Lord of Penance

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Three: The Temple By Night

The waning moon had passed its zenith and was slipping westward, and although a city like Absalom never entirely slept, only a few scattered lights glowed amid the darkness, while the perpetual background drone had subsided to the faintest of hums.

Olhas peered down the silent street that led to Domitian's manor, rolled tension out of his shoulders, and said, "Ready?"

"If you are." Sefu hesitated. "You know, you don't have to do this."

Olhas raised his eyebrows. "Are you planning to work the magic yourself? That should be interesting."

"I mean, maybe I can bring her out just by being stealthy."

"And then what? Look, I understand all the ways this can go wrong. We could get killed breaking in or end up with the Graycloaks hunting us afterward. But if we stick together, we should be all right."

"All right, then. I owe you."

The gillman grinned. "You certainly do." He pulled up the black scarf around his neck to mask the lower half of his face. The rest of his clothing was just as dark and thus well suited to housebreaking.

Sefu tied on his own improvised mask. Then he and Olhas crept down the street toward Domitian's manor.

Olhas raised his hand for a halt, drew a vellum scroll from his sleeve, and unrolled it. Like the Wave Riders' somber clothing, the parchment repository of magic was something they'd purchased specifically for this enterprise. Though Olhas was a competent sorcerer, his innate power had its limits, and he wanted to conserve it to cleanse Leyli of Domitian's influence.

Eyes that could see deep underwater could also make out a trigger phrase even in the gloom, and Olhas read it in a whisper. The ink made a tiny crackling sound as the magic bound in the words discharged, and the writing crumbled into powder.

Meanwhile, Sefu peered at the window under the gable. He couldn't see the lookout at all, let alone discern whether or not the half-orc had succumbed to the spell. "Is he asleep?" he asked.

Olhas rerolled the scroll and slipped it back into his sleeve. "I guess we'll find out."

They sprinted toward the wrought-iron gate. Sefu didn't hear anyone shouting an alarm, and when they climbed over into the courtyard, it took them out of the lookout's field of vision. He hoped that when the half-orc woke, he'd imagine he'd simply drifted off naturally.

Keeping low, the Wave Riders crept on to the front door. Olhas squatted and whispered into the keyhole. The lock clicked, and the door swung ajar.

Sefu peered through. The foyer was unoccupied and, with the oil lamps extinguished, even darker than the night outside.

He and Olhas prowled up the stairs. They were proceeding on the assumption that Domitian's followers slept in the bedrooms, although Sefu actually wouldn't have been surprised to discover that the god-to-be kept his poor abused flock in the cellar.

It turned out that he didn't, although he apparently required them to lie on the floor instead of in the beds. The worshipers tossed, jerked, twitched, and moaned in their sleep. Squint as he might, Sefu often found it impossible to make out their features in the gloom, but he trusted Olhas to recognize Leyli when they came to her.

	"Olhas may not be the most attractive Wave Rider around, but he's a good man to have on your side."

A floorboard creaked. Sefu pivoted. A half-orc was leading a woman—Sefu thought it was the cultist who'd been made to pull her own teeth, though he wasn't sure—down the hall toward him, Olhas, and the room they'd just finished inspecting.

Sefu nearly snatched out his sword before realizing the ruffian wasn't showing any sign of agitation at the Wave Riders' presence. Apparently, thanks to their black garments, he's mistaken Sefu and Olhas for two of his fellows.

Sefu gave him a little wave. Then he and Olhas stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. He hoped it was an unremarkable thing for one of the half-orcs to do.

Apparently it was, because the tough didn't come in after them or shout for help, either. Footsteps padded by, and then, farther down the corridor, another door opened and closed. Sefu suspected it was the one that he and Olhas had decided likely led to the master bedroom.

As they moved on, he tried not to imagine all the special degradations to which Domitian might be subjecting the woman in his private chamber in the middle of the night. Then a pair of high, perhaps inhuman voices began to yowl. The eerie cries echoed through the dark house, but if they woke any of the cult leader's followers, Sefu couldn't tell. Perhaps the magic that trammeled their minds kept them from hearing.

"By the Eye," Olhas whispered, sounding unsettled for once, "what is that? What's he doing to her?"

"I don't know," Sefu answered. "But our task is still to find Leyli and get her out of here."

And eventually they did find her, after climbing up to the third floor. Leyli lay sleeping beside another female cultist in a room that had evidently once belonged to a child. Ghostly in the trace of light shining through the open casement, clowns juggled, ropewalkers balanced, and bears danced in the mural on the wall.

Whispering, Olhas cast a second spell of slumber to make sure Leyli's roommate didn't wake. Then Sefu picked up his sister and set her on her feet. The gillman's magic had taken hold of her as well, and she slept on obliviously. Sefu supported her with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.

"Ready?" he asked.

Olhas removed the preserved tongue of a serpent and a bit of honeycomb from a hidden pocket in his belt. "Go."

Sefu shook Leyli. Meanwhile, holding both magical foci in his left hand, Olhas swept them through an S-shaped pass and whispered sibilant words of power.

Leyli stiffened in Sefu's grasp, then started to squirm and struggle. Olhas reached the end of his incantation and said, "Listen! Domitian sent us. He wants you to go with us and cooperate with us in every way."

Leyli stopped fighting. Sefu cautiously uncovered her mouth, and she didn't scream.

"Let's get out of here," Olhas said. He smiled at Leyli. "Quietly, please. Domitian doesn't want us to disturb the others."

She nodded slowly, in a dazed way that gave Sefu a pang of guilt. He'd come to restore her mind, not add yet another level of confusion and compulsion. But Olhas had assured him the effect was only temporary, and it really was the easiest way to sneak her out.

They all crept back down the staircase into the foyer. With the door to the outside world in view, Sefu felt himself relax at least a little.

Then a shaggy lupine beast stalked through one of the doorways on his right.

Sefu was more familiar with the creatures of the sea and coast than those of the forest and plain. Yet his instincts shouted that the creature was something more than a dog or even a wolf, and an instant later, it proved them correct by speaking.

"What's this?" it snarled.

The beast was a worg, then, a man-eating predator of near-human intelligence. And if it was serving as Domitian's watchdog, that was yet more evidence—not that Sefu needed any—that the god-to-be was a dastard of the vilest sort.

What Sefu did need was a way past the brute. Maybe he and Olhas could bluff it like they'd bluffed the half-orc in the hallway.

"Somebody wants to play with this skinny bitch," he said, trying to sound as coarse as any half-orc ruffian. "The Reaper knows why, especially at this hour. But he sent gold, so Tsadok and me have to deliver her."

The worg grunted, then snuffled. Sefu realized it was taking his and Olhas's scents. But before he could do anything about it, it lifted its head and howled.

Sefu whipped out his sword and rushed it. The worg broke off its cry to spring back and avoid his first cut. Maybe, if the Wave Riders were lucky, that bit of ululating wailing had blended in with the yowls still issuing from Domitian's bedchamber, and no one had noticed it.

In any case, Sefu had to deal with the beast, and quickly. He slashed at its head, but it sidestepped the stroke, then sprang.

Its front paws slammed into Sefu's chest and smashed him to the floor. Slavering jaws plunged at his throat.

Behind him, Olhas rattled off a word. Darts of green light stabbed into the worg's muzzle and shoulders, and it faltered at the shock. Sefu let go of his sword's hilt and grabbed it partway up the blade, so he could stab with it at close quarters. He thrust it between the creature's ribs.

Blood spurted. The worg shuddered, then collapsed on top of him. He lay panting under its rank, dead weight for a moment, then rolled the carcass to the side.

Leyli blinked. If she truly understood that a fight to the death had just taken place, no one could have told it from her demeanor. "Did you call me a name?" she murmured.

"No," Sefu said. He rose and yanked his sword out of the worg's body.

"We need to go now," Olhas said.

They boosted Leyli over the wrought-iron gate, and then the three of them hurried away down the street. Sefu kept glancing over his shoulder. As far as he could tell, no one was in pursuit, so after a time, he and Olhas took off their masks. There was no point in looking like thieves to whomever they might meet along the way.

Of course, he couldn't do anything about the worg's gore staining the front of his clothing, but fortunately, he and his companions didn't have far to walk. He and Olhas had rented a flop in a tenement just a couple blocks from the manor. The flop was a squalid little room, with a dank smell hanging in the air and roach droppings crunching underfoot, but it was a place to go to ground while the gillman did his work.

The flop contained a sagging cot with a no-doubt-flea-infested straw tick and a single rickety chair. Olhas set the latter in the middle of the floor and motioned for Leyli to take a seat. "Please," he said.

She sat.

The gillman murmured a rhyme, crooking and uncrooking his fingers all the while. Then he walked around and around Leyli, peering at her from every angle.

After what felt like a long time, Sefu asked, "Are you doing anything?"

"I'm learning everything I can about what Domitian did to her, so as to have the best possible chance of undoing it. If I'm working too slowly to suit you, my abject apologies."

"I just want you to get it done before the spell that's making her biddable wears off."

Leyli slowly rubbed her temple with her fingertips. "What? A spell?"

"It's nothing," Olhas said. "Just relax." He looked at Sefu. "I believe I'm ready." Shifting his hands from side to side like he was placing stones in an invisible mosaic, he chanted a longer incantation in a language Sefu didn't recognize. On the final syllable, he planted his right hand on her forehead.

She gasped and bucked at his touch. Then she went limp.

"Did it work?" Sefu asked. "Is she all right?"

"Let's ask her," Olhas said. "Leyli, how do you feel? Do you understand what's been happening to you?"

Blinking, she looked up at her rescuers. Then she jumped up and threw her arms around Sefu. "I'm sorry!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry!"

"It's all right," he said, patting her back. "I know you weren't in your right mind."

"And the Graycloaks need to know it, too," Olhas said. "If they understand that Domitian uses magic to enslave his 'followers,' they'll move against him." He grinned. "As opposed to arresting your brother and me for breaking into his house and killing his dog."

"But I don't know if the Graycloaks can stop him," Leyli said. "I don't know if anyone can."

"I can understand why the man seems powerful to you," Olhas said, "but—"

"You don't understand," Leyli said. "He isn't a man. I know because sometimes he let me see him as he truly is, to terrify me, and then made me forget it later."

Sefu frowned. "Then what is he, really?"

"A demon! He has two heads, each the head of a cat, and his hands are twisted around on his wrists."

"That's why we heard two voices crying out," Sefu said. Imagining the creature Leyli described forcing himself on the woman the half-orc had taken to his bedchamber made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Yes," Olhas said, "but he's not exactly a demon. He's a rakshasa."

"A what?"

"An evil spirit given flesh," the gillman said. "A kind that takes particular pleasure in degrading and defiling people. The backward hands are a giveaway. And actually, this is good. The Graycloaks may not like to interfere with actual religious leaders, even unscrupulous ones, but they'll certainly—"

The world blazed white.

Coming Next Week: Strange fiends and desperate measures in the final chapter of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson