A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

late he swallowed down the liquid fire, feeling it pour into his body. . .

Lilla had watched him take the cup, curious at what had come over him. But then in the next moment, he dashed the cup from his hands, flung himself backwards and started choking on the floor. It was shocking, startling, but immediately she was on her knees beside him. ‘Help him,’ she begged. ‘He’s choking! Help him!’

His eyes were wide and staring as he clawed at his own throat and then, with horribly slow deliberation, they rolled back in his skull. All of them apart from her stood frozen in shock. She managed to pull him onto his side but as she did a thick jet of vomit suddenly spewed from his throat in a foul, glutinous gush across the stones.

‘What’s happening?’ she cried. Domnicus was the first to respond. He was next to her. Erlan’s body was convulsing violently, his skull thudding against the stone. ‘Put something under his head, quickly,’ ordered the priest. Then Gerutha was there, her shawl scrunched into a ball – she tried to wind it around his thrashing head but his movements were too violent. ‘Hold him. Hold him!’

Einar was on his knees, his big fists pressing down on his friend, locking his shoulders against the floor to stop him doing himself worse harm. Then Erlan’s mouth opened, so wide he looked like a snake dislocating its jaw. It was obscene. And suddenly a voice shrieked from inside him, filled with such rage and pain. A voice, yes, but not his own. It was something inhuman, something evil. Erlan’s arm broke free, he seized Einar by the collar and flung him away as though he was made of goose down.

‘Get the cross,’ Domnicus instructed Gerutha. ‘There! The one on the altar.’ Gerutha ran to fetch it. ‘There’s a demon in him, I think. I’ve seen this before. Not many times but. . . do not loosen your grip on him. He will harm us and himself if not restrained.’

The emperor stood above them, peering over. ‘Can you help him?’

‘Maybe. Hold him, I said,’ Domnicus snapped angrily at Einar who had crawled back into position.

‘You bloody hold him, priest – he’s too strong for me. Just what the hell is going on?’

‘Prayer drives it out,’ Domnicus gasped, pushing down on his chest.

‘Drives what out? What’s in him?’

‘An evil spirit has its hold in him.’

‘What can I do?’ asked Leo.

‘Help restrain him.’

There was a foul smell – like burning flesh and something rotten. Lilla, too, was leaning on his waist which was bucking around in his fit. Her hand touched the leather belt at his waist. It was scorching hot. ‘The belt,’ she said, recoiling her hand, and then remembered. ‘That thing. It’s of something evil, too.’

Gerutha returned with the cross. Domnicus snatched it from her and pressed it onto Erlan’s chest. He screamed once more with the voice of a fiend and smoke started skirling off the belt. There was a sizzle of flesh like meat on a griddle. ‘Cut it off him!’ she cried. Einar drew his knife and jammed the blade under the belt, heedless of whether he cut his friend. The leather split in a second and immediately burst alight. Einar seized it like a poisonous snake and threw it across the floor where it continued to burn.

Domnicus was praying, invoking the name of his God over Erlan in a voice almost as strange as the demon’s, his words resounding with an unnatural authority. He commanded the demon to come out of him but the response was only a jabber of words. They sounded like dark curses in a language Lilla didn’t understand.

‘Do you know what he’s saying?’ she asked.

‘That’s Aramaic,’ replied Domnicus, drawing breath. ‘He is cursing God and the name of Christ. And me!’ He suddenly laughed. ‘You cannot win, devil! You cannot! You must obey Christ! He is the firstborn of creation, the Son of the Most High God. His death was your defeat! His blood overcomes all things. His cross stands between you and this man! The cross defeats you!’ These words were all too strange for Lilla. She was still bewildered that some other spirit could somehow be in the man she loved. ‘Come out of him, devil!’

‘I—will—not,’ croaked a voice in Norse from Erlan’s throat that sent a chill through Lilla’s blood. It was thick and dark and crackled like angry fire, like many voices speaking at once. The sound of it drew out a memory, one she had wished never again to come to the surface.

‘Azazel,’ she murmured.

‘Shut your whore mouth, you sadistic bitch!’ snarled the voice on her lover’s lips.

‘What did you say?’ Domnicus stole a glance at her.

‘It is his name. The Witch King’s name. . . Azazel.’

The priest nodded, his eyes narrowing. ‘Yes. I see.’ He seemed to recognize the strange name. ‘Azazel – the fallen one. Yes!’ He turned back to Erlan’s rigid body and bent over him, unafraid. ‘I know you, Azazel – demon of hell! You fell with the Morning Star. In the name of Christ, I command you to come out of this man!’ the priest bellowed, but the demon only filled the hall with another ear-rending shriek. Erlan’s eyes snapped open and rolled forward, except now they were not the eyes of a man but great pits of welling darkness. Eyes of evil. They rolled right and fixed on the emperor. Suddenly a surge of inhuman strength broke like a wave through his body, his hands threw off their restraint and he seized Leo by the throat.

‘You shit spawn usurper!’ the voice rasped, Erlan’s hand choking the life out of him. He leaned forward over him, spittle drooling down in strings into the emperor’s gaping mouth. ‘I will destroy your legacy, cross fucker. I will make your name a smear of shit.’

‘Pull him off!’ Domnicus tugged ineffectually at Erlan’s arm but only earned himself an elbow in the face and went reeling back.