Along with that thought came the memory of the presence that had seemed to sense the disturbance and seek it out, the black, flapping wings, and he wondered if they had barely escaped something far worse.
Deckard Cain made his way back around the corner of the house to the front, where a handful of people remained, watching the last wisps of smoke drift up from the dark interior. The door was still open, but he could not tell whether it was inviting him in or letting something out. Several men with empty buckets emerged, their faces grim and black with soot. They stomped down the steps and past him without a word or a second glance. They were protecting their own homes and families, and were interested in nothing else.
Leah was awake. She stood huddled next to James, impossibly small next to such a giant. He had taken off his cloak and draped it around her thin shoulders. Cain felt a burst of warmth for the man who had quite possibly saved their lives. Whatever else had happened here tonight, James had shown them that there was still some kindness left in the world.
The big man spotted him and turned. “She woke up just a moment ago,” he said. “Seems perfectly fine to me. I had her wait here, avoid that commotion.” He jerked a thumb toward the area where Gillian had been dragged away. His eyes showed Cain that he had heard more than he would say. Cain nodded.
He went and stood before Leah, looking down at her. The girl said nothing, clutching the cloak with both hands. Her face was streaked with soot and the remains of what might have been tears, but she retained a bit of stubborn grace as she stared back at him in silence.
“You will come with me,” he said stiffly. “Your . . . mother is no longer able to care for you due to her illness. We will find a safe place for you soon enough, and arrange for funds that will help support you until you reach an age where you can provide for yourself.” Then he added, awkwardly: “I’m . . . sorry.”
If Leah heard or understood him, she did not acknowledge it, her wide, dark eyes unblinking. In that moment Cain felt the ghosts from a day long past crowding in, among them a child who had stood before him much like this.
“You can stay with us tonight,” James said, breaking the spell. “Things will seem clearer in the morning.”
Cain realized he had been holding his breath, and he let it out in a slow hiss. He shook his head. “It’s better to leave Caldeum now,” he said.
James frowned. “It’s still dark, and she’s got nothing but the clothes on her back. The house is full of soot—”
“Thank you,” Cain said, “but I will get her what she needs.” He put a hand on James’s shoulder. “You have done more for us than we have the right to ask. But we have been ordered to leave this place or face a jail cell, and I have urgent business in another town that cannot wait.”
For a moment the big man seemed about to protest, but then he shrugged. “If you insist,” he said. He looked at Leah. When the girl tried to hand him his cloak, he waved it away. “Keep that until you find one that fits you better. It’s a lucky one, you know. Saved my life once. Maybe it’ll do the same for you.”
Leah pulled the cloak back around her shoulders. It fell well below her knees, long enough to be a dress on her. Cain shook James’s hand, then turned to Leah. “It’s time,” he said. “No sense in waiting any longer.”
Leah followed him obediently enough. If leaving her childhood home gave her any pause, raised any depth of emotion, she did not show it. As they made their way toward the city gates, Cain looked back only once and found James staring after them, still in the same spot where they had left him. He raised a hand in the man’s direction, but received nothing in return.
Outside the gates, a breeze picked up grains of sand and sent them skittering across the nearly empty road with a sound like fingernails across a board. The trade tents, empty now, flapped in the wind like the wings of gray birds disturbed in their sleep.
Cain led the way, Leah a few short steps behind. Now she dragged her feet, staring down at the dusty road, her head hanging like a convicted prisoner headed to the gallows. But she did not speak or utter a sound. Several guards looked the strange pair up and down but did not move to stop them. They were trained to keep the wrong people out of Caldeum, not prevent them from leaving.
The sun was beginning to lighten the sky, bringing a slight tinge of warmth above the mountains in the distance. They passed a small group of weary travelers in a mule-driven cart, the back piled high with colorful cloth. A small boy sat cross-legged on the top of the pile and stared somberly at them as the cart wobbled by.
A short distance farther on, they reached a fork in the road. Cain stopped, leaning heavily on his staff. To his right the road ran toward the sea, and held more travelers and was well worn; to his left, another road led toward Kurast, this one rutted and empty, weeds beginning to sprout through the dust.
Kurast. A dead city, full of rapists, murderers, and worse. What kind of place was that for a child? Yet they must go there, for the road to salvation led through it, if he was right; in Kurast, he would find an answer to the mystery of the book and the mages calling themselves Horadrim, who were there or somewhere just beyond. Cain hardly dared hope that they existed. But if so, they might be able to help with whatever was happening with Leah. And they might just hold the key to saving Sanctuary from eternal darkness.
As the two figures stood at the crossroads, it seemed as if the lightening sky turned black again, and a chill swept through the land, and Deckard Cain felt that same monstrous, unseen presence fill the night like a black cloud blotting out the stars. He thought of the protective spell that Adria had cast over her daughter’s whereabouts so many years ago, a spell that had remained intact until Cain appeared on Gillian’s doorstep. Even after that, it had held its magic. But the fire had changed something, had damaged the spell somehow, and now, whatever might have been looking for them had a window to peer through.
The voice of the demon in the Vizjerei ruins came back to him: Our master comes . . .
The chill crept into Cain’s bones and settled there, turning his aching knees to blocks of ice and sending a shiver through his body. Quickly he laid his staff down in the dirt and fumbled through his rucksack, the little girl just behind him all but forgotten in the urgency of need, his fingers like fat, dead things that would not obey his command. Finally he pulled a scroll free and cradled it in his hands as his heart raced in his chest and his blood thumped in his ears. An artifact left to him by Adria, saved for such a time as this.
They will find you before long, and if they do, this quest is over before it even begins . . .
His voice slowly gaining strength as he went, Cain uttered aloud the words of power from a scroll of misdirection and protection he had gotten from Adria long ago, casting an invisible cloak over them to hide them from sorcerers’ eyes, at least for a short time.
For so many years, he had denied the existence of Horadric power, banished the truth of his ancestry to the depths of dusty, forgotten trunks and musty, book-lined chambers, fought against his mother’s teachings, refusing to see behind the veil of what he perceived as madness. He had lived in denial, putting his trust in scholarly pursuits of a more mundane nature. But the world of magic, of demons and angels, had always been there, waiting for him to find it, the struggle of good against evil, playing out as it had for centuries, an eternal battle for control of Sanctuary and the souls of those men, women, and children who lived their lives in blissful ignorance. The power of evil was always present, and always close, like the hot breath of a beast upon his neck. Cain himself had tasted it long ago, and had spent the rest of his life trying to shut away the horrible memory, at least until the invasion of Tristram and the rise of Diablo had forced the truth upon him.