by D. P. Prior
“Come back, you shoggers!” he yelled, shaking his axe after them. “I’ve not finished with you yet.”
“What the Abyss just happened?” Ilesa asked.
They were atop a craggy knoll that had forced its way up from the forest floor. She strode to the edge of the summit and looked down in astonishment. Below, where there had been woodland, there was now water glimmering in the light of the three moons. The knoll formed an island jutting up from the center of a lake. It was barely twenty feet across, but it must have risen more than that above the water level at its highest.
The wolf-men were splashing toward the shore some hundred yards distant. One of them screamed, an altogether human sound of terror and pain. The others reached the bank and climbed out, shaking their fur dry in silver sprays.
A huge dark wake trailed them through the water and then abruptly vanished.
Nameless trudged up beside Ilesa, axe slung over his shoulder. “Suns are coming up again. Shog, things change quickly here.” He glanced at her arm where tufts of blood-drenched fur still covered the skin. “Hurt bad?” he asked.
Ilesa shielded the wound with her hand, willing the fur to fade. She was left with a vicious, weeping gash, but at least the skin was human once more.
She looked up slowly, expecting to see anger in the dwarf’s eyes. He’d seen it, she was certain. Seen that she’d tried to change, that she’d have left him, if she could. She hated herself for it. After all, he’d stayed behind for her, but she’d panicked, changed on instinct.
“I…” She lowered her eyes, not knowing what to say.
“You fought well, lassie.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Did us both proud. Now let’s look at that bite before you go and bleed to death. Should have some thread and a needle in my pack.”
She held out her arm, watching the wolf-men on the shore.
As the suns rapidly took to the sky, the wolf-men began to cry and shudder. They scampered toward the trees, limbs warping, fur fading, until the last thing she saw was dozens of naked men disappearing into the forest.
NILS
Nils clung on like an infant sloth. He’d slipped and rolled so that his arse faced the ground twenty feet below, and his arms and legs were wrapped tightly around the branch. Pine needles had gotten inside his clothes and were prickling his skin. He’d have been scratching like a flea-infested monkey, if he’d had the guts to let go with one arm; only he didn’t, not with a dozen wolf-men down below, circling the tree and making grasping leaps for the lower branches.
Say whatever you like about Nils Fargin, he thought as he struggled to hold on, but he can bloody well climb.
Climbing was his main role in the Night Hawks, probably the only reason Dad had let him join so young. Cat burglary was his thing, and there was no one better. Least no one he’d ever heard of.
Nils’s ankles came uncrossed on the branch, slipping to either side.
“Shit,” he swore, hooking first one leg, then the other back over.
The wolf-men responded with howls of frustration.
He couldn’t keep this up much longer. Already felt like he had acid for blood from gripping so tight, and his limbs were growing leaden. Weren’t just the tree he couldn’t hold onto neither. His bladder was full to bursting, and if he didn’t do something about it real soon, the wolf-men would be getting an unexpected shower.
He sucked in a deep breath, steeled himself, and swung his left leg further round the branch, forcing his body to follow. At the same instant, the tree shook as a deafening roar ripped through the forest.
The wolf-men yelped and scarpered. Pine needles rained down in great green clouds. And Nils fell.
He hit the ground with a thud, and the breath whooshed from his lungs. The front of his britches grew hot and damp. Felt like he’d been clobbered from behind with a sledgehammer, and at first he thought he’d broken every bone in his body. Gradually, though, sensation returned, and he was able to twitch his fingers and toes. Nils didn’t believe much in miracles, but he was sure he’d just been on the receiving end of one. Gingerly at first, and then with growing confidence, he climbed to his feet and swept the pine needles from his clothes.
“Oh my shogging…”
Above the trees, off in the direction he’d last seen Nameless and Ilesa running, a craggy peak had risen from the earth. The twin suns of Aethir were already streaking blood across the horizon, and in their crimson glow, he could see the silhouettes of two tiny figures atop the mound.
Last he’d seen of Silas, the wizard had bolted for a hole in the ground. There’d been two wolf-men on his tail, and Nils doubted he’d have made it. Just like ferreting a rabbit, they’d have dragged him out by the seat of his pants. He shook his head at the stupidity—weren’t Silas supposed to be educated?
Nils caught sight of the book Nameless had lent him, the Liber Via that had belonged to a dwarf called Thumil. It was lying open on the ground, where it had slipped from his pack. He stooped to pick it up and was surprised, and not a little proud, that he actually recognized some of the words. Nils was starting to think he had something of an aptitude for letters, which was another minor miracle. Nameless said the book was written in Old Dwarven, a language that Silas pointed out was the same as the Ancient Urddynoorian used in official Senate documents back in New Londdyr. It was known as the language of the educated, but Nils was already getting the hang of it. It had fallen open on the passage Silas had been working on with him at dusk. Just before the wolf-men had come.
For all his annoying ways, you couldn’t deny Silas was a good teacher. Damn sight better than Magistra Archyr, and that was a fact.
He unshouldered his pack and put the Liber Via away. The simple recollection of the reading session by the campfire made him decide he at least owed it to Silas to go look for him. Yeah, maybe all he’d find was chewed-up meat, but he still owed him all the same.
Slinging his pack over his shoulder, and taking a good grip on the hilt of his sword, he backtracked toward the hole Silas had scooted down. Must’ve been some kind of burrow, Nils reckoned. He shuddered to think what kind of creature made such a big hole.
He got no further than a few strides, when a wolf-man darted out from behind a tree. Nils half-drew his sword as he stepped back, tripped on a root, and fell on his arse.
The wolf-man glared at him, then looked up at the suns and whimpered. It turned tail and ran into the woods, and as it did so, Nils saw the fur fade from its body until it was just a naked man.
A strange silence settled over the forest. No more howling. No bird song, neither. Just the gentle blowing of the breeze through the trees.
He hurried back along the way they’d come until he spotted the burrow. There were two naked men crumpled on the ground outside, both with horribly charred skin. He was about to duck into the hole, when he noticed a crisscrossing of red mist over the opening. He stepped back. It reminded him of the tales he’d heard of the Abyss covering the mouth of the Void.
“Silas?” he called. “Silas, you in there?”
He strained to listen, and was rewarded with a sound like the turning of pages. A feverish muttering started up. He thought it was Silas, but he couldn’t be sure. The words were foreign, the tone guttural and inhuman.
“Silas?” he called again, but the voice from inside continued with its gobbledygook, getting louder and more frenzied. “Silas, if that’s you, hang on. I’m going to find the others, and then I’ll be right back.”
No response, but Nils shuddered at the chill that was creeping its way up his spine. Whatever was going on in there, it didn’t feel right.
He made his way back through the pines, heading toward the rocky hill that had pushed its way up through the earth. His legs were chafing from his wet britches, so he was relieved to reach the edge of the forest and see that the hill was actually an island set in the middle of a lake, like the Great Lake of Orph a day’s hike from New Londdyr, only smaller. It was maybe a hundred yards from the shore to the
island. The figures he’d spotted earlier were seated, one examining the other’s arm.
“Nameless!” he hollered, waving. “Ilesa!”
They stood and waved back. Nameless cupped his hands in front of his mouth and yelled, “We’re stuck.”
“Can’t you just swim for it?” Nils called back. That’s what he’d have done. He weren’t just a good climber. Reckoned he could out-swim a dolphin, if it came to it.
Nameless dropped his chin to his chest.
“He can’t swim,” Ilesa shouted.
“Wait there,” Nils called, immediately realizing how silly that sounded. Where else could they go? “I’ll come over, and we can help him back.”
“What?” Nameless looked up. “I am not getting in that water. And besides, I think there’s something in there.”
Nils shook his head and laughed. “Just hang on.” He started to pull down his britches, and then remembered they could do with a wash, so he left them on. He undid his boots, kicked them off, and stepped into the water.
It was icy cold, but he’d put up with worse.
He waded out up to his knees and then froze as a gigantic scaly head broke the surface, a long sinuous neck rearing up beneath it. Amber eyes glared hungrily at him, and a wide maw gaped open to reveal a lashing forked tongue and fangs that could skewer a man.
“Get out of the water!” Nameless yelled, brandishing his axe, for all the good it would do.
Nils splashed backward, but it was too late.
The serpent lunged at him with the speed of an arrow.
Even quicker, though, was Nameless’s axe, which whistled through the air like a comet and struck the monster square on the skull.
The serpent twisted and roared, and Nils gasped as the axe spun in midair and sailed straight back to Nameless’s hand. He backed all the way onto the shore and scooted toward the trees on his rear.
The serpent swayed for a moment, and then dived beneath the surface. It headed toward the island, an enormous V-wake trailing it through the water.
SILAS
“Silas?” a voice cried from outside. It seemed familiar, but impossibly distant, like the fading sounds of a dream upon waking.
Silas’s lips continued to move to the rhythms and tones of the spell on the page before him. His tongue curled around words never intended for human utterance, gargled sounds he dimly recognized from the lectures of Magister Arecagen: the barbarous names of the goetic theurgy ascribed to Otto Blightey, the Lich Lord of Verusia.
“Silas, if that’s you, hang on…”
The open grimoire continued to compel his attention and draw it inward, away from the noise from without. Symbols swirled on the page, sigils and letters—the words of the warding. A thrill ran up his spine. A pleasant tingling pricked under his skin. Good, his flesh seemed to say. Gooood.
The chatter of his usually frenetic mind dissolved into a stillness he could only think of as white. It felt serene. It felt satisfying. It felt so, so good.
The smell of roasted flesh wafted through the crimson web of mist covering the mouth of the burrow. The wolf-men had died instantly, the fur retracting inside the skin until two lifeless humans remained. Silas wasn’t sure if his spell—the book’s—had effected the transformation, or if it was the rising of the twin suns. Whatever the cause, he was certain of one thing: they were lycanthropes, the werewolves he’d read about in the books of folklore he’d hungered after as a child. He shouldn’t have been surprised, not after the zombies they’d encountered once they’d crossed the Farfalls; not after the legends he’d studied at the Academy concerning the dark side of Aethir. Whatever phantasms invaded the human mind during sleep, the son of the Demiurgos dreamed darker. After all, was it not said that many of the things that came to a man at night were the distant echoes of the Cynocephalus’s nightmares?
He watched the red tendrils of magic pulsing like malignant veins. They seemed hungry for someone else to try the entrance. Silas knew he should banish the spell, leave the burrow, and look for the others, but was it worth the risk? Could even Nameless have survived the wolf-pack? Ilesa?
A recollected voice rose from the depths: Silas, you in there? It had been Nils, he knew that now, far away, speaking to him from another place—or had it been right outside? A ripple zipped through Silas’s heart. What if Nils had touched the ward?
He could see nothing but the two naked corpses shimmering in the hellish glow of the web. Was there a third body out of view? He scanned the page for the words of banishment, but the letters were a blur.
I’ll be right back, Nils had said.
See, he can’t have touched the ward. He’s quite all right.
Yes, but… Who is this? Silas stared at the grimoire, then cast a look over his shoulder into the darkness behind.
And besides, what do you care? Why do you even need him, when you have all you need right here? All you ever dreamed of, and more.
“Who is this?” Silas whispered, dropping the book and inching back further into the burrow.
Read, said one of his own thoughts, so loud it could have been a voice, but a voice from between his ears. Read more.
“Stop it.” Silas tried to get further away, but his limbs wouldn’t obey. He began to shiver, and at the same time, cold sweat beaded on his skin. “Stop it!”
You know you want to. It will make you feel better. You know it will. Come back to me. Read. Reeeead.
“No,” Silas said, his voice hoarse and broken, and then he felt the almost tangible tug of chains restraining his will. “Yes.” He reached out a hand and crawled toward the grimoire on his knees.
Have I not kept you safe? Given you the power to defeat your enemies? Is that not proof enough that I am your friend?
“Yes. Yes it is.”
It had to be. Nothing else made any sense. How much had he already learned from the pages of Blightey’s book? How much had his power grown? Without the book’s aid, he’d have been impotent against the zombies. Without the warding it had shown him, the wolf-men would have feasted on his flesh. He drew closer, fingers extended, straining, stretching out for it.
Something growled in the darkness behind. Dimly, Silas was aware of a great bulk surging up from the depths of the burrow. It snarled, and he heard the rush of air as it lunged.
He winced and braced himself against a strike he was sure would end his life there and then, but the grimoire skidded across the ground and made contact with his fingers first. A wave of oily blackness rolled through his arms and spilled from his back. There was a strangled cry, a pulpy splash, and a heavy thud.
Silas scrabbled round to face it and gasped. The steaming carcass on the floor of the burrow was white and thickly furred, with ears as long as a man was tall. Pinkish eyes rolled up slowly into its head, and its jaw sagged open to reveal two saber-like teeth.
See, his errant thoughts gloated. See how good we are together.
“Yes,” Silas said, turning his eyes back to the grimoire. “Yes, I see.”
All I am, I give to you. This time the thoughts seemed to emanate from the book itself. I will reveal every secret. Every secret.
“Show me.” Silas stroked the open page, as if it were the skin of a lover. He lifted the grimoire, closed it gently, and cradled it. “Show me.”
Heat welled at the base of his spine, shifting, turning—uncoiling. It rushed from vertebra to vertebra, like it was climbing a ladder, until it reached his brain and erupted with the intensity of a small sun. Every muscle in his body cramped rigid, and Silas screamed silently in some hidden compartment of his mind.
The fire in his skull contracted suddenly and shot from his eyes in twin beams of argent. Where the streams converged, a flickering figure appeared in the air to the accompaniment of crackling static. It blinked in and out of sight. A ripple ran from its head to its toes, and then it snapped into focus.
A man stood before Silas, limned with silver. He was dressed like the pictures of the Ancients from Urddynoor in a pinstriped
jacket and matching trousers. A deep crimson cravat drooped over the lapels and completely covered his neck. A long face that tapered to a prominent, dimpled chin sat atop it, as if an afterthought. The skin was ashen, the nose sharp and aquiline, and the eyes were void, the irises as black as the pupils. Coiffed white hair swept away from a high forehead and fell below the shoulders; it was stained with greasy yellow streaks. The man wore a gold ring with the biggest stone Silas had ever seen—amber, by the looks of it, and with something dark and many-legged encased at its center. The fingers of both hands were long and thin, interlaced, as if in prayer, but held just above the level of the crotch.
The head swiveled, as if looking for an interlocutor, and then thin, cracked lips parted to reveal the decaying stumps of brownish teeth.
“My dear, dear Worthy. You have received the Word and heeded it. You have faithfully followed my statutes and been obedient unto my laws.”
“What laws? Who—?” Silas said, but the man continued as if he hadn’t heard; as if Silas were not there.
“If you are watching this, it is because I no longer endure, and the Void has come to claim me.” The voice had a rasping quality, the barest hint of a lisp. “It is also because you have in your possession the book of my life, my theurgy, and my ordinances, and it has deemed you worthy.” A grin tugged at the corners of the man’s lips, and the skin of his sallow cheeks stretched thin and seemed about to split.
Blightey? Silas opened his mouth to ask, but the man raised an elongated finger and wagged it. The eyes remained focused elsewhere.
“Remain silent, and hearken to my voice.”
An icy thrill ran through Silas’s veins, and he clamped his mouth shut. He dared not blink, lest he missed something—a gesture, an expression, the merest sign in the depths of those inky eyes. His limbs began to shake, and sweat streamed down his face.
