. It does not exist in this world.”

  “I’m sorry, Caleb,” Elizel said. “But you see, we cannot help you. When the storm abates, we will send you off with provisions for three days. May you find your way to Erte, Blessed Mollai help us all.”

  “Do you want me to talk to them now?” Daniel whispered.

  Caleb turned around slowly, taking in the faces of all of these Bedu leaders. Had he misjudged them? All along he had assumed the Bedu had the power he needed, but now, as he gazed into their hateful eyes he saw them for what they were. Cowards, like all humans, afraid to face bitter truths. No, he, Ashmedai, King of Demonkind, would not let these pathetic, stubborn, frail, cravenly humans thwart his grand visions! He would wake them up.

  “No, Daniel,” he said. “I’ve a better idea.” Then he shouted, “Lord Elizel, there is another place on Gehinnom where the power exists to return us to Earth.”

  Uriel said, “And where is this?”

  “Not where, but who.” The circle was silent, waiting. He said, “In the one whom you call the Betrayer.”

  Like a gaggle of startled birds, the Synedrium gasped and shrieked.

  “We do not speak that name in this holy circle!” Elizel said. “May his name be erased!”

  “Then your taboos will be your death! Are we not near the ashen wastes of the Jeen? Beyond the black sands in Dudael lies the Abyssal of Lost Hope. Chained at the bottom of that chasm lies—”

  “Stop!” Uriel shouted. “Have you not heard our lord as he has commanded you? We do not speak that name in this—”

  “Azazel!” Caleb shouted.

  Their mouths fell open, and they wailed as if their children had been slaughtered. Their faces twisted in horror, contempt. Someone shouted an order and there were sounds of swords sliding from sheaths. Otto yanked out his blade.

  “Yes, I’ve blasphemed,” Caleb said as he stood. “And I will blaspheme again! Only by shocking you awake can I make you see. You seal the fate of the Cosmos with your taboos. The name of the Betrayer is barbarous to your ears. He tricked your ancient kin and turned them into flesh-eaters. And though he is bound upside down at the bottom of a chasm in Dudael, he daily plots your torment. Is not this storm above our heads the product of his cruel messenger, Chialdra? Azazel’s name is anathema, and for good reason. But Azazel, my lords, is the only one who can help us now. He is the only one on Gehinnom who can give your priests the power to return us to Earth. Hear me! Azazel is the only one who can save the Cosmos now.”

  “Abomination!” Otto shouted, pointing his blade at Caleb. His voice silenced the crowd. “This man defiles our holy circle! He rides into our camp on the backs of maneaters and brings a horde of demons in his wake. And now, he begs us to ally with our most-hated enemy? Do we not send the scapegoat into the desert to confound him whom we do not name? Hear me, fellow Houses of the Bedu, we have grain and oil to deliver to Blömsnu before the quarter moon. We have not time for a man’s obscene delusions! He brings evil into our midst. He and his companions must die!”

  A chorus of assent rose among the Synedrium.

  “Lords of the desert,” Caleb said. “We sit here at your mercy.” Daniel and Marul looked up at Caleb as if he’d just signed their death warrant. “We came before this holy circle because we are desperate. We traversed the Tattered Sea because we believe the Bedu would help us. Daniel Fisher is a Pillar of the Kuurku. His kind have buoyed the Kuurku for eons, keeping you and your ancestors safe. Will you cast him out into the desert like your scapegoat? If so, then let it be known for all time that on this day the Quog Bedu let the Cosmos die.”

  Their murmurs quieted. The only sound was the faint ticking of the storm against their crystal roof, the occasional lick of flame from the smoky torches. Caleb sighed. He was spent. But he just might have convinced them. Daniel stared up at him.

  Marul climbed to her feet. “My lords,” she began.

  “Don’t you dare,” Caleb said.

  “There is something you need to know,” she said.

  “Witch,” Caleb said, grabbing her arm. “Heed my warning!”

  “This man with whom you speak with is none other than—”

  “Don’t!” Caleb said.

  “He is—”

  “Ashmedai.”

  But it wasn’t Marul who’d spoken his true name. The voice was small, raspy, and came from the far edge of the circle.

  The crowd gasped as a grizzled, bloody monster, a walking pile of carrion, shoved its way through the circle, a shiny dagger clutched in its hand. Four soldiers ran up to the beast and formed a shield of swords.

  Who is this creature that knows me? Caleb thought. A soldier of the Legion? He didn’t sense its demon essence, but perhaps that was how it had entered the camp undetected.

  Elizel rose from his chair. “Kill that vile demon!”

  The creature paused as the soldiers moved in.

  “I am Rana Lila,” the creature rasped, “Daughter of Ari and Nediva. Born in the city of Azru, which stands no more. And I am no demon.”

  The knot in Caleb’s chest unfurled painfully. How could this bloody creature be Rana?

  “She ran in from the storm!” a man shouted. “She is human, and her companion is dead, Lord Elizel!”

  “My parents are dead,” Rana rasped. “My city destroyed. My sister, missing. All because of him. Caleb. Ashmedai. The demon.”

  “You are delirious,” Elizel said, stepping down from his throne. He whispered to a page who ran into the crowd. “Our magicians would have known if Caleb was a demon.”

  “He is Ashmedai, King of Demonkind.”

  Elizel looked troubled. Otto, sword outstretched, strode toward Caleb as he nodded to someone in the circle.

  Damn her! Caleb thought. Damn Rana to the lowest Shard! I had them! They were mine!

  “It’s time,” Rana said, eyes on Caleb, �
�to rid the world of an evil.”

  And then she sang.

  Oh, such glorious, empyrean symphonies! Her eyes were the twin suns of Sheol beaming over Lake Hali. The Synedrium were the steep black cliffs beside the waters. A wind blew through the curtains as Caleb lay on his bed inside the palace of Abbadon. Thirteen of his most recent children giggled as they played on the floor, their voices ringing down the palace halls. She lay beside him, Mashit, his wife, her smile a thousand bright dawns. Was it possible that, in their unending realm of suffering, they had found happiness together?

  And Rana sang on.

  They were happy, weren’t they? So why had he awoken in chains? Why was he dragged like a traitor through the streets in a cage as they spat and threw stones at him? And there, before the whole throng of Sheol, Mashit stripped him of his power in a ceremony of blood and glass. His children testified against him. Not one—not one!—came to his defense.

  She had poisoned their minds, turned them against him. His own children! Why? He had given her everything he had!

  He fell to his knees, covered his ears. “Stop it! Rana, please stop!”

  Rana sang on.

  Bobel, my youngest, why do you throw stones at me? Kumeatel, my yellow-eyed darling, you can ensnare nations with one glance, why do you spit at my heels? Atrax, mightier than mountains, why do you turn your back to me? My children, you cast your eyes down before your father. Now I am a mongrel! Creator, Mother, where have you gone? Why do you not come when I call for you? In what dark corner of creation do you hide?

  Rana took a breath, and the visions ceased. She ran to Caleb, dagger raised. “For Azru!” she shouted. “For my parents!” She lunged at him, but three soldiers tackled her, and her knife fell from her hands.

  “Slaughter them!” Otto commanded. “Slaughter them all!”

  “Belay that order!” Elizel said. “Chain them, but do not kill them!”

  “You must gag the singer!” Uriel shouted.

  The soldiers shoved them all to the ground. A soldier pressed his sword to Rana’s throat. “Sing your demonsong again, and I will cut off your tongue!” he said.

  Rana seethed as she stared at Caleb. As they bound his hands behind him he said to her, “Take a good look around, Rana. For this is how the Cosmos dies!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Pain mattered little. Revenge was the only truth. But they had robbed her of that. The soldiers threw Rana onto her back and shoved cotton deep into her mouth, securing it with a muzzle of burlap. She felt like vomiting as the gold button of the sun broke through the parting clouds. White-robed men with dark beards chanted spells at her, tunelessly, like braying goats, and she felt as if a collar was being tightened around her neck. The magicians made their company of soldiers stuff wax into their ears, “Lest the demon witch somehow still sing, even with her gag. Curse Elizel and his orders!” And with their ears stuffed the soldiers looked like crazed, fearful donkeys. They dragged her across the camp as if she were an animal herself. The Bedu cursed and spat at her, flicked her a thousand curses. It would take her a decade to appease Mollai after this.

  The sand worried its way into her wounds, and she moaned, but her voice had vanished, collared by their spell. Damn them! Without her voice, she was nothing.

  They bound her wrists and ankles in iron cuffs, then affixed the chains to an enormous log. Daniel, Caleb, and Marul were sagging in their chains, when they dragged forth another man, one as bloody as her.

  Emod.

  He hung limply from his chains, dead. They had stripped him naked, his last dignity removed. His mouth hung open as if his soul had just flown from it.

  And that is how I will die, she thought, delirious from pain.

  Twelve soldiers, ears waxed and cottoned, kept watch over them. Two magicians in fluttering white robes identified themselves as priests of the Bedu as they approached.

  “Stupid demon,” one priest said to her in Bedu-Besk while sucking loudly on a prune. “We are the most learned magicians in the world. Did you think you could charm us Bedu with demonsong? Elyam, my friend,” he said to the other, “tell the demon what we’ll do if it voices the black sound again?”

  “We have orders to kill it, Avra,” the other said, scratching his beard.

  “She’s no demon,” Marul said. “Under that shredded flesh is a child. You idiots chain a girl!”

  “A demon girl,” said Avra, his beard prune-stained.

  “Don’t you see that she bleeds like any man?” Marul said. “She’s been shredded by the storm. By the Goddess, I beg you to help her!”

  “By the Goddess, we curse her!” Avra said, biting into another prune. “Look how her wounds have stopped flowing, even without healers.”

  And Rana saw that it was true. Her pain had lessened too, and her many wounds had stopped suppurating. Once, a long time ago, she had helped Papa slaughter an ox and accidentally sliced her arm. The cut was deep and bled profusely, and Papa was more worried than she’d ever seen him. He sat by her bed the whole night, praying to the Goddess, even wept. And in the morning, when she awoke and they took off the bandage to examine the wound, only a small nick remained. A week later there wasn’t even a scar. Papa had said the Goddess had answered his prayers, and he became devout, for a time. Rana had thought it was the Goddess too. But now she thought that maybe it had been something more.

  “No human can pry men’s wills with demonsong,” Avra said. “Music has always been the indulgence of evil forces.” He spat juice onto the ground.

  “For a people who pride themselves on knowledge,” Marul said, “the only evil is your ignorance. She’s no demon!”

  “Then what is this chained grotesquery who wields such power?”

  Marul stared at Rana, and her gaze held histories within histories. “You fools. She is Gu.”

  Marul’s words lingered in the air. Havig had called her that. So had Grug. Was this the name for the power she wielded?

  “A Gu?” Elyam said. He laughed, and Avra almost choked on his prune.

  “The ignorance is yours, woman,” said Avra. “The Gu designed the great cities in the days of the Twelve Kings, when Asa and Jehoia, in the House of Almon ruled Gehinnom, when the Tattered Sea was a true ocean under parasot of water, and myriad creatures swam here. The Gu Loshn, designed and built Karad, where the Goddess Mollai dwells in divine splendor. The Gu Lider inscribed the Verses of Bethor, which are lovelier than a moon over an oasis spring. And the Gu Oyern built the Obelisk of Shean, which still stands at the shores of the southern seas.

  “Their artistry is renowned throughout Gehinnom, even where the skies turn gray and cry. But because we have sinned, Goddess Mollai withdrew the Gu back into her womb. Now the Goddess sits in Karad, waiting for her people to return to righteousness, when she will give birth to the Gu again and return Gehinnom to its splendor. The Gu are long dead. Their overflowing urns have shattered, their great works evaporated. Only hints of their glory remain, and only we, the Bedu, remember them.”

  “I am not Bedu,” Marul said. “And I remember.”

  “You are confused.”

  “And you are wrong. She is Gu.”

  Elyam scowled as he waved his hand dismissively. “The Gu were never female!”

  “Men!” Marul cursed. “Always convinced you are the center of the universe! Here you stand in the presence of a Gu, a Pillar, and the King of Demonkind, yet all you can see is your own self-importance. No wonder the Bedu have fallen.”

  “And what are you?” Avra said, smirking. “The Goddess herself?”

  “I am Marul Menacha, The Witch Who Gives Demons Pause.”

  Avra smiled. “Pause to stop and laugh!” The priests chortled. “The Thirty-Six Pillars are holy beings. Men of great strength who hold up the Kuurku day and night with their might. They are not pale-skinned, shrunken little men who cavort with maneaters.” He shook his head. “The Pillars were resplendent even at night. The Gu were exalted by kings! And the King of Demons, crossing the
desert like a thief in the night, as if he fears the mouse that sleeps in the dunes. Ha! Liars, liars, the lot of you!”

  “And fools, fools, the lot of you!” Marul spat. “The Quog Bedu have changed much.”

  “And much for the better,” Avra said. “Much for the better.”

  The two priests whispered amongst themselves for a time, and Rana was grateful for the respite. Though her wounds were healing faster than they had any right to, she still suffered with every breath. Blood and drool fell from her mouth as she tried to shift the lumps of cotton aside.

  I will not roll over and die like some beast, she thought. I must escape.

  Caleb was chained at the opposite end of the log. At least she had the solace of knowing that the Bedu would kill him too.

  She met his unholy white eyes and his face turned as red as the setting sun. “You stupid, short-sighted, pathetic child!” he said. “The priests are right. Did you think you could bewitch the whole tribe with music? You are powerful, but you know nothing. The Bedu mastered magic a thousand years before you were born! And now everything is ruined. For a song.”

  “Will you stop whining?” Marul said. “You make my ears hurt.”

  “Your pain is nothing compared to what you will feel when the Earth shatters. Our bodies will wither and decay, but our souls will live on, tumbling for trillions of torturous years through endless voids. Woe, woe is us.”

  I have debased Caleb, Rana thought. She had made this demon writhe and sob, and that gave her some small satisfaction.

  “Shut your mouth,” Avra said. “Your words are poison.”

  “And yours are the brays of lambs before slaughter,” Caleb said.

  The clouds were fleeing rapidly, and sun and shadow chased each other along the ground. Emod swung in the wind, chains creaking. If not for Caleb, Emod would be smoking his pipe and smiling at passersby on Bedubroadstreet now. Mama would be singing as she hung the clothes to dry. Papa would be staring out the window at the rising Ukne, cursing so loudly that dust would fall from the ceiling. Her feelings overwhelmed her. Never again would she see them. Their bodies were rotting in the yard, pecked to the bone by scavengers, or eaten by Mikulalim. She shivered at the thought. And Liu, her round face, her glistering brown gem eyes. The sobs came like waves of sand. But she could breach no sound, and her own eyes were too dry to make tears, so she just shuddered in her chains.