“No.”
“Certainly not a warrior.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to ask Master Bloodthorne anymore stupid questions?” she quipped.
Damien nearly smirked at the mockery in her voice, but held it back. The way she’d saidMaster Bloodthornetickling him, perhaps in a way it ought not have. “She is a shield,” he told the imp pointedly before the two could truly begin sniping at one another again.
Kaz’s eyes narrowed, glancing down at the knoggelvi’s mane, confused. The woman knew the truth about her own predicament, that she was accidentally enthralled by the talisman, and the imp knew the intention of their journey south was to release a demon, but there was no good reason that either of the two needed to have the entire picture, so he went on in a way he assumed would satisfy.
“The talisman I will use to fulfill the prophecy is being shielded by her presence. She will mask the aura of our descent to Eirengaard and leave us unbothered by the Holy Order of Osurehm.”
“Ah!” Kaz perked up, something like a smile on his horrible, little mouth. “You are a genius, Master Bloodthorne.”
Damien’s insides twisted in a way that was unfortunately becoming more familiar.
“But what will we do with her when we get to Eirengaard?”
The crescent markers were looming right before them now, their pointed tops many stories overhead, taller than Damien remembered. His last journey out of Aszath Koth had taken him north of the city to the frozen dunes, and before that, he had gone west and across the Maroon Sea. It had been at least a year, he supposed, since he traveled this way, and much longer since he had gone due south. South lay Eiren proper, predominantly human rather than beast, where dominions and the gods they served were worshiped rather than the gods locked in the Abyss and their demon disciples, where darkness was shunned and light reigned supreme. As the road pitched down ahead, he could already see a patch of sunshine shimmering across it.
“He’s going to kill me.”
For a moment, Damien wasn’t sure she had said the words or if they were only in his own head. He had not known her very long, but her voice was unlike what he had become used to, flatter and resigned. But Kaz’s reaction told him the woman had spoken aloud.
“Truly, Master?” The imp clacked his claws against one another, grinning from batwing ear to batwing ear. “You’ll be slitting this one’s throat when we reach the realm’s capital?”
Damien’s brows lifted, and he sat straighter. “Yes.”
“Excellent!” Kaz spun around triumphant, and Damien was glad to no longer be under the imp’s eye.
Once they passed through the gate, Damien glanced over his shoulder. The girl, Amma, she had said was her name, was staring down at her hands as she pulled them gently through the mane of the knoggelvi. Carefully, she was undoing a knot, her brow knitted with focus, corners of her mouth turned down. Her fingers worked with delicate precision, and it was as if he could feel them then on his own hand all over again.
Damien snapped back around. On the gate’s other side, the path continued southward, but there was a divergence off of it to the east as well. Another breeze swept over them, this one a bit warmer. “This way.”
As he tugged on the knoggelvi’s reins and they headed for the easterly path, Kaz looked back at him. “Forgive me, Master, but unless the cities have gotten up and moved since my death, I believe Eirengaard is directly south of Aszath Koth, is it not?”
“It is,” he sighed, annoyed at the imp’s memory. “We must make a small detour first.” It helped that going east would also allow Damien to give the half-abandoned city of Briarwyke the widest berth. With its desecrated temple and tainted memories, it could be avoided on the southern road as well, but it was perhaps too dangerous to chance getting even that close.
“But, Master, the prophecy! The demon lord awaits, and—”
“I said,” warned Damien, eyeing the creature with contempt, “we must make a small detour. Surely your master should not be questioned.”
Kaz shrunk back on himself, bowing and settling down.
Damien glanced back once again. She was looking up now, big eyes filled with a hundred questions when they found his. Rather than let her ask any of them, he whipped back around and led them down the easterly road, diverting off the most direct route to the capital of Eiren and away from his destiny.
CHAPTER 7
THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTIES OF BLOOD AND CURSES
As much as Amma had disliked Aszath Koth, the swamp may have actually been worse. It at least smelled quite a bit worse. There was a lurching suck of a sound as the grotesque creature she rode pulled its hoof out of a puddle of muck and stepped back up onto the raised path of soft earth that wound deeper into the bog. Even the weird, evil horse-thing didn’t seem to like it, not that its reaction to her sitting astride it suggested it liked much at all.
They had traveled steeply downward for a few hours once they had passed out of the mountains, sunshine glowing down on Amma for the first time in days and managing to raise her spirits just that much. But then they kept going, and the road they traveled, notably not the one she’d taken to get to Aszath Koth, narrowed and grew soggy, and the sky clouded over once again. This may be Eiren, but it was no place she had ever been.
Amma had attempted to ask a few more questions, but Damien, or rather, Master Bloodthorne as that horrible, little monster insisted he be called, offered only one-word answers in a needlessly harsh tone. The quiet had given her time to consider things, her mind less clouded than the night before. Running seemed possible for a short while after they had left the city, but without the scroll that, as far as she knew, was still tucked into the blood mage’s pocket, the entire ordeal she had gone through would be for naught.
And this thing that was inside her, the talisman, what would it do? If she was far enough from the mage, perhaps he couldn’t control her, but she was unwilling to count on that so soon. Instead, she would need to bide her time, test the range of that stupid talisman, and find a way to get her hands on the scroll. He would keep her alive until at least Eirengaard, and the capital was still perhaps a week or two’s journey south if the main road was taken, though she had no idea where this detour would lead.
As time waned on the road, so did the effect of Damien’s grouchiness and the cloud that had hung over Amma at the mention of the impending, murderous deed he was meant to carry out. When she had finally untangled the knots from her knoggelvi’s mane in a section large enough to begin braiding, she finally asked, “Where are we?”
