He yanked her robe back over her shoulder. “You will take me to the girl.”
She frowned and straightened her clothing. “Very well. But you will only kill us both.”
“Good.”
* * *
Vosh followed the woman down a weed-infested road that cut through the nearby forest. The lantern in her hand barely penetrated the shadows hanging over them.
He could not say how he had managed to survive for so long after ingesting the kingsgloom the woman had mixed into that bowl of wine. He should have been dead long ago, and he felt half dead already. Yet, he continued onward. It was as mysterious as how Sohka had found him.
Had the stars really told her? Fortunes could be read in the stars, he knew, but could something so specific as the location of his cave also be revealed by the heavens? It seemed too fantastic. Yet, she had found him all the same. He grimaced. It made no difference one way or the other anymore.
His disorientation, aching numbness, and nausea dwindled as he focused on his task. He remembered the mental exercises he had learned as a novice and used them to still his mind and block out the effects of pain and illness. His strength began to return at each step, but he knew his time was slender at best.
The woman whined as he tugged on the rope he had tied around her neck to keep her from running off. “How much further?” he asked, leaning a bit on the long wooden sword as he walked.
“It’s too far,” she said. “You’ll never make it. Besides, the girl has been honored. She—”
He yanked hard on the rope. “Honored? You think slavery is an honor?” He gnashed his teeth. “The Order of Light is a plague that needs to be eradicated. All of your kind will suffer a hundred fold for the evils you have wrought upon innocents throughout Kaifaene.”
The woman laughed suddenly. “Poor Senshu. You have no idea what you are stumbling into. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a clearing nearby. Let me comfort you.”
“Be quiet.” He pulled on the rope again, nearly strangling her this time. She coughed and choked.
Years ago, he had watched the slavers drag his family away. Surrounded by dozens of mercenaries, he had been afraid. Too afraid to even lift his sword to protect them. He glowered at the memories. He had looked for his wife and son afterwards, but there had been too many leads, too many villains to follow—he had been trapped in a labyrinth that led nowhere. There had simply been too much evil to wade through. But he would find Sohka, and he would save her from the fate he had been unable to protect his family from.
Soon, the reddish glow of torches and bonfires flickered through the darkness up ahead. Vosh knocked the lantern out of the woman’s hand, sending it crashing into the dirt. He tossed aside his wooden stick and slipped the steel sword from its sheath on his back. He listened to the faint ringing sound of the blade sliding free. He gently touched Sokha’s satchel, feeling the dusty leather under his fingers, becoming acclimated to its important weight at his side.
“You cannot save her,” the woman said. “You will only die. This is pointless. It is not too late for us to—”
“Be quiet.” He contemplated what to do with the woman. He needed the element of surprise. No doubt she would warn her comrades of his approach if he brought her with him. The merchants’ bodyguards from the inn would be difficult adversaries, and there would probably be many more of them here. He needed every advantage he could get.
But could he let her return to the village to continue her monstrous ways? Others would suffer if he let her go. That was certain.
She seemed to sense what he was thinking. “I will change,” she said quickly. “I swear it by the Starry Heavens. Your courage and resolve has shown me the truth of my misdeeds. You promised to spare me, remember? Let me go, and I will spend my life in goodness.”
“No.” He pulled her close and plunged his sword into her stomach. He covered her mouth with his hand in case she tried to scream. But she only gasped faintly and dropped to her knees. He knelt beside her and ripped the blade up and across her stomach, feeling hot blood and entrails pour over his hands. Her eyes never left him, even as he set her down in the weeds.
He wiped his blade on the hem of her robe. It had been a better death than she deserved. The others would not be so fortunate.
Trees began to wither around him as he moved closer to the bonfires. The grass gave way to dirt and broken stones. The air felt thick and stale, growing more and more foul as he walked. A cloud of flies zigzagged around him. Vosh adjusted his grip on his sword. His hands were sweaty. His vision wobbled dangerously. His innards smoldered and boiled while his flesh turned cold as snow. Sweat dribbled down his face. He had to focus, to clear his mind of all distractions. The Order would pay for what they had done; he would see to it.
A dusty path opened up off of the main road, framed by gnarled, stunted trees and briar bushes. His legs lumbered slowly, and he struggled to keep his fears and illness at bay—he had to save her. He was going to die; he was already dying. He had to save her before it was too late. He let Sohka’s sunny face fill his eyes and thoughts. With her in mind, his purpose remained clear.
The stench of rot became nearly unbearable. Clouds of gnats and flies were everywhere. Vosh continued forward to the perimeter of a large clearing cluttered with bonfires. Dead trees loomed above him like bony hags and from their branches hung the bloodless corpses of animals.
Figures stood in a semi circle, and as Vosh crept closer, he could see that they were all nude and smeared with red paint—no, blood. Each held rusty cleavers, bony clubs, or sinuous knives, occasionally raising them into the air. Animal corpses also littered the ground with their throats slit and emptied. A few human bodies were slumped in the grass, ruined.
He had not expected this. The Order of Light, even in their twisted way, still worshipped the Starry Heavens and Sharak’kai. This was something far different. And far worse.
In front of the mass of people, a tall, robed man wearing a mask of some sort stood on the remains of an ancient structure, probably something built in the age of the Stone Kings. A thin girl lay naked on the red-stained slab of stone before him. The robed man raised up a large ornate bowl and poured its crimson contents over the girl, then drained the rest into her mouth.
She convulsed, her body jerked, and her limbs thrashed violently through the air. A loud, terrible wail escaped her.
Vosh gripped his sword tightly. There were at least thirty of those cultists or whatever they were between him and the girl. He had to save her. He would not fail again. A fiery sweat burned his eyes and soaked through his robes.
He took a deep, trembling breath and charged quickly into the clearing. His entrance went mostly unnoticed until he cleaved his way into the crowd. Bodies dropped in his wake, screaming out as his sword cut them down. Cries and frantic shouts pierced the air. But in a moment, he found himself completely encircled. The cultists bared their gruesome cleavers and knives. He stared at their bloody faces, glared into their dull eyes. They came at him all at once. Vosh tore his way through them up to the ruined structure, lopping off limbs on the way.
The robed man held up his hand, and his followers immediately halted their attack.
Vosh staggered a bit. It was difficult to remain upright. His chest ached.
“Let the girl go,” he yelled.
The man laughed through his mask—Vosh realized it had been constructed from the flesh of a human face, from many human faces. The man reached out to the girl on the slab and pulled her to her feet. Vosh hurried forward, but stopped abruptly in his tracks.
Before him stood Sohka, naked and slumped, like a limp puppet dangling from strings. Vosh’s heart plummeted.
Blood dripped from her mouth and suffused her body. Tufts of her sunny brown hair fell out right before his eyes, leaving pale bald spots. The eyes gazing at him from her round, blood-soaked face were dim
and vacant, offering him no sign of recognition. Her once softly white skin was now a blotched, cadaverous gray.
The tall cultist beside her grinned through his grotesque mask, revealing a set of brown, rotting teeth, with more than a few missing. He put his hand on Sohka’s bare shoulder. His fingers reminded Vosh of worms.
“Blood for blood,” he said in a dark voice, like the rattling of old bones. “Blessed are they who drink their fill. She has tasted the blood of the Blood-drinker, the blood of a god! Ahz Zu Ahz!”
The fiends chanted all around him, waving their jagged weapons in the air. “Ahz Zu Ahz!”
“Monsters!” Vosh hollered. “Filth! I will kill you all!”
Tears poured down his face as he gazed at the monstrosity that had once been Sohka. So young and so innocent! Now ravaged and deformed. It was all his fault. He was supposed to protect her; he had promised to keep her safe. There seemed to be nothing left of her at all. How could this happen? His mind reeled. Then a desperate, fleeting thought slipped through his head. But it was impossible. His stomach roiled in sickness and fear. His time was dwindling rapidly.
Vosh looked over at the mob surrounding him. He had already killed dozens of them, but there were still so many more. Too many. It was as if they continued to multiply no matter how many he cut down. Why did evil always seem so numerous? He looked back at Sohka and the cult leader standing at her shoulder.
The tall man produced a tarnished dagger from inside his tattered cloak. “Put down your weapon and die,” he said to Vosh. “Embrace the inevitable. Embrace the Blood-drinker. Accept his divine ruin and give us your blood. All else is futile. Give us your blood. Soon Kaifaene, like all the world, will be in the grip of the Old Ones.”
The Old Ones were not real, Vosh told himself. This made no sense! What kind of insane fools would worship a myth? The Old Ones lived only in stories. But one glance at Sohka told him he might be wrong. Whatever they had done to her seemed far beyond the bounds of nature.
Vosh stared at the man, at the surrounding cultists, then at poor Sohka again. He took a deep breath and sprang into motion. He swung his sword in a wide arc, ripping off arms and legs of those nearest to him. Screams and curses exploded from everywhere. He would not falter again. The forms of swordplay danced over him, and he moved with a deadly grace into the slaughter. He reared back and split the skull of a scrawny, flailing man, and then ripped out the innards of another. By now, Vosh’s hands were slick with gore, and when he tried to extract the sword from a man’s chest, it almost slipped out of his grasp. He lost his balance for a moment, but managed to keep his footing.
Jagged, rusty knives bit into his arms, legs, and ribs, taking advantage of his brief stumble. Clubs crashed into his shoulders, but on he fought. He punched a stick-thin woman in the face and broke a man’s knee. His keen blade cut through torsos and necks, thighs and shoulders. But they were too many. A dull knife drove deep into Vosh’s side and staggered him. The fiends were all over him, clawing him, biting him, stabbing him, trying to lick the blood from his wounds.
They stopped abruptly and backed away. The cloaked leader had his hand in the air, aiming his tarnished dagger mockingly to the heavens.
“Embrace his favor,” the man said. “Give him your blood and reverence. You will die and rot either way, and the girl will gorge herself on you. She is of us now. There is no escape. Give us your blood. Give us your blood. Ahz Zu Ahz!”
“Give me your blood. Give me your blood,” Sohka murmured in a frightening voice.
Odala Vosh nearly screamed in agony at her words. He knew his time had run out as blood poured between his fingers from the wound in his side and as the poison in his veins continued to destroy him. There would be no escape. Not for him. But perhaps… That frantic thought returned, and he knew what he must do. He had to do it. Curse it all, there’s no other way, he thought angrily. There’s no other way. He had failed her once, he would not do so again. There was only one way to save her, only one thing he could do. The idea terrified him, but he growled and accepted it.
He would not run this time, he would not let fear rule and ruin him. He prayed for his disgrace to die here with him, leaving nothing but bones in the ground. No marker or grave, no sign or remembrance. Just bones in the ground, unnamed and soon to be forgotten.
“Go to Sharak’kai!” he shouted.
Drawing on his last reserves of strength, he thrust his blade into Sohka’s stomach. The cultists froze in surprise, and their leader stumbled backwards, nearly falling over.
“Go to Sharak’kai!” Vosh yelled again. The thing that had been Sohka gasped as bile and blackish blood spilled from her belly. Vosh yanked the sword out and slit her throat in one swift cut that partially decapitated her. The girl fell to the ground, twitched, and then remained still.
A gust of wind sighed over the wretched clearing, stirring softly through his hair, touching his face like a gentle hand.
The poison ate at Vosh’s brain, cramped his stomach, encased his limbs in a stinging numbness. The pain devoured him, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. His sword had all of the weight of a mountain in his hand, and he could no longer lift it. His legs gave out, and he collapsed.
Sharp hands seized him and dragged him up to the blood-drenched slab of stone. Their vile chants faded to a whisper when his senses succumbed at last. He hardly felt his body being torn open, his bones and muscles ripped apart. Above, through the crowd of sickly faces, he could see the Great Eye staring down from the heavens. It was as though his disgrace and failures were stripped of him like so much flesh. Joy and relief cloaked his soul as its fragile hold on his body slipped away.
When the starry darkness engulfed him, Odala Vosh thought of the blood the cultists were no doubt already drinking in a frenzy, the blood tainted with poison.
* * *
David Hollingsworth holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has had fiction published in Pubscriber and poetry soon to be published in Mid Rivers Review.
WHAT ADAM SAID
by J. A. Bradley
artwork by Mark Levine
“Welcome back, Dana.”
Dana, balancing a mug of the world’s worst coffee and a package of peanut butter crackers, smiled a response. She hoped it looked more genuine than it felt. “Good to be back, John.”
“Welcome back to work, I mean, not from the vending machine. We’re glad you did. Come back, I mean,” John said. Then, realizing he was treading uncomfortable territory, he continued, “Some storm, huh? Gonna be a heck of a day with the CAD down. Just like old times, right?”
“Yep, just like old times,” she said. The sound of rain on the roof of the small police station was a constant rattle now. It would get much worse very soon. Dana eased herself carefully into her chair. She wasn’t sore anymore, but it was almost habit now.
“Are you okay?” John asked, “I mean, can I get you anything or something?” John was awkward, but he really was a dear.
Dana renewed her smile and brandished her coffee and crackers. “Nope, I’m all set. Thanks, John.”
John nodded, looking relieved to have successfully waded through the conversation. “All right, just let me know. I’m here if you need anything. I guess I’ll go check on our guests now.”
“You got it. Thanks,” Dana said. She wondered how long it would take for life to feel normal again. “The guests” were a young mother and her infant daughter. The mother–little more than a girl, really–had been on her way to her mom’s house to wait out the storm, but hadn’t anticipated how bad the roads would be. When she saw the station, she pulled in and asked if she could wait out the worst of it. She seemed like a sweet girl, though she was fond of talking with her mouth full of gum. They were set up in one of the interrogation rooms now, which suited Dana just fine. She wasn’t quite ready to be around children yet.
&nbs
p; Dana turned back to her desk. Someone had left a newspaper there, which she set her mug on. A series of older coffee rings stained the front page in an interlinked approximation of the Olympics logo. The headline read: “Scientists Predict Storm of the Century.”
Dana sighed and tapped at her keyboard until the three computer displays flared to life. The “Storm of the Century” was the reason she was here at the station instead of home in bed, curled up next to her husband. The chief had been profusely apologetic when his call woke her up at three-thirty in the morning, but he was desperately short-handed. The governor had declared a state of emergency, and the county’s computer-aided dispatch system had gone down. Their small-town dispatch unit was hamstrung, and would have to fend for itself. The chief was calling in all his favors. Dana could have refused anyway–nobody could make her come back to work, not after what she’d been through–but in the end she decided to come in.
Dana fell into old habits, moving methodically through her sleeping townhouse. She showered and dressed, made herself some scrambled eggs with cheese, and made sure to leave a note on the kitchen table for her husband Mike. He’d been having such a hard time sleeping lately; she didn’t have the heart to wake him.
Hurricane Kyle was still in its early stages then, though the roads were already bad. The preceding week of constant, steady rain saw to that. Dana’s smartphone had been beeping incessantly with flash flood warnings and other weather alerts. Over the course of the next 12 hours, Kyle was expected to ramp up in intensity until it reached Category Four or (depending on the news network you favored) even Category Five. Newscasters, barely hiding their excitement as they played at weatherman for the week, were throwing the word Katrina around.
Space and Time Issue 121 Page 11