Page 6 of Jailer to the Death God
I swallow hard against the bitter lump in my throat. “I won’t ask one of them to die, not after what they’ve survived, Rose.”
“You’re right,” she says faintly. “This is something I can’t ask of anyone but myself.”
She moves before her words solidify in my mind. Snatches a crooked little knife from her belt, one I’ve seen her use a thousand times for cutting blooms in the gardens or chopping herbs for incense.
“Tell my sisters I did it for them,” she says, and drags the edge across her neck while a bloody scream rips from my throat.
2
The call tugs at my core, drawing the fragments of my consciousness from their wanderings throughout the realm of Unlife, pulling my psyche back together.
I’m being summoned by a human.
Not again.
I’ve only been summoned successfully a handful of times. You would think humans could manage it more often. But it’s surprisingly difficult to get the ingredients and the amounts in the incense blend just right. Harder still to ensure you’ve actually found one of the entrances to my realm, and not simply a very deep sinkhole. The correct number and orientation of the candles is vital, and they must be lit in a certain order. And then there’s the small matter of collecting nine living sacrifices and laying them out in the right configuration, without any of them fighting back or running off.
Even then, not just any sacrifices will do.
I will appear for nine murdered souls, but my appearance will bring no joy to the summoner. If the sacrifices are unwilling, I rise from the Pit and drag down the ones who slaughtered them. Their bodies are broken, and their spirits are left to wander, shrieking, without any hope of eternal rest.
Ninewillingsacrifices are required to summon and ensnare me.
Fortunately, people who are willing to die for someone else’s cause are very difficult to find.
The fact that I can even be summoned at all is a colossal joke played on me by my godly “sisters,” Macha, Aine, and Beirgid. Drunk on the raw cosmic energy of some meteor shower or other, they collaborated to lay this burden on me. They have never liked the fact that I do not take lovers among humans—or gods. No matter how many times my divine counterparts have tried to seduce me, I have never been interested in the least.
The other deities do not understand me. They were born of light, and I was birthed from the darkness. They care only for themselves; I care about fairness and justice. I am the dark balance to their light, after all.
They never interfere in the tragedy or joys of humans. I despise human cruelty, and I punish it without mercy.
When I meet whoever has summoned me, I shall be utterly merciless.
The last vestiges of my mind whiplash back into my body. It’s painful, like a taut string being snapped. Throughout the past century, my body has remained on my throne, while my mental influence expanded and governed the workings of my domain. It was easier that way, rather than physically prowling my realm as I used to do.
The summoning wraps a sickening fist around the core of my being, seizes me with a force I can’t resist. I’m sucked out of my throne, towed at blazing speed through the roofless columns of my palace, up toward the heavy underbelly of the human world, which hangs like a ponderous sky over my realm. Holes puncture that sky, each one a channel leading to a different part of the mortal sphere.
At the other end of one of those channels, hunched among bloodstained victims, is the evildoer I must confront. I’ll dispatch him quickly—it’s nearly always a man seeking immortality for himself—and then I will return to my semi-slumber on the throne.
The force of the call yanks me into one of the dark holes. I rush upward, buoyed not only by the summons but by my anger at being disturbed.
I choose a favorite form of mine on my way up—inhumanly tall, swathed in black robes, with a collection of antlers branching from my skull and moss wreathing my black hair. I could make the form perfect, but I like to leave gaps—something to unsettle the humans, like a valley of exposed bone down the center of my forehead, a decayed hole in my cheek, or pupilless eyes that resemble the void of death. Something to remind them that I am ancient as the world itself.
A roaring wind carries me up, through a tunnel lined with black vines that writhe like tortured serpents in the tempest of my passing.
I explode out of the Pit into the bitter cold. I’m not used to feeling cold, or hot, or anything. Only when I’m summoned do I experience sensation, and none of those experiences have been particularly pleasant. In every case I was able to conclude my business quickly and return to my realm.
Something feels different this time.
The metallic taste of blood hangs in the air, mingling with the aroma of incense, blended properly and burned in just the right amounts.
There are the bodies, nine of them—no, ten. Strange.
I inhale deeply, expecting to taste the bitterness of murder in the air.
But instead the soft fragrance of surrender permeates my senses.
These are not victims, but willing sacrifices. Which means I cannot punish their murderer and depart for my throne again.
