Of the Abyss

 

DEDICATION

Of the Abyss
is dedicated to Ria and Zim, whose challenge to try NaNoWriMo sparked this entire crazy trilogy; to Mason, who tolerated (or perhaps encouraged) my obsession; and to my mother, who introduced me to Freudian theory and has been one of my best beta-­readers this round.

 

I also tip my hat to UMass Boston's QSC and Classics Club, two organizations that provided invaluable resources, inspiration, and encouragement as I first created this world, and to Remy and the rest of my writing group, who have helped me bring it together in final form.

 

CONTENTS

 

PROLOGUE

T
he surface of the Abyss was covered with an immense desert that had once been a fathomless ocean. It was a place of glistening black sand, venomous beasts, creeping vermin, and of course the Abyssi—­those perfect, beautiful predators who ruled the infernal realm by fang and claw.

One such creature looked past the gray, smoky sky above him to a realm where the ocean was cold and tasted of salt, where verdant green cascaded across rich earth, and where the mortal creatures lived.

Soon
, thought the Abyssi.

It was a powerful thought, for one of his kind. Most Abyssi had no concept of
soon
; they could only consider
now
, and whether what stood before them could be devoured or enjoyed in other ways. They certainly did not have the patience to create a mancer, an effort that took many careful years siphoning power into one of the frail creatures of the mortal realm. A mancer who would—­soon—­be able to break the barrier that separated this world from the one before it.

In the mortal world, the creatures who considered themselves strongest had nearly no fur. Their teeth were dull as if for grinding grass, and their nails were short and rounded, useless for shredding flesh. In the mortal world, the Abyssi would play.

 

Part 1

AUTUMN
YEAR 3988 IN THE AGE OF THE REALMS

 

CHAPTER 1

T
he mingled smells of brine, fish, and sweat from the docks failed to bury the cloying, meaty odor that greeted Lieutenant Hansa Viridian as he shouldered open the back door of a small warehouse that had seen better days. As the stench rose, he swallowed repeatedly in an effort to keep the bile from fleeing his stomach, along with everything he had eaten that day.

When Captain Feldgrau had given him and his second lieutenant, Jenkins Upsdell, the assignment less than an hour before Hansa was supposed to be off duty, he had assured them it was probably a false alarm. The landlord was fed up with a tenant who refused to respond to complaints about vermin, and instead of filing a complaint with the harbormaster or the minister of health, he had cried sorcery and summoned soldiers.

A brief survey of the warehouse made Hansa doubt this was a quick job. He drew his sword and visually swept the room, looking for threats.

The interior was dimly lit; the windows had been boarded up long ago, so the only light left came from candles burning on every raised surface. Most had melted completely but a few still flickered feebly, illuminating the carnage of small animals—­mostly rats, though some were bigger. Some had simply been cut apart. Others had been disemboweled, skinned, and set around the room in ritualistic form, primarily on top of a leather altar Hansa
hoped
was made from a cow.

Something moved in the shadows of the back wall and Hansa raised his weapon, stepping out of the way so Jenkins could join him. They made their way across the room, trying to ignore things that squished and popped under their boots, increasing the rank odor that already rose from the decaying sludge that slicked the floor.

Movement caught Hansa's eye—­pale fingers twitching in the far corner. Splashes of blood and darker fluids had camouflaged the man who lay sprawled in the back of the room.

“Jenkins?” Hansa asked before moving closer. Jenkins had the sight, which meant he could see the magic sorcerers used, though he couldn't control it himself. He might be able to tell if the man was a threat.

“I can't tell,” Jenkins replied. “There's too much power all over this place.”

That left finding out the hard way. “Watch my back,” Hansa said as he sheathed his sword and knelt to establish if this man was a victim or a villain. In any other situation, it would be difficult to imagine a naked, unarmed man could be a threat, but a mancer wasn't only dangerous if he was dressed and armed. Abyssumancers were more powerful in the presence of blood, and they had an unsettling ability to hide weapons in plain sight.

“Sir?” he said. “If you can hear my voice, please let me know.”

The body didn't move again. The man's skin was so ashen Hansa began to wonder if he had really seen him move in the first place. He reached forward to check for a pulse and Jenkins whispered, “Left hand, Hansa.”

His eyes flickered down, and he saw the small dagger within inches of the injured man's left hand. Hansa knocked it aside with a boot, then once again leaned over and this time set two fingers to the man's throat, looking for any evidence of life.

He jumped back when the man's chest rose in a hitching, pained breath that soon became a rattling, wet cough.

“Help me,” the man whispered. He lifted one languid arm.

“Do you need a doctor?”

“Need . . . to get out of this place,” the man answered. “The . . . Abyssumancer . . . could come back.
Please.
”

“Can you walk?” Hansa asked the injured man.

“Not . . . on my own.”

“How did you get here?” Jenkins asked. Meanwhile, Hansa tried to ascertain the extent of the injuries and whether it would be safe to lift the man—­for him, and for them, if he turned out to be dangerous.

“Don't know. I—­” He coughed again.

A slash across the man's rib cage revealed the white glint of bone, and three parallel slices like claw marks savaged his thigh. Many of the injuries should have caused death within moments, but this man wasn't dead. Though blood was smeared across much of his skin, it wasn't concentrated around the wounds, which meant it wasn't his. That meant he wasn't as helpless and innocent as he pretended.

Hansa tried to suppress his instinctive frown, but the man must have seen something that said his ploy of being pathetic wasn't working. He struck; Hansa cried out as a blade swiped across his withdrawing hand, drawing blood and sending pain like fire up his arm.

The pain wasn't just the wound—­it was magic. When it reached Hansa's heart, it wrapped around that vulnerable organ, and suddenly the air was smothering, dark, and hot as ash. Hansa's knees hit the ground, and then his palms, and then—­

The air cleared and he coughed as he drew desperate, cool breaths. He struggled to draw his sword before he realized it wasn't necessary.

Jenkins had buried a small dagger in the Abyssumancer's back, just under his shoulder blade. It wasn't enough to kill, but it had been treated with a fast-­acting poison that would put the sorcerer into a deep, powerless delirium for several hours. While he was out, they could search him more thoroughly and get him back to the cells beneath the Quinacridone Compound.

“Are you all right?” Jenkins asked as he helped Hansa to his feet.

Hansa nodded, sheathed his sword again, and instinctively checked his left pocket, which held a gold ring wrapped in white silk. The ring was set with a star ruby and two small diamonds.

“Do you ever plan to actually propose?” Jenkins asked as he trussed their prisoner's wrists. In addition to being second lieutenant of Hansa's company, Jenkins had been his best friend since before they could walk. Despite how long they had known each other, Hansa was still a little unsettled by Jenkins's ability to tease him about something like proposal nerves while they were surrounded by the gory remnants of magical malfeasance.

“I meant to tonight, but then this came up.”

“Rubbish. You've ‘meant' to every night for weeks now. A girl like Ruby isn't going to wait forever.” His tone mellowed some as he hauled the mancer to his feet, and removed his own travel cloak to wrap around the naked man. “And in the meantime, do me a favor and don't make my sister a widow before you make her a wife. How's the hand?”

“It's not deep,” Hansa said. Now that there was no magic backing it up, the wound itself was barely a scratch. “Let's get this gentleman back to the cells and see if he can tell us anything useful.”

He spoke optimistically, but they both knew interrogating a mancer was normally futile. Men who made deals with demons were not easily caught in petty verbal traps, and anyone who would willingly walk the Abyss wasn't intimidated by a human soldier.

They left the warehouse with their prisoner slung over Jenkins's shoulder and entered the raucous bustle of the Mars docks.

The capital city of Kavet changed from one world to another the moment they crossed Harbor Road. The neat lanes and well-­maintained stone and brick buildings of the upper city gave way to a haphazard, ramshackle wooden maze of flophouses, warehouses, shops, taverns, and inns that only those who lived there knew how to navigate. The jangle of merchants hawking their wares blended with a half-­dozen languages spoken in drunken volumes, the ringing of instruments played by street performers, and the screaming of sea birds.

Immediately around Hansa and Jenkins, those noises quieted. Sailors out of Silmat and Tamar wouldn't know what a mancer was—­they had their own forms of magic, but nothing as dangerous as sorcery—­but they still responded to two men in official uniform carrying a bound, bloody man. They drew back, taking their games and drinking back to their own ships, or otherwise further away from authority.

The whores and thieves—­or, as they called themselves,
disciples
of A'hknet, a religious order that, as far as Hansa could tell, believed in nothing—­followed their clients or disappeared into the night, few wanting to be noticed by members of the 126.

“We're always so popular here,” Jenkins murmured, the words just loud enough to reach Hansa's ears. Raising his voice, he shouted at two men half-­hidden in the shadows, “You two, break it up.”

The taller man was wearing the uniform of a Tamari sailor; he turned to Jenkins with a glare before the other half of his illicit embrace realized what was going on and jerked back. The sailor tried to catch his arm, but got an elbow in the ribs in return. Whatever the prostitute had hoped to earn by engaging this particular fare, it must not balance out with a charge of perversion and public display.

“Like we have time to chase after them tonight,” Jenkins said, keeping an eye on the sailor long enough to establish he wasn't going to pick a fight after losing his intended roll in the hay. “As it is, we can't carry this fellow all the way back to the city square.”

The Quinacridone Compound at the heart of the upper city had been a palace before the revolution, and was now the center of Kavet's government. Most citizens just knew it for the great hall where debate and voting took place, but underneath the pale, honey-­colored stone was a dungeon where mancer powers were suppressed by centuries-­old magics built into the foundations. That was where they needed to bring their prisoner, preferably before he woke up and attacked them again.

“Ma'am,” Hansa said to an older merchant woman who was watching them without fear, “may we borrow your cart?”

The elderly woman swept him with an expression that should have been as deadly as the mancer's power, and asked, “Can I
stop
you?”

“Not really,” Jenkins admitted, “but you'll be compensated, and we will make sure it is returned—­”

The woman took a step back and spat at their feet. “Quinacridone brats. Just so you know, I voted
against
Initiative One-­Twenty-­Six.”

Hansa sighed, as Jenkins shifted the mancer's weight. “I'm sure you did,” he said.

Citizen's Initiative 126 had created the small, elite band of soldiers to which Hansa and Jenkins both belonged. Occasionally they were called in when lesser authorities could not deal with a civil problem, but mostly they had the dubious glory of walking into dens where sorcerers wielded power enough to breach the veil to the realm beyond. Some mancers could manipulate the thoughts of those around them, or even outright possess them. Some caused sickness. Some just killed, bloody and violent, in ever-­escalating patterns. This one started with rats, but he would have moved on to his neighbors soon enough, if he hadn't already.

Yet women like this protested the authority that gave Hansa and Jenkins the power to walk into such places and risk their lives to protect the citizens of Kavet.

Jenkins nodded to Hansa, who pulled the cart forward. The woman wore the symbol of A'hknet on a pin at her throat. If she had any trouble with her belongings because of the missing cart, other members of that order would assist her. They had scattered at the appearance of soldiers, but would return quickly to get all the gossip once Hansa, Jenkins, and the mancer were gone.

“Numen-­crossed Quin. You call us thieves, and here you are in the night taking what's mine.”

Hansa winced. Was she
trying
to get arrested, giving them a hard time when their nostrils were still filled with the odor of rotting rat viscera and Hansa's head pounded from whatever the mancer had done to him?

“Ma'am,” Hansa said tiredly, struggling to be polite, “if you give us your name, we will have the cart returned. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you may come to the compound to pick it up tomorrow. Your only other choice is causing a scene right now and spending the night in lockup for interfering.”

He had no interest in arresting this old woman. He just wanted to get this over with and get home.

“Let's go,” Jenkins said, lifting the cart and ignoring its owner, who continued to glare but stopped arguing. “It's going to be a long night.”

Hansa suspected “long night” was a gross understatement.