Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “We could die at any time,” said Shalayn. “A wizard could teleport in while we’re sleeping.”

  “True, but I’m too tired to stand guard.”

  “I don’t want to die sober, and I don’t want to die horny.”

  “Oh. I’m awake enough for that.”

  We took care of both those issues, and still the wizards failed to show up and kill us.

  In the morning, she told me she didn’t want to die hungover.

  For a week we searched the tower for some means of escape while the dead wizard on the ground floor stank worse with each passing day. We found nothing other than that dangerous door which neither of us was willing to try to touch again. The one discovery we did make was that each time we returned to the bedroom, it had been tidied and the bed remade. I also learned that if anyone stayed in the room trying to learn how that happened, nothing got cleaned. I suppose whatever magic the wizards worked to achieve this effect was set only to function in an empty room so as not to disturb its occupants.

  “Fucking wizards, eh?” said Shalayn, grinning, when I shared my discovery.

  At some point she noted that I still wore the mouldering old clothes she found me in and that the armoires were filled with pristine clothing in a wide range of colours, styles, and sizes. Much as I hated wizards, they did seem to appreciate quality. I selected for myself a pair of black cotton pants, a loose shirt the hue of dark blood, and comfortable leather shoes. What I really wanted was a long robe of all red, but couldn’t find it. Every other colour was available except the one I wanted. Like the wizards had some aversion to that one choice. Weird.

  I transferred the ring and the wrapped shard of my heart to a pocket in my new pants.

  Shalayn eyed me as I displayed my choices.

  “What?”

  “Red suits you. You look good.”

  “Yeah?”

  She shrugged.

  With no windows, we had no way of knowing if it was day or night and soon lost track of time. We ate. We drank. We made love in every bedroom.

  Shalayn shed her armour and found a set of silk robes that accentuated her curves to great effect. Pale blue, they matched her eyes.

  As we sat to eat yet another meal and drink more wine I drew the shard of my heart from its pocket. I lay it on the floor between us, unfolding the material to display it.

  “We might be here for a while,” I said. “I want to know more of who I am.”

  Shalayn stared, unblinking, at the stone. “I don’t want to be stuck in here with an asshole.”

  “It won’t change how I—” I stopped, uncomfortable. I wanted to tell her it wouldn’t change how I felt about her, but I was never really sure what she felt about me. “I’ll still be me.” That sounded pathetic.

  “I know you really want this. Thank you for waiting as long as you did. That must have been difficult.”

  She had no idea. Many nights, after she fell asleep, I sat up staring at the shard. So many times, I almost touched the stone and robbed her of any choice in who she shared this tower with. I didn’t want to be that kind of person. I wanted to be someone she could rely on. Someone she could trust.

  Someone she could love.

  She’d been hurt, I was sure. Who hurt her, I didn’t know. Maybe it was Tien, they definitely shared some history. Being with the two of them in that underground cafe felt like interloping on old friends. I decided that if Shalayn wanted me to know, she’d tell me.

  “We’re in this together,” I said, “and together, we’ll make decisions.”

  “Good. So how does this work?”

  “When I touch it, it’ll enter my flesh. It’ll make its way through my body to my heart.”

  She nibbled on her bottom lip, looking thoughtful. “Is it painful?”

  “Incredibly.”

  “Why don’t you push it against your chest over your heart so it doesn’t have to tear through your entire body to get there?”

  I blinked at her. “Because I’m an idiot.”

  She flashed a quick smile. “And you said you were unconscious for a while afterwards?”

  “At least a day. Maybe two.”

  “Right. Let’s get you into bed—”

  “Oh, here we go again. Always thinking with your—”

  “So I don’t have to drag you there. And you’ll be more comfortable.”

  After retiring to one of the bedrooms—this one was deep earthy tones and down comforters big enough to lose yourself in—I sat on the bed. I lay the tiny shard of obsidian on the sheets before me.

  “You’re sure?” said Shalayn. “You don’t want to smash it to dust or toss it down the hole in the water closet?”

  I couldn’t tell her how tempting that was, or how terrifying. The idea of just being me, this me, of spending my days with her… I wanted that. Taking on new memories would change me—how could it not?

  “I need to know,” I said.

  She nodded and I picked up the stone and held it against my chest.

  For a moment, nothing.

  I screamed as it split the skin and bore through one of my ribs. This was not less painful.

  I lost Shalayn. She must have been there, but the pain became everything. Searing agony.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A man, cloaked in blood, stood on a hill. An icy wind, rushing down from the Deredi Mountains, snapped and tugged at his robes, blew the cowl back exposing hard features shaped by hard choices. His hair, once black, now shot with iron grey, hung in long, ropey braids. His eyes were gone, torn from his skull, replaced by two differently shaped and sized stones that looked to have been forced into the sockets. Ridged scars like melted flesh surrounded the stones.

  Down below, in the Melechesh Pass, arrayed armies faced off against each other. Stone eyes surveyed the scene.

  Battalions of giants, armoured in the scales of slain dragons, held colossal great swords. Sorcerers spent themselves, ageing at a furious rate, growing old and weak, to fuel their crude but powerful spells. Elementalists stood surrounded by armies of trees and rocks. The very earth did their bidding.

  The man watched distant elementalists work to wake the mountain upon which they stood. This was madness. Size and age determined an elemental’s power. If they succeeded, they could never hope to control something so large, so ancient.

  Even the western tribes had come. Shamans in stinking animal skins clawed themselves bloody, called ancient and long-dead ancestors and spirits.

  He saw armies of corpses surrounding the necromancers. Dead knights mounted on rotting horses. Giants, reduced to decaying sinew and bone, rode undead dragons, their massive wings like wind-tattered sheets. Anything falling in the coming battle would rise up against the man in blood.

  And there, safe at the back, cowering behind the vast armies they plotted and manipulated to bring against him, stood the wizards. Legions of Battle Mages twisted the world with their filthy chaos magic. The air stank of change and unfettered potential. Standing in huge rings, thousands of women and men holding hands, they pooled their resources to work world-shattering spells.

  “This is too much,” said the man with the stone eyes. “They damage the world with their mad quest for power and domination.”

  He turned to the demon standing at his side and asked, “Can we interrupt whatever spell they’re working? If we break a circle that big, the backlash will destroy most of their army.”

  The demon, in robes of ink, looked like a gaunt old man, bald, bent and near skeletal. “If we break that circle, it might crack the earth to its core. Lava. Ash in the sky for years.”

  “I’m fine with that.”

  “The elementalists have succeeded in waking that mountain. It will be angry.”

  “Perfect. Break the circle.”

  The demon squinted at the distant mage-circle. “Whatever the cost?”

  “Whatever the cost.”

  Icy wind dragged at the creature’s black robes and it pulled them tight. “You can’t win
, old friend. The world is against you. The wizards have won. The Empire will fall.”

  “Perhaps I can’t win,” said the man. “But I can make their victory expensive.” He turned to survey the ranked demons behind him. “Maybe I can cost them everything.”

  Creatures called from a hundred different realities stood waiting. Massive beasts, some dwarfing even the Deredi giants, held formation beside winged nightmares from some distant hell. Many, hailing from closer realities looked human, differing only in some small detail. Purple skin, horns, claws, too many or two few fingers. With this army, he had bound the world under a single rule: His. And now, with this army, he would lose the world.

  Ten thousand years ago, when he first rose to power, there had been no Wizard’s Guild. The many branches of magic, mages, sorcerers, necromancers, shamans, elementalists, and demonologists squabbled like children.

  He brought the demonologists together, unified them in purpose. With him at the helm, the demonologists conquered the world, created the first true empire. The wizards were jealous of his power and built their guild, mimicking the unity of the demonologists. He tolerated it; chaos magic had its uses. They were leeches, feeding off all he wrought, always worming their way into every aspect of the Empire.

  Ten thousand years was too much. Increasingly he left details of the Empire to be run by underlings. Conquering kingdom after kingdom, the Empire swelled beyond the scope of one man. It was too large. And that, he knew, had been its weakness.

  Size killed the Empire.

  Size, and the machinations of the greedy, power-hungry wizards.

  They’d learn.

  The wizards might win. Tomorrow, the Empire might be theirs to rule. But it was also theirs to lose. And lose it, they would. Short-sighted, they had no idea just how much the Empire relied upon demons. Demons the wizards had no means of controlling.

  “We fight to the end,” said the man. “To the death.”

  The demon beside him nodded, wizened face sad.

  Commands were sent out and the demonic host, bound in servitude to the demonologists, had no choice but to obey.

  That night the Empire fell, and the world sank into a thousand years of darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I woke to find Shalayn in a silk nightie with a spread of food, cheeses and oil-soaked vegetables, laid out on the bed. She sat cross-legged, a bottle of red wine between her freckled thighs.

  She watched me surface, cocking an eyebrow. “You started twitching and groaning. I figured you’d wake up soon.”

  “You look amazing.” And she did. I was so used to seeing her in armour I still had trouble equating this woman to that warrior.

  “I am.” She passed me the bottle. “You were out for two days and one night,” she said as I drank.

  She examined me, reclaimed the bottle and took a long swig.

  “I’m still me,” I said. “I still… My feelings for you haven’t changed.”

  “You remember your past?”

  I considered her question. There was so much in there, swirling about my thoughts. I couldn’t be sure which parts were real and which were fragments of a strange dream. Frankly, none of it seemed terribly real. The past, I decided, was like that. Even the most cherished moments faded, became memories of memories, as we focussed on the parts we liked, and forgot the rest. But where individual moments lacked clarity, knowledge was something different. I knew things. Impossible things. I remembered ancient symbols written in blood, pacts between men and creatures from other realities. I remembered one of the earliest bindings I learned as a young demonologist.

  The majority of my past, however, remained lost to me.

  “I think I know why the wizards did this to me.”

  Shalayn waited.

  I hesitated. Should I tell her? She believed the history the wizards taught, that all demonologists were evil, that the wizards saved the world. I didn’t remember much, but I knew she was wrong. The wizards lied. Their treachery destroyed the empire that kept the world peaceful for millennia. They destroyed an ancient civilization in their thirst for power.

  “Well?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m worried you won’t like it. I’m afraid you won’t understand, that the wizards poisoned you.”

  “Poisoned? So, you’re a demon, or something?” she joked. “I guess that would explain the stone heart.”

  “Close.”

  She blinked at me.

  “I think I was a demonologist.”

  She leaned away, subtly distancing herself. That hurt.

  “I know some very minor demonology spells. Nothing big, nothing world-shaking.”

  Shalayn pushed herself off the bed, stood there in her nightie, staring at me, bottle clutched in one hand.

  “I’m not evil,” I said. “I’m the same man you knew. I haven’t changed.”

  She drank.

  “You can’t believe everything the wizards taught you. They lied about a lot. They rewrote history to make themselves look good.”

  She drank again, emptying the bottle.

  “I still…”

  Turning away, she left the room.

  “I still love you,” I said after she’d gone.

  I sat, wondering what to do. Should I chase her, try to explain? Would she even listen?

  In the end, I decided to wait, to give her time to come to terms with what I told her.

  Hours later she returned, quite drunk, still wearing that sexy nightie. I was happy to see she hadn’t gone to fetch her sword. Instead, she held another bottle of wine clutched in her fist. It was full.

  “You’re a fucking demonologist,” she slurred.

  “Technically, you’ve been fu…” Her look stopped me. Not a time for jokes. “A very minor one,” I said. “No great earth-shattering magic, here. I doubt I could actually summon anything.” I left out the fact that I was quite sure I’d learn more as I found more shards of my heart.

  “You’re likely the only one in all the world.” She sat on the edge of the bed, but stayed beyond arm’s reach.

  “I don’t believe that.” I couldn’t see how the wizards could possibly have wiped out every single demonologist. Somewhere, they were hidden away. Probably far to the south, in the islands.

  “Demonologists are evil. Were evil,” she corrected. She blinked at me, eyes red. “Are evil.”

  “I’m not evil.”

  “I have the worst taste in men. Tien…” She laughed, a snort of derision. “She managed to do it again. Ruined another one.” She drank, spilling wine down her chest, wiping at her lips with the back of her hand. “So stupid.”

  I wasn’t sure who she meant, me, her, or Tien. I shuffled closer on the bed and she didn’t move away.

  Reaching out, I touched her arm, the softest, most tentative caress. “I haven’t changed. I’m still me. I haven’t suddenly become some blood-swilling soul-sucking monster.”

  She studied me, eyes miserable, wanting to believe me, tormented by a life-time of wizard propaganda.

  “The wizards lied to you,” I said, moving closer, putting an arm around her. “They lied to everyone.”

  “It can’t all be lies.”

  “You’re probably right,” I admitted. “But I don’t know everything they taught you. I don’t know their history. And it’s not like all wizards are good and honest people, either. A wizard helped us break into this very tower so we could steal something for her.”

  She nodded, wanting me to still be the man she knew. I pulled her close and she leaned against me.

  “I will never become a man you don’t like,” I swore. “If I do, you can cut me open, and shatter my heart, break me back to the man you love.”

  Nightie soaked in red wine, she pressed herself against me, staring up into my eyes. “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I knew,” she said. “I knew there was something different about you. When that dead mountain lion clawed you, the wounds were terrible. I didn’
t think you’d last the night, but you didn’t even seem worried. I cleaned your wounds, and by morning they were already starting to heal. I knew,” she said, like somehow this was all her fault.

  I held her while she slept, snoring and drunk.

  In the morning, she changed into a long silk dress she found in one of the armoires. We ate our breakfast, more preserved vegetables, sitting on the floor in the kitchen. The ground floor and the dead wizard stank so bad we no longer went down there.

  She was quiet and tense, but not distant. I think that while she accepted what I was, she hadn’t yet decided what it meant. She was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. At least for now. I promised myself I wouldn’t let her down.

  “I have an idea,” I told her. “It’s a terrible idea, and probably dangerous, but I’m not sure we have much choice.”

  Pale eyes hardened. “You’re going to summon a demon.”

  I considered the idea, searching my memories. “I’m not sure I know how. Anyway…” I grinned, “I don’t think I need to. If my theory is right, most of the objects in the museum downstairs already have demons bound to them.”

  “You think this tower is where the wizards piled all the demon junk they didn’t know what to do with?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why was that piece of your heart here?”

  “Probably got mixed up with all the other demon stuff. There hasn’t been a demonologist in thousands of years, right? I doubt anyone alive has any idea who I am. Or was.”

  “I suppose.” Shalayn selected a chunk of red pepper from the jar of preserved vegetables and popped it into her mouth. She washed it down with some white wine. “So, you’re going to muck about with a bunch of unknown demons until you find one that can get us out?”

  “When you put it like that, it sounds dangerous.”

  “Just a little.”

  “But hopefully not. I have no way of knowing what’s in any given object. I think a more skilled demonologist could, but I know only the most rudimentary binding. If I try that on a powerful demon, it will devour my soul.”

  After taking another sip of wine, she returned the bottle to me.