by A. J. Ponder
Phetero’s soldiers, already unsettled, jumped. Dirk took the opportunity to get under cover of the cave entrance.
“It’s fine,” the leader said. “Phetero wants the wizards to witness his triumph. We just need to shackle the others.”
Capro raised his staff and stared at the man. “Don’t even think abou—”
“But Phetero didn’t mention anything about chains,” a smart alec piped up.
The officer nodded. “True enough.” He stepped back.
Capro chuckled warmly; he got the feeling the men might be willing to do more than play fast and loose with their orders. “Phetero’s mad. So I can’t help but wonder why you fine men would be following him?” The question hung in the air for a moment before Capro waved it away. A mistake. Soldiers might question their boss, but only a fool would try to win them over by questioning their right to blindly follow orders.
Capro shrugged. “Don’t mind me, I’m old. How about you just let us through? Me, my boy and Sylvalla don’t want to miss the party. So it would be nice if you could all stand back a bit. Oh, and, by the way, I’ve set a curse. The first man to kill one of Sylvalla’s soldiers here, will die.”
The officer greyed. He shook his head. “I…We…”
Capro nodded to him, and then pointed to several archers. “I may be old, but I am a wizard, and a wizard is not blinded by rocks!”
“Wh…what archers?”
“Oh, dear,” Capro said waving his hands, and mumbling dramatically. “Now I’ve changed my mind. Should you turn on these men, every single one of you will die.”
Can he do that? Sylvalla thought. Probably not. But she doubted any of them would be brave enough to find out.
With no more time to waste, Mr Goodfellow Senior raced through the crumbling grey arch and into the stinking cave to catch up.
He was trailed by four enemy soldiers.
Capro turned and glared.
The soldiers glared back—all except one who held his nose against the stench of rotten flesh that wafted from the cavern.
“You want me to kill them?” Dirk asked.
“No, it’s too dangerous. The evil here does not need feeding.” Capro scowled at the four men that comprised their unwanted escort. “Come, the future hangs in the balance. We must hurry. But do be careful, this is the realm of A’Rieal, the damned. Some scholars say they can appear as motes of light and strip away your soul, or your life force. So, if you see anything like that, please stay clear.”
Sylvalla nodded.
They scurried into the dank tunnel, trying not to look too closely at the rock paintings portraying semi-human creatures caught in endless screaming agony—and other horrors unfit to be written upon good paper—a visceral reminder that a primal evil dwelt here. (A forgotten, nameless, shambling horror whose abysmal disrespect for numbers, geometry and science was legendary.)
Capro’s hand glowed with wizard-fire, and yet the light seemed small—as if it was being sucked at by the evil all around, and consumed by the growing stench.
Further into the mountain the broken walls became more solid as if hewn from enormous slabs of rough stone. Large cracks, some the size of tree-trunks, wept brown-orange trails onto the mud floor. Sylvalla looked away.
Somehow this seemed more disgusting than the preceding artwork—or maybe the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down over cycles incalculable were simply more frightening. A hideous reminder of the evil power they were about to face.
A deep breath, and they hurried on. Every step in this oppressive place felt like an eternity, but at last they came to a wooden wall with a door hanging at a precipitous angle, half torn off its hinges. Three symbols were burned into its surface: the hanging man (signifying death); a building with a bright red cross slashed across it (do not enter); and the twinned and horned Guardians of Hades. (The Nameless One and He Who Should Never Be Named.)
Sylvalla hesitated.
Deep inside, human voices echoed, their timbre hollow. It was strange to hear even muffled sounds of life in this mausoleum where creatures thoroughly forgotten had made their homes and lived and died—and undertook unholy rites in evil ceremonies of death and debauchery.
Ahead, the two wizards drew back to let her take the lead. That couldn’t be good. Skin prickling in fear, Sylvalla stepped inside to be greeted by the indescribable smell of sulphurous putrefaction. She gagged, her mouth filling with acid.
Jonathan stepped up. “We can’t let this place get us down.” He nudged Sylvalla, and said, “Nice place to bring us for a picnic, Dad. If I’m not mistaken, someone came well ahead of time to help set up. I can smell the delicious aroma of century-old rotted carcass from here.”
One of their escorts laughed. The sound quickly stifled in the gloom.
Slowly, almost feeling their way through the narrow, wizard-lit darkness, the party stumbled on, ignoring the four soldiers who were still following them discreetly.
After a hundred steps there was a lightening of the gloom. Not a glow as such, more as if greenish-glowing fingers grasped their way out from the walls where the corridor twisted into a vast cavern. Rushing water echoed all around.
Dirk pushed past Sylvalla, ignoring her objections. “Whatever the old wizard thinks you’re going to do, Sylvalla, you’re not going to be able to do that if you stumble into a trap.”
Inside, the chamber’s eerie light was worse than the darkness. Flanked by soldiers, Dothie and Phetero were standing, elevated on a dais of rock in the vast cavern. Phetero spoke in guttural tones, invoking the demonic forces that resided in this hateful place. Water, almost invisible in the dark, sprayed down from a fissure in the ceiling and into the floor itself, and tumbled down to the cracked stone at their feet.
Caught up in their oath, the wizard and the king didn’t notice the new arrivals. But the Thurgle did. He and two red-cloaked guards emerged from the shadows beneath the dais, swords drawn.
The Thurgle strode forward, a wide grin on his face.
Sylvalla glanced back, their escort was closing in, too.
Up on the dais, a sliver of eerie light stabbed down, piercing the stone so the cavern rang with the sound of splitting rock.
The temperature plummeted.
§
For the first time in his life, Dirk was cold. Little hairs on his arms stood out in chicken pimples. Bile rose in his throat. The smell, the feel, the biting cold of the chamber expanded into a physical presence, transforming the waterfall behind Dothie and Phetero into a flurry of sleet and snow that whipped around the king and the wizard.
Dirk couldn’t fight, he couldn’t move.
The thurgle and Phetero’s soldiers would surely come and kill them all—but no—Fergus stood, sword raised high, suspended in mid-step. He, too, was moving unnaturally slowly. The slow spell, or whatever it was, seemed to affect everyone except those standing in the swirling snow.
Dirk tried to move past Fergus and the soldiers. He had to get to where the snow swirled—locking King Phetero and Dothie in the slow-flickering intensity of a spell of great power. But the closer he got, the more he felt drained by the ghostly light, and the profane cold.
Fergus waved his sword clumsily and Dirk parried and sidestepped. The Thurgle did not try to follow. Instead he backed off, dropping his sword in his hurry to flash the Eye of Protection, the ward superstitious people used to fend off evil. The two soldiers with him were no longer interested in attacking, they huddled under their red cloaks. This demented idea of a spell obviously cost them dearly—they no more noticed Dirk and Fergus struggling than the A’Rieal (the Damned) noticed the frightened souls of the men whose life energy they ripped away with each dancing mote of light.
Now Fergus was no longer in his way, Dirk noticed the glow of Mr Goodfellow Senior’s light-stone on a dark surface, a plaque. Black on black it was almost invisible—but in the light-stone’s glow he could just make out the words, A’lganathrieal A’summiit, on its surface.
“Stop them!”
Capro called, pointing to Dothie and Phetero on the dais. Capro was huffing and red-faced with effort—though his feet were not even moving. “Stop...”
Again, the air rang with the sound of splitting rock. The fissure on the dais widened into a bottomless maw. Phetero’s remaining guards hurried backward, open mouthed, faces contorted as if screaming. Dirk couldn’t hear them over the sound of splitting rock—and even if his ears did, that is not what he remembered—for something was forcing its way up through the newly-formed abyss.
Dirk was a hero, unquestionably. And yet, he screamed in abject terror.
§
Far away, the Scotch Mist scribe took a careful note of the time, as Dalberth looked up from his stretcher and screamed, too.
Death
Sylvalla pushed in front of the screaming Dirk, clutching Dragonslayer, ignoring the ground shaking and tearing apart. The pain in her fingers was acute as she grasped the tiny blade. She tried and failed to draw on its power, finding only more pain. “What in all Hades are you doing?” she yelled, but Dirk, Francis and Mr Goodfellow Senior remained strangely sluggish.
Sylvalla paid little heed to the plaque that barred her way. Cursing at her pain, and the cold, and her sword, she stepped up to the dais, hardly even noting the demented images and blood red script scrawled across its base. It was almost impossible to move with the strange light from the A’Rieal tearing at her.
Maybe that’s why the others have slowed?
It was impossible to stay clear, the danger was all around them—except maybe up on the dais. There, the sleet continued to fall on Dothie and Phetero so that their dark robes were stained white with frost. Even their eyebrows appeared craggy and aged as they called a tentacled horror from the depths of the earth.
It was maddening. No matter how much she willed it, her sword would not draw its magic in this evil place. In desperation, Sylvalla cursed and called on the seven gods, but still Dragonslayer would not grow. Anger fuelling her, Sylvalla pushed through the invisible barrier holding her back. She strode up onto the dais with increasing vigour, when every shred of sensibility was screaming at her to run away. Still, she’d come here for a reason, past all reasonable endurance, the pain in her hand speaking louder than fear. Louder even than the bone-shattering cold and the Rieal, the damned denizens of this awful place, tearing the life from their red-cloaked victims.
Swiftly, Sylvalla closed the gap between her and Phetero’s personal guards, their tortured faces locked in a series of grimaces as fingers of phosphorescent light strobed toward them. They would not have known it when they arrived, but their task was not to protect Phetero—it was to sacrifice their lives to animate the very evil depicted on the walls outside.
The power released was unimaginable now. It coursed through the air, and flashed in blinding discharges that lit the cavern in searing blue-green.
“By the gods,” she cried, gripping Dragonslayer.
Dothie smiled, although the cost of the magic he was using must have been phenomenal.
Phetero, the-man-who-would-be more-than-king fairly purred. “Ah, the princess! How gracious of you to arrive at such an auspicious moment.”
Ignoring the pain and awkwardness in her hands, Sylvalla skirted the chasm[79]. “I do not make a good sacrifice,” Sylvalla said, her tiny sword glowing in the intense darkness.
“How can you be so very sure, Princess?” Phetero laughed, the sound all the more cacophonous when Dothie joined him.
“The Prophecy,” Capro murmured so softly Sylvalla wondered how she could have heard it. “He is trying to bring the nameless gods out of the void and into the world.”
How is anyone supposed to stop a god?
This time, Sylvalla’s determination to draw on the power of her sword was extreme. She clutched it and willed it to life in an intense effort that left her gasping. Coloured flashes stabbed behind her eyes and still Dragonslayer remained no bigger than a needle. Sylvalla screamed, taking her pain and frustration and feeding it to her anger as she cast about, cutting the clutching threads of malicious light as best she could. But this slight victory coalesced to fear as the broken strands settled cold and hard and immovable against her skin. “Capro! Save me!” she cried as a curtain of light enveloped her.
Capro trembled. His lips moved, not in a spell, but in a long-forgotten children’s prayer. “All the gods, for goodness’ sake—”
The luminescence streamed toward Capro and Jonathan.
“Don’t let us die before we wake.” Capro Goodfellow Senior finished triumphantly.
The light retreated into the mouth of the chasm, so they could more clearly see the tentacled monster that quested from the fathomless void. From under heavy folds of flesh its eyes shone red with malice in its bulbous head, and its pustulent greenish-black limbs carried barbs and suckers down their lengths. Thick and lithe, a tentacle flicked up to snatch one of Phetero’s soldiers, pulling him, screaming, into the gaping rent whence it came.
A ghastly silence.
Chunks of bloody meat sprayed back into this world, followed by a soft belch.
The tentacle whipped out again, with an unearthly quickness right at Sylvalla.
Earthly as she was, Sylvalla ducked a little too slow so the limb raked across her back, shredding her cloak and gouging her back. The sensation was not that of cold—ice was warmer than this. Ice would be hot on her skin, and yet numb as she was, she felt the creature’s eyes following her. She spun.
Capro was chanting:
“Lest the sword should falter
There is evil in the air
Lest the sword should not win through
Go help the mad and fair.”
He must still hope that somewhere, somehow, one of his precious prophecies must hold meaning. Maybe if he could find it, he could save everyone. It was a thin hope, but with her sword still little more than a needle, it was all the hope Sylvalla had.
§
Deep down, Jonathan knew neither swords nor words would win this day. Blood would only make the damned souls and the thing they worshipped stronger, and words are never enough...
“Words lie
They are the darkest of all shadows...
The ashes hold the sword.”
Prophecy, it seemed, was all smoke and mirrors. It misspoke, or it outright lied. No, not lied. Made you believe it meant one thing, when the truth was another. The ashes didn’t hold a sword at all. They held The Sword.”
“The sword must
Awaken to the night…”
“Sylvalla!” Jonathan tried to call out, but the luminescent fingers reached down—icy as a knife and loud as a hundred cacophonous flutes—and took his voice far away.
Sylvalla did not appear to need his encouragement. She was still fighting to approach Dothie and Phetero. She raised her sword. A glimmer of power flickered and died, and she slumped. Defeated.
Jonathan’s father was also failing, waving his arms and yelling prophecy to no effect. For Jonathan the sound of prophecy was painful—almost as painful as Dothie’s grin of triumph.
The beast revealed itself and he screamed, his long-awaited revenge forgotten. For an instant he wanted only escape, but he could not run—gripped by the evil in this place. Besides, he could not leave Sylvalla, or his father here. No, he had to do something, and, right now, the best, most heroic thing Jonathan could do was help Dirk.
Dirk stumbled, pulled from the interstitial glue of forgotten time, and half fell, before staggering slowly forward.
“Go save Sylvalla,” Jonathan yelled. “She is our only hope.”
Jonathan’s father was yelling too, something about the words!
Jonathan’s eyes fell on the plaque.
A’lganathrieal A’summiit, it said. A memorial plaque? A prayer to the damned, or the two evil godlets that were trapped here? Whatever it was, it was powerful, and looking closer, there were more words underneath. Obscure words from the language of the ancients glowing in the phosphorescent light.
>
Mr Goodfellow Senior and Dirk were rushing as fast as ants in treacle.
Jonathan yelled, “The plaque, the plaque, destroy the words!” But neither Mr Goodfellow Senior nor Dirk could hear him.
Wizard’s cloak swirling all around, Old Capro fought on past the plaque and toward where the evil lurked—its tentacles questing for new blood.
Jonathan battled closer. Someone needed to expunge those darkest of shadows, or all three heroes; Sylvalla, Dirk and his father were doing little except rushing to their own deaths.
A scream echoed.
Another soldier was grasped in the writhing tentacles and torn from the fabric of the world.
Jonathan winced, but kept on going. To save them he must crack the slate.
Suddenly it was in front of him. He kicked it.
It would not crack.
He had to scratch the words.
He took his sword and smashed it into the plaque.
The sword broke in two and still the words would not scratch.
In desperation, Jonathan took his dragon’s tooth amulet and swiped the diamond-dragon tooth across the block.
The tooth turned red-hot. Jonathan dropped it on the ground with a shriek. The precious, theoretically indestructible, jewel smashed into a thousand shards. The soft tinkle of the destroyed gem was overwhelmed by an ear-splitting creak as the slate cracked in half.
“You’re too late,” Phetero yelled in triumph, even as the awful clutching slowness that caught Jonathan was dispelled.
Jonathan grinned. “What do you mean, too late? Your demonic creature is retreating.”
Phetero laughed.
Repugnant and terrible, the creature re-emerged from the depths, its serpentine tentacles dragging a shadowy package. It flung the substanceless darkness out over the edge of the abyss, and into the world.
§
Sylvalla turned as Fergus lumbered out, calling to the thing, or things, that the creature had released. “Fulfil your promise, demons. I command thee,” he cried. Or at least that was the translation Capro provided, yelling it for all to hear.
