Shadows & Sorcery #198
That soul-curdling screech in the distance means there’s a new Shadows & Sorcery! And boy is there, a whole bunch of it. Got carried away this week, so please enjoy the 3000+ word short story in here, and the other two creepy little flash pieces.
Next week? New chapter of The Path of Poison. Oh yes. Sepp and Casimir are about to take a dip into the murky underworld of Farhaven in search of thieves and grimoires, so stay tuned and get up to date in the TPoP archives!
Miss out on last week’s moody three-parter? Check it out here!
This week, the red wizard Carloman gets an unlikely ally to help combat the Emperor of the Dark, madness drives us to ascend the Charnel Plateau, and a lone figure seeks desperate aid in the Temple of Knights…
If this edition gets clipped in your email due to length (it does happen), you can read the full version on the site!
Emperor of the Dark
The high sun was peering down directly overhead, as if to join all those gathered around the deep gash in the earth. But even then, it half-hid in shadow. It was a corpse, human, naked and withered, twisted in upon itself, arms curled and bent, legs locked and feet stretched, neck contorted so that the head, whose mouth was pulled right back in a hideous grimace, peered up and away. Something about all of this taken together suggested, to half the group, unimaginable agony, and to the other half, which shuddered more, ecstasy. It wasn’t alone, however. Within the shallow pit were piled numerous objects, none of which did anything to dispel the sense of disgust the image conjured. Bent iron nails, some in the flesh, lengths of black prayer beads bound the legs, the arms and hands had pinned to them strips of linen with writing, where the eyes ought to be had ingots of a black metal hammered into them, and the caved in chest had pooled within it a stinking, viscous substance.
There was not a single set of eyes there that did not bear an expression of horror, but only the red wizard Carloman’s bore horror mixed with a barely restrained rage. His hands clasped his staff so tight one might think his knuckles were about to tear through the skin. This was far from the first like this he’d found in the past few weeks, and one was enough to stop him sleeping comfortably at all. Little details were different every time--a personal flourish, he was sure. The first two, isolated incidents, almost certainly. Old evils, forgotten. Then he kept finding more, up the coastline of Voerlund, from Farhaven and halfway up to Lundermark. This would be the tenth he’d found now. Tenth. He almost swore out loud. Around the fifth, he had become utterly convinced this was an entire operation, and not something localized either, but a grand rite of darkness that had been going on right under his nose for heavens knew how long.
But, if there was a silver lining to any of this, it was that this one was...well, fresh. That meant whoever did this was nearby, or had departed not long ago. Good, thought the wizard. Because he had no doubt in his head there was ambition here beyond the regular wretched gnosticism, the little ritual acts of cruelty to show loyalty to the masters. It was like a bulwark, or more likely a cage in construction. He could envision half the known world encircled by shrines of malevolence, spirits bound to the spot and enslaved to a dark will, with followers bidding them to emanate further and further these rites of horror. Aye, you want power, thought the wizard, you want to become something, start something...
The wizard cleared his throat, pulling himself out of his dark revelrie. “Tell me, hetman,” Carloman asked as he turned to official in a purple mantle who held his hand over his mouth in uneasy contemplation, “who was it that found this thing?”
“It was me, sir,” came a young voice. Carloman looked around. By the look and sound of her, a Manatarian. Clay red hair and skin, but amber eyes, much like the wizard’s own. He hadn’t taken stock of the people amidst the confusion of the morning which had awoken him, otherwise he’d have seen and felt the presence of what was quite plainly a fledgling magician. How she’d come to so small a slice of Voerlund as this was a mystery, but all the same, good thing she was here.
“Aye,” said the hetman with a tinge of pride. He was, Carloman understood, standing in for the indisposed knight of the region, who had remained shut in chambers, denying even Carloman a visit for aid the night before. “It was our young scholar who found it.” A bit more than a scholar, thought Carloman. He asked her then:
“Tell me anything about this you can: how you found it, when you found it, what you saw. Anything.”
“Let me see...” she said in a natural Merchant’s Tongue as her eyes flashed to the corpse for a second and blinked, “I was out before dawn, observing the sun’s coming--I’m Manatarian, sir--and, ah, let’s see, I noticed there were two moons in the distance, landward, sun came from seaward today,” she was pointing out the directions as she spoke, head down in focus, “when the first rays, they spilled, I swear this, they spilled past the manor walls first and onto the ridge here, where I was climbing up, and it took a moment, like the light wasn’t...quite upon it, but as I got closer, I saw it then, gashed into the earth.”
“As if it revealed itself,” Carloman mused aloud.
“Yes,” said the young magician with an acute affirmation, “exactly.”
Carloman rumbled in his throat.
“So what does this,” the hetman asked, waving at the grave, “mean?”
“I don’t need to tell you it’s evil,” said the red wizard, never once looking away from the thing, “but I do need to tell you that the best thing you can do right now is go home, throw logs on your fires, and keep them lit until--” he paused for a second, and looked to the Manatarian girl, and concluded “until we give word all is okay.”
Upon a low stone did Carloman and the young magician Sunya sit, and talk. Carloman had set his staff, carved with the images of the known world’s gods, on the ground between them and the grave as a barrier. There had been a short, terse dialogue, with the wizard asking certain questions with extreme caution, probing for reactions and experiences. Now, he didn’t know what it was intended for, not exactly, but he knew to what power it was dedicated. But did she, this young woman Sunya who said she had only twenty or so summers under her belt, have even the faintest notion beyond what her soul told her? No, he had determined, but she felt more from it than he’d expected she might. The wizard was sensitive to potencies, to the amalgamated depth or complexity of a thing’s meaning, its power, and he felt a potency more than what might expected from someone so young. She’d learned a good deal, more than he had starting out, and seemed bent on the path of deep inquiry. This was a delicate time, then. He had been fortunate enough not to stumble over something like this in his youth, but he had also no one to instruct or guide or prohibit him. He wasn’t sure he wanted another Carloman in the world, for though he could do much, no two lives would ever follow the same course, and he could not ensure her safety or sanity with such knowledge of the Outer Dark in her head. And it was a lonely life at times, always apart from the world at large, bearing the tremendous weight of a responsibility that once taken could never be removed.
She had probed back with questions of her own, to which the wizard had evaded to the best of his ability. That it was a defilement, something wrought in anger and hatred, for callous purposes, he made abundantly clear. What powers did it draw, though? What spirit had been invoked for it? What meaning had this thing? What gave it power? She was a keen student, and that came from particular experiences. He knew that well enough himself. His admiration grew, however, alongside his unease. The gods gave him nudges now and again, and he was particularly glad of this one. Had she begun to investigate this herself...
None of the black truths which lurked behind his veiled words had he intimated whatsoever, but the feeling had become resolute in him to guard her from that malignant locus. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t help, or, S’eth, that she couldn’t be the one to fix this. A mighty boon to her that would be. And with the red wizard at her back? He proposed the idea. That thing was fresh--he made sure to make a point of that. And so, whoever had constructed it was close, a day’s travel at the absolute most, and they knew their plans were being disrupted, for no one of little power, knowledge, or connection was capable of something like this, and were as such not liable to flee. That it had been revealed was already a mark against its efficacy, for it was a secret thing, meant to be hidden away, in the dark, and it was she who had uncovered it. So, what say she?
A long day came and went, which the wizard was thankful for. The gnostic behind this wouldn’t dare attack in the light, not even in a waning summertide like this. So he took the time to instruct Sunya on how the thing ought to be destroyed. He felt comfortable enough watching over it himself, or going off to fetch something, or letting her do so. He watched her work and listened to her questions--she’d fully accepted his authority on the matter, or, he hoped instead, his wisdom, and perhaps felt a little more of the potency he emanated than others often did. It helped him begin to form an idea of just what she really was capable of, and was pleasantly surprised. She’d gone back to her home inside the manor walls twice to retrieve things, most of which seemed to be ash from a hearth, and had spent a good deal of time setting piles of thick ash out before her on lengths of linen, but now she was doing something.
Sunya first coated her hands in ash, and at that Carloman asked was she herself born in Mul Manatar. Yes, but her family--all twelve of the extended clan--travelled to Voerlund when she was quite small, and had been invited by Ser Gaslov’s estate after a few moves. They kept up a great many of the rites from the old homeland, though. She’d seen two grandmothers do this a lot. Ashes from sacred fires for blessing things, helping with guidance, that sort of thing, so it seemed right to use the creations of fire against this murky thing hidden away in the shadows. Carloman beamed beneath his beard. This was brilliant. The girl was a natural. Next, she threw hard clumps of ash upon the withered corpse--at the head and feet--and finally cast a handful in the air over it, and let it settle. Then, came something else. Budding magicians tended towards certain similar habits, unconsciously at first, just knowing, just feeling, and once they began to understand things, that was when the first leaps in power came. But she’d already taken that leap. She had on her person a bundle in a small cloth bag--a red bag, he noted, full of heat and life--containing what was her focus or source, a collection of small objects which meant something to her, and so, were. With this she would conjure her magics, directing the sympathies with actions, gestures, movements, and intent.
“May I add a little something?” asked the wizard in the Manatarian language.
“Please, yes,” she replied in kind, surprised.
“Repeat after me,” and with this, Carloman spoke three words of flame in an arcane tongue, devised long ago by a righteous magus of old to aid in the working of magics. “Now, hold out your focus.”
She did so, and repeated the words effortlessly, and both their hearts leapt as a ring of flame erupt around the gash in the earth.
“Mark those well in your memory, Sunya, they will aid you in years to come,” said Carloman with a tinge of pride.
Then, night came, creeping slowly in the wake of the wandering sun. Sunya had set a short time aside to bid it farewell in the Manatarian fashion, and Carloman had joined her. They had taken their post behind the small rock outcropping near the defiled grave, and waited while the wizard related that he’d been to Mul Manatar several times over the years. The nation had a unique charm, something very relaxed about it all, very passionate people, though. But behind the pleasantries, there had lurked the rumination in the wizard’s mind--this girl’s very soul would be in peril at any moment. But he believed his presence would be just the aid needed in gnostic’s defeat, and in her empowerment. Aye, there was much he could pass on here...and much that could be lost. Time and experience had proven his fears right too many times. If it came to it, he would step in.
The difference between deepest twilight and true night was the lack of definition. True night made things unreal. Things shifted and wavered in a certain way. And out of this came a shape. Ostentatious would be the word for it. An older man, clad in rich black finery, long sleeveless coat with golden trimming over puffed, sequined arms, piled dark velvet hat, a chest-high walking staff of wood and silver--the very image of Imperial Voerlund opulence, and all of it, Carloman could see, just a little beaten, a little worn. Likely plundered from the back of an ancient manor house’s cupboards and closets. Only fitting thing for something like this. He set a hand on Sunya’s shoulder to brace her, letting the gnostic begin to grub about in the defiled grave, muttering swears, his focus now utterly diverted. When they emerged, Carloman thumping his staff into the soil, the shape didn’t jump, but stopped, and slowly stood to attention, hand held to his breast in an attitude of assumed imperious elegance.
“No need to kill him,” said Carloman, “he may prove usefu-”
“Ser Gaslov?” Sunya blurted out, the horror clear and present in her tone.
Carloman’s head darted from her and back to the gnostic.
“Serpent’s Breath, I should’ve known,” he said to no one in particular.
“What,” she said, anger making her voice tremble as she stepped forward, “is this?” Her shaking hand shot out to the grave.
Many gnostics were, by necessity, powerful mystics in deep communion with a power which at every moment hooked a new claw into their souls to play like puppets, licking their lips in anticipation of a reward. Some were just poor fools who fell into something or had been targeted in a moment of weakness, hadn’t the sense to run and were just “following orders”, cowering under threat of reprisal. They knew the truth, but didn’t really understand, didn’t know much more than what was fed to them. Carloman had the notion that the wretched little man, whose nasally tone slithered through the air with the typical grand-standing of those who’ve really bought into every drop of deceit, was a mere snivelling brat eager to grovel for praise. He stood and waved his stick around, jeering, saying they stood now upon the keystone of a new empire, and that they looked upon its soon-to-be master. He wouldn’t be a problem, although, he almost was.
The wizard came up behind Sunya. He could almost feel the anger. Ths Gaslov was the regional knight, he was by all accounts a leader, benefactor, and guardian of a personal kind, who had taken in her and her family as people of the realm when, for whatever reason, they left their home. A knight was a bit more than a count--they may have shared a technical status as administrators of land, but a knight was as much a statesman as they were a disciplined warrior, trusted commander to the guard and soldiers under them, and a scholar of history. They were widely respected, admired, and were as a class devoted to the uplifting code of royal Lunderman honour. It was often so that foreigners to Voerlund saw and felt this most keenly, for it was a Voerlunder peculiarity held in esteem across most of the Known World. And this man had spat all over it.
Carloman had intended to tell Sunya not to hold back, but she was already gone, striding forth, curses on her lips. This was a delicate moment. Rage was a powerful tool--had he himself not used his deep reserve of anger to empower his spellwork when doing mortal battle nameless shadows from beyond? She hadn’t the tempering of age and wisdom, though. He realized the danger he put her in, and the potential which spread out before her. Carloman raised his god-carved staff high and brought it to the ground. He would be ready. The knight had brought out his short, hidden axe--a thin bladed specimen design to leave long, deep cuts in the flesh. He watched the knight lumber forward at her, disdain upon his scowling features, but not as wroth as she--not even half as much. In her fury, she thought of swears to the sun and oaths to flame, images of her faith flashed before her very eyes, and she spat curses as the axe rose against her, but she saw red, her vision focused entirely upon a man more traitor than she realized, but knew enough. Her hand gripping the magical focus flew out with an impassioned gesture, and a stream of thunderbolts lit the area for a league around for a full three seconds, falling upon the gnostic with the roar of a landslide, obliterating him in an instant.
Brother Thunder, Messenger of the Sky, had to come to the aid of its own. Carloman hadn’t even bid the Serpent shift its Coils, but guessed it saw what was happening.
Sunya stumbled back, gazing at the scorched black crater where once a human being had stood. The red wizard put a hand on her shoulder.
“It is done. The world, and, I think, Gaslov Manor--though I doubt it will carry that name now--thanks you, though you might not know it.”
She didn’t speak, just looked at the crater. Shock? Awe? Sorrow? All three probably.
“I understand how you feel, Sunya,” he said in Manatarian, “but there is much more to magic than you can imagine right now that is gentle, warm, cool, comforting, envigorating. To defend and foster and grow. What you willed, what you saw and felt, existed. You have placed this upon the world, and it shall always have happened here, and to you. Just as what he did is stain that will take a long time to scrub clean. Be mindful of what you make, my dear, but know also that more can always be made.”
She was quiet for a moment more, and then said in a small voice: “Who...what was he?” She didn’t look at the wizard.
“I pray there never comes a day you understand, but if it does come to pass,” she looked to him slowly, “I think you will be ready.”
Charnel Plateau
Amidst a parched expanse of lifeless, crag-laden, arid wasteland sprawling under a searing red sky, a vast tableland shot out of the earth. Restless, hissing winds flowed down from on high, carrying the choking stench of ancient death that haunted the desolation. Upon every side, beetling, jagged cliffs denied access to whatever bleak mystery lurked above.
All save for one lonely, shadowed inlet in the lethal desert dust-flows.
High, narrow steps, hacked aeons ago into the burnt umber stone, wound and slithered like a bent and twisted spine up the sheer rock face for a league or more, barely visible amidst the sharp rises and edges. Upon this perilous path, three shapes crept like beasts up the steep footholds and grips, at times more like a primitive ladder than a set of steps. As they traversed this curious way, it would every so often disappear in and out of the cliff, giving the impression less that it had been shaped by human or mostly human hands in some dim epoch, and more has having been bored by some mad and eyeless worm or serpent.
After a day’s nigh ceaseless travel, slowing to a crawl the higher they ascended, the nameless trio eventually found themselves in total darkness, as the steps, ever climbing upward, vanished within the outermost hinterlands of the plateau’s outer skin. Outcroppings and shelves of coppery rock, dense and flaking and treacherous to the touch, barred even the most remote hint of passage, and so whoever, or whatever, hacked the steps into existence had been forced to find an alternate means to attaining the plateau summit through a different species of stone. But it had been done.
Clambering sometimes on all fours, sometimes wriggling on their stomachs, and sometimes reaching out in the sightless darkness of the plateau’s innards they went, their limbs aching, their throats scratched with dust, their minds wracked with the secret horror of this lifeless, silent vastness. And then, as if waiting in ambush, the stench which they had been mercifully free from during their approach, which may as well have been a lifetime ago, began to permeate the cold inner air. It came like lapping waves, first only the scent, and then upon a clammy air, reminiscent, they thought--for they had ceased to speak long ago--like a thin water, soaking into them. When weak, trembling, pallid light began to bleed from somewhere far ahead, the first thing their stinging eyes saw was the stone which began to be stained in long streaks and rivulets of a dark, rotten brown.
Soon, the pale orange stone gave way to a richer shade of rot entirely, coating every surface with a viscous skin that smudged and stuck to the touch, and though the mere touch of it sent shivers of abhorrence through them, what almost sent them to flight were the thin tendrils of some mist, which they swore coiled about their limbs and pawed feebly at their faces. But they pressed onward, possessed of a desperation and doom, knowing their mad quest ended either in a lonely death, or an ultimate exultation.
The drive of their hands and feet, bloodied by their journey, rewarded them with a vision in the murk like a red scar above them to which the steps eagerly climbed. It was a rent in the rock showing, at last, the sky, and the world outside this giant’s throat.
They attained, all together upon the widening gullet, a single glimpse of the world above.
From one of end of the sky to the other, amidst a reeking, flowing, and omnipresent fog, an obscene ocean of rotting flesh and jutting bone as far as they could see. Livid, coruscating reds like angry and infected wounds were mixed with gangrenous rugose greens and squamous blacks, while old piles of meat, brown and ribbed and withered, lay in profusion elsewhere. At odd intervals, bones protruded, each and every one broken, fractured, warped, twisted, and malformed in a thousand different ways which suggested nothing but supreme suffering. All was slick and shining, and whole rivers of tainted juices ran with foul gurgles from gaping wounds. Not a single concrete or legible form could be spied in that charnel hell.
If those three wanderers ever returned, every bleak and terrible myth of the most ancient eras brought to seething life, they did not return home, and they did not return the people they were, or ever could be, again.
Temple of Knights
Nothing more than a shell of naked, damp-streaked stone and a maze of wild grass and mud, with only layers of dripping moss and mould holding together. It had, in ages past, been a palace, so the fireside myths say, where dwelt the master of all the land for a full score of leagues. Pointing towards the grim heavens was its toppling tower, whose great brass bell, now cracked and half buried in sacred repose, once tolled the call to battle. The ruins had long since become home to a disparate rabble of landlings who wouldn’t have dared step foot in its confines while knights still walked the earth.
He was a landling of good standing, well-esteemed in his labour, and especially his piety, and as such, had been chosen by the oldest and most respected member of their community to go and receive baptism. It was as much an honour as it was a necessity. Under his arm did he carry a bundle of tribute, and he made sure to mark its weight well as he made his way through this ruins. It meant the world to these people. It meant their survival. He watched them as he went, these people he’d known all his life, whose sires his sires had known all their lives, and so on into the murky depths of the centuries, clad in bundles rags and long, wound strips of linens, squatting around damp little fires with thick black smoke coiling in the air above them. A hard, honest, and compassionate people, who deserved not the bloody violence now inflicted upon them.
He understood desperation. There had been deep winters which left his own people with little choice. But to look upon the desolate scenes of fire-scarred stone and sad mounds where mass graves barely fit, to sack their meagre walls thrice over was an unjust cruelty. The attackers did not even abide by the code of combat as written in the old code. The landling felt a deep sorrow sometimes, for that same sacred code had proscribed the bearing of arms long ago, as per the old chivalry, and it meant they could not fight back, something the bandits took advantage of--though this may in fact have been in the people’s favour, for now did he go to receive baptism, and perform the ancient rites of petition and tribute to raise up a knight in defence of the people. A higher than high honour, he was made sure to know.
The many walls, and shards of walls, were open to the sky, open to the streaks of stars or the blanket of cold silver and pale sun, but where the landling came to now was under the stone, into the earth, down broad, chipped steps set into the base of a half-sunken edifice, upon which were hints of plaster and even painting. It led down past the soil, the mud, the dust, and into the oldest stone of all, where torches fed on the finest, most pungent fats lit the way the temple of knights.
Within a low, arched chamber, whose roof bore a cosmos of spider-web cracks, the ritual re-enactment of knighthood was begun. Seven curates in faded robes stood unblinking as the landling adorned himself in vestments made to resemble raiment of old: shoes with metal bands holding up strips to resemble boots, a long coat with metal fasteners and wide lapels and cuffs, a whole-cloth cloak, and about the neck, an a medallion of painted wood bearing the holy heraldry, a mystery icon which bore the lineage and history of a bloodline, now nameless from the weight of ages. The archcurate came forth, bearing the raising blade. The landling took to one knee, head bowed, and before the flames, steel hammered in an age of valor and legend lent its weight and authority to this place which was as far a cry from glorious myth as one could get.
It was upon him. He could almost feel it. A glimmer. A flash. A whisper of ancient grace. Past the bowing curates, past the rows of bone-filled niches and piles of dust with gilded name plates, through the serene darkness and immaculate silence, to the great stone sarcophagus and the scores of old offerings which were piled there, rotten and flaking. He could just see the image upon it, carved from a single block of stone, of a great armoured warrior.
Some wanderers who came to their walls spoke of knights with trembling voices. Visions of rust-clad berserkers enflamed with a battle-fire that had lain within their withered frames undimmed since they were cut down, eager to range across the lands again unchallenged. Those who said as such never stayed long. They were not welcome.
“The knight must rise...the code of chivalry says so...to slay the unrighteous and protect the weak...so was the war waged, so was the world burned, so were the fields watered with blood, to protect us...”
Thus went the supplicant’s invocation of contract and obligation. The tribute was laid with bowed head, and as his feet scuffed the ancient stone in his reverent retreat, there was a sudden, violent crack as the lid of the sarcophagus was shoved aside.