Shadows & Sorcery #144
The ghouls and spookies are out a-leapin’ so you’d better stay in and read this one hundred and forty-fourth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
I hope no one minds, but I may have gone overboard in multiple places this week and only one story actually counts as flash fiction. Also I royally screwed up, because in my (completely understandable) mad dash to write about wizards, I completely and irrevocably RUINED the schedule—this week was meant to be a new Path of Poison chapter! Please forgive me, for I won’t forgive myself.
Anyway, new logo, AND now a new email header! We’re all up to date, looking good aren’t we?
A triple threat this week with all the weird cults, dark gods, and sorcerous shenanigans you’ve come to tolerate here at S&S. Last week had some of that, too, and if you just got here or missed it, check that bad boy out HERE
And lastly, my friends, please take a second and tap that little heart button to leave a like! Let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we delve into the under-city in search of the Church of the Dream, we seek a dire cure in a savage world for Fire Madness, and we join an old friend to banish a frightful Wind of Dark…
Church of the Dream
The under-city was a tangle of sloping alleys, of long tunnels formed from the undersides of great bridges, of networks of habitations cobbled together between the foundations of larger structures above, it was lost streets, obscured courts, and forgotten buildings. The sound of a deep, distant bell served as his guide, carried and somehow enhanced by the cool dampness that persisted in the under-city after strong rains above. Its echoes sounded throughout the maze like exhalations, and the mist which clung to far off side-streets only strengthened the impression. The bell was a call, but not for him. It called for the Dream. Still, it had been useful in the early days, though he more than knew his way to the church now.
Down a short flight of thick, sagging wooden steps, into a deep alcove, and there was the double oak gate of the Church of the Dream. One of several, or so he understood. After all these years of deliveries, of all the faces he'd seen from the city above, of all the inner chambers he'd been granted access to, of all he'd learned of the Dream itself, he still couldn't quite make up his mind as to whether this was a legitimate cult, the just fancies of aristocrats, or the under-city forgotten looking to leave the world behind for a little while. But he was fond of them all the same, and he made sure they got good stock.
He knocked a "triple trinity" of three times three knocks and waited a moment. Apparently the rhythm was good for not bothering Dreamers within, and he'd made sure to remember that. The left-side door opened a crack, and immediately the sweet pungency of the den trailed out. From within the dim interior a face peered, a rather short, red-haired girl. Oh, she was new, he thought. But she had the eyes, the ones that aren't really looking at you when they're looking at you. She must have had the Dream. She knew who he was though, or had been told, and with a big smile wordlessly showed him in.
The crimson stone walls were deeper in hue than usual—new paint?—and the wide wooden beams across the gently arched ceiling had a few new gold disks hanging from them that tinkled pleasantly as the girl trailed her fingers through them. The long, low bell sounded deeper in here. Divans and cushions were piled into rounded recesses that lined short off-shoot corridors, wherein figures reclined. They, however, merely slept. Waiting to Dream. The ground was soft and padded for the sake of them. Down the central passage and through a gilded door they silently slipped, and into a domed library lit by tall braziers where his old acquaintance sat.
She was all of pure mahogany—her waving locks, her dark eyes, her dusky skin, as well as the air of the occult about her. He was sure she was quite beautiful, but her manner, though perfectly friendly, was distant in a way he never could fully grasp, and it did something to his perception of her. He always got the idea she had seen something. Whether it was some past trauma that affected her—and perhaps drove her to this den—or whether she'd really seen so much of the Dream as she'd hinted, it was another thing he couldn't fit into place. He showed her the merchandise as always, and studied her in the moments they were not in discussion.
The flowers were rare, expensive, and gorgeous to behold. Low, wide things that grew on cold pools, composed of a thousand shades of purple, and bearing a thick, sweet scent that demanded to be drunk deep. He couldn't really help himself, and he shared this with her, and to an extent, the Church. The potency wasn't just in their bulbs, it was in the petals, it coursed through the stems, and gathered in the roots. One of these flowers supplied enough of the drug for a full month. A lungful of it was enough to make the head swim for a second. Burnt and inhaled, or soaked and imbibed, they sent you into slumbers that were all but death itself—just enough so that you may still Dream.
And according to his acquaintance, Dream they did. For years on end. Saints and prophets of the Dreaming Church, coming messiahs of an age where knowledge from beyond the wall of sleep would enlighten the whole of the world. He had seen those Dreamers once, and it was the closest he had ever come to believing.
With a finely carved little box of thick coins under his arm, he and his old acquaintance exchanged a polite kiss on the cheek as befitting those of such stations and familiarity, and he was led out by the glaze-eyed girl. He enjoyed his visits to the Church. He had been to one other, but it wasn't the same. He thought, as he always did as he left, that either he had the best customers for life, or he had inroads with the truth. Either way, it was a win for him.
Fire Madness
"How long have you gazed into the fire? Look for only a second, and it just flickers, or jumps. But if you let your eyes stray slower over it, you can see deeper into the fire. Where it swirls and churns like so many crystals. The lights dance in your eyes, blotting out everything until you see the lashing tongues, begging with cavernous hunger."
That was the last thing Kenou said before the madness took him some time in the night. His brothers had went to bed full well knowing what was about to happen. Just a few hours before dawn, charred, sightless eyes peered into cupped hands that cradled nothing but air as a cloak was draped over him, and his brothers quietly ushered him past the heavy curtain and out of their domicile in the cliff-side village.
He had always been a sensitive fellow. The two brothers glanced to the glaze-eyed madman who now held his arms around himself in the cold pre-dawn air, and frowned. Things had always affected him in ways they never did anyone else. He talked of things to his brothers, and to their kith in the village, things he had seen in his dreams, or in storm clouds, or under icy waters, when others would have liked to forget them. While his brothers had mourned long their parents, Kenou had gotten over his sorrow swiftly, accepting this grand change, but the wound their hound sustained in a slight accident stuck with him for weeks, long after the beast was back to its old self. The way it huffed and whined as it lay by their fire, unable to do anything about the pain, affected him horribly.
Medou, his immediate eldest brother, often reckoned a mighty intellect in the village, now wondered if that was where the fire madness began. The worshipper would probably know. By earth and bones, what they were doing now was risky. But Jetou, the eldest of the three, was fond of his littlest brother's funny ways, he had always been a welcome diversion in the fields or at the mill, even if Jetou didn't quite understand. Medou wasn't going to argue, but he did wonder what the worshipper of the gods could really do outside the stories folk told.
In the sunlight, the gold on green was invigorating. A well-trod trail passed through a section of lightly forested country alongside a wide, stepped gorge with short waterfalls and black rocks which jutted from the foamy waters. On the opposite side, huge trees with curved trunks and hanging moss trailed into the sky. In the distance great broad craggy hills rose with mist at their peaks. But in the dark, the trail was dim, the river was a slick black roaring streak, and the trees were like great strange giants that peered from the shadows. The hills and their pearlescent mists melted into the night sky that swirled with cold stars. But it wasn't quiet—far from it. The night was never quiet. Hoots and calls shot from the distance and overhead, and the pad of feet and scrabbling of talons was ever present. The night was alive with vicious hunters who sought the advantage of darkness against each other, though all were born to it.
The worst part of all this was they couldn't even bring a torch. Not with Kenou being the way he was. Not with thoughts of hungry flames in his head.
Jetou came to a halt, and held his mad brother by the shoulders. Medou stopped, too, and crouched low. Feet ran in one direction, others leapt into a tree elsewhere. The brothers were broad-men, and stood always on their two feet, their still great strong arms good for industry. But this country, especially at night, was the realm of skitter-men, the shaggy, snout-faced folk who ran and killed from hands and feet. In the day they lazed in the sun on their treetops, filling themselves on the night's kills. Jetou was the eldest, and the strongest. He had his copper tipped axe with him, but feared his near blindness in the night. The stars merely gave things a dim outline, definition was lost in the murk, in which a dozen skitter-men might be crouching right now. One or two strikes with the copper tip would send a skitter-man off, but they were kings of these woods. If only the worshipper of the gods lay towards the savannah, thought Jetou, where wholesome grey-furred boulder-men lived. Jetou liked them, they were the strongest and none challenged them, and their villages were kith. A fine ally to have now, but even those mighty folk would balk at a worshipper of the gods.
Jetou took out his axe and tried to shine the copper tip in the starlight as they shuffled along their brother. Low, breathy sounds passed from one unseen foe to the other. Skitter-men didn't have so many words, many less than broad-men, mostly they talked like beasts did. Medou knew some of their sounds from hunting, and he was surprised when he heard them speaking "unsure", "afraid", "nervous". Why? Was it Kenou? He didn't know, but for now, he told Jetou, though it didn't make him put his axe away. The skitter-men stayed back some distance, although they followed almost the whole trail until the trees thinned out, and the dark dusky plains began, their long grasses shifting like deep waters, through which the brothers now passed.
An arc of paleness tinged the far horizon. It had taken longer to get here than the brothers thought it would. But the temple stood before them, set against a steeper rise on the low hill they had come to. A fire burned before four tall, flat, painted stones. Kenou raised his face as they came near, as if from a daze, but neither of his brothers thought he really saw anything but the fire with those eyes. The monoliths were old, the painted images and the stone around them chipped, faded, and stained.
They could not tell who or what was behind the mask of the figure that now crept forth from the deep shadows the flames threw forth, covered in a long robe of furs and straw, draped in many dozens of small things which hung from knots all over. The visage was a great disk with naught but two large painted eyes, and from it emerged the words of broad-men, but not how broad-men would speak them. It had seen the fire madness before. It knew it well.
"Fire, oldest power, older than tongues..." its head turned to Jetou, "older than weapons." It came forward and from its ragged shroud emerged an arm caked in crumbling black ashes. It lightly tipped Kenou's head upward, and seemed to peer into his eyes. "Men were not meant to have it. Gods forgot it on the field of battle. Like tongues and weapons. So only gods have power over it."
The worshipper made signs in the air with its hand, and then turned from them, shuffling back to the monoliths. It crouched before them, and to a small metal chest that sat there. It beckoned them to it without moving. A sudden weight fell upon Medou's feet as the fire flared and threw living light upon the painted idols which seemed to leer and dance and leap. Even Jetou tensed before them, wondering if, at any moment, some terrible being might emerge. The worshipper stood and held something up then. It was on a long length of black knotted thread, a collection of what looked like desiccated flowers or herbs, themselves black, wrapped in rough leather.
"Pray," said the worshipper.
"To what?" asked Medou.
The worshipper pointed an ash-painted arm up into the inky blackness.
"The Night God."
Jetou did not hesitate, and uttered a simple supplication as he looked up, to what he barely even knew. The worshipper handed over the bundle, saying it was holy to the night, but its head was turned towards Medou, who looked away. He had wondered, since his brother and he had decided on this course of action, what good bringing the attentions of gods on them all would really bring. Fearsome tales abounded of the gods descending from their wars in the stars with wrath, or to steal men from the earth. A hundred stories flooded into his mind, but the resolute eyes of his brother steeled him. He would utter one prayer, and then only in his mind, for the gods to take back their fire, and pass their eyes over he and his kin.
Wind of Dark
Lysella was a healer. That's what she'd always been told, and it's what she'd always believed. She had the temperament for it, apparently. Or so everyone told her. She was good at it. Much of it came naturally. Not all of it, but enough for the village, most of the time. But this, with twenty years of experience, from a young age, this had her stumped. She couldn't say so, though. The way everyone kept looking to her, apologetic, desperate faces wondering, begging to take one more in. She'd met every one of their perceptions about her thus far. And in the face of this sickness, how could she say no?
At least that stranger in the public house wasn't sick. He seemed fine, kept to himself. He nodded when people passed him, gave smiles from under that great bush of beard. Kindly eyes, warm eyes, for all he was dressed like a sorcerer. She'd had a mind to enquire after him, but the way he hunched over his book, or leaned on his arm, told her not to. Not that he seemed dangerous, just...she didn't know. No doubt he was impatient to set sail to the Macha Clanhold, but still, why choose a little port village like this?
A sudden knock at the door. Serpent's Breath, another one? In the moments it took to set down her mortar and pestle, the thought once again welled up in her mind: when will I get sick? She banished it as she undid the latch and opened the door. She could feel the cold, and night was settling in already. Great. She pulled the door in to admit her patient, only it wasn't a patient. It was the stranger. Lysella stood still for a moment, a little surprised. He was looking past her, scanning the interior of the apothecary's house. His eyes darted back to her.
"I understand there is a sickness in the village?"
Fear burst open in her chest.
"Ah, yes, but please, if you stay back, return to the inn, there's very little, um, very little chance of-" she stammered out, but the old fellow stopped her.
"Oh, no no, I'm sorry, I bear no complaints," he said as if he felt he'd genuinely offended her. "I only mean to ask because I believe I may be of assistance."
"How...how so, sir?" she replied, hesitation and exhaustion mixing in her voice.
"My name is Carloman," he smiled. "I am a wizard."
She waved him in, and watched the stranger—the wizard as he glided in, his red cloak flowing behind him. He had a great big walking stick with him. Or a staff. Wizards had those. Some canons had them, too. This one was carved with all kinds of shapes she'd never seen before, foreign gods or magic symbols maybe. She recognized the long serpent shape which coiled around its whole length, though. He was walking among the meagre beds that packed the house, most lining the walls, some out on the floor. They were quiet. Horribly quiet. No moans of pain, ragged exhalations, nothing. Just laying there, breaths shallow and shaking, eyes seeing nothing. She could barely get them talk.
The wizard turned to her and walked slowly back, his brows furrowed over his worried amber eyes.
"I've never seen anything like this..." he said.
"Neither have I," she choked out, trying to be quiet but relieved to have finally been able to say it, before the fear crept back in. "None of my herbs, roots, nothing I can mulch up, none of my old medicine bottles," she whispered sharply, "I'm trying everything that is green and growing and rich, but nothing I feed them or get them to drink, nothing on the throat or chest," she was beginning to get louder, and the wizard put a hand on her shoulder.
"Tell me, how did this start? Did it come from a ship or aught else?"
"Came on bad weather."
"Weather?"
"Aye. About..." she clamped her eyes to focus, "seven days ago now, we had this, well, this weird storm. Been winter for two score days now, then sevenfold ago this dry wind, very unseasonable—we were all talking about it, not because we thought, great, summer is back already, but because it felt bad."
"Felt bad how, exactly?" Unease laced the wizard's tone, and his eyes wandered in thought.
"Dry. Warm. But like...it scratched the back of your throat, and made the air, I know I said it was dry, but it made it so warm at night."
"It came at night?" His eyes flashed to hers.
"Yeah, it comes with the night, stays until a little after the morning."
"It's been coming back?" he said sharply.
"We've had two nights—three now, hopefully this one without it."
"You are positive it came with those winds?"
"I am. I don't know, maybe it's some kind of imbalance in their bodies with this unusual weather-"
"From which direction does it come, do you know?"
"It comes from seaward, which is also weird."
The wizard did not reply, but his face said "of course it does" as his eyes hardened.
"Does...that matter?" she asked, wondering if she should have.
"I'm sorry, what's your name, dear?" asked the wizard.
"Lysella."
"Lysella, I want you to light some candles in here, and get that fire in your hearth healthy."
"I'm afraid that won't warm the place up much, sir, it's a draughty old house."
"Just keep this place as bright as you can."
"I'm sorry, but what's all this for?" She couldn't hide the tremor in her voice. Challenging a sorcerer, she felt stupid.
The wizard's hard eyes softened.
"The most vital thing you can do right now, as a healer and as their kin, is provide your people with light and flame. Oh, and, ah," he set his staff against a wall and began patting around his pouches and pockets for something, before pulling out a small orange gem. He then held his hand in a curious way, crossing all his fingers, placing the gem on the palm and breathing it, which, to Lysella's shock as she actually jumped back, it flared to life. "Don't worry, dear, it's quite cool. Hold the stone to your candles, it will light them, however many you have, and then pop it in your fireplace and it'll do the work. Just keep feeding it wood." She took the gem he held out between her finger and thumb, holding it at some length. The wizard retrieved his staff and made for the door.
"And where are you going, sir?"
"To banish this foul wind," said the red wizard with a rumble like thunder.
Beyond the healer's house, the twilight was still, but Carloman could sense a disquiet in the upper air, like a thousand spirits whirled and rushed about. Fleeing, perhaps. The dark winter air held a deep chill, but here beside the sea, it was brisk and quickening. That was good. Now, thought the wizard, where would be the best place to do this? Somewhere high, preferably. But alas, no cliffs. Not even a temple roof. And he couldn't quite scramble up one of the huts. The village was spread thin across a stretch of rather nice coastline with rocky beaches. He could see up and down the coast a short ways, and then it hit him—the pier. Perfect.
Night fell true as he made it to the pier. The difference between the deepest moment of twilight and night proper was the lack of definition on things. It made the world formless, unreal. There was the potential in that to do a lot of very useful things, but it also confused things, and as such, it was something Carloman never made much use of if he could help it. The stars were dim overhead with the weather—long wisps of high cloud obscured many of them. The ocean sighed. And then, by slight degrees that suddenly shot into a dozen snaking currents, a musty warmth flowed across the pier, the water, and forward onto the beach and village. S'eth, he didn't think it would arrive at the actual moment of nightfall. It sure enough, it stuck in the throat, making the wizard cough loudly. He banged his staff on the wooden pier three times and barked an arcane word of flame, but felt that scratchiness creeping back. He hoped Lysella had the candles and hearth going by now. She, and her patients, would need it.
Carloman continued uttering fiery words. He suspected it would do something to his speech if he didn't. At the end of the pier he stood. It wasn't terribly long, but it was closer to Macha than anywhere else in sight. The dark wind would dull and confuse the already tenuous sympathies he intended to invoke. He searched about his neck for the right amulet, and from the twenty or so thin stamped metal and hand carved wood medals he wore, he pulled one from his neck, and set it on the end of the pier. It was a repurposed lustre coin with a crudely hammered mark of Gaoth, the Macha god of sky and future. He removed from a pouch, then, something else. It was a tied bundle of dry, brown sprigs. It was actually what he was on his way to replace. Cuttings from the depth of a primeval forest. Not much to work with.
"Serpent of Voerlund," Carloman spoke just above a whisper, two fingers crossed, "please loosen thy coils." He set his thumb on the spiralling snake that ran the length of his staff, and uncrossed his fingers. "Gaoth," intoned the red wizard with the proper Macha sounds, "come bearing storm from your cold northern skies." He banged his staff against the pier, and ran his thumb over the carved disk and waves of the sky god on his staff. "Come bearing hoarfrost from the mountain peaks." He hanged his staff again. "Flash thunderbolts and crack the heavens," again he set his staff against the pier, "and see in the times beyond only the fresh breeze and bright air." Carloman thrust his staff into the air with a word of fire, and then a prayer-call he had once heard a Macha warrior under his brief tutelage use: “Gaoth, Vald na Awyr...Amach ur talún!”
Under all of his visualization, his focus, his words, was the desperate hope that this meagre working would do the trick. As that strange wind continued to come in waves, he thought that perhaps that was exactly why it didn't. Hope left room for failure, and doubt practically guaranteed it. He shouted another word of fire. So be it. He tore from his neck four more amulets and set them on the end of the pier. Though the sympathies did not exactly line up, he had an intent in his mind. He was the crucible in which they would change, this he knew and thought. A polished tin disk with stamped stars, a red stained droplet-shaped fire charm, a gold-plated sunburst, and his own World Serpent circle he had worn since his days as a court wizard in Zagrest, lay before him with Gaoth's mark, and the sprigs of primeval woodland. A potent little bundle.
"Bear them through, Serpent of Voerlund, through the Dark, hold them in thy coils, while from across the deeps come ye, Gaoth, clad in frost and mist and thunder, come, and I will feed your fire-towers many magical things."
With a great clang of his staff into the pier's wood and a final word of flame, Carloman stopped, and looked. The wind ceased to blow, but held still. Streaks of navy flew through the smattering of slate wisps of cloud above, and with every minute, grew brighter. There resounded across the coast deep booms. As the lightning broke through the corrupted air with the sound of trees being uprooted, a roaring wind carrying sheets of rain began to pelt the beach and village, the whole coastline was lit by fantastic bursts of radiance, and Carloman saw a vast form in the sky he knew was no cloud. In mere minutes, the clinging heat dissipated, and stars shone through breaks in the storm cloud. Carloman remained, drinking the northern storm into his lungs and bones, soaking in its power, until it died away into a drizzle, and the sun began to pale the sky.
Far into the morning, a sopping wet wizard sat quite pleased with himself by the hearth in the healer's house—now free of its patients. A chair or two had been sacrificed for the sake of the fire, but apparently it had been worth it. Lysella said, with wide eyes, that the fire had kept going low, but how she herself leapt as the fire leapt to life with the thunder cracks, and how that heavy rain seemed to have washed something away. Carloman told her it had. He waited until he was mostly dry to retrieve his gem, ask Lysella if there was aught else he could help with, and then where he might seek lodging, because quite frankly there was no way a ship was going to make that voyage if this weather kept up. Which it would, for a few days at least. He'd see what he could do about that in the meantime.