The Demon and the Shadow Man

I

There was little to be done for the souls of the fallen hill men. Unlike Father Kristopher's powerful spirit, all but the shaman's had fled into the other world immediately upon their mortal deaths. Only the shaman's soul lingered on as the dark clouds parted into the gray of another Still World noon. Anders dragged the bodies of the others off to a ditch about a field away and piled them atop one another. For the shaman, he said purifying prayers over the corpse, but he knew there was small chance they would be curative. Souls that had not heeded the light in life rarely did so in death. In truth, he was only trying to prevent the shaman's soul from returning as a demon. He had no wish to fight the man twice. The prayers might prevent this from happening. Then again, they might not.

By mid-noon, the hazy, white shimmer within the shaman's body was fading. By the time the first dark cloud bloomed overhead, it was gone. Anders dragged the corpse off to the ditch and laid it out atop the others. Then he returned to crouch beside the old priest.

Once again, he looked at the body's still form. There seemed to be a question on its lips, some crucial words struggling to break through the black thread, but Father Kristopher's closed mouth still held its silence. Its soul, however, lingered on. If anything, its glow seemed to be growing stronger in the fading light. This was a testament to its great strength, though it didn't make Anders's task any easier. He had to defend this soul in the wilds for as long as it took to reach the other world. Only then could he inherit its position as the village priest. He had been sent down from the north specifically to do this, and he had been training to do it since he was thirteen summers old. But the greater the soul, the longer the journey, and the old priest's soul looked to be truly great. Anders would not be earning his position easily.

So it has always been. So it will always be, Anders thought. Forever and ever. Amen.

He sat still in his crouch and did his best to remain mindful of the other world. It wasn't easy. The pain in his arm and the ache radiating out from between his shoulders was distracting. Still, he moved only to slice bits of meat with his dagger—he was keeping the dagger in his cloak now—to sip from his water skin, and, once, to relieve himself in the grass a few paces off from the body. It would have been best to purify the dagger. It had drawn unsanctified blood, but he did not have the right instruments. For now, he had satisfied himself with washing it in a clear rivulet running up hill from where he had piled the corpses. Hopefully, any diseased remainder of the hill man's flesh had been carried away.

At first, stillness had not come easily to him at the monastery. He had needed to work harder than most thirteen-summer boys to learn how to crouch, rump atop heels, forearms on knees, chin tilted slightly downward with the eyes half-lidded, for hours on end. It was easy enough to say clear your mind, easy enough to command yourself to do it, but of course, that didn't finish the task. If you had to command your mind to be clear, then you had already failed to clear it, and it wasn't until the death of his Father Superior that he had fully grasped what stillness meant. The sight of those vacant eye sockets had shown him that the key lay not in clearing one's mind but rather in allowing one's mind to become full. One could not hold all the world out. Instead, one had to let all the world in, including all of its turbulent evil, and observe it objectively. Only then could the stillness of true clarity be achieved.

He was doing all he could to dwell in that clarity now. Being a sanctified priest in his twentieth summer, he could do this despite the pain in his limbs and the hunger in his belly. Whenever he felt his concentration slipping, he refocused by looking upon the priestly weapons. They were once again clean and laid out in a row beside the body on white linen. If this failed, he focused on the pulsing shimmer of the old priest's soul.

When the black clouds began to thicken again, he recited his prayers. Normally, he would have done this silently, but it was comforting to hear those old words of power sound against the darkness and rising wind. O, Earth Mother, set my hand to the plow with the good direction of a sane man. O, Sea Father, put my hand to the oar with the strength of a seeing man … and so on. All of the prayers called for light and for vision, both of which seemed helpful in his present circumstance. Also helpful in a world that had stopped turning a thousand seasons ago.

He did not know what the next darkening would bring, but he doubted it would be more hill men. He had slain one of their shamans, and this would fill them with fear. But there were other creatures in the uplands that hungered for souls, and not all of them were mortal. Many vengeful spirits also haunted these high places. Likely as not, this valley was honeycombed with burrow tombs left over from the Sleeper Wars. Demons loved these dark little holes, and the hill men would have opened most of them in the hope of good scavenge. Such twisted old spirits were always filled with rage. They would like nothing better than to drag a powerful soul down into the depths to feed off of for an eternity.

Again, the rising wind blew with a threat of rain. Again, Anders refused to raise the hood of his cloak. All of his senses needed to be at their peak. It was odd that it had not rained yet, especially as the wind had now switched to blow into the valley out of the east. Now it came rushing out of Dark World, where true night lay forever on a barren Earth.

An urge to rise and pace nearly overcame him. It was a foolish urge, as doing so would dull his perceptions, but it was powerful, so powerful that he wondered if something foreign was trying to enter his mind. The spiritual mind could be attacked directly, and demons had this power. He would have to keep his thoughts fully present. He concentrated on the shadow of a small splotch of rust that had formed along the edge of one of the crossblades. Was it rust or dried blood? He couldn't be certain in the failing light.

Another urge to rise seized him. This time, it was powerful enough that he had to clench his jaw and focus his vision on the old priest's wrinkled face. He sensed fear building in the back of his mind. This was not the tense readiness that he had summoned to meet the hill men, but true fear, the kind that could paralyze. He would have to be mindful of this as well. Fear could be controlled, but only if you remained aware of it. You had to be able to see it from the outside. Otherwise, it could consume you.

The clouds were thicker than the noon before, and so was the darkness that came with them. I might as well be in Dark World itself, Anders thought, and he struggled to contain the fear rising within him.

The demon did not announce itself from a distance as the hill men had. It simply appeared a few paces off in the grass. To the mortal eye, it was little more than an arrow-straight green line gashed vertical into the surrounding dark. But to the spirit eye, it was a powerfully-built woman dressed in an ornate uniform. She wore strange medals and insignia across her broad chest and shoulders. Above the sharp crease of her braided collar, her frowning face was deep-lined and imperious. She was bald aside from a small, tight bun of hair gathered from the few strands still clinging to the top of her scalp. Her eye sockets burned with twin emerald flames.

"Evening, Trooper," she said. "Status report?"

Her skin, or what had been her skin, was peeling down the outlines of her skull in drooping green flakes.

"Good noon to you, Spirit," Anders said in the calmest voice he could manage.

The emerald fire in the demon's eyes flared. Had he offended her by calling her spirit? Probably. Demons were more or less permanently offended. The important thing to remember was that she was not really a she at all but rather a thing that could assume any shape it wanted. Most demons took the shapes they had held in their mortal lives, but not all.

"Spirit?" The demon woman spat the word. "Why do you call me spirit, Trooper? My battle handle is Osprey, and you will address me as such. No. You will address me as Major. Yes, that is what good discipline requires. To you, I am Major Osprey, and you are simply Trooper. Do I make myself clear, Trooper?"

She's insane, Anders decided. Little surprise there. Most demons were after spending hundreds of seasons trapped in a hole in the ground. And who knew how long this one had been roaming the valley looking for its lost Trooper?

"I'll call you as I like," Anders said, "seeing as I have far more of a purchase on this world than you do. I'll also ask you to leave me in peace. We have no business together."

The demon woman drew up her ornamented shoulders and glared at him. He could faintly see through her into the shadowy ghost grass beyond. He had surely offended her this time, had offended it this time, and this was for the best. There was no need to draw things out. The fear that had threatened to consume him had receded into the calm he had been trained to cultivate before battle. He was thankful for this, even if the battle was likely to be a difficult one.

"Insolence!" the demon woman barked. "Insubordination! I have issued you a direct order, Trooper, and I expect it to be carried out promptly and precisely. Do you read me? I repeat, do you read me? Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Niner …"

The demon woman began to recite strange words that sounded a little like numbers or letters. Anders couldn't tell which, and it didn't matter as long as they weren't also a spell.

"… Uniform. Victor. Whiskey …"

He listened to her recite until she began to repeat herself. When no strange sensation overtook him, he rose from his crouch, reached down through the neck of his cloak, and drew out the small, silver cross sigil he always wore on a leather string. He held it out before him in the demon's direction with the string still draped around his neck.

"In the name of the Earth Mother and the Sea Father," he began. "I command you to leave this place and return to whatever cursed ground you came from. You are not wanted here, and, by my presence, I declare this to be sane earth upon which you may not tread—"

With a cry like that of a scalded dog, the demon's shape transformed into the semblance of a man in battle armor. But rather than a sword and shield, the man held the longest pistola Anders had even seen. It was not even a pistola, really. It was too large for that. The armored man dropped into a firing position and sighted down the weapon's squared-off barrel at Anders. His squinting eye burned in the shape of a fiery green X.

"Target acquired," the armored man said. "Commence fire in three, two, one—"

Anders willed himself not to duck as a stream of emerald light streaked out of the huge pistola in his direction. It was aimed at the cross, and he felt a tingling prickle in his fingertips where they held the string above the sigil. The sensation was unpleasant, but not unbearable. It was like a nest of white spiders had suddenly hatched in his palm and were now crawling across his fingers. As long as he did not panic, he could withstand it. He held the cross in place and continued to recite the Banishment Prayer. "—So begone from this place, and may the mercy of our heavenly Father and Mother grant you—"

"Disengage," the armored man said.

"—the peace—"

The light from the pistola disappeared.

"—of true death."

"Disengage and fall back," the armored man said. "Tac-nuke air support required on quadrant Alpha, Niner, Tango. Full saturation requested."

The demon vanished, and Anders found himself standing in a fresh emptiness of darkness, wind, and waving grass. He held the cross upraised. The prickling in his fingertips was fading, but it was being replaced by a deeper, more painful throb running down his arm. It was the same arm the hill man had raked the noon before, and the hurt was especially present in the fresh wounds. He had done nothing in the way of cleaning or binding them. He'd had nothing to clean or bind them with, and now they felt as if they were splitting open all over again. He held himself still. The demon might be gone for good, but he doubted it. It seemed too powerful to be frightened off by a mere cross and a prayer.

"Target acquired."

This time, the voice came from above him. It sounded glottal and crackly, as if the words were being spoken through a smoking fire of wet peat.

"Payload released. ETA to target three, two, one—"

Before he could raise the cross over his head, the demon dropped into his mind in the form of a blinding green light. It dazzled him, and he felt as much as saw the world around him explode into a gigantic emerald flash. Now he could no longer see the clouds or the grass or any part of the valley. Instead, he was looking at a huge tower of orange flame rising up over a dark plain. The tower was taller than any mountain he had ever seen, and it was composed entirely of burning light. He could not feel its heat, but he could see it radiating out from the tower's base. It warped the surrounding air into wavering lines that trembled like ripples on a pond. He could feel the flesh on his face prickling, blackening, peeling back …

"Contact!" the crackling voice shouted from overhead. "I repeat, we have contact!"

Beyond the tower's base, he could now see a city. Its buildings rose like a buried giant's fingers thrusting up out of the dark plain. They were not as tall as the tower of fire, but they were still massive, far taller than any buildings he had ever seen in life. At first, they also seemed to be made of light, but then he saw that they were actually made of glass. They were reflecting the tower of fire, and they were shattering one-by-one as its lines of its radiant heat met their shimmering walls.

"Target destruction confirmed. Repeat. Target destroyed!"

All across the city, the burning walls of the buildings began to melt down into the dark plain below. Others exploded outwards as they were hit by concentric rings of flame.

"Roger that, Command. Now I am become Death—"

The tower of fire sprouted a black plume ringed with an emerald halo.

"—the destroyer of Uniform, Sierra, Alpha—"

Anders was falling toward the dark plain. He was plunging into the remains of the burning city. Now a thousand fires guttered amidst its ashes, a thousand fires that left only black rivers of smoke in their wake.

"Mater dei!" The voice crackled from on high.

The hellish glow of the tower had reached the dark clouds overhead. It loomed over everything like the hunched and brooding shoulders of some terrible god.

"Deus propitius esto!"

Anders was lying on the ground amid the rubble and the flame. The remains of a small building sparked with gouts of heat in the darkness nearby. A nude child, her entire body glowing with a radiant green incandescence, sat on the remains of what had been the front step. Half of her face was that of a smiling, freckled girl. The other half was that of a dog-chewed corpse. Only her eyes were the same. Each was an endlessly deep and seething pit of emerald fire.

"Evening, Trooper," the girl crooned through a snaggle of shattered, black teeth. "I think you have something I want."

"No," Anders whispered.

"Let's call it a certain body of intelligence. It's right behind you, I think."

Anders felt his head being turned as if a steel-fingered hand had descended from the heavens to twist his neck. Father Kristopher's shrouded corpse was still lying in the ghost grass behind him.

"That's the one." The girl's voice was now flat and dead. "Hand it over, Sonny Boy. That's an order."

With all of his strength, Anders pulled his head out of the grasp of the hand twisting it from above and stumbled backwards to hide behind an outcropping of smoking rubble. His quiver crunched into the metallic wreckage behind him. Somehow, the old priest's corpse still rested beside him in the grass. "Release me!" he shouted. "Spirit, I order you to release me from this false vision under the names of all the gods!"

When he turned to look back over the rubble, the girl smiled, rose from the step, and began to drift toward him. As she did so, a second arm grew out of both sides of her bony ribcage. On the corpse side of her, the arm grew out pale and fair. On the girl side of her, the arm was not an arm at all but rather a gray tentacle covered in grasping black suckers.

"You have something I want, boy." she repeated. "Give it to me now, and I will not hold you in this place forever."

Anders sprang up, drew his dagger, and hurled it at the demon girl's chest. It passed through her and disappeared into the flames of the burning building. Her smile only grew, and he ducked back down beside the old priest. He would have run if he could, but his legs had become too weak with fear for that. Next to his shoulder, a fat green slug oozed out of the rubble. Frozen with terror, he watched it emerge and slither toward the neckline of his cloak. Four eyes sprang up from its body on red stalks. Its mouth was a black hole ringed with tiny, white blades of teeth.

"Give it to me now," the girl called. "Hand it over, or I will feed off your fear for an eternity. Your gods have failed you just as my God failed me—failed me, my father, and this most holy coun-try …"

These last words reached him in a weird sing-song voice that he recognized immediately. It was the voice of sun madness, that strange and awful disease that took hold of northerners who failed to sleep under their endless light. It made them lose their minds, and his father had been one of these unfortunates. Near the end, he had circled the family stead with an ax for three noons before splitting his skull open on a rock. Throughout this time, he had sung constantly in just such a voice, sprouting endless screeds of nonsense while striking at the walls. Anders and his mother had huddled inside, listening to him sing and frantically praying to the Earth Mother and the Sea Father.

We are the children of the sun and the moon , his father had sung. But now the moon won't show, so we've all got to go down, down into that lonesome val-ley …

He could hear the demon girl waiting for him on the other side of the rubble. Her breath came in slow pulses, like a fire catching wind in a parched field. He turned slightly and could just see her bare feet beside him. One was pinkish white and the other was shriveled black. Both were hovering a head's length above the ground.

Then the slug was under his cloak. He felt its ravenous mouth fasten onto his neck, felt that ring of tiny, white teeth burrowing its way in. But, somehow, there was still grass beneath his feet …

He groped for the cross. It was still hanging around his neck, and he drew it out of his cloak with a frantic tug that tangled the string in his numb fingers. It was burning with a fiery, violet light.

"O, give me what I want," the demon girl sang from behind him. " The sun and the moon and the bloom in June. I'm just a little ol' Texas girl, you see? You wouldn't want to do nothin' to cross me … "

He clutched the cross in his fist, and its violet light spread through the back of his hand. It was spreading out into the world too, and, everywhere the light touched, the living world began to reassert itself. The ashen rubble around his boots once again became the cool mud of the valley. The burning sky overhead faded to a clouded black. The volcanic lump of metal at his back transformed into a thick patch of ghost grass. Its stalks were waving in the wind above his head.

Beside him, the old priest's body was aflame with the same brilliant, violet glow.

"Oh! Susanna," sang the demon, " don't you cry for me! I've come from Alabama wid my machine gun on my knee!"

He rose, turned, and held the flaming cross up before her face.

"Back with you," he commanded. "Back with you in the name of all holy and sane beings, for you are neither, and I command you to leave my soul in peace!"

The vision of the burning city faded around him, driven away by the violet light emanating out from the cross, from the old priest's corpse, and even from within Anders himself. He could feel it burning within his breast now. He could feel it shining from his eyes and from his lips.

The demon began to retreat. It hissed and wailed. It gnashed its broken black teeth. Anders pressed forward through the grass, closing the distance between them. Twin bolts of violet light blazed out from the cross and entered the demon's green eyes.

"I command you to leave this place!" Anders shouted.

He pushed the cross against the demon's forehead, and the creature's pale semblance of flesh peeled back into charred petals of skin. The demon screamed and dissolved into a black cloud. For a fleeting moment, it resembled a beautiful young woman. Then it was blown away on the wind.

II

Anders did nothing the following noon but crouch beside Father Kristopher's body. Its violet glow had faded back to its former ashen hue, but its soul still glimmered strong as ever up into the gray sky. By high noon, he was out of meat. By the time the first dark cloud appeared on the horizon, he had emptied his water skin. He was tempted to ask the old priest's body questions, but he did not. The old man's soul had come to his aid against the demon, and that was enough. No sense in interrogating a miracle.

So it has always been. So it will always be. Forever and ever. Amen.

Though the demon was gone, its sing-song voice continued to echo in Anders' muddled thoughts. If not for the old priest's intervention, he would likely be wandering the hills now, a raving madman shouting nonsense at the top of his lungs. Such behavior ran in his blood after all, and it had been a close thing. Really, as close as one could get, and demons had only limited powers of possession. There were other servants of darkness who could do more, and it was these he feared now—one in particular, though back in the village, that fear had seemed ridiculous. No priest had encountered him in a generation. Now, it was a fear Anders felt almost too weak to control.

"Why don't you take more food?" Sister Agatá's chirping voice returned to him. "You are skinny enough as it is, Young Father. How will you call upon the light to face down the Shadow Man with nothing but wind and fear in your belly?"

Strange laughter sounded within Anders's skull. He didn't recognize it. He didn't know where it had come from. It was just there, and he shuddered over the trembling knees of his crouch.

Once again, the gathering clouds massed overhead, throwing their dark shadows across the valley. Some of them reminded him of the great cliff side rocks of his homeland. He had never been one to dwell in memory. It wasn't a good trait for someone whom took confessions. Yet, he now found himself wishing to see certain things again: the rocky shores of the Gray Isles for one, and the cliffs that rose above them where the terns flocked to lay their eggs. Most people thought of the Gray Isles as a lonely place, just some stony outcroppings rising up from a cold northern sea. But they had their own beauty if one only knew how to look. In spring, those same stones bloomed with white bunting flowers that were as graceful as any bridal frock. And the sight of terns descending in great pale clouds from Ice Range was like that of a host of the Jesu men's angels on the wing. His favorite task as a boy had been climbing those fearsome seaside cliffs to collect eggs in early spring. One had to climb the slippery rocks amid the wheeling birds and sprays of breaking waves that lit the air with rainbows. The eggs were always hidden deep within the nooks of the stone, and their color was a hazy, dream-like blue. Only children could harvest them. A man's hand could not have clung to such small purchases or reached into the little crannies that contained the treasure. And one could only bring down a single egg at a time. They were that fragile. Even he, the best of the boyhood climbers among the surrounding steads, had broken half the eggs he attempted to carry down in his flapping shirt. Whenever he managed to retrieve one whole, there was always a celebration among the mothers whom gathered on the shore below to watch their boys climb. His own mother would kiss his forehead first, her lips soft and wet with sea spray. Then all the other mothers would kiss him, and all of the neighboring girls too. To bring down an egg was to get a kiss. That was the rule, and he had taken full advantage of it before his father had gone mad and he had left for the monastery. Then all such things had ended.

Anders bit down hard on his leathery tongue. He had to keep his mind clear. This was the life he had chosen. This was the death he would embrace.

"Ah! Why so sad, Young Pater? What harm in savoring a little memory now, so close to the end?"

The voice came to him from nowhere. That is, it came from everywhere, and it was suddenly just there, wholly and completely, in his mind.

"Yes. You are not alone, my young friend, but you need not fear the coming dark. I will not fall upon you like some ghoul in the night. We have much to discuss, and we can do it all within the confines of your mind. You need not even rise from your—how do you call it?—crouch."

Anders felt a single raindrop alight on his forehead. It was fat and warm, like a dollop of melted fat squeezed off a hunk of roasting flesh. As far as he could see, the darkness around him was empty aside from the waving grass.

"Who are you?" Anders said, though he already knew.

His voice emerged hoarse and choked from thirst.

"I have many names, Young Pater, some of which you know and some of which no living man has ever heard."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I wouldn't want to make a liar out of your good Sister Agatá. Did you know she was a whore in her youth? Half the old men in the village got their pleasure from her, and for cheap coin too. But no matter. That is not what we are here to discuss."

The voice was smooth, mild, and devoid of accent. If anything, it was strange only for its complete absence of inflection, like the voice of a man whom had learned to speak from reading words carved on the inner wall of his tomb.

"Then you are the Shadow Man," Anders said.

He felt the truth of this even as he said it.

The empty voice laughed. Like its words, the sound was absent of any distinction or feeling. It was only the performance of laughter, a perfect but empty imitation.

"Bravo, Young Pater!"

A new wash of fear, more powerful than any Anders had felt before, broke over him.

"Where are you?" he whispered. "And what do you want?"

"You forget what you already know. I am everywhere, always. And we need not lie to each other. You already sense what I want. It is similar to what all the world has wanted from you of late. The more important questions are, what is the difference and why should you give it to me."

"You're a liar," Anders said. He wasn't certain as to why he said it. The words just spilled out. "I may not know much, but I know that."

Another empty laugh. "Oh, I certainly am. But here I am telling you I'm a liar, which, in a way, makes me truthful. This is what used to be called a paradox. Are you familiar with the problem of paradoxes, Young Pater? Did they ever come up during your bloody training? Probably not—and yet you and your kind are rife with them."

Anders glanced at his weapons. They were once again laid out on the white linen beside the old priest's corpse. Only the dagger was missing. He had not bothered to retrieve it after it had passed through the demon, another stupid mistake. A light rain was falling now, and he could see droplets collecting in the pitted places along the crossblade's steel. Without attention, they would lead to rust—even more rust than was already there. When had his crosses grown so tarnished?

He touched the smaller cross hanging under his cloak. It, too, felt dirty.

"Cling to your sigil if you must, Young Pater. But know that my questions still stand."

Anders licked rain off his lips. "I think we have nothing to discuss," he said. "I think you should take back your questions and go before I banish you."

Empty laughter filled the air around him.

"Well said, Young Pater. Why risk getting sucked into the maw of my questions? That is what they should have called me, really. The father of questions. But again, we are wandering off the path. I have a proposal to make to you. Are you ready to hear it?"

Anders clutched his cross. "What if I say no?"

"Then I could fall upon you, tear out your tongue, and shake it under these diseased clouds until it forms the answers I want. Or I could drift down the coast carrying a pestilence that will kill every man, woman, and child for a hundred miles. Sorry, a thousand fields. Sometimes, I get the new measurements confused. In any case, it serves you best to hear me."

"Why me?

"Because you're the only one who can give me what I want."

"What makes me so important?

"Who says you are? Maybe I just have time on my hands—an eternity of it."

"I don't believe you."

"Nor should you, but let's begin before the rain thickens and you have to shout."

Anders glanced at the old priest's body. The white glow was still there, but it seemed to have lessened slightly. It was hard to tell, distracted as he was.

"No. You are correct, Young Pater. Your predecessor's soul is beginning to cross over. Let's have no suspense on that account, but be assured I can snatch even the faintest ebb of old Kristopher's tail and drag him back from the gates of the other world if I choose. So hear me now and hear me well."

"You're full of threats," Anders said. "You must be frightened."

Once again, he did not know where these words came from. It was like someone else had taken possession of his parched throat.

"Not half as frightened as you should be."

"And you must be close," Anders pressed, "for though you claim to be everywhere, you are no god. You have to carry yourself though this world one way or another."

"Well said again! You are beginning to impress me. But be careful. Too much cleverness has cooked your kind's calf before."

"My kind's?"

"Mankind's."

"Show yourself. Let me see your shape, and I'll answer your questions."

"I doubt you would like that."

"Show yourself, or I will clear my mind until there will be no one but you in there babbling to yourself. Don't think I can't do it."

"Threats, threats. Why must our dealings always be so hostile?"

"I know you are pressed for time, Shadow Man."

"You might not like what you see."

"Show yourself," Anders repeated.

He eyed his weapons. The crossblades were closest to hand. The handles would be wet, and his reach would be slowed by fatigue, but maybe, if he could just be fast enough—

"Don't be so foolish as to try to put a blade in me. That would be both pointless and tedious, and we are indeed pressed for time."

Anders waited in his crouch, rump atop heels, forearms on knees, chin tilted slightly downward with his eyes half-lidded. A dark shape began to form a pace before him. At first, it had no definition. It was only a knot of blackness floating a few heads above the grass. Then it sank into the shape of a sitting man—no, not sitting, crouching. The man was crouching in the same manner as Anders but so as to be facing him. He was also wearing a gray cloak and looked to be of the same length of limb. The only difference was that the hood of the man's cloak was pulled low over his face. His features were hidden under its shadow.

"There," the cloaked man said in the same empty voice. "'Now you see me,' as they used to say."

Anders studied the man crouching before him. There was truly nothing of difference between them aside from the raised hood. Yet this was not nothing. No true priest crouched with his hood raised. It darkened the senses. It left one liable to surprise. He felt a strange urge to explain this and had to clench his jaw.

"I cannot let you have Kristopher's soul," he said instead, "but I am curious as to why you want it so badly. Why don't you just kill me and take it?"

The hood of the man across from him bobbed up and down against the surrounding darkness. "I could do that," he said, "and it would be no small pleasure for me. This old shepherd's soul is very strong—stronger even than you know. But I don't need to possess it. I only want a little piece of information that it contains. Then I will wash my hands of it."

"Again, I don't believe you."

"Why? Does it surprise you that I would let such a dedicated servant of the light march off to the other world unmolested? I'm not without a sense of justice, Young Pater. He was a worthy foe, and, if it was the price of your cooperation, I would gladly let him pass on to his eternal reward."

Anders watched his double. The other man remained crouched, unmoving. A little piece of information? What kind of information would such a powerful soul possess? Anders didn't know. He was a priest, a sanctified defender of souls, but now it struck him that he knew very little about their actual properties. Then again, he was also a young priest. He was foolish. Stupid. Un-tried …

"No, no," the hooded man said. "Don't start questioning your faith now, my young friend, not after making such bold declarations." The peak of his hood leaned forward. "Remember how you said all of those prayers to ward me off when I first entered your mind? Remember how you called upon your holy words of power to banish me in the name of the Earth Mother and the Sea Father and all that other claptrap? Oh, but wait—"

The hooded man rocked slightly back on his heels, and Anders felt as much as heard him laughing silently.

"Tsk, tsk, Young Pater. What would your Father Superior say—that is, before he had his tongue ripped out by a pack of rabid heathens?"

Anders felt a fresh fear cut into him like a cold blade carving down his spine.

"I call upon the Earth Mother," he began. "I call upon the Sea Father—"

Now the hooded man laughed aloud. "Oh, stop!" he said. "Please! Don't be silly, trotting out your empty little sayings now. Let us simply talk as friends."

"We are not friends."

The laughter stopped abruptly, and the hooded man's voice became harsh as a windswept crag. "No. We are not, but that does not change the fact that you don't believe in those words any more than I do."

"That's not true."

"Come on, boy! It's all just ritual, isn't it? Fancy language to impress ignorant villagers? High-flying words to keep them in thrall to your bloody order? I know you feel the same."

"I banished a demon with them."

"No. You spoke as a puppet with a true priest's soul guiding your lips. But that soul is fading now—fading fast."

"I saw violet flame rise from my cross."

"You saw what you wanted to see, and, rest assured, it did not come from you."

"That's a lie."

"Is it? Look within yourself, Priest. Where is your violet flame now when you need it most? You're no Light Bringer, and you never will be."

"This is all a lie. You're a liar."

"No more than you are when you clutch at that little piece of metal strung around your neck. But which of us is in the truth telling business again? I forget."

Anders's hand twitched toward the nearest of his crossblades. The movement was small, but the failing was great. To have let the hooded man provoke him into such a lack of concentration was unforgivable.

"You're the one who is unforgivable, hypocrite. But now the truth comes out, and all that matters is whether or not you will give me what I want. Thankfully, we have already established that you have no good reason not to."

It took all of Anders's concentration not to reach for his crossblades. The hooded man was only a pace away. At this distance, he could rake once, shoulder to waist, and the man would fall dead. Or he could just slash flat across the throat …

But he's not a man!

"Don't despair," the hooded man said in a much gentler tone. "I have exposed the lies of far more hardened hypocrites than you. And anyone would grow cold at the thought of watching a bunch of wrinkled old women mutter over candles for a lifetime. You have thought this yourself—thought it many times. All that ministering. All that hand holding. Accept reality, Young Pater. You're a man of action. You're a man of this world—not the other. You have no more business overseeing the empty prayers of foolish villagers than I do."

"It is my vocation," Anders said. "It is my vow to serve others."

These words sounded foolish to him now.

"Please! Could you not better serve others by actually doing something for them? I can teach you things that might make a real difference. Like how to stop a band of milky-eyes from pillaging their way through a hundred steads. Or how to bring a man back from sun madness. That would be something, wouldn't it? Of course, I can't save your father's soul, but to save the next poor, deluded man who comes after his wife and child with an ax? What do you say, Young Pater? Interested?"

Anders stood up. He couldn't help himself. The hooded man mirrored his movement. Now, they stood facing each other above the waving grass. Rain fell hard between them.

"Why are you bothering to tempt me?" Anders said.

The hooded man stared at him for a long moment. From a standing position, his chin and lower lip were just visible under the hood's shadow. There was something familiar about these features. They were surprisingly slight, almost delicate.

"Because I need your help," the hooded man said. His tone was higher now, softer, almost sweet. "For all your unbelief, you are still a sanctified priest entrusted with the soul of your spiritual brother. If I kill you, I can take his soul, but I cannot make it speak to me. Such a strong spirit has too many defenses. However, if you will call it forth for me, call it forth as a brother, then it will come open to my questions. I can show you how to do this. I know the words, but you must say them of your own will."

The hooded man pointed at the old priest's corpse with a pale and surprisingly graceful hand. "Rest assured, these words will mean nothing to you and even less to me. But, to him they mean everything."

Anders waited for the hooded man to say more, but he only stood pointing to the corpse.

"And, in exchange for this betrayal, you promise me what?" Anders said finally. "Vague knowledge of how to thwart raiders and cure sun madness? I may not be a true believer, as you say, but I still know that any deal I make with you will destroy me. You'll have to do better."

"What about a wife?" The hooded man said. "What about a little babe squealing in your arms? What about both of these lovely baubles while living on a fine estate where the fields rise up gold and fruit drips from the trees? I could make you important, too. Just one quick, painless conversation, and I can raise you up to be a bishop in three summers, a cardinal in five. Think of all the people you could help then. Imagine it: a cardinal who actually cares for the well-being of the living? I need not mention that you would have a legion under your command—also, all the fine-figured mistresses your blessed hands could ever hope to caress. Understand me. I don't offer these things in a spirit of scorn. I would be the last to judge, and I would be the first to take them all for myself if it was within my power to do so."

"No," Anders said.

"Very well. Then how about what you really want?"

The man drew back his hood, and a slender ray of twilight pierced the clouds overhead to light his face.

It was the face of Anders's mother.

"Well met, my sweet boy," she said softly.

She looked young—far younger than she had when Anders had last seen her seven summers before. That had been on the noon he left for the monastery, and her face had been drawn and gray with worry. But now it was lit with the shining brightness of youth. Her blue-gray eyes drank in the twilight, and her golden hair, hair the color of the richest straw, spilled out with a dull luster from beneath a green band he recognized. It was the one she had always worn for good luck when he had climbed the cliffs. It was the color of soft moss and trimmed with silver holly thread that glowed like a strand of pearls. He remembered the warm feel of it when she would press her head against his before each climb. He remembered her singing to him. No. She was singing to him now. His beautiful, young mother was singing to him amid a field of gently waving grass.

"I can take us back," she sang. "I can take us back to a time when your greatest fear was climbing for eggs and your greatest joy was giving them to me. I can take us back through the seasons to the Gray Isles, to where the white buntings bloom like bridal veils and the waves break into rainbows against black rock. I can give you a chance to grow again—the right way this time. You can grow into a happy man. You can marry. You can present your daughter to her smiling grandsires. There will be no sadness this time. No madness. No death. And no cold monastery twisting you into an agent of death." She reached out and touched Anders's cheek with her palm. "There will be no evil," she sang. "There will be no knowledge of evil. You know too much about evil now, my sweet boy, but it's not your fault. I can take it all back. I can take us back to where we belong—together."

Anders's mother sang, and he could not help but listen.

"You just have to do this one small thing for him. Just this one little thing. Then we can both live the lives we should have led—"

"Stop," Anders said hoarsely. "I know it's not you. I'm sorry, but it can't be."

His mother smiled and raised her arms to embrace him. "True enough," she said, "it's not me—not yet, but it will be. You just have to give him the chance to make it so."

"Time cannot be reshaped," Anders whispered.

"No, it cannot. But there are other times that exist in other places. There are many forking rivers of time, and one can go back to the fork and row the other direction if one only knows how. That's what he can do for us. We just have to give him the chance!"

"But he's a liar, Mother. He can't be trusted."

Anders's mother drew back, but only slightly. Then she pressed forward and closed her arms around his trembling shoulders. "He can be trusted about this," she whispered into his ear. "That's what people never understand about him. He always keeps his word when he gives it. Besides, what choice do we have?"

A vision of rainbowed sea spray played across Anders's vision. Everyone from his boyhood was present, all the mothers and all the girls waiting for him to climb down from high above. Not far off, his father and the other men of the steads were playing at toss pins. His father turned and waved up in his direction. He was smiling through his long brown beard. Anders saw himself wave back, one hand still clinging to the rock …

"But what does he really want?" he said.

Anders spoke into the soft folds of his mother's cloak. In response, she rocked him gently back and forth over the grass. They were swaying together, almost dancing. "Not so much," she said softly. "Only a little knowledge about someone to be born far, far away from here. It doesn't concern us, and it never will."

Something hot and bright flared in the deepest recess of Anders's mind—a violet glimmer that passed as quickly as it arrived.

"The Light Bringer," he murmured.

His mother held him close. "If you want to call her that," she said. "It's not important. Just another superstition the likes of which he has to deal with, not us."

"And Father Kristopher's soul?"

She laughed softly against his cheek. "Off and gone to its reward after he has what he wants. He has no more use for an old priest's soul than he does for yours or mine."

An old priest's soul …

With a start, Anders twisted in his mother's arms to look down at the corpse. Its light had almost faded completely. Soon, very soon, it would be nothing but a body lying in the grass.

"He has almost crossed over," Anders said.

His mother turned his gaze back towards her own with a gentle hand. "Yes," she said. "There is not much time—not if we are to be together again. Fortunately, the words are not many. All you have to do is repeat them after me."

"After you?"

"I will let him speak through me—just this once."

"I can't do it. I am sworn."

"Sworn to what, my love? It's all a game. You don't have to play any longer if you don't want to."

"No! I am sworn to uphold the light in the name of the Earth Mother and the Sea Father—"

She released him, drew back, and howled up into the twilight. This awful wail distorted her face, and for a moment, he could see something else behind it, a darkness that was blacker than all of the clouds above and all of the earth below. But it was a sound he recognized. It was the same cry she had made upon discovering his father's broken corpse outside their battered stead.

"Superstition!" she cried. "Madness! Will you forsake our one chance to be together for these things?"

"I don't have a choice!" Anders pleaded. "I am fated. I don't want this any more than you do—"

"Please!" she cried. She sank to her knees in the grass before him, and the hood of her cloak fell forward in gray folds around her pale face. "Don't leave me again. Don't leave me in the hell I wander now. I call for you every noon, and, every noon, you don't come. Every noon, I call for my son, and he does not come."

Her stricken features shined up at him through the rain. Their youthful cast was gone now. It had been replaced by the gray and lined face he remembered. Except this face was even worse. The grayness had faded into a bloodless pallor, and the lines had twisted into deep crevasses flowing with dark rivulets of tears. Her pleading hands were clasped and upraised.

"I'm sorry to have abandoned you!" Anders said. "I should never have left you to walk alone."

"I walk alone in the dark," she cried. Her face ran with black tears. "I walk alone by death's rocky shore, calling for my son, but he never comes."

Anders knew he could not keep his oath. He knelt before his mother and took her trembling hands within his own. Hers were soft and weak. His were the stony tools of a killer. "I'm here now," he said. "I'm here, and I'll never leave you alone again."

She raised her shining, tear-streaked face up to him. Each black droplet was afire with a spark of glittering light. Each rolled like a tiny star down her cheek. "Then you will say the words?" she said.

"I will do what is needed."

She smiled weakly, removed her hands from his grasp, and placed them on his shoulders. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you, my son."

He said nothing. There was nothing more to say.

She rose to stand before him. "First, you must turn and face the body," she said.

He did so. It was hard to see the old priest's shrouded form down in the grass. Its glow had dwindled to almost nothing under the pounding rain. When he sighted it, it was only by catching a last, faint glimmer of pale light escaping through the bound jaws.

He could feel his mother's gentle presence behind him.

"Now you must repeat after me," she sang. "I call upon the black winds of the void …"

But he wasn't listening. There was a new faint glimmer coming from the old priest now. This one was not pale but violet. It came from lower down his body, from where his hands were clasped together across his chest. Something was sticking up from his grasp through the thin wool of his cloak. It was shaped like a letter—a single, long, straight letter that Anders did not recognize. Yet it was somehow all the letters of all the languages that had ever been written. It was glowing with a violet flame that was suddenly fierce.

No. Not a letter. A handle …

"Hurry, my sweet boy" his mother sang. "I call upon the black winds of the void—"

"I love you," Anders said.

The thing in the shape of his mother stopped singing. "I love you too," it replied in a hollow voice. "But you must hurry—"

"I wasn't talking to you."

With all of his speed, Anders drew his flaming dagger from the old priest's grasp and raked it across his own throat. For an instant, a brilliant, violet light lit his face beneath the black clouds. His expression was perfectly calm. Then he fell forward over the old priest's corpse in the grass.

III

When the villagers returned to the uplands in search of their new priest, they found a strange scene. His body was not lying next to that of the old priest's. That corpse still rested, decayed but untroubled, where they had left it. But the young priest's body lay a field off in a ditch atop the mangled corpses of twelve hill men. Together, that made for thirteen bodies, a number of dark power. For this reason as much as any other, they decided not to move it.

Stranger still, all of the bodies had been partially burned, as if someone had wished them destroyed but had not cared to wait long enough to finish the task. It was because of this that they were able to pick out the young priest's remains. He carried a short length of unblemished steel in the charred remnants of one hand. It was a dagger blade, the handle having burned away in the flame, and the hand was upraised in a final, slashing gesture across the throat. The tattered remains of flesh surrounding the ripped gullet glared up at the villagers. They looked like the splayed hoof of a goat.

The villagers debated whether or not to stitch the corpse's lips. The eyes had been burned out, but some skin still clung to the jaw, and the slight smile it formed looked possessed by the worst of evils. What would be the point? they decided. Whatever had come for the young priest had already had plenty chance to take his soul, and black clouds were beginning to form overhead. It was not worth lingering in such a cursed place, not with another darkening coming on. A new priest had already been sent for. He would be informed of what they had seen. He would know what to do.

Instead, they quickly covered all of the bodies with a tall mound of ghost grass. If nothing else, this would shield the poor boy's corpse from the rain. Then they hurried back down the valley toward the coast.

THE END

Bio: C.M. Barnes lives and writes in New Mexico. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Digital Americana, Booth, and elsewhere. He is currently at work on a collection of interwoven speculative tales and a horror novel. Read more at silenceoncebroken.com.

E-mail: C.M. Barnes

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