Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

His men already engaged hard, slamming into the fragments of the enemy battleline that still stood. A long line of families stood behind, calmly lined up by a roaring bonfire. The furnace heat struck him like a hammer, and he inhaled superheated air that brought him up short. Black-robes stood scattered throughout the town’s square.

Tregaran stood mute as more soldiers surged past him and broke into the square, cutting into the remaining mercenaries. Behind the mercenaries’ failing line, a priest calmly tapped a man on his shoulder. Tregaran watched helplessly as the man gathered up his daughter and, together with his wife and son, calmly walked into the center bonfire. The man’s flesh immediately burst into flames, but he stood without expression as the fires consumed him and all he loved.

Something about the smoke and rising sparks drew his eye. Tregaran slowly looked up, seeing the smoke from the fires bending together, blending into a single cloud, a maelstrom that slowly spun and turned, gathering the Fires into itself. He knew he should move, join the fight, but the overwhelming scene froze him. Decades of experience failed him as he took in something literally beyond his capacity. Failure and depression rolled over him. He had brought his men to this, failed them utterly. He tried to think of something to say, something to do, but his experience betrayed him as well. He simply couldn’t move.

The Black-robes’ last troops fell, and the soldiers broke past. They cut down priest after priest, and no few of the villagers as they turned to clumsily fight the veteran infantry. It became apparent to Tregaran than none of the victims moved of their own volition.

He shook himself out of his fugue. Now that he was aware of it, he could feel a heavy weight, like a blanket soaked in water, trying to descend on him. Its message was heavy, soporific. “Listen to me. Do as I bid. Give over. You have failed. You are a failure. Just listen and all will be well.”

Tregaran tried to shrug the weight away, but now that he sensed it, he could feel it working its way into his mind. The depression built. He scanned around, frantically looking for the source of the oppressive weight in his mind. In the very center of the town square, next to the largest Fire, stood a priest working his stave.

A half-dozen soldiers cut their way through his final protection and pressed down on him. He raised his stave, and a something flowed out, moving like smoke. It coalesced in a few heartbeats, becoming a malevolent, envenomed whip, drawn from the end of the stave.

The first soldier swung his sword at the looping whip, his arm cutting smoke. Even in the distance Tregaran heard his high-keening scream. The man fell back, his arm boiling with blisters that ruptured. Maggots spilled from the wounds and chewed into his skin.

The second soldier charged full into the same sick smoke, then the priest whipped the thing on the end of his stave, carrying it through the other four. Each fell, screaming, flesh consumed by boils that burst into parasites that ate at their hosts. The men fell, screaming and writhing, still several feet short of the priest.

Tregaran looked around desperately, wishing he hadn’t left the archers on the hill. His men continued their assault through the open center, slaughtering mercenary, priest, and townsfolk alike. Windrows of dead piled up near the Fires, as the defense failed against his men. The soldiers had cut down most every living thing.

It wasn’t until he saw a tongue of flame bend, reach from the fire and engulf a fallen priest that he truly understood. Its movements were sentient, alive. The priests were making something.

He felt the touch of the firecat’s voice in his head. “Aye. And when they are done, they will bring it through. He thinks he can control it, but it is a master . . . not a slave. He seeks to use it to make miracles, to succeed where Laskaris has failed. Instead, he will be its tool.”

“Do something!” Tregaran cried aloud, as another of his soldiers fell to the smoking stave. Flames now licked around the arch-priest, swirling like a cyclone up above him.

“I cannot. You’re halfway into its world now, where I cannot enter.”