“If they’re gone, they didn’t leave long ago,” Sayeed said. “Else the animals would be starved. We can still catch them if they traveled on foot.”
Zeeahd grunted as they stalked among the compound, his anger palpable.
The cats eyed the animals, mewled.
Zeeahd waved a hand dismissively. “What are the animals to me? Do what you wish. Kill what you wish. Only the Oracle matters to me.”
As the devils wetly slipped their fleshy cells and set about slaughtering the panicked animals, Sayeed and Zeeahd explored the nearby buildings. They found root cellars, fermenting beer, wine, cheese, but no people.
“They’re gone, Zeeahd,” Sayeed said. “The Oracle is gone. He foresaw us coming and-”
Zeeahd whirled on him and slapped Sayeed’s face, once, twice. “He’s not gone! He must be here. He must. Otherwise. . ”
Sayeed grabbed his brother by the wrist and squeezed. Zeeahd did not so much as wince.
“Release me, Sayeed. Now.”
Sayeed let his brother go.
Zeeahd’s gaze drifted in the direction of the devils that had emerged from the cats. In their bloody glee, the fiends were leaping atop buildings, firing their quills at each other, at the animals, at nothing. Some of their spines trailed flames as they flew, and soon dozens of small fires started.
“Otherwise what?” Sayeed asked. “Finish your thought.”
Zeeahd ignored him, turned, and eyed a low stairway that led to a columned portico and a pair of double doors that opened onto the abbey. Zeeahd inhaled in a hiss, put a hand across Sayeed’s chest.
“What is it?” Sayeed asked, his hand going to his sword hilt.
“He’s here,” Zeeahd said.
“How do you know?”
“Because those doors are warded. Feel it?”
Sayeed didn’t, but he trusted his brother’s ability to sense powerful magic.
Zeeahd withdrew some items from his belt pouches as they walked toward the doors. He began to cast a counterward.
Standing in the shrine, looking upon the image of Jiriis and his father, the Oracle held his hand over the glow globe in the shrine.
When he lit it, he knew what it would bring.
“I will stand in the light and fear no darkness,” he said, and waited for the ward on the doors to fall.
Vasen ran through the pass, his armor clanking, and even Orsin struggled to keep up. The moment Vasen heard the distant rush of the valley’s cascades, he readied his shield and let the light die from his sword. Darkness cloaked them all.
“The light keep us,” he said to his comrades.
He stopped at the mouth of the pass. The valley stretched out below him, a finger-shaped slash in the mountains covered in shrouded pine and scrub. The darkness and trees hid the river. The abbey and its outbuildings and walls nestled in a cleared swath farther in. The lands around the buildings looked like a black smear in the darkness. The glowglobes were unlit, their defiant glow extinguished. The windows, too, were dark, and the sight pulled Vasen up short. He’d never before seen the abbey sitting in darkness under the Shadovar’s sky. It looked not like a place dedicated to the God of the Sun but a tomb, a surrender. The shadows around him swirled.
Orsin and Gerak tried to walk past him, but he stopped them with the flat of his blade.
“Wait.”
“What is it?”
Screams pierced the valley’s silence, carried up from the abbey on the wind. Not human, but animal, and. . something else. The wind carried the stink of smoke.
“Something is burning,” Orsin said.
“I smell it,” Gerak said. He nocked an arrow but did not draw. “I can’t see anything.”
More screams sounded from below, the desperate, terrified bleats of the goats. All at once a dozen small fires lit up in the compound, the roofs of several storage sheds and several trees. Vasen heard cracking wood, the growls and snarls of some kind of beast. He could see movement in the shadows cast by the fire, but could make out no details.
“We get close,” Vasen said. “Move quietly and quickly.”
Orsin and Gerak nodded and they all started down. By the time they reached the bottom, two of the storage sheds were fully ablaze. The light from the fires raised shadows all over the compound. Vasen felt a twinge when he looked at the shadows, a feeling of connectedness. He crept onward.
They clambered over the low stone wall that kept wild animals from the fields, and when they did Vasen stepped on something slick and wet.
A pile of blood-soaked skins lay at his feet. Vasen lifted one of the skins on the end of his sword. They looked vaguely feline. Blood slicked the empty bag of fur.
“Those. . look like the cats that accompanied the two men,” Gerak whispered.
“They weren’t cats,” Vasen said, dropping the skin to the ground.
“Then what?” Gerak said, looking toward the abbey.
“We’ll soon know,” Vasen said.
They darted in a crouch across the fields toward the abbey.
The sudden flash of a light in one of the windows of the eastern-facing tower of the abbey caught Sayeed’s eye.
“There is a light in the eastern tower,” he said, pointing.
Zeeahd nodded, the flesh under his robe roiling and bulging, and continued his countercharm, using a silver wand to trace glowing symbols in the air.
Vasen, Orsin, and Gerak sheltered behind one of the outbuildings used to house visiting pilgrims and peeked around the corner. Smoke fogged the air, but the light of the flames allowed Vasen to see the marauders.
“Spined devils,” he said.
The spined devils, which were about the size of a mastiff, prowled about on all fours. Hundreds of sharp quills, about the length of a man’s hand, coated their hides. As Vasen watched, one of the creatures growled, tensed, and fired a half dozen spines from its back at a storage shed. The spines burst into flame as they flew and sunk deeply into the wood of the shed, the flames licking at the timbers.
Another spined devil burst through the fence of an animal pen, carrying the leg of a goat in its mouth. A second devil bounded into view from the right and tried to take the goat haunch from the first, the two fiends scrabbling over it like dogs.
“I can’t see how many,” Vasen said. “More than a handful, though.” “There were at least a dozen cat skins,” Orsin said.
Vasen eyed Gerak, to see how well the man was holding up. Gerak met his gaze, nodded.
There were too many to try and cut their way through.
“We’re looking for men, not devils,” Vasen said. “We need to get to the abbey undetected.”
“The smoke will help,” Orsin said.
“Where is everyone?” Gerak asked.
Vasen could only shake his head and try not to lose hope. He looked out from around the building and saw no devils, although he could hear them above the crackle of burning wood. Just as he was about to give the order to run for the northern courtyard, a powerful impact shook the timbers of the shed. The three men flattened themselves against the wall, looking up, as they heard the chuff of a devil, the sound of claws on roof tiles.
Shadows poured from Vasen’s skin.
Moving silently, Gerak drew an arrow, nocked, and took a knee a pace away from the wall, his bow trained on the roof.
The chuffing changed to a low growl.
Vasen met Orsin’s gaze, gave him a nod. The deva nodded in return. They readied themselves and Vasen cleared his throat.
The devil lunged forward and the moment its head appeared past the edge of the roof, Gerak let an arrow fly and Orsin lunged upward. Orsin looped his hands around the fiend’s neck and flipped it from the roof. It fell on its back, snarling, claws flailing wildly, an arrow sticking from its throat. Vasen hacked downward with his sword and split its throat. Stinking black ichor poured from the wound, stained the grass, and the creature went silent.