King of Chaos Read online

  I kept cutting. Jokum tried to free himself, but his thrashing only wound him up more. "Seriously, kid, quit moving or I leave you here."

  It occurred to me the kid might speak only Hallit, so I repeated the message best I could, which wasn't great. I ended up with something like, "Stop, stupid, or you alone."

  Something about my voice got through to him. He tried to stay still, except when one of the spiders dropped onto his face. He slapped it away, but not before its bite left a sizzling wound on his cheek. He screamed again, louder.

  With most of the web strands cut, I grabbed him around the waist and pulled. He came down on top of me as I wrenched him free.

  "Lesit!" he yelled.

  The giants stomped toward us. The woman in the net reached out a hand again. "Jokum!"

  "Go, Jokum," I told him. "I'll keep these jerks busy."

  Despite my tough words, I prayed Alase and Tonbarse would show up soon. Even if they did, I didn't like our chances. Alase was right. It would have been a lot smarter to leave Jokum and Lesit to their own problems. Without help from the others, who hung back more than a mile away, we couldn't take these giants on our own.

  But I knew someone who could.

  The giant holding Lesit moved toward Jokum. I gave the kid a kick to encourage him. Tears mingling with the blood on his face, he took one last look at Lesit and ran.

  I threw a handful of darts at the giant, careful not to perforate his captive. He slapped at the wounds on his gray-green chest like he'd been nipped by gnats.

  "Hey, fatty." I showed him the big knife. "Come get me."

  He came after me, all right. His heavy footsteps shook the trees.

  I closed my eyes and tried to keep my mouth shut as green buds and spiders rained down on me. Only then did I realize my mistake. A thousand fangs sank into my flesh as I shucked off the jacket and threw it aside. I had to drop the big knife to get my arm out of the sleeve.

  I focused all my pain into a name: "Viridio!"

  It feels like falling backward, only instead of coming down on my head, I come all the way around, like I'm one of those tall mirrors in a frame, and somebody's flipped me around. When I come back up the other side, it isn't me you see inside. It's nine feet of demon, claws, carapace, and fangs.

  The change swirls my thoughts and takes my brain up to a full boil. The part that's still me has to struggle to stay on top. I think about who I want to hurt the most. I try not to blame Lesit, even though it's kind of her fault. With any luck, I'll have forgotten all about her by the time I'm finished with the giants.

  The one holding her pauses for a second when it sees what I've become. With barely a thought, I see I've put my scorpion stinger in his eye. Much as I hate the idea of having a tail, it tickles me to see the jelly spilling out of his eye socket. I hit him again in the other eye as he shrieks and bawls. For a second I think about tearing out his throat, but I like the way he's crying. I'd like him to go on crying while I deal with his pal.

  The other one brings his gaff hook down toward me. I slap it away with the back of an armored wrist. My claws are longer than the big knife, almost as long as swords. I rake them across the giant's blubbery belly and watch his blue-black guts ooze out. They smell like rotten fish and brimstone.

  I hear a shout behind me and turn. The big black wolf has showed up at last. He smashes the other giant's legs out from under him, turns and lunges not for the throat but for the net hanging from his shoulders. The wolf tears off the net with the woman still inside, dragging it away. When the wolf's bright blue eyes meet mine, I see it's really me he's saving her from.

  I want to teach him a lesson. As I move forward, the blind giant reaches out to grab my leg. He's still strong. His grip hurts. He pulls me down. I let him.

  Once we're lying together, I wriggle around until I'm close enough to bite his throat. My venom melts his fishy skin. I get my fingers under his arms. My claws push in between his ribs. I find the pulsing heart inside. I want it. I take it. I shove it in my mouth. I feast on its bitter flesh.

  When I'm done, I look around for Alase, but she's nowhere to be seen. She's taken the girl with her. That wasn't very nice. I decide to find them and tell them that I think it wasn't very nice.

  The swamp is thick with trees and brush, thicker than it was before. I stop and tear down the ones I don't want to walk around. Despite the effort, the moist air cools me off. I start breathing slower. Inside, part of me is angry. Part of me is scared. The two parts both want to talk. The angry part speaks first, but not in words.

  Radovan Virholt, you weakling, you imbecile! I told you never to summon me so close to the Worldwound!

  My thoughts were still jumbled, but I could feel mine separating from Viridio's. It wasn't even his thoughts I felt in my head. It was more just his emotions, or maybe his instincts. Whether he was more like a man or an animal, I couldn't say. Probably a devil like him wasn't much like a man or an animal, anyway. "Hey," I said. "We're a lot farther away than we were before."

  I can still feel the chaos eating away at the edges of my perceptions.

  "That's probably just the swamp gas," I said. "Besides, you love killing demons. You said so in Kyonin."

  I don't like sitting on the edge of the Abyss. If I were to perish here, there's no telling what would become of me. I might be banished from the chamber. I might even be destroyed along with you.

  That idea sobered me up a little. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't have done it if it weren't an emergency. Besides, it all worked out. You can go any time you like. Say hello to Quang for me. The little jerk ran out on our last talk."

  Quang spoke to you?

  "Uh, yeah? Maybe." I realized I'd just spilled the beans. "I don't remember. What's it to you?"

  Viridio made a sound halfway between a hiss and a coughing fit. I felt his thoughts hovering just above mine, like a scorpion's stinger over an ant. It hung there a while, deciding what to do with me, before I realized I was once again standing naked in my own skin.

  I checked my arms and chest for bites, but there were hardly any marks left. I went back for my stuff. I fetched my jacket and the big knife, which were both in pretty good shape. Nearby I found my ruined kickers and the shreds of my pants. I cursed myself for forgetting to buy extra boots along with the spare pants back in my saddlebags. Then I walked back to catch up with the expedition.

  Before I found them, I found Bastiel. The unicorn stood in a haze of mosquitoes. It took me a second to realize he wasn't switching his tail back and forth like a regular horse. It took me another second to realize that was because none of them were touching him.

  "You're too late to help with the fight," I said. "You want to give me a ride back?"

  "Don't test me, hellspawn. The only reason I'm not trampling you into a puddle is that I don't wish to sully my hooves with your tainted blood."

  "I think it's because you don't want my big knife up your ass." The unicorn stamped and snorted, but it didn't matter. After my little workout, I still felt all the mean coursing through my blood. I was ready to take on anybody or anything that rubbed me the wrong way. "What the hell are you doing out here anyway?"

  "The others were worried about you," said Bastiel.

  "Yeah? And that matters to you why?"

  "Because you can help them," he said. "Oparal wanted them to succeed, so I—" He huffed and snorted again.

  "Yeah, yeah, I get it. So let's go back and help them." I walked up to the big fellow, but he shied away. "Calm down, you big baby. I'm not planning to ride you, bare-assed or otherwise."

  "Stay away."

  "Is that it?" I said. "Just like all the other horses, you're scared of me?"

  "I am not a horse," he said. "And I am not afraid of you."

  "You may not be a horse," I said as we headed back to the caravan. "But I've never seen a bigger chicken."

  Everybody eyed me when I got back, and not just because of the pants thing. Anyway, nobody stopped to talk. They started moving the momen
t I showed up.

  Alase must have told them what we'd seen at Dyinglight, and they decided to keep going past it. The way the boss talked about it, he expected to find what he was looking for somewhere up north, by some standing stones in the forest, or where a forest used to be, or something like that.

  There was no sign of Lesit or Jokum. When I asked Aprian, he said the boss talked with them for a little while before offering to let them join the company. They'd refused, so he let them go with supplies and a couple of spare weapons. Considering how things had worked out for the other Kellids we'd met, I couldn't say I blamed them for setting off on their own.

  Alase was sitting on the carriage roof with the luggage. She already had my spare trousers. She held them up, beckoning me to join her.

  I ran to catch up with the carriage and jumped onto the footman's ladder. Up top, I put on the pants. I dropped the shreds of my boots on the roof.

  Most of the others walked their horses through the swamp, including the wagon and carriage drivers. Even after I got my pants on, they stole peeks at me when they thought I wasn't looking.

  "I guess you told them what happened."

  "I said you rescued the slaves."

  "What about the ...Grawr!?" I made claws with my hands.

  "They could see that for themselves." She looked at my boots. "Barek could bind those up for you. He makes boots and armor."

  I nodded, figuring maybe later, when I wasn't feeling so weird around anybody.

  "Your god is very difficult to call. I never met a caller who had to take poison for his god to hear him."

  "I told you, it's not the same as you and Tonbarse." I looked over to see the big wolf talking as he padded through the swamp, Arnisant on one side, Bastiel on the other. I never saw the unicorn answer. Still, I could tell he was listening. "For one thing, there's five of them waiting on the other side of the gate—me—in this little hell. For another thing, they're devils, not gods."

  She shrugged. "The only difference is that you have not learned to support your god when it heeds your summons."

  "Yeah, because supporting the bastard is the first thing I want to do when a devil comes over to ride my body."

  "Not your body," she said. "Your spirit. It is the god's body that comes across. It rides your spirit in this world."

  She went on like that for a while. Most of it was stuff the boss had already figured out—or, as he put it, "hypothesized." An awful lot of Alase's version sounded like the kind of pitch I'd heard from fortune-tellers and hedge witches from here to Cheliax. Sure, Alase was the real thing, a summoner with real power, but I knew from the boss that it was all a matter of magic formulas that made spells like hers work. Sorcerers and witches and summoners, they all explained it in different ways, but it all came down to arithmetic.

  "I can show you how I first called to Tonbarse," said Alase.

  "I'm pretty sure it don't work the same for me. For Viridio, I need to be dying of venom before he shows up."

  "What about the god who rode you before him?"

  "Devil. I had to die in a fire."

  "Maybe we should call to the poison devil."

  "Yeah, that's better. Still, I don't want any of those mooks coming through right now."

  "What I will show you won't bring your god into the world. It will only let you call to him."

  "Yeah?" It occurred to me that I had some more questions for Quang. Last time we talked, he'd left in a hurry. Now that we were farther from the Worldwound, maybe he'd have more to say. "All right. Show me."

  "Let's sit low."

  We rearranged the luggage around the edges of the carriage roof. All pushed up against the low rail that kept it from sliding off, the trunks and bags formed a wall around us. Soon we couldn't hardly see the others riding around the carriage. Once we sat cross-legged on the roof, we could barely hear them, either.

  After all our shifting around, I expected the boss to poke his head out to give me an earful about making a racket, but nothing happened. Ever since Valahuv, the boss had stepped out only to take his turn behind the bushes. Jelani did the same. When I asked, the boss just said they were studying the Lexicon, taking turns to make sure it didn't make either one of them too peculiar.

  You ask me, that plan wasn't working out too good. They both seemed a little skittish when I brought their meals inside. When Aprian asked me what was going on in there, I joked that maybe they'd hit it off. Neither of us believed that. One look at either of them when they poked their noses out, you could tell they'd been losing sleep the hard way.

  Alase scooted forward until her knees touched my shins. When she took my hands, it reminded me just how little she was. She didn't act little, though. Even though Tonbarse seemed to do all her fighting for her, I could see by the way she cut her food that she knew how to use her knife for more than eating.

  "Close your eyes," she said. Her finger traced patterns on my palm. "Imagine the place where your gods live."

  I didn't have to imagine it. I'd seen the joint, first when the demons of Kyonin opened me up and later in a hundred nightmares. It was a little cave, its scabby walls glistening red with blood and yellow with puss. The golden light came from me, or at least that puddle on the wall that was the point where Hell connected to Golarion and the Abyss.

  "All right, I got it."

  She let go of my right hand and grabbed my left. She traced more runes on it. "Now envision your gods."

  "Which one?"

  "The one you want to speak to."

  That would be Quang. I'd seen a few imps in my time, but I wouldn't forget his barbed chin, his bat wings, the agate-green eyes, the black claws and curved barb on his tail. With all that in mind, I still couldn't see him in the little hell. Even so, something else started coming into view.

  In a fleshy niche in the wall, the bulky figure of Norge melted into view. Big as a grizzly, he was one big mass of red muscle bristling with black spines and teeth. As I saw him in my mind, I started to hear his steady snoring. I could even smell the sulfur from the yellow puddles on the floor.

  I started to think maybe Alase's plan was working too good.

  "Listen—"

  "Don't speak to me," she said. "Speak to the god. Call his name, and he will answer."

  There was no point talking to Norge. He was half dead, or mostly asleep, or something. Besides, I didn't think I'd get anything out of him even if he woke up. So instead I called out, "Quang? You in there somewhere, you little jerk?"

  My voice echoed off the walls of passages I couldn't see. I knew the devils had a way in and out of the little cavern, but I'd never seen it.

  "Quang? Come over here, let's finish our chat."

  "As you call to him, imagine how this place appears through his eyes."

  "What do I know about how Hell looks to an imp?"

  "Just try."

  All right, I thought. He's a little guy, so everything looks bigger. I imagined the cavern was four times bigger, looming above me like cathedral. It started to work. I felt real small.

  Then it occurred to me that Quang had never acted like he thought he was small. In fact, he flew above the heads of the other devils. I thought about what the little hell looked like from high on the ceiling. Sure enough, in my mind's eye, I was looking down on Norge and all the disgusting pools on the floor. Soon I heard a popping sound and the quick beat of little bat wings.

  Where ...? What have I ...? Unholy crap! Who summoned me here?

  "Who'd you think?" Not only could I hear him, but with my eyes closed I could see the little imp hovering in the little hell.

  Radovan? When did you become a sorcerer?

  If I could conjure a phony pony with a riffle scroll, who's to say I couldn't conjure a crappy little imp like Quang? "Turns out I got hidden depths."

  You aren't using the Lexicon now, are you?

  "What if I am?"

  Don't you realize what it does?

  "I'm the one asking the questions." I probably should hav
e thought of some before calling him. "So, uh, what do you think the Lexicon does?"

  Seriously? He cackled. You had me going there! You don't have a clue what it does!

  "You mean besides opening portals to different worlds, yeah?"

  Oh. Quang sobered up. So you have a little more than a clue.

  "So it bothers you for the same reason Viridio can't stand being near the Worldwound. Is that it?"

  You've been talking with Viridio.

  "Sure. I told him to say hello."

  So that's why he chased me halfway around Mammon's Bier. You squealed on me!

  "What were you up to that it was squealing?"

  Listen, Radovan. What we got here is a big misunderstanding. If I'm in trouble with Viridio, it's only because I'm trying to help you out.

  "Help me?"

  I'm not saying there's nothing in it for me, just that I've got a great deal for you.

  "I notice you're the only one there, aside from Norge."

  Yeah, nobody wanted to carry him out. Besides, the place has kind of grown on him.

  "Tell me about this deal."

  All right, here's what I got: you already know about fire and venom being the sigils for Norge and Viridio.

  "Yeah?"

  I can tell you everybody's sigil.

  "Including yours?"

  Including mine.

  "Interesting." Now that I'd finally been in a tight spot and knew how to call on Viridio on purpose, I could see the use in that. "What do you want in return?"

  Hardly anything. Just promise that when your boss does use the Lexicon, the first thing you do is call me through.

  "I thought you were afraid of the Lexicon."

  I am! And you should be, too.

  "What's the catch?"

  Because you're a smart guy, I know better than to try to trick you. The catch is this: when you're up close and personal with the Worldwound, there's a fair chance the first of us you call through can come all the way through. I want what we've all wanted from the start: I want out of Hell.