Out of the Grave: A Dark Fantasy (The Shedim Rebellion Book 2) (16 page)

“I have staff in the ports of Argante and Nineve. I have men talk with the sailors, to corroborate the reports from Sornum.”

Elmar was a talented man. Azmon understood why Tyrus had relied on him to manage the Imperial Guard. If he were a noble, or had a talent with runes, Azmon might use him at the front. He wished his lords were as resourceful as his master clerk.

“Tell Rassan, ‘No more excuses.’ I want him in Argoria.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“How long until the dry months?”

“They say soon.”

Azmon grew tired of rains that came in from the ocean and lingered before Mount Teles. The plains had become a muddy mess, and he didn’t want to march men or supply wagons over that ground.

A bone lord interrupted them. “Your Excellency, the beast is awake.”

Azmon followed the lord from his tent across the camp to a smaller tent, which dozens of the Imperial Guard secured. Fools thought they guarded it from lords intent on learning Azmon’s new runes, but the guards protected the camp from the thing within.

A female lay on a table, draped in a cotton smock. For a moment, Azmon felt like a proud parent, godlike, creating a new life. Then he saw the red glow of the eyes, robbing the illusion of humanity. The eyes turned her face into a nightmare. Other things made it worse. Her limbs lacked coordination and jerked as though a puppeteer pulled strings.

“How long has she been like this?”

“She just started moving.”

He dared think of her as Lady Lilith. He might have reincarnated the dead, and if so, he had earned a black place in history. No one had done it, at least there was no record of it, but she did not look human either. He had created something new. Wary of touching her, he watched from a distance.

Azmon said, “Stand.”

The beast struggled with jerking movements that seemed monstrous. The head tilted, and the hands twitched. Joints popped when she flexed her legs. The eyes flickered between glowing red and rolling into her head.

Now for the real test. “Speak.”

She made a sound like a sheep, but it was too deep for such a slender throat. Everyone shuddered and covered their ears. Azmon listened for syllables, something intelligent, but it sounded like the “ma” of a sheep. As she struggled, she croaked like a toad.

“Ma… ster,” the beast said.

“Again.”

“Ma-ster.”

“Very good.”

Azmon fought a need to celebrate. If he were alone in his tower, away from prying eyes, he could laugh at his triumph. Glancing at the lords, he saw their fear. He had created a speaking beast.

“We can build on that word. Come to me.”

The thing that resembled Lilith struggled to lift one foot, then another. After a few minutes, she had walked a single span. He made notes of each tick. Of course, he had hoped she would be further along than this, but her stumbles felt better than months of failures. He considered the other runes he had given her. Lilith should be capable of more than walking and talking, but she needed training.

For the first time in months, Azmon experienced a sense of accomplishment. Possibilities sprang to mind. With a new beast and a talented student, a new protégé, he was ready to assault Paltiel and fight his way atop Mount Teles.

Lilith found herself encased by canvas walls. She sensed dozens of men, in steel suits, beyond them. This prison was soft but surrounded by steel. She expected chains on her limbs and hooks in her flesh, but she wore a cotton smock, a strange prison, different from the horrors of the Nine Hells. She heard hearts beating against ribs, and thoughts of blood made her drool. A carpet covered the floor. She sat with her knees to her chest. Her tattered memories were unreliable things. She glimpsed an old life and knew the man with the golden hair, boyish yet deadly. The more recent memories, demons in the burning world, were stronger. She had no sense of time or her age or where she had come from, only that she had escaped.

Reality was slippery. She struggled to separate the waking world from nightmares. Things that should be nightmares were memories, and this place was calm and peaceful like a dream. She feared she would wake among the shedim again. The demons stood tall, with burning eyes and dozens of faces covering their black bodies, all laughing at her pain. She hugged her knees and rocked herself.

A curtain drew back, and the golden man entered. The white robes meant danger. He was slight of build with an attractive young face, but instincts told her to run. He carried a wooden box under one arm.

“You are still awake?”

She nodded.

“Say, ‘Yes, master.’”

Lilith struggled against the compulsion to please him. Her tongue was wrong, too large for her mouth. “Yes… master.”

Her voice sounded masculine. She imagined a woman, young, with brown hair, swimming in a pond, and thought she was that woman. Another life, another body—her limbs had aged since then, covered in scars. She rocked herself, confused.

“Your speech has improved.”

“Yes, master.”

He knelt before her and opened the box. Lilith hated the contents. They did this each day, playing games. He withdrew wooden blocks, white and black, with silver runes embossed on them.

“Do you remember these from yesterday?”

“Yes, master.”

“Good.” Azmon arranged five blocks on the ground. “These were my toys when I was a child. They helped me learn the language of God. They are the Runes of Dusk and Dawn. Did you know that you had a set like these?”

“No.”

“Your family has produced many great students. Do you remember your family?”

“Sons?” She struggled to find words, and when she had the words, her mouth was too big for them. “I had sons?”

“You had two sons. And three brothers. A family blessed with boys. Arrange the blocks in the ascendance matrix.”

The games exposed her clumsy fingers, but the more they practiced, the easier it became. She struggled to flip the blocks to the right face and order them. A vague memory bothered her: a tiny child able to find the pattern in moments. The golden man offered no help, and she avoided his blue eyes.

“Good. Faster than before.”

They played more games with the blocks. Lilith enjoyed it although it made her feel stupid. This had been easy once, and she slouched under the weight of that shame. A compulsion kept her going, that and the suspicion that the golden man could send her back to the demons. Thinking of their scaly hands and drooling mouths made her tremble again.

“Are you tired?”

“Hungry.”

“I will feed you later.”

“Yes, master.”

He arranged the blocks into a new pattern. Lilith found it familiar, and it made her nervous.

“Do you recognize this pattern?”

“No.”

“Say, ‘No, master.’”

“No, master.”

“It is a glimmer.” He passed a slender hand over the blocks, and what had been white and black wood became red and gold. “An illusion.”

Lilith smiled and rocked faster. She knew runes, or had, and enjoyed the trick. A memory, she recognized the golden man’s talent. Others would struggle to make the trick so smooth.

“You have this pattern inside you.”

Lilith stopped rocking. His words made no sense. She had no blocks inside her. A sense of dread built as though she might wake from this dream. They had done this yesterday.

“No, master.”

“You must try.”

She repeated the denial.
No
was a powerful word, but he refused to listen. He did not like the word, and she closed her eyes to hide from his scowl.

“Relax. Breathe. In and out—deep breaths—that is good. Now open your eyes and focus. You can do this. You must try, for me.”

Lilith opened her eyes.

“Your hair is black.” He gestured at his hair. “Make it this color.”

An easy trick, one she had mastered days ago. She lifted her long hair in front of her face and willed it to change. The black shimmered into a blonde, similar to the man’s hair. She dreaded the next part.

“Now look at my hand.”

“No.”

“You mean, ‘No, master.’”

“No.”

He was surprised at that, and so was she. Her fear made it easier to refuse him. Their bond frayed when she did not want to hurt herself.

“You must try. Raise your hand. Notice the nails and knuckles? Make them like mine. Make your hand the same as mine.”

Lilith closed her eyes and willed her hand to change. Her skin moved on its own. He said she had done well, but she kept her eyes closed. Seeing another person’s hand on her arm never felt right. She could not accept it, and it brought back bad memories. Even with her eyes closed, the memories stirred. She saw faces of people she had known; names drifted into her awareness.

“You did well. Open your eyes.”

“No, master.”

“This is a better trick than my illusion. Your flesh has changed.”

She opened her eyes. Her hand itched—oversized and wrong—she struggled to control herself. Tears clouded her vision, and she pulled at the skin. Neither of these hands were hers. She clawed at her own flesh.

“This is not me.”

She thought her real body might be underneath the fake skin, but it wasn’t, only blood and tissue and pain. Her claws shredded her skin, exposing the pulp of the muscles, a blackish tissue, oozing a blood more black than red. The sight of it, a beast’s flesh, made her panic. She wanted it off and scratched harder, but it wouldn’t come off because it was she.

She was a beast. What had happened to her body?

“Stay with me.”

“Get it off!”

“Stay with me, Lilith. You can do this. This is you.”

She wailed, a mixture of fury and despair.

“You can be anyone you want. I gave you the runes.”

Memories stirred, and her breath shortened. She had been flying on a beast when a force grabbed her. She remembered the wind in her hair, a large man with eyes that glowed yellow: the Damned. Her face burned, and a red glow tinted her vision. The boy before her, Azmon—his name was Azmon—looked afraid, and she enjoyed terrifying him. She remembered dying; she
was
dead. The memory exhausted her, left her weak and feeble. She remembered the man cutting her throat and falling from the sky.

“He killed me.” She sobbed. “I’m dead.”

“You remember. Good. Stay with me, Lilith; I need your help.”

She remembered more—her time on the table, Azmon’s experiments. She was a bone beast, another disgusting monster.

“Release me.”

“I’ve freed you from the Nine Hells. You are reborn. I created my own Reborn hero.”

“I am a Reborn?” She remembered Blue Feasts and celebrations for the babies born with birth runes, but this was different, shameful and wrong. Her flesh was not her own. She wanted to punish the Damned for killing her.

“Revenge?”

“No.” Azmon raised a finger in warning. “That is the mistake you made before. I want my daughter back.”

Lilith didn’t remember a daughter. Her memories had holes. Maybe the emperor had a daughter after Lilith had died? How long had she been dead?

“How long?”

“They took her from me a year ago. You will rescue her.”

Lilith had used the wrong words. She did not care about his daughter and struggled to talk. How long had she been dead? Azmon smiled while she cried. She brushed aside her tears, aware that her face was wrong too, a false face. She was trapped in another’s flesh. The tears would not stop.

“You remember more each day. Soon you will be ready.”

“Yes, master.”

The day wore on, and a warm sun cooked Tyrus in his armor. The plains were hotter than the mountains. His pulse pounded in his face, flushing his cheeks, and puddles of sweat filled his boots, blistering his feet. Runes could repair blisters if he let them; instead, each step rubbed the skin raw. Thankfully, Klay had slung Tyrus’s pack across Chobar’s saddle. Tyrus kept a decent pace but had reached the achy part of the run.

Four rangers rode in a wide diamond pattern, watching the flanks, while the main troop stayed near Tyrus. The plains had rolling hills, high enough for men to disappear between, and running headlong into an ambush was a real danger.

A long day awaited him. The tedium of placing one foot before the next, across many miles, dulled his senses while worries about finding Ishma distracted him. Azmon would keep her close—he was certain—but she could be anywhere in the camps or Shinar. Tyrus needed to capture a noble who knew about the royal family, and finding someone like that would be as hard as rescuing her.

As his mind wandered, he couldn’t help but remember the last time he had saved her. Memories of failure gave him doubts. He underestimated his enemies again and repeated old mistakes. Images of the caravan being rushed by Hurrians—a flight of black arrows followed by charging pikemen—kept dogging him. Oblivious and arrogant, he had walked into that ambush and wasted the lives of hundreds of good warriors.

As he jogged beside the bears, he replayed the ambush in his mind. He should have been more vigilant with the scouts. A young, undefeated champion, Tyrus had assumed the Hurrians were irrelevant, and it made him paranoid now. With a glance at the rangers, he was comforted that he was not alone. They fidgeted with their weapons. The purims were demon spawn and primitive. Behind walls, people described them as a nuisance, but on open ground they made everyone nervous.

He wished he had never spent those weeks on the road with Ishma. His best memories—and his worst—all wrapped together, amazing conversations with a beautiful young queen and a series of colossal blunders that caused needless suffering. He had been alone most of his life. No woman compared to her. Azmon tried to arrange several marriages, but short of being forced into one, no nobles would send their daughters. He was too big and too common, valuable as long as Azmon lived. They thought the hulking warrior would become arthritic and useless, but that was before he had a hundred and twelve runes.

Klay stood in his saddle twice. The sun was setting, a blue sky stained orange.

“What is it?”

“Purims, following the knights.”

“How do you know?”