Tristram was in shambles. King Leoric had lost his mind and was surely under the influence of something powerful and black at heart. Cain could only guess, from what he had read, what that thing might be: Diablo himself, the Lord of Terror.
He took his battered journal from the pack around his waist, and bent to write. But the words would not come, not tonight.
Cain rubbed his aching, bleary eyes. He had been awake for more than twenty hours. The flame inside the lantern sputtered as a fresh draft of air washed over him, and a moment later he heard the sound of a door opening. He looked up to see a young woman hurrying down the aisle toward him, a heavy cloak wrapped around her sleeping gown to ward off the icy cold.
“Gillian,” he said, finding his staff and getting to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
The barmaid’s pretty blue eyes were wide with fear. “The soldiers have returned from Westmarch,” she said. “Our army has been all but destroyed! There are so few left. And now the king’s men have gathered against them.”
“Where is Aidan? Has he come back with them?”
“I don’t know.”
Cain’s fear deepened, swirling within him like smoke. While Captain Lachdanan and his army were battling the Westmarch forces, King Leoric had taken to executing some numbers of the townspeople he had deemed responsible for the disappearance of his son. The depth of his bloodlust knew no bounds. Dead birds falling from the sky, ghostly apparitions in the night, butchered livestock, accounts of strange and horrifying creatures wandering the edges of town—all of this paled in comparison to the corruption of men’s souls, the blackness of their hearts.
“And where is the king?”
Gillian shook her head. “Nobody knows. But the men are coming here, Deckard, to the cathedral. You must leave this place!”
“But the texts—”
She put her hand on his arm, tugging at him. “We can come back later for them.”
“I have waited too long, Gillian. So many years, absorbed by my own selfishness and small-mindedness, refusing to see the truth about the darkness that lies beyond our world—”
A sound like a distant scream echoed upward from the catacombs beneath their feet. Gillian recoiled, terror whitening her face as she clutched at the cloak around her shoulders. “We must go now. Please, Deckard!”
He nodded, returning his journal to his pack, along with the books he had been reading, and picked up the lantern, handing it to Gillian.
The last of the Horadrim. His mother had seen it all. How could he have been so blind?
Another noise reached them, this one from outside, the sound of men approaching in a hurry. Cain looked at the barmaid. “We’ll leave by the rear door,” he said, taking her hand. “This way.”
There was no time. A shout came from the antechamber, and the clank of armor and heavy footsteps echoed through the soaring hall. Cain blew out his lantern, plunging them into darkness and pulling Gillian down with him, behind a row of pews. She gasped, her fingers entwining in his and clutching at him as a line of men ran into the room, the first of them turning to clash with their swords against the others who followed. Cain recognized the king’s men, pursued by Lachdanan and the remains of the royal army of Khanduras. Brother against brother, battling through the very halls of the cathedral!
He searched for the king’s eldest son but did not see him. The fight was fierce. Grunts and cries mixed with the clank of metal. A pew shattered as the leader of the king’s guard was thrown backward, skewered through the throat. The horrible sound of his last gurgling breath reached Cain’s ears, and the coppery smell of blood filled the room. As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The moans of the dying rose up and were silenced with the blades of the remaining soldiers.
“Bring a torch!”
Lachdanan stood in the shadows of the aisle, breathing hard. A soldier approached him. Cain and Gillian crouched lower as torch flame washed the stone walls with light and threatened to expose their presence.
“Where is the Black King?” Lachdanan’s eyes were wild and glittering in the light.
“We believe he is somewhere below us, sir, in the catacombs.”
“Lead me there. He must pay for his sins. Quickly now!”
The soldier nodded. The group of them set off, passing no more than ten feet from where Cain and Gillian were hiding. Lachdanan had been a friend once, but something told Cain that they must remain out of sight. When the men had passed through the chamber on their way to the stairs leading below and the cathedral had fallen back into darkness, he stood up, looking at the carnage with a terrible sense of outrage and loss. Blood pooled in the aisle, black in the shadows, while the bodies steamed in the cold.
Dread filled his heart. How had it come to this?
Gillian stifled a cry. Cain turned to find a figure looming over them, eyes like the fiery pits of Hell, the stench of death in the air.
Behind the figure stood a woman holding hands with a small boy, their eyes watching him with a mixture of sorrow and reproach.
Cain awoke to darkness, momentarily confused by the power of the dream. Much of it had happened like that, except for the end; why had he imagined that figure?
And the woman and child . . .
Cain cut off the thought abruptly, aware of a distant threat looming over him like boiling thunderheads. He had made himself a bitter promise many years ago. He would not think of them. Never again.
He wiped his wet face with the sleeve of his tunic. Something had awakened him. He listened to the ticking of the hearth near where he lay on the floor, his old bones aching from the hard boards underneath his back.
The sound of someone moving and a soft mutter of voices came from the hall.
Cain slowly got to his feet and found his staff. There was just enough moonlight coming through the window to avoid running into things. He shuffled forward, stopped, listened again. Nothing.
Leah’s door was open. He walked to the end of the hall and peered in. Gillian stood at the foot of the girl’s bed, staring down at her and whispering, slowly swaying back and forth, her arms at her sides.
“Gillian,” he said softly. She did not seem to hear him. Moonlight filtered through the window, falling across the bed. For a moment, a shadow seemed to pass, darkening the room, and Deckard Cain imagined huge, black wings flapping across a cloudless sky. Gillian turned abruptly and walked past him as if he weren’t there, her sightless eyes open and staring, as Leah muttered wordlessly in her sleep and turned over.
Cain followed Gillian down the hall, where she entered her own room and closed the door. He stood there waiting, but nothing happened, and eventually he returned to his spot on the floor before the hearth, where he lay for a long time without sleeping, troubled thoughts crowding his head, waiting for the dawn to come.
5
The Black Tower
Two hundred feet above the ground, in an empty room of blackened stone, a solitary figure watched the ruined landscape as the sun dipped below the horizon. The wind slipped through narrow, glassless window holes, rippling his robes and threatening to tear his hood from his head; he held its edges in his long, bony fingers. The man’s flesh was translucent, blue veins running just beneath the skin like threaded tattoos. This was as much as he cared to expose to the air. It would not do to reveal his face, even here, even when he was alone. He no longer revealed that unless darkness shrouded him from any prying eyes.