Shadow's Witness (17 page)

Doesn’t matter, he told himself, he did what he did and he goes down anyway.

Ready, he knelt before the door and listened. Nothing. He had the benefit of surprise then. Slowly, he pulled the door open—

A body slammed into it and knocked him backward. He caught a glimpse of gray flesh and dirty fangs. Ghoul!

He leaped back with a shout and brandished his blade, expecting a flurry of claws, fangs, and stink. Instead, the ghoul inexplicably halted in the doorway. It growled softly, almost a purr, then stepped backward into the hall, out of Gale’s sight.

Stupefied, Cale stood there, blade ready. He waited for a tense moment, but nothing happened. What in the Hells?

The ghoul—Cale now recognizsed it from its long black hair as Tyllin Var, a former pickpocket specialist and Mask believer—reappeared in the doorway. It snarled impatiently and waved a clawed hand, beckoning Cale forward.

Gale’s heart thudded in his chest but he quieted his fear with anger. Seems Pm expected after all, he thought. Gripping his blade in a sweating fist, he advanced cautiously out of the room.

As with the storeroom, the guildhouse was in a filthy, chaotic shambles. The long main hall stretched before hint, dotted with open doors and littered with debris like the aftermath of a street riot. Broken weapons, half-eaten bodies, shredded clothing, rotten food, overturned chairs and tables, all lay strewn haphazardly about. Behind Tyllin, who flashed Cale his fangs in an evil grin, stood a ghastly formation— pair upon pair of ghouls lined the hall at even intervals, a grisly formation of twisted gray bodies that marked a processional path directly to the shrine. The double doors to the Righteous Man’s sanctuary and worship hall stood open, hut from where Cale stood, he could not pierce the dimness of its interior.

Tyllin stood aside, regarded Cale with slitted eyes, gave a snarl, and waved him forward. Presented with no other option, he stalked cautiously past Tyllin and made his way down the hall. Cale realized how futile his resistance to an attack would be at this point.

Eyeing him hungrily, each pair of ghouls growled softly as he walked between them. Some pawed the air and snarled, unable to conceal their insatiable desire for his flesh. He kept his long sword ready and watched them all like a hawk, but none of them made an aggressive move.

As he passed each pair, they fell in behind him and herded him toward the shrine. Only a third of the way

down the hall, he already had a small crowd of ghouls behind and still more before him. He could feel their hungry eyes boring into bis back. Surprisingly, he felt unafraid. He felt the liberation of a condemned man being led to the gallows. He knew now that he would not get out of here alive, and the realization freed him from fear. Neither of us is coming out of that shrine, old man, he vowed.

Though many of the ghouls still wore clothing or had tattoos that Gale recognized as belonging to a one-time comrade, their feral yellow eyes no longer contained anything recognizably human. Magic and religious fanaticism had mutat—

A yellow-eyed shadow flitted in the corner of his vision. He whirled on it, blade high. Nothing was there.

Nothing but the gaming parlor where guildsmen once had bet their take from jobs on the chance deal of cards and the random fall of knucklebones. Human vices that Cale could understand.

Still scanning the darkness of the parlor for the shadow demon, his eyes fell to the floor and he gave a start. He stopped walking and looked more closely to be sure his vision had not deceived him. The crowd of ghouls behind herded closer. The floor just inside the doorway of the parlor appeared to be slowly boiling, like simmering soup. He felt title hairs on his arms rise and bend toward the weird floor, as though pulled. Had the shadow demon vanished into that? Before he could consider further, a chorus of impatient growls sounded from the ghouls.

“Maaassk,” they mouthed as one, and the press of their vile, stinking bodies forced him forward.

Mask indeed, he thought as he walked. This is where your fanaticism has brought you, old man. He kept his eyes away from the half-eaten corpses

More doorways yawned to either side as he walked the rest of the long hall. The rooms beyond the doorways had once been familiar to him—here a meeting room, there a dining hall, there a training room—but like the gaming parlor, all of them now stood warped in some way. The familiar furnishings he had known lay toppled, broken, befouled, or missing altogether. Horrors had replaced them. A wall in the dining hall dripped what looked to be blood. Drops of crimson seeped through the plaster near the ceiling and ran down the wall in rivulets. Two ghouls crouched at the base, purring, and licked up the blood like children eating sweetened ice. The steady rasp of their tongues had worn grooves in the wall. Cale forced down the vomit that tried to climb up his throat. He sidestepped a patch of floor before him that oozed a thick, black liquid and walked on.

“Mask,” the ghouls behind him murmured.

Instead of the familiar oak table and chairs standing in the center of the main meeting room, a sickly gray colored whirlpool now churned, as though the floor had become a thick liquid. Again, he felt a strange pull from the maelstrom. Streaks of ochre and viridian swirled a slow path into gray oblivion. Cale found the motion hypnotic. With an effort of will, he forced himself to look away before the urge to leap in overpowered him. As he turned away, he thought he glimpsed a pair of baleful yellow eyes peering at him from within the whirlpool.

He drew nearer to the shrine. The crowd of ghouls behind him grew as each pair fell in line.

He passed what had once been the training room for pickpocketing and climbing and saw that portions of the wall and floor seemed absent. Not hewn out or dug up, but absent, as though reality had been slashed open hen Rath. Again he thought he

saw a pair of yellow eyes staring at him from the emptiness in the wall, but when he blinked, the eyes disappeared. Disconcerted, he turned away and focused his gaze forward on the open double doors of the shrine.

This is utter madness, he thought, and struggled to keep a tight grip on his sanity, The wrongness of the guildhouse made him dizzy and nauseated. A man could lose himself quickly. The living do not belong here, he thought. He now knew for certain that the Righteous Man had gone mad—summoning demons, turning guildsmen into ghouls, transforming the guildhouse into a seething den of vileness. There could be no other explanation. He no longer cared for the why of the Righteous Man’s behavior—how could he hope to understand the reasons of the man who had done this—he only cared about stopping him.

That resolution brought him an odd, detached calm. He reached for his throat and felt the reassuring cool’ ness of the necklace of missiles, rolled the last explosive globe between bis fingers. He would kill the Righteous Man with his steel, then start a blaze with his globe that would incinerate the entire guildhouse and everything in it.

Resolved, he picked up his pace and strode unafraid for the shrine. The crowd of ghouls behind him loped to keep up.

He walked through the ornate doorway, turned to glare at the ghouls, then slammed the doors shut in their faces. He held the doors fast for a moment, expecting the ghouls to push them open and pile in behind him, but they made no effort to follow. They waited just outside. Gale could hear their low growling through the doors. They were only the escort, it seemed. He turned to survey the shrine.

“Erevis Gale come at last,” said the Righteous Man, the contempt evident in his voice. The guildmaster

stood near the front of the large shrine room, atop a raised dais, behind the block of basalt that served as an altar. Black candles burned in tall bronze candelabra but shed only dim light. Shadows filled every corner. Gale quickly glanced through them for the yellow eyes of the shadow demon but saw nothing.

Wooden pews lined the room from the back wall up to the altar. Ghouls filled those in the rear. Rocking gently and growling low, they held their hands clasped as though in prayer, a macabre mockery of piety. They watched him sidelong out of slitted eyes. They licked their fangs hungrily but kept their seats.

Already holding his long sword at the ready, he filled his other hand with a dagger. At that, the ghouls began to growl and rock faster but still remained seated. He walked straight down the center aisle, through and past the ghouls, halfway to the altar. He kept his eyes locked on the masked face of the Righteous Man.

That’s right, I’ve-come,” he said. “What in the name of the gods have you done here?”

The Righteous Man stepped out from behind the altar and spoke in a soft, menacing tone “You’ve come to do Mask’s bidding, perhaps?”

“Maaasssk,” the ghouls in the pews echoed. “Masssk.” They rocked and rocked.

The guildmaster’s voice sounded different, Gale noted, but he attributed it to the guildmaster’s obvious insanity. Only then did the Righteous Man’s question strike him—Mask’s bidding? What does that mean?

He shook his head and forced himself to stay focused.

“I’ve come to do my bidding, not a god’s. I’m here for you, old man. It ends tonight, all of it. You hear me?”

Stall rocking in their pews, the ghouls gave a soft, prolonged hiss. Gale attuned his hearing behind him

but kept his eyes locked on the Righteous Man. Casually, he pulled the explosive globe from bis necklace and cupped it in his dagger hand. If bad went to worse, he’d blow the whole place immediately.

Favoring his leg, the Righteous Man stepped down from the dais. He stood only a dagger toss away. Gale could feel the intensity of his stare even through the black felt of the mask. He looked normal beneath his velvet robes—tall, thin, slightly stooped—but some-tiling about his mannerisms struck Gale as odd. He moved stiffly, herky-jerky, like a marionette. Palpably radiating contempt, he seemed to have more … presence. His ominous silence made Gale uncomfortable.

1 asked you a question, old man!” He gripped the dagger and globe in his now sweaty hand.

At his harsh tone, a cacophony of hisses sounded from the ghouls. Gale heard their leathery skin rasping against the wood of the pews as they rocked faster and faster. “Mask,” they whispered, “Mask.”

“I heard you, Erevis Gale,” said the Righteous Man, and again Gale noticed the odd inflection and cadence. The guildmaster limped forward a step. Involuntarily, Gale found himself backing up. The hissing of the ghouls grew louder. The rasping of their skin on the pews sounded like a carpenter’s plane on wood..

“You enter my guild and utter bold words. Bold words indeed for but a pre-incarnate Champion of Mask.” He fairly spat the name of the Shadowlord, and when he did the ghouls hissed their echo.

“Maaasssk.”

Pre-what? Gale took another step back as the Righteous Man approached. Seized with an inexplicable fear, Cale struggled to keep it out of his voice.

“You’re the servant of Mask, priest, not me. And he can’t save you from me. It’s over.” He held forth, his blades to demonstrate a defiance he didn’t feel.

When the Righteous Man replied, his voice sounded oddly distant, and Gale realized that he was speaking to someone who existed only within the realm of bis madness.

“No, he isn’t going to save you now, is he Krollir?” the Righteous Man whispered to himself, and began to laugh. The sound was so thick with evil that it sent shudders along Gale’s spine. After a moment, the guildmaster returned his attention from wherever it had gone and refocused on Gale. “Nor will he save you. I sent servants to seek you out, Erevis Gale, to draw you forth and bring you here, you and the other. He knew that one of you would become the chosen of Mask, if not him. He feared and hated you accordingly.” The guildmaster took another step toward Gale.

With difficulty, Gale held his ground. -/”I do not share his concern. You cannot stop me. You or the other, paltry servants of a paltry god.” The Righteous Man raised his hands to the ceiling. “I will feed!”

Gale stood stupefied. Who is he? he wondered. Me and the other? The Righteous Man had admitted to the attack on Stormweather. But to draw Gale out? What was going Oil here?

Even as he wondered, the answer began to crystallize—the shadow demon, the ghouls, the corpses, the warping of reality. No man could have done this, not even a priest with the power of the Righteous Man. No human could live in this pit.

He suddenly realized that the real Righteous Man was dead and the thing that now looked upon him was not human, couldn’t be human. The realization multiplied his growing fear. His resolve to avenge the attack on Stormweather melted. He wanted nothing else but to get out of here, and get out of here now.

The … thing apparently sensed Gale’s fear, for it inhaled deeply, sniffed the air as though searching for

spoor. “Ah, you know now, don’t you?” It inhaled again. “You do—I smell your fear.”

The ghouls fell silent. Gale heard only his own breathing and the voice in his head screaming for him to run,’ The thing took a step closer and the ghouls rose as one. Gale tried to fight off a wave of supernatural fear that rooted him to the floor.

“What are you?” he managed to mouth, but wasn’t sure if he said it or merely thought it.

“Not what,” the thing responded. “Who. I am Yrsillar, master of Belistor, keeper of the Void, Lord of the Nothing. Now the avatar of Mask as well. Would you see his face and mine?”

His face and mine. A demon had possessed the Righteous Man. Gale’s knees went weak. His tongue felt too dry to form an answer.

The thing reached up and peeled off the black felt mask. Gale recoiled in anticipation of a nightmare, but the face was merely the drawn, wrinkled visage of an old man. Except for the eyes. The sockets looked empty. Not merely without eyeballs, but empty, a pair of holes that opened onto nothingness. Their gaze hit Gale like an ogre’s club. Gasping for breath, he staggered backward, suddenly free from the paralyzing fear that the demon projected.

Yrsillar began to laugh, and behind the thin body of the old man Gale sensed a towering, awful shadow— the demon Yrsillar, lord of the nothing.