Issue #4 • Nov. 20, 2008

“The Crystal Stair, Pt. II,” by Charles Coleman Finlay & Rae Carson Finlay

“The Last Devil,” by Sarah L. Edwards

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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THE CRYSTAL STAIR, PT. II

by Charles Coleman Finlay & Rae Carson Finlay

(Concluded from Pt. I, in Issue #3)

* * *

        The concubines’ tower was a long, curving wall of window- pierced rock rising from a cliff spur that split the sea from a valley choked with broken stone. The concubines occupied the uppermost floors, the children the broad floors below that connected along a causeway to the public palace and the meadows. On the lowest level, among the foundations facing the ravine and the trash pits where the wind seldom stirred, lived the oldest vaimen, lost in rot and drowned hopes as they still clung to life. No portion of the palace was more heavily guarded than the tower. Eunuch sentries watched each stairwell and intersection. Their earrings tinkled every time they stirred, a sound that ran through the halls at night like the feet of mice.

        Khatire held all this in her head, but she couldn’t think about it without her stomach knotting too tight to move. Make it through the Bitter Chamber, that is the next step.

        And maybe the hardest. She and Nefaria crept along the walls, draped in the illusion of shadowed stone. Their clothing betrayed them with every step, but the crackling torches and lapping breakers outside camouflaged the murmuring fabric. They stole past one guard standing at the Hall of Blue Swallows, then passed another pacing restlessly at the top of the Bath Stairs, carefully timing their rush past him as he paused to turn. Sweat broke out on Khatire’s forehead as she maintained patient, painful concentration during each step down the stairs. They had descended several levels, passing open archways, when someone came up from the baths, rounding a corner in the stairs and startling them so suddenly Khatire dropped her illusion. They jumped back a step as the other figure did the same.

        “Who goes there?” the dark shape said, louder than a whisper but not loud enough to reach the guard up the stairs.

        Nefaria’s fist knotted in the back of Khatire’s dress. Khatire reached for her dagger, but Nefaria pulled her dress too tight to reach it.

        “Tuamutef,” Khatire said.

        The eunuch stepped forward from the shadows. The bells that dangled from his ears made no noise. He had removed the tiny clappers. Seeing her reaction, he held open his palm to show ear bells connected to a ring so he could mimic the proper sound of his passing.

        “When you didn’t call for me, I grew worried for you,” he said. His eyes, which had been shifting nervously up and down the stairs, settled on Khatire and Nefaria, with all their layers of clothes. Hope sprung in Khatire’s heart. It would be so much easier to reach the children’s level if Tuamutef distracted the guards.

        He shook his head once.

        “Help me,” Khatire whispered.

        His soft features shifted from frightened anger to a sad smile. He shook his head again, this time placing his hand on her wrist. The ear bells hidden in his palm cut cold into her skin. “Only if you turn and go back to your room this minute.”

        “I can’t,” she whispered.

        “Then I can’t either,” he said. “It is each to her own in the world beneath the stair.”

        He looked past her then, as if she were invisible to him, hidden by her Gift, and walked up the stairwell, tinkling the bells he carried.

        Khatire grabbed Nefaria’s hand and hurried on. Tuamutef would not seek out the guards, but he would tell everything if they came to him. Tears welled in her eyes. She held them back until they seemed to fill her throat enough to choke on.

        Down two more levels, they came to the thick main blockhouse of the tower. The stairwell opened on an anteroom guarded by a marble statue of Tabia, the first empress. Tabia had died in childbirth, swearing vengeance on any woman who married His Splendor after her, and so in all the centuries since he had only taken concubines. She was beautiful and terrible; the sculptor who captured the delicate structure of her bones was bold enough to reveal the cold, imperious curl of her lip. She loomed over the room as if she were still willing to crush anyone in her way—Khatire shuddered to look at her. Beyond her stood a wide archway framed in veined quartz blocks, alternating pink and yellow tones that curved toward the ceiling. The Chamber of His Splendor’s Seed. The room where Damijan inspected his brood of children, where they were selected for favored status or discarded, the intersection of the concubines quarters and the children’s level. His concubines called it the Bitter Chamber.

        Two sentries, young, wide-eyed, and alert, stood on either side of the arch. Nefaria, as exhausted as Khatire, loosed a small gasp of despair.

        Khatire squeezed Nefaria’s hand—it was hot and damp—and inhaled to still her own fear. Though Nefaria feared the sentries, Khatire was petrified of the prismed stone. She had passed this crystal archway with its shattered torchlight only once before, more through luck than skill.

        She focused on the flitting light—so fragmented!—and gradually, particle by particle, bent it to her will. If she could draw the sentries out of the arch and send them down the hallway, even a half dozen steps, she and Nefaria could slip through unnoticed. She reached behind them, shaped the light to form a human shadow, then bounced it off the sandstone.

        One sentry’s head snapped toward the movement, his eunuch’s earring chiming. Torchlight reflected off his waxy scalp and oiled topknot. “Did you see something?”

        The other sentry, equally alert after his companion’s reaction, shook his head.

        She concentrated harder, giving the shadow more form and sending it down the opposite corridor again.

        “I saw it that time,” the second guard said, taking a few steps in that direction. The first one came up and stood by his side.

        It wasn’t the half dozen steps Khatire needed, but she might not get another chance. She gave Nefaria’s hand a gentle squeeze. Tuamutef had abandoned her, but Nefaria was with her still. The farther she went, the more that mattered to her. Steadying herself with a quiet breath, she embraced the crazed light bouncing off the quartz, controlling and reflecting it to create an illusion of nothingness. With soft, measured steps they moved toward the crystal archway. Nefaria’s hand burned in hers, and Khatire dripped sweat beneath layers of clothing.

        The sweat on her forehead collected into a single rivulet. She felt it reach her eyebrow and trickle, cooler and wet, down the bridge of her nose. Her body’s liquid, refracting the light she oppressed, was its own tiny, unexpected prism.

        Khatire blinked.

        The first guard turned, peering through the spot where they stood in disbelief. “What is that?”

        The other drew both daggers from his thighs. His kohl-rimmed eyes swept the torchlit corridor, then the crystal entryway, even the dark fog of the room beyond.

        Khatire pulled Nefaria forward, faster now that she was losing control.

        “I’m not sure. A shimmer—there it goes!”

        Khatire crushed Nefaria’s hand in her fist, and the other woman stifled a small cry.

        But the sound was drowned out by the laughter of the second guard. “It’s only the empress’s ghost. I told you Tabia walks these halls to see that no one marries His Splendor.”      

        The women were through.

        Khatire yanked them to the right, out of sight along the dark-enveloped wall. She fell to the stone floor, bruising her knees. Her mind fluttered between Gift and realsight, riotous color competing with comforting darkness while her stomach churned. Nefaria squatted beside her, reached for the criss-crossed ties at the neck of Khatire’s woolen dress. She yanked them apart, spread the collar wide, and fanned cool air against her breasts.

        “We must keep moving,” Nefaria whispered. “Or it will be our ghosts who haunt these halls.”

        Khatire squeezed her chambermate’s hand in thanks, then rose. Beyond the Bitter Chamber, the palace was guarded sparsely all the way to the outer walls. The emperor had learned centuries ago that his children were more malleable when they saw their mothers regularly, and Khatire had visited the nursery every day for three years as was her privilege. She traversed the familiar stone corridors with confidence, taking advantage of every shadow, every odd angle, and they reached the lower children’s level without illusion. Khatire needed the rest. After the pass through the last arch, she was not sure how much, or how soon, she could rely on her Gift again.

        The older children caused more mischief, especially at night, and were more heavily guarded to protect others as well as the emperor’s interest. But the nursing children were tended only by women too plain or powerless to be considered as concubines. So Khatire wasn’t worried about entering the nursery. The hall finally ended in double doors, burnt mahogany and twice her height, carved with sharp, brutal lines making a vast spiderweb of green and black. She placed her hand on the door.

        Nefaria clutched her wrist. “I can’t.”

        Khatire spun on her angrily. “It’s too late to have second thoughts now,” she hissed.

        “I have no second thoughts,” Nefaria whispered. She could not look at Khatire—no, she could not look at the door. She was one of the mothers who had never visited her own children in the nursery, not even once. “I... can’t. Not there.”

        Khatire thrust Nefaria into a shadowed corner. “Wait here.”

        She turned to go, but Nefaria’s hand darted out to clutch her wrist again. “What if you’re caught?” she whispered low and urgently. “How do I escape the palace?”

        “We’re going through the spinrag’s bone-nest,” Khatire said, turning away a second time.

        Nefaria hiccupped a laugh and grabbed Khatire once more. This time when Khatire spun on her, Nefaria’s eyes glowed like two pale moons. “Oh gods, you’re not joking....”

        Khatire jerked her arm free, then grasped the brass handles of the web-swathed doors and pulled them open. No, she wasn’t joking. The spinrag’s lair was the only way out where they wouldn’t be seen or caught. But first she had to rescue Anut-ka.

        Within the receiving room, a marble likeness of the emperor’s face glowered at her from atop its spiraled pedestal. Tuamutef said it had been carved centuries ago, before the emperor marched his armies across the continent, before the gods had exiled him to this tiny demesne pinned between the desert and the sea. Even carved in marble, it made her knees weak and gave her the thought, for just a second, that she might scurry back to His Splendor’s bed and beg another chance.

        He was like a drug, potent even when diluted. She wrenched her gaze from the statue, and passed through the beaded curtain that covered the nursery entrance. Though she parted the strands slowly, carefully, the beads clattered like a tiny avalanche of pebbles.

        Within the vast room, no one stirred at the noise. She tiptoed across the polished mahogany floor, around scattered sleeping pallets, where the tiny children slept like puppies. Three small boys cuddled together around a stuffed lion. Lhare’s small daughter, the only blonde, lay in the embrace of an older sister, sucking noisily on her thumb. High, open windows cooled the air, so that many of them huddled under blankets. Khatire crept from bed to bed, face to face, searching the sleep-parted lips and sheet-clenched fists for something familiar. There! Dark, arched brows and long black lashes—the eyes that Anut-ka inherited from his father.

        Khatire reached out to grab the child, who twitched with dreaming, and froze. It was a girl, almost four. Khatire’s hand went to her throat. They were all brothers and sisters, all bearing mark of their father’s features. A lump, hard and stinging, grew in Khatire’s chest. There were so many!

        She could only save one.

        Stepping quietly around the room a second time, she found him at last, cozied into a corner where sandstone wall met mahogany paneling, arms wrapped around a sheepskin. She brushed his plump cheek with her fingertip.      

        “Mama?” he murmured, reaching for her.

        “Shhh.” He always knew her, even in the dark. He hugged her neck, snugging his head against her shoulder until he found the right spot to go back to sleep. She could carry him out like this. It might work.

        Until they reached the spinrag.

        She rocked her hips back and forth to sooth him, while reaching for the vial of poison in her bag. A taste, no more, would keep him sleeping. The cork popped free under her thumb. She hesitated, then dabbed it on her finger, which instantly went numb. Hand shaking, she wiped her fingers on his lip.

        He scrunched his face, rolled his head away from her.

        “Shh, one little lick, Mama’s medicine,” she murmured. Unsure that he’d swallowed any, she reached into her pocket and tipped the bottle one-handed onto her finger again. She time she put her finger in his mouth and smeared it on his tongue.

        He began to choke, near to crying, but she rocked him and stroked his hair to settle him. One of the children was sitting up in her sheets, watching them. Khatire kept her back to the girl and walked toward the beaded curtain, hurrying away before the child called out for their nurse sleeping in the next room.

        She found Nefaria, backed into the corner where she left her. She jumped when she saw Khatire and her son, trying to retreat further into the shadows.

        “We must go,” Khatire whispered, walking past.

        “Khatire, I—” She choked off a sob.

        Khatire stopped, hugging Anut-ka protectively.

        “I’m so sorry.”

        “What did you do?”

        “I was afraid, I’ve been so afraid. Ankha found the dead vaim, I had to tell her something—”

        “Ankha was here?” Anut-Ka squirmed, and she realized her grip on him had tensed. She relaxed her hold, but kept her other hand tight on the dagger.

        “No, no. I mindspoke to her. It’s my Gift. I told her you came back to the room, that you ran to hide in the servants’ quarters. Oh, gods, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

        Khatire’s mind reeled. The servants’ wing lay at the opposite end of the palace, nearer the public walls and not the spinrag’s nest. Nefaria had lied to buy them time, so why was she apologizing?

        She was apologizing because she had been Ankha’s spy all along. Ankha let Nefaria have a seat near the throne because she hid from the emperor and rarely tried to bed him anymore. Ankha had assigned them as chambermates when the emperor began to favor Khatire, after her son was born, just so Nefaria could spy on her. Nefaria had guessed the power of Khatire’s Gift and warned Ankha.

        Nefaria held up the hem of her dress, her hands shaking as much as her voice. “I sewed things into my nightgown, I stole from Tuamutef. I want, I want to go home, Khatire, I want to escape. Please. I lied to Ankha—”

        Khatire let go of the dagger and shifted Anut-ka’s weight to her other hip. He had grown heavy with the drug, unable to hold onto her. She turned and hurried down the hall. “Come if you want.”

        “Gods, thank you—”

        “Don’t you dare speak to me.”

* * *

        If the guards were rushing to search the servants’ quarters they might have only minutes left to escape. Khatire tried to still her heart and mind to prepare for the spinrag. She had only approached it once before, when Ankha had thrown a slave girl to the creature and made all the concubines watch. The spinrag, already glutted and drowsy, had stung the girl then crawled off to sleep in its hole among the cliff-bottom rocks. Khatire, wrapped in shadows, the taste of vomit in her throat, had crept down and stolen poison from the swollen sting-lump on the dead girl’s body, to use on herself if she couldn’t bear to continue. Then, within days, she’d discovered she was pregnant, and her life had changed.

        Anut-ka sagged in Khatire’s arm, too heavy to carry much longer. She grabbed Nefaria by the elbow and propelled her through the kitchens, weaving through chopping blocks and stone ovens, past an enormous spit of thick poles over greasy sand. Beyond the spit lay a trap door.

        “We slide down the trash chute,” Khatire whispered, heaving on the metal ring. “You go first. Now, listen close!”

        Nefaria nodded, her eyes red, full of tears and uncertainty.

        “When you land, don’t move. The spinrag will see you come, but she strikes at movement. If you remain still, she’ll wait for you to move again.”

        “How will we get past her?”

        “Anut-Ka and I will slide down after, and I’ll create a flash to blind her. You must keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them. That will give me time to form the illusion we need to pass.”

        The trap door lay open. Cooler air hit their cheeks, briny and damp and tinged with rotting vegetables. Nefaria sat on the edge, swung her legs into the hole. “Khatire, are you sure—”

        “Remember, don’t move,” Khatire said, and shoved her through with a slippered foot. Nefaria’s gasp faded as the silk swaddling whisked her through the chute.

        Khatire shifted Anut-ka’s body again as she sat on the edge of the chute. A drool stain soaked the shoulder of her dress. His face was slack, but his eyelids fluttered when she tickled his cheek. Gods, she hoped she had guessed the dose right. She had tested it only on herself, only once.

        Cerastes, spare my son, please. She had no candle to offer as she prayed, so she formed a flickering light in the air in front of her, hoping the goddess would forgive her for also using it to prepare her defense against the spinrag.

        A shriek clawed at her heart from far below, high and terrified. The light failed. Then pain burst across her temples; Nefaria was mindscreaming.

        Khatire reeled, falling into the chute, trying to clutch Anut-ka to her chest. Her head bounced against the fungus-lined wall, her leg twisted under her, and Anut-ka slipped from her hands. She tried to pull him back in, grasping frantically for her Gift at the same time.

        She fell into open air and slammed into soggy, putrid garbage. Anut-ka tumbled from her hands and rolled down the compost heap. The spinrag crouched over Nefaria—a shining black carapace, barnacle-covered, with twitching pinchers. It lunged at Anut-ka’s rolling body.

        Khatire screamed light; her voice, her terror, and her Gift as one. She lurched forward, stealing every particle of light from every star in the sky and exploding it like a shipful of fireworks.

        She blinded herself, bleaching the landscape before her eyes to layers of white and stained white, all of it a blur. The spinrag, only a pale gray now, clattered away, scattering rocks and bones in its rush to escape. Khatire fumbled on her hands and knees until she reached Anut-ka and scooped him to her chest.

        “Shh,” she whispered comfort, rocking his silent body against her chest. “Shh.”

        The spinrag lived at the ocean’s edge, hunting the vermin that picked among the garbage. She only had to make her way past the compost dumps, up the slope to sheltered places among the rocks where she could rest until her sight returned. From there, she could find a way out of the valley, past the boundaries of the emperor’s prison-demesne.

        Khatire staggered to her feet, took a few steps with Anut-ka. Panting, she glanced over her shoulder, prepared for the spinrag’s next attack, but it was like looking at the world through a thick veil. A stone tumbled behind her—she clutched Anut-ka to her chest and nearly screamed.

        But no movement followed her. Her feet left the layers of garbage and rot, and she began to climb up the rocks. She slipped, banged a knee, held Anut-ka with one arm, tore her fingers on the stones, always climbing, until she reached a little ledge where they both spilled flat. She lifted him and carried him between a narrow crack of stone to a wider ledge.

        Where are you?

        Khatire kicked herself upright, back to stone.

        Khatire?

        Nefaria was mind-calling her. The spinrag’s sting must have only grazed her. Maybe the stinger got stuck in all the layers of cloth, spilling its poison in the silk instead of flesh.

        Help!

        If Nefaria panicked, if she mind-called Ankha for aid, she would bring all the guards down on them at once, before they could escape.

        “I’m coming,” she whispered. Nefaria, wait for me, I’m coming.

        She rolled Anut-ka over to the wall. His body was nothing but dead weight, and she could feel no breath stirring in him. She feared she had given him too much poison, but she couldn’t stay to fix that now. She wrenched the dagger from her pocket, and, closing her mind to realsight, tried to see only with her Gift. From her vantage point, she stared down across the wet mounds of garbage at the spinrag’s hiding place, a lightless hole, black against the glistening mounds of rotting vegetables and slime-covered stone around it.

        The huge pincers emerged out of the darkness first, tapping the ground as they came, covered with barnacles that made them swirls of rough light. The body came forward in a rush, its stilt-legs carrying it with astonishing speed. The tail curved over the body, bouncing like a brawler looking to land a punch. Near the barbed tip of the tail bobbed a venom sac the size of a human skull.

        Help me!

        “Don’t move.”

        Khatire scrambled down the rocky slope, sliding to the bottom. Cautiously, she inched toward Nefaria.

        Behind the spinrag’s pincers, on either side of its knobby head, were thousands of tiny eyes. Drawing on her Gift, Khatire formed a silhouette against the ragged wall. She forced the shadow to scamper, like a frightened rat, into one of the many branching corridors away from Nefaria. The spinrag clicked its sideways jaws opened and shut as it stepped toward the false shadow, feet clicking tat, tat, tat. It did not go far enough. Khatire flicked a group of light particles against the wall.

        The tail lashed so hard it nearly pulled the spinrag over when it failed to connect. Poison shot out of the tip, making a shiny wet splash against the rocks. Khatire threw the light again, and the spinrag jumped at it, slashing with its pincers.

        Wrapped in shadow, Khatire ran to Nefaria’s side. “I’m here,” she whispered.

        “I can’t feel half my body,” Nefaria pleaded. “My left side is numb. I didn’t see it coming. I think I can walk, if you help—”

        “Shh, lie still,” Khatire said, kneeling beside her friend. The knife was hidden at her side. One sudden slash, just like she had done to the vaim, and Nefaria would be no more danger to them. She deserved it, deserved it for betraying Khatire’s trust, for revealing her secret, for putting her life and her son’s life in danger. She was a bad person, a bad mother who ignored her own daughters.

        “Can you make it quick?” Nefaria whispered, hiding her eyes in the crook of her arm. “I don’t want the spinrag to take me.”

        Her pale neck lay exposed, bright as desert sand in moonlight to Khatire’s Gift. The blue veins pulsed under the skin. Khatire’s fist tightened on the dagger.

        The spinrag’s legs came toward them, tat-tat-tat. She threw another ghost of light and shadow across its path, but this time it did not jump. The creature had learned.

        Khatire dropped the dagger into her pocket. Her heart pounded, and her hands sweated. Nothing stood between them and the spinrag. Extending the shadow over Nefaria, she reached under her and helped her to her feet. Nefaria’s head hung to one side, her left eyelid drooping, lips slack. One leg dragged behind her, toes kicking for purchase, but the other seemed steady enough. Her weight did not feel that much heavier than Anut-ka.

        The spinrag lunged at the spot where Nefaria had lain, jabbing at the ground with its pincers. The head came up and swiveled from side to side. The tail flexed and tensed, coiled, ready to strike.

        Khatire crafted another illusion, cat-like and darting, on the other side of the refuse pile.

        The spinrag took a few steps in its direction. Tat, tat, tat. Then it stopped and cocked its head again.

        Khatire tried once more—a tiny lightburst along the far wall that made the stones sparkle. The spinrag didn’t move.

        They were nearly to the wall, to the steep climb and the narrow squeeze between the rocks. The spinrag swiveled its head from side to side again. Khatire dragged Nefaria up the slope, pulling her toward what she hoped was the safety of the ledge. Nefaria helped, clutching with her one good hand, balancing their climb with her good leg.

        Her dragging leg dislodged a small rain of stone.

        The spinrag crossed the distance in less than a blink, its huge tail smashing into the rocks where their feet had just been. Nefaria flinched, nearly slipping away, dragging both of them down the slope.

        Khatire panicked.

        She exploded light so hot, so dazzling, that pain seared her eyesockets. Nefaria whimpered, flinching again, shielding her face. Khatire gritted her teeth and yanked Nefaria’s body up the ragged rock as the spinrag’s tail slapped the stones again, splashing hot venom across her bare ankles. She blasted ball after ball of light, on one side and the other. The spinrag skittered upslope through the lightbursts, dislodging splatters of stone. Its pinchers smashed within inches of Khatire’s face. Its tail lashed all around them.

        And then they tumbled onto the ledge. Nefaria, sobbing, dragged herself with one arm to safety through the crevice in the stone. Khatire fell on her back, nearly spent, nearly blind.

        A vague shadow reared over the lip of the rocks.

        Khatire shaped a thousand darts of light and flung them at the spinrag’s head in a focused blaze as bright as the midday sun. The creature jerked back so suddenly it tilted off-balance, and tumbled head over tail down the slope, bringing a slide of rock crashing around it.

        Or so Khatire guessed from listening. Her world was only black.

        She sat there in the dark for a long time, with no idea where the ledge was, where the crevice was, or where she could find her son’s still-poisoned body. Even when she heard Nefaria stir, cloth whisking stone, she sat, trying again and again to make light blossom, even a spark. But she could see nothing. Tears wracked her body until she heard the wounded limp of Nefaria’s footsteps and felt a hand fall on her shoulder.

        “It’s almost dawn,” Nefaria whispered. “We have to go where they can’t see us from the windows.”

        “I’m blind,” Khatire answered.

        “I didn’t call Ankha,” she said. “She doesn’t know where we are.”

        “I don’t care.”

        “You must live,” she said urgently.

        Khatire laughed. “Must I?”

        “Anut-ka stirs.”

        What could she do for him, blind and helpless? Then she he heard his voice, muffled, confused, and her heart leapt toward it. She staggered to her feet, nearly falling over. “This way,” Nefaria said, lifting Khatire’s hand to her shoulder.

        Together they felt their way through the rocks. Anut-ka’s mumble resolved into mama. “Shh, I’m here,” Khatire whispered. Nefaria led her to his side, and he climbed into her arms even as she was kneeling, his weight tipping her over against the rocks. She clutched him tight, feeling his eyelashes brush her cheeks, his hair between her fingers, and she thought how she would never see his face. She began to weep again.

        “Mama, what’s wrong?” he murmured. His breath was sour, as if he had vomited.

        “Nothing’s wrong,” she said, almost laughed as the tears flowed even stronger. The poison was out of his system. She held his head in her hands and kissed his face until he pulled away. “It’s going to be fine.”

        “We found a staircase,” he said, tugging at her hand.

        “It’s old,” Nefaria said at her side, startling her. “Made by workmen maybe, centuries ago. It leads over the ridge and out of the valley to the desert.”

        Which was the way they must go to escape.

        Khatire rose, wiping the tears from her eyes, and listened. The waves pounded the rocks on the other side of the palace, and the air was filled with salt. Somewhere up above them was the Bridge of Broken Wings, and beyond that the emperor’s spire and his plan to find the Paha Vaim and escape his exile. If she had survived the intrigue, and Anut-ka had become the heir, she would have lived the rest of her days in a splendor known only to emperors and gods. Now, she would be a blind beggar woman with a useless Gift and a son to raise, both of them living in an exile of their own making.

        “Mama, look at it shine,” Anut-ka said, tugging at her hand again, insistently.

        “It’s the wet rock, lit up by the dawn,” whispered Nefaria.

        “Is that it, mama?” Anut-ka asked. “Is that the Crystal Stair?”

        “Yes, it is,” Khatire said. She squeezed Anut-ka’s chubby little fist and held tight to Nefaria. “Let’s climb it together.”

Copyright © 2008 Charles Coleman Finlay & Rae Carson Finlay

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Charles is the author of The Prodigal Troll and the collection Wild Things. His literary fantasy adventures featuring the spies Kuikin and Vertir have appeared in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rae’s stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Neo-Opsis, and elsewhere. Charles and Rae met on OWW, the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror, and married after just three cross-country dates. This is their first co-authored story.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE LAST DEVIL

by Sarah L. Edwards

        My master was a mighty man. He slew devils with a sure hand as none other did, finding them when no other could and striking them down with a great strength. They say if he had prevailed, our land would be free of devils. I doubt this very much. Though my master was a great man, even if he had by a miracle found and killed the last devil that walked among men, surely others would have arisen from the bowels of the earth.

        The master and I sought the strange ensnared she-devil, held in the grip of some enchantment of old and hidden deep among the twists and peaks they call the wolfhound crags. Yet we sought to slay not only a devil but a legend, made so by some glib-tongued prophet in ages past who said she in the mountains, when slain, would be the last of her kind.

        The first gentle slopes of foothills made a barren landscape. Stone-filled earth prevented any kind of farming and the grass grew too thin to graze, except perhaps for sheep, though the legends of the wolfhounds kept most shepherds away. I had no true horror of the hounds, for we had met before and I judged them mortal creatures. Still, I had not much more wish to die by a mortal creature than a cursed one. I assured myself that the master would have caught scent of any that dared draw near, but still I kept a sharp eye.

        So it was that I first saw, a half hour or more behind us, a black speck just coming up a rise as we fell behind another. When we climbed again I looked behind and saw nothing, but on the next ascent I again caught sight of the figure, no nearer and soon dropped from view, but still following our trail.

        The master strode in the way he would when his thoughts were turned inward, and I concluded not to disturb him. Perhaps if left alone, the follower might find his fate in the teeth of a wolfhound without any interference of ours.

        Finally, as dusk grew close as a wet fog, the master turned, his eyes bright and distant a moment before seeing my face. “Kem, we’d best bed soon.”

        “Yes, Master,” I said. Dropping my voice, I said, “We’re followed.”

        “Yes.” He looked up beyond me, and though the dark figure could only have been one shadow among many, even were he out of the valleys, still the master nodded. “Light a fire and warm the meat. We’ll have a visitor tonight.”

        “But Master, the beasts?”

        He shook his head. “They’ve not touched him, so they’ll not touch us.”

        “Yes, Master.”

        I built a fire of the few wood scraps we’d packed with us and propped the roast mutton over it. A seeping damp crawled over us and added to the chill of late-harvest air.

        The master sat some short distance from the fire and fingered his saber, the bright-polished knife that had freed the world of a great count of devils. As he turned it over, the curving blade gleamed in the firelight, flashing like another flame. The fancywork glittered black against the shine. What the fancywork meant, whether it was words in some foreign tongue or sorcerous symbols or even a family crest, the master had never said.

        Finally, he looked up and spoke into the darkness. “Join us at the fire. No need to skulk with the shadows.”

        And then some shadow to my right stepped away from its brethren, into the light. It was a hunched, sour-looking man I remembered from the last settlement we’d left. He’d whispered fiercely against the devil-slayer, Saman of the Dales—my master. A fool’s hero, he’d called him, just a man with a sword who knew more of devils than any right man should. But he’d whispered only, for if my master were a fool’s hero than the land held a great quantity of fools.

        “Have a meal with us,” said the master.

        Without any rustle of his black cloak, the man sat near me before the fire. “I am called Candrin.”

        “And I Saman, which you doubtless know.”

        “Of course,” the man said, and I tensed.

        The master nodded to me. “Now the meat, Kem.”

        When we each held some of the warmed mutton, the master turned to Candrin. “You follow us—a weary task, I’d guess.” Underneath his voice’s warmth there was a sharpness like a saber blade.

        “A weary task indeed,” Candrin said. “You wonder, why in the name of plowed earth have I tramped after you all this day? Through lands ravaged by wolfhounds, what’s more. It’s a fair thing I’ve still all my limbs.”

        “It’s no wondrous thing,” said my master, all the humor gone. “You stink of disease, like a rabid cur.”

        Candrin peered closer. “Indeed.”

        I sniffed the air, but with a nose full of woodsmoke I could smell nothing else.

        “They say you seek the she-devil,” said Candrin.

        “Do they?” said the master.

        “Aye, the serpent-woman trapped in crystal, high in the mountains where no man treads.”

        “They say many a strange thing, as you surely know,” said the master.

        “Do you know how to find her?”

        “I’ve never failed to find those I seek. So the ale-songs say.”

        The man leaned nearer. “And do you know the way to free her from her prison and drive your dagger through her heart? It’s cunning knowledge—not just any know it.”

        “I know well enough.”

        “The she-devil is imprisoned in such enchantments that you will fall prey yourself before you’re near enough to catch sight of her! No unstudied man—not even you, champion—could unknot that tangle. None but a devil could, or a mage. Which do you claim?” His eyes glittered in the firelight.

        “The devils I’ve slain are claim enough. And you, stranger, what is your claim? You threaten and cajole all at once. Would you hinder me? Do you favor the devils?”

        Candrin hunched nearer. His eyes sparked like cinders. “The devils must die, every last to the smallest hatchling still feigning to be a human babe. They curse the earth and set disease on the wind.” He spit at the ground. “It is by their sorcery that I am before you, a man set rootless by misfortune.

        “But I’ve no faith you can end this devil, hero. Unless I journey with you, you and your manservant will die some tormented death in the mountains, and you’ll be mourned as one more champion too foolhardy for anyone’s good.”

        The master sat back, the tension I’d seen before eased to watchfulness. “And what would you care to do about this, murmurer, meddler?”

        Candrin shrugged. “I am a magician, in a small way.”

        “I’ve little use for small magic.”

        “You’ve use for mine.” He laughed softly. “I’m a day or so older than I might look, hero, and that’s old enough. Since devilish sorcery withered the crops of my village and the people drove me away in distrust, I’ve rooted among heroes and witches, magicians and medicine-women and lone shepherds to find the secrets of the devils. I know more of the she-devil you court than you could know if you circled her with your nose to the air for the next fifty years—if you lived that long.”

        “You offer some hidden knowledge in return for journeying with us? Why not tell me now and save yourself the danger?”

        Candrin shook his head. “You’ll never find your way. You need me to cast the spells. She’s encased in crystal, did you hear that, hero?”

        “So the legends say.”

        “You’ll need magic to break her loose before you can even think of stabbing her with that shiny knife of yours.”

        My master sat back until shadows masked his eyes, the stray of his glance hidden. Candrin returned to the remains of his mutton, gnawing at it with ivories that, though somewhat yellowed, appeared too strong for the age he claimed.

        The master leaned forward again and looked at me. “Kem, how do you judge his offer? Is there malice behind it, or is it only the man’s slinking ways I mistrust?”

        Candrin smiled faintly, but he did not speak.

        I glared towards him and said, “I cannot see his motive, Master.”

        “No more can I. What say you to that, magician?”

        Candrin shrugged, a long, slow sweep of the shoulders so studied as to belie the calm he pretended. “I have told you, I wish the devils dead. Perhaps she is the last, eh, as it is said? I’ve peered into deep mysteries that I might lend aid to such a quest as this, hero.” He looked the master in the eye. “I’m old enough a man for superstitions. I believe the tales. On this quest, the last will die.”

        But hadn’t the master heard him in the settlement? He called him murmurer; didn’t he know what he’d said?

        The master nodded. “Candrin, if you care to travel with us, you may. I warn you, any harm you intend to us will haunt you instead.”

        Another shrug. “I wish only the devils to die.”

        These words ought to have comforted, but something in Candrin’s voice left me so uneasy I kept watch that night while they slept each on his own side of the fire.

* * *

        Near dawn, cloud and fog joined in a drizzling rain, not hard but long, so that any fire we might have wished would have drowned in wet fuel before it ever drew breath. We wrapped our cloaks around us, burdens at our backs, and turned again to the mountains.

        We walked until the hills we strode began nudging the foothills, which grew always steeper and stonier, with little plant growth save the rare scrub bush. We broke for a rest while the master and Candrin growled about paths and maps, just low enough that I couldn’t tell what the argument was, or even whose way we finally chose.

        Candrin gradually slowed, dropping from his place just behind the master until I drew even with him.

        “Tell me, Kem, why do you follow this man?”

        I grunted. “A devil, sir, slew my father some years past.” It had saved me the trouble, though I doubt now I would ever have killed him myself. More likely I would fled some desolate night than repay the man the bruises and deep-cut sores he’d often given me.

        Candrin’s glance flicked to me before again staring ahead. “Aye?”

        “My master slew the devil.”

        I had watched from among the gathered crowd. Yellow eyes, the devil had, and a hide of scales glistening black. Even when the foul thing had fully turned, its hands still grasped at the air while the twisted mouth shrieked fearful things. It would have seemed only a beast, powerful and deadly, were it not for those hands and eyes, so like a man’s but not, a living sacrilege. They gave the true dread of the thing.

        “And so you offered yourself to him in gratitude?” Candrin asked.

        Still stumbling and sore from my father’s last beating, I had stolen into the champion’s room at the inn the night of the slaying. I had nearly made away with the fabulous saber he had wielded when he, walking silently, drew up behind me. In one movement he wrested the blade from me and struck off the small finger of my lesser hand. Did I prefer the whole hand to follow for thievery, he asked in a voice of quiet thunder, or would I sell myself to him for the price of a finger?

        I nodded. “Aye.”

        Candrin hummed. “A noble tale.” There was likely a sting in his voice, but I did not notice. I was rubbing the seam of the finger where the master had joined it again with my hand. Were it not for the faint scar, none could tell I had ever lost it.

* * *

        In his lore Candrin knew trails that the master could not smell out for the rain, which plunged steadily to earth and to us standing in its path, lingering upon our caps and down our necks and in our boots until even the memories of dryness and warmth were faint. The earth was drenched, the stones we climbed slick, though there appeared continually less earth and more stone.

        When I woke the fourth morning plagued with aches I guessed them to be from the climbing. We scrambled down into a narrow valley and mounted the heights on the far side. The way was hard, and I grew hot, though a breeze blew cool. My clothes grew sodden beneath my cloak. I was glad to sink onto a stone when we paused, for the mountains were blurring and swaying before my eyes.

        “Your man has fallen to devils’ ills, champion,” Candrin said, from a great distance. “It haunts these regions, killing those who draw too near to devils’ haunts.”

        “Have you a cure?”

        “No, Master,” I cried, my voice thick in my throat. “Heal me yourself.” Always he had before, when I was wounded by an animal or fell foul of unclean air.

        There was some murmuring, then, though I could no longer hear the words. The murmurs brought darkness.

        When I awoke, the gray-veiled sun had nearly dropped below the distant peaks. My thinking seemed slow and my head ached dully, but I breathed well. “Master?”

        “Kem.” Then I saw him, seated not far away. “Candrin has healed you. He is not such a charlatan as he appears.”

        The mage, also nearby, hunched his shoulders a little more and said nothing to this.

        “But, Master—”

        “You will be well by tomorrow, Candrin tells me, and you’ll not fall ill again. We bed here tonight.” He stood and walked away, towards the long view of valley and stone. Candrin looked as though to speak to me, but I turned on the cloak where I lay to face away.

        My mouth stung bitter with some herb or potion drunk while I was ill. Before my closed eyes I saw the village healer again, the first devil the master slew after I joined him. The healer had smelled of the same bitterness, shedding it in sweat and fear as the master closed upon him against the sloping wall of a stable dug from the earth. The healer flung his gnarled hands before him, and his fingers were stained with the juices of pain-easing roots.

        When the master drew his saber, the healing man shrunk into the wall, trembling, until he dropped to earth with a screeching cry that gurgled to nothing as he turned. His body lengthened, his worn leather footings bursting as his legs, now fused, spiraled behind, scaled and glistening black.

        The master circled, watching the devil’s face to ready for the strike.

        When it came, the master leapt aside and slashed deep across the chest. The devil howled and struck again, frenzied, and the master thrust his saber deep into the belly. As the devil writhed, the master struck off the head with a last swing of his blade.

        I edged towards the prone form, for even dead the devil was fearsome. “Why should a devil be a healer, when they wish us harm?”

        “Devils are foul things, and if they do not do us harm, it is not for virtue. It is only the stifling of their nature, for a time.” His voice fell lower as he spoke, and when I looked to his eyes I saw some depth of grief there that I did not understand. “They call great evil upon mankind, with a power they’ve neither wish nor will to control.”

        We had gone then, collecting supplies from the village as payment and journeying towards the town where rumor called us next.

        The memory seemed strange to me now, and it rolled in my mind without rest. I lay long on my cloak before sleep came again.

* * *

        It was only when the skies finally emptied and the mountain trails wound beyond Candrin’s ken that the master led once more. We were deep in the mountains then, crags and cliffs at every turn. Our pace was the same, yet there was a tenseness in our step. Candrin and the master agreed it would be only a day or two more.

        I met Candrin with distrust when he slid behind to me again, our second day after the rain had stalled.

        “Your master knows these mountains well, does he not?”

        I scowled. “He is wise in the ways of the devils. He catches their scent. That is how we follow the trail of the she-devil now.”

        “He is indeed very wise in their ways,” said Candrin, scrambling over a low stone that he might stay at my ear. “How is it, I wonder?”

        I shrugged. “He is champion of the Dales, and now all the greater plains. He is a mighty warrior against the devils.”

        “Aye, indeed, but you do not catch my meaning. How does he know such things—the methods of seeking the devils, of slaying them?” He peered sidelong at me.

        “He is very wise.”

        “Has he studied, then, as I have studied?” growled Candrin. “I must weave a costly sorcery to seek out a lone devil, yet he finds tens of them without any sorcery at all. How? Has he spent long years in search of the knowledge of these creatures?”

        “He has not said.”

        “Can it be he knows their ways for some other reason?”

        I turned to him, tired of his questions. “And what reason would you have?”

        “He is one of them.”

        Before thinking, I had thrust him against a boulder. “How do you slander my master? How dare you?”

        ”Think, man. He has the nose for them, smells them like only one devil can smell another. He knows their ways. They reveal themselves to him. Think on it.”

        “I think we’ve no more need of you,” I said, a hand to his throat as I reached for my knife with the other.

        Before I’d drawn it clear of my belt, I was pulled roughly back and slammed into the rock beside him.

        “What is this?” asked the master.

        “Master, he slanders you,” I cried. “He dares say —”

        “I’ve no wish to hear what he dares say,” said the master. “Leave him. Mage, bear your tongue well in your mouth. We’ve yet long to travel today.” He turned his back to us and continued up. Candrin glanced at me, searching, and then followed the master.

        I took the rear, and in the hours until dusk imagined thrusts of my knife to the throat, the eyes, the belly of the cloaked man climbing ahead of me.

* * *

        As the last light in the gray sky dimmed on the edges of the horizon, we stopped and prepared for sleep. Candrin drifted behind the nearest boulder for some preparation of his own devising, and as he did, the master was suddenly at my side.

        He dropped close, his voice hushed and tinged with strain. “Kem, you are my manservant. We go tomorrow to hunt a she-devil, and perhaps you’ll sorrow to see a woman die, even one such as she. Look to me, Kem.” He clutched my cloak. “Swear me an oath that if any devil crosses your path, you’ll slay it. Swear it!”

        “Aye, Master, I swear it.”

        He let go my cloak and I tripped back.

        “But Master—”

        He turned away and knelt by a rock across the clearing, where he pulled his cloak about him and lay down. Candrin, returning just after, seemed not to see either of us, but lay at another edge of the clearing. I went and took my place near the master, between him and Candrin.

* * *

        I slept ill, fitfully, and some time before dawn I crept away to the edge of the long, stumbling slope of stone that fell away from our path. Far across that expanse of edges and shadows, at the peaks spearing the horizon, I watched for the sky to lighten. How I could have wished for a glimpse of the natural sun through the close-hanging fog that had dogged us all through the mountains. At that dark hour even a pale, weakened glow would have been most welcome. I could not judge the time to know how long I must wait, but there seemed no chance of sleep again.

        Candrin’s accusations angered me, but the master’s command, that I prepare to slay a devil, left me far more uneasy. In my years serving him carrying baggage, keeping watch, bearing witness to his fatal duels with the devils, I’d never had need to strike one. Always the master had slain them. I mean him no dishonor when I say that the slaying was no difficult thing, for when they have just turned devils are sluggish and slow to strike. The master’s greatness was in the finding and the knowing of them, not the slaying.

        All about this quest was strange. Never had the master allowed any to accompany us, surely no sly magicker like this man Candrin. And why would he not listen to my worry?

        He had not trusted me less since we first journeyed together, when he’d bound me hand and foot each night and kept my boots near him as he slept. It was wise he did. I cannot think now what I would have done had I freed myself, for I had little skill but the thieving my father had taught me. It was this that the devil, still a man, had murdered him for. But the master gave me no such chance for escape, taking me far across barren wilds and past lonely clusters of huts in search of the devils. On those long roads between the dwellings of man, the master showed me the throwing of the hunter’s knife, the earths the healing herbs love, how one may sleep in deepest cold and not die. Perhaps some of these things might be called magic by the unknowing, but they are not, for I know them and I am no mage.

        I might still have taken my own way, then, but there came a time when I was shown two roads, and I bound myself by my choice. We traveled near these same mountains, though further north, across the same wildlands ranged by wolfhounds. My master had a rumor of devilry in a village in that direction. We rested by turns, the waking one tending the fire while the other slept. I woke to a cry, and saw the master wrestling a hound, its teeth snapping at his throat.

        Acting without thought I spun to the fire, grabbed a burning limb, and clubbed the hound with it, swinging with the strength of all my fear and my courage woven as one.

        As the wolfhound howled, the master found the knife he’d been reaching for and plunged it into the hound’s head. With a weak moan, the hound fell to the ground, its teeth still bared.

        The master took the pain from my burned hand, though the rippled flesh never healed smooth. He gave me a knife, as well, and did not again bind my feet. There was no need.

        Thinking these things, I watched the eastern sky until it began to pale. The others arose. After a quick, silent meal from our packs, we set out again, the master leading with a long stride that I hurried to keep up with.

* * *

        The way grew treacherous, for we followed no path. The stones we climbed were still damp, and slick under our feet. As we were slipping between the walls of two peaks whose stony heads were not so far above ours, the master drew to a halt, his hand in the air to call silence.

        Staying us with a motion, he passed through the crevice and was gone.

        “In your years with such a champion,” Candrin rasped, “I am sure you know the one sure way of causing a devil to reveal its nature.”

        I drew away from Candrin’s rasp in my ear. He followed. “Has he never told you why they always turn as he attacks?”

        I glared at him. “I know. It is because they fear to die in human form.”

        He nodded his cloaked head at me. “Indeed. Remember that.” After a pause, he said, “I wonder why it is. It does them no good in the fight. Perhaps some final hunger for the truth. Eh? Knowing their lives short, they wish to spend one moment not skulking, not hiding. Doubtless they have some less noble reason. Some twisted mysticism, maybe fear for their souls.” He shook his head slowly. “Yet I cannot but give them honor for such honesty, be it selfish or foolish or noble.”

        “You’ve no honor to give any creature.”

        He twisted to look at me, and his eyes narrowed. “How do you think I found your master but by the spells that find devils?”

        “You lie.”

        “Fool.” He spat the word in my face. “Two devils will die this day, whether I’ve your hand or no.”

        Wearily I turned away to watch the passage. Behind me Candrin shuffled and murmured under his breath. I could have struck him then, turning to him on a pretense and crushing his skull, if only to still his fidgeting and his foul mouth. But the master would not want it, and besides, Candrin had not yet freed the she-devil we sought.

        The master came some time later, his face pale but his features set. “She’s there. Candrin, come break the enchantment, that I may slay her.” He turned back the way he had come, and we followed. The way was thin in places and the stone walls stretched above us, seeming to flatten us as we went.

        From the darkness of the passage, we broke out onto a plateau, studded with stones and grown thick with weed. Opposite the passageway, across this strange meadow, stood the devil, trapped in her prison of crystal. Had the sun broken through the clouds there, the great crystal would have shone like a hundred lamps, like water set somehow afire.

        “What must you do to free her?” asked the master.

        “I must look closer,” said Candrin, his eyes on the devil.

        With cautious stride we approached the she-devil, as though at any moment she might break from her block of shining stone and strike at us. But finally we stood before the pillar, and she remained coiled within, her arms thrown up before her face, her black hair forever floating about her. Had any clothing been thrown off when she turned, it must have long since rotted away.

        Candrin knelt and began taking things from his pack: thin-pulled leather scrawled with intricate symbols, a tiny dagger, a cloth filled with some pungent herb. Meanwhile the master circled the stone. He peered at the she-devil with a great intensity of some emotion I could not identify.

        I had never been so near a devil still living, enchanted or not. Her great black tail wound several coils thick beneath her. I shuddered but could not look away. That line where the immense serpent form melted to that of a woman thrilled me with a horrified fascination. There the scales faded to skin, pale against the ebony. There curved breasts small, neatly shaped—I flushed, for in serving the master I’d had little experience with women.

        She was terrified. Her eyes showed it, wide and white, around coins of yellow like brilliant gems with knives of black at their centers. Her mouth was open in a silent cry.

        “Candrin, have you prepared?” The master’s voice seemed far too loud in that still place.

        “It will not be so much longer,” said Candrin. The master drew back some distance away and sat to wait. As we watched, Candrin built a fire before the pillar, muttering strange words over it and finally throwing in the herb I had smelled. My eyes smarted and my nose stung at the odor. Beside me, the master sneezed harshly.

        “Candrin,” he called. “What purpose has that foul stuff?”

        “It subdues the devils,” Candrin replied. “They cannot abide the scent.”

        The master sneezed again but said no more.

        “Master,” I whispered, “Why was she caught in stone? What had she done?”

        “Her fate was a warning to the others,” he said softly.

        “She is very young.”

        “Hush,” he said, his stare fixed upon her. I looked, but of course she had not moved. I asked no more questions.

        Finally, Candrin called to us, “I’ll break it now.”

        The master hastily arose with his saber drawn. As we approached, Candrin took the small dagger, heated in the fire, and pressed its tip into the stone. With a sudden crash, like that of water at the base of a falls, a great mist rose around the stone, obscuring it. When it had drifted clear, the stone was gone, and the she-devil lay gasping on the earth.

        The master strode forward, choking on the smoke from Candrin’s fire.

        He stopped just a stride away from her to look upon her as she lay. As her breathing steadied, she finally seemed to see his boots before her face, and she peered up to him. She stilled.

        It was as though they themselves hardened to crystal. An air of silence hung about them like that at a grave after the mourners have gone.

        Abruptly the master turned on his heel and came to me. “Kem, it is your time.”

        “What?” I stared into his earnest face. The smoke had drawn tears from his reddened eyes.

        “I am weak. Pity strangles me. You must slay the devil, Kem.”

        “Master, I cannot,” I said, shocked. “It is yours to slay.”

        “You must.”

        “I am no champion, Master. I am only your servant.”

        His breath was ragged. “Then serve me now. You’ve sworn to me your will.”

        “But, Master—”

        He fell to the earth, choking.

        Candrin was at my side. “You see it, Kem? He is a devil, for only they suffer so under the scent I’ve brewed. Do you see it now? You’re not harmed by the smoke.”

        I sniffed at the scent again. It stung, but it did not choke me.

        “Now, go slay that she-serpent while I tend to this one.” Candrin shoved me towards the she-devil, still lying where she’d fallen. With shaking hands, I took the saber from the master and moved towards her, not even thinking what I did, for my mind whirled.

        It could not be. He was a champion. He had slain tens of devils just before my eyes, and many more before I served him. Surely it could not be.

        Some sound behind me caused me to turn. Candrin knelt at the master’s side with his dagger in his hand, raising it to strike.

        I did not think. With one motion, I lunged and swung the saber at Candrin.

        He howled a stricken animal cry of pain. I drew the saber from his shoulder and swung again, now at his side. Again, another bite in his shoulder. Again—

        Something tugged at me, and I whirled with the saber raised above my head, nearly striking at my master, whose hand clung to my shirt.

        “Leave him, Kem,” he whispered. A spreading crimson stain marked his chest. I glanced to Candrin and saw that his dagger was already blooded.

        “Master,” I cried. Dropping the saber, I reached for his cloak and shoved it to his chest.

        “No use,” he gasped. “Poisoned.”

        Beneath my touch, he writhed. I fell back. His face twisted and in long convulsions, his body swelled. He gave a low moan, and from within him burst a long black tail, shiny with scales. Shudders coursed through his body.

        The poison was swift. Even as I watched, his breathing shallowed. His face, already pale, grew waxen. He looked to me with yellowed eyes. “Slay the she-devil.” I rushed to him and again held the cloak to his chest, but in a moment his struggling breaths ceased.

        My eyes swelled with hot tears. “Master.” Kneeling there, not minding the seeping blood or the scales, I fell across my master’s body and wept.

* * *

        When I had spent my first flush of tears, I looked stupidly around me. A few strides away Candrin lay curled in the grass, his hand to his shoulder as though to staunch the blood. It had done him little good, for the cuts were deep. Now he slept as one who would not wake again.

        A gasp caught my ear, and I turned.

        The she-devil was pulling herself upright. When I caught her eye she paused, her mouth open as she stared back at me.

        Young, barely of marrying age. Wielder of a power no man could claim, a knowledge and a skill that worked so often for ill. Who could blame her if, in all those long centuries frozen in stone, she had nurtured a seed of spite?

        I knelt to pick up the saber and wipe its curved blade clean on my shirt. When it shone again, I stood and looked to the she-devil.

        Her scales were gone, and legs folded in place of the serpent’s tail. As she huddled with her arms about her, her slate-gray eyes followed my motions.

        Under that gaze, I stopped.

        She pulled her knees closer to her chest.

        I had known villages where men died and women fell ill under devilish curses. Once the master slew a she-devil living as a birthing woman, and I saw the children whom she delivered, their tongues thick and their minds as weak as an animal’s. And here, curled in a heap in front of me, was another like the birthing woman.

        I strode forward, raising the saber and tightening my grip on the hilt as my arm waited for the moment. As I neared, she dropped her gaze and closed her eyes. Her shoulders tightened, waiting for the blow to come. I stood to strike and as I readied, she took a last harsh breath.

        She coughed.

        Again, a deep, choking cough that clenched her frame.

        Candrin’s smoke, caught on my clothes.

        I dropped my hand. Tears washed across my vision, and I stumbled back.

        Through a blur I looked to the master, so still, and to Candrin’s body curled in the grass. My breathing slowed. Finally, I returned to the master and set to work. I listened for the she-devil’s movements in case she should now choose to strike, but she did not come any nearer.

        I took the master’s pack from him, but I returned him his saber. I had no wish to heft its weight again. His pack was light and held no provisions for the journey out. I laid the master straight, his tail coiled where his feet had been. Then I piled rocks around him, many and many until only a heap of mountain stone marked where he lay.

        Candrin’s tunic and cloak were bloodied, but his pants were only travel-soiled. I stripped him of them, folded them, and laid them near the heap of stone. By them I left my cloak and my heavier shirt. I stood quietly there for a moment, and then took my knife, the master’s gift to me, and laid it atop the clothing.

        I glanced once to the she-devil, still watching me with eyes like wells of shadow. I nodded to her. She was still for a moment, and then she dipped her head in return.

        Turning away, I took up my pack and crossed that eerie plain to the passage by which we had come. I did not look back to Candrin’s body, left for the ravens.

        My master was a mighty man, and more than a man. He slew devils with a sure hand as none other did, finding them when no other could and striking them down with a great strength. They say if he had prevailed, our land would be free of devils. I doubt this very much. When the last that turns is slain, still there remain the devilish creatures who do not turn, formed as men.

Copyright © 2008 Sarah L. Edwards

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Sarah L. Edwards writes science fiction and fantasy, reads a lot, knits (anybody need a scarf?), and wonders what to do with this math degree she just got. Her fiction has previously appeared in Writers of the Future XXIV, Aeon Speculative Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Her stories have appeared five times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including “The Tinyman and Caroline” in BCS #17 and the BCS anthology The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Year One.

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COVER ART

“Endless Skies,” by Rick Sardinha

Rick Sardinha is a professional illustrator/fine artist living and working on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island. His passion is to create in traditional oil media, however, he is just as comfortable in front of a computer and often uses multiple disciplines in the image creation process. More of his work can be seen at http://www.battleduck.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1046

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2008 Firkin Press

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