Corvus Rex

by J K Ishaya

  “He shook his head. ‘Not even close. When that bond vanished, blocked by some wall that my mind could not penetrate, I realized we had been discovered. Nyarlathotep had to be in the area somewhere and fully aware of not only myself but of you. I went out to track you by scent. I found the two contubernia you slaughtered, but by the time I traced you to Trajan’s fort, you were not there. Your handy work in that traitor’s tent had stirred a hornet nest. I went in to investigate and managed, just in time, not to step into the binding circle left on the floor. I knew then that you had been trapped, and Nyarlathotep’s own stench still lingered. It has been a long time since I caught that scent, but I remembered it well. I left the Romans to their frenzy of fear and continued following your traces, and his, for days, until he and his retinue of sheq n’gai reached the Alps, and there I followed the scent up to a granite wall in a mountainside. I know it is the door through which he took you, but I could not get in.

  “‘I knew his next step would be to get you into the Dreamlands somehow. It was the same thing he did to me.’ His eyes glazed, and he looked away. ‘A long time ago.’ After a pause he seemed to catch a second wind. ’So, I ensconced myself nearby and slept, and dreamed. I descended the steps to the Temple of Flame, and Nasht and Kaman-Thah told me Nyarlathotep had indeed brought you through, not to mention their complaining that all protocols were trampled, and they had not been allowed the opportunity to question you. At that point, I knew I would need further help.’ He gave a gesture to the old man and something of a respectful bow. ‘This is Nodens,’ he said. ‘Lord of the Great Abyss.’

  “I looked at the individual in question, having no idea of his significance other than that he had commanded the winged things that had taken me off the ship. With a title like that, I surmised, no wonder they—night-gaunts as he called them—obeyed him. I must have looked like a complete numskull given I failed to bow or show any kind of respect. Malorix cleared his throat and gave a gesture that I follow through. I recall that I still did not catch on, and finally Nodens’ stoic facade cracked ever so slightly. His sea-glass eyes crinkled at the corners and I thought maybe his beard twitched a little around his mouth.”

  “Nodens.” Howard finally puts his notebook to use again and scrawls the name in there. “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “Look among your mythologies again,” Kvasir says, “and you will find him. The Celts, particularly, venerated him in this world. He is one of the few Great Ones whose name has not been altered from realm to realm and age to age.”

  “Of course, I did not know this,” I remind Howard. “To me he was an inhuman mystery, but he had obviously helped Malorix locate me, so I finally gave a clipped, awkward bow. ‘Gratitude. I think.’

  “‘We must get both of you away from here,’ Nodens said and stepped down from his root pedestal with an air of purpose. ‘Nyarlathotep will not rest until he has recovered all of his prizes.’

  “Malorix nodded and turned to me. ‘Zyraxes, listen, I will have to find a way into the mountain on the earth plane to get you out. Are there any details you can tell me?’

  “‘Only that I am trapped in a circle and surrounded by those creatures, the n’gai. There is a fellow prisoner. His name is Kvasir, he is—”

  “‘Kvasir?’ Nodens asked, and his brow softened as if with great fondness. ‘He is alive?’

  “‘Yes,’ I said, ‘how do you know him?’

  “‘I fought alongside him and his father ages ago. The Boreans are no Dreamers but, whenever necessary, they have ventured back into the Dreamlands through portals to fight the darkness of the Outer Gods. Nyarlathotep is himself one such vile being but he is of a lower rank and ultimately serves Azathoth. But Kvasir and his kind,’ he went on, ‘they are good and brave people, loyal to Queen Nara. Pity about his brother. Lyrr was a good young man, too. They may save him yet if Nyarlathotep hasn’t annihilated his consciousness.’”

  “Wait,” Howard interjects. “Nodens is the ally you spoke of before, isn’t he?”

  Kvasir nods. “Not technically one of the founders of my race, but a cousin, you could say. Not just a Great One but an Elder God tasked with keeping Nyarlathotep’s activities in check as much as possible. I had not encountered him since before Lyrr’s possession. Much more time had passed for him in the Dreamlands than for me on the earth plane, hence his claim that we'd fought together ages prior when for me it had only been a matter of years.”

  "How did he know of Lyrr's possession?"

  "Our queen that he spoke of, Nara, was able to communicate with him over the gulf by a means established between them. They often exchanged intelligence on Nyarlathotep's activities when possible, and so both were always informed of what was happening on either side of the veil. The time difference, of course, always complicated that. For example, on the earth plane, Lyrr's possession had taken place only weeks ago for myself, but for Nodens the news was already years old in Dreamlands time."

  "I see," Howard says, though his voice is anything but sure.

  I nod along. "Come the time you do journey there, Howard, you will find it somewhat confusing until you get used to it."

  The boy considers this then signals for me to continue.

  “By now my mind spun to keep up with all that Nodens had said. By comparison, I had learned a handful of things about the Dreamlands and their nature, and I had no real concept of these gods other than what Nyarlathotep had told me when we looked upon the face carved into the side of that volcano. That I had learned it all from Nyarlathotep—the very entity they were telling me I should not trust—that was the infuriating part. Flummoxed by all of this talk, I began to pace with agitation and then an exceptionally human rant came out of me directed at both of them.

  “‘Great Ones… Outer Gods… the Crawling Chaos… this queen you speak of… and… and… Azathoth?’ I felt something of a chill saying this last… Word? Name? I did not even know what it meant, but I was too wound up to stop and evaluate why the hairs on my arms abruptly stood up. ‘You say all of this as if I know what it means. But all I really know is that I am now this… flesh-eating…’ I searched for the right word other than monster and I came up with the very same term my prison mate had used: ‘Abomination!

  “I turned upon Malorix and I am sure my glare was nothing short of ugly. ‘Maybe, just maybe, had I been allowed to explore the Dreamlands all along, I would not be this ignorant fool, but you took it upon yourself to stop me from going down the steps when I was a child. Why? To protect me? Look what good it has done! If you wanted to protect me then you should have let me die in Trajan’s camp!’ Then all of my energies were spent. I stumbled back, my piece said—or shouted, rather—and shuddered.

  “Stunned by this outburst, Malorix fished for something to say. ‘Zyraxes, I could not…’ His mouth bobbed open, shut again. ‘I did not mean…’ He sounded as if there were an invisible grip on his throat, cutting off the breath needed to make words. Redness rimmed his eyes, but tears did not come.

  “Unfazed, Nodens quietly watched us, both of his hands coming to rest on the staff of the trident.

  “‘I could not let you die without having your revenge on the Romans,’ Malorix admitted. ‘I had my own reasons for hating them even over a hundred years later.’

  “Hearing this, from what I had learned of his history while in my prison, my suspicions were confirmed. ‘I know,’ I said, ’and I know what Nyarlathotep did to you.’

  “He stared, blinking for a moment, swallowed what appeared to be a very hard lump, and in an instant, I saw pieces of his former life through his eyes: a wash of fear and confusion, blood, looking up at gray-patchy skies, hearing flies buzzing and the moans of fallen warriors dying while Roman legionaries picked over the remains. As smoky Stygian skies descended into night and the soldiers strode away with their spoils, a strange figure appeared in a black robe, his face obscured, but in the place where the forehead should be sat a green, luminescent jewel of a scarab. There was a sense of being
lifted, carried, and then blackness as the memories shut off and Malorix took a seat on the root where Nodens had been standing.

  “‘Nyarlathotep took me and several of my brethren, all of us broken and dying, from the battlefield,’ he said. ‘That was our last conflict with the Romans. I did not find out what happened until years later, long after I was changed, after I escaped from him.

  “’The cavern in the mountain, where he is keeping you… I know that place well. I did not need your scent to find it. It is snared in my memories and will never fade.’

  “‘That is where he changed you,’ I said, and he nodded, and we were both quiet for a long moment as I recalled the exchanges in the prison, when my captor bragged about altering a human man. This man. And he was still broken, as broken as I was, and I understood him so much more than expected.

  "'Yes,' Malorix said, 'and I am afraid that when I changed you, I managed to alert him all over again to my whereabouts. Your transformation caused a ripple in energies I cannot explain, like a boulder thrown into a lake, and Nyarlathotep was waiting on the far shores to see the waves break.' On this he looked away and shook his head, a gesture of ultimate frustration bordering on defeat.

  “Then Nodens spoke and brought us back to the present. ‘Wonderful, we all acknowledge that we are on the same side, yes?’ The light in his eyes appeared to dart from one to the other of us then fell upon me. ‘Make no mistake, boy, Nyarlathotep will be sending out his own minions to find you. Malorix’s body is on the earth plane awaiting his return. He has the knowledge and means to free you as well as Kvasir or any other captives that might be within that mountain.

  "‘As for you, although you took the steps to get here, escape is as easy as waking up. I had hoped the drop from the sky would jar you back into the waking realm, but you are still here, so you must focus and… what?’

  “I was already shaking my head at him. ‘I cannot,’ I explained. ‘In my cell, I am also under a sleep spell and thus trapped here. I could not wake up if your winged devils dropped me from a thousand skies.’

  “To that, Malorix voiced his favorite vulgarity: ’Shit.’”

  Chapter Twenty

  “We discussed at long length what might possibly break the spell so that I could wake up on the earth plane and further escape could commence. I told Malorix and Nodens about the young woman who had cast the spell. The manner in which she had done it was too hazy for me to recall now; all I knew was that she’d chanted something, waved her hand gracefully in my direction, and the next thing I knew I stood over the steps looking down toward the first entry at the Temple of Flame with Nyarlathotep there and ready to guide me. Nodens could not identify the specific spell from this description alone, but he knew exactly who the woman was and the role she had played in conceiving a Borean-human child solely for the sake of breeding a vessel for Nyarlathotep.

  “The Elder God said he had first encountered her in the Dreamlands long ago when she was young and innocent, before she had been seduced by Nyarlathotep’s sect. Nodens had a fondness for Dreamers, it seemed, and he appeared to be regretful that Amarisa had slipped through his fingers into wickedness.

  “The rest, well, much of it we have already summarized for you.”

  Howard nods. “It came together then? It all began to make sense?”

  “Yes, for the most part, though there were still details to discover, and we hadn’t the time yet. Nodens told me more about the Great Ones, their fall from grace and the faction of their descendants who battled their way out of the Dreamlands to find a new home here on earth. I thought of the image of a Great One carved into the side of that mountain and once more compared it to both my prison mate, Kvasir, and Nyarlathotep’s vessel. It made sense that such features should come from godly beings and be inherited generation after generation with little of any human bloodlines showing. Such was the case with Lyrr, inheriting his Borean father’s traits.”

  “It makes me think of tales of fallen angels,” Howard muses. “Paradise Lost.”

  “Or the Nephilim who came from the sons of God and the daughters of men,” Kvasir adds soberly. To Howard’s astonished look he adds, “You would be surprised how much my kind lent to those legends.”

  “In any case,” I continue, “I began to feel like I was awakening on another level. Nyarlathotep’s web of deception was crumbling. I had been duped into seeing him as something of a guide, but while he started out presenting a broad learning scope when we’d set out from the Enchanted Wood, soon he had narrowed the focus, particularly to my feeding needs and patterns. Then he had done all he could to lead me away from achieving any sort of moral code. I knew, too, that whether here in the Dreamlands or in the waking world, I would encounter him again and I would need to resist him with all the power I could summon, whatever form that power might be.

  “Nodens escorted me and Malorix east through the forest, heading for a city named Ilarnek where Malorix and I were to feed. Yet again, my injuries, and subsequent rapid healing from the fall called for it, advancing the hunger even though I had fed only hours ago.

  “Malorix also intended to peruse the archives in the temple there for more information on Dreamer interaction in these lands that might help me awaken, and pending what he found, our next option was simply a use of coordination in which I would be left to fend for myself here while he returned to the earth plane and broke into the mountain to find both Kvasir and my sleeping body. This would be hazardous for him, given he could fall prey to the same mystical traps as I had, so he would have to navigate with all of his senses piqued, watching every single step.

  “We reached a crossroads cut into the woodland with directional signs pointing east to Ilarnek and west to Thraa, and there Nodens left us. He was going to the coast to station his night-gaunts to keep watch for Nyarlathotep’s ship. I asked him if I would see him again. He said nothing, though his aqua eyes beamed, and I thought the upper edge of his beard rose, hiding a small smile. Then a heavy mist that smelled of salty ocean formed around him, engulfed his body, and withdrew rapidly into the woods, leaving nothing but an empty path. I blinked in astonishment while Malorix strode on ahead unfazed.

  “‘He does that,’ he called back to me. ‘You’ll get used to it if you’re planning to come back to the Dreamlands.’

  “I hurried after him like a perplexed child. ‘You mean you will not stop me any more?’

  “‘Why should I? The damage is done.’

  “‘Damage?’ I retorted. ‘It seems to me, the damage is from being withheld from the Dreamlands to begin with!’

  “‘Really? Here you are and so far Nyarlathotep has almost made you his puppet. Did he say he was taking you somewhere fantastic? He did, did he not? Same shit he tried with me.’

  “Those words stunned me. I stopped hurrying along behind him and stared at the ground for a moment of fevered thought as he continued around the bend ahead. Malorix and I already had so much in common, even down to fighting against Rome, so it made sense that Nyarlathotep had put him through a similar situation as mine or taken him on a similar journey. I took a breath and decided I would reorganize my questions better as well as tamp down any cynicism. Just then he came back down the path.

  “I expected him to scold me for stopping, but he quickly gave me a signal to remain quiet and I heard his voice gently in my mind, Caravan coming this way, and I do not feel like being seen. Are you capable enough of shielding yourself?

  “I nodded to him and we stepped off the path and into the woods where we waited. After a moment, the caravan appeared. Three colorful horse-drawn vardos came grinding along the road, followed by a supply wagon with pots and pans jangling against its side walls. Several men clad in layered clothing with scimitar-style swords on their belts walked along beside it, and at least two children were running about. We focused on their minds, projecting a visual of only more forest where we stood watching.

  “My hunger stirred a little, but I kept it in check and focused on learning about
them via their surface thoughts. They were merchant families, a clan, moving from city to city with their goods. One of the children, a boy, paused not far away to relieve himself before running off with a shout for the entire movement to wait, which, of course, they did not, but with all of his energy he caught up just fine to have his head gently swatted by his father.

  “With a creeping, renewed sadness, I thought of my own children, dead in the tower house fire, which was so intense that there would not have even been bones to recover. The whole event felt so long ago, a lifetime away, but it still sent little stabs through my heart and a dense lump up into my throat. I think Malorix sensed this, for after they passed, he turned to me and gestured that we move a little further into the woods.

  “The shadows deepened here, and I basked in that. The ground, like that onto which I’d fallen, was dense with roots and moss and Malorix took a seat, gesturing for me to sit opposite him. He diffused a great deal of emotional discomfort and tension which in turn fed my own agitation. I realized, however, that it was not directed toward me, and slowly I lowered myself onto a large, fairly comfortable root.

  “He propped on his knees, head hung in thought before he finally spoke. ’I am sorry now that I stopped you from coming into the Dreamlands,’ he said, ‘but I was trying to protect you.’

  “‘But why? You did not even know me. I did not know you. Nyarlathotep said you perhaps sensed the same potential in me to become… this. To become like you.’

  “He looked up at me, gave a wistful, reminiscent smile, looked away again for a time, and then said, ‘I descended the steps for the first time when I was five and entered the Temple of Flame. Nasht and Kaman-Thah greeted me, asked their questions, and though they hesitated to allow me through at that tender age, they finally did. I was frightened on my final journey down to the last landing that looks into the Enchanted Wood. For years all I did was play in those woods, luminous and dark as they are, where I encountered the zoogs and other creatures.’ I questioned him on these things and after he described them, I realized that was the name for the slippery rodent-like things I had seen on my journey through with Nyarlathotep as my guide. They were rather intelligent creatures, he told me, and he had managed to befriend some of them, though they could be unpredictable as to how they might treat a human wanderer. He was fortunate that they had chosen not to overpower and eat him. Then he continued, ‘Over time, as I grew older, I ventured farther, until I spent entire lifetimes in the Dreamlands, only one night’s time in the waking world. I learned to use that time difference to my advantage.’