by Joe Jackson
Maelstrom chuckled lightly. “You will hardly be the first or the last head of the Order to ask me such a thing,” he said. “What is it I can do for you, Hand of Zalkar?”
“Can you take me and a few others to the underworld if we decide to go?” she asked him evenly. She had laid her cards on the table: it was possible he would mention her request to the Council, but if that was the case, it would at least relieve her of the burden of trying to sneak around gathering information about going to her enemies' homeland. If he decided to trust her and do as she asked, then she might be able to take what companions she wanted and go without having to spend days or even weeks justifying her plan to her family and the Council. In the back of her mind, Kari suddenly realized just why Jason Bosimar, the former head of the Order, had left out so many details in his journals.
Maelstrom thought to himself briefly. “No, I am afraid I cannot,” he said. “Despite the many years I have spent mastering the arcane, inter-dimensional travel has never been an area I have put much research into. However, as I still have ties with the High Council of Wizardry, I could put your request before Eliza Chinchala. Having lived on both worlds, she is quite adept at passing to and fro, and I believe she is well respected among both her peoples and ours.”
Kari thought on that for a minute. Eliza was the daughter of King Celigus Chinchala, a demon king who had turned coat to serve the pantheon, and now lived on Citaria. If Eliza was able to go back and forth between Citaria and the underworld, and was respected by the people of both, then she might be the perfect “person” to recruit for such an undertaking. It left Kari to wonder how many others would become aware of her plans if she involved Eliza, but again, she was only trying to avoid argument by doing things in a somewhat-underhanded way. If her plans came to light, she would still insist on going through with them.
“Would you pass along my request?” Kari asked, and Maelstrom nodded. “Please tell her this is to be kept extremely quiet, and if she comes here, she'll need to use…discretion.”
“As you wish,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Lady Vanador?”
“How's Sonja doing with her studies?” Kari asked curiously.
The Archmage's expression became one between a smile and a grimace. “Sonja pushes herself too hard,” he said. “Mastery of the arcane takes decades in most cases. She is simply never satisfied with what she can do, instead becoming frustrated by what she cannot yet do. For instance, she is extremely advanced in the use of shields and protective abjurations, but that means little to her next to her shortcomings with invocations and transportation. It is one of the stranger facets of her personality. In any case, I will contact Eliza and see how she feels on this inquiry of yours. I am certain she will at least come and speak to you, whether her response is affirmative or negative.”
“Thank you, Master Maelstrom,” Kari said. He nodded courteously and then began to leave the campus grounds, so Kari turned and made her way to the temple. She realized it was going to be tricky telling the Council and Lord Allerius what she'd found without tipping her hand to them. She tried to get her thoughts in order and decide how much to tell them while she made her way across the central courtyard.
Along the way, she returned the respectful nods or salutes of the other hunters and cadets, all the while lost in thought about Jason Bosimar. She wondered just what it was he had been hiding all the time he served as head of the Order. In her mind, she juxtaposed Jason hiding what he was doing with her own reasons for masking her plans, and suddenly, it dawned on her.
*****
The Council of the Demonhunter Order consisted of nine human priests of Zalkar, most of whom had served in the military at some point in their careers. The majority of them were elders, though a few of them, such as Master Arinotte, were barely older than Kari. Kari was now the head of the Demonhunter Order, but was answerable to the Council, who interpreted Zalkar’s will directly and advised the Order’s head on how to carry out his wishes. With their more direct connection to Zalkar, Kari assumed they might better understand the implications of her previous mission and the tales of Elias Sorivar and Danilynn Stahlorrr. She stood before them in the presence of Lord Allerius, and waited for them to bring the meeting to order.
Kari glanced from face to face while the priests spoke in quiet tones behind their long table. Each of the nine men fulfilled a specific function on the Council: three to oversee the Order’s hunting, three to oversee the Order’s logistics, and three to oversee the Order’s administration. The three priests in charge of hunting were the ones Kari was most familiar with, and they sat at the left end of the table. Master Arinotte, the youngest of the priests, was in charge of Specific-Target Missions, where only one or two hunters were needed to investigate an issue. Master Perez, a former brigadier, was in charge of Military Integrations and Tactics, which oversaw hunters required to advise and join military units involved in battles with groups of demons. Master van Holtzer was the one most familiar to Kari: he was in charge of training and education on the Order’s campus. Though he had a reputation as a stern, no-nonsense taskmaster, Kari knew that it was because he took the failures of his graduates quite personally.
Sitting at the right end of the table was Master Zallinger, who was in charge of Ministry Logistics, making certain that the Order was sufficiently funded to pay its hunters and help support the families of those who fell. Kari wasn’t well-versed in economics, but she knew that with what hunters were paid for their dangerous work, it would quickly drain the coffers of the Order and the entire Temple of Zalkar to pay them solely from the donations of the people. That was where Master Franklin’s responsibilities lay: he was in charge of negotiating income from the various nobles across the kingdom and the world, to make certain that they helped fund the Order that kept them safe. The final priest in charge of logistics was Master MacDonald, who was the Order’s General Treasurer and oversaw pay and the sale of artifacts recovered in hunts.
The final three head priests were in charge of administration. The most prominent of these was Master Bennet, who was second only to Master Attir Surallis, Zalkar’s high priest at the grand temple in Sarchelete. Master Bennet, sitting in the center, helped run the Order as head of the Council, and his specialty lay in granting promotions to deserving hunters. To his left sat Master Goldberg, who was in charge of maintaining the Order’s history and records, and thus helped Master Bennet in deciding who to promote. And to Master Bennet’s right sat Master Rousseau, who had the important task of interpreting Zalkar’s law and amending the Order’s rules and regulations accordingly.
“So then, Lady Vanador, please tell us your findings from your hunt in Barcon,” Master Bennet said at last, bringing the meeting to order. The elder human had the hood of his light blue robe down, as did all the others, and the lines of his face creased as he smiled at Kari. “We understand your hunt was a success, and that Earl Southwick was enthusiastic in his praise for you. So what is it you needed to speak to us about?”
Kari hesitated a moment, trying to get her thoughts in order before she simply started babbling at the Council. There was so much to tell them, so many implications and revelations that had come up as a result of what they’d thought was a cut-and-dry hunt. Had Turillia been just a serial killer like they'd thought, then Kari would have simply hunted and killed the half-succubus and that would have been the end. The presence of a shadow demon, the possession of a ruling noble, and the involvement of the mallasti known as Emma, though, had much more serious implications. And that didn’t even take into account all of the things Kari had discovered regarding Jason Bosimar and the events of his tenure. Kari wasn’t sure where to begin trying to explain it all.
She decided to start simply. “The assassin is dead,” she confirmed. “She turned out to be a syrinthian-succubus hybrid, but her killings weren't random like we were told when BlackWing first came and spoke to us.” She held her hand up so they’d allow her to explain before anyone began sidet
racking her with questions. “The killings were actually part of a plot to steal enough power to become a demon king or maybe even a minor goddess, just like I've been told Sheila Darkstorm did on Koryon.”
There seemed to be doubt in the eyes of all of the priests before her, and Kari could well understand that: on the surface, Turillia’s plan seemed impossible. “You conferred with the priests of Lord Ambergaust on this?” Master Bennet ventured. Ambergaust was the head of the Koryon pantheon, to which Sheila Darkstorm belonged, and so his priests were the most familiar with the succubus-turned-deity’s schemes.
“Yes. Master Belyakov of Lord Ambergaust’s church was helpful in explaining that this plot of Turillia’s had been done once before, like I said, by Sheila Darkstorm. Turillia wasn’t stealing power from the people she killed; she was committing the murders to feed a shadow demon that was in possession of BlackWing.”
“And you say it was BlackWing who came to see us on the campus, not Lord Black?”
Kari nodded and tried to keep her thoughts clear; this would be the most difficult part to explain. “That’s where this mission got really confusing,” she said. “I know our Order has believed BlackWing and Lord Black are the same person for a long time. It turns out that it’s true, but not quite the way we thought. When I spoke to Lord Black, he told me of an encounter he’d had with a demon here in DarkWind almost sixty years ago. After a lot of work, my friends and I figured out that the demon Lord Black had fought possessed him when he thought it was dead. And what’s stranger than that is that one of them has the ability to split into two…copies, I guess you’d say, of the same person. So the demon was splitting off this…copy of Lord Black – BlackWing – and using that copy to commit its evil.”
“So Lord Black was innocent in all this?” Master van Holtzer asked. As the headmaster in charge of training, Kari understood he and Master Goldberg would be the most surprised by the finding: they had been teaching about Lord Kaelin Black’s alleged crimes for many years.
“I wouldn’t say innocent, and neither would he,” Kari said. She knew that this revelation would at least exonerate Lord Black of the things that had been done since the demon took hold of him, but he had a reputation that extended further back than that. It was something that would come to light in due time, though, and she believed that for the time being, Lord Black was no longer a threat. “Lord Black is an interesting man with a very dark past, and even he said it was going to take him some time to figure out what he had done and what the demon had done through him, either by…manipulation or using the BlackWing duplicate. But when I finished my mission, he was very thankful, and he asked me to tell you that the Order is welcome to station hunters in his city and pass through it at their leisure. Oh, and the ‘church’ of the demon lord Achirun has also been burned out.”
The priests regarded her, clearly impressed. “I see you were wise to insist on being the one to handle this matter,” Master Arinotte said. “But please, elaborate on how Turillia and this shadow demon interacted to try to make her into a demon king or a goddess.”
“Turillia’s murders were feeding the shadow demon in BlackWing. I’m not sure if it was the fear or what, but every time she killed, the shadow demon grew stronger, and then she would feed off of the shadow demon. When we discovered what she was up to with the help of Master Belyakov, it turned out that Sheila Darkstorm had done essentially the same thing: she fed off of other demons and stole their power, and then she ‘sealed’ it in herself by feeding off of a demon king. Turillia didn’t have a king to feed off of, but she used me as bait to lure the mallasti sorceress ‘Emma’ to Barcon, because a mallasti's blood would, in theory, have the same effect.”
“Fascinating,” Master Perez said, and by the expressions on the other priests’ faces, Kari could see the tale intrigued them as well. “So then, was Emma drawn to Barcon to exact revenge on you for foiling her plan on Tsalbrin? If that was a feint, as you and your companions thought, then such would not really fit. What was it about your presence that drew Emma to Barcon?”
Kari wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to spring such a revelation on the Council or her friend Lord Allerius without warning, but she shrugged; it had to be said. “I thought Master Surallis would have spread the word, but I guess he's still discussing it with the other high priests,” she said. “Emma came to Barcon because…I’m Salvation’s Dawn.” She waited a minute while the Council spoke quickly and quietly among themselves, and Kari glanced at Lord Allerius. He had been a close friend to her over the previous three years, but the way he looked at her in light of this revelation made it obvious he was in awe of her. She’d always believed there was a level of mutual respect between them, but now she could see that Allerius viewed her in much the same way as many of the awe-struck cadets: she was a hero to him.
“Gods and angels,” Master van Holtzer said when the priests finished their impromptu conference. “Lady Vanador, this is most exciting news, but I must ask: how do you know this?”
“A wizard in Barcon named Dominick Harrington – who helped with my hunt – used a spell called an ‘arcane seal,’ and apparently it told him that I carried this power or whatever you want to call it,” she said. “I’m not even sure anyone else would’ve known what it was they’d detected, but Mr. Harrington said he’s studied the Temple of Archons for years, and so he was already familiar with the enchantment or power or whatever it is.”
“This is distressing, though,” Master Perez said. “If Emma knows that Lady Vanador is Salvation’s Dawn, then we do not know how many other denizens of the underworld also know. You discussed this with Master Surallis when you spoke with him in Sarchelete?”
“Yes, Master,” Kari said. “I thought maybe I would have to stay on campus to stay safe from the demons, but Master Surallis told me that I shouldn’t change anything about how I live or work. He said I’m supposed to be a light to the world, and I think he also meant that if the demons know I’m Salvation’s Dawn, and they need me, it puts them at a disadvantage if I’m the one who goes out to hunt them.”
“She raises a good point,” Master Arinotte said. “Perhaps now that Lady Vanador knows she is Salvation’s Dawn, she can manipulate Emma, instead of the other way around.”
“I’m worried about the other keys, though,” Master van Holtzer said. “If this Emma knows that Lady Vanador is Salvation’s Dawn, she may already be searching for the other six seals. If we don’t find them first or at least know who holds them, we have no way to protect the Temple other than by keeping our hunters and the military there to watch over it.”
“Let us not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Master Bennet said, gesturing for calm. “We know that the other seals are guarded by powerful beings; have we reason to believe that Emma poses a threat to those beings?”
“Well, from what Dominick said when his arcane seal passed over Emma…,” Kari began. “He said that calling her an archmage was an understatement. I don’t really know a lot about wizards or wizardry, or how much more powerful they can get than an archmage, but based on the look on his face when he told me that…she’s definitely very, very powerful.”
“Did Turillia or the shadow demon recognize you were Salvation’s Dawn?” Master Franklin asked.
“I don’t think so. Turillia was trying very hard to kill me because she wanted to…,” Kari paused as she remembered her encounter with Turillia in the town hall. “Oh, wait! Maybe she did…she was going to try to steal the power of the Blood Oath from me, but maybe she also wanted to steal the power of Salvation’s Dawn, if that’s even possible. I guess I’m not really sure, Masters; if the shadow demon knew, it never said or did anything to make that apparent. I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“I think perhaps it is time we sought the counsel of Lord Kaelariel on this matter,” Master Bennet said. “Lord Allerius, would you please go to Kaelariel’s temple and bring Kyrie Kyleah to us if she is available? Kaelariel may be the only member of the pantheon who knows the locat
ion of the other six seals, and if Ms. Kyleah imparts the importance of our inquiry to Lord Kaelariel, then perhaps he will reveal their locations, if he knows.”
“Do we have any idea what’s in the Temple?” Kari asked, and Lord Allerius hesitated to hear the answer of the Council before he left.
“Only speculation, Lady Vanador,” Master Bennet said. “We believe it is the place Gori Sensullu brought those heroes he exalted as deities. It is possible the demons seek to become gods by some means within the Temple, but again, this is speculation and nothing more.”
Lord Allerius nodded, patted Kari on the shoulder, and left to do as he was asked. Kari turned back to the Council. “Masters, I didn’t want to ask in front of Albrecht, but something came to my attention when I was working in Barcon that I simply have to know the truth. Elias Sorivar told me that there’s a succubus living here in DarkWind, and that Jason Bosimar knew about it and allowed her to stay here to use her for information. Is that true?”
“You mean Amastri?” Master Arinotte asked, and he waved a hand dismissively in response to Kari’s nod. “There is truth to what you’ve been told, but Amastri is not a succubus. Frankly, we don’t know exactly what she is. She is not a demon, but we do know that she is a servant of King Koursturaux S’Bakthra, and that killing her would be very, very dangerous. You’ve never heard mention of Amastri before you spoke to Eli?”
“No, Master; that was the first I’d heard of her.”
“And there’s a reason for that. Keep your distance from her, Lady Vanador. A time will come when we are at liberty to dispose of Amastri, but for now, we’re best served allowing her to stay here where we can monitor her as much as she monitors us,” the priest explained. “Also, she does manage to make herself useful from time to time when we need information regarding the underworld. Her price is just…absurdly high.”