Chapter 15
Azreth helped lower Raiya through the window, then started to climb through after her. It became clear that he was far too large for the opening, and his legs dangled through while his upper body was trapped outside. After a few seconds of contorting unsuccessfully, he simply punched the sides of the window, breaking out chunks of the frame until he fit.
The cultist just smiled as he stood up inside, unoffended by the casual destruction of the cult’s building. She was human, past middle age, and her face was painted in unnerving black and white makeup that made her look rather corpse-like. “He is utterly magnificent,” she said, her eyes traveling all the way down his body and then back up. “Truly a work of glorious, grotesque art by the dark goddess, praise her.”
“Praise her,”came an echoed chant. Inside the attic they’d dropped into were half a dozen women and men in black robes.
“What may we call you, young acolyte?” the woman said to Raiya.
“I’m Raiya. This is Azreth. I don’t want to frighten you, but you might be in danger. The Paladins were on our tail. They’ll be coming for him.”
“You are both safe here,” the woman said. “The wretched followers of Paladius, curse him—”
“Curse him,”echoed the others.
“—will not enter our temples. They know that to do so would be an act of war. Moreover, they are afraid to come too close because they believe our temples are tainted with evil. They are right.” She smiled again. “The child of darkness and his human escort are welcome here, of course. I am High Priestess Gereg. We are happy to help in any way we can, and I would be pleased to offer you sanctuary from the Paladins.”
Raiya hadn’t expected such a warm welcome from death cultists. “Thank you. It’s nice to meet you,” she said, giving an uncertain nod. “I don’t mean to keep going on about it, but the man leading these Paladins is… quite persistent. I’m not certain they won’t be able to force their way in.”
Gereg gave a signal to the other cultists, and half of them hurried downstairs. “Worry not, daughter of darkness. We arm ourselves just as heavily as the Paladins. I’ll post extra guards at the entrances.”
“Thank you.”
“You must be tired from running. Would you like to rest here? You may stay as long as you wish. Let me show you our temple, and I’ll take you to our sleeping quarters, if you like.”
“You’re too kind. We would appreciate that very much.”
Gereg went to the stairs, and Raiya and Azreth followed a careful distance behind her. Azreth bent down to murmur in Raiya’s ear.
“What is wrong with them?”
“What do you mean?”
He gave her a look.
She shrugged. She had a hard time arguing that they weren’t suspicious. “They’re a little strange I suppose, but who isn’t? They’ve done nothing to hurt us yet, which is more than can be said for a lot of people.”
Azreth made a quiet, discontented sound as he straightened.
Priestess Gereg gave them a tour of the temple. It was larger than Raiya had expected, and appeared to be new construction, which made sense, considering that the cult of Moratha had been rapidly growing recently. The building was all rich ebony wood with vaulted ceilings and dark stained-glass windows, and smelled of incense. The beauty of the place was somewhat marred by its eerie inhabitants, though. They wandered about the temple like ghosts, many of them wearing the corpse-like face paint that Priestess Gereg sported, and even the ones who didn’t wear the paint looked depressed or sickly. An unsettling chant could occasionally be heard throughout the building, though Raiya couldn’t tell where it originated from.
They all stared at Azreth when they passed. They gathered in doorways and on balconies to get a look at him. Many of them bowed deeply, while others seemed too awed to react. Raiya looked up at Azreth to see how he was taking all this, and he gave her a tense glance. He was no more comfortable here than he had been in the Roamer camp or the inn.
As they entered the main hall of the temple, Gereg turned to them. “We have long awaited this day.”
“What do you mean?” Raiya asked.
“For months now, there have been signs from the dark goddess that something is coming.”
“Signs?”
“Dreams. I dreamed of a great awakening in Uulantaava. I dreamed of an otherworldly force that would come to help us spread the dark goddess’s love far and wide. Now, it seems that this otherworldly force has finally arrived.” She smiled at Azreth.
“I see,” Raiya said. “And in your dreams, how was the… spreading of darkness accomplished, exactly?”
“I cannot say. But have faith. The dark goddess will reveal everything soon.”
“Ah. Of course.”
Gereg squinted up at Azreth. “Your companion doesn’t speak much, Acolyte Raiya.” Azreth frowned at Gereg.
“He is still new to the mortal plane. Our customs are unfamiliar to him, so he prefers to let me speak for him.”
“How wise of him.”
“Priestess Gereg, I hate to ask for more when you’ve already offered us so much, but there is something else we need help with. We’ve encountered more troubles than just the Paladins since Azreth arrived on our plane. Someone attempted to place a binding on him.”
Raiya nodded to Azreth, and he reluctantly raised his palm to show Gereg the runes. They looked better than they had earlier, but they were still rather raw and red, like recent wounds.
Gereg raised an eyebrow. “A nasty bit of spellcraft.”
“Can you help us undo it?”
She looked uncertain, and Raiya’s hopes fell. But then Gereg nodded. “Many of our number are mages. We will help you find a way to fix it, with the Goddess’s blessing. Worry not.”
Raiya breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Gereg bowed to Azreth. “Please make yourself at home, beloved spawn of the dark goddess. We are eternally grateful to her for this gift. Praise Moratha.”
“Praise her,”echoed some other cultists nearby.
Gereg bowed again as she left, and then they were finally alone—except for the dozen or so people still watching them from around the cavernous room.
Azreth was bemusedly studying the display at the front of the room: a stone altar, a basin, and a lot of decorative skulls that appeared to have come from real people. For a moment, Raiya was afraid the liquid in the basin might be blood, but upon closer inspection, it appeared to be mere water.
“Is Moratha really the mother of demons?” she asked Azreth, keeping her voice down.
He shrugged.
“What do your people believe?” she asked.
“Our eldresses say nothing of gods. They kneel to the universe itself, to the forces of chaos, creation, and destruction.”
“You worship the universe?”
“We don’t worship anything.”
“I see. Perhaps you should keep that to yourself for now. The acolytes will be sorely disappointed.”
“I agree.”
She was glad they had come to the same conclusion. It appeared that their welcome here was conditional upon their support of Moratha’s goals. If they wanted the cultists’ help, it would be best to play along for a while.
He rested a hand between her shoulder blades, grazing upward to the base of her neck. Her skin tingled at the touch.
“I am hungry,” he said quietly.
“So am I,” Raiya said, giving him a sly look. His eyebrows lifted slightly. She realized it was the first time she’d admitted she freely wanted him, and apparently he realized it, too. She cleared her throat. “Later. We should take care of some things first.”
Nirlanand his retinue of Paladins had the audacity to approach the temple and demand entrance, but were turned away by several cultist mages. Raiya watched the exchange from behind the curtains of a window upstairs. She didn’t relax until long after he’d left. It appeared they were safe, for now.
That evening, Azreth sat stiffly in a chair that was far too small for him while a few of the cultists studied his hand. To Raiya’s disappointment, even the mages seemed to know little more about the binding enchantment than she did.
“A pity Brother Eunaios isn’t here,” one of the cultists said. “He’s been missing for some time. He was the most knowledgeable about summoning and binding of us all”
Raiya carefully didn’t reply.
Predictably, Azreth drew a crowd of onlookers as he sat for the mages. The more people gathered around him, the more irritated he looked. Some of them began asking him questions about his purposes on the mortal plane and about the hells, which he answered mostly with noncommittal grunts.
Then people began making requests. Someone asked him to bless their ceremonial knife, a task which he surely wasn’t qualified for, but merely being a demon seemed to be qualification enough to satisfy the cultists. Another cultist asked him to relay a request to the dark goddess.
When it got to be too much, Azreth got up and stormed out of the room, knocking over several cultists in the process.
“I dislike these people,” he said to her later. “And this place is not safe. I can sense it. We should leave.”
“I know. But they might be our best chance at fixing this.”
He frowned, but didn’t argue.
By the next day, she was starting to lose hope that this endeavor would yield any fruit. But then she found the temple’s library.
It was not very large, but the selection of books was ideal. The shelves were filled with an array of unusual tomes, including Effective Methods of Murder, Sacrifice, and Embalming; The Nature of the Hells: A Noncomprehensive Study of Demonology; Confessions of a Blood Magician; and various runic dictionaries and spell books.
Finding someone willing to help Azreth would be good, but being able to do it herself was even better.
There were no desks in the library, which struck her as odd. Perhaps, like Nirlan, the cultists were more interested in the idea of forbidden knowledge than in the actual knowing of it. So she worked directly on the floor, bent over a dusty book of demonic runes as she carefully copied them into her notebook. A small candle served as her only light, as the space lacked windows. Occasionally, one of the cultists would stop by to ask what she was doing and offer advice, most of which was unhelpful.
“Are you a mage?” one of them asked, crossing her arms as she looked down at Raiya.
“No, not as such.”
“Too bad. You’d be a lot more useful if you were.”
“I can’t disagree.”
“Perhaps the demon should have come directly to us instead of you.” She smiled unkindly.
Raiya looked down at her work, though she was suddenly having a difficult time concentrating on it. “Yes, you’re probably right.”
After a few hours, she leaned back to stretch her shoulders, and she felt a presence at her side. She looked up, and Azreth was crouched beside her, watching her work. She had no idea how long he’d been there. He raised a hand over her candle, and the flame grew a little bigger and brighter, casting more light over her book.
She smiled and pointed to the book. “Look what I found. It was written by an Ysuran mage who lived in the fourth century. It’s a study of runes found on enchanted artifacts from the hells.”
Azreth looked at the page she’d pointed at, impassive.
She went on, too excited not to share her findings, whether he wanted them explained or not. “Look at these. They’re very similar to the ones on your hand. And here—” She flipped to another page in the book. “This section has theories about reversing bindings. Most of it isn’t relevant to you, but look at this set of runes. The runes on your hand appear to be a combination of several languages and spell types, but I think some of them use an old demonic language. We can use this as a basis for building a spell to reverse your binding. I’ve already made a few prototype enchantments for us to test.”
Azreth studied the runes in the book she’d been reading, then looked over the enchantments she’d sketched out, his luminous eyes carefully passing over every pen stroke. At last, he looked up at her.
“You can read all these runes? These spells?”
“Yes, most of them. I’ve studied runic languages for a long time. Maybe longer than I should have.”
“These languages can be merged?” he asked slowly. He looked at his hand, then back at the book. “What does this one mean?”
Raiya pointed out each rune on his hand as she explained their function in the spell while Azreth listened. When she’d finished, she sat back, waiting for him to react. He frowned. Raiya guessed he was going to point out how unlikely it was that her counter-enchantments would work, and she braced herself.
“You are very clever,” he said.
Raiya raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Thank you.”
“I thought you were a mere craftsman of enchantments, not an inventor of them. You have impressive skill.”
Flutters filled her stomach. “I don’t know about that. But I’m glad I can be of assistance.”
“You offer more than just assistance,” Azreth said. He lowered his voice, glancing up to look her in the eye. “If you were not with me, I would be trapped and without hope.”
Raiya was startled. She swallowed back a lump in her throat. Without thinking, she found herself reaching out to touch his hand. He looked down at where she touched him, quiet and still.
“I’m glad I can help,” she whispered. “No one should be trapped or hopeless.”
His fingers slowly folded around hers.
A sad thought occurred to her—that he might no longer need or want her after this was done. She realized, rather suddenly, that she didn’t want to leave him. Was it just because of the sense of safety that came from having a demon as a bodyguard? Or had she begun to appreciate his company?
“What will you do after you’re free?” she asked. “You said you will not return to the hells.”
“No. I will remain here with you.”
She blinked, surprised. It seemed he’d already been thinking about this, as well. “With me?”
His gaze sliced toward hers. His eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
Raiya watched him, and he watched her back. The warmth had gone from his aura. His expression was cool and unyielding.
Slowly, Raiya’s pleasure drained and was replaced by confusion. “What do you mean by that?”
“You will stay by my side while I remain on your plane. That is all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms. “Perhaps you should ask me what I plan to do, instead of telling me.”
He scowled. “What do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t decided yet, and I was considering my options.”
His lips twisted downward. He glanced away, and she could see the muscle in his jaw silently flexing before he returned his gaze to her. “You will remain with me, and I will feed from you.”
“Is that a command?”
“If it must be.”
It felt like a knife twisting in her chest. “You can’t do that. You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my master.”
“There is nothing you can do to stop me. You are weak.”
Raiya gaped at him. She shut her book and stood up. “How dare you talk to me like this?”
He stood up too, towering over her, unapologetically intimidating. “You give me no choice. I must feed, or I will grow weak and die. There is no other option.”
“Perhaps I would have continued to help you if you had just asked me. Did you think of that?”
“You said you were considering leaving me.”
“So you’ve decided to force me to stay?”
He waved his arm in a rare outward display of frustration, baring his teeth. “If you refuse, you will force my hand!”
“So if I tried to leave you, you would keep me against my will? And how will you feed from me? Do you plan to hold me down and torture me?”
“I do not want to hurt you.”
That made her feel a little safer, but not much. “Then what is your plan, exactly? How will you feed from me if I’m unwilling?”
He had nothing to say to that, apparently. The silence was deafening.
“I thought you—I thought we were getting along.” It sounded stupid now that she said it aloud. This was his nature. What else had she expected? It was only just recently that she’d started to think of him as a companion instead of an enemy, anyway. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have my trust and friendship while also holding me hostage.”
“I apologize if I gave you the impression that you should trust me,” he said sarcastically.
“You’re right. That was my mistake.” She shoved her notebook under her arm and shelved the book she’d been referencing before stalking toward the door.
Azreth grabbed her arm to stop her, and she stiffened, looking back at him nervously. His expression was hard but wavering slightly, like he was wrestling with several emotions. “Where are you going?”
“To my bed.”
“It’s only midday. You will not require rest for hours.”
“And?”
“Aren’t you going to try to undo my binding?”
“When I’m not feeling so exhausted, maybe.” She glanced down at his hand on her. “Release me.”
He hesitated, then let go. She left without another word.