Page 57 of House of the Beast

Chapter

I n my journal, I had marked several points on the city’s map where the Weeping Lady’s Sorrowless Disciples would set up waystations in the umbral plane, being more inclined to help other Pilgrims than to hunt for glory.

The closest was half a quadrant away from Firmament Square. It was as good a destination as any.

The Dreadguard—Tomin—was at least able to walk on his own.

He had ripped off part of his own uniform to press to his wound and was doing a fair job of focusing on the road ahead rather than letting his mind wander too far into panic.

But there was a harried air to him, like something was constantly trying to get his attention and it was all he could do to keep himself together.

The Wanderer of Still Waters was long gone, leaving nothing but corpses and a couple of ruined buildings for us to find.

I gave the bodies a brief check as we passed them by, wary of any terrors that might have taken hold.

I was curious, too, if any among the dead were vessels.

If any of my competitors, who had looked so proud to pass the ceremony of initiation, had already met their end.

Unsurprisingly, they all seemed to be guards.

A couple of tempered horses had also fallen, torn apart but still alive, just serenely breathing.

Though I wasn’t hoping for much, I followed the trail of blood and ruin briefly to the edge of one of the wider canals, where it then disappeared.

The Wanderer had gone into the water. I looked at the perfect reflection of the stars above on its surface and wondered if the canals had felt most familiar to its home.

I crouched at the water’s edge with a huff of frustration.

The blood that had been left behind was a dark, muted red.

Mortal blood. The Wanderer must have found a taste for flesh and dragged some poor fool along to chew upon.

With all our wants and fears and physical bodies, humans were irresistible to things that had spent millennia floating in the void of the heavens.

It was dreadfully dull up there, Aster had told me once.

Why else would stars keep falling to Kugara, trying to get a foothold through the door?

Unsettled, I straightened, and we continued on our way.

Though the sky remained vibrant and awash with cosmic light, the streets below were muted and shadowy.

Everything was just slightly on the wrong side of perception.

Whenever I looked up, the stars were so bright there was a blur around them—light breaking away at the edges, splintering off into prismatic colors.

The buildings seemed to huddle closer when you weren’t looking, their shadows congealing, and within, I could glimpse dark shapes like lonely phantoms slowly drifting about.

I would have tried to hunt some of these shadows down along the way, to collect more offerings of ichor for Aster—but soon after we left the canal, Tomin began to stumble, and only a short distance later he lurched toward a building and collapsed against it, panting.

I approached him warily. His eyes were still clear, but his face was sheened with sweat, and he was white as a sheet.

He wasn’t turning, but he had lost a lot of blood.

I stood there for a moment, indecisive.

“I’m sorry,” he panted. “I can’t—I can’t.”

It was tempting to leave him. Like Aster had said, he had wanted to hurt me.

But I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I thought of how I would feel if I were to draw my sword now and cut him down.

The idea of it sickened me, and with it came relief.

The good part of me was still there—the part I had been afraid to lose.

So I went to his side and slung his uninjured arm around my shoulders and tried to heave him to his feet.

But he was a grown man, a soldier in his prime, and no matter how many hours I had trained with a sword, I was not built to handle a weight like his by myself.

After another useless heave, Aster huffed in frustration and went to Tomin’s other side. He grabbed hold of his other arm, ignoring Tomin’s flinch at the touch of something unseen, and said to me, “Ready?”

“Ready,” I replied, and together we hauled the Dreadguard to his feet.

“What—” Tomin stammered, staring right through Aster, who was struggling with his weight. “What was—”

“The will of the Beast,” I answered him simply, pulling him along to start walking. Aster snorted in dry amusement.

After that, there was not much chance of hunting down terrors.

In fact, we were lucky we were not hunted in return.

I was acutely aware of how vulnerable we had made ourselves, and how I had already hindered my own quest to slay the fallen star and stop my father both.

The Dreadguard was heavy, and soon I was sweating with exertion.

Aster was not the type to sweat, but he muttered complaints every so often, which I could not even answer without raising even more questions from the stunned Dreadguard draped across our shoulders.

After a minute or so, Tomin said quietly, “Thank you, Lady Alma.”

“How sweet of him,” commented Aster, voice like acid.

“You’re welcome,” I made sure to say pleasantly in response.

We continued like that, the three of us, slowly and awkwardly, making our way east along one of the main waterways that I had memorized from Sevelie’s home. After some time, it opened up into a wider plaza—and there, at the edge of it, was flickering torchlight.

“Oh, thank the heavens,” Tomin almost sobbed out.

Someone had set up camp here. A waystation, just like I had hoped there would be.

The surrounding streets had been cleared out and oil lamps lit to stave off the perpetual night.

It was the sole point of brightness and the first sign of life we had seen during our trek, and like a beacon it warmly beckoned us closer.

Tomin’s steps regained some energy, enough for Aster to let him go with a grunt as we hobbled faster toward the promise of safety.

A few men stood guard over the encampment, giving us mistrustful stares as we approached. I swept my gaze over them quickly. No Avera colors. My father wasn’t here, nor Kaim.

There was, however, a Church knight. “Excuse me,” I called as we came close. “You are with a Sorrowless Disciple?”

The knight’s eyes went quickly to my metal arm, then to my sword, and she seemed relieved to find it sheathed. “Yes, Lady Avera,” she replied, evenly but warily. “We have set up an infirmary here, in light of the Wanderer’s attack, to provide aid for Houses who need it.”

“This man needs healing. I request asylum for him.”

“In the Carrine statehouse, my lady, to your right.”

“Thank you.”

Even without the Church knight’s directions, I would have been able to tell where to go. Death hung heavy in the air. Not the quick, violent death of battle, but slower. There were people here injured—and something else, pulling some of these deaths back from the brink.

It could only be one of the Weeping Lady’s blessed healers.

We made our way into the statehouse—a public building donated by Euphina’s ancestors in a show of goodwill to the court.

A statue of the Weeping Lady greeted us in the foyer, her hands clasped in prayer as tears ran from her closed eye.

Someone had managed to light the grand chandelier above, and for a moment it felt as though we were back in Sorrowsend.

A howl of agony soon shattered that illusion. Beside me, Tomin jumped.

“Come on,” I muttered, hefting his weight up.

We followed the echoing cries into a hallway, and then into a dining hall, where most of the furniture had been pushed up against the walls to make space.

There, a Sorrowless Disciple was surrounded by a collection of dazed and wounded men.

Some of them, I noticed, had been patched up already, because I could see where their armor had been dented and uniforms bloodied, but they appeared healthy and hale underneath.

The man currently being attended to was of House Metia and was clearly not so lucky as the others.

He lay atop a dining table with his gut torn open, which I was sure the Disciple would have patched up without a hitch, if not for the dark mass slowly writhing inside of it.

Another umbral worm, and one that had grown quite large by the looks of it.

The Disciple had one hand wrapped around the worm’s neck in a clawlike grip, while the other laid daintily upon her breast as she prayed.

She did not seem to care that her sleeve was being soaked through with blood, or that the man was whimpering for mercy like a dying animal.

Her smile remained serene. Her hand began to glow with healing power.

The worm did not like this. It twisted ferociously in her grip. Her poor patient screamed, and then a nest of smaller worms began to boil around his stomach as they fed off his fear.

Giving it up for a lost cause, the Disciple calmly drew a dagger and drove it through his gut first, then yanked it out and drove it again into his skull for good measure.

The room fell quiet. The worms slowly melted away into a puddle of black goo, trickling down the poor guy’s body to congeal upon the expensive wooden table.

The Disciple wiped her hands, her smile unaffected, and said pleasantly, “Next.”

Beside me, Tomin blanched.

“You’ll be fine,” I told him quickly. “The terrors didn’t take you. You can rest here and find your way back through the gate with the other wounded when it opens.”

“Right,” he said, sounding dazed, his eyes still on the dead man now being dragged off the table. “Of course.” He took a deep breath, turned to me, and bowed deeply. “Thank you, Lady Alma.”

“It was nothing,” I said, uncomfortable with the sudden show of reverence.