by Adrian Cole
All this Necral observed through the Eye of Horabis, musing in silence. He knew the fallen man: it was the immortal, the one who could not kill and who could not die as men died, for the Dark Gods had decreed it. He was the Voidal, and it was time for him to return once more to Skull Keep.
Necral turned from the Eye apprehensively, not eager to study the dark man further. Let the passage of this frightful harbinger be brief, so brief, he mused.
Out of the left eye socket of the gigantic skull fluttered a host of black shapes, their necks short and thick, their myopic eyes like huge, bulbous orbs, glowing with lambent green fire. Their bodies were squat but strong, their wings thick, flapping silently, ghosting them out over the Ocean of Souls as they carried their comatose burdens to the very portals of life at the edge of the many dimensions. These were the every-moving Sowers, bearers of the reborn, working tirelessly in clouds, replenishing the dying with the living.
On the sturdy back of one slumped a figure, a torpid man, dreaming the dazed sleep of one who is about to know again the mystery of rebirth. As the Sower swooped on into the darkness, guided by blind instinct, the man registered only passing images, dreams that would quickly be forgotten in his new life, for no one alive ever recalled Skull Keep. Death remained a mystery its Gods guarded jealously. Yet as the Sower crossed the Ocean of Souls, there were faint lights down upon its surface: it was there that the black Dead Fishers poled their long barges through the murk towards the mouth of the Keep, their way lit by the blue nimbus controlled by the Keeper, Necral.
In one of the flat barges was stretched out a single body, that of a man dressed entirely in black, a sword strapped at his side in an ebon scabbard. Usually the barges contained several dead each, but this barge contained only the dark man—each barge usually had but one Dead Fisher to pole it, but in this there were several of the hooded figures. And commonly the dead were naked—certainly no weapons ever came here. Perhaps it was these facts that netted the curiosity of the flying Sowers, or perhaps their interest had been seeded some other way. Several of the Sowers did drift down over the solemn scene, vaguely curious. Their minds were puny, geared to the perpetual task set them by Necral, but some flash of insight now made them aware of the uniqueness of the slow-moving barge of death.
The man on the back of the most daring Sower dreamed on, but the Sower came close enough to the barge bearing the dark man that several of the Dead Fishers waved it away with their dripping poles. The creature lurched in mid air and the dreaming man swung precariously from side to side. A sizzling bolt of blue energy zipped by the Sower, warning it off on its voyage and the creature’s green orbs bulged even wider with terror. It shot upward; from its back tumbled the sleeping figure, plummeting into the darkness that was the Ocean of Souls.
None of the Dead Fishers had ever shown emotion, for they had no need of it in their grim, mechanical toil; yet now there was a sense of great urgency about them. An ageless pattern had been shattered as the falling body dropped out of sight beyond the blue nimbus of light. At once the Dead Fishers acted—they began to pole the barge urgently from its course, towards the spot where the body had disappeared. This event was unprecedented in the history of the Ocean and must quickly be rectified lest there were dire repercussions. Already such a corruption of the rhythm of Necral’s domain would have to be reported.
The barge drifted on, its now anxious crew scouring the depths for the fallen man. Then a pale hand rose up like a gnarled branch. Arms reached out and fastened on to it. In moments the body was tugged up over the low rim of the barge and the man was dropped on the wet boards. Around him huddled the Dead Fishers, thankful for having secured him. Until they realised what had happened.
He was no longer ready for a new life. He lived again in the body that the Dead Fishers had taken to Skull Keep, the body in which he had died, victim of a murderer’s knife. This could not be permitted.
The Dead Fishers stared upwards, looking for the Sower, sensing its flapping shape circling them like a desolate bird searching for lost young. It would have to return this man to the Keep.
When the man had hit the surface of the Ocean, he had found his dreams acutely emphasised. Gone was the lethargic vagueness, the lack of continuity. Everything had become clear, a joined sequence, ultimately reality. He was aware. Now, shaking droplets from his eyes, he peered at his bizarre surroundings, etched in pale blue light. He was on a flat boat, moving towards a distant mass that was shaped like a giant, sprawled in the darkness.
Impossible.
Around him the Dead Fishers gathered, highly nervous, realising that he was aware, another fact without precedent here. They sought to bring the Sower down so that it could carry away its burden and restore the order of things. The man looked down at the dark figure reclining in death. Its features were sharp, picked out morbidly by the garish light. They were familiar. Who was this being? Where was this place? What dimension of nightmare had swallowed them? Rough hands made to drag the man away, but he fought them instinctively. Somehow they meant harm, he was certain.
With a sudden twist, he wrenched a long pole from the hands of one of his assailants. Above him a black shape winged down like a huge bird of prey. He swung the pole and punctured a leathery wing: a tortured shriek followed and the thing plunged out of sight into darkness. Now the guardians of the barge were in a panic. They rushed upon the man, who they thought insane, but he attacked them with scything sweeps, battering them desperately aside. Bones crunched and robed bodies doubled up in unaccustomed pain; the barge rocked dangerously. Completely unprepared for such a ferocious onslaught, the Fishers were quickly beaten back, falling over the sides of their barge into the waiting blackness. The man saw his advantage and was quick to follow up, crushing the skulls of the last Fishers to resist him.
As his final victim flopped overboard, he put down the pole and turned his attention to the corpse in the bottom of the barge. He leaned over the dark man, whose eyes began to flicker open. Their green depths made the features even more familiar.”I know you,” said the dark man.
The other touched at his ears, as if they had been damaged, mystified by something. “And—I know you.”
“Where is this place?” said the first.
But the other shook his head. He pointed to the nearing mass of Skull Keep.
The dark man rose on his elbows and looked at the huge, prone body. He nodded. “I have been here before, though it may only have been in a dream.”
The other frowned in agreement. “This may be a dream, too, for there is much mystery about this place. Shall we investigate?” he grinned.
“I think we have no choice.”
And so the barge drifted on, now poled by the man who had fallen from the sky. For some reason he kept touching his ears, as though they would fall away from his head.
As they drew nearer the floating mass, always watching for signs of an attack either from the Ocean or from above, the dark man tried to recall where it was that he had met his companion before. Something about the man’s preoccupation with his ears was the clue, for there was a significance in it that he did not understand. The other poled on silently, watching the amazing Keep, the dead husk of a giant, who must have belonged to a race of superhumans. From its eye sockets the two men could now see the twin clouds of Sowers, constantly going out into the ink of the heavens.
“By all the Gods, this is a dismal realm,” murmured the dark man. “What manner of being is that before us? I feel I know it, but my mind is hazy.” As he spoke he could faintly discern other barges—they all plied a path through the impenetrable murk of the waters to the gaping mouth of the dead giant, where broken-toothed portals awaited them. It would not be wise to enter, for they would immediately be discovered and possibly attacked. The dark man pointed way off to the long arms of the dead being. “There,” he said. “Let us make for the hand. I see no life there. We need time to plan carefully.”
The other nodded, studying the solid forms of the twi
sted, lifeless fingers beyond. He began to pole away from Skull Keep and drifted along the towering walls that were the body of the dead giant. Across darkness the barge slipped in absolute silence.
Eventually it came under the shadow of those colossal fingers, nestling in the space between them, out of sight, hidden in the chasm from the watchful eyes of anything that might fly overhead, or from the beings in the other black barges drifting over the lake of black glass. The two men moored the barge deep between the massive fingers, waiting to see if they had been pursued, but they had not.
The dark man looked across at his companion, realising that the latter had been studying him closely. “You say you know me?”
Momentarily the other’s eyes lit up. He nodded, his lips framing one word, clearly and distinctly. “Voidal.”
The dark man echoed the word, frowning. But then a gate in his memory creaked open and in that shadowed place, shards of recollection gleamed. “Voidal!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I recall. The Dark Gods would still keep the truth from me.” He was nodding, lost in a sudden deep reverie.
His companion’s eyes were fixed on him. “Once you helped me.” His words were a little slow and ponderous, as though he was not used to speaking. “I had become the prisoner of a particularly pernicious creature. But I invoked your name and you came to free me and those who were incarcerated. But my freedom had a price.” He tapped his ears grimly.
The dark man looked puzzled. “Your ears—”
“My hearing. I was made deaf. And yet here, in this unwholesome realm, I can hear once more! I am glad enough of that, though I wonder what price I must pay for such a miraculous restoration. Is this your doing? You told me we would meet again, but it amuses the Gods to toy with me.”
The Voidal nodded. “You are not alone in that.”
“It is strange,” mused the other thoughtfully. “I seem to recall my life almost as a series of dreams. I am a Songster by profession. I possessed the most beautiful instrument, Layola. She was my love, my inspiration, trapped within that living frame. Priceless to me, and sadly of much value to other, greedy thieves. When I lost the use of my ears, I could no longer hear the loving voice of Layola. I knew despair then, and I sank myself into its pit. I could not sing as I had, I could not make a living. My life became a weary trudge from one tavern to another, each dive more despicable than the last.
“Envious eyes watched me, my Layola. One night, drunk to the point of insensibility, I slumped in an alley. The thieves found me and took my Layola. Something in my sodden brain stirred: I struggled, and for my pains got a knife between my ribs—” He winced as if he could still feel the pain.
The Voidal saw the look of surprise on the Songster’s face.
“But—I died! My life leaked out of me as I watched the murderers flee with my Layola—”
“That’s why you are here,” said the dark man.
The Songster looked down at himself, studied the place where the knife had entered him. “Repaired, though there is a long scar. Then, did I live?”
“These are not dreams,” said the Voidal. “I will show you something. Come with me.” He gestured for the other to follow, then began clambering up the difficult surface of dried flesh that still clung to the hulk of the dead god. Up the wrinkled ridges of a petrified finger the two men went until they had reached the highest joint. There, clinging to tufts of dried hair, they watched the weird processions to and from the Keep.
The Voidal pointed to the sombre barges, their cargoes of naked dead.
“They are all dead,” said the Songster.
The Voidal pointed up at the winged shapes. “Living souls, as you are.”
“Living! The dead come here to be—restored?”
The Voidal nodded. “I recall the place now. It is the Ocean of Souls, known to us only in dreams.”
“Then the murderer’s knife did kill me. And I was being borne away to a new life—”
“While I was to be cast out into the omniverse once more by the Dark Gods. Your unwitting intervention has broken their grip on my destiny. Yet for how long? They will snatch it back.” He lifted his gloved right hand and stared at it hatefully. “For the moment it is lifeless. But here, in this void of death and rebirth, perhaps I can use it for my own ends.”
The Songster drew back in horror.
“It will not harm you,” said the Voidal. “Ironically it may yet be the boon of us both.”
“But where must we go? How are we to escape? Can that hand shatter the walls of this world and set us adrift on more familiar seas?”
“I think not. If we are to escape this realm, we will need the aid of the Keeper, Necral. Here he is omnipotent. We will have to go to him. Somehow we must wrest from him the secret of the exits. By force, by guile, by trickery. Somehow we must use him!”
Glumly the other studied the lines of the remarkable Keep.
“We must find a way in and reach Necral before he discovers us,” said the Voidal.
“Your sword—the Sword of Silence—”
But the dark man shook his head slowly. “No, this is not the weapon that stole your hearing, Grabulic.”
“Ah, you recall my name.”
The Voidal looked up, suddenly more alert. “Yes! My memory has been so poor, so fractured, and yet there are things I recall. Dreamwarp! The rogue Island—it restored something of me. The Dark Gods have not erased it.”
“What about the sword? Will it help us?”
“Its powers are not for use against dead flesh.”
“I see,” muttered Grabulic, disappointed.
“Grabulic, you were being taken away to a new life, in a new form. You have no quarrel with the powers here. Return to the barges—take the one we stole—and you will yet be placed in the omniverse where you belong. You’ll recall nothing of this. I make no demands on you. Once I freed you—now you have helped me. The debt is paid.”
Slowly the Songster shook his head. “If I am reborn in some other form, it will be without my Layola. The Gods will keep her from me. I—I need your help to find her. I don’t care what it costs me.”
The Voidal smiled grimly. “There’s much of mine that I’d take back from them. Together, then, though you risk everything.”
“So be it.”
They began the difficult trek over the titanic corpse. It soon became evident that they had underestimated its sheer size and extent, for they had gone along steadily for what appeared to be several miles, yet had made no real progress. The hide was thick, pale and tufted with coarse hair, matted in places that made progress difficult. On and on it stretched, this repellent landscape, with no sign of variation or ingress. Yet the two men did not complain, keeping up a slow, dogged pace.
Eventually they saw movement ahead and shielded themselves behind a ridge of flesh. From this point of concealment they were able to look down into a steep declivity and see clearly what transpired there. Both were stunned. The landscape of the body had been altered unnaturally. It had been quarried. Below, a strange, pale-skinned group had gathered amongst the workings. They were stunted, man-like beings, remarkably thin and stick-like. Their hands ended in clawed talons, their feet curled in a prehensile fashion. Some of them squatted on their haunches, while the bulk of the party began to attack the flesh of the Keep. They needed no tools.
“What are these?” murmured Grabulic, but that much soon became evident. They were feeding on the rotting flesh of the dead giant; their cruel claws ripping off chunks of it in strips and cramming it into mouths filled with pointed teeth. Already they had excavated a deep hole in the centre of the workings, evidently the work of many, many attacks. The Voidal scowled, searching his mind for a clue to their history. He could find none, but his face evinced a rare smile as he turned to his companion.
“Here may lie our means of entry. Fate favours us. Come, prepare for a dispute, for I doubt that they’ll allow us entry without a fight.”
Grabulic had retained the long pole from the barge and as th
e Voidal leapt up from concealment and slipped silently down the slope, he followed him, intent on giving a good account of himself. They were upon the feasting horrors before the latter realised. Steel sang as the Voidal drew from its ebon scabbard his sword, though it seemed no more than an ordinary length of steel in this dismal region. He took up a belligerent stance and at once the creatures cowered back.
“What are you about?” the dark man challenged.
One of them crept forward hesitantly, its mirthless features twisting pathetically as it whined at him. “No harm, master, no harm. We are the grovellers. We do but tend the flesh of the Keep that has been preserved by Necral. It is our lot to keep it in a semblance of health.”
“How—by eating it!” laughed the dark man.
“We do but take what sustenance is allowed us, no more.”
The Voidal drew nearer to the gaping wound that they had inflicted. “You have cut deep. This can do the Keep no good. The Keeper will not be pleased.”
Their bloodshot eyes squinted in terror of the blade and he saw their shaking fear. Grabulic swung his pole so that it whooshed through the air ominously, deterring any potential attack. “What is your name?” the Voidal challenged the leader.
“I am Larg the low-born.”
“We are the vassals of Necral,” the Voidal told him. “Nothing escapes the Keeper.” He motioned for Grabulic to inspect the wound’s darkness and depth. The latter nodded and climbed down into the workings.
“What will you do with us?” said Larg nervously. “We are too useful to be destroyed.”
“You should be punished,” said the Voidal. “It is for Necral to decide.”
They began gibbering, hopping about like frightened children. Larg looked sheepishly at the huge wound. “Spare us, masters! We are worthless and harmless. We did but steal a few morsels of flesh.”
The Voidal ignored him as Grabulic emerged from the wound. “Is it deep?” he asked him.
Grabulic climbed out. “Deep?” he laughed. “Why, there is an entire system of elaborate honeycombs within! How far it extends I could not even begin to guess.”
