Arc 9: Chapter 7: King of Dust |
Urizen Taar’uk’s young apprentice — not so young anymore — stared back at me with unmasked shock. Even as he realized who I was, recognition dawning in him despite the subtle changes I’d made to the body his master put me in, his anger began to return.
A snicker escaped me at the look on his face. “So you do remember! I’m glad. I remembered you, Narahn.”
I’d recognized him the moment he appeared downstairs, though I had considered keeping it a secret before this little drama started.
The apprentice’s expression hardened. “I always suspected you might return for me one day.” He shifted to put himself between me and the unconscious Dedo and started pulling back the sleeve of his tunic, revealing intricate tattoos on his dark skin. “I have learned much since then.”
Indeed he had. The marks in his flesh were gold, fashioned into elaborate patterns crisscrossing between complex sigils — heptagons, decagons, and dodecagons, all of which contained alchemical formulae. The very symbols of his faith, and these were no transfused falsities like Urizen’s staff or the Candrian’s mask. His arm blazed to my sight like it were a mirror reflecting bright sunlight. I winced and took a step back.
“Is this revenge?” Narahn demanded. “Revenge on me for ten years ago, for what Urizen did?”
“Revenge?” I stared at him through the window made by my veil and upraised arm. “Why would I want revenge?”
Narahn must have believed I was mocking him. He took a step closer. I hissed.
“I should banish you right here!” He said through gritted teeth. “Correct Urizen’s hubris.”
No, there was more to Narahn of the Nails. I considered a moment, knowing him to be mere moments from deciding to do something brash. “If you slay me, then you will never find the other demon.”
He stared at me in confusion. “What other demon?”
“The one who hurt Dedo,” I said. “I do not know if it is Abgrûdai, but it is malicious, and it will kill again. I believe it will come back for him.”
“How can I believe any of this?” Narahn demanded.
“Believe what you will,” I snapped. “But had I intended you or your ward harm, you would both already be dead. Believe that much.”
It was a half truth, at least — had I come with the intent of devouring Dedo, I would not have hesitated in that final moment. Why had I hesitated?
Narahn was not convinced. “I know what you are. I read Urizen’s notes. You are a virulent liar, and will say anything to make me drop my guard.”
“Your master did not heed me, and look where it got him.” I lowered my arm even as he kept his raised, resisting the impulse to either flee or attack. Instead, I spread my hands out and exposed myself. “Make your choice… But know that I am the only one hunting this thing.”
The physik’s upraised hand was clenched into a tight fist. The tattoos were most concentrated on the back of his hand and his palm, the whole hand exceedingly bright to my eyes. He bared his teeth, seemed to hesitate. I remained perfectly still.
“Why did you save me back then?” He asked.
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. I had done that, hadn’t I? Had I not spoken to him back then in the lab, he would have rushed to his master’s aid and been taken by Orkael’s torturers as well.
Narahn’s face twisted. “Was it some game? To leave me in torment?”
I understood then that my face must have haunted this young soul. Me and that day, a deep stain in his mind with tendrils chasing him across the years.
“You hate me, don’t you?” I took a step closer to him, unable to help myself. He growled and showed me his tattooed arm again, but I didn’t balk. His pain was like the sweetest aroma to me.
“I hate Urizen for what he did,” Narahn spat. “You… You’re just the monster his arrogance brought.” In a more bitter voice he added, “You both murdered that woman whose face you’re wearing even now.”
“You…” I blinked and felt a slow smile spread across my face. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
Narahn’s face turned ashen, and I knew I’d struck the mark. What was it? A boyhood crush? Urizen had said she was simply a whore he pulled from the street.
I had her memories. They were spotty things, no more than murky fragments like to half-remembered dreams. It had taken many years to sort through all of them, and even then she was little more than a stranger. Her life was little different from Dedo’s — short and full of hardship.
I summoned one of those flashes up then and spoke even as I recalled. “I kissed you before I went into the circle. Your first?”
“She kissed me,” Narahn snarled. “She… Her name was Kaida. She thought Urizen was summoning an angel using her blood, that it would make her its bride and take her to Heaven. And then he murdered her.”
“And you let him,” I said. “You helped.”
“I…” Narahn’s shoulders slumped, his voice sinking into a pained whisper. “Yes.”
“Poor, confused boy.” I took another step closer. “Would you like to apologize? She’s with me, you know. In here.”
I ran my hands down my face, then the sides of my neck. Lower.
“Stop!” Narahn thrust his arm out again. “Don’t you dare—”
While he was focused on my hands, my tail slipped free from my robe and moved at blurring speed. A magician’s misdirection. The snake-head lashed, sinking its fangs into the meat of Narahn’s calf. He let out a cry of pain and crumbled, clamping his hands over the wound. I’d bitten deep, though the twin marks produced little blood.
I glided forward to stand above him, staring down past my nose with cold contempt. “You are not good enough to challenge me, mortal, and I do not fear your scribbles. There was a reason your master trapped me inside twelve layers of wards.”
“What are you going to do?” He asked. Already he was growing pale and shaking. The numbing chill of my venom would be coursing through his veins.
Instead of answering, I knelt and touched my fingers to his cheek, turning his face to one side to get a better look at his hawkish profile. He grit his teeth and tried to pull away, but he was helpless as poor Dedo then.
What did I do with him? Making the one surviving soul who’d witnessed my transposition into this world a thrall appealed to my sense of aesthetic. He obviously possessed some useful skills, though his brashness was annoying.
I could also kill him — he might know secrets about me that would be dangerous, even ways to reverse his master’s spell and banish me. Perhaps he even knew my true name.
He did not belong to the Candrian, and I’d made no promise to spare him. My tail poised over one shoulder, hissing threateningly as it readied to strike. One more injection would be lethal. Narahn’s eyes were wide with fear as they tracked it.
Instead of biting, I sighed and stood. “I didn’t come here to eat your soul, Narahn. I am here to hunt the thing that preys on the Candrian’s House, nothing more.”
“You mean what’s poaching your prey from you,” Narahn hissed.
I turned to the door. “What is coursing through your veins right now is a potent venom. Soon it will render you unconscious. Should you survive the fever and the nightmares, then remember this and be more cautious in the future. Next time, I will strike to kill.”
His eyes were already rolling up into his head. I considered kissing him — my serpent’s venom was a more concentrated form of the poison on my lips, and the latter also acted as the antidote. But he’d annoyed me, and he seemed strong. He would probably survive…
My tail suddenly let out another hiss and its milky eyes turned toward the window. Though we were connected and of one body, it had its own senses and often perceived danger faster. I followed the serpent’s attention and peeked outside, seeing the street below had emptied. There’d been quite the crowd on my arrival, but now it looked abandoned.
“Hm.” I let my serpent twined about my arm and scratched its chin idly as I considered. “Do you think someone has taken issue with our presence, my companion?”
One of the windows across the street shut even as I watched. I tasted the air with my tongue, much as my tail did to scent its surroundings. It did not taste of an impending storm, so I did not think they hid from the weather. It might have been the foreshadowing of a sudden outbreak of gang war, but the timing with my arrival seemed rather convenient, and I didn’t see armed cutters flitting between the alleys.
I saw the gargoyle exactly where it had been. I doubted the surly watcher would be any help. Clearly, someone had taken issue with my presence here. What to do…
Sparing one last glance at the comatose Narahn, I took to ichor shape and kept to the shadows, slinking through the walls of the old house and terrifying various vermin out of my path until I reached the roof. There I retook womanly shape, looking down at the street from on high. With a better vantage, it became clear that the Nails were not in fact abandoned — a retinue moved down from the same way I’d come earlier, a gaggle of about a dozen or so figures in ragged robes, their bare and blistering feet struggling torturously across Rot Voraag’s filthy corridors. Six of them bent under the weight of a palanquin, upon which sat a crooked shape wearing a bloodstained crown.
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“Rettabrand,” I said to my serpent as it watched from my right shoulder. “So the King of Dust is here himself. Do you think he’s still cross with me?”
My second self only flicked its tongue against my ear. A small reprimand, and deserved. I was being flippant even as a dangerous enemy approached.
The retinue came to a halt about halfway down the street. The one seated on the palanquin cut a dour figure, emaciated so his threadbare robe hung loose to reveal a wasted chest stretched by rib-bone. He took each breath with effort, yet his voice thundered down the street like it was carried by the lungs of a giant.
“SHYORA!” Rettabrand roared. He paused a moment to catch his breath as my name echoed through the Nails. “I know you’re here, you slattern!”
“Why does everyone try to insult me by referencing my promiscuity?” I asked aloud as my serpent watched the raving thing down on the street. It baffled me why anyone might think a succubus of all beings would consider it offensive.
“Did you think you could walk about the city like you own it after what you did?!” Rettabrand continued. His bloodshot eyes searched the street. “We’ve all heard that you and that glyptis appeared at court. Think you’re above the rest of us now, do you?”
Well, I was above him then. Literally. Neither he nor his slaves looked up to my perch atop Narahn’s hospital, where I hid in the shadow of the chimney stack. Rettabrand was the leader of a rival Lodge. They called themselves the Court of Dust, and believed their leader to be descended from the original rulers of the city, and thus the rightful inheritor of it. No one knew why the Exalted tolerated the dust-priests and their ranting sermons on the streets, though I had my own suspicions. Mainly, that the city’s master was so far above the wretched old pretender that he simply did not feel threatened by even the idea of him.
I would have liked to feel the same, but Rettabrand was not harmless. His worshippers were so ardent and numerous that they’d ignited a spark of true power in the man, made him at least halfway to a demigod. While I doubted he could so much as hold a candle to the yellow-robed monster on the Clay Throne, he could certainly threaten me.
And he had reason to. I’d seduced his son and heir, the Prince of Dust. Being subjected to my Kiss so many times had turned the man into a simpering vegetable. Sometimes he escaped his handlers and wandered the streets, desperately calling out for me. I’d heard that the regular sightings of his most feared enforcer stumbling about the city naked and erect were quite an embarrassment to the Lodge’s leader.
The serpent hissed. My gaze roamed the alleys, and I saw movement in them — those would be the dustwraiths, disquiet spirits bound to Rettabrand’s will. No doubt he’d surrounded the Nails and had no intention of letting me slip away.
I considered my options a moment as the Dust King continued to bellow down below. My tail detached — a moment of pain, then it came free of my spine and slithered down one leg to coil on the rooftop.
“Find Didikas,” I ordered it. “Tell him what is happening and that I may need his help.”
The serpent flicked its forked tongue in acknowledgement, then slipped away. I melted back into ichor form and descended down into the alleys. I had to dodge one of the wraiths as I moved through the clay maze, a jackal-like thing with multiple heads, little more solid than I.
I found what I was looking for about a block and a half down, lying beside one of the waste trenches where he’d stopped to vomit and passed out. The Justikar had been robbed already, but retained most of his armor and — most importantly — his sword, trapped in a death grip in his fist. The local scavengers probably would have just cut off his hand and taken both, but even ill a member of the Vigilante Lodge was dangerous.
I reformed, but not as Lady Wurmwing. Instead I took on the shape of a bedraggled waif, a girl of dubious age clad in a torn and filthy tunic short enough to reveal shapely legs. I was not so good a shapeshifter that I could weave clothing from nothing, but I could fold garments I already wore into new configurations. Nothing fancy or elaborate, but it took little time to shred my merchant robes and make them look like a slave’s meagre rags. Immediately I started shaking the Justikar’s shoulder, making my voice urgent and cajoling him in breathless words until he stirred.
“What? Who is it, can’t a man get a blink of rest!” He blinked red eyes at the sullen sky. Covered in his own vomit and the sludge from the trench, he was nonetheless a powerfully built figure with short hair fashioned into spikes by wet clay, a popular style amongst the city’s martial inhabitants.
My current shape also had reddened eyes, mine from weeping rather than a night of drunkenness, and I spoke through choked sobs. “Please, sir, you have to help me! He’s coming, he’ll be here soon!”
The man’s gaze shot to me, and my flinch wasn’t feigned. His bloodshot eyes were wide and furious, and I think only the sight of my tear-and-dirt-streaked face prevented him from lashing out.
“A girl?” He growled. “What, trying to rob me? Come now, that’s a rough thing to do to a man down on his luck, an unjust thing!”
That was dangerous. If a Justikar perceived injustice, it would invariably lead to violence. “I’m not robbing you!” I cried, not needing to fake all of my frustration. “You’ve already been robbed! I need your help, please.”
Right on cue, Rettabrand’s thunderous anger echoed down the way. His procession was on the move again, likely shifting as his dustwraiths closed the net and reported back to him. I didn’t have much time.
“Who’s that?” The Justikar asked, his bleary demeanor fading as he sat up. I kept my hands on his shoulder.
“My…” I sniffled. “My master. My lord father was forced to sell me to him. He bought me for his harem, but I escaped. He meant to… He tried to…”
I descended into broken sobs. The Justikar looked down on me with sudden pity, his mood as mutable as wasteland wind. “You’re a noble’s daughter, then?”
“My father is one of the caravan lords,” I said with an eager nod. “But the Dust King threatened him, said he would kill me if he could not have me! I tried to be brave, but…”
I thought I would need to weep again, but the Justikar heaved himself to his feet with an expression of growing fury. “Rettabrand!” He snarled. “That lustful roach! I’ve had quite enough of his nonsense, enough I say! Don’t worry, lass, no one will lay a hand on you.”
Except you, I thought dryly, when you’ve rescued me from the villain. After all, it was just for the good to be rewarded for their efforts. I knew how this slum knight and his fellows thought.
Sword in hand, my savior stalked towards the dustmen as their procession came down the street. All those tramping feet had kicked up clouds of dust, veiling Rettabrand’s retinue true to their name. Knowing a wraith would catch me if I tried to flee, I followed the Justikar as he approached the dustmen, my posture cowering as I tried to hide behind his bulk.
“That’s far enough, Your Majesty.” The Justikar pointed his sword at the old man on the palanquin as the whole retinue came to a halt.
Rettabrand leaned forward on his throne, causing the supplicants bearing it to groan at the shift in weight. The seat was fashioned of bones and rope, a crude platform well matched to the primal warlords from which the Dust King claimed his lineage. He might have been of kingly stature once, but he was so incredibly old that he’d bent and shriveled into something goblin-like. His spine was nearly level with the top of his skull, his pate hidden by the golden crown fused to it by eight nails. It was said by some that the Exalted himself had hammered that hat to the pretender’s head, in mockery of his claims.
“Get out of the way, Vigilante.” Rettabrand’s voice was tomb-dry and so quiet it was hard to believe he’d bellowed so powerfully minutes before. “That creature behind you is not what you think.”
He wasn’t fooled by my disguise. While the Justikar’s attention remained on the palanquin, I stuck my tongue out at the Dust King. The old man’s face darkened.
“Creature?!” The Justikar roared. He was truly worked up now, no doubt both at my plight and at the prospect of being rewarded for his altruism by the noble parent I’d alluded to. “Have you no shame, Rettabrand? To take a girl from her family... It is unjust!”
All the dustmen flinched at that pronouncement. We all knew where this ended, and few beings in Rot Voraag would dare trifle with a Justikar’s righteous indignation.
Unfortunately for me, Rettabrand was one such being. The old man nodded, his demeanor strangely calm. I felt a sudden spike of tension. I’d hoped he would order his entourage to charge the Justikar, who would kill many of them and allow me to escape in the chaos. He would have to call his undead minions in to contend with one of the Vigilantes.
He gave no such order. Instead, with a grunt, the Dust King of Rot Voraag rose from his throne. One of his slaves scrambled forward on hands and knees to hunch before the palanquin, allowing his lord to use him as a footstool to descend. I noted how the wretch groaned in agony — his master was heavier than he looked.
“I’m so tired of this city,” Rettabrand said as he descended to the street. In his threadbare tunic and sandals, he looked like any other wasted vagrant, the illusion broken only by the bloodied crown fused to his skull. “This used to be a glorious place. My forefathers ruled a verdant land, a nation of warriors whom even the old empires respected.”
I started to back away from the Justikar, slowly.
“Now…” Rettabrand let out a despairing sigh. “We’re a great latrine. Infested by devils and the dupes of devils, who prey freely on idiots like you.”
Several dustmen moved forward. They worked together to carry something on their bruised shoulders, an object heavy enough that it took four to hold the burden, hardly less than had suffered under the palanquin.
It was a sword — a huge and scarred sword with a hilt wrapped in cracked leather, no adornments, sheathed in a simple scabbard.
Rettabrand took the hilt of that great blade and drew it from the scabbard with deliberate slowness. The sound of steel hissing against leather filled the street. It seemed to take an eternity to be drawn forth completely, and both the Justikar and I found ourselves almost perversely transfixed as more and more gray steel slid free. I might have even bit my lip.
When done, the four dustmen who’d carried the blade all collapsed to their knees, exhausted. Yet that small, frail-looking old man needed only one hand to brandish it. He aimed the greatsword’s tip to the glaring sky.
“Shyora!” He cried out. “That’s you cowering in this dupe’s shadow, isn’t it? You will lift the spell you placed on my son, or by all the stars, I’ll send you back into the Abyss screaming!”
I will admit, now, that he intimidated me just a bit. Especially after what he did next.
The Dust King lifted one sandaled foot, a slow and deliberate motion, then brought it back down in a stomp. The Nails shuddered. Both me, the Justikar, and all the dustmen stumbled as the world became unsteady beneath us. Window shutters cracked on their hinges, tiles split and flew from their roofs, and a sound like thunder split the hazy day.
A rift sundered the street, beginning where Rettabrand had stomped and racing like a lightning bolt in our direction. That rift became a fissure. The Justikar, already off balance, fell into it. I would have as well, but I’d already been on the verge of flight and reacted just in time, diving to one side even as a yawning chasm appeared in the middle of the Nails. It did enormous damage to the surrounding buildings, even caused one of the high pinnacles of wind-shaped rock to splinter up its length.
People died in that display of quasi-divine power, though I never learned how many. My instincts screamed at me to simply leave, to translocate, but I knew the Dust King would have spirits ready to latch onto any attempt to teleport and follow me to my destination.
I almost did it anyway. This was more than I’d bargained for in my day. I got shakily to one knee, still in the shape of a mortal waif — changing shape required concentration, which wasn’t easy when tremors continued to shudder through the street. Rettabrand’s fissure had missed me by the width of hands. I’d lost sight of him in the ensuing cloud of dust, which meant he and his slaves also couldn’t see me.
I acted on pure instinct. The form of the runaway slave dissolved, flesh melting like heated wax from a gray skeleton. That melting flesh became flame, and like malleable rock shaped by magma, I altered my form again, this time becoming a great centipede with a hundred swift legs and a flexible form suited to the city’s chaotic alleyways.
I left the human skeleton behind, imparting a last order to that fragment of myself. It released a girlish giggle and ran off another direction, even as my centipede-shape made for a gap between two buildings.
I heard Rettabrand’s roar as he caught sight of my decoy, listened to him order his followers to give chase. They would have a merry dash with a disappointing conclusion. One of the dustwraiths got in the way of my true body, but it was caught alone as its pack-mates moved to obey their master. Our meeting was swift and violent. I tore into it in savage silence and covered myself in its scent, to better confuse its fellows.
And I made my escape as the Dust King’s voice howled like a storm over the Nails.
