“Wonderful to see you, too, Gillian.”
She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “Forgive me. But it’s been years, with no word, nothing at all. I thought you might be dead.”
“I have business in Caldeum, and I wanted to check on you and Leah.”
“Your business tends to be dangerous.”
He nodded. “That it is. I’m searching for the makers of this.” He reached into his sack and pulled out the reproduction of the Horadric text. “I found it among the ruins of a Vizjerei repository.”
Gillian lifted the book in her hands, then turned it over and studied the binding. “There’s a bookseller in town named Kulloom—he often drinks at the tavern where I put in my hours serving customers. He might know where a book like this was made.”
“Thank you. I’ll try him.”
“It’s important?”
“The fate of Sanctuary itself may hang in the balance.”
“What do you mean?”
Cain hesitated, wondering how much to say. Most of the citizens of this city would have laughed him right through the front gates if he told them what he feared, but Gillian had seen demons with her own eyes, and seen her town destroyed by them. “I have reason to believe that the rulers of the Burning Hells, Belial and Azmodan, are preparing for an invasion. The destruction of the Worldstone has affected our world in ways we cannot understand, and has left us vulnerable. Think of Tristram, Gillian. The horrors that descended upon us. The madness we suffered . . . I cannot let that happen again! We must learn as much as we can before it’s too late.”
“You always got right to the point.” Gillian stared at the Horadric symbol on the cover of the book, seeming to drift away. Her hands clenched harder, and the haunted look in her eyes returned. “I hear them,” she said softly, as if speaking to herself. “Whispering. All the time, inside my head. They won’t let me rest. They tell me terrible things. They want me to . . .” She stopped, her lip quivering.
“What is it that they tell you? What do you hear?”
Abruptly she put her fingers to her mouth, looked at Cain as if surprised by his presence, then whirled and went into the kitchen, busying herself with her back to him. “I’m a silly old woman,” she said. “You must be hungry. Let me get you something.”
“You’re hardly old. Where is your laughter, Gillian, your love of life? Where has your spirit gone?”
She stopped, muttered something, put her hands on the counter to brace herself, and made a muffled sound, her shoulders shaking. Cain got up from the table and went to her. She turned and pressed her wet face to his chest, silent sobs wracking her body.
It broke his heart to see her like this. He stood awkwardly for a moment and put his arm around her shoulders. He could feel her tears wetting his tunic, the bones sliding under her skin. He had never been much comfort to anyone, had always been more comfortable around dusty books and scrolls than people. But it didn’t seem to matter much to Gillian; after a minute her sobs began to ease, and she stood back and wiped her face with her sleeve. “I don’t mean to be rude. You must think I’m crazy.”
“The girl,” he said. “She doesn’t know?”
Gillian shook her head. “I’ve told her very little. It’s so hard. I’m . . . afraid of her, Deckard. There are things . . . things that happen when she’s around. Adria—”
“Is surely dead.” Cain put up a hand as if to dismiss the thought. Gillian had raised Leah as her own, just as he had hoped she would years ago, after Leah’s real mother had left her in Gillian’s care. “A witch may be powerful, but her reach does not extend beyond the afterlife. And Adria did not mean harm to anyone. There’s no reason to think there is anything to fear. If Leah has inherited any of her talents, she has had no training, no knowledge to shape them. She is innocent.”
“Adria once frightened me. Her child frightens me more.”
Cain thought of his reaction to Leah’s touch, and suspected many others had had the same response. The girl would need someone to help her understand her own gifts, and suspicion and fear would only cloud the waters. “You need to resist this feeling. It comes from what happened at Tristram. Such close contact with corruption and death can affect the mind. But you are stronger than you think.”
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” Gillian whispered, tears welling in her eyes again. “I’m just a barmaid. I’m not meant for this.”
Suddenly she stiffened, cocked her head, as if listening. Cain reached out to touch her shoulder, but she moved away abruptly, making a soft, strangled sound in her throat before picking up the loaf of bread she had been preparing from the counter. “Enough of me,” she said more firmly, the quaver in her voice evening out. “You will eat something, and then get some rest. You’re welcome here for as long as you need to stay.”
Cain took the bread she offered him and returned to the table, chewing the stale loaf while he studied Gillian’s back as she continued to busy herself in the kitchen, violently attacking the dirty pots with a scrub brush as if she might wash away all that had happened like so much dirty water. His heart ached for her, and for all the people who had been left behind, forever haunted by those terrible events, driven mad by the demonic contact. Most had been killed outright; perhaps, Cain thought, they were the lucky ones. Gillian’s physical deterioration surely mirrored her inner turmoil. Diablo’s contamination continued, even after the Lord of Terror was long gone.
He considered whether to push her some more, and decided it might make her condition far worse. He was worried for the girl. When he had learned that Adria had left her in Gillian’s care, letting her remain here had seemed to be the only option at the time; he had been concerned with much larger, more important things, and he had meant to come to Caldeum to see to her when the world had settled again. But then the battle with Baal near Harrogath had destroyed Mount Arreat, and things had taken a very dark turn. He had become distracted by the ominous signs of gathering evil (perhaps he had let it happen far more easily than he would admit), and the years had passed so quickly.
Looking around this place now, and seeing Gillian’s odd behavior, he wondered if he had made the right choice.
Deckard Cain stood before the shelves of the ancient library, the light from the small lantern barely enough to make out the spines of the Horadric texts that sat like mute witnesses to his failure. The wind howled outside like a living thing, battering itself against the thick stone walls of the cathedral; icy drafts blew like the breath of ghosts against his bare shins, and dust swirled and danced beyond the flame.
He took a book down from the shelf and sat at the desk, where he scanned the lines of print with a trembling finger. The more he read, the more it confirmed all that he had found in Jered Cain’s writings. His heart was full of regret. It could not be. Yet it was: everything his mother had told him, all her stories of demons and angels that he had dismissed as folklore for these fifty-some years, chronicled here, in careful detail like a book of forgotten histories rather than myth.
His mother’s voice echoed back to him through the years: Jered is your blood, and you—you are the last of a proud line of heroes . . .
Every logical fiber of his being cried out against this. He was not wired to accept anything he did not understand. He was a schoolteacher and a scholar, not some mad dreamer. Yet the events of the past few weeks could not be denied.
An unearthly moan drifted up from somewhere far below his feet, followed by the faint rattling of metal. Deckard Cain tried to convince himself that it was the wind whispering through empty chambers. He shivered and pulled his tunic tightly around his thin shoulders.