The Oracle’s glowing eyes fixed on Zeeahd. “You won’t find him, Zeeahd.”
“That is a lie,” Zeeahd shouted. “You lie!”
He could take no more. He ran across the room, the devils loping after him.
The Oracle remained unmoved, and Zeeahd grabbed him by the robes and shook his tiny frame, spitting black spatters of phlegm with every word.
“Liar! Liar!”
The Oracle shook his head, his face placid. “I speak what I see. You will not find him.”
A distant shout carried into the shrine from elsewhere in the abbey. Not far away.
“Oracle!” shouted a voice.
“You won’t find him, Zeeahd,” the Oracle said, and smiled into Zeeahd’s face. “Because he has found you.”
Zeeahd’s ruined flesh goose pimpled. “What? What did you say?” “He’s found you.”
Again the voice from below. “Oracle!”
“Then I will be free of this right now,” Zeeahd said, and shoved the Oracle away from him.
“No,” the Oracle said. “You will never be free. Your body will mirror your soul. That is your fate, Zeeahd.”
Another shout, closer this time. “Oracle!”
The darkness squirming in Zeeahd’s belly wriggled up his throat, caused him to cough, to heave. He clenched his stomach, heaved from the bottom of his belly, and gagged as he vomited a thick string of his pollution onto the floor, fouling Amaunator’s sun. The glistening string lay there, a stinking mass of putrescence-hell reified in his innards and puked forth into the world. He stared at it, the Oracle’s words replaying in his mind.
You will never be free. You will never be free.
The words snuffed whatever humanity remained in him. Zeeahd wanted the Oracle dead: He wanted the abbey burned.
“Kill him!” he said to the devils, waving at the Oracle. “Tear him apart!”
“That is denied you, too,” the Oracle said, and, before the devils could pounce, a beam of bright light shone through the translucent dome in the ceiling, fell on the Oracle’s face, and bathed him in clear light. His skin turned translucent in the glow, took on a rosy hue. He placed a thin, veined hand on Abelar’s bier.
The devils growled but did not charge him.
“Kill him!” Zeeahd shrieked.
The beam of light faded, as did the light in the Oracle’s eyes. His expression slackened, grew childlike. His mouth fell open partially and split in a dumb smile. He spoke a single word, his tone that of a lack wit, not the leader of a congregation, not the head of an abbey that had provided light in darkness for a century.
“Papa,” the Oracle said.
The devils snarled and bounded forward. The Oracle closed his eyes and started to fall but before he hit the floor, the devils struck his body at a run and drove him to the stone floor. Claws and fangs tore into his body, ripping robes, ripping flesh. Blood spread in a pool across the floor.
The devils lapped at the gore eagerly, chuffing, snorting, but then they began to whine, then to shriek as their flesh began to smoke. The dead Oracle’s flesh glowed on their muzzles and claws. They squirmed like mad things, snarling, growling, spitting, trying to get the Oracle’s gore off of them. Their skin began to sizzle, bubble, and melt. They shrieked a final time as their hides sloughed from their bones, the spines falling like rain to the floor, their organs melting into putrescence.
Zeeahd could only watch it, mesmerized, horrified, as even in death the Oracle took his final revenge.
Rage rose in him, hatred, darker and fouler even than the sputum he’d left on the floor, hatred for Abelar, for the Oracle, for himself and what he had become, for daring to hope.
“Oracle!” came a third shout from down below, perhaps at the base of the stairs.
Zeeahd dared the devils’ fate. He turned and kicked what was left of the Oracle’s body, once, twice, again, again. Nothing happened to him, and he warmed to the task, venting his rage in violence. Bones broke, flesh split, and blood seeped from the rag doll corpse. But his outburst served only to amplify his rage, not abate it. He began to cough during his tirade, felt again the stirring in his innards, but did not care. He stared at the image of Abelar Corrinthal, carved in the wood surface of the bier. The peaceful expression. He spit on the image, slammed a fist on the wood. His skin split and blood marred Abelar’s visage.
“You! You! You are why all of this has happened to me!”
He seized the lid of the bier and with a grunt threw it to the side, revealing the wrapped, mummified body within.
“You have rest!” he shouted to Abelar. “You have peace! And I have nothing but the promise of the Hells! Because of you!”
“The life he lived brought him peace,” said a strong, firm voice behind him. “The life you’ve lived will bring you something far worse.”
Zeeahd turned slowly, a snarl on his lips. The man who stood at the entrance to the shrine was only slightly shorter than Sayeed. Long, dark hair was pulled off his strong-jawed face in a horse’s tail. The beard and moustache he wore did not disguise the violence promised by the hard line of his mouth. Dull, gray plate armor wrapped his broad body. He carried a shield emblazoned with a battle-scarred rose, a large, dark blade from which darkness poured. A thin stream of shadow led off from the blade back the way the man had come. Shadows emerged in flickers from his exposed flesh.
Zeeahd’s fists clenched. “There is nothing worse!”
The man stepped into the room. Zeeahd backed off a step, his stomach writhing with hell.
Vasen took in the remains of the devils, the body of the Oracle, the defiled bier of Dawnlord Abelar. He fixed his gaze on the thin man.
“My name is Vasen Cale. My father was Erevis Cale. I’m the one you’ve been trying to find.”
“And yet you found me,” the man said, and a maniacal laugh slipped past his lips. The laugh turned to wet coughing.
Vasen took another step into the room, trailing shadows, bearing light. The man backed away from the bier, toward the double doors behind him. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he were awaiting something.
“Here he is, Lord of Cania,” the man said, and pointed a bony finger at Vasen. “He’s found. The son of Cale. Now free me of this!”
The man coughed, gagged. Vasen could make no sense of his babblings and didn’t need to. He needed only to kill him.
He held up Abelar’s shield and Weaveshear. “This is the Dawnlord’s shield and this is my father’s sword. I’m going to kill you with them.”
The man shrieked with despair, rage, and hate, spitting black phlegm as he did.
“Where is your promise now, Lord of Cania?” The man glared at the dark places in the room as if they held some secret. “I’ve done what you asked! I’ve done it! Here he is! Free me!”
“You’re mad,” Vasen said.
The man glared at Vasen, his breathing a forge bellows. “Maybe I am mad. And maybe I’ll be freed only if you’re dead!”
He raised his hands and a line of fire exploded outward from his palms. Vasen raised his shield and the fire slammed into the steel, drove him back a step. Shadows poured from Vasen’s flesh, from Weaveshear, and those from the blade surrounded the fire in darkness and contained it.
Still the man continued to shout, an animal cry of mindless hate, the fire pouring from his hands, black spit pouring from his mouth.
Licks of flame ignited the biers and spread to one of the wall tapestries, which quickly turned into a curtain of fire. In moments the entire room was ablaze.
Vasen pushed against the fire, enduring the heat, one step, another.
“Vasen!” he heard from the stairway below. “Vasen!”
“Here!” he called, the flames licking around his shield.
Orsin and Gerak ran up to the doorway behind him and stopped, eyes wide at the conflagration. Gerak drew and aimed with his usual rapidity, but the thin man separated his hands and sent a second line of fire into the bowman. It hit Gerak squarely in the chest and knocked him against the wall. He quickly aimed another blast at Orsin, but the deva dived aside and dodged it.