The Price of Faith (46 page)

Thanquil opened his eyes to darkness. Only it wasn't darkness. It was black and it was endless but it wasn't as though he couldn't see. He saw his arm stretched out in front of him, he saw Myorzo in his hand and he saw the business end sticking into Kessick's chest. He also saw Kessick; pale and with a face of confusion and pain but Kessick nonetheless, his own hand still outstretched but no blade present.

Thanquil looked around, glancing first left and then right. He could definitely see but the problem was there was nothing to see.

“Help me,” breathed Kessick softly.

Thanquil turned back to the man. “Why?”

Kessick fixed him with a cold stare. “I wasn't talking to you.”

A laugh sounded in the nothingness. Loud and heartless and strangely familiar. It echoed around and around until Thanquil could not tell where it came from. Then, from behind Kessick stepped Thanquil's mirror image.

“Or maybe I was,” said Kessick.

Thanquil's doppelgänger took two steps until he was between the two and looked at them both. He looked younger than Thanquil but only because he also looked healthier. No black bags under the eyes, no scraggly beard left uncut for too long, no wounds from the fight.

“Help me,” pleaded Kessick.

“Why?” asked Thanquil's mirror.

“We had a deal!”

Thanquil laughed, the other Thanquil. “Our contract in no way states I must save your life and it is null and void upon your death. Tell me, why would I need you,” the other Thanquil looked at Thanquil, “when I have him.”

Kessick opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out. Like dust on a breeze he simply faded away until there was nothing left.

Thanquil dropped Myorzo and backed away from himself. Glancing around with wild eyes. “Where are we? Am I? Is this the void?”

The other Thanquil looked at him like a wise man might look upon a foolish child only with far less compassion. “Not quite. This is you, Thanquil Darkheart. We're inside you.”

“And you're...”

“The demon, Myorzo,” the way the demon spat the word Thanquil was far from certain that was its real name.

Ignoring the irony of the question Thanquil asked it anyway. “Why do you feel so familiar?”

Myorzo smiled. “Because you are me.”

“No!”

“No?”

“That's not true!”

“Are you sure? Your
God
has an incarnation. A piece of himself born in mortal form. Are you so sure I can't do the same.”

Thanquil stared down himself and wondered if his face always looked so smug. “You're lying.”

A room began to build itself around them. Four walls layered upon each other brick by brick and a roof of straw growing into existence faster and faster until they were inside a building, inside a room. A hearth sprang to life in one of the walls though it provided no heat and a chair grew out of the floor. Part of one wall fell away to reveal a window though no light shone in from outside. Stray straw dropped from the roof and formed into a mattress on the floor in front of the hearth.

“Do you remember this place?” the demon asked.

Thanquil nodded. “This was my home. Before...”

Two figures faded into life on top of the mattress both naked and writhing, thrusting, grunting and groaning in pain and ecstasy. Thanquil's parents.

“Thane and Isa Fisher,” said the demon in Thanquil's own voice. “She was barren, you know.”

Thanquil saw his mother claw at his father's back and gasp. “There a point to this?” he asked himself.

“This was the first time we met,” said Myorzo. “I was here at your conception. They wanted a child so badly and Volmar would not answer their prayers so they called on other powers. And I answered.”

Thanquil grimaced as both his parents shuddered in climax. He turned away from the scene. “And what was the price?”

“You were. Both the price and the payment. I gave them you. I gave them myself.”

He might have struck at the demon had he thought it would do any good.

“It isn't the only time we've met,” continued Myorzo. “Hundreds of times since then I've come to you. Keeping an eye on you.”

“How?” Thanquil asked. “You were inside the sword.”

Myorzo laughed. “You think in such small terms. I was there, I was here. I am in many places all at once. Just like your
God.
”

The demon stepped up beside Thanquil. “Would you like to see what Kessick saw?”

“No.” But it was too late. His old home and his parents faded away and a wall began to build itself beneath his feet. A giant wall. It stretched out as far as the eye could see in both directions and higher and higher it grew with Thanquil and his mirror standing at the top watching the world shrink beneath them.

Figures down below began to move. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. A sea of movement down below. A dead sea. Dead bodies writhed together, surging towards the wall and throwing themselves at it, hacking at it with picks and hammers and arms ending in bloodied stumps. Climbing upon each other in an attempt to reach the top.

“Nothing grows in the land of the dead,” said Myorzo in Thanquil's ear.

“Nothing lives in the land of the dead.”Thanquil completed the saying.

“You've been there, you've seen the dead walk.”

“Never seen an army of the dead,” Thanquil mused as at the chaos below him.

“One of many,” said Myorzo. “One of seven and each one bent on flooding the world with death.”

“The Dread Lords...”

“Are returning,” the demon finished for him. “ This is what I showed to Kessick. He saw it and he knew action was needed. He knew your
God
could not be trusted to help you.”

Again Thanquil turned away from the image. “He was wrong.”

Myorzo stepped in front of Thanquil, his face a picture of rage and Thanquil realised he could look quite scary when angry. “Why do you cling to him?” Myorzo demanded. “Why do you believe in him?”

Thanquil opened his mouth to reply but the demon cut him off.

“Do you even know what your
God
truly is? Do you know he and I come from the same place?”

Thanquil refused to let anything show on his face but even so the demon smiled at him. “You didn't. Your
God
comes from the world you call the void just as I do. We are one and the same he and I.”

Belief was a tricky thing, hard to explain and harder to keep. If anything faith was even trickier. “It doesn't matter,” Thanquil said to the demon. “Though it does make sense. I believe in Volmar's teachings, in his ideals and I have faith that his plan for us is the right course. It doesn't matter to me if he is a God or a demon. It's him I believe in. Not the word we give to define him.”

“You would defy me?” asked the demon.

Thanquil looked himself in the eye. “Yes.”

The wall vanished into the nothing, fading to black and in front of Thanquil an image of Jezzet appeared. She was on her knees, her eyes flooded with tears and her wrist dripping with blood, her own fingers digging into the wound.

He felt his throat close and choked back his own tears at the image. He had been desperately trying not to think of her. He failed. Hot, wet tears rolled salty tracks down his cheeks and into his beard. “Is she... dead?” he asked.

“Not yet,” the demon walked up to Jezzet and looked at her closely. “Time isn't exactly on track here. But she's going to die. In your words; demon magic is the power to change fate. Kessick used that power to change hers, linked it to his own. The moment he dies, so does she. You can't change that.”

“Oh...”

“But I can,” the demon looked up at Thanquil from behind the image of Jezzet and smiled. “I can stop her from dying.”

Thanquil didn't bother to wipe the tears from his eyes. “And the price?”

“No different to that I gave to your parents. You. I want your service, your...”

“No,” Thanquil said almost choking on his words. He closed his eyes, forced the tears to stop and when he opened them the image of Jezzet was gone. “No,” he said again.

“Huh...” said his mirror image looking confused for the first time.

Thanquil looked the demon in the eye. “I'm going to give you what you want most, Myorzo. I'm going to set you free.”

The demon stood, watching Thanquil carefully. “You can't.”

“I can.”

“The chains were forged by Volmar himself. Only he...”

“I am Volmar's will,” Thanquil all but shouted before he could reign in his emotions. He walked over towards the discarded demon blade and looked down upon it.

“And for that you want the life of Jezzet Vel'urn?”

Thanquil let out a ragged breath. “No. For that I want you to leave. You and all your brethren. I'm going to set you all free, shatter the chains and break the ties that bind you to the Inquisition and in return I want you all to leave this world and
never
return.”

He knelt down and picked up the demon blade, taking it in both hands and waiting for the demon's answer. The creature seemed to take forever to decide and when Thanquil turned he found his own face staring at him from only a few paces away.

“I agree to the terms of the contract,” Myorzo said in Thanquil's voice.

The demon blade shattered.

The demon blade shattered. Kessick, slack-mouthed and vacant-eyed, toppled. Myorzo's dark presence rushed out of the sword in a black fog. The building behind them burned bright yellow, ash drifting into the air. Thanquil turned from the scene just in time to see Jezzet hit the ground. She didn't move.

He ran to her, collapsing onto his knees by her body, and slowly reached out to touch her. Her only wound was her bleeding wrist, self inflicted and far from fatal. Thanquil had almost expected to see a stab wound just where he had killed Kessick but there was nothing. She was whole. Her eyes were open wide staring blankly into the sky but the light had already gone. Jez had already gone. There was nothing left but a body.

The world grew blurry again and Thanquil felt the tears come, choked them back and knelt by her. Her clothes were tatty, a mere step above rags, her hair was a mess; longer than she liked it, and she was spotted everywhere with other's blood. It seemed wrong somehow, not a death deserving of a Blademaster, not a death deserving of Jezzet Vel'urn. She still wore his ring. The little wooden charm he had made for her in Sarth. He remembered the way she liked to play with it, rub at it with her thumb whenever she was nervous.

Thanquil heard voices, close by and raised, and he blocked them out. He shut out the whole world and just knelt by her. A traitorous part of him kept imagining she would suck in a deep breath and sit up and it would all be a cruel final joke played by the demon but she didn't, no matter how much he watched her, no matter how many tears he shed she didn't get up.

More shouting. A mote of ash landed on Jezzet's face just below her left eye marring her skin, covering the small scar she had there. He reached out with a shaky hand and wiped it away but it only smudged, made things worse and her skin felt cold. Thanquil couldn't help himself, he gave her shoulder a shake. Jezzet's head lolled to the side but still she didn't get up.

Something hard and fast hit him in the face, slapped his cheek and stung. He barely felt the pain he was too busy feeling tired and numb.

It came again, tried to hit him again and he caught it. Turned out to be a hand and a wrist connected to a thin, bloody arm with oozing wounds. Thanquil looked up into Henry's eyes and for just a moment the little woman looked scared, a flicker of fear soon replaced with her more familiar anger. She wrenched free her hand and turned Thanquil away from Jezzet's body. He didn't stop her. It wasn't like any of it mattered any more.

“You an' Thorn had a deal,” she said to him her fierce face spotted red and brown.

“She's dead.”

Henry nodded, her face a picture of compassion if not for the permanent sneer created by the scar on her lip. “Thorn'll be too if ya don't do somethin'. You had a deal. Kessick's life fer a pardon. That fucker is dead. Time ya lived up ta your end.”

Thanquil frowned and looked up.

“There,” she pointed and he followed her finger.

The Black Thorn and Jacob Lee were facing each other over a stretch of street crowded with bodies. Thorn held an axe in one hand and his other was cradled against his chest. Blood ran down his face from a cut up on his scalp and he was shouting something. Jacob Lee limped slowly towards Thorn, a dagger sticking from his left leg and three deep gouges cut across his face. It seemed a miracle the wounds had not hit his eyes but both seemed intact.

“Do somethin',” Henry said to him her voice quiet but strict.

Thanquil nodded slowly and wiped away the tears from his eyes on his coat sleeve. “Look after her,” he said to Henry and pushed himself to his feet.

He crossed the distance to the two slowly, each step an effort greater than the last. His limbs felt leaden. His eyes struggled to focus. His mind screamed at him to go back to Jezzet unless she should wake and he not be there but he forced it to silence. There were bodies everywhere, so many of them, some with wounds, some without. True to it's word the demon had taken all its brethren with it when it had left. They had vacated the human bodies and left nothing but empty shells behind. Empty shells like Jezzet.

The two were still a fair distance apart; Jacob limping faster with each step and the Black Thorn backing away, screaming at the Templar to stay back. Thanquil put himself between them.

“Stop,” he said his voice barely more than a defeated whisper.

Jacob took another step.

“Stop, Jacob. Please.”

Another step.

“The Black Thorn isn't to be harmed. I've pardoned him.”

Jacob took another step so he was within arms reach of Thanquil and then stopped. Staring down at the smaller man. He shook his head.

Thanquil nodded. “It's an order, Jacob. The Black Thorn is not to be harmed.” He sniffed and forced back fresh tears. “I've already lost too much today. I'm not about to lose the only friend I have left.”

Jacob turned his gaze from Thanquil to the Black Thorn and back again. Then he struck.