Growls sounded from somewhere down the corridor outside his room. Something heavy crashed. Ceramics shattered and something metal rang off the floor.
With shaking hands, Vasen took the shield. The metal felt warm in his hands, pure, and he knew it was as much a holy implement of his faith as any symbol he might ever wear around his neck. He held it before him so he could see the rose. Thin tendrils of shadow from his hands ran along the shield’s edge. He frowned, tried to will them away, but they clutched at the shield as surely as his hands. He hoped the saint would not object.
Channeling the power of his faith through the shield, he spoke a prayer of healing and the rose lit like a lantern, bathing him in its glow. The darkness leaking from his flesh resisted banishment from the light and lingered on the edge of the shield. But still the glow did its work. The gashes in his flesh closed, his ribs knit back together, and the pain and fatigue he felt vanished.
As the glow faded from the rose, he bowed his head, overcome.
The scrabble of claw on stone sounded from the corridor outside his chambers, closer now. He strapped the shield onto his forearm, found the weight of it ideal. He opened the chest at the base of his bed. His father’s sword lay inside, wrapped in oilcloth. He reached for it, the shadows so thick and swirling about his hands that he could scarcely see his fingers. He took the wire-wrapped hilt in hand. The metal felt cool, the texture slick. Shadows slipped from the weapon to join those bleeding from his flesh. He lifted the weapon, slid off the oilcloth, and revealed a blade as black as a sliver of night, like deep water under a moonless sky.
The hilt seemed made for his hand, the weight made for his style. He took a few practice cuts, marveled at the way the weapon left a trail of dissipating shadows in its wake.
Chuffing sounded from outside the door, the sound of a fiendish hound on the scent. He heard claws clicking on the stone floor, the low, predatory growl of an animal on the hunt. He held a sliver of night in one hand and a circle of light in the other and he felt as if he could walk through the Hells themselves.
“Devil!” he shouted. “Account for your presence in my abbey!”
He started for the door, but before he reached it a crouched form filled the doorway, the raised spines on its back like a forest of blades. Its lips peeled back from its long fangs, and its sleek head moved back and forth as it eyed the room. Seeing no one else, its tongue fell from its mouth and it snarled at Vasen.
“Come,” Vasen said, his anger rising, and beckoned it to close.
The devil hissed, tensed, whirled, and launched a dozen spikes at Vasen. They caught fire as they whizzed toward him. He sheltered behind his shield and most of the spines slammed into the metal and stuck there. A few thumped into the wall. Others hit the bed and caught it afire.
Vasen got out from behind his shield as the devil sprung at him, all claws, teeth, and rage. He braced himself and swung his shield left to right as the devil reached him. The slab of steel and wood flared with light as it slammed into the devil’s head and neck, driving it sidelong into the wall near the hearth. The fiend squirmed, bit, and clawed, trying to get around the shield, but Vasen threw his legs back, leaned his weight into the shield, still blazing with light, and pinned the creature against the wall while driving Weaveshear into it again and again. The blade bit effortlessly through the devil’s hide. The fiend writhed, shrieking as one blow after another sank deep into its vitals. Black ichor poured from its slashed guts. When at last it went silent and still, Vasen let it fall to the floor and jerked his blade free. Behind him, his bed was ablaze. Parts of the abbey were ablaze, too, and there was no way to stop it. Soon the entire structure would be gutted by fire.
He had to get to the Oracle.
He looked at his shield, still glowing faintly, and at his blade, leaking shadows. The shadows twisted themselves into a line that snaked out of the room and turned east.
A line to follow, he thought, smiling and thinking of Orsin.
Without looking back at his burning quarters, the room that had been his sanctuary for almost thirty winters, he followed the line of shadow emitted by Weaveshear and hurried to Dawnlord Abelar’s shrine.
Zeeahd moved rapidly through the dark abbey. On the way, he encountered two of his devils, who must have gained entry through an upper window.
“Follow,” he ordered them, and they fell in beside him.
Light trickled down the stairs that led up through the eastern tower, the light he’d seen from outside. The devils growled softly. Without a pause, Zeeahd and the devils climbed the stairs. A hallway opened into a circular shrine.
Two biers sat in the center of the room, but Zeeahd had eyes only for the frail old man who stood near them. He wore the elaborate red and yellow robes of a senior priest of Amaunator. His eyes glowed orange, and when they fixed on Zeeahd, Zeeahd halted in his steps.
“Oracle,” Zeeahd said.
The old man’s hand went to the holy symbol he wore around his throat, a sun and a rose.
“Do you know who I am?” Zeeahd asked, stalking into the room, the devils flanking him.
The Oracle stared at him, glowing eyes unblinking. “I know what you are.”
“Then you know why I’ve come.”
“You’ve come to further the purposes of forces beyond your understanding,” the Oracle said.
The old man’s confidence galled Zeeahd. The devils snarled, their claws scratching the floor. “I need an answer to a question, old man.”
The Oracle smiled faintly, looked away from Zeeahd to stare thoughtfully at the image of the woman carved into the lid of the bier.
“She never married another. The woman whose image is carved into the wood here. Her name was Jiriis. I’m sure she never loved another, either. She committed her life to service, but lived it alone.”
Zeeahd put a hand on the spines of the devils at his sides. Was the Oracle mad? Was he anticipating Zeeahd’s question and answering him somehow.
“We all make sacrifices, it seems,” the Oracle said.
“I don’t care about that. Where is the son of Erevis Cale. Tell me. If he lives, tell me his location. If he’s dead, tell me where I can find his corpse.” When the Oracle said nothing, he added, “Tell me and no harm will come to you, but be certain that I’ll have an answer, one way or another.”
“I long ago accepted the harm that would come to me. I saw it in a dream. But it has been a good hundred years.” The Oracle turned and looked down on the other bier. “Do you recognize the face here, Zeeahd of Thay?”
“You know my name?”
“Look on it and do what you came here to do,” the Oracle said, his voice stern. “You recognize it, do you not?”
Zeeahd looked carefully at the image carved into the bier. His fury rose as he recognized the face, the face forever branded by pain into his memory. The stump of his thumb began to ache. The curse within him began to writhe.
“Abelar Corrinthal,” he said, and the words came out a hiss, and the hiss turned to a cough.
“He was my father,” the Oracle said, looking back at Zeeahd. “A good man. A holy man. Very unlike you, Zeeahd of Thay.”
Zeeahd’s coughing worsened as his rage intensified. He felt the growth in his belly, the sickening, squirming mass that resided within him, that wanted only to become. His damnation had started a hundred years ago, but he had held it at bay since then. He refused to let it finish. He would free himself before he let the Hells have him.
“Then I’ll have something for you when we’re done, son of Abelar,” Zeeahd said between coughs and gasps. Black flecks peppered the floor. “The son, Erevis Cale’s son, where will I find him? Tell me now or I’ll make you suffer.”
The devils growled at that, an eager sound.