Chapter 18
In the morning, Raiya found Azreth waiting for her outside the door to her sleeping quarters. Had he been waiting there all night?
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” he replied perfunctorily. “I need to speak with you.”
She held her breath, thinking of their meeting last night. “About?”
“When will you be ready to try another counter-enchantment?”
She relaxed. This was more familiar territory. It was easier to think about enchanting puzzles than to try to sort through her feelings toward him. She started walking toward the dining hall, and Azreth followed. “I didn’t think you’d be so eager after what happened last time.” Frankly, she was deeply embarrassed by the incident. The idea of trying again made her feel nauseous.
“I must be freed from the binding. There is no alternative.”
“I’m not sure that enchanting is the way out of this. We might need a real mage who can cast real spells.”
“Enchantments are real spells.”
“It went very poorly last time, Azreth. It was irresponsible of me to even attempt it.”
“Do you think I’m not strong enough to endure it?” He frowned, tilting his head at her. One of his horns scraped the ceiling as he moved, and he ducked, casting an irritated glance upward. “I have been in worse pain before.”
She lowered her voice. “It’s not that. All of this is just educated guesses. What if something worse happens next time? What if I… damage you somehow?”
“Another scratch on a broken sword is of little concern.”
She frowned at him. “You’re not a sword.”
He moved to stand in front of her, blocking her path. “I would like you to try again,” he said. He paused, then added, “Please.”
Raiya gave him a skeptical look.
“Last time, I could feel something in your enchantment pushing against the binding,” he said. “It didn’t work, but it was close. We are on the right path. You will succeed if we keep trying.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“I have paid more attention than you think I have. I know you know things. I know you’re good at this.”
She would have thought he was just trying to flatter her, but he said it almost accusingly, like he thought it was something she was trying to hide in order to get out of work.
“We will try again,” he said firmly.
Raiya hesitated, still surprised by his confidence in her. “I’ll… do my best, then.”
Azreth nodded approvingly. “We must leave this place. You should get all the information you can now. Take whatever books you can carry from the library, and we’ll leave tonight.”
“That’s stealing.”
“Yes.”
Several cultists appeared at the end of the hall. “Acolyte,” said one of them, addressing her. “You and the demon are to come to the main hall immediately. The High Priestess has had another vision.”
Raiya held back a sigh. They owed the cultists a debt for harboring them these past few days, but their visions and their refusal to address Azreth directly, as if she were his handler, were tiring. As was his custom, Azreth said nothing and waited for Raiya to deal with the intrusion. She suspected he would have completely ignored the cultists if left to his own devices.
She was too impatient for indirectness. “What does that have to do with us?”
“It’s a message from the dark goddess herself, regarding the demon.”
“Is the priestess quite certain it wasn’t just a dream?” Or made up entirely.
The cultist scowled. “The priestess has requested your presence specifically. Come.” He waited until Raiya headed toward the main hall. Azreth was a looming shadow on her heels.
Raiya stopped short in the doorway of the main hall. It was more crowded than she’d ever seen it, packed with cultists in dark robes and alarming black and white makeup. Dozens of eerie faces all turned to look back at them in unison as they sensed Azreth’s presence. In front of the altar at the other end of the room was Priestess Gereg.
“Ah!” she said, smiling grimly. “Our guests of honor have arrived. Please, approach the altar.”
Everyone in the room stared at them expectantly. Raiya felt a prickling of foreboding.
“My apologies, Priestess,” she said, giving a slight bow. “Something urgent has come up. I’m afraid we have to be going. Please accept our most sincere thanks for your hospitality. You have been very kind.”
“I’m certain you can spare a few moments more before you leave. It is a matter of greatest unholy importance. Come. Approach the altar.”
She glanced up at Azreth, who was looking back at her for guidance. Reluctantly, she started down the aisle. She stopped a few steps from the altar when Gereg brandished a jagged knife.
“Take this,” Gereg said, offering the knife to Azreth. “And make an offering to Moratha.” She motioned to the basin on the altar, which was currently empty.
“What kind of offering?” Raiya asked.
Gereg gave her a heavy-lidded glance. “Blood. Life, drained and corrupted by death. The only kind of sacrifice the dark goddess accepts.”
Raiya’s blood pounded in her ears. Azreth glanced over at her as her fear spiked. Did Gereg mean for Azreth to kill her as an offering?
Her hand dropped to the handle of her baton. She hadn’t reached for it since they’d first come to the temple, but she’d been careful to keep it always within reach. What would the cultists do if Azreth refused to do as they asked?
Azreth took the knife, but raised it to his own arm. He dug savagely into his flesh, bending the metal in the process of carving a small cut in his wrist. Raiya’s stomach lurched, but Azreth never flinched. He held his forearm over the altar, and inky blood dripped into the basin. Gereg seemed satisfied.
“Last night, I had a vision,” Gereg said. Her voice was not loud, but the other cultists were so still and silent that it filled the room anyway. “In it, I saw the demon before us. He spoke with the dark goddess’s voice and proclaimed that he had come to fulfill Moratha’s plans for Heilune. He is to be a reaper, come to bring her wrath upon our plane. He is her instrument of death, a weapon of unknowable destruction. The dark goddess’s glory will follow him as he bathes the land in blood.” Her voice had grown in volume gradually, and as she spoke these last words, she raised her hands skyward. “Praise Moratha!”
The room had been utterly, obediently silent up until now, but when the acolytes replied, it was with thunderous excitement that may as well have been cheering and applause. “Praise her!”
Azreth was frowning. None of them seemed to notice his displeasure.
“It begins tonight,” Gereg went on. “There will be a massacre of epic proportions, starting right here in Ontag-ul. All will die. Humans and elves, children and animals alike. Death will rule the land, blood will flow like water, and Moratha will be pleased.”
The room went even more quiet, as if the other cultists were as stunned as Raiya was. Many of the faces around the hall were grinning gleefully, but some looked perplexed or concerned. The priestess couldn’t be serious, could she? This veneration of death was all a farce, wasn’t it? They couldn’t really want everyone to die.
“So, demon,” Gereg said. “Thus begins the Goddess’s reign. You are commanded to kill indiscriminately, whenever and wherever you desire, so long as it is often. You will rend flesh with your monstrous hands, tear bloody gashes with your terrible teeth, crush bones beneath your giant’s feet. Go now and destroy; spare none. We will follow in your footsteps with our blades high.” She bowed low, extending her hands toward him in a dramatic gesture.
“No,” Azreth corrected her.
Gereg stopped, looking up at him. He arched an eyebrow at her.
“You are refusing her call?” Gereg asked tensely.
“I am.”
Gereg raised her chin. “You were designed by the dark goddess to serve her will. You will obey her. It is your purpose.”
Azreth gave her a withering look. “What do you know of my purpose?”
“You are a tool to be used as she decrees for the spreading of darkness and despair. You are death. This is your purpose, just as a stock animal’s purpose is to feed, as a mother’s purpose is to nurture, as a wheel’s purpose is to roll. It is not a decision to make. It is already done.”
Azreth raised a fist and smashed it down into the bloodstained stone basin, crushing it to pieces and cracking the altar beneath. Raiya jumped.
“What do you know of my purpose?” he snarled again, baring sharp teeth. The air wavered visibly with his fury.
The priestess remained admirably composed. “Do you deny your goddess?”
“I care nothing for your goddess.”
There were gasps around the room.
“Blasphemy,” Gereg breathed.
Raiya took Azreth’s arm and started pulling him back down the aisle toward the exit.
“You will serve her,” Gereg said. “If you will not do it willingly, then we will break you. You will obey.”
On her command, half of the acolytes in the room raised weapons and chanted spells, as if they’d been prepared for this outcome. The surly acolytes they’d encountered in the hall were in the aisle behind Raiya and Azreth, blocking their escape. One of them was whispering words to a spell, her hands plucking at invisible threads of magic in the air.
“Get out of the way, or I will send you to your goddess,” Azreth said, which Raiya thought demonstrated a vast increase in self-control compared to the first time she’d seen him interact with mortals.
“Submit, demon,” snarled the one in front of them. All at once, all the mages’ voices simultaneously reached a crescendo, and there was an explosion of magic.
A wall of vibrant reddish light rose up from the floor, encircling Azreth in a column of magic.
He pressed a hand to the wall, then pounded on it, to no avail. He was trapped inside, just as he had been in Nirlan’s dungeon.
Horrified, Raiya kicked aside the long rug that spanned the aisle. Carved onto the wood just beneath where Azreth stood was a circle of runes, glowing with the power the mages had just imbued them with.
Fingers raked her sleeve as someone tried to grab her, and she jerked away. She drew her baton, spinning to point it at the cultists. “Stay back!”
The cultists surrounded her. There was not nearly enough power in the baton to stop all of them. Panicked, she turned the baton toward Azreth’s cage and shot. There was an echoing blast and a bright flash as a beam of magic passed through the barrier, but the barrier was still intact, not even scratched. Inside the barrier, Azreth shouted something she couldn’t quite hear. He pointed to the floor.
Fool,she thought. Shoot the runes, not the barrier.
She aimed the baton toward the circle of runes, but then someone grabbed her from behind, and her shot went wide, shooting a blast into the pews nearby. All at once, there were people all around her. As Azreth pounded on the barrier, a hand grabbed her wrist, and yet another grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling her away from Azreth. A wall of people formed between her and him.
She stomped down hard on the foot of the cultist behind her until he let go, then swung the weighty baton, clipping one cultist’s jaw and smashing another one in the knee. Swinging the baton in an arc to ward them off, she backed away, then pointed the baton toward the ceiling. The baton’s runes glowed brighter in her hand, and then a beam of energy shot into the roof above them. The baton’s runes went dark again, spent.
There was a shower of dust, and then a loud crack as wood splintered and stone crumbled. People shouted and scrambled for safety as the roof in the corner of the room collapsed. A cloud of dust billowed from the corner.
Raiya turned and ran. In the confusion, she managed to shove her way to the door. She paused there, glancing back at Azreth. His hands were pressed against the barrier and his eyes were on her. With a grimace, Raiya ran out the door, leaving him behind.