The Pact, page 6
part #1 of The Dark Roads Series
"I'll burn all of you before you touch me."
"Daddy, look!" The keep's daughter pointed, eyes wide in fright. "Look! The devil's letter's branded on her skin!"
The crowd behind them started to sway. Some of the men tried to push past, to climb the stairs and get at her.
Serenity turned her gaze on the wooden banister and forked a sign at it. "Raidho!"
The beam uprooted from its spot, splintering and twisting under the command of the chariot rune, the rune for movement. Serenity whipped the sign at the oncoming attackers, throwing the wooden planks with it. It swept the men backward, leaving most of them struggling back to their feet under piles of lumber. A second wave of the mob came at her, incensed by her assault, shouting more loudly and more rabidly than before. They moved like a swarm...and they didn't look apt to quit.
Fire burned in Serenity's guts. It pulsed through her on her heartbeat, and the blood on her palms radiated with its heat. The thoughts of her books whirled madly through her mind, her own precious journal violated and destroyed, her shelter defiled. And her rune cards, Jack's birthday rune cards, stolen and carried away by boorish, spineless idiots.
Anger sparked and flickered into rage. Thunder echoed distantly in her ears, and she bared her teeth.
"You're going to die."
Within her, D'aej uncoiled himself and made ready. Sly pleasure seethed through all the darkest places where his shadowy presence touched her.
She spun to face the southern wall of the boarding house, and made another sign with her left hand. The wooden planks ran through with cracks and splinters, then buckled, pulled down by the black magic she kindled.
As chunks of siding collapsed, the shouts of the mob turned into cries of fear. Some of them scattered, scrambling over one another to get away. Some still came at her, waving their weapons and ropes, chanting a fervent litany of psalms and verses from their holy books, dogma of the church put up like a shield before them.
The barkeep swept his daughter aside and charged up the stairs, taking aim with the blunderbuss. Serenity held out her right hand and let her fingers dance.
Activate the inner elements, D'aej whispered.
"Laguz."
The rifle exploded, blowing the man down the stairs, his hands maimed with twisted metal and his face scorched. He screamed. His daughter's shrieks rose to echo his.
D'aej hissed and writhed. Yes!
"You think fire purifies, do you?" Serenity growled at the barkeep. "How pure is ash and cinder? How clean is a pile of soot?"
She raised both hands, chanting in the language of the darklings. D'aej slid forward until he filled her completely, every cell, every vein, two souls drawing on the blackness of the otherworld. On her chest, the old scar, the rune seared there in angry reverse, grew hot along with the blood on her hands, blazingly hot. As Serenity and D'aej called on the power, the scarred flesh reddened, throbbing and glowing like coals.
The primal torch...
"Kenaz."
Tracks of fire raced down the stairs and the walls, leaping from her fingertips into unseen veins in the planks and beams around them. The damaged wall cracked apart and rained down in pieces. The other two walls creaked and groaned. The lines of the blaze zigzagged across the wood and the floor, creating the sign of the torch rune all around her. Those still coming caught the flames from every side as the building began to burn.
Do it, Serenity! Show them what you really are!
Behind her, Serenity heard, sensed the cries of those still in their beds, the ones who came into the halls at the sounds of the shouting, and neighbors waking up to find the boarding house burning like a beacon.
"Don't like a witch, is that it?" she shouted. "Well, you made one serious mistake here, people! I'm no witch! I'm no weaver! I am thurisaz, the hammer and thorn!"
The supernatural tempest of the hagalaz rune whipped around her at D'aej's quick command, a cunning chain whipped from one hand to the other. Her feet left the floor and she hovered just above it, the fire surrounding her, encircling her, a halo of bright, leaping flame.
"Her eyes!" the girl cried out from below. "Look at her eyes!"
The walls quaked and crumbled. Around them, their whole side of the hotel started to come down. The wails of the otherworlders filled Serenity's ears as the roar of destruction grew, and she could see them, darting and sweeping shadows going hungrily out to feed, snickering and full of joy as the people panicked. Strangers came running from their rooms and tried to push past her to escape, but the flame burned too bright, too intense. Others took their chances and jumped from the railing. Some got lucky, and made it to the door and out into the night. The stairs before her were eaten by the flame, eaten by the avenging hunger of the otherworlders, their vibrant, violent energy bleeding from her body as the blood pulsed on her palms.
Finally, Serenity threw her head back, surrendering to the fury, as the barroom, the landing, and even the closest upstairs room, collapsed all around them.
D'aej took hold of their body, suspending it as the floor dropped out beneath them. Protecting her with his dark talents.
Survivors of the downfall scurried over the debris, trying to escape the fire. She touched down gently on a broken card table unharmed. The halo of flame dissipated as she walked across the wreckage toward the street.
Good job keeping yourself together there, by the way.
"Oh, shut up," she growled. Her long hair drifted delicately around her on the web of the otherworld, the scar on her chest searing from the wicked exhilaration.
She'd blood-kindled the spell without meaning to. The lacerations on her palms had fed each curse an extra surge of power. She didn't so much mind it now, but later, she'd feel it like a bad hangover, and she'd regret it.
She wouldn't regret other things, though. She promised herself she wouldn't regret doing what had to be done.
Townspeople panicked all around her. They called for rescue, to put out the flames and save the people still inside. She walked down the town's main road without stopping. Some tried to grab at her, to seize her and rope her for hanging, or perhaps to throw her back on her own flames.
"Oh-DIAR!"
The street whipped into disorder as she forked the rune of movement in reverse. Hitching posts flew up from their places, careening into the crowds and scattering bodies. Signs and batwings flipped up off their hinges and came flailing down on passersby. Dust and rocks swirled into the whipping air.
Careful, fleshling, you're using too much power...
"ZU-gal!"
Men and women stopped in their tracks and keeled over, vomiting and fainting in the grip of a curse for sickness.
Serenity, stop!
"If you don't want to die, don't try and stop me!" she shouted at them. Her words echoed with D'aej's voice, screaming like the screech of an angry mountain cat, rocking her assailants and throwing them off their feet. The blood seared her palms so deeply, she caught a whiff of her own burning flesh.
Despite his protests, his plea for caution, her demon swelled within her, feverishly intent, managing the maelstrom. He kept the energy burning, feeding the power through her, twisting the ways of the runes through her hands.
And finally, no one tried to stop her.
***
The city square stood silent, alien and strange after the chaos of the main street she left behind. She and D'aej were alone here. Everyone else in Tyr Salem was somewhere back in the chaos, trying to save what they could.
The church loomed, rigid and angry, before her. Great and tall and dark with shadow at this hour of night, it seemed to wait, offended and self-righteous, for the witch to approach. The windows glared down on her like eyes, the glass dark and ruby-red.
She stared up at it in return. "Can we go in?"
She sensed something like a shrug through their mental link. I don't know, really. I have no idea what the strength of the charms around it may be.
Unspoken came his grim certainty she'd blown far too much power with her blood-quickened curses. Serenity grimaced and wiped her palms on her jeans. Her blood ran cold again, no longer fueled by her unchecked rage. "You're not afraid of a little church, are you?"
I didn't say I feared it. I simply said I didn't know how they might have fortified it against my kind.
"It's a thieves' church!" she shouted, issuing challenge as though to the building itself. "A house of liars and hypocrites! A place of self-serving, chauvinistic, high-handed pricks!"
Fleshling, why are you yelling?
She quieted, but still she seethed.
Just go up to the door and go in. If we absolutely must, we can use a spell, but if you aren't careful you're going to burn us both out entirely.
Serenity kept still for a moment, eyeing the church. It didn't look so powerful, after all. Nothing but a stone building with fancy glass windows and pretty symbols carved into its walls. Mentally, she scrolled through the futhark, warding its powers against the icons of the believers. And she approached the door.
It hung ajar. As if in waiting. She peered at it, scrutinizing, and then went in.
The sanctuary was huge. Far greater than any building she'd ever been in before, a great, echoing chamber with a ceiling higher than she'd ever seen. Far too big for such a small town, opulent and arrogant, cold through and through and stinking of sour wine and old, stale incense.
It appeared to be abandoned. She sprinted down the center aisle, waiting for someone, the monk or his brothers, to call out and try to stop her, but the room held silent except for the sound of her own footfalls. At the front stretched a dais, and on the dais an altar.
Her rune cards lay spread out upon it, face up and in order, each one reversed.
"Thanks be," she muttered, counting them twice before picking them up. Out of habit she shuffled and re-shuffled them before sliding them into her pocket.
There, you have your cards. Can we go now? We've used a damn lot of energy for such a simple errand.
"You do what you have to do," she reminded him, turning away from the altar.
The monk stood in wait for her, halfway up the aisle—appeared out of nowhere again, quick and quiet as a scavenging rat. He glared at her with eyes brimming with mean shock and disgust.
"Witch," he spat. "I knew it as soon as I saw you. Devil! Bride of—"
Serenity threw the sigh of fehu at him, the sign of the cattle's horns, and it caught him high in the chest to send him stumbling backward. The power issued forth a bit weaker than usual. D'aej wormed about in her head, suffocated in the holy place, sapped by the wards against demons and hollowed out by the ravaging curses she'd twisted back in the tavern. But the spell cast the insufferable priest to the stone, striking him down with a callous resentment, and she stalked across the aisle at him.
"How dare you come into this place of worship!" he sputtered, crawling backward on his behind as she came closer. "How dare you—"
"How dare I?" she snarled.
"Murderer!"
"All I wanted was a place to rest for the night," she snapped. "A room and a bed, and to be left alone. I didn't come here to harm anyone. But somehow, I get you, chastising me in the street, thinking to tell me what I can and can't wear even while you sit there ogling, and I get your servants breaking into my room and burning years and years' worth of study, and then I get a mob of your people screaming for my blood, planning on hanging me in the middle of the night. And you, padre, you have the gall to call me a murderer?"
"The Lord will repay you in kind!" the priest shrieked. "When you come here, doing the devil's work! Wearing his symbol upon your breast! Whore! Devil's whore!"
She leaned down and grabbed him by the front of his robes, pulling him up to meet her eyes. "You're right," she hissed. "I do the devil's work. I wear his mark. I traffic with demons, and I command their power. So it might have been wise of you and your people not to piss me off."
D'aej seized the moment from her and surged forward, filling her mind and body again. This time, he brought with him a wild hunger, snarling and spitting. It consumed the darkling, turning him into a vicious carnivore. Serenity understood what he meant to do, but she had no strength to snap him out of it before it was done.
He took control, forked two fingers of their free hand, and thrust them into the preacher's eyes.
The monk screamed as his sensitive organs burst under the darkling's touch. Tiny, dark flames sparked in the wounded sockets. D'aej's power snaked into him, burning him from the inside, and as it gained momentum with the dying preacher's anguish, it blazed in him, hollowed him out and consumed his body, its life, its energy. A smell like roasted pig rose into the air as D'aej swelled with renewed strength. Shouts from the others, the brothers still hiding in the cloisters, rose up all around them in alarm.
Did you have to do that? she chided wearily. He controlled the mouth now, their roles reversed for a time, and Serenity had been pushed into the under-mind.
"You can't burn my magic like some cheap lamp oil and expect me not to take replenishment when it is offered." D'aej purred as the monk's vitality filled him, soured and rotten but still delicious. The darkling's humor was quickly restored. "Should we bring down the rest of this place, too?"
No reason to, at this point, Serenity replied. Let's just get the horse and go.
"As long as they haven't gutted it for a demon's mount, you mean." He dropped the priest's carcass, now leaking smoke from the cracks and pits left in its blackened skin, and kicked it aside as they left the church. Before exiting the grand doors, however, he turned back, glaring at the altar and the symbols hung on the walls all around it.
D'aej had no need of words to cast his magic. He placed one hand on the stonework beside the door and with the other made the sign of wunjo, the sign of prosperity and good health, in merkstave. The rock shivered, and a dark split ran through it, traveling around the holy walls and cracking, shattering, breaking each reverent icon, each artful relic as it passed, turning the remains old and sick with mold and mottling.
He turned away and prowled out into the night, as whatever magic protected the believers from his kind was broken with the destruction of their idols.
"Let them remember us, in any case," he growled. "Let them remember the witch who crumbled them and their faith to the ground."
A strange moment occurred where their minds met in passing, hers gliding forward and his retreating. Dizziness passed over her, swaying her stomach and head, and she had to pause, catching her breath.
The shouts of more sufferers rose from the shadowy building behind them. But she didn't bother to look back.
***
Serenity's horse hadn't been killed. The stable hands either forgot about him, or assumed they could sell him for a good bit of coin after his owner conveniently died. Whatever the reason, the gentle animal remained unharmed, happily munching feed in his stall. She cooed to him as she pulled down his saddle and fit it, stroking his neck and happy he'd been spared. The horse had nothing to do with demons, witches, robbers, or lynch mobs, after all. He was only a poor beast, and a good beast at that.
The chaos had spread by the time they rode out of the stables. The fire from the hotel moved on to other prey, laying a claim on the neighboring building and still going. It might even take the whole street, judging by the size it had acquired. Efforts to contain it seemed futile by now. The smart folk had given up trying to help and gone running to care for their own needs. No one could be sure any buildings would survive in this dry and windy desert climate, so the time had come to hoard valuables and get to a safe distance. The blaze would keep going until it had nothing left to take.
Unless, of course, someone—someone like Jack, maybe—knew the rune for suffocated fire, or the rune for rain or ice, and could drown the flames with a simple sign.
The thought crossed Serenity's mind. She sat tall in her saddle, watching the fire merrily burn, watching the people giving up and running away. She could put a stop to it, just as easily as she'd started it. The power was there, tired as she might be, husked out and hollow, the blood on her hands dried and useless. She could still save what remained to save, if she really had to, and let the people lick their wounds in peace, lesson learned and no more harm done.
Or she could simply leave. With a shake of her head, she turned the horse east, and began to ride.
If they'd left me alone... if they'd just let me be...
They rode out into the desert, away from the conflagration of Tyr Salem. She rode without looking back, fiercely determined not to divert from her path, counting time with the horse's hooves to keep her mind and eyes away from what she left behind.
Finally, far, far out into the bone-white sands, she allowed the horse to stop, and turned to look upon her work. She could see it in the distance, a torch flame in the darkness, pouring smoke into the night.
She had done that. She had set a town to burn.
"I had to, Jack." Her fingers played on her scar, sending a twinge of pain through her chest. "They would have killed me if I hadn't."
D'aej stayed silent in her mind. But she sensed him, distantly smug, smiling like a satisfied cat.
CHAPTER SIX
Serenity didn't know how much longer D'aej kept them going on the road that night. Drained and now sick to her stomach from so much action, she found herself drifting away from it all. Her thoughts roamed, taking her back to the bounty, the man who'd brought her here, who waited somewhere ahead of them on the trail. Catching him, finally bringing this long pursuit to an end, that would make all she'd been through, all she'd done, worth it.
But then her thoughts took her back to the beginning, back to Jack and the Wolf's Den.
You could do great things, Serenity.
They sat together at their table in back, studying the futhark. He guided her hands over the cards, reciting the names of the runes, their associated meanings, the interconnections.
