Skull of Oghren

by Tuomas Vainio

  Behind the statues, Pan grabs the storm drain as instructed. As he tries to lift it aside, he groans and moans until the rusted hunk of metal rises and shifts aside. The boy peers into the darkness; 'Is it supposed to feel this cold?'

  'Yes.' Replies the rat before leaping down from the boy's shoulder, and then disappearing into the darkness below. Pan hesitates, but reluctantly slides down into the darkness. He cannot pull back the grate, so the old rat just tells him to leave it. After all, only a child could follow them into the darkness.

  The tunnel is narrow and shallow and Pan practically needs to crawl on his belly to move after the rat. After all, their passage only exists to drain the rain water off the streets, and it has not been intended for sewer maintenance.

  The boy and the rat move slowly onwards with their own rendition of the game of cat and mouse. The old rat runs ever ahead only to stop under the storm drains basking in the light of the street lamps. The boy has no choice but to crawl onwards to wherever the rat stands. It is the only way to do it right. After all, the boy's five short candles can only last for so long not to mention how any light emanating under the grates of the storm drains might draw the curiosity of any nightly wanderer. So the boy continues to crawl onwards with his arms wrapped inside the sleeves of his cloak. After all, it is slightly grimy business leading ever deeper into the sewer system.

  Eventually the heads of the boy and the rat stick out where the rain is supposed to wash down and gather with the waste coming from elsewhere. It is quite a drop down, and even in the almost pitch black darkness, the stench that emanates upwards from swirling pool of darkness is nothing short of being nauseating. The boy asks: 'Do we have to jump down?'

  'No, but you might fall down.' The old rat's whiskers twitch and shiver for a moment, a moment before it turns to grin to the boy. 'You know what? You know where we are now?' Pan nearly groans out loud from the question, but the old rat doesn't mind; 'Look up, you can see the full moon.'

  The boy does as he is told, he twists his head back and looks upwards to see the clouds and the moon dance upon the stars of the night sky. The rat and the boy have travelled the long way down into the depths of the pit at the heart of the docks district. The boy's lone eye wanders to the grinning face of the rat, and he cannot help but to ask: 'Did any of them survive?'

  'Under this stink, the reek and stench, I can smell the cracked skulls and broken bones, I can smell the iron and rust of the blood, I can smell death and rot.' The rat sighs. 'But that tells us not the fate of the eight we saw fall earlier. Hence what we must do now, is to go to the left, follow the narrow ledge until we find another hole for you to crawl through.'

  'WHAT?'

  'It is not that far. I think your fingers can make it. Plus it used to be a hole for a chimney long ago, so you can expect ancient chimney dust instead of grime. Isn't that a relief?'

  The old rat begins to walk along the narrow ledge, and as he takes his small steps his thoughts return to the days of long past. To the days of his youth, time when the ledge used be on the inner wall of a courtyard instead of the pit at the heart of the docks district. He remembers the day when the entire fortress palace fell and tumbled into the mines below. He remembers how rubble and stone was piled over the ruins to form the foundation for the new district. The memories of the past almost overwhelm the rat, and he would shed a tear if he could.

  The boy's fingers slowly follow the ledge behind the old rat. The boy's feet scrape and fall loose against the wall, but the boy continues to shift his body onwards hanging on nothing but his fingers and the ancient tiny ledge on the wall. He has been made to climb through worse places before, so the rat is not too worried. It is what they boy has been trained for as a little thief.

  The rat finally stops and waits for the boy's fingers to nudge against him. A signal for the boy to climb up, to push his tiny body upwards into the hole that once were a chimney. It is tricky business as the boy almost falls straight down into the pipe chute, but he manages to cling by with his arms and legs all spread out and twisted to held his small body in place.

  The rat chuckles, and moves under the boy to draw out one of the candles, along with the flint and steel. The rat rests the candle on the ledge, and smashes the flint and steel against one and another. Sparkles fly all around until on the fourth strike, the crisp end of the candle string finally catches one and the kindle becomes a flame. The rat leaves the candle be for a moment and returns the flint and steel into the boy's pocket, they cannot quite afford to loose either of the two quite yet. The candle's flame is already tickling the boy by the time rat gets back to lift up the candle, and give the boy a chance to see and figure out the best way to get out of his predicament.

  Hence the boy and and the rat slowly move around the hole on the wall, lifting one limb at a time, slowly turning, twisting, bending, until the boy can finally relax. He is sitting down while his feet dangle towards the cesspool below. The rat snuffs out the flame to save time, and says: 'Take all the time you need, you are going to need your arms and legs to slide down into the old fireplace.'

  'Couldn't we have brought some rope with us?'

  'And where would you have tied it over here?'

  The boy rubs his face in agony. 'There are grappling hooks you know-'

  'Have I told you of Bob?'

  'Pfft, only a thousand times.' Pan assumes a mocking tone and mimics the words the rat had told him at least a hundred times: 'Bob used to vouch for grappling hooks, only to have those fall loose at the worst of times, to stick into his own guts whenever he had to crawl through narrow spaces, and basically cling onto every set of armour left to decorate the noble house he visited...'

  '… And afterwards the guards simply followed the trail of red all the way to his hideout, and home. A place that happened to be the local guild of thieves. Suffice to say, the entire guild house was torched by the magisters' men.' Finishes the rat.

  'Fine... What can I expect to see when I go down this chimney?'

  The old rat sighs and scratches its left ear before answering: 'It used to be the great kitchen, and it is not far from where we need to be.' The boy's stomach growls. 'I do not think there will be much food for you to grab, so just try to bear, and should the worst come to worst, I am sure we can find some old leg to fry.' The boy doesn't join to the old rat's hollow laughter.

  Pan starts to move his body, and he slides his feet to the chimney, and presses his feet hard against the opposing walls. The old rat climbs onto the boy's shoulder, and little by little, Pan lets his body slink further in. A little nudge at a time, until he hangs in the air supported by nothing but his feet and hands pressed against the chimney's chalky insides.

  It is not the first time for Pan to climb down the insides of a chimney, the old rat has made him train hard and master the many required skills of acrobatics deemed necessary for successful thievery in the city. Thus the boy's movements come from almost flesh memory, he moves one limb at a time, nudging a feet, then a hand, and it ensures a slow progress towards the bottom.

  As Pan's feet finally and slowly touch the ancient base of the kitchen's fireplace, he finds himself in a large open room lit by faintly glowing blue crystals. The kitchenware has either tarnished and rusted beyond recognition, and only a few cobwebbed skeletal remains mark the fine ingredients and rare beasts that were once used to prepare the meals of palace.

  The whole place is too silent for Pan, he can hear his own breath, the faint beat of his heart, and the unnatural chill causes every hair on his body to rise with shivers. 'Where now?' The boy whispers as his instincts cry of danger, and beg for his body to flee.

  'To the wine stands, and to the cupboards to pick up one crystal chalice. After all, it is rude to intrude without gifts of good will.'

  'Who are we meeting?'

  The rat chuckles like as if it were a nut cracking toy. 'My brother, my brother.'

  Pan doesn't understand, so he moves to the bottles of wine and follows the old rat's instr
uctions to find an intact bottle with a sealed wax cap, and with the right vintage marked on the side. There are rows and rows of bottles still in their rightful place within the stack. Although at some parts the stacks have collapsed and the bottles stick out of piles of rubble rising above the light and dark stones of the floor. The boy blows dust and wipes promising bottles only to cast them back down when the old rat hisses and growls in disapproval.

  The bottle that satisfies the rat's standards is found within an ancient wooden crate that simply crumbles against the boy's touch. The bottle itself is dark red, and the ancient wax still glimmers bright in the eerie blue glow of the illuminating crystals. This bottle is not marked with series of numbers to denote the date and vintage, but rather the bottle itself has been engraved with fractal shapes to be a true wonder to behold.

  'What is the bottle worth?' The boy wonders barely out loud.

  'Neither of the vineyards nor the glass maker exist any more, they have not for a long time. Thus it is but a pretty piece of old curiosity, and its value ranges in between a copper button to two copper buttons.'

  Pan looses his interest towards the bottle, and turns around to look for the final item. The drinking chalice. And as luck may have, he sees a set of dusty paper thin crystal chalices resting on the stone table behind him. Most of which have cracked or worse, but there seems to be one that has remained intact. Carefully, the boy moves his fingers to lift it up, and to give it a blow of fresh air. It is thin, nearly weightless, and as the boy rises it against the eerie crystals the light seems to bounce forever within the chalice causing the chalice to sparkle like a night sky under meteor storm.

  Thus as the boy holds the bottle and chalice in his hands the rat standing on the boy's shoulder guides them through the empty passages of ancient turmoil and glory. Ruination of decadence, a silence too quiet, Pan cannot help but to feel that his whole presence is an insult. Yet he does as the rat instructs and so he sneaks past the corners of the hallways. It is not the thievery that bothers him, it is the beat of his own heart and against the cold sensation of unnatural hunger that emanates from the air. A hunger that feels with the boy's every breath. It is almost as if he were walking in a belly of a great beast. The boy finds no relief or reason for his uneasiness while the old appears to remain both calm and unaffected. The rat just continues to tell where to turn and how far to walk.

  Pan presses his shoulder against yet another door, and with a rusted creak he manages to push it open. He has entered a great hall filled with round support pillars racing towards the darkness above. But what stops him in his tracks is a wight that appears behind a pillar. A simple slumped step forwards and it stands right there in the open. A human body drained of all moisture, leaving only pearly pallid flesh wrapped tight around the skeleton. The blood of the creature has dried still inside the creature causing the blood veins stick through the skin as nothing but crooked black lines. This undead monstrosity wears a set of ancient ragged armour and it slowly creaks to stare right at the boy with the eerie glow of its eye sockets filled with unforgiving blue fire.

  Every instinct in Pan's body tells him to run for his life; but his body does not listen, it is simply frozen in fear. The wight extends it neck and moves its jaw to bite the air. The wight's jaw hits hard like it could almost bite through steel, and the snap releases an echo that bounces between the pillars of the hall. It is not long before the creature begins to take its slumbering steps towards the boy paralysed from fear alone. A slowly encroaching doom, and the boy's mind can only focus on everything he has heard of these creatures, their lust for blood, the unnatural coldness, the vicious hunger, and their fear of fire.

  Pan tries to move his hand to his pocket to reach for the candles, but his hand only shakes in the air. A hopeless idea as even a mere candle could be easily snuffed out even by the dead. Thus Pan feels the cold freezing breath of the wight on his neck. How every breath of this undead monstrosity sends shivers down his back, how the stench of the creature makes him want to throw up. The wight inspects the boy, while snapping its jaws, and then it suddenly backs away and hobbles elsewhere.

  The old rat sticks it head out under the collar of the cloak and lets out a relieved rat like squaky laughter: 'Haha.'

  Pan's voice shivers, stutters, and remains painfully quiet: 'Why did it not attack me?'

  The old rat stops his laughter with the question. He cannot face the boy and so he just turns his head down and stares at the stone of the floor. 'Wights recognise their own, and after every sunset you are becoming more and more like one of them. The only reason why it came so close to us was me, it saw me as nothing but a little pocket of heat and life to devour.'

  'Did you bring me here to lock me up before I turn into that?'

  'No. I brought you here because you need to understand what is at stake, what you will become if you choose to give up. You need to fight, because that is the only way to delay the process. But it alone is not enough, we need something else and... And I cannot claim it without your help.' The old rat gives a sad stare at the boy. 'I will not ask you to go much further boy, we are almost where we need to be.'

  The boy and the rat begin to move once again, darting from pillar to pillar, doing their best to avoid further encounters with the armoured wights on their almost mindless watch. Pan and the old rat make haste towards the great open doors on the other side of the hall, and once they go through they stand within a throne room of old. A large open space, with an elevated throne and a Wight King sitting on it. The tapestry that covers the walls has been crafted from the skin and bodies of humans, stitched together with entrails. The pillars are adorned with dead and withered vines and rose branches.

  'Don't be shy now, walk up to the king.' The old rat whispers into the boy's ear.

  'There are no kings in the city, not beyond rats...'

  'Oh, trust me, there is. He has simply preferred to rule from the shade.'

  The king is a wight. As ghastly in his appearance as the one before, but somehow slightly more representable with the ancient crown perched on his head. Away is the glory of polished gold, what remains is in tatters and adorned with dust. The king's head slowly turns to face the approaching boy and the rat. Hunger of the creature lights the eye sockets with cruel blue fire. The jaw rattles, before hollow laughter rises from the creature's mouth. A laughter as cold as it is unforgiving, and so the ancient king rises with the bones of his withered body grinding and snapping against one and the other.

  The Wight King's stare focuses on the old ball of fur sitting on Pan's shoulder. 'You are a fool to have come here, little rat.'

  The old rat chuckles. 'And you'd be even greater fool to cast me out, for I bring thee news, my liege.'

  'And what news could a rat possibly bring?' The two just continue to stare at each other.

  Finally, the old rat just gives in and shakes his head. 'I know time matters little to you, but our old friend, Surtur, is dead at long last.'

  The Wight King shouts out with a voice that could shatter bone and stone alike: 'WRONG.' The rat's eyes spread wide open, as the king's mocking laughter fills the throne room, and the curtain of human flesh joins in.

  'I SAW HIM DIE!' The old rat protests past the laughter.

  The king's face twists into a crooked fiendish smile as the laughter slowly fades, and then he says: 'And I saw the cowardice of the High Council of Magisters. I heard out their begs and cries before me, I heard their fears and worries, and I gave them the means to call his spirit back into this mortal realm. I gave them my blessing.'

  The old rat's jaw hangs low as he cannot understand the Wight King's reply at first. 'What have you done?' Shouts out the old rat and the Wight King just laughs ever more.

  'Oh, what is the matter rat? Has time stolen your sight? Has time age dulled your mind from the fact that nothing comes free?' It is then the old rat finally looks around himself to truly look at the great tapestry of human flesh. 'Can you see the family resemblance?'

 
Pan as well looks at the morbid cloth, and asks from the old rat: 'What is it?'

  The old rat swallows: 'Flawed as he was, Surtur still cared greatly of his family. Of his wives, sons and daughters, their grandchildren, and great grandchildren. He accepted all who shared even the faintest blood relationship as part of his family.' Pan doesn't quite understand what the old rat is saying and so rat continues: 'The hearts required to bind Surtur's spirit and weave his new mortal body had to come from somewhere.'

  'So they were his family?'

  The Wight King laughs ever louder, causing the rat and boy fall silent. 'So tell me old rat, is there a reason why I should not have you join my great tapestry?'

  The old rat clears his throat. 'I have come here to ask for seeds, seeds of the common dandelion.'

  The Wight King just returns to his throne, and rests his chin on his ghastly hand: 'You risk your life for seeds of a weed plant?'

  'What's a dandelion?' The boy asks but receives no answer as the old rat and the Wight King are simply locked and absorbed in their staring contest.

  The silence is only broken when the king finally asks: 'For what ill intend do you ask such from me?'

  'I ask not for myself; I ask only for what I hope is enough to save this poor boy with me.'

  The Wight King finally gives a proper look at the boy, and the king feels how the boy is teetering towards undeath with the every muted beat of his heart. How the cold air finds peace inside the boy's lungs. 'The plant can be potent, but it does not hold the cure you seek. The boy's fate is already sealed.'

  'Sealed, perhaps.' The old rat mocks, and proceeds with fury of righteous argument: 'But not beyond prolonging, should you grant him mercy, should you grant him the seeds I ask. The boy deserves more time!'