Shadows & Sorcery #60
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It’s the SIXTIETH edition of the one and only Shadows & Sorcery!
This issue marks the 300th story written for this newsletter. Five a week, for over a year, without missing a beat. There’s about 48,000 words here, give or take a couple hundred. Good heavens, possibly more! Frankly I think that’s just mad, I dunno about you. But I very much appreciate all the folks who’ve been opening these emails every week and soaking all this nonsense in, I hope you’ve been enjoying it!
Naturally, this edition is completely free for everyone to read. Five tales of dark fantasy weirdness for the taking—dive on in! You know what else is free? The current five chapters of The Path of Poison, a monthly dark fantasy serial chronicling the adventures of a young apothecary and hexer. Check the latest chapter out HERE with links the previous four chapters included.
On a slightly more serious note, I just want to say that next week there will be no new edition. Now, I enjoy the hell out of writing these things and sharing them, but burnout is real. After 300 stories, well, I thought I might take a quick breather. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be something to read next week! As I do every 100 stories, I’m gonna dig through the archives for some of my personal highlights, free and paid stories, and release another Special Edition. Service will resume as usual afterwards, unless they come for me. You know who.
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This week, we see just what you get when you uncover Frozen Graves, we gaze fearfully up at the Catacombs Moon, we meet what dwells within the Fortress Labyrinth, we join the battle for the Eternal Cathedral, and learn what grim history might live behind an Abandoned Pilgrim…
Frozen Graves
The sun was rising over the hills in a pale gold, and the jagged skeletons of trees poked out of the banks of pure white that had remained unmoved for weeks. The only evidence of human habitation was a beaten track of dirty slush with a thick coating of frost, a farmer's landmark, and a crescent arrangement of small cottages in the low hills. Jacob fell back into the fresh snow over the fence. As light bled over the stark countryside, he saw now their faces clearer than he could in the flicker of his dying lantern during the night. The entire township was gathered about, some still in their ragged funerary garments. There was about fifty of them. Jacob stared, their eyeless sockets entreating an earnest plea for him to stop this foolishness. What had been a young woman a week before bent down and was grasping through the fence, reaching out a hand to Jacob like he was a lost child. Some of them flung their arms into the air, a dry rattle choking in their throats, some clasped their hands to their chests and stared on. Some clambered forward and lay their hands on the barrier, looking right at him. They were desperate for him and all that held them back was a mere fence with ribbons.
Behind Jacob was an intimidating expanse of frigid, open country. The next village or town, or even farmhouse, as far he knew, was leagues away in the open, but besides that, he had the townsfolk following him. He couldn't lead them anywhere else, he couldn't be responsible. He studied the fence before him. Attached to it were a number of strips of reddish fabric. Most were tied on in ribbons, some nailed and a few even had wax seals. There were about eight or nine of them arranged irregularly. The townsfolk couldn't move past them, or refused to. They could be of some use, but Jacob wondered if he removed one, would this protective barrier fall? He didn't want to get too near them. The young woman-thing hadn't retracted her hand and followed Jacob's movements as he stalked across to one seal and pried loose the nail in the weak, shoddy wood, ready to jam it back in in a moment's notice. He held it close to him for a second, watching the townsfolk. None of them tried passing across the barrier, but they did flock towards him, noticing his actions. He watched them sway slowly side to side, back and forth. Their exhalations made no mist in the chill air. He looked down and pried a second seal from the fence, and hopped over it.
Wading through them, he held out his two seals at arm's length. A number of them stretched out inquisitive hands, but jerked them back. Jacob turned as he walked, measuring the sphere of influence the seals seemed to have on the townsfolk. He held them back as he retreated over the fence again. One by one, he removed the seals from the fence, bundling them in his arms. As the last ones were being removed, a few of the townsfolk started climbing awkwardly over the fence. They dropped to the other side with thick crunches.
Jacob started backwards, watching the dense group thinning out and flanking him. As he drew them out into the wide field, he ran to one side of flock. A few stopped to watch him and cock their heads. The rest seemed to follow him slowly. Jacob dropped two seals on the ground. He hesitated before dropping another as he was confronted with a shape whose colouration suggested extreme frostbite across its whole body. It was a naked thing with all traces of humanity stripped from it. Bestial, inhumamn. Cursed. He gulped down an exclamation remembering how it had looked when the town had accidentally uncovered its frozen grave a week ago. It should have been forgotten, but now it had brought from its tomb the cold of its due damnation.
After a slight semi-circle was formed around them, Jacob watched them to see what their next move was. The things tensed up for a moment, unable to pass over the seals. A few tested the perimeter. One of them at the back wheezed, ending in a throaty gurgle, they all turned, and began shuffling together out the open side of the semi-circle.
Jacob ran as fast he could to beat their escape. He threw down more seals along the way, funnelling their movements. They didn't shirk from him, but reached out to him, palms upwards, as if each one meant to say 'join me'. One of them caught a hold of his shoulder. He froze and snapped his head towards what he once knew as Pastor Clarke and his dishevelled cassock. The Pastor's mouth was agape and issued forth a low, light moan. It was the lack of any threatening intonation that made Jacob's skin crawl. He jerked himself from the Pastor's grip, sending the thing stumbling back a step. He placed a seal on the ground and skirted the rest of the group, laying down the last one.
He ran out and watched the townsfolk. They had stopped in their tracks and were looking about, shiftlessly walking around the vague circle and swishing their hands at certain intervals. One by one, they stopped and looked towards Jacob who was heading to the crest of the nearest small rise in the land. Had he not stopped and merely ran, he might not have heard them, each one of the fifty townsfolk croaking out a sound, each one a fraction of one word, each resonant groan adding into a single droning, momentary cacophony of Jacob's own name whispered across the emptiness of the frigid land.
He dashed across the ice, daring not to look over the revealing sun's dreadful vision, nor heed its wind's monstrous call, leaving the townsfolk to test the barrier.
Catacombs Moon
The high magus had a body of helpers employed to represent him as hands, eyes, and mouths, beyond the spire which crowned the duke's palace. They had reported back that a certain fellow named Gus was a good worker. He was timely, diligent, discrete, he could be trusted. And so, upon the advent of the high magus' death, one of the mouths went down and brought Gus into the heights of the spire. Much work was to be done, it was said, and they believed Gus would make a fine addition to their number. But he must first prove himself.
He had never been near the middle floors before. The second he stepped through the gateway, he could feel it. A pushing and pulling all at once, all over him, like testing, probing feelers. When he tried to suppress his discomfort, one of the hands laughed. "This is the motion of the universe, Gus, that force which warps the fabric of reality. What the great sprawl of peasants across the land fearfully call magic is the art of drawing and focusing through certain lenses the power of potential itself. We know this, and you, we hope, in time will know it, too."
Gus had been tasked with helping bury the high magus. He wondered just where the body of a royal official like this might go, the nobility of the land being notoriously secretive. He knew, though, that his mere being here, was binding him into an oath of absolute concealment. But really, what choice had there been? Too look upon the final resting place of the high magus would be the stamp that sealed his fate. As he was led to the preparatory chamber, Gus wondered why they kept going up, instead of down.
He looked down at the body of the high magus. He was lain out upon a black onyx slab. Had he not known these were the remains of one of the most highly respected magicians in the world, he'd have guessed that what lay before him was the corpse of something pulled out of hell. It only resembled a human because it had two arms, legs, and a head. Nothing about its hard, gnarled flesh, long limbs, or snout-like face spoke to anything of this world. He couldn't even be sure that the small cloudy crystals with peppered the hands and fingers, much like the towering stones which littered the chamber around him, hadn't somehow grown directly from the skin.
"Ignorant they may be below," said one of the hands quietly, "but the common folk know well that so-called magic is dangerous. They're right. Why do you think our order swarms upon lone villages at dusk who have uncovered deposits of crystal underground? This is the price of sorcery and ultimate knowledge, Gus. Look on it, and know the sacrifice made for wisdom." All the while, Gus felt that pulling and pushing. It was on his eyes, his tongue, every finger, every hair on his head. Digging under his skin.
Gus and three other hands carried the bier upon which the high magus' corpse was lain, draped in a heavy white sheet with weights upon its corners. To his surprise and vague unease, they continued silently to ascend the spire through a gently winding passage of black stone. The only instructions the mouths had given was to place the high magus in the nearest available niche. For, they made explicitly clear, Gus' sake. Up, up, up, the eerie slope went, until finally, the group came to a barred and chained black door. No torches or lanterns or braziers lit this lonely passage, and yet they could see. Gus was instructed to set the bier down.
A hand undid the chains and bar, and threw open the portal. It opened upon utter darkness, a void which made Gus feel as if standing upon a lethal precipice. They picked the bier back up and passed through. With mere seconds to take it all in, Gus noted that the hands ahead of him looked as if swallowed up by the dark. He didn't know why, but he held is breath as he passed through. Suddenly, without warning, a fierce gale assailed him, and the sensation from before came back a thousand-fold. He was almost brought to his knees, but the hand next to him propped him up and pushed him forward. Gus looked around. All was stark light and shadow, black upon a dusty, pallid grey, through which the violent winds threw clouds of biting dust.
The land immediately descended, tall walls of pale rock formed a deep canyon, but they were not bare. For as far as his eyes could see in the strange light, there were spaces in the canyon wall, climbing quite high, filled with sheeted forms. Were these all high magi? What was this? Where was this? What in heaven's name was that awful feeling that wormed its way through his body? He could almost see through some of the sheets. Some were horribly loose in this torrential gale, threatening to reveal what was beneath any second. There is something strange about a corpse, all knew this. More than the reminder of mortality, of frailty, there is something missing from a corpse which makes it wrong, makes it "other". Gus was far too aware for his own good that he was surrounded by them, and that the corpses were themselves already far from human. He couldn't even look down lest he spy the form of the high magus on the bier in his hands.
Not a minute later, a minute which felt like an hour, the hands stopped and themselves reverently placed the monstrous form of the high magus, still veiled by the death shroud, into an empty niche, standing. They took Gus by the arm and led him up the canyon slope. For only a second was he able to look around at the top before being forcefully ushered back through the dark gateway. His mind refused to believe where he was.
Down below, two doting mouths told Gus that his service and decorum had been commendable, and to be aware that his first treatments begin tomorrow. Yes, they said, the high magus had been an old man, but it was not age that had ended his life. Alas, this was the price of wisdom. Gus was sent home with a generous sum of money in the form of pure goldleaf notes, but nothing seemed right on his walk home. Maybe it was just the shock of what he'd experienced after being thrust back into the mundanity of the city, but something in him just didn't feel right. Almost like the pulling and pushing wasn’t just a feeling, like maybe something had been shifted.
Gus looked out of the small, dusty tavern window. Framed amidst the ragged silhouettes of the slowly rising sea of rooftops was the duke's palace, atop it was the spire of the high magus, and above it all was the moon, which almost looked as if it was balancing itself upon the spire's point. He gripped his mug tightly and couldn't help but think of what he knew dwelt up there, of what it meant to have that thing over his head for the rest of his life, or what it meant when it came low and full. Just what might be spilling out from it.
Fortress Labyrinth
The idea was simple on paper: instead of constructing a vast series of fortifications to be manned and maintained throughout the years, to fall into disrepair or into a dozen different hands with the shifting of battle lines and borders, instead of setting up an unhappy history from the first brick, build a single structure. One that spans the entire breadth of the pass through the mountain, the nation's one true weak spot. Build a labyrinth. Instead of shutting off the pass with a stark wall to be dismantled, present instead an open passage, offering false simplicity. Only when enough armies fail to exit will the Winding Wall, the fortress labyrinth of serpentine passages, become a byword for terror.
The Winding Wall found itself added to over the years, of course. Knowledge from spies would leak out after repeated attempts at discovering the way through. And it did have a way through, but only a select few whose trust was tested time and time again knew. Some sections received subtle alterations whose builders were exiled, sent into handsome retirements, or maimed and blinded. Beasts were introduced into the interior, but their fates were left unknown. Spores and virulent weeds were cast in to infest the corridors and provide worse blockades. Some particularly callous high councils used it as a dungeon, sealing prisoners within to become a defensive feature--maddened inmates slaying intruders, that was the idea.
Curiously, and horribly, each and every idea stuck. Old charts of the labyrinth's interiors were left to be seen while secrets of reconstructions existed only the skulls of the long dead. Flora of monstrous kinds flooded countless passages, along with the unspeakably devolved beasts which carved a niche for themselves. Most of the inmates died, but not all. Brutal subcultures dwelt within, cultish madmen who stole away hapless intruders that became either sport, food, or new members of the labyrinth. This was what met every intruding force, assassin, thief, and more: a microcosm of all the world's peril.
In truth, though it was an incredibly effective barrier, any kind of alteration had been forced to cease by impossible working conditions, and the high councils of the land had no idea what was festering inside the lightless passages of that cold mountain pass. Not until things started to emerge from within. How they had gotten away with it for centuries, only the gods knew. Perhaps it was to finally teach a lesson for the ages.
Imagine what it must have been like for them to first step out from the cloying stillness and dark, and into the gusty high pass. Such mind-shattering revelations can produce awe, terror, zeal, or hatred. In the madmen who flooded out from the labyrinth, it produced all of that and more. None of the haughty high councils of the past could have possibly foreseen, in their arrogance, that their greatest threat would come from their own grand fortress. All at once, it seemed that the tides turned, and the great city below found itself in the grip of war. The mountainside became a wilderness of barbarians, and the outskirts quickly became ghost towns wherein dwelt cultish madmen.
The other lands look upon the kingdom and its beleaguered capital with curious eyes. In the end, none wanted to risk an invasion and draw the ire of the barbarian horde, as well as the kingdom's own forces. The irony of their newfound deterrent was not lost on the high council, who looked upon the glow of vile fires in the distance. The labyrinth madmen fortified themselves with black fungi from within their dank lairs for another bloodthirsty assault. A district had fallen yesterday, and they were unsure if the blockade would hold. But surely that was the worst of what the labyrinth held. Or so they hoped, to themselves.
Eternal Cathedral
How long do you think it has stood there, at the summit of the broad hilltop? How many suns and moons have passed their light upon its stone, how many winds have caressed and battered it, how many rains and hails have hammered and soaked it through? However many have passed since man first stood upright is the only answer, and even then, the oldest stones that form its half-sunken base haven't even a fraction of the ancient immensity of the primal earth upon which they sit, where in elder days beasts gathered to peer at manifestations they couldn't even comprehend.
Although the word has only been in usage for perhaps three thousand years, the hilltop structure has always been a cathedral: a head and center of worship and communion, the seat of the holy of holies, the eye of the wisdom of the whole of the world. In fact, it's the only one of its kind. Humanity may have spread itself across the earth, but it has never once, in all its exploration, ever come upon another spot which even hints of manifestations of divinity. The nameless Eternal Cathedral is the one place where the veil is thin, where the spaces join, where the gate is open--the one place in all the world where man may meet and know the gods.
An ocean of blood has been spilled for this land. Enough flesh has been torn and rent asunder that were it gathered all up and pressed together, there would be enough for the gods to make another continent of sorrowful penance. Since the first two human tribes met under the air of what would become the Dome of Stars, there has been unceasing battle to control it. The Cathedral is holy land, it is THE holy land of all humankind. The wars of faith are fought with each army standing on opposite sides of the mount, gazing at the same rugged monument, and beseeching what dwells within for the same victory.
The struggle for the Eternal Cathedral never truly ended, but in recent times, it has dulled to a simmer of rivalry that merely spurts and sputters every so often. Well over a hundred different faiths have gathered in a sprawling city at the base of the tall, broad knoll upon which the Cathedral itself sits. Tens of thousands of blessings have poured from within the Dome from just as many different gods, from the stolid ancient faiths to the countless secretive cults that listen to whispers through the cracks in the Cathedral walls. Chants, calls, horns, bells, drums, bellows, and more echo down from the mount at every moment from dawn to dusk and throughout the night, religions vying constantly for the space in which to summon benevolences.
The Eternal Cathedral itself though is beautiful beyond compare. It wears its age with dignity and mystery. The very air around it is laden with primal sanctity. The sag of stone, the chip and fade of paint, but also the brilliance of the materials, the sheer size of the building, there's nothing else quite like it. It's no wonder that it receives a constant stream of travellers daily. Within is a smoky microcosm of human faith. Chains with censers lazily bleed heady incense, chimes ring in hidden currents of breath, arches and pillars are adorned with carvings of gods, saints, and spirits of such minute detail that one would be forgiven for thinking they might come alive any second. The aureate air is laden with soft shadows that does not dull its dusty lustre, but accentuate what they do not touch.
But beyond every alcove of relics and sprawl of shrine-tombs, beyond the throngs of celebrants, priests, hierophants, phylarchs, magisters and more, there is the Dome of Stars. Like a smudge of the night sky itself, redolent in blue and purple nebulae, silver shining stars, and a faint trilling which permeates everything around it. The Dome of Stars, the one place in all the world where the gods show themselves, cradled by a dome of pure gold, the divine center over which war will be fought til the end of time. And from its curious depth there does manifest shapes, some look even human, but most do not. They half-descend and hang in the air, revealing their celestial forms for study, adoration, or the collection of miracles. Then they are gone, and another cult moves in to repeat the process.
Abandoned Pilgrim
The story is fragmented. The full picture may never be known. In the Year of the Long Sun, there was an exodus from the east. The first fractured waves of holy nomads appeared, their eyes set on some distant horizon unseen to the strangers whose lands they passed through. A close and taciturn people, they were peaceful, but had little time for anything but whatever it was they were searching for, and they were searching, it was found out. Kind locals found the nomads more loquacious after given shelter or aid in the wilderness. They were pilgrims, sent out by their gods on an intense spiritual journey, and their very destiny hinged upon it. Half their race had flooded into the world, to send back by degrees, hopefully, the knowledge of the quest's end.
Only they never found it, and the pilgrims were abandoned by their gods.
The nomads fled into hiding, shame, exile. Of their distant, unknown homeland, there were only vague reports for many years after from travellers and merchants of a hot, dusty land where the spilling of blood was a common sight and war was all the people know. One by one, those who had come out into the world in searching re-appeared, a frightened, godless people with a doomed destiny. They became new pilgrims of a kind then, cleaving to whatever idols and signs they could wherever they found themselves.
But of course, not every lost nomad found themselves somewhere decent, and after learning their gods had abandoned them, some did not suffer them to dwell in their lands, believing they had committed some unspeakable sin. For a race to whom faith and divine purpose was a fundament of life, to be severed from that was a terrible blow, and they might just accept the guidance and power of anything else that showed itself. And so, these poor beggars uncovered, in their dark corners, other powers to which they might cleave.
On the outskirts of villages, in the midst of slums and hovels did they dwell, solitary. Stories were told, of course, that out there they performed rites behind shuttered windows and in dank cellars, calling out in their sorrow, in the night, to whatever might listen. Folk would swear that in lonely places they were answered, and bid pay terrible prices all too happily paid in full.
People who knew the pilgrims in passing would say that their sorrow slowly turned over the years into resentment, maybe even hatred. Those quiet, downcast eyes were no longer drooped in misery, but in dark rumination. Ancient faith had gone unrewarded, and they were left to scrabble in the mud. Word of their change spread slow and long, and the pilgrims took unto them the spurned, the bitter, the vengeful, and taught them how to set to rights their sadness and anger. The pilgrims would never worship again, even they who had gathered in the backs of temples and shrines would leave never to return, unwilling, some say, to place themselves beneath any more gods.
It is no secret that the high magicians of today loathe the origins of their arts in the mad pilgrims, who bent spirits and forces to their twisted wills. In their lust for divinity, they broke through veils intended to stay whole, which it is whispered may never have been closed. If any of them or their race are alive today, there are those who'd see them answer for their sins. There are others who would beseech them for their knowledge. There are even more who hope neither comes to pass, and the nomads simply fade into eternity.