I remembered Shalayn’s question when I mentioned something similar regarding the summoning and binding of demons.
“Who created these bargains?” I asked.
“The gods.”
“I was told there were no gods. That they were an invention of the demonologists, that religion was nothing more than a means of controlling the people.”
“You were lied to.” He shrugged. “Or misinformed by someone ignorant of the truth.”
Had I worshipped these gods? I had so many questions. Exhaustion forced me to set them aside.
I felt drunk on lack of sleep, wrung hollow with thirst.
“I can’t focus,” I said. “Need sleep. In the morning.”
“That concept has no meaning here.”
“The sun never moves,” I said, understanding. Swirling clouds, spiralling ever inward, devoured.
“That’s no sun. It’s a god, the Lord of this hell.”
“Oh.” I wanted to feel something. Shock. Awe. Horror. I was too tired.
Lowering myself to the floor, I looked up at this strange old man who claimed to be my friend and was clearly not human. Was he lying about that? Could he be lying about everything?
“You bound him,” said Nhil as my eyes slid closed. “With the help of your god.”
I slept.
Oceans of salt water drown my dreams. I sank in the brine. Far above, on the surface, fleets of warships did battle. We were losing here, as we were on the mainland. Wizards rained rocks from the heavens. Sorcerers sacrificed themselves, burning through years of life, spending their own muscle and flesh, to call colossal fire-storms. Lightning cracked the sky. It was so bright I saw it from the deepest depths.
Calling my demons to me, those of oceanic hells, I rode them to the surface. Kraken. Sea dragons large enough to swallow an entire man-o-war. Dark things, alien to the light, sickly white, savaged reality with their demonic power.
And still we were losing.
A thousand elementalists died waking the ocean. The wizards spent them at a terrifying rate and the fools, believing the lies of power-mad mages, let them.
The ocean was too big, too ancient, to ever be controlled. It was awake and it was angry. I knew it would be centuries before any man dared set keel in these waters. The wizards pitched the world into darkness. The Empire relied on the ocean for so many things. Food. Communication. Trade. The filthy wizards just toppled civilization and they probably didn’t even realize it.
The ocean found me, sought to crush me.
I slipped away.
Thirst woke me, seized my throat, left me coughing and gagging. I rolled over and found Nhil standing exactly as he had when I fell asleep.
“Have you been there the entire time?” I asked.
“Where else would I go?”
“You don’t eat or sleep?”
“If I did, I’d be long dead.” He examined me with violet eyes.
Did he look younger, less wrinkled and ancient?
“If you’re finished wasting time,” he said, “we should return to your lessons.”
“You love this, don’t you?”
“Everyone needs a purpose,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Kill Tien,” I answered without hesitation.
“That will do. For now. Shall we begin?”
Rather than talk, I nodded.
We studied symbols, memorized chants and incantations—bargains, Nhil reminded me—until sleep claimed me. When I woke, we continued. We practised until my voice cracked and all sound was gone from me.
“Take a moment,” Nhil said. “Find some saliva. Then we’ll do this.”
“Why do I have to do everything,” I whispered. “Why can’t you help?”
“The bargains weren’t arranged for my kind. Now, no more questions.”
Nhil watched as I chalked arcane symbols onto the floor. They were strange and alien, and achingly familiar. Careful not to scuff anything, I placed an empty bowl at the centre.
Sitting back, I worked to find even a drop of saliva. My tongue felt cracked, like leather left too long in the sun. There were things I knew, dark truths I had yet to examine. Unanswered questions flashed through my thoughts, scattering them. Waves of dizziness left me weaving and unsteady as I sat.
Why did demonic summonings and bindings require blood and souls? Why wasn’t the same required of elemental summonings? Was interacting with elementals less evil than calling upon demonic aid?
Evil.
I didn’t like that word. So judgemental. One man’s evil was another’s righteous. The world wasn’t black and white, right and wrong. That was what the wizard’s preached. Evil, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder.
I was not evil.
Sure, but was there a way to sacrifice a soul that wasn’t evil?
There must be.
I shied from the thought. Were the wizards right? Was demonology inherently evil?
How many souls did it take to bind a god? This place, this bubble of reality, had been some kind of escape for me. There were enough rooms to host hundreds of friends or diplomats. Had I been the kind of person who had friends? Who carved this castle from the rock of this floating mountain? If there was a god here, was there also a native population to worship it? Where were they?
I had this sick feeling that I knew the answer.
I wanted to ask Nhil. Did I sacrifice the souls of an entire reality to bind the devouring god in the sky?
I couldn’t spare the spit.
I coughed and hacked until I tasted sour bile. It was the best I could managed.
“Are you ready?” asked Nhil. “You drifted off there for a while.”
Again, I nodded rather than speak.
“Begin.”
The spell went on. I chanted until all I could manage was the ghost of a whisper. The chant built in me, filled my skull.
“Louder,” commanded Nhil.
My voice cracked.
“Louder!”
I screamed the words, throat tearing, voice shredding apart.
I sensed it.
Deep in the heart of this floating mountain, was a reservoir of pure water. It was huge. It was thousands of years old. It sought to drown me, to douse the tiny spark of my life.
I hurled my will against the ancient intelligence. Rage burned away all doubt and fear. I needed this. No damned water elemental would be my death.
You. Will. Obey!
Fear. Terror.
The water elemental cowered. It remembered me. It remembered how I brought it here, how I bent it to my will.
“Fill the bowl,” I commanded. “If I ask for water, you give it.”
I opened my eyes to find the bowl filled with cool, clear water. I drank until I puked.
Then I drank more.
“Better?” asked Nhil.
“Yes,” I answered, voice still raw.
“Good,” he said. “Because we have another problem.”
I lay back, belly distended. “What’s that?”
“You’re still going to starve to death before long.”
“Oh.” I released a long belch. “Fuck.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What are my options?” I asked Nhil.
He pursed grey lips, examined me with a judging eye. “When did you last eat?”
I realized I’d been so thirsty it dwarfed my hunger. Now, that need was sated, my belly was happy to let me know just how empty it was.
“It’s been a while.” First locked in the tower, and then here in the basement, I hadn’t seen a moving sun in ages. Judging time was impossible. “It feels like at least three days.” My fingers shook and I felt jittery. Hunger sharpened deep and ancient predatory instincts.
“Then I see one option,” said Nhil. “A portal demon.” He lifted a grey hand to forestall my inevitable questions. “They are immaterial beings existing in the space between worlds, between realities. As such, they can open temporary gateways from one world to another,
or even from one location in a world to another in the same world.”
“Why the hell didn’t you teach me this first?”
“Ah, there we have a little of the old you. I didn’t teach it to you first because it will take months to learn. You might survive that without food, but not without water.”
My stomach rumbled complaint. It was not looking forward to starving for the next two months.
A thought occurred to me. “The ring that got me here. A portal demon?”
“Of course.”
“Why can’t it take me back?”
“Two problems,” said Nhil. “That is a demon bound with very specific commands. All it does is bring people here, to your castle. I suspect it once belonged to a trusted advisor or friend.”
“I had friends?”
“Everyone has friends. You gave them the ring so they might either visit you here, or escape to this place should they be in danger.”
“Is that what happened to those corpses beyond the castle walls?”
Nhil pursed his lips. “Corpses? I didn’t know. But probably. They likely came here to escape the war, only to find themselves trapped outside the tower and unable to leave. When the wizards betrayed you, you changed the orders at the gate. Where previously they opened to anyone on your short list of friends and advisors, you told them only to open to you.”
I thought of these unknown friends thinking they were fleeing to safety, only to starve to death beneath a devouring sun. “I told the gate?” I asked.
“There is a powerful demon bound there. It recognized you and opened when you made it clear that’s what you wanted.”
“You couldn’t get out, could you?”
“No. But even if I could, I could not have left this hell. There are no portal demons here to take me home.”
I wanted to ask what he meant by home, but realized I needed to stay focussed on my own survival. Such questions could wait.
“I don’t understand why I can’t use the ring,” I said.
“It was bound with a very specific set of commands. To change those commands, you’d have to break the binding, which would take half a year to learn, maybe longer. You would then have to rebind it using spells that would take another few months to learn. You don’t have that kind of time.”
“When I tried to bind it back in the wizards tower—”
“You failed. This demon is well beyond your current abilities. You were a thousand years old when you summoned and bound it. Perhaps not at the height of your power, but certainly more skilled and knowledgeable than you are now.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t imagine how much someone might learn in a thousand years. “Let’s get started,” I said, deciding. Then, when Nhil turned to head off toward the bookshelves, I called out, “Wait.”
He stopped, back to me.
“You said demon. I thought demonic summonings required souls.”
“They do.”
“Is there someone here other than us?”
“There is not.” He turned to face me. “You have planned for such contingencies.” He cracked a fractured smile. “Well, not quite for this. I don’t think you ever imagined returning without your memories. But you left a Soul Stone here. It will provide the needed souls to power the summoning.” When he saw I was about to ask more questions, he waved me to silence. “Soul Stones are receptacles. Lives can be sacrificed, their souls stored for later use.”
“Did I sacrifice people to make this Soul Stone?”
“Of course.”
I felt like that shard of obsidian in my heart grew a thousand times heavier and tried to drag me down. What kind of man casually sacrificed souls to store for later use? I knew the answer.
“How many souls?” I asked.
“I don’t know. This one is a small stone; no more than sixty. Others were bigger. You were at war. Some carried thousands.”
Thousands. I wanted to puke. “To sacrifice someone…”
Nhil waited.
“I killed them.”
“Of course.”
“Personally. Cut their throats.”
“You were very good at it. Had it down to an art. I once watched you do hundreds in a single day.”
My gut twisted, threatened upheaval. I bled hundreds of people in a single day, stored their souls in a stone, so I might later feed them to demons. How could this not be evil? How desperate would a situation have to be to justify such atrocity? Could anything justify murder on such a scale?
Shalayn was right.
The wizards were right.
“Ah,” said Nhil. “I see you don’t remember any of this. You are not the man you were.”
Was that a bad thing? Hell, I wasn’t even out of my teens, if I’d judged the age of my body correctly.
“I’m not him,” I said, voice shaking.
“I know.” Shoulders sagging, he gazed at the floor between us. Was that pity I saw in those demonic eyes?
This Soul Stone would save my life, assuming I learned the summoning and binding spells before I starved to death. But in using it I’d be feeding a soul to whatever demon I summoned. A soul I put there. A soul I tore from someone.
“It’s too late,” I said. “Those people are already dead. There is no saving them.”
“A justification,” said Nhil. “You’re lying to yourself. Souls are eternal. People are reborn, over and over, to live different lives.” He studied me. “Unless that soul is destroyed, devoured.”
“If I shatter this Soul Stone?”
“The souls within will be freed to be reborn.”
I broke, put my head in my hands, crushed my palms against my eyes until I saw red. “This is evil,” I whispered.
“So be the good guy,” said Nhil. “And starve to death.”
“I hate you.”
“Today you do.”
And I hated that we both knew what I was going to do. Starving here meant an end. It meant Shalayn died in that tower or was taken by the wizards to die later. It meant I’d never see her again, and her death would be my fault. It meant Tien won. It meant a conclusion to my quest to regain my lost self.
That thought stopped me. I wasn’t just some minor demonologist reborn. The dreams. The man with the stone eyes. The war. This place and the murals.
Nhil knew who I was.
“Who am I?” I asked into my hands.
“You know who you are.”
And I did.
Who was the one demonologist the wizards would want destroyed?
“Khraen. The Emperor.” I was the evil the wizards told everyone to fear.
I wanted to deny it. I couldn’t.
It was too much. I couldn’t comprehend the full import of what this meant. Whatever that man was, I knew I was different.
Pulling my hands from my eyes I glared at Nhil. “You said souls are eternal. If I die here, I’ll be reborn.”
He did that sliding blink. “Not quite. You dedicated your soul to your god. She locked it forever in obsidian. You’ve already been reborn.” He shrugged. “Maybe other pieces of you have too. Perhaps, someday, one of them will come here and find your corpse. Maybe he’ll cut that little shard from your chest and be one step closer to becoming the man you were.”
That thought flooded me with rage. I was not part of someone else. They were all part of me.
“My god, what is her name?”
“No,” said Nhil. “You are not ready for that.”
I dropped it. Was the demon telling the truth about any of this? Who could I trust? He said that sky-devouring sun was a god, and then referred to my god as ‘her.’
Some other version of me sacrificed the souls now in the stone. Would using those souls to save myself—to save Shalayn—be evil? How many souls would I sacrifice to save the woman I loved?
The question felt wrong, like I missed something.
I wasn’t going to starve here. I knew that. I couldn’t let Shalayn die. No way was I going to let Tien get away with this.
> “We’d best get started,” I said.
“Quite.”
We spent weeks reading and rehearsing, memorizing lines of an ancient bargain Nhil claimed had been forged by gods. By the end, I was so weak I spent days and nights on the library floor. Nhil brought blankets and pillows from one of the bedrooms for me to sleep on.
Every night I dreamed of war. War on the oceans. War in the deserts. War in the jungles and on the plains. Dragons razed armies of demons to ash and I cried in sadness. Nightmares clawed through from other worlds. Ink flesh bled black light. They came at my call, obeyed my every command. I sacrificed thousands to summon them, spilled oceans of blood, and then set them upon my enemies. These things, all tentacles and split snake-eyes, shambling madness, devoured the souls of wizards and sorcerers. They crushed the mountains awoken by the elementalists, left dead rock in their wake.
The necromancers, once my closest allies, broke my demons. Battalions of dead giants pulled them apart. Stampeding elephant corpses trampled them in the dust.
Every morning I hallucinated. When awake, my hunger was everything.
The water elemental at the heart of this flying mountain refilled the bowl at my command. I drank until I was full. I drank until my belly stretched tight and the thought of more water nauseated me.
Hunger always returned, worse each time. Sharper. Deeper.
Finally, when Nhil was confident I’d memorized the bargains and could flawlessly paint the symbols of binding—or decided I’d never get any better—he brought out the Soul Stone. It was a diamond the size of my smallest fingernail. He lifted the rock, turning it to catch the dancing torchlight.
“Each facet can store a single soul,” he said. “The number of facets limits the number of souls.”
I remembered the fist-sized diamond in the wizard’s tower, its thousands of facets. Was that a Soul Stone?
“How many does this one have?”
“Sixty.”
Sixty. Sixty souls. Sixty people I killed, sacrificed so I might later make use of them.
“How many are in there now?” I asked.
“No idea.” He lifted the gem, turning it, and peering into the facets. “The bargains were not struck with my kind in mind,” he said, changing the topic. “No matter how much I learn, no matter my flawless memory or ability understand, I can’t summon or bind.”
Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1) Page 14