by T. C. Rypel
It was the rarest of occurrences: The energumen, the possessed spirit that cohabited his body, whose own body was that of the werewolf, had parted from him. It sat on a boulder now with the legs of a goat tucked under the teated body of a cow. Its head was that of a pig with dirty needle teeth, the horns of an ox protruding from its temples. The thing rarely departed his body for two reasons: Moving in the physical world, it knew only frustration at having no capacity for sensory experience of its own; and worse, there would always be a struggle when it attempted to return. Thus, it reserved its comings out for moments when Simon was extremely weakened. It had chosen its timing well, this day.
Simon heard the voice in his head again. The voice, it seemed this time, of a dwarf with a cleft palate.
“I said how do you like it?”
“It befits you.”
“Oh, this?” the demoniac spirit said, raking an eagle’s talon over its strange body. “Just something I cobbled together. Filched it from a farmer here, a peasant there, an old woman who will cry for want of milking cow today—” Its laugh was a staccato trilling; a bumblebee and a bullfrog in harmony.
Simon stooped and drank from the brook, dispersing with an act of willpower the bizarre illusions that floated past in the reflection. He thought of how hungry he was. When he turned and looked at it again, the energumen was slurping at raw entrails.
“I know what your mother likes,” it rasped in a singsong cadence.
Simon sighed and slumped down against a tree, closing his eyes.
“I think I—I found out something about you last night,” Simon said, smiling with quiet satisfaction, running his eyes over his healing wounds.
The demon hissed, “Well, I know everything about you, ass licker—and here’s something for you—Wolverangue is going to kill you tonight. It can’t be destroyed in this realm, you know. Oh no-no-no—that’s fixed by the laws that be. Do you know who made those laws? Aren’t you grateful? Why don’t you curse His name?”
Simon ignored it and went on. “Oui, I think—correct me if I’m wrong, and then I’ll know I’m right—I think that you’ve been taught well by the Deceiver. You’ve been deceiving me all our lives. I felt a certain...panic when you thought the Thing would drag us into the Pit last night—”
“He will, he will—Wolverangue will drag you down to perdition, and then I’ll be free to roam the world and...do those things you’d like to do when you’re being honest with yourself.”
“I think,” Simon kept on, “that you’ve masked the truth about the Wolf-Beast’s death, guarded it all this time. Made me believe I was a slave to it. That must have taken you one hell of a continuous effort. First of all,” he ticked off on his fingers, the demon babbling all the while in a sound like a child fluttering his lips, “I found that I could win control over the Beast in the full of the moon. Did that make you...uncomfortable?”
“Have a drink—” The energumen waved its eagle talon in a rotating movement and performed one of the minor kinetic enchantments it was capable of: a torrent of water from the brook and a cascade of pebbles pelted Simon where he sat. But it could not know the merest touch of the objects it threw, to its frustrated fury, and this magick power could last but a short time. The attack quickly slowed, and then ceased.
Simon wiped his face and flicked the stones from his lap. “My...aren’t we childish today? But allow me to continue: Second, do you know what else I think? If I were to die in the body of the Beast...so would you. You would not be freed, as you have suggested to me so often. All your urgings that I throw myself off promontories and into bonfires.... I have observed that when you command the Beast during the full moon, you’re rather careful, for all your savagery. So I reason thusly—”
“The Hell-Hound will flay you,” it sang in a woman’s voice, the voice of one who had once caused him a grief and shame he would never dispel. The voice nagged on in normal discourse: “Why don’t you give it up, my darling, dearest Simon. All the agony. The life of an outcast, shunned by men and filthy animals alike—how can you go on like that? Men hate you, beasts hate you, the birds in the trees—where are they? They won’t come near, because you’re here now. You’re hated by all. All save me. I pity you, and with good reason, for I know your suffering—”
“Of course you do,” Simon replied, “because you feel everything I do. You fled me today because you couldn’t stand the pain. Don’t you think I feel your squirming when I suffer? Don’t you know that knowing the certainty of your pain is all that sustains me in my darkest moments? It makes me embrace every pain.”
“How can you know what I feel?” the woman’s voice railed. “I feel nothing but what I wish to feel, and you grant me too little of that with your stubborn asceticism. When you die, I can live, and I can see no point in your going on. Here—”
A rustle in the branches overhead. A noose dangled from a sturdy larch limb.
“—here is surcease of pain; the sweet, endless sleep of death. Eternal, insensate. A balm to your weary heart. Emptiness....”
“You hate me most of all, don’t you, demon or devil or whatever you be? For I deny you true life, as long as I cling to mine.”
The voice became masculine, a thundering cathedral boom. The spirit sprang upward on its borrowed goat legs, and an eagle talon reached skyward. “He hates you most of all, and He’s deceived you! How He must laugh—why don’t you curse His name and be done with Him?”
“By the holy name of Jesus, be silent!” Simon commanded.
“That’s the one! Why don’t you curse it for what He’s allowed to happen—look at you!”
Simon clamped his eyes and ears shut and prayed in fervent faith. “By the God who created both of us and His Son who has died for mankind, I command you to be still!”
The energumen shriveled and disappeared, the abandoned animal parts falling atop the boulder, withered and dried.
The ensorcelled man gasped. His eyes widened with the realization of a dawning hope. When he turned, the thing was behind him, a tiny girl now, but sexually mature. Simon jumped back, in spite of his knowledge of its tricks.
“Exciting, wasn’t it?” The woman’s voice again. “Had you ready to apply with the Office of Inquisition, eh? By the way, how do you like it?” The thing began to fondle its new body.
Simon scowled with revulsion at its perversity and leaned away against the tree. “Don’t bother to tell me where you got it.”
“Hah-hah! You might go there at once, eh? Actually, it’s only an illusion this time, enhanced by the dark desires of your own soul, of course. Don’t deny it! Ahh, the pleasures the flesh offers. Why don’t you give it up? You don’t know what to do with it anyway, unless you’re...properly led....”
The noose fluttered before him, up in the tree.
“Come-come now—up and in!”
Simon got up and grasped the rope. He swallowed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would set you free, if I spurned God’s gift.”
“What gift has He given you?” it sneered.
“The gift of life, for better or worse. You see...I know the truth now. Only if I take my own life will you be freed.”
“That’s what you think, is it?” the demon asked wryly. “That’s what you’ve reasoned—your great revelation? Such a philosopher, you are,” it minced, cartwheeling into the brook across his view.
“Oui,” Sardonis said reflectively, “and if there is a way for you to live independently of me, then there must be a way for me to free myself of your cankerous presence.”
“Such talk.”
“I shall find your demon father and wring the truth from him one day—”
“You had him once,” the energumen taunted, the reminder always a stinging one for Simon, “and what happened?”
Simon turned away from it again, blotted its voice from his mind. “I shall find him and destroy him, and somehow that will destroy you—I know it.”
“He’s your father as well, you know,” the voice offer
ed seductively.
“My father died by his hand!” Simon stormed.
The energumen cackled. Its voice became that of a nun who had tutored the orphan during his monastic youth in France: “Fresh sacrificial meat, he was, that’s all—”
“I’ll destroy you both, if it be God’s will, because I know now that the samurai—the others—they’re right—”
“There is no universal will but the Dark Master’s.”
“Call him by his despised name,” Simon said acidly. “Satan. The Despondent One. The Lost Angel—”
The woman-child tumbled in front of him and squatted, producing excrement so vile that he was forced to cover his face and move off to the brook. He began to wash, fighting back a sob, feeling terribly alone. His fatigue caused him to hate this endless struggle with every fiber of his being.
“Tonight you die,” came the foreboding voice.
“And you with me,” he answered without looking back.
“Go ahead. Find out.” The energumen began singing a ribald drinking chantey.
Simon experienced a moment’s doubt and bitterness. Then he remembered: the taunt it could not bear. A thin smile creased his lips.
“Demon,” he said without looking at it, “what is your greatest sadness?” The song ceased, but there came no reply. “Shall I remind you? Do you think you can know my griefs while I am ignorant of yours? We share all unguarded thoughts. Let me ask you this—what is your name?”
He heard what sounded like a whispering wail in his head.
He turned, and it was gone. The woman-child, the excrement, the noose—all evidence of it had vanished from the woodland delve.
“Hiding?” Simon pressed in a loud voice. “Do you think that can spare you from the truth. What is your name? You have no name! You are nothing. You will live a captive within my body, nameless, purposeless, leaving no mark of your passing on earth. Until the day that I die and take you with me—”
The energumen shrieked inside Simon’s brain until he thought it would burst. It attacked him and fought to return in its nonentity’s shame. There ensued a fierce spiritual conflict, and during its brief duration Simon desperately realized that if he could best it, deny it re-entry, he would be rid of it forever. But in his weakened condition, he could not resist its invasion, and the thing again took up smoldering residence within Simon’s being.
He fell on the ground, exhausted, beating the earth with his fists. He knew he must decide a course of action, for all too soon night would fall and Wolverangue would seek him again.
Prostrating himself and pouring out his terror in a long, humble petition for guidance and protection, he felt a resurgence of determination, of will to live, of courage to face the agony to come. For although his multitude of wounds were healing with the remarkable rapidity he’d grown accustomed to, he knew what the transmutation at sundown would do. They would burst to bleed anew.
At length he decided his course. Hefting the battle-axe, he started off on foot for Castle Lenska. On the main road through the valley, he chanced upon an abandoned steed. Grimly determined to test his stubbornly held convictions for validity, he spent some time trying to coax the horse to come to him. It came as no surprise that it instinctively fled from him; but this time he stayed with it. For an hour he circled around the horse, a sturdy destrier, talking to it gently, moving ever nearer, careful to avoid startling it. It began to accept his presence.
An hour later Simon sat aboard the steed, the great axe lashed beside him. And to his delight, his pains had served up an added serendipity: a half-full wineskin and a pouch of food. Grateful for the transport, in his wish to conserve strength—though horsemanship was new to him and he was still unclothed—he guided the mount northward.
There was much ground to cover before the horse abandoned him at sunset.
PART THREE
HOUR OF THE DRAGON
“And when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it”
—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
For several hours in the tunnel the only sounds to be heard were those of pain and grief and utter exhaustion.
None of them could even mount enough concern for security to act as a sentry. They collapsed, disdainful of comfort. Garth wincingly tended Miklos Zarek’s wounds before falling back in tearful surrender. Monetto tried vainly to light a fire, flinging away the materials at last. Wilfred, Arvin, and William Eddings simply abandoned all effort, drifting off into private misery that soon became deep, merciful sleep.
Had any enemy discovered the tunnel entrance, they would have been pinned between the invader and the bristling spear-points of the redoubt that blocked the passage back to the city, as Gonji had ordered, though none of them would have cared.
Gonji sat apart from them, knees drawn up to his chin. He was the last to sleep and the first to rise.
About noon the samurai awoke to the sound of Zarek’s moaning. Minutes later, Monetto started out of sleep, a strangled cry breaking off as his vision cleared. His expression clouded with gloom when he remembered his circumstances. He looked to Zarek, nodded curtly to Gonji, and scrabbled for the tunnel exit.
He came back a moment later. “Sunshine,” he announced with cautious optimism, as if to dispel the horror of it all. Seeing Gonji’s lack of expression, he moved to tend on Zarek. “The caravan must be well on its way by now,” he continued absently. “Wonder if Sylva’s got the little ones in hand.”
“You don’t belong here, Monetto,” Gonji said blankly. “Your place is with the caravan, with your family.”
To which the biller responded gently, “Karl would have wanted to be here. But he can’t be. So I am.” He placed an extra blanket under Zarek’s tossing head before peering across to see Gonji’s curious expression. “Sylva would want me here...helping. She’s a great manager of the children, you know.” He looked away.
Gonji cast him a narrowed glance as he rose.
“Where are you going?”
The samurai had begun clearing a path through the viciously spiked redoubt. “I forgot something. I’ll be back.”
“What?” Monetto pressed, eyes crinkling with apprehension.
Gonji paused before he disappeared. “I left my mother’s sword in the heart of Vedun....”
The last thing he saw in the tunnel behind him was the baleful stare of William Eddings.
He tramped through the desolate catacombs, pressing at the insistent pain in his side. Ascending to the surface, he moved through Tralayn’s house, which now shivered with ghostly memories, strapped on his sallet, and eased out into the southern quarter.
Vedun looked like a plundered graveyard. Looters ran amok, tearing homes apart for the valuables left behind in the evacuation. Not many even took notice of him in the excitement of the rich harvest. The few who did regard his grim expression gave him wide passage, the fight knocked out of them by the night’s events. Some merely took him for another scavenging mercenary—there were strangers about whom he’d never seen before. Vultures drawn by easy pickings. And the few adventurers who saw that it was the wanted brigand Gonji—and momentarily entertained notions of revenge or glory or gold—quickly abandoned any lofty ambitions when they saw the menacing flicker of the dark eyes under his brooding sallet brim.
It appeared that Klann’s mercenary companies, the workhorse of the diminishing army, were ravaged by death and desertion. The dead city was a feast for carrion birds and men alike; its halls and houses, a meadow sprinkled with treasure. This campaign was over; only the spoils of war remained here.
The afternoon sun strobed him warmly as Gonji mounted a stray horse and clopped sullenly toward the smith shop. The sky was burnished blue, clear but for a tracing of cirrus clouds in the west. The rain had fallen over the eastern edge of the world.
Animals wandered near the livery area, bleating and lowing. Dogs howled over dead masters. Two of them fought over forage in an alley as the samurai rode by.
Gonji dismounted at the rubble before the Gundersens’ home and sidled into the smith shop. It had been plundered of riding gear. The stables housed a motley lot of deserted broken nags, all the good horses having been stolen or ridden out by citizens.
He entered the house, hearing scuttling sounds within. He drew the Sagami silently. In Wilf’s bedchamber, a lone brigand sat on the cot, pulling on the stylish Italian riding boots Gonji himself had bought and later disdained.
The samurai leveled his blade at the surprised man, who froze, hollow-eyed. He reached for one of the two pistols thrust into his belt. Gonji stamped forward in a heartbeat. The Sagami’s point stopped a half inch from the scavenger’s nose.
“Take them out one at a time, with two fingers,” Gonji directed coldly, “and lay them on the cot. Then take off those boots and leave this place. Don’t ever let me see you again. You’ve violated the home of my friends.”
The man gulped and complied in a rush, anxious to be gone before his reprieve was withdrawn. He reached for his own discarded boots, but Gonji stopped him.
“Iye. Leave them.”
He seemed about to protest. Gonji slashed his boots into neat halves with two sharp blows and returned his sword point to engagement between the man’s eyes. The brigand was on horseback, galloping away, seconds later. Barefoot.
The samurai took up the pistols. They had been loaded and spannered. He grinned to himself and shook his head. Then he stuffed the wheel-locks into his obi, still tied at the waist of his cuirass.
The hatch in the floor that led down to the cellar had gone undiscovered beneath the worn rug that concealed it. Gonji descended the cool, clammy stairs to find his mother’s wakizashi, her gift to him, still wrapped in the spot where he had left it. He drew it. Saw the high gloss on the blade where Garth had mended it. He ambled to the large chest that contained the memoirs of the smith’s days in Klann’s service.