The Shadow of Elysium (Shadow Campaigns) (4 page)

Inside, the priest’s house was no more luxurious than mine, save for the gilt-and-porcelain shrine in one corner that was carried into the church itself on holy days. A copy of the
Wisdoms
, heavy and silver edged, sat on the little table, and a curtain separated the main room from the sleeping pallets. I pushed through it and found Father Barca sprawled and unconscious, massive, hairy arms akimbo. He slept soundly, and there was a faint smell of spirits in the air.

I bent down, reaching for the rage I’d felt only minutes before. The thought of Peter’s pale, torn skin made it flare up again. He wouldn’t survive another six months with Barca, I was certain. It was one life against another; surely God would understand that.

I called on my demon, and the
cold
slipped down through my arms and into my fingers. I placed my hands, gently, on Barca’s chest and saw in my mind the clockwork enormity of his body. Even a man like this, even an
evil
man, is more intricate and complex than the finest creation of any artificer; to see it would be enough to make a heretic believe in the Creator. I let my demon prowl, slowly, through the myriad pathways of the priest’s flesh. Then, exerting my will, I coiled it into a fist and sent it smashing outward, bringing the marvelous structure crashing down around us.

It didn’t take much. Just a few taps, around the heart, before Father Barca’s breath gurgled in his throat and his body spasmed. Killing was easy, so much easier than healing, and I thought I could feel my demon’s glee.

***

There were no marks on the body, no way for anyone to guess that the priest hadn’t died a natural death. Few in the village mourned; his fiery brand of religion had been a poor fit for the practical people of Nestevyo, who were more worried about their next meal than the next life.

But there was one person, of course, who knew. After the villagers brought the news, Peter left my house the next morning without speaking to me. We avoided one another from then on as if by mutual consent. He had to have guessed what had happened, but I hoped he would eventually come to terms with it. I had saved his life, after all, even if he hadn’t asked me to.

I should have known better. Peter had never cared very much for his own life when it came up against the dictates of his conscience.

A month passed without us exchanging more than a glance. Time for a letter to wend its way out to the Church, for them to respond. I thought they would send another priest. Instead, the village awoke one morning to find a black carriage waiting on the road, accompanied by a squad of nervous Imperial soldiers.

I didn’t resist. What would have been the point? They would have shot me down on the spot.

The troops delivered me, sealed in the back of the carriage, into the care of a caravan headed for Elysium. When they finally let me out, blinking against the sun, my breath caught. Peter was with them, bound to a saddle like a prisoner.

One of my guards explained later. The poor, sweet, stupid fool had written a letter to the bishop, confessing everything—me and my demon, our relationship, Father Barca’s death—and begging for absolution. Orders had come back. I was to be taken to Elysium as a demon host, and Peter to the bishop’s dungeons in Raga, to await judgment. Whether the charge was immorality, associating with demons, or conspiracy to murder they didn’t say. Bishops of the Church are not obligated to justify themselves.

Up to that point, I had been resigned to my fate. I had killed a man, after all. Perhaps they were right to imprison me. But when I saw them leading Peter away—Peter, who had done nothing wrong but offer kindness—I felt the rage rising again. They had to wrestle me into the cart, hold me down while they tied my bonds.

I knew I had to find him. That night, I began planning my escape.

I do not know if my plan will work, and there is no way to test it beforehand. If I fail, though, what more can they do to me? Kill me on the spot? After what Hunter has told me, I am inclined to agree with Alex that death would be preferable.

I wait until evening, when the convoy has pulled into its nightly camp beside the road. We are passing through an ancient wood, huge trees larger than anything near Nestevyo blotting out the stars. The road is rocky and dry for once, a narrow track cut through the underbrush barely wide enough for the wagons. Here and there it makes wide semicircles where the builders went around a particularly massive pine instead of going to the trouble of chopping it out of the way.

Torches flare in the failing light as the outriders begin setting up their tents. We have perhaps an hour before they come to take Alex and me on our once-a-day sanitary excursion and then give her another dose of the drug.

The Priest of the Red sits on the box at the front of the wagon. His short companion has slipped off to help erect the camp, but the priest watched the men work with benign indifference. He yawns and raises his hands above his head to stretch.

“Sir,” I say, putting as much urgency as I could into my voice. “Father!”

“Eh?” The priest half turns. “Quiet, you.”

“There’s something wrong with the girl.” I point at Alex with my bound hands. “I don’t think she’s breathing.”

“What?” The priest glares at her, but she lies very still, as she always does when the drug has her in its grasp. “Damnation.”

As I had hoped, he began to climb over the back of the box into the bed of the wagon. There is no one in the convoy more suited to give medical attention than a frocked Priest of the Red, so it made sense that he would attend to it himself. Once he is bent over Alex, the sides of the wagon will hide him from the view of the men outside.

All the same, I feel a sudden thrill of doubt. The priest
looks
like Hunter, sounds like him—as best I can tell, given the black glass mask and the enveloping robe—but I can’t swear they are the same man.

Still. It’s too late to back out now.

The Priest of the Red drops into the box and kneels beside Alex, looking at her closely. When he touches her cheek, she groans and stirs slightly. The drug is wearing off.

“She’s alive,” he says. “What do you think—”

I reach out, as far as my chained hands will allow, and grab him by the arm. My demon flows out through my fingers,
cold
and gleeful. There is no time to admire the complexity of his form, no time for anything but a frantic descent into his body. He starts to utter a cry, but I stretch out my will and the muscles of his throat seize up. A moment later, I have a hold on his heart, which gives a frantic stutter and then stills forever. The priest falls to the floor of the wagon with a gasp and does not move.

“Wh . . .” Alex’s eyes are half-open, full of uncomprehending terror. It’s painful to watch her try to focus through the haze of the drug.

“I don’t know if this will hurt,” I say. I tear a strip from the priest’s robe, pull her mouth open, and stuff the cloth inside. I can’t afford to have her scream. “If it does, I’m sorry.”

Her eyes go wide. I take her bound hands in mine, and send out my demon once again.

I can feel every part of her, every fiber of muscle and quivering nerve. I search, frantically, for what is wrong with her, and in her blood I find the drug. A nasty, spiky thing, slowing her heart and her lungs, pushing her toward darkness. The strength of it is such that I marvel she wakes up at all.

This is a more delicate operation than the crude murder I had just committed, and I have no idea if my skill is sufficient to the task. Her body is already attempting to pull the drug from her veins, rendering it harmless, and I exert my demon’s power to help it along. Alex moans, muffled by the gag, and her back arches. I can feel her heart slamming in her chest, beating out a fearsome pace. I am hurting her; her hands curl into claws. But it is working. I can feel it working.

***

After a few seconds, or a few minutes, or an hour—I can no longer tell—I am finished. Every trace of the drug that I can find is gone. I open my eyes, pulling my demon back, and see that Alex is lying still, eyes closed, a fine sheen of sweat covering her face and dampening her filthy shirt. Her breath comes in gasps at first, but slows and steadies as I watch.

“Alex?” I say very quietly. “Can you hear me?”

She nods and opens her eyes. I reach across and pull the gag from her mouth, and she coughs and spits onto the wagon bed.

“What . . .” Her voice is a rasp. “What did you do?”

“I healed you. With my demon. They’ve been drugging you.”

Alex seems to take this in stride. She points at the Red Priest. “What about him?”

“He’s dead,” I say. “My demon can . . . do that, too.”

“Ah.” She sits up, leaning against the side of the wagon. “I take it we’re escaping, then?”

“If you can get us out of these chains.”

“Give me a moment.” She closes her eyes again, breathing deeply.

“Was it very painful?”

She gives a jerky nod.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t be. We do what we have to do.” Alex opens her eyes and stares at me intently for a moment. “Okay. Let me try.”

At first, nothing happens, and I wonder if this has all been for nothing. Then something stirs around her arms. Worms of darkness work their way out of her skin, wrapping around her, over and over, until her arms wear cloaks of solid shadow as high as the elbow. The shadow stuff twists and writhes, like water on the boil, and mounds up around the iron shackles at her wrists. A moment later, there is a
clank
as they fall away, solid metal sliced neatly apart.

“Hold your hands out, and stay still,” she says. I comply, fascinated, and a lance of solid darkness slashes out and parts my own bonds as though they were made of soft cheese. Next she cuts the anklets that bind me to the wagon bed, then her own. The touch of air on the lacerated skin is enough to make me scream, and my joints pop and groan in protest as I stretch for the first time in weeks.

“God almighty,” Alex says, “that feels good.”

At first I think she means being able to move freely, but I realize she is reveling in her magic. Her demon boils around her, flapping the edges of her clothes as though she stood in a strong wind. In the near darkness, she cuts a terrifying silhouette, and I wonder for a moment at what I have unleashed. But I push the thought from my mind.
We do what we have to do.

“Now what?” she says.

I stare at her, then shake my head, a grin springing unbidden to my lips.

“I have no idea,” I say. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Fair enough,” Alex says. “I can’t say planning ahead was ever my strong suit.”

There’s a
clunk
as someone unlocks the rear gate of the wagon. One of the guards pulls it down, and it takes him a moment to process the scene. His mouth begins to open in a shout of surprise.

Alex’s demon moves faster than thought. A spear of solid shadow catches the man in the throat, bursting through his flesh as easily as it cut the iron manacles. His shout is drowned in blood, and he collapses forward, clawing at the wound. Alex stares at him, breathing hard.

“Nine,” she says under her breath.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Alex unstraps the rifle from the still-twitching guard and tosses it to me. With practiced motions, she slashes his belt with a knife made of solid darkness and gathers his things, handing them over one by one. Balls and powder, a knife, a canteen, a belt pouch with a few coins.

“If you haven’t got any better ideas,” she says, “then I suggest we run.”

I look from the dead priest to the dying guard, then to this strange, hard girl in whose hands I realize I’ve placed my life. I nod.

Alex hops down from the wagon and leads the way into the darkness, moving without a sound. I follow, rifle over my shoulder, feeling clumsy by comparison.

The mercenary who called himself Tullo watched the commotion from a distance. The guards had discovered the bodies and the missing prisoners, and a furious shouting match was in progress. The issues in question seemed to be what to do next and, more importantly, who was to blame. Consensus in the latter point seemed to be settling on the dead men.

Tullo turned away and walked back among the wagons. His own personal bag was strapped to the side of one the fish haulers; he undid the straps, then shifted his few personal effects out of the way. Another flap, cunningly stitched so as to be nearly invisible, gave access to a hidden space. From this he removed a long black cloak, which he swung about his shoulders, and a piece of folded black cloth, heavy and glittering with fragments of obsidian.

When he pulled the formfitting black mask into place, glass clicking and clattering, he was Hunter once again. And just in time, too. Voryil, commander of the guards and the only one who knew about the Penitent Damned’s presence in the entourage, hurried into the narrow alley between the two wagons, wearing a very nervous expression.

“Ah,” he said. “You’ve heard what happened, sir?”

“I have,” Hunter said, shedding Tullo’s southern accent like an old coat. “This is very unfortunate.”

“The drug must have lost its effectiveness.” Voryil’s tone was very slightly accusatory. On the one hand, it
had
been Hunter’s responsibility to make sure the girl’s power was contained. On the other hand, one did not live a long and healthy life by throwing failure in the face of the Penitent Damned, no matter how justifiably. “Alex was able to access her power and break her bonds. She killed Erik. As for Father Omorte . . . there seems to be some confusion.”

The boy
, Hunter suspected.
I should have been more careful.

Voryil coughed. “Ah . . . what would you like us to do, sir? Shall we go after them?”

Hunter shook his head, glass clicking. “No. We cannot match the girl’s power with what we have here. We press on to Elysium. I will make my report to the pontifex.”

Voryil looked uncomfortable, perhaps wondering how he would be represented in that report. “They can’t have gotten far, and she may still be weak. It will be nearly a month to Elysium and back—by then they’ll have gotten away clean.”

Hunter smiled under the mask. “That will not be a problem.”

His demon filled his mind, and two trails appeared, like glowing ribbons in the air. They snaked off to the east, into the woods.

Tracks could be covered. Dogs could be fooled. But Hunter’s demon placed its barbs into his targets’ very souls, and they were not easy to shake off.
And I’ve had plenty of time to get my hooks into these two.

“No, Voryil,” he said aloud. “That will not be a problem.”

Two weeks to reach Elysium, explain things to the pontifex, and two more weeks to return with a team of Penitents powerful enough to overcome the girl’s formidable demon.

Only a month’s head start. It hardly seems fair.

He only hoped they knew how to survive in the woods.
It would be a pity if they starved to death before the chase has even begun.