The man laughed. “I’ll kill you all! Then I’ll be free. Watch, Lord of Cania! Watch!”
Gerak’s bow sang and an arrow thunked into the man’s shoulder. The man grimaced with pain, staggered back, hunched, snarling. His flames faltered. He raised his left hand to unleash another blast of fire, but again Gerak’s bow spoke first and a second arrow sank into the man, this time his left shoulder. The impact spun the man around and he shouted with pain.
“Die,” Gerak said.
A third arrow buried itself in his left thigh, and the man went down. He collapsed, coughing, spitting gouts of black phlegm.
Gerak stepped beside Vasen, nocked and drew again, sighting for the man’s throat. Vasen lowered his shield and weapon and watched. The man deserved death, and Gerak had earned the right to give it to him.
Gerak’s bowstring creaked as he drew back to his ear.
The man writhed frenetically on the floor, snapping the arrows stuck in his body, his arms wrapped around his stomach, screaming wildly, maniacally, between coughs. His body pulsed, roiled, as if something within him were trying to get out.
“It hurts!” he shouted. “Kill me! Kill me!”
“Give him no relief,” Orsin said. “He deserves what pain comes his way.”
Gerak sighted along his arrow, and after a long pause, lowered his bow.
The man rolled over onto his stomach, dark, bloodshot eyes staring out of the pale oval of his face. His teeth, crooked and stained black, bared in a snarl.
“I’ll kill you! All of you!”
He lifted himself on his wounded arms, grunting against the pain, and staggered to his feet. He lifted a hand at them. Vasen readied his shield and Gerak readied a killing shot, but before the man could discharge any fire, his eyes filled with pain and fear. He went rigid, threw his head back, and uttered a piercing shriek of pain. His back arched and he cast his arms out wide, his hands bent like claws. Tapestries and the biers burned all around him.
“Suffer, bastard!” Gerak shouted. “Suffer like she did.”
“We should go,” Orsin said. “The other one’s still alive, and many devils besides.”
Vasen nodded. Shadows poured off of him, off of Weaveshear, and led off down the abbey’s corridors.
Another scream from the man, a wet gurgle that ended in him vomiting a black rope of phlegm down the front of his robes. He put his hands on his face, screaming, as black fluid poured from his eyes, his nose, his ears, saturating his robes.
“This is not what you promised!” the man screamed. “This is not what you promised!”
Snarls and the heavy, scrabbling tread of clawed feet on the floor of the corridor behind the man grew loud enough to hear over his screams and the crackle of the flames.
“They’re coming,” Orsin said.
“You’ve seen what you need to see,” Vasen said to Gerak. “Leave him to suffer or kill him. Your decision.”
Gerak looked at the screaming man, seemingly insensate of all but his pain. Anger twisted Gerak’s expression and he drew, nocked, and fired. An arrow sank to the fletching in the screaming man. He seemed barely to notice the wound as black fluid poured from the hole.
“Gerak,” Orsin said.
But Gerak was past hearing him. He drew again, fired. Drew, nocked, and fired, the arrows coming so fast that Vasen was dumbstruck. In moments, six more arrows sprouted from the man’s flesh. Black, putrescent fluid poured from the wounds, but still he stood, screaming, bleeding, dying, changing.
“We have to go!” Orsin said, as something large and strong slammed into the double doors behind the dying, bleeding man.
The man uttered an inhuman shriek as the skin on his thin body cracked and split, blood and ichor spraying the room all around as something expanded within him, his flesh an egg birthing a horror.
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
Sharp claws burst in a black spray from the tips of his fingers. His spine lengthened with a wet, cracking sound, making him taller, thinner. He screamed in agony as the transformation twisted his body. His skull elongated, the jaw widened. His teeth rained out of his mouth as fangs burst from his gums to replace them. His voice deepened. An appendage burst from his back, a bony tail that ended in a spiked wedge of bone that looked like a halberd blade. The devil-a bone devil, Vasen realized-used its clawed fingers to help it slip the rest of the man’s flesh and body, as if it were undressing.
“We must go,” Orsin said.
Vasen took Gerak by the arm. “She’s avenged, Gerak. Elle is avenged. Come on.”
The bone devil stood like a man but twice as tall, its nude body the color of old ivory, the flesh pulled so tight over it that it seemed composed of nothing but skin, sinew, and bone. Hate burned in eyes the black of the phlegm that polluted the floor. Fingers on its overlarge hands ended in black claws the length of a knife blade. The devil clacked them together, as if trying out a new toy.
Finally the double door behind gave way and a half-dozen spined devils and Sayeed burst through. All of them pulled up at the sight of the towering bone devil.
Sayeed’s emotionless, dead eyes went to the ripped pile of flesh gathered around the clawed feet of the devil, the face of the thin man still visible at the top of it, the eye sockets staring, the slack mouth open in a scream.
“Zeeahd?” Sayeed said, his blade limp at his side.
Orsin took hold of Vasen and Gerak, his grip like iron. “We have our path.” He nodded at the line of shadows that led from Weaveshear down the hall, away from the devils. “We must go. Right now.”
“This is freedom, Sayeed,” the devil said, his voice deep and gravely. “Freedom at last.”
Sayeed fell to his knees, staring at the devil. His expression went slack and Vasen saw something in him die. The spined devils abased themselves before their larger kin.
Vasen, Orsin, and Gerak turned and ran.
Before they’d taken five strides, he heard the bone devil say, “Kill them all.”
Vasen turned to see the spined devils tumble into the hall behind them, all spines and scales and teeth. They launched dozens of spines from their twisted forms, the quills lighting up as they flew.
He channeled Amaunator’s power through his shield and it blazed rosecolored light across the entire corridor. The quills hit the light and fell inert to the ground. Vasen turned back and ran on, following the twisting tendril of shadow put before him by Weaveshear.
The devils shrieked and gave chase, their claws clicking over the floors. Orsin plowed down the stair and through a set of doors, and Vasen slammed them shut behind them, hoping to delay the devils. He held Weaveshear before him, following the thread it offered. He had no idea where it would lead.
“It could be nothing!” he shouted to Orsin, indicating the thread of shadow that led them on.
“Follow it,” Orsin said. “Trust me! It’s happened before!”
Every corner they turned, every door they opened, Vasen feared encountering more devils, but the way remained clear. They burst through an outer door and into the northern courtyard, sprinting over the smooth flagstones and the shining sun symbol of Amaunator.
“The sword is leading us into the valley,” Gerak said. “We’ll be exposed in the woods. We should find a defensible spot and make a stand.”
“Always you want to make a stand,” Orsin said with a grin, pulling him along. “Keep moving!”
The devils burst through the doors behind them, caught sight of the three comrades, and loosed a hail of flaming spines. The missiles thudded into the walls, burning.
“Keep going!” Vasen said, and shoved Gerak forward. “Follow the line! Follow the line!”
They cleared the courtyard, the outbuildings and livestock pens, and sprinted into the pines. The devils pursued relentlessly. Vasen could hear them roaring and growling not only behind but off to either side.