by Martin Ash
We entered a short, dank, torchlit passage with a low arched ceiling. At its end, where it widened into a small storage area, was a wooden door. In front of this a shocking sight met our eyes.
Stretched upon the dark earth was a man, another servant. His clothes were torn, his face and limbs were a bloody, mangled mess. He was moaning loudly, his body contorted in terrible pain. Markin the physician knelt beside him with water and clean linen cloth, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
A pair of soldiers and another servant stood by, gaping with frightened faces from the wooden door to the wounded man and back again. The door, which was shut, shuddered violently, as if something on the other side was trying to break through. A violent scraping sound and furious snarling, snuffling noises came from the cellar beyond.
‘What’s going on here? What’s happened?’ demanded Lord Flarefist.
I knelt beside the wounded servant and invoked a healing rapture. I saw now that he was horribly mutilated. The flesh of his right cheek and temple had been ripped partially away, hanging in bloody strips, the bone exposed. One eye socket was filled with blood and it appeared the eye had been gouged out. There were savage claw-marks down his neck and over his breast and thigh. Chunks of flesh seemed to have been ripped from his bones.
Having applied the rapture I straightened, sickened. A soldier was explaining to Lord Flarefist: ‘He was taking the thing its feed. He opened the door and stepped in and it flew at him. He managed to get out and shut the door, but in those few seconds it all but tore him to pieces.’
Flarefist gaped, confounded. ‘Flew at him? Tore him to pieces? It’s a damn’ baby!’
The soldier nodded fearfully towards the rattling door. ‘No longer, sir.’
I looked at the door. At its base there was a gap of an inch or so between rotting timber and floor. There something moved: a dark, questing, ravening snout, snuffling furiously back and forth. I shuddered.
Flarefist had seen it too. ‘What the devils is that?’
The other servant spoke. ‘It’s grown, my lord. It’s changed in hours from a helpless infant to a furied, savage thing. It’s the size of a young boar.’
Flarefist stared at him. ‘What by all the god and demons have you been feeding it on?’ he demanded absurdly, as if diet could explain the sudden terrible, unnatural growth.
The servant giggled hysterically, almost weeping. I looked back at the mutilated man on the floor and said, in horror at my own words, ‘Try pushing some raw meat under the door. That may quieten it.’
Two more soldiers arrived at a run in the passage. I stared at that evil snout below the door, my ears assaulted by the dreadful sounds issuing from within. And into my mind, unbidden, the words floated darkly: ‘…then you shall see that Ravenscrag’s birth will be not to its saviour but to its Iniquity, and you shall all witness its Iniquity rise.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘…and you shall all witness its Iniquity rise.’
The words hung in my mind, lowering and dark, as if written in storm-clouds across the sky. From where had they come? These words had not been spoken to me, by Sheerquine or anybody else. Nor had I set eyes on them in written form. But I felt certain of their validity. And I knew without question that when – if ever – I came to read Molgane’s bane, I would find those words inscribed there.
I lay on my bed, my head cradled in my hands on the pillow. Outside the elongating shadows of early evening crept slowly down from the heights, deepening as they came. The last night of darkmoon was almost upon us.
Tomorrow the new lunar cycle would begin, marked by the reappearance of the radiant slender crescent. But I couldn’t forget or dismiss Hectal’s words early that morning: Tonight is the last of darkmoon, but here will another before you know it. Shadownight comes.
A chucklehead, a halfwit, a congenital loon who dined on moss. And an enigma. He knew more than he said, and I was now convinced had a greater insight into what was happening here than anyone else in Ravenscrag. But what did he mean by Shadownight? And I thought of the words of the Ravenscrag prophecy: … four must perish since the blood of the moon was spilled, but that done, one at last will come.
The blood of the moon… Four had perished, that much I’d confirmed. And the one, Redlock, had come. And then…
Moonblood. What had happened to her? What was her part in all this? Could she be involved in Redlock’s abduction or transformation? She had betrayed her anxiety over the birth. Had she known something was going to occur?
I almost dozed, I was so weary. But each time, as my eyelids grew heavy, I was jolted rudely back to wakefulness. The clamour in my mind was relentless, a maelstrom of questions, doubts, and images of weird and disturbing menace.
Far below, deep within the ancient castle, in the gloomy cellar where a servant had been mauled almost to death, a demonic creature paced. Following my suggestion chunks of rabbit meat and raw pork had been pushed under the door. The thing fell upon the flesh with ravening fury. The door ceased to shudder, the snarls and growls grew intermittent. Its belly filled, the creature became subdued, at least for a time.
How had it grown so suddenly, transformed from a tiny helpless cub to a frenzied monster in just hours? What manner of creature was it? And equally important, what was it becoming?
I’d argued with Lord Flarefist, who wanted the thing destroyed there and then. Somehow I prevailed, and now the cellar door, which was not particularly sturdy, was reinforced with strong boards of timber and further bolstered with heavy sacks of sand and earth. A space had been left at the base so that raw flesh might still be pushed through.
In the wider area of the passage outside the cellar door, six nervous guards were now stationed. They were well armed and equipped with strong rope netting and metal mesh. Their orders were to slay the creature without hesitation should it somehow manage to force its way through the barricade – an impossibility at present, but if its present rate of growth continued…
I screwed up my eyes, trying to push the thought from my head. I felt justified in my efforts to keep it alive, but could not help but be haunted by notions of its escape. There were moments when I wondered whether it might have been better to have let Flarefist have his way. But what if the creature, by some sorcerous transformation, was Redlock?
~
Molgane’s bane. Where was I to find it? I could approach Hectal again, but his game seemed to be to dispense only cryptic clues, leaving me to solve them myself – or not, as the case might be. And I had no guarantee that Hectal knew of the whereabouts of the missing scroll anyway.
I got up from my bed, fraught and frustrated, and poured myself a cup of wine. Within me I knew an ambivalence. I wanted desperately to be done with this whole business. I was isolated in Ravenscrag, cut off from all outside contact, trapped and endangered. I wanted to be gone from here, never to return. Never again to think of Ravenscrag’s prophecy or its bane. Never encounter its people. Escape, and then cast Ravenscrag and everything associated with it from my mind.
But on the other hand - I couldn’t deny it – I was intrigued. Notwithstanding its obvious dangers to myself, this mystery was irresistible. Part of me knew that I could not let myself walk away, even if the choice had been mine to make. I would never forgive myself if I did. I’d be irked for the remainder of my lifetime, never knowing, never having the satisfaction of explaining, or at least coming to some sensible understanding of what had befallen Ravenscrag and its inhabitants.
Ah, but how maddening! Nothing was clear. So much had happened in so short a time, and none of it made sense. Perhaps I was too close, too involved. If I could just attain a little distance I might see something that was presently obscured.
‘I am Zan-Chassin!’ I reminded myself, and with this thought came the recognition that, even if my physical movements were restricted, there was a way by which I might to some extent detach myself from the storm, and perhaps even secure guidance.
I returned to the bed and arr
anged myself in meditative posture upon it. I commenced the preparatory steps for entering Zan-Chassin trance.
Taking note, one by one, of every object before me I attuned myself to the chamber, to its ambience, its presence, its physical character. I focused inward upon my body, its muscles, tendons and sinews, its tingling nerves and pulsing organs. I listened to, then dissolved into and out of, the river of blood coursing through my veins. The process was second nature and took only moments, yet it demanded a supreme effort of concentration. Ideally the mind is wholly free of encumbrances and distractions when entering trance; one is both mentally and physically refreshed and alert. My mind was far from being unencumbered, and I was tired and my skin was raw and angry from its burns.
But I completed the first preparation phase, and entered trance, dissolving the objective world. No longer anchored, I came from my corporeal form and rested alongside and slightly above myself. I sent forth a summons to my bound spirit ally, my Custodian, Yo.
~
‘I am here, Master.’ He announced himself almost upon the instant.
‘Yo, I am pleased. I’ve a task for you. I wish you to take custody of my living body while I journey in the Realms.’
‘Very good, Master. Master, may I first ask a question?’
‘You may.’
‘Have you found for me yet the physical form that I will occupy to explore your strange world of matter, as you promised?’
I’d anticipated the question. The role of the Custodian entity is unique in that, once it has been bound to service, it is provided by its Zan-Chassin master with an animal form. By this means the entity comes to familiarise itself with the physical world, of which it has had no previous experience. The Custodian then serves a dual role. It takes temporary protective custody of its master’s body when he or she journeys into the Realms of Non-Being; and further, it is capable at other times of providing assistance in the physical world, by dint of its physical form.
‘I’ve chosen your form, Yo,’ I replied. ‘It is that of a Wide-Faced Bear, a wild species fairly common to my world. Upon my return to Khimmur I will set about the preparations, select a pregnant female bear whose cub you will become, and establish the ritual in order that you may be born into this world.’
‘Oh, Master, thank you. It’s so exciting! But can I not be human like yourself?’
‘That isn’t possible, Yo. The human man or woman is possessed of a mind that is infinitely more complex, though not necessarily more intelligent. The human infant would not adapt well to possession by an unworldly spirit. You must accept a simpler form.’
‘But why, Master?’
I was already discovering that Yo was a most inquisitive entity, quite childlike in many ways. I had no objection to this. Quite the opposite, I considered it something to be encouraged, at least to the point of endeavouring to provide satisfactory answers to his enquiries. At the same time though, his desire to learn tended to occupy my time when I was least able to give it.
I attempted to answer his question. ‘It’s Moban’s way. We don’t really know why. It’s possible that in time, after many rebirths and lifetimes in the simpler life-forms, you may acquire the knowledge and experience to finally be born human. But if it transpires at all, it will be a long, long time hence. In the meantime, consider your privilege. As my servant you have myriad opportunities denied others of your kind. Not only will you learn of the corporeal world through the animal form that I will provide you with, but you are also privileged to take charge for limited periods of my own human body. It is an invaluable experience, Yo. Use it well.’
‘I will, Master.’
‘And now I journey, for I must speak with the spirits of the dead. You will take custody of my body while I am gone.’
‘I am your servant.’
I pronounced the ritual incantation which would ensure my physical protection in my absence. ‘Custodian, enter this form and guard it until my return. Keep it as you would your own. If it thirsts, let it drink. If it requires sustenance, let it feed. If it is endangered, protect it and recall its rightful occupant. Ensure that none sever the cord between this body and its rightful occupant. Guard it well, for this is your sacred duty. Fail, and your true name shall be broadcast to your enemies. You will be cast out of this world in shame, naked and without ability, forever.’
‘It shall be as you command, Master.’
Yo entered my corporeal form. I hesitated, seized with a moment of anxiety. There’s always a nagging fear when passing control of one’s physical form and embarking upon a journey within the Realms. One can never be wholly sure of what one will find, either in journeying or upon one’s return.
Since my initiation as a Zan-Chassin Adept of the First Realm, I had journeyed perhaps half a dozen times, and then only briefly, leaving Yo in charge of my body. The demands of a physical body, coupled with Yo’s general unfamiliarity with the corporeal world, gave him quite limited abilities, and I’d always returned to find my body more or less as I’d left it. Nonetheless, there was always the possibility that, through omission, oversight or circumstances wholly beyond his control, he might fail to heed its welfare, and I took leave with a hollow feeling.
I soared high, out of that chamber, over the ramshack, sun-tiled roofs of Ravenscrag castle and town. I sped up, ever up, topping the rocky heights of Wansir, leaving them and the physical world far behind, rising into the failing blue. High above the world I parted the fabric between realities and passed into First Realm.
~
The Realms as we conceive them are a natural extension of the world as it is ordinarily experienced through the senses, an incalculably vast, perhaps infinite region of existence that becomes accessible only to a few, and then only after long and arduous training. By such training the Zan-Chassin initiate attains a heightened awareness that confers to some extent an ability to perceive this ‘other’ world. With further development he or she is able to take leave of the physical body and enter this realm and interact with the spirit entities that are its denizens.
First Realm, then, is in Zan-Chassin terminology the initial stage of discovery of a formerly unperceived aspect of Moban’s great and wondrous creation.
The entities that inhabit the Realms mirror us inasmuch as they have virtually no awareness of us or the corporeal world. Once bound to service, however, they evince a fascination for the physical – in the same way, one might say, that we develop a fascination for the non-physical world that they inhabit. This fascination is most pronounced in the case of the spirit which becomes the Zan-Chassin adept’s Custodian. The Custodian is normally the only bound spirit to actually inhabit the physical world in animal form. (A full account of the binding to service of the first-realm spirit ally may be found here.)
Deep within the Realms lies a region known as Shalu, the waiting place of the dead. Here dwell the spirits of those who have been human. Here they wait while they undergo the mysterious process of re-emergence: over an indeterminate period their essence and their memories, their total life experience, are reabsorbed into Moban’s greater essence. It is believed that the souls of the dead follow one of two courses. They are either completely re-merged, in effect ceasing to exist as entities of any kind, or they return at some point in another form, all memories erased, and dwell again in the physical world.
Shalu is a remote and secret place, a place of mystery, virtually inaccessible and rarely if ever visited by the souls of living humans. But between it and the physical world has been established the sacred meeting-place. Here a Zan-Chassin can journey to call upon and commune with the spirits of the ancestors.
It was to this ethereal meeting-place that I, bodiless, now sped.
Encountering no one, I passed across a shifting blue desert, a vast emptiness, a swirling flux of nothingness that we comprehend as the subtle, unimaginably potent creative energies that underlie existence itself. Physical descriptions are unreliable here. The Realms obey laws not common to corporeality, and
one perceives in an altered mode, without organs of sight, hearing, touch or other.
I arrived at the meeting-place, which to my perception was a small floating ‘island’ of vague solidity, a sense of coalescence within the surrounding formlessness. It was perhaps thirty paces in diameter, its surface seemed to consist of a rippled, powdery grey sandlike substance. Around its perimeter stood a ring of standing stones, spaced evenly apart with perhaps three or four paces separating each. At its centre was a small crystal cairn upon which rested a stick and a hand-drum: the Drum of Calling.
I alighted near the centre of the circle, approached the cairn and took up the Drum and stick. I beat three times upon the skin. The resulting effect could not properly be termed a ‘sound’; rather, it was an unsettling resonance, profound and almost sensual, which briefly cut through the eldritch silence of that place.
I sat down to wait. The sky flowed dark and rapid above and below me, rivers of dimly coloured clouds lapping and whirling, forming into one another, casting shadows that seemed to become living things, strangely familiar yet unidentifiable, which then moved away, merging and dispersing as they went. Presently I became aware that I was no longer alone.
A dim vaporousness gathered before me, a wispy, cloudy ‘something’ that slowly melded into a recognizable form. The ghost of my father stood before me. Behind him, half-visible in the fluxing dark, floated another who I recognized as my mother. My father spoke. ‘My son, why have you disturbed us?’
‘Father, mother, I intended no disturbance. I have come for guidance.’
I was shocked. I’d communed with the dead only once before. The spirit who had come then had been anonymous, someone I had never known. To find myself now facing my beloved parents was something I was unprepared for. I was thrown into a turmoil of emotion, barely able to articulate my reasons for calling them.
