12: THE FEAST OF DEMONS

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Two days since Queen Khaeriel lost her patience with House D’Mon

Kihrin said, “So what was Aeyan’arric doing—?”

The room quaked, a single jarring tremble. The cause seemed obvious enough; something massive had just landed on the hillside above the tavern.

Something as heavy as a giant dragon, perhaps.

Conversation throughout the tavern stopped. Everyone looked up at the ceiling and waited to see if it would repeat.

In the silence, Kihrin had no trouble hearing the old woman at the bar say, “You don’t figure she can dig down here, do you?”

At that moment, Kihrin realized the tavern customers weren’t ignorant about what was happening outside. They hadn’t responded with panic or screams or frantic questions about what made that noise. They hadn’t looked around, trying to pinpoint the threat’s direction. They’d all stared up at the ceiling.

They already knew.

Kihrin met Janel’s eyes. She hadn’t been looking around the room. She’d been watching him.

“Did you think I wasn’t going to tell them?” she said.

“I assumed that, yes.”

She stood up from her chair and trailed her fingers over Kihrin’s hand as she walked past him to the center of the room. “All right, everyone! Pay attention.”

Everyone did. Immediately.

“I’m sure by now you have all heard about the little problem we have waiting for us outside,” Janel said.

“Yeah, what are we going to do?” a large man said. “We lost fifteen people in Ferra because of that damn dragon.”¹

The bartender snapped, “We lost fifteen people in Ferra because they didn’t follow orders.” She absently moved her hair from her face as she spoke.

A wine-stain birthmark covered part of her face.

Maybe it was just coincidence … no. Kihrin didn’t think so. Ninavis.

“What the—” Kihrin looked around the room again. Too many stallions, now that he knew what to look for. That made no sense for a small town, but worked perfectly for a military group. Kihrin glanced at Brother Qown; he didn’t seem surprised either.

“I have a theory about what’s going on here,” Janel said. “I hope I’m wrong, but in the meantime, there’s nothing we can do but wait. And yes, Dorna, if she wanted to dig her way down here, she could. Aeyan’arric isn’t trying to kill us. At least not yet.”

“But how did she find us—?” a large roan man with an impressive mustache started to ask. Sir Baramon.

Janel cut him off. “I don’t know, but this changes nothing. Make yourselves comfortable. Look like you belong.”

Janel returned to the table.

“Don’t give me that look,” Janel told Kihrin. “Or do you mean to tell me you have never arranged a tricky meeting, in a neutral location, and replaced everyone with your own people? Not once?”

“Yes, but it ended with me on the auction block, so I don’t recommend it.”

“I’d have avoided this option if I had any alternatives.”

Kihrin gestured to the room. “These are all those people from Mereina, aren’t they?”

“There’s a few faces I don’t recognize,” Brother Qown said. “But it has been a while.”

“We gained some, we lost some,” Janel said. “And I’d have told you earlier, Kihrin, but you seemed suspicious enough.”

He had to admit there was some truth to that. Still …

“You said you have a theory about our dragon friend. Do you? Or did you just say that to calm them down?”

Janel started to shake her head. “Unlike you, I’m not impossible to track with magic, so Relos Var must have told Aeyan’arric where to find me.”

Kihrin stared. She didn’t seem to be joking. Not that he could think of any circumstances where bringing up Relos Var would be funny.

“You don’t know he did that,” Brother Qown said. “We have no evidence at all.”

“True,” Janel said. “And I hope I’m wrong. I suppose I’ll just have to ask him when next we meet. Shall I continue with the story?”

Kihrin exhaled. “Sure. We’re already at the party. Might as well sing along.”

Janel’s Turn. The ruins of an estava, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.

By the time we reached the shelter, we desperately needed it. A light drizzle had begun to fall soon after the dragon’s passing, and it became a torrential downpour within minutes. Strong winds whipped icy rain, joined by hail, which fell with increasing frequency as time wore on. Fortunately, not much rain made its way past the tree canopy once we entered the forest proper, but what did fell hard and wet upon us. The wind strengthened; the trees creaked as they bent and sometimes cracked under the strain. Lightning lit the air in snapping flashes, some bolts so close the whole ground shook from the thundering boom which followed.

“It’s up ahead!” Ninavis yelled. “Just at the base of that hill!”

She pointed at the spot in question through a break in the trees, a green tree-lined hill decorated with old stone blocks and crumbling ruins. Halfway up, a rough stone ramp led to a yawning black opening. The cave mouth might have been taken as natural if the entrance hadn’t been so symmetrical. Relief washed over me as I realized what I saw.

“What is this place?” Brother Qown asked.

“An estava,”² I answered. “Thank the Eight.”

“A what?” He looked bewildered.

“Shelters built by Khorsal and his centaurs.” Dorna scrunched up her face as if tasting something foul.

“Since it’s going to save our lives, I don’t give a pile of horse crap who built it,” Ninavis said. “Everyone inside, right now. Go, go, go!”

Sana the elephant minder shook her head. “Them places are cursed!”

I turned to the woman. “Mare, if by cursed you mean ‘a place where Ninavis and her people hid from Captain Dedreugh for months,’ then perhaps so, but we have no time to find anything better. So please, follow Ninavis inside.” I tried to make it clear from my tone I wasn’t making a request.

Sana wanted to argue, but Ninavis’s people were already moving. A lightning crack and thunder clap far too close at its heels decided the issue. She started leading the remaining elephants.

Brother Qown asked, “What does estava mean?”

Dorna answered first. “Storm shelter.” A nasty grin cracked her face. “You ain’t seen a Joratese tornado yet, have you, foal?”

His eyes widened.

I fought not to laugh while Dorna grabbed him by the robe. “Come on, then,” she said. “It’s going to be a bad time to be outside tonight.”

While not all Joratese houses are underground cellar homes—indeed, many aren’t—we have never forgotten we’re host to the most vicious storms to be found in the empire. Joratese architecture derives from the estava, not so different from cellar houses today except in scale. They were not fortresses; they acted as shelters for times when, for whatever reasons, the Horse Lords hadn’t wanted to move their herds away from approaching storms.

Ninavis’s people had lit a few lamps as we entered the shelter. Too few for the place’s size. Presumably, lamp oil was a rare treat for bandits on the run.

The tunnel opened into a gigantic stone hall supported by massive granite columns, so large the lamps didn’t illuminate the far walls. The estava showed signs of great age—cracks in the floor, places where rubble had fallen from the ceiling. Running water echoed beyond the torchlight, but I didn’t know if I heard runoff from the storm or if the shelter had permanent access to fresh water.

Ninavis and her crew would know.

The hall’s current owners had left their mark. Crates rested against a stone wall, opened to reveal foodstuffs and cloth bundles, supplies and rations stolen from across the banner. I even recognized the merchant groups. There, tea from Eight Coins Trade Consortium, and over there, dried mango donated courtesy of none other than the Sifen family. A grand pile of pillows and rugs marked the main bedding location, and someone had taken time to craft an earthen oven.

The refugees needed no instructions; they spread out, set down their possessions, and began making camp.

Brother Qown waited for me to help Ninavis take a seat on a piece of fallen masonry before he bent down next to the woman. “Let me look at your leg.”

I saw her about to protest. “Ninavis, I bear the responsibility for your injury. Let Brother Qown heal your leg. Vishai priests are without equal in the healing arts.” I sat down on a wooden box, stretching as I began removing the black enameled armor I’d borrowed from Sir Baramon. Sir Baramon had been right about the poor fit. My muscles were not happy.

“The Physickers Guild wouldn’t appreciate you telling folks that,” Ninavis said.

“The Physickers Guild is more concerned with lining their coffers than helping people,”³ I replied. “And they hardly bother doing even that much in Jorat.”

“Maybe if you stopped burning them as witches,” Ninavis suggested, “they’d be keener to take your metal.”

I was about to protest, but I realized she was baiting me. I didn’t have the patience for it. I was about to respond, anyway, when Sir Baramon joined us. His red face suggested both the rigors of a hard march and the tears he’d shed along the way. I reminded myself he’d lost someone very close just a few hours prior.

I didn’t even know his lover’s name.

Sir Baramon sat down next to me. “That was…” He pressed his lips together and tried again. “I’m not imagining things, am I? A dragon attacked us? I thought they were myths…”

“Oh no,” Brother Qown said as he unpacked his satchel, looking for whatever supplies he needed to treat Ninavis. “That was Aeyan’arric.”

Everyone stopped.

Ninavis blinked. “You know its name?”

“Her name,” Brother Qown corrected. “And yes, I know her name. There are eight dragons.⁴ Based on the descriptions I’ve read, that’s Aeyan’arric, the Ice Bringer, Lady of Storms.” He hesitated as he saw the expression on our faces. “Father Zajhera taught me their names.”

“Eight of them,” I repeated. “Like the gods?”

Brother Qown gave me a shocked look, the one he wore whenever I asked a question he’d rather I hadn’t. “No! I mean, there are more than eight gods, anyway…”

“Only eight gods who matter.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. Dragons are the living antithesis of the natural order the gods personify, so you can’t compare them.” He held out his hands. “Sometimes a number is just a number.”⁵

I stared at him and felt in my bones my priest had just lied to my face.

“So eight in all the world,” I said, “and yet one shows its face—her face—here. Now.” I finished pulling the plates from my arms. “Even if we call ourselves fortunate that the dragon was only interested in our elephants, I find myself discomfited. She flew toward Mereina…”

“It may be coincidence,” Qown said.

“Oh aye. And when vultures circle in the sky after a battle, that’s just coincidence too.” Dorna began picking up discarded armor and placing the pieces in neat, organized rows next to Sir Baramon. “I’d see about helping the group fix supper, but I’d say they’ve had enough catastrophes for one day. I can help with the ritual of parting, though.”

Embarrassment washed over me. Of course, the townsfolk would still have a funeral. Even if they didn’t have bodies to burn, ashes to scatter over fields, they would still honor those they’d lost. We wouldn’t have enough rations for the funeral feast, but …

But. They had to do something.

I couldn’t blame them.

“Do you think they’d mind if I said a few words?” Brother Qown asked.

“Well, you ain’t a priest of the Eight, colt—” Dorna began to protest.

Qown frowned with disappointment. “Dorna, I am. My lord Selanol is one of the Eight. I’m as much a priest of the Eight as anyone who follows Khored or Galava.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I didn’t think of it that way.”

I touched Brother Qown’s hand. “I’m sure they would be grateful for someone to speak for the dead. Please.”

Dorna gave me an odd look. “What? You ain’t doing that?”

“I cannot. I’m going to sleep now.”

Dorna’s hands froze on the armor.

“Early for that, isn’t it?” Sir Baramon asked.

“Quite the opposite. I’d hoped we might make camp earlier. Now I fear I’m too late.” I stood and gathered up the cloak I’d picked up from the Red Spear’s body. I saw where everyone put their blankets together for sleep and headed to the other side, where I would be alone.

I would have liked it better if Arasgon had been with me, but I would have liked it better if none of this had happened too. I bundled my cloak into an impromptu pillow and lay down, curling myself into a ball.

Death’s touch came immediately, as it always does.

Janel’s Turn. The Afterlife.

In sleep, I walk the lands of the dead.

Even within the Afterlife, I often wake to find I have been drawn to some death scene. Some spot where the crossing of souls has made the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead easier to pass. Demons seem drawn to these places too, hungering for a return to the land of the living—which is otherwise so difficult for them to reach.

Or was it?

(A treaty was the only thing preventing them from attacking us at will, Brother Qown claimed.)

I found myself back in Mereina.

A great many lives had crossed over in the old fortress’s history, so it was easily recognizable. And each death had created echoes through the Veils, giving its castle more strength. The newer town itself might have been invisible here, under other circumstances. Previously, the town had been too young and too peaceful for its structures to have left a memory resonating into the Afterlife.

Now?

Town and castle both stood in grim relief, solid and firm. Glowing phosphorescence lingered along battlements or outlined the patios, the tournament stands, the azhock. Ghosts wandered the grounds, addled and frightened. Their appearances mirrored their deaths. The poor warder stood in the nobles’ box, blue-faced, freed from his illness but perplexed by his current predicament.

Sadly, I didn’t have time to take these poor souls aside and clarify their situation, guide them to Thaena’s Land of Peace, offer them advice. I didn’t have time to explain they could die twice, the second death more permanent than the first. The demons would use those deaths to gain what they wanted most in the whole world.

Namely, the whole world.

Oh yes, the demons had come to Mereina. They would start a Hellmarch here if they could, would puppet these dead across Jorat slaughtering village after town after city until they had gathered enough souls to call a demon prince’s attention.⁶

And then the killing would never stop.

The demons had arrived to ravage the souls of the dead.

I had come looking for more challenging prey.

I wasted no time. Sword drawn, I laughed as my first swing took a demon’s head from his shoulders and—blocking a hellhound’s lunge with my shield—I stepped to the side. I began the slaughter, letting my hate and my rage fill me with a fire-like warmth. The first demon’s blood was black, the second a glowing purple; there were no rules for how a demon’s gore might appear.

I was impaling a demon tiger’s jaw with my sword when I heard a shout. I looked up in time to see a massive hammer smash into my face, throwing me backward.

Awake, such a blow would have slain me, but the rules are different when one’s existence is metaphorical.

I slammed my hand down into the ground for leverage and pushed myself upward. A massive skinless demon stood before me, muscles glistening red between white divisions of connective tissue and yellow fat.

He was still missing his lower jaw, though.

“Kasmodeus?” I spat blood to the side. “You recovered quicker than I thought you would, given how easily you died the first time.”

The muscles of his cheekbones pulled. A grin, or as close as he could manage.

**OTHER DEMONS WILL SCREAM AND HIDE THEIR FACES WHEN THEY SEE WHAT I DO TO YOU.**

I laughed. “Plan you, then, to save a few drowning puppies? Make soup for an old sick mare?” I smiled. “Roses. You shouldn’t have.”

His eyes glowed. **DIE, WHORE!** He swung his maul, letting momentum send it crashing down.

I barely dodged it. He was more powerful than before, but then again, he’d stolen at least a few poor souls who’d died too close to those damn stakes. Who knew how many souls he’d taken from dire sacrifices burned at previous tournaments?

He gave me no time to collect myself. No sooner did his first swing send dirt flying in all directions than he swung again and again. One devastating blow followed by another. I lifted my shield to block a strike, buying myself a chance at a closer swing. His blow drove me to my knees. I ground my teeth as I lashed out with my sword. The edge hit true, shearing through chest muscle and rib cage.

He didn’t notice. Or perhaps he didn’t care.

I screamed as his hammer caught me in the ribs in turn. Bones cracked. As it had in the tournament, I felt a great spreading warmth overcome me.

Fire sprouted from the ground under my fingertips, spread out in a spiral around me on the grass. It looked unreal in this place, a red-and-orange pattern against the Afterlife’s blues and purples. I had no time to question it, but I pulled strength from the heat.

What remained of his face grinned. **I WILL USE YOU AS A FOOTREST. I WILL MAKE MY CHALICE OF VICTORY FROM YOUR SKULL.**

He raised his hammer.

“Why don’t you stick with the practical? Clearly, you need a jaw—”

In the distance, an elephant’s trumpet split the air.

I raised my head.

He paused.

More elephants called to each other, their sound like thunder. In the living world, this would have been no great occasion. Elephants were not so uncommon there. In the Afterlife, however?

Elephants in the Afterlife have only one mistress.

I started to laugh.

“Well, then,” I said. “It seems Death has found us both.”