Dorna tsked under her breath. “We need the metal.”
“Not that,” I said. “They threw themselves under my idorrá, and I did nothing when those men came to collect them.”
“You’re young,” Dorna said, her most common excuse for many otherwise unforgivable sins. “I bet Ninavis and her people thought they’d sway you better than the son of the man they’d murdered. Nicer odds. Taja’s dirty luck for them the soldiers found us, before those bandits delivered the full pitch.”
“What if they’re right?” I asked. “Something is wrong here. And what Kalazan said about the demon-claimed child—”
Dorna grabbed me by the chin, startling me. “Offal and dung, foal! Anyone paying even half-assed attention knows what happened to you at Lonezh Canton—”
I nudged her hand away. “No, they don’t. You know that. I’m Janel Danorak. No one knows; who else survived? Without witnesses, truth twists into rumor. Rumor distorts into myth. Jorat needed a symbol—so they invented their own.”
“Always wondered why that fancy high general never set the record straight.”2
I sighed. “He told everyone Xaltorath led the Hellmarch. Which is true.” I lowered my head for a moment, closed my eyes, inhaled. “I suppose this ‘demon-claimed’ label just hits too close to home.”
“I still say it’s chance. Nothing but chance. Anyhow, we’re lucky to lose those outlaws. That lot was trouble, mark my words.”
I looked away, certain we were not even slightly rid of them. “Maybe I should have married Oreth—”
She scoffed louder. “Oh, that would have worked real well. Both of you stallions, and he’s never forgiven you for it. Sir Oreth don’t just want to ride you, he wants to break you.” She set her hands against her hips. “Can’t believe the baron didn’t ask you to stay with him tonight. That one wants for a strong rider, mark my words. You’d be perfect for each other.”
The blood flowed to my cheeks. “It’s not his place to make that suggestion, Dorna. That role is mine.”
“He still shoulda turned his quarters. Rude not to.”
“Only to hear my refusal? Much less embarrassing for him that he didn’t.”
She blushed then, her expression showing less chagrin than guilt. “Aw, foal … maybe once we’re done here. Atrine might be a better place to find someone—”
I was in no mood to discuss bedchamber politics. “Enough, Dorna.”
“Go rest, child. We’ve a big day tomorrow.”
I nodded despite how I dreaded sleep and all it brought. “Yes. Thank you, Dorna.”
Of course, I delayed slumber as long as I could.
As long as I ever could.
But Hell always claims me eventually.
* * *
I loathed sleeping. I hated it even though it came easily. I never have any trouble drifting off, sleep taking me the moment my eyes close.
Perhaps because what I do isn’t, technically, sleep.
We live in a universe divided into two worlds, Life and Death. If I spend my waking hours here among the living, my sleep belongs to the goddess Thaena.3
I die, you see.
Every night, I die.
I shut my eyes and opened them again, no longer in Mereina.
I stood in a clearing in shadowed woods under storm-red skies. My nightclothes were gone. Instead, I wore plate armor, made from metal so dark it absorbed all the light, a silhouette darker than the night.
I arrived with weapon drawn, something other than the Theranon family sword. Nor was the armor the same I had inherited from my grandfather, tucked away inside my traveling valise. In the Afterlife, I had no physical body to wear real armor or weapons. It was all in my mind—or rather, all in my souls.
A ghost village spread out before me. Not ghostlike in some poetic sense, hollow buildings left skeletal in abandonment. The village haunted the air in spectral hues, phosphorescent blues and violets lingering in transparent phantasms.
And it wasn’t abandoned.
Its residents remained, murdered right alongside their homes. All of them, village and villagers, had died together.
The village’s citizens struggled against their ties, nailed to its trellises and arbor posts, trussed up like so much livestock after the slaughter. Demonic runes painted on azhock walls with glowing human blood. I’m not sure if the people had perished from sword strike or when the cellar homes and patios had been set ablaze, but die they had, even though they screamed still. They writhed and begged for someone to cut them down, to release them from their torment.
They wouldn’t have to wait long; the demons had come to feast.
Too many demons.
I felt more than heard the first wave, a vibrato bark sending shudders of anticipation trembling over my skin. The hellhounds bayed, their pitch excited as they tracked the sacrifices left for them. They would eat most souls trapped there. They would choose a few for worse.
The demon-hound howls grew sharper as they scented me.
It’s my curse, you see. In the Afterlife, I burn hotter than everything around me. I glow from the fire I bring with me. And demons do so love heat. Few have the willpower to divert to other, easier prey once they have caught my scent.
I have wondered if I had reversed cause and effect. Was I this way because of the Hellmarch demons who found me in Lonezh? Or did those demons target Lonezh Canton because they’d been drawn to my fire?
Enough of that.
My point is they always pursue me, assuming me the hind in their hunt, a timid deer to be chased down and savaged.
I had grown content with the arrangement.
I was the trap already baited.
I smiled as I spun around, sword taking the first hellhound through the skull, splattering black ooze across the dead ground as I cleaved it in twain. The second hound leaped, bit at my armor, gnawing against the metal plate. I laughed and slammed the creature against the earth, rewarded with the sweet sound of breaking bones.
More hounds followed. And died.
These were the younglings, the newest infected, the weakest, and the least experienced. These demons were still acclimating to the torture of their new existence, cursed to hold ignoble shapes until they proved their worth. The dogs died easily.
Next came the riders.
Older and craftier, they didn’t rush to their deaths the way the hounds had. They’d developed individual personalities, a preference for their appearance. Nothing original: skulls and horns and fangs are always popular. Demons prefer forms mortals find frightening: the rotting dead, monsters from myth, god-king tales.
We find human fear delicious.
I mean, they do.
A demon with a rhinoceros’s skeletal head shook a spear at me. “Begone, whore. A feast has been readied for us.”
I laughed and bounced the gore-soaked flat of my blade against my palm. “Then come take your due, but you’ll work for this supper.”
This demon group wasn’t stupid enough to attack me one at a time. They wouldn’t have survived long in the Afterlife by being unobservant. They must have seen how well that tactic had served the dogs.
It mattered not. All demons take a savage delight in slaughter.
In this, I was no different.
I stepped to the side as a demon on a skeletal steed’s back tried to run me through, setting his twisting reptilian ride to cross my path. The lizard-mount cried out as I punched the monster between the eyes. Then I grabbed its spiked ruff and dragged it to the ground, so its rider slid within reach. A human skeleton, crafted from pale blue flame, keened in pain as I ripped through his rib cage with my sword.