Oathbreaker ch. 9.39 - Silence (Patreon)

Peace, for a little while. I knew its taste, but this one felt different.

I left the hot north for the cold south, joining my wizard in a lonely castle on an island off the southern shores of the inland sea. It was a gray, foggy land of old woods and ghosts, but the old tower was warm and well built. There were books I hadn’t read and the simple pleasure of a new lover with the resilience to withstand me.

It wasn’t retirement. Didikas was no homebody, and he was in the middle of some elaborate intrigue. The same great game wizards had been playing for thousands of years, I assumed. I let him have his play. I would grow bored enough to scheme again eventually, but would be satisfied with imported wines and rich furs for a while. Didikas would probably ask me to participate in his plots, and I would, and eventually start indulging in my own.

I didn’t dislike that future. My ambition was as much a part of me as my hunger for souls, but like the latter, it went through periods of dormancy.

It came to be midwinter. We were just far enough north of the savage deep south that winters were merely very wet, and the sea climate meant nearly omnipresent fog. It encircled the tower for miles, a heavy, slow brume that subsumed it in a purgatory of gray quiet. Looking out a window at that rolling blanket of sea fog, I imagined it as a protective blanket shielding me from the world and all its troubles. Or, more precisely, shielding the world from me. The damp air smelled of opportunity and possibility, and of new things beyond the veil.

I sipped some wine and finished penning my resignation letter to the Campanile. Harmodian had given me no reason to resent him. That was an era of my life I would remember fondly, and the letter acted as a bittersweet farewell to the persona of Domina Ekasne. When done, I took more wine and recalled a recent comment Didikas had made, the sort of blandly critical trifle he liked to sneak into regular conversation. I drank often lately, and he disliked it.

I stared out at the rolling fog. I read the letter again, and decided I didn’t like it — the tutor I’d been would have used a more precise word here, a less fond affirmation there — and made another. That one seemed even more wrong, and I became frustrated. That led to more wine.

I’d been that person for a century. Why was I struggling to find her?

I gave up and found Didikas in his study, where I distracted him. We ended in his bed, and it came to be an hour before dawn when he extricated himself and began to dress.

“Where are you going?” I asked him, letting an arm dangle off the bedside.

“I have a factor to meet at the port in Lyre,” he said as he pinned his shirt. He dressed in more elegant clothes, I noted. The nobly born gentleman rather than the vagabond mage.

“Hm. Would you like me to go with you?”

“You’ll find it dull.” He adjusted his collar — he’d become apt at dressing without a mirror. I didn’t allow them in our rooms.

“I find staying here like a pining housewife dull.” I stretched, and resisted the urge to let my wings and tail out. I was in human shape then. Didikas did not like making love while I was in my preferred form.

“I’ll only be a day or two.” He found his scepter and belted it at his hip like a sword, then took a small ball of painted glass from a little box on the nightstand, which he took a minute to fix into the empty socket of his left eye. When done, he made for the door. He froze when I moved from the bed to lacing my arms about his neck. I’d crossed that distance in a mere eyeblink and placed my lips to his neck.

“You wouldn’t have a pretty face waiting for you at Lyre, would you?” I pressed my lips to his neck and inhaled. He smelled of power, like there was a crackling storm just beneath the thin barrier of his skin.

He smiled and patted my arm. “There’s a trader with news from the subcontinent.”

One of his seemingly innumerable spies and informants. There’d been a brief period where I suspected he might be seeing someone else, so I’d followed him and listened in on a few of his rendezvous. They were interesting, and I’d learned some things and made some theories, but I’d stopped shadowing him every time.

I wouldn’t have been overly angry if he had been cheating on me. It would be interesting to see if this new thing would survive a few sweet hearts being served to him for dinner. Didikas was no moralist or idealist, and I’d thought of many ways to test the boundaries of him and I.

Masking these thoughts, I said, “What news from the subcontinent?”

He seemed to care a great deal about what was happening in Urn. I did not. The war between light and darkness hadn’t interested me in a long time.

“I hear there’s a plague ravaging the eastern kingdoms.” He shrugged.

There was something strange in his voice. Curiosity? Satisfaction? Now my interest was piqued.

He had a messenger from the west recently too.

“What games are you playing, wizard?” I used a teasing voice and bit his ear.

Didikas winced and leaned away. “I’m not quite sure yet, but I won’t be playing them at all if I’m late.”

I let him go. He left without so much as a goodbye kiss. For some time, I considered that conversation and the mystery of Wandering Didikas. I wondered why Zifar Ludriq had called him the fox, and why he sometimes dreamed about being a fool in a court of devils. He didn’t let me in his dreams, which made it hard to learn more.

After brooding a while, I put on a robe and went to the tower’s small library. The fleshy homonculi Didikas kept as servants shied from me. Ghosts, the omnipresent vermin of every old castle or ruin, scurried from my shadow. I spent time reading. I had more wine. I listened to the quiet. I glanced at the dead elf kept on one of the library walls. It held its true form in death, its compound eyes bright as sapphires.

Didikas had a fascination with them. I was busy considering why when I heard the voice. It was quiet and far off, barely more than the ethereal whisper of any other ghost, and yet…

—me.

I thought it was the elf at first. They were as immortal as demons — we were close cousins — and I’d sensed an awareness in the cadaver before. But after an hour of standing almost face to face with the insectoid thing and nothing happening, I made to return to my distractions.

—ease, just—

It came at the library’s door, stronger now. My gaze went to the end of the corridor outside, where a stairwell descended further down.

Driven mostly by curiosity, I went to the stairs and descended. There were parts of the tower I hadn’t explored in the months I’d lived there — it was a burrow-sanctum and larger inside than out — and I soon found one of the sections I’d not visited. The entrances were all located high up and required magic to access. The lower passages were quiet and still. I couldn’t even hear the sea down in that darkness.

“I hear you,” I said.

And the voice came, clear as my own thoughts.

“Help me.”

Feeling playful and thinking it was merely another ghost, I answered. “I will help you. Tell me how to find you.”

A light breeze stirred the corridor, soft enough to be barely more than a feathery sensation against my skin. I moved towards it.

There were more stairs. I descended, and soon realized I must have gone beneath the island. It went very deep. There were more rooms and chambers below, many empty, but the regular stir of wind lured me onward. It wasn’t unlike the sensation of soft wings beating out a draft. There was an irregular thumping sound, like a heartbeat drumming out of tune.

When I reached a dead end, I stopped and canted my head to the side, at first thinking I’d been pranked by the tower spirits. They could be malicious. I glanced back to see if the way back had been closed, but saw the same hallway, the same stairwell at its end.

“Where are you?” I asked aloud. There came no answer.

I turned my attention back to the wall. It was smooth granite rather than the laid stones that made up much of the upper floors. Almost unconsciously, I lifted a hand and tapped at it with a nail. Not hollow or illusion, but… I sensed something. There were energies moving further on, almost thrumming through the stone.

Didikas probably didn’t want me snooping down here, but I was cross with him and acting out of spite as much as curiosity. I recalled that his preferred magic, what he’d used back in the old days, had involved the manipulation of earth and doorways.

With a moment’s concentration, I laid my hand flat on the wall and turned it to liquid. The change of one kind of matter into another, destruction and reformation, was the most basic kind of demonic magic. I went through, and emerged into another space on the wall’s opposite side. It would be obvious I’d tampered with the wall — my magic didn’t heal clean — but Didikas and I had barely argued since we’d gotten together and I felt we were due for one.

All my pleasant musings on the nuances of relationships went cold and silent as I saw what lay on the other side of the wall.

I’d entered a large chamber. There was a short stair between the doorway — the wall I’d just opened — and the main floor, which spread out in a long oval that gave the space a cave-like aspect. Complex shapes were carved into that floor, and on the high ceiling, making its use as a ritual chamber obvious. Auguries had been performed here, and summonings. The air stank of sorcery. There were iron spikes driven into the walls like black teeth aimed inward, made to keep energy bound inside the room and direct them towards its center. There were altars built into niches on the walls, some of them half-made. I knew them for what they were at once. Flies and beetles crawled over one to my left. Another dripped with fresh gore.

It was all set dressing for what lay at the center of the room. There, suspended by chains and long needles of iron, hung the Angel of Harkres.

It gave off a pale, weak light. The seraphim was in its natural form, a thing of many wings and glaring eyes sprouting like flower petals from a central mass of burning crystal. It should have been awe-inspiring, majestic, but suspended in that cage of metal it just looked exhausted and limp. The divine light burning from its core was weak and dim.

“I will ask as many times as it takes.” Another shape leaned into view. It was large, dark — part of the room’s darkness.

It was a demon.

The angel trapped inside the binding circle shivered, making a sound like tree leaves unsettled by wind. Its voice reverberated through spaces and dimensions — it didn’t speak, but burned its words into reality. They were filled with agony.

I…

Will not.

“This will not stop. Tell me what She did. We know that you were there, that you witnessed.”

The demon produced another spike, and with surgical calm, inserted it into the lattice pinning the angel. It screamed.

That scream…

It broke something in the world, and took me back over a thousand years and a trillion stars to a place I longed for and never wanted to see again. I—

Stood over the body of another angel. Its blood dripped down the length of the spire into void darkness far below. A cracked moon tumbled down and struck another tower, destroyed it, and even as it fell armies clashed on its surface. I stripped a piece of alabaster flesh from the wounded angel, the still-living angel, and chewed on it as I watched Heaven burn.

In the present, saliva filled my mouth and the stink of divine blood flooded my senses. I took a step back. Every one of the angel’s seventy-seven eyes fixed on me.

Help me.

The creature reached out and filled my head with images. I saw—

Ammatán standing next to his father. The boy, almost a man then, stares at the burning house and speaks.

“I’m not sure I’m ready.”

Didikas smiles. “Of course you are. I prepared you for this.”

Ammatán nods. “Its true name will be hard to find. The others are ready to head into the wastes, but…”

“I’ve already shown you where to look. The old empires paved the way for us, but we will finish the work.”

The younger man looks doubtful. “You should head the cult.”

“Not my style. You have more faith than I. Channel that into something they can follow. I’ll keep to the shadows while you gather the necessary instruments.”

The scene changes. Ammatán standing in front of a congregation in the midst of an ancient city buried by desert sands. They chant a name over and over.

Samaoth. Samaoth. Samaoth.

Silver fire flickers in Ammatán’s eyes.

Another place. The chamber where we fought Samaoth and the God-Saint. The great pit in the center yawns wide and empty. Didikas stands with another man, a brute in armor with long hair and a long beard, his eyes full of madness and hunger. His dead flesh is animated by something foul and very old, like thousands of sentient worms crawl beneath his skin.

“Your brat almost ruined this,” the armored man says.

Didikas stares at the place where the angel had hidden itself. “He could not contend with both Samaoth and Artureon at once. None of us could have expected them to conspire together. Besides, the cult was always a disposable tool. They extracted the true names of no less than five Abgrûdai, which is far more than I expected from them.”

The armored man grins to reveal huge ivory teeth. “And your son?”

The wizard’s voice is dispassionate. “He made a poor apprentice, but a fine devotee. Luckily, those are very easy to make. Leave the intricacies to me, Issachar. All I need from you is to keep making war. Your soldiers need to be ready when the time comes.”

The wizard turns and begins to walk towards the doors. The soldier’s yellowed eyes track him.

“Where are you going?” The soldier asks.

Didikas doesn’t even spare a glance back. “To find the one who opened Harkres to us. She enables many new strategies.”

The soldier laughs. “Don’t you have the thing’s true name? Just call it back.”

“It’s always better to have a tool which wants to fit your hand than one strangled in it, my friend. This one is a demon who wants to playact at being human. Besides, there are gifts I want that have to be given freely…”

In the hidden chamber beneath the wizard’s tower, the demon stoked the flames beneath the  captive angel and pulled at one of the hooked chains. Its eyes went out of focus and tore me from the vision.

I took another step back. Behind me a calm voice said, “I planned to bring you down here after a year or two and explain things. I should have guessed the Onsolain would meddle.”

The voice was refined and light, tinged with an aristocratic lilt. The voice I’d heard on occasion when I peeked through the cracks in his armor.

“I would have found my way down here on my own.” I surprised myself by speaking in a similarly neutral manner to his. “I get bored easily.”

I turned to face Didikas. He stared back at me with calm appraisal. Waiting to see what I’d do.

“When I was in Harkres,” I said as the angel continued to be tortured behind me, “Zifar Ludriq asked me if someone named Reynard had sent me. That’s you, isn’t it?”

The wizard sketched a slight smile. He wore a fine doublet of black and red over a shirt with white sleeves, and his dark hair was combed back from his lean features. Above his long, elegant nose and thin lips, his mismatched eyes didn’t so much as waver. The glass one caught the firelight and seemed to glow.

“It’s the name I’ve used during my time beyond these shores.” His smile took on an edge of nostalgia. “You saw that briefly in my dreams, do you remember? After Narahn chased me from Rot Voraag, I passed through mist and water and found myself in some very strange lands. There are whole worlds inside the cracks, Shyora, lands betwixt Heaven and Hell where even angels and demons rarely tread. I spent an age lost in those while you were in the Abyss. I suppose our journeys mirrored one another? I didn’t even re-emerge into this world until after that upstart goddess reknit the planes and gave me a path back.”

The angel let out another cry. The demon hadn’t stopped its work.

“We can talk about this upstairs.” Didikas arched an eyebrow. “This environment isn’t exactly conducive to idle conversation, but I can explain everything.”

My true form boiled beneath my flesh, itching to come out. I’d hidden it deep because he seemed to like me in human shape. Because he liked me weak. How had I not seen it before? I could smell mortal lies.

“Ammatán never betrayed you, did he? Even up until those last moments, he was your devoted tool.”

He studied me a moment, looking surprised, then glanced at the angel and his lips parted in a silent “Ah.”

“Your son?” I asked. “You were ready to destroy me for threatening him!”

He shrugged and inspected his trimmed nails. “He was important to my plans. Of course, I thought he’d become Magi then… besides, you seemed affected by the boy when we had that encounter in Ember. I didn’t think telling you that he botched things while binding demons for me would endear you to helping me in Bradivara. I know how attached you’ve always gotten to your mortal pets.”

“You are mortal,” I hissed, though I was no longer sure. I let out a hiss as I realized the truth. “When did you gain the Profane Gift? I never gave you that favor.”

He studied his nails, looking bored. “I’ve obtained many. Other demons do not play as hard to get as you, my dear.”

He was something like a cambion. Not born a demon, but the differences were academic at best. How could I have failed to see it until then? His ichorous soul had been so well camouflaged by that cloak of mortal arcana that I’d been beguiled by the one and failed to notice the other. Ironic, in a way.

He let out a short bark of laughter, almost a cough. “I am Magi! I’ve transcended all human limits! Men like me have ruled this world for thousands of years! We invited the wrath of God and survived it. We’ve peeled open the skin of Creation and learned how to tamper with its levers. We opened the Abyss and made the stars bleed!”

“As our dupes.” I insisted.

He waved a hand as though he could bat my words from the air. “My dear, your entire race is little more than a very old kind of homonculi. You wouldn’t even have form if the ancient scholars hadn’t fashioned them for you.” At my glare, his smirk faded and he gave me a steady, knowing look. “You think this pretty mask you wear is what you really are? Come now, Shyora, don’t play the fool.”

“I am as I choose to be,” I told him.

He snorted. “Some horny alchemist in Aghar a few millennia back imagined one of their daemons should look like a comely woman with dragon wings, and he shoved your consciousness into that shape so he had something to beat off to while he pestered you for cosmic secrets. You’re a frustrated old man’s wet dream given flesh.”

I felt I might choke on my indignation. “I chose my form to resemble the first succubus! It was my will.”

“Do you think it was hers?” He lifted a hand to point behind me. “She once looked very much like that.”

I refused to turn and look at the tormented seraphim. All my focus, my anger, fixed on that one arrogant mortal.

“What do you want?” I asked him. “What was all of this for? Why do you need demons? Why this?”

I swiped a hand at the room and its horrors.

The wizard spread his hands out as though I’d just asked him an impossible question. “Because it knows what the God-Queen did. I’m gathering as much information as I can.”

“For what purpose?”

His long fingers laced together. “To undo it. This world is a prison, Shyora. A prison for men like me so that we can’t touch the levers anymore.”

“That’s all this is about?” I asked in disbelief. “You want power? You want to be a god?”

He shrugged. “All men want to be gods. I’ve been a beggar and a fool before. I’ve watched power be abused and wasted, and I’ve stood by and watched those who hold it wither under its weight. Those of us who sit in the wings, in the shadows, see all the ugliness that lies under the light. I’m done watching.”

He extended a hand. “Join me. You wanted to be a queen once. I can make you a goddess.”

I slid my hands up my own arms. What I’d wanted was to stop feeling cold.

“You said you loved me,” I said in a quiet voice.

“Of course I love you.” His crooked smile returned. “You were the first thing I ever loved. You were heartless and strong, and full of wicked guile. I was ready to give you a piece of my soul. Ah, I was brazen that day! My left eye hasn’t stopped aching since the moment you ate it in front of me. You are the most lethal of all succubi, Pernicious Shyora, and I want you at my side.”

“If that’s all you wanted,” I told him with icy calm, “then you could have simply bound me.”

He hesitated, and his expression changed. That handsome patrician face turned petulant, almost boyish. And I understood then.

I began to laugh. It started small, almost a little sob, but within moments it became a full belly laugh. His expression soured, that look of sudden vulnerability intensifying, which made the laughter worse.

“You…” I wiped at the corner of my eye. “You wanted me to choose to be your loyal pet, didn’t you? Because if I didn’t you would always wonder if it was real, is that not right?”

He seemed to struggle for words, something he did not usually do. “Don’t be absurd.”

“You haven’t changed at all! You’re still that jealous vagabond lurking with the beggars and the flies, looking up at the works of your betters and choked with envy. Do you know why I was attracted to you back then, Didikas?”

His fingers curled over his palm as he drew his hand back. “Why?”

“Because…” I stifled another fit of giggles with a hand over my mouth. “Because you were just so pathetic. It was cute. You know I’ve always liked the pitiable ones? I liked Ekasne because she was a tortured artist, and Arlee because her life was just so sad. I liked Fell because, beneath everything, he was a helpless romantic. And I liked Narahn because he was so fixated on healing a dead city. And you…” I lowered my hand and all the mirth drained from me. “I liked you because you were a powerless, arrogant, lost soul… and I thought you and I were alike in so many ways. I thought you were a kindred spirit.”

His voice was cold and devoid of all pretense at affection. “And you do not think that now?”

I spoke coldly as well. “No. Now I think you’re just another fool with delusions, and I’m bored of you.”

He nodded and his anger retreated behind a calm that seemed in itself far more dangerous. “I see. That is a shame.”

I started to shapeshift into my true form, but the wizard was faster. All he needed to do was say a handful of words. And he used the weapon that had always hung between us, the thing which made it impossible for he and I to ever be equal or safe to one another, which in my hope and conceit I’d allowed him to keep.

He spoke my true name.

The cosmos bent its will around the words. Gears worked into the walls of reality shifted, and the sound of my true name stiffened the cords of my spirit and froze me to the spot.

The wizard lifted his chin. “Kneel.”

I tried to resist. I did, for a moment, and the pain was… indescribable. When I fell to my hands and knees, it was with enough force to make bones crack. The whole chamber shuddered like in an earthquake, dust raining from the ceiling. My being, both the physical vessel and the darkling ichor that hid within it, shuddered with agony.

I couldn’t even look up as my new master stepped close and grabbed my hair to lift my face up. His expression was mild, but the copper glint of the eye I’d left him burned with satisfaction and rage.

“I’d rather have not done things this way,” he said. “It’s tedious and untidy. Don’t speak. I order you to a year and a day of silence. I’ve had quite enough of your rancid, poisonous mouth.”

My teeth clicked together so hard that one cracked. Every nerve and sinew in my body vibrated like a carelessly plucked cord.

“Kur, prepare another niche. I’ll start carving the idol tonight. It seems seven will become eight.”

Somewhere beyond my agony, the other demon made a reply I didn’t hear. My hand scraped the floor, claws gouging into the stone. I was trying to find the angel, silently pleading for its help now.

But there was no help for either of us. We were both abandoned.

“Ah, that hurts, doesn’t it?” The man once called Didikas leaned in to whisper into my ear. “Did you know that your name is a spell? A very powerful one. It binds you even as it gives you identity. A strange thing, isn’t it? The very thing that makes you self-aware also hurts so much. I’ve always wondered, do you think the reason spirits respond to their names after repetition is because the pain would be too great otherwise? We have an interesting opportunity to find out.”

He said my name again, directly into my ear. Some of my hair tore off in his fist as I writhed. I wanted to scream, but…

He’d ordered me to silence.

End of Arc 9