Oblivion Hand

by Adrian Cole

  “Your bond? I am satisfied, for you cannot lie. I will speak of your fate. What do you know of yourself?”

  “Only what you have shown me in dreams.”

  “That you cannot die, cannot kill? Trickery, for you are no immortal! But that is a riddle I will not solve for you. Cannot kill? Another riddle, for did you not see yourself killing?”

  The Voidal looked in disgust at his right hand. “This hand does the work. It crawls from me, as if a separate entity. I would cut it from me, but it would crawl black, fuse itself anew to my flesh.”

  “It is not your hand. It belongs to another, an even more terrible power than you.”

  For the first time since descending to this hidden place, the Voidal felt the great cold seeping into him, though it was the coldness of fear. His eyes remained fixed in horror at the gloved hand.

  “It is the Oblivion Hand, the hand of one of the thirteen Dark Gods. Through it, you do their will, for it destroys their enemies. Separate entity! Yes, indeed. You cannot control it, nor could you sever it and escape it. Always it will return. It will never leave you, unless one day you appease the Dark Gods. Perhaps then you will retrieve your own hand. By the Oblivion Hand are you known as Fatecaster, and the finger of the hand marks those who will die by it.”

  The Voidal shuddered, putting the hand from his sight.

  “There is more,” went on the deep voice. “You ever seek a friend, one to guide you, the image never focused. Another trick of your tormentors! This is Death you seek, and only after meeting with him can you move on. Death is the key that unlocks all doors for you.”

  The Voidal scowled at the massive face. “If you speak the truth, then I am to bring death here, to this Universe. Yet you told me no harm—”

  “It is the body of this Island that will die, not those above.”

  “I see. What else can you tell me?”

  There was a pause, followed by an odd laugh, which seemed incongruous coming from the anguished face. “One thing more. Your sword.”

  The Voidal touched his left fingers to the ebon hilt. “The Sword of Silence?”

  “Yes. I know its power. For their own reasons, pity perhaps, the Dark Gods have given it to you. It has remarkable qualities, but I have already taken precautions against it, in case you attempt to use it on me. You will have noticed that Dreamwarp is clothed in silence. Strike with the sword and you will accomplish nothing.”

  “You expected an attack?”

  “I trust nothing! You are an agent of the Dark Gods, their pawn! Only your blind service can ever earn you a degree of freedom.”

  The Voidal laughed sardonically, a mirthless sound. “I have agreed to help you. I will not strike.”

  “No. But they may yet chastise me,” came the rumble from below.

  “You have kept your part of the bond. If you’ve said all, I’ll do my part.”

  “I have, Voidal. Your dreams will ever be fitful, but among them you will recall all the things I have said. My ailing powers can achieve that much for you. Now, hence! Fetch me the child!”

  By the depths of the Ether, Shebundra, I swear the child has a greater capacity for food than I!” said Abal the Farmer as Urgollo finished the succulent fruit he had been eating.

  The girl laughed. “I fear he will eat us out of provisions.”

  Urgollo giggled, tossing away the core. “Look,” he said, pointing. “Here comes the strange man.”

  The Voidal stood before them, his face set grimly.

  “What did you learn?” Shebundra asked him anxiously.

  “We are not in danger. Neither, it seems, is the archipelago. But from this moment on, you must put your trust in me. What I must do may seem unpalatable to you, but it will be for the best, for the good of us all.”

  Abal looked dubious. “Explain yourself,” he said gruffly.

  The Voidal turned to Shebundra. “You were here once before. You dreamed of a golden man.”

  She bit her hand, her eyes alive. “How did—?”

  “The Island has told me. It is not hostile, least of all to you and your child. I am to take the child. No harm will befall him. When we return, in a short while, he will be enriched beyond your imagining.”

  Shebundra looked uncertain.

  “No!” protested Abal. “I don’t like this!”

  The Voidal looked at him directly. “When this is done, we will quit this place and go our own ways. Neither Dreamwarp nor I will enter your lives again. This I promise you.”

  Abal remained uneasy, for his protectiveness towards mother and son had trebled since their arrival on the Island.

  The Voidal spoke softly to Shebundra. “The Island wishes to see the child.”

  Her eyes suddenly widened, as though a new understanding had burgeoned within her. The Island—the child. She nodded, and the Voidal took Urgollo by the hand and led him away.

  “Do not be afraid,” called Abal, but the child had a strange, fascinated look in his eyes.

  “All is well,” he called back.

  But Urgollo’s sense of wonder became a sense of stealing dread as the Voidal led him down the murky depths of the black tunnel. However, up from the abyss came gentle waves of dreaminess to soothe him as the Island calmed him. Fresh clouds of lightworms drifted about the two descending figures, casting long shadows up the tunnel so that Urgollo began to respond once more to the magic of his bizarre surroundings. Down they went, ever down, the Voidal as silent as stone, and at last they reached the huge chamber and stood near its central chasm.

  “What lies beyond?” asked the child, afraid to look.

  “The one I have brought you to meet. He who will speak to you,” said the Voidal. “Wait here.” He strode the brink and again stared down into the huge face. “I have brought the child.”

  The eyes closed as if in a prayer of thanksgiving. “Then your bond is kept, Voidal. Bring him to me. Show him his sire!”

  The Voidal offered his hand to Urgollo and the child came hesitantly, for the vast well before him suggested unimaginable terrors. He clutched at the fingers of the Voidal and stood close to his side. As he looked down into that enormous visage, a scream escaped his lips, but the Voidal held him tightly so that he could not flee.

  “Peace, peace, Urgollo. This is not an enemy. It is the one who sired you.”

  Urgollo continued to struggle, his eyes looking down. The face looked up at him avidly.

  “My—father?” gasped the child, stilling himself, watching in amazement. His fears were soothing away, responding to the part of him that was elemental.

  “Yes, Urgollo,”” thundered the voice. “I am your father, who once was almost a god!”

  “He is bound,” said the Voidal. “Only you can release him.”

  Urgollo nodded. “How?”

  The Voidal looked down. “How is the child to serve you?”

  An unholy smile played upon the lips of the great face. “I will be free at last! The child and I will be united, forged as one. And we will break away from the curse of the foul Dark Gods!” The huge mouth gaped open, a crimson well. “Cast the child within!”

  Urgollo flinched at the gaping maw, its frightful stench. The Voidal’s face creased in sudden doubt. “Cast him within? You said nothing of this. You were to enter him—”

  “Cast him within!” repeated the voice angrily, bellowing with impatience. “He will be reborn. Do it now, damn you!”

  As the Voidal looked down into that slick maw, he saw for the first time the shapes and writhing horrors that crawled and coiled within it, the spawn of a deep evil, and he drew back, appalled. The child, too, sensed the insane shapes. “NO!” he wailed, all sense of wonder shattered, replaced by wave upon wave of revulsion. Both he and the Voidal pulled away, for there was no hint of succour in that malefic hole.

  “I will not make this black sacrifice,” said the Voidal, holding Urgollo well clear, shielding him.

  “Again I say, cast him in, or I shall destroy you all!” roared the voice,
shaking the invisible walls of the cavern with the intensity of its rage.

  But the Voidal drew the child further away. “There is some other foul purpose in this. You deceive us! Evil is your purpose. Stand with me, Urgollo. I’ll not cast you to your doom.” With this, he drew from its scabbard the Sword of Silence, but a great bellow of laughter gushed over him.

  “Do your worst! Your weapon is impotent against me! You cannot silence your minds—they will hear me yet! You cannot silence that which is already silent.”

  The irony of the riddle was not lost on the Voidal, who had retreated well back from the pit. Urgollo was trembling, too frightened to move away from him. The dark man held up his right arm, but the hand within the black glove was lifeless.

  “See!” roared the voice. “I have already had my punishment! The Dark Gods have done enough. You cannot cast my fate. The Oblivion Hand does not obey you!” And there was more frightful laughter.

  Its booming shook the cavern walls like an earthquake, building in intensity, bringing black loam down from above. The Voidal and the child were rooted, held by a tangible force, staring in shock at the rippling blackness that was engulfing them. Now this darkness pulsed and swelled like a living thing. The child fell to the floor, hands closing over its head in an effort to blot out the growing menace. But the frightful din seemed to have sped outward, awakening something else that was far older and far more sinister.

  Far in the distance that could have been lost in remote space there were deep, sonorous sounds, thunders that were muted, but growing, like reversed echoes. They approached, slowly but implacably. The voice from the pit and the stentorian laughter cut off abruptly. But the Voidal and the thing in the well listened intently. The sounds were not of their making. Somewhere out in the limitless ocean of darkness, a force coalesced, drawing ever inward, like a coiled serpent of unthinkable magnitude, a core of evil more terrible than any mad dream the Island could ever dredge up.

  A whisper came from the pit, couched not in mockery but in extreme dread. “What have you done? What have you unleashed?”

  The Voidal was motionless, listening to the pulsing of growing sound. “Not me. Your own laughter woke this. You scorned the silence, mocked the Sword. It is not me you laughed at.” In the darkness he could see movement, ebbing closer like a black tide, huge, malignant, nebulous and yet as palpable as stone. In the cavern’s darkness, around the limits of vision, shapes were materialising, blacker than space, blacker than hate. Black as Death.

  Upward they soared, looming inward, heads lost in dizzy heights, unseeable but awesomely present.

  “Who comes?” breathed the voice in the pit.

  Thirteen colossal shadows ringed the cavern. The Voidal put his left hand upon the shoulder of the shivering child, drawing it to its feet. His insides had run cold as freezing ice, his every bone, artery and fibre had become chilled to the essence. For these he recognised out of nightmare, the promised memories: they were the Thirteen seneschals of the ineffable Dark Gods, shadows of the ultimate doom. Silence fell upon the cavern, and it was absolute.

  The Voidal felt movement. His right hand stirred like an animal rousing from hibernation, clutching tighter the Sword of Silence. In the faint glow of the lightworms, the hand rose up with the Sword, holding it in salutation to the grim watchers without eyes. The Voidal looked into the darkness that clad them and saw that each of them held a sword: each of them save one, who had no weapon, and no right hand to hold one. From the terrible darkness that was its incomplete arm, a tendril of thick shadow curled towards the Sword of Silence as it rose, blotting it from sight.

  From the pit came a gibbering, the first hysterical whimperings of a being in utter terror. The face looked up around the rim of its prison and saw the Thirteen shadows. It saw in their clouded hands the swords of power, each one possessed of an individual strength, each with devastating potency. One of the Thirteen leaned forward and the face in the pit screamed.

  The Voidal saw the shifting of shadows, powerless to move himself. His right hand, lost in shadow, came back from the great cold before him. It now clutched another sword, no longer the Sword of Silence, which had been recovered by its original keeper. This sword had another name, and the Voidal knew it, though no words were spoken.

  The screams from the pit increased, but the Thirteen remained stoically silent and cold. Their own swords winked out like lost stars: now only the one remained, in the right hand of the Voidal, their slave. Aloof, they did not deign to speak to him, though he knew their desires. Like dimming illusions they slowly drew back into the embrace of the Night that had sent them, the screams of Dreamwarp a requiem to their passing.

  Soon the great cavern was empty again, save for the thing in the pit, the Voidal and his whimpering charge. Turning to the child, who cringed in fright, the Voidal directed him to the way back.

  “Go there, Urgollo. Go back up to your mother and the good Farmer. Go quickly, for nothing will molest you. The lightworms will guide you.”

  Urgollo stared around at the dark, expecting to see the grim titans looming above. But they were gone as if they had never been. With a last cry of fear, the child scuttled away up the incline, soon lost to view, racing for the light of the Ether. The Voidal walked slowly to the edge of the pit. He looked down for the last time, fearlessly now, into the face, which had become a writhing mask of lunacy, all semblance of sanity shredded away by the appearance of the fatidical seneschals.

  “Your treachery has once again sealed your fate,” said the Voidal without compassion. He pointed the sword downward at the slack-jawed mouth from which the last of the vile things wriggled and died. It was the Sword of Dispersal.

  A single, endless scream was ripped from the black mouth. The Voidal felt the ground heave, then tumbled outwards in an arc, falling with the Sword pointing before him into the huge orifice. The sound became a rumble, a boom of thunder, then an explosion of tremendous force.

  Darkness snuffed out the Universe as if it were a candle.

  Dreams.

  Floating in that familiar well, faint stars scattered like dim jewels, the Voidal dreamed. He saw a huge Island, drifting, drifting.

  Suddenly it began to heave and shudder like a great beast in mortal agony. It throbbed, then burst, sending its countless fragments outwards in every direction, spewing forth a hundred thousand new Islands and tufts of debris across the far reaches of the green Ether, spreading ever outwards so that what had once been a single Island was now strewn throughout all the Universe in a billion particles. Dreamwarp was no more.

  One spinning piece of detritus from the explosion whirled past the eyes of the dreaming Voidal, a dream within a dream. There was life on the tiny Islet, for clinging to it were three beings. A stout man, a beautiful young girl and a bewildered child. This youth looked radiant, for a darkness within him had dissipated.

  As they sped out of his dreams, the Voidal saw them embrace. For them the nightmares had ended.

  But not for him.

  Chapter IV

  FIRST MAKE THEM MAD

  At this juncture it is necessary for me to introduce one of the most vital components of the entire Voidal canon, although in some ways I am tempted to play down the involvement of the particular character to which I refer. Had I merely set down his escapades verbatim, for he himself is a notorious spinner of yarns, the Voidal would have been relegated to the background, while the creature to which I refer would have assumed monstrously heroic proportions. And nothing could be further from the truth.

  This tale has many variations, being a favourite among the familiars and imps of sorcerers and mages throughout the omniverse. However, I have exercised considerable editorial license in my recording of it.

  It notes, significantly, the downfall of an extremely powerful empire, but ironically earns its place here because it introduces the reader to the abovementioned character, a familiar by the name of Elfloq.

  —Salecco the Long Suffering

  I hav
e spoken already of the immense empire of the Csarduct Dynasty, and of how it held sway over almost the whole of Phaedrabile. Like all tyrants before them, these quasi-human conquerors were greedy for expansion, avid for the secrets of the many dimensions. Phaedrabile was never enough.

  Their dreadful mages and sorcerers schemed and plotted, calling upon demiurges and demons long plunged into the depths of antiquity (and for good reason). No powers were too terrible for the Csarduct sorcerers to tap. They plumbed the very depths of their arts, seeking to reincarnate old and forgotten gods and hideous powers that would obey them and sweep aside all forces. There was no god, spirit or demon feared by the sorcerers of the Csarducts, and no power to which they bent the knee, save their overlords, the invincible Csarducts themselves.

  They established a bridgehead on the world of Moonwater, a foothold to other realms, first step to new tides of bloody carnage and conquest. Moonwater, entirely coated in a phosphorescent ocean of living matter, harboured the great citadel of Quellermondel, which had been artificially grown from the green mooncoral of the planet’s ocean over a period of countless millennia. Seven aquamarine moons dominated the Dryunic skies and looked ever down on Moonwater, where the bright ocean reflected in iridescent splendour the emerald glow of the heavens.

  Up from the curling, glittering glory of the mooncoral city the ragged towers of the sorcerers thrust like jagged spears seeking the moons: for each heavenly titan there was a tower, seven in all, and from the names of the seven moons the Seven Sorcerers of the Csarducts took their names—Quar Mordo, Mage of Pain; Endellys, Mage of Dreams; Jundamar, Mage of Prophecy; Lucedrix, Mage of Knowledge; Quarramagus, Mage of Spells; Zomakh, Mage of Necromancy; Tephlemytho, Mage of Immortality.

  Moonwater hid them all from the curious, prying eyes of the Empire. High in their fantastical towers the sorcerers practised their outrageous mysteries, always seeking paths of discovery, new powers. The seven towers glowed and reverberated to strange energies as the Seven pursued their endless missions. Quellermondel had once been no more than a huge outcrop of mooncoral, but over the centuries, coaxed by unnatural magics, it had thrust upwards towards the bright moons, defying laws of sanity, piling itself layer upon layer upon twisted layer, shelf upon leaning shelf, so that now its planes were countless, its walks twisting and turning through tunnels, over arches, across dizzy abysses, high, high upward, ever upward. The bizarre pile ludicrously mocked geometry and architecture.