Faithful Servants

  Chapter One: Down at the Clever Endeavor

  The Clever Endeavor wasn’t the best bar on Axis. Nor was it the cleanest, or the cheapest—and definitely not the friendliest. It was a bar you went to when you didn’t want to be seen.

  Not that there weren’t always customers. The place had a pretty decent crowd of regulars, and new folks stumbled in from time to time as situations warranted. But everyone there knew the first rule of the Clever Endeavor: even if you saw someone you recognized—you didn’t see them.

  Which is why it was so immediately obvious that Salim was being followed.

  The bar was roughly half full, which meant that it was as full as it ever got. Wrought-iron lanterns filled not with flickering flame but with smooth phosphorescence glowed softly between tables, casting enough light to see by but not so much as to make anyone feel exposed. The bar’s shape was different than most, with a wide-open center and tables positioned around the twisting outer wall, each set in its own scalloped hollow. It was hardly the best use of space, but the sort of folk that frequented the Clever Endeavor appreciated the fact that the odd layout gave every table a wall to put one’s back to, plus a clear view of the entrance and the stairs leading up to the street. Directly across from the doorway stood a long wooden bar without any stools, and behind it lurked a rack of hundreds of bottles of all shapes and sizes—some clear, some opaque, and some jumping and jittering of their own accord.

  The bar’s unusual shape, however, was nothing compared to its clientele. As far as Salim could tell—and such things weren’t always obvious—he was the only human present. To his right, a cluster of hive people—this particular group composed almost entirely of the flying variety, which resembled seven-foot-tall, black-shelled wasps—used deft proboscises to scrape thick red fluid from long, fluted glasses. Thanks to their telepathy, the only sound from their alcove was the steady brush of feathery appendages on crystal, yet the way they occasionally whirred their wings or crooked their limbs suggested an argument. Or as close to an argument as creatures with a hive mind ever got.

  To Salim’s left, several of the plane’s native axiomites were going over documents with a winged, green-skinned man that Salim had pegged as an angel, hammering out some sort of agreement. Each time one of the elflike axiomites moved to point out a particular clause, the illusion of its flesh broke and scattered, revealing the cloud of glowing symbols that was its true form.

  Across the room, another axiomite pulled her companion, one of the fox-headed vulpinals, as deep into the shadows of her alcove as she could. Salim couldn’t say whether the gesture was one of modesty or fear of judgment by her fellows, but it had little effect either way. Each time the fox-man touched the flawless skin of her thigh, a blaze of runes drifted up from the caress like golden dust, broadcasting her excitement to the room. The axiomites were living mathematical abstractions, but apparently even abstractions had needs.

  And those were just the groups. Far more common in the Clever Endeavor were the singletons—folks who didn’t care to bring companions, and were even less interested in making new ones. These solitary drinkers were scattered around the place, each lost in his or her own thoughts. A flame-haired ifrit, the half-breed offspring of some genie and a mortal, sat nursing a brass goblet at one of the flame-retardant tables. Beyond him, a contract devil with a pointed beard and wire-rimmed spectacles which were almost certainly just for show sorted through a pile of scrolls. Closest to the bar was a blurry, vaguely humanoid distortion in the air which Salim took to be one of the shae, the aristocratic residents of the Shadow Plane. The shadow people had long ago traded physical forms for regions of coherent probability, and had been insufferably smug about it ever since.

  In other words, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Salim shifted so that his back was to his uninvited guest. He leaned over the table, propping his head on his hand and looking down as if staring into his drink. In reality, it was the glass that concerned him. In its warped reflection, the rest of the room behind him was clearly visible.

  The solitary axiomite two tables down was staring at him. Not the careful, peripheral-vision study of someone used to the Clever Endeavor’s rules. The eyes fixed on Salim’s back were blatant in their gaze. Though the man’s nondescript robes, pointed ears, and inhumanly perfect features were no different from any of a thousand other axiomites, a large rune that glimmered with its own light sat between his eyebrows.

  A glowing forehead tattoo was an interesting choice for someone trying to pass unnoticed. But then, this was Axis. As it was, the rune told Salim nothing except that he’d never seen the man before.

  Salim set down his glass and looked to the bartender. Lahan was standing in his usual place behind the counter, a rag over one narrow shoulder and a vacant expression on his face as he stared off into the distance. As Salim’s hand twitched up in the three-fingered signal, however, the barman’s eyes snapped into focus. He met Salim’s gaze and nodded slightly.

  Good. Placing one hand on the battered surface of the table, Salim shoved himself to his feet. He stood there for a moment, wobbling slightly as if from too much drink, then began weaving his way toward the back of the establishment. Past the bar, he turned left and staggered into the hallway leading to the jakes.

  As soon as he was around the corner and out of sight of the rest of the bar, Salim flattened himself against the near wall, willing his black robes to blend into the shadows. His right hand crept to the twisted hilt of his sword, then moved away. Lahan wouldn’t want any blood if he could help it. Salim waited.

  The axiomite came around the corner. Salim sprang. One hand wrapping around the man’s neck, the other forearm hitting sideways across his chest, Salim slammed into his follower, jamming him up against the far wall of the hallway.

  Instead of flying apart into a cloud of symbols, the man hit the bricks with a meaty slap. Not a true axiomite, then—a disguise. The fake axiomite’s mouth opened, and Salim squeezed his windpipe shut before he could make a sound.

  A hand came up, crabbing toward the man’s chest, and Salim batted it away easily. Searching within his opponent’s tunic, he found the hard knot of the pendant the man had been reaching for. Salim closed his hand around it and pulled, snapping the thong easily.

  The man shifted. Where one moment Salim had been holding an axiomite, now he was holding something else entirely. Gone were the axiomite’s lithe limbs, replaced by green scales and clawed, three-fingered hands. A pair of stumpy wings, ludicrously small for such a large creature, fluttered ineffectually from slits in the shirt’s shoulders. The biggest difference, however, was the head: a cross between a dinosaur and the long, toothy grin of a dolphin. The creature’s new face rose on a serpentine neck that was suddenly several feet longer than it had been. The glowing rune that had emblazoned the man’s forehead was still there, but now it sat between two eyebrow ridges of thick horn.

  “Whoever made this particular eidolon had a weird sense of humor.”

  A nice trick, but it made little difference. Salim choked up on the ludicrous neck until his fist rested just beneath the overlong snout, then pulled the head back down to eye level.

  “What are you?” he asked, loosening his hold on the creature’s windpipe.

  The creature coughed and sputtered. “I…I don—”

  Salim squeezed a warning. “You don’t know? I find that unlikely.”

  The creature shook its head, gasping, and tried again. This time it managed to rasp out a single word.

  “Eidolon.”

  An eidolon. Interesting. That explained the glowing tattoo—eidolons were created creatures, and the rune would undoubtedly be a sign of its master. The thought of a third party made Salim suddenly aware that his back was exposed,
and he dragged the creature farther down the hall toward the privies. He trusted Lahan to give him a signal if someone else came their direction, but there was no guarantee that the eidolon’s summoner couldn’t turn invisible.

  “Who do you work for?” Salim demanded. “And why is he looking for me?”

  The creature shook its head again. Though Salim still had it pressed up against the wall, he could feel its body relax.

  “He’s not. I came on my own.”

  That didn’t make sense—eidolons didn’t do anything without their masters’ consent—but Salim left it alone for the time being. He was starting to get irritated. Before he could ask another question, the eidolon answered it.

  “Ceyanan told me you could help me.”

  Ceyanan. The name was like magic—as soon as Salim heard it, everything became clear. He sighed and released the creature, stepping back as it stretched out its serpentine neck, curling and corkscrewing it to work out kinks.

  “So the angel sent you.”

  The creature nodded, a more expressive move than any human could hope to make. “He told me how to find you.”

  “Of course he did.” Salim’s black-winged chaperone was fond of jokes. Never mind that the angel’s sense of humor had nearly gotten this particular emissary killed. What did a single life matter to a herald of the death goddess?

  Salim turned back toward the bar, motioning for the snake-man to follow. “Come on.”

  “So you’ll help me?” the eidolon asked. Its muzzle was still frozen in the idiot smile that seemed more appropriate now than when it was a just a breath away from being choked to death.

  “I didn’t say that,” Salim said. “First we’ll talk. But not here.” He glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Now are you coming, or aren’t you?”

  Chapter Two: A Walk in the Park

  “So talk.”

  The two men—for Salim had returned the eidolon’s amulet, and the snake-man once more looked like an axiomite—walked shoulder to shoulder through one of Axis’s many parks. To either side of the cobblestone path, trees and bushes of a hundred different varieties stood in a riot of color, each with a neat little placard giving its name and world of origin. Several were surrounded by decorative fences, and one of these quarantined plants shook and hooted as the pair passed by, its spherical fruit opening to reveal sucking lamprey mouths.

  “My name is Connell,” the eidolon said. “My master is Gatis Mirosoy, of the nation of Ustalav. More than thirty years ago, he called me forth from the aether of the Cerulean Void and gave me form, shaping me into his constant companion.”

  Salim nodded. He didn’t know much about the practices of the so-called summoners, but he knew that the spirits they used in their magical creations were drawn from the Outer Planes. They weren’t true souls—otherwise his own master, Pharasma the death goddess, would have something to say about the poaching—but they were close enough to provide the necessary animus. If Connell were a product of the chaotic Maelstrom, then it explained his appearance—and the disguising amulet. The serpentine proteans native to that plane were despised everywhere, but Axis had been at war with them since the universe began.

  All of these thoughts passed by in the time it took Connell to draw breath and continue.

  “For three decades, I served my master faithfully, protecting him from enemies, researching incantations, and managing his household affairs. He made this amulet specifically for me, so that I might treat with the local villagers on his behalf without unduly alarming them.” One slender axiomite hand came up to caress the object, where it hung on its repaired leather thong.

  “Sometimes, perhaps once every few years, his research would take us beyond the manor, to some forgotten library or dusty tomb where valuable knowledge lay languishing, waiting for the master to rescue it. It was on one of these excursions that he found the—the crown.” The eidolon’s voice caught, and for a moment he was silent.

  “Crown?” Salim prompted.

  “It’s terrible!” the eidolon wailed, then reined himself back to a more reasonable volume. “We found it in the burial chamber of Arachyx the Ghoul-Handed. The master had brought us there in search of an ancient tapestry, but as soon as he saw the crown, all thought of the original mission went out the window, and he had to have it. It’s a sick thing, an evil thing—a twisted band of iron with thorns that jut out in all directions, even back into the wearer’s scalp. The whole thing has a weird, slick feeling to it, not like iron at all, but like oiled or decomposing flesh. And when the thorns prick you, the blood never drips—the thorns suck it up. I hate it.” With this last pronouncement, a single tear welled up and rolled down the eidolon’s disguised nose, dropping to the dirt.

  “Missionary work is hardly Salim’s forte.”

  “After the master put it on, he…changed. Before, he’d been a quiet man, and stern as any good master, but not without a sense of humor. After that, he became something else. He lost all interest in summoning lesser servants from the distant planes, which before had been his greatest joy, and even quit experimenting with my form. Instead, all he wanted to do was research death. He became obsessed with creating undead things, from rat skeletons and dog zombies to more… substantial works.” Connell paused, embarrassed. “I dug up graves and brought him the remains of the townsfolk. He said we were just borrowing them.”

  “Right.”

  Connell shrugged, helpless. “He was my master. If he wanted to study necromancy, that was his prerogative. An eidolon doesn’t question.”

  Salim nodded, but trained ears had caught the verb tense. “Was?”

  All at once, the eidolon’s composure broke, and the face he turned to Salim was a caricature of anguish.

  “He sent me away,” Connell whispered. His tone made it sound like a death sentence. “In all my life, I had never been more than a mile from his side. But he had changed so much. He had never been over fond of travel, but now he never left the manor. He quit eating hardly at all, and would go for days without sleep. He ignored the clean clothes I left out for him. He tore down the shrine to the magic god Nethys, and built a new one to Urgathoa, the Pallid Princess. The old one was wood and paper, beautifully made. This one was made of parts from his—experiments.”

  Salim had seen plenty of such shrines, and could well imagine the decomposing limbs and reanimating scramblings it entailed. The Pallid Princess was a sick bitch, and made Salim’s own goddess look downright warm in comparison. Where Pharasma was, for all her faults, at least even-handed and devoted to perpetuating natural cycles, Urgathoa was devoted to undeath and gluttony, her necromancers filling the world with perverse beings that refused to die. Needless to say, the two ladies didn’t get along.

  “You said he sent you away.”

  Connell wrapped thin arms around himself. “It was that stupid crown—I know it was. After a while, he didn’t even take it off to sleep, and didn’t notice when the wounds from the thorns got infected. I tried to take it off him once—just for a minute, to clean them out!—and he threw me halfway across the room. And that was when he said he didn’t need me anymore.” Another slow tear. “That—that he had plenty of new servants. Better ones. And then he cast a spell, and I was somewhere else.”

  The eidolon went silent, and Salim gave him his space, recognizing in the set of his shoulders how hard this must be for him. After a moment, Connell continued.

  “He’d sent me back to the Maelstrom, the chaos plane he’d drawn me from. Except it didn’t feel like home anymore. I was awkward, and lonely, and everything I met was either terrified of me or trying to eat me. But worse—I could still feel him. My master. The thread was faint—so faint—but I could still feel him.” The eidolon pointed to the rune on his forehead. “I’m still my master’s creature.”

  “That’s when I realized how much danger he was in. He had his undead things, but they were still weak, and sooner or later someone was going to get fed up with the grave robbing and try to do s
omething about it. And I wouldn’t be there to protect him.”

  Salim was starting to get tired of the eidolon’s puppylike devotion. He attempted to hurry the story along. “And so?”

  “So I went to see Pharasma.”

  Salim stopped walking so abruptly that Connell almost tripped and fell over onto a flower whose blossoms were shaped like tethered hummingbirds, petal-wings buzzing frantically to pull them away from the clumsy eidolon.

  “You went to the Boneyard?” Perhaps Salim had underestimated the creature. Though the goddess of death wasn’t the sort to slay anyone out of hand—quite the opposite, in fact—there were plenty of other beings around the Gray Lady’s realm who were less discriminating, and the journey there was hardly easy.

  “It took a while,” the eidolon agreed, “but I got there eventually. Some nice crow-vulture-things in masks led me in and showed me to one of her servants, a black-winged angel called Ceyanan. I think you know him?”

  “You could say that,” Salim said wryly. In the same sense that you know your master, he thought, just without the hopeless love. But he didn’t bother confusing the eidolon with his own problems.

  “He was very nice,” Connell said. “I simply explained the situation as best I could, and he agreed that it would be in Pharasma’s interest to help me.” Here the eidolon grinned, and despite the amulet’s illusion, Salim could easily imagine the serpentine smile beneath it. “See, it’s not just the necromancy—I know the goddess hates undead, but that problem will take care of itself when someone eventually comes along and kills him. The real issue is the crown. It’s what’s changed him and made him do all these evil things—I’m positive. And if it’s the crown, that means it’s not his fault. And if it’s not his fault”—here the eidolon raised a triumphant finger—”then it shouldn’t affect the final judgment of his soul. It’s a tricky situation. If my master dies while the crown’s magic is making him do bad things, does that count against him? Does his soul go to Urgathoa, or to Nethys? At the very least, it seems like a long and complicated judgment is in order.”