The thing sitting across from me was known as a Darkling. Nourished by purest darkness, I could hear the kindle of shadows surging through the metal coils and tubers that adorned his armored exterior. For all of that, he was a perfectly pleasant host, even offering me a beverage. I declined, of course. I was all too familiar with the sweet blackberry wines derived from the dusky fruits of the deep woods, where the eldest Dark Hats are known to pray to strange gods. The inky beverages were likely to contain spirits of a decidedly non-alcoholic variety.
Without conversational nuance, my host began his exposition. “The Shepherd of Wolves is a type of being called, by my kind, an Unbegotten. These creatures are without beginning or end, and they seek nothing but the limits of their own pleasure. They have been known, from time to time, to put on a semblance of definition—merely a trifling whim on their part, we suspect. The Shepherd, in particular, enjoys the occasional solidity of shape and title, and has made great sport of his pet murderers, even fashioning games of death to further satisfy its fascination with killing and killers. Surely, this last bit is why you have sought us. You are a player in one of his games, are you not?”
“I am,” I confirmed.
“I see. In the past, the Shepherd’s contests were small, consisting only of a handful of participants, and taking place across a relatively minute killing field. But since the Darkness, all that has changed. The powers behind the night have been given substantially greater license to tarry beyond the threshold of our solid world, to more completely master their desires. The Shepherd has gathered together some of the greatest of your kind, and he means to see them dance and kill and die.”
“I’ve gleaned most of this already,” I interjected, “but what I seek is the precise meaning of the Game. What is the purpose of it all?” My words trailed into the silence, leaving small whispering motes of insecurity as they traveled over black peaks and graven anthracite.
“The last time a winner was declared,” my host replied, “tens of thousands of people were found impaled upon the leafless winter branches of an entire forest. The jaws of every man, woman, and child overflowed with sparkling gold coins that littered the forest floor like yellow leaves at the height of autumn. At the time, there was a killer well known for this very treatment. That killer, it is believed, won the Shepherd’s Game.”
I shook my head. “Nearly every greedy child has at some time or other been forced to heed the cautionary tale of ‘The Golden Leaves of Winter,’ though the Shepherd of Wolves wasn’t mentioned in any iteration I’ve ever heard.” Despite my intrigue, this was far from the definitive answer I was hoping for. I was beginning to understand why the supplicants of the ancient darkness were willing to meet with me.
The being from the deep darkness continued. “But you understand what might come of such a Game, specifically one that reaches its conclusion after the Great Darkness?”
I could feel the gloom around me tighten, trying to hold me in the chair. I decided to answer the creature’s question honestly. “Certainly. Entire populations of people could die, perhaps much more. I know the identities of only two living players—myself and Jack Lantern—and I can only imagine the dreams that might spring from our killing fields. I can see it now—a nearly endless Halloween, burning dim and orange across half the world, clean-carved smiles glowing from every window. Or perhaps it will be a global art gallery, its exhibits filled to bursting with lost dreams, spilling weird and wonderful from coast to coast, immortal and explicit.” I fixed my gaze upon the creature. “But you don’t care anything about that, do you? Your only concern is that Nighthead might come under the knife, yes? You don’t need to say anything, I already know your answer. You wish to end the game by destroying its players, thereby sheltering your own wicked industries from the Shepherd’s touch. It’s the purely logical move for your kind to make, after all. I’m quite sure that somewhere upon your person, perhaps hidden in some strange metallic compartment, there rests the kill lists you’ve taken from the fallen Wolves, players your kind have hunted down and killed. And now you would have my list.”
The being rose from the table and pushed a button on his armored forearm. With a tiny hiss of steam, a compartment opened on his belt. Out tumbled no less than three kill lists.
I decided to continue honestly. “I certainly don’t hold any of this against you. And if it makes you feel better about attempting to impede this wonderful Game, I will tell you I had no intention of leaving here without first tasting the shadows swimming through your veins. This could very well be my last time in your magnificent city, should I fall to Jack Lantern or some other Wolf. I just couldn’t leave without showing you my art, and basking in your unsurpassed darkness.”
My vision of the under-city, the rooftop, and the creature clad in solid shadow winked from sight, but I had already memorized my surroundings. Immediately, I roused my father from red dreams, and while the alien dark was somewhat constrictive, it was not immovable. With a little effort, I rose and swung my father where I expected to find my host.
As I’d correctly assumed, the being wasn’t the fastest of creatures and hadn’t moved far from his seat. My father collided with the armored darkness, sinking deep beyond the layers of steel into a near-ethereal body of shadow. The being cried out, simultaneously loosing what sounded like gunfire. I had already shifted behind the creature when the worst of its weaponry discharged, and the vantage allowed my sister to sever the cables from the armored helmet. No longer fed its nourishing pitch, the Darkling collapsed.
I sought out the dead body within the armored suit, but found nothing—merely a silken darkness weighing slightly more than the surrounding silence. My aspirations for art dashed, I took up a new idea. Removing the severed nubs from the overlarge helmet, I replaced the cables and donned the armored suit, breathing in a darkness I could never have imagined. Then, like some deep-sea explorer, I began to probe the primordial depths of the dead-black city.
With each inhalation of darkness, my senses turned away from the solid world and addressed, with curiously little hesitation, only places where its truest form lived. As I passed into the narrow lanes of the sable city, its citizens looked upon me with the quiet detachment of philosophers. They nodded to me, smiles like funeral songs and soot. There was no malice here, only friends to a different dream, abiding with the quiet dignity of fallen kings, ruined and beautiful.
I strolled to the edge of a fountain of smoothest onyx and listened to the words of a sackcloth-clad poet. He extolled the virtues of dying into the night, and wondered loudly over “the dead eye of Luna, burned white and blind by the sun. Man thinks it the face of the moon, and all the while, your remaining eye, still turned to darkness, away from the world, spies the other side of his soul. When, good mother, will you look again upon the world?” I assumed he was referring to the Great Darkness—I had once heard a story claiming the dark side of the moon once faced the earth, and it was that very event which caused the Great Darkness. But I didn’t dwell long upon that portion of his poem, instead fixating upon the word mother.
Almost lost to the endless train of questions that tumbled from the utterance, my focus was regained by the sight of others dressed as myself, though the newcomers stood far taller than even my height. They carved through the drifting black crowds with no small appearance of purpose. They were looking for me, naturally.
Here the darkness was law, and as such, the powers of the Deadworld were weak, which allowed me to move more quickly than I was accustomed to. After I discarded the apparatus obscuring my head, I raced beyond black gardens, between statues hewn from cold anthracite, past sanctuaries for creatures lost to the lighted world—until I finally drew upon the legendary Night’s Orchard, whose trees spilled over with the ripest, darkest fruits I’d ever seen. Here was the real reason for my wanting to visit Unduur.
I quickly snatched a single fruit from the limb of a nearby tree. It was not entirely unl
ike an apple, save that it was dressed in the color of oblivion and possessed all the heft of a whisper. I placed the black fruit in my pocket and prepared to take my leave of the wonderful city.
Before I could make good my escape, dark shapes discovered me. They initially kept their distance, as they knew what I was capable of—or at the least, they knew what I had done to their kinsman. Above me, knotting and coiling their bodies into terrible shapes, were strange eel-like creatures, apparently obedient to the gathering shades that sought to end my role within the Shepherd’s Game. Unlike the other creatures of Unduur, these beings were bone-white, expressing their fondness for the darkness by means of colorless flesh and eyeless faces.
After the Unduurians had gathered in sufficient numbers to quell their fear, they began to drift cautiously toward me. I made for a tactical retreat as our battle became a game of darkness, a test of our respective affiliations to pitch. While my body was comprised of only flesh and blood—whereas the Unduurians partook almost exclusively of shadow—my deeds courted a blackness that rivaled any shade that ever lived beneath the earth. My contest with Tom Hush had taught me something of the fickle nature of shadows—how they might betray one master for another.
I whispered to the surrounding darkness of the fire and light I had delivered unto the spaces beneath Lastrygone, how I had filled the hollow earth with the sun—and that I might choose to do so again, here. The darkness came to me like a lost dog, circling me, whispering its allegiance. At my command, the last breath of pitch was denied the Unduurians’ heaving lungs. Within seconds, my pursuers began to fall away like the fading memories of childhood. Soon, I was left only with the drifting eel-things that haunted the high branches of the black orchard. But without masters to command them, they glided away.
I traveled far and for days into the darkness of caves, hoping to find my way back to the surface of the world, but I was confronted only by fresh gloom. Perhaps it was my ninth day under the earth when I encountered a thin stream of light draining down into a wide stone chamber, signaling for the first time my nearness to the lighted world. However, no sooner had I began my steep climb toward the source of the emaciated light when something gigantic detached itself from the titan shadows of the chamber.
Sane words were never meant to describe such a creature. Only the language of madness and nightmare could do justice to the thing. The cave walls behind me exploded into stone shrapnel as a bizarre extrusion struck out. The thing, appearing to be neither god nor animal, gathered darkness with each step, moving between visibility and oblivion. Its size, easily greater than any prosaic earthly creature of land or sea, failed to produce even the smallest sound—its movement was betrayed only by the overabundance of its silence.
My speed bested the creature’s next swipe as I plunged into my own gathering of supplicant shadows. A split-second after my deep dive, my sisters blazed a wet and glittering path across a monstrous appendage, the fluids that followed as foreign as the creature itself. It wailed with such intensity, the stones of the ceiling awoke from their abiding sleep and rained down around me.
A world of teeth snapped shut inches from my face. Before the creature could raise its head beyond my reach, I sprang at its face, my sisters full of glee. The creature’s flesh was an inconsistent tangle of competing textures, as if it were stitched together from dozens of different species. Its eyes were traditional enough, however, thankfully resting in relatively customary places. My sisters liberated them from their sockets. The weight of the giant orbs and the accompanying optic fluids sent me to the ground with a squishy thud.
It wasn’t until it bellowed at me that I realized I was locked in mortal combat with a thinking, feeling creature. “Wretched little thing! I’ll spin the flesh of your soul into a hatchery for flies! Their tiny white children will gnaw at you until your spirit has nourished a swarm to rival the sky!”
I saw no harm in engaging the creature in conversation. “As I have no intention of being sewn into a worm garden, perhaps I should introduce you to another member of my family. His bite may rival your own, creature.” My father roared every bit as loudly as the nightmare, tracing an arc of fire and rage through the darkness so bright, it sent the shadows fleeing. The monstrosity’s head burst in a spray of gore and bone, yet it didn’t seem fazed. Unlike its eyes, its brain must have been more uniquely situated.
Surprisingly, without benefit of a head, the monster took its turn within our burgeoning dialogue. “You have a lovely little family, my plucky friend. I only wish I could work their metal as easily as I mold flesh. But I smell souls beneath their steely corpses, and while it’s a bit trickier than skin, I’ve been known to spin a soul or two into the tapestry of my webs.” Regrettably, the creature’s words camouflaged the advance of its gigantic stinger.
I felt the monster’s venom course through me as my heart pumped liquid fire to my every extremity. The stinger itself was more than adequate for tearing through my shoulder, almost severing my arm in the process. The force of the attack drove me from my place upon the creature’s shoulders and into the grasp of a massive embroidery of spun skin. By no means as placid as the silken works of a spider, the web of flesh came to life at my touch, whispering its welcome through hundreds of sewn-in mouths. “Come and suffer with us,” the web of skin whispered.
Within moments, I was trapped in its weave, snug and motionless. The lord of the tapestry, now taking no pains to remain hidden, gathered its labyrinthine body above me. It was a wonderfully horrible thing, made from a patchwork of organic nightmare. It began to lower itself upon me as a number of facial formations protruded from its giant body. At least this explained why my father’s blow had proven insufficient to killing the horror.
I had the feeling the creature had no immediate plans for me, which would allow the deep silence of the underground to mend my wounds. After a quick assessment of the situation, I allowed the creature’s wicked and tentacled extremities to seize me. It spun a fine casing of liquid skin all around me, twirling me in the manner of a spider applying its webbing. The strange liquescent pre-skin congealed upon every rotation, and I chuckled at the tickling touch of the trembling, lacey flesh. Finally, I was wrapped in a hearty veil of solidified skin, replete with strong interwoven layers of muscle tissue that flexed against my body, enhancing the already strong grip the enclosure exercised upon me.
As I expected, the creature allowed for my head to project out from the flesh cocoon, permitting me to hear it gloat—an activity of which the creature was eager to partake. It smiled with a half dozen mouths, first one and then another speaking, creating a singular, uninterrupted voice. “I see you have met my family, little morsel. They are a rather cozy bunch, to be sure, and they seldom if ever depart each other’s company. Soon, you will be even closer to them than you are now. But for that level of intimacy to be properly achieved, you must first spend some time writhing and rendering within me—I’m afraid I will have to swallow you.” Its many mouths illustrated their delight with smiles and smacking lips. “Before I do this, I will allow you the courtesy of pleading for your life, as I’m sure you will be inclined to make an argument for your continued survival. I will also tell you that I have, on rare occasion, been compelled to release a few potential meals on the basis of some rather compelling dissertations. Do you find this generous of me?”
I chose the last mouth to speak as the focus of my reply. “Firstly, you’re a liar. You’ve never neglected yourself on something else’s behalf, this much is clear to me. Secondly, I have no intention of begging. However, I’d be more than happy to ask some questions of you, if you’d be kind enough to answer.”
Some of the mouths growled at the insult, others smiled at the appeal. “A strange yet harmless request, to be sure,” the creature said, amused. “I’ll entertain what you clearly think is some kind of trick that will allow you to escape from me. Ask your questions, my little web-to-be. I look forward to your attempt
at freedom.”
The web of flesh continued to constrict, trying to force the air from my lungs. “Well, you certainly have enough limbs to pat yourself on the back, but my intention to escape is hardly a deduction worthy of such self-congratulation. I could escape even now, if I so chose, but I’d like to gather your story, first. Where do you come from, creature?”
“I see,” the creature mused. “You wish to stir me by having me recall the story of my life. Very well. It’s been a while since I’ve even thought of my lost home, so it might do me well to remember it out loud.” It lowered its massive ruin of a head level with my suspended body.
The silence hoarded within the creature’s chamber lay heaped like gold in a dragon’s lair. I seized it, pouring it across my cocooned, wounded body, attempting to heal it. All the while, the creature regaled me with tales of its home world and its exploits since being stranded upon the corpse of Earth. It had been marooned here sometime after the Darkness, and had abided ever since within the underworld, weaving tapestries of fleshy webs while it waited for the day it might return whence it came. I felt my shoulder reset just as the Flesh Weaver addressed me anew.
“And so, there you have it, little morsel, a brief recounting of all the lonely years I’ve spent away from my home, where webs and worlds are one and the same, where flesh looks to my kind’s weaving for its place and purpose. Have you any further questions, my dear fellow?” The creature seemed eager for another question, and I realized that my captor was truly enjoying the opportunity to use its multiple mouths for a purpose other than eating and weaving.
The Red Son Page 20
