Shadow's Witness

  Jak staggered backward out of reach. Cale shouted to him as he closed.

  “I’m coming, little man!”

  The shadow demon turned its head toward Cale.

  Seeing his opportunity, Jak charged, arms wide in an embrace. Too late, the demon tried to bound backward. Jak crashed into it and wrapped his little arms around its leathery midsection in a great hug. Brilliant golden light flared blindingly bright. As the protective aura dissipated, its energy exploded into the shadow demon. The stink of charred demon flesh filled Jak’s nostrils. The creature screamed, spasmed, and tried to pull away, but Jak held on. Absently, he noted the feel of the creature’s skin, cold and flabby, like a wineskin filled with ice water. A claw tore painfully across his back. He screamed but held on. Another claw gripped him around the head, lifted him into the air, and flung him away like a rag doll.

  He grunted, hitting the ground awkwardly. Jak looked up to see the demon standing over him, its abdomen and torso horribly burned and smoking.

  Cale appeared behind it, long sword overhead. He chopped across and neatly swiped the demon’s head off. Milky-white eyes widened with surprise, and the shadow demon soundlessly collapsed. Thick purple liquid trickled from its neck.

  “Cale!”

  “Little man.” Cale extended a hand and helped him to his feet. “We’re leaving.”

  “Good,” Jak said. When he gripped Cale’s forearm, he saw their souls bleeding from both of them. The gray mist rose from their skin and floated back toward the altar where Yrsillar still stood, eating. Jak felt weakened already, but whether from the drain or the bleeding wound in his back, he couldn’t tell.

  “You cannot escape me,” Yrsillar boomed, but remained on the dais.

  Cale steered Jak for the door. “Let’s move.”

  Behind them, Yrsillar began to mouth the words to a spell.

  “Dark! I didn’t know they could cast spells, Cale. I swear I didn’t.”

  They ran.

  Jak glanced behind them to see that a distortion had formed in the air before Yrsillar. In a voice as loud as thunder, the demon lord spat the final magical syllables of the spell and pointed a clawed hand at Cale and Jak. At once the distortion spread out and took on the shape of a wave, a tide of pure nothingness. Pulsing with power, it undulated toward them like a great worm. Picking up speed, it swallowed pews, floors, and ceilings, and left only blankness in its wake. Yrsillar and the dais sat amidst an ocean of absolute emptiness.

  Jak found the emptiness hypnotic, the oblivion tempting.

  “You’re going nowhere!” the demon lord boomed again.

  “Run!” Cale ordered, looking over his shoulder and pulling Jak along. “Run!”

  Jak ran. Trailing wisps of soul in their wake, they ran down the rest of the aisle as quick as they could, crashed through the doors, and sped down the hallway for the gate that led back home.

  Right behind them and gaining, the wave burst through the door, wall, and floor. It consumed everything in its path. They reached the gate. Cale lifted Jak to throw him through.

  “No,” Jak said. “We go together or not at all.”

  The wave sped toward them. Cale didn’t argue. He nodded, picked Jak up, and slung him over his back. “Hang on.”

  The wave closed in, swallowing everything. Looking into its emptiness, Jak felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and clutched Cale around the neck.

  “Go!” he screamed. “Go!”

  Cale backed up a few steps, spun on his heel, and sprinted forward. The wall of nothingness seemed about to engulf the colors of the gate, to swallow them in emptiness.

  “Cale!” Jak was face to face with the void. Bile raced up his throat. They wouldn’t make it!

  Cale took a final stride and leaped into the air.

  Jak’s final shout resounded in his mind but Cale could make no reply. He felt his body stretched as thin as parchment and a tingling that quickly grew painful, as though tiny needles had been driven into his pores. There was light and color.

  “Oomph!”

  “Dllarlk!”

  They toppled from the gate and collapsed to the floor in a heap. They quickly disentangled themselves from one another and tried to recover their bearings.

  Above them, a pulsing void of emptiness swirled in the air—the other side of the gate that they had just traveled through. With each pulse, it pulled the hairs upright on Cale’s arms and head, like a tide trying to pull him back to sea. The pull of the void.

  He took a deep breath, inhaled the acrid and coppery air of the real guildhouse. He sat up and looked around.

  Corpse after bloody corpse littered the hall, over twenty of them, all gutted and decapitated. They were the ghouls he and Jak had slaughtered in their vaporous forms back in the Abyss.

  Jak stared at the slaughter. “Dark,” he said in wonder.

  Looking upon the carnage, Cale felt no horror, just a distant, grim satisfaction. The ghouls were twisted evil creatures—irredeemable horrors—and he and Jak had done what they had to.

  He surveyed the rest of the guildhouse, the real guildhouse—wood plank floors, piles of broken furnishings, heaps of filth. The whole was lit by the familiar flickering of torches. They had made it back alive.

  He was surprised to find his strength returning, the energy of home apparently replacing that sapped by the Abyss. With the return of feeling came a heightening of pain—his ribs ached sharply and the gash in his torso throbbed with every beat of his heart.

  The pain of being alive, he supposed. The pain of the human condition. He welcomed the sensation. Better that than the oblivion of the void.

  Revivified, if not quite whole, he looked at Jak with raised eyebrows.

  “Jak?”

  The little man nodded. “I feel it too. It’s replacing the life we lost to the Abyss.” After a thoughtful pause, he added, “But it can’t replace the life-force consumed by Yrsillar.”

  Yrsillar. He’d be coming as soon as he realized that his spell had not killed them. Cale climbed to his feet, one hand holding his blade, one hand holding the felt mask.

  “Let’s do this,” he said, and helped Jak to his feet. “He’ll be coming.”

  Jak nodded, pulled out his holy symbol. “First some healing. We’re both wounded.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he chanted the words to a spell and laid a magically charged hand on Cale’s arm. Cale’s bruised ribs instantly stopped aching and the gash in his torso closed. Jak cast another on himself, sealed the slash in his back and the scratches about his face and head.

  “That’s it, Cale, that’s all I can do,” Jak said as he pocketed his holy symbol.

  Cale nodded, held up his blade. “We’ll make do with only these, then.”

  Jak chuckled softly, indicated Cale’s shredded cloak and torn leather armor. “Not exactly in the best shape for this though, are we?”

  “We’ll be all right,” Cale reassured him. “We’ve got an extra ally now.” He showed Jak the felt mask he held in his hand.

  The little man took in Cale’s meaning, nodded knowingly.

  “You’ve accepted then?”

  “I’ve accepted. Let’s go.”

  Together, they turned and walked for the doors that opened onto the shrine of Mask, his god. Jak fell in beside him.

  Before they had taken five paces, the sound of an opening gate from within the shrine gave them pause. The voice of the Righteous Man, the voice of Yrsillar, came through the doors.

  “Erevis Cale! You will face me!”

  “I want nothing more,” Cale muttered, and made for the doors.

  As they walked, Jak grabbed Cale’s forearm. “Remember, he’s weaker here, but he’ll still have magic. We need to be careful.”

  “We will.” He looked down on Jak and held up the felt mask. “I have to face him in the shrine. We fought him on his turf. Now we’ll fight him on mine.”

  Jak eyed the mask, nodded in understanding, and the two friends strode for the shrine.

&nb
sp; As he walked, Cale thought of Thazienne, of Thamalon and Stormweather, of the warped Night Knives, the uncountable dead inadvertently caught in this demonic nightmare. He gripped his blade and the mask tightly. A reckoning was finally at hand. He jerked open the shrine doors.

  Burned pews and charred ghoul corpses lay scattered about the room, the aftereffect of the magical globe Cale had exploded in the shrine two days earlier. The rest of the room remained intact, and Yrsillar, now in the form of the Righteous Man, stood in the center aisle halfway between the shrine doors and the altar to Mask. A gate swirled behind him, the doorway through which he had transported himself back.

  Having seen the awful majesty of the demon lord in his true form, Cale could hardly conceive how the guildmaster’s body contained such a being.

  As though in answer to his thought, a distortion began to take shape around the Righteous Man’s slight frame. Flickering tongues of nothingness danced around the Righteous Man’s body that obscured his human form and suggested the awful magnificence of Yrsillar’s true shape. To Cale, the Righteous Man’s body seemed ready to burst at the seams, to vomit forth the truth of Yrsillar’s being from the lie of the guildmaster’s form.

  “Come, then,” the demon hissed.

  Without hesitation, Jak jerked free two throwing daggers. Silvery blurs in the torchlight, they sliced through the air for Yrsillar’s throat.

  Casually, Yrsillar sidestepped the first blade, then shot forth a thin arm to snatch the second dagger out of midair. Quick as a striking snake, he hurled the blade back at them.

  It streaked past Cale’s ear before he could move, missing by sheer luck, and sunk all the way to the hilt in the wood of the doorjamb.

  “Dark,” Jak breathed.

  Cale nodded agreement but said nothing. The strength behind that throw had been superhuman, demonic. That meant that the frailties of the Righteous Man’s body did not limit Yrsillar in this human-demon form. The realization alarmed him because it meant Yrsillar would not be as weak as they had hoped. It also exhilarated him because it perhaps meant that the demon lord could be killed, not simply transported back to the Abyss.

  He had no more time to ponder. Yrsillar advanced, strode boldly for them, the limp of the Righteous Man no longer in evidence. The distortion about his body became increasingly defined as he neared. The terrible form of Yrsillar expanded with each step and dwarfed the human body that struggled to contain it.

  “Your death will be long, Champion of a paltry power, long and painful.”

  Cale and Jak spread as far apart as the aisle permitted.

  “Be careful,” Cale said out of the side of his mouth.

  “I’m always careful,” Jak replied.

  Yrsillar ignored Jak and headed directly for Cale. He bore no weapons.

  Cale backed off, drawing him in, blade held defensively before him. “Come on,” he breathed. “Come on.”

  From behind Yrsillar, Jak rose up and charged, short sword aimed straight for the creature’s back.

  Yrsillar whirled halfway around, sidestepped Jak’s stab, and backhanded the little man’s jaw. Blood and spit flew from Jak’s mouth.

  “Unngh.” Jak flipped head over heels from the force of the blow and crumbled to the shrine floor.

  Cale lunged forward and stabbed Yrsillar through the abdomen. He drove the long sword through the distortion and all the way into the Righteous Man’s thin body until the tip of the blade burst out the other side his ribs. Blood poured from the wound.

  “Arrrgh!” Yrsillar sagged. The demonic distortion faded, shrank back into the body of the Righteous Man. Cale grimaced and twisted the blade. He felt the metal shear at the demon’s organs, gave his anger free play.

  “That’s for the Uskevren, ecthain,” he hissed into the wrinkled face of the Righteous Man.

  It was Yrsillar’s voice that groaned with pain. The demon still had possession of the Righteous Man. Cale drove the blade in farther, pushing the body of the Righteous Man across the aisle.

  Yrsillar spat blood and grimaced in pain.

  Cale smiled grimly, satisfied and victorious. This was over.

  Even as that thought crossed his mind, the body of the Righteous Man suddenly jerked up straight. The voids of Yrsillar’s eyes regained their focus and their glare sent a shiver up Cale’s spine. The demon lord’s grimace of pain twisted into a mirthful leer. He closed a hand around Cale’s wrist and began to squeeze.

  “Not so easy, Champion.”

  Though the distortion no longer played about the Righteous Man’s form, the old man’s slight body nevertheless exhibited the terrible strength of the demon lord.

  Desperate, Cale maniacally jerked the long sword around and opened a hole in the Righteous Man’s flesh. Yrsillar laughed into Cale’s face and squeezed.

  “Ahhh!” His wrist snapped. Still Yrsillar squeezed.

  “Ahhhhh!” Bone grated against bone like grinding millstones. Dizzy, he thought he would pass out from the pain.

  Unable to stop himself, he released the hilt of his blade. Yrsillar still gripped his wrist.

  With all his strength, Cale balled his free hand into a fist—a fist that enclosed the felt mask—and punched Yrsillar in the face. Again and again he struck powerful blows that broke the Righteous Man’s nose and split his lips.

  With blood streaming down his battered face, Yrsillar only laughed. He lifted Cale by the wrist and shook him in the air like a child’s doll. Cale screamed in agony.

  Disdainfully, Yrsillar flung him aside. Cale flew through the air and crashed amongst the pews and charred ghoul corpses. Wracked with pain, he righted himself and looked up to see Yrsillar looming over him. Cale had no weapon. He crawled crabwise over the ghoul corpses, cradling his broken wrist.

  “I told you that you cannot escape me,” Yrsillar taunted, and spoke a word of magic. Five glowing bolts of energy streaked from the demon’s extended fingers and slammed sizzling into Cale’s chest.

  The impact knocked him flat on his back. His chest was on fire. His breath left him. He rolled over onto his stomach and tried to crawl away. Yrsillar followed him. Cale could feel him, could feel the empty holes of the demon’s eyes burning into his back.

  “And you thought to challenge me! You and your ridiculous god.” He laughed evilly. “I have eaten more souls than you have lived days, Erevis Cale.

  Then with another magical word, another wave of energy seared Cale’s back.

  His vision went blurry. He struggled to stay conscious. Desperate, he clutched the felt mask in his spasming fist. Its soft touch brought him a moment of clarity.

  He would die with dignity.

  I’m your Champion and I won’t die like a groveling dog, he thought to Mask.

  Another blast of energy sent stabs of pain along his spine. He clamped his mouth shut and walled off the scream of pain that tried to burst from behind his teeth.

  Though the effort nearly made him pass out, he flipped over onto his back. Yrsillar stood over him, frail with the Righteous Man’s form, but awful for the power he contained.

  “Damn you,” Cale croaked.

  Yrsillar stopped laughing, bent down to regard him with narrowed orbits. “It is you who are damned, Champion,” he said. “Your soul is mine. I’ll devour most of it, but leave you with just enough to remain sentient, enough so that you can appreciate your fate.”

  Cale tried to spit in his face, but only managed to dribble saliva down his chin. “The gods damn you,” he croaked again.

  Yrsillar stood upright and regarded him with amused contempt. “The gods do not damn, fool, nor do they bless. They manipulate. This is where those manipulations have brought you,” his mouth twisted into a snarl, “Champion.”

  Yrsillar reached for him.

  Though it took a supreme effort of will, Cale did not try to squirm away. He would not give Yrsillar the satisfaction of seeing him afraid. He would die defiant.

  Reflexively, he threw the only thing he had left. The felt mask.

/>   “To the Hells with you,” he said.

  A bird of cloth, the mask fluttered through the air and softly struck Yrsillar on the chest—

  Without warning, the air around the demon lord exploded in a blast of silvery-gray light. A roaring sound filled Cale’s ears. A sphere of energy encapsulated the demon lord, sizzling and burning him. He roared in pain, reached for Cale in a rage, but the energy held him shackled.

  Shielding his eyes, Cale scooted away.

  Yrsillar’s roars grew more and more pained, his promises more and more dire. The sizzling intensified. “You will suffer an eternity of pain, Erevis Cale! I shall peel your soul like an onion and devour you over the course of millennia. I shall—”

  The cascade of silver energy grew brighter and brighter until it reached a sparkling, sizzling crescendo.

  “No!” roared Yrsillar, and swung his arms wildly against his confinement. It was a futile effort.

  With the suddenness of a lightning strike, the demon’s translucent form was torn from the suddenly slack body of the Righteous Man. The mortal separated from the demonic with the sound of ripping cloth. The guildmaster’s body fell to the ground unmoving. Yrsillar’s writhing demonic form, still contained in the silver energy, was blown across the shrine and into the gate. His screams of rage and pain diminished as his body grew smaller and smaller.

  The gate snapped shut with a sudden pop, the sound as final as a funeral dirge. Another such pop sounded from the hallway outside the shrine as that gate closed. Within seconds, the ubiquitous pulsing had ceased. All the gates in the guildhouse must have closed.

  Cale looked around stupefied, dazed. The shrine was empty and silent.

  It took a few moments to register. Yrsillar was gone. They had won. The realization affected him strangely. He fell back and tried to laugh, but managed only a pained grimace. He wasn’t yet ready for laughter. Emotion flooded him though—not happiness, but something he couldn’t quite put a name to. His eyes welled. He blinked away the tears.

  How? he wondered, but already knew the answer.

  Mask had banished Yrsillar, or Cale had banished Yrsillar with the power of Mask. It no longer mattered which. He was now a man of faith.