Diablo 3: The Reaper of Souls (28 page)

"COME."

Valla called to Bellik, "Unlock the door."

Bellik's eyes shot back and forth between Sahmantha and Valla. "Is it safe?"

"No harm will come. I'll see to it."

After an instant's hesitation Bellik did as he was instructed. The girl, chin to her chest and hair hanging so that it was impossible for her to see where she walked, nonetheless proceeded unerringly into the stable.

Bellik gave her a wide berth, and then he and Valla followed as the girl passed the first stalls where the other children were held. To their right, the older girl who had hefted the stone earlier stood at a door, grasping the bars, and when she spoke, it was in the gushing voice of the demon.

"I AM OLPHESTOS. I AM THE INFILTRATOR, PROCURER, HERD OF THE WRETCHED, AND FLAYER OF THE WRITHING DAMNED..."

Bellik glanced about in horror, his palms pressed once again to his ears as Sahmantha shuffled on. The boy who had dragged the sword in the street pulled himself up to peer through a window on the other side, the voice continuing, issuing now from his mouth.

"THE FOMENTER, GATHERER, INFLICTOR, AND THROAT OF THE SILENT SCREAM..."

Another child spoke from a stall on Sahmantha's right. "THE FERRYMAN OF LOST DREAMS, SHATTERED HOPE, AND WITHERING DESPAIR..."

At the final stall appeared the smith's son. There was a bloody vacancy where his front teeth had once been.

"THE READY RIGHT HAND OF TERROR. THE INWARD-STARING EYE. KNOW ME, AND KNOW THE UNSPEAKABLE."

Bellik stayed close to Valla as Sahmantha stepped out into the sunlight.

Valla exited behind her, pushed back her hood, and forced her way through the gathered crowd.

"Make room! All of you! Bellik, a hand!"

The townspeople pressed in, questioning, accusing. Bellik shouted for the throng to make way as Sahmantha staggered forward.

Valla parted the crowd ahead of the little girl, who continued on. Her movements were erratic, spasmodic at some points, yet graceful and almost liquid at others. The knot of people proceeded past the shops on the eastern edge of town.

Sahmantha sped up her pace, and several of the townspeople fell behind. Bellik gasped for air, his face red with the exertion.

They had made their way along a desolate stretch of dirt road, little more than a path out into the fields beyond. Sahmantha stumbled out onto a patch of dead grass, stopped, turned. Her head straightened, and the demon's gale-speak burst forth once again.

"SEEK YOU TO STAND BEFORE ME? THEN COME..."

The girl grinned slowly, but when she spoke next, it was with the voice of only a child, of little Sahmantha Halstaff. "We can play roughhouse together."

Without warning the girl's eyes closed. Her body went limp and collapsed.

Valla rushed forward and leaned close to make sure Sahmantha still lived. She could hear the child's breath.

Most of the townspeople who had fallen behind caught up now, circling the demon hunter. Bellik stood nearby, steadying his breathing. Valla looked up as if expecting the demon to fall out of the sky.

Then, she looked down. She took note of the blighted grass, running her fingers over it. It spread out over a large expanse, stretching far and tapering on either side, forming the general shape of a massive eye. There were black spots throughout as well—demonic contamination.

"Healer, what's below us?"

Bellik's eyebrows lifted. "Nothing."

"That ain't 'xactly so."

Both Valla and Bellik turned to one of the observers, a rotund farmer with a bushy white mustache.

"The river Bohsum would be right 'bout underneath our feet."

Bellik watched Valla, and whether or not it was a trick of the light, he was unsure, but it seemed that she had gone slightly pale.

"But I heard the river as I rode in last night. I hear it faintly even now."

The mustached farmer's brow dipped in what appeared to be mild annoyance.

"That ain't the real Bohsum... Just a channel dug out by the settlers ages ago, meant ta divert the water... 'Cause the real Bohsum flows outta the Deadfall Mountains—"

The farmer turned and pointed northeast.

"—and pretty soon comes to a sinkhole. Then it goes underground... runs through these parts deep below for quite a ways 'fore comin' back up two days' journey to the west."

Valla scanned the immediate surroundings.

"No well?"

"Soil outside o' town's fertile enough, but the ground right here's harder 'n iron. Easier for the old timers to dig the channel."

Valla sighed as she replied, "This sinkhole and the place where the river resurfaces... there are no other ways to get down there?"

The farmer spat. "Nope."

"And where's the sinkhole?"

The farmer nodded toward the mountains. "'Bout half a day that way."

Bellik peered at Valla inquisitively. "So... so what now?"

The sawyer's daughter raised her hood and swept the crowd with her gaze.

"Stay here, and stay together. There is strength in numbers. Take Sahmantha back to the stables. Bind and lock away any other children under sixteen summers." She looked again to Bellik.

"And get me my horse so I can go kill your demon."

It sounded like a thunderstorm.

Valla stood at the lip of the cavity into which the Bohsum flowed, her eyes lost in the swirling waters of the sinkhole. The river entered the depression here and spiraled slowly at the edges, more vigorously inward, before finally disappearing into the darkness at its center, down into the unknown below.

The spray of it felt cool on her face as the twisting vortex and the sound like a gale took Valla's mind back to a night weeks after the attack on her village...

Valla and Halissa were huddled together for warmth as the rain pounded the earth. Halissa had fallen into an exhausted sleep. But, as had been the case for so many nights before, she was beset by nightmares of the massacre. Halissa woke up, screaming, and ran...

Nearby, the swollen river raced. Halissa ran too close to its banks, and she slipped in the mud... Halissa reached out her hand...

Valla had feared that Halissa would be swept away, lost forever... lost like the rushing waters that spiraled now into the core of the sinkhole, so very much like an eyeless socket.

Her heart sank at the recollection, but she had grasped Halissa's hand. It had worked out. Everything had worked out in the end.

Back in the here and now, the absence in Valla's memory was more pronounced, a persistent nothingness. Whatever the missing piece was, Valla vowed, it did not matter. She felt more tired than ever, but she would finish this. For Halissa.

She knew that her armor would only weigh her down, and so she shed it, piece by piece. Her weapons she placed in a satchel given to her by Bellik for just such a purpose. In the satchel also were flint and tinder wrapped in goatskin. To these she added her bolas and various explosive-tipped bolts.

She removed her cloak and hood and placed them in the satchel as well so they would not encumber her in the water. Once stripped of her vestments, Valla cinched the satchel and stepped to the edge of the cleft.

Valla could think of nothing more unconscionable than a demon that would corrupt children. She felt a heat rise within her core, a seething fury. But that was what the demon wanted, wasn't it?

She thought of Delios. Of his failure.

A demon hunter must always temper hatred with discipline.

Part of her knew that she might not survive the plunge, that the churning waters could pull her to a watery death.

Valla took a deep breath and jumped.

It was a kind of isolated chaos within the roiling eye of the sinkhole. The world surrendered to obscurity as her muscles struggled to negotiate her body's orientation. Her chest burned with held breath. She fought to maintain her grip on the satchel in the midst of it all. She was whipped, rolled, thrust, and submerged deeper and farther until her consciousness threatened to abandon her completely. The darkness and lack of positional awareness were absolute.

There was a sense of rapid movement; various parts of her body struck stony protrusions as she was carried by the river.

And then...

Her fingers found a snag. She had grasped a thick stalagmite and was bracing against the rushing tide. She pulled her head clear and drew in as much air as her chest could hold.

She felt the satchel in her hand and was relieved. The water in her eyes made it impossible to see, and even after she wiped her face against her arm, her vision still did not clear.

The air was cool down here. Valla probed with her foot and felt a wall of stone. Finally, the blurriness diminished as she swung the satchel onto a ledge and dragged herself out of the raging torrent.

She sat, allowing her body a moment to rest, taking in her surroundings. The immediate area opened into what appeared to be a warren of tunnels and alcoves. Luminescent algae coated the walls, stalactites and stalagmites, rocky columns, and parts of the roof. The light cast by it provided an eerie, unearthly glow that rendered a torch unnecessary.

Good, Valla thought. I can keep both hands free.

Detecting any noise other than the gushing water was impossible, as the thunderous roar echoed throughout. Valla removed her cloak—which, remarkably, had remained mostly dry—from the satchel and fastened it for warmth. She unpacked her weapons, relieved to see that the crimson bolt was still among them, then set her crossbows and stood, one in each hand.

She gazed into a cave with jagged limestone spikes protruding from top and bottom like a shark set to swallow its prey, and she spotted a shadow against the blackness beyond, flitting from one side to the other.

Valla pressed after it, and as she did she felt the first brush of the demon's mind against hers, a malefic, detestable presence lurking just outside her awareness, a wolf prowling at the edge of a dark forest.

The sensation became more insistent as she stepped into the cave, senses fully alert. Her pulse raced.

WELCOME, a voice spoke in her head. Valla moved to the back of the cave, where a tunnel receded into darkness, the algae much sparser upon the walls. Here and there were patches of the same black substance found at the well in Holbrook.

She knelt and dipped her fingers in the viscous muck.

WHAT PERSISTENCE YOU HAVE. WHAT DESIRE.

WHY?

THE EYE WILL SEE.

Valla stood and snuck into the tunnel, crossbows ready. There was movement across the floor, a slithering, and then she saw it, its skin glistening just a bit in what little light existed, a black tentacle that rose, unfurled, and whipped out at her. Valla fired a bolt and the thing jerked backward, but the crossbow was a poor weapon for this task. She slung one crossbow and removed a dagger even as she felt the demon probing inside her head now, a dull ache. She envisioned black tendrils within her mind, not unlike the oily appendage that attacked her.

SAWYER DAUGHTER.

Valla sliced across, shearing the tip off as the tentacle shot forward. It retracted quickly, but the presence in her mind was burrowing deeper.

DELIGHTFUL MEMORIES YOU KEEP INSIDE, BLOOD SACK. RIPE FOR PLUCKING.