by Colin McComb
We stood like that for half an hour. I was patient.
When the sun touched the horizon behind him, he said, “My name is Trembling Crow. I am the son of the south wind and the Following Star. My cousins are the five wolves of the hills and the four sharks of the whirlpool, and I am the slayer of my brothers. My master was the Ocean Fox, who found me riding a straw mat in the currents of the southern sea. I was not born in these lands, but I will die in them. But not tonight.”
I thought to mock him, but I found myself caught in his cadence, fraught with meaning. “I am the Magus Underhill. I was taught by Dame Dolores, and apprenticed to Alastair, called Magus Underhill. I was torn from my life by tragedies, and torn again by injustice, and I have made myself anew. I was not born in these lands, and I fear nothing in them. If you strike at me, I will kill you. Now be about your business.”
He nodded his assent to me. “I brought you here because here is where you must be. When the sun hides her face from the world, I will show you what I bring.”
“I have what I needed: the girl’s freedom,” I said. “I intend to leave.”
He coughed and sat on the ground, drawing a circle around him with a bone that looked suspiciously human. “Leave, if you wish.”
I did not. Instead, I watched him, and I watched the sun drop below the horizon. When its last flash of light shimmered the air, Trembling Crow began to chant, low and harsh, as if his words were bilious and rotten flesh. I felt a presence like plague begin to build, and I shook a circle of iron fillings around me to strengthen my shield sphere. I set the lightnings in an orbit around me, and the exploding sphere hovered over my left shoulder like judgment.
Even with protections that would let me face down Knights Elite, I found that I was terrified. The chanting continued, growing louder. Night came rushing from the east, far faster than it had any right to do. The fire beside us flickered and danced in the sudden darkness.
And then…a single pulse, deep, bone-shaking, like the skin of a drum the size of the world had been stroked. A ripple in my sight, as if the world were a single flat reflection in a puddle, and something was stirring in the depths below. No. Like silk, elastic, stretching backward and downward and inward, a vortex from some unimaginable gulf that distorted every sense.
A pulse, again. The heart of a star resounding in a void of madness. I could hear the fabric of reality tearing.
It was then that I realized that we of the Empire who call ourselves magi are tricksters and liars playing on the fears of the people. We are tinkerers who can engineer fabulous devices and perform mundane tricks with the powers of our mind and our wits. We imagine we uncover the secrets of the world.
We are wrong. We don’t have the faintest idea.
A third pulse. And then—
From inside the vortex a blasphemy arose. Its arms defied counting, seeming to shift and waver. Its six horns curled around its head like a cage. Three enormous claws snapped and clacked at the air as it swam toward us on diaphanous, tattered wings, and I found myself wishing that I had studied not with the magi but with Father Church. As it breached that membrane of the void, its scorpion tail flailed spastically, and a green poison dripped from it and smoked and hissed on the ground.
Its horrid eyes met mine, and I saw empty burning pits so vast they could be called infinite. I saw deep spaces of immeasurable chill. I saw the death of my body and the enslavement of my soul. I saw despair and ruin.
I prepared myself for battle. I prepared myself for death. I hoped that it would be over quickly.
My head filled with the sound of the void, and it was upon me, in me, beyond me, and through me.
Sickened. I was sickened. Trembling Crow was gone. In the night of my ordeal, my senses had gone dark, and I do not remember what happened in that time. The tribesfolk prostrated themselves on the ground before me, and I felt the presence in me that they feared and venerated. It paused within me for a moment, and I saw in its intentions the Empire laid waste, our world bloody and screaming, no soul spared. I saw horrors I could not have imagined a day before. The world burned.
Its name is Stricantherichus, and it has consumed me. I am sickened to my very core.
The Village
This is what I remember of that day: we came from the west under night’s embrace, and we left spoilt offerings to the horrified dawn.
Nothing that lived escaped the clutches of the raiders, and though they were ravenous from long years in the western lands, they feared their master—my owner and rider—more than they feared their hunger. They brought death through the doors of pain: their master, my unholy passenger, had warned them not to let life fade entire under their hands.
They did not cover their tracks with fire, but then they did not have the need. The guardians of this land were weak and soft. A small outpost—only four men!—fell before them, and the men were left to die in limbless agony. The farmers and their families, up before the dawn, fared no better. The raiders left no survivors, not one.
They came upon Lower Pippen as the first fingers of dawn painted the sky. The guards dozing in their towers came down first as pairs of reavers scaled the ladders noiselessly. When the guards fell from their towers to the hard-packed dirt, the killers moved from house to house, slaughtering all who lay within. Those who escaped to the streets faced worse: circling spheres that spat blue lightning and rained fire upon their pleading heads.
Driven into the square like sheep, they were surrounded and forced to their knees.
I remember watching myself mount the speaker’s dais.
I remember throwing my hands into the air.
I remember blood… and teeth.
I remember laughing with a voice that was not my own.
It was afternoon before they had finished, and their bellies were finally full.
In the evening, my master—my jailer—roused them from their slumber, and we mounted the roads again. I hoped, I fought, and I strained to pass by, but my traitor hand pointed to the manor, and I gave up hope for Dame Dolores.
I do not want to recall…
… oh gods, her suffering…
They began to burn that night, starting in the library I had once loved, and as we moved north, my owner let me turn my head to see the town in which I had lived my whole life ascend to the sky on the back of billowing smoke.
And now I sit in a small room in my mind, drawn to this chair of iron and ice. I do not know how long I have been here, but I fear that it has been months. I pray that it has been only months. There are no doors. Two barred windows face me, and through them I can see the sights my true eyes behold. They show me that which I most fear. Atrocities and villainies that surpass anything of which I have read, committed by people whose faces are filled with terror when they turn to see me. The raiders who follow me slaughter at the commands that fall from my lips, but now that they have left the Sickened Lands, they do not relish their task. They would steal away but for the spheres at my command, for the flame I spit and the acid that destroys their souls. Sometimes the voice of the monster comes spilling through the window, corrosive, murmuring obscenities and drawing my eyes to the horrors that lie outside my cell.
I am trapped in my mind. I feel my body, but I do not command it.
Sometimes I feel the presence of the creature let go, and the chains holding me to the iron throne disappear. But they are never gone entirely. I once took a blade in hand to end my life, and instead I found myself carving an intricate symbol on the forehead of a strong young farmer, laughing. Maybe I am too weak to fight it. I despair. I go to the windows—windows spaced like eyes—and watch the landscape pass around now. And lately…
… lately I have been dreaming of a light to the north, and I turn my gaze that way. In the times when I am free, the raiders follow me, but they do not listen to my commands to flee. They think it a test, for in the past, my jailer has returned and hunted those who fled while it was away.
So north I go, ever north, hoping for fr
eedom. Hoping for freedom, and praying for oblivion.
END OF BOOK TWO
Acknowledgments
The faux-science in this story is imaginary. I have no training as a scientist, so if anything couldn’t actually happen, I urge you to remember that this is a work of fantasy. Plus, there’s a big demon in the story, and if you can get past that, you should be able to handle some scientific missteps.
As always, I’m thankful for the remarkable editing of Ray Vallese, who catches the small errors and the big ones, despite my best efforts to fool him with far too many commas—it’s the literary equivalent of a Zerg Rush. If you happen to see anything wrong in here, it’s my fault entirely.
Stone Perales consistently does excellent work, and I am extraordinarily grateful that his talents grace the cover of my book again.
Thanks also to Guido Henkel (www.guidohenkel.com) for his fantastic guide to building an ebook, "Take Pride in Your Ebook Formatting". If you want to publish an ebook, you should talk to Guido about formatting it for you. He's good.
Here also is my public admiration for Sensei Michael Williams, godan, owner of Tamashi Karate Dojo /Premier Martial Arts Detroit, and for the assistance of Rasaan Turner, shodan.
On a more personal level, I’d like to thank my pre-readers: Clinton Boomer (you should read his stuff!), Steve Dengler (who is alarmingly generous, warm-hearted, passionate, and funny), Scott McComb (my smartest brother), and Brian and Emily Summerfield (because game night is a sanity saver).
Love to my mom and Mikey—here’s to many more years of paddling around in canoes.
As always, love to the old friends: Mr. Chris Avellone (play his games!), Mr. Chaz Bumgardner, Monte Cook, the Pohles (stop by the Wizard’s Chest if you happen to be in Denver), Sun Dog, the DiTerlizzis (read their books too!), the Kemps (hey, read Paul’s books also!), Dawn Murin and Dana Knutson, and Dave and Christine Zenz.
And thanks once again to everyone who pitched in on the first Kickstarter campaign. Every once in a while, I open my Kickstarter spreadsheet and I look at your names and I think, “Man, these people are just incredible.” You should probably know that I continue to think that about you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colin McComb, according to his children, is both a great father and a stinky toot. His children laugh and say this is too silly to include in this book, but it appears to be here anyway.
On a more biographical note, McComb was born in 1970 and has been an avid reader his entire life. He received a BA in philosophy from Lake Forest College, and rather than delivering fries to hungry customers, he has spent most of his professional career writing in one flavor or another: game design, fiction, business plans, technical writing, and more. He has even won several awards for his writing, and he will gladly and modestly tell you about them.
He is co-owner and “President for Life” of 3lb Games LLC.
He is married to Robin Moulder, and they have two children, who are simultaneously great and stinky.
Table of Contents
Prologue
The Prisoner
Childhood’s Tale
The Guardsman’s Tale
The Apprentice’s Confession
Interlude: Meanwhile
In the Tower: Assassin
In the Tower: The Trial
Interlude: The Cruelty of Children
The Kidnapper’s Tale
The Shaman’s Tale
Interlude: Sickened
The Village
Acknowledgments
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
