Shadows & Sorcery #168
Some writers describe themselves as “plotters” who meticulously plan every scene and action, some describe themselves, unfortunately, as “pansters” (as in, flying by the seat of their pants, it’s stupid) who just go in with a notion and see what happens in the moment. Myself, I write down some lines of ideas for imagery, vague outlines of a bare narrative or concept, sometimes detailed, often times not, with the intent that some things will get changed, added, and/or expanded…and then I spend the whole day apparently just banging out a nearly 3000 word short story because I am possessed by forces.
I call this a flash fiction publication but really it’s just chaos out here. It’s not that I can’t stop, it’s that I won’t stop. Enjoy!
Last week had some cool stories, and for the new folks who just joined (literally some of you just arrived today), why not check it out HERE?
And just a reminder for everyone new, kinda new, or ancient beyond reckoning, there’s nearly 700 other stories to read in the archives. That’s a lot of reading. Perhaps too much reading. But again, won’t stop. Dive in wherever you want and take a look around!
Lastly, please leave a like here and on whichever other editions you read, and let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we venture into the woods and encounter Sacred Sorcery, we sail out to the strange reaches of the Crypt Sea, and we venture underground with the Dust of the Sorcerer…
Sacred Sorcery
Young Yani Kuleka went out to the woods where tonight, they said, there would be magic.
His land was a green land, painted by the gods in shades of green. It was found in the bright, soft sprigs and ferns, in the rich, moist moss and swaying, verdant grasses, and in the deep, nearly black canopies of the immense and serene forests. The wood of his home was of hazy greens, the stone foundations and old menhirs were stained with primordial lichen, the soil he tilled was dark with a dozen shades of it, the water he drank ran with green, and even the pale old sky and mists that came from it were tinged with the colour. He wore green woven from viridian fibres, his eyes held it, but his skin was still dusky. Some day it too would be green. The mountains were blanketed in it, save for their peaks, which were frosted white, and had been since the beginning of time.
It was close to such a place he found himself tonight, legs still abuzz from the dance, and head swimming from the drink, and quite far from his home. Magic, they had said in whispers excited, fearful, suspicious, and yearning, would be in the air, and things could be done that couldn't be done elsewhere or elsewhen. Young Yani did not quite know what he would do. Yani did not think very big, he thought of and lived only in the right now. Yesterday had already happened, and tomorrow didn't exist. But maybe with the magic, yesterday hadn't happened yet, and tomorrow was already going on. And besides, now it was night, and the night was young.
Into a break in the forest came Yani, whereupon a great silver moon, another rare thing not green in this land, loomed low and shone brilliant. With old stumps and rocks was the glade strewn, and it was cool and the air was invigorating, fragrant with deep forest scents. Each breath soothed his limbs but held his energy, and he felt like he could leap across this clearing in two bounds. But, as he soon found out, he was not alone. There came to him, quite clearly, the sound of singing—a single voice called out to itself, to the grass, the trees, and the moon in an old, old song, which the more he heard of it, made Yani think of the songs his grandparents said their grandparents talked about singing when they were young.
And then, the lone reveller called out from the rock he sat on.
"Hullo! Below there!" He raised in his hand a long drinking horn, gilded in the moonlight, which curled thrice before ending in a small ball. Yani approached the fellow with a hearty hello in kind, and took a draught from the offered horn. He was an odd looking chap in a long pale green gown and boots, with a beard more like a scraggly bush than anything. His eyes, Yani only half-noticed, where completely white.
"What are you doing out here, friend?" asked the stranger.
"I could ask the same of you!" replied Yani with a laugh.
"I am Tulen, the wind god, and tonight is my night off."
Yani laughed again, took a second draught, and handed it back.
"You do not believe me, boy?" said the stranger with a smirk.
"Sir, if you are the wind god, then I am king of the mountains!"
"No, Yani, tonight you are a god!" said the stranger clapping Yani's shoulder.
Yani stopped. He hadn't introduced himself, right?
"There's magic tonight, my boy, and only when there is magic can I take a break. But don't fret, there will still be winds, and you will still have fun!"
With a snap of his fingers, suddenly there came from on high a great breath of wind like rushing horses, and on it, something descended on galloping gusts into the stranger's hand. It was a book, it seemed.
"Now, I can only give you two things, my boy: my authority, and this book of sacred sorcery, long vanished from the world." Tulen handed the great bulk to Yani. It was a big mouldering tome with yellowed pages that had ragged edges either roughly bound and loosely packed in between two bare wooden plates with silver edges, the whole thing held fast by a heavy clasp and chain. "Now I am off! Show me what you can do, boy, whistle me a wind to ride down the mountainside!" Yani stood there quite dumbfounded. He hadn't even taken the clasp off the book yet. "Hmm! You'll need to a quick lesson!" said Tulen as jumped up off his rock, and gave a long, sharp whistle which, just as it began to fade, seemed to be met by a sudden roar and rush.
"Just like that, my boy!" was all Yani heard before, in a flash, Tulen vanished.
Not having quite taken it all in, Yani sat down on the stranger's rock, and opened the book. The first thing he saw was a drawing of a bent branch, and large red painted words that said "SEEK THE VEHLOTREE FOR YOUR CROWN". Yani was an easy-going kind of fellow, and took just about anything in his stride, even if it did shake him. Normally even he would be terrified. But tonight, there was magic. So, he thought, why not seek the vehlotree? He jumped off the rock, and strode into the woods, book open in one arm, glancing down at it, puzzling through curious passages. He realized after a short while of wandering through the shadowy trunks he thought maybe he should he find a description or a picture of it at the very least, but alas, the book contained no clue he could at least readily discern, and he didn't want to spend the whole night trying to figure out the archaic tongue laid out before him. So, he thought, if the wind brought this book, and took away the stranger, could it take him to the tree?
Yani began to whistle, again and again, softly at first, then louder and louder—until a breeze ran by him. Then back at him, and then past him again. He got the message. Under the sighing, swishing boughs Yani ran, following the playful wind which cavorted about him, pushing him this way and that, deep into the verdant woods, until finally he came, after much scrabbling and scrambling, to a kind of shallow dip where the forest parted, and in its midst was a much bigger and much stranger tree. From root to tip, it was weighty with its skin of moss and vines, and it seemed almost as if other things grew upon and around it, bushes and other little sprouts, hanging tendrils, and even sections of little flowers, all under the massive dome-like canopy of this one great tree, this vehlotree. Scattered all about the loamy, springy ground were loose leaves and small branches. Yani stopped, and looked at the book again quickly. The same branches as depicted lay all about him. With a small thanks, which seemed somehow appropriate, he reached down and took up one of the pliable lengths of wood and, as seemed to be the idea, wrapped it about his forehead.
Well, he didn't feel any different. But maybe he was. After all, tonight there was magic, and he was a god, was he not? Or at least acting as one. Just to be safe, and just to make sure Yani also picked up a goodly sized branch, sturdier than the rest, still bearing a few sprigs and leaves at the end. He swished it through the air. It felt good, felt right. Opening the book, branch under his arm, he read out aloud to himself a passage which detailed the conjuration of wind. There was a lot of "becrowned" and "like air upon like air", which he did not completely understand, but he had a crown, and he knew how to whistle. He wondered if doing more than whistling made other winds. He was the wind god tonight, so he'd better find out.
Yani took a deep breath, held it, bulged out his eyes, held up his branch wand, and let out a mighty roar—within seconds he was thrown off his feet by a mighty gust, only, he found to his surprise, he never hit the ground. As he tumbled higher and higher, Yani scrambled to grab the book and reorient himself as he watched the forest grow smaller and farther from him, and then the mountains, and he watched the green ocean that was his homeland speed away far below him replaced with the shining silver of the sea that divided his land from the harsh dark white vastland which now speeded into view—and suddenly away as he was carried upon the night wind over sparse and barren peaks, through dense high fogs, over benighted steppes and deep valleys, over shimmering cities, slumbering villages, and further—further than he thought possible, into, he was shocked to see, the sunlight.
At last, the fierce gale began to subside, and Yani found himself falling and gliding and floating down into a landscape of a kind he had never once seen in his life. It was hot, searing hot, and it was not green. The colour of sunlight above trees, above the mountains, all around him in an immense, limitless desolation, a hazy and very pale gold, the colour of some tawny beasts. He reached down, hands trembling in hesitation, and held granules of something in his palm, loose and dry and quite soft. He suddenly wondered, to his horror: tonight there was magic, but it was not night here. Yani fumbled about the book, to see if it said anything. Well, if it did, he couldn't quite make it out. He looked around himself once more. He really didn't like this. He thought of the dance back home he had all but just left, and the farm, and his cottage. Maybe it just had to be night somewhere. Maybe they had magic in the day here, wherever that was. And besides, he was a god right now. So, he took in a lungful of the warm, dry air, and let it out in one great bellow.
He held still, waiting, wondering. And after a second, fearing.
He didn't even feel it, he didn't even hear it in this still vastness, but just as he went to look at the book, he was cast off his feet again to tumble about the upper air, relief flooding his entire being. Back over the tawny dry land he went, over the cities, the towns, and back into the deep, chill night, over the snows and water, and once again into the forest, crashing headlong into every branch and twig and bough he could manage, unable to stop until he tumbled and rolled through the squelching loam, landing against a tree. At least it was home. Only as he sat up, Yani realized the book was not in his hand, or under his arm, or, as he leapt up and searched frantically, nowhere around him at all.
Yani wandered through the forest then for a while. He ran this way and that, following as best he could the path he had flown, thinking at some point, over the trees, it must have fallen from his hands. But, he feared, what if it fell in the sea? Or in the snows with the wolves and barbarians? Or in one of those cities? He couldn't exactly go on throwing himself around the world on winds until he found it. It was then he began to feel rain. Typical, just what he needed. Only, he realized, wasn't the wind god—himself right now—meant to bring rain? And then he heard a voice, a laugh, and from not too far away, either. Yani whistled, he knew that worked, and soon that playful little breeze danced passed him, and he followed, hoping it would bring him to the source of the laugh.
In a place where the trees did not really part, but bent away overhead, Yani found someone kneeling on the ground in the rain in the middle of a circle of twigs set upright into the earth. It was a beautiful woman, he did not know her, but she was definitely from around here, dusky-skinned and green eyed and green clad. She whipped her head around as she heard him approach. Trouble? He hoped not. Especially since she had the book on the ground beside her.
"That book," Yani asked, "where did you get it?"
"It came to me from the sky," she said. "There is magic tonight."
"Yes there is!" he said puffing out his chest, "I am the wind god, and that is my book!"
She laughed. "You are no god! You wear a crown of magics, so you are a sorcerer, like me."
"Tulen himself gave me his authority, return that book to me!"
"Then how is it I can conjure the rains?"
"I can send them away," Yani replied, hoping he was right.
"Do this, prove you have authority, and I will give you the book."
Yani shook himself, and held out his branch wand, and began to swish it about in the air. He gave long exhalations, and then began to blow harder, and once he gave a single low shout, which to his surprise, hidden quite well, began to fight off the rain, and within a few minutes, it had utterly ceased. The sorcerer stood, herself quite openly surprised. She shrugged then, picked up the book, and gave it to Yani.
"How came you to meet the wind god?" she asked, with a kind of awed admiration.
"I met him drinking in the woods, tonight he is off and I am to be the wind god until he returns."
"What is your name, tonight's wind god?"
"I am Yani."
"I am Vesi."
Yani thought to himself for a moment.
"Can you read this book, Vesi?"
"I learned archaic script from my master," she replied, a smidgen of pride in there.
"Vesi..." Yani was not very good at asking for help. But these were exceptional circumstances, and tonight, there was magic. "Will you aid me in being the wind god? I can read little of these old words, but I wish to do right by Tulen who gave me his authority, and by this land who needs the winds!"
And so, that night, authority and learning, which do not always stand side by side, now went as equals upon the mountain peaks, the lake shores, the forest deeps, and above the towns and forts. Cool breezes cleared the air in whole villages, rain clouds were carried on a whisper from afar and sent afar. In that time, Yani laughed louder than he had all his life, and Vesi was made giddy with the sacred wisdom at her fingertips. Across the whole of the land did they comb through the book of magics for powers, and once or twice made thunderbolts fly from horizon to horizon, or hold still in the air before being sent back into the heavens. They saw all their green land in its fullness from high above, where they felt they might almost touch the calm, cool moon.
And then, the sun began to creep forward, and Yani knew Tulen would soon return. He and Vesi returned to the clearing where first Yani had met the wind god, more alive and more tired than any village dance had ever made him. They found the stranger upon the rock, as before, taking great gulps from his triple-curled drinking horn. All he could do as he turned was laugh.
"If this was any other night, my boy, I would strike you down into DUST! But tonight there is magic, and all things are permitted. I felt your workings, and I approve! But now!" said Tulen, raising his hand into the air, at which motion the book suddenly flew from under Yani's arm and into the sky, "Now I must go reassert my mastery over the sky and the winds!" He reached out and plucked the branch crown from Yani's head and spun it on his finger, before releasing it, whereupon it flew over the trees and, it can be assumed, back to the vehlotree. "Thank you for a relaxing night away—both of you!" And with that, Tulen, the God of the Wind, leapt from his rock with an ululant whistle, and rode off into the paling heavens, under which Yani and Vesi descended the mountain together.
Crypt Sea
A long, low vessel with spiral prow bore a dozen sailors over the roaring waves of an unquiet, roiling, steaming sea. As the crests which threatened each time to lurch violently skyward fell, shadowy water got thrown up onto the deck where it fizzled into nothing. The sea had been getting darker and darker, and at a point, the water became completely black with corpse liquor, and the ship cast over its side two great mooring spikes which shot into the dark below. Every so often, something happened in the crust beneath the ocean deeps, and some part of the lightless expanse is rent asunder. The earth's searing blood often poured forth from these wounds, creating fleeting islands of warped, black coagulate which crumbled with the incessant battering of the restless waves. But three days ago, as chance would have it, a quake had cracked open the grave-strewn sea bed.
Chained to the deck at their waists, the seafolk hauled, over and over in a tense silence, hooked lengths of twisted cord, which fell through the oily sea with nary a sound. The water was utterly black, utterly featureless, heaving the vessel up and around as if some vast thing below were toying with it. It was an ocean of shadow all around, reaching far out of sight, and the air was clammy and pallid with rising steam. Their hooks were cast again and again, thrown and let sink for some several minutes, tugged upon, and then drawn back—until one of the sailors felt their cord catch.
Four other sailors moved in wordlessly to aid their fellow. The weight upon its end below was immense, and their flesh ached from toil in the cloying, half-drowning fog. More seafolk came in to help, and with eight arms straining, something finally emerged from the deeps and the fog at the end of the black-stained cord. The hook had found its way into something that seemed like a great chunk of solid shadow. The vessel dipped as it was hauled aboard and dragged into an open space on the broad deck.
The hook had helped pry it open somewhat. It was not so large that they could not work at it by hand, yet it bore enough weight that it didn't move upon the water-slick deck with the heaving of the sea just below. The ocean sounded guttural growls and ragged sighs. The choking stench of hot moisture in the air was suddenly overpowered by the ageless putrescence that disgorged itself from the slid-open lid of the stone sarcophagus, sloshing about inside and upon the deck with wet, heavy sounds. With every push and shove of the sea, more of it poured forth, yet it never seemed any less full.
Without a second to spare, two sailors rushed forth and set into the thick, dark liquor an iron tube connected to a leather hose, itself running to a thing like a great cylindrical furnace bellows. Four sailors now worked it, each pull of the handles responded to with a frightful rasping from the pooling liquid. Within the span of some several minutes, the level began to drop, the bellows-like device sat turgid and resistant, and something lay half-emerged from the lower, viscous liquor. Almost as if it had been stirred in its slumber, the way it seemed to gaze and reach up. They quickly pushed the lid back into its resting place, forcing its image from their mind, and with a supreme burst of strength, cast the sarcophagus from the deck, where it was swallowed up soundlessly by the black, smothering sea, where the dead of all the world eventually come to rest. They then cut the mooring spikes, set a fire in the boiler, and guided the vessel to the healthier waters beyond the crypt sea.
Dust of the Sorcerer
It was a simple square opening near the base of the vast, beetling cliffside, bordered by a few protruding stone blocks. The sellsword turned around, gazing out over the parched, lifeless vastland of stark and striking mesas and mountains. There were probably worse places to die. She turned back to the sorcerer who was gesturing to follow him in. He looked about as withered as this land, leathery, sagging skin, completely hairless, built like a figure made of sticks, and wrapped up in loose yellow and orange robes. She shuffled past him, and watched as he set a skull down upon the threshold. It had a rather thick candle set into the crown. He patted around his robes then, and removed a small pouch—one of what she guessed must have been hundreds considering what she had seen on the way out here. He took a small pinch of the dust inside, and sprinkled it over the candle, which a second later, sputtered to life, and began to smoke heavily.
"The flame will tease out the ghost within," he said, and she could hear the grin in his words though he was turned from her, "and it will protect our exit. It was difficult," he continued, half to himself, "keeping the spirit inside, but packed with desiccated grave soil, it believed itself buried, yes." He'd been doing this the entire trip out here. Every pouch and vial had a story. "Oh don't worry," he creaked as he got up and turned around, "he was a savage, a killer. Nothing lost." With a barely suppressed grin, he slid past her and into the tomb.
She had demanded, some while back, to know what in the world was out this far, and just what he was paying her so handsomely to help acquire. Whether his pause was some kind of consideration, appraisement, or sense of dramatics, he had finally revealed that he sought to plunder the remains of three very old, very powerful witches, whose corpses dwelt in a secluded tomb in a secluded land. Specifically, he wanted their hair. She wouldn't understand why, and she didn't press him. She hadn't even asked to know anything about them, though the deeper they descended, she felt as if that time was soon to come anyway.
"Not that far now...not that far...the first corpse lies just yonder." He had been casting forth handfuls of some thin ash the whole way which burst into a curious yellowish light with a sharp smell, all in lieu of a torch. "Did you know there are places in the world where the sun never sets?" She could tell he'd been just aching to talk about this.
"In truth?" she said as convincingly as she could.
"Oh yes, yes, ancient peaks bathed in eternal sunlight, believed to hold it up in the sky and shine it upon different parts of the world. And like many things, they are, too, suffused with occult essence. The sun powders them with its light, and—yes, this is in truth dust from one of those very peaks, which knew the first rays of the sun. See how it flies," he said, throwing out another handful, "seeking to light up as much as it can." It did seem to fly pretty far, much further than one would think his rail-thin arms could cast anything.
He had dust for everything. Metals, stone, even ground up gems, dried up herbs and petals, and bones, and organs, all of it, he had said at length a dozen times over, bore secret powers. The world was writhing with hidden forces in everyone and everything. She'd been getting quite the education, he reminded the sellsword several times. She should be writing it all down. Make herself a personal grimoire. That she found him and his practices repellent in the extreme she hadn't exactly hidden, but she did hold it back more often than not. She was being paid quite a bit after all, and he took care of nearly everything, from lodging to transport to food. She wondered why she was even out here in the first place. Maybe he just really enjoyed gloating over how powerful he was.
But then again, he was pitifully weak. What should have been four days out here was now on its seventh. He had to stop constantly, and take less arduous paths. He medicated constantly with things he sniffed and burnt. Seemed to be pretty much all that sustained him some days, when he could barely keep the little food he ate down. She decided very early on that she wasn't going to carry him.
Suddenly, he fell back with a hiss, his arm out to ward her. She unhooked the axe from her belt and went around him.
"What is it, old man? Beasts?"
"Now," he said with a shortness of breath, "time to earn your keep." He removed a small pouch and handed it to the warrior. "On your axe. It won't last long."
"What in the hells is in there?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"Ghoul. Go!"
Something black and shiny peered from around the corner ahead. Peered, though it had no face, no eyes, no mouth, not that she could see. But it did have arms, long, thin arms with wicked little claws crooked just behind the head which, she saw as it emerged, was attached to a long, hunched shape of black plates and squirming legs. It was about as thick as her own arm, and it was fast. It ran along and up the walls, and over the ceiling. She had just enough time to smear most of the pouch's contents on her axe and watch it blaze to life, ducking forward from the ghoul's strike and sending her axe into one of its slick black segments with a sickening crunch and sizzle. She watched the thing arms flail as gurgling and spitting came from the head that, she noticed now, had in some curious fashion a human shape. She ran up to it as the wizard began stumbling over himself to retreat, only to feel two sharp points nearly—far, far too nearly—pierce her lamellar cuirass. The front part whirled around, its taloned hands out and ready to grasp her, but it met the billowing axe head first, and a gush of something foetid spilled out from the round black head, the mandible-arms pawing at her feebly as it fell to the ground, lifeless.
The wizard gasped and ran over, cursing. He immediately shoved his hand into the rent open chitin. She didn't ask. A moment later his hand emerged, steaming, and holding a turgid grey organ, and he laughed.
"Oh, that was too close! Something so precious nearly destroyed. They know things, you see, from what they've eaten the world over," he gibbered excitedly. She was going to find out anyway. "Oh this was old, I bet you've sat in and eaten many interesting things, haven't you?" He took out a length of vellum and placed the thing upon it. He then removed a long, thin glass vial and poured its light, airy contents slowly and with great care upon the slimy little thing. "Sand from the deepest part of the deepest desert. Where they say time does not flow. To preserve."
A handful of light-bearing dust later, they finally entered the chamber of the first witch. Its robed corpse sat up in an alcove in a way the sellsword found intensely unsettling. The way it hunched made her think it might suddenly rush forward. It was also rent open in a rather violent manner. The sorcerer gave a frustrated huff, and supposed they had disrupted the ghoul from its work. But that meant the other two, which weren't too far ahead, should be untouched. And if not, that's why she was here. She watched has he began to cut the thin, ragged hair from the skeletal, partially preserved head. Into some black pouch he placed it after tightly wrapping it, the sellsword found herself surprised something of such age could take such handling. But this wasn't a normal place, and these weren't normal corpses.
The sorcerer had been spouting off about some historical anecdote when the warrior suddenly stumbled. She groaned, her steps lurching, and finally she fell to her knees. The sorcerer spun around, stopping mid-sentence. He watched her for a minute before removing a pouch from his robes and blowing the dust into her face. She spluttered and fell back, eyes wide.
"What is that, what did you do?" she was shaking, her hand dropped to her axe.
"Breathe it in, give yourself a second." The softness of his words were almost more of a shock than the pain.
She blinked, and staggered up. The pain was dissipating.
"Now," he said, taking out a vial, "remove your armour and apply this to the wound, gently."
"Wound?"
"I think the ghoul did manage to get you, though not enough to be fatal." He cleared his throat. "Make sure it stays that way, hmm?" He handed her the vial and continued on a little further. She did as she was told.
True to his word, the rest weren't far ahead. The one above had been the acolyte, apparently. Buried herself here when the order died off. But if the first corpse looked wrong, then these two didn't even look human, and it wasn't the advanced decay and desiccation which made them so. She couldn't place it, and she didn't want to investigate.
"Not much left to work with here," he said, poking around the mummies, "everything is gone. Maybe other sorcerers, likely ghouls long past—but, aha! No one thinks of the hair! Oh the possibilities are endless," he dropped into a whisper as he removed everything he could from their heads. The chamber they were in was small and cramped. No ceremony, no carvings or statues. Just a hole in which two horrors sat in the silent darkness.
"I was expecting more out here," she said.
"Doesn't fit your bill of what wizards and magicians look like, no?"
"No covers, no coffins...no traps."
"This is what they would have wanted. Wherever I leave my flesh, I hope some enterprising sorcerer will take it and make themselves even greater, and their flesh will make another even greater, just as I did with my masters. And so on, into eternity. All the world consumed and changed in the flesh of sorcerers. It is our great work. I want to see it cast as dust across the cosmos to seed other spheres. But first we should take a rest, I'm afraid all this excitement has gotten to me and we have a long walk back to our camp!"