‘Bah!’ the ancient continued, waving a hooked, claw-like hand in dismissal. ‘Trakall was a hack,’ he said as he backed away and eased himself down into a chair across from Duerr’s. ‘And he cheated at cards.’
Duerr realised that his throat was still painfully dry, and raised the goblet to his lips. A sharp tang rose from its contents, making his eyes water. He hesitated, yet did not want to appear ungracious to his rescuer.
‘It’s just Solland brandy,’ the old man said, taking a sip from his own glass and grinning wryly. ‘With a dash of black-eyed jenny,’ he added. ‘You’ve had a shock, by the looks of it.’
Duerr nodded as he sniffed the concoction gingerly. Black-eyed jenny was an archaic name for a rare variety of herb he knew to grow about the southern marches of the Midden Moors. It was not unrelated to the reason he had come to the Drakwald Deeps himself. He took a sip, the effect of the herb all but instantaneous. His mind cleared as the preparation worked its way through his system, while the brandy relaxed him, the chamber seeming to come into focus all around him.
‘Back from the dead, eh?’ the old man said, settling into his high-backed chair. ‘What’s your name, boy?’
‘Benedi…’ Duerr started, before taking a second draft on the dark liquor, his throat not quite wetted. ‘Benedikt, sir. Benedikt Duerr.’
The ancient grinned, his features assuming the death mask rictus once more, if only for a second, before he replied, ‘Welcome then, Benedikt Duerr. I am called Koth, Sidon Amen-Koth to be precise. I welcome you to my home, and to the Drakwald.’
Not quite sure how to take the welcome, Duerr decided he owed the old man some form of explanation for his presence. ‘Sir,’ he started. ‘I came for the–’
‘You came for the manbane,’ the ancient interrupted. ‘That much is quite clear, eh?’
‘It is, sir?’ Duerr stammered, his mind racing. How could this Koth have known his reason for coming to the Drakwald Deeps?
Koth grinned once more, the light in his eyes dwindling to a speck as the shadows closed in. ‘You are not the first, young man. And I have no doubt you will not be the last.’
Duerr blinked and took another sip of the Solland brandy to steady his nerves. ‘How could you–’
‘How could I know?’ Koth interjected once again. ‘What else would one of our calling be seeking on the verges of the Midden Moors? You sought the manbane herb, to distil its blood, brew its essence and gain its power over dreams… and nightmares. Did you not?’
Duerr steadied the crystal goblet on the worn arm of the chair, and nodded. ‘You are correct, sir. I needed the manbane to progress in my studies.’
‘To attain the charter?’ said Koth, grinning. ‘To gain permission to practice your arts?’
‘My master requires this of me, sir,’ Duerr admitted, a feeling of dejection stealing over him. ‘Or else I cannot attend to the funerary rites.’
‘Hmm,’ Koth nodded. ‘And who is this mentor to whom you are apprenticed?’
‘My master?’ Duerr replied. ‘My master is Lord Mhalkon, Adept of the Seventh Circle, he…’
‘Hmpff!’ Koth snorted, his grin twisting into a grimace. ‘Seventh Circle, indeed. Lord Mhalkon, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. Are you acquainted with my master?’
‘Acquainted?’ Koth answered. ‘Never heard of him. Should I have?’
‘Well, yes,’ Duerr stammered. ‘He is plenipotentiary-designate of the Cult of Morr, ambassador to the court of–’
Koth raised a wizened hand, affording Duerr a view of his curled and cracked nails. ‘Young man,’ he said, his voice low and dangerous. ‘Do not be so quick to name our true lord and master.’
‘Ours?’ Duerr replied, realisation dawning. ‘Then you serve M…’ he caught himself. ‘You serve those who wear the shroud?’
‘I serve no man, young sir,’ Koth replied. ‘But to answer your question, in a manner of speaking, yes, I serve, though I have scant dealings with those mumbling fools in Lucinni.’
Duerr knew that Koth was referring to the convocation of the priests of Morr, the god of death, sleep and dreams, which gathered once every decade in the city-state of Lucinni, far to the south. The Cult of Morr was a loose affiliation of priests and wizards and followed precious little dogma, with no established church as such. That meant that each practitioner was apt to conduct themselves as they themselves saw fit, and some did so in widely divergent ways.
‘If I might ask,’ Duerr dared venture. ‘How do you serve?’
Koth did not answer straight away, but looked about the chamber, his eyes, mere pinpricks of reflected light in the shadowy pits of their sockets, seeming to look beyond his mundane surroundings. His gaze swept over shelf after shelf of arcane tomes and dusty relics, over locked chests and baroque book stands, until, finally, it settled back on Duerr.
The ancient sighed, the sound redolent of stale air stirring within a tomb opened for the first time in centuries. ‘I serve the past. I serve that which has gone before. Most of all, I remember. That is how I serve.’
Duerr nodded and swallowed hard. ‘How long, sir?’ he asked. ‘How long have you served? How long have you remembered?’
The flickering of the wall-mounted sconces seemed to slow to a gentle pulse as Koth’s gaze settled upon Duerr, the air thickening as if reality itself were leaning in closer to hear the ancient’s reply. ‘I have always served, Benedikt Duerr. And I always shall.’
‘Sadly,’ the old man continued. ‘So too must you.’
Duerr’s blood turned cold as he met Koth’s gaze. ‘Really, sir,’ he started. ‘I must return–’
‘You cannot,’ Koth replied.
‘Sir, I–’
The ancient leaned forward, his death mask visage all Duerr could perceive as the shadows seemed to close in. ‘Hush, Benedikt Duerr,’ Koth whispered. ‘This is no doing of mine, and I bear you no ill will.’
‘Then what, sir?’ said Duerr. ‘What holds me here?’
Koth inclined his head towards the nearest window and, after a moment, Duerr broke his gaze and looked out. All he saw was the dark forest, the twisted boughs questing upwards towards the gibbous moon. Then a deep, coarse braying filled the night, and Duerr understood.
‘The beasts?’ he said.
‘Aye. The Children of Old Night. How they hate this place.’
Duerr stopped himself from asking why the beastmen might hate the tower of this ancient wizard. His studies and the arcane knowledge he was party to came to him and he had no need to ask. ‘They know this place is not subject to the laws of nature, the laws by which they themselves live and die. They know that you are not subject to such laws. Am I correct, sir?’
‘Very good, young man,’ said Koth. ‘Very good. This… Mhalkon, is it? Yes, he has taught you something at least.’
Duerr glanced around the chamber once more, seeing as if for the first time just how old its contents truly were. How long had Koth dwelt here, coveting priceless relics of ages long gone, while the surrounding forests seethed with beastmen?
‘There must be a way out,’ said Duerr. ‘Surely you have the power.’
‘I may well have the power, Benedikt,’ Koth replied. ‘But I have no desire to leave.’
‘They protect you?’ Duerr asked. ‘They keep the world at bay. They keep the past locked in.’
Koth chuckled, the sound like an ancient coffin lid sliding from its resting place. ‘They do.’
‘They keep all of your… artefacts, your tomes, your relics, safe.’
Koth nodded, though he did not reply.
‘You have such power here,’ said Duerr, aware that Koth was studying him, his skull-like head cocked at a slight angle. He looked towards the ancient volumes arrayed on the shelves. ‘You have knowledge. If I could harness but a portion of that, I could win past them, and escape.’
/> Koth remained silent for another minute, though to Duerr it felt like ten times as long. The flickering of the sconces had slowed right down to a rolling rhythm, disturbingly synchronised with Duerr’s own heartbeat. The longer Koth remained silent, the more resolved Duerr became. He was certain of it – Koth must surely have some weapon, some rune-bound blade that would turn the beastmen aside and secure his escape!
‘I have no such talisman, boy,’ said Koth at length. ‘I am no Alaric to craft weapons that hack and hew.’
Without Duerr realising Koth had moved, the old man was across the chamber and standing beside a shelf piled high with dusty artefacts. ‘What use to me Elbereth’s Leash or the Mirrors of Mergith? I have no need for Urn Guards or the Cat of Calisthenes, Niobe’s Torch or Rathnugg’s Boots. Not that they did Rathnugg any good…’
‘But you know spells,’ Duerr insisted, knowing he was correct. ‘You have power. This very place has power. I can feel it!’
Koth fixed Duerr with his pit-eyed gaze once more, regarding the young wizard with something akin to curious amusement. Duerr felt powers moving, energies aligning, and dead things stirring in cold, damp earth. He knew with terrible certainty that here before him was perhaps the most puissant master of the old ways of shyish, the Wind of Death, in all the land. That such a being dwelt within the very boundaries of the Empire, albeit deep within the Drakwald Deeps, was astonishing. He felt the draw of temptation, a small part of him begging leave to remain and to learn the secret arts and become master of nightmare and death. But a greater part of Duerr longed to escape this place and the perils pressing in on it from the forests all about. The sensation of dead things stirring grew ever more powerful, until he could feel movement beneath his feet though he stood upon stone flags. His nostrils filled with the musty stink of worm-chewed earth, his mouth with the copper tang of a mourning coin placed beneath his tongue in the funerary rites…
‘Enough!’ Koth ordered, and the power receded, the stink of rotten earth fled, and the slithering of dead things faded away. The copper tang lingered in his mouth as Koth rounded upon him.
‘You are correct,’ the ancient sighed. ‘I cannot keep you here. But I would not see you consumed by things you have no knowledge of.’
‘You will help me?’ Duerr pressed. ‘You will lend me your power?’
‘I will lend you my knowledge, Benedikt,’ Koth replied, holding up a gnarled claw to forestall interruption. ‘Though be warned. You may not thank me, even should you escape.’
Now the blue-green illumination cast by the archaic sconces was all but frozen.
‘I understand,’ replied Duerr, though both men knew full well that he did not.
One month later, Duerr stood high atop the tower of Koth, looking down from the highest turret upon the wind-lashed, night-shrouded Drakwald. Such knowledge infused his mind and his soul, such power was his to command, that he knew he would soon be gone from this place. He would be free of the beastmen, free to return to the Colleges of Magic. He would show his master and his peers that he was worthy, more than worthy, to serve Morr. Perhaps he would return to Koth’s tower, and treat with him as an equal one day.
‘I am ready, master,’ Duerr announced, feeling a cold wind stir his robes. The gale was not entirely natural, the tang of dark magic underlying it.
‘You know you cannot return,’ the voice of the old man came from behind Duerr. ‘Should you even escape.’
‘I know,’ Duerr lied as the wind increased. ‘I am ready,’ he repeated.
‘Upon your own soul then,’ said Koth as he proffered Duerr a rolled up, ribbon-bound scroll. ‘Begin.’
Duerr took the scroll and broke the black wax seal, the discarded ribbon snatched away upon the wind to flutter to the dark clearing far below. He grinned as his eyes scanned the first lines of the spidery text written countless centuries earlier. Here was the last piece of the puzzle, the completion of the knowledge Koth had instilled upon him this last month. With it, he would turn the beasts to his service and escape this ancient trap.
Unfurling the scroll fully and holding it out before him, Duerr located the archaic sigil which he must enunciate in order to turn the beasts to his service. The night gale increased still further, and now it was clear that the Wind of shyish was building to a storm, an invisible vortex of magical energies forming overhead. The sigil glowed blackly upon the ancient parchment, tendrils of ebon power questing outwards as if to draw Duerr’s soul inwards to embrace it…
‘Speak the word and be done!’ Koth shouted over the now howling winds. ‘Before it is too late!’
Fully appreciating Koth’s warning, Duerr took a deep breath and braced himself, the wind seeming to pause in its surging for that instant.
Then he spoke the ancient word of power.
The word had not been spoken in millennia, not by mortal lips at least. Only one schooled in the funerary rites could form it and not be blasted to crematory ashes or withered to a husk. It was a word that few ever spoke this side of the grave. The Wind of shyish whipped to a howling gale, buffeting Duerr and forcing him to set his feet wide lest he be snatched from the turret and tossed to the storm. The trees all about the clearing thrashed and dry leaves were whipped upwards. In an instant, the night was turned to a howling storm.
The feeling of power that Duerr had experienced a month before returned, only this time it was a thousand times more potent, and a thousand times more than that. He was the master of death and of dreams, the bearer of the forbidden key that would unlock the portal between this world and the next. The air about him transmuted into the cold earth of the grave and the air that filled his lungs was scented with the heady, cloying cocktail of incense masking decay.
The word resounded through the thrashing woods and Duerr knew it had been heeded. Soon, he would be master of life and death – his own life and the death of others. The beast would turn pale and do his bidding, and he would be free.
‘It begins!’ Duerr heard Koth bellow into the wind, his voice tinged with terror.
A wet rending split the earth, and Duerr looked downwards into the clearing. The ground appeared to be boiling, as if the roots of the trees all about were stirring in hideous motion. His eyes widened in horror as he saw what he took for a root appear in the cracked earth, questing upwards with a jagged motion. But it was no root. It was nothing natural at all. It was an arm, or the skeletal remains of one, and it was dragging itself clear of the unmarked grave that must surely have held it fast for centuries.
In moments, the arm was clear and the body itself was visible, as were dozens more as they rose with jerking motions from the cold ground. Skeletons, the bones stained almost black by the raw earth, pulled themselves erect all about the clearing, and only then did Duerr see what he had wrought.
‘Beasts…’ he stammered. ‘Beasts from the earth…’
‘Yes, young Benedikt,’ Koth whispered from behind Duerr, his dry voice somehow carrying over the howling wind and speaking directly into the wizard’s mind. ‘And they are yours to command as you will. Now you have the power to escape this place.’
‘Now you may leave.’
Duerr stepped through the portal at the base of the tower, out into the night and the clearing beyond. He trod cautiously, despite the knowledge that the army of dead things arrayed about was his to command. He felt as though he were walking the hunting ground of the most voracious of predators and knew that, in many ways, he was. Steeling himself, he walked through the tattered ranks, studying the rotting things he had brought into being.
The beasts were dark skeletons, rags of flesh and fabric caught amongst ribs and joints. Insects scuttled about disturbed nests while squirming worms fell to the churned ground. They stood upon cloven bone feet and clutched rusted cleavers and rotten shields in their dead grips. Their skulls were the sharp-snouted forms of cattle, though their teeth, where these had survived, were l
ong and wickedly sharp. A pair of horns framed each skull; some curled tightly, others straight and proud. The eyes were empty sockets, but Duerr could perceive the faint spark of animal cognition deep within.
As he walked through the ranks of dead beasts, the sound of creaking bone and rustling dried flesh all about, he saw that one amongst their number was far larger than its fellows. Cautiously, he approached the mighty beast, looking up into its bovine-formed skull and perceiving in its empty eye sockets a vestige of raw, animal power. Echoes of the creature’s death reverberated about the night, faded visions of blasphemy and desecration imprinting themselves over Duerr’s vision. This beast lord had led its war herd against the hated tower and its fearful denizen, seeking to cast it down once and for all so that no stone was left standing upon another. The creature had failed; it and all of its herd had perished in the clearing. Yet, centuries later, its hatred remained, pure and distilled to the essence that still imbued it with fearful power.
At once quelled by the might of the undead beast lord before him and almost drunk with the fact that it was his to command, Duerr spoke the word of command. ‘March!’
At first, nothing stirred but the wind. Then the wet creak of movement filled the clearing about the tower of Koth, and the army of long dead beasts set out. Slow and unsteady at first, the dead things followed Duerr’s order and were soon marching slowly and irregularly through the undergrowth beneath the dense canopy. Duerr hesitated at the tree line and looked over his shoulder towards the tower. There at its peak was Koth, looking down from the turret. He could not see the old man’s expression for he was silhouetted against the green orb of Morrslieb. Then Koth was gone, the tower fading to the ramshackle aspect that Duerr had found it in weeks before. He turned, and followed his army into the black depths of the forest.
He did not get far.
Mere yards beyond the tree line, Duerr came upon the rearmost ranks of the war herd, stood still and silent. The air beneath the black canopy was still, the sounds of the wind muffled and distant. Duerr felt waves of animal threat spilling off of the dead things all about him and knew that death beyond death waited to be unleashed. He edged forward through the silent ranks until he saw the back of the undead beast lord before him.
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