by Awert, Wolf
He laughed. “Yes, that is my ram. After a bit of a struggle at first we took care of the herd together. Now his herd is gone, the owner sold them. He must have followed us all this time.”
“What is his name?”
Nill shrugged. He had never bothered to give the animal a name.
“Send him away,” the shaman said, agitated. “I don’t trust the beast, and I don’t want him anywhere near me when we’re talking about demons, and especially when we enter the Other World.”
“Why not?” Nill asked in confusion.
“That is no ordinary animal that followed you, and I don’t want to risk disorder in the worlds.” The shaman had suddenly become very serious.
“The demons have helpers in this world, helpers we should avoid. And they are strong enough to control us humans. Arcanists can call upon them. Archmages can summon, but not control them. The strongest demons a mage can summon are the demons of pure emotion. There are six of them. Odioras is the Demon of Cold Hate, Irasemion is the name of the Demon of Wild Rage, and Avarangan is the Lord of Blind Greed. Despras is the Master of Desperate Fear, and Exmediant the Two-Faced stands over exuberant happiness and deepest sadness. I’m not completely sure whether he might really be a gemini-demon, though.”
“That’s only five, though. Unless you counted Exmediant for two?”
“The sixth and last demon is little-known. His name is Subturil and he is the Demon of Pride.”
Nill was not certain whether he had heard correctly. “Pride?” he asked.
“Yes, pride – or arrogance. The tales say that no mortal can escape these demons when confronted by them. They are described in our legends. Many of the old heroes fought against them, but all of them failed. Each in their way – some went out in great battle, some sad and pathetic.”
“And you can talk to them?”
“Yes, I can, although I never have. You must know that the six great demons are the demons of the ancient time, when emotions were still pure and powerful. These days people still battle their emotions, but their enemies are of a less threatening nature. No, the time of the great demons is over. And those six are not even the mightiest of all. Above them still stand the Archdemons. The Griffin-Legged, the Goat-Legged and Serp the Mighty, who takes the form of a snake. Whoever goes to the Other World should take great care that no birds of prey, no rams and no snakes are near. For demons are cunning, clever and capricious in the human world.”
“Do not worry. I will make sure that the ram does not approach the fire,” the druid said.
Urumir seemed to calm down at these words, for the ram had disappeared. “Now then. Name your demon, Nill,” he said.
“Esara called him Bucyngaphos.”
It looked as though all life had been drained from Urumir. He collapsed, held up by the bones and quills on his clothing, but then fell backwards off the trunk. Nill saw two filthy feet follow. Dakh’s face had lost all color. Nill could not tell what scared him more. How could simply giving a name make two such powerful men helpless, like a hedgehog flipped on its back? The thought of leaping up, running away and leaving behind everything that had to do with the Other World and its demons shot through his head. But it passed before he could act upon the impulse, and in spite of all his fear he could not tear himself away. He felt pulled towards the Other World like a moth to a light. Accessible, he thought.
Dakh regained composure first and helped the shaman back up.
“Is that possible?” he asked Urumir. “And if it is – what does it mean?”
“If what Nill says is true, the Other World is looking for him. And if Bucyngaphos is after him, he will be found. In this world or in his world. And because Nill can’t escape him, he must meet him head on. Are you ready, Nill?”
Nill was not, but he nodded all the same.
“Then we shall go through the flame.”
Nill did not understand what he meant, for the shaman was still sitting.
“Look into the fire, I will help you.”
Wild images flitted past. Nill saw the primal fire igniting, raging, shrinking to earthen fire and falling apart, the sparks growing ever smaller. Now there stood only a torch in the darkness. Nill saw things burned in the fire, he saw mages conjure flames from nothing, saw the calm, silent blaze of molten rock and bursting flames. He saw fire by the river and in the mountains, fire underneath ice and in his mother’s oven.
He felt dizzy. He was standing in the fire, felt its heat and heard its roar, saw the heat waves in the air and heard the cracking of wood and stone. In the middle of the inferno he saw a black spot that slowly grew, taking on a human form.
“Come,” the spot said, “follow me.”
Nill stepped hesitantly forwards and passed through the flames. In front of him was naught but an enormous darkness.
“It takes some time for the eyes to get used to the darkness when you enter the Other World through the fire.” The shaman’s calm voice was clearly audible. The blackness all around began to feel less absolute, the shadows started taking shape. At first they were washed-out and formless, but they slowly began to resemble bodies. Nill could make out faces and differentiate between armor and robes, rags and noble dress. The people in front of him moved at a steady pace or hovered above the ground. There was no rest anywhere, everything was moving.
“I wouldn’t have thought this place to be so busy,” he murmured in wonder.
“It isn’t. It just seems like it because we’re in the demons’ world now. Time and space as we know it have no greater part to play here, they are not constant. If you move towards one of these figures you’ll see that there are great spaces between them. There are not many humans in the Other World.”
“Is this not the place where all dead people go?”
“No, only the people we remember. Our grandparents and parents, our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. And the people of old, of legend: powerful kings and mages whose stories have been told for generations. Why do you think rulers have their deeds chronicled, why do we build statues and memorials? As long as a person remembers you, you will stay in the Other World.”
“And if I’m forgotten?”
“Then you will go back to the void whence you came.”
“So as long as I’m here I can speak to my fellow people, even if I’m long dead.”
“If someone is there to call upon you, yes. That is why people come to us shaman. We possess the magic of communing with the spirits of the dead. We are the mediators.”
“Do spirits like being called upon?” Nill asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe the spirits would rather go back into the void than waiting around here for someone to finally call them.”
The shaman shook his head. “The spirits do not feel any longer. The time they spend here does not exist for them.”
Nill went on through the shadows. It looked as though they were dodging out of his way, but maybe they were not there at all. Occasionally he saw someone in a regal gown or in mighty armor with bloodstained weapons, but most of them were like the villagers he had known: farmers, hunters, shepherds and craftsmen.
Between the dead, small things that Nill could not quite make out hopped around. When he came closer they retreated quickly. Nill followed them and the amount of spirits lessened. It was not easy to see anything. Some of the creatures had small, red dots for eyes. Nill looked over his shoulder and realized with a shock that he had lost Urumir.
“Urumir, where are you?” Nill cried out silently into the flowing nothingness all around him. His guide had left him in the Other World. He was gone. Everything seemed to fall apart. Nill’s eyes found the only solid point he could find in all the confusion: a pair of slanted, yellow eyes.
“You, here?” Nill breathed. He had never thought he would greet his old ram with such relief and happiness. “It seems you want to follow me everywhere. How did you get past Dakh-Ozz-Han?”
But the eyes stayed sill in the da
rkness and did not move. Nill stepped towards them. The eyes recoiled from him.
“We’re all alone here, so come to me,” Nill implored and began to doubt whether the eyes really were his ram’s. His happiness was suddenly gone and fear began to replace it. Nill took a step back and the eyes followed. Nill could not make out what creature belonged to those eyes. He walked to the side, backwards and forwards. The eyes mirrored his every move as in a silent dance. Nill squatted down and the eyes rose up. He leapt and the eyes dropped to the ground without losing a trace of their intense gaze. He spun around and the eyes were gone. Nill was afraid that this was all just a game, the rules to which he did not know, something which reality could burst out of at any second.
How do shaman find their way in the Other World if there’s nothing to hang on to? he wondered. At this point he had even begun to doubt whether the floor he was standing on was really there, for the shadows around him sank through it into the depths or rose up into the sky, as though there were no actual boundaries whatsoever. It seemed the ground was only where he chose to stand. Nill jumped up, expecting to sink with the other descending shadows, but he landed on his feet again. His jump was feeble too, not more than a small hop. “I’ll never get out of here. Urumir, was it you who lost me?”
Nill heard the feebleness in his voice and as always he hated himself for it. But the thing that had seen him through all the humiliation and hardship in his village, the small flame of resistance, was not so easily extinguished. A hero may be desperate, but even that must have an end, he thought.
He sat down on the ground, closed his eyes, forgot the shadows and blocked off the whirling commotion that surrounded him. In place of movement something else happened. Nill felt wide awake, equipped with magnified senses. He saw and heard everything, even if around him there was only darkness and silence. The slanted eyes had disappeared, Urumir was nowhere to be seen, but Nill no longer felt alone.
Out of the corner of his eye, the very perimeter of his vision, he saw murky blotches tumble about and dissolve when he turned his attention toward them. So he let them be. They combined and took shape. He looked upon a throne. Four feet of a high chair were anchored to the ground, held in place by an executioner’s blade. In front of the sharp steel there were two mighty talons digging into the ground. The talons grew before his eyes, grew endlessly until he could only see spots and cracks in the ancient leathery claws. He saw congealed blood and clumps of mud.
Nill had to tear away his gaze with force. He stared up, higher and higher, and did not so much see as sense the face up there, a face he recognized. Bucyngaphos, the Archdemon. A sudden gust of wind blew through the area as the demon lord stood up and shook out his small, thick wings. The wind dragged Nill up from the floor and pulled him through the air. Bucyngaphos extended one of his scythe-like claws, impaled Nill’s cassock and lifted him up to his face. Nill flailed a bit with his legs before becoming still.
“It was time for you to come to us.”
The voice reverberated deeply. It filled the space and Nill’s head completely; there was nothing left apart from it. Here, in the Other World, Nill could understand the demon.
“Why?” It was the only question that managed to break through the wall of terror that had enclosed his mind.
A deep, booming rumble sounded in the distance, came closer and crashed down on Nill. Was the demon actually laughing?
“Listen, little nothing. Go out in your world, become strong and powerful. And once you have become strong and powerful, you will learn that there is still one stronger and more powerful than you. And then you will go and defeat him, and you will learn that nothing has changed. Only now another is above you again. Your short life is not enough to fight everyone who wants to control your life. And even if you should succeed in the impossible, you would still be so far beneath me that I could barely see you.”
Nill shrank beneath the Archdemon’s speech and for the first time truly understood what it meant to be a Nill.
“Your short life is not enough to understand that the lords have lords, and even they must serve others. Like all others, I am commander and servant in one. And in the end even the mightiest must bow down before fate and time, and even then they do not know whether fate and time might not be two faces of the same being. And fate is not free either. ‘Why?’ you ask. We are both here because our fates are entwined. One tiny moment for me is your entire life.”
The demon looked at Nill for a long time, and Nill felt as though he were sinking into those circular black eyes. “The first time you were the one who called me,” the voice rang, “and I wanted to take you with me. But you were not ready yet. Now you come to me and you found me in my own world. The fewest mortals succeed at doing so. And you of all people want to know what I want of you?”
Yes, the demon was unmistakably laughing. He was shaking with mirth, and Nill’s ears were filled with the roaring, booming din. The laugh itself was flat and dull and did not reach Nill through his ears, which were vehemently, but in vain, protesting against the attack. It shook his entire body, bent his spine and knocked his teeth together. The claim that laughter is contagious came from someone who had never heard a demon laugh in his home world.
Nill could do nothing against the voice that filled his head. It was so monumental that it took up all space and made independent thought impossible. His feet were moving without his consent and were putting some distance between their owner and the throne. He managed to look back one last time. The further he went away from Bucyngaphos, the larger the Archdemon became, and Nill felt a power completely unlike anything he had experienced before.
“I fought that one with my dagger.” Nill had to laugh as he realized this folly. The shape of the Archdemon was now surrounded by a wreath of colorless light and dust. But even at this distance Nill could not bear the sight for long. The image broke before his eyes. Talons and claws, tusks and horns, eyes and jagged tail whirled around in chaos. The floor he stood on began to move and ascend. Nill stared at it as it came ever closer, finally smacking him in the forehead. “Dakh!” he yelled. Then the heightened senses left him again.
When he came to he felt a pair of strong hands beating his clothes.
“The next time you go to the Other World, sit a bit further from the fire. And if you want to sit so close, take care not to fall over. A few hairs might be singed, your clothing has a few burn marks, but you seem to be unharmed,” Dakh grumbled over him.
Nill rubbed his face, the skin of which burned a bit in a few places. “What happened?”
Urumir sat still by the fire and said nothing.
“What happened and where were you all this time?”
“I was standing next to you but you didn’t see me. Even I have no idea what happened. No shamanic wisdom would be enough to explain that. You encountered a powerful demon. I felt his presence, but you’ll know about that better than I. The two of you changed the Other World in order to meet. How that happened is also beyond of my knowledge. How am I supposed to know what happened? I don’t know anyone but you who has ever even seen an Archdemon, let alone talked to one. What happened today puts you on the same level as the old ones of legend. Nill, tell me: who, or rather what, are you?”
Nill rubbed his arms, which were cold despite the fire and had begun to turn blue. “I’m someone who wants to learn how that can never happen again. I was scared, so scared. I’ve never been so afraid in my entire life. I felt helpless. There must be something to protect me from that sort of thing. And the demon I met was sitting on a throne, he had great talons, short wings and a boar’s head.”
“Bucyngaphos.” The druid and the shaman whispered the name and listened to the sound of it until Urumir said: “Every mortal is helpless against an Archdemon. Even the strongest mages in Ringwall can do no more than give orders to their servants when summoned. So do not mention what happened here to them. They would fear you. And they destroy all that they fear. Now where is that accursed ram gone?”
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“Disappeared,” Dakh said. “Vanished into the darkness. It was nowhere near the fire, though. You can be sure of that, Urumir.”
Nill heard what Dakh said and looked doubtfully into the flames.
Ringwall
The loneliness was at an end. Paths turned into lanes, lanes turned into streets. Lonesome farmhouses came closer to each other, merged to form hamlets, then villages, until finally houses stood in rows and towns were formed. Dakh and Nill had reached Rainhir, the capital of the five kingdoms. It spread like frayed cloth around a round mountain which stood out sharply against the dark blue sky. Nill was at first impressed by the hustle and bustle, the noise and the many houses and small streets, but then realized that it was really quite like his own village, just more hectic.
“So a city is basically just a big village,” Nill said, disillusioned.
“Rainhir is a big village, yes. It really only exists to supply Ringwall with all the things it needs. Mages need to eat and be clothed too. Mages need plants, metals and certain types of wood. This is a place of haggling, dealing and trading. This is not Ringwall.”
The sky had grown dark, almost black, but now flickered a few times and suddenly shone in blinding white light. It began to rain for a few heartbeats and stopped again. The sun burned down upon them in the short breaks from the rain and gave the air an uncomfortable humidity. The druid deemed that a great battle had been fought a few days ago. It always took some time for nature to get back to normal.
Dakh-Ozz-Han’s steps grew longer. Nill knew his companion well enough by now to know that restlessness had taken hold of him, invisible beneath the calm exterior. They crossed the city and stood before the sheer rock of the mountain. High up above, just below the peak a strong wall encircled the mountain. If Rainhir was the necklace, then this wall was the crown.
“What a city that must be if the walls enclose the entire mountain!” Nill exclaimed.
“The walls are, in fact, the city,” Dakh smiled. “They are two stories tall and the mountain is full of carved tunnels and vaults. Nobody knows how far down they go.”
