by Adrian Cole
Grabulic felt the onset of despair, knowing that a prolonged recital of unspeakable names would not delay his unwanted confrontation with the Many Mouths indefinitely. He slumped against the cold wall, cursing and profaning, vilifying the gods he was supposed to be invoking. But in time, as his wasted rage spent itself, the seed of a faint plan evolved in a dark corner of his mind. A single name slipped elusively through the halls of his memory, and he tried in vain to corner the name and grasp it, bringing it out into the light of recollection. The words of an old rhyme came to him:
“Ye who seek the Hand of Fate
That points the way to Future’s gate:
In deed your will is best employed—
Invoke the shadow from the Void.”
Now the Songster recalled the slippery name.
The Voidal.
It meant from the Void. This Voidal was the enigmatic fragment of an old myth or legend from a history or nation unremembered. But of the smattering of lore that surrounded the perplexing figure there was an element of sorcery as old as the omniverse itself, or so Grabulic believed. No god would help him shatter the walls of the Spydron’s hold, but this Voidal, this ancient curse—who could tell what powers his incantation might unleash? This comer from the Void knew no allegiance to gods and obeyed no laws that they made.
Grabulic straightened as best he could, gazing deeper at the green light. Of all the gods he had tried, only this Voidal might answer him. And yet—surely there would be a reckoning, a dire emolument. The Songster frowned at that, but quickly his cunning mind compromised with the dilemma. There was a way. So, committed to his course, he drew in his breath and spoke.
“Hear me, timeless vault of the omniverse! I invoke the Voidal! In the name of the creatures of this castle and by their will, I invoke the Voidal!”
Out into the ether went the words, absorbed at once by the indifferent stone. Grabulic could think of nothing else to add weight to his words, for very little was known of the thing he had summoned. He had no idea what effect his invocation would have, nor was his confidence surging. Yet he struggled to the door of his cell and called upon his captors.
“Ho! It is done. I have summoned the one who will aid you.” At this, word was quickly sent to Kulkurakk and shortly afterwards he appeared, glancing about him suspiciously, as though expecting to see some terrible and grisly deity.
“I see no god! Have you caused an invisible spirit to enter the castle?” he boomed. His manlings surrounded him, each holding a crude fungi club, ready to be used.
“The one I have summoned is not yet here. But he will come in time. You will know him when he comes. In the meantime if you would release me, I will—”
“You may enjoy the hospitality of your room until such time as your god does come,” laughed Kulkurakk, and calling to his followers, strode back into the black tunnels.
Grabulic returned in despair to his hides. He would be glad of any aid this Voidal might bring. He tried to recall other fragments of the legend, for if the being did arrive, it were best to be prepared.
Along a remote tunnel in the lower regions of the castle, a host of ratlings was gathered together about a carcass. Some unfortunate creature had strayed into the ratling domain, a mutated hybrid from an unspecified part of the hold. There were many such strange ones, spawned at some point in the castle’s timelessness by sires and dams the nature of which had become totally obscure in its weird evolution. Whenever a lone creature found itself far from the safety of its hole, it was sure to fall foul of a thirsting horde. And now it was the ratlings who had struck. They were stripping every last vestige of flesh and organ from their victim. But then, as if at a given command, they all ceased their gnawing and began sniffing the air in unity, their blood-red orbs gleaming in the faint effulgence of light diffused by the mould on the walls, their noses high, twitching.
Something approached. Something alien to the castle.
From around a bend in the narrow confines of the tunnel appeared a solitary figure. Though it had the appearance of a man, it moved almost like a spider, its long, black-leather encased limbs striding forward in silence. It saw at once the lately feeding ratlings and from the ebon scabbard that depended from its belt slid a sword, without a sound. The ratlings amassed for a singular charge: their crimson eyes beheld the brazen stance of the newcomer. It was a tall man, thin and dressed in funereal clothes studded with a brief silver harness. The hair was sleek and black, and the cloak was of a midnight hue. The face was sharp, the eyes a piercing green, enhanced by the aura of silence and darkness in which the figure was swathed. The Voidal had come to the castle of the Spydron.
Their sense of smell told the ratlings that this spider-like being was not possessed of fear: the very fact introduced the same emotion into each of their own tiny brains. Was this an enemy from the upper vaults, spawn of the hated spiderlings? Instinct told them to rush forward and destroy it, but their fear quickly mounted to terror, for in the right hand of the Voidal was that awful sword, its sinister purpose a mystery they would rather not unveil. The ratlings began to squeal in indecision, then ran about in a fervour. Soon they were scurrying ever backward. The Voidal strode nervelessly toward them. It was enough. They fled.
Grabulic, exhausted by his lengthy incantations and lulled by his introspective ponderings, had fallen into a light sleep. From outside came muted voices; eyes looked in at the somnolent figure as it cried out in its sleep or gave voice to hoarse whispers. The manlings assumed that the Songster was merely continuing his chants and supplications to the promised divinities, whereas the recumbent body was dreaming a sequence of ghastly nightmares in which some invisible being was tearing the bones from within it.
Kulkurakk, meanwhile, pacing up and down the corridors of his immediate domain, followed by a murmuring band of his people, was first to come upon the stranger. This dark figure had come out of the shadows, a sinister, wispish light following it like a familiar. In the figure’s pale, green-eyed face and angular tallness, Kulkurakk recognised another being alien to the castle. At its side swung an ebon scabbard, from which the pommel of a sword stood up brightly, scattering beams of light, shimmering as if holding within it powers that writhed, eager to be free of its grip.
The Voidal stopped as he saw the manlings. Kulkurakk sniffed, but from this foreign creature came no noticeable aroma. The weapons of the dwarves wavered. Could this be the promised god, or his servant?
Kulkurakk stepped forward haughtily, chin out-thrust. “You lookin’ for the Songster?”
The Voidal mouthed the word, mulling it over. “I come in search of a companion,” he said after a pause.
“And his name?”
“I don’t have it. But he is here in this intolerable region.”
Kulkurakk grunted. “Very well. Come with us.”
As there seemed no immediate hostility from this stranger, the manlings were content to allow him unhindered passage to the cell of Grabulic. Keys rattled in the low door, and as it swung open, Kulkurakk motioned the stranger inside. The Voidal bent and entered, looking down at the snoring Songster. A nudge with his boot brought the latter into sleepy wakefulness, muttering his innocence in the affair of the deflowering of the daughter of a certain King Nyordias. The Songster stared at the green light, gasping and drawing back from the night-hung stranger. The manlings had again retired, though they had not locked the door. A god could shatter such things with his breath.
“Who are you?” burbled Grabulic, clutching his instrument.
The man in black looked puzzled. “Who am I? I wish I could answer that to my own satisfaction. I am a wanderer, set adrift by the Dark Gods, whom I appear to have offended. My memory of such matters is a fragmented thing. But I seem to sense that I am to meet a friend here, someone who can help me.”
“I summoned the Voidal,” said Grabulic tremulously. “Though I did it in the name of the manlings. It was their wish, not mine!” he added, still mindful of the potential price of the calling.
The Voidal considered the name. “It seems familiar to me. I may be him. But you say you summoned me? How? From where?”
“I—I—merely invoked your name.”
“Why?”
“To aid me—I mean—the manlings of this castle. They have no gods, being neglected by them, as indeed, am I, and as I had heard of you, they forced me to invoke you, in their name, to aid them—”
“To what end?”
“To free them from their plight. This is the world of the Spydron. Do you know the myths? Well, they are not myths here, but lunatic reality!”
The door opened and Kulkurakk entered slowly, hand grasping his fungi club. “Is this the one you promised us?” he asked Grabulic bluntly.
“Indeed!” said the latter, getting to his feet. “It is.”
“Will you save us?” Kulkurakk asked the Voidal.
The Voidal considered. “If it is in my power to help you, very well. But if I am to be of service, there is something I would have you give me.”
Grabulic visibly paled, his fingers twitching.
“Name it,” said Kulkurakk.
“Knowledge. All that you know. And you—” he pointed to Grabulic. “All that you know also.”
Kulkurakk looked relieved. “Well, that one is a Songster. He has already sung to of us of many wonders outside this place. What we manlings know we will soon impart to you. But he is the one with true knowledge.”
The Voidal’s green eyes focused on the Songster. “A Songster! That would seem a stroke of fortune.”
“All that I know is yours,” Grabulic assured him with a lavish bow, and the dark man seemed satisfied.
“Let us to a more comfortable place,” said Kulkurakk, “though there are no luxuries in the castle of the Spydron.”
Far below the middle terraces where the manlings and the outsiders conversed, the squealing ratlings had scurried ever downwards in search of their masters and the repugnant monster that had set itself up as their supreme monarch, Xalganash, he of the Thousand Teeth. Now word was being carried to the hybrid that sprawled in wasted, gelatinous bulges of blubber in the lowest catacombs of the castle, far from the eyes of other creatures, where only the ratlings ever set foot and where only the Spydron could otherwise peer. Into the vast and bulbous presence of this grotesquely mutated ratling came a quartet of great rats, each black-skinned and huge, bellies never empty, often filled with their own kind. They stopped well short of the foul-smelling nest of their ruler, telegraphing to Xalganash in their own peculiar way the facts concerning the arrival of the strange being in the upper tunnels of their domain. They told also of the fear this grim harbinger had instilled in the minds of the ratlings. Whatever Xalganash felt about this uncalled for intrusion, the degenerate monarch made no reply, dismissing his four underlords curtly. They were glad to remove from the presence of the Thousand Teeth, their duty done.
When they had gone, the monarch continued to masticate the bones of the carcasses that had been brought to him, leaving nothing. As his many teeth worked with the efficiency of knives, he considered the news he had been brought. As he did so, an oblique configuration appeared upon the far wall of his huge, stifling chamber, where the stone had been smoothed near flat by the beating of a million ratling tails over the ages. There, upon the wall, was a shadow, coalescing out of nothing, deepening in umbra, forming into a shape. Xalganash spat out bones in anger. Who dared work sorcery here in his very lair? But he was cautious: it may be the Spydron, whose power alone he respected.
Upon the wall the shadow was complete. It was a creature with legs. At first it seemed to be an image of the Arachniderm, the loathely monster that ruled the rival spiderlings who thronged the highest reaches of the castle. But it had five legs, not eight. What creature had five legs? As the shadow moved, it formed into a huge human hand, its forefinger directed straight at Xalganash. However, after no more than a few moments, the hand shimmered and dissolved. The rat monarch roared out his scorn and went back to crunching his bones, the incident soon forgotten.
Kulkurakk and his manlings had gathered around the fire in the Chamber of Bone, the tall part of their middle terrace which was sacred to their ancestors, the worship of whom was the only kind of worship in which they indulged. Guards had been placed at the entrances to see that no spies or advance parties of ratlings or spiderlings harried those within. Kulkurakk and his elders had then recited to the Voidal all they knew of the castle of the Spydron, its geography, its history and its inhabitants. To this small store Grabulic was able to add only a smattering of the myths and legends he had gleaned from his wanderings. The Voidal sat in silence, a graven image, but at the end nodded, masking his emotions.
When Kulkurakk had done, Grabulic turned to him. “Now, I beseech you, leave the Voidal alone with me for a while. Such other knowledge as I have for him is secret and for no other ears.” In spite of evident misgivings, Kulkurakk agreed to this request, leaving the two outsiders beside the sputtering fire, surrounded by the stained bones of the manling ancestors that festooned the walls, a forest of trophies.
“Their trust in my ability to help them escape may not be well founded,” said the Voidal. “The Spydron appears to have erected an impregnable barrier between this inner world and the external omniverse. If I am to breach it, the method of my doing so has not made itself apparent to me. Can you help, Songster? What can you tell me? You summoned me. Why did you invoke the Voidal?”
“Since I called you, I have managed to scour my memory and come up with certain songs and fragmentary pieces of legend that may shed some light upon you,” said Grabulic. “For example, it was in the court of King Bendool the Braggart that certain mages, seeing their master’s pleasure at my rendering of the Songs of Life and Death, gave me access to some ancient rhymes and odes that had long been secreted in their private library. Of these, the majority was only of interest to a scholar of orthometry or a Songster such as myself, but others—well, you shall hear. One spoke of a being, seemingly a man, that would ‘come from the void’ at the behest of the summoner. This being was apparently bound by the invocation of its name to perform some deed useful to the invoker. Usually this deed itself was a ‘rendering of future events’ (to quote Julius Julian the Minor) or a prophecy, rather than an actual physical act (such as any common demon would perform). The collected rhymes of which I speak referred to the being as ‘Fatecaster.’”
The Voidal’s eyes flared with jade light. The mantle of melancholy that had draped him seemed temporarily pierced by the Songster’s words. “Fatecaster! Yes, I recall that name. Then I am a prophet?”
“It could be that you shape the future with your words, or indeed, your very presence.”
“Perhaps. Go on.”
“In the Forbidden Odes of Oyboldornix, a scribe of the Csarducts, whose Empire sprawls across all but the extremities of Phaedrabile, there are to be found certain lines concerning a ‘walker in the void.’ These I can quote, as far as my faltering memory will permit. They read:
“You who walk the void of night,
Whom immortality are shown
By Gods unseen and recondite:
The death you seek may be your own,
Yet you may be destroyed by none.
“This suggests that you are immortal, unless the dark Gods will it otherwise,” added Grabulic uncertainly.
“Your words have the shimmer of familiarity, as though I lived an old dream in which the fabric of your words was more substantial. An immortal prophet! And the gewgaw of these Dark Gods, whom I have sometime enraged. Yes, they have cast me out into a void of ignorance, and they have taken something from me, my soul, perhaps. Without it, how could I die?”
“One thing more I recall,” went on Grabulic, masking his personal feelings of relief. “The venerable scribe says:
“Not by thy will shalt thou kill.”
“By whose, then? That of the Dark Gods? They who forge my every step, for I seem to have no will of my own. If the
manlings are to escape this place, it will not be through my will.”
Grabulic tossed more fuel on to the fire, while the dark man brooded. “What mischief have you worked upon these Dark Gods?”
“I have no memory,” said the Voidal.
“Could their fate for you be to make you atone for your sins by using you to dispense fate to others who have offended them? Whose fate have you lately cast? Where were you last?”
The Voidal looked up at him, face sullen. “Each time I move from one realm to another, my past slips back, a spectre that dogs me but which will not show its face! Perhaps I do bring doom, catastrophe, love or fortune, but I cannot say. But—your words have the ring of wisdom. You have solved me one riddle. I must do the work of the Dark Gods, work which they will not do openly—”
“And work which you would not do willingly, perhaps.”
“Yes,” agreed the Voidal with a dry laugh. “I believe you have it, Songster. You are a friend indeed for teaching me this. I know that I was to meet a friend here. That much was planted in my mind. I knew as much when I found myself walking the tunnels.”
Grabulic returned his smile, relieved to be considered the friend of such a redoubtable ally.
The Voidal clenched his right fist in its glove, shaking it at the stone walls as though in abjuration of the Dark Gods. “I shall wrest back my fate!” he avowed. “Though it takes an eternity!”
Grabulic looked at the leather-sheathed fist uneasily, recalling yet another line of forbidden poetry. He spoke it aloud:
“The curse of might lies in thy right. Your hand, Voidal. Your right hand. It is the key to your power.”
The Voidal did study the gloved hand, unclenching it, though he did not unclasp the glove. For a long moment he was wrapped in thought. “You wake strange emotions within me, Songster. It was you who summoned me here, but who, I wonder, was it that sent me?”
