The Black Road Read online

A trail scarred the mountainside, running parallel to the Dyre River. Darrick was certain Raithen’s pirate crew used it when changing the guard. He stayed off it, choosing the slower path through the brush.

  Mat and Maldrin followed him, staying to the path he chose.

  As they neared the riverbank’s edge overlooking the three pirate vessels, wisps of silver fog threaded through the brush. Tobacco smoke itched Darrick’s nose. Though Captain Tollifer didn’t allow smoking on Lonesome Star, Darrick had been around a number of men who smoked in ports they patrolled and traded with. He’d never acquired the habit himself and thought it was repugnant. And it reminded him of his father’s pipe.

  The brush and treeline ended twenty yards short of the area the pirates had been using to shift their stolen goods. Shadows painted the stacks of crates and barrels, giving him more cover to take advantage of.

  One of the pirates walked away from the group of five who played dice. “That ale’s gettin’ the best of me. Hold my place. I’ll be back.”

  “As long as ye have money,” one of the other pirates said, “we’ll stand ye to a place in this game. This is yer unlucky night and our lucky one.”

  “Just be glad Cap’n Raithen’s been keepin’ us headed toward fat purses,” the pirate said. He walked around to the side of the crates where Darrick hid in the brush.

  Darrick thought the man was going to relieve himself over the side of the riverbank and was surprised to see him dig in the bag at his side frantically once he was out of sight of the others. Pale moonlight touched the dice that tumbled out into the man’s waiting palm.

  The pirate grinned and closed his fist over the dice. Then he started to relieve himself.

  Moving with catlike grace, Darrick crept up behind the pirate. Picking up a stone loose on the ground, Darrick fisted it and stepped behind the pirate, who was humming a shanty tune as he finished. Darrick recognized the tune as “Amergo and the Dolphin Girl,” a bawdy favorite of a number of sailors.

  Darrick swung the stone, felt the thud of rock meeting flesh, and wrapped an arm around the unconscious pirate to guide him to the ground. Leaving the fallen pirate out of sight from the others, Darrick slid to the riverbank’s edge. He peered down, seeing that all three cogs did lie at anchorage beneath the overhang as he’d thought.

  He drew back, put his shoulders to the crate behind him, slid his cutlass free, and waved to Maldrin and Mat. They crossed, staying low.

  “Hey, Timar,” one of the pirates called, “ye comin’ back tonight?”

  “Told ye he had too much to drink,” another pirate said. “Probably start cheatin’ any minute now.”

  “If’n I see them loaded dice of his one more time,” another pirate said, “I swear I’m gonna cut his nose off.”

  Darrick glanced up the slight rise of land toward the ruins of Tauruk’s Port. No one came down the trail that wound through the wreckage.

  “Four men left,” Darrick whispered. “Once one of them makes a noise, there’ll be no more hiding here for us.”

  Mat nodded.

  Maldrin slitted his eyes and ran a thumb across the knife in his fist. “Better they not have a chance to make noise, then.”

  “Agreed,” Darrick whispered. “Maldrin, hold the steps. They’ll come from below as soon as we announce ourselves. And we will be announcing ourselves. Mat, you and I are going to see about setting the ships on fire below.”

  Mat raised his eyebrows.

  “Barrels of whale oil,” Darrick said. “Shouldn’t be that hard to get them over the edge of the riverbank. They’ll fall straight to the ships below. Get them on the decks of the one port of Barracuda, and I’ll target the one starboard of her.”

  Smiling, Mat nodded. “They’ll be busy tryin’ to save their ships.”

  “Aye,” Darrick said. “We’ll use the confusion to get aboard Barracuda and see to the king’s nephew.”

  “Be lucky if’n ye don’t get yerselves killed outright,” Maldrin groused. “An’ me with ye.”

  Darrick smiled, feeling cocky as he always did when he was in the thick of a potentially disastrous situation. “If we live, you owe me a beer back at Rik’s Tavern in Westmarch.”

  “I owe ye?” Maldrin looked as though he couldn’t believe it. “An’ how is it ye’re a-gonna buy me one?”

  Shrugging, Darrick said, “If I get us all killed, I’ll stand you to your first cool drink in the Burning Hells.”

  “No,” Maldrin protested. “That’s not fair.”

  “Speak up first next time, and you can set the terms,” Darrick said.

  “Timar!” one of the pirates bellowed.

  “He’s probably fallen in,” another pirate said. “I’ll go look for him.”

  Darrick rose slowly, looking over the stack of crates as one of the pirates peeled off from the game. He held his cutlass in his hand, signaling Mat and Maldrin to stand down. If fortune was going to favor them with one more victim before they set to, so be it.

  When the man stepped around the crates, Darrick grabbed him, clapped a hand over the pirate’s mouth, and slit his throat with the cutlass. Darrick held the man as he bled out. A look of horror filled Mat’s face.

  Darrick looked away from the accusation he found in his friend’s eyes. Mat could kill to save a friend or a shipmate in the heat of battle, but killing as Darrick had just done was beyond him. To Darrick, there was no remorse or guilt involved. Pirates deserved death, whether by his hands or by the hangman’s noose in Westmarch.

  As the pirate’s corpse shuddered a final time, Darrick released it and stepped away. Blood coated his left arm and warmed him against the chill wind. Knowing they were working on borrowed time, Darrick caught the edge of the crates in front of him and hauled himself around them. He lifted his knees and drove his feet hard against the ground, sprinting toward the three men still occupied with the dice game.

  One of the men glanced up, attracted by the flurry of motion coming toward them. He opened his mouth to yell a warning.

  SEVEN

  “Kabraxis is the demon who created the Black Road,” Lhex said. “What is the Black Road?” Raithen asked.

  The boy shrugged, bathed in the golden light of the lantern the pirate captain held. “It’s all just legend. Old stories of demons. There’s talk that Kabraxis was just an elaborate lie.”

  “But you said if a demon was involved,” Raithen said, “it was all truth once.”

  “I said it was based on something that was supposed to be the truth,” Lhex replied. “But so many stories have been told since the Vizjerei started supposedly summoning demons from other worlds. Some of the stories are based on incidents that might have or might not have involved demons, but many are total fabrications. Or a story has been fractured, retold, and made more current. Old wives’ tales. Harsus, the toad-faced demon of Kurast—if he even existed—has become four different demons in the local histories. The man who taught me history told me there are sages at work now trying to piece together different stories, examining them for common links that bind them and make only one demon exist where two had stood before.”

  “Why would they bother with something like that?”

  “Because there were supposed to be other demons loose in the world according to all those simpleminded myths,” Lhex said. “My teacher believed that men spent so much time trying to name the demons in mythology the better to hunt them down instead of waiting for them to act. To pursue their quarry, the demon hunters need to know how many demons were in our world and where to find them. Sages research those things.” The boy snorted. “Personally, I think demons were all named so that a wise and wizened sage could recommend employing demon hunters. Of course, that sage would get a cut of the gold paid to rid a place or a city or a kingdom of a demon. It was a racket. A well-thought-out scary story to tell superstitious people and separate them from their gold.”

  “Kabraxis,” Raithen reminded, growing impatient.

  “In the beginning years,” Lhex said, “wh
en the Vizjerei first began experimenting with demon summoning, Kabraxis was supposed to be one of those demons summoned over and over again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Kabraxis operated the mystical bridges that stretched from the demon worlds to our world more easily than many did.”

  “The Black Road is a bridge to the Burning Hells?” Raithen asked.

  “Possibly. I told you this was all a story. Nothing more.” Lhex tapped the drawing of the elliptical lines threaded through by the solitary one. “This drawing represents the power Kabraxis had to walk between the Burning Hells and this world.”

  “If the Black Road isn’t the bridge between this world and the Burning Hells,” Raithen asked, “what else could it be?”

  “Some have said it was the path to enlightenment.” Lhex rubbed his face as if bored, then smothered a yawn.

  “What enlightenment?” Raithen asked.

  “Power,” Lhex said. “Is there anything else that the legends would offer?”

  “What kind of power?”

  Lhex frowned at him, faking a yawn and leaning back comfortably against the wall behind them. “I’m tired, and I grow weary of telling you bedtime stories.”

  “If you want,” Raithen suggested, “I can have Bull come back and tuck you in.”

  “Maybe I’ll get his other ear,” Lhex suggested.

  “You’re an evil child,” Raithen said. “I can imagine why your father shipped you away to school.”

  “I’m willful,” Lhex corrected. “There is a difference.”

  “Not enough of one,” Raithen warned. “I’ve got gold enough that I can do without your ransom, boy. Making the king pay is only retribution for past indignities I’ve suffered at his hands.”

  “You know the king?” Lhex’s eyebrows darted up.

  “What power can Kabraxis offer?” the pirate captain demanded.

  The river current shifted Barracuda again. She floated high, then slithered sideways a moment before settling in. The rigging slapped against the masts and yardarms above.

  “They say Kabraxis offers immortality and influence,” Lhex replied. “Plus, for those brave enough, and I can’t imagine there being many, there is access to the Burning Hells.”

  “Influence over what?”

  “People,” Lhex said. “When Kabraxis last walked this world—according to the myths I’ve read in the philosophy studies I did—he chose a prophet to represent him. A man named Kreghn, who was a sage of philosophy, wrote about the teachings of Kabraxis. And I tell you, that was a very ponderous tome. It bored my arse off.”

  “The demon’s teachings? And it wasn’t a banned book?”

  “Of course it was,” Lhex answered. “But when Kabraxis first walked this world then, no one knew he was a demon. That’s the story we’ve all been told, of course, and there’s no proof of it. But Kabraxis was better thought of than some of the demons of legend.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Kabraxis wasn’t as bloodthirsty as some of the other demons. He bided his time, getting more and more followers to embrace the tenets he handed down through Kreghn. He taught his followers about the Three Selves. Have you heard of that concept?”

  Raithen shook his head. His mind buzzed steadily, gaining speed as he tried to figure out what Buyard Cholik was doing seeking out remnants of such a creature.

  “The Three Selves,” Lhex said, “consist of the Outer Self, the way a person portrays himself or herself to others; the Inner Self, the way a person portrays himself or herself to himself or herself; and the Shadow Self. The Shadow Self is the true nature of a man or woman, the part of himself or herself that he or she most fears—the dark part every person struggles hardest to hide. Kukulach teaches us that most people are too afraid of themselves to face that truth.”

  “And people believed that?”

  “The existence of the Three Selves is known,” Lhex said. “Even after Kabraxis was supposedly banished from this world, other sages and scholars carried on the work Kreghn began.”

  “What work?”

  “The study of the Three Selves.” Lhex grimaced as if displeased at Raithen’s listening skills. “The legend of Kabraxis first developed the theory, but other scholars—such as Kukulach—have made our understanding of it whole. It just sounds better couched in terms that led the superstitious to believe this was one of the bits of wisdom we needed to save from the demons. Fairy tales and mechanisms to define social order, that’s all they were.”

  “Even so,” Raithen said, “there’s no power in that.”

  “The followers of Kabraxis reveled in the exposure of their Shadow Selves,” the boy said. “Four times a year, during the solstices and the equinoxes, Kabraxis’s worshippers came together and partied, reveling in the darkness that dwelt within them. Every sin known to man was allowed in Kabraxis’s name during the three days of celebration.”

  “And afterward?” Raithen asked.

  “They were forgiven their sins and washed again in the symbolic blood of Kabraxis.”

  “That belief sounds stupid.”

  “I told you that. That’s why it’s a myth.”

  “How did Kabraxis get here?” Raithen asked.

  “During the Mage Clan Wars. There was some rumor that one of Kreghn’s disciples had managed to open a portal to Kabraxis again, but that was never confirmed.”

  Has Cholik confirmed it? Raithen wondered. And did that trail lead here, to the massive door that is located beneath the ruins of Tauruk’s Port?

  “How was Kabraxis banished from this world?” Raithen asked.

  “According to legend, by Vizjerei warriors and wizards of the Spirit Clan,” Lhex replied, “and by those who stood with them. They eradicated the temples to Kabraxis in Vizjun and other places. Only wreckage of buildings and broken altars remain where the demon’s temples once stood.”

  Raithen considered that. “If a man could contact Kabraxis—”

  “And offer the demon a path back into this world?” Lhex asked.

  “Aye. What could such a man expect?”

  “Wouldn’t the promise of immortality be enough? I mean, if you believed in such nonsense.”

  Raithen thought of Buyard Cholik’s body bent with old age and approaching infirmity. “Aye, maybe it would at that.”

  “Where did you find that?” Lhex asked.

  Before Raithen could respond, the door opened, and Bull stepped inside.

  “Cap’n Raithen,” the big pirate said, holding a lantern high. Concern stretched his features tight. “We’re under attack.”

  Only a few steps short of the pirate about to scream out, Darrick leapt into the air. The other two pirates who had been playing dice reached for their weapons as Darrick’s feet slammed into the pirate’s head.

  Caught by surprise and by all of Darrick’s weight, almost too drunk to stand, the pirate flew over the steep side of the riverbank. He didn’t even scream. The hard thump told Darrick that the pirate had struck the wooden deck of the ship below instead of the river.

  “What the hell was that?” a pirate called out from below.

  Darrick landed on the bare stone ground, bruising his hip. He clutched his cutlass and swiped at the nearest pirate’s legs, slashing both thighs. Blood stained the man’s light-colored breeches.

  “Help!” the stricken pirate yelled. “Ahoy the ship! Damn it, but he’s cut me deep!” He stumbled backward, trying to pull his sword free of its sash but forgetting to release the ale bottle he already held.

  Pushing himself up and drawing the cutlass back again, Darrick drove the pirate backward, close to the riverbank’s edge. He whipped the cutlass around and chopped into the pirate’s neck, cleaving his throat in a bloody spray. The cutlass blade lodged against the man’s spine. Lifting his foot, Darrick shoved the dying man over the riverbank. He turned, listening to the splash as the pirate hit the water only a moment later, and saw Mat engaging the final pirate on guard at the supply station.

  Mat�
�s cutlass sparked as he pressed his opponent’s guard. He penetrated the pirate’s guard easily, hesitating about drawing blood.

  Cursing beneath his breath, knowing that they had precious little time to rescue the boy and that they didn’t know for sure if he was aboard the ship waiting below, Darrick stepped forward and brought his cutlass down in a hand-and-a-half stroke that split the man’s skull. Acutlass wasn’t a fancy weapon; it was meant to hack and cleave because shipboard battles on vessels riding the waves tended to be messy things guided mostly by desperation and strength and luck.

  Blood from the dead man splashed over Mat and onto Darrick.

  Mat looked appalled as the pirate dropped. Darrick knew his friend didn’t approve of the blow dealt from behind or while the pirate had already been engaging one opponent. Mat believed in fighting fairly whenever possible.

  “Get the barrels,” Darrick urged, yanking his sword from the dead man’s head.

  “He didn’t even see you comin’,” Mat protested, looking down at the dead man.

  “The barrels,” Darrick repeated.

  “He was too drunk to fight,” Mat said. “He couldn’t have defended himself.”

  “We’re not here to fight,” Darrick said, grabbing Mat’s bloody shirtfront. “We’re here to save a twelve-year-old boy. Now, move!” He shoved Mat at the oil barrels. “There’s plenty of fair fights left down there if you’re wanting for them.”

  Mat stumbled toward the oil barrels.

  Thrusting his cutlass into his waist sash, Darrick listened to the hue and cry taken up from the ships below. He glanced at the top of the stone steps carved into the side of the overhang.

  Maldrin had taken up a position at the top of the steps. The first mate held a war hammer with a metal-shod haft in both hands. The hammer took both hands to wield, but the squared head promised crushed skulls, broken bones, or shattered weapons.

  “ ’Ware arrows, Maldrin,” Darrick called.

  A sour grin twisted the first mate’s mouth. “ ’Ware yer own arse there, skipper. Ain’t me gonna be goin’ after that there boy.”

  Darrick kicked a barrel over onto its side. The thick liquid inside glugged. Working with haste, he got behind the barrel and used his hands to roll it toward the riverbank’s edge. The downward slope favored the rolling barrel.