Lost Lore: A Fantasy Anthology

by Ben Galley

  “Apologize,” growled Hesk.

  A moment’s more hesitation, the contempt still on his sharp-featured face, Iorgen spoke in a quavering tone. “I beg your forgiveness, Sir Stranger. I meant no offense to you or your, eh…compatriot.”

  “Benska?” prompted Hesk, looking at the ugly man who still sat on the ground, clasping his broken nose with a rag pulled from a pocket.

  “Sorry,” he sputtered, the word muffled by blood-covered hands and the now-soaked rag.

  The stranger lowered his blade in a languorous motion, scraping it along Iorgen’s leather cuirass, leaving a thin trail cut in its hardened surface. He closed the flap on the satchel, shading the severed head from the Barrowlands sun. Cradling the bag to his chest, he rested his hand gripping the broken blade to it in a strange protective gesture. He walked mechanically around the stones, climbing ten feet up the hillside.

  Staring after the Syraeic with unconcealed resentment, Iorgen let out a long exhalation and returned to the business at hand. “Man, place, curse. What are we supposed to conclude from that? That the place is cursed? Isn’t that the usual Djao clap-trap to scare off grave robbers like ourselves?”

  “Maybe,” said Hesk, uncertain. He looked for a moment longer at the stranger, who stared into the hillside, unseeing, as though the violent encounter was a thing of distant memory. Hesk walked back to the stone and examined the depressions and their words. Something about the word szaa drew him back, and he intensified his inspection, looking closely at the curling script. And then he saw it: another word, subtly woven into the letters of szaa, so artfully wrought that he smiled at the long-dead artisan’s skill. The other word was szu-loh. He spoke it aloud.

  “Huh?” spouted Iorgen, still looking at the stranger. “Zoo-what?”

  “Szu-loh, repeated Hesk, addressing the Syraeic agent. “Szu-loh, brother. What does it mean?”

  The agent’s weariness was back, his anger dissipated. His lips twitched, he frowned, and finally answered Hesk in a husky voice.

  “Blood,” he said. “Life’s blood.”

  It hit him, like a bolt from above. Hesk strode over to still-prone Benska, grabbed the bloodied rag from him despite the man’s profane protest, then walked back to the stones. He squeezed the cloth over the indentations, filling them with Benska’s red offering. Then he rubbed the rag on the rest of the stone, painting a thin, slick coat on as much of its surface as he could manage. For several seconds, nothing happened. But just as he was beginning to feel foolish, the stone started to soak in the blood, like a sponge. Iorgen, standing next to him, gasped. Benska scurried over just in time to see the last of it disappear into the rock.

  “Dark sorcery,” he whimpered.

  Hesk looked at the man, unable to hide his contempt. “What did you expect, Benska? It’s the goddamned Djao. The literally gods-damned Djao. The Barrowlands stink of sulfur and necromancy! It’s why the gods destroyed them!”

  As if his words held power, there was a loud crack from the stones and all three mercenaries jumped back. The sound of rock grinding on rock echoed across the hills, and the two pictogram stones situated side by side slid into the ground, exposing a dark opening into the hillside, about four feet wide, and two and a half feet high. An exhalation of ancient air that stunk of the grave spewed forth, sending the three of them into coughing fits. The stranger, standing on the hill above the opening and spared the stench, turned slowly to face the mercenaries. As the three gagging men began to recover, he pushed back the leather bag’s flap and put his ear to the opening, listening. After a minute he smiled, a wicked thing that made Hesk’s skin crawl.

  “Your first kiss blown from the Barrowlands,” the stranger said.

  They stood outside the entry for nearly an hour, arguing. Hesk had cracked an alchemist’s glow-rod from his pack and tossed it into the opening. A corridor, formed of rough bricks and roughly seven-foot-high, was revealed by the pale illumination, just past the low entrance. Neither Benska nor Iorgen was willing to go first, but Hesk didn’t trust either of them alone with the Syraeic agent for a second. And they couldn’t bring him in the ruin with them, after all. One of them would have to stay behind to guard the madman.

  “Let ‘im wait out here alone!” Benska grunted.

  “That’s two thousand gold sovereigns on two legs,” retorted Iorgen, pointing at the stranger with his sword. “What keeps him from wandering off while we’re crawling around in that hole?”

  “So, who’s gonna babysit him then?” Benska asked. “And does the nursemaid get the same share of whatever the other two finds inside the tomb?”

  “An eighth share seems fair,” said Iorgen, face smug. “You wouldn’t be taking the risks.”

  “Who says it’s me then?” objected Benska, wincing as he touched the plugs of cloth stuffed in his nostrils. “I didn’t sign on to babysit this mad old man! Unless I got his share, too!”

  This stupidity seemed to light up a thought in Iorgen’s mind. He held up a hand at Benska and pointed at the stranger. “Ha! There! Why don’t we have the gray-hair lead the way?”

  “What?” said Hesk, aghast.

  “Yeah!” Benska exclaimed, enamored by the idea. “Let him be our canary!”

  “Didn’t you just call him two thousand walking gold pieces, Iorgen?” interjected Hesk. “That’s an idiot plan.”

  “No, it’s brilliant,” Iorgen answered. “We let him lead the way. Any trap or nasty beast we come on, it goes after him first. He’ll be our miner’s canary, just like Benska said. Hand him a torch and point him in the right direction. If it’s a tomb, the treasure we find’ll make two grand o’ gold look like spare tavern change.”

  Hesk couldn’t push the two of them off this absurdity. It would be naked murder sending the stranger in there first. And Hesk had a new worry: if these two idiots were sure the tomb held a treasure to replace the two thousand gold the madman would bring, what would keep them from planting a knife in the agent’s belly? Two thousand sovereigns the price for avenging their humiliation? These amoral ruffians wouldn’t think twice. Either way, Hesk would be complicit in another murder. At last, he made a decision.

  “Me and the Syraeic go in first. You two follow.”

  The corridor was about thirty yards long, descending at a slight angle into the hillside. The floor was made of the same rough, uneven bricks that comprised walls and ceiling, slowing their pace into the tomb, or whatever it was. Hesk had simply asked the stranger to come with him, and he had obeyed. With the glow-rod left near the entrance, Hesk now held a burning torch, its flickering light dancing off the brown brickwork. With his heart pounding in his chest, his eyes scanned every surface, seeking anything that might be out of place or unnatural, any tell-tale sign of a trap or cleverly concealed hazard. The stranger walked beside him, looking around with wary eyes, muttering to the leather bag he held to his chest.

  The hall at last opened into a larger space, and Hesk stopped. He held out the torch and moved it in an arc before him.

  “What is it?” hissed Iorgen in a stage whisper.

  “A chamber. About thirty foot square. Three more corridors lead off, one on each wall.”

  “What’s in the room?” asked Benska, holding a second torch along with his rusty weapon.

  Hesk looked around carefully, examining every inch of the space. When he was satisfied, he said, “Nothing. It’s empty.” He took a step forward, but the Syraeic agent’s sword arm swung out in front of him, barring his way. Hesk froze. The stranger set the satchel down on the floor and pried a piece of loose brick from the wall with his blade. He tossed the chunk of masonry to the center of the room, where it landed with a hollow thud.

  A breath later, the bricks of the floor collapsed, falling with a loud, tumbling crash into a gaping pit. They shielded their faces from the cloud of dust vomited up by the collapse. It took several minutes for the dust to settle.
When at last they could see again, Hesk turned to the stranger, whom he found looking back at him.

  “Canary,” said the stranger, with a hint of what might be a smile.

  After the collapse, only a narrow perimeter of bricks remained around the pit, about a foot wide. Hugging the rough brick wall, they navigated the narrow precipice gingerly, taking the first corridor to the right. The hall soon became a descending stairway, the steps carved from the limestone of the hill. They ended in a rough-hewn chamber, seventy or more feet long and about twenty feet wide. At first, Hesk thought stony debris lined the walls to either side of a path across the room. Perhaps his mind failed to register their true nature at first because of the sheer number. They were bones, human bones; a hideous repository of remains. They may have been laid to rest with reverence, laid down together and on top of one another, but clothing and flesh had rotted away long ago. Now they were intertwined in a morbid intimacy.

  Benska shoved Hesk aside, barging into the chamber despite the lesson provided by the first room. Iorgen followed behind him with little more courtesy or caution. Benska scanned the row of bones to the right with child-like excitement, light from his torch flickering on ivory-gray limbs, ribcages, and skulls. Here and there items winked and sparkled, hints of wealth Hesk’s mercenary companions couldn’t resist. They dashed forward and began rummaging through the bones, like shoppers at a bazaar, crying out with delight with each new discovery of plunder.

  Hesk felt an urgent, stupid impulse to join them in their heedless foray. The urge whispered to him, fierce and persuasive. It called to that eager lad first drawn to the Syraeic League Citadel by tales of adventure. Gems! Bracelets of gold! Ancient Djao charms worth a duke’s ransom! Lying here before you, for the taking. Be sure to get your share of the loot! He looked at the stranger, who appraised him with the eye of a preceptor. The look summoned a memory of a lictor at the Citadel named Pallas Rae. She had seemed impossibly old then, white haired and wrinkled, punctuating her rebuke with raps of a walking staff.

  “Impulse, Hesk Atterley! Impulse is the enemy of a Syraeic agent. You must learn to master its siren song, lest it lead you to an early grave. Do we need to visit the vaults again? Should I have you count funerary urns of agents who couldn’t master the urgent voice that calls to come running? I’ve interred so many young men and women there. We have room for your urn, too, should you fail to discipline yourself.”

  Hesk felt his face burning anew with shame. It was Lictor Rae who had turned him out of the Citadel a few months later. He recalled her parting words, highlighted with a disappointed grandmother’s frown: “If you wish to run headlong for your coffin, young man, do it without my approval. We need those capable of learning virtues they didn’t possess when they arrived on our doorstep. Patience, caution, wisdom. Acquire those virtues or join the brave and reckless in the grave.”

  Iorgen spared a moment from foraging to look back at Hesk and the stranger standing at the foot of the stairs. His blade was sheathed and he cradled several tarnished items in his left arm. Some were set with gemstones dulled by age, but promising so much, if only one took the time to polish them.

  “What are you doing standing there?” sneered the black-haired mercenary. “Don’t think I’ll share any of this with you if you’re gonna stand there watching us do all the work!”

  Benska looked up, dropping a few items gathered in his arms. Somehow, he managed to keep hold of his torch; where his mace lay was a mystery. “Yeah! Quaking like a coward? They’re only bones!” He punctuated this assessment by kicking a dusty femur across the floor at them.

  “Even with sorcery, corpses need muscle and sinew left on ‘em to be of any danger,” said Iorgen in a tone that dripped pedantic certainty. The two of them returned to scavenging. “With nothing to hold them together, they can’t hurt you. You see, I’ve done some reading, and I know a thing or two about the dead. Anyway, you’ve been in Busker tombs out east, right? Have you ever seen a pile of bones leap up and do a dance? That’s the kind of story the village witch scares the children with, Hesk.”

  Iorgen was indeed a fool, making it even more galling that what came out of the man’s mouth sounded like reason. But at that moment, the stranger put a hand on Hesk’s shoulder and pointed to the far end of the room, where the path between the rows of bones met the wall. Hesk spied a pair of lights in the distance, one stationary, one dancing about. As he moved his torch, one of the lights seemed to follow with it, as though…

  “A mirror?”

  He waved the torched back and forth. One of the lights dutifully matched his movements. The other bobbed up and down in concert with Benska’s torch as the deserter bent over here and there to inspect another promising bauble. Hesk turned to the stranger, who was fixed on that distant reflection.

  “Should we check it out?” Hesk enquired of the Syraeic agent, feeling like a boy asking permission from his father. The stranger looked at him, seemed to consider it, and at last nodded his head. The two walked down the path, stepping over bones tossed about by the ransacking mercenaries.

  As they neared the far wall Hesk saw that the reflective surface was one with the stone from which the chamber had been carved, running from floor to ceiling, eight feet wide. It looked like crude glass, an irregular, brassy sheen and odd patina marring its surface. His own visage stared back at him, grotesque, strangely distorted by the mirror’s wavy imperfections. His heart leapt when that perverse likeness shifted, reaching out toward him with a ragged-nailed finger. A smile spread across its demonic face, revealing a row of needle-like teeth. Just as quickly, the monstrous features vanished and the reflection again matched his real self.

  “Did you see that?” he asked in a trembling whisper. But the stranger didn’t reply. He looked in the mirror himself, grimacing, lips curling back in disgust.

  “What’s this?” Iorgen stood next to him now, fingering a faceted stone set in the hewn rock beside the mirror. The black-haired mercenary rubbed at the protuberance with the sleeve of an undershirt that peeked out from the waist of his cuirass. Torchlight flickered on the revealed brilliance of a golden topaz.

  “Shit!” exclaimed Benska, pushing the stranger aside to join them. “There’s a bunch of ‘em!”

  It was true. Dozens of gemstones set in the stone flanked the dark mirror. Hesk had to jerk his head away to avoid Benska’s torch setting his hair afire as the squat man rubbed at another, revealing the rich green of an emerald. Hesk was about to object, rage bubbling up from the pit of his stomach, when he felt the stranger’s hand on his shoulder, urging him backward.

  The firelight of Hesk’s torch danced in the stranger’s eyes. They looked not at Hesk, but at the mirror. Nostrils flaring, he pointed with his broken blade at the reflection. Hesk saw himself and the stranger standing before it, and the animated figures of Iorgen and Benska at either side, prying out gems with their daggers. But that wasn’t what the agent was pointing at. A great form stood behind them all. It looked like the trunk of a fat, scaly tree, tumorous bulges on its reptilian bark, swollen roots at its base, sunk into the stone. It seemed to breathe, inhaling, exhaling black malice. Hesk turned in near-panic, brandishing his longsword before him, ready to fight off the hideous thing. But nothing lay behind them save silent, scattered bones.

  When he turned to face the mirror again, the Syraeic agent was backing up as he closed the leather satchel that held the head of his friend. Then the man shouted in a voice both commanding and raw: “Get back, you fools!”

  Both Iorgen and Benska’s heads jerked around, annoyed that anyone would interrupt their happy pillaging. The stranger continued to retreat from the dark mirror, holding his blade before him, like a protective talisman. The mercenaries scowled and returned to their scavenging, popping priceless jewels from the wall.

  “Is your own reflection spooking you now, old man?” sniggered Iorgen, shoving a fat diamond into a pocket. “Or are you se
eing ghosts?” Benska giggled, then went to his knees to retrieve a ruby the size of a hen’s egg he had fumbled. He dropped his torch on the floor as he reached for the jewel.

  “Have another chat with your doxy’s head while we claim our fortune!” Benska cried, followed by an idiotic cackle.

  A hoary limb shattered the glass, springing forth, like a bolt fired from a ballista. It pierced Benska’s face and exited the back of his skull with an explosion of blood and brain matter. He had been on all fours, but the force of the blow sent his body flying backward, slamming into Hesk. It knocked the young man to the ground and sent his torch skidding across the floor. The rigid thing skewering Benska’s face now flexed and curled around the squat man’s neck, like the tentacle of some impossible deep-sea creature. It began pulling the corpse slowly toward the midnight-dark hole where the mirror had been.

  Iorgen emitted a piercing scream as he brought the edge of his sword down on the appendage over and over, hacking away artlessly, like some panicked woodsman desperate to fell a tree. Black ichor spurted from the wounds he inflicted, but his blows failed to halt the beastly tentacle. Instead, another emerged from the hole and wrapped itself around Iorgen’s sword arm, squeezing so fiercely that the man’s limb snapped with a sharp report. His weapon clattered to the floor.

  The mercenary’s inhuman shrieks of agony were silenced a second later when a third ropy tentacle snaked out from the darkness and wrapped itself around his head. Iorgen’s piggy eyes, wide with horror, peeked over the muscled appendage. Gemstones fell from his pockets and other hiding places, like a child’s marbles, rolling across the floor to join the tumble of bones.

  Hesk left his still-burning torch on the floor and charged at the blackness from which the murderous tentacles had emerged. Holding the blade over his head, he brought it down with both hands on the scaly appendage still gripping Iorgen’s sword arm. Black blood squirted from the gash he inflicted, splattering his face and armor with an unholy baptism of gore. The oily stuff had the stink of rotting flesh. Hesk gagged and heaved up the meager contents of his stomach.