by Mike Shel
“You seem quite ill at ease if this place and my presence here is indeed only a metaphor in a god’s mind. You assume this form to weaken my resolve. It will not succeed.” Auric leapt over Del’s body, grabbed hold of Lenda’s tunic with his left hand, and pressed the point of the Djao blade into her belly.
“The truth!” cried Marta plaintively, rope burns livid on her neck, mascara cascading down her cheeks in dark waterfalls. “I shall give it to you! The lies that cloud your understanding—all shall be revealed!”
“I think the Aching God is afraid,” Auric said, a cruel smile on his lips.
“Wait!” cried his father, bloodshot eyes unable to fix on his son, drunk on the cheap whiskey he favored, its stink on his breath and oozing from his pores. “All those lost, all the death, all the damage wrought by my brothers and sisters! I can give you back those who have perished! Your wife! Your son! Lenda! Do not throw away this gift I offer!”
“Just now,” said Auric, his hard smile fixed. “Just now I think you know how vulnerable you are, so-called god. Well, I judge you guilty of murder. A murderer of hope, a murderer of souls, a murderer of the goodness that can come from humanity. I am the judge, and I shall execute the sentence as well.”
Auric ignored the pleading, pitiful look and pressed the point of the blade into his son’s belly. Black pus began to pulse forth, splashing the weapon’s steely edge. Tomas coughed up black sputum, his teeth stained with its oily darkness.
“Papa…” he whimpered.
Auric stood again in the great chamber of the Djao ruins, before the mottled membrane of the drumhead, Szaa’da’shaela’s tip sunk into the puncture wound it had created. The second he became aware of his surroundings, several fat tentacles, like the appendages of some colossal octopus out of nightmare, sprouted forth from the wall and snaked out toward Auric and his companions. Rather than suckers, the undersides of the tentacles were lined with thorny teeth, dripping a foul substance.
Auric yanked his blade from the wound in the membrane just in time to cleave in two a rubbery tentacle that sought him out. The severed limb thrashed violently on the ground as the stump retreated into the wall from which it had emerged. Lumari cast a handful of gray dust at a tentacle worming its way across the floor toward her. When the substance settled on its moist flesh, it twisted and shriveled, slamming about savagely, knocking the alchemist to the ground.
Belech, miraculously healed of the terrible deformities, ignored the tentacle advancing on himself, instead running to the aid of weaponless Sira, who lay on the ground, apparently exhausted from the ordeal of aiding him. He swung Busy Marlu upward in a great arc, a two-handed swing that would have made his old comrade Basher proud. He landed a violent blow on the appendage, then brought it down again as it tried to sneak in under his notice. Auric saw Lumari sit upright painfully, clutching her side as she reached for another vial. A second tentacle took the place of the one that was thrashing and withering still, like an animate, drought-parched vine. He made his decision and ran to Belech and Sira just as the tentacle intent on seeking the old soldier latched onto the man’s ankle, spilling him to the flagstones. As Auric hacked down on that rubbery appendage, Belech crying out in pain, the tentacle that had been brutalized by Busy Marlu turned its malevolence from Sira to the old soldier. It twisted and curled back on itself, seeking Belech’s bull neck. He swung his mace at this new assailant, which dodged about with serpentine cunning, seeking an opening.
Lumari, having spat a gout of blue flame at a third tentacle that had sprung forth from the wall, shouted across the chamber at Auric. “The membrane! The dream!”
In that moment, Auric saw the truth of it. The Aching God’s heart lay there, and somehow, it was vulnerable to Szaa’da’shaela. As long as it continued beating, more of these tentacles would burst forth from the walls of the Aching God’s body. He spun around as Belech struck with escalating desperation at the attacking appendage, and headed back toward the membrane, dragging the blade’s edge along the tentacle holding Belech’s ankle as he did. The tentacle split open and black ichor spilled onto the flagstones, as though it was an overstuffed sausage whose casing had split on a grill. Several more tentacles sprang forth from the wall and snaked toward Auric, perhaps sensing his intent. He began a whirling advance to the membrane, like the Azkayan dervishes he had read about as a child, swinging the Djao blade in a bloody frenzy. One rubbery tentacle after another was severed, their dismembered lengths thrashing furiously on the ground and spattering dark gore everywhere.
When he finally reached the membrane, coated from head to toe in the black ichor spewed from a dozen of the Aching God’s snaky appendages, he stopped and drew in a deep breath. The membrane hadn’t healed—perhaps couldn’t heal itself. It was pulsating and spitting dark pus from the small wound he had inflicted earlier with Szaa’da’shaela. Auric held the Djao blade’s grip with both hands, its deadly point hovering above the bruised surface of the Aching God’s heart.
And the Aching God spoke to him again, its voice that of his long-dead mother, a tenuous memory drawn deep from his earliest childhood. Your friends die! The tall one, I am throttling the life from him now!
Auric twisted to glance behind him. A tentacle was indeed latched around Belech’s neck, the old soldier’s tongue protruding, eyes bulging. He seemed to stare at Auric in his peril, wide eyes crying for aid. The impulse to go to him was powerful. He saw the face of Lady Hannah in his mind’s eye, heard her voice, commanding him.
Yes! Aid him, quickly! Before it’s too late!
Auric jammed the blade in with all the strength he possessed, creating a new tear in the membrane. Black liquid vomited up from the terrible wound the weapon had opened, gouts of the god’s foul substance spattering his already filthy cuirass. The ground beneath them rumbled, lurched, and a discordance of voices flooded his head, calling out obscene threats, begging, pleading, making desperate, impossible promises.
Anything! cried Lenda’s voice. Any wish fulfilled! Power! Love! Wealth! An end to all suffering!
Auric twisted the blade in the wound, dragging it along the membrane so that it split and tore, disgorging dark gore. And then the chamber shuddered violently, a roar of frightful agony echoing off its curving walls. The Aching God whispered its last words in the silky voice Auric had heard in the duke’s dining hall:
Uszur’aal’bec’da’oud…
And then nothing. Silence.
When at last his senses began to return, Auric found himself sitting next to the butchered membrane, legs splayed out, ears ringing, blackness spattering his arms, clothing, armor, his face, the floor, and walls. Szaa’da’shaela lay next to him, quiet. He watched as the blade seemed to suck up the oily black substance slick on its metallic surface. In seconds, it was clean and gleaming as though a squire had spent the night polishing it.
The evil presence had vanished.
The Aching God was dead.
It took several minutes before Auric was fully present in the chamber, and several more before he finally heard a real human voice call his name.
“Auric,” said Sira.
Auric turned. Belech lay flat on his back, motionless, Sira kneeling beside him. His flesh was pale and damp with sweat and blood from dozens of lacerations. His neck was bruised and pierced, signs of the toothy serpentine appendage that had been wrapped around it. Auric’s eyes went to Lumari, who stood nearby, holding her side, then to Sira. It was when he saw the sadness in her face that he knew Belech was dead.
He knelt beside Sira, before Belech’s corpse, and held both the old soldier’s hand and the priest’s. She closed her eyes.
“Sira?”
For a moment, she didn’t respond. Then her eyelids fluttered weakly and she looked up at him, dry and cracked lips forming her lopsided smile.
“Belu…bless us, I was able to save friend Belech from what that beast did to his flesh. And he sa
ved me, again, from the Aching God’s attacks. One of the tentacles strangled him while you faced the Aching God. Lumari and I tried to pull it from him, but it was too strong. It was only after you slew the demon that the thing let loose its grip.”
Auric looked at Belech’s dead face. “Too late,” he croaked, placing a palm on the man’s sweaty forehead. “I’ve never met a nobler man, Sira,” he said, feeling welling up in his throat. “Such a decent man. Such a kind man.”
Sira’s hand joined Auric’s on Belech’s forehead and she spoke a blessing. “May you rest forever in the arms of blessed Belu, Belech Potts.”
“Amen,” said Auric.
And then the three survivors, Auric, Sira, and Lumari, wept together in the empty sanctum of a dead god.
34
Inquiry
Auric, Sira, and Lumari took the bodies of Belech and Gnaeus with them, using the passages that had re-opened with the death of the Aching God. It was difficult, with Sira so cruelly drained from her healing exertions, and Lumari’s broken ribs. When they at last arrived at the gate outside the Djao ruin, they were greeted by Brother Marno, a green-robed priest of Chaeres who informed them of what had happened: Wallach Bessemer strangled the sin eater in his cubicle, dressed himself in her stinking vestments, and ambushed Sister Teelu, who was waiting dutifully at the gate in the crypts. The old warrior-priest apparently had his own key to the gate, though where he had gotten it no one could say. Sister Teelu had still not regained consciousness when the Syraeic party left the Priory of St. Besh, though priests of Belu kept a close vigil with rituals for healing. It was unclear if she would recover.
The journey back to Serekirk was slow, but without incident. Passing the Temple of Timilis soon after they re-entered the city, Auric had to restrain himself when they came upon the female priest who had bestowed a mocking and cryptic farewell when they left the city. She inquired with a smirk if they had taken pleasure in the surprises the great god had provided them in the Barrowlands.
“There is a god in need of killing, surely,” Lumari muttered. Auric agreed with the alchemist’s sentiment, but didn’t speak it aloud. They rode in silence to lodgings at Pennyman’s.
They took two days for Sira to recuperate at the tavern, and during this time Auric left Szaa’da’shaela with Hanasi Welka at the Counting House so that she could conduct her delayed reading of the Djao weapon. Before setting sail on the Duke Yaryx, Auric retrieved the blade and a fanciful leather scroll tube containing details of the diviner’s examination. She was unable to present the findings to him in person, as she was reportedly exhausted from the reading, which took thirty-six hours to complete. He felt strangely reluctant to read the tube’s contents, packing it away with his armor and other belongings for the voyage.
The Duke Yaryx had dutifully waited for them at the docks of Serekirk. On their first evening back aboard, the Syraeic survivors had dinner in the captain’s cabin with Hraea and his officers, though their attendance was out of courtesy rather than any desire for company. Their reluctance to recount their Barrowlands ordeal in greater detail clearly frustrated the Royal Navy men. After providing a bare outline of the expedition, the remainder of the meal was spent with Hraea cajoling them for a fuller account.
“Come now,” said the captain at dessert, nose reddened upon finishing a third glass of his precious Kenish red. “Surely you won’t deny us the full tale! I certainly mourn your losses, but I don’t see how this silence serves to honor their sacrifices.”
Auric looked up at the man from the pudding he had been staring at, a sudden wave of anger washing over him. “Captain,” he retorted, “did you ever open that package given you by Duke Emberto?”
Hraea’s muttonchops flapped as he pursed and unpursed his lips, flustered by the abrupt change in topic. “I don’t see how that’s relevant to our discussion this evening.”
“I’m just curious, sir,” Auric responded, his annoyance apparent to all in the cabin. “What gift did the duke see fit to give you? Miss Edjani was given the sacred laurel crown of Kalimander’s Bishop of Belu, who was apparently one of those naked corpses we passed on our carriage ride, hanging like a criminal from a lamppost. I was given a Djao weapon that has hardly begun revealing its extraordinary properties. His gifts to the two of us seemed so spot on, I just wondered what the Duke of Kelse thought proper for the man who bested four notorious pirate vessels. Surely you won’t deny us a glimpse of the good duke’s regard?”
Hraea harrumphed and stuttered for a moment before finally settling on a stratagem. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be appropriate conversation, with ladies at the table.”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Lumari, resting her chin in her palm and tapping her pudding dish with a spoon. Auric and the Yaryx’s officers looked at the captain expectantly. Sira stirred her uneaten pudding with a spoon.
“Well,” Hraea said finally, “I think you’ll agree that the duke was quite mad, Sir Auric, as Miss Edjani deduced. By the patience of St. Katuryn, the man slit his own wife’s throat and let her corpse rot fireside for a week, continuing to converse with her all the while!”
“One sign among many others that the duke’s mind was unwell,” Auric agreed. “What was in the box, Captain?”
“An illustrated book.”
“Really?” inquired Lumari. “What kind of illustrated book?”
“Well, um…” the captain muttered. “It was a very…unique volume.”
“Colorful, then?” Auric quipped. “Gilded text? Delicate woodcut prints? An expensive edition only the higher aristocracy can afford, I’d imagine? But why would you hesitate to discuss this before our women?”
“It was pornographic,” Hraea hissed.
“By Lalu’s silky garters!” exclaimed Lumari, feigning shock.
“Well!” Auric cried. “Was it engaging? A compelling narrative? Did it race right to copulation? Or something less pedestrian?”
The Yaryx’s first mate, Lieutenant Polor, demonstrated admirable restraint by maintaining a face of stone. The other officers at the table were far less successful in suppressing their amusement.
“Really, Sir Auric,” sputtered the captain. “This is embarrassing and most unseemly! I cast the damned thing into the sea once I realized what it was! Truly shocking, the depths to which our nobility have descended.”
“Shocking, I agree,” Auric said, standing up from the table, “though the duke’s taste in literature is of less concern to me than his paranoia and proclivity for arbitrary murder. Thank you for a pleasant evening, Captain Hraea. I think we shall retire to our cabin for the night.”
For the remainder of the sea journey they ate meals sequestered in their cabin, as no further invitations from the captain were forthcoming. Nor did the Syraeic survivors keep one another’s company much, each of them opting for their own private vigils. The Corsair’s Run was strangely quiet as the Duke Yaryx made its way along the coast of Kelse and lost Valya, temporarily free of the pirate predators that gave the waters their name. In the evenings, Auric took to standing on the quarterdeck, at the ship’s port railing, preferring the open vista of the Cradle Sea to the coastline.
On one of those solitary nights, lit by a fat, bright moon, he opened the scroll the diviner had drafted for him detailing the reading of his mysterious Djao blade. What he found was more mystery, and frustration: the document’s text was a chaotic tangle of indecipherable Higher Djao pictograms and unfamiliar sigils, as well as the various dialects of the language—Lesser, Middle, Gutter Djao—transitioning from one variant to another without discernable reason. He could make no sense of it. He found himself overcome by an urge to toss the scroll with its fancy leather tube into the roiling waters with disgust. But when he raised the document to cast it into the rolling waves, a feminine hand stayed him. He turned and found Lenda Hathspry with her kind, crooked smile, shaking her head.
“Whatever words you me
an to put to bed in the Cradle, it strikes me as rash—and unlike you,” said Sira in her most soothing voice. “Think on it. Perhaps what it contains may be of value to you after all.”
Auric nodded, gruff, brooding. He did not share with Sira mistaking her, again, for his long-dead compatriot.
The lands surrounding the Cradle Sea were just shy of autumn when the Duke Yaryx sailed into Boudun’s harbor. The port was alive with frantic activity. A few crippled warships had limped into harbor for extensive repairs, and word was a small Azkayan armada had blockaded Estagard in Warwede while they were adventuring in the north. Luckily, the enemy flotilla was repelled by a combined fleet of ten Royal Navy ships and four ducal vessels dispatched from Wesse. For now, it was unclear if this assault was a move by some Azkayan satrap hoping to expand his domains, or if the mysterious supreme suzerain of that sprawling eastern realm was at last renewing his or her episodic war on Hanifax.
With all the excitement, Auric, Sira, and Lumari drew little attention as they bid the Yaryx and her crew farewell. Hraea was formal, Lieutenant Polor and the other officers warmer, but Commandant Mastro most effusive of all. He gave Auric a muscular hug and reminded him of his earlier promise to investigate his father’s last mission for the League. Auric affirmed that he would do so, though it might be some time before he could make good on that promise.
The trio led their mounts and pack horses carrying the bodies of Belech and Gnaeus from the harbor and through Boudun’s bustling streets. When they arrived, the Citadel too was a hive of activity, just as Auric remembered it in the years before his retirement. With the black contagion banner and its rat skulls gone and traffic entering and exiting Syraeic headquarters, they needed no further confirmation that their expedition had ended the plague. But Auric had a more personal concern demanding an answer.