Shadows & Sorcery #196
I was gonna say “in an absolutely stunning turn of events, every story this week is actually flash fiction” but then I re-checked the word counts and uh only one of them is flash fiction. Is Shadows & Sorcery just one massive lie after another? Technically, I guess, but no one’s asking. Just buckle in and enjoy the weird stuff out your porthole windows as we blast closer to the fabled 200th edition…
Missed out on last week’s revisit of three of the best worlds S&S has to offer? Or just want to read it again? I got you, choom
This week, we witness the rise of the order of the Sealed Knight, we do battle with the Magic of Shadows, and we creep through the streets of a City of Sorcerers…
Sealed Knight
Tsuro’s Revolution may have cast down the temples to the soul-gnawing gods of old, but the shackles they placed on mankind remained. Shackles to be broken, as the new faith said, one piece at a time over countless lifetimes. It had been determined in the Seventy-Two Revelations of Tsuro, and the accompanying Scrolls of Shah-Kas, that the simple and innocent nature of humanity had been twisted to falter and fall back into the sensuous traps the gods freely plied mankind with, to let them rise and fall in an endless cycle so the gods could feed upon their star-born cattle for all time. So, a piece at a time, for as long as it took. But Tsuro’s teachings, the writings of Shah-Kas, as well as the guiding strictures of new civilization, did make allowances for those deep-seated frailties and weaknesses of mankind, such as war, commerce, and politics, which despite the immense spread and influence of the Revelations, still retained their staunch worshippers. Once they recognized themselves as weak, however, the shackles were let shatter a little slower.
Yet in that heated age when the Revolution spread across the world unhindered, some were not satisfied with the war of attrition that Tsuro preached as a steadfast rebellion, and sought the most extreme measures using the teachings as a foundation for a new order, becoming the legendary caste of paragons and the quintessence of all spiritual pursuits: the anchorites, seekers of liberation sealed within tomb-like cells to achieve total severance from the sensuous world, and therefore freedom from the shackles of the gods.
Once immured, anchorites were sealed within their cells with wax and mortar, dwelling amidst pure and perfect darkness to contemplate the profound truths of Tsuro’s Revelations. Those who emerged from their cells lived curious existences as failed holy folk, humbled and bearing the weight of a certain shame, but also the closest things to experts the world had on the practice, and it was from their long debates, treatises, preaching, denouncements, and the increasing violence upon those who cleaved to the Revelations, that the tradition of the Degrees of Sealing then came.
Monastery, Cell, Plate: these were the Degrees. The silent, brooding edifices of black stone stood in stark contrast to the opalescent towers, the gilded marble, the ivory gates, the bejewelled idols, domes of jade and azure. The monasteries of the immured anchorites were as fortresses of tranquility from the fire of cultures rotten with hedonism and debauchery. The earnest faithful gathered in them when the armies of thirsting gods and their tyrant-priests waged slaughter upon threats to what should have been their eternal rule. As was written, the first two Degrees could be openly and freely broken, and re-sealed if so desired, and many anchorites did so to become wandering teachers, scholars, and as the blood flowed in the wakes of holy wars, powerful warriors.
Not soon after they began to appear did the leaders of men who held faith in Tsuro’s ideal of liberation beg these anchorite warriors to lead the charge in driving back their oppressors. Accounts recall the plate-clad, linen-wrapped, wax-sealed warriors wading with nary a call nor breath into whole cadres of divine soldiers with massive ringed cleavers, scimitar-headed polearms, broad diamond-headed longswords in either hand, knobbed and iron-banded staves, and battleaxes with crescent-shaped heads half as large as their own bodies. So utterly quelled were their passions and hungers, so dulled their senses, so impenetrable their armours, that the martial arts they developed were almost insurmountable in sheer strength and ferocity. Pikes, blades, hammers, and bolts clanged, sang, and slithered off the thick steel plates which ran in long, intricate, overlapping rows across their entire bodies. The tread of their steel upon the earth was as thunder, and their brands swung as arcs of lightning. Blood flew and hung in the air like crimson stars before falling as a black haze, and they emerged from each and every battle with their plate flowing in red rivers.
Land, favour, and power were gained, and the shackles of many shattered slower than ever, secure in the promise that one day they would be free. All the while, the anchorites remained, and the battles continued. Temples, shrines, altars, and tomes and talismans were crushed underfoot to dust, their names relegated to mouldering chronicles. For their valor, their piety, and their service, the new kings of faithful enclave-states awarded titles and deeds to lands over which their holiness could preside, the estates of the anchorites growing into beacons of sanctity in a burgeoning holy empire.
Throughout the Age of Revolution, one constant persisted as a thorn in the side of the empire which, every so often, lost one of their precious sealed knights: the armour, the last Degree which kept the anchorite severed from the sensuous world, could never be removed or unsealed in any way, else the immured soul was deemed lost to the caprices of the old gods for all time—they did not brook those who sought to flee their grasp any quarter, any mercy. But, the kings pondered in their councils, the empire was soon to be itself as holy, pure, and free of sin as any anchorite’s cell. They did not see those anchorites who chose to walk from their plate as failed in any way, for all the empire were like anchorites now, and they did not count any of which the people would come to indulge in as sins, like the folk a century ago would have.
And neither did the silent, grinning, slavering gods.
Magic of Shadows
Firelights and braziers burned like small suns under the black velvet of the warm night that stretched over the valley township. Breaths of air carried the scent of the perfumed foothills into rows of old terraced houses, lively market squares, and raucous meeting halls that leaned over streets of cracked flagstone, and past them down long flights of wide steps where passages of old cobblestone amidst damp mud snaked, bearing upon their sides countless huddles of small wooden domiciles, where figures reclined and laughed.
Above, a great smooth-faced moon shone like a drop of quicksilver in a pool of ink, and under its pale iridescence, two shapes hurried with hunched shoulders into a silent span of sagging hovels. The scrap of parchment hastily passed showed where the thing they sought should to be, but the winding paths were like canyons of shadow in some places, and they knew not whether what they now walked through were unliving shadows, or if the thing within was trying to hide itself.
It felt as if passing into a space where they were not welcome—gooseflesh made the skin feel like it was pricked with little claws, every motion of the air made the eyes dart about, and the gut twisted in that curious fashion when the body knew it is being watched before the mind could conceive it. Indeed, they were not welcome, for a claim had been staked by yesternight’s moon, and they taken it upon themselves to refute it. In here, the scent of the far off heather and chill mountain tarns vanished, replaced by the stench that arose from every step their banded leathers made through the squelching mud. The moon peered between the shacks and huts that huddled about them. The moon—that which had enabled the curse to be lain amidst these dwellings.
Vast was the lore of the true nature of the human self, and enough of it had filtered down so that most folk understood three things: one, the shadow was an extension of the self, of one’s presence in a higher or further plane. Where or what that was, was left to the philosophers and umbraseers to figure out. Two, the shadow was cast by only by the sun, the moon, or the light released by things connected to them. No other light could cast a human shadow. And lastly, that people had some control, just as they did the rest of their bodies, over their shadows in expanding or contracting them. The customs and beliefs which surrounded the astral bodies, their light, what they made rise in mankind, and the treading upon or intermingling of shadows had been a source of conflict since there were humans to have shadows.
Din and Zhad stood for some minutes debating the veracity of the candles that had been granted to them. Long, not too thin, the tallow was a sickly yellow, and had around it a sort of red, diamond-shaped banding. As close to sunlight as they would get in the depths of the night, and along with a long soaking in the shadow of a saint’s bones lit by similar candles, they had all that would be needed to lift the moon-cast curse that sat now before them within a bare, dusty interior of a nameless hovel. It was some sort of small, oblong jar or vial with flat sides, and out of the top there stuck a black candle with a white flame which threw strange, web-like shadows across the floor and walls. They couldn’t begin to guess what was in that glass, save that it was something a warlock had cast their shadow on, and transferred their will and their essence through.
Behind Din, four candles sat on the bare wood, and from a little iron box Zhad removed a short length of vaguely oval shaped bronze. One end of it glowed white with heat, and Zhad began to gently press it to candle wicks—only for something to rush by. He hadn’t even heard it approach. A black shape, a blur, but twisted about, he swore, as if to glare. “Light the damn candles” came Din’s quavering tone. It would take all four, and the shadow which leered as if from all sides knew so. Zhad got the last the candle lit as it closed in on him—Din clamped his eyes shut, and began to focus.
It was all about feelings. The sun made certain feelings enflame, and they...were real, or something, through the shadow. That far he didn’t really understand. He knew enough take this on, though, so he focused, and felt. He knew how to throw out his shadow, and he knew well enough the sensation of when two shadows came into contact. This wasn’t the same, but it was close enough. Made sense. Wasn’t really a person, was it? All this came in wordless flashes, interrupting his train of thought. Focus. The sun. Ecstasy, heat, bliss, rage, and old, old myths of heroes and their mighty shadows rearing up as baleful presences, cast by great mantles of sunfire to purge and crush—like he was now. But his feelings seemed to wash over the shade like waves against a towering cliffside. Whoever set that thing must have put some deep darkness into it. The moon did that. Mystery, brooding, melancholy, strange and esoteric moods. Aye, but the sun had all that virulence and mania to it, too—Damn it, he thought. Stop. Where was Zhad? Din swore. Okay. Heroes. The shadow of the bones he’d been in. All those stories from your childhood. The fear—no, the awe, the anger, the tyrants and slayers and conquerors and champions!
He felt something then...crash off his shadow. It wasn’t a physical sensation by any stretch of the imagination. More like a mental stimulation, something that bypassed the flesh. Keep that there, he thought. He swung his shadow about the room, and it came again. The heat of his feelings began to build and the candles flare, just as something—the shade, he was sure of it—closed in and around him. It was the shadow of that vial, what was within it, and ultimately, what was inside that warlock, enflamed and cast by that curious lunar flame and eldritch forces it enabled in man. Two wills were thus in umbral combat. But his was here, his was present, and in a span of seconds he hadn’t even really noticed, brain aflame with the rushing images of heroism and might, all sensations abruptly vanished. He opened his eyes to darkness—or rather, they were already open. He recalled his shadow, and saw it had utterly and completely enveloped the entire room. In the wake of its recession, a black smear that had been the the glass vial was seen upon the wooden boards. A voice called his name. Zhad stepped into the bare old room with no small measure of hesitation, followed by an exasperated guffaw, replied to in kind by Din, clasping his arm in victory, before they set off into the night to report their success under what promised to be the tranquil illumination of the moon.
City of Sorcerers
Thin, nebulous streams of pearl and silver slithered through the black heavens, passing between the cavernous shadows of the clustered towers whose blinking lights stood in for the stars. Lone, guttering lanterns created pools of sickly light along the jagged streets. Through one of them now a shape passed, shoulders hunched, feet clothed in thick binding, hushing over the damp stone, sometimes sloshing through shallow stagnant pools. All around, the walls and ground hummed in variations so slight, no ear caught them until they had changed.
Unless, of course, you were one of that number that gave Katanek, City of Sorcerers, its name.
She was not of that number. But tonight, she was more than she had ever been before. She lived in that part of a sorcerer’s lair set apart as a ritual complex. For most, it was just a living. Mold your life to the demands of their long and strict rites designed to cultivate life energy, and get food and board for a smidgen of the energy your actions created. But for her, it was ambition. Sorcerers engaged a great number of people in their lairs, knowing many would slip up, and the maximal production of energy would suffer. Not her, though. For years she had sought to live by the letter of the Master’s strictures. And tonight, it had paid off.
During the rest period allotted to a quarter of the household, a figure had appeared beside the half-parted curtain of the deep-set alcove that served as her bedroom. She had all but jumped up as the black-robed shape revealed itself to be the Master. His pallid, bushy countenance, topped by a sort of large bunched hat, held that distant stare sorcerers had, for they saw the world, she believed, in different ways. Long, pallid fingers were held in a manner that implied a question was forthcoming. Faithful subject, she was asked—bid, no, tested, she felt, there was a task that needed seeing to. Of vital importance. It required a swift hand, a fleet foot, and the utmost discretion. The reward would be grand indeed. It was a matter of minutes until she was out into the benighted streets.
Just when Katanek had become the City of Sorcerers, no one could truly say. Had it happened over time? In a way, yes, it had been one of the earliest centers of inquiry into the new philosophy, and a great many naturalists had gathered there. Or had it happened during one of the great influxes, when it seemed new towers rose almost every day, and every old house had a new sorcerous inhabitant? That time when stories began to spread—really spread, of assassins and resurrection men, when the first ritual complexes were erected and of what happened inside them. They weren’t built to be homes, that she knew herself. It had scared her for the first few weeks. But all those stories couldn’t be true—kernel of truth, yes, yes, but embellishment oft made that core seem insignificant in comparison.
That was what she told herself as she peered around another corner to make sure the street ahead was empty.
In a city like this, where the huddling towers of sorcerers grew and grew, space was at a premium. The graveyards had become stone forests, the monolith tombs jutting at slightly odd angles in the loose soil of old rock shards, almost as if the dead within were standing to attention, waiting for an order. Life energy. That was what sorcerers dealt in. It could be drawn out, so it was said. Focused into the breath, through the eyes, by a touch, and then changed. How they did so, that they kept to themselves. Too dangerous, otherwise. A lot of people would make rash decisions if they learned how to do so, and pay the ultimate price. A body had its store. Every spell took from the life itself, and could never be replenished, not truly, merely cultivated within the self, or within others. Hence the ritual complexes. And so had the currency of Katanek come to be life itself. No more precious a commodity was there, and the rest of the world knew it.
No wonder the sorcerers kept their art a secret. And no wonder they lamented the waste of the scraps of life left behind, just enough to linger but not to animate, sealed within graves like these she now crept between, when it could be put to good, living use. That much she had scraped together, and it was, she believed, why she had been chosen by the Master, chosen to be rewarded—a shiver ran through her as she reminded herself—with a spell. Two lone lanterns hung high on beetling walls lit this burial ground, and she found herself in the shadow-laden center before a fresh internment whose sealed surface had been too hastily set in place. It had fallen forward just enough for her to wedge a heavy curved tool within, and pry it open so that the thick stone lid rested on the tomb in front. The corpse slumped forward. Sometimes a wound was too great for one’s life energy to fix quickly, she figured. Such was the case with the poor young man within. But it just so happened, when the wrappings here cut away, to reveal what the Master had said was of vital importance.
Pearl and silver streaks swam across the darkness as a single sharp clank of stone rung out amongst the tombs, and a shape passed into a side-street, and hung to the shadows of toppling squatter’s dwellings. The trail left upon the stone wouldn’t be noticed come sunfall. Within the lair, she clung close to the object of her task, and rose into the silver-tinged heights of the sorcerer’s domicile, and delivered her charge in an eight-sided antechamber to words of praise. “Return,” said the Master, eyes gleaming, “and I will at last have something to spare.”
As she descended the wrought iron steps to her alcove, there was the sound of tearing flesh and muffled breath, and she did not let the image that sprung to mind stay there, for soon, she did not think, but merely felt, wordlessly, that one day, that might be her—no, it would be her.