Corvus Rex

by J K Ishaya

  “I marveled at the detail and tried to understand the bizarre story taking place on the panels, and then my eyes fell on the panel with the pillar strapped to the wagon. I looked at the serpentine face and felt it strangely familiar.

  “While I had been admiring the artistry of the doors, Malorix had been calling the attention of someone inside. He had raised the huge iron knocker and let it down with a boom and soon the shutter behind the iron bars opened and an old man’s face peered out and asked our business. Malorix made the appeal that we were here to do some research and needed to look in the archives. For that, the old man demanded a contribution.

  “‘Oh, damn,’ Malorix muttered and sighed, and then his gaze landed on the pouch hanging off of my belt. ‘What is that?’

  “I showed him the large gleaming ruby that Nyarlathotep had given me in Dylath-Leen and he immediately used it to secure our entry. Grumbling, I went along with this, though that ruby seemed one of the few good things to come of my experience on the black ship. Inside the repository foyer, the whole of our greeter was revealed. The old man looked much like any image of a monk in a coarse robe, though from his neck hung a miniature replica of the same reptilian figure on the panel outside. It looked like it was carved in creamy jade, and I understood that both the panel depiction and the amulet had to be representative of some kind of idol. He walked stiffly with many a moan and groan, introducing himself as the librarian, Sergais. Inside the repository, the corridors were of the same golden-lit sandstone, long and narrow, the first opening upon a reception area where Malorix signed in while telepathically sending me a warning not to say either of our real names out loud.”

  “Do you remember what false names he used?” Howard asks.

  “No.”

  “I wonder if it might have meant something.”

  “It wasn’t significant enough to remember, and I couldn’t read what he wrote down. Writing was not one of my scholarly pursuits in Dacia. That was left to scribes, but even had I studied, I doubt I’d have been able to interpret what he scrawled in the yellowed ledger book there. He was also still mentally influencing whomever we came into contact with while in Ilarnek. Covering our tracks, as it were.

  “We followed our grumbling guide past reception and into the library, and there I marveled at tiers upon tiers of books and scrolls. There were some ten tiers, I believe, around an open, square shaft, and all sharing the supports of tall, carved wooden columns neatly fitted into the sandstone. They were connected by spiraling stair cases and their walls filled from floor to ceiling with the relic manuscripts. At the bottom of the shaft, several more monkish figures hunched over a series of tables, studying manuscript after manuscript or writing on big sheets of parchment. Light was provided by a massive iron chandelier, also multi-tiered and lined with thick, burning candles.” As I tell this, I sense Howard’s lust for knowledge rising again as his mind visualizes the library and yearns to see it in person, to learn what is in those scrolls.

  Now you’ve really done it, Kvasir sends to me with much humor and a bright shot through his eyes. You know the moment we leave he’ll be going down those damned steps.

  I give him a glance and return a quiet, resigned, I know. “We were shown to a study table set along the railing, presumably to utilize the light from the chandelier. Malorix whispered something to Sergais about what we were looking for and soon he was delivered a heap of volumes. He sat down to look through them but quickly put aside one after the other.

  “‘Nothing,’ he murmured from time to time. ’Still nothing… and… nothing.’ He was sounding more and more discouraged.

  “I, on the other hand, was growing more and more bored. Granted, I was frustrated that I could not lend much of a hand in my own salvation, at least where this research was concerned. My skills were in warfare while Malorix had had over a century to educate himself beyond the battlefield. I wandered the tiers for a while, looking over the spines of books, which were a most foreign thing to me. Scrolls were familiar, and there were cubbies stuffed with them, each labeled with a tag identifying its contents. I made my way down one spiral stair case after another until I was at the bottom and looking over the shoulders of the scholars there. They tolerated my presence though one or two were uncomfortable with my creeping around, and then I became naughty.

  “In my boredom, I began to pick over their surface thoughts. It was growing so easy I could not help myself, and it helped me learn a few things about the temple and the repository so that I did not feel too terribly ignorant. These men were indeed monks. Some were translating the same story or a piece of history into different languages, others were updating archival volumes. When not working in the library, they maintained the idol I had seen on the door panel. And then, as luck would have it, a draft swept through the study chamber and up the well of tiers and one of the old scholars shivered and quietly cursed about keeping the doors shut to the tunnel. A tunnel! I thought with new excitement, and I followed the draft. It carried a distinct scent of mildew and old stone and I found said tunnel with ease.

  “It was lit by heavy rows of torches, presumably not merely to light it but to keep the dampness down, but there were cracks in the walls that leaked and left dark stains in the stone, and I guessed that we were easily below the marsh table that surrounded the city.

  “Mind you, I know that this looks like history repeating itself, but I had no intention of evading Malorix as I had in the forest of Dacia. In fact, I was sending him little kernels of thought, a sort of trail to keep him informed where I was, but it was also as if something was luring me, and I did not recognize that.

  “I proceeded down that hall, squinting at all the flickering light and after at least fifty yards encountered a plain stone stairwell out. I looked behind me to find no one had noticed my sneaky ways, including Malorix, and so I ascended.

  “The climb took a good fifty steps and the well opened upon a straight sand stone corridor. At the end I saw the brilliance of more flame glow and smelled thick, sweet incense burning. I walked down this corridor without further hesitation, expecting to have to conceal myself. It opened upon an arcade that surrounded what I immediately recognized as the vast room of an inner sanctum. The censors that wafted thick, amber smoke into the air hung between each column in the arcade, while the outer room was well lit with a deep fire pit. On one side of this pit, a cluster of Ilarnek’s citizens were bowed to worship.

  “On the other side of the pit, towering over the pit and the praying adherents, stood the very idol that was portrayed on the repository door and old Sergais’ amulet. It stood as tall as two men, though on the dais it appeared taller, and it was very clearly a reptilian figure, a sort of water lizard coiled and frilled along its edges, with gills on either side of its head and there was that long, impressive snout of teeth, and wide, dark eyes that, stone or not, appeared to stare out and find me.

  “I took a breath and held it as I stared back, knowing I was only looking at a stone carving, but it vibrated with power, but more disturbing was how familiar it felt. I picked through all of my memories to find it, and it was there somewhere. Like when you feel something brush your arm, but you cannot even find so much as a spider web, yet you still feel it tickling, and you grasp and grasp and still find nothing. The more I reached, the more it evaded me, and I was left in a daze, just staring.

  “That was my first encounter with the idol for the serpent god Bokrug. I learned its name just moments later, when Malorix came from out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and steered me out of the temple with an irritated, ‘Let’s go, Zyraxes. Now.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “We left the temple through the opposite side from which I’d found it. By now night had completely fallen and the moon had risen to edge the flat roofs of Ilarnek in silver. I trotted along behind Malorix, whose pace kept quickening until it was almost a slow jog. ‘Did you find anything?’ I asked more than once before he felt compelled to answer.

  “‘Nothing. We can
not do anything from this end. We’re going to have to wait out the spell.’ I noted a clip in his tone, a tamped down desperation. He didn’t walk straight through the square but kept to the wall of the main temple before cutting across to the corner of the chapter house opposite the repository. I ran my hand over the sandstone as we went and watched his every move, how he would tilt his head to sniff the air, how he would gaze into the shadows of the streets that opened upon the brighter square, and then he stopped walking and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “‘We’re being watched,’ he whispered. He almost sounded amused.

  “I focused my gaze into the streets and saw simply people of many types: tall, thin, round, and various races. Colorful clothing here, drab and boring there. I did not know what I was looking for, and then Malorix nudged my ribs and pointed them out.

  “‘There, in that alcove over there. He is a Nyarlathite.’

  “This was the first time I had heard that term, but I understood immediately what it must mean. I telescoped my vision and distinguished that there was indeed a young man there. He sported black, leather armor under a long cape with a hood pulled up over his head, but from under that hood cascaded locks of flaxen hair, and the face they framed was angled and smooth as alabaster, only offset but a focused cruelty in the pale, blue eyes. These were the features of the children of the Great Ones, matched by my earthly prison mate or by Nyarlathotep’s hapless host.”

  I absently gesture at Kvasir, who shrugs it off.

  “Cursed with beauty,” he jokes. “But yes, it is true that our kind tend to inherit a common set of features, but each distinct enough not to look exactly alike.”

  “Your kind being the race in general?” Howard asks.

  “Yes, both Boreans and Nyarlathites,” he clarifies. “In the Dreamlands, we are scattered but common enough that few people even take a second glance, and we needn’t hide our features. In some places, like the city of Inganok, there are some who are honest laborers and tradesmen who take no side at all, but Nyarlathites are still mingled among them so it is best not to trust any.”

  “Huh,” Howard murmurs. “And this Inganok? Where is that?”

  “Far to the north from where I was in Ilarnek,” I say. “For us to encounter any of Mr. Freysson’s kin at all was not out of the ordinary but to see those in service to Nyarlathotep was, at that moment, a much greater likelihood. Nodens’ night-gaunts had snatched me, after all, so there was a high alert out among the followers of the Crawling Chaos, and they knew what they were looking for. This one had spotted us, as they are much more resistant to our mental shields, and Malorix already had a plan of his own.

  “‘This way,’ he told me and led me down one of the streets and into an alley. ‘Do you feel him following?’

  “I concentrated and noticed that the hackles on my neck were at attention, and there was a buzz in the back of my mind, a sort of static that no thought could banish. ‘Is that him?’ I asked. ‘I can’t read him, exactly. He’s trying to shield himself.’

  “‘He is,’ Malorix confirmed. ‘That’s good, pay attention to such signals. They will serve you well in the future.’ He took us up and down streets through the maze that was Ilarnek until we encountered another Nyarlathite, this one a woman who wore the same stealthy armor and hooded cape as her fellow.

  “She was not trying to mentally cloak herself at all but stood at the end of a narrow passage, now clear for the night of any human residents, and stared directly at us with chilling intent. Her face was as smooth as porcelain, and petite though she was, she radiated the blackest of power. Malorix gave me a head shake warning not to underestimate her, then he gestured at the ground. I froze in my tracks to see a familiar circle of symbols there in an almost imperceptible paint, except that near our feet it glowed subtly as if already activated by our close presence. We backed away, and when she saw that her trap had failed to snag either of us, her face shifted from confidence to fury.

  “Malorix turned to look at me, feigned calm in his eyes before the distinct tinge of crimson bled into his irises. When he spoke next, his voice had deepened, and I saw the hint of fangs budding behind his lips.

  “’Run,’ he said.”

  Howard stares back at me as if disappointed to hear we did not stand and fight, even with the threat of the occult trap before us, and then I read it clearly on his surface thoughts before he remembers I can do that. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just would have expected more resistance from you.”

  “You have to understand, Howard, that though Malorix was experienced in these matters, I was not. He was still protecting me as well, but he did have a plan. Though we darted for the other end of the street, we turned right there and then made yet another right turn, putting us in parallel with the narrow street on which we’d just been and leading us back toward the temple complex. We moved at our top speed, and Malorix’s voice was a constant in my mind: Watch every step, look out for traps, and now we go up.

  “He took to a set of steps up to a three-story structure and once elevated higher than street level, turned and leapt to the opposite roof with ease. On instinct, I followed him. I had already discovered, when stalking Romans, what I could do, and now I rediscovered it by bounding up only to find him gone.

  “I raced to the edges of the roof and looked down on the sparsely active streets, but saw no trace of him, only a scent on the breeze. I sniffed the air, turning about to find its source and take that direction. It belonged purely to Malorix at first, but as I followed it, hurrying in one direction, turning to vault across an alleyway to another roof, and then turning again, I picked up something else mingling in, something that was almost like ancient dust, old leaves, decay, and then with it came the alluring coppery tang of blood. I groaned as my hunger stirred, and it was this delicious aroma that overpowered me and led me straight to him.

  “I dropped from the edge of a roof directly down into an alley and found it closed at the end, but there I heard the feasting. Muted snarls and tearing noises called me. The blood smell thickened and when I turned, I found the body of the male Nyarlathite that we’d seen on the edge of the temple complex. I wondered how I had not at least heard some commotion with my heightened senses given how it had ended in this.

  “He was splayed across what at first looked like a large stone block with a heavy wooden board laying across the top, but on quick observation of the large iron hinge on the edge of the board and a rope and bucket that lay nearby, the block was actually a well with a cap on it. His shoulders and arms flailed above his head which hung limp, dead eyes staring at me upside down, and that long golden hair spilling toward the base of the well. Blood drained down over the juncture of shoulder and neck and wicked into his hair where it dripped down and pooled amid the cobblestones. As my gaze traveled upward, past the face to the chest which was laid open, the leather armor ripped apart, I felt a start.

  “Upon him, the thing was perched and gnawing with its long, black maw: the same creature which I had not seen since I was a child. Its slick, onyx skin gleamed, and its brow was as I remembered, heavy over three sets of graduating serpentine-red eyes, the largest at the front, the whole of the thing the size of a small horse. Its front half was hunched over as it dined, supported on the clawed ends of two huge, folded, ribbed wings, like a bat’s, while its rear, panther-esque legs were in a crouched position.

  “When it looked up at me, the red eyes gleamed with familiarity, but this time it did not bolt and fly away. It stared at me purposefully, blood and saliva drizzling out of its mouth and spilling back upon its gutted victim.

  “Feed, a voice said in my mind: Malorix’s voice, though there was something strained about it, as if it were an effort for him to communicate telepathically while in such a bestial form. I was too shaken at first, seeing this creature for the first time in so many years. This time I knew that it was him in there, but I could not correlate the intelligence behind the order while looking at a thing so savage as it cracked bon
es with that powerful jaw. He had said that I would eventually be able to transform as well, but I shuddered to think it would be into something like this. The only thing missing, but still in my memory, were the slick black tendrils that had slid from its back and grabbed me from the steps.

  “Feed, he repeated. Now, Zyraxes! We must hurry!

  “I knew it was necessary, and I felt nothing for the victim, so I approached and hovered over the head and neck, watched the run off of blood. My gums ached as my teeth extended and I leaned in and drank as it continued to spill the more the creature gnawed up into the chest cavity, and a new fount of blood gushed from the dead Nyarlathite’s mouth, and I drank from that, too. The freakish nature of the situation dispersed from my thoughts, and having my horrific companion right there beside me, dining with such gory zeal, suddenly seemed very normal. I finished and stepped back, and when Malorix had had his fill, his six-eyed head lifted and stared at me. The eyes narrowed, not as if he was scrutinizing me, but rather they glazed as all of his focus went into listening with an ear cocked upward. A low rumble sounded from the creature's throat as a watch hound picking up a threat.

  “I heard the footsteps pounding closer as well, many streets away, and a shout which was answered, and then more feet pounded, and they were closing in.

  “We go, the voice said in my mind still harsh and strained. Maintaining his dreadful form Malorix reared up and leapt with the grace of a cat from the venom-blackened corpse and scrambled onto a roof above with extraordinary agility. I heard the wings beat once and then talons gripping stone. With a leap of my own, reaching out with clawed hands, I caught the edge of the roof and hoisted myself up and came down in a kneel, looking around for him.