Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyperborea

by John Shirley

  Remarkably, however, in the way that stories seem to have of taking on a life of their own, independent of any individual teller, let alone any witness to the relevant events, those who told his tale after his death soon begin to allege that he had met a nascent archetype in a cave on the mountain, and that his indomitable heroism had found a mysterious way to inform the lucky archetype of its destiny, not as the mold of any mere substantial species but as the archetype of an idea: the idea of black comedy.

  We storytellers are, of course, secretly and cynically bound to believe that the final rhetorical twist in question is as nonsensical as the rest of the tale—but even we must concede that if there really had been any such archetype lurking in the otherworldly caves beneath the mountains of Hyperborea, as the continent waited for the all-consuming ice, it would probably have been one of the busiest of all, and perhaps also one of the proudest.

  One Last Task for Athammaus

  By Ran Cartwright

  The shadows were long and growing longer with each night.

  The night, darker than before, smothered the glow of braziers and oil lamps that lined the alleys and byways of Uzuldaroum near the home of the aged former Headsman, Athammaus.

  The whispers had been faint and distant for some time. Now they were near. And they spoke in a strange tongue to Athammaus.

  Only at night.

  Only in the dark.

  Athammaus merely nodded and smiled. A faint chuckle now and again escaped his lips. Not that he knew what the words were or what they meant.

  They were a foreign tongue from long ago. There was a faint remembrance. Perhaps they were a mix of tongues, languages.

  Human and some blasphemous abomination. With hissing overtones.

  Still, the old man nodded and smiled. Bah! Too much foum-wine!

  Then the night came when Athammaus had a thought.

  A strange thought. Something that he hadn’t thought of for a long longtime.

  Commoriom.

  The ancient capital.

  By the Great Gods of Hyperborea…!

  He shuddered, sat back in his wingback chair, lit his pipe, and stared into the orange fire that danced in his fireplace.

  Commoriom.

  Why after all this time should he think of such a place?

  He hadn’t thought of the former capital since the night he spoke of its collapse and abandonment to the scribe who had recorded his story. That had been nearly eight lustrums ago. Seven lustrums after everyone had fled the city.

  Long deserted. Now crumbling ruins. Overgrown with strange vegetation pushing up between blocks of granite and cobblestone, vines shrouding the once glorious marble architecture.

  The public square, no one has been there since…

  Athammaus sighed. The thought faded.

  The whispers had returned.

  And the dark, a sorcerous darkness that blotted out oil lamps and stars.

  A shadow passed by his window, crossed the wall of his study, a strange shadow that seemed human, but misshapen; a black phantom.

  The old man tapped his pipe out in an ashtray and rose from the chair. The whispers spoke. One last task needed to be done, they said.

  The former Headsman of Commoriom nodded and smiled.

  “Yes, yes, one last task,” he muttered to no one but himself. “One last task.”

  Though he knew not what that task was.

  The strange black phantom rolled slow along the wall to a door, reached out a blackened hand, and guided Athammaus from his home.

  That one last task would take him back to Commoriom.

  ~*~

  It was a single day’s journey from Uzuldaroum to the ruins of Commoriom. But for an old man of Athammaus’ age, it could take two or more days.

  He had left Uzuldaroum in the middle of the night. Guided by the strange black phantom, he took to the old road. The unused road where none dared to tread after dark. Even highway robbers refused to venture onto the old road.

  There were stories of terrible death and madness. Of people found nailed to trees, or hung by their feet from twisted branches, eyes plucked out or gutted with innards hanging like vines. Some had simply disappeared, the beginnings of wild tales and legends told around campfires.

  Athammaus had no fear of such things. Such tales and legends.

  The black phantom guided him. It was there, ever present, gliding through the night, whispering to him, soothing, soft, sustaining.

  One last task, it said. Strange hissing words that Athammaus heard in his thoughts. One last task.

  The old man continued on. Voices whispered, taunted.

  Shapes moved in the night. More than the black phantom that guided his steps. Many more as he ventured close to gaze upon them.

  Bodies he saw under the light of a full moon that fought its way through the ever thickening canopy of vegetation and trees. The moonlight illuminated a mist that clung to the ground and the ghostly shapes of bodies, headless bodies.

  Few at first, then more, hundreds more. Thousands more.

  All of them headless corpses aimlessly wandering about in the dark, looking for their heads.

  Athammaus stopped, watched, and wondered.

  Faint traces of recognition, dim and distant in the tattered rags they wore. They were criminals, all of them. Sentenced to death by decree of King Loquamethros, beheading their punishment to be carried out by the Headsman.

  Commoriom’s Headsman. Athammaus.

  Voices began to intrude upon his thoughts, not the same whispering that had guided him, but the voices of the dead. The disembodied voices of those terrible apparitions that now wandered aimlessly before him, searching for their heads.

  “You killed me, Athammaus,” said a retched voice. “You took my head.”

  “It was my job…I…”

  “You killed me too, Athammaus,” interrupted another, “my crime didn’t warrant such punishment.”

  “And me!” cried a fourth, “You killed…”

  “Me…”

  “Me, Athammaus…me!”

  “And me!”

  There was a brief moment of silence, then…

  “We died, Athammaus, we all…died!”

  “I did my job for King Loquamethros!” Athammaus cried angrily. Gaining resolute strength, he added, “You died, all of you died for your crimes! You deserved to die! You are naught but phantoms! Be gone from me! Now! Go!”

  And they were gone.

  So sudden.

  Apparitions vanished in the night. All but the strange black phantom.

  The former Headsman turned narrowed eyes of contempt to his phantom guide. “And you!” he shouted, “be gone with the others! Go!”

  The black phantom faded and was gone as sudden as the apparitions had departed.

  The old man stared a brief moment and then continued on the rest of the night, his journey uninterrupted by ghosts, the dead, the black phantom, or highway bandits that would never ply their trade along the old disused road.

  Then just before dawn, just before Athammaus need turn his course to the north through the towering ancient jungle vegetation that crowded the old road to Commoriom, he laid himself down for rest.

  And dreamed a strange and terrible nightmare.

  ~*~

  A hush had settled over the public square in Commoriom. Townsfolk had gathered; they were expectant, yet fearful. There was to be an execution. No trial, no tribunal, no setting of a future execution date. The execution was to be immediate. The victim was the deposed King Loquamethros. The new king seated in the King’s Box on the edge of the square was Knygathin Zhaum. The horrible hybrid beast from the Eiglophian Mountains slowly rose to his feet; his yellow and black mottled skin rippled like a thick viscous fluid. Upon his head he wore the Royal Crown of Hyperborea.

  King Zhaum pointed a black pulpy finger.

  The Headsman understood.

  Hands bound behind, the former king was forced down upon the eighon-wood execution block.


  “Athammaus! Athammaus!” the former king cried.

  Athammaus raised the great curved blade of his executioner’s ax and let it fall with unconscious added thrust.

  A clean cut severed King Loquamethros’ head. The head pitched forward as the body lay across the block.

  “Athammaus!” the severed head continued to plead.

  “Take it away!” King Zhaum commanded from the King’s Box at the side of the square.

  Athammaus turned to the King’s Box. The king was gone; a black phantom stood in Zhaum’s place. And a low guttural laugh, slow and taunting, echoed across the public square.

  It was the last Athammaus remembered before he awakened on a new afternoon along the old road to Commoriom.

  He sat up, dwelling upon the fading scene of nightmare - Knygathin Zhaum; the black phantom.

  The former Headsman’s eyes narrowed. “Zhaum,” he muttered angrily, “so, this is your doing.”

  ~*~

  A mid-afternoon treat of carro-nuts and foum-wine was all that Athammaus required to put him in a frame of mind to resume his journey to Commoriom. He was well on his way down the old road, further than he had expected for his advanced age.

  The vegetation was dark and dense, a myriad of colors, all tending to a strange ethereal dark mixture in the faded light and shadows beneath the towering trees; the vegetation gave off fragrant appealing aromas pleasing to the smell, playing with one’s senses, and tending to make one forget the passage of time.

  Overgrown boughs clung to one another high above, creating a tunnel in which to pass. Tall grasses pushed up between the flagstones in the road, separating the ancient construction, many of the stones cracked or split with age and weathering.

  Again the voices spoke to Athammaus as if from afar. Strange and ethereal voices, musical in tone.

  The black phantom that guided his steps had returned unbidden, floating amidst the trees, darting about the thick underbrush like a child playing games in the olden days of Commoriom’s city park.

  The aged former Headsman glared with distaste at the phantom. Such a strange thing it was, a shadow of black emptiness.

  This phantom so much like Knygathin Zhaum in form, so much like the nightmare…

  And the voices…so serene…

  The scent of the vegetation acted like a drug; it dulled the old man’s senses. Dimmed his awareness.

  On the road to Commoriom…

  He walked dreamily, the world around him now faded, distant; beyond his touch and understanding.

  But he cared not.

  The voices were there, speaking to him. Ethereal. Dream-like.

  One last task to be performed, they whispered.

  One last task…

  “Are you too but phantoms of my mind?” he muttered in a brief moment of clarity. The question quickly faded and was forgotten. His thoughts drifted aimlessly.

  He continued on from day into night, walking until he could walk no more. Then he sat before a campfire and listened to the night.

  There were strange cries in the dark and the nearby rustling of underbrush. The moon had risen long before, still full, but very little light shown through the thickened canopy, just enough to cast strange elongated shadows that writhed across the worn and cracked flagstones of the narrow road.

  Athammaus watched the shadows claw and twist as though they were alive, trying to gain some form of foothold to rise up and stand before him. But they failed and finally lay still.

  The moon moved on with the night.

  The softness of the warm air and the fragrant scent of the strange vegetation overwhelmed Athammaus. He curled up before the dancing flames of the campfire and spiraled happily into a drug induced sleep.

  Even in his sleep the former Headsman heard the voices whisper to him.

  One last task for Athammaus, they said.

  One last task.

  Then they fell silent.

  Such a pleasant day on the road to Commoriom again gave way to a night of terror in the dream world of his mind.

  ~*~

  A dark cavern beneath Mount Voormithadreth.

  Campfires dotted the cavern floor; their flames licked the darkness above, and cast writhing shadows low on rough stone walls.

  There had been a long day and night of celebration among the gathered Voormis. They had taken four people captive, three men and a woman, Hyperboreans, no doubt come to the mountains from Commoriom.

  They were of high standing by their manner of dress, and by their arrogant tone of voice and demeanor, having demanded their immediate release.

  Instead, the three men of Commoriom were stripped of their clothing and bound to towering poles of wood, while their female companion was dragged away to another part of the cavern; her screams escalated to shrill shrieks that lasted long into the night.

  The Voormis danced around the three bound men while some abominable travesty of priesthood stumbled forward with a small bowl of paint and brush. The Voormis priest painted strange signs and symbols on the flesh of the captives. No doubt something that represented their god, the horrid abomination they called Zhothaqquah.

  There was a pounding of drums, wooden shells with human skin stretched across them, and frenzied dancing that reached a fevered pitch before everything suddenly stopped. Only the terrible shrieks of the woman could be heard echoing through the dark.

  One by one each of the men were untied and brought forward. Forced to their knees, each in turn had their heads torn from their shoulders by the Voormis and impaled upon pikes that had been struck into the soft earth of the cavern floor. Their bodies were eaten, freshly gnawed bones discarded in a dark corner.

  Only the female, Atalana, adviser and confidant to King Loquamethros, remained alive, shared in a most hideous and vile manner by a number of Voormis, and in the course of time she gave birth to numerous hybrid abominations.

  Athammaus awakened. Sat up. “Abominations,” he muttered angrily, and shook his head.

  The day had come, the fire long dead and cold.

  The former Headsman of Commoriom sat for a moment and thought of the nightmare still fresh in his mind. Yes, it had been a nightmare. But more than that, there had been some truth to it.

  Many years before a Commoriom delegation had been sent to Mhu Thulan to discuss depredations of the Voormis in the mountain passes of the Eiglophians. The delegation had disappeared and was never found. Their fate was a mystery though many secretly whispered the name Knygathin Zhaum.

  Athammaus sighed. It was a long ago memory.

  “Knygathin Zhaum,” he muttered, eyes dark and staring.

  ~*~

  The light of late afternoon was like dusk the closer Athammaus came to Commoriom. The vegetation was thicker, the fragrance more pungent, a cachet that took away the senses, made one see and hear things.

  Real?

  Perhaps. Perhaps not.

  It mattered not to Athammaus.

  He merely smiled, and continued toward the crumbling ruins of the once mighty capital of Hyperborea.

  Twilight deepened; shadows grew long. The black phantom lurked amidst the thickening vegetation. The whispering voices told their stories to Athammaus, strange stories of places and times the former Headsman had never known, told in tongues foreign to the old man, yet, strangely, he understood.

  They were tales of victory, pleasing to the ear. Tales of love, adventure, families, and conquests; of great wizards and sorcerers from faraway lands and the magic they performed, and of great kings and their courts and the ladies of the courts and the jesters that made everyone laugh; and of dreams that were real, and of those who had ventured to those Dreamlands and had stayed.

  Amidst the cacophony of whispering voices, there came a single voice that told a different tale, a tale of foreboding, pain, agony, death, and resurrection to the world of the living dead, a tale of Black Rites and the blasphemous toad god, Zhothaqquah.

  Then the whispering voice that had spoken of the dead fell silent. />
  Athammaus stopped; his thoughts had wandered, and the voices had slowed his pace.

  Dusk was quickly turning to night. He would not make Commoriom before nightfall. Best to wait until the morn.

  He kindled a campfire, spread his bedroll, sat and stared.

  There were strange sounds there in the dark, and black shapes on the edge of the firelight. And somewhere nearby there was Commoriom.

  His eyes and thoughts clouded with the night and fatigue…

  ~*~

  The former Headsman peered across the blasted landscape at the crumbling gate of stained marble entwined with creeping vines.

  Commoriom, a haunted ruin bathed in the light of the moon.

  Here was the great gate to the once majestic city, fabled former capital of Hyperborea. Now mere tarnished stone, crumbled and collapsed, entombed in vines, vegetation, and towering trees.

  And here where Athammaus stood was the blasted waste dump, a land spoiled and scarred as though blighted by some horrific pestilence, where Commoriom’s executed criminals lay buried in nameless graves, executed by Athammaus on orders of King Loquamethros.

  The earth beneath the former Headsman’s feet trembled, barely perceptible. A slight crack; dust billowed, a small spiraling cloud unseen in the shadowed night.

  Athammaus turned an eye to the gate. The strange black phantom stood there; it motioned for the former Headsman to follow. He did, and stepped lightly across the waste dump, trod on numerous unseen and unknown graves. The earth turned. More cracks snaked through the waste dump, more clouds of dust billowed in the dark. Athammaus paid no heed.

  The blasted waste dump split, tore open. Earth crumbled into widening crevices. Decayed fingers of headless corpses clutched at the earth, pulling themselves free of their graves to follow Athammaus into the city.

  Athammaus walked the ruined and vine covered streets and alleys; behind, unseen and unheard, came a horde of headless dead. They made their way to the public square that so long ago had served as the place where the king’s justice had been meted out.