He had retreated from her tears and her pleadings, going to his library and locking his door, leaving his son standing in the hall, looking after him with his tiny hands clenched into fists. When he had come out again, she and Jered were gone.
What had he done?
Deckard Cain’s hands trembled as he reached for the envelope. It was stamped with the royal seal of Khanduras, marking it as an official missive from the local lord’s men. He tore it open, removing the thin parchment from within and scanning the contents with growing horror.
Dear Schoolmaster Cain: We regret to inform you . . .
As he reached the thing that had taken Egil, it closed its fingers around Cain’s throat, holding him like a small toy, their faces inches apart.
The thing’s features had changed again. This time, what was revealed was not man, woman, or child, but something inhuman. Raw flesh stretched shiny-slick across knobs of bone surrounded a gaping maw full of sharpened, bloody teeth.
“They cry for you,” Belial spat at him, his breath like rotting flesh. “You never could look at their bodies, could you, Deckard? See what we did to them on that empty road? Yet their physical pain was nothing—only the beginning. We took their souls and made them slaves, and they have been suffering under the watch of my loyal servants ever since. You ignored them for so long for your precious books, you hardly noticed what they meant to you until they were gone. And now you have brought us another one to play with, just in time. We thank you for doing our bidding, even if you weren’t aware of it.”
Deckard Cain saw a flash of an empty, overturned wagon upon the road to Caldeum, the splash of blood across the spokes of the wheel. Red-stained shapes under rough blankets that men had draped over them. “You . . . lie . . .”
The demon roared, throwing its head back and howling at the ceiling, its laughter shaking the foundations of the building like an earthquake. “Everything is a lie, old man. All that you see, all that you believe. Your family was a lie, your sad little life of solitary study, your loneliness and anger. Even your pathetic little quest to find us. You think all that you’ve done, the things you have found along the way, the signs that brought you here—all that was your doing?”
Cain’s legs gave way, and he sagged against the creature’s arms as its fingers tightened around his throat. Everything seemed to click into place: Akarat’s discovery of the texts that had led them to the ruins, and the Horadric prophecies he had found there that had been left by the First Ones seemingly by accident, texts that had eventually led him to Caldeum, Kurast, and finally to Gea Kul. So many coincidences, so many close escapes.
“Even now, you do our bidding, old man. This shell we inhabit will die in a moment, yet you will be too late to stop what is happening.” The thing grinned at him. “The little girl. You left her alone, didn’t you? Left another one alone again. You thought she was safe. You poor fool. Check the book. You—ahhhhh.”
The creature sighed, eyes suddenly growing dim and fixed, face re-forming, features bubbling back to their original shape as its hands went slack and Cain dropped, gasping, to the floor. Egil slumped, already dead, falling toward Cain and wetting his face with blood.
He looked up as Mikulov slid his punch dagger back out from the base of Egil’s skull. Mikulov stepped back, breathing hard, his eyes wild, as the green light that had bathed the room began to fade into darkness. Cain pushed Egil’s body off him, scrambling backward as the blood soaked through his tunic, wetting his skin. He fumbled in his rucksack, pulling out a bag of Egil’s powder and throwing it against the wall. The pop and flare filled the room with light once again, and Mikulov retrieved the torch and lit it.
Cain found his staff in one corner, snapped in two. The cracking sound he had heard when he had fallen earlier came back to him, and as he gathered the pieces, a deeper fear spread through his limbs and urged him on. His fingers touched the piece of parchment paper in the hidden pocket of his tunic, the edges old and crumbling, its message seared once again across his memory: We regret to inform you . . .
“Wait!” Mikulov cried, but Cain ran as fast as his trembling, nearly useless legs would carry him, careening through the shadows with the torchlight following behind and Mikulov continuing to call out. Egil was dead, poor Egil, another young man who had trusted Deckard and had paid the bitter price for it, as had Akarat, the young paladin who had been filled with such confidence. Used like all the rest.
I will not let you down, Akarat had said, back at the Vizjerei ruins. Egil had said much the same thing before they had come here. And they had not let him down, but Cain had been unable to protect them in return, as he had promised himself he would. And now he feared the worst for someone else under his care and protection. Someone he had promised to keep safe.
The demon lies.
Yes, of course it did. But lies were often wrapped in truth.
Deckard Cain reached the library, Mikulov close behind with the torch. The room was silent and empty and shrouded in shadows, the remains of their search strewn in piles on the floor. The book of Horadric prophecies was still open on the table. Check the book, the demon had said. Cain flipped through it with trembling fingers, all the hidden text still legible as Mikulov stepped to his side and the flickering torchlight brightened its pages.
“What is it—?”
Cain let out a small cry, stepping away from the table and the book. But it was too late. He had already seen what had been scrawled across the last two pages, written in blood, still fresh and wet.
The words were seared into his brain:
The girl is mine.
29
The Warning
Long before they reached the caves, they could smell the smoke.
Cain and Mikulov had caught up with Thomas and Cullen before the two men left the tunnels. They had been slowed down by their heavy burden of books, while Cain and Mikulov had been propelled ever faster by their fear of what they would find when they returned to camp. The two men sagged as Mikulov explained briefly what had happened to Egil, Thomas leaning on Cullen for support. Thomas and Egil had been close friends, Cullen explained, as Mikulov assumed Thomas’s sack of books for him. It was a tough blow to take.
But it was nothing compared to what they found when they reached the clearing.
Black smoke billowed from the cave’s entrance. The bodies of men and other creatures still lay scattered across the ground, many of them with arrows buried to the fletching in their necks and chests.
What drew their eyes was the huge wooden cross that had been erected in front of the cave, and the thing that hung there.
Lund’s chin rested on his chest. The huge man was naked, his hands and feet lashed to the wood, rope digging cruelly into flesh the color of white marble. But Lund was beyond any pain now.
He had been split from throat to groin, his innards spilling out and hanging down to the dusty, blood-soaked ground.
The crows had been at work on him. One still remained, perched upon the right crossbar above Lund’s fingers, a gigantic black bird with glossy feathers and curved talons. It pecked at his fleshy thumb, pulling loose a string of meat, and cocked its head at them, peering, as if deciding whether they were a threat. Then it opened its beak and cawed, the sound echoing across the hillside like the scream of the damned before it flapped its wings and rose, still screeching, up and over the tops of the dead trees and out of sight.