The Order, page 15
Eventually they reached another large room, with an enormous wooden table set for a meal. A gray-haired woman who might have been about Gillian’s age stood muttering to herself. Brand clapped his hands, and she immediately scurried off.
“We were about to sit down for supper,” Brand said. “Fill your bellies, and then I would be pleased to hear more about your travels.”
Leah sat down with Cain at one end of the table. A few moments later the servants returned with heaping platters full of steaming food: whole chickens skewered on blackened sticks; thick, juicy slices of red meat; asparagus; potatoes; and loaves of warm bread. In spite of herself, Leah’s stomach rumbled, and she and Cain sat down at one end of the long table and dug in as Brand settled across from them and watched intently with his fingers steepled before his nose, the ghost of a smile still on his face.
The food was strangely tasteless, but Leah didn’t care; it was hot, and there seemed to be an endless supply. She tore into a leg of chicken, juices running down her chin, and ripped off a chunk of bread to mop up the pool of salty broth on her plate. The potatoes burned her fingers, but she ate them anyway, and washed them down with a mug of wine.
Next to her, Cain ate in silence. Brand never took a single bite and simply watched them without comment, occasionally gesturing to the servants to bring more of one thing or another as supplies ran low.
Leah ate until she could not eat another mouthful. The remaining strings of meat on her plate were too rare and oozing pink fluid; she swallowed against the gorge that suddenly swelled in her throat, and as she looked around, the room filled with shadows that pooled in the corners and crept like black mist.
“So tell me,” Brand said, breaking the silence. “What is your business in Kurast?”
Cain looked up from his plate. His eyes looked glassy in the firelight. “I’d rather not say,” he said. “But I can offer you payment for your hospitality.” He took out a gold nugget and placed it on the table.
“Fair enough. But I won’t take your gold. We don’t get many visitors here, but those who come tend to stay for longer than they expect.”
“We’ll be gone in the morning.”
“Perhaps.” Brand shook his arms to free them from the cuffs of his robe, and the fabric fluttered. A deck of cards appeared in his hand. “You look like you’re searching for something, my friends. Let me offer you a reading. The cards can suggest a possible future and can help you find the right way forward.”
He let the cards drift through his long fingers like water flowing over a drop, deftly flicking one out to the table, then another, and another. They were oversized and thick, painted with bright red and black figures; the first showed a scroll, the next a sorcerer with a serpent around his waist, the third a man on a wheeled chariot being pulled by two mules, one black, one white. “Taratcha is a misunderstood art,” Brand said. He stopped the soft rain of cards from one hand to another and placed the remaining deck on the table. “The word comes from turaq, which means ‘pathways.’ There are always multiple paths open to you. There is nothing inherently wrong with the cards themselves. But there are those who shy away from the truth, finding it too difficult to bear.” He tapped an upturned card with a shiny fingernail. “The Scroll of Fate. Changes are coming, your destiny awaits you. Forces are gathering on the horizon, something momentous.” He tapped another. “You see here, the Sorcerer. I can tell you are under great stress, and time is a heavy weight upon your necks. There are heavy choices to make, but you are resourceful. This quest consumes you, yet you are uncertain about its outcome. The answers may come from within, or from another who can bring about a transformation.” He tapped a third card. “Here, the Wheeled Chariot. It moves between spiritual planes. This can represent a great battle that can be won, if you have the strength to see it through. But it requires control over forces that may consume you and opposing needs that may pull you apart. You must overcome these opposites and bring them together in order to triumph. The Wheeled Chariot suggests a great conviction to overcome, but also an inner focus that may destroy others around you.”
Brand swept up the cards, then picked up the deck again. This time when he let the cards flow, flicking out one after another, he kept his hypnotic gaze on Cain’s face, and the cards seemed to float in slow motion before settling before them, face up. Leah saw a hooded man with wings of light, a warrior swinging a giant sword, and a tall, dark tower struck by lightning. The last one disturbed her; she could see figures falling from the tower, looks of terror on their faces.
“Justice,” Brand said. “This is paired with the second card, Judgment. There is a great tragedy in your past that must be overcome, balance restored. You are preoccupied with that tragedy, even as you try to ignore it. But it will be resurrected whether you like it or not. You must face a moment of reckoning for what you have done.”
He tapped the last card with the tall building rising up from a jagged, broken plain, its black surface cutting through storm clouds and looming over what appeared to be a city far below. Leah looked more closely at what appeared to be creatures below it, reaching up for the falling men. There was something terrifying about the card, a darkness that spread through the room. The card’s contents seemed to change as she watched, growing more detailed, the creatures writhing upon its surface.
“The Black Tower,” Brand said, his eyes focused upon Cain’s face, a slight smile on his lips. “An ill omen, I’m afraid. Chaos and destruction may come to you. Something long lost will rise again. Along with it, an epiphany and, again, transformation, as with the Sorcerer. This may be brought about by you or another, but it will come, and you will never be the same.”
Leah’s stomach churned. The card’s contents swirled and shifted, and she looked away. For a moment, what she saw did not register to her shocked senses; the food on her plate had changed. Instead of the remnants of a fine meal, the plate held strings of raw, glistening gristle and matted fur, along with a long, hairless tail curled across its edge that twitched once, and was still.
Leah shoved the plate away from her in terror and disgust as Brand appeared to grow in size, looming over the table like some kind of giant. As the room started to spin and it became harder to breathe, Leah began to see him as a monstrous, beady-eyed crow, head to one side, studying them as a bird might study a carcass on the road before pecking at the meat.
A woman came to clear her plate. The woman did not look at her or speak at all, and Leah noticed bruises on her neck, as if she’d been choked. She wanted to scream, but something was wrong with her throat. The room still spun lazily around her, but she could not make herself move. Her body clenched down hard, threatening to throw up all the food she had eaten.
“I don’t feel so well,” she said thickly. “I don’t—I don’t think—”
Lord Brand stood up so quickly the chair nearly tipped over. “You must be exhausted from your long journey,” he said. “Let me show you to your rooms. We can talk more tomorrow.”
Cain tried to stand as well. The old man’s eyes were drooping, his body sagging as if he could barely hold himself upright. Leah couldn’t seem to focus. She could not move her legs.
More of the gray, lifeless townspeople materialized from nowhere and helped them from their seats, holding their arms as they followed Brand like dull sheep through the huge manor.
The rooms seemed to go on forever, with many archways and doors leading off in different directions. Most of the doors were closed, and Leah heard thumps and low moans coming from behind them. The ceiling lowered itself above their heads, until it seemed they were walking through a narrow tunnel, cobwebs hanging in the corners, the walls dripping with moisture and covered in a strange green moss. She thought she might be dreaming, but the hands holding her up felt real; she looked at them and saw curved, yellow talons, and she tried again to scream but managed only a whisper.
Finally they ascended a stone staircase. The manor seemed to go on forever, the upper hallway receding to a pinpoint beyond these chambers, so that Leah got the feeling she was in some kind of magical structure that might house thousands. When she glanced behind them, she did not see the staircase they had ascended, even though it should have been right there.
The others were carrying her entire weight now, and when she looked at the old man, his head was slumped, his feet dragging along the floor. Darker shadows lurked, and flickering candles were set at far intervals in small recesses in the walls, leading to a set of adjoining rooms.
“Here we are,” Brand said, his long arms outstretched, directing them into a sleeping chamber with a four-poster bed in the middle that was large enough for five people. The thought of his touching her made Leah want to scream. “This should suffice. The young lady may sleep here, if she prefers.” He motioned to a second, smaller room, connected by an open door.
Cain stumbled, and Brand was at his side in an instant, saying something in his ear in a voice too low for Leah to hear. He led Cain to the bed and sat him down on it. “Sleep as long as you like. We hope you’ll be comfortable here.”
Leah tried to protest, to say something that would break the silence and make Cain wake up from his trance; but she found herself growing ever sleepier, her limbs being drawn down toward the floor and becoming impossibly heavy, and her eyes closing of their own accord, and she shuffled forward to the other room, nodding. She thought she saw Gillian standing there, waiting with open arms, but it was the Gillian she remembered from years ago, and not the one who had lost her mind and tried to kill them all. This Gillian was kind and gentle, and sang to her at night, and tucked her in as a real mother should.
Come to bed, Gillian said, and as Leah climbed onto the soft covers and closed her eyes, she thought for just a moment that Gillian’s arms had begun to grow longer and darken, shriveling into something else that slithered up the sides of the bed to wrap her in a black, soundless cocoon, before sleep took her and she drifted dreamlessly through an endless ocean.
FOURTEEN
A Stranger Comes
Deckard Cain dreamed of fire and blood. He was caged like an animal, hanging from a pole twelve feet off the ground as grotesque, gibbering demons laid waste to the last remains of his beloved Tristram.
They had returned shortly after Aidan had left the town in the dark of night. The siege on Tristram had not been over, after all, and the creatures that had descended upon it were far worse than ever before. They fed on human flesh, tearing the corpses on the ground limb from limb, chasing after those few townspeople who remained alive. The entire world had fallen into anarchy, and he, last of the Horadrim, the one remaining hope of a long and proud line of heroes, crouched impotently in his own filth, waiting to die.
In his dream, a new man appeared; his face was hooded by a dark robe, his back hunched, and he pointed a long, bony finger in Cain’s direction. The finger grew into a blackened, twisting sliver of wood, curling toward the cage, wrapping around it, weaving through the bars until they had been almost completely covered. Then the tendril of wood began to squeeze. Metal groaned and popped, and Cain huddled in the center of the cage as everything collapsed around him, pushing in on all sides until he could no longer breathe.
He was consumed, lost, abandoned, and forsaken. He was no Horadrim, and no hero. He would die here, alone, while Diablo’s two brothers, Mephisto and Baal, destroyed Sanctuary, once and for all.
Cain awoke gasping into shadows, his body flushed and covered in sweat, the covers of the bed wrapped so tightly around his body he couldn’t move. At first he remembered little about how he had gotten there, but slowly the memories began to return, and he recalled entering the strange little town, the residents all walking silently with their heads down, led by the mysterious Lord Brand, and the meal at his table, with its seemingly endless supply of food. After that, all memory was gone.
Cain cursed himself for being so careless. There was evil here, although Brand’s purpose remained unclear. What had he done to them? And who was really behind this?
Cain tried to sit up, but could not. His arms were pinned to his sides, his legs immobile.
These were no bedsheets.
The room was lit by the remains of a single candle in an alcove in the wall, sputtering down to the last half inch of wax. The flickering flame sent shadows dancing across the walls. The bed was covered with a mass of rough and tangled roots, pulsing and slithering and tightening like black snakes around him. They had grown right up out of the floor, encasing his body. As he watched in horror, more of them wriggled through cracks in the wood, growing longer and thicker as they slid up the side of the bed and whipped around it to hold him fast, their hairy sides sticking and pulling at his skin.
His staff and rucksack were sitting in the corner, out of reach.
Leah. Cain struggled, but the roots only tightened even more until it became difficult to breathe. Where was she? Was she safe?
More shadows fell across the bed. Lord Brand loomed over him, his servants behind him in gray, hooded robes. The people were chanting in low voices, and they held lanterns so that the room filled with an orange glow.
Brand held up a hand, and they stopped at once, standing like statues behind him. Brand was smiling again in that predatory way, and his eyes were bright, searching Cain’s features for something that was not clear. “Did you think you would be allowed to go to Kurast alone? To find the answers you seek?”
“Release us—”
“You will remain here, for now. Our master commands it.”
“Who is your master?”
Brand looked away, the smile fading from his face. “We are born from darkness, into light, and He shall lead us back to the fires from which this world was forged—”
“Enough!” Cain said. He tried to shout a warning to Leah, but his voice came out as a hoarse cry. The hairy roots slithered again, tightening painfully across his chest. He groaned.
Brand’s gaze fixed on his. “You are weak, Deckard Cain. You search for others to do your dirty work for you, yet you call yourself Horadrim. Those who put their trust in you have known only pain. The cards speak the truth: chaos and destruction is coming for you, and you will face a final judgment for what you have done.”
Cain reeled, as if from a blow. Brand knew exactly where to strike: Cain’s deep fear of cowardice, selfishness, and regret. I have failed. Foul demons were at work; he must not let them see his weakness. Yet he had no access to a spellbook, nothing to use that might free him from their clutches.
“How do you know who I am?”
“I know you are an old fool,” Brand hissed suddenly, thrusting his head forward like a cobra about to strike. “The plagues of Hell are coming. And they will destroy this world and all it has been, and the gates of the High Heavens will fall. We cannot stop them, but we can avoid the eternal hellfires if we do what must be done, if you are sacrificed, and the girl is given up—”
A high scream came from the adjoining room. Cain jerked his head to the right, trying to see into Leah’s room. One of the cultists was standing in the open doorway, his back to them; he stumbled and fell, as if shoved by a powerful hand.
The temperature in the room dropped, and a now-familiar charge tightened the air around them. Lord Brand stepped away from Cain’s bed, his hawk-like features registering shock, and then fear, as a great tearing sound came from Leah’s room.
Brand’s skin rippled. For a moment, his brow flattened, his nose protruded grotesquely, and eyes shrank to beady specks.
Cain sensed movement from the doorway.
Leah stood there among the shattered remains of the roots that had imprisoned her, her head up, eyes blazing. Yet it was not Leah, not exactly; something else seemed to carry her as she strode confidently through the room to Cain’s bedside, ignoring Brand, who fell away from her, arms up as if to protect himself. Leah raised her own arms, and something huge and powerful exploded out of her, blue fire licking her fingertips as the roots holding Cain’s bed tore to pieces and the cultists were thrown backward against the walls, tumbling like straw thrown by the wind.
Abruptly, Cain could breathe freely again, and he took in great gasps of air, his lungs burning, nostrils filled with a smell that was half copper, half foul bog, a sulfurous stench that made his stomach churn. He climbed from the bed and gathered his rucksack and staff. When he turned back, Leah was still standing there, motionless, and when he grabbed her arm, she turned docilely toward him, her face slack and lifeless. He snapped his fingers before her, but she did not seem to react. Some kind of trance again, similar to the one he had seen back in Caldeum. But there was no time to explore it further. Already the people on the floor were stirring.
Where the roots had been was a scattering of black seeds. Cain scooped some up and dropped them in his sack, then led Leah to the door and down the hall to the stairs. The entire house seemed to have shifted in the night; the hallway turned a corner, and the stairway appeared farther away than he remembered and curved back upon itself. He fought back the disorientation, and they descended as quickly as possible. On the bottom floor, the layout had changed, and he led them through more hallways than he remembered and past rooms they had not seen.
Finally he found the front doors, and he pulled them open and they ran out, into the frigid night.
The fog was thick, swirling across the ground and shrouding the nearby houses. More townspeople crowded the front walk, chanting, all of them in the same gray robes. As Cain led Leah through their midst, they reached out with grasping hands to clutch at his tunic. But they were slow and clumsy, and he was able to swing with his staff and tear free before he heard a shout. He turned and stared in shock; there was powerful magic here indeed.
Lord Brand had emerged after them, but the manor was no longer there. In its place stood a modest, one-story house, its straw roof sagging inward.
“Run, Leah,” Cain said.
