3
Talismans
"Of course we will take her in. Are you children or are you men? Leave your superstition where it belongs: in the dust beneath your feet. A solitary twin is still the bearer of a whole soul unique unto itself, even when its counterpart dies. Give her to me, if you are afraid. Perhaps this is the lot I have drawn. Yes…perhaps the very last one. But mark me, and mark me well, young hunters.
"Though it falls to me to teach this girl-child, we have all taken on a heavy debt, whether you wish to believe the truth or close your eyes to it. Isla Chandler's suicide was our salvation, and humanity will never, ever be able to repay her.
"Remember her."
- Li Xia of Xiansai, the eldest living demon hunter
Two women—one marching with a charm jingling in her hair, the other little more than a quiet shadow in the underbrush—made their way along the hidden path the pounding boots of the survivors of the cathedral massacre had made as they fled. The path of their hasty retreat was the straightest line to the heart of the disaster, and Leah and Iona shared an unspoken agreement that no time must be wasted. Every second that passed shortened Deckard Cain's lifespan, if indeed he still lived. In addition, Rumford—now looking more and more like a man who had jumped over his own grave without falling in and still could not believe it—informed them shakily that if they could slay the Wretched Mothers, monstrosities whose bile stirred the dead from their slumber, Tristram might be able to rest easily for a while. The relentless fury of the undead would stop.
The girl, Leah, had held firm when the dead broke through the carts, doors, boards, and sharpened stakes of the barricade, handling her shortbow with the confidence of a lifetime of training and an intimate knowledge of both the weapon's capabilities and her own. Or so Iona had thought, at the time. Something nagged at her now, as they jogged through the brush. There had been another kind of confidence radiating from Leah as she had loosed her arrows, the muscles of her smooth forearms tensing and releasing like the measured breathing of some strange creature lurking just beneath her skin. The girl was special. Somehow, she was special, as Iona, herself, was special.
"We're not so different, you know," the girl murmured, as though reading her thoughts. Iona kept her face carefully blank as Leah turned to look at her. "I have great power within me, too. Like you. But…not just like you. I can't control mine. It just sort of…explodes. But it's only happened a few times, and only when I was in grave danger."
"That sounds…disturbing," Iona replied carefully. "Leah, what do you know of your family? Your parents, your…siblings?"
"I don't have any siblings," Leah answered. "My mother was Adria, the owner of the hut we're making for. But she died when I was very young. No one lives there, now."
"And your father?"
Her face flushed with pride, which Iona could detect even in the sparse patches of moonlight. "I'm told he was a great warrior. He died fighting for Old Tristram, almost twenty years ago. Just before I was born. Sometimes I wonder if he knew about me. If he knew he was going to have a daughter."
"What do you think?"
"That he did. I think that he did, and that he sent my mother away to go live in Caldeum where we'd be safe. When she died, Uncle Deckard took me in, and we've been traveling the world ever since, chasing after moldering prophecies and folklore." A profound weariness touched her voice, teetering on the edge of bitterness but not quite daring to take that step. "He's obsessed with the 'End Times.' It's all just stories, but I think he really believes the world is about to end. Now. It's like he took us to Tristram just to wait for it."
"I have a mentor, as you do," Iona said quietly, pulling a branch out of Leah's way and guiding the girl around a hole that seemed to be begging spitefully for an ankle to break. "Her name is Li Xia—what her family name is, I do not know. We keep them to ourselves, for the most part. Like talismans. Do you understand?"
"I'm not sure," Leah admitted.
"If we are the only ones to remember the name our fathers gave us, and their fathers before them, if we are the only ones to remember those faces and names, then our resolve to live grows that much stronger, because we know that if we die, they all die with us, Leah. No one lives on to carry their torch forward. That burden is ours. And sometimes, a burden can be a blessing. A way of keeping yourself alive, and fighting, because no one else will pick up your burden for you. Li Xia told me that I should seek out the Fallen Star, because its arrival would herald a great doom, a doom that I must face, myself. It was, she said, the lot I had drawn. We do not have the luxury of choosing these lots—we can only choose what we do with them. So have faith in your uncle, Leah. He is not the only one who sees the Star as a portent. And his faith in you must be great, for him to involve you so heavily in his life's work."
Leah fixed her solemn eyes on Iona's, chewing pensively at the corner of her lip as she fingered the amulet that lay against her chest, over her heart. "Li Xia's faith in you is great, too, isn't it?" she said at last.
"It is." There was neither pride nor embarrassment in her voice. It was a simple fact, acknowledged.
Leah smiled. "I think you have another talisman. The names of your friends. They don't die with you, though. They live on. So you should talk about them, you know? Talk about them, and make more friends, wherever you go." She sighed. "One day, when all of this is over, I'm going to open an inn. Everyone needs a waystation. A safe place to sleep, away from the road."
"That sounds like the perfect place for an ambush," Iona remarked. "I would sleep in a field."
"No one's getting ambushed in my inn," Leah said stoutly, and again Iona felt the odd tugging sensation, recognizing it more as a sort of flexing, as of great power. She felt it touch her for the briefest instant, and her eyes flashed with hellfire, as they did when she fought. She found that she was very, very afraid, now. The air was icy in her throat. Her mouth went dry, and she stopped walking. Her forefingers twitched as they moved to the weapons at her sides.
Then it was over. The fire went out of her eyes, the oppressive feeling of awful dread just a half-imagined memory, now. But Iona was no fool, and neither had her teacher been a fool. She would not forget this feeling. She would not ignore it. All she could do was file it away in a corner of her mind, for now, and keep a wary eye on the girl.
I can't control mine, Leah had said.
I. can't.
Those were the words that mattered. Iona resolved to find out just how Deckard Cain's niece had come by such power, and who, if anyone, had suffered for it. Another thought, still more ominous, clouded her mind as she caught up to the girl. Perhaps…just perhaps…someone else could control it. What a horror that might make of this poor, sweet girl, if true.
If true.
"There it is!" Leah cried softly. "Adria's hut. The keys should be in here, somewhere."
The little ramshackle building appeared long-vacant. Leah reached out to push the door open, then jumped as it fell off its hinges with a rusty squeal and a wet, muffled groan. It was rotten. Iona put her hand on Leah's shoulder to steady her, but the girl was already stepping carefully over the wreckage of the door, pointing to a dark corner.
"There's a hidden passage, here, down under the floor," she whispered excitedly. "Come on!"
Leah opened the door and vanished into the depths beneath the hut. Iona paused, her nostrils flared with the stench of death again. Intuition—or perhaps only anxiety—prodded her to gaze out the hut's solitary window at the fields beyond. The Cathedral was near. And that meant its great cemetery was, as well.
She knelt, pulling a handful of caltrops from a pouch at her belt. She set the cruel traps carefully below the window, then, as an afterthought, along the entire wall. "Basement" and "trap" were almost synonymous in her personal lexicon. If anything tried to get through while they were down there, she would hear them. …She hoped. Always, it came down to hope. Action would follow, regardless, but it was better to have hope, to grease the axles.
Iona slid down into the hole, into blackness.
Her foot struck a shallow board, then another. There was a ladder here, completely intact. As she made her descent, she felt the glow of a torch somewhere behind her. Glancing down, she gauged the distance and jumped the rest of the way to the ground, landing almost noiselessly on the packed dirt. Leah watched her, holding the torch aloft, her face grave.
"Your mother had her secrets," Iona murmured, brushing the dirt from her hands. All along the walls were jars and vials of powders, barrels of things which might at one point have been alive, and dusty books dog-eared with use. Iona's eyes widened. At the center of the room, a cauldron sat in the fire from which Leah must have lit her torch.
Someone was here.
"People always said she was a witch," Leah mused, examining the books. "I never would have believed it, but this…this is incredible. Uncle Deckard would be wild to get his hands on some of these tomes."
Iona took her by the elbow and drew her, none too gently, back to the ladder. "And the fire? Who lit that, Leah?"
Leah swallowed hard, suddenly looking very frightened. "I...I don't know. I'll just get the key—"
"Stay. Here."
Leah nodded, slipping the torch into an iron loop on the wall. The charm in her hair bobbed crazily in the firelight as she trembled, and Iona sighed.
"Please," she forced herself to add. "I need you to guard the exit. Can you do that, Leah?"
"Right," Leah said bravely. "Okay."
"Thank you." Iona tried a smile. "I'm not accustomed to the luxury of backup."
"And I'm used to having to drag Uncle Deckard away from a library of old scrolls to keep us from getting killed by mobs of angry skeletons," Leah replied, returning the smile, but sadly. "It must feel that way to you, huh?"
"Not entirely, Leah," Iona murmured, scanning the room. "In fact, you remind me of…someone. Someone very special to me. So please, try to stay safe, and remember that we have your uncle to think of, in addition to ourselves."
"Yeah, we do….We—"
She stopped breathing.
Iona was already moving.
In the shadow beyond the firelight, several figures had begun to rise from the ground, and as they had, the death-smell had intensified. Iona somersaulted, landing on the lip of the cauldron, avoiding the steam as she pinwheeled once for balance. A braid of rope hung from the support beams above her, and she leaped for it, kicking out with all her might as she did. The massive cauldron crashed onto its side, scalding the dead creatures as they rose.
"Captain Daltyn!" Leah shouted breathlessly, as one of the dead men shrieked and struggled with its heavy, soaking, steaming clothing.
Carrots, potatoes, and two skinned rabbits—ingredients for a stew the infected men had doubtless hoped to eat before death took them in this dark, hidden space—grew faintly fragrant as the boiling water washed over them, but it was not an appetizing smell. Cooked manflesh was stronger in the air, now. Leah looked up at the beams with wide, pained eyes and saw the demon hunter fitting something to one of her crossbows. Her eyes weren't dark anymore. They were glowing like the fire in the middle of the room. The first time she had seen it, she had thought it was the fire, just a reflection. But it wasn't. Those hellish eyes locked with hers for an instant, and Leah backed quickly to her post at the base of the ladder.
Iona wound a special bola into its matching groove in her handbow, her eyes locked on the figures below. "You were right not to return to town when you knew you were infected. I will avenge you, Captain, and your brave men," she whispered, pulling the trigger. "Now, sleep."
The cord whipped around all of the struggling, growling creatures as they slipped and slid in the boiling soup. Then, half a heartbeat later, it exploded.
Leah cried out as the blow rocked the foundations of the hut, holding her hand over her eyes against the shower of dust falling from the shelves. She coughed, spitting dirt from her mouth, and blinked, peeking around the corner at the main room.
The cauldron was gone. The dead men were gone. Only the demon hunter remained, perched on a beam with a closed look on her beautiful face. But to the left…there was a desk, and on it… Leah got to her feet and almost fell again as she reached it, running her fingers over a leather-bound book with a shivery sort of hunger.
Overkill, Iona thought bitterly to herself. You wanted to be absolutely sure, because you were afraid. You were afraid for Leah because she reminds you, oh yes, she reminds you so, so, SO much of HER, and now the dead will surely be coming for you, now. Stealth is lost. Surprise is lost. All because of your weakness. Go and meet them, now. Go and meet them before they find this girl.
She dropped lightly to the ground, away from the mess she had made.
"I found the Cathedral key," Leah said shakily, holding it up. Her face was pale and streaked with dust, but her eyes were bright. "I also found my mother's journal. What I've read of it is disturbing. But I think it holds some clues about all of this."
Iona took the key stiffly. "Go back to town. Learn what you can. I will rescue your uncle."
Leah nodded and smiled. "Thank you."
Her smile, it seemed, was a perfect ghost of Isla's. And that made it a ghost of Iona's, as well. Has Leah ever noticed, Iona wondered as her hands closed over the ladder's bottom rung, that she and I have the same smile?
Li Xia's voice answered. Perhaps she would, if you smiled more.
"I will," she whispered to herself, climbing upward, toward the moon. "I will smile quite a bit tonight. But only my enemies will see it."