Chapter Six: Grave Pool

Keeper of the Shade

Derian had never gone against his master’s word, and told himself he would change course after another ten steps. But the light kept moving and he kept following. He waited to see if there was another strange step, or an archway that they would move through. He peaked his ears to listen to their chatter.

“…no armor can’t…”

“…prepared, he’ll have to…”

“…problems, master, problems…”

He felt like he was walking towards a trap, and wanted to make sure Rez got out of it in one piece. On the other hand, he would not care if Cassius stumbled and fell the rest of the way down.

The light stopped. Derian held his breath as the lantern was lifted.

“Here?” Rez asked.

“It is prepared,” Cassius said. Derian heard the door of the lantern squeak open, then the sound of Cassius blowing out the flame. The small monk was plunged into darkness, yet an image of the lighted stairs was burned into his eyes. He crept forward, waiting for his armor to clink or scrape against the stone. But it never did.

He heard the grating of stone against stone. Then light poured into the stairs and made him blind. The light was a pure white, as if made from polished moonstone. Sunlight was not as pure and thin, nor so alarmingly glaring. He took the final few steps down, and looked into the room with the bright light.

Rez and Cassius looked like shadows moving into a space with no floor, walls, or ceiling. There was no way to tell the shape of the room. The walls themselves seemed to give off the steady light. The Master Monk’s boots left no prints, and he put up the hood to his cloak as he stepped towards a dark mass at the center of the room.

Derian bit his lower lip. There was no mistaking the blackness of that cloak in the room’s powerful light.

The wall beside the doorway began to rumble, and the stone began to slide shut. Derian darted through into the white room, and pressed himself against the door after it closed. He looked down at his body, covered in rock dust, oil, grave dust, salt, and mud. He had blood from his fight with the she demon pooling in his shoes. They squelched as he took a step, and left red boot prints on the pure white floor.

“That’s not good,” Derian whispered. He felt under the armor, and tried to find the source of his leak. It seemed that when the she-demon had kicked him, she slipped a sharp foot into his side. But even as his boots filled and emptied with each step, his head felt fine and steady.

Rez and Cassius had made progress towards the shadowy mass. The room’s scale was mind-bending, and Derian squelched towards the center. His old master seemed nearly a quarter of a league in front of him.

He tried to stay low, but realized there was nothing that would hide him if his master decided to look over his shoulder. He stood up, and walked slowly.

“We are all set,” Cassius’s voice rang out in the white room.

Rez hummed.

Derian got close enough to tell what the shadowed mass was.

It was a mass of people. They were bound by ankle and wrist, gagged and tied together in a great spiral. Those on the edges tried to move, but they went nowhere, tied down by the weight of all the people tied up behind them. Derian guessed that there were around one hundred people bound. The sounds were muffled and shrill. There was a stink that rose as he neared.

Beside it, a woman was bound to a wooden chair.

Then Derian recognized the woman. It was Cathrine, her beauty hidden beneath mounds of rope and chain.

“Reveal,” Rez shouted. He tossed grave dust over head. In the lighting it looked like white ash.

It caught in the space around the tied people. There were three bands of spirits standing around the humans, holding hands and dressed in robes with silver chains. They swayed opposite of one another, and looked like the mouth of a leech.

“I call he who keeps the shade, he who divides light from dark. He who rules the stairs of the between, who decides who goes up and who goes down.”

The spirits howled like animals. Cassius removed a jug from his robe. He uncorked it and began to splash its contents through the haunts and onto the people.

“I call you forth, great Shamath, with a great sacrifice to your steps. May these souls be judged well by your appointees, and their intentions be true and pure. If any are caught in the ring of indecisivity, passed from goddess to devil and back again, may they entertain you thoroughly, as they trudge the steps for eternity.”

The group shook. Derian could make out the tall, thick figures of the mountain tribesmen sticking out above the heads of the peasantry. He saw the twig-like figures of a Wagoneers. There were guards of the lord mixed in, some wearing helmets, others wearing nothing but a loincloth.

He could smell the liquid from the jug, rotten whale oil.

“We call you great god, who is the master of who receives the light. He who judges alongside the goddesses and she-devils. He who is a comrade to both the light and the dark. The Keeper of the Sade!”

Cassius lit the lantern and walked to Rez. Derian’s master lifted the lamp. Against the glaring whiteness of the room, it did not look lit. The flame was darker than the white light. Smoke that drifted out between the foggy glass panes looked thick as soot as it rose to the ceiling. The haunts began to shift back and forth faster, until they were a blur.

Rez took an orb from his necklace, and unhooked it from his chain. He whispered to it, and then tossed it into the air above the crowd.

“Shook, shake, tremble,” the master said. The orb exploded above the living and the dead. It’s dust and oil rained down until all were touched and wetted. He swung the lantern by his side.

He went to Catherine, and took another orb from his necklace.

“Shalla nestle, parfuna, vessle.” The master leaned his head over the woman’s and broke the orb between their foreheads. The glass shattered and left them both bleeding. Rez put his bleeding forehead against the bleeding wound of the woman. The golden band that had been around the orb fell to the white floor with a thud, as Cathrine fought against her bounds.

Derian could bear it no longer.

“Master, no!” Derian yelled.

Cassius turned.

“You fool, child!” the curled man said. “You should have listened to your master!”

“Those are innocent people, Rez! They are not yet ready to pass!”

“It is not us who decides the path, Derian. It is he, Shamath. And he requires sacrifice.”

“Shamath is no devil, master! He is not called by blood!”

“He is called by smoke,” the master said, “and his wife is called by blood.”

He threw the lantern.

Derian’s body moved like a whip of silk. His footsteps sprayed blood across the whole of the floor. As he neared the center of the ritual, the blood sprayed over the bound group and onto those around it. The armor threw off its dust, and crimson and gold paint was revealed. The visor of the helmet clanged shut as he leapt. He caught the lantern as it began to fall, and took it over the far side of the crowd. He slammed into the ground and gasped as the light was crushed beneath him. The lantern oil flared up. He felt his skin burn and melt, cooking his flesh and meat. He curled around himself as the flame took over his body.

“Quickly, Cassius, another flame!” Rez shook as he yelled. He ripped a sleeve from his cloak and handed it to the bent man. Cassius began to strike his flint against it.

“Derian!” Rez screamed. He ran to the burning body.

“Master-”

“I am your master no longer, boy! You fool! You idiot! Can’t you see something greater than us is taking place?”

“Those people-” Derian wheezed. The flame was licking at his throat.

“They are the price of the god and his she devil wife. We are bringing glory to he who is known as a lesser god. I sent you to the town of Fairright not as a mistake! I sent you because you are the least qualified. I sent you because I know that you would not find the anchor. I sent you because I couldn’t have this fucked up, yet here we are! What in the world were you doing on the staircase of fate? Even with simple instruction you fail to comprehend! You found away to screw with me when there should have been no way!”

The flame consuming Derian rose to a brilliance that made the old master take a step back. Then it faded down, the oil spent. The flame winked out and the flesh hissed as it bubbled and smoked. The cassock was gone, and the skin that showed between the armor was charred.

Rez shook his head and turned.

“You are the anchor,” Derian coughed.

“Die already, little bird,” Rex said, walking to Cassius. The crooked assistant had the sleeve burning and held it out while kneeling.

“Join my body, Shamath! Lend me your power and brilliance! For thy wife I offer the spirit of Denaria, the blood of an ancient king who you once knew.”

He tossed the sleeve onto the mass of people, and the mixed oils caught the flame. An explosion of green and blue erupted, with thick black smoke. The bodies railed against one another, but could not get space. Rez threw grave dust into the fire, and the streaks of souls bounding to escape were imaged in glittering black and white specks. But the haunts who surrounded the crowd were spinning and lifting off the ground with such speed that they were bands of spirit, solid rings that did not let the bodyless souls leave.

Dark laughter came from Rez and the curled man. The body of Cathrine thrashed in the wooden chair. She tumbled over, against the ground, and through the visor, Derian watched as her flesh crawled and spasmed.