Pathfinder Tales: The Redemption Engine

by James L. Sutter

  Time changed. The edges of Salim's vision, bound all his life by eye sockets that now seemed terribly cramped and constrained, blew outward in a cascade of rushing color. Impossible sounds filled his ears, his throat, coating his tongue with the flavor of screams or piercing his eyes with the smell of purple. His body stretched, thinning out along the current like a trail of dye, permeating and dispersing, yet at the same time he could still feel Maedora's fingers in his own twig-thin digits, holding to him with more than flesh.

  They picked up speed, rushing with the river, crackling with the lightning, crashing against the sides of the first channel and then swirling up it, faster, like a cataract in reverse. Thoughts were torn away as fast as they came, and it was all Salim could do to retain a fragile sense of I, an even lesser grasp on we. He was a thing, an idea, a concept blasting through each curve of the canyon, always rising, splashing on and through other ideas and bits of things and nothings and banking high as they raced through turn after turn, picking up speed, and now the mountain was shrinking, the bends coming tighter, and then there was the spire's tip and the joining of the rivers and they came together and—

  Salim fell upward through a hole in the sky.

  paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas , Aug 10, 2014

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In Light of Recent Developments

  Salim woke in agony, his entire body suffused with the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb gone to sleep—his tongue, his eyelids, his lungs. He coughed and lurched into a sitting position, trying to keep control of his convulsing muscles.

  He was in a bed. Clean white sheets covered him to the waist. Beneath them, he was naked, the linen smooth against his flesh. What he could see of his skin was unharmed, and there were no telltale blooms of red on the sheets to suggest it was any different below them.

  "Welcome back, gov."

  Salim turned.

  Gav sat in a wooden chair next to the bed, smiling broadly. He held out a bundle of dark clothing, and Salim was relieved to see the Melted Blade on top of it. "We were worried you might just keep sleeping."

  Salim threw back the sheets and stepped onto a warm hardwood floor. Other than the large bed and chair, the room was empty. The opposite wall held a wooden door, and on the others hung needlework depictions of humanoids in a variety of compromising positions.

  He shook out his robes and pulled them on, then cinched his sword belt tight around his waist. "How long was I out?"

  "Two days, Your Honor. We tried to wake you, but you were down deep. We feared that if we shook you any harder, you'd pass the rest of the way and stay on the other side for good."

  "Who's we?" Salim bent to lace his sandals.

  "Bors and Roshad. After you three jumped away to Heaven—neat little trick there, by the by—I kept my ear to the cobbles. When they popped back up, I found them and got the whole story." His eyes narrowed. "Did you really call out a couple of angels?"

  "Yes."

  The boy's grin broadened. "I knew it. ‘I'm not surprised,' I told 'em. ‘My employer's got a pair like an aurochs.' Still, maybe not the wisest of moves, neh?"

  "Tell me about it." Salim straightened. "So where are we?"

  As if in response, the door opened, and a corpse stepped through.

  She had been human, once, and lovely. Dark cinnamon skin lay smooth and bare under the film of veils she wore, and her dark hair was tied up tightly in an elaborate braided bun. In the center of her chest, however, the veils parted to reveal the ragged, fist-sized hole just left of her sternum, the white shards of broken ribs visible in the gelid mass of congealed blood. Dead eyes regarded the room's occupants blankly as she stepped forward and reached for them.

  Salim moved between her and Gav, shoving the boy backward hard enough to tip the chair over. The Melted Blade sang free of its scabbard. "Stay behind me!"

  "Not again!" Gav scrambled to his feet and grabbed Salim's sword arm. "We've been through this before, remember? You don't have enough coin in that purse of yours to start getting blade-happy." Still hanging off of Salim's elbow, he addressed the corpse. "We're fine for now, Alyra, thank you. Please let the others know he's awake."

  The zombie woman lowered her arms and nodded, then turned and shamble-swayed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Gav breathed a sigh of relief and released Salim's arm. "You've got a hell of a way of making friends, gov."

  "Where are we?" Salim demanded again.

  "At the White Lady—the cathouse I told you about back when we first met. The one where they get a bit more creative with the staff, remember?"

  Salim remembered it, as well as the walking dead servants of the necromancer district. He remembered greasy little Gerik Mubb, and what he'd done to the man and his "wares." It felt like a lifetime ago. "You brought me to an undead brothel."

  "Brought you?" Gav looked offended. "You think I'd set you up in a bed this pricey when you're not even awake to use it proper? Give me a little credit, sire—thrift is part of the Gav Nahli package. You spend a little on me, save a lot everywhere else." He shook his head. "This is where we found you. You just showed up on the floor of one of the rooms, dropping out of thin air and scaring hell out of everyone." He paused. "Well, those that still get scared."

  "I see." The last thing Salim remembered was riding the chaos current, screaming and stretching as he shot up into the roiling sky. Not only had he survived, he'd apparently appeared in precisely the city he'd needed to get to, in a brothel full of the same undead he was sworn to hunt down and destroy as an agent of the death goddess.

  Someone clearly had a sense of humor. But who? The aeons seemed unlikely. Pharasma, maybe? Or perhaps the multiverse itself? The latter would certainly fit with the rest of his life experience.

  The door opened again, this time producing familiar figures.

  "Bors! Roshad!" Salim stepped forward and clasped wrists with each man in turn. Both returned his grip with interest, Bors's enthusiastic squeeze making Salim's bones creak.

  "Cayden's bile, but it's good to see you up and around," Roshad said. "When you wouldn't wake up, we thought the angels might have—well, we didn't really know, honestly." He stepped back and looked Salim up and down. "So what the hell happened to you?"

  "You first," Salim said. "Where did the angels take you?"

  Roshad spread his hands. "Home. It seems they didn't consider us much of a threat." He frowned. "We aim to prove them wrong, now that you're back."

  Salim nodded. "Fair enough. Getting back to Heaven is going to be a problem without my amulet, though."

  "Oh, I don't think we'll need to go that far," Roshad said grimly.

  "What?"

  "If you honored gentlemen wouldn't mind," Gav broke in, "I suggest we continue this conversation outside, somewhere we aren't paying for by the half-hour. Master Salim's purse is looking unhealthily thin, and every coin saved is one that can be spent on tips for a worthy guide and companion."

  "Fine." Salim gestured to the door. "After you."

  Gav led the way, taking them down a long hallway full of doors. From behind several came the usual squeals and grunts of a house of prostitution, yet from others came more disturbing sounds: crunching and sawing, or the slither of many otherwise silent bodies moving against each other. Salim's grip tightened on his sword.

  Then they were down a staircase and out into the common room, where various patrons lounged in chaises and chairs with a variety of pretty somethings of both genders. Some of the staff were perfectly normal humanoids, albeit powdered pale or made up with dark kohl around the eyes to give them a severe and bloodless look. Yet others were the real thing—walking corpses like the one that had greeted him and Gav, standing perfectly still or caressing themselves mechanically. Dead flesh on display.

  At last they made it to the front doors and onto the crowded street, moving through the press toward the inner wall of the district.

  Something was different. The street
s here had been crowded before, but now they were even more packed—normal people squeezing shoulder to shoulder with undead servants, orc slavers, and other undesirables as they wound their way through the lanes. A tension that hadn't been there before pulsed in people's voices and movements, and Salim knew it all too well. This wasn't just a crowd out for market day. These people were one thrown stone away from a mob.

  "What's happening here?" Salim asked.

  They passed through one of the smaller tunnel-arches at the edge of the district and into the open-air core of the city. As they emerged into sunlight, Roshad pointed.

  Great inky columns of smoke twisted up from the southern edge of the city, escaping through breaks in the district's stone ceiling.

  "Caramine's back at it again," Roshad explained. "Only this time she and her crew aren't bothering to be quiet about it. They've barricaded off a chunk of the Bottoms and aren't letting anybody in. And they've started taking more sacrifices—a lot more." He lifted his veil and spat. "They're recruiting anyone who falls into their hands—either you join with them, with magic to seal the deal and keep you honest, or they ‘purify' you with the machine. Guess Caramine figures sticking to criminals wasn't fast enough—now she's helping the righteous speed up their heavenly homecoming as well. That smoke isn't just from fires set in the fighting."

  "Pyres," Bors agreed. "Burning the corpses."

  "What about the other gangs?" Salim asked. "I thought they kept each other in check. Why aren't they doing anything?"

  "Oh, they are, gov." Gav dropped back from his position in the lead to join the conversation. "But they're not exactly like some softer city's guards, neh? Nobody wants to lose more troops than anyone else, for fear another gang'll use the weakness to bite off part of their territory. The gangs put down strays when they find them, but they aren't about to invade the Bottoms. Most folk consider that a problem for the other Freemen to fix."

  "Other Freemen? So they haven't all gone to Caramine's side?"

  Gav laughed. "Who do you think's making all the smoke? Caramine may have a solid following, but she doesn't have Halman Wright and the rest of the Freemen's leadership. They've been fighting her tooth and nail, though so far it's been pretty evenly matched. They're why Caramine's only got part of the Bottoms and not the whole damned thing."

  "What about the Church of Pharasma?" Salim asked. "Isn't the cathedral down in the Bottoms?"

  "Okay, the Freemen aren't the only reason," Gav admitted. "But the crows haven't done much yet other than patch up the Freemen. The good ones, I mean."

  Salim frowned. "Take me there."

  "Where do you think we're headed, gov? She said to bring you as soon as you woke."

  "She?" For a moment, Salim thought he meant Caramine. Then he understood. "Maedora! She's here?" He felt a twinge of guilt. In the shock of waking up among his mortal friends again, he'd totally forgotten about the psychopomp.

  "She showed up yesterday and started asking about you," Gav said. "I knew you two didn't get along, but I figured you needed a pretty powerful cleric to pop you out of your nap, and you were already burning a lot of coin just lying in bed—and not in the good way. I didn't think another Pharasmin was about to smother you with your own pillow, so..."

  "You were right. Thank you." Salim wondered where Maedora had appeared that it took her a day to get back here—somewhere outside the city? Or had she shown up on the other side of the world and strong-armed some wizard into teleporting her back? He smiled at the mental image.

  They moved south through the inns and shops of the Core districts, making for the unbarricaded portion of the Bottoms where Pharasma's cathedral stood. As they went, Bors and Roshad explained more about the state of the city since they'd returned. As usual, Roshad did most of the talking—and cursing—but Salim could see in Bors's eyes that the big man was equally angry. For all that the two projected streetwise cynicism, neither liked the idea of a multiverse where angels and abolitionists could go bad so thoroughly. Salim understood the feeling.

  When they finished, Salim returned the favor, explaining his experiences with the featureless desert, Maedora, and the aeons' tower.

  "But if the angels wanted to get rid of you," Roshad asked, "why would they send you to these aeon things?"

  Salim had been asking himself the same question. "I don't think they did," he said slowly. "Planar magic is difficult. I suspect they meant to maroon us somewhere in the Maelstrom for the proteans to destroy, or else farther out in the desert—another day, and the aeons wouldn't have mattered where I'm concerned. We just got lucky." He paused. "If you believe in luck."

  "I'll believe in it as long as it believes in me," Gav opined. "You sure meet some strange people, gov."

  "Present company included."

  They found the portion of the Bottoms not yet held by Caramine significantly less crowded than the streets of Ankar-Te, and Salim supposed many folks from the southern districts must have pushed north to get away from the fighting. Those who still used the streets did so quickly and furtively, beneath eyes watching from half-shuttered windows.

  The Godsmouth Cathedral sat at the southern edge of the district, where the city wall met the lip of the cliff. Constructed of black stone, the temple was a buttressed and gothic affair, with three bell towers representing Pharasma's tripartite nature rising up through a hole in the district's ceiling.

  The cathedral was one of Kaer Maga's most famous landmarks, and Salim had heard tell of it several times on his voyage to the city—or rather, of the crypts it was founded to maintain. When someone important died in Kaer Maga, the Pharasmins took the corpse out through a gate in the wall and down a series of ledges to a giant face carved into the cliff, then through the mouth into a massive tomb complex. No one knew how old the Godsmouth Ossuary was, but it was rumored that not even the Pharasmins had fully explored them, and it was a mark of great distinction to be buried there.

  Yet it seemed that Salim wouldn't need to visit the catacombs, or even the cathedral itself. As his party approached, a small, straight-backed shape emerged from the church's doors and moved to intercept them.

  "Maedora." She was back in her human guise, clothing altered to look even more like a military uniform.

  "Salim." She didn't smile, but neither was there the disdain he'd seen every other time she'd worn this body on the Material Plane. If he didn't know better, he'd have sworn she was happy to see him. "I see you finally decided to get back to work."

  "After all that, I thought I deserved a bit of a lie-in," Salim said. "What happened? At the tower, I mean. Did it knock you out as well?"

  She waved a hand. "That's not important. We need to travel to Heaven immediately. I've already waited too long for you to wake."

  "You waited for me? How thoughtful." Despite his bantering tone, Salim was pleasantly surprised. He would have expected her to handle things herself.

  Her eyes narrowed. "I use all the tools at my disposal. Including you."

  "Of course." Salim bowed slightly, hands raised in surrender. "In that case, we'd best get moving. There's no telling how long we have before Nemeniah and Malchion make their move."

  "Oh, you're too late for that."

  Salim's head snapped up. "What?"

  "I've spoken to my superiors at the Spire," Maedora said. "It seems we spooked the angels after all. As soon as they banished us to the desert, they made their move on Pharasma's Court." She looked ready to spit. "An angelic invasion."

  "And...?" Salim couldn't quite figure out how to ask the question. Part of him was still overwhelmed by the angels' audacity. Though he understood why their plan was madness, deep down, doesn't some part of everyone admire a madman? "Did they succeed?"

  "Of course not!" Maedora glared at him. "They surprised the Spire's forces briefly, and made a terrible mess of things—a whole branch of the River of Souls jumping its banks! But Pharasma has enough psychopomps to guide every soul in existence along its destined course. As quickly as they establis
hed their toehold, the angels were pushed out again."

  Salim felt strangely deflated. Somehow, he had presumed that when things came to a head, he'd be at the crux of it. Inwardly, he laughed at his own arrogance. He thought of Bors asking what made Salim so important, and Salim answering that he wasn't—yet clearly he hadn't really believed that. "So it's over."

  Maedora's expression softened. "Not quite. The angels were pushed out of the Court, but their forces regenerate quickly." She gestured toward the columns of inky smoke. "They're currently pinned down at the Spire's edge, on the border between it and the celestial planes. The Court wants us to shut down Caramine's machine and stop the flood of new troops before the final push."

  "I see," Salim said. "And Heaven? Where are the other angels in all this?"

  "That's what I want to find out." A look of frustration flitted across her stony face. "My superiors didn't spend a lot of time explaining."

  "I know the feeling," Salim said. "Before we go running into a fight this time, I'd like to know the whole picture." His jaw clenched as he remembered something. "I still don't have my amulet, though. So unless you've learned how to tear a hole in the planes in the last few days, we're going to need—"

  He broke off as Maedora reached into a back pocket and produced several slightly squashed rolls of vellum. He felt his jaw sag open. "Scrolls?"

  "The brothers and sisters at the cathedral were happy to provide them."

  "Somehow I doubt that." A magical scroll capable of transporting people between the planes could only be scribed by an exceptionally powerful spellcaster—presumably one of the cathedral's high priests or priestesses. Even one such scroll was worth more gold than the men standing with him were likely to see in their lifetimes. And here Maedora stood with a crumpled handful of them.

  The psychopomp's lips quirked up at one end. "They were once I convinced them."

  Salim could easily imagine the scene—the psychopomp storming in from gods-knew-where, demanding immediate access to the cathedral's most secret storerooms, requisitioning as she saw fit while the clerics did their best to balance humility with outrage.