Mel Odom - The Black Road

Darrick shook his head. "You can't go about just droppingthe names of all those demons like that. They aren't real. They can't be all real."

"The Prime Evils are real."

A chill threaded through Darrick, but even after everything he'd seen-even after everything he'd lost after seeing the demon in Tauruk's Port-he struggled to believe that the worlds of the demons, the Burning Hells, were real and not just stories.

"Have you seen the Church of the Prophet of the Light?"

"No."

"It is huge," Taramis said. "In less than a year, the Church of the Prophet of the Light has become one of the most prominent structures in Bramwell."

"Bramwell isn't a big city," Darrick said. "Mainly fishermen and farmers live there. Westmarch barely keeps a garrison of guards there, and it's mostly a show of support because no invading army would attack Westmarch through Bramwell. The roads are too harsh and uncertain."

"Kabraxis takes generations to build his power," Taramis said. "That's why even the unholy trinity of brothers learned to fear him. Where they waged war and fought with human armies with their own demonic ones, Kabraxis won believers to him."

"Through the layers of man."

"Yes." The sage tapped the outermost ellipse. "First is the fear mankind has of demons. People who fear Kabraxis will acknowledge his leadership, but they will break away at the first chance." He tapped the next ellipse. "Next comes greed. Through the Church of the Prophet of the Light, Kabraxis and the high priest known as Master Sayes, also called the Wayfinder have granted gifts to their worshippers. Good fortune in business, money, an unexpected inheritance. Then he moves closer to the heart." He tapped the next ellipse. "Covetousness. Do you secretly want your neighbor's wife? His land? Worship Kabraxis, and it will be yours in time."

"Only if the man you want those things from doesn't worship Kabraxis as well."

"Not true." Taramis paused to relight his pipe. "Kabraxis weighs and judges those who serve him. If one man-more powerful in the community than another-will better serve Kabraxis's purposes, the Banisher of the Light rewards the more powerful man."

"What of the worshipper who loses whatever the other man wants?"

The sage waved the question away. "Simple enough. Kabraxis tells everyone that the man who lost his lands or his wife or his family wasn't strong in his faith. That he played Kabraxis-or, in this case, Dien-Ap-Sten-falsely and deserved what he got."

Sour bile rumbled in Darrick's stomach. Every word the sage spoke had the ring of truth in it.

Taramis moved to the next ellipse. "From that point, Kabraxis seeks out those people with greater fears. Sickness in your family? Come to the church to be healed. Your father is becoming senile? Come to the church, and have clarity returned to him."

"Kabraxis can do these things?"

"Yes," Taramis said. "And more. Demons have many powers. In their own way, they offer salvation to those who serve them. You've heard of the gifts Diablo, Baal, and Mephisto have given their own champions in the past. Enchanted armor, mystical weapons, great power to raise armies of dead. The Prime Evils rule through fear and destruction, always aiming for subjugation."

"Kabraxis has no interest in that?"

"Of course he does," Taramis said. "He's a demon, after all. Even archangels want those who worship them to fear them just a little bit. Otherwise, why would they choose such fearsome forms and act the way they do?"

Darrick considered the question and supposed it was true. Still, all this talk of demons was foreign to him, something he didn't even want to invest in. Yet he felt he had no choice.

"Archangels for the Light threaten man with being tortured by demons for the rest of his eternal life, and theypromise dire vengeance for any who worship and aid the demons." Taramis shook his head. "Archangels are warriors, just as demons are."

"But they have a more generous view of how man is supposed to fit into this world with them."

"That," the sage said, "depends on your belief, doesn't it?"

Darrick sat quietly.

"There are some who believe this world should be cleansed of demons and angels, that there should be no Light or Darkness, and men should find their own way in life."

"What do you believe?" Darrick asked.

"I believe in the Light," Taramis replied. "That's why I hunt demons and expose them for what they are. I've killed eight lesser demons in the last twenty years. Not all of them are the likes of the Prime Evils."

Darrick knew that, but he'd only seen the one demon, and it had been a truly horrifying creature. "What are you going to do to Kabraxis?"

"Kill him if I can," the sage stated. "If not, I mean to see him exposed for what he is, his priest slain, and his church razed to the ground."

The man's words drew Darrick in, and he took comfort in them. Taramis made doing such an incredible thing sound possible.

"You've lost someone to the demon," Taramis whispered.

Darrick drew back.

"Don't bother to deny it," the sage said. "I see the truth in your eyes. You wear your pain like a chevron for anyone who has been through the same thing." He paused, his eyes sliding from Darrick's for a moment. "I lost my family to a demon. Twenty-three years ago. I was a priest. Such a thing wasn't supposed to happen to me. But a demon's hand took my wife and my three children from me."

The lantern light flickered on the table.

"I was young then and full of my studies as a Vizjereimage. I taught in one of the outlying schools in my homelands. A stranger came to our door. We lived in back of the school, just my family and I. This man told us that he had no place to sleep and had eaten nothing for two days. Fool that I was and full of my new position, I let him in. During the night, he killed my family. Only I lived, though most thought I would not." He pulled back the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the long, wicked scars across his flesh. "I have more scars over the rest of my body." He tilted his head back, revealing the thick scar that curved around half of his neck and across his throat. "The priests who saved me had to piece me back together. All of the healers told me later that I should have died. The Light knows I wanted to."

"But you lived," Darrick whispered, drawn into the horror of the story.

"Yes." Taramis knocked ash from his pipe and put it away. "For a time, I resented my life. Then I came to realize that it was a more focused one. The demon that had killed my family would go on to kill other families. I resolved to get well, mentally and physically. And I did. It took me three years to heal and nine years to track down the demon that took my family from me. I had killed two other demons by that time and revealed four others."

"And now you hunt Kabraxis?"

"Yes. When the Church of the Prophet of the Light first came into being, I became suspicious. So I began researching it and found enough similarities between the healing and the changes wrought within the worshippers to lead me in the direction of Kabraxis."

"Then why come here?" Darrick asked.

"Because," the sage said, "Kabraxis was once here. For a time, the barbarian tribes worshipped him when they warred against the people of the southern lands. During that time he was known as Iceclaw the Merciless. He succeeded in uniting some of the more powerful barbarian tribes, creating a great horde that landed between the Twin Seas, the Great Ocean, and the Frozen Sea."

Darrick considered the implications. The stories about the barbarian horde went so far back that they were considered only tales to frighten children with. The barbarians had been depicted as cannibalistic warriors who filed their teeth and filled their bellies from the bodies of women and children. "Until Hauklin came with his great sword, Stormfury, and slew Iceclaw during a battle that took six days."