Shadows & Sorcery #177
*bass boosted killer queen starts playing at full volume*
But apart from that, I got interviewed twice this weekend about writing! W&S Bookclub talked with me about flash fiction for Self Published Author Appreciation Week, and Laken Honeycutt over at her Author’s Nook blog talked with me about some of the themes, intent, and theory behind S&S and it was a ton of fun. Take a look and see how the sausage is made!
Last week on S&S we had a triple bill of grimy, filth-encrusted, darkest medieval fantasy and if you missed out on that, or want to give it another look, do so HERE
And of course, please leave a like—let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we seek out the power of Sinner’s Sorcery, we join the one-armed warrior Kastaine tailing a spy bearing a Draconic Sword, and we witness what may be called up from Demon Ash…
Sinner's Sorcery
The sting of the memory came like lapping waves, scratching a little more and more of her mind away with each ebb and flow, and emboldening every step she took. The sky above the spans of lusterless, dripping moss which sagged from the bloated boughs was an absolute and utterly formless black. No piece of heaven passed over this country of shadows. They gave it a wide birth. It was known what dwelt out here.
The thing under her arm was becoming heavier with every passing moment. It was a mass of ragged, yellow parchment—old, flimsy, and well worn from centuries of frequent consultation, packed and stitched into frayed bindings between two thick flaps of pale leather that served as covers. To say it had cost her everything wouldn't be right. She'd already lost everything she had fought for in her life. Instead, the book was like papers of passage into another land—another life. She couldn't take anything with her, and besides, she liked to travel light.
There was a difference between someone who sinned, and a sinner. The gods threw down their transient cursemarks like lashing rainfall. It seemed there was little mankind could do right in their eyes. If even there were eyes watching us, she thought quite often to herself. She had felt her fair share of the marks of sin throughout her life. But none of them, absolutely none of them compared to the pain of patting down the dry soil on that little hilltop cairn.
Then there were sinners. Most priests called them cursed, said they were made examples of by the gods, changed and warped to fit their blasphemies. Yet, according to a few clerics with the capacity for thought, like the good old man who had seen to the traditional ministrations at no cost, sinners were referred to by higher clergy as a "monstrum", that is, not so much a curse, not a debilitation, but rather a kind of terrible, divine visitation, a punishment as much on the sinner as on the rest of humanity, so laden with dread power were they. It was with a tremor in his hoarse whisper he admitted that it seemed to be the most the gods ever did to show that they were even still around. Best we could do was keep the faith, and avoid such a fate.
It was a slender, slanted rent in the bulging, irregular face of the vine-veined slate cliff, over the lip of which ran rivulets of damp that left streaks and stains like black thunderbolts. It was as if something had struck the face and split it, or had taken a long gouge out from it. Pools of water had collected at its base, and droplets and thin streams fell from above over the rent, giving it, in her mind, the aspect of a slavering maw. One other odd detail: the edges of cave opening were stained darker than the slate stone, stained, she noticed as she approached and ran a finger over it, with a thick layer of smoke. Strange to any sight, but a particular warning to those in the know. Or, in her case, an invitation.
The cave ran with a slanting, wavering roof for a ways in, and she had to duck and crouch in several sections before reaching a taller and, she noticed, undoubtedly hand-shaped interior. There were no torches, no belching braziers, nothing of the occult, just murk. Not total darkness, but an uneasy, half-shifting twilight given barest form from the dregs of light that slithered in from outside. But quite frankly, she wasn't sure what to expect. It certainly wasn't the voice which suddenly loomed from out of the darkness, so thick and with such force it seemed almost to have a presence of its own.
"You..."
Before her she now saw a veiled and shrouded being. She could not see what was actually there, but hints of what might lurk below protruded under the hanging veils, making its aspect almost impossible to guess, save that it was quite large. With only a few faltering steps, she laid the tome before its feet.
"Teach me," she breathed.
"Teach?" came the guttural, clicking voice of the sinner. "No, no," it said, drawing the words out, the grin clear in its voice, "there's nothing I can teach you that is not already in your head..."
"Show me how." The shudder in her voice was not fear.
"Merely by coming here have you marked your flesh with their disdain."
"I want more." She barely held back the anger.
"Why?" That simple word was laden with a timbre that set her very bones buzzing.
The clack and pad of feet clearly not human, or no longer human, came forward to study her. It hummed as she did not reply, her mouth pursing with the difficulty of even saying it, but her gaze met its own behind the shrouds.
An arm came out from under the voluminous hangings, it was gnarled, it looked almost wooden, like it ought to creak like a bough in a gale, seemingly cracked in places, with streaks of coarse grey hairs like bristles, and knobbed fingers ending not in talons but tapering sharply to hard black points. It was placed gently around her shoulders.
"Their ire is oft in passing," said the sinner, "but every god," its voiced dipped thick and viscous, "has its breaking point. Come, there are yet greater heights of detestation."
Draconic Sword
Unlike the greyfolk and their temples, man had no god-ancestors around which culture, belief, and identity converged, no sacred space which elicited a sense of profound commonality. From the earth did man come, born of no particular source or influence, owed no allegiance, and to that same earth did man return. Man often said to their greyfolk friends that the tavern was the temple, the gathering place where tales were told, legends revisited, oaths struck, and joy made and shared between all folk within, native and traveller alike. Such was the reason that the warrior Kastaine had chosen the tavern as his perch in which to observe. The draconians were on the warpath. A half-dragon host had breached the ice belt, intent on establishing a foothold in the overworld, the likes of which hadn't been seen in aeons. Their eyes were, as ever, on the prize that was mankind, with the spilled blood of their ancient greyfolk nemeses a fine bonus.
Kastaine was not a soldier. He could fight, and he had fought—indeed, he'd lost an arm to it. But the Lords of Castlegrand, the capital of all human civilization in the overworld, knew where his strengths truly lay. And when all-out war bubbled just under the surface, they knew better than to waste his talents trying to force him into the role of a soldier. An agent like Kastaine was a precision instrument, even in a meagre little borderland such as where he dwelt now.
The ice belt rose and melted into the twilight sky in the distance beyond the frosted hinterlands which lay not even a day's journey away. This was a peculiar landscape: a sparse and craggy steppe that was neither the lush grasslands which lay closer to the top of the world, nor the sandstrewn, spired reaches of the Stone Vastlands proper. That tribe of greyfolk known as Stonefolk were few here—it made sense. Less opposition. The people in this tavern were hunters, gatherers, farmers. They dwelt mostly outside their homes, in the wilds surrounding this distant smattering of hamlets, of which this one was particularly far out. They would see things, hear things, and spread the news. They had their warriors, and as word reached further skywards, or what greyfolk called north, more soldiers mounted for war. But that would take time these poor folk might not have. Kastaine was set to ride through the night once he'd gotten a picture of the situation out here, to a cadre of elite warriors who kept a small fort and village in a range of low hills skyward, or northward. Each one was like Kastaine, an agent of Castlegrand, and imbued with kingsmail—the spectral armour of an ancient human lord that could be granted to the worthy, the product of human Art taught to them by their greyfolk friends, and esteemed among that race as on par with their own finest creations. With this, though they be a small force, they were more than capable of withstanding an assault until a proper force arrived.
But Kastaine wasn't so sure he would leave tonight. He had been sitting in this tavern, in a shadowed corner, nursing small mugs of rather curious fermented juices, eyeing a suspicious character who had slunk in amidst a group of others. There was a general air of tension through which passed an almost constant stream of words of worry, but this fellow was different. He was quiet, he was listening, and he was doubtless a warrior, judging plainly by the sword at his side. A bulky, though not too long specimen it was, and most interesting was that its scabbard seemed to have been wound up in a darkish fabric. Now, swords themselves, naked blades, may sometimes be wrapped in material in place of a sheathe, if the sheathe is damaged or misplaced, but Kastaine could think of no particular reason a scabbard should be wrapped up as this one was. And he knew it was a scabbard underneath because whoever had done so, had not been terribly careful. It was loose, hanging in some places, and showing just enough under its hasty bindings to make Kastaine's instincts flare.
He had developed a nose for draconic things, and that sword was draconic.
The draconians were, by and large, not a subtle race. They had inherited more of fire than guile from their ultimate progenitors, and it was by force did they express themselves. Now, why was someone carrying a draconic weapon, not a trophy to be brandished but hidden in haste, in this borderland, so close to the outbreak of a war—a slaughter, if man wasn't careful? Well, he didn't want to cast any aspersions, but the fellow didn't exactly have much going in his favour at this moment. And draconians did like to flaunt their influence.
After a short while observing him, the suspicious man, who had been bent over a drink at the far end of the bar, suddenly backed up, turned, and slid out the doorway, which was open to the night. Kastaine made sure the man left before he too rose, and as he left, nodded to the publican of the tavern, a trusted friend and the only other person who knew Kastaine's business.
There was a deep chill on the snaking wind tonight, carried down from the beetling peaks of the ice belt which divided the overworld of man and greyfolk from the underworld of the dragons. The lifeless pallor of the moon on the landscape only added to the biting cold. Kastaine pulled his cloak around him with his one arm. A grim omen. The moon, it was said, was the sun of the underworld, a place but dimly remembered in the oldest tales of humanity, alternately of blasted wastelands and dense, cloying jungles. All of it, bathed in the cold lunar radiance which seemed to make more shadows than it did illuminate. The wind from the ice peaks was kicking up little clouds and sheets of the dust that covered these sparse, outer lands. The winds, and their dust, seemed to be rushing to the few steeper rises and ridges that began to shoot up as one left the village bounds. This was where the man was heading.
The agent fell then into a low run, so as to gain a vantage point in the brush on the ridge which bordered the road on one side. A dozen thoughts flitted through Kastaine's mind—spy? Saboteur? Assassin? What honeyed words had been offered to him? What masters exactly was he reporting back to? Damn it, he thought, he had to assume the worst, especially now, but he was thankful to have been proven wrong before. He hoped beyond hope this was merely a case of simple misinformation and he was following a fellow agent.
He hoped...until the man stopped, and something emerged from the shadows in the shallow gulley that was the road out of the village. Standing tall, taloned hands and horned brows visible even from this distance, three draconian warriors strode forth from the darkness, flexing their large wings.
Damn and blasted traitor, Kastaine almost hissed out loud, but he had to be careful now more than ever. Four opponents. He had the advantage of surprise, with the high ground and his kingsmail arm. Was it worth engaging all four? He'd done so before, but that was with help, or at least help on the way. No, best let him pass whatever information he had along, let them part, then attack the draconians. Take one out, two was a better bet than three, and the man was guaranteed to flee at the first sign of trouble.
But before he could think further, the draconians turned around and took to the sky, their large wings unfurling and stretching out to their full breadths. Curse it all, he had no greyfolk art to aid him in his attack—they were gone. After a moment, the man began to step back, turn, and seemed then to seek another route, the draconians now naught but small black blurs in the distance. All was not lost. As the man passed below Kastaine, the agent sprang forth and leapt down without a sound, axe out, and into the man—they landed with Kastaine's axe pressed against the traitor's neck.
"Wait! Wait!" the man choked out. "Sir, please! It's not—it's not what you-"
"Give me one good reason not to slice your spy's gullet open!" Kastaine hissed from behind gritted teeth.
"I am," he wheezed, "I am a spy, I am, but I have been feeding falsities, lies, to misguide them!"
"Is that so? Then what's with the sword?" Kastaine's eyes never broke from the man's, which were wide with panic.
"It's a mark, a badge, they said none of the people here would know what it was, I was posed as a mercenary, you see, so it could be anything!"
A likely story, thought the agent, and a probable one. And yet...
"You're alone in this, hmm?"
"Yes...I was taken from my clan in the frost-lands yonder..." he half-motioned with his head to the ice belt. Clans of humans did indeed inhabit that desolate span.
"Then if you're not a traitor, you're a fool to think this would lead anywhere but your death."
"Please," he blubbered, "I want to escape, you can help me!"
"Then you won't mind," Kastaine growled, "if I liberate you from this." His summoned his arm of kingsmail, the spectral steel flashing into existence and tearing the sword from the man's belt. Kastaine set his axe into the earth beside the man, who cringed from its impact, and shot up.
He drew the sword out, casting the scabbard aside. It was a little over the length of a long dagger, but broad-bladed. Subtle warping in the edge of the black metal made it a terribly cruel and quite efficient weapon, designed to cause pain to cripple rather than singular wounds. The draconians held great hate in their hearts for the upstart humanity they were made to rule. Dragons proper, they were beings possessed of unfathomable power and a need to express it. In a way, Kastaine understood that. He didn't like it, for it was against him and his kind, and the greyfolk, it just made sense. But the draconians had a bitterness their sires did not. He gripped the blade in the crook of his kingsmail arm, which was bereft of sensation and stronger than steel—and sometimes hit a little harder than he meant for it to. He pushed with his other arm of flesh, and pressed with the kingsmail, until the sword began to buckle and deform, and the metal groan as it bent into uselessness. He threw it to the ground.
The would-be double agent still looked scared, but the right kind of scared. He could be trusted, at least for now. In fact, the agent thought, he might even be useful...
Demon Ash
Two cloaked figures scurried down a set of worn old steps in a low, cramped passage, then hurried to either side of the threshold and knelt. Near the top of the steps could be seen another shape, the radiance of a quickly growing twilight throwing them into silhouette. The shape emerged into the long hall at the base of the steps, its length lit entirely by the pallid radiance of glass pots of candleweed, hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and which threw their light upon a long series of short, veiled objects which lined either side of the room. The shape now revealed himself to have the sharp, severe, thoroughly bloodless and almost greyish clean-shaven features favoured for "strength of character" among the aristocratic classes. His high arching brows and drooping, dispassionate dark eyes had a sardonic cast as they were swept about in surveillance, and his perpetual frown was upturned only once, and then only slightly, at first sight of that curious chamber. He was clad in a black gown of some rich, dense velvet most associated with dabblers in the black arts.
One more figure appeared then at the foot of the steps. Or rather, it would be more appropriate to say two, but one was small, and cradled in the arms of another, who had a round face, with warm skin and warm eyes which one could read an unmistakable hardness in, that was nevertheless foreign to their nature. The features of the smaller one were hidden under a shroud of grey, and did not move. The squire put up a hand to motion this last arrival to now stop.
"Bring out," came a low timbre, speaking in deliberate measure, putting forth a hesitant hand as a choice was made, "resonare de votum vitae."
The two cloaked figures rose and shuffled noiseless at the command, choosing, after a few moments of study, one of the small veiled shapes on the left. With some effort, the loud screech of metal dragging on stone suddenly shot through the vaulted chamber, breaking the sepulchral stillness with which the air had been suffused. The squire strode forth, and with one swift motion, tore the heavy drapery away from the object and cast it to the floor. Before him was wide brazier of black iron on six curling legs. The warm-faced man with dire charge crept forward, and saw it held within its shallow bowl a mound of darkish, thick-granuled ash or dust.
"Now, two circles to accommodate, if you please."
The voiceless servants set to their task without pause. Producing two pieces of white chalk on lengthy stalks designed to hold them, a large circle was made with immense care around the brazier, and then a smaller one just before it, intersecting it only slightly. The ease with which they had performed their master's command spoke quite plainly that this was far from the first time they'd been bidden to do so. Under the pale candleweed light, the chalk seemed, in some fashion, to glow on the bare stone onto which it had been scratched. Like some dim power had been stirred, and was now affecting the space around it.
The warm-faced man held his charge tight, and his feet scraped across the stone in what the squire immediately noticed as distress.
"What you are about to see," said the squire, without turning, "is not a real demon. It is from a collection accrued at great expense."
"W-what are the circles for, then?" He knew he spoke out of turn, but somehow thought the squire wouldn't mind.
"They are guides for a mechanistic process, rather than wards against an active intelligence. You needn't worry. I'm not fool enough to conjure true demons in my cellars."
"I don't-"
"No, of course you don't," the squire said, half turning for a second, "why would you? I'm sure you've seen your fair share of conjure-men and wonder-workers throwing sparks from their hands or making smears of night sky in the air, hmm?"
"I have," came the unsure reply.
"And I'm sure you have at least noticed the characteristic clouds of ash which form in their wake? The kind which billow about for a moment before dissipating to the earth?" He simply waved his hand before the brazier rather than wait for a reply. "Dangerous amateurs the lot of them, but useful, sometimes. The world chafes at their expression, but what they leave behind is quite safe. I can assure you my sources are far more trustworthy than peddlers bragging about their domination of lesser demons."
The squire removed from his robe then a one-handed flint and steel sparker, the kind you squeezed in your hand to light fires. Such a mundane tool seemed, the warm-faced man thought idly, somewhat incongruous. In the other hand, the squire removed a sprig of some pungent plant. There was something distinctly medicinal in its strong, sharp scent. He set the little bright green, rounded leaves alight, and cast it into the brazier. The stench of medicine caught in the throat, but it didn't seem to bother him in the least. He took out, then, a short knife, a thick-handled tool knife, the kind one finds on the decks of deep sea trawlers—another incongruous item—and ran the edge over his thumb with only a small exclamation. A trickle of blood fell into the fire and the ash. And as it sizzled and spat, smoke began to rise—too much smoke, in fact, but it didn't climb high. Instead, something else rose from the mound or short pillar it formed. It looked as if jumbled, as if half-collapsed in on itself, outlines and silhouettes that began to solidify, and, the warm-faced man saw with a start, produce a visage more horrible than anything he'd ever seen, or thought might exist.
"An echo..." the squire said, a strange reverence behind his tone, "a sigh, a memory, of a conjuration and working, stirred by the ritual objects. Faint, but still effective. Place the child in the smaller circle. Do it now."
The warm-faced man didn't hesitate, but neither did he look at the looming, swaying shadow above him. He set down his charge with the utmost gentleness, and swallowed a sob that threatened to escape his throat as he stood up and back. The squire did not interfere. The shade of the thing—of the demon seemed to be making gestures. Demons were sorcerers, spellworkers of mischief, ruin, terror, there wasn't a person alive who hadn't grown up on stories of covens and their demon masters in the wilds, in cellars, in city squares after dark, or the mad magicians who were all but demons themselves, and wove intricate webs of bargains and pacts to compel and order lesser demons. Their command over the half-living forces of nature had enthralled human beings since the beginning of time itself. But the truth of it was most people found them absolutely terrifying.
And yet, when the young girl coughed and spluttered and strained to sit up, the warm-faced man ran forth against all instinct and held her close to him as she whimpered and asked where she was.
"You understand that now," said the squire, fixing his gaze on the warm-faced man before him, "you are counted among my closest confidantes, and may, at some time, be called into a service such as this?"
"I do, sir." He looked down at the child in his arms, tears welling, not even noticing the shade behind him sinking back into oblivion. "Thank you, sir. Truly."
"Well," the squire cleared his throat, "I merely did my duty. Go now," his tone instantly softening, "be with your daughter."