Chapter 1
The familiar dream was always the same. He was on his knees, wiping a stone floor clean. The rag soaked up the red puddle, a mixture of soapy water and blood. When he wrung the tattered cloth out over his washbucket it ran in pink rivulets across his hands, a child’s hands.
A noise intruded on the dream, waking him.
Footsteps.
He moved one hand to his sword, and in the hazy moment between sleep and reality, it still seemed to be a child’s hand, dripping with watered-down blood, but the dream faded and reality returned. Now it was a man’s hand, callused by training and scarred by battle. That hand belonged to Protector of the Law, twenty-year senior Ashok Vadal, and he did not clean blood. He spilled it.
Listening carefully, Ashok decided that the noise had come from just outside his tent. A warrior had approached, then stopped there probably to gather up his courage before waking their honored guest. Ashok relaxed and released Angruvadal’s grip. Reaching for it first was an old habit. If the sword needed to be drawn, it would have told him.
The blood scrubbing dream had come to him many times before, but as usual it held no wisdom, no revelations. It meant nothing. After all, it was only a dream. It was a fabrication of the mind, not a memory. It was not real. The stifling heat was real. The moist clinging air was real. He’d been sleeping beneath hanging silks because the stinging flies that infested this region were all too real. The sweaty discomfort reminded him that he was in the wretched northern jungles of Great House Gujara, and that he’d been ordered here to kill a demon. The waking noises of the temporary camp and the unusual silence of the jungle suggested that the demon had shown itself.
The messenger hadn’t announced himself yet. Ashok was used to low-status members of the warrior caste behaving this way around him, either out of respect for his office or fear of his reputation. He’d been listening to their whispered rumors for two decades now, half of which weren’t true, and the other half exaggerated, but it was no wonder messengers were always so nervous around him. It was always best to cut through the awkward pause. “Is it time?” Ashok asked through the canvas.
“The demon has been sighted, Protector.”
“Where?” He rolled out from beneath the silks and found his clothing in the dark.
“It’s raiding a village on the coast right now.” The warrior was trying to keep the fear out of his voice, and mostly succeeding. “The messenger said it’s already slaughtered dozens!”
“So it’s close then?”
“Yes, Protector. The demon is very close.”
Good. It was too damned hot to have to chase it.
* * *
Ashok sprinted along the darkened path toward the sounds of screaming. His appointed escorts—a paltan of fifty warriors—were behind him, struggling and failing to keep up. The soldiers were on foot because horses didn’t survive for long in the humid, muddy, vine-choked, insect-infested northern peninsula of House Gujara, so their warrior caste had no cavalry tradition here. However, when it came to fighting a demon, being on foot was not a disadvantage. Horses were terrified by demons, and no matter how well trained, could not be relied upon.
Besides, for short distances such as this, Ashok could outrun a horse.
He began to encounter fleeing villagers along the path. There were a few men, women, and children of the worker caste, but most of the refugees were casteless non-people. It made sense, because only the lowest of the low would be condemned to live close to the seashore. Many of those he passed were wounded, mostly from crashing through the thorny brush, but a few were showing the blackened, bloody patches that came from simply brushing against a demon’s hide. Rub a hand against a demon one direction, it was smooth, almost soft, but run it the opposite and leave your palm behind.
There had been no time for the villagers to gather their possessions. Since the demon had struck in the middle of the night, most of the villagers weren’t even clothed, but a few of the casteless were carrying squealing pigs or squawking chickens. Non-people were pragmatic that way. As he drew closer to the village the fleeing crowd became thicker and he had to dodge between them. They were terrified, desperate to escape, but he moved through the crushing mob effortlessly, like a raindrop falling from the sky and rolling between the leaves of a tree, seeking its inevitable path. Behind him there was a great deal of shouting as the warrior caste crashed into and roughly shoved their inferiors out of their way, off the path, and into the stabbing thorn vines.
The village was close now. The breaking of wood and the crack and pop of fire could be heard over the panicked cries. The demon itself would make no sound. They never did. Ashok could smell smoke and blood and spilled bowels, but the demon itself would have no scent. It would be a swift black shadow, with claws harder than steel, a mouth full of razor teeth, and the strength of an elephant.
The orange light from several burning huts cast wild shadows through the trees. The thick jungle parted. There wasn’t much open space between the jungle and the high tide, so the ramshackle buildings had been packed tightly, practically on top of each other, and built on stilts to keep them dry above the rocky beach. Bridges constructed of wood and hemp connected the structures, and they were swaying violently as people ran across, trying to escape the spreading fires and the demon’s hunger. Beyond the village was the vast dark ocean. Nothing came from the sea except for regret, fish, and demons.
There was no sign of the demon yet, but Ashok knew it was in there somewhere. His sword could sense it as well, and Angruvadal was demanding to be drawn in order to dispense death. Not yet. Demons seemed to sense black steel, and he didn’t want to frighten the creature away. If it returned to the sea, there would be no way to follow, and he’d have to wait for another chance to catch it.
As he caught his breath, he noticed several warriors stationed at the end of the jungle path, shouting at the villagers to flee for their lives, as if the encouragement was needed. The soldiers were armed with spears and wearing the simple cloth and hide armor preferred by House Gujara, where rust was a greater enemy than actual enemies. Despite being equipped for battle and raised their entire lives to do nothing but fight, they were in no hurry to enter that burning maze to take on a demon.
“Go back the way you came! There’s a sea demon here!” a very young soldier warned when he saw Ashok emerge from the jungle. “Run away while you can.”
The firelight was flickering and unreliable, so the junior nayak had probably not realized who he was ordering around. Ashok didn’t take his warning as an insult against his courage. He entered the circle of torchlight, and when they saw his armor they shut their mouths. “Which one of you is in command?”
The soldier realized what manner of man he’s been speaking to. “Apologies, Protector! Our havildar is Virata!” It was part explanation, part summons, and then he realized that, demon incursion or not, he’d better bow to someone of such high station, so he dipped his head so fast that his padded helmet fell off into the sand. “I’ll fetch him. Havildar! A Protector is here!”
“A Protector? Impossible.” Another warrior, gone a bit fat, came jogging up. He was too old to hold the low rank of havildar—a leader of ten—but of course, a great house would only send the dim and disgraced from among its warrior caste to protect a cursed holding such as this. “Our house has abandoned us. We’re all going to die here. There’s no—”
The ornate armor of the Protector Order should have been a giveaway, but Ashok showed him the token of his office so there could be no question about who was now in charge. The officer’s eyes widened when he saw the silver flash in the firelight. “Take me to the sea demon,” Ashok said.
“I can’t!” the officer wailed.
Ashok couldn’t believe his ears. The Law was clear about both of their duties in this situation. “Are you disobeying my order?” His tone was cold. “Calm yourself and speak carefully before you answer.”
“No, Protector. It was…I don’t know…I saw it reach through old Ravna’s stomach, take hold of his spine, and pull his head right through his shoulders. Such a thing can’t be real! I ordered a retreat because we had to run. I had no choice.”
That babbling didn’t answer Ashok’s question. The havildar was stupid with fear. Demons could shatter even a great warrior’s courage, and he was fairly certain this man had never been counted among House Gujara’s great to begin with. “Calm yourself and tell me, where is the demon?”
The havildar cowered. “Too strong…Too much blood. I can’t…Won’t go back…”
In a time of crisis, some men might shirk their duties, but to a Protector, obedience was everything, and the Law required him to punish this demon for trespassing. He couldn’t do it if they were lollygagging around while it swam back to sea, so Ashok backhanded the warrior in the mouth hard enough to loosen a few teeth from his jaw. The officer fell in the sand, whimpering.
“Where?”
“We saw it in the storehouse!” interjected the young soldier before Ashok could put his boot to the havildar. He was pointing into one of the larger fires. “Past that big building there. Last I saw, the demon was heading toward the casteless quarter, that direction.”
The casteless were not people, they were property, but they looked enough like real men that the sea demon probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Ashok could only assume that non-people tasted the same as real people to a demon.
“It was huge! It had to duck to get through the big storehouse door.” The junior soldier lifted one hand as high as possible, stretching it over his head, and even stood on his toes.
The nayak was tall, nearly as tall as Ashok in fact. Even allowing for some exaggeration from the terror of seeing such a thing, that meant this demon was a big one. The larger demons that bothered to come up on shore were particularly bloodthirsty, and their raiding period could often last an entire season. If it wasn’t stopped tonight, then its rampage would continue, night after night, until it was killed or sated. It would take a few minutes for his fifty-man escort to catch up, and when they did they would be too out of breath to be immediately useful. The demon would surely sense the arrival of that many soldiers and might decide to leave. It couldn’t be allowed to escape.
“Reinforcements are coming. Tell the risaldar in charge that I’ve gone after it.”
“Alone?”
Ashok drew the ancestor blade of Great House Vadal from the sheath on his belt. Angruvadal was eager. The sword retained the collected martial instincts of every man who had ever carried it into battle, all in a length of metal so black that it absorbed the light around it, and so sharp that it could even pierce the hide of a demon. The nayak realized what it was and took a fearful step back.
I am never alone.
* * *
The heat was so intense that it was difficult to even approach the growing fire. A black shape shot between the storehouse and a burning shack. Ashok would have followed directly, but his skin was not nearly as impervious as that of his prey. Despite the fact that they lived their lives beneath the waves, fire didn’t seem to harm demons. Ashok ran along the shore, leaping from rock to rock, looking for a path through the flames. Unclean saltwater soaked his boots, and he cursed the fools who would build a village in such a tainted place.
Most of the residents had fled or died. Now the demon was just toying with the stragglers, feasting before it returned to the depths. They’d always struck him as spiteful that way. He spotted the demon again as it leapt over a rope bridge, but then he lost it in the smoke. The air scorched his eyes as he started up a narrow ramp after it. Ashok paused to tie a scarf over the lower half of his face in a vain attempt to strain the air. It made sense that the creature would have the advantage here. Demons could breathe air or water, and in comparison to that, what trouble was smoke?
Ashok selected a path and pushed on through the maze of connected huts and scaffolding. The bridge was flimsy and rocked wildly as he ran across. He reached a solid platform and a lucky shift of the wind granted him a lungful of decent air and a clear view. A few coughing survivors pushed past him to climb down the ladders. One desperately leapt over the side to fall into the black waves. It was foolhardy to ever touch Hell, but it was shallow enough here that nothing immediately tried to devour that worker. Tonight the ocean’s nightmares were on dry land.
He had been taught that the best way to track a demon was to follow the signs of chaos. Wherever demons went, they left carnage in their wake. They were the living embodiment of destruction. Sword in hand, Ashok moved down the platform, following the trail of blood and discarded body parts. Demons never stopped moving, and they liked to carry their victim’s bodies as they bounded from place to place, gnawing on them until they found someone else to rip into. Once they’d gorged themselves, and their bellies were stuffed full, they would usually pause long enough to vomit up what they’d just eaten in order to make room for more. There was a foot, still wearing a sandal. There were several severed fingers on top of a pile of unidentifiable organs. He was on the right path.
The trail led down another narrow bridge. The cracks between the boards revealed crashing surf below. The only thing separating his body from the evil sea was some rickety stilts and rotting wood. It was strange enough to make even a man without fear pause. How could anyone, even the lowest of the low, live like this? Then the wave retreated, revealing shining sand, and his confidence returned.
This largest group of platforms was kept purposefully separate from the rest. This was the oldest and most confusing part of the village, with huts and structures haphazardly built in layers on top of each other for generations. It didn’t matter which house’s territory he was in. Casteless quarters always felt similar, giving off an air of disintegrating shoddy construction and a general filthiness. The Law mandated that the living area of the untouchables be kept separate from that of the whole men. Bits of glowing ash were falling from the dark sky, and several buildings in the casteless quarter had caught fire. Ashok took cover behind the corner of a hut and listened. Something was screeching. It was a horrible, bloodcurdling sound. He hoped the demon had attacked a piglet because that sound should not ever come out of a human throat, no matter how low in status the human might be.
Keeping Angruvadal low at his side, Ashok stalked toward the darkened barracks where the cry came from. There was a sickening crack and the noise abruptly stopped. Ashok froze.
The demon knew he was here.
The huge hut was big enough to house dozens of casteless. Ashok’s eyes couldn’t quite pierce the shadows inside, but he knew that it was watching him. He knew the demon would look upon him and see a tall man, lean and hard, dressed in lamellar armor, plates lacquered gray and inlaid with silver, held together with leather and silk, not so different from some of the humans it had killed before, and hardly intimidating to something as strong as an elephant. Only unlike the others, this man was completely devoid of fear.
Something smooth and vast slid along the floor of the hut, blacker than its surroundings. There was a shimmer as a bit of firelight reflected off of its nearly impenetrable hide. It didn’t immediately barge into the open to try and eat him as he had hoped. He’d surprised the last demon he’d fought by side-stepping its charge and opening its guts with Angruvadal. This demon was not so stupid. No…This demon recognized that this particular human was somehow different than the others. It understood that this human wasn’t prey.
Both of them had magic in their blood.
Curious, the black shape slowly lifted itself from the floor and slid forward into the light. The demon flowed so smoothly that its movements were like pouring oil. It had to twist its wide shoulders to fit through the door. The soft wood crumbled to bits as the demon’s razor hide rubbed against it. Once on the platform, the demon no longer had to slouch. It rose to its full height, towering over Ashok. The young nayak at the jungle’s edge hadn’t been exaggerating its size at all. Sighting a demon on dry land at all was a rare experience. Most men would go their entire lives without seeing one. Ashok had seen four, and this was the biggest by far.
Demons came in many shapes and sizes, and it was whispered that truly vast beings had been seen amid the waves, but the ones he’d fought had been shaped like men…mostly…though each of them had been distorted in a different way. This one was too tall, its limbs too long, its fingers longer still, and each ended in a black point. There were three fingers, splayed wide, with a translucent webbing between them. Its legs were too short, too squat. Its head was a lump, nearly featureless except for a horizontal line that divided the lump in half.
“The ocean belongs to demons. Land belongs to man. So says the Law.” Ashok slowly lifted his arm, revealing his black steel blade.
The line across its otherwise blank face split open, revealing teeth, black and shiny and sharp as the rest of its body. It let out a hiss of air that sounded surprisingly dry and raspy. That was the first sound he had ever heard a demon make. It must have recognized the sword that had been dispatching its kind since the Age of Kings.
“The penalty for trespass, for either side, is death.”
Now they understood each other.
The demon bolted.
Ashok went after it.
Demons were faster than men, but a Protector was no longer just a man. He caught it before it could get around the side of the casteless barracks and struck. Nothing in the world was sharper than an ancestor blade, and it cut smoothly through demon’s back. Their blood was thin and milky, and it shot out as if it was kept under a great deal of pressure. That wound was deep enough to fell any normal being, but it only stung the demon.
It spun, swinging at him, but Ashok dodged aside as its claws obliterated the barrack’s wall.
Moving as fast as lightning, the demon lashed out over and over again. Ashok moved back, placing his body to avoid the blows and turning aside the rest with his sword. The demon’s claws and bones were grown from a material harder than steel, nearly as hard as the ancient sword, and glowing sparks rose whenever they met. Ashok was not concerned for his sword. The chips were from the demon’s bones, because nothing could harm this sword except dishonor.
He had fought and defeated three demons, but combined, the many bearers of Angruvadal had killed nearly a hundred, and though their memories were not perfectly clear, their instincts remained, and they belonged to him now. The demon’s erratic movements were expected, almost predictable.
Ashok dodged a mighty blow and ran the edge of his sword up the demon’s arm in response. White blood hit him in the face. Demons didn’t have veins and arteries like a man. Instead the interior of their limbs was a solid slab of dense meat, white as snow, all of it soaked in their thin blood. But like a man, let the blood out and they began to weaken. The Protector attacked, lunging forward to drive several inches of black steel between its flexible ribs. Their vitals were hard to reach, and even when pierced, they didn’t die quickly. The creature flowed back, out of reach of the sword.
If demons felt pain, they never showed it. They were like Protectors that way.
It leapt to the side, crashing through a railing to fall to the next level. He thought about letting it go. No one really knew how demon’s bodies worked, so maybe he’d wounded it enough that it would slink off and die…But the Law was clear. The penalty was death, so he had to be certain. If the demon couldn’t dive directly into the depths, it would head for the surf. Where the two worlds met was no man’s land, but in anything not shallow enough for a man to see his feet, evil lurked, and then Ashok would be the trespasser. He had to catch it before then.
Without hesitation, Ashok leapt over the side after it. His boots hit solid wood. He could still feel the vibrations of the fleeing demon. This level was darker, damper, covered in hanging ropes and moist nets and the stink of fish. Only the casteless ate the unclean animals of the ocean. Catwalks stretched between the stilts and scaffolds. There were beds of flea-ridden straw in every corner. This place was nastier than the foul huts above. Even among the casteless there was rank, so how low did one have to sink to be the lowest amongst them?
There was a crash and a shout just ahead. Ashok ran down the catwalk, through a rain of smoke and ash from above and a mist of saltwater from below. A shack had been constructed of discarded garbage, using the stilts of a real building as a frame. There was a hole in the wall where the demon had smashed through.
Inside the shack were several women and children, filthy, ragged, and thin. The untouchables had been hiding, hoping the demon would pass them by, but instead they had wound up right in its path. A male casteless, old, defiant, and tiny, was the only thing between the monster and its victims. Ashok had never known that one of the non-people could be capable of real bravery, but this casteless dreg was defending the shack like he was a warrior defending the Capitol.
Only Ashok noted that the old casteless was holding the demon back with a spear. That was a severe violation of the Law.
The demon swatted the spear aside and the old man with it. It would crush the cowering humans just out of spite before leaping to the surf below. Only Ashok reached it first and drove Angruvadal through its back and out its stomach.
“You shouldn’t have come here, demon,” he said as he wrenched his sword free, spilling the demon’s dinner of partially digested villagers.
It twisted around and swung at him, but he ducked, and the blow shattered several of the stilts instead. He stabbed upward, through its armpit, deep into the meat of its chest cavity. At this rate, the hut was going to collapse on top of them, and it was not his place to needlessly kill the property of House Gujara. “Get out of here,” Ashok ordered the casteless as he pushed the demon back against the other supports.
But rather than flee, the non-people were jabbering and squealing at him in their rough, mangled dialect. “There’s two of them!”
“Behind you!” A child pointed back the way he’d come.
The sword warned him as well, a sudden rush of instincts and a desire for self-preservation, and Ashok threw himself aside. Even then, a black blur of demon flesh rubbed against him. The interlocked plates protected his chest, but where the hot hide brushed against his face blood came welling up through his lacerated skin.
Two demons!
Both of the huge creatures were on him then, clawing and snapping. They were identical in size, shape, and viciousness. He’d never faced such a challenge before, but the sword had, and it told him exactly what to do. Ashok slashed and danced between the limbs, painting with blood and bone shard sparks. He hit them each with a dozen clean strikes, each sufficient to kill a man, but it barely slowed the demons’ onslaught.
A claw broke mail and sliced into his left arm. Another claw cut a gash through his cheek. The fresh pain merely kept Ashok focused. He was unable to feel fear, only a cold calculation of the odds, and it wasn’t looking good. At least the first demon was no longer trying to escape.
The demons were bigger and stronger but Ashok was moving constantly, trying to keep one of the savage creatures in front of the other so he only had to respond to one set of attacks at a time. There was no room to maneuver here. The casteless were running or clambering down the hanging nets like monkeys. There was a loud thump overhead as a burning beam landed on their improvised roof. Instinct whispered to Ashok, and he swung upwards, smashing through the thin boards and spilling flames onto the demon’s heads.
They had no visible eyes, but the burning roof support seemed to blind them. Ashok stabbed, taking one through its pelvis, then he lowered his shoulder plate and crashed into the other, driving it off balance. The demon flesh scraped the paint from the ornate carvings of his armor, then grated across his now exposed arm. For a beast of the depths, the demon felt remarkably dry and hot. His ploy worked, and creature was put off balance and sent crashing through the ramshackle wall, over the edge, where it struck the hanging nets, thrashing about and entangling itself.
Seeing where it was suspended, Ashok leapt across, caught hold of the netting above the demon, and hung there, swinging in the fiery wind, dangling from the rough hemp with one hand. There was still a demon on the platform behind him, and the one thrashing below him, but that was only for a split second, because then Ashok struck at the ropes, cut them all in one swing, and dropped the entangled demon to the shore below.
It hit the rocks with a thud. Ashok glanced down and saw that fallen demon was twitching, its thick skull cracked open and leaking white. Hopefully that one was finished.
He scrambled up the ropes and rolled onto the top platform. The fire had spread quickly. There was a thump as the other demon leapt up and landed next to him. He attacked, but the demon intercepted his arm with a blow that would have killed an ox. Bones cracked and Ashok’s sacred sword went bouncing across the floor.
Damned blood loss…He must have been injured worse than he thought. He’d never lost hold of his sword before. He called upon the Heart of the Mountain to seal his wounds as he lurched to his feet, but the demon struck him hard enough to deform steel plates and knock him through the wall of a shed.
The Protector landed in a cloud of splinters. The shed was burning around him. Flames were licking up the walls as Ashok crawled in the direction of his sword. There was still air to breath near the floor, but his chest was so wracked with pain that it hardly mattered. The second demon followed him, webbed toes gliding soundlessly across the wood, its lump of a head clanking through the dangling chains and hooks, sending them swinging.
The demon would reach him before he could reach his sword.
It bent down and claws slid through his armor, clothing, and skin, hoisting him from the ground, up into the smoke and toward black teeth. Blood poured from the lacerations on his back, but he ignored the pain, and fought, striking with his elbow against the beast’s thick skull. All he did was lose more skin. It lifted Ashok up, then smashed him back down, through a support beam, and hard onto the floor.
Angruvadal was just out of reach. Ashok lay there, the air driven from his body, flat on his back, glaring at his impending death.
The old casteless appeared through the smoke, bellowing incoherently, and jabbed his illegal spear into the demon’s back. Even the finest steel had a difficult time piercing demon hide, so the blade bounced off harmlessly. The demon swiveled its eyeless lump of a head toward the casteless, not realizing in time that this non-person was no threat, only a momentary distraction, but it was enough for Ashok to roll over and lunge for his sword.
His fingers closed around Angruvadal’s grip as the demon turned back to finish him. The angle was awkward, but Ashok had desperate strength and the sharpest sword ever forged. Black hide parted, hardened bone shattered, and the demon toppled as its leg came off in a spray of shimmering white.
The Protector struggled back to his feet. Now it was the demon’s turn to crawl. One arm was hanging useless at his side, but Ashok could fight with either, and he went about methodically hacking the demon to pieces.
The demon rolled over and raised one of its claws, almost as if it were begging for mercy. The line opened in its lump of a head, and alien sounds poured out, a series of incomprehensible hisses and gurgles. Ashok paused for a moment. He’d never known demons had language. There was no way to know what it was trying to say, but it didn’t matter, the Law was very clear on this matter.
“You are guilty of trespass.” Then Ashok swung and hacked a massive chunk of flesh from the top of its head.
There was a crack as more supports gave way. The floor shifted hard to the side. He could withstand unbelievable pain and recover from injuries which would instantly kill a normal man, but that didn’t mean he could breathe smoke or survive being in a collapsing stilt house as it was consumed by fire. It was time to take this fight elsewhere. Ashok put his boot on the dying demon and shoved it over the edge of the platform.