The Price of Faith

by Rob J. Hayes

Years and years ago now Jezzet had killed her old master as all Blademasters must, her final test and greatest challenge; to kill the man she had come to trust with her life, the man who had taught her all she knew. It was not a clean kill. She had given him a fatal wound and he had smiled at her and told her. Blademaster I might have been but mine was a wasted life chasing nothing but my own desires and my next treasure but you, Jezzet, you will be great and greater than great. Your name will be... He had died then but Jez had got the idea. She had always thought it folly; the ramblings of an old, dying man but in Sarth when she had shed her fear and her inhibitions she had realised Yuri was right. Only she lacked a purpose.

  The Blademasters of old had followed causes, aligned themselves with great kings and queens or fought on the side of rebellion to help those couldn't help themselves. Jezzet Vel'urn had never had a purpose. At least not until she met Thanquil. She might not believe in his God or his Inquisition but that didn't matter. She believed in him and that made him her cause.

  Jez gained herself a second blade; wasn't too hard, there were swords a plenty in the street now. She parried an attack with one and took the man's arm off, just below the elbow, with the other and flowed into her next attack, striking two demons at once. She knew her blades could not kill the creatures but they were a damned sight less dangerous when they had no arms. Or no eyes, Jez, reckon you're pretty good at taking those out these days.

  She whirled away from a wild swing and hamstrung a woman in the process, skipping backwards and glancing around to gain her bearings. At first she had tried for Kessick but that soon became a hopeless endeavour. There were simply too many demon-people protecting him. Now she looked for Thanquil, to help him, to protect him, and just to be near him again.

  Close to the burning building she found him. Beset by four demons and looking far the worse for it Jez could see Thanquil struggling towards Kessick, fending off harrying attacks meant to cripple not kill. He was far, maybe too far and there was a small host between them but Jez could feel the fire of battle in her veins and Blademasters were not so easily deterred. Last thing I'd call this is easy, Jez.

  She stepped close to a woman-demon and locked its sword with her own only to step away a moment later taking the creature's hand off at the wrist. Then she turned and started away from them all, away from Thanquil. A quick faint to her right and Jez cut to her left, breaking into a sprint and skirting the chasing demons. A man stepped into her way, big and burly and with more beard than face. Jez leapt at him, brushed his axe away and hit him full in the chest. They both went down rolling in the dust; him scrabbling for purchase, her poking one of her swords in his chest. Easier to leave it there, Jez. She grabbed the dagger sheathed on his belt, pulled it free, flowed back onto her feet and was running again. Her pursuers had gained but she was still ahead and closing in on Thanquil fast. One of the demons brought down a hammer blow on the Arbiter, he blocked but the attack forced him to his knees and another of the creatures closed in from behind. Then Jez caught them.

  She barrelled into the demon behind Thanquil at full speed and sent the creature tumbling away. With no time to waste and no sense for safety Jezzet vaulted over Thanquil and kicked the second demon in the face. The Arbiter surged to his feet and turned and he and Jezzet stood back to back, weapons drawn and ready and facing down their enemies. Wasn't too long before they were surrounded and more than a little outnumbered.

  “Good timing,” Thanquil said. “I was starting to think you weren't coming.”

  Jez found herself smiling. “Had to leave it 'til the last moment. I like to make an entrance.”

  He laughed but only for a moment. “I'm sorry, Jez.”

  “Eh?”

  “For not believing you. About Drake. I'm sorry.”

  Jez's heart gave a flutter. “Now might not be the best moment for this,” she said unable to stop smiling.

  “Maybe,” he said slipping something into her hand. It turned out to be a slip of paper and she wasted no time in slicing it in two with her sword which took on a distinctive golden glow. “But I can't be sure we'll get another so now will have to do.”

  She should have told him then how she felt. She wanted to tell him, wanted to say the words but her throat tightened and refused to give voice to her thoughts so she settled for thinking it instead. I love you.

  “I need you to watch my back,” Thanquil said and Jez noticed the demons had backed off a little.

  “Always,” she managed to croak.

  She felt his back disappear, took it to mean he was walking away and she glanced back at him.

  “I can't be certain how they'll react,” he said as he took hold of something in his coat and pulled it free. A moment later a whole mess of paper fluttered to the ground behind him. The demons backed away further, giving ground before him, around him. Jez followed slowly, keeping distance and keeping watch, glancing back at him whenever she could. Then she saw what he carried, a sword black as night that looked like it had crawled up out of hell itself. The blade was uneven, jagged and hard to focus on. Looks like a demon, Jez. Looks like a demon blade.

  “Thanquil...” she started to say something, not really sure what and not really sure why but it felt like she should give voice to some sort of thought. Kessick interrupted her.

  “Now where did you get that, Arbiter Darkheart?”

  “Took it from your master's smoking corpse,” she heard Thanquil say with a voice colder than she'd heard before. “I was thinking of leaving it in yours.”

  Silence rushed in to fill the gap, or at least as silent as a battlefield could get where fighting was still very much taking place somewhere nearby. The blazing building to her right decided on that moment to collapse in a gout of flame that quickly set two neighbouring adobes on fire. The demons were closing in behind Thanquil so Jez kept close by, protecting him as she had decided she would.

  “I see,” grated Kessick and Jez heard the sing of steel leaving scabbard as he said it. She glanced back to see both men just a few paces from each other and both with swords in hand. Jezzet had done her best to teach Thanquil how to fight but he was far from a master and she was far from certain he could best Kessick but if he had brought that sword here than she supposed he must have a plan and she trusted him enough to believe he could see it through. Of course that didn't mean she wouldn't take the chance to give Kessick a good stabbing should the opportunity present itself and she sorely hoped it did.

  Jez saw Thanquil move out of the corner of her eye, preparing to strike but Kessick stepped backwards, hand held out in front of him. “Wait! I should wait if I were you, Arbiter. Kill me and Jezzet Vel'urn dies too.”

  “What?” Jezzet and Thanquil said in unison.

  “Our fates are bound. If I die, so does she...”

  Kessick continued but Jez didn't hear him, didn't hear anything over the blood rushing in her own ears and the deafening beating of her heart. The charm! She looked down at her left wrist, at the fresh scar along the precise line of the old one. The scar first made to sew an anti-pregnancy charm into her wrist, and she knew what had to be done.

  Jez dropped her sword and without so much as a thought drew her dagger across her left wrist. She gasped at the pain and gritted her teeth. Yuri had inflicted far worse injuries on her during her training, she would endure. Not deep enough, Jez. She drew back the dagger and stabbed it into her wrist, the pain driving her to her knees and flooding her eyes with tears so the world became a blurred mess of colour and agony. She cut into the flesh beneath the skin and dug with the point until it hit something solid and she sent a prayer to any God would listen that it wasn't bone. Throwing down the dagger she thrust her fingers into her open, bleeding wrist and cried out. There, Jez. That's it! Her fingers brushed the charm and the world went black.

  Thanquil

  Thanquil opened his eyes to darkness. Only it wasn't darkness. It was black and it was endless but it wasn't as though he couldn't see. He saw his arm stretched out in front of
him, he saw Myorzo in his hand and he saw the business end sticking into Kessick's chest. He also saw Kessick; pale and with a face of confusion and pain but Kessick nonetheless, his own hand still outstretched but no blade present.

  Thanquil looked around, glancing first left and then right. He could definitely see but the problem was there was nothing to see.

  “Help me,” breathed Kessick softly.

  Thanquil turned back to the man. “Why?”

  Kessick fixed him with a cold stare. “I wasn't talking to you.”

  A laugh sounded in the nothingness. Loud and heartless and strangely familiar. It echoed around and around until Thanquil could not tell where it came from. Then, from behind Kessick stepped Thanquil's mirror image.

  “Or maybe I was,” said Kessick.

  Thanquil's doppelgänger took two steps until he was between the two and looked at them both. He looked younger than Thanquil but only because he also looked healthier. No black bags under the eyes, no scraggly beard left uncut for too long, no wounds from the fight.

  “Help me,” pleaded Kessick.

  “Why?” asked Thanquil's mirror.

  “We had a deal!”

  Thanquil laughed, the other Thanquil. “Our contract in no way states I must save your life and it is null and void upon your death. Tell me, why would I need you,” the other Thanquil looked at Thanquil, “when I have him.”

  Kessick opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out. Like dust on a breeze he simply faded away until there was nothing left.

  Thanquil dropped Myorzo and backed away from himself. Glancing around with wild eyes. “Where are we? Am I? Is this the void?”

  The other Thanquil looked at him like a wise man might look upon a foolish child only with far less compassion. “Not quite. This is you, Thanquil Darkheart. We're inside you.”

  “And you're...”

  “The demon, Myorzo,” the way the demon spat the word Thanquil was far from certain that was its real name.

  Ignoring the irony of the question Thanquil asked it anyway. “Why do you feel so familiar?”

  Myorzo smiled. “Because you are me.”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “That's not true!”

  “Are you sure? Your God has an incarnation. A piece of himself born in mortal form. Are you so sure I can't do the same.”

  Thanquil stared down himself and wondered if his face always looked so smug. “You're lying.”

  A room began to build itself around them. Four walls layered upon each other brick by brick and a roof of straw growing into existence faster and faster until they were inside a building, inside a room. A hearth sprang to life in one of the walls though it provided no heat and a chair grew out of the floor. Part of one wall fell away to reveal a window though no light shone in from outside. Stray straw dropped from the roof and formed into a mattress on the floor in front of the hearth.

  “Do you remember this place?” the demon asked.

  Thanquil nodded. “This was my home. Before...”

  Two figures faded into life on top of the mattress both naked and writhing, thrusting, grunting and groaning in pain and ecstasy. Thanquil's parents.

  “Thane and Isa Fisher,” said the demon in Thanquil's own voice. “She was barren, you know.”

  Thanquil saw his mother claw at his father's back and gasp. “There a point to this?” he asked himself.

  “This was the first time we met,” said Myorzo. “I was here at your conception. They wanted a child so badly and Volmar would not answer their prayers so they called on other powers. And I answered.”

  Thanquil grimaced as both his parents shuddered in climax. He turned away from the scene. “And what was the price?”

  “You were. Both the price and the payment. I gave them you. I gave them myself.”

  He might have struck at the demon had he thought it would do any good.

  “It isn't the only time we've met,” continued Myorzo. “Hundreds of times since then I've come to you. Keeping an eye on you.”

  “How?” Thanquil asked. “You were inside the sword.”

  Myorzo laughed. “You think in such small terms. I was there, I was here. I am in many places all at once. Just like your God.”

  The demon stepped up beside Thanquil. “Would you like to see what Kessick saw?”

  “No.” But it was too late. His old home and his parents faded away and a wall began to build itself beneath his feet. A giant wall. It stretched out as far as the eye could see in both directions and higher and higher it grew with Thanquil and his mirror standing at the top watching the world shrink beneath them.

  Figures down below began to move. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. A sea of movement down below. A dead sea. Dead bodies writhed together, surging towards the wall and throwing themselves at it, hacking at it with picks and hammers and arms ending in bloodied stumps. Climbing upon each other in an attempt to reach the top.

  “Nothing grows in the land of the dead,” said Myorzo in Thanquil's ear.

  “Nothing lives in the land of the dead.”Thanquil completed the saying.

  “You've been there, you've seen the dead walk.”

  “Never seen an army of the dead,” Thanquil mused as at the chaos below him.

  “One of many,” said Myorzo. “One of seven and each one bent on flooding the world with death.”

  “The Dread Lords...”

  “Are returning,” the demon finished for him. “ This is what I showed to Kessick. He saw it and he knew action was needed. He knew your God could not be trusted to help you.”

  Again Thanquil turned away from the image. “He was wrong.”

  Myorzo stepped in front of Thanquil, his face a picture of rage and Thanquil realised he could look quite scary when angry. “Why do you cling to him?” Myorzo demanded. “Why do you believe in him?”

  Thanquil opened his mouth to reply but the demon cut him off.

  “Do you even know what your God truly is? Do you know he and I come from the same place?”

  Thanquil refused to let anything show on his face but even so the demon smiled at him. “You didn't. Your God comes from the world you call the void just as I do. We are one and the same he and I.”

  Belief was a tricky thing, hard to explain and harder to keep. If anything faith was even trickier. “It doesn't matter,” Thanquil said to the demon. “Though it does make sense. I believe in Volmar's teachings, in his ideals and I have faith that his plan for us is the right course. It doesn't matter to me if he is a God or a demon. It's him I believe in. Not the word we give to define him.”

  “You would defy me?” asked the demon.

  Thanquil looked himself in the eye. “Yes.”

  The wall vanished into the nothing, fading to black and in front of Thanquil an image of Jezzet appeared. She was on her knees, her eyes flooded with tears and her wrist dripping with blood, her own fingers digging into the wound.

  He felt his throat close and choked back his own tears at the image. He had been desperately trying not to think of her. He failed. Hot, wet tears rolled salty tracks down his cheeks and into his beard. “Is she... dead?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” the demon walked up to Jezzet and looked at her closely. “Time isn't exactly on track here. But she's going to die. In your words; demon magic is the power to change fate. Kessick used that power to change hers, linked it to his own. The moment he dies, so does she. You can't change that.”

  “Oh...”

  “But I can,” the demon looked up at Thanquil from behind the image of Jezzet and smiled. “I can stop her from dying.”

  Thanquil didn't bother to wipe the tears from his eyes. “And the price?”

  “No different to that I gave to your parents. You. I want your service, your...”

  “No,” Thanquil said almost choking on his words. He closed his eyes, forced the tears to stop and when he opened them the image of Jezzet was gone. “No,” he said again.

  �
�Huh...” said his mirror image looking confused for the first time.

  Thanquil looked the demon in the eye. “I'm going to give you what you want most, Myorzo. I'm going to set you free.”

  The demon stood, watching Thanquil carefully. “You can't.”

  “I can.”

  “The chains were forged by Volmar himself. Only he...”

  “I am Volmar's will,” Thanquil all but shouted before he could reign in his emotions. He walked over towards the discarded demon blade and looked down upon it.

  “And for that you want the life of Jezzet Vel'urn?”

  Thanquil let out a ragged breath. “No. For that I want you to leave. You and all your brethren. I'm going to set you all free, shatter the chains and break the ties that bind you to the Inquisition and in return I want you all to leave this world and never return.”

  He knelt down and picked up the demon blade, taking it in both hands and waiting for the demon's answer. The creature seemed to take forever to decide and when Thanquil turned he found his own face staring at him from only a few paces away.

  “I agree to the terms of the contract,” Myorzo said in Thanquil's voice.

  The demon blade shattered.

  Thanquil

  The demon blade shattered. Kessick, slack-mouthed and vacant-eyed, toppled. Myorzo's dark presence rushed out of the sword in a black fog. The building behind them burned bright yellow, ash drifting into the air. Thanquil turned from the scene just in time to see Jezzet hit the ground. She didn't move.

  He ran to her, collapsing onto his knees by her body, and slowly reached out to touch her. Her only wound was her bleeding wrist, self inflicted and far from fatal. Thanquil had almost expected to see a stab wound just where he had killed Kessick but there was nothing. She was whole. Her eyes were open wide staring blankly into the sky but the light had already gone. Jez had already gone. There was nothing left but a body.

  The world grew blurry again and Thanquil felt the tears come, choked them back and knelt by her. Her clothes were tatty, a mere step above rags, her hair was a mess; longer than she liked it, and she was spotted everywhere with other's blood. It seemed wrong somehow, not a death deserving of a Blademaster, not a death deserving of Jezzet Vel'urn. She still wore his ring. The little wooden charm he had made for her in Sarth. He remembered the way she liked to play with it, rub at it with her thumb whenever she was nervous.