The word had come from Fendor.
He knew that afterward.
Knowing did not make it feel as though he had spoken it.
Kaylor stood in the farmyard with the great silver sword held in both hands, its unfamiliar runes alive with pale light. Fendor had looked at the blade because looking at dangerous magical objects was how one learned whether they were about to become more dangerous magical objects.
Then something entered his thoughts.
Not a voice.
Not exactly.
A shape waiting behind language.
His mouth opened before he understood what was happening. His tongue formed sounds no elven throat should have known how to make—part hiss, part click, part harsh syllable dragged from somewhere older and less accommodating than any language Fendor had studied.
The instant the name left him, the air tore open.
The thing that appeared was female only in the broadest possible sense.
A serpentine lower body coiled across the farmyard in armored loops. Above it rose a powerful torso surrounded by too many arms, each hand gripping a curved sword or long blade. Metal caught the afternoon light in every direction. The creature’s face held the beauty of something designed to make horror more intimate.
Fendor drew his own sword.
“I said that?”
Kaylor glanced at him.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know that word.”
The demon moved.
Kaylor barely had time to raise the strange blade.
Six swords came at him.
Not wildly.
Not in a storm of undirected steel.
The creature fought with the precision of something for whom additional arms were not an inconvenience but an advantage refined over centuries. One blade drew his guard outward. Another followed low. A third came toward the opening created by the first two.
Kaylor’s Cloak of Displacement blurred his position.
The demon struck where he appeared to be.
Steel passed through an image.
Another sword found only air.
Then one corrected.
The edge struck armor.
Kaylor absorbed the blow and drove backward against it.
More attacks followed.
Fendor counted despite himself.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four—
“Six?”
He stopped counting when the tail came around.
The serpent’s lower body twisted with extraordinary speed. The final strike caught Kaylor from the side and hammered into him hard enough to move the dragonborn several feet across the yard.
Kaylor remained standing.
He looked at the demon.
Then at the new sword in his hands.
“Good.”
Fendor stared.
“It has six swords.”
“I saw.”
“And a tail.”
“I felt that.”
Nethnarel rose on fiery wings.
The creature turned several blades toward her without taking its eyes from Kaylor.
That was irritating.
Nethnarel raised the Staff of Power.
“Hold.”
The command carried magic.
Invisible force closed around the demon, reaching for muscle, will and movement at once.
For a heartbeat the creature slowed.
Nethnarel felt the spell begin to settle.
Then the demon twisted free.
All its blades moved again.
Nethnarel frowned.
“I dislike that.”
Fendor moved toward the stream.
The little farm’s geography had suddenly become inconvenient. Kaylor and the demon occupied the yard beyond the water. Isamu was already moving toward them. Hexen’s wolves spread along the bank, searching for a route that would allow them to join without creating more chaos.
Fendor did not need a route.
Magic held the surface beneath his boots.
He ran across the stream.
Behind him, Hexen watched the unfamiliar sword.
The runes still glowed.
Something pressed briefly against the druid’s thoughts.
A word wanted to exist there.
Hexen felt the pressure.
Rejected it.
The impulse disappeared.
His eyes narrowed.
That was useful.
Also deeply unpleasant.
“Don’t look at the sword,” he called.
Fendor was halfway across the stream.
“A little late.”
Isamu reached the demon first.
His whip cut toward one of its many arms.
The creature parried.
Not blocked.
Parried.
A curved sword flicked outward and redirected the whip with the kind of precise movement Isamu expected from a master duelist, not a monster summoned into a farmyard ten seconds earlier.
Isamu changed angle.
The next strike landed.
He moved before the demon could answer.
The wolves came next.
They did not attempt to kill it.
Hexen gave them the simpler problem.
“Help Kaylor.”
The pack spread around the demon, lunging from different directions, snapping toward the serpentine body and forcing several of its blades away from the dragonborn.
That was enough.
Kaylor attacked.
With the strange sword.
Fendor saw him do it.
“Are we sure about that?”
Kaylor was already swinging.
The blade struck.
Power moved through it.
Not the sword’s power.
Kaylor’s.
Whatever remained of the divine force he had once carried beneath an unbroken oath had changed with him, darkened by betrayal without becoming meaningless. Against a fiend, that old violence still knew exactly what it was for.
Kaylor drove it into the blow.
Radiance and something harsher exploded through the demon.
The creature recoiled.
Kaylor struck again.
More power followed.
The silver blade passed through infernal flesh as though it had been made for precisely this work.
Kaylor felt something inside the weapon answer.
Not enough to understand.
A pulse.
Recognition.
The runes brightened.
For an instant he thought the sword approved.
That concerned him less than it probably should have.
“Fiend,” he said.
Fendor reached the far bank.
“We had inferred that.”
“No. Definitely.”
“Thank you for the formal classification.”
The demon recovered.
Several arms came around.
The wolves distracted one blade.
Kaylor caught another with the new sword.
A third passed through the false image created by his cloak.
Fendor entered from the side.
He did not use the bow.
There was too much movement, too many allies and entirely too many swords in one small section of farmyard.
The Vorpal Longsword came free.
The demon turned toward him.
One of its blades met Fendor’s.
For a fraction of a second the two weapons bound.
Fendor saw intelligence in the creature’s eyes.
Recognition of technique.
Assessment.
It knew how to fight.
Fendor smiled.
“So do I.”
He disengaged.
The next cut entered beneath one arm.
The demon twisted.
Fendor followed.
Another strike.
Then another.
No perfect vorpal line presented itself. Too many shoulders. Too many blades. Too much serpentine motion.
He did not need perfection.
Kaylor hit it from the opposite side.
Isamu’s whip cracked.
The wolves lunged.
The demon tried to turn toward all of them at once.
For perhaps the first time in its existence, having too many arms was not enough.
Fendor’s sword entered deep.
The creature collapsed.
Its weapons struck the earth one after another.
The serpent body followed.
Dust lifted around it.
Silence returned to the farmyard.
The wolves stood around the corpse growling.
Kaylor remained with the strange blade raised.
Nethnarel descended slowly.
Fendor looked at the body.
Then at Kaylor.
Then at the sword.
“No one move.”
Kaylor lowered it slightly.
“Why?”
“Because apparently looking at that thing makes people speak demons into existence.”
Isamu approached.
“Fendor did.”
“Thank you.”
“You did.”
“I remember the accusation.”
“You asked.”
“I did not.”
Hexen crossed the stream more conventionally.
His attention remained on the blade.
“I felt something.”
Fendor looked at him.
“What?”
“When I saw it.”
Nethnarel’s expression changed.
“So did I.”
“Did you say anything?”
“No.”
“Neither did I,” Hexen said.
Kaylor frowned.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
Fendor stared at him.
“You’re holding it.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re the only person it isn’t trying to make summon something.”
“That seems useful.”
“No.”
Kaylor inspected the glowing runes.
“They’re fading.”
That was true.
The light diminished until the markings returned to dark grooves against polished steel.
The sword became beautiful again.
Merely beautiful.
Fendor distrusted it more that way.
He tried to remember the name he had spoken.
He could not.
He knew there had been a first sound.
Then another.
Something in the middle like teeth clicking together.
He attempted it.
Nothing came out correctly.
The memory resisted reconstruction.
“It wasn’t my voice,” he said.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“What?”
“When I said it.”
“You sounded like you.”
“No.”
Fendor shook his head.
“I heard myself. It wasn’t mine.”
No one made a joke.
That was how Kaylor knew the sword had finally managed to worry them.
The farmhouse door opened.
The woman stepped outside.
For several seconds she did not see the demon.
She saw Kaylor.
More precisely, she saw what he held.
Her face changed.
The fear was immediate.
Personal.
She ran.
Kaylor shifted his stance.
“Wait.”
“My husband’s blade!”
The words came out nearly as a scream.
She crossed the yard toward him.
“Put it away!”
Kaylor looked at the sword.
Then back at her.
“You know it?”
“Put it away!”
She reached for the weapon.
Kaylor raised it beyond her grasp without effort.
The woman caught his arm instead.
“Give it to me.”
“That seems unwise.”
“It belongs to my husband.”
Her voice broke.
Fendor saw the difference.
She was no longer frightened of five adventurers or the dead demon.
She was frightened of the sword.
Kaylor lowered his arm, though not enough to surrender it.
“What do you know about it?”
“He died with it.”
The words stopped everyone.
The woman’s eyes moved toward the barn.
Toward the place where the blade had been hidden beneath the dead cow.
Confusion joined the fear.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the barn.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That can’t—”
She pulled at Kaylor’s arm again.
“Give it to me.”
Kaylor did not move.
The woman might as well have attempted to drag down one of the nearby trees.
Fendor approached more carefully.
“Kaylor.”
“I’m not hurting her.”
“I know.”
That was not the concern.
Fendor looked at the woman.
“What was your husband’s name?”
She told him.
The name meant nothing to any of them.
“How long has he been gone?”
The question seemed to take some of the force from her.
“Three months. Maybe a little less.”
“You told us he went into the woods.”
“He did.”
“Why?”
She hesitated.
“People had started coming.”
The abandoned settlement.
Nethnarel moved closer.
“The pilgrims?”
“Not all of them. Before that.”
“The first wagon?”
The woman nodded.
“Those people. The soldiers. Priests. Whoever they were.”
Her husband had grown curious.
That was the word she used.
Fendor understood immediately that curious was often what people called concern after the concerned person did not return.
He had wanted to see what the newcomers were doing.
Perhaps he had believed the old settlement belonged partly to everyone who had lived around it long enough to remember when nobody used it.
Perhaps he had simply distrusted strangers rebuilding a fortress in the mountains.
He took the sword.
Then he left.
He never came home.
The woman had assumed he died somewhere in the woods.
An accident.
An animal.
Bandits.
Eventually, when enough time had passed, she had stopped inventing possibilities that required him to still be alive.
“And the sword?” Kaylor asked.
“It was his.”
“Where did he get it?”
“From my family.”
That surprised Nethnarel.
“Your family?”
“My father’s before him. His father’s, I think.”
“Magical?”
The woman looked at her.
“No.”
Everyone looked at the sword.
The woman followed their eyes.
“No,” she repeated. “Not like that.”
“Did the runes ever glow?”
“What runes?”
Kaylor turned the weapon.
The markings were obvious.
The woman stared.
She knew the blade.
That much was real.
But the symbols seemed to mean nothing to her.
“They weren’t there?”
Nethnarel asked.
“I don’t know.”
The woman leaned closer despite her fear.
“There were markings. Decoration. I never studied them.”
“Did it summon demons?”
The woman looked at Fendor as if the question itself had become unreasonable.
“No.”
“Useful.”
Kaylor slid the weapon carefully into its decorated scabbard.
The act seemed to let the entire farm breathe.
The woman sagged.
Fendor noticed the little boy then.
He was watching from the farmhouse.
Only part of his face showed beyond the edge of the doorway.
His mother had not seen him.
Hexen did.
The boy was crying.
Not loudly.
He had the expression of a child attempting not to be discovered crying, which made the fear worse rather than smaller.
Hexen studied him.
The boy saw that he had been noticed.
He retreated.
Too quickly.
Hexen followed.
Not at Isamu’s speed.
That would have been cruel.
He crossed the yard while Kaylor continued speaking with the woman.
The boy had moved around the side of the house by the time Hexen reached it.
He stopped there.
Hexen turned the corner.
The child froze.
“You know something.”
The boy shook his head immediately.
Hexen had dealt with children before.
He had also dealt with frightened animals, frightened soldiers, frightened villagers and at least one frightened king who had attempted to disguise terror as authority.
The boy had none of their practice.
His guilt was almost visible.
Hexen held out one hand.
A tiny light appeared above his palm.
Nothing dangerous.
Barely more than a glowing seed.
The boy stared at it.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t.”
The answer came too fast.
The boy ran.
Hexen caught him before he reached the far corner.
The child fought.
Not effectively.
Panic supplied effort without strength.
“Let me go!”
“Stop.”
“Let me go!”
His mother heard.
She turned.
Saw Hexen holding her son.
Whatever calm Kaylor had managed vanished instantly.
She ran back across the yard.
“What are you doing?”
Kaylor intercepted her before fear became something worse.
“Wait.”
“That’s my son.”
“We know.”
“Let him go!”
Hexen did.
The boy immediately moved toward his mother.
Then stopped.
Not because anyone held him.
Because Kaylor crouched.
The dragonborn’s size made the gesture almost absurd. Even lowered, he remained enormous beside the child. Peacemaker hung at his back. The newly sheathed silver sword rested nearby.
Kaylor could intimidate armies by standing quietly.
He did not use that now.
“What happened to your father?”
The boy looked away.
His mother stared at him.
Kaylor waited.
No threat.
No command.
Just the question.
The boy began crying harder.
His mother understood before anyone said anything.
“What do you know?”
He shook his head.
“What do you know?”
The second time her voice was softer.
That broke him.
The story came apart as he told it.
Not in order.
Children rarely remember terrible things in order.
His father had left after the strangers came to the abandoned settlement.
The boy knew where he was going.
He followed.
Not close enough to be caught.
Close enough to remain afraid the entire way.
He watched his father enter the old town.
The gates had not yet filled with pilgrims then.
There were soldiers.
The original ones.
The men who had arrived before everyone else.
Priests too, perhaps.
People working around the great central building.
The boy waited outside.
His father did not return.
Hours passed.
He became frightened.
Then the soldiers appeared at the wall.
They carried something.
The boy’s voice failed.
His mother put both hands over her mouth.
Fendor knew the rest before the child forced himself to say it.
They threw his father’s body over the edge.
Not buried.
Not returned.
Discarded.
The corpse tumbled down the slope outside the settlement and disappeared among rocks and brush.
The boy waited until the soldiers left.
Then he went to him.
His father was dead.
No accident.
No animal.
No bandits.
The sword was beside him.
The boy took it.
He could not carry it properly.
He dragged it where he had to, lifted it when the ground allowed, and eventually brought it all the way home.
Then he hid it.
“In the barn?” Kaylor asked.
The boy nodded.
His mother’s face had gone empty.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought—”
He could barely breathe.
“I thought they’d come.”
“Who?”
“The men.”
He looked toward the distant settlement.
“I thought if you knew, you’d go there.”
His mother closed her eyes.
The boy continued.
“I thought they’d kill you too.”
She pulled him against her.
For a while, none of the heroes spoke.
The farm seemed very small beneath the mountains.
Beyond the fields, the pilgrimage continued along the road.
People still walked willingly toward the settlement.
Families.
Old men.
Children.
Believers wearing images of the burning woman.
They passed within sight of a farm whose owner had been murdered for investigating the very place they now entered gladly.
Fendor turned toward the mountains.
The central spire of the rebuilt temple was visible in the distance.
Scaffolding climbed around it.
Smoke rose from the town.
Pilgrims moved along the road in an almost continuous line.
“They killed him,” Isamu said.
It was not a question.
Kaylor stood.
“Yes.”
Hexen looked toward the sheathed sword.
The weapon had belonged to the farmer’s family for generations.
His wife remembered nothing extraordinary about it.
No demons.
No names forcing themselves through other people’s mouths.
Her husband carried it when he went to investigate the new temple.
The cult’s soldiers murdered him.
His son recovered the weapon afterward.
And now it knew the name of something from the Abyss.
Nethnarel saw the same sequence forming in his mind.
“We don’t know they changed it.”
Fendor looked at her.
“No.”
“But?”
She watched the distant spire.
“If she’s telling the truth, that sword went into the settlement as one thing.”
Kaylor rested a hand upon the scabbard.
“And came back as another.”
The woman heard him.
Fresh fear crossed her face.
Kaylor removed his hand.
He looked toward the road instead.
Toward the pilgrims.
Toward the fortress-temple being rebuilt around a goddess whose followers promised to cleanse the world.
Before now they had evidence of belief.
Symbols.
Pilgrims.
Priests.
A growing town.
Now they had a corpse.
A witness.
And a sword that had somehow learned to call demons.
Fendor looked toward the mountains.
“Words first?”
Kaylor’s eyes remained on the temple.
“For now.”
That was as much compromise as anyone was likely to get.
They had come to investigate a pilgrimage.
They were no longer wondering whether the people at its center were dangerous.
The only question left was how dangerous.
And what, exactly, they were building up there.