Chapter One: Down at the Clever Endeavor

The Clever Endeavor wasn’t the best bar on Axis. Nor was it the cleanest, or the cheapest—and definitely not the friendliest. It was a bar you went to when you didn’t want to be seen.

Not that there weren’t always customers. The place had a pretty decent crowd of regulars, and new folks stumbled in from time to time as situations warranted. But everyone there knew the first rule of the Clever Endeavor: even if you saw someone you recognized—you didn’t see them.

Which is why it was so immediately obvious that Salim was being followed.

The bar was roughly half full, which meant that it was as full as it ever got. Wrought-iron lanterns filled not with flickering flame but with smooth phosphorescence glowed softly between tables, casting enough light to see by but not so much as to make anyone feel exposed. The bar’s shape was different than most, with a wide-open center and tables positioned around the twisting outer wall, each set in its own scalloped hollow. It was hardly the best use of space, but the sort of folk that frequented the Clever Endeavor appreciated the fact that the odd layout gave every table a wall to put one’s back to, plus a clear view of the entrance and the stairs leading up to the street. Directly across from the doorway stood a long wooden bar without any stools, and behind it lurked a rack of hundreds of bottles of all shapes and sizes—some clear, some opaque, and some jumping and jittering of their own accord.

The bar’s unusual shape, however, was nothing compared to its clientele. As far as Salim could tell—and such things weren’t always obvious—he was the only human present. To his right, a cluster of hive people—this particular group composed almost entirely of the flying variety, which resembled seven-foot-tall, black-shelled wasps—used deft proboscises to scrape thick red fluid from long, fluted glasses. Thanks to their telepathy, the only sound from their alcove was the steady brush of feathery appendages on crystal, yet the way they occasionally whirred their wings or crooked their limbs suggested an argument. Or as close to an argument as creatures with a hive mind ever got.

To Salim’s left, several of the plane’s native axiomites were going over documents with a winged, green-skinned man that Salim had pegged as an angel, hammering out some sort of agreement. Each time one of the elflike axiomites moved to point out a particular clause, the illusion of its flesh broke and scattered, revealing the cloud of glowing symbols that was its true form.

Across the room, another axiomite pulled her companion, one of the fox-headed vulpinals, as deep into the shadows of her alcove as she could. Salim couldn’t say whether the gesture was one of modesty or fear of judgment by her fellows, but it had little effect either way. Each time the fox-man touched the flawless skin of her thigh, a blaze of runes drifted up from the caress like golden dust, broadcasting her excitement to the room. The axiomites were living mathematical abstractions, but apparently even abstractions had needs.

And those were just the groups. Far more common in the Clever Endeavor were the singletons—folks who didn’t care to bring companions, and were even less interested in making new ones. These solitary drinkers were scattered around the place, each lost in his or her own thoughts. A flame-haired ifrit, the half-breed offspring of some genie and a mortal, sat nursing a brass goblet at one of the flame-retardant tables. Beyond him, a contract devil with a pointed beard and wire-rimmed spectacles which were almost certainly just for show sorted through a pile of scrolls. Closest to the bar was a blurry, vaguely humanoid distortion in the air which Salim took to be one of the shae, the aristocratic residents of the Shadow Plane. The shadow people had long ago traded physical forms for regions of coherent probability, and had been insufferably smug about it ever since.

In other words, nothing out of the ordinary.

Salim shifted so that his back was to his uninvited guest. He leaned over the table, propping his head on his hand and looking down as if staring into his drink. In reality, it was the glass that concerned him. In its warped reflection, the rest of the room behind him was clearly visible.

The solitary axiomite two tables down was staring at him. Not the careful, peripheral-vision study of someone used to the Clever Endeavor’s rules. The eyes fixed on Salim’s back were blatant in their gaze. Though the man’s nondescript robes, pointed ears, and inhumanly perfect features were no different from any of a thousand other axiomites, a large rune that glimmered with its own light sat between his eyebrows.

A glowing forehead tattoo was an interesting choice for someone trying to pass unnoticed. But then, this was Axis. As it was, the rune told Salim nothing except that he’d never seen the man before.

Salim set down his glass and looked to the bartender. Lahan was standing in his usual place behind the counter, a rag over one narrow shoulder and a vacant expression on his face as he stared off into the distance. As Salim’s hand twitched up in the three-fingered signal, however, the barman’s eyes snapped into focus. He met Salim’s gaze and nodded slightly.

Good. Placing one hand on the battered surface of the table, Salim shoved himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment, wobbling slightly as if from too much drink, then began weaving his way toward the back of the establishment. Past the bar, he turned left and staggered into the hallway leading to the jakes.

As soon as he was around the corner and out of sight of the rest of the bar, Salim flattened himself against the near wall, willing his black robes to blend into the shadows. His right hand crept to the twisted hilt of his sword, then moved away. Lahan wouldn’t want any blood if he could help it. Salim waited.

The axiomite came around the corner. Salim sprang. One hand wrapping around the man’s neck, the other forearm hitting sideways across his chest, Salim slammed into his follower, jamming him up against the far wall of the hallway.

Instead of flying apart into a cloud of symbols, the man hit the bricks with a meaty slap. Not a true axiomite, then—a disguise. The fake axiomite’s mouth opened, and Salim squeezed his windpipe shut before he could make a sound.

A hand came up, crabbing toward the man’s chest, and Salim batted it away easily. Searching within his opponent’s tunic, he found the hard knot of the pendant the man had been reaching for. Salim closed his hand around it and pulled, snapping the thong easily.

The man shifted. Where one moment Salim had been holding an axiomite, now he was holding something else entirely. Gone were the axiomite’s lithe limbs, replaced by green scales and clawed, three-fingered hands. A pair of stumpy wings, ludicrously small for such a large creature, fluttered ineffectually from slits in the shirt’s shoulders. The biggest difference, however, was the head: a cross between a dinosaur and the long, toothy grin of a dolphin. The creature’s new face rose on a serpentine neck that was suddenly several feet longer than it had been. The glowing rune that had emblazoned the man’s forehead was still there, but now it sat between two eyebrow ridges of thick horn.

“Whoever made this particular eidolon had a weird sense of humor.”

A nice trick, but it made little difference. Salim choked up on the ludicrous neck until his fist rested just beneath the overlong snout, then pulled the head back down to eye level.

“What are you?” he asked, loosening his hold on the creature’s windpipe.

The creature coughed and sputtered. “I…I don—”

Salim squeezed a warning. “You don’t know? I find that unlikely.”

The creature shook its head, gasping, and tried again. This time it managed to rasp out a single word.

“Eidolon.”

An eidolon. Interesting. That explained the glowing tattoo—eidolons were created creatures, and the rune would undoubtedly be a sign of its master. The thought of a third party made Salim suddenly aware that his back was exposed, and he dragged the creature farther down the hall toward the privies. He trusted Lahan to give him a signal if someone else came their direction, but there was no guarantee that the eidolon’s summoner couldn’t turn invisible.

“Who do you work for?” Salim demanded. “And why is he looking for me?”

The creature shook its head again. Though Salim still had it pressed up against the wall, he could feel its body relax.

“He’s not. I came on my own.”

That didn’t make sense—eidolons didn’t do anything without their masters’ consent—but Salim left it alone for the time being. He was starting to get irritated. Before he could ask another question, the eidolon answered it.

“Ceyanan told me you could help me.”

Ceyanan. The name was like magic—as soon as Salim heard it, everything became clear. He sighed and released the creature, stepping back as it stretched out its serpentine neck, curling and corkscrewing it to work out kinks.

“So the angel sent you.”

The creature nodded, a more expressive move than any human could hope to make. “He told me how to find you.”

“Of course he did.” Salim’s black-winged chaperone was fond of jokes. Never mind that the angel’s sense of humor had nearly gotten this particular emissary killed. What did a single life matter to a herald of the death goddess?

Salim turned back toward the bar, motioning for the snake-man to follow. “Come on.”

“So you’ll help me?” the eidolon asked. Its muzzle was still frozen in the idiot smile that seemed more appropriate now than when it was a just a breath away from being choked to death.

“I didn’t say that,” Salim said. “First we’ll talk. But not here.” He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Now are you coming, or aren’t you?”

Chapter Two: A Walk in the Park

“So talk.”

The two men—for Salim had returned the eidolon’s amulet, and the snake-man once more looked like an axiomite—walked shoulder to shoulder through one of Axis’s many parks. To either side of the cobblestone path, trees and bushes of a hundred different varieties stood in a riot of color, each with a neat little placard giving its name and world of origin. Several were surrounded by decorative fences, and one of these quarantined plants shook and hooted as the pair passed by, its spherical fruit opening to reveal sucking lamprey mouths.

“My name is Connell,” the eidolon said. “My master is Gatis Mirosoy, of the nation of Ustalav. More than thirty years ago, he called me forth from the aether of the Cerulean Void and gave me form, shaping me into his constant companion.”

Salim nodded. He didn’t know much about the practices of the so-called summoners, but he knew that the spirits they used in their magical creations were drawn from the Outer Planes. They weren’t true souls—otherwise his own master, Pharasma the death goddess, would have something to say about the poaching—but they were close enough to provide the necessary animus. If Connell were a product of the chaotic Maelstrom, then it explained his appearance—and the disguising amulet. The serpentine proteans native to that plane were despised everywhere, but Axis had been at war with them since the universe began.

All of these thoughts passed by in the time it took Connell to draw breath and continue.

“For three decades, I served my master faithfully, protecting him from enemies, researching incantations, and managing his household affairs. He made this amulet specifically for me, so that I might treat with the local villagers on his behalf without unduly alarming them.” One slender axiomite hand came up to caress the object, where it hung on its repaired leather thong.

“Sometimes, perhaps once every few years, his research would take us beyond the manor, to some forgotten library or dusty tomb where valuable knowledge lay languishing, waiting for the master to rescue it. It was on one of these excursions that he found the—the crown.” The eidolon’s voice caught, and for a moment he was silent.

“Crown?” Salim prompted.

“It’s terrible!” the eidolon wailed, then reined himself back to a more reasonable volume. “We found it in the burial chamber of Arachyx the Ghoul-Handed. The master had brought us there in search of an ancient tapestry, but as soon as he saw the crown, all thought of the original mission went out the window, and he had to have it. It’s a sick thing, an evil thing—a twisted band of iron with thorns that jut out in all directions, even back into the wearer’s scalp. The whole thing has a weird, slick feeling to it, not like iron at all, but like oiled or decomposing flesh. And when the thorns prick you, the blood never drips—the thorns suck it up. I hate it.” With this last pronouncement, a single tear welled up and rolled down the eidolon’s disguised nose, dropping to the dirt.

“Missionary work is hardly Salim’s forte.”

“After the master put it on, he…changed. Before, he’d been a quiet man, and stern as any good master, but not without a sense of humor. After that, he became something else. He lost all interest in summoning lesser servants from the distant planes, which before had been his greatest joy, and even quit experimenting with my form. Instead, all he wanted to do was research death. He became obsessed with creating undead things, from rat skeletons and dog zombies to more… substantial works.” Connell paused, embarrassed. “I dug up graves and brought him the remains of the townsfolk. He said we were just borrowing them.”

“Right.”

Connell shrugged, helpless. “He was my master. If he wanted to study necromancy, that was his prerogative. An eidolon doesn’t question.”

Salim nodded, but trained ears had caught the verb tense. “Was?”

All at once, the eidolon’s composure broke, and the face he turned to Salim was a caricature of anguish.

“He sent me away,” Connell whispered. His tone made it sound like a death sentence. “In all my life, I had never been more than a mile from his side. But he had changed so much. He had never been over fond of travel, but now he never left the manor. He quit eating hardly at all, and would go for days without sleep. He ignored the clean clothes I left out for him. He tore down the shrine to the magic god Nethys, and built a new one to Urgathoa, the Pallid Princess. The old one was wood and paper, beautifully made. This one was made of parts from his—experiments.”

Salim had seen plenty of such shrines, and could well imagine the decomposing limbs and reanimating scramblings it entailed. The Pallid Princess was a sick bitch, and made Salim’s own goddess look downright warm in comparison. Where Pharasma was, for all her faults, at least even-handed and devoted to perpetuating natural cycles, Urgathoa was devoted to undeath and gluttony, her necromancers filling the world with perverse beings that refused to die. Needless to say, the two ladies didn’t get along.

“You said he sent you away.”

Connell wrapped thin arms around himself. “It was that stupid crown—I know it was. After a while, he didn’t even take it off to sleep, and didn’t notice when the wounds from the thorns got infected. I tried to take it off him once—just for a minute, to clean them out!—and he threw me halfway across the room. And that was when he said he didn’t need me anymore.” Another slow tear. “That—that he had plenty of new servants. Better ones. And then he cast a spell, and I was somewhere else.”

The eidolon went silent, and Salim gave him his space, recognizing in the set of his shoulders how hard this must be for him. After a moment, Connell continued.

“He’d sent me back to the Maelstrom, the chaos plane he’d drawn me from. Except it didn’t feel like home anymore. I was awkward, and lonely, and everything I met was either terrified of me or trying to eat me. But worse—I could still feel him. My master. The thread was faint—so faint—but I could still feel him.” The eidolon pointed to the rune on his forehead. “I’m still my master’s creature.”

“That’s when I realized how much danger he was in. He had his undead things, but they were still weak, and sooner or later someone was going to get fed up with the grave robbing and try to do something about it. And I wouldn’t be there to protect him.”

Salim was starting to get tired of the eidolon’s puppylike devotion. He attempted to hurry the story along. “And so?”

“So I went to see Pharasma.”

Salim stopped walking so abruptly that Connell almost tripped and fell over onto a flower whose blossoms were shaped like tethered hummingbirds, petal-wings buzzing frantically to pull them away from the clumsy eidolon.

“You went to the Boneyard?” Perhaps Salim had underestimated the creature. Though the goddess of death wasn’t the sort to slay anyone out of hand—quite the opposite, in fact—there were plenty of other beings around the Gray Lady’s realm who were less discriminating, and the journey there was hardly easy.

“It took a while,” the eidolon agreed, “but I got there eventually. Some nice crow-vulture-things in masks led me in and showed me to one of her servants, a black-winged angel called Ceyanan. I think you know him?”

“You could say that,” Salim said wryly. In the same sense that you know your master, he thought, just without the hopeless love. But he didn’t bother confusing the eidolon with his own problems.

“He was very nice,” Connell said. “I simply explained the situation as best I could, and he agreed that it would be in Pharasma’s interest to help me.” Here the eidolon grinned, and despite the amulet’s illusion, Salim could easily imagine the serpentine smile beneath it. “See, it’s not just the necromancy—I know the goddess hates undead, but that problem will take care of itself when someone eventually comes along and kills him. The real issue is the crown. It’s what’s changed him and made him do all these evil things—I’m positive. And if it’s the crown, that means it’s not his fault. And if it’s not his fault”—here the eidolon raised a triumphant finger—”then it shouldn’t affect the final judgment of his soul. It’s a tricky situation. If my master dies while the crown’s magic is making him do bad things, does that count against him? Does his soul go to Urgathoa, or to Nethys? At the very least, it seems like a long and complicated judgment is in order.”

Now Salim understood. “And Ceyanan sent you to me.”

Connell nodded enthusiastically. “He agreed that such a judgment would be needlessly complicated and take up the goddess’s valuable time, and that the best thing to do was remove the cursed crown and let my master’s soul cleanse itself. Then he gave me your description, and the name of a bar, and transported me to Axis.”

“Of course he did.” Salim had to admit, the eidolon’s logic was sound. And it would be just like Ceyanan to send Salim on a job that was, in essence, missionary work. Soul saving. That would tickle the angel’s sense of irony.

“So will you do it?” the eidolon asked eagerly. “Will you help me help my master?”

As if he had a choice. “Ustalav, you said?”

“Aton’s Field, a village near Kavapesta.”

Salim reached into his robes and produced an amulet of his own. The size of his thumb, the stone was a perfect, lightless black, save for an iridescent spiral that seemed to shimmer and move of its own accord. Cupping the stone in one hand, he offered the other to Connell. “Let’s go, then.”

The eidolon took it.

The world twisted.

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Chapter Three: The Penitent Man

There was the usual moment of darkness and cold, the terrible feeling of being drawn through space like a fish on a line, and then the light was back and the amulet deposited them safely.

Right in the middle of an angry mob.

Salim looked quickly to Connell, but the eidolon was already holding his own pendant. Before Salim could say anything, the eidolon’s disguise as an axiomite melted into something less suspicious. The pointed ears were still there, but shorter. Gone was the inhumanly perfect skin, replaced by a moonscape of old pockmarks. The cowl of the robe he wore—now old and tattered, stained as much by the road as any dye—came up to cover the glowing forehead rune.

It was a good job. The peasant closest to the new arrivals blinked, peered at the two of them as if he trying to remember something, then visibly gave up and returned his attention to the shouting man at the front.

They were in the central green of a modest town, a ring of shops and public houses encircling a muddy patch of grass long since chewed into submission by the hooves and jaws of livestock. Beyond, Salim recognized the dark and craggy peaks of the Hungry Mountains rising ominously on all sides. Even now, at midday, the fog that shrouded their dark forests was thick, and moved in strange ways just beyond the valley’s last farmsteads.

The mob was barely worthy of the name—perhaps forty men and women in varying states of disrepair—yet Salim had seen such groups before. The deciding factor for mobs wasn’t in their muscles, or their makeshift weapons, but in their eyes. These folk were afraid. And where there was enough fear, something could break, and turn even the most timid housewife into a killer.

The man trying to catalyze that change stood at the focal point of the loose semicircle, perched precariously on an overturned wheelbarrow. He was middle-aged and almost completely bald, with only a few wisps of white hair scrambling to cling to and cover his shining pate. From beneath voluminous black robes similar to Salim’s own poked stick-thin arms, gesticulating wildly. At his throat hung a large silver spiral on a chain—the holy symbol of Pharasma.

“Too long have we suffered the monster to remain in our midst!” the priest cried. “Far too long! You, Silva,” he pointed at one of the women near the front, “was not your husband’s grave torn up, just weeks after his passing? And you, Tam”—this time a fat man in a flour-stained apron—”your uncle’s grave as well. No wolf digs so deep, or so thoroughly.”

He returned to addressing the whole crowd.

“Suffering is our lot! Yet that doesn’t mean the Goddess desires us to lie down and let monsters roam the night, taking our loved ones. As your priest, I should be leading you—yet I am old, and my hands shake with the palsy.” He raised the offending appendages high. “Thus I must pass the burden to my son, Sir Percinov. It is he who will lead you to glory.”

The crowd shifted slightly, and Salim glimpsed the figure that stood at the old priest’s knee. The plates of its armor were all in black and silver, the chest embossed with Pharasma’s spiral, and a businesslike bucket of a helm obscured the face. At the figure’s waist rested a long sword in a matching scabbard. All in all, a suitably imposing sight. Yet something about the way the warrior stood gave Salim pause.

“When?” a voice from the crowd cried.

“At dawn,” the priest said. “Mirosoy and his creatures are things of darkness. We will bring them the cleansing light.”

“That’s my master,” Connell hissed, and Salim tapped his arm to quiet him.

The crowd shouted its ragged approval, and then the church bells began chiming. In twos and threes, the people shuffled off to be about their errands, or perhaps just to rest up before the lynching.

The priest had stepped down from his wheelbarrow and was talking with the knight. Salim approached.

“Excuse me, Father. May I have a word?”

The priest turned. Above his beak of a nose, hard little rat eyes crawled up and down Salim’s length, taking in the black robes and sun-darkened skin, the short beard and strangely melted-looking sword hilt. His eyes lit upon the amulet, which Salim had left hanging prominently against his chest, and the hard mouth softened almost imperceptibly.

“A fellow clergyman?”

“Something like that.” Salim drew the spiral of Pharasma in the air between them.

“Yet not from around here.” Salim’s southern skin, so much darker than the sickly pale Ustalavs, kept the words from being a question.

“No,” Salim agreed. “My companion and I have traveled far to offer our assistance. It seems others in the church have learned of your situation.”

“Hum,” the priest said, a sound that wasn’t altogether pleased. “Very well, then. My name is Father Adibold, and this is Sir Percinov. My rectory is just over here—please, allow me to welcome you properly.” Without bothering to wait for a reply, the man turned and began stalking toward a little house attached to the church, the armored warrior just behind him. Salim and Connell followed.

“A child in armor is still a child.”

The house might better have been called a cell. Though the walls were still painted white, they’d clearly been neglected for some time. The outlines of less-faded regions suggested that, at one point, there had been more furniture in here—a bureau, a couch—yet now the room contained only a stove, a cupboard, the roughest of wooden tables, and two chairs. Salim accepted the priest’s invitation and sat in the nearer chair, then immediately wished he hadn’t. He’d interrogated men in more comfortable chairs than this.

Father Adibold took the opposite chair. Connell remained standing next to the door, while the armored figure took up a respectful position behind the priest’s left shoulder. For the first time, the metal mountain spoke.

“Da, may I—?”

“Yes, fine!” The priest waved a hand. With an audible sigh of relief, the warrior removed his gauntlets, then reached up and pulled off his helmet.

It was a boy, brown-haired and skinny. His bobbing larynx didn’t even come close to touching the steel gorget meant to protect his throat. Salim bet that if he struck the breastplate, the teenager would rattle around inside the armor like the clapper in a bell.

The old man spoke first. “You’re not a priest,” he said bluntly. “The sword tells me that much. So what are you?”

“A hunter,” Salim said. “A problem-solver for the church, specializing in the sort of thing you now face. Or have I heard wrong? It’s undead creations that your people fear, is it not?”

The priest grunted. “Indeed.” Reluctantly, he got to his feet and went to the cupboard. He returned with two cups of water and a cob of bread, which he set between them. “Please,” he said, gesturing. “Eat.”

Salim tore off a chunk of bread and bit into it. It was hard, and old, but blessedly weevil-free.

“I’d apologize for not offering better fare,” the old man continued, not sounding the least bit apologetic, “but we of the Kavapestan branch don’t believe in southern niceties.”

Aha. Suddenly both the ostentatiously poor hospitality and the deliberately uncomfortable furniture made more sense. Salim’s eyes twitched toward the man’s sleeves, which had fallen back when he proffered the food. The priest caught the look and deliberately pulled the cloth back down, but not before Salim caught the telltale lines of dozens of thin white scars on his forearms.

“So you follow the Penitence, then.”

The old priest thrust his jaw out pugnaciously. “The Lady of Graves judges us not only on what we do, but what we endure. Those who suffer in this life are rewarded in the next. We Ustalavs have known this for generations.”

“Very admirable,” Salim said.

The priest searched for any sign that he was being mocked, and upon finding none, slowly nodded. “Yes, well. It’s rare to find a southerner who understands the value of forsaking worldly pleasures.”

“Believe me,” Salim said, “I’ve forsaken plenty. But I didn’t come here to discuss theology. Tell me of Mirosoy.”

“Bah!” the priest said, and spat on his own floor. “A magician and minor noble who lives in a manse at the far end of the valley. He’s been there for years.”

“It’s disgusting,” the armored boy put in helpfully. “Using magic to avoid honest sweat and labor.”

“Shut up, Percy,” the priest said, yet he nodded at the sentiment. “It’s true, we have no love of wizards and witches here. Yet it’s still not a crime, and his business helps keep the village alive through hard times. Of late, however, the lord has turned to darker arts. Graves have been disturbed, even within the grounds of the church.”

Now it was Salim’s turn to grunt. Grave robbing from a church of Pharasma was bold, if not outright suicidal. “And his creatures. You’ve seen them?”

“Not personally. But the villagers who cart out his provisions or used to work in his house speak of moans, and shambling forms, and the stench of death.”

Salim nodded. “And you’d send a mob of villagers to handle things?”

The priest bristled. “Not alone! I would offer what magics I have, and my son would lead them!”

“Ah yes, your son.” Salim turned to the would-be warrior. “Show me your hands, boy.”

Confused, Percinov did as he was told, holding them palms out. Salim nodded.

“That’s a fine suit of armor, boy. It’ll serve you well one day. But not yet.”

“Now wait just a minute—!” the priest began.

Salim silenced him with a raised finger. “Calluses.”

“Pardon?”

“You may know penance, Father, but I know war. And the calluses on this boy’s hands are from chopping wood, not a sword hilt. The pattern’s all wrong.” He glanced back at Percinov. “You can put your hands down now, boy.”

Percinov did. His father glowered. “The boy will be fine,” the old priest growled. “Any wounds he suffers, I’ll heal. And his pain will buy credit with the Goddess.”

As it happened, Salim knew precisely how little credit such suffering earned. Yet he set that sentiment aside and decided to test out a suspicion that had been building.

“And what would the boy’s mother think if he were killed?” he asked.

“Don’t you talk about his mother!” Tiny drops of spit flew from the priest’s lips to land halfway across the table. “Serafina is with the Lady now, assisting in the judgment of souls. We should all be so fortunate.”

“But, Da—” Percinov began.

“Shut up, Percy!”

The priest put his head in hands. For a moment, no one said anything. At last, the priest looked up, his lined face appearing older than ever.

“What do you propose?” he asked.

Chapter Four: The Greatest Gift

Salim slipped through the pools of shadow cast by branches and shrubs, trusting to his robes to break up his outline and make him invisible. Around him, the sounds of the night creatures were sporadic and tense. Expectant.

Connell slid along beside him, still wearing his peasant disguise. Salim had to give him credit—the eidolon was surprisingly graceful. Ahead, the manor house stood huge and whitewashed at the end of the drive, its windows cavernous and dark save for three in an upper corner, which glowed with dim red light.

As welcome as the shadows were in hiding their approach, Salim would have preferred to come during daylight. Yet he had wasted too much time trying to convince Father Adibold that Salim and Connell would do better alone than with his assistance.

It was utterly stupid. The priest’s little mob of peasants would likely scatter at the first sign of a walking corpse, and those who stayed would be slaughtered. Worse, if this Lord Mirosoy had advanced to making ghouls, then every farmhand who fell would rise again shortly to add to his army.

The old priest and his son might have been more useful—the man claimed to have some magic yet, and the boy’s armor was solid. Yet Salim had seen enough in the priest’s eyes to know that it wasn’t worth it. For all that Adibold talked of the Pharasmin Penitence, that hopeless splinter sect of ascetics and self-deniers, it wasn’t religious fervor that made Adibold cut himself, or so eagerly throw himself and his only son into harm’s way. It was grief for his dead wife. Perhaps even a desire to join her early.

Salim understood that all too well. But the boy still had plenty of years left, and suicidal warriors were a liability.

In frustration, Salim had even attempted telling the old priest part of the truth: that Lord Mirosoy wasn’t acting of his own accord, but rather had been enchanted by a cursed magic item.

The priest would have none of it. “I’ve seen souls corrupted by a shiny coin, or a bit of bare thigh. The nature of the temptation is unimportant.”

At last, once it became clear that even the prospect of killing a potentially innocent man wasn’t enough to dissuade the priest—”sorting good from evil is the Lady’s job, not ours”—Salim had given in and agreed to join them in their attack at dawn.

Which is why he and Connell were out here in the dark, with the sun still hours below the horizon.

Salim caught the eidolon’s eye and nodded. The eidolon had given him the layout of the house, and they’d decided on the servants’ entrance around the side rather than the grand double doors that faced the drive. It was time to break with the road and circle left.

Something shot out from the brush near Salim’s feet.

Without thinking—because in combat, acting was always faster than thinking—Salim drew his sword and slammed it down, pinning the scurrying shape to the earth. The creature squeaked once and expired.

“Mouse,” he whispered, and withdrew his blade, rodent still clinging to its tip. He started to scrape it off against his boot, then stopped.

The thing’s ribcage was hollowed out, the flesh rotted away from tiny bones. Salim’s sword had spitted it neatly, yet its back legs still kicked feebly.

Another tiny form catapulted itself from the bushes. Before Salim could move, Connell leaped, springing forward with the grace of a cat and coming up an the undead rat in his hands. The eidolon popped it into his mouth, bones crunching, then looked back at Salim and smiled.

Perhaps the eidolon would be more useful than Salim had expected. Connell swallowed and asked, “Scouts?”

Salim nodded. It seemed Mirosoy wasn’t totally without defenses. He slipped the twice-expired mouse from his blade and ground it under his boot heel before continuing on.

The servants’ entrance was unguarded. From the tree line, it was a solid hundred feet of open lawn to the steps up to the back porch, and then the door. Salim covered it at a run, body bent almost double, sword under his robes to avoid reflecting the moonlight. Connell paced him. At the door, they paused for a moment, listening. When nothing revealed itself, Salim nodded to Connell and thumbed the latch.

Beyond lay a long hall, its wood-paneled walls lit only by the feeble shaft of moonlight from the open door, quickly disappearing into utter black.

Salim smelled it first—the charnel stench of putrefaction. He thrust out an arm to stop Connell, but the eager eidolon had already bounded into the corridor.

A hand reached from the darkness.

Salim moved. There was no time to let his eyes adjust, so he closed them and let his ears and nose guide him past the struggling eidolon, deeper into the dark.

Something rose up in front of him, grave-wet and stinking, and he brought his sword out and down, feeling it cleave through cheese-soft flesh. The thing gave a sigh and fell heavily into him, knocking him back into the wall and what felt like a tall table or stool. His free hand closed on a smooth, heavy object, and he brought it down hard on the thing in front of him, then spun to skewer a new attacker to his right. Back toward the entrance, Connell shouted something.

They were stuck. Salim might be able to keep this up indefinitely, but there was no telling about the eidolon, and they needed to move fast if they wanted to retain the element of surprise. Gritting his teeth, Salim reached out and touched the goddess.

It was only a second, but it was enough. The Lady of Graves flowed through him in a black rush, as grotesque and violating in its own way as the creature putrefying on his feet. The energy passed through him and into the blade of his sword, and cold steel flared with ghostly incandescence, lighting the hallway.

There were only three zombies, all dressed in the rotting finery that had probably once been the best clothes the little town could offer. Two lay at Salim’s feet, his sword having severed the fragile magic that kept them animated. Down the hall, Connell struggled with the third. The eidolon had dropped his disguise, and the long neck of his true form snaked around the back of the zombie’s futilely chomping head, wrapping it like a boa constrictor. Long jaws locked around the undead creature’s skull. There was a twist and a pop, and the last corpse dropped to the floor and lay still.

Salim looked down at his off hand. The object he held was a stone bust of a young man, handsome in a vaguely arrogant and pupilless sort of way. He held it out toward the eidolon. “Your boss?”

Connell nodded.

Salim let the stone drop onto the corpse it had clubbed, then wiped his sword on the tattered linen shirt. He gestured down the hall.

“You know the house,” he said, “but don’t leave my side unless I tell you to. Are we clear?”

Connell bobbed his head in what appeared to be genuine contrition and led the way deeper into the house.

The manor was a shell. Though the pair passed several well-appointed sitting rooms, with plush armchairs and walls of bookshelves or big bay windows overlooking the moonlit grounds, the layer of dust at the entrance to each argued that no one had bothered with them in some time. Connell avoided the showy front half of the house, with its hangings and sculptures like the one Salim had appreciated, and instead led them through a series of narrow, more utilitarian corridors and staircases. Salim kept the light from the sword carefully banked and focused by a fold in his cloak, yet nothing stirred in the dead house. If it weren’t for the slight but ever-present scent of decay, Salim might have thought the place a summer home, packed away for storage while the lord was away.

At last they came to a door whose bottom edge was limned with the same red light they’d seen from the road. The eidolon’s barely existent lips moved, and after a second Salim realized Connell was attempting to mouth the word “workshop.” Salim nodded, and the eidolon turned the knob. The door swung open.

The room was large, the kind other lords might put to use as a ballroom or formal dining room for parties. The huge set of windows they’d observed earlier cast moonlight on the hardwood floor, yet this illumination was overpowered by red lights that floated like swamp fire at the room’s far end. The glow from these flying lanterns was soft, and cast a flattering glow over the guests. No doubt that generous lighting would have kindled more than one midnight romance among the figures standing in a knot on the dance floor. Except that the guests were dead.

As one, the corpses turned to observe the newcomers. These, too, were still dressed in their funeral finery, some in the clothes of peasants and merchants, others in simple shrouds marked with the symbol of Pharasma. There was no pattern to their features—young and old, male and female all stood with the awkward stances or constricted limbs of rigor mortis. A few had clearly been magically preserved for their funerals, and even now were only beginning to show the first signs of decomposition. Others were little more than fleshy skeletons, their bones tied crudely together with twine where tendons had fallen away.

Behind them all, a man stood in the center of the lights, obscured from the chest down by a long dining table repurposed as a workbench. Stacks of books and bubbling alembics cluttered every surface, along with stranger implements and silvery surgical tools with whose use Salim was thankfully unfamiliar. Though the man’s face was the same as that on the stone head in the servants’ hall, this version was older, and so drawn and haggard as to resemble his zombie subjects. Above the face, a black crown of long thorns and vertical spikes pierced and pricked at his brow, holding back long, dark hair.

Lord Mirosoy looked up from the book he’d been studying, yet his face barely registered the newcomers’ presence. With one finger still marking his place in the text, he flicked his hand toward his uninvited guests.

“Lord Mirosoy appears to have embarked on some

significant life changes of late.”

“Kill them,” he said, and went back to reading.

The undead convocation shuffled forward.

Connell growled—a deep, resonant rumble in surprising contrast to his usual excited tenor. Three-fingered talons flexed.

“No,” Salim said, and put a hand on the eidolon’s shoulder.

Connell looked at him in puzzlement, but Salim simply squeezed once and then released him. He stepped forward and drew his sword.

The eidolon might be better in a fight than he let on, but that wasn’t the point. Salim had seen enough to tell that these people were no ghouls, no vampire spawn or vengeful wraiths. These were just farmers, their corpses denied the slow transition into the same dirt they worked, forced to walk again at the whim of some spoiled lord.

This wasn’t a fight. Nor even an execution.

It was a funeral rite.

The zombies approached, and Salim flowed like a river to meet them.

The undead fought silently, and Salim did the same, the only sounds the swirl of his robes and the wine-glass ring of steel sliding free of flesh, punctuated by the thumps of corpses hitting the floor. They moved to surround him, and he let them, whirling like a dervish, blade kissing them lightly in the only blessing he knew how to give.

Rest, he thought as a child’s body slid from his sword, crumpling to the fouled floor. Rest.

And then he stood alone. Around him, the hardwood was covered with bodies, splayed once more in the posture of death that, while undignified, was so much more than they’d had a moment before. He looked down at the corpses and wished them well.

At last they had Mirosoy’s attention. The lord looked at them as if dazed, struggling to understand the mess of bodies staining his ballroom floor. “Who are you?” he asked.

“It’s me, Master!” The eidolon’s voice was the whining, eager tone of a dog hoping to regain its master’s good graces. “I’ve come back to help you! Please don’t be angry!”

Mirosoy ignored his creation, instead focusing on the dark-eyed man moving toward him, sword drawn. The lord’s voice didn’t waver. “And you?”

“Just a friend,” Salim said. “One who’s come to do you a favor.”

His sword lashed out.

“No!” Connell’s scream was grief bordering on pain. The eidolon leaped for Salim’s back, talons outstretched, but it was already too late. Salim’s upward slash carved a shining arc toward Mirosoy’s face.

The blade missed the man’s cheek by inches. With a tiny clink of metal on metal, Salim’s sword caught one of the black, curving thorns of the crown and tore it free from the summoner’s head. Mirosoy gasped at the sudden absence, or perhaps at the furrows the embedded thorns carved through his scalp. The crown fell to the table, and Salim followed it down, sword hilt gripped in both hands. Blade met crown with Salim’s full weight behind it.

There was a flash that wasn’t so much light as its absence, and a high, keening wail that might have been a word, or a name. Then there were only two halves of a crown, the metal seeming to shrivel and fold in on itself like burning briars. The newly rusted slag clattered to the floor and lay still.

“Master!” Connell was past Salim and gripping Lord Mirosoy’s shoulders. The noble stood with head hung on his chest, looking ready to fall face-first into his workbench. Slowly, he raised his eyes. “Connell?”

“Yes. Yes, Master.” The eidolon was weeping in earnest now, huge tears rolling down the reptilian face. Above them, the rune on his forehead glowed brighter than ever. “I’m back now. I knew it was the crown that sent me away, not you. And now you’re free!”

Mirosoy straightened, shrugging off the eidolon’s steadying hands. “Yes. Well.” He looked over to Salim. “You do realize that’s a priceless artifact you just destroyed?”

Salim marveled. Even half-dead and surrounded by his own failure, the man exuded entitlement. Salim looked down at the corpses on the floor, then back at the noble.

“I’m sure we can arrange an accounting of debts.” His voice was soft.

The summoner followed Salim’s gaze down, then swallowed. “No, that won’t be necessary. Clearly, the crown needed to be destroyed. You have my thanks.”

Salim inclined his head, unconvinced. Perhaps the crown wasn’t as responsible for these atrocities as Connell wanted to think. He opened his mouth to say something—then stopped.

There was a new sound. Salim saw the other two pick up on it as well: a low, muttering hum.

Voices.

Salim moved swiftly to the window. Out in the darkness, a line of torches snaked down the manor house’s long drive.

“Damn.” Apparently Father Adibold was no longer interested in waiting until dawn.

Salim turned back to Mirosoy. “We need to get out of here. In two minutes, their families”—he gestured to the corpses on the floor—”are going to burn this place to the ground. And you’re going to let them.”

“Oh?” The noble’s lip twitched toward a sneer.

Salim raised his sword suggestively.

“Oh,” Lord Mirosoy said again, this time with considerably less vigor. “Well, you see, that may be something of a problem.” He raised a hand and gestured to his waist.

“Oh, Master!” Connell’s voice was horrified. “What have you done?”

And now Salim saw it. The various beakers and sealed containers on the worktable didn’t stand alone. Below the rumpled blouse, several thick tubes snaked out of Mirosoy’s abdomen and into the vessels and retorts on the table, steady streams of black and red fluids cycling through them.

Once more, the summoner ignored his servant and spoke to Salim. This time he looked almost embarrassed.

“The crown,” he said. “It had several suggestions as to how I might…improve my longevity.”

“Lichdom.” Salim understood now why the man looked so hollow. He almost spat, but stopped himself for fear of hitting one of the corpses. “You were trying to turn yourself undead.”

“Not me—the crown!”

Salim didn’t care. “Can you stop it? Reverse it?”

“Almost certainly,” Mirosoy said. “But it’ll take time. Days.”

Behind Salim, the villagers were drawing closer. He could hear individual voices in the rumble of the mob. “We don’t have days.”

Lord Mirosoy ventured a tentative smile, greasy and anxious. “If you’ll allow it, my manor has certain defenses which—”

“No. You’ve done these people enough harm already.” Salim thought hard. “Can you teleport? Move this whole setup somewhere else with magic?”

The noble grimaced. “My studies of late have been focused on other matters.”

“Clearly.” Salim sized up the various tubes that nosed into Mirosoy’s clothing like hungry worms. “And I were to just pull those out?”

“Then I would die. Likely in excruciating pain.”

Works for me, thought Salim, but he knew the eidolon would never stand for it. Besides, there was no telling what sort of backlash the expiring spell might generate.

Beyond the window, dozens of feet crunched on gravel.

“I have a suggestion.”

Both Mirosoy and Salim turned to look at Connell. The eidolon was holding up a hand, as if waiting to be called on. Salim nodded.

“I have a suggestion,” the eidolon said again. With one three-fingered hand, he reached up and touched the amulet hanging from his serpentine neck.

And then there was no Connell. Only a second Mirosoy.

Salim understood immediately. “Connell—” he began.

“They’re looking for the master,” the eidolon said firmly. “If we give them one, maybe they’ll go home.”

“They’re a mob,” Salim pressed, throat suddenly tight. “Even if they think Mirosoy’s gone, they’ll burn this place down anyway.”

“Then you’ll have to stop them.” The eidolon held out a hand. “Goodbye, Salim. Thank you.”

The hand hung there, unmoving. After an eternity, Salim stepped forward and took it. They shook.

Connell looked to Mirosoy.

“It’s good to have you back, Master.”

Then the eidolon walked out of the room and was gone.

Silence reigned as the two men stood looking at the door where the second Mirosoy had disappeared. Finally Salim spoke.

“If you lived a thousand years,” he said slowly, “you would still be unworthy of that love.”

“What?”

Salim’s glance flicked sideways to the noble.

“That sacrifice. For you.”

Mirosoy seemed genuinely puzzled. “It’s an eidolon,” he said. “I made it to protect me. When it’s gone, I’ll make another.”

Salim stared at him.

Outside, the crowd roared.

∗∗∗

Three empty cups stood at parade rest on the wooden table. A fourth, only halfway drained, stood before them, the officer addressing its troops.

Salim took another drink. Around him, the familiar buzz of the Clever Endeavor continued as usual, a dozen conversations that never happened, between people who were never here and had never met. This time, no one was looking at Salim. That suited him fine.

The wood between his elbows was stained dark with spilled wine. Salim grimaced and set his mug down on top of the splotch, but the cup wasn’t quite big enough to hide it from view.

Connell hadn’t screamed. He hadn’t made a sound at all. By the time Salim reached the front door of the manor house, passing corpses which lay motionless without the crown’s animating touch, the worst was over. The bravest of the mob was still hacking away with hoes and scythes, while others shouted encouragement. At some point, someone tore away the amulet to reveal the eidolon’s true form, which Father Adibold loudly proclaimed a sign that the noble had been a monster all along.

And then, finally, it was over. With a last gasp from the crowd, the eidolon’s body disappeared. Only the bloody stain on the gravel drive remained.

Still giddy with the ease of their victory, the mob might have indeed charged the manor, had Salim not chosen that point to reveal himself. Stepping forth to address Father Adibold by name, Salim announced that the evening’s festivities were over, and that he’d dealt with the rest of the lord’s creatures himself.

A few of the mob, drunk on blood, had yelled abuse. Salim raised his still-glowing sword, and the newfound bravery dissipated. With Father Adibold at its head, the crowd turned and made its way back toward town. In no time at all, Salim was alone on the driveway. Just him and the stain Connell had left behind.

A single torch, dropped by a villager, still sputtered in the dirt. Salim bent down and picked it up. He looked up toward the manor window, where the red lights still played.

He could finish things. Mirosoy had perverted the corpses of innocents, and attempted to do the same to himself. Salim had executed men for less. He could set the torch against one of the tapestries in the entrance hall and let the whole place disappear.

Instead, he had opened his hand and let the torch drop.

And now he was here.

Salim drank deep, draining the last of the mug. The wine at the bottom had an unpleasant copper taste, and he looked down to see blood pooling there, mixing with the dregs. He put fingers to his nose, and they came away red. He sighed.

“You have a terrible way of announcing yourself, Ceyanan.”

The creature across the table was neither male nor female, its pale skin as smooth and inhuman as an alabaster statue. Behind its shoulders, great wings that were half feathers, half shadow flexed once and then furled tightly in the dingy confines of the bar. Gray cloth like funeral shrouds wrapped its waist and chest.

Salim wiped his bloody upper lip with the back of his hand. “You want to tell me why you sent him to me?”

The angel smiled. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play coy.” Salim put down his empty mug and leaned back, crossing his arms. “Your boss deals with more complex judgments than Mirosoy’s little change of heart on a daily basis. If you hadn’t sent me in, the mob would eventually have made it through those zombies and killed him, thus removing any reason for the Lady of Graves to take an interest.”

“Many innocents would have died,” the angel observed.

“And since when does your mistress give a flying fig about that?” Salim held up two fingers to the barman, who appeared almost immediately with two more mugs.

“Thank you,” said Ceyanan, “but I don’t drink.”

“Who said one of these was for you?” Salim pulled both drinks close.

The angel watched him. “You’re an excellent hunter, Salim. Your skill does you credit. But you still have much to learn.” White lips twitched higher, the smile becoming almost beatific. “Connell did something very brave today. Out of love and devotion to his friend.”

“Who didn’t deserve it,” Salim growled.

“Does it matter?” The angel’s big eyes bored into Salim’s. “Is the eidolon’s sacrifice any less admirable because of it?”

Salim laughed sharply.

“Is that what this is all about? Teaching me to take pride in my work, even if I don’t have any choice in the matter?” He showed his teeth. “Haven’t I learned enough about duty? About sacrifice?”

Ceyanan shook its head, half sad, half bemused.

“Maybe not,” it said at last. “But don’t worry. You will.”

“Just what—” Salim began.

But the angel was gone.

Salim stared at the chair where the angel had been. Then down at the stain on the table.

A mug in either hand, he began to drink in earnest.