The Last Druid (11 page)

Entha
, he thought sadly,
it almost happened to you with Nishtan.

He pushed himself away from the thought.  He couldn’t afford to get emotional now—there was no time for it.  He had to focus on finding a way to get the girl away from Dranl and
bring her to Elenia.  It was easier said than done—he wouldn’t be able to get in without being spotted.  He would have to wait for her to come out, but that would take time and so much patience.  It had to happen at some point: if Dranl’s victims didn’t fall to self-doubt, he brought them into his service with the help of the demons he used to control them; he was especially fond of using spirit demons for his own designs.

But whatever happened,
he knew he could not let himself fail to save the girl.  Not only would the world die if he did, but he would never be able to live with himself for the failure.

XIV

Ca
lla

Calla was trapped in a living nightmare.  When she first came around everything seemed the same—in terms of the gloom, stone and metal around her—apart from feeling like her head had been fried, but it seemed different to her at the same time.  It became clearer when she tried to move and found she couldn’t—not of her own accord anyway, for when she finally got up something else was in control.

Her movements weren’t
all she had no control over.  She had lost almost everything, even control of her speech: the voice was hers, but the words coming out of her mouth weren’t.  She found herself having to endure listening to conversations with Dranl, her captor; she had no doubt that he was the one responsible for her current state.  He heard her deepest secrets she never shared with even her closest friends and family, had her commit acts that went against everything she believed in; he flirted with her openly, had her accompany him almost everywhere—she had been rendered incapable of refusing him.  She was a prisoner in her own body, screaming out at him and all the other monsters around her, but she was left silent.

It
kept her quiet.

It had no name, none that Dranl gave it.  He was happy with the results of his trick, but still kept her close for a solid week as though he doubted
his skill.  He didn’t acknowledge any change in her; he seemed to treat her as though nothing had happened, except that she just had a change of heart.

But she wasn’t the same, this wasn’t what she wanted even in a thousand lifetimes—
it
dictated what she would and wouldn’t do.

Unlike Dranl, Cal
la did have a name for it.  She called it the Kultav, a Soul-demon, the most dangerous of its kind.  The stories and myths she had grown up hearing back home were full of such monsters.  But of all of them the Kultav was the most feared.  It could join with and perfectly control its victims, always leading them to bitter ends.  The Kultav always made its victims do whatever they abhorred, and fed off the negative feelings that filled them afterwards.

In the stories
the Kultav’s host always died.  Supposedly it could be removed, but the method was incredibly difficult and dangerous.  If the host had been affected for too long, then their fate was sealed and they were left to perish; for those who were sent for the extraction process, things never went well and they were left weakened to the point that they were beyond further help.  For Calla, the fact that Dranl could control one of these demons was terrifying in itself.

Now
she was Dranl’s favorite servant.  The Kultav had successfully taken over.  Satisfied with his work, Dranl had been sending her down to the city, mainly to make sure that several of his top projects were proceeding at the right pace.  He was always pleased with “her” reports, and enjoyed it when she visited him every day.

Since her arrival two weeks earlier, Dranl had been letting her live in another wing of his
palace; it seemed even darker and colder than any other area of the place.  She had large rooms, a group of servants, even her own private courtyard of stone.  Dranl gave her all kinds of freedom to do as she pleased—as the Kultav pleased, really.  For the most part she was left to herself.

Calla wasn’t particularly surprised when
Dranl summoned her to his study around midmorning; she was already feeling that combination of boredom, mild despair, and rage that always preceded these meetings.  The demon’s mood was a bit better than hers—Calla could sense excitement and anticipation coming from it, a welcome change after having her mind inundated with wave after wave of its agitation.

They
stood in the middle of the study waiting for him to return; he was meeting with several of his military commanders for some reason or other.  The Kultav had her pacing around the room, slightly impatient.  Calla was completely impatient.  She wanted to know what he had planned now—most of the time the things Dranl requested of her scared her.  The fact that the Kultav was unnaturally quiet to her right nowwas even more concerning.

The Kultav
stopped the pacing and turned to stare at the far wall.  A large mirror hung there that reached from an inch below the ceiling almost all the way to the floor, framed with images of skulls and monsters Calla couldn’t identify carved out of dark stone.  Her eyes were turned to look directly at the glass where she was forced to stare at her reflection.  Her eyes had taken on a golden tint since the demon moved inside her.  She caught sight of what she was wearing and would have cringed if she could.  Rust-colored fabric peeked out between overlapping plates of dark metal from the base of her neck down to her waist and along both arms; a dragon’s head had been made of the same metal and sat on her right shoulder while lines and patterns had been etched into the rest of the armor to create its body.  But from the waist down she was unprotected, wearing only fitted black pants of thick leather and dark brown boots that came up just below her knees.  If she were to be put in a battle situation, an opponent would have only to cut her in half to end her life.

These days she found herself wanting her end to come that way, and soon…

There was a sharp stab at her mind at the thought, followed by a kind of growl she could hear only in her head.  The Kultav refused to let her entertain such ideas for more than a minute and was always quick to inform her of its displeasure.  It could only feed on her while she was alive—she was useless to it dead.

At last Dranl walked in
, the metal studs in the heels of his boots ringing against the stone floor.  He closed the dark-wood door partway as he came in and proceeded to the stone block that was his “desk,” pausing only to briefly touch Calla’s chin with his forefinger.

If Ca
lla was still in control she would have struck at him for it, hating the way he touched her as though they shared some deep connection.  But the Kultav made her stay where she was, delighting in her discomfort.

Dranl sat down with a heavy sigh.  “Unbelievable,” he
muttered aloud.  “What more are they expecting me to do?  Summon the defenses and arsenal to build themselves?  Earth matter is lifeless; it cannot be commanded by magic to do such things.”

Calla was moved a step
closer to his desk.  “My lord?” the Kultav asked, using her voice.

“My commanders expect me to supply them with more laborers with only a minute’s warning.  Honestly, I cannot give them the entire city population
; they are needed in other areas besides construction and combat training.”

“I thought you have been giving them
the laborers they need, lord?”

“Apparently they feel the Brilken I send them for laborers do not count.  They like having unquestionable control over the workers, and the Brilken have a tendency to be a little…stubborn.”
  He drummed his fingertips against the top of his desk.

“But unlike the Brac—your people—they can endure easily ten times as much work and accomplish much more in
far less time.  Surely that benefit is enough to let them overlook the Brilken’s flaws?”

“My commanders do
not share your opinion, my dear,” Dranl said glumly.  He sank back heavily in his chair.

“What is your bidding, lord?” the Kultav asked.  “What
is it you would ask of me?”

Seriously
, Calla thought, the words echoing around her head. 
What do you have planned for me now?
  She tried to ignore another stabbing sensation in her mind from the demon.

Dranl wasn’t paying attention to the disagreement between host and demonic parasite
.  He was busying himself with stacks of parchment piled up two feet tall in front of him, a strained look on his face.

Oh come on already!  You’re killing me with the anxiety here!

“Sir, what is your command?”  This time the Kultav seemed to share Calla’s sentiment.

Dranl picked up the quill from the inkwell in front of him; calling it a quill was a bit of a stretch, given that it was a dirty, scraggly thing
, hardly anything more than the feather shaft.  He stared up at her, eyebrows raised, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth.  “Relax, my dear—“

Relax?  Don’t you tell me to relax!

“I was coming to that point.”  He pulled out a blank sheet of parchment from a smaller pile to his left and set it in front of him, pausing to write something on it.  “I have enough on my plate with everything in the city. 

Is that so? 
For Calla, that was the first piece of news that would have made her smile in a long time if she was still capable of doing so. 
Good then—you deserve to be given hell after what you did to me.
  She was surprised when the Kultav didn’t reprimand her for the thought.

“What do you mean, my lord?”

“Would you please address me by name?  In addressing me by title you are making me feel old.”  The pen scratched along the parchment as he continued writing, his eyes pointed down.  “It seems there is some sort of trouble brewing along the northernmost borders.  No one, however, has given me a clear report on what exactly is going on up there, but one thing they will tell me is that several of our outposts have been destroyed; they do not seem to know how or why this has happened.  Normally I would write it all off as the result of freak weather or something, but one post turning to rubble every few days regularly is too much to be just a coincidence.  As if that wasn’t enough, now there are rumors that our newest Malc captives are trying to organize some kind of uprising down in the dungeons.    There are so many things going on, I can barely keep up!”

“What exactly are you saying my l—Dranl
, sire?”

Are you seriously asking that?  Honestly? 
By the gods demon, you are so thick!  Even I know what he’s saying, and “I’m” not the one he’s talking to!
  There was still no response from the demon.

Dranl seemed a little puzzled by the question
, his dark eyebrows rising.  “I mean that I want you to go there and look into the reports in my place.  If the outposts are being destroyed by some power or a natural disaster, I want clarification on it.  I know I can count on you to get me that information.”

The Kultav finally understood what Dranl was saying.  “I will return quickly,” it said, bowing.

“Please do, my dear—as much as I can depend on you, I find the thought of your absence most depressing.”

Calla wished that she could just once start gagging at his words for him to see
. 
I think I might be sick
, she thought as the Kultav steered her towards the door and out of the room.  She could sense its glee at her disgust, which didn’t make her feel any better.

They set off on horseback—if one could call the thing they rode
on a horse. It was about the size of a standard horse, but too many of its features were wrong to belong to one, or to any living animal.  The thing’s body was like a series of twigs tied together to make a child’s toy, every bone pronounced under its dark, almost oily hide.  The head looked like nothing more than a skull with skin stretched across it, with no eyes that Calla could find, and two pairs of horns protruding from the top between its short, decayed ears.  Its lips didn’t come down far enough to cover its sharp teeth.  It was another demon creature Dranl had summoned for his own use but happily loaned to her.  Despite its skeletal appearance the creature ran far faster than a horse should without a sweat.  For three days nonstop it carried her through the barren plains, not once showing signs of fatigue.

On the
morning of the fourth day they reached their destination, a line of charred buildings that stood within sight of the border between the Dead Lands and some other area of still-living earth.  They pulled the reins to make the creature stop as it and Calla stared in front of them.  The place had been destroyed some time ago, blackened beams already falling from their former places to the ground.  The ruin was already blending into the dreariness of the land around.  They had heard the reports of this place before leaving Cloch an Tsolais—it had fallen about a week ago, most of the inhabitants perishing in the blaze that consumed it; only a handful of people survived, none of them telling a tale that made any sense.  Soon many more began to arrive from other places, telling similar stories.