by T. A. Miles
At the top of the stairs, Merran nearly stepped on a form, and wound up partially leaping over it. He stopped long enough to assess whether or not it was a threat, but it appeared to be a victim who had been destroyed beyond coming back. The woman’s neck had plainly been broken by the force used in acquiring her blood and therefore, her soul. She had been further ravaged by the scavenging horrors that her own household and staff had become in an alarmingly brief period of time.
Merran left the corpse for the time being, continuing toward the bedroom where Korsten, a victim, and a disembodied demon waited. He slowed before a pair of adjacent doorways. One of them stood open. The other was mostly closed.
Upon notice of it, the partition slammed shut, as if someone was provoked by his arrival. Merran knew very well that it was not someone, but something. He raised one hand to perform a Blast spell, but the swell of light from beneath the door told him that Korsten had already begun one. He dashed into the adjacent entryway, discovering with a nearly missed step that it was a stairwell.
Behind him, the bedroom door flew from its hinges and struck the opposite wall with force that nearly powdered it. The disturbance hung in the air for a moment, followed by the panicked shout of a young man, and the howling protest of the Vadryn.
Merran rushed from the stairwell and into the room. His arrival drew the immediate attention of a bent form with overlong limbs. The gray haze from which the creature had shaped itself, sank and drifted over the room’s empty bed, opening a mouth of no real substance, beyond the glimpse of Hell it offered.
A Blast spell was quickly conjured, disrupting its tenuous form and alarming the young man curled in the corner of the room. Korsten stood in front of him, sword formed. He used a Barrier to shield both himself and the boy from Merran’s casting.
The Vadryn let out a roar of frustration, turning itself to the window. With a freshly slain body on the pavement below, Merran had no intention of allowing it to escape. His sword cut through its smoky form, again interrupting its ability to hold mass. In sheer desperation, the beast flung itself at Korsten’s Barrier. Energy radiated through the shield upon impact, again startling Dunlar’s son.
Merran tracked the beast’s movement across the space, as it began to flail. Several more strikes with his blade dispersed the form before it could manifest any further. Aspects of its being drifted off, like smoke from a snuffed candle. Its consciousness had been that of a lesser Vadryn and would undoubtedly not be reformed. Still, Merran went to the broken window to be sure no trace of it had escaped. Outside, it was only tendrils of fog that drifted over the damp grass and flagstones that were bed to the body of the governor. The body did not move.
From the area of the bed, Korsten said, “Dunlar’s son is alive.”
“One of them,” Merran recalled, understanding that they would have to search the bodies in order to identify whether or not the other son was among the victims.
At the moment, it was important to know whether or not anyone had survived, who may have been carrying contamination, or who may have been hosting one of the Vadryn. He believed that what had transpired so swiftly, and in such a calculated fashion, was the work of more than one demon.
•—•
Hours of effort made Ergen wonder if the demon hadn’t simply killed half the town—or all of it—and been piling them at the shop for weeks. But the kills were fresh, and the beast hadn’t come before earlier that day. Not as far as Ergen knew.
“Let’s get this to the house,” he said to Guidry, who he had caught—more than once—trying to take bites out of the collection. Now the man was gone. “Guidry!”
The back doors were open, swaying minimally in the ever-active air. The dark was getting light, Ergen noticed. He should have been back with Deya by now.
“Guidry!”
The constable stepped inside through the back exit. He held his horse’s reins and stood in the shadow of the animal as if he planned on going someplace. Not yet.
“We’re not done here.”
“I think this ought to be brought to the attention of Thaylen,” the constable said, still stuck in who he once was, over what he had become. “And those priests.”
“To Hell’s depths with those priests,” Ergen spat. “Now, come over here and help me load this bundle into the cart out back.”
Guidry made his way over. The horse lingered in the doorway. While the two of them gathered the tarp and the contents folded within, Ergen watched the animal lower its head to investigate the floor as if it were a patch of green grass.
“What’s wrong with that animal?” Ergen muttered, leading their route to the doors. The weight of even mostly drained corpses and assorted parts was more than he had anticipated. His own collecting had not been done in mass.
As they passed the horse, Ergen noted it taking samples off the floor. He grimaced while it chewed the bloody bits. His expression drew sharper when he saw the patches of raw redness along the animal’s neck and flank.
“Gods damn you, Guidry!”
Guidry pushed forward with the tarp, as if there was nothing else that required his attention. He said simply, “He tried to get away.”
“And that, in no way, accounts for bite marks, you stupid fool.” Ergen moved quicker toward the cart, lest Guidry’s gaining strength push him over. He let the constable handle most of the weight getting the package into the cart. With it loaded, he jerked his head toward the south end of town. “Get that animal out of here. Go have a word with Thaylen and those priests, then get back here and help me with Deya.”
Guidry backed out of the cart, but his response was overtaken by footsteps and a sudden shout.
“Sir!”
The voice caused Ergen to start. The flinch that racked his body was almost painful, alerting him to just how tense he was.
The voice of the newly arrived constable continued in a panic, “The manor—it’s …”
Panic turned to shock.
Ergen looked over his shoulder at the man, who stood momentarily paralyzed in the face of his superiors in position before a back drop of slaughter that had nothing to do with the shop’s daily—or nightly—affairs. Their hands were covered with the color of the deed they’d committed, which was only after the fact of what had actually occurred.
“What is this?” the man finally asked.
Guidry looked behind him, then once more at his underling, who was taking steps backward now.
Ergen watched him, and he noticed the figure he was backing into, who had arrived with unnatural speed after an assault that would have required hours for a man. Hours and several accomplices.
Renmyr Camirey was a portion of Hell dressed in a human body, and he had come to Feidor’s Crest for only one reason.
“This is the end of us,” Ergen said to the constable. He turned his face away while the beast punctuated his statement with death.
Six
The sun was rising by the time they had completed an essential search of the house. Among the bodies, Thaylen Dunlar’s eldest son did happen to be discovered. Korsten found it disheartening, for several reasons.
Thaylen’s youngest, just twenty, was at rest on a pallet Korsten and Merran had arranged for him on the lowest landing of the main staircase. Though he had survived the Release, the sheer force of the spell had dealt him some strains and bruises, and as well his body had been severely weakened by the demon’s presence. The worst of it was the Vadryn’s poison. Korsten had been the one to cut the seal onto the boy’s skin at the point where he had received evident damage by a demon.
Korsten and Merran themselves bore permanent and visible scars, located where each of them had been inflicted by the poison of a demon, and which a priest—in Korsten’s case, Merran—had sealed by magic. The roughly crossed lines, made only by a priest’s blade, were nestled at the base of Korsten’s neck, beneath his jaw. Merran
’s were on his back. Neither of them had been possessed, however, only assaulted. But assault was all it required.
It was Merran who had first said to Korsten, “Never let the Vadryn draw blood from you. Not while you have a soul riding its current.”
He had said it more than thirty years ago, in Haddowyn.
“We’ll have to see what state the town is in,” were Merran’s present words. He was seated on the stairs that overlooked the entrance to the house. The doors appeared to have been broken through by tremendous force. “I don’t think that we can afford letting the house stand.”
Korsten knew that. The contamination was heavy, and there was no way to know, without a purging, whether or not anything may yet affect the area.
He sat down beside Merran, surveying the wreckage. There were swords on the floor amid the bodies in the front hall. At least, the residents had summoned the courage to fight, though what would have come through the doors would have been singularly horrific to them, and nothing they could have brought down without better aid than iron swords and bravery at the threshold of Hell.
Knowing that was also knowing that what had come through the doors was not what had been possessing Thaylen’s son. The beast he and Merran had faced in the bedroom would not have been capable of such strength, or of such sudden and thorough devastation.
“There’s still Constable Guidry,” Korsten said. “And the deputy governor. Neither of them appear to have been here.”
Merran had nothing to say to that, and when Korsten looked back at him, he was paid in the charming, though grave blue eyes of a man he had officially known longer than he had known anyone in his life. In that time, Korsten had seen the toxin of the Vadryn literally eat away at the bodies of men and animals. He had seen aspects of Hell in the eyes of children. Having been alone in the company of demons, the value of having someone at his side was not to be assessed in words. That said, there were times when he and Merran had to separate in order to complete a task, and this may have been such a time. Given the condition of Dunlar’s son, it seemed an unnecessary risk to leave him alone. If another demon was still near enough, it might easily come back for him.
“I’ll see to Guidry and his men,” Korsten volunteered, standing.
“Don’t go too far yet,” Merran advised. “The town may have lately become a veritable cemetery of the recent dead.”
Korsten required no further explanation. He understood what his partner was implying. Still, he wondered, “Can there really be no one left here?
“I think the town had fallen before we arrived,” Merran said. “Or that its fall had been prepared, and that our arrival provided the catalyst to simply ending it.”
“That would mean the presence of one of the older spirits of the Vadryn.”
“An archdemon,” Merran said in simpler terms, since Korsten tended to take long paths around admitting to the presence of the greater beasts. In this instance, it may have been one in particular that Korsten hoped to leave unnamed, since it would mean that Haddowyn’s destruction was as near as it ever had been. It was the place which Korsten believed he would never fully leave, no matter how deeply he was brought into the folds of the Vassenleigh Order.
It was true that Renmyr Camirey had been taken by a demon of more ancient making than many of the Vadryn, but Korsten was not willing to discount him altogether. It was not a secret that he yet hoped that the man could be separated from the beast, and somehow saved, just as Dunlar’s son yet could be—as others had been before.
Merran had less faith and little interest in the topic. “If Renmyr Camirey is yet in the region, I imagine it’s to prepare it for invasion, by infecting and weakening as many towns and villages as he is able. Morenne’s forces will only have to walk across and make their claim, bringing the Borderlands even nearer.”
While the topic depressed Korsten distinctly, he didn’t deny the possibility of what Merran had said, as he might have years ago. Years ago, he might well have argued with him on the subject of there being any humanity left to Renmyr. But—whether Merran realized it or not—Korsten had learned how to gain some distance from the memory of Haddowyn, and from thoughts of Renmyr as he once had known him. Much of that distance was achieved through study and through hunting, with Ashwin and Merran as his guides.
“He was seen at Eastmark,” Korsten decided to say, in support of Merran’s theory. It was a fact Korsten had helped bring to light during his time as a prisoner of Morenne.
And those were circumstances which Merran tended not to want to rehash, but he nodded to concede the value of the statement anyway.
“I won’t go far,” Korsten promised.
He walked himself outside, finding Onyx near the front doors, alongside Erschal. Once mounted, he gave a careful look about the grounds beneath the wan daylight. The ever-present haze had scarcely lifted. “This really is Haddowyn all over again, isn’t it?”
The question went unanswered, and Korsten directed Onyx toward the main gates.
•—•
Merran had tended to the boy as much as he was able for the time being. Elwain Dunlar would require rest and observation more than anything else now. What damage the demon had done was not entirely able to be reversed. Sealing the toxin against further spread was the first and best treatment to give someone who had had their blood drawn by demon. Still, if the wounds were too great or too many, it would do little good. And possession was another matter entirely.
They were probably going to have to leave Feidor’s Crest more swiftly than Korsten preferred, if there was an archdemon present. That the beast might have left the manor after the slaughter, indicated that it had a larger plan, and that it may also have been aware of their presence and left the lesser demon as an obstacle to delay them.
It was also possible, with an archdemon present, that there could be one or two lesser beasts yet pinned beneath its superior will. Any such creature interested in maintaining some semblance of independence would have undoubtedly fled the area the very moment it detected the presence of one greater. Occasionally, one tested the waters, if it felt that it had amassed enough strength and structure to its being. Of course, it required many centuries for an archdemon to form, and there was, in actuality, no contest. Still, part of the Vadryn’s makeup was defiance. They would lead themselves to disaster, as surely as a child or a misguided adult, but in doing so they would only contribute to the ever-growing power of those higher than themselves. Archdemons had the ability to corrupt and control populations beyond isolated towns and villages. They had proven capable of swaying the interests of an entire country. If allowed to carry on, they would have taken over two kingdoms.
That fact made Merran want to stay, regardless of whether or not it was one of the ancient masters of the Vadryn lingering near. There were other factors, that always reminded him it was better not to tempt fate.
Before doing anything further, Merran decided to sort through the governor’s study, in search of any journals, documents, or letters that may have been of some benefit to understanding precisely what had gone on in Feidor’s Crest. The Council of Superiors would want any relevant information pertaining to the infection, any speculation on the presence of the Vadryn—even if it wasn’t labeled as such—and also any correspondence that might have implicated defection to Morenne. The northern region knew more of contamination and possession than it did of defection, but it remained a possibility all the same.
The Borderlands seemed to draw further south with each year the war persisted. The Vadryn encroached ahead of Morennish soldiers. Morenne’s advance immediately following the siege on Vassenleigh was no longer considered a coincidence, if it ever truly had been. It was vital for the Order to reveal its survival to all of Edrinor now, and to assess who could be counted among the Old Kingdom’s allies. The Council had once hoped to better recoup Vassenleigh’s numbers before making an announced return, but th
ere was no more time, if Edrinor was to be spared conquest by demons.
Such thoughts walked with Merran through the lower levels of the ruined house. Dunlar’s study was not far from the central hall and appeared to be in moderate order, but there also appeared to be little of value. Books were filled with administrative upkeep of one variety or another. There were some family records, the odd piece of fiction or history …and a text on religion.
The Welkyn and the Malakym: An Accounting of the Heavens.
Both groups mentioned in the book’s title were considered ancient powers—gods. There were not many differences between the Welkyn and the Malakym, that Merran was aware of, except that one group was said to have operated expressly from the highest levels of Heaven while the other worked in a nearer proximity to both the world of mortal people and the surface chapters of Hell. Over time, the Malakym became largely referenced as the elements. The Welkyn grew more distantly regarded, which was not a wonder, considering the path the world had taken into Hell, and into the clutches of the Vadryn; demons out of the furthest depths.
Near a century of war with Morenne in no way assisted, nor had the loss of the last Rottherlen King. One of the narrow threads of hope lining the edges of the Superiors’ strategy was, in fact, an ascendant. Ashwin believed that somewhere in Edrinor there was yet a blood relation to the family, and that finding that hidden individual would raise morale and Edrinor’s chances of victory against demons and would-be conquerors.
Priests had been tracing bloodlines for years. Some of them had dedicated much of their careers to doing so and had come to no solid leads. Speculation would not do. The connection the Rottherlens had had to the Spectrum was unique and vital to establishing a balance the people trusted. Most outside of Vassenleigh were too young to know what that balance felt like, and though history had achieved a consensus regarding its existence and its value, many in the north remained largely ignorant of that history.