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A Creature of War, Book 5, CH05
🕑 Added 2025-05-11 13:00:07 +0000 UTCThe city was large, larger than any he could remember being—but that could be what spending almost thirty years in a small town did to someone. The guards looked him over as he entered, but he had nothing threatening on him. All he wore were the clothes he’d had on when Leo died and the dust of the road. He’d destroyed all his possessions when he’d erased the town from existence.
He walked among the people, not seeing them, or the buildings they were gawking at. He heard, but didn’t listen to, the merchants selling their wares, to the men and women putting themselves on display. He was here for only one reason, and he could sense her in the distance.
She had changed over the years—life did that, LRK knew it, possibly better than most. But no matter how her superficial patterns shifted with her moods, her age, her core heat remained the same and he would never forget it. He would never forget his daughter.
He took the most direct route he could to her, which caused it to be circuitous. As he was so focused on her he didn’t bother sensing for the stone that made up some of the buildings and most were wood, which he couldn’t sense. So he had to backtrack out of multiple dead-ends.
When he finally saw her he allowed himself to pay attention to where he was, and instead of the guard or warrior district of the city, he was in a street filled with shops. He checked, she might be shopping, but no, she was sitting by the door, a lynx toddler at her feet.
The street had a calm to it, and he noticed the shadows were stretching. He’d arrived at the end of the day, and while all the doors were open, some shop keeper were sweeping the floors or starting to take their wares inside for the night.
She picked up the child, still talking to a human woman, and brought it to her breast. Only then did it register that the child was hers. His daughter had a child of her own. He had a grandchild.
He clamped down on the emotion. He wouldn’t care, wouldn’t let himself care. What if it was like Leo? Like him? The idea it might die just for being different almost drew out a keen from LRK. Could he survive loosing a grandchild to bigotry? Would she?
She pointed in his direction, saying something to the woman, and as the woman walk that way Alaine noticed him. Her face immediately lit up. “Papa!” She stood, barely disturbing her child, and walked to him. “Oh Papa I am so glad the letter reached you in time.” She pulled the protesting child from her breast and turned him. “Papa, this is Azaghal, your grandson.” She leaned in against the child’s face. “Azie, this is the most wonderful man after your father. This is Lars, your grandfather.”
LRK didn’t look at the child. He remembered what looking to Leo’s innocent face had done to him and he couldn’t get attached again. “Alaine, can we go to your house? We need to talk.”
“Of course.” She hugged him with one arm.
After a moment, he hugged her back, but he barely put strength in it. She guided him back to the storefront, stopping by the door before it. “Natalie, can you look after Azie for me for a time? Papa needs to speak to me.”
“Of course Alaine.” The human nodded a greeting to LRK as she settled the mewing child in her arms.
Inside the store, the walls and tables contained things of colors, he tried to pay attention to them, after all his daughter had made them. He didn’t. For all that he loved her, he didn’t want to know how successful she was. He didn’t want to be reminded of who he was leaving behind.
She led him to the back, to a table by the stairs going up. It had a stove with a kettle on it and she offered him tea, which he refused. He dropped in one of the chair.
She sat opposite him. “Papa, what’s wrong? You’re all serious.”
“Leo is dead,” he stated, feeling none of the pain anymore. He’d buried it with everything he had been.
She gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh Papa, are you alright?” tears fell from her eyes.
“I’m fine,” he said, knowing she didn’t believe him, and not caring. He didn’t even try to smile, to offer her the little comfort he should.
“How did it happen?”
“There was a fire.” He didn’t say more. For all that he controlled himself, he knew that if he tried to explain about how her brother had been murdered, he could lose it, and he might destroy this city in his rekindled rage.
She took his hand. “Papa, I am so sorry. Don’t worry about going back, you can stay here, I’ll make space.”
He shook his head, looking at her hand, forcing the connection he felt down. Forcing himself not to feel anything. “I came to tell you I’m going away.”
“Papa, I—”
“I was always going to leave,” he said flatly, “Once you and Leo no longer needed me. I should have left years ago, but I wanted to fix—” He closed his eyes, forced the grief down. He could feel it once the mission was over. Right now, it would simply get in the way. “Now there’s no reason for me to stay.”
Alaine opened her mouth, her face making clear the protest she was ready to lay on him, but the door opened and a lynx entered, holding Alaine’s son in his arms with far more familiarity than LRK liked. He pushed away from the table. No bean counter got to just take his daughter’s son and—
“Ulrick!” She went to him, kissed him, before taking her son from his arms. “I’m so glad you’re home. I want you to meet Papa. Papa, this is Ulrick.”
The lynx was tall and lanky, wearing a quality gray shirt and brown pants. He looked healthy enough, but nothing like what LRK expected her daughter’s husband to look like.
“He isn’t the caravan guard you left with.”
Alaine made a face. “Oh, him. He was nothing like the gentleman he pretended to be. When we got here, he set me to work taking care of his hovel. When he was there, he did nothing but drink and force himself on me. He was usually so far in his cup that he fell asleep before he could do anything.” The relief in her voice made LRK hate the man.
“After returning from guarding a caravan he hunted me down while I was shopping and he tried to drag me back, saying I should have been waiting for him at home, getting his bed warm for him. I finally had enough. I’d expected him to be happy to see me after months away and all he could think of was that? I told him off and he struck me.”
“He what?” the buried rage found a new target. LRK was going to track him down and kill that man.
“It was the first time, Papa. You don’t have to worry.”
“And the last,” Ulrick added.
“Ulrick happened to be present,” She continued, “and he kept the excuse for a man from striking me again.” She looked at the lynx with fondness. “Gave him a proper trouncing.”
LRK took another look at the lynx. He only vaguely remembered the guard who had taken his daughter with him, but he remembered broad shoulders, strong arms, an easy smile and a willingness to prove his strength.
Ulrick still looked like a bean counter.
“Ulrick took me to the herbalist to ensure I wasn’t hurt. Then he took me to his mother’s home; he wasn’t letting me return to that brute’s hovel. The lout tried to take me back. Claimed you’d promised me to him, as is you would have even let me leave with him if you’d known the kind of man he really was, Papa. Fortunately, he never got the Keeper back home to sign him the forms so he couldn’t enforce it.”
Ulrick looked up as thunder ripped through the air.
Alaine continued, as if she hadn’t heard. “That time Ulrick hurt him so badly the friends that lout had brought to witness winning me back had to carry him away.” She straightened. “He has never bothered us since.”
The look Ulrick gave her told LRK she wasn’t aware of the other attempts that were made. It impressed him. That he would keep his daughter from worrying about things like that, but it didn’t explain how he’d accomplished it.
“What do you do?” LRK demanded. He could see how the two could be in collusion, waiting until Alaine was comfortable to get her to… what?
Alaine beamed, oblivious to the threat that had been in LRK’s voice. “Ulrick is a scholar of the past.”
Ulrick stood still as LRK’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t missed it. LRK could see him being keenly aware of the danger he was in.
“Really?”
Alaine looked from one to the other. “Papa?”
“How does a scholar take on a guard and win?” he asked. This man was going to pay for leading his daughter on.
She placed herself before Ulrick. “Papa, stop this.”
“Not before he explains himself.”
“Papa,” she said in that voice that was one part petulance, one part pleading and one part cajoling. She’d gotten him to do many things he hadn’t wanted to when she’d been younger with that tone, but this time it slip off the ice flowing through his veins.
She sighed. “Papa, Ulrick studies how people fought in the past.”
He looked at her. “Alaine, books won’t teach a man like him how to beat a guard.”
“He is right, Alaine,” Ulrick said, as he placed a hand on her shoulder and gently moved her to the side. The lynx looked at LRK, and something shifted in his stance, he moved his weight to his left leg, shifted the right forward. “But you can learn a great deal meeting with experts of old styles.”
The lynx no longer looked worried, but LRK still didn’t like what he heard. “You don’t look like a traveler. You’re too well fed.”
Ulrick smiled. “I’m not. I don’t even like walking from one side of the city to the next. Fortunately for me, the king enjoys watching masters give demonstrations of their skills. Master potters, weavers—” he smiled and nodded to Alaine, who blushed, “—and master fighters. I will speak with them once they are done, and some, if they have the time, will teach me a sliver of what they know. I doubt I am very good compared to any one of them, but I certainly am good enough to put a thug who would strike a woman in his place. And if you force me, sir, I will show you what I do know, even though you are my wife’s father.”
“Papa!” Alaine looked horrified. “What are you thinking, Ulrick could hurt you?”
LRK didn’t react to how ridiculous the statement was, and Ulrick was worried again. He might have admitted to not being very skilled, but he knew enough to tell LRK wasn’t worried.
That, along with how Alaine stood by Ulrick’s side, made LRK pause. There was no triumph on the man’s face. He was still worried. She had picked him over her father, it was clear, but Ulrick didn’t see a victory, he still saw a potential fight he didn’t want to have.
LRK forced his anger down. “You protected my daughter,” he stated. “Do you promise to continue to do so?”
“With my life, Sir.”
LRK nodded. He looked at Alaine, who seemed to be able to breathe again, at the child she held who had managed to fall asleep in her arms, in spite of the tension.
“Then I can go.” He stepped around Ulrick, only to find his daughter before him.
“Stay, Papa. Just for a little while. You have no reason to hurry back home, do you? Azie would love to get to know his grandfather, I’ve told him so much about you.”
“No.” He wouldn’t get attached again. Now, with his rage keeping every other emotions at bay, was the time to cut all ties. “There is one other thing I need to do here, then I am leaving.”
“Will you come back?” the concern in her voice kept him from outright saying no.
“I don’t know,” was as close as he could say. He knew he’d never return, but he realized he couldn’t steal all hope from her. “I’m going to be busy with this for a long time, Alaine. When I’m done, maybe I’ll return.”
Would she still be here by then? Would she even still be alive? The Celeste’s disciples were many and spread far. This would take time.
She searched his face. “I hope you do.” She hugged him one-armed again. “I will miss you, Papa.”
“Where is the Celeste’s temple?” He asked, stepping out of the hug.
She was momentarily confused, then understanding dawned. “Of course. Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” He kept his confusion from showing. “I need to do this alone.” What could she think he was aiming to do that she could assist with?
She nodded. “Ulrick is the one who walks the city. Can you take him there?”
“Just point me to it,” LRK said, before the man could do anything. “I’ll make my own way there.”
Ulrick led LRK outside and pointed to a spire barely visible between two buildings. “Just keep that in sight, and you’ll reach it. The simplest way is to get to the King’s Street, then head to the Morning Market. You got through and you’ll find Temple Road. It will take you to it.”
LRK nodded, but grabbed the man’s arm before he returned inside. “You need to understand something,” he said, not looking away from the spire. “I have no plans to return here, but Alaine is the only child I have left. If you ever hurt her, run. Because word will reach me, and when it does, I will return.” He turned and locked eyes with Ulrick’s “I will leave nothing of you for the rats to eat. You will be ash carried away by the wind, forgotten by everyone.”
Ulrick’s gaze didn’t waver. “Sir, if I ever hurt Alaine, I will not run. I will wait for you on this doorstep and accept whatever punishment I deserve.”
LRK thought better of this lynx for that admission. He turned and walked away from him, from his daughter, from the only things that remained of Lars. He’d burned the memory of them if he could, but settled on burying it under the anger.
He followed Ulrick’s directions, and soon he stood before the large building of stone, wood and glass. Massive doors stood open and men and women of all species, or all ages, walked through them. The Celeste welcomed all, so long as you were ‘normal.’
He entered with the other, smirking internally at the acolyte by the door welcoming him within the temple. Welcoming someone they considered a monster. If their Celeste was real, it would have kept him out; for what he was planning.
A young Keeper stood on a dais, behind a pulpit, speaking to the assembled crowd. She was a cat with marmalade fur and spoke the Celeste’s message, which summarized to ‘The Celeste will love you, so long as you prostrate before it and tell it which of your neighbor is a demon so they can be cleansed by fire.’ LRK had a difficult time not rolling his eyes sitting in a pew at the back.
He looked the crowd over, seeing far more ears on top of heads than on each side. How many of them were powered, he wondered? Living in quiet shame, in fear of the day they would be found out.
Motion was near constant, people standing and leaving, to be replaced by others. As far as he could tell, three-quarters of the pews were occupied at any time.
The Keeper finished speaking and a human Keeper took her place. He was older, his unshaven beard streaked with white. He spoke of a traveler, of temptation, of power gained, but at a great price—destruction and debasement. He spoke of a death without meaning, of being cast away from the Celeste. Different words, wrapped within a tale, but the same message. Be normal, or else.
As he spoke the light of fire in braziers replaced that of the sun. Another Keeper replaced this one, and yet another story, told with conviction, with the certainty they were true. The Celeste was real, she said, had always been, would always be. Rejoice in its light.
LRK watched people come and go, wondering why they bothered? What did they gain from listening to someone tell them what to think, what was true and what wasn’t? He had been that way once, but he’d been made to be like that, to obey without questions, and even he had broken out of that within a few years.
A different Keeper left the pulpit, and no other replaced her. In the silence, LRK realized he was one of only a handful of people still seated, and by their appearance, the others had nowhere to go, other than a doorstep, or dirty alley. A Keeper in the customary black robe accosted them, spoke softly, and they left.
The Celeste might welcome all, but clearly, even it had limits as to how long someone could loiter. The Keeper was older, his pale face wrinkled but clean shaven, his gray hair close to his scalp. This man didn’t spend much time in the sun, LRK thought. When they fixed on him, the Keeper’s eyes were warm, as if they were friends.
If only he knew the truth of who he was, LRK thought, of why he was here. The warmth would vanish.
“The sermons are done for the day,” the man said in a confident voice. “If you wish to hear more, you will need to return tomorrow.”
“I’m not here for the stories,” LRK said, dismissively. “Are you in charge of this temple?”
“I am.”
That surprised LRK. He’d expected someone in a lower position to have the duties of emptying the temple. He faced him. “Good, I have questions.”
The man smiled. “If you are looking to become a Keeper, I’m afraid you made the decision too late, but you are welcome to help with maintaining the temple.”
“Not interested,” LRK couldn’t keep the derision out of his voice and the Keeper stiffened. “What I’m curious about is this.” He motioned around them. “What exactly is the Celeste?”
“What do you mean?” the man warmed a little and motioned for the spot next to LRK. He slid down to make space.
“The stories you’ve been telling, they talk about this being, but what is he, or she? It? Is the Celeste human or Furrian?”
“The Celeste is everything,” the Keeper said soothingly.
LRK rolled his eyes. “Can’t be. Nothing is everything.”
“The Celeste isn’t like us.” The man seemed to take the lynx’s derision as a challenge now. “He is the Celeste, beyond comprehension, watching over us, keeping us safe.”
“So long as we do what he wants.” He considered going with ‘it’ but LRK decided too much combativeness wouldn’t be productive.
“The Celeste wants us all to be safe, pure, untainted.”
“Right, don’t you mean so long as you’re not Furrian?”
“Anyone can succumb to temptation.”
“I’ve never seen you burn a wizard.” LRK was making a guess, but there were enough Celeste related stories where wizard played a positive role, he was confident he was right.
“Wizards don’t give into demonic temptation. They work through the material the Celeste gave us. What they make is no different from the loom a weaver uses, the potter’s wheel.”
LRK snorted. “Clearly you have no idea how physics work.”
The Keeper looked at him suspiciously.
“Look, explain to me why it is the only people you guys burn are Furrians, if all this isn’t a ploy to remove us for some reason?”
“My child,” the Keeper said, placing a hand on LRK’s shoulder, “I do not know what you have been told, but the Celeste has nothing against you.” The smile LRK gave the man made him falter, but he pressed on. “You are the Celeste’s child. All beings, human or Furrian.”
“If that’s the case, how come the Celeste made demons to only come after Furrian?”
“The Celeste didn’t make demons.”
“I thought the Celeste made everything.”
“Yes, everything of this world. Demons slip through the cracks, from the underworld.”
“Cracks the Celeste put there.”
“No, the Celeste would never—”
“Then where do they come from?”
“From the demons, they force their ways in—”
“Why doesn’t the Celeste stop them?”
“Excuse me?”
LRK chuckles. “You’ve never thought those stories through, have you? The Celeste made everything. It’s more powerful than anything, so why does it allow things like demons to make holes and come muck about its creation?”
“Muck about?”
“Never mind. Answer me this. Why does the Celeste allow demons to exist?”
“To test us, of course.” The Keeper spoke with confidence now.
“Why does the Celeste need to test you?” LRK was amused at how easily, how willingly, the man was to fall back on an explanation, instead of looking at the flaws in his beliefs.
“So that he’ll know we have the resolve to resist demons.”
“Doesn’t he already know that? It’s the Celeste, ultimate thing and all that.”
“Sir, if your only goal here is to mock the Celeste, I will—”
“I’m sorry, got carried away.” The Keeper looked confused, so LRK gave him more to think on. “Why the fire? Why burn possessed people. Doesn’t that seem excessive to you?”
“The fire cleanses.”
“Fire kills.”
The Keeper nodded, and when he spoke, he sounded chagrined. “Yes. But once one lets a demon in, what else can we do? The taint is permanent, even if they want to renounce them, they will always fall victim. Yes, fire kills, but it also purifies them, so the Celeste can take them back within himself.”
“Purify?”
“Yes, one must be pure to—”
“Have you ever tasted ash, Keeper? There’s nothing pure about that stuff.”
The man rubbed his face. “You’re missing the point. This is about the purity of the spirit. The body isn’t important, just a vessel, by then it’s not even that, it’s a prison, corrupted, holding the spirit trapped.”
“How do you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to kill a young man, what kind of proof do you need to make sure he or she has been possessed?”
“We record the evidence, the words of the witnesses. We get a confession.”
“How do you get someone to admit to being possessed?”
“There are methods,” the man said softly. “We can force the demon to manifest, to admit what it is.”
“What’s the youngest person you ever had to question that way?”
The Keeper looked away. “Four. It was a sad case.”
LRK cursed softly. Did power show up at that age? Leo had been six, so it was possible. How could they do that to a child?
“What was the verdict?” he still asked.
“She was possessed, of course.” The tone was still sad, but there was an edge to it, as if he was defying LRK to question it. “It took three days, but the demon admitted to its presence, to everything it had been accused of, all the while trying to play on my feelings.”
LRK closed his eyes. How could anyone torture a four-year-old girl for three days and still call themselves kind? Considerate? He didn’t think this man was a sociopath, but who else could do this?
“That’s how long it took for her to show her power?”
“No, it would never show it, but it admitted to it.”
“And that was enough?” LRK realized he’d made an assumption. “Was the girl Furrian?”
“No, human. Demons do not go after only Furrians, and yes. The book is clear. Ultimately, the Demon can no longer lie while under the signs.”
LRK had to force his stomach down. A human child. She had never have been able to demonstrate power. The one true claim of possession the Keepers made, and they hadn’t even needed it to burn her.
“Has anyone questioned that way been proved innocent?”
The Keeper shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Only the guilty are accused.”
This would be funny, LRK thought, If it wasn’t already horrible. He sensed for life throughout the temple and found the cluster behind the dais. By their positions they were all sleeping.
“Do you take in people in trouble, Keeper? Weary travelers, in need of a meal and bed?”
The shift in question confused the Keeper. “No. The temple is only for the initiated to live in. There are a few inns in the area who take our markers. We give them so those in need can go there for a night. Are you in need of help?”
LRK shook his head. “How about loved ones? Or other people a Keeper might take to their bed?”
“Of course not,” the man replied, offended.
LRK smiled. “I hadn’t known Keepers in the city were beyond needs of the body.” He worked at keeping his voice even as he continued. “The Keeper from the town I came from was known to keep some widows company.”
The man shook his head. “The Celeste doesn’t require we renounce life, but the temple is only for His disciples to live in. Our relationship with the Celeste is a holy thing, to bring others here, where we are closest, would sully it.”
LRK nodded and felt a weight lift. He had been unsure what he’d do if one of the sleepers could have been an innocent, but now that wasn’t even an issue. He could continue talking, he probably should, to amass more intelligence, but he’d already heard more than he could stomach. The other Keepers were in bed, most probably sleeping. If not, the thick stone walls would keep them from hearing what he was going to do.
He stood and stretched. “Thank you, this has been most instructive.”
The man stood with him. “In spite of the late hour, I am happy I could help illuminate your thoughts.”
LRK smiled at him. “Is that what you think happened here?” He punched the Keeper hard enough the man flew over the last three pews. When LRK reached him he was still on his back, bewildered. He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him to the stone wall, far enough from the doors leading outside to be sure no one would hear the screams.
“What are you doing?” The man managed to ask as LRK lifted him and pressed him against the stone, where he melted partially in. “You’re possessed!”
“I’m much worse.” He placed the man’s arms over his head and solidified the stone around his hands. The man fought to escape, but it was too late. He released the rest of him and stepped out of the way of the kicks. “A Keeper murdered my son.” LRK said, and the man stopped.
“I am so—” The punch to the face silenced him.
“Don’t bother. I might have thought he was the exception. I didn’t, but I might have. Except you just admitted to torturing a four-year-old girl, then burning her even though she was innocent.”
“He was possessed!”
“She was human,” LRK snarled. “Humans can’t have powers. She had no powers to show you.”
“She could still—” Another punch.
“No. Powers, that’s how your religion claims you know who’s a demon. Without a show of power, you shouldn’t have done anything to that little girl.”
“She admitted to it!” The man flinched as LRK raised his fist, but he stopped.
“Okay. I’m glad you reminded me of that. I was just going to get some revenge in, but now I’m going to make a point.”
The man screamed for someone to help him.
“Don’t bother. The walls are too thick. We’re too far from the people sleeping and since you don’t allow anyone to stay close at night. There’s no one on the other side of this wall. We can talk in peace.”
“You will never corrupt me!”
“Like I care. I’m only interested in getting you to say a few words.”
The man looked at LRK suspiciously. “What words?”
“I am a demon.”
“I’m not a—” he began, quizzically.
LRK punched him in the stomach and the man retched.
“I will never—” The man’s face snapped to the side from the punch.
LRK hit the man anytime he refused to say the words. When he stopped, a few minutes later, the man’s face was bloody, his lips split, his nose broken, an eye closed.
The lynx dug his fingers in the stone by the Keeper’s head, on the side he could see out of and pulled a lump of stone from it, shaping it like putty, stretching it, forming a blade.
“Please,” the man pleaded, “You don’t have to do this. You can be saved.”
“Killed, you mean. Tell me, the person who started this religion, human or Furrian?”
“What? No one started…. The Celeste is—” the man tried to move away as LRK tested the sharpness of his knife on his robe. He smiled as the heavy fabric fell away with hardly any force.
“Someone’s in charge of all this.” He tapped the flat of the blade against his hand, waiting.
“I am, this is my temple.”
LRK sighed. “Not here, the whole thing. There’s one person who makes all the big decisions.”
“The… The Voice?”
“I guess, who are they?”
“I don’t know.” The man eyed the stone knife, but he was calmer.
“How can you know not who you answer to?”
“I’ve never been to Asgoreth, only the blessed get to train directly under the Voice.”
The name wasn’t familiar. “Where is it?”
The man shrugged, then hurried to speak as LRK moved the knife to his face. “To the setting sun! By the largest expanse of water anyone will ever see!”
The setting sun, made it west, not that he had an easy way to keep to it, his senses didn’t extend to magnetism. The largest water meant nothing in a time where people couldn’t go higher than the highest hill. Some lakes were wide enough to qualify. But for it to be the city where this Voice lived in, it would be large, and known. As he went west, someone would know of it.
“Good enough.”
The Keeper looked at him in horror, as if he’d realized he’d told him some great secret.
LRK ran the tip of the knife down the man’s cheek, leaving a red line. “Let’s get back to getting you to admit you are a demon.”
The man squirmed, then whimpered as the motion made the knife dig deeper. “I’m not a demon.”
“How many people say the same thing when you start. Does that stop you? Demons lie, right?” LRK slashed the man chest, but only cut the fabric, although the scream led him to think he had misjudged and opened the Keeper’s chest. The fabric fell, showing intact flesh. “I’m going to guess you’re lying too.”
“I am not. You know this. I am a Keeper. I serve the Celeste.”
LRK cut a red line on the flesh. The man screamed and whimpered.
“Please, I did nothing wrong. I am sorry your son is lost to you, but demons took him, not I or your town’s Keeper.”
LRK smiled at the man. Feeling his rage turn to ice. “This isn’t about Leo. This is about you. It’s about getting you to admit that you are a demon.” He placed the point of the knife against the man’s shoulder.
“I am not—” the scream as LRK pushed was loud enough he made a dome of solid air over them, keeping it from traveling, making it sound hollow. He stopped when he felt the bone.
“Why are you doing this?” the man cried.
“To get to the truth. What is it you Keepers like to say? The truth will set you free? Just admit to being a demon and the pain ends.” When the man glared at LRK, he pushed the knife along the bone, toward the shoulder. The man gritted his teeth.
“Well?” LRK asked, the point reaching the edge.
“Never.”
LRK pushed the knife deeper in the shoulder joint. The man shook his head, still silent. With a twist he forced the bone out of the socket. LRK winced at the scream. He’d thought the previous ones had been loud, but he’d forgotten just how loud a man could scream.
“Stop,” the man whimpered. “I’m a demon, please stop!”
LRK pulled the knife out. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, do you see how that girl could admit to it? Did you use physical pain with her, like this, or did you go for the emotional torture? Did you promise her she’d be reunited with her parents if she simple said those same words?”
With an effort, the man stopped whimpering and raised his head. “You don’t understand. I had to do it. I had to save her spirit from the demon holding it captive.”
“I get it.” LRK turned, and looked around for things to use to make the pyre. “It’s what I’m doing too, saving your spirit.” He was going to have to use the pews. Wasn’t there something smaller that he wouldn’t have to break to pieces before he could pile them around the Keeper? “The next step is to purify you, right? Burn that demon out of you.”
“You can’t do that! I’m not possessed, I wasn’t accused!”
LRK whirled. “I accuse you,” he snarled. “I say you’re a demon because what else but a monster would torture a young girl? Only a demon would make my Leo feel insufferable pain just for being different. What was she accused of? Did a neighbor not like her hair? Did she steal cookies? What would you have done if he’d dare use his power to save a family from a fire? You’d have turned that fire against him wouldn’t you? Tie him to a post and light him up.”
The man had the gall to look saddened. “Can’t you see? It didn’t do that thing to save them, it did it to ingrain itself into their lives. They would have come to trust him because of it and the demon within him would have corrupted them all, given time. The Keeper did—”
LRK struck him hard enough teeth flew out, hit the wall of air and bounced off the floor.
“Leo was a good man. My son saved those people knowing the price, so don’t you dare accuse him, or say anything else, or I’m just going to cut your throat and leave you here to die.” He turned before the tears came. The reminder that Leo had let it happen hurt too much.
Why? Why hadn’t he saved himself?
And this Keeper just couldn’t see his own hypocrisy. He’d admitted to being a demon under pain, just like the girl he’d killed, but he didn’t realize they were the same. He still saw her as tainted and himself as innocent. If this man was so set in his belief he was blind to this, what could LRK do to make others see this faith was nothing but a sham? How could he tear it apart if there was always going to be someone like this Keeper with an explanation for why one was a demon while the other was just an error?
He looked at the pews, at all this wood, and he chuckled. Had he provided some of the wood here? Had some of the trees he’d cut gone to make those pews he was considering using to burn this Keeper? He was far from that town, but toward the end, they came from far for his wood.
A fire.
How ridiculous was that? Burn one Keeper and hope that anyone would get the message? He turned and looked at the man trapped in the stone. How could he expect to bring down this faith just by killing a man, the nine in this temple? By killing a hundred or a thousand of them? What would simply killing them accomplish?
No, if he wanted to bring down the faith, he was going to have to attack more than the people who pushed the belief. He was going to have to bring down a lot more. He smiled. But first he needed to write something.
The Keeper studied him as LRK returned to him his face a mix of apprehension and curiosity. LRK wondered what the man saw. A monster with a demonic smile? A man who’d finally figured out how he was going to channel his rage? A father driven mad with grief?
The earth formed bowls under the man’s wrists, then formed spikes that pierced them.
The man pleaded for his life, while LRK cut more of the robe into strips, going so far to claim he’d renounce the Celeste, had seen the error of his way, if only he was released. By the time he had a reasonable brush the man’s cried had quiet.
He dipped the end in the blood began writing on the stone. He needed more than one application—blood didn’t make as good paint as he’d expected, or maybe it was his improvised brush, or changing the message.
He’d began with ‘Child killer,’ but that hadn’t felt like enough, so above he added ‘he was,’ but that was too specific. He rubbed it out, then wrote ‘The Celeste is a’. It was off center, and he thought he should add more. Maybe a warning for anyone to stay away from them, but this had taken more of the blood than he’d expected and there was none flowing into the bowls anymore. Would there be enough for anything he wanted to write? He didn’t want to run out halfway. He wasn’t killing a second person this way.
He’d figure a better way while he traveled.
He walked out of the building and crossed to the other side of the road. He leaned against the wall and sensed through the building to the nine people sleeping. They had to go first. He couldn’t be certain they would sleep through everything. All one needed was a little luck and they might escape. No one escaped this, escaped him.
He increased the fires within them as fast and as hot as he could, and within seconds everything was consumed and the fires had nothing to feed on. If he hadn’t already decided on the next step, he thought the image of a body shaped ash on a bed might be terrifying enough to keep people from becoming Keepers.
But his goal was larger.
He took hold of the stone that comprised the temple, all of it. He wrapped his power through it all, and, with one thought, brought it down. The crashing stones were probably louder than any storms coming through this area. He kept hold of them as they fell, making sure they fell within the temple ground and not on the surrounding houses, and that they fell so his message would remain clear.
When the dust settled, the road was filled with people in various state of dress. The wall where his message was painted was now facing the road, the dead Keeper hanging loose under it, which became visible as more people with torches approached.
LRK watched the people search for survivors, the city watch join in. He listened to the people talk about the wonder that no other buildings were touched, and thanks the Celeste for it.
To LRK’s surprise a Keeper approached from the road. Had one escaped, somehow? But her black robe was free of dust. The woman was older, her face having only a few wrinkles, but her hair was gray. He was surprised to see she had a sword at her hip. He’d never heard of an armed Keeper. They used their faith as their shield.
He considered burning her there, as she spoke to the supervising watchman. No one would know it was him. But he realized that having a Keeper witness this was to his advantage. This ensured the new spread to other temples, maybe to that Voice character.
This one event might not be taken seriously, but as more temples were destroyed, they’d known this had been the first. They wouldn’t be able to deny it now. As the Keeper went to the body, LRK slipped through the crowd and used the chaos he’d caused to leave the city unnoticed.
* * * * *
Yes, this will be all for now.
Oh, no need to worry, there is still much to go before this chapter in our Lord’s life is over. Much more.
Well, I didn’t think everything he did to the Keeper needed to be mentioned, after all, I have told of the length he can go to when properly angered the last time.
Will it be like this every time? well, I don’t think there will be a need to recount each and every temple he destroys, so I won’t make it so horrible, but I can tell you the scale will change at some point. But that will be for future stories.
He walked among the people, not seeing them, or the buildings they were gawking at. He heard, but didn’t listen to, the merchants selling their wares, to the men and women putting themselves on display. He was here for only one reason, and he could sense her in the distance.
She had changed over the years—life did that, LRK knew it, possibly better than most. But no matter how her superficial patterns shifted with her moods, her age, her core heat remained the same and he would never forget it. He would never forget his daughter.
He took the most direct route he could to her, which caused it to be circuitous. As he was so focused on her he didn’t bother sensing for the stone that made up some of the buildings and most were wood, which he couldn’t sense. So he had to backtrack out of multiple dead-ends.
When he finally saw her he allowed himself to pay attention to where he was, and instead of the guard or warrior district of the city, he was in a street filled with shops. He checked, she might be shopping, but no, she was sitting by the door, a lynx toddler at her feet.
The street had a calm to it, and he noticed the shadows were stretching. He’d arrived at the end of the day, and while all the doors were open, some shop keeper were sweeping the floors or starting to take their wares inside for the night.
She picked up the child, still talking to a human woman, and brought it to her breast. Only then did it register that the child was hers. His daughter had a child of her own. He had a grandchild.
He clamped down on the emotion. He wouldn’t care, wouldn’t let himself care. What if it was like Leo? Like him? The idea it might die just for being different almost drew out a keen from LRK. Could he survive loosing a grandchild to bigotry? Would she?
She pointed in his direction, saying something to the woman, and as the woman walk that way Alaine noticed him. Her face immediately lit up. “Papa!” She stood, barely disturbing her child, and walked to him. “Oh Papa I am so glad the letter reached you in time.” She pulled the protesting child from her breast and turned him. “Papa, this is Azaghal, your grandson.” She leaned in against the child’s face. “Azie, this is the most wonderful man after your father. This is Lars, your grandfather.”
LRK didn’t look at the child. He remembered what looking to Leo’s innocent face had done to him and he couldn’t get attached again. “Alaine, can we go to your house? We need to talk.”
“Of course.” She hugged him with one arm.
After a moment, he hugged her back, but he barely put strength in it. She guided him back to the storefront, stopping by the door before it. “Natalie, can you look after Azie for me for a time? Papa needs to speak to me.”
“Of course Alaine.” The human nodded a greeting to LRK as she settled the mewing child in her arms.
Inside the store, the walls and tables contained things of colors, he tried to pay attention to them, after all his daughter had made them. He didn’t. For all that he loved her, he didn’t want to know how successful she was. He didn’t want to be reminded of who he was leaving behind.
She led him to the back, to a table by the stairs going up. It had a stove with a kettle on it and she offered him tea, which he refused. He dropped in one of the chair.
She sat opposite him. “Papa, what’s wrong? You’re all serious.”
“Leo is dead,” he stated, feeling none of the pain anymore. He’d buried it with everything he had been.
She gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh Papa, are you alright?” tears fell from her eyes.
“I’m fine,” he said, knowing she didn’t believe him, and not caring. He didn’t even try to smile, to offer her the little comfort he should.
“How did it happen?”
“There was a fire.” He didn’t say more. For all that he controlled himself, he knew that if he tried to explain about how her brother had been murdered, he could lose it, and he might destroy this city in his rekindled rage.
She took his hand. “Papa, I am so sorry. Don’t worry about going back, you can stay here, I’ll make space.”
He shook his head, looking at her hand, forcing the connection he felt down. Forcing himself not to feel anything. “I came to tell you I’m going away.”
“Papa, I—”
“I was always going to leave,” he said flatly, “Once you and Leo no longer needed me. I should have left years ago, but I wanted to fix—” He closed his eyes, forced the grief down. He could feel it once the mission was over. Right now, it would simply get in the way. “Now there’s no reason for me to stay.”
Alaine opened her mouth, her face making clear the protest she was ready to lay on him, but the door opened and a lynx entered, holding Alaine’s son in his arms with far more familiarity than LRK liked. He pushed away from the table. No bean counter got to just take his daughter’s son and—
“Ulrick!” She went to him, kissed him, before taking her son from his arms. “I’m so glad you’re home. I want you to meet Papa. Papa, this is Ulrick.”
The lynx was tall and lanky, wearing a quality gray shirt and brown pants. He looked healthy enough, but nothing like what LRK expected her daughter’s husband to look like.
“He isn’t the caravan guard you left with.”
Alaine made a face. “Oh, him. He was nothing like the gentleman he pretended to be. When we got here, he set me to work taking care of his hovel. When he was there, he did nothing but drink and force himself on me. He was usually so far in his cup that he fell asleep before he could do anything.” The relief in her voice made LRK hate the man.
“After returning from guarding a caravan he hunted me down while I was shopping and he tried to drag me back, saying I should have been waiting for him at home, getting his bed warm for him. I finally had enough. I’d expected him to be happy to see me after months away and all he could think of was that? I told him off and he struck me.”
“He what?” the buried rage found a new target. LRK was going to track him down and kill that man.
“It was the first time, Papa. You don’t have to worry.”
“And the last,” Ulrick added.
“Ulrick happened to be present,” She continued, “and he kept the excuse for a man from striking me again.” She looked at the lynx with fondness. “Gave him a proper trouncing.”
LRK took another look at the lynx. He only vaguely remembered the guard who had taken his daughter with him, but he remembered broad shoulders, strong arms, an easy smile and a willingness to prove his strength.
Ulrick still looked like a bean counter.
“Ulrick took me to the herbalist to ensure I wasn’t hurt. Then he took me to his mother’s home; he wasn’t letting me return to that brute’s hovel. The lout tried to take me back. Claimed you’d promised me to him, as is you would have even let me leave with him if you’d known the kind of man he really was, Papa. Fortunately, he never got the Keeper back home to sign him the forms so he couldn’t enforce it.”
Ulrick looked up as thunder ripped through the air.
Alaine continued, as if she hadn’t heard. “That time Ulrick hurt him so badly the friends that lout had brought to witness winning me back had to carry him away.” She straightened. “He has never bothered us since.”
The look Ulrick gave her told LRK she wasn’t aware of the other attempts that were made. It impressed him. That he would keep his daughter from worrying about things like that, but it didn’t explain how he’d accomplished it.
“What do you do?” LRK demanded. He could see how the two could be in collusion, waiting until Alaine was comfortable to get her to… what?
Alaine beamed, oblivious to the threat that had been in LRK’s voice. “Ulrick is a scholar of the past.”
Ulrick stood still as LRK’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t missed it. LRK could see him being keenly aware of the danger he was in.
“Really?”
Alaine looked from one to the other. “Papa?”
“How does a scholar take on a guard and win?” he asked. This man was going to pay for leading his daughter on.
She placed herself before Ulrick. “Papa, stop this.”
“Not before he explains himself.”
“Papa,” she said in that voice that was one part petulance, one part pleading and one part cajoling. She’d gotten him to do many things he hadn’t wanted to when she’d been younger with that tone, but this time it slip off the ice flowing through his veins.
She sighed. “Papa, Ulrick studies how people fought in the past.”
He looked at her. “Alaine, books won’t teach a man like him how to beat a guard.”
“He is right, Alaine,” Ulrick said, as he placed a hand on her shoulder and gently moved her to the side. The lynx looked at LRK, and something shifted in his stance, he moved his weight to his left leg, shifted the right forward. “But you can learn a great deal meeting with experts of old styles.”
The lynx no longer looked worried, but LRK still didn’t like what he heard. “You don’t look like a traveler. You’re too well fed.”
Ulrick smiled. “I’m not. I don’t even like walking from one side of the city to the next. Fortunately for me, the king enjoys watching masters give demonstrations of their skills. Master potters, weavers—” he smiled and nodded to Alaine, who blushed, “—and master fighters. I will speak with them once they are done, and some, if they have the time, will teach me a sliver of what they know. I doubt I am very good compared to any one of them, but I certainly am good enough to put a thug who would strike a woman in his place. And if you force me, sir, I will show you what I do know, even though you are my wife’s father.”
“Papa!” Alaine looked horrified. “What are you thinking, Ulrick could hurt you?”
LRK didn’t react to how ridiculous the statement was, and Ulrick was worried again. He might have admitted to not being very skilled, but he knew enough to tell LRK wasn’t worried.
That, along with how Alaine stood by Ulrick’s side, made LRK pause. There was no triumph on the man’s face. He was still worried. She had picked him over her father, it was clear, but Ulrick didn’t see a victory, he still saw a potential fight he didn’t want to have.
LRK forced his anger down. “You protected my daughter,” he stated. “Do you promise to continue to do so?”
“With my life, Sir.”
LRK nodded. He looked at Alaine, who seemed to be able to breathe again, at the child she held who had managed to fall asleep in her arms, in spite of the tension.
“Then I can go.” He stepped around Ulrick, only to find his daughter before him.
“Stay, Papa. Just for a little while. You have no reason to hurry back home, do you? Azie would love to get to know his grandfather, I’ve told him so much about you.”
“No.” He wouldn’t get attached again. Now, with his rage keeping every other emotions at bay, was the time to cut all ties. “There is one other thing I need to do here, then I am leaving.”
“Will you come back?” the concern in her voice kept him from outright saying no.
“I don’t know,” was as close as he could say. He knew he’d never return, but he realized he couldn’t steal all hope from her. “I’m going to be busy with this for a long time, Alaine. When I’m done, maybe I’ll return.”
Would she still be here by then? Would she even still be alive? The Celeste’s disciples were many and spread far. This would take time.
She searched his face. “I hope you do.” She hugged him one-armed again. “I will miss you, Papa.”
“Where is the Celeste’s temple?” He asked, stepping out of the hug.
She was momentarily confused, then understanding dawned. “Of course. Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” He kept his confusion from showing. “I need to do this alone.” What could she think he was aiming to do that she could assist with?
She nodded. “Ulrick is the one who walks the city. Can you take him there?”
“Just point me to it,” LRK said, before the man could do anything. “I’ll make my own way there.”
Ulrick led LRK outside and pointed to a spire barely visible between two buildings. “Just keep that in sight, and you’ll reach it. The simplest way is to get to the King’s Street, then head to the Morning Market. You got through and you’ll find Temple Road. It will take you to it.”
LRK nodded, but grabbed the man’s arm before he returned inside. “You need to understand something,” he said, not looking away from the spire. “I have no plans to return here, but Alaine is the only child I have left. If you ever hurt her, run. Because word will reach me, and when it does, I will return.” He turned and locked eyes with Ulrick’s “I will leave nothing of you for the rats to eat. You will be ash carried away by the wind, forgotten by everyone.”
Ulrick’s gaze didn’t waver. “Sir, if I ever hurt Alaine, I will not run. I will wait for you on this doorstep and accept whatever punishment I deserve.”
LRK thought better of this lynx for that admission. He turned and walked away from him, from his daughter, from the only things that remained of Lars. He’d burned the memory of them if he could, but settled on burying it under the anger.
He followed Ulrick’s directions, and soon he stood before the large building of stone, wood and glass. Massive doors stood open and men and women of all species, or all ages, walked through them. The Celeste welcomed all, so long as you were ‘normal.’
He entered with the other, smirking internally at the acolyte by the door welcoming him within the temple. Welcoming someone they considered a monster. If their Celeste was real, it would have kept him out; for what he was planning.
A young Keeper stood on a dais, behind a pulpit, speaking to the assembled crowd. She was a cat with marmalade fur and spoke the Celeste’s message, which summarized to ‘The Celeste will love you, so long as you prostrate before it and tell it which of your neighbor is a demon so they can be cleansed by fire.’ LRK had a difficult time not rolling his eyes sitting in a pew at the back.
He looked the crowd over, seeing far more ears on top of heads than on each side. How many of them were powered, he wondered? Living in quiet shame, in fear of the day they would be found out.
Motion was near constant, people standing and leaving, to be replaced by others. As far as he could tell, three-quarters of the pews were occupied at any time.
The Keeper finished speaking and a human Keeper took her place. He was older, his unshaven beard streaked with white. He spoke of a traveler, of temptation, of power gained, but at a great price—destruction and debasement. He spoke of a death without meaning, of being cast away from the Celeste. Different words, wrapped within a tale, but the same message. Be normal, or else.
As he spoke the light of fire in braziers replaced that of the sun. Another Keeper replaced this one, and yet another story, told with conviction, with the certainty they were true. The Celeste was real, she said, had always been, would always be. Rejoice in its light.
LRK watched people come and go, wondering why they bothered? What did they gain from listening to someone tell them what to think, what was true and what wasn’t? He had been that way once, but he’d been made to be like that, to obey without questions, and even he had broken out of that within a few years.
A different Keeper left the pulpit, and no other replaced her. In the silence, LRK realized he was one of only a handful of people still seated, and by their appearance, the others had nowhere to go, other than a doorstep, or dirty alley. A Keeper in the customary black robe accosted them, spoke softly, and they left.
The Celeste might welcome all, but clearly, even it had limits as to how long someone could loiter. The Keeper was older, his pale face wrinkled but clean shaven, his gray hair close to his scalp. This man didn’t spend much time in the sun, LRK thought. When they fixed on him, the Keeper’s eyes were warm, as if they were friends.
If only he knew the truth of who he was, LRK thought, of why he was here. The warmth would vanish.
“The sermons are done for the day,” the man said in a confident voice. “If you wish to hear more, you will need to return tomorrow.”
“I’m not here for the stories,” LRK said, dismissively. “Are you in charge of this temple?”
“I am.”
That surprised LRK. He’d expected someone in a lower position to have the duties of emptying the temple. He faced him. “Good, I have questions.”
The man smiled. “If you are looking to become a Keeper, I’m afraid you made the decision too late, but you are welcome to help with maintaining the temple.”
“Not interested,” LRK couldn’t keep the derision out of his voice and the Keeper stiffened. “What I’m curious about is this.” He motioned around them. “What exactly is the Celeste?”
“What do you mean?” the man warmed a little and motioned for the spot next to LRK. He slid down to make space.
“The stories you’ve been telling, they talk about this being, but what is he, or she? It? Is the Celeste human or Furrian?”
“The Celeste is everything,” the Keeper said soothingly.
LRK rolled his eyes. “Can’t be. Nothing is everything.”
“The Celeste isn’t like us.” The man seemed to take the lynx’s derision as a challenge now. “He is the Celeste, beyond comprehension, watching over us, keeping us safe.”
“So long as we do what he wants.” He considered going with ‘it’ but LRK decided too much combativeness wouldn’t be productive.
“The Celeste wants us all to be safe, pure, untainted.”
“Right, don’t you mean so long as you’re not Furrian?”
“Anyone can succumb to temptation.”
“I’ve never seen you burn a wizard.” LRK was making a guess, but there were enough Celeste related stories where wizard played a positive role, he was confident he was right.
“Wizards don’t give into demonic temptation. They work through the material the Celeste gave us. What they make is no different from the loom a weaver uses, the potter’s wheel.”
LRK snorted. “Clearly you have no idea how physics work.”
The Keeper looked at him suspiciously.
“Look, explain to me why it is the only people you guys burn are Furrians, if all this isn’t a ploy to remove us for some reason?”
“My child,” the Keeper said, placing a hand on LRK’s shoulder, “I do not know what you have been told, but the Celeste has nothing against you.” The smile LRK gave the man made him falter, but he pressed on. “You are the Celeste’s child. All beings, human or Furrian.”
“If that’s the case, how come the Celeste made demons to only come after Furrian?”
“The Celeste didn’t make demons.”
“I thought the Celeste made everything.”
“Yes, everything of this world. Demons slip through the cracks, from the underworld.”
“Cracks the Celeste put there.”
“No, the Celeste would never—”
“Then where do they come from?”
“From the demons, they force their ways in—”
“Why doesn’t the Celeste stop them?”
“Excuse me?”
LRK chuckles. “You’ve never thought those stories through, have you? The Celeste made everything. It’s more powerful than anything, so why does it allow things like demons to make holes and come muck about its creation?”
“Muck about?”
“Never mind. Answer me this. Why does the Celeste allow demons to exist?”
“To test us, of course.” The Keeper spoke with confidence now.
“Why does the Celeste need to test you?” LRK was amused at how easily, how willingly, the man was to fall back on an explanation, instead of looking at the flaws in his beliefs.
“So that he’ll know we have the resolve to resist demons.”
“Doesn’t he already know that? It’s the Celeste, ultimate thing and all that.”
“Sir, if your only goal here is to mock the Celeste, I will—”
“I’m sorry, got carried away.” The Keeper looked confused, so LRK gave him more to think on. “Why the fire? Why burn possessed people. Doesn’t that seem excessive to you?”
“The fire cleanses.”
“Fire kills.”
The Keeper nodded, and when he spoke, he sounded chagrined. “Yes. But once one lets a demon in, what else can we do? The taint is permanent, even if they want to renounce them, they will always fall victim. Yes, fire kills, but it also purifies them, so the Celeste can take them back within himself.”
“Purify?”
“Yes, one must be pure to—”
“Have you ever tasted ash, Keeper? There’s nothing pure about that stuff.”
The man rubbed his face. “You’re missing the point. This is about the purity of the spirit. The body isn’t important, just a vessel, by then it’s not even that, it’s a prison, corrupted, holding the spirit trapped.”
“How do you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to kill a young man, what kind of proof do you need to make sure he or she has been possessed?”
“We record the evidence, the words of the witnesses. We get a confession.”
“How do you get someone to admit to being possessed?”
“There are methods,” the man said softly. “We can force the demon to manifest, to admit what it is.”
“What’s the youngest person you ever had to question that way?”
The Keeper looked away. “Four. It was a sad case.”
LRK cursed softly. Did power show up at that age? Leo had been six, so it was possible. How could they do that to a child?
“What was the verdict?” he still asked.
“She was possessed, of course.” The tone was still sad, but there was an edge to it, as if he was defying LRK to question it. “It took three days, but the demon admitted to its presence, to everything it had been accused of, all the while trying to play on my feelings.”
LRK closed his eyes. How could anyone torture a four-year-old girl for three days and still call themselves kind? Considerate? He didn’t think this man was a sociopath, but who else could do this?
“That’s how long it took for her to show her power?”
“No, it would never show it, but it admitted to it.”
“And that was enough?” LRK realized he’d made an assumption. “Was the girl Furrian?”
“No, human. Demons do not go after only Furrians, and yes. The book is clear. Ultimately, the Demon can no longer lie while under the signs.”
LRK had to force his stomach down. A human child. She had never have been able to demonstrate power. The one true claim of possession the Keepers made, and they hadn’t even needed it to burn her.
“Has anyone questioned that way been proved innocent?”
The Keeper shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Only the guilty are accused.”
This would be funny, LRK thought, If it wasn’t already horrible. He sensed for life throughout the temple and found the cluster behind the dais. By their positions they were all sleeping.
“Do you take in people in trouble, Keeper? Weary travelers, in need of a meal and bed?”
The shift in question confused the Keeper. “No. The temple is only for the initiated to live in. There are a few inns in the area who take our markers. We give them so those in need can go there for a night. Are you in need of help?”
LRK shook his head. “How about loved ones? Or other people a Keeper might take to their bed?”
“Of course not,” the man replied, offended.
LRK smiled. “I hadn’t known Keepers in the city were beyond needs of the body.” He worked at keeping his voice even as he continued. “The Keeper from the town I came from was known to keep some widows company.”
The man shook his head. “The Celeste doesn’t require we renounce life, but the temple is only for His disciples to live in. Our relationship with the Celeste is a holy thing, to bring others here, where we are closest, would sully it.”
LRK nodded and felt a weight lift. He had been unsure what he’d do if one of the sleepers could have been an innocent, but now that wasn’t even an issue. He could continue talking, he probably should, to amass more intelligence, but he’d already heard more than he could stomach. The other Keepers were in bed, most probably sleeping. If not, the thick stone walls would keep them from hearing what he was going to do.
He stood and stretched. “Thank you, this has been most instructive.”
The man stood with him. “In spite of the late hour, I am happy I could help illuminate your thoughts.”
LRK smiled at him. “Is that what you think happened here?” He punched the Keeper hard enough the man flew over the last three pews. When LRK reached him he was still on his back, bewildered. He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him to the stone wall, far enough from the doors leading outside to be sure no one would hear the screams.
“What are you doing?” The man managed to ask as LRK lifted him and pressed him against the stone, where he melted partially in. “You’re possessed!”
“I’m much worse.” He placed the man’s arms over his head and solidified the stone around his hands. The man fought to escape, but it was too late. He released the rest of him and stepped out of the way of the kicks. “A Keeper murdered my son.” LRK said, and the man stopped.
“I am so—” The punch to the face silenced him.
“Don’t bother. I might have thought he was the exception. I didn’t, but I might have. Except you just admitted to torturing a four-year-old girl, then burning her even though she was innocent.”
“He was possessed!”
“She was human,” LRK snarled. “Humans can’t have powers. She had no powers to show you.”
“She could still—” Another punch.
“No. Powers, that’s how your religion claims you know who’s a demon. Without a show of power, you shouldn’t have done anything to that little girl.”
“She admitted to it!” The man flinched as LRK raised his fist, but he stopped.
“Okay. I’m glad you reminded me of that. I was just going to get some revenge in, but now I’m going to make a point.”
The man screamed for someone to help him.
“Don’t bother. The walls are too thick. We’re too far from the people sleeping and since you don’t allow anyone to stay close at night. There’s no one on the other side of this wall. We can talk in peace.”
“You will never corrupt me!”
“Like I care. I’m only interested in getting you to say a few words.”
The man looked at LRK suspiciously. “What words?”
“I am a demon.”
“I’m not a—” he began, quizzically.
LRK punched him in the stomach and the man retched.
“I will never—” The man’s face snapped to the side from the punch.
LRK hit the man anytime he refused to say the words. When he stopped, a few minutes later, the man’s face was bloody, his lips split, his nose broken, an eye closed.
The lynx dug his fingers in the stone by the Keeper’s head, on the side he could see out of and pulled a lump of stone from it, shaping it like putty, stretching it, forming a blade.
“Please,” the man pleaded, “You don’t have to do this. You can be saved.”
“Killed, you mean. Tell me, the person who started this religion, human or Furrian?”
“What? No one started…. The Celeste is—” the man tried to move away as LRK tested the sharpness of his knife on his robe. He smiled as the heavy fabric fell away with hardly any force.
“Someone’s in charge of all this.” He tapped the flat of the blade against his hand, waiting.
“I am, this is my temple.”
LRK sighed. “Not here, the whole thing. There’s one person who makes all the big decisions.”
“The… The Voice?”
“I guess, who are they?”
“I don’t know.” The man eyed the stone knife, but he was calmer.
“How can you know not who you answer to?”
“I’ve never been to Asgoreth, only the blessed get to train directly under the Voice.”
The name wasn’t familiar. “Where is it?”
The man shrugged, then hurried to speak as LRK moved the knife to his face. “To the setting sun! By the largest expanse of water anyone will ever see!”
The setting sun, made it west, not that he had an easy way to keep to it, his senses didn’t extend to magnetism. The largest water meant nothing in a time where people couldn’t go higher than the highest hill. Some lakes were wide enough to qualify. But for it to be the city where this Voice lived in, it would be large, and known. As he went west, someone would know of it.
“Good enough.”
The Keeper looked at him in horror, as if he’d realized he’d told him some great secret.
LRK ran the tip of the knife down the man’s cheek, leaving a red line. “Let’s get back to getting you to admit you are a demon.”
The man squirmed, then whimpered as the motion made the knife dig deeper. “I’m not a demon.”
“How many people say the same thing when you start. Does that stop you? Demons lie, right?” LRK slashed the man chest, but only cut the fabric, although the scream led him to think he had misjudged and opened the Keeper’s chest. The fabric fell, showing intact flesh. “I’m going to guess you’re lying too.”
“I am not. You know this. I am a Keeper. I serve the Celeste.”
LRK cut a red line on the flesh. The man screamed and whimpered.
“Please, I did nothing wrong. I am sorry your son is lost to you, but demons took him, not I or your town’s Keeper.”
LRK smiled at the man. Feeling his rage turn to ice. “This isn’t about Leo. This is about you. It’s about getting you to admit that you are a demon.” He placed the point of the knife against the man’s shoulder.
“I am not—” the scream as LRK pushed was loud enough he made a dome of solid air over them, keeping it from traveling, making it sound hollow. He stopped when he felt the bone.
“Why are you doing this?” the man cried.
“To get to the truth. What is it you Keepers like to say? The truth will set you free? Just admit to being a demon and the pain ends.” When the man glared at LRK, he pushed the knife along the bone, toward the shoulder. The man gritted his teeth.
“Well?” LRK asked, the point reaching the edge.
“Never.”
LRK pushed the knife deeper in the shoulder joint. The man shook his head, still silent. With a twist he forced the bone out of the socket. LRK winced at the scream. He’d thought the previous ones had been loud, but he’d forgotten just how loud a man could scream.
“Stop,” the man whimpered. “I’m a demon, please stop!”
LRK pulled the knife out. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, do you see how that girl could admit to it? Did you use physical pain with her, like this, or did you go for the emotional torture? Did you promise her she’d be reunited with her parents if she simple said those same words?”
With an effort, the man stopped whimpering and raised his head. “You don’t understand. I had to do it. I had to save her spirit from the demon holding it captive.”
“I get it.” LRK turned, and looked around for things to use to make the pyre. “It’s what I’m doing too, saving your spirit.” He was going to have to use the pews. Wasn’t there something smaller that he wouldn’t have to break to pieces before he could pile them around the Keeper? “The next step is to purify you, right? Burn that demon out of you.”
“You can’t do that! I’m not possessed, I wasn’t accused!”
LRK whirled. “I accuse you,” he snarled. “I say you’re a demon because what else but a monster would torture a young girl? Only a demon would make my Leo feel insufferable pain just for being different. What was she accused of? Did a neighbor not like her hair? Did she steal cookies? What would you have done if he’d dare use his power to save a family from a fire? You’d have turned that fire against him wouldn’t you? Tie him to a post and light him up.”
The man had the gall to look saddened. “Can’t you see? It didn’t do that thing to save them, it did it to ingrain itself into their lives. They would have come to trust him because of it and the demon within him would have corrupted them all, given time. The Keeper did—”
LRK struck him hard enough teeth flew out, hit the wall of air and bounced off the floor.
“Leo was a good man. My son saved those people knowing the price, so don’t you dare accuse him, or say anything else, or I’m just going to cut your throat and leave you here to die.” He turned before the tears came. The reminder that Leo had let it happen hurt too much.
Why? Why hadn’t he saved himself?
And this Keeper just couldn’t see his own hypocrisy. He’d admitted to being a demon under pain, just like the girl he’d killed, but he didn’t realize they were the same. He still saw her as tainted and himself as innocent. If this man was so set in his belief he was blind to this, what could LRK do to make others see this faith was nothing but a sham? How could he tear it apart if there was always going to be someone like this Keeper with an explanation for why one was a demon while the other was just an error?
He looked at the pews, at all this wood, and he chuckled. Had he provided some of the wood here? Had some of the trees he’d cut gone to make those pews he was considering using to burn this Keeper? He was far from that town, but toward the end, they came from far for his wood.
A fire.
How ridiculous was that? Burn one Keeper and hope that anyone would get the message? He turned and looked at the man trapped in the stone. How could he expect to bring down this faith just by killing a man, the nine in this temple? By killing a hundred or a thousand of them? What would simply killing them accomplish?
No, if he wanted to bring down the faith, he was going to have to attack more than the people who pushed the belief. He was going to have to bring down a lot more. He smiled. But first he needed to write something.
The Keeper studied him as LRK returned to him his face a mix of apprehension and curiosity. LRK wondered what the man saw. A monster with a demonic smile? A man who’d finally figured out how he was going to channel his rage? A father driven mad with grief?
The earth formed bowls under the man’s wrists, then formed spikes that pierced them.
The man pleaded for his life, while LRK cut more of the robe into strips, going so far to claim he’d renounce the Celeste, had seen the error of his way, if only he was released. By the time he had a reasonable brush the man’s cried had quiet.
He dipped the end in the blood began writing on the stone. He needed more than one application—blood didn’t make as good paint as he’d expected, or maybe it was his improvised brush, or changing the message.
He’d began with ‘Child killer,’ but that hadn’t felt like enough, so above he added ‘he was,’ but that was too specific. He rubbed it out, then wrote ‘The Celeste is a’. It was off center, and he thought he should add more. Maybe a warning for anyone to stay away from them, but this had taken more of the blood than he’d expected and there was none flowing into the bowls anymore. Would there be enough for anything he wanted to write? He didn’t want to run out halfway. He wasn’t killing a second person this way.
He’d figure a better way while he traveled.
He walked out of the building and crossed to the other side of the road. He leaned against the wall and sensed through the building to the nine people sleeping. They had to go first. He couldn’t be certain they would sleep through everything. All one needed was a little luck and they might escape. No one escaped this, escaped him.
He increased the fires within them as fast and as hot as he could, and within seconds everything was consumed and the fires had nothing to feed on. If he hadn’t already decided on the next step, he thought the image of a body shaped ash on a bed might be terrifying enough to keep people from becoming Keepers.
But his goal was larger.
He took hold of the stone that comprised the temple, all of it. He wrapped his power through it all, and, with one thought, brought it down. The crashing stones were probably louder than any storms coming through this area. He kept hold of them as they fell, making sure they fell within the temple ground and not on the surrounding houses, and that they fell so his message would remain clear.
When the dust settled, the road was filled with people in various state of dress. The wall where his message was painted was now facing the road, the dead Keeper hanging loose under it, which became visible as more people with torches approached.
LRK watched the people search for survivors, the city watch join in. He listened to the people talk about the wonder that no other buildings were touched, and thanks the Celeste for it.
To LRK’s surprise a Keeper approached from the road. Had one escaped, somehow? But her black robe was free of dust. The woman was older, her face having only a few wrinkles, but her hair was gray. He was surprised to see she had a sword at her hip. He’d never heard of an armed Keeper. They used their faith as their shield.
He considered burning her there, as she spoke to the supervising watchman. No one would know it was him. But he realized that having a Keeper witness this was to his advantage. This ensured the new spread to other temples, maybe to that Voice character.
This one event might not be taken seriously, but as more temples were destroyed, they’d known this had been the first. They wouldn’t be able to deny it now. As the Keeper went to the body, LRK slipped through the crowd and used the chaos he’d caused to leave the city unnoticed.
* * * * *
Yes, this will be all for now.
Oh, no need to worry, there is still much to go before this chapter in our Lord’s life is over. Much more.
Well, I didn’t think everything he did to the Keeper needed to be mentioned, after all, I have told of the length he can go to when properly angered the last time.
Will it be like this every time? well, I don’t think there will be a need to recount each and every temple he destroys, so I won’t make it so horrible, but I can tell you the scale will change at some point. But that will be for future stories.
Comments
Marcwolf
A murderous purpose.. to silence the Voice and cleanse the land of Celeste. Who would hate LRK's abilities so much as to create a faith to purge them...
