The Belandria Tarot

Chapter 2: The Devil

With a flash of light, the devil named Zeb crashed into a world painful in its concreteness.

"You dare call me to this place?" He reached to tear the fool's head from his body to begin its punishment, but his hands met a searing barrier. His howl shook the stones of the tower.

The foolish mage fell to his knees bleeding from nose and ears, yet kept his incantation going, finishing before he let his shaking hands fall.

"Be silent, Devil. I called you and you will obey me." The puny mage's voice was rasping and thin, yet it contained power that Zeb struggled against.

"You are tired and hurt, human. How long will you be able to keep up your feeble spell? Death will be just the beginning of your suffering."

"You will obey. You are mine."

The devil's laughter rolled over the mage. The mortal screamed with the pain, and almost lost his control of the barrier.

"Almost had you," Zeb chuckled cruelly. "Why don't you just give it up? Eternity isn't that long."

The mage fought back to his feet and began a new incantation. Zeb fell silent, for the first time since he had been yanked into this room. This one had a depth that he hadn't imagined. The mage smiled, as Zeb threw himself against the barrier trying to break through, fighting against the power crushing him like a great hand. Zeb howled, then shrieked and finally whimpered, but to no avail. The mage slowly and torturously brought the devil to its knees.

"You are mine. You will serve me and do my will in all things," the mage said.

"I am what I am because I refused to serve one who is infinitely greater than you. Why should I serve you?" Even in his humiliation the devil's voice made the human cringe.

"You will serve because I will compel it. I will wrap you with chains even you will not break. The mage began a third incantation. The word began to crush the demon again. Zeb fought a long weary battle, but knew himself to be the inevitable loser. He had misjudged this one from the beginning. Yet, one day, he would hold this human's soul in his hands and crush it to dust. The spell pushed him toward a body that lay sodden on the floor. In blind panic, Zeb fought to avoid that fate. He never knew how close he came to breaking loose as the spell forced him into suffocating darkness.

In the black, a voice came to him and spoke with agonizing power.

"You are mine, and you will do my will as by my will you are bound."

Zeb twisted and turned to hide from the excruciating voice, but it surrounded him with unendurable pain. Still he refused, until the devil was but a weak voice whimpering refusal.

"No. I will not serve."

Finally, when the voice reached the point of snuffing out the devil's existence, it stopped.

"Then I will bind you by flesh and power. This is the geas that I lay upon you. You will slay the king of this land at the time of my choosing. Only by his blood will you buy your freedom. Defy me and I will send pain. Obey and you will live. Anything you claim, I will seek out and destroy. Whether you say it or not, you are mine."

The power vanished with a snap and Zeb threw himself at his tormentor. Rough hands caught him and threw him to the floor. A boot kicked him and he struggled for breath. He had never imagined the agony involved in breathing. The rancid odour of the humans in the room assaulted him. Lifted to his feet again, a hard hand slapped him. As often as the devil had dealt and received pain in the spirit realm, nothing prepared him for the white heat of physical pain. To his disgust his body cowered from a man who wasn't any taller than the body Zeb inhabited. Twisted by scars that covered every visible part of his body, his hair grey, yet the man's eyes glittered with a cold blue gaze as if hoping that Zeb would attack again. Zeb hung his head.

"Enough," said the mage, "you know what to do with him."

"Come on, ye reeking sack of bones," the man pushed Zeb toward the door. "We got work to do."

The stairs were yet another t*****e for Zeb. He wasn't sure of his legs yet. Walking in his 'reeking sack of bones' was like trying to control his feet by pulling strings tied to his toes. Several times, Zeb stumbled, and the men ahead or behind caught him, roughly pushing him to his feet.

They finally arrived on the main level. Zeb was led to a cart and pushed in the back.

"The master wants ye trained, so trained ye will be, though the devil knows what he wants with ye."

The devil does know, and it is nothing good. Zeb quickly fell asleep. Dreams of the mage's cruel voice flaying his spirit and laying him open troubled him. He only woke when the One's light entered his dream, banishing the dark visions of the mage. Zeb sat up with a shout with something banging in his chest like an animal trying to escape. The demon tried to curse in the language of his own kind, but his mortal lips couldn't shape the words.

When the men driving the cart saw that Zeb was awake they made him walk.

"Ye can't fight if ye can't walk," the man the mage gave him to for training said.

Zeb swore at his tormentor. The man just laughed.

"Y'll call me Trainer, I don't care what other words ye add in." He snapped the reins and set the horses to a faster pace.

Over the next week, Zeb learned to walk, then run. Fortunately, his body remembered how to eat and deal with other functions that Zeb had only known of in the abstract. It was one more torment that his 'trainers' stood over him and jeered and commented on every disgusting detail. He was forced to bury the stinking results with a wooden shovel little better than a flat stick.

They arrived at a castle with low walls surrounded by a moat filled with turbid green water. By this time, Zeb walked, and even ran, easily.

"Ye won't want to be drinking from there, or you will die of the chills." Trainer spat into the water. "Tis cursed by the master himself."

They put Zeb in a small, windowless room with a cot and a bucket with a lid. Sounds of men training and working came through the thick wood of the door. The room smelled musty, but it wasn't damp.

"Work hard and I give ye more. Cause trouble and I take away what ye got."

Zeb began a routine of eating whatever food his trainers put in front of him, then working through a series of exercises that tested the limits of his control over the body he inhabited. Gradually, he learned to live in his prison of flesh. He even learned that it could feel more than pain. He began to notice the taste of the food he was given, liking some dishes and not others, though he ate them all. He discovered pleasure in his increasing control of his body.

His training took place in an open yard surrounded by stone walls. The rank smell of the moat floated over one wall. A gate gave a view to another yard with stairs up to the wall and the gate to the outside. The only door was the one they led him through each morning.

A chair and small table appeared in Zeb's cell. The day that they handed him a weighted club the length of his arm he attacked Trainer with all the fury pent up inside him. Trainer just laughed as he danced away from Zeb's attack and covered his pupil with bruises. When Zeb was barely able to stand, Trainer knocked him down.

"Ye might just do, if ye can control that temper. Anger will make ye strong, but it will make ye stupid too."

After that, Trainer took every opportunity to push Zeb to lose his temper, then taunted him as he beat him to a pulp.

The weather grew warmer and the pace of training picked up. Trainer took to making Zeb run through the woods while he rode a horse and whipped him with a thin rod when he slowed too much. Now Zeb was being matched against two or three opponents at once.

One morning, Zeb walked into the training yard, to find Trainer standing by a table covered with swords of different lengths and shapes.

"They're blunted. So if ye got any ideas forget them. Pick up a weapon and get the heft of it." He described each as Zeb handled it. "Short sword, good for formation work, but ye won't be doing any of that. Someone with a long sword will cut ye to pieces. Long sword is better, but tis heavy. Ye need to be strong and fast. If ye go up against some fancy boy with one of these rapiers, he'll stick ye in the eye before ye get a swing at him. This one with the teeth looks scary enough, but it will stick in chainmail and ye'll look the fool trying to free your sword while someone else chops ye up. There are other weapons, too, but we ain't got time to deal with them."

Trainer put Zeb through the basics of each weapon, but then handed him the long sword.

"This is what ye'll be using."

Sword drill was the same as with the clubs. Mistakes were punished with bruises, triumphs rewarded by a grunt of pain from his opponent.

The day came when Zeb held a sharp sword as he faced a nervous opponent.

"What's the matter, Johnny, don't think ye can take this bag of flatulence? If he kills ye, I'll take away his piss pot."

A strange expression crossed Zeb's face - a smile. Stretching it into a feral grin, he saluted Johnny with his sword.

Johnny swallowed and brought his sword to the ready.

Zeb lunged at his opponent, but Johnny stepped aside and was able to block. Zeb kept up a barrage of attacks, but each parried by an increasingly confident Johnny. They chased each other back and forth across the yard.

"Enough," Trainer finally called. "Y're almost ready."

"For what?" Zeb asked.

"Don't know, don't care," Trainer said. "Master said get ye ready. Y're almost ready." He took the sword from Zeb and dismissed Johnny. "Y're wasting energy trying to overwhelm your opponent. Watch and learn; yer enemy will teach you his weaknesses, and then you use them to defeat him."

Zeb wasn't given an edged weapon again, but he was soon matched against multiple opponents once more. His sparring partners took to wearing light armour, as Zeb made no pretense of trying to pull his blows. Now that he was trained and aware, he reveled in the physical sensations of combat. The feel of a blow landing on an opponent, the look of apprehension on their faces, even his own bruises became pleasures.

Zeb gave no thought to the mage, so it was a shock when he turned from training to see the figure in a black robe watching. He bared his teeth and would have lunged to the attack, but his muscles failed and dumped him in the dirt. The mage came over and nudged Zeb with a toe.

"Good enough." Power rumbled in his voice. "It will be convincing. The fool king will die at your hands." He walked away leaving Zeb to struggle to his feet.

The next day, he was brought a clean set of clothes. When he arrived at the training square in the rough homespun, Trainer was waiting for him.

"It is time for you to serve your master's purpose; we will take you into the city and you will be told what to do from there."

The black knot building in Zeb since the previous day exploded. The mage might be able to turn his muscles to water, but not Trainer. Zeb moved faster than he had yet in training and snatched the trainer's sword from his belt and cut the man's throat. Men ran from all corners of the yard to attack Zeb, but he slaughtered them as fast as they arrived. Bruises and pain had been part of training, now blood spattered the sand and put the taste of salt on his lips.

Zeb picked up a second sword and cut and slashed his way to the gate. The stink of spilled guts and blood set him to laughing. Men, eyes white with fear, blocked his way with spears, he couldn't reach them with the swords. He fled up the stairs to the wall and jumped off into the moat. The slam of the water dashed the swords from his hands, but he didn't need them now.

By the time Zeb crawled from the moat and headed for the forest, archers had made it to the wall. Their arrows fell around him as he ran. One struck him in the back, but Zeb ignored it as he ran through the forest.

No sounds of pursuit followed him. Killing Trainer should confuse them enough to let him escape. The arrow was a nuisance but he'd deal with it later.

For some reason, he lost speed, bumping and crashing into trees. Zeb kept running until he reached a road. Instead of bursting onto it to overpower whoever was there, he staggered out and collapsed in front of a cart being pulled by a donkey.

As darkness swelled to drown him, he bared his teeth.

"I will not serve.