Shadows & Sorcery #84
Here we go here we go here we go now—the eighty-fourth edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
What follows requires some context.
This week, I took a trip to the nigh-mythical Cúchulainn Stone in County Louth, here in Ireland, where it is said that the demigod hero Cúchulainn had his final stand—literally, he lashed himself to an ancient menhir so that he might die standing and facing his enemies. And then I read a bunch of barbarian fantasy comics and listened to Horslip’s Dearg Doom on repeat.
The result of this is the three-part tale of grim and lurid barbarian adventure I present to you all this week!
A quick note about the next chapter of The Path of Poison: it will be with you all during the week. It’s gonna be a pretty important chapter, too, so it needs much looking over. And thank you to everyone who’s been reading through it and leaving comments, I’m happy to know it’s going down well!
And just once more, remember, I’m looking for feedback on premium content: what do YOU as a customer want to see here? Behind the scenes info? Glances at WIPs? Reader submitted material? Or perhaps narrated episodes? Illustrated e-book collections of stories? Maybe even guest writers?
Please let me know!
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This week, we join the scion of a decadent empire on a quest into the heathen wilderness to seek the Temple of Shadow, but we must pass through the malevolent and primal Castle Woods to finally stand before the gruesome Pit of Sacrifice…
Temple of Shadow
As the loyal blood of Regnum Regis, and as the scion of a warrior clan, I was bid by my elders go out on campaign to celebrate my coming of age, to go out into the barbarian-infested lands beyond the borders of our empire. I studied at length Xaxus Pentameron's legendary "Codex Barbarion" to ascertain what might be my best option. Using my family's strength of name, I was admitted to peruse the original manuscript itself, and not some pallid reproduction. The tome itself is a work of exquisite beauty, its cover plates are of oak cut from trampled pagan groves, and its leaves are the dried skin of conquered tribes finally put to good use, inked with blood from the finest stock of slaves.
The book details the many savage tribes dwelling in the as yet untamed wilderness surrounding Regnum Regis, and is in fact an encyclopedia of barbarians as much as it is the priest's own journal. I delighted in Pentameron's details of the feasts and orgies of his day contrasted with the brutal and bloody rites of pagans unfit for imperial inclusion. I came away from it with much food for thought, on where I might make my name.
There was, of course, Áéa just south of us. The people cower under the predations of their wandering gods who produce all kinds of cursed demihuman offspring, who dwell in the hills and rivers and woods, so perhaps I go kill one of those and be worshipped as a hero by the ignorant but pleasant farmers of those warm, lush valleys. But I thought it too cliche in this day and age.
I considered what was beyond that, and the arid plains and sandy wastes of primeval Narakhis did not seem so attractive to me, lest I fall foul of one of their bestial sorcerers or as some tomb-offering. There was little else to interest me southwards, just rotting and sweltering jungles where tribesmen live in perpetual war with hordes of apemen. The islands which fall away into the sea sparked a moment's consideration, but as yet not even the fleets of Regnum Regis have landed there, so seething are the seas with monsters.
I looked northwards then, to the cold plains where splintered factions of nomads battle endlessly amongst themselves. Pentameron's tome says it is so they can claim some kind of god-ancestor's birthright. Too much conflict at every turn, little glory to be found. There was the land at the apex of this, and the words of Pentameron upon this place interested me greatly, but also saddened me, for he says they were once ripe for civilization, and had a fine martial culture, but fell too quickly to their barbarian predilections, and it is now a godless land of bloodshed. It will take more than one scion of the empire to fix that place. And besides, I did not wish to be away from home too long.
For me, it seemed like the west was the answer, delving deep into the dark forests and frozen mountains. Pentameron described the Vorgelts of this land as naked, painted barbarians, divided between the perilous mountains and the monolith-infested vales, who dance around bone-heaped bonfires on certain nights and worship, at turns, mighty heroes and bloody idols. They perpetually raid each other, berserking shaman-warriors possessed by beast spirits clashing against warped fighters twisted into unspeakable horrors by the power of the menhirs. This struck me with an intense and morbid fascination, and I went to one of my family's finest slaves, herself a savage but beautiful Vorgelt taken in an invasion some ten years ago and sold to us, whose hero-god Ky-kulon I had seen her worshipping in secret. I wrested much knowledge from her.
This is what I presented to my elders when it came to gather up and venture forth.
At the far western edge of the land, there sat a temple. A grim edifice of black stone, primeval and weatherstained, squatting low before the roaring waves of the grey, steely ocean in which there careen and crash colossal icebergs. There, the southern barbarians gather to holler and roar into the darkness so that they may draw out their ancient slumbering heroes to help in some battle.
I would myself go to the "temple of shadow", for the Vorgelts believe that is all the dead are, and draw for forth myself a pagan hero and do battle with it. This was acceptable, and for three nights a feast was held in my honour. For the gods, we performed deeply esoteric and solemn rites dredged up from the darkest corners and oldest scrolls and tablets. The hero-god of the slave girl was propitiated with a little spilling of blood, as per her instructions. All this ritual pomp was followed by wild lotus orgies, and scouring the streets to seek folk to join our revels. A little more blood was spilled here, in good humour.
Every night, or morning, or whenever I would eventually pass into slumber and, while still at the mercy of my fellow revellers, I would dream the most vivid dreams of that temple. This I knew to be an effect of the lotus pulp, but I believed, too, it was a destiny calling to me from the fog of time. In those dreams, amidst the dense scent of ocean air and rumble of far off thunder, I flew through a rich darkness, pregnant with unseen shapes I battled against in order to reach some goal.
That morning, our company of 20, including myself, rose with the sun. We saluted the golden disc as our people had done since time immemorial, and we looked one last time upon the great span of our venerable empire. Though this was not the jewel-encrusted spectacle of the grand, sprawling capital, with its towers of white marble and diamond, the jade domes and burnished bronze temples, the wisps of smoke from labour and rite across the charming squat little homesteads, this was our bucolic home, the first province that Regnum Regis conquered in the name of law and civilization many centuries ago. Emerald hills and azure lakes could be seen in the light mist of the distances, pleasant country to rival the luxuriant splendour of the warm but rather too wild Áéan southlands. Our temples were grottoes and caves, painted and carved by hand, or trees which had watched Regnum Regis rise from the earth and had eventually passed, their hollow trunks admitting us into their aeon-weighted bodies.
We looked upon this and felt a yearning for it swell in our hearts, but beyond it lay the dark tangle of the barbarian wilderness and a legacy waiting to be grasped, and so we went out bare chested, with naught but strapped sandals and belts for our weapons and idols like our forebears, skin drinking the sun of home before we fell under pagan suns.
Castle Woods
The words "forest" or “woods” do not do justice to the immensity through which we passed. This was one absolutely unbroken vastness of a kind I could scarcely comprehend. I had no trouble believing that the entirety of Regnum Regis could sit comfortably within these walls of boundless, virile nature. Yes, there were small glades and openings, and thinnings of the trees, but they were not dividers, just landmarks quickly subsumed back into this primordial gulf.
The air was thick, it was heavy, and I breathed deeply of it at each step, the rich, damp, musty odour of a mix I cannot even begin to describe flooding down into my lungs and through the whole of my body. The ground was in places soft, almost a mush of loam, rotten leaves, and, I suspect, carcasses. In other places it was hard and crunched with dead leaves, twigs, and the remains of fallen trees. The light was filtered through the deep green, almost black of the single leagues-wide span of the canopy overhead, in thin little shafts of pale grey and diffused in the heavy dark. Mist crept as a chill blanket over all here, rising sometimes in slow, lurching waves, sometimes parting at our approach, and sometimes refusing to be even brushed aside, clinging to us.
And then, there were the monoliths. Neither Xaxus Pentameron nor my slave girl had lied when they each described this southern reach as infested by standing stones and "cromlechs". How many of these could conceivably have been placed here, I thought. How many could really have been dragged from so far away and into this nigh-impenetrable vastland? I came to believe then that these menhirs had not been placed here by human hands, but had grown from the earth, and that the stones that man erected were made merely in mimicry.
But what struck me as the most curious aspect of this forest-land was something I only noticed over several days of travel. I noted down my observations mentally at first, noticing certain repetitions in the growths of the trees. After that, I began to actually draw them on parchment brought for map-making. I was quickly proved right: the trees really were like a fortress. The trunks, which dwarfed some imperial houses, were not just grown but arranged like walls, like corridors, and most importantly of all, like chambers. Some of these spaces had lower sub-canopies to reinforce the impression. We were walking, then, through the very halls of the barbarian cities, if they could be called such. Or perhaps palaces. Or even temples.
But if this was indeed the case...where were the tribesfolk? The attendants? The priests? Or worshippers? Not in several days had we heard anything but the scampering of unseen beasts and chilling calls of winged things. Not a single human figure but each other graced our sights.
We performed our necessary rites personally each night, or what we guessed was night, for what might be sun or moon or stars was difficult to discern in the infinite murk and twilight. And besides, different lands have different suns, and the small, whitish sun of the west wandered a strange path, and cast stranger light. Small fires were kindled as best could be managed with often damp material and we burned figures of leaf and twig, or flesh from our hunts of the forest beasts. We did not sing or keep feasts here. Something about the cold immensity did not want to be broken more than it already was.
I thought back upon Regnum Regis much during this trek. The white stone and bright sun, the wide, shallow valleys and lively eastern sea, from which there comes the fresh ocean wind singing across the golden landscape, all of it rich in lore and faith. My memories of the empire's glory and how I might share in it kept me going through the oppressive and alien atmosphere of these castle woods, which I had taken to calling them so much like the dour grey keeps of the westernmost imperial province were they.
The seeming abandonment of this place filled us with a terrible loneliness, of a kind I suspect unique to this part of the world. We felt small, insignificant, though we were of the empire, and our tread was heavy even in our home. One of our number was not an imperial native but a naturalized citizen from the third and so far last conquered territory of Makeroia, a curious land of rock-strewn plains and wide, shallow rivers, and so he had at least some remnant of barbarian superstition that was now fighting for supremacy in his system. He spoke with a shudder at the tense stillness, which I admit I felt too, so potent was it. It was most certainly not a place which slumbered, but seemed to hold its breath and wait, yet I had to remind him of what he was, and who he was with, which helped soothe his wilder nature.
There is a sadness to an abandoned temple. A pitiful kind of aura which permeates sacred spaces given over to the wiles of nature and beast, that neither feels nor hears the footfalls of adherents or their chants, that does not smell the incense and perfumed fires, that does not bathe in the warm light of holy flames. There is sometimes too a fragile majesty to the abandoned temple, the space which served its people well, and which was not left to rot but to silently return to the earth from which it was raised. One can imagine its splendour, and perhaps even ruins can be returned to by the surreptitious acolyte, and the old rites be lived again.
We felt none of this in the castle woods. From my extensive reading of the Codex Barbarion and questioning of the slave girl, I knew that this hadn't been just a temple, but a whole complex where people lived and worshipped, every corner of it was given over to their many shrines and customs. Upon a closer, careful inspection, I found none of the things I knew to look for either standing, or even remaining. I couldn't place it, but something about this place didn't seem just deserted from an eventual drifting away, this place had been fled from. Something had driven the people here away. Northern raiders? Perhaps. But I felt somehow more damage would be evident, even if it were long ago. No, it simply appeared to have been suddenly uprooted.
Our nights deep within this maze here haunted. We hadn't recognized it at first, but once the mood of the place began to settle upon us, a subtle dread soon crept in under it. We felt less and less alone, and came to feel more like trespassers. I came to believe that we had been baited into a trap, and when we were already far too deep in its jaws, the thing would reveal itself.
One grey morning we came to a great parting of the trees, and suddenly found ourselves free from that dark place. None of us felt right about it, and I let the company voice their displeasure and fear so they would remember. It was only when I took stock of our people did I come to know the price for our sudden escape. The western man was gone. Not a trace of him was to be found even when several tramped back to the last campsite, and we had been in too much of a hurry to have this earthen fortress at our backs to notice.
I guessed then why the people of this wood had left. There are powers of the deep, old world not even barbarians will worship.
Pit of Sacrifice
Our passing into the highlands had been a disaster. In seeking a path to the temple of shadows, a bearing of the land must be attained, and to do so, elevation was required. We wandered across a bleak landscape of various shades of green, brown, orange and yellow, each one sapped of some innate vitality, dulled and muted. The rest was grey, both stone and sky. Pale snow capped some higher peaks. I could hardly believe human beings not only lived here but fought for it, savage or no. But fight they did, as our coming was met, at seemingly every step, by the assaults of manic berserkers.
I had little knowledge beyond what the Codex Barbarion had granted me on these highlanders. I knew they were shaman-warriors, possessed of beast spirits in battle, but by my gods I could not have prepared myself for the things I witnessed that led to their reputation. We surprised a group of them in a grim little glade of low, sparse trees, crouched over the rotten corpse of some animal, hammering upon large drums, leaping, yelling, and partaking of the fetid flesh, and each of them quaffing some brew from a skin.
If we had one advantage here, it was superior training and arms. The barbarians carried long-hafted axes and broadswords, weapons which granted them range, to be sure, but once our more agile frames fell in close, wielding much more compact warblades, short work was made of them as they swung about their hefty weapons. But this was a lesson paid in imperial blood, for they slew no less than three of our number within minutes, before our blades put them down.
We skirted a small kind of village some time after that, surrounded by a low earthwork wall, a solitary and miserable affair with rag-clad natives going about their toil in the biting cold. But we were of Regnum Regis, and the heat of our gold sun had not yet fully left our flesh, and we walked tall amidst the cold hills. We were glad of that blessing when we finally gained a glimpse of the seaward horizon, before being assailed once more by frightful warriors in paint and furs and naught else, themselves like beasts walking like men. No doubt a full legion could wipe these hillsides clean, but our numbers were dwindling in a land they knew better than we ever would.
At last we retreated back into the forests of standing stones and damp fog, only to walk right into a desperate fight between south and northmen. The southerners were the raiders here, and their enemies barely had them in a stalemate. It was then we were witness the other dark sorcery of the Vorgelt barbarians, a sight that seared itself into my mind. One of the southern men suddenly began to convulse—but that word does no justice to the sheer violence with which the man's flesh shivered and spasmed and shook. The fingers flexed madly and the limbs were shot out straight as the muscles across his form bulged, looking ready to burst. His cheeks and mouth were pulled back halfway down his neck so the gullet was visible. He hunched over and steaming hot blood poured from his gaping, grinning maw. His eyes distorted and stared madly, clouded red. His legs bent and snapped, and reformed to look like those of a dog, and upon them he bounded forth, cleaving a northerner in half with a single stroke, and embedding his sword in the head of a fellow, screaming inhuman screams.
The "battle" was over in minutes, and we moved in to slaughter the exhausted Vorgelts. The warped warrior's flesh was sundered and the skin was split and bleeding with the mutation. It reduced our number to no more than five before we killed it, the others having run off in sheer terror. How these madmen had not conquered the hills and mountains with such demonic ferocity spoke to the frightful power of the northmen. Once it was done, we surveyed the scene, and saw that the southmen had been piling corpses atop a great bier, which had been dragged, laden with dead. This seemed worth investigating, as the temple of shadows did receive sacrifices and offerings. We followed its track, knowing we were hunted.
When we gained the rise, we weren't ready for the sight which greeted us. It was one of primeval wonderment. The land rose again to a beetling clifftop of dark grass rushing to and fro in a wild gale, it tapered to a peak which was crowned by a squat, black edifice of smooth, stained stone: the temple of shadow. Framing this vista were vast wings of roaring ocean waves which climbed high like cliffs themselves before crashing into the stone. Into my weary limbs there flooded a renewed energy and purpose, and I marched at the head of our beaten and broken company.
There was a sense of brutish vitality about all things here, the air seemed charged with tension, as if ready to spring forth any moment—to what end, I could not guess, but I don't believe I would have been much surprised had the cliff itself taken off to swim the depths of the ocean. It made us rather jumpy, though. The moment we heard the first echoes of that barbaric howling over the din of the raging ocean, we all fell into a low stance, ready for battle. But we paused before the maw of the temple and ran through our idols, invoking the blessings of lands now so far away.
In particular, among my own collection, I brought out a very small idol of dull metal, made to resemble a fighter in one of the many arenas that dot the empire, for bloodsport is a cherished pastime and fine channel for our vigorous energies. The god's name was Daimo Fulgus, the god that fighters invoke for glory in combat. Yes, there were many war gods and battle spirits in Regnum Regis, but warriors invoked Fulgus not for prowess, clarity, honour, or strength, no, they invoked him for glory. For spectacle. To be remembered.
In the depths of the temple, I found my destiny. I wasn't surprised we were captured, but I was disappointed that my hubris had clouded my judgement, so close to my goal. We had followed the trail of blood, the stench of death, and howls of the barbarians, right into their clutches. Lurid torches lit this otherwise windowless, cyclopean carcass of sunken stone. Water dripped and ran from every conceivable place and pooled about the floor. Thus was thick smoke and brine added to the already heady air. The Vorgelts were banging their weapons and drumming their shields, shouting and hollering, chanting in their barbarous tongue all around us, ringing a deep, steaming pit.
And then, just as the high priest or shaman or whatever it was they had turned to me, ready to cut my throat open and smash my skull in as had been done to the four others, a thought rushed to the forefront of my mind. I didn't stop to consider it, but simply let it happen. I bellowed the one thing I thought might give me a moment, and spoke then the name of the hero-god of my family's slave girl. Ky-kulon! Several of them stopped and looked at me, and laughed guttural laughs. The ritual master shared some short words with another, and chuckled deeply. The blade was sheathed, the hammer set down, and I was cast alive into the pit of sacrifice.
I pulled myself from the thick pools of rotting gore and saw first the desecrated bodies of my kinsmen, and then saw them atop bones and sundered flesh in countless different states of decay, a putrescent panoply of blighted green and black and red. From above came the calls of the barbarians. They weren't just hooting and yelling, they were screaming now, smashing their weapons and shields against the worn, crumbling edge of the pit, their voices cracking and straining in cruel mockery. I saw now that at one end of the uneven shaft I was trapped in, there was a low, wide alcove, pitch black, and pregnant with vague figures which seemed to be rushing towards me, but never making progress.
Save for one. Something loped and lurched and bounded through the illimitable darkness. A great black shape thundered from the alcove and rushed about the pit madly. I wondered only a for second, wordlessly, about my dream of this temple, now so long ago. Of being amidst numberless shapes in the dark, running towards some goal. As if I had been in that darkness. But I snapped to as I saw the darkness standing amidst the piles of flesh, and beheld then as it began to take shape. It was, I shuddered to see, feasting upon the dead, and slathering itself with fluids and mush, and making sounds I knew could come from no living creature.
I guessed what it was by the one name the Vorgelts above chanted out of unison: Ky-kulon. To look upon an ancient idol said to have been carved in the very likeness of a living god, or to glimpse indescribable holy forms deep in ecstatic visions, this was remarkable, but understandable. To look upon a god in the flesh, conjured by blood, summoned by primal fury, to which a grander and darker sacrifice than I had ever seen was offered...
Well, I had my sword, and so I did in this treacherous place all I could.
I have scars enough for a lifetime, and that lifetime is and will be a blur to me. The warmth of the golden sun left me long ago. I have risen from tilling grim little fields under the whip, to slaying wolven northmen, to standing beside kings in giving counsel. I have thrown corpses into the pit, and danced around witch-fires. My children are many now, and they have my eyes. Regal blood asserts itself slowly, reigning in barbarism. May yet the glory of empire grace this heathen land.