by Grey Durose
'Ah, Ali, you have returned.' the lord spoke.
'As you commanded, my lord.' Ali bowed as he replied.
'And I see you have brought Yasin with you. Excellent.' The lord shifted excitedly in his chair.
'He was not hard to find, my lord. He was preparing for his duties, as always.' Ali raised his head and stepped in front of his seated master, he got down on one knee, so that he could be looked down upon.
'Yes, the boy has done well. You were right about him, Ali.' the lord said, then gave Ali a small flat smile.
Yasin came forward, to join Ali on the floor in front of their master, 'Forgive me, my lord, but why have you summoned me? Have I displeased you?'
'Far from it. I have been... most satisfied, by your efforts.' The master of the cult slowly licked his lips, 'In fact, I am so pleased by you that I have chosen you to perform a special duty for me.'
'It would be an honour, my lord. How may I serve?' Yasin grovelled shamelessly.
The master smiled, 'In good time. First, I must deal with you, Ali.' He turned his gaze back to the older man.
'I will serve you as I always have.' Ali bowed his head.
'It is a simple task but an important one, all the same. The site of the old temple is important to me, as you know. Soon, I anticipate that other forces may move against us, they may choose to violate the temple. Your task, will be to go out in to the desert and watch, you will be my eyes and ears. If anyone should go near the temple site I want you to inform me immediately.' When he'd finished talking, the lord crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.
'This is such a mundane task, my lord, surely one of the others could do this for you.' Ali ventured.
'YOU will do it, nevertheless!' the lord roared. 'If I wanted one of the others to do this, I would have summoned them, and NOT you!'
'But my...' Ali began to plead
'ENOUGH!' the master bellowed. 'Go! Get out of my sight, and make sure you do as I have ordered or I will have your head to decorate my chamber.' The lord thrust out his arm and pointed to the exit with an unnaturally long finger.
'Forgive me, my lord. I shall obey.' Ali got up and slunk backwards across the dais, bowing as he went.
Yasin was surprised by the intensity of the exchange. He'd seen the lord's temper flare before but never at Ali. He opened his mouth to speak but the lord raised a hand to hush him. They both waited, in silence, until Ali had left the chamber. The lord clapped his hands to dismiss his attendant and when he too was gone the lord at last turned back to Yasin.
'Now we are alone, I can give you your orders, boy.' The lord's switch of mood seemed abrupt, despite the pause.
'I await them eagerly, my lord. No task is too small for me.' Yasin said, mindful of how the previous conversation had gone.
'Excellent, it was so with Ali, too, in years now gone. He was young once, and eager to serve. I have spoiled him over the years, I gave him too many privileges. Clearly, he feels he can question me before he obeys.' the lord seethed.
'The only question I will ask is: how may I serve you better, my lord.' Yasin saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself further and wasn't going to let it slip by.
The lord laughed, the booming sound echoed through the chamber. He knew an ambitious follower when he heard one. 'Be careful, boy. Ali has been a faithful servant for most of his life and I would not set him aside so quickly.'
'I didn't mean to...' Yasin's apology was interrupted by a raised hand.
'Enough. I have an important task for you and there is little time for you to accomplish it.' The lord paused for a moment. 'As you may or may not have been told; I was not always the creature you see before you. I am one of few, spread across the globe, but once we were all together. We too have a lord; he who can have no name. Long ago, we were torn from him and we have never been able to reunite before our enemies drove him from us again. For many centuries our lord has been cut off from our minds, some of us thought him gone forever but last night I was struck down by the return of his awesome presence. I was chosen to stay in this place because of its significance to our kind, because I alone have this special connection to our lord. My brothers and sisters knew that if the lord were to return, I would sense his coming long before the rest of them.' He paused again, he didn't want to reveal too much; Yasin was young and the young could be foolish.
'Some messages are best carried in person and transmitted by voice, boy, and that is what I would ask of you.' the lord finished speaking and waited for Yasin's response.
'My lord, if all you wish of me is to carry a message then I shall do so, joyfully.' Yasin bowed his head in reverence but all the time he was struggling not to think too hard about what he'd just been told.
'You must go to the house of the initiates, near Baghdad. There, you will seek out the Mother, you must not speak of my message to any other. She will know what to do.' the lord explained.
'I will do this. What is this message you wish me to carry?' Yasin was struggling to bury his excitement.
The lord leant forward and pulled Yasin's head towards his own. A shiver of fear ran down Yasin's crooked spine, he'd seen the lord do this to many before they died. The lord's cheek brushed against Yasin's, as his head slid alongside his own. His lips toyed momentarily with Yasin's earlobe, before his words seeped in to Yasin’s ear; 'Tell her: the Nameless One is coming.' the lord whispered. He released Yasin's head and sat back again with a satisfied look on his face.
'Nothing more?' Yasin enquired, pretending to be a little puzzled.
'Nothing more.' the lord replied. 'Go now, leave immediately. Take one of the cars. Do not speak of this to your brothers.'
With that, the conversation was ended. The lord clapped his hands and called for his attendant. Yasin bowed and scraped his way out of the chamber.
Yasin barely dared breathe until he was out of the cavern and in the relative safety of the passage. He walked hurriedly along the upward spiral, rushing to get out into the sunlight. Suddenly, there was a hooded figure ahead of him.
'So, you seek to steal our lord's favour from me?' It was Ali's voice.
'Far from it, I am but a message boy, Ali.' Yasin was desperate to get out of the complex and on the road.
'I heard what he told you, he would never have told me such things when I was your age! Tell me the message you carry.' Ali insisted.
'I must not, our lord commanded it.' Yasin protested, his heart accelerated, he was so close and Ali could ruin it all.
'You will, or I will make the rest of your life here a misery. That thing you do with your mouth could just as easily be done with your arse.' Ali's lip curled in contempt as he spoke.
Ali grabbed Yasin by the shoulders and slammed him up against the wall of the passage. Yasin could smell his stale, tobacco-soured breath. Ali can imagine what he likes, I'm free now, he thought.
'You're not free, boy. You will have to return and, when you do, you will be mine again.' Spots of saliva flew from Ali's mouth and landed on Yasin's shocked face.
Ali was standing too close for his own good, Yasin raised his knee and sent it crashing in to Ali's genitals before he could hear the thought. The older man yelped and fell to the floor, clutching at himself, a sharp throbbing pain pounding in his groin.
Yasin leant over and spat in his face. 'We will see, old man.'
He turned and walked away, half expecting Ali to come charging after him but when he emerged in to the bright sunlight he knew he was safe. He made his way straight to the garage and selected one of the cars, he took the keys off the hook and got in. All the time he remained in the compound he was forced to control his thoughts and his expressions but it was hard to disguise his relief, now he was finally leaving. He drove over to the barrack building and got out to collect his meagre belongings then stopped off at the kitchen to gather provisions, too.
Finally he was on his way, it had only taken a few minutes but it had seemed like an hour. As he drove past the entrance to the caves, Ali emerged. Th
e old man was red-faced and fit to burst. He rushed at the car but Yasin put his foot down and cracked Ali's hand with a wing mirror as he reached for the door. Ali would be looking for someone to take his rage out on, it would have to be somebody else, today.
Chapter Three
George awoke with a start, feeling like he'd forgotten an appointment. He reached over to the side table, grabbed his watch and blinked at the dark blue face. It was just gone nine and the sun had been up a good while, even at this time of year.
He got up from his chair and set about readying himself for the day, “you can't save the world on an empty stomach”, Master Giovanni had always said, with his customary wink as punctuation. Gio’s voice still echoed through his mind every day.
After a shower, breakfast and a change of clothes, George was ready to get down to the business of solving the puzzle of Henry's disappearance and dealing with whatever had caused it.
As he walked back towards the stairs from the kitchen he noticed the closed study door. The study! he thought. It had been one of Henry's favourite haunts. The desktop computer was set up there, so it was a place for Henry to do his research and also to fulfil his obligation to George: using his knowledge of hacking to sabotage the websites of anyone who came remotely close to some terrible truth. He could also use it to trace the whereabouts of any such people, at which point, George would go on a “field trip”. The study was also a good place for Henry to look out across the lawn and smoke.
Indeed, the study contained plenty of evidence of Henry's presence. The window was open, despite the recent rain, and the various ashtrays - filled to over-spilling - mixed with the damp cold air to produce a very dank odour. A whiskey glass sat on the desk top, overshadowing the keyboard, and a plate harboured a half-eaten piece of toast with something brown spread on it. The desk top was strewn with odd pieces of paper, all covered with handwritten notes. The notes were several layers thick and had spilled over on to the floor and every other available surface. The most striking alteration to the state of the room were the walls. Once painted in a plain cream shade, every available inch of them had been used to continue Henry's train of thought in broad strokes of black ink.
George had first encountered Henry almost ten years earlier, he was working in the city and was extremely good at it. Henry had been a Mathematician by education, the complex stuff that most others consider a foreign language or even magic. Shortly after graduation from Cambridge, he'd been offered a job by an investment company, high risk and cutting edge stuff. Aimlessly, Henry had accepted the post but he took to it like a duck to water, even if he never really engaged in the social aspect - many of his colleagues were pigs of the lowest order, by Henry's recollection. It was the application of his mathematical theorem that excited Henry and, within six months, he was generating more wealth than anyone at the firm ever had. Of course, it didn't last. Henry spent two years on top of the world and George had watched his gifts from a distance, his flaws too.
Henry was brilliant, and supremely knowledgeable about things he sometimes had no business knowing. More importantly, he liked to push his theories to their limits and that's how he first began to fall from grace. A theoretical mathematician can take his theories as far as he likes, no one gets hurt, or loses money, but in Henry's line of work, jobs could be lost, lives destroyed, businesses tumbled and a lot of capital could disappear in a matter of seconds. That was where George lost track of Henry. When it all came tumbling down about his ears and he'd heard of the job losses and even the odd tragic suicide, because of what he'd done, Henry had cracked.
Henry was fired, of course, but only after an ugly scene at the office, involving a prolonged rant and a lot of broken glass, followed by a trip to the pavement courtesy of the security guards. After that he’d plunged in to darkness. Depression took hold and he failed to make his mortgage payments. His savings and investments had all been placed firmly behind his theories and had been lost when the scheme turned sour.
Henry had no family to speak of, he was an only child and his parents were nearly fifty when he'd been born, his mother had battled with breast cancer for many years and, when he was sixteen, it had finally claimed her. His father had always been a somewhat distant figure in his childhood and that didn't change after his mother's death. His father chose to wallow in his own self-pity and immersed himself even more deeply in the business which had always drawn most of his attention. His drinking also became more of a problem.
When his father died, four years later, Henry had felt nothing, he was consumed by numbness and only took a few days off from his degree course to arrange and attend the funeral.
With a fresh disaster of his own design, Henry was alone again and he ended up living rough on the streets of London. He quickly became drawn in to the world of squats and serious drug addiction and, with no money left, stealing was the only way to feed his habit. That was Henry's life for three years and though it seemed like less to him it aged him far more. Deep lines etched his face long before his thirtieth birthday.
That was when George had found him again, running down the street towards his car, being pursued by a rather out of breath shop assistant and spilling DVDs as he went. George had recognised him instantly, opened the passenger door and motioned for Henry to join him. In his rush to get away before the police arrived on the scene, Henry had jumped at the chance and leapt in to the car without hesitation.
George took Henry back to the house and, after disentangling Henry's misunderstandings about his motives, explained to him how he knew him. Henry had spent some hours telling George his story and how he came to be on that street that day and George had offered him a fresh start.
It wasn't an easy break from Henry's old life but George had all the skills and equipment necessary to make it permanent and, a year later, Henry had been transformed from the bony, track-marked, thin-bearded addict, in to a slightly chubby, clean-shaven, heavy smoker. Not a fairy-tale, but a vast improvement on the man George had found.
Those who bore the name Horrendo were allowed very few people in their lives and Henry had been there for George, too. Through the crushing pain of the isolation, through broken bones and flesh-wounds and so many other adventures that Henry could never know the details of, and never asked.
Now, all that was left of Henry were these notes that surrounded George. He began to pick through the pieces of paper but, with no apparent order to them, it was impossible to make sense of it all. Instead he turned his attention to the walls, these surely must have been the most recent of Henry's scrawlings.
Looking around him, George managed to work out that the notes on the walls started on the top left of the wall opposite the desk and worked their way around the room clockwise. A lot of it seemed to be mathematical in nature but interspersed with words from various languages, both ancient and modern, and symbols George recognised from his training in incantations and ritual. Most worrying of all, was the repeated mentions of the phrase “the Nameless One”. This phrase was familiar to George, it was used to describe a particular creature, the one who'd started it all.
His Master had spoken of the Nameless One only a few times and only towards the end of his life. Master Giovanni had felt it was something George should know, as his Master had before. It was little more than a fragment of a legend, most of the story lost over the ages. According to the version passed down to George: long ago, many thousands of years before written history began, a man had called a creature in to being. This, thing, was not of our world, or indeed anywhere within the confines of our physical universe. The creature had slain the man and embarked on a trail of destruction. However, the man had a brother who'd shared his dwelling and, upon discovering his dead kinsman, began to track the creature in the hope of exacting vengeance upon it. Little more was known of this man's story, other than he was supposed to be the first in the line of men who led to George, the first Horrendo, though the origins of that title were also lost.
Questions raced th
rough George's mind: was Henry referring to the same Nameless One? How did Henry know of a legend passed down from Master to Apprentice and never written down? What was Henry trying to do?
George began to gather the papers on the desk together, when he noticed there was an object nestled beneath some of them at the back of the desk. He lifted the papers to see what it was and, to his surprise, he found it was an amulet. Clearly quite old and made from silver, it had a familiar feel to it. George was sure he'd seen one just like it in the library vault. Surely Henry couldn't have breached the security of the library? he thought. The library was off limits and Henry knew it. Besides which, he'd never picked a lock in his life and there was only one key. He had to have acquired the amulet from somewhere else. Whatever this amulet was, it wasn't just a piece of old jewellery and the only way to find out what it did was to find out what its twin was doing in the vault. Next stop, the library, he decided.
Upstairs in the library, George made his way across the room, past shelves of modern books, all stacked according to an elaborate system, devised by generations past. Next came the slightly older texts, gathering dust and in need of some attention, perhaps another day, George told himself. Finally, came the clean room. In this carefully maintained environment were found a large collection of extremely rare or unique books. Some over fifteen hundred years old and hand written on vellum, others were not books at all but scrolls, painstakingly preserved and often unread for fear of destroying them forever, before a safer way of transcribing them could be devised.
The far wall of the library was reserved for works of fiction. Fiction needed to be monitored, too; occasionally a writer would stumble upon some terrible truth in their attempts to stir the imaginations of their readers. There was another reason for having a fiction section at the end: because it wasn't the end. There was a small latch on the side of one of the stacks of inbuilt shelves and by gently moving it forwards the whole unit was released. The unit swung outward like a door, set well above the floor, so as not to leave tell-tale marks on the floorboards. Behind the shelves was the vault door, which was forged some eighty years previous, using the materials and design of Master Giovanni.
